Movies watched on planes

[nrgburst]

Jetlagged but getting this down quickly:

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets- pretty CGI but terrible, plot and character-wise, excepting Rihanna's short (but amazing) performance.

Atomic Blonde- Decent action/spy movie with great period music and background. Charlize Theron's parade of outfits are TDF and her fight sequences are jaw-droppingly brutal. Sadly the Plot Twist!!! thing just got old by the third time around and of course they killed off the lesbian character who inexplicably didn't leave even when given intel that she was going to get killed, like WTF.. 

Kingsman: The Golden Circle- So terrible I stopped watching partway through despite the promise of Pedro Pascal. Why are we still killing off female characters so less competent male characters can shine in 2018? RME

Wonder Woman: I watched this again, but I still didn't fall in love with it the way most of my f-list did this summer. IDK- the whole "Love Is The Answer" thing didn't work for me, although the emotional journeys of the characters were great. 

Fast & Furious: Of course they killed off (and mostly ignored) the badass female characters but still a fun ride. Gal Gadot apparently did all her own stunts. I then watched twenty minutes of 2 Fast 2 Furious which was laughably low budget for a sequel? And realized I started on this franchise in the middle, whoops. How confusingly did they name these? So I skipped to

Fast Five: Yeaahhhh totally shipping Han/Gisele! :DDD An Asian man that's allowed to be attractive to women in a Western film, whaaaat?! Plus Dwayne Johnson vs. Vin Diesel was exactly the kind of Meeting of OTT Machismo that works for me. I plan to watch the sequels.

Comments

[dhampyresa]

The Valrian comics are better than the movie, imho.

[nrgburst]

Ah! There are comics! See, it seemed like the movie had an assumption that you would understand who the main character agents were and the way they were asserting Pasty Whitebread boy was this totally hot badass despite who they had actually cast had me ??? Plus zero chemistry and ugh I hate canon ships where the boy keeps pushing at the girl to give in and fuck him even though she's going NO. HELL NO.

[malurette]

Yep! Something like 20+ albums--an interesting fact is that the series is finished; while most of the time with french/belgian comics where each album is a self-contained adventure, the authors just keep going and going and adding new ones and often getting worse and worse past a certain point, here they decided one day they were done and wrote one final adventure. (However, they later opened the franchise to younger authors, who can create out-of-continuity one-shot if they so please.)
More info here if you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val%C3%A9rian_and_Laureline

I've read the whole series and I really felt like the movie assumed we would already know and care about Valérian and Laureline--even as their characters were wildly altered here!--but also the Shingouz/whatever their name was altered to (that trio of info-selling ETs... no introduction here, no backup explaining Laureline's conflictual reaction to them or anything?)

I had little to no expectations about the plot and the movie still managed to disappoint me badly, urgh!! They butchered the characters, their relationship, they were damn ugly, sorry if I want prettiness on the big screen and there were serious pacing problems, and so on.

[nrgburst]

No wonder Besson seemed to think everybody should just know about who they were! Pretty lazy storytelling though- even iconic characters need introduction.

I suppose I was lucky not to be sorely disappointed though! What a let down that must have been!

[dhampyresa]

Yeah, there are comics! The movie's plot is mostly drawn from L'ambassadeur des ombres (although with different themes etc) which is my favourite album and I was rather disappointed by the adaptation.

[dirty_diana]

I then watched twenty minutes of 2 Fast 2 Furious which was laughably low budget for a sequel? And realized I started on this franchise in the middle, whoops. How confusingly did they name these?

Lol! I love seeing cute confused people getting into my fandoms. Though I am the rare person that likes 2 because I enjoy Brian and Rome being dumb together. And yes Han/Gisele are so hot.

[nrgburst]

LOL I'm using this icon because Vin Diesel. But ahhhh, I was so baffled! Like Fast & Furious was so slick and obviously studio produced and 2 Fast was like... some dude with a GoFundMe decided to make something about FAST CARS and HOT CHICKS.

I liked that taste of Letty/Dom too (Michelle Rodiguez sells a lot of things for me, hehe)- should I go back and watch the first one, or will that have me cringing even worse than 2 Fast?

[dirty_diana]

Hmmn. The first one doesn't entirely have the slick Hollywood feel of the modern ones either, partly because it's 2001 and partly because it's not really the same genre? The original concept was stagecoach western with street race cars (really) and it kind of grows with each film into the Fast Five action aesthetic.

BUT if you like Vin Diesel then it is the movie to find out Dom's backstory, get the beginning of the family thread, and yes Dom and Letty have a couple classic scenes in it. So I recommend giving it a try, I guess?