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I’ll not spend too much time on why this movie looks terrible, so much as how dumb and bad an idea it is. Yes, the comic strip has been around for over 50 years (which still kind of blows my mind), but are there a lot of kids clamoring for a Marmaduke movie? They got two Garfield movies, and even those two weren’t exactly firestarters at the box office, in the same way that Alvin and the Chipmunks was (not a comic strip, but similar marketing and weirdly, surprisingly successful). I know that I was a kid, I know that I saw and liked plenty of crappy movies (for some reason, the movie that always comes up to mind is Dennis the Menace), but I don’t know that I desperately needed CGI characters. Marmaduke is just not a character that needs a movie, or even demands one. I just hope I’m proven right in June.


Monopoly

That this movie is even possible (and it may just end up being that for the time being) is scary. That Ridley Scott is attached to direct is far, far worse. You know who Ridley Scott is. He’s the guy who directed Gladiator, Alien, Blade Runner, American Gangster, Black Hawk Down, and Thelma and Louise. He’s an Academy Award nominee. And he is, in some form, attached to direct a movie based on Monopoly. My best, serious guess is that the movie will be something close to Wall Street, and that’ll be if the movie gets off the ground. Scott’s also attached to a prequel to Alien. Some people just don’t learn. However, with regards to Monopoly, the issue is that some people (read: the entirety of Hollywood, apparently) love board games more than anyone else does.

Now, I’m no board-game hater (if there is such a thing); I like board games fine. I like playing them. And I rarely - no, sorry, I never think to myself, “Ah, if only this game was a movie with characters and a story, as opposed to a game on a board with pieces!” I appreciate that great movies (or, at the very least, entertaining movies) can come from the smallest of ideas, the smallest of concepts, but the idea of making a movie out of any board game, let alone this one, is just baffling to me. Why would anyone want to watch a movie that’s meant to be associated with Monopoly? Would such a movie be any good? What if the movie has only a tenuous connection to Monopoly, and is forced to throw in random references, like a main character wanting to move to Park Place? Gag me, and do it now. Sir Ridley, run away.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Oh, I cannot wait for this movie. I just can’t. I can’t wait to not see it. Yes, I’m willing to admit that the movie, based on its trailer, could look a whole lot worse. But so many of the elements seem profoundly haunting. It’s a movie, from Jerry Bruckheimer and the director of National Treasure. It’s a movie based on the poem and segment from Fantasia, and it’s live-action. Oh, wait, I’ve got even better news: the sorcerer is played by Nicolas Cage. I think I may throw up. Now, thankfully, the movie is coming out on July 16th, so I’ll have something to avoid, because that’s the same day that Inception, also known as one of the few movies I cannot wait to see this summer, is coming out. I’m sure there will be a big box-office battle between the films, and I’m wholeheartedly behind Inception.

Inception may end up being a bad movie (though I doubt it, and would be painfully disappointed if that’s the case), but it’s about something. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is only about making money. Inception is also about making money, but not solely. Warner Bros. is trying to make a movie that might be about something; Disney is, in this case, not. It’s hard to ignore Bruckheimer’s track record, but a live-action movie based on a short animated segment from a classic film, one of the most identifiable scenes in all of cinema. This is about as close as you get to blasphemy, and the fact that Cage is in the movie just compounds it. Yes, he’s still got the ability to act (or at least, I think he does), but him in a movie from Bruckheimer shows all the signs of another check. I may be one of the few, but I won’t be dropping any money into his coffers for this one.

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