Let me give you a breather from all my Cebu City Map series and talk about something supposedly entertaining, until you watch it. I've seen "The Seeker: The Dark is Rising". No, don't ask me about where I saw the movie, this entry is not about that. This wouldn't be much of a spoiler also since I wouldn't be talking about the plot either. This would probably have to be my 2 cents on the movie in general.
I have not read the novel and neither have I heard of it prior to watching the movie, so my only source of information about its story was the movie itself. The story was fairly simple; nothing shown in the movie that got too complicated. But that was actually one failure they had. It showed nothing about the past of the groups' beginnings. It said that the boy was "the seventh son of a seventh son", so what? Did it mean that his father also had 6 big brothers? And then what? Or did it mean the generation to which the father belonged to? Why the coincidence to the rise of the dark side? How were the "Older Members" of the society chosen, where they the 6th son of a seventh son that they didn't qualify for the job? (Ok, I'm being corny! LOL!) Where the "Old Members" related to the boy's family and indeed they belonged to the same family tree? Or were the "Old Members" also seekers in their youth but their powers have now faded?
Darn, at the end of the story, you'd end up making your own storyline than be convinced of what was presented. And oh, I watched the movie because I don't have time reading the novel. Watching it was like entering the movie house at the middle of the show, you wouldn't know how it came to be other than the fact that the boy had the responsibility to save the world and he had powers, for some reason though, I did not see him using it during times of battle.
There clearly were numerous attempts of mellow-dramatic scenes, but it failed miserably. It was like the scenes were very much in a hurry to have itself done and move on to the next that it ended up being just a show of special effects rather than a story-teller. There have been movies which lasted for 3 hours or more yet it gained a lot of revenues. So budget constraints might have been the factor of cutting a movie that could have been great, but that was one movie very much in a hurry to be done and over with.
I felt terrible after watching the movie. Not that darkness failed to conquer the light, but darkness indeed conquered my imagination. I didn't know what to make up with it. I had lots of questions about the movie that now I'm trying to google the story just to feed my inquiries.
I have not read the novel and neither have I heard of it prior to watching the movie, so my only source of information about its story was the movie itself. The story was fairly simple; nothing shown in the movie that got too complicated. But that was actually one failure they had. It showed nothing about the past of the groups' beginnings. It said that the boy was "the seventh son of a seventh son", so what? Did it mean that his father also had 6 big brothers? And then what? Or did it mean the generation to which the father belonged to? Why the coincidence to the rise of the dark side? How were the "Older Members" of the society chosen, where they the 6th son of a seventh son that they didn't qualify for the job? (Ok, I'm being corny! LOL!) Where the "Old Members" related to the boy's family and indeed they belonged to the same family tree? Or were the "Old Members" also seekers in their youth but their powers have now faded?
Darn, at the end of the story, you'd end up making your own storyline than be convinced of what was presented. And oh, I watched the movie because I don't have time reading the novel. Watching it was like entering the movie house at the middle of the show, you wouldn't know how it came to be other than the fact that the boy had the responsibility to save the world and he had powers, for some reason though, I did not see him using it during times of battle.
There clearly were numerous attempts of mellow-dramatic scenes, but it failed miserably. It was like the scenes were very much in a hurry to have itself done and move on to the next that it ended up being just a show of special effects rather than a story-teller. There have been movies which lasted for 3 hours or more yet it gained a lot of revenues. So budget constraints might have been the factor of cutting a movie that could have been great, but that was one movie very much in a hurry to be done and over with.
I felt terrible after watching the movie. Not that darkness failed to conquer the light, but darkness indeed conquered my imagination. I didn't know what to make up with it. I had lots of questions about the movie that now I'm trying to google the story just to feed my inquiries.
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2 comments:
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Wow cyril, you should do this more often! You do know how to write about movies!
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
oh wow thank you kris, comments like this warms the heart especially from an articulate writer such as you.
I just hate watching movies where every scene tries to be mellow-dramatic, like even a scene shopping for the holidays enforces its viewers that such is always part of a bigger plot to end the world. It's over sensationalism that kills a story I think.
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