What else has she been in? She did a good job of being androgynous (sp?).
B-but it’s fucking Keanu!
That’s exactly what I thought too, but there are so many spoiler boxes in this thread that I can’t find the other POV. Who said something else 
I’m amused that the guy I thought “kind of looks like Gavin Rosdale” was 
One of the nice thing about being comic illiterate (except X-Men) is that I seem to enjoy comic-based movies like this one and the Blade series more than a lot of fans do. But not Daredevil and Spiderman - I didn’t like them either.
The only ones I’ve seen from her IMDb list are Vanilla Sky and The Beach
You’re mostly correct here, but you’ve got the names wrong. [spoiler]Lucifer is not among the three; this storyline happened after Lucifer had already resigned and left Hell in a Sandman story. The three demons to whom Constantine sold his soul were the group that replaced him.
I’m not certain the three demons were named, except the one you identify as Lucifer was called the “First of the Fallen,” and was apparently so old and nasty that when Lucifer fell into Hell, he was already there.[/spoiler]
Strangely enough, it doesn’t/ There is a lot of CGI, but it all plays into the story effectively. They don’t act shy about showing you the monsters and all the horrible things that happen - it’s not a horror movie. But it quite never turns into an action flick, either, not even in the 3rd act. And that’s a good thing.
Whoosh.
Yes, but…
He healed Constantine to keep him from heaven and give him time to screw up again like you say. That wasn’t the flaw pointed out earlier though. The flaw is that Lucifer didn’t need to allow him to save Isabelle. At this point Lucifer had already won. All he needed to do was collect Constantine’s soul and leave.
I’ve never read Hellblazer. I’m not much of a Reeves fan either. I thought he was decent and the movie worthy of seeing. It wasn’t great, but not bad. My biggest complaint was…
I didn’t like the casting choice for Lucifer. It might have been more than just the casting. I didn’t care for his slightly unhinged mannerisms. He just didn’t seem smooth and sauve enough. Maybe it’s accurate to the source though?
Definitely not original to the source. The Lucifer of the comics is very suave and elegant, closer to the movie’s Balthazar, and he’s a stickler for the details of a contract. The movie scene is borrowed liberally from the comic but stripped of its context it loses almost everything that made the original one of the high points of the series. Comic book Lucifer is definitely not a scenery chewing, eye-rolling nutcase, and he’s much too smart to let Constantine outsmart him in the manner he does in the movie. In the comic Constantine still beats him, but in a much more clever manner.
I think:
Constantine never outsmarted Satan in the movie. That was the whole point. He wasn’t trying to trick anyone. He knew he was going down and there was no evading it. He was simply doing a favor for a near-stranger, no more and no less. He didn’t just think he was going to Hell, he knew. So, since he was already screwed, he just did something because it was the right thing to do.
I realize that your reply was more directly towards Selkie’s post, but since it relates to what I wrote:
My issue with Lucifer has nothing to do with whether Constantine outsmarted him or if it was just a selfless act. The problem is that Lucifer should have just collected Constantine and left. There was no deal or contract. He had no obligation to grant Constantine a wish.
The movie needed a rewrite based on someone noticing that the earlier occult stuff is far cooler than the object based solution at the end. Also in this hypothetical rewrite they could have caught the issue that’s been in the spoiler box discussion, to which I will now add:
I suspect that there are two things that contribute to the scene, neither of which has sufficient support from the rest of the movie. If one of these had been picked and written into earlier parts it would have been a very good movie, or an absolutely terrible one that blew its ending.
The first is the devil doesn’t want to feel in debt. Notice that there is a comerce focused metaphysics at play in John’s mind, and that the forces of heaven reject this. If hell had been shown to embrace it then the scene would have been natural. Lucifer is in the debt of John as a result of what he did. Given that Lucifer doesn’t appear in the movie earlier it is impossible to set up his personality, but I think people would buy into hell’s agents playing out Lucifer’s prefered method of doing things.
The second is that the devil was asking a rhetorical question. In the form of “So, you did something that helped me and saved the world, what do you think that earns you?” It was small talk. Lucifer is gloating over the whole situation, is interupted to stop his son, and then returns to gloating. John gives an answer to the rhetorical question, surprising Lucifer, and then Lucifer claims that he released the soul to heaven. He may have been planning on taking John to see Isabel suffering in hell, because that kind of shit is sure to make Lucifer laugh his ass off. I suspect that something in the ball park of the second was more the point, but it is harder to set up for. Having Lucifer be in the middle of saying more instead of waiting for an actual answer would have made it clear that Lucifer didn’t really expect any answer and that his discussion over a reward was just waiting for the moment of actual passage.
I also thought that the reviews were lacking. I suspect a number of reviewers had started in on their slams and the movie simply wasn’t good enough at the start to pull them away from this. The movie was far better than I expected it to be, but I had fairly low expectations that had been lowered further by reviews.
Oh, and as for the other boxed issue:
Constantine implies that half-breed is a term that he, and maybe a few others, apply. I suspect it just means that it is a demon or angel in a mortal body, as the demon that Constantine threatens to send to heaven points out that flame isn’t a great weapon against him because he was born in fire.
I said that, too, when I first heard about him being cast in this movie as J.C., but enough people whose taste in movies I tend to share have liked this enough that I’m going to have to check it out for myself.
I mean, at least it’s not as universally tragic as the Travesty of Extraordinary Magnitude…er…League of Extraordinary Gentlement.
bamf
I saw it tonight, trying everything I could to watch it without any of my prejudices from being a big fan of Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis’ runs on Hellblazer.
Overall verdict: I think they took the whole “balance” concept too much to heart, because they ended up making a movie that was overwhelmingly mediocre. Not the abomination I expected it to be, but not a particularly good movie on its own merits, either.
The Good: Rachel Weisz, who’s just plain hot, period. (Or, exclamation point). She was totally into the movie and the characters and gave it her all. Plus, her American accent was perfect; I never would’ve guessed she was British if I didn’t already know.
The style was good. I could appreciate that they were trying for a modern-day film noir with angels and demons taking the place of mobsters and cops, instead of a story about a British ex-punk con artist who knows the occult. It’s more The Big Sleep than The Sting, and that worked.
The guy from Bush was good, as was Peter Stormare’s “Lucifer as Truman Capote.” Tilda Swinton was really good as “Gabriel as David Bowie.” The exorcism scene at the beginning was well-done. There were plenty of neat sequences (the prologue, Constantine’s first entry into the nightclub, the priest who can’t get a drink in the mini-mart, the introduction of Gabriel). I liked that they included Chas as Constantine’s driver. Overall, they stayed true to the idea of “inspired by Hellblazer” while putting a stylistic spin on it.
The Bad: It’s just not a good movie. It feels as if it were made by people who’ve seen good movies before and know what kind of stuff goes in them, but weren’t capable of making one themselves. They were light on the exposition, which is good, but forgot that you still have to use some way to explain what’s happening. So many of the events which would’ve seemed cool had they been explained at all, instead just seemed thrown in without any relevance.
I still say Keanu Reeves was horribly mis-cast. Not because he doesn’t look like Constantine from the comic, but because he just couldn’t play that character. I don’t hate the guy; I just make fun of him because he’s an easy target. But he was really bad in this movie – he was every bit as wooden as he is in every other movie; he was so clearly trying to act like a bitter, jaded man instead of just seeming like one; and he just plain delivered his lines poorly. He’s not a young man anymore – he’s in his early 40’s – but he still just seemed like somebody trying to act like a grown-up.
My biggest beef is that they ruined the ending. They took so much from the comic, everything except for the ingenious twist at the end. The comic sets it up as this big con game with the highest stakes imaginable, but the movie just turns it into a boring and predictable “one man’s redemption” story.
In the movie, Constantine just sacrifices himself to save a woman (or actually, two women). There’s nothing really clever or sneaky about that. In the book, the whole storyline is an elaborate con game pitting the rulers of Hell against each other and against Heaven itself, and you’re wondering how the hell he’s going to be able to pull it off. And when the twist is revealed (can’t kill him because that would bring about the Apocalypse), you’re left thinking “Damn, that’s clever!” At the end of the movie, you’re just left thinking, “Damn, that’s exactly what I expected to happen because it’s exactly like at least a dozen other movies.”
Most annoying is that in the book, Constantine tricks his way out of Hell. In the movie, Lucifer isn’t really tricked at all; he saves Constantine’s life as a punishment. Much, much more predictable and less satisfying.
So… eh. It’s by no means the travesty that I was expecting. But it’s completely forgettable and unremarkable.
Hate to break it to you… but… your friends’ tastes have turned to swill. Don’t trust them. Trust your first instincts. Think back to when you first heard THIS guy was going to play THIS guy, who was inspired in part by THIS GUY. Now repeat these three little words until the world makes sense again.
“It’s fucking Keanu!”
Embrace the hate.
Isnt the second ‘This guy’ a drawing of Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart?
MiM
It could have been worse. Remember the rumors about This Guy?
I saw it last week, and although I only read enough Hellblazer to know that the choice of Keanu was a terrible one, I enjoyed the movie. It wasn’t amazing, but the visuals were good and not too overblown, the characters were pretty interesting for an action flick, and it had some good witt here and there. I didn’t like the portrayal of Lucifer, either…the twitchiness was annoying and took away from his presence. Not the best portrayal of the devil I’ve seen, but other than him, the other actors and characters were pretty good. I really liked Pappa Midnight.
A few questions for those who’ve read the books…was Gabriel supposed to be the Archangel Gabriel? Because I was also having a hard time telling whether or not the “Half-breeds” were supposed to be angels or not, and in the comic, Gabriel’s a man, so I was just curious if they took a bit of poetic licence here, or if the character was a different Gabriel. (And a note: Lucifer’s motives all seemed pretty clear cut to me, but Gabriel’s were rather out of left field in my opinion…that’s the one thing about the movie that really bugged me).
And what is the connection between Swamp Thing and John? It seems an odd mix, in my opinion, a comic about nature and another one dealing with demons and whatnot. One of the comics I read was John’s birthday, and Swampie showed up, and it didn’t reallly seem like they were friends, but there was some respect there. How are the two connected?
The Archangel Gabriel, in a human host, yes. The Angels of the DCU, at least in the Vertigo depictions, are androgynous. Tilda Swinton was perfectly cast. Gabriel’s motive, as far as I can tell from the movie’s context, was just what John suggested : Insanity.
John Constantine was created as a supporting character in the Swamp Thing title originally.
Are you referring to the Superman casting brouhaha, or about the upcoming Ghost Rider flick? Because I personally would pay good money to see Nicholas Cage’s head set on fire.