Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Watership Down

anyone watch it? managed about 15 minutes - posh people over acting, dialogue changed from the book to make it sound like a shit action movie version of peter rabbit, crap CGI makes it look like aforementioned skyrim - film just does everything much better - so no point watching this at all really.
 
The book is amazing, the original film is good, this looks shit. Actually that's the law of diminishing returns for every book adaptation ever :(
 
Wanted to like it but pretty poor all round the voices had little emotion and most annoying was the constant music sound track which never really seemed to fit cant remember what the music score was like in original too much but this was all over the place imho no bright eyes in this one either
Going to watch original plague dogs and watership down animations tomorrow with nephew and niece as this reminded me so expecting a few tears
Little to recommend in this version
 
how old are nieces and nephew

:hmm:
whats it rated at they are over 8 but then I think I cried a little a few years back at the plague dogs ending ;)we watch a few animations together though and watched when the wind blows too which did cause a bit of controversy when my sister fund out :(
 
Watched 20 minutes of the Netflix series and can’t believe how poor the CGI and animation was. Looks like a poor video game. Character design and art direction could not be more generic. Why did they get a director with no experience in animation ?
 
Last edited:
I've just finished watching it, it was ok but there wasn't much emotion in either the animation or the delivery of the dialogue- dialogue was often too fast and without much emphasis, even though there was something dramatic supposedly going on.

Overall I preferred the original film (book>film>miniseries in that order). I quite liked that at the end when the little ones ask for a story about Hazel-rah, the storyteller is reciting the start of the novel ("The primroses were over..." etc is IMO a very memorable opening to a novel). I can't recall whether the original film did that, it's been years since I saw it. What I do remember is how much more dramatic the performances were though - from Fiver keeling over and having seizures during which his terrifying visions appeared, or the menace of General Woundwort, or the sheer horror of the scene where the original warren is gassed, the black rabbit of Inlé visiting Hazel - all so much better in the film...

I thought the best thing about this mini-series was Peter Capaldi as Kehaar - that stood out as a great performance in an otherwise lacklustre production. Real shame as there are some very good actors in it.

(Just in case it is not apparent, I am a huge longtime fan of the novel, read it for the first time when it was newly published* and couldn't put it down, and find it unforgettable).

*(Edit - actually I have just looked at the publication date and realised that my claim to have read it when it was first published is most likely inaccurate - I did read from a young age and was advanced in my reading, but that is pushing it by a few years for a novel of that size and complexity :D )
 
Last edited:
I did actually like the idea of a more photo-realistic cgi version beforehand.

But if a stylised version can be so much more emotive, then there's no point in doing something that looks more realistic and then fudging it.

 
How could a light that shined so brightly suddenly shine so pale?

Thought it was poor.
 
Am watching it.
Or at least I have started watching it.

As a rule I tend not to watch CGI films and because I love the book / original film so much it was always going to be very hard to like.

The opening animation was quite good and true to the book / original film. The cast is very good (Ben Kingsley as General Woundwort no less) and a BBC plus Netflix collaboration who should be a better option than most :hmm:

The CGI/animation seems poor to me. Also the characters seem to lack the magical personalities needed to portray talking/thinking rabbits.

Am sure that the new young generation will enjoy it but I can't. Going to stick with it for now but unlikely I will see this through. It is just making me want to put the original film on, which I might do :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ax^
Also I need to find my DVD copy of the Plague Dogs. Read the book recently and had forgotten how great it is.

It is not on Netflix or Amazon Prime is it?
 
Back
Top Bottom