Ok my topic about disappointing movies was pretty successful, so I'm going to bookend it with one about movies that were in your opinion surprisingly good. I imagine this thread won;t be as big as my disappointing movies thread but hey, you never know.
"Amazon women on the moon". A low budget parody of late night tv, circa 1987. I found it fairly amusing and entertaining.
"Catwoman". Ok, most people hated it and I should have for several reasons, mostly how nauseated I am of the superhero movie genre as a whole, but this was made a bit before they started jackhammering them down people's throats in ad campaigns that seem to be based on nazi blkitzkreig tactics. What made the movie surprisingly good to me was the central plot element that a cosmetic maker created a cosmetic that made people look years younger but literally turned their skin to stone. Given that people will pay to be injected with botox, which mean botulism toxin. Botulism toxin in an incredibly dangerous agent which is used as the basis of some of the most deadly chemical weapons on earth. When you consider how many people will willingly use this which even under the best on circumstances tends to leave their faces frozen in a rictus that makes them resemble victims of the Joker's smilex poison I could actually accept the premise of catwoman's main plotline. I'm not saying it was a great movie but given how horrible the reviews were I was surprised when I saw it finally.
"Iron sky". Low budget plus a laughable premise managed to get together and have a kid who i liked. The movie was just so laughably absurd and ham acted it became good in the sense that the adam west batman series was good. Avoid the sequel like covid, tho.
"Batman return of the caped crusaders" I was surprised by this one in that in an age of parody and mockery movies (Like the scary movie series, meet the spartans, vampires suck, ad infinitum) it was a very well done tribute to the campy and silly batman series made with respect. It's easy to parody batman and almost hard not to, but the movie succeeded in being far from an insult to the old series. The sequel was good too.
"Moontrap". Ok, I watched it due to it starring a star trek ilumni, but would have liked it if it hadn't. Another low budget flick that delivered a good bang for it's buck. Another case of "Avoid the sequel" unfortunately.
"Tankgirl". Ironically being released at the same time as "Waterworld", TG had an oddly similar premises (TG was a disaster film about a lack of water, WW was a disaster film about an excess of water.) and likely cost maybe 5% what kevin costner's tired mad max at sea drama cost yet managed to be far more entertaining.
All these movies surprised me by being more enjoyable to me than I really expected them to be. What pleasant surprises have you gotten from a movie?
"Aquaman" They really tried to abandon all of the super seriousness of the DCEU and just kinda had some fun with it. It was like their Thor. It also had a dope aesthetic
When I saw the trailers for the first Thor film, I thought it looked like an absolute train wreck but ended up going to see it anyway because I'm one of those weirdos who absolutely loves going to the theater. I left the film thoroughly impressed, and Thor has been my favorite Avenger ever since.
Whilst I've mellowed on it over the years I suspect rewrite by committee is mostly to blame for source drift
[/b]Logan[b]
The X franchise was spiralling the drain and Mr Jackman sensibly sat out of the tail end so wasn't expecting much out of it, never been so glad to have been so wrongfooted, bestest non-super super film ever
Thor: The Dark World -- Yes, I like this film, screw all the haters
House of the Dead -- Uwe Bolls first video game film. God it is a trainwreck but I saw it in theatres with my friends and it was so bad it was kinda good? We sometimes get together to watch it again because its so gloriously stupid and has nothing to do with the videogame at all.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- Okay, this is a terrible film granted. The first time I saw it it was 1 in the morning and I was so completely smashed that It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen.
Ghostbusters Answer The Call. Is it as good as it’s predecessors? No. Does that mean it’s therefore devoid of all merit? Nope. It’s a fun film.
Terminator Dark Fate. Given out of then 5 films, only 2 had been any good? I was apprehensive about the 6th. But you know what? It stands on its own two feet, and is pretty bloody ace.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also?
Guardians of the Galaxy.
At. The. Time.
You may have noticed I’m one of life’s highly irritating natural optimists. Given how pretty much no-one had even a passing knowledge of those comics? I expected it to be the MCU’s streak breaker. I really did. I mean, who at that time had even heard of them?
Managed to win tickets to a pre-release screening. And it knocked my socks clean off.
I feel this qualified because nobody expected it to be anywhere near as good as it is. Everything about it is brilliant and entertaining.
Definitely with you on Guardians. I had an inkling it would be good, but not as good as it was.
When you think about it, it's a fresh achievement even for the MCU - it had already successfully pulled off the first mainstream superhero ensemble with the first Avengers movie, but that was using heroes that had their own lead-up films to support it. Guardians introduced us to a completely utterly new cast of no less than five heroes, gave each of them substantial screen time without sacrificing the wider Infinity Stone plot, and still managed to slot nicely into the wider universe without having any prior connections even hinted at. That's one hell of a writing accomplishment.
Another one I'll add here is Love Actually. It's the only "chick flick" I enjoy to this day, probably because of its focus on characters rather than plot - I find most romantic films waaaay too predictable, and also incredibly unrealistic because their conflicts would unravel if the main characters just sat down and actually talked for five minutes.
In contrast, Love Actually has realistic characters with realistic relationships and issues, and it makes those characters much easier to identify and empathise with.
Also - I've gotta add Seven Pounds. I've never been one much for stories set in the "boring" real world, and while I've always liked Will Smith, I didn't think he had much chops as a serious actor. I'll admit, the first half of the film was sloooow building up and I could have given up on it - but I was warned in advance that I needed to watch the whole thing.
It's one of those films where even describing it would give too much away, it's all tied up in the last 15 or so minutes and it's an absolute gut-punch of a heart wrencher. Make sure you watch it - but make sure you have your loved ones on speed dial for immediately after.
Pitch Black. Saw the trailer and thought it looked like a rubbish Alien rip off. Got a free ticket to a midnight screening along with a bunch of friends and thought it was absolutely awesome. Vin Diesel was scary as hell as Riddick.
You may have noticed I’m one of life’s highly irritating natural optimists. Given how pretty much no-one had even a passing knowledge of those comics? I expected it to be the MCU’s streak breaker. I really did. I mean, who at that time had even heard of them?
I had. Except it was the 1990 series, set in the 31st century.
[Which overlapped a bit with the team introduced in 1969 and appeared in fits and starts over the 70s]
And I was really confused, since the movie wasn't the characters I remembered from the comic at all, except for a bizarrely distorted Yondu. [And they're essentially the 'Ravager' leaders you see at the end of GotG 2 for Yondu's funeral]
So while I'd heard of it, I had really low expectations for the film. Post 90s in comics is essentially no-go territory for me, and I've little patience for retcons and restarts.
But the film did a good job with the random team of morons.
Lone Ranger. A silly premise trying to resurrect an ancient property nobody under fifty cared about, and what they ended up with was a second go at Pirates of the Caribbean that fixed a lot of the things they did badly on the first go.
Split. Mainly because M. Night had been pitching bombs since The Village, Signs, or The Sixth Sense depending on the individual's opinion.
Dredd. Relatively low budget, went under the radar, based on a relatively unknown comic, and was following up Stallone's abomination. It might be the best action movie I've seen since The Matrix. It's one of those rare films that is even better when heavily analyzed.
Birds of Prey. It bombed and reviews were middling. There were several moments in it where I was grinning ear to ear. I wouldn't call it a particularly good film, but it's far better than I expected.
Edit: Also Aquaman. Did anyone expect it to be that good? The character has been the butt of jokes across multiple forms of media for decades and the DC had struck out with BvS and Suicide Squad beforehand. Again, not a great movie, but perfectly acceptable as a popcorn superhero flick.
Definitely agreed on Split - did you see Unbreakable yet? That's really good too - though, although I've not seen it, my understanding is that sadly Glass doesn't measure up to their standards.
Dredd was fantastic, but I was expecting it to be, because pretty much every role Karl Urban touches is gold. If you want amazing things, give him the lead!
I really really liked Aquaman - but I have to admit I wasn't surprised by its tone after seeing Wonder Woman the year before. That was the tonal shift for the series I wasn't expecting (although I was still very much looking forward to it anyway).
Ha this will be a good one - for me its Suicide Squad. Hear me out though - I saw it long after release and had heard like 1000 times it was the biggest pile of crap ever made and an offence to god by then.
Given my EXTREMELY low expectations going in I was surprised and thought it was pretty watchable overall. Not great mind you, but I felt there was potential just spoiled by some odd plot and character choices.
I'm still amazed that the first Mortal Kombat movie was enjoyable and not a train wreck. With the second one being completely abysmal, it only highlighted how surprisingly good the first one was.
Don't judge me XD It's tank porn intersperced with ludicrously wholesome anime moments and I enjoyed it.
I see you're a man of culture too
i picked up the movie and the series on a ridiculously good sale a few weeks ago. I watched the series when it came out but haven't checked out the movie yet.
Don't judge me XD It's tank porn intersperced with ludicrously wholesome anime moments and I enjoyed it.
I see you're a man of culture too
i picked up the movie and the series on a ridiculously good sale a few weeks ago. I watched the series when it came out but haven't checked out the movie yet.
The movie is more of the series, so if you like one you'll like the other. Pretty good epic battle in the movie too (though there's some characters from an OVA or something who confused me cause I haven't seen it).
I'm about to recommend a movie that's really awful on most levels.
It's budget was clearly at best a few thousand dollars, it was badly filmed, calling most of the acting wooden would be an insult to lumber, the messaging was heavier handed than the stature of liberty and all in all it was pretty bad in most ways.
But it has some interesting points. It deals with the nature of humanity and raises issues that at the time were beyond cutting edge, issues that weren't raised again until movies like blase runner and the original ghost in the shell anime.
It's called "Creation of the humanoids" and deals with a lot of really deep issues despite it's incredibly poor production values.
It manages to have some pretty good and clever lines. A robot (android today) tells a human "I know who my creator was, you have to take yours on faith." (BUUUUU-uuuurrrnnnn!)
Other good lines were:
"If a Man Loses His Leg, Is His Soul Affected?"
"I didn't like being old. I really didn't like being dead."
"They re-died."
"How do you apologize to someone for killing them?"
"Do I still have a soul?" "Hmm, no, I don't think so, but you remember having one, and that seems to be enough."
This really cheap little movie has some SF credentials to it. One of the stars was the canadian actor "Dudley Manlove", who played the alien eros in the legendary "plan 9 from outer space".
Also, the humanoid (android) makeup was done by Jack Pierce, who created a lot of the universal horror makeup jobs in the 30's and 40's, including the original frankenstein and the mummy played by karloff. CotH was his last movie.
Here's a review on site dedicated to cyberpunk sf films.
Wonder if Pterry might’ve seen that? The lines you quoted have a distinct Discworld feel to them.
I’ll have to give it a watch some time. I’m always up for wonky movies which didn’t quite succeed in telling what was really a pretty interesting story.
Sure they suffer from sequelitis, and none of them are approaching great. But they’re still bloody good fun, and I’ll watch them at the drop of a hat.
Somewhat comparable, Underworld and its initial sequel. Absolute nonsense, but still enjoyable.
My problem with Underworld is they go for a very dark pallet in the film. So unless you've got the screen setup just right you can easily end up squinting half the time to see what the heck is going on.
Sure they suffer from sequelitis, and none of them are approaching great. But they’re still bloody good fun, and I’ll watch them at the drop of a hat.
Somewhat comparable, Underworld and its initial sequel. Absolute nonsense, but still enjoyable.
My problem with Underworld is they go for a very dark pallet in the film. So unless you've got the screen setup just right you can easily end up squinting half the time to see what the heck is going on.
On the other hand, Kate Beckinsale in skintight clothing.
As for surprisingly good movies, I second Thor: the Dark World.
Hmm, perhaps Overlord? I mean, I was expecting a crappy cheesy zombie flick. Then it turned out to be a more traditional war movie then it turned into this wonderful creation.
This is going to sound strange, but Last Action Hero is my fav Arnold Schwarzenegger film.
Pokes fun at action movie cliches whilst still being a good action flick. Arnie is charismatic, the kid is actually quite good, and it has one of my all-time fav bad guys, played by the incomparable Charles Dance.
Ohhh, I absolutely LOVE Last Action Hero. I've turned a few people onto its genius.
"Hello? I said I just shot a man, I did it on purpose!!" Charles Dance is incredible.
The first Underworld and Resident Evil episodes are actually pretty solid action movies. Last Action Hero is a classic.
I adore JJ's Star Trek trilogy, I think they're all awesome. I know lots of people dislike them, if not flat out hate them, but I'm the opposite of the typical trekker fan as I can't stand anything related to that franchise other than the aforementioned trilogy. I probably like those three movies that much because they're so different than other Star Trek works.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Last Action Hero is a legitimately good movie. I don’t understand how so many critics didn’t “get” it.
I suspect it's the usual being sniffy donks if the critics deem a film 'beneath' them and don't bothered actually watching it, Siskel and Ebert were prime culprits
And whilst it's a bit patchy it's one of Arnulds better ones
With regards to the Last Action Hero it came at the tail end of a string of amazing Schwarzenegger films. So everyone was basically expecting another Terminator 2. While I also enjoy The Last Action Hero, I wouldn't put it on the same level as his other films of that period.
Decided to check out A million different ways to die in the west one morning, booked the ticket and made my way to the relevent screen...which instead was showing "Postman Pat: The movie". Went straight back to the lobby and it turns out the showing times were wrong, and was instead due to show much later in the day...
So I asked "okay, thats not happening...what else you got?" So in a nutshell I ended up watching 22 JUMP STREET instead.
Didn't expect it to be much cop and was bummed out to not be enjoying Seth's latest offering...and OMG the stars must have been in alignment! I love a good comedy and lost my breath with the Killer Rabbit from Holy Grail, and crumbled at the Prince of Theives "Chicken" scene in Hot Shots Part Duex...
...but I suffered a chest burster when Jenko( Channing Tatum ) "connected the dots" in the Chief's office!
There seemed to be a trend of critics not getting movies. Last Action Hero, Starship Troopers, Big Trouble in Little China, Hudson Hawk, all these films got trashed by reviewers despite being obvious satire/parody.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: There seemed to be a trend of critics not getting movies. Last Action Hero, Starship Troopers, Big Trouble in Little China, Hudson Hawk, all these films got trashed by reviewers despite being obvious satire/parody.
People can be the same. Heck if you gave me almost any sports computer game to play I'd likely rate it low because I really don't enjoy them nor sports. It just wouldn't be an interest to me in the least. I wouldn't "get it". Yet my brother buys and plays Football Manager every year almost.
Sometimes its just that the niche isn't a niche that the big name reviewers are into. Also I think some films grow on you; I wasn't a big fan of the second Riddick film, it was good but its plot/pacing issues annoyed me. A few years on and I like the film more, even with its faults. So sometimes time and a film growing on you can change your perception. This can also explain why a film might flop at the cinema, but then go on to develop a cult status or even have a second surge of popularity.
Heck sometimes a new generation appreciates something a previous generation didn't or vis versa. I'd wager a good few major reviewers are likely to be older; having held the position for some time; so they might miss a film that younger generations will engage with far more so.
In the end reviewers are not perfect and sometimes you've got to learn to read between the lines a little. Heck I do the same with steam reveiws; if someone says a game is repetitive and boring but has 2K hours chances are they are bored in the now, but for most of those 2K hours they were happily playing the game.
Lance845 wrote: Water world. There is no middle ground. People either hate or love this movie. I LOVE this movie.
Really? I can't think of anyone that met that movie with more than an indifferent shrug.
It was Yet Another Kevin Costner film in an insane blur of Kevin Costner films, all of them vaguely the same, all of them fairly bland.
People remember Dances with Wolves, generally frown or laugh at the horrid Robin Hood (or swoon at the music, sadly), and the rest are left as a forgotten morass.
Apparently it's a public domain movie, the makers went under and no one considered it worth keeping a copyright on. it's on youtube several times, and there's a 'indy" dvd of it combined with "war of the planets", a truly awful italian sci fi flick. I'd say it's likely PD now.
If you youtube it try to find the better quality copy, honestly most times i've seen it on tv the quality was abysmal, washed out, pale, faded, etc. Also the full uncut version starts with an intro the discusses the evolution of robots, featuring some really laughable ones that appeared on the ancient "Adventures of superman" series .
Another 'robot" in the intro was a leftover alien from "Earth vs. the flying saucers"
If you don't see an intro featuring these and stock footage of atomic bomb tests you're not seeing the whole thing.
If you can, pop for the dvd, this movie deserves some respect. I know with the covid crisis money can be tight but if you can shell out for the dvd try to, if not watch it on youtube because, despite everything, including a leading man who was clearly picked for his jawline and chin instead of his acting ability plus a 'twist' most rutabagas would see coming this movie deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. Someone working on this really had some intelligent ideas that were nearly eons ahead of their time.
So yeah, as easy and tempting as it is to laugh and jeer at it at least try to listen to the dialog despite it's usually overdone tones and give this one a little respect.
Starship Troopers is certainly enjoyable, but it failed hard on two accounts; its a dreadful adaptation of the original book and Cameron had already done a far better and respectful job a decade earlier with ALIENS, despite lacking the advantage of CGI.
But even so, its still a fun slice of sci-fi pie. It fits naturally into a triple-bill with Robocop and Total Recall. After a series of horrible events in my life in 1997, this single scene changed it for the better...
It’s not meant to be an adaptation of the book. It’s pretty much a repudiation or the philosophy of the book. Aliens also isn’t even remotely an adaptation of Starship Troopers. They both satirize the kind of culture and decision makers that the book lionized, to various extents.
I would say 2007's 'Surfs Up' is the film that spring to mind.
Just another derivative animated film perhaps, but I happened to watch it during a relaxed Sunday on the settee... the central message and characters really got to me!
I think it is.....I feel like I have seen it, and it was while having Tubi running in the background while I was doing housework...... but I am not 100% sure.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: It’s not meant to be an adaptation of the book. It’s pretty much a repudiation or the philosophy of the book. Aliens also isn’t even remotely an adaptation of Starship Troopers. They both satirize the kind of culture and decision makers that the book lionized, to various extents.
Definitely wrong on the first account, but something to be said for the second.
Its got "Starship Troopers" in the title and like Dune'84 is going to be compared to it's source material regardless of its intent. If they really wanted to do their own thing then they should have done a name change such as The Thing from Another World, or Blade Runner, which are loose adaptations of Who Goes There and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep respectively. As Dune was twisted into a product to challenge Star Wars, Starship Troopers was twisted into a sci-fi-satire in the vein of Robocop.
ALIENS, at its core is a sequel to Alien( no big surprise there ), an 80's remake of THEM! and a blatantly obvious attempt to sneak Starship Troopers on to the big screen. Theres a bit of IT! The Terror From Beyond Space in there, but lets keep on track with the Starship Troopers connection. While not an official adaptation of Starship Troopers, Cameron does borrow a lot from Heinlein's novel. I rememeber Verhoven said in an interview that he didn't even finish reading the novel, whereas Cameron had his the cast read it for inspiration. Without writing a long, drawn out essay, Verhoven drifts away from Heinlein's novel but Cameron is attracted to it. With Verhoven's Starship Troopers we scream "fascists!" at the Federation and its troopers and laugh when one gets ripped apart in cartoon style nor care for any civilian victims, but with the Colonal Marines and colonists of Hadley's Hope we feel genuine sadness for their tragedy.
While the novel is critized for certain things; right to vote and all that jazz, its written with an appreciation for the common solider who directly faces danger and the idea that a military lifestyle can be beneficial. ALIENS clearly has no exploration of the political and propaganda side of Heinlein's novel but at least has the respect for the soldiers who are doing their job of keeping colonists safe. In civilian life there are so many forces at work trying to take advantage of us which is represented by Weyland Yutani - the "company". But in military life we can be trained to push past our percieved limits and even tackle our worst fears head on, and accomplish a great deal. The colonial marines allow Ripley an opportuntity to face those fears...
...but I still think she was daft to trust the company again!
H.B.M.C. wrote: Yeah I never noticed even an inkling of SST in Aliens.
I suspect it might be a sort of confusion of influences. The Mobile Infantry as depicted in the movie took some direction from the Colonial Marines in Aliens, but that's just an example for how the movie didn't really derive as much from the book as one might expect.
Aliens is related to starship troopers? Man, some people are stretching more than reed richards!
Military unit vs bug like aliens is starship troopers? I guess cloverfield was too. Hell, if military vs big bugs is a ripoff of starship troopers I guess sst was a ripoff of "Them!" (and hey, heinlein wrote it 5 years after "them!" so who's to say the germ of the idea wasn't planted in his skull while watching Them! in a theater?)
On to another surprisingly good movie, I'll say this: The words "intelligent" and "Godzilla movie" don't get used in the same sentence much but I found "Godzilla vs bioolante" was a fairly intelligent godzilla movie and the most intelligent one until "shin godzilla" came along.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fairly intelligent and plausible premise: If we accept the existence of godzilla, how would people in the real world react to it?
Obviously by trying to kill it, of course, but beyond that there would be a massive drive to study it and find out how the hell it could possibly exist and what we could learn from it. And that was the key plot of godzilla vs biolante: An international race to acquire, analyze, utilize and ultimately weaponize Godzilla's DNA.
Despite some stuff about a human soul being trapped in biolante (Bio-lahn-tay is how is how it seems to be pronounced) and a girl with psychic powers the plot of GVB was one I could accept without much problem. If godzilla existed then hell yes people would want to study its DNA and find uses for it. It was time for a movie like that to be made and GVB was a good one.
Really? Wow, then I guess Independence Day bares absolutely no similiarities whatsoever to War of the Worlds and if any are just completely coincidental!
Guys, thank you all for showing me the light. I can now appreciate ALIENS and ID4 as the true masterpieces of originality that they obviously are. Its a huge weight off not only my shoulders but also the larger community of film critics as well.
I don't know how you could you read Starship Troopers, watch Aliens, and then proceed to conclude that Aliens is somehow an attempt to get Starship Troopers on the big screen.
trexmeyer wrote: I don't know how you could you read Starship Troopers, watch Aliens, and then proceed to conclude that Aliens is somehow an attempt to get Starship Troopers on the big screen.
It's probably going down to boiling the story down to very simplistic elements of influence - eg marines vs aliens level of analysis. It's in the same category of analysis such as "there's only 9 stories in the world" or somesuch value. Basically when a story is rendered down in a specific way to basically summarise the entire story in a sentence or two. At which point a lot of stories, when pulled apart like that, will be "basically the same story".
trexmeyer wrote: I don't know how you could you read Starship Troopers, watch Aliens, and then proceed to conclude that Aliens is somehow an attempt to get Starship Troopers on the big screen.
It's probably going down to boiling the story down to very simplistic elements of influence - eg marines vs aliens level of analysis. It's in the same category of analysis such as "there's only 9 stories in the world" or somesuch value. Basically when a story is rendered down in a specific way to basically summarise the entire story in a sentence or two. At which point a lot of stories, when pulled apart like that, will be "basically the same story".
But even a comparison that superficial doesn't work. The focus of Starship Troopers isn't even necessarily on the combat, it's on the training, military/social history, and the philosophy behind why they fight and why the Mobile Infantry exists. The actual combat is a secondary element. To go even farther with that argument, the aliens almost don't even matter to the story of Starship Troopers. The novel is basically an explanation (and justification) for infantry followed by an analysis of officers and the role of a platoon commander and senior NCOs.
trexmeyer wrote: I don't know how you could you read Starship Troopers, watch Aliens, and then proceed to conclude that Aliens is somehow an attempt to get Starship Troopers on the big screen.
It was actually in a different order for me; I watched Aliens growing up, then Verhovens film in 1997 and then on recommedation by my father, the Heinlein novel. A few years later I found out that Cameron had indeed used Heinlein's book, and passed it round for members of the cast to read.
SST was a social novel more than anything else, a novel essentially endorsing a form of rule by force imposed on the majority.
Joe stalin once said "whose who vote decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything."
In the SST universe the power structure picks who can vote, so it keeps the status quo how it wants it. It's a case of the voters not picking the leaders, the leaders pick the voters.
In the aliens universe "the company' runs everything, the military included.
While i don't despise heinlein as some do for his views I do admit he had a very schizophrenic seeming view on things. His two most famous novels had both parallels and extreme dichotomies. Anyone read "stranger in a strange land"? That was different than SST in that while SST advocated or at least positively portrayed a society that was close to if not actually a military dictatorship,SIASL advocated a form libertarian anarchy, yet while preaching this total personal freedom idea it was based on the people in the new libertarian order possessing the power to simply wipe anyone who resisted or opposed them out of existence until only the new libertarian anarchists were left. One subtle yet very chilling line in SIASL mentioned that people often tried to file criminal charges against the new movement based on mike and his magic martian powers, but "Complaining witnesses always failed to appear in court." Gee, I wonder why?
So while SST sang the virtues of a society based on military force that put down all opposition, SIASL endorsed a total non government non military system of pure anarchy and personal freedom, where ll opposition was simply "discorporated" to be reincarnated as future members of the society.
Ok, little off topic now so I'll leave it here. Maybe someone wants to open up a heinlein thread?
In the aliens universe "the company' runs everything, the military included.
This is not in fact true. The company does not run the USCM. It isn't even part of the same "country".
Weyland Yutani is a major corporation in a galactic nation that has contracts with other galactic nations. It's like Boeing making planes for European nations. WY has contracts with the USCM to produce a lot of their goods. International policy, due to the vastness of space, has different military organizations act as relief and support for different colonies IF requested. WY used the USCM in aliens to act as ignorant front line support to check on a colony that had gone dark in a process that was pretty standard by that point. What was not standard was that the company man Burke was using their ignorance to recover samples of the aliens. The USCM is not owned by or under the control of WY in any capacity.
Lance845 wrote: Water world. There is no middle ground. People either hate or love this movie. I LOVE this movie.
I thought it was not bad - but not great ......
Are you sure you exist? Just double-checking.
I've never seen Water World, so no comments on that movie.
As for my movie that was surprisingly good... I'm not sure it counts (because it wasn't GOOD, so to say) is Jason X. The one where Jason ends up in space.
It's a terrible movie, not scary in the slightest. But holy hell, it's hilarious! It's so over the top, that when my dad and I caught it on the TV one night, we could not stop watching. So, bad movie, but really enjoyable.
Its got "Starship Troopers" in the title and like Dune'84 is going to be compared to it's source material regardless of its intent. If they really wanted to do their own thing then they should have done a name change
they did, SST was Called "Bug hunt on Planet P" until they realised how similar their script is to SST and as they saw that no one owns the movie rights, they bought them to avoid problems (as someone else buying them and sue their movie because of the similarities), renamed the movie and the characters and called it done
And you know? There’s far more to it than gore and shock. Without defending some of tricks they used - it’s still a surprisingly thought provoking film for its class.
trexmeyer wrote: I don't know how you could you read Starship Troopers, watch Aliens, and then proceed to conclude that Aliens is somehow an attempt to get Starship Troopers on the big screen.
It was actually in a different order for me; I watched Aliens growing up, then Verhovens film in 1997 and then on recommedation by my father, the Heinlein novel. A few years later I found out that Cameron had indeed used Heinlein's book, and passed it round for members of the cast to read.
He used it as a point of influence, but that was it. So did 40K. Notably there are no Marines in SST, they are Mobile Infantry. There is also a clear gap in professionalism between SST and Aliens, along with many significant differences in both the political and military structures of each universe.
Matt Swain wrote: SST was a social novel more than anything else, a novel essentially endorsing a form of rule by force imposed on the majority.
Joe stalin once said "whose who vote decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything."
In the SST universe the power structure picks who can vote, so it keeps the status quo how it wants it. It's a case of the voters not picking the leaders, the leaders pick the voters.
In the aliens universe "the company' runs everything, the military included.
While i don't despise heinlein as some do for his views I do admit he had a very schizophrenic seeming view on things. His two most famous novels had both parallels and extreme dichotomies. Anyone read "stranger in a strange land"? That was different than SST in that while SST advocated or at least positively portrayed a society that was close to if not actually a military dictatorship,SIASL advocated a form libertarian anarchy, yet while preaching this total personal freedom idea it was based on the people in the new libertarian order possessing the power to simply wipe anyone who resisted or opposed them out of existence until only the new libertarian anarchists were left. One subtle yet very chilling line in SIASL mentioned that people often tried to file criminal charges against the new movement based on mike and his magic martian powers, but "Complaining witnesses always failed to appear in court." Gee, I wonder why?
So while SST sang the virtues of a society based on military force that put down all opposition, SIASL endorsed a total non government non military system of pure anarchy and personal freedom, where ll opposition was simply "discorporated" to be reincarnated as future members of the society.
Ok, little off topic now so I'll leave it here. Maybe someone wants to open up a heinlein thread?
A fair observation and I agree that we should get back to the topic on hand, as it wasn't my intention to derail the thread.
I think we'll save the Heinlein stuff for another time.
Moving on; Jaws 2.
For all the Jasons, Freddies and Michaels of this world, nothing deserves a scream more than scarface-shark. Where the first film takes a while to get up to speed, Jaws 2 is already dishing out the goods and chewing up Amity Bay. Seriously, Michael Bay explosion only 20 minutes in!
The electrocution scene is particularly memorable, and surprisingly John Williams doesn't overuse the Jaws theme. As far as sequels go its pretty good and could have been far worse....MUCH worse...
Voss wrote: People remember Dances with Wolves, generally frown or laugh at the horrid Robin Hood (or swoon at the music, sadly), and the rest are left as a forgotten morass.
When did Prince of Thieves reach "horrid" status? I thought that was saved for the Russell Crowe interpretation.
Voss wrote: People remember Dances with Wolves, generally frown or laugh at the horrid Robin Hood (or swoon at the music, sadly), and the rest are left as a forgotten morass.
When did Prince of Thieves reach "horrid" status? I thought that was saved for the Russell Crowe interpretation.
When it came out.
Mawkish Bryan Adams songs, random pointless witchcraft, and Costner, Mary Elizabeth and Christian Slater Americanizing everything in sight.
Plus the catapult scene, which should have been a merciful end to the whole affair.
Also, you could ignore it if it was just the cut, but he specifically has a line saying they’ll be there by nightfall. It’s about 200 miles and you are on foot! You can barely do the journey in that time in the 21st century!
Oh and it isn’t a straight cut, there’s a little scene in between where they stop by a tree on a wall in a little valley between two hills. It’s a beautiful location. So beautiful, it’s quite famous and recognisable. Pity it’s famous and recognisable for being on Hadrian’s Wall...
Also, you could ignore it if it was just the cut, but he specifically has a line saying they’ll be there by nightfall. It’s about 200 miles and you are on foot! You can barely do the journey in that time in the 21st century!
Oh and it isn’t a straight cut, there’s a little scene in between where they stop by a tree on a wall in a little valley between two hills. It’s a beautiful location. So beautiful, it’s quite famous and recognisable. Pity it’s famous and recognisable for being on Hadrian’s Wall...
Its alright, Robin had remembered to have his Weetabix that morning.
How dare anyone bad mouth Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves! Such a glorious film. At one point in the 90's (atleast on TV where I lived) it was always being played on some channel on either Saturday or Sunday afternoons. And since we didn't have all the choice people have today with entertainment I'd always sit and watch it.
That film is just like a nice warm blanket on a cold winter day.
In the aliens universe "the company' runs everything, the military included.
This is not in fact true. The company does not run the USCM. It isn't even part of the same "country".
Weyland Yutani is a major corporation in a galactic nation that has contracts with other galactic nations. It's like Boeing making planes for European nations. WY has contracts with the USCM to produce a lot of their goods. International policy, due to the vastness of space, has different military organizations act as relief and support for different colonies IF requested. WY used the USCM in aliens to act as ignorant front line support to check on a colony that had gone dark in a process that was pretty standard by that point. What was not standard was that the company man Burke was using their ignorance to recover samples of the aliens. The USCM is not owned by or under the control of WY in any capacity.
}
I dunno, looks like 'the company' runs everything in the aliens universe including the government. They got their weasel on the ship on Aliens. They seem to have no fear of being charged with murder, even of marines.. they seem to fear no consequences of their actions.
In the aliens universe "the company' runs everything, the military included.
This is not in fact true. The company does not run the USCM. It isn't even part of the same "country".
Weyland Yutani is a major corporation in a galactic nation that has contracts with other galactic nations. It's like Boeing making planes for European nations. WY has contracts with the USCM to produce a lot of their goods. International policy, due to the vastness of space, has different military organizations act as relief and support for different colonies IF requested. WY used the USCM in aliens to act as ignorant front line support to check on a colony that had gone dark in a process that was pretty standard by that point. What was not standard was that the company man Burke was using their ignorance to recover samples of the aliens. The USCM is not owned by or under the control of WY in any capacity.
}
I dunno, looks like 'the company' runs everything in the aliens universe including the government. They got their weasel on the ship on Aliens. They seem to have no fear of being charged with murder, even of marines.. they seem to fear no consequences of their actions.
The company runs everything in the films because the films expressly deal the company properties. The ship in the first film is their own ship and its not even an exploratory ship nor crew. It's a simple transport with just 1 android loyal to the company directive to secure the sample. Aliens 2 its a Weyland terraforming site, but again all they muster is 1 ship of less than 20 people to investigate and that's with one manager who has some understanding that the Alien is a real live creature and likely has caused trouble at the site.
Basically in both cases we are dealing with a very tiny sphere of influence in the grand scheme of things so its very easy for the company to appear like gods. Yet at the same time the company is honestly spending very few resources on the whole venture; with the second film clearly showing that the company was less involved than it is one manager.
It's not till the 3rd film that we really see anyone in serious power showing serious interest in the Alien and then its too late. They appear in the last moments before its all ended. That's perhaps the first real sign we get that the company has significant resources of their own. From then on we never see them again in the original films as Alien 4 deals directly with the military of its time period, with a suggestion that by that time period Weyland is a small-fry compared to the military interests.
Not so much surprising in terms of quality, but surprising in terms of accuracy.
I had no idea how accurate Office Space was until I did software development for a large corporation. The inefficiencies and wasted time there was extraordinary. Not quite as bad as Office Space, but it was still impressively unorganized.
Speaking of software development - Tron and Tron Legacy.
Most people think of The Terminator and The Matrix when it comes to computers being represented in film, but as a programming enthusiast the Tron movies feel more authentic to the spirit of the field. Whenever discouraged I always pop those in the dvd player to get the bug once again.
I liked predator 2 as well, but have a hard time watching it now due to gary busey being in and and after something he did I really don;t want to see him in a movie.
Omg, the chap in the opening "they destroyed everything I own - my catina!" - he's in Wing Commander 3 as a pilot who dreams of opening his own catina someday!
I was going through some films I have over the weekend looking for something to have on as background noise as I painted. It made me remember one more film I enjoyed far more then probably everyone else.
I actually really enjoyed Jupiter Ascending. The concept was cool, even if the execution was lacking for some.
Also Channing Tatum as a half-dog person was...odd.
Super Ready wrote:Another one I'll add here is Love Actually. It's the only "chick flick" I enjoy to this day, probably because of its focus on characters rather than plot - I find most romantic films waaaay too predictable, and also incredibly unrealistic because their conflicts would unravel if the main characters just sat down and actually talked for five minutes.
In contrast, Love Actually has realistic characters with realistic relationships and issues, and it makes those characters much easier to identify and empathise with.
OMG this is one of my favorite films of all time. It's my go to reference whenever anyone questions me singing Laura Linney's accolades. If her plot line doesn't absolutely crush your soul by the end of the movie, you were never human to begin with.
Sure they suffer from sequelitis, and none of them are approaching great. But they’re still bloody good fun, and I’ll watch them at the drop of a hat.
Somewhat comparable, Underworld and its initial sequel. Absolute nonsense, but still enjoyable.
My problem with Underworld is they go for a very dark pallet in the film. So unless you've got the screen setup just right you can easily end up squinting half the time to see what the heck is going on.
On the other hand, Kate Beckinsale in skintight clothing.
Personal tastes I guess, but I was more smitten with Sophia Myles in that movie...
Underworld and Res Evil series are great fun (as well as staring the Directors stunning wives ) - love a tv series of either both - crossover
Both Sophia and Kate are gorgeous in Underworld -- also amsuingly in the commentry when she is watching with her husband she does says somewhat wryly she does not remember the topless scene with Sophia..... but he replies it was when she caught pneumonia!
I tried watching the animated Res Evil films and...yeah...not good. (speaking as someone who loved Res Evil on PS1)
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I was going through some films I have over the weekend looking for something to have on as background noise as I painted. It made me remember one more film I enjoyed far more then probably everyone else.
I actually really enjoyed Jupiter Ascending. The concept was cool, even if the execution was lacking for some.
Also Channing Tatum as a half-dog person was...odd.
It was good I thought, some pretty entertaining concepts and set pieces.
But, I think the film suffered from coming from the makers of the Matrix, after the Matrix, and there was a ridiculously amount of hype and high expectation that doing something 'new' the Wachowskis would knock it out of the park again.
Which, I don't think they did (certainly not in the same way - I would give it a 3/5, the original Matrix 5/5 and probably in my top 10 of all time)
Omg, the chap in the opening "they destroyed everything I own - my catina!" - he's in Wing Commander 3 as a pilot who dreams of opening his own catina someday!
Commodus Leitdorf wrote: I was going through some films I have over the weekend looking for something to have on as background noise as I painted. It made me remember one more film I enjoyed far more then probably everyone else.
I actually really enjoyed Jupiter Ascending. The concept was cool, even if the execution was lacking for some.
Also Channing Tatum as a half-dog person was...odd.
It was good I thought, some pretty entertaining concepts and set pieces.
But, I think the film suffered from coming from the makers of the Matrix, after the Matrix, and there was a ridiculously amount of hype and high expectation that doing something 'new' the Wachowskis would knock it out of the park again.
Which, I don't think they did (certainly not in the same way - I would give it a 3/5, the original Matrix 5/5 and probably in my top 10 of all time)
This movie confuses me. If you de-construct it into component pieces..... each piece is good. There is a subtext and themes. There is world building. There is a rags-to-riches/fairy tale story line. The actors are good. The script and dialogue is good.
Then you put it all together and it is..... not good. If I were a film student, this would be my Doctoral Thesis project to figur eout why this movie is not good! It should be..... but it is not.
Omg, the chap in the opening "they destroyed everything I own - my catina!" - he's in Wing Commander 3 as a pilot who dreams of opening his own catina someday!
A perfectly good sequel, which isn’t a simple retread of the original, and instead delves a bit more into Future Detroit, and the well dodgy morals of OCP.
It’s definitely a “I don’t think twice about watching it” movie. Plot wise it could do with a spit and polish (lean more into Murphy’s Catholicism, and hence distaste for suicide for instance) and it could’ve equalled the original.
Automata (2014) - Starring Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith.
Wholly unoriginal tale of insurance investigator (pound shop Blade Runner) investigating sentient androids but it was a really good movie considering it's budget.
Archive (2020) - Starring Theo James. Another Android movie, this time more along the lines of Ex Machina. Also really enjoyed this one.
Both were films i went in with low expectations but was pleasantly surprised.
OK, it wasn't GOOD, but it was SURPRISINGLY GOOD. I wanna get out front on this one.
Basically, my partner and I both love the youtube series Best of the Worst and one of our favorite episodes is one about a zero budget twilight ripoff called The Last Vampire on Earth. So, when super drunk on Halloween we decided to watch the first Twilight, then LVOE as a horror double feature because I had never actually sat down and watched all of twilight.
And as we were sitting down, riffing on LVOE, laughing at how ludicrous it was, we started getting extremely frustrated by the fact that this was actually a better romance story setup than twilight.
The actors can't act, and the hunky male lead is a dude who's probably super average looking but unfortunately has a somewhat unusual facial structure that makes you think, just looking at his face in a close-up, that he's going to be kind of pudgy and does NOT lend him to an emo look. And it does that zero budget film thing where it just doesn't explain things to you that it could explain but, objectively, LVOE is a better love story than twilight.
Let's compare Edward Cullen to Shrekward as characters. Imagine they're two dudes who both look like Robert Pattinson.
-Edward Cullen is slightly over 100 years old IIRC. He became a vampire because he was going to die of spanish flu and his vampire pimp daddy was a doctor during the pandemic, which makes one immediately wonder why daddy vampo does not have a whole bevy of 120 year old small innocent children he rescued from the clutches of Spanish Influenza instead of one emo teen. Anyway, whatever. Point is, Shrekward is TWO THOUSAND TWENTY. He's lived long enough to see every human he's ever befriended and cared about die, twenty times over. Why does this matter? it matters because Shrekward has 100x more reason to be an emo sadboi than Edward does, and honestly, Edward doesn't really come off as that, instead he basically just comes off as a super huge callous donkey-cave.
-Both movies use the shtick of 'protagonist is a normal girl whose smell the vampire lovelad finds irresistible for no adequately explored reason'. But what does Shrekward do with this? He immediately tries to do everything he can to get to know this girl, he talks to her, meets her family, spends as much time as he can with her, and as soon as he meets her he goes out and makes sure he makes sure he has a source of blood lined up so he doesn't get thirsty around the object of his affection. And he gets it by bribing a red cross truck guy. You know, like a normal humane person who does not consider terrifying then murdering large animals for sport just the height of selfless abstinence. Your entire family is based around A fething DOCTOR, Edward, why can you not figure out some way to get blood?
-Bella has literally no character setup at all. She is JUST a self-insert, pure and simple. Other than their relative location to her, we know basically nothing about her family, she has no interests outside of Edward, and no real motivation at all besides to be with Edward. Chloe, while being a probably perfectly nice community college freshman who definitely can't act, at least is given some kind of something to make her a potentially interesting romance protagonist. She has...aids cancer, it isn't clear really, her incredibly blase sleazy used car salesman of a doctor is one of the best sources of unintentional comedy throughout the movie but she definitely has aids and I'm 99% she also has cancer at some point but it's delivered with all the gravitas of Lisa's mom from The Room. That's something for you to work with: The person who wants to do good things for the world, but is still really early in her college education and just might not have enough time to get to the end of college. Do you just...drop out, live in misery not accomplishing any of your goals and die? Do you try to push through, knowing you probably won't make it? It's not the most original, but it's at least something.
-At the very crux of the movie, the climactic tension is very similar. In Twilight, it becomes clear that Bella is basically a helpless meat balloon in an impossibly dangerous world of nigh-invincible vampires with extremely dubious protection. She's nearly murdered multiple times and each time it's heavily implied that her murderers are also planning to sexually assault her first. And in LVOE, Chloe has aids cancer and will most likely die. The obvious question is, do we save our protagonist by making her a vampire, which Bella and Edward literally have zero reason not to but which for Chloe would essentially mean forsaking her religious faith and going against everything she's ever believed in.
Edward flatly refuses Bella, essentially forcing her to give up her mortal life and every relationship she's ever had to live as his favorite scented candle, and Shrekward just asks Chloe to make sure she's taking plenty of time to make an informed decision, and then when she says she's certain what she wants to happen to her body, he obliges and bites her in the final shot of the movie.
There's so much more that is functional and workable as a romantic storyline in the zero budget, hilariously inept, terribly written, terribly acted knockoff of twilight than there is in twilight itself that it's almost enough to make me unironically like LVOE. You can imagine a version of that story that works. And the Best of the Worst episode goes into the antics of the movie's director, who is this eastern european immigrant fella who seems a little egotistical, a little delusional about his directorial talents, you know the classic Trolls 2 The Room director shtick. But I love that this guy picked up Twilight with the full intention of shamelessly ripping it off, and even HE was like "Wait...no...this doesn't work. What? Well, we're not going to do THAT." several times.
Oh! The Ninth Gate. Johnny Depp is a scholarly rare book collector, who gets entangled in some secret societies and magical texts. It is weirdly understated, but kept my attention thoroughly. Very good film, and not at all what I'd usually see!
And for B rated action films that deliver the goods- Beowulf. Not the Angelina Jolie version. The Christopher Lambert version. What if Beowulf was in a slightly post apocalyptic future, but they never mentioned why this was and it had almost no effect on the plot, it just made the weapons pseudofuturistic? Or- Highlander vs the Beowulf. It is a grand old time! Much more my usual fare.
If you're talking about Last Vampire on Earth, it is free on youtube.
Regardless of being over the bar of being a better love story than twilight, LVOE is still 100% a funny bad movie that's enjoyable to watch. Even if only for the epic climactic soliloquoy at the end and the fact that every medical professional in the LVOE canon universe is some sort of used car or greasy sub shop owner.
I'll say that i finally watched cruise's "the mummy" remake and was pleasantly surprised.
As horrible as the reviews were i almost expected excrement to literally fly off the screen as i watched it. I decided it wasn't all that bad really.
I like the gender flip with a male being chased by the undead mummy instead of a women having to be rescued by a male lead as usual. Also the fact that there was a sort of department dedicated to fighting the paranormal in a world where paranormal powers existed was a nice touch. I mean if we accept a world where the paranormal is a fact, i'd like to think some government and agencies would finally get that thru their heads and begin taking action to protect their people and societies from them instead of just the eccentric professor to stop the supernatural menaces.
The exotic hawtie they had playing the titular role didn't hurt.
All in all I'd say i liked it better than the hugh grant mummy movie remakes, of which i had a low opinion. But i have to say karloff's version beats them all.
Damnatus; the enemy within. It is a fan-made movie about W40k.
the one movie that was made by German Fans and advertised in White Dwarf, and than banned/forbidden to released as GW read the German Copyright Laws right before it should be released
this was also the time when GW removed any community based content from their website, closed all fan-zines and wanted people to add "copyright by GW" to all pictures of painted models because they did not knew that stuff made somewhere else does not follow UK Copyright and they have no control over it
GW has had a long history of abusing copyright laws to crush any form of competition. I remember hearing how they would basically sue most other british miniature makers out of existence on very shaky grounds simply because the other companies didn't have the financial resources to fight them even if their claim and injunction was false.
I don't know if it's true but some have said that britian redid their copyright laws partially based on testimony about how GW had misused them to wipe out competition on a wide scale.
I do know britain redid its copyright laws which allowed the judge dredd cursed earth comics t be released for the first time in decades, and loved the all out assault on mdconalds which was just so perfect.
Cursed Earth? Been reprinted many, many times. With the exclusion of a single episode which basically involved Col Sanders.
With regard to Damnatus, if memory serves the issue was indeed German IP Laws. I’m far from expert, but my understanding was that if it was released, the creator would get more than just the IP for their work, and couldn’t even sign it over to GW?
Certainly something in that ballpark, if the chatter at the time was to be believed.
With regard to Damnatus, if memory serves the issue was indeed German IP Laws. I’m far from expert, but my understanding was that if it was released, the creator would get more than just the IP for their work, and couldn’t even sign it over to GW?
German/Austrian IP Law is very creator friendly, if you create something, you own the IP
you cannot sell or give it away, you can only license it (yet it is restricted to this work alone)
Germans creating a 40k movie, the Copyright of that movie belongs to the creators, no matter if it is released or not
GW gave them the allowance to make a movie and could take it away anytime,
so without GW they were not allowed to show it in public, and the Damnatus Crew could demand money from GW if they wanted to use it
they never had the idea of making any money or wanted something from GW, they would handed the stuff over to them free to use
but GW panicked as the realised that German IP Law is different and they would never own the IP and shutted down anything fan made they could find in Germany
the one movie that was made by German Fans and advertised in White Dwarf, and than banned/forbidden to released as GW read the German Copyright Laws right before it should be released
this was also the time when GW removed any community based content from their website, closed all fan-zines and wanted people to add "copyright by GW" to all pictures of painted models because they did not knew that stuff made somewhere else does not follow UK Copyright and they have no control over it
...and not to forget that 14 year old boy using unofficial models at a GW store.
It seems to me the GW are pretty jerk about their works. I don't want to know what would be happened if I would have created the faction of the Men of Iron using the Battletech models, like I was thinking to do.
The_Grim_Angel wrote: It seems to me the GW are pretty jerk about their works. I don't want to know what would be happened if I would have created the faction of the Men of Iron using the Battletech models, like I was thinking to do.
For your own use? Nothing.
To try to sell? All of the companies involved would be completely in their rights to come down on you like a hammer.
There isn't anything odd about someone defending and maintaining control of their IP.
Matt Swain wrote: I'll say that i finally watched cruise's "the mummy" remake and was pleasantly surprised.
That's a great shout. I put it on not expecting much and when it had finished I had enjoyed it more than a good portion of the Marvel movies. I still don't understand the scathing reviews. But then, Edge of Tomorrow initially got horrid reviews and I liked that a great deal.
A lot of it comes from Cruise being much better at playing contemptible gits than heroic heroes. Collateral, War of the Worlds, Mummy, Edge of Tomorrow - he plays the role of someone you wouldn't personally like very well.
The_Grim_Angel wrote: It seems to me the GW are pretty jerk about their works. I don't want to know what would be happened if I would have created the faction of the Men of Iron using the Battletech models, like I was thinking to do.
For your own use? Nothing.
To try to sell? All of the companies involved would be completely in their rights to come down on you like a hammer.
There isn't anything odd about someone defending and maintaining control of their IP.
Are you suggesting to sell models that are already on the market?
No, I was thinking what it would happens in that time, if I had used the Battletech models to create the codex of the Men of Iron (for my own use) and then I have reported my battles on the forums, like others do and/or if I created a fanfiction about that faction.
The_Grim_Angel wrote: It seems to me the GW are pretty jerk about their works. I don't want to know what would be happened if I would have created the faction of the Men of Iron using the Battletech models, like I was thinking to do.
For your own use? Nothing.
To try to sell? All of the companies involved would be completely in their rights to come down on you like a hammer.
There isn't anything odd about someone defending and maintaining control of their IP.
This is very true, but a lot depends on what kind of impact a company can create on its fans by how it chooses to wield that hammer (or warhammer TM in this case I guess)
People forget how *bad* the climate was amongst internet/fan communities around 8-9 years ago, I think reached it's zenith around the Chapterhouse and Finecast release period.
A lot of guys who were small time casting for friends in the community (not even advertised for general sale) got shut down. There were 'informers' (I am not joking here) writing to GW legal directly, from certain forums (not this one, AFAIK) and informing them of what was going on.
I know of at least one forum/site that was effectively ruined because it had banned any negative discussion around finecast for instance, with posts insta-moderated and proclamations (lost of bold type and capital letters as a notice on the front page).
Fun it was not, and the site withered and died soon after that.
The fear of being hit by a 'cease and desist' I think was worse than what GW were actually doing in most cases, but it did mean that a climate of fear pervaded a lot of the community sites. It put everyone's backs up and meant there was a lot of bickering between members.
Thank God, whoever is in charge now, has backed off a bit and calmed down a little. You need to give fan communities a bit of room to breath as long as it's not causing you any financial impact, and GW lost an awful lot of good will during that period.
I have no problem with GW going after recasters, but yes GW did get very out of hand. They even started getting very daft, issuing orders that 3rd party retailers couldn't use GW box art/product shots for sales (I think this one might even have lasted); shutting down fan or news sites and sending them threatening letters for releasing details on leaks and rumours which led to several to outright stop showing any GW content what so ever.
GW Basically went through a very odd phase when most other companies were starting to latch onto the idea of the internet being a really big product sales method and community building system; GW was almost stead fast in its hate/fear of the internet and all it could bring.
Chapterhouse I think started to break GW's back on that front as they realised some/all of their "legal" team weren't as well informed as they thought they were. Though we never really lost the internet fear culture until the CEO changed and some of that underlaying management structure got changed. It's hard to imagine now when GW puts out articles 7 days a week including Christmas; makes youtube videos; heck when they get a leak now they roll with it as marketing (I'm sure heads might roll in the background, but that's internal company rules and policies etc..)
GW's attitude today is far more healthy than it was and whilst there was damage done in the past, they are sort of improving their general attitude.
I agree, there's FAR more for GW to gain by having some flexibility and allowing fan communities to have some freedom; than there is being draconian. I'm sure GW still shuts down recasters if they can, but at the same time they aren't going after media content creators like they used too; nor are they hostile toward the internet.
There’s also the requirement to actively defend your IP.
Now, now zealous you need to be there? I do not know. It may be a sliding scale (for instance, if I create an original piece of 40k art, and sell it on t-shirts etc is different from creating my own models and using a name GW have claimed as a trademark).
Oh, while we're talking about recent original sci fi movies that surprised you with how good they were, I gotta mention Annihilation.
I saw Natalie Portman as the lead initially on a trailer and immediately went 'nope' but when I actually sat down to watch the movie I loved every moment of it. She definitely does not repeat her "I am too cool for this nerd gak" performance from the star wars prequels.
Personally, I have always loved abstract sci-fi that uses the genre to explore emotional themes and the ways that different individuals deal with a given situation, and I've also always loved the setup of a government/military organization just beginning to question whether the situation they're in is totally futile, whether that's in Evangelion, Pacific Rim, Edge of Tomorrow, whatever.
As far as I understand, not in the way people typically invoke it. Trademarks yes, copyright or patents no.
If GW trademarks 'Astartes' and doesn't aggressively defend it, then it may become genericized if eventually challenged in court. But you can't lose a copyright by not defending it. GW is free to let companies A, B, and C make carbon-copies of their models if they want, then sue company D when they do the same. That's the core of licensing agreements, when it comes down to it.
GW going after the publisher of a children's book over the term 'space marine' was an issue of trademark. You could argue that GW had to do it to protect their IP, but I think the general takeaway was that GW really doesn't have any legitimate basis to trademark 'space marine' in the first place.
GW going after Chapterhouse was an issue of copyright. And there they absolutely chose to enforce copyright, and had no legal 'need' to do so.
I saw Natalie Portman as the lead initially on a trailer and immediately went 'nope' but when I actually sat down to watch the movie I loved every moment of it. She definitely does not repeat her "I am too cool for this nerd gak" performance from the star wars prequels.
To be fair, no one does well in the prequals - She is normally a good actress (and very pretty )
catbarf wrote: GW going after Chapterhouse was an issue of copyright. And there they absolutely chose to enforce copyright, and had no legal 'need' to do so.
...and then they find out that what they think they have copyrights on, in the vast majority of cases the US legal system disagreed with them on - off the top of my head, either 2/3 or 3/4 of the overall claims were either dismissed or ruled in CH's favour. Not sure what the split there was between trademark, copyright, etc, though - been far too long sine I've looked into the details.
I saw Natalie Portman as the lead initially on a trailer and immediately went 'nope' but when I actually sat down to watch the movie I loved every moment of it. She definitely does not repeat her "I am too cool for this nerd gak" performance from the star wars prequels.
To be fair, no one does well in the prequals - She is normally a good actress (and very pretty )
Whilst I'm not a fan of Ms P I think she, understandably, stopped even trying after the first prequel being lumped with manakin didn't help ( which was mostly on George rather than Haydn)
I'll add Lego Batman, was expecting a harmless kiddy fodder but it was way smarter and like Bane left me feeling warm and fuzzy
I saw Natalie Portman as the lead initially on a trailer and immediately went 'nope' but when I actually sat down to watch the movie I loved every moment of it. She definitely does not repeat her "I am too cool for this nerd gak" performance from the star wars prequels.
To be fair, no one does well in the prequals - She is normally a good actress (and very pretty )
That is true, the star wars prequels did manage the superhuman feat of making Sam Jackson a boring character.
I think I really appreciated two things about Annihilation. First that it was a story with an incredibly un-rehashed concept (in my opinion, anyway) and second that it was that rare, rare gem of a movie that managed to have a lot of female characters without needing them to be one dimensional #girlpower #strong #brave.
The characters are allowed to be women, and they're allowed to be competent and effective and good at their jobs, and later on they're allowed to crack under the stress of an impossible situation and to deal with that situation in a variety of different ways.
As far as I understand, not in the way people typically invoke it. Trademarks yes, copyright or patents no.
GW going after Chapterhouse was an issue of copyright. And there they absolutely chose to enforce copyright, and had no legal 'need' to do so.
In the US (insofar as my MBA education has given my understanding of it), it isn't so much that you must protect trademark/copyright, because that in itself is not enough in the courts. . . In the US, businesses hold all kinds of trademarks/patents/copyrights, the sticking point oftentimes is the phrase "intent to use".
Now, in GW's case, they had clear intent to use the term Space Marine(s), even if that in itself is a generic term. On the flip side, Xerox got hit in the business practices big time because so many people began using the term "xerox" as a catch-all meaning "to use a photo-copier", similar in the way that people are beginning to use the term Google as a verb, regardless of whether that search engine is being used at the time. Because of the issues Xerox faced (due mostly to other companies poor practices), the trend has been for mega companies to be hyper-aggressive in defending their names, to prevent another xerox from happening. But, for it to work, those companies have to show that their [term] is non-generic and that they have intent to use the IP.
In a movie sense, it would be like, if Marvel owned the rights to a character named Lord of Thunder, but had not made any comics, comic appearances, film/tv/streaming appearances, merchandise appearances, etc. for the length of their ownership, and then after 30 years, a studio makes a DC movie with a villain named Lord of Thunder to fight Batman. In all likelihood, Marvel would lose the case because despite a lengthy ownership, the argument would be made that there was no effort to show intent to use the IP.
This is in part why so many record labels often put out 50+ year old songs under a new artist, to prevent that song from becoming part of the public domain.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Now, in GW's case, they had clear intent to use the term Space Marine(s), even if that in itself is a generic term. On the flip side, Xerox got hit in the business practices big time because so many people began using the term "xerox" as a catch-all meaning "to use a photo-copier", similar in the way that people are beginning to use the term Google as a verb, regardless of whether that search engine is being used at the time. Because of the issues Xerox faced (due mostly to other companies poor practices), the trend has been for mega companies to be hyper-aggressive in defending their names, to prevent another xerox from happening. But, for it to work, those companies have to show that their [term] is non-generic and that they have intent to use the IP.
Yep, those are all instances of trademarks. Trademark protection is based on use; if a term can be demonstrated to be generic, then it loses trademark status.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: In a movie sense, it would be like, if Marvel owned the rights to a character named Lord of Thunder, but had not made any comics, comic appearances, film/tv/streaming appearances, merchandise appearances, etc. for the length of their ownership, and then after 30 years, a studio makes a DC movie with a villain named Lord of Thunder to fight Batman. In all likelihood, Marvel would lose the case because despite a lengthy ownership, the argument would be made that there was no effort to show intent to use the IP.
That's a copyright issue, and it's not quite the same. Marvel would lose if the new character was sufficiently distinctive not to be considered a copyright violation despite the identical name (see: Black Sabbath not paying Marvel a dime to use the name 'Iron Man', because the song has no relation to the character), or if the defense can convince the jury that the creator was unaware of the original and thus it constitutes independent creation. If the character was sufficiently similar to the original and/or created with awareness of the original, then DC would be in the wrong. Whether the Marvel 'Lord of Thunder' was ever actually used would only be relevant to establishing whether or not DC could credibly claim to have been unaware of its existence.
You can write a book, submit a manuscript to a publisher, ultimately not have it published, wait thirty years, and still retain full copyright over your book- no intent to publish or market it is necessary; the fact that you created it is sufficient to establish copyright. You only lose copyright if it becomes public domain as you noted, but that doesn't seem relevant to GW and Chapterhouse.
Going back to the topic that started this- the reason projects like Astartes can exist is because GW is free to be lax about their copyright if they wish, and 'new GW' seems to be a lot more gun-shy about aggressive litigation than pre-Chapterhouse GW was. You'll see GW go after people who use their trademarked sales copy, but casual copyright violations like fan projects seem to be fine. Just don't try to sell it or you're going to be up to your ears in lawyers.
Going back to the topic that started this- the reason projects like Astartes can exist is because GW is free to be lax about their copyright if they wish, and 'new GW' seems to be a lot more gun-shy about aggressive litigation than pre-Chapterhouse GW was. You'll see GW go after people who use their trademarked sales copy, but casual copyright violations like fan projects seem to be fine. Just don't try to sell it or you're going to be up to your ears in lawyers.
Which is fair, its one thing to create fan content, its another to profit from it.
I think as well as legal changes, I think GW's marketing has realised that there's more to gain in allowing fans to promote the GW brand themselves. Allowing more freedom for fan creations means that fans are spreading the GW brand and its costing GW nothing at all to achieve that. GW is much more brand aware and clearly wants to sell their brand as much as they possibly can. Realising that they more they sell it the more customers they reach and the greater chance more of them will take up the GW hobby and buy some models.
Matt Swain wrote: I'll say that i finally watched cruise's "the mummy" remake and was pleasantly surprised.
That's a great shout. I put it on not expecting much and when it had finished I had enjoyed it more than a good portion of the Marvel movies. I still don't understand the scathing reviews. But then, Edge of Tomorrow initially got horrid reviews and I liked that a great deal.
A lot of it comes from Cruise being much better at playing contemptible gits than heroic heroes. Collateral, War of the Worlds, Mummy, Edge of Tomorrow - he plays the role of someone you wouldn't personally like very well.
Never understood why Edge of Tomorrow was so panned. I thought it was one of Cruise's best and deep films.
Maybe because I'm biased, because if any actor can pull off Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, they get a perpetual "bad film mulligan" from me:
As for other films I really dug:
7 Psychopaths
Usual Suspects
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Cursed Earth? Been reprinted many, many times. With the exclusion of a single episode which basically involved Col Sanders.
With regard to Damnatus, if memory serves the issue was indeed German IP Laws. I’m far from expert, but my understanding was that if it was released, the creator would get more than just the IP for their work, and couldn’t even sign it over to GW?
Certainly something in that ballpark, if the chatter at the time was to be believed.
Mcdonalds and burgerking and the jolly green giant, and they were censored for nearly 40 years until britt copyright law changed.
Isn't it being an adolescent fantasy more or less the whole point of Sucker Punch, which as that's about Zacks limit, a series of essentially MTV music video was something even he couldn't mess up (likewise 300 being a film stylised like a video game flipping between cut scenes and fighty bits)
kodos wrote: 300 is a 2 hour metal Video with cut scenes between written by Miller
nothing wrong here
The only problem I had with 300 was how utterly dumb the inciting event that created the pivot point in the movie was.
"you can't fight with us, for your shield cannot guard your brother on the flank from -"
"Sir?"
"What?"
"Sir, we fight in a line sir."
"What of it?"
"Well lines have two ends on them, usually, quite notorious for that fact. Couldn't we just put him on the end, where he hasn't got anyone to protect? Or maybe even just..not in the line, and allow him to die a heroic death with us?"
kodos wrote: 300 is a 2 hour metal Video with cut scenes between written by Miller
nothing wrong here
The only problem I had with 300 was how utterly dumb the inciting event that created the pivot point in the movie was.
"you can't fight with us, for your shield cannot guard your brother on the flank from -"
"Sir?"
"What?"
"Sir, we fight in a line sir."
"What of it?"
"Well lines have two ends on them, usually, quite notorious for that fact. Couldn't we just put him on the end, where he hasn't got anyone to protect? Or maybe even just..not in the line, and allow him to die a heroic death with us?"
"Oh yeah good point. Form up Quasimodo!"
I can not seem to recall where Ephialtes was lame came from. I am pretty sure it is not mentioned in Herodotus, but I could have sworn a different ancient historian made this claim. However, I can not recall who at the moment.....
Am I just being crazy or does someone else recall it?
kodos wrote: 300 is a 2 hour metal Video with cut scenes between written by Miller
nothing wrong here
The only problem I had with 300 was how utterly dumb the inciting event that created the pivot point in the movie was.
"you can't fight with us, for your shield cannot guard your brother on the flank from -"
"Sir?"
"What?"
"Sir, we fight in a line sir."
"What of it?"
"Well lines have two ends on them, usually, quite notorious for that fact. Couldn't we just put him on the end, where he hasn't got anyone to protect? Or maybe even just..not in the line, and allow him to die a heroic death with us?"
"Oh yeah good point. Form up Quasimodo!"
Eh I saw it more that he's using it as one key example. If you're in a line fighting you need to use your shield and the guy can't even raise it properly. If he's out on a wing then its a wing that's got no defence which means the next guy along isn't just protecting himself, but has to protect the guy on the end as well as himself and the next guy as well. So it creates a weak point. At best it means your weak link dies early; at worst he dies early, the next guy fumbles trying to protect him and suddenly you've got an end of the line breaking.
If he's behind then he's no use again; if the line breaks and you have to retreat he's going to get in the way; if the line is pushing in a scrum then he can't lend his weight to it much and might trip up those behind who are trying to push in.
Plus even if we ignore his physical limitations, he's also never trained in a team to fight. He doesn't know how to right in a team with the 300 who are trained and have worked together and in teams expertly in combat. They don't just raise their shields; they know how to shield the person next to them and how their companions will react to the fight. They know who will block and who will charge; who will do daring feats; they know the doctrines and how to behave when an order is given.
Again this newcomer just doesn't know any of that, by his very nature he's likely never been in a team situation let alone a battle situation.
It's so many unknowns that in a situation where every man counts he's just not going to hold up his end. If it was the end of film battle with thousands upon thousands taking part he might have fit in; but in an army of only 300 he stands out as a huge point of weakness.
I can not seem to recall where Ephialtes was lame came from. I am pretty sure it is not mentioned in Herodotus, but I could have sworn a different ancient historian made this claim. However, I can not recall who at the moment.....
Am I just being crazy or does someone else recall it?
this is from the Frank Miller Comic, it wasn't a thing before that
kodos wrote: 300 is a 2 hour metal Video with cut scenes between written by Miller
nothing wrong here
The only problem I had with 300 was how utterly dumb the inciting event that created the pivot point in the movie was.
"you can't fight with us, for your shield cannot guard your brother on the flank from -"
"Sir?"
"What?"
"Sir, we fight in a line sir."
"What of it?"
"Well lines have two ends on them, usually, quite notorious for that fact. Couldn't we just put him on the end, where he hasn't got anyone to protect? Or maybe even just..not in the line, and allow him to die a heroic death with us?"
"Oh yeah good point. Form up Quasimodo!"
yet that Ephialtes was unable to fight within the Spartan Phalanx and did not want to fight with the Auxiliaries was one of the legit things in the movie
the original betrayal was for money only and would not have made a good story point but the rejection because he was not able and trained to fight with them is valid
I can not seem to recall where Ephialtes was lame came from. I am pretty sure it is not mentioned in Herodotus, but I could have sworn a different ancient historian made this claim. However, I can not recall who at the moment.....
Am I just being crazy or does someone else recall it?
I'm not exactly sure where it comes from but it wasn't contemporary. I think Miller invented it to add an extra layer of tragedy to the story of 300. In the record Ephialtes wasn't Spartan. He was a local and not described as crippled or deformed. It's also not entirely clear if he was the one who betrayed the defenders. Herodotus records two other men as being accused of revealing the existence of the bypass to the Persians and I've read at least one book that notes that the Phocians who lived in the area and were not overly fond of the other Greeks would probably be aware of the area and might have revealed it.
Matt Swain wrote: I'll say that i finally watched cruise's "the mummy" remake and was pleasantly surprised.
That's a great shout. I put it on not expecting much and when it had finished I had enjoyed it more than a good portion of the Marvel movies. I still don't understand the scathing reviews. But then, Edge of Tomorrow initially got horrid reviews and I liked that a great deal.
A lot of it comes from Cruise being much better at playing contemptible gits than heroic heroes. Collateral, War of the Worlds, Mummy, Edge of Tomorrow - he plays the role of someone you wouldn't personally like very well.
Never understood why Edge of Tomorrow was so panned. I thought it was one of Cruise's best and deep films.
Maybe because I'm biased, because if any actor can pull off Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, they get a perpetual "bad film mulligan" from me:
The only criticism I could make of Edge of Tomorrow is that they didn't go with the original title (of the comic?) "All you need is kill", which was vastly cooler
Loved Tropic Thunder! Probably one of the most underrated comedy films, it's just got so many brilliant moments in it (of which Grossman is one!)
I can not seem to recall where Ephialtes was lame came from. I am pretty sure it is not mentioned in Herodotus, but I could have sworn a different ancient historian made this claim. However, I can not recall who at the moment.....
Am I just being crazy or does someone else recall it?
I'm not exactly sure where it comes from but it wasn't contemporary. I think Miller invented it to add an extra layer of tragedy to the story of 300. In the record Ephialtes wasn't Spartan. He was a local and not described as crippled or deformed. It's also not entirely clear if he was the one who betrayed the defenders. Herodotus records two other men as being accused of revealing the existence of the bypass to the Persians and I've read at least one book that notes that the Phocians who lived in the area and were not overly fond of the other Greeks would probably be aware of the area and might have revealed it.
Yes, Herodotus lists two other names but rejects them as the likely culprits as the Greek authorities did not issue any punishment to them officially after the fact. They did with our guy Ephialtes, who was eventually killed in an unrelated manner IIRC.
Dang, I am surprised it was so recent as Frank Miller who wrote that Ephialtes was a cripple. I suspected some later Roman writer to have added that touch. Someone like Livy or Dionysus of Halicarnassus or something.......
I'l gonna get flamed for this, but i kinda liked "300: Rise of an empire".
Acknowledging, even if in a very fictitious context, Themistocles and Artemisia, was an amazingly good touch and a welcome nod to some important but generally unsung figures in greek, and therefore western, culture.
Also the fact that the greeks weren't saints and the persians weren't demons was a good touch. Artemsia was essentially a monster the greeks made for themselves thru their own cruelty and evil.
The best man in the movie as i saw it? The persian who saw the child dying in the streets of athens, picked her up, adopted her and raised her to be strong.
Seconding Solomon Kane, it was basically a Warhammer Witch Hunter movie, the scene with the ghouls is as close as we will get to the Old World on screen.
I also liked Starship Troopers a lot, but I guess that is not weird on this forum!
For real though, I enjoyed the hell out of the Nicolas Cage Ghost Rider movie. Ghost Rider is a ridiculous and cheesy character, and Cage does ridiculous and cheesy better than anyone.
Critics, including Roger Ebert at peak powers, gave "The 'Burbs" 2 out of 4 stars and gaked on it in his way, but I love that movie. Classic Tom Hanks flick in my opinion.
Movie is over 30 years old and I probably haven't watched it in 20 years, but any time I see a redheaded dude with a beard, I think of the Klopek son (who was also the creepy redhead in Children of the Corn). And I think in every neighborhood I've lived in, there is always that one house that is a bit suspect and I think of this movie.
Da Boss wrote: Seconding Solomon Kane, it was basically a Warhammer Witch Hunter movie, the scene with the ghouls is as close as we will get to the Old World on screen.
I also liked Starship Troopers a lot, but I guess that is not weird on this forum!
For real though, I enjoyed the hell out of the Nicolas Cage Ghost Rider movie. Ghost Rider is a ridiculous and cheesy character, and Cage does ridiculous and cheesy better than anyone.
I was disappointed that we get this great scene of Sam Elliot and Nick Cage riding across the darkened desert, only for Sam Elliot to bow out as soon as they get to the destination..... I was all like..... what? Why? Did Sam Elliot's contract for this movie JUST expire?
I just watched this film on horror channel called 'The Last Man on Planet Earth'.
It's a shonkey direct to video type film with bad cgi, but somehow seems to do it's interesting premise justice, create some textured characters and put some good twists in there.
I very much judged this film by its cover but I'm glad I stuck with it!
Turnip Jedi wrote: Isn't it being an adolescent fantasy more or less the whole point of Sucker Punch, which as that's about Zacks limit, a series of essentially MTV music video was something even he couldn't mess up (likewise 300 being a film stylised like a video game flipping between cut scenes and fighty bits)
I thought it was a scathing feminist critique on male nerd objectification of women (but only after indulging in said objectification in the trailers and publicity to get the male nerds into the cinema, obviously).
The only problem I had with 300 was how utterly dumb the inciting event that created the pivot point in the movie was.
"you can't fight with us, for your shield cannot guard your brother on the flank from -"
"Actually, we don't even do that. When the actual fighting starts, we abandon all formation and run off to stab people as a disorganised mob, usually in super-slo-mo."
Mine is Ghostbusters '16. Script was shoddy, the editing was choppy in the third act, Chris Hemsworth was clearly on brodude autopilot, the villain was...so forgettable I couldn't tell you a single thing about him, but the actual main cast were fun, had some great individual scenes (like the "They're here!" moment in the restaurant) and deserved a far better story to work with.
Turnip Jedi wrote: Isn't it being an adolescent fantasy more or less the whole point of Sucker Punch, which as that's about Zacks limit, a series of essentially MTV music video was something even he couldn't mess up (likewise 300 being a film stylised like a video game flipping between cut scenes and fighty bits)
I thought it was a scathing feminist critique on male nerd objectification of women (but only after indulging in said objectification in the trailers and publicity to get the male nerds into the cinema, obviously).
The only problem I had with 300 was how utterly dumb the inciting event that created the pivot point in the movie was.
"you can't fight with us, for your shield cannot guard your brother on the flank from -"
"Actually, we don't even do that. When the actual fighting starts, we abandon all formation and run off to stab people as a disorganised mob, usually in super-slo-mo."
Mine is Ghostbusters '16. Script was shoddy, the editing was choppy in the third act, Chris Hemsworth was clearly on brodude autopilot, the villain was...so forgettable I couldn't tell you a single thing about him, but the actual main cast were fun, had some great individual scenes (like the "They're here!" moment in the restaurant) and deserved a far better story to work with.
In 300, why not put that guy at the end of the line with no brother to shield on his side? Duh, leo.
Picked it upon a whim, and greatly enjoyed it. Lots of fun, and for what it is, a decent plot. Effects are above Direct To Video expectation too.
Yikes Tremors is still going! I think Tremors 3 was the last one I watched but they tread a good line between horror and fun.
I think the series honestly deserves some credit. While no Tremor's film is as good as the first one, the sequels have been surprisingly okay. I think Tremors 4 is the second best movie in the series. Tremors 5 was so average it was okay. 6 and 7 fully embraced being corny B-movies and ran with it to good effect. None of them will blow your mind or anything, but they are decidedly adequate (in a good way).
Yea, they must be doing something right if they are still making them!
I liked the third one because it went back to the town of Perfection and had some good references to the first film.
Matt Swain wrote: I'l gonna get flamed for this, but i kinda liked "300: Rise of an empire".
Acknowledging, even if in a very fictitious context, Themistocles and Artemisia, was an amazingly good touch and a welcome nod to some important but generally unsung figures in greek, and therefore western, culture.
Also the fact that the greeks weren't saints and the persians weren't demons was a good touch. Artemsia was essentially a monster the greeks made for themselves thru their own cruelty and evil.
The best man in the movie as i saw it? The persian who saw the child dying in the streets of athens, picked her up, adopted her and raised her to be strong.
True, although as someone aware of Artemisia previously it was quite jaring - in reality she is a pragmatic indivudal who like many Greeks simply saw serving the Persians as no worse and perhaps better than serving Athens or Sparta.
She also too the opportunity to dispose of a rival during the battle, shifting her colours during the battle depending on situation and recived high praise from the king before heading home. This was partly as she also advised the King not to bother fighting the greeks further once they had burned and looted Athens and to leave the mopping up to his subordinates. She may have even married one of the Kings sons following the war.
I enjoy 300 and its sequal as simply how the Spartans told the story to new recruits - massively exagerting everything and promoting themselves.
Of course they both also have some distortions of ancient era sexuality to suit modern audiances.
I enjoy 300 and its sequal as simply how the Spartans told the story to new recruits - massively exagerting everything and promoting themselves.
Of course they both also have some distortions of ancient era sexuality to suit modern audiances.
I mean that's sort of the point of the films. They are propaganda movies and all the style and description of the Persians is done intentionally to demonize them as "the enemy". Heck in the first film the person telling the story of how Leonidas died wasn't even there when it happened.
When you look at the story through the lense as an exaggerated propaganda film all the stuff in the story that doesn't make sense kinda does from that angle.
Of course they both also have some distortions of ancient era sexuality to suit modern audiances.
I always just thought the homoerotic slippt thru censorship because of the violence and was way ahead of its time
Ahh not my point - Spartan soldiers were usually given a older male lover when they joined a barracks and are often described as having to be dragged to their marriage bed as it was so unatural so when they call the Athenians "boy lovers" it is amusing .
Some prominent ancients considered that sex with women was only to make children and that love was more natural with a male comrade with whom they experienced war together - not forgetting of course the Sacred Band of Thebes. Of course there was also Hetaira and "flute girls" as well as male prostitutes
Most ancients would not define themselves as a specific sexual type in the same way as we do today.
Edge of Tomorrow and Oblivion are two of my favorite Tom Cruise movies. They aren't world-changing, but they are solidly fun sci fi adventures, and I think they both have good endings.
chromedog wrote: ... and the best part about both is that Tom Cruise's character dies.
At least once.
I've always wanted to ask something: Is all the hostility against tom cruise based on his involvement in what many people regard as a fraudulent and possibly dangerous cult? I'm not saying the name as someone might accuse me of getting into R&P, but is that the only reason people have such hostility towards tom cruise? I really am curious here.
As for me, i never gave a damn about him till "Interview with the vampire" and wasn't displeased with his lestat. I mean from what I head of him i'd expected his performance to be a $@/#sandwich, and instead I considered it a ham sandwich, and when you''re expecting the former and get the latter it can be a pleasant surprise.
I'm not a fan at all, and the last movie of his i watched was "Oblivion", which i almost saw as an apple product of the future ad, with the Ihouse, the Idrone, the Iclothes, the Iplane, the Ibike, the Irifle, etc.
But seriously, someone tell me is all the hate for him about his cult involvement? I remember then the valkyrie movie was announced and you had Klaus Von Stauffenberg's grandson on an interview, practically on his knees with his hands clasped in front of him begging "Mr. Cruise, I am asking you to please not play my grandfather! We don't want your cult using his story to spread their propaganda!"
AegisGrimm wrote: Edge of Tomorrow and Oblivion are two of my favorite Tom Cruise movies. They aren't world-changing, but they are solidly fun sci fi adventures, and I think they both have good endings.
I can't recall watching a bad TC movie - both of these are really good IMO. Also really impressed with Collaterall with TC as an Assassin bad guy.
Of course they both also have some distortions of ancient era sexuality to suit modern audiances.
I always just thought the homoerotic slippt thru censorship because of the violence and was way ahead of its time
Ahh not my point - Spartan soldiers were usually given a older male lover when they joined a barracks and are often described as having to be dragged to their marriage bed as it was so unatural so when they call the Athenians "boy lovers" it is amusing .
Some prominent ancients considered that sex with women was only to make children and that love was more natural with a male comrade with whom they experienced war together - not forgetting of course the Sacred Band of Thebes. Of course there was also Hetaira and "flute girls" as well as male prostitutes
Most ancients would not define themselves as a specific sexual type in the same way as we do today.
making the movie now and you could go much more into that direction and it would be accepted, by that time it feels the movie went as far as possible into the "not heterosexual" direction as possible and that the scenes with the Queen were added to make it less obvious
Of course they both also have some distortions of ancient era sexuality to suit modern audiances.
I always just thought the homoerotic slippt thru censorship because of the violence and was way ahead of its time
Ahh not my point - Spartan soldiers were usually given a older male lover when they joined a barracks and are often described as having to be dragged to their marriage bed as it was so unatural so when they call the Athenians "boy lovers" it is amusing .
Some prominent ancients considered that sex with women was only to make children and that love was more natural with a male comrade with whom they experienced war together - not forgetting of course the Sacred Band of Thebes. Of course there was also Hetaira and "flute girls" as well as male prostitutes
Most ancients would not define themselves as a specific sexual type in the same way as we do today.
making the movie now and you could go much more into that direction and it would be accepted, by that time it feels the movie went as far as possible into the "not heterosexual" direction as possible and that the scenes with the Queen were added to make it less obvious
Maybe.... - the Old Guard was certainly well recieved andits also quite possible that the Leonidas and his Queen were a loving couple - people are complicated and often fail to succumb to easy clasification.
Of course they both also have some distortions of ancient era sexuality to suit modern audiances.
I always just thought the homoerotic slippt thru censorship because of the violence and was way ahead of its time
Ahh not my point - Spartan soldiers were usually given a older male lover when they joined a barracks and are often described as having to be dragged to their marriage bed as it was so unatural so when they call the Athenians "boy lovers" it is amusing .
Some prominent ancients considered that sex with women was only to make children and that love was more natural with a male comrade with whom they experienced war together - not forgetting of course the Sacred Band of Thebes. Of course there was also Hetaira and "flute girls" as well as male prostitutes
Most ancients would not define themselves as a specific sexual type in the same way as we do today.
making the movie now and you could go much more into that direction and it would be accepted, by that time it feels the movie went as far as possible into the "not heterosexual" direction as possible and that the scenes with the Queen were added to make it less obvious
Maybe.... - the Old Guard was certainly well recieved andits also quite possible that the Leonidas and his Queen were a loving couple - people are complicated and often fail to succumb to easy clasification.
I find it highly likely that even in ancient Greece, where bisexuality seems to have been the social norm there were those who preferred one gender over the other, even to the extreme of what we'd consider to be 'heterosexual' or 'homosexual'.
As an aside, I would share an excellent post from r/AskHistorians here. It's a great 'TLDR' of Spartan history that I really appreciated when I found it (I think I found the literal needle in the haystack with that one, the whole thread is pretty good). It's not as hard hitting for the Greeks as the Egyptians, but Classical greek history spans 1000 years, and we tend to treat Greek culture as monolithic, something that never changed in all that time even though it changed about as much as anywhere else with 1000 years to adapt to new situations.
Most ancients would not define themselves as a specific sexual type in the same way as we do today.
And as an another aside, I find this observation to be great in its conciseness. Historians have recently been tackling a wave of criticism from the LGBTQ community on a number of things, and largely failing to explain their position in laymen's terms (long explanations about source criticism, anachronism, and historiography are dry even to historians). Historians haven't until recently really faced this kind of criticism and it can be hard to explain how preposterously modern current perceptions of gender, sex, and identity are. They're literally only about 50 years old, 200 tops depending on how strict we want to be. It's not something we can transplant back 2000 years and expect to fit neatly into a box.
Of course they both also have some distortions of ancient era sexuality to suit modern audiances.
I always just thought the homoerotic slippt thru censorship because of the violence and was way ahead of its time
Ahh not my point - Spartan soldiers were usually given a older male lover when they joined a barracks and are often described as having to be dragged to their marriage bed as it was so unatural so when they call the Athenians "boy lovers" it is amusing .
Some prominent ancients considered that sex with women was only to make children and that love was more natural with a male comrade with whom they experienced war together - not forgetting of course the Sacred Band of Thebes. Of course there was also Hetaira and "flute girls" as well as male prostitutes
Most ancients would not define themselves as a specific sexual type in the same way as we do today.
making the movie now and you could go much more into that direction and it would be accepted, by that time it feels the movie went as far as possible into the "not heterosexual" direction as possible and that the scenes with the Queen were added to make it less obvious
Maybe.... - the Old Guard was certainly well recieved andits also quite possible that the Leonidas and his Queen were a loving couple - people are complicated and often fail to succumb to easy clasification.
I find it highly likely that even in ancient Greece, where bisexuality seems to have been the social norm there were those who preferred one gender over the other, even to the extreme of what we'd consider to be 'heterosexual' or 'homosexual'.
Indeed - however many would also not have seen the need or indeed point in defining a person by their preferences given that sex could and often was not just something for pleasure/afirming relationships but also for duty or just stress relief / part of war.
I just found it amusing that given how homoerotic (*) imagery abounded in 300 the characters expressed the opposite
(*) my Female friends don't seem impressed by the sculpted male bodies but I am sure some are !
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LordofHats wrote: As an aside, I would share an excellent post from r/AskHistorians here. It's a great 'TLDR' of Spartan history that I really appreciated when I found it (I think I found the literal needle in the haystack with that one). It's not as hard hitting for the Greeks as the Egyptians, but Classical greek history spans 1000 years, and we tend to treat Greek culture as monolithic, something that never changed in all that time even though it changed about as much as anywhere else with 1000 years to adapt to new situations.
Most ancients would not define themselves as a specific sexual type in the same way as we do today.
And as an another aside, I find this observation to be great in its conciseness. Historians have recently been tackling a wave of criticism from the LGBTQ community on a number of things, and largely failing to explain their position in laymen's terms (long explanations about source criticism, anachronism, and historiography are dry even to historians). Historians haven't until recently really faced this kind of criticism and it can be hard to explain how preposterously modern current perceptions of gender, sex, and identity are. They're literally only about 50 years old, 200 tops depending on how strict we want to be.
Thanks - will check out that link
And exactly - at work I talk about the rather wonderful Hortense Mancini who had affairs with men and women, much to the chargrain of her husband, finally ending up in the bed of both Charles II and his illegitimate daughter - but would she have described herself as "bisexual" - I seriously doubt it even if the term had been known - she was just enjoying life and would have been uncertain of the point of defining herself in such a way.
The same can be said for her contemporary Phillip, brother of Louis XIV who was happily fathering many children, having mistresses as well as being very much in thrall to his male lover/s.
It’s my very basic understanding of Greek and Roman society that your sexual partners’ social class / standing was probably more important than their gender.
Jadenim wrote: It’s my very basic understanding of Greek and Roman society that your sexual partners’ social class / standing was probably more important than their gender.
Well I think thats limited to your wife or husband - slaves, prostitutes and casual sexual partners are different, in fact men were encouraged to seek out prostitutes but not too much. Women did suffer from the usual double standard, as in many cultures it was important that a husband knew any children were his - "Caesar's wife". Egyptian and northern european woman seemed to have more choice and freedom than their sisters in Greece or Rome.
Also in Rome it also mattered if you were the dominant partner - specifically who put what in whom but then the Romans had sexual imagery Everywhere - including as soon as you walked in the door.
That being said, I imagine alot of married couples were just that - couples who at most indulged themselves with their slaves - which again technically did not count but that would depend on the couple. Marriage in Rome was also, for most people, very simple and pretty much happened if you lived together long enough with divorce from this sort of marriage being equally simple.
Mortal Engines main problem is that it tries to get as much from the books in as possible while leaving important information for those who did not know the source out or just gives small hints
less of the book and more of a story would have helped
yet it was fun to watch
Mortal Engines had some really cool ideas, but they tried sooooo hard to make it a sweeping epic which did detract from some bits.
There was some really unnecessary padding too; the baddie's daughter sub plot that went nowhere or the visit to the sky city for example. I assume they were more important in the book!
The film did a great job or making you feel this clash of civilizations though. I was genuinely invested in the pathos of these mighty motorised cities being slowly starved by the Chinese wall, and the desperate measures required to save their way of life. It made Hugo Weaving's character pretty cool.
I've always wanted to ask something: Is all the hostility against tom cruise based on his involvement in what many people regard as a fraudulent and possibly dangerous cult? I'm not saying the name as someone might accuse me of getting into R&P, but is that the only reason people have such hostility towards tom cruise? I really am curious here.
In "The Media" it certainly does appear that way, and not without reason. . . In the past, I do recall that on red carpet interviews, he'd spout some cult propaganda lines which, in more recent years, he has strayed from (as honestly, the place is high profile enough he doesn't need to any more) doing. It was that type of previous activity that I'm sure lead to Mr. Valkyrie's offspring's desire to have him not play the role, however I am not familiar with that organization actually putting its content IN movies (well, except for Battlefield Earth. . .but that's a bit different), so I may be somewhat ignorant of the full breadth of the protests.
On these forums, go through enough movie threads, and you will see a few people who don't like him because of his style of acting, or that he was miscast (Jack Reacher. . . apparently) in a role, or a number of reasons that do not pertain to that other thing.
Kroem wrote: Mortal Engines had some really cool ideas, but they tried sooooo hard to make it a sweeping epic which did detract from some bits.
There was some really unnecessary padding too; the baddie's daughter sub plot that went nowhere or the visit to the sky city for example.
I assume they were more important in the book!
The film did a great job or making you feel this clash of civilizations though. I was genuinely invested in the pathos of these mighty motorised cities being slowly starved by the Chinese wall, and the desperate measures required to save their way of life. It made Hugo Weaving's character pretty cool.
Agreed - watched it the other night and enjoyed it alot - plenty of intriguing steampunk and epic cities on wheels etc.
And yeah the daughter seemed like she was going to be much more important - guessing either it did not work or had to be cut down due to length - its not a short film anyway.
I've always wanted to ask something: Is all the hostility against tom cruise based on his involvement in what many people regard as a fraudulent and possibly dangerous cult? I'm not saying the name as someone might accuse me of getting into R&P, but is that the only reason people have such hostility towards tom cruise? I really am curious here.
In "The Media" it certainly does appear that way, and not without reason. . . In the past, I do recall that on red carpet interviews, he'd spout some cult propaganda lines which, in more recent years, he has strayed from (as honestly, the place is high profile enough he doesn't need to any more) doing. It was that type of previous activity that I'm sure lead to Mr. Valkyrie's offspring's desire to have him not play the role, however I am not familiar with that organization actually putting its content IN movies (well, except for Battlefield Earth. . .but that's a bit different), so I may be somewhat ignorant of the full breadth of the protests.
On these forums, go through enough movie threads, and you will see a few people who don't like him because of his style of acting, or that he was miscast (Jack Reacher. . . apparently) in a role, or a number of reasons that do not pertain to that other thing.
If you've read any of the Reacher books by Lee Child, then Cruise is a poor choice for the casting, purely on the physical characteristics - the guy is no 6' 4", 220lb, one-man-wrecking-crew. Now, I've not watched either film in full, so I'm not going to comment too much on the performance - but in the clips I saw from the first film, especially the fight outside the bar? He definitely seemed to have the right sort of attitude in place.
Still, after 20+ books, if I'm gonna go watch a film about Jack Reacher, I kinda want the actor to at least be in the right ballpark for how Jack Reacher is described, y'know?
I didn't mind the Reacher film but physical discrepancies aside it's the thing where wee Tommy C is more a brand than an actor and is hired to be that rather actually acting hence all his movies become Tom movies rather than movies with Tom in them
Well, I'm glad my question about the hate for tom cruise didn't get any hostility. I've seen so much of it i finally just had to ask. Thanks for the honest answers.
Cheesy mismatch of actors you know that don't survive more than 5 minutes (LOL). Feels like a cheesy shock-horror late night movie, but in a good way.
Will it win an Emmy? LOL, no way. It is fun for what it is though. The credits are enjoyable, as the characters don't have names, so they accredit the actors with such parts as "Yoga Pants" and "Shut the F*** Up Gary".
I bought the dvd for a dollar having seen the game mentioned at times.
Yeah, the budget and effects were college students on a "we're making LSD in chem lab and selling it to finance this" level but it had some amazing acting chops, like tomas jayne, ron perleman and John Malkovich.
I think that very cheap and excessive blood splatter was poorly matted in after the movie was made for some reason.
it was worth the dollar i paid and the time i spent, i'd say. Good grimdark vibe for 40k fans. I've heard mutant chronicles, the game, was inspired by 40k so it's not surprising.
I'm not a fan of fantasy movies in general and I know it was considered a semi-fiasco but I found this one was quite entertaining and I watched it 3 times already. Alicia Vikander is also one of my favorite actress, so it's a bonus.
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Kroem wrote: Mortal Engines had some really cool ideas, but they tried sooooo hard to make it a sweeping epic which did detract from some bits.
There was some really unnecessary padding too; the baddie's daughter sub plot that went nowhere or the visit to the sky city for example.
I assume they were more important in the book!
The film did a great job or making you feel this clash of civilizations though. I was genuinely invested in the pathos of these mighty motorised cities being slowly starved by the Chinese wall, and the desperate measures required to save their way of life. It made Hugo Weaving's character pretty cool.
I consider it a decent B movie. Definitely not worth of a modern successful blockbuster but it's not trash either.
I recently watched the Roland Emmerich “Midway” film. I’d skipped it last year as it got absolutely panned in reviews (and the trailers did NOT look good), but recently I’d seen some comments / user reviews that said it was alright, so I gave it a go. It’s...fine, maybe a 6/10. CGI is mostly decent and there’s some good actors in there (unfortunately Ed Skrein’s performance is not brilliant; not got anything against him, just slightly miscast I think). Not something I’d ever pay to own, but as a background/lazy afternoon filler I’d happily watch it again, so definitely better than expected.
Saw Galaxy Quest for the first time the other day as it's now on Netflix.
How did I miss this film for so long?
Was a lot of fun, just thoroughly enjoyable Saturday night fair that completely kept your attention.
Everyone was perfectly cast in it (especially Alan Rickman, with a role made for his dry delivery) and Sigourney Weaver was !
I've always wanted to ask something: Is all the hostility against tom cruise based on his involvement in what many people regard as a fraudulent and possibly dangerous cult? I'm not saying the name as someone might accuse me of getting into R&P, but is that the only reason people have such hostility towards tom cruise? I really am curious here.
In "The Media" it certainly does appear that way, and not without reason. . . In the past, I do recall that on red carpet interviews, he'd spout some cult propaganda lines which, in more recent years, he has strayed from (as honestly, the place is high profile enough he doesn't need to any more) doing. It was that type of previous activity that I'm sure lead to Mr. Valkyrie's offspring's desire to have him not play the role, however I am not familiar with that organization actually putting its content IN movies (well, except for Battlefield Earth. . .but that's a bit different), so I may be somewhat ignorant of the full breadth of the protests.
On these forums, go through enough movie threads, and you will see a few people who don't like him because of his style of acting, or that he was miscast (Jack Reacher. . . apparently) in a role, or a number of reasons that do not pertain to that other thing.
If you've read any of the Reacher books by Lee Child, then Cruise is a poor choice for the casting, purely on the physical characteristics - the guy is no 6' 4", 220lb, one-man-wrecking-crew. Now, I've not watched either film in full, so I'm not going to comment too much on the performance - but in the clips I saw from the first film, especially the fight outside the bar? He definitely seemed to have the right sort of attitude in place.
Still, after 20+ books, if I'm gonna go watch a film about Jack Reacher, I kinda want the actor to at least be in the right ballpark for how Jack Reacher is described, y'know?
Agree 100%. It takes a certain amount of arrogance I think for an actor to think "I can act up this extra 8 inches in height and 100lbs". For that kind of boys-own role which was basically someone beating people up for 90 minutes it needed someone that was big and physical; Jason Mamoa with a crewcut, Henry Cavill or even Chris Hemsworth. If Tom Cruise wanted that kind of role he should have done another Mission Impossible.
Other films with similar miscastings where you feel they have bought their way into a role are Tom Hanks in The Da Vinci Code (him with a mullet, again actor was meant to be 6'4" and square jawed) and Nicole Kidman in the Goldon Compass (meant to be a petite brunette).
Actually also Daniel Craig in the Hollywood remake of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Character was meant to be with middle-aged spread and unremarkable to look at, not someone who can walk out of the water with sun glistening on his oiled six-pack and an uzi in each hand
Pacific wrote: Saw Galaxy Quest for the first time the other day as it's now on Netflix.
How did I miss this film for so long?
Was a lot of fun, just thoroughly enjoyable Saturday night fair that completely kept your attention.
Everyone was perfectly cast in it (especially Alan Rickman, with a role made for his dry delivery) and Sigourney Weaver was !
Its a fantastic movie as not only is it clever and very funny with as you say a perfect cast but it mocks with love and understanding AND also manages to be a decent action movie as well.
It's always a pleasant surprise when a movie exceeds your expectations! I can totally relate to your list of surprisingly good films. "Amazon Women on the Moon" had its unique charm, and "Catwoman" had an intriguing premise despite the mixed reviews.
for shame !
