Posts Tagged ‘movies’

Daybreakers: What went wrong?

Last night some friends and I went to see the new movie Daybreakers. Honestly, I’m a little sick of vampires, but I wanted to see what they did with it.

Daybreakers is the vision of the Spierig brothers. With the 1940s style costuming and vampire friendly environment you feel like you’re seeing something close to our world, but just a little different. I thought this was nicely done, even though in a few places it felt more like I was watching a music video than a film.

Honestly, this story almost made it for me. I think it’s greatest weakness was its hero. The main character fails to grab your interest, because even though he has an overriding concern, he never goes through any great transformation. He makes a physical transformation, but not a psychological or moral one, which leaves the audience with the feeling of, ‘What’s the point?’

He’s a victim hero and those guys are never any fun unless they’re out for hardcore, car-exploding, mob-bosses-dying-in-terrible-ways revenge. Our hero has no need to change, because he’s there to do exactly what the writer wanted him to do–show off the neat vampire world. Had more work been done to create a satisfying hero arch, you would have seen a completely different movie. A much better movie.

It’s good eye-candy though and there are a few cheesy lines that got a good laugh, but overall it falls short of being a satisfying film experience.

OK, so technically, it’s probably not considered a Christmas movie, but I put it in my catalog of fun things to watch around Christmas time.

Here’s the original trailer:

Here’s some making of clips about the film’s birth:

Part 2

An excellent interview with the screenwriter Caroline Thompson:

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/olague_robert/caroline_thompson.php

I couldn’t find the original script, but I did find a transcript. It at least gives you a flavor of the wonderful dialogue and character development Caroline put into the work.

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Edward-Scissorhands.html

I’ve noticed that most of my favorite films tend to have a speculative element. Edward Scissorhands is a kind of suburban fairytale and fantasy. I’m not sure if it’s a good one to use as a commercial model though, because honestly I don’t think something like this would have made it through the studio system at the time. Something like it might today though.

Edward is on my ‘watch 5 times’ list. I think it takes watching something about 5 times to truly grok its structure.