jamiejimbothomas

A pretty solid film, just the right length, didn't out stay it's welcome.

Interesting to see more of the Yautja culture and homeworld.

Dek was on the back foot and learned and grew as a character throughout the film.

I loved the inclusion of the Weyland Yutani corp. A cool blending of the two franchises without stepping on each other's toes.

My only criticism would be they could have dialled back the cheesy humour by about 50%, but I'm glad I saw it in the cinema and will watch it again when it comes to Disney+

The first film was a tense psychological thriller with a slight supernatural element.

Black Phone 2 felt like a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks mess.

The Ernesto character had nothing to do and that story thread.coukd have been lost and helped bring the overly long 2 hour runtime down.

At most this should have been 90mins.

The direction was weird with overly long pauses in scenes that should have been a lot quicker given the situation the characters were in. This was especially noticeable in the scene between the father, son and daughter having a long pause discussion/argument about leaving the camp.

Borrowing from Nightmare on Elm Street in heavy doses only made my eyes roll.

If you enjoyed Black Phone, rewatch that and don't waste your time with this messy, unnecessary sequel.

I thought the film was at times boring, it could have had a good 25mins trimmed for a better pace.

Jared Leto was just his usual greasy self, which given the limited nature of the Ares character probably played to his strengths.

The decision to jettison the Quora character after the tease at the end of Legacy was a massively wasted opportunity to do something interesting with a character who had left the grid and existed in the real world and the nature of artificial life Vs organic life.

The 3D printed support structures around the vehicles/people in the lab looked a bit ridiculous and you could tell it was used to help the average Joe understand what was going on using a contemporary analogue.

The permanence code aspect was not an issue in Legacy but was shoe horned so badly into this film as the MacGuffin it kept taking me out of the story.

I was really looking forward to this film after seeing the trailer but having seen it I am disappointed and probably wouldn't bother watching it again.

Tron Ares 4/10.