I'm not one to be disappointed by movie adaptations of books. This isn't because I know that they'd get them right, rather I don't let my hopes get too high due to the inevitability that they will butcher the source material. I don't know why I let my guard down with the latest Dan Brown adaptation. Past experiences with The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons should have taught me otherwise, but I ended up getting hurt more than ever with this one.
Harvard professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) wakes up in a hospital in Florence with no memory of how he got there and a head wound. His attending doctor, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), explains that he arrived at the hospital with bloodied clothes and that his head wound has caused amnesia, but his memory should return. Before any of this can be processed, he is attacked by Vayentha (Ana Ularu), a mysterious assassin disguised as an Italian police officer. Soon Langdon and Brooks discover that he was there to prevent the release of a plague that could wipe out half of the world's population, a plan devised by Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), a scientist concerned with overpopulation and who died at the start of the film.
Let me talk about the brief positives of the film before I get into how it devastated me. The film really captured the effects of amnesia and really eased the audience into the story. This is a pretty creative way to convey the confusion of the characters as well as not giving away everything at once. The scenery is spectacular, but that's what is expected when you set your film in Florence, Venice and Istanbul.
I know this isn't a book review, so I won't go into too much detail about it. While Dan Brown's writing is somewhat formulaic, the ending of the book was very different and original. While the movie has the super Hollywood ending (spoilers!) of Langdon stopping the plague from being released and saving the world, the book actually reveals that the plague has already been released and the day that they spent trying to stop was actually the day when the whole world would be infected. Instead of the plague killing people, it actually just made a third of the population infertile, a trait that may or may not be passed down through the gene pool. This ending is so much better and would make people stop and think. But because of Hollywood, we now just got a movie that everyone will forget because it lacks anything to make it stand out. That just defeats the purpose of making a movie, you want something that lasts the test of time to make as much money as possible.
Even if you haven't read the book on which it's based, Inferno is a pretty dreary movie. It sets an exhilarated pace that it can't keep up with. This is combined with a bland and conventional story, as well as confusing twist, to make an unforgettable movie that no one wanted.
I know this isn't a book review, so I won't go into too much detail about it. While Dan Brown's writing is somewhat formulaic, the ending of the book was very different and original. While the movie has the super Hollywood ending (spoilers!) of Langdon stopping the plague from being released and saving the world, the book actually reveals that the plague has already been released and the day that they spent trying to stop was actually the day when the whole world would be infected. Instead of the plague killing people, it actually just made a third of the population infertile, a trait that may or may not be passed down through the gene pool. This ending is so much better and would make people stop and think. But because of Hollywood, we now just got a movie that everyone will forget because it lacks anything to make it stand out. That just defeats the purpose of making a movie, you want something that lasts the test of time to make as much money as possible.
Even if you haven't read the book on which it's based, Inferno is a pretty dreary movie. It sets an exhilarated pace that it can't keep up with. This is combined with a bland and conventional story, as well as confusing twist, to make an unforgettable movie that no one wanted.
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