31% on Rotten Romatoes
Insurgent continues shortly after the events of Divergent, as Tris, Four, Caleb and Peter, now wanted criminals, are on the run from Jeanine and her Dauntless army.
So as I stated before, the novels aren't spectacular, and even though Insurgent was (in my opinion) the best novel in the trilogy, I think this film fared much better than it's novel counterpart, and definitely heaps better than it's prequel, Divergent.
I think I stated in a previous post that in the trailer you could see how they changed quite a lot of features from what actually happened in the novels, probably to make it more dramatic and get it to translate better on screen.
The plot is much the same, but the way Veronica Roth writes makes the novels seem all over the place, as if she doesn't really have a clear goal set out for the novels except to show the readers what the other factions look like. In the first novel and film, we see Abnegation, a lot of Dauntless, and a little bit of Erudite. In this sequel, we see more of Amity and Candor, the remaining two factions.
However, apart from that, there's also something strange that Jeanine, the leader of Erudite, is hiding from the public. In the novel, it's just a simple video stored on a hard drive that is hard to access, but in the film, it's a very dramatic looking box. In order to open this box, we need a Divergent. But not just any Divergent, we need a Divergent that can pass through the tests of all five factions. And surprise surprise, it's Tris.
This added element of a box and needing to pass through tests certainly helped the film out. It provided more dramatic moments, it provided a clearer plot direction and it also provided an opportunity for intense sequences heavily laid with special effects.
The special effects from this film definitely make this film trump the first film of the series, and definitely make the movie worth the watch. There are more action sequences as a result, and this balances the slow and boring scenes that overwhelmed the first film.
The actors were alright in this film. Shailene Woodley is still pretty good here, and Miles Teller was good too. Unfortunately, the other characters didn't have much to contribute as they weren't designated many lines. They also introduced some more of the characters we get familiar with in the books, but they don't get given more than 5 lines each. Most of the film revolves around Tris and Four though, so I can understand why they chose not to include too much of the other characters.
One casting decision I was unsettled by was Naomi Watts playing Evelyn. I know she's 45 in real life, but the way her hair was done, and her make up, made her look super young. Also, the make up was way too dramatic for her character (who is meant to be essentially homeless), so that was quite a distraction.
Lastly, the directing was still a bit weird. The first film's directing was really slow and boring, and while this film was more action packed, there were some really weird moments. In one scene, the camera awkwardly like closed in quite quickly onto Tris' face and it was so weird, but it was one of those one-off moments where you can just bet the director thought, "Man this would look so cool", but it really wasn't. There was also a lot of unnecessarily dramatic moments were everything was in slow-mo, or scenes where the overall tone of the scene was just weirdly dramatic.
Overall, I think it was a good film for fans of the novel/series. It's definitely better than it's prequel, or even the novel. Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller and the action sequences make it worth the watch, giving it that rewatchability factor that Divergent lacked. But if you're not a fan of the series you can give this a skip.
95% on Rotten Tomatoes
Based off the popular TV show, Star Trek shows us the origins of James Kirk's captaincy of the Starship Enterprise. Being an origin film, we also get to look at some of the backgrounds of the other main characters too, particularly Spock and Bones. We get a bit of Uhura, Sulu and Scott too, as the film attempts to provide some back story for the formation of our favourite Starfleet group.
To be honest, I can't remember much of the actual plot, as I watched this some time ago. The most notable thing was the back stories of all the characters, which was pretty fun.
I've watched a few episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series, so whilst I don't know everything, I'm still slightly familiar with the main crew of the Enterprise. My brother's been getting into it in the last year or so, and he's been writing down all the good episodes for me to watch after (because, let's face it, some of those episodes are really really weird)!
Because I didn't watch the Original Series from the start, I didn't know too much about Captain Kirk's background, or if they even introduced one, so it was pretty interesting seeing this film's take on Kirk starting off as a rebellious kid and adult, always getting into trouble and quite literally being very close to the brink of death. He constantly breaks the invisible rules that society abides by, and he is consistently the smart-arse in the group. Because of this, Chris Pine is pretty great as this version of Kirk, and his dashing good looks don't harm the film either.
Yet, this spin on Kirk's character was not enough for the filmmakers. Nope, they had to put a spin on Uhura and Spock's characters, and that was straight up weird. I love Zoe Saldana though, and Zachary Quinto was really great as Spock here, so I'll let it slide. Honestly, the make up was perfect for him, and he really did look just like a younger version of young Leonard Nimoy's Spock. I also enjoyed the personal background they gave Spock, continuing to show how Spock, despite always saying that he has no emotions, still actually is a very emotional, and human, being.
Also funny was them making some good references to the original series. I watched it a while back so I can't really remember all of them anymore, but I remember them referencing Sulu's fencing abilities, which was quite a funny nod to one particular episode.
Overall, I think it was quite an interesting take on Star Trek's Original Series, which is quite different. In the Original Series, the action is extremely crude and unrefined (on the rare occasion where action actually exists), and some of the episodes have really weird plotlines that not intense at all (in fact, quite a few of the episodes are a bit laughable or cringeworthy).
So in the end I think it is a good film to watch. I think people who were really hardcore Trekkies liked it, but if you weren't much of a fan, or if you had no idea what Star Trek even was going in, it's still very enjoyable as it caters for both fans and non-fans.
On a side note, can I just say how revolutionary Star Trek: The Original Series was? Like, it had in it's main cast, an Asian actor (George Takei as Sulu) and a black woman (Nichelle Nichols as Uhura). Obviously I wasn't alive back then, but I'm pretty sure not a lot of movies or TV shows had such diversity in their main cast. I think I read somewhere that when Whoopi Goldberg saw a black woman in the main cast on a TV show, she realised that there was that potential for her to make it big as an actress too.
87% on Rotten Tomatoes
So my family actually watched the original Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) film before watching this film so we could understand what this film was alluding to. Unfortunately, I really did not like The Wrath of Khan. It was quite slow and boring. While I remembered the episode with Khan in the Original Series, and while they did elaborate on his character in this film, for some reason it wasn't that enjoyable for me, despite it being highly acclaimed.
However, since Hollywood is Hollywood, they made the plot to Star Trek Into Darkness more action packed and enjoyable. It was actually quite enjoyable, but obviously some moments were too unrealistic.
Benedict Cumberbatch was Khan this time around, and he was a great actor in this, but he just looked nothing like Khan; so much so that it was quite distracting. In the original film, Khan was like this native American guy who dressed like he was a tribal leader. Here, Benedict Cumberbatch looks like he just got out of the Matrix or something.
It was also weird how they changed the ending from the original.
~SPOILER on the Wrath of Khan ending!~
I understand how they wanted it to be evident that, since there was an element of time travel in here, things from the original timeline would change, but I dunno... it was just weird. They added something after that bit anyway so they could have just kept it the same, and that so called "plot twist" just became really unnecessary.
~SPOILERS on Into Darkness ending!~
So I still think this film was good, but Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan was pretty distracting, and the bit at the end threw me off a lot, so much so that those two were two of the few things I remembered from the film.
No comments:
Post a Comment