Musical Mondays Week 11 Repo! the Genetic Opera

[SaraK 1980]

I don't really understand why you would repo an organ. Is it to be used on someone else? Because if so, they likely shouldn't rip it out of someone and carry it around. If its just to punish a person for not paying, well, now they're never going to get money. The person is dead. Why not just cut off a finger or something to 'warn' them?

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

This movie, apparently, started as a short called The Necro-merchant's Debt, which is a WAY BETTER TITLE. Come on, that is awesome. I would buy that goth metal album, not REPO!

 

About the comic-book style expositions scenes, they were indeed frustrating and unnecessary. They interrupt the flow of the film (such as it is), since the music abruptly drops off during them. Plus, the Graverobber role exists solely for exposition as well, so the movie has two artificial contrivances to explain itself in a fucking MUSICAL, which is a genre engineered for characters to reveal inner thoughts and plot machinations. They just have to sing about them! It is their purpose!

 

Speaking of the Graverobber, he sings:

"A little glass vial?

A little glass vial!

And the little glass vial goes in the gun like a battery."

 

What kind of guns take batteries? I know this is a minor things compared to the brazen absurdity of the movie, but it made me laugh. As did the lines "We made an agreement! / I will honor that agreement!"

[EvRobert 1684]

Oh I wasn't saying that you were saying it was ripped off LOL I have just had this argument for so long. It's a theme that has gone back even before the late 90s/early 00's. I know of a book from the mid 90s that also explored this notion and I'm sure it goes back even further. It's not a troupe that has been well mined, but it does have some basis in science fiction.

 

I think there is room in the speculative fiction world for all sorts of organ repossession stories, i just wish this one was better.

[Cam Bert 8145]

It's not really an original idea. Look no further than Monty Python's Meaning of Life and the idea of live organ donations. They just added a back story and put it in a different genre.

[EvRobert 1684]

This movie, apparently, started as a short called The Necro-merchant's Debt, which is a WAY BETTER TITLE. Come on, that is awesome. I would buy that goth metal album, not REPO!

 

About the comic-book style expositions scenes, they were indeed frustrating and unnecessary. They interrupt the flow of the film (such as it is), since the music abruptly drops off during them. Plus, the Graverobber role exists solely for exposition as well, so the movie has two artificial contrivances to explain itself in a fucking MUSICAL, which is a genre engineered for characters to reveal inner thoughts and plot machinations. They just have to sing about them! It is their purpose!

 

Speaking of the Graverobber, he sings:

"A little glass vial?

A little glass vial!

And the little glass vial goes in the gun like a battery."

 

What kind of guns take batteries? I know this is a minor things compared to the brazen absurdity of the movie, but it made me laugh. As did the lines "We made an agreement! / I will honor that agreement!"

 

I think this movie (not just this song, which was probably the second best song and easily the catchiest) was trying too hard to make lyrical rhymes.

 

And yes The Necromerchant's Debt is a MUCH better title.

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

I don't really understand why you would repo an organ. Is it to be used on someone else? Because if so, they likely shouldn't rip it out of someone and carry it around. If its just to punish a person for not paying, well, now they're never going to get money. The person is dead. Why not just cut off a finger or something to 'warn' them?

I'm thinking the logic is that, after repossession, GeneCo would then sell the organs to another person. Maybe then without even telling the public that all their organs are.... gently used? That would have given the plot perhaps more direction. Maybe given Anthony Head's Repo Man some sort of card to play against Rotti, so he could reveal the limited supply of organs to the public to ruin Rotti if Rotti ever harmed Shilo.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

About the comic-book style expositions scenes, they were indeed frustrating and unnecessary. They interrupt the flow of the film (such as it is), since the music abruptly drops off during them. Plus, the Graverobber role exists solely for exposition as well, so the movie has two artificial contrivances to explain itself in a fucking MUSICAL, which is a genre engineered for characters to reveal inner thoughts and plot machinations. They just have to sing about them! It is their purpose!

I thought the first one was interesting. I thought it was a creative way to introduce us to the world. However, you're right; it still could have been a song giving us the same information.

 

And then they just wouldn't stop coming.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

It's not really an original idea. Look no further than Monty Python's Meaning of Life and the idea of live organ donations.

I thought about that part the whole time. And that segment was a mini-musical...

[EvRobert 1684]

I thought the first one was interesting. I thought it was a creative way to introduce us to the world. However, you're right; it still could have been a song giving us the same information.

 

And then they just wouldn't stop coming.

 

The first one would have been fine if they would have had say, Sarah Brightman narrate it, ala Jamie Lee Curtis in Escape from New York/LA. Instead it's 3 GOD DAMN MINUTES of reading a comic. 3 minutes, I'd rather be reading Batman.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Y'all are too damn fast for me and this is what I get for forgetting to watch this this weekend.

[EvRobert 1684]

(FYI, I really should be writing on one of two new plays I'm working on, but I'd rather be discussing this train wreck of a movie )

[kateacola 2440]

 

I think there is room in the speculative fiction world for all sorts of organ repossession stories, i just wish this one was better.

Definitely, I think it was an interesting concept but I agree..wish it was executed better.

 

Side note...what was up with the lighting in most of the movie?

[EvRobert 1684]

Y'all are too damn fast for me and this is what I get for forgetting to watch this this weekend.

 

I wish I had forgotten to watch this...

 

 

 

not really. I love getting SO angry at a "bad" movie. And I had been meaning to watch this sooner or later

 

[Cakebug Tranch 6873]

Y'all are too damn fast for me and this is what I get for forgetting to watch this this weekend.

Seriously, we need to know your take on this Taylor. Please watch it soon.

[tomspanks 9039]

DAE think Blind Mag should've been Mute Mag? Let's say she couldn't speak, let alone sing, due to the mysterious organ failure disease, but Geneco gave her a working larynx and voila, now she sings like the angels. I mean, so what Geneco wants to repo her Xmen eyes? She can still sing without them.

[EvRobert 1684]

Definitely, I think it was an interesting concept but I agree..wish it was executed better.

 

Side note...what was up with the lighting in most of the movie?

 

re: the lighting. I wondered if they were trying to give it the feel of being on stage while also trying to give it a musical quality.

 

Or maybe Bousemann (sp?) doesn't know how to light? I'm too lazy to look it up, but who was the cinematographer? It's possible that, knowing how fast they filmed their follow-up, The Devil's Carnival: Alleluia, (14 days) that they filmed this almost as fast and didn't have time to properly light it.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Seriously, we need to know your take on this Taylor. Please watch it soon.

I'm seriously hoping tonight will work out!

[EvRobert 1684]

DAE think Blind Mag should've been Mute Mag? Let's say she couldn't speak, let alone sing, due to the mysterious organ failure disease, but Geneco gave her a working larynx and voila, now she sings like the angels. I mean, so what Geneco wants to repo her Xmen eyes? She can still sing without them.

 

OMG yes! I was like "okay so she was blind before Marni died and could sing, she got eyes and could sing, if she loses her eyes, will she not be able to sing?" a larynx would make so much more sense.

 

Also, why is her contract with GeneCo so much a bigger deal then others? Does signing a contract in blood make it "more legal" in court? And it was already established that GeneGo had a legal right via congress to repossess. The whole signed in blood OH NO! deal was another step that made no sense-and frankly kind of childish. I know blood oaths USED to be a big deal, but today not so much let alone in 2035 or whenever this took place.

 

And I STILL want to know why her eyes are able to project holograms and shit, and no one else has this super duper magic tech powered organs.

[Cam Bert 8145]

One of the things that I found odd about this movie is the scope. Scope is not the exact right word but hopefully you'll see what I mean. Take something like Batman. Gotham is a large city and there is all sorts of criminals and crime that take place within it and Batman stops it all. Now if we look over to Metropolis we see it's the same situation but they have Superman. In Repo! you're set in this one city where GeneCo is located but yet they're passing bills in congress implying this is a nation wide problem and people are talking about the Repoman like some sort of Batman like boogeyman. So the question I had is what's going on in the other cities? Are there Repomen there as well? Is there more than one Repoman in GeneCo city, because there are a lot of dead bodies and why are there so many dead bodies if not people are being repo-ed all the time. Are they being trucked in from nearby cities? There is a curfew to prevent grave robbing but how long has this been going on that all the graves aren't already defiled? The problem is if this was on a stage, I think I'd think less of these issues however this movies tries to create a world and not just a few locations and more me it just raises more questions and takes me away from the characters.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Hey, you know those 'Rocky Horror' comparisons?

 

I've found the Rosetta Stone...

 

 

Goddamn it, Anthony Stewart Head! Stop it!

[Cam Bert 8145]

Goddamn it, Anthony Stewart Head! Stop it!

Giles is so much more a Brad.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

So....I never got into Buffy, so I didn't have a frame of reference for Anthony Stewart Head as Giles. My first thought when he came on screen was that he looked like a Bobo James Spader.

 

And now I want a version of this with Spader as the Repo Man.

[EvRobert 1684]

So....I never got into Buffy, so I didn't have a frame of reference for Anthony Stewart Head as Giles. My first thought when he came on screen was that he looked like a Bobo James Spader.

 

And now I want a version of this with Spader as the Repo Man.

 

But I don't think Spader can sing any better then Sorvino...

[Cam Bert 8145]

So....I never got into Buffy, so I didn't have a frame of reference for Anthony Stewart Head as Giles. My first thought when he came on screen was that he looked like a Bobo James Spader.

 

And now I want a version of this with Spader as the Repo Man.

My frame of reference for him will always be coffee guy first

 

[kateacola 2440]

 

Speaking of the Graverobber, he sings:

"A little glass vial?

A little glass vial!

And the little glass vial goes in the gun like a battery."

 

this was the only song that I semi- enjoyed (mostly just catchy enough to be memorable).

But in that song I couldn't help but think Alexa Vega needed some new ears, lol