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House (1985)
Poor writing
This movie could have worked, but it tried to do too much without effectively developing the plotline it set up.
The basic premise of the story is a classic haunted house. A boy disappears in a pool, never to be seen again, and an aunt kills herself in the house.
The aunt returns as a ghost to say that the house tricked her into killing herself. How or why this happened is never explained, and this plotline is simply forgotten as the aunt is never mentioned again.
The main character, a writer named Roger, moves back into the house. He used to live there when he was a child, but he also seemed to live there with his wife when his son disappeared. This is a bit unclear, as is how long ago the boy disappeared.
Roger is, of course, divorced but maintains a good relationship with his ex-wife, as she visits him and they talk on the phone often. This makes one question the necessity of the divorce plotline.
Roger has two neighbors: a very attractive woman with a boy the same age as Roger's son. She and Roger hit it off right away, and there is chemistry between them. This plotline could have been interesting, with her acting as a replacement for the divorced wife, but since he reunites with his wife at the end, this entire plotline is pointless and could have been cut; it adds nothing to the movie.
The other neighbor is a typical pushy but well-meaning guy who keeps entering Roger's house despite Roger not wanting him to. The relationship between them feels forced and unconvincing. While he interacts a bit with Roger, he has no real impact on the story and could have been cut without affecting the end of the story.
The haunted house summons a being that appears to be his wife but changes appearance to a monster. He shoots the monster, which then turns back into his wife. Some police visit him to check on the gunshots, but he manages to hide what happened. Unlike the other apparitions, this one doesn't go away, so he cuts it into pieces and buries it poorly in his yard. The neighbor's dog digs up parts of it, and that plotline is forgotten altogether. The entire segment with the police, the burial, and the dog digging it up could have been cut as it doesn't add anything.
The main plotline revolves around the writer recounting his experiences in Vietnam. He tells a poor war story that ends with a cocky soldier getting shot. The soldier begs Roger to kill him, but Roger runs for help instead, resulting in the mortally wounded soldier being captured and tortured for weeks. It's implied that the haunting is because Roger didn't kill him, and once Roger realizes this, the house loses its power over him. This is very confusing and poorly written overall, with no explanation given for why a soldier killed in Vietnam would haunt a house in America.
In the end, Roger manages to rescue his son from the house, and the movie ends with the once broken family being happy.
So in short, the plotline is:
- Boy disappears in the house
- Writer divorces his wife
- Writer moves into the house and writes about his Vietnam experience
- The house is haunted because he didn't kill another soldier
- Once he realizes this, the house loses its power over him
- The family is reunited
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The movie is riddled with plotlines that are unexplored and go nowhere; they also forgot that the main plotline should lead somewhere.
The monster effects are reasonably solid for 1986, but since they, literally, let the monster out of the closet at the very beginning, the feeling of suspense is ruined. A classic approach in these kinds of stories is the mounting insanity of the ones living in the house, but they don't do that in this movie.
This movie is sold as an R-rated Comedy, Fantasy, Horror. It doesn't have any comedy, it isn't scary in the slightest. Sometimes movies are directed at a younger audience, which explains the lack of scariness, but that isn't the case here. The Fantasy tag also makes no sense. This movie isn't even PG-13.
I simply don't understand what they tried to achieve with this movie; it barely has a story, all subplots are abandoned, and nothing makes sense.
The Rift (1990)
Just bad
❌ Script
The story isn't bad, it has all the elements to be enticing and interesting, however the script is horrible. The characters are caricatures of human beings. The actions and reactions makes absolutely no sense and it's simply cringeworthy. The dialogue is written by someone who doesn't speak English and who has never witnessed human interactions at all.
In the hands of a competent scriptwriter this could have been a good story; but sadly this wasn't the case.
✅ Monster effects
The effects are cheap, but they work fairly well. They use a variety of monsters, and while it might have been better to just focus on on plant-monsters the monster effects works
❌ Other effects
These effects were horrible. There are techniques for making miniatures look realistic, those techniques were not used here. The sub appears to be extremely small every time we see it, but inside there are big square rooms. If you are going for a story about a sub, at least make the sub look good.
If you leave your sub at 30 000 feet you should wear proper diving gear; not just a normal scuba suit. Take a look at any of the 1000 other deep sea movies and you see how it should be done. It can be done fairly cheap... or as an alternative... don't have a deep diving scene if you can't pull the effects off.
❌ Acting
The acting was horrible. The lines were read as if sitting around a table. We have the entire spectrum from extreme overacting to no acting at all. Even if the budget is small you can have decent acting. Some of the bad acting surely comes from the bad script, but it's clearly directed by someone who shouldn't be allowed to make movies.
Verdict
I had to struggle to finish this movie. While the monster effects are decent the movie fails to convince. I can accept bad effects; I can even accept horrible effects if the movie is made with heart. This movie isn't made with heart. What really kills the movie is the acting and the human interactions. Avoid this movie, folks!
The Marvels (2023)
The movie is a mess, but Iman Vellani is a delight
This movie is a mess. It's clear this movie was produced by committee rather than being written by someone wanting to tell a coherent story. It takes skill to make a $300 million movie feel cheap. The special effects were overall good, the exception being the effects where Rambeau is flying; those had the quality of a 1985 sci-fi movie. The production felt rushed, the dialogue was forced, and the movie failed to convey any sense of urgency or danger at all.
## Main characters
Kamela Khan/Mrs. Marvel (played by Iman Vellani) was an absolute delight. The actress pretty much radiated emotion and played her character perfectly. This was the one and only highlight in the movie. Her character was consistent in the movie and made sense overall. The only negative is that a 21-year-old person shouldn't play a character of 16.
Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (played by Brie Larson) was quite solid. Her character was written very badly, with a strange character arc, but it was clear that Brie made a good effort. The character was extremely inconsistent; you can't have a character struggle to defeat two non-powered soldiers at the start and be able to reignite a sun by simply flying into it at the end.
Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) was weird. It's impossible to say if Teyonah was good in the role or not because the role was written so badly. The emotions were inconsistent, and the powers were all over the place.
## The plot
There is a lot going on; my guess is that a committee came up with a few key concepts. The movie, despite being 1h45m, felt bloated and much too long. Cut away the plot lines that were dropped and forgotten, and we'd have a movie that's about 1 hour long.
Main concepts include, but aren't limited to
- Space portals that are used to steal planetary resources
- Carol Danvers is a super villain who doesn't even attempt to save the planet she doomed to destruction many years ago. Even if it literally takes 10 seconds of her time and no effort at all to reignite their sun. She's made no attempt at all during the last 20 years to help them.
- Magic power bracelets that can absorb power like every other space weapon and McGuffin. Used to open and close portals but are only used to open them; could be removed from the movie entirely and no one would notice.
- Teleporting of the main characters. This creates a bit of difficult situations but has no impact on the story.
- Tentacle-cats that lay space eggs inside walls and can eat people without harming them. This adds nothing to the story.
- A space station. This adds nothing to the story.
- Skrull planet. Forgotten after they fail to save it.
- Bollywoodian Song and Dance planet. Forgotten after they fail to save it.
- Destroying an AI means that the sun stops working.
You felt compassion for the villain after learning that Carol Danvers screwed their entire planet over, and thus the victory over the villain feels empty. Overall, the ending felt rushed; a lot of plotlines were left dangling, and it just felt pointless.
Because of all the story elements that were forgotten or had no impact on the story, the movie felt bloated. It's time for Disney to stop writing movies by committee.
The Wheel of Time (2021)
This is not Wheel of Time
The Wheel of Time is an epic Saga. It's one of the biggest and most well written pieces of fantasy to ever be created. Some might have opinions about Brandon Sanderssen completing the book, but I think he did a great job. My only problem with the Wheel of Time books is how some of the women were portrayed.
This adaptation however... if I were to speculate about the creative process I would think it went something like this.
1. 5 people read chapters at random
2. They each write down three things in the chapter. A name or a specific event.
3. They take these events that amounts to about 5 minutes for each episode.
4. Then they made up the rest with things that weren't in the books.
It's understandable that you make an abridged version of a story as long as this one, but making it abridged while at the same time adding a lot that wasn't in the books at all, that doesn't add to the story... that's spitting at the legacy of Robert Jordan. Why would one even think up new scenes while at the same time ignoring some of the most important scenes from the books?
Since the story is abridged and a lot of new events, meetings and characters are invented without reason or purpose a lot of what happens doesn't make sense. We skip events that are central to the story while taking deep dives into other things that were at best hinted at in the books. Characters therefore act in ways that aren't explained by the story. Character motivations are almost non-existent.
The makers of the series tries to counter this by making up new backstories that are completely pointless. We get to follow the story of how Perrin killed his wife.. a story that didn't happen... he never even had a wife... he (Mat and Rand) weren't really considered as adults in the books, even if they were close... a lot of the story is about them growing into men... so inventing a backstory completely at random for a character that already has a great backstory, that's just sad.
On top of this we have the casting... some casting choices are really good (Moraine, Siuan Sanche, Rand, Mat, Liandrin to name a few). But they forget what the story is about. Tworivers is largerly a remnant of Manetheren; it's an isolated village in the outskirts of the world; yet the Tworivers have more racial diversity than a modern city. One of the key points in the first book is that Rand is different from everyone else in the village and that he stands out due to his background, but he doesn't stand out here because there are people from every etnicity in his village. At least be consistent!
We then come to the casting. Selene is meant to be extremely beautiful, described as "probably one of the most beautiful women of her Age or any other" and "Perfect human beauty". Her skin is creamy pale. In the series she's fairly good-looking, but not anyone that would turn heads. She's not pale at all, and is overall a really poor casting for that role.
Elayne is described as "exceedingly beautiful, with blue eyes like sapphires and red-gold, curly hair. With a smooth-skinned, perfectly oval face. In the series she's alright, a bit cute but that's about it.
Perrin is meant to be fairly tall and extremely muscular. In the series he's strong, but nothing exceptional. Fairly week portayal overall.
In the books Rand is revealed as the Dragon Reborn when he reaches the Eye of the World. When absorbing the power of the Eye he stops the first invasion of the Trollocs... but here he doesn't do that... it's stopped by a couple of women; lead by a woman who can't even channel in the books. Once again, it's understandable if scenes are cut, or shortened. Some events can be skipped, but scenes should never be rewritten like this. There are a lot of strong women in Wheel of Time; the series doesn't have to invent new strong women or new acts to tell their tale.
This is one of the worst adaptations I've ever seen. They haven't even made an effort to adapt it, they've taken a few elements of the story and simply rewritten 90% of what happens.
Even with we ignore the adaption aspect, this is still one of the worst series I've ever seen. The charafters, the events etc doesn't make any sense at all.
At least a lot of the visuals are beautiful!
Black Adam (2022)
Overall a bit Meh
What do we have...
The story in short is:
# Black Adam is bad
# There are some other characters that has 0 impact on the story
# Black Adam is perhaps kinda good but in a bad way
# Kills bad guy no effort
# The end
The story in slightly more words...
# Black Adam was a bad superhero that got put to sleep
# Plottwist: His son was a good superhero, but he gave his powers to Adam to save him. Son got killed. Adam did bad things in revenge.
# Bad guys want demon crown
# Plottwist: The bad guy is in fact an ancestor to the king Adams son defeated.
# 4 superheroes appear: Hawkman (badly defined powers, no backstory), Dr Fate (can see into the future, badly defined powers, found a magic helmet in a 10 sec backstory), Cyclone (pointless, has no impact on the story at all, can make cyclones, badly defined powers), Atom Smasher (pointless, has no impact on the story at all, can become really big, like Ant-man but without the charm)
# Superheroes attack Black Adam with CGI, but Adam cannot be hurt by CGI.
# Adam and superheroes team up
# Bad guy get demon crown but dies
# Adam gives up his powers for no reason, gets thrown in prison
# Plottwist: He died but by dying he gets demon powers
# The guy that can look into the future sees that things are going bad, frees Adam and then dies a pointless death.
# Adam, without powers, appears to be invulnerable, regains his powers
# The bad guy summons the legions of hell. The legions gets defeated by 30 random people wielding blunt objects.
# CGI fight with the bad guy, Adam wins
# The end
With a story like this, why wasn't the movie great?
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First of all, Adam is immortal, apart from when he was hurt for 30 sec in the beginning nothing can harm him. Even when he doesn't have his powers he's pretty much invulnerable. The superheroes can't really get hurt either. Dr Fate dies in his fight agains tthe bad guy, but it's announced in advance that he will die and that the bad guy will defeat him, meaning there's no surprise that the bad guy wont care no matter how much CGI Dr Fate throws at him. In the last fight between Adam and the bad guy neither can be harmed by the CGI at all, untill Adam rips the bad guy apart. The fights are perhaps well made, but when you know that noone will die (except when you know someone will die) there are no stakes and no surprises. I have to wonder... why do directors think that fights between immortal gods are fun to watch? Even Adam Wests batman from 1966 is more exciting since you don't know the outcome of every fight!
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Investment in characters... I don't care about Adam... I'm told he was bad, but then perhaps goodish... ok fine, he's immortal, who cares. Our other heroes... I don't care about them... They have no backstory, I have no emotional investment in them. Dr Fate dies, but you know he will in advance, there are no surprises at all! It would have taken only a minor rewrite to leave the other heres out from the movie completely, they are nothing but empty filler.
The villain... he wants the crown, he gets the crown he dies. There is no investment in his goals. You barely even know if he has goals other than killing Black Adam.
There is also a mother and her son, but they are so generic and bland you don't really care about them. The mother finds the crown, her kid almost gets killed, Almost no impact on the story.
In other words, you don't care about any of the characters. They are emtpy shells. If each of the characters had had an origin story, perhaps their own movie, you might care, but they don't. In Marvels End-game you care about Stark dying because you've been with that character through a lot of movies, the death has impact and meaning. If he had died in the first movie without having any impact at all noone would have cared.
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The plottwists... why do we have the plottwists?
A plottwist is a nice storytelling device when it surprises you...
But... the original hero wasn't Adam but his son, and his son died to give Adam his powers... why? Just let Adam have the powers and start out with good intentions but go bad when his son dies, no need for a twist!
<eneric good guy is in fact are a generic bad guy that wants a crown isn't really doing anything. Had we been invested in the character as a good guy him being bad might have had some impact, but we don't get invested in characters at all here. And the plottwist that he's in fact related to the bad king... who cares? We're still not invested in him.
Dr Fate sees that Hawkman will die... but in a twist he decides to kill himself for no reason at all. He could just have said, oh, hol' up folks, let's free Adam and let him deal with the bad guy.
The twists add nothing, they almost seems tacked on in the script. Remove them and it would have been the same movie.
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This movie isn't exactly bad, it's just bland and pointless. Unlike Shazam it isn't even funny. It's understandable that DC wants ensamble movies just like Marvel, but they don't make any attempts to get you invested in them. The technical quality of the movie is overall good, the acting is good, the casting is good. There is even fairly good chemistry between the characters. Just a pity the script is bad.
As for the fights... CGI-fights with characters flying all around, with noone ever reacting to getting punched into the ground etc... those fights are not fun. Considering the budgets they should be able to hire someone to make the fights engaging. Perhaps the story isn't great, and perhaps the characters aren't developed, but if the fights are fun you can still enjoy it, just like you enjoy cheesy 1-man-army movies from 1980-1990.
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Final judgement: Watch this movie if you've got nothing else to do. You will get a bit bored at the CGI-fights and you wont care about any of the characters... at all... but perhaps you want some mindless fodder for the brain.