proceed at your own risk – no major spoiliers
my critique of the movie:
What i didn’t like: I wanted to love this movie, the trailer was stylized and showed the art-deco retro futuristic world of the 1930s-40s movies and it seemed like a cool concept. In trailer form i loved it but as a movie, i wasn’t sure if i liked the treatment. The abundance of computer generated images and the soft focus, fuzzy, desaturrated, not quite seamless presentation was distracting to me. There were no sets built for this film and sometimes you could obviously tell walls and large rooms were computer generated as well as people seen at a distance. The whole package was a weird juxtaposition of past setting and modern-day fakery. I wondered if the kids in the theater “got it”, the nod to the old black and white era films.
The other gripe i had about the movie is the characters didn’t seem too pressed about their mortality, especially at the beginning with Polly’s character running towards and into a crowd of buidling high robots and nearly getting stepped on several times. There was never really a sense of danger, you kinda knew everyone would be ok because they were cool about it, getting out of jams at the last possible second.
What I liked: it did feel like a serial from the 40s. The robots, vehicles, airbases, and rayguns were cool, some of the large scenery shots were impressive and the landscape and seascape map overlays were cute. As the movie progressed, the color got better and the presentation was a bit sharper.
There was a certain fight sequence that was reminiscent of Indiana Jones, Star Wars with a hint of the matrix rolled into one. At the very end, it seemed like it would be a cool franchise if they tightened up on their presentation and tried not to be so faithful to making it look retro.
Angelina Jolie makes an eyepatch sexy. 🙂
Recommendation: See it, but catch the matinee showing.