He is right there isn't anything too interesting to this movie. My friend even fell asleep about 1/3 the way into it. A couple quick but cool action seens though nothing to write home about. He is also right that at the end of the movie a fact is revealed that makes 99% of this movie asine.
Escape to the Movies: Book of Eli
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
This is just about the name:Mikkaddo said:
I saw the movie knowing the book was actually the Bible; I ignored MB's spoiler warning. But at one point in history there were many different versions of the Bible and the church eventually had to decide what books were in and what were out.
Before I saw the movie and the review, I thought "The Book of Eli" would be Eli's journal as he walked across the wasteland protecting the last Bible. I thought that "The Book of Eli" might be the start of a New New Testament. The New New Testament being God's two minute warning before the apocalypse.
I believe (and I am quite ignorant on this) that the Qu'ran considers Jesus to be a prophet. So it takes New Testament material and adds to it like I thought "The Book of Eli" might.
I wonder if the Qu'ran is written in books? Can anyone still following this help me out?
Atheist. Gotta keep posting that.
I keep saying to myself, "How many pages of original thought have I lost posting here?"
And I keep replying, "Discussion is the catalyst to original thought."
Bull-fucking-shit, i'm sorry, but i saw this today, and i thought it was brilliant, if you're going to take it as being a preachy bible story, the actions of every character other than eli and saval..something, completely discount that, there's a direct quote from gary oldman saying:
"the book can be used to control the weak and the stupid, it happened before."
If that's not a sting in the tail of a story seemingly glorifying the bible, i don't know what is.
Also, the AMOUNT of famous faces in this! Edward Gambon, Tom Waits, the guy who plays Linderman from heroes, it's ridiculous..
If you don't see this movie because MovieBob said it was a trite, preachy boring flick, you would be oh so mistaken.
EDIT: Was it really meant to be a secret it was the bible? I thought that was clear from the start, every blurb or description i found of it mentioned it.
"the book can be used to control the weak and the stupid, it happened before."
If that's not a sting in the tail of a story seemingly glorifying the bible, i don't know what is.
Also, the AMOUNT of famous faces in this! Edward Gambon, Tom Waits, the guy who plays Linderman from heroes, it's ridiculous..
If you don't see this movie because MovieBob said it was a trite, preachy boring flick, you would be oh so mistaken.
EDIT: Was it really meant to be a secret it was the bible? I thought that was clear from the start, every blurb or description i found of it mentioned it.
Buddy, I think you hit the nail on the head.SlowlyCrazyIAmGoing said:
This movie is based around god giving a man a divinely inspired mission.
This is a great and pure premise if you believe in the divine, or supernatural, and causes everything to fall in line within it, and seem epic whilst doing it.
However, not to label anyone, but Bob doesn't seem like a religious guy. So him, along with many other critics in the same boat, missed that grandeur and scale because they simply found the premise, out-of-line with what they thought was rational. Thus destroying the structure of the plot from the root. Its akin to a man from Asia trying to understand a film about an American family, the Asian man has no point of reference to the American so any trials the family goes through fails to silicate a response from the Asian man simply because of a basic change in view.
Its been no wonder that many reviewers who identify themselves as atheists have given the movie bad marks simply on their belief system. Is that good or bad thing? Not necessarily, honesty is a desired quality in a reviewer. But keep in mind that reviews of this movie are going to be heavily dependent on beliefs outside of the normal realm of film.
in order for Mila Kunis to become Megan Fox is if she lost all of her acting talentColdStorage said:
no, he wants contemporary games to not have a boring premise, and on Eli, he isn't attacking it for being silly, he's attacking it for being boring, predictable, and pointlessAnacortian said:
I'm so glad that inbetween all the serious religion banter my Mila Kunis comment still gets quoted like its of the utmost importance!.
Speaking of which;
Speaking of which;
I really really hate Megan Fox, I used to wonder why we didn't get to see more of that eye candy when she was in "Hope and Faith", and now I realise... she's insipid and she can't actTailsRodrigez said:
Interesting that apparently the only good movie ever made with god involved that people can think of is Blues Brothers.
Shouldn't that be a sign that it is an overused and poor strategy when you only name one movie?
Dues Ex Machina made sense in Greek Times, these days it is just lazy storytelling.
Shouldn't that be a sign that it is an overused and poor strategy when you only name one movie?
Dues Ex Machina made sense in Greek Times, these days it is just lazy storytelling.
I think it's more a sign that they don't really know that many movies.theultimateend said:
Off the top of my head I can think of the following: The Last Temptation of Christ, The Exorcist, Dogma, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, various film adaptations of The Master and Margarita.
And, since The Blues Brothers is more about faith than about God, let's count films like The Messenger (Besson's 1999 film) and Andrei Rublev, too. (Not that the movies I listed above aren't also about faith... but they have more of an obvious supernatural element. 'Cept maybe Pasolini's Gospel, I don't quite recall, but it's a Jesus movie, so, y'know.)
A lot more than just the one film.
...
The thing about "deus ex machina" is that it represents an impossible problem being solved by something that comes out of left field -- in the olden sense, a random god appears in the final act and magics up a solution. Stories where God is there from the beginning or where God doesn't demolish the conflict at the end don't qualify as "dei ex machina". (Eli still qualifies because of the bullshit twist.)
-- Alex
I don't care enough about the subject to get into a discussion about it but I think Dogma is a bad example (the rest are fine).Alex_P said:
Dogma's entire popularity seemed to revolve around it being a spoof of the whole circus. Not to try and legitimize it.
Pretty ironic. The reviewer criticizes the movie for...uh, I think it was unoriginality, or cheesiness, oh and triteness. He was almost incoherent. All the while, he is basing his hatred off of one fact: the involvement of God. Yet, he cites stuff like the Punisher sequel as being superior. Is a super human gunman supposed to be more "refined" or "believable" or something? We see all sorts of wierd, unrealistic, or unbelievable crap in theaters, and the reviewer was simply unwilling to even attempt to enjoy something involving Christianity, just for the sake of hating Christianity.
If the bible was replaced with some "ironic" object, like "the cure," or some crap like that, it would have been several orders of magnitude more contrived and cliched than the straight up divine intervention shown here. Everyone and their mother puts that in movies. Oh well, your loss. While the movie could have been done far better, it was definitely enjoyable.
If the bible was replaced with some "ironic" object, like "the cure," or some crap like that, it would have been several orders of magnitude more contrived and cliched than the straight up divine intervention shown here. Everyone and their mother puts that in movies. Oh well, your loss. While the movie could have been done far better, it was definitely enjoyable.
Yeah but God Himself never said anything to the Blues Brothers. They simply assumed that they were on a mission from God because they were helping outa Church-run Orphanage. I suppose Jake might have recieved some "Divine Inspiration" durin that scene in the church with James Brown but Elwood was always the one spouting the line "We're on a mission from God."
Also, The Blues Brothers went about completing their "Mission" with the use of fraud, blackmail, theft and several trafic violations (about fifteen counts of attempted vehicular homicide in one scene.
Another important difference between the two films is that the Blues Brothers was, from start to finish, a COMEDY!! It never presented itself as anything more than entertainment. Come on, Random dance scenes the bit in the restaurant with Jake trying to buy that rich guy's kids, Illinois Nazis and (I think) the most destroyed police cars in a movie ever.
Also, The Blues Brothers went about completing their "Mission" with the use of fraud, blackmail, theft and several trafic violations (about fifteen counts of attempted vehicular homicide in one scene.
Another important difference between the two films is that the Blues Brothers was, from start to finish, a COMEDY!! It never presented itself as anything more than entertainment. Come on, Random dance scenes the bit in the restaurant with Jake trying to buy that rich guy's kids, Illinois Nazis and (I think) the most destroyed police cars in a movie ever.
Okay, seriously, remember the GI Joe review? The plot wasn't all that, there was no moral message to the film worth seeing, but it didn't matter because it was FUN? Where's that perspective, Bob? How were the movies action sequences, or the acting, or anything BUT the plot? I mean, I get the plot was crap. I get that that impairs the movie. You didn't have to spend your whole bloody review on that.
Okay, sure, you spent twelve years in Catholic school and now you hate the Catholic Church because they suck at teaching children. Fine. Whatever. I don't care. I want to hear about the MOVIE. That's why I watch your bloody reviews, not to hear a thinly veiled rant about how much you dislike Christianity. I mean, even the Ninja Assassin review covered more elements of film than this, and half of it was spent on an unrelated subject. Seriously, Bob, if you'd said the action scenes were crappy, or too short, if you'd talked more about the acting, if you'd talked about ANYTHING other than the plot, I'd have nothing to go on here.
As it is, I've timed it. 25 seconds of intro logos and music. 20 seconds of spoiler warnings. One minute and thirty seconds of "it's the Bible, this sucks." 30 seconds on the actual actors/characters involved, most of which was praise for the cast. At the 3:10 mark you hit upon something that might actually be a legitimate negative comment NOT about the plot: you spend ten seconds talking about how it's mostly just a post-apocalyptic movie (which made me, personally, want to see it just because my movie diet doesn't include enough post-apocalyptic stuff). Then we go back to bashing how it's about the Bible for another twenty seconds. Then ten seconds of credits.
So disregarding intro, credits, and spoiler warnings, that's 110 seconds on one facet of the movie compared to 40 seconds on everything else. And absolutely no mention of the quality of the action scenes (which looked great in the previews and appear to be the main POINT of the movie).
Meh.
Okay, sure, you spent twelve years in Catholic school and now you hate the Catholic Church because they suck at teaching children. Fine. Whatever. I don't care. I want to hear about the MOVIE. That's why I watch your bloody reviews, not to hear a thinly veiled rant about how much you dislike Christianity. I mean, even the Ninja Assassin review covered more elements of film than this, and half of it was spent on an unrelated subject. Seriously, Bob, if you'd said the action scenes were crappy, or too short, if you'd talked more about the acting, if you'd talked about ANYTHING other than the plot, I'd have nothing to go on here.
As it is, I've timed it. 25 seconds of intro logos and music. 20 seconds of spoiler warnings. One minute and thirty seconds of "it's the Bible, this sucks." 30 seconds on the actual actors/characters involved, most of which was praise for the cast. At the 3:10 mark you hit upon something that might actually be a legitimate negative comment NOT about the plot: you spend ten seconds talking about how it's mostly just a post-apocalyptic movie (which made me, personally, want to see it just because my movie diet doesn't include enough post-apocalyptic stuff). Then we go back to bashing how it's about the Bible for another twenty seconds. Then ten seconds of credits.
So disregarding intro, credits, and spoiler warnings, that's 110 seconds on one facet of the movie compared to 40 seconds on everything else. And absolutely no mention of the quality of the action scenes (which looked great in the previews and appear to be the main POINT of the movie).
Meh.
DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS JOKER!
The Book of Eli is a wonderful flick which, despite most movies these days, actually has a positive religious theme. There's enough action to please everyone and the theme and message was powerful. This idiot doesn't know what he's talking about. It's worth seeing, trust me.
The Book of Eli is a wonderful flick which, despite most movies these days, actually has a positive religious theme. There's enough action to please everyone and the theme and message was powerful. This idiot doesn't know what he's talking about. It's worth seeing, trust me.
Firstly calling people idoits and jokers does not give off a very good vibe and doesn't help to get your point across. Just how is the idea of a man defending a bible a good story?Phantom64 said:
Also, what message are you talking aboutm that reiligion is bad in the wrong hands because sad to say it, but it's been before and WAY better.
I have to disagree. I loved the movie. The major plot twist in the end was really good. I was not bored at all during the movie.
you have to see the movie to understand it. the ending explains it all. don't criticize it because of what someone told you. go see it your self. or if your too lazy, just torent it or something.
I really, really liked the movie. I found the plot enjoyable, and the fact that the book is a bible isn't a twist...you find out very early in the movie. even then it should be obvious from the trailer. the action was awesome and the twist in the movie that is, you know, an actual twist was amazing. bob is just butt sore about it having religion in it. although if he had actually paid attention to the movie like a good reviewer he would know that the antagonist wanted to have the bible to manipulate the "weak-minded." it isn't a purely "oh the bible's so great" movie. if you're going to hate a movie because you don't agree with it's religious views, you've got issues