Eric Boellner
Well-known member
I'm gonna keep this short. Saw the movie on Friday, it was pretty good. Loved the last scene - Hanks is great, as always.
But DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN, that first scene is so f--king awful. One of the most on-the-nose, totally serious but completely s--tty scenes I've ever seen in an otherwise good movie. It's literally Tom Hanks and Catherine Keener driving to the airport, and Hanks spends the entire scene expositing his home life and family. He literally delivers, with that annoying spoof of a Forrest Gump accent that was at its worst in this scene (or maybe not, what do I know), a line that I can best remember as "Our kids are doing okay, but I'm worried about [son's name]. If he keeps skipping school, things could be hard for him later on. I mean, he could have trouble getting a good job. Back when I started out, you could make captain in a few years if you just kept your head down and showed up on time. But now... [DRAMATIC PAUSE!] ...It's a different world. Things are [a-]changin'."
I feel like that entire scene just HAD to be a studio demand after a bad test screening. Because there's no way in a devil's hell Billy Ray got paid to write that s--t. I mean, he's not the greatest screenwriter in history, but aside from that Dolph Lundgren flick, he's got a pretty good resume...
Maybe he got some stupid notes back from the studio, decided to pull a Damon/Affleck, put that scene in there just to see if anyone would notice he was f--king with them, and then Greengrass thought it was legit and actually filmed it, I dunno...
But DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN, that first scene is so f--king awful. One of the most on-the-nose, totally serious but completely s--tty scenes I've ever seen in an otherwise good movie. It's literally Tom Hanks and Catherine Keener driving to the airport, and Hanks spends the entire scene expositing his home life and family. He literally delivers, with that annoying spoof of a Forrest Gump accent that was at its worst in this scene (or maybe not, what do I know), a line that I can best remember as "Our kids are doing okay, but I'm worried about [son's name]. If he keeps skipping school, things could be hard for him later on. I mean, he could have trouble getting a good job. Back when I started out, you could make captain in a few years if you just kept your head down and showed up on time. But now... [DRAMATIC PAUSE!] ...It's a different world. Things are [a-]changin'."
I feel like that entire scene just HAD to be a studio demand after a bad test screening. Because there's no way in a devil's hell Billy Ray got paid to write that s--t. I mean, he's not the greatest screenwriter in history, but aside from that Dolph Lundgren flick, he's got a pretty good resume...
Maybe he got some stupid notes back from the studio, decided to pull a Damon/Affleck, put that scene in there just to see if anyone would notice he was f--king with them, and then Greengrass thought it was legit and actually filmed it, I dunno...
