When Jonah Hex was first announced, I got pretty excited for the project. I’m not much of a comics guy — and I know zilch about the character of Jonah Hex — but the idea of a badass, revenge-craving gunslinger in the 1800s sounded pretty promising to me. When Josh Brolin became quite vocal about wanting the role, my interest soared (it was already high when Thomas Jane was pushing for the gig). Then, aside from the odd casting announcement every now and then, the only other news that came out concerning the film was word that Crank creators Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor had left the project as directors under the ever-ambiguous guise of “creative differences” (though their script would still be used). And that’s never a good sign when you’re dealing with what is intended to be a summer hit for a studio as big as Warner Bros.
Then the trailer for the film hit and … few of my fears were abated. It looks like Wild Wild West. A slightly cooler, grittier version, maybe, but any comparison to Wild Wild West is hardly a compliment. Now, I’m not ready to dismiss the film outright. I think Brolin owns that trailer. Plus, I’m always glad to see John Malkovich and Lance Reddick in anything; hell, even Megan Fox looks like she’s actually having some fun with her role. But man does its action look a little too juvenile for its own good. I’m all for fake stuff, be it horse-mounted Gatling guns, mini-crossbow rockets or Megan Fox, but it all looks as goofy as just about every other failed Hollywood stab at retrofuturism.
It’s as though they picked up on steampunk as the new buzzword and decided that they’ve got to have it in their saddlebag (without ever attempting to understand why it became a buzzword in the first place, of course). The trouble with that isn’t actually Hollywood’s failure to understand steampunk, however; it’s the fact that steampunk is typically bad news for the big screen. Conceptually, inventing gadgets and gizmos that are powered beyond their means by steam or ridiculously complex sets of gears is a great thing. You can get away on the written page with all kinds of anachronisms because the reader’s imagination runs wild. But the coolness of steampunk isn’t confined to just the worlds of novels and comic books. Artists can slap a bunch of brass and exposed gears and pipes to any combination of normally boring items and create something worth geeking out over.
Both those mediums, however, have an advantage live-action movies don’t: their creations need not be functional. On the big screen, however, if something looks exceedingly fake, people are going to think it looks stupid. And when it comes to movies like Jonah Hex or Wild Wild West, all of the CGI employed to bring this fantasy tech to “life” makes everything look cheesy and supremely non-functional to most people.
Obviously this isn’t always the case. There are filmmakers out there willing to devote the requisite time to fleshing out the retrofuturism in their films. For example, Guillermo del Toro‘s production and art designers actually bothered to build real physical props that looked cool and conceivable for Hellboy instead of settling for budget-compromised digital creations. Even someone like Joe Johnston was able to make retrofuturism palatable with The Rocketeer; though given his later work on Jurassic Park III and The Wolfman, I’ll chalk that success up to CGI still being a relatively new tool for filmmakers in 1991.
Does this mean that Jonah Hex is going to be another Wild Wild West? Not necessarily. First, I doubt they’re going to top something as silly as a giant mechanical spider. And secondly, Director Jimmy Hayward may be able to strike the delicate balance required to deliver a film that knows how outlandish it is and has a lot of fun indulging in that; I just don’t know enough about the guy. But I’m not entirely hopeful. I think production house Legendary Pictures has established themselves as an incredibly fan-savvy studio, but for every Batman Begins, Dark Knight, 300, and Watchmen, there are still movies like 10,000 BC, Clash of the Titans, and Lady in the Water. No one in Hollywood is immune to producing genuine stinkers.
Personally, I am looking forward to Jonah Hex, but considering the glutton for cheesy crap side of me equally looks forward to Syfy channel original movies, I would hardly call that an endorsement. Actually … now that I’ve compared Jonah Hex’ styling to both Wild Wild West and a Syfy channel movie, I think I’m even more doubtful than when I first started writing this post. At least Brolin’s scarred face spitting out one-liners looks pretty great, right?
Check out the trailer for Jonah Hex by clicking here
