Babylon A.D. with Vin Diesel

dragon · Post by **dragon** » 2008-08-25 12:46pm

Well Vin Diesel has a new movie coming out this Sept 11 call Babylon A.D. which is based off a book called Babylon Babies which was translated from a French book from 1999. Well hopefully the movie is much better than the book as it sucked, didn't even made it passed the first three chapters before I put it down in disgust.

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2008-08-25 01:29pm

The trailer looked very generic. Lots of things exploded, and there was some mucking about with vehicles, but nothing that grabbed me as a "must see" in any way.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2008-08-25 01:38pm

A man has to escort a woman to safety through a near-future world that's tearing itself apart? Sounds familiar.

This movie seems to have come out of nowhere. The trailer looked like it may have one or two nice ideas in it, but I don't think too many people are itching to see this film.

Joviwan · Post by **Joviwan** » 2008-08-25 02:30pm

Instant fail points for the trailer having Requiem of the Rings.

I'll hit it up on DVD rentals, maybe. I like Vin Diesal's action work, so it's at least worth vieiwng once, if not ever again. Good explosions, though I can already tell the improbable snow-mobile chase is going to really stretch my SOD.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-08-25 03:21pm

The film's timing of release shows that the studio doesn't have much hope for it.

It looked at least somewhat interesting to me until they had the "backflip on a snowmobile over a missile" sequence. It looks like they might just be making an action flick by the numbers if they have to shoe-horn in a snow scene for that stuff.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-08-25 03:58pm

Decidedly "meh", and initial previews I've heard about say it is so. To expect it to even lick the boots of Children of Men is to be quite deluded.

darthbob88 · Post by **darthbob88** » 2008-08-28 02:12am

I have a hard time seeing how this can really suck. Either a) it will rock my socks by sheer force of awesome, which I think will be more likely, or b) as you lot have noted, it will be a mediocre attempt to rip off Children of Men. Depending on who pays for me to see it, I might not regret watching it.

Old Plympto · Post by **Old Plympto** » 2008-08-28 02:28am

Uh oh!

Sci-Fi Scanner excerpt wrote:Masters of Scifi - Babylon A.D. Director Mathieu Kassovitz Describes a Disastrous Production

Mathieu Kassovitz is pissed off. The French auteur, who first made waves in 1995 with La Haine, is supposed to be celebrating the passion project he's been nursing for the past five years. Instead -- the week before Babylon A.D. hits theaters -- he is nursing a grudge. "I'm very unhappy with the film," he says. "I never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be. The script wasn't respected. Bad producers, bad partners, it was a terrible experience."

The film, starring Vin Diesel, is an adaptation of the French novel Babylon Babies by Maurice Georges Dantec. It tells the story of a mercenary (Diesel) in the year 2019 who is hired to transport a woman and her guardian from Eastern Europe to New York. "The scope of the original book was quite amazing," says Kassovitz. "The author was very much into geopolitics and how the world is going to evolve. He saw that as wars evolve, it won't be just about territories any more, but money-driven politics. As a director it's something that's very attractive to do."

Diesel emphasizes the movie's theme of smuggling people across national borders. "This whole thing that's happening in Georgia right now is so fresh that no one has even asked about it yet," he says. "We're coming into an age where borders are closing, and I think that our society will be numb to it because of our freedom in the virtual world, our freedom in the Internet."

But according to Kassovitz, Babylon A.D. fails to deliver any of these messages. "It's pure violence and stupidity," he admits. "The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters... instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24."

The director is slagging the movie?

The article continues at the above link.

Block · Post by **Block** » 2008-08-28 03:00am

Well if he's the director and he didn't get the shots he wanted, it's sorta his fault isn't it?

Battlehymn Republic · Post by **Battlehymn Republic** » 2008-08-28 03:35am

So it isn't Children of Men. Just turn it into Doomsday.

Thanatos · Post by **Thanatos** » 2008-08-28 03:37am

Bounty wrote:A man has to escort a woman to safety through a near-future world that's tearing itself apart? Sounds familiar.

The plot line of "Man has to protect a woman during a journey because she's carrying\is x" is extremely common. Off the top of my head: Cyborg, Terminator, The Gauntlet, Dogma, etc.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-08-28 12:51pm

How many of those are a) near-future, b) world gone to shit, c) actually good when factoring in a) and b)?

Thanatos · Post by **Thanatos** » 2008-08-28 03:43pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:How many of those are a) near-future, b) world gone to shit, c) actually good when factoring in a) and b)?

Terminator is halfway A&B (hero comes from a near future world turned to shit) and Cyborg is A&B. Gauntlet has "Broken hero restored by journey" though, which is definately a frequent part of the setup.

Not sure why I selected Dogma since its more of an ensemble quest, probably just tired. Replace it with Fifth Element (broken hero again), End of Days (Broken hero again and looks like it shares plot elements), and half of Minority Report (A definately, B depending on your opinion of how things are at the beginning of the movie). There's probably way more, I'm just turning my chair around and looking at the DVDs I have on that bookcase.

As for C, its all a matter of opinion really. I obvious like all the above to a varying degree since I still own them all. Like I was saying though, the plot setup is a very common one. Children of Men was just the latest movie to use it and the director apparently spent five years working on it. Had he been faster at getting it out there (as its apparently an adaptation), the result probably would have been "Man, Children of Men is way better than Babylon A.D" rather than "Man this looks like a crappy Children of Men".

Looking at reviews though, it seems as if its basically ripped off stuff from everywhere. Not just minor stuff either, they ripped off another movies ending completely.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2008-08-28 04:01pm

Guess I'll read the book and ignore the movie until it's on TV for free.

Gerald Tarrant · Post by **Gerald Tarrant** » 2008-09-03 05:51pm

On a whim I caught a matinée of it. It was terrible. Diesel's character is supposed to be the cynical hard bitten ex-military conscienceless bad-ass whose job conflicts with the safety of his young "package"; who is then redeemed by the faith of a young girl (Spoilerized just in case you can't see where that's going). Sly Stalone; in all his rubber faced mumbling, (from the 4th Rambo version) does a better job of a cynical military guy than Diesel does, and for the record I think Rambo 4 sucks too. His character has many brooding silences where I imagine we're supposed to reflect on how stoic he is, instead he just looks constipated. Diesel has the job of protecting this young girl, instead he manages to get her into several dangerous scrapes from which he needs to rescue her. It's like there were several script writers.

On to the setting; I think 202x would be about right. And the props or SF people managed to do a decent job on some of the stuff they showed. They had computers embedded in everything, from paper (maps that zoom in and scroll), to ski goggles (had a HUD I thought I saw). That's about the only part of the movie that I liked.

There's this scene where our intrepid heroes are being chased by "fighter drones", which are teh Über flying border guards of death. Except their marksmanship makes redshirts look good. Vin Diesel manages to kill one by shooting it with his pistol while jumping off a 20ft berm on a snowmobile. It gets worse, he kills the last one by ramming it with his snowmobile. Which is the where our heroes sustain there first injury, Diesel suffers near fatal shrapnel injuries from destroying the drone. The movie gets worse from here, and I have no more interest in categorizing its stupidity.

I think Bab. AD rivals Wing Commander and Battlefield Earth for stupidest movie I've ever seen.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2008-09-03 06:11pm

Block wrote:Well if he's the director and he didn't get the shots he wanted, it's sorta his fault isn't it?

Not if he wants to shoot something but the studio won't let him.

CDiehl · Post by **CDiehl** » 2008-09-03 08:51pm

Since we're on the subject of movies this movie suspiciously resembles, I'll add that when i saw theads for this movie, I thought it resembled a sci-fi'd up version of The Transporter.

Also, I almost admire Vin Diesel's balls for mentioning Georgia while pimping this dumb-looking movie.

TK-984 · Post by **TK-984** » 2008-09-07 02:40am

Guys - Vin Diesel does a fucking back flip on a snowmobile over a missile. In that moment of the trailer, you know whether or not you're going to like that movie.