Arcaneya

Tag: 2012

  • The Watch (2012): Failed Because It Was Not Absurd Enough. Let’s Fix That

    Some movies start with a premise so sharp you can’t help but think, this is going to be good. The Watch (2012), starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade, is one of those. A bunch of suburban men form a neighborhood watch, only to discover that their sleepy town is infested with aliens. It’s the kind of setup that should write itself into a cult comedy classic. Yet the execution was anything but. The movie barrels ahead with scattershot gags, tonal shifts, and chaotic alien action that never quite gels with the humor. What could have been a satire of suburbia meeting the absurd ended up with a truly horrific Rotten Tomatoes score and a reputation as one of those comedies that just couldn’t deliver.

    The core problem? The Watch wasn’t absurd enough. It wanted to play with outlandish ideas but never fully committed, trying to be a half-comedy, half-action film, and landing awkwardly in between. The absurdity was always waiting in the wings, but the movie chose explosions over escalation.

    The Missed Opportunity for Absurdity

    Imagine instead that the inciting incident didn’t involve aliens at all. The Costco security guard at the beginning doesn’t die in some shocking extraterrestrial attack — he just gets wasted at a late-night party in the store and has a horrific accident. Ben Stiller’s character, desperate to impose order on his otherwise mundane life, convinces himself that no human accident could look that bizarre. He concludes it must have been aliens.

    From there, paranoia takes over. A neighborhood watch is formed. The men start seeing patterns where there are none — blinking lights, strange noises, people acting suspiciously. Their imagination fuels their conviction, and the comedy comes not from alien gore but from how far suburban dads will take their fantasies when unchallenged. The brilliance here would be the slow burn escalation: the audience isn’t sure if this is all in their heads or if something real is lurking.

    And then — against all odds — the aliens actually show up.

    The Confrontation and the Cosmic Prank

    When the Watch finally faces aliens, the absurdity peaks. They’re laughably outmatched. Their paranoia-driven confidence shatters as the aliens wipe the floor with them. The men break down, humiliated, admitting they never really knew what they were doing. In the wreckage of their dignity, they’re ready for annihilation.

    But instead of finishing them off, the aliens reveal the truth: it was all a prank. They’d heard rumors across the galaxy about some suburban town in a backwater corner of Earth where guys had formed a “watch” for aliens. The sheer ridiculousness of it was too tempting. They had to see what would happen if they played along.

    The aliens didn’t come to invade; they came to troll. What the humans mistook for deadly serious was, for the aliens, cosmic hazing.

    Why This Would Work

    This alternative outline doesn’t just heighten the absurdity — it commits to it. By rooting the story first in accident-born paranoia, it grounds the comedy in something relatable: how humans can invent meaning (illusion) where there is none. The slow escalation gives the characters room to grow and play off one another instead of drowning in chaotic set pieces. The reckoning and willingness to admit their pitfalls and naivete at the end is the earned product of that internal growth. And the cherry on top? The very satisfaction that, in their own ridiculous way, they managed to manifest their thoughts into reality.

    After the ego is broken, new unassuming galactic friends emerge — pranksters who prove that sometimes the universe is in on the joke. That ending lands with a laugh and a point. Sometimes life’s big battles aren’t cosmic wars but our own tendency to take ourselves too seriously. In this version, The Watch could have been a suburban Galaxy Quest — self-aware, absurd, and much more fun to watch.

    Thank you,

    Ira

  • John Carter (2012): We Anticipated the Next Big Hero – We Got a Bouncing Flea Instead

    When John Carter hit theaters in 2012, it was supposed to be the rebirth of the grand space epic. Based on the century-old pulp novels that inspired Star Wars, Avatar, and Dune, the film had every ingredient to become the next major cinematic myth. A legendary hero transported to a dying planet, an alien civil war, forbidden technology, princesses, swordfights, and just enough cosmic mystery to stir a sense of wonder. And yet… what we got was a $250M Sunday cartoon about a half-shirtless man bouncing around like a Martian flea.

    It’s not just that the film underperformed — it’s that it was confused. Tonally, narratively, emotionally. In its rush to cram in lore and laser beams, John Carter forgot to build a bridge between its audience and its world. It gave us blue energy weapons without rules, villains with god powers from the first frame, and a lead character who seems just as lost as we are — wandering Barsoom without purpose, meaning, or reason to care. It’s as if the movie was made backwards: designing the action figures first and worrying about the soul later.

    And then there’s the jumping. Ah yes, the jumping.

    What should have been a symbol of otherworldly strength became a visual punchline. Carter’s low-gravity-enhanced bounding across Mars was so floaty, awkward, and cartoonish that he ceased to resemble a warrior and instead resembled, well, a flea. Not a majestic alien liberator, but a blur. A dot. A guy yeeting himself from the ground onto a spaceship like he’s in a physics-defying Looney Tunes short. It broke the illusion. The audience didn’t marvel — they giggled.

    It only gets weirder. At the story’s midpoint, Carter is thrown into a gladiatorial arena to battle two oversized white space gorillas. This sequence could have been brutal, meaningful, maybe even tragic. Instead, it feels like a level in a video game: senseless, loud, and emotionally hollow. The gorillas are not connected to the story’s themes or villains — they’re just obstacles, like someone added them because “the kids might like it.”

    The movie keeps doing this: replacing character work with spectacle, plot development with exposition, and relationships with quippy banter. Most glaringly, it fails to give John Carter a why. Why should he care about this planet? Why does he keep going? Why does he eventually lead armies and declare himself Warlord of Mars? The film gestures at a tragic backstory — his wife and child died — but this is dropped in halfway through and used more like emotional seasoning than actual motivation.

    This lack of purpose leaves Carter — and us — adrift. He becomes a passive observer of Martian politics, a reluctant tourist, a man who seems to be on the wrong planet in the wrong movie. The fish-out-of-water trope only works when the “fish” has a reason to swim.

    So let’s fix that.

    The Added Motivation

    Imagine instead that Carter’s brokenness stems not from war or loss, but from something more personal — and ironically, more Earthbound: heartbreak. A failed relationship back on Earth that left him jaded, bitter, quietly seething. Perhaps he loved a woman who betrayed him. Or manipulated him. Or sold him out for safety or power. Now he distrusts women. Not in a cartoonishly toxic way — but in a wounded, quietly resentful way. He doesn’t even realize how deeply it’s poisoned him. And so he drifts through life, murmuring things like, “I wish I could find someone who wasn’t part of this mess. Someone not of this world.”

    This becomes more than a line — it becomes the defining ache of his character. A wish he says with bitterness, but that lingers in the back of his mind like a dare to the universe.

    When he arrives on Mars, it’s not wonder he feels — it’s escape. Finally, a world where none of those memories apply. Until he meets Dejah Thoris. And immediately assumes she’s like the others: proud, political, manipulative, unreachable. He watches her the way someone watches a trap about to spring — with both fascination and deep suspicion.

    But she’s not what he expects. She’s not scheming or superficial — she’s intelligent, principled, brave, and surprisingly unsentimental. She doesn’t flirt. She challenges. And she doesn’t want saving.

    At first, Carter resents her, maybe even mocks her behind his eyes: “Another princess with a plan and a hidden knife.” But that old line — “I want a woman not of this world” — starts to resurface, echoing faintly. She is not of this world — literally. And emotionally, she doesn’t play by Earth’s rules either. He finds himself listening when he thought he’d tune her out. He begins to see someone worth trusting.

    Their relationship isn’t built on chemistry or quips. It’s friction. Conflict. Recognition. She stands up to him, and he hates how much he respects that. Somewhere along the way, without realizing it, she becomes the embodiment of the thing he swore didn’t exist.

    She becomes the answer to a bitter, private wish — one he never expected the universe to hear.

    So when the Therns trick him and send him back to Earth, it’s not just a plot twist — it’s a heartbreak. He doesn’t mourn a lost battle. He mourns the one person who made him feel seen again. His return to Barsoom isn’t about conquering. It’s about repairing. Himself. His trust. His belief that something real, honest, and beautiful could still exist — somewhere in the stars.

    Now the arc has meaning. Now the relationship isn’t a convenient pairing for a sci-fi prince and princess — it’s the catharsis of a man who thought he was done with love, rediscovering it in the last place he thought to look.

    This one change — a personal, romantic ache carried from Earth to Mars — would rewire the entire movie. Suddenly Carter isn’t wandering Barsoom like a dazed cowboy looking for his pants. He’s chasing something — something he didn’t even know he was chasing. The story stops being about alien tech and warring factions and starts being about a man trying to believe again.

    Sometimes, we have to see a story on screen to realize what’s missing. And John Carter, for all its potential, showed us just how hollow spectacle becomes without emotional architecture underneath it. The hero’s journey can’t be powered by blue lasers and bouncing physics. It needs something messier. Something more human.

    Even on Mars.

    Thanks,

    Ira

  • Prometheus (2012) – The alternative plot outline

    Why not take a chance and build the story around the least experienced crew member—the trainee biologist? Imagine a version of Prometheus where the heart of the story isn’t buried under philosophical ambiguity and half-baked mythology, but centered on a single, flawed human trying to prove himself.

    This young biologist would start out as a complete greenhorn—nervous, unsure, and unqualified. He signed up for all the wrong reasons: not out of scientific passion or existential curiosity, but because he had a crush on another crew member. Maybe he even lied on his application just to get on the mission. From the moment we meet him—washing his face in the mirror, trying to calm his nerves like Eminem in 8 Mile—we know he’s in over his head. Yet we’d see his vulnerability, and would connect with him emotionally. He’s not a hero—he’s us, dropped into something far bigger than we’re ready for.

    As the expedition begins, he lags behind while the others move with confidence and precision. He slows the team down, makes clumsy mistakes, and clearly doesn’t belong. His fear isn’t just for himself, but for the safety of the entire crew. And eventually, he does mess up—badly. He’s the one who touches the alien snake. Not out of idiocy, but out of desperation to prove he’s capable. The result? Others die, trying to help him, and he’s suspended, blamed, and rightfully chewed out.

    But as the mission spirals into chaos and even the experienced team members start dropping one by one, he’s somewhat exonerated. The crew is shrinking fast, and they need all hands on deck—even him. He gets another chance. This time, he’s determined. He begins to learn from his mistakes. He takes responsibility. Sooner or later, he’s forced to come clean—why he’s really here, what he lied about, and who he let down. He owns up to it all. He apologizes. And in the end, he redeems himself—not by surviving, but by saving at least one other crew member. Maybe even the last one standing—or the very person who doubted him most.

    This version of the story wouldn’t just be tighter—it would be earned. It would give us a meaningful arc, grounded decisions, and a protagonist whose journey we actually care about. And that, more than goo, Engineers, or mythology, is what Prometheus needed most.

    Ira

  • Prometheus (2012) – How To Lose An Audience in 5 seconds

    But don’t get me wrong—Prometheus starts strong. It does everything right to capture the audience’s attention: stunning visuals, a mysterious setup, grand philosophical questions about humanity’s origins. That’s no small feat, especially when your story hinges on the search for what’s essentially a cosmic MacGuffin. But then, in the space of five baffling seconds, it all unravels. A trained biologist, on a dangerous alien world, takes one look at a clearly hostile, hissing space cobra and decides it’s a good idea to pet it. Just like that, the spell is broken. Logic is gone, tension is gone, and all that’s left is the sad realization that the script was rushed or the writers weren’t fully in it.

    So let’s take a closer look at this biologist’s so-called character arc and break down how those events should have unfolded—if the writers had been more careful about preserving logic and scientific credibility.

    Trained biologist – An already complete character arc

    When we’re introduced to a trained biologist—or any trained professional, really—in a story like this, we expect that their character is already formed. They’ve gone through the grind, completed their education, faced challenges, and emerged on the other side with a level of mastery. That kind of background implies not just skill and confidence, but something even more important in a high-stakes, unfamiliar environment: intuition. They should recognize danger, assess unknown variables, and respond like someone who’s been in the field before—and it shouldn’t matter that they’re in a new environment.

    Fix #1 – The trainee

    So for this story to work, it should have been made explicitly clear—more than once—that this guy isn’t a seasoned expert, but rather a trainee, maybe even the junior member of a larger biology team. Someone who’s smart, yes, but still green. Someone who’s here to learn, not lead. That would at least justify some hesitation, some curiosity overpowering caution. Without that context, his actions come off not as human error, but as a complete failure of storytelling.

    Fix #2 – The Motivation to Risk

    Alternatively, we could just give him a clear, believable motivation for sticking his hand out in the first place. Earlier in the film, the team is shown collecting DNA samples from the environment—rocks, air, remnants of alien organisms. So why not establish that the biologist, of all people, is especially eager to collect data from a live specimen? If the creature appears passive or non-aggressive at first, his curiosity could override his caution—not because he’s stupid, but because he’s driven by scientific ambition. It’s still a risky move, but now it’s in character, and it adds tension instead of killing it.

    “It’s a scientific expedition — No weapons.”

    Even before the team sets foot on that alien world, the film drops a glaring red flag: somehow, a trillion-dollar spaceship is staffed by a ragtag group of naive, disorganized rookies who seem to have no clear protocols to follow. Case in point: Elizabeth Shaw, a medical doctor, somehow manages to overpower a trained soldier and orders him to lose the weapons.

    Now, I have to admit, part of me wanted to cheer. After all, I didn’t want another “shoot first, ask questions later, when it’s dead” sci-fi action flick full of needless firefights. So, for a moment, I gave the film a pass on this rather unorthodox command. But looking back, it only highlights how inconsistent the writing is: how does a doctor have the authority—and the muscle—to disarm a soldier on a potentially hostile alien planet? And what kind of “scientific expedition” sends people into the unknown without backup firepower or clear contingency plans?

    But beyond inconsistent writing, there was one specific story element I really want to highlight:

    The Search for Our Creator trope

    How believable is it that anyone on this crew would be willing to risk everything to search for our creators on a distant, alien planet—yet none of them show even a hint of spiritual belief or reverence? It’s as if not a single person on board is a churchgoer or someone who embraces the idea that humanity was created by a higher intelligence—what many would call God, often associated with creative power of love. Sure, a few characters casually mention Darwinian evolution, but where’s the religious perspective? Where’s the crew member who wrestles with faith, or represents the hope and fear that come with confronting the divine?

    Honestly, this felt like a huge missed opportunity. Splitting the crew into ideological camps—believers versus skeptics—could have added real tension and depth, turning the mission into a profound clash of worldviews, rather than just a sci-fi treasure hunt. Instead, the story skims over this rich thematic soil, leaving it oddly flat.

    But despite all its shortcomings—the baffling decisions, the missed thematic opportunities, and the uneven writing—Prometheus is still a fun movie to watch. But storywise, I just can’t rate it very high. For me, it lands at a 3 out of 10.

    Thank you for reading.

    Ira