petersaarloos

Terrible.

Granted, the books have their flaws. Unlike GRR Martin, Liu Cixin does not write compelling characters. The dialogue of the books is wooden and the cast lacks personality, except for perhaps Ye Winjie and Da Shi, to an extent.

D&D, of Game of Thrones infamy and producers of 3 Body Problem, struggle to write their own scrips and fill in the gaps. Cixin left them a lot of gaps, and they filled it with the same stuff that GoT seasons 5 and beyond were made of.

Some of the flaws:

• The casting is largely terrible. The stunningly beautiful Eiza González as CSO of a nonofiber startup is a downright bizarre choice. For a main character, her acting is also quite sub par (although I hate blaming actors for casting when they're given a terrible script). Casting Jonathan Price as a religious fanatic is such an blatant nod to GoT that it makes his character hard to appreciate.

• The script is cringeworthy. Dialogue is wooden and full of clichés. Liam Cunningham's character, Thomas Wade, is probably the worst offender. It's like he has the effect on people around him that all spoken words must emphasise just how bad ass he is.

• The newly introduced characters have a bunch of early-thirties drama going on that is so annoying and wooden. The world is ending and I have to watch these infants argue about nothing.

• The plot doesn't fare much better. Avoiding spoilers: the nanofiber scene was just outright ridiculous. They might as well have used missiles...

I'll stop there. Don't waste your time.

I grew up watching Batman: TAS and was about eighteen when the Nolan films came out and loved the hell out of them. Watching them back, however, they have a ridiculous element to them. We're looking at a dude in a bat suit, which is cool enough, but why does it have to take itself so seriously? (I am aware of the irony.)

This 'Batman' film, starring Robert Patinson, fails in many ways where the Nolan fimls succeed. The Nolan films are much more suspenseful. I was genuinely on the edge of my seat, often having no clue what would happen next.

But I think it better succeeded in capture the Batman aesthetic. It felt more like I was watching a comic book, or the incredible game-series. It didn't feel like a dramatic, heavy, serious interpretation of Batman, as the Nolan films did; it just felt like actual Batman.

It has clear flaws though. It is 3 hours, and although the length didn't bother me, I felt some scenes were drawn out when some dialogue was rushed. Also, some of the suspense just didn't work. The story had so many predictable 'last-minute-rescues', that by the end, I never really believed Batman, or anyone, was in actual danger.

Nonetheless, I liked it as a successful and faithful adaptation of a Batman film, and I hope this series continues.