Digital Media & Branding

The first thing that must said about The Chronicles of Narnia is that they are in fact made for children. This is an epic series for young imaginative minds and I believe the author, C.S. Lewis did this with purpose. In my opinion Lewis had set out to present deep and timeless truths by using allegory that may or may not be timeless itself.
That being said, I will now do my best to review this movie as a movie….not a retelling of the book, but a retelling of the timeless truths that C.S. Lewis intended to convey. I will also briefly say, that I believe the voyages in the book were much richer and more meaningful than the movie portrayed. I think that the writers who transcript the novel to a screen play made some silly changes that didn’t need to be made. So if this were a review of how well the story was told, it would not get the same ratio of stars.

But this is a movie review, and alas, it is time to review the movie!!

The director was Michael Apted who’s other movies include Coal Minor’s Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist, The World is Not Enough, and a few other films that give him credibility. Apted and his team did a great job setting up the shots that included a slew of complicated CGi characters. The actors reacted well to those characters and you very quickly forgot that they were CGi.
Reepicheep is one of Narnia’s most noble characters who fervently seeks after adventure and honor. He has the heart of a lion and the stature of a mouse. As a matter of fact, he is a mouse! To truly fall in love with Reepicheep I would suggest reading the book or finding a radio drama of the chronicled stories. I was impressed that this fully CGi character wasn’t EVER distractingly CGi. Even in the Lord of the Rings, the amazingly constructed Gollum was many times obviously a CGi character. I have great respect for the 3D artists that made these characters come to life.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT IN 3D???? No! Spend that extra money on a soda or candy! I’m not an anti-3D person. I think there is a time and a place. This movie did not benefit from 3D.

The acting was done well and you will either love to hate our new character Eustace Scrubb or you will just hate him! This was a GREAT cast! This little guy has a face that drips with bitterness and pride yet has the acting chops to make you feel like he’s “work in progress”. And you better get used to that face, because his character is the lead role in the next Chronicle.

This story is more about Lucy and Edmund making that transformation from children to young adults. Lucy gets most of the plot line in the movie and it is quite skewed from the true story from C.S. Lewis. However, these modern storytellers kept the same over all idea of our characters who are charged with making the right decisions under great temptations.

In short I believe that this movie was VERY well done and as a stand alone movie it is a great night at the cinema that your kids will enjoy as well as you adults! Just look past the subtle changes in the story line and quick moments of bad acting and you’ve got your self a 4 star movie!! Hope you go out and enjoy it. Please feel free to leave your thoughts about the movie below. Agree with me! Disagree with me!! As long as we’re still talking!

9 Things I Would Change About “Unstoppable“

1. Spend more of that $100 million budget on A List Writers rather than A List Actors. This script didn’t require great acting skills, although I think that Chris Pine and Denzel Washington did a great job. As a matter of fact, I think all of the actors did a great job! However, with a script like this, Twentieth Century Fox wasted money by paying for something and not using it to it’s full potential. It’s like they bought a the fastest car on the market, like the Bugatti Veyron and only driving it to church on Sundays. What a waste!! :/

2. Ex-nay the media and their crude exposition! The script writers take an easy approach to tell the audience what they need to know. The media comes in full blast with it’s “educating” the public about the train. If we look back on movies like Speed or Twister we can see how to effectively use the media to communicate to the audience without the story line suffering. The news became just as important of a character as any of the individuals in this extraordinary circumstance. In short, every time this form of exposition was implemented I was reminded one way or another, that I was in a movie made in 1991.

3. Character Development. This is my #1 pet peeve of all time regarding story telling. If the story teller wants me to invest in a character, they MUST give me something of substance to invest into! In Unstoppable we are very quickly thrown into many characters with cliche back stories (which frankly doesn’t bother me), ordinary work place circumstances, and one very big extraordinary dilemma. There are people dying and getting hurt and I realized……I could care less about these people. The News Media told me why I should care….but I didn’t FEEL it. Just because the News Media outlet informs us of his patriotism doesn’t mean that it will summon up strong emotions to our audience. In fact, it’s a MAJOR clue that in a few minutes this new character in the movie will get seriously injured or maybe even die. Telling the audience facts about a person is not what makes us relate to the individual. Watch the movie Brothers to see how to make a war vet relate-able.

4. More creativity when telling a cliche back story. I mentioned before that I don’t really mind a cliche back story. There is no story that hasn’t been told already in some form or fashion. I have a problem with cliche when you approach it without even trying to be creative and unique. Our Co-star Will, played by Chris Pine from Star Trek (2009), has some very shady past that has separated him from his family and he obviously wants things to get back to the way they were. He also seems to have some rich uncle that is…..somebody important?? I don’t really know, they dropped the ball on that one.

5. No pay off to some potentially great sub-story lines. Here at Storied we’ve been discussing how this movie got the green light. It must have been the combination of a proven Director, Tony Scott, two blockbuster actors like Denzel and Chris Pine, and finally the writer Mark Bomback from a few successful scripts we’ve seen over the past 12 years. I’m sure that Twentieth Century Fox is saying to themselves, “Why didn’t we at least read the script?” “I thought you read it?” “No, I thought you read it.” And Tony Scott says, “None of you read it? Because I didn’t read it either!!” And Mark Bomback is at home scrambling for that rough draft of a script he jotted down on paper called “Unstoppable”. This movie felt like a first stage writing that needed another six months of solid work.

6. Comic relief character was run over by the inertia of the movie. We had this really great character with yellow glasses and a fantastic yellow beard and an all denim attire! He was great!!! At least he could have been. his part got ran over…not by that train….but the interrupting news media who had the incessant need to stop everything and “inform” us of something stupid, like how many oil tankers are dangerously close to the bridge that is expected to derail the train full of explosives.

7. Develop the Random Know-It-All Character to be an actual Character. Kevin Corrigan does a great job playing a federal inspector who happens to be at the station’s head quarters to talk to a class of children. His character, Inspector Werner, had just about any answer the were looking for and was always right. The script didn’t allow this character to become the hero that he actually was. We wanted to see a chracter a little more like Jeff Goldbloom in Independence Day (1996) or even like Gary Sinise in Mission to Mars (2000) I believe they could have done a little more with this character than just a random happen-stance that ended up saving a lot of lives.

8. Music is a score not a soundtrack. This is a small comment that may not be shared by my fellow film critics. In an artsy movie like The Last Kiss (2006) or 500 Days of Summer (2009) it is totally ok to have a soundtrack. Songs by various artist that fit the mood and circumstances to help portray the Story Teller’s vision…Sound Track. In a hopeful “blockbuster” like Unstoppable was supposed to be, they should have stuck with a score. I’m defining a score as delicately placed music just under recognition of the audience that helps move the story emotionally. Again…I’m being a little over critical here, but I was distracted by the use of music especially when we were introduced to Frank’s daughters.

9. Don’t use the same camera dolly and sweeping motion every 3 seconds. My final point that will make you think I’m a film snob…I got really bored with the cinematography. There’s only so many ways you can shoot something like a train. I admit the cinematographers had a more difficult job than you may realize. The script called for a train to be traveling at a fast distance, and by the nature of trains they cannot veer off course or have too many variables that can add a new element to the situation. The cockpit, where the engineers sit was a small space with little room for interesting camera angles. They did a great job at first making this tight spot an energetic piece of cinema. Then it quickly became apparent that they ran out of ideas and just recycled shot after shot. I assume their was no story board.

Well there you have it! Those are the 9 things we would like to change about “Unstoppable”. Do you agree or disagree?? Discussion is welcome and you will be heard! Leave your thoughts below.