From Bad to Worse?

Cinematic badness is comparative - I was reminded of this the past weekend by a couple of the films I streamed.  By any measure, the films produced by The Asylum, mainly so-called 'mockbusters' designed to cash in on the success of recent big budget releases, are quite terrible. I generally avoid them at all costs, with their cut price CGI, vaguely recognisable-from-some-old-TV-series stars, clunky scripts and terrible production values.  But I bumped into one streaming on a fairly obscure livestreaming channel on Roku and, foolishly, found myself sitting through the whole bloody thing.  Now, I strongly suspect that the only reason that I found it in any way bearable was because, in comparison to a film I'd sat through the day before, it seemed like a masterpiece.  I'd made the mistake of streaming a movie of which I had no prior knowledge and had done no research on, purely on the basis of its title.  As anyone foolish enough to have read this blog in the long term will be aware, I have a soft spot for the low budget giant ape movie Konga (1961) - one of the holy trinity of British giant monster movies of the era, along with Behemoth, The Sea Monster (1958) and Gorgo (1959).  So, when I saw a movie titled Konga TNT (2020) - complete with a picture of a giant ape menacing a city skyline - on demand on a Roku channel, I just had to watch it to find out if it had any connection to the original.  Boy, did I regret that - seventy three minutes of my life that I'll never get back.

There is a connection between the two films, with the credits of Konga TNT claiming that it was inspired by the 'public domain Charlton Comics character'.  Now, while those comics might be in the public domain, they were actually a spin off pf the original Konga film, which, as far as I know, isn't in the public domain.  Which is probably why the 2020 film goes to great lengths to create an origin story for the giant ape that is far removed from the original, involving crashed alien spaceships, although there is a mad scientist of sorts involved.  Unfortunately, what unfolds is essentially a home movie that has somehow escaped into the wild.  Featuring a cast of non-actors and non-existent 'special effects', including the sort of CGI I could probably produce on this laptop, the film, with its man-in-a-monkey suit monster, (although at times he is also a stuffed toy and a glove puppet), clearly sees itself as some kind of homage/parody of the original.  Sadly, though, the script is just too scatter-shot to succeed, also seeking to parody, at various points, the likes of Indiana Jones, rolling news stations and disaster movies generally.  Its lack of focus, not to mention its execrable acting and production values, means that Konga TNT feels far longer than its seventy three minute running time.  Like all intentionally bad movies, it misses the point that the truly enjoyable bad movies were never made with the intention of being bad.  The original Konga, for instance, actually boasted a reasonable budget and featured a decent enough cast by the standards of such movies of the era - its entertainment value comes from a truly bonkers script, a typically eccentric performance from Michael Gough and its pretensions of being able to stage King Kong on a B-movie budget.  

Consequently, I felt more inclined to give that Asylum movie, Age of Tomorrow (2014), a chance.  After all, some of the CGI wasn't too bad, the production design (particularly the space ships and space suits) was surprisingly decent, plus it boasted professional actors.  Granted, most of them weren't particularly good professional actors, but it at least had a couple of recognisable faces amongst the cast, most notably Robert Picardo, who pitched his performance exactly right for this sort of movie.  While the title Age of Tomorrow was clearly designed to echo the contemporaneous Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow, the script takes in a number of recent science fiction blockbusters - it seemingly starts out as an Armageddon knock off, then quickly turns into an alien invasion film, knocking off the likes of War of the Worlds (2005), Starship Troopers (1997) and Independence Day (1996).  Most interestingly, rather than being a true 'mockbuster' cashing in on a single film, Age of Tomorrow seems to be aimed at parodying an entire genre, namely the gung ho style of 'plucky earthmen resisting superior alien invaders at all costs' type of film.  Whereas, traditionally, these sorts of films always end with humanity scoring an unlikely, against-all-odds victory, Age of Tomorrow goes for a more downbeat ending, leaving most of the main cast dead and the survivors facing a seemingly hopeless last stand against overwhelming odds.  It's a brave choice for this sort of film, albeit one that leaves the viewer wondering why they bothered watching it, or even if this is a cliffhanger for a never made sequel.  But the more I think about it, the more I admire the film makers' for opting for this ending, which reflects unfashionable reality: that the use of overwhelming force usually wins in these situations.  

None of which to say that Age of Tomorrow is some kind of unheralded classic.  It is still a crappy Asylum production chock full of bad acting, lame dialogue and bare bones production values.  Like most of the studio's other productions, it is hugely derivative - yet, unlike most of those 'mockbusters', it does at least show some originality in the way it treats its borrowed elements and develops its second hand ideas.  As I've said, I probably wouldn't have been so generous to Age of Tomorrow had I not subjected myself to Konga TNT the day before, a film so terrible and bereft of any redeeming features that it made me glad of any kind of enjoyable cinematic experience.  The guys at The Asylum at least understand that it is pretty pointless trying to parody low budget movies that are themselves already a parody of themselves and instead focus on the pretensions of those big budget productions which really should know better.