Movie Review: Monster Ark

I was watching Sci-Fi last week when there was a commercial for a movie where there was more than one Noah’s Ark, and one of them was EVIL.  The movie was called Monster Ark, and I admit, I geeked out.

As you know, I’m a B-movie nerd, and overall monster geek.  Heck, I’ve written 2 monster based novels now, (yes, MHI:2 THE ROUGH DRAFT is almost done).  So when I heard that commerical, the wheels started turning.  Holy crap, what an awesome idea.  Imagine what you could do with an idea like that.  An ark filled with other animals that never made it.  Man, I could write one heck of a cool story off of that idea.

So I tuned in to the Sci-Fi Original Picture Presentation of Monster Ark, and like 95% of the Sci-Fi original pictures, it was pretty lame.  You would think that by now I would have learned my lesson.  If it is a Sci-Fi original picture it’s probably gonna suck.  There will be a lame CGI monster, some propane explosions, and random nameless people will suffer CGI death, with CGI blood, at the CGI claws of the CGI monster. 

And there was just one monster.  And it sucked.  No ark full of monsters. 

As usual, the producers couldn’t find a single person who had ever actually been in the military to consult and point out that soldiers don’t shoot their rifles from the hip, while yelling incoherantly, while wearing black in the desert, and screaming things like “Stand Down!” when nobody is actually doing anything that they might actually, you know, stand down from.  Tiny Lister played a major who actually yelled “Don’t you die on me, Boy!” after yelling for somebody to stand down, so the dialog was just awesome.

None of the movie actually makes a lot of sense, and you get the feeling that they just didn’t really care when they made it.  I’ve decided that caring is what seperates Good B-Movies from Bad B-Movies.  There are two moments that are supposed to ‘homages’ to Indiana Jones, except in one scene where the rip off the Map Room At Tanis scene, they just happen to be able to pull the heads off of two shovels, stick them together (like legos!) and the staff is the right length to show them where the… heck, I can’t even remember what the hell they were looking for at this point… was. 

Overall, just keep on walking.  I was only mildly entertained, and I’ve got low standards, and I was dehydrated and sunburned from teaching pistol, and when I’m that incoherant, I’ll go for just about anything.

Cover Art for Monster Hunter International: Baen Edition
The Pink-Camo Breast Cancer Charity Gun Post

8 thoughts on “Movie Review: Monster Ark”

  1. Have you caught Blue Demon? I’d have to ask Stingray what channel it was on (Tivo pulled it for us), but it was an incredibly FUN B-movie. The difference was, as you say, in whether the people who made the movie cared- these people clearly cared a lot.

    “But that’s illegal!”

    “You idiot! We’re the government! That’s what we DO!”

  2. Couldn’t watch the whole thing. Watched about 15min in the begining and saw how it ended. That was more than enough. Thought they stole the idea of the secret society protecting the secret from the Mummy movies and the whole “I believe the staff is there” bit was retarded. Yeah look a little harder and gee what did we find in the stone box…the staff. Lame

  3. Heck, I’ve written 2 monster based novels now, (yes, MHI:2 THE ROUGH DRAFT is almost done).

    * twiddles fingers *

    * waits….*

  4. And they borrowed the end from Raiders as well.

    How lame would that be to be a member of a secret society for one of the generations that had nothing to do? You have to be ready on a moments notice but generally have nothing to do while you wait. Be it protecting the Grail, or the secret of the Mummy or the DiVinci Code or now Noah’s stuff. Lots of secret brotherhoods waiting around doing nothing. No wonder the middle east is a mess.

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