Welcome to Schlocktober!

I am sometimes asked to explain how/why it is I don’t go about referring to myself specifically as a political “libertarian” anymore; usually in the context of an accusation that I (and others) mainly dropped it because it’s been adopted by the so-called “Tea Party” and thus no longer “cool” – which, to be fair, is at least partially accurate…

The thing of it is; while I am mostly simpatico with “small-L” libertarians on policy and civics details, where we seem to differ is when it comes down to broader worldview.

Simply stated, it strikes me that “name-brand” Libertarianism as it exists now is about “freedom” in general but regards absolutist ECONOMIC freedom – in the form of low-to-nonexistant taxation – as the most important form thereof. And while I’m as averse to wasteful spending as anyone I can’t quite go there with them. Entertained as I am by the fantasies of “Atlas Shrugged,” Galt’s Gulch (or Rapture, for that matter) is not my vision of a better world.

The “better world” I’M striving for is a world free not from the frequently irritating but largely practical economic limitations of a shared society; but rather freed from the unnecessary boundaries of outdated systems of “morality” and/or “consequences” rendered no-longer-mandatory by science.

To place it in less flowery language: My “highest freedoms” are the freedom of individuals to eat, drink, smoke, shoot WHATEVER they want (with the ALL IMPORTANT caveats of adulthood and responsibility) and to fuck, marry, divorce WHOEVER they want (with the ALL-IMPORTANT caveats of adulthood, consent, sound-mind, etc) impeded by as few unnecessary consequences as possible; and if a tax-funded “social safety net” is part of the aparatus necessary to make such freedom-from-unecessary-consequence possible… then, quite frankly, Uncle Sam can HAVE my goddamn money.

I dunno if there’s a “name for that position, but it’s mine.

Well, that didn’t take long.

Hero Complex has a short interview up with Kevin Tancharoen, currently living the dream of every fan-film maker (except, y’know, for the part about already being a professional film director) after his “Mortal Kombat” YouTube short (nobody is buying that the short was “accidentally” made public, yes?) got him put in charge of the new “Mortal Kombat” movie.

I’d joke that the piece reads like something I’d draft as a parody of everything wrong with genre film; but in this case it actually reads like a parody of everything wrong with genre film I already did.

It’d be tacky to repost the whole (short) article, so here are the choice bits (in boldface) from Tanchroen’s mouth:

“Yes, my sensibilities lean more toward realism as opposed to the more mythological stuff that Mortal Kombat automatically has.”

Kill me now.

“It will be more realistic and gritty than the last two movies, but also a very big story.”

I don’t even know what these words mean anymore…

“I want it to be bloody, but in a natural sense and not gratuitous, crazy spurting pools of blood. That takes it to a different level of camp.”

So, basically the only thing that originally distinguised the property – and the number one thing people agreed was missing from every earlier version – he doesn’t want to do. This is up there with the stories Kevin Smith tells about Jon Peters wanting Superman to never fly or wear his costume.

Well, at the very least he’s not shameless enough to name-drop Christopher Nolan – the go to “justifier” for this sort of thing. Oh, wait…

“Chris Nolan started the trend of making everything in this type of genre grounded.”

Someone needs to draft a special Guiness World Record for being the best movie ever to have an almost-entirely negative effect on it’s genre and just hand it to “The Dark Knight” at this point.

“What took most people by surprise with my shorts, I think, is that you never would think of putting Mortal Kombat in a realistic setting.”

Imagine that…

“But I believe it’s a fighting game and it’s meant for that purpose.”

I’m not even kidding here: If anyone has an english-language translation of what the hell that sentence is supposed to mean, I want to hear it.

What’s kind of infuriating is that, for the same bargain-basement price Warners is almost-certainly getting Tancharoen for, a producer who actually gave a shit about this material could’ve likely scooped up a mid-level action guy from the Hong Kong, Korean or even Japanese set that actually knows how to do this sort of thing. (Takeshi Miike could probably knock the best Mortal Kombat movie ever out in a weekend.)

Then again, maybe it’ll be good. Just this last week a movie I’d been fully-prepared to despise – with very good reason – turned out to be shockingly good (as in “this is pretty good, and I am shocked by this”) so who knows? Either way, I look forward to hearing the usual off-topic reminders that no video game originating prior to 2001 deserves to be a movie – don’t let me down, kiddies 😉