World of Blue - Archived Forum 2007-2022

Aw guys, you made me less exited for the film. I have yet to watch it since cinema's are still closed here (working expat in Peru for a year). I did have high expectations of Villeneuve, especially after Blade Runner 2049. Guess I'll just have to wait and see how it turns out for me. Who knows, after reading this thread I might just be pleasantly surprised still!

Otherwise I'll just have to use the new Matrix movie to fuel my lust for sci-fi. Not really something I expect to be of much substance either, but surely something I was hugely geeky about in my early teens.

Soolsma wrote: ↑Thu Nov 11, 2021 7:19 am Aw guys, you made me less exited for the film. I have yet to watch it since cinema's are still closed here (working expat in Peru for a year). I did have high expectations of Villeneuve, especially after Blade Runner 2049. Guess I'll just have to wait and see how it turns out for me. Who knows, after reading this thread I might just be pleasantly surprised still!

Otherwise I'll just have to use the new Matrix movie to fuel my lust for sci-fi. Not really something I expect to be of much substance either, but surely something I was hugely geeky about in my early teens.

Always better to have expectations as low as possible!

Soolsma wrote: ↑Thu Nov 11, 2021 7:19 am Aw guys, you made me less exited for the film. I have yet to watch it since cinema's are still closed here (working expat in Peru for a year). I did have high expectations of Villeneuve, especially after Blade Runner 2049. Guess I'll just have to wait and see how it turns out for me. Who knows, after reading this thread I might just be pleasantly surprised still

Sorry Soolsma. People were holding off posting opinions because of me; when I saw it that made it OK for spoilers.

Annie wrote: ↑Sun Nov 14, 2021 9:04 pm

Soolsma wrote: ↑Thu Nov 11, 2021 7:19 am Aw guys, you made me less exited for the film. I have yet to watch it since cinema's are still closed here (working expat in Peru for a year). I did have high expectations of Villeneuve, especially after Blade Runner 2049. Guess I'll just have to wait and see how it turns out for me. Who knows, after reading this thread I might just be pleasantly surprised still

Sorry Soolsma. People were holding off posting opinions because of me; when I saw it that made it OK for spoilers.

Don't worry. I chose to came here myself. Also can't really be spoiled since I read the book and saw both the Lynch movie and the miniseries already Like I said, after some disappointed reviews I can only be pleasantly surprised now.

I wonder how many people would rate the Lynch version higher than the Villeneuve one if the Lynch version was directed by Uwe Boll or something.

Histeria wrote: ↑Mon Nov 15, 2021 1:38 pm I wonder how many people would rate the Lynch version higher than the Villeneuve one if the Lynch version was directed by Uwe Boll or something.

As long as the Villeneuve one still sucks probably a lot.

If Villeneuve's sucks then Lynch's is a supermassive blackhole.

I actually like Lynch's version. But this latest one is the far superior film and the other gets a huge booster seat at the table solely because of the name billed as director. Another filmmaker releasing the exact same product would never get anywhere near the same benefit of the doubt.

The Villeneuve one is just so massively boring and uninteresting to me. Seeing Paul's visions just reduced to wispy slo-mo shots of Zendaya in the desert was pretty underwhelming. Lynch's version is flawed but at least there's ideas in it. 5 minutes of that film has more craft and creative energy in it than Villeneuve's, which is essentially an art-less action film. I don't know, I clearly really didn't care for it.

Histeria wrote: ↑Mon Nov 15, 2021 3:19 pm ... and the other gets a huge booster seat at the table solely because of the name billed as director. Another filmmaker releasing the exact same product would never get anywhere near the same benefit of the doubt.

I'm not a fan of this kind of statement because it's not falsifiable. I can make any long-winded argument I want and, because we don't have a universe where Uwe Boll directed it, there's no control group.

I rate Dune dead-last in Lynch's filmography and I have huge, huge problems with it and think it's really shallow compared to Herbert's novel. But some of the blatantly bad decisions are at least bizarrely bad and for that reason, it's still an interesting film to watch and it still makes me react (albiet often negatively). A poor movie with baffling decisions is (to me) always superior as a viewing experience to a film that is completely average in every way and risks nothing.

AXX°N N. wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 2:38 am I'm not a fan of this kind of statement because it's not falsifiable. I can make any long-winded argument I want and, because we don't have a universe where Uwe Boll directed it, there's no control group.

You're right. I agree and it's a fallacy I've been thinking about since posting it.

It's something I perceive a lot but especially in Lynch discourse. I'd love to do a study on it, actually. Not Dune specifically but the way the author in lingers in the audience decoding of texts. That's something Lynch himself has rallied against, while at the same time his work is some of the most autological in popular culture. So it's an interesting paradox to chew on.

But without access to the multiverse we'll have to make do with adapting the methodology to something like representative audience samples and edited fake title sequences. Maybe a PhD thesis component.

Histeria wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 2:57 amThat's something Lynch himself has rallied against, while at the same time his work is some of the most autological in popular culture. So it's an interesting paradox to chew on.

Do you mean like how he refuses to do commentaries? It's certainly a dilemma, and even trying to actively counteract it doesn't fully escape it; Pynchon for instance is seldom photographed and never interviewed and there's sparse personal details out there, but that's only made the interest in those few personal details extremely high and they're well-known and definitely inform many people's engagement with his work; in a way, his work becomes read through a lens of reclusivity and absence of the author in terms of how people take certain choices/themes.

It's hard to say how your brain works different under any notion. I never knew Scarface and Carrie were directed by the same guy until recently, but ever since learning that I now draw parallels between certain stylistic choices that exist in both.

Soolsma wrote: ↑Thu Nov 11, 2021 7:19 am I did have high expectations of Villeneuve, especially after Blade Runner 2049.

I actually stopped having high expectations of Villeneuve after Blade Runner 2049. I think that film is far superior to his Dune, especially stylistically, but the exposition ruined it for me. It angers me when they have to explain everything out loud for the masses, and this film had some very annoying examples of this. I was worried when Villeneuve said that Dune would be more accessible than Blade Runner 2049 - it was an instant red flag.

Initially, I was excited when I heard that he was going to make new Blade Runner and Dune films because I had a lot of respect for him as a director, but now I feel that he was simply swallowed by the Hollywood blockbuster machine. He turned into a kind of a lesser version of Christopher Nolan, status/image-wise, and that is not much either.

Films like Polytechnique, Prisoners, Enemy, and Arrival were all far superior to his recent output, in my opinion. (I still haven't seen Incendies.)

Ickles wrote: ↑Mon Nov 15, 2021 5:17 pm The Villeneuve one is just so massively boring and uninteresting to me. Seeing Paul's visions just reduced to wispy slo-mo shots of Zendaya in the desert was pretty underwhelming. Lynch's version is flawed but at least there's ideas in it. 5 minutes of that film has more craft and creative energy in it than Villeneuve's, which is essentially an art-less action film. I don't know, I clearly really didn't care for it.

I couldn't agree more. It frustrates me that people around me - even film lovers and people who read the book - all loved the film.

And don't get me started on Zendaya. She just seems so lifeless and expressionless to me, and I can't stand it that she uses just her first name. So pretentious.

I've heard a lot of people say there's too little exposition in BR2049 and Dune. Too much is a new one to me.

I did think Arrival had too much exposition, though. I love the film but funny how perceptions can be completely reversed from person to person. Still, it's not like it had Twin Peaks S3 levels of expository dialogue.

We should all try to not get frustrated at other people's views on films we love/loathe, though.

Histeria wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 6:28 am I've heard a lot of people say there's too little exposition in BR2049 and Dune. Too much is a new one to me.

I did think Arrival had too much exposition, though. I love the film but funny how perceptions can be completely reversed from person to person.

It's been a long time since I've seen Arrival, and maybe I just liked the film enough not to notice the exposition so much. But yes, I can imagine, it probably has a lot of it. I would have to see it again.

There was one scene in Blade Runner 2049 that upset me the most: it's when Ryan Gosling is on his computer, and his hologram love interest is next to him. There's some talk about how he's currently using her language (meaning 0s & 1s, since he's on a computer), and then they say it out loud: 0s & 1s. That totally pissed me off at the time. (I'm writing this from my head, so it's possible that I don't recall the scene completely well.)

Histeria wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 6:28 am We should all try to not get frustrated at other people's views on films we love/loathe, though.

You are right, of course. I admit I get overly passionate about films sometimes (or often), especially with the people I know in real life.

Yeah, sorry if my critique came across as too harsh or pointed. My old video store employee days coming back to life. I know plenty of folks who really enjoyed the new Dune and I'm glad they found something they connected with in it but definitely haven't felt that connection myself.