3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Three Thousand Years of Longing

2022, George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) -- Amazon

What a beautiful fairy tale of a movie that ... well, to be honest, left me pretty empty. Not feeling empty, just that it didn't affect me much. It should have. Miller was able to take an older, popular action franchise and have it become transcendent while still retaining the world contained within. The visuals, the music, the world building !! And lest us not forget, he took a story about a pig and astounded the world. But not everything can be those, some just have to be an exercise in movie making.

When opening genie containers, I assume the world would be more interested in finding Idris Elba than Melissa McCarthy. I know I was. So was Tilda Swinton. Elba (The Suicide Squad) is The Djinn, discovered in a bottle that scholar Alithea Binnie (Swinton, The Dead Don't Die) finds in a shop in Istanbul on one of her trips for work. As is the way, he offers her three wishes, which have conditions, but she is suspicious. She is a woman of tales, and all the tales tell one to be wary of djinn. So, instead, he tells her tales of him, of his past, of his wishes.

Each tale is cautionary, full of wonder and love. They expand on who he is, what he can do, and how people have treated him, and he in turn, treated them. The tales turn the sceptical Alithea and in the end, she wants nothing more from him but to have him love her. So he does. So he returns to London with her, to become part of her life, but a secret one, that she returns to each day. But it comes with consequences for djinns  were never meant to be part of our modern world with all its signals and wavelengths. So, she finally releases him, but the love is retained and he returns to her on occasion, when his strength returns.

Each tale was so intricately built, so beautiful dressed and shot. The Djinn is truly a marvel to behold, a being of smoke and fire and shimmering, reflected light, both massive to behold and airy. But there was no weight to the stories, they didn't draw me in. They were just nice things to look at, to hear, but didn't move me once, there was not even one moment of, "That'll do pig, that'll do." Its a shame. If it wasn't for the marvellous visuals and colours, I might have been bored entirely. There was so much to work with, but perhaps I can just blame it on the source material? 

Kent's take.