Matt Swain wrote: How about Fantastic four? I was incredibly disappointed that as bad as the last 2 were the reboot managed to be a xxxxton worse in every way.
I've seen this twice now. It suffers the sin of mostly being incredibly boring but the production is also obviously so cheap that I assume it was just made to keep the rights from expiring similar to the Sassone film.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: To be fair to Deep Blue Sea, I think it was trying to go for that good-bad target so few movies ever achieve on purpose. It being predictable may have been intended as a feature.
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Was really excited to see this, then got to the end of the film in the cinema and looked along the seats to see a row off people with puzzled looks on their faces asking "was that it?". It was so unimpressive the only part of the movie I can recall for certain was just how disappointing it was.
Sounds like it nailed the book, then.
I agree. I know a lot of people made a fuss about him but really not a fan of Cormac McCarthy. The Road is probably the single most depressing thing I have ever read, and not even in the manner of something like The Boy in the Stiped Pajamas (which made you sit and swallow a lump in your throat afterwards) - it was just bloody awful.
I’m a Corman McCarthy fan and I can’t really disagree. I thought the Road was brilliant, but also a painful, depressing experience. Blood Meridian is even worse. I felt nauseated reading that one.
For me, No Country for Old Men didn’t have any of the magic the other two did, though. It was just McCormac self-indulging, which he does more than enough in his good books.
The Road is one of those where you sit back after the credits roll and say "Well, that happened. Now I need something to cheer me up, because I sure as hell can't go to bed like this".
Hahahah that reminded me on The Road to Perdition.
I loved that movie up until the end scene where Hanks was shot. When the squibs go off and blood splatters on the window but the window does not break.
There is no way I can conceive of having blood splatter out of the opposite side of a gunshot wound without the shot being a through and through.
I mean I get WHY is went down like that but the HOW was disappointing.
Inglourious Basterds. It probably wasn't that the movie was objectively bad, so much as that was when I started to find the Tarantino trademarks becoming too familiar and intrusive, after that amazing opening scene. OK, so this is the bit where someone sits in a room and talks about a random tangent in an unnecessarily long monologue, this is Samuel L Jackson playing Samuel L Jackson....
Worst one was probably Men In Black II. It wasn't even amusingly bad, just a tired and low-effort retread of all the cool moments from the first, with none of the originality and none of the passion. I think the series might be like Highlander, in that the first one was lightning in a bottle that perfectly hit a zeitgeist, and they've been trying in vain to recapture it ever since then.
As the OP I'm going to exercise the right to expand the thread a bit into "the most disappointing movie you NEVER saw".
Was there a movie who's word of mouth was so awful you didn't even bother with it?
For my own part 2 come to mind.
"Alien Covenant". I had hopes for this one, I really did. Even tho I had real issues with prometheus, i had hoped this one would go in a new direction.
In the movie we find that humans are created by an alien species. Now intelligent androids were always part of the alien universe, so when it turns out humans are created by another race as well it makes you wonder how that would affect people's feelings towards androids. I was hoping the sequel to prometheus would set up a new paradigm between creators and created. with humans and artificial people learning to live with each other and confronting the engineers over their plan to destroy humanity.
Maybe shaw, objecting to the engineers plan to destroy humanity, claims they have no right to destroy humanity even tho they created them, then realizing this means humans have no right to treat androids as property either.
Instead, david goes the tired old "MUST KILL ALL HUMANS!!!" route and wastes a beautiful chance to take the whole 'creator and created" thing in a new direction.
Given how david saved shaw after his creator was dead in prometheus I was hoping there could be a new, original dynamic there. Maybe even having david reveal he poisoned shaw's lover at the command of his creators and had no choice, but regretted it, and shaw forgiving him.
But no, none of that happened. As soon as I heard about what happened in covenant I decided not to see it. Ugh, what a wasted opportunity to go in a new direction...
The Predator. Ok, once I heard they redid the predators into a 'genetic borg" species that was all i needed to know.
I actually quite enjoyed The PRedator. But as you have all seen, i almost enjoy anything lol.
But one thing that really got me was just how bad Dark Pheonix was.
The movies went down hill after First Class, but where atleast OK. But Dark Pheonix was garbage. IT proved that Sophie Turner cant act actually, that whininess IS here default mode. They shoved Magneto in who, at this point,tried to destroy the world 3 times and faces not punishment for it. Mystique gets fridged for Beasts character development, and Magnetos, but no character development happens.
The fight Between the Brotherhood and Xmen was hard to follow because you only knew of the Xmens power. The Train scene made no sense.
My understanding is they had to pay JLaw a ton of money just to come back and do what she did. She HATED being in the xmen movies. You will also notice that in each movie she is blue less and less and more often then not her clothes cover the majority of her body and don't change when she changes.
So her getting fridged... probably the actresses demands.
In fairness I've heard that some actors who use a lot of body makeup end up with Kidney problems. The actress who played Zahn in Farscape had that issue and I suspect she's not alone.
Overread wrote: In fairness I've heard that some actors who use a lot of body makeup end up with Kidney problems. The actress who played Zahn in Farscape had that issue and I suspect she's not alone.
Yeah but they could have ping pong balled/dotted her. They didn't because she just wanted out.
Lance845 wrote: My understanding is they had to pay JLaw a ton of money just to come back and do what she did. She HATED being in the xmen movies. You will also notice that in each movie she is blue less and less and more often then not her clothes cover the majority of her body and don't change when she changes.
So her getting fridged... probably the actresses demands.
A character dying isnt bad.
But it seemed she only died.....for the motivation of 2 others.
Overread wrote: In fairness I've heard that some actors who use a lot of body makeup end up with Kidney problems. The actress who played Zahn in Farscape had that issue and I suspect she's not alone.
Although JLaw was only in full body makeup up until Days of Future Past. From that one onwards it was a rubber suit, with just her face painted, which cut the makeup time down from 8 hours to 3.
Lance845 wrote: Sorry quick clarification.
Predators is a pretty great movie about bigger meaner predators dumping people onto a game reserve planet and hunting them for sport.
Not the point of the thread, I know, but... I loved this one! This is the one with Adrien Brody and Topher Grace, right? Hit a lot of sweet spots that were present in the latter half of the original.
Lance845 wrote: While appeasing the chinese might very well be a factor, Tilda Swinton is also a VERY good actress and does a great job with the part while the Ancient One was one of those 70s racial stereotype characters. There are no doubt layers to the reasons to cast the AO different and I think the product that came out was better for it.
Whilst I liked Ancient Tilda (and I'm big fan of hers in general), it's not like there's a shortage of good Asian actors who could have portrayed the character and make it interesting, too.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Nuance matters. Execution matters. Some people are less sensitive to lack of both of those than others. Two scenes that seem just as plausible to you can span a world of difference to others.
Indeed. I remember seeing Deep Blue Sea at the cinema with a friend. Out of all of the issues with that movie, the one that killed it for him was sharks swimming backwards, something that didn't phase me anywhere near as much as how tediously predictable it was. And given my rather 'brain-switched-off' approach to movie watching, if I'm finding it predictable, that's saying something...
Huh, IMHO one of the strength of the DBS is that it throws few surprises at you. Granted in lot of places it is very predictable, but by no means the worst example of the genre.
When I saw it first time, I was not bothered by backwards swimming sharks as such, just how bad they looked. All the CGI in the movie was very poor even for the time. It's one movie which definitely could use a 'special edition'.
One thing I will say about Deep Blue Sea - as much as you can claim it's formulaic and easily predictable, nobody - but NOBODY - can look me straight in the eye and truthfully tell me that they saw that one scene coming.
Spoiler:
Samuel L Jackson's very sudden and inspiring-speech-interrupting death.
The rest of the film was bad pacing, bad plot, poor use of characters, bad script, complete destruction of the universes verisimilitude and just everything bad about how to make a film.
I'm baffled that people bring up 'TLJ destroyed verisimilitude' when this has hardly ever been a strong point of Star Wars, some other movies of the series were just as bad. Han going through Starkiller base's shields by hyperspace is just as nonbelievable as 'Holdo maneuver' - if it was that easy, it would have been weaponized ages ago. In ESB Falcon flies to another star system without a functioning hyperspace. In Phantom Menace they simply fly through the Trade Federation blockage with a ship which is 1/100th the size of dozens of ships firing at them. And of course TRoS 'hyperspace skipping' takes the dumbness to all new levels.
Backfire wrote: And of course TRoS 'hyperspace skipping' takes the dumbness to all new levels.
But looked really cool on screen... which is ultimately what has mostly always dictated events in Star Wars films. Lucas's films are eye candy set to classical music. It's not surprising that the sequels carried on that trend.
Lance845 wrote: Sorry quick clarification.
Predators is a pretty great movie about bigger meaner predators dumping people onto a game reserve planet and hunting them for sport.
Not the point of the thread, I know, but... I loved this one! This is the one with Adrien Brody and Topher Grace, right? Hit a lot of sweet spots that were present in the latter half of the original.
I really like it too. Think was probably the best Predator-related thing since Predator 2.
On the thread title I guess AvP would probably be up there, although I had read the 1 and 2 star reviews before I went and kind of knew what to expect. Possibly the closest I have ever got to walking out of the cinema, but I stubbornly stayed just because how much tickets cost.
Why-oh-why they couldn't have just gone with the plot from the Dark Horse comics and Machiko Noguchi - something along those lines, I will never know.
Super Ready wrote: One thing I will say about Deep Blue Sea - as much as you can claim it's formulaic and easily predictable, nobody - but NOBODY - can look me straight in the eye and truthfully tell me that they saw that one scene coming.
Spoiler:
Samuel L Jackson's very sudden and inspiring-speech-interrupting death.
The "Standing by the open moon-pool monologing" was a little.... telegraphy. While I'll admit it was still a little *surprising* it wasn't exactly out of the Deep Blue.
Lance845 wrote: Sorry quick clarification.
Predators is a pretty great movie about bigger meaner predators dumping people onto a game reserve planet and hunting them for sport.
Not the point of the thread, I know, but... I loved this one! This is the one with Adrien Brody and Topher Grace, right? Hit a lot of sweet spots that were present in the latter half of the original.
I really like it too. Think was probably the best Predator-related thing since Predator 2.
On the thread title I guess AvP would probably be up there, although I had read the 1 and 2 star reviews before I went and kind of knew what to expect. Possibly the closest I have ever got to walking out of the cinema, but I stubbornly stayed just because how much tickets cost.
Why-oh-why they couldn't have just gone with the plot from the Dark Horse comics and Machiko Noguchi - something along those lines, I will never know.
I liked AvP, the problem being the pre-existence of Xenomorphs and Predators on earth and the use of green lasers in Sub-Zero temperatures. That's an annoying technical point. AvP Requiem was my "they jumped the shark" moment.
Lance845 wrote: Sorry quick clarification.
Predators is a pretty great movie about bigger meaner predators dumping people onto a game reserve planet and hunting them for sport.
Not the point of the thread, I know, but... I loved this one! This is the one with Adrien Brody and Topher Grace, right? Hit a lot of sweet spots that were present in the latter half of the original.
I really like it too. Think was probably the best Predator-related thing since Predator 2.
On the thread title I guess AvP would probably be up there, although I had read the 1 and 2 star reviews before I went and kind of knew what to expect. Possibly the closest I have ever got to walking out of the cinema, but I stubbornly stayed just because how much tickets cost.
Why-oh-why they couldn't have just gone with the plot from the Dark Horse comics and Machiko Noguchi - something along those lines, I will never know.
Lance845 wrote: Sorry quick clarification.
Predators is a pretty great movie about bigger meaner predators dumping people onto a game reserve planet and hunting them for sport.
Not the point of the thread, I know, but... I loved this one! This is the one with Adrien Brody and Topher Grace, right? Hit a lot of sweet spots that were present in the latter half of the original.
I really like it too. Think was probably the best Predator-related thing since Predator 2.
On the thread title I guess AvP would probably be up there, although I had read the 1 and 2 star reviews before I went and kind of knew what to expect. Possibly the closest I have ever got to walking out of the cinema, but I stubbornly stayed just because how much tickets cost.
Why-oh-why they couldn't have just gone with the plot from the Dark Horse comics and Machiko Noguchi - something along those lines, I will never know.
I liked AvP, the problem being the pre-existence of Xenomorphs and Predators on earth and the use of green lasers in Sub-Zero temperatures. That's an annoying technical point. AvP Requiem was my "they jumped the shark" moment.
If the green laser thing was getting you then you should have been upset about the aliens going from face hugger to full grown aliens in less than 20 minutes. Or the preds knight being immune to alien acid but not it's armor, or net. Or how a pred took off his mask, got knocked out, woke up, and didn't realize he had been face huggered and then blew up the whole place with his wrist bomb immediately. Or how the drones attacked the queen to free it instead of attacking themselves. Or how the drones were more intelligent in the movie then any other movie for no good reason. Or how that one aliens tail was like... 20 feet long.
insaniak wrote: I strongly suspect that in order to have not seen that coming, you would need to have left the room 15 minutes prior to the film starting...
Really? I really enjoyed that film and it was a surprise to me. It was fun film with silliness and even the death at the end was a bit different to the normal filme fare.
Some friends wittered on about they could see the CGI change but I can;t tell the difference between HD and normal tv so I enjoy stuff more.
Predators is a great movie - Adrian Brody is very good and good supporting cast.
AVP was ok but nothing compared to what they could ahev done by adpating the comic.
Lance845 wrote: Sorry quick clarification.
Predators is a pretty great movie about bigger meaner predators dumping people onto a game reserve planet and hunting them for sport.
Not the point of the thread, I know, but... I loved this one! This is the one with Adrien Brody and Topher Grace, right? Hit a lot of sweet spots that were present in the latter half of the original.
I really like it too. Think was probably the best Predator-related thing since Predator 2.
On the thread title I guess AvP would probably be up there, although I had read the 1 and 2 star reviews before I went and kind of knew what to expect. Possibly the closest I have ever got to walking out of the cinema, but I stubbornly stayed just because how much tickets cost.
Why-oh-why they couldn't have just gone with the plot from the Dark Horse comics and Machiko Noguchi - something along those lines, I will never know.
I liked AvP, the problem being the pre-existence of Xenomorphs and Predators on earth and the use of green lasers in Sub-Zero temperatures. That's an annoying technical point. AvP Requiem was my "they jumped the shark" moment.
If the green laser thing was getting you then you should have been upset about the aliens going from face hugger to full grown aliens in less than 20 minutes. Or the preds knight being immune to alien acid but not it's armor, or net. Or how a pred took off his mask, got knocked out, woke up, and didn't realize he had been face huggered and then blew up the whole place with his wrist bomb immediately. Or how the drones attacked the queen to free it instead of attacking themselves. Or how the drones were more intelligent in the movie then any other movie for no good reason. Or how that one aliens tail was like... 20 feet long.
AVP is a terrible movie.
I get a bit annoyed at vast mega-companies who appear unable to mount more than the most rag-tag exploratory teams when its the CEO/founder/head of the firm organising the trip.
That and you turn up to this isolated spot and someone other than you burns a laser blast into the ice. If that really happened the last thing you'd do is go down. You'd be calling head office, asking for details from space, more info etc...
Overall its what I call a low-grade fan-service film. It sacrifices story for iconic or fancy scenes.
Of course a higher grade fan service film would be something like Alien 4 where for the most part its pretty well done save for the odd way they bring Ripley and the Xenos back.
Overall once you read the Dark Horse comics you realise just how much the studios have thrown away in really awesome film potential with the franchise.
I get a bit annoyed at vast mega-companies who appear unable to mount more than the most rag-tag exploratory teams when its the CEO/founder/head of the firm organising the trip.
That and you turn up to this isolated spot and someone other than you burns a laser blast into the ice. If that really happened the last thing you'd do is go down. You'd be calling head office, asking for details from space, more info etc...
I actually find this trope quite believable. Even if it is the CEO/founder whatever arranging the trip? If you're going into unknown territory, the last thing you're going to do is risk valuable resources on what might be a suicide mission. You send the expendable chaff first, whose orders are to explore thoroughly, and if that's at risk to themselves, why does the company care? If they chicken out at the first sign of danger, it's a wasted trip and that means wasted money.
What irks me, is when that team doesn't come back and the company sends a similar team to investigate. That's the unrealistic part, you'd either leave well alone or send in someone a bit more... "violent", if not more valuable, for instance mercs.
If the green laser thing was getting you then you should have been upset about the aliens going from face hugger to full grown aliens in less than 20 minutes. Or the preds knight being immune to alien acid but not it's armor, or net. Or how a pred took off his mask, got knocked out, woke up, and didn't realize he had been face huggered and then blew up the whole place with his wrist bomb immediately. Or how the drones attacked the queen to free it instead of attacking themselves. Or how the drones were more intelligent in the movie then any other movie for no good reason. Or how that one aliens tail was like... 20 feet long.
We've seen Xenomorphs grow from chest burster to full size on the remains of a dog (albeit with maybe implied other prisoners) so who knows. Same with the other stuff. Alien technology/biology is alien to us. We know how green lasers don't perform in low temperatures.
AVP is a terrible movie.
This is where semantics come in. I was EXPECTING a terrible movie. They all have been. Predator 1987 was bad. It was an 80's action movie that did some scenes well but overall was an 80's action movie. Predator 2 was a 90's cop film, but with aliens. It was also bad. Alien and Aliens were good. Aliens 3 was not, neither was Resurection. I didn't have a very high bar for AvP. I wasn't disappointed. I was annoyed by the green laser thing as it's physics.
AVP was worse because it came out just after Freddy VS Jason, which no one expected to be good...yet was. Compared to that matchup, AVP should have been straight forward.
Kayback wrote: Predator 1987 was bad. It was an 80's action movie that did some scenes well but overall was an 80's action movie.
Gonna have to disagree with you there! Original Predator starts out as a cheesy 80's action movie but rather unexpectedly (at the time) transforms into a thriller, almost horror. That's what makes it a great film, but arguably its success and the prevalence of the Predator in pop culture works against it these days. Everyone knows the tonal switch is coming.
Kayback wrote: Predator 1987 was bad. It was an 80's action movie that did some scenes well but overall was an 80's action movie.
Gonna have to disagree with you there! Original Predator starts out as a cheesy 80's action movie but rather unexpectedly (at the time) transforms into a thriller, almost horror. That's what makes it a great film, but arguably its success and the prevalence of the Predator in pop culture works against it these days. Everyone knows the tonal switch is coming.
It's like the chest-burster scene. In the original film it was terror inducing and violent - today its so well known that its not as horrific compared to back then.
We get the same thing with a lot of landmark films - take Jurassic Park where one of the biggest landmark features for it was the first time seeing dinosaurs that weren't either stop-motion; enlarged iguanas or a guy in a suit who looks like a guy in a suit. Heck the film even toys with us by showing the caged Raptor right at the start which is what we'd normally see- hardly anything in really dark black and close scenes to get around the fact that they don't have a raptor. Then BOOM we get that strong musical score and open fields and huge dinosaurs
The only way i could enjoy the original predator was with Rifftrax.
I watched Predator 2 and found it much better, yet im told its worse.
I honestly think that sometimes, people watch things when they are kids a few time, with only half memories of it. and then are told by others later on on how bad or how good something is and then form their opinion that way. Not saying its always true however, but it feels that way sometimes.
I think its prudent for people to go back and visit things they watched as kids and reevaluate them.
True but sometimes you have to also learn to appreciate things within context. Plus there's no problem with having earlier impressions colour your impression of something.
Heck consider something like the Redwall books - books that I can't enjoy reading as an adult. However I can see that were I a lot younger when I first read them I likely would have really enjoyed them and would then enjoy them through nostalgia as an adult.
That said I do agree sometimes its good to go back and experience things again. Though as I recall Predator and Predator 2 were 18 rated films sooooo most of us "shouldn't" have been kids when we watched them.
though the fact they made a kids version of Robocop I think suggests that everyone knows kids don't follow age guidelines
Oh yeah, i should have said "adult" media would be appropriate, things made for kids dont necessarily warrant a revisit.
What im more talking about is when people form an opinion on "Something is bad" based on what people say, despite only seeing the movie awhile ago.Thats why I think things warrant a revisit when you are older, to form your own opinion. and my Opinion is, Predator 2 is the best of the franchise
hotsauceman1 wrote: The only way i could enjoy the original predator was with Rifftrax.
I watched Predator 2 and found it much better, yet im told its worse.
I honestly think that sometimes, people watch things when they are kids a few time, with only half memories of it. and then are told by others later on on how bad or how good something is and then form their opinion that way. Not saying its always true however, but it feels that way sometimes.
I think its prudent for people to go back and visit things they watched as kids and reevaluate them.
I like them both - very different films
PLus Aliens cast in Pred 2!
Also as a lad loved the Whole cod Voodoo gang stuff mixed in with the Predator lore
Just because you did, doesn't mean that anybody else currently participating in the thread did.
Equally most people will have rewatched films they like, perhaps even many, many times as they've grown up if they did watch them when they were young, giving ample opportunity to re-evaluate their opinion.
Unless you're suggesting people go back and rewatch films they don't like, which seems pretty futile.
If the green laser thing was getting you then you should have been upset about the aliens going from face hugger to full grown aliens in less than 20 minutes. Or the preds knight being immune to alien acid but not it's armor, or net. Or how a pred took off his mask, got knocked out, woke up, and didn't realize he had been face huggered and then blew up the whole place with his wrist bomb immediately. Or how the drones attacked the queen to free it instead of attacking themselves. Or how the drones were more intelligent in the movie then any other movie for no good reason. Or how that one aliens tail was like... 20 feet long.
We've seen Xenomorphs grow from chest burster to full size on the remains of a dog (albeit with maybe implied other prisoners) so who knows. Same with the other stuff. Alien technology/biology is alien to us. We know how green lasers don't perform in low temperatures.
AVP is a terrible movie.
This is where semantics come in. I was EXPECTING a terrible movie. They all have been. Predator 1987 was bad. It was an 80's action movie that did some scenes well but overall was an 80's action movie. Predator 2 was a 90's cop film, but with aliens. It was also bad. Alien and Aliens were good. Aliens 3 was not, neither was Resurection. I didn't have a very high bar for AvP. I wasn't disappointed. I was annoyed by the green laser thing as it's physics.
Well, that was a production issue. The "dog alien" was supposed to have come out of a bull. It grew to the size it was at on "birth" because it had more body to grow in. Further, bare minimum hours if not a day goes by before anyone sees it again.
In AVP the temple changes every 15 or 20 minutes. AFTER one of those changes the eggs come up out of the platforms. Then the face huggers attach, fall off die, and chest bursters come out. And by the time the temple shifts again they are all already full grow.
It takes longer then that for the face huggers to do their thing. It takes longer then that for the chest burster to do it's thing. And it takes longer then that for the aliens to grow.
Honestly when they re-did Alien 3 I hated that they changed it from dog to bull. Sure you can argue about growth speed, but honestly the bull hatching scene was tame and the Xeno didn't really have any bull like properties or shape besides being on all fours.
Instead the dog hatching scene is FAR more horror inducing; far more shocking. Furthermore the alien looks like a dog; its lithe, smaller and generally sized more akin to the dog.
Overall dog wins and its about the only change in the directors cut editions that I wish they had not made.
Overread wrote: Honestly when they re-did Alien 3 I hated that they changed it from dog to bull. Sure you can argue about growth speed, but honestly the bull hatching scene was tame and the Xeno didn't really have any bull like properties or shape besides being on all fours.
Instead the dog hatching scene is FAR more horror inducing; far more shocking. Furthermore the alien looks like a dog; its lithe, smaller and generally sized more akin to the dog.
Overall dog wins and its about the only change in the directors cut editions that I wish they had not made.
Thats fine. I was just talking about the production change as it relates to the aliens growth pre birth.
Arguably a chest burster that emerges from a dog with roughly 1/4 the body mass of a person should be smaller then the chest burster we saw in the original alien. Coming out with all 4 limbs and tail already developed and able to run around on all 4s only makes sense if it spent more time gestating inside of the larger mass of the bull.
Since it was originally intended to be the bull they never built the props for the chest burster. When the reshoots and production changes happened to change it to a dog they just mashed the props they had together with close up shots of gore and some pick up shots of a dog pacing and said it came out of a dog.
Yeah. So much so that the director struck his name from anything that had to do with it. He has no credits or anything.
While Alien and Aliens have directors cuts Alien 3 has the Assembly Cut, because they brought in someone else to use the directors original notes and the production script to reassemble what had been shot into the closest approximation of what he would have made. The director reportedly would not even take a call to talk about going back to work on the movie again.
He has publicly "disowned" the film, but hasn't actually followed through on it, despite there being precedent for just that. (Although that may only apply before release, I dunno.)
For a hat trick I'll submit all 3 of the godzilla anime that were on netflix recently.
To say these things sucked would be to disparage the term suck, as the term suck can have positive confrontations, like "Man my new vacuum cleaner really sucks the dirt out of my carpet in one pass!" or... "My new..."Never mind.
These were ghawdawful, depressing, hopeless and no fun at all.
They also harked to the old "technology bad!" luddite meme that implies humans are better off living a very low tech, stone age existence.
A man without technology is a dead, naked ape, not a happy noble savage.
On a side note, the message at the end of the execrable godzilla anime series reminded me of the same idiocy that managed to poison the last episode of battlestar galactica, which pulled the same idiot meme that would condemn 98% of the survivors to slow starvation, death by easily treatable medical conditions and illnesses, exposure, etc. With such an inane ending the SFC managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again.
insaniak wrote: I strongly suspect that in order to have not seen that coming, you would need to have left the room 15 minutes prior to the film starting...
Really? I really enjoyed that film and it was a surprise to me. It was fun film with silliness and even the death at the end was a bit different to the normal filme fare..
Honestly, the only way that death could have been more blatantly telegraphed was if he was wearing a bikini, took off his top, and said 'Gosh, I hope there's no sharks in this here pool...'
Matt Swain wrote: For a hat trick I'll submit all 3 of the godzilla anime that were on netflix recently.
To say these things sucked would be to disparage the term suck, as the term suck can have positive confrontations, like "Man my new vacuum cleaner really sucks the dirt out of my carpet in one pass!" or... "My new..."Never mind.
These were ghawdawful, depressing, hopeless and no fun at all.
They also harked to the old "technology bad!" luddite meme that implies humans are better off living a very low tech, stone age existence.
A man without technology is a dead, naked ape, not a happy noble savage.
On a side note, the message at the end of the execrable godzilla anime series reminded me of the same idiocy that managed to poison the last episode of battlestar galactica, which pulled the same idiot meme that would condemn 98% of the survivors to slow starvation, death by easily treatable medical conditions and illnesses, exposure, etc. With some an inane ending the SFC managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again.
It's amazing how much worse they got as they went.
Yeah, honestly you'd be better off watching shin godzilla than any of these crapanime vids.
Speaking of shin godzilla the interesting thing was the explanation of godzilla's energy source. Sure, it was BS, but if it could be duplicated we'd have a new power source that ran off the most common elements on earth and while radioactive, the radiation had a half life of 20 days which means sore it for 400 days and it would be basically non radioactive at the end.
That would make Godzilla a solution to pollution and very much eco friendly.
insaniak wrote: I strongly suspect that in order to have not seen that coming, you would need to have left the room 15 minutes prior to the film starting...
Really? I really enjoyed that film and it was a surprise to me. It was fun film with silliness and even the death at the end was a bit different to the normal filme fare..
Honestly, the only way that death could have been more blatantly telegraphed was if he was wearing a bikini, took off his top, and said 'Gosh, I hope there's no sharks in this here pool...'
Not to me - and not to plenty of others - to you apparently and a couple of my friends but majority nope.
though the fact they made a kids version of Robocop I think suggests that everyone knows kids don't follow age guidelines
Which was the "kids" version of robocop?
The marvel cartoon? (yes, it had a SMC slot alongside the hulk and spiderman).
They made a live action series, one season, for Robocop. It was based after the first film if I recall right and its, cheesy. For kids/young teens its fine, but its very clearly aimed at them as there's no blood/extreme violence. Its the kind of situation where Robocop will fire his gun and instead of killing, it will hit a plank that then knocks someone out etc...
though the fact they made a kids version of Robocop I think suggests that everyone knows kids don't follow age guidelines
Which was the "kids" version of robocop?
The marvel cartoon? (yes, it had a SMC slot alongside the hulk and spiderman).
They made a live action series, one season, for Robocop. It was based after the first film if I recall right and its, cheesy. For kids/young teens its fine, but its very clearly aimed at them as there's no blood/extreme violence. Its the kind of situation where Robocop will fire his gun and instead of killing, it will hit a plank that then knocks someone out etc...
I think I remember absolutely loving that as a kid for some reason, I'm shocked to realise it was only one season. Looking back it was everything people make fun of kid friendly adaptations for being - non lethal fights, badguy *somehow* gets away to be back next episode, discount store renaming of movie-only characters, kid sidekick...
though the fact they made a kids version of Robocop I think suggests that everyone knows kids don't follow age guidelines
Which was the "kids" version of robocop?
The marvel cartoon? (yes, it had a SMC slot alongside the hulk and spiderman).
They made a live action series, one season, for Robocop. It was based after the first film if I recall right and its, cheesy. For kids/young teens its fine, but its very clearly aimed at them as there's no blood/extreme violence. Its the kind of situation where Robocop will fire his gun and instead of killing, it will hit a plank that then knocks someone out etc...
I think I remember absolutely loving that as a kid for some reason, I'm shocked to realise it was only one season. Looking back it was everything people make fun of kid friendly adaptations for being - non lethal fights, badguy *somehow* gets away to be back next episode, discount store renaming of movie-only characters, kid sidekick...
Aye I really enjoyed it too as a kid. Rewatching it now (its on Amazon Prime UK) I can see the "kids adaptation" elements in it; plus add to it the aging process of being a TV show made in an era before the big budgets and higher end CGI of modern shows and you can see it pales compared to the film. But it is fun and for its target audience its well made and suited.
Hmm a tie between Starship Troopers 3 and Jaws 2.
I loved the original starship troopers, played a lot of starcraft 1 as a kid really fitted. The ingenius use of thousands of poorly kitted infantry with little other support in an effort to outswarm the bugs, the fact that I now learn that this is a direct subversion of the book only makes me love it more. You build a society that requires endless war and ensures large parts of the population are recruited into the military? Well they're not all going to get marvelous power armour are they? And it's not necessarily always great if they make it back alive in the type of numbers they were sent out in. The Cassus Bellum is also dodgy as hell in the movie, which makes complete sense given that their society must always want for war. Come Movie no 3 90% of the movie is a small party hoofing it through the desert pinneing the whole way about how the state does not sanction worship of their Jesus. I'm sorry, I watch this to see masses of poorly kitted soldiers fight an uphill battle against brutal warrior bugs for a worthless rock.
Shark literally kills like maybe 2 people and a orca(done offscreen too). Not counting the first 'victim' who literally self immolates as soon as Jaws has a go at the outboard motor. You can't attribute this kill to Jaws. People also bounce off Jaws's mouth which does not really happen, because sharks project their mouth forwards when they bite. Becasue if prey bounced off shark's mouths when they went to bite, they'd all starve to death.
It's fascinating to me how many movies folks mention here as disappointing are favorites of others (including myself ). I'm guessing this is due to high expectations / wanting them to be really great, and feeling they fell short. Dunkirk falls into this category, I think.
Here's another interesting war movie - Rotten Tomatoes score 41%, Audience score 92%:
I saw it in the theater with no expectations and was shocked at how good it was - particularly the feel of the dive bombers doing their runs. I had never really pictured this and it was very cool to experience in that setting (although I'm sure not totally realistic). Anyway, from my point of view it's well worth checking out if you missed it, but if you are a big history buff it might make your "disappointment" list here
Omg yes! Midway was absolutely fantastic. I was expecting an action movie with a thin WW2 veneer and was very pleasantly surprised that they actually touched on just about every contributing factor to the outcome of that battle. The embellishment was kept to a minimum. I would have preferred if they left out Pearl and the Doolittle Raid to focus solely on Midway itself but it was still a solid flick in my book.
Hmm maybe I was thinking about Jaws2 got a mix up. But I agree 3 was just garbage.
Jaws 2 had the shark get electrocuted.
And the less said about Jaws 4, the better. Though it did have an immortal line delivery by Michael Caine and also the appearance of his miraculously drying shirt.
I didn't mind Dunkirk I guess it depends on your level of expectation going into the movie. I really don't like Fury but I wasn't expecting it to be a good movies from the start but with Fury I'd not count myself disappointed.
I found it odd that people don't like Battlefield Los Angeles. I thought as alien invasion films go it was pretty solid. I mean there's some funny things about the aliens motivations but when is there not? The acting was all pretty solid and I liked the progression from getting murderised by the aliens then learning the physiology of their enemy, adapting and finally overcoming.
Wasn't the reason for the Jaws 3 effects being as they were because it was an early "3D" film and the method used looked good in a specially made 3D cinema, but fell flat when shown in regular. A feature that I think also happens to other specialist 3D films, but where they today produce two versions - a 3D and a regular - so that you view using the right screen with the right version.
I recall when 3D glasses were "all the rage" for a bit and if you took them off the film was blurry.
Something I feel needs mentioning... the nature of a movie's continuity errors and problems with suspension of disbelief, shouldn't necessarily be something that makes the movie automatically "bad".
Case in point? Schwarzenegger's "Commando". Brilliant cheesy action movie, if that's what you're after. With such magical cinematic gems as:
- the single-blow instant-kill elbow to the face!
- the magical self-repairing car, that flips multiple times with visible damage and a door ripped clean off, before driving away seconds later in perfect condition!
- the assault rifle with an endless magazine that never needs reloading - except when necessary for dramatic purposes!
- the rocket launcher that can be fired from the back of a moving car without swerving or ripping off the poor untrained civilian's arm!
Honestly, half of the fun is watching for these kinds of moments, and building a drinking game around them.
OldMate wrote: I didn't mind Dunkirk I guess it depends on your level of expectation going into the movie. I really don't like Fury but I wasn't expecting it to be a good movies from the start but with Fury I'd not count myself disappointed.
I found it odd that people don't like Battlefield Los Angeles. I thought as alien invasion films go it was pretty solid. I mean there's some funny things about the aliens motivations but when is there not? The acting was all pretty solid and I liked the progression from getting murderised by the aliens then learning the physiology of their enemy, adapting and finally overcoming.
I liked Battle LA just fine, it was a fun movie that hit the right notes. I personally think OG Independence Day does alien invasion blockbuster the best though. It's just so entertaining.
OldMate wrote: I didn't mind Dunkirk I guess it depends on your level of expectation going into the movie. I really don't like Fury but I wasn't expecting it to be a good movies from the start but with Fury I'd not count myself disappointed.
I found it odd that people don't like Battlefield Los Angeles. I thought as alien invasion films go it was pretty solid. I mean there's some funny things about the aliens motivations but when is there not? The acting was all pretty solid and I liked the progression from getting murderised by the aliens then learning the physiology of their enemy, adapting and finally overcoming.
I meant to say that I actually liked Dunkirk, too - and felt people who didn't must have had really high expectations. So, I agree with you
I was actually quite disappointed by Battlefield Los Angeles, again because I was expecting something so awesome (it's my favorite genre!) and I felt like the main character in particular was just terrible (some combination of lines / plot / character / acting... just did not work for me).
scarletsquig wrote: Incredibles 2 - so, very, very disappointing. I don't even want to talk about it!
That's an interesting selection! It wasn't something I was that invested in but I do tend to agree... big lost opportunity...
scarletsquig wrote: Incredibles 2 - so, very, very disappointing. I don't even want to talk about it!
All I can remember about that film was that there was mind control via television. It was very forgettable.
Also in 3D animation films...Sausage Party. I don't recall when or why I watched it, but browsing YouTube or Reddit mindlessly would have been more productive.
RiTides wrote: It's fascinating to me how many movies folks mention here as disappointing are favorites of others (including myself ). I'm guessing this is due to high expectations / wanting them to be really great, and feeling they fell short. Dunkirk falls into this category, I think.
Here's another interesting war movie - Rotten Tomatoes score 41%, Audience score 92%:
I saw it in the theater with no expectations and was shocked at how good it was - particularly the feel of the dive bombers doing their runs. I had never really pictured this and it was very cool to experience in that setting (although I'm sure not totally realistic). Anyway, from my point of view it's well worth checking out if you missed it, but if you are a big history buff it might make your "disappointment" list here
I think the only really bad part about Midway* was how the CGI ships, planes, and explosions could often be very uncanny valley at times. Especially in moments of high tension or suspense, I found the really obvious CGI is obvious effects to be rather defeating for the movie's efforts. The destruction of the Arizona in particular was hard to feel anything about solely because you can practical see the green screen set it was filmed on.
*Other than some nonsensical historical anachronisms that don't make sense in such a serious attempt at historical accuracy but none of those really detracted from the film. It's a far more faithful attempt at telling the story straight than most war movies.
Lance845 wrote: I barely remember Battle LA, but I do remember seeing the aliens and being like "Oh. Necrons with Gauss weapons." Which is pretty sweet.
I consider this movie to be one of my favorite comedies. It's just such a laughably bad and cliche'd effort. I had no real expectations of it but it ended up being so bad I enjoyed it XD I think I've come to a similar place with Battleship. Gotta give some credit to actors who are in a god awful movie, know they're in a god awful movie, and still try to give it their best shot and manage to make the movie kind of fun for how hard they're trying and how bad the final product still is. Respect
I really enjoy Battle LA, even if it is just a pastiche of every war film cliche you could imagine. Apart from the very beginning; most alien invasion films lean into this disbelief/not realising what’s happening confusion, normally with the hero being the only one to realise the danger. Battle LA shows a much more competent military, who march into the briefing room and are like, “right identical objects slowing down and manoeuvring, so aliens, and they’re coming down in large numbers off the coast of occupied areas, therefore invasion. Hop to it.”
insaniak wrote: I strongly suspect that in order to have not seen that coming, you would need to have left the room 15 minutes prior to the film starting...
Really? I really enjoyed that film and it was a surprise to me. It was fun film with silliness and even the death at the end was a bit different to the normal filme fare..
Honestly, the only way that death could have been more blatantly telegraphed was if he was wearing a bikini, took off his top, and said 'Gosh, I hope there's no sharks in this here pool...'
The movie had kind of 'anti-telegraph' maneuver when they talked that standing next to the pool might be dangerous, which usually means it isn't. Also, there was this kind of mystery story with his character which was left incomplete.
Jaws 3d could have had the best sfx in the history of cinema and it still would have sucked.
The movie was just so stupid. How was a giant shark able to swim around in a relatively small environment meant to be visually accessible and observable ? What? A romulan scout vessel crashed on earth and the shark swallowed it's cloaking device?
It was undetected for so long then suddenly everyone can see it all the time?
It had a full grown man in diving gear stuck in it's throat and it's still swimming around trying to eat people? Hey, I get a peanut stuck in my throat and i'm not doing xxxx until i swallow it or cough it out.
It gets dumber. A dead man holding into a grenade? the shark politely pulling out of the control center before exploding. I'm sorry, this is hurting my brain too much to go on....
OldMate wrote: Hmm a tie between Starship Troopers 3 and Jaws 2.
I loved the original starship troopers,
Ugh. Starship Troopers. It was nothing like the novel. I wanted to see power armoured apes killing high tech enemies on the bounce, sorta like the SM. What did we get? Imperial fething Guard against Tyranids. Generic mass enemy shooting, hardly any tension. Plot armour was thick with that one, as were plot guns. Yeah that little piece thrown in to show how to effectively neutralize a Bug with basically a CNS shot, but then the literal Space Cadet can do it after a crash landing with a PDW when the dual DShK mounts couldn't?
The novel wasn't about meat grinder need for new recruits to run the economy.
Jadenim wrote: I really enjoy Battle LA, even if it is just a pastiche of every war film cliche you could imagine. Apart from the very beginning; most alien invasion films lean into this disbelief/not realising what’s happening confusion, normally with the hero being the only one to realise the danger. Battle LA shows a much more competent military, who march into the briefing room and are like, “right identical objects slowing down and manoeuvring, so aliens, and they’re coming down in large numbers off the coast of occupied areas, therefore invasion. Hop to it.”
I agree the film plays things straighter than a typical alien invasion movie, but I wouldn't really call assuming an alien invader has no air support particularly competent XD It's the first thing in the movie that has me go 'lolwut'? Aliens have landed for all of thirty minutes and the military has decided 'they have no heavy weapons and no air support, stupid aliens are invading with nothing but infantry'. It's just a really dumb assumption to make. The movie is made of moments like that, along with lots of jilted dialogue that feels copy pasted from other movies, actors that are trying but just can't save the completely uninspired script, and occasional situational weirdness that makes a bad movie funny. EDIT: Not to mention what is clearly bad cutting in post-production.
My favorite scene is the alien autopsy, where tension and suspense are built up for the grand reveal that the alien weak point is... In the chest. AKA Center of Mass. AKA where any trained soldier should already be aiming, but apparently there's a hidden menu in the movie where the Marines have to perform a monotonous task, fill out the 'pointless discovery' bar with mashing the stab button a few times, and only then do they get a damage buff that lets them actually kill aliens.
Jadenim wrote: I really enjoy Battle LA, even if it is just a pastiche of every war film cliche you could imagine. Apart from the very beginning; most alien invasion films lean into this disbelief/not realising what’s happening confusion, normally with the hero being the only one to realise the danger. Battle LA shows a much more competent military, who march into the briefing room and are like, “right identical objects slowing down and manoeuvring, so aliens, and they’re coming down in large numbers off the coast of occupied areas, therefore invasion. Hop to it.”
I agree the film plays things straighter than a typical alien invasion movie, but I wouldn't really call assuming an alien invader has no air support particularly competent XD It's the first thing in the movie that has me go 'lolwut'? Aliens have landed for all of thirty minutes and the military has decided 'they have no heavy weapons and no air support, stupid aliens are invading with nothing but infantry'. It's just a really dumb assumption to make. The movie is made of moments like that, along with lots of jilted dialogue that feels copy pasted from other movies, actors that are trying but just can't save the completely uninspired script, and occasional situational weirdness that makes a bad movie funny. EDIT: Not to mention what is clearly bad cutting in post-production.
My favorite scene is the alien autopsy, where tension and suspense are built up for the grand reveal that the alien weak point is... In the chest. AKA Center of Mass. AKA where any trained soldier should already be aiming, but apparently there's a hidden menu in the movie where the Marines have to perform a monotonous task, fill out the 'pointless discovery' bar with mashing the stab button a few times, and only then do they get a damage buff that lets them actually kill aliens.
I don't recall Battle LA very well, I did recall the silly COM damage chart, which was hilarious. The lack of air support/armour/artillery rings a bell but it's fuzzy.
One honourable mention is ... Battleship. I actually really enjoyed that movie. As silly as the premise was, making a movie over that board game, and the twin Barrett against the windshield trick was questionable AF (why not open up with the 5"? )
But like the low bar set for many of my Night Shift movies I actually thought the trick of incorporating the pre laid wave height net as grid references for calling the shots, like in the game, was it's saving grace. Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying it was a good movie but a decent bad movie that *didn't* disappoint.
Kayback wrote: One honourable mention is ... Battleship. I actually really enjoyed that movie. As silly as the premise was, making a movie over that board game, and the twin Barrett against the windshield trick was questionable AF (why not open up with the 5"? )
Yeah I mentioned BS earlier. It's in the same category as Battle LA for me. The movie is bad, cliched, and uninspired but it's got this odd mix of badness that makes it a very funny movie to me. Lots of things are super questionable in it.
I rather liked how the ship's fire control officer, his immediate subordinate, and I think the chief engineer are the ones sent out on a dingy to investigate the weird structure found in the ocean. It reminded me of how silly it is that Star Trek always sends the command screw into dangerous and unknown situations, because it's not like the ship might need its tactical officer, chief medic, or chief engineer for anything else anytime soon XD Also the MC being a complete looser who somehow managed to get into an officer program right off the bat despite having no apparent qualifications for it XD The roller ball weapons were also just straight silly.
I also agree that the movie's battleship grid moment was actually a fairly neat idea as far as cinema goes. Unlike Battle LA, Battleship actually had a few decent ideas (like the alien's motives being mostly inscrutable). The scene where the Missouri fires all its guns was also just the kind of 'look at this dakka' moment I'd expect from a B-grade movie. A shame the scene was preceded by the really nonsensical one where navy men trained for running warships are apparently world class snipers XD
I love that the aliens in Battleship don't actually appear aggressive and only retaliate when fired upon. It's not a good or smart movie by any means, but when they're powersliding the battleship for the broadside in one of the stupidest things I've ever seen, I was still on my feet cheering.
Battle LA is clearly a videogame. It even ends with "hold this point until the timer expires" before the last boss reveals his final form.
Super Ready wrote:Something I feel needs mentioning... the nature of a movie's continuity errors and problems with suspension of disbelief, shouldn't necessarily be something that makes the movie automatically "bad".
Case in point? Schwarzenegger's "Commando". Brilliant cheesy action movie, if that's what you're after. With such magical cinematic gems as:
- the single-blow instant-kill elbow to the face!
- the magical self-repairing car, that flips multiple times with visible damage and a door ripped clean off, before driving away seconds later in perfect condition!
- the assault rifle with an endless magazine that never needs reloading - except when necessary for dramatic purposes!
- the rocket launcher that can be fired from the back of a moving car without swerving or ripping off the poor untrained civilian's arm!
Honestly, half of the fun is watching for these kinds of moments, and building a drinking game around them.
Haha totally agree it is definitely part of the charm of that film. Friends and I used to love watching it repeatedly, saying the lines as they were coming up and laughing at some of those bits.
OldMate wrote:I didn't mind Dunkirk I guess it depends on your level of expectation going into the movie. I really don't like Fury but I wasn't expecting it to be a good movies from the start but with Fury I'd not count myself disappointed.
I have a question about Fury - I still haven't watched that film after reading someone's account of SS troops suicide-charging the tank at the end of the film.
As I like history (and hate films that take liberties, or just make gak up - U571 etc.) is there actually much enjoyment to be had in that film?
Pacific wrote: I have a question about Fury - I still haven't watched that film after reading someone's account of SS troops suicide-charging the tank at the end of the film.
As I like history (and hate films that take liberties, or just make gak up - U571 etc.) is there actually much enjoyment to be had in that film?
I think the primary reason to watch Fury is 2 fold;
-The tanks used in the film are not replicas. The Shermans and Tiger 131 were all loaned to the production by museums (mostly the Bovington Tank Museum). You get to see these tanks do cool gak and that's mostly the movies main pro.
-Actually pretty good acting and characters. The main cast of the movie did a rather stellar job bringing the film to life. The movie trends more toward the 'war is hell' side of things but also has lots of 'oh yeah!' moments.
I wouldn't call the movie particularly historically accurate but I also wouldn't say it's wildly inaccurate. Several of it's commonly cited inaccuracies aren't even all that far fetched in real terms. One example is the battle with the Tiger which some criticized for only featuring one Tiger (Tigers in the late war tended to operate in pairs) and for the battle opening with the destruction of the tank at the back of the column (it would make more sense to destroy the tank at the front). But German tank crews at the end of the war were scarce and often inexperienced or poorly trained. Expecting a Tiger crew to be aces who would make smart moves just because they're in a tiger is fallacious. Breakdowns and fuel shortages also led droves of German vehicles to simply be abandoned so it's not unrealistic to find a lone Tiger wandering the German country side as the battle lines broke down at the war's end. It's partner could have been lost off screen and such is largely irrelevant to the film itself. I would not consider these things to be particularly inaccurate.
The adheres a bit to the work of Belton Cooper's book Death Traps which is now largely considered to be a very misleading account of armored warfare in WWII (by historians) but it it is in line with how most people think about the war and most of the scenes in the movie are based on accounts from tankers who served in the war.
People have panned the final battle scene of the film, but I think it's not nearly as unrealistic as some critics claim. The immediate inspiration for it seems to have been a anecdote from Death Traps that never happened and was one of many examples of Belton Cooper having no idea what he was talking about. Others have suggested the ending was inspired by the 1943 film Sahara, which has a similar ending featuring the crew of an M3 Lee. There is a real life analog for the final scene however, so I wouldn't consider the film too unrealistic just borderline miraculous; Audie Murphy, Holtzwihr Germany 1945. Murphy's M10 Tank Destroyer was disabled in combat and Murphy ordered the vehicle abandoned because it was stuck in a road with no cover. For over an hour, Murphy fought alone from the tank destroyer as it burned, directing artillery fire, repelling assaults from German troops, and firing the vehicle's mounted 50 caliber machine gun. He was credited with killing 50 German soldiers and was awarded the Medal of Honor for the action. The makers of Fury don't seem to have known about Murphy's story but the scene at the end of the movie is rather similar, just with the crew of an M4 instead of an M10.
There was also a similar action in the Korean War with an M26. The commander of that tank was also awarded the Medal of Honor.
LunarSol wrote: I love that the aliens in Battleship don't actually appear aggressive and only retaliate when fired upon. It's not a good or smart movie by any means, but when they're powersliding the battleship for the broadside in one of the stupidest things I've ever seen, I was still on my feet cheering.
Battle LA is clearly a videogame. It even ends with "hold this point until the timer expires" before the last boss reveals his final form.
Battleship
Its a great fun film agreed its notable the Aliens go out of their way to not target civilians having a really specific TOE - which of course is used aganst them!
Skyline is also excellent and I enjoyed the sequal alot too
Battle LA - started well and goes down hill with the autopsy scene a high point and is (IMO) greatly inferior to both these films
Super Ready wrote: Something I feel needs mentioning... the nature of a movie's continuity errors and problems with suspension of disbelief, shouldn't necessarily be something that makes the movie automatically "bad".
Case in point? Schwarzenegger's "Commando". Brilliant cheesy action movie, if that's what you're after. With such magical cinematic gems as:
- the single-blow instant-kill elbow to the face!
- the magical self-repairing car, that flips multiple times with visible damage and a door ripped clean off, before driving away seconds later in perfect condition!
- the assault rifle with an endless magazine that never needs reloading - except when necessary for dramatic purposes!
- the rocket launcher that can be fired from the back of a moving car without swerving or ripping off the poor untrained civilian's arm!
Honestly, half of the fun is watching for these kinds of moments, and building a drinking game around them.
Taking place at the same time of Skyline, Mark Corley, a LA police detective, helps his estranged son, Trent, out of jail just as an alien invasion begins. Mark leads a group of survivors but most of the humans are killed or abducted, one by one. until finally they are grabbed by a towering alien thing. On board the spaceship, Mark tries to find his son meets up with survivor Elaine and her transformed boyfriend Jarrod (both from the first film). Elaine is three months pregnant, her pregnancy has accelerated and she gives birth to a daughter but dies during the delivery, When Jarrod is killed fighting the alien leader, Mark rescues Audrey but is too late to save his son.
Trent has his brain taken and placed in another alien bio-mechanical machine creature. Sarge is badly wounded when he defends the baby from an alien. The dying Jarrod destroys the ship, which crashes in rural Laos. some escape from the spaceship which starts to repair itself abd gace to fight against both aliens and local rogue ex-policemen bandits. The baby becomes a three-year-old in just one day and locals Sua and Kanya lead Mark, Audrey, and the baby to a hidden human resistance hideout and drug processing facility located in local ruins.
A medical officer and former drug chemist, examines the baby girl and her unique DNA - the key to defeating the aliens due to her evolving DNA. Using the child's blood and recovered alien technology, they get a serum to free the bio-mechanical soldiers from alien control and restore their human personality. During the a battle between the aliens and surviving humans Mark enters a grounded alien ship, where he uses Harper's serum to turn the mind-controlling blue light into a red light that frees the mind-controlled bio-mechanical soldiers.
Before he can deploy it, the alien leader and his horde of alien warriors disable the light but Trent, his mind restored after encountering his father, fights back inside a giant alien tanker. The child fixes and deploys the red light, freeing the bio-mechanical soldiers, and Trent defeats the alien leader
Ten years later, the child, Rose, now a fully-grown adult, has taken control of an alien ship, and Trent is her second-in-command. Rose leads freed bio-mechanical soldiers and humans in an assault on the other alien ships around the Moon, including the mothership.
Overread wrote: Wasn't the reason for the Jaws 3 effects being as they were because it was an early "3D" film and the method used looked good in a specially made 3D cinema, but fell flat when shown in regular. A feature that I think also happens to other specialist 3D films, but where they today produce two versions - a 3D and a regular - so that you view using the right screen with the right version.
I recall when 3D glasses were "all the rage" for a bit and if you took them off the film was blurry.
This is a fair point.
But, brace yourselves.....Dredd (because in the words of Han Solo? Hey, it’s me!) is the exception that proves the rule.
I like Battle L.A. and still watch it from time to time when the mood strikes me.
... Which kind of worries me, given that between the premise (aliens want our oi-water, I mean...) and the dialogue (small words, repeated often, as though explaining things to a child), they're clearly trying to hook the dumbest audience they possibly can... what does that say about me?
Still, I like the different battle setpieces, the aliens add a bit of novelty to your standard 'war in the streets' style scene, and I think the music is genuinely good.
So yeah, solid B movie for me - even more solid as background noise for building minis.
Battle LA is a movie where you freely skip large parts, particularly the beginning, and put it on as pulp scifi background while doing something else like gaming or cooking. It's got some neat visualizations, some cool battle scenes, some fun action, but if you're expecting much more out of it, you'll be grossly disappointed. There's a lot to criticize or poke fun at about it, it's definitely not the highlight of anyone's acting or writing careers, but there's also some genuinely cool stuff to watch.
I enjoyed the movie because it felt like everyone making it was on the same page. “So, Black Hawk Down meets Aliens. We’re gonna have fun with this, get a pay check, maybe make a video game. Everyone on board?”
Kung Pow- Enter the Fist is probably in this category for the vast majority of the world's population. Steve Oedekerk bought up the rights to 3 or 4 old kung fu movies. This is Steve Oedekerk of 'Thumb Wars' infamy. Then he recut them into a single film. And spliced himself in as the star. And did all of the dubbing himself.
He fights a cow, and pyramids, and a cybreasted woman (one large breast).
It is a hilarious travesty of a film that will either have you laughing to tears in the first 15 minutes, or turning it off and asking whoever showed it to you what is wrong with them. I've never seen anyone have a moderate reaction to it.
Ohh man, Kung Pow is amazing. But as a spoof, it's fair to say that you need at least a rudimentary knowledge of kung-fu flicks to appreciate it... without that, I'd say you don't really have grounds to complain.
It's like trying to complain that Spaceballs is nonsensical if you've never heard of Star Wars.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I can no longer resist. Forgive me, Dakka.
You mum’s “special and secret” video.
Again, I am sorry, but I needed to get it out of my system.
I’m a terrible human being.
Pfffff, my mum's videos are hardly "special and secret". Yes, that's plural, thusly explaining the conflict in terms. Tell me, were you around for the original VHS production or did you get one of the market stall DVDs more recently?
trexmeyer wrote: It's a funny joke now but fast forward 20 years and it will be very real given how many young ladies are on OnlyFans and the like.
And people will be able to see your dad sending her money... hey people got to meet somehow. That's if the website isn't belly up in 5 years like so many tech company.
Gitzbitah wrote: Kung Pow- Enter the Fist is probably in this category for the vast majority of the world's population. Steve Oedekerk bought up the rights to 3 or 4 old kung fu movies. This is Steve Oedekerk of 'Thumb Wars' infamy. Then he recut them into a single film. And spliced himself in as the star. And did all of the dubbing himself.
He fights a cow, and pyramids, and a cybreasted woman (one large breast).
It is a hilarious travesty of a film that will either have you laughing to tears in the first 15 minutes, or turning it off and asking whoever showed it to you what is wrong with them. I've never seen anyone have a moderate reaction to it.
The only way you could be disappointed by that movie is if you saw absolutely none of the advertising and went in expecting a serious (well as serious as they go) Kung Fu movie only to get that insane, silly riot of a movie.
@LordofHats - thanks an awful lot for writing that up. That definitely sounds like it should be 'OK' for me to watch!
I've done a fair amount of reading around tank battles and WW2, it sounds like you have too and if there are no completely out there endings hopefully I will be able to watch and enjoy it.
Thanks again!
Super Ready wrote: Ohh man, Kung Pow is amazing. But as a spoof, it's fair to say that you need at least a rudimentary knowledge of kung-fu flicks to appreciate it... without that, I'd say you don't really have grounds to complain.
It's like trying to complain that Spaceballs is nonsensical if you've never heard of Star Wars.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I can no longer resist. Forgive me, Dakka.
You mum’s “special and secret” video.
Again, I am sorry, but I needed to get it out of my system.
I’m a terrible human being.
Pfffff, my mum's videos are hardly "special and secret". Yes, that's plural, thusly explaining the conflict in terms. Tell me, were you around for the original VHS production or did you get one of the market stall DVDs more recently?
Haha.. I think my generation the video would have been on a super 8 so hopefully no such thing existed!
Finding a box of old negatives once in the attic on the other hand...
trexmeyer wrote: It's a funny joke now but fast forward 20 years and it will be very real given how many young ladies are on OnlyFans and the like.
And people will be able to see your dad sending her money... hey people got to meet somehow. That's if the website isn't belly up in 5 years like so many tech company.
No one paying for that is actually hooking up with them unless they're actually wealthy. It ain't a dating app.
Going to expand to series rather than just movies and I'd say Game of Thrones. I mean it was dumbed down a lot, I appreciate its gotta be simplified a bit but they went too far.
Was just reminded that I have to change my answer...
The Hurt Locker.
I try to avoid US military movies based on procedural inaccuracies, but the last two decades have seen movies that portray the character in an incorrect light every bit as much as they butcher procedure. Some "high"lights from this piece of swill:
US Army Lieutenant Colonel directly orders a medic to kill an unarmed wounded insurgent, and you hear the medic following the order as the LTC walks off to essentially fellate Renner's character.
Apparently EOD is nothing but spec ops and Green Berets. Nice to know that they are all trained to be highly proficient snipers.
I was deployed to Baghdad and was based in Camp Liberty, which is portrayed in the film. What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that EOD teams weren't cruising around the countryside alone and unsupported whenever they felt like it.
Look up the weight of a 155 artillery shell, multiply that weight times, what, 9? THAT is what Renner deadlifts with his fingertips via det wire in the movie.
There's actually a ton more I can eviscerate this movie over, but I'll stop there while I'm still being civil. Needless to say, this movie smacks of a movie made by someone who was dating a soldier who deployed that came back and rattled off a thousand embellished war stories.
Zero dark thirty.
It's message "torture is bad but sometimes it gets things done"
If you follow the plot very closely which surprisingly seen to follow closely real life events you have this different message. "Well we tortured a heap of people and that really got us nowhere. But then we put our noses down, did some actual detective work like you'd expect any intelligence agency to do and wowee we found him."
Also if you are practicing to land a helicopter next to a solid wall. Do not simulate said wall with a chainlink fence.
Just Tony wrote:Was just reminded that I have to change my answer...
The Hurt Locker.
I try to avoid US military movies based on procedural inaccuracies, but the last two decades have seen movies that portray the character in an incorrect light every bit as much as they butcher procedure. Some "high"lights from this piece of swill:
US Army Lieutenant Colonel directly orders a medic to kill an unarmed wounded insurgent, and you hear the medic following the order as the LTC walks off to essentially fellate Renner's character.
Apparently EOD is nothing but spec ops and Green Berets. Nice to know that they are all trained to be highly proficient snipers.
I was deployed to Baghdad and was based in Camp Liberty, which is portrayed in the film. What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that EOD teams weren't cruising around the countryside alone and unsupported whenever they felt like it.
Look up the weight of a 155 artillery shell, multiply that weight times, what, 9? THAT is what Renner deadlifts with his fingertips via det wire in the movie.
There's actually a ton more I can eviscerate this movie over, but I'll stop there while I'm still being civil. Needless to say, this movie smacks of a movie made by someone who was dating a soldier who deployed that came back and rattled off a thousand embellished war stories.
I defense of that "sniper" scene.
1) They weren't "snipers." It was just a long range engagement.
2) At the time (I'm not sure when it was changed), USMC recruits were trained to hit stationary targets at up to 500 yards with iron sights and IIRC we had targets up to 600 yards in MCT (used an ACOG then). I know the USMC has switched over to some kind of scope since then. In terms of shooting, it's not completely unbelievable.
In general, yes, it's not a good movie and the EOD personnel I know hate it.
I've never watched Zero Dark Thirty. For some reason unrelated to this thread I was watching clips of it on YouTube yesterday and I was thoroughly unimpressed. It really seems like a propaganda puff piece.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
OldMate wrote: Zero dark thirty.
It's message "torture is bad but sometimes it gets things done"
If you follow the plot very closely which surprisingly seen to follow closely real life events you have this different message. "Well we tortured a heap of people and that really got us nowhere. But then we put our noses down, did some actual detective work like you'd expect any intelligence agency to do and wowee we found him."
Also if you are practicing to land a helicopter next to a solid wall. Do not simulate said wall with a chainlink fence.
At the time McCain lambasted the film for showing how torture failed to provide reliable intel and in fact proved false information.
Just Tony wrote:Was just reminded that I have to change my answer...
The Hurt Locker.
I try to avoid US military movies based on procedural inaccuracies, but the last two decades have seen movies that portray the character in an incorrect light every bit as much as they butcher procedure. Some "high"lights from this piece of swill:
US Army Lieutenant Colonel directly orders a medic to kill an unarmed wounded insurgent, and you hear the medic following the order as the LTC walks off to essentially fellate Renner's character.
Apparently EOD is nothing but spec ops and Green Berets. Nice to know that they are all trained to be highly proficient snipers.
I was deployed to Baghdad and was based in Camp Liberty, which is portrayed in the film. What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that EOD teams weren't cruising around the countryside alone and unsupported whenever they felt like it.
Look up the weight of a 155 artillery shell, multiply that weight times, what, 9? THAT is what Renner deadlifts with his fingertips via det wire in the movie.
There's actually a ton more I can eviscerate this movie over, but I'll stop there while I'm still being civil. Needless to say, this movie smacks of a movie made by someone who was dating a soldier who deployed that came back and rattled off a thousand embellished war stories.
I defense of that "sniper" scene.
1) They weren't "snipers." It was just a long range engagement.
2) At the time (I'm not sure when it was changed), USMC recruits were trained to hit stationary targets at up to 500 yards with iron sights and IIRC we had targets up to 600 yards in MCT (used an ACOG then). I know the USMC has switched over to some kind of scope since then. In terms of shooting, it's not completely unbelievable.
In general, yes, it's not a good movie and the EOD personnel I know hate it.
I've never watched Zero Dark Thirty. For some reason unrelated to this thread I was watching clips of it on YouTube yesterday and I was thoroughly unimpressed. It really seems like a propaganda puff piece.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
OldMate wrote: Zero dark thirty.
It's message "torture is bad but sometimes it gets things done"
If you follow the plot very closely which surprisingly seen to follow closely real life events you have this different message. "Well we tortured a heap of people and that really got us nowhere. But then we put our noses down, did some actual detective work like you'd expect any intelligence agency to do and wowee we found him."
Also if you are practicing to land a helicopter next to a solid wall. Do not simulate said wall with a chainlink fence.
At the time McCain lambasted the film for showing how torture failed to provide reliable intel and in fact proved false information.
By McCain do you mean john mccain? He had some familiarity with torture, I recall.
As to portrayal of torture in movies it's usually inaccurate and usually doesn't give good information. Sheik Khalid Mohammed was captured in 2003 and tortured extensively. He was waterboarded 183 times in a month, despite the CIA trying to claim that some of it was jut pouring water on his face not actually waterboarding. He was kept from sleeping for 71/2 days which likely caused permanant damage to part of his brain and his chillden, who were 6 and 8 at the time, were subjected to abusive interrogation.
This is a quote from his wiki article:
"One CIA official cautioned that "many of Mohammed's claims during interrogation were 'white noise' designed to send the U.S. on wild goose chases or to get him through the day's interrogation session." For example, according to Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and the top Republican on the terrorism panel of the House Intelligence Committee, he admitted responsibility for the Bali nightclub bombing, but his involvement "could have been as small as arranging a safe house for travel. It could have been arranging finance." Mohammed also made the admission that he was "responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation," which killed six and injured more than 1,000 when a bomb was detonated in an underground garage, Mohammed did not plan the attack, but he may have supported it. Michael Welner noted that by offering legitimate information to interrogators, Mohammed had secured the leverage to provide misinformation as well.[99]
In an article discussing the reliability of Khalid's confession and the motive for giving misinformation under torture, Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent with considerable experience interrogating al-Qaeda operatives, pointed out that:
When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information you're getting is useless.
His words are echoed by the U.S. Army Training Manual's section on interrogation, which suggests that:
the use of force is a poor technique, as it ... can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.
As an example of this the article discloses that although the George W. Bush administration made claims that the water-boarding (simulated drowning) of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed produced vital information that allowed them to break up a plot to attack the U.S. Bank Tower (formerly Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center) in Los Angeles in 2002, this has been proven to be untrue. In 2002 Sheikh Mohammed was busy evading capture in Pakistan.[100] Likewise the claim by former George W Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former CIA director of the National Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriguez, that the torture of Khalid Mohammed produced the most significant lead in finding Osama bin Laden, has also been shown to be false. According to U.S. Senator John McCain, "The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times ... not only did the use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed; it actually produced false and misleading information."[101][102]"
The fact is that the US treatment of mohammed has only disgraced america and made him a martyr and hero to radical islamists.
But we're getting off the topic here, even tho this is related to the topic of torture in movies and how movies often portray it inaccurately.
Mr Morden wrote: I never understood the aclaim for Zero Dark or the Hurt Locker - both seemed poor movies.
I think Hurt Locker was a patent case of favoritism shown toward its director. I found the movie to be profoundly mediocre in every respect, but there was a narrative behind its production that caused people to stake claims. I actually don't think anyone really ever praised Zero Dark Thirty much. It got good press when it released and favorable reviews, but then it passed into the void of forgotten films with nary a whimper. It wasn't a good movie, but no one was going to claim that the movie about how the US got Bin Laden was crappy.
If you really like movies dealing with defusing bombs you need to watch "Juggernaut". It's pretty much a movie about bombs on a cruise liner, about half is dedicated to police finding the bomb maker, half is dedicated to stopping the bombs.
On one hand i'd almost like a remake of this with modern technology, as the movie was made in the 70's and the techis quite old by now.
On the other hand the odds of hollywod remaking it with the same quality, plausibility and suspense of the old one is pretty low at best.
I can definitely see where people are coming from about The Hurt Locker, but I went into it more as a film about the psychology of the main character, rather than an attempt at a militarily accurate film.
And in that sense it was ok. I don't think it's the best movie, but it wasn't terribly disappointing either.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Not to mention he lied.
The calories he was eating didn't match what he said. It was a good 1500 more
And then the Fathead guy went and ate 2000 calories per day at McDonald's (along with 100 carbs or less) for a month and lost weight. You could lose weight eating cake, but it would be bad in the long run.
Edit:
New nomination. The Dark knight Rises or feth it, I don't care if my story is coherent. Hardy and Hathaway have some strong moments, but that movie is basically Idiot Ball: The Film. Also, somehow guns don't exist in an American city.
Who knew eating nothing but McDonalds for 30 days would lead to weight gain, and a drop in health? Spesh when you stop exercising?
Bog off, Morgan Spurlock, you pathetic hack,
The scary thing is there are people who do live on McDonalds and who don't exercise and who have no real idea that it is impacting their health. Part of it is because healthy eating is one of those "Your parents teach you" things so it doesn't always get covered at schools (UK side I believe this has improved since I was at school). Of course there's also regional variation in McDonalds; the UK version is, I'm given to understand, a lot healthier than the US version.
But I also got the impression that "supersize me" was just a really cheap idea that was blown up way more than such programs normally are. It's to me a kind of "channel 4 documentary" style production on the big screen. Then again I suspect it likely held more relevance/impact/influence in the USA
Mr Morden wrote: I never understood the aclaim for Zero Dark or the Hurt Locker - both seemed poor movies.
I watched a pirated version while in the Middle East and thought it was a B-grade movie made by enthusiastic filmography students who blew their budget on the opening scene (which was cool). The rest was mediocre action movie dross.
I was amazed AF when it was running against Avatar for Oscars.
Just Tony wrote:Was just reminded that I have to change my answer...
The Hurt Locker.
I try to avoid US military movies based on procedural inaccuracies, but the last two decades have seen movies that portray the character in an incorrect light every bit as much as they butcher procedure. Some "high"lights from this piece of swill:
US Army Lieutenant Colonel directly orders a medic to kill an unarmed wounded insurgent, and you hear the medic following the order as the LTC walks off to essentially fellate Renner's character.
Apparently EOD is nothing but spec ops and Green Berets. Nice to know that they are all trained to be highly proficient snipers.
I was deployed to Baghdad and was based in Camp Liberty, which is portrayed in the film. What I can tell you with absolute certainty is that EOD teams weren't cruising around the countryside alone and unsupported whenever they felt like it.
Look up the weight of a 155 artillery shell, multiply that weight times, what, 9? THAT is what Renner deadlifts with his fingertips via det wire in the movie.
There's actually a ton more I can eviscerate this movie over, but I'll stop there while I'm still being civil. Needless to say, this movie smacks of a movie made by someone who was dating a soldier who deployed that came back and rattled off a thousand embellished war stories.
I defense of that "sniper" scene.
1) They weren't "snipers." It was just a long range engagement.
2) At the time (I'm not sure when it was changed), USMC recruits were trained to hit stationary targets at up to 500 yards with iron sights and IIRC we had targets up to 600 yards in MCT (used an ACOG then). I know the USMC has switched over to some kind of scope since then. In terms of shooting, it's not completely unbelievable.
In general, yes, it's not a good movie and the EOD personnel I know hate it.
I've never watched Zero Dark Thirty. For some reason unrelated to this thread I was watching clips of it on YouTube yesterday and I was thoroughly unimpressed. It really seems like a propaganda puff piece.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
OldMate wrote: Zero dark thirty.
It's message "torture is bad but sometimes it gets things done"
If you follow the plot very closely which surprisingly seen to follow closely real life events you have this different message. "Well we tortured a heap of people and that really got us nowhere. But then we put our noses down, did some actual detective work like you'd expect any intelligence agency to do and wowee we found him."
Also if you are practicing to land a helicopter next to a solid wall. Do not simulate said wall with a chainlink fence.
At the time McCain lambasted the film for showing how torture failed to provide reliable intel and in fact proved false information.
By McCain do you mean john mccain? He had some familiarity with torture, I recall.
As to portrayal of torture in movies it's usually inaccurate and usually doesn't give good information. Sheik Khalid Mohammed was captured in 2003 and tortured extensively. He was waterboarded 183 times in a month, despite the CIA trying to claim that some of it was jut pouring water on his face not actually waterboarding. He was kept from sleeping for 71/2 days which likely caused permanant damage to part of his brain and his chillden, who were 6 and 8 at the time, were subjected to abusive interrogation.
This is a quote from his wiki article:
"One CIA official cautioned that "many of Mohammed's claims during interrogation were 'white noise' designed to send the U.S. on wild goose chases or to get him through the day's interrogation session." For example, according to Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and the top Republican on the terrorism panel of the House Intelligence Committee, he admitted responsibility for the Bali nightclub bombing, but his involvement "could have been as small as arranging a safe house for travel. It could have been arranging finance." Mohammed also made the admission that he was "responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation," which killed six and injured more than 1,000 when a bomb was detonated in an underground garage, Mohammed did not plan the attack, but he may have supported it. Michael Welner noted that by offering legitimate information to interrogators, Mohammed had secured the leverage to provide misinformation as well.[99]
In an article discussing the reliability of Khalid's confession and the motive for giving misinformation under torture, Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent with considerable experience interrogating al-Qaeda operatives, pointed out that:
When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information you're getting is useless.
His words are echoed by the U.S. Army Training Manual's section on interrogation, which suggests that:
the use of force is a poor technique, as it ... can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.
As an example of this the article discloses that although the George W. Bush administration made claims that the water-boarding (simulated drowning) of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed produced vital information that allowed them to break up a plot to attack the U.S. Bank Tower (formerly Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center) in Los Angeles in 2002, this has been proven to be untrue. In 2002 Sheikh Mohammed was busy evading capture in Pakistan.[100] Likewise the claim by former George W Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former CIA director of the National Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriguez, that the torture of Khalid Mohammed produced the most significant lead in finding Osama bin Laden, has also been shown to be false. According to U.S. Senator John McCain, "The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times ... not only did the use of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed; it actually produced false and misleading information."[101][102]"
The fact is that the US treatment of mohammed has only disgraced america and made him a martyr and hero to radical islamists.
But we're getting off the topic here, even tho this is related to the topic of torture in movies and how movies often portray it inaccurately.
Well yes, everyone knows that information gleaned through torture is not reliable or useful, I mean it's great for making people confess to what you want them to, and to furthermore admit that their pet chihuahua is secretly a satan that they worship with human sacrifice. It's just that often humanity relapses into stupid trains of thought. the CIA actively went against its practices and protocals to torture people. These protocols and practices were in place purely for pragmatic reasons, namely because the CIA that put them in place only wanted quality intel. The only thing that torturing people does is justifies their low opinion of you and breeds for yourself more enemies while simultaneously alienating your potential allies.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
Also, you should know that as soon as you say "everyone knows torture is unreliable" a legion of willfully ignorant morons will bellow in unison "HOLD MUH BEER!"
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
Also, you should know that as soon as you say "everyone knows torture is unreliable" a legion of willfully ignorant morons will bellow in unison "HOLD MUH BEER!"
It is a recuring theme in tv shows and films that it works with good guys often using against bad guys to get that vital info. Having that message all the time does leave a lingering impression that maybe it does work.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."
Also, you should know that as soon as you say "everyone knows torture is unreliable" a legion of willfully ignorant morons will bellow in unison "HOLD MUH BEER!"
It is a recuring theme in tv shows and films that it works with good guys often using against bad guys to get that vital info. Having that message all the time does leave a lingering impression that maybe it does work.
Don't forget that whole era of TV and movies and marketing when spoon bending and magic were taken seriously. There's still a lot of lingering impacts from that whole era of TV where such powers, and others, were often displayed in otherwise "fairly sensible" series as factual elements.
It is a recuring theme in tv shows and films that it works with good guys often using against bad guys to get that vital info. Having that message all the time does leave a lingering impression that maybe it does work.
One of the great plague's on society is that a job done well is really, really boring.
Who knew eating nothing but McDonalds for 30 days would lead to weight gain, and a drop in health? Spesh when you stop exercising?
Bog off, Morgan Spurlock, you pathetic hack,
I remember seeing this film, seeing what he was doing and being like.... man, I expected him to turn out far worse.
I did appreciate the discussion the movie prompted and I think it helped curb some problems in the food industry. It definitely wasn't what I'd call an honest film though.
It is a recuring theme in tv shows and films that it works with good guys often using against bad guys to get that vital info. Having that message all the time does leave a lingering impression that maybe it does work.
One of the great plague's on society is that a job done well is really, really boring.
Who knew eating nothing but McDonalds for 30 days would lead to weight gain, and a drop in health? Spesh when you stop exercising?
Bog off, Morgan Spurlock, you pathetic hack,
I remember seeing this film, seeing what he was doing and being like.... man, I expected him to turn out far worse.
I did appreciate the discussion the movie prompted and I think it helped curb some problems in the food industry. It definitely wasn't what I'd call an honest film though.
I find it weird though.
Torture is so played out. I mean lets set aside the ethics and stuff for a moment. It's freaking boring. Oh, torture. Empty drama.
Stories of interrogations I've heard, where interrogators didn't torture their subjects but instead cleverly maneuvered them into revealing more than they intended, tricked them into thinking they were in control, or got them to come around and flip by tackling their ideas methodically have all be way more excited than torture stories. Mind games are way more thrilling and excited than a torture scene, especially when the torture scene is turned into some kind of glorified sacrifice where the good guy does a bad thing for the 'right reasons'.
To write clever characters, you have to have some form of being clever.
It's like when someone tries to write a master manipulater or stuff like that it mostly fails.
It's why all Alpha Legion Stories suck
hotsauceman1 wrote: To write clever characters, you have to have some form of being clever.
It's like when someone tries to write a master manipulater or stuff like that it mostly fails.
It's why all Alpha Legion Stories suck
Or the ability to create that illusion. I doubt Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have made a great detective, but he managed to write one that has made his way into legend.
It is a recuring theme in tv shows and films that it works with good guys often using against bad guys to get that vital info. Having that message all the time does leave a lingering impression that maybe it does work.
One of the great plague's on society is that a job done well is really, really boring.
Who knew eating nothing but McDonalds for 30 days would lead to weight gain, and a drop in health? Spesh when you stop exercising?
Bog off, Morgan Spurlock, you pathetic hack,
I remember seeing this film, seeing what he was doing and being like.... man, I expected him to turn out far worse.
I did appreciate the discussion the movie prompted and I think it helped curb some problems in the food industry. It definitely wasn't what I'd call an honest film though.
I find it weird though.
Torture is so played out. I mean lets set aside the ethics and stuff for a moment. It's freaking boring. Oh, torture. Empty drama.
Stories of interrogations I've heard, where interrogators didn't torture their subjects but instead cleverly maneuvered them into revealing more than they intended, tricked them into thinking they were in control, or got them to come around and flip by tackling their ideas methodically have all be way more excited than torture stories. Mind games are way more thrilling and excited than a torture scene, especially when the torture scene is turned into some kind of glorified sacrifice where the good guy does a bad thing for the 'right reasons'.
Well hostages are always an option and they as a system to get someone to do/tell you what they want generally works. Unless you're the good guy and they know you'd never carry through with the threat of you wanted coercion, but traditionally this is not the good guy's tools. But I think it's better than torture, it also raises the stakes for the hero. What if they actually have to murder/mutilate someone to make the other guy know they're serious?
Alternatively that is where some cleverness comes in handy.
hotsauceman1 wrote: To write clever characters, you have to have some form of being clever.
It's like when someone tries to write a master manipulater or stuff like that it mostly fails.
It's why all Alpha Legion Stories suck
I disagree.
When we look at pop culture, it’s mostly about the Protagonist more observant than the Antagonist.
Consider Columbo, and “just one more thing”. This is something I use professionally, because I’m aware that I usually have more information than the parties involved. And I can work with that. Does that make me more cleverer? Nope. Just better informed. And I’ve developed a knack for spotting what someone is very carefully not saying. If someone dodged a question two or three times, it’s a sign that the answer might be detrimental to their argument. Whilst it’s rarely all that conclusive in itself, it’s still another part of the jigsaw.
Subtlety is also great, nothing more satisfying than having several people reach the same conclusion at different points in the narrative for different reasons. Rather than the much more vulgar sign posting you see being thrown around.
OldMate wrote: Subtlety is also great, nothing more satisfying than having several people reach the same conclusion at different points in the narrative for different reasons.
LA Confidential is really good for this. You have three very different police detectives, each doing their own investigation and the little clues and connections between them all slowly pull tight and knit the whole thing together at the end.
hotsauceman1 wrote: To write clever characters, you have to have some form of being clever.
It's like when someone tries to write a master manipulater or stuff like that it mostly fails.
It's why all Alpha Legion Stories suck
Agreed - same with Nolan's Joker or 24 - you usually end up having the "bad Guy" seemingly having three million layers of plots or pre-cog abilities so that everything everyone does he/she /they have predicted.
Use of direct pain/Torture is a standard part of many action films - often by both sides and in films and media almost always works unless its the hero/heroine.
Since this thread has gotten into the torture area, I guess i can say that IMHO the 'best" (I use that term with hesitation) torture scene I ever saw was in "Casino Royale".
Honestly, Danial Craig earned an oscar for that scene. His acting and emoting were so intense you had to shudder. His laughing while crying bit about "Now the world will know you died scratching my b-lls!" was such a moment of triumph.
The guy torturing him was great in that scene too. His casual "You know, I've never understood all these elaborate torture methods. It's the simplest thing to cause a man more pain than he can endure."
This was again the 'best' torture scene i think I've ever seen. It also revealed that torture generally doesn't work.
Another scene I remember was from "dirty harry' where eastwood shoots the psycho in the thigh then grinds his foot into the bullet wound to make him tell where the girl was buried. Sadly it didn't work either.
Another scene I remember was from "dirty harry' where eastwood shoots the psycho in the thigh then grinds his foot into the bullet wound to make him tell where the girl was buried. Sadly it didn't work either.
Well, the killer did tell him where the girl was. But she was already dead at the time.
Matt Swain wrote: Since this thread has gotten into the torture area, I guess i can say that IMHO the 'best" (I use that term with hesitation) torture scene I ever saw was in "Casino Royale".
Honestly, Danial Craig earned an oscar for that scene. His acting and emoting were so intense you had to shudder. His laughing while crying bit about "Now the world will know you died scratching my b-lls!" was such a moment of triumph.
The guy torturing him was great in that scene too. His casual "You know, I've never understood all these elaborate torture methods. It's the simplest thing to cause a man more pain than he can endure."
This was again the 'best' torture scene i think I've ever seen. It also revealed that torture generally doesn't work.
Another scene I remember was from "dirty harry' where eastwood shoots the psycho in the thigh then grinds his foot into the bullet wound to make him tell where the girl was buried. Sadly it didn't work either.
"The guy"? That was Mads Mikkelsen, who went on to play Hannibal. He's so perfect for that sort of sadistic, detached villain.
Another scene I remember was from "dirty harry' where eastwood shoots the psycho in the thigh then grinds his foot into the bullet wound to make him tell where the girl was buried. Sadly it didn't work either.
Well, the killer did tell him where the girl was. But she was already dead at the time.
Huh. I remember the scene ending with the pathetic psycho wailing about his rights. But it has been aeons since i saw it so i looked it up and -i'll be damned again- you're right.
My bad. Been a long time since i saw it, i just remember him screaming and wailing about his rights.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Azreal13 wrote: I can't believe you self-censored the word balls.
Well since some mod here changed my "BULL$&!#" thread to "nonsense!" i guess at least one mode here is picky about censoring.
Speaking of torture vs other methods of getting information, I remember reading about an example of how a Nazi officer got a captured allied airman to give him some useful, not vital or really important, but useful information that nazis wanted.
Luftwaffe pilots were noticing that in air combat with allied planes sometimes the planes would shoot white phosphorous tracers and sometime they shot red ones.
They were curious as to why this was and wondered what it meant, if it was significant in anyway.
Well, a smart little gestapo officer was assigned to get an allied pilot to talk . He used no torture. instead he said the allied pilot was fighting for a lost cause, as the germans had noticed the allied pilots were using red phosphorous traces at times, which meant they must be critically short of white phosphorous, a vital war supply.
The allied pilot laughed in his face. He told the interrogator that allied planes were using WP tracers in the first 75% of their ammunition load and RP in the last 25% as a way of letting the pilot know he was low on ammo without having to try reading an ammo gauge in combat. He laughed at the dumb nazi for thinking the allies were short of WP or anything else.
Now this pilot thought he was doing a good thing, he can't really be blamed. He thought the germans believed the allies were running short of WP, which was a critical supply,and it was giving them some comfort. He thought by telling them the truth he was hurting their morale which was good for the allies.
Well, instead he gave them some useful information, the Germans now knew an allied plane firing RP traces was low on ammo.
Obviously the information did the nazis little good, but still he should not have told them. It's remembered as one slick piece of interrogation and an example of why you should give the enemy no information even if you think its the right things to do.
I'm going to say Fury again, not that I was disappointed but because the end was bad, even worse than I was expecting. Firstly giant German column in 45 in broad daylight when the allied planes are swarming above Germany?If they spiked their tank, fell back and warned the infantry, the Germans would march into entrenched machine guns mortars and artillery support. Every American solder had a repeating firearm, a lot of firepower. This is what they advocated against.
Instead it's an unsupported tank in a blatantly self indulged M'erica moment. It should have taken less than three minutes before it was a burning wreck.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I mean if you want to do nationalistic shirt thumping at least put the tank on a hillside with good lines of sight and in a hull down position. Maybe with a section of infantry backing you up. That'd be great.
OldMate wrote: Battleship. Not much of it even made sense.
It's very much in the "action flick turn your brain off" category. That said it had one scene I liked, which was when one of the aliens showed a mysterious amount of sympathy/mercy to one of the characters. It's a tiny scene, but its a sign of diversity of thinking within an otherwise unified "alien" threat. All too often most action flicks the "enemy" are a unified evil - aliens, zombies, nazis, terrorists. Whatever they are they are typically between totally evil and just evil "Goons". It's a higher level of sophistication that you don't expect from the film.
There are exactly 2 good things about Battleship: 1. the AC/DC montage with them getting the battleship ready. 2. in the beginning with the main character breaking into a convenience store, but only because it is a shot-for shot remake of an actual burglary where the burglar got stuck in a liquor store. It's pretty obscure, but the video did the rounds on the internet for a while and even got mocked on The World's Dumbest.
OldMate wrote: Battleship. Not much of it even made sense.
It's very much in the "action flick turn your brain off" category. That said it had one scene I liked, which was when one of the aliens showed a mysterious amount of sympathy/mercy to one of the characters. It's a tiny scene, but its a sign of diversity of thinking within an otherwise unified "alien" threat. All too often most action flicks the "enemy" are a unified evil - aliens, zombies, nazis, terrorists. Whatever they are they are typically between totally evil and just evil "Goons". It's a higher level of sophistication that you don't expect from the film.
Love that film - just great fun and even managed to make the game work as part of the film.
The Aliens in the film are remarkable in that they actively avoid civilian casulties throughout the film - several occassions to their detriment. We never know why - TOE, honour code, habit, what but its part of thier entire military effort.
For me, the most disappointing movies are the movies about aliens. I am very interested in this subject, and there is no standard or an exciting film about them. So for me, each film regarding this subject is a big disappointment.
OldMate wrote: Battleship. Not much of it even made sense.
It's very much in the "action flick turn your brain off" category. That said it had one scene I liked, which was when one of the aliens showed a mysterious amount of sympathy/mercy to one of the characters. It's a tiny scene, but its a sign of diversity of thinking within an otherwise unified "alien" threat. All too often most action flicks the "enemy" are a unified evil - aliens, zombies, nazis, terrorists. Whatever they are they are typically between totally evil and just evil "Goons". It's a higher level of sophistication that you don't expect from the film.
Love that film - just great fun and even managed to make the game work as part of the film.
The Aliens in the film are remarkable in that they actively avoid civilian casulties throughout the film - several occassions to their detriment. We never know why - TOE, honour code, habit, what but its part of thier entire military effort.
Also, bunch of old boys clearly having a whale of a time. That alone is worth the price!
Battleship is simultaneously terrible, and incredible. At no point is it anything but dumb, but you're still on your feet all "lets powerslide this thing!"
Probably my most disappointing movie was The Musketeer. It's just painful and the stuntwork never comes close to making up for it.
Ultraviolet also deserves a nod. It's just dreadfully dull to the point where the theater I was in stopped paying attention and little discussions popped up between strangers making fun of it.
The first is kinda oddly brilliant. The politics are convoluted on the first watch, but encourage further views to figure it out.
The second? I’ve seen it. I know I’ve seen it. Still couldn’t tell you a thing about it, because it was that forgettable I’ve actually, genuinely forgotten it.
Also, any mystery film or TV show where the key to the solution is something not disclosed to the audience. Because frankly that is a cheap shot. Part of the fun is the guessing whodunnit. Rug pulls such as “oh yes then there was this time that person did something we didn’t refer to at all and all happened conveniently off-camera but complete explains whydunnit” are just bloody lazy.
The first is kinda oddly brilliant. The politics are convoluted on the first watch, but encourage further views to figure it out.
The second? I’ve seen it. I know I’ve seen it. Still couldn’t tell you a thing about it, because it was that forgettable I’ve actually, genuinely forgotten it..
Same. They've got all the cool elements, but they've just got forgetful stories and don't feel like they've got passion behind them
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Also, any mystery film or TV show where the key to the solution is something not disclosed to the audience. Because frankly that is a cheap shot. Part of the fun is the guessing whodunnit. Rug pulls such as “oh yes then there was this time that person did something we didn’t refer to at all and all happened conveniently off-camera but complete explains whydunnit” are just bloody lazy.
The first is kinda oddly brilliant. The politics are convoluted on the first watch, but encourage further views to figure it out.
The second? I’ve seen it. I know I’ve seen it. Still couldn’t tell you a thing about it, because it was that forgettable I’ve actually, genuinely forgotten it..
Same. They've got all the cool elements, but they've just got forgetful stories and don't feel like they've got passion behind them
I feel the opposite as like the Res Evil Films they were made by a husband and wife team of Director/Lead Actress and hence seemed to be more than easy money action flicks for them. Whilst Kate Beckinsale is not as enthuisiastic about the action genre as Mila (it did not help she was very ill on the first film I think)
Hurt Locker is a film i just don;t get why people rave about - especially consdering how bad the main characters are.
The Underworld discussion is interesting. I honestly really like Evolution, better than the OG to be honest. It might even be my favorite in the series. Rise of the Lycans and Awakening are also really solid. It's just Blood Wars I didn't care for.
The Black Death. Just a tip, if you're going to a village to root out heresy and witchcraft don't eat their food and drink their ale or fratenize. Also if you're goining to make a movie and build up the idea of witchcraft, demons and magic remeber the audience will probably feel cheated when you pull a: "But its science and to the primitive and superstitious medieval people it looks like magic." Because the audience will feel insulted as by this stage there is so much wrong with the movie that they are hanging onto the barest thread of a hope that there will be an exciting ending. Rather than an anti-climax and things that would have been bad if ever they were able to care for any of the characters. Shaun Bean and his entourage of "authentically" dull and frankly filthy medieval(i use the term loosely fqntasy is probably more appropriate) soldier characters fighting a legitimate demon cult with a witchand/or demon would have made enduring the rest of the pile of trash the movie actually worth it. Instead, we see a season 1 game of thrones ending for Shaun Bean. Also the main character is unlikeable and goes through an illogical charcter change.
LordofHats wrote: Stories of interrogations I've heard, where interrogators didn't torture their subjects but instead cleverly maneuvered them into revealing more than they intended, tricked them into thinking they were in control, or got them to come around and flip by tackling their ideas methodically have all be way more excited than torture stories. Mind games are way more thrilling and excited than a torture scene, especially when the torture scene is turned into some kind of glorified sacrifice where the good guy does a bad thing for the 'right reasons'.
I remember a clever scene (think it was one of the Mission Impossible movies?) where they use faked TV footage to make the prisoner believe his master plan has already succeeded....so of course he brags in detail about how he pulled it off.
The most disappointing film I’ve seen recently was the Edward Norton Incredible Hulk film. I really like Norton, Tim Roth and Liv Tyler, but that film is the dullest thing I’ve ever seen. The action scenes are flashy but unsatisfying, the dialogue is staid and predictable, and it’s all just a bit crap.
It doesn’t help that my wife and I are watching all the marvel films in chronological order so it gets directly compared to much much better films on either side.
LordofHats wrote: Stories of interrogations I've heard, where interrogators didn't torture their subjects but instead cleverly maneuvered them into revealing more than they intended, tricked them into thinking they were in control, or got them to come around and flip by tackling their ideas methodically have all be way more excited than torture stories. Mind games are way more thrilling and excited than a torture scene, especially when the torture scene is turned into some kind of glorified sacrifice where the good guy does a bad thing for the 'right reasons'.
I remember a clever scene (think it was one of the Mission Impossible movies?) where they use faked TV footage to make the prisoner believe his master plan has already succeeded....so of course he brags in detail about how he pulled it off.
Hands down the Star Wars movies after Return of the Jedi (and if I'm honest, RotJ wasn't very good either)
I saw the original trilogy as a kid, so it holds a bit of a mythical, nostalgia-induced place in my pantheon of God Like Movies. (I recently watched Star Wars New Hope again, and it was fine. Definitely not God Like at all, but perfectly watchable) So in 1999 (was it really that long ago??) when I went to see Phantom Menace I had high hopes and was absolutely stunned at how bad that film was. It was just rotten, by any metric (except perhaps ticket sales!). And what's worse: it killed Star Wars for me. I just couldn't get excited about it at all after that. Never saw any of the subsequent films when they were first released (still haven't gotten around to see Rise of Skywalker, the most recent). But the three that came out around the turn of the millennium were just abysmal. Terrible, terrible films.
I definitely have to say that while I wasn't really looking forward to this and watched it just cause I could, I was shocked at how bad a film it was. Even by the low expectations I have of DCU films, 1984 was bad.
I can’t say I was disappointed with Rise of Skywalker. I was expecting it to be bad, but it was so, sooooo bad that I ended up laughing the whole time. Literally the whole movie, starting with “The Dead Speak!”
Billed as a turn around in DCEU fortunes and competence? It was distinctly Meh.
It’s another one where I’ve seen it, but it made such little impression I don’t really remember it.
About the only thing I do remember is her (admittedly pretty sweet) charge across No Man’s Land. And even then, it’s because we already knew she’s bulletproof.....but still uses her bracers to turn aside bullets, because reasons.
And as well documented, I find Gal Gadot to be a terrible actress. But, that may be down to me being unused to her accent, and so not a good judge of subtlety of tone.
I’d put her in the dependable but not solid category of actors, alongside Schwarzenegger and Van Damme and the like. That doesn’t sound like high praise, but it puts her head and shoulders above actors who drain the life from their movies, like Jared Leto, later De Niro, later Willis, later Depp, Bonham-Carter, etc..
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I can’t say I was disappointed with Rise of Skywalker. I was expecting it to be bad, but it was so, sooooo bad that I ended up laughing the whole time. Literally the whole movie, starting with “The Dead Speak!”
I just got more and more bored with it and tuned it out. I was playing total warhammer or something and just... stopped paying attention to the other screen at all.
My movie-watching is down a lot anyway. They're just not engaging enough to capture my attention and keep me focused on the film.
The good stuff will actually drag me away from whatever else I'm doing and get me to focus on the screen (awkward when I put something on in the background while I paint, and the brush starts drying out). But that's really, really rare with current films.
Billed as a turn around in DCEU fortunes and competence? It was distinctly Meh.
It’s another one where I’ve seen it, but it made such little impression I don’t really remember it.
It had a decent enough setup, a passable middle, then a fethtastically ugly CGI finish where evil god of evil really is eviling it up and ripping all the nuance out of the story.
Then all the heroism gets sucked out of her because the love interest of a few weeks dies and she's sad and useless for decades without her Man, which _really_ guts the apparent story. The impression it left on me was really bad, but it helped make 1984 less of a disappointment simply because it carried on with the suck the first movie ended on, rather than its more positive beginning.
Jurassic World. The plot did not make any sense, the characters were unlikeable, and they were obsessed with(and seemed to have doubled down this opinion for the next movie) of using dinosaurs in war(which to my mind is a comically bad idea(unless you're expecting a nuclear holoclast and want to use the dinosaurs*after* humanity is reduced to the stone age)), the big bad genetcially modified and mislabeled dino was just a gigantasurus with a skin condition and camouflage abilities. And AT rocket proof plot armour apparently as it shrugs off a direct hit from what seems to be an AT4. Maybe its quill things are ERA?
*Dino nerd rant*
Indomitus Rex? I was expecting something more than an ugly carcharodontosaur that has been mislabeled as a cross between Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. I mean both animals are at very different ends of the therapod spectrum. They're both specialist hunters in their own way, it's like crossing an A10 warthog with an F16. It's going to make an abomination.
I have really grown tired of the 'bulletproof dinosaur' cliche. Amazingly, one Raptor actually was killed by firearms in JW! I was shocked.
While I sort of like Jurassic World, mostly because the climatic battle is SO GOOD, I agree that the Indominus itself was a disappointing design. Just a generic theropod.
That said, if you think JW was bad, then you probably have not seen Fallen Kingdom...
OldMate wrote: Jurassic World. The plot did not make any sense, the characters were unlikeable, and they were obsessed with(and seemed to have doubled down this opinion for the next movie) of using dinosaurs in war(which to my mind is a comically bad idea(unless you're expecting a nuclear holoclast and want to use the dinosaurs*after* humanity is reduced to the stone age)), the big bad genetcially modified and mislabeled dino was just a gigantasurus with a skin condition and camouflage abilities. And AT rocket proof plot armour apparently as it shrugs off a direct hit from what seems to be an AT4. Maybe its quill things are ERA?
*Dino nerd rant*
Indomitus Rex? I was expecting something more than an ugly carcharodontosaur that has been mislabeled as a cross between Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. I mean both animals are at very different ends of the therapod spectrum. They're both specialist hunters in their own way, it's like crossing an A10 warthog with an F16. It's going to make an abomination.
ironically my friend you're righter than you probably know. At one time the air force considered retiring the A-10, rumor has it because some idiot with stars on his shoulders considered it to be 'ugly' and replacing it with an f-16 modified to specialize in ground attack.
My immediate thought, after i recovered from the mild concussion the involuntary epic facepalm had given me, was to try to figure out where to even begin savaging this inane notion. The f-16 and the a-10 are so any attempt to make one do the rule of the other would result in a flying abortion that did nothing well, well except maybe serving as a platform to transfer money from taxpayers into the pockets of defense contractors and their pet generals.
Onto a movie i find disappointing, i'm going to give a blanket call out t any movie that you must watch or read something else to understand.
Maybe i'm outdated today, but when i invest time and money into seeing a movie, i expect a finished product, i except something that is complete. I am not interested in paying for an unfinished product.
When i see a movie that has huge holes in it, i feel i have been cheated, even robbed. I do not want to spend more time and money to read a book or wait to buy a dvd release with extra footage that makes the movie work.
I've been told that stupid generic scifi action film with star trek names and logs plastered on it that Jar jar Abrams released is actually better if you watch the dvd and see the extra footage. As big a pile of plague marine gak that movies was i have no intention whatsoever of seeing a longer version of it.
Likewise people say if you go online and read the background on 'rise of skywalker' it makes more sense. I already paid to see the movie in terms of time and money, why throw more good time after bad?
Movies that require more than in on the screen to understand or make sense are unfished products and i have no desire to see them and be left with a sense what i jsut saw made no sense, had stupid plotholes in it, etc.
OldMate wrote: Jurassic World. The plot did not make any sense, the characters were unlikeable, and they were obsessed with(and seemed to have doubled down this opinion for the next movie) of using dinosaurs in war(which to my mind is a comically bad idea(unless you're expecting a nuclear holoclast and want to use the dinosaurs*after* humanity is reduced to the stone age)), the big bad genetcially modified and mislabeled dino was just a gigantasurus with a skin condition and camouflage abilities. And AT rocket proof plot armour apparently as it shrugs off a direct hit from what seems to be an AT4. Maybe its quill things are ERA?
*Dino nerd rant*
Indomitus Rex? I was expecting something more than an ugly carcharodontosaur that has been mislabeled as a cross between Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor. I mean both animals are at very different ends of the therapod spectrum. They're both specialist hunters in their own way, it's like crossing an A10 warthog with an F16. It's going to make an abomination.
Did they hit it with the AT4? I thought they didn't. I was supremely disappointed with the "ambush" they used on it, not using their firepower efficiently at all.
The idea of combat dinos isn't a *bad* one. IMHO the Raptor and the Raptor Mk2 whatever it was is too big, you're needing something the size of a dog to do a dog's work. But something as lethal as Deinonychus could work.
Personally i think something more closer to *actual* velocoraptor sized could be handy, (about turkey sized(might be better to scale it up to large dog size? For that bit more mass and stopping power?), but you know, armed to the 9s with tooth and claw). Its feathery coat would also make the creature more suitable for deployment in cooler climates.
And yeah use them like working/attack dogs.
I’ve always found the various “bio weapon” concepts used in films rather strange; there are plenty of deadly animals already on Earth and you don’t see armies roaming around with packs of lions or similar.
In theory, it has all the parts it needs to be good. Yet, somehow.... it fails. Worse, it fails in a boring way.
My favorite review of this movie is that the only interesting thing about it is that Sean Bean is still alive at the end.
It's a really bad movie. It plays itself like it's a epic, but it feels like really bad YA fiction complete with a cringy romance plot and a very stale main character running on miraculous contrivance.
gak that's a hard one...I'd rate Riddick as better but I find the character of Riddick interesting and have a level of investment in it that makes the comparison very biased for me so I don't think I can fairly compare them. In my bias though, Chronicles of Riddick is a 5/10 movie and Jupiter Ascending is maybe a 3/10. Jupiter Ascending suffers a lot from trying to tell a very complicated story in a very small amount of time and largely failing to actually get anything across but confusion and 'what now?'
Chronicles of Riddick is a movie I enjoy for the weirdness and for the production values. I’m not sure the plot makes sense or I like the characters, but I find myself really drawn into the experience of it. It’s ...different, and that makes it fun.
From the ads and reviews I’m hoping Jupiter Ascending might also be enjoyable for being different. But I’m also worried it might just really be bad.
Jadenim wrote: I’ve always found the various “bio weapon” concepts used in films rather strange; there are plenty of deadly animals already on Earth and you don’t see armies roaming around with packs of lions or similar.
Mostly because those animals don't respond to training as well as dogs. Dogs love to do what their handlers and training have taught them to do. Cats don't give a frag. Even big ones.
There has been some success training dolphins, birds can be taught very specific tasks.
Another small-medium sized game animal with the intelligence of dogs/dolphins and the ability to be trained but with the lethality of a movie Raptor? It would make a decent weapon. Maybe not the Tora Bora but the tunnels in Vietnam? Even doing things that dogs can't. It isn't that far fetched as a plot device.
Jadenim wrote: I’ve always found the various “bio weapon” concepts used in films rather strange; there are plenty of deadly animals already on Earth and you don’t see armies roaming around with packs of lions or similar.
Mostly because those animals don't respond to training as well as dogs. Dogs love to do what their handlers and training have taught them to do. Cats don't give a frag. Even big ones.
There has been some success training dolphins, birds can be taught very specific tasks.
Another small-medium sized game animal with the intelligence of dogs/dolphins and the ability to be trained but with the lethality of a movie Raptor? It would make a decent weapon. Maybe not the Tora Bora but the tunnels in Vietnam? Even doing things that dogs can't. It isn't that far fetched as a plot device.
It also feeds into that "man fiddled where he aught naught" trope, combined with some old fashioned For Science!
I've seen alot of bad movies, but what always springs to mind when the topic comes up is Anchorman 2.
I loved the first one and my wife and I still quote it often. However, has any sequel ever tried so hard to improve on every gag from the first film and failed every freakin' time?
Eilif wrote: I've seen alot of bad movies, but what always springs to mind when the topic comes up is Anchorman 2.
I loved the first one and my wife and I still quote it often. However, has any sequel ever tried so hard to improve on every gag from the first film and failed every freakin' time?
Ugh.
Kick-ass 2? The first one is deliberately edgy/provocative, but does it with charm and humour. The second one is just nasty and uncomfortable.
Heard nothing but good things about it. Watched it and hated it. It somehow felt incredibly smug about itself.
This one is one of my favorites but I completely understand how you came away with that opinion. It's literally a movie about a bunch of gakky people learning to be slightly less gakky. In the graphic novels, they become real function human adults, in the movie... Less so.
Terminator 3. Terminator 2 was one of my favourite films of all time and it came at a formative time of my life. My friends and I literally wore out VCR tapes where we had watched it so many times. Honestly think as I left the cinema I was so utterly depressed, and actually found the film so bad that it had damaged my enjoyment of the second one.
Matrix 2 & 3 - They have their moments, but again saw the first film 6 times in the cinema, got my expectations up way to high and nothing was ever going to match the original.
Aliens Vs. Predator - to be fair probably disappointment is the wrong term as I think most people had a fairly good idea this was going to be gak and had read the 1-star reviews, but still impressive that it essentially sank two franchises in a single film.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Scott Pilgrim vs The World.
Heard nothing but good things about it. Watched it and hated it. It somehow felt incredibly smug about itself.
I watched it quite recently. Thought it was quite good fun, and wished I had seen it when I was a teenager as I'm sure it would have been my favourite film ever at that age.
In theory, it has all the parts it needs to be good. Yet, somehow.... it fails. Worse, it fails in a boring way.
My favorite review of this movie is that the only interesting thing about it is that Sean Bean is still alive at the end.
It's a really bad movie. It plays itself like it's a epic, but it feels like really bad YA fiction complete with a cringy romance plot and a very stale main character running on miraculous contrivance.
Haha that's a good one about Sean Bean.. Yes I agree, think it was more the disappointment that it could have been something really special and was not.
Yeah. Like a lot of overstuffed movies, it might have been good as a TV series or something. There were ideas there, they just didn't have any time to develop any of them.
I just watched Breach last night, with Bruce Willis, and what I saw before I literally fell asleep was one of the crappier movies I have seen in a while. Jesus, it actually had badly animated grey muzzle flashes on the guns, for God's sake.
I woke up as the big monster was chasing them, but then just gave up and turned it off. If I want a good (modern-made) "chase on a spaceship", I'll watch Pandorum again.
Discounting some straight-to-video stuff - like Ecks versus Sever (although some is a guilty pleasure) the most disappointing I saw at the cinema was Avatar. Risible plot and the much exalted special effects were of no consequence.
Avatar sure seems to divide people (they either love it or hate it).. I'm in the other camp and will say that was was possibly one of my favourite film 'experiences' ever. The 3D effects were spectacular - certainly the most effective use of 3D in a film; I saw it in full IMAX and it absolutely blew me away - combined with the orchestral score when they were soaring through the floating mountains, it puts the hairs up on my arms thinking about it even now. I think probably Gravity was the only thing I have seen which comes close, in terms of its ability to make an audience laugh or groan as the perspective shifts to you looking down from a great height.
Any film where people stumble out of the cinema afterwards, grinning like idiots, I think has done something right and so as a producer of entertainment James Cameron absolutely knocked it out of the park in that regard.
I agree the plot was quite cliched (and I think, for a lot of people that were sensitive and against it's message it's a good enough reason to dislike it) but in my own simple way it tugged at the heart strings and its just a wonderful piece of entertainment.
I love also that James Cameron was powerful and influential enough in Hollywood to say "OK I need a couple of hundred million $, this film is going to be on the drawing board for 10 years, it will need technology that hasn't been developed yet, and its about giant blue aliens" and 20th Century Fox just handed him the money and left him to it.
I'm actually as excited about Avatar 2 to see what the new technology/underwater scenes will bring, as I am about the film itself (as these kinds of sequels usually can only tread the path of the original and invariably disappoint).
MarkNorfolk wrote: Discounting some straight-to-video stuff - like Ecks versus Sever (although some is a guilty pleasure) the most disappointing I saw at the cinema was Avatar. Risible plot and the much exalted special effects were of no consequence.
and it kicked off that whole 3d being jammed into everything despite it having likely the best 3d which only managed to be not terrible ( Toy Story 3 and Tron got close too but i dimly recall it being reliant on contrast so animation is easier)
Pacific wrote: Avatar sure seems to divide people (they either love it or hate it).. I'm in the other camp and will say that was was possibly one of my favourite film 'experiences' ever. The 3D effects were spectacular - certainly the most effective use of 3D in a film; I saw it in full IMAX and it absolutely blew me away - combined with the orchestral score when they were soaring through the floating mountains, it puts the hairs up on my arms thinking about it even now. I think probably Gravity was the only thing I have seen which comes close, in terms of its ability to make an audience laugh or groan as the perspective shifts to you looking down from a great height.
Any film where people stumble out of the cinema afterwards, grinning like idiots, I think has done something right and so as a producer of entertainment James Cameron absolutely knocked it out of the park in that regard.
I agree the plot was quite cliched (and I think, for a lot of people that were sensitive and against it's message it's a good enough reason to dislike it) but in my own simple way it tugged at the heart strings and its just a wonderful piece of entertainment.
I love also that James Cameron was powerful and influential enough in Hollywood to say "OK I need a couple of hundred million $, this film is going to be on the drawing board for 10 years, it will need technology that hasn't been developed yet, and its about giant blue aliens" and 20th Century Fox just handed him the money and left him to it.
I'm actually as excited about Avatar 2 to see what the new technology/underwater scenes will bring, as I am about the film itself (as these kinds of sequels usually can only tread the path of the original and invariably disappoint).
I have a completely difference experience with Avatar, as I don't know any people who actually hate it. Guys that consider it mediocre sure, but I won't say it's something that really divide people, like a Tarantino's movie. Gravity is another movie that I've always thought it's widely considered good at least.
I liked it a lot, but I can't stand wearing 3D glasses and after my first watch at the theatre I wasn't impressed, I was too unconfortable to properly enjoy it. I've watched it on TV another 5-6 times and absolutely loved it, I'll definitely watch it again.
To me of the worst movies I've ever seen was Tenet. I love Nolan, watched all of his works, and that was the first and only movie that I watched in 2020 thanks to covid, so expectations were pretty high. But it was really terrible, on any possible level: plot, acting, visual effects... it's still the last movie I watched at the theatre, almost an year ago now.
Blackie wrote: I have a completely difference experience with Avatar, as I don't know any people who actually hate it. Guys that consider it mediocre sure, but I won't say it's something that really divide people, like a Tarantino's movie.
Agree. It was an excellent movie experience for me in spite of it being live action Fern Gully. A movie can be trite and still be enjoyable. I've seen lots of reviews dismissing Avatar as not being great but I don't think I've seen many (outside of the usual rage-bait nonsense) where people are saying it is actively bad.
Blackie wrote: To me of the worst movies I've ever seen was Tenet
I found Tenet to be just on the acceptable side of the good/bad divide, but it was a close thing. I don't think it's a bad movie but I have no idea why anyone would love it for the reasons you mention as well as it has some horrendous crimes to cinema (mumble mumble mumble, quick back and forth cuts between shots for no reason, mumble mumble, for the love of god fix the audio!).
I don't mean the reviews of Avatar saying it was actively bad (I don't think there were many - it's showing 82% both for critics and fans on Rotten Tomatoes) - just that the film seemed to provoke either massive fanboyism or almost seething hatred.
I remember people deliberately having blue-faced profile pictures on Facebook of themselves, who were in turn then dubbed 'Avatards' by people mocking them
Tenet was one of those films that was wonderfully filmed, amazing effects, soundtrack etc. but it gave me nosebleeds for about two weeks afterwards. I think I would need to watch it a few more times to try and see if it's understandable or if it was just me.. found the sound balance appalling too, you could barely hear the dialogue and I was constantly turning the volume up and down to hear people talking then getting my ears popped in the next action sequence.
I'd heard a lot of good things, the acting was really excellent, and the first half (?) was intriguing ...... then as it progessed, and more was revealed, the whole thing descended into a downward spiral of improbable nonsense. Nothing wrong with a film with an underlying message, but this was all MESSAGE with the barest veneer of a story.
At least I didn't experienced the sound issue with Tenet, as in theatres here foreign movies are dubbed, and all dialogues were pretty clear. I prefer to watch movies in their original languages though and I've been actually tempted to give Tenet a second chance but now to discover that it suffers even from another (major) issue is simply too much .
I'd heard a lot of good things, the acting was really excellent, and the first half (?) was intriguing ...... then as it progessed, and more was revealed, the whole thing descended into a downward spiral of improbable nonsense. Nothing wrong with a film with an underlying message, but this was all MESSAGE with the barest veneer of a story.
MarkNorfolk wrote: Discounting some straight-to-video stuff - like Ecks versus Sever (although some is a guilty pleasure) the most disappointing I saw at the cinema was Avatar. Risible plot and the much exalted special effects were of no consequence.
Sadly, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever was not straight to video. It had a theatrical release..... I saw it.
The Forgemaster wrote: or based on a book/book series tends to disapoint. there are some exceptions but...
it...that....literally I would say sixty or seventy percent of movies that are produced are originally based on print media.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'd say for me the most disappointing has to be the new Pacific Rim.
I'm not ashamed to say I did not actually see the movie after seeing the trailer. It was very clearly the most shameless of cash grabs based on desperately trying to sequel/franchise a film that was unexpectedly successful. I've always hated those.
I am rarely disappointed by any movie because I don't watch movies I know I wont like. Sometimes I am presently surprised. Sometimes though... The most disappointing movie I saw was The last Jedi.
Terrible acting / terrible characters / incoherent plot / breaking the laws of the setting. Absolutely terrible.
I really like Scott Pilgrim, but I'm a little heartbroken it came out before the comic and went the original ending route. For the most part, it's fine, but the one real, honest good moment lost is that Scott doesn't really beat Gideon and win the girl; he frees Ramona from the baggage of Gideon, but it's ultimately Ramona who chooses Scott and defeats her Evil Ex directly. It really changes the meaning behind the story and while they kind of try to say the same thing with Nega-Scott, it's just not as satisfying.
Blackie wrote: At least I didn't experienced the sound issue with Tenet, as in theatres here foreign movies are dubbed, and all dialogues were pretty clear. I prefer to watch movies in their original languages though and I've been actually tempted to give Tenet a second chance but now to discover that it suffers even from another (major) issue is simply too much .
I'd heard a lot of good things, the acting was really excellent, and the first half (?) was intriguing ...... then as it progessed, and more was revealed, the whole thing descended into a downward spiral of improbable nonsense. Nothing wrong with a film with an underlying message, but this was all MESSAGE with the barest veneer of a story.
That was also another really bad one, indeed.
Compared to the brilliance of Get Out, Us felt almost sophic in how it tried to bend over backwards to make a point while simultaneously muddling that point so much I no longer understood exactly what point the film was trying to make, only that it was trying to make one and failing.
MarkNorfolk wrote: Discounting some straight-to-video stuff - like Ecks versus Sever (although some is a guilty pleasure) the most disappointing I saw at the cinema was Avatar. Risible plot and the much exalted special effects were of no consequence.
Sadly, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever was not straight to video. It had a theatrical release..... I saw it.
The Forgemaster wrote: or based on a book/book series tends to disapoint. there are some exceptions but...
it...that....literally I would say sixty or seventy percent of movies that are produced are originally based on print media.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'd say for me the most disappointing has to be the new Pacific Rim.
I'm not ashamed to say I did not actually see the movie after seeing the trailer. It was very clearly the most shameless of cash grabs based on desperately trying to sequel/franchise a film that was unexpectedly successful. I've always hated those.
I'd have to agree with the 2nd pacific rim, i enjoyed the 1st, but the 2nd was trash.
MarkNorfolk wrote: Discounting some straight-to-video stuff - like Ecks versus Sever (although some is a guilty pleasure) the most disappointing I saw at the cinema was Avatar. Risible plot and the much exalted special effects were of no consequence.
Sadly, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever was not straight to video. It had a theatrical release..... I saw it.
I saw my step-son's dvd copy and just, well.... assumed.
MarkNorfolk wrote: Discounting some straight-to-video stuff - like Ecks versus Sever (although some is a guilty pleasure) the most disappointing I saw at the cinema was Avatar. Risible plot and the much exalted special effects were of no consequence.
Sadly, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever was not straight to video. It had a theatrical release..... I saw it.
.
I saw my step-son's dvd copy and just, well.... assumed.
I was the same with Hurt Locker. Saw a bootleg copy in the Middle East and thought it was a pretty decent indie-B grade DVD movie. Then I see it beating Avatar at the Oscars
I've seen plenty of crap, but that wasn't disappointing, I knew it was rubbish going in (Cineworld's subscription service has a lot to answer for - I've seen loads of awful films I would have avoided if I actually had to fork out for a ticket at the door).
Off the top of my head, Prometheus and Alien Covenant spring to mind; five hours or so spent answering questions about the Alien setting that no-one need care enough about to ask. Prometheus was full of stupid people acting out of character to drive the plot. Covenant might have been a half-decent sci fi film about AI, creating life and the responsibilities of a creator, but it was lumbered with a pointless connection to Alien.
The Terminator sequels after T2 were worse than I'd hoped (sadly that franchise started on a high and has gone downhill with every sequel); I didn't bother seeing the most recent one. And the Matrix sequels, which were just re-telling the same story that The Matrix did, but with more goth dancing and monologuing.
Batman vs Superman might have been a disappointment, but they at least had the decency to warn me with the title of the film. That's not a plot, it's two nine year olds arguing in the playground
MarkNorfolk wrote: Discounting some straight-to-video stuff - like Ecks versus Sever (although some is a guilty pleasure) the most disappointing I saw at the cinema was Avatar. Risible plot and the much exalted special effects were of no consequence.
Sadly, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever was not straight to video. It had a theatrical release..... I saw it.
.
I saw my step-son's dvd copy and just, well.... assumed.
I was the same with Hurt Locker. Saw a bootleg copy in the Middle East and thought it was a pretty decent indie-B grade DVD movie. Then I see it beating Avatar at the Oscars
Oh, gods. I had blocked out The Hurt Locker. I'm usually disappointed in any military movie as gross inconsistencies are abound, and doubly so for OIF and OEF movies as their goal was to propagandize against the war, but The Hurt Locker pushed this further into gak town than any military movie in history.
I hate that movie already, but I couldn't imagine how much more intensely I would have hated it had I watched it in country.
Rewatched this recently because I guess I remembered it being better for some reason? Holy gak this movie is bad XD Like, you'd think a film about eccentric weirdo Stonewall Jackson and the first phases of the Civil War would be exciting, but instead it's really really boring.
Not even going to into the film's questionable historical depictions and platitudes the mods won't like that. But I also kind of don't have to.
This movie is the equivalent of that guy you know who thinks being able to remember some nice quotes and turns of phrase qualifies as being intelligent. The action scenes are about the only saving grace, and they're few and far between enough they can't save everything else which feels like a really fethed up aesop that is using the worst examples to try and equivocate on the worst lessons. Every character is a cardboard cut out of the cardboard cut out versions of the historical persons. And it's so long...I've always thought the Civil War is this overblown thing people like to glorify for god awful reasons on basically all sides and this movie does everything in its power to reinforce my bias XD
EDIT: And maybe the worst part of the movie is the horrifically missed opportunity for excellence. It must have been one of the most jarring times to be alive to be alive at the start of the American Civil War. The film doesn't absolutely nothing to explore this moment, which is history to us but was life then. It just pontificates on the war like it's a stage play and treats the characters like they're actors playing out a part rather than people who lived in one of the strangest and bitterest of times.
I'd be interested in a movie like that, and shockingly I think you could be generous as feth with the Southern characters and still be less delusional about them or the war than this movie is.
Battlefield Earth. With the length of the book and the progression of the story it should never had been made into a movie. I could easily see it being at least a three season tv show.
Rewatched this recently because I guess I remembered it being better for some reason? Holy gak this movie is bad XD Like, you'd think a film about eccentric weirdo Stonewall Jackson and the first phases of the Civil War would be exciting, but instead it's really really boring.
Not even going to into the film's questionable historical depictions and platitudes the mods won't like that. But I also kind of don't have to.
This movie is the equivalent of that guy you know who thinks being able to remember some nice quotes and turns of phrase qualifies as being intelligent. The action scenes are about the only saving grace, and they're few and far between enough they can't save everything else which feels like a really fethed up aesop that is using the worst examples to try and equivocate on the worst lessons. Every character is a cardboard cut out of the cardboard cut out versions of the historical persons. And it's so long...I've always thought the Civil War is this overblown thing people like to glorify for god awful reasons on basically all sides and this movie does everything in its power to reinforce my bias XD
EDIT: And maybe the worst part of the movie is the horrifically missed opportunity for excellence. It must have been one of the most jarring times to be alive to be alive at the start of the American Civil War. The film doesn't absolutely nothing to explore this moment, which is history to us but was life then. It just pontificates on the war like it's a stage play and treats the characters like they're actors playing out a part rather than people who lived in one of the strangest and bitterest of times.
I'd be interested in a movie like that, and shockingly I think you could be generous as feth with the Southern characters and still be less delusional about them or the war than this movie is.
That sounds a bit like Oliver Stone’s “Alexander” film; I have yet to figure out how you can make the biography of one of the most influential and successful leaders in history boring, but he managed it.
Might not quite top the list as *most* disappointing, but the recent Netflix Army of the Dead was really bad - and I had really high hopes for it.
The trailer looked fun, some of the characters looked interesting (Tig Notaro as a helicopter pilot? Color me intrigued!), and so long as it tried to avoid most of the tired zombie trope that gets recycled over and over...
It fell right into the trope, face first. Little flickers of fun here and there, but mostly really pretty bad...
I watched a good bit of the movie on Netflix 2x speed just to get it over... Bummer! (and how far has Zach Synder fallen since the great, character driven remake of Dawn of the Dead? Sheesh!)
Anyone else notice the fake dead pixels with Army of the Dead? Thought it was my TV, but apparently it was an issue with one of the cameras they shot with. It's literally a small thing, but it really colored my whole impression of the quality level of the film. Like...maybe fix that first?
gorgon wrote: Anyone else notice the fake dead pixels with Army of the Dead? Thought it was my TV, but apparently it was an issue with one of the cameras they shot with. It's literally a small thing, but it really colored my whole impression of the quality level of the film. Like...maybe fix that first?
I didn't but I can't tell the difference between "normal Tv" and HD etc....
Yes, character and plot holes abound, but what sent me into a rage was:
Spoiler:
When they discovered they only had 90 minutes left instead of over 24 hours before the nuke was to be dropped - why on earth were they taking time to celebrate in the money vault, fan money, engage in moronic 'emotional' converstaions, etc. Wouldn't the atmosphere be like "Load up and get the heck out of here, NOW!"
Army of the Dead had some good acting, but it felt like the screenplay had been rewritten multiple times by different people... really all over the place.
Sometimes that's because half the film is on the cutting room floor. I know a good few films have been torn apart there - Alien 3 was massacred to make it fit theatre time frames and it suffered a lot for it. I know Sergio Leone had huge problems as wel.
Of course directors and writers can also get carried away - I think Gangs of New York had something like 8 hours cut from it.
Overread wrote: Sometimes that's because half the film is on the cutting room floor. I know a good few films have been torn apart there - Alien 3 was massacred to make it fit theatre time frames and it suffered a lot for it. I know Sergio Leone had huge problems as wel.
Of course directors and writers can also get carried away - I think Gangs of New York had something like 8 hours cut from it.
Alien 3 sounds like it was problematic from start to finish. Them completely cutting Paul McGann out of the film was pretty mad. I had read that David Fincher has practically disowned it and puts it down to him being young and inexperienced, although I don't think it's a bad film in most senses (and in many ways positively shines in terms of what came after in the franchise). But, reading some of the rejected script/storyline ideas, which featured Hicks and Newt in a far more interesting setting, I really think it was a missed opportunity.
Another vote for Us. I enjoyed Get Out but Us was just riddled with plot holes.
While thinking of book adaptations, I have to mention Mortal Engines. The trailer got me into the books, and I loved them. The movie on the other hand was an awful adaptation. While they inevitably have to cut some of the plot out due to timing, there's very, very little resemblance to the original plot or characters.
Went to see it when I was still young - and nearly walked out but I was not driving.
Deeply unpleasant violence-porn - especially in the sadistically long initial killing of Drew Barrymore - no idea why people like this film given that the so called satire is drowned out in the flood of voyeuristic sadism against all the female characters. I longed for one of them to get out a gun and blow the idiots in masks away.
The violence in scream was meant to evoke the violence in the slasher movies it was sending up, misogynistic, fetishized and gratuitous. Sounds like it worked.
Maybe it needed to be exaggerated to Robocop levels of excess in order to be proper parody rather than falling into the same mold?
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The violence in scream was meant to evoke the violence in the slasher movies it was sending up, misogynistic, fetishized and gratuitous. Sounds like it worked.
Maybe it needed to be exaggerated to Robocop levels of excess in order to be proper parody rather than falling into the same mold?
It never seemed to be sending up anything - half of an hour torturing a girl at the start for instance and glorying in it - repeated a number of times - but then the old snarky remark to somehow balance it,.....hmmm not buying it myself - personalyl I just found it to the same old torture porn "pretending" to be something else and i imagine enjoyed in exactly the same way.
Valkyrie wrote: Another vote for Us. I enjoyed Get Out but Us was just riddled with plot holes.
While thinking of book adaptations, I have to mention Mortal Engines. The trailer got me into the books, and I loved them. The movie on the other hand was an awful adaptation. While they inevitably have to cut some of the plot out due to timing, there's very, very little resemblance to the original plot or characters.
Fantastic visuals, awful movie.
For me the point at which I had no faith that the Mortal Engines movie would be anywhere near good as the books was as soon as Hester was revealed in the trailer. Her facial scars are downgraded from a missing eye, mouth permanently twisted into a sneer, and a destroyed nose into having both eyes, intact nose, mouth perfectly functional and some superficial scarring on her chin and cheek. Her appearance in the book is a visual metaphor of her soul, split in half between the good in her and the violence inflicted upon her which she has internalised into hatred of pretty much the entire world around her.
They discarded that kind of visual storytelling when adapting it into a visual medium. The whole point is that Tom sees past that outer ugliness to the true Hester inside. That doesn't work when she isn't ugly to begin with. It's basically doing the whole "ugly high schooler takes off her glasses and lets her hair down and now she is gorgeous, even though she wasn't actually ugly before because we couldn't actually cast a not stereotypically attractive actress in the lead role of our film."
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The violence in scream was meant to evoke the violence in the slasher movies it was sending up, misogynistic, fetishized and gratuitous. Sounds like it worked.
Maybe it needed to be exaggerated to Robocop levels of excess in order to be proper parody rather than falling into the same mold?
It never seemed to be sending up anything - half of an hour torturing a girl at the start for instance and glorying in it - repeated a number of times - but then the old snarky remark to somehow balance it,.....hmmm not buying it myself - personalyl I just found it to the same old torture porn "pretending" to be something else and i imagine enjoyed in exactly the same way.
Probably because you watched it after the age of Torture Porn, when it came out just before that hit, yet after Slashers were a big thing in Horror. Timing is everything with some of these films.
Just like there is no way you could capture the feel of watching the original Exorcist in theatre or the mass-hysteria/hype around the Blair Witch Project. Therefore, if you watch these films now..... it is hard to understand what made them so special.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The violence in scream was meant to evoke the violence in the slasher movies it was sending up, misogynistic, fetishized and gratuitous. Sounds like it worked.
Maybe it needed to be exaggerated to Robocop levels of excess in order to be proper parody rather than falling into the same mold?
It never seemed to be sending up anything - half of an hour torturing a girl at the start for instance and glorying in it - repeated a number of times - but then the old snarky remark to somehow balance it,.....hmmm not buying it myself - personalyl I just found it to the same old torture porn "pretending" to be something else and i imagine enjoyed in exactly the same way.
Fair enough, I guess.
As someone who never enjoyed slasher movies unironically, I enjoyed Scream as a parody of slasher movie tropes. But I can see where you’re coming from.
There’s definitely mileage for us gorehounds watching stuff in date order, with as neutral a mind as we can manage.
Best way to see how things changed and evolved over time. I mean, the movie industry or at least the rating systems are far more permissive these days. Only by watching stuff in the order it was released can you get close to recreating the dubious thrill of movies getting ever more graphic in the old Ultra V.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The violence in scream was meant to evoke the violence in the slasher movies it was sending up, misogynistic, fetishized and gratuitous. Sounds like it worked.
Maybe it needed to be exaggerated to Robocop levels of excess in order to be proper parody rather than falling into the same mold?
It never seemed to be sending up anything - half of an hour torturing a girl at the start for instance and glorying in it - repeated a number of times - but then the old snarky remark to somehow balance it,.....hmmm not buying it myself - personalyl I just found it to the same old torture porn "pretending" to be something else and i imagine enjoyed in exactly the same way.
Probably because you watched it after the age of Torture Porn, when it came out just before that hit, yet after Slashers were a big thing in Horror. Timing is everything with some of these films.
Just like there is no way you could capture the feel of watching the original Exorcist in theatre or the mass-hysteria/hype around the Blair Witch Project. Therefore, if you watch these films now..... it is hard to understand what made them so special.
The Exorcist is still just as chilling and terrifying today. Sure it may not be as shocking anymore, but the core of the story and the real, human horror of it holds up. There's a reason that the later parodies of it were focused on pea soup, heads turning around etc. and not on the desperation of a mother looking for any way to help her little girl, or a priest battling his own guilt over the loss of his mother and his subsequent crisis of faith.
The Exorcist is a character drama with supernatural elements.
Already been mentioned, but the Hobbit movies. I was a bit skeptical at first because the Hobbit is a much lower stakes story than LOTR and I thought it might not translate as well to screen. But all the actor choices seemed good. And Del Torro was doing it, and he'd done a good job with several visually interesting fantasy films.
Then Peter Jackson was doing it again. Hmmm. Well Fellowship of the Ring was really good, and maybe he'd learned from his mistakes in TTT and ROTK?
Nope. That first film is not good at all, and it's still the best of the three by a fair margin. Someone did a Tolkien edit that removes all the stuff that is not in the books, which improves the films a fair bit and makes them one fairly long film instead of three incredibly bloated ones.
The Hobbit should have been two films, not a trilogy.
First film you have Bag End and the setting up of the story (no washing up song), the Trolls, Rivendell, Misty Mountains, Eagle rescue and meeting Beorn. It ends with the Dwarves setting out on their way to Mirkwood (final shot pans up from the company riding towards the forest, the lonely mountain visible in the distance as ominous music plays, Smaug's theme).
2nd film starts with the dwarves getting lost in Mirkwood, Bilbo saving them from the spiders, them getting captured by the elves, barrels out of bond (no orcs or ridiculous slapstick), arrive in lake town and meet Bard (who is the captain of the archer militia) and the Master, they are given a heroes welcome by the people of the town (though Bard warns that they will wake Smaug and bring ruin) and sent on their way to the mountain, Bilbo meets Smaug who then burns lake town until he is taken down by Bard (using his normal bow and his last arrow, not some ballista) who is leading the defence, Bilbo finds and steals arkenstone, battle of five armies (cut it down to something the length of the battle of amon hen or moria, basically we see what Bilbo sees until he is knocked out and do not see the end of the battle but the aftermath when he comes round), Thorin's death and funeral, Bilbo leaves for home.
Lindsay Ellis did a really good multi-part breakdown of the disaster that was the production of the Hobbit, including interviews with some of the crew (first part here: https://youtu.be/uTRUQ-RKfUs).
The high level summary was massive executive interference trying to wring the project for profit and the fact that PJ had two weeks to prepare for production after Del Toro left, compared to the nearly two years he had for LoTR.
But ultimately, yes, very disappointing. I rewatch the LoTR special edition on a regular basis, it’s one of my “comfort films”. I haven’t even been able to bring myself to watch the special edition of Five Armies once since I got it, just after release.
First film you have Bag End and the setting up of the story (no washing up song), the Trolls, Rivendell, Misty Mountains, Eagle rescue and meeting Beorn. It ends with the Dwarves setting out on their way to Mirkwood (final shot pans up from the company riding towards the forest, the lonely mountain visible in the distance as ominous music plays, Smaug's theme).
2nd film starts with the dwarves getting lost in Mirkwood, Bilbo saving them from the spiders, them getting captured by the elves, barrels out of bond (no orcs or ridiculous slapstick), arrive in lake town and meet Bard (who is the captain of the archer militia) and the Master, they are given a heroes welcome by the people of the town (though Bard warns that they will wake Smaug and bring ruin) and sent on their way to the mountain, Bilbo meets Smaug who then burns lake town until he is taken down by Bard (using his normal bow and his last arrow, not some ballista) who is leading the defence, Bilbo finds and steals arkenstone, battle of five armies (cut it down to something the length of the battle of amon hen or moria, basically we see what Bilbo sees until he is knocked out and do not see the end of the battle but the aftermath when he comes round), Thorin's death and funeral, Bilbo leaves for home.
While I agree overall, the washing up song was one of the few bits of the whole sorry project that actually felt like the book.
While I agree overall, the washing up song was one of the few bits of the whole sorry project that actually felt like the book.
Riddles in the Dark was pretty damn good, it just had the bad luck of being sandwiched between the silly goblin town escape and the thematically dumb eagle escape sequence (where Bilbo proves his worth to Thorin, ending the arc of Thorin coming to appreciate Bilbo and valuing him as a member of the company in the first film of a trilogy, by tackling a massive Orc rather than, you know, his quick mind and stealthy abilities which he demonstrates in the escape from the Elves of Mirkwood).
The Hobbit trilogy suffered from the expectations created by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The he Hobbit is a much slighter story, after all; it's a childrens' story, only later crowbarred into Tolkien's great English mythology. But hardly anyone who went to see the LotR films would want to see something which should really have the tone of a Pixar film, so we got what we got - The Hobbit but grimmer, with half the appendices of LotR chucked in to pad it out.
The washing up song and the scene with the trolls were about right, the barrel-riding scene and all of the third film were way too long and should have been cut down. In the book, after all, we skip the entirety of the battle because Bilbo gets knocked out.
Also, the Battle of the Five Armies was really lacking some great stuff from the book. Where was the swarm of bats which blots out the sun, allowing the orcs to travel and fight under it unweakened?
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The violence in scream was meant to evoke the violence in the slasher movies it was sending up, misogynistic, fetishized and gratuitous. Sounds like it worked.
Maybe it needed to be exaggerated to Robocop levels of excess in order to be proper parody rather than falling into the same mold?
It never seemed to be sending up anything - half of an hour torturing a girl at the start for instance and glorying in it - repeated a number of times - but then the old snarky remark to somehow balance it,.....hmmm not buying it myself - personalyl I just found it to the same old torture porn "pretending" to be something else and i imagine enjoyed in exactly the same way.
Probably because you watched it after the age of Torture Porn, when it came out just before that hit, yet after Slashers were a big thing in Horror. Timing is everything with some of these films.
Just like there is no way you could capture the feel of watching the original Exorcist in theatre or the mass-hysteria/hype around the Blair Witch Project. Therefore, if you watch these films now..... it is hard to understand what made them so special.
Yea Army of the dead sucked. Watch it for Green Screened Tig Nataro and the opening 15 minutes where it essentially shows you the concept the movie never lives up to.
BlackoCatto wrote: Yea Army of the dead sucked. Watch it for Green Screened Tig Nataro and the opening 15 minutes where it essentially shows you the concept the movie never lives up to.
Frankly, the first 15 minutes would have been a much more interesting movie imo.
Watched it tonight, fell asleep 3 times during. What a pile of gak.
It is shockingly bad. I don't understand why the studios were able to make good films of this type in the 80s/90s, and now they apparently can't.
I'd also nominate the 2005 version of The Fog. Compared to the 1980 original by John Carpenter, it has a worse story, worse acting, and inexplicably, worse effects. A really pointless and charmless remake.
BlackoCatto wrote: Yea Army of the dead sucked. Watch it for Green Screened Tig Nataro and the opening 15 minutes where it essentially shows you the concept the movie never lives up to.
Frankly, the first 15 minutes would have been a much more interesting movie imo.
Its an odd failure in a genre full of enjoyable films that is fails to live upto - any of the follower (IMO) are much better watches - Resident Evil, Cockneys vs Zombie, Warm Bodies, Zombieland , tv shows like I Zombie also explore some of the same areas much more effectively.
For me it did not work as a action adventure or a heist film and was actually overlong and frankly dull in places. Unlike all of the previous - the characters were not especially likelable either. Shame really
The start was not bad - although how and why aircraft were being shot down escapes me....
Mr Morden wrote: The start was not bad - although how and why aircraft were being shot down escapes me....
A lot of the plot makes zero sense whatsoever, and I'm not one of those viewers who can turn his brain off readily and ignore plot holes when they keep piling up.
Spoiler:
So the underlying plot of the scheme is that some rich douche wants a sample of zombie, because doesn't someone always want to turn zombies into a bioweapon in these things? It's cliche, so whatever, except;
Someone had already made the zombie and it got out at the start of the film while being transported across the desert. This lab presumably wasn't in the Vegas city limits (there's no army base in the city and they seemed to be driving toward it for some reason), so why the feth do they need a zombie from Vegas? Maybe the original lab data was lost or destroyed to avoid a scandal, but that would be oddly smart as a thing to do to then follow up with the stupid scheme in the movie. The movie never explains it either way.
The secret guy sent into Vegas to collect the zombie bits seems to have no idea how they work. The Coyote knows more than he does. Which is weird.
Doubly weird because it seems like the plan would have had a better chance of success had they simply informed an entire team what they were doing and then simply walked them back out. The entire heist gag actually worked against the big bads actual goal, not for it. Why didn't they send in a team, grab a zombie bit, then go out beyond the barrier the zombies have never penetrated, and simply flown team out with a not junk helicopter waiting just outside? They could have been in and out in a hour and actually gotten what the stupid conspiracy wanted.
And triply weird because one scene makes it clear the military is in on this 'let's steal a zombie head or whatever' scam. So why the feth didn't they send in delta force or something? Instead, they let a third party hire a bunch of amateurs for...no reason whatsoever. It's not like they don't control the airspace or anything and could slip a team in and out.
Quadruply weird, cause they'd apparently tried the exact scam before and failed with some other dudes who I assume weren't military cause they were also trying to get the money, but that means they've tried the same scam multiple times and failed each time. And were trying again?
And my personal favorite is the completely unnecessary daughter character. Who is super concerned about a mom and her kids, so concerned that she abandons the kids as a city they're near is about to be nuked to go looking for the mom. It's bizarre how she thinks nothing of that, nor does anyone else. Who the feth is looking out for those kids while she's being self-righteously suicidal?
The entire plot of the film really stops making sense very quickly and the characters do a lot of really stupid gak. My favorite is the fist fight. I started laughing at that, because WTF how dumb are you trying to fight a zombie with your bare hands and arms?
Valkyrie wrote: Another vote for Us. I enjoyed Get Out but Us was just riddled with plot holes.
While thinking of book adaptations, I have to mention Mortal Engines. The trailer got me into the books, and I loved them. The movie on the other hand was an awful adaptation. While they inevitably have to cut some of the plot out due to timing, there's very, very little resemblance to the original plot or characters.
Fantastic visuals, awful movie.
For me the point at which I had no faith that the Mortal Engines movie would be anywhere near good as the books was as soon as Hester was revealed in the trailer. Her facial scars are downgraded from a missing eye, mouth permanently twisted into a sneer, and a destroyed nose into having both eyes, intact nose, mouth perfectly functional and some superficial scarring on her chin and cheek. Her appearance in the book is a visual metaphor of her soul, split in half between the good in her and the violence inflicted upon her which she has internalised into hatred of pretty much the entire world around her.
They discarded that kind of visual storytelling when adapting it into a visual medium. The whole point is that Tom sees past that outer ugliness to the true Hester inside. That doesn't work when she isn't ugly to begin with. It's basically doing the whole "ugly high schooler takes off her glasses and lets her hair down and now she is gorgeous, even though she wasn't actually ugly before because we couldn't actually cast a not stereotypically attractive actress in the lead role of our film."
Exactly that. They also ruined Tom's character; in the books he's presented as more of a shy weakling with no real aspirations due to his upbringing. In the movie he seems to be the typical slick cool-guy/secret savant.
Valkyrie wrote: Another vote for Us. I enjoyed Get Out but Us was just riddled with plot holes.
While thinking of book adaptations, I have to mention Mortal Engines. The trailer got me into the books, and I loved them. The movie on the other hand was an awful adaptation. While they inevitably have to cut some of the plot out due to timing, there's very, very little resemblance to the original plot or characters.
Fantastic visuals, awful movie.
For me the point at which I had no faith that the Mortal Engines movie would be anywhere near good as the books was as soon as Hester was revealed in the trailer. Her facial scars are downgraded from a missing eye, mouth permanently twisted into a sneer, and a destroyed nose into having both eyes, intact nose, mouth perfectly functional and some superficial scarring on her chin and cheek. Her appearance in the book is a visual metaphor of her soul, split in half between the good in her and the violence inflicted upon her which she has internalised into hatred of pretty much the entire world around her.
They discarded that kind of visual storytelling when adapting it into a visual medium. The whole point is that Tom sees past that outer ugliness to the true Hester inside. That doesn't work when she isn't ugly to begin with. It's basically doing the whole "ugly high schooler takes off her glasses and lets her hair down and now she is gorgeous, even though she wasn't actually ugly before because we couldn't actually cast a not stereotypically attractive actress in the lead role of our film."
Exactly that. They also ruined Tom's character; in the books he's presented as more of a shy weakling with no real aspirations due to his upbringing. In the movie he seems to be the typical slick cool-guy/secret savant.
I enjoyed the movie but had not read the books.
Sounds like the same thing as "horribly disfigured love interest" in Ready Player One....hmmm
1. If you’re not gonna do Bane, don’t use the name.
2. An American city held hostage? Really?
3. I’m sorry Master Bruce, but your knee is knackered. You’ve buggered up all the cartilage. Until you need to make that leap out the trapdoor...not long after you’ve recovered from being paralysed....
Loved the first film, the second had me hyped by the trailers and then when I saw it, it was just... bleh. At least the sound track was still damn good. But that was it's only saving grace.
Loved the first film, the second had me hyped by the trailers and then when I saw it, it was just... bleh. At least the sound track was still damn good. But that was it's only saving grace.
Hey now, it did also give us one of the best worst line deliveries ever
Loved the first film, the second had me hyped by the trailers and then when I saw it, it was just... bleh. At least the sound track was still damn good. But that was it's only saving grace.
Johnny Cage getting his neck snapped. I could watch that on infinite repeat.
The Exorcist is still just as chilling and terrifying today. Sure it may not be as shocking anymore, but the core of the story and the real, human horror of it holds up. There's a reason that the later parodies of it were focused on pea soup, heads turning around etc. and not on the desperation of a mother looking for any way to help her little girl, or a priest battling his own guilt over the loss of his mother and his subsequent crisis of faith.
The Exorcist is a character drama with supernatural elements.
The Excorcist is one of those movies which has to be watched alone, or in a small theatre with not too many people. If you watch it with a group of friends, all the commentary, eating popcorn, people getting up for drinks/bathroom breaks distract you from the minute detail which the movies appeal is based on.
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AndrewGPaul wrote: The Hobbit trilogy suffered from the expectations created by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The he Hobbit is a much slighter story, after all; it's a childrens' story, only later crowbarred into Tolkien's great English mythology. But hardly anyone who went to see the LotR films would want to see something which should really have the tone of a Pixar film, so we got what we got - The Hobbit but grimmer, with half the appendices of LotR chucked in to pad it out.
The washing up song and the scene with the trolls were about right, the barrel-riding scene and all of the third film were way too long and should have been cut down. In the book, after all, we skip the entirety of the battle because Bilbo gets knocked out.
As much as I think Jackson is an overrated director, the studios premise that Hobbit should out-epic the LotR films (even though source material is less than 1/3 of LotR with much more childish tone) set the whole thing up for inevitable failure.
Loved the first film, the second had me hyped by the trailers and then when I saw it, it was just... bleh. At least the sound track was still damn good. But that was it's only saving grace.
Hey now, it did also give us one of the best worst line deliveries ever
There are people here who may never have seen that movie, and never had planned to. People who could have died safe from ever having seen that part of the movie. Now thanks to you some people who could otherwise4 have died without ever experiencing that scene have seen it.
Loved the first film, the second had me hyped by the trailers and then when I saw it, it was just... bleh. At least the sound track was still damn good. But that was it's only saving grace.
Hey now, it did also give us one of the best worst line deliveries ever
I wonder if The Hobbit trilogy failure is due mainly from its being based on a stellar piece of literature? Yes, I did read the Hobbit super long ago, so only recalled minor plot points. Sure, the movies had bloated and meaningless parts added to fluff it up.
But, my main questions are: If you did not read the books, would you have thought the films as big a failure as you do? What does your buddy think of them, if he never read the book? Aren't a good percentage of the hated films here based on book where a vivid description and story have been drawn and expectations set?
Army of the Dead, which beyond a few good gore fest scenes, was total gak and I had zero expectation going in with no book to reference.
Sometimes I wonder if the writer and director are on the same page in some movies, but when it is the same medicore-talent person both writing and directing? God save us all...
No, I don't think expectation has anything to do with it. I'm not a huge fan of the book or anything, but I found that first film miserably dull. There's more padding than fun and its just not a tale with enough depth for that kind of runtime.
LunarSol wrote: No, I don't think expectation has anything to do with it. I'm not a huge fan of the book or anything, but I found that first film miserably dull. There's more padding than fun and its just not a tale with enough depth for that kind of runtime.
Definitely this. Each of the three films has maybe an hour's worth of plot progression. It could have been one long movie, and probably would have been better for it.
LunarSol wrote: No, I don't think expectation has anything to do with it. I'm not a huge fan of the book or anything, but I found that first film miserably dull. There's more padding than fun and its just not a tale with enough depth for that kind of runtime.
Definitely this. Each of the three films has maybe an hour's worth of plot progression. It could have been one long movie, and probably would have been better for it.
Just reading the last post and seeing this? I knew it was about the Hobbit.
The films were indeed gak. Lots of filler, lots of unnecessary CGI and a plot that went a-wandering.
It could have been two films, maybe, but would have needed better arcs even then. One long would've been pretty rough as well.
The big mistake is they basically went the opposite direction of the book. Instead of Bilbo becoming more relevant as the story went on and seeing him grow, he became less and faded out of a fairly pointless, no-stakes regional conflict.
I think one issue was that they changed things in Lord of the Rings an then decided that they had to link Lord of the Rings to The Hobbit. So suddenly Legolas has to appear, suddenly themes and ideas that were changed for one film have to slip into the other.
I also feel that things like the elf-dwarf romance were thrown in because they lose their path and started moving from telling the story in the book to filling the quota of statistical components a "film must include".
I think many changes were accepted in Lord of the Rings because they captured the feel of Middle Earth and because many big fans accept that its a huge story and that changing things helps it along. Whilst The Fellowship is quite a slow story at the start, it actually covers quite a significant period of time. Whilst there isn't as much combat and action there's a lot that happens during the opening pages.
Meanwhile The Hobbit is a much smaller story, its less grand, its less ambitious; its a simple pure adventure. I agree it could more likely cut down to two long films instead of three.
I agree, I saw the first hobbit movie and was really excited for the next two, it fit reasonably well with the book, and by making it 3 movies you can really make good on the story. The next two movies were a disappointed 'why did I even get my hopes up?'
I actually enjoyed how it was linked to the lord of the rings, it builds foreboding as a prequil should. I just didn't all the slowed stuff they put in like Thorin's nemisis. Wargs and goblins don't need an excuse to hunt dwarves and hobbits.
MDSW wrote: I wonder if The Hobbit trilogy failure is due mainly from its being based on a stellar piece of literature? Yes, I did read the Hobbit super long ago, so only recalled minor plot points. Sure, the movies had bloated and meaningless parts added to fluff it up.
But, my main questions are: If you did not read the books, would you have thought the films as big a failure as you do? What does your buddy think of them, if he never read the book? Aren't a good percentage of the hated films here based on book where a vivid description and story have been drawn and expectations set?
Definitely some of my disappointment is that, but even objectively (sic) the movies have plenty of very concrete issues. Tonally they're a mess: in some ways they're gritty, but many of the fight and action scenes are very cartoony (makes sense I guess, they were animation) and completely take the viewer out of the 'this is epic and serious' mindset which LotR managed to convey. Also they are absurdly LONG which kills the tension of the scenes and they just become boring (admittably, Jackson is hardly only director guilty of this). One of the best scenes of third movie is the climatic scene where Thorin takes Azog out with a rock. Great way to resolve a fight - but it doesn't end there but continues for no obvious reason. Also, the attempts for comedic characters - Radagast and that Laketown Master's toady - were just plain awful. Gee, that guy has bird poop and other one dresses like an old woman! Feel the hilarity! I was seriously thinking during watching the movies "I hope somebody replaces these with Jar-Jar in future edits to make it more watchable".
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Overread wrote: I think one issue was that they changed things in Lord of the Rings an then decided that they had to link Lord of the Rings to The Hobbit. So suddenly Legolas has to appear, suddenly themes and ideas that were changed for one film have to slip into the other.
I also feel that things like the elf-dwarf romance were thrown in because they lose their path and started moving from telling the story in the book to filling the quota of statistical components a "film must include".
Yeah, The Hobbit trilogy should have been named "LotR: Rise of Legolas" instead...
I don't actually mind Legolas showing up (makes sense he would and I presume he actually was present during the events of the book) but he is given major role simply because he's important due to LotR, not because of his participation has some relevance for the main story. And Tauriel is extremely fan-fictionish because somebody needed a quota box ticked and wrote a tacked-on character with tacked-on scenes to underline how cool and awesome she is.
I didn;t mind the hobbit, it was a childrens book and I read LOTR first and so was underwhelmed when I read it. It still felt like a kids film for the most part.
However I would agree its hugely overlong at three films - one would have been fine.
I liked Tauriel (not her crush on the most undwarf like dwarf ever) and Legolas..... and really enjoyed Gladriel kicking Saurons ass
I’d waited so long for that film. Ever since the Dark Horse Aliens comic said it was being worked on (so maybe 1993?)
And what did we get? Idiot Predators With No Awareness Of Their Surroundings.
The humans being idiots? Par for the course mate. That’s fine. But the Predators? Nah man. Not happy.
Agreed 100 (200?) percent.
I think if you followed the build-up to the release of this films all of the signs were there that it was going to be crap. The PG rating, interviews with Paul WS Anderson (who had an atrocious track record at the time). I went into the cinema fully expecting it to be gak, but it still managed to lower the bar
Like you say it was the disappointment in terms of what could have been done based on the comic book. Most people were hoping I think for the plot line of Noguchi taking on the Aliens and Predators on the farming world (set in the Aliens timeline) - which at least had an explanation for why the Predators were crap and not particularly effective fighters, in that they were aspiring hunters who had lost their trainer/head honcho.
Lets face it after Alien 2 and Predator 2 both franchises suffered. Alien 3 was a decent story but got torn apart in the cutting room and took 2 or 3 special edition releases (and some old stock footage) to get back together.
Meanwhile Alien 4 was honestly well made, if a bit more fan-service at some levels and some of the science was a bit bungled, but it was decent.
After that its been a train wreck.
AVP made almost no sense "Oh we are going to investigate these under-ice ruins" "oh wait something has blasted a laser hole right where we were going to spend months drilling; eh lets just head down there anyway".
Honestly they feel like they've no idea what to do with the alien franchise and for some reason avoid using any of the storylines that the comics established. There's several "aliens invade world" and "aliens on ship" through to full blown World War Aliens and such storylines in there which are nicely put together and would have been great as horror or action flick films.
Alien and Aliens worked because they showed the gribblies off in very different ways (single, stealthy Hunter, endless swarm of voracious killers). They kinda support the other in that way.
Lone Alien vs bloke with gun = bloke probably wins. Any variation thereon (others than Lone Alien vs lots of blokes with guns) = Aliens win.
Predator 2 didn’t mess with the core formula, but did make good use of the change in scenery. Predators likewise was a decent stab at not reinventing that particular wheel. It could’ve done without the Super Predator I suppose. Just a rival hunting party would’ve sufficed.
The Predator, AvP, AvP 2, Prometheus and Covenant are just plain old messy.
I’d say i probably enjoyed AvP2 the most, if only because seeing both species tearing through a small town was something new on the big screen.
But both gribblies rely on surprise, and not showing more than is necessary. There’s only so much you can do with that, unless it’s “This time, instead of a face, it’s got four arses. And a telescopic leg, and a terrible fear of stamps”. Which is kinda what The Predator did.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Though….having said that…….
Disney now own Alien. And Predator I think.
Both could do with the TV Rescue of Disney+. Neither requires a particularly high budget, and I think a limited serial format could work nicely. Certainly we’ve seen the Genuine Disney Magic on Mando, WandaVision, FalconSoldier and Loki, where a longer, episodic run time has been adopted beautifully.
MovieBob sums up the problem with Aliens pretty well. The first movie gives you a fantastic slash flick in space and the sequel asks what if there were more of them and one was bigger. There's not really anything more to do with them unless you try to add some weird quirk to them that is somewhat at odds with the way they've been portrayed.
I think the only thing that could be neat with them is to have a movie where some rebels seem to succeed in winning their freedom only to start getting picked off while celebrating that night. Do the horror movie, but when you get down to the last survivor, have them press a button and either kill the xenomorphs or otherwise make them docile and call in for retrieval to show how Weyland-Yutani have succeeded in weaponizing them.
What they always shoudl have done is make it more of an anthology series. Here's a new horrifying species that can kill you out there. A lot of the appeal of the first movies is learning how the monster functions and that's essentially lost as soon as everyone knows the rules. That's kind of the issue with Predator too, but also while they work together well. Just make a franchise of horror monsters, rather than getting stuck on a specific species.
LunarSol wrote: MovieBob sums up the problem with Aliens pretty well. The first movie gives you a fantastic slash flick in space and the sequel asks what if there were more of them and one was bigger. There's not really anything more to do with them unless you try to add some weird quirk to them that is somewhat at odds with the way they've been portrayed.
I think the only thing that could be neat with them is to have a movie where some rebels seem to succeed in winning their freedom only to start getting picked off while celebrating that night. Do the horror movie, but when you get down to the last survivor, have them press a button and either kill the xenomorphs or otherwise make them docile and call in for retrieval to show how Weyland-Yutani have succeeded in weaponizing them.
What they always shoudl have done is make it more of an anthology series. Here's a new horrifying species that can kill you out there. A lot of the appeal of the first movies is learning how the monster functions and that's essentially lost as soon as everyone knows the rules. That's kind of the issue with Predator too, but also while they work together well. Just make a franchise of horror monsters, rather than getting stuck on a specific species.
True, although you could argue a lot of the supplementary material (books, comics) had far more interesting storylines than anything done in the films. As Overread mentioned, anything like Earth Hive or Nightmare Asylum would have made great films.
I recently listened to the original Alien 3 script/story on Audible (which is well worth a listen if you haven't yet heard it) and that expands on how the Alien operates, drawing in some of the 'bio weapon' bits of Prometheus. As you've said there, that would have been something new and a different way to shock an audience that already knew what to expect. But, instead they played it safe with the David Fincher Alien 3 storyline version which was really just a lesser version of the first film.
I actually don't mind Alien Resurrection as it's just mad, and I find it funny that they gave it to the director of City of Lost Children, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, to film. It's certainly got some interesting sequences and shots and I think it a hell of a lot more entertaining than Alien 3. But, it doesn't really feel like it belongs with the rest of the franchise.
I feel that Resurrection did a lot with the franchise that fans, esp of the time, sort of wanted to see with the Alien. By that time we knew what it was, chest bursting and all that wasn't anywhere near the same shock value. What people were keen on was seeing a touch more action and energy and perhaps more threat from the Aliens and Resurrection kind of gave that to us. It introduced ideas like them using their acid blood in a more active way and such.
Even little things like having an acid spray attack and swimming underwater. For its time using a great mix of CGI and practical effects.
We also get a little bit of the Giger sexualised side, though its mostly contained within the end of the film when Riply is being carried to the nest. Again its something that is in the background of the art and such, but which rarely (if I think never?) comes through again.
BlackoCatto wrote: Yea Army of the dead sucked. Watch it for Green Screened Tig Nataro and the opening 15 minutes where it essentially shows you the concept the movie never lives up to.
Oh, that reminds me, the Dwayne Johnson Hercules.
Trailer: Hercules fighting cool giant monsters.
First 2 minutes: Hercules fighting cool giant monsters in a flashback about the wildly exaggerated legends told about him.
Rest of Movie: Low budget fantasy schlock that reads like a rejected episode of the Kevin Sorbo Hercules.
BlackoCatto wrote: Yea Army of the dead sucked. Watch it for Green Screened Tig Nataro and the opening 15 minutes where it essentially shows you the concept the movie never lives up to.
Oh, that reminds me, the Dwayne Johnson Hercules.
Trailer: Hercules fighting cool giant monsters.
First 2 minutes: Hercules fighting cool giant monsters in a flashback about the wildly exaggerated legends told about him.
Rest of Movie: Low budget fantasy schlock that reads like a rejected episode of the Kevin Sorbo Hercules.
I really enjoyed the film, but I totally get that it was uttery mis-sold..... that said it doesn't deserve the comparison to the Sorbo bs.
It's a bit like The Vvitch, which was misadvertised as a jump scare horror, based on one or two scenes, but the film was more of an slow burn atmosphereic horror.
The biggest let down I had was the Miami Vice remake. I'd been on a streak of about 7 or 8 years of only picking good movies. And this remake was by Michael Mann, who was behind the original series (which while it had dated a lot, was pretty ground breaking for the time). And as a director Mann had come off Heat, The Insider, Ali and Collateral. There was no way this could miss, especially when the early word was how he'd pushed the digital film techniques used in Collateral to a whole other level.
I was travelling at the time so I didn't catch any of the reviews, and I had to do a big sell my travelling friends, because who goes half way around the world to go sit in a multiplex? Can do that at home. But this was different, because this guy made Heat and Collateral, two of the great action movies.
Yeah, I had some explaining to do. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx were incredibly bad, mumbling their way through a by the numbers plot, and the action scenes that had been so visceral in previous Mann films were incredibly flat in a way I still can't understand. The digital cinematography did look great in some scenes, but other times looked honestly kind of amateur.
Yeah, so not only did I have to admit I screwed up after the movie, it also broke my streak of picking only good movies, and set my record of picking films on a long, steady decline. These days I don't think I'm any better than guesswork in knowing if a film will be any good. And its all because of Miami Vice.
MDSW wrote: I wonder if The Hobbit trilogy failure is due mainly from its being based on a stellar piece of literature? Yes, I did read the Hobbit super long ago, so only recalled minor plot points. Sure, the movies had bloated and meaningless parts added to fluff it up.
But, my main questions are: If you did not read the books, would you have thought the films as big a failure as you do? What does your buddy think of them, if he never read the book? Aren't a good percentage of the hated films here based on book where a vivid description and story have been drawn and expectations set?
Whatever love there was for the Hobbit, you could multiply it by 100 for the Lord of the Rings. But the film versions there were mostly loved because the film versions were very well done. Sure, there are people who insist they were also bad because whatever, but that's just because this is the internet. But the Hobbit films were disliked by vastly more people, despite being on the less loved book, because they were awfully executed. It wasn't even stretching it out to three films, which could potentially have worked given the other story elements they brought in, but the execution of what they put on screen. Just compare the center piece battles in the second movie of each trilogy. Helm's Deep vs the the escape from the goblins. The first is one of the classic battles of cinema. It tells a clear story with real, coherent geography, uruk hai slowly moving through each layer of defense, while the heroes undertake a series of actions to delay them. Then the goblin battle is just a series of CGI flashes, with the heroes barreling forward, with no plan or clear end goal, with physics changing second by second to allow each CGI spectacle.
I think I quite like Miami Vice. But probably because I never watched the TV series, and mostly I like the feel of it - it looks and sounds good, which papers over the story being a bit thin and silly. But it's definitely not up there with Heat.
AndrewGPaul wrote: I think I quite like Miami Vice. But probably because I never watched the TV series, and mostly I like the feel of it - it looks and sounds good, which papers over the story being a bit thin and silly. But it's definitely not up there with Heat.
Heh. I remember the lead up publicity. Mann declared "this is not a nostalgia trip", which pretty much killed my interest in seeing the movie version.
The Dark Knight Rises, even when not comparing its big brother The Dark Knight, it's bad. With some terrible "plot-driven" logic for the characters (sending all the police force into the sewers, how they stand around letting the villain do their stupid monologue, while a nuclear bomb is ticking down to destroy everything) And probably one of the more controversial movies Thor: Ragnarok. Too much humour, or bathos, even for a Marvel movie, a meandering, overly segregated plot, or plotlines, and yet again yet another boring, two-dimensional villain, who was also WAY, way too OP. Just...bad in my eyes.
I can't say whether the LoTR or Hobbit movies are disappointing. I have yet to stay awake long enough for any of them to ascertain this.
It's not a running-time, thing - I barely make 30 minutes in before nodding off. It's the slow, ponderous plodding nature of a plot that takes forever to get anywhere.
Avengers infinity war was pretty underwhelming and almost as bad as Snyder's cut of Justice League.
Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins - after a trailer I had so big expectations for this, and my dissapointment was even bigger. Bad scenario full of holes, stupid characters acting like morons, fight scenes filmed like with a phone from a 2 metres, and I will not even start about certain animals and a magic rock. Compared to this Wonder Woman 1984 is a masterpiece. No matter if you care about G.I.Joe or not, save your money and skip this garbage.
My bad. Thanks. 
