Everyone keeps suggesting there is a paradox concerning the 5D future humans and their ability to save humanity in the past. It's really not a paradox at all. Everyone assumes humanity survived to ascend to the 5th dimension but how could humanity exist in the future if not for the actions of Cooper.. who was guided by future humans (begin endless loop).
Did anyone ever consider the other important character in the movie? Amelia Brand carried on with the rest of her mission (thanks to Cooper). I postulate that Brand used the human seeds as intended and set up a colony. A colony that would thrive and eventually evolve beyond human. Thus Earth is of little importance, and may have indeed died. These colonists, and the generations that followed, would have been told the story of a great man (Cooper) who saved them from extinction. With the ability to manipulate space-time, they would pay homage to their hero "God" by helping him in the past so he may fulfill the mission most important to him, to once again see his daughter. Plan B worked beautifully. But the 5d humans, having the power to bend space-time, decided there's no reason why Plan A had to fail.
Denis Villeneuve is the man!
There’s only one word that came into my mind after watching it: finally.
Finally, a blockbuster that isn’t afraid to be primarily driven by drama and tension, and doesn’t undercut its own tone by throwing in a joke every 30 seconds.
Finally, a blockbuster that puts actual effort in its cinematography, and doesn’t have a bland or calculated colour palette.
Finally, a blockbuster with a story that has actual substance and themes, and doesn’t rely on intertextual references or nostalgia to create a fake sheen of depth.
Finally, a blockbuster that doesn’t pander to China by having big, loud and overblown action sequences, but relies on practical and grounded spectacle instead (it has big sand worms, you really don’t need to throw anything at the screen besides that).
Finally, a blockbuster that actually feels big, because it isn’t primarily shot in close ups, or on a sound stage.
And of course: finally, a blockbuster that isn’t a fucking prequel, sequel, or connected to an already established IP somehow.
(Yeah, I know Tenet did those things as well, but I couldn’t get into that because the characters were so flat and uninteresting).
This just checks all the boxes. An engaging story with subtext, very well set up characters, great acting (like James Gunn, Villeneuve's great at accentuating the strengths of limited actors like Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa), spectecular visuals and art design (desaturated but not in an ugly washed out way), pacing (slow but it never drags), directing, one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores: it’s all here.
I only have one real criticism: there’s too much exposition, especially in the first half.
It can occasionally hold your hand by referencing things that have already been established previously, and some scenes of characters explaining stuff to each other could’ve been conveyed more visually.
Other than that, it’s easily one of the best films of the year.
I’ve seen some people critiquing it for being incomplete, which is true, but this isn’t just a set up for a future film.
It feels like a whole meal, there are pay offs in this, and the characters progress (even if, yes, their arcs are still incomplete).
8.5/10
Nothing comforts anxiety like a little nostalgia.
If anything, Hollywood has boiled that concept down to a science over the past few years, as this film is basically a summary of everything that’s wrong with the industry in a neat, 148 minute package.
It thinks it’s meta and self-aware by pointing out how cynical and cheap franchise filmmaking is.
That might sound similar set-up as 22 Jump Street, but this film proceeds to be cheap and cynical itself without saying anything substantial beyond its own set up, so it embraces what it’s trying to criticize.
Everything in this movie is structured as an excuse to show stuff you’ve seen before, there are little to no original concepts or ideas that push the franchise in an interesting direction.
It’s mostly a rehash of the first film (mixed with some stuff from Reloaded and Revolutions in the second half), except the action isn’t nearly as good, it’s more predictable and convenient, the performances are nowhere near as memorable (that’s what you get from replacing your 2 best actors), it looks uglier and more synthetic, the pacing isn’t as tight, and it’s a lot more dull because of how much it overexplains itself.
It also ditches the cyberpunk aesthetic, and replaces it with something a lot more bland and boring, stripping the franchise from a lot of its personality.
It’s honestly quite an accomplishment when you think about it: the original is one of the best, most successful, big budget films ever made that still maintained a strong artistic and alternative impulse.
This, on the other hand, couldn’t be any more lowest common denominator if it tried to.
It’s a parody of itself and modern blockbuster filmmaking.
I suppose that was Lana Wachowski’s goal to some extent, but it isn’t very compelling to watch.
3/10
Let me start this off by saying that this sequel did not feel outside of what we remember.
Blade Runner 2049 maintains the mood and feel of its predecessor. The visuals, the sound... the dystopian future, it's all there.
| FIRST THOUGHT |
I love writing reviews, it comes somewhat naturally to me after watching something that I learn to feel passionate about.
This movie taught me to be passionate.
But... it's really hard for me to express judgment. And I'm going to explain why:
Actually, it's very simple. This was a 3 hours movie. Of these 3 hours, 2 were simply... air. Now, don't get me wrong, that isn't always negative, like in this case. It was refreshing air, but still... it doesn't (at first glance) hold anything on the plot.
Because of this, the viewer (me at least), is left with a lot of questions, the picture doesn't explain itself. Also; as a side note - you most definitely need to watch the first one. The great majority of the runtime is inexplicably useless.
The longer it goes, the longer it begins to add new stuff, and then some, then it seems somehow related to what's actually going on, but right after it deviates the actual story on an ideal from the characters involved, that at a certain point, evaporates. I'm really conflicted about this because it looks to me like the screenwriters and director wanted to leave all of this to theory and the fans.
Why is this confusing? Because it's a very strange mixture of linear narrative and non-linear narrative. One is focussed on one objective, the other starts a bunch of other objectives and then it simply dies. No explanation was given, no closure was given.
And this is aggravated by the fact that it's a 3 hours movie, of which 1 hour of the actual story is spread and mixed amongst 2 hours of absolutely nothing. VISUALLY IMPRESSIVE NOTHING. A VERY INTERESTING BUNCH OF LITERAL VOID.
This is actually the only thing I did not like about the movie. Which, again, if you are like me and enjoy movies that aren't patently explaining themselves, it's not a bad thing. I just feel like it could've been much more interesting if they explained somehow what happened to all the side characters, or just cut them out.
|STORY & ACTORS |
Aside from what I've mentioned before, the more "linear" part of the story is actually not that bad. It's nothing impressive. A part of what I said earlier connects to the fact that this movie constantly keeps juggling between what is real and what is not. Be it by robots, or actual reality that the characters are living. So it came out pretty obvious that the movie would have a twist at some point, somewhere. I will admit that I did not get it until the very end, so, don't be discouraged.
Ryan Gosling was great, also because he as an actor was perfect for his role. Being so that he has this way of being and looking conflicted, and so it portrayed really well on the protagonist.
Harrison Ford had less value to this movie than he did in the last Star Wars.
Jared Leto's character is a mystery to me, but he did a phenomenal job talking random shit.
All of the other actors, Jared Leto included, were there to push the story forward (or to add random bullshit) and that's it. They did a fantastic job, but unfortunately, as mentioned above, at first glance it looks like they don't mean shit.
| CINEMATOGRAPHY |
The movie is visually pleasing, it's bliss for people with OCD. It's perfectly round and at the same time perfectly square. It keeps smooth lines combining great color combinations in the palette, and utilizing great solid colors at the same time.
As I said before it holds perfectly a spot near its predecessor, the mood and feel are almost identical. (Having watched the first one only an hour before going to the theater to watch this one)
I have to say, this one looks A LOT, like A FUCKING GIGAZILLION LOT more gruesome and splatter than the first one. The fighting scenes are brutal, they do not go into dramatic effects, they just are what they should be. A punch in the face, exploding heads and blood.
There is no doubt that this movie looks fucking amazing.
It sounds amazing as well. It has a collection of deep, pure sounds. There is not a lot of music, but when there is it's powerful and present and it makes you wake up and amaze. Same goes for the special audio effects: I have watched it in ATMOS and I have to admit, they did not utilize it at all, except for one scene later in the movie, but the way it goes from absolute silence to seat trembling sensations it's really amazing. The sounds were so powerful I could literally see the movie screen shake and the subwoofer hit made the whole room shake.
I would also like to add that in the Italian version, you can clearly see that they used "incorrect" words grammatically, they used a lot of anglicisms, I guess they've done that to express how language is evolving? It's actually current of our generation, I see a lot of people adapting English words in Italian, so I was very impressed by that.
| FINAL THOUGHT |
I feel like everyone needs to understand, before watching this movie, that you need a time, a mood and a place perfectly fit to sit for a 3 hours movie that it's going to feel like a 6-hour long journey into colors, shapes, and absolute "living" silence.
This is NOT a Marvel movie, there is action, well-done action, but it's not about action. You need to sit, relax and don't think about time, because, trust me, it's going to fuck you.
Please like my comment if you enjoyed my review, it makes me really happy.
Note that all of this is driven by my personal opinion. If you think I wasn't objective in some of the parts of what I've written, you're welcome to make me notice where.
On Twitter, I review the entire world -> @WiseMMO
Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan was just a fabulous experience. I definitely enjoyed the movie quite a bit from start to finish, and usually war movies aren't really my cup of tea (at least not anymore). However, cinematically, the entire movie is just a masterpiece. As a big movie buff, I could appreciate how meticulously crafted the whole movie was. It's so hard to create a movie like this within this genre while trying to remain "minimal", but Christopher Nolan accomplishes it in every sense of the word.
He seamlessly interweaves 3-4 different plot narratives/timelines, while using minimal amounts of exposition. He gives the viewer such a sense of a looming and foreboding threat, while never even having a Nazi soldier on screen at any time. He tells us "so much with so little" and allows the viewer to take in the conflict of each situation (and there are a lot of them) rather than point it all out to us. In that sense, you really feel like you're getting into the mind of each one of the soldiers/main characters when they are contemplating some very crucial decisions that literally determine life and death, for not just them, but many other men as well.
Nolan gives us continued development, closure and solid endings in each one of the tiny subplots that he sets off from the beginning. It's definitely a joy seeing how all the different plotlines intermingle with each other at the end especially with the civilian aspect added in. And, most importantly, he accomplishes all this in less than 2 hours (and by a damn good margin as well).
If you appreciate amazing direction, cinematography, and vision within a movie, this will be an absolute joy. It could definitely get Christopher Nolan that elusive Best Director Oscar come Academy Award season. I watched Dunkirk in 70mm, but, honestly, I couldn't really tell the difference, especially without being able to do a side-by-side comparison to a regular version. Overall, it didn't seem too different from the usual XD or IMAX type presentation at my local big theater. Still, the movie is a visual treat lending heavily to more practical effects that gives a nice sense of realism to it all.
Anyways, this gets a solid 9/10 from me, coming from a war movie curmudgeon. Watch it, and you won't regret it.
When I saw the first teaser to this movie, I was like "What the hell is this? Something Peter Jackson created, that looks this fantastic? I need to watch this, even though the CGI did not look that good (yet?)". The first trailer wasn't that interesting anymore as it spoiled a lot. Still, Peter Jackson, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Lang... that could still be a good movie?
But first of all: The marketing - at least in Germany - was irritating. Peter Jackson wanted to do this movie, he held the rights to making this movie for over 8 years but couldn't get around and therefore decided to pass it on to one of his protegees: Christian Rivers, who has worked as storyboard artist and visual effects supervisor in 11 of Jackson's movies, has his directorial debut - Peter Jackson only contributed his first draft, and of course the rights and budget - which by the way is 150 million dollars - not bad for a debut. But does money equal quality?
Let's take a short look at the plot:
In a dystopian future the few survivors of a global catastrophe gathered together to form mobile predator cities and live in an world order called "Municipal Darwinism", i.e. in the great hunting ground larger cities hunt smaller cities for their resources, to enslave the people, etc. In this steampunk setting London is known as one of the most predatory cities - but the free young woman Hester Shaw wants to travel to exactly this city, because she is hoping to settle a score with one of the leaders of the city.
Peter Jackson has already proven that he has the ability to create new, unseen and absolutely fantastic worlds, and at first glance it seems like with Mortal Engines this applies as well, even though this is not really Peter Jackson. But: It's just the first glance. Yes, the world is cool, it has a lot of beautiful and interesting original ideas that we get to see. The CGI at first glance looks good - but unfortunately only at first glance. Different to Lord of the Rings, where you see a number of details, that are filmed in long slow moving camera to make sure the viewer has the ability to actually see, discover and experience all the details, in Mortal Engine you always have very fast tracking shots, so in the end, everything is blurry giving the movie makers the ability to mask the missing level of detail, as well as often also the physical plausibility of things. And that was something that really bothered me. How do the cities actually transform, or rake up to bigger cities? This happens so fast that you don't actually know - because there is no clever way they do fit together. And what are all the details in London? You don't get to see anything - there are 2-3 spots that are shown in detail - the rest is principally just a hill with a number of glowing spots, that blur due to the fast camera pace. Same with the wall. Why don't show how the people behind the wall actually live? They live a totally different life, why not celebrate it, like e.g. Lord of the Rings celebrated the introduction of Rohan? Because these details actually don't exist.
And at least to me, a movie of this caliber, with this budget and playing in such a world needs to be presented, needs to stun me. And we don't get anything.
But it's not only the graphics and setting - this is probably still the best part of the movie. Talking about the story, this movie is even worse. First, this movie is so packed, that you start to ask: Why did they not make a 2-part movie? Peter Jackson made 3 movies out of the hobbit which is a small to medium sized single children's book. But here, due to packing so much into one movie and not getting rid of certain aspects you feel like a lot of things are touched but not really explained. And this is really sad, as the story has a number of interesting parts. I would have loved to learn something about Anna Fang. Why is she hunted? What is her motivation as leader of an resistance movement? What is that resistance movements motivation? We get nothing - Anna is seen in the wanted poster in the beginning and all of a sudden she is there. The whole backstory with Shrike could have also been interesting, but is also just touched. Same with our antagonist. What is his motivation? No idea. Why does he - all of a sudden - decide to destroy something? No one will know. There are also hardly any quite moments to establish the characters, and this leads not only to the characters being really shallow, but also not rally having time to interact with each other and in the end there is absolutely no chemistry between the characters. All could die, and no one would care. And also the story telling is absolutely minimal. Most of the time is spend in an concatenation of action sequences: I feel that more than 80% was just action, and these action orgies where extremely CGI dominated, so they don't even get that exciting - and to me, after the first 2-3 action sequences I got fatigued.
In the end the actors are not challenged at all and fall far beyond what they are probably capable of, and there is not much else that the movie has to offer - I was bored after the first third of the movie, and it did not get any better till the end. A really great disappointment, I had high hopes :(
Well...
Instead of reading reviews, the best thing to do is just go and watch it
I didn't find it REALLY good, but I enjoyed it nonetheless !
the main problem (sorry) are the actors... especially Jennifer Lawrence ! Don't go watch it if you want a serious SF movie !
I didn't count the number of times there were "sexy" shots on her body, but at the end I was like "come on ! Not again !"
Also for physics friends, the director made quite a good job ! Of course, there are some flaws but there is a lot of actual physical content, so the ship, the technology and everything is not pure imagination (or wandering).
also I'm still wondering some things, like why is there only a single medical pod or bartender for 5200+ people ? Why there is still a need for propulsion when you keep at 50% of light speed ? What a glass preventing humans from being roasted by a fusion reactor is made of ? How strong Chris Pratt really is to make an amount of force equivalent to the force with which he got ejected by the energy of that reactor, simply by throwing a door ?
Finally, the music is fair and the design is good, the only big problem here is too much romance but hey, that's what people want now ¯_(ツ)_/¯
This movie is OK at best. It's one of Nolan's better ones at least. But, it has some serious issues. See Krauss talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pG89gREWyI&t=1m12s
It's too long - he's right. The oxygen blight is completely scientifically silly. The entire basis of the plot (that Earth will run out of oxygen in tens of years) is unbelievable. This put me off from the start. There's some "formula" that Michael Caine worked on and half-solved, but it took data from the event horizon of a black hole (which also makes no sense scientifically) to solve it. Sorry, if you approach a black hole, you don't end up behind a bookshelf in your old house in the past - I have no idea how they can claim this is a movie about science. It is FULL of religious symbolism, though, so if you're into that, you'll be right at home. Apparently humans evolve out of the 3rd dimension too ... sure. There's one thing that was definitely right - outer space is quiet - FINALLY.
The cinematography is pretty good, and I liked how the dude went crazy on the barren planet, but this film would have been a lot better without the sappy happy ending. I mean, really - transporting all the way back from inside a black hole? Armageddon had a much more realistic ending than that, and it was SO STUPID! It would be great if someone fan-edited this into something scientifically accurate (dub over the lines about what's wrong with Earth replacing it with a feasible problem, have him crushed to death in the black hole, show Brand on the planet at the end all alone, FIN). I don't know how people can give this a higher rating than a 7/10. I wouldn't consider it to be a classic at all. It's at best a see-once blockbuster, just like Armageddon was.
[9.9/10] How do you go about capturing something as immense and horrifying as the Holocaust on film? It is an event that stretched across countries, with an unimaginable, unending array of horrors, that feels too big to be contained within the feeble confines of celluloid. But Steven Spielberg and his team somehow manage it, by going big and going small.
Spielberg gives us avatars for the different sides of this experience. He gives us Itzhak Stern, to channel the desperation, the resourcefulness, the unceasing fear of the Jews driven from their homes and then forced into camps. He gives us Amon Goeth, to symbolize the utter inhumanity, the callousness of the people who carried out such atrocities, who saw their captives and victims as less than human and acted accordingly. And he gives us Oskar Schindler, and with him, the arc of a man who goes from seeing the Jews as a means to an end, of profit and personal gain, to helping them a little when he can, to realizing that he’s sold his soul and trying to do everything he can to buy it back.
Through these central figures, Schindler in particular, the film brings grand, wide-ranging concepts down to earth: the dehumanization of the Jewish people, the different shades of wanton cruelty visited upon them, the gradual realization of their plight by the world, the good works that created light in the darkness, and the bureaucratic state that treated the harvesting and expungement of human lives like a series of numbers on a ledger.
But he also stretches beyond those avatars, to capture the horrors of one of humanity’s great shames as a series of chaotic, disquieting events that affected massive numbers of people. Spielberg’s camera does not shy away from panic, the tumult, the hiding, the casual deaths doled out in the streets in the “liquidation” of the Krakow ghetto. It doesn't flinch from the masses of people loaded into trains, stripped and prodded and treated like animals, and falling apart as families are split up, spouses are separated, and parents see their children blithely led to the slaughter. It holds the tension to the last when a group of Jewish women are disrobed, shaved, and sent into a shower, uncertain whether they are being disinfected, or sent to their deaths.
Through all of this, Schindler’s List provides a sea of familiar faces, individuals who are less fully-developed characters, but still given personalities, connections, quirks, and specific hopes and fears, that make them more than the indistinct mass of humanity their Nazi tormentors see them as. They are distinguished just enough to make them memorable, relatable, recognizable, but their concerns, their reactions and mere persistence or faltering within these stomach-churning events, are real and universal enough to make them stand-ins for the broader horrors faced by so many like them in the Holocaust. The film expertly balances their humanity and the way they represent the humanity of so many other, saved or caught or lost, in the Third Reich’s mortal machinery.
The film, in fact, treats it like machinery. That’s not to say there is pure dispassionate indifference here. One of Schindler’s List’s most intriguing choices is its treatment of Amon Goeth as someone profoundly real and expressive -- in his boorish laughter, his twisted affections for his conscripted maid, his brief and faltering attempts to own the power of mercy -- but also someone with no shred of empathy in him, for whom murder is either an idle sport or a mundane necessity of his job, until the very suffering or salvation of the people under his watch becomes one extneded joke.
But at the same time, the editing and framing choices emphasize the efficiency, the bureaucracy the meticulousness of the Nazis as they processed the Jews into fungible goods and slave labor and ash. Spielberg returns repeatedly to the images of the “listmakers”, the names being typed onto pages, the stamps that dictate life or death, the regimented memorialization of letters and numbers that either allow humble, blameless Polish Jews to hang onto their lives, or condemn them to an untimely death.
This is not the rush of the battlefield or the fog of war or the uncertainty of combat. It is the systematic extraction and extermination of a people at the hands of the state, done with governmental imprimatur. It is one of history’s greatest horrors regularly delivered with the desultory indifference of a civil servant.
At the same time, Spielberg and company take pains to show the contrast between the lives led by the German officers and private businessman who thrive on this murder and forced labor, and the beleaguered Jews struggling simply to survive. The film juxtaposes the lavish parties Schindler joins with the S.S. officers, and scenes of the squalor of the ghettos. He contrasts decadent pleasures of the flesh and of stunning artistic displays, with private beatings by officers who hate the cause of their own twisted feelings, and life events eked out by Jews in captivity. Without ever having a character speak out to condemn this disparity, he lets the disparity speak for itself in the distance between the casual horrors of mass enslavement and extermination, and the flush, spoils-of-war indulgences of those who profit from it.
That’s aided by the black and white aesthetic of the film. That choice certainly bolters moments like when a colorful flame juts back into the monochromatic world of the film, signifying the traditions carried despite the time they were almost snuffed out, or Schindler recognizes the red coat of a little girl that helps spur him to recognize the abominations of these acts and the humanity of the people who suffer under them. But it also allows Spielberg and director of photography Janusz Kaminski to make light the focus of their images.
The flash of gunfire illuminates and identifies the killings that take place in the Krakow Ghetto. The light that shines on Schindler’s face as he leans out of the shadows to comfort Helen Hirsch after she describes the terror-filled unpredictability of Goeth’s arbitrary murders cuts a contrast in the us vs. them divide. And it creates a stark beauty but also a grim frankness to swaths of liberated refugees walking down a hill, or clothless people forced to run in circles so they can be examined, or the bursts of smoke and ash that signal the ending crush of human suffering practically automated. It makes Schindler’s List feel older than it is, whilst channeling the dark realities the film unflinchingly confronts.
It confronts them with the crowds of Jews, the lists of names, thrown into the mortal whims of men who view them as subhuman, to be killed, abused, utilized, or saved. It confronts them with the story of a man who comes to see that invisible machine, the input and output of war, and laments his myopic part in it, and changes enough to save whom he can whilst decrying the more he might have saved. And it confronts us with the unimaginable scope and brutality and lost humanity, channeling the experience into a visceral three hours of trials and loss, of shameful joys and undeserved deaths, of regimented destruction and unsanctioned survival.
It is, in a word, a masterpiece. It is a hard watch, but also a film that accomplishes the impossible -- it captures the all-encompassing maw of the Holocaust, the acts that called into question our very souls as a species, the kindesses and losses that helped to affirm them, into a film so attuned to make us recoil, that also makes it impossible to look away, to cover our eyes, or do anything but reflect and remember what was done and what was lost.
A HUGE Lord of The Rings fan here! and I have mixed feelings about this movie just like the previous The Hobbit movie.
Let's start with the positive points:
The Acting, it's fantastic and Martin Freeman once again kills it as Bilbo and he is just so fun to watch on the screen and everyone else is great. Gandalf is a huge badass (no surprise there,, this is the same old guy that stood up to the Balrog and said You Shall Not Pass).
The Dragon is awesome and Benedict Cumberpatch is awesome, his voice is amazing and Benedict and Martin together in any scene will make me happy ! The dragon looks majestic and everything worked with that dragon.. honestly it made the movie 10x times better.
The music is great (it's Howard Shore). Some of the action sequences are amazing (the mirkwood spiders, the Barrel scene)
Also the subplot with Gandalf and the Necromancer is actually interesting.
(Lee Pace as Elvenking just decapitating that Orc was so beautiful I can't describe it!)
Then for the negatives:
it's too LONG! and this is not just me saying, anyone who saw this movie says this, it is very long and thus so many and I mean SO MANY useless fillers are thrown in there that just decreases the quality of the movie, they do so much harm!
That Romance is stupid and should NOT have been there, I would have liked it a bit if it was with Legolas and added a bit to his character but nope that Elf is just in love with that dwarf..
The Lake Town people and that useless hate for Bard is incredibely useless.
The dwarves trying to kill a FIRE BREATHING dragon by molten gold is stupid.
Too much CGI and Green screen, as I rewatched this movie I realized that the CGI in the Lord of The Rings was better than this and that was 13 years before this movie, I don't like CGI Azog or Bolg or just CGI orc in general.
Azog is still a subplot that I didn't like.
So these are just the Important stuff that I had to say!
(and Legolas seems to defy Physics.. doesn't matter he's cool LOL)
As an outside observer with no previous connection to the series, I found it more than a little confusing to get started with Neon Genesis Evangelion. The original series ran for a single season in 95/96, then was condensed and re-worked into a feature film a year later, then circled around again to produce an alternate ending, and has now returned to the well once more for yet another revival of roughly the same material at a new animation house. There's also been sporadic talk of a live-action rendition, though that seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years.
I figured I'd start with this, the newest model, and... well, to put it nicely, it feels like something that's been left in the oven for too long. If there's passion and energy and enthusiasm to any of the earlier iterations, they were lost somewhere between here and there. The whole production is empty and soulless, like a husk just going through the motions and winking desperately at the audience. Maybe that works for the die-hards, who've already memorized the crucial storytelling beats and can relish the new perspective, but it doesn't offer a lot of meat for the uninitiated. Everything is vague and understated, from the young protagonist (literally plucked from a street corner and deposited in a skyscraper-sized mech, sans-training, to save the city) to his peers and support staff (a group of hyper-stereotypical anime girls) to the monolithic hulks that use him as a punching bag (a trio of imaginative, but dull, forces of nature).
It's just so emotionally flat, so excruciatingly blasé about everything, that even the spectacular concept of a giant robot at war with a hovering, six-mile-wide jellyfish feels bland. That these big metal exoskeletons are almost singularly employed to shoot really big guns doesn't help the case. Those ridiculously large sniper rifles might as well be mounted to a rooftop turret or something. At least the animation looks nice, if perhaps a bit too reliant on abstract mechanics and twirling gears, and the character designs remain sharp and memorable. A lot of time and money went into this, not to mention the three ensuing sequels (as of this writing, one remains unreleased), and I can't honestly say that either investment was worthwhile.
This is one of Marvel Studios’ riskier projects, the hyperlink structure combined with the villain being the main character immediately makes it stand out in the genre. It’s because of those two aspects that the film works as well as it does. Thanos is a great character with an interesting motivation. The animation is so detailed and lifelike that it never fails to bring out the emotion, in fact I’d argue that the scenes between him and Gamora have the most emotional punch (courtesy of Zoe Saldana and Josh Brolin, who both put in a really solid performance). The balancing of all the different plot lines is also quite well done as there’s a relevancy to each one, nor does the tone feel too disjointed at any point. Some transitions or the sudden pop culture riffing during serious scenes can be awkward, but it’s handled about as well as it could. The exposition is handled tastefully and kept to a minimum, it instead chooses to focus on unexpected interactions between characters from different branches of the Marvel universe, which is the more exciting part. I’m less into the action and filmmaking, however. Not a lot about the camerawork or score jumps out to me, I feel like what little vision the Russos brought to their previous MCU projects is completely lost here. The washed out colour palette (which for some reason is slightly more vibrant during scenes in space) and obvious music embellishments don’t evoke all that much. The staging and editing of the action is a little too quick for my liking, the moments that are meant to be memorable don’t leave much of an impression because the editing doesn’t take its time to punctuate the stunts properly. Some of the CGI also feels a little weightless, for example Stark’s suit looks and feels like its made from paper. The resulting scenes, such as the final battle on Titan, feel more like small scale, digital mush than the big epic scenes they’re aiming for. Once the film decides to slow down for the dramatic conclusion, I find its intent to be manipulative and disingenuous. I felt that way after watching it the first time in the cinema, and after every ‘death’ in this movie having been retconned in one way or another, it turns out I was right. Even in its riskier films, Marvel will find ways to take most of the edges off. Overall, it’s still decent but it’s lost a lot of its flavour for me over the years.
6/10
