100 Great Scenes In Not So Great Films - 23 - Laertes' advice to Ophelia in the Ethan Hawke Hamlet

The Case For The Prosecution:

I try not to be precious about Shakespeare. Update him, reset him, add songs and dance, I'm pretty cool with it. Just don't screw up the verbiage (this obviously does not apply to wholesale-changed ones like Kiss Me Kate or the Shakespeare: ReTold Taming of the Shrew). I don't mind scenes being cut. I have long made my peace with the fact I am never going to get all of Act 3, Scene 7 in any Henry V. There are scenes I demand be in, e.g. the Jason Connery Macbeth gets less than nul points because it takes out MacDuff's "one fell swoop" speech, but I try to be cool.

But, if you're using the words, at least say them, don't just mumble along and hope someone will know what you mean. Christ, I've heard 13 year olds deal better with iambic pentameter.

Even when the actor's aren't mumbling, the sound quality in the Ethan Hawke Hamlet is pretty bad so you can't make out what's going on.

I can see the appeal of playing the play as "Hamlet, Slacker Prince", even if it goes completely against how I see the character (every generation reworks Hamlet in its own image, discuss). In the hands of a competent director it might even have been good. This film was also lacking one of them.

Bill Murray should be able to do things with Polonious given that he's got great timing, but no-one except Hamlet is given any time or room to do anything. The film is a waste of time, idea and resources.

The Scene Itself:

Watch on YouTube

Why the scene is so good:

In the middle of all this terrible misuse of English, Shakespeare and the cinematic arts there are two people that get it. They are Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles as Laertes and Ophelia. When they speak, it sounds like people, and because they're both theatre types, you can actually hear what they're saying. And oh how much Laertes loves his sister, and this is only going to end badly.

This is one of those versions of Hamlet where I am team Laertes.

Blade Runner 2049

From before Blade Runner 2049

Murder on the Orient Express looks dreadful. Why make a film of a book if you're going to change it that much? (in keeping with the main topic, Blade Runner had the decency not to call itself “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”.)

The Snowman appears to be this year's entry in the Scandi-noir feature no/few Scandinavians genre.

Given the multiple millions that went into the new Justice League trailer, the CGI is remarkably bad. And I’m still stuck with the feeling that the only character I like separately is my boy Bats.

D that saw Blade Runner 2049 with pointed out that the Thor: Ragnarok trailer was hardly any better on the CGI front, buttons least that appears to be a stylistic choice and you know, I <3 Thor and the gang.

Blade Runner 2049

A lot of the points I am going to mention cover the same ground as Selenak does here. She explains what I liked and disliked better than I can, in fewer words, so I recommend reading her take on the film, and then coming back to read this for the couple of points where we disagree, and a few more specifically-me points.

- I maintain my feeling of unease about a film about 30 years in the future of what people 40 years ago thought now would look like. Where are the films about what people now think 40 years in the future will look like?

- Denis Villeneuve is a stonkingly good director. He keeps a lot of the visual language from the original, but imbues it with his own feel which is a lot softer than Ridley Scott’s.

- The BBFC rating includes a warning for sexualised nudity. Anyone who finds any of the nudity in this film arousing has issues. I think it was very well done, and thematically works but yes, the director deliberately went for “the commodification of sex and bodies is bad” and it worked.

- The film works best when deals with the flipside of Blade Runner’s “what does it mean to be human”. 2049 asks “what does it mean to not be human?”

( Everything below this is a spoiler. )

On to some more general points:

- I know why film-makers have characters use axe kicks in films. They look cool. I am willing to go with “rule of cool”, even if I don’t like axe kicks. What I don’t get is why the characters being attacked by axe kicks never use the “proper” defence against them, even if that character is supposed to have fight training. Axe kicks are so easy to defend against, why does nobody ever do it?!

- I say this about every film he’s in, but when did Dave Batista get so good? He’s a foot taller than me and about two of me in weight, and yet, when Sapper Morton put his glasses on I wanted to protect him. That’s a neat trick.

- I really like Hans Zimmer’s work. If you need a film composer who can ape someone else’s style and rework it into something new, he’s the best choice. The problem isn’t him, the problem is when the soundsystem of the cinema you are in can’t take all those tones at once, and you get massive reverb even when the soundtrack doesn’t want it. Also, I’m reasonably sure that chunks of the soundtrack could be used for soundboarding people. I know it’s deliberate but some of that really messed with my brain.

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In short (too late, I know), Blade Runner 2049 is a good film. It’s not as good as Blade Runner. It may or may not be a good sequel to Blade Runner.