This is a movie I really did not expect to enjoy. I usually don’t get on well with big-budget special-effect-heavy post-apocalyptic machine vs. monster films set in darkness, snow and rain. I watched it purely because it had Idris Elba (from The Wire) and Charlie Hunnam and Ron Perlman (both from Sons of Anarchy) in it.
But I thoroughly enjoyed it. So much so that I have seen it several times now. I cannot figure out why I like it because some parts of the movie are quite cheesy, but it is probably because of the individual detail of each machine and monster and that each one is so very different. Plus the huge scale of everything just makes your jaw drop. There are sites detailing the different details and specs of each machine and monster which shows how much thought went into each one.
You can see the huge scale of things in this video, even just on YouTube. Watching it on a big screen is mind-blowing. I would have loved to see it in 3D.
I had the same experience when I watched Avatar. I did not see either of them in 3D as I have bad astigmatism which mean I cannot see 3D properly and it gives me splitting headaches and nausea. I would have loved to though.
Two language details:
- the Gypsy Danger had to be renamed in many countries because of the perjorative meaning of the word gypsy.
- Charlie Hunnam has developed the same accent problem as Angela Lansbury. They are both British but have used American accents for television series for so long that they have a strange accent that is something in between. Not quite mid-Atlantic but Charlie’s veers wildly and sounds really strange sometime. Charlize Theron was not English speaking to start with (she was Afrikaans speaking) which could be the reason her American accent is flawless.