I put the spoiler tag in there, but in truth, in order to 'spoiler' something, it needs to have a plot to spoil. So using that term here is somewhat nebulous. Based on a graphic novel, 'Pathfinder' is the tale of a viking lad abandoned (for his lack of cruelty) in the New World, to be raised by Indians, and then fighting against the Northmen (aka the 'Dragonmen') upon their return a generation later. The Good: The swords were pretty cool, especially the heroes. Sort of a 'dragonhead viking sword.' In some ways reminiscent of Highlander. Hold that thought, because I'll be returning to it in the summary. It also reminded me of 'The Scotsman' in Samurai Jack with his sword with 'magic runes'. The Kurgan is in it. Again, hold that thought. The 'vikings' actually spoke either Icelandic or Norwegian; I'm not sure which, but it was clearly one of the two. Probably the coolest facet of this whole wretched movie. The Bad: Where to begin? This movie was adapted from a graphic novel. I LIKE those kind of movies. 300 just screamed graphic novel throughout. This movie just doesn't. It doesn't have any sort of 'comic book' feel about it at all. Which is a shame, because that 'feel' might have redeemed it. We already know the movie wasn't supposed to be historically accurate or anything like that- fine. But by Odin, can we really call this movie a 'viking' movie? I'm not sure. Mindless fantasy monster men, maybe, but not vikings. I'm not going to cry about the horned helmets- everyone else has already addressed that. I tried hard to like this movie. I wanted to like this movie. I read the bashing and shit beforehand and decided to give it a chance anyway. I mean, we all talk about movies where the whole point is to simply turn off your brain and kick back for a couple hours, right? Well sports fans, sometimes you can't turn your brain off enough for that strategy to work. This was one of those experiences. I'll simply bullet point some of the low points here: 1. Where on the eastern seaboard of North America do we find mountains like the ones in this movie? It looked like it was shot in the rockies. Canadians, do you have a gigantic ass mountain range up in Newfoundland that you've been hiding from the satellites? 2. A 'viking' character loses an eye in gory fashion, and not one of his compadres cracks the OBLIGATORY joke about how he looks like Odin now! I mean, c'mon! 3. No character development to speak of. 4. We learn nothing about the Indians we're supposed to give a shit about. They all speak with contemporary midwestern accents, too, which is jarring. They subtitled the 'vikings' in Norse, they should have subtitled the Indians in one of the Indian tongues. Which wouldn't have made much difference, since there isn't much dialogue to speak of. And why do friendly Indians ALWAYS look like the Sioux in Dances With Wolves? 5. The boy is raised by Indians, for crissake. When did he learn how to swordfight? 6. The movie was downright boring. Amazing, considering how much of it was pure action, hack and slash. 7. How is it that the Indian chick at the end becomes the 'Pathfinder' for her people? BTW, it is NEVER explained WTF a pathfinder is, or the significance of the position to the Indians. That was one of those 'here's some weird shit straight out of the blue' at the end of the movie. The Ugly: A movie requires at least these three things to be a success: 1) A script. 2) An editor. 3) A director. Pathfinder is batting a big ol' goose egg here. This movie is a godawful mess from start to finish. When the only saving grace of a movie is the action, it takes a real talented director to fuck it up so much you can't make any of it out. Thirty minutes into this crapfest, I decided that given 1 week to work with the script, I could have made this movie at least fun. I blame the editor, but I'm not sure how much he had to work with between the awful script and the awful direction. Just....damn. Summary: I was so bored during this movie that my mind wandered off to ways it could have been made to be cool. Which brings us back to Highlander. With a little script doctoring, this could have been the best Highlander movie since the original. Clancy Brown played the viking leader in this movie. Guess what? He look, dressed, and acted like the Kurgan. So much so that I began thinking of him as the Kurgan about halfway through. And if you think of him as the Kurgan, it's easier to buy that he would have surrounded himself with the most incorrgible, whoreson, rapine of the viking breed. A real band of evil bastards. Which is what the 'vikings' in this movie were, through and through. Otherwise, I was wistfully reminded of the humor, loyalty, and bad-assedness of Herger the Joyous, Buliwyf, Edgtho, and the rest of the boys in the 13th Warrior. Those were vikings, by Thor! These guys- not so much. Karl Urban's character would have made a great pre-immortal. The Kurgan dies in the end of this flick by a huge fall, and then he gets covered up by an avalanche. Well, he didn't lose his head, did he? And Urban's character somehow, inexplicably, walks out of the avalanche that buries all the remaining vikings at the end. With a cool ass sword in hand, too. Well, doesn't that just scream 'first death' to you? Sheee-it! The boy is an immie! Yep. This should have been a highlander movie, except with a new immortal nicknamed 'The Pathfinder', with a cool dragon-headed viking sword. That's the angle they should have taken. So here's my final analysis: If you go in and pretend this is a Highlander movie, I'll give it about 5 stars out of 10. If you don't, I give it about 2 stars out of 10. Marso sez: It's the suck.
Reviews like this make me believe people on this forum could probably make a better movie than half the shit that's coming out of Hollywood these days, but the problem is we are nobodies, and no one is going to give anyone $50 million to make a movie. So we end up getting these hacks who somehow fellate their way up the chain and then end up making crap like this. See: Miami Vice and Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.
My last TV spot for my local amnesty group was better than three thirds of what comes out of Hollywood these days. It cost €6 for eggs and took one hour to shoot. There's also a Director's Cut with a CGI explosion!
^ I think the trick might be to just keep making movies, even if they are shitty ones. Eventually, you'll end up on one of those indy film festivals, then everyone takes notice. People then end up trusting you with bigger and bigger projects. The problem is the really talented people are too proud of their work, and would rather produce nothing than make something that's not up to their own standards. I know a few people who, if you met them, would give off the impression that they were country bumpkins that just fell off a turnip truck on the way to a county fair, i.e. they really knew very little about what they were doing. Yet these people - through ignorance, or delusion, or just dumb luck, believed they could actually do stuff professionally, and eventually, they succeeded and are now making a lot more money than me. So maybe the trick is to just go out and do it, and eventually, everything will fall into place.
I feel that way, and I'm not even talented. I just know I could do at least a smidge better than what's out there, which wouldn't take much. But I don't wanna settle for a smidge, which is why I don't dig my stuff.
Ah, fuck that, I miss when it used to be fun to do. I gotta find that again. To hell with the rest. To hell with the whole damned world.
No, I disagree, you have some talent. Maybe not boatloads and boatloads that it's running out your ears, but enough that you could do a few years worth of work before fading into obscurity again for another ten or twenty. Those "one-hit-wonders" exist for a reason, and that is usually because the first movie/music album/whatever is usually the guy or girl's life work, all packed into one. And then they get really popular and then sign a contract that says they have a year to come out with their second project. Of course this is going to suck, because the first took a lifetime to complete, then the next they have to produce in a year. If you put all the stuff you've written together, you could have at least two "one-hit-wonders", whether they would be in comic form, movie form, or whatever. The trick is to just DO IT and get it out there for the world to see. That goes for Cassandra too.
Still better than 0-hit wonder. And that one hit wonder will still make you millions. Vanilla Ice is a multi-millionaire, all because of "Ice-Ice-Baby."
IMHO, this is the best time ever to be in entertainment/media, because of blogs, and sites like YouTube. Anyone can publish/distribute his or her work. Look at these guys on YouTube: [yt="We Need Girlfriends"]omE_8VJN9Eo[/yt] They're just a bunch of nobodies producing a series and posting the episodes on YouTube. They've got a MySpace page with over 6,000 friends. Forget about getting rich--they're probably losing money on this. But they're producing a body of work which will help build their careers. I think it's awesome! JMHO. YMMV. Edit: Watched 6 episodes. Pretty good, IMO. Hope they're successful!
Problem is, in contrast to painting, writing and those things filmmaking even at the indy level requires lots of money, equipment, time and people if the result should be watchable. Yes, you can go and sign up to DOGMA 95 and make stuff à la nature but then, how many such movies have you seen? DOGVILLE. End. And that one has at least 5 huge stars and an array of well known actors you'll not get to work for your project even if you had the money. Thus you can't produce the quality that's required for such a movie to work. Point is, you can do other art projects next to having a day job that keeps you eating. Filmmaking is a day job once you leave the realm of the short movie. 'Just do it' gives us shit like Uwe Boll's video game films who is a zero talent hack with a 'vision' and a seemingly endless money source. Btw, I don't consider fooling around on YouTube as 'filmmaking'. It's fun but it's neither art nor any help for an eventual career. It's mostly vain self presentation. I wouldn't be so sure about that. The record companies take most of the profit from the first works. He'll have money trickling in because it's still played on the radio but nowhere near millions level. 'course he has more CDs out and sold over 20 million so you're probably right. From just one song? No.
If the artist wrote the #1 hit themselves, it could set them up for a good long time. I read an interview with Tommy James back in 1988 where he said just the songwriting royalties on "Mony Mony" (Billy Idol version not his original, 1 week @ #1 in 1987) netted him in the 7 figures. One song, one week @ number one, just Songwriting royalties.
Don't know much about filmaking, so you're probably right, but my point is, too many people who SHOULD be out making art aren't doing it, and too many people who really SHOULDN'T are actually doing it. My question is - those people who produce these absolutely shitty movies - how do they get their start? For all the crap he may come up with, you still know who 'Uwe Boll' is. For all we know, it might not be long until he convinces some Hollywood bigwig to give him tons of cash to make a shitty movie because the director they actually want costs too much money. Probably not, but I think it's still too early in the game to really be sure of that. YouTube hasn't been around all that long yet, and we might end up seeing some brilliant work being done on it one day. What I'm reminded of are those kiddies mixing around other people's music and sounds on turntables. Most people didn't take it seriously, until it bloomed into a totally new music style, and now we have these DJs traveling all over the world because people wanna hear their 'house' or 'trance' 'music'. Yeah, artists don't make anything off their royalties, but you're forgetting all the concerts he held back in the day. He was in my city just a year or so ago, and although he can't pack an entire stadium anymore, he did manage to sell out another much smaller venue. That is what makes recording artists most of their And there probably was a time where he COULD pack or nearly pack an entire stadium. Sure, he has other songs he 'sings', but does anyone really go for those?
I wonder that too. Total determination? Luck? Connections? Most likely the last point - look, for example, how many non-American directors make it in Hollywood (not many). The likes of Petersen, Emmerich, Scott and so on already came there with a good portfolio. Michael Bay, on the other hand, did the same as I: directing TV commercials. Then he made BAD BOYS... a career simply not possible outside Hollywood, and also impossible when you're not there to network. I really don't know how he does it. The films are Z-class, bleeding money like mad but he still gets bigger and bigger budgets and good actors Word is, btw, that the budgets come from Germany where they have a huge tax hole for financing movies. Looking at his stuff I tend to agree without checking the information. Maybe but as of now, those little windows are the real problem. Nobody watches that for more than a few minutes. That's also why no pros really embrace it other than for trailers which happen to have the right duration. Hmmm... never thought of that. Maybe you're on to something. Of course filmmaking is a much more complex process than making electronic music. For it not to suck visually you need an array of specialists. Watch the end credits of some indy movie one day to see what I mean. You can't do all that alone, that's impossible. Or better yes, you can. But the results won't be good. And not even the best script in the world will save you when it looks like shot in your garage, lighted by your mother, soundified by a deaf guy and cut by your cat. He's still around?
I'm pretty sure that Germany closed that loophole due to, in no small part I'm sure, Uwe Boll. That means that any movie he makes now are being made because a studio actually wants to make them.
