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Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Dark Jaguar - 24th April 2006
Okay, they did the "faithful adherence to source material" thing. Too bad they did it in a "ya know, we should put those charcoal briscuit babies in there so people won't wine about them NOT being in here" way.
I had my worries when I realized the script was being written DURING A FEW WEEK'S VACATION, but I passed it off as something "hollywood does". It is unfortunate that this movie seems to be an insult to me. Not 5 minutes into it, they said the name of the movie in a loud voice, in a "oh yeah, we didn't forget the name of the game" way. (Little kid screams the name of the town wanting to go there.)
About 4 times before they even get there, they need to make it a point that Silent Hill is a ghost town. They mention the same stuff over and over again, which basically states they don't trust the viewing audience to have an attention span at all. "The coal fires are still burning under this town, and also the town had a fire years ago, the coal is still smoldering under it, which basically means that under the town, there's a fire, on some coals." It is as though Mojo Jojo wrote a large portion of the dialog.
Pyramid Head was there, but while it SEEMED like he would serve a purpose, it appears he was there ONLY long enough to be called "the demon" and then you never see him again. There's no psychological change, at all, in the main characters to justify his sudden disappearence. They apparently just summoned him up for the purpose of tearing the entire skin off someone and then sent him away. "See? We're cool, we have this guy!"
The art style was perfectly presented. The various nods to the game and the near perfect recreation of the opening part of Silent Hill 1 were great. It is unfortunate that the game suffers in SPITE of the adherence to source material, and it is all because of the major place they strayed, the one place they HAD to stray admittedly, the entire movie script was of course the only way to make a game fun to WATCH, but wow did it suck. Aside from a brief moment here and there of "wow I have no idea what's trying to hurt me" mode, it really sucked. Oh, there's also the fact that while in the games, a lot of stuff is alluded to rather than spelled out, in this game they spell out EVERY detail, over the course of very long interludes in flashback mode. And of course, the obligatory repeating of itself just to make sure I know exactly what their opinion of my intelligence is.
Just to make it clear, the parts of the story that take place with the husband are entirely useless. That is, it goes NOWHERE. He "discovers" some stuff about the town, but it's nothing that the mother doesn't discover on her own anyway and it just plays into that horrible repetition of the obvious (something terrible happened here) the movie does so well. In fact, the entire husband part of the story just ends with the guy being yelled at by a police officer with some job of covering up a conspiracy and him GIVING UP AND GOING HOME.
They had a TWIST ENDING of sorts where it turns out the wife and daughter either A) are dead, B) never left Silent Hill after all, or C) decided their husband was a loser (I wouldn't blame them) and left him after seeing him asleep on the couch. You decide.
In other words, they tried to stay true to source material, but it is unfortunate whoever wrote the script was ONLY trying to get the characters from one thing from the games to another.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 24th April 2006
The script was hardly GOOD by any means, but it also wasn't as bad as some people have said. That aside, I enjoyed just about everything the movie had to offer, except for Allessa's exposition near the end which really could have been cut out since most people still didn't understand what it was all about anyway.
And it's likely that Christopher was in the movie for the sole purpose offering a bit of insight into the town's history and so that that he can appear as the main character in the sequel. Probably could have been done without, but I never felt bored by it.
Quote:Not 5 minutes into it, they said the name of the movie in a loud voice, in a "oh yeah, we didn't forget the name of the game" way. (Little kid screams the name of the town wanting to go there.)
It helped to establish the need to go to that one specific town, though. Remember in the game? "Hey, let's go on a vacation to Silent Hill...THE MOST TERRIFYINGLY EVIL PLACE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!!! I hear it's a great place for family outings." Yeah...
Quote:Oh, there's also the fact that while in the games, a lot of stuff is alluded to rather than spelled out, in this game they spell out EVERY detail, over the course of very long interludes in flashback mode. And of course, the obligatory repeating of itself just to make sure I know exactly what their opinion of my intelligence is.
And people STILL had no idea what was happening in the movie. Part of the problem is that most of us already knew exactly what was going on long before we saw the movie, so there was no need to explain ANYTHING. The only place where I felt like they were trying to explain way more than necessary was Alessa's exposition near the end, but I've already made clear my opinion of that particular scene.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - deanna - 24th April 2006
i liked it a lot
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Weltall - 24th April 2006
I saw it twice so far, and I actually enjoyed it a lot. For a long time I was very wary of the movie. I understand the Silent Hill games and the continuity better than most people, and I was quite afraid of it becoming another Resident Evil. To my delight, even though they did change some of the fundamentals, they did so in a way that was at least somewhat consistent with the games.
Plus, as I got into it, my expectations changed somewhat. I went in with expectations in the stratosphere, expecting another Silent Hill game in movie format, which isn't really possible. Once I allowed myself to approach it as what it is, a fan-movie, I found that I liked it much more than I thought I would.
Sure, the acting was questionable and some of the dialogue was stinky, but I heard Harry Mason say 'Huh? Radio.", laughed because it sounded funny, and still adored the rest of the game.
I have to commend Christophe Gans. The direction for this film, in my eyes, was outstanding. I didn't like Pyramid Head's limited role (and, considering the reason PH even existed in the games, he shouldn't have been there anyway), but the Otherside transformations and the monsters were to a fucking T. And even though PH and the re-created scenes were blatant fanservice, I'm a fan, dammit, and I appreciated them to no end. The alleyway scene in the beginning, which is certainly one of the three most memorable moments from the entire series, was executed perfectly, even down to the skewed camera angles.
I also appreciated the fact that they killed Cybil off, as she is supposed to die in the game as well.
Overall, it exceeded my expectations all around, and I'm thrilled that it's doing so well in the box office.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Dark Jaguar - 24th April 2006
I'm not sure what this means, but the audience I was with actually ended up laughing at a number of the scenes in the game.
At any rate, it did do a lot of things "right", but in the end I just didn't like it. Oh well.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 25th April 2006
There were about 15 people in the theatre with me. I don't think any of them ever said anything or laughed during the entire movie.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - EdenMaster - 25th April 2006
![[Image: 20060424.jpg]](http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2006/20060424.jpg)
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 25th April 2006
P-A is allowed to criticize the movie since they've played the games. That doesn't make them any less wrong though.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - lazyfatbum - 25th April 2006
sounds like a pretty good debate going on about the quality of the film from alot of different outlets... this must be what they meant by ..."multimedia".
But while the first SH had rediculous (badly translated) dialogue the 2nd, 3rd and 4th was done extremely well so I dont think you should blame the bad dialogue in the movie on the fact that the first game had bad dialogue which would have been avoided anyways if the original writers and top translators were on call from Konami to be there as advisors during the script phase. it's the director and more importantly the writer who make a good story... james cameron could write and direct a 3 hour movie about a snowball fight outside of school and it would be awesome, make trillions of dollars, because it would be well writen and have a talented director.
I'll have to see it just to see what all the fuss is about. Bad dialogue is actually hard to achieve nowadays, it's the story that's been lacking for several years now. Gee i wonder if it had anyything to do with the WGA strike, oh look another remake in the theaters, I wonder why.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Weltall - 25th April 2006
I'm not blaming the bad dialogue on the game, I'm merely stating why I can let it slide. Besides, the dialogue in all of the games sure has some real "who farted" moments.
SH4:
Cynthia: *is lying, near death, on the floor in a veritable ocean of her own blood with numbers cruelly carved into her body*
Henry: "...Are you okay?"
And in SH3, after spending an entire day trapped within a hellish alternate reality, Heather runs off to call an ambulance when Douglas breaks his leg. Hello.
SH2 is really the only game that had no egregrious dialogue. Yet, I love each game and enjoy them all immensely. I would have loved to see better dialogue, but I'll hardly lose sleep because it's sub-par.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Dark Jaguar - 25th April 2006
There's clearly a difference of opinion, but I think I'll play devil's advocate regarding the Silent Hill 1 thing GR. When the main character and his daughter head there for vacation, they have no idea the place is an abandoned ghost town. That's only discovered when he gets there. So it's not like he thought "hey let's go on vacation to hell's armpit". He THOUGHT it was still habitable. The only real issue is barely anyone outside of Silent Hill seems to realize what's happened to that town. It is as though it is an informational black hole and government officials everywhere just don't seem to mind the sudden lack of any updates on that town at all, even when voting season comes around. That's the main thing I have an issue with. In this day and age, a town can't just delapidate without the whole world knowing about it within 5 minutes.
I will only add I saw this with a friend and a few rows in front of us, there was another group of fans. This dedicated individual in front of us was voicibly upset with the movie. As my friend said, it would seem she basically expected the cinema scenes to be resolution bumped and played back directly.
My friend enjoyed it more than I did, but we both found it lacking.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 25th April 2006
Don't most normal people read about where they're travelling to and/or get hotel reservations first before they start driving and find themselves with the very bowels of Hell itself?
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Dark Jaguar - 25th April 2006
I've never "gone travelling on a vacation" before, so I don't know. They read a brochure, so they did read about it. I really don't think the WORLD would be operating normally if everyone actually knew, as common knowledge, that there is a town that is a direct spiritual link to an alternate reality. There's not a military agent nor a scientist to be found there, so clearly no one knows the current condition.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 25th April 2006
If it's as big a vacation spot as the game suggests then I imagine it would not remain a secret very long that things were not quite right.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - A Black Falcon - 25th April 2006
You don't need to have a plan well ahead of time to go on vacation somewhere... when we went to England we'd get reservations in the next town in the last one (for bed and breakfasts, through a system the UK has to reserve them through tourist bureaus or something)... no preplanning for the specifics of where to stay...
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 25th April 2006
My family always plans out everything, at least a month in advance.
...
Why in the heck are we talking about vacations?
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Weltall - 25th April 2006
The reason that Harry doesn't know Silent Hill is an abandoned ghost town in Silent Hill 1 is because it isn't. Harry sees it that way, but that's because he isn't in the real Silent Hill. The truth is, Harry and the characters he sees are in an alternate reality under Alessa's direct control. It's not entirely unlike the movie, except that in the game, the real town of Silent Hill is still normal and unaffected by anything you encounter. This is also the case for the other games as well. You never see the real town, and the real town never sees you. It always goes about its buisness while you're trapped inside of realities beyond ours.
Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Harry would decide to go to Silent Hill and not think twice.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 26th April 2006
Well, anyway, my point was that it was hardly some grand set of events that brought him there. And in the context of the rest of the movie the reasoning behind going to Silent Hill was good enough.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Dark Jaguar - 26th April 2006
Not really... It didn't need to be "grand", I never said that. I just said it had to make sense, and that's just an example of "bad parenting", along with running from a cop for no earthly reason I can comprehend at all.
Oh Weltall, I think I'll need some explaining here. It is clear that you keep going from Silent Hill to Hellish Silent Hill, so what, there are now 3 different worlds, and you never see the "real" one? What's the purpose of having TWO fake silent hills?
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - lazyfatbum - 26th April 2006
DJ every SH takes place in the mind of the characters. everything is unreal.
here's the best way to understand it I think, imagine a city has the triforce built under it. You have a triforce on your hand, making you speciol, so you go there. As soon as you arrive the town is reflected off of your mind, if you're a person with a guilty conscious you live in hell, if you're feeling fine and have no personal demons you see nothing out of the ordinary. here's the difference: Imagine the triforce under the city has already been claimed by another person with the triforce in their hand, and they can make whatever they want in the city. So even if you're a good person, you'll be attacked by THEIR nightmares and what not and you will see Silent Hill based on what THEY think.
now, in a nightmare on elmstreet kinda way, if you fail while in this dream world it will effect the real world. Die in the dream world, die in the real world. That sorta thing. But not everyone can enter Silent hill, you have to be speciol, harry's adopted daughter contained half the soul of Alessa so she was called to silent hill in order for the souls to combine (they were split to keep God from bbeing born), James killed his wife while vacationing in SH and felt so guilty he actually relapsed and forgot it happened, this overwhelming guilt opened silent hill to him where he can fight his own demons and the memory of his wife who he thnks is 'missing' - there has to be a very specific reason why Silent Hill will let you in because SH is a consciousness (like the triforce) and you have to be sensitive to it in order to interact with it, otherwise it stays hidden from our perception of reality.
In a way, Silent Hill is a real life purgatory, from it you will clear yourself and enter a state of guiltless understanding, realization, etc. Or completely drown in your guilt, being overtaken by your fears even the things you try to laugh at manifesting themselves in to the worst case scenario you can imagine. and then, you have the people who are on a mission, people that have died (harry in a car wreck) but are kept alive in order to stop a great disaster (the birth of god), if he makes good, he is given a new life (so is his daughter who is now two people = plot of SH3) and it raises the question in the stories does God exist or is the will of the characters who make good and become archangels foor good, (having defended good, are ultimately cursed afterward to continue being a servant of God for the good of man) litteraly speaking.
but SH is what it is because it left a scare, a man-made scare from the civil war where men butchered other men and asylums carried the insane in to slughterhouses for the wicked to torture as either a display of power or just to sooth their own desires to perpetuate anger and fear. because of those events SH is the emotional heart of Earth that carries this negative energy flow, which is why it was decided that god will be birthed in Silent hill's hidden reality (a pocket in a multiverse created by the pain of the murdered) that is created and forged by the unborn God as he gestates in two different people (representing the original person's good and bad side). Alessa creates 'alternate' Silent Hill and ffills it with her nightmares (nurses, demon children etc), walls made of blood and that sort of thing while harry's daughter sees a more shrouded SH trying to give harry clues as he moves forward exposing the truth of SH and what harry needs to do, your daughter creates the people who help you. Eventually harry's daughter is 'killed' (she never actually existed anyway)combined with alessa and god is born, the people merged, god is killed by harry, and the baby (collection of both soul-halves) becomes one, at which point this 'version' of Silent Hill no longer exists and harry wakes up in his car with a massive headache and a baby in his arms.
this is why SH2 was so different, it went in a completely different direction story wise. But when Harry's daughter reaches 16 or 17, she is thrown in to Silent Hill where ever she goes, even when not in the borders of SH because she has the god inside her, it survived just as she did and it's creating these alternate worlds based off the fears and mind of harry's daughter. While harry was attacking what would become, harry's daughter is being attacked by what has been and her Silent Hill along with harry's silent hill is reborn so to speak, as memories she must recollect and experience in order to kill god who's main driving force is the so called mmother of God Claudia who sacrificed her own daughter to use as a vessel for god, harry's daughter denounces god, vomiting it on to the floor and Claudia takes it in to her, swallowing it, you kill claudia and the undeveloped god forces himself to be birthed at which point you kill it once and for all.
fuck I love silent hill.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 26th April 2006
Quote:Oh Weltall, I think I'll need some explaining here. It is clear that you keep going from Silent Hill to Hellish Silent Hill, so what, there are now 3 different worlds, and you never see the "real" one? What's the purpose of having TWO fake silent hills?
One is the purgatory where all the cultists are since they're dead, but as Alessa explains she has no power over them because of their blind faith. The Dark Silent Hill is Alessa's realm and where most of the monsters roam around. In the movie, most of the monsters can't come out when foggy Silent Hill is in play. The "real" Silent Hill becomes uninhabited likely because those who survived knew something about what really happened and used the story about coal fires to keep people away.
Quote:Not really... It didn't need to be "grand", I never said that. I just said it had to make sense, and that's just an example of "bad parenting", along with running from a cop for no earthly reason I can comprehend at all.
I imagine there's a LOT of backstory between Rose, Christopher and Sharon that's not present in the film. I got the impression that Rose was under a lot of stress since if she couldn't find a way to cure her daughter in Silent Hill, then it was likely that Sharon would have ended in some kind of insane asylum. Cybill was going to arrest her and take her back to Christopher, which would have all but eliminated any chance of her getting anywhere near Silent Hill.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Dark Jaguar - 26th April 2006
For the first part, I was asking Weltall about the GAME, not the movie.
Also, the movie didn't seem to have the cultists from the game, but rather heartland fundamentalists.
Cybil was going to do what? Why would she arrest her? She was just pulling her over for speeding as far as I could tell.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 26th April 2006
Quote:Cybil was going to do what? Why would she arrest her? She was just pulling her over for speeding as far as I could tell.
Cybill was eyeing her closely from the moment she pulled up the gas station. Rose was acting kind of weird and Sharon was crying about her pictures. Cybill then pulled her over later to see if anything was wrong. Maybe Cybill wasn't planning on Rose, but that was likely what Rose THOUGHT.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Dark Jaguar - 26th April 2006
Why would Rose THINK that, aside from being someone who acts in a generally irrational manner through the whole opening part of the movie?
As far as I can tell, she had no motivation for trying to escape from the police. I'm not exactly alone on this. No rational explanation was offered, and it is not clear that that is actually intended to BE a hidden secret for us to uncover. It just seems a bad plot device.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Great Rumbler - 26th April 2006
Rose was desperate and wanted very badly to get to Silent Hill. Cybill represented a hinderance to that goal. So, Rose steps on the gas and blasts through the gates. It's hardly some complex, hidden secret...
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Dark Jaguar - 26th April 2006
Riiight. The reality is that despite what they INTENDED for that scene to mean, it came out as ridiculous. No one in the audience understood the reasons for that sudden "I'd better go!" thing. She had no reason at all to think she would be arrested, she barely had reason to think she might get a ticket, and was the risk of actually being PUT in jail and losing her child really worth a, at the MOST, half hour delay? All it ended up doing was crippling her in that town anyway, when otherwise she might have had an ally give her a gun early on, perhaps in some coffee shop.
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Weltall - 26th April 2006
Silent Hill was... not a good movie... - Weltall - 26th April 2006
Dark Jaguar Wrote:Riiight. The reality is that despite what they INTENDED for that scene to mean, it came out as ridiculous. No one in the audience understood the reasons for that sudden "I'd better go!" thing. She had no reason at all to think she would be arrested, she barely had reason to think she might get a ticket, and was the risk of actually being PUT in jail and losing her child really worth a, at the MOST, half hour delay? All it ended up doing was crippling her in that town anyway, when otherwise she might have had an ally give her a gun early on, perhaps in some coffee shop.She had damn good reason to think she could be arrested. She took her daughter against her husband's wishes and without telling him. For all she knew, Christopher could have told the police that she kidnapped her daughter and was taking her to Silent Hill. He didn't do that, but it's hardly a stretch to believe he might considering the circumstances (he did take other measures to stop her, such as cancelling her credit cards), and considering that Rose had a terse, uncomfortable exchange with a nosy cop poking around her car, one could certainly think Rose had that thought in her mind when Cybil pulled her over.