Corpsey

bandz ahoy
"it is comically operatic first of all. within the first 30 minutes there are three or four scenes of different imperial spaceships arriving somewhere and delegations with solemn faces and hilarious costumes exiting the ramps in slowmotion to crescendoing chords in landscapes that look differently but all have the exact same sense of serene vastness to them."

Like this sounds quite LOTRingsy to me. Slow-motion shots of grim-faced, hilarious-costumed men.

Although LOTR does balance that stuff with some (albeit deeply unfunny) levity – and the most intensely stylised bits (the Elves) are the most boring and annoying bits.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
"in landscapes that look differently but all have the exact same sense of serene vastness to them."
Landscapes that look differently is such an ugly, inelegant construction. What would be wrong with "look different"? OK he's trying to somehow get across something meaning that in the shallowest sense they have a different look yet somehow, on a level below that, their actual appearance or the effect that appearance creates is the same... but their must be a way of saying that that isn't so clunky, clumsy and downright ugly.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
"it is comically operatic first of all. within the first 30 minutes there are three or four scenes of different imperial spaceships arriving somewhere and delegations with solemn faces and hilarious costumes exiting the ramps in slowmotion to crescendoing chords in landscapes that look differently but all have the exact same sense of serene vastness to them."

Like this sounds quite LOTRingsy to me. Slow-motion shots of grim-faced, hilarious-costumed men.

Although LOTR does balance that stuff with some (albeit deeply unfunny) levity – and the most intensely stylised bits (the Elves) are the most boring and annoying bits.

This interpretation is going more for recent Star Wars meets Alien/Prometheus style-bender, with scale and sheer numbers of ships from the off. Even that’s inaccurate. More dusty looking. Grey. An attempt at HD granular. It’s done really well initially, more LOTR with the cgi and a couple of heroin bumps

Don’t let disdain cover over anything you take from it, unless it’s Four Weddings and a Funeral
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
"That look differently" is perfectly valid English. It's just a bit old fashioned. I think it used to be standard to use adverbs in this way, rather than adjectives, as in "I felt badly about it."

Probably the only adverb that's still regularly used this was is "well", as in, "I don't feel too well." But even that sounds British/formal, and is gradually being edged out by the the more American/informal "I don't feel too good."
 

entertainment

Well-known member
Oh shit, I thought that was a review from a random blog. I actually take that back if it's Entertainment writing in his second language. I'm not joking, in that case it's a completely different thing and my complaint is totally unfair - I apologise unreservedly.
haha thats fine mate
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
@Corpsey trying to start a fight there...
Anyhow, I've seen the film now and that bit about how many times in the first half hour spaceship ramps slid down to disgorge solemn delegations is spot on. In fact arguably you even undercooked the number of times it happened, or maybe it was just cos you mentioned it that I was more conscious of- and sensitive to - it happening again and again... not that I would have been likely to completely miss any of the massive set piece scenes with spaceships, portentous music, dry ice all over the shop - and plot points being explained rather conveniently...

I actually sympathised with the director at that point, all those things did have to happen so in a sense he was in a bind, but surely there was some way to vary it a little.

RREALLY MILD SPOILERS BELOW IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN OR READ THE OTHER VERSIONS

Also, what I said above about plot points being conveniently spelled out for you was only half of the truth, in that, although you got a fair bit of; "We have to give Paul special treatment because, despite your orders to only bear girl children so that our centuries old plan of selectively breeding Bene Gesserit with the aim of creating The One, could come to fruition, you betrayed us in order to keep the Duke happy and also you taught Paul how to do magic tricks like his namesake Daniels and made him into an intergalactic wild card" - many other bits were skated over. There were quite a few bits where things were kinda mentioned but not explained adequately to understand if you didn't know them. I suppose Villeneuve could then claim these things were evidence of his attempts to squeeze in as many of the ideas from the book as possible... but if you couldn't know what these things meant simply from seeing the film, can you truthfully claim theh are in the film?

I went to see it with three people who had not read the book and don't particularly like sci-fi (or me now) and from talking to them afterwards they missed a lot of what (kinda) happened, or at least the motivations for it. And they aren't interested enough to go and read about it so they will never know.

Well that all sounds entirely negative which is unfair, I thought the first half was decent enough apart from the quibbles above. If you have read the book and your mind fills in the missing bits automatically then it seemed as though what was on screen was as it should be.

The second half though, when they are in the desert... well that dragged, it seemed to have a lot of hallucinations, drwam sequences, visions and many other excuses for slow boring montages with Zendaya and really serious music. I was thinking "the film is getting on for three hours long, you don't need to pad it out so much. Or, why not take out a couple of montages and explain why everyone is after the Spice or who the Sardaukar are or whatever.

And speaking of serious music, I'm not sure you needed so much of it. Like when the Harkonen are bombing the shit out the city and the sky is all red, buildings and spaceships are collapsing on an enormous scale, we don't need orchestral music on top of the sensory overload we're already facing to tell us this is a big event and how we should feel about it. And there were lots of scenes where you could have said something similar.

So, yeah, it coulda been better sadly
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Every part of your description of the entire film makes it sound like the sort of thing I’d run a mile from.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Either answer would have been plausible ai think... well, maybe the sound design wasn't horrible in itself, but there was wsy too much of it. I think the word is intrusive.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Either answer would have been plausible ai think... well, maybe the sound design wasn't horrible in itself, but there was wsy too much of it. I think the word is intrusive.
Well it's Hans Zimmer, isn't it? Mr Bombastic.
 
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