Wandering Earth 2 Review
Jan. 23rd, 2023 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoGot to watch this in the theater today. Brought my mom and my cousin who was visiting us for CNY. Some thoughts...
The good:
- SFX is good, definitely on par with the average hollywood blockbuster; good to see the chinese movie industry getting this far. The space elevator scenes were cool.
- Heartwarming moments were heartwarming. Teary moments appropriately teary. It could be that I'm part of the targeted demographic (ie chinese) for the storytelling. But it did hit the right emotions when needed for me.
- I personally liked the attempt to be inclusive in the scope of the movie. Yes, the main focus were on the chinese heroes and their heroic moments, but that's just expected like we expect the americans to be the big damn heroes of american blockbusters. Aside from the main characters, there's certainly a better range of representation of nationalities, genders, languages... than many american shows (that make a big production of being diverse...)
- A new appreciation for a certain MV. =P
The meh:
- While I, being fluent in english and chinese, found the movie to be very friendly to me in terms of language, I can understand that other people might have more difficulties. There's a lot of english speakers in it, so chinese audience would have to rely on the subtitles just as much as the english audience would have to for the chinese parts. Can lead to confusion for people who can't read fast enough. Not sure there's a solution to this issue though.
The bad:
- The plot...eh, I was aware of the silly premise that was already revealed in the first movie, so went into this with the brain turned off. And there are certainly a lot of plot holes, and lack of explaining a lot of stuff the story just takes for granted but makes you go "what, what about...". Then in addition to that, there's some convolutions to the plot. As it is, my mom walked out of the theater not having understood several core elements of the story and I had to explain it to her.
- I had been reading other reviews that complained about the length, and I did feel the stress of sitting there for 3 hours (the last hour of which I was studiously trying to ignore the bathroom urge). There does seem to be some bits that I feel could have been chopped or simplified. Or maybe a shorter theatrical version and then a longer extended cut? That way you can sell it twice.
Overall: 8 out of 10 maybe? Would like to watch it again (main struggle here is my paranoia of going outside while COVID is still lurking).
EDIT: Want to add my cousin's feedback on the movie...
She liked it and felt it was better than a lot of American blockbuster movies she'd watched, in terms of SFX, theme, and drama. She definitely felt the distinctively chinese cultural differences in the movie, and felt it was new and interesting. For example the emphasis on family and community over the individual, and the focus of the sci-fi on megastructures and communal projects rather than the more western staple of starships/age of sail theme.
The good:
- SFX is good, definitely on par with the average hollywood blockbuster; good to see the chinese movie industry getting this far. The space elevator scenes were cool.
- Heartwarming moments were heartwarming. Teary moments appropriately teary. It could be that I'm part of the targeted demographic (ie chinese) for the storytelling. But it did hit the right emotions when needed for me.
- I personally liked the attempt to be inclusive in the scope of the movie. Yes, the main focus were on the chinese heroes and their heroic moments, but that's just expected like we expect the americans to be the big damn heroes of american blockbusters. Aside from the main characters, there's certainly a better range of representation of nationalities, genders, languages... than many american shows (that make a big production of being diverse...)
- A new appreciation for a certain MV. =P
The meh:
- While I, being fluent in english and chinese, found the movie to be very friendly to me in terms of language, I can understand that other people might have more difficulties. There's a lot of english speakers in it, so chinese audience would have to rely on the subtitles just as much as the english audience would have to for the chinese parts. Can lead to confusion for people who can't read fast enough. Not sure there's a solution to this issue though.
The bad:
- The plot...eh, I was aware of the silly premise that was already revealed in the first movie, so went into this with the brain turned off. And there are certainly a lot of plot holes, and lack of explaining a lot of stuff the story just takes for granted but makes you go "what, what about...". Then in addition to that, there's some convolutions to the plot. As it is, my mom walked out of the theater not having understood several core elements of the story and I had to explain it to her.
- I had been reading other reviews that complained about the length, and I did feel the stress of sitting there for 3 hours (the last hour of which I was studiously trying to ignore the bathroom urge). There does seem to be some bits that I feel could have been chopped or simplified. Or maybe a shorter theatrical version and then a longer extended cut? That way you can sell it twice.
Overall: 8 out of 10 maybe? Would like to watch it again (main struggle here is my paranoia of going outside while COVID is still lurking).
EDIT: Want to add my cousin's feedback on the movie...
She liked it and felt it was better than a lot of American blockbuster movies she'd watched, in terms of SFX, theme, and drama. She definitely felt the distinctively chinese cultural differences in the movie, and felt it was new and interesting. For example the emphasis on family and community over the individual, and the focus of the sci-fi on megastructures and communal projects rather than the more western staple of starships/age of sail theme.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-24 05:50 am (UTC)COVID definitely a reason I don't want to be in a theater. Everyone around me seemed to think the pandemic is over so that's making me even more paranoid.
3 hours for blockbuster SciFi is a bit much, to be honest. Either bring back intermission or go back to 90 minute movies, which is really the sweet spot in terms of movie going.
Most Chinese movie goers these days have passable enough English that they can probably figure out the conversation. English gets taught starting in primary school. Most gen-z Chinese kids who can afford movie tickets can understand English movies. There might be the slacker here or there who can't understand basic English (movie English complexity is ~5th grade level), but they're in the significant minority.
8/10 is pretty good. Maybe I'll give it a watch after I'm done wrapping up two different NaNos.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-24 06:28 pm (UTC)2. I heard that the director struggled with whether to split the movie into 2 parts or not and in the end put it all in one film. My guess is that the first half just didn't have a big enough climax to sustain its own separate movie, and the second half would lose some of its emotional weight without the buildup in the first half. Still, I think there are some parts that could be removed or simplified in the unified work... but I guess the director didn't want to give those parts up.
3. Not sure primary school kids have the patience to sit through 3 hours, even if there's plenty of action. My butt felt sore after I got home (though half of that is also because I had to drive my cousin to stanford after the movie, and the back & forth took over 1.5 hrs because we hit rush hour on the way back).
(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-24 06:40 pm (UTC)Re: 3 - Yeah, I'm not saying the movie is for little kids, just that movie scripts are written to be comprehensible by 5th-graders. That's just a basic writing rule of thumb for audio/visual media. Keep the language as simple as possible to increase comprehension from the audience. (For example, political speakers' speech complexity -- as in the vocabulary complexity -- is at 8th grade level. Any more complex and the audience starts to zone out and cease listening.) This is one of the biggest difficulties of script writers: how do you construct dialogue that deals with adult concepts using a 5th-grader's vocab?
Edit: Just as an example, in movies, instead of saying "obfuscate", they'll change it to "hide" or "cover up". Instead of "juxtapose", it's "compared to", if it's an adult movie, it'll be upgraded to "contrast to". Instead of saying "decapitate", it'll be "chop his head off" or "off with his/her/their head(s)". Etc. That's what I meant when I said the language is targeted at 5th grade comprehension.
(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-24 08:54 pm (UTC)Specifically, I suspect little kids might more easily draw the connection for the term "Digital Life" to AI or artificial life. But my mom certainly never made the connection even though half the movie was focused on one of the main characters obsessing over the digitization of his dead daughter. *shrug*
(no subject)
Date: 2023-01-25 02:06 am (UTC)Eh, I think it depends on the elderly. I mean, if you just don't think digital goods ought to be valued the same as physical goods because the production labor has been infinitely reduced to right click -> copy, then it's pretty hard to sell that digital has a one-to-one valence to analogue. In which case, it's pretty hard sell that digital life is conceptually the same as artificial life. I mean, what does "artificial life" even mean when the definition of life requires an organic body? Y'know?
Adults are more likely to question the conceits whereas children just kind of go with it and assumes it makes logical sense.