George Lucas’s black guilt campaign failed over the weekend, as Red Tails‘ “foolish Africans” were no match for Kate Beckinsale’s hot ass fighting werewolves (or is it vampires?) in Underworld: Awakening. Underworld and Red Tails went one and two, while Marky Mark once again stopped 9/11, with Contraband beating out Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for the three spot (“HOW YOU LIKE THOSE WAHLBURGAHS, LOOZAH! GO PATS!”). Meanwhile, poor Gina Carano and Haywire opened lower than even Tom Hanks’ 9/11 film. It’s okay, baby, you still explode my tower, if you know what I mean. (I am so, so very sorry for that).

Red Tails rated 33% among critics, but received an A grade from audiences (via cinemascore), almost the inverse of Haywire‘s 82% among critics and D+ on cinemascore. Audiences apparently were so happy to see black war heroes that they ignored lines like “Die, you foolish African,” and “I guess there’s more to you coloreds than I thought!”, while critics failed to recognize that a movie that isn’t bad isn’t the same thing as one that’s good. Red Tails did an incredible job convincing black people that it was their duty to see a crappy movie because it had black people in it, while MMA fans tried to do the same with Haywire.

I’m not a black dude, so I can’t really speak to the Red Tails guilt campaign, but I’m pretty sure there were black movies before this, and there will be plenty after it, whether or not we give George Lucas our money for his uncredited remake of The Tuskeegee Airmen. But as a die-hard MMA fan, I can tell you that if I was in the habit of seeing movies just because MMA stars were in them, there are plenty of Hector Echavarria movies I could rent.

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The American dream is not dead.

Opening All Over Your Face and Chest: Haywire, Underworld Awakening, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Red Tails

FilmDrunk Suggests: I’m excited to see Haywire for Gina Carano and my boy Channing Tatum. Vince said he didn’t like Haywire because it was stale, but it was actually because Gina Carano wouldn’t respond to his letters that he sprayed with Drakkar and sealed with a glittered mushroom stamp. He’s such a romantic!

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All Steak No Sizzle

Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 output reminds me a lot of post-Pinkerton Weezer. I don’t want to speculate as to what hurt Soderbergh’s feelings the way Pinkerton’s poor sales and appearance on Rolling Stone’s worst albums of 1996 list (I’ll never forgive you for that, Rolling Stone) hurt Rivers Cuomo’s, but Haywire and Contagion feel like Soderbergh playing with genre movies, the same way everything after Pinkerton felt like experiments with different pop styles, rather than an earnest attempt to make personal music. Taking on less personal work a great way to pump out product quickly and not be too emotionally invested if it fails (because they’re essentially cover songs anyway), but you can sense the detachment. And a detached artist is… kind of boring.

Haywire is Soderbergh’s contribution to the Bourne/Hanna/Columbiana/Abduction sassy vengeance oeuvre, with the twist being that he cast former MMA star Gina Carano, one of the only pretty girls around who actually looks believable beating up grown men (the other? you guessed it, Maya Angelou). Adding believability is almost revolutionary in the hot-chick-beats-up-dudes genre, and Soderbergh, competent as always, does a solid job building a story that tracks, and never makes you go “what? That’s stupid.”

Only he forgot one key ingredient – fun. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding that Haywire‘s audience cares about which secret agent double crossed Agent Sexpunch (was it C-Tates? Banderas? Ew-Greg?), when really we just want to see her look sexy and punch stuff. There’s one truly transcendent fight scene in a hotel room that hits just the right note of intimate brutality, where Gina seems like she might f*ck you but will probably kill you, but the rest of the film just sort of chugs along clinically, hitting all the positions, but never quite giving you the full girlfriend experience.

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After the jump, burly MMA sex symbol (probably the only time I’ll ever mean that as a compliment) Gina Carano does her best Jason Statham impression in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, in the role of ass-kicking rogue government operative that would normally go to someone like The Stath (frickin’ Title IX). I don’t know about you, but to me it feels like Steven Soderbergh, somewhere along the line, between no one wanting to watch his two-part, four-hour movie about Ché Guevara, The Informant! being a disappointment at the box office (full disclosure: I thought it was great), and Sony pulling the plug on Moneyball a few days before filming (so that they could make the mind-numbingly conventional version they eventually made), Soderbergh decided, “You know what? Screw it. You don’t want me to try to do something unconventional? Fine. I’m gonna make the glorified B-movies everyone else makes and do a remake of Outbreak where Gwyneth Paltrow gets a graphic autopsy. Then I’m gonna shoot one of those dumb, chick-on-the-run movies, just so I can blow stuff up and watch Gina Carano’s boobs bounce while she triangles people. And you know what? It’s still gonna be better than Salt.”

(at this point I imagine him doing that “suck it” thing with his forearms over his crotch)

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“Hi! Uh… Can I take a picture of your boobs, I mean vagina, I mean costume?” -Comic Con in a nutshell

Whoa, it’s empty in here on weekends. That’s right, don’t adjust your monitor, I’m posting on a Saturday. I promise I won’t make a habit of it. It’s just that I’ve got so many photos from Comic-Con that I had to get a head start. Don’t worry, this is only the beginning. I’ll be back Monday with even more awesome cosplay and LARPing and pictures surreptitiously taken of girls’ butts. Haha, just kidding. …Or AM I?

People wonder if Comic-Con is just a giant convention where they’ve convinced people to pay to watch advertisements and trailers for films that will be online five minutes later. That’s a big part of it, the part that’s like a more-elaborate theater lobby, where you walk around looking at posters and glorified dioramas without actually seeing a movie. But the other part, the cool part, is the regular folk in their costumes (not the promo girls like in the banner pic, though they’re nice to look at). It’s pretty hard to be a cynical, jaded dick when you see how happy and earnest and adorable people are to be showing off their home-made costumes on the one day of the year where it’s encouraged. People will stop whatever they’re doing just to pose for a picture with a stranger, and seem to enjoy every minute of it. Just when I start to hate all the hype and marketing and people stepping on my feet, they always make me smile. Oh, and those girls in the banner pic were the Sushi Girls, whatever that means. And yes, they both had bikini-line tattoos. They did NOT enjoy it when I asked if they were scratch and sniff.

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