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SpitztheGreat's rating
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SpitztheGreat's rating
A think that it's important to approach this movie with an open mind. Forget the source material and watch the film as its own experience, that way you can more accurately judge it. With that open mind you will see that World War Z is very generic and forgettable, a lazy attempt in a very crowded genre.
Much of the criticism surrounding this movie has revolved around how far it strays from the source material, that by doing so World War Z just becomes another zombie movie. I never agreed with the visceral reaction to straying from the source material, the book isn't high literature, it's not some unassailable classic, so it never upset me that they took great liberties with it. However, it really does seem unfathomable that they could make a less interesting movie than the one they did.
In my opinion this movie is caught between worlds; it doesn't know if it wants to be an action movie that takes you from set piece to set piece, or if it wants to be a more thoughtful addition to the genre. Instead, it never commits to either and thus never does anything particularly well. The development hell that this movie went through are well known, and you can see it play out on screen as there's no core to it. The best I can figure is that through countless re-writes (including the final, famous rewrite and re-shoot) elements from many different ideas got lumped together, but an internal logic was lost along the way.
Parts of the movie seem to want to play up a feeling of tension, other parts want to go full action movie, and yet others want to go for good old disaster porn. Is this movie 28 Days Later? Is it Aliens? Or is it The Day After Tomorrow? With such a clutter of competing ideas, no single one ever takes hold, and the audience is left drifting in the wind. The tension has no teeth, the action is boring, and the ramifications of a world ending zombie war aren't really explored in great detail.
One final point; for a movie that puts a lot of emphasis on action set pieces, you will be hard pressed to see find one that makes them less compelling. There's very little weight to the action because the zombies are just so over powering, one turns into 10 in mere seconds, entire cities are fully infested within a matter of minutes, and they're so fast and strong that humans can't compete. This may be compelling on paper, but all it means is that the action is like watching a ridiculous video game. And speaking of video games, who did the special effects for this movie, and how did they pass quality control? World War Z has absolutely terrible CG, it was awful in 2013 and only looks worse with each passing day. Even the makeup of the zombies looks laughable. The poor special effects really hammered home to me that this was not a labor of love, and instead was something closer to a burden on all those involved.
It's not a terrible movie, but there's better ones to see. Nothing is done well enough to make up for the things that it does poorly.
Much of the criticism surrounding this movie has revolved around how far it strays from the source material, that by doing so World War Z just becomes another zombie movie. I never agreed with the visceral reaction to straying from the source material, the book isn't high literature, it's not some unassailable classic, so it never upset me that they took great liberties with it. However, it really does seem unfathomable that they could make a less interesting movie than the one they did.
In my opinion this movie is caught between worlds; it doesn't know if it wants to be an action movie that takes you from set piece to set piece, or if it wants to be a more thoughtful addition to the genre. Instead, it never commits to either and thus never does anything particularly well. The development hell that this movie went through are well known, and you can see it play out on screen as there's no core to it. The best I can figure is that through countless re-writes (including the final, famous rewrite and re-shoot) elements from many different ideas got lumped together, but an internal logic was lost along the way.
Parts of the movie seem to want to play up a feeling of tension, other parts want to go full action movie, and yet others want to go for good old disaster porn. Is this movie 28 Days Later? Is it Aliens? Or is it The Day After Tomorrow? With such a clutter of competing ideas, no single one ever takes hold, and the audience is left drifting in the wind. The tension has no teeth, the action is boring, and the ramifications of a world ending zombie war aren't really explored in great detail.
One final point; for a movie that puts a lot of emphasis on action set pieces, you will be hard pressed to see find one that makes them less compelling. There's very little weight to the action because the zombies are just so over powering, one turns into 10 in mere seconds, entire cities are fully infested within a matter of minutes, and they're so fast and strong that humans can't compete. This may be compelling on paper, but all it means is that the action is like watching a ridiculous video game. And speaking of video games, who did the special effects for this movie, and how did they pass quality control? World War Z has absolutely terrible CG, it was awful in 2013 and only looks worse with each passing day. Even the makeup of the zombies looks laughable. The poor special effects really hammered home to me that this was not a labor of love, and instead was something closer to a burden on all those involved.
It's not a terrible movie, but there's better ones to see. Nothing is done well enough to make up for the things that it does poorly.
Gone Girl is 2014's Mystic River, a beautifully crafted, powerful, memorable story that leaves you thinking, and yet ranks painfully low on the "entertainment" scale. I'm hard pressed to find a real flaw in Mystic River, just as I am in Gone Girl. That doesn't mean the movie is perfect, I could parrot some of the points raised elsewhere, but in totality I think Gone Girl is a damn fine film.
And I can never recommend it.
This is an insanely dark movie for a major Hollywood production- if this was a smaller film without famous actors I think it would be one of those movies that IMDb members talk about when they're discussing "disturbing movies" like Caligula, Gummo, and Happiness. To bring it back to the Mystic River analogy I would like to turn the attention to Clint Eastwood's follow up Million Dollar Baby. This was another dark movie that I found very challenging, but unlike Mystic River there was enough lightness to it that it felt more balanced, that life wasn't just three hours of being kicked in the balls. I found those small rays of sunshine refreshing and helped add contrast, perspectives, and layers to the ending. Mystic River and Gone Girl never makes the attempt to add contrast in this way, they hammer away at the inescapable darkness of the narrative. Both movies are so packed with impending doom, and suffocating tension, that the viewer never has a moment to relax and enjoy the really well crafted film that is being shown.
I'm not trying to argue that there should have been more comedic moments, they would have been out of place; but even the most serious movies can take their foot off your throat long enough for you to breath.
I'll give the movie a 7 out of 10 and be glad to never watch it again.
And I can never recommend it.
This is an insanely dark movie for a major Hollywood production- if this was a smaller film without famous actors I think it would be one of those movies that IMDb members talk about when they're discussing "disturbing movies" like Caligula, Gummo, and Happiness. To bring it back to the Mystic River analogy I would like to turn the attention to Clint Eastwood's follow up Million Dollar Baby. This was another dark movie that I found very challenging, but unlike Mystic River there was enough lightness to it that it felt more balanced, that life wasn't just three hours of being kicked in the balls. I found those small rays of sunshine refreshing and helped add contrast, perspectives, and layers to the ending. Mystic River and Gone Girl never makes the attempt to add contrast in this way, they hammer away at the inescapable darkness of the narrative. Both movies are so packed with impending doom, and suffocating tension, that the viewer never has a moment to relax and enjoy the really well crafted film that is being shown.
I'm not trying to argue that there should have been more comedic moments, they would have been out of place; but even the most serious movies can take their foot off your throat long enough for you to breath.
I'll give the movie a 7 out of 10 and be glad to never watch it again.
This movie has no heart, no soul, like one character claims of Murphy, it's just a "Tin-man"; a shell of a movie that has nothing beneath its skin.
The movie utterly fails to deliver upon the promise of the original. While the original is a flawed movie it does manage to achieve some pure moments that demand the viewer's attention. Robocop 2014 is more polished than the original but is sterile and unconvincing.
Gone is the gratuitous violence of the original. In its place is violence so softened that it loses all gravity. Robocop 2014 resembles a video game, there's no real sense of danger to the main character, no power behind the machine that is "cleaning up" crime, just a sterile movie where everything falls into place and no one is left offended. I'm not trying to say that gratuitous violence is always appropriate, but in order to create a sense of how dangerous the Detroit of Robocop 2014 is there needs to be a real sense that violence is out of control. Only a city that has become a warzone could put a robot on the streets. The original showcased the dangers of Detroit perfectly in the pursuit on the highway in broad daylight. An American city where there's a roaming gun battle between police and a crime syndicate hits home pretty hard. The viewer is made keenly aware that crime is so out of control that it blatantly challenges the authorities without fear. Robocop 2014 doesn't have anything like that; thus the viewer is left unfulfilled in understanding the danger posed to the citizens.
Gone is any cleverness in the satire. While the original's satire wasn't brilliant it was still clever enough to illicit a knowing laugh from someone who was really paying attention. Robocop 2014 removes this cleverness for heavy handed, ham-fisted scenes from Samuel Jackson. Jackson only has one speed in his acting, and his scenes grow tiresome quickly. There's nothing subtle about anything Jackson does in his career and his performance here is more of the same. His portrayal of a sensationalist journalist could have been a great addition to the movie. Instead it's too heavy handed and unoriginal.
Gone is a true villain. How they missed this aspect of the movie I don't understand. The three "bad guys" are composed of 1) A mob guy who is under developed and cast aside pretty quickly 2) a guy who's just a jerk, and 3) A guy who I'm not sure ever actually committed a crime. The original was carried by two great performances by the villains, they ground the movie and help establish the sense of pervasive danger that I mentioned before. RoboCop 2014 just has a couple of guys who you don't like, but who aren't really bad guys. The only true bad guy is so under developed that I almost forgot he existed while writing this review. This is the guy who is bringing Detroit to its knees? Yawn...
Gone is any semblance of character development. The original RoboCop had a really great closing line and helped wrap the whole movie up and left the viewer with some closure and hope. RoboCop 2014 just ends. Murphy's development is stunted (at best), you don't know if he's made any real progress. His development is handled haphazardly, he starts off in good shape, slides backwards, moves forward, then back, and then the final ten minutes of action takes place and you don't get a good understanding of where he is emotionally. The original provided a steadier progress in Murphy's development, slowly but surely the wall is chipped away. In Robocop 2014 you never get this feeling of progress, stuff happens but it doesn't really seem to matter.
Overall this is an action movie for the 21st century. Soulless, heartless, inoffensive, boring, and built to maximize profit. Again, the original is a flawed movie, but RoboCop 2014 is not an improvement and in almost every meaningful way is a step backwards. Some movies should not be family friendly and this is one of them.
The movie utterly fails to deliver upon the promise of the original. While the original is a flawed movie it does manage to achieve some pure moments that demand the viewer's attention. Robocop 2014 is more polished than the original but is sterile and unconvincing.
Gone is the gratuitous violence of the original. In its place is violence so softened that it loses all gravity. Robocop 2014 resembles a video game, there's no real sense of danger to the main character, no power behind the machine that is "cleaning up" crime, just a sterile movie where everything falls into place and no one is left offended. I'm not trying to say that gratuitous violence is always appropriate, but in order to create a sense of how dangerous the Detroit of Robocop 2014 is there needs to be a real sense that violence is out of control. Only a city that has become a warzone could put a robot on the streets. The original showcased the dangers of Detroit perfectly in the pursuit on the highway in broad daylight. An American city where there's a roaming gun battle between police and a crime syndicate hits home pretty hard. The viewer is made keenly aware that crime is so out of control that it blatantly challenges the authorities without fear. Robocop 2014 doesn't have anything like that; thus the viewer is left unfulfilled in understanding the danger posed to the citizens.
Gone is any cleverness in the satire. While the original's satire wasn't brilliant it was still clever enough to illicit a knowing laugh from someone who was really paying attention. Robocop 2014 removes this cleverness for heavy handed, ham-fisted scenes from Samuel Jackson. Jackson only has one speed in his acting, and his scenes grow tiresome quickly. There's nothing subtle about anything Jackson does in his career and his performance here is more of the same. His portrayal of a sensationalist journalist could have been a great addition to the movie. Instead it's too heavy handed and unoriginal.
Gone is a true villain. How they missed this aspect of the movie I don't understand. The three "bad guys" are composed of 1) A mob guy who is under developed and cast aside pretty quickly 2) a guy who's just a jerk, and 3) A guy who I'm not sure ever actually committed a crime. The original was carried by two great performances by the villains, they ground the movie and help establish the sense of pervasive danger that I mentioned before. RoboCop 2014 just has a couple of guys who you don't like, but who aren't really bad guys. The only true bad guy is so under developed that I almost forgot he existed while writing this review. This is the guy who is bringing Detroit to its knees? Yawn...
Gone is any semblance of character development. The original RoboCop had a really great closing line and helped wrap the whole movie up and left the viewer with some closure and hope. RoboCop 2014 just ends. Murphy's development is stunted (at best), you don't know if he's made any real progress. His development is handled haphazardly, he starts off in good shape, slides backwards, moves forward, then back, and then the final ten minutes of action takes place and you don't get a good understanding of where he is emotionally. The original provided a steadier progress in Murphy's development, slowly but surely the wall is chipped away. In Robocop 2014 you never get this feeling of progress, stuff happens but it doesn't really seem to matter.
Overall this is an action movie for the 21st century. Soulless, heartless, inoffensive, boring, and built to maximize profit. Again, the original is a flawed movie, but RoboCop 2014 is not an improvement and in almost every meaningful way is a step backwards. Some movies should not be family friendly and this is one of them.