Where Michael Bay learned to make Movies

Old Movies that where shot on location can become a great way to see how a place looked at a certain point in time. Just take the 1996 German Made for TV Action Flick Adrenalin as an example. About half of the Movie is filmed inside the Phantasialand Theme Park. This Park changed drasticly since the Movie was made and barely anything that is shown still exists. Or the 1977 Desaster-Suspense Rollercoaster as an example. A large portion of this movie was filmed in the Kings Dominion Theme Park wich opened just 2 year prior to the movies release and therefore some rides now considered classics, like the Racing-Coaster Rebell Yell, are shown in brand new condition. The opening scenes of Rollercoaster where shot at Norfolk´s Ocean View Amusement Park wich was demolished in 1979. And that demolition inspired the creation of The Death of Ocean View Park, a Made for TV that gained a cult status in the Theme Park enthusiast community for it´s footage of the still operating park and a finale that mixes footage of the real demolition with special effects. The Rocket, Ocean View´s Wooden Roller Coaster, is the main star in the explosion filled climax put up a real fight though. Much to the enjoyment of bystanders and fans of the park the ride survived 2 sets of explosive charges and had to be pulled down by a Bulldozer in order to have the ride finally collapse.

Sadly the Movie itself isn´t as good as it´s spectacular end. The main issue seems to be that they had to come up with a plot that ends with the destruction of Ocean View Park. The Setup is rather simple: Norfolk get´s hit by a Hurricane, that surprisingly enough doesn´t seem to have destroyed anything, afterwards some strange things start to happen. Bumper Cars Move on their own during the night, the entire Park looses Power and sandcastles disappear (I´m serious, that really is a plotpoint in the movie). Meanwhile the wife of a teacher that also happens to work at the park has visions of a terrible desaster happening on July 4th during an big event. During all this a socialy awkward boy tries to find a girlfriend. Succesfully. The Film is full of cringe worthy acting, badly written dialouge and luckily decent shots of Ocean View Park. To me The Death of Ocean View Park realy has only 2 redeeming qualities: It shows the Park before it´s final destruction and that ending is some Michael Bay worthy shit. Huge explosions everywhere, no matter if they make a whole lot of sense or not, they just look good. You can find the entire thing easily on YouTube and a few places even sell Bootleg DVD´s of it, just don´t expect a good movie. Or great acting. If you watch this you come for the Park and stay for the explosions.

The Prequel you always wanted

Contains stuff that may be considered Spoiler. I don´t care if you read any further. After watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story today two things became very clear: The first one is that Star Wars as a Franchise is much better off without George Lucas. Yes, he created the Franchise in the first place and the original trilogy is incredible, however with the Special Editions and his obsession with changing movies years later and the mess that is the Prequel Trilogy it became obvious that someone else with fresh ideas would be needed to keep the franchise a succes. Don´t get me wrong here, I don´t hate everything about the Prequels, at least half of Episode II is good and Episode III is a very enjoyable movie all around, but I consider Episode I to be one of he worst movies I have ever seen and I still think that everything that was important about that trilogy could have been told in a single movie. The second thing I realised while watching Rogue One was that this movie is what the Prequels should have been. At least I never needed such an detailed background story for he the main villain of the original movies, like I said that should have been one movie, and then the rest of the prequels should have been about other events that lead to Episode IV. And Rogue One really isn´t about the background of any character we already know, heck, all charachter that already where established in the other movies don´t have much screen time anyway, it is about the series of events that ended with the Rebels getting their hands on the plans for the Death Star and it explains why it had that design flaw that allowed them to destroy the station later on, and that explanation doesn´t even feel stupid. We even get a first impression of the Death Star´s capabilities without the movie ever spoiling if it realy is capable of destroying entire planets. In fact Rogue One doesn´t spoil anything about any of the other movies. At times the movie feels more like a Sci-Fi war movie than Star Wars, but that isn´t really a bad thing because all of the action is done very well and it never feels out of place. You don´t have any Jedi battling it out, these are the rebels we are talking about, they are normal people that can´t use the Force. Yeah, sure, you have that blind guy that seems to be able to use a bit of the Force and you see Darth Vader uses a simple Force tricks, but all of that isn´t anything too fancy. Both myself and all of my Star Wars loving friends really enjoyed this one.

So, what is this all about?

Hi, I´m Drunkasaurus Rex, otherwise known as Soonjai, I´m from germany and I do stuff for a living. I started this Blog many moons ago in my native tongue and just recently decided to change the language because reasons. What the Blog is about? Movies and Video Games. Content may be postet irregular and there is a chance of grammatical and spelling mistakes. I don´t care much about them, so I will leave them mostly where they are, heck, I always had more spelling mistakes than Blog entries here. Why is my english so good if it isn´t my native language? Because Movies and Video Games! You see, ever since I knew enough english from school to understand it enough I started to watch movies that where produced in english in that language, at first with subtitles, later without them. The first time I played Morrowind I kept a dictionary at hand to be able to understand it. It was quite the journey, but well worth it.

I started playing video games in general way back on the Commodore C64 and for a good while I thought that Super Mario Bros. was a rip-off of the Great Giana Sisters. I didn´t knew better back then because we never had an NES and I played Giana Sisters a few years before I played the first Super Mario Bros. game. I´m not a fanboy of anything, I just like video games as a whole, but I have to admit that I tend to prefer the PC and Sony Systems as my platforms of choice. I grew up on Nintendo consoles and the PC at home and Sega systems at my grandparents place. I got my first Playstation 1 system at a time when the PS3 was avaiable, so it became a fairly late love for me. For both games and movies I like stuff from most genres avaiable, but for both medias I tend to like stuff that isn´t the flashy AAA content everyone if blabbering about. I also consider myself as a fan of Uwe Boll, I can´t help myself here, but most of his movies have a certain appeal and charme that I really enjoy. Except for Alone in the Dark. That one is crap.

Since I hate rating systems for media content (i.e. X/Y) I won´t use any of that nonesense here. In my Opinion these rating systems are utter nonesense and worthless when it comes to decide if you, the reader, would or wouldn´t like whatever it is I´m writing about. For the same reason I don´t care about any Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoe or IMDB ratings, neither from "Professional" Reviewers nor from the general public. Or can you explain to me what the real difference between a game with a 79/100 and one with a 81/100 is? That all being said: If you have any questions, just ask, I try not to bite your head off. Comments about grammar and / or spelling mistakes will be deleted no further questions asked. And now, let´s get this show rolling!