June 19, 2006

Towards a Unified Bad Movie Classification System: Part Zero

Earlier this year, I saw Ultraviolet.^[1] After stumbling out of the theater in a daze, my buddy and I came to the conclusion that Ultraviolet might very well be the worst movie we've ever seen. Or at least in contention, along with, say, Yor, Hunter from the Future. You can't use "worst movie ever" lightly, but wow, Ultraviolet was a failure on every artistic level I can think of:

• Emotional Content: Every scene provoked the opposite emotion intended. All action scenes provoked boredom. All dramatic scenes provoked cringing. All tear-jerking scenes provoked laughter (Ex: the merry-go-round scene).
• Dialogue: Beyond stupid.
• Logic: Bad guys from several different factions appeared out of nowhere as the plot required. Violet had the supernatural ability to kill as many bad guys as required. People betrayed each other for no particular reason. Chase scenes were impossible to follow: Violet would be running through one futuristic corridor, then we'd cut to a scene of bad guys running after her through some other futuristic building, then we'd cut back to Violet running through yet a third futuristic building...
• Bad Guy: An action movie lives and dies by the dark charisma of the Big Bad Evil Guy. Star Wars had Darth Vader. Die Hard had Hans Gruber. Ultraviolet had some guy who liked to taunt his enemies with, "Are you mental?" He also wore nose plugs.^[2]
• Sex Appeal: No tension at all between Violet and anyone, least of all her wimpy vampire scientist buddy (William Fichtner, who usually rises above material like this). Fellow red-blooded males should note that the uninterrupted view of Milla Jovovich's sculpted midriff got boring about ten minutes in.
• Action: Violet defeated about 60% of the bad guys by whirling her torso around in "bullet time" and letting her enemies shoot or slice up their own buddies to death.
• Visual Style: The architecture was scrubbed clean and inhospitable to all life. The bad guys were faceless helmeted interchangeable fascists. The rebels wore tight leather and had swords and mirrorshades. Et cetera. The only really innovative element was the nose plugs.
• Music: Every action scene pulsated with loud, grindingly awful techno music. (Over the years, I've actually learned to like loud techno music, so I can only imagine what people who don't like techno thought.)
• CGI: Without a doubt, the worst I've ever seen. Particles didn't pretend to fly out right. Perspectives looked skewed. Fiery explosions looked patched in from consumer-grade movie editing software. And whenever a heavy CGI scene occurred, the camera would go blurry and glossy to cover up the dirt-cheap effects. It looked like someone had smeared petroleum jelly on the camera lens -- like a Barbara Walters interview, or NBC's much-maligned athlete retrospectives during the 2000 Summer Olympics.
• Languages: There's a scene where Violet runs onto the roof of a building and is suddenly surrounded by dozens of Asian gangsters. A frank, subtitled exchange ensues between Violet and the Head Gangster, followed by Violet dispatching all the gangsters with the technique described in "Action", above. Just a run-of-the-mill bad scene, right? Well, a couple of days another friend of mine reported that he had actually understood half the conversation. The gangster was speaking fluent Vietnamese, but Violet was speaking... some other Asian language! Mandarin, maybe? Japanese? Random syllables? Who knows? As long as it's Asian and stuff. Ultraviolet is so bad, it has layers of badness that require specialized knowledge to unlock.

I bring all this up not to warn people about seeing Ultraviolet -- too late for that! -- but to ponder the idea of bad movies in general. So stay tuned as we dive in to my brand-new Official Four-Category Bad Movie Classification System! (I tried to come up with a Category V, but to no avail.)

1. There's a medium-length story that explains why we chose to see Ultraviolet and stick through to the bitter end, but it's really not very interesting.

2. Special hint for aspiring screenwriters! Nose plugs do not make your villain look tougher or smarter.

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