TNA Xplosion
2002
23 Seasons • 202 Episodes
Overview
TNA Xplosion is a television program produced by Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, featuring both highlights from Impact Wrestling and exclusive taped matches. It is now produced only for international markets, no longer airing in the United States. It currently airs in Canada on The Fight Network, in Asia and the Middle East on ESPN Star Sports, the Arab World on MBC Action, and is available on Challenge in the UK. On March 14, 2013 Impact Wrestling and Xplosion will be film permanently from the road .
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Reviews
✦ AI-generated review
The Opulent Burden of Forever
I remember when *Interview with the Vampire* hit theaters in 1994, the air was thick with a specific kind of skepticism. You couldn't open a newspaper without reading about the "miscasting" of Tom Cruise as Lestat. Anne Rice herself had been vocal, practically public in her mourning for a project she felt was being butchered by Hollywood’s need to put a shiny, bankable face on a creature of the night. But watching it now, away from the noise of that era, the casting doesn’t feel like a mistake. It feels like the entire point. Neil Jordan, a director who has always been fascinated by the friction between our social performances and our private desires, didn't want a goth poet; he wanted a rock star. And that, in its own way, is exactly what a vampire is: a hedonist who has mistaken longevity for a personality.
Jordan’s film doesn't move with the frantic pacing of modern horror. It drifts. It floats through history like a ghost who hasn't quite realized they’re dead. There is a lush, suffocating quality to the production design—the heavy velvet curtains, the candlelit parlors of New Orleans, the way the fog seems to cling to the frame like damp wool. It’s a movie about the exhaustion of time. Brad Pitt’s Louis is the anchor for this fatigue. While Cruise is busy playing Lestat as a petulant, flamboyant aristocrat—a man who treats murder with the casual flair of a dinner party host—Pitt is playing someone who has looked into the abyss and found it boring. There’s a distinct physical difference between them. Cruise moves with a twitchy, predatory confidence, his head tilted slightly, always assessing. Pitt, conversely, has a heavy, slumped posture; his eyes often seem red-rimmed and hollow, as if he’s physically struggling to carry the weight of his own memories. He isn't just an undead predator; he’s a man who has lived too long, and it's the one thing he can’t articulate to the reporter.
The film truly finds its, shall we say, pulse when Claudia enters the frame. Kirsten Dunst, at an age where most child actors are asked to be precocious or cute, is tasked with the impossible: portraying a soul that is ancient and decaying trapped inside the body of a little girl. There is a sequence, deep in the middle of the film, where Claudia cuts her hair. She’s staring into a mirror, frustrated by the doll-like curls she’s forced to wear, cutting away at them with a pair of shears. She isn't just grooming; she’s performing an act of self-mutilation. She’s trying to carve an adult identity out of a vessel that will never age. The lighting in that scene is crucial—cold, blue, and isolating. It’s one of the few moments where the film stops being a Gothic spectacle and becomes a genuinely painful meditation on the trap of one's own skin.
Roger Ebert, writing at the time, noted that the film is "a series of conversations, punctuated by scenes of graphic horror." It’s an astute observation. Most vampire films treat the bite as the climax, but here, the horror isn't in the bloodletting—it’s in the dialogue. It’s in the way Louis and Lestat discuss morality while someone is dying on the floorboards. That disconnect is jarring. It creates a space for the audience to lean in and wonder: how much of our own humanity would we trade for immortality? And would we eventually grow bored of the answer?
There’s a strange, lingering melancholy to the way Jordan concludes the film. It doesn't end with a battle or a grand confrontation, but with a confession. It is a story told by someone who needs to be heard, even if the person listening is terrified, even if the listener is just another victim in the making. That, perhaps, is the truest part of the vampire mythos that Jordan taps into: the loneliness of being the only one in the room who knows the truth.
I’m left wondering, after the credits roll, if the film succeeds because of its flaws or in spite of them. There are moments where the melodrama tips over into the absurd, where the dialogue feels too much like a philosophy lecture delivered in a corset. But maybe that’s just how it feels to live forever—a mix of high-minded tragedy and ridiculous, performative nonsense. I can't quite say the film is perfect, but I don’t think it needs to be. It’s a beautifully dressed, deeply tired ghost story, and I’m still not sure I’ve fully shaken the dust of it off my coat.
I remember when *Interview with the Vampire* hit theaters in 1994, the air was thick with a specific kind of skepticism. You couldn't open a newspaper without reading about the "miscasting" of Tom Cruise as Lestat. Anne Rice herself had been vocal, practically public in her mourning for a project she felt was being butchered by Hollywood’s need to put a shiny, bankable face on a creature of the night. But watching it now, away from the noise of that era, the casting doesn’t feel like a mistake. It feels like the entire point. Neil Jordan, a director who has always been fascinated by the friction between our social performances and our private desires, didn't want a goth poet; he wanted a rock star. And that, in its own way, is exactly what a vampire is: a hedonist who has mistaken longevity for a personality.
Jordan’s film doesn't move with the frantic pacing of modern horror. It drifts. It floats through history like a ghost who hasn't quite realized they’re dead. There is a lush, suffocating quality to the production design—the heavy velvet curtains, the candlelit parlors of New Orleans, the way the fog seems to cling to the frame like damp wool. It’s a movie about the exhaustion of time. Brad Pitt’s Louis is the anchor for this fatigue. While Cruise is busy playing Lestat as a petulant, flamboyant aristocrat—a man who treats murder with the casual flair of a dinner party host—Pitt is playing someone who has looked into the abyss and found it boring. There’s a distinct physical difference between them. Cruise moves with a twitchy, predatory confidence, his head tilted slightly, always assessing. Pitt, conversely, has a heavy, slumped posture; his eyes often seem red-rimmed and hollow, as if he’s physically struggling to carry the weight of his own memories. He isn't just an undead predator; he’s a man who has lived too long, and it's the one thing he can’t articulate to the reporter.
The film truly finds its, shall we say, pulse when Claudia enters the frame. Kirsten Dunst, at an age where most child actors are asked to be precocious or cute, is tasked with the impossible: portraying a soul that is ancient and decaying trapped inside the body of a little girl. There is a sequence, deep in the middle of the film, where Claudia cuts her hair. She’s staring into a mirror, frustrated by the doll-like curls she’s forced to wear, cutting away at them with a pair of shears. She isn't just grooming; she’s performing an act of self-mutilation. She’s trying to carve an adult identity out of a vessel that will never age. The lighting in that scene is crucial—cold, blue, and isolating. It’s one of the few moments where the film stops being a Gothic spectacle and becomes a genuinely painful meditation on the trap of one's own skin.
Roger Ebert, writing at the time, noted that the film is "a series of conversations, punctuated by scenes of graphic horror." It’s an astute observation. Most vampire films treat the bite as the climax, but here, the horror isn't in the bloodletting—it’s in the dialogue. It’s in the way Louis and Lestat discuss morality while someone is dying on the floorboards. That disconnect is jarring. It creates a space for the audience to lean in and wonder: how much of our own humanity would we trade for immortality? And would we eventually grow bored of the answer?
There’s a strange, lingering melancholy to the way Jordan concludes the film. It doesn't end with a battle or a grand confrontation, but with a confession. It is a story told by someone who needs to be heard, even if the person listening is terrified, even if the listener is just another victim in the making. That, perhaps, is the truest part of the vampire mythos that Jordan taps into: the loneliness of being the only one in the room who knows the truth.
I’m left wondering, after the credits roll, if the film succeeds because of its flaws or in spite of them. There are moments where the melodrama tips over into the absurd, where the dialogue feels too much like a philosophy lecture delivered in a corset. But maybe that’s just how it feels to live forever—a mix of high-minded tragedy and ridiculous, performative nonsense. I can't quite say the film is perfect, but I don’t think it needs to be. It’s a beautifully dressed, deeply tired ghost story, and I’m still not sure I’ve fully shaken the dust of it off my coat.