In which I cop to watching terrible TV movies

I somehow ended up watching all four hours of the horrible TV adaptation of XIII last Sunday and last night, and boy am I sorry.

Here’s the main problem: XIII was a very well-received graphic novel first, over in Belgium of all places. It then made the leap into an interesting first-person shooter whose charm was enhanced by the fact that it was done not in a photorealistic style, but instead as though the player were playing the comic. Nice idea, and apparently well-executed.

Well, here comes the nearly inevitable film adaptation, clearly shot on the cheap with has-been (as in “has-been MUCH THINNER before now”) Val Kilmer in a bit part, and Stephen Dorff as the eponymous XIII.

And it’s bad. Really bad. Granted, there probably hasn’t been a decent plotline yet that actually works well in all three formats (game, comic, TV) because of the various demands and quirks of each medium, so they definitely get SOME slack for taking a swing at it. And there were parts that weren’t awful, but on the whole the entire affair ran on rails, telegraphing twists well before they happened. Plus, since it needed to anchor two evenings, it felt super-bloated at four hours (well, minus commercials). Add to this the fact that the plot of Shooter is basically the same thing, but in a much better movie, and you get some annoyance.

However, the single greatest area this steamer fails is in preventable problems clearly the result of a complete disregard for verifiable facts. To wit:

  1. One scene, said to be “the day before election day,” or early November, shows Arlington National Cemetery under a few inches of snow. Snow that early in or around the District would be freakish and weird, and while not unprecedented, is still out of place here.

  2. Compounding the error, though, is the very next shot of the film, which shows a lush and verdant White House lawn. Trees are full of leaves, the sky is blue, and there’s no hint of winter. Um, what? News flash to filmmakers: The White House is only about two miles from Arlington, dumbasses.

  3. In another shot displaying a willful ignorance of basic DC geography, a phone call placed from “a pay phone in Dupont Circle” shows the caller with a clear view of the Capitol down a wide boulevard. Leaving aside for a moment the basic problem — the Capitol isn’t visible from Dupont — the view provided OF the Capitol is from the east, and Dupont is northwest.

  4. A plotpoint of the film is a presidential race between a successor Vice President and the opposite-party candidate, who happens to be the assassinated President’s brother. That’s a little weird, but here’s the really fun part: a political ad we see in the film claims that the Vice President “as governor of Illinois voted to cut funding for the Marines.” Um, what?

  5. A late-film development is the deployment of a dirty bomb at a Bethesda polling station on election day, as a way to allow the government to impose martial law and disrupt the electoral process. This opens the door for a twofer of stupidity. First, we see elaborate, TSA-style security measures at the polling station, which have never been in place any time I’ve voted anywhere.

  6. The real screamer, though, is that (according to dialog in the film) DC suburb Bethesda, Maryland is “four hours from DC.” That’s some metro line, isn’t it?

Compare all this to the slavish attention to real-world geography shown by the Fallout 3 team on a video game.

Sigh. It’s what I get for watching a broadcast network, really. If NBC/CBS/ABC/Fox ever get something decent on the air, it’s got to be a complete accident.

5 thoughts on “In which I cop to watching terrible TV movies

  1. Not going to argue about what entertains; that which amuses… well, it amuses–’nuff said. I would, however, like to offer a shout-out for the XIII video game. I have played versions on both Xbox and PC, and they both rocked. If you have some old tech laying around and are looking for a rocking good time, the game is well worth it. It features the voice talents of Adam West, and if that isn’t enough of a ringing endorsement, then, in the immortal words of Morris Day, “I don’t wanna see you no mo’.”

  2. Yeah, I heard good things about the game, but you know well what my gaming is like ATM. ;) Mostly, my point was about the avoidable suckage in the ill-conceived “film.”

  3. No argument there. My own tv viewing is pretty limited of late. I watch LOST, Phineas & Ferb, and whatever Hannah Montana-like show happens to be on Disney at the moment.

    Really, if I had any agenda, it was a plug for my hero, Adam West. On the most perfect day of my life, right after I’m elected protectorate of the people, I’ll go out partying with Adam West and William Shatner. And then I’ll die mid-March, but at least I can say that I’ve partied with West and Shatner.

  4. I am partial to Life on Mars on ABC. Check it out. It is 70’s popart porn. The story lines go form scifi to drama, to the lyrics of a song.

  5. Yeah, with that cast, it can’t miss, or so you’d hope. I started watching it and got distracted, but the Tivo was still catching it for me. I’m like 4 or 5 episodes behind right now. It’s very well done; I got a real kick out of the last one I watched, which was the “Angel did/did not throw the little black girl off the roof” one. It was full of Wire alums:

    — The old version of Clams, his mentor, was Clarke Peters a/k/a Lester Freemon — The priest, old and young, was Chris Bauer a/k/a season two’s Frank Sobotka — Suede, the black panther leader guy, was Chad Coleman a/k/a Dennis “Cutty” Wise

    Plus, if you watch House, you got a kick out of who played the young version of Clams (“Big Love”, the black Mormon who was part of the influx of new associates at the beginning of season 4.