Three Quick Movie Reviews

Three quick movie reviews. I’m bundling them together because I watched them all with Kavi (my 19-year-old), and we both had essentially the same problem with all of them.

Very mild spoilers follow.

The problem we had with all of them was they had great visuals, but very little we cared about emotionally.

a) Supergirl actually worked best for us of the three — or at least for me. I did legit tear up a bit at one or two moments. Kara had some real grief to work through, and the movie did a good job of moving her through that. And there was a bit with two parents that was also emotionally engaging. It was also nice to see a superhero show dealing with a difficult and current political issue.

But otherwise, the stakes and plot felt unconvincing and kind of meh. Lots of big action scenes, fun to look at, but they ate up a lot of film time for little payoff.

b) Aang had a difficult narrative challenge to overcome — it’s set between Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra (Kavi asked if there was a name for the thing that is between the prequel and the sequel, and I actually didn’t know, especially in this case, when you can’t call it the original. It happens in the interregnum, so maybe something with that). That timing meant that they couldn’t change anything too major, given the set-up at the start of Legend of Korra. That’s a huge challenge, because the main thing Aang is trying to do, we know hasn’t happened in Legend of Korda.

So, giving due credit for the difficulty of task, the filmmakers didn’t succeed in overcoming said difficulty. Very little happens — a tiny bit of character development for Aang and the major antagonist, and that’s about it. Lots of pretty visuals. One sweet moment at the very end that was emotionally satisfying, but otherwise, neither of us got emotionally engaged at all, and if it weren’t so pretty, we’d have been quite bored.

c) Finally, The Odyssey. Very pretty, very dramatic, lots of fight scenes, sort of like The Lord of the Rings in that epic feel. But a complete failure for both of us on the emotional stakes front. We just didn’t care about Odysseus, Telemachus, Penelope, etc.

(Kavi had an additional problem that she thought the actors were mostly too famous, and it really got in the way of her buying the characters. I thought the actors did fine, and I could mostly forget who they were. Well, except Tom Holland and Zendaya, because I see a lot of reels of them being cute these days, but that’s not really their fault. We both liked Circe).

If I were writing it, I’d have spent some time with backstory of Odysseus’s crew, even if I had to invent a little of it. When you kill off people who are supposed to be important to your protagonist, the viewer should care. Kavi suggested that part of the problem is that The Odyssey itself is very long, and it’s just too much to cram it into one three hour movie AND do decent characterization. I think she’s right — they could have done a two-part movie, or a 6-episode miniseries, and that would have given the story enough room to breathe.

*****

Last note is that I feel like this is an issue that’s getting worse, and I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a Hollywood person a while back, where I was complaining about how much the Star Trek movie I’d just watched (I think it was _Into Darkness_) was pretty visuals and long fight scenes (which I mostly find boring). They said that it was a trend in Hollywood, because if you have mostly visuals and very little dialogue, it’s much easier to sell to global markets and make back your money.

Which I mean, sure, I get, but I feel like now I want some kind of rating scale for movies that basically tells me how likely I am to actually care what happens to the characters. Does this movie make me cry? Does it make me laugh so hard my stomach hurts? Does it make me want to punch someone, or pehaps start a revolution? I want people to recommend those movies to me!

A few last Odyssey notes while I’m here — yes, bring earplugs (I forgot, so was literally putting my fingers in my ears pretty often, which I’ve never needed to do at a movie before). And be prepared to miss at least a quarter of the dialogue due to the sound issues. (Not that they really care about the dialogue, per earlier note.)

And finally, I waited to read the Emily Wilson (famous Odyssey translator) review until after I’d seen the movie, but now that I’ve seen it, and with the caveat that I last read the Odyssey about 30 years ago and have forgotten a lot, I pretty much agree with her.

Pretty movie, fun enough to watch, very little in the way of coherent themes or character development. We particularly liked the Cyclops depiction and how they had Circe transform the men. Glad I saw it, though, just to be able to take part in the cultural conversation. $6 matinee felt about right. 🙂.

*****

And hey, while I’m here doing media commentary, I’ll note that my main problem with the Star Trek: SNW season 4 first episode is that I think the temporal prime directive is pretty much immoral. So it’s not really a problem with that episode per se, but the ethics of that concept entirely. I don’t really think it belongs in Star Trek, and it particularly bugs me that it’s grouped as a ‘prime directive,’ when it’s kind of the opposite of the actual prime directive from an ethical standpoint.

Okay, that’s it. Discuss! Link to Wilson review in first comment (be sure to read the full review, and not the shortened version that’s floating around with just the more critical comments).

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