tonysundell

This movie is made of: 10% a cut and paste parts from old movies 15% of remaking the very same scenes from old movies 20% Meta commentary that breaks the immersion yet somehow doesn't add anything 5% an interesting main villain 15% combat that lack all energy and choreography 10% genuinely new and exciting ideas 10% romcom elements 15% videogames as a medium commentary.

Oh boy, where do I begin? Artsy smash up of things that just don't resonate together. At first an anime revenge-story that for some reason has some awful country music on the background. I kept thinking: do I have wrong audio source chosen or why this seems so immersion breakingly bad. However this, uh what ever this is, turned into a dancing video in middle of the most interesting part, where the chosen movements highlighted 3D models lackcluster parts and then out of nowhere it becomes a japanese live action flick with absolutely nothing interesting happening. It all went even more downhill from there...

Just when I thought Black Mirror can't get better, this episode emerges. Okay it's not your typical BM-episode, but as an individual story it works great.

The movie itself is sort of a trailer for interactive content in itself and seems to be serving the purpose of teaching audience of the possibilities of interactivity.within a movie. As such I guess it's somewhat of a success. However for a person like me, I've grown up with stuff like this, at 90's we had interactive full motion video format on multimedia CD's and since then games have taken over as the superior medium far surpassing anything movies can do. Telltale did this sort of stuff quite well with their game series of Walking Dead.

I feel like Bandersnatch is actually held back by it's own concept and it doesn't work as a movie or as a game. The end result is something hand warm between the two and the satisfaction of an ending never pays off. You need to keep the narrative building up toward the climax regardless of the choices person makes. Truly great use of this technique would have build an ending that's the sum of player's/watcher's choices along the way to give a shocking end revelation that's altered by whatever you chose to do or did not.

I think they can do a lot better than this. It's not just choosing between A and B, it's about the end and what type of tapestry the audience is allowed to weave.

World, cyberpunk aesthetics, characters and over all plot all work beautifully together. Make no mistake: this is one of the best cyberpunk products that has come in a while. Truly innovating on technology phobias and serving us an unpleasant vision of future, technology and human mind. Paying a slight nod and homage to the original Bladerunner movie it still walks it's own path proudly setting itself apart.

Then the part I did not like that much: main protagonist is your typical William J. Blazkowicz / Dolph Lundgren type cookie cutter guy. He might be the least interesting part of entire series, which is such a shame since you are bound to see him a lot. He's here to "save the princess" and get laid while doing so, but that's it: personality of a paper towel.

The one movie that was so horrible that I felt writing my first IMDb review is an obligation toward betterment of human race.

Here's the sin list:

* Copy n' paste original movies' plot line without understanding how to mimic the success or why it was successful in the first place.

* Not sure if it's fault of the script or the director, but this movie is a mess of plot that doesn't know what it wants to be, bad spacing and jokes that don't hit the mark.

* Characters are underdeveloped and flat and they never grow into any direction. Only redeeming character being Holtzmann, who is the most interesting out of the bunch. The worse character in whole movie is the main villain that is so forgettable that you might not remember him existing at all.

* 200 million marketing budget apparently buys a lot of shill marketing and paid reviews. Don't trust anything you read on the internet about the movie, gender issues are just a smoke screen to hide movie's bad quality.

* Cameos are mostly unnecessary and embarrassing. They just keep throwing them at you randomly. Only exception being Phil Murray who's ghost skeptic character works okay for the short moment he appears on screen.

* Movie's internal logic and rules get bend in the last action sequence where suddenly ghosts don't have to be trapped due their lasting ghost form, but instead can now be killed... by slashing them into pieces. There are few cool action scenes in the end but they don't fit in with the characters who didn't grow into any direction during the movie. From audience's perspective they are still inexperienced trainees in a profession no one has ever done before, but suddenly our main heroes do all kind of cool battle stunts and gymnastics despite of having background as a scientists. If they had background and expertise in other areas it sure was not told. Another spacing wrecking moment is the part where several ghost destroying equipment gets introduced out of the sudden but these machines of death are never used in the movie, well apart the one that was never introduced before.

* Product placement. In Sony movies the only place where end battle can happen is at New York's Time Square. The reason? It has the most product placement real estate of all of the locations in world. Pringles, 7eleven, H&M and Starbucks came out of nowhere without any reason for being there and one of the main characters might have just turned their eye contact directly toward the camera and sang a commercial in middle of the movie out of blue. It would have been a lot more sincere.

I wouldn't advice anyone to see this abomination. As far as reboots go, this is just as bad as the new Robocop was.