very belated movie reviews
Yup, I've been neglecting my LJ again. I just haven't had the time or inclination to check up on it most days. Anyway, I've recently seen two movies: Legion and Daybreakers. Without giving any spoilers just yet, I'm going to have to say that Daybreakers was the superior film and concept. Neither of them were really amazing, but Daybreakers was at least the price of the ticket. Legion was simply a disappointment from beginning to end and really not worth review. I enjoyed precisely one thing in this movie, and that was the angel Gabriel fighting with bullet-repelling wings. Very cool. The rest of it? Not so much.
Daybreakers is a sort of Orwellian dystopia, in which an epidemic has made it so that vampires make up most of the world's population. As you might expect, the human race is nearing extinction, due to vampires being unable to come to some kind of sensible arrangement as far as blood farming goes. (I mean, seriously. Mandatory blood donation wouldn't be that hard to enforce.) The main character, a hematologist, is attempting to come up with a blood substitute in order to save the remaining humans from complete extinction. He's working on a time limit, since when vampires are starved of blood, they turn into repulsive, bat-winged nosferatu.
I did note the increasingly popular golden vampire eyes, but at least these vamps actually combust in the sunlight. It actually led to one of the only funny lines in the film: a reporter announcing that vampires being caught in the sunlight were one of the leading causes of forest fires. I do think that having them plain out explode when they are staked is a little too much, especially since they don't explode when exposed to daylight- they just ignite, and they don't explode when their head is cut off or when they're shot. A little overkill, Hollywood, just so you know.
The film has a very purposefully fifties air, complete with cigar-smoking corporate heads with nifty gelled hair and nifty suits and nifty sexy secretaries. By the way, the vampire epidemic seems to have really taken its toll on the feminist movement, as most of the ladies of the night I've seen here are sexy secretaries or similarly subordinate positions. Also, vampirism does not seem to affect POC- I counted one black vampire and an Asian vampire lost in the crowd. I decided to take that as an example of the tremendously problematic society. (Even though it's just the movie-makers being dumbasses. Maybe they didn't want their all-white fifties aura to be wrecked by multiple ethnicities or some shit.)
I enjoyed the blood-milking human plants, I enjoyed the human rebellion and I wish the female semi-leader had more time onscreen. And I also think she should have been given the part the old Chuck Norris wannabe had played, as their roles are not incompatible. She could have been the person to draw the main character into the resistance and been the former-vampire leader with all the wise sentiments and badassery. We really didn't need the old man aside from plot revelation, which could have been easily accomplished by the female character, without all the shadow-sitting faux intruigue that the old man seemed enamored with. You get a little tired of his dramatic wisdom-dropping. I think, if we were going to have this old man as the vampire cured of vampirism, his part should have been made more minimal.
Big issue: I'm not sure about the subplot with the corporate vampire head and his human daughter. On one hand, it's good that they gave him just that bit of 'humanity', in his search for his daughter and his desire to be immortal with her- even if the fatherly desire was twisted and contorted like mad. The daughter, I think, needed much more fleshing out. We see her as a frightened human rebel, and that's all she is ever shown as. Scared little girl. It's depressing, in my opinion, but that's due to overexposure of female-as-the-victim.
Especially since her forced turning was played exactly like a rape scene, complete with ripping of shirt, pained noises, complete lack of consent and violation of person, and the scene ended with the soldier walking away, having done what he came there for, and the girl lying curled up on the floor. And then, of course, madness, self-harm, and suicide. She starved herself of blood and started to become a berserker, and then was publically killed. Was it nasty? Yes. But, a redeeming part of this subplot is that it actually is a realistic depiction of society's treatment of victimized women, and I think it was even a self aware one. The whole ordeal was played out to be horrible and violating, the girl clearly shown in every was as sympathetic, the men who did this to her clearly condemned by the narrative.
The only real problem I have with it is that the victimization of women is not new, or unusual. It's been shown to us repeatedly, in almost every action movie. It's not a twist on a trope, it's just another 'women are victims' statement. Movie, we know. How about now we have 'women have control over their bodies' or 'women can be in power without sacrificing femininity.' There's an unexplored angle for you.
All in all, the worldbuilding is what I liked best about the movie, as well as the obvious action scenes, vampires living in fifties corporate America and the mundane acceptance of the undead lifestyle, and all that supernatural goodness. The plot is pretty basic, the characters unimpressive, but not intolerable. I'd wait until it comes out on DVD for you guys to see it.
Daybreakers is a sort of Orwellian dystopia, in which an epidemic has made it so that vampires make up most of the world's population. As you might expect, the human race is nearing extinction, due to vampires being unable to come to some kind of sensible arrangement as far as blood farming goes. (I mean, seriously. Mandatory blood donation wouldn't be that hard to enforce.) The main character, a hematologist, is attempting to come up with a blood substitute in order to save the remaining humans from complete extinction. He's working on a time limit, since when vampires are starved of blood, they turn into repulsive, bat-winged nosferatu.
I did note the increasingly popular golden vampire eyes, but at least these vamps actually combust in the sunlight. It actually led to one of the only funny lines in the film: a reporter announcing that vampires being caught in the sunlight were one of the leading causes of forest fires. I do think that having them plain out explode when they are staked is a little too much, especially since they don't explode when exposed to daylight- they just ignite, and they don't explode when their head is cut off or when they're shot. A little overkill, Hollywood, just so you know.
The film has a very purposefully fifties air, complete with cigar-smoking corporate heads with nifty gelled hair and nifty suits and nifty sexy secretaries. By the way, the vampire epidemic seems to have really taken its toll on the feminist movement, as most of the ladies of the night I've seen here are sexy secretaries or similarly subordinate positions. Also, vampirism does not seem to affect POC- I counted one black vampire and an Asian vampire lost in the crowd. I decided to take that as an example of the tremendously problematic society. (Even though it's just the movie-makers being dumbasses. Maybe they didn't want their all-white fifties aura to be wrecked by multiple ethnicities or some shit.)
I enjoyed the blood-milking human plants, I enjoyed the human rebellion and I wish the female semi-leader had more time onscreen. And I also think she should have been given the part the old Chuck Norris wannabe had played, as their roles are not incompatible. She could have been the person to draw the main character into the resistance and been the former-vampire leader with all the wise sentiments and badassery. We really didn't need the old man aside from plot revelation, which could have been easily accomplished by the female character, without all the shadow-sitting faux intruigue that the old man seemed enamored with. You get a little tired of his dramatic wisdom-dropping. I think, if we were going to have this old man as the vampire cured of vampirism, his part should have been made more minimal.
Big issue: I'm not sure about the subplot with the corporate vampire head and his human daughter. On one hand, it's good that they gave him just that bit of 'humanity', in his search for his daughter and his desire to be immortal with her- even if the fatherly desire was twisted and contorted like mad. The daughter, I think, needed much more fleshing out. We see her as a frightened human rebel, and that's all she is ever shown as. Scared little girl. It's depressing, in my opinion, but that's due to overexposure of female-as-the-victim.
Especially since her forced turning was played exactly like a rape scene, complete with ripping of shirt, pained noises, complete lack of consent and violation of person, and the scene ended with the soldier walking away, having done what he came there for, and the girl lying curled up on the floor. And then, of course, madness, self-harm, and suicide. She starved herself of blood and started to become a berserker, and then was publically killed. Was it nasty? Yes. But, a redeeming part of this subplot is that it actually is a realistic depiction of society's treatment of victimized women, and I think it was even a self aware one. The whole ordeal was played out to be horrible and violating, the girl clearly shown in every was as sympathetic, the men who did this to her clearly condemned by the narrative.
The only real problem I have with it is that the victimization of women is not new, or unusual. It's been shown to us repeatedly, in almost every action movie. It's not a twist on a trope, it's just another 'women are victims' statement. Movie, we know. How about now we have 'women have control over their bodies' or 'women can be in power without sacrificing femininity.' There's an unexplored angle for you.
All in all, the worldbuilding is what I liked best about the movie, as well as the obvious action scenes, vampires living in fifties corporate America and the mundane acceptance of the undead lifestyle, and all that supernatural goodness. The plot is pretty basic, the characters unimpressive, but not intolerable. I'd wait until it comes out on DVD for you guys to see it.