Another movie review entry!
It's movie time again, aka we watched a lot of stuff these past few days! =D
We saw "Kingsman" in the movie theater in Cologne and luckily we even got the original version (yay!) and yeah... I liked it! It was silly, comic book fun and Taron Egerton really owned his role as Eggsy and he had sooo much chemistry with Colin Firth's Harry, gawd, what a pair of cutiepies (naturally I ship it).
The reason I am not all over this fandom (okay yeah I read the fanfiction, I am only human after all and Eggsy and Harry make a superfucking pretty pair and all the tropes, guys, I mean, Harry has to teach him how to dance, right, I mean that is important for a gentleman spy, right, and yes, I do have a soft spot for Eggys having done gymnastics) is that there are several issues with the film that continue to spoil my memory of it. Or rather it's just one issue and the rest is me being nit-picky.
In the last scene before the credits, right after Eggsy beat the bad guys and saved the world in his bespoke suit, he finds a woman in a cell (she is the Swedish? Princess or whatever) who had been captured by the bad guys a bit earlier on. She promised him - and I am already groaning while I am typing this - "If you save the world, we can do it in the arsehole" and Eggsy actually goes to her and collects his fuck trophy and we see this through Merlin's eyes (Eggsy's handler) because they are connected via spy-glasses and the last thing you see before the credits is a smiling blonde woman turning around and showing the viewer her ass.
I am way more angry now than I was when we left the cinema (Colin Firth and his cute smile were blinding me) and maybe I am even over reacting but this was such a vulgar and absurd note for the movie to end on, especially since there were not that many female characters (Eggsy's mother, Roxie and Gazelle) to begin with but they all were shown without overly objectifying their bodies. (I think there were some questionable shots with Gazelle but I am willing to give that a pass since she did other things in the film apart from being "a warm hole for the hero to stick his cock in" and she has swords attached to her legs, so...).
It was very tacky, superfluous and left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth. They had a wonderful film with terrific actors, a nice, action-packed plot - and then they ruin it, at least for me, with this utterly ridiculous scene. There was nothing in the whole film to suggest that they would pursue any kind of "romantic" relationship (and I am using this word very loosely here) between any of the characters, hell Eggsy and Roxie didn't even flirt and that was such a nice set up for a change, especially in action packed spy movies.
And then there is the Swedish princess or whatever and everything went to hell. Blergh.
Oh well, Eggsy and Harry are still hilariously cute and I am not above enjoying the fanfic and fanart. If there is a Eggsy-as-a-gymnast!AU somewhere, I would scream and flail like a madwoman.
Why captainkimchi and I never manage to watch decent movies but always end up with trashy stuff in foreign languages is absolutely beyond me.
This is another one of those films where the funniest part was our ongoing commentary (I am so sorry, I am especially bad at this, I just can't shut up when I am just watching a film for shits and giggles) because the entire movie was a) way too long, b) absolutely crazily convoluted, c) started out with a voice over AND a read along text against which the beginning of "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children" felt like a swift, brisk summary of every necessary plot point and d) was waaaaaay too rushed.
If you picked all four, CONGRATULATIONS, please don't watch this movie.
For those of you who spent way too much time in front of the tv in the late 80'ies and early 90'ies "Space Pirate Captain Harlock" is nothing new, as it was a very successful anime series back in the day (although only a third of all the episodes saw the light of day in German dubbing).
I mean, listen to this exquisite intro - thanks Nicole. No really, thank you.
Yeah okay, I am just being mean, the series was quite excellent from what I gathered (and can remember) and the movie is basically a prequel with a set of entirely new and ultimately useless characters which is exactly where the movie begins to be rushed, boring and utterly weird up until the point of it being completely incomprehensible for fans of the tv show and new ones alike.
There are so many plot threads that go unanswered (Why does Yama look like a young Harlock?) and the character development falls victim to "all tell, no show", so we are told that Harlock's entire crew thinks of him as the biggest, greatest, bestest and overall perfectest human being on earth sorry, in space but we don't get to see why that is the case. He almost never interacts with anyone but the alien Mime and then, when he rescues Yama from the deadly clutches of a predator although he knows that Yama is a traitor, we have no idea what his motivation is apart from the fact that maybe he thinks Yama is too pretty to die which would make Harlock a likeable narcissist and I am pretty sure that this isn't what they were going for.
I mean there is "tall, dark, mysterious" and then there is "tall, dark and why the fuck are you even on this ship, dude, I forget regularly that you are the captain cause you never do anything!"
Moreover this movie's joke-rate is atrocious, nothing is funny apart from this one time when the bird flies against some sort of pipe. (This bird is my favourite thing in the entire movie.
from here
I don't know why, this bird has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I like the idea of broody, dramatic Captain Harlock having a truly ugly, lame bird for a pet).
The lack of comedic elements emphasizes again how damn serious this movie takes itself which is kinda ridiculous considering that their main antagonist's motivation is that he is sitting in a wheelchair (all that technology and you are telling me that there is no way for this guy to get a pair of robot legs?) and that Captain Harlock's ship - the Acardia - looks like something that Bad Dragon can't wait to sell on Talk like a Pirate's days.
Don't get me wrong, I liked the film well enough ("Sach ma, meinste, der hat den Thron selbst geschreinert?" - "Nää, gabs wahrscheinlich gratis beim Gothic-Laden-Sale dazu.") because it looked amazing. The 3D graphics, the action sequences, the flawless re-design of the character outfits (recognizable, but twelve times cooler) were all breathtaking and very fun to watch. In a way, it reminded me a lot of "Advent Children" - great looks, almost no plot and a huge ton of exposition which ultimately has no or very little pay off.
All in all, I wouldn't watch it again or even recommend it to people, but I am more than happy to look at gifs of their pretty faces.
We saw "Kingsman" in the movie theater in Cologne and luckily we even got the original version (yay!) and yeah... I liked it! It was silly, comic book fun and Taron Egerton really owned his role as Eggsy and he had sooo much chemistry with Colin Firth's Harry, gawd, what a pair of cutiepies (naturally I ship it).
The reason I am not all over this fandom (okay yeah I read the fanfiction, I am only human after all and Eggsy and Harry make a superfucking pretty pair and all the tropes, guys, I mean, Harry has to teach him how to dance, right, I mean that is important for a gentleman spy, right, and yes, I do have a soft spot for Eggys having done gymnastics) is that there are several issues with the film that continue to spoil my memory of it. Or rather it's just one issue and the rest is me being nit-picky.
In the last scene before the credits, right after Eggsy beat the bad guys and saved the world in his bespoke suit, he finds a woman in a cell (she is the Swedish? Princess or whatever) who had been captured by the bad guys a bit earlier on. She promised him - and I am already groaning while I am typing this - "If you save the world, we can do it in the arsehole" and Eggsy actually goes to her and collects his fuck trophy and we see this through Merlin's eyes (Eggsy's handler) because they are connected via spy-glasses and the last thing you see before the credits is a smiling blonde woman turning around and showing the viewer her ass.
I am way more angry now than I was when we left the cinema (Colin Firth and his cute smile were blinding me) and maybe I am even over reacting but this was such a vulgar and absurd note for the movie to end on, especially since there were not that many female characters (Eggsy's mother, Roxie and Gazelle) to begin with but they all were shown without overly objectifying their bodies. (I think there were some questionable shots with Gazelle but I am willing to give that a pass since she did other things in the film apart from being "a warm hole for the hero to stick his cock in" and she has swords attached to her legs, so...).
It was very tacky, superfluous and left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth. They had a wonderful film with terrific actors, a nice, action-packed plot - and then they ruin it, at least for me, with this utterly ridiculous scene. There was nothing in the whole film to suggest that they would pursue any kind of "romantic" relationship (and I am using this word very loosely here) between any of the characters, hell Eggsy and Roxie didn't even flirt and that was such a nice set up for a change, especially in action packed spy movies.
And then there is the Swedish princess or whatever and everything went to hell. Blergh.
Oh well, Eggsy and Harry are still hilariously cute and I am not above enjoying the fanfic and fanart. If there is a Eggsy-as-a-gymnast!AU somewhere, I would scream and flail like a madwoman.
Why captainkimchi and I never manage to watch decent movies but always end up with trashy stuff in foreign languages is absolutely beyond me.
Click to viewThis is another one of those films where the funniest part was our ongoing commentary (I am so sorry, I am especially bad at this, I just can't shut up when I am just watching a film for shits and giggles) because the entire movie was a) way too long, b) absolutely crazily convoluted, c) started out with a voice over AND a read along text against which the beginning of "Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children" felt like a swift, brisk summary of every necessary plot point and d) was waaaaaay too rushed.
If you picked all four, CONGRATULATIONS, please don't watch this movie.
For those of you who spent way too much time in front of the tv in the late 80'ies and early 90'ies "Space Pirate Captain Harlock" is nothing new, as it was a very successful anime series back in the day (although only a third of all the episodes saw the light of day in German dubbing).
I mean, listen to this exquisite intro - thanks Nicole. No really, thank you.
Yeah okay, I am just being mean, the series was quite excellent from what I gathered (and can remember) and the movie is basically a prequel with a set of entirely new and ultimately useless characters which is exactly where the movie begins to be rushed, boring and utterly weird up until the point of it being completely incomprehensible for fans of the tv show and new ones alike.
There are so many plot threads that go unanswered (Why does Yama look like a young Harlock?) and the character development falls victim to "all tell, no show", so we are told that Harlock's entire crew thinks of him as the biggest, greatest, bestest and overall perfectest human being on earth sorry, in space but we don't get to see why that is the case. He almost never interacts with anyone but the alien Mime and then, when he rescues Yama from the deadly clutches of a predator although he knows that Yama is a traitor, we have no idea what his motivation is apart from the fact that maybe he thinks Yama is too pretty to die which would make Harlock a likeable narcissist and I am pretty sure that this isn't what they were going for.
I mean there is "tall, dark, mysterious" and then there is "tall, dark and why the fuck are you even on this ship, dude, I forget regularly that you are the captain cause you never do anything!"
Moreover this movie's joke-rate is atrocious, nothing is funny apart from this one time when the bird flies against some sort of pipe. (This bird is my favourite thing in the entire movie.
from here
I don't know why, this bird has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I like the idea of broody, dramatic Captain Harlock having a truly ugly, lame bird for a pet).
The lack of comedic elements emphasizes again how damn serious this movie takes itself which is kinda ridiculous considering that their main antagonist's motivation is that he is sitting in a wheelchair (all that technology and you are telling me that there is no way for this guy to get a pair of robot legs?) and that Captain Harlock's ship - the Acardia - looks like something that Bad Dragon can't wait to sell on Talk like a Pirate's days.
Don't get me wrong, I liked the film well enough ("Sach ma, meinste, der hat den Thron selbst geschreinert?" - "Nää, gabs wahrscheinlich gratis beim Gothic-Laden-Sale dazu.") because it looked amazing. The 3D graphics, the action sequences, the flawless re-design of the character outfits (recognizable, but twelve times cooler) were all breathtaking and very fun to watch. In a way, it reminded me a lot of "Advent Children" - great looks, almost no plot and a huge ton of exposition which ultimately has no or very little pay off.
All in all, I wouldn't watch it again or even recommend it to people, but I am more than happy to look at gifs of their pretty faces.