Keanu Reeves Must Die
Keanu by udannlin
No. Really.
Look, I don’t actually care that he’s one of history’s most wooden actors. What’s that to me? I’ve seen some fine films with some truly appalling performers wedged into them. And utilised properly, a complete lack of acting talent can be valuable.
Kenneth Branagh’s version of Much Ado About Nothing, for example – that was beautiful. Against a panoply of peformers including Ken, Emma, Kate Beckinsale, Denzel, Richard Briers, Brian Blessed, with Michael Keaton and Ben Elton in classic Shakespearian comedy-relief roles, Branagh cast Keanu in the role of Chief Villain.
And that was a masterstroke, because Much Ado is a comedy, and the villain has neither depth nor real motivation. He’s jealous of his brother and wants to mess things up: in other words, he’s just there as a foil to keep the various lovers from getting together in the first act instead of the last.
So – instead of making him convincing, Branagh (who knows Shakespeare. Very. Fucking. Well.) put Reeves on the job. And Keanu, fired-up to play from The Bard, went at it like a small terrier going after a Rottweiler’s scrotum. He flounced, he fleered, he minced and sneered and mugged… and despite being given no comic lines or appearances, he wound up being one of the funniest elements of the film. I’m sure he thought he was delivering a tour-de-force performance, yes. But he was funny anyway, and I think Ken deserved a special oscar just for that: Best Use of Keanu Reeves In An Actual Speaking Role.
In general, though, you could just about replace Keanu in any of his films with a cardboard cut-out and a well-trained talking parrot, and the films would get better. Who cares? Not me.
The thing that bothers me is the Keanu Reeves Kiss Of Crap. That’s like the Kiss Of Death, only much, much stinkier and harder to wipe off. The Keanu Reeves Kiss Of Crap has been applied to a number of films now – films which I really, really wanted to be made well. Constantine, for example – fantastic character, marvellous original stories from the comics, utterly charmless by-the-numbers craptastic disaster with Reeves in a role which he never, ever for an instant had the chops to carry. Daniel Craig would have made a decent John Constantine, I think. Or anyone with the capacity to look ordinary but feel dangerous… but not Reeves.
Put Reeves into the role, you guarantee there will be no sequels. And that sucks for all the Hellblazer fans out there, myself included.
Johnny Mnemonic. There’s another example. Truly marvellous story from William Gibson completely fucked up in the retelling, made all the worse by Reeves blundering onscreen efforts. Who’s going to shoot the best of Gibson after something like that?
And let’s not discuss the remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. Although I suppose that putting Reeves into the remake isn’t all bad… fuck knows, a sequel to THAT story could only suck donkey bollocks through a shit-stained straw, so ensuring it remains solo by strangling it with the Keanu Reeves Kiss Of Crap is probably something of a service to humanity.
The point remains, however, that as long as Reeves is going about, blundering into potentially interesting SF/Fantasy franchises and suffocating them hideously with the cinematic equivalent of toxic flatus, there are a good many films and stories which I might like to see that are guaranteed to be gang-Reeved* into permanent obscurity.
The big danger on the horizon is Cowboy Bebop.
Please. I really like Cowboy Bebop. Isn’t there somebody out there in with a Mannlicher-Carcano, a multi-story bookstore, and a sense of cinematic aesthetics?
*gang-reeved: (vt) to be visually, orally and auditorially brutalized into a state of abject, helpless torpor by an inescapably dire multi-media performance. Ex: ‘I feel like shit. That film totally gang-reeved my brain, man’.
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“Best Use of Keanu Reeves In An Actual Speaking Role”. I want to see that award.
Funny article once again Dirk. I am a little scared of the idea of Bebop live action. I cannot see Keanu as Spike myself.
Poor old Keanu, this article will certainly cost him a few nights sleep.
While on the whole I tend to agree with this assessment, I do wish to take issue with Constantine, just on the basis that I didn’t completely hate it.
Am I a fan of Hellblazer? Hell yes I am…
But still, given that no movie (or even series of movies) was going to deliver the depth and feel of Hellblazer, I found Constantine to be a pretty decent movie… especially due to the performances of Swinton and Stormare.
In brief, all I was expecting from Constantine was disappointment, and I’m happy to say that in this respect, I was also disappointed.
I know several other dedicated Hellblazers feel the same way… in short, Constantine was never going to match up to the comic, so as far as a movie adaptation goes, it was surprisingly watchable. Hell, I even bought the DVD.
However, your Keanu hatred missed one great example… Dangerous Liaisons, where he struts through period France like a surfer, taking on Malkovich with a silent, but utterly real psychoacoustic addendum: “I challenge you to a duel… dude.”
I am with you there on Constantine Xab. I didn’t totally hate it and really enjoyed the visual landscape that was shown to us. I don’t know the comics at all thou. Suggestions on where to start?
I’m going to throw my hat in the ring and defend poor Keanu here. Not because I think he’s a particularly talented actor, clearly he isn’t. However I propose that there are three very good arguments why we should support Keanus film career.
1. While he has put forward many a dreadful performance and forced various terrible films at us, he has also made some really good fun films that I can’t help but enjoy. The Bill and Ted films are gold (and he’s perfectly cast), Point Break is not only great fun but it leads us to some giggling heaven in Hot Fuzz and His role as “dim but pretty bloke who’s not sure what’s going on” in the Matrix has brought me hours of joy. How many of these films would never have been made if they hadn’t got the poor man’s big name attached?
2. If he wasn’t acting he’d have more time to spend on his music. I’ve heard his band. Trust me you don’t want this. If he dies they’ll start playing it on the radio and the albums will be everywhere.
3. This has become my go-to argument for defending the indefensibly bad acting that America sometimes churns out. At least it’s not Nick Cage. Imagine how much worse life would be if all Keanus roles had been played by the modern Nick Cage. Not the Face-Off or Con Air cage but the Cage of Ghost Rider and the Wicker Man. That would be worse than hell.
I think these arguments are valid enough to warrant a reprieve for mister Reeves. We can’t kill him. We need him. He must be allowed to get too old and too powerful until he can make enough bad decisions that his career will die on it’s own, which I’m hoping will happen to good ole Nicky any day now.
Your arguments are cogent, and almost acceptable. The third is particularly terrifying. The prospect of Nick Cage earnestly befouling all my future nightmares of Cowboy Bebop with some kind of Johnny Cage Wilde At Heart Con Air version of Spike Spiegel is horrific.
Nevertheless, Keanu Reeves Must Die. And while I’m at it, I think I need to work on Roland Emmerich too…
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/apocalypse-later-asimovs-foundation-to-become-a-movie/?partner=rss&emc=rss
Before I reply I want to state that I am a pacifist with a healthy respect for all life. So much so that I defended Keanu when he’s about to murder my beloved Spike.
I say that first so you can appreciate the gravity of what I’m about to say next.
Kill Rolland Emmerich! Kill him now, shoot him. Shoot him in the face then put his head on a pole at the gates of Hollywood as an example to others. The message is leave Asimov the hell alone! You had your chance, you screwed it up. You can’t do Asimov.
If you have to do The Foundation give it to someone who can handle it. Someone who understands what an epic tale it is and loves it. Find the Sci-Fi Asimov geek equivalent of Peter Jackson and say, “Do you see what Peter did with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, go do that but bigger.” because the Foundation is a far more vast tale than has ever been told on film, and in truth, it’s probably too big.
natters, i couldn’t agree with you more ~ it’s sad to see yet another armchair quarterback take the cheap shop while underestimating a guy with a solid legion of ninja female worshippers
“Armchair quarterback”?
No, no, babycakes. The grown-up term is ‘critic’. And I’ll pit my hard-earned black belt against your eBay shuriken any time you like, so far as the ninja thing is concerned!
Dear old Keanu may set feminine hearts — and slightly moister bits — a-flutter, but he has the acting chops of Stonehenge, and I don’t want him messing with any more of my icons.
If you really need more Keanu in your life, let’s work together. I will write a kick-ass ninja-dripping script with a character designed just for his Reeviness; you convince him that it’s his life’s culmination to bring it to the Big Big Screen. That way he stays clear of things like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman stuff (admit it: you were secretly a-drool over the prospect of Keanu with a spiky black ‘do and a drapey black silk dressing gown, weren’t you?) and you still get the Keanu Eye-Candy dosage you require.
I’ll even call you in to write all the nude Keanu combat sequences. Deal?
Um, Dirk… This is coming from a HARDCORE sandman fan. someone who LOVES those books with a passion that is slightly unbecoming of one as masculine as myself….
but I can almost see keanu playing the sandman. Morpheus spends inordinate amounts of time being quiet, slightly wooden and emo-esq…. i can almost see Keanu’s acting chops being borderline spot on for the role.
He should stop trying to play roles which actually require him to emote.
Though to be completely frank i think there are roughly a thousand other dark haired actors out there who would do sandman well, i can’t help but think his distanced attitude might play ok.
i await the barrage…
No, no, no!
First, he’d want too many explosions.
Second — look, any time you hand a stiff role to a wooden actor and tell ‘em to ‘act wooden’, they overplay it. Really. Remember the Judge Dredd film? They handed the title role to Stallone. And if anybody should have been able to play the permanently impassive Dredd, it should have been Sly, no?
No.
Give Keanu the job of Morpheus, and you’ll see him trying to imbue every word with depth and resonance. And it will be horribly painful to behold, for it will be not unlike diarrhea and constipation at the same time: for though he will appear to be struggling with the mightiest turd ever to smite sphincter, yet he will continue to dribble…
It. Must. Not. Be. In fact, I should never have mentioned it. Even as we speak, agents and trolls of Uwe Boll are scouring the web, looking for new, ever more painful ways to hurt people like you and I. If they even conceive of the Keanu/Morpheus link, we are doomed!
I misundestood this and thought I had been given a legion of ninja female worshippers.
That would have been cool.
I hate when that happens. You know – the bit where you turn around and realize that your legion of ninja female worshippers turns out to be either a hallucination, or maybe one lonely cosplayer, size XXXX-enormous, waving a tatty ‘We Love Nattars’ banner hopefully…
On this, comrade, we stand united. Shoulder to shoulder. Beware, Roland: geekdom rises!
Our conversation seems to have been circumvented by an insertion of conversation.
Now it looks like you’re in complete agreement that I should have my own legion of ninja female worshippers.
By the power of Grayskull!
Dude, I will personally father, raise and train you a legion of ninja female warriors as long as their first two missions are simple – kill Emmerich, then kill Boll.
It’d be worth it just to stop them from getting their hands on any other good source material.
My wife would probably disagree with your assessment of Keanu