Epic cinematic battles
This week I went to see two summer blockbusters, Dawn of the Planets of the Apes and Guardians of the Galaxy (the latter at a press preview through the kind offices of my friend SA, who is a film critic for a number of major outlets). Both films are excellent and well worth seeing.
With regard to Dawn, I continue to be impressed with Andy Serkis as an actor and a craftsman. His characters have great depth. He's invented a new form of acting. Someone needs to give him a special Academy Award. I saw that one critic said that this film i's better than it has any right to be. From my perspective, films are as good as their teams make them--and this team worked very hard to make an excellent film about the change-over between dominant species, at least in the San Francisco area. It's got a strong story and strong characters. If you buy the premise, you buy the flick--and it's well worth the purchase.
As for Guardians, I haven't had that much fun at a movie in a very long time. It's a terrific adventure and the film has great heart. You actually care about the people and creatures who star. And it's a fun story. I laughed a lot and left the theater vastly entertained. Groot is my new favorite fictional character, at least for this flavor of film; he's marvelous.
Interestingly, I experienced something with both films that I haven't experienced before. As summer action-adventure movies, they each include the de rigeur battle sequences. I don't think it's a spoiler, really, to say that Dawn includes a pitched battle between humans and apes, and that Guardians includes a couple of fight scenes, both hand-to-hand and spaceship-to-spaceship. But at the beginning of each fight scene, I found myself thinking, "OK, here we go; let's get this over with" and impatiently settling in, mildly gritting my teeth until it was all done. Given that I had this reaction to each film, I can't say it's a fault of the movies; something has changed in me.
I don't know if it's age or years of working with story or what, but lately my patience for the epic battle has dwindled almost to nothing. If I watch the Lord of the Rings films, I speed through those sequences. They're remarkable technical achievements of filmmaking but they're just, well, boring. They don't advance character. They only mechanically advance story; the outcome is often predictable given which side our heroes are fighting on. Some of this is my changing taste, I think; I'm still and always will be a SF and fantasy fan and reader, but the portrayal of battle on screen has just lost me.
Have you had this experience? I wonder what folks think and what their experience has been.
With regard to Dawn, I continue to be impressed with Andy Serkis as an actor and a craftsman. His characters have great depth. He's invented a new form of acting. Someone needs to give him a special Academy Award. I saw that one critic said that this film i's better than it has any right to be. From my perspective, films are as good as their teams make them--and this team worked very hard to make an excellent film about the change-over between dominant species, at least in the San Francisco area. It's got a strong story and strong characters. If you buy the premise, you buy the flick--and it's well worth the purchase.
As for Guardians, I haven't had that much fun at a movie in a very long time. It's a terrific adventure and the film has great heart. You actually care about the people and creatures who star. And it's a fun story. I laughed a lot and left the theater vastly entertained. Groot is my new favorite fictional character, at least for this flavor of film; he's marvelous.
Interestingly, I experienced something with both films that I haven't experienced before. As summer action-adventure movies, they each include the de rigeur battle sequences. I don't think it's a spoiler, really, to say that Dawn includes a pitched battle between humans and apes, and that Guardians includes a couple of fight scenes, both hand-to-hand and spaceship-to-spaceship. But at the beginning of each fight scene, I found myself thinking, "OK, here we go; let's get this over with" and impatiently settling in, mildly gritting my teeth until it was all done. Given that I had this reaction to each film, I can't say it's a fault of the movies; something has changed in me.
I don't know if it's age or years of working with story or what, but lately my patience for the epic battle has dwindled almost to nothing. If I watch the Lord of the Rings films, I speed through those sequences. They're remarkable technical achievements of filmmaking but they're just, well, boring. They don't advance character. They only mechanically advance story; the outcome is often predictable given which side our heroes are fighting on. Some of this is my changing taste, I think; I'm still and always will be a SF and fantasy fan and reader, but the portrayal of battle on screen has just lost me.
Have you had this experience? I wonder what folks think and what their experience has been.