TL;DR: Lords of Chaos is worth a watch even if you don't care about black metal, The Dirt is generic and forgettable even if you like 80's pop rock. ---- Lords of Chaos was better than expected. Funny and semi-thoughtful. Dead-chan is truly sugoi. Cinematography is just "okay", could have been artsier, but the condensed story of 'lol dumb kids whose moms pay for everything fuck up their own lives tryna be brutal' is bretty gud. The Dirt is eh. It's a reenacted clipshow, and I'd rather just rewatch the old interviews for the legitimacy, than watch Nikki stroke himself off about shooting up heroin for the 15th time. There doesn't seem to be any real emotion or point to the movie inbetween the inaccuracies and generic band breakup-reunion story. Razzle dies and no one cares lmao. Why'd they completely ignore Mick? The reenactments in Lords of Chaos sparked joy because it was impossible to find any high quality footage of the dumbass black metal shit, cuz they were just dumbass kids and didnt document anything. So it was cool seeing classic photos and vids referenced during storytelling moments. Like having Euronymous wear his iconic crop top during a scene. Not the focal point, but fun to recognize. There are def inaccuracies and storytelling liberties, but they serve the story and characters. The reenactments in The Dirt felt empty. Prime example of this is the record signing thing that was referencing the Donnington Park interview (they even show it side by side in the credits!!). Why did they change the setting and context? What did it show about the characters? How does it advance the story when they skip the whole Too Fast For Love era? Did they just want to show tommy being stupid with his cigarette and nikki bashing tommy's head cuz it's an ~iconic~ moment? Why not just do it like the original then if it's supposed to be wanky dumped-on-your-head fanservice? Don't get it! Also the costuming is kinda weak, none of the extras look like they belong in the 80's lol. I suppose The Dirt was just supposed to like 'lol they referenced a thing i like so i like it', so it wasn't made for me. It was made for me and Shane in 2010 cuz we were teenagers who legit thought crashing cars and smonkin' heroijuanas was cool and awesome AND TOTALLY BADASS!!! I guess i'm not impressed now that I'm so old and tired of dumbassery. Woulda thought it was cool as a teenager. HEY they conveniently cut out the lolsoedgy story of Nikki raping a girl, now that it's not cool to brag about drunkenly raping a girl!! The Dirt tries really hard to portray the members of the band as totally cool badasses who have a lot of sex (sex is badass and cool and so is licking your buddy's pee off the floor and killing your friends in car crashes), so there's nothing for my brain to grasp onto. I liked Lords of Chaos cuz it wasn't afraid to make everyone look like dorks. They're LARPing nerds wearing wizard hats, whose moms pay their rent yet they insist on living like bums cuz it's brutal to their friend group. There's actual examination going on with the movie, on how these privileged kids could end up doing such awful shit. Which is the elephant in the room when you reexamine stories like this in today's context. And I'm so glad they addressed Varg's bullshit in the movie? Like EVERYBODY knew Varg was a nazi but no one cared in the 2000's. The black metal thing started as kids playing around with satanic imagery, but Varg bought into his own delusions. Fascism was a ~cool fashion statement~ even up to the early 2010's, but the more these types of people hang out in their echo chambers the more they actually start believing in shit that was originally just JK BRO IT'S JUST A GAMER WORD JUST JOKIN' HAHA. So yeah, I'm glad the movie portrayed Varg as a deluded loser that everyone should shun lolz. Teenage edgelords grow into shitty awful old nazis if you don't smack sense into them. Uhh. Good parts about The Dirt: The guy who plays Vince looks great as girly-man Vince in the 80's. Too much abs though, we know Vince be slim-thick. MGK does an excellent job as Tommy and portraying the candence and mannerisms, cuz they're both white boy rapper types. UhhHH. I like Tommy's wedding outfit. I like when Mick goes 'ow' when he tries to get up. I will shit on Crue all day but I'll still sing along whenever a song from Too Fast For Love. The color grading to match the music videos is pretty good! The Dead suicide + Euronymous murder and Motley Crue's Dirt book were pretty important stories for me to read about as a young lad. So now that my spine is aching and I eat tapioca straight from the tub, it's fun for me to look back with these movies.
Here's my ooooold Motley Crue fanart from my teenage years :^)
And some oooooold Mayhem fanart from my teenage years...
