The longer a person is intoxicated the more likely they are to do stupid things. They become overconfident and quickly lose touch with reality. Today one of my students told me he was recently fined $75 for public indecency when he was caught urinating next to a car wash. He and his buddies had driven to the big city and had some fun, but he needed them to pull over so he could take a leak. A police officer saw him. The student said the only defense that he gave the officer was that in the small town where he was from what he was doing was not illegal.
I recently finished watching the Wesley Snipes action film Blade: Trinity. It is the third film in the series and it seems to have fallen into the same trap as other action franchises such as Batman, Rambo, and The Ninja Turtles. The first installment of any good action series is usually exceptional in quality, artful, and original. The first Rambo was a genuine psychological drama; the first Ninja Turtles took the plot and characters of a children's cartoon and used innovative animatronics to tell a humous, yet mature, story; and the first Blade presented an interesting allegorical plot about the mingling of vampires and humans, and the film also contained some horrendously violent and disturbing, but visually stunning, special effects.
In the second film in an action movie franchise the studios are willing to spend the big bucks. The writers and directors no longer face the burden of exposition, because the audience knows who the good guys and bad guys are, so the story goes straight into the explosion enhanced, rock 'em sock 'em storyline. Watching these movies is like riding a new roller coaster, and the audience knows who will be safe in the end. No one questioned who would win when Rambo fought the Vietnamese, Batman and The Ninja Turtles defeated better villans in their second installments, and action in Blade 2 was the equivalent of watching a two hour CG enhanced WWF music video. Sometimes sequels and their overbloated budgets produce some degree of lame-ity (Anybody remember Vanilla Ice chanting "Go Ninja Go!"), but for the most part the audience gets to see the same story told in a superior way with better production values.
You would think, having created mature characters and complicated plots, studios, producers, and directors would ride the momentom and put out their best in act III. Sorry! Almost without fail the producers and directors put out the worst installment. Like anybody who feels that their contribution to the company is to simply ride out their contract, studio personnel seem to realize that by part three they've already created an audience of geeks, so they deride into a moat of mindless violence and self referential humor. Sylvester Stallone can suddenly destroy Afghan armies with ease, and Val Kilmer picks up a flashy side kick to do the same things that Michael Keaton did all by himself.
Blade Trinity follows the same pattern of downard spiral. All of the characters, even the haggard Kris Kristofferson, seem to forget their previous experiences and revert to one dimensionality. This same violent special effects are there, but they seem sanitized and neither gritty nor real nor inovative. If Blade's mommmy would have washed her son's mouth with soap this flick could easily have been rated PG-13.
Why does this schlock get created? Do the producers need to defend themselves against these criticisms? Of course not, it may not cost $75 bucks, but the answer is obviously because people (meaning me) continue pay for it. Rambo 4 anyone?
