| Piranha 3D | |
|---|---|
Theatrical poster |
|
| Directed by | Alexandre Aja |
| Produced by | Alexandre Aja Mark Canton Marc Toberoff Grégory Levasseur |
| Written by | Pete Goldfinger Josh Stolberg Alexandre Aja Grégory Levasseur |
| Starring | Elisabeth Shue Adam Scott Jerry O'Connell Ving Rhames Jessica Szohr Steven R. McQueen Christopher Lloyd Richard Dreyfuss |
| Music by | Michael Wandmacher |
| Cinematography | John R. Leonetti |
| Editing by | Baxter |
| Studio | The Weinstein Company Atmosphere Entertainment Chako Film Company Intellectual Properties Worldwide |
| Distributed by | Dimension Films |
| Release date(s) | August 20, 2010 |
| Running time | 87 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $24 million |
| Box office | $83,188,165[1] |
Piranha 3D is a 2010 3D horror film, and the second remake of the 1978 film of the same name. It is directed by Alexandre Aja and sports an ensemble cast featuring Steven R. McQueen, Jessica Szohr, Jerry O'Connell, Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Lloyd, Elisabeth Shue, Adam Scott, Kelly Brook, Riley Steele, Ving Rhames and Eli Roth.
The film grossed over $83 million worldwide and received positive reviews from critics.
Contents |
Fisherman Matthew Boyd (Richard Dreyfuss) is fishing in Lake Victoria, Arizona when a small earthquake hits, splitting the lake floor and causing a whirlpool. Boyd falls in and is ripped apart by a school of piranhas that emerge from the chasm and ascend the vortex.
Jake Forester (Steven R. McQueen) is admiring attractive tourists as spring break begins. He reunites with his old crush, Kelly (Jessica Szohr) and meets Derrick Jones (Jerry O'Connell), an eccentric pornographer, as well as Danni (Kelly Brook), one of his actresses. Derrick convinces Jake to show him good spots on the lake (Lake Victoria) for filming a pornographic movie.
That night, Jake's mother, Sheriff Julie Forester (Elisabeth Shue), searches for the missing Matthew Boyd with Deputy Fallon (Ving Rhames).They find his mutilated body and contemplate closing the lake, however this is made difficult by 20,000 partying college students on spring break who are important for bringing revenue to the small town. The next morning, a lone cliff diver is attacked and consumed by the marauding fish.
Jake bribes his sister and brother, Laura (Brooklynn Proulx) and Zane (Sage Ryan), to stay home alone so that he can show Derrick around the lake. After Jake leaves, Zane drafts Laura to go fishing on a small sandbar island. They forget to tie the boat down and are stranded in the middle of the lake. Meanwhile, Jake goes to meet with Derrick and runs into Kelly, who invites herself onto Derrick’s boat, The Barracuda. Jake meets Crystal (Riley Steele), another of Derrick’s actresses, and cameraman Drew (Paul Scheer).
Julie takes a team of seismologist divers — Novak (Adam Scott), Sam (Ricardo Chavira), and Kendra (Dina Meyer) — to the fissure. Novak speculates that the rift leads to a buried prehistoric lake. Kendra and Sam scuba dive to the bottom and discover a large cavern filled with large piranha egg stocks. Both are killed by the piranhas before they can alert the others to the discovery. Novak and Julie find Kendra's corpse and pull it onto the boat, capturing a lone piranha, which they take to Carl Goodman (Christopher Lloyd), a marine biologist who works as a pet store owner. He explains that the piranha that they caught is a prehistoric species, long believed to be extinct, which must have been trapped underground for over two million years where they have grown super-aggressive.
Julie, Novak, Fallon, and Deputy Taylor Roberts (Jason Spisak) try to evacuate the lake, but their warnings are ignored until the piranhas begin to attack the tourists. Novak boards a jet-ski with a shotgun to help while Fallon drags people to shore and Julie and Taylor try to get swimmers into the police boat. A floating stage capsizes from the weight of the panicking guests.
Meanwhile, Jake spots Laura and Zane on the island, and forces Derrick to rescue them. Derrick crashes the boat into some rocks, flooding the rooms below deck. Kelly is trapped in the kitchen while Derrick, Crystal, and Drew are thrown from the boat. Crystal is devoured and Drew disappears, leaving his fate unknown. Meanwhile, Danni manages to get a partially eaten Derrick back on board.
Deputy Fallon makes a last stand, but it's presumed he is killed by the fish. After the chaos settles, Julie receives a call from Jake pleading for help. Julie and Novak steal a speed boat and head off towards the kids. Julie and Novak reach Jake and attach a rope to his boat. Julie, Danni, Laura, and Zane start crossing the rope, but the piranhas latch onto Danni's hair and ultimately devour her. The others make it to safety, but the rope comes loose. Using Derrick's corpse as a distraction, Jake ties the line to himself and goes to save Kelly. He ties Kelly to him and lights a flare after releasing the gas in a pair of stored propane tanks. Novak starts the boat and speeds away just as the piranhas surround Kelly and Jake. They are dragged to safety and the propane tanks explode, destroying the boat and killing most of the piranhas.
Mr. Goodman calls Julie on the radio, and Julie tells him that they seem to have killed the majority of the piranhas. Terrified, Goodman tells her that the reproductive glands on the piranha they obtained were not mature, which means that the fish they were fighting were only the babies. As Novak wonders aloud where the parents are, a human sized piranha leaps out and knocks him into the water. The scene then cuts to black.
Richard Dreyfuss said that he accepted the role only after Bob Weinstein persuaded him by offering the actor a larger salary, which Dreyfuss later donated to charity. Dreyfuss also stated that the ill-fated character he plays is a parody and a near-reincarnation of Matt Hooper, the character he portrayed in the 1975 film Jaws.[2] Jaws later served as inspiration for the parody film entitled Piranha. The song the character in Piranha 3D listens to on the radio on his boat is "Show Me the Way to Go Home", which Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw sing together in Jaws.
Pornographic actresses Ashlynn Brooke and Gianna Michaels make cameos in the movie as partygoers who meet extremely gruesome, piranha-related demises.[3]
Chuck Russell was originally scheduled to direct the film, and made uncredited rewrites to the script by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, as well as incorporating the original John Sayles script that Joe Dante directed the first time around.[4] Alexandre Aja was selected to direct the film instead.[5]
Production on the film was scheduled to begin late 2008, but was delayed until March 2009.[6] In October 2008, Aja stated filming would begin in the spring. He further stated "it's such a difficult movie, not only because of the technicality of it and the CGI fish, but also because it all happens in a lake.[7] We were supposed to start shooting now, but the longer to leave it the colder the water gets.[8] The movie takes place during Spring Break and, of course, the studio wanted it ready for the summer, but if you've got 1,000 people who need to get murdered in the water, you have to wait for the right temperature for the water, for the weather, for everything."[9]
Shooting took place in June 2009 at Bridgewater Channel in Lake Havasu, located in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. The water was also dyed red for the shooting.[10]
Citing constraints with 3D camera rigs, Aja shot Piranha in 2D and converted to 3D in post production using the reali-D conversion process developed by the company, Inner-D.[11] Unlike some other 3D converted films released in 2010, Piranha's conversion was not done as an afterthought, and it represents one of the first post-conversion processes to be well received by critics.[12][13][14]
Piranha 3D's theatrical release date had been set for April 16, 2010, but was delayed.[15] The film was planned to premiere on August 27, 2010,[16][17] but in June 2010 was moved to August 20, 2010.[18] The film's first trailer debuted with Avatar. A second trailer was shown in prints of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Inception. It was set to have a panel on 24 July 2010 as part of the San Diego Comic-Con International but was cancelled after convention organizers decided the footage that was planned to be shown was not appropriate.[19] Nine minutes of footage, with some unfinished effects, were leaked onto websites. The clip used in promotional TV ads and the trailer that shows Jessica Szohr's character, Kelly, face to face with a pack of piranhas was not used in the movie, and was used for promotion only.
The official poster was released June 22, 2010.[20]
Piranha 3D grossed $10,106,872 in its first 3 days.[21] In the United Kingdom, Piranha 3D opened at #4 at the box office, earning £1,487,119. As of May 16, 2011, Piranha 3D has made $83,188,165 worldwide.[22]
Piranha 3D has received positive reviews, having received a 74% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 112 reviews, with a "certified fresh" score of 6.2 out of 10.[23] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received a mixed average score of 53%, based on 20 reviews.[24] A tongue-in-cheek scholarly review of the movie was written for the journal Copeia (Chakrabarty & Fink 2011), which reviewed the movie as if it were a documentary film.[25]
Empire gave the film three out of five stars, saying "Remember the film you hoped Snakes on a Plane would be – this is it! By any sane cinematic standards, meretricious trash ... but thrown at you with such good-humoured glee that it's hard to resist. It's a bumper-sticker of a movie: honk if you love tits and gore! Honk honk honk."[26] Christy Lemire, film critic for the Associated Press, said "Run, don't walk: 'Piranha 3D' is hilariously, cleverly gory. Mere words cannot describe how awesomely gnarly 'Piranha 3D' is, how hugely entertaining, and how urgently you must get yourself to the theatre to see it. Like, now."[27] HollywoodLife.com called the film "a campy masterpiece of a movie", adding "If you have an ounce of fun in your body, you will love this movie about killer piranhas that overtake a town of hotties — in 3D!"[28] Peter Hall of Cinematical.com said "The gore, the nudity, the language, the gags, the characters-- it's all always on the rise. Just when you think things could not possibly get more ridiculous, that the film has peaked, Aja and screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg manage to ram another syringe of adrenaline into its heart."[29] The Hollywood Reporter referred to the film as "a pitch-perfect, guilty-pleasure serving of late-summer schlock that handily nails the tongue-in-cheek spirit of the Roger Corman original" while stating "Jaws it ain't -- Aja exhibits little patience for such stuff as dramatic tension and tautly coiled suspense, and there are some undeniable choppy bits...but he never loses sight of the potential fun factor laid out in Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg's script."[30] The Orlando Sentinel gave the film one and a half stars out of four, stating that "Piranha 3D goes for the jugular. And generally misses, but generally in an amusing way."[31]
The film was released on the DVD, Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D formats on Tuesday, January 11, 2011. The "3D" part of the title was taken off the 2D releases to prevent confusion of the two formats. The film was released in Australia on Thursday, December 30, 2010.
| Piranha 3D: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack | |
|---|---|
| Soundtrack album by Various artists | |
| Released | August 31, 2010 |
| Length | 42:47 |
| Label | Lakeshore Records |
| Producer | Skip Williamson (exec.), Brian McNelis (exec.) |
Lakeshore Records released the soundtrack album of Piranha 3D which included mostly rap, dance, hip-hop and R&B music. Artists include Shwayze, Envy, Flatheads, Amanda Blank, Public Enemy, Dub Pistols, and Hadouken!.[32]
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Artist | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Get U Home" | Cisco Adler & Aaron Smith | Shwayze | 3:14 |
| 2. | "Shake Shake" | Emmanuel Duncan & Leviticus | Envy feat. Leviticus | 3:25 |
| 3. | "Here She Comes" | Geoff Segel & Nik Frost | Flatheads | 3:34 |
| 4. | "Make It Take It" | Amanda McGrath, Alex Epton, Mario Andreoni, Santi White & Tyler Pope | Amanda Blank | 2:27 |
| 5. | "Bring the Noise (Remix Pump-kin Edit)" | Carlten Ridenhour, Eric Sadler & Hank Shocklee | Public Enemy vs. Benny Benassi | 3:39 |
| 6. | "She Moves" | Jason O'Bryan, Barry Ashworth & Ter K. Lawrence | Dub Pistols | 3:12 |
| 7. | "Flower Duet from Lakmé" | Léo Delibes | Adriana Kohutkova & Denisa Slepkovska | 6:37 |
| 8. | "Nadas Por Free" | Willy "Wil-Dog" Abers, Ulises Bella, Raul Pacheco, Justin Porée, Asdru Sierra & Jiro Yamaguchi | Ozomatli | 2:57 |
| 9. | "Come and Get It" | Eli Paperboy Reed, Ryan Spraker & Michael Montgomery | Eli Paperboy Reed | 3:33 |
| 10. | "Now You See It (Benny Benassi & Dj Shimik Extendet Mix)" | Armando C. Perez, Justin Roman, Vince Garcia, Tony Arazadon & Richard Bailey | Honorebel feat. Pitbull & Jump Smokers | 3:25 |
| 11. | "M.A.D." | James Smith, Alice Spooner, Daniel Rice, Nick Rice & Chris Purcell | Hadouken! | 3:25 |
| 12. | "I'm in the House" | Steve Aoki, William Adams & Justin Bates | Steve Aoki feat. Zuper Blahq | 3:24 |
Dimension Films announced a sequel to be in the works.[33] The film is Piranha 3DD and is directed by John Gulager with Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan writing. It is set for a 2012 release. It Stars Ving Rhames, Paul Scheer and Christopher Lloyd, reprising their roles from Piranha 3D .[34] Piranha 3DD is reportedly set at a waterpark where the piranhas find a way through the pipes.[35]
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