Constantine
Feb. 19th, 2014 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishFrancis Lawrence (dir.), Constantine
I'm a Hellblazer fan from way back (where 'way back' is defined as 'the late nineties,' which will get me scoffed at by people who actually are Hellblazer fans from way back). I got excited when I heard they were making a John Constantine movie, a decade ago now, and then immediately switched from 'excited' to 'indignant' at the reveal that the actor playing Constantine was Keanu Reeves. (John Constantine has blond hair and a Liverpool accent, as well as a great deal of personal presence and charisma. Keanu Reeves ... does not.) So I never got around to seeing the movie. From everything I'd heard, that was quite okay.
Then at some point I became a fan of Tilda Swinton, because she is awesome, and at some point after that I found out she was in Constantine. And I stumbled across a cheap copy of the DVD on Monday night, anduilos needed a Bad Movie to distract her from test stressing, and, well.
So, that was two hours of my life I'm not getting back.
How bad was it? Chas Chandler, London cabbie and Constantine's oldest friend, became Chas Kramer, Constantine's young apprentice, portrayed by Shia LeBoeuf. That right there pretty well sums it up.
Everything about the movie that wasn't either Tilda Swinton's Gabriel (who is fantastic in her one scene in act one and in the last twenty minutes, and otherwise entirely absent) or Djimon Hounsou's Papa Midnite was terrible. Not even 'so bad it's good' terrible either, just plain bad. The plot makes almost no sense, the characters (again, Gabriel aside) are an insult to cardboard cutouts and occasionally have similar names to characters from the comic, and the scenery... um. They sure do love their early-21st-century CGI backgrounds.
On the other hand, it's made me want to dig out my old back issues of Hellblazer, and to rewatch The Prophecy (starring Christopher Walken as Gabriel and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer), so I guess it wasn't a wholly negative experience.
I'm a Hellblazer fan from way back (where 'way back' is defined as 'the late nineties,' which will get me scoffed at by people who actually are Hellblazer fans from way back). I got excited when I heard they were making a John Constantine movie, a decade ago now, and then immediately switched from 'excited' to 'indignant' at the reveal that the actor playing Constantine was Keanu Reeves. (John Constantine has blond hair and a Liverpool accent, as well as a great deal of personal presence and charisma. Keanu Reeves ... does not.) So I never got around to seeing the movie. From everything I'd heard, that was quite okay.
Then at some point I became a fan of Tilda Swinton, because she is awesome, and at some point after that I found out she was in Constantine. And I stumbled across a cheap copy of the DVD on Monday night, and
uilos needed a Bad Movie to distract her from test stressing, and, well.So, that was two hours of my life I'm not getting back.
How bad was it? Chas Chandler, London cabbie and Constantine's oldest friend, became Chas Kramer, Constantine's young apprentice, portrayed by Shia LeBoeuf. That right there pretty well sums it up.
Everything about the movie that wasn't either Tilda Swinton's Gabriel (who is fantastic in her one scene in act one and in the last twenty minutes, and otherwise entirely absent) or Djimon Hounsou's Papa Midnite was terrible. Not even 'so bad it's good' terrible either, just plain bad. The plot makes almost no sense, the characters (again, Gabriel aside) are an insult to cardboard cutouts and occasionally have similar names to characters from the comic, and the scenery... um. They sure do love their early-21st-century CGI backgrounds.
On the other hand, it's made me want to dig out my old back issues of Hellblazer, and to rewatch The Prophecy (starring Christopher Walken as Gabriel and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer), so I guess it wasn't a wholly negative experience.
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Date: 2014-02-21 05:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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