Strange Directions, pt 2 

Strange Directions, pt 2

And SPEAKING of worried, remember when John Woo could do NO wrong?

Seriously. Remember back before, well, before he came to the U.S.? Back around the mid-1990s, John Woo was THE foreign director to be into: An action maestro who turned the coolest aspects of the martial-arts and gangland-gunfighting movies into a fusion genre that spawned "A Better Tommorow," "Hard Boiled" and "The Killer," three of the greatest action movies of all time?

At the time, the news that John Woo was to direct a live-action scifi blockbuster based on a classic video game would've been greeted by unanimous Movie Geek hosannas.

So it's depressingly telling of how overall-poorly Woo's Hong Kong-to-America transition has been going that today's Hollywood Reporter announcement that Woo has elected to produce (with an option to direct) a version of the popular Nintendo scifi franchise "Metroid" has been met by the Geek Community with something LESS than zealous praise.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news.php?id=4202

Either way, file this in the "POSSIBLE GOOD NEWS" bin. (right alongside the equally-decent news that Hong Kong master Corey Yuen has signed on to the "Dead or Alive" movie.) Woo's star may have lost A LOT of luster in between The Killer and Paycheck, but he's still a solid filmmaker with the right creds.

SIDE NOTE: Hey, want to LOOK like an informed Film Geek but not actually have to be one? Here's some prediction to keep you "ahead of the game" on "Metroid" fan-debates:

Every "cult" adaptation has at least one "detail" to it that studios almost immediately want to tamper with and fans would regard as blasphemy any attempt to change. With "Metroid," the rallying cry of the fans will almost certainly be "FULL ARMOR!" In the games, the heroine Samus Aran is a babe but does all her fighting covered head-to-toe in an armored battlesuit and helmet. It's a near-certainty that the studio will push VERY hard for modifications to be made so that they can have a top-billed "name" actress in the role with a visible face for glamour-shots, and an equal near-certainty that "Metroid" fans will greet such a concept with open hostility.

Just watch.