A Brief Word On This Madness Around The Mountains Of Madness

Graphic via /playlist blog

There was once a time in Hollywood when the biggest news were what movies were being made. Yesterday was not that time, the biggest buzzed issue was that Guillermo del Toro long planned, much hyped adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness" did not get the green light from Universal. The film had Tom Cruise attached to star and James Cameron producing, but it still was not enough. Del Toro is now directing "Pacific Rim" for Legendary Pictures, which is also about madness and monsters, no word if the mountains show up.

To hear the internet tell it, this is the worst thing that has happened in the history of movies. Universal is "chickenshit" for not making proclaims Aint it Cool. Fanboys, listen to me, relax seriously. Yeah I've read the novella and the script and they're cool. But as much as Lovecraftian neo-hippies think that this will be the greatest thing ever, I completely understand why a struggling movie studio doesn't want to invest in a 150 million dollar project about shape shifting aliens who experiment on gigantic penguins (yes, that is part of the actual story).

Del Toro is an interesting director, but I don't personally believe him to be director wunderkind many praise him to be.Sure he has interesting monsters in his films, but monsters don't make the man. And for all the people that hate the Hollywood machine, keep in mind that the Del Toro isn't the creative mastermind they think. To date he's made two comic book sequels (Hellboy II & Blade), one comic book movie (Hellboy), one movie based off a book (Mimic) and two original films that are heavily indebted to the spanish filmakers before him (The Devil's Backbone & Pan's Labyrinth). Simply put, he's good, but not the greatest. I'd take Nolan, Blomkamp, or Tarantino over him any day.