IRON MAN VS SCIENTOLOGY PROPAGANDA ONOES!
Jun. 26th, 2013 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogCatching up on my cinema activities:
After Earth
Let’s get the obvious out of the way – the main reason this film is getting so much hate is because (1) M. Night Shyalaman co-wrote and directed it, (2) Jaden Smith co-stars with his dad, and (3) Scientology something blah blah blah. Take away those memes, and what you have with After Earth is a flawed but decent film.
The premise doesn’t get much simpler: a teenage son must overcome fear and prove himself to his hard-ass military war-hero father after the two crash-land on post-apocalyptic Earth. Not the most original idea, but it’s executed well – at least on a functional level. My main beef is that they don’t really do anything surprising with the father-son coming-of-age meme, and the “Earth a thousand years later” angle seems underbaked – honestly this could have taken place on any planet.
But for all that, it’s not bad. Will Smith makes a surprisingly convincing hard-ass soldier with his emotional range buried under layers of self-discipline. And while it’s true that Jaden Smith is the weak link in terms of acting ability, he’s still better than everyone in The Happening. So all up, it’s another great-looking but average sci-fi film, unless you have it in for Shyalaman and/or Scientology, in which case you’ve probably already made up yr mind about it.
Iron Man 3
In which Tony Stark is pitted against a terrorist called The Mandarin. Action ensues, and things are destroyed.
I’m not the biggest Iron Man fan in the world, and it’s mainly Robert Downey Jr that makes the films watchable for me. This one is no exception in that regard. That said, I enjoyed this one more than the first two. The first Iron Man has a lot going for it as an origin story, but IM3 has the best villains of the series. Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce make the most of it as The Mandarin and Killian Aldrich. Discussions about the difference between the comics and the film are irrelevant to me, so I got a kick out of the way both characters were used.
Other than that, I don’t have much to say about it. It is what it is – a lot of fun, but not much else.
Heavy boots of lead,
This is dF
After Earth
Let’s get the obvious out of the way – the main reason this film is getting so much hate is because (1) M. Night Shyalaman co-wrote and directed it, (2) Jaden Smith co-stars with his dad, and (3) Scientology something blah blah blah. Take away those memes, and what you have with After Earth is a flawed but decent film.
The premise doesn’t get much simpler: a teenage son must overcome fear and prove himself to his hard-ass military war-hero father after the two crash-land on post-apocalyptic Earth. Not the most original idea, but it’s executed well – at least on a functional level. My main beef is that they don’t really do anything surprising with the father-son coming-of-age meme, and the “Earth a thousand years later” angle seems underbaked – honestly this could have taken place on any planet.
But for all that, it’s not bad. Will Smith makes a surprisingly convincing hard-ass soldier with his emotional range buried under layers of self-discipline. And while it’s true that Jaden Smith is the weak link in terms of acting ability, he’s still better than everyone in The Happening. So all up, it’s another great-looking but average sci-fi film, unless you have it in for Shyalaman and/or Scientology, in which case you’ve probably already made up yr mind about it.
Iron Man 3
In which Tony Stark is pitted against a terrorist called The Mandarin. Action ensues, and things are destroyed.
I’m not the biggest Iron Man fan in the world, and it’s mainly Robert Downey Jr that makes the films watchable for me. This one is no exception in that regard. That said, I enjoyed this one more than the first two. The first Iron Man has a lot going for it as an origin story, but IM3 has the best villains of the series. Ben Kingsley and Guy Pearce make the most of it as The Mandarin and Killian Aldrich. Discussions about the difference between the comics and the film are irrelevant to me, so I got a kick out of the way both characters were used.
Other than that, I don’t have much to say about it. It is what it is – a lot of fun, but not much else.
Heavy boots of lead,
This is dF
