u/silviod

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A family of decided misfits all face their own identities. Don Mancini reinvents his franchise in this by-now five-legged beast and does so with so much conviction, style and direction that it's hard not to adore what he manages to achieve.

Upon its release it was obviously chastised to hell and back. When I first saw it in 2006, I didn't like it too much. There were elements I loved - namely the Hollywood production level and the modern effects - but a lot I hated. I didn't think critically about the film, I was 13 and instead rode the consensus wave. It made sense - Chucky was ostensibly a horror franchise and he was a character that completely choked my entire childhood. I'm really not fucking kidding. I was absolutely traumatised by Chucky. In high school, I refused getting lifts home from my mate's gran because the route passed a video shop that was emblazened with a Seed of Chucky poster in the window. Yes... I was scared of fucking Seed of Chucky. The design right here, of Chucky and Tiffany's faces floating above - they horrified me. I had thought that Chucky was bald and that horrified me even more. Eurgh.

But this is such a brilliantly camp and funny film. It's so completely fucking twisted, so bonkers, so disturbing, and so gentle. There's a genuinely lovely arc here for all of the characters, and Glen as a character is so welcomed into this franchise. Mancini has a knack of introducing characters who feel like they've been here all along - to think that this is only Tiffany's second appearance and yet already she feels integral. Mancini explores questions that have never been ventured by a slasher before, and he poses them directly to Chucky himself: what drives a slasher villain to kill? What is their awareness of their own identity and legacy as a slasher villain? Who are they?

But more than that, Mancini explores themes of gender identity in a way that is so Goddamn ahead of its time that it's actually kind of unbelievable. I can't believe how overtly he explores themes of gender non-conformity, and he does so in a fucking Chucky film. What's genius about this film is that Mancini twists and distorts the Chucky mythos perfectly, and uses it as a springboard to create a genuinely interesting and well-earned film that stands just as much on its own right as it does within the franchise. This is the inevitable direction of Chucky as a character, and it needed to go this way, because beneath the killer doll mystery voodoo of it all, he's still a human being with an entire domestic life before his 1988 transformation.

My relationship with this film has always been back-and-forth. In recent years, I started to relove it as a surreal and strange film - I loved the idea of showing it randomly at parties or to friends who only really know Chucky as a slasher villain - so that when they see Chucky and his kid kill Britney Spears, they're always baffled. But I had always hated some of the humour ("Violins are bad!") that I felt was a bit too try-hard. Now, though, I realise that all the lines I hate are Chucky's... and it seems as if the truth is that Chucky himself is just an old fucking boomer with a bad sense of humour and Tiffany rightfully puts him in his place whenever he cracks a crass and dull joke.

Mancini is not short of ideas at all here, and like its 2000s brethren Jason X, this film deserves to exist, and galvanises the franchises into a shape that it needed to be. This is a progressive, funny, twisted and surreal film that made itself known immediately upon revealing John Waters as a sleazy paparazzi. I am so glad this film exists and I can't wait to dig into the rest of the Chucky franchise again during this random rewatch.

For reference, I watched a 4k theatrical cut that was fan-restored. Forget which one but I did a lot of research to make sure I watched the correct one. I wanted to watch the film as it originally stood.

It's got some imaginative details, but it chokes under the emptiness of the wider world. Everything feels so small, despite the promise that the world is full of life. No one else exists except the characters we see on screen - it feels like a videogame that pretends there's a wider world but that wider world is just a matte painting plastered around the circumference of the set.

I have spent my entire life being completely ignorant to the entire Star Wars mythos. It has always been so uninteresting to me, and it felt like such a big gap in my filmic knowledge as a filmmaker and film lover. I decided, finally, to force myself into watching it this May 4th and it was as laborious as I expected. Look, I know what I like and what I don't. I knew I never would like it. But, going into it, I really, really tried to let myself enjoy it. I am never beholden to my own expectations - I went into Weapons expecting to love it but I ended up hating it. I thought I'd hate The Lighthouse but I ended up loving it. Suffice to say, I am always willing and open to being surprised.

Unfortunately my instincts were right. It was a slog for me to get through, the plot was paper-thin, I had no idea what was going on, the characters were all uninteresting outside of R2D2 and Han Solo. The villain was clumsy and awkward. I'd heard Darth Vader was one of the best villains ever, and I'd always known about his breathing - I for some reason expected him to be a silent villain, so when he started talking it did make me laugh, I'll admit. But then he kept talking, and he was so unthreatening in his clumsy cheap plastic costume that I couldn't take him seriously at all.

I give Lucas props for the imagination of the smaller details. There are lots of fun creatures all over the place that I had fun with. I liked that little graveyard thing near the start full of droids and that. There were some seriously impressive special effects - especially for the budget - and the cinematography was gorgeous throughout. It's just such a shame that the film that all of these elements are tethered to is so void and boring. I don't like space sci-fi actiony films like this at the best of times, so it was never gonna wow me, but I was hoping for a little bit more from a film that changed cinema. I'm not trying to be contrarian, and I'm sure most people who read this (which is no one) will be baffled at my assertion that this film is empty, but you have to remember, I know next to nothing about Star Wars. I have heard random names and stuff but I have no clue what anything is, so I really am judging this entirely on its own merits, and it really does just feel so tiny. It doesn't feel like there's some grand big world full of rebels and space nazis - I know it was trying for that, but it just doesn't land at all for me.

I've been trying to find other perspectives on this film as a standalone film, and it's almost impossible. I challenge you to find a single review on Letterboxd that doesn't make any reference to other Star Wars films or media. This leads me to believe that this franchise is so ubiquitous that people can't isolate this as its own piece - and it was its own piece. In 1977, this was a standalone film. People seem to be reviewing this film because they're projecting elements from later films into this one, and that's bizarre to me. It says a lot about franchise filmmaking and the homogeny of the Star Wars beast. I've spoke about this before, but it's especially pertinent in Star Wars, it seems. Am I the only one out here who knew next to nothing about this film or the characters before watching it?

Without any baggage of cultural understanding, and without any childhood nostalgia corrupting my vision, I had a quite unique opportunity to see this as just a film from 1977 called Star Wars, and with that, I mostly saw a surprisingly thin soap opera masquerading as an expansive world: fun but shallow details that do nothing but leave me hungry for something the film isn't substantial enough to fulfill. I will not be watching any more Star Wars films now, soz