Flagrant-Baronessa
Joined May 2005
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Reviews288
Flagrant-Baronessa's rating
Yikes. This is definitely not the future my mother warned me about. This future is populated by cute kids, blood-free deaths, supermodels with perfect teeth and goofball terminators that shoot themselves in the foot. It is set in a sun-kissed Michael Bay desert landscape with high-tech military equipment and not the dirty sewers we saw in T1. Either Kyle Reese was laying it on real thick to get in Sarah Connor's pants, or McG et al were simply incapable of delivering the dark, post-apocalyptic future setting that they kept harping on about honoring before release.
This is no doubt a casualty of the scarlet letter that is the PG-13 rating, oft denied by the production while they dropped subtle hints along the way such as toy deals, Pizza Hut endorsements and McG noting how the PG-13 The Dark Knight was "made without compromise". In reality the rating was a fait accompli the moment they green-lit a $200M production. The implications of the rating are not just sacrifices to language, blood & gore or in the inclusion of a sidekick kid to instill the family friend image. It's worse. Now the Transformers audience is a major demographic for TS, and it translates in the light-hearted, gadgety nature of the movie, and obviously in its Harvester design (who deploys mototerminators from its kneecaps).
But quite honestly, massive mythology discrepancies aside, there is simply far too many wrist-slashingly bad/expository lines and heavy-handed metaphors in the script for this to even work as a standalone movie (thanks, Haggis). To its credit, much of the action is kinetically captured in a timely shaky-cam fashion. Lord knows I'm no McG fan (he's a snake-oil salesman) but I feel the major culprit truly is the script which spells everything out for the viewer with voiceovers and facepalm exposition. I'm sorry the writers were not able to give McG, at the very least, the kind of mindless action flick he was surely able to direct in a competent if forgettable manner.
Whereas acting is concerned Christian Bale shows up for 35-40 minutes looking real angry at the world and at being involved in this project, it is in fact Sam Worthington who is a breakout star, and such an effortless tough guy that you can feel the bass reverberate in your body when he throws a punch. Think of how hardass he could be in the right R-rated setting. I'm getting chills just thinking about it. Everything else reeks of an empty cash-in sequel with neither knowledge nor respect for the source material, vaguely "justified" by tagging on "this isn't the future my mother warned me about". No, McG, it most certainly is not.
Whatever. Pages could be spent arriving at the conclusion that this movie is, quite simply, abysmal. I'm giving it a 3 out of 10 based on Yelchin, Worthington and effort on the action side of things.
This is no doubt a casualty of the scarlet letter that is the PG-13 rating, oft denied by the production while they dropped subtle hints along the way such as toy deals, Pizza Hut endorsements and McG noting how the PG-13 The Dark Knight was "made without compromise". In reality the rating was a fait accompli the moment they green-lit a $200M production. The implications of the rating are not just sacrifices to language, blood & gore or in the inclusion of a sidekick kid to instill the family friend image. It's worse. Now the Transformers audience is a major demographic for TS, and it translates in the light-hearted, gadgety nature of the movie, and obviously in its Harvester design (who deploys mototerminators from its kneecaps).
But quite honestly, massive mythology discrepancies aside, there is simply far too many wrist-slashingly bad/expository lines and heavy-handed metaphors in the script for this to even work as a standalone movie (thanks, Haggis). To its credit, much of the action is kinetically captured in a timely shaky-cam fashion. Lord knows I'm no McG fan (he's a snake-oil salesman) but I feel the major culprit truly is the script which spells everything out for the viewer with voiceovers and facepalm exposition. I'm sorry the writers were not able to give McG, at the very least, the kind of mindless action flick he was surely able to direct in a competent if forgettable manner.
Whereas acting is concerned Christian Bale shows up for 35-40 minutes looking real angry at the world and at being involved in this project, it is in fact Sam Worthington who is a breakout star, and such an effortless tough guy that you can feel the bass reverberate in your body when he throws a punch. Think of how hardass he could be in the right R-rated setting. I'm getting chills just thinking about it. Everything else reeks of an empty cash-in sequel with neither knowledge nor respect for the source material, vaguely "justified" by tagging on "this isn't the future my mother warned me about". No, McG, it most certainly is not.
Whatever. Pages could be spent arriving at the conclusion that this movie is, quite simply, abysmal. I'm giving it a 3 out of 10 based on Yelchin, Worthington and effort on the action side of things.
The epic 'Dragonlance' quadrilogy along with its many future derivatives was Tolkien made hip for the teen generation. There was a more liberal leakage into RPG territory and as such was made easier to follow, more fantastical to imagine and let's be honest - far, far funnier than it had any right to be. Unlike Eragon/Stardust/whatever, it wasn't penned by some overenthused 15-year-old Star Wars fanboy, but jointly by two professional authors, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. With hindsight, it may have been a bit of a model kit assembled from greater works of fantasy, but it proceeded so briskly along a great story and without any delusions of grandeur that it was pretty hard not to get locked into the world of Krynn as a teen.
Having said that, the George Strayton (of Xena, *cringe*) penned and Will Meugniot (of... let's not go there) directed adaptation is the most mercilessly underwritten, underbudgeted and blemished film you will see this year. It was largely abandoned by studios to a most deserving fate of no marketing and with a youtube trailer that looked like my early aborted Windows Movie Maker projects. In the same visual vein, I have seen crisper animation in a 1990's Saturday morning cartoon. Toonz Animation India's very nature here of blending principal characters and backgrounds of 2D animation (does this even qualify as animation? Isn't it just... drawing?) with the bad guys -- dragons, draconians, etc -- of clunky 3D proportions meshes horribly where the resultant contrast in technique creates anachronistic and incongruous elements that move at different speeds, and it is just so ugly and flat you wish someone had drowned the poor thing at birth.
Storywise, a barbarian woman named Goldmoon (Lucy Lawless) seeks the help of a fellowship in protecting/escorting her as she carries a blue crystal healing staff awarded by the gods, as their very presence is hedged around by a war that is getting increasingly close to home. There is a marginal, half-hearted faith vs. secularism ploy operating recurringly in a few scenes, but to no discernible end. This is a far less recognisable element in the novel, and here Goldmoon the cleric clumsily comes across more as a bit of a crazed redneck with her "Faith is the answer" pearls of wisdom than the strong, proactive woman she is in the actual story on page. There are dozens more characters that in a misguided attempt to kick-start the story are introduced far too early and far too quickly. These are your dutiful fantasy heroes with their assigned quirks: a grumpy dwarf, a self-doubting hero, a beautiful bar-maiden and a mysterious wizard to name a few. The voice-over behind these characters are marred by contemporary American accents that invariably choke on silly exposition or sound downright uninspired as they plod along in the loose collection of sped-up scenes that comprise Strayton's puzzling screenplay.
The latter, I realise, I could spend all day picking apart and singling out elements and characters that did not correspond to my fangirl images of them from the books, but indeed this would be tiresome and I'm sure fans will all have their unique visions of characters that are now completely ridiculous. As an example, 'Tas', the sidekick kender, is in the book a creature more akin to someone like Gollum but here he looks completely human and purposely 'boyish'. So now hilarity stems from his appearance as an effeminate anime amalgamation. To their credit, I suppose, the rest of the characters don't look as 1980's high-haired and glossy as they did on the cover of my trilogy version, and generally the landscape is not too divorced from Weis' and Hickman's evocative descriptions. Although it is far too easy to criticize the outcome of personal preconceived notions like this, even new elements that I did not recognise or recall from the novel were pretty awful.
Lastly, I cannot help but wonder who the audience is here. Fans of the book might give it a watch when recovering from the shock that it is animated (or, "drawn"), but they are invariably going to hate it. Kids are clearly not the target here ultimately it is a little bit too dark and surprisingly rated the same as LOTR (Ha!). I don't know how exactly the film could have been improved, except in every way, but locking up Weta Digital's Randy Cook, Jim Rygiel, Brian Van't Hul and Christian Rivers in a room for a few months and not letting them out until they have created acceptable draconians could be an idea. Hopefully this film will do to Dragonlance what Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings (1978) did to Tolkien - giving it a Peter Jackson type treatment twenty years later, because this is simply unacceptable. What a fate to befall Dragonlance.
2 out of 10
Having said that, the George Strayton (of Xena, *cringe*) penned and Will Meugniot (of... let's not go there) directed adaptation is the most mercilessly underwritten, underbudgeted and blemished film you will see this year. It was largely abandoned by studios to a most deserving fate of no marketing and with a youtube trailer that looked like my early aborted Windows Movie Maker projects. In the same visual vein, I have seen crisper animation in a 1990's Saturday morning cartoon. Toonz Animation India's very nature here of blending principal characters and backgrounds of 2D animation (does this even qualify as animation? Isn't it just... drawing?) with the bad guys -- dragons, draconians, etc -- of clunky 3D proportions meshes horribly where the resultant contrast in technique creates anachronistic and incongruous elements that move at different speeds, and it is just so ugly and flat you wish someone had drowned the poor thing at birth.
Storywise, a barbarian woman named Goldmoon (Lucy Lawless) seeks the help of a fellowship in protecting/escorting her as she carries a blue crystal healing staff awarded by the gods, as their very presence is hedged around by a war that is getting increasingly close to home. There is a marginal, half-hearted faith vs. secularism ploy operating recurringly in a few scenes, but to no discernible end. This is a far less recognisable element in the novel, and here Goldmoon the cleric clumsily comes across more as a bit of a crazed redneck with her "Faith is the answer" pearls of wisdom than the strong, proactive woman she is in the actual story on page. There are dozens more characters that in a misguided attempt to kick-start the story are introduced far too early and far too quickly. These are your dutiful fantasy heroes with their assigned quirks: a grumpy dwarf, a self-doubting hero, a beautiful bar-maiden and a mysterious wizard to name a few. The voice-over behind these characters are marred by contemporary American accents that invariably choke on silly exposition or sound downright uninspired as they plod along in the loose collection of sped-up scenes that comprise Strayton's puzzling screenplay.
The latter, I realise, I could spend all day picking apart and singling out elements and characters that did not correspond to my fangirl images of them from the books, but indeed this would be tiresome and I'm sure fans will all have their unique visions of characters that are now completely ridiculous. As an example, 'Tas', the sidekick kender, is in the book a creature more akin to someone like Gollum but here he looks completely human and purposely 'boyish'. So now hilarity stems from his appearance as an effeminate anime amalgamation. To their credit, I suppose, the rest of the characters don't look as 1980's high-haired and glossy as they did on the cover of my trilogy version, and generally the landscape is not too divorced from Weis' and Hickman's evocative descriptions. Although it is far too easy to criticize the outcome of personal preconceived notions like this, even new elements that I did not recognise or recall from the novel were pretty awful.
Lastly, I cannot help but wonder who the audience is here. Fans of the book might give it a watch when recovering from the shock that it is animated (or, "drawn"), but they are invariably going to hate it. Kids are clearly not the target here ultimately it is a little bit too dark and surprisingly rated the same as LOTR (Ha!). I don't know how exactly the film could have been improved, except in every way, but locking up Weta Digital's Randy Cook, Jim Rygiel, Brian Van't Hul and Christian Rivers in a room for a few months and not letting them out until they have created acceptable draconians could be an idea. Hopefully this film will do to Dragonlance what Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings (1978) did to Tolkien - giving it a Peter Jackson type treatment twenty years later, because this is simply unacceptable. What a fate to befall Dragonlance.
2 out of 10
I suppose this is where I insert a few lines of witty pirate jargon and then proclaim this film the fast-paced, explosive, commercial masterpiece of Disney that we had all hoped for as an end to the Caribbean trilogy! I should also be pooping my pants over Johnny Depp's performance. For certain this is prime foddera fangasmfor Deppoholics all over the world and I'm happy the films have found their audience, but for the rest of us how fun can this type of hubris-infested, over-the-top mess be?
The answer is well, sporadically fun. As a strong suit the aesthetics are something else: a regal buffet of ships against dramatic landscapes, drenched in absolutely top CGI. There are some vaguely cool lines, and the opening to the film is actually pretty classy. Regrettably, the can of story lines-worms clumsily opened by Dead Man's Chest presents At World's End with a troublesome, chock-full legacy that is bursting at the seems with characters and ideas, all of which Gore Verbinski shuffles into story lines like a Las Vegas croupier. He is not always apt however, and often (read: all the time) five or more different story lines are operating in the same scene, which is simply disorienting.
The cumulative effect is that when four ships align to fight (The Pearl, the Flying Dutchman, The Armada, and Chow Yun Fat's vessel), you have no idea who is on them, why, where they are going, where their allegiances lay or what will happen. The latter is the only good unknown in this case. The bottom line is that the writers (and I use "writers" in the loosest sense possible, more like 4th grade sketchbook dribblers) are so overzealous with At World's End that in the end you are so desensitized to action- and story elements that nothing keeps your attention. So basically it's a lot like Dead Man's Chest except longer, bigger, and more chaotically organized for 3 butt-numbing hours!
It saddens me, lastly, what a commercial cash cow Johnny Depp has become in POTC. Every frame is milked its worth of Sparrow "goodies" (I've never found him funny, but I understand most viewers do). Not only does he occupy an unrealistically hefty slot of screen time, but his hallucinations following banishment has spawned mini-Jacks running around, often 10-15 at a time, all cracking one-liners and chewing scenery. Part of Sparrow's charm was his unique persona and consequently ability to stand out in a crowd, and with a screen that is awash with his clones, this feature severely wanes.
4 / 10
The answer is well, sporadically fun. As a strong suit the aesthetics are something else: a regal buffet of ships against dramatic landscapes, drenched in absolutely top CGI. There are some vaguely cool lines, and the opening to the film is actually pretty classy. Regrettably, the can of story lines-worms clumsily opened by Dead Man's Chest presents At World's End with a troublesome, chock-full legacy that is bursting at the seems with characters and ideas, all of which Gore Verbinski shuffles into story lines like a Las Vegas croupier. He is not always apt however, and often (read: all the time) five or more different story lines are operating in the same scene, which is simply disorienting.
The cumulative effect is that when four ships align to fight (The Pearl, the Flying Dutchman, The Armada, and Chow Yun Fat's vessel), you have no idea who is on them, why, where they are going, where their allegiances lay or what will happen. The latter is the only good unknown in this case. The bottom line is that the writers (and I use "writers" in the loosest sense possible, more like 4th grade sketchbook dribblers) are so overzealous with At World's End that in the end you are so desensitized to action- and story elements that nothing keeps your attention. So basically it's a lot like Dead Man's Chest except longer, bigger, and more chaotically organized for 3 butt-numbing hours!
It saddens me, lastly, what a commercial cash cow Johnny Depp has become in POTC. Every frame is milked its worth of Sparrow "goodies" (I've never found him funny, but I understand most viewers do). Not only does he occupy an unrealistically hefty slot of screen time, but his hallucinations following banishment has spawned mini-Jacks running around, often 10-15 at a time, all cracking one-liners and chewing scenery. Part of Sparrow's charm was his unique persona and consequently ability to stand out in a crowd, and with a screen that is awash with his clones, this feature severely wanes.
4 / 10