I've only seen one other movie by Abrams. It was exactly like this movie seems to be. The first half was beautiful. The second half was a mess, and you realized then that the first half was built on utter rot, on an ill conceived plot. It was all a sham but the fast pace and the great images of that first part sort of camouflaged it. It was a 2009 a movie called Star Trek.
Hm. You know, I was actually really happy with Abrams' Star Trek. And in fact, I thought his Uhura was the best counter-example the woman in peril that I'd seen for years. So I guess it's not endemic.
Well, this is a universal storytelling problem with spooky mysteries. The trick is NOT to resolve them. JJ dumped this giant brick of exposition on us in the third act, which was annoying. Just let the mystery live.
We had almost the exact same reaction, ranting to each other as we walked home. My suggested fix was that Joe could have been kidnapped instead, resulting in Alice needing to work with the other boys to figure out the mystery and save him. Mary's was that Charles could have been kidnapped, so Joe and Alice would be in the adventure together. Either way would have been a definite improvement, IMHO - sooo frustrating.
I also felt like the creators were being so nostalgic for the ET/Goonies time period that they let themselves be progressive on a 1980s level (not very) but that may be giving them too much credit.
Yeah, I figured you guys'd see it too. I basically went home and re-wrote the third act in chat with a friend (Alice's dad dies saving her life, redeeming himself, something else the movie totally flubbed) - but even if you want to have Alice get kidnapped by a monster, you should at least cut to her trying to free herself/communicate/help the other victims, like the little girl in The Host. I mean. I'm just so tired of this bullshit; it's not just misogyny, it's lazy storytelling.
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I've only seen one other movie by Abrams. It was exactly like this movie seems to be. The first half was beautiful. The second half was a mess, and you realized then that the first half was built on utter rot, on an ill conceived plot. It was all a sham but the fast pace and the great images of that first part sort of camouflaged it. It was a 2009 a movie called Star Trek.
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http://boingboing.net/2008/01/10/jj-abrams-ted-talk-m.html
He's not interested in resolution. Just in spooky mystery that could be anything.
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I also felt like the creators were being so nostalgic for the ET/Goonies time period that they let themselves be progressive on a 1980s level (not very) but that may be giving them too much credit.
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