A guy movie with a girl hero.

Rating: 8/10 (12 February 2012)

I woke up this Sunday and made some Fruit Loops in one of my "Hello Kitty" bowls. I check the movie times for a matinée and I feel like a guy movie. Well a girl heroine movie that guys like because her clothes are tight fitting and she kicks a lot of ass. I think there's more violence in this one than the other 3 combined and it's about 30 minutes shorter. What I was thinking before this, is well, why guy movies? Why am I geared more toward violence than other current movie offerings like The Vow? A nice wholesome movie that's like Momento without the crazy. Nah, I don't want to see The Vow. Why should I? I'm a guy I wanna see stuff blow up while the hero is holding next months' Maxim model one handed from a helicopter. Not really, I tend to enjoy movies with strong female heroines and I had a thing for Vampires in high school. So guy movies, John Hill at movieoutline.com (http://www.movieoutline.com/articles/hero_screenwriting.html) says males tend to like guy movies because we want to relive pre-adolescent fantasies. Is this true? Do I really want to go through puberty again? I don't think so but I did want to go everywhere when I was a "pre- adolescent" like Hawaii. So, I'll go with his explanation but Vampires? What would make me want to watch a movie about Vampires? Vampires seem to be in control of things, I read recently that people tend to want more vampire and undead lore during times of need like a recession or depression. Robin Redmond Wright, wrote that zombies are an identity for excess buying. The zombies eventually overtake the living and feed off them out of need. Vampires from her perspective, represent the rich and are in control of their life, forever. Which, along with other fantasies is pretty good in a bad economy or recession. (source for Robin's Paper: http://www.adulterc.org/proceedings/2011/papers/wright.pdf) So, that's the tangent that I took from this film. The why's for the need for Vampires in every culture and society I will not know but this franchise is pretty good in that it offers a little bit of everything. There's love, Kate Beckinsale falls for this half vampire/half werewolf man. Which is very bad among the elders of her coven. They really call it a coven in the movie which I thought was just for witches. She's also a bad ass that has automatic handguns that can hit werewolves in the head from across the room. In real life would be nearly impossible. I like her guns and this movie had a lot of action sequences. It was almost like reading a comic book with as much action that was included. I watched it in 3D also because I haven't really saw a good 3D action movie yet. This was close, I like that the filming of the action either put the character in a "pop-up book" fashion moving about the screen but made everything else in the frame fuzzy. If film makers could made keep the character in the background and make everything else pop-up it may make for a better movie. Since the movie is filmed in like a side view adding depth to the background would make you feel like you were right next to the character immersed in the environment rather than watching a 3D pop-up book. Anyways, just my two cents.
What I didn't like about this portion of the story..it was kind of short. If it's a movie I like I usually go to an early show to get rid of the teenagers that well, want to be teenagers and be loud. Not today though, it was old people that wanted to know the "who" or "why" of everything. Action movies kind of play out like a techno song. They have a longer than normal intro then a bunch of noise, then a drop in the action for dramatic effect. Then, well repeat until end credits. So, all the while as soon as it got quiet enough to hear shift my boys in my pants. The old man behind me starts up with, "So who's that guy?" WTF! Why? Why do you want to know old man? The story was pretty good, she comes out of a coma after 12 years to an attempted extinction of both Vampires and Werewolves, and an unknown daughter. Then, it's basically non-stop conflict for 90 minutes. I feel like I got what I paid for, an escapism to a world of guns and gore.