Forum Overview :: John Romero's Empire of Sin
 
I watched the Godfather trilogy for the first time this year. I didn't get it! by Tangentially Related Film Review 06/14/2019, 6:46pm PDT
I understood the character of Vito Corleone (Brando in the first movie, De Niro in the second). He was a broke immigrant who saw in crime an opportunity to make something of himself. He loved his family and clearly enjoyed playing philosopher king to his little community. He was a killer and a thief and a two-faced egomaniac, but he was also an orphan who became a patriarch, catching all those poor wops in the rye before they could run off a cliff. He built an empire and died laughing with his grandkid. Awesome! Would've made a fine, conventional protagonist for a movie.

I couldn't understand Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) as the actual protagonist of THIS movie, which was long enough to be two movies even before it turned into three movies, because there was nothing conventionally attractive about him. He just seemed like a boring prick who hurt people out of some perverted sense of responsibility. Emphasis on BORING. It didn't matter what pointless, destructive thing he was doing - marrying a woman he didn't love, having his own brother killed, committing horrible crimes for no other reason than because he was the only one who could - he always acted like it was some great imposition on him. He was a miserable bastard and he died alone, theatrically slumping over in his chair in a movie nobody liked.

Intellectually, I can appreciate a protagonist whose cleverness you respect on a moment to moment basis, while never once sympathizing with as a human being. What I don't understand is why I would want to endure nine hours of tedious melodrama focusing on a guy like that. Was it supposed to be a cautionary tale? Some statement on the banality of evil? Every time a character died in the Godfather trilogy, I'd wish the whole film had been about him - not only would it have been more interesting, IT WOULD BE OVER BY NOW. It's the rare movie that can make me feel like I'm bad at watching movies, but The Godfathers managed it.
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I watched the Godfather trilogy for the first time this year. I didn't get it! by Tangentially Related Film Review 06/14/2019, 6:46pm PDT NEW
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