posted
Alot of gamers were upset by the somewhat soft and cleanly violence in the prior Mortal Kombat movies, but it seems that like its fans MK will be forced to grow up. This is a little bare bones write-up and ofcourse the actual video that Kevin Tancharoen directed as a teaser for Warner Brothers to see what he can give them, and lets assume that its existence and positive feedback on the internet may affect thier opinion. It will most definatly be have atleast an R rating if not NC17, while no children allowed would reduce ticket sales it would drive home that this movie is not for children and hopefully help adults understand that an NC17 rating doesnt make it porn.
Considering the fact that they already have Michael Jai White (lead from Spawn) playing my favorite character, I dont really see anything that could stop me from seeing this movie.
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Its getting good press online from the fanboys, and they have an impressive cast and crew so far. WB would have to pretty dense not to go through with it... oh wait, were talking about production company exec's... crap.
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NC-17 almost guarantees it won't turn out much of a profit,(if any) at the box office. R, maybe. Violence even graphic violence just doesn't garner movies an NC-17 rating which means they'd have to put not only nudity, but sex scenes. I don't see why that would have any place in a Mortal Kombat movie, none of the characters have that kind of interest in each other.
They'd have to create one heck of a movie for it to have a chance to do well.
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I'm still confused as to why a scene from But I'm A Cheerleader where a clothed young woman pantomimes mastubation through her clothes qualifies the movie as NC17, but gruesome vivid bloody violence enacted upon the living and the deceased is R and in some cases PG13. In my opinion movies like Saw, Se7en and (hopefully this MK) should not be available to children no matter how horrible thier parents are.
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posted
AH: We could get into an in depth analysis as to the inconsistency of the rating system in America. But I wouldn't be able to do you the service of steady discourse on the subject.
But simply put, for me, nudity is different in that you cannot fake nudity (at least nobody does). Violence is always simulated, if there was a movie where the actor was actually killed or injured in a serious way, I would say that should push the envelope beyond R. Sex is something generally more distant from a child's everyday experiences than violence is. These are some of the key reasons to me violence and sex are just not the same thing when it comes to a movie.
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quote:Sex is something generally more distant from a child's everyday experiences than violence is.
While this is true in a sort of general sense, I think it falls apart when dealing with the kind of (simulated) violence under discussion. Fighting on a playground is vastly different than decapitation.
Personally, the times I saw sexual material in film as a child, I was just confused. Violence of the sort we're discussing, I can't recall ever seeing. But it would have been terrifying. Even terribly simulated violence was traumatic. Watching something like Saw would have been nightmarish.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: ... But simply put, for me, nudity is different in that you cannot fake nudity (at least nobody does). Violence is always simulated, if there was a movie where the actor was actually killed or injured in a serious way, I would say that should push the envelope beyond R ...
This difference doesn't seem to be as clear to me. Spartacus and Beowulf used prosthetics, wigs, and computer rendering to bump up the nudity.
Meanwhile, particularly in Jackie Chan's earlier movies, there are a lot of actors getting injured in stunts and what not, although sorta* not on purpose.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Violence is always simulated, if there was a movie where the actor was actually killed or injured in a serious way, I would say that should push the envelope beyond R.
Well, this is true in a way. But it's not uncommon for stunt men to be killed or seriously injured. This happened during the filming of The Dark Knight and at least one of Sam Raimi's Spider Man films, if I recall correctly. And let's not forget Brandon Lee being literally shot to death on the set of The Crow.
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The angle they seem to be taking this "new" Mortal Kombat would seem to give them a chance to make a profitable movie- not necessarily by bringing in blockbuster numbers, but by keeping it non-supernatural and thus not requiring a 100 million-plus CGI budget. It ought to be possible to do a movie on real-world sets where martial artists are the big draw, with competent B-list actors, for, say, $40 mil or so. And while MK isn't the sparkling license it was ten years ago (which probably also helps with regard to keeping costs low and meddling hands off), I could certainly see a movie done in that style making twice that in box office.
In a small aside: as an occasional browser of boxofficemojo.com, I'm frequently astonished by how much money gets sunk into movies these days. Are they building rendering farms and software from scratch each time? I mean, I enjoyed The Princess and the Frog, but where did $105 million dollars disappear into that movie? Or $150 million into Shrek 2? Or $200 million into Prince of Persia? Doesn't anyone remember how to build miniatures anymore?
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Sterling: asset development. The single biggest cost of video game development, and I suspect of movie development, is time by designers to create models. Software developers are always creating better and better environments for doing that in to bring time lower, but ultimately, if you want a lot of detail and nuance in how something moves, you need someone to describe (in some sense) how that happens, and with the visually rich environments in modern movies, that's a lot of things to describe.
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It makes sense for a detailed CGI worlds to be vastly more expensive (although detailed miniatures would be even moreso). But I don't see a reason why Princess and the Frog should be more expensive than Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, adjusted for inflation. Anyone care to do the math and see how much more expensive it actually was?
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The Princess and the Frog was far, far more visually complex than Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and used a digital pipeline for a lot of the process.
And Snow White and the Seven Dwarves cost nearly $1.5 million to make, which would be over $22 million in 2009, using CPI inflation. I'm fairly certain the cost of good animators has gone up a lot since Snow White (more than CPI), and they likely spent a lot more on music, just to name a few areas that would help account for the difference.
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Is it not more disturbing to show chilren a movie where death is represented so innacuratly? A man is shot, but we see no blood, his body does not bloat, his muscle's do not go slack emptying the contents of his body as grain from a sack, his eyes do not glaze and gain a look that a human can only describe as "dead"
Instead he just falls to the ground, maybe says his last words, poses his face to resemble the clueless stare of a blow-up doll and lets his hand drape from his wrist. That is what our films show death as, children grow up thinking that people die cleanly and quick and more often than not because they deserve it. What is more damaging to your children a cartoon friendly depiction of murder and suffering or the puppet's from America: World Police being bumped against one another?
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Violence is always simulated, if there was a movie where the actor was actually killed or injured in a serious way, I would say that should push the envelope beyond R.
Well, this is true in a way. But it's not uncommon for stunt men to be killed or seriously injured. This happened during the filming of The Dark Knight and at least one of Sam Raimi's Spider Man films, if I recall correctly. And let's not forget Brandon Lee being literally shot to death on the set of The Crow.
There's a difference, I think, between behind the scenes mistakes like you're referring to and intentionally harming and/or killing someone on screen for entertainment value which is what BlackBlade was referring to.
You don't actually see Brandon Lee get shot to death and the rare instances where a stunt resulting in injury is placed in the movie you can't tell they reall get injured (at least without looking very closely). And those injuries are generally relatively minor.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Violence is always simulated, if there was a movie where the actor was actually killed or injured in a serious way, I would say that should push the envelope beyond R.
Well, this is true in a way. But it's not uncommon for stunt men to be killed or seriously injured. This happened during the filming of The Dark Knight and at least one of Sam Raimi's Spider Man films, if I recall correctly. And let's not forget Brandon Lee being literally shot to death on the set of The Crow.
There's a difference, I think, between behind the scenes mistakes like you're referring to and intentionally harming and/or killing someone on screen for entertainment value which is what BlackBlade was referring to.
You don't actually see Brandon Lee get shot to death and the rare instances where a stunt resulting in injury is placed in the movie you can't tell they reall get injured (at least without looking very closely). And those injuries are generally relatively minor.
Don't forget Twilight Zone, where Vic Morrow and two children were killed by a helicopter; John Landis was charged with involuntary manslaughter. I admit I don't recall how much of that made it on screen.
And there have been several movies where the actors themselves have been injured. I can recall numerous cases of broken ribs and other fractures. Although I do admit that the movies that I do recall that happening in are rated "R" (I checked three).
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: It makes sense for a detailed CGI worlds to be vastly more expensive (although detailed miniatures would be even moreso). But I don't see a reason why Princess and the Frog should be more expensive than Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, adjusted for inflation. Anyone care to do the math and see how much more expensive it actually was?
Well, I haven't done the math, but specifically with regards to Princess and the Frog: Disney had previously shut down its 2D animation studios. It's my understanding that to make that film, they had to rebuild the 2D animation department. I wonder if the costs of doing so were folded into the movie budget itself?
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: ... But simply put, for me, nudity is different in that you cannot fake nudity (at least nobody does). Violence is always simulated, if there was a movie where the actor was actually killed or injured in a serious way, I would say that should push the envelope beyond R ...
This difference doesn't seem to be as clear to me. Spartacus and Beowulf used prosthetics, wigs, and computer rendering to bump up the nudity.
Meanwhile, particularly in Jackie Chan's earlier movies, there are a lot of actors getting injured in stunts and what not, although sorta* not on purpose.
Sorry this is so belated, but regarding animated nudity I think I would be comfortable with looser standards on animated nudity. I'm not sure why but I know for violence we allow for more graphic violence if the person being assaulted is not human. I'm thinking of LOTR where heads were being lopped off an folks getting skewered but retaining a PG-13 rating.
Fantasia for example had glimpses of harpy and centaur breasts, and still retained a G or PG IIRC.
If you animated an explicit love scene I think an R would still be warranted. I dunno, I still need to think a bit about it. Rating standards are one of those subjects I think people love to sneer at without really thinking of how to make it work properly.
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posted
Well, it's not necessary animated nudity that I think blurs the lines between violence being simulated and nudity not being faked, but CGI nudity (or prosthetics) that is intended to pass for the real thing.
But yes, I think that many of the folks sneering at rating standards don't necessarily have much invested in making them work "properly" (or as the quotes imply, agree what properly means).
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quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: Don't forget Twilight Zone, where Vic Morrow and two children were killed by a helicopter; John Landis was charged with involuntary manslaughter. I admit I don't recall how much of that made it on screen.
That entire scene was scrapped from the movie. I was 15 when that movie came out. I remember seeing the footage on the news of the accident. I was horrified.
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