Made For TV Movies Suck
So there wasn’t a post yesterday. The chain has been broken! Even though my campus was open for the holiday, apparently buses were not running to it, as evidenced by my spending an hour hopping between bus stops only to watch it cruise right past the campus entrance without stopping, followed by an additional 45 minutes to get home accomplishing nothing. I sort of tried to make contact with Dro and tell him to do a post, but I was in a bad mood and instead played Guitar Hero 3 for multiple hours. So, I’ll just blame it on Dro and move on to the post I have planned for a few days but never actually got around to writing until last night, which is me making fun of stupid made-for-tv movie trailers:
As my interest in my Netflix account dies down, I figured I’d make use of it by renting terrible movies before I cancel the account in December. The first of these is The Black Hole, a made-for-TV movie starring the dynamic duo of Judd Nelson (as a scientist!) and Kristy Swanson (as a scientist’s assistant!). The best part about this movie isn’t that a black hole materializes out of a botched science experiment, but that some kind of stupid intergalactic electric monster comes through the black hole and is terrorizing the city of St. Louis. Even worse, this electrical menace is ATTACHED to the black hole by invisible threads through space-time! Whenever he finds a source of electricity and gorges himself, the black hole gets bigger! OH NOZ! What will Judd Nelson do?! How will Kristy Swanson assist?!
FACT:
Kristy Swanson + Judd Nelson + Intergalactic Black Hole Creature = lulz
The sad thing is, as hilariously bad as this movie was, I actually got more laughs out of the previews before it.
TRAILER 1:
First we have a movie about earthquakes, and how the tectonic plates are shifting really fast or something. My favorite part of the trailer:
Person on phone: “These plates, which are essentially massive sections of the Earth’s crust, are in a state of constant motion.”
note: Why say ‘essentially?’ Isn’t that EXACTLY what they are?
Other person: “How is that different from other faults we’ve been facing?”
Person on phone (camera zooms in): “It’s MORE VOLATILE.”
Oh shit! Super-volatile plate movement! What a grand concept! Now comes dramatic shots of firefighters being heroes, American flags waving in the wind, and shots of the stars looking busy/important/crestfallen. Hey, look at all these big names in this! Kim Delaney! Dean Cain! Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon! Frank Langella! Beau Bridges! Wait, Beau fucking Bridges? He’s the guy from Stargate SG-1! I’m sold!
Now comes a reverse shot of a tide, indicating a huge tidal wave, and definitely does NOT look stupid because it’s clearly a shot of the tide played in reverse. And then, a huge CG wall of water rising over a shot of a city:
Man on radio: We’re definitely gonna need backup on this one!
Other man: I don’t like the sound of that…
Oh, but here’s the punchline, the title of this trainwreck waiting to happen: 10.5 Apocalypse! Oh, man.. give this writer a raise! Can it get worse than this? Yes, yes it can.
TRAILER 2:
This one actually has people I’ve heard of in it! And boy, do I feel sorry for all of them. From what I gather, this is about our sun suddenly going supernova. How this manages to catch the entire world’s scientists off-guard, well… I’m not sure they even bother explaining that. But who cares?! Luke Perry is in the house, and he’s totally going to save the world from that stupid sun! This trailer has a ton of explosions, and I’m really not sure why. I don’t know if the sun expanding suddenly causes helicopters to crash and log cabins to explode, but that’s what I’m getting from this. As a rip-off of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme music plays (definitely not out of place at all), we learn that not only is Luke Perry in the house, but Tia Carrere! She was in something I saw once! What the hell was it? Rush Hour? A porno? Ooooooh, of course! Wayne’s World! She’s really gone places, that one! Who else? Peter Fonda! I’ve definitely heard the name Fonda often! Lance Henriksen! He was…um, he was….wasn’t he Bishop in Aliens? In any case, it would appear he is the leader of an elite military unit trained to prepare for the sun exploding. How do I know? This trailer has a shot of him in military clothing saying “This is what we were trained for.”
Cut to a shot of a guy dressed as a utility working looking suspicious and knocking on the back door of a big van. HEY! What’s that utility worker up to?! Something’s fishy here! Now a shot of some guy in a big important-looking room going “I want the worst case scenario.” Well, sir, the goddamn sun is exploding! The worse case scenario is the entire galaxy is screwed.
What I don’t get about this movie is how it must end. Either the sun does explode and everyone dies, which is not too exciting since they give that away in the trailer, or the entire thing is a big tease and there’s a shot of a scientist going “Oh, the decimal was one point further left than it should be- we’re fine! Sorry about that global chaos we caused!” That’s the problem with a movie like this- there’s no way the ending is going to be the least bit satisfying. OR COULD IT? Rent SUPERNOVA today and find out!
TRAILER 3:
So I guess Hallmark Entertainment is a little behind the times. This third trailer is ANOTHER end-of-the-world scenario. Did they not get the memo that these movies got old after Armageddon and Volcano? Seriously, just because The Day After Tomorrow had good special effects doesn’t mean we need more of these. And putting the trailers for them one after another on the DVD for The Black Hole does not help.
So what’s the scenario here? Well, there’s a huge hurricane coming, of course! Hey, we’ve had hurricanes before! That really hits home, Hallmark! You are gritty, timely, and unrelenting! This is exactly what we need. A movie about a gigantic Category SIX storm! What’s that, you say? It’s bigger? Bigger than a Category 6, which does not exist? What could it be? Oh, you guessed it. This bad boy is a CATEGORY SEVEN. That’s two times worse than the worst hurricane ever! These guys are not only edgy, but creative!
Best shot in this trailer? A tiny coupe car gets flung around and slams into the base of the Eiffel Tower, which is apparently enough to make the top start to wobble and the tip to fall off. Good stuff. Also included is a shot of people getting pulled off the railings of the tower. And where else would they be, really? Why take shelter from a world-ending storm? There’s sightseeing to do before you die.
We’ve got winners in this one too, folks! Randy Quaid! Gina Gershon! Shannen Doherty! Tom Skerritt! Is it possible that we’ll get a better title than Supernova or 10.5 Apocalypse? Yes and no. The title is simply (and menacingly) Category 7. But wait, there’s a subtitle! “THE END OF THE WORLD.” NICE.
I don’t know if I even care about watching The Black Hole anymore! I think I need to return it and rent all three of these!
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