Issue #5: Jiu Jitsu

When that Netflix money gets lost in the mail, but you still want Nic Cage

I want to be very clear here. The amazing people and companies I am about to mention up top had nothing to do with this movie. Do not blame them for Jiu Jitsu.

But the extended opening credits sequence of Jiu Jitsu (2020), which featured weird animation and voiceover work and comic book paneling, got me thinking about the people who create memorable opening titles for beloved properties, both for film and TV.

I love a good title sequence. It gets my hyped for what I’m about to watch and gives me a great reason to shush the person next to me. There are a lot of good ones out there (here’s 10 great ones) and just some awful attempts at entertainment, which is how we ended up here today.

Some of you may not realize but the opening credits are often completely farmed out. Some recent TV classics, such as Game of Thrones, WestWorld, and True Detective, were completed by outside firms that specialize in such violent delights.

The most effective opening sequences, as with Game of Thrones’, is both visually arresting and provides necessary exposition without the viewer really understanding that they’re learning all about Westerosi geography.

This great Observer article details the process Angus Wall, a film editor and the title designer, and Kirk Shintani, head of CG for a52 and Elastic, went through while designing the GoT sequence.

It quickly became apparent that the title sequence could perform a useful role for the series, acting as a legend, or the map you find at the beginning of most fantasy books. Once the creative team involved concluded that the opening credits could perform the same pragmatic function, they had a mission to create representations of the show’s locations in a visually arresting manner.

“We started with references from production,” Shintani told Observer. “They provided us with tons of photography and concept art for the locations that we wanted to build for Season 1.  From that we were able to understand what the locations looked like and how we might be able to adapt them to fit our design language. We spent quite a bit of time working out what each location would look like, so concept art was extremely important. We tried a lot of different looks, styles and structural components.”

Patrick Clair, whose credits include True Detective and Netflix’s Daredevil, told Insider about the types of things his team considers when designing the sequence - always with the audience in mind:

"It's a big deal for us to take 90 seconds of the audience's time at the start of each episode," Clair told Insider over the phone from his home in Australia. "We try not to get too concerned about the details of the plot. [We're] more concerned about what's bubbling down beneath. That way it gets more interesting as the season goes on."

Are you a title sequence skipper? I live with one (in fairness, she has seen Bob’s Burgers opening sequence enough as is) but I do lobby to let it roll when we watch prestige TV. And, obviously, movies don’t really offer that handy ‘skip’ button.

I’m curious which side of intro-skipping you all fall on. And I’d love to hear what some of your favorite title sequences are, both because I’m a big fan of them and am openly attempting to increase audience engagement.

And now, whether you’ve skipped the top part or not, it’s time for the curtains to widen and for the lights to go down. Hold on to your butts.

The Feature Film

Here’s the thing: this movie is trash.

It looks like it was shot on an iPhone X and edited in iMovie with stock explosions, gun shots, and ricochets, and title cards and subtitles created by a seventh grader. It’s all very … stylized.

The actor who plays the main character, exotically named Jake, is entirely wooden. Nicolas Cage, god bless him, isn’t given nearly enough to do in a movie that sorely needed a lot more of him. He isn’t even introduced until the 39 minute mark! I checked.

And at one point director Dimitri Logothetis inexplicably decided to turn an action scene into a first-person perspective fist fight a la Hardcore Henry. That in and of itself is an artistic choice that can be forgiven. However, the movie only does this one time pretty early on (and poorly) and then never again. It is confounding, to say the least.

Also, the group of characters whose names I don’t think I ever learned are fighting some extra-dimensional invincible being straight from the Power Rangers’ costume rack.

I mean, at least I was able to watch with this one for free on Netflix.

Considering this movie is garbage and I can’t rightly recommend it, I’d like to meditate on something else for a moment - Nicolas Cage’s decision-making progress.

I don’t get it.

It’s been well-documented that he’s had financial problems over recent years, but there are paycheck movies and then there’s this. He may have only been on set for just a few days and genuinely looks like he’s enjoying himself in his scenes. But surely he read the script beforehand? And then looked around at the cast and thought, “Maybe I should just go sign some autographs for $20 a pop instead”?

[Same goes for Frank Grillo. Why are you there, bud? Anyway.]

This is all with the knowledge of the year of our lord 2021, in which Nicolas Cage showed he can act his ass off opposite a literal pig. He can still do it! Better than most!

I am befuddled.

Cinema UnCaged was always going to fall into a few potholes. That really was the point of this experiment - to enjoy some of my favorite films all over again, to watch some classics I hadn’t gotten to yet, and to try to understand why an Academy Award-winning actor would sign on to tie on a headband and do martial arts against an invincible robot alien thing amongst fake ruins in fake Myanmar. It’s truly bizarre.

This has been a fun experiment so far. Thanks for being here.

I’m giving Jiu Jitsu 1 woefully forgettable side character out of 5.

Fiverr Bonus Round:

You can hire these guys for $85 if you need a title sequence of your own for anything.