Babylon A.D. and Vin Diesel, revisited

Last fall I wrote this was the movie in which Vin Diesel approached the Rutger Hauer Event Horizon: that point beyond which a star makes only straight-to-DVD crud. It’s just as well for Vin that he was able to get back in on the Fast and the Furious franchise, and there’s been more recent talk about more Riddick movies, but I remain skeptical, especially after the underwhelming performance of Riddick director Twohy’s latest flick. Then again, if the Riddick franchise goes in the space-noir rather than space-opera direction, they might be able to recapture Pitch Black’s edge with Pitch Black-level budgets.  Stranger things have happened. .  .

But I’m here to talk about Babylon A.D.  Which, yes, I bought when I was in Montreal two weeks back for WorldCon.  But as the string physicists say, I can explain everything. . . so. .  .  I was looking for a copy of Sunshine, but that was 23 bucks, and I found Babylon A.D. for $8!  And, to be honest, I . .  .(deep breath) LIKE Babylon A.D.  The plot is incoherent, but I’ve got (as you can tell) a soft spot for Vin Diesel, and enjoyed watching him thrash his way through two hours of terrible dialogue and pointless action scenes.  And it’s a real shame the movie’s so bad, because some of the sets are spectacular (like the one where the Russian train goes through radioactive wastelands). I’ll go out on a limb, in fact, and say that this was a cyberpunk classic waiting to happen, but something went terribly wrong on the way to the studio.

But at any rate, when I got back to D.C., I realized I’d left the damn thing on the plane.  This has not been a good summer for me on planes.   I left a BURNING SKIES poster on the flight back from ComicCon, and I left an ipod on a flight before that.  I blame all of this, of course, on Gerard Depardieu’s appearance in Babylon A.D.  I mean, what else could be responsbile?

11 Responses to “Babylon A.D. and Vin Diesel, revisited”

  1. Karen Wester Newton Says:

    I wish I had known you were at Worldcon! Don’t beat yourself up about the poster. Think of it as seeding BURNING SKIES advertising onto the winds of chance.

    The iPod is a different story. Ouch! I live in fear of leaving my Kindle somewhere.

    And BTW, I feel almost the same way about THE FIFTH ELEMENT. The plot is ludicrous, but it is a fun movie to watch.

  2. Kameron Hurley Says:

    Another beautiful, horrible movie I watched last night: The Mutant Chronicles. First 30 min is cinematically lovely, savage… and mostly incomprehensible. Then 45 minutes of WIN! And bad writing. And plot holes. But comparable WIN! Then last 30 minutes of incomprehensibility and letdown.

    So. Much. Potential.

    Awesome, beautiful, steampunk world and concept utterly ruined by poor execution and bad, bad, writing.

    It was about what I figured, tho: it was in and out of theaters REALLY fast.

  3. David Williams Says:

    haven’t seen Mutant Chronicles, but will add to list.

    Sunshine, btw, is amazing, but you probably knew that already.

  4. Mike Collins Says:

    HA!

    I call you brother Dave.

    I love Babylon AD. Any movie that wants you to take Vin Diesel flipping a snow mobile in a gunfight seriously.

    How do you go wrong with that?

  5. Mike Collins Says:

    See that? I was so excited by this conversation that I didn’t even finish my thought.

    Any movie that wants you to take the snow mobile flipping gunfight seriously is worth the price of admission.

  6. David Williams Says:

    And let’s not forget the epic fight in the old Soviet factory. You KNEW Diesel was going into that cage as soon as ya saw it. . . .

  7. Justin Kugler Says:

    So, I guess this means I finally need to watch that copy of Sunshine I bought and never opened (because my friends and I decided to watch The Fountain on our movie night, instead)?

  8. David J. Williams Says:

    I think SUNSHINE’s a brilliant movie. . open up that DVD! I’ll post on the movie next week at some point , as I’ve been mulling various aspects of it over.

  9. Erik Huntoon Says:

    I haven’t seen Babylon A.D. yet but want to.. and Sunshine for that matter. Another one that is on the list. But I will second the mentioning of The Mutant Chronicles. I enjoyed it tremendously on a variety of fronts. The combination of WWI style trench warfare in the far future right along the heavy steampunk setting and a cast of actors that I enjoy. I’ll pretty much see anything that has Ron Perlman in it. The movie definitely has shortcomings, but all in all, I think they are pretty easy to overlook.

  10. markwilliams Says:

    the Mutant Chronicles- has some close ties to “Sunshine” in the way that most of cast dies in heroic patriotic fashion trying to save the planet!

    The design of this film was AMAZING and the effects people earned their money for the “look” although the execution was a little too digitized for me at times, and yes the “plot” had holes you could drive 747 though but its still respectable B level action fare.

    The cast are all longtime Sci fi vets with an great appearance by John Malkovic.

    Bottom Line: B for concept and design, C-/D+ for script but a fun movie if you’re having a sci-fi “grindhouse.”

  11. Choko Says:

    Hi, danke Bez