I grew up as teenager in 1980's and I knew Wiro Sableng character from the novels. When I watch this movie it feels nostalgic to remember the memories of adolescence. The opposite for my teenage son, who grew up with Marvel comic characters, Batman v Superman movie, and Avengers films with super sophisticated CGI techniques, they were rather unable to enjoy this film.
This Wiro Sableng film is very extraordinary in terms of artistic, camera system, lighting, and the natural beauty presented. However, the scenario is a lot of holes and deficiencies in terms of building character to be recognized by laypeople who do not know the characters in the novel Wiro Sableng.
Don't expect too much to introduce the character of Wiro Sableng's stories to the international world, many Indonesian teenagers alone do not fully understand the characters displayed in this Wiro Sableng film. The uniqueness of Wiro Sableng's combat skills and Wiro's inner sanctum identity search should be explored in depth.
Wiro Sableng movie Director is supposed to learn from the movie director "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" movie which was able to make the lay audience understand the deep character and the complicated storyline without having to read the book's own story. Another example is the SWORDSMAN film in the 1990s played by Jet Li. Although ordinary audiences never read the original novel, the audience understood the names of the characters and the greatness of the characters through the Swordsman story.
Many lay audience who have never read Wiro Sableng's story are confused with many characters that appear because of "being forced" to appear in a very limited /short of time, without explanation of the background of the characters and the background history/review of the greatness of each character's combat skills.
I am very proud that Indonesian films can cooperate with international film distributors. Screenwriters and directors should be able to display more in-depth information about the uniqueness of the character with the perspective of a new audience who have never heard of the story of Wiro Sableng.
Most viewers who are able to be fascinated by this film are people who already understand the story of Wiro Sableng. But for lay audiences and teenagers who have never known the novel character Wiro Sableng will be confused with the appearance of characters which are explained in the novel but there is no explanation in the film so that the unique characters in the novel only appear very shallow and as if only a supplementary figures.
I hope a lot from this Wiro Sableng's Film producer. Hopefully, if the sequel will be made, it can involve international class actors such as Iko Uwais or Joe Taslim. The movie director needs to learn a lot from the movie director: TSUI HARK in terms of storytelling techniques; or learn from William Kong; Hsu Li-kong; Ang Lee when they make "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" movie.
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