Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott)

[Nick Medrano]

Hey folks,
Check out this trailer for Scott's latest Gladiator-esque flick!

Kingdom of Heaven

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Looks very promising. It looks like a visually stunning movie, but you can see at the trailer (although you can never be certain offcourse) that it looks emotionally very stunning too.
And although I don't like Orlando Bloom, I believe Ridley Scott can bring good performances out of his actors, and this looks like no exeption.

Really promising! An epic with a heart!

[Yi Fong Yu]

direct link to quicktime trailer:

http://mp3content02.bcst.yahoo.com/b...7/11048407.mov

anyway, since ridley's very own gladiator you notice how all movie studios have been trying to profit from the genre? look @troy, alexander, etc. they've all failed miserably (artistically). now here's the master back in his game.

[Imran Zaidi]

Interesting - a film about the crusades at a time like this. I hope they're courageous enough to show all angles of the story, and nobody ends up being faceless 2-dimensional villains.

The first crusade was an incredibly violent and primitive time in humanity's history, and incredible wrongs were committed by ALL parties involved. Here's a link that helps explain how ugly the real history of it was...

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/First-Crusade

As appreciators of film, we should all definitely hold Hollywood accountable when filmic representations of history are far less than accurate in order to indulge the masses with a pleasurable 2-hours. I hope Ridley Scott is better than this.

[Keith Loh]

The visuals are nice but I'm one of those who admired Gladiator more for its visuals than its story. I thought the movie sucked but the costumes were nice. I hope this one is better.

[John Hudson]

You thought it sucked? Explain please! (Just curious)

[Imran Zaidi]

I agree with Keith to a point about Gladiator. Technically I thought the film was brilliant. Acting, execution, everything requiring mastery was mastered. But I was never moved by the story, probably mainly because I thought the story was very trite. I suppose in a way that was the point, but I didn't really see anything new in there other than the aforementioned sensory stuff.

I was, however, moved by Braveheart, though Gladiator was basically just Braveheart without the kilts.

[Keith Loh]

What Imran said except I only liked Braveheart slightly better.

[Yi Fong Yu]

although i agree with most of what ya'll been saying i really liked BOTH films and can't really decide which is better as a "battle epic". braveheart was really good there's no doubt there and mel showed us every side of william wallace EXCEPT for the spiritual side, which is why i luved gladiator. so i guess i like braveheart for all its qualities, which are obvious but i also luv gladiator. ridley scott's vision of a general who became a slave and a slave who was not just set free physically and brought freedom to rome but i think maximus was set free spiritually. i like the themes both films brought to the table.

thus, i think kingdom of heaven will be less spiritual (ironically) but will be ridley's answer to braveheart in a BIG way.

PS didya notice that after return of the king, everyone wants to do somn similar to that type of epic battle scenes?

[Imran Zaidi]

Actually, you know you reminded me, that is the one thing I did definitely like, story-wise, about Gladiator. The fact that he wasn't looking for his ultimate fulfillment on an earth where his deepest wish could no longer be fulfilled - being with his murdered family. The spiritual aspect of the character is perhaps the only thing about the story I found moving.

[Keith Loh]

Yi Yong Fu, I really was not taken with the story of "Gladiator". It was predictable. The central character of Maximus was cookie cutter boring. Yes, we get that Maximus has nothing to lose. Yes, we get how evil the villain is. Not only is Commodus ruthless, he is also incestuous, weak and whiny. It's a standard cliche to make the heroes totally spotless and the villains piled upon evil. Boring.

[Imran Zaidi]

Totally agree. It really is annoying when films just find a villain and make them obviously villanous, and the heros just plain heroic and nothing else. Real life is so seldom like that.

And going back, I'm willing to bet that Kingdom of Heaven will do the same thing.

[Yi Fong Yu]

the problem is... if you have a "realistic" villain, would you still watch the film? a realistic one would be someone that would possibly never have been caught nor killed, thus having no resolution to the film. i think you can venture into the documentary area or 'avante-garde' films if such a thing would happen... but certainly for fictional films there needs to remain a 'semblance of ebb&flow "cliche" and all. in fact ain't there it true that there are only 7 stories anyway and it's really the artist invovled in HOW he re-expresses those 7 stories that makes it original. just my opinion anyway....

[Imran Zaidi]

No, mostly I just want more depth. Perfect example is the film Narc, with Ray Liotta and Jason Patric. A different type of film, but I use it as an example of how a 'villains' in a film aren't always 2-dimensional monkeys out to do evil for evil's sake.

There are many crimes in humanity that were committed by people not seeking to do evil, but rather by having a different view on what 'good' is. That's the awful mess of real life as opposed to oversimplified movies, and Narc very elegantly and masterfully showed that.

People will go see good movies whether or not the villain has dark shadows under his eyes. But I do think that in real life the villains do indeed tend to get caught and/or killed.

And more importantly, if the devil really looked nasty, who would follow him? The devil is probably the most compelling, attractive or interesting character in the crowd, because that's how he gets the good guys. If it was obvious how evil he is, then there'd be nothing heroic about discovering and avoiding him. No challenge and no trial. This is why I have problems with these types of heroic characters - their challenge is usually just a physical challenge of some sort.

The unfortunate thing is, this sort of formula is taught to people all over the globe. Step one, introduce your character and their normal life. Then something happens to take that character away from normalcy. Then they spend the rest of the movie trying to get back to the place where they started, learning at least one thing in the process.

I think that describes almost every single Hollywood movie ever.

[Yi Fong Yu]

have you ever seen 'm' by fritz lang? i thought it was an interesting villain, to say the least =^).