monsters vs. aliens

há a questão do orçamento. é bom lembrar que o novo museu dos coches deverá custar cerca de 31 milhões de euros quando este filme custou mais de 165 milhões de dólares. quando se entra na sala para assistir, 165 milhões têm o seu peso. até que ponto uma engrenagem desta dimensão tem flexibilidade de imaginação ou até que ponto a imaginação não passa de outro produto engarrafado. isto não é arte, é entretenimento. como entretenimento, gostei de ver.

depois há a questão do 3D. os críticos dizem, e devem ter razão, que a única razão pela qual o 3D está a ser introduzido é pelo lucro, pelo preço mais elevado dos bilhetes e pela maior dificuldade da pirataria. tudo antes da estética. mas onde é que a estética esteve primeiro na indústria do entretenimento antes do filme em três dimensões? o que sei, e este é o teste último, é que os miúdos adoram. eles são espontâneos, mexem-se e dizem que estão chateados se o filme é aborrecido, riem à gargalhada com as piadas, têm medo, ficam tristes, assustados. os miúdos adoram o 3D e levantam-se para apanhar as bolas atiradas do ecrã, os graúdos podem suspirar pelos 39 Degraus ou pelo Quarto Mandamento mas uma coisa não incompatibiliza a outra. Coeurs foi o filme que mais gostei de ver este ano e não tem mesmo nada a ver com 3D, isso devia significar que fujo da Dreamworks? nem pensar. espero que o 3D passe para os filmes de graúdos o mais depressa possível, há muitos filmes que ganhavam com essa tecnologia e o bilhete não é assim tão mais caro.

depois há a questão dos críticos vs. público. enquanto eles dão uma nota de 50%, o público dá 70%. é verdade que há histórias melhores, é verdade que há filmes mais originais, é verdade que a técnica não é tudo. mas... muita acção, muito riso, um filme bem feito. ainda aquém do marco Shrek, embora a cidade de São Francisco esteja mais linda que nunca.

para os pais há sempre o rebuçado das associações com o Mars Attacks, meu filme de culto, The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, ET, Back to the Future, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Fly, The Blob, Dr. Strangelove, Startrek, Close Encounters of the Third Kind e até An Inconvenient Truth. e a miúda é mesmo gira.

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‘Monsters vs. Aliens' is a pop-culture cornucopia
By ROBERT W. BUTLER
daqui

Possibly no other movie has contained as many pop cultural references as "Monsters vs. Aliens."

Co-director Conrad Vernon said that from the start, the film was conceived as a cheeky homage to classic monster and sci-fi films.

"It was a great idea ... plus they gave me a budget to buy as many old horror films as I wanted. So I bought about 150 DVDs of films from the early '50s and '60s, and everybody on the project got to see them."

Vernon means everybody.

"People from the art department, the effects department, the story department - everybody got to check out these movies and draw from them. So we had ideas coming in from everybody, not just story people or artists but from lighting people, the executives. Everyone was pitching ideas to be included in the movie."

The final film is so crammed with homages to old movies that you'd have to watch it several times to catch them all - and even then you'd miss some.

In a recent telephone call Vernon - whose credits include "Shrek 2" - offered some insights into the film's characters and situations and the old movies that inspired them:

Susan Murphy/Ginormica (voiced by Reese Witherspoon): "Everyone thinks of 'Attack of the 50 Foot Woman,'" Vernon said. "Which is true, but we wanted to make sure we weren't basing our characters on just one movie. We were exploring subgenres: mad scientists, oozing gooey characters, mutants that are half this and half that ... and of course the whole giant human genre."

B.O.B. (Seth Rogen): B.O.B. is a gelatinous blue globule with one big eye. He's an obvious reference to the 1958 Steve McQueen movie "The Blob."

"I saw 'The Blob' when I was a little kid," Vernon recalled. "My baby-sitter and I sat up to 2 a.m. watching. It was great. There was this oozy character that whenever it touched you sucked all the moisture out of you.

"Of course B.O.B. doesn't hurt people, but he sometimes inadvertently sucks them in."

The Missing Link (Will Arnett): "There's a lot of the 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' there," Vernon said, "but also some 'King Kong' and some 'Piranha'...there's just a whole bunch of influences."

Insectasaurus : This one's too easy - at least for anyone who's ever seen the Japanese character Mothra, the skyscraper-sized bug who tore up Tokyo in a 1961 release.

Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie): A fellow with a human body and the head of an insect, he's an obvious nod to 1958's "The Fly." His laboratory apparatus is modeled after the one in the 1986 "Fly" remake.

Gen. W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland): Monger runs a top-secret federal prison for monsters.

Says Vernon: "We were thinking of 'Dr, Strangelove's' Buck Turgidson" - portrayed by George C. Scott - "when we started out. But when we cast Kiefer we didn't tell him that this was based on the 'Strangelove' character. We simply explained that Monger was a grizzled WWII vet who has spent 50 years capturing and controlling these monsters.

"Kiefer envisioned him as the drill sergeant from 'Full Metal Jacket' mixed with the cartoon character Yosemite Sam. So there's a little bit of all those people in it, filtered though Kiefer's sensibility."

"Monsters vs. Aliens" also has a scene set in the Pentagon's War Room that's a dead ringer for the one in "Strangelove."

"My co-director Rob Letterman and I are huge Stanley Kubrick fans, and that's one of our favorite movies. Thanks to that film you think of the War Room as a big cavernous place with a big board and all these people working at terminals like an air traffic control center. But I've seen photos of the real War Room. It's like a conference room with chairs and a few TVs. Very disappointing."

Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson): A megalomaniac from another planet, Gallaxhar has arrived to colonize earth with an army of killer robots.

"Designing Gallaxhar we asked ourselves what were the most common design traits of '50s sci-fi monsters," Vernon explained. "We came up with big bulging brains, slimy tentacles, multiple eyes and a costume made of some sort of Lycra or satiny material."

Much of "Monsters vs. Aliens" takes plays in a meticulously animated version of San Francisco.

"A big chase through the hilly streets of San Francisco ... there are a ton of movies in which that happens. Everyone thinks 'Bullitt,' but there's also 'Ronin,' 'Foul Play' with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, 'What's Up, Doc?'... there's a ton of San Francisco chase movies referenced here."

At one point the movie's earthbound monsters fight a giant alien robot, in the process wrecking the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a reference to 1955's "It Came From Beneath the Sea," in which a gigantic octopus pulls down the bridge.

"We wanted to pay a little respect to the West Coast," Vernon explained. "New York gets wrecked in monster movies all the time - 'King Kong,' 'Cloverfield.' But I love the city of San Francisco and thought it deserved to be wrecked in style."

There are plenty of other old movie references floating around, among them "Men in Black," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "I Am Legend," "Independence Day," "The Empire Strikes Back"... the list is endless.

"People are saying, 'Oh, I'm so glad you paid homage to 'The Wizard of Oz,'" Vernon said. "But honestly, I don't recall anyone on our team mentioning that movie.

"What that tells me is that people are seeing their own memories in this film. And really, that's fantastic. It means the movie is speaking to people."