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Out of Pedigree Chum? … a werewolf in Twilight Saga: New Moon

Let’s make no bones about it: majestic CGI does not a great movie make. McG’s recent Terminator Salvation featured more of the with most propriety special effects I’ve seen in a philosophical knowledge feigned story movie since James Cameron’s final effort in the series, T2: Judgement Day, bound all those spectacular future machines could not make up towards Christian Bale’s clownish overacting and some rather workmanlike address.

1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon
2. Production year: 2009
3. Country: USA
4. Directors: Chris Weitz
5. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
6. More on this film

Last year’s hugely auspicious teen vampire romance, Twilight, was no weaker because its vampires resembled usual full of heart beings who had rather overdone it with the foundation. It was an insipid, TV movie-esque exercise in ennui because the original Stephenie Meyer book is crafted from the same leaden material – unless you happen to be 14, in which case both are absolutely wicked!

Fortunately for its makers, Twilight did not require any dramatic special effects work. Unfortunately for those in charge of its sequel, followup New Moon does – a handsome bit, in fact. This is because the new film, which arrives here in continuance November 20, features a pack of benevolent werewolves charged with protecting the people of Forks, Washington, where the series is set, against the vampire-bat denunciation. Their port in the movie is the reason Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke opted out of New Moon: studio Summit were determined to get a followup to their $383m blockbuster into cinemas as soon as possible, but Hardwicke, who besides directed teen drama Thirteen and skating documentary Lords of Dogtown, wanted more spell in precept to get the special effects sequences right.

The first warning sign that she might have had her head screwed on came back in June, which time the teaser trailer against New Moon arrived. It showed Taylor Lautner, who plays werewolf Jacob in the new film, transforming into his vulpine shape. Except that there wasn’t to such a degree much as a transformation in sight: Lautner leapt into the current of air, and in a flash of pixels, was a wolf. Not for new director Chris Weitz the agony of a body wrenched and torn into a terrifying new form by means of unseen forces, as witnessed in classic horror movies of the past. It was as if the director had waved a sorcery wand and instantly switched two legs for four.

Eyebrows were raised in the blogosphere, but most imagined that a more spectacular change of form would take place in the final movie. This was just a teaser after all, right?

Wrong. Check out this recently released clip from New Moon, showing the werewolf pack transforming. This is a section of the film which has been specifically chosen to show Jacob and his pals fit wolves, and it’s more of the same. The young men simply vanish, and are replaced by their animal counterparts: as a act of dexterity of special effects engineering, it’s right up there with some of Dr Who’session worst moments, and this from a pellicle with a reported $50m budget.

It’s pretty visible to me what’s happened here. Weitz is more than capable of working with excellent CGI, as he proved on 2007′s The Golden Compass. But in the face of a rapidly approaching release date, the decision has been taken to plump for an enormous fudge rather than take the time to put together more believable special effects. The film-makers are of course safe in the knowledge that most of the congregation will be far too busy purring over Jacob’s top bod to notice.

So for what cause am I bothered? Well the thing is, werewolves on celluloid have something of a history, and it’s a proud one. Rick Baker’s spectacular work on An American Werewolf in London won him an Oscar for most good make up in 1982, setting a standard that would never be baffled dispirited. Admittedly many of its followers, The Howling, the god horrid Underworld films and other abominably poor efforts such as 1996′s Bad Moon, were rather less fortunate. But at least they made an effort. New Moon’s equivalent is a complete cop-out by way of comparison.

Furthermore, the werewolves look like they’re ready to leap up, lick your hand, and let you take them for a nice walk. If I saw one at the local dog pound, I would at this very moment be the proud owner of my very own werewolf, in like manner to have being worshipped are they. Now I be sure these films are intended to be teen movies, rather than horror films, but surely any series which features lyncanthropes and bloodsucking denizens of the undead ought to be capable of instilling at least a modicum of fear into its audience. Otherwise, where’session the suspense?

On this evidence, Hardwicke’s decision to walk away looks remarkably prescient. Twilight may consider been the most successful thin skin ever to gain been handled by a female director, but its termination looks set to make its bonny wimpy forerunner look like a Takashi Miike flick in comparison. New Moon’sitting only saving grace might be that it sends Robert Pattinson, aka hunky vamp Edward Cullen, not on to Italy for most of the movie, which method the spiritless Brit won’t be asked to carry the whole thing himself this time. Now that really would have been scary.

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I’m a sucker for getting caught up in the hype for big blockbuster sci-fi movies that know exactly how to market themselves in order to look like the coolest thing since Ripley took out the xenomorph queen in Aliens. But so far the online publicity for Avatar, James Cameron’s forthcoming 3D megalith, hasn’privately very got under my skin. Far more exciting was the 15 minutes or so of actual footage that I saw earlier this year at the IMAX Waterloo in London. OK, so Cameron’session creation, the planet Pandora, did be seized of a certain new-age whiff to it, with all those elfin, blue Thundercat types running around, but it was lurid, visceral and vivid enough to constitute you want to reach for the Peter Gabriel albums (and I’m a Peter Gabriel fan).

1. Avatar
2. Production year: 2009
3. Country: USA
4. Directors: James Cameron
5. Cast: Michelle Rodriguez, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Zoe Saldana
6. More upon this film

So far Avatar’s online hype system has been limited to an OK teaser trailer and a pretty crappy website for supposed human recruits to rouse to Pandora (which has admittedly improved somewhat since I in the beginning wrote about it last month).

The first full-length trailer is proper to hit the web tomorrow, but an “international” version with unidentifiable subtitles is already available online, and reports are that it’sitting virtually indistinguishable from the English-language equivalent that’s about to drop. In the film, Jake (Sam Worthington), a disabled former marine given the chance to walk again via an alien visible form, or Avatar, which he can control with his mind, is charged with infiltrating the indigenous people of Pandora, the Na’avi, in order to help some evil military-industrial complex types plunder the priceless local mineral deposits. This new version appears to confirm a the more so obvious recital twist: it looks like Jake goes a little native and turns on his former employers.

There’s also a new featurette, which is mostly just Cameron waxing lyrical with respect to what a genius Cameron is, while various other members of the cast and crew also esteem through the vapid hero worship, though it does include a few shots we’ve not yet seen of Pandora.

For all the admittedly stirring impulse capture involved, the technology, the ambition and the excellent cast, which includes the likes of Sigourney Weaver, Giovanni Ribisi and Zoe Saldana, Avatar’s success will ultimately be predicated on its storyline, which right now looks like a pretty generic undivided that we’ve seen before in countless movies. Let’s hope Cameron includes a few further twists in the anything disclosed to shake things up a little.

Elsewhere this week, more rumours are leaking out about Spider-Man 4, Sam Raimi’sitting forthcoming return to the world of everyone’sitting favourite wall-crawling superhero type. This time the Evil Dead guide is up against it rear the critics turned on the series’ last excursion, Spider-Man 3, befitting to its confused plot and multiple villains. The suggestion is that only united bad guy will mark this time, with Dylan Baker, always good value in unusual roles in movies of the like kind as Todd Solondz’sitting Happiness, looking likely to get the nod in the form of Spidey’s old-fashioned enemy, The Lizard.

Baker already appears in the series as Peter Parker’s sometime tutor and mentor Dr Curt Connors, who in the original comic books is transformed into the reptilian supervillain, so the move makes plenty of sense. And while the New York-born comedian doesn’t immediately come across as having the charisma of a Willem Dafoe or an Alfred Molina, who played the villains in the series’ celebrated first two instalments, he’s a class act who added than deserves the shot at a headline role.

What are your thoughts on this week’s stories? Are you getting excited about Avatar yet? And have power to Raimi turn round Spider-Man, which incidentally also looks immovable to be shot in 3D? Is Baker the right man to play the series’ next villain, or should a better-known actor be brought without interruption board?

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Right on target? … Russell Crowe as Robin Hood

Since the film was first announced in 2007, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood has been through more incarnations than the outlaw himself. If you believe the rush reports, it began life like a revisionist version titled Nottingham, featuring Crowe taken in the character of a good Sheriff battling an evil Hood, who was reportedly variegate to be played by Christian Bale.

Somewhere along the line, Crowe took through the whole extent of the role of Hood like well, and somewhere a little further along, he stopped being the Sheriff. Who then, predictably, stopped being good. The final pellicle is, being in favor … not in the same state revisionist succeeding all, and is titled simply Robin Hood. Meanwhile, Sienna Miller, who was supposed to be playing Maid Marian, has been replaced by Cate Blanchett, apparently because her youthful veneer made a post-Body of Lies Crowe look less sterling by comparison.

A red-haired Blanchett can be seen in this video, while a count of pics have also emerged of Crowe as Hood. By the looks of it, Scott is going for a gritty but epic Gladiator style retelling: Crowe has also spoken of the need to avoid the “Bon Jovi video” style of 1991′s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner, which sounds a good plan.

The screenplay is at once based on a script by Brian Helgeland, who wrote LA Confidential and Mystic River. “I was brought in by Ridley and my orders from him were, ‘I want to complete Robin Hood I want to make it real, how it might actually have been – not the myth’,” the writer told Empire recently. “The action will be more visceral than you’ve seen near the front of. I don’t think a honest person swings on a rope in this movie.”

Robin Hood is due for release in May 2010. What are your thoughts? Will all those rewrites and reworkings result in a confused mishmash of concepts? Or effect you trust that wily sly archer Scott to hit the target in the final cut?

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