Sam Walker

What this movie gets right is the cinematography. There are so many wonderful and bleak shots in the film. At the very list it is visually pleasing most of the time. Joaquin reprised his role wonderfully; though his character has become more silent since the first film, considering his predicament I think it works well with the character. While the first film, in my opinion, was a master commentary on society and mental illness this one does a good job making a few additional points in the same vein, albeit not nearly as well as the first. At the very least, it does a good job of showing how people are quick to condemn and not try to help or believe a person has serious issues. However, I think the direction given to the prison guards of Arkham is pretty fitting. I think they show the struggle of being a guard and the kinds of things that might happen on the daily to make their lives difficult, but it also exposes the ugly side of law enforcement with a God complex that find joy in ruling over their inmates or “messing” with them. I also really enjoyed the orchestral score of the film I thought it was moving and powerful, especially the areas that chose to reprise the original theme. There were quite a few places to laugh and the first quarter of the film was actually pretty enjoyable. Now for the ugly, the plot of this thing is so convoluted it’s hard to tell what is real and what is a delusion at times, I could try and give it some credit and say they did this to give the audience first hand experience with delusion, but I don’t believe that is the case. There are so many things that happen in the film that don’t make any sense at all for instance if an inmate can’t have a certain object how the heck can THIS be allowed or THAT happen. I feel the film doesn’t have a real clear underlying message I feel like it started to go in one direction but then it decided to go another way, but also like maybe it had to apologize for how dark the first film was… I honestly have no idea. There’s also suddenly a lot of extra information added to Arthur’s past that sort’ve felt shoehorned in, perhaps for added weight in the court scenes. When I first heard this was a musical a lot of people were complaining, but I actually thought it could be really cool and really show some madness. What I ended up sitting through was 2 hours and 15 minutes of mostly strained whisper talk-singing. I know Joaquin can sing, so I don’t know if the music was just out of range or if he was so committed to singing in character. I appreciate the commitment to the character, as I assume that was the attributing factor to the pained singing, the pain and desperation really came through. However, that was a lot of pained singing to have to sit through as an audience. Lady Gaga sang quite well but her character was under developed and severely lacking in my opinion. I was expecting something very different based on the marketing and the first film, and by the end of it I was left wondering what of substance really even happened?

This is the same film as Top Gun, almost the exact same scene sequences. It's entertaining, but uf you just watched the original, you're going to be really bored. Unless you just came to see new airplanes and like 10% added character depth for Maverick.