So overall I give the movie 4/10. I was pretty dissapointed. The movie would have worked better if it had no relation to the JW series because the expectations of the brand were not met. This movie played out like a bad "tacticool" video game.
I feel like people who aren't Chad and Keanu dont understand why people like the JW series. Ballerina was closer in quality to The Continental than the JW movies. And that's not good.
I'll go over different categories about why I formed my opinion the way I did: sound, visuals, characters, writing, etc...
Sound: 7/10
Music was really good when we got it but there were no standout tunes like the JW movies had. Nothing as catchy as anything else in the previous movies.
Gunshots and other violence sounded pretty good.
Visuals: 7/10
The signature lighting of the JW movies was present in a few scenes, which looked good. Most scenes were too dark to fully enjoy unlike the JW movies.
Flamethrowers were cool for all of 10 seconds.
Violence: 5/10
Some of it is a writing issue. But most of the choreography was boring, flat, uninteresting and far below what I've come to expect from the JW brand.
They address the "how can a girl go on a killing spree with assassins?" issue with a line during her training montage about "you will always be smaller and weaker. So cheat. Be smart. Fight like a girl." And then she proceeds to fight like a man for the rest of the movie. No foreshadowing payoff. Just "plot armor-fu".
When Eve does get hurt, it's like they artificially timed it. "It's been exactly 3 punches and 2 kicks. We have to show the audience we remember she's 'vulnerable'".
John Wick's scenes were not interesting at all. No good choreography from Keanu. Very forgettable scenes.
Best action scene is the opening scene of Eve's father defending their home. Nice knees and elbows from that guy.
New Characters: 4/10
Eve is ok but not the same charming stoic blank slate that is John Wick. She doesn't say anything particularly cool, deep nor interesting. Forgettable character. (The movie should have been about Shimazu's daughter from JW4). She is a textbook Mary Sue.
The only standout character other than Eve's father (who dies immediately and looks exactly like John Wick in the first movie) is the hunting shop owner.
Theres a scene with Eve caring about another Ballerina but we dont even get a reason why. All we get is Eve's opinion that the girl is "the best dancer in the school" and shes timid and Eve likes her as a friend. Then she immediately dissappears too. No other ballerinas are given any time.
Villain had no charm and easily forgettable.
Eve's sister also had no charm and easily forgettable. No outstanding character traits at all.
Norman Reedus has a very underwhelming action scene with a shotgun that lasts maybe 30 seconds to a minute. He looks like he walked off of the Walking Dead set and onto the Ballerina set in the same day. Wasted actor.
Writing, story, plot: 3/10
The writing is awful. Worse than The Continental.
The villain plot: kill anyone that leaves the assassin cult village.
Yeah, there's an assassin Cult that supposedly doesn't answer to The High Table. We are given no reasons why. They have a snowy village like Resident Evil 8. And everyone is an assassin in the cult. Wtf?
Also, the Cult has been hiding for many years. But plot armor Eve found them by basically just asking the first person she sees where they are and they know and tell her and just like that, the assassin cult that doesn't answer to The High Table and has been evading everyone for years is just found by an amateur with no spectacular skills or resources.
The final act "twist": Eve's sister has been alive and raised by the cult. Doesn't affect anything and then she dies. Not even a good conversation between the 2.
Ana was recently on Hot Ones and said they focused on humor in this movie. Fucking where? This movie was absolutely humorless. It was more bleak than the other 4 JW movies combined. I gave a chuckle to this one German chef lady but nothing memorable otherwise.
Eve's first job is to protect some girl from her abusive Asian gangster bf. She gets rubber bullets because reasons. The job doesn't require her to fight like a girl nor does she change in character after it.
Her first test is to assemble a pistol faster than another person and be the first to shoot the other person across the table. The other person is a decade experienced assassin that looks badly beaten. The experienced assassin has done the tear before. They get a head start on Eve. Eve still wins. Why?
I should explain: unlike John Wick who shows us he's the best at what he does from the first scene, Eve has up to this point only been shown as average (for Ballerina students). She doesn't do anything better than anyone except hitting a guy in the balls (who practically just let's her do it, because how can an assassin trainer not be prepared for a ball kick?). She isn't John Wick, but since the movie title heavily implies that she's pretty much the next him, I feel this just wasn't shown properly. Her plot armor is thicker and more inconsistent than John's.
This movie is so obviously being forced into the JW franchise. What i mean is that it's obvious this was never intended to be connected.
As many have already noticed, the timing of having John's involvement in this movie makes no sense whatsoever. This movie takes place between JW3 and JW4. Not only would this event be mentioned when John visited the Ruska Roma in JW4 because of how it went down, it would imply that John was "working again" when JW4 heavily implied John was training and recovering in the sewers with the Bowery King that whole time.
So John is hired by the Ruska Roma to kill Eve, "a loose end" that may cause a war between Ruska Roma and the Cult. No one seems to care about the consequences of the High Table in this movie at all (except for 1 mention of "not conduction business on Continental grounds").
So John is in New York, Ruska Roma talks to the Cult leader and makes a deal to kill Eve by midnight or start a war, and in a few minutes John is in a hidden mountain village in Europe only accessible by train with a new suit and nothing else. Holy fast travel, Batman.
Let me be clear: this is a winter wonderland snowy mountain village. John shows up in a suit and dress shoes and nothing else. Not even a bag of guns. Literally nothing else. Oh, but he has the Pit Viper pistol that he should only be receiving much later in the events of JW4. Did Wiseman even watch the other movies?
So John is literally doing a job for Ruska Roma. He has no personal investment in Eve otherwise. But suddenly he grows a heart because she stares at him with her big puppy eyes. Maybe John thinks she looks like Daisy. I dunno. But what I do know is that John doesn't act like John at all in this movie. She keeps attacking him and he keeps trying to spare her for some rule loophole (it's not yet midnight) when all John cares about at this point is revenge.
Eve can't take 1 John Wick but takes out The Cult before she even reaches full assassin status. Absolutely a Mary Sue. She has the same odds as John including John himself but she survives it all with less training, experience and resources. Spare me.
Forcing the "everyone is connected to the main character" trope is terrible in this movie. Like, why is her sister still alive? Why tell us at the end of the movie when it doesn't matter anymore? Why does her dad know Winston? Why does Winston care about him? Or her? I thought Winston thought John was special to him in some way. But now he's just Batman going around recruiting orphans? Wtf? So how many people does he do this to?
So Eve kills the Cult leader and is excommunicated with a bounty. Oh yeah, and she saves Norman's daughter from the Cult leader who only got caught because she went looking for Norman to find the Cult. But whatever. Wasn't that interesting anyways.
Also, this is a small nitpick but: Winston's hair.
In every other encounter, he has slightly longer hair down his neck. It's consistent in all 4 JW movies.
When we see Winston in Ballerina, he has a short and tight hairstyle. It's also this short and tight when he first meets Eve as a little girl. So he has magic hair that grows and shrinks randomly. How does a mistake like this get made?
I'm sure I'm forgetting something but I've covered the big stuff.
I really wanted to love this movie. I went in with a positive mindset. But I can't deny just how dissapointing this was.
If you want a similar but better movie, watch:
The Long Kiss Goodnight
No comments:
Post a Comment