According to Blaster.com, when a reporter mentioned that Weaver’s character, Grace Augustine, had died in the original, Weaver said:

Darling, that’s not true. She didn’t maybe die. Maybe she’s just in the tree. … I’m not allowed to say anything, but [Cameron] certainly made a lot of notes over the last year of where to move on. I think he really wants to keep the team together as much as he can.

When a reporter suggested that the planet of Pandora could somehow resuscitate her, Weaver added:

You stop there. I’m not allowed to say anything.

More curious still was the news that the project was written and filmed as one long screenplay, and that the decision on where to split the film(s) would be made after-the-fact.

Well, it’s now after-the-fact.

Early “test” screenings, which producers use to gauge the audiences’ response to a film, have indicated that the producers have chosen a cut-off point — though, depending on the reaction to these screenings, that could still be changed prior to the movie’s November 19th release date.

In short, we don’t yet know where the story will be split. But here at TheTorchOnline.com, we have an opinion on where it definitely shouldn’t be split.

Here are the top ten worst possibilities:

10. After the opening title credit, but before any of the actors’ names are listed. This would make the first movie about ten seconds long.

9. Right after Harry Potter drops trou at the edge of the forest pool, but before he goes into the water to retrieve Godric Gryffindor’s Sword, leaving us with the image of Daniel Radcliffe’s bare ass for the next six months, until the second half of the movie is released.

8. In the middle of an establishing shot for the village of Godric’s Hollow.

7. At the start of a scene at the house of Bathilda Bagshot where Hermione stops to use the bathroom and ends up snooping in the medicine cabinet.

6. During “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” the tale told by Xenophilius Lovegood, right in the middle of a sentence.

5. An establishing close-up shot on the “King’s Cross Station” sign at the beginning of Harry’s first “dream” encounter with Dumbledore.

4. A pick-up shot of Bellatrix Lestrange casually scratching her ass in the middle of torturing Hermione.

3. Mid-pensieve, right before Harry learns that he has to die in order for Voldemort to die, at the moment when actor Daniel Radcliffe accidentally choked on some of the dry ice fumes.

2. The moment right after Voldemort tries to kill Harry, but before we learn he ends up killing himself. Never read the book? Here’s where you pay.

1. In the epilogue, as Harry, Ron, and Hermione are sending their kids off to Hogwarts, but before Harry can offer Albus any advice, and Ron stops to spit phlegm into a trash can.

Not anymore. Now they’re (more or less) a year-long affair.

Here’s this fall’s line-up of fantasy and fantasy-esque movies:

(Sept. 3) Machete: Since when does a fake trailer in a previous movie end up becoming an actual movie? When the director in question is Robert Rodriguez. The violent Machete, first “seen” in Grindhouse, centers on the character of Machete Cortez, first seen in Rodriquez’ family franchise Spy Kids, making the whole thing about as meta as movies come.

(Sept. 10) Resident Evil: Afterlife: The 3-D trend continues with this film, which picks up right where the third film ended, with Milla Jovovich back and determined to bring the Umbrella Corporation to its knees — and also coming face-to-face with her nemesis Albert Wesker for the first time.

(Sept. 17) Devil: Five people are stuck in an elevator, and they think one is — who else? — the Devil. But the scariest thing about this film may be that M. Night Shyamalan is back after the disaster that was The Last Airbender. But at least it’s only as producer (and story writer), not  director.

(Sept. 17) Alpha and Omega: Get it? “Alpha” and “omega” wolves? In this animated movie, two wolves from opposite ends of their pack’s social order must somehow work together to save themselves and their pack. Here’s betting they just might also fall in love.

(Sept. 24) Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole: A silly name and some odd-looking trailers has some folks snickering, but this animated movie has at least two things going for it: the entertaining young adult novels upon which it is based, and Watchman’s Zack Synder, who is directing. Because it sounds so silly, we think it’ll be great.

(Oct. 1) Let Me In: Cloverfield director Matt Reeves directs this remake of a Swedish movie about a vampire in the body of a 12-year-old girl. But because it’s yet another project about vampires, which we’re totally sick of, TheTorchOnline.com doesn’t care.

(Oct. 22) Paranormal Activity 2: How do you make a sequel to movie that was made for $10,000 (but ended up grossing almost $200 million) and whose claim to fame was its anti-Hollywood, unpredictable nature? You can go slick, like the producers of Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows did (to their chagrin), or you can go for the same seemingly “real” feel as the first movie, as they’re doing here. The trailer is certainly scary. Katie Featherston (”Katie”) returns.

(Oct. 22) Saw 3-D: Oh, please. Just stop, okay? On the “plus” side, Cary Elwes (from the first movie) returns.

(Nov. 5) Megamind: An animated superhero movie tells the story from the point-of-view of the villain, Megamind, voiced by Will Ferrell. But what happens when Megamind finally succeeds in killing his nemesis, Metro Man (Brad Pitt)? Does life have any meaning?

(Nov. 12) Skyline: Why are we watching the skyline? Because there’s a light that’s attracting Los Angelinos — and there just might be scary aliens on the other end! Unfortunately, the Brothers Strause (Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem) direct.

(Nov. 19) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1: It’s finally here, and we’ll be there with bells on. Director David Yates says he used lots of hand-held cameras, so expect things to be shaken up both figuratively and literally. But this is only part one, so also expect to be frustrated at the end.

Nov. 24 Tangled: Yet another animated movie (this one from Disney), based on the classic fairy tale about Rapunzel. Interestingly, the movie is CGI, but the film is made to look like oil on canvas. The Princess and the Frog didn’t quite bring Disney animation back from the dead — could this be the film to finally do it?

The upshot? The film does contain some of the flaws of the book itself, but is still a very high quality production, on par with the last few films:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I is a great continuation of the series, thematically and visually in line with films 5 and 6. Though it is a fast-paced film, with several nice set pieces and much-improved performances from the young cast, it does suffer from two major problems. First, it faithfully adapts the seventh book, including the book’s own problems. The “camping in the wilderness” scenes become quite repetitive, and the attempts at drama/angst amongst the trio during these scenes comes off as tired. Also, the scenes involving the locket horcrux causing its wearer to be angry/aggressive are far too reminiscent of Lord of the Rings….The film ends at a very appropriate spot, and though not exactly a “cliffhanger”, left me greatly anticipating Part II.

Read the whole review (and comments from other viewers)

See the rest of the images here.

The reviews are relatively strong (at 67% “fresh” at RottenTomatoes.com), and theaters report enthusiastic audiences.

But when the opening weekend box office tallies are calculated, the movie grosses a mere $15.25 million — a far cry from projections that were up  to $30 million.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World? No, it’s Snakes on a Plane, the insanely-hyped 2006 film that ended up being a major disappointment for New Line Cinemas. Box office fell more than 50% the following weekend, and the total U.S. tally ended up being a mere $33 million — $65 million world-wide — on a production budget of $33 million.

Is Scott Pilgrim repeating that film’s fate of never breaking out beyond its younger, geekier, internet-friendly audience? Scott Pilgrim was an absolute sensation at Comic-Con, and it was better-reviewed than Snakes on a Plane (at 80% “fresh” at RottenTomatoes, although we thought it was overrated), but it fared considerably worse at the box office, coming in a disappointing fifth (after Inception, in its fifth week), with a total weekend gross of $10.5 million — well below projections of $18 million.

The story of Scott Pilgrim, which had a reported budget of $60 million, isn’t over: the film may yet find its audience at the box office, and given the enthusiasm of its fans, it’s almost guaranteed to find a large cult following on DVD. And it’s always hard to draw any “lesson” from the failure or success of one film.

But Scott Pilgrim is an interesting reminder that there can still be a major disconnect between the geek world (and the internet), and popular success.

In short, those of us in the geek blogosphere sometimes talk as if the sun revolves around us, and the entire world is waiting to hear what we have to say. But they aren’t.

Look, I can tell when a movie is arriving with a lot of buzz, and the buzz around Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is like that of a hive of killer bees. I also know that the preview audiences I saw the movie with — all fans of the graphic novels that the movie is based on — came totally pumped to see it, and their enthusiasm never flagged: they loved it to the very end.

I, on the other hand, hated it.

I wish I could say otherwise, not just because I know most people are probably going to disagree with me, but also because there is much about the movie that is genuinely new and different. The gimmick of the movie (and the graphic novel) is that Scott Pilgrim life’s is an unacknowledged cross between reality and a video game.

The look and feel of the movie perfectly mimics the look and feel of the graphic novel, but that makes it sound like I’m not giving the movie enough credit. There are a thousand ways they could’ve screwed this up, but they really didn’t.

The movie also captures the graphic novel’s zeitgeist-y sense of omnipresent irony. This is about, and for, a generation that has seen it all and done it all. As a result, just about every line in the movie is a droll meta-reference to something else — some video game element or movie cliche.

In that respect, the movie felt very contemporary.

Unfortunately, the rest of the movie just plain didn’t work. Part of the problem is that while the look of the movie is very faithful to the graphic novel, the story itself is too faithful. A movie is not the same thing as a graphic novel, and this thing takes too long to get going.

The story (as everyone who’s read the graphic novel knows) is that diffident, self-conscious Scott wants to date beautiful, above-it-all Ramona — but to do so, he has to defeat her “seven evil exes,” superhero-style.

But it takes too long to get to this main story — all of the many secondary characters have to be showily introduced first.

And when the story finally does get underway, it becomes very, very repetitive and uninvolving: each battle is just an extended fight scene with no unexpected twists, and no real lesson learned — not until the final scene where Scott has a realization so obvious and trite that I couldn’t believe that a movie this ironic and self-aware didn’t immediately mock it.

Maybe this has something to do with the movie’s sense of omnipresent irony, but I also never had the feeling that there was anything serious at stake, and I never really cared about any of the characters. The movie seemed to be relying heavily on the goodwill for the characters generated by the graphic novels — and maybe that will be enough for most people.

But being only a very casual reader of the novels, it wasn’t enough for me.

It didn’t help that Michael Cera seemed completely miscast. I know he’s become the “go-to” guy for hip, edgy teen and 20something movies, but I found him to be just too much of a dork to be anything approaching a romantic lead, which Scott is also supposed to be. I have nothing against dorks — some of my best friends are dorks, and I’m pretty dorky myself.

But I didn’t buy for a minute that any of the three women interested in him would even be interested in him, not with all his neurotic tics and ironic asides. These are obviously Cera’s normal acting tendencies, but I thought he went way over-the-top here, and if it was supposed to be charming, it didn’t work for me.

Fans of the graphic novels will probably love this movie. But everyone else … well, they might very well like it too.

But I really didn’t. Enjoy your cruise, folks — this is one cultural ship that’ll be sailing without me on board.

Two and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

Back 2006, Japan’s famous Studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, Ponyo) finished a movie called Tales From Earthsea, based on Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic Earthsea series of books. But legal wrangling kept it from being released in the U.S. — the U.S. film rights to the books were held by the SyFy Channel which had produced a truly horrible TV adaptation of le Guin’s work back in 2004.

Tales From Earthsea finally opens in the U.S. today, released by Disney with voice-overs by Timothy Dalton and Willem Defoe (the preview screening I attended was in Japanese with subtitles).

We could’ve missed this one. Le Guin, it seems, is doomed to see only sub-par film adaptations of her most famous work.

The movie tells the story of … well, I’m not quite sure. Truthfully, the story is so different from the books that I assumed the movie was based on a short story that Le Guin had written that I hadn’t read. But no, it’s supposedly based on the first four books in the Earthsea series.

Mostly, it’s based on Tehanu, the fourth book. And if you think that starting with the fourth book in an intricate series like this is a bad idea, you’re right.

Ultimately, my problems with the movie all boil down to awkward storytelling. Some elements from the books are jammed in that are completely unnecessary to the plot — like references to the Tombs of Atuan, Ged’s facial scar, and the mythology of the dragons (although, admittedly, this is among the coolest parts of Le Guin’s books).

Other elements aren’t set up properly — namely the whole idea of the “shadow” — and aren’t even really acknowledged until the end of the movie, leaving even viewers who’ve read the books confused. A magic sword isn’t fully explained, and the movie’s antagonist isn’t introduced until halfway through the movie.

And while the movie has a decent opening and a terrific third act, the middle section is slow-paced and meandering — ironic given all the plot from the books that they’ve left out.

I’ll confess my bias upfront and say I’ve never been a huge fan of Studio Ghibli, whose movies always seem to me to have major narrative problems (acknowledging that there could be cultural differences I’m not aware of).

But Spirited Away’s confused, disjointed narrative worked because the story was supposed to be confused and disjointed: the plot was mimicking a major theme of the story, which was all a big mind-trip.

Here it just feels like the people involved didn’t have a clear vision and ultimately let their story get away from them.

Some fantasy films are made and immediately become a part of the cultural zeitgeist, integrating themselves into pop culture and slang, so that every movie-goer worth his or her salt understands a reference to Middle Earth, or can tell you what happens when you flick and swish your wand, chanting “Wingardium Leviosa.”

But not every film can be a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Some films are made and, through no fault of their own, never manage to find the enormous mainstream success that is so coveted. When this happens, these movies are banished to an ethereal storage dimension called the Cave of Forgotten Tales, and become lost to time.

But here in the offices of TheTorchOnline.com, we have a portal to this mysterious dimension, and from time to time, we venture into this cave, looking for the blockbusters that might, could, or should have been.

And then we review them.

Trick ‘r Treat

Five Torches (Out of Five)

This film first became known to many by the online buzz that surrounded its initial screenings, and inexplicably it never received a mass commercial release before going to DVD. Inexplicably, you see, because Trick ‘r Treat is hands down one of the best Halloween movies to come out in years.

The cast is stellar, and as a full-fledged geek, I was excited to discover both Anna Paquin and Brian Cox were starring, as they both starred in one of my favorite superhero films, X2: X-Men United.(Not coincidentally, the film is “presented” by Bryan Singer, the director X2, and written and directed by Michael Dougherty, who cowrote the screenplay for X2.)

Of course, these days Paquin is much better known for her role as Sookie in True Blood, and that is much closer in theme and feel to Trick ‘r Treat.

One of the elements that make the movie so great is it simultaneous feels very current, yet is also something of a refreshing throwback, largely due to its anthology nature.

Writer/director Michael Dougherty crafts four interweaving stories involving a couple who are wrapping up their Halloween celebrations, a psychotic school principle, a group of oversexed coeds, and five young teens playing a dangerous prank. Dougherty plays a bit with the timeline so that dead characters can reappear very much alive, but never so much so that it becomes confusing, and indeed that extra tweak pushes the screenplay from clever to masterful.

In an era overrun with dismal, disgusting horror movies like the Saw and Hostel films, which require absolutely no imagination to make or enjoy, Trick ‘r Treat is a visual feast, with a lush, colorful palette that makes the tamer scenes feel like a safe oasis. Of course, this feat just makes the scary moments downright terrifying, and all of this adds to the effect that the movie accomplishes so well: it’s fun. Scary, yes, but fun.

While there isn’t a single weak like in the cast, the standout performance of the film would have to be Dylan Baker as the psycho principal/serial killer, who is at times chilling, engrossing, and often very funny. At one point, he even garners sympathy. And that’s after we saw him murder a child.

Trick ‘r Treat, if there is any justice in the world, will become a staple of Halloween viewing, and at a slim 82 minutes, it’s a good length for party-viewing. I know what I’ll be watching at my party come October.

I’ve long made my opinion known that while I am, or was, a fan of both fantasy genres, there’s also such a thing as overkill.

Since 2000, an astounding 42 big-budget superhero movies have been released, nine in 2008 alone — this from an industry that only releases 50 or fewer mega-budget movies in any given year.

It’s not just that there are too many superhero movies for the market to sustain; there are too many superhero franchises.

As for vampires, by my count, there have been thirteen vampire TV series just since 2000 — and four (True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, The Gates, and Being Human) are still on the air!

And this doesn’t even include shows like Supernatural that regularly feature vampire characters.

As for the movies, I count 24 major vampire theatrical releases just since 2000 — and literally hundreds more that were made-for-TV or went direct-to-DVD. There are at least 14 vampire movies currently in production.

Now we’re even getting the inevitable wave of parody movies — for vampires, that means Vampires Suck, coming in August, and for superheroes, the (latest) movie-parodies are Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World and Megamind, both coming later this year.

When the parodies come, you know it’s time to stop.

Seriously. The madness must end. For every new vampire or superhero movie or TV show that gets greenlit, that means some other movie or TV show does not — which also means some other newer, fresher genre or story continues to be ignored.

Worse, everything interesting that could possible be said about superheros or vampires has long been said. For example, every possible use of vampires as metaphor has already been done: the power of sexuality (Dracula), homosexuality (Anne Rice), assimilation (True Blood), teenage angst (Buffy), immortality (The Hunger), delinquency (Lost Boys), boring suburbia (Fright Night), teenage love (Twilight), even the Israeli/Palestinian situation (Underworld) and the unsustainable exploitation of the environment (Daybreakers)!

And regarding superheroes, we get it: with great power comes great responsibility — and yeah, we’re all superheroes in our own way, with our “secret” identities.

Either that or superheroes are exactly like us, with all our same flaws, despite the colorful costume and superpowers. Or maybe superheroes are just a metaphor of elitism, either good like in The Incredibles or bad like in Watchmen.

Whatever you’re saying, it’s been said.

Even though the superhero and vampire media trends are now officially at an end (because we say so!), here are a couple of things this doesn’t mean:

It doesn’t mean there will never be another superhero or vampire movie. I wish it did, but there are (a) a number of popular franchises, like Twilight and Iron Man, that are still playing themselves out — quite successfully, I might add, and (b) there will still be the occasional extraordinary superhero or vampire project from time-to-time. Just because westerns have been dead since the 1970s, that didn’t mean Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven wasn’t a fantastic movie.

And, of course, there will always be the die-hard superhero and vampire fans, people to whom these genres speak on a deeper level, and they will keep the flames of these genres forever flickering in the form of books, graphic novels, and other less expensive media. More power to em!

But our official announcement does mean that vampire and superhero projects will no longer be given the cultural benefit of the doubt. From this point on, they won’t be considered hip and trendy and zeitgeist-y, and won’t automatically be greenlit by TV or movie executives.

No, the pre-existing bias will be that vampires and superheroes are tired and derivative — unless their creators somehow prove differently.

Basically, the All-Vampire-All-the-Time Era (and the All-Superhero-All-the-Time Era) are, thankfully, blessedly, over.

There’s absolutely nothing more to see here, folks, so let’s all move on.

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Clash of the Titans, based on the 1981 Ray Harryhausen classic, is a terrible movie. If you weren’t duped into seeing it in theaters, Netflix it at your peril.

Repo Men, about a future world that trades in artificial organs, was blasted by critics and audiences alike. It stars Jude Law and Forest Whitaker.

Clash of the Titans

Bitten, starring Jason Mewes and Erica Cox, was a poorly received vampire movie that aired last year on the Syfy Channel. A  paramedic finds a woman he believes is a drug addict going through withdrawal — but she’s addicted to blood, not drugs.

Tin Man (mini-series), starring Zooey Deschanel, Neal McDonough, Alan Cumming, and Raoul Trujillo, is a dark retelling of The Wizard of Oz. It has its fans, but we weren’t among them.

Being Human: Season 1 is a UK series about a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf who become roommates. We liked it a lot.

Stargate Universe 1.5, stars Robert Carlyle, Louis Ferriera, Alaina Huffman, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Christopher McDonald.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 is one of TV’s best sci-fi show’s ever. Then they added Lucy Lawless to the cast, and it got even better.

Life After People: Season 2 is a History Channel series that reveals what it would be like on Earth without people.

August Releases:

Furry Vengeance, starring Brendan Fraser and Brooke Shields, was uniformly reviled.

Lost: Season 6. This is the show’s last season, including the finale. Don’t get us started.

Heroes: Season 4 also had its fans, but once again, we weren’t among them.

The Vampire Diaries: Season 1 suffered from the buzz that it was a Twilight rip-off. Who knew? The first season of this CW show was surprisingly good — one of the rare TV shows where something important happens every episode.

Sick of silly, brain-dead summer sci-fi movies? Boy, is Inception the movie for you.

In a world where drugs exist that allow one person to enter the dreams and subconscious of another person, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a dream-explorer on the lam, is made an offer: implant a motivation (or “inception”) in the mind of a business tycoon. If the idea takes, the world will be transformed — and Cobb is promised that he’ll finally be able to return to the life and kids he was forced to leave behind.

Can implanting a motivation in the mind of another even be done? It’s one thing to explore another’s subconscious, but to actually implant suggestions there requires going deep, deep into the mind.

Cobb assembles his team (which includes two enormously appealing actors, Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and off they go.

Whaddaya bet that things don’t go exactly as planned? A big part of the problem is that even though they’re in the subconscious of another person, dark demons from Cobb’s own subconscious keep inserting themselves into the action.

This is very much a Christopher Nolan movie (the director of Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight, who wrote, produced, and directed here). And while I absolutely loved Memento and Insomnia, I confess to being frustrated by some of the clunky plot contrivances in Batman Begins and even The Dark Knight.

That’s a problem here too. So much of the movie’s plot depends on a loooooong list of “rules” that govern the subconscious. It’s not that it doesn’t all hang together — it does, at least if you squint. It’s just that after a while, you get tired of trying to keep it all straight. Whose subconscious are we in exactly?

Then there’s the question of coincidences. I believe a filmmaker gets one major coincidence and three minor ones per movie. But Inception is riddled with timing coincidences. And while everyone’s mind is guarded by our subconscious, which sends evil guardians to confront invaders, these “guardians” are apparently absolutely, completely worthless. They couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a cannon from ten feet away (except when the plot calls for it, and even then it takes hours for the person to die).  Seriously, the henchmen in the original 1960s TV series Batman were more competent than these guys.

Yes, yes, I know this is all the kind of thing you immediately forgive (or don’t even notice) if a movie speaks to you on some larger level. Maybe it’s an indication that, for all its “mind-blowing” ideas and admittedly cool special “dream” effects, I thought this movie meandered at times. And for all its psychological mumbo-jumbo, this movie thinks it’s smarter than it actually is.

This I will say: there are two great plot-twists in the movie (neither of which, thank God, is the now-hackneyed, “Oh, wait, the whole movie was a dream!” which, frankly, was the big “reveal” of one of DiCaprio’s most recent other films).

Speaking of DiCaprio, he’s a reliable “main character” actor, and he’s fine here on one level. But something is revealed about him midway through the movie (he’s described as an “old soul”), and I didn’t see it at all. Frankly, I’m wondering if the whole movie would’ve been more successful with an actor with much more gravitas.

It feels strange to spend so long criticizing a movie that, on the whole, is successful and that, even apart from its “success,” aims to be sooooo much more than the typical stupid summer blockbuster.

But basically, this is a movie that’s worth criticizing. There is much to think about and argue over here — and much fun to be had too.

Still, as much as fans of The Matrix (and most geeks in general) will go nuts for this movie, for me, it just isn’t a classic.

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