Kevin Smith is having title trouble again. After previously dealing with censorship related to the title Zach and Miri Make a Porno, the filmmaker has run into a snag with his next movie, originally called A Couple of Dicks. Warner Bros. has changed the title of the comedy, which will star Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan, to A Couple of Cops, obviously so as not to confuse anyone with the multiple (including the offensive) meanings of “dick.”

But this can’t be the end, because nobody in their right mind would distribute a movie with that new title. I’m pretty sure the word “cops” is poisonous. Has there been a single good movie with that word in the title since Buster Keaton’s 1922 short? Singularly, “cop” will occasionally work, such as in Beverly Hills Cop, Super Cop, Cop Land and Kindergarten Cop. But pluralized, I think the best we’ve seen is Cops and Robbersons. Recall that Hollywood Homicide was once titled “Two Cops,” which is quite like Smith’s movie’s name, but better. And maybe the original title cursed it, because the movie flopped. So, unless A Couple of Cops involves fumbling policemen resembling the Keystone Cops, it’s certain that the studio will need to brainstorm a new name quick, if it’s not already too late. Or, if Smith doesn’t really care about this movie, which he didn’t write and is seemingly only directing for the easy money, perhaps he can ultimately take his own name off and let it be an Alan Smithee film.

Here are some of the negative responses to the name change from around the web:

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Both are broadly classifiable as science fiction, but Alien is basically a horror flick and Aliens has all the conventions of a war film. That’s a pretty slick transition from one type of movie to another, especially since the switch was so immediate within the series. Most movie franchises don’t play with genre in such a way until they’ve gone through a number of sequels, and even then the series usually just simply takes its characters into outer space, a la Moonraker, Jason X and Leprechaun 4.

Genre jumping isn’t that easy, though, unless a franchise inhabits a whole universe in which to expand through. Like Star Wars, for example. Originally a film series, the Star Wars franchise spread out into novels, which has allowed for dips into the romance genre and now horror. That’s right, an upcoming novel by horror author Joe Schreiber, titled Deathtroopers, takes the Star Wars universe into frightening territory described by Schreiber as “in the vein of The Shining and Alien, with a little dose of William Gibson mixed in.”

So, if Star Wars can venture into the horror genre, what other movie franchises should attempt a genre jump? To toy with the idea, we’ve selected five film series in need of a change and suggested a possible redirection of genre for each.
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• Here’s something I thought I’d never see, though I guess it is inevitable that all major actors will direct at least one film in their lives: the words “A Film by Bruce Willis” shall feature in the credits for the indie Three Stories About Joan, which will star Camilla Belle. In addition to making his directorial debut, Willis will also co-star as Belle’s father.
• Initially, I also was surprised to read that American Psycho is getting the Broadway musical treatment. Then, I realized it’s basically just Sweeney Todd with ’80s music. Still, I have to wonder about all the sex and vulgarities. Also: will it be as much a laugh riot as “Oh Africa, Brave Africa”?
• This I find not shocking at all: Billy Crystal is making his first live-action appearance in seven years to play opposite The Rock in the lamest of lame comedies, Tooth Fairy.
• A producer in India is ignoring the rules of the Foreign Language Oscar and independently submitting his film, Tingya, to the Academy, separate of his country’s official entry. The film may not be good enough to receive a nomination even if it were eligible, but at least the guy is protesting the unfair process. Meanwhile, THR’s Risky Biz Blog is excited about the foreign film race following Israel’s submission this week of Waltz With Bashir.

We’re less than a week away from the release of Tropic Thunder, and as the reviews and puff pieces make their way onto the web, there’s one thing clearly uniting the media’s coverage: talk of Tom Cruise’s appearance in a small role as a Hollywood studio boss. Everyone seems to agree that he steals the show and that his performance — or the joke surrounding it — is one of the comedy’s major highlights, if not the actual best part.

Of course, we can expect a good cameo from Cruise every now and then. He showed up for a bit part in Young Guns and played himself as playing “Austin Powers” in Austin Powers in Goldmember. But from what it sounds like, his role in Tropic Thunder is featured for longer than might qualify as a cameo. Some are regardless referring to the performance as an “extended cameo”, and in theory it certainly fits in with the huge crop of so-called “ironic cameos” that have become popular in movies and TV in the last ten years.

Still, despite my not having yet seen the movie, I’m thinking that Tom Cruise’s involvement in Tropic Thunder is more like the following list, which consists of merely small roles filled by big stars. You might consider some of them to be technically cameos, especially the ones that aren’t integral to the plot and/or call attention to themselves. But with each of the roles I’ve included, I consider them to be either the best part of their respective movies or at least a major highlight, which is how Cruise’s appearance is being touted. Anyway, forgive me for trying to come up with something different than simply a best cameo list, even if the focus here seems less than clear.

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This week’s spin is all about the revisions. The 8:17 AM Monday version of David Germain’s AP writeup stressed an action star’s humiliation at the hands of an imaginary rodent, leading with the headline, “Cartoon Rat Beats Bruce Willis.” At some point in the morning, the imagery was softened somewhat; the 9:55 headline, “Rat Rules Box Office With $47 Million,” takes Willis’ defeat out of the equation.

Over at Variety, Pamela McClintock was quick to note in her Saturday morning report that Ratatouille’s $16.5 million first day was “the lowest first-day opening for a Pixar film since Toy Story 2 in 1999.” By Sunday night, when the animated film’s massive victory over all comers was apparent, McClintock’s revised report described the film’s weekend-long ascendancy to the top spot as a “simmer.” For her part, Nikki Finke’s preferred cooking metaphor is “roasted,” which seems like a bit of an overstatement.) Remember, on Friday McClintock’s coverage gave the Die Hard sequel the edge in the race for to the top spot.

Meanwhile, while his Hollywood Reporter pre-weekend coverage had given the Pixar film the edge, Gregg Kilday notes that if Live Free’s Wednesday and Thursday receipts are taken into consideration, “Die Hard ended the weekend with a five-day estimated cume of $48.2 million, a whisker ahead of Ratatouille’s three-day gross.” Proof that an almost-senior citizen can cook a rat–he just needs five days and, like, a crock pot.

More on these movies at Spout:

Live Free or Die Hard
Ratatouille
Toy Story 2

***”McClane, who has handily defeated effete Eurotrash in the past, is destined to find himself overshadowed this weekend by a Parisian rat with a refined palette.” Gregg Kilday can’t hold back the snark in reporting that Ratatouille is looking likely to beat Live Free or Die Hard at the box office this weekend.

***Variety seems to think the odds are with McClane. Pamela McClintock notes that Live Free’s $9 million opening day is not only Bruce Willis’ best opening since the mega hit Armageddon, it’s the best first-day tally for a Die Hard film, ever.

***What kinds of unsavory things did Marc Forster have to do in order to get two jobs in two weeks? The newly anointed Bond director is partnering with Mandate Pictures to develop Land of Roses , about “a suburban mother who, with the support of her fellow outraged townspeople, attempts to exonerate a hardworking Middle Eastern father falsely imprisoned as a terrorist by Homeland Security.”

***Speaking of unsavory, Jim Carrey has been hired to star in and produce Sober, a Universal-based comedy poking fun at addiction. According to Variety, hilarity ensues when “a hard-partying software exec [is] assigned a court-appointed Sober Buddy to keep him under control during a critical business trip to Las Vegas. A perfect plan falls apart when the Sober Buddy (Carrey) falls off the wagon.” Delightful!

After spending a chunk of the morning wading through treatises on the socio-political implications of Bruce Willis blowing up a skyscraper, I got to thinking about franchises. I don’t think they’re a bad thing, in theory (and, if you want to get theoretical, definitely check out this post from David Bordwell’s blog, in which the legendary film academic solicits thoughts on sequels from a roundtable of colleagues). You could certainly accuse the sequel-happy studios of laziness–I always mentally cut to a shot of a Disney executive furiously trying to find a summer tentpole to greenlight so he can go on vacation: “Eh. They bought Johnny Depp as a pirate before–maybe they’ll do it again.” But it’s hard to complain about any of this when the audience continues to turn out for franchise films.

So the question becomes, “What do people like about sequels? What are they hoping to see?” If the lure is in large part one of wish fulfillment–if any significant segment of the audience goes to see X-Men 12 because there’s something that X-Men 1-11 didn’t accomplish that they’re still hoping to see–then won’t the success of sequels as a genre fall in direct proportion to the rise in user-generated video? Basically, if fans live in a world in which they can appropriate, manipulate, and juxtapose characters, images and ideas from their favorite films in order to meet any desires left unsatisfied by the original films, why would they then bother to leave the house and pay $12 in order to see an authorized sequel?

Think about that while you watch this Rambo vs. Predator mashup. If a dude with iMovie can pit Stallone against the ultimate opponent, what else is there for John Rambo to accomplish?

Live Free or Die Hard opens today, and while Bruce Willis waits with bated breath to see if a truncated bus ad can buy him another ten years as an action star, our friends at Slate and the Guardian are contemplating what it all means.

Last week, Joe Queenan published a looong consideration (incidentally, why does the Guardian’s film section still post 2,300 word essays in one long column? Would it be grossly capitalist for them lay a story out across two pages?) of the collateral damage left by Willis’ John McLane throughout the course of the franchise:

How much is it going to cost you? Well, in addition to all the high-rise buildings, bridges, highways and subway stations that are going to have to be replaced, there is the niggling subject of lawsuits both against the police department and against John McClane himself. Recently I reviewed the Die Hard carnage tally, and determined that McClane could easily be tied up in court for decades due to his madcap, unauthorised escapades. In the original Die Hard, either he or his employer would be on the hook for the deliberate destruction of the skyscraper in which Rickman’s terrorist cabal is holed up. And because McClane, a Manhattan cop, was operating without any authority whatsoever on the Los Angeles police department’s turf, the bill for the calamitous devastation would not be sent to the LAPD, but to the headquarters of New York’s Finest. This being the case, it’s hard to see how McClane would ever be in a position to affect the course of events in Die Hard 2. He would long since have been forced to take early retirement.

I love geeking out over the real-world implications left ignored by action fantasies; I crave a Law & Order spin-off dealing only with the legal problems of the great action heroes. There were a couple of throwaway lines in Ghostbusters 2 about the gang going bankrupt after having been sued by the city for the havoc wrecked in the first film–wouldn’t that trial have been more fun to watch than all that nonsense with Peter McNichol and Sigourney Weaver’s horrible baby? But Queenan isn’t offering his 2,300 words in the name of parallel universe hypotheticals–the ultimate goal here is to point the finger at us idiot Americans for allowing McClane to continue his fiscally irresponsible rampage across four films:

Backed into a corner, most audiences would admit that John McClane is a major head case, a Grade A loony, the living, breathing apotheosis of overzealous policing, and exactly the opposite of what most of us want in our lawmen. Why then are the Die Hard films so popular? [...] Though I am always loath to suggest that a movie produced by Joel Silver possesses a deeper meaning, in this case the underlying message of the Die Hard movies comes through loud and clear: American society is so prosperous that it can not only survive inflation and recession and the dotcom meltdown and the current collapse of the housing market and Donald Rumsfeld, but it can even survive John McClane’s latest madcap escapade. In a society with this much money, money is never going to be much of an issue.

After all that scolding, Eric Lichtenfeld’s celebration of “yippie kai yay motherfucker” as the “greatest one-liner in movie history” should be refreshing. But ultimately, Lichtenfeld doesn’t beat Queenan’s argument so much as play into it:

When terrorist-slash-exceptional thief Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) taunts hero John McClane (Bruce Willis), “Who are you? Just another American who saw too many movies as a child?” and asks this “Mr. Cowboy” if he really thinks he stands a chance, McClane’s answer