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Night Watch

Stewart

Active Member
I seen this film recently, called Night Watch and I thought it was terrible. It's big on special effects - which were excellent - but the plot revolved around the tired old good guys/bad guys (in this case vampires) protecting something until a prophecy is fulfilled.

The film was adapted from a novel (the first in a series of four, I believe) and follows the contemporary struggles of the vampires of Light (Night Watch) and the vampired of Darkness (Day Watch). They are both after a twelve year old boy as he is prophesied to begin Armageddon - they both want to influence him to make his choice, to choose between Light and Dark.

I think the thing that lets this film down is that there are so many concepts and things happening but absolutely no explanation. The vampires can move into a place called the Gloom (rendering them invisible in our world); after incidents in civilian's lives they can find out they are an Other, a person who has a special ability (shapeshifting, for example) and must choose between Light and Dark.

No doubt the further stories from the books will received adaptations but I would hardly think they are worth waiting for. Like the sequels to The Matrix, they will appear as nonsensical filler. The only thing separating the two is that the original Matrix was good. The original Night Watch is just rubbish too.
 
Stewart, generally I do not make a habit of correcting peoples' grammar, but since you are such a stickler for the grammatically correct, you might like to change "I seen this film recently" to "I saw this film recently".
Yours in helpfulness,
Poppy. ;)
 
I dunno, I liked "Night Watch". Maybe it helps to have read the book too - the movie doesn't do a very good job of explaining all the mythology behind it, no. But I liked the whole grey-area thing; the good guys and the bad guys have a somewhat generic mission, true, but the whole idea of having them both ruled by a bureaucracy where they have basically called a truce on the top level and the poor shlobs down on the street have no idea what their bosses have decided is "good" or "bad" in this particular case...

The book delves a lot deeper into that, and does a much better job of it; the movie, to some extent, skips not only the background but also the whole choice bit; how to try to be good in a world where you have no idea what consequences your actions will have. Sure, the whole good-vs-bad, light-vs-dark thing is run to the ground, but I think "Night Watch" had a somewhat fresh perspective on it. I'd say equal parts Gaiman and Bulgakov, although perhaps not QUITE as good as either.

Or maybe it's just the Buffy reference that reeled me in. I dunno.
 
I thought it was an interesting alternative to Underworld. As for explanation I didn't think it was to bad. I accepted the Others having powers just like the Mutants in XMen have powers.

Also the fact that this is just the first movie of a series means that more may be explaned with more detail later on.
 
i liked this movie. i have read that all will become clear with the next two movies, the story was always meant to be a trilogy in much the same way as LOTR was.. eagerly awaiting the next two instalments...
 
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