Wednesday, March 2, 2011

ALIEN VS. NINJA.........and SEA MONKEYS!

This is the prequel to the original ALIEN that the Internet has been buzzing about recently.  The film, set in feudal Japan, explores the origins of the Yutani side of the Weyland/Yutani Corporation and their interests in the alien and space exploration.  You see Yutani is actually the name of a school that teaches the deadly arts of ninjitsu.  Yutani is an old teacher and founder of the school who discovers a crashed U.F.O. out in the woods somewhere.  After boarding the abandoned ship he quickly learns how to pilot the vessel and immediately takes it out into space where he befriends those elephant looking aliens we see dead and fossilized in ALIEN.  They tell him he needs to start building more spaceships and....Nah, I am just messin with ya.

ALIEN VS. NINJA is exactly what the title says only to be accurate it should say ALIENS VS. NINJAS VS. ZOMBIES CONTROLLED BY SEA MONKEYS.  I swear this is the first movie ever that you see actual sea monkeys.  Those little guys are bastards.  There are these ninjas who are sent out to investigate a crashed meteor and low and behold we spend the rest of the movie fighting aliens.  Its pretty cool overall.  The fights are mostly impressive if a bit over the top.  Plus as an added bonus there is some ALIEN VS NINJA SEXUAL INNUENDO.  Lets not go there shall we?

The beginning of the movie has a shot of a tall palace and these cartoon ninjas start jumping out of it.  At first I thought this was just a production company banner appearing to let us know which company financed the film, but no, this is the actual movie.  So it starts off immediately on the wrong foot.  Soon after that all these ninjas are fighting our hero ninja and he kicks all their butts in awesome C.G.I. badassness.  Yea, there is a lot of C.G.I. in this film and it is of the SYFY original movie quality.  The movie itself looks a bit flat almost like it was shot on home video only in digital.  You kind of get this feeling like you are watching a bloody version of POWER RANGERS.  When they don't look like sea monkeys the aliens are of the fake rubbery-man-in-a-costume variety.  They look like they should be duking it out with Godzilla in a burned down city made of cardboard.  I don't like their design.  They need to be big kick-ass scary, not a bunch of Pokemons.

There really isn't much to say about this one.  It was a fun watch.  It's not as great as the Internet led me to believe but I am proud to add this to my blu-ray collection.  You will see a lot of crap you haven't seen before mixed in with a lot of crap you have seen before but overall it will be an enjoyable experience.

Oh, yea before I go.  If you are making a movie and at the end you have a final battle with some kind of pop song sung in Japanese playing over the action, please don't have the subtitles translate the song.  Its very distracting and really weird.  I missed most of the end fight because I was reading the song subtitles and wondering why all these Japanese songs mention flower petals and wind.  I don't need every single thing translated, thank you.  I may have a blog but I am not that big of a nerd.

Probably.


Jason

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