Omega Doom (1996)

Revenge of the Nerds, it’s stunning to imagine, is a divisive film.  Primarily, its critics tend to call up the film’s questionable sexual politics as the reason why it’s so awful (and, yes, they are problematic).  I’m sure that, when it was released back in 1984, there were still plenty of people who detested this aspect of the movie.  It’s just that the internet wasn’t around for everyone and anyone to vent their spleen and instigate a hip, mob mentality that usually comes and goes so fast, the people complaining rarely even remember what it was they were decrying, having moved on to the next outrage du jour.  Having now vented my own spleen, no, I have never particularly cared for the crass, assaultive way that women are treated in the film, but it also never stopped me from mildly liking the film for what it is: a crass, assaultive sex comedy.  It was never meant to be anything else, the same as gore films are filled with gore.  To expect otherwise is missing the point (or maybe it’s just me).  Call me crazy, but I always preferred the second film, Nerds in Paradise more, and either way, I don’t hold these films up as favorites by any stretch.  So why in Green Hell am I talking about Revenge of the Nerds in my introduction to Albert Pyun’s Omega Doom?  Because every time I think of the title and the titular character (as essayed by Rutger Hauer), I can’t help but think of the big song number from Jeff Kanew’s magnum opus, just changing the lyrics to amuse my juvenile self.  “We’re Lambda Lambda Lambda and…Omega Doom…”  Don’t try and tell me you didn’t start singing along to that.

During the big human/robot war, robo-soldier Omega Doom (cue music) is shot in the back of the head, wiping away his memories and prime directives (which we can only assume were counter to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, anyway).  Doom wanders the wasteland doing stuff, while the various remaining robot factions feud over a legendary arsenal (which they call treasure) that will give them the ability to defeat not only their automaton enemies but also the humans who have been crawling back to prominence.

It amazes me how many times Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Yojimbo have been remade, retooled, re-envisioned, etcetera (I get the why of it; they’re outstanding films outstandingly crafted, and imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that), and Omega Doom (cue music) is yet another stab at the latter of the two.  Doom comes to town, befriends the local put-upon robot who literally always loses his head (named The Head, played by Norbert Weisser), does good for the local put-upon female robotic saloon owner (named The Bartender, played by Anna Katarina), and kind of sort of pits the local robot gangs (The Roms and The Droids) against each other, though really, he just picks them off.  The difference is that, instead of Ronin or gunslingers, these are robots in a post-nuke, post-human/robot-war world, get it?!  Sure, Doom tries to talk the other robots to death before throwing down with them, but eventually that’s what it all ends up being.  I can understand Pyun’s desire to put his spin on Kurosawa’s classic (and Pyun has surely made some classic Action films [Cyborg, Nemesis, Dollman to name but three] in his own right), but I cannot for the life of me fathom how he managed to make this one so confusing and dull. 

The robots all act like humans whenever it’s convenient.  For example, why the hell do robots need to or want to drink water?  Why would a robot open a saloon to serve same?  Why would a robot derive any sort of pleasure from kicking around a disembodied robot head (or derive any sort of pleasure from anything at all)?  Why would robots express feelings like regret or hope?  At least with Omega Doom (cue music) it’s semi-logical.  He was changed by the shot to his melon.  It would make more sense and work better dramatically to have Doom be the only one with emotions, needs, wants and to have him bring these things to the other robots, to change them through their interactions.  The only plausible explanation I can come up with is that Pyun wanted to show that robots are as bad as people.  And again, I have to ask why?  It doesn’t play with the setup of the narrative, and it’s needless window dressing that robs the film of any resonance it could have had (although I suppose it’s gangbusters as an “elevator pitch”).

Omega Doom (cue music) has a purpose, and it’s this that he ostensibly bestows to his android brethren.  He’s there to save them in messianic fashion (the ones he doesn’t destroy).  What’s interesting about this is that his purpose came about due to damage caused by a human.  If anything, his peaceful goals are a defect (or, I suppose, free will, but that’s not nearly as intriguing to me).  One of the first robots he talks to and befriends is The Head, the part of Doom that was impaired.  This is the direction that Pyun should have taken the film, that Omega Doom (cue music) is a brain damaged robot with a messiah complex.  Instead, The Head recalls that he was a teacher (along with providing tons of painfully unfunny comic relief), The Bartender recalls that she serves water (as well as the lyrics to Joy to the World [the Handel version, not the Three Dog Night one]), and Zinc (Jill Pierce) decides to join the good bots for no real reason.

I really don’t enjoy beating up on this film, because it did have a lot of potential, and that’s the reason I’m doing it, though not for too much longer.  The robot gangs just stand around talking to each other or to Doom.  Then they talk some more.  Then there’s a showdown.  Then there are less robots in the gangs.  All this dialogue wouldn’t feel so useless if any of it went anywhere or if it wasn’t all simply wasting runtime until the fights.  And let’s talk about the fights.  There are some bright spots in their execution, but otherwise they are jumbled, scattershot messes.  I can see why Pyun chose to edit them together as he did (whip-fast cuts between awkward closeups and long shots of combatants in silhouette), Hauer not being the most leggiadrous of onscreen fighters (or certainly not by this point in his career).  The director had to find a way to cut to the stunt people as economically as possible.  I can only assume he didn’t cover his leads well enough to allow for longer, clarified shots in these scenarios, or maybe he mistakenly thought this approach would amp up the excitement.  It’s a shame, because I really wanted to like this movie, but neither the story nor the action live up to the title Omega Doom (cue music).

MVT:  Some of the shots in the film look okay.  Unfortunately, they also look so similar as to become nigh-indistinguishable.

Make or Break:  The first scene featuring The Head.  You may feel like you got kicked in yours.

Score:  3/10           

Episode #272: Slinging Betty Blue

Welcome to another episode of the GGtMC!!!

THis week we bring you our diabolikdvd.com sponsored episode and it was Large William's turn to program the show!!! Films ccovered this week include Betty Blue (1986) directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix and Slinger (1989) which is the directors cut of Cyborg the Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle directed by Albert Pyun!!!

Direct download: ggtmc_272.mp3

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Adios!!!

Arcade (1993)

I’m keenly interested in the evolution of video game graphics.  When they were first introduced to the public, they were as basic as basic could get.  Everything was a square, and the squares were made up of squares (“pixels,” for all you squares).  There was no such thing as a round object.  The “ball” in Pong is a small square which behaves with only the rudimentary physics that an actual ball would have.  Early graphics were the merest suggestions of shapes in reality.  Yet, they were effective in the same way as the graphic design work of someone like Saul Bass, just more regimented by the strictures of the medium.  Nonetheless, there is a reason why we revere the poster for Vertigo but not the graphics from Atari’s E.T. The Extraterrestrial game.  That difference is in the discipline.  

As I stated, video game graphics were limited by grid like template for everything.  Mr. Bass, by contrast, used the simplicity of shape, but his work still looked handmade.  The objects were not perfectly-formed, and this is why we scoff (well, I do) at the idea of art produced by a computer.  Just so we’re clear, I’m not talking about art produced on a computer, I’m talking about work produced with little to no input from a human element.  There is a wild difference between painting a metallic sphere and rendering a metallic sphere by asking a computer to do it.  Despite all of this, I personally would rather play the first Mega Man game than many of the more immersive games of today.  I’m not certain if it has anything to do with my love of simplicity or my dislike of the modern world.  Perhaps it’s because sometimes I revel in being contradictory.  Perhaps it’s because I can’t stand being contradictory.  I am large, I contain multitudes (thanks and apologies to Walt Whitman).

Alex (Megan Ward) is tortured by the constant specter of her mother’s (Sharon Farrell) suicide and the stress of having to take care of her traumatized father (Todd Starks).  Wandering over to the local arcade (ominously dubbed Dante’s Inferno), Alex and her pals are invited by one Mr. Difford (John de Lancie)to play the latest, greatest console, titled Arcade.  After Nick (Peter Billingsley) gives it a quick spin as well as his enthusiastic seal of approval, Alex’s beau Greg (Bryan Dattilo) gets behind the controls while everyone conveniently leaves the room.  Of course, Greg is pulled into the world of the game, while Difford bestows every kid in the joint with a home version of the game to test and evaluate.  But that clever, clever Alex knows there’s something rotten in Los Angeles (and thank you Coen Brothers for engraining in me the habit of pronouncing that city’s name with a hard “g”), and she sets about getting to  the bottom of it all.

Thus do we come to Arcade (aka Cyber World), Albert Pyun’s direct-to-video attempt to cash-in on the public’s growing fascination with more immersive video game environments.  Despite the talent at work on the film (including one of David S. Goyer’s early writing assignments), it sadly reeks of everything about the Nineties, and nary a one of the few good things.  The characters are drawn straight out of an Aaron Spelling primetime melodrama; the cool couple, the cool sidekick, the weirdos, the “that guy,” etcetera.  They are also painfully undeveloped, with characterizations so thin they only have one side (thank you, Red Skelton).  Interestingly, the only two who are given any sort of depth are women.  Alex is a tragic case, written as being haunted by the guilt of her mother’s death, but aside from when it comes up as a cheap way to generate drama, this aspect lays there like a dead fish.  Laurie (played by the ever-adorable A.J. Langer) feels unwanted and unattractive among her friends, and she probably harbors not a small amount of jealousy toward Alex.  But again, this is essentially blurted out in one scene and then forgotten.  Rather than relying on the conflict between characters to generate tension, Pyun and company relegate all of the heavy lifting of the film to the video game scenes (but we’re coming to that).  Possibly worst of all, the midtempo, corporate rock soundtrack conjures memories of dreck like Collective Soul or Everclear (or just throw a friggin’ dart, and you’ll hit some shitty Nineties frat rock band; I don’t care).  The more I dwell on it, the more I realize exactly why I spent so much of that time period getting drunk.

Let’s discuss computer-generated graphics/effects.  As the state of the practice is, it still is not entirely convincing, to me.  Let me be more specific.  On rigid or inorganic objects, they can work very well, so long as the lighting is matched moderately closely to the live plates (if any are used), and they are a godsend, I’m sure, for compositing elements together.  On living things, however, they simply just don’t cut it.  But we’re not here to get into a huge discussion on the uncanny valley as it pertains to virtual actors.  That said, my theory (and I’m sure it’s yours, too) is that CG characters move too perfectly.  There is an element of chaos in natural movement (sometimes all but indiscernible, but it’s there, and the naked eye recognizes it) which cannot (at this time, anyhow) be programmed by a computer.  Computers work on a basis of ones and zeroes, and that’s great for precision and number crunching, but living things are imprecise by their very nature.  Even if a computer artist can detail every individual pore on a virtual character’s skin, every hair on their body, their behavior will always be dictated by two states of being; essentially, “yes” or “no.”  Thus, these characters are little more than glorified versions of Jerry the Mouse dancing with Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh (and let me just say, that sequence was better executed than a lot of CG work I’ve witnessed).  

Bearing all of this in mind, the early Nineties were a time when everyone was eager to experiment with and play in the digital effects playground, and the filmmakers or Arcade were no different.  However, for as smooth as a surface could be made to look, everything in the video game world of the film is still very basic objects put together in very traditionally ordered ways.  The amount of space and time needed to render graphics also limits the variety of the labyrinth’s corridors.  Ergo, we are treated to the same three or four shots of dungeon walls edited slightly differently over and over.  And, of course, none of the live characters fit into the video game world in a believable fashion.

To be fair, the filmmakers do start off with some interesting (if not entirely original) ideas.  There is the idea of video game addiction (and addiction in general), which could have been investigated, and it would have been just as prescient today (if not more so).  There is the idea of Hell, and the journey depicted through it in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (though he had nine circles, and the video game only has seven).  There is the idea of control, our craving for it in our lives, and the false sense of it imparted by immersion in video games.  There is the idea of being tempted by our heart’s desires and being doomed by our giving in to them.  This is some compelling material when utilized properly, and there is a lot that could have been done with it.  But Pyun seems solely interested in giving the audience the spectacle of the then-newfangled computer graphics, and they just don’t cut it (then and now).  That he plays to the level of his production’s limitations rather than around them is somewhat baffling to me.  But what do I know?  I’d rather play Xevious than Grand Theft Auto any day of the week.

MVT:  Despite my despising just about everything from the Nineties, they were a part of my youth.  There’s a sense of nostalgia I have, then, about things from that era (even when I hate them), and this film is no exception.  In flinging every Nineties cliché onscreen, the filmmakers actually do a decent job of capturing the time when the film was made.  Don’t that beat all?

Make Or Break:  The Break is the ineluctable “twist” ending, which succeeds in being not only utterly predictable and telegraphed from the film’s first frames but also in being flat out dumb.  Go ahead, watch Arcade if you don’t believe me.

Score 4.75/10

The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982)

Texas-born actor Lee Horsley is one of those guys who look better with a mustache than without one. If you seek proof, just watch Albert Pyun's The Sword And The Sorcerer. Sure, he has some stubble, but his lack of a manly upper lip covering makes him look like a baby face. Contrast this with the television show for which he is best known (or at least the one for which he is best known to me), "Matt Houston." Not only was he a two-fisted private dick, but his constant companion was none other than Pamela Hensley. For those who don't know, Ms. Hensley also played the deadly ice queen, Princess Ardala, on the program "Buck Rogers In The 25^th Century." Not only was she a ruthless opportunist, but she held her own alongside such hardasses as Henry Silva and proto-Edward-James-Olmos, Michael Ansara. And she did it all while looking phenomenal in a bikini (yes, really). I put it to you, gentle reader, would you rather hang out with Pamela Hensley or Joe Regalbuto? That's what I thought. 

Villainous warlord, Titus Cromwell (we know he's villainous, because he's played by Richard Lynch with a Harpo Marx hairdo), resurrects demonic sorcerer, Xusia (Richard Moll), to aid him in conquering the kingdom of Ehdan, ruled by the benevolent King Richard (Christopher Cary). However, Cromwell betrays Xusia and raids the kingdom solo. As Ehdan falls, Richard's son, Talon (James Jarnigan as a boy, Horsley as an adult), is bestowed with a three-bladed sword, witnesses the death of his family, and vows revenge. Years later, Prince Mikah (Simon MacCorkindale, TV's "Manimal") and Princess Alana (Kathleen Beller) foment rebellion in Ehdan, but the machinations of Cromwell and his right hand man, Machelli (George Maharis), threaten to quell the revolution unless the adult Talon and his band of buccaneers (including the one and only Reb Brown) intervene and smash the tyrant.

One of the great tropes that the sword and sorcery/fantasy subgenre gave us (or if not gave, certainly cemented and made its own) is the concept of the specialty weapon. Prince Colwyn of Krull had the über ninja star, the Glaive. Hawk of Hawk The Slayer had a mental link of sorts with his sword. Dar of The Beastmaster had the collapsible (or spreadable depending on your perspective) throwing blade. In times when gun powder simply doesn't exist, survival of the fittest is won by the person with the most unique weaponry (because the other guys don't have it). More often than not, the hero has to spend part of his quest attaining this weapon before he can use it in the story's climax (and he really should use it in the story's finale for it to be satisfying). As I mentioned in my review of the abysmal Thor The Conqueror, oftentimes these special arms are born of magic. Their wielders, however, are not typically trusting of magic and prefer to use their hands or hand-forged steel, hence why they are rarely, if ever given a magical amulet or scroll or some such with which to combat evil. Yes, the weapons are magical, but they are represented as weapons. They have blades and spikes and harmful-looking accoutrements. Thus we come to Talon's triple-bladed sword. This thing has more gadgets and surprises on it than a Swiss Army knife or James Bond's Aston Martin. And yet, the thing appears to be the most unwieldy blade ever. The air drag alone would make you the slowest (and probably most dead) swordfighter in history. Nevertheless, it's endearing to us and we forgive (to a degree) its ludicrousness (nothing says antipragmatic like sword missiles), because it has become a necessary element of the genre, and it definitely has a distinct look to it.

The Sword And The Sorcerer also deals with the concept of birth and rebirth. Interestingly, it applies it both literally and figuratively and to both good characters and evil. Xusia is brought back to life, rising seemingly out of a sepulcher filled with blood. Meanwhile, Talon, as a heroic figure is born at the time he witnesses his parents' deaths. Later, some very biblical event occurs to him, which again echoes this theme. On a more grand scale, Cromwell is born as a despot as he conquers (read: kills) the kingdom's in his path. Mikah and Alana endeavor to resurrect Ehdan and restore it to its former glory through their insurgency (which is more than confusing, since Talon is the son of the former ruler according to the prologue and unrelated to either of these two). Cromwell thinks Xusia dead but later suspects that the damnable wizard is behind all of his current woes, and in a fashion, Xusia has, indeed, been reborn yet again. This constant cycle of birth, death, and rebirth parallels the eternal struggle between good and evil or even Rota Fortunae (i.e. The Wheel Of Fortune), symbolizing the recurrent nature of Fate. The Sword And Sorcery subgenre, like Science Fiction and Horror, is well-suited to this sort of motif. They are already, through their generic elements, divorced from reality. This allows for more deeply allegorical explorations and heavy usage of metaphors via these selfsame elements. How interesting it is that the more divorced from our everyday world the piece is, the more easily it allows us to discuss the issues of our everyday world.

It is a generally accepted rule of storytelling in general and screenwriting in particular that a tale cannot be rife with coincidences. One is acceptable, but adding more, you run the risk of making the whole yarn feel arbitrary. After all, why should the hero have to accomplish anything when some coincidence, Deus Ex Machine, what-have-you will most likely just pop up and solve his/her problems? And why, then, should you give a shit? Sadly, there are a lot of coincidences in Pyun's film, and they do detract from its quality. Characters just show up out of nowhere to lend a helping hand. Other characters suddenly have a conspicuous change of heart, when we've never been introduced to them at all. It's not enough to condemn the film overall, but it is enough to take points away from its score.

The scope of Pyun's film is rather epic. He is, after all, trying to create an entire fantasy world. Be that as it may, this is epic fantasy on a budget, and its effect on the overall enjoyment of the film is noticeable. For example, in the prologue, Cromwell has at least two large battles between his army and his opponents. We don't get to see any of the fighting. We don't get to see any of what Xusia (who we spent a nice chunk of screen time resuscitating, mind you) does in service to Cromwell. No, we get shots of the corpse-strewn battlefields, post-battle (and I would wager shot at the same time). In a cave, Talon and his men are attacked by a horde of rats. Granted, they are repugnant animals, and I would not want them crawling all over me and gnawing bits off, but this is a fantasy movie. They couldn't be attacked by some otherworldly creature? After Talon's men band together to spring their leader, we cut immediately to the same guys locked up in the dungeon. Yes, it's funny, but the elision of the action leading to their capture feels jarring. You feel like you missed scenes at several points (and some of which appear to be key) in the film. What intrigued me about this was that there were some action scenes that were nicely done, so we know that the filmmakers could pull it off. Nonetheless, knowing this and enjoying what there is to the movie in its current form, you can't help but crave to fill in these blanks. But isn't that part of what Fantasy is all about?

MVT: The special and makeup effects used on characters like Xusia are wonderful and half the fun of the picture. There are some surprisingly gory shots that really deliver, and the best part is, they always seem to come just at the moment you need them the most. Crafty devils.

Make Or Break: The Make is the credit sequence, when Xusia is raised. It's violent, queasily sexy, funny, and oh-so arch. When the sorcerer's "E.T." fingers start glowing, you know someone's going to die violently. And do they ever.

Score: 6.75/10
 

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Nemesis (1992)

I started wearing prescription eyeglasses in fourth grade (I know, boo hoo). I have not stopped wearing glasses since then. I have never tried (nor wished to try) contacts. I have debated getting Lasik surgery done, but let's face it, it costs a decent amount of money, and the people I know who have had the surgery done still require glasses to read. I spend an inordinate amount of time reading. What good is the surgery, then? The way I figure it, I'm wearing glasses anyway, and it's the devil you know versus the one you don't. Consequently, I have never owned a "cool" pair of sunglasses. I have bought prescription sunglasses in the past, but changing glasses everytime you enter or leave a building is a bigger pain than you would think. So now I have a pair of slip-on shades for my glasses. They may not be as cool as Dwayne Wayne's, but they suit me just fine. What's the point of this little discourse, you may ask? I don't think I could hack it in the world of Albert Pyun's Nemesis. Everybody in this movie wears sunglasses at all times (okay, most times). How do they not run into the furniture?

In the future...Alex (Olivier Gruner) is a cyborg working for "the Man" to bring down bio-engineered and synthetically-enhanced gangsters, hookers, terrorists, and so on. After getting blown up real good during a mission to grab a microchip, he winds up convalescing in a border town in Baja, New America. There he is contacted by fully-synthetic ex-girlfriend, Jared (Marjorie Monaghan, who I would have sworn was actually Linda Fiorentino), to come back into the fold. Instead, Alex becomes a smuggler of something or other on the black market. After myriad machinations too complicated to actually delineate here, Alex is tasked with getting a microchip containing VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION to the revolutionary gang, the Red Army Hammerheads, and stopping the robots (cyborgs, synthetics, androids, whatever the hell) from taking over the world. 

This future vision of the world (along with ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the ones depicted in every form of media) is, of course, a dystopian one. Almost every set and town in the film is crumbling away and usually industrial in nature. Filters are used to give us the notion that our atmosphere has been permanently changed by some cataclysm. You've seen this effect before, especially if you've seen many movies from the Eighties and Nineties. I like to call it the "Los Angeles Filter," since you'll see it frequently used on establishing shots of Los Angeles, even if a nuclear holocaust hasn't occur (shorthand for smog, perhaps?). There's lots of rain (we can assume it's acid rain), and everything is just ugly. Interestingly, the robots say that they want to create a utopia by eliminating humans and replacing them with cyborgs. In other words, it's humans creating the problems faced by the world. And yet, if people didn't exist, the question must be asked, what would the robots do with themselves all day?

Let's just lay it on the line, shall we? There isn't an original bone in this film's body. Everything from the Hong Kong action movie scene of the Eighties and Nineties to Blade Runner to The Six Million Dollar Man to the work of William Gibson and the entire cyberpunk movement and more are referenced, either directly or indirectly. The writer, Rebecca Charles (whose only listed film credits on IMDB are for the Nemesis trilogy, yes, trilogy), loaded the movie up with film noir and tough guy touches. Jared narrates the film like Sam Spade or any other of a thousand private dicks, regardless of the fact that she's only in a few scenes and isn't the main character. This is not to say that a supporting character can't be the narrator, but it's not the norm (hell, Joe Gillis was dead, and he still narrated Sunset Boulevard). Speaking of the dialogue, it's meant to be hard-bitten and pithy, but instead it is glaringly self-conscious and clunky.

One refreshing aspect of the film is the amount of badass women it. Right from the first scene, we are given women unafraid to get their hands dirty and who know how to handle firearms. In a genre dominated by men and the male gaze, I love it when the other fifty percent of the world can stake out some terrain. And the irony that they look very good doing it is not lost upon me. Still, the women in this film are strong and, more often than not, shown as being superior to men both physically as well as in rank and mental acumen. Julian (a very muscular Deborah Shelton) has Billy (a very young Thomas Jane) killed, performs surgery on Alex, and sets him on the right path. All before putting on her sunglasses (see?) and shooting up a good portion of the hotel in which they meet. Jared is the sage whose data can save the entire planet. Max Impact (Merle Kennedy) has the Lori Petty/trickster role as the young cynic who wants revenge against Alex but will later become a strong ally. They all add something, and the film wouldn't be what it is without them, I think. Or at least, not as distinctive.

But let's call this what it is. Nemesis is a mess of a film. The plot is convoluted to the point of incoherence. The viewer is never absolutely sure whose side who's on, or which side we (as an audience) are supposed to root for. The character development is so thin, it only has one side (thank you and apologies to Red Skelton). The dialogue can actually induce wincing in those watching. The acting (with the exceptions of Tim Thomerson, the late Brion James, and Monaghan) is so wooden, one could easily come away with splinters. The film has nothing new to say about any of its themes (what it means to be human and so forth). And while the special and visual effects (including some decent stop motion) and stuntwork are solid for a low budgeter like this, the movie on the whole is nothing more than an excuse to cram ninety-six minutes with action and a little skin. 

Why, then, do I take such delight in something as meaningless and bewildering as Mr. Pyun's little opus? I think it's because this is one of those rare instances where style actually does triumph over substance. Whether it's caused by the overload of the puzzling goings-on or the barrage of action, I found myself just giving in to the spirit of the whole affair. Maybe I was just beaten into submission by it. 

MVT: The persistence of style and the pure abandon of any semblance of coherency make this film more fun than it really has any right to be. In other words, it just feels good.

Make Or Break: The Make is the scene where Alex is being chased by the bad cyborgs (I know, which time, right?). A cyborg (played by an uncredited Sven-Ole Thorsen) harasses a little old lady on the street. Having taken enough guff from this whippersnapper, the biddy (Mabel Falls) pulls out a rather large gun and blows Thorsen away. It's one of the more overtly humorous scenes in the film, and even though it's predictable (just like the rest of the movie), you can't help but love it.

Score: 7.25/10

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