devonerik Reviews

Dune: Part One (2021)

Some storytelling mistakes, but it captures the tone well

[7/10 · 13 May 2023]

Frank Herbert's "Dune" is an incredibly difficult book to film well... witness the number failed at it in the past.

Villeneuve's effort, while far from perfect, is the first one that can actually be regarded as a success.

What few problems there are mostly have to do with pacing... Frank Herbert begins his book with a pivotal scene that creates tension and sets a strong narrative hook, while Villeneuve loses his nerve and prefaces the plot with a long sequence of scenes whose only purpose is thinly veiled exposition.

Filmmakers could definitely stand to have more faith in the intelligence of their audiences... just because Hollywood has been treating viewers like morons for decades doesn't mean they actually are.

However, if you are willing to sit through these initial bad bits, your patience will be rewarded. Villeneuve is highly successful at capturing that intangible stark feeling of both the Arrakis desert, and the universe of Dune itself.

His version of Paul Atriedes is slightly younger and less competent than Herbert's but this is not entirely inappropriate, because in a visual medium like film, we cannot be privy to a character's thoughts, and thus we need to watch Paul gain competence to create a satisfying character arc.

This is a small example of one of the ways that Villeneuve balances his clear respect for the source material with an understanding of the need to change the story slightly to suit the demands of a different fictional medium.

Overall, the film lands well, even if it takes quite a while to stop spoon-feeding the audience grade-school level explanations.

Unfortunately and bizarrely, the character of the naturalist Liet-Kynes has been race and sex swapped, making it quite clear that in today's Hollywood, not even directors with respect for the source material can escape the mandate from The High Table(tm) to pay ritual obeisance to The Message(tm).

Fortunately, Villeneuve seems to have gotten away with only one gesture, and manages to not totally ruin the story.

Last Sentinel (2023)

Bland, heavy handed, preachy and dull

[1/10 · 11 May 2023]

No one writes stories anymore, just heavy-handed delivery platforms for The Message(tm).

The Message(tm), in this case:

"You are a BAD! You ate a meat today?!? You drove the gas car?!? BAD peasant BAD!! You, yes you personally, are KILLING all the horses, cats, and swallows!"

Apparently, us bad peasants living a technological lifestyle will cause so much water to melt off the polar icecaps that there will be a NEGATIVE mass of ice, releasing more water than is actually contained IN the polar icecaps in the first place, and submerging all the world's land, which did not happen the last time the polar icecaps completely melted, 34 million years ago.

This sort of lazy, phoned-in, unresearched, half-assed writing sets the tone for the whole story; the ideas behind each failed plot twist are never supposed to make sense in your head. You are just supposed to feel them with all your feels.

Perhaps "story" is a generous word here, because The Message(tm) is relied upon to justify the plot, rather than the other way around.

By this point, you may, depending on who you are, be thinking that my objection here is to the content of The Message If you live in NYC, have never left there, refuse to ride anything other than a bicycle, and think food comes from the grocery store, then you might think that possibly you would enjoy this film.

You would be wrong. Even if you agree with every single part of The Message(tm), there's still no story, no discernible character motivations or development, and no real conclusion.

The Message(tm) cannot save the story, it can never save any story, because good art requires no justification, and bad art allows none.

Lockwood & Co. (2023)

Not perfect, but gets some important things right.

[8/10 · 9 February 2023]

Lockwood and Company isn't by any means a perfect show... there is a bit of plot clumsiness in midseason. Now that I've gotten that statement out of the way, I'm going to focus on what it does right.

Because this show successfully accomplishes a lot of tasks that 95% of 21st century filmmakers have altogether forgotten how to do.

1. Exposition is paced properly.

Instead of hitting you with a big lump of summary and explanation right up front, Lockwood drops you right into its fantasy world, giving you just enough clues via character dialogue to whet your curiosity and keep you from being totally lost. Then it pieces out the detailed background information in easily digestible bites, each one appropriate to what's going on and to your current level of investment in the story.

Lockwood does not take your attention for granted.

2. Characters are actual characters.

In Lockwood, people don't do things because they are "the good character" or "the bad character". They have actual motives and desires which lead to their actions in a believable way.

Even wholly villainous characters whose actions are meant to be reprehensible still have believable reasons for doing what they do, rather than "because they are bad".

And the female lead is made into a strong character not by telling us she's perfect and super talented, or by having her beat up a bunch of male characters who are just there to show how cool she is, or even by having her be the only competent person in the room, but by having her face daunting obstacles with both human weakness and the courage to overcome that weakness and do what she needs to do.

She IS specially talented (which is why the story is about her), but the writers don't feel the need to follow us around reminding us every two minutes that she is a stronk wammen who is better at everything that everyone else. Because she isn't. It's as if she were, you know, like... a real person, or something crazy like that.

3. The setting of the story actually follows from its premises. Ghost hunters carry fencing weapons because {reason that is consistent with ghost folklore}. Ghost hunting is highly important and profitable because {specific historical events with understandable impact on the current setting}. Ghost hunters are extremely young because {specific lore reason why older people can't do it}.

4. Protagonists do not instantly triumph over everything because they are cool, and covered in plot armor. Instead, they eventually triumph over major obstacles, despite setbacks, because they are persistent and have some heroic virtues.

Except for a few small missteps here and there, it all hangs together without coming off as contrived.

The series isn't perfect, of course.... the combat choreography is downright awful, even worse than Disney Star Wars. And would somebody please tell the scriptwriters that a "stun gun" is just a pain device, not an off switch for humans?

But if you don't totally hate urban fantasy, this show will probably hold your interest.

The Amazing Maurice (2022)

No. Just.... no.

[1/10 · 9 February 2023]

It's almost impossible to do Terry Pratchet properly on film, because his unique charm consists of the wry observational humor of his narrative voice... and just how does one translate that to a medium that doesn't have a narrator?

Well, whatever you do, don't do what this production team did. You can feel the scriptwriters' desperation through the screen.

"Oh, my god, someone wants us to turn this into a movie.... what do we do?"

They try cringey song and dance numbers that have nothing to do with the plot. They try thinly veiled clumsy exposition. They try seasoning the thinly veiled clumsy exposition with not-at-all veiled clumsy exposition. They try going "meta", and interrupting the action to break the fourth wall and have one of the characters lecture us about stories. They try turning a prop from the book into a robot character that is basically R2D2 from star wars.

Yes, you heard me right, they put in a robot. In Discworld.

None of it lands.

Because no one loved this movie. It's transparently obvious that everyone from the voice actors to the scriptwriters to the animators just wanted to do their time, collect their paycheck, and get as far away from this trainwreck as fast as they possibly could.

You know a script is bad when even a season professional actor like Hugh Laurie can't breathe life into it.

This gets one star, not only because it's a horrifying zombie nightmare, but because it's a horrifying zombie nightmare created from the corpse of something bright and beautiful and good.

The one positive piece of hope I have for this production is that maybe they will take the price of my ticket, and book some time for the lead animator at a local cat cafe, so he can learn what an actual cat looks like.