Post by Deleted on Dec 19, 2017 6:32:51 GMT
Aug 2, 2017 1:01:41 GMT Nora said:
July must have been a month of the biggest disappointments for me, at the cinema. Dunkirk, Baby Driver and Atomic Blonde.Atomic Blonde was probably the smallest disappointment of the 3, but still.
Here is what bugged me about it:
1. Not enough James McAvoy whose character had the most impact on the story it seemed
2. We knew virtually NOTHING about the main character. I mean I dont need a bible on each character, but even Wick at least showed us "he loved his wife and his puppy". Case closed, I would have been happy to take as little as that with Therons character.
3. I understand the appeal of
lesbian scenes including two hot women
but it felt too forced and marketing-driven. 4. The visuals looked like John Wick, its characters talked like those from John Wick but yet somehow it was feeding us a story as complicated as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, in its ambition? What the hell was that?
5. the ridiculous ending
6. Theron was not a strong enough action lead for me. I dont mean she didnt do her own stunts or stuff like that, I know she did a lot, but her on-screen presence didn't fit the part. Spy in Berlin during that time wouldn't have dressed and styled as her, as that would instantly get her noticed and killed. Again, I get it, its marketing, but you know, unlike Kingsman or Wick where there was this additional part of the world so their spies could have pulled off wearing what they did and acting like they did, this story was saying its in a normal world. So she just looked ridiculous to me most of the time, with her facial expressions, those hair and clothes.
7. I am all for female power, but when a 115 pound girl is wrestling with and punching a 230 pound guy, (or two!) it does look ridiculous no matter how much martial art and corkscrews you throw in there. Especially since the scenes didn't show her using flexibility or speed as much as pure "horsepower" often. Ugh..
8. useless and story-breaking scenes from London, and a waste of John Goodman.
BUT - I am totally sold on the idea of crossing the Atomic Blonde and John Wick universes and have them meet. And I do believe in second chances so I hope for the best for the director as well as the sequel if it gets made.
What did you think?
While what you say about a female spy not dressing in that extremely sexy and stylish manner and not being able to physically triumph against men twice her size is undoubtedly correct, Nora, those aspects do not bother me because Atomic Blonde is hardly supposed to constitute a realistic espionage movie. Instead, the film is supposed to be a postmodern, stylized action-spy film that represents the cinematic translation of a graphic novel. In other words, the stylistic choices—while dubious or ridiculous from a realistic perspective—fit the film's tone, intentions, ambitions, and source material. Likewise, while I concur that the ending feels overextended or overwrought, it is unsurprising given the sub-genre.
Atomic Blonde is not supposed to be Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015) or The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt, 1965). Its ambitions are largely different, yet with a little more character development and thematic rigor, the movie could have proved that much better.
The problem with realism and female characters in Action movies is there are double standards when it comes to the portrayal of them and a male character in a Steven Seagal movie can walk into a room where they are surrounded by 20 men with guns and take all of them down in 5 seconds with his fists and nobody will say a word even though the movies are set in a realistic world and are meant to be realistic but the second a female character does something similar we have a particular group of people up in flames even when it is in a Sci Fi or Horror movie and that female character is half cyborg (as seen on the old 'Dark Matter' board) 'cause she is a woman. I could care less about realism in movies like this especially in the Spy/Action genre where most of them would be dead in 2 seconds if they were real. The amount of times James Bond has survived in movies and the things he has survived are unrealistic to say the least and it reminds me of the people who constantly whinged over the things Sydney Bristow did in 'Alias' but were always giving a free pass to Jack Bauer in '24' when both characters were unrealistic.
