Heads up: I know that there are a lot of folks going into this expecting it to scratch the same itch as Game of Thrones or Vikings.
You’re going to come out extremely disappointed if you expect that.
This is way slower and artsier than your average 'manly' action movie, the tone and feel are more akin to something like The Revenant
Alright, so I did not give this its due the first time around, here are my updated thoughts.
The first thing that stood out to me during the rewatch is how much of the imagery had already burned itself into my brain, there are so many fantastic long takes that I still easily remembered months after seeing it the first time.
I love the brutal and raw feel, which combined with the score creates a very good sense of atmosphere.
The characters clicked for me this time around, a lot of their development is done in subtle and visual ways (pay attention to how cold Skardsgard’s character claims he is versus how he acts). As a result, I wasn’t bored and the pacing fell into place for me.
While the story is still a little by the numbers and predictable, I picked up on this theme of the toxicity and pointlessness of revenge, which sets it apart from similar stories like The Lion King or Hamlet.
The action slaps, but I’m still not a fan of some of the arthouse touches. For example I don’t get what that hallucination fight during the sword retrieval scene wants to convey.
But yeah, it’s much better than I initially gave it credit for, even if it’s nowhere near peak Eggers.
7.5/10
Nice looking chinese animation. It looks very good and... that's about it. And not even everything. The monsters, effects and environment look good, but humans look pretty weird. Can't say the story is really interesting. It is very basic and done a hundred times. Monster meet human, fall in love, but we can't be together, yes we will, fight with a big baddie, the end. It's not even pieced correctly together. I don't know how close it is to the original story though.
If you're not familiar at all with chinese folklore you might miss or not understand lots of stuff, but it's not that important. Though one thing that seem very far from most chinese stories I've seen: the social distinction between characters. The villagers treat Xiao Bai very casually, when it's obvious she is of a very high social status, I mean you can see immediately that just her clothes are probably worth the whole village ten times over. Xuan attitude doesn't vary much when it turns out she's probably an immortal either. As for Xuan, for a dirt poor villager he seems to have extensive knowledge of mystic and magical arts out of nowhere. It should be surprising enough that he can read, but he can identify constellations and their meanings, deactivate magic arrays or find their exits, identify an item made by a secret shop that sells weapons to demons... that's really a lot.
The accelerated love story has not much meaning either. Touching scenes based on "do you rememeber when we did that ?"... it was litterally two days ago, of course she fucking remembers...
Whole final battle is not worth much more, it doesn't make much sense either, be it on who's fighting who, flucuating power levels, how everybody is absorbing everybody's energy, how a minimum level demon can survive for so long in the magic array when one that absorbed everybody's strength is defeated in seconds. The long scene trying to convince villagers to help in the middle, when there is absolutely nothing they can do, nor can they know that there is anybody to save nor if helping won't actually save the bad guy instead.
And that's just a few of the nonsensical parts of the story.
Pretty close to the original, doesn't bring much.
Aladdin is ok, I guess, nothing special.
Jasmine storyline has been updated to be more modern, she wants to succeed her father and not only choose who she will marry. That's a pretty good upgrade. However the need to have girl power moments is, as often, an after thought and badly exploited. Yeah for the plot upgrade, but her song, only one added from the original, is a joke. It could have been placed at several points in the movie and be ok, but it's at the worse time (when she gets arrested), the whole sequence is a little too much of a let it go lookalike, and her little song basically cancels Jafar's first wish. Seriously high level of wtf.
Despite all online criticism at the trailer, Will Smith is pretty good as the genie. The added storylines to humanize him are interesting, it goes well with the movie if not with the character. The point of the genie is too be crazy and extravagant, so much that it's clear he's way beyond human understanding. I don't think humanizing is an improvement for the character.
Jafar sucks bigtime. Original Jafar was dark and scary. Here he just looks like a kid having a tantrum.
CGI is pretty good, however, again, it's not on the level for genie magic. It looks good, ok, but it clearly loses several level of wtf compared to the drawed version. Again, what the genie can do is so weird and extravagant that it's jsut not translatable to real life effects. So it's pretty disappointing on this point even if expected.
Songs were disappointing too. The more rap like version of Will Smith are ok, an it goes with the character, but it's not that good wgen it's closer to real singing. Mena Massoud's part are not good. Naomi Scott however is impressive, she really can sing and is three leves above the others. The bad point being that it makes the fact that the others are lacking so much more obvious.
Conceptually interesting, but we’ve seen it done better in other movies and even tv shows at this point.
Yes, I certainly can’t deny that the acting and visuals are brilliant.
Also, the action scenes and worldbuilding are magnificent.
Can you tell it was made in the early 2000’s? Absolutely, the cyberpunk look is ever so present in a lot of scenes, but that’s not bothersome. In fact, I think it’s awesome.
Furthermore, this story goes in directions you don’t expect.
It takes a while for the real adventure part to kick in, and only then you’ll realize that the first act was just a lot of character development.
This film fails on a point where Spielberg hardly ever failed: tone.
As you probably know, this film was originally intended to be directed by Stanley Kubrick.
His dark touch is felt, and it really doesn’t mix with Spielberg’s whimsical style at all.
For example, do PG-13 Ted and an Einstein cartoon played by Robin Williams feel as if they belong in the same movie as where a mother leaves her own kid behind in the forest, and cries her eyes out for doing that?
Unfortunately, they don’t, which results in bizarre tonal shifts throughout the film.
Moreover, I found the choice to have the AI act like our stereotypical imagination of robots a mistake, as it makes it harder to connect to the characters, or understand certain choices of human characters in the first act.
Finally, certain scenes were, in the larger scope of the story, unnecessary (e.g. Brendan Gleeson’s circus show). Removing those scenes would’ve sped up the pacing and shortened the runtime, something this film needed.
5/10
Kyoto Inferno's strongest suite, like its predecessor, is in its choreography. It's able to invent moves that makes anime sword fight - with somersaults and slide running - looks convincing. Both in duel and large scale battle Kyoto Inferno succeed in imagining how swordsmen with super human abilities would cross their swords to each other. They even manage the tricky part with Himura vs Soujiro, a battle that relies heavily on speed. The film also has a very good casting choice, especially with Soujiro, which is a feat in itself if we're speaking of anime adaptation.
However, also just like its predecessor, the film is weak in its plot department. The pacing is a bit inconsistent and some scenes feel like rushed plot points. Same thing can be said with character development. There are so many characters introduced who lack enough time to grasp viewer's attention. Combine this two, and you get the Shinomori Aoshi subplot. His subplot sticks like a sore thumb especially so during the last 15 minutes of the film, with his arrival disturbing the whole tone.
It is unfortunate that, compared to the first film, Kyoto Inferno seems to opt with delving into the story and character's decision a little bit more. The story attempts to explore Himura's resolve of "not killing" - it plays big part in the course of the film - but because of its inconsistent pacing and rushed plot points, the dilemma of "what could've made Himura pushed the boundaries of killing" cannot be developed to its maximum potential.
Were the film focused more on the fights, where it excels the most, Kyoto Inferno could've easily been one of the most enjoyable action anime adaptation out there.
Contains major spoilers !!!!!
Huge and utterly dissapointing. After TFA I said this movie would make or break the story. For me it broke.
Where to begin? Let´s start with my biggest problem.
After that rebel cruisers bridge was hit and Leia was thrown into space we saw her drifting in the cold empty vacuum of space. This was a powerful scene and I had tears welling up in my eyes thinking that would be a great ending for the character dying how she always lived. Fighting. I did not realise, or care, that it would have been a huge coincidence had they written this scene at that point not knowing Carrie would pass away. But as I said powerful scene. And then she opens her eyes and floated back into the ship still beeing alive. At that point I was seriously considering leaving the cinema. It´s scifi but, please, without as much as a hint of an explanation that is just awful writing. It is Disney all over it. Anyway I stayed and watched the rest but in general I was done with the movie.
There are tons of other things I didn´t like.
way to much unnessesary and stupid humor. Most of the time it does not fit and just destroys scenes. Holding for General Hux - that might have been OK once but two or three times it just becomes goofy. And there is more of this througout the movie.
the writing was all over the place. So much things going on that do little to nothing for the general plot and just add playtime. Like that whole thing with the codebreaker, going to the casino. Just sugarcoating CGI.
and speaking of playtime - way too long. About five times towards the end I thought it was over. It could have ended when the reached the rebel base- no let´s add another battle. When they realised they where trapped. With Luke going out to face Kylo. At some point I would have been OK with the movie ending with the First Order defeating the rebels, everyone dying, and the franchise done with. But of course that is not happening and the movie ends.....no, just show us a kid with a broom looking at the stars and indicate he could be the hero of a future movie.
in many ways the continuation of storylines is not satisfiying. They introduce Snoke in the first movie without an explanation who he is, where he comes from and how he got there. Would have been OK, could have done later. So now he´s dead without so much as a fight and there are questions left to be answered.
what about Rey ? Are we really to believe her parents were some drunk and drifting scavengers that sold her for money like Ren said ? That would be very stupid because how in the universe could she master the Force in ways even the best Jedis or Sith couldn´t without as much as years of training. Another void in the storytelling.
too many, shall I call them, homage scenes ? A lot of times I felt I had already seen this movie. The scene in the throne room f.e. Snoke = Emperor, Rey = Luke, Ben = Vader, the destruction of the rebel fleet playing in the background and the Ben killing Snoke is like Vader killing the Emperor. I know that was said about TFA as well but I feel it´s much worse here. The Battle of Hoth reviseted would be another thing where they re-did some scenes to a T. All that was left was tow cables.
Those are just some examples of the things I disliked and maybe there could be satisfactory explanation later. There is a lot more but it would take too much time to write it down. But I doubt I will go to the cinema for the next one.
To be fair there where some positives in this movie.
I liked the scenes with Rey and Luke althought they did not really lead anywhere. But some nice insights into Lukes story after ROTJ.
The conversations between Kylo and Rey where very interesting and I thought there was really potential to steer the story to something new and exciting. Not happening.
So overall I was not satisfied. I really like TFA, it built some expectations that where all crushed with this. As far as I am concerned I am done with this new story. I am not not very eager to find out what else the canibalise and how they try to write themselves out of this. There is nothing left.
This is my view of the movie. If you liked it I´m happy for you.
May the Force be with us. Always.
