Avoid Babylon A.D. At All Costs?

I like Vin Diesel, I admit it. Pitch Black is one of my favorite science fiction movies films, and I did enjoy Chronicles of Riddick. So when I saw the first trailers for Babylon A.D., I was actually intrigued and figured with Diesel and a cool looking science fiction story, nothing could go wrong.

Oh boy did something awful happen to this movie.

I haven’t seen it yet, and by all accounts, I shouldn’t. But some of the stuff being said about just how bad it is actually make me want to witness for myself to see what all the fuss is about.

According to Massawyrm over at Aint It Cool News, no one wants anything to do with this movie, including the studio and the director, Mathieu Kassovitz. After a bit more poking around, I found some pretty telling quotes from Kassovitz and as you can probably deduce, he’s a bit cheesed. From SciFi Scanner on AMCTV:

“I’m very unhappy with the film,” he says. “I never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be. The script wasn’t respected. Bad producers, bad partners, it was a terrible experience.”

Yikes.

The movie was based off a novel called Babylon Babies by Maurice Georges Dantec, and was something Kassovitz was excited about interpreting onto the big screen.

But it failed, miserably.

“It’s pure violence and stupidity,” he admits. “The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters… instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.”

And I’ve seen some bad episodes of 24. Can’t be good. But the rest of the story for how this movie got so bad in Kassovitz’s eyes is pretty amazing:

The film’s production was reportedly riddled with problems, from vast delays to budgetary concerns to weather setbacks. Kassovitz points to the studio, “Fox was sending lawyers who were only looking at all the commas and the dots,” he says. “They made everything difficult from A to Z.” The last stroke, Kassovitz says, was when Fox interfered with the editing of the film, paring it down to a confusing 93 minutes (original reports were that 70 minutes were cut from the film; Kassovitz says the number is closer to 15).  Diesel too was astounded at the film’s length. Having just completed production of the fourth installment of The Fast and the Furious, he had not seen a cut of the film in six months. “Am I even in the movie any more, or am I on the cutting room floor?” the actor joked. Fox could not be reached for comment on this story.

It’s so rare to hear these kinds of comments from a director or anyone attached to a newly released film. It’s obviously not good on any level, unless it conjures up some sick interest into seeing just what is so bad about Babylon A.D.

I’m in that boat possibly.

But the reviews are dreadful. The movie is getting a 4% on Rotten Tomatoes, a score I haven’t seen in quite awhile. From Aint It Cool News (warning, explicit language):

The director sure as hell seems to want nothing to do with it. And for the first two acts of this movie I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why not. And then came the third act twist. And boy howdy was it a twist. It twists a fairly cool, if somewhat lifeless, science fiction film into a laughable piece of garbage that begins to beat the audience about the head with some of the dumbest god damned things you’ve heard in a long time. I’m not talking improbable. I’m not talking impossible. I’m talking downright fucking goofy.

So what do you guys think? Is it bad enough for you to want to see? Or will you avoid it for all eternity?

[SciFi Scanner, AICN]