Cyclops (2008)

I liked the movie Cyclops very much. The King Kong "bring the big beast back alive so we can display him for profit but he gets loose tearing up the town before we finally kill him tragically" plot is classic. The Roman Emperor granting bread and circuses to the people as cheaply as he can manage it (while having his underlings make it seem like a big deal) and constantly tying the hands of the only seemingly competent military man who can control Cyclops is classic government satire. That same military man being spared by Cyclops in the exciting Colesium scene is classic "Androcles and the Lion" material. The Cyclops defending himself and his property and trying to win his freedom (albeit rather bloodily) is heroic. The historic period recreation (though it may be inaccurate)is interestingly done. The monster is portrayed in many more scenes then the average monster films which try (and usually fail) to build up suspense by gradually having their monsters appear. Technical picks aside I though this a very good film.

No one intends for this film to be anything but "cheese". Historical facts go out the window, but that's okay, because this is a Cyclops.This Cyclops is mean, and eats people's innards. And he can kick Hannibal the cannibal's butt. There's loads of gore for the brats, but the dorks will want more outlandish special effects. We are given more readable actions, so there is a logic of plot and story line to follow than the "video arcade" special effects the dorks would stuff down our throats. This speaks well for the director.One mark against it is the ease with which our hero communicates with the Cyclops. This went beyond cheese.And it is cheese. Lots of fun. Unlike most films, the good guys sometimes win. That's a nice twist. But what makes this into a good cheese, of the Provolone kind, are the fairly well defined characters. Besides the lead, we get several characters we can follow and believe. Gordion and Julian in particular. Even the two bad guys, Tiberius and Falco, have some saving graces. A lot of one scene characters are in for laughs, and do a lot of ignorant things, but this is understandable in human evolution for the scientific minded, because this is set in an unknown BC year, before some of the genes for stupidity vanished. And, in fact, this is Rome, where arrogance did exist in humans, which makes these foolish characters much more realistic than the illiterate masses want to admit.The female lead is ultra beautiful, at least by male standards, but isn't a "woman's woman", but more of the male fantasy woman. She doesn't fit the mode of the former, who we know survive these films, so the viewer never really knows if she'll survive. That does make for suspense.I would've given it a higher mark if there was less gore, and if the scenes where the Cyclops communicates with the hero were deleted. That was ridiculous. The story was fun, though, and entertaining.

Cyclops is set in ancient Rome where three local men run into a giant bad tempered Cyclops who proceeds to kill & eat two of them, the third Roman guy escapes & reports back to the relevant authorities. Ruler of Rome Emperor Tiberius (Eric Roberts) commands his right hand man Falco (Craig Archibald) to order Roman soldier Marcus (Kevin Stapleton) to take his men & capture the Cyclops, what the boss wants the boss gets & Marcus does indeed capture the Cyclops & it is imprisoned for use in gladiatorial battle. Meanwhile a group of slaves try to escape & are caught, Marcus tries to free one of them & he is arrested for treason, all of them are ordered to fight in the Colosseum as gladiators for the entertainment of the Roman public who love this sort of stuff, apparently. The slaves, Marcus & the Cyclops decide not to fight each other but the brutal & corrupt regime of Tiberius as they seek their freedom...Directed by Declan O'Brien this is yet another Sci-Fi Channel 'Creature Feature' that was shot in Bulgaria although set in ancient Rome & produced by B-Movie legend Roger Corman (in an amazing career spanning over half a century he has nearly 400 credits as producer & over 50 as director) & his wife Julie Corman, apart from one or two decent gore scenes & some unintentionally funny moment Cyclops has little if nothing going for it. First off despite being set in ancient Rome the makers were not interested in historic accuracy so don't expect a history lesson as the dialogue feels very modern rather than how you would expect the ancient Romans to speak, While the first half of Cyclops is quite fun in a fast paced but very daft & sometimes embarrassing sort of way it quickly descends into a Gladiator (2000) rip-off with some former Roman army dude being betrayed & becoming a gladiator. I can't believe I just compared Cyclops to the multi Oscar winning Gladiator! In terms of quality the two are literally worlds apart. Cyclops is at it's best during the first half when it's more of a 'Creature Feature' with the Cyclops running amok in ancient Roman killing lots of people in fairly gory ways, the only problem is it doesn't last & if that's really the only thing a film has going for it then there's something wrong. Most of the usual clichés, predictability, happy endings all round & poor scripting are present.The one thing that did surprise me about Cyclops is how gory it was, there are ripped-off heads, heads cut off with axes, ripped-off limbs, blood splatter, the Cyclops takes revenge on an annoying kid & bites his hand clean off, it rips someones leg off, there are some ripped open stomachs, a guy is impaled on a spear, there's a slashed throat & more. The only problem are the CGI computer effects which render some of the gore scenes laughable & speaking of CGI computer effects lets talk about the title character himself. There is not one single special effect shot in Cyclops that I would even consider as convincing, the CGI Cyclops effects are truly awful, it changes size between shots & the animation is absolutely dreadful. Yout average Playsatation game looks better. The scenes when the Cyclops begins to talk are unintentionally funny due to a really bad voice, awful lip sync & a stupid look monster. To be honest I would have no hesitation in saying master stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen's Cyclops from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) is more realistic, has more charm & personality & is infinitely more watchable on screen & that was made half a century ago. There are a few hand to hand gladiatorial fights but they look sloppy & stilted & have no real energy or dynamism about them.The budget probably wasn't that high so one wonders why the production values are quite as good as they are & a little bit of research seems to suggest that Cyclops was shot on the same sets used for the lavish TV production of Spartacus (2004) so that explains that. Eric 'I'll star in anything for money' Roberts (the IMDb has him listed as being in ten films made in 2009 already & it's only the beginning of February!) is the name actor & looks bored frankly while I don't recognise anyone else from the cast.Cyclops has some nice sets (left over from another production) & has some surprisingly gory moments but overall the awful CGI computer effects renders every scene with the Cyclops laughable which is not what the makers intended. It's nice to see Roger Corman still cranking them out though even if this is as rubbish as most of his other output.

This is the perfect movie if you've got something else to do such as cooking, cleaning, grooming your pets, or weatherproofing the windows. That's what brings it up to a 3. If you sit down to watch it for the sake of watching it, expect to be sorely disappointed.The beginning: If you saw a giant monster, would you just stand there? No, but these guys do. Unbelievable.The first battle is absolutely moronic. Why would they rush the monster when they had archers? When they saw their fellow soldiers dropping, why didn't they bother using the archers? Did I mention the archers? When they finally did use the archers... why did they suck? And when did they have time to dig that giant cyclops-sized pit? And when they finally did capture the cyclops, how did they manage to shackle it and get it out of the pit when -- prior to this -- anyone getting close to the monster got crushed and/or eaten? I'd also like to point out that while the Romans did indeed use whistles, they were shaped more like dog whistles, not our modern coach or safety whistles.Also, the phrase to "take with a pinch of salt" has been in use only since the 17th century. It was not in use in ancient Rome.Now let's discuss the cyclops itself. Odysseus had a run-in with the cyclops. Assuming that was somewhere around the time of the Trojan War, roughly 1194-1184BC, that's very far off from the reign of Tiberius which lasted from 14 to 37 AD. But if you look up anything about Tiberius, none of the movie is correct, especially about the Marcus uprising and the emperor being slain by a cyclops (obviously). Sci-fi. I get it.This movie starts out very bad and very cheesy. The first hour is basically the cyclops killing people, getting caught, getting loose, killing people, getting caught again, and eating more people parts in between. Toss in some political back-stabbing and a slave uprising, and jump right into the colosseum. Some low-budget slaughter, the bad guys die, the end.Did anyone else find it ironic that Marcus shouted "Look out!" to the cyclops right before he got a spear through the eye?That's terrible ;)