Here's the trailer for the hugely entertaining 1975 movie Death Race 2000.
The trailer doesn't quite give you the feel of the movie, but one thing it has in common with the film it's promoting is efficiency--the premise is explained briefly, and we go on from there.
As a movie, Death Race 2000 was made following the formula Roger Corman used in all of his seventies drive-in epics. As long as the director delivered the requisite number of car crashes, included some gratuitous tits and ass and kept the running time below ninety minutes, anything else was okay. In this case, screenwriter Charles Griffith and director Paul Bartel tossed in tons of over-the-top characterizations (characters have names like Matilda The Hun and Machine Gun Joe Viterbo) and hilarious black humor--drivers can score extra points by running down children and the elderly.
The best thing about the movie is that it's fun. The bright, cartoonish colors are a giveaway; Bartel clearly knew how ridiculous the premise was, and didn't expect you to take it any more seriously than he did.
Now here, regrettably, is the trailer for the upcoming remake, simply titled Death Race.
Sigh. Where to begin?
First of all, it's obvious the efficient storytelling of the first movie has been replaced by endless exposition. The hero has a Tragic Backstory, which must be related in flashback and...WHO CARES? This is a movie about a ruthless, coast-to-coast car race. Make with the driving and the crashing and explosions, already.
Second of all, instead of the wonderful collection of B-movie favorites (David Carradine, Roberta Collins) and up-and-comers (Sylvester Stallone) of the original, we're stuck with Jason Statham, a guy studios are determined to keep casting in lead roles despite such recent non-starters as War, The Bank Job and (shudder) In The Name Of The King. We also get Ian McShane and Joan Allen, slumming outrageously, and Tyrese Gibson as what can only be described as The Black Guy. Seriously, do you think his character has been given any other function?
Third, just when you think this trailer can't get any more hackneyed, they trot out...Guns N Roses? The hell? The use of Welcome To The Jungle seemed a little trite as far back as Clint Eastwood's The Dead Pool, but at least at that point, the song was new. Now, it carries all the menace of...well, of a lame, best-forgotten relic of the eighties. Still, at least they didn't use Fall-Out Boy or some such.
Worst of all, this movie features the same dreary, color-desaturated look we've come to expect from contemporary action movies. Is this supposed to make it look grittier, more realistic? Because, you know, this is a remake of Death Race 2000--maybe the crazier the visuals, the better?
Ah, but that would go against the aesthetic of the film's writer-director, Paul W.S. Anderson, the auteur of the Resident Evil pictures and a proponent of the movies-as-video games school. Even at the low level at which he functions, Anderson isn't very good at what he does; expectations for a movie called Alien Vs. Predator couldn't be very high, and yet he still managed to disappoint.
But again, he keeps getting work. And again, it seems Hollywood really is trying to make bad movies for their own sake. Unless, of course, some exec somewhere really thought it was a good idea to team up the star of Crank with the director of Event Horizon, in which case, that person should be shot.
