First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way. Uwe Boll is quite possibly the worst director in the history of cinema. He really is. He has so far managed to take shutgunning zombies, monsterous predators, and hot vampire sluts that kill Nazis and make them all boring. I actually can’t call him talentless, because making movies this bad is a sort of talent in its own right. He makes Ed Wood look like Stanley fuckin’ Kubrick, all right? As if video game movies aren’t terrible enough, from the thoughtless implimentation of Doom to the pathetic strapped-on franchine of Wing Commander, and even down to the Dennis Hopper’s Worst Nightmare that was Super Mario Brothers, Uwe Boll is always there to lower the bar.

Today, the bar is actually subteranian. His latest disaster is a movie called Postal. I won’t actually say it has anything to do with the cult hit game Postal because so far, they look nothing alike (not that Alone in the Dark had anything more in common with its gaming counterpart than the name either). At any rate, there’s a trailer available online for it. I dare you to watch it. No, really, I dare you. Because there’s nothing people like more than a good 9/11 joke. Yes, seriously.

The trailer, for those of you that still have souls, features a window washer working outside of a skyscraper, turning in horror, and being disintegrated as an airliner crashes through the building. First off, the joke isn’t even funny. And part of what makes it unfunny is Boll’s tactless implimentation. But for the most part, it’s not funny because it’s high budget. It’s a very well crafted and carefully CGI’ed 9/11 joke. Morbid vacation photographs Photoshopped on the internet are one thing (and there are plenty of mock-ups out there). But the man hours and the movie dollars that went into producing this thing are what actually bother me. Someone at a board meeting saw the concept drawing and said, “Go with it!”

Then there’s the whole thing where, and I don’t even remember if I beat Postal or not anymore, but I don’t remember there being any airplanes in it. So once again, he’s taking some random video game moniker and applying it to the backwash that passes for his internal thought process. Which means, of course, that when people start bitching about the movie (and its mockery of 9/11), all of that venom gets associated with those nasty video games (cue the Grand Theft Auto connection).

And then there’s Boll himself. He likes to think of himself as a rogue, or a maverick. Bucking the system and doing things his way. Here’s a clue for Uwe Boll any any other 13 year old boys out there. Being different is not, in and of itself, cool. Anyone can be a rogue or a maverick – and the truth is that Boll is neither. It’s just the lie he has to tell himself because being different is a lot easier than sucking. He said that he wanted Postal to be, “ruthless, just like Monty Python movies used to be.” Of course, Monty Python had the unique distinction of also being funny. Something Boll has never intentionally accomplished. But just so we’re absolutely clear on where I stand here, John Cleese has taken shits that are funnier than anything Boll could ever or will ever put on film. It’s a very amateurish rhetorical trick, comparing yourself to someone else who was actually talented so you can shield yourself from criticism by association. Thankfully, Boll’s talents as a wordsmith (as evidenced in his movies) are on part with his gifts as a director. Nonesistent.

So we can all strap ourselves in while politicians take another cheap shot at video games, ironically, by attacking someone that all gamers universally hate. And we can all hang our heads in shame when Postal takes fourth place on opening weekend and disappears into the duldromesque miasma that is straight-to-DVD hell where it belongs (as DVDs are easier to burn than conventional film). And we can watch in abject horror as Boll continues to make money by producing nothing of value, nothing of interest, and nothing that any living person can possibly enjoy. At least this time he’s butchering a relatively unknown gaming franchise, so fewer of our fond memories will be sullied by his hamfuck application of trite cliche and paper doll plot. It’s not like he makes such terrible movies that the only way he gets funding is by using his own production company as a tax shelter for people who want to purposefully invest in a movie that doesn’t turn a profit. . . oh, wait a minute.

Mel Brooks should sue.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 11th, 2007 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Games, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.