deothor

All of it was awful. I'll write this in points:

1. What worked in manga cannot be translated 1 to 1 to live adaptation. This is literally Uwe Boll of manga adaptations level of awful.

2. Character reactions are comical, over-emotional, the mimics and how they behave reeks of "behave like you are in manga" direction.

3. Scenes try to recreate that manga feel, but they end up looking pointlessly slow, clunky.

4. For the love of god and everything that's holy do not use "japanese engrish". If you don't know the language, do NOT force it in. Nobody will have it against you. Whenever actors said "bis" (beach) i was rolling my eyes.

5. Speaking of the "bis" (beach) plot.. again, you can't translate the setting into live action and make it look not... weird. Hundred+ of people wearing swimming clothes all the damn time can work in manga... Not here.

6. The "games" look extremaly cheap. You can see the cardboard. It has this fan-made in garage feel.

7. Games always get solved in last moment. Cliche.

8. Characters don't pick weapons when they can. It's awful writing for pointless drama.

Now about "main" characters:

* Arisu - the guy usually has that "what is going on" look as if he was just teleported into the setting. He's supposedly some amazing puzzle solver and yet, except 1 game, all i see is him deus-ex his way out with knowledge that was not showed to audience. Heck, his solutions could potentially fail, but due to him being a protagonist he always comes up with the good answer.

* Usagi - the strong and independent climber girl with neat power of climbing and having a climber dad with a past of her climber dad dying while climbing.... That later is reduced to question-repeating device for Arisu. He says "X" and she quickly follows with "X?! FOR THEM REALS?!" obviously director had no clue what to do with her, so she's just an eye candy.

* Chishiya - a painted blonde guy that always has this feel of never being surprised or phased. He acted good, but whenever camera made a zoom on his face i couldn't laugh at his shaved moustache that was ruining his "i am edge anime person" character. Also his puzzle-solving, big-brain deducing powers are deus ex machina. It works because he said so even if its nonsensical.

Rest of characters either died or will die in season 2 so i can't give a damn.... Oh yeah we also have a woman playing as rainbow person here to make californians happy. I just wince.

At episode 4~5 i started to skip through scenes that were stretched to fit into "manga feel". There alot of flashbacks that are, again, stretched, because director is a hack and thinks making them extra long means they are extra good. Then you realize the pattern of humanizing-through-the-flashback right before character dies. I hate it so much. It's awful.

Some folks said season 2 is worse than 1 and i believe them.

Imagine a SAW movie where the killing device is made out of cardboard, everyone does literally nothing to solve the puzzle and then in last few second Ariso comes "I KNOW WHAT TO DO!" then Usagi repeats "YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO?!", then we see 5-minute long flashback, then the person from flashback dies stupidly and then Ariso makes the "i know everything now" face, then Chishiya comes and says "took you lonmg enough anime-boy" while having smug, yet phased out face and our pro-gamer-anime-protagonist then proceeds to explain his ex machina solution that disarms the cardboard and then they win.

Do i recommend it? No.

Longer explanation: Very No.

I know this title is already a blasphemy. Sorry. I enjoyed my time watching Dune 2, but i believe Diune 1 being just superior.

I found it tiresome when almost whole movie was filmed with dunes in background. I know it's silly "issue" that plenty of you will scoff at, but the movie lacks the variety of environments/scenes Dune 1 provided. I will, however, nod at the gladiator arena. It was great. Maybe if we had some more "okay lets take out eyes away from sands for a moment" scenes, things would have been better.

Another minor issue of mine is music. There's 1 theme going whenever something important happens and it fits great, but, due to repetition of it, at some point you begin to just phase it out. Diune 1 - remember the scene of Atreides being attacked by Harkonnen and Sardaukars? That scene, that music. It burned into my memory. There's no such thing in Dune 2, unfortunately. There are great scenes in dune 2 for sure, but they lack the 'oompf' feel that music provides.

Plot. There won't be any spoilers. I'd say i am quite focused watcher, but there were few parts i didn't understand. It feels like some scenes were cut, or altered and movie had those few small and jarring stumbles. Flow was disrupted.

Characters. I enjoyed Stilgars performance alot. Lady Jessicas character was uhh, she plays much bigger role here and i was slightly tired of her at some point. I really did not enjoy how they portrayed The Emperor. They couldn't make him more weak willed and no-presence even if they tried.

I'm using kind of simple, yet pretty solid way of scoring a movie. I ask myself few questions: Was I fully entertained? Did i felt the lenght of the movie? And finally: would i watch it again? Entertained I was, i did feel the time of the movie... And i wouldn't watch it again. There's simply nothing for me to return to. Nothing to "re-live" again. What about Dune 1? Oh heck i will watch again!

Either way for me it was a 7/10 which means: Good. Neither great, nor average.