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Post by fenris on Dec 8, 2019 17:15:25 GMT
The Asylum have announced their mockbuster of Jumanji: The Next Level, entitled The Final Level: Escaping Rancala. Blimey, the opening scenes in this trailer really make nostalgic for Tron, and even more so for Arcade (1990), Full Moon's low budget Tron knock-off. Lots of potential fun here - the characters realising they've got multiple lives, Bai Ling getting subtitles despite the fact she's speaking fully understandable English, ' Boss Fight!' and that final reveal... Jaw-droppingly self-referential. Looks promising.
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Post by fenris on Dec 26, 2019 13:52:07 GMT
Recently watched The Final Level: Escaping Ranana and found it to be a great deal of goofy fun. Although it's The Asylum's mockbuster of Jumanji: The Next Level, due to budgetary constraints it's more reminiscent of earlier films such as Tron (1982), the 'Bishop of Battle' segment of anthology movie Nightmares (1983), and Full Moon's Arcade (1993). The story: avid videogamer Jake and his younger sister Sarah are spending time at Jake's favourite hangout, the local video game arcade. While Sarah goes outside to meet their mother, Jake lingers to play one last game... and is never seen again. Ten years later, a now-twentysomething Sarah (played by Jessica Chancellor) has become a successful redheaded entrepreneur, but is still deeply affected by her brother's disappearance. As a result, her latest about-to-launch business venture is a tribute to him - a themed bar that is partly a faithful recreation of a video arcade, complete with vintage games. Sarah's partners in this enterprise are her two friends since childhood, brunette tech nerd Rae (Tiana Tuttle) whose job is to make sure everything works, and blonde networking vlogger/blogger Chrissy (Emily Sweet), in charge of advertising, publicity and social media. However, when the last game to be installed turns out to be 'Rancala', the game Jake was playing when he disappeared, the three friends find themselves sucked into it, and are faced with the multiple tasks of surviving and completing the game, finding Jake and trying to return to the real world.
There's a hugely pleasing amount of meta humour in The Final Level (which probably reaches it's zenith early on, as the girls discover the first end-of-level boss opponent is a sharknado) centring on the trio of heroines adapting to being inside a video game: having to instinctively duck their heads every time an on-screen message appears, learning that unfeasibly large objects (oars, long-barrelled sniper rifles, planks of wood) can be pulled from the modestly-sized backpacks they're wearing, and having their clothes automatically change to match every new environment they enter. Arriving on a beach, they find themselves suddenly clad in just some skimpy & revealing bikinis. "Do you think a man designed this game?" deadpans Chrissy.
Enjoyable though The Final Level is, there are some negatives: much of the movie's initial fun and inventivity ebbs out after the first 35 - 40 minutes, and the film starts to drag during it's middle section. That said, things do rally in the final stretch with some welcome twists, although the reveal of The King - the game's final, super-boss opponent - is a disappointment, due to some typical Asylum penny pinching. He really should be a dastardly arch-enemy, part-Vader, part-Ming the Merciless, ruling Rancala from a lair that's half-gothic castle, half-Death Star control room. Instead, he's just some ranty man in a vaguely naval officer-style uniform, sitting on a throne made out of twigs, on a raised platform in the middle of a forest clearing. Very unsatisfying. The movie's low budget special effects and CGI mostly past muster, apart from a disastrous sequence in which two of the girls move at super-speed (having been given selected superpowers courtesy of the game), which just doesn't work and should have been left on the cutting room floor.
Characterisation is also tissue-thin, and although the three lead actresses do their best to flesh out the trio of heroines, they don't quite succeed (Sweet comes closest) due to simply having so little to work with. Full marks though to Chancellor, Tuttle and Sweet for throwing themselves full-bodily into The Final Level's many, many fight scenes, which are shot so you can see it's clearly the actresses and not stunt doubles who are throwing punches, high-kicking and back-flipping. And considering this movie is clearly intended for a family audience, kudos to The Asylum for including a scene in which two of the characters matter-of-factly share a same-sex kiss (this is nothing new for The Asylum - their mainstream 2007 mockbuster Transmorphers had two key characters in a same-sex marriage).
Despite it's flaws, I enjoyed The Final Level immensely and in my humble opinion it stands alongside the likes of Sherlock Holmes (2010), Mercenaries (2014) and the Avengers Grimm movies as one of the most entertaining films The Asylum has yet made. It's hard to dislike a movie that features a girl successfully dropkicking a charging rhino.
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Post by fenris on Jan 5, 2020 21:41:02 GMT
Coming soon from The Asylum - Battle Star Wars!! Here's the official synopsis: ' When the leader of the evil Coalition threatens to destroy a Rebel planet for its resources, his daughter will have no choice but to join the Rebel side and fight for what is right.' I'll give Battle Star Wars a try when it's released next year. An encouraging sign is that it's being written by Jeremy M. Inman, who previously scripted all three entries in The Asylum's noteworthy Avengers Grimm series. Whoa. Based on the trailer, it looks like The Asylum have spend a bit more time & money on this movie, compared to some of their other productions. Intriguingly, the official synopsis makes it sound that Battlestar Wars could essentially be Rogue One or A New Hope from Leia's point of view. And as Jeremy M. Inman had already successfully taken on the most popular movie franchise of the 21st century by scripting the Avengers Grimm movies, it's no surprise The Asylum assigned him to write their take on the biggest film franchise ever. Incidentally, since he's already gleefully mashed together the MCU and the DCEU by setting Sinister Squad - The Asylum's mockbuster of Suicide Squad - in the same continuity as the Avengers Grimm movies, I'm hoping Inman finds a way to tie Battlestar Wars into the Grimm series. After all, the MCU does have a space opera component, in the form of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
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Post by fenris on Mar 1, 2020 23:20:04 GMT
According to Amazon, Battlestar Wars is being released on Region 2 DVD in the UK on 23rd March, while The Final Level: Escaping Rancala is likewise being released on 6th April as Jurassic Island.
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Post by fenris on Mar 7, 2020 15:00:39 GMT
Coming soon from The Asylum - Fast & Fierce: Death Race. Here's the official synopsis: Jack Tyson is on his way to grabbing the cash prize for an illegal car race from Mexico to California when a desperate woman, fleeing from her gangster boyfriend who runs the tournament, jumps into his car pleading for help. The movie is an in-name-only sequel to The Asylum's earlier mockbuster The Fast & The Fierce (2017), which - as you can see from the trailer below - had nothing to do with cars or road-racing at all. www.thefilmcatalogue.com/films/in-the-driftThe Asylum have announced their take on Godzilla vs Kong which switches the top billing & will be titled Ape vs Monster. No doubt due to the release of Godzilla vs Kong being pushed back to the end of the year, Ape vs Monster has vanished from the slate of The Asylum's upcoming movies. Have no way of knowing if this merely means that Ape vs Monster's release has also been delayed, or whether actual production of the film has been postponed or even cancelled.
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Post by fenris on Jun 21, 2020 14:15:07 GMT
The Asylum have emerged from the enforced coronavirus shutdown with news of several upcoming movies, including their mockbuster of Top Gun: Maverick, entitled Top Gunner, which has the Russians as the villains (somebody at the Asylum clearly misses the Cold War - their previous movie Megalodon also had dastardly, sneering, hissable Russkies as the bad guys). But the only one to peak my interest is called Monster Hunters. Here's the official synopsis; When an alien prison ship crash lands and unleashes creature after creature in the California desert, they make quick work of the army that tries to stop them. Now, the only hope of stopping the aliens rests with a secret branch of the government specializing in alien weaponry. But with the team untested in actual combat, the battle for Earth will be brutal.
This sounds like a reworking of the Asylum's aborted Ape vs Monster project (see earlier posts). Both the premise and especially the title are utterly bland and generic (hope they change the latter before release), but I have faith because it's being written by Jeremy M Inman, one of the Asylum's leading lights who scripted & directed Avengers Grimm and Sinister Squad, and wrote Avengers Grimm: Time Wars and the entertaining Battlestar Wars.
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Post by fenris on Aug 30, 2020 14:44:13 GMT
The Asylum have emerged from the enforced coronavirus shutdown with news of several upcoming movies, but the only one to peak my interest is called Monster Hunters. Here's the official synopsis; When an alien prison ship crash lands and unleashes creature after creature in the California desert, they make quick work of the army that tries to stop them. Now, the only hope of stopping the aliens rests with a secret branch of the government specializing in alien weaponry. But with the team untested in actual combat, the battle for Earth will be brutal.Hmm. Have to say, this looks particularly unimpressive. Plotwise, it appears to just be a rehash of earlier Asylum movie Alien Predator (see previous post), and while the standard of CGI in Asylum films has steadily improved over the years, it seems to have taken a substantial leap backwards here. The design of the creatures is also quite simplistic and uninspired. The aliens in Alien Predator were depicted using practical effects (men in costumes) and I think a similar approach would have benefited Monster Hunters. Intriguingly, the font and effects used in the trailer for the slogan and movie title are identical to the trailer for Monster Island (again, see previous post). Whether this means the two films are linked (same continuity?) or it''s just due to typical Asylum penny pinching remains to be seen. I hope it's the former, but strongly suspect it's actually the latter.
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Post by fenris on Jun 22, 2021 21:39:54 GMT
No doubt due to the release of Godzilla vs Kong being pushed back to the end of the year, Ape vs Monster has vanished from the slate of The Asylum's upcoming movies. Have no way of knowing if this merely means that Ape vs Monster's release has also been delayed, or whether actual production of the film has been postponed or even cancelled. Since vanishing from the slate of upcoming Asylum movies, there had been no further mention of Ape vs Monster on the company's official website, Facebook page or Twitter feed, nor on any of the trade sites where forthcoming Asylum films are listed as becoming available for distribution. But then a month ago, this dropped unannounced out of nowhere; The smart money says the ape's going to win this one.
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Post by fenris on Aug 8, 2021 9:57:15 GMT
Slate of upcoming Asylum movies;
MegaBoa. Official synopsis: On a trip to Colombia, a group of college students head into the rainforest to look for cave drawings. But a once thought to be extinct sixty-foot boa constrictor is out lurking in brush, hungry for blood. After a gap of ten years, The Asylum revives it's 'Mega' series, which started out as an offshoot of it's Mega-Shark franchise. Previous entries have been Megafault (2009), Mega-Piranha (2010) and Mega-Python vs Gatoroid (2011).
Bram Stoker's Dracula. Official synopsis: Professor Van Helsing is tasked with finding and killing Dracula after the undead nightwalker turns a former student’s love interest into a vampire. Sounds like a current-day updating to me (when it comes to adapting classic works of literature, this is something for which The Asylum repeatedly has form). The company has tackled Stoker's Count before, with the above-average Dracula's Curse (2006). The scriptwriter for this latest version is Jeremy M Inman, previously responsible for some of the Asylum's best movies of recent years, such as Battle Star Wars and the Avengers Grimm series.
Planet Dune. Official synopsis: A crew on a mission to rescue a marooned base on a desert planet turns deadly when the crew finds themselves hunted and attacked by the planet’s apex predators: giant sandworms.
Devil's Triangle. Official synopsis: When a group of marine biologists crash land in the Bermuda Triangle, they realize they have stumbled into the lost city of Atlantis. But they quickly discover the city isn't friendly, and its humanoid inhabitants are planning worldwide domination using the piles of weapons and technology that have fallen through the Triangle over the centuries. Sounds like The Asylum's take on childhood matinee favourite Warlords of Atlantis (1978). Is it too much to hope that this film will tie in with Avengers Grimm: Time Wars (2018), which also featured an Atlantean invasion? Considering that The Asylum bizarrely seem reluctant to create new franchises or an interconnected movie universe, almost certainly.
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Post by fenris on Oct 4, 2021 21:28:32 GMT
Planet Dune. Official synopsis: A crew on a mission to rescue a marooned base on a desert planet turns deadly when the crew finds themselves hunted and attacked by the planet’s apex predators: giant sandworms.
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Post by fenris on Nov 11, 2021 21:39:15 GMT
Devil's Triangle. Official synopsis: When a group of marine biologists crash land in the Bermuda Triangle, they realize they have stumbled into the lost city of Atlantis. But they quickly discover the city isn't friendly, and its humanoid inhabitants are planning worldwide domination using the piles of weapons and technology that have fallen through the Triangle over the centuries.
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Post by fenris on Jan 19, 2022 21:55:00 GMT
Bram Stoker's Dracula. Official synopsis: Professor Van Helsing is tasked with finding and killing Dracula after the undead nightwalker turns a former student’s love interest into a vampire. Bram Stoker's Dracula has been retitled (confirming in the process that it's The Asylum's mockbuster of Morbius), has a trailer (below), and been given an expanded & reworked synopsis: In this gothic thriller, Detective Amelia Van Helsing is on the desperate hunt for the killer responsible for a string of grisly murders targeting young women. Matters only worsen when all evidence leads to the seemingly untouchable Count Dracula. And when Van Helsing’s girlfriend vanishes, she is forced to question the very existence of monsters in a final showdown with the enigmatic count.
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