Metropolis (2010)

Powerful

Overrated and overhyped

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

As usual, the best movies to expand a citizen point of views are not what they are : for years, Metropolis was branded for my eyes as a Scifi movie with the 1st robot ever, a female one whose surface would inspire the future C3PO and that's all ! Now that i have seen it, i realized that the robot element is not that essential (it would have been the same with genetic clone) while all the social struggle and workers revolt that is the main subject of the movie are kept quiet in medias.That subject is so protest, so dangerous for governments that the few movies about it are cautiously put away : So while this movie is nearly 1 century old, it's the 1st time that i see in a picture a social revolt in a modern state ! The scenes are powerful because they are oppressive and this Metropolis guesses what happens today : 2 classes : one that works in pitiful housing, one that has fun in luxury appartements. This divided city is totally accurate (for example, Paris has left for the rich and right for the poor, NYC is up for riches and down for poor)). It could be a Marxist movie but conformist reviews tackles it like a Nazi one (the argument used in France to eradicate all subversive thinking, whatever it's exactly) : Anyway, as a German movie, we find the usual praise for body health and the leader thematic. As a director, Lang is really talented and uses primitive tools to new horizons : the situations are so dangerous (especially, the night pursuit) or nightmarish that it's nearly an horror movie and in no way, you could guess it's so old. At the end, it's a sort of Brazil but without any fun and the gothic ending is really similar to Burton's Batman ! So it's a must-see movie !

This film is rated very highly as a futuristic sci-fi story made in 1927 setting the example how future sci-fi would be made some 40 years later.As a silent movie, albeit with a music sound track added to it, it remains an extremely difficult movie to follow, as the limited interspersed written sections in between scenes are all in German, though the film has been updated with previous lost parts and supposedly, addition of English translations.The movie I saw, was indeed on BluRay with an on-screen written explanation in English, giving the movie's history and how lost parts had been recovered. But the movie itself was still completely the German version.A classic movie? No way! After an hour I scanned through the rest and found nothing of interest in this overlong movie. It should have remained on the rubbish heap.

In 1927, Austrian director Fritz Lang released the SF drama "Metropolis", movie that Hitler and Goebbels liked so much that they offered him status of a honorary Aryan, despite his Jewish origin. For its time, this film is a marvel of cinema and it's really hard to believe it's so old. It is considered one of the greatest films of all time and has had a great influence on the future of the genre. The city of Metropolis in DC Universe was named after this film, and design of C-3PO from the "Star Wars" is based on this robot. There are also futuristic cities from "Blade Runner" and "Dark City", Tim Barton's Gotham, as well as many crazy scientists who strongly resemble this from "Metropolis". After the premiere, the film was butchered by shortening and for decades it was thought that about a quarter of the film was forever lost. In 2008, a damaged but complete copy of the original film was found in Argentina, which was combined with a shortened version and the film was reconstructed in its original form. The story is a futuristic version of the biblical "Tower of Babylon", placed in 2026. The film was extremely high-budget for its time, and some of the special effects invented for this film are still in use. Nevertheless, in its time, this movie was failure and it almost bankrupt the studio. "Too bad that so much really artistic work is wasted on this manufactured story" - Variety. "A technical marvel with feet of clay, a picture as soulless as the manufactured woman of its story" - The New York Times. H.G. Wells called it the silliest movie he had ever seen, with a sort of malignant stupidity. "Metropolis, in its forms and shapes, is already as a possibility a third of a century out of date." I personally liked everything except the fact that the movie is extremely slow. Not slow in terms of lack of action and idle, but leaves the impression of slow motion. After about an hour I set the player to speed x1.5 and the movie suddenly became much better. Although scenes of chasing that way look much like Tom & Jerry cartoons, everything else looks more natural than in its original speed.8/10

On so many levels, this film is truly brilliant! An early achievement in SF, an epic of epic length prior to the days before sound, "Metropolis" must have been found by its German viewers as provocative, to say the least. Now it can be viewed for that in historical terms, given a subplot with its communist overtones and its religious symbolism. The special effects used in this magnificent piece of cinema were way ahead of their time, as was the prophetic message. "Metropolis" is an absolute must-see for the student of film and for anyone else interested in film history and culture!