Candyman (2021)

johnny_ultimate

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Once again, Jordan Peele is not directing this film. He's just a co-writer. It's being directed by Nia DaCosta. I've removed Peele's name from the thread title as it keeps coming up as if he's the main creative force behind it.

And secondly, complaining about 'wokeness' and 'socio-political' themes around a bloody Candyman film is deeply funny to me. The first film is perhaps the most overtly 'socio-political' slasher film ever made, with issues of class and race deeply embedded into its very DNA. Boggles the mind anyone could have watched that film and come away with any different impression.

Obviously And hence Peele is there.

Like a fly on a shyte.

He was also a writer and producer on the Twilight zone and us (as well as director there) and look how they turned out

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peele_filmography

Anything he has touched as as writer has not ended well in general.

pixelburp

Horror as socio-political commentary?

What a crazy, outrageous and never-before-seen idea :pac: Keep politics out of my fish-hooks!

johnny_ultimate

And just as a counterpoint, even though this isn't actually 'A Jordan Peele Film' - Us and Get Out are extremely well-made films and both individually bloody good fun on their own very different terms. (Us is messy as all hell, but lots and lots to like about it too).

"Us" is an indulgent boring mess.

Kingp35

glasso wrote: »

"Us" is an indulgent boring mess.

Agreed. I really enjoyed Get Out. Us was poor though. The story was nonsense, really disappointing. My Wife was not impressed that I made her sit through it!

Tony EH

Tony EH wrote: »

This thing doesn't seem to be any better. I remember seeing 'Candyman' on a whim in the 90's (a decade of such neutered horror that it's probably best forgotten almost entirely) and to my surprise it turned out to be quite a good little movie. It was nothing brilliant, mind you, but that remake trailer did absolutely bugger all for me, and if ever there was film that didn't need a remake...

Still, I am totally at a loss as to the gush that Peele gets. He's competent and can direct a film. But other than that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

Yes Candyman was a fairly inconsequential and unexpected minor success back in the day. It wasn't brilliant by any means (quite uneven) but somehow the "Candyman 5 times" thing sticks in the mind of those who saw it at the time.

Also the theme of the 1992 movie was very much primarily about folklore (and persistence of same) and urban legend than anything else.

Retrospectively it has been "remembered" as something different in the light of the last number of years and primarily the reason for this remake.

Chances are this will be over-egged.

Peele is not the director here but it's his writing and in particular the ham-fisted symbolism and try-too-hard social commentary style that is his downfall.

On a technical level he can direct yes but it's his writing that is the problem - see "Us".

"Get out" was decent as said.

What sort of adult uses the term woke?

Padraig Mor

glasso wrote: »

Yes Candyman was a fairly inconsequential and unexpected minor success back in the day. It wasn't brilliant by any means (quite uneven) but somehow the "Candyman 5 times" thing sticks in the mind of those who saw it at the time.

Also the theme of the 1992 movie was very much primarily about folklore (and persistence of same) and urban legend than anything else.

Retrospectively it has been "remembered" as something different in the light of the last number of years and primarily the reason for this remake.

Chances are this will be over-egged.

Peele is not the director here but it's his writing and in particular the ham-fisted symbolism and try-too-hard social commentary style that is his downfall.

On a technical level he can direct yes but it's his writing that is the problem - see "Us".

"Get out" was decent as said.

I think you undersell the original somewhat. I loved it back in the day and actually only watched it again fairly recently. Great show, elevated by Philip Glass' music. I accept some unevenness and am ambivalent about the "Candyman x 5" trope which wasn't in the original novella IIRC. And while the central theme is about folklore, I think it's fair though to remember it as a race commentary in part - Helen pointing out that the police managed to shakedown the whole neighbourhood when she (white, middle class) was assaulted, yet are nowhere to be seen when it's black on black violence is just one of many such scenes throughout the movie.

And doesn't Tony Todd have the most amazing voice?!

winstonia83

winstonia83 wrote: »

What sort of adult uses the term woke?

it's in Wikipedia innit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke#:~:text=Woke%20(%2F%CB%88wo%CA%8Ak,Vernacular%20English%20expression%20stay%20woke.

What sort of adult doesn't actually know the history and evolution of the term across the 20th century from one of social awareness to its current connotation as an overly virtue-signalling concept of same?

jill_valentine

glasso wrote: »

it's in Wikipedia innit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke#:~:text=Woke%20(%2F%CB%88wo%CA%8Ak,Vernacular%20English%20expression%20stay%20woke.

What sort of adult doesn't actually know the history and evolution of the term across the 20th century from one of social awareness to its current connotation as an overly virtue-signalling concept of same?

OP didn't say they didn't understand it, they suggested it's terminology they don't take seriously as a criticism in itself. One could suggest, too, it would be especially ironic coming alongside a T2 avatar considering how many definitions of "overwoke" that movie comes under.

Candyman is quite overtly about class and race and how those things interact with the overwhelmingly white establishment. It's a feature of the titular character's origin story, just as it's a feature of Helen's efforts to document the folklore in present day. All of that unfolds againt the backdrop of early 1990s Cabrini-Green of all places, and in the context of a historic lynching.

It would be silly to try to pretend any of that is incidental.

glasso

glasso wrote: »

it's in Wikipedia innit?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke#:~:text=Woke%20(%2F%CB%88wo%CA%8Ak,Vernacular%20English%20expression%20stay%20woke.

What sort of adult doesn't actually know the history and evolution of the term across the 20th century from one of social awareness to its current connotation as an overly virtue-signalling concept of same?

What? I only hear the term on the internet and never spoken in real life.

Maybe you're spending too much time on the former. But do Irish people speak like above in real life these days?

oh deer

as I said the original film's primary theme was folklore and urban legend - which it unquestionably is.

I didn't say that race wasn't featured

but race is certainly the only reason that it's being remade and why Peele is a co-writer on it.

pixelburp

What lately I find most curious of the complaint about "woke" is: this is obviously an American movie, about a distinctly American problem and voice; a subject that's on the lips of a lot of those at the centre of the maelstrom. The movie's creators are themselves from that demographic.

To that end: it's quite clearly a movie made that doesn't care if it resonates with non-Americans or not - so curling ones lip about it feels redundant and just like wasted energy. I think there's an assumption here that we've just become so accustomed to American media, we immediately take it that it's built towards our enjoyment, consumption or speaks to us. When, here? It's not.

Would you complain about a horror movie that dealt with Australia's shocking history with its aboriginal communities? A Japanese film that dealt with Salary Man culture? Any number of countries that might produce a horror film that was also "about" female genital mutilation? Possibly not, because if wasn't an American movie we kinda give those things a pass as "foreign". But that's just it: horror movies are often way more than ostensibly scary things going "boo" (to take the Australian example, The Babadook was bluntly about motherhood and hating ones child).

This iteration of Candyman is clearly engaging with the racial element and there ain't no Subtext here. It's debatable if I'm interested in that but I won't agitate about it being "woke" or not, because the audience clearly isn't for me. A pasty white Irish guy.

winstonia83

winstonia83 wrote: »

What? I only hear the term on the internet and never spoken in real life.

Maybe you're spending too much time on the former. But do Irish people speak like above in real life these days?

it's a cultural term very much in the current vernacular, even in Ireland.

trying to pretend otherwise is at best.... uninformed.

Tony EH

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Once again, Jordan Peele is not directing this film. He's just a co-writer. It's being directed by Nia DaCosta. I've removed Peele's name from the thread title as it keeps coming up as if he's the main creative force behind it.

Cool so. From this thread, I got the impression he was the director.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

And secondly, complaining about 'wokeness' and 'socio-political' themes around a bloody Candyman film is deeply funny to me. The first film is perhaps the most overtly 'socio-political' slasher film ever made, with issues of class and race deeply embedded into its very DNA. Boggles the mind anyone could have watched that film and come away with any different impression.

Agreed.

jill_valentine

glasso wrote: »

oh deer

as I said the original film's primary theme was folklore and urban legend - which it unquestionably is.

I didn't say that race wasn't featured

but race is certainly the only reason that it's being remade and why Peele is a co-writer on it.

I don't think it's "unquestionable" at all, I don't think you can meaningfully extricate that folklore/urban legend aspect from the friction between the black community it belongs to vs Helen's removed perspective as a white academic.

And if race is the only reason Candyman is being remade, all the other classic horror properties being remade or rebooted in the last ten years, are they being remade for different or more worthy reasons?

pixelburp

pixelburp wrote: »

What lately I find most curious of the complaint about "woke" is: this is obviously an American movie, about a distinctly American problem and voice; a subject that's on the lips of a lot of those at the centre of the maelstrom. The movie's creators are themselves from that demographic.

To that end: it's quite clearly a movie made that doesn't care if it resonates with non-Americans or not - so curling ones lip about it feels redundant and just like wasted energy. I think there's an assumption here that we've just become so accustomed to American media, we immediately take it that it's built towards our enjoyment, consumption or speaks to us. When, here? It's not.

Would you complain about a horror movie that dealt with Australia's shocking history with its aboriginal communities? A Japanese film that dealt with Salary Man culture? Any number of countries that might produce a horror film that was also "about" female genital mutilation? Possibly not, because if wasn't an American movie we kinda give those things a pass as "foreign". But that's just it: horror movies are often way more than ostensibly scary things going "boo" (to take the Australian example, The Babadook was bluntly about motherhood and hating ones child).

This iteration of Candyman is clearly engaging with the racial element and there ain't no Subtext here. It's debatable if I'm interested in that but I won't agitate about it being "woke" or not, because the audience clearly isn't for me. A pasty white Irish guy.

The film medium is global.

My issue is effectively selectively remaking a piece primarily to accentuate an aspect of it in some current societal context.

If that's not the definition of "woke" in the understood context of the term (except those who find it unfamiliar obviously!) then I'm not sure what is.

jill_valentine

jill_valentine wrote: »

I don't think it's "unquestionable" at all, I don't think you can meaningfully extricate that folklore/urban legend aspect from the friction between the black community it belongs to vs Helen's removed perspective as a white academic.

And if race is the only reason Candyman is being remade, all the other classic horror properties being remade or rebooted in the last ten years, are they being remade for different or more worthy reasons?

not sure what your whataboutery point is about referencing other remakes.

the point is that this movie is being remade for purely racial commentary reasons - which it is.

and as said race is part of the original film but you're actually retrospectively exaggerating it to some extent.

you'll love the remake no doubt!

pixelburp

glasso wrote: »

The film medium is global.

My issue is effectively selectively remaking a piece primarily to accentuate an aspect of it in some current societal context.

If that's not the definition of "woke" in the understood context of the term (except those who find it unfamiliar obviously!) then I'm not sure what is.

Again, you're making an assumption that every American film is made to be consumed by a global audience. If this was a Fast & Furious sequel you might have a point, but this is a remake of a niche film, for a niche genre, albeit by a brain trust that has had some mainstream kudos. So by your own logic, no American movie can tackle headlong an inherently American subject, in case Irish audiences (for instance) get irritated with the subject? Kinda proving my point then - US films have to correspond to your tastes, not the homeland's?

Don't think anyone's trying to say this film isn't putting its messaging in the foreground, but just because the messaging is a subject you are personally bored with, or disinterested in, doesn't mean it's "woke". If someone wants to make a polemic about police brutality and attach it to a story that already had a racial element, then that's for them to do, and American audiences to react to.

oh and the original story by Barker was "unquestionably" centralised on the idea of "myth and rumour" and set in Liverpool!

It began with a short story. British author Barker’s major breakthrough came with his “Books Of Blood” series in 1984, and in the fourth installment (published in 1985), there was a story named “The Forbidden” — which shares a title, but little else, with a short film that Barker had directed in the 1970s. Involving the power of myth and rumor, the tale involves a Liverpool university student who discovers graffiti on a housing estate referring to a figure called The Candyman, and ends up becoming his latest victim.

Rose and Barker began meeting to develop the story, and quickly agreed that retaining the Liverpool setting wouldn’t fly with the financiers and decided to move the story into the deprived Carbrini Green area of Chicago.

the setting was moved to Chicago for reasons of a higher chance of securing financing!

https://www.indiewire.com/2012/10/looking-back-on-20-years-of-candyman-whats-blood-if-not-for-spilling-250781/

pixelburp

pixelburp wrote: »

Again, you're making an assumption that every American film is made to be consumed by a global audience. If this was a Fast & Furious sequel you might have a point, but this is a remake of a niche film, for a niche genre, albeit by a brain trust that has had some mainstream kudos. So by your own logic, no American movie can tackle headlong an inherently American subject, in case Irish audiences (for instance) get irritated with the subject? Kinda proving my point then - US films have to correspond to your tastes, not the homeland's?

Don't think anyone's trying to say this film isn't putting its messaging in the foreground, but just because the messaging is a subject you are personally bored with, or disinterested in, doesn't mean it's "woke". If someone wants to make a polemic about police brutality and attach it to a story that already had a racial element, then that's for them to do, and American audiences to react to.

I find you purely argumentative tbh - the most pointless of discourses will only ensue.

pixelburp

glasso wrote: »

I find you purely argumentative tbh - the most pointless of discourses will only ensue.

Imagine an argument/debate/discussion happening on a film board.

You Used the reduction "woke", then cry foul because you're challenged on the lazy term, because an American film isn't being made specifically for you.

Sure, I'm argumentative. Cos I think you're talking nonsense

Mr Crispy

glasso wrote: »

the point is that this movie is being remade for purely racial commentary reasons

Why is this a problem for you?

Mr Crispy

Mr Crispy wrote: »

Why is this a problem for you?

It debases the original piece imo and I don't like the idea of selectively picking a movie and remaking it to prove a point in a completely different context around a theme which actually wasn't even in the very original inspiration.

In fact it actually also devalues the very serious issue that it's being picked for by just being so obvious.

That's just my opinion.

johnny_ultimate

The first film is unambiguously about race and class. Long before the titular film makes his belated introduction to Madsen’s character, the film tells the story of a white researcher living in an explicitly gentrified apartment block. She and a friend venture for ‘research’ into a real-world Chicago housing project. Thee various interactions between the black and white characters in these different settings explore in no uncertain terms the vast inequality and separations between different classes of people (and black and white communities) in late 80s / early 90s urban America. None of this is going into the backstory stuff that overtly draws on the history of racial violence in America. I haven’t read the original story, but my understanding from second-hand accounts is that Barker’s work very much draws on the class divide in English cities as part of the work - that was transplanted to America for the film.

This is all stuff that has been explored thoroughly and convincingly by both academics and critics, contemporaneously and retrospectively. A quick Google of ‘Candyman and race’ or ‘Candyman and class’ brings up everything from academic journals from the 90s to modern culture blogs. It’s also been discussed by Bernard Rose himself over the years, and Tony Todd.

Not only is this stuff foundational to the film and therefore series, it IMO means the series at least theoretically lends itself remarkably well to being re-explored through a modern lens. And in particular that the project is being steered by a young black woman seems like a natural, logical evolution given the source material. None of that guarantees a good film, but does at least feel uniquely fitting for Candyman as a series.

Mr Crispy

glasso wrote: »

debases the original film.

It has no effect on the original film whatsoever.

pixelburp

pixelburp wrote: »

Imagine an argument/debate/discussion happening on a film board.

You Used the reduction "woke", then cry foul because you're challenged on the lazy term, because an American film isn't being made specifically for you.

Sure, I'm argumentative. Cos I think you're talking nonsense

It's not that I can't go on and on retorting you, it's just that I couldn't be arsed.

That's being honest.

If I said black you'd just say white for the sake of it.

Mr Crispy

Mr Crispy wrote: »

It has no effect on the original film whatsoever.

not in my opinion.

to place a weighting on my points it's the second one that I made that would be 80% of my gripe.

as said I don't like the cherry-picking a movie for a remake purely for the obvious purposes in this case.

even more so considering it was something that Barker didn't even have in his original story set on the other side of the world.

maybe Peele just doesn't trust his own original concepts after the incoherent disaster that was "Us" - who knows?

(notwithstanding the fact he's not the director, he's initiated the project)

johnny_ultimate

glasso wrote: »

It's not that I can't go on and on retorting you, it's just that I couldn't be arsed.

That's being honest.

If I said black you'd just say white for the sake of it.

Mod note: Enough of this tedious trolling, glasso.

pixelburp

Anyway, so then I says to Mabel ...

Tony Todd. Now there's an actor who maybe got a little typecast? Though if there are only two malevolent roles I know him from (Candyman, and The Rock), a third would be one of Star Trek's best - and most heart-rending episodes - "The Visitor". His voice is also just amazing.

Obviously, without the context of the show, the clip is a little meaningless, but any excuse to share a clip from the best Trek show there was:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkhipDIMXmY