Wildfire: The Remix

I know, I know—I have a few weeks worth of journal entries to finish and this post will be sitting at the top of the screen for a while, but it just can’t wait. Some of you may remember waaaaay back in December ’08 when I wrote a movie review (or rather, comments made between Jeremy Gustafson and myself while watching it) about “Wildfire: The Arabian Heart”. The movie sucked. A lot. But don’t take my word for it—read some of these other reviews I found online:

imdb.com

blockbuster.com

The Dove Foundation

(Michael Vincent, the writer/director/actor/editor/musician/producer—yes, he did all of these—is extremely proud of Wildfire receiving “The Dove Award”. The award is given solely because the movie is family friendly and not objectionable, but it’s an award, dammit!)

You may have noticed that one of the above sites is blockbuster.com. That’s right, the movie has somehow become available for public consumption. You can buy it from a couple stores and websites, so that’s what Jeremy Gustafson did. He decided to relive the pain and suffering by inviting a bunch of friends over to his place and had a viewing party for “The Worst Movie You’ll Ever See”. (That might be a stretch, but not by much.)

But it wasn’t the same worst movie. If you go to amazon.com and buy episodes of Beauty and the Geek, you can see that they’re edited differently than when it was aired on television. Similarly, Wildfire changed various scenes and plot twists, but why? What was Michael Vincent’s motivation? Honestly, I think he may have read my blog entry and made some changes because of it. He didn’t fix all the holes in the plot and inadvertently created some new ones, but you can’t blame the man for trying. … Actually, you can. I sure do.

The movie starts with three girls driving from Massachusetts to Minnesota by themselves (I always forget that they have to be at least 16 because of that). The driving montage shows a little dot moving on a U.S. map from the East Coast and eventually gets to Pennsylvania. Suddenly, you can see the blurry image of the “Welcome to Minnesota” sign over the map because, you know, the sign is that big.

Pennsylvania is also when the girls finally hear knocking on the inside of the trunk of the car where the younger brother was hiding. Basically, he was riding in the trunk from Boston to Philly before deciding it might be a good idea to get someone’s attention. That doesn’t say much for his common sense, but I’m impressed with his bladder control.

And once again, that makes you wonder how the girls had luggage by the time they got to Minnesota. He pulled his sister’s suitcase out to give himself room in the trunk, but they all had bags to bring inside the house and plenty of clothes to wear out on the farm. Yes, they went to live on a farm. No, I don’t know why they brought all of their trendy outfits.

But here’s the sort of thing that I’m talking about: When the girls arrive at the farm, it was daytime. When they walk into the front door of the house, it’s dark outside. When we watched it on Friday, that final scene in the car had been darkened. It may have looked later in the day in the background, but unfortunately, that also meant you couldn’t see squat inside the car anymore.

The younger brother still grabbed the electric fence—it showed a close-up of his hand closing over the wire and made a zapping sound—but instead of the kid going airborne, it skipped ahead to him slowly getting up off the ground (a few yards away from the fence, of course).

Logan, the good guy, was no longer the ex-boyfriend of Abigail, the bad girl. No, Abigail told that story to Lindsey, the good girl, to make her really upset and destroy the budding romance between the goody-goodies. It was a lie, Abigail is an ice queen and they were never an item. And then toward the end of the movie, Abigail had a little fire burning and threw in a letter signed “Logan” at the bottom.

Logan asks Wildfire if he should forgive Lindsey. She talks to the horse during her riding lessons. Lindsey’s little brother asks it to keep her safe. Why? “Wildfire speaks to those who listen.”

The “county fair” was originally a county fair. Somehow, it became the amusement park Valleyfair (with a shot of the large sign at the entrance, no less). How that translates into kids saying they’re going to the “county fair”, I’m not sure, but I can say with absolute certainty that I’ve never been to a county fair that had a giant roller coaster or a flume ride. Oh, and the credits say that it’s not supposed to suggest an actual location. Yeah, right…

Okay, so there’s the giant mall where you could spend an entire day shopping, which means either Logan and Lindsey went to the Mall of America or people from Massachusetts have very low standards for malls. They also went to the “county fair” at Valleyfair. I checked the map and both of those are about a 40-minute drive from Jordan, MN. That’s both a big commitment for a first date and a really big county.

Once again, Lindsey’s training for the horse race is walking Wildfire in small circles. We have yet to see a horse run. That does not bode well for racing.

But fear not! There shall be no horse race! Wildfire still dies! A person could argue that Wildfire is merely in a “not looking good” state, but that person would be wrong. The final shot in the barn is from the inside of the pen: the uncle is on the outside holding onto the bars, then turns off the lights and you can hear him start to cry. It’s actually kind of a touching scene, but who turns off the lights on a sick horse?

And as soon as they walk out of the barn, people are holding a candlelight vigil. Because word travels fast in small towns. (Thankfully, Abigail wasn’t front and center this time.)

The next day, the county fair is a dead plot line. Abigail doesn’t gloat to anyone about Lindsey not riding, we don’t hear about the results of the race, no one says anything about the fair ever again… it was an essential element of the plot until it wasn’t anymore, at which point it disappeared.

This time, Wildfire has a son! A horse called Triton! And it can run! Why is it in the story? Because it’s a happy ending! Except Wildfire is still dead, but at least Triton looks happy!

Get ready for this change… Lindsey and Logan hug! And they don’t show her shirt at an angle that makes her look preggers! She might still be preggers after that hug, but at least you can’t tell by looking at her.

And the end of the movie… good Lord. It turned into a disjointed sequence of clips that lasted for maybe 20 seconds—everyone’s hugging, the car drives away, Logan is running in the driveway and Lindsey’s standing there. End of movie. Ugh.

To top it off, we’re guessing that along with being the writer/director/actor/editor/etc., Michael Vincent was also the graphic designer for two reasons:

1) The credits used some of the most obnoxious graphics I’ve ever seen.
2) There were at least five misspellings (a few actors’ names as well as “annimals”).

What worries me the most is how the credits described how the animals were protected. Instead of “No animals were harmed”, it claimed “all animals were monitored.” Plus it had a logo with “American Humane” next to it and really tiny letters below that which probably didn’t say “Society”. Poor annimals.

So if you’re reading this, that’s the scoop, Michael. Some parts of the movie got better and some parts got worse, so the overall quality didn’t change very much. If it’s any consolation, we didn’t feel the same urge to slit our wrists, if for no other reason than we didn’t want Jeremy to have to clean up the mess.