I heard at one of the big premieres, in LA or NY, when Michael tells Connie, "maybe they should fear you", people just started walking out.

Sofia did a better acting job on g1 in the baptism scene.

+1
I completely agree. FFC made two big mistakes by casting his sister to play Connie and Sofia to play Mary imo.

EDIT: seen i already replied to this thread.

Re-watched again recently, and its still Pacino that lets the movie down for me. Very little essence of Michael Corleone in the movie.

I think Talia Shire was ok in all 3.. and obviously Winona Ryder getting sick screwed them at the last minute...Sophia Coppola was abysmal.... but Eli Wallach as Don Altobello was just as bad..

...worse, if that's possible...

A poisoned cannoli can't be too far on that list as well.

As flawed as this move is I still watch it every few months.

Agreed. I think Pacino was upset about them not paying Duvall enough, so maybe he phoned it in on purpose.

I watched a clip on YouTube because I didn't remember him being THAT bad but you're right. It was not GOOD

Somewhere in the late 80s to early 90s Pacino just started playing versions of the same character. Not Tony Montana, but variants on Carlito Brigante. The bravado, the mannerisms, just about everything Pacino has done in the last twenty five years, with a very few exceptions, has just been shades of Carlito. When I watch GFIII, I feel like I'm watching the first iteration of Carlito.

Surely there must have been a way for Pacino to play a tired, worn out Michael Corleone that didn't involve invoking an alien character that we had never seen before.

I think the 16 year gap is mostly to blame. It would be hard for any actor to play a character after that much time has passed and make it ring true...especially a role as complex and calculated as Michael Corleone.

How could Al portray Michael the same way? In the 9 years between Cruising and Sea of Love his voice changed immensely due to smoking. Cruising is 1980 and he sounds like Michael, Sea of Love '89 and he sounds totally different. Losing much of your vocal range as an actor will change how you act....

I do think the film is misunderstood. It is weak compared to the first two, it is also a much less grand story. It's a much less epic, more corporate story that is centered around one man's redemption. It's not the sweeping multi-generational epic that II was. It fails in several areas: Sophia Coppola, Michael's haircut, Joe Montagna (I can't take him seriously as a gangster), and the fact that it feels too modern.

GFI and II are both period films as much as they are gangster films. They look and feel like the periods in which they're set; they transport us back to 1945 New York or 1958 era Cuba. While GFIII is set between 1979 and 1980, it looks and feels like it's taking place in 1990, when it came out. It looks, aesthetically, unlike its siblings. And Michael's haircut....

Al Pacino on [The Godfather: Part III (1990)]

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000199/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
If interested, need to scroll down, under 'Personal Quotes'

You know what the problem with that film is?
The real problem? Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty. That's not who he is. In the other scripts, in Michael's mind he is avenging his family and saving them.

Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster - not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward. That is not the image he has of himself.

SPOILER

Michael has this code: he lives by something that makes audiences respond. But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn't right.

I applaud [Francis Ford Coppola] for trying to get to that, but Michael is so frozen in that image.

There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother. That was a mistake. And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on. He was wrong.

SPOILER

Coppola and Puzo punished Michael mercilessly! and Pacino let them!
The degradation of once powerful [albeit nefarious] man was absolutely brutal indeed
Oh, the ignominy of it all......

This slipped by me in III: Who takes over the Corleone family from Zasa? Vinny? If so, who authorized it? Michael? The Commission? I don't recall a transition scene.

A convenient omission, Oli, although Michael, at his party, told Vincent that "Mr. Joe Zasa now owns what used to be the Corleone Family business in New York." A bit earlier, before Vincent joined them, Michael told Zasa: Joe, your business is your business. I have no interests or percentage – I’m out." So, it is arguable that Michael didn't care who succeeded Zasa.

A more serious omission: Who took over the Corleone Family, which was still under Michael's control in II, after Pentangeli flipped and the Rosato brothers were on the run?

Too bad FFC didnt keep some of the good film that was cut out and thrown away from all 3 films ( yeah, i know G3 included ) it could have been used for flash back scenes in a possible G4.
He should have done G3 no later than 1983 or 1984 AND PAID Duvall and Castellano wanted to make it right.

My theory is that Mike is still running the family as a criminal enterprise after Part 2. The last scene in part 2 is suppose to take place in 1968 when Anthony goes off to college and basically shuns Mike. Mike still has that cold look in his eyes so I'm sure he is still a cold blooded mobster at that point. My guess is that sometime in the early 70's Mike finally gives up Control of the criminal family to Zasa

JCrusher. Are you referring to when Michael is sitting outside smoking right before it goes into the flashback of Vito's bday? Hire do you know that it's 1968? And why the Hell do they show what appears to be the Tahoe house in ruins in the beginning of 3? Was it supposed to be symbolic to Mike's life and what it once was?

The flashback scene overlaps Michael sitting in the same room where he basically told Connie to get rid of Earl. The last scene of II is Michael sitting outside on the grounds of the compound; he's not smoking (and he is still wearing his wedding ring).

I doubt that we can accurately gauge the year. Some Board members who know the cars of the era may be able to identify the approximate year based on the cars that appear in those scenes. In the hotel scene when Michael strikes Kay, both kids are young, nowhere near college age. The same is true in the scene when Michael closes the door on Kay.

If we assume that Pentangeli's suicide, Fredo's murder and Roth's murder occurred in rapid sequence (per Michael's admonition to Tom, "I don't want to kill everybody--just my enemies"), then all would have occurred in 1960: Roth told reporters at the airport that he came home to vote in the Presidential election.

That could be correct TB. It fits with my post about the kids being young. Still, the cars are the key for me. Maybe someone who knows them better than me can chime in. You know them, don't you?

That's definitely a cigarette in his right hand.

According to the script the last scene takes place when an 18 year old Antony meets up with Michael, but like so many other scenes it was cut so we only see an older Michael sitting in his chair. It would take place in the late 60s.

Oli, the last car seen in GFII that we get a reasonably full view of is a '59 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 limo parked outside the Tahoe boathouse during Mama's wake. That would be consistent with a '59-'60 time frame.

yup. Plus his hair is starting to get grey in it and it looks like his face has some wrinkles.

Head Topics Ireland 25 February 2022
As The Godfather turns 50, it’s time to give the unfairly ridiculed Part III another chance

The Godfather: Part III, the poor relation of the franchise?
Godfather III has never been loved, but has perhaps been unfairly treated

I [author of the article - Source Independent.ie] watched it recently, for the hell of it, and for all its shark-jumping and papal assassinations, there are wonderful set pieces, deep moral undercurrents and some fine performances too.

The idea to make Michael Corleone’s guilt over the killing of his brother Fredo a central theme of the film was a good one, as were his efforts to gain redemption by splashing his cash in the Vatican.

It’s densely, even audaciously plotted, full of baroque references to the earlier films, and if it hadn’t had the word ‘Godfather’ in the title might have been better received.

It’s worth watching, if you never have, and Sofia Coppola is not at all as bad as some critics have suggested. But when it was rereleased in 2020, nobody went to see it

When Coppola rereleased it two years ago to mark its 30th anniversary, the reaction was very different. The director had renamed it The Godfather Coda included new edits, and cut it back to a relatively trim 158 minutes.

But all for naught, as commentators lined up to explain why they’d never particularly cared for the film in the first place. The plot was grandiose, the pacing funereal, Al Pacino’s ageing make-up ropey, and Sofia Coppola’s acting egregious.

I watched some of 3 last night before retiring. 3 has some weaknesses I don't like.

I have never accepted George Hamilton in his role, and, on top of that, I didn't much like the role that was created in GF 3.

The other thing that rubs me the wrong way is the matriarchal emphasis in the Corleone family, with the rise of Talia Shire with her role as Connie C.

Also, I though the cousin love angle was totally necessary. Too much about Michael's family.

For me, in GF I & II, family was part of the story, but was not "the story" as I see it was in GF 3.

Kay & Michael still in love... I mean, who gives a sh*t!!

To me, this is the most significant criticism of many. If you can't cast Duvall/Hagen, why do you feel the need to create this replacement who adds nothing. And George Hamilton? He was cheeseball even back then.