Children of Men vs. Pan’s Labyrinth

[bad beetz]

It’s all about expectations for me with these two movies… Because of the expectations I had, Pan’s Labyrinth let me down and Children of Men delivered.

Pan’s Labyrinth: This movie let me down in the exact same way that “Contact” did. It was false advertising. With “Contact,” I wanted Jetsons walkways, multi-headed aliens, and new planets. What I got was religious conflict over who gets to go to outer space and if there really is a God or not. Boring. That wasn’t what I was there for, to see Jodie foster bicker with the religious right. “Contact” in my opinion, can suck it, and suck it hard. If you watch the trailers for it, you expect something COMPLETELY different. Weak sauce. However, if I had seen a trailer that made it out to be what it was, I probably would have thought it was a pretty darn good movie. This is why I never read reviews.
Pan’s Labyrinth is a movie about a girl in Fascist Spain where the realm oscillates between a reality filled with atrocities, and her fantasy world which she escapes to, filled with fantastic mythical creatures. The Trailers made it out to be a split in favor of the fantasy world, and that I would be awestruck with its extraordinary fairy-tale characters. [censored] that. You know what I got? A fawn, a couple fairies, a big ass boring frog, and…. OK, the eye-hand monster guy was [censored] awesome, but still, not enough. I came to see fantasy, and what I got was mostly hard painful reality. It was an 80/20 split that should have been flipped the other way around, just like “The Cell.”
I know it’s going to suck balls, but I’m really anxious to see 300M, cause I think it’s going to deliver what it promises.

Children of Men offers a creative vision of what the world is like with no one under 18 years old. It’s steadily gripping. The way its shot helps you experience violence in a new way, which is nice; because 27 years of violence on TV really helps you not feel anything when you see it. You have to shoot it in a new way to spark a feeling. I admit I’m hugely biased for this film, as anything post-apocalypse is my favorite (I just read “The Road” and loved it loved it). Anyway, it’s a fun movie, I wasn’t really bored. As a useless comment: I thought that the scene where Clive Owen is drinking around the corner while they’re talking about his lost son in the other room is sublime, because I didn’t think to myself “Oh god they’re doing ‘lost son’ character development, I should take this chance to go take a piss.” The ending’s a downer, but I don’t think there’s anything else they could have really done with it.


Anyway, both movies are pretty good, but Pan's Labrynth let me down. I was so excited for it.

[Fedfan691]

I agree with the vast majority of your assessment. I think had the hype for pan's labyrinth not been there, I would have liked it about the same as I liked children of men, which was a whole lot. But due to the disappointment from all the hype, I liked children of men much more than pan's, simply because I walked in without any real expectations.

Oh, and you're right about McCarthy's "The Road." Awesome book.

[El Diablo]

beetz,

"The way its shot helps you experience violence in a new way"

Unless you are a film fan who loves post-apocalypse/end-of-world style movies, in which case you obviously would have seen 28 Days Later and thought this was shot in a very similar manner.

[El Diablo]

beetz,

"The Trailers made it out to be a split in favor of the fantasy world"

That is a very good point. That would actually make a pretty good thread, trailers that largely misrepresent the movie.

[ChromePony]

I haven't seen Pan's, but I felt that Children of Men let me down a little bit. It was very well shot and put together but I kept waiting for some satifactory explanation of what happened and it just never came. This basically reduced the plot into a basic action movie, "We must accomplish this task while other people are trying to kill us", even though it was produced more artistically than say Die Hard or whatever I wanted more from the plot. I think the background story had a lot of potential so I guess I was just hoping for more and while I enjoyed it enough, it just didn't really deliver on the level I wanted it to.

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]
I haven't seen Pan's, but I felt that Children of Men let me down a little bit. It was very well shot and put together but I kept waiting for some satifactory explanation of what happened and it just never came. This basically reduced the plot into a basic action movie, "We must accomplish this task while other people are trying to kill us", even though it was produced more artistically than say Die Hard or whatever I wanted more from the plot. I think the background story had a lot of potential so I guess I was just hoping for more and while I enjoyed it enough, it just didn't really deliver on the level I wanted it to.

[/ QUOTE ]

My roommate had read the book a while ago and liked it as a science-fiction book. Consequently, he was disappointed with the movie, because it's pretty weak in that department. Die Hard is actually I think a very valid comparison, in a lot of ways; COM is just a really effective action movie, with a sweet premise and some political commentary (Homeland Security/visual references to Abu Ghraib/etc.) thrown in. The ambush scene in particular got me on edge more than I can remember a movie doing in quite some time.

[tdarko]

I want to see Pan's for the opposite reason of you. I am not much of a fantasy/sci fi lover and the 80/20 gritty "painful reality" as you say is what I heard as well and this is what attracted me to this since I was initially turned off from the movie when I saw the trailer, which made it seem almost like a children's fantasy movie.

I have The Road sitting on my shelf. I need to find time to read it, thanks for reminding me.

[ChromePony]

EDIT: Not sure if this is a spoiler cause its kinda the whole premise of the movie, and I don't what you're doing in this thread if you want to avoid spoilers, but consider yourself warned.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I haven't seen Pan's, but I felt that Children of Men let me down a little bit. It was very well shot and put together but I kept waiting for some satifactory explanation of what happened and it just never came. This basically reduced the plot into a basic action movie, "We must accomplish this task while other people are trying to kill us", even though it was produced more artistically than say Die Hard or whatever I wanted more from the plot. I think the background story had a lot of potential so I guess I was just hoping for more and while I enjoyed it enough, it just didn't really deliver on the level I wanted it to.

[/ QUOTE ]

My roommate had read the book a while ago and liked it as a science-fiction book. Consequently, he was disappointed with the movie, because it's pretty weak in that department. Die Hard is actually I think a very valid comparison, in a lot of ways; COM is just a really effective action movie, with a sweet premise and some political commentary (Homeland Security/visual references to Abu Ghraib/etc.) thrown in. The ambush scene in particular got me on edge more than I can remember a movie doing in quite some time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Anyone know if the book does a better job explaining the situation in CoM?

I just don't find the whole, no more children -> total chaos to be an obvious result. Yeah it would be tramatic, but from a purely economic perspective there are less dependents to take care of so it seems like there should be more resources for everyone else. Instead it seems that society gets broken down into a sort of class system with martial law imposed and lots of foreigners are kicked out of the UK and left starving the in streets/forests.

It would also be nice to have a little more confidence in these magical people and fancy ship that they are trying to get to but we really learn nothing about them.

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]

I just don't find the whole, no more children -> total chaos to be an obvious result. Yeah it would be tramatic, but from a purely economic perspective there are less dependents to take care of so it seems like there should be more resources for everyone else. Instead it seems that society gets broken down into a sort of class system with martial law imposed and lots of foreigners kicked out of the UK and are left starving the in streets/forests.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's different; it's really only obliquely mentioned a couple of times, but the implication is that terrorist attacks have shredded pretty much every other major urban center, and that Britain is pretty much the last country left standing. Thus all the refugees, which is where the martial law is coming from.

There are less dependents, but as your workforce wanes your production also goes down, etc. Apparently (secondhand here) the book does a better job looking at all of the consequences of this, and also adds the wrinkle that it was all the dudes who went infertile. This makes a bunch more sense, because if you found one fertile guy he could really get to work on the repopulation front. Kee, not so much. But for visual reasons (and hell, perhaps even because this hopelessness was something the director was shooting for) I can see why they made the switch.

[neuroman]

Expectations ruining movies are the reason I try (as much as possible) to avoid learning anything beyond the basic premise of a movie. I find it generally makes movies in the theater more enjoyable.