roaming_kate23 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
roaming_kate23) wrote2024-04-07 09:00 am
roaming_kate23) wrote2024-04-07 09:00 am
Entry tags:
[The First Omen]
OH. MY!!! Wow! I have so much to say about the movie but most of it is going to go underneath a cut for anyone who wants to go into it unspoiled. I am just going to say,pre-cut,that the word I would use is “misdirection”.. If you see it you’ll know what I am talking about .
Stuff that I got wrong:
Margaret is NOT fluent in Italian.
Nether was she exiled for her..sins But it’s made plain that she had a not-so-great childhood
Definitely is NOT Mrs. Blaylock OR the doomed nanny from the original.
The woman in the trailer that seemed to have 3 6’s on the roof of her mouth-it was in fact Carlita .
Father Spileto was in there..for like a minute,looking at a file with a picture of Gregory Peck’s Robert Thorn.
So, I am going to start at the end of the movie and go from there. There is a set up for a second(or more) film, with Margaret and her daughter-Damien’s sister-in hiding.That was quite the subversion from the 1976 film.
It plays to the “nuns R creepy” thing and their being a conspiracy at every level of the Church, which at the time this takes place-1971-is worried about its relevance.. So they have been trying to create. an Antichrist.But this has had varying results ,one of them being Carlita, who, like Margaret has visions she can’t explain and who, also like Margaret is an orphan.
Margaret arrives in Rome to go into the sisterhood but first she has a night out which gets a bit strange. We see glimpses of dream/nightmare scenes in the hospital wing of a hospital attached to the orphanage where..”fallen women”(READ: unwed mothers((one with a claw is especially. WTF) give birth.
She is arriving in Rome at a time of upheaval -lots of protests and the like.Being that she is mostly sheltered because she’s working at the orphanage but at one point she and the girls from the orphanage get stuck in the middle of a riot.
Margaret is..I hate to use the word “naive” but it’s about right. She’s been mentored by Father Lawrence who knew her when she was a child. We get allusions to Margaret having issues much like Carlita’s and that is because they are both part of the experiment to try and bring about the Antichrist Except most of them have died/been deformed/are female.Carlita and Margaret are two exceptions. So now we have the biggest diversion from the original story is that Damien’s mother is human , and not a jackal as stated in the original Omen movie. A jackal IS involved though.
Margaret is going into this situation not knowing a whole lot-that she is going to become a nun ovbiously-and it takes her a while to get to where she turns Nancy Drew thanks to Father Brennan who gets shish k bobbed in the original film and who knows EXACTLY what is going on. I would even go so far as to call her a badass!
Watching this movie I had the thought that there could be MANY discussions/ about women’s bodily autonomy and abortion and the Church’s death grip WRT to it.(when Margaret finds out that she is pregnant with the Antichrist the first thing she says is that she wants to get rid of the baby and the two people she is with-both of whom are priests-don’t disagree with her. To them,abortion IS murder..but all bets are off when the mother-to-be is about to give birth to the Antichrist.
It’s mentioned several times that the reason that they are trying to bring about the Antichrist is because the Catholic Church is not as relevant as they were .As I said elsewhere ,that is the nuclear option.I’m also thinking there is some chafing against modernism in the Church(which in some places definitely got more people going to Mass but in other places,like Italy, it was the opposite.Especially back in the day.Since Pope Francis has been Pope the church still doesn’t have the best approval rating but Francis has caused people to see the Catholic Church in a different way.
Nell Tiger Free did an AMAZING job as Margaret ..there was one scene that was incredibly physical. At one point they mention she is from Massachusetts but has moved around a lot .Would have been interesting to see Nell attempt a Massachusetts accent,lol
What else?? The deaths in this movie were on par for an Omen movie)my gold standards for Omen movie deaths are the beheading in the 1976 original.and the guy getting cut in half by an elevator in the sequel.I already had a fear of elevators and that didn’t help There is a death with a reveal al the very start of the film which ,from what I had heard was gory(and it certainly was but having the reveal. Made it so much better..
This review is all over the place..I wanted to do a mostly spoiler free review but went into writing this without any notes, which is very unusual for me.
One more thing: having been to Italy, and specifically Rome, twice, I LOVED the scenery porn where they would have scenes with wide shots of Rome.
Stuff that I got wrong:
Margaret is NOT fluent in Italian.
Nether was she exiled for her..sins But it’s made plain that she had a not-so-great childhood
Definitely is NOT Mrs. Blaylock OR the doomed nanny from the original.
The woman in the trailer that seemed to have 3 6’s on the roof of her mouth-it was in fact Carlita .
Father Spileto was in there..for like a minute,looking at a file with a picture of Gregory Peck’s Robert Thorn.
So, I am going to start at the end of the movie and go from there. There is a set up for a second(or more) film, with Margaret and her daughter-Damien’s sister-in hiding.That was quite the subversion from the 1976 film.
It plays to the “nuns R creepy” thing and their being a conspiracy at every level of the Church, which at the time this takes place-1971-is worried about its relevance.. So they have been trying to create. an Antichrist.But this has had varying results ,one of them being Carlita, who, like Margaret has visions she can’t explain and who, also like Margaret is an orphan.
Margaret arrives in Rome to go into the sisterhood but first she has a night out which gets a bit strange. We see glimpses of dream/nightmare scenes in the hospital wing of a hospital attached to the orphanage where..”fallen women”(READ: unwed mothers((one with a claw is especially. WTF) give birth.
She is arriving in Rome at a time of upheaval -lots of protests and the like.Being that she is mostly sheltered because she’s working at the orphanage but at one point she and the girls from the orphanage get stuck in the middle of a riot.
Margaret is..I hate to use the word “naive” but it’s about right. She’s been mentored by Father Lawrence who knew her when she was a child. We get allusions to Margaret having issues much like Carlita’s and that is because they are both part of the experiment to try and bring about the Antichrist Except most of them have died/been deformed/are female.Carlita and Margaret are two exceptions. So now we have the biggest diversion from the original story is that Damien’s mother is human , and not a jackal as stated in the original Omen movie. A jackal IS involved though.
Margaret is going into this situation not knowing a whole lot-that she is going to become a nun ovbiously-and it takes her a while to get to where she turns Nancy Drew thanks to Father Brennan who gets shish k bobbed in the original film and who knows EXACTLY what is going on. I would even go so far as to call her a badass!
Watching this movie I had the thought that there could be MANY discussions/ about women’s bodily autonomy and abortion and the Church’s death grip WRT to it.(when Margaret finds out that she is pregnant with the Antichrist the first thing she says is that she wants to get rid of the baby and the two people she is with-both of whom are priests-don’t disagree with her. To them,abortion IS murder..but all bets are off when the mother-to-be is about to give birth to the Antichrist.
It’s mentioned several times that the reason that they are trying to bring about the Antichrist is because the Catholic Church is not as relevant as they were .As I said elsewhere ,that is the nuclear option.I’m also thinking there is some chafing against modernism in the Church(which in some places definitely got more people going to Mass but in other places,like Italy, it was the opposite.Especially back in the day.Since Pope Francis has been Pope the church still doesn’t have the best approval rating but Francis has caused people to see the Catholic Church in a different way.
Nell Tiger Free did an AMAZING job as Margaret ..there was one scene that was incredibly physical. At one point they mention she is from Massachusetts but has moved around a lot .Would have been interesting to see Nell attempt a Massachusetts accent,lol
What else?? The deaths in this movie were on par for an Omen movie)my gold standards for Omen movie deaths are the beheading in the 1976 original.and the guy getting cut in half by an elevator in the sequel.I already had a fear of elevators and that didn’t help There is a death with a reveal al the very start of the film which ,from what I had heard was gory(and it certainly was but having the reveal. Made it so much better..
This review is all over the place..I wanted to do a mostly spoiler free review but went into writing this without any notes, which is very unusual for me.
One more thing: having been to Italy, and specifically Rome, twice, I LOVED the scenery porn where they would have scenes with wide shots of Rome.