Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Ben-Hur (2016)

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-13-2016, 11:18 PM:

The last (thank heavens) train-wreck remake of the summer of 2016, this is a movie that I was really rooting for... I really wanted it to be good, even though there was almost zero chances of this version ever coming close to the 1959 classic, which is one of my favorite movies.

But after I found out that the people responsible for dreck like "Son of God" and "Risen" were involved as producers, I started to lose hope. Those movies were cheesy and pandering. Turns out my fears were well-founded: This movie takes those cheesy and pandering qualities, lathers them over a story that needs to be told slowly and carefully, and puts the whole thing into fast forward.

Morgan Freeman, who I used to really like, gives his usual one-note performance in this movie as Sheik Ilderim, owner of the horses that Ben-Hur eventually drives in the big chariot race. Jesus Christ, who was treated with great respect in the '59 movie by keeping him as kind of a mysterious presence, is all over this movie spouting preachy lines and looking like a matinee idol. He comes off as pompous rather than caring.

The pivotal action scenes, especially the chariot race, have the weird quality of being more intense than the 1959 movie, yet at the same time less satisfying and less realistic. In the race, you can almost feel the dirt hitting your face, but you can't tell what's going on due to the choppy shaky-cam cinematography and the over-the-top CGI.

I loved the rendering of Christ's crucifixion in the 1959 movie because it was all done very matter-of-factly. No drama, no music, very businesslike. It probably is the closest depiction to the way it actually happened that's ever been put on film, outside of possibly "The Passion of the Christ" (which I haven't seen). In this movie, we get sweeping camera crane shots, big orchestrations, lots of noise, all of which strips the whole scene of the dignity it should have. Plus, for a while there, the movie becomes about Jesus - but the story is NOT about Jesus, the story is about Ben-Hur. Jesus hijacks the movie! This movie clubs you over the head with the redemption theme rather than letting it seep into your soul.

The ending is the dumbest. The story as told in the 1959 movie was heart-rending, and you realized that not everything is a happy ending and there are consequences to your actions. And that not everybody is capable of redemption, even when facing death. In this movie, after Ben-Hur has won the race by nearly killing Messala and causing him to lose a leg, the two mortal enemies square off in an "I WILL FIND YOU...AND I WILL KILL YOU!!" type argument, yet within 30 seconds, they're hugging each other and then they literally go riding off into the sunset, and all is right with the world. Virtually everybody in the movie, including the bad guy, has a happy ending. (Well, except Jesus, of course.)

The end credits are like a rotten cherry on top of a melted milkshake. As a coda to this supposedly dignified, epic movie, you see the major credits zooming around and kicking up fake dust in a sequence I have a feeling was inspired by the opening credits in the first Superman movie in the 1970s, and accompanied by one of the most annoying pop songs in recent memory. On a lot of movies I like to stand in the back while the audience is leaving and listen to the music; with this one, my main instinct is to turn down the volume.

Like so many of today's movies, this one takes a story that started out as a believable, relatable tale and turns it into an action movie that makes no sense on almost every level. Maybe Spielberg should have done this movie instead of "The BFG" -- he probably would have done it more justice.

1.5 stars from me --- half a star for the movie, and an extra star for the set design, which is the best thing about the film. Too bad the camera sweeps over everything too fast for the viewer to see most of it.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-04-2016, 09:30 AM:

I think I found a way to best summarize how it feels to watch this movie unfold in front of your eyes.

Imagine The Asylum and TBN having a 100 million dollar baby. Do you think it would be a virgin birth? I can tell you, the whole thing would be rather nasty and you probably wouldn't want to come near it.

So, let's assume you're Viacom and you've got some $100M to burn on the remake of one of those classic movies that's so high on so many people's top movies of all time list. Who'll be your first choice as a director? Obviously the guy who's known for such timeless classics like "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter", "Yolki 1914" or "Wanted"...

Posted by Rick Raskin (Member # 1561) on 10-04-2016, 03:22 PM:

My VFW Post was offered free tickets to a preview screening. No takers. No doubt why.

Mike: Dreck is the appropriate adjective.

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 10-04-2016, 06:27 PM:

I haven't seen it. Some reviewers actually thought it was passable, and Cinemascore audiences gave it a surprisingly high A-. So some people who saw it liked it a great deal (I just haven't happened to find any of them).

Point being, if this movie weren't living under the shadow of a Great Giant, don't you think it would've found better a better audience, even as it is?

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 10-09-2016, 03:07 AM:

I'd be interested to know how studio executives evaluate the business case for remaking a movie that not only has a formidable critical and popular reputation, but has recently undergone a blank check restoration and is still very much a bankable IP asset. Presumably they must have focus groups or market research or something to suggest to them that an audience exists for that story, but not told using decades old actors and visuals.

On the subject of remakes, most of the chariot race was pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of the 1925 version, which had been done with far more primitive technology, and IMHO is just as impressive. Yet the 1925 version has pretty much disappeared without trace: public resistance to silent movies, I guess.