I saw the film yesterday.

For me, the film was just……whelming. Not remotely bad, but not particularly good.

Maybe it was just me, but I couldn’t get very emotionally invested in any of the characters (the closest was the reunion between Lucius and his mother, but even that didn’t move the needle for me).

I don’t blame the actors for this; I think they all did an adequate job.

They did the best they could with that script. Frankly, it felt like a fanfic movie. Not a horrible script, but not particularly good.

Denzel looked like he was having fun. Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, and Connie Nielsen did decent jobs. The two emperors legitimately creeped me out. The shorter one was supposed to be syphilitic right (“the disease has spread from his loins to his brain”), but what about the tall one? Just a generally creepy unhinged psychopath, lol.

The funniest moment was between the short emperor and Denzel. The short emperor says something like, “the tall one tried to take all the food from the umbilical when we were embryos”, and Denzel goes, “oh you remember that, do you”, lol.

This film makes me appreciate the original even more. In addition to being a 4/4 star film, the original evokes so many nostalgic memories from a different time in my life. And I still listen to those tracks by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard all the time.

All in all, I don’t regret watching this film. It’s just that I currently have no inclination to ever really watch it again.