It's kinda sad to make money doing torture porn, it's not like he even tried with Hostel, the first half is filled with boobs, the second is filled with extreme gore, just what the sad group of violence-craving teenagers wants. Extreme gore like the stuff in Hostel and Saw shouldn't carry the movie. Bleh, I'm gonna go watch Se7en again.
I swear a lot in this review, don't say I didn't warn you.
I feel compelled to write about movies that suck ass, and that's why I'm here today. I'm frustrated and getting your frustrations on paper usually help, so here we go. Synopsis: "On his 14th birthday Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig) finds out that he is the last of a group of warriors - The Light - who have spent their lives fighting against evil - The Dark. Will travels through time to track down the signs that will enable him to confront the evil forces. The Dark is personified by The Rider (Christopher Eccleston)." The movie starts off pretty good, Will seems like a good guy, and the setting in a small, English village is pretty nice. The suspense start when Will is kidnapped by two security officers. As they investigate him about the signs, they slowly turn into monsters and eventually crows, that fly after him. It's a nice, scary scene, but after that it goes down hill very quickly.
The Powers I was pretty excited when one of the Old Ones, Merriman, tells Will that he has super powers, but that feeling goes away pretty fast. He's got super human strength, telekinesis and the ability to control fire. He uses these powers to push his brothers, flirt with a girl and blow cars and stuff up when he's angry. Why give him powers if he doesn't use them? Also, when he's told he's got powers, he goes "can I fly?", and you just have time to think "fuck, that'd be awesome" before the other guy says "of course not." Meh.
The Signs Apparently who ever hid the signs "all over the world" didn't really give a shit and hid them at random places around the village. Places where Will just happen to be at the right time. The first sign is a necklace inside a big mall, for fucks sake. Also, the last sign is not an object, it's something that "isn't hidden from him", and what do you know, the last sign is himself. Wauw, I didn't see that one coming. Fuck you, script writer. Another thing, they have a castle The Dark can't enter so why didn't they just hide the signs in there?
Time Travel Will travels through time to find the signs. Initially it sounds pretty cool, but it actually sucks. The first time travel is to a dark church in the 13th or 14th century, and all you see from this time era is from within the church, it would've been cool to actually see some more of this world, but I guess not. In the scene the group is attacked by something, one of the Elders thinks it's a dragon, and you immediately go "holy shit, it would be awesome if they we're attacked by a dragon", but alas, the director would rather disappoint the audience once again, so he sends in an old lady who turns into snakes. Snakes that don't really attack anyone, but just kinda cuddle with you. Oh, also, Will is saved by a corpse. No, it doesn't make sense, and yes, the director is an ass hat. The next time travel is to some village being pillaged by vikings. One of them seems to be the chief, and he's got one of the signs on his shield, so Will follows him to his boat, and the chief sees him and throws him into the water. The chief picks him back up and it looks like he's about to cut his head off, but then Will's digital watch starts beeping, and apparently the chief wants it, so Will fucking trades his watch for the shield. Why THE FUCK didn't the viking just kill the snotty kid, take the watch and go back to raping stuff. So, in the next time travel he goes back to a small market place in 1690. The sign is a small object attached to a feather, it seems to be the prize of a cock fighting competition. He goes back to his own time, and in the bar that had the competition he find a glass case with a plate saying "Champion - 1690" and the winning chicken, stuffed. Don't ask me why they chose to stuff this very cock (it couldn't have been the only competition, right?), don't even ask me why they would stuff the fucking cock in the first place.
The Dad's Thesis and The Rider aka. The Dark Will had a twin brother, who disappeared when they were infants. At the same time the dad was writing a thesis about light and darkness, we see his documents about this several times throughout the movie, and the father seems troubled about continuing the work. It seems obvious that it's got something to do with The Dark, but you never get to know what it's about, and he's apparently only hesitant about his work, because he feels that's the reason he didn't protect the twin in the first place. What's even more ridiculous is the fact that The Rider kidnapped the twin, and held him hostage for 14 years! He says himself that he's annoyed he took the wrong twin, this raises a lot of questions. First of all, how the hell did he know that one of the twin brothers was the last member of The Light? Also, why did he kidnap one of them, why not just kill them both? Throughout the movie he's got a lot of opportunities to kill Will, but he doesn't, until the end. He's supposed to be this incredibly evil guy, who's trying to destroy the world, and all he had to do to accomplish that was to kill the boy. Instead he tries to force the boy to give him the signs, since the boy is the only person who can find them (which is why he should get it over with and kill him). He's also one of the least intimidating villains I have ever seen, when he's not dressed as The Rider, he's this geeky doctor with glasses.
The Ending In the end we have the cliche battle between good and evil. The Rider has started a snow storm (again, why not approach the boy and slice his head off?) so everyone in the village is hiding in the Old Ones' castle, a place The Rider can't enter. But apparently he can still use his powers inside the house, because he creates these big icicles in the ceiling, and instead of just letting them all fall, killing everyone in the room, he lets them fall one at a time, so they have enough time to wake up and run. We also know that The Rider has an accomplish, and once again the script writers takes a dump on the plot line and reveals the incredibly cliche and pretty fucking stupid fact that the sweet girl-next-door was actually an evil bitch. Will is almost convinced to hand the signs over to her (because he's a twat), but she gets aggressive so he decides not to. Smart move. Then we get to the final battle, they're in the same castle, just back in time, as mentioned, The Rider can't enter the premises, but he masks his voice and acts like he's Will's family, and since Will is retarded and seems to have no will to live, he opens the door. When you think The Dark has won (all the Old Ones and Will has been thrown into a hurricane of shadows or something like that) Will realizes he's the last sign, with all the signs he can now defeat The Dark. The Rider is triumphantly enjoying his victory when Will walks into the room saying something like "I am the last sign, I am the seventh son of seventh son", I wasn't really paying attention, since I was laughing hysterically at this point. As he says it The Rider falls off his horse... Then Will swallows the darkness with this hand (yes, it's very anticlimactic), the twin is saved, and everything is fine.
After watching The Seeker (or The Dark is Rising, or whatever you wanna call it) I was actually looking forward to Stardust. It seemed like a more mature fantasy movie compared to most of what’s on the market now, ie. it hasn’t got a kid in the lead role. The plot is quite simple, in a countryside town bordering on a magical land, a young man, Tristan, makes a promise to his beloved Victoria (Miller) that he’ll retrieve a fallen star by venturing into the magical realm. Inside he meets the star, in the form of a girl, Yvaine (Danes).
I don’t think I’ve seen a movie that varies so much between really good and extremely bad. The script could really have used a couple of rewrites, the movie would’ve been a lot better. All in all, the movie suffers a lot under the writers taken advantage of creative licence. On the other hand, the movie is funny as hell, and the fight scenes are awesome; for example, the protagonist has to fight a corpse being controlled by the main antagonist, a witch (Pfeiffer), who’s manipulating a wax figure, one witch is hit by a flying sword making her crash into the wall and a goat-turned-human tries to head butt an unicorn, which also sets him flying into a wall. Also, Robert De Niro’s character Sheakspeare, a flying pirat who collects lightning, is very cool. You’re initially totally convinced he’s a psychopath who’s gonna rape Yvaine, but as it turns out he’s a fruity transvestite. Another antagonist is one of the seven heirs to the throne, Septimus, who’s searching for a ruby Yvaine’s got, which will make him king. The entire story line about the heirs is very entertaining as well, it starts out in their castle with the four remaining sons of the king, who explains that the son who finds the ruby will be the king (although the tradition is that the last surviving son will be the king), so the four sons set out to find the ruby and kill their brothers, a killing spree that starts of in the king’s chamber as one son is pushed over the balcony and the king laughs hysterically. Also, the sons have blue blood; a nice little touch. One of the really bad and cliché parts though, is the fact that Tristan is the last heir to the throne, because his mother, who’s been imprisoned by a with since he was born is the long lost daughter of the king (all the sons die).
There’s also a lot of cliché crap, for example, the witch, who’s trying to kill the star, thus being able to live forever. She has at least three chances to kill her but doesn’t. As mentioned the writers also took advantage of their creative licence, there are a lot of coincidences and stuff that doesn’t make sense, for example the part with the witch not killing the girl when she’s got the chance. The ending especially ruins a lot of the movie, first of all, after Tristan falls in love with Yvaine he goes back to the real world to tell his former love, Yvaine misunderstands this so she thinks he doesn’t love her, and the setup is just ridiculous. Afterwards Tristan is fighting with the witch, she is about to kill him, but then she cracks down because her sisters are dead and she has nothing to live for anymore, at this point you could literally hear the cinema go ‘WHAT?!’ Seconds later, as the couple is leaving, she starts laughing and shuts all the doors with her magic, okay, it was just a trick, stupid. Then Yvaine hugs Tristan and suddenly a blinding light from within her disintegrates the witch… Apparently she couldn’t do this before, because ’she needed Tristan’, kinda dumb.
All in all it was a bit disappointing compared to what I had hoped for, but I’d still recommend it.
Stardust – 6/10.
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