Thursday, May 14, 2009

Angels and Demons

I went and saw the "sequel" to the controversial De Vinci Code last night.

Tom Hanks stars again as the symbolist that knows what all those secret lemon juice messages that really old Roman dudes left behind mean and that there is a secret Illuminati path through Rome that points the way to their secret "church" where they would gather to plot the scientifically diabolical demise of the Catholic church. But it wasn't a true sequel, at least not in the movie. They are loosely tied together by a very brief conversation within the first ten minutes and the fact that one of the characters is the same. Maybe this isn't the case in the books, but I haven't read those yet.

Being that the movie was supposed to portray a climactic chapter in a centuries old controversy (which came first the chicken of the egg), I felt that it lacked the punch of it's predecessor. It didn't really have the same edgy suspense or thought provoking power. The first few scenes escalate the tension to a certain level and it just stays there until the end of the move which, I thought very amusingly, ended with a "big bang"...

All in all, it wasn't a bad movie at all. If you haven't been to Rome, it's a nice little tour and not a complete waste of a couple hours. Especially if you are as obsessive compulsive about seeing all the movies in a series if you've seen any of them at all.

1 comment:

D. Skippy said...

Read the books. Angels and Demons actually came first and the author had so much extra research bits left over that he figured he'd write another book.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I liked Angels and Demons (the book) better than the Da Vinci Code except for the superfluous and badly done "romance". It's like he tossed it in just for the fuck of it and it was completely unnecessary.

And, yes, the books are just like that -- where there is only the one character in common.