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Chronicle: Best Superhero movie of the year?
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You should read this spoiler, as it's more about how the movies' technicly shot, but just in case for other people, I will spoiler it.
Although it does kind of beg the question; if the movie isn't found footage, why bother with shooting strictly from handheld devices? It doesn't really do much. The only thing I can think of is that the way the camera moved gave us more insight into how Andrew was feeling at any given moment, but he was really good about his body language so that was never an issue.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
While I disagree with you about the acting, I think your second point is a legitimate critisim and once they got to the point where they were taking shots from people's iphones it's something I wondered myself.
I haven't worked that through my head yet to see how well it works but it is one idea.
There were just a couple of points where the movie screamed, acting!!! to me. Whenever anything emotionally weighty came along, particularly. They were really great at playing teenagers, though. The actors were able to capture that really, really well.
On another note, probably my favorite non-powered scene was when Matt visited Blondie's house; the shot with her in the mirror and him in the door was good. I also liked how the movie ended right when
I also have a theory that maybe the crystal underground had something to do with recording equipment, perhaps for an extraterrestrial group, to tie everything together with the cameras, etc
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I was quite intrigued by the trailer some time back, but was pretty skeptical that it was going to be done well, and figured it was going to be some young-adult novel piece of shit. And then, elation! It was getting good reviews, and this thread picked up. Boy was I excited when I finally got around to seeing it.
Did not live up to my expectations. I know I'm walking into a hornet's nest and don't want to be the one hater in the thread, but, well. Reasons!
There are legitimately compelling lines of reasoning to justify someone with his kind of power breaking the established rules and doing things that could be considered evil, but Chronicle barely glances at them. Instead it ignores the entire subject by pretending that our main villain spent a few minutes on Wikipedia learning about natural selection. Fuck right off.
Things got increasingly ridiculous from there on out, and I was embarrassed when the movie went out of it's way to turn Andrew into a burn victim so he would be sufficiently evil for the finale.
Speaking of which, the scene near the end where Andrew rips the cameras & phones away from those people in the building and surrounds him and Matt with them, I think that summed up the problem with the found footage style. It wasn't the worst use of the style by any means, but the film really had to bend over backwards to justify 1) having the camera there in the first place, and 2) occasionally having good, normal cinematic shots. I mean, the entire purpose of the love interest character for Matt was to be able to switch away from Andrew's camera for a time, but none of their interactions were at all interesting. (The only memorable scene produced by her existence was the neat 1st person view out of the car when she was with Matt going to confront Andrew and he started fucking with them.)
I mean, if the film has to work so hard to accommodate it's own style and justify the few typically cinematic shots, then the found-footage gimmick does as much harm as good. You could do the whole movie with a more traditional style, and get interesting with the cinematography in a film where that quality would normally be overlooked. And then, just think, you can have whatever kind of shot you want, whenever you want! No need to invent one-dimensional characters or have silly little sequences to justify a brief switch to normality.
Wasn't completely awful, but really was a tremendous disappointment for me. A well-acted one though, for the most part.
It found it pretty realistic that he'd flip the fuck out.
The only thing he was yelling over and over at the end of the movie was 'Leave me alone.' I mean, he's just a guy who had one too many bad days. They stack, especially when you're young.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I dislike your reasons, sir!
I never watched Blair Witch or Cloverfield so I'm sort of new to the "found footage" genre. I can see where you are coming from but personally I thought they did a decent job. He carried that camera around with him all the time and that development made the iphone scene at the end not that out of place for me.
Out of curiosity what sort of compelling lines of reason could have been used to justify Andrew's actions?
I mean seriously, THE turning point was when he puked on pink-haired-girl. After that he couldn't be talked to or reasoned with by anyone.
I was thinking maybe something to do with his mother's death and father's reactions would be the trigger, but nope, they went for something completely asinine instead.
Edit for responding to CCow!
As for what could have been a compelling reason to justify his actions, take your pick! He was arguably justified in some evildoing when he robbed those thugs to pay for his mother's medicine, and I had much less of a problem with that than I did with him raging at Matt and the whole city.
Hell, he was probably justified in being villainous when it came to revenge on his dad, as that's another area where character established rule 1 could arguably be bent.
There are a lot of reasons to do something bad for a good cause, and the movie even used a little of it. But it didn't really do much to bring us to the point that made his final actions and character something that was compelling or well-earned.
As for the truck, I didn't mind that so much. It was the first time any of the characters really realized how dangerous they could be, and there already was some violent undercurrent for Andrew at that point, so he just overdid it. Like I said, they did a good job with him up to the last straw and everything after.
Telekenetic powers, fantastical powers or no, he'd never have a wonderful life. He'd always be the shit layer of the cake. And that's what made him crash.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
What the shit? I thought this was just a joke in Party Down. This is real????
Ahh, except
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Of course I understand that when you're in high school it seems like the only world there is. But he was already experiencing so much more than that, and being gratified by it. The best day of his life was flying around with two of his friends, remember? With all that was available to him with such tremendous powers, I don't feel satisfied that losing out on being the cool kid at school was the straw that broke the camel's back on him turning into hyper-evil-douche.
I just don't think they followed through very well on the progression of the central, most potentially interesting character.
At the end of the day, though, he was still human. A very fractured human.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
He was convinced by Steve that one strong talent (in this case supernatural) is all it takes to be liked by others, and that almost seems to be the case until he realized that playing the game at that level just means more eyes on you when you screw up. After that, considering the delicate state he was in anyway, he pretty much put two and two together and figured out that he could actually enact his teenage power fantasies.
My friend who I saw it with also said he disliked the whole "apex predator" bit, and I responded to it like I am here: He's a dumb teenager, of course you're not going to like his justifications for being an asshole.
So what you're saying is that we have the choice to either A) like the character and his arc and his motivations or
At the risk of buying in to the overread character, I also thought it was interesting that Matt talks about Hobbes in the beginning, and the fact that Andrew starts to act like a total asshole right when he feels no one can keep him in check. Seemed pretty Hobbesian
Also, when was the Hobbes reference? I remember Matt talking about Schopenhauer, Plato, and Jung, didn't catch anything beyond that though.
He references it in the first 5 mins iirc. They are in the car.
That said, we don't have to particularly like him once he goes beast mode. He's not a hero, pretty much everything he does is in retribution for past abuse (I think they sort of imply that the dicks hanging around his neighborhood are drug dealers, but even still mugging a bunch of suburban wannabe bangers in Canadian tuxedos doesn't strike me as very lucrative), and his self-rationalization is facile and borderline cartoonish.
Telling yourself it's fine to do it because
Andrew gets bullied and abused through life. Magneto went through the Holocaust.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
That is really interesting, but I would write it off as coincidental.
I sorta thought of something along different lines:
At the end, Andrew gets killed by a spear from a statue. It looked to me like some sort of a Greek statue, with a muscular man wielding a spear.
Really? You mean they all couldn't empathize with the guys that they ignored in high school?
Shocking.
First of all, check out Kurt Busiek's Secret Identity graphic novel. Busiek is best known for Astro City and Marvels (two books I'd recommend without reservation), but Secret Identity is another fantastic work that highlights his tremendous storytelling skills and love for the medium. SI is a Superman story, but not about Superman. Essentially, it's about a teenage boy in the real world who just so happens to be named Clark Kent by his parents as a joke. He's sick of his name and getting made fun of at school, until the day he actually does get superpowers identical to Superman's. It's never explained in the story how he gets them, he just does. The story isn't about that, but about what it would be like if a kid in real life actually got Superman's powers. You can obviously see the similarity to Chronicle, as they're both about teenagers in a realistic world getting powers. However, SI is quite different as Clark in the book takes the responsibility and uses his powers to help people, becoming a real Superman, while Chronicle goes off in the opposite direction. In the course of the story, he finds love in the big city, deals with an incredibly suspicious and hostile US government, and eventually even raises a family. I tend not to consider SI a "true" Superman story, as it does not take place in the DC universe or contain the actual character of Superman, but rather a kid named after Superman, but it's still a very good read.
The other comic I'd recommend is Brian Bendis's long-running series Powers. In a nutshell, Powers is about police detectives who investigate superhero, or "powers" crimes. They're just your average gritty cops, trying to do their job in a world filled with insanely powerful superheroes who demolish buildings and occasionally maim innocents. Of course, sometimes these superheroes turn insane, or end up getting murdered, and then they have to do their best to solve it. Unlike traditional comics where the superhero and supervillain are entangled in this intimate conflict to the exclusion of the outside world, Powers has a lot of collateral damage. People get their faces melted off, or just torn apart, because supervillains are sadistic fuckers. It's a comic that's alternately very funny, or very grim and dark.
The only scene that I felt could have had a simple change to turn way more awesome was
The who what?
Projecting much there son?
FFXIII-2 is good, Vita might be the handheld for me, Chronicle is good.
Did not see any of these things coming.