Review: Fantasy Island is a muddled mishmash of tired tropes, dull twists
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There are way to many TV shows or movies (usually in the sequel) where the central mystery is dragged out so long and so hyped and then it ends up being a boring letdown in the end. Better to just leave it unexplained. Especially if you had no clear idea where you were going when you started. No foreshadowing, retconning..... if I can't go back and watch it again and see the clues... it's just lazy, sloppy, bad story telling.
And I mean who amongst us couldn't have done without midi-chlorians?
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Meh, I mostly enjoyed it. Sure, some of the twists were predictable but overall I thought it was well executed with one glaring exception
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Boring? Sounds like they have a lock on the feel of the source material. [never could stand the damn show]
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Once...there was a group of unsuspecting studio executives who wished to remake another popular show from yesteryear into a feature film.
Things did not play out quite the way they'd imagined...
Things did not play out quite the way they'd imagined...
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Amen.
Star Wars films were a fun adventure through a very cool looking universe that looked way interesting and deep .... but they gave us few details.
It added a real richness to everything going on, without the film having to bother to explain much at all.
" I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.'
I have no idea what that is, but it adds depth and weight to the scene.
You had the books and such for folks who wanted to dive head first into stuff, but good book or bad book, the films maintained the mystery.
And as soon as we went to the prequels and had to watch the Senate or ... whatever those scenes were, all was lost.
Mysteries have weight, they are believable because we don't know, they can shift around as we wish them to. Nailing down every nail or detail gets messy restrictive, questions become "wait that doesn't make sense", or "man the jedi / skywalkers actually kinda suck".
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Looks like hot garbage.
How do you 'reboot' this from a light heart comedy to a slasher/torture porn flick?
Well, for starters, Mitt Romney would have a job after politics.
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To a degree, I agree. The Force was enough just being The Force. Later we're told that it permeates and binds everything, but that doesn't really diminish it. Midichlorians did.
(Side note: if they'd cast midichlorians as something that was a result of Force capabilities, I wouldn't have minded them so much. They'd still be superfluous, but at least not ridiculous.)
That's a great establishing line, which told us a lot about the universe with two sentences. There's an Empire and an Emperor, there used to be a Republic with a representative government, and that's no longer in place.
There's also the followups:
Tagge: "But that's impossible. How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?"
Tarkin: "The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line...fear of this battle station."
A handful more sentences tell us that the Empire is run feudally, and has to be the bad guys because they have to intimidate the populace rather than having it's direct support.
Even most of the books kept the basic mysteries. The Force did some stuff, we had some muddy ideas about what it could and couldn't do, the Emperor rose out of the Clone Wars, and so on. But the underlying mysteries--the Jedi and Sith, the Force, and so on--remained pretty amorphous.
(Before the dark times. Before the mouse.)
Here, it gets murky. Showing the Clone Wars and rise of the Empire wasn't necessarily bad, it was just the delivery. And, you know, sci fi authors having no sense of scale. (JJ Abrams could do with some learnin' on the subject; both Star Trek and Star Wars suffered from his lack of understanding that space is vastly, mind-bogglingly big.)
Overall, I think the biggest issue with the movies is not thinking about the broader implications. "The Light rises to meet the Dark" turns the force into some sort of balance beam. Hyperspace travel being nearly instantaneous (which was ambiguous in the original movies) totally changes the practicality of the Rebellion. And so on.
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Still waiting for the Gilligan's Island, Fantasy Island, and Lost cross-over movie.
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Its not boring overall, there are a few parts though that some could consider boring.
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That depends entirely on what story you're trying to tell.
A story about an evil empire being opposed by mystical monks doesn't really need to explain why the mystical monks powers work - just that they do. (Unless the source of their powers is directly related to the empire's power, of course.)
In this case, the TV show was all about being careful what you wish for, and that your fantasies aren't always what you think. The focus is on the guests, not the island. The movie apparently tried to make it about the island - and failed.
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Ow ya.. If they can make a horror movie out The Banana Splits, then surely a Gilligan's Island horror theme should be doable.
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That would have been so meta if that had been part of it...
Sadly, it appears that the show wasn't that imaginative.
I am a bit bummed out by the fact they're not using the same plane. They had a Grumman Widgeon in the original series (actually, a SCAN Type 30 licensed by Grumman), but it appears to be a DHC-3 Turbo Otter amphib floatplane (Tail# DQ-SEA, yes, I have that kind of time to look at previews/reviews to get the tail number and look it up).
I liked the Grumman, myself, since I like 1940's designs, but the Otter is a somewhat newer model and probably safer for filming.
I don't think I'll be seeing this unless it's streamed on Netflix. The reviews elsewhere pretty much reflect what Jennifer wrote here, with one of them saying the second half played more like a mystery movie than a horror movie (which it didn't do very well at all). It has a PG-13 rating, so horror isn't going to be very horrifying with that rating, I imagine.
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Good God, what's next on the Reboot Parade? The Love Boat?
Hey, studios, some new and original material would be welcome.
Hey, studios, some new and original material would be welcome.
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Gilligan's island meets Lord of the Flies: Hey Skipper Piggy, I guess I goofed again, huh. Now Mr Howl is gonna baste us alive!
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Love boot? I almost bet that's a thing, but I'm afeard to look it up. Because You can't unsee or unknow things.
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It's been a "Doctor Who" tradition pretty much forever that The Master - after pretty much unequivocally dying or otherwise sent away with no chance of return in some earlier episode - pops up once again without a shred of explanation about how he/she managed to still be alive, beyond maybe waving it off with, "It's complicated."
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Because there were so many pressing, unanswered questions from the TV series, they made a movie to clear things up.
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The Coronavirus will provide the plot twist. The results of Norovirus infections were thought to be not photogenic enough. And of course if we could get instantly transmissible, fast acting, TB onto the boat, we could have all those luminous, pale, photogenic, Victorian consumptive heroines dying like flies, and steal some cool tunes from Verdi or Puccini. For scriptwriters, Dorland's Medical Dictionary and a Carnival Cruise schedule could guarantee lifelong employment.
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Why did anyone expect anything out of this? It was made by the same inept team behind Truth or Dare.
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As if millions of internet users raised their hands, and were suddenly in agreement.
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Apparently the movie is so boring it is more interesting to discuss midi chlorians. Ouch.
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For those interested in a fun adrenaline rush. Check out VFW. It's action, exploitation, horror in the vein of John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 (yeah, I know it's basically a more violent Rio Bravo) with the violet practical F/X sensibilities of stuff like Bone Tomahawk and Brawl on Cell Block 99. It's a simple siege film without any pretense. Good modern drive-in fare that we just don't see much these days.
Great old school ensemble cast - Fred Williamson (and his son), Martin Kove, David Patrick Kelly, William Sadler, Stephen Lang, and George Wendt. Moves along briskly, isn't boring, and works great if you like old no holds barred grindhouse exploitation without any artsy fartsy art-house pretension of having some deeper meaning.
Somebody give this crew a real budget and see what they can do. Why work with the people that gave us garbage like Truth or Dare, Blumhouse?
Great old school ensemble cast - Fred Williamson (and his son), Martin Kove, David Patrick Kelly, William Sadler, Stephen Lang, and George Wendt. Moves along briskly, isn't boring, and works great if you like old no holds barred grindhouse exploitation without any artsy fartsy art-house pretension of having some deeper meaning.
Somebody give this crew a real budget and see what they can do. Why work with the people that gave us garbage like Truth or Dare, Blumhouse?
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I have no interest in yet another 70s series reboot, so this comment isn't about Fantasy Island. I just wanted to comment on the Star Wars comments. Which means this is off topic and you can downvote with glee if you want:
RE: midichlorians...
I've never been closer to walking out of an in-progress movie than when they came up with that ridiculous line. I know at least one friend of mine actually did walk out and demand a refund. While I dislike the Disney-wars movies save one (Rogue One), they at least saved us from the midichlorians!
That's all. You're now free to return to munching popcorn.
RE: midichlorians...
I've never been closer to walking out of an in-progress movie than when they came up with that ridiculous line. I know at least one friend of mine actually did walk out and demand a refund. While I dislike the Disney-wars movies save one (Rogue One), they at least saved us from the midichlorians!
That's all. You're now free to return to munching popcorn.
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Not really a reboot, but I am intrigued about the upcoming Invisible Man. That has some potential for plot twists that you won’t see coming.
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If it actually stays true to the H.G. Wells book for a change I'm interested, otherwise meh.
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