New Mewtents

I still don't know why this wasn't just released straight to VOD. Probably a contract thing that it had to hit theaters first and they didn't care enough?

So, new mutant Moonstar gets orphaned and is sent to this "institution" where there are four other mutants also institutionalised, one mutant lady in charge, and... no-one else. Seriously, this is a thin cast. Yes, there are other people filling in momentary roles, but this is basically a small cast in not much larger than a locked room. ANYWAY, spooky stuff starts happening, and who is to blame? Is it the new mutant with psionic powers who just turned up? Nah, couldn't be. But hey, gives them a chance for things to happen, so we get scenes, and thus a movie.

Really, this is fine, but it certainly had a build up of "when will this get released? we need to reshoot! ... but we may or may not use those reshoots... eh, we'll get this out some time." I don't know what the full production hold up was, but I find it hard to believe it was seriously reconsidered often, and, as I said, should have just been dumped on VOD.

The performances are all right, and I often spent time trying to remember "which mutant is this?" Pro-tip, they never actually give them their mutant names, so don't hang around for that. And there's the hand puppet... booooooo! The effects are decent, but at this point that should be the default (and yet still so many effects that aren't good).

Given than director Josh Boone said "nah, don't worry about covid, go see this," well, screw him, this isn't that important. Just wait for it to finally get put out on VOD.

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Malun

EDIT TO ADD: Given the actions of the movie makers, FUCK this movie.

So I'm going to talk about the live action, but here's the thing about that and the animated movie... we have both! You may like one, both, neither, but we have both so you can choose! Having one does not erase the other, they are different things, so let's move on.

The bulk of this movie does follow the animated version. Mulan isn't the typical daughter, her father is called to war and she goes instead, has to pretend to be male... then the main difference is a lack of guys dressing up in drag... I mean there is more emphasis on girl power. To the extent of the bad guys getting their own evil Mulan!

And as its own separate movie, it's fine. There are some very pretty moments, and frankly they could have lent harder into the wire fu and more supernatural elements. The opening feels like it is trying to be more real, but then we get a kite masquerading as a phoenix before the witch goes full force and, yeah, they could have gone harder into that for some really great sequences.

As for harking back to the animated movie, the score kept throwing in bits from "Reflection". Which does hammer on the "who is Mulan?" theme, but just made me want to go full on that song! This movie also echoes some of the other songs with spoken word versions of some of the lyrics, but doesn't get as obvious as "Reflection".

The real question we will see is, what will the live action sequels be like?

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NETEN

So, can I talk about this movie? There is definitely one part I want to discuss, more from a film perspective, but it is the scene near the end, so I'll put that in spoiler space so you don't see it on the main page.

Someone said this is "temporal James Bond", and that's pretty accurate. There is a big gimmick to this movie, but that became more about filming (see below) than the story. At various surprise points where we were supposed to go "what is happening?" I was just "oh, it's that" and I was right. So... yeah, not really surprised by it.

But the main reason this film could be considered "impressive" is in the filming of it. The gimmick meant that things had to be done really careful, and, I'm sure, with much rehearsal. I'm sure CGI helped, but even then you still had to have all the pieces in place. However...

SPOILERS

In the big fight at the end (shocking: there's a big fight at the end), we have two teams of good guys, and that was fine... but as far as I could tell, the fight was just them moving forwards and shooting. Aside from one or two plot scenes around the main leads, I couldn't even tell you that there were bad guys there, let alone what they did in the fight! It just felt like filming a war but only showing one side. The heck??

/SPOILERS

So I did see this in a theatre... and because of the situation, there were less staff around and plenty of seats empty, so I'm sure a few people were in there who never paid for a ticket. (That they were in a seat booked by someone else was a bit of a giveaway.) So now there is the joy of not only balancing seeing a movie vs crowds, but also vs people you can't even account for being there!

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