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Is Genesis History? (2017)
The short answer being: NO!
Evolution is a proven fact, the only reason it is still called "a theory" is there are still details to clarify.
Besides from that my title says it all.
No Time to Die (2021)
Here Lies James Bond Agent 007
Born to celluloid 1962, died 2012
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
- - - - -
You fought long and well, but you finally lost to those who hate all that is white, male and heterosexual.
First they told people you were a coward who would quit the service over a flesh wound, and that you would fail to protect your boss.
Then they reduced your story to a family feud with "your evil fosterbrother".
And then when enough people had bought these lies, they simply retired you.
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
Skynet's New Strike
In the year 2032, Skynet creates a new infiltrator terminator model, T-Zero-Brain. Two T-Zero-Brains are sent back to 2019, where they kill and take the place of producer/director/writer James Cameron and director Tim Miller.
The T-Zero-Brains produce a movie postulating that Skynet has been removed from the fluctuating future timelines, and that the future of mankind no longer depends upon the life of John Connor.
In order to further weaken mankind mentally and bring about a timeline where Skynet may come into existence and take over sooner, the movie heavily supports globalist and woke ideas where independent and critical thought is banned, and also postulates that Terminators without a specific mission are not programmed to kill any humans in sight.
Since the T-Zero-Brains are machines without creative or independent thought, their movie "Terminator: Dark Fate" is a pure repetition of the original Terminator, and even uses obvious Skynet designs and even designations to postulate an entirely new enemy.
Despite these obvious errors, their mission is largely successful. A large number of people are fooled, and the less gullible mostly turn away from the entire franchise in disgust.
Aware of Skynet's scheme, the human resistance sends back a number of programmers to 2019. Their mission is to create a computer game warning people that the real threat is still Skynet, that Terminators aren't actually good guys, and that John Connor is still crucial to the survival of the human species.
The computer game must be good enough to gather a following, but despite this being an huge challenge for movie-based games, the programmers from the resistance are successful: They manage to create "Terminator: Resistance" which becomes widely praised as the best and possibly only good Terminator computer game. This game strongly emphasizes that the original Terminator universe is still in effect.
The future of mankind now depends on enough people playing the "Resistance" game, enough people rejecting the false "Dark Fate" movie, and enough people avoiding further propaganda from the hostile T-Zero-Brains posing as James Cameron and Tim Miller.
Dredd (2012)
Good entertainment, but lacking in contrasts
The new Dredd movie from 2012 is good, solid entertainment. The story is mostly a case study of Dredd and rookie Judge Anderson (a quite important figure in the comics it is nice to see her included in the adaption) working a single case. The result of this focus is a well rounded and satisfying story which looks a lot like a "pilot episode" with the extra quality of being able to stand alone (rather than just introducing characters and suggesting future plot lines without actually telling a story).
But it fails in capturing the "feel" of the comic books. Without meaning this in a strictly purist way, I still think the one quality that would really make a Dredd movie stand out - and above - from the majority of superhero movies ... would be to do a good job of capturing the characteristics that makes the comic book a success - in a way that clearly stands apart from anything else.
The new "Dredd" fails to do so for a number of reasons. While more popular than the 1995 "Judge Dredd" with Sylvester Stallone, that version remains an arguably better interpretation of the comic books in a number of ways.
Overall, the Stallone version had two flaws. First and foremost: Judge Dredd takes off his helmet. This rightly put off a lot of fans - he NEVER does that in the comics. It *is* an error, huge enough in itself to say the Stallone adaption fails to be a "true" Judge Dredd adaption. Secondly, it actually tried too hard to be a loyal adaption of the comic book in other respects, e.g. by including a robot from the marginal ABC Warriors from the books - and many other "well known details". It's more a showcase than good story telling.
But this also makes the Stallone movie more colorful, absurd, and over-the-top in a way that - despite the helmet issue - does a vastly better job at capturing several important qualities that make the books stand apart.
The new "Dredd" does a better job at telling a story - but it fails completely in being "real" Dredd. "Judge Dredd" surely wasn't perfect - but neither is "Dredd". It lacks in the extreme contrasts that hallmark the Dredd comic books.
The comic books have a lot of special traits that makes them great fun; more absurd British humor than the new movie succeeds in capturing. This *is* a loss because a more loyal adaption would have been more unique, better-looking and overall funnier than the entertaining but far from unique result at hand.
For example: Judge Dredd is NOT a "future cop", he is a "judge". All judges are brainwashed with principles of justice to a degree where they are more "robocops" than human beings. There are no corrupt judges. And they do not "uphold the law": Their mandate is to *make* the law - on the spot, for the occasion.
Megacity One is *not* a gigantic slum. It is a clean and colorful city of enormous buildings in absurd designs. There are no 1, 2, or 3 story buildings, there simply isn't room for that. The huge population *must* be packed into gigantic beehive buildings. The air traffic is of course TIGHT.
Megacity One is held in an iron grip by the Department of Justice - the Judges. They are *NOT* - quote - "losing control of the city" - they constantly have to fight extreme crime and disturbances in an extremely large population, but ... "losing control"? ... The Judges? -NEVER! Dredd of the comic books is first and foremost fun because he is the ultimate parody of the ultimate control freak.
Much of the problem here would be the lack of money to (re-)create a convincingly correct Judge Dredd universe. In order to cover this a bit the movie mostly takes place in darkly lit corridors.
But thus is lost the contrast between an amusement park-like colorful city, and dark and absurd violence, and extreme measures of justice, of the comic book, which combine into a unique world of absurd contrasts in the comics. The less visible but extremely important point that the Judge Dredd is a true hero and a true anti-hero both in one bag is also lost. The new "Dredd" seems too serious to fully capture that.
The lesson from this movie is; if you cannot get the money for a real adaptation, do something else. A completely new version with a much bigger budget is our only hope for ever seeing a "real" Dredd adaptation.
As a dark, gritty, violent low-budget action sci-fi this movie is a 6 out of 10. But for posturing as a "Dredd" movie without capturing anything of the look, feel, humour, or points of the source material, it ends up a 1.
Zardoz (1974)
Brilliant - and cheesy, put purposefully so
First: DON'T vote "not helpful" simply because you don't happen to agree. You are completely entitled to hate this movie, but I AM trying to help. Don't be a fascist about it!
I will not go into details, but I will comment on themes in the movie, hence a slight spoiler warning :-)
The reason for my giving Zardoz 10 stars is that I truly believe this to be a movie of extreme artfulness and originality, and intellectual as well as entertainment value.
That said it is not a movie I can bring myself to watch as often as, say, Jurassic Park or Pulp Fiction. There is no doubt that this is not a movie that could possibly be to everybody's liking, and there is nothing wrong with being unable to enjoy it.
But personally, I do love it for several reasons - about as many reasons as there are ideas shoveled unto each other in the movie.
When this movie came out the press reviewers tended to agree that "Zardoz is extremely artistic" + "overly so, handling almost too many themes and perspectives" + (and here's a bit of the key to the puzzle) "too right-wing" (if the reviewers were left-wing), or "too left-wing" (if the reviewers were right-wing).
This is rather funny, and says something about the movie: The truth of the matter is, it criticizes capitalism and socialism with equal fervor. If anything, it suggests an a-political humanism instead. But the reviewers in all cases saw their own political views ridiculed, and commented about it without realizing that "the opposition" was under equal attack.
As I saw it the first time (back in the 70's) I found the following things rather obvious:
1) Zardoz is a 70's movie with a cheesy style that deliberately parodies contemporary movies. The more or less "hippie" ideals found in other sci-fi movies at the time are ridiculed in Zardoz: Most of the action takes place in "The Vortexes", closed cities where the "enlightened" and privileged dress in a mix of "yoga class" and "pseudo-Egyptian" styles, live on ecological produce, hold "we-are-all-equal round table group meetings", use crystals as containers to store knowledge, and even have a sort of artificial reincarnation system.
These "enlightened" people are decadent, thin-blooded, sexless, and bored out of their wits. And they are a perfectly acidic parody of 70's new age culture and socialism and feminism.
2) BUT - at the same time the Vortexes are sanctuaries for "the privileged upper class", idling away while the outside world populace suffers and toils. And thus they are also an acidic comment on the relationship between the privileged and the non-privileged (countries or classes, both apply). The underlying hypocrisy of the "spiritual enlightenment" of the privileged seems to be one of the more important themes of the movie. Neither socialism nor capitalism seems to sit well with director John Boorman.
In this setting, Zardoz tells a story of individual rebellion (or not so so individual after all, but that's yet another detail) and thus plays on its clear main theme: A profound doubt in "culture" and "civilisation", and a belief that personal life defined by sex, love, death, violence, and intellectual achievement is the "real and true nature" of human existence.
If that sounds a bit much, let me assure you that is is :-)
The scope(s) of Zardoz' existentialist theme is the main reason why the movie can feel chaotic, as if "it wants do do too much at the same time". But this is also part of the fun, and the art: Zardoz raises lots of questions and offers only "family life" and "personal experience" as a sort of preliminary answers.
Zardoz plays on several literary and philosophical themes, and like the philosopher Nietzsche (whom I believe to be a direct source for inspiration), comments on everything it can think of at an almost chaotic pace.
Add to this the combination of genre parody, political and social satire, and you do get something that is indeed difficult, chaotic - but also extremely unique and original.
Most users and comments seem to believe that the cheesiness of the movie in unintentional. I don't: I think Boorman had great fun in making Zardoz look so awfully 70's that is awfulness completely overshadows other movies from that time. I also think that Connery looks to be enjoying himself extremely in this movie for the very same reason.
There is no real conclusion to this, only - I hope - a few perspectives that may help you when or if watching this movie.
If you get a headache watching Zardoz, I understand.
If you got a headache reading this review, I apologize :-)
But if at any point you as much as smirked - DO give Zardoz a try. You can always turn it off - it really IS too much, anyway.
Oh, and I for one DO want a blu-ray of this. It IS a counterpart to "Excalibur" in several ways, and wonderfully good-looking in all its awful cheesiness - a bit like the 80's Flash Gordon.
Watchmen (2009)
Good-looking but disappoints in comparison with graphic novel.
In short: Do NOT, repeat, NOT, see the movie until you've read the graphic novel. It offers nothing that the graphic novel doesn't do better.
If you're not normally into comics, you may consider that this one was elected in TIME MAGAZINE as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. Yes, novel. The graphic novel "Watchmen" really sticks out as full-fledged (and extremely original) literature.
Elaborating: Whenever a movie is made from a story already told in another medium, someone will complain that this or that was omitted. They (okay, now 'we') are always right of course, but other people tend not to care, accepting that the movie 'cannot have it all'.
But then why make it? This question is extra relevant in this case, where the original story was already in a visual medium.
Furthermore, the 'you cannot put it all in a movie' argument is wrong. The 'Watchmen' movie actually demonstrates that a completely loyal adaption would have been possible. It would have been longer, but it would also have been incredibly much better if there had to be a movie version.
Watchmen the movie IS impressive, and until a point extremely loyal to the graphic novel.
The problem is, ALL good things in the movie result from sticking EXACTLY to scenes from the graphic novel. But about one and a half hours into it, it will be clear that you can stop drooling in anticipation of the movie version of the correct ending from the real story. And also that the lack of a lot of background from the graphic novel is rapidly beginning to hollow out the the movie adaption.
So, after an impressively loyal start the movie ultimately fails by deviating from the heavily superior graphic novel.
Without giving too much away (trying to avoid spoilers by only hinting at how differences from the graphic novel discredit the movie):
1) In the novel, Rorschach follows a series of leads concerning missing persons in a storyline that builds up to the climax. The climax of the original graphic novel is radically different from the movie, and the build-up storyline is part of why it's actually devastating. The movie is weakened by omitting this side story..
2) A lot of 'man on the street' sequences from the graphic novel are omitted. These scenes revolve around a street newsstand and its occasional as well as frequent customers. Without these scenes, the movie lacks the 'consequenses for man on the street' interest of the graphic novel, and also removes a lot of human interest from the Rorschach character. Also, the 'pirate cartoon' (which refers to a comic-within-the-comic from the graphic novel, and which has been adapted separately) cannot be inserted in a way that will make sense in an 'ultimate' Watchmen movie cut as planned. (It is a comic book story read by a young man who frequents the street newsstand. Without the newsstand scenes there will be no context for the pirate story).
3) The movie follows Rorschach, Night owl and Silk Spectre. A lot of background about another super hero, Ozymandias, is left out. The background given in the graphic novel serves to make some important points for understanding the entire story, and the movie is weakened by the omissions.
4) As already mentioned, the climax differs from the novel. While good enough seen autonomously, it pales in comparison to the correct ending. And it does smell of "The Dark Knight" - so much that I think it's a pure and unoriginal ripoff, and that at the cost of the real storys uncompromising originality.
The movie is still highly impressive 'in it's own right', but it IS redundant where it's loyal to the graphic novel, and finally inferior for not sticking completely to being loyal.
A perfect movie version would have been approximately four hours long (four and a half if counting the pirate story in). The movie clearly proves that a loyal transfer of the graphic novel to cinema was possible. But it fails to be it.
Without putting down it's stunning visuals and it's dark and brooding intelligence, this is NOT an 'ingenious', or 'brilliant' movie. This is just another relatively okay (and certainly well-produced) movie adaption of a novel from which the true brilliance and genius was borrowed, and which you really ought to read instead.
By the way: Why the BLEEP isn't Mozarts Requiem credited in the music list, along with information of conductor, orchestra and record label?
Post edit: Much much later I am finally changing what I almost immediately regretted, namely giving this movie 6 stars. My reason for that was it does entertain to a point (about halfway, where is turn to pure boredom and disgust if you know and like the novel), and it is visually good looking, but so are lots of other movies that differ from this in being worth one's time. Since it completely fails in keeping the stuff that makes the graphic novel great, I don not feel it deserves attention at all, and therefore I have changed to 1 star. This movie simply should not have been made. I never felt an urge to see the movie again, I do regret having ever wasted time with it. Knowing the novel it merely annoys and bores me, and I don't like it.