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Notes on Splice, How to Train Your Dragon, Ironman 2 6/12/2010 3:13:17 PM
Brief story notes on some recent movies.
Splice
posted 6/12/2010
This is an old-fashioned horror film, with the set up of two scientists playing God to create a new life form and then finding their personal issues clouding their judgement in a way that dooms them all. The film generates a quality of menace and creepiness more than outright horror. A stronger, initial note about one character's unsuitablity to be a parent would have given the story more depth.
The creature they create for all the right and wrong reasons, Dren, is well-designed to be human-like but not quite. Feral but with some human emotions.
People who like horror that is thoughtful might give this a try.
Hot Tub Time Machine
posted 6/6/2010
This movie shows the danger in creating an unsympathetic character to generate a character arc and set up a happy ending. One of the characters is such a crazed creep, however, that the first third of the movie is weak and not funny, and it raises a huge question of why the guy has any friends at all. The plot does play with the idea of characters traveling to the past needing to not change anything that affects their present lives. Some laughs.
How to Train a Dragon
posted 5/12/2010
Stories aimed at children often have clearly defined characters. Here, a young Viking boy is thoughtful and frail and the son of a powerful, super-sized father who routinely states his disappointment in his son. When the boy captures a deadly dragon, he learns enough about the dragons who attack his village to change the lives of his clan for the better.
Every significant character has a dramatic truth and an issue that plays through the plot.
Nicely done.
Ironman 2
posted 5/12/2010
Where the first film was muscular and enjoyable, this is trival and muddled. The film has its own Jar Jar Binks as a comic bad guy. Unfortunately, buffoons carry no dramatic weight, so the story feels slight, the arc for the main character unclear (or just not important). Hopefully everyone involved got paid well.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
posted 4/18/2010
I viewed this movie within a week of reading the novel, so it was interesting to compare the two. The novel creates narrative tension for the main characters by revealing their inner thoughts and feelings. In the movie, the character who makes the strongest impression is Lisbeth, who has some immediate, and powerfully presented, goals and issues to resolve. The movie recreates the story along a vein of visual action, finding out what happened to a missing girl, while the book covers much more ground with more characters.
In the book, the main issue for Lisbeth is gaining an ability to feel and experience love in a relationship. The movie ends on a different, visual note that undercuts her real journey.
The main goal for another character in the novel is getting his life back and getting revenge on someone who got him sent to prison. Getting revenge registers in the film, why getting his life back was important to him, not so much.
A central issue in both the book and movie is how women are treated by men and fascism in Sweden during and after WWII.
