A Tim Burton-produced Roald Dahl adaptation that does its best to capitalize on the success of The Nightmare Before Christmas via eccentric stop-motion animation. The love that seeped from every pore of Nightmare isn't here, however, and no amount of curious character design can account for that. It doesn't help that the Dahl story itself has been altered to suit a more typical film structure, stripping away much of the free-wheeling zaniness that made the book so unpredictable and entertaining. That can't have been for a lack of time, as the film is already dreadfully short: barely more than an hour, with some serious padding at both ends.
The awkward blend of animation and live-action doesn't work especially well, either. Despite one great casting decision (AbFab's Joanna Lumley as the bone-thin, witchy Aunt Spiker), the flesh-and-blood scenes feel under-produced and B-grade, a sharp contrast to the more lush, professional efforts on the other side of the coin.
At a glance, the quirky stylings that typify Burton's work seem a great match for Dahl's oddball stories. As a promo slick or movie poster, it's thumbs up all the way, but too much is missing to consider the whole effort as much more than a well-intentioned miss.
After the 2014 Godzilla film, people demanded a dumb monster movie.
The result is something that joins the ranks of Jurassic World 2, Pacific Rim 2 or Rampage.
Happy now?
Pro's:
- Creature design/VFX.
- The set up for the 3 main human characters (the idea that drives them).
Con's:
- Massively overblown (especially at the end).
- Too much exposition and way too plot driven. Emphasizing the plot is never a good idea when you make a film like this.
- The dialogue in this is awful, and does the actors no favours.
- The characters are hollow shells, and constantly act in unnatural ways. Especially what they did with Vera Farmiga's character felt lazy and not earned.
- It overuses the orange and teal look to a degree where Zack Snyder would be jealous of it.
- If you thought the final season of GoT had a lot of deus ex machina and 'plot armour' moments, just know that you've seen nothing yet.
- The action scenes in this are incoherent and underlit, and therefore hard to follow.
I find it funny that whenever we get one of these, the take away for most always seems to be: too much focus on the humans, not enough on the monsters!
Well, here's the thing: you can't really develop characters like Godzilla or King Kong, so watching them for 2 hours walk through buildings and punching things is going to get dull very fast.
Therefore, you need the human focus.
You know which director knows this? Steven Spielberg.
You know which movie knows this? Jurassic Park.
So instead of demanding more shallow elements for the next one, let's maybe ask for the filmmakers to develop the characters for once, and stop focussing on a plot we've seen hundreds of times at this point.
2.5/10
Imagine making a movie that has such big stakes, but make it so nobody cares about any of the characters.
Jean Grey - Yawn, she struggled with controlling her powers, controlling her emotions. Some part understandable but I felt no emotion.
Professor X - Acts like a Villain for the first half of the film.
Mystique - Shouldn't have hired Jennifer Lawrence, she couldn't handle the make-up. Attempts a death scene but leaves no emotional impact.
Quicksilver - Has some of the most iconic scenes in comic book films and they don't give him his scene. Gets injured early on and just disappears until the end of the film.
Storm - Was just there to do damage.
Beast - The only character with correct motivation and you somewhat understand why he feels the way he does. Just feels like bad casting personally. Hoult is just too youthful and skinny for beast.
Cyclops - His character is just completely centred around Jean. Feels like we never get to see just Scott.
Nightcrawler - Where does this come from, he just become a murdering psycho and the build up just seems too out of character for him.
Magneto - Probably the best performance, character flipped sides very easily considering his motivation for wanted to kill Jean.
Jennifer Chastain/Aliens - Why, what, who, what, why.
Good scene - Using their power to fight over control of the helicopter
Bad Scene - Every single one with Jennifer Lawrence
