Movies that could have, should have, been much better than they were.

Cafe Society
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I will concede that while Watchmen had plenty of flaws, its ending did in some ways improve on the original ending from the comic book.

[spoiler]In the comic book, Ozymandius essentially developed two different plots; one to remove Dr Manhattan, who he felt was raising international tensions by concentrating too much power in America’s hands, and a second to unite all the nations in the world by manufacturing a extraterrestrial threat.

The problem was that his plan was unnecessarily complicated and therefore liable to failure. While he did succeed in temporarily removing Dr Manhattan from Earth, his extraterrestrial threat could have easily reversed that. Faced with an alien invasion, many people would have reversed their previous concerns about Dr Manhattan and wanted him back as a defense against the aliens. Ozymandius’ plotting could have easily ended up making Dr Manhattan more powerful than he had been before. (His plot only succeeded in the end because Dr Manhattan came to agree with it and voluntarily exiled himself from Earth.)

In the movie, Ozymandius had a single plot that tied these two elements together. His manufactured plot was to make it look like Dr Manhattan had gone crazy and had destroyed several cities. This meant when the nations of Earth united against a common threat, it was Dr Manhattan they were opposed to not some extraterrestrials. So the movie plot combined the goals of removing Dr Manhattan and uniting the world rather than trying to balance them against each other. [/spoiler]

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Let me get this straight: the deleted scene was a compute he had designed - in a very short space of time - to communicate with the computers of gigantic forcefield protected spaceships capable of travelling vast distances?

Yeah, I’m still not buying that.

163

I liked the Les Miserables musical movie a lot…it had its flaws but overall I found more in it to like than to dislike.

I was more or less okay with Russell Crowe’s voice, and liked it more on a second and third hearing (but see my comment at the end of this post). I was actually a little more disappointed with Jackman’s voice…for all his credentials as a Broadway singer, I’m not sure whether his voice was a proper fit for Valjean. (Ideally, the movie would have been cast with Les Mis stage veterans, but studios won’t greenlight a picture–least of all a movie musical–that doesn’t have some big-draw names.) Anne Hathaway, Aaron Tveit and Samantha Barks absolutely KILLED. And now that I have watched it several times on cable, there are lots of little tiny moments I pick up on (for example, Word of God says that the army captain and Enjolras were childhood friends–look closely and you can see the sorrow and regret at having to fight against him).

The close-ups that everyone seems to gripe about–well, they could be a little overdone at times. But I think I see where Tom Hooper was coming from in having so many. For all its rep as a mega-musical, most of Les Mis’ most important songs were done on an empty stage with only one or two characters. It’s one of the most intimate so-called “mega-musicals” that you can imagine, and for that reason lends itself well to smaller stage productions. I think Hooper was trying to duplicate that effect, of intimate moments in the middle of big, epic events, and in that he more or less succeeded.

But one thing hurt the movie in my eyes (and ears)–the CUTS. There seemed to be more of them (and clumsier ones) as the movie went on. It almost seemed as if the film editor was more and more nervous about the movie’s length as it went on, so s/he rushed it more and more.

And it’s a shame, because in fall 2012, the screenplay was leaked online. (Which was written, incidentally, by the author of Shadowlands, one of my favorite plays and movies.) The finished movie, to its credit, put in lots of stuff from the novel that couldn’t have been done onstage, but the original screenplay had even MORE stuff from The Brick.

Tom Hooper has said that he might release an extended edition. Whatever other flaws the movie had, I’d forgive them if only he did that.

He’s also said his original cut of the movie was about four hours. I wouldn’t necessarily want to see that (although it might be nice), but I’d be happy enough with full versions of The Confrontation, Master of the House, Attack on Rue Plumet (which is missing the verse that explains WHY Thenardier’s gang was there in the first place), A Little Fall of Rain, Drink with Me, and Javert’s Suicide (cutting out a verse wrecked the symmetry with Valjean’s soliloquy). All these restored would probably extend the movie by fifteen minutes–tops!

While we’re on the subject of cuts to musicals and movies that should have been better than they were, Sweeney Todd is another one, largely due to its very drastic cuts to its score and some of its script. Cutting verses out of good songs was bad enough, but Burton cut all the choral parts (which left God, That’s Good without a freaking TITLE PHRASE), the title song (which really hurts because he was going to have CHRISTOPHER LEE as part of a ghost chorus singing the song–why couldn’t he have just left it in as a voiceover?), the first scene with the Beggar Woman in the beginning (which left Sweeney to only really meet her at the end and took away from the impact of the final revelation), Kiss Me which left no scenes between Anthony and Johanna aside from their meeting and their escape…it was almost as if Burton was AFRAID to make it too much of a musical. And it’s a shame, because it’s got so much else to recommend it.

Oh, and what I said about Crowe as Javert? As I said, I liked him well enough, even though I’ve been spoiled by the likes of Philip Quast…the main thing wrong with his performance is that his is more of a rock voice, not a Broadway/operatic one. But it was still pretty good for the movie’s depiction of Javert.

BUT…I’ve heard a clip of Benedict Cumberbatch’s singing voice, and all I can say is…if only they’d cast him and he could have taken a little time off filming Star Trek Into Darkness…sigh…

164

I really wanted to like Get Smart, and Steven Carell is perfect casting, but damn they fucked that up.

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Aw. Now that was one TV-to-movie adaptation I DID like. They did a good job (I thought) of updating Maxwell Smart to the modern era, of being true to his character while not being a Don Adams clone. Plus, the old show’s schtick of the female agent allowing the man to take the credit all the time would NEVER have played today.

(And Alan Arkin stole every scene he was in.)