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The [movies] thread: It’s pronounced Furi-OH-sah, not Furio-SAH
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By the fourth, we've got a blind swordsman outfighting people with guns (ugh), everybody is wearing bulletproof suits (ugh), apparently everybody can just ignore that they should be one enormous non-functional bruise from all the bullet hits (ugh), they've got a fucking gun with knives built into it so you can gun-stab people (double ugh), and so on. I still like the atmosphere and the scenery they shoot the action scenes in, but it lost any sense of feeling visceral and everybody seemed to be gun-toting murder robots who never got tired or injured or anything.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
I had dinner with my roommates tonight and they wanted to watch it since they never had, and it has been a long time for myself, maybe since it first came out.
That script is a goddamn Swiss watch. Dozens of moving parts, not an ounce of fat, propulsive momentum while still organically developing characters, with payoffs to so many setups I lost count. It’s the screenplay version of that big damn clockwork house Dr. Manhattan was building on Mars. It’s an economical marvel. Almost every scene is moving something else forward in multiple ways, layered like big damn onion. It is breathless and you don’t feel a single second of the two and a half hours.
It’s a shame they never really stuck the landing on the third one, and the less said about the other two following the better. But these first two films? Masterpieces of blockbuster cinema.
🔥
Agreed. I've always liked the 2nd one. Even though it's perhaps not as good as the first overall it really captures that same feel of everyone trying to outsmart everyone else. While also setting up interesting themes for the series.
The third one just completely shits the bed from minute one though.
The biggest problem the third makes is going all-in on the weird and crazy fantasy stuff, a big part of what made the first two films work was putting a single otherworldly element in the midst of a fairly standard swashbuckling adventure. What if cursed treasure was real? What if Davy Jones was really the afterlife ferryman of the seas? But then the third just swings for the fences and never relents; What if a white British girl became the king of all the pirates from Asia to the Virgin Islands and then she and her finance asked a witch and a zombie to take them to the underworld so they could rescue their friend who they kinda murdered and also his ship is there, and then the witch turns into a 100-foot pile of crabs and attacks the East India Company with a typhoon while a wedding takes place, oh and also one of the heroes gets their heart cut out but they get over it.
Like, you can just stick to one thing. There was no need to go that far afield, and I’m sure that contributed to the script being muddled and somewhat unsatisfying. I don’t dislike the third film nearly as much as some, but the Will and Elizabeth trilogy does feel like having a three course meal where appetizer and entree were some of the best things you’ve eaten and the dessert was an underbaked cheesecake with, like, Oreos, cashews, and limes.
But yes. I was really impressed with that script for pt. 2. Someone should randomly email a copy of it to JJ Abrams everyday.
I saw a theory online that I'm fond of where essentially, John Wick isn't an action series so much as it is a fantasy series, with Wick being the protagonist who managed to extricate himself from the world of the Fae at one point but is brought back into their wars by his actions to deal with the assholes in the first movie. The reason it gets more and more ridiculous and unbelievable (if it were a gritty action film with logic and rules), is because it's actually high fantasy faerieland. That's why everyone he meets also happens to be an assassin, and Central Park is full of assassins, and you have comic levels of damage soaking and ridiculous weapons.
I don't know why, I guess it's the uncanny valley thing, like you know me, I like basic entertainment, but it just set off something visceral.
I agree with your whole synopsis and your thoughts about it in general, I just had to let you know if we ever watch it you have to stop like five minutes before end credits or do your editing magic
I mean I just watched it an hour ago and yeah it was super super noticeable, you are absolutely right
How you can do fifty minutes of Davy Jones looking like the best thing ever shat out a computer to a PS1-level octopus effect at the peak of your finale is really baffling
I've wanted the Wick series to be a stealth vampire series since the techno-goth party in Italy from the second film. Bonus points for making it a stealth Blade reboot.
Just have Wick start blasting his way into a nightclub, his shots aren't keeping anybody down, blood starts spraying out of the sprinkler system, and Wick doesn't miss a beat. Yanks a pair of custom silver knuckleduster stakes out from behind his back and starts dusting vampires. Halfway through the dancefloor, he runs in to Blade who was working from the other direction. Instantly and without comment a team-up movie where they're hunting the same guy, who turns out to heavy-hitter crimeboss that is secretly a vampire.
But personally I clapped like a seal when I realized they were paying homage to The Warriors during the sequence where he’s fighting his way across town to reach the final duel
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Yes, there had been things in development since like 2017 and I was underwhelmed by the third installment in general, but when the casting announcements started coming out for Ballerina and Continental, and then they started talking spin-offs for Halle Berry and Laurence Fishburn - I noped out.
Sorry Shay Hatten, I'm just not that interested in your Vampire the Masquerade weekend campaign with the fangs filed off.
PSN:Furlion
Good grief, I'm getting really tired of half movies.
Yeah the second book really drives home some of the points in the first book. I guess it was one of those things where it is impossible to make a war movie that doesn't glamorize war in some way.
https://variety.com/2023/film/news/denis-villeneuve-dune-3-script-almost-finished-1235829382/
PSN:Furlion
I think I still would prefer the sparse minimalism of the first film, but I would like to see a version of John Wick 4 that's 1 1/2 hours long. I could've enjoyed the sequels better for what they do if they hadn't overstayed their welcome to such an extent.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that EXCEPT every fucker has bulletproof suits. There's no way in hell that this John Wick is anything like the John Wick described in the first film. The legend is a man who completed something completely impossible for anyone else. By the fourth he's only alive at all because of his magic suit. If it was John tearing through thousands of people like paper I'd take that over vainly trying to kill people who are deflecting bullets. It's fine for the oni High Table soldiers who have fully maxed out gear but not the regular people since only the top assassins like John, Ms Perkins, Common (I forget his name) should be anywhere near successful to have the coins and access to that stuff. Basically it felt like they got really lazy and just started relying on the suits a lot plus the way no normal people react to what is going on around them. Makes it feel like it's taking place in a void. Compare that to the Red Circle club in JW1 where people are running for their lives and John uses cover instead of the suit.
The first, like, five minutes of At World's End are hard as fuck and do a fantastic job of seeing up the EIC as the real big bad. It's explained that basically the entire island has had their rights stripped and are set to be condemned, a bunch of prisoners turn a shanty into a defiant dirge, they hang a fucking kid, and Beckett is like "fuck yeah let's do this thing." I'd watch the hell out of that movie, I'd watch that movie on the moon.
Then the rest of it happens, and, well.
The action scenes have been getting over-long to the point of dragging the films down since John Wick 2. But it's definitely been getting worse. It needs to be tightened up.
I love the classy, languid opening titles. Just driving around Italy in a Ferrari while Matt Munro sings On Days Like These. Great music all the way through as well.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Absolutely, some beautiful vistas in there as well, CGI just can't compare.
This was something going around while the previous thread had commitment issues, and it's one of those fridge logic things that sounds ok at first but when you think about it again it just gets dumber and dumber. By not reviewing the clearly bad movie by saying you want to be positive about things you give the game away that it's a bad movie, and all the talk about it being the producers fault is just cope when the director is also a producer and everyone knows this is what happens when you do a blockbuster movie for a studio. It's also a sign of the "critic" not wanting to be mean for fear of being excluded from the cool kid's table that is Hollywood, as it seems Stuckmann wants to be a filmmaker himself.
It's all streets behind, and I guess it's not surprising this was done by Stuckmann, who is one of if not the most generic, bland, meaningless reviewer on youtube.
I could be wrong, but isn't that pretty much where the book ended?
Paul ascends the throne, and the rest of the universe holds it's breath".
Changing it so the other great houses disagreed was a major departure. In the books and other Dune movies/series, the guild stepped in with "This guy is nuts enough to burn the universe, and in the correct place, time and fully has the capability to do so. So, he's the new king or everything crumbles." Then the guild makes big puppy dog eyes at Emperor Paul Muad'Dib Atreides saying "Please don't cut off our spice supply".
No you are right, just surprised to see them do it in a movie.
PSN:Furlion
The third was where I went "Ok this is a bit much..."
The fourth one just felt like a bad excuse to try and shoehorn in as much old school samurai movie stuff as it could. It has some fun stuff in it but ultimately it's also the film that made me wish that if this is where it's going to end up that they had just stopped after the first movie.
Agreed. I really like Keanu in general but find the John Wick series after the first one to be overly long perfume commercials.
Ah thanks. Didn't mean to be so negative, glad you liked it and I'm sure I will too.
It's really SpiderVerse that annoyed me the most.
Not happy about it being 3 movies and thought where they cut it was bad: should have ended 15? mins earlier where
JW 3 had super assassins refusing to kill Wick out of pure respect
Doesn't John betray that pact in the third movie?