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arendhamming
Reviews
First Life (2010)
Brilliant
This series of three episodes is very distinct from the famous BBC nature documentaries. It depicts the story of how life developed, and therefore also uses animations. It is amazing to see how life developed such things as being able to move around and sexual reproduction. To me, fossils always seemed boring pieces of stone. But in this series, David Attenborough travels the world to show places and fossils that demonstrate pivotal developments in the early evolution of life.
After you've seen this, all other nature documentaries that depict the world's current nature may feel like merely portraying an aftermath of the journey this documentary takes us on. All life's current wonders become but a small moment in time in an evolution that has been going on for millions of years and in which the real leaps forward were taken long before life even came to land.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)
OK movie, superficial compared to the book
The book The Hobbit is less than half as big as each of the books of the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy. Yet it was milked out to three movies. This seems to be for no other reason than monetization. Three movies from a strong franchise, sure to rake in money, is better than one or two. Yet it also demonstrates that the first and foremost concern isn't about telling the story. Much less so than it was of the LOTR movies to my opinion.
The central theme of The Hobbit is a story of personal development and maturation of Bilbo, the hobbit after whom the book was named. Yet it is this character development that is lost in the movies. No matter how well the actor tries, so many stuff was added to stretch the story to three movies, that the personal development just got lost in translation. Worse, parts of the story that are details to the event progression but essential for the personal development, such as Bilbo being unconscious during the battle of five armies in the book, were altered to make up more stuff. Another theme that's important to Bilbo's development is his friendship with Thorin. The first two movies did a good job of showing that, but this movie goofs it up with unnecessary simplifications from the book in how Thorin himself develops. Stretching a small story out over three movies should have given ample space for depicting it properly.
Some quotes were literally taken from the books, yet there are some major changes that are just odd. In the books there is no mention of orcs at all, they're called goblins. Yet in the movie there are only orcs, which are very different from the goblins encountered in a previous movie. Apart from such major changes, there are all kinds of details that just don't make sense and feel like superficial stereotypes. Bard's family, for example, is perhaps meant to draw us into his character further, but they feel clumsily weaved into the story. Radagast never appears in the books, but he has appeared throughout the Hobbit movies. In this film appearance feels even more contrived than in the other movies. He just appears at two moments, not adding anything to the story.
For those who saw the previous movies, this movie will be the OK conclusion of the trilogy. But it won't please anyone who also read the book and enjoyed the journey and maturation of Bilbo.
To me, this whole movie seems more like a superficial means to earn money with tons of special effects, than a medium through which the brilliant story of the book is told. is properly told.
The 100 (2014)
Awesome concept, let down by mediocre plot, dialogue and lack of logic
(only one paragraph with spoilers, marked as such)
The concept is awesome. A space station with the surviving human race and then a small group of teenagers (played by actors in their twenties as usual) sent to earth.
It's awesome because it can be a little sci-fi-ish, without being all about space ships and alien races. It's awesome because it could be like the hunger games meets battlestar galactica.
However, what the hunger games had behind it were three books with a good plot, rather then a single book and way much ignorant screenwriters. In the end it's pretty much a teen drama. Complete with the mediocre acting and episode plots that twist the progress of the story to give every episode it's own tension arc, including the not too exciting cliff hanger.
But what's worse... the dialogue. Completely irrational non-discussions that boil down to "i want you to do something that's for your own good, but if you do, you owe me something". The logic is often so cheesy that only someone completely stuck in US culture would fall for it, and then only if they're a not too critical teenager watching the show.
Season one is done now. In season two, i'm sure they're going to keep everyone that made the series a "success" alive, regardless if that would be logical in the story progression.
But the worst part of the series is the complete disregard of logic. Communication between factions breaks down, and gets re-established but barely audible, breaks down again and then suddenly offers video conferencing. Rocket fuel is at one moment very explosive, the next moment it needs kilos of tnt as an accelerant. When a group becomes sick they get the symptoms all exactly at the same time and after a while they're suddenly instantly healed.
Of course, when you nitpick enough, every series has little mistakes, plot holes, etc. But in this series, they're in your face. It's really hard to look past them and just enjoy for all but the least critical viewer.
(spoiler part) Everyone miraculously survives even the most dire situations. A group finds a guy who was captured from an expedition party miles and miles from camp. Apparently the jungle is then filled with blood to provide a trail to him. And when he is found, he's hung up on a tree for bait... only there's no one there to actually attack the group that came for him. (spoiler end)
The characters are strung together from superficial stereotypes. People act totally implausible if a real person was actually in that situation. And the conflicts that rise between people feel like they arose from the writer's heads, not from the personalities and the situations they were put in.
It's all so disappointing, because the concept behind the series is so awesome. I tried to tell myself everyone acted so irrational, because it's all teenagers. But then you realize it's also only written for teenagers, and the not very critical ones at that.