“The Runaways” and “Clash of the Titans”

The Runaways vs. Clash of the Titans

Clash of the Runaways

The Runaway Titans

The Ruclawashys of the TITANAWAYS!

Besides rubbing elbows, and some other body parts AM I RIGHT!?!, with crazy homeless alien jazz musicians and drunk chicks with potty mouths this weekend – I viewed two films with both my EYES and EARS! Las peliculas son The Runaways y Clash of the Titans!!!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! AND THEY WERE MAGNIFICENT!!!!!!! AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE!!!!!!!! THE COMPETITION!!! THE EMOTION!!! THE SWORD FIGHTS!!! THE MYTHICAL BEASTS!!! THE YOUNG GIRLS WITHOUT MUCH CLOTHES!!!! AHHH!!!!!

My inner-monologue right now is going crazy. This potent cocktail mix is one part large iced coffee that I chugged, one part annoying conversation from co-morkers, and one part “AGGRESSIVE THURSDAY”! AAAAHHHHHH!!!!! SHUT UP CO-MORKERS!!!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! I’m using my hands to create a golden spire of comedy out of this malleable blank word document page!!! SHUT!!! UP!!!

To be transparent for a moment — it is 9:53 am. I will not be able to write until this FUCKING CONVERSATION ENDS!!!! It is 9:56 am and I’m back. I feel like I can’t breathe when someone is having a conversation that I can’t stand. Probably because if I allowed myself to breathe I would yell, “THIS IS THE MOST BORING CONVERSATION EVER! ISN’T THERE A BORING CONFERENCE ROOM YOU COULD HAVE YOUR COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY BORING CONVERSATION IN!?!”

I did see The Runaways and Clash of the Titans. They were not magnificent. That was a little hyperbolic. They were both entertaining and I’m glad I saw them. Today, I will set your intrigue level even higher by drawing the vivid parallels between both films. But if you are looking for the short answer on whether you should see these movies or not given the opportunity: yes, you should see them.

Little bit longer answer: if you do want to see these two movies already then you should see them. If you have wild expectations for these movies like they will redefine what you know as truth, morality and justice then don’t see these movies. Never see those movies. Your expectations for a movie need to be comparable to what the actual movie is. Don’t expect Clash of the Titans to give you a good Forrest Gump-everything-in-the-world-is-beautiful-even-when-it-is-simplisitc-and-sad-and-we-all-should-love-each-other-with-the-small-amount-of-time-we-have cry, because that will not happen. You should see Clash of the Titans if you want to see a giant sea monster. That’s about it. If you are not into seeing a giant sea monster then DON’T FUCKING SEE THE FUCKING MOVIE!!! So, if you have a sane set of expectations for these two movies and you still want to see them then go see them.

A lot longer answer: Kristen Stewart kisses Dakota Fanning!!!!! AAAAAHHHHH!!!! Kristen also kisses some other chick just for the hell of it. Seriously, that does happen. Both movies are quite entertaining and both have some “remarkable” “similarities”. I’m not saying that the Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning all girl rock and roll 80’s movie is the exact same movie as Sam Worthington’s war against the Greek Gods movie. But what I’m presupposing is – what if they are?

Exhibit A: Bad News Bears

The Runaways and Clash of the Titans are focused around the journey of two groups of misfits taking on an insurmountable opposition. In The Runaways, our merry band of hot teen chick actors play a merry band of hot teen chick musicians – pretty good, right? Their mission is to form the first ever successful all girl rock and roll band. There is Dakota Fanning as the platinum blonde bombshell lead singer. Kristen Stewart is the oil black guitarist with mystique and throaty vocals. Stella Maeve is the sun kissed beach bodied drummer. Scout Taylor-Compton is the slick soloing guitarist who has boobs. And Alia Shawkat is the bassist who also has boobs.

The breakdown of the movie is pretty much Dakota, Kristen, Michael Shannon as the band manager (I’ll talk about him later). The actor with the fourth most screen time is probably Riley Keough who plays Dakota’s older sister- she is excellent looking as well. The rest of The Runaways have little to do besides look like attractive young ladies who play instruments. Stella Maeve has a few lines early on, but disappears as the movie continues. Scout Taylor-Compton has a couple lines, which feel like they are only in there so the other characters can respond, “Shut up, Lita Ford” just so they can remind people Lita Ford was also in The Runaways. And lastly, Alia Shawkat from Arrested Development fame is funnily enough playing a fictional character named “Robin” since the real bassist, Jackie Fox, I guess wouldn’t sign off on this movie. I honestly don’t remember hearing Alia say anything in the movie. So Stella, Scout and Alia are background eye candy for the most part.

Clash of the Titans also features a merry band of merry bandsmen who appear to be polar opposites on the surface, but really they all are big softies who kiss and hug and read each other bedtime stories. FAGS! Just joking. Sam Worthington is the EM-EFF-ING M-A-N in blockbuster action movies right now. You may recall Sam was in Terminator: Salvation, Avatar and, now, Clash of the Titans. I enjoyed all three of these movies. I think Terminator is my favorite of the three. I know a lot of people did not like that movie, but a lot of people are fucking stupid and those two categories overlap nicely. I think Clash of the Titans has more replay value than Avatar since a lot of Avatar is based around “surprise” and “revelation”. It is supposed to be mystifying the first time you see “Pandora” or the “Na’vi” et cetera and this becomes less mystifying with additional viewings or I’m guessing it will – I really don’t care if I ever see Avatar again and I enjoyed it.

Sam plays balls confidence and furiously angry Perseus. Sam is the front man of this group of vengeful marauders and Dakota is the front woman for The Runaways. So, Sam is Dakota. And Dakota was in a movie called I Am Sam. AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! THE UNIVERSE IS IMPLODING!!!!! Sam’s second in command is his no nonsense and conservative voice of reason Mads Mikkelsen aka Draco. Mads is fine as the straight talk express right hand man, but for the ladies they kind of lose out. Mads is a handsome man (voted best looking Dane, I believe) and in this movie he looks like he attends every Phish concert ever. Anyway, Sam and Mads are accompanied by several other men in leather skirts, sweaty muscles and sharp edged weapons. Very similar to The Runaways, most of these guys do not have many lines. They are pretty much just standing around or randomly swinging a sword as eye candy. Especially this sexy ass motherfucker:

Exhibit B: Grumpy Old Men

Besides scantily clad females — OH MY FUCKING GOD! THESE CO-MORKERS ARE TALKING AGAIN!!!! AHHHHH!!!!!!! WHY CAN’T THEY JUST NOT TALK!?! — They stopped. Where was I? Oh right, “scantily clad females”. This movie is more or less Dakota Fanning’s sexual coming out party. She parades around in almost nothing for a lot of the movie. She also engages in sex and so forth. She does a great job with all of it considering this Cherie Currie character is completely different than anything else she has played. Nevertheless, the one actor who steals all scenes he is in is Michael Shannon as band manager Kim Fowley.

Michael Shannon really kills it in pretty much every scene he is in. This “exhibit” title is a little deceiving because Michael is only 36 years old, but in comparison to his jailbait co-stars he is ancient. Shannon plays Fowley as a  angry, sexual, near violent, manipulative and at the same time oddly intellectually nurturing band manager. There are several reoccurring band practice scenes where Shannon as Fowley gets a chance to really show off with an over-the-top, but in your face performance each time. Ostensibly, he is a very opinionated, aggressive and colorful man who is 20 years older than these recently lost their innocence teen girls who want to play in a band together. He is barking at them to be sexier, to be tougher, to think with their cocks. They are definitely crowd pleasing scenes. And at the same time, Shannon is the constant throughout the movie. He has seen the lure of rock and roll life before where as Kristen, Dakota and the rest of the girls have not. He is the constant ushering us through.

The “grumpy old men” who do the same for Clash of the Titans are Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes. At 57 and 47 respectively, neither is “50 over 60 list” old, but slap on an unnecessarily long beard and wig and they certainly look the part. Liam Neeson plays Zeus and Ralph Fiennes plays Hades. Fowley in The Runaways is part older good guy and part older bad guy, Zeus and Hades are that together. It seems like nowadays if Fiennes is in a movie then he is the archetypal epitome of evil incarnate and that doesn’t change much in this movie. Hades is the bad guy. He is the mastermind of the whole ordeal. If you think this is a spoiler than you’re an idiot – LOOK AT THE GUY!

All in black, his voice is decrepit, he has a hunchback and he shoots fire! These are generally all bad guy territory. Lord of the Underworld? That usually does not appear on the resume of your “hero”. Zeus, on the other hand, is a little more complex. He is good, but is swayed to do bad things. Hey, nobody is perfect – even the most powerful God in the world. Both Fiennes and Neeson give very dramatic and almost Broadway stage style performances. They’re pretty cheesy and magnanimous, but how else would you expect “Gods” to act. “Hey there Zeus, it’s Apollo. I just wanted to see if you wanted to watch last night’s Gossip Girl? I DVRed it. It’s kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. So give me a ring back on my cell phone when you get this. Or you can text me. I, the Sun God Apollo, love texting. Latez!”

Zeus doesn’t know how to text! He only knows how to make proclamations! And, shoot lightning bolts and be a God and stuff.

Finally…

Exhibit C: Godzilla ; Jaws ; King Kong ; Snakes on a Plane

Let’s stop bullshitting around for a minute. Everyone is seeing each of these movies respectively for one thing:

UNLIMITED POWER!!!!

For Clash of the Titans it is the KRAKEN!!

For The Runways it is the WANT!!

People go see monster movies for the fucking monster. You watch Jaws to see the damn shark. You watch Godzilla to see GODZILLA! You watch Snakes on a Plane because it the greatest waste of time EVER! I like Jack Black a lot. I like Naomi Watts a lot. There are times when I like Adrian Brody. But I saw that movie because motherfucking KING KONG was in it. King Kong, bitches! And that is the same logic for these two movies.

The Kraken is an unstoppable hellish creation of size, weight, teeth, tentacles, and destruction whose power is so great it scares the Gods shitless.

The Want is an unstoppable, unflinching, unblinking, never ending, boner creating, orgasm delivering, sex flush painting, heavy breathed fuck whisper deep in your … ear drum that owns all of your souls and you love it.

So if you get tired of the early summer heat this weekend then go see these movies.

And the Want would fuck the Kraken rotten – if you were wondering.