Sweeney Todd! ARGH!

[justira]

So I went and saw Sweeney Todd, because I felt like doing something entertaining, relatively brainless, and not involving my mouth. Since it had Johnny Depp in it, was directed by Tim Burton, and purportedly contained straight razors and a lot of blood I was pretty sure I would enjoy it.

Which I did. I admit that now that Depp has bagged himself an iconic role it's difficult to separate him from Jack Sparrow. Of course Depp plays a lot of dark British men, but now the sarcasm and the British accent are tied to Sparrow.

And so is the smirk.

Just, fyi. Depp's evil smirk is like, orgasmically hot. I'm warning you >.>

Okay, so Depp was flashing around straight razors and there was a lot of blood. This should have been a slam dunk for me (JOHNNY DEPP. STRAIGHT RAZORS. BLOOD -- oh wait, sorry, my kinks are showing, let me tuck that back in there, *whistles*).

BUT ALAS.

THE BLOOD. IT WAS HORRID.

Not like blood is supposed to be horrid. It was SO BADLY DONE. I'm not objecting to the colour -- Burton likes to play with colour palettes and that's fine; he did the same thing in Sleepy Hollow and the whole "blue palettes make blood stand out" dig worked there, too. (In fact I was pretty specifically looking for similarities/differences between Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow -- and From Hell.)

No, it's not the colour. It's the... consistency? Texture? Opacity? I mean! God, it was so bad, the blood was OPAQUE and too thick half the time and the other time it was runny and looked like bad red dye.

Man, this movie could have been BEAUTIFUL with some nice, well-done blood. Light playing on blood can look fantastic, and this movie had the perfect setup for it -- so much nice, heavy lights and darks; it would have been gorgeous. I don't know whose brilliant decision it was to do the blood the way it was done here, but I want to smack them upside the head. Sure it made the blood stand out -- because it was distractingly ridiculous. I understand that it was this kind of fake-gore, shockingly THERE approach but it just didn't work for me at ALL. If they could have toned down the opacity just a little, made it thinner in some places and thicker in others, let the wonderful moody lighting play on it properly -- I would have been a happy camper.

I mean, seriously. Johnny Depp. Straight razors. Blood.


Also, this movie made me wish I understood music -- I noticed that the score was very complicated, but that's pretty much all I got out of it D=

I will definitely do a full-fledged review of the movie because I have a lot to say about the character development and the storytelling and the visuals and of course about how goddamn hot Depp is, especially with that fantastic hair and raggy clothes. But for now I just wanted to get that off my chest -- the blood sucked. I'll be sulking.

PS: Two posts in one day! MY JOURNAL. IT LIVES. IT RISES LIKE ZOMBIE JESUS.

Comments

[shuraiya.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Sweeney Todd yet (I don't know if I will be able to, because of the gore/cannibalism), but I just wanted to comment and say I agree that Johnny Depp is kind of stuck with the Jack Sparrow persona FOREVER now. XD;