Throughout the comics, cartoons, and movies, Peter Parker is faced with dilemma after dilemma - from choosing whom of many worthy candidates to save, to meting out his own brand of illegal vigilante revenge-flavoured justice on those who have wronged him.
In that sense he's a worthy role model, thus allowed relatively untouched past the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television's giant Scissors O' Censorship. It's a marked contrast to Chow Yun Fat's character, Captain Sao Feng from Pirates of the Caribbean, who committed the odious sins of 'vilifying and defacing the Chinese'.
In Spidey's honour, WanDa cinema erected this curiously misshapen effigy in the atrium.
The hardcore fans were out in force too. I would normally feel pretty odd photographing someone else's unaccompanied child in public like this, but this guy was asking for it.We chose the VIP screening because it was the first one available in English with Chinese subtitles, rather than dubbed into Mandarin. I know I should probably be practising my Chinese listening, but there's something deeply wrong with Venom hissing "Never wound what you can't kill" in Putonghua.
The waiting room was great. Comfy couches with complimentary and coffee...
... Mickey Mouse-shaped biscuits ...
... and free magazines. The view should have been good too, but unfortunately instead of the Songhua River, it was filled with construction yard.
For a few Chairman Maos more than a regular ticket, we found ourselves in the lap of luxury. The cinema itself had just 24 seats, mostly Laz-E-Boys with four-way motorised movement, and one couch that reclined to almost horizontal. Even the attendant was prettier than those attending the normal screens, where all the plebs go.It's probably worth noting that going to the cinema, bourgeois leisure activity as it is, probably isn't such an established tradition in China than it is in the West. The problem is compounded by the fact that DVD's cost a mere fraction of a ticket. People that do make it down to their local multiplex, then, are either so excited at the sight of the Silver Screen that they chat animatedly, reiterating the plot out loud throughout the entire venture, or so rich and over-privileged that they leave their phones on and continue their oh-so-important business conversations oblivious to their fellow audience members.
It's annoying to say the least, and as the lights dimmed I was relieved to see that apart from us, the VIP screening was completely empty. At least for a while. I'm not sure what category of anti-social behaviour this falls into, but in a particularly angst-ridden low in Peter and Mary-Jane's relationship, a woman came wandering into the VIP cinema carrying a crying baby! After a couple of leisurely circuits, just to make sure that she'd disturbed us sufficiently, she wandered out again.
I won't say much about the movie itself, except to say that I thought it was awesome. To those whiners who say it's a muddled mess, it's a tall order to compress over 40 years of comic book history into a few two hour movies but Sam Raimi has done a great job so far. Sure, Venom might rub the hard-core Silver Age fans up the wrong way, but this isn't the 1960's any more. a villain like Kraven the Hunter would frankly look camp and ridiculous in present-day New York, even for a comic-book movie, and Venom, for all its faults is undeniably cinematic.
No comments:
Post a Comment