Future War

1997 movie that Claude Van Daame apparently turned down

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Evil beings borrow a few dinosaurs from earth's past and a few humans from earth's future to use as "trackers" and slaves. One of the slaves manages to escape and somehow ends up in 1990's America. As dinosaur heads and cyborgs chase him, he gets help from a nun. No kidding.

Another day, another terrible movie. The best part of this one is an (unintentional?) pun. The evil alien things are referred to as "handlers" several times during the movie, but the reason they have to kidnap earthlings to use as slaves is because they lack hands. Handlers lacking hands? Oh, the irony! That does bring up a question though. How did they build spaceships or time machines or whatever to come to earth for dinosaurs and people? And the cyborgs who chase him have hands. When were they created? That might be a plot hole. Regardless, if the best thing about your movie is a pun, you know you're in trouble. The first twenty minutes of so of Future Wars is the characters slowly walking through what I believe is the director's basement. It's a long, slow build-up to what can only be described as a special effects extravaganza--dinosaur PUPPETS! That's right--PUPPETS! They're intimidating puppets though, puppets that might scare the average three year old. Unfortunately, it limits what the dinosaurs can do in the movie. They can open their mouths and growl. They can lunge toward the camera. They can be held really close to the camera with the actors in the background so that they appear much larger than they actually are. Ummm. . .I guess that's about all they can do. Another effect used shows dinosaur and cyborg perspectives, an infrared deal for the former and this ugly robot visual thing for the latter. It's pretty distracting. The star is Daniel Bernhardt who, as the box above proudly proclaims, went on to do bigger and better things. I don't know who Agent Johnson even is from the Matrix sequels. Maybe Daniel Bernhardt is the reason why the last two Matrix movies sucked so much. Was he responsible for bringing down the franchise? He certainly doesn't help Future Wars very much. Here, he's a sort of Van Daame light. He roundhouse kicks frequently, screams at bums, runs in a way that would make Jimmy Stewart call him awkward, and has this stumbling way of talking (ostensibly because he doesn't know English although he picks it up in a couple hours) that makes the awful dialogue seem awfuller. Another thing I noticed: Following the 20 or so minutes of wandering around the director's basement, it flashes back to the runaway fleeing through a labyrinth of empty cardboard boxes as a dinosaur and a cyborg chase him. The cardboard boxes aren't supposed to be anything else. It's just a maze of empty cardboard boxes. It's shockingly cheap looking. But then there's a second fight scene in a maze of cardboard boxes and a third scene where cardboard boxes feature prominently. It really makes you start to wonder. I'm not sure what I started to wonder, but I wondered something.