Angels and demons sucked.

The Angels and Demons movie sucked. Totally. I was like, “Two years of waiting and I get this?” I was about to give a point-by-point explanation of why the movie did not work magic the way the book did, but I realized it did not even deserve that. OK, I know some things must be sacrificed when you go from a 200-page novel to a two hour drama, but cutting off the romance between Vittoria and Langdon? Not even providing a moment to appreciate the awesome ambigrams? Paying almost no attention to the bloody and gory killings described in the book? You might think I am a sadist, espousing violence; but the Dan Brown’s ingenuity was using the dark side of human nature to expose the light – in the end, the book did get people thinking about the things surrounding science and religion. After all, thats the whole point…without the Demons, there are no Angels. The soundtrack was awesome though. But this is Hans Zimmer you are talking about, you sort of expect great music form him – he was the man behind the Dark Knight‘s score.

And for a totally unrelated raving, here is one of my Photoshop works of art that I did not share with you in the last post, on the grounds that it was a bit obscene:

Just to insult your intelligence: it is a spoof of the photo sharing site Flickr.com.

Angels & Demons – the movie

Next month, a new movie will be released which is based on a prequel to the enormously successful Dan Brown novel, the Da Vinci Code. Its called Angels & Demons – and the trailer is out.

The story? An ancient brotherhood of artists and scientists thought to be extinct for four centuries and started by Galileo himself, known as the Illuminati, steal a canister of a highly explosive antimatter from the physics laboratory CERN. It looks as though they had quite a lot of issues with the Catholic Church. So, to take revenge they place the antimatter at the heart of Vatican city, after having some good fun killing the former Pope and four cardinals who wanna become one – and wait to blow the sh*t out of the entire city. Science and religion clash in this terrifying war. Now, it is upto a Harvard research scholar and a sexy CERN physicist to save the world.

Take a breath.

If the story sounded implausible to you, it is because…well, it is implausible. OK, I know it was real thrilling to read the novel – it was unputdownable when I first read it two years ago.  I instantly fell in love with the book – it was exceedingly well written, the vivid characterization and deeply heart rending flashbacks, along with a complex plot, is still unforgettable.  The ambigrams – words designed in such a way that it looks the same when read upside down – that were featured in the novel were totally awesome. And it sort of became a passion of mine to make ambigrams of my own.

The problems crop up when Dan Brown calls fiction as fact. Like its sequel, there is an author’s note in the first page which claims all the works of art and other facts mentioned in the book are completely accurate. The truth is rather different. The Illuminati was not founded by Galileo. There is no such thing as the Altars of Science. Antimatter could not be produced in quantities mentioned in the book, nor could antimatter bombs. It is not a reliable source of energy in the future.  CERN doesn’t have spacey aircrafts, or for that matter a huge Glass Cathedral or an indoor sky-diving hamber. (They do have, however, an entire page discussing the inaccuracies in the book.) The entire novel is worthy of a conspiracy theory. Much of what Dan Brown calls as original research seems to be nonsense.

When the movie is released, I fear it will probably create a new group of believers who refuse to doubt the wisdom of Dan Brown. I still love the book immensely – but as a work of fiction.