Kaiju Shakedown is in full-on psychic mode today, issuing damning judgments against movies that are barely in production. Movies are constantly mutating - screenplays are re-written, fresh voices are hired, bad-idea-generating producers are replaced - so we'd be thrilled to have our predictions proved wrong about any of these movies. Some of them may actually wind up becoming modern day classics, but based on the info that's out there now it seems clear that...

These Movies Will Suck

The SEVEN SAMURAI remake will suck based on the review of the screenplay that's gone up over on CHUD. Set in the present the film is now about White People being hired to save innocent Thai farmers from evil Thai drug dealers. It's about time the world learned that White People can save non-White people from themselves better than anyone else on the planet: Hello, Afghanistan! Hi there, Iraq! The White People are here to save you now!

The Japanese remake of Akira Kurosawa's THE HIDDEN FORTRESS will suck based on this report from Ryuganji. It's not the fact that boy band member/chicken bait, Matsumoto Jun, will play the two bumbling vagabonds who wound up becoming the basis for George Lucas' R2-D2 and C3-P0 that indicates suckiness but the fact that the movie is being directed by awesome-special-effects-man-turned-blah-director, Higuchi Shinji. Shinji has a talent for taking brain-busting concepts (super-submarine tries to stop Hiroshima bombing! Earthquakes totally destroy Japan!) and magically turning them into mediocre movies (LORELEI! SINKING OF JAPAN: THE REMAKE!).

Action fantasy, LAUNDRY WARRIOR, will definitely suck because, well, it's about a Korean martial arts fighter and it's called LAUNDRY WARRIOR. Rosie O'Donnell comments further:

Eager to present the other side of the story, however, one of the film's producers, Michael Peyser (SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL) says, "With 15 set-piece action sequences and use of every kind of weapon from swords and machine guns to dynamite, plus 50 carnival tricks, LAUNDRY WARRIOR lends itself perfectly to the downloading and gaming environments." Or, more simply, "Our movie will not only suck but it will insult your intelligence at the same time."

Hong Kong movie, IN LOVE WITH THE DEAD, will suck because it's directed by the Pang Brothers, the unstoppable directing duo who brought the world RE-CYCLE, DIARY, TESSERACT, THE EYE 10 and THE MESSENGERS - all of which sucked. However, its suckiness is slightly mitigated by this sentence in the movie's plot synopsis: "Later when he goes to a Gas station, the staff says Ming smells like a corpse." Smells like a corpse? What flavor is that? Maybe it won't suck after all. (24FramesperSecond has a trailer)

Speaking of the Pang Brothers, their own remake of their own middling action movie, BANGKOK DANGEROUS, is assured a place in the International Gallery of Suck because a) it wrapped a year ago and is being dumped in February 2008, and b) this still:

You can look at more stills from the movie but they won't wash that taste out of your eyes.

Tomorrow: These Movies Will Rock!