Watching this movie was like trying to deepthroat a firehose. An unenjoyable experience that only got worse as the movie went on.
I had to stop watching because the amount of stuff happening with the plot made it utterly unenjoyable to watch. There is no breathing room for you to process anything or to feel anything. There is just plot. This results in the characters being completely flat, emotionally impactful moments being made completely dull, and moments where I was supposed to feel shock or excitement feeling the same as the rest of the movie. I felt like someone took my brain out of my skull and ran sandpaper all over it. And by the time I was like "surely the movie's done", I was only an hour in. So I DNF-ed it.
Some might say that the pacing was a stylistic choice, to make you feel like how the Joker feels. Other more enlightened people who know what decent movies look like (and have a functioning brain) would say that this is just poor writing and editing.
Good writing and editing requires making difficult decisions about what to keep out of a movie. Movies are not books. They are 1-3 hours long, and there's a limit on the amount of content you can fit into that. You need to not only hit all the important plot points, but also leave space for your audience to be able to process things and make things emotionally impactful. Good writing and editing necessitates making clever sacrifices to maintain that delicate balance.
Nolan just straight up refuses to do this lol. I'm sure there's fans that are going to be like "there's deleted scenes! He cut some stuff out!" But at the same time, there is no breathing room in this story. It is just plot. And that's the sign of piss-poor editing and writing, which is really sad.
This movie had a lot of potential. It earns a point more than Oppenheimer for me, which was one of the most excruciatingly boring experiences I've ever had in a theater. But where Oppenheimer was completely devoid of content, meaning, or depth, this movie has too much of it.
And that to me (so far) seems to be Nolan's schtick. He's really good at making movies that seem to be good movies on the surface, but are missing one or more of the elements that make them amazing movies. You might get dazzling visuals, but no substance. You might get an amazing plot, but no breathing room or emotional depth to the movie. And because these missing elements are so critical to the movie's success, because they are the foundation upon which all the other parts rest, when they're not there, the entire movie collapses in on itself.
For that, this movie gets a 4/10. From my rating criteria:
"A movie which was so unengaging and underwhelming it in its overall effect, to the extent that you're finding it difficult to fight the urge to want to stop watching. Lethargic and emotionally numbing."
That about sums this up for me. Disappointing to say the least.
Review by Sam WightVIP 2BlockedParent2024-03-26T03:27:58Z
Watching this movie was like trying to deepthroat a firehose. An unenjoyable experience that only got worse as the movie went on.
I had to stop watching because the amount of stuff happening with the plot made it utterly unenjoyable to watch. There is no breathing room for you to process anything or to feel anything. There is just plot. This results in the characters being completely flat, emotionally impactful moments being made completely dull, and moments where I was supposed to feel shock or excitement feeling the same as the rest of the movie. I felt like someone took my brain out of my skull and ran sandpaper all over it. And by the time I was like "surely the movie's done", I was only an hour in. So I DNF-ed it.
Some might say that the pacing was a stylistic choice, to make you feel like how the Joker feels. Other more enlightened people who know what decent movies look like (and have a functioning brain) would say that this is just poor writing and editing.
Good writing and editing requires making difficult decisions about what to keep out of a movie. Movies are not books. They are 1-3 hours long, and there's a limit on the amount of content you can fit into that. You need to not only hit all the important plot points, but also leave space for your audience to be able to process things and make things emotionally impactful. Good writing and editing necessitates making clever sacrifices to maintain that delicate balance.
Nolan just straight up refuses to do this lol. I'm sure there's fans that are going to be like "there's deleted scenes! He cut some stuff out!" But at the same time, there is no breathing room in this story. It is just plot. And that's the sign of piss-poor editing and writing, which is really sad.
This movie had a lot of potential. It earns a point more than Oppenheimer for me, which was one of the most excruciatingly boring experiences I've ever had in a theater. But where Oppenheimer was completely devoid of content, meaning, or depth, this movie has too much of it.
And that to me (so far) seems to be Nolan's schtick. He's really good at making movies that seem to be good movies on the surface, but are missing one or more of the elements that make them amazing movies. You might get dazzling visuals, but no substance. You might get an amazing plot, but no breathing room or emotional depth to the movie. And because these missing elements are so critical to the movie's success, because they are the foundation upon which all the other parts rest, when they're not there, the entire movie collapses in on itself.
For that, this movie gets a 4/10. From my rating criteria:
"A movie which was so unengaging and underwhelming it in its overall effect, to the extent that you're finding it difficult to fight the urge to want to stop watching. Lethargic and emotionally numbing."
That about sums this up for me. Disappointing to say the least.