It’s often regarded as a sin to judge things before we know all knowable facts about it.  I have a problem with this.  For one, how do you ever know when you have enough informatin with which to grant proper judgment?  Yes, I know, we are not suppose to judge.  Right, got it.  But this brings me to the second problem here: every single one of us judges.  Everything.  All the time.

Image Credit: Manu M

What exactly does it mean to judge anyway?  Merriam-Webster Online defines a judgment as “a formal utterance of an authoritative opinion.”  The key here to a judgment is the authority part.  As in, what makes you an authority on…(insert field here)?  And the formality portion makes a judgment seem so final.  So there are many different types of judgments here to be had.

Biblically, judgment is reserved for God alone.  What we’re talking about here is moral judgment and not really any other kind.  What is moral?  Simple, is one good or bad?  There is much criteria here to weigh.  Is that person penitent?  This is an important consideration.  Another is a person’s acceptance of God and his plan.  Only God can judge these things.  We, being falliable, do not have the ability to make moral judgments.  God’s judgment requires both perfect compassion and perfect justice.  In addition, it requires perfect knowledge.  We are capable of none of these things.  So we are commanded not to make judgments.  Fine.

But the judgments I speak of are not moral judgments.  What I’m talking about are the tiny little judgments we make all the time.  We do.  And most importantly, the judgments that we make everyday are crucial for our success and survival as contented if not happy and healthy people.  This is in direct contradiction to the old adage: “Never judge a book by its cover.”

Let me give you some examples.  We glance at combinations of clothes in our closets while they remain on the hangers.  Eventually, we choose sets of clothes that will be most appropriate.  Why don’t we try on every single combination that exists in our closets?  For one, we don’t have the time.  It’s not feasible.  Instead, we glance quickly at all of the color combinations, refine our search from there with weather-appropriate clothes, narrow it down further to office-appropriate clothes.  Then, we see which are clean, which are pressed, and those that still fit.  Finally, we arrive at only two or three possible choices to have to make.  We don’t try on every combination of clothes because we don’t have the time, but we also don’t do it because we don’t need to.  What seemed like a quick, rash act of choosing was really a much more involved and intricate selection process.  The thing is, as average humans go, we’re damn good at this type of activity.

Another good example is driving.  Now, this may not seem like a very good example.  It seems like there is no end to the really poor decision-making of all the bozos on the highways across the world.  Bear with me though.  You need to keep in mind that the task of driving is remarkably complicated.  That we can make sense of it with high levels of success is nothing short of a miracle.  Every trip is riddled with the need for quick judgments and rapid decisions.

For the last several decades, car-manufacturers and whiz kids from the most prestigious institutes all over the world have been trying to get cars to drive by themselves.  They use sensors that can perceive things humans can’t.  They use processors that can perform millions of tasks a second and memory and recall that we could only dream of.  Yet, not one model has half of the ability of a 100 year old lady driving her pink town car to the horror of the fleeing masses.

The point is, it is not only acceptable to make judgments, but perhaps necessary.  There is a preponderance of evidence available to us that allows us to judge well.  We often just suck at articulating that evidence which drives our decisions and following actions.  This evidence, either immediately available or gathered through experience, can make us an acceptable authority in the field of our requirements.

Where is this all going?  The point of this diatribe is to prove that it is okay for me, in principle, to judge the following movies without actually having seen them yet.  Okay, maybe I went a little overboard with the lead-in to this piece, but now you believe that it is not unreasonable to sway you one way or the other from seeing or not seeing these movies.

That’s right folks, I’m not going to review these movies, I’m going to preview these movies.  Studios and production companies and distributors team up to sell these movies to us all.  They use the trailers to hook us.  They get to pick out all the right pieces of evidence from their film to convince you to pay your ten bucks to buy a ticket.  All I’m going to do is keep them honest.  They are the defense, setting up their case for the trial to come, and I am the prosecutor for the people, ready to rip it apart if need be.  We’ll begin with their opening statements.

Twilight

Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke

Release Date: 11/21/08

You already know what we think of the book.  But movies are not the books and vice versa.  I give this one a clean slate, and then watch the trailer.  After watching the trailer, I realize that I am not the target demographic.  Titanic is closer to my advertising group than this movie.  That being said, it looks awful.  Sure, 12-15 year old girls, as well as a spattering of females of all age groups, will see this in droves.  It will be the number one movie at the box office this weekend.  There’s no mistaking that.  But the direction looks amateurish.  The picture has the quality and likeness of a Lifetime event.  And the material looks quite weak and unbearably generic.  You’ll see this as a lasting theme through, well, all of my reviews and previews, but, why did this movie need to be made?  What’s the point?  What does it teach us?  A story really ought to say something.  This one does not appear it to do so.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Directed by: Scott Derrickson

Release Date: 12/12/08

What quickly comes to mind from the trailer is that the production quality and the effects are off the charts.  Unlike Twilight, at least this movie looks like it was done by professionals.  I am rather pleased with that.  However, whenever a movie is remade, the question I always ask myself is: why?  Don’t get me wrong, it is perfectly legit to remake a film if good material was done poorly.  It has happened before.  Or, good material can suddenly become relevant again which would make appropriate to spotlight it.  But with a movie as iconic as The Day the Earth Stood Still, there had better be a damn good reason for bringing it through again.  One of the problems with classics is that they are done right the first time.  And when good material meets good production, you get the kind of quality that doesn’t happen very often.  It is what makes them, um, classic.  They are both timely and timeless.  They were innovative and provacative when they came out, and they remain so through time.  Casablanca should not, and absolutely could not be re-done.  Neither should this one.  I predict another War of the Worlds.  Lots of money and suspense, but lacking any lasting significance that its predecessor has.

Gran Torino

Directed By: Clint Eastwood

Release Date: December 2008

Clint Eastwood gave me a gift.  He made a movie just for me.  It’s called Gran Torino.  It seems to be about a bitter and haggard old veteran who’s not real happy with what old age has to offer.  More than that, he’s not happy with what the world or it’s supposed after-life equivalent has to offer either.  And he’s pissed off about it all.  When things start to boil over for him, he has the opportunity to take it out on someone who deserves while at the same time, awarding someone else a little peace and justice.  Yeah, Eastwood’s going vigilante, and it looks like he’s doing it right.  He may be pushing 80 years old, but he’s showing us that he’s got something to say about it.  Hell yeah!

Watchmen

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Release Date: 03/06/09

I’m really torn about this.  We all know that Watchmen is probably the quintessential work in the history of graphic novels.  Its author, Alan Moore, is one of the mediums most legendary characters.  Knowing this, I’m quite excited to see it realized on film.  At the same time, I understand, that of all of the graphic novels or comic books in existence, that this is the one that is probably the least filmable.  Zack Snyder did great with Frank Miller’s 300.  Although that one was well suited for cinema.  Watchmen…not so much.  The trailer has some really good footage in it and it appears that Snyder stayed pretty close to the source on this, but it just doesn’t seem to go together like it should.  Somewhere in all of the pictures and perhaps even the exactness and accuracy of the film to the source the intent and story that Moore penned is lost.  I’ll see it, but my expectations are quite low.  See Cringe Factor of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen if you need more information on why my expectations are so low.

Star Trek

Directed By: J.J. Abrams

Release Date: 05/08/09

There are two kinds of people who like Star Trek: fanatics and those who appreciate good story-telling.  In the mind of the fanatic, Star Trek can do no wrong.  For those of us in the other category, we are more discrimating.  For instance, we like Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation more than the original.  We like only even-numbered Star Trek films.  Yes, even The Voyage Home.  Although we’ll only watch it by ourselves, at midnight, on USA, after we’ve secretly watched Roadhouse.  The point is, we like story.  We love the inherent grounding of good sci-fi coupled with the wonder that only the same can give us.  What J.J. Abrams does, though, is take us back to learn, through lots of exposition, who the main characters of the original are.  This is a prolonged origin story for space heroes.  As a rule, origins suck.  Why?  We already love these characters because of their actions and because of their relationships.  So, what’s the point of this?  To make money.  It’s for the fanatics and they’ll enjoy it.  But I warn you, Twilight is for the fanatics too.  I will see this movie, and I will keep my expectations low.