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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Considering the two best actors/characters from the first film, the people who made it worth watching, were not going to be in the sequel (sort of), this had a hurdle to get over. Unfortunately instead of starting fresh with a new fun direction, it's all about mourning the absence of T'Challa/Chadwick Boseman. I'm well past caring about this franchise, so I simply wanted 2-hours of escapism. Remember when it was crazy fun like Tony Stark welding a robot suit in a cave and then flying around to AC/DC? Instead I got 2.5-hours of leaden, ponderous, boredom from a film that thinks it's 'War and Peace'. I know it must be possible for fans to care about an adaptation of some nonsense from a 1960s children's comic as earnestly as this wants them to, but I was not up to the task. The thing that really ticked me off from the start about this one, was how bad and cheap it looks. There isn't one FX shot in the whole thing that looked like anybody took pride in doing it, some look as I did them in half an hour. There are CG wave FX round the hulls of ships that look poor next to 'Titanic' and I recently saw that back at the cinema for it's 25th anniversary. I dreaded every scene that was not in daylight because otherwise this is so poorly lit and lacking in contrast, that I sometimes strained my eyes to tell what the hell was happening on screen at all. Why do films look this bad now? on this massive budget? Could they not afford lights?!? The post credits scene with the always fantastic Lupita Nyong'o was the only point that gave me "the feels"... in the bit after the main film is over.
This is an actual screenshot from a quarter billion dollar movie:
Barb Wire (1996)
There were two big reasons why me and my friends wanted to watch this post-apocalyptic-ish movie at the cinema on my 15th birthday back in 1996 but I can't remember what they were right now. We regretted our shallow decision and afterwards suspected this did not have quite the same budget as the previous year's 'Waterworld'. This was the 2nd time I watched it, many years later and although it's still not a good movie, it's entertaining and colourful enough to make me chuckle. There is an extra level of tension from wondering if the duct tape holding the sets and props together will hold. After just watching the dreadfully shot/lit quarter-billion dollar 'Wakanda Forever', I was left pondering how and why 'Barb Wire', a no-budget piece of 90s schlock could look so much better. There are smoky, chiaroscuro shots that rival 'Blade Runner'. It can't be that these guys had more talent than the Oscar winning makers of 'Wakanda Forever' and they certainly didn't have more time, money and resources. It must just be that people actually cared about films looking good back then... even Pamela Anderson B-movies. The action is fairly well handled too and when that and the visuals combine it can sometimes be pretty cool:
'Barb Wire' is from that weird 90s pre-'Iron Man'/'X-Men' era when the idea of respecting comic book source materials (and the fans of such) had never crossed their minds. So rather than drawing closely from the BW comics (which I've never read) they instead, copy-and-paste the script from 'Casablanca' and then apply the surface details of BW comic over it. It's insane how much this is a plotpoint-for-plotpoint, scene-for-scene, character-for-character, unauthorised remake of 'Casablanca'. I guess they figured nobody would care enough about this movie to sue. The HD transfer on Netflix looks very nice by the way.
Here is a puppet discussing the similarities to 'Casablanca' (but I think this way underplays how close the films are):
Considering the two best actors/characters from the first film, the people who made it worth watching, were not going to be in the sequel (sort of), this had a hurdle to get over. Unfortunately instead of starting fresh with a new fun direction, it's all about mourning the absence of T'Challa/Chadwick Boseman. I'm well past caring about this franchise, so I simply wanted 2-hours of escapism. Remember when it was crazy fun like Tony Stark welding a robot suit in a cave and then flying around to AC/DC? Instead I got 2.5-hours of leaden, ponderous, boredom from a film that thinks it's 'War and Peace'. I know it must be possible for fans to care about an adaptation of some nonsense from a 1960s children's comic as earnestly as this wants them to, but I was not up to the task. The thing that really ticked me off from the start about this one, was how bad and cheap it looks. There isn't one FX shot in the whole thing that looked like anybody took pride in doing it, some look as I did them in half an hour. There are CG wave FX round the hulls of ships that look poor next to 'Titanic' and I recently saw that back at the cinema for it's 25th anniversary. I dreaded every scene that was not in daylight because otherwise this is so poorly lit and lacking in contrast, that I sometimes strained my eyes to tell what the hell was happening on screen at all. Why do films look this bad now? on this massive budget? Could they not afford lights?!? The post credits scene with the always fantastic Lupita Nyong'o was the only point that gave me "the feels"... in the bit after the main film is over.
This is an actual screenshot from a quarter billion dollar movie:
Barb Wire (1996)
There were two big reasons why me and my friends wanted to watch this post-apocalyptic-ish movie at the cinema on my 15th birthday back in 1996 but I can't remember what they were right now. We regretted our shallow decision and afterwards suspected this did not have quite the same budget as the previous year's 'Waterworld'. This was the 2nd time I watched it, many years later and although it's still not a good movie, it's entertaining and colourful enough to make me chuckle. There is an extra level of tension from wondering if the duct tape holding the sets and props together will hold. After just watching the dreadfully shot/lit quarter-billion dollar 'Wakanda Forever', I was left pondering how and why 'Barb Wire', a no-budget piece of 90s schlock could look so much better. There are smoky, chiaroscuro shots that rival 'Blade Runner'. It can't be that these guys had more talent than the Oscar winning makers of 'Wakanda Forever' and they certainly didn't have more time, money and resources. It must just be that people actually cared about films looking good back then... even Pamela Anderson B-movies. The action is fairly well handled too and when that and the visuals combine it can sometimes be pretty cool:
'Barb Wire' is from that weird 90s pre-'Iron Man'/'X-Men' era when the idea of respecting comic book source materials (and the fans of such) had never crossed their minds. So rather than drawing closely from the BW comics (which I've never read) they instead, copy-and-paste the script from 'Casablanca' and then apply the surface details of BW comic over it. It's insane how much this is a plotpoint-for-plotpoint, scene-for-scene, character-for-character, unauthorised remake of 'Casablanca'. I guess they figured nobody would care enough about this movie to sue. The HD transfer on Netflix looks very nice by the way.
Here is a puppet discussing the similarities to 'Casablanca' (but I think this way underplays how close the films are):
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