Chronicle: Best Superhero movie of the year?

Kyougu

Well probably not...but I could see it being a close call.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KARAwpINJfg

Just got back from it, and even knowing that it was getting good reviews (High 80's in RT) I was still surprised by how great the movie is. The story is formulaic and you can tell where it's going based on the trailers/advertising but like most things it's how it gets there that makes it so good.

The 3 main actors are largely to thank for this. You really do buy them as kids who just been handed powers and it's fun seeing them experiment and bond together. Which makes

Andrew snapping

completely work.

Also for those that hate the whole handheld camera thing, this movie pulls it better than any I see. It's not really shaky, and there's some really great uses of the concept.

Harry Dresden

Haven't seen yet but from what I understand it isn't a super-hero film it's a science fiction film where teenagers get super-powers.

Unless the good teenagers don masks & adopt super-heroic personas?

Atomika

Of course, this is a year that will see both The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, as well as Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Spider-Man, Dredd, and John Carter.


Let's review the OP in about 9 months.

Kyougu

Harry Dresden wrote:

Haven't seen yet but from what I understand it isn't a super-hero film it's a science fiction film where teenagers get super-powers.

Unless the good teenagers don masks & adopt super-heroic personas?

I would say this is a superhero film in the way that Unbreakable was.

Though yeah, I am using the definition pretty loosely.

To be more specific, SERIOUS STORY SPOILERS:

Andrew snaps and goes full blow supervillain. Starts by mugging and robbing a store (while wearing his dad's old firefighting uniform as a costume), then goes on a rampage downtown where his cousin tries to stop him. Cue a full blow comic book fight.

Quid

I saw in the preview that at least one of them was hiding their identity with what looked like a fire fighter ensemble to fight someone else or attack people or whatever. While it's not a super hero movie in the traditional sense, it does fit all the normal requirements. There's a villain, there are the people who fight him that are the heroes, and they all have above normal human abilities.

Mind, that's not important at all to enjoyment of the movie. I'm looking forward to seeing this. Glad to see it's doing so well as far as reviews go.

TheBlackWind

Yeah, I have to say I really liked this movie, which is good, because I wasn't so sure from the first trailer. It helps that the leads were all pretty likeable.

Things got out of hand pretty quickly after he first dons the suit. The way he slammed around the guys from his neighborhood was brutal.

gavindel

There was no way i could possibly enjoy that movie after the barrage of advertisement for it. Maybe its just because I watch Adult Swim, but they played one of the two promo trailers every SINGLE commercial break for three or four hours. As bad as freaking christmas carols.

To the point where I wanted someone to shout "Akira!" and white-slowly-expanding-nuke the city from orbit.

Forar

I'm really looking forward to seeing this. My backlog includes 2 other movies, but I intend to drag some friends to see this on Friday.

SniperGuy

Going to see this today. RT's reviews have me really excited. Looks like an origin story for a super villain, rather than a super hero.

SniperGuy

I return! That was damn good. Minor complaint:

You don't get to find out what the glowy thing was! I want to knoooooow. Would love to see a sequel, but I doubt it'll happen. After he suited up in the fireman outfit the entire remainder of the movie was crazy intense. That entire sequence was amazing, though partially ruined by people behind me laughing at stupid moments. When the two are grappling and flying into walls, the camera cuts to a no audio camera inside the bank and they come shooting through and people thought that was hilarious for some reason.

Loved it all around though.

DiannaoChong

gavindel wrote:

To the point where I wanted someone to shout "Akira!" and white-slowly-expanding-nuke the city from orbit.

I have brought this up in the trailers thread, but this movie is probably the closest thing to a live action akira that we will ever get. and the movie is really really good.

Harry Dresden

DiannaoChong wrote:

gavindel wrote:

To the point where I wanted someone to shout "Akira!" and white-slowly-expanding-nuke the city from orbit.

I have brought this up in the trailers thread, but this movie is probably the closest thing to a live action akira that we will ever get. and the movie is really really good.

Hollywood will still try for a genuine Akira remake.

skeldare

Harry Dresden wrote:

DiannaoChong wrote:

gavindel wrote:

To the point where I wanted someone to shout "Akira!" and white-slowly-expanding-nuke the city from orbit.

I have brought this up in the trailers thread, but this movie is probably the closest thing to a live action akira that we will ever get. and the movie is really really good.

Hollywood will still try for a genuine Akira remake.

It's coming

Glal

SniperGuy wrote:

I return! That was damn good. Minor complaint:

You don't get to find out what the glowy thing was! I want to knoooooow.

Honestly, that would probably spoil it. There's really no way they could explain it that would be satisfactory. Plus, it wasn't really relevant to the story.

Saw the movie earlier today, loved it to bits. Really good performances all around, too. Normally I'm not fond of Camera POV movies, but since this wasn't a Found Footage movie and they mainly used the concept to make the movie more interesting visually it worked really well.

Harry Dresden

skeldare wrote:

Harry Dresden wrote:

DiannaoChong wrote:

gavindel wrote:

To the point where I wanted someone to shout "Akira!" and white-slowly-expanding-nuke the city from orbit.

I have brought this up in the trailers thread, but this movie is probably the closest thing to a live action akira that we will ever get. and the movie is really really good.

Hollywood will still try for a genuine Akira remake.

It's coming

Every article related to that movie has been awful. I'm almost fascinated enough to watch it to see how badly they screw up the adaption.

TheBlackWind

Wiki says it got suspended again early January. I would be quite ok with it never coming back.

I thought it was awesome how

There were so many camera cuts in fight at the end (which has to be one of the coolest in a superhero movie in a while) The swap to CCTV and camera phones and such was really cool.

SarcasmoBlaster

Yeah, I definitely liked that they found a way

to dynamically film the fight scene - as well as the other "action" scenes - in a way that made sense. That was cool. Also, it helped a lot that the three main guys weren't written as a-hole teenager cliches. The final fight was awesome both in action and tone. The certainly made two guys flying around beating the hell out of each other feel both dangerous and real, which is more than can be said for a lot of superhero films.

DiannaoChong

damn.... I didnt think to look. In the final scene:

was his finger back? I wondered if they shot it off to have him survive and show if they would regenerate as well

Edit, he was wearing gloves, it was cold. duh. So I am not sure why they had that happen. just to allow for dramatic timing in the end I guess.

Harry Dresden

Atomic Ross wrote:

Of course, this is a year that will see both The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, as well as Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Spider-Man, Dredd, and John Carter.


Let's review the OP in about 9 months.

True. Any other year except 2012. No matter how good Chronicle is I find it difficult to believe it's going to be better than Avengers or Dark Knight Rises.

urahonky

Could we use this trailer in the OP instead?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exr5B8DCH4w

I'd never heard of this movie, but now I am definitely going to have to find a way to see it.

Atlas in Chains

Just got back. As good as advertised. The trailers do give away a good portion of the plot, but the movie expands on the WHY instead of just the events you know are coming. Andrew isn't just super Emo, he has depth of character. When

Andrew finally stood up to his dad

I was silently screaming DO IT! DO IT NOW! Emotional investment fo sho.

override367

skeldare wrote:

Harry Dresden wrote:

DiannaoChong wrote:

gavindel wrote:

To the point where I wanted someone to shout "Akira!" and white-slowly-expanding-nuke the city from orbit.

I have brought this up in the trailers thread, but this movie is probably the closest thing to a live action akira that we will ever get. and the movie is really really good.

Hollywood will still try for a genuine Akira remake.

It's coming

This is going to be Dragonball again isnt it

Heisenberg

Atomic Ross wrote:

Of course, this is a year that will see both The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, as well as Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Spider-Man, Dredd, and John Carter.


Let's review the OP in about 9 months.

Nothing has a chance against DKR.

Really interested in Dredd, though.

noir_blood

Harry Dresden wrote:

Haven't seen yet but from what I understand it isn't a super-hero film it's a science fiction film where teenagers get super-powers.

Unless the good teenagers don masks & adopt super-heroic personas?

I'll argue that it very much a superhero movie, and in fact, follows the whole "origin' story line of the genre almost to a tee. Plus the ending, with

Matt saying that he's going to do some good

Is as much of a 'with great power, comes great responsibility" thing as possible.

I really enjoyed the movie. It builds up nicely, and the last act is pretty damn glorious, along with the way they choose to film it. Also, it's kinda funny, cause the guy that plays Andrew was scheduled to play Tetsuo in the Akira movie.

Kyougu

Something else that really stuck with me, mild spoilers

This movie captures the act of flying better that most high budget movies. It just felt right.

RT800

So I watched this yesterday.

There certainly wasn't any shortage of assholes to pick on Andrew throughout the movie. They really laid it on thick with the sympathetic villain plot points.

Nothing about it struck me as being a "superhero" movie though. It's more like Cloverfield and Paranormal Activities, where normal people get filmed reacting to largely unexplained supernatural circumstances.

Most Badass Scene:

The one where Andrew's dad tries to hit him in the hospital bed and Andrew's eyes fly open and the whole goddamn room explodes.

Quid

RT800 wrote:

So I watched this yesterday.

There certainly wasn't any shortage of assholes to pick on Andrew throughout the movie.

They really laid it on thick with the sympathetic villain plot points.

Atlas in Chains wrote:

Just got back. As good as advertised. The trailers do give away a good portion of the plot, but the movie expands on the WHY instead of just the events you know are coming. Andrew isn't just super Emo, he has depth of character. When

Andrew finally stood up to his dad

I was silently screaming DO IT! DO IT NOW! Emotional investment fo sho.

Excellent. This was one of my major worries since the trailer didn't really do anything to explain it. Can't wait to see it today.

Dac

Quid wrote:

There's a villain, there are the people who fight him that are the heroes

I disagree a little bit. Andrew isn't really a 'villain' - I would hesitate to even call him an antagonist. The way he is exposed to us, it makes the audience very much want Andrew to pull through, to succeed, to master the things that oppose him. That's the role you typically have for your protagonist.

It's really not a story about heroes and villains. It's a tale of tragedy that happens to have superpowers.

Quid

So are a lot of stories in Astrocity. It doesn't have to be black and white and have everyone in tights.

noir_blood

Dac wrote:

Quid wrote:

There's a villain, there are the people who fight him that are the heroes

I disagree a little bit. Andrew isn't really a 'villain' - I would hesitate to even call him an antagonist. The way he is exposed to us, it makes the audience very much want Andrew to pull through, to succeed, to master the things that oppose him. That's the role you typically have for your protagonist.

It's really not a story about heroes and villains. It's a tale of tragedy that happens to have superpowers.

And I'll disagree. Yes, at the beginning you do want Andrew to pull through and be something more than he becomes. But there's two specific scenes

The spider scene, and the one in which he rips off the bully's teeth and then gleefully explains how he did it

that shows he's gone to far. Considering that the second scene takes place after

what he did to Steve

Show's he has choosen his path.

Shadowfire

Atomic Ross wrote:

...Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Is this a thing?

It sounds epic in the most stupid and amazing way ever.

Atlas in Chains

It didn't cross my mind to classify this as a superhero movie while I was watching it, but thinking back on it a day later, I have no issues with that description. They stripped away most of the conceits of the genre, which went a long way towards hiding it, but the movie ended up being a fairly tight origin story. It was a tragic origin, like X-Men First Class, just stripping away the layer of comic book silliness that comes with a Marvel movie.

Harry Dresden

Shadowfire wrote:

Atomic Ross wrote:

...Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Is this a thing?

It sounds epic in the most stupid and amazing way ever.

Yep. It's a thing and it will be glorious.

Dac

noir_blood wrote:

Dac wrote:

Quid wrote:

There's a villain, there are the people who fight him that are the heroes

I disagree a little bit. Andrew isn't really a 'villain' - I would hesitate to even call him an antagonist. The way he is exposed to us, it makes the audience very much want Andrew to pull through, to succeed, to master the things that oppose him. That's the role you typically have for your protagonist.

It's really not a story about heroes and villains. It's a tale of tragedy that happens to have superpowers.

And I'll disagree. Yes, at the beginning you do want Andrew to pull through and be something more than he becomes. But there's two specific scenes

The spider scene, and the one in which he rips off the bully's teeth and then gleefully explains how he did it

that shows he's gone to far. Considering that the second scene takes place after

what he did to Steve

Show's he has choosen his path.

Yeah, that's the tragedy part of it. Now, I left my seat to go to the bathroom at the point Andrew left his house and came back when Andrew was

knocking over a convenience store

so I might have missed something, but I assumed he was stealing to get money to pay for his mother's drugs that his family couldn't afford anymore. Doing a wrong thing for right reasons and all that. It doesn't mean he's a good guy,

what with what happened to Steve and all

, but I would argue that he doesn't really become a full antagonist until he

TK bombs his room and the couple floors adjacent to his in the hospital

Quid

Excellent movie. Full on spoilers:

Even after he'd started to go really crazy I still felt bad for Andrew. The guy was treating the world the same he'd been treated his whole life it seems like, and given his issues he probably thought it genuinely was okay to do what he did. Steve dying was a shock too. I expected they might fight and someone might get hurt, but actual death didn't occur to me til then. And finally Matt having to end it as well as his own life as he knew it.

Also I agree it was great use of hand held/cctv/etc cameras. So well that I actually got a sense of vertigo at the end when

the Beetle was falling off the Space Needle.

I also agree with @Kyougu.

It's nice that they didn't have perfect awareness of everything around them just because they could fly.

Also also agree with Atlas. I was ready for him to end it there and then.

emnmnme

Harry Dresden wrote:

Shadowfire wrote:

Atomic Ross wrote:

...Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Is this a thing?

It sounds epic in the most stupid and amazing way ever.

Yep. It's a thing and it will be glorious.

I bet you ten internet dollars he conceals a wooden stake inside his stovepipe hat.

Caedere

This movie was absolutely outstanding. I had the pleasure of seeing it with just the very basic premise of the movie explained to me ("It's a camera PoV movie, but it's like if [one of my friends] suddenly developed crazy psychic powers"), without having seen any trailers or anything for it beforehand. Going into it like that was awesome. I love doing that with films - it really gives a new appreciation for filmmaking when you go in completely and totally blind.

Anyway, I have to say Andew's situation really struck a chord with me. Like, really struck a chord, and for two reasons:

One:

My stepfather was a drunk and played those sort of intimidation/mind games with me, although he never hit me. They portrayed that perfectly. Also, my actual father did hit me often, and the last time I saw him was when he grabbed me and shoved me through a bookcase. I left after that. I wanted nothing more than to be able to fight back, but I never could, of course. Every time a domestic abuse scene happened in this movie, it ended with me nearly in tears and full of adrenaline.

Two:

I grew up in Seattle. I've been in that fucking school they were in. Watching that was spooky as shit, I'll tell you.

UnbreakableVow

I loved this movie

Do I think it's the best superhero film of the year? I think DKR might topple it. I don't have high hopes for The Avengers at all. I'm somewhere in the middle on Spider-Man.

But this movie was a real treat

Quid

Caedere wrote:

Anyway, I have to say Andew's situation really struck a chord with me. Like, really struck a chord, and for two reasons:

One:

My stepfather was a drunk and played those sort of intimidation/mind games with me, although he never hit me. They portrayed that perfectly. Also, my actual father did hit me often, and the last time I saw him was when he grabbed me and shoved me through a bookcase. I left after that. I wanted nothing more than to be able to fight back, but I never could, of course. Every time a domestic abuse scene happened in this movie, it ended with me nearly in tears and full of adrenaline.

Me too and I react exactly the same way. Probably why I felt so terrible the way it had to end.

RT800

I kinda gotta feel bad for the dad as well though.

I mean there's no excusing the way he treated Andrew, but you gotta figure the guy's circumstances. He's disabled, he's unemployed, he's out of money, and his wife is dying a slow, painful death that will leave him with a mountain of debt and a kid to raise. No wonder the guy stayed drunk.

It just kinda struck me as tragic. He wasn't a sadist who beat on Andrew for the fun of it. He was just a weak man under a tremendous amount of stress.

UnbreakableVow

RT800 wrote:

I kinda gotta feel bad for the dad as well though.

I mean there's no excusing the way he treated Andrew, but you gotta figure the guy's circumstances. He's disabled, he's unemployed, he's out of money, and his wife is dying a slow, painful death that will leave him with a mountain of debt and a kid to raise. No wonder the guy stayed drunk.

It just kinda struck me as tragic. He wasn't a sadist who beat on Andrew for the fun of it. He was just a weak man under a tremendous amount of stress.

When he revealed that Andrew's mother died, I thought he was going to come around to Andrew and realize the terrible things he'd been doing to him. Sometimes tragedy can help people wake up and stop being assholes.

But when he told Andrew to apologize I was seriously hoping Andrew would just wake up and re-enact the spider scene with his dad