I see widespread critical acclaim for this movie. Aside from the cinematography and/or art direction, I see very little redeeming about this movie. Johnny Depp is certainly no singer. As an actor, we’ve seen his arch characterizations of several personas in many movies, and this is no different. The music is certainly not the point. But mainly, the explicit gore is undeniably gratuitous, and only subtracts from any enjoyment I might have felt watching the movie. The stage play and the opera worked just fine with minimal realism, e.g. a knife that can be made to squirt stage blood and simulate a throat cutting. The victims on stage were sent to their final destination *feet first * through a trap door in the stage floor. End. But in the movie, not only do we see virtually front view and closeup of the blood letting, which goes on in some cases for several seconds, but the people are sent downstairs head first, and are shown landing on their heads, crushing skulls, etc. There must be eight or so murders shown that way in the two hours of the movie. That, added to a very realistic burned-alive view of the store-keeper in the oven. Are we so innured against the views of violence that we just shrug our shoulders and say, “Ah, what the hell, it’s just pretend - it’s art, for god’s sake”? Are so many viewers used to splatter movies that it’s all just ignored? How in the hell can this be considered a top-notch movie?
How far away from this quote have we come when critical acclaim looks away from the bulk of the production?
“Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
I have seen the play several times, but not the movie. Theatre and film are two very different media, and I would expect the film version to be gorier than the stage play, only because the latter must work with a limited pallette of special effects, while the movie can incorporate much more. On the stage, you have to be careful not to make much of a mess and not to injure the actors, two problems that have much more leeway in a movie. And don’t forget that the gore is fairly central to the theme and plot. These people were crudely and inhumanely butchered, and that’s never pretty. To portray their deaths with a single squirt of red liquid and a swift trip, feet-first, landing intact in the cellar, seems extremely unrealistic. What you described is pretty much what I would expect.
The film is supposed to be very dark. Part of that is the stylized violence. There are different genres of splatter films. This film aspires to be more than simply a gore-fest. There’s definitely some social commentary in there, IMHO about greed and commercialism in society.
Understandably, there are some people who don’t like to see violence and gore, regardless of how it fits into the film. It is definitely somewhat of a horror film, which doesn’t mean it is somehow less artistically legitimate, but it does mean that it will simply not appeal to some people.
Yes, but the gore is gratuitous. The social commentary can be made - is made in the play - without such clarity of presentation. And movies with gratuitous violence or sex or anything, for that matter, are dishonest. It’s art that shits its own nest and makes for poor lodgings for anyone else.
Interesting…I saw it with a friend who does not like scary movie fare. She laughed her head off the whole time and then went back to see it again a few weeks later. We agreed that it was a deliberately over-the-top dark comedy.
I was much more grossed-out by the meat grinder than by the blood.
As for the singing, some of the actors managed to do a decent job and others did better, but these songs require emotion more than vocal talent, and I thought they brought out the emotions successfully.
That’s all.
Perhaps Tim Burton did not consider the violence gratuitous, but there in perfect measure. Of course I have no idea if he did or not, but it’s a thought worth considering. I haven’t seen the play, but I’m also willing to consider that Burton was not necessarily trying to make the same social commentary as in the play, so the presentation would be different.
The fact that the audience isn’t seeing the action from 15-20 feet away means that they expect the violence to look more realistic. I thought it was very good, though not great, but I didn’t fault Burton for the gore. It is about a murderer, after all.
I saw this movie last weekend - I went in only knowing it was a musical about a barber and his landlady who kill people and turn them into meat pies. I dislike gory movies and torture porn, but didn’t have any problem with Sweeney Todd. The parts that made me cringe were the slooooooow throat-slitting and the bodies hitting the ground; the gushing blood seemed deliberately over the top and didn’t even register on my goreometer.
I absolutely loved it and went knowing that it was bloodthirsty stuff. I don’t think the gore was gratuitous.The gore doesn’t begin until late in the piece after the incident with the Judge. Todd then launches into “Epiphany”. Read Sondheim’s lyrics here and you will see that Burton’s direction is true to the intent of the drama. And later when Mrs Lovett lovingly contemplates life “By The Sea” Todd is a completely different man due to his circumstances and actions.
I might add that I find gore for its own sake unattractive in movies. It is too easy to make movies where gore is a substitute for plot or tension. I have for instance seen none of the Saw franchise nor Hostel but found the gory scenes in Saving Private Ryan and Enemy At The Gates hard to take but easy to accept as drama.
The scenes in Sweeney Todd don’t come as gory surprises, there is a loving theatrical build up.
It’s easily the worst movie I’ve seen this year, and I just watched Rambo. I had to rewatch Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands again to cool my hatred Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. I didn’t care about any of the characters at all. Saw the twist ending a lightyear away. The singing is weak and the plot is worse. I hate this fucking movie.
I’m just glad we’ve got so many other great movies this year to keep this turd a mile away from a Best Picture Oscar.
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I thought it was one of the best films of the past year and I would have been very pleased had it been nominated for Best Picture.
I am a huge fan of the original musical and I loved what they did with it. The gore was so over the top that it was not disturbing. It was more on the level of the Kill Bill Crazy 88s fight scene than anything in **Saw **or Hostel. The only thing I felt was too much was showing all the victims landing on their heads. It’s not done that way in the musical, and that part seemed a bit like shock for shock’s sake. But the throat-slitting? No I did not feel that was over the top at all.
Just come back from seeing this film (yes I know it’s taken me ages to see it but then it only came out on Jan 24th here).
What a pile of shit. I walked out after 30 minutes of excruciating boredom and that’s before any of the gore even began (so I don’t know if it was gratuitous or not). I knew it was a musical but was so completely over the whole singing-as-speaking dialogue in five minutes; I didn’t expect it to be like an opera although I gather from reading other threads it’s based on one so that’s my bad.
But regardless, it seemed that there was only one direction for every character in the film and that was “look into the distance and sing with a pained expression on your face”, because that’s all I saw. So that’s £8 and and hour (adverts, trailers and 30 mins of cack film) out of my life I won’t get back. The best part of the whole experience was seeing the trailer for Jumper.