The sci-fi flop on a r-scale that led to a new batman

By Drewsch
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I recently had to write a script for a list of movies that I felt owed a little or a big debt The matrix. One of the movies I focused on for the shortest time in that video was 2002’s Equilibriumwritten and directed by Kurt Wimmer, writer and director of 2020s The children of the cornOne of the worst Stephen King movies I’ve ever seen.

So now I have admitted to giving Kurt sci-fi Short Shrift movie in that video and I’ve reminded people right, no joke, Stephen King’s movie than both of it The lost Sequences, I want to give Wimmer’s best instruction effort to look back on him, because the film and release it is definitely worth another look.

Equilibrium makes a smart sci-fi stupid

So the first criticism of Equilibrium We have to address the story and the world alternately in the future in which it happens, because a word I’m definitely used against this film is “derived.”

It is a word used when a piece of art takes some identifiable source of inspiration and people don’t feel it does anything … well, inspired with it. Instead they can’t help but see it as a copy-and-paste job.

Equilibrium Undoubtedly take inspiration from classic and so familiar sci-fi dystopian novels and imagery, creating a world where human beings live in a fascist state where emotion and artistic expression are suspended in the name of war elimination.

It reminds me more than a little of my favorite video I’ve made for this channel Harrison Bergeron. You should watch that.

Libria’s society EquilibriumFascist Open State (no one ever accused Kurt Wimmer of subtlety), maintains peace by forcing everyone taking an emotion killing drug called Prozium. As I said, Kurt and subtlety are not beds, even if this is just a timely reef and re -franding Soma from Huxley’s A brave new world.

EquilibriumTreating his inspiration reminds me of another sci-fi movie that gets the word “D”, 2013’s Blemish. The two visual styles of these films focus on action, and their sci-fi world designs are sleek, pulled down, and simplified. The same can be said by their Plug-and-Play mode with their influences.

Imagine that each specific inspiration for a piece of art is a different colored wooden block, like the alphabet of those with whom children play. Do children still play with those? I have not been a child for a few years anymore. Anyway, artists take each of those wooden blocks and can use them however they want to build their own art. Some may carve the blocks into new shapes, some might cut the blocks into pieces and then paste something new from the broken shards.

But movies like Blemish and Equilibrium Feeling like they take those blocks and do much more than putting them beside and on top of each other. The best thing they can think of their influences is just a bigger block.

I think this kind of mindset is what people try to convey when they call a film “derive.” And we will argue EquilibriumThe story of Sci-Fi and World surrenders to the larger block problem. Therefore, while his themes, character arcs, and general narrative are strongly introduced, they barely bring anything new to the board that has not been better explored in better stories.

Guns, actors, and grinding pumpkins

Thing Equilibrium Proposes that those literary stories are not a bunch of cool, silly gun fighting with Christian Bale looking cool stupid. Equilibrium At its best when it is just being a simple yet stylish action flic. It may be an empty act (literally at one time) but Wimmer understands how to a gun martial arts that showcase unique locations or fashionable conceptual sequences like the blackout shooting.

And in addition to Christian Bale, the rest of EquilibriumCast does exactly what they are asked and elevates the material they have to work with. There is actually no weak link in the ensemble. Real heroes Equilibrium are actually the casting directors. That is, Angus Macfadyen is this. Komodo from Warriors of virtue! Love ‘in.

And Wimmer makes the most of shooting in Berlin, where his fascist architecture certainly helps to drive home the real -world fears he uses Equilibrium.

Okay, I don’t know where else this can go in the script, so before we talk EquilibriumRelease and Box Office and all those good things, I have to make the editor do something, so keep with me as I explain some things very quickly.

“Temp Track” is a temporary music soundtrack containing music material from sources (usually other film scores) used in photos editing, which allows filmmakers to have some music to work with before they have their own original score.

If you watch as many movies as I have for as long as I am, you can start hearing when an original score is trying to sound like some other familiar movie music, and they probably have found that familiar movie music for their temporary track.

What does this have to do Equilibrium? In case I never get a chance to show this ever again, I speculate that Equilibrium Use a very unique choice on his temporary track: The pumpkin pumpkin song “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning” from the Batman And robin soundtrack. Not the score, the soundtrack. Do I go nuts, y’all?

The secret success of equilibrium

Ok, so what happened with Equilibrium to be assumed a failure? Well, he did not receive a very warm reception from most judges at the time and currently has a 40% critic score Rotten tomatoes. Roger Ebert gave him three stars out of four so if you’ve been keeping an eye on with our videos, that’s still half a star less than Silver.

If you look at the basic data as EquilibriumTheatrical release and a box office for us, it looks like a mirror failure, opening on the spot #20 on just 301 screens in the country, well below 10% of the US theater screens available at the time.

Equilibrium Scraped together $ 1.2 million at the US box office and another $ 4.1 million internationally, making it taken in theatrical rare quarter of its $ 20 million budget reported. Sounds like nothing but bad news, right?

Well, here’s an example where the real money was already made before the movie ever hit a single screen. Thanks to pre -release sales in various markets worldwide, such as theatrical display fees and home video contracts, Equilibrium After turning enough profit that the distributors, Miramax, decided to withdraw on promotion and advertising, which in turn meant reducing the number of screens that the film would play everywhere.

Thank goodness, Equilibrium He seems to have left this failure as audiences have helped the film be embraced quite broadly. It is not so effective for me as time has happened, and some of its block problems are even more ended today, but I can still enjoy its simpler and even more Sillier pleasures. And I’ll take any anti-fascist action flic that I can get right now.

And hey, I’ll even throw a bone into Kurt Wimmer. I still say Equilibrium is his best instructional effort, but he also wrote The beekeeper Last year surprised me with how present his sociopolitical commentary was while also managed to be stupid and fun.

Equilibrium stupid and fun, and that’s fine even if he tries to appear much smarter than he is. It is definitely smarter than The children of the corn.

Look at the podcast Chat sematary Where I guessed a whole episode about Stephen King by Kurt Wimmer The children of the corn. Look at the Genrevision Episode on Warriors of virtue For more of my angus macfadyen obsession.

And most importantly, keep coming back for more here on a huge freakin robot.