I just watched and it is really good. Both the visuals and the high intense action are breathtaking.
I felt that, if a blink, I lose something important. I miss the experience. I plan to, someday, watch again.
Everything Miller did was right. The cast is excellent. The new Max (which I would bet that he is not the same Mel Gibson’s. Maybe the son?) is likable. The secondary characters are likable. Even the super weird archenemy is likable.
The music is again very good but what makes this movie great are, as said before, its visuals and the unstoppable actions scenes.
The scenes, mostly made using practical effects (real live cars, explosions and doubles) are amazing. And Miller transformed it entirely by post-processing it fully, like it was shot against the blue/green screen. The desolation from the desert came not from Earth’s landscape, but from a computer. However, it is not a demerit. In fact, due to the correct and artistic way it was employed, the virtual scenery a color correction makes the movie an one-of-a-kind.
I was looking for quite some time for some stories that used a minimal amount of resources, like scenarios or visual effects, and were mainly focused on characters. I was interested on these kind of story mostly because I was planning to write some stories that would allow me to produce them by my own. Therefore an inexpensive production is a requirement. I needed an inspiration. Some real case examples to put into my wall and see that is a possible feat.
Then I stumble, in a short period of time, in 2 articles (a video from WatchMojo and an article from IGN) that listed a series of movies that features the characteristics. Among both articles, an unanimous praise for a very old movie staring Mr Fonda called 12 Angry Men (the Brazilian Portuguese title is 12 Homens e Uma Sentença, something like 12 Men and a Sentence). So I gave it a shot.
And man! Instant classic. Instant love.
The principle here is simple. The 12 jurymen have to decide, unanimously, if the accused boy is guilty or not guilty. But what seemed to be a very easy and straightforward decision reveals to be more intricate. Because the unanimously condition have to be followed, it forces all the characters to level their beliefs and reasons towards one single point. This is what the whole conflict is placed: they all differs in backstory and value different things.
Fonda (which I cannot recall the name. In fact, I think the characters are never presented by name) is the main star of the film, but there is a very distributed character relevance here. I’m not going to say that the twelve characters are equal, but there are at least five that are constantly relevant throughout the whole story. They control the flux of the story. Fonda is the protagonist because the whole conflict and he is the major force towards one line of the thought. And there are a central antagonist, that opposes Fonda all the way. Yet is one of the most distributed stories I can remember.
All happens into a single room. In a rainy night. All the shots take place from different angles from this tiny room. It is definitively a challenge for cinematography, but they done it. It becomes very personal and intimate. There is not much visual demand here because the lighting and the scenario is very mundane.
The performances are convincing and all characters feel that they have their own personality. From the talkative salesman to the awkward accounting.
Classic. Entered in my personal Best movies of All Time list. A must-see.
The Martian is often described as Cast Away in space. I agree. It presents the incredible task of surviving, alone, on Mars. Just like Tom Hanks surviving on the island.
But improvising life on Mars is several degrees more complex than on that island. This is why the main character in The Martian has to be a very, very very smart guy, a little too MacGyver to be honest. Imagine Apollo 13, the movie, when NASA focuses on converting ship scraps into an oxygen filter, but for the entire duration of the movie, it was done mostly by one guy.
80% of the book, Mark Watney is in dire straights. Always facing high odds of dying. This is why the book is so compelling. It sucks your soul, making you wonder at night “how he can pull this off now?”. Watney must have a clear state of mind all the time. I understand that it would not make any sense to write a book about a normal guy that gets lost on Mars and dies after the first disaster. But Watney is too much the perfect guy to be lost in spaceace.
The book sometimes abuses the technical description of the solution. It could be shorter by a bit. However, and this is not a small achievement, there are at least 2 moments when I was crying due to the narration and climax feeling.
It will become a movie directed by Ridley Scott and started by Matt Damon. I will see the movie for sure.
I was waiting a moment with my girlfriend to watch what I was expecting to be a silly romance story. The Fault in Our Stars was a bestseller book, adapted to the big screen. And it is more than enough to make me shiver. Twilight Saga and Fifty Shades of Grey are recent proof of what book editors are bestselling.
But for my surprise, this one is a great movie. Amazing character development, very sad story with a great dosage of first love romance. I cried from start to end.
The actors deliver the characters with nice performances. I cannot remember right now a single actor that was bellow-par. Shailene Woodley is gorgeous and with the make up and different haircut, she is even more beautiful. Great actress too, because she makes you care deeply about her character, the protagonist Hazel.
Her friend and lover Augustus, played by Ansel Ergot, is less believable, but very likable. He is always positive about life and drives the whole dark tone of cancer with much lighter.
The human relations, even on very dare moments of life, is really
What a great story!
What a great universe!
What a great art!
Without any further words, I loved Saga.
Saga is an epic space opera, with a rich and VERY weird universe, full of bizarre races and locations. Like Star Wars, there is a galaxy-wide conflict, but unlike the reference, there is no good-and-evil motto.
The main characters (the couple Alana and Marko) are involved, but they are not the center of the conflict. They are fugitives hunted by governments and bounty hunters and they challenge the odds to remain alive. All this with a newborn girl Hazel.
The story is incredible, yet believable.
The overall look is really good. Brian K. Vaughan, the author, mentions the amazing art from Fiona Staples several times in the author area over and over and I cannot disagree. It enhances the experience as it should. Comics are mixed of visuals and story and both are covered.
Probably one of the recurrent mentioned features of the series is the sex references. Sex is part of the story but is not vulgar. It is dealt with as a part of the universe.
The liberty given by Image Comics to authors pays off on Saga. Brian K. Vaughan is one of my preferred authors of this generation. I liked very much X: The Last Man, at least in the first half.
You have to read it
NOTE: I just read the first 8 issues. I want to read the rest.
