Angels and Demons
The one with Ayelet Zurer as the CERN scientist. Langdon gets some lascivious looks but not even first base so far.
Ah, the classic problem of adapting the more popular book first, then adapting the “prequel”. They just pretend The Da Vinci Code has already happened, but paint over Tom Hanks’ white hairs.
Langdon continues to boast of his ability to Sherlock his way out of situations, and do that thing where he “knows” where people come from, because he notices they wear giant golden symbols of their work on clothes or bags. It was if Sherlock was hitting the opium even more, to dull his senses. Oh god, the gratuitous Italian, mamma mia.
The “history” stuff is the same old bullshit. Describing John Paul II (at least that’s what the body looks like) as a “progressive” pope, that’s rich. Oh, and the science. Antimatter described as “combustible” by a CERN scientist. The famous “god particle” quip.
LHC is like a Blofeld hollowed out volcano base: with a distracting PA system blaring worthless announcements, distracting scientists from their work. How can anyone do deep intellectual work with that racket?
The pope camerlengo, some kind of Borgia (an adopted child of the Pope) does a big speech on Scientism vs Catholicism, literally preaching to the converted, since he does it on the conclave! The climax and ending is so stupid, suddenly everyone starts going on shooting sprees and most characters are shot dead. The bomb goes off anyway, but it’s just fireworks.
But of course, it’s a fake ending! The shifty Irish is to blame, and the ambitious Ratzinger (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is not Palpatine, he’s the hero. Everybody knows “progressive” churchcritters are a pox on the true church, hardcore dogmatists should live! Progressives should kill themselves in a last cardinal sin to avoid heaven. Eat THIS, Francis!
The casting choices continue to baffle. Why the actual fuck does an Israeli plays an Italian platonic love interest for our boy author avatar Lagdon? In a starring role? So you get two leads trying badly to speak Italian, who the fuck thought this was a good idea?
Also, for some reason, this is a Seven ripoff.
Christ, what a mess. Or should I say, mass?
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.