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Oct. 28th, 2009 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedantherBrain dump after seeing Astro Boy, the new movie:
* Not a bad movie, taken for what it is.
* With the possible exception of the villain and his goal, which might have been thrillingly topical if the film had come out a year ago, but as it is was already distractingly old hat the moment the film hit cinemas. I can't help wondering how they failed to see that coming.
* I'm not convinced it's authentic Astro Boy under the surface, but it's at least close enough that I'm having to think about it.
* One of the things that I'm dubious about is that I don't think the film quite takes a consistent stand on the robots. There's a significant, and at times very unsubtle, thread about the human characters having to learn that robots can be people too, and aren't just mindless machines that can be casually dumped when they wear out or get broken. The consequences never really get followed through, though, and the film itself is not above occasionally casually breaking a robot to entertain the audience.
* There are apparently certain things that must happen in a superhero origin movie, even one that adapts a superhero origin in which they don't. These things happen in Astro Boy.
* It's obviously been too long since I last watched something with Bill Nighy in -- every time Dr Elefun was on screen, I was going "He sounds familiar. Jim Broadbent? But Jim Broadbent wasn't in the opening credits. Bill Nighy was in the opening credits. Didn't I read somewhere that Bill Nighy was doing Dr Elefun? But he doesn't sound like I remember Bill Nighy sounding. But he does sound familiar..."
* Come to that, I think the last time I heard Bill Nighy was in that film where he was playing the Dutchman with the Welsh name and the Scottish accent, which probably didn't help.
* I found myself wondering, during the climax, if the filmmakers thought it was obligatory for any adventure film based on a Japanese property to feature a skyscraper-tall monster rampaging through Tokyo. I don't think it was quite right for Astro Boy, any more than [analogy involving two disparate American films that I can't be bothered to fill in]. Exciting sequence, though.
* Roger Ebert has an essay about how one of the things he looks for in a film is that it gives him a certain feeling: "the welling up of a few tears in my eyes, a certain tightness in my throat, and a feeling of uplift: Yes, there is a good person, doing a good thing." I got a bit of that at the appropriate moment in Astro Boy (not as much as, say, in the corresponding moment in The Iron Giant, but enough to be going along with).
* Somebody else somewhere has an essay with the thesis that Hollywood only knows how to tell one story, the one where the protagonist discovers his True Self and his right place in the world; every new story that comes out of Hollywood is that story, and every old story Hollywood adapts, whatever it started out as, ends up being that story too. Astro Boy is not the film that will prove this thesis wrong.
* Not a bad movie, taken for what it is.
* With the possible exception of the villain and his goal, which might have been thrillingly topical if the film had come out a year ago, but as it is was already distractingly old hat the moment the film hit cinemas. I can't help wondering how they failed to see that coming.
* I'm not convinced it's authentic Astro Boy under the surface, but it's at least close enough that I'm having to think about it.
* One of the things that I'm dubious about is that I don't think the film quite takes a consistent stand on the robots. There's a significant, and at times very unsubtle, thread about the human characters having to learn that robots can be people too, and aren't just mindless machines that can be casually dumped when they wear out or get broken. The consequences never really get followed through, though, and the film itself is not above occasionally casually breaking a robot to entertain the audience.
* There are apparently certain things that must happen in a superhero origin movie, even one that adapts a superhero origin in which they don't. These things happen in Astro Boy.
* It's obviously been too long since I last watched something with Bill Nighy in -- every time Dr Elefun was on screen, I was going "He sounds familiar. Jim Broadbent? But Jim Broadbent wasn't in the opening credits. Bill Nighy was in the opening credits. Didn't I read somewhere that Bill Nighy was doing Dr Elefun? But he doesn't sound like I remember Bill Nighy sounding. But he does sound familiar..."
* Come to that, I think the last time I heard Bill Nighy was in that film where he was playing the Dutchman with the Welsh name and the Scottish accent, which probably didn't help.
* I found myself wondering, during the climax, if the filmmakers thought it was obligatory for any adventure film based on a Japanese property to feature a skyscraper-tall monster rampaging through Tokyo. I don't think it was quite right for Astro Boy, any more than [analogy involving two disparate American films that I can't be bothered to fill in]. Exciting sequence, though.
* Roger Ebert has an essay about how one of the things he looks for in a film is that it gives him a certain feeling: "the welling up of a few tears in my eyes, a certain tightness in my throat, and a feeling of uplift: Yes, there is a good person, doing a good thing." I got a bit of that at the appropriate moment in Astro Boy (not as much as, say, in the corresponding moment in The Iron Giant, but enough to be going along with).
* Somebody else somewhere has an essay with the thesis that Hollywood only knows how to tell one story, the one where the protagonist discovers his True Self and his right place in the world; every new story that comes out of Hollywood is that story, and every old story Hollywood adapts, whatever it started out as, ends up being that story too. Astro Boy is not the film that will prove this thesis wrong.
