Dear Boy, You Aren't The Rock and It's Called Acting

There's a famous Hollywood story about a conversation between Dustin Hoffman and Sir Laurence Olivier when they were filming the movie Marathon Man back in the 1970s.  Dustin Hoffman was/is a "method" actor, meaning (sort of) that he does in real life whatever his character does in the movie to help him "feel" the character.  Sir Laurence Olivier was an "actor" actor, meaning he understood it was make believe and actually acted his scenes and acted them well.  At one point during the movie (SPOILER) Dustin Hoffman's character doesn't sleep for something like 48 straight hours.  That meant real life Dustin Hoffman stayed up for something like 48 straight hours before shooting.  When Dustin showed up on set, disheveled, tired, and near useless, Sir Laurence, disgusted, told him, "Dear boy, it's called acting."  Sir Laurence Olivier, sometimes called the greatest actor to ever live, thought actors should act.  I wonder what he would have thought about Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior if he was still alive? He probably would have thought this: I wish I were dead, so I could spin in my grave. I wonder what Sir Laurence Olivier thinks now that he's dead. Probably nothing. I don't think the dead can think. It's sort of part of being dead.

That was a good paragraph. I don't really know what it means, but it was good. You know what isn't good? Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior. Full disclosure: I, Jay!!!, was a professional wrestling fan.  A HUGE professional wrestling fan. I loved every minute of Monday Night Raw. I was very passionate. If I didn't like the scripted outcome of a match, I would say, "These people don't know anything. Clearly the other combatant should have one the fake battle of supremacy because it's so important." I wanted them all to have nice leotards. One of my favorite wrestlers was the Rock. He was the best. He's still the best. He makes movies now. His movies are for kids and are sort of stupid but not bad. He's actually an okay actor. ANYWAYS: when Scorpion King 1: No Tagline Needed came out it starred the Rock, a professional wrestling god, in his first big-screen starring role. He had previously appeared in Mummy Returns as the Scorpion King…a selfish, evil king who sold his soul to some strange devil creature, so he could obtain unlimited power only to be taken down by Brendan Fraser thousands of years later. Classic yarn.

Universal Soldier 3 (or 1.5?): Regeneration (Whatever That Means)

Okay, so, um, this movie was really good? I did not expect that, like, at all.

This franchise makes absolutely no sense. The first movie comes out and is your spectacular late 80's/early 90's actioness (that's how you describe a female lion action movie). The second and third movie come out on TV and are reportedly so awful that they are erased from existence, so a new second movie is released with Jean Claude, the star of the first movie. The second movie was awful, but evidently not as awful as the first second movie, so it "counted." Then they needed to make a new third movie to replace the bad third movie but it was really the fifth movie, and it is AWESOME but also ignores the second second movie completely even though that one was supposed to count dammit! Also, this movie advances time like sixteen years and pretends that we are still at war with Russia.

Like I said, this movie once again decides to ignore pretty much everything that has happened before it. The second movie, where Jean Claude was inexplicably no longer a zombie robot shoulder but now a father and a man, either didn't happen or hasn't happened yet. I don't know. In this movie, Jean Claude is in a secluded Russian house being coached on how to become human. I don't think he has a daughter. Nor does he like boobs that much. He's indifferent towards them. He has a problem: he doesn't know how to become human because that would be way too much of a stretch for Jean Claude, so he beats up a guy in a restaurant for some reason. Then the US Army kidnaps him and says, "No human for you!" and makes him a zombie soldier again. This was good for Jean Claude (who, as it happens, has really done a decent job in the two "post-cocaine-addiction" era movies I've seen him in).