Reviews

Likes:

• Characters (Everybody in this movie is so amazing and lovable! And they have different personalities. And also the relationships and connections between them are very interesting. It's also very nice how some characters including Scott himself, go through some changes throughout the movie.)

• Actors (Almost every one of the actors performs amazingly, especially Michael Cera who's the best!)

• Video game theme (the theme made me immediately fall in love with the movie, so unrelated to the plot, yet so fitting and creative and awesome!)

• Creative Directing (Amazing ways the director had chosen to tell us the story, with the camera movements and cuts and so many details in literally every second of the movie and until the very end, while they made us very aware of the presence of the director and the fact that this is a movie we're watching instead of making us feel completely immersed in the story, but it was so creative in the right way that it wasn't a bad thing but an amazing thing. It's like one of those stories that you love the way it's told more than the story itself.)

• Fast pace (everything happens so fast, you don't have time to take a breath or pay attention to all the details! And it's really good, keeps you on your toes the whole time and keeps things moving forward. It's really a smart decision to keep the pace fast, otherwise, you could be annoyed by some things or feel the jokes are cheesy.)

• Beautiful scenes (Some scenes were so artistic and beautiful, like the scene in the snow with the shadow of the swings.)

• Dialogues (So funny, so stupid, so great!)

• Fantasy style (I loved the style of the fantasy in this movie, where things were totally normal then suddenly one thing was completely unreal yet nobody seemed to care!)

• Consistent Comedy (In many movies, there are a lot of funny moments at the beginning of the movie, yet it keeps getting less and less as the movie proceeds. But in this movie, the comedy was so amazingly consistent throughout the movie, you got as many funny moments in the end as you got in the beginning, and it never got boring or repetitive or predictable.)

• Story (Simple story but interesting enough. Also I loved the ending way more than in the comics.)

Dislikes:

• Songs (First of all, it's so sad that this epic movie didn't have an appropriate theme song or music, it was very necessary and its absence is very noticeable. Just imagine something like 21 Jump Street's theme for this movie. The only theme it had was Ramona's song which repeated 3 times, it was kind of nice but far from the ideal! Another thing I didn't like was the songs that were played during the Song Fights. They were really bad! Like in Scott's fight against Todd or the twins, what was that? They required great epic songs.)

• Romance (The movie's biggest disappointment was the romance between Scott and Ramona, which was the biggest point of the plot that would make all the fights make sense. But their love was so tasteless, based on nothing, not explored and explained at all. A very simple crush, which was not enough at all.)

• Some virtual effects (I get it that having simple virtual effects was sort of the style of the movie, but some effects look too fake.)

• Some dialogues (there were some dialogues that their delivery was just unnatural and bad. Like "Did we suck?" or "Yay for that")

• Fights difficulties (The fights weren't sorted from the easiest to the hardest, which is how they should've been to keep us thrilled. For example, the fight with the Twins didn't seem hard at all.

• Scott can fight (OK this is also weird that Scott was just a normal guy, but he suddenly knew how to fight incredibly from the first moment! And he won the battle with the first evil x with ease and no difficulty at all!)

The storyline is predictable and boring: Bad guy illegally gets a lot of money, does a lot of bad stuff, gets caught. Wow, who saw that coming.

Worse than that, it has NO interesting characters, nothing that keeps me wanting to keep watching. The characters are all shallow and 2D, and there are no funny or cute or entertaining friendships or relationships (like in 21 Jump Street or in Adam Mckay movies for example) that would make me say, "OK this is a bad guy, but this relationship is so cute I want to see where this is going!" Nope, nothing like that. His relationship with his wives have no depth, and with his friends are just normal stuff and never gets funny enough.

So this was an unimpressive and uninteresting movie for me, and probably just an excuse for Scorsese to have a pornography in his résumé.

Likes: The scenery and decorations were stunning. I also liked the ending, how Emma took care of Hariot's problem herself. And I liked the soundtrack very much.

Dislikes: Compared to the 1996 British TV film of Emma, this one was far behind, the performance of the actors, and the delivery of the dialogues were weak and colorless. Let's be honest, no one can be a greater Mr. Knightly than Mark Strong.

I liked the way this movie was made, with Enola narrating and breaking the fourth wall now and then. Millie Bobby Brown's performance is also really great. But there are no other good performances in the movie.

And my biggest problem was with the storyline. It had big plot holes and wasn't interesting, not to mention that Enola didn't even find her mother, and there was no reason for her mother to leave without telling her.

My biggest problem with this franchise is the storyline: The events make no sense and the characters make illogical decisions. Especially when the next movie starts, it's like the writer started thinking about what to write for that movie, rather than having a complete pre-thought-through storyline in mind for the whole series.

I liked the first movie more because the atmosphere and the world was kinda cool, and Shailene Woodley played well, and I also liked the soundtrack.

This is what I understood from this movie and how I interpreted the metaphors.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

First of all, Narnia is your heart. As in, each person's heart as an individual. And by heart I mean your spiritual side, whatever you call it.

At first, you're not even aware of your heart and spirit. (Before discovering Narnia) You, as an individual human being, have 4 aspects or characteristic traits: 1. Bravery and leadership (=Peter), 2. Wisdom and rationality (=Susan), 3. Ambition and egocentricity (=Edmund), 4. Kindness and innocence (=Lucy).

(Very much like the houses of Hogwarts) The first time Lucy discovers Narnia represents having a spiritual or religious experience and finding out about your heart. While other people or your other aspects try to deny it, because it's not logical and possible.

(Up to this point I thought the movie followed an existentialist view: because of the individualism and the idea of believing in the impossible for no reason. But then I found out about this:) The heart is taken over by evil (=white witch) and you need to take it back from her.

(Because there's no evil in existentialism, so I realized it's not the philosophical view of this movie) Aslan is God and he will help you take your heart back and be good, and he is the real and true king of hearts.

Ambition wants to go to the dark side to gain power if he's not controlled by your other aspects. At which point evil will kill him and destroy you and take over your heart forever.

But Aslan sacrifices himself for each individual heart, so that you will be saved and the heart can survive the attack of the evil forces.

(The writer has turned the story of "Jesus sacrificing himself for all of humanity to save everyone" which is a very collectivist idea, into "Aslan sacrificing himself for you to save your heart" which is an overwhelmingly individualist idea. Again, sounds a lot like existentialism.)