| Title | Qt3 Movie Podcast: Chronicle |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Movie podcasts |
| When | February 12, 2012 |
Us three dudes without superpowers discuss Chronicle, a movie about three dudes with superpowers. That's hardly fair. Our 3x3 this week, which starts at the 51-minute mark, is movies that cop out..
Read the full articleThere's a hyphen in "cop-out movies" and "that was a cop-out" but not in "movies that cop out."
Ah, very good! Thanks for the copyedit. I almost went with spelling it as one word.
Was wondering what happened to this podcast. I didn't want to be a nag and ask what was up though.
Yeah I was wondering too but didn't want to be rude.
Entirely my fault, sorry bout that.
Overall, I really liked Chronicle. There was a definite Akira vibe and it might have been better keeping that tone and going darker. The movie deserved a bigger endgame. I don’t know if it was the poor execution of found footage or if the script was just too complicated but it would have been better as a standard movie. I really liked using the fire suit to tie him to his past. Since his father was his chief abuser, by donning the fire suit, he essentially became his father when he decided to go out and take that role on himself.
All that said I’m a little tired of the abused kid growing up to be the villain. Sure it makes him sympathetic and helps us to understand why someone would turn to evil acts, but it could be more compelling to see him understand how wrong that abuse is and vow to end it when he sees others doing it. There would be more of an internal struggle from wanting to lash out but knowing it was wrong. Then he would have to confront your best friend who was allowing absolute power to corrupt him.
Kelly really undersells the Akira similarity. Every major story beat is borrowed from it, as if the writer thought no one had seen this weird obscure Japanese animation a quarter century old.
Yeah, there's no nuance to his shift either. He goes from good to bad after one conversation with his dad and a spider, and then never waffles again. Noob writing.
Well, at least Matt didn't ride a cycle. But yeah. The wholesale borrowing did strike me as would-be stealthy too. Kinda wish Landis had borrowed more of Akira's scale, to be honest.
I don't like Facebook (did I do that right?)
I'd actually take issue with that: Andrew doesn't go from good to bad, he goes from passive-bad to active-bad. Part of what I took away from the movie is that he's never actually a good person - being a victim doesn't automatically confer sainthood, after all. Even at the very beginning, he's shown to be creepy and antisocial. The power just gives him the ability to act on those urges.
Yeah, being a victim kind of is Hollywoodspeak for being saintly, isn't it? I wish Chronicle had done a bit more to show that wasn't the case here. I think they hint at it when Matt tells Andrew that Andrew hasn't always been easy to talk to.
You get ten bonus points! :)
Just seeing this on dvd. It's not much like Akira at all. It's kinda there I guess, but not the way Hunger Games is like Battle Royale. Way less so. Akira is a totally different (bigger) story in scope, and the characters are 'delinquent kids' from a dumping ground school (in a quaint japanese way), not suburban highschoolers. Plus tentacle monsters.