Gemini Man

pixelburp

The CGI was variable; sometimes props were due, the younger Smith was top notch and I stopped thinking I was watching an effect. the problem was consistency and about half the time it went all Polar Express with a dead eyed mannequin. Arguably what sunk it was that the very last shot of young Smith was (one of) the worst in the whole film, leaving a bad taste.

The plot was fairly so so, the action perfunctory. It's no great wonder this was a flop when it came out, it sunk money into CGI and 48fps filming and was never going to claw that back. De-ageing ain't a draw anymore, that's a Tuesday in the MCU.

MJohnston

Saw this in 60fps when I was in San Francisco back in October. I really wanted to experience the 120fps thing but nobody was showing it in that format. Here’s what I posted on Letterboxd back then:

Not a great movie by any stretch. Way too emotionally distant, which is a real problem because it's an action movie that really tries to reach for something deeper. Part of that is the expressionless acting of Junior Will Smith, part of it is the bottomless blandness of the script.

The high frame rate thing rescues it only a little. It fades into insignificance in basic dialogue scenes, but it truly makes fairly standard action scenes seem like a completely new experience.

Worth seeing in high frame rate, but this isn’t a memorable movie otherwise.

Would love to see a movie where the action is filmed in 120fps, but everything else is in normal 24fps. I’m surprised Cameron isn’t interested in this for Avatar 2.

The motorcycle fight you’re all grumbling about, the 60fps really changed the way that scene felt - instead of any normal action scene where you’re struggling to pick up on what’s going on, in HFR you could track every single little move of the action. The speed of Junior’s attacks really worked very well with that, and it felt completely unlike any other action movie I’d ever seen.

I believe the UHD Blu-ray of this has a 60fps version, which I’d love to experience again. Bad film, very interesting technology.

McDermotX

MJohnston wrote: »

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I believe the UHD Blu-ray of this has a 60fps version, which I’d love to experience again. Bad film, very interesting technology.

It does.

Terrible film, but a worthwhile watch on a technological level just the once, for those interested in a different aesthetic. Gunplay scenes very sharp, very smooth but obviously some of the CGI work is horrendously obvious and takes the viewer out of the comfort zone, with the motorcycle sequence holding up quite well until the young Smith starts fighting old Smith with the bike, where HFR or not, it looks terrible.

Sad Professor

Watching this in 60fps and it's amazing how HFR by making everything more real makes everything more fake. The only benefit is in fast moving and chaotic actions scenes where the higher frame rate brings clarity but also makes every instance of green screen and CGI more obvious.

The Black Oil

I spent the first 30 minutes or so trying to figure out why Will Smith agreed to do this. Clive Owen is landed with what must be amongst the worst dialogue of his career. Clearly, someone found a file of bad villain lines and simply copied them into the script. Despite all this, I found it fairly watchable, though some of that's because of Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Less so frustrating and just rather disappointing. Ang Lee, what are you at, fella?