froghawk on 10/9/2020 at 12:43
Yeah, I don't know... for my money, Villeneuve is a hell of a lot better at grounded real world stuff than sci fi. Polytechnique, Incendies, Sicario, and Prisoners were really fantastic films, whereas Arrival had a bad script by a bad writer imo (great direction and source material couldn't save it for me), and BR2049 was slow for slow's sake (I usually love slow, but to me that film felt like it was pretentiously attempting to appear artsy purely through its pacing). Enemy wasn't a great psychological thriller, either. I think Villeneuve's got what it takes to make great sci fi though, so we'll see - maybe he finally lands it for me this time, though I can't say I'm sold by the highly dispassionate lead performance in that trailer.
The lead writer also worked on Prometheus, Doctor Strange, and the panned Mummy remake. His other two films are lower profile, but both have quite low rotten scores. That doesn't give me hope - I don't know why Villeneuve keeps working with these crap writers on his sci fi projects. Arrival was written by the guy behind the awful Nightmare on Elm Street remake (which somehow managed to be the worst film in the series), Final Destination 5, and The Thing prequel. BR2049 was co-written by the guy behind the Green Lantern flop (though it was saved by having one of the original BR writers on board). And now this.
Sulphur on 10/9/2020 at 14:30
I see you mirror my wikipedia habits, froghawk. Note that there's a third writer, though, along with Villeneuve. Eric Roth, responsible for the screenplays Forrest Gump, Munich, and, uh, Benjamin Button. I'm cherrypicking, but the rest of his work isn't particularly stinkworthy either - well, if we pretend The Horse Whisperer doesn't exist, anyway.
rachel on 10/9/2020 at 14:31
I loved both Arrival and BR2049, so we obviously diverge here froghawk... In fact it's his success in tackling such a heavyweight project as Blade Runner (I was VERY dubious it would work out) that makes me all the more excited for this.
froghawk on 10/9/2020 at 15:48
To me, both films fell into the recent trend of what I think of as 'art blockbusters', though the term is too generous. Basically, after Nolan's films were such runaway successes, many other directors started trying to imitate that approach. The problem is that the scripts in these films are always bog-standard hollywood fare - they're simply directed in an 'elevated' fashion, which gives them a sort of undeserved pompous self-importance - the very definition of pretense. Lots of films pretending to be about something big and shot very artfully while saying very little. I'd prefer dumb Hollywood films be honest about what they are. As far at this trend goes, Arrival and BR2049 are better than most, but Arrival in particular struck me as incoherent pastiche of cliches despite the novel and fascinating language concept.
Note that I also think of the original Blade Runner as a film with incredible direction and uninteresting script (much like Alien, actually). The famous monologue at the end wasn't even part of the script - that was improvised by Hauer. Odd, as I enjoy David Peoples (I love 12 Monkeys, and Unforgiven is great), but I've never been the biggest Blade Runner fan. Honestly, I found the sequel to more enjoyable than the original! Boths films are marred by pacing problems to me, though - not one of the zillion cuts of the original feels particularly well-paced to me, and as I said the sequel is slow simply to appear more artsy (and Jared Leto's performance is yikes!).
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I see you mirror my wikipedia habits, froghawk. Note that there's a
third writer, though, along with Villeneuve. Eric Roth, responsible for the screenplays Forrest Gump, Munich, and, uh, Benjamin Button. I'm cherrypicking, but the rest of his work isn't particularly stinkworthy either - well, if we pretend The Horse Whisperer doesn't exist, anyway.
Yeah, I did see that. He has 3rd billing, so I'm not sure how big his input was, but screenwriting credits always tend to be a funny thing regardless - for all we know, he rewrote the whole damn thing. I guess we'll just have to wait and see! I do appreciate that Villeneuve is drawing exclusively from the books and splitting it into two films.
Pyrian on 10/9/2020 at 20:48
It's easy to see why BR2049 flopped. I liked it, it used interesting ideas, but I wouldn't want to watch it again. That's what worries me about this new Dune. Without any narrative novelty or suspense... Slow pan cinematography with little going on won't carry it alone.
SubJeff on 11/9/2020 at 23:05
Quote Posted by froghawk
uninteresting script (much like Alien, actually)
U wat m8?
Anyway, I, like raph, thought that BR2049 was a bad, bad idea, but it worked out great. I love Arrival. Love it. Prisoners was really good too. So I'm very optimistic about Dune.
I do think that the trailer demonstrates, already, how right Lynch got some of it - despite people's hate of the Lynch version. I really like it for what it does well, and of course it's general trippyness. And I have it on original Betamax.
demagogue on 12/9/2020 at 01:40
I really liked BR2049 and Arrival except that both of them, although a lot of their story was good, even great, to a point, had a lame payoff in the end (IMO) with the fan service and moon logic, respectively. But in both cases, that wasn't Villeneuve's fault as the stories were just written that way. He took what he was given and still worked his magic, making them surprisingly great even despite the plot flops.
So the thing with Dune is, unlike Arrival, at least the first book is solid all the way through. I haven't read the later ones (or if I started to, I don't remember them). Anyway, if he makes the movie like BR2049 and Arrival and sticks to the great parts of the story, I think it'll hit the mark. If it starts getting into the weird parts of the later books, what I read from the summaries, well, we'll see... Remember the Lynch movie ended with a scene from a much later book, but as it was really the finale it kind of passed. I think people want to see a movie of the first book, anyway, as that's really the classic.
Speaking of which, I liked the Lynch version, the art direction and the auteur obsessiveness in the right places, but I'm not one to say it should preclude a new version, even the new version being the definitive version of it. The story is a space opera that deals in spectacle, while Lynch's version had great art direction, the visuals are looking dated, and I trust this new version will have the proper scifi spectacle. We can already start to see it in the trailer. There were some foibles in the pacing and continuity of the first, and like people have said, it was cramming a lot of story into a tight space, and this new version, especially if it's told over two movies, can have more space to give the story itself justice. So overall I'm in the optimist camp.
SubJeff on 12/9/2020 at 12:10
dema - the weirding modules were a massive thing that spoilt the film to most fans.
And the pay off in Arrival was tremendous!
demagogue on 12/9/2020 at 12:44
I don't think it was the weirding modules that spoiled that movie. They're a relatively minor piece whether you liked them or not. Maybe somebody has done a poll about people opinions on it though.
Learning a language allows you to travel through time? They didn't even handwave in super future scifi tech; we could have always time traveled if only we'd've thought about it the right way... Not the punchline I was rooting for. They could have at least handwaved alien tech in and had basically the same pay off, and that could have been great.
Sulphur on 12/9/2020 at 12:51
Yeah, Arrival's core narrative gambit smacks of, well, non-scientific fiction. It doesn't work when you switch up real-world logic for something dreamy and untethered to the rest of an otherwise grounded narrative for the sake of a last act twist. That's one of the flaws, and admittedly a big one - Arrival's not any kind of classic sci-fi movie to me because of that. However, the rest of the movie's direction was solid overall, IMO
