The Witches

Whose the third mouse?! There were only ever two in the book

"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."

So early review for the movie already come out and it not looking good, the common criticism about the movie are about the effect, the acting and the tone. Seem like WB wanted to play safest possible and make a movie without any tooth.

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

Really I have heard a lot of bad things about the movie, but not as much bad about the performances or effects. Which seems to be the two things critics like.

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From what i heard, the visual are pretty tame when compare to the 1990 version, but probably because how still hold up most of the effect in the 1990 version are. Big mouth full of teeth just can't beat that scary face and the unmasked scene . Anna Hathaway performance seem to try to mimic Anjelica Huston performence but come up short. The High Witches here just doesn't feel authority but rather more like a brat, same go for the rest of the witches. And the boy seem to change his personality completely and immediately after turned into a mouse.

Edited by BattleRaizer on Oct 24th 2020 at 1:55:56 AM

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

The CGI of the snake is Sy-Fy Original Movie levels of atrocious, but otherwise, it's not too bad.

It's been 3000 years…

Oh man I like this book. It getting bucthered sucks.

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Again where are you seeing people pan the performances? I am mostly seeing people and critics say Anne Hathaway is the only reason to watch this. Not doubting you, just curious.

Edited by Bullman on Oct 23rd 2020 at 3:36:11 AM

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I've just seen the CGI designs for the mice.

My gosh. I won't say they look quite as bad as those in Cats, but...

I mean, Stuart Little did it much better and that was like, what, twenty years ago already?

Edited by AmazingSpiderHam on Oct 23rd 2020 at 6:21:54 AM

I mean I am one of the few people who didn't find the effects of the original that convincing or the movie that scary. The only thing that made the original good to me is Anjelica Huston. Everything else was fine, but not to her level.

Again can someone give a review of where they are saying Anne is bad? I have done some searching and I can't find one that says she's horrible. Not as good as Huston maybe, but none saying she's outright bad. Most of what I have seen says she's the only reason to watch the movie. Along with Spencer. I'm sure they are out there, and maybe I am looking in the wrong places. I would like to read some that do criticize her for a more balenced outlook before I try to watch it.

Edited by Bullman on Oct 25th 2020 at 1:31:21 PM

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It mostly from some online review i follow like

. They don't said that she is bad, just that she seem miscast and try too hard to imitate Huston's performance but can't quite match up which draw unfavorable comparison between the two.

Edited by BattleRaizer on Oct 26th 2020 at 1:42:12 AM

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

https://them0vieblog.com/2020/10/21/non-review-review-witches-2020/

I personally don't like Brad as a critic, but I have seen some others compare her to Huston. So I can buy that. I might look around YouTube to see if I can find some like that. Thanks for answering my question.

Thanks.

Edited by Bullman on Oct 25th 2020 at 1:57:33 PM

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread

You're welcome.

Interesting that Bruno and the new mouse don't appear and the time skip at the end. Have they died?

So, yeah.

Saw it with my sister's family this Halloween. It... definitely happened. Octavia was great and Anne clearly was having fun. The CGI was dodgy at times but not too bad.

I think that the Esoteric Happy Ending really stuck with me the most? "Oh, well mice only live three years... but I bet you could live as much as three times that" and the kid being... super on board for it? Like that was a bizarre moment.

Not to mention the fact the movie did end with a group of child soldiers armed with a ridiculously potent chemical weapon mobilizing on an international campaign of genocide.

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The ending of this was pretty bizarre. Dying young and spending the rest of their short lives going on a vigilante rampage is not something that'd leave many feeling accomplished or anything.

Wake me up at your own risk.

Apparently there's been some speculation recently that the entire story may be a giant anti-semitic dog-whistle. There's the aforementioned "chemical weapon genocide treated as a good thing" angle, and the true forms of the witches themselves and their secret campaign of mass-child murder both call to mind Medieval caricatures of Jews.

And Dahl sadly was an anti-semite (never meet your heroes indeed), though he tried to "justify" it by saying he became one due to opposing Israel's actions toward its neighbors rather than mindless hatred.

Do I believe it? Dunno, need to read up more, but it's a discussion the new movie has prompted.

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

I think the book ending was suppose to be bittersweet rather than a happy one. The gramma and the boy both don't have much time left to live but at least they won't be left alone and they spend the remain time they have protecting people from the witches.

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

Dahl wrote it as an allegory about fascism. The witches, like many hateful assholes out there, may seem nice and normal - but then the gloves literally come off. (Not for nothing does the Grand High Witch have a German accent.)

Of course, Dahl was anti-Semitic, to an extent. It was criticized at the time and he knew it made him look bad, so he tried to downplay it. But you can tell from his adult books he was pretty damn misanthropic in general, not that it makes it any better.

Anyway, Dahl hated the original film so much he picketed theaters yelling at people not to see it... when he was dying. I doubt he would have liked this any better.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Speaking of unnecessary changes, one the posters on the video that BattleRaizer posted made a good point by saying that they made the witches too Obviously Evil by giving them Pennywise-style demonic mouths.

I like to keep my audience riveted.

I don’t recall her accent being specified, but it’s said she lives in Norway. I also don’t know if I would call it an anti-fascist story considering in Dahl’s time fascists were a lot more open and actively warmongering, him being a World War II veteran. The “secret conspiracy” angle along with witches being identifiable by distinct noses does give unfortunate credence to the anti-Semitic reading, but like many of Dahl’s books The Witches at a base level is a about children’s fear of realizing that not all adults can be trusted.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Nov 2nd 2020 at 12:52:12 PM

I think the big nose thing probably just a case of the author didn't think about it implications rather than out of any malice. He probably just need the witches to have an easy to recognizable characteristic for children without been too obvious and can still blend in. Plus long big nose is a pretty popular trait of witches in fiction.

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

And why is that associated with both witches and fearmongering about Jews, one might ask...

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Nov 2nd 2020 at 6:05:25 AM

My point is that writers and readers are used to that depiction of witches in their popular culture, they probably don't even care or know about it origin. It's something that both so heavy ingrained in our culture and so far remove from it original intent that it practically it own thing now. Can you blame someone for using the most popular depiction of something without knowing it origin? It would be like call out writers who depicting Orc base on Tolkien works as anti- Mongolia.

Edited by BattleRaizer on Nov 2nd 2020 at 9:22:39 PM

E.T technically is a Isekai movie

I saw the adaptation and I quite liked it, although I thought the first half was somewhat stronger than the second.

I thought what I guess I'd call the "African American framing" was a surprisingly effective narrative choice because African American folklore has stories of witches disguised as normal people (i.e. the "Boo Hag" and a story, also found in other American traditions, called "Sop Doll").

As far as the antisemitism goes, although Dahl was antisemitic by his own admission, I doubt he was a secret Nazi and agree that whatever antisemitism is in The Witches has to do with the possible roots of witch tropes rather than anything deliberate.

My general take on this issue is that while Dahl was a horrible person in a lot of ways, I note that in Henry Sugar, he has a very sympathetic character, Max Engelman, who I understand as coded as Jewish (possibly also/alternatively gay given the mention of Max being unmarried and the fact that he and Henry are super-close and have no female romantic connections).

Besides the name, Max has what kind of sounds like a Jewish "racial coding" ("small and dark") and the narration indicates that he fled Vienna for Hollywood after the Nazis invaded Austria.

That being said, I did have some concern about the scene in this adaptation where the Grand High Witch looks at her enormous stash of money and makes contemptuous comments about human greed, and then makes a deliberately cheap meal order. While I think we are to understand the cheap order was just her being a jerk to the hotel manager, the combination of hidden stacks of money and extreme miserliness kind of has a Greedy Jew vibe. AFAIK, this scene is original to this adaptation.

Edited by Hodor2 on Nov 3rd 2020 at 2:33:17 PM