Doubling down on that.... I finally completed my "journey" and I've seen The Godfather III.
Random thoughts...
- Took a while to get adjusted to the protagonist; in the two other movies I was seeing Michael Corleone, in the third I was seeing Al Pacino, if you get what I mean. When he was young, he was different enough to pretend that "Michael Corleone" was "real", but by 1990 Pacino already had the looks that I was more than familiar with (we're talking about one of the most famous actors ever after all) so it took a while to go past the idea of seeing another Al Pacino movie rather than thinking "wow, look how Michael Corleone aged". I perfectly know how he aged, I've see him in countless movies.
- Having not lived the real time gap between the two original movies and the last one, it didn't seem too much disconneted or different from the previous ones. Didn't get "meh, is this even a Godfather movie?" feeling at all.
- After all, they've kept some beats from the other two movies, mainly the protagonist being smart enough to figure out who's the real puppet master behind a life attempt, and the final montage with the bad guys being killed one by one.
- The Pope sublot was weird. That was one the little things I knew about the movie, that it tied in with the Pope / italian political climate of the end of the 70's. In the second movie, they've adapted an historical background to their protagonists, the Cuban revolution - after seeing the movie I went and checked and yes, it was real, the Cuban dictator really fled the country on that New Years' Eve. Here instead they've kept the name of the popes (Paul VI and John Paul I), they even kept the looks (bald, mustache) of a banker that was found hung under a London bridge, but they've changed the names and the years in which the events happened.
Also, from knowing as little as "the movie ties in with the conspiracy theories about the sudden death of John Paul I", I expected that it would have been the Corleone gang to kill the Pope, something as in "the Pope is an obstacle, but what can you do? you can't get the Pope" / "We can get ANYONE", this kind of thing. Would have been daring and ballsy to do. But it all turned out a conspiracy of the bad guys to which an older and weaker Michael Corleone couldn't react.
- Speaking of the Corleone name, took me a while to figure out that the "surname" wasn't a cheap pick, as in "how do I name my villain? mh, let's just use the name of a town as a surname", but that it had an explanation (the immigrant office labelling Vito Andolini from Corleone as "Vito Corleone"), and the moment Michael suggested Andy Garcia to call himself Vincenzo Corleone, it kinda felt like a Sith title, where everyone call themselves Darth
"the Mafia is strong with you.... a powerful boss you will become. Henceforth, you shall be known as Vincenzo..... Corleone"
- Didn't really have particular problems with Sofia Coppola, but I found it weird that she would bang her cousin.... hello, incest anyone?
- Also totally didn't see coming the "red wedding", or better the "helicopter dinner". Savage. And the killing of John Zasa was a callback to young Vito Corleone killing Fanucci (or whatever was the name of the guy dressed in white) during a procession.
All in all it was enjoyable, A nice conclusion to a saga, even though a bit underwhelming.... in the end Michael dies old, forgotten and alone, his attempts to protect his family all futile. He must have left it all in the hands of Andy Garcia and spent another 10-15 years sitting alone in his home wallowing in regret and sorrow.