To go along with my latest urge to design my MMO, I have been also wanting to watch Fantasy movies. I went through the entire trilogy of Lord of the Rings over the last couple of weeks, but I’ve also had a few movies sent out to me via Netflix of late as well. I had three fantasy movies rented in fact: Stardust, Spiderwick Chronicles, and The Golden Compass. All of them weren’t awful, none of them were great, some were surprising, some weren’t.
Golden Compass had a lot of debate from Christians when it first came out because it was written by an Atheist. Now first off, I think they made far too big a deal out of and their protests against it actually hurt their cause. From commercials, I didn’t want to see this movie because it looked horrible. But because they made such a big deal out of it, I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Certainly the bad guys did have a striking familiarity to Catholocisim, however, overall I think the themes of the movie (such as doing good deeds and such) should be embraced by Christianity, but that has never really stopped Christians from complaining so oh well. The movie itself was merely ok, the ending was a tad confusing and the little girl acting was not great. I wouldn’t buy the movie or even watch it again, but the movie made me want to read the book because the world that was created was very cool and original and it seemed like the book would have been way better. Overall, it was likely a C movie… not extremely well done, and mediocre acting, but cool world and decent computer graphics.
Next up is the Spiderwick Chronicles which I also had no interest in watching, but my daughter did so we went and saw it in the theaters initially. However, the movie proved to be too intense for her and we had to leave halfway through the movie because she was getting to scared. I, however, found the movie to be surprisingly interesting. Again, like Golden Compass, the concept of the movie was cool, it had great graphics, and it had slightly better acting. After watching the DVD though, it seemed like we left at the appropriate spot because the second half of the movie really wasn’t worth watching. For this one, the setup was the interesting part, the rest was nonsense. I wouldn’t even read this one unless the book was given to me for free. It started out great, it is too bad the writer couldn’t follow through. I would give this movie a C-.
Lastly, perhaps the biggest surprise was Stardust. Like Golden Compass, the advertising made this movie look terrible, but surprisingly it wasn’t. Outside of Robert DeNiro who proved that he can only act a certain part and anything else he should retire in, the acting was well done. Again, the world was interesting, though not quite as the previous two movies. Again the animation was cool. But overall I have to say the movie was the best of the three of these movies. While I wouldn’t buy the movie, I wouldn’t mind seeing it a time or two again. I would rate the movie a C+ or a B-, not really sure which it is a tweener. The storyline was really well done, the execution was great. It wasn’t entirely a fantasy movie, it felt more like a fairy tale, but that was fine, it was definitely worth at least one watch.
I’ve decided to take a little break from the fantasy movies at this point. I don’t want to overdo it and I recently got The Dark Knight on DVD which I will start watching. For Netflix I moved some Sci-Fi stuff up to the top. Currently have The Fountain, but I bet I give into the fantasy again soon enough. I just didn’t want too much fantasy in a row.