Renaissance

I was really excited about Renaissance before I saw it. I had seen pictures of the film, and I loved the stylized visuals of the movie. I support whenever any artist decides to do something untraditional with their work, especially in cases where they are attempting to emphasis certain points in the work. This is the same reason I really like Sin City, which used the visuals in order to better tell the story. However, after seeing Renaissance, I was just disappointed. The film had so much promise, but really it was just a poorly written detective story pushing a half-thought-out moral. It was pretty, but without much substance. Oh Renaissance, you could have been so much more.

At the beginning, everything is starting to work out well. We're introduced to the characters and a little mystery, and the film starts itself out well without any errors. Then, things just start sliding downhill. First, the mystery starts to fall apart because the film makes it too easy to separate the bad guys from the good guys. In this kind of film, you're supposed to be guessing who is good and who is bad. In the actual film, they were kind of going that route, but they were also pausing every once and a while to show you certain characters smiling menacingly, ruining the suspense.

Then, as things get revealed, they turn out not to be as interesting as you thought they might. Oh, a woman is trapped in a forest that grows as she walks? This is incredible and odd, I wonder what is happening to her... oh, she's in a computer-screen bubble with a treadmill in it.

My biggest complaint is the half-assed moral of the story: something along the lines of “without death, life is hell.” The main character has to make the decision to prevent the world from gaining the technology to become immortal. He does so because some old asian guy says it would suck to live forever. That's it. The movie doesn't go into why it would suck to live forever, it just assumes the audience would agree and moves on. Well, if that decision is so obvious, why does the villain still want the technology? And can we just suppose that living forever would suck? I mean, I understand the reasons it might, but I'm sure someone could probably provide some counter arguments. The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie explored this concept more than Renaissance.

I think I'd enjoy this movie if someone finished writing it. Until then, it just makes me angry.