Bloodrayne
Apr. 10th, 2006 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cdybedahlSince this was very much a Monday™, I decided to spend the evening watching something instead of trying to do anything and probably end up accidentally breaking stuff. And I decided to watch Bloodrayne. Of this movie I had heard bad things, including the fact that it's number 23 on IMDb's Bottom-100 list. But I thought that, hey, at least it's got Michelle Rodriguez. That's good enough for an hour and a half or so. We watched Ultraviolet, after all. Which is a movie that places solidly in the same genre ("Entertaining Crap") as Bloodrayne. So let's compare them on some relevant points: violence, effects, plot, babes and slashiness.
When it comes to fight scenes, Ultraviolet wins. Its fight scenes were way ridiculous, but they were fun to watch, decently choreographed and competently acted. Milla Jovovich is, as I've noted before, surprisingly good at that kind of thing. In Bloodrayne, the fights are pretty crap and sometimes downright boring.
In the field of special effects, Ultraviolet wins like woah. Yes, all right, in a few places things were much too obviously computer-generated. But overall it looked very good. The F/X in Bloodrayne are crap. Sometimes the fights look like they were taken from mid-80s low-budget slasher flicks. The vampire effects were done better in first-season Buffy.
Moving on to plot, Bloodrayne scores its first solid win. It hasn't got a good plot by any stretch of the imagination, and it's very clearly based on a computer game. But the plot it has in understandable, and it even provides reasonable excuses for the violence and gore. It's a much more servicable plot than Ultraviolet had. Heck, it's a better plot than either of the two Tomb Raider movies had.
Then we come to the babe factor. Where Ultraviolet had Milla Jovovich, which is a pretty strong point. Bloodrayne, on the other hand, has Michelle Rodriguez and Kristanna Loken. Rodriguez does a repeat performance of the overly violent macho bitch from Resident Evil and Lost. Not great art, possibly not even acting, but still fun to watch. As for Kristanna Loken, she was the first big surprise of the movie for me. She looks way hotter and acts way better here than what I unfortunately remember from Terminator III. Altogether, either Rodriguez or Loken by themselves would've been strong competition for Jovovich here, and with them together it's hardly even a fight. And just to remove any shred of a doubt about which movie wins the babeness round, Loken gives us a good long look at her bare tits.
As for slashiness, it's not even a competition. I don't remember if Ultraviolet even had any other female characters than Jovovich's Violet. The slashiness factor there was absolutely dead zero. Bloodrayne, on the other hand, pretty much starts out with Loken's Rayne locked in a cage and a pretty girl trying to help her so they can run away together. To a place where they can live happily. Again, together. Hell-o girlfriend. A little later, when the first girlfriend is safely dead, Rayne snogs a female vampire just before following another woman home. Given what Kristanna Loken said about working on this movie with Rodriguez, I had some hope for slashiness between them, but I hadn't expected as much or as obvious as what we get. By the time Rayne and Katarin (Rodriguez, that is) finally meet, Rayne has already given a strong impression of being about as straight as Xena's chakram. Then she and Katarin glower and fight and get into each other's personal space a lot. And Katarin is shown repeatedly lurking in the shadows watching Rayne train, too. All in all, Bloodrayne doesn't just win the slashiness fight over Ultraviolet, it utterly dominates. In fact, it's been a while since I last saw a movie this slashy.
So Bloodrayne wins. In my opinion, it's not even close to deserving its ranking on IMDb. It's certainly not a good movie, but it's far more entertaining than Ultraviolet was.
When it comes to fight scenes, Ultraviolet wins. Its fight scenes were way ridiculous, but they were fun to watch, decently choreographed and competently acted. Milla Jovovich is, as I've noted before, surprisingly good at that kind of thing. In Bloodrayne, the fights are pretty crap and sometimes downright boring.
In the field of special effects, Ultraviolet wins like woah. Yes, all right, in a few places things were much too obviously computer-generated. But overall it looked very good. The F/X in Bloodrayne are crap. Sometimes the fights look like they were taken from mid-80s low-budget slasher flicks. The vampire effects were done better in first-season Buffy.
Moving on to plot, Bloodrayne scores its first solid win. It hasn't got a good plot by any stretch of the imagination, and it's very clearly based on a computer game. But the plot it has in understandable, and it even provides reasonable excuses for the violence and gore. It's a much more servicable plot than Ultraviolet had. Heck, it's a better plot than either of the two Tomb Raider movies had.
Then we come to the babe factor. Where Ultraviolet had Milla Jovovich, which is a pretty strong point. Bloodrayne, on the other hand, has Michelle Rodriguez and Kristanna Loken. Rodriguez does a repeat performance of the overly violent macho bitch from Resident Evil and Lost. Not great art, possibly not even acting, but still fun to watch. As for Kristanna Loken, she was the first big surprise of the movie for me. She looks way hotter and acts way better here than what I unfortunately remember from Terminator III. Altogether, either Rodriguez or Loken by themselves would've been strong competition for Jovovich here, and with them together it's hardly even a fight. And just to remove any shred of a doubt about which movie wins the babeness round, Loken gives us a good long look at her bare tits.
As for slashiness, it's not even a competition. I don't remember if Ultraviolet even had any other female characters than Jovovich's Violet. The slashiness factor there was absolutely dead zero. Bloodrayne, on the other hand, pretty much starts out with Loken's Rayne locked in a cage and a pretty girl trying to help her so they can run away together. To a place where they can live happily. Again, together. Hell-o girlfriend. A little later, when the first girlfriend is safely dead, Rayne snogs a female vampire just before following another woman home. Given what Kristanna Loken said about working on this movie with Rodriguez, I had some hope for slashiness between them, but I hadn't expected as much or as obvious as what we get. By the time Rayne and Katarin (Rodriguez, that is) finally meet, Rayne has already given a strong impression of being about as straight as Xena's chakram. Then she and Katarin glower and fight and get into each other's personal space a lot. And Katarin is shown repeatedly lurking in the shadows watching Rayne train, too. All in all, Bloodrayne doesn't just win the slashiness fight over Ultraviolet, it utterly dominates. In fact, it's been a while since I last saw a movie this slashy.
So Bloodrayne wins. In my opinion, it's not even close to deserving its ranking on IMDb. It's certainly not a good movie, but it's far more entertaining than Ultraviolet was.
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Date: 2006-04-10 08:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-10 09:25 pm (UTC)And I haven't seen Girl Fight, so I can't comment on that.