Hellblazer
Mar. 19th, 2005 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anotherusedpageSo, I gave in and went to see the Constantine movie...
It was... well.
Keanu Reeves pissed me off considerably less than I was expecting. The graphics were cool. The opening possession and exorcism was good fun. I liked the vision of hell. The sequences with the deaths of John's friends were pretty damn good - bugs in one, and booze in another, very true to form. The through plot kinda sucked, but I'd seen that coming. John was far too... Christian. Satan was pretty good.
Gabriel was not as good as I'd been lead to believe... visually good, but I didn't like Tilda whatsername as an actress as much as I'd thought I would.
Balthasar, John's demon contact, was... well, they passed up the opportunity to include whatsername... is it Laylah?... his usual demon contact, anyway... and thus get in a single decent fun female role, but other than that he was ok.
The girl - well, the best thing about the girl was that they didn't kiss. But, she spent what felt like an awful lot of time needing to be deposessed and rescued because she was pregnant with the anti-christ, and I had the urge to have the irrate feminist rant about how women are more than wombs... it was only actually one scene extended scene, mebbe the last fifteen or twenty mins of the film, but it still really irritated me.
As did Papa Midnite's fucking well Catholicism. It felt like they were scared to show any occult stuff that wasn't safely within the Christian framework, so you had Papa Midnite without the skulls and crows and insects, and in fact without ANY of the voodoo stuff at all, not even really zombies, although there was a passing visual reference... and he spouted Latin, and blessed John with a Christian blessing, and was generally... not Papa Midnite. Just a black exorcist.
Oh, and John does the sensible thing and quits smoking after he's cured of lung cancer. *facepalm*
Which leaves me with only really one thing left to say:
OH MY GOD WHAT DID YOU DO TO CHAS YOU BASTARDS!?!?
Ahem.
I mean, I have a special place for Chas in my heart, and in my fanon, but I wouldn't have minded them leaving him out of the film altogether. But what they did made me want to throw things at the screen...
He was a nineteen year old whiny sidekick. Of the OMG pleez johnny let me help you kill teh demons, can I, can I, can I ohh pleeeez! variety. Now, I usually don't MIND whiny sideckicks. I even quite liked Robin in the Batman and Robin movie. But... oh god, I was GLAD when they killed off Chas. It was SO bad.
The things I minded most were the things that I hadn't been warned about in advance. The praying to God for help kind of almost made sense in context. John as a failed suicide I didn't like, but I could live with it. The random stuff with the Spear of Destiny and demons that were going to 'break through' felt like they'd been nicked from elsewhere in the Vertigo universe, but again, if you accepted the premise, it wasn't so bad. Satan was cool, although you didn't get the sense of... politics... between heaven and hell. It was distinctly... personal, and petty. I mean, it's kinda personal and petty in the comics too, but there wasn't that underlying feeling of... something more complicated.
So yeah. Did I enjoy watching it? Yes, it was entertaining, and visually strong; bits were tense and exciting.
Do I wish it had never been made? Hell, yeah, it's mangled Constantine almost but not quite entirely out of recognition, and it hurts.
Oh, there were a coupla slashy moments if you were looking. All the demons looked like they didn't know whether they wanted to kill John or fuck him, and he came as close to pulling Satan as he managed with the girl...
It was... well.
Keanu Reeves pissed me off considerably less than I was expecting. The graphics were cool. The opening possession and exorcism was good fun. I liked the vision of hell. The sequences with the deaths of John's friends were pretty damn good - bugs in one, and booze in another, very true to form. The through plot kinda sucked, but I'd seen that coming. John was far too... Christian. Satan was pretty good.
Gabriel was not as good as I'd been lead to believe... visually good, but I didn't like Tilda whatsername as an actress as much as I'd thought I would.
Balthasar, John's demon contact, was... well, they passed up the opportunity to include whatsername... is it Laylah?... his usual demon contact, anyway... and thus get in a single decent fun female role, but other than that he was ok.
The girl - well, the best thing about the girl was that they didn't kiss. But, she spent what felt like an awful lot of time needing to be deposessed and rescued because she was pregnant with the anti-christ, and I had the urge to have the irrate feminist rant about how women are more than wombs... it was only actually one scene extended scene, mebbe the last fifteen or twenty mins of the film, but it still really irritated me.
As did Papa Midnite's fucking well Catholicism. It felt like they were scared to show any occult stuff that wasn't safely within the Christian framework, so you had Papa Midnite without the skulls and crows and insects, and in fact without ANY of the voodoo stuff at all, not even really zombies, although there was a passing visual reference... and he spouted Latin, and blessed John with a Christian blessing, and was generally... not Papa Midnite. Just a black exorcist.
Oh, and John does the sensible thing and quits smoking after he's cured of lung cancer. *facepalm*
Which leaves me with only really one thing left to say:
OH MY GOD WHAT DID YOU DO TO CHAS YOU BASTARDS!?!?
Ahem.
I mean, I have a special place for Chas in my heart, and in my fanon, but I wouldn't have minded them leaving him out of the film altogether. But what they did made me want to throw things at the screen...
He was a nineteen year old whiny sidekick. Of the OMG pleez johnny let me help you kill teh demons, can I, can I, can I ohh pleeeez! variety. Now, I usually don't MIND whiny sideckicks. I even quite liked Robin in the Batman and Robin movie. But... oh god, I was GLAD when they killed off Chas. It was SO bad.
The things I minded most were the things that I hadn't been warned about in advance. The praying to God for help kind of almost made sense in context. John as a failed suicide I didn't like, but I could live with it. The random stuff with the Spear of Destiny and demons that were going to 'break through' felt like they'd been nicked from elsewhere in the Vertigo universe, but again, if you accepted the premise, it wasn't so bad. Satan was cool, although you didn't get the sense of... politics... between heaven and hell. It was distinctly... personal, and petty. I mean, it's kinda personal and petty in the comics too, but there wasn't that underlying feeling of... something more complicated.
So yeah. Did I enjoy watching it? Yes, it was entertaining, and visually strong; bits were tense and exciting.
Do I wish it had never been made? Hell, yeah, it's mangled Constantine almost but not quite entirely out of recognition, and it hurts.
Oh, there were a coupla slashy moments if you were looking. All the demons looked like they didn't know whether they wanted to kill John or fuck him, and he came as close to pulling Satan as he managed with the girl...
