@KALofKRYPTON It is true that RPO has plenty of harsh omission from the book. Whole segments of the quest are handled differently and the films and games present in the book do not make an appearance in the film, as you say, presumably due to licensing issues. Considering what they had to work with, they manage to make a fun movie out of it, albeit flawed.
Conversion of books to film is always dicey. The best book to film adaptations are probably the Harry Potter series. At least he first 3. They start to omit a lot in the 4th one. Also, I’m a huge fan of the original Lord of the Rings. (The Hobbit films were alright, but talk about deviating from the book! And then some!). I felt the essence of the LotR trilogy was captured in the films, but even then, there is a lot of extras shoe-horned in to make for better visual drama (I’m looking at you Arwen)
I watched Star Trek: Byond last night. I liked it, but was a bit dissaponted. It’s the weakest of the 3. It has a problem that’s seems to becoming more common these days. Movies are too fast paced. It never took the time to really develop characters or story much. Even leaving the shock or emotion gone because sometimes because it’s almost over by the time you’ve been able to process what’s happening. Example: When the villain sucks the life out of people for the first with the two crew members hung upside down, it’s really about over by the time you understand what he’s doing. No time was taken for the scene at all.
It just funnells from one scene to the next as fast as possible. It felt a little loose with the action sometimes too.
The villain is also a example of poor pacing. I was completely confused about him by the end. I mean, his motivations are very well explained, and it doesn’t make sense as to how he went from abandoned captain with 3 crew members to life sucking alien with a giant hive mind army while he complains about unity and tries to destroy federation to make it stronger. What even happened.
I liked some of the humor though.
Moves need to start having less scenes or being longer.
Funnily, games move away from and take times to develop more and more while being accused of not being art, while movies seem to be moving towards being more shallow and heralded as art.
@Feena Thanks. Yeah definitely report back. I’m curious what your take on it might be. And you can go back and read the spoiler tagged items I left and see if you agree.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution Author named Dennis Wheatley. He wrote a small number of occult novels, as well as some war ones based on his national service.
The supernatural ones are excellent, if rather of their time (1930s); there are examples of language and attitudes that are to be expected.
The Devil Rides Out is essentially a story about a group of friends, one of whom falls in with Satanists and the ensuing plot of the Satanists and the efforts of the group to rescue their friend.
The film is by the Hammer House of Horror, made in '68. If you're not sure about who Hammer are - pretty much any British supernatural film you've seen with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and their contemporaries was probably made by Hammer. Often low budget, often of questionable quality - but absolutely endearing.
The adaptation of The Devil Rides Out is, barring one scene, note for note identical to the book.
I'd highly recommend reading Wheatley's supernatural books (The military ones are are rather dry). As far as horror goes, it's all rather twee feeling by modern standards - but he did so very much research.
He wrote a non-fiction book called The Satanist using his years of research and even time living as a Satanist for research.
It's all very bonkers, but incredible to think of what was going on in tiny English hamlets in the pre and post WW2 years.
@Kidfried
Let me know what you think.
Hammer really made some great films, but mileage may vary on how accepting you are of low budgets and questionable effects work.
Some of their best are:
The Gorgon
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Horror of Dracula
The Curse of Frankenstein
Curse of the Warewolf
Plague of Zombies
The Quatermass trilogy
Twins of Evil
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed
Dracula Prince of Darkness
There are a few Hammer films I haven't seen. But most made it to DVD. I occasionally pick one up if I'm passing CEX.
EDIT: I totally forgot to mention The Woman In Black!
Hammer made a return to production with The Woman In Black starring Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe. It's a really good film actually - and Radcliffe is surprisingly watchable given his Hey Presto past.
He's also great in Horns in case you haven't seen that.
Saw A Quiet Place last night. I have my issues with it, but it's overall an incredible achievement in focused direction and effective use of sound to build an atmosphere of tension and paranoia. It's nice to see a deliberately artistic, and not mainstream-by-design at all sort of film achieve this kind of success. Seeing this in a theater is a must. My heart jumped in my throat every time a sound distinct enough from the quiet pitter-patter of feet exploded from the speakers, no matter how unnoticeable it would have been in other films. The acting was pretty great as well, and the Clicker-esque monsters were pretty scary. I'm glad the wisely decided to keep them mostly hidden until near the end of the film.
I'm pretty sure the idea didn't come from TLOU, though: it's not like Naughty Dog invented the concept of a monster that navigates by sound.
I really have to question the logic of a world that didn't IMMEDIATELY think to utilize some sort of sonic weapon against these creatures once they realized they navigated the world almost entirely by sound, though. Like... we already have these weapons. Nobody thought to use them? That was some bafflingly stupid writing.
Also, sanctity of life be damned: shame on those people for going through with a pregnancy in a world like that! Were they planning on keeping the baby in that little coffin every time it made a noise, as babies are wont to do? I'd call this more bad writing, but I'm pretty sure I know some people who would be exactly this stupid, so I'll give it a pass.
Pretty good movie otherwise, though. It's always nice when these horror movies come along every few years and seem to redeem the existence of a genre that is dominated by terrible direct-to-video releases.
@Th3solution Great thoughts! I shared a similar experience in terms of the deathly silent theater. The film's incredibly spare sound design makes it where you gain a heightened sense of EVERYTHING around you, and it makes you nervous to cough, adjust your seat, or reach for a bag of snacks. It really is a brilliant parallel to the way the characters in the film had to be incredibly mindful of the sounds they were making. If you think about it, it's an emergent, incredibly context-specific experience that relies on seeing that exact movie in a dark theater, surrounded by other people. Seeing it at home would be an almost entirely different experience. It's experiences like this, I think, that still justify the expense and inconvenience of having to go on a pilgrimage to the cinemas.
Saw "A quiet place" last night and I agree with all the comments that have been made here.
As you guys pointed out the theatre was incredibly still to the point were I couldn't physically take bite of the cookies I brought with me.
The premise is very ingenious and I liked the direction, though you could imagine the director being pretty green at times. It was a tense and ultimately satisfying creature film but I think the film could have done a lot more by showing us a lot less of our monsters. Nothing is as scary as our imagination running wild. I also thought it finished a bit too soon...I see what they did with the ending but it's somehow unsatisfying.
And yes as @Ralizah pointed out, the fact nobody thought of a sonic kind of weapon is rather strange.
@Feena My mother audibly yelled at the screen: "That's it?!" when the credits started rolling. I didn't mind the ending, but I actually tend to like abrupt endings when they end on an exclamation point like this film did.
The monsters, once we got a good look at them, reminded me of the creature from Cloverfield.
I watched Ready Player One. It was a great movie. It had so many awesome references and Easter eggs, and I know there were even more than I saw. I loved the art style they had for the Oasis, it was the perfect blend of realism and fantasy/cartoon. The story was pretty good and I quite liked the casting for the characters. Samantha is particular because I liked how she was pretty, but not freakin gorgeous.
I’ve never read the book nor know anything about it.
All in all I think it could only use a few improvements. It should have had more social commentary, as I really liked the stuff that was there from being in the real world too to the 80% ads without seizures. Also, it needed Nintendo and Sony characters in it, as I don’t think I saw any of them.
Also, Mechagodzilla Vs. Gundam was the best thing ever, I was so excited when that happened. It was the best scene in the movie probably. I’m tided over until King Kong Vs. Godzilla comes out.
Also, that permadeath mechanic would never fly in a real MMO. It worked well for the movie, but could never exist in reality. People like PvP too much.
Sorry to bring up this one again, but I finally got round to watching The Last Jedi. It passed a couple of hours on, but what a strange film. It felt like it had been made by about twelve different people, each with a different idea of what a Star Wars film should be. And it looked like it had been edited by a kid with ADHD. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it as such, it was just so strange.
Also, I could have done without the milk bit. That was easily the most disturbing scene in any film I have watched recently, and I saw Bone Tomahawk the other day.
Good job, Parappa. You can go on to the next stage now.
@Ralizah@RogerRoger@Feena Pretty much all in agreement here about A Quiet Place. It is one of those films that is fun to talk about and I’ve been recommending to all my friends and coworkers, despite its flaws.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Did anyone else watch Ghost Stories yet?
I really enjoyed the movie even though some of the elements didn't fall into place as well as I hoped -<nd writing that just now I realised it's really hard to talk about the movie without spoiling.
Anyway, it's a little more than just an anthology of horror tales and I do recommend it to cinephiles and horror buffs. It's not anything shockingly new but it is extremely well done and it has a nice, unique pace and some quirky storytelling choices. I am very curious to read your comments about this one.
Saw A Quite Place earlier. Thought is was very effective and tense film. I don't get spooked easily but this had my skin crawling. Like others have said it really is worth seeing it in the cinema, such a unique experience with not a sound being made by everyone.
Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
A bunch of my friends want to see Infinity War, and they invited me to see it with them. However, I haven’t seen ANY Marvel movies. So I’ve been catching up. I watched Doctor Strange last night, and while I liked it, that ending was SUPER anti-climatic, it honestly shocked me.
@TheTetrisGuy Congratulations on making it this far without seeing any Marvel movies. 😂 Starting from scratch now is probably overwhelming. What are there, like 20 of these now? I’ve seen them all, although stretched out over like 8 years though.
(Actually, I take that back — haven’t seen Black Panther yet)
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Forums
Topic: The Movie Thread
Posts 681 to 700 of 8,953
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic