Ron Howard had a weak try with the film adaptation of Dan Brown’s Inferno

“There’s a switch, if you throw it half the people on earth will die, but if you don’t in a hundred years then the human race will be extinct”. (Bertrand Zobrist)

 

The first quotation of the film made us feel confident that the director, Ron Howard, wasn’t going to disappoint us. Indeed, during the first 30 minutes we are glued to our seats wondering what will happen next. We watch Professor Robert Langdon, played again by the multi-awarded Tom Hanks, waking up in an Italian hospital in Florence and
suffering from a head injury and amnesia together with apocalyptic dream-visions.

The plot seems to be addictive when a killer disguised as a policewoman breaks into the hospital and tries to shoot Langdon. He is saved by Dr Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), who will help him to recover his memory.

Together, they race across Florence and other cities trying to stop the biological weapon created by the scientist Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), who wants to exterminate half the world’s population in order to avoid a complete extinction.

Unfortunately the plot becomes predictable as soon as it develops, and factual references to Dante’s Divine Comedy are few.

We have already dealt with biological threat and people who try to stop it (think about James Bond), and the much-beloved symbolism seen in the previous movies (The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons) is full of badly connected and even forced puzzle.

The end of the story differs from that of the book in a more obvious and predictable way.

I’m so incredibly disapointed with the #InfernoMovie, why the F would you change the most inportant part of the movie? A wasted oportunity💩

— Lena Krones 🌐 (@LenaKrones) 23 ottobre 2016

 

Despite the beautiful cultural places we can see on the screen, such as Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and other sites throughout Europe, the interesting ethical dilemma about humanity’s future – the real risks from over-population – is completely forgotten in the all too predictable manhunt.

The Da Vinci Code took $758 million worldwide in 2006,
while Angels & Demons managed to earn $485 million in 2009. It would be difficult for Inferno to receive the same response from the audience this time, especially from the scholars of the genre. We have better hopes for a possible film version of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.