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The only purpose it serves is to get butts in seats in 1997 for the theatrical re-issue of the movie. At the time, it was a cute "ah-ha!" moment for audiences familiar with Star Wars. Beyond that, the scene makes zero sense to include as canon in any of the physical media releases. It's kinda insane that the current version is what'll be remembered as the actual movie now.
Revisionism is 99% the wrong move with old movies. The only case I can think of where it's warranted is WAR OF THE WORLDS where they painted out the obvious wires holding up the spaceships because you could never see them on film and video prints but DVD and Blu-ray made it stunningly obvious to the point where they took you out of the movie.
I went through a phase in High School when I was really crazy about his early films and plowed through most of them. I thought SLEEPER was particularly hilarious and wanted to see more as I found them just to be as insane and fun as the Monty Python movies I had recently discovered at the time. I got about as far as ZELIG but didn't find the film to be too interesting or funny and just kinda gave up with him.
The big questions I have had since, is who, outside of snooty film buffs and arthouse nerds, actually watches his recent movies? He has made a career on autopilot for the past two decades making a low budget movie per year and somehow getting massive casts of big-name actors to be in his films for a fraction of their usual fee. I think his name and the prestige of having been in an Allen film, coupled with the low budgets, has been the whole schtick since the 1990's, but somewhere along the line the prestige dried up (for the most part) because practically nobody was seeing these movies and the modern puritanical cancel culture movement fully absorbed Woody Allen largely thanks to the Farrows and his "son" Ronnan Sinatra. This made him toxic, at least among the big-name-actor community who care about their image and don't want to look like they are on the wrong side of history.
I think the movement is slowly sputtering out though so there's a chance Allen may have a minor comeback in him still. There's a lot of actors who would die to be in a Woody Allen movie even after all the negative chaff, just because they "got a chance to work with him", similar to Roman Polanski.
Lol - I am surprised you have heard about that obscure and disastrous TV show. I remember it coming back on satellite TV (possibly the early Scifi Channel) briefly when I was a kid for like a week or two but otherwise that's all it did after its initial run.
I'm sure any attempt at an ALIEN show will be just as uninteresting as any of the other modern attempts to turn well-remembered genre films into shows. The WILLOW, LORD OF THE RINGS, DARK CRYSTAL, and DUNE shows have all been underwhelming, boring, and terrible, despite high production budgets.
That was back when I lived in LA and wasn't working a full-time job (the height of the 2008-2012 Recession) and was looking to break into national TV/film. I looked up online how to be in the audience for various live TV broadcasts and found out it was free if you sign up ahead of time. I went with a friend of mine who was also out of work. I remember we had to park and wait in a giant line at the CBS (?) studios in Hollywood and some producer lady walked around and chose all the "best looking" people to be in the first couple rows. The rest of us were essentially treated like cattle.
This was one of the most hard-to-find of the Eurocrime movies, at least in the English dub, for many years.
After finally seeing it (on a widely released BLU-RAY of all things!) I can say I was a bit underwhelmed by this offering. It tried hard to be very serious in places when it was dabbling in giallo and child-trafficking territory, but the comedic sidekick guy got awfully grating and the car chase scene was beyond goofy (what's with the guy spinning around on his head TWICE?). There's also the only example of a shootout ON a moving roller coaster that I've ever seen, which must have been a lot of fun for the actors to film but way too goofy to pop up in a hybrid giallo/polziotteschi/political thriller.
It is kinda strange how he lightly taps the car with his hand after parking it, which is very un-robot-like.
I think the biggest issue is when he's riding on the hood of the car and makes that wincing face right before punching through the windshield. You'd think an emotionless cyborg would not be too concerned with hurting himself enough to make a face, unless that's all "part of the act".
It's also strange that he doesn't just immediately kill Rick Rossovich when fist-fighting him in the bedroom, but throws him around a whole lot. We all know he could have just insta-killed him just like he did earlier with Brian Thompson.
Is there any evidence whatsoever that the workprint exists? All I hear are apocrypha claims about tapes here and there but nobody seems to actually have a digital file of it. The workprint of the John Woo's HARD TARGET spread like wildfire once that surfaced. I would imagine that this film's would go mega-viral as it's been so hyped up and talked about for years - even on youtube and facebook in the mainstream chat forums.
I agree on all the points, but I'm also surprised nobody has mentioned that Jabba doesn't physically match his appearance in JEDI in the slightest bit. How does he grow by 2-3x over the course of just a couple years? Is he supposed to be just a juvenile gangster slug in this film? How would he have had time to create a far-reaching criminal organization already if he grows this fast?
He also comes off as ineffective and weak in the special edition, so it not only kills the mystique but it also makes him a far less threatening character than he appears to be at the start of JEDI.
1997 was a crash-course for me in the value of keeping cut scenes cut. Often they just serve to make the movie worse and are best left as bonus features on some DVD. I learned a similar lesson around the same time after purchasing the "Extended Directors Cut" of DAWN OF THE DEAD.
I was in the audience once at a taping of Real Time with Bill Maher back in 2009. I was surprised that the audience was not as large as I had expected it to be... maybe 200 people tops. The "Applause" sign only came on at the very start and the very end of the show. All the laughter and applause in between was organic. There was one joke Maher told that nobody laughed at and he smugly said "F you guys!" to the audience.
But that's Real Time 15 years ago. I am not sure how things have changed or if it's massively different on a show like The View.
I was also surprised how close the cameras all were to the guests - they had special lenses that make it look like a longer shot than it actually is. All the cameras ran onto stage and clustered around the guests point-blank so you, as the audience, could barely see around them. You had a better view looking up at the giant monitor next to the stage than to actually try and look at the real thing.
I wonder where things went wrong there. I feel that somewhere around when 9-11 happened, CNN shifted from being mainly a talking head discussing news and various produced pieces, to being panels of "experts" offering their commentary and opinion. They introduced that news ticker at the bottom of the screen and often had big multi-paneled windows (like "The Brady Bunch") of all these suits just sitting there waiting their turn to offer 10-20 seconds of "insight" and frequently interrupt each other.
It's like our society had a collective dumbing-down around 2001 and it just kept getting worse.
He paid for it 10 times over when Bruce Lee's son whupped him good in RAPID FIRE, probably the best fight scene of Brandon Lee's short career.
Since Seagal basically fled to Russia for various (I am sure including legal) reasons, there's a chance he'll start to show up in Russian and Chinese cinema, probably in small roles. I'm a bit surprised that this hasn't happened already as he's been gone from the USA for something like 5 years at this point, and he still enjoys some popularity in foreign markets.
I worked on a few of his movies in the early 2010's and was very puzzled myself how his films were getting funding as he was already then considered a joke in the USA. What I was told at the time was that it was all based on presales to various foreign countries like Thailand where he was still popular. I assume that's still the case in places like Kazakhstan etc where his name can help sell a movie.
I think whether or not he appears in a decent film again comes down to him and if he chooses to even try to get back into acting (which takes more effort than he has demonstrated in many years). I doubt he speaks Russian that well even though he lives there so he'd be the odd man out English speaker (or bad Russian speaker) in a Russian action movie, which could potentially be good if it shows the same novelty that NIGHWATCH or HARCORE HENRY displayed. I would say that it's beyond him at this point as he's just too old, fat, and lazy but he did slim down and show some effort again when he did EXIT WOUNDS, so there's a slim chance some of that same ambition is still somewhere deep down inside of him, assuming he finds the urgency and enthusiasm to tap back into it.
1. MARKED FOR DEATH - just so damn violent and fun. I love the Jamaican bad guys too as they give the film an interesting flavor.
2. OUT FOR JUSTICE - similarly violent and fun, taken down a slight notch by Seagal's ridiculous attempt at a New York accent.
3. UNDER SIEGE - has the biggest production values of a Seagal film and the two best villains, hurt a little bit by Seagal having too many annoying "helper" characters which took away from his heroism and Seagal was starting to put on a distracting amount of weight.
Honorable mentions: ABOVE THE LAW (can't be in the top 3 because it's a bit slow at times), and HARD TO KILL (maybe his most "dumb but fun" film hurt by having a plot that's a bit too ridiculous). I also have a soft spot for UNDER SIEGE 2 because the setting is cool, but he was starting to seem a bit tired as an action star at that point.
Hah, you could also possibly blame Jackie Chan for killing the 80's action movie phenomenon as well. RUMBLE IN THE BRONX was such a massive hit that they started re-releasing his other, older films into American theaters as though they were new movies. This kinda over-inundated American audiences with cheap, badly dubbed action movies with comedic tones to them, so it helped make action movies feel less serious and cheaper than they had been, which inevitably cost audience over the long haul.
Also, the late 90's was when Chan started to heavily Americanize his brand and move into RUSH HOUR, SHANGHAI NOON, THE TUXEDO, etc. and stopped doing all his own stunts. Wasn't seeing him do his own stunts the entire reason for his existence as a star in the first place? :/
I would be inclined to agree that this was Seagal's first movie which I wasn't inclined to see (and I still haven't seen!) despite having seen everything he was in up to this point. Something happened in 1996 where I just wasn't that interested in seeing any more action movies from the action heroes I was a big fan of up to that point.
Van Damme - kinda killed my enthusiasm for him with STREET FIGHTER (a similarly daft vanity project in 1994 to Seagal's ON DEADLY GROUND). I had no desire to see THE QUEST when it came out, despite the okay-ish reviews and that it was a return to form for him to his underground fighting movies. MAXIMUM RISK similarly sounded dull to me, though I watched it later and found it to be "okay".
Schwarzenegger - TRUE LIES was good but its comedic tone, plus all the comedy movies he was in around this time sort of turned him into a joke. By the time ERASER came around I just didn't care anymore.
Stallone - JUDGE DREDD was just such a disappointment that I found myself taking a break from him as well in 1996, but he made the smart decision with COPLAND to go from being an action hero to a dramatic actor and it actually worked well for him (I retained my respect and enthusiasm for him the next couple years).
'96 was officially the year that the "80's Action Movie" died. They all started doing DTV action slop shortly afterward. Comedic action movies, theatrical audiences turning away from action movies, and over-reliance on poor CGI/VFX for stunt work (vs real thrills) killed it, encapsulated by the movie WATERWORLD. It had been a good run but you can't have good things forever.
You might want to check out STREETS OF FIRE and THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT. Both are kinda flawed masterpieces from the early 80's. STREETS is kinda the spiritual successor to THE WARRIORS weighed down by all the experimental but ill-fitting 80's rock music and 50's biker culture that it revolves around.
I'm kinda shocked that so many directors like him and George Miller keep making these action-heavy productions well into their 80's. It kinda throws water into the face of my theory that directors generally get lazier and safer as they get older (look at how George Lucas made the Star Wars prequels which were the most lazily made, uncreative big-budget films I have seen that can't blame all their issues on studio meddling). Just think how exhausting that must be to have to figure out where to place extras for battle scenes and how to manage all the coverage from the various units.
Either that or he just has really great assistants who make the whole process really easy for him while he essentially rubber-stamps the creative decisions (think John Huston while "directing" ANNIE).
His recent films, though not exactly "good" in my opinion, are far better and livelier than what you'd think an 80+ year old would be interested in making.
A similar situation happened in the late 80's with all the ABYSS knockoffs getting made before ABYSS even came out... and it's been sort of a standard Hollywood practice ever since to throw a film together real quick because a rival studio is making an anticipated hit. The Italians just aren't doing it as much because, compared to Hollywood films, they have less money now than ever.
In a funny way, the film's existence sort of encapsulates the entire Italian genre film industry, along with why a lot of films get rushed into production to capitalize off of the success of an anticipiated big hit that isn't even finished yet.
Back in the 50's, Hollywood started saving money by shooting the big epic movies in foreign countries, starting in Rome with QUO VADIS. The Italians built all these giant sets for the movies and there were leftover costumes too, so the Italians started making their own period films with the same sets and costumes. This led directly to the Peplum film genre most popularized by the Steve Reeves HERCULES movies, which were giant hits and made more money vs. their budget than anything Hollywood was doing.
The Italians ALSO got into the habit of copying American movies around the same time. The Spaghetti Western was a symptom of this, but so were the Eurospy, White Fang, Robin Hood, and World War 2 movies they got into in the latter 60's/early 70's, and then in the 70's with gialli (thrillers) and crime movies based on Godfather/Bullitt/French Connection.
1976 was sort of the high water mark of the Italian ripoff industry (both in terms of money and output), so of course a big notorious international production shooting in Rome was going to suffer the same fate. The difference here was that the Italians made (and released) the ripoff of the Hollywood (though it was a largely Italian production from a technical standpoint with American money behind it) "A-movie" CALIGULA, while it was languishing in post production. It was kinda smart because they could release their MESSALINA movie twice - once when it was done and again after the movie it was ripping off came out. This was not the only movie to use the CALIGULA sets though, as Bruno Mattei used it at least once (NERO AND POPPEA) as did Joe D'Amato (CALIGULA THE UNTOLD STORY), though both these were produced after CALIGULA was released. (CONTD)
He essentially has found a career balance of appearing in big movies in small supporting roles (like LINCOLN LAWYER, etc) or bigger, closer-to-starring roles in micro-to-low budget movies (like these Rene Perez movies he's been popping up in lately). I'm sure the prior are better for prestige and pay better but they're a little fewer and farther between than the latter (for which he doesn't have to audition for and shows up on set for a couple of days). In a way it's kind of a similar career to Bruce Campbell, Udo Kier, Richard Tyson, Danny Trejo, Michael Madsen, etc. He had a leading man phase and still gets some larger roles, but they're in low budget movies whose producers probably felt lucky to get him, while the mainstream stuff he is still in throws him into small character roles.