George Miller has directed four movies since 2000: Happy Feet, the dancing penguin movie; Happy Feet Two, the sequel to the dancing penguin movie; Mad Max: Fury Road, arguably the best movie of the 2010s; and Three Thousand Years of Longing, starring Idris Elba as a genie who grants Tilda Swinton three wishes. The man is a legend.
Three Thousand Years of Longing follows Dr. Alithea Binnie (Swinton), a solitary academic who purchases a trinket in a grand bazaar in Istanbul, as one does. Inside is a Djinn (Elba) who “offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom,” according to the official plot summary. “This presents two problems. First, she doubts that he is real and second, because she is a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong.” To satiate her, the Djinn tells stories from the past, which apparently involves spiders, swords, and lots of screaming.
It’s a whole new world, one where Idris Elba is a buff genie. A better world, imo.
Three Thousand Years of Longing premieres at the Cannes Film Festival today, May 20, before hitting theaters on August 31. If I had three wishes, I would use my first one to make it August 31 today, and spend the second on hurrying up production on Furiosa.