Turkish Star Wars [Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam] (1982) Review

Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam AKA Turkish Star Wars (1982)
Director: Çetin Inanç

Writer: Cüneyt Arkin

Producer: Mehmet Karahafiz

Editor: Necdet Tok

Cinematography: Çetin Gürtop

Music: No Original Music

Starring: Cüneyt Arkin, Aytekin Akkaya, Füsun Uçar, Hüseyin Peyda, and Necla Fide

Best Credit: All the composers they ripped off. Just scroll to "Music Department"

Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes

Rating: None (Comparable to PG)

Genre: Sci-Fi, Space Opera, Action/Adventure

Release Date: 1982 (no date)

Intro:  One morning, I was searching b-movie clips on Youtube and I came across a video that had what it considered the worst scenes of all time. In the comments, somebody put that a movie called Turkish Star Wars was worse than all of them put together. This, of course, piqued my interest, and I was able to find a version of the movie on Youtube and decided to give it a watch. Well, this was one of the most interesting decisions I have made in a while. Turkish Star Wars was something else. It was across the board awful, but at the same time entertaining and hilarious because of this. It is a blatant ripoff of Star Wars, recycling its shots and music, and it has hilariously bad special effects and action sequences. This one was a special b-movie that kind of left me with my mouth open wondering if I really just saw what I saw, but in a good way.

Plot: To be truly honest, I'm not exactly sure what the plot was.  It's kinda all like the weirdest dream you've ever had. You don't know why and how stuff is happening, but dammit, stuff is happening and you have to go along with it. From IMDb: "Two space cadets crash-land on a desert planet, where an evil wizard seeks the ultimate power to take over the world." Also, "The earth divides in to meteors after a nuclear war. Now Cuneyt Arkin and his friend Aytekin Akkaya has to fight against unknown enemy who is looking for human brains, which he will use to destroy the human kind." I'm surprised people got a plot out of this thing.

Things people may find “objectionable”: There are a lot of fight scenes, but they are so badly choreographed that none of them are brutal at all. There is a little bit of blood, but very little. I'd say it's comparable to the movie it rips off, Star Wars, as far as content is concerned.

What was Good: Nothing

What Could Have Been Better:

     -Directing/Cinematography: Bad. It's clear the director is not very good at his job. Several times throughout the movie, there's shot sequences that make absolutely no sense because they're moving to fast or badly edited. Since the director is the main one in charge of the production, I'm blaming all the terribleness of this movie on him.

     -Special Effects: Absolutely awful. Holy crap. First of all, the director steals shots from Star Wars every time he needs an space scene. There's a space battle within the first few minutes of the movie and the bad guys are supposed to be attacking the earth. The entire sequence is just a bad montage of random Star Wars clips of ships flying in and around the Death Star. Then there's the props. Late in the movie, a magical sword plays into the plot. When shown, it is more than clear how fake-looking it is. It looks like it's a fake sword made out of wood or something, probably because it was. And finally, there's the monsters. It's clear that it's just a bunch of people wearing stupid-looking costumes, and it comes off as hilariously bad. I think I've seen better costumes from an amateur theater production.

     -Script: Well, I'm not exactly sure since I don't speak Turkish. I'm just going to assume it was bad. I used Youtube subtitles, which was an interesting experience because they were cool and a nice feature to Youtube but sometimes they didn't provide the most accurate translations. See picture to the left for an example.

     -Music/Score: Well, it was actually a bright spot in the movie, because for the most part, the music was good. The only problem is that this good music was shamelessly stolen from Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. You'll just be sitting there watching a fight scene when all of a sudden, they start playing the Indiana Jones theme. It's so hilarious out of context. There was also a little bit of original music, but it was everything you'd expect out of a low-budget 1980s Turkish space opera in that it was incredibly cheesy.

     -Acting: Not horrible, but definitely not what I'd call good. This wasn't really an emphasis of the movie, and for the most part the movie can be understood just as well without any of the dialogue (a lot of people watched it without subtitles). It was just one of those things that didn't stick out as being particularly average or bad.

     -Story: Since I picked up little of the plot and it's evident from the IMDb reviews that a lot of others didn't either, I think it's safe to say it wasn't written or told exceptionally well. Also, as I mentioned earlier
     -Originality: Well, I'll admit I've never seen anything quite like Turkish Star Wars, and I'm pretty sure that isn't a good thing. I can't say it's original since it rips off so much crap from Lucasfilm, whether it be the soundtrack from Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark or all the space scenes from Star Wars. Hell, half the movie is just ripping off Lucasfilm. The story is also your typical space opera plot where this average guy gets this powerful weapon and defeats the guy trying to take over the galaxy.

     -Characters/Emotional Involvement: I did not care about any of the characters. I barely even felt like I knew any of them. The characters were about as two-dimensional as you can get.

     -Action/Suspense: Other than the use of Star Wars footage and music, it was the most entertaining part of the movie, just because of how ridiculous it was. The fight scenes were badly choreographed and looked totally faked. Sometimes they even used the old technique of speeding up the camera to make things look like they happened faster, which sometimes works, but not in this case and it just ends up looking really lame. To get a taste of the action sequences and the whole movie, check out the video to the right. -------------------------------------------------->

     -Editing: Simply terrible, especially when they inserted the stolen Star Wars shots. The shots were recycled, which is always a no-no in filmmaking, and they were edited in a way that made no sense. If there are any aspiring editors out there reading this, watch the movie to learn what not to do.

Final Score: One phrase sums up my reaction to Turkish Star Wars fairly well: What the hell did I just watch? This thing is so ridiculous, it really needs to be seen to be believed. It is truly one of the most shockingly bad movies I have ever seen. If you're a die-hard b-movie fan like myself, this one should be on your watch list. If you aren't, steer clear or just watch some clips of its best moments on Youtube.

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Aliens (1986) Review

ALIENS (1986)
Director: James Cameron

Writers: James Cameron, David Giler, and Walter Hill

Producers: Gordon Carroll, David Giler, Walter Hill, and Gale Anne Hurd

Editor: Ray Lovejoy

Music: James Horner

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Carrie Henn, Paul Reiser, and Lance Henriksen

Runtime: 2 hours 17 minutes

Rating: R ("monster violence" and language)

Genre: Sci-Fi, Action, Horror

Release Date: July 18, 1986

Before Watching the Movie: This is a sequel to Alien, but it's not totally essential to see it before seeing Aliens. All you really need to know is that Ripley (Sigourney Weaver's character) was on a ship and her entire crew was killed by an alien and she put herself to hyper sleep at the end after blowing up the ship and jettisoning the alien into space.

Intro: My friends and I gathered together for a movie night about a week ago, and decided we would watch Back to the Future on Blu-Ray, since my friend had brought it. After waiting 20 minutes for the stupid Blu-Ray player to load the disk and then once it did load, somehow making the disc menu, along with all the buttons, disappear, we gave up and decided to watch Aliens instead.  While Alien is a good movie and regarded as a classic by many, Aliens, its sequel, actually manages to be better through great directing by James Cameron and lots of action, suspense, and unpredictability.

Plot: Ellen Ripley (Weaver) has been put in cryogenic sleep since the end of Alien, where she was on a cargo ship that was terrorized by an alien they picked up as part of a covert operation. She is the only survivor, and she is found in the capsule floating in space by her company 57 years later. Back at corporation headquarters on earth, she frantically tries to explain the danger of these aliens to everyone while she finds out terraformers have started colonizing the same planet her ship found the alien on. When contact is lost with the planet, she agrees to go along with a group of marines to the planet to wipe out the aliens. While there, they find a young girl named Newt (She is the little girl Ripley is holding in the poster. Also see picture below) who is the lone survivor of the entire colony and who Ripley adopts. Though the marines are cocky about the mission to begin, they soon find out that Ripley is right and that exterminating the aliens won't be as easy as they thought.

My artistic (As in, I know how to use Photoshop)
rendition of Ripley and Newt. No, that isn't
what Newt looks like in the movie, thank God.

Things people may find “objectionable”: There is a good deal of violence in the movie, but not as much gore as you'd expect. There are also a few uses of the f-word, but it's not excessive.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography: 10/10. James Cameron, as always, does a great job with the directing, and the visuals don't disappoint.

     -Acting: 9/10. Good performances by pretty much everyone. Sigourney Weaver is great as always in the role she's known for.

     -Writing: 8/10.

          -Story: 8/10. Solid story with no obvious plot holes. It got a little cliché and over-the-top at times, but not so much that it ruined the movie at all. Also, the story had a nice degree of unpredictability to it, as I didn't know how the characters would escape or which ones would escape (besides Ripley, of course).

          -Script: 8/10. Not a bad script at all, though some of the lines for one of the marine characters (I can't remember his name) were a little cheesy, as the only adjectives he  seemed to know were "big/bad-ass" and "huge." Also, he ended pretty much all of his lines with the word "man." A majority of his lines sounded a lot like, "That was a big-ass alien, man!!"

     -Special Effects: 8/10. By 1980s standards- incredible. Today, some of it kind of looks cheesy, but in watching it, you need to keep in mind how good the effects are for the mid-80s. People will likely be saying the same things about Avatar (another James Cameron movie) in 20 or 30 years.

     -Music/Score: 8/10. Solid score that fit the movie pretty well.

     -Power/Emotion: 8/10. The movie makes you concerned about at least Ripley and Newt, if not anyone else. This is one area I thought the movie was definitely better than its predecessor, since I found it hard to care to deeply about any of the characters except for Ripley, since it was fairly clear they were all going to die.

     -Adrenaline: 10/10. As an action movie, Aliens succeeds in keeping you thrilled pretty much the whole way through, even though it takes a little while to get started. This similar pattern of a slow beginning that leads into an exciting and suspenseful rest of the movie is followed in both Alien and Prometheus, which are parts of the same franchise.

     -Mind-Bendingness: 7/10. The movie features a some cool concepts, such as the terraformers and a couple other spoiler-related things. However, blowing your mind is not as much of an emphasis as it is in Prometheus or Avatar.

     -Humor: 3/10. Not the point of the movie, but there were a couple funny moments that were worked in.

     -Best Credit: Barbara Coles as "Cocooned Woman."

     -Final Score: Aliens was a great movie and to me it was better than Alien, as it's well-rounded and thrilling. I'd recommend this to anyone who like sci-fi and anyone who has seen Alien, since it is a continuation of the story, and is close to Alien in terms of quality at worst.

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