Thoroughly enjoyed myself, however it's definitely the weakest of the franchise. The CGI is beautiful and it has many outstanding moments, but this new protagonist, Noa, lacks any of the depth and moral complexity that that made Caesar's character great. This movie focuses on how legacy can be perverted but ultimately doesn't do anything with it, instead making the main antagonist a follower of old roman ideas rather than using Caesar's teachings in a twisted way. It shows feral humans very briefly, but never does more with that concept beyond a single scene. A lot of this film is also a retread of themes and even specific plot points lifted from Dawn and War.
Additionally, it doesn't explain where Mae or Trevathan came from, how they are so educated, and how they avoided becoming mute; The titular Kingdom is only gestured to from far away, and isn't actually an integral part of the story; How did the entire Eagle clan escape the water but only the two main antagonist apes made it out? It also seemed like there were a lot more apes outside the immediate inner courtyard that got flooded that are probably fine. I just had a lot of unanswered questions.
Maybe I'm being too harsh on this movie because it has the impossible task of following up a nearly perfect trilogy, but ultimately I came out more excited for what comes next that what I had just watched.
Absolutely LOVED the book, can't wait to see this.
Wow, Charlyne Yi was awful in this.
A sports movie that gradually transitioned into a dog movie, and somehow kinda failed at being both.
Saw an advance screening of this one.
This is one of the most original and creative films I have ever seen. In the words of Casetify defending their copyright theft: it's "a bastion of originality".
Let's get a quick rundown of the plot:
Some farmers are chilling on their farm, enjoying their peaceful life. They have enough grain for themselves and a little extra. Big evil outsiders come in, and want their grain. This is a problem, because they want all of it. So the evil outsiders announce that they'll be back in ten weeks to take all of their grain, and boy howdy had they better have that grain ready, or else bad things will befall this little peaceful farming town. So the peaceful farmers decide to send out two of their people to go and find some SPACE WARRIORS:tm: to defend them from the evil empire.
At this point, you're probably saying to yourself, "This sounds familiar", but I assure you, it's a story never been seen before on film. Not once.
checks notes
- Seven Samurai
- The Magnificent Seven
- Battle Beyond the Stars
- A Bug's Life
- Star Trek Enterprise: Marauders
- The Magnificent Seven (again)
- etc, etc, etc
Now, what makes this one different, is that it's with Star Wars vibes!
rechecks notes
Oops Mandalorian did this one too in S1E4, "Sanctuary".
So what this movie lacks in originality, it surely makes up for in characters, right? Wrong! Out of the six or seven main characters in this film, all of them get less development than a random spider villain that shows up briefly halfway through. There are two interesting characters, one of which is the main character, Kora, whose flashback stories are infinitely more interesting than her present predicament, and Jimmy, a robot voiced wonderfully by Anthony Hopkins, who disappears after about five minutes of screentime.
This movie consists of the main characters going to a place, seeing a person do something cool, stowing that person in their spaceship for later, repeated a few times. We get a cool scene of Shirtless Guy trying to ride a bird lion thing, which is lifted straight from Avatar, a very derivative film in it's own right. There's a scene of Asian Sword Lady taking down a spider person, which is cool but again has no impact on the story or other characters whatsoever. It's a list of cool action scenes Snyder wanted to string together and came up with some very thin reasoning to get there. It also has the advantage of being a "Part 1", which means the movie is all setup and no payoffs, so nothing really happens in this film. The Moon does not Rebel.
The main Nazi Guy does get killed by our main hero, which should be a pretty permanent thing given that he is in fact dead. I almost gave Snyder a pass here for this next part, because earlier in the movie, he sets up a character that can bring things back to life! Holy reveal, Batman, she's still alive! Nope, they hook him up to some hoses and put him in a water balloon, and he's all better and more ready than ever to subjugate some farmers on a back moon somewhere for some grain, sans the re-aliving princess.
I will give a little credit to the visuals of the film; they're outstanding. This movie was great to look at, even better if you only look at the trailer and don't have to deal with the plot, which is what this film was designed for. Most of the exciting trailer shots were five second flashbacks which weren't fleshed out. I watched more slow motion shots of rice in this movie than actual characters interacting.
To paraphrase Honest Trailers' criticism of Nolan's Tenet: This movie is not Zack Snyder at his best, but it's certainly Zack Snyder at his most.
All that being said, I had a great time. Solid movie. Would recommend. Can't wait for Part 2.
Pros:
- The VFX work is great, especially the dinosaurs
Cons:
- No world building
- No exposition
- No explanations
- Nothing happens
- All of the potentially suspenseful moments were shown in the trailer
I love slow movies; Lawrence of Arabia is one of my favorites. But this film is surprisingly boring, and it makes an hour and a half feel like it's dragging on. There's no meaningful dialogue because the only two characters in the film don't speak the same language. It's a dinosaur movie where nobody gets eaten, and the dinosaurs are barely even an issue until the very end.
Another great episode! Although the deer and car VFX were comically bad.
Legitimately one of the worst films I've ever seen. I love the MCU but lately it's just been outright bad. Here's hoping Feige is smart enough to remove Jeff Loveness from Kang Dynasty, but I'm not getting my hopes up. Maybe James Gunn can sway me with his MCU swan song. We'll see.
Alright, this one was pretty stupid. The obvious foreshadowing of the lamp phone charger, the shoehorned cheating plot, and the awful twist. The twist that Hunter was actually dead for some of that time came out of nowhere, and wasn't alluded to or set up cleverly, the film just blatantly lies to you. Add that all to the poor acting, hammy dialogue, and the fact that Becky barely cared about Hunter dying when she was so messed up from her husband's climbing death, all add up to make this film pretty sub-par. I will admit however that the tower sequences were pretty stunning, leaving me wondering how they were shot. I'd love to see a behind the scenes of how it was done, especially with this film's clearly low budget (Which apparently was only 3 million, I was right).
Saw an advance screening, and I honestly don't know what the critics are on, this film was excellent.
Not great. Went to Mackinac Island and this movie was hyped up because it was shot on the island. While it was cool to see the locations I'd been to in the film, the plot is nonsensical. The two hang out for two days, are "in love", and he gets sent back to his own time due to absurd time travel mechanics and gets depressed and dies. The dialogue also left much to be desired.
That Guinan excuse was idiotic, otherwise can't wait for more Q!!
Boba Fett isn't even in the episode... It was phenomenal but I reject the premise. Literally could've released as an episode of Mando S3
