Throw Me a Frickin' Bone

In yet another display of its ongoing slide in moral turpitude, Hollywood has consistently refused to adequately portray a giant evil wolf.

Exhibit A:


WETA, normally superb on monster design, decided to with the giant hyena/hamster route, rather than portray the large, cunningly intelligent wolves Tolkien describes.

Exhibit B:

As good as ILM has been in the past, creature design for the Harry Potter movies has been less than stellar. I'm thinking of the centaurs in particular here. Anyway, Lupin's alter ego looks more sad than terrifying. Maybe even a little cute.

Exhibit C:

The best of the lot, as is befitting a Frank Miller inspired movie. Still, you can tell that The 300 didn't have a top-of-the-line budget (not that it helped the previous two creatures). He just looks a little fake. The movement, in particular, is a problem.

Until Hollywood manages to come up with a realistic, sufficiently scary design, I suggest it sticks to what it does best rather than churn out unsatisfactory canines:

More Like "Blunderworld"

Zing!

Saw Underworld: Evolution last night. It actually wasn't as god-awful bad as I thought it would be. The first third was fairly exciting, and I liked the medieval bits, though I don't know why Russian knights were dressed up like soldiers of Gondor. The backstory of an eternal, secret war was attractive (as was Kate Beckinsale). Of course, the movie broke down soon enough. Marcus and William were never really explained, and the "evolution" part of the movie was just an inelegant way of needlessly increasing the powers of all involved. Oh, I thought the part where Selene and Michael fight Marcus on the truck was very well done. So, not god-awful bad, just mindless action movie bad. Remember that.

I guess this is a good a time as any to offer my theory on vampires in art. The best comparison I can make is to the King Arthur mythos. Neither has really been done justice yet. Every book or movie I've read about the two has shown some flashes of brilliance but can't quite come through. For some reason the idea remains better than the execution. Discuss amongst yourselves why.



No wonder the vampires in the prologue are so ineffective. They were originally the clowns Peter Jackson had defending Gondor.