He Said: Knight & Day/Eclipse
By Jamie D. Ruccio
July 7, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
It's not that Knight and Day is a bad movie. It's just sort of there. It is exactly like every bland, high fructose, syrupy, generic summer action offering. The story of Knight and Day is less about the movie and more about its development history, disappointing box office returns and what that means to the further career of Tom Cruise. It's also an interesting and surprisingly open look into movie marketing with co-president of marketing for Fox (one of the distributors) Tony Sella doing a PR post-mortem on the marketing strategy.
In its long development history, Knight and Day has gone through 12 writers, three titles (formerly Wichita and Trouble Man) and has had the likes of Adam Sandler, Chris Tucker and Gerard Butler all at one time associated in some form with the movie. And it suffers from all of this as it very much has the feel of a movie that was well done long before.
Knight and Day is apparently about international spy Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), who encounters June Havens (Cameron Diaz) at the airport. They literally bump into one another as they wait for the same flight. Once on the sparsely populated flight, June decides to take a chance and engage Roy in conversation. But before she makes her final moves she goes to the bathroom to freshen up. Then, in one of the funnier scenes in the movie, Roy is attacked by every passenger and crew member, who all turn out to be fellow spies bent on killing him. Emerging from the bathroom, every other person on the flight, save for Roy, appears to be sleeping...until the plane lurches to the side to reveal that Roy has dispatched everyone, including the pilots. Roy then manages to crash land the plane in a corn field, drug June and then return her home.
June wakes in her own bed and proceeds to assist her sister with her wedding. This is interrupted by federal agents who take her away and promise to take her to a safe location, something Roy warned her evil agents would do. However, before they are allowed to harm her she is rescued by Roy himself. Unsure of which side is really interested in her safety, she escapes from Roy and contacts an ex-boyfriend, the firefighter (he has a name but really, does it matter?). Roy again "kidnaps" June. They then go to retrieve a genius scientist, who has invented a world-changing machine that Roy claims to be responsible for protecting.
Given this set-up, the movie than falls into all manner of predictability as it careens from one frantic action sequence to another. Oddly, it slows down later and loses what little humor and charm it had and sticks to a rather boring, almost Mission: Impossible-like plot. This essentially kills what little goodwill the movie had built up with the audience.
Much has been written about the failure of Knight and Day. It opened with a disappointing total of $20.5 million for the weekend. This was Tom Cruise's worst opening, in a lead role, since 1992's Far and Away, which took in just under $13 million. The blame, however, seems to have very publicly fallen on the ad campaign. In a very public discussion, Tony Sella, the Co-President of Fox Marketing, explained that the marketing was aimed at the over 40 audience who would most identify with its aging stars. "If you're over 40, this movie was a rock star - the whole concept, the Nick and Nora of it all. It's a grown up film. That was the whole theory behind selling the film, that it was a cool, adult movie, hence the poster and the graphics behind it. We wouldn't have called it Knight and Day if we weren't going for an adult audience," he commented. But as tracking came back, they changed the mood of the promotion and began marketing it as a much more standard action film. The release date was moved up from a standard Friday release of June 25th to a much more unusual Wednesday June 23rd date, perhaps in hopes of building up a good word-of-mouth (based on the tracking this seems to have been a desperate, last ditch move).
Knight and Day was never a movie that was going to succeed no matter who starred in it. The flaws are not in the acting, as Diaz and Cruise gamely trudge through the laborious and unoriginal writing, but in the well-worn plot. Still, one wonders why their staffs allowed themselves to be attached to the project in the first place. I cannot imagine the various scripts ever had a pulse. From the Pink Panther movies to Austin Powers, the spy genre has been mined countless times for laughs and in a much better fashion.
In keeping with a time of day theme, Caroline and I saw and thought we'd throw in a little bit about The Twilight Saga: Eclipse as well.
Being part of a couple, both Caroline and I realize that we sometimes have to go and do things we normally wouldn't do because it makes the other one happy. I'm not someone who hates the series but I admit to be baffled by its appeal. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is exactly what you expect and those expectations differ wildly depending on your gender. Caroline has quoted another fan of the series as saying, "It helps if you are a 14-year-old girl or ever were a 14-year-old girl". Being a part of neither of those demographics and having now seen two of these movies, I find it an interesting exercise in gender differences.
As an aside we recently went and saw Human Centipede because I was too curious for our own good (I'll save you the of bouts of nausea and not review the film in any way). Caroline gamely agreed to come along even though I cautioned and warned her. Turnabout was fair play, so I accompanied her to see Eclipse...and neither one of us is sure who got the wrong end of that deal.
All you need to know about the movies is that Kristen Stewart plays Bella (wait for it) Swan, the object of desire for a Vvmpire, Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson, his hair and the dopiest expression since Pauly Shore) and a werewolf, Jacob Black (played by Taylor Lautner and his abdominal muscles). The plot is really that simple. There's something about how the vampires and werewolves don't get along and Bella is apparently in danger because she's so incredibly desirable to the vampires that they all want to eat her.
Edward is so idealized that he literally sparkles in sunlight and his erotic prowess is such that it may just kill mortals. And yet he chastely resists Bella's mopey come-ons, vowing that they will not be together until she is 18 and they've married. He continues to profess his love for her, and yet he won't take her virginity. This is one of the few things I found unique about the movie in that it does offer a modern reinvention of vampire mythology. What we now classically think of as a vampire owes all to Bram Stoker's Dracula, which is the most famous of several vampire books based on even older legends. In that novel, the story challenges Victorian mortality (of which Twilight's Edward is a staunch defender). Edward's feelings about these values offer an interesting twist on truly classic vampire mythology. (Hey Hollywood...how about a Carmilla movie possibly staring Angelina Jolie? I promise to go to every Transformers movie from now on if you give me this).
Each of the boys profess undying devotion and steadfast love to Bella. The dialogue is deadly earnest in that only a 14-year-old can take it seriously. There is never a hint of self-awareness or that an entire world is happening around them. There is a self-absorption in the characters that is abundant and amazing. The entire movie is written as though from the pink pen of a girl's pink diary, with each word written in loopy script on a pink piece of paper...with Hello Kitty stickers in the corners.
And yet none of this matters. It somehow connects to its core audience in a way that defies criticism. This is fine. We all have touchstones. When I watch Jackass, I know it's stupid, but watching guys hit each other in the crotch with stuff will always be funny. I can't help it.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse validates youthful ideals and connects those a bit older, disabused of those idealistic notions, to a time when they were still possible. It presents two pure flawless characters in contest with another for the soul of an equally exemplary character even if she is squeamishly uncomfortable in her own skin. In this way, she represents the time in all our lives when our self esteem is in question. It's a bit of wish fulfillment packaged in some ultimately secondary vampire/werewolf mythology. In its way, Twilight gives the audience exactly what they asked for and this is entirely a valid purpose for an artistic endeavor. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is an attempt to connect a specific audience to a very unique time of life and it should be allowed its place.
So there you have it. It's been a rough few weeks for this reviewer. I've seen Hollywood summer schlock, movies aimed at female tweeners (and their older sisters) and a movie where people's mouths are sown to other people's butts. And while my movie loving corpse is likely truly dead, there is always hope. Perhaps next month will be better...