UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

An area for discussion of Dolph's past, present & future movies!

Moderator: Moderators


Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby Jox on 17 Jun 2013, 18:27

Theatrical release in South Korea starting June 20

Image
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03



Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby preacher on 15 Jul 2013, 21:37

Saw this (finally) thru netflix the other day. Definetly a well made movie i many ways.
Looks leagues better than your avarege DTV. It had a look of it's own that really worked.
From what I had heard I thought this was gonna be way out there in terms of story and how it was told so I was suprised at how straight forward it was. I actually was kind of predictable right up to the end.
The big D was just as cool as I expected. Really good fights from D too. Did the film need both him and VD? Not really and that the two of them never interacted on screen is strange (storywise, i know the reasons and they are not strange at all).

Hyams is a competent guy and I respect his vision and passion a lot.
User avatar
preacher
Regular
 
Posts: 368
Joined: 22 May 2004, 20:35
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby Jox on 18 Oct 2013, 11:20

Today’s best action directors aren’t working in Hollywood, but in direct-to-video
http://www.avclub.com/articles/todays-b ... ll,104394/
His comparatively high-brow background might help explain why his two most accomplished films—Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning—are also the headiest and most ambitious movies to come out of the direct-to-video action renaissance.

Hyams’ Universal Soldier films are death-haunted meditations on identity and memory. Though both are canonical sequels to Roland Emmerich’s original Universal Soldier (1992), there’s no trace of Emmerich’s influence in either; Regeneration takes its visual cues from Andrei Tarkovsky and David Fincher, while Day Of Reckoning’s David Lynch vibe (think Lost Highway or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) is mixed with over-tonal references to Videodrome, Enter The Void, Funny Games, and The Shining. Both films feature Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren reprising their roles from the original film, though they function as thematic poles rather than leads; this is especially true in the case of Day Of Reckoning, where—yet again—Scott Adkins serves as the protagonist.

Both movies demonstrate how much an action movie can accomplish without ever attempting to subvert the genre. Regeneration and Day Of Reckoning are, first and foremost, expertly crafted action movies, marked by intensely choreographed, brutal violence that expands on the themes instead of negating them. They do what the best classic action movies did: turn the struggle and endurance at the center of the genre into a portrayal of something bigger.

At their core, action movies are about bodies—bulging veins, swelling muscles, chests and foreheads drenched with sweat—and what those bodies are capable of. When there’s a sense of unity between what the body is doing and what the camera is doing, the result can be sublime. A body framed a certain way becomes figurative art and takes on a meaning that goes beyond the context of narrative or character. Space becomes sculptural, and movement becomes musical. That’s the essence of what made action movies a vital, exciting genre to begin with. Hollywood seems to have lost that sensibility, but in the direct-to-video world, it remains as striking as ever.
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby Jox on 03 Nov 2013, 18:57

Forum member Scorpio advised me that US: DOR premiered in Spain on TV (no DVD or BD release) yesterday with a running time of 97-98 minutes, meaning they must have deleted about 11 mins of footage in that version...
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby Scorpio on 04 Nov 2013, 17:10

Yes, that is.

The version that has been released in Spain is not a cut version, is a version "mutilated". :mrgreen:

It's a shame, in Spain we can not enjoy a good version of the film dubbed in our language. :(
User avatar
Scorpio
Member
 
Posts: 117
Joined: 03 May 2010, 20:51
Location: Spain

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby Jox on 15 Nov 2013, 13:43

Cool discussion with John Hyams about his movies and the convergence of movies and video games
http://videogametourism.at/node/1844
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby dude hallenbeck on 17 Nov 2013, 13:06

Sounds like he's got a movie similar to Gamer he's trying to make. I think his take on that kind of thing would fit perfectly given what's accomplished with Universal Soldier.
User avatar
dude hallenbeck
Member
 
Posts: 440
Joined: 21 Aug 2013, 15:06

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby Jox on 12 Dec 2013, 18:06

Hyams had said last year that he had some ideas for a potential UNISOL 5 but according to his Tweeter back in September, nothing concrete is going on to get one off the ground at the moment:
John Hyams ‏@jrhyams 26 Sep

@dandelts @TheScottAdkins Glad to hear it, man, that's awesome. As for another U.Soldier, nothing in the works as of now.
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby bomaz on 12 Dec 2013, 18:22

I love the man's work, and even if I'm a 100% for a new UniSol under his vision, I think he should do a different project these days and "disconnect" from the unisol universe for a little while.
User avatar
bomaz
Member
 
Posts: 1729
Joined: 18 Jan 2004, 01:00
Location: FRANCE

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby dude hallenbeck on 14 Dec 2013, 14:38

Well, he did say the video game film was one of multiple projects he's developing, but we all know how things can be, he could just as easily not be able to get anything off the ground and fade into obscurity.
User avatar
dude hallenbeck
Member
 
Posts: 440
Joined: 21 Aug 2013, 15:06

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby Jox on 19 Dec 2013, 13:21

Scott Adkins on his knee injury:
Yes I tore my ACL in my left knee six weeks before shooting Universal Soldier so I basically made that film, El Gringo and Expendables 2 with just one leg. I actually damaged it much more in '...Soldier' and smashed a large piece of Meniscus out from my knee joint, not fun but this is what we do for our chosen art right? By the time I was filming Expendables I was in a hell of a lot of pain so December 2011 I went in to surgery and they used part of my hamstring to create my new ACL. But in order to make sure I rehabilitated it properly I needed to take at least six months off from making action films, hence Zero Dark Thirty and Legendary. Green Street 3 was a good warm up for me a year later which we shot November/December 2012 and then I went straight into Ninja 2 in January (2013). But luckily for me I badly injured my back shooting Ninja 2 which took my mind off the knee! I'm feeling good now though, got all my old kicks and flips back so I'm happy for that.

http://www.impactonline.co/features/159 ... -interview
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

Re: UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: DAY OF RECKONING (John Hyams, 2012)

Postby Jox on 25 Jan 2014, 19:17

Hyams interviewed by the VIllage Voice with his dad about JCVD's ENNEMIES CLOSER:
Jean-Claude has become a lot more interesting as a character actor than the good-guy action performer. That's perhaps one of the benefits of him becoming older, having experience. Right now, a close-up of Jean-Claude — his face tells a lot of stories that, in the past, it didn't. Anyone that spends time with Jean-Claude knows that he's a guy that wears his emotions on his sleeves. He's also not afraid to show himself in different ways. So, when the concept of Day of Reckoning was established, we thought, "How do we do something completely different with this movie than we did with the last film?" One of the basic ideas was to turn the protagonist of the past movies into, if not the antagonist, then the destination of the films. Day of Reckoning is a journey movie with a new protagonist, and [Jean-Claude] is the character that looms over the whole film, like the Harry Lime the hero is going to find.

Different movies call for different treatments as far as how faithful you're going to be. Something like a Coen brothers or Tarantino film is really beholden to the dialogue. However, for me — and maybe this has to do with my documentary experience — I really like to think of the script as something you use as a structural standpoint. It's something you put a lot of work into, figuring out how to track this story and these characters. I believe in taking whatever is written on the page and taking it to another place on the set. Actors bring a lot to the table, in that sense. And once I start cutting, I don't look at the script. At that point, I look at the film as a bunch of raw footage: How it goes together and what the scenes are can really change, so you need to keep yourself open to that.

I really think Larnell is one of the most talented choreographers out there. He really has a great understanding of the narrative elements of a fight; he was one of my most intimate collaborators. So with a sequence like that, none of the beats or moves are actually that defined in the script. But the script gives you the flavor for what kind of scene it is, and in that scene, the characters were bulls in a china shop. In the script, we talk about aluminum baseball bats, but I really encouraged Larnell to come up with the fight himself. He would pre-viz the whole thing, and in the case of that fight, we stuck pretty close to his pre-viz. There's a few things here and there we eliminated, but he has such a good sense of the general movements of a fight — like it's a dance, as Dad said. I also relied on [actor] Scott Adkins; he has a great mind, not just for specific moves, but for how to shoot the moves that he does. But with a guy like Larnell, I'm just trying to inspire him to go in one direction or another.

Taking Day of Reckoning specifically: The film's tone was the most important thing, and that's a thing we established in a lot of ways. I don't know if it was conscious at the time, but on one level, I was going for a tone Cronenberg has struck very well in his films, where if there's humor, it's incredibly deadpan. But what you're aspiring to is something like The Fly, where he really achieves overt humor. We wanted to be visceral, and a movie that's as much an action film as a horror film. And as you said, you need to create a release. That release was, in the '80s or '90s, one-liners. We wondered, "How do you create a release and humor without really letting on that it's a joke?" I think our goal the whole time was to make a midnight movie, so the violence is going to go to a place where the only thing you can really do is laugh about it.

I agree with my dad. I'm trying to not be predictable in how I edit action scenes; I sometimes prefer extremely long takes. Any way that you can create the illusion that these things are happening in real time is some of the most exciting action filmmaking I've seen. Those long takes in Children of Men are some of the best action scenes that have ever been done. That being said, people need to be careful of lumping filmmaker together. I love what Greengrass has done with the two Bourne movies he did. The car chases in both films stand up with The French Connection. But there's Greengrass, and there's people that took what he did and saw it as a technique, and it wasn't necessarily consistent with their movies, or they didn't know why they were doing with it. Greengrass did something so much [more powerful] than just shaking a camera.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-01-22/ ... interview/
User avatar
Jox
Site Admin
 
Posts: 23038
Joined: 08 Nov 2003, 23:03

PreviousNext

Return to Dolph's Movies

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 47 guests

cron