SOAP Opera

While reading through the film junk blog I encountered a link to this article by Chuck Klosterman for Esquire Titled: The “Snakes on a Plane” Problem. The Article makes some good points about participatory filmmaking, the internet, and all that. I’m not sure what to make of the snakes movie. Certainly it could be a sign of the times now that Sci-Fi Channel is finally spending money to make cool stuff like Amazing Screw-On Head, Eureka, and Battlestar Galactica (Edward James Olmos EJO is awesome!) the era of Sci-Fi Channel Original movie badness might be overtaken by extra bad Hollywood crap. I think in terms of the irony factor Klosterman hit the nail on the head. If you make a movie to be bad and it is badly made then it won’t be funny at all. This is why some satire works and some doesn’t. Also if you make a movie to be sincerely scary or whatever (serious) and it is a failure at that then it can be funny (good). An example of this situation can be found in analyzing the Leprechaun franchise. The first one tried to be scary and even though it was idiotic, it was funny as all hell. By the second one the makers seemed to be in on the joke and it wasn’t as good. Then by the third one he’s in Vegas and there is some medallion thing and he seems to have forgotten all about his precious gold. In IV he’s in space! Great so he’s immortal and in his long life he’s managed to get out there into the mix of alien politics and space marines. Then for V he’s “in the hood” and for V2 he’s “back in the hood” presumably these are meant to be prequels to IV or perhaps fall outside of the regular cannon material and do not take place in the Leprachuniverse. I haven’t seen the last two Lep flicks maybe they’ve figured out how to do satire right but I’d imagine they are just something awful in that non-ironic sort of way.