marcicat | Movie Review: Stormbreaker

(Or, as they called it in the US, “Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker. That seemed long.)

Explanation:
Okay, there was a reason why this ended up in my dvd player. After we watched I Am Number Four, I wiki’d the movie [and through a series of events that doesn't need exploring at this juncture] and found out that Alex Pettyfer was in both movies. (My reaction to the Netflix description for Stormbreaker: “That sounds terrible! I should watch it.”)

Quote:
“Don’t touch that!”
“Why, is it dangerous?”
“No, it’s very annoying!”
-gadget guy, Alex

Reaction:
Sooo….. I think I can make a guess at why this movie wasn’t popular enough to get sequels. It reminded me a lot of Eragon, actually (fun fact: Alex Pettyfer turned down the role of Eragon to be in Stormbreaker) — since they were based on books, there was a whole world-building thing they were trying to do, and allude to, which really just meant that people who know the books and people who don’t ended up having a completely different movie experience.

(In other words, whatever was going on between Alex and Gregorovich? It was pretty weird. See below.)

I’m not sure it’s a good thing when the foreshadowing is obvious, but it could be predicting 1) Gregorovich and Alex are going to end up secret lovers on the lam; 2) Gregorovich and Ian were secret lovers but not on the lam; 3) Gregorovich is secretly Alex’s dad.

(Or 4) (my personal favorite) Gregorovich and Ian had a secret pact to escape and save their families from their respective organizations, which started with Ian’s supposed death, but neither of them thought MI-6 would make a move on Alex so quickly, and now they have to get him out too, and what with all the lying and the killing, it’s just an awkward situation all around.)

Questions:
1. The dvd has a picture of a dog on it. The movie did not seem to have a dog in it. What’s up with that?

2. Why was the bad guy’s plan so stupid? Releasing a virus to kill millions of people — that makes no sense. It’s not targeted, it’s not profitable, and there’s no endgame — what would he have gained from it? Nothing, that’s what. Except probably death by virus, which is just… really, really dumb.

Mirrored from The Marci Rating System.