I don't understand all the bad words about this film. I quite enjoyed it, I think it was beautifully filmed, but I would expected more (a deeper development of the character and the story, above all). I have not read the book, so I don't know if it does justice to its source material, but why it was so negatively received?
share[deleted]
Usually in book-to-movie adaptations, especially books with a large, long time following, book fans are VERY critical of the movies. Personally, I was a great fan of The Giver, having read it back when it came out. After watching it, the only thing *I* was still unhappy about was changing the age of the main character (which I said in an earlier reply to another post, was probably done because of labor laws- under 16s, and even under 18s, have strict labor laws protecting them, which can severely limit the amt of time they are available per day/week for filming. So, the filmmakers went with older actors to save themselves the headache. It was kind of stupid, but despite the age difference, I felt the story was fairly true to the book. The ending was different, but "good" for people like me who like "happy endings"... I can certainly appreciate the "create your own ending" style of the book; I just enjoy happily ever afters more. :-p
------------
Right now, we are alive... And in this moment, I swear... We are infinite.
Jonas is an extremely difficult role to do bc he has to display a lot f human emotion (and pretend he just experience them the first time.) Such role is risky to expect twelve years old boys to be able to do it. Brenton thwaites looks 18 and he is good-looking with that innocent nice guy look to him that fits jonas - and he has good work ethics, so jeff bridges and those producers picked him
shareBecause it's yet another Y.A. novel adaptation. It may have been based on a book written before THE HUNGER GAMES, DIVERGENT, etc. But they changed certain elements to make it resemble those other movies. It ended up being formulaic.
shareFor me it was a failure of style over substance...just a flat film with a meandering story that is very poorly paced.
Noel
The pacing is a bit rushing towards the end i agree. But everythibg else worked fine to me: plot is easy to understand, music is beautiful, visual is beautiful, acting is great (altho some people complained that the cast acting look robotic - well, what do you expect? These people are supposed to be EMOTIONALESS...NO ONE HAS ANY EMOTION EXCEPT JONAS AND GIVER. So the whole movie really relies heavily on jonas/brenton so of course they can't just get a twelve year old boy to shoulder this role whose acting is utmost important among tge entire other characters.
shareWe have had a wave of similar themed films recently and this was did seem a little flat and maybe a bit too low budget.
Its that man again!!
Anyone who has not read the book most likely enjoyed it. It is the book readers that complained and those are the negative things you hear about this book - all negative review is about how the movie isn't EXACTLY like the book. You hardly hear them talk about the acting, cinematography, direction, etc..the elements of movies. What makes a good movie is based on the elements of a movie, but stupid book readers only argument as to why the movie is not good is because it changed some things from the book such as jonas age. Screw them. I love brenton as jonas. He gives jonas an extremely cute face to associate with ;)
share[deleted]
The reason people don't like it is because it tells the truth about modern America which is exactly like the dystopia community in this film. Ugly people don't like looking in the mirror and this film is a mirror of what modern America has become.
In modern America, emotions are repressed, political correctness rules, not honesty or authenticity, people are fake and superficial, equality is the law, conformity is psychologically enforced, etc.
Look at the films of the 1970s and you will see how much more uninhibited and natural people used to be. They could express their
their thoughts more honestly and openly. Even racist views could be expressed. You were allowed to be more honest. Unlike today. Watch modern shows like csi or law and order or the new battlestar galactic and you can see how emotionless and cold people have
become today.
People are sheep. They conform to whatever is current and don't think about it. They assume that authority = truth and majority = right.
Here is specifically why I hated the movie:
1. In the book, it is well drawn out that everyone is part of "the system". Even the elders operate under the same controls that the citizens do. They are limited in their emotional range and use "precision of language" to compensate. They are unaware that they are also being controlled in order to contribute to a perfect society. The ONLY person who is apart from this is The Giver.
Meryl Streep's character carries an air that she is well aware of the controls placed on the society and uses that knowledge to act how she does. She draws from a more complicated set of emotions that are unavailable to everyone else. She is not a part of the system, but a manager of the system.
2. Katie Holmes' character, for the same reasons as #1. She is always aware that she is correcting Jonas' aberrant behavior as if she knows that something more sinister is at play. Ok, people... for this kind of society to work... NO ONE must be able to conceive of the controls in place. So, she... rather than being a controlled citizen... is yet another character who's aware of the controls and acts to keep them in place.
3. I hate it when movies give away the ending at the beginning, but in a way that's so obvious it's just stupid. At the moment that The Giver tells Jonas about the boundary, Jonas immediately concludes that if he moves beyond it, then all else will fall into place. Gee... now that we know that... the rest of the movie can pan out exactly as he described.
4. There's a certain despair we should be feeling when we read/see content like this. We need to be able to fathom that the players in the story are completely incapable of comprehending complex emotions. We have to be able to imagine being in a prison of our own creation, yet having utterly no clue as to what was sacrificed in order for it to be put into place. Imagine that not a single character in the story will have the capacity to "wake up" and effect change... that The Giver faces an uphill battle as the only one who has a remote clue as to what is really going on.
I understand that we must be able to relate to characters on a basic level. And, relating to people who only have surface-level complexity of emotions doesn't draw people in. We're drawn in by... HOPE. We hope that people will wake up when a trigger is given. The reality is that they won't. That it's futile. They are so wired into the system, and medicated to stay that way, that we should only really be able to feel despair when fathoming how expansive their prison is and how impossible it is to escape.
This movie, for me, had too much hope... waaaaay too much hope.
1. I'll have to give you that one. There is definitely more going on with Meryl Streep's character and unfortunately the story doesn't reveal what it is. It seems to have a lot to do with the previous receiver a decade before but we don't get the details.
2. Not true, at least at the beginning of the movie. As the story progresses your right. Though it's not just Katie holmes' character. Everyone that Jonas interacts with including
his father, sister, and two friends are changed and feel more than other characters in the story. It's why his father hesistates in releasing the girl at the end and his mother is unsure of herself when she talks to the girl.
3.Stories and movies especially do this all the time in almost every genre. Usually they do it in three parts. The first time right at the beginning and most people miss it. They will reinforce it toward the middle and most people see it this point. The last time is usually right befroe the turning point in a story. The sad fact is that most people need to be told unfortunately otherwise they will have no idea what is going on. For the observant people however, you can often predict the story and outcome of most movies withing the first 15 minutes.
4.The story was dark and dreary and terrible. The old and the young were murdered everyday and no one cared. All the things that make life worth living had been taken from us. If it was any darker I don't think it would be well received. Also isn't hope kind of the point of the movie? The idea that we are in this prison of our own devices but we are not trapped forever...
All it takes is one person who is willing to act.