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So, I watched some movies this weekend:
How to Train Your Dragon:
Um, it was adorable and I love it. This may very well be because I brought Jaz and Jane, Ruben's youngest sister (8 years old) to go see it and it was Jane's first movie in a movie theater, and they were totally adorable throughout the entire viewing. But, it was totally awesome. I don't have many deep thoughts about it but there are many things that I appreciated about it including:
1. The voice acting. Hiccup's dry sarcasm hit all the right notes, of being smart yet awkward and endearing at the same time. I don't care that the Vikings were sudden Scottish all of a sudden. Craig Ferguson can do no wrong.
2. Toothless is just awesome. Like all adaptations, you worry that movie version of something might not be as good as what you imagine in your head after reading the book. But they did a GREAT job giving Toothless his personality without any words. The animation with his eyes and body movement was great, and their bonding sessions where Hiccup learns all about dragons were top notch. I totally want a pet dragon now.
3. The script. Often Dreamworks has a tendency to write jokes in for adults and while there were a few jokes that would have gone over their heads, this one went for heart instead of the crude comedy they usually do and the movie was better for it. This movie had the same kind of heart that you'd expect from Pixar, focusing on the way Hiccup's relationship with his dad and how his desire to be accepted puts him at odds with his relationship with Toothless. Chosing to put that as the center conflict was the right choice to make it a worthwhile movie. There are costs and consequences to each action and decision the characters make, and they manage to pull off the "our enemies are just like us if we'd just try to understand them" and "you're awesome just the way you are" tropes pretty well without hitting you over the head with it. And yes, the plot is drastically different from the original books, but you know what, that's okay because I liked this plot too.
All in all, I'd totally see it again, and definitely will be getting the DVD.
Clash of the Titans:
Well, I didn't hate it. Mostly because it's Clash of the Titans, okay? The original is cheesy and wrought with bad acting, it fucks with classical mythology like whoa, it has a freaking mechanical bird and moments of weird astral projection, and I STILL LOVED IT. To entertain me, all they had to do with this version is to give me cooler effects and show off Sam Worthington's legs, both of which were accomplished. That said, I didn't love it because of the more problematic issues that didn't make sense at all.
1. They screwed around with the classical myths, even more so than the original, which says something. I suppose "MAKE UP/STEAL SHIT FROM OTHER MYTHS TO FIT OUR PURPOSES" is to be expected, since the original Clash screwed around with the myths too, and one really cannot criticize the new version's treatment of Calibos and Bubo when neither exist in classical Greek mythology. (The writers of the original basically took Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest and reshaped him into Calibos.) Can you really get something wrong if it wasn't right to begin with? However, it still really bugged me that they put Io in and wrote her the way she did because a) Io doesn't even belong in the Perseus myth, and b) movie!Io bears no resemblance to the Io in mythology. Io was one of Zeus' flings who got turned into a cow to escape Hera's wrath and wound up becoming a princess in Egypt. She was not a kick-ass, immaculately clean exposition fairy with a vendetta against the gods. Thetis has no business in the Perseus myth anymore than Io does, but at least the original didn't get Thetis' character wrong. By the time the djinns showed up, I kinda just threw my hands up in the air since djinns from a completely different mythology altogether.
2. There was also a really icky undertone concerning rape that the writers put in that I'm not sure how I feel about because they only kind of deal with it. To make the gods look like assholes, they turned Medusa and Perseus's mother into rape victims of the gods and Io into someone who gets punished with eternal life for saying no to a god's advances. Yet, the problem with the movie is that these women don't ever really get justice, or even sympathy, in the end, from men or gods. Like Medusa gets raped and turned into a Gorgon for her troubles and now we're supposed to root for the heroes to kill her? Uh, yay? And the movie frames Calibos as this tragic figure who was a pawn of the gods, with his dying words to Perseus being all "don't turn out like the gods" but dude? *He* killed his wife when all she did is sleep with someone she thought was her husband. He's not exactly blameless in all this either. The movie conveniently forgets all this, of course. And then there's Io. Who gets resurrected at the end of the movie and you're supposed to feel all "yay!" because she clearly cares very deeply about Perseus and vice versa so now they can be happy together- until you remember that eternal life was her punishment, so really pulling her from resting in peace and finally seeing her loved ones in the Underworld only to live again isn't all that great either, now is it? The movie kind of really fails on this aspect.
3. And my biggest problem was that Perseus isn't that great in this movie either. He spends most of the movie going all, "I'm a MAN not a GOD," throwing tantrums all over the place and ignoring the very logical advice everyone keeps throwing at him like, "Just use the fucking gifts to kill the god-like creatures, okay? Fly the damn horse, use the damn sword and stop being a moron." But in the end, he winds up all chummy with Zeus and turns his back on the people of Argos. He becomes exactly what he didn't want to be. He also fails to accomplish his goal in the end since he doesn't actually kill Hades, which is why he went off to kill the Kraken in the first place. Andromeda was more of an afterthought, which is a shame really, because this version of Andromeda is noble, logical, sympathetic, always seems to have her people's best interests at heart, and is generally an awesome person. I couldn't understand why it was that Perseus said no to her because last time I checked, being the ruler of Argos = being a man, so where's the conflict of interest again?
So, I dunno. It wasn't completely without its merits, because I enjoyed bits and pieces of it, but it's not that great either. And I kinda really would love to see the original cut of the movie, which apparently is very different from the final product.
And finally, because this is relevant to your interests: they are considering turning Newsies into a Broadway musical. Cue flailing now.
How to Train Your Dragon:
Um, it was adorable and I love it. This may very well be because I brought Jaz and Jane, Ruben's youngest sister (8 years old) to go see it and it was Jane's first movie in a movie theater, and they were totally adorable throughout the entire viewing. But, it was totally awesome. I don't have many deep thoughts about it but there are many things that I appreciated about it including:
1. The voice acting. Hiccup's dry sarcasm hit all the right notes, of being smart yet awkward and endearing at the same time. I don't care that the Vikings were sudden Scottish all of a sudden. Craig Ferguson can do no wrong.
2. Toothless is just awesome. Like all adaptations, you worry that movie version of something might not be as good as what you imagine in your head after reading the book. But they did a GREAT job giving Toothless his personality without any words. The animation with his eyes and body movement was great, and their bonding sessions where Hiccup learns all about dragons were top notch. I totally want a pet dragon now.
3. The script. Often Dreamworks has a tendency to write jokes in for adults and while there were a few jokes that would have gone over their heads, this one went for heart instead of the crude comedy they usually do and the movie was better for it. This movie had the same kind of heart that you'd expect from Pixar, focusing on the way Hiccup's relationship with his dad and how his desire to be accepted puts him at odds with his relationship with Toothless. Chosing to put that as the center conflict was the right choice to make it a worthwhile movie. There are costs and consequences to each action and decision the characters make, and they manage to pull off the "our enemies are just like us if we'd just try to understand them" and "you're awesome just the way you are" tropes pretty well without hitting you over the head with it. And yes, the plot is drastically different from the original books, but you know what, that's okay because I liked this plot too.
All in all, I'd totally see it again, and definitely will be getting the DVD.
Clash of the Titans:
Well, I didn't hate it. Mostly because it's Clash of the Titans, okay? The original is cheesy and wrought with bad acting, it fucks with classical mythology like whoa, it has a freaking mechanical bird and moments of weird astral projection, and I STILL LOVED IT. To entertain me, all they had to do with this version is to give me cooler effects and show off Sam Worthington's legs, both of which were accomplished. That said, I didn't love it because of the more problematic issues that didn't make sense at all.
1. They screwed around with the classical myths, even more so than the original, which says something. I suppose "MAKE UP/STEAL SHIT FROM OTHER MYTHS TO FIT OUR PURPOSES" is to be expected, since the original Clash screwed around with the myths too, and one really cannot criticize the new version's treatment of Calibos and Bubo when neither exist in classical Greek mythology. (The writers of the original basically took Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest and reshaped him into Calibos.) Can you really get something wrong if it wasn't right to begin with? However, it still really bugged me that they put Io in and wrote her the way she did because a) Io doesn't even belong in the Perseus myth, and b) movie!Io bears no resemblance to the Io in mythology. Io was one of Zeus' flings who got turned into a cow to escape Hera's wrath and wound up becoming a princess in Egypt. She was not a kick-ass, immaculately clean exposition fairy with a vendetta against the gods. Thetis has no business in the Perseus myth anymore than Io does, but at least the original didn't get Thetis' character wrong. By the time the djinns showed up, I kinda just threw my hands up in the air since djinns from a completely different mythology altogether.
2. There was also a really icky undertone concerning rape that the writers put in that I'm not sure how I feel about because they only kind of deal with it. To make the gods look like assholes, they turned Medusa and Perseus's mother into rape victims of the gods and Io into someone who gets punished with eternal life for saying no to a god's advances. Yet, the problem with the movie is that these women don't ever really get justice, or even sympathy, in the end, from men or gods. Like Medusa gets raped and turned into a Gorgon for her troubles and now we're supposed to root for the heroes to kill her? Uh, yay? And the movie frames Calibos as this tragic figure who was a pawn of the gods, with his dying words to Perseus being all "don't turn out like the gods" but dude? *He* killed his wife when all she did is sleep with someone she thought was her husband. He's not exactly blameless in all this either. The movie conveniently forgets all this, of course. And then there's Io. Who gets resurrected at the end of the movie and you're supposed to feel all "yay!" because she clearly cares very deeply about Perseus and vice versa so now they can be happy together- until you remember that eternal life was her punishment, so really pulling her from resting in peace and finally seeing her loved ones in the Underworld only to live again isn't all that great either, now is it? The movie kind of really fails on this aspect.
3. And my biggest problem was that Perseus isn't that great in this movie either. He spends most of the movie going all, "I'm a MAN not a GOD," throwing tantrums all over the place and ignoring the very logical advice everyone keeps throwing at him like, "Just use the fucking gifts to kill the god-like creatures, okay? Fly the damn horse, use the damn sword and stop being a moron." But in the end, he winds up all chummy with Zeus and turns his back on the people of Argos. He becomes exactly what he didn't want to be. He also fails to accomplish his goal in the end since he doesn't actually kill Hades, which is why he went off to kill the Kraken in the first place. Andromeda was more of an afterthought, which is a shame really, because this version of Andromeda is noble, logical, sympathetic, always seems to have her people's best interests at heart, and is generally an awesome person. I couldn't understand why it was that Perseus said no to her because last time I checked, being the ruler of Argos = being a man, so where's the conflict of interest again?
So, I dunno. It wasn't completely without its merits, because I enjoyed bits and pieces of it, but it's not that great either. And I kinda really would love to see the original cut of the movie, which apparently is very different from the final product.
And finally, because this is relevant to your interests: they are considering turning Newsies into a Broadway musical. Cue flailing now.