This reminded me of Guyver - but it already had a failed live-action take (w/ Mark Hamill) :)
What in the what
Saw it last night. It was okay. Clunky dialogue, horrible exposition, lots of plot holes, pointless action, and great effects. About as expected.
— Alan
How about a Supreme Court drama called Alito: Battle Angel?
It would be like the time I was walking by a theater, and being a big fan of the movie Amadeus, I saw there was a movie called Beethoven starting in 15 minutes. So I bought a ticket.
It turned out to be a movie about a giant dog named Beethoven.
Except in this case, it would be the opposite of that.
Haha, I remember my brother talking hopefully about that movie, also thinking it was a biopic of Beethoven. I had to let him down gently.
Then Immortal Beloved came out, and it wasn’t all that great, so … =/
“But who will listen to your Ninth Symphony?”
“EEEVERYYONNNNNE”
I really enjoyed this one. It’s an adaptation of a 90’s manga and it felt to me like a 90’s movie, just with way better special effects. If this had come out when I was a kid, I would have wanted all the action figures. My only real disappointment is that the story is left hanging at the end. Hope we get a sequel.
I saw it yesterday and was kind of…whelmed. It wasn’t terrible nor great, just kinda typical hollywood tween limonade prefabricate. Fairly competently shot, the CGI was nice, action scenes were fun, but the script just offered literally nothing of interest, only cliches. Expected more from a cult manga adaptation. I would have probably loved it if I was 12 and this was my first movie though. After Avatar, another disappointment from Iron Jim. I wonder how the new Terminator will fare.
It is striking how much it reminded me of Ready Player One and Ghost in the Shell (with scarjo). All three are almost interchangeably mediocre. Which given that cyberpunk is my favourite genre, kinda stings. At least we got Blade Runner 2049 and Upgrade.
Watched it today.
I liked it. The story is not fantastic, but it tries to hit the story beats from the comic IMO, and much of what I felt became clunky comes from that attempt of trying to stay true to the source, while not fully embracing it’s themes. It’s not a great adaption, but all in all, I think it’s competently done.
The action and special effects though… wow. Saw it in IMAX, and this is 100% a movie you should see in the best 3D that you can. This is one of the rare movies made for that medium. There was a Captain Marvel trailer in the theater prior to this viewing and it looked terrible in comparison. The sfx here just sing, IMO, and are Oscar-worthy.
Thumbs up from me. Hope they have enough success to develop the sequel that they build up to.
On the subject of the effects, in an interview a couple of years ago (in Japanese, so there is always a slight chance of Lost in Translation, jumping languages back and forth), Robert Rodriguez was saying Lightstorm had accepted to rework the original designs of the movie “on their spare time, off from Avatar”, and that is what they sent to Weta to do their work.
Whatever those Avatar movies are going to be, it seems they might be quite breathtaking.
Saw it today, liked it, more for the visuals than anything else, hope they are successful enough that they can continue the story, I’d like to see more of the setting.
It’s interesting how many posts in this thread are basically, “Story sucked, hope there’s a sequel!”
Also, the posts that are like, “The special effects were awesome, but it’s not worth a sequel.”
To be clear, I don’t think the story sucked - it’s just aggressively average. I mean, people absolutely love this character and this story from the comics (see @iron_weasel’s post in the podcast thread), but watching this movie you’d be hard pressed to understand why, because most of the context and nuance is cut from the story in the service of presenting a two hour sfx/action movie. So you end up with a pretty derivative romance story, instead of the fairly complicated relationships and themes they explore (or try to explore) in the comic.
It’s also pretty clear from the ending that this is the first film in what was intended as a franchise/multiple-movie epic. Too much so, perhaps - to the point where it lessens the movie’s narrative in trying to set up the sequel.
Yeah - the movie actually adds a lot of story beats that take place waaaaay later in the Manga for some reason. I guess they’re trying to set the stage of condensing the entire series into a trilogy.
I second this. Saw it on IMAX 3D and, wow, that was amazing. I’m normally anti-3D but this one is 100% worth it. This isn’t a 2D movie converted to 3D, you can tell special 3D cameras were used. I assume Cameron had a hand in the technical side. This bodes well for the new Avatar movies.
Also, not sure when this happened but the 3D glasses provided at my local IMAX are much larger now. They fit over prescription glasses way better than the small yellow glasses from before. Huge improvement.
Agree, great visuals and manga storytelling are pretty much what I expected and the film delivered just that.
If you want a movie to really hate on, try Mortal Engines. Terrible, terrible story. I was able to predict the last 45 minutes of the movie because I figured out they were just doing a riff on Star Wars. Yes, even the Death Star.
I finally got around to seeing this, and I thought the movie was very fun. A real visual treat that doesn’t completely sublimate the source material. It’s clear that Rodriguez continues to refine his techniques of transferring comics (and now manga) to movies. He’ll nail it one day.
And Ms. Connelly continues to rock the best eyebrows in the business. Rowr!
Generally liked the action and visuals, was less sold on the rest of the movie. My main complaints:
- It basically skips any sort of proper conclusion in favor of a blatant sequel hook (and one that doesn’t make any sense to me - she’s just demonstrated that she’s perfectly capable of running up the cable, and Vector has just told her that nobody ever goes up to the floating city except as organs, but for some reason she skips the cable in favor of trying to go up by motorball championship? What?
- Waltz’ black nurse gets a bunch of screentime but no dialogue at all. WTF.
-
They killed a dog!
- Mahershala Ali is always good, but it’s unfortunate that like in Luke Cage he’s essentially relegated to being a miniboss on the way to the big bad.
- I just don’t buy the romance. Especially Hugo’s line “I’ve never met anyone more human than you.” So…he doesn’t get out much?
But, y’know. Pretty neat fights. And I might actually go read the manga now - I think Comixology Unlimited has the whole thing.
You’re forgetting the defense mechanisms on the cables which not only kills Hugo, but wipes out her entire combat unit in the flashback sequence.
In the comics, it’s made pretty clear that no one goes up the cables and I think it was implied the same here.
Kind of a weird character in general. Has no obvious parallel in the comics.
I feel he got some good scenes. He’s essentially the face of Nova through most of the movies. A waste to kill him off, though - he survives a fair bit longer in the comics and is more of a “grey” character, IIRC (i.e., basically doing what he needs to get by, rather than an outright villain).
The comics are much more dystopian than the films manage to be, I think. The comics depict a brutal world where life is harsh, violence is omnipresent, and cyborgs and enhancements are the norm. 100% unmodified humans are rare - even Hugo has stuff done to him. That aspect is lost entirely in the films, IMO; there are still lots of cyborgs, of course, but then you have sequences like the Street Motorball thing and the daytrip out into the “wasteland” (which in the movies is lush, rather than the desert of the comics) which all water down the extreme harshness depicted in the comics.
Also, Hugo in the comic is much less sympathetic than the movie as I recall
But I agree - the romance is kind of a weak point in this.