So in the modern day, things get a bit, well, I’ll call it odd. Every film seems to attract loonies off all kinds. Those that support. Those that detract,
But if I may, I’d like us all to look back, for the purposes of this thread, and nominate......
A) A Film one actually enjoyed.
B) That, to the best of your knowledge nobody actively dislikes.
Why the italics? Because there’s a difference between not enjoying a given film, and actually disliking it.
As ever, I’ll kick off. With a bit of low hanging fruit.
Sister Act.
I defy anyone to not enjoy this movie on some level. And I double defy anyone to actually say it’s a poop film. Overall. It’s an excellent seat filler, which somehow went beyond its initial remit. It’s fun. It’s funny. It’s gentle. None of its jokes out past their welcome.
It’s utterly uncontroversial, despite its religious ties. It’s gentle. And I feel it has a universal morality to it.
Forest’s genuine innocence as he navigates the tumultuous 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Sweet, and sorrowful. To say that, as a protagonist, he is an unlikely hero would be a serious understatement.
(In my humble opinion, the best movie I’ve seen. I find the era to be endlessly fascinating. The story is deep and compelling without being overtly preachy. So much shown and implied, without being said aloud. Jenny’s throwing of stones at her old home is heartbreakingly *real*. The development of “side” characters as well as the main character is interesting to me. The world is full of horror, yet Forest is blissfully unaware, like a modern-day Don Quixote, and overcomes these obstacles... unlike the unfortunate Knight-Errant.)
beside the two movies mentionned above, I would suggest Fury Road, the latest Mad Max movie. It was a very well done action movie with suprisingly good stunt work, costumes and very good acting. Probably one of the best movie of the action/adventure genre.
I defy anyone to not enjoy this movie on some level. .
Nope, I hate it.
Whoopi Goldburg gives me the irrits when she's trying to be funny, and I hate the trainwreck-style 'protagonist in a stupid situation where they will inevitably be caught out in some catastrophic way' premise in just about any movie in which it is used.
Plenty of movie critics at least actively disliked Star Wars. But then, plenty of movie critics of the '70s and '80s just actively disliked any sci fi movie on general principle, because they were sci fi.
Funnily enough, I hated Space Balls the first time I saw it. Re-watched it with my wife (then-girlfriend) some years later and thoroughly enjoyed it. I take my comedy much less seriously as an adult than I did as a teenager, apparently.
I mean, are we putting aside movies in which people have no interest due to genre? I assume we're going for "movies that the TARGET audience liked or loved...almost without exception", etc?
I'd say Last of the Mohicans is arguably a perfect film, but if you've zero interest in the French and Indian War etc...then you might dislike it solely on that fact.
I've known quite a few people who hate Princes Bride, for a wide variety of reasons.
And personally, I absolutely hate 'A Christmas Story.' Out of all the 'mainstream movies' in the world, I probably hate it the most.
I don't want those people to exist, let alone be 'normal'
Another that I enjoy considerably more as an adult, although I didn't dislike it as much on first (teen) viewing as Space Balls...
On a somewhat related note, while I'm not at all sure it would go into the 'nobody hates it' category, the Three Amigos is a movie that I am rather surprised to enjoy... I can't stand Chevy Chase, Martin Short or Steve Martin, and it's that trainwreck silly-situation-premise that I normally hate, but somehow this movie just worked.
Only time I've ever heard anyone talking about it was hearty recommendations to watch it immediately or as a contender in a "top movies of all time" debate.
I don't get people who hate Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I mean, I get people who are sick of the memes and just don't enjoy it being brought up when it isn't relevant, but I don't get how anyone can't enjoy it on some level.
Elbows wrote: I'd say Last of the Mohicans is arguably a perfect film, but if you've zero interest in the French and Indian War etc...then you might dislike it solely on that fact.
I used to love the movie, but today, it as lost some of its charm due to its numerous anachronism.
Grimskul wrote: I would say Saving Private Ryan, Green Mile, the first Toy Story, Terminator 2, and personally Kung Fu Hustle.
I can't watch Saving Private Ryan. I get that it's an impressive piece of cinematography, but I can't enjoy it on any level. I watch movies for escape, so getting too carried away with the realism in a movie based in an actual, horrific war just winds up being stomach-churning.
Anyone not on the Gump train should have had parents more interested in getting them into standard schooling.
The Princess Bride is another near-perfect movie. Don't like it? Probably too much time on the soul sucking machine.
Boondock Saints... has not aged well. I plan to show it to my kids when they're older, in a "This sort of thing used to be socially accepted, but now it's not..." I rewatched last year-ish and it's very much an angry white man sort of movie. Which isn't intended to be triggering, just... I'm in a better place now then I was back then, and now it's got some parts that are hard to watch.
Shawshank is on my top 5 movies that if I accidentally see it playing, I have to finish watching. Because honestly, how often do you look at a man's shoes? I need to know.
Grimskul wrote: I would say Saving Private Ryan, Green Mile, the first Toy Story, Terminator 2, and personally Kung Fu Hustle.
I despiseToy Story. I hate that it has sequels. The main characters are all SOOOOOO irritating. I'd probably hate Kung Fu Hustle, but I've only seen trailers.
Last of the Mohicans is a good call. I can imagine some "White Man Saviour" issues if it came out today though.
Spirited Away is wonderful. I can imagine someone not liking it, but to actively dislike it would make you the worst human being who ever lived.
Similarly, anyone who does not love the original Karate Kid is dead inside. To actually dislike it I think you'd need to be pure evil. The sequels, not so great, sure. The remake was cringe, agreed. But the original ruled. And Cobra Kai is cheesy as hell, but I love that too.
There are too many different people in the world for there to be a "Universally" loved film. Some people hate things simply because other people like them!
Elf, some folks may tell you chrimbly begins when Gruber falls off Nakatomi but really its when you watch this film in season
I hate Will Ferrell with a fiery passion. Any movie where he is the lead is a dumpster fire in my eyes. Elf received the same hate only because of the actor.
My wife made us turn off Blues Brothers before the halfway mark. She has no patience for musical comedies like that or This Is Spinal Tap. She walked out of A Mighty Wind.
Similarly, anyone who does not love the original Karate Kid is dead inside. To actually dislike it I think you'd need to be pure evil. The sequels, not so great, sure. The remake was cringe, agreed. But the original ruled. And Cobra Kai is cheesy as hell, but I love that too.
You're the first person I've seen praise that movie in any regard. Even as a kid I could see the ordered list of Hollywood tropes and cliches that made up every single aspect of that movie. It was a insipid, unimaginative checklist, with a dull cast of characters.
The Koala Kai Quickbooks commercials are possibly the only amusing thing to spawn out of that film, and it isn't that amusing;
warspawned wrote:LOTR
I'd make an exception for Two Towers, for the absurdist melodrama of fake character 'deaths' and completely missing the point of Faramir.
Impossible to not like this movie unless you just don't like dinosaurs. In which case...there is just no pleasing you is there?
This was a book before it was a movie...so there is actually quite a strong contingent of hatred out there.
Dang those book readers! Ehh - they probably changed a bunch of stuff around so they didn't get their nostalgic feels out of it. As a piece of cinema though how could you not actually like it? The scenes are stunning - even compared to what we can do today with CGI. The music is spectacular. Even the comedic relief is perfect.
Impossible to not like this movie unless you just don't like dinosaurs. In which case...there is just no pleasing you is there?
This was a book before it was a movie...so there is actually quite a strong contingent of hatred out there.
Dang those book readers! Ehh - they probably changed a bunch of stuff around so they didn't get their nostalgic feels out of it. As a piece of cinema though how could you not actually like it? The scenes are stunning - even compared to what we can do today with CGI. The music is spectacular. Even the comedic relief is perfect.
They are indeed quite different. I loved the book when I was a child, but like a lot of Crichton’s works it aged pretty poorly in my opinion. The movie, on the other hand, didn’t wow me when it came out, yet aged very well. It is one of the movies I find batter than the book it’s based on, but I doubt that is a common opinion.
I'm going to restate the OP's premise to be clearer. Movies that are both widely enjoyed, and have very few vocal detractors, based on the specifics of the movie. So, no whole scale elimination of genres or tropes.
Princess Bride: I don't get why people love it, but it's a fine movie with appeal to both kids and adults. There are some quite good aspects.
Jurassic Park: It's aged well (even the CGI), while action packed, it's not too intense.
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Kroem wrote: Maybe Back To The Future? I can't imagine someone disliking that one!
It's been cited as one of the greatest screenplays ever written, for what it's worth. I'm sure there are people that aren't wild about it, but the actual haters have to be pretty few.
Kroem wrote: Maybe Back To The Future? I can't imagine someone disliking that one!
Ooh, pick me!
I never liked Michael J Fox. Not sure why, I just found him intensely irritating, up until his appearance in Boston Legal, where I was surprised by quite liking his character.
I hate Will Ferrell with a fiery passion. Any movie where he is the lead is a dumpster fire in my eyes. Elf received the same hate only because of the actor.
I think Elf was the reason I thought I disliked Will Farrell, but then I enjoyed the hell out of Anchorman.
I think we can discount people who rationally or irrationally dislike a movie because of a specific actor. That's obviously not a fair judgment of an actual film.
I think again, we need to consider only the "target" audience. I can imagine any number of 60-70 year olds hating everything that's released today because they're not the target audience, etc. I do think this is an issue with people reviewing films in general. There's the constant assumption that if you don't like a film, it's a bad film - which is erroneous.
See any amazon review of a violent movie, and you'll see one and two star reviews "This movie was too bloody and gory!". It's essentially poor form to rate the film a one or a two because of something you dislike subjectively. I can watch a film, dislike it, but appreciate that it was beautifully filmed, well written, had a consistent plot, excellent character arcs, etc. Likewise I can thoroughly enjoy a film which is a friggin' mess...containing none of those elements because it simply brings me joy on another level. Conflating the two is often the issue..."I like this weird, quirky, poorly filmed movie...thus it is an excellent movie". No. An honest appraisal of a film would take into account more than a simple opinion. It's why I generally ignore movie rating numbers when I pick a movie to watch.
insaniak wrote:I think Elf was the reason I thought I disliked Will Farrell, but then I enjoyed the hell out of Anchorman.
whereas I really don't like Anchorman, maybe due to besides maybe Sir Trevor we don't have news celebs this side of the pond so maybe I didn't quite get the parody
Elbows wrote: I think we can discount people who rationally or irrationally dislike a movie because of a specific actor. That's obviously not a fair judgment of an actual film..
Given how big an impact the choice of actor can have on a film, I'm not sure that's true. How much better would Michael Bay's decision to focus on the 'human' story in Transformers have worked if Shia LaBeouf's character wasn't so intensely irritating? In that particular case, the draw of the titular characters was still big enough for those movies to succeed despite the flaws, but a movie can be made or broken on how well the protagonist connects with the audience.
Then again, maybe 'Movies that could have been better with a different cast' would be a good topic for a different thread...
Nothing is going to be universally liked. Somewhere out there is somebody who thinks three day weekends are a bummer.
So far in this thread people have expressed a dislike for Whoopi Goldberg (an EGOT winner) and Michael J Fox (a widely love actor with plenty of hardware). I think that it’s fine not to care for them, but it’s also getting into the sort of weeds that this exercise needs to avoid.
Polonius wrote: Nothing is going to be universally liked. Somewhere out there is somebody who thinks three day weekends are a bummer.
So far in this thread people have expressed a dislike for Whoopi Goldberg (an EGOT winner) and Michael J Fox (a widely love actor with plenty of hardware). I think that it’s fine not to care for them, but it’s also getting into the sort of weeds that this exercise needs to avoid.
There is a very definite difference between 'Is it good?' and 'Do you like it?'
I can acknowledge that someone is a fantastic actor without personally liking their work. But yes, I'll take my odd actor quibbles over here instead...
Kroem wrote: Maybe Back To The Future? I can't imagine someone disliking that one!
Ooh, pick me!
I never liked Michael J Fox. Not sure why, I just found him intensely irritating, up until his appearance in Boston Legal, where I was surprised by quite liking his character.
Damn, I thought I had a winner with that one I get it though, I have an irrational dislike for Eddie Redmayne and David Tennant because I disliked the first characters I saw them portray!
OK what about The Brave Little Toaster? That's imune to people disliking the actors because it's a cartoon!
If we're including animation, My Neighbour Totoro is difficult to find anything to dislike. And that opinion holds after having watched it at least 47 billion times with my eldest daughter...
Yeah, I'd throw Disney films out there, as a whole. They have a formula that is squarely targeted at the lowest common denominator, and it is hard to deny their appeal. If the threshold for actively dislike is changing the channel when it comes on, most will just shrug, ignore it and sing along to the hit when it comes. Ironically, of course! But they still know the words.
Except by the crowd to whom dropping of Bombadil is huge crime and sin ;-)
Back in the mid 90s when I first read LOTR my first thought when we encountered Bombadil was "if they ever do a movie of this book this scene is getting dropped"
Except by the crowd to whom dropping of Bombadil is huge crime and sin ;-)
Back in the mid 90s when I first read LOTR my first thought when we encountered Bombadil was "if they ever do a movie of this book this scene is getting dropped"
Movies and books are different. I get that changes have to be made with pacing, and to reduce the number of characters, etc. I think the Old Woods and barrow downs bits in the book help set up Fanghorn and the confrontation with the witch king, but when something needs to hit the cutting room floor, they are the low hanging fruit. Faramir bothers me, as he swaps some aspects with Borormir, and not in his favor. But from a flow POV, i get when they did to move things back to Osgiliath.
Honestly, a 100% true shooting of the books would be unwatchable. What we got is probably the best possible outcome. Sure, there are calls I would have made differently, and a little nerd rage. But not me in the director’s chair.
I periodically like to show The Boy some classics. It gives you an interesting perspective to see things through another’s eyes. Movies are just not paced the same these days. He thought the Blues Brothers was OK. Didn’t care much for the original Godzilla, thought To Kill a Mockingbird was boring. I want to expose him to some kurosawa films, but don’t know if he could make it through them. Similarly, I just watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly last night. Nearly 3 hours. Classic, but I can just see The Boy pulling his phone out halfway though.
I’ll add Clue to the list. Great movie, one of my favorite comedies. I also am a huge fan of Mel Brooks films, but get that some might find them offensive.
The Ultramarines movie! How can anyone dislike that?! Jokes, obviously (though I enjoy having it on in the background while playing 40k at home).
I don’t think I met anyone who disliked Moana, as far as I know, though they have mentioned elements or scenes they didn't like.
I think the problem with this ‘game’ is you have to exclude anything even slightly ‘scary’ or ‘gross’, as others have said that can be off putting, but if we stick to the intended audience for a movie then it isn’t really an example of a movie that is undislikable.
The Disney route is probably the way to the solution. Include nothing too disagreeable. But then someone might dislike them for being bland (and I know many are disliked by some for following ‘damsel in distress’).
nareik wrote: The Ultramarines movie! How can anyone dislike that?! Jokes, obviously (though I enjoy having it on in the background while playing 40k at home).
I don’t think I met anyone who disliked Moana, as far as I know, though they have mentioned elements or scenes they didn't like.
I think the problem with this ‘game’ is you have to exclude anything even slightly ‘scary’ or ‘gross’, as others have said that can be off putting, but if we stick to the intended audience for a movie then it isn’t really an example of a movie that is undislikable.
The Disney route is probably the way to the solution. Include nothing too disagreeable. But then someone might dislike them for being bland (and I know many are disliked by some for following ‘damsel in distress’).
Maybe Shrek?!
Definitely not Shrek.
Too much toilet humor, idiot balls and a disempowering moral: for the ugly guy to get the girl, she has to be ugly too.
I think you may have missed the moral of the story, being that appearances don’t matter, it’s what’s inside that counts...
Taking a different approach, a movie that was immune to dislike was Dogma. The creators gleefully joined the protests! And the movie was a success and is still one of my 5 movies that suck me in, regardless of what I’m up to.
I acknowledge that isn’t the spirit of the game... but it was immune to the effects of dislike.
greatbigtree wrote: I think you may have missed the moral of the story, being that appearances don’t matter, it’s what’s inside that counts...
)
I missed it because it isn't the moral. The movie is not subtle about it, and the sequels hammer down the same point- they can only be together if they're both hideous. If appearances didn't matter, they'd both end up in their birth shapes and still have an ogre/human romance.
If the inside counts, they're still out of luck- Shrek is just as much an offensive jerk as prince mcshorty, they just play it for laughs instead. He slowly develops personal loyalty (to donkey and Fiona), but his main motivation is to get rid of the other critters. And frankly both Shrek and Fiona are pretty ugly on the inside as well. Their 'courting behavior 'on the way back from the castle mostly involves animal abuse and thoughtless destruction. But it's ok, because again, played for laughs.
By contrast the Prince is jerk, but even before that reveal, the movie takes it as fact that he's inherently inferior because he's short, and goes back to that well repeatedly. So in Shrek's world, appearances matter a lot.
Shrek's major plot point in the follow-up films center of the fact that since Fiona can be beautiful, she's better off without him.
Also, despite Shrek ostensibly being a comedy, its humor was really bland and uninteresting, at least to me. I found it just kinda forgettable. Not offensive, but kinda boring..
Clue is a simply marvelous movie. However, a lot of its humour is lost on...some people. Much in the way that several of my college roommates didn't understand the humour in Dr. Strangelove, etc. While I doubt many if any people have watched Clue and hated it, I think it's Neil Simon-esque style of writing may not be everyone's cup of tea.
That being said...damn I absolutely adore that movie. I think it's the unsung best of Tim Curry.
Whilst I’m always happy to be proven wrong through discourse (round of applause for everyone keeping it civil!). Pretty sure I asked the wrong question!
Whilst I’m always happy to be proven wrong through discourse (round of applause for everyone keeping it civil!). Pretty sure I asked the wrong question!
But hey, too late now!
Unfortunately, someone, somewhere is going to hate something. So this thread is looking for something that just doesn’t exist.
I do think it’s an interesting change in perspective. Not what’s the best movie, or what’s your favorite. Which would have different answers. There are movies I like that many people wouldn’t. I get that, people have different tastes. And there are “good” movies that I just don’t care for. I recognize that the directing/writing/acting/cinematography might be excellent, but I don’t care for the genre, or don’t want the feels it’s going to generate. But what’s something that most people would enjoy, and not have any serious issues with? Anyone can watch and have a good time? Interesting question.
It's been a long time since I saw Short Circuit 2,but I recall it not being anywhere near as good as the first one.
On a side note, when I picked up the DVD of Short Circuit, not having watched the movie since I was a kid, I was rather surprised by just how much adult inuendo was packed into that movie... Not a bad thing, but there was so much that I missed as a kid
Star Trek 4 is another that I hated as a teenager, as it seemed to be making a joke of a franchise that I took rather seriously and was very important to me. I enjoy it much more as an adult, having learnt to embrace the absurdity.
Yeah I think this is impossible there is always going to be folks that dislike something just out of the box - "I hate movies based on historical events" - "I don't like Tom Hanks..."
On that note, how bout Apollo 13? I think it is a pretty hard movie to really hate on. Unless maybe you are a history buff and get pissed because someone in mission control didn't look like the real guy or they got a technical point wrong.....
ZergSmasher wrote: A lot of the ones mentioned above I agree with. I'll add The Goonies to that list. I don't know that I've ever met anyone who doesn't like that movie.
Except by the crowd to whom dropping of Bombadil is huge crime and sin ;-)
Back in the mid 90s when I first read LOTR my first thought when we encountered Bombadil was "if they ever do a movie of this book this scene is getting dropped"
Yep. That was my thoughts as well. I never expected that to be there. There's very few movie changes I actually really, really, REALLY dislike(that ringwraith saw Frodo in Osgiliath is one. I don't mind Faramir taking them there for making Faramir's arc have story of character development but shouldn't ringwraith have senses ring and kinda alerrt Sauron?) and this one was one I was expecting and thought obvious.
But damn there's lots of hate from certain people regarding that. I was stunned on that. Unless you expect to have 100% copy(which doesn't really work as movie) something's got to give and that's one section that is easy to cut without having big impact. And for some reason Frodo's age doesnt' cause much of comment despite having bigger impact on story in terms of change...
Some of the hate is just internet hyberbole. Then again many regard Tom as being a sort of projection of Tolkien in his own story in some way, so cutting him out is like cutting out the creator in a little bit of a way.
That said I do think it was right to cut it, its a shame to lose that whole scene and segment, but at the same time Tom would need a very very good director and actor to make the scene work without it coming off as utterly stupid.
Personally the only thing I really dislike that's missing is the scouring of the shire. I always felt that scene was ever so important because it did a few things
1) It showed that Bilbo and the other hobbits, whilst exceptional on their adventures, were not beyond the realms of reality for their own people. We see hobbits fighting and holding their own in their corner of the world.
2) It brings home that the hobbits are not outside of the world and its influences. It kind of brings it all home in a very real sense; far more so than the Ringwraiths raiding Hobbiton for the Ring.
3) I think it shows Sauron for his own colours one final and nasty time as he takes out his petty anger on the hobbits.
Overall they tease us with it, but its a shame it never took place in the films.
Tim 121RVC wrote: Hmm, I thought The Goonies was a seriously good option for this topic too.
Okay, how about one of these:
- Intouchables
- Willow
- Toy Story
- Madagascar
- Meet The Parents
- Labyrinth
Do you mean Untouchables? Or Incredibles?
Personally, I had to leave Meet the Parents because the humor was almost entirely based on discomfort and embarrassment, and I get enough of that for free. Madagascar was...I think I saw that? I was going to say forgettable, but now I’m not even sure I saw the whole movie.
My wife won’t watch Labyrinth because it scared her too much as a kid, but I love that one. Same with Willow.
Tim 121RVC wrote: Hmm, I thought The Goonies was a seriously good option for this topic too.
Okay, how about one of these:
- Intouchables
- Willow
- Toy Story
- Madagascar
- Meet The Parents
- Labyrinth
1. Dull and noting interesting
2. Bad acting, bad soundtrack but I can see why people like it still.
3. Notting bad but far too boring and nothing that caught my interest, even as a child when it came out.
4. Seen it several times at work with some of the children I deal with in my job, not a bad movie but the voice acting makes me long for my lunch break.
5. Bad acting, terrible plot and obnoxious setting.
6. Good movie and one I don't mind watching
Matt Swain wrote: No one hates blazing saddles! C'mon, the campfire scene makes everyone laugh!
One of my favorite movies, but that kind of humor is not for everyone. And I think a lot of people these days just don’t get satire, and go straight to being offended. And if you take it at face value, there are a lot of horribly racist things in that movie. Now, they are there poking fun AT racists, but that bit might miss a lot of people. And piss off all sorts.
Matt Swain wrote: No one hates blazing saddles! C'mon, the campfire scene makes everyone laugh!
You mean the movie that induces heart failure, a loss of will to live and a smoldering dislike for western movies? I suppose one would need to be a fan of such actions and other means of what they wanted to portray as comedy to find anything to even break a smile to.
Matt Swain wrote: No one hates blazing saddles! C'mon, the campfire scene makes everyone laugh!
You mean the movie that induces heart failure, a loss of will to live and a smoldering dislike for western movies? I suppose one would need to be a fan of such actions and other means of what they wanted to portray as comedy to find anything to even break a smile to.
Honest question, do you actually like anything? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you post one positive, uplifting thing on this forum. Now, I’m “meh” on Blazing Saddles myself, but love a ton of MB’s other works. But every time I’ve seen you post, it’s ALWAYS in the negative. What DO you like? Honest question, I’m not attacking; you just seem like you need a little bit of cheer in your hobbies.
Matt Swain wrote: No one hates blazing saddles! C'mon, the campfire scene makes everyone laugh!
You mean the movie that induces heart failure, a loss of will to live and a smoldering dislike for western movies? I suppose one would need to be a fan of such actions and other means of what they wanted to portray as comedy to find anything to even break a smile to.
Honest question, do you actually like anything? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you post one positive, uplifting thing on this forum. Now, I’m “meh” on Blazing Saddles myself, but love a ton of MB’s other works. But every time I’ve seen you post, it’s ALWAYS in the negative. What DO you like? Honest question, I’m not attacking; you just seem like you need a little bit of cheer in your hobbies.
Why I do like things, but I do not find any amusement in 95% of things pumped out over the years. I do post positive things but, I feel no need to explain anything to you actually, but as to disprove your claim here are movies I do enjoy. If you in the future feel the need to ask such things send me a PM!
Ran by Akira Kurosawa
Bone tomahawk from 2015, the director eludes me at the moment.
Veiviseren( Norwegian film)
Kongens Nei ( also an Norwegian film
Dunkirk
Impossible to not like this movie unless you just don't like dinosaurs. In which case...there is just no pleasing you is there?
This was a book before it was a movie...so there is actually quite a strong contingent of hatred out there.
Dang those book readers! Ehh - they probably changed a bunch of stuff around so they didn't get their nostalgic feels out of it. As a piece of cinema though how could you not actually like it? The scenes are stunning - even compared to what we can do today with CGI. The music is spectacular. Even the comedic relief is perfect.
They are indeed quite different. I loved the book when I was a child, but like a lot of Crichton’s works it aged pretty poorly in my opinion. The movie, on the other hand, didn’t wow me when it came out, yet aged very well. It is one of the movies I find batter than the book it’s based on, but I doubt that is a common opinion.
It's been a long time, but as I recall the film followed the book fairly faithfully.
Oh, and I've heard literally no one say Grave of the Fireflies is a bad movie. Depressing, yes absolutely. Bad no. Same goes for Spirited Away wrt bad and actually quite a lot of Studio Ghibli's stuff.
Vermis wrote: Grave of the Fireflies is one of those films that I'm very glad I saw, and that I never want to see again.
It's too good at what it does.
This. I'd watch Plaguedogs and Watership Down instead of watching Grave of the Fireflies for a second time. Yet I don't for a moment regret watching Gave the first time.
Bran Dawri wrote: It's been a long time, but as I recall the film followed the book fairly faithfully. .
Mostly. The kids' ages were swapped, there was a bunch of stuff cut out (like the Pteradon enclosure and second T-rex, which were more or less incorporated into the second movie instead), and the old guy doesn't get eaten by Compies. Other than that, IIRC, it was pretty much spot on, with most scenes being directly lifted from the book.
The character (and motivations) of Hammond is a pretty big departure. I seem to recall other characters having different personalities in the movie as well, but it’s been a long time.
Yeah, it's been a while since I read the book, but I do recall Hammond possibly being a little less Santa Clause-y.
I wonder if the fact that Richard Attenborough's Hammond was such a cuddly little fellow was the reason they didn't kill him off. In the book, it felt like he got exactly what was coming to him for his hubris. In the movie, you wind up feeling sorry for this likeable but naive old fellow who just wanted to make dreams come true and had it all come crashing down around him...
Yeah, Hammond was the big change from book to movie. Swapping kids’ ages was no big deal. And Ian Malcolm died in the book (they were barely able to bring him back to life though). And the two books were split into three movies; basically everything that occurred in the books happened in one of the three movies. Most of Jurassic Park the book ended up in Jurassic Park the movie, and some of it ended up in Lost World the movie. Then Lost World the book ended up in Lost World the movie and JP3.
insaniak wrote: Yeah, it's been a while since I read the book, but I do recall Hammond possibly being a little less Santa Clause-y.
I wonder if the fact that Richard Attenborough's Hammond was such a cuddly little fellow was the reason they didn't kill him off. In the book, it felt like he got exactly what was coming to him for his hubris. In the movie, you wind up feeling sorry for this likeable but naive old fellow who just wanted to make dreams come true and had it all come crashing down around him...
There were a fair few departures. Muldoon doesn't die, Hammond and Wu do, there's that the island wasn't actually abandoned during the storm and in fact was actively being repaired and the escaped dino's looking to be recaptured after they escaped, Hammond definitely being an ass and not a lovable old guy, Grant actively hunting down a raptor nest and almost diving headfirst into it etc.
I forgot Muldoon doesn’t die in the book. Which is odd, given he was my favorite character in the movie. I modeled my Borderlands 2 Axton character after him, even when the “clever boy” skin came out (yes, I know it’s “clever girl” in his line from the movie).
6 is actually oone of the better ST movies as I recall. Not just for Captain "then fly her apart" Sulu, but also Shakespeare-quoting Klingons, aliens with testicles on their knees and "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."
Bran Dawri wrote: 6 is actually oone of the better ST movies as I recall. Not just for Captain "then fly her apart" Sulu, but also Shakespeare-quoting Klingons, aliens with testicles on their knees and "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."
I'm not a fan of Star Trek in general, especially not the older ones, but I liked this movie. It was a good S-F movie with good acting and dialogues.
Bran Dawri wrote: 6 is actually oone of the better ST movies as I recall. Not just for Captain "then fly her apart" Sulu, but also Shakespeare-quoting Klingons, aliens with testicles on their knees and "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."
It’s also a solid way to bridge the two timeframes.
We see the Khitomer Accords being signed, and the reason why Klingons went from sworn foes, to sometime allies of The Federstion.
That of course feeds nicely into TNG, and for me opened up more Klingon related narratives, which are among my favourites in TNG’s stable.
Bran Dawri wrote: It's been a long time, but as I recall the film followed the book fairly faithfully. .
Mostly. The kids' ages were swapped, there was a bunch of stuff cut out (like the Pteradon enclosure and second T-rex, which were more or less incorporated into the second movie instead), and the old guy doesn't get eaten by Compies. Other than that, IIRC, it was pretty much spot on, with most scenes being directly lifted from the book.
The main difference, which for me was entirely positive, was that most of Chrichton's ramblings about chaos theory and how modern science is evil (ignore those wicked cool dinosaurs bought back through modern science) were cut out, leaving Malcolm without much to do other than "be Jeff Goldblum". It's a funny case where I think "dumbing down" a book was entirely the right choice.
.the princess bride
.robin hood men in tights...well pretty well all mel brooks comedies
.aliens (directors cut only-still my #1 scifi movie of all time i have probably watched it 60 times)
.monty python-and the holy grail
I can think of a few other big, well received movies, but there will be a vocal minority that will hate them.
I can't watch Saving Private Ryan. I get that it's an impressive piece of cinematography, but I can't enjoy it on any level. I watch movies for escape, so getting too carried away with the realism in a movie based in an actual, horrific war just winds up being stomach-churning.
Well as a history buff i am the opposite. i want them to try and re-create it realistically as much as possible so people understand the events of history and become immersed in it. saving private ryan was groundbreaking, but then Tom Hanks went and made band of brothers and completely blew it away, granted he had alot more time to tell the story than in a single movie.
6 is actually oone of the better ST movies as I recall. Not just for Captain "then fly her apart" Sulu, but also Shakespeare-quoting Klingons, aliens with testicles on their knees and "Second star to the right and straight on till morning."
2 and 6 were both directed/produced by Nicholas Meyer-the only man who can do star trek right...even on a shoestring budget (5 blew out the studio and was ended before it was actually completed tot he original script, then did so poorly they slashed the budget for 6. Meye had to re-purpose a bunch of the old TNG sets like the ready room/dining hall for the movie). he is also the only trek writer who remembered true Newtonian physics in a 3d space.
Vermis wrote: Grave of the Fireflies is one of those films that I'm very glad I saw, and that I never want to see again.
It's too good at what it does.
Ok........I hate that movie.....I really really do
Im going to be called contrarian and edgelord but i hate it
Spoiler because its rambly and spoilers
Spoiler:
First, Lets talk about how we are supposed to feel sympathy and sadness at their situation......but they are literally in it because the brother could not swallow his pride and just live with his aunt? Jesus kid, your sister died because of your pride. Your sister gets sympathy for me, because she was young enough to not realize you where being an asshat.
Second: Its filmed like we are not watching a movie, nor presented as such, but that we are Voyeurs into their lives. We are not watching a story or a movie, we are watching peoples sad lives, which to me feel manipulative.
THIRD: The director said the movie was made for teens to early 20s, in japan, in 1988. Who is going to go watch that in that age range during that time? Why? Because at the time, those people where the kids of survivors of the conflict, possibly the same age as the main two. Its meant to shame those kids, during a time of prosperity in japan, in showing what their parents went through. with the final judgmental look from the boy in the end as if to say "This is what your parents went through you little gak, why are you complaining, I DIED" and i just couldnt stomach it.
Fourth: its just kinda.....misery porn.....that is all it is
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Automatically Appended Next Post:
BobtheInquisitor wrote: The character (and motivations) of Hammond is a pretty big departure. I seem to recall other characters having different personalities in the movie as well, but it’s been a long time.
In the Movie, he is more Walt Disney
In the Books, he is Pt Barnum with a god complex.
Bran Dawri wrote: It's been a long time, but as I recall the film followed the book fairly faithfully. .
Mostly. The kids' ages were swapped, there was a bunch of stuff cut out (like the Pteradon enclosure and second T-rex, which were more or less incorporated into the second movie instead), and the old guy doesn't get eaten by Compies. Other than that, IIRC, it was pretty much spot on, with most scenes being directly lifted from the book.
The main difference, which for me was entirely positive, was that most of Chrichton's ramblings about chaos theory and how modern science is evil (ignore those wicked cool dinosaurs bought back through modern science) were cut out, leaving Malcolm without much to do other than "be Jeff Goldblum". It's a funny case where I think "dumbing down" a book was entirely the right choice.
Um. The 'science is evil bit' is in the film. It brings nothing but death (and greed, which leads directly to death). The doctors and the kids have their initial enthusiasm and wonder ruthlessly stomped out over course of the film.
The message of the film is anyone who wants to open Pandora's box needs to be viciously killed and eaten.
Bran Dawri wrote: It's been a long time, but as I recall the film followed the book fairly faithfully. .
Mostly. The kids' ages were swapped, there was a bunch of stuff cut out (like the Pteradon enclosure and second T-rex, which were more or less incorporated into the second movie instead), and the old guy doesn't get eaten by Compies. Other than that, IIRC, it was pretty much spot on, with most scenes being directly lifted from the book.
The main difference, which for me was entirely positive, was that most of Chrichton's ramblings about chaos theory and how modern science is evil (ignore those wicked cool dinosaurs bought back through modern science) were cut out, leaving Malcolm without much to do other than "be Jeff Goldblum". It's a funny case where I think "dumbing down" a book was entirely the right choice.
Um. The 'science is evil bit' is in the film. It brings nothing but death (and greed, which leads directly to death). The doctors and the kids have their initial enthusiasm and wonder ruthlessly stomped out over course of the film.
The message of the film is anyone who wants to open Pandora's box needs to be viciously killed and eaten.
I felt as if there wasnt really a message or theme to the movie. I felt it was just a joyride TBH.
2001: A Space Odyssey. . . . Literally the only people I've seen hate on it, have not seen it all the way through. Yes, the story is slower than an iceberg made of pure molasses. Yes, it is difficult to get through that pace for today's movie goers. . . Get past that, force yourself to watch it. The technical elements are all there. . . Everyone I think I've ever met who's seen it all the way through gets the "reward" the movie offers. The movie somehow just seems to stick in you.
The first Blade Runner movie. Among "experts" it is highly regarded for its technical elements (camera shots and the various other "science of filmmaking" things). The cast is well done and fit their roles easily. Much of the negativity I've personally seen levied at it are from people who simply don't like the type of movie (ie, they wouldn't like it for any reason simply because its sci-fi, or its some other categorical distinction)
I’ve watched 2001 all the way through, and if I hadn’t been desperately passing time while stuck on a plane, I would have fast-forwarded at least half of the movie. I did not enjoy it.
I get that movies were slower-paced, but it really feels like a piece that the director just let go, and simply didn’t prune the completely unnecessary, while shorting time and explanation of more interesting parts. I think it’s a mess of a movie. It’s incoherent. There are some twinges of thought provoking material, but mostly in the “what the feth was that about” sort of way, rather than presenting an idea or perspective that was challenging.
2001 is *the* movie I consider to be over rated by almost everyone, though. I begrudge Kubrick on a personal level, for my wasted time that I had hoped would be spent on a good movie.
2001 always felt to me like half the story is missing and that they didn't actually start getting a plot together until there's a guy talking to HAL. It's not that its slow its that the beginning has multiple parts that don't naturally link together so you get a disjointed feeling. Plus when they do start to sort of link together its too late.
Now don't get me wrong I like slow; I love the Spaghetti Westerns. However I don't feel like 2001 is being slow to build atmosphere. It seems to be slow just to be slow sort of.
I think one thing that is important to remember is that it was a true 3D film originally . That in itself likely gave it huge accolades when seen on the original 3D screens of the time.
2001: A Space Odyssey. . . . Literally the only people I've seen hate on it, have not seen it all the way through. Yes, the story is slower than an iceberg made of pure molasses. Yes, it is difficult to get through that pace for today's movie goers. . . Get past that, force yourself to watch it. The technical elements are all there. . . Everyone I think I've ever met who's seen it all the way through gets the "reward" the movie offers. The movie somehow just seems to stick in you.
The first Blade Runner movie. Among "experts" it is highly regarded for its technical elements (camera shots and the various other "science of filmmaking" things). The cast is well done and fit their roles easily. Much of the negativity I've personally seen levied at it are from people who simply don't like the type of movie (ie, they wouldn't like it for any reason simply because its sci-fi, or its some other categorical distinction)
Huh. I know a lot of sci fi fans who dislike both of those. 2001’s human characters are more robotic than the computer—how could anyone find that off-putting? And Blade Runner hits a similar ratio of boring pacing to unlikeable characters.
Overread wrote: 2001 always felt to me like half the story is missing and that they didn't actually start getting a plot together until there's a guy talking to HAL. It's not that its slow its that the beginning has multiple parts that don't naturally link together so you get a disjointed feeling. Plus when they do start to sort of link together its too late.
Now don't get me wrong I like slow; I love the Spaghetti Westerns. However I don't feel like 2001 is being slow to build atmosphere. It seems to be slow just to be slow sort of.
I think one thing that is important to remember is that it was a true 3D film originally . That in itself likely gave it huge accolades when seen on the original 3D screens of the time.
Yeah, I mean it was among the first but the art form wasn't really perfected until the arthouse 3d films like Spy Kids 3D started to come along and implement some of the ideas that experimenters like kubrick scratched the surface on.
But, you know, I guess as a historical piece you could go and watch it like you might watch Citizen Kane, Phantom Menace or Casablanca.
Overread wrote: Now don't get me wrong I like slow; I love the Spaghetti Westerns. However I don't feel like 2001 is being slow to build atmosphere. It seems to be slow just to be slow sort of.
Hah, yeah. With the spaghetti westerns it helps to establish setting, malaise, and tension: wide open deserts, hard-bitten killers and poor peasants squinting at eachother. With 2001 a lot of it is things (ships, people) slowly rotating through space.
No arguing that it was a groundbreaking film, but one of the effects of that seems to have been 'look at our SFX. Then look at them some more. Keep looking, we'll tell you when.' I wasn't aware it was originally in 3D - that does explain it a bit more.
I wasn't a fan of 2001 the movie either, but then, the book it's based on is too cerebral (like much of Clarke's works, TBH) to be made into film well. Currently reading Earthlight, which I think has a better concept to put to screen, at least so far.
I think Kubrick did about as well as can be expected given the source material, but that atill doesn't mean I think it's a particularly good film, the awe-inspiring opening sequence notwithstanding.
Elbows wrote: I watched it and thought "eh...okay, not sure what the big deal is."
Same for me too. Granted this was seeing it 2D, I'm sure seeing it 3D, especially back when it was newer, was a different affair. But I could just never really see why it was so amazing.
Then again I had a similar reaction to Avatar. The film was nice don't get me wrong and the CGI in its day top rate and still stands up well today. However it suffers from bad (in my view) story pacing which results in very little room for character development and a very rushed feeling story. The overall premise for the story is good, nothing world shattering, but good and its got its own twists and turns. It just didn't blow me away as an entire experience like it seems some people were blown away.
Huh. I know a lot of sci fi fans who dislike both of those. 2001’s human characters are more robotic than the computer—how could anyone find that off-putting? And Blade Runner hits a similar ratio of boring pacing to unlikeable characters.
I liked 2001 right up until the 'WTF just happened...???' ending. It made somewhat more sense after I read the book, but I haven't bothered to go back and rewatch the movie to see if it improves it.
Blade Runner I saw when I was about 17 or 18, and I found it tedious and largely incomprehensible. I've been meaning to give it another go before watching the new one, but haven't got around to it yet.
Then again I had a similar reaction to Avatar. The film was nice don't get me wrong and the CGI in its day top rate and still stands up well today. However it suffers from bad (in my view) story pacing which results in very little room for character development and a very rushed feeling story. The overall premise for the story is good, nothing world shattering, but good and its got its own twists and turns. It just didn't blow me away as an entire experience like it seems some people were blown away.
I saw Avatar in the cinema, in 3D... and that was an awesome enough experience that the story really didn't matter that much. There was just so much pretty to look at.
No other 3D movie I've seen before or since has come close to being that amazing a spectacle.
Huh. I know a lot of sci fi fans who dislike both of those. 2001’s human characters are more robotic than the computer—how could anyone find that off-putting? And Blade Runner hits a similar ratio of boring pacing to unlikeable characters.
I liked 2001 right up until the 'WTF just happened...???' ending. It made somewhat more sense after I read the book, but I haven't bothered to go back and rewatch the movie to see if it improves it.
Blade Runner I saw when I was about 17 or 18, and I found it tedious and largely incomprehensible. I've been meaning to give it another go before watching the new one, but haven't got around to it yet.
Blade-runner is made by a guy who thinks he has too much self importance.
I’ve never seen the original Blade Runner, that I recall, the the more recent sequel was not bad, and all I really knew about it was that humans don’t like synths... though it was not really explained beyond, “the new discrimination that’s socially acceptable.”
I do want to watch the original some time, but not a priority. Based on the second, I expect that the original had a *very* strong impact on anime, since the tropes of the 2nd Blade Runner were very familiar to Synth-Cop Anime movies I’ve seen.
Huh. I know a lot of sci fi fans who dislike both of those. 2001’s human characters are more robotic than the computer—how could anyone find that off-putting? And Blade Runner hits a similar ratio of boring pacing to unlikeable characters.
I liked 2001 right up until the 'WTF just happened...???' ending. It made somewhat more sense after I read the book, but I haven't bothered to go back and rewatch the movie to see if it improves it.
Blade Runner I saw when I was about 17 or 18, and I found it tedious and largely incomprehensible. I've been meaning to give it another go before watching the new one, but haven't got around to it yet.
I have a fairly heretical view of Blade Runner. I saw the theatrical version with Dekker's narration intact, during my first year of college. I feel its pretty necessary for the film to make any sort of sense, otherwise its just a lot of wandering around for no apparent reason and very little context for anything that happens. It also lacks random unicorns, so, there's that as a bonus- even though I generally like movies with unicorns in them, they just don't fit.
But honestly, its a movie for those scenes and quotes that 'everybody' knows and parrots around a gaming table when they're only vaguely appropriate, much like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The rest of the movie is basically filler around those moments.
The sequel... didn't really manage to justify its existence or the amount of time it was wasting on things that lead nowhere and didn't matter. Part of it is simply the cliche of the spoiler, and the simplicity of 'what happens now.'
Spoiler:
If you're making 'synths' that are functionally identical to humans right to down to being able to think and feel like humans, and/or breed with humans, you're just making humans. All the bland industrial operations involved in making a device and using it like one are now simply monstrous and blatantly evil, so... stop. Its like nu-Battlestar Galactica, Westworld or Picard. Or the classic problem of Frankenstein, for that matter. These are blatantly people, so the creators/'normals'/whatever just need to stop being monsters to the new human variant and just accept them. Its really simple and straightforward and not particularly interesting. Slavery and dehumanization aren't complex and confusing moral gotchas anymore. Welcome to the 19th century
I'm starting to understand why so many recent Hollywood films seem so rushed and chopped up in the editing room if people keep telling them they don't like the slower portions of 2001 and Bladerunner
That was basically my thoughts on the Blade Runner sequel, It had some cool parts but in general there was too much plot and not enough of the brooding, moody sequences that I liked in the original.
I think there's a few issues to consider with films
1) Remember the director doesn't do all the chopping. Cinema groups that buy the films also chop them and can be really randomly brutal to a film just to get it to fit into a time slot for the maximum bums-on-seats for the cinema. Sergio Leone had huge problems with his films and the cinema group cutting them randomly. Apparently there's still film footage from Once Upon a Time in America held by different people/groups that was meant to be in the film that was cut and still hasn't been put back (because of rights arguments and the like).
2) TV to film plot pacing. I'd argue that we've a body of directors/writers who are used to writing storyboards and scripts for TV who then find themselves confused when trying to achieve the same for a film. Either they end up stretching out a TV episode format into a film - which often comes off ok if lacking some of the "big effects" one might want from a film; or they try squashing a whole season down into a film length resulting in a lot of rush
3) Films based on material outside of the film. I'd argue a good few comic films are like this in that there's very little in the film of character development and plot development, because its more made for fans of the franchise/series already. However sometimes these big films get marketed toward totally new markets of people which results in that block getting a very different feel to the film compared to those who have followed the series leading up to the film.
4) Too much. Just too much in one film. This often happens. We can see it in films like Suicide Squad. It's clearly not made following after other material in a strict sense (but sort of is because it is comics again); so its trying to introduce half a dozen or more lead characters at once. The result is a messy situation where no one character gets enough development time.
Honestly its clearly a generational thing with regard to the movies. There are clearly many skilled directors who know how to pace films and write them and construct them to fit in time slots; just as there are many who are clearly less experienced or have too many outside factors bullying in too much content and chopping things up randomly. It's nothing new, but I would agree that we seem to be getting a lot more of it. PErhaps its simply a sign that we've a newer generation of movie makers all coming through the system in various key stages (not just directors) at once.
Kroem wrote: I'm starting to understand why so many recent Hollywood films seem so rushed and chopped up in the editing room if people keep telling them they don't like the slower portions of 2001 and Bladerunner
That was basically my thoughts on the Blade Runner sequel, It had some cool parts but in general there was too much plot and not enough of the brooding, moody sequences that I liked in the original.
There are tons of films with a slower pace that are not boring, such as the mentioned Spaghetti Westerns. Blade Runner (the original, I liked 2049) just felt tedious, and I didn’t want to spend any extra time with those unlikeable characters. I’m not saying you’re wrong for enjoying the movie—it is a classic. I was only stating that it is not “immune to dislike” by any stretch.
Huh. I know a lot of sci fi fans who dislike both of those. 2001’s human characters are more robotic than the computer—how could anyone find that off-putting? And Blade Runner hits a similar ratio of boring pacing to unlikeable characters.
I liked 2001 right up until the 'WTF just happened...???' ending. It made somewhat more sense after I read the book, but I haven't bothered to go back and rewatch the movie to see if it improves it.
Blade Runner I saw when I was about 17 or 18, and I found it tedious and largely incomprehensible. I've been meaning to give it another go before watching the new one, but haven't got around to it yet.
I have a fairly heretical view of Blade Runner. I saw the theatrical version with Dekker's narration intact, during my first year of college. I feel its pretty necessary for the film to make any sort of sense, otherwise its just a lot of wandering around for no apparent reason and very little context for anything that happens. It also lacks random unicorns, so, there's that as a bonus- even though I generally like movies with unicorns in them, they just don't fit.
But honestly, its a movie for those scenes and quotes that 'everybody' knows and parrots around a gaming table when they're only vaguely appropriate, much like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The rest of the movie is basically filler around those moments.
The sequel... didn't really manage to justify its existence or the amount of time it was wasting on things that lead nowhere and didn't matter. Part of it is simply the cliche of the spoiler, and the simplicity of 'what happens now.'
Spoiler:
If you're making 'synths' that are functionally identical to humans right to down to being able to think and feel like humans, and/or breed with humans, you're just making humans. All the bland industrial operations involved in making a device and using it like one are now simply monstrous and blatantly evil, so... stop. Its like nu-Battlestar Galactica, Westworld or Picard. Or the classic problem of Frankenstein, for that matter. These are blatantly people, so the creators/'normals'/whatever just need to stop being monsters to the new human variant and just accept them. Its really simple and straightforward and not particularly interesting. Slavery and dehumanization aren't complex and confusing moral gotchas anymore. Welcome to the 19th century
Gotta disagree just a little there.
Spoiler:
If you are making 'synths" that think and feel like humans and can even breed with humans, you probably have the option of controlling what genes go in them. You could make them free of genetic flaws, eliminate a lot of health issues, increase desirable genes, etc. It could be a way of improving human genetics.
well, to divert us from that dangerous line of thinking (cough eugenics cough)...
I propose.. Moana. my little girl loves it and I have to say I enjoy it too. the songs are catchy and theres lots of bright colours. I have a bunch of tattoos so she calls me Maui and I have to call her Moana. it brightens my day.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: well, to divert us from that dangerous line of thinking (cough eugenics cough)...
I propose.. Moana. my little girl loves it and I have to say I enjoy it too. the songs are catchy and theres lots of bright colours. I have a bunch of tattoos so she calls me Maui and I have to call her Moana. it brightens my day.
That's cute. I know a lot of new parents who unfortunately had their love of some of the recent disney movies kind of taken away from them by the fact that their children demanded them continuously played 24/7 for several years.
Never got around to seeing moana myself, but I have heard it's pretty good. I figure I've got plenty of years to go see every major kids' flick ahead of me, so I'll have time to catch up.
Huh. I know a lot of sci fi fans who dislike both of those. 2001’s human characters are more robotic than the computer—how could anyone find that off-putting? And Blade Runner hits a similar ratio of boring pacing to unlikeable characters.
I liked 2001 right up until the 'WTF just happened...???' ending. It made somewhat more sense after I read the book, but I haven't bothered to go back and rewatch the movie to see if it improves it.
Blade Runner I saw when I was about 17 or 18, and I found it tedious and largely incomprehensible. I've been meaning to give it another go before watching the new one, but haven't got around to it yet.
I have a fairly heretical view of Blade Runner. I saw the theatrical version with Dekker's narration intact, during my first year of college. I feel its pretty necessary for the film to make any sort of sense, otherwise its just a lot of wandering around for no apparent reason and very little context for anything that happens. It also lacks random unicorns, so, there's that as a bonus- even though I generally like movies with unicorns in them, they just don't fit.
But honestly, its a movie for those scenes and quotes that 'everybody' knows and parrots around a gaming table when they're only vaguely appropriate, much like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The rest of the movie is basically filler around those moments.
The sequel... didn't really manage to justify its existence or the amount of time it was wasting on things that lead nowhere and didn't matter. Part of it is simply the cliche of the spoiler, and the simplicity of 'what happens now.'
Spoiler:
If you're making 'synths' that are functionally identical to humans right to down to being able to think and feel like humans, and/or breed with humans, you're just making humans. All the bland industrial operations involved in making a device and using it like one are now simply monstrous and blatantly evil, so... stop. Its like nu-Battlestar Galactica, Westworld or Picard. Or the classic problem of Frankenstein, for that matter. These are blatantly people, so the creators/'normals'/whatever just need to stop being monsters to the new human variant and just accept them. Its really simple and straightforward and not particularly interesting. Slavery and dehumanization aren't complex and confusing moral gotchas anymore. Welcome to the 19th century
I like the voice over Blade Runner and enjoyed some of sequal - ubt for me the main couple
Spoiler:
both dying was a big downer and I agree I really don't think the plot makes much sense - I build super robots, but want them to breed and take a couple of decades to mature - er what? Why would you want that?
queen_annes_revenge wrote: well, to divert us from that dangerous line of thinking (cough eugenics cough)...
I propose.. Moana. my little girl loves it and I have to say I enjoy it too. the songs are catchy and theres lots of bright colours. I have a bunch of tattoos so she calls me Maui and I have to call her Moana. it brightens my day.
That's cute. I know a lot of new parents who unfortunately had their love of some of the recent disney movies kind of taken away from them by the fact that their children demanded them continuously played 24/7 for several years.
Never got around to seeing moana myself, but I have heard it's pretty good. I figure I've got plenty of years to go see every major kids' flick ahead of me, so I'll have time to catch up.
Haha yeah, I'm getting a little sick of Frozen, but between those 2, postman pat, wallace and gromit and (the one I actually hate, peppa pig) theres at least some variety in what my daughter likes to watch.
Moana is quite a fun watch, Dwayne Johnson brings his usual charisma as Maui, and the story based on Polynesian folklore is easy to watch and quite interesting.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: well, to divert us from that dangerous line of thinking (cough eugenics cough)...
I propose.. Moana. my little girl loves it and I have to say I enjoy it too. the songs are catchy and theres lots of bright colours. I have a bunch of tattoos so she calls me Maui and I have to call her Moana. it brightens my day.
That's cute. I know a lot of new parents who unfortunately had their love of some of the recent disney movies kind of taken away from them by the fact that their children demanded them continuously played 24/7 for several years.
Never got around to seeing moana myself, but I have heard it's pretty good. I figure I've got plenty of years to go see every major kids' flick ahead of me, so I'll have time to catch up.
Having had kids like that, I would have to agree with QAR. . . . Moana is one of the few Disney movies that I can still put on and "enjoy" despite the number of times its been on repeat. The majority of other disney flicks lost any polish after 3 or 4 watchings, and become actively loathed after 10. . . The songwriting in Frozen, for instance, is just fething terrible.
I like the voice over Blade Runner and enjoyed some of sequal - ubt for me the main couple
Spoiler:
both dying was a big downer and I agree I really don't think the plot makes much sense - I build super robots, but want them to breed and take a couple of decades to mature - er what? Why would you want that?
Wallace had reprogrammed his synths for absolute obedience and loyalty to him. . . One would assume any "born" synths (if he could ever figure it out) would also be born with that programming pre-installed (but how!?)
But I don;t get what he gains by having synths born - apart from having to wait years for them to grow.
Or he can just mass produce them and upate as and when.
Maybe he is supposed to be verging on insanity and obsessed with really slowly breeding a techno-organic race that is subservant to him rather than just building the same?
Mr Morden wrote: But I don;t get what he gains by having synths born - apart from having to wait years for them to grow.
Or he can just mass produce them and upate as and when.
Maybe he is supposed to be verging on insanity and obsessed with really slowly breeding a techno-organic race that is subservant to him rather than just building the same?
IMHO, Wallace has a weird "god complex" where he wants to absolutely prove that he is better than Tyrell in every possible way. . . Not really dealt with visually in 2049 (IIRC, it does come up in the middling anime/shorts series that was done in the lead-up), but he's a corporate head, and generally there's a small consortium of a dozen or less corps that are "running" everything related to living on earth. Government, food, housing, everything. . . He apparently wants absolute control over ALL of it.
In a very deranged sort of way, having absolutely loyal, absolutely obedient robots that look and act exactly like people would be one "long con" game solution to him actually taking over and removing all other competition. . . It is quite weird, it is quite convoluted, but its also a bit mustache twirlingly corny. . . It's a weird damned if you do, damned if you don't inclusion thing in the films. . As a result, you get this sort of weird guy who is showing ambitions of power, but we don't really get any of the why behind it.
Mr Morden wrote: But I don;t get what he gains by having synths born - apart from having to wait years for them to grow.
Or he can just mass produce them and upate as and when.
Maybe he is supposed to be verging on insanity and obsessed with really slowly breeding a techno-organic race that is subservant to him rather than just building the same?
IMHO, Wallace has a weird "god complex" where he wants to absolutely prove that he is better than Tyrell in every possible way. . . Not really dealt with visually in 2049 (IIRC, it does come up in the middling anime/shorts series that was done in the lead-up), but he's a corporate head, and generally there's a small consortium of a dozen or less corps that are "running" everything related to living on earth. Government, food, housing, everything. . . He apparently wants absolute control over ALL of it.
In a very deranged sort of way, having absolutely loyal, absolutely obedient robots that look and act exactly like people would be one "long con" game solution to him actually taking over and removing all other competition. . . It is quite weird, it is quite convoluted, but its also a bit mustache twirlingly corny. . . It's a weird damned if you do, damned if you don't inclusion thing in the films. . As a result, you get this sort of weird guy who is showing ambitions of power, but we don't really get any of the why behind it.
Ok thanks - that kinda helps - its wierd when Wallace is whinning about not being able to make replicants quick enough but then wants to breed them - but I guess that fits in with his growing madness. He also seems to be there to carry on as its not like he can't make another Luv (or 30 of them) to go looking for what he wants.
Its a pretty enough film, but apart from K and Joi was a petty slow and empty film for me
Nevelon wrote: I’d have to rewatch it to check, but I thought he touched on it. trying to sum up his thoughts here (or my recollection of them)
If you are manufacturing, you are limited to what you can make in your factories. Pretty linear growth, and presumably requires infrastructure.
Self-producing replicants are exponential. You have an engineered working (slave) class that can spread as fast as humanity across the stars.
By giving humanity an unlimited, self-producing, obedient and expendable labor force, you give them the stars.
Yeah he said that but each biologically produced replicant also takes the sme time as a human to mature into a useful product? So unless to takes 16 years or more to make a replicant then its slower and also limited to succesful sexual reproduction - human sexual congress does not result in a child every time but again I suppose he can artifcailly inseminate but then your worker is not working as effectively for some period.
Hmmm Maybe he hoped to speed up the maturity process. You think he would look into creating just wombs that can produce them.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: well, to divert us from that dangerous line of thinking (cough eugenics cough)...
I propose.. Moana. my little girl loves it and I have to say I enjoy it too. the songs are catchy and theres lots of bright colours. I have a bunch of tattoos so she calls me Maui and I have to call her Moana. it brightens my day.
That's cute. I know a lot of new parents who unfortunately had their love of some of the recent disney movies kind of taken away from them by the fact that their children demanded them continuously played 24/7 for several years.
Never got around to seeing moana myself, but I have heard it's pretty good. I figure I've got plenty of years to go see every major kids' flick ahead of me, so I'll have time to catch up.
Haha yeah, I'm getting a little sick of Frozen, but between those 2, postman pat, wallace and gromit and (the one I actually hate, peppa pig) theres at least some variety in what my daughter likes to watch.
Moana is quite a fun watch, Dwayne Johnson brings his usual charisma as Maui, and the story based on Polynesian folklore is easy to watch and quite interesting.
I watched Moana by myself on netflix, i loved it. Thought the crab part was weird, but whatever.
Rewatching it every several years and the depth of jokes just keeps getting better as I gain a better understanding of the world. In my opinion its immune to dislike.
Kilkrazy wrote: Back to the Future 1,2 and 3
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Amelie
Paddington 1 and 2
The Back to the Future films are vastly overrated. The first one is kind of okay but not brilliant, the second is likewise okay but has flaws, and I stopped the third after about half an hour as it was awful. I dont understand why people rate them so highly. (enjoying them is completely different, that's entirely personal preference, but I just don't think they're particularly good fims)
Excellent Adventure is very fun, but once you watch it more than once the major flaws really jump out at you (i.e. terrible acting, script, plot)
I've not seen the others so can't comment.
I don't believe that movies immune to actuall dislike actually exist. I am a very prolific film viewer and there are very very few films that I think people would not find some fault with or simply not enjoy.
The closest I can think of is maybe 12 Angry Men, On the Waterfront, or Duck Soup.
Duck Soup in particular is one of the funniest films ever made.
The Back to the Future trilogy is beloved by everyone I know. In the 30+ years of chatting with others about the three films, I've never heard a bad thing until recently when its become fashionable to rag on films for the slightest flaw.
Love all three as one running story but the third film is definitely my favourite. Clint Eastwood for the win!
SamusDrake wrote: The Back to the Future trilogy is beloved by everyone I know. In the 30+ years of chatting with others about the three films, I've never heard a bad thing until recently when its become fashionable to rag on films for the slightest flaw.
Love all three as one running story but the third film is definitely my favourite. Clint Eastwood for the win!
Paddington was a blast!
I enjoyed the first BttF.
The second one felt like a bridge. It was there to connect the first and 3rd, but could not stand decently on it’s own.
Third I recall thinking was OK, but not as good as the first.
It’s been decades since I’ve seen them, and only saw 2/3 once each. First a few times.
Rewatching it every several years and the depth of jokes just keeps getting better as I gain a better understanding of the world. In my opinion its immune to dislike.
I prefer Jabywocky and Life of Brian as I think Holy Grail's endng is not great.
I watched Moana by myself on netflix, i loved it. Thought the crab part was weird, but whatever.
Yeah. I thought it would be part of the folklore but aparantly not. Some of the bits there seem quite scary for a kids film. The weird 6 armed masked monster that gets geysered into the sea from the monster realm, and te ka herself. But it doesn't seem to bother my daughter any.
Disney movies have always had scary parts. It's supposed to be part of the fun... Walt said back when Snow White was first released that he wanted kids to wet themselves in cinemas. I'm assuming that comment was meant to be at least slightly hyperbolic, but the underlying design has stuck, over the years...
I still haven't seen any of those. I really don't think I want to.
Because cute fluffy animal movies were never really my thing (when I was a kid, we'd see maybe one movie at the cinemas per year) - we didn't have a tv until I was 8 but it was usually only on for the news, or sportsball.
Yeah, that one hurt my brain a little. I can't draw a line between 'cute animal movie' and Watership Down.
Disney movies have always had scary parts
Disney movies have some real horrors going on. Part of that is the source material, of course (fairy tales aren't cute. They're medieval 'scared straight' stories. 'Don't go into the woods at night, or you're going to be brutally murdered or worse.'), but while Disney movies gloss over a lot of the nasty stuff, they still keep it in.
Almost all Disney characters have dead relatives, a significant number of the 'relationships' are sketchy and smarmy (at best- Beauty and the Beast is arguably worse, and the Jafar/Jasmine creepiness mostly but not completely happens off screen), and any number of horrible things happen to children.
To be fair, I'm fairly sure Watership Down was never intended to be a children's story. I suspect that the people who marketed it had never actually seen it, or read the book, and just assumed 'it has bunnies! Kids will love it!'
chromedog wrote: I still haven't seen any of those. I really don't think I want to.
Because cute fluffy animal movies were never really my thing (when I was a kid, we'd see maybe one movie at the cinemas per year) - we didn't have a tv until I was 8 but it was usually only on for the news, or sportsball.
Farthing wood is the closest to fluffy animals and in the first episode several characters die. It's the least bloody of the three, but has the highest death count (by the end of the whole series most of the original cast is dead).
As for animals being marketed at kids, I think its mostly because animation went through a phase where it was only marketed toward children so anything animated was auto assumed to be for kids by many. This is not and never has been true, but its a false belief many hold. Even way back in the 80s and 90s and before there were adult cartoons - though the wave of stuff from Japan (anime) hadn't really hit the UK in a big way (and when some of it did I think it got hived off to bad channel/time slots so it didn't really get seen as much). USA got a lot more Anime (indeed there's a huge US to UK Block on that even now - there's loads of DVD series that never get encoded for UK systems)
Nevelon wrote: I’d have to rewatch it to check, but I thought he touched on it. trying to sum up his thoughts here (or my recollection of them)
If you are manufacturing, you are limited to what you can make in your factories. Pretty linear growth, and presumably requires infrastructure.
Self-producing replicants are exponential. You have an engineered working (slave) class that can spread as fast as humanity across the stars.
By giving humanity an unlimited, self-producing, obedient and expendable labor force, you give them the stars.
Yeah he said that but each biologically produced replicant also takes the sme time as a human to mature into a useful product? So unless to takes 16 years or more to make a replicant then its slower and also limited to succesful sexual reproduction - human sexual congress does not result in a child every time but again I suppose he can artifcailly inseminate but then your worker is not working as effectively for some period.
Hmmm Maybe he hoped to speed up the maturity process. You think he would look into creating just wombs that can produce them.
You're reading pretty close on a film that I think it's pretty evident from watching it is intended to be heavily metaphorical.
A whole lot of details of the bad guys' actual "plan" doesn't make literal sense, no. but I'd think that the movie had enough surrealist elements in it that you wouldn't worry about why guy had to go to place and get thing. There's plenty of high-budget fully realized perfectly literal sci-fi flicks, let us just have one wibbly wobbly multimillion dollar art film that bombs but still comes out on dvd so we can own and rewatch the pretty pictures
Nevelon wrote: I’d have to rewatch it to check, but I thought he touched on it. trying to sum up his thoughts here (or my recollection of them)
If you are manufacturing, you are limited to what you can make in your factories. Pretty linear growth, and presumably requires infrastructure.
Self-producing replicants are exponential. You have an engineered working (slave) class that can spread as fast as humanity across the stars.
By giving humanity an unlimited, self-producing, obedient and expendable labor force, you give them the stars.
Yeah he said that but each biologically produced replicant also takes the sme time as a human to mature into a useful product? So unless to takes 16 years or more to make a replicant then its slower and also limited to succesful sexual reproduction - human sexual congress does not result in a child every time but again I suppose he can artifcailly inseminate but then your worker is not working as effectively for some period.
Hmmm Maybe he hoped to speed up the maturity process. You think he would look into creating just wombs that can produce them.
You're reading pretty close on a film that I think it's pretty evident from watching it is intended to be heavily metaphorical.
A whole lot of details of the bad guys' actual "plan" doesn't make literal sense, no. but I'd think that the movie had enough surrealist elements in it that you wouldn't worry about why guy had to go to place and get thing. There's plenty of high-budget fully realized perfectly literal sci-fi flicks, let us just have one wibbly wobbly multimillion dollar art film that bombs but still comes out on dvd so we can own and rewatch the pretty pictures
I enjoyed the visuals and several of the characters but found it overely long (as apparently did Ridely Scott)
If you bother spelling out the bad guys motivations why make them make no sense - why not just make him mysterious and he wants the baby but he does not need to say why - if he was just wierd billionare dispatching minons cos he is wierd I would have been fine but the half assed attempt to give him a motivation was off putting when he was in it.
Nevelon wrote: I’d have to rewatch it to check, but I thought he touched on it. trying to sum up his thoughts here (or my recollection of them)
If you are manufacturing, you are limited to what you can make in your factories. Pretty linear growth, and presumably requires infrastructure.
Self-producing replicants are exponential. You have an engineered working (slave) class that can spread as fast as humanity across the stars.
By giving humanity an unlimited, self-producing, obedient and expendable labor force, you give them the stars.
Yeah he said that but each biologically produced replicant also takes the sme time as a human to mature into a useful product? So unless to takes 16 years or more to make a replicant then its slower and also limited to succesful sexual reproduction - human sexual congress does not result in a child every time but again I suppose he can artifcailly inseminate but then your worker is not working as effectively for some period.
Hmmm Maybe he hoped to speed up the maturity process. You think he would look into creating just wombs that can produce them.
You're reading pretty close on a film that I think it's pretty evident from watching it is intended to be heavily metaphorical.
A whole lot of details of the bad guys' actual "plan" doesn't make literal sense, no. but I'd think that the movie had enough surrealist elements in it that you wouldn't worry about why guy had to go to place and get thing. There's plenty of high-budget fully realized perfectly literal sci-fi flicks, let us just have one wibbly wobbly multimillion dollar art film that bombs but still comes out on dvd so we can own and rewatch the pretty pictures
I enjoyed the visuals and several of the characters but found it overely long (as apparently did Ridely Scott)
If you bother spelling out the bad guys motivations why make them make no sense - why not just make him mysterious and he wants the baby but he does not need to say why - if he was just wierd billionare dispatching minons cos he is wierd I would have been fine but the half assed attempt to give him a motivation was off putting when he was in it.
But thats just me.
I agree with that. I would have preferred much more be left unsaid, personally. But you don't get a budget that large without making some concessions to the suits and focus groups, so I can live with it for the visual beauty that comes from having that much money behind the project.
Rewatching it every several years and the depth of jokes just keeps getting better as I gain a better understanding of the world. In my opinion its immune to dislike.
As discussed a few pages back, I think the thing that brings out the "dislike" in those movies are those few who incessantly dredge up quotes from the movie where they do not fit, nor are needed. . . there is a time and place for injecting a python quote into everyday conversation, that time is not "all the time" tho
Another two contenders, maybe? :
Russell Crowe's "Gladiator"
and
"The Count of Monte Cristo", the one with Guy Pierce
What I've personally seen: basically everyone likes/loves/accepts these movies. . . Sure, they may dislike a scene or two, or dislike one element or another of the film, but on the whole everyone seems to be positive about them. Thoughts?
Rewatching it every several years and the depth of jokes just keeps getting better as I gain a better understanding of the world. In my opinion its immune to dislike.
As discussed a few pages back, I think the thing that brings out the "dislike" in those movies are those few who incessantly dredge up quotes from the movie where they do not fit, nor are needed. . . there is a time and place for injecting a python quote into everyday conversation, that time is not "all the time" tho
Another two contenders, maybe? :
Russell Crowe's "Gladiator"
and
"The Count of Monte Cristo", the one with Guy Pierce
What I've personally seen: basically everyone likes/loves/accepts these movies. . . Sure, they may dislike a scene or two, or dislike one element or another of the film, but on the whole everyone seems to be positive about them. Thoughts?
insaniak wrote: To be fair, I'm fairly sure Watership Down was never intended to be a children's story. I suspect that the people who marketed it had never actually seen it, or read the book, and just assumed 'it has bunnies! Kids will love it!'
Watership down is heroic fiction that happens to be about rabbits. Think Beowulf or the Odyssey. But with rabbits. It’s very hard to describe in a way that sounds appealing, but it’s one of my favourite books and has a wonderful, rich mythology and an incredibly realised world. The film has some of those elements (and is definitely not for little kids!), but still doesn’t do it justice.
I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something different to read.
I would also toss in The Green Mile in the same sentence if we speak drama alongside A Beautiful Mind.
If we jump categorys, i think only thouse who dislike the action category would be the persons who dont like Die Hard 1, Lethal Weapon 1 and my alltime personal favorite action movie as of this date; Mad Max: Fury Road.
Same could be said about the sci-fi movies; Matrix 1, 5th element, Clouse encounter of 3rd kind and ET.
The Gladiator is allso a move that moust likely is only disliked by humans who dont like the roman era or Russel Crowe, same can be said about Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
I like the Dollars trilogy, didn't care much for Once Upon A Time In The West. Well shot, just bits of the story annoyed me.
Jadenim wrote: Watership down is heroic fiction that happens to be about rabbits. Think Beowulf or the Odyssey. But with rabbits. It’s very hard to describe in a way that sounds appealing, but it’s one of my favourite books and has a wonderful, rich mythology and an incredibly realised world. The film has some of those elements (and is definitely not for little kids!), but still doesn’t do it justice.
I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something different to read.
There's a quote about The Hobbit, not long after it's publication I think, that I can't find right now; but something along the lines of "it starts as a jolly fairy story, but transforms into a heroic epic, where characters start talking like Sigurd". Watership Down isn't quite that extreme, but in the same kind of category. The fact that it's about bunnies kind of wrongfoots you.
I have literally never heard someone say they dislike The 5th Element.
It's weird. It's campy. It's over-the-top. It doesn't take itself seriously. But somehow, it just works. I think we have a winner for the thread.
Rewatching it every several years and the depth of jokes just keeps getting better as I gain a better understanding of the world. In my opinion its immune to dislike.
As discussed a few pages back, I think the thing that brings out the "dislike" in those movies are those few who incessantly dredge up quotes from the movie where they do not fit, nor are needed. . . there is a time and place for injecting a python quote into everyday conversation, that time is not "all the time" tho
Another two contenders, maybe? :
Russell Crowe's "Gladiator"
and
"The Count of Monte Cristo", the one with Guy Pierce
What I've personally seen: basically everyone likes/loves/accepts these movies. . . Sure, they may dislike a scene or two, or dislike one element or another of the film, but on the whole everyone seems to be positive about them. Thoughts?
No. Gladiator is super creepy murder porn. One of the few movies I saw in the theater where I was very tempted to just walk out.
I felt like I was watching a terrible snuff film in very weak Roman cosplay.
That the movie opens with fething stirrups on the horses just shows how pathetic the historical research was.
As for that version of Count... I honestly can't think of anything that lets me distinguish it from several other movies set in the same period made in the 90s/00s.
Bran Dawri wrote: I have literally never heard someone say they dislike The 5th Element.
It's weird. It's campy. It's over-the-top. It doesn't take itself seriously. But somehow, it just works. I think we have a winner for the thread.
Eh. I personally like it, but have gotten several 'what the heck are you watching' faces from friends and family- and I totally understood why. It doesn't even come close to winning.
I would also toss in The Green Mile in the same sentence if we speak drama alongside A Beautiful Mind.
If we jump categorys, i think only thouse who dislike the action category would be the persons who dont like Die Hard 1, Lethal Weapon 1 and my alltime personal favorite action movie as of this date; Mad Max: Fury Road.
Same could be said about the sci-fi movies; Matrix 1, 5th element, Clouse encounter of 3rd kind and ET.
The Gladiator is allso a move that moust likely is only disliked by humans who dont like the roman era or Russel Crowe, same can be said about Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
I know several folks who dislike Mad Max Fury Road because "god damn feminism invading my action moviez!"
Same crowd that bitches and moans endlessly about the new star wars, new marvel movies, new sisters of battle, etc, etc.
Bran Dawri wrote: I have literally never heard someone say they dislike The 5th Element.
It's weird. It's campy. It's over-the-top. It doesn't take itself seriously. But somehow, it just works. I think we have a winner for the thread.
I feel like 5th Element is one of those movies, where it's so bad it's good. Not in the usual ways. The story is dumb. The plotting is dumb. The romance is forced and heavy handed. Everything about the movie is just kind if off enough that it feels silly, and the films attempts at levity I don't think were intended to be 'doesn't take itself seriously'. The film is bad. Bud bad in all the ways that make a bad movie fun XD
I know several folks who dislike Mad Max Fury Road because "god damn feminism invading my action moviez!"
Same crowd that bitches and moans endlessly about the new star wars, new marvel movies, new sisters of battle, etc, etc.
I think that, realistically, if we spread the net wide enough, we could find people like this with literally every single film out there, even with the "best" of the mostly agreed upon films here. There are people who say they actively dislike anything with X actor's name in the credits, or they hate X director/producer. . . . The Harry Potter films, while not mentioned ITT, are fairly well regarded throughout much of the western/film-going world. However, the religious folks I grew up around were actively pushing a boycott and "disliking" the films because they showed "witchcraft". . .
Even in this thread, for instance, I've brought up Gladiator, and someone brought up one of the most bizarre (IMO) reasons for disliking it. . . I mean, I kind of wonder if they even saw the story within the film. . . And yet, in my experience of people IRL, the only time I've personally encountered any dislike for the film, is for reasons we were kind of discounting (ie, a person "hates" anything with Russell Crowe in it)
Bran Dawri wrote: I have literally never heard someone say they dislike The 5th Element.
It's weird. It's campy. It's over-the-top. It doesn't take itself seriously. But somehow, it just works. I think we have a winner for the thread.
I feel like 5th Element is one of those movies, where it's so bad it's good. Not in the usual ways. The story is dumb. The plotting is dumb. The romance is forced and heavy handed. Everything about the movie is just kind if off enough that it feels silly, and the films attempts at levity I don't think were intended to be 'doesn't take itself seriously'. The film is bad. Bud bad in all the ways that make a bad movie fun XD
Yeah, maybe for the producers and writers. The actors certainly don't look like they're taking it seriously to me, they're just having fun making it over-the-top and it shows.
I know several folks who dislike Mad Max Fury Road because "god damn feminism invading my action moviez!"
Same crowd that bitches and moans endlessly about the new star wars, new marvel movies, new sisters of battle, etc, etc.
I think that, realistically, if we spread the net wide enough, we could find people like this with literally every single film out there, even with the "best" of the mostly agreed upon films here. There are people who say they actively dislike anything with X actor's name in the credits, or they hate X director/producer. . . . The Harry Potter films, while not mentioned ITT, are fairly well regarded throughout much of the western/film-going world. However, the religious folks I grew up around were actively pushing a boycott and "disliking" the films because they showed "witchcraft". . .
Even in this thread, for instance, I've brought up Gladiator, and someone brought up one of the most bizarre (IMO) reasons for disliking it. . . I mean, I kind of wonder if they even saw the story within the film. . . And yet, in my experience of people IRL, the only time I've personally encountered any dislike for the film, is for reasons we were kind of discounting (ie, a person "hates" anything with Russell Crowe in it)
Why is that a treason to discount them? The presence of an actor or a Directors style can make or ruin a film in one persons (valid) equally opinion.
I like Mad Max2 but not 1 or 3 and enjoyed the new one.
I have no real feelings about Harry Potter - just does not interest me.
IMO Harry Potters story was less interesting than the world they lived in.
But then again, i love the idea of urban fantasy and a hidden magical world hiding under the veil or normal society, so much im thinking of making a D&D world around it.
I know several folks who dislike Mad Max Fury Road because "god damn feminism invading my action moviez!"
Same crowd that bitches and moans endlessly about the new star wars, new marvel movies, new sisters of battle, etc, etc.
I think that, realistically, if we spread the net wide enough, we could find people like this with literally every single film out there, even with the "best" of the mostly agreed upon films here. There are people who say they actively dislike anything with X actor's name in the credits, or they hate X director/producer. . . . The Harry Potter films, while not mentioned ITT, are fairly well regarded throughout much of the western/film-going world. However, the religious folks I grew up around were actively pushing a boycott and "disliking" the films because they showed "witchcraft". . .
Even in this thread, for instance, I've brought up Gladiator, and someone brought up one of the most bizarre (IMO) reasons for disliking it. . . I mean, I kind of wonder if they even saw the story within the film. . . And yet, in my experience of people IRL, the only time I've personally encountered any dislike for the film, is for reasons we were kind of discounting (ie, a person "hates" anything with Russell Crowe in it)
*Hand raised* I hate Harry Potter (found the writing for the books to be dumb as hell), hate Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell, Ang Lee, Zak Snyder and Rian Johnson for trying to ruin the Skywalker Series of Star Wars. All of them are high on my “don’t watch even if somebody else bought the ticket”.
Even in this thread, for instance, I've brought up Gladiator, and someone brought up one of the most bizarre (IMO) reasons for disliking it. . . I mean, I kind of wonder if they even saw the story within the film. . . And yet, in my experience of people IRL, the only time I've personally encountered any dislike for the film, is for reasons we were kind of discounting (ie, a person "hates" anything with Russell Crowe in it)
Personally I think Gladiator is hugely overrated movie. It is not actively terrible (except in historical accuracy) but it is just so mediocre. Opening battle is ludicrous even by Hollywood standards. Most of the dialogue is simplistic and boring, completely lacking any kind of intrigue, and plot makes little sense. Most actors give good performances but somehow, nobody had any chemistry going on. It's like 5 good actors all doing monologues. I did like some arena scenes, chariot scene and Tigris vs Maximus. Final fight was weak sauce however.
I found widely panned 'Fall of the Roman Empire' much superior, even though its fight scenes are mostly crap. That movie felt dark and depressing, with end scene very appropriate for the title. Gladiator ended with supposedly high note "oh, we're totally making Rome Republic again", well how did that work out?
Why is that a treason to discount them? The presence of an actor or a Directors style can make or ruin a film in one persons (valid) equally opinion.
I like Mad Max2 but not 1 or 3 and enjoyed the new one.
I have no real feelings about Harry Potter - just does not interest me.
The reason why I personally discount those opinions is because those people will ultimately never watch X film, but still say "Ohh I hate that film, its so dumb" without ever seeing it.
Imagine for a moment, someone who hates the first Die Hard movie, and as a result says, " I will never watch another Bruce Willis movie ever again", and then they turn around and say, "5th Element sucks!!!" without ever seeing it. . . and as we've seen in this thread, 5th element is quite a popular film, being mentioned many times.
In some fairness, I can understand someone saying, "I dislike Will Farrell movies, I thought Step Brothers and Talladega Nights were basically the same, unoriginal stuff, and other than being quotable, were not funny. I shant be watching any more farrell movies" . . . and then seeing previews for that sherlock holmes movie they did and saying, "nope, not gonna see it"
I also have no real feelings for the Potter-verse, the example I gave was a group of people giving "hate" on a movie/franchise, without ever seeing it, based on their weird and not normal belief system (I mean that within the context of the particular religion as compared to general christianity, not intending to go far off topic and actually discuss religion)
Well, as far as WF goes, I have seen Anchorman, Taladega Nights, Step Bros, and even the new Sherlock. He has been awful in basically all of them. I tolerate movies that have him in them in a support role (Zoolander, that frat movie w/Luke Wilson, Lego, etc). But if he’s the main role, I find it utter trash. MM I’ve just seen SO many previews where her character annoys the hell out of me, I have formed all opinions off of previews. And a Saturday Night Live skit that was so annoying it actually made me angry. That shouldn’t be possible.
Except by the crowd to whom dropping of Bombadil is huge crime and sin ;-)
Back in the mid 90s when I first read LOTR my first thought when we encountered Bombadil was "if they ever do a movie of this book this scene is getting dropped"
Tolkien himself said about possible movie adaptation, that Bombadil could be left out altogether.
Curiously, he said same about Battle of Hornburg, which of course made up like 2/3 of actual Two Towers movie.
I think he would have liked Fellowship, but not so much other two movies.
Why is that a treason to discount them? The presence of an actor or a Directors style can make or ruin a film in one persons (valid) equally opinion.
I like Mad Max2 but not 1 or 3 and enjoyed the new one.
I have no real feelings about Harry Potter - just does not interest me.
The reason why I personally discount those opinions is because those people will ultimately never watch X film, but still say "Ohh I hate that film, its so dumb" without ever seeing it.
Imagine for a moment, someone who hates the first Die Hard movie, and as a result says, " I will never watch another Bruce Willis movie ever again", and then they turn around and say, "5th Element sucks!!!" without ever seeing it. . . and as we've seen in this thread, 5th element is quite a popular film, being mentioned many times.
In some fairness, I can understand someone saying, "I dislike Will Farrell movies, I thought Step Brothers and Talladega Nights were basically the same, unoriginal stuff, and other than being quotable, were not funny. I shant be watching any more farrell movies" . . . and then seeing previews for that sherlock holmes movie they did and saying, "nope, not gonna see it"
I also have no real feelings for the Potter-verse, the example I gave was a group of people giving "hate" on a movie/franchise, without ever seeing it, based on their weird and not normal belief system (I mean that within the context of the particular religion as compared to general christianity, not intending to go far off topic and actually discuss religion)
Fair enough - I do think a specific actor or Director can make or break a film for a given person.
All the Christopher Nolan films I have seen have been (IMO) over long, pretentious, fundamentally empty and soulless and hence I see no reason to watch another one - but I would not comment on ones I have not seen other than to say I would not watch it.
I have equally not enjoyed a film with Jim Carey in it so I don’t watch those.
Film types are again IMO something that can make a person dislike (or love) a film. I absolutely hate slasher flicks like Halloween series or even worse Scream series – a film I wish I had walked out of after watching Drew Barrymore be tortured for about half an hour. Torture-porn is torture porn.
In the context of the original question I think its valid to say that you hate/love a type of film or a director’s style or a given actor as that can (and often will) make you like/dislike the film.
What I find curious, is - even in this thread - the use of "hate" for non-offensive actors. Rather than, "I don't find X funny, or I don't like watching X", we immediately jump to "hate".
I understand if it's due to the actor being an actual gak person (many of them are), but to "hate" someone because you don't enjoy their acting? Seems a bit bizarre. There are loads of famous actors who are insufferable witches...but there are plenty of them who are perfectly decent human beings, even if you dislike their characters, acting, etc.
Elbows wrote: What I find curious, is - even in this thread - the use of "hate" for non-offensive actors. Rather than, "I don't find X funny, or I don't like watching X", we immediately jump to "hate".
I understand if it's due to the actor being an actual gak person (many of them are), but to "hate" someone because you don't enjoy their acting? Seems a bit bizarre. There are loads of famous actors who are insufferable witches...but there are plenty of them who are perfectly decent human beings, even if you dislike their characters, acting, etc.
I don't think I said I hate a person - I should not off I did, I would agree its an overused word - I do it too much myself. Same with "love" to be fair.
I should be clearer - I really really dislike certain peoples work in films be they directors or actors.
Met quite a few actors and most of them were lovely
It wasn't directed at you - just in general. I find the same thing amusing when people "hate" a type of food or vegetable or fruit or something.
There are more than enough actors with obnoxious political stances, self-important religions, actual criminal backgrounds, substance abuse issues, spats of rants and raves, blatant racists, etc...so to "hate" someone because they do a form of comedy is just really stretching it for me. Save the hate for the people who genuinely deserve it.
I think Jim Carrey is rubbish as an actor. He plays the same role and makes the same funny faces in all of his 'popular' movies.
Not as bad in the same way as Nicholas Cage who only gets roles because of who he is related to. I mean he has won one Oscar but he's also been nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for 14 different movies/roles.
I think Nicholas Cage tailors his acting to the type of film he thinks he’s making. He can give a great dramatic performance, give a more somber-yet-aware performance, or go balls out. Lately, he seems to have only been making one kind of film...
It might be a case of him having found his favorite kind of work and sticking with it.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think Nicholas Cage tailors his acting to the type of film he thinks he’s making. He can give a great dramatic performance, give a more somber-yet-aware performance, or go balls out. Lately, he seems to have only been making one kind of film...
It might be a case of him having found his favorite kind of work and sticking with it.
Cage's acting is actually a conscious decision to move away from the portrayal of reality in film, to move away from literalism.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I never saw that one. In my opinion, modern SNL has only been funny during Weekend Updates, half the cold-open political skits, and...uh....hmmm.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh! Eddie Murphy’s return to SNL was mostly good.
Have you by any chance seen Maine Justice?
Spoiler:
Spoiler:
If that still counts as modern, I thought it was amazing. Then again, I am also a huge fan of the Lazercats saga- although even I admit it is uneven.
The reason why I personally discount those opinions is because those people will ultimately never watch X film, but still say "Ohh I hate that film, its so dumb" without ever seeing it.
Imagine for a moment, someone who hates the first Die Hard movie, and as a result says, " I will never watch another Bruce Willis movie ever again", and then they turn around and say, "5th Element sucks!!!" without ever seeing it. . . and as we've seen in this thread, 5th element is quite a popular film, being mentioned many times.
Honestly, I think this statement needs a fairly big disclaimer on it, because I don't know which people you're referring to. I'm one of those who has certain actors I just can't stand, and whose presence in a film invariably spoils it for me... but I can't fathom why someone would claim to dislike a movie they haven't actually seen.
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Elbows wrote: What I find curious, is - even in this thread - the use of "hate" for non-offensive actors. Rather than, "I don't find X funny, or I don't like watching X", we immediately jump to "hate".
It's a fairly over-used word in general, these days. I blame a decline in literary standards in general... it's easier to just say 'hate' than to find a more appropriate adjective.
And, of course, social media has amped up the hyperbole. Shouting that something is the worst thing ever is far more likely to get attention than suggesting that thing is mildly annoying.
Jjohnso11 wrote: I think Jim Carrey is rubbish as an actor. He plays the same role and makes the same funny faces in all of his 'popular' movies.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Truman Show beg to differ, in my opinion.
I was thinking this same thing. I hate “dumb” comedies. Of which Jim Carrey did a LOT of. I could pretty much be sure I’d hate any of his work. But I saw The Truman Show, and had to re-evaluate my thoughts on him as an actor.
When it comes to Nic Cage, I’d argue his Oscar entitles him to enjoy daft roles for some money.
I mean, he’s an Oscar Winner. Top of his game. No accolade higher.
Sure, you could chase more. That’s a valid option.
But for some (and I’m of this mindset), once you’ve hit the pinnacle, why not simply do stuff you enjoy? He clearly enjoys hamming it up, and let’s face it he’s pretty decent as a Deliberate Ham.
While i loved the ace ventura's, dumb and dumbers, and such i think, that like the rock, jim carey is criminally underrated as an actor. His actual dramas are engrossing and his new tv show is amazing. Poor guy got pigeon holed hard in a time when they didnt really let you branch out.
And even in those dumb comedies he does some great character work. Ace Ventura, for example, incorporates loads of animalistic movements and behaviours which, apart from being there to be funny, also give you insight into his character. His strut is obviously based on a bird, for example, with the constant bobbing of the head as he walks. That combined with his outrageous dress sense perfectly conveys the need for the character to show off, to display themself and attract attention like a bird displaying its plumage.
Jim Carrey also hitched his wagon to the crackpot anti-vaxx brigade train for a while ... which would have also hampered his career (for damn good reasons).
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: When it comes to Nic Cage, I’d argue his Oscar entitles him to enjoy daft roles for some money.
I mean, he’s an Oscar Winner. Top of his game. No accolade higher.
Sure, you could chase more. That’s a valid option.
But for some (and I’m of this mindset), once you’ve hit the pinnacle, why not simply do stuff you enjoy? He clearly enjoys hamming it up, and let’s face it he’s pretty decent as a Deliberate Ham.
That is what Danial Radcliffe did
"Hmm, i could make tons as a top billing actor after my Harry Potter role, which net me more than enough money to live on.......OR I CAN PLAY A FARTING CORPSE THAT JETSKIES THROUGH THE POWER OF FLATULANCE"
I’m not fond of Will Ferrel lead movies. They just don’t do it for me. Same with Jim Carrey’s “Ace Ventura” type roles. I don’t like Adam Sandler’s “Happy Gilmore” roles.
That said, I liked WF in stranger than fiction, where he was less over the top, and I like JC’s serious roles in general. I like AS’s less over the top roles too. I enjoyed “Grown Ups” and it had several actors I generally don’t like normally... but did in those movies.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: When it comes to Nic Cage, I’d argue his Oscar entitles him to enjoy daft roles for some money.
I mean, he’s an Oscar Winner. Top of his game. No accolade higher.
Sure, you could chase more. That’s a valid option.
But for some (and I’m of this mindset), once you’ve hit the pinnacle, why not simply do stuff you enjoy? He clearly enjoys hamming it up, and let’s face it he’s pretty decent as a Deliberate Ham.
That is what Danial Radcliffe did
"Hmm, i could make tons as a top billing actor after my Harry Potter role, which net me more than enough money to live on.......OR I CAN PLAY A FARTING CORPSE THAT JETSKIES THROUGH THE POWER OF FLATULANCE"
Well indeed! In terms of Harry Potter, I’m genuinely impressed the child actors didn’t turn out to be, y’know.....child actors in any way shape or form.
Over the series they all showed improvement, without breaking character. And none of them have turned into drug addled wretches, or had to divorce their parents to stop them spending their hard earned money.
Say what you may about the quality of the films (I love them), but the cast and crew most certainly looked after their young charges well.
Daniel Radcliffe has more than earned his right to arse around in bloody awful avantgard arse scapes all he likes!
Exactly I love what all 3 of the main actors did, it was more than amazing how they somehow became decent people despite spending their life in the hollywood system.
Say what you may about the quality of the films (I love them), but the cast and crew most certainly looked after their young charges well.
On a side note to these films, while I haven't watched really any of them, one particular facet I've seen mentioned by the child-actors and adults alike was that, during filming, they had the student crew doing their actual fething homework at this table, in costume, and basically had the cameras rolling for reactions and whatnot. . . Just another layer of "realism" where people were genuinely doing something on screen that really sold the scene for everyone.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: When it comes to Nic Cage, I’d argue his Oscar entitles him to enjoy daft roles for some money.
I mean, he’s an Oscar Winner. Top of his game. No accolade higher.
Sure, you could chase more. That’s a valid option.
But for some (and I’m of this mindset), once you’ve hit the pinnacle, why not simply do stuff you enjoy? He clearly enjoys hamming it up, and let’s face it he’s pretty decent as a Deliberate Ham.
That is what Danial Radcliffe did
"Hmm, i could make tons as a top billing actor after my Harry Potter role, which net me more than enough money to live on.......OR I CAN PLAY A FARTING CORPSE THAT JETSKIES THROUGH THE POWER OF FLATULANCE"
I would also toss in The Green Mile in the same sentence if we speak drama alongside A Beautiful Mind.
If we jump categorys, i think only thouse who dislike the action category would be the persons who dont like Die Hard 1, Lethal Weapon 1 and my alltime personal favorite action movie as of this date; Mad Max: Fury Road.
Same could be said about the sci-fi movies; Matrix 1, 5th element, Clouse encounter of 3rd kind and ET.
The Gladiator is allso a move that moust likely is only disliked by humans who dont like the roman era or Russel Crowe, same can be said about Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
I know several folks who dislike Mad Max Fury Road because "god damn feminism invading my action moviez!"
Same crowd that bitches and moans endlessly about the new star wars, new marvel movies, new sisters of battle, etc, etc.
prolly cuz the movies that now features a female main role, are retakes on older movies that was written around all main roles beeing male actors.
I dont mind watching an action movie where the main actor(s) is female aslong as the whole movie script is DESIGNED for it. (something i have yet to see)
in the case of fury road, i dont see the main actors beeing male or female, it is the world and the cars that are the main actors.
I dont mind watching an action movie where the main actor(s) is female aslong as the whole movie script is DESIGNED for it. (something i have yet to see)
.
How would that work, then? Lots of references to flowers and babies and perfume and stuff? They print the script on pink paper, maybe?
Hey, do you remember that part in Aliens where Ripley complains about being a bit bloated, and wishes she was back home raising babies and cooking for her man? Yeah, now that was an action role written for a woman, by jingo!
I dont mind watching an action movie where the main actor(s) is female aslong as the whole movie script is DESIGNED for it. (something i have yet to see)
.
How would that work, then? Lots of references to flowers and babies and perfume and stuff? They print the script on pink paper, maybe?
Hey, do you remember that part in Aliens where Ripley complains about being a bit bloated, and wishes she was back home raising babies and cooking for her man? Yeah, now that was an action role written for a woman, by jingo!
That’s not my take on what he said. I think he meant, with Alien(s) being a perfect example, a script that starts out BEING about a female lead. Badass like Ripley or otherwise. He doesn’t agree with a movie that’s been about a man/men that suddenly gender-flips “just cuz”. The newest abomination that is Ghostbusters is a perfect example of that. Ironically, a movie I won’t watch because MM is in it and the previews are just awful. I think THAT’S what he’s saying.
Interesting fact (well.. not really) that I found out about this film the other day, was that the score was composed by Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits fame). Will have to watch it again now..
I dont mind watching an action movie where the main actor(s) is female aslong as the whole movie script is DESIGNED for it. (something i have yet to see)
.
How would that work, then? Lots of references to flowers and babies and perfume and stuff? They print the script on pink paper, maybe?
Hey, do you remember that part in Aliens where Ripley complains about being a bit bloated, and wishes she was back home raising babies and cooking for her man? Yeah, now that was an action role written for a woman, by jingo!
That’s not my take on what he said. I think he meant, with Alien(s) being a perfect example, a script that starts out BEING about a female lead.
I think insaniak expresses surprise that somebody has apparently not seen Alien(s)...or any other of dozens of action movies designed for female leads (granted, many of them suck but still).
I agree that any story which attempts to build on novelty value "oh look, it's a different gender!" is probably not any good. For example, idea of making a female James Bond is completely trite. Coming up with original character who is a female spy in glamorous settings, yeah no reason why that couldn't work.
timetowaste85 wrote: He doesn’t agree with a movie that’s been about a man/men that suddenly gender-flips “just cuz”. The newest abomination that is Ghostbusters is a perfect example of that. Ironically, a movie I won’t watch because MM is in it and the previews are just awful. I think THAT’S what he’s saying.
Ghostbusters is not about men. It is about a group of scientists investigating the paranormal who set up a business to catch ghosts.
The sex and gender of the scientists is completely immaterial to the story being told.
timetowaste85 wrote: He doesn’t agree with a movie that’s been about a man/men that suddenly gender-flips “just cuz”. The newest abomination that is Ghostbusters is a perfect example of that. Ironically, a movie I won’t watch because MM is in it and the previews are just awful. I think THAT’S what he’s saying.
Ghostbusters is not about men. It is about a group of scientists investigating the paranormal who set up a business to catch ghosts.
The sex and gender of the scientists is completely immaterial to the story being told.
Last I checked, Ghostbusters was 4 guys named Egon, Peter, Ray and Winston who had a paranormal group (Winston came in later) created a way to trap ghosts and made a living from it. They had a female secretary. Then this new movie was made, and changed all 5 characters’ gender roles. It was the very definition of gender swapping in a movie. I wouldn’t go pay to see a male Pocahontas or an Asian Pocahontas movie either! Oooo, or how about a Mexican Mulan movie starring a chihuahua! Also not gonna happen!
White washing, reverse white washing, and gender swapping “just cuz” is the dumbest thing done in modern cinema. It’s insulting to the source material. Make new movies starring the people you want to play the roles. Don’t ruin years of lore just cuz you’re “edgy”.
timetowaste85 wrote: He doesn’t agree with a movie that’s been about a man/men that suddenly gender-flips “just cuz”. The newest abomination that is Ghostbusters is a perfect example of that. Ironically, a movie I won’t watch because MM is in it and the previews are just awful. I think THAT’S what he’s saying.
Ghostbusters is not about men. It is about a group of scientists investigating the paranormal who set up a business to catch ghosts.
The sex and gender of the scientists is completely immaterial to the story being told.
Last I checked, Ghostbusters was 4 guys named Egon, Peter, Ray and Winston who had a paranormal group (Winston came in later) created a way to trap ghosts and made a living from it. They had a female secretary. Then this new movie was made, and changed all 5 characters’ gender roles. It was the very definition of gender swapping in a movie. I wouldn’t go pay to see a male Pocahontas or an Asian Pocahontas movie either! Oooo, or how about a Mexican Mulan movie starring a chihuahua! Also not gonna happen!
White washing, reverse whitewashing, and gender-swapping “just cuz” is the dumbest thing done in modern cinema. It’s insulting to the source material. Make new movies starring the people you want to play the roles. Don’t ruin years of lore just cuz you’re “edgy”.
You can not ruin anything that came out of production as far from a good movie, to begin with, had said movie series been made by competent people and with a solid script and such I would be inclined to agree with you. But the latest installment in the series did no real harm to it, besides stepping on a few toes and making fans wail in despair online.
timetowaste85 wrote: He doesn’t agree with a movie that’s been about a man/men that suddenly gender-flips “just cuz”. The newest abomination that is Ghostbusters is a perfect example of that. Ironically, a movie I won’t watch because MM is in it and the previews are just awful. I think THAT’S what he’s saying.
Ghostbusters is not about men. It is about a group of scientists investigating the paranormal who set up a business to catch ghosts.
The sex and gender of the scientists is completely immaterial to the story being told.
Last I checked, Ghostbusters was 4 guys named Egon, Peter, Ray and Winston who had a paranormal group (Winston came in later) created a way to trap ghosts and made a living from it. They had a female secretary. Then this new movie was made, and changed all 5 characters’ gender roles.
Just because they were played by men doesn't mean that them being male was important to the story, or even a defining feature of their character. What in Ghostbusters requires them to be men? What jokes? What story elements? The story in Ghostbusters is not about men, it is about the ghostbusters and that original story would play the exact same way if those ghostbusters were all women or a mix of men and women.
The only joke I can recall in the entire of the first Ghostbusters film which relies on the sex of a character is the "dickless" joke at the expense of Walter Peck.
Why do women need to be justified and the role needs to be "designed" for a woman when the same is not true of men?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
timetowaste85 wrote: I think he meant, with Alien(s) being a perfect example, a script that starts out BEING about a female lead.
Also, Ripley was originally written as a man. Ripley's sex and gender in the first Alien film are incidental, it is never brought up in the text of the film. It is with the later films (probably strongest in Aliens) where it is actually somewhat relevant to the story (and even in Aliens it could still work with a man, you just flip it from a mother/daughter to a father/daughter dynamic)
Then why was it necessary to replace the already existing characters with their opposite gender? Same argument can be made against the change.
Do you know many people would get pissed off if Alien got a reboot and Ripley was turned into a man? 99% of the fans of the original would. Myself included. Gender swapping for the reason of “just cuz” is the dumbest reason there is.
timetowaste85 wrote: Then why was it necessary to replace the already existing characters with their opposite gender? Same argument can be made against the change.
Because the people making the film thought that these four women would be good in the roles. Which is the same reason that we ended up with the four male ghostbusters in the first film. And why we ended up with a female Ripley.
To be fair we ended up with 4 male actors in ghostvusters because they were all essentially buddies that pushed hard for friends film to get done. There was a pretty cool special on it
Hulksmash wrote: To be fair we ended up with 4 male actors in ghostvusters because they were all essentially buddies that pushed hard for friends film to get done. There was a pretty cool special on it
Was that The Movies That Made Us on Netflix? If so, agreed, it was a great look at behind the scenes.
Hulksmash wrote: To be fair we ended up with 4 male actors in ghostvusters because they were all essentially buddies that pushed hard for friends film to get done. There was a pretty cool special on it
And in addition, Ramis was a fan. There were already comic books, cartoons, and action figures that made up the lore. They were for Egan, Ray, Peter and Winston. There was a ton of background for these characters as “the Ghostbusters“. This new movie got made because the director wanted to “do something different“. And the movie was panned by most, and will never see a sequel because of how trashy it was. We got Ripley because Sigourney Weaver is bad ass.
ATCM: Most people do not want to see characters they love rebooted into different identities. They want to see something new. If you want to support this kind of garbage, that is entirely your right. But just like I recognize that Sharknado is absolute garbage and still enjoy it, you should recognize that stuff like this is complete garbage and that’s an opinion held by the general public. The ratings prove that.
The female Ghostbusters movie does not suck because it is a movie about females. It sucks because it is a movie based on established lore with established characters that were completely thrown out just to have a female cast. As stated before, rebooting Alien in order to have a bad ass male role take the place of Ripley would be a terrible thing as well. Having a white guy play Black Panther would be a terrible decision, and should never happen. These are examples of awful things that should never take place in the movies. These old characters exist because someone came up with the idea and made them awesome. Replacing them to be “different” is trashing that original person’s view. And anyone supporting it should be ashamed of themselves.
timetowaste85 wrote: Then why was it necessary to replace the already existing characters with their opposite gender?
Well, because the actors were older to replay as the character, so they had to change the characters!
timetowaste85 wrote: As stated before, rebooting Alien in order to have a bad ass male role take the place of Ripley would be a terrible thing as well.
Imma stop you right here, rebooting Alien is a terrible idea, period. Movie is already here and still work.
timetowaste85 wrote: Then why was it necessary to replace the already existing characters with their opposite gender?
Well, because the actors were older to replay as the character, so they had to change the characters!
timetowaste85 wrote: As stated before, rebooting Alien in order to have a bad ass male role take the place of Ripley would be a terrible thing as well.
Imma stop you right here, rebooting Alien is a terrible idea, period. Movie is already here and still work.
Just like Alien, it didn’t need to be remade (and I agree with you). My point was that Ghostbusters got a remake JUST to say they were being different by casting females. And it flopped because established lore was thrown into the garbage for that “edgy” new thing. Again, reviews have shown how the general public feels about that. And it ain’t positive.
A Town Called Malus wrote:Ghostbusters is not about men. It is about a group of scientists investigating the paranormal who set up a business to catch ghosts.
The sex and gender of the scientists is completely immaterial to the story being told.
It might've been immaterial in 1983. And it might've been immaterial if it wasn't used as a selling point in 2016.*
Otherwise, yeah. The sex and gender of the scientists didn't have much to do with the mishandling and mediocre performance of the reboot.
A Town Called Malus wrote:Because the people making the film thought that these four women would be good in the roles.
Notice how, before the movie's release, they had a whole lotta people involved with the film on talk shows, sniggering at all the basement-dwellers who were complaining about the film? Dan Aykroyd was one.
Afterwards, he was on TV stating that Paul 'these women are hilarious' Feig would not be back on the Sony lot anytime soon.
* Honestly, just sit back and watch Mr. Plinkett's review. Language warning. They pretty much had to use that as a selling point.
timetowaste85 wrote: Just like Alien, it didn’t need to be remade (and I agree with you).
Honestly, I don't really get why people make remakes. Sometime it works, sometime it even is a MASSIVE success (thinking Scarface here), but most of time it feels... unnecessary.
The worst is remake of pretty recent movies just to have US people instead of foreign actors and directors, those remakes are the worst, most creatively bankrupt things hollywood has to offer to the world.
timetowaste85 wrote: Just like Alien, it didn’t need to be remade (and I agree with you).
Honestly, I don't really get why people make remakes. Sometime it works, sometime it even is a MASSIVE success (thinking Scarface here), but most of time it feels... unnecessary.
The worst is remake of pretty recent movies just to have US people instead of foreign actors and directors, those remakes are the worst, most creatively bankrupt things hollywood has to offer to the world.
Agreed. Those and “white washing” like ScarJo as Major in GitS was an awful decision. That falls in line with my comments like “a white guy playing Black Panther”. You just DONT!
timetowaste85 wrote: Just like Alien, it didn’t need to be remade (and I agree with you).
Honestly, I don't really get why people make remakes. Sometime it works, sometime it even is a MASSIVE success (thinking Scarface here), but most of time it feels... unnecessary.
The worst is remake of pretty recent movies just to have US people instead of foreign actors and directors, those remakes are the worst, most creatively bankrupt things hollywood has to offer to the world.
They don't bother me to be honest - some are good, some are not (IMO)
I prefer them to have a new take or different style and have enjoyed for instance the two very different versions of True Grit but had the opposite with the recent Star Wars films.
If you look at the Bechdel test and its relevance you'd understand why people are so interested in advancing female leads.
I think the best individual should play the role where it makes sense. Unfortunately "best individual" tends to be white, straight, and male in the majority of movies/television shows. I might go through this post and see if the majority of these movies pass the Bechdel test.
edit- the OPs first film passed. So I'll just take my ball and go home.
I know several folks who dislike Mad Max Fury Road because "god damn feminism invading my action moviez!"
Same crowd that bitches and moans endlessly about the new star wars, new marvel movies, new sisters of battle, etc, etc.
I think that, realistically, if we spread the net wide enough, we could find people like this with literally every single film out there, even with the "best" of the mostly agreed upon films here. There are people who say they actively dislike anything with X actor's name in the credits, or they hate X director/producer. . . . The Harry Potter films, while not mentioned ITT, are fairly well regarded throughout much of the western/film-going world. However, the religious folks I grew up around were actively pushing a boycott and "disliking" the films because they showed "witchcraft". . .
Even in this thread, for instance, I've brought up Gladiator, and someone brought up one of the most bizarre (IMO) reasons for disliking it. . . I mean, I kind of wonder if they even saw the story within the film. . . And yet, in my experience of people IRL, the only time I've personally encountered any dislike for the film, is for reasons we were kind of discounting (ie, a person "hates" anything with Russell Crowe in it)
*Hand raised* I hate Harry Potter (found the writing for the books to be dumb as hell), hate Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell, Ang Lee, Zak Snyder and Rian Johnson for trying to ruin the Skywalker Series of Star Wars. All of them are high on my “don’t watch even if somebody else bought the ticket”.
I legitimately read this as you having some kind of next-level conspiracy involving all those individuals collaborating to destroy star wars from within, and I was getting really excited to dig into it until I realized you just specified with the last guy.
.....
Just for me, can you explain how if Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell, Ang Lee, Zak Snyder and Rion Jahnsan did collaborate in a grand plot to destroy star wars, how they would do it?
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Jjohnso11 wrote: Unfortunately "best individual" tends to be white, straight, and male in the majority of movies/television shows.
I dont mind watching an action movie where the main actor(s) is female aslong as the whole movie script is DESIGNED for it. (something i have yet to see)
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How would that work, then? Lots of references to flowers and babies and perfume and stuff? They print the script on pink paper, maybe?
Hey, do you remember that part in Aliens where Ripley complains about being a bit bloated, and wishes she was back home raising babies and cooking for her man? Yeah, now that was an action role written for a woman, by jingo!
:
I'm sorry, Alien, the film that famously had a script written with zero references to the gender of the lead so that the director could cast whoever he felt fit the role best, is a film designed around having a female lead?
.....
It's why the character has a name that is her last name! She's called Ripley in the script specifically so it's almost irrelevant if Ripley is male or female. It was going to be Allen or Ellen, the point was it didn't matter.
I would also toss in The Green Mile in the same sentence if we speak drama alongside A Beautiful Mind.
If we jump categorys, i think only thouse who dislike the action category would be the persons who dont like Die Hard 1, Lethal Weapon 1 and my alltime personal favorite action movie as of this date; Mad Max: Fury Road.
Same could be said about the sci-fi movies; Matrix 1, 5th element, Clouse encounter of 3rd kind and ET.
The Gladiator is allso a move that moust likely is only disliked by humans who dont like the roman era or Russel Crowe, same can be said about Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.
I know several folks who dislike Mad Max Fury Road because "god damn feminism invading my action moviez!"
Same crowd that bitches and moans endlessly about the new star wars, new marvel movies, new sisters of battle, etc, etc.
prolly cuz the movies that now features a female main role, are retakes on older movies that was written around all main roles beeing male actors.
I dont mind watching an action movie where the main actor(s) is female aslong as the whole movie script is DESIGNED for it. (something i have yet to see)
in the case of fury road, i dont see the main actors beeing male or female, it is the world and the cars that are the main actors.
So, to summarize, movies that feature a female actor are fine as long as the whole script is designed for it.
Not like Mad Max Fury Road, the film about a woman raised in a commune called the Many Mothers who were trying to plant seeds in a world they describe as destroyed by men, trying to kidnap and rescue several brides from a bad guy named Immortan Joe, leader of a cult called the War Boyz, by escaping in a gigantic semi truck filled with mothers' milk.
You're right, that film had nothing to do with the characters being male or female. No references to those dynamics in there at all.
Aliens (NOT Alien) and Fury Road are two examples of action films designed around female protagonists; they happen to be some of my favorite films (Aliens is my all-time favorite).
If gender swapping is the only or primary reason a movie (or show or comic or whatever) is being (re)made then the main point of the original better have been gender in the first place; otherwise it’s pretty likely to be a waste of everyone’s time.
timetowaste85 wrote: Just like Alien, it didn’t need to be remade (and I agree with you).
Honestly, I don't really get why people make remakes. Sometime it works, sometime it even is a MASSIVE success (thinking Scarface here), but most of time it feels... unnecessary.
The worst is remake of pretty recent movies just to have US people instead of foreign actors and directors, those remakes are the worst, most creatively bankrupt things hollywood has to offer to the world.
To be honest, I don't get why some people are so opposed to it.
For some reason, it's perfectly ok that there are a million different books out there with re-tellings of, say, Grimm's Fairy Tales, or the King Arthur legend, But try to make a movie with a different take on Ghostbusters? It's the end of the world!
Remaking a story allows you to tell that story in a different way. Sometimes that keeps the core of the character more or less the same and just changes small details and updates the visuals for a modern audience. Sometimes, it will involve major changes to the story, or to certain characters... and honestly, I would prefer that to the version that tries to stick too close to the original, because it gives you something different to watch. There does indeed seem to be little point in re-making a movie if you're just going to do the exact same thing... but telling the story with a difference (What if this character is actually bad guy? What if, instead of looking for [thing] they're looking for [other thing]? What if, yes, the main character is a woman, instead of a man?)
The sheer level of vitriol people direct at remakes just puzzles me. It's like they feel that remaking a story somehow erases the previous version from existence. The fact that there's a version of Gone in 60 Seconds with Vin Diesel in it, or a version of Ghostbusters with an all-female cast in no way prevents you from watching the original versions of those movies if you prefer them. All it does is gives other people an alternate take on those stories.
Although, really, Ghostbusters is probably not a great example to use in these discussions anyway, since from what I've read (I haven't seen the new one) it's a terrible movie completely irrespective of the gender of the leads. People just focus on the fact that they gender swapped the cast, because that's so very rage inducing, for some inexplicable reason.
the_scotsman wrote: Just for me, can you explain how if Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell, Ang Lee, Zak Snyder and Rion Jahnsan did collaborate in a grand plot to destroy star wars, how they would do it?
It's "and Rian Jonson, who tried to destroy the Skywalker series of Star Wars films". Nothing to do with the others.
I'm sorry, Alien, the film that famously had a script written with zero references to the gender of the lead so that the director could cast whoever he felt fit the role best, is a film designed around having a female lead?
I think this reasoning about films being 'designed' around a female lead is a bit confused, but Alien is still a good example, and similar to Ghostbusters: maybe it didn't matter what sex the working stiffs in the film were, beforehand, but Sigourney Weaver's Ripley has become so cemented as part of the franchise that some people can't fathom Alien films without her, despite having died at one point.
Not like Mad Max Fury Road, the film about a woman raised in a commune called the Many Mothers who were trying to plant seeds in a world they describe as destroyed by men, trying to kidnap and rescue several brides from a bad guy named Immortan Joe, leader of a cult called the War Boyz, by escaping in a gigantic semi truck filled with mothers' milk.
You're right, that film had nothing to do with the characters being male or female. No references to those dynamics in there at all.
Frankly, I see Fury Road as something like Avatar. It's going to take a while for fans to see past the swooshy effects.
insaniak, the gender swap in GB2016 was not in itself offensive (it was, however, boring); what happened was Sony created the narrative that people were panning the film because of the gender swap — the idea was to flip the script from “this is a bad movie disliked by reasonable people” to “this is brave movie disliked by sexist manbabies”
Manchu wrote: insaniak, the gender swap in GB2016 was not in itself offensive (it was, however, boring); what happened was Sony created the narrative that people were panning the film because of the gender swap — the idea was to flip the script from “this is a bad movie disliked by reasonable people” to “this is brave movie disliked by sexist manbabies”
Sony didn't create that narrative. People were panning the movie all over the internet prior to release, purely on account of the leads being women. Sony certainly made an effort to use that to deflect some of the actual criticism that came after people saw it, but it was most certainly a thing.
You’re mistaken; Sony did create and propagate that narrative as a counter marketing strategy.
Of course some number of people were spouting sexist stuff; it’s the internet, you can find someone as an example of anything. What Sony did, to hoodwink folks like you, is edit and create content to make it seem like that was the main criticism of the movie, to align this pile of crap film with a conversation about why sexism is bad.
Manchu wrote: Aliens (NOT Alien) and Fury Road are two examples of action films designed around female protagonists; they happen to be some of my favorite films (Aliens is my all-time favorite).
If gender swapping is the only or primary reason a movie (or show or comic or whatever) is being (re)made then the main point of the original better have been gender in the first place; otherwise it’s pretty likely to be a waste of everyone’s time.
I think part of the frustration here is this: nothing gets greenlit unless it's a remake, sequel, or reboot, and a great majority of what gets remade or rebooted starts out with white male protagonists.
Make an original spy movie, and make James Bond 23 starring that fellow with the odd ears for the seventh time in a row and it realky does not matter what the difference in quality is there, the second one will profit and the first probably will not.
At the end of the day, people just want things the same. And they will gladly proclaim that the only reason something not made is to push insert non Default Person Attributes Here regardless of what the original reason for the writing of the screenplay was before it got reworked into a seqboomake of an existing property.
Before the movie was released, it was the main criticism of the movie. It wasn't until after people actually saw the movie that they started to criticise the movie itself.
insaniak wrote: [For some reason, it's perfectly ok that there are a million different books out there with re-tellings of, say, Grimm's Fairy Tales, or the King Arthur legend, But try to make a movie with a different take on Ghostbusters? It's the end of the world!
Poor examples, I think. Centuries-old verbally-retold morality tales with multiple local versions and interpretations, versus a single painstakingly scripted and filmed story from 1984.
People just focus on the fact that they gender swapped the cast, because that's so very rage inducing, for some inexplicable reason.
I think too many people focus on the gender-swapping as the reason for the rage, to put it down as inexplicable and easily dismissable. Not to say that nobody ever threw their toys out of the pram for that reason alone, but it's also an easy (lazy?) shorthand to indicate just what kind of problems can come with gender-swapping and female leads these days. Not always, but often. Used to get bums on seats by virtue-signalling - however sincerely - and piggybacking on previous successes; to label any criticism as coming from misogynists and social lepers; and apparently (with hindsight) to cover up the fact that the film is shoddy in general.
There's stuff like the little mermaid living happily ever after, rather than turning into sea foam; but it might be a bit different to, say, a big budget movie of Queen Aretha and her female knights showing up the bumbling male saxons, that looks like it was filmed on $75.25, with the director and main cast appearing everywhere with soundbites about 'taking the narrative away from white men' and sticking it to 'the basement dwelling trolls'.
It's that antagonism that gets me, man. Too often it's the filmmakers presenting as broken and childish themselves, not stoicially ignoring the dumb clucks but doing their best to stir them up.
Poor examples, I think. Centuries-old verbally-retold morality tales with multiple local versions and interpretations, versus a single painstakingly scripted and filmed story from 1984.
You're lacking a conclusion, here...
I think too many people focus on the gender-swapping as the reason for the rage, to put it down as inexplicable and easily dismissable. Not to say that nobody ever threw their toys out of the pram for that reason alone, but it's also an easy (lazy?) shorthand to indicate just what kind of problems can come with gender-swapping and female leads these days. Not always, but often. Used to get bums on seats by virtue-signalling - however sincerely - and piggybacking on previous successes; to label any criticism as coming from misogynists and social lepers; and apparently (with hindsight) to cover up the fact that the film is shoddy in general.
It can be true both that people complained about the movie having women in it, and that people on the 'other side' tried to use that to dismiss other criticisms of the film as misogyny...
I think the core problem of the female Ghostbusters is that it was too late. If it had come out hot on the heels of the original films then I think people would have been more accepting of it. However it came years later, in a slot where people were more thinking the terms "reboot" or "sequel" rather than "all female cast replacement" which is closer to what most would consider a spoof (pretty easy too as Ghostbusters always had a slight comic element and the female version played up to the comic elements in the trailers).
insaniak wrote: Before the movie was released, it was the main criticism of the movie.
Like I mentioned, you can easily find someone selling any position at all on the internet. Nothing about the reaction to GB2016 was newsworthy until the trailer dropped and immediately became the most quickly disliked video in YT history. That’s when the propaganda campaign got underway.
Manchu wrote: You’re mistaken; Sony did create and propagate that narrative as a counter marketing strategy.
Of course some number of people were spouting sexist stuff; it’s the internet, you can find someone as an example of anything. What Sony did, to hoodwink folks like you, is edit and create content to make it seem like that was the main criticism of the movie, to align this pile of crap film with a conversation about why sexism is bad.
Disney did the same with The Last Jedi trying to cover up that stinking pile of gak
Ghost in the Shell got flak for having a A list white actress as the main character. but I had no isue with it in the same way as happy to see Samuel J as Nick Fury - both got the charcter right.
Remakes can and do work - or not. How many times has Shelock Holmes been made or the Dickens classics? some are good, some less so.
insaniak wrote: Before the movie was released, it was the main criticism of the movie.
Like I mentioned, you can easily find someone selling any position at all on the internet. Nothing about the reaction to GB2016 was newsworthy until the trailer dropped and immediately became the most quickly disliked video in YT history. That’s when the propaganda campaign got underway.
You and I clearly remember it differently. And that's ok.
It’s also somewhat irrelevant, considering that what some anonymous YT accounts post in the comments section can’t seriously take on hundreds of millions of dollars of production and marketing. People generally, not some tiny sub-subset of GB fans, responded negatively to the GB2016 trailer; that’s why the counter narrative needed to be cooked up and pushed so hard.
To me it seems pretty clear that audiences get their hackles up at the word reboot, and then start looking for reasons why their negative expectations will be fulfilled. Whether there were any genders or sexualities swapped, characters de-aged, themes dropped or plots simplified, the audience already doesn’t like the idea of another reboot. They can point to any changes to the original and say, “that’s the reason!” And if there are no changes at all, the audience can dislike the rehash for being boring and pointless.
I wonder how many reboots would receive a warmer welcome if they were announced differently. “Answer the Call: A Ghostbusters Multiverse Story” might sound clunky, but it does safely leave the original story sacrosanct while priming the audience for potentially dramatic changes.
For example, Star Trek 2009 successfully used timeline shenanigans to avoid a lot of fan backlash.
In the end, I don’t think the genders of the Ghost Busters remake made a difference to the movie. It wasn’t a good movie because the movie wasn’t good. They could have had the original cast brought forward with a time machine, and it wouldn’t have mattered. It still would have been a bad movie.
Pragmatically speaking, people that care about genders in movies care about something that I don’t. In my opinion, it’s a waste of their time and energy. Regardless of when the sexism narrative began, it didn’t alter the quality of the movie.
If people get hung up on what actors look like, when that doesn’t impact the film, that’s their hang up. Sucks for them.
Nolan Batfilms, Craig Bond films, most of the MCU, Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, the recent IT movies, Battlestar Galactica (TV but still), Coen Bros’ True Grit, Planet of the Apes; I mean we could go on and on.
Perhaps my point wasn’t clear. I’m saying that if someone cares if a character is a specific gender, or race, religion, sexuality... if it isn’t relevant to the story -
In a Constantine fiction, A Buddhist Monk trying an exorcism wouldn’t jive with the Judeo-Christian mythology it relies on
- and a person is bothered by it, that’s a problem with the person getting bent out of shape by it. While completely judgmental, you can’t fix stupid. All you can do is try to improve the future by encouraging critical thinking.
Does it make a difference to the story if this person’s gender was different? Padme needs to have children that Vader doesn’t know where they are. You can’t really flip that role’s gender. Could Luke and Leia’s genders have been flipped without changing the story? Yes.
Does it make a difference if the character’s race was different? Django Unchained really wouldn’t make much sense, given the time period, if Django wasn’t black. Would it make a difference if Mace Windu was Asian? No.
Sexuality? Again, if you want your characters to produce offspring without outside “interaction” involved, having a straight couple kind of works... but short of that? Does it matter to Sulu’s character in the Star Trek reboot if he’s gay or straight? Nope. He can perform his duties as an officer of Star Fleet either way.
Yes, complainers gonna complain, but that doesn’t make the criticism valid.
Manchu wrote: I don’t think that’s quite right. People want their favorite IPs to keep going. That is a big part of why this is happening at all.
When it comes to video games, reboots have been hitting it out of the park lately.
Video game reboots/remakes get a very different reception, I think, because to most consumers the originals are not actually still available. Sure, you can technically still whip out a PS1 and play the original Resident Evil, but the vast majority of people playing video games now either weren't around when the PS1 was a thing, or traded in that machine a long time ago. So a remake is a chance to revisit that game, generally with significantly improved visuals and/or game engine.
Whereas a movie made in the 70s is still generally available to watch right now. So a remake seems uneccessary, unless it brings something new to the table... at which point it gets criticised for being different to the original. Unless, like Gone in 60 Seconds, it's a remake of something old enough and obscure enough that most people don't actually realise that it's a remake.
Some remakes/reboots are indeed far better than their "original" counterparts. . . . I mean, before Chris Evans put on blue spandex and picked up his shield, all of the prior cinema versions of Cap America were, well, they weren't great at all.
And I don't mind it so much if a film maker revisits some of their own work, even if its a DVD collection or the like, such as the Alien quadrilogy box set I have, where all of the filmmakers have a more "complete" version of their movie that is longer than theatrical release. . . but in that case, these did not warrant an entirely new shoot, new cast and new everything, so it may not fit some people's definitions of reboot
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Some remakes/reboots are indeed far better than their "original" counterparts. . . . I mean, before Chris Evans put on blue spandex and picked up his shield, all of the prior cinema versions of Cap America were, well, they weren't great at all.
What are you thinking of for 'cinema versions?' I can think one or two terrible made-for-TV Cap movies, but not any real Hollywood or even indie films (not that an indie studio would be able to pay for a Marvel license).
None of the comic movies really fit the definition of remake, and for reboots, all that really fits is Sony's increasingly bizarre Spiderman web, and WB mugging random actors and dressing them up as Batman while they're drunk. And both of those were more about cycling the lead actor and director than anything else. And possibly keeping those characters stuck at their roots, because they fear the general audience won't recognize anything but 'dead relative = become super hero.'
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Some remakes/reboots are indeed far better than their "original" counterparts. . . . I mean, before Chris Evans put on blue spandex and picked up his shield, all of the prior cinema versions of Cap America were, well, they weren't great at all.
What are you thinking of for 'cinema versions?' I can think one or two terrible made-for-TV Cap movies, but not any real Hollywood or even indie films (not that an indie studio would be able to pay for a Marvel license).
None of the comic movies really fit the definition of remake, and for reboots, all that really fits is Sony's increasingly bizarre Spiderman web, and WB mugging random actors and dressing them up as Batman while they're drunk. And both of those were more about cycling the lead actor and director than anything else. And possibly keeping those characters stuck at their roots, because they fear the general audience won't recognize anything but 'dead relative = become super hero.'
There are decent budget films from 1944, then 1979, and finally a 1990/91 version. . . . Similar case for the Superman films, despite the love that the Christopher Reeves films get, and as bad as they truly are, Henry Cavill just looks a better Supes than previous bloke, and the SFX have gotten to a point where we can "appropriately" pull off the film.
Yeah... looking at those, I don't think we can say the current incarnation is a reboot or remake of those films. Just starting fresh from the same source material. Honestly, the idea of reboot of something that's primarily literary or historical is complicated
I wouldn't say they were reboots any more than Kevin Costner's Robin Hood or Men in Tights are 'reboots' of the Errol Flynn version.
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Superman I'll entirely disagree with you. Effects, sure (but whatever- the CGI bits are honestly dull), but for Superman films that actually get the point of Superman, the Reeves movies are far, far superior to the Cavill movies. It isn't even close. As Superman, Cavill looks bored out of his mind and completely uninterested in anything going on around him.
And I say that as someone who thinks Superman is a dreadful and boring character.
Voss wrote: As Superman, Cavill looks bored out of his mind and completely uninterested in anything going on around him.
I feel like that's largely down to the directorial decision to make him moody and emo. When he gets to actually act, he sells it - the final scene with Zod,for example, was just an awesome, powerful, emotional moment. I dislike Superman with a passion as a character, and hate his presence in the Justice League, but I'm still sorry that Cavill didn't get to play him properly, because he seems a perfect fit for the role.
Manchu wrote: Nolan Batfilms, Craig Bond films, most of the MCU, Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, the recent IT movies, Battlestar Galactica (TV but still), Coen Bros’ True Grit, Planet of the Apes; I mean we could go on and on.
I consider stuff like the Nolan Batman films and It to be more like contemporary adaptations of a literary work than a reboot of a remembered film. I don’t believe anyone considered the current MCU to be a reboot of Ang Lee’s Hulk or Salenger’s Cap. I’ll give you True Grit, Planet of the Apes, and partial credit for Dawn of the Dead, though. The less said about nBSG the better.
So while there are good reboots out there, I maintain that my own first reaction to the word reboot, as well as the reaction I see the most of on the internet, is distrust.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I don’t believe anyone considered the current MCU to be a reboot of Ang Lee’s Hulk or Salenger’s Cap
I don't think many people were even aware of the existence of earlier Captain America, but there was some amount of grumbling when the Norton Hulk was announced, as it was specifically marketed as a reboot. I suspect the grumbling would have been louder if more people had actually liked Ang Lee's Hulk.
And at least they did the smart thing and didn't just make Norton's version another origin movie, cramming that into the opening credits instead.
timetowaste85 wrote: Then why was it necessary to replace the already existing characters with their opposite gender? Same argument can be made against the change.
Because the people making the film thought that these four women would be good in the roles. Which is the same reason that we ended up with the four male ghostbusters in the first film. And why we ended up with a female Ripley.
come on..do you really believe that? or are you just kidding yourself?
BobtheInquisitor wrote: How many well-received Movie reboots or remakes have there been in the last two decades? Fury Road is the only one I can think of.
Wait, so Fury Road was a reboot? Well, good I guess I can forgive it now. My wife still wont. She hates that he was basically little more than a side kick in a movie with his name on it.
I saw it more a a trend of Piss Max off he topples your society, the rest of the characters, thought having more "story" were just a means to an end.
Moral of the story, don't mess with max and don't jack his car.
Seriously there was so much wrong with the story of that movie that he surviving ladies were completely short sited. I imagine the survivors from the other towns toppled their newly liberated kingdom in a matter of months. Meanwhile max was like I can see where this is headed and I'm out.
Good special effects does not a good movie make. See Highlander 2 for an example.
warhead01 wrote: She hates that he was basically little more than a side kick in a movie with his name on it.
So... just like every Mad Max film but the first.
I mean, in The Road Warrior Max had 16 lines of dialogue. In Fury Road he has 52. So over 3 times more dialogue.
Max is not the main character in the stories he appears in past the first film. He is a wanderer, a legend, who travels from place to place, entering and leaving other peoples stories.
Max is the main character in the films. He may come into other people's stories but it's about how he upends those stories and sets them in another direction. They talk in hushed tones about "the rude worriah", not about the old duffer in a WWII helmet, or the guy who mucked out the pigs. He might get his head kicked in and left for dead every so often, but he's not overshadowed.
And Arnie spoke all of five words to Sandahl Bergman in Conan the Barbarian, the love of his character's life. Sheer verbiage isn't the be-all, end-all.
Voss wrote: Yeah... looking at those, I don't think we can say the current incarnation is a reboot or remake of those films. Just starting fresh from the same source material. Honestly, the idea of reboot of something that's primarily literary or historical is complicated
I wouldn't say they were reboots any more than Kevin Costner's Robin Hood or Men in Tights are 'reboots' of the Errol Flynn version.
That's still easily the Robin Hood I like best though.
warhead01 wrote: She hates that he was basically little more than a side kick in a movie with his name on it.
So... just like every Mad Max film but the first.
I mean, in The Road Warrior Max had 16 lines of dialogue. In Fury Road he has 52. So over 3 times more dialogue.
Max is not the main character in the stories he appears in past the first film. He is a wanderer, a legend, who travels from place to place, entering and leaving other peoples stories.
You could take Max out of Fury road and the difference would hardly effect the story. Furiosa would just have to work a little harder and maybe have an inside warboy to work with to replace Max in a few scenes. They could have just called it Fury road in that case and we'd have been fine with that, it might have been even more entertaining.
warhead01 wrote: She hates that he was basically little more than a side kick in a movie with his name on it.
So... just like every Mad Max film but the first.
I mean, in The Road Warrior Max had 16 lines of dialogue. In Fury Road he has 52. So over 3 times more dialogue.
Max is not the main character in the stories he appears in past the first film. He is a wanderer, a legend, who travels from place to place, entering and leaving other peoples stories.
You could take Max out of Fury road and the difference would hardly effect the story. Furiosa would just have to work a little harder and maybe have an inside warboy to work with to replace Max in a few scenes. They could have just called it Fury road in that case and we'd have been fine with that, it might have been even more entertaining.
If you take Max out they all die trying to cross the salt and Joe remains in charge.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: How many well-received Movie reboots or remakes have there been in the last two decades? Fury Road is the only one I can think of.
Nolans Batman films - I really really really dislike them but very highly regarded by most people
Mission Impossible films - what Bond films used to be
Daniel Craig Bond films - again some people like the new version
True Grit - so very different to the old one but both good
Battlestar G is and was very well received - I really enjoyed it
Sabrina The Teenage Witch
Nikita - The Maggie Q one for me
The new Lost in Space - very much a Family show - no guns etc.
Most of the Super hero movies in the last ten years!
warhead01 wrote: She hates that he was basically little more than a side kick in a movie with his name on it.
So... just like every Mad Max film but the first.
I mean, in The Road Warrior Max had 16 lines of dialogue. In Fury Road he has 52. So over 3 times more dialogue.
Max is not the main character in the stories he appears in past the first film. He is a wanderer, a legend, who travels from place to place, entering and leaving other peoples stories.
You could take Max out of Fury road and the difference would hardly effect the story. Furiosa would just have to work a little harder and maybe have an inside warboy to work with to replace Max in a few scenes. They could have just called it Fury road in that case and we'd have been fine with that, it might have been even more entertaining.
If you take Max out they all die trying to cross the salt and Joe remains in charge.
I'd have payed to watch that. I liked Joe. Snappy dresser, cool truck.
Seems to have his life together aside from some family issues. A sitcom in the making.
Also, it almost sounds like you think those strong and empowered ladies from the wasteland need a man to save them...
If only we could get rid of that stupid guitar guy on the truck as well. A step in the right direction.
It works for Fury Road, as MM Beyond Thunderdome was released 34-35 years ago (1985, didnt really look for month/day). . . . the 2009 Trek movie was the first featuring the Kirk era crew since the 80s as well.
The difference between both of these is kind of huge. . . In Fury Road, we have "another" Max film. . . It's simply another movie with the Road Warrior showing up.. . . It isn't resetting the franchise, giving us a new origin story or anything like that. It is simply continuing the legend of Max. Trek however, gave us a new "origin story" for the maiden flight of THAT particular crew on the Enterprise.
For me, the term reboot is odd because it is such a vague term. . .It can mean simply that there was a very long hiatus between films within a larger franchise, or it can mean a total reset and restart of a story (we see this with the Bale Bat-flicks) complete with origins/background type cinema.
'Reboot' would apply when the new movie is intended to stand completely separate from what came before. Fury Road isn't a reboot, just a different actor. Likewise, JJ Trek isn't technically a reboot, since it doesn't discard the previous material, just establishes a new continuity alongside it.
I kinda though Fury road ft in between road warrior and Thunderdome chronologically.
I really did like Joe and his war boys and the idea that there were 3 little kingdoms in a sort of ecosystem to each other. I would have loved to seen more about how they managed to even build those kingdoms from the wasteland.
I saw they are working on another Mad Max/fury road movie but it seems to have hit a snag. No idea what it's about yet.
The only bits about Fury Road which are somewhat odd are:
1) The few flashbacks of a young girl we see which, far as I recall, never get explained in the film (his child from the first film was a son).
2) The fact that he's not got his squeaky metal leg brace(I think).
Overall after the first film the story is very light on specific details. We know that the world went to bits even before the second film (in the first there are already echos of trouble as there's already road-gangs) and that after the second film its all a nuclear wasteland.
After that we don't really have any other specifics - no idea where in the world he really is; how far he's travelled; how the worlds geography has changed. We don't even have any date nor time references and his adventures are each only a few days long. Short snippet adventures rather than spanning months or years. So each adventure is a short window into his life roaming the wasteland.
About the only major story points are that we know the people who escape in the third film make it to a large city and become "The Great Northern Tribe" (If I recall right).
Fury Road works great as a sequel that reboots the series into life because it doesn't try to ret-con anything that came before. It also doesn't really change Max in vast ways either; he's still very much an enigma who fights to stay alive but who is also willing to sacrifice and fight for others in need.
It's an ideal way to restart a franchise setting because by not challenging the original material it acts as a nice bridge between the old and the new. It gives writers room to then start to change things and because we've already accepted the lead into this new series of films we are more likely to accept evolution of the character and setting.
warhead01 wrote: I kinda though Fury road ft in between road warrior and Thunderdome chronologically.
That was suggested initially before people had seen the movie, but the timing doesn't work out. While the exact timeline is somewhat iffy, the chronologies I've come across put it after Thunderdome.
warhead01 wrote: I kinda though Fury road ft in between road warrior and Thunderdome chronologically.
I really did like Joe and his war boys and the idea that there were 3 little kingdoms in a sort of ecosystem to each other. I would have loved to seen more about how they managed to even build those kingdoms from the wasteland.
I saw they are working on another Mad Max/fury road movie but it seems to have hit a snag. No idea what it's about yet.
There is a canon prequel comic that shows the beginning of the little society. Much like all things that exist only to explain how a cool thing got to be in a cool place and never explained in a good movie, it sucks absolute ass and is precisely as boring as every one of these little "fan theories" would be when you actually play them out as a story.
The funniest part of it is the climax, where a bunch of these disaffected military guys try to grapple into a base guarded by scientists, and all but Joe get shot. The next morning they wake up and get ready to leave, but joe appears at the top of the facility having killed all the scientists, and they all start chanting "Immortal Joe" and the actual MADLAD comic book author had them start to chant "Immortan" IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GOD DAMN CHANT.
That linguistic shift happened INSTANTLY. it wasn't the result of multiple generations of uneducated cancer-ridden warboys repeating a word rather than understanding it, they just start spontaneously chanting that after saying "Immortal" like 3 times. Because otherwise, it wouldn't have happened on screen in the prequel, and people would have said
"Gwarsh, so now we know why he's called Immortal Joe, but how does he become Immortan Joe? What's the story there? We should have a presequel to find out!"
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insaniak wrote: 'Reboot' would apply when the new movie is intended to stand completely separate from what came before. Fury Road isn't a reboot, just a different actor. Likewise, JJ Trek isn't technically a reboot, since it doesn't discard the previous material, just establishes a new continuity alongside it.
My working definition of Reboot/Remake would be
"Any newly released film that is not a direct sequel to an existing property but which traces all to a significant fraction of its marketability to people recognizing the source material from previously existing motion picture media."
Often, a very small amount of time and energy in a reboot is taken to establish it in relation to an existing film or series. The BSG remake is, technically, a sequel - they reference a previous conflict with the cylons a couple times in the first few episodes. And the star trek reboot is "an alternate timeline" which gets mentioned a couple of times in the first two films. The James Bond films, when they change out the actors, would definitely in my opinion be remakes/reboots, even if there is a flimsy and very subtextual continuity whereby we are all expected to believe that various character names are codenames that change hands and just happen to be given to shockingly similar individuals within the same organization each time.
The distinguishing element between a reboot and a sequel is how much the plot events within the previous film actually affect the sequel. Harrison Ford as Decker and the actions he took within the original Blade Runner are fairly important to the events of the new film. But in Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse, the events of the Sam Raimi films are EXTREMELY briefly mentioned in a single flashback of a version of Spider-man who almost instantly gets killed by a villain who did not appear in the Raimi movies. Technically it's a sequel, but it's more accurate to call it a reboot or remake.
the_scotsman wrote: The James Bond films, when they change out the actors, would definitely in my opinion be remakes/reboots, even if there is a flimsy and very subtextual continuity whereby we are all expected to believe that various character names are codenames that change hands and just happen to be given to shockingly similar individuals within the same organization each time.
I would argue that we didnt have a single "reboot" in the Bond franchise until Casino Royale as it was probably the the first to have "recycled" material in terms of baddies and plot-points. . . They've generally all been what the SW universe is trying to do with R1 and Solo in that they are all stories of things that Bond has done, but they are not necessarily "sequels" (at least not when viewed as a whole, I'd argue that each actor has his own sequels until the next Bond actor takes the helm)
the_scotsman wrote: The James Bond films, when they change out the actors, would definitely in my opinion be remakes/reboots, even if there is a flimsy and very subtextual continuity whereby we are all expected to believe that various character names are codenames that change hands and just happen to be given to shockingly similar individuals within the same organization each time.
I would argue that we didnt have a single "reboot" in the Bond franchise until Casino Royale as it was probably the the first to have "recycled" material in terms of baddies and plot-points. . . They've generally all been what the SW universe is trying to do with R1 and Solo in that they are all stories of things that Bond has done, but they are not necessarily "sequels" (at least not when viewed as a whole, I'd argue that each actor has his own sequels until the next Bond actor takes the helm)
It's kind of splitting hairs, to be honest. Characters have come and gone, certain characters have stayed through a reshuffle (Judy Dench was still M for the previous Bond actor, for example) but the new films are definitely not the first time a plot point has been
"Remember Q? Gadgets!"
"Remember M?"
"Remember james bond fight on train?"
"Remember bond car?"
it just put its own sort of unique branding spin on it vis a vis the mid 2000s Gritty Realism craze.
Which I think I've actually lost some of my tolerance for. I recently watched a bunch of bond films, and barely got through Casino Royale and just flat out gave up on Solace. The campy bond films at least knew that their portrayal of technology would be laughable in a few years, so they kind of laughed with the viewer and kept it pretty silly, and it made them memorable. Casino royale might need a few years before I can get the nostalgia on and not be annoyed by old, stale, but not quite old and stale enough that they're funny in retrospect action movie tropes.
I'm sure one day I'll be laughing as riotously at the Bottomless Chair scene as I did during the weird vietnam movie inspired torture montage set to Madonna from Die Another Day, but it sure wasn't true now.
Voss wrote: As Superman, Cavill looks bored out of his mind and completely uninterested in anything going on around him.
I feel like that's largely down to the directorial decision to make him moody and emo. When he gets to actually act, he sells it - the final scene with Zod,for example, was just an awesome, powerful, emotional moment. I dislike Superman with a passion as a character, and hate his presence in the Justice League, but I'm still sorry that Cavill didn't get to play him properly, because he seems a perfect fit for the role.
I've circled around on Man of Steel. Yeah, Justice League is still garbo, but there are some genuinely great moments in Man of Steel - I especially love the Russell Crowe speech about how he can save them, he can save all of them.
Voss wrote: As Superman, Cavill looks bored out of his mind and completely uninterested in anything going on around him.
I feel like that's largely down to the directorial decision to make him moody and emo. When he gets to actually act, he sells it - the final scene with Zod,for example, was just an awesome, powerful, emotional moment. I dislike Superman with a passion as a character, and hate his presence in the Justice League, but I'm still sorry that Cavill didn't get to play him properly, because he seems a perfect fit for the role.
I've circled around on Man of Steel. Yeah, Justice League is still garbo, but there are some genuinely great moments in Man of Steel - I especially love the Russell Crowe speech about how he can save them, he can save all of them.
I was on an airplane back from France at one point with 12 hours to kill, so I started searching through the movies they had on to see if I could find some that would be funny to watch in a french dub, and justice league did not disappoint for that purpose.
There is nothing like seeing henry cavill turn to camera and
"hon hon monseiur le sup sont comme un petit chou-fleur oui oui!" *disconcerting CGI mustache-flesh wobble*
Voss wrote: As Superman, Cavill looks bored out of his mind and completely uninterested in anything going on around him.
I feel like that's largely down to the directorial decision to make him moody and emo. When he gets to actually act, he sells it - the final scene with Zod,for example, was just an awesome, powerful, emotional moment. I dislike Superman with a passion as a character, and hate his presence in the Justice League, but I'm still sorry that Cavill didn't get to play him properly, because he seems a perfect fit for the role.
I've circled around on Man of Steel. Yeah, Justice League is still garbo, but there are some genuinely great moments in Man of Steel - I especially love the Russell Crowe speech about how he can save them, he can save all of them.
I was on an airplane back from France at one point with 12 hours to kill, so I started searching through the movies they had on to see if I could find some that would be funny to watch in a french dub, and justice league did not disappoint for that purpose.
There is nothing like seeing henry cavill turn to camera and
"hon hon monseiur le sup sont comme un petit chou-fleur oui oui!" *disconcerting CGI mustache-flesh wobble*
Next time try Polish, where some films are dubbed by one person who just talks over the film
Ghost in the Shell got flak for having a A list white actress as the main character. but I had no isue with it in the same way as happy to see Samuel J as Nick Fury - both got the charcter right.
To get really technical, neither of those would be examples of 'white/blackwashing' in movies: -Johansson's character in Ghost in the Shell remake was still Asian, she just had been transferred to robot body designed to look like generic Caucasian woman. (Personally I didn't like her there - she had no chemistry with anyone). -MCU Nick Fury is based on Ultimate Marvel Nick Fury, who is essentially different character with same name, like many other Ultimate universe characters. It's actually very faithful adaptation of comic character (because Ultimate Nick Fury was based on Samuel Jackson...), just not original comic 616-Fury.
Voss wrote: As Superman, Cavill looks bored out of his mind and completely uninterested in anything going on around him.
I feel like that's largely down to the directorial decision to make him moody and emo. When he gets to actually act, he sells it - the final scene with Zod,for example, was just an awesome, powerful, emotional moment. I dislike Superman with a passion as a character, and hate his presence in the Justice League, but I'm still sorry that Cavill didn't get to play him properly, because he seems a perfect fit for the role.
I've circled around on Man of Steel. Yeah, Justice League is still garbo, but there are some genuinely great moments in Man of Steel - I especially love the Russell Crowe speech about how he can save them, he can save all of them.
I was on an airplane back from France at one point with 12 hours to kill, so I started searching through the movies they had on to see if I could find some that would be funny to watch in a french dub, and justice league did not disappoint for that purpose.
There is nothing like seeing henry cavill turn to camera and
"hon hon monseiur le sup sont comme un petit chou-fleur oui oui!" *disconcerting CGI mustache-flesh wobble*
Next time try Polish, where some films are dubbed by one person who just talks over the film
I always wanted to see fight club dubbed into German with English subs, but from the German. Don't know why just thought it would be cool. I always get a kick out of anime when it's in English with English subs but the text doesn't fit the spoken. Most amusing.
Ghost in the Shell got flak for having a A list white actress as the main character. but I had no isue with it in the same way as happy to see Samuel J as Nick Fury - both got the charcter right.
To get really technical, neither of those would be examples of 'white/blackwashing' in movies: -Johansson's character in Ghost in the Shell remake was still Asian, she just had been transferred to robot body designed to look like generic Caucasian woman. (Personally I didn't like her there - she had no chemistry with anyone). -MCU Nick Fury is based on Ultimate Marvel Nick Fury, who is essentially different character with same name, like many other Ultimate universe characters. It's actually very faithful adaptation of comic character (because Ultimate Nick Fury was based on Samuel Jackson...), just not original comic 616-Fury.
Nah, the Ghost In The Shell example is still whitewashing. Just because you try to justify your whitewashing in the narrative doesn't mean you aren't still whitewashing.
Also, one is removing a role from an underrepresented group and the other is not.
And really, the first phase of the Marvel cinematic universe had more than enough white dudes, so a bit of variety in there was good if just for the colour palette of the films
Voss wrote: As Superman, Cavill looks bored out of his mind and completely uninterested in anything going on around him.
I feel like that's largely down to the directorial decision to make him moody and emo. When he gets to actually act, he sells it - the final scene with Zod,for example, was just an awesome, powerful, emotional moment. I dislike Superman with a passion as a character, and hate his presence in the Justice League, but I'm still sorry that Cavill didn't get to play him properly, because he seems a perfect fit for the role.
I've circled around on Man of Steel. Yeah, Justice League is still garbo, but there are some genuinely great moments in Man of Steel - I especially love the Russell Crowe speech about how he can save them, he can save all of them.
I was on an airplane back from France at one point with 12 hours to kill, so I started searching through the movies they had on to see if I could find some that would be funny to watch in a french dub, and justice league did not disappoint for that purpose.
There is nothing like seeing henry cavill turn to camera and
"hon hon monseiur le sup sont comme un petit chou-fleur oui oui!" *disconcerting CGI mustache-flesh wobble*
I stuffed that into google translate and got '<garbled> (possibly superman) is like a little cauliflower, yes, yes'
What's the context for that line?
Dang those book readers! Ehh - they probably changed a bunch of stuff around so they didn't get their nostalgic feels out of it. As a piece of cinema though how could you not actually like it? The scenes are stunning - even compared to what we can do today with CGI. The music is spectacular. Even the comedic relief is perfect.
