Fulltime Casual - An Australian Film and TV Podcast

Listen up, New Line execubots.

I know it was almost like you could feel again when you re-enacted scenes from Indecent Exposure with the cash that Peter Jackson made for you, and I wish you well in your perverse hobby, but there’s something you don’t know: the human film-going population you hold in tenuous thrall thought the Lord of the Rings films themselves were actually pretty cool.

You didn’t know Peter Jackson was a good director. You didn’t even know who he was, did you? It was pure blind luck that you were too coked up to realise you’d stumbled into a Video Ezy instead of a 7-Eleven when you went for ciggies at the Mortal Kombat II wrap party.

Rayden is still waiting for his hot chicken roll, by the way.

See, we little people, we like films. And we’re happy for you to rub Benjamins all over yourselves provided it comes from good films. We don’t like people who make money by selling us shit and telling us its chocolate. We really start to hate them, actually. But we like it when people who do good work succeed. When Clooney makes twenty mil on a picture, we say “Good for him!”, and “What a great guy”, and “Even though he’s rich, I’d buy him a beer. Go date a supermodel, you big lug! I’d turn for you, George!”

But I digress. Let’s talk Gears of War.

Don’t mistake me, Empty Suits – I’m all for putting a squad of Colonial Marine wannabes in hulking power-armour and having them battle a hideous alien menace. I haven’t seen the game, so I’m only guessing that’s what it’s about, because they’re all about that. Probably there’s something called a “Gear”, which is either a giant fighting-suit or mecha-type arrangement. But I’m pushing my luck now.

Postapocalyptic dystopia optional.

These are all great elements for a film. I desperately want to see power-armoured dudes shooting aliens. But please, Soulless Corporate Cash-Vampires, please just make it a genuinely good film? One that we’ll buy on DVD even though we don’t have to, and that we’ll make our friends watch and annoy our girlfriends by quoting all the great lines?

A film, for example, totally unlike Underworld?

Oh. I can see you’ve hired Len Wiseman.

You’re nothing like Clooney.