Monday, November 15, 2021

I preferred Big Trouble in Little China

I wonder how that John Carpenter movie would hold up on re-viewing?

Anyhow, I'm talking about having watched the surprisingly well-reviewed (92% on Rottentomatoes, and 71% on Metacritic) Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.    (It's now streaming for free on Disney, after only being on the cinema starting maybe 6 weeks ago?)

I'm glad I didn't make my first trip to the cinema for nearly 2 years to see it, as I was seriously underwhelmed.

It's not exactly bad - it's just that it's not very good.  I don't think the script, which was meant to be heavy with family drama, was particularly good.  And the action continually suffered from the Marvel issue of not always being able to do heavily CGI action in such a way to make it feel it carries any sense of danger, or at least, pleasing movement.  (It's funny, but it's hard to work out sometimes why for me some obviously CGI action works well enough, and other times it doesn't.)

As with Black Panther, the climatic battle I found an uninteresting, badly edited visual mess,  and going all in with Chinese mythology and dragons seems a bit of stretch for me, even in a movie series where the multiverse is a thing.   

I ended up wondering why I like Dr Strange a lot, but didn't care for this.  Maybe I'm more into Asian mysticism than Asian mythology, and the Dr S movie was very eye-catching with its innovative looking visual effects.   (I still like seeing the sparky portal - it's charming.)   

I hope I have a better reaction to the James Bond film - I hope to see that by this time next week.

  

 

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