Wow. Regardless of the film's actual quality, this is the kind of movie that would normally be a huge frigging hit, but the ads have most people immediately turned off to it. This has to be one of the biggest marketing mishaps ever. Unbelievable. As for the movie itself... not bad. I'd say it's a solid B- in my book. Maybe more C+, but it's a movie that clearly is on the "lame to awesome" scale and not the "bad to good" scale, so it gets a bit of a break. It's actually just about exactly what I expected it to be.
Could have used another fifteen or twenty minutes of story/character work, as a proto-summer-blockbuster it has that kind of "just serviceable" story you'd expect, clearly existing only get you to the Rollicking Adventure. Of course, this is how it was in the source material as well (come at me bros) so I didn't go in expecting much more, but there are fleeting moments of (very "Pixar-ish") greatness that make it obvious that more time spent on getting to know our heroes and their situation could have led to something truly special. But what we get is just serviceable.
The adventurey material was pretty good. Some great CGI, some very big, fun setpieces, and the general look of the movie is much better than the ads led me to believe. I wouldn't say the action was great, but it was engaging and felt more unique than I expected it to (though it's hard to comment on any action the day after seeing The Raid, because holy shit, The Raid). The weird thing is that it did not feel like a 200-250 million dollar movie. There were many times, especially towards the end, where shots were claustrophobic in the kind of way that felt like they didn't want to pull out since it'd mean more CGI to fill in, and there are some editing hiccups where it feels like it skips past a shot you would "expect" based on what came before it. For such an expensive movie, it felt strangely constrained. But it had its share of big, satisfying moments as well.
I hope this somehow manages to do well enough to justify a sequel. I would love to see where they go with this. With more time spent on the script this could evolve into something frigging great. The potential is clearly there, they just need to snap themselves out of "we're making a summer blockbuster" mode and into "we're making a movie" mode.
Edit: The 3D is perhaps the best post-conversion job I've seen but it's 100% pointless, and I have a feeling the movie looks better in 2D.
Edit edit: Also weird? The classic "Walt Disney" logo is now simply "Disney." When did that happen?
Yet another edit: Kitsch is definitely a weak link here. Even with this script a stronger lead could have made a big difference. This needs Han Solo, not Jake Sully. But even he has a couple small moments where he clicks. Perhaps Stanton needs to get better at working good performances out of actors.
