Ultraviolet (merged) (1 Viewer)

[Jason Harbaugh]

Guess my feeling about the trailer was right. Gotta admit, with all of the prerelease praise you guys were giving I was almost ready to see it anyway.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

OMG, you don't mean..., egads, you mean she looks...31!? Oh the horror!

Seriously, I don't get that.

I hope to catch this next week, i'm a sucker for any and all things Mila.

 

[Ken Chan]

Milla looked fine. Although the way they smoothed her out was sometimes distracting, especially in that one scene where they're intercutting between her and William Fitchner (the guy on ABC's Invasion) who was not filtered. It was almost like an old episode of Moonlighting.

Equilibrium was on FX Saturday afternoon (it's also repeating on Sunday). Never saw it, so I caught the first few minutes, and in the first action scene Christian Bale jumps through the door and slides into the room. The lights in the hall get shot out -- a half-second too late to be really effective, BTW -- then it's all dark for a few moments. (Why weren't there any lights in the room, or did they manage to shoot those too?) So then he spends a few seconds shooting everyone, just standing there. Now, this might look cool, but if we can see him with the muzzle flashes, he can't shoot everyone at once, so why doesn't anyone get him?
The same kind of "wouldn't this be cool" thinking sabotages Ultraviolet, although Equilibrium did not seem to be executed as ineptly. Should I try and see the rest of it?

 

[Chuck Mayer]

Yes, Equilibrium's later action scenes, though in the same vein, are done with more discipline and pizzazz than the first one. I can't compare to UV (having not seen it, and unlikely to in theaters...based on the comments in here) but I imagine the film itself is quite a bit better.

Too bad, I was really anticipating UV.

Oh well,
Chuck

 

[BrianB]

I loved Equilibrium. It's waaaaaay better than UV. UV is incredibly amateurish in its execution.

 

[brentl]

Sorry John, she does look good for 30 .... something I tend to get picky on crows feet though, one of my things

Brent

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Ultraviolet = ultracrap

What a horrible movie! Milla was sure looking for a quickie pay check with this one. It was like The Matrix (only the first film; the other two sequels do not exist) for brain dead, zombiefied video gamers.

When a line of dialog was spoken, most of the audience burst out laughing!

I want my 88 minutes back! This one may win a Razzie for something next year.

Dan

 

[ChrisBEA]

I am one of the few that really liked this......:frowning:

 

[AlexF]

Saw this one today. Far better than I'd anticipated. Yeah, so some of the action scenes went on a bit long, but there were enough odd ways of showing (or not) the action that interested me. And the sword fight at the end was something I would almost expect to see in a Cirque de Soleil show. Very cool to watch.

Sure it was mindless fluff... but honestly, were you expecting an epic movie? I think not.

 

[Matt Leigh]

I posted this on another forum but here goes...

I just saw this today. The film is an utter mess and completely cheesy to a point where the cheese is completely tasteless and makes you groan and feel ill. The trailer makes the film look really bright, colorful, slick, and stylish but the actual movie is muddy and ugly. There is some kind of hideous blurry post production effect used in character closeups that is similar to the old fashion bloom in Sky Captain but messed up and ugly. This was probably done to make the film look more expensive but ended up making it look cheap.

As far as story goes there is nothing really here. Plot about vampires vs. a government/lab/doctor/company or something and a boy who has within him the key to kill or save everyone on one side or the other. This actually is enough of a main plot but they never do anything with it.

The biggest problem is that there is NO, NONE, NADA, tension or coherency in this film at all. Most of the film has Violet walking or running from place to place and then being surrounded by guards, gangsters, vampires, cops, etc who try to attack her but she ends up taking them all out within 12 seconds. She never takes a hit and you never is in any kind of trouble because she constantly takes out all of her enemies.

The effects in this movie are god awful. The CGI in the city sequences and vehicles is almost pre Jurassic Park era quality. The whole film looks cheap as hell. Costumes on everyone but the guards and Violet are awful and are on par with direct to video sci-fi low rent junk like Velocity Trap. All of the look is derived from stark reflective sets with lots of ugly colored lighting. There is such a lack of production design here that it is shocking how Wimmer could have approved any of it after making Equilibrium (which had its own shoddy costumes here and there).

I have a feeling one of two things happened to this movie...

1st possibility is that Wimmer got the budget, did principle photography, showed the studio heads what he had so far and they freaked out at him, cut the budget in half had him continue and he had to assemble what he could with the money he had.

2nd possibility is that he blew most of the budget in principle photography then what was left didn't cover all he wanted to do in post so he started to make all kinds of concessions in the editing room then realized he didn't have a good enough looking film, went back to the studio to ask for more money and they took the movie from him and then told him to fuck off.

This film is not completed by any stretch of the imagination. This is some kind of rough cut with temp effects and an editing hack job. Dialouge is looped on many occasions to fill in story points where concessions in the editing have been made. I'm not talking about the narration either, I'm talking about the conversations.

There is no defending this movie other than perhaps it would have been better given a budget and talent to realize the original vision. The editing of the main story isn't the way it is to make the film feel like a comic, it is to cover gaping holes in the story and to mask what I'm sure is a complete change in the story structure due to sequences not being finished.

Avoid like the plauge until the film does get finished or unless you want to see a lesson in how a film can get destroyed in post production.

 

[Ed Speir IV]

I COMPLETELY agree with everything in the above post. I was extremely disappointed in this film.

The CGI effects during the chase scenes were perhaps the worst I've ever seen in a film released at an actual theater.

 

[David Rogers]

I was disappointed. No plot, and the CG was not photo-real. Too many cute "she just wiped them all out without showing the move used" bits; too much quick-cut to build and create the action.

There were nice sequences, and a few good looking scenes (poses), and some of the effects were kinda nice. Opening scenes were nice, fight on the roof against a bunch of pistol wielding enemies was very innovatively done, and the fight in the well room against the other vampires was very clever in how it was shot and presented.

Overall though, too rushed and not enough money on the screen. Mila looked good, but she didn't look capable of handling the stunt sequences so they had to cut and shoot around her.

I really feel like Wimmer owes us a tie breaker movie so we can see if Equilibrim was his one-hit-wonder, or if he was just off in Ultraviolet.

 

[TheLongshot]

Well, according to IMDB, Ultraviolet cost $30m. (In comparison, Equilibrium cost $20m.)

I wonder also if the fact that he doesn't have the actors to work with as he did with Equilibrium? Looking the cast list, the only name that does really stand out is Milla, and I don't think you really want Milla to be the best actor in your film.

I also watched Equilibrium on FX yesterday, and was reminded how good of a movie that was. Yes, you did get some over the top action scenes where the hero easily takes care of the bad guys, but Christian Bale really gets you to feel for his character, and has a lot of good character scenes in there. I assume that Ultraviolet doesn't have these things.

Well, I hope Wimmer does better next time. I'll probably catch this on DVD at some point.

Jason

 

[Felipe S]

I agree with all the above posts. If I was to rate this i would probably give this a 1 out of 10. The crazy part was that what would've probably bumped this up to a 3 or 4 out of 10 would be to actually to show the effects of the violence portrayed. I mean... u have a rooftop full of baddies shooting the hell out of each other... and we dont see a single drop of blood, gore or pain in the death. Violet fights tons of guys with swords and there are no limbs flying off, once again.. NO BLOOD and everyone just drops to the ground like nothing happened. You can tell this was intended for 9-14 year olds.

Just awful, dissapointing and boring.

 

[JediFonger]

also, it makes you wonder why any actress would take a part like this... is it because trinity from Matrix? now every women wants to prove themselves? that's insane. i mean... can you imagine what goes through a human being's head when they read this script... if they had one.

well, other than the story, which everyone already know there is none, from the DVD review, the audio isn't even worth it.

 

[Will_B]

Milla has some candid words about Ultraviolet here:

http://horror.about.com/od/interviews/a/int_milla.htm

"...that's the perfect example of a movie that I spent a year of my life preparing for, and shooting, and you know, once you see it, you're like, 'Okaaay…' [laughs] On to the next!"

I like the way she doesn't hesitate to dis a film if it not as good as she hoped. That she also criticises RE2 gives me hope that RE3 might be good.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

Well she just went back up in the respect department from me. I rented Ultraviolet and couldn't believe how bad it was. At least I did know from the beginning when seeing the trailer, as you can see by my comments earlier in this thread.

If only Milla had been so lucky...

 

[Don Giro]

I rented this last Friday, solely because I've loved Milla Jovovich in a black wig since that Revlon commercial she did a year or two ago (when I would inform everyone within earshot that "That's how she should look ALL the time"). I also think she has one of the sexiest voices I've ever heard, so the voiceovers were a plus for me. But I'll be damned if I can remember anything remotely resembling a plot. The cityscape CGI looked completely unfinished and obvious.

 

[Steve Christou]

Ultraviolet - quite possibly the greatest movie... ever made.

 

[JonZ]

"The cityscape CGI looked completely unfinished and obvious."

Yea I read that on a online DVD review, that it seems they just released the thing unfinished. I brought this but havent watched it yet. I figured itll be something to turn my brain off and have a few beers to.