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intertribalAs usual, haven't read the novella of The Mist. Consider this a commentary on the 2007 movie.
The monsters were fun; the bigger the better. Liked that it was all because of a military project trying to contact other dimensions.
I really dug the ending of the movie. I wanted the awesome old people to live and I still dug the ending! The ending, IMO, made this movie work. It made bland, anonymously heroic David with his beloved little son (I am starting to get really tired of a certain set-up, if you can't tell) - and the rest of his team - accountable characters instead of the holier-than-thou messengers of righteousness that they were sort of set up to be (I have found that movies that try to lampoon/criticize holier-than-thou messengers of righteousness on one side of the political spectrum - in this case, the religious fundamentalist side - usually end up erecting their own holier-than-thou messengers of righteousness on the other side, to act as the correct counterweights. Left Behind for Leftists, right? It's ugly no matter who does it, though. And I've done this myself. I know it is hard to resist). I really didn't think another version of Mike the Dutiful Constable from Storm of the Century - whose greatest sin was cheating on a goddamn test! - was really necessary, but at least Frank Darabont had the balls to let this version of Mike make a wrong move. I give him A LOT of credit for that.
Also, there's been some talk about the role of condescension in politics these days - the idea that educated liberals condescend to "red-state Americans," so to speak, and uh... this movie didn't exactly dispel that. Having the red-staters say things like "Do not condescend to me!" (while essentially validating any feelings of condescension toward them) did not help.
See, if we just could have paired the first 90% of War of the Worlds with The Mist's ending... we would have like the best, most depressing, most realistic monster invasion movie ever. Oh yeah, and with the cast of W of the W, please, because the guy who played David could not act, on top of the already crippling setback of David being the most boring character in the whole movie. It is crazy to me how boring main characters can be. And I don't mean main characters who act as windows to the world - I mean genuine protagonists.
The monsters were fun; the bigger the better. Liked that it was all because of a military project trying to contact other dimensions.
I really dug the ending of the movie. I wanted the awesome old people to live and I still dug the ending! The ending, IMO, made this movie work. It made bland, anonymously heroic David with his beloved little son (I am starting to get really tired of a certain set-up, if you can't tell) - and the rest of his team - accountable characters instead of the holier-than-thou messengers of righteousness that they were sort of set up to be (I have found that movies that try to lampoon/criticize holier-than-thou messengers of righteousness on one side of the political spectrum - in this case, the religious fundamentalist side - usually end up erecting their own holier-than-thou messengers of righteousness on the other side, to act as the correct counterweights. Left Behind for Leftists, right? It's ugly no matter who does it, though. And I've done this myself. I know it is hard to resist). I really didn't think another version of Mike the Dutiful Constable from Storm of the Century - whose greatest sin was cheating on a goddamn test! - was really necessary, but at least Frank Darabont had the balls to let this version of Mike make a wrong move. I give him A LOT of credit for that.
Also, there's been some talk about the role of condescension in politics these days - the idea that educated liberals condescend to "red-state Americans," so to speak, and uh... this movie didn't exactly dispel that. Having the red-staters say things like "Do not condescend to me!" (while essentially validating any feelings of condescension toward them) did not help.
See, if we just could have paired the first 90% of War of the Worlds with The Mist's ending... we would have like the best, most depressing, most realistic monster invasion movie ever. Oh yeah, and with the cast of W of the W, please, because the guy who played David could not act, on top of the already crippling setback of David being the most boring character in the whole movie. It is crazy to me how boring main characters can be. And I don't mean main characters who act as windows to the world - I mean genuine protagonists.
