ALL SCI-FI

[Bogmeister]

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_______________ Deep Blue Sea (1999) Trailer


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The ultimate in summer movie exploitation, this takes the Jaws concept and adds in the usual genetic tinkering to give our toothy adversaries an added advantage: brain-power!

The goal was laudable: a cure for Alzheimer's. The side-effect: not good.

Samuel L. Jackson plays a rich investor who decides to check out the progress on this work at a remote installation in the middle of the ocean — this is sort of the sharks version of The Day of the Dolphin (73).

Anyway, very bad timing. Pretty soon, the crew and scientists are being picked off by a trio of nasty man-eaters which can think their way around our technology. The CGI special FX allow us to see stuff which was not possible a few years earlier.

Needless to say, most of the cast are chewed into hamburger, and the filmmakers do not spare us the full details of the various dismemberments. But curiously the effect is less gross and more in the vein of cartoon-style violence. Perhaps the modern mind instinctively knows that what we're seeing is not really happening, despite the so-so realism of nineties CGI.

Then again, CGI tends to be less real and more animation unless it's top notch, and if your DVD player is capable of freeze-frame/slow motion, you may notice the fake cartoony blood inserted digitally in a couple of spots. The strength of the flic is its ability to surprise the viewer, who is probably wise to the ways of this horror genre. Sudden death is given a real meaning here. Of the cast, Thomas Jane, a relative newcomer at the time, did show movie star potential.

BoG's Score: 7 out of 10



__________________ Samuel L. Jackson Dies


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___________________ Deep Blue Sea Review


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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

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I watched this movie on DVD a few years ago, and even though I admired the interesting sci-fi premise, I began to realize (as character after character died horribly) that the target audience for this movie are people who enjoy seeing gory death scenes.

Frankly that's sad . . .

Compare the body count in this movie (eight bloody deaths if don't count the pet parrot) to the one for Jaws.

(1) the lovely girl who goes skinny dipping, a disturbing scene I can't bear to watch — but not because it's gory, but instead because of the pitiful cries of the poor girl,

(2) the guy in the small boat whose severed leg is seen sinking to the floor of the bay, and finally,

(3) the little boy on the rubber raft in the big beach scene,

(4) the body of the old man whose head pops out of the hole in his boat and scares Richard Dreyfuss, and —

(5) Quinn, who screams repeatedly while blood dribbles from his mouth and the fake shark chews on his chest . . . none of which was very convincing.

Admittedly, five compared to eight is not a large difference, but the Jaws scenes are tragic and dramatic, whereas the Deep Blue Sea scenes are graphic, gory, and sometimes downright sadistic.

The point is, we cared about the characters in Jaws, so we were saddened by their deaths (not sadistically delighted), and we were scared that the likable main characters might die as well.

An alternate (and better) version of Deep Blue Sea would have the brave and brainy group successfully pit their intelligence against the genetically altered "smart sharks" and win (mostly), with just a few casualties for dramatic effect.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

[johnnybear]

I liked the film but think it was overly gory! Anyone seen the sequel?
JB

[Bud Brewster]

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I watched 12-minute "making of . . . " bonus feature to get an idea of how gory it's gong to be. The director said he wanted this sequel to be more of a horror film than a sci-fi film.

Uh-oh . . .

FYI: It's VERY gory. When one guy leans over a tank in the underwater research facility, a shark leaps up and bit's his head off.

The "making of" video showed the CGI sharks, and the FX guys still haven't figured out that when a shark's tail moves to the left, the head has to move a little to the right.

Dogs can wag their tails without moving their heads. Sharks can't. It's all about action / reaction.

And just like in the first movie, the CGI sharks swim WAY too fast. The faster you make a CGI shark swim, the less real the damn thing looks. Slow movement means "large and heavy". Fast movement means "cartoon fish" . . .

Ocean Ramsey Shares Exclusive Video Of Swimming With Massive Great White Shark


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)