Priest: failing this part of the target audience
I keep wanting to, but I don't think that I have it in me to make a coherent post about how soul-suckingly awful the Priest movie was.
Brief blather:
I have loved the Priest manhwa for years.
The movie bears absolutely no resemblance to it, except that the priests in the movie have crosses on their faces, kind of like Ivan Isaacs.
Buuut....there are literally 0 crossover characters. Not even the protagonist.
And instead of Lizzie, gun-toting gang-leading badass, we get a girl whose notable movie activities are 1) to have had a sexual relationship, and 2) to scream a lot.
People fight vampires instead of zombies. There are no references to angels.
For semi-inexplicable reasons, the movie takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where society is controlled BY THE EVIL CATHOLIC CHURCH. Everyone is Catholic, or made to act Catholic. People enter streamlined confessional booths, in which people receive reconciliation from pre-recorded faces. The church will print/stamp the words "FAITH / WORK / SECURITY" on to walls or documents, in case you had any doubt that in dystopian futures, faith is a tool with which the people are manipulated.
I feel like I'm not explaining myself well. I'm not just butt-hurt that the movie wasn't a regurgitation of the source material. In addition to everything above, it was actually a terrible movie. It had some of the worst pacing and dialog that I've seen in a long time.
I was very upset that I could not like this movie! I showed up in the movie theater clutching my volume 1, in a very nerdlike way, and was disappointed. I want anime/manga/manhwa-inspired stories to succeed here in the U.S., but they keep doing them so wrong. There is this movie; I've heard less than stellar things about Speed Racer and the DBZ movie. Akira could have been a good movie, but they've whitewashed the cast and are setting it in NYC.
I saw this Friday, but my negative feelings are lingering. I will take a fragrant bath and read some feminist sf for brain-bleach.
Brief blather:
I have loved the Priest manhwa for years.
The movie bears absolutely no resemblance to it, except that the priests in the movie have crosses on their faces, kind of like Ivan Isaacs.
Buuut....there are literally 0 crossover characters. Not even the protagonist.
And instead of Lizzie, gun-toting gang-leading badass, we get a girl whose notable movie activities are 1) to have had a sexual relationship, and 2) to scream a lot.
People fight vampires instead of zombies. There are no references to angels.
For semi-inexplicable reasons, the movie takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where society is controlled BY THE EVIL CATHOLIC CHURCH. Everyone is Catholic, or made to act Catholic. People enter streamlined confessional booths, in which people receive reconciliation from pre-recorded faces. The church will print/stamp the words "FAITH / WORK / SECURITY" on to walls or documents, in case you had any doubt that in dystopian futures, faith is a tool with which the people are manipulated.
I feel like I'm not explaining myself well. I'm not just butt-hurt that the movie wasn't a regurgitation of the source material. In addition to everything above, it was actually a terrible movie. It had some of the worst pacing and dialog that I've seen in a long time.
I was very upset that I could not like this movie! I showed up in the movie theater clutching my volume 1, in a very nerdlike way, and was disappointed. I want anime/manga/manhwa-inspired stories to succeed here in the U.S., but they keep doing them so wrong. There is this movie; I've heard less than stellar things about Speed Racer and the DBZ movie. Akira could have been a good movie, but they've whitewashed the cast and are setting it in NYC.
I saw this Friday, but my negative feelings are lingering. I will take a fragrant bath and read some feminist sf for brain-bleach.