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I'd have to go with a movie by the name of Patient Zero. Was hoping for a fun, not too serious zombie movie ala the Dawn of the Dead remake. I found it to be one of the most incredibly bland, by the numbers movies I've ever seen. Like, how does something manage to be so offensively uninteresting. Take Day of the dead with it's tight quarters bunker theme, take out the interesting cast, the charming effects, decent if silly writing and bam. You got patient Zero.

 trexmeyer wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
With regards to the Endgame big bash, for my own part, the end fight scene was more Ready Player One pop-culture extravaganza than anything else, it felt like it was about mashing as many characters on screen as possible in a giant combat that made zero sense to fight the way it was fought with ultimately meaningless Deus Ex Machina events all over the place (e.g. everything about Captain Marvel in that fight). That said, for many viewers, a pop-culture character mis-mash extravaganza was exactly what they were there for admittedly, but so much of it was narratively irrelevant and forced that it was hard, for me at least, to keep my suspension of disbelief in check.

The final fight scene was a hot mess. The girl power moment was horrific pandering that could have easily been done naturally and better.

@MrMorden

Everything up until the time jump was fine. I hated everything after that. They could have gone in so many directions even with that opening and went with the laziest, pandering story they could have possibly come up with.

I wish they had done something along the lines of a figuring out how to defeat Infinity Gauntlet Thanos before tracking him down and defeating him.

It felt to me like there was a board meeting and it went like this:

"Okay, ideas for the final fight. Jim said Captain America uses the hammer and I love it."

"All the girls could team up for a girl power moment."

"Love it."

"Spider-man can make quips."

"Naturally."

"Captain Marvel can come out of the sky and just smash the space ship, we need her for the next phase gotta build her up."

"Forward thinking."

"I think these are all great ideas. How do we want to structure the scenes so it all makes sense in sequence?"

*throws that guy out the window*

"Anymore ideas?"

*I don't think any of the bits of the final fight were bad, but I'm definitely in the 'the way these scenes were put together seems really random and forced' crowd. They really could have fixed the problem with some forethought.

 Easy E wrote:
The Fountain

I expected something a bit more profound than a Disney-fied Circle of Life theme.... but no.

There were essentially three divergent story lines from different timelines, that all lead into one big theme.

I was expecting something more from it, and it ended up making me very mad!

I saw that film at a 24hr cinema at about 1.30 in the morning. Couple of drunk guys in the cinema that looked like they had already fallen asleep before it even started were the only people there, I think that I was probably in about the right head-space to appreciate it.. Definitely a very odd film !

 LordofHats wrote:
*I don't think any of the bits of the final fight were bad, but I'm definitely in the 'the way these scenes were put together seems really random and forced' crowd. They really could have fixed the problem with some forethought.

End Game was definitely a let down after Infinity War - not majorly disappointing, just nowhere near as good.

The end fight reminded me of a 90s cartoon superhero introduction sequence. Remember the X-Men introduction? We get 1.5 seconds of Wolverine doing his snikkt thing, 1.5 seconds of Storm doing weather things, 1.5 seconds of Xavier touching his fingers to his head, etc. No reason, no contribution to the story, just a feel good montage of the characters doing their character thing. Very little of it actually added anything.

The biggest disapointment, for me, from End Game was how they completely invalidated one of the biggest set ups from Infinity War. Hulk is near invincible. He can get beaten up but he'll come back angrier. Thanos could click his fingers as many times as he liked, each time removing half the universe's population until there was only he and Hulk left, click his fingers one more time and my money would be on the green guy surviving.

Then Hulk finds the one thing it can't smash and is scared. That's amazing set up. I was excited to see what they do with it. And they go with a crappy café scene and Banner now has the strength but none of the anti-social-smash-everything-in-sight issues of the green guy? What the hell was the point of Hulk in Infinity War if his fear gets completely bypassed in the sequal? That café scene was a serious WTF moment when I saw it in the cinema.

Yeah - the Hulk having his movie trilogy 'off camera' is a failing of the MCU. The merging of the Banner/Hulk persona would have a great moment in a time of crisis - like the end fight.

Although, interestingly, we get a few hints that 'the beast' wasn't too far away. 'Take your hands off me' and 'Lady, I ain't askin' ' felt like violence was the preferred method of conflict resolution.

 LordofHats wrote:

The final fight scene was a hot mess. The girl power moment was horrific pandering that could have easily been done naturally and better.

Pretty much this. The "girl power"stance failed because a move like that is meant to indicate a coming together of story-lines, most of those people hadn't even MET. It was literally "They got va-jay-jay they in the shot" move.

Overall the movie was crap. Time travel is so bad of a story line and invalidates anything. Problem? Go back in time and fix. I *LOVED* Captain wielding Mjolnir. I know I was meant to but that didn't mean it wasn't cool.



Honestly disappointing movie through and through? Solo. I loved Rogue One and it was predictable as hell. Solo was just stupid.

Endgame was too long, first 90 min basically nothing happens.

The worst scene is the clash between Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner when they had to decide who was going to sacrifice. It was supposed to be dramatic and intense, but ended up absolutely comical.

On the other hand Fat Thor was a huge bonus to the movie.

All-star movies are never easy to do though, it's hard to merge a solid plot with the necessity of giving appropriate space to everyone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Henry wrote:


The biggest disapointment, for me, from End Game was how they completely invalidated one of the biggest set ups from Infinity War.

The biggest disappointment for me is that End Game had the perfect ending for the franchise. Not a happy handing but definitely an epic one. "Bad" guys should win sometimes, even if I think that Thanos was actually in the right and Iron Man was the real villain of the MCU since Civil War.

even if I think that Thanos was actually in the right

The "Mad" titan - no his whole theory was just stupid - I'll randomly kill half of all people cos in a couple of generations the population will be the same but I have just devestaed societies and killed countless people for zero result.

Needs to be more than culling people every so often - but then he was a complete nutjob

Endgame is one of my fav MCU movies so I am biased.

More of an issue is Dr Strange not just chopping Thanos arm off with a portal in previous film to get the glove - hell - chop his head off.

I think the intent of Endgame was to be a love letter to all of the previous MCU films. Agree the time travel was a bit clunky but it was a great way of reminding everyone, especially the casual audience, what had happened over that past decade and served as a kind of 'greatest hits'

The final battle was essentially a royal rumble - I guess in the same way it needed to be in there, but as lots of people have pointed out there are far better individual fight scenes in other movies in the series.

Then you have the conclusion of story arcs, most notably with Tony Stark, who has transformed over the course of the series from being self serving in Iron Man to someone who becomes ultimately selfless, and gives his life for the people around him.

I did at least like that Thanos had some kind of philosophy behind what he was doing, even if it was morally repugnant and arguably illogical. That immediately places it above a lot of other fictional megalomaniacs you can think of (*cough* the Horus Heresy *cough*), added depth to his character, and the prospect of the indiscriminate genocide he wanted to carry out (being so utterly terrifying) added an enormous emotional weight to the end of Infinity War.

 Mr Morden wrote:


The "Mad" titan - no his whole theory was just stupid - I'll randomly kill half of all people cos in a couple of generations the population will be the same but I have just devestaed societies and killed countless people for zero result.

The opposite of zero result. He could have saved the universe for centuries. But I can agree about the percentage, he should have aimed to wiping 90% of the population, not just 50%. Still billions of lives in that 10%.

Why devastated societies? We had devastating world war wars and societies managed to re-born in a few years: Germany was in ashes in 1945, but one of the wealthier countries in the world 50 years later.

Thanos looked at the big picture: the lives he erased were irrelevant to the universe while slowing down the overexploitation of the resource was not. It sounds cynical but it's actually right.

It's the same concept that moves Mass Effect's villains, even if their harvest wasn't random.

I think it's also important to note that the time travel is going to be a step forward into future stories. Dr Doom has a classic piece of tech known as his time platform. Well... the Avengers basically built a time platform.

Now that Time Travel has been done Kang The Conqueror can show up without having to introduce the concept of time travel.

Like Dr Strange introducing magic the time travel in this movie is a stepping stone forward both in parallel realities and time travel for classic marvel schtick going forward.

 Blackie wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:


The "Mad" titan - no his whole theory was just stupid - I'll randomly kill half of all people cos in a couple of generations the population will be the same but I have just devestaed societies and killed countless people for zero result.

The opposite of zero result. He could have saved the universe for centuries. But I can agree about the percentage, he should have aimed to wiping 90% of the population, not just 50%. Still billions of lives in that 10%.

Why devastated societies? We had devastating world war wars and societies managed to re-born in a few years: Germany was in ashes in 1945, but one of the wealthier countries in the world 50 years later.

Thanos looked at the big picture: the lives he erased were irrelevant to the universe while slowing down the overexploitation of the resource was not. It sounds cynical but it's actually right.

It's the same concept that moves Mass Effect's villains, even if their harvest wasn't random.

He acheives nothing other than death, misery and pain in all his time - even the snap does not stop anything - no one knows who or why he did it - they carry on their lives as best they can but as they repopulate - what will have changed - if anything populations may be more desperate and exploitaive. A few hundred years after his Sanp - the universe is in the same or worse condition. So pointless and zero result.

Ask those who survived the war if they considered society was devestated - they recovered because of stuff like the Marshall plan - who does this in a post snap world - he doesn't and he leaves nothing to rebuild a better world.

If he dictated to all what they could and could not do, he might achieve something. Or he could have changed their mental outlook with the snap. Or killed everyone "evil" - hard one to define.

His "big picture" is incredably limited and without imagination - he is a great tragic, mad character in the MCU films but his plan is also insane and pointless. He is a destroyer but not a builder.

Its not even if the universe seems over populated - I guess its a metephor for humans on earth - but there are more planets than humans in the Milky war alone....

 Blackie wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:


The "Mad" titan - no his whole theory was just stupid - I'll randomly kill half of all people cos in a couple of generations the population will be the same but I have just devestaed societies and killed countless people for zero result.

The opposite of zero result. He could have saved the universe for centuries. But I can agree about the percentage, he should have aimed to wiping 90% of the population, not just 50%. Still billions of lives in that 10%.

Why devastated societies? We had devastating world war wars and societies managed to re-born in a few years: Germany was in ashes in 1945, but one of the wealthier countries in the world 50 years later.

Thanos looked at the big picture: the lives he erased were irrelevant to the universe while slowing down the overexploitation of the resource was not. It sounds cynical but it's actually right.

It's the same concept that moves Mass Effect's villains, even if their harvest wasn't random.

On a galactic scale there is no shortage of resources, only sysyems to get the resources to the people who need them.

Thanos did nothing to solve that problem.

 Blackie wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:


The "Mad" titan - no his whole theory was just stupid - I'll randomly kill half of all people cos in a couple of generations the population will be the same but I have just devestaed societies and killed countless people for zero result.

The opposite of zero result. He could have saved the universe for centuries. But I can agree about the percentage, he should have aimed to wiping 90% of the population, not just 50%. Still billions of lives in that 10%.

Why devastated societies? We had devastating world war wars and societies managed to re-born in a few years: Germany was in ashes in 1945, but one of the wealthier countries in the world 50 years later.

Thanos looked at the big picture: the lives he erased were irrelevant to the universe while slowing down the overexploitation of the resource was not. It sounds cynical but it's actually right.

It's the same concept that moves Mass Effect's villains, even if their harvest wasn't random.

Welcome to the Illuminati.

There are people alive today who believe in population culling. That is part of what made Thanos' plan so terrifying.

Edit: I also found Endgame disappointing for a couple reasons. I never bothered to go back an re-watch it.

1. Dropping of Hulk story line from IW..... weak
2. Time travel to solve the issue.... weak
3. Too many character's needing their arcs resolved..... a tough lift for ANY movie

That said, I will take Endgame over The Last Jedi any day of the week. The director, Rian Johnson; of Last Jedi is a great director, see Brick and Knives Out. They are very talented. However, they were the absolute worst choice for a Star Wars movie. If you watch any of his other movies it is obvious. He could make an amazing Star Wars movie, just not the second movie of a trilogy.

 Blackie wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:


The "Mad" titan - no his whole theory was just stupid - I'll randomly kill half of all people cos in a couple of generations the population will be the same but I have just devestaed societies and killed countless people for zero result.

The opposite of zero result. He could have saved the universe for centuries. But I can agree about the percentage, he should have aimed to wiping 90% of the population, not just 50%. Still billions of lives in that 10%.

Why devastated societies? We had devastating world war wars and societies managed to re-born in a few years: Germany was in ashes in 1945, but one of the wealthier countries in the world 50 years later.

Thanos looked at the big picture: the lives he erased were irrelevant to the universe while slowing down the overexploitation of the resource was not. It sounds cynical but it's actually right.

It's the same concept that moves Mass Effect's villains, even if their harvest wasn't random.

On any any meaningful timescale to anything larger than an individual human lifespan, none of these actions would have accomplished any of Thanos' goals, even going for 90% Life can rebound insanely quickly and reoccupy niches and return to consuming existing resources if conditions are right insanely fast and nothing Thanos did addressed that at all. One will note that Germany didnt take 50 years to return to being one of the wealthiest nations in the world, they were back at that point after about a single generation. With intact industrialized societies and knowledge bases, much less stuff like fusion power and faster than light travel, returning to the status quo would likely take even less time even with greater destruction acros the galaxy/universe. Even if it had done what Thanos wanted for centuries, given the timescale of stuff he appears to be concerned about, centuries would be the blink of an eye. Life on earth has gone through multiple extinctions where only a small fraction of life has survived, and life on earth is more robust and diverse than at any other point in earth's history (or at least was until the current in-progress mass extinctions at our hands in the current era that is the Holocene).

The idea as expressed in Mass Effect was also among the dumbest, most hamfisted, poorly conceived and thought out, and most narrratively disconnected I've ever seen, so much so that it terminated all further interest in that franchise for me

It kind of astounds me how many people are still hung up on Thanos' plan not making sense. He's called the MAD Titan for a reason. Yes, his plan is incredibly stupid. So what? If you honestly believe an intelligent, rational being would never concoct such a scheme I would direct you to any number of our own real world examples in history. I apologize for Godwinning this thread but look no further than the damn Nazis. Nazism is a ridiculous, absolutely bone headed ideology and yet millions of people in a developed country bought into it wholeheartedly. Thanos is just another nut job.

Every Pirates of the Caribbean after the first.

Every Matrix after the first.

Snowpiercer

Endgame was emotionally satisfying, but not intellectually satisfying.

I think people are hung up, not on the plot, but on Blackie, who is wholeheartedly pushing wholesale slaughter as an admirable, logical plan, and dismissing Tony Stark's idea that beings who can level city blocks ought have some kind of oversight.

 creeping-deth87 wrote:
It kind of astounds me how many people are still hung up on Thanos' plan not making sense. He's called the MAD Titan for a reason. Yes, his plan is incredibly stupid. So what? If you honestly believe an intelligent, rational being would never concoct such a scheme I would direct you to any number of our own real world examples in history. I apologize for Godwinning this thread but look no further than the damn Nazis. Nazism is a ridiculous, absolutely bone headed ideology and yet millions of people in a developed country bought into it wholeheartedly. Thanos is just another nut job.

Which is exactly what I said.

What is scary is people still think it was a good idea

Thanos looked at the big picture: the lives he erased were irrelevant to the universe while slowing down the overexploitation of the resource was not. It sounds cynical but it's actually right.

I did not read the comics, but I find when you try to take a one-dimensional comic book villain's ideology into a fully fleshed out concept, it quickly falls apart.

Maybe it sounded good as a few quips in a comic series, but not in a multi-million dollar movie plot, but this may be taking the road way too high.

 MDSW wrote:
I did not read the comics, but I find when you try to take a one-dimensional comic book villain's ideology into a fully fleshed out concept, it quickly falls apart.

Maybe it sounded good as a few quips in a comic series, but not in a multi-million dollar movie plot, but this may be taking the road way too high.

I think it worked fine as long as you realised he was insane, with the first film being his own twisted "heroes" journey rather than that of the Superheros he fought.

I liken him to the agent in the Serenity film, he thought he was making a new world that had no place for people like him. It made his death at Thor;s hands at the start of the film more effective - and get the impression the older Thanos actually welcomed his death.

Thanos' plan maybe is stupid. His solution was maybe ineffective or imperfect. I'm not discussing that.

The reason why he did it was noble though.

I consider Iron Man much more of a villain instead: in Age of Ultron he basically wanted to control the entire world in the name of a global protection, under the threat of a super developed AI that knew everything about everyone and a massive amount of weapons, which sounds like a tyrant's plan. So much Orwell's 1984.

To quote Benjamin Franklin:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

His space shield was much more of a wicked plan than Thanos' vision.

 MDSW wrote:
I did not read the comics, but I find when you try to take a one-dimensional comic book villain's ideology into a fully fleshed out concept, it quickly falls apart.

Maybe it sounded good as a few quips in a comic series, but not in a multi-million dollar movie plot, but this may be taking the road way too high.

His motivation in the comics was actually more sane.
He was in love with Death (the entity, in the Marvel universe) and was giving her gifts. Its unquestionable evil, but at least had a chance of achieving his goal (though she didn't like him and didn't care about his idea of 'gifts')

His plan in the films was hateful and extremely stupid, as population growth is exponential. The 50% elimination is repopulated in about a century or so. On a universal scale, he killed uncountable billions for a brief delay of game to the 'resource shortfall' problem.
Had he simply done the opposite (made resources more available while campaigning for limits on population growth), it at least could have achieved something. With nigh infinite power, it would have been relatively simple and straightforward.
His solution to the 'give a man a fish/ teach a man to fish' problem was to kill half the fishermen and half the fish. Its really notable that the first sign the Avengers get that they've undone Thanos' wish is that the birds are back (and the tree isn't dead, iirc)

 Blackie wrote:

The reason why he did it was noble though.

Hard disagree. Thanos did it to prove that he was right and everyone else was wrong and unwilling to do what was necessary. It was entirely a selfish reason. Anything he says to the contrary is a thin veneer of lies over that truth.

If his intentions were noble and he was serious about saving the universe then his plan would have been the last resort after acquiring all of the stones rather than his first choice.

With the stones he could have set up a factory which produced resources and instantaneously delivered them to where they were needed, for example. The reality stone is capable of transforming energy into whatever the wielder wishes. He could literally take hydrogen gas and turn it into medicine, or food. He could then use the space stone to instantaneously send that medicine and food anywhere in the universe.

Thanos was a being of incredibly limited vision but boundless ego.

See that makes more sense - sacrificing uncountable numbers of trillions upon trillions upon more trillions of life to DEATH in order to woe her to his arms.

Far more sane than such a vast death toll exacted to stave off resource shortfalls. Heck if you've got the power of creation just, I dunno, hobble the capacity for races to reproduce; advance them to an energy state of life; create more universe space and resources. I mean its supposed to show how he's insane, but it sort of comes off a bit odd when you consider how old, experienced and how wide travelled he is in the galaxy by the time he gets the powers he got.




That said my honest problem with the whole franchise is how it fragments into needing to watch so many other "adventure start" films to get to a point where you can watch the end films. Even then its still a mash-up.

 Blackie wrote:
Thanos' plan maybe is stupid. His solution was maybe ineffective or imperfect. I'm not discussing that.

The reason why he did it was noble though.

I consider Iron Man much more of a villain instead: in Age of Ultron he basically wanted to control the entire world in the name of a global protection, under the threat of a super developed AI that knew everything about everyone and a massive amount of weapons, which sounds like a tyrant's plan. So much Orwell's 1984.

To quote Benjamin Franklin:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

His space shield was much more of a wicked plan than Thanos' vision.

That extrapolates to being anti- military in any form, any intelligene agency etc - its a balance - sometimes it tips one way or another - like The Acords - they make sense in a world like ours - how do you deal with people with superhuman powers -even martial artists are licensed. But they can then be abused like any power or law.

Tony was suffering from PTSd and having seen what could happen was desperate to find a way to defend the world, and those he loved.

Tony in the MCU is not a world leader - its not something he could manage (or even wanted to do) - esp not for any length of time early Tony is too busy having a good time, later he is love, then a family man. He never seems to be power hungry in the trad sense

No the Space Shield has issues but it does not kill untold numebrs of people.

The first Resident Evil. RE1 and 2 were so naturally cinematic they seemed ideal to jump off from into something legitimately scary and sombre. The movies are dumb fun I guess but every single second felt like a wasted opportunity.

Voss wrote:

His motivation in the comics was actually more sane.
He was in love with Death (the entity, in the Marvel universe) and was giving her gifts. Its unquestionable evil, but at least had a chance of achieving his goal (though she didn't like him and didn't care about his idea of 'gifts')

Actually it was Death who wanted to reduce population of Universe by half because due to exponential population growth, there were more people living in the universe than had ever died. So she resurrected Thanos and ordered him to kill half of the sentient beings everywhere "to restore balance". Thanos was just a lot more efficient than she had foreseen and got out of her control.

I actually thought of another movie I was massively disappointed with. That being the recent remake of Ben-Hur. Some elements of it actually do follow the book a bit better, but overall to me they butchered it. Yes, the classic one with Charlton Heston is a tough act to follow, but they could have tried harder I think.

Backfire wrote:

Voss wrote:

His motivation in the comics was actually more sane.
He was in love with Death (the entity, in the Marvel universe) and was giving her gifts. Its unquestionable evil, but at least had a chance of achieving his goal (though she didn't like him and didn't care about his idea of 'gifts')

Actually it was Death who wanted to reduce population of Universe by half because due to exponential population growth, there were more people living in the universe than had ever died. So she resurrected Thanos and ordered him to kill half of the sentient beings everywhere "to restore balance". Thanos was just a lot more efficient than she had foreseen and got out of her control.

Huh. Its been a great long while, but that seems later on. The original stories (in Captain Marvel and then Avengers) seemed pretty hinged on Thanos wooing Death, first with the help of the Cosmic Cube, and then later with the Infinity Gems. But this was in the mid 70s, not the early 90s Thanos Quest/Infinity Gauntlet stories.