Has anyone seen this and want to discuss it? I watched it last night and although the movie itself wasn't disturbing, I kept on trying to figure out what they'd done wrong, why it didn't work as well as I thought it ought to have worked. I woke up in the middle of the night with a bug in my head trying to figure it out.
To start with just one tiny nit: This was a good example of why you should put your skeptic in the movie instead of on the couch watching the movie.
In The Eagle, Marcus and Eska travel northward through the non-Roman parts of Brittan keeping Marcus's Roman identity secret. Both my husband and I were waiting for someone to cry out "Roman!" and point at the tack on the horses as evidence. Neither of us knew that they hadn't changed Roman tack for what would be normal in the area they were traveling but there was nothing in the movie indicating that anyone had worried about it. (My husband thought that the fact that they even had horses would have made everyone suspicious of them.) They weren't shown making efforts to disguise Marcus's sword or his patrician's haircut. He didn't even let his beard grow. The only thing done, as far as was mentioned in the movie, to hide Marcus's nationality was to have Eska do all the talking.
Someone in the movie should have worried about the horses, the saddles and bridles, hiding the sword, and Marcus's hair cut. If someone had worried about those things, my husband and I sitting on the couch wouldn't have had to, even if not a single wardrobe element in the movie was changed.
My "issues" with the production go on from there, mostly having to do with storytelling, narrative and symbolic elements.
Anyone seen it? Have any thoughts?
To start with just one tiny nit: This was a good example of why you should put your skeptic in the movie instead of on the couch watching the movie.
In The Eagle, Marcus and Eska travel northward through the non-Roman parts of Brittan keeping Marcus's Roman identity secret. Both my husband and I were waiting for someone to cry out "Roman!" and point at the tack on the horses as evidence. Neither of us knew that they hadn't changed Roman tack for what would be normal in the area they were traveling but there was nothing in the movie indicating that anyone had worried about it. (My husband thought that the fact that they even had horses would have made everyone suspicious of them.) They weren't shown making efforts to disguise Marcus's sword or his patrician's haircut. He didn't even let his beard grow. The only thing done, as far as was mentioned in the movie, to hide Marcus's nationality was to have Eska do all the talking.
Someone in the movie should have worried about the horses, the saddles and bridles, hiding the sword, and Marcus's hair cut. If someone had worried about those things, my husband and I sitting on the couch wouldn't have had to, even if not a single wardrobe element in the movie was changed.
My "issues" with the production go on from there, mostly having to do with storytelling, narrative and symbolic elements.
Anyone seen it? Have any thoughts?
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