The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)...
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
Okay, the actors got along, but in season 2 it still seems like the characters don't have much of a friendship. They're rarely working side-by-side, and when they do, they're mostly sniping at each other, or Solo is off flirting with the love interest and leaving Illya to extricate himself from mortal peril. So maybe that's a failure of the writing/direction in season 2, which would be consistent with the general carelessness I sensed in that season.
Exactly the difference between this and MI
The MI franchise is a carryover from when Tom Cruise was the biggest star on earth.
It's a shame that it's not doing so well. It sounds like they did everything right. Which is probably why it's not doing so well....
After seeing it I had no complaints whatsoever except one very minor and easily dismissed quibble. It's hard to imagine someone seeing this and then trashing it or not recommending it to friends unless they can't get over not getting a more typical high octane and over loud flick with lots of flash and bang.
I can see a lot of younger viewers not being drawn to or not getting the title. Could the period setting be that much of a turn off? As I mentioned upthread it's possible some older viewers could be cynical of reboots (not without some justification). And maybe it has something to do with the timing of its release at this point in the summer.
Having an M:I movie as a lead-in a couple of weeks earlier should have helped, but then maybe because it isn't much like M:I in execution could be seen as something of a letdown.
It's a good movie. I don't get it.
There's one fella on another board who's such a huge MFU fan that he's still screaming over the non-canon sacrileges committed by the film. He's even quoting background information as canon that was never, ever said on screen, but that Sam Rolfe "revealed" from his notes in interviews at later dates, and the film is "ignoring".
You wonder what part of "reboot" this guy doesn't understand.I hear you. I watched only a couple of episodes from the first season and for me it hadn't aged well. It wasn't horrible, but I can see where I still liked the concept, but the dated execution didn't work anymore.
For me the film fixed all those things that bugged me rewatching the original episodes.
On the flip side I don't like the rebooted M:I movies. For me they are just too divorced from the original source materiel. Yes, the original could be formulaic, but I still quite like it and don't find much wrong with it even after all these years.
I've been thinking about that quibble and it reminded me of when Bond was rebooted with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. In CR we didn't hear the familiar Bond theme until the very end of the film when he is firmly established as 007. In like manner this MFU reboot Solo and Kuryakin are not yet U.N.C.L.E. agents given U.N.C.L.E. doesn't yet exist until mentioned at the end of the film. No U.N.C.L.E. agency yet so no familiar series' theme.
So if there were to be a sequel then that would be the time to reintroduce the series' theme because Solo and Kuryakin will then in fact be agents of U.N.C.L.E.
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Ghost Protocol is the only movie in the M:I film series that really feels like Mission:Impossible to me. It's a much better homage to the series than any of the other films, although it still incorporates all the established conventions of the film series as well. All of the last three films are good, but aside from GP, they're a very different entity from the series.
The first act of the '96 film also felt like a continuation of the M:I formula, but the rest of the film was devoted to deconstructing that formula entirely.
Ghost Protocol is definitely the one that most feels like the series, a proper ensemble, even if Cruise is still clearly the star. Although I liked Rogue Nation I missed the team ethos from the last one. Rhames and Renner basically did F-all!
Me neither. Maybe it's a bit too bland?
My best guess is that it unfortunately is swept up in the Straight Outta Compton wake and just can't compete.
Whereas, having seen RN just yesterday, I think it maintained the ensemble flavor of GP quite well. No doubt Ethan and Benji are the two main characters now, but Brandt and Luther were pursuing their own independent effort that was given a fair amount of screen time, and they played a significant role once the two pairs converged into a full team. Granted, it wasn't quite as ensemble-driven or character-driven as GP, but it was certainly more so than the first three films.
I think I've heard of films that started out slow but built audiences through word of mouth. Though that would've been more likely to happen back in the old days when films stayed in release for months. These days, a film that doesn't score big in its first week is likely to be pulled from theaters quickly, and any gradual audience-building would have to wait for the DVD release.
Yeah, thats what I figured.
Yep. Younger audiences are rarely into period pieces without major action sequences or one or more A-list stars, and this had neither.
Also, opening so soon after Mission: Impossible was doubtless a really dumb move. It might have done best in the doldrums of January-March, where major release competition is weakest...
That's one of the things that sounds good to me. I'm tired of remakes that are all explosions and don't feel like the original.
Well, there's no one more cynical of reboots than me, and that's because the producers rarely have any respect for the source material. But it sounds like these guys got it right-- starting with the period setting.
My 14 year old loved it. Didn't know anything about the spurce material either. But we like movies the populace often dislikes and period peace are a good thing.
I don't see MI as a lead-in, it was competition for TMFU. I mean, why would audiences want to go see a similar genre film, especially one less well known, and with virtually 'no stars' while MI: RN is still in the theaters, and is generally perceived to be a success. If anything having TMFU premiere so closely to RN might lead to unkind, and maybe unfair, comparisons. As someone else suggested they should've changed the release date. TMFU probably should've come out in January or February, with less competition, but also before Kingsmen because I think it loses in that match up as well.
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