Movie Post!
Movies I've seen recently: Toy Story 3, The Last Airbender, and Prince Caspian.
Toy Story 3 was amazing. The storyline was brilliant, the animation was very good, and the comedy even outdid its predecessors. But its real strength was in its raw emotion. My sister and I both bawled our eyes out. To put things in perspective, I was four years old when the first Toy Story came out, and eight for the second. In the third installment, Andy, the imaginative child from the first two films, is preparing to leave for college. I've just finished my first year at NYU. So yeah, the theme of childhood ending hit pretty close to home.
The Last Airbender was...not amazing. The pacing was off (though this was perhaps unavoidable, given that roughly 600 minutes of the tv show had to be translated into 100 minutes of movie). The casting choices were questionable (though I don't care what anyone says, I liked Dev Patel as Zuko). But the worst part was the dialogue, which mostly sounded as if it had been written in another language and then poorly translated into English. The scene where Aang explains how he wound up in the iceberg went a little bit like this:
Katara: What happen?
Aang: Somebody set up us the storm.
Sokka: Katara! We get Fire Nation!
Zuko: How are you gentlemen? All your elderly are belong to us!
Ok, so that's an exaggeration. But not by much.
Still, the overall visual design of the movie was pretty good. And I don't think the off-kilter storytelling was quite as bad as most people have made it out to be. Normally that wouldn't be enough to redeem a film, but...I don't know, for some reason I like the damn thing.
But if they make book two, I really hope they get someone else to write the script.
As for Prince Caspian, which came out a while ago but I only just got around to seeing, I have to say that Peter's battle cry "For Narnia!" might have been replaced with "For teh lulz!" for all the sense some of his actions made. Where in the books Peter is sometimes impulsive, in the movie he was frequently irrational and often downright bitchy. Caspian the Seafarer was also more like Caspian the Angsty, though Ben Barnes did a very good job in the role. Miraz's line about how his claim that the old king had died in his sleep was "technically true" was also amusing. But other than showcasing Peter's irrational bitchiness and Caspian's angstiness, what did the attack on Miraz's castle add to the story? And what was with that cheesy pop song in the final scene?
Toy Story 3 was amazing. The storyline was brilliant, the animation was very good, and the comedy even outdid its predecessors. But its real strength was in its raw emotion. My sister and I both bawled our eyes out. To put things in perspective, I was four years old when the first Toy Story came out, and eight for the second. In the third installment, Andy, the imaginative child from the first two films, is preparing to leave for college. I've just finished my first year at NYU. So yeah, the theme of childhood ending hit pretty close to home.
The Last Airbender was...not amazing. The pacing was off (though this was perhaps unavoidable, given that roughly 600 minutes of the tv show had to be translated into 100 minutes of movie). The casting choices were questionable (though I don't care what anyone says, I liked Dev Patel as Zuko). But the worst part was the dialogue, which mostly sounded as if it had been written in another language and then poorly translated into English. The scene where Aang explains how he wound up in the iceberg went a little bit like this:
Katara: What happen?
Aang: Somebody set up us the storm.
Sokka: Katara! We get Fire Nation!
Zuko: How are you gentlemen? All your elderly are belong to us!
Ok, so that's an exaggeration. But not by much.
Still, the overall visual design of the movie was pretty good. And I don't think the off-kilter storytelling was quite as bad as most people have made it out to be. Normally that wouldn't be enough to redeem a film, but...I don't know, for some reason I like the damn thing.
But if they make book two, I really hope they get someone else to write the script.
As for Prince Caspian, which came out a while ago but I only just got around to seeing, I have to say that Peter's battle cry "For Narnia!" might have been replaced with "For teh lulz!" for all the sense some of his actions made. Where in the books Peter is sometimes impulsive, in the movie he was frequently irrational and often downright bitchy. Caspian the Seafarer was also more like Caspian the Angsty, though Ben Barnes did a very good job in the role. Miraz's line about how his claim that the old king had died in his sleep was "technically true" was also amusing. But other than showcasing Peter's irrational bitchiness and Caspian's angstiness, what did the attack on Miraz's castle add to the story? And what was with that cheesy pop song in the final scene?