Two movies - one delightfully good, the other delightfully bad

I’ve a new movie to add to my MTWSB(IMHO)TIOWTAWFSWMMT list.

Skinwalkers

I watched it on Thursday, and laughed way too much during the course of it. I also spent a lot of time while watching it wondering why it seems so hard to make a good movie about werewolves. An American Werewolf in London was actually pretty good; An American Werewolf in Paris was alright, but pretty disappointing when compared to the former. I haven’t seen any of the classic black and white wolf man movies, nor have I seen the original The Howling (I have seen a few random sequels to The Howling, and wow are they ever bad). Silver Bullet was okay - nothing really noteworthy about it, but nothing horribly wrong either. I have a soft spot for Underworld, but that isn’t a pure werewolf movie. Blood and Chocolate wasn’t awful, but I wouldn’t really call it good either. So really that’s one good werewolf movie I’ve watched, and the rest have been at best "meh."

Those musings aside, the basic plot of Skinwalkers is as follows: there’s this kid who is about to turn 13, and Navajo legend states when he reaches 13 there will be no more skinwalkers. So those werewolves who don’t want to be werewolves are trying to protect the kid from those werewolves who want to remain werewolves (who naturally are trying to kill the kid). For me, the one high point of the movie came fairly early on. I found the first major gun fight between the two groups to be quite enjoyable, but not, I imagine, for any reason the filmmakers would appreciate (or at least not for the reasons they likely intended). The evil werewolves (who also greatly resembled a biker gang which is neither here nor there) had managed to track down the kid to the town he was being hidden in. As the inevitable firefight ensued I was treated to a scene that reminded me greatly of Hot Fuzz (which is pretty much the only reason I enjoyed the scene in question). The various good werewolves living in the town apparently go nowhere without several concealed weapons on them, and they conveniently also keep caches of weapons hidden everywhere in town. My two favorite examples would be the mailman with the sawed off shotgun in his mailbag, and the kid’s grandmother who is revealed to keep a huge freaking revolver in her purse (I also enjoyed the bit where she tosses the now empty revolver to her confused grandson and advises him that explanations will come later but right now he needs to learn how to reload a gun). If you’ve watched Hot Fuzz, the above description should sound pretty familiar to Sgt. Angel’s assault on the town of Sandford. The difference being Hot Fuzz was meant to be half spoof, and half loving homage to action films, whereas the scene in Skinwalkers was played completely straight which makes it precisely the sort of ridiculous action sequence Hot Fuzz was spoofing.

The rest of the movie was pretty painful.

The other movie I watched on Thursday was far, far superior. Sadly I doubt I'll have as much to say about it. Let me start with the basics: I highly recommend Stardust to everybody. I had wanted to see this in a theatre, but I didn't ever get a chance. At the time of its release I knew only a little about the movie, mainly that it was based on a Neil Gaiman book of the same name - that I'd never read. In fact, at that time, I hadn't read anything by Neil Gaiman (except for Marvel 1602). I have since rectified that little oversight. Of his novels (that I've read, I haven't made it through all of them yet) my favorite thus far has easily been Stardust. Upon completing the novel, my desire to see the movie adaptation (which was already pretty high even before reading the novel) increased greatly.

The story (in either media) is a modern (relatively speaking) go at telling a classic fairy tale. And when I say fairy tale here I do not refer to the watered-down whimsical story for children we tend to associate with the term, but the more old school story of magic and wonder intended for an adult audience. The kind I think Tolkien would have approved of (not that I'm in any way an expert on J. R. R. Tolkien, but I direct you to his essay "On Fairy-Stories" to help form your own opinion on the matter).

The movie stays true to the spirit of the book, it changes things here and there, simplifies the beginning a bit, expands a few parts, and alters the ending. All-in-all the sort of things you'd expect to happen when a book gets adapted into a movie. I didn't find any of the changes to be terribly jarring, or painful. At worst I waffle a little bit on how I feel about the movie's ending. I found it to be the most obviously "Hollywood-esque" change made to the story, and part of me is a little disappointed in that. However the other part of me is somewhat embarrassed and reluctant to admit I might just slightly prefer the movie's ending over that of the book's.

So to sum up: Skinwalkers - bad so mock with friends, Neil Gaiman - good author, Stardust the book - really good so go read it, and Stardust the movie - really fun so go watch it.