鴉PieFedWhat successful or popular movie that many loved you just HATE?
submitted by Platypus@lemmings.world edited
Rules: explain why
Ready player one.
That has to be one of the cringiest movies I've seen, is tries so hard, too hard with it's "WE LOVE YOU NERD, YOU'RE SO COOL FOR PLAYING GAMES AND GETTING THIS 80S REFERENCE" message and the whole "corporation bad, the people good" narrative seems written for toddlers... The fan service feels cheap and adds nothing to the story.
Finally, they trying to make the people believe that very attractive girl with a barely visible red tint spot on her face is "ugly"... Like wtf?
Yet it received decent reviews plus being one of the most successful movies of that year.
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Pretty much all of the Avengers films.
They aren’t engaging in any way. The characters are unintelligent and full of self importance. The whole franchise is Just loud noises and shark jumping.
I find nuggets in them. Iron man 3 had issues, but I was fascinated by the portrayal of Tony stark's ptsd after the battle of new York. Sure, seeing a bunch of robots is fun, but it's not really engaging. The intersection of everyday life, mental trauma, and super powers and responsibilities is fascinating to me.
I mean they're silly by default. They are not supposed to be high art. I like half of the MCU. Raimi spiderman Is as silly yet I consider it a masterpiece of a film, 2 even more.
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My problem is witg cg fights. I feel like I'm just watching a three hour long cut scene.
Kind of agree with you. I liked it until endgame, but it was a downward slope afterwards
I liked the MCU, at first, but it had no business continuing after End Game.
I feel the same. Everything up until Endgame had some entertainment value. Most of what's after is a low-quality cash grab
It makes me feel snobbish to say you have to be literally juvenile to enjoy it. I just don't get it. There's no suspense at all, no surprise in anything. They're all boring, intelligent characters. Even as films aimed at kids they're bad, but I'm eternally surprised at the traction they get with 20s-30s..
With so many a-list actors, they all get different story arcs, and fight for screen time, so there isn't time to tell a nuanced or interesting story, and when they're together it's just an orgy of showing off how cool they are
Interstellar. That ending was so unbelievably dumb that I can't even stomach the rest of the movie thinking about it.
I know it's got rave reviews, a stacked cast, Nolan directing. Plenty was pretty, cool concepts, high stakes scenes. But that ending... *shudders*
Oh, yeah, that space library bullshit was so fucking bad it made the rest of the movie bad retroactively. Well, maybe he could save the Earth by screaming "Murph!!!1!1!!1!" a little louder. Or more often.
That meme always makes me think of *Heavy Rain*.
Which meme?
Hmm, I guess it's not as prevalent as I thought, but I've commonly seen the "Murph!" thing referenced online. Perhaps "meme" was the wrong word.
In the video game *Heavy Rain*, there's a scene wherein the protagonist loses his son and has to search a crowd for the kid. While playing through that scene, you can press a button to shout his name. There is no limit to how often you can do this. Additionally, sometimes the game will apparently glitch so you can do it throughout the entire game.
Warning, potential spoilers for a game from 2010: https://youtu.be/DAhG9D9UO7c
I didn’t like the ending, it seemed like kind of a big letdown. I don’t remember it, I just remember being surprised at how bland it was when the rest of the movie had me on the edge of my seat.
For me interstellar suffered from it's hype. i expected a great, innovative movie and found it... okay.
Interesting opinion. The ending of Interstellar made me cry like a baby. Shit was great.
That's very valid but there's one thing I don't understand : how can the ending affect the whole experience? To me that's like saying "sex is meh because the shower afterwards is boring". Don't know if I'm making sense lol
To me, most endings are mediocre because endings are just very hard to write. It is very rare to have both the elements for a great story, and the setup for a great ending. In that context I feel like investing too much on the ending hurts the whole experience, whereas a weak ending just hurts the last ten minutes.
For me I really hated the audio in that movie. It was the most stereotypical Nolan BWOM crap throughout and yet the dialog was whisper quiet.
Oh and the plot was just Contact again…felt really unoriginal
Yes. Fucking yes. That movie and everyone in it is so dumb, I wonder who the people raving about this hot garbage are.
I was done with this movie from the start. The story about setting the table differently because of the dust?! GTFO That’s why cabinets have doors on them! I was too miffed after that
But .. wasn't that story from someone who *actually* lived through the dust bowl?
I don’t think so…but even if it was, cabinets with doors existed long before the dust bowl. People understood and solved the ‘dust on flatware’ issue long ago.
No, they didn't. I live in a dusty city and dust gets in everywhere, no matter how tightly you pack it.
Then you're wrong and you should do some thinking
https://whatculture.com/film/10-movie-facts-you-probably-already-knew-deep-down?page=5
why would you put doors on cabinets then?? Mine seem to work properly…
Oh shit I completely forgot about that. So dumb, absolutely love it
To me, it's one of those movies that seems like it could have been great, and as you say it had cool concepts and high stakes scenes. But there were just too many places where the characters were dumb, and they had to be dumb in order to make the story work, and then story itself is pretty weak. To me, it's not a terrible movie, but I've never understood all the hype around it.
ITT: people using the downvote button as an "I disagree" button when the entire point is to name popular movies that you dislike. Sort by controversial for the real answers, I guess.
For me it's Alien. Maybe because I'm not a horror movie buff, but I do like sci-fi and yet it just didn't really do anything for me. I somehow found Prometheus to be more engaging.
Oh wow, complete opposite here - I thought Prometheus was hot garbage.
"Hey everybody, let's just remove our helmets in this totally unvetted environment, we're all scientists but trust me, this is supes safe!"
"Aw look at the little alien snake, so cute, better get real close!"
"I'm clearly showing symptoms of exposure to some alien pathogen, but let's just hide it from the entire crew, including my girlfriend, who I will be fucking."
"Oh, a huge ring is rolling toward me and I'm gonna get crushed, better keep running in a straight line!"
I mean, come *on*.
After seeing how people acted during the pandemic, that part is probably the most realistic.
See also, every zombie movie ever. There's always someone who got bitten but decided to say nothing until it was too late.
Both can be true.
I never watched alien growing up, and only half-watched it with a girlfriend (sorry, good movies are great but... Boobs vs stereotypical teenager watching a movie....)
By the time I watched the movie fully, it just held no scare factor for me.
And so many dumb choices were made in Prometheus, it's hard to take the people seriously when everyone is acting like children who have never been in space or a dangerous situation before.
The same can be said when in Alien the scientist shoves his face close to what is clearly a moving egg that responded to him as he got closer.
There were no scientists in Alien. It's a bunch of space truckers and they're infinitely more competent than the hand picked group in Prometheus.
Ah, shows how much I know about the film, thank you for correcting me
This is Ash erasure, and I won't have it.
Speaking of downvotes, I don't think comments in a moderated forum should even have a downvote button. Every situation where a comment can be legitimately downvoted, like spam or bigotry or trolling, the comment should just be reported and removed by a moderator, instead.
People's intuition about downvoting is simply that it's the opposite of an upvote because that's how it is presented in the UI. That might make sense for articles, but not for comments.
You didn't list one of the main uses of a downvote: lowering the visibility of poorly made or unfitting content. If you believe that a post or comment does not contribute to or belong in the community or discussion, your only recourse in most places is to downvote. Yeah ideally mods would remove every such post but that ignores the fact they are few in number, often absent, and generally follow their rules to the letter instead of moderating on vibes.
If it's poorly made, then you're supposed to simply upvote other comments if they're better.
If a comment is unfitting, then it is off-topic and can be removed by mods.
I honestly think comment downvotes should be disallowed, or if that isn't possible, then the users who downvote each comment should be easy to find, like with a "click to expand and list downvoters" sort of link. I think you'd find downvoters to be mostly trolls and non-participators. Low value accounts.
To me, though, that sounds like calling the police to resolve a mild disagreement. It just escalates situations more than needed and creates drama where things could have otherwise been settled quietly by simply letting the content be buried and ignored.
I believe in using best judgment with downvotes and not simply using it as an "I disagree" button (which is why I did not downvote your comments, as some inconsiderate people seem to have done), but I do believe they have a place. They're a form of community self-moderation that help keep discussions on topic and civil. I only really use the report button for content that I actually feel is somehow dangerous or detrimental that *needs* to be removed.
But I also do completely understand the instances out there that do choose to remove the downvote button entirely (check out blahaj.zone for one option if that's what you're looking for), and I know that is a preferable way for many to use Lemmy. I have an alt on blahaj myself, but I prefer being on instances with downvotes because it's nice to see bigoted/heinous content be buried when moderators don't or refuse to step in.
I think they're downvoting my comments to try to be funny in this particular situation.
If people used the downvote like you suggest, it would be less of a problem. But speaking of policing, there is no real policing of votes. There's just a button.
You give people a downvote button, and they'll simply go through threads going up, down, up, down, up, down. It's like they double their vote and it drowns out any more ethical downvotes. It hasn't happened much on Lemmy, but it happens as a matter of course on Reddit. It will eventually be here, too, if Lemmy continues to grow. There is nothing to stop it.
Besides, apart from your point about essentially unmoderated areas, I think the upvote button is enough to achieve all the goals you listed. And if it's unmoderated, it's going to become unusably toxic no matter how people vote.
Downvoted
I loved how Alien brought together horror and science fiction. If it didn't do anything for you, as you admit that you're not into horror, then fair enough.
Now, I'll throw in here that I can't abide Aliens. To me, it betrayed the horror elements of Alien, making it more akin to some dumb action movie with some added schmaltz thrown in. Unlike many, I actually consider Alien3 the better film than Aliens (certainly not Alien), in that it does try to bring back the horror elements and darkness in a different way. Still, I can understand why many deride that film. The Assembly Cut does make amends, and is possibly worth watching if you didn't care about the theatrical version.
I do really think the horror is what kills it for me, just not my genre of choice. And it's not that I'm against things being scary, but I just never vibe with the format of most horror films. Same with horror games.
I also do see all of the faults that people pointed out with Prometheus, and I'm not going to really call that movie "good" either. But I think what makes it appeal to me a bit more is the worldbuilding. Alien is more understated and throws you into a well-imagined sci-fi universe that leaves a lot to be inferred, but Prometheus has a lot more of the "grand worldbuilding" type of atmosphere to it that had me really interested in what I was actually seeing.
FWIW I'm using the downvote button as a "You didn't explain", "That's a band not a movie", "That's a show not a movie", "That's a genre of animation, not a movie" button ;p I'm definitely clicking it far more often that I typically do =p
It's wild how many people can write but not read.
Marvel movies. Yes all of them. They're trash. It's just cgi slop, badly written one-dimensional characters, cliché tropes, formulaic stories, plotholes bigger than meteorcraters and brainless action sequences. A cashgrab.
A saw a couple; I gave them a fair chance. They're all the same. The appeal is beyond me. Brainrot at its finest.
didn't even like the Spider-Man movies? or iron man? first captain America? usually the origin movies are pretty solid.
Captain America is the personification of blind patriotism and mindless obedience with a butt chin wrapped in an American flag. Unless you are the sort of person who rubs one out to lady liberty while reciting the pledge of allegiance it really doesn't have anything to offer. As a European I'm inclined to say that the film is just wanky patriotic trash.
Spider-man is Sony.
All Captain Americas are forgettable.
Iron man 1 is good. Ben Kingsley is great.
the new spider-man, not toby mcguire. it's a "marvel" character, says so right at the start and in trailer, Marvel Studios.
The only new Spiderman film I enjoy is the one with Dafoe and Mcguire in.
Ben Kingsley is great, but he's in Iron Man 3, not 1.
Yes. I didn't want to say that iron man 3 was great. The suit army was ridiculous.
I'm a huge Marvel Comics nerd and I completely agree. The Daredevil series was decent though, that's the only exception I can think of.
I watched through the first Avengers. It was pretty clear what the rest of it was going to be like.
Same. I like animated superhero films more that live action ones, except for a few like Watchmen.
Ready Player One was so bad, but this is a rare instance where the book is worse than the film. At least the film has visuals the book is just cringe and rememberberries.
Agreed. That book was recommended to me by a few fellow sci-fi book fans, so I gave it a shot. Couldn’t get through it. It read like a 6th-grade kid’s fanfic about the 1980’s. Bad writing, bad dialogue, ham-fisted plot.
To be honest, isn't it a 'Young Adult' book, i.e., intended for preteens/teens, not adults?
True, but it’s still poorly written. And so much of the content is GenX nostalgia, it’s obviously meant to be a crossover to those preteens’/teens’ parents.
Young adult means the content is suited for a younger audience, it's not an excuse for unintelligent writing void of anything of value.
Lets be real here, young adults (I.E toddlers and teenagers) aren't exactly the most critical readers or familiar with judging literary quality. The writers of books targeted at young adults know this, and tend to not do more work than they have to on plot and world building. Go ahead and write me a five paragraph essay on the value that Warriors added to the medium. No child read warriors for the themes, they read it for the premise of anthropromorphic cat drama and as fuel for their first role-play world building sessions. YA novels are the literary version of comfort food, enjoyable for those that like the taste but you would be foolish for expect a fufilling rich plot with well thought out characters.
By Warriors I assume you are talking about Warrior Cats? I have not read it but I was under the assumption that was a childrens book seeing as how it features cats. When someone says young adult my mind goes to books like Catcher in the Rye or Lord of Flies.
True! But I guess young adult readers don't tend to be as discerning, which is why I never expect the writing to be any good.
The book is straight garbage. Probably the biggest Gary Stu ever. The movie is actually decent by comparison, because it removed a lot of cringe and toned down the main character.
Gary Stu? Is this the male version of a Mary Sue?
Yes.
Yeah, if OP thought the movie was heavy on the “good job being a teenager in the 80s!” content, they should steer *well* clear of the book.
The thing that baffled me about that movie was how many "startups" used it as reference for what they were trying to create. Like, did I watch the same movie? Real life was so shitty they had entire blocks of people living in trailers mounted to each other vertically. They used the matrix or whatever it was called to escape. And you want to create that for real?
Why don't we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we're at it.
Have you been around the car culture?
Wasn't it supposed to be bad though? Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought people liked it because it was ridiculous and campy.
Yeah, the book was meant to feel a bit cringey, because the story is told from the perspective of a teenage gamer obsessed with pop culture. It's the entire reason he wins the egg hunt, because he's always got these obscure references floating around his head.
Agreed. The movie is just a fun action film wirh no brainpower needed. If you go into it with no expectations it’s fine.\
The book? The author insists on yanking you out of the story with listicles of callbacks and references to obscure ‘80s shows or whatever. The main character is just an ass, and is also conveniently capable of meeting every challenge thrown at him despite being an impoverished basement dweller. The book became a slog of contrivances to get from A to B with “Aren’t all these retro references cool?” jammed in at every opportunity.
The movie did ruin the Iron Giant, though.
I haven't seen Ready Player 1, and now I have a reason not to see it.
You don't disrespect Su-Per-Man.
Except when it makes for a cool action movie scene.
Oh hell naw. If you mean that they made him go superweapon, that's damn near legal cause to burn down a studio
I haven't actually seen the movie, only a few clips of it. I'm *pretty sure* they make him use his weapons, but maybe not his superweapon.
RPO is bad, yes. But Spielberg is a good director and that's why the movie is at least entertaining. I hate-read the book, but I still enjoy the movie.
Very weird take. Everyone I've ever talked to loves that book. I honestly cannot picture any conceivable reality where the movie was better than the book.
James Cameron’s Avatar series.
Then again… Does *anyone* actually like it? It seems to have all this online hype when it’s such a boring visual spectacle.
It’s like the opposite of the *other* Avatar franchise, which wasn’t a commercial hit, and seems less popular on paper, but seems to have a massive cultural impact.
I liked the first one!on acid. On a 3D TV. I don’t see myself ever watching the second.
After leaving the theatre:
"Did I just pay 20 bucks to watch a CGI rip-off of "Dances With Wolves"?
I remember one critic called it “Dances with Smurfs”
Thats perfect.
Lol
I don't know why everyone jumps to Dances With Wolves. It's clearly Pocahontas.
I always thought it was the last fern gully
To a tee.
They're the same movie.
I believe the impact was mostly to do with the visuals. And, honestly, that is very fair. While it is inctedibly dull and cringe story-wise, the visuals are phenominal, especially since the movie is now already 15 years old.
I feel the same way about Jurassic Park in that sense, though it is much less cringe than Avatar (but still pretty basic story-wise).
But the original Jurassic Park was *fun*. The writing was sharp and memorable, the cast charismatic, even if the plot is not that important (which is fine).
I did love JC Avatar's alien flora and fauna, and some small details like the realistic spaceship, but I guess it feels much less exciting in hindsight without anything to "attach" it to.
And again... the IP its name collides with is nothing to sneeze at, visually. You can pause it almost anywhere, even in "mundane" scenes, and get gorgeous fantasy shots and incredible music:
My understanding of most people's opinion is that the visuals are stunning but otherwise whatever. It's definitely mine. Avatar 2 has one of the worst written and worst paced stories I have seen in a long time. But it's still almost worth the watch solely to admire the visuals that over-shadow other movies by a mile.
I have never seen it. I got wind of the similarities between the American Indian Wars and Dances With Wolves/Ferngully and decided that my time and money were better spent elsewhere. I don't need another reminder of the pain it is to be Lakota and look into the past.
The funny thing is James Cameron acts like the movie and message are *so profound*.
He's not completely wrong, sure the story has been done a ton because it's a solid and engaging tale to learn about a new world/culture. Also the technological portion of the movie used several new methods and cameras for the first time in a theater and introduced so many methods that are in use today.
Honestly at this point I think he's saying whatever he can to continue funding his submarine hobby.
"Certified door expert" James Cameron
I like both Avatars, both for the same reason:
A lot of work was put into creating a tangible world that isn't Earth. If it weren't for the clearly "magic" elements (also counts for both Avatars) I feel like I could almost... Reach out and touch the world.
This is true. Some elements of JC Avatar were super interesting and detailed. Like the spaceship, that was *ridiculously well-thought-out for such a brief appearance, and no telling how much time was spent on the fauna.
But... they made the overarching story and characters so unremarkable.
I felt something similar watching Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Talokan (the underwater city) was *breathtaking* and incredible, no telling how much labor was put into it... only for that gorgeous setting to be used for a brief swim through and never seen again.
You just reminded me of this video again, that explains how unfortunately the world building that went into the music didn't make it to the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL5sX8VmvB8
That was amazing. Thanks for sharing!
the worldbuilding is what's interesting in Avatar, imho. The visuals support that. Story wise it doesn't do a good job of being surprising
See, I'm baffled by this one, now I've only seen the first movie so maybe there's something in the second I don't know about in world building. But the first, the world building was to me... meh? Okay, the alien planet was interesting, they have a culture, they seemed to do a fine job with that, cool. But the story makes humanity so blitheringly stupid that I cannot comprehend the worldbuilding beyond "We need some Captain Planet level villains." They're after unobtanium, a mineral that has properties for anti-gravity and wrecking havok on radar. Soooooo.... We're going to work hard on inserting someone to convince the locals to dig up under the religious tree for the major vein of it instead of the *MULTIPLE* floating mountains all over the place.
Which then when the military decides to do its thing, this spacefaring species uses glorified helicopters that fly lower and slower than modern military aircraft, *again* through the mountains of unobtainium in a low altitude approach for a strike operation that only makes sense if the enemy has radar... which the aliens definitely did not. I seriously might have missed something but I couldn't get past humanity in it was just carrying the idiot ball throughout the movie.
Yea all that to me belongs to script. And I agree it's not very good. When I say worldbuilding, I'm talking about the ecosystem and its interconnectedness. It does a good job of mirroring the Earth's and I consider it to be a proper -although indirect- awakening to the beauty of terrestrial biology.
What is that other Avatar franchise? I watched the first movie when I was just a kid so my opinions highly influenced by my emotions. I don’t think it is the best sci-fi movie out there but I really like Avatar (2009).
Avatar the Last Airbender, and the Legend of Korra.
The animation, specifically. The Netflix series is *OK*, and there is absolutely no movie adaptation.
Funny enough, I watched them when I was like 19, but Korra, Zuko and Iroh are still three of my favorite characters in anything ever. I remember it vividly, where I can't remember a single line from the James Cameron Avatar (which I watched as a teen when it came out).
Thank you for making it clear that there's no movie. There's a lot of misinformation on the internet and some people happen to think that there is one.
There is no movie in Ba Sing Se.
Here, we are safe. Here, we are free.
Oh, I thought there is another Avatar (blue one) movie created by somebody else. Avatar animated series are more influential for me too but why compare these totally unrelated works? They have the same name but they are so different that any comparison is absurd to me.
Ah, the "dances with wolves" rip-off with blue people?
It was praised in its theatrical release, and I remember being one of the few people that didn't like it.
When it came out for home release, public opinion shifted on it quickly. When it can't use its 3D effects to wow the audience and make it go "Look at that creature, look at those plants, isn't this fun and imaginative." its story has to stand on its own. And since that story is "Dances With Smurfs: Baby's First Creative Writing Project"... Yeaaaah no
I knew it was going to be shit when in an interview James Cameron said "You can see how even the best humans are bad people and even the worst Na'vi are good people!", and me being a writer immediately saw a red flag.
This is true, I remember it being lauded in theaters.
I mean, I guess not everyone is media savvy and the story could have felt "new" to some, but there wasn't a character that stood out or anything, no cast stealing the show...
The vibe I got was that people were oohed and ahhed by the "Colors man!"
But if I wanted that I could just stayed home, put on some synthwave, and eat some of those psycilosibin gummies they sell at vape shops.
Not one comment in here about Lord of the Rings.
Which I agree with. Amazing movies. Glad everyone's on the same page.
For me, it's James Cameron's Avatar. Visually stunning, especially for its time, but the story has to be the most cliche, predictable, boring, lazy piece of writing to ever have existed. It's like they held an environmentally conscious 11 year old at gun point and made them write a story. The cigar chomping military guy working for corpos wants to pilfer a beautiful planet for its resources with disregard for the native populations that live there. Where have I seen that before? Oh yeah, ALL AROUND ME, EVERY FUCKING GOD DAMN DAY. Get an original idea.\
Fuck this stupid piece of shit dumbass movie. It's intellectually insulting. It's a disgrace.
/endrant
How could you forget to mention the dumbest name for a MacGuffin ever, “Unobtainium”?
It’s so bad that it belongs on mystery science theater 3000
Hey, I watched it on acid and it cracked me up!
It's just "Fern Gully"... But with blue people. Go ahead, watch Fern Fully (1992) then watch Avatar.
It's a rip off.
THANK YOU! I've constantly called it "Fern Gully as reinacted by Starship Troopers and the Dragonriders of Pern"
1st- I agree. 2nd... Most people I tell my fern gully theory don't see the connection. You took it to a whole new, although very accurate, level. 3rd... I'm glad I'm not alone in seeing this. Thought I was crazy.
Someone called it more succinctly "Dances with Smurfs".
Avatar is at least notable to me as the last movie that was able to wow me with special effects, which also makes it the last movie where I was able to at least sort of overlook the attempt at a story that was used to glue all the eye candy together. Everything since then, I really don't care how good your special effects are, that stuff is boring and routine now.
That's also why I haven't watched Avatar since it was originally out in the theatres. There's really no reason to.
You had me with LOTR for a sec 😂
And the worst part? Unobtainium - ugh.
Regardless of your opinion of the movie, Unobtainium is a real term used in engineering and material sciences. A modern example would a material to make the walls of a fusion reactor with. The movie example was implied to be a room temperature super conductor.
Pocahontas in blue
Pocahontas stories never get old because the situation of native Americans never gets straight.
Went to see it in theaters to check what all the hype was about. I was so confused throughout the movie, why this was the highlight of the year for most people.
For me this was the movie that made me realize just how much I hate a story that is only tropes and fully expected outcomes. The visuals also felt like a natural evolution of everything I've seen before, now with the added literal headache of 3d glasses. But I remeber people were saying they've become suicidal after watching this, because they can't live on this fantastical planet. What?
For people that watched it at home and liked it, I have no explanation as to why.
The cinematic releases of LOTR were good, but the directors cuts are way too long and quite boring at times 😅
The director's cuts are amazing, but they are only for diehard fans of the LOTR lore
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Disney's Hercules.
Because it completely butchers greek mythology. Of course, that's to be expected from a kid's movie (especially Disney) but I've been a greek mythology fan from an early age and this movie really disappointed me as a child.
Zeus being a caring father?
And a loyal husband ha
This was a really popular opinion at the time if I recall.
Counterpoint: it's one of the better Disney movies IMO. The gospel soundtrack slaps, and Danny DeVito, James Woods, and Susan Egan are all perfect in their roles.
Also, I blame Meg at least in part for my lifelong weakness for skinny dark-haired sarcastic women. But that's on me.
I'm not sure if you're saying my opinion was popular at the time- I've never met anyone in person who agreed with me, not then and not now either. Occasionally some people say, "ok, I get what you mean" but they don't really *share* my opinion. Most of the times I get "what? Hercules? Such a great movie!".
And fair enough, I'm not saying it's a *bad* movie, simply that I was thoroughly disappointed which isn't the same. Objectively the art direction is really good, the voice acting and animation is solid, and yes the soundtrack was also objectively good but unfortunately not my type, what can I say. It's just not a movie for me.
The cycle:
Step 1: (as a child) "wow this movie was great, I love Greek stuff!"
Step 2: *learns a ton about Greek mythology over the next many years due to interest sparked by the movie*
Step 3: (likely as a teenager or older, re-watching it one day) "holy shit this movie is absolutely nothing like Greek mythology, why did I ever think it was good..."
I've rewatched some of the old Disney classics and I was thoroughly disappointed by Hercules. I personally don't care that much about the mythological accuracy of it but it was just kind of meh my memorys of the movie were much better.
Forest Gump. The 1994 Best Picture nominees were some of the most highly competitive the Academy has ever had, and they went with the one that was just a straight-up terrible fucking movie. It has no value except as nostalgia bait for Americans and propaganda for those who want to believe in the myth of American individual exceptionalism.
Its musical score is also probably the worst thing I've ever had the misfortune of performing in an orchestra. Dull and repetitive.
And its most famous line is straight-up bullshit. I've heard the book does it differently, but the movie puts "something that kinda sounds deep to a 14 year old" over a level of rationality that stands up to 20 seconds of thought from an average person. A box of chocolates tells you *precisely* what you're going to be getting.
This is probably one of the weakest arguments against this movie—and there’s plenty to criticize. Labeling the chocolates was not always a common practice. It’s something mass produced chocolates started to do. There was a time people bought from a confectioner and there wouldn’t be labels. That’s the context of the line. You can criticize this line but the labeling isn’t the problem.
The book is *WILD!* Gump goes to space, there's a lot more racism and sexism in the book, and Gump doesn't come off as a lucky mentally challenged, but overall nice guy. He ends the book looking like a racist asshole, and criminal, IIRC. I read the book as a teenager after seeing the movie and that was the first book that I decided that the movie was actually better.
Can’t help but love that you’re criticizing the line as faux-deep when it was delivered by someone with a mental disability.
Yeah, but a lot of the point is how despite being mentally disabled, he's supposed to have deeper insight into things. That's certainly how the cultural perception of the movie is. The problem is that the "insight" he has and which both the movie itself and the cultural memory of the movie treat as genuinely meaningful is actually fucking dumb.
I had listened to the audio book before I saw the movie. The movie is so off the mark on the ridiculous life of Forest Gump. My favorite part of the book is that Jenny leaves him, she doesn't die, she leaves him because he becomes a major pot head.
Why do I know wanna see a modern remake of the film where Forrest Gump gets baked and goes on Joe Rogan? Then says some shit that accidentally fixes the Left-Right Divide and leads to Trump being kicked out of office?
that would be spot on!
There's a YouTube video that's like "What if Forrest Gump took place in modern day."
And it's wonderful, he gets beaten up during the George Floyd protests by police and thinks it was because he called for a cab not knowing calling for a taxi was illegal. (The cops misheard him and thought he shouted "ACAB"), then later he decides to go on vacation to the Capitol because he's a patriotic American and he's always wanted to see it, he goes there and meets other excited patriots who seem to be having some kind of a party (It's January 6th 2021)
If anything, Forrest Gump is a satire of The American Dream^TM
Only guy to have such a successful life without doing anything unethical is a mentally challenged, politically unaware, and extremely lucky, who does everything he's told without questioning it.
It’s truly a film about not judging the book by its cover and allowing for that to happen instead of taking the film literally you can see the themes and especially satire/parody of the American dream as described above.
It's white exceptionalism mixed with conservative narratives about Murican history.
Much of this thread be like...
I mean... what did you expect? You came to a thread titled "What successful or popular movie that many loved you just HATE?" It's going to be full of unpopular opinions that people are going to disagree with. Coming in and hoping to agree with everything is being that guy on a Lemmy thread.
Snowpiercer. The movie was just a weak attempt at socio-economic metaphor, with an absolutely terrible premise, bad effects, action sequences shot mostly in the dark, weird pacing, and goofy characters. It seemed like a live-action Anime, and I hate Anime. I sat through that movie, the whole time wondering how and why it got such great reviews.
Oof. I love that movie. I thought it was extremely well chorographed. The fight scenes were awesome. Weird how opinions differ.
I felt like I was taking crazy pills while watching it as I tried to reconcile what I was experiencing vs what I heard from others.
The socio hierarchy stuff is the point of the movie. Well done metaphor. Thought provoking even if you hate the exposition.
I will eat your best tasting babies for not being in line with the movie critic hierarchy. Back of the train with you.
Nothing wrong with metaphors.... Until they are so dull and ridiculous as if thought up by a sixth grader doing a lit assignment. Snowpiercer is that. That's all it is. There is nothing profound on insightful or interesting or new. That's all it is: the embodiment of a really dull metaphor. Just my opinion of course.
Some Nolan stuff.
Inception: I understand it, it's just extremely convoluted and dumb.
Oppenheimer: It's a movie with 95% dialogue, and he decided to put loud droning music under every conversation so you can barely hear the people talking.
The dark knight trilogy: I just can't take batman seriously in it. The voice is so silly, and the pointy ears just look really out of place in this very serious take.
Anyway, I do like some of Nolans movies, these are my pet peeves.
The audio mixing in his movies is genuinely terrible. If you aren't watching them with subtitles, you're probably missing half the plot because of background noise.
I guess he refuses to use ADR but also films with an imax camera which is about as loud as a lawnmower. So all the dialogue needs to be extracted from all that noise and it sounds like shit.
Nearly all Nolan stuff. His movies are cold and impersonal, and his characters are just dull (and he can't write a woman character that's not one dimensional). I can't remember the name of any of the characters bar the main ones. I feel like that's his main job and he can't do it. Everything else in the movie has a team of people (sound, lighting, design etc) but his area is always the let down.
That Bane movie was one of the most comically bad I've ever seen. Terrible acting, ridiculous plot points, dozens of plot holes.
I think Nolan is good at putting things together, but he lacks emotion and depth.
???
Nolan is so overrated his Batman trilogy sucked except Heath Ledger as the joker. Everything since the WW2 film he did has been overly pretentious.
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I like these threads when people complain that “old classic movie” is formulaic and trope ridden or unoriginal… seemingly forgetting these films set the tropes, formulas and genres that all subsequent film makers hopped-on. That’s why, in retrospect, it appears clunky.
In another similar thread somebody said the band Queen were boring… yeah, maybe now. But fifty years ago when they first released? Not so much.
Just saw someone comparing Blade Runner to Ghost in the Shell and Fallout 4. (They had other criticisms too, though.)
That’s the exact comment that partly inspired me to post off topic…
I guess it’s perspective and all that. I can understand not personally liking any particular film, that’s fair enough, but SOME of the reasoning in this thread is fundamentally flawed.
Citizen kane is still a terrible film. I found myself wanting to defenestrate my laptop at the end.
I’d hoped for more from that film, but thought it was ok. Sorry to hear your experience. If I wasn’t in Gnu/Linux land right now I’d try and make some joke about Windows meeting a window.
Off the top of my head: Wizard of Oz, Gone With The Wind and, especially, Casablanca were, in my opinion, worth the hype… but I understand user experience varies.
I have a letter one of my Grandma's friends wrote her after seeing Gone With the Wind. She did the equivalent of "meh" - I was shocked. No idea if this friend was just not impressed with anything or wanted to come across cool. After my shock wore off, I still laugh off and on about.
-- I didn't see the letter until after Grandma died, so I didn't get to ask about the friend. (Grandma was born around 1910)
I’m sure they were both absolute beauties, Granny and her friend.
Without wanting to sound pretentious but that is the magic of any art. Somebody of the time looks at it and goes “meh” and then someone decades later sees it and goes “yeah, I like that”. Horses for courses; and all that.
I personally think the key thing is being able to distinguish between that which isn’t for you, versus stuff that is objectively poor. And now I do sound pretentious… smh. Sorry.
I went into Bridge to Terabithia at 11 years old excited to watch two kids have a fantasy adventure and I still haven't forgiven it
Your friend Leslie is dead
THIS! Me and my mom thought it was a fun fantasy story from the commercials. The kids going into the forest into another realm of fantasy creatures. All of that in the commercials was just 1 scene in the movie, and the rest was boring or heartbreaking. I will never forgive their marketing team.
Okay but like the whole point I feel is that tragedy is impossible to avoid. It's supposed to be a slap in the face. If you haven't forgiven it, then the film achieved its goal.
My ex would cry just bringing this movie up. She made me watch it but I was around 23-24 so I don’t remember it.
Read the book in 4th grade, due to the marketing I did not have any interests seeing the film but judging by your comment it seems they more or less kept in line with the source. It is not a happy story.
Harry Potter.
Before JK went mask off, I had dropped the books about half way though for being increasing annoyed with how they ended. Never any change to the status quo except Harry actually regressing in character development. I watched the first movie, but that was around when I dropped the books and never looked back.
I was able to just quietly keep my opinions to myself, but with with JK becoming increasing unhinged with both her tweets and books, I haven't felt the need to be polite with the "separate the art from the artists" types. Especially when they just assume that you're a fan if you don't correct them.
I'm just gonna hop on to say that there is zero world building in Harry Potter. I know that's because it was written for a youngish audience, but like the only things that are ever built on are used directly for the story in that book, then mostly left alone.
No one comes back years later with a Time Turner and wrecks havoc, for instance.
The few comparisons to Tolkien I've heard of her works are so unbelievably unfounded and off base.
Not to mention she's a TERF
I'm just gonna leave Shaun's review here.
Harry Potter unintentionally made a whole subgenre of fiction that could be called "Harry Potter, but fixed". Little Witch Academia's workers union episode was great and Reign of the Seven Spellblades is a mid, but still fun anime that seemingly takes aim at opposing Harry Potter and JK(specifically, her anti-trans shit) at every turn. I haven't read it, but Shaun seems to think that The Hog Father is a direct reaction to the house elf shit in HP.
Hogfather as in the Discworld novel? I could have sworn that was older than Harry Potter.
Edit: it is, but surprisingly only one year older than the first Harry Potter book.
I'll have to relisten to the review.
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Not sure why this was downvoted. It’s a very good point. Sanderson doesn’t like being openly critical of other authors but it’s pretty obvious that applying his laws to Rowling explains a fair amount of why her writing is bad.
Fuck I hate her bullshit inconsistency with this. Prior to that shitty play coming out I could have given you a simple explanation for this. First: the time turners were all made inoperable during book 5 when the team went to the Ministry. This was shown explicitly in the text (and is an example of Rowling’s delayed reaction to criticism that I think the Shaun video brings up). It could be bypassed pretty easily if you *wanted*, but it also works well enough to explain why nobody else uses one anymore, for a kid’s book.
But more crucially, the way time turners work in the original is pretty clear: it’s a one-way trip back in time. In book 3 they travel back a matter of hours, and then work back to the "present" in real time. You can’t use it to go back and kill Hitler or something like that, unless you want to be permanently stuck in the past. It’s never said, but it’s feasible that it could have been expanded on by placing a hard limit on how far back you can go at all. Then she went and wrote the play and (supposedly—I never read or watched it myself) completely broke all of that. I suppose you could be generous and say she was following Sanderson’s 3rd law, but IMO it wasn’t so much "expanding" on what she already had as it was "completely retconning the way it works in a way that also undermines previously-established plots".
And they were made inoperable in the laziest way possible. Like someone bumped a cabinet and ALL of them broke. Easy, no more time travel.
Fine enough for a kid's book, but it tried to take itself WAY more seriously than that, just to continue to pick up and drop plot points and ideas constantly. I wouldn't mind it if a fair few people didn't hail it as if it's a great work
I haven't read the books, but liked the movies. This is more of a expression of what I liked than anything else... But while JK turned into a mess, the movies generally were good even though
The first two are okay but the third one in particular is a favorite of mine. It's less because of Harry Potter and more about just how well it stands as a well made movie. It is darker in the literal sense and movies a lot more away from the magic wonder feeling the former movies had. In particular by adding a horror like element that adds so much more tension then the older ones. When I was a kid it was terrifying how unsettling and discomforting things were made to be.
And despite it being the movie which used the never-seen-after completely world breaking time turners, it does an amazing job actually using them.There are all these things that go wrong, but just in the right way that the time loop works out without actually changing the first iteration we saw. The books probably do it the same way, but as a visual adaptation it's right on the mark, down to the sense of time running out when the time travel shenanigans happen.
Then again, I'm weak for "good feelings" making a difference and similar, so the protection spell that chases the Dementors away at the crucial moments sure makes me giddy. So it's a thematic bullseye for me, despite how much emotional discomfort the movie played with to get there.
JK Rowling holds a very common position amongst older feminists and really doesn't deserve the constant rape threats for funding women's refuges. I'm pushing back on the party line here, and no, I don't believe trans people deserve to be killed, or any bullshit like that. I promise to hide them in my non-existent attic if it comes to that.
Edit: the books did get progressively worse after the third or possibly fourth one, though, and the films aren't very good.
Her or her friends are running those charities. It's a way to hide money from tax collectors.
Looking back with adult eyes, her books push a very pro-Class based society. That's why nothing ever changes.
Edit: The books got progressively worse because JK wrangled more and more control away from her editor.
I'm not sure about the ownership of foundations, charitable funds and the like; some degree of corruption wouldn't surprise me unfortunately.
I will say that she won't have been deliberately pushing class-stratification given her socioeconomic background, however the whole setting is heavily influenced by Victorian-era children's novels about boarding school adventures which were absolutely saturated with classism.
They surely needed a team of editors towards the end.
JK was never poor. Her "homelessness" was couch surfing between friend's houses in Edinburgh.
If she didn't approve of the class system, then why was the sorting hat never wrong? Having kids switch houses between school years would have been an easy to to signal character development for a younger audience. Her class system is depicted as shitty, but something you just have to accept as true and deal with to become stronger. Look at how they treat the one character to oppose slavery. Even our MC, who's an outsider to the wizard world thinks it's weird to be opposed to slavery.
Well, you've clearly made your mind up.
It being common does not make it ok. If she were just quietly anti-trans in her personal life that *might* be something we could overlook. But she is proudly and actively hateful towards trans people. She ignores the fact that trans women are even more likely than cis women to be victims of gender-based violence and pretends that trans women are actually predators. And she engages in bullshit "transvestigating", drumming up witch hunts against butch cis women. She is actively causing harm against women, including the cis women she claims to want to protect. She’s a terrorist using stochastic methods.
How old were you when you started reading them?
The John Wick series
Watched them all over the course of a weekend - its the same fucking moving over and over and over and over again. The amount of disbelief I needed to suspend got exponentially larger so by the time I got to the last movie I just couldn't take it anymore. There is no real plot or any development of characters, it's just implausible fight scene after implausible fight scene.
I think if I put a few months between each movie I wouldn't have this opinion - on their own the movies can be mindlessly entertaining but all together was too much for me.\
The whole point of those movies is to see the action. The martial arts, guns, cars, everything is an incredible stunt or piece of action camerawork. John Wick is what happened when stuntpeople made a movie. People liked it because it looked realish and the stunts were cool. So they made more.
Exactly. The lore and such is an interesting attempt at world building, but I enjoyed it because of the insane level of tight choreography and flow, when many action films merely imply martial arts by showing a single punch and then shaking the camera violently lol.
I think a prequel with less emphasis on action could be pretty good
Brain off. Guns go pew
I love the first one and would argue it's fairly grounded, it's the sequels that quickly got unhinged.
Dude murders everyone over a dog. So grounded.
Murdering people over a dog part is still plausible. But the secret assassin organization where they pay for services using secret gold coins and talk about guns like fine wine, that was just a bit over the top.
Well...
The first movie feels like it could take place in the real world. That society as we know it exists, drug cartels and mafias and all, and the organized criminals have worked out a deal with a hotel owner. When a gun fight erupts in a night club, everyone screams and runs away.
The second movie blows that all up; everyone is a secret underground hitman pretending to be a normal civilian, the hotel owner is a quasi-religious figurehead who only fears the Truly Evil Council, and when a gun fight erupts at a concert, everyone cheers.\
They came up with a cool setting and then shoved it straight up its own ass.
We were talking about the *action scenes* being believable.
I saw this movie in theaters with no expectations, and I’ve seen a lot of action movies in theaters. There was a palpable shift in that moment, a few people audibly gasped, and then we were all on board.
He doesn’t kill anyone that doesn’t have it coming, most of them many times over. He lets the bouncer go, makes peace with Viggo's brother, lets Cassian live, and honestly seems to just want to live in peace after he sends a bunch of souls for judgement. It's like Creasy in Man on Fire; forgiveness is between them and God, it's up to him to arrange the introduction.
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I enjoyed the first movie; The "I hear you have struck my son." scene sold it for me; if the movie was perfectly cliche that scene would have ended "Sorry sir, it'll never happen again!" while a red laser dot is wiggling up his chest and then Viggo says "I know." and we hear a gun shot through the phone. No, that "He stole John Wick's car, sir; and he killed his dog." "Oh." It was a fresh helping of big Hollywood action movie. And for a big improbable ridiculous one man army action movie, it still had some restraint. It was at least a little grounded.
The second movie went right up its own ass. So, literally everyone everywhere in the world is a secret underground contract killer? I haven't seen...I saw a thread about "there probably won't be a John Wick 5 because Keanu's knees" so 3 or 4. I enjoyed the first one.
I find they are always on when I stay at hotels. A few years ago it was always Harry Potter, now its always John Wick. The first movie is pretty good to watch in one sitting. But I am convinced the rest of the series is mean to be consumed in 5-10 minute chunks. Like coming and going through the hotel room while your doing other things. For that its pretty good cause you don't have to know any story to follow it for a minute or two. Just have to remember that you don't need to know who is who because they will probably die in the story soon anyways.
I didn't like these either. I think it would have been better if he WASN'T already some badass guy with access to firearms but instead just some regular dude that got his life ruined, and then he had to figure out how to get revenge on everyone while being just an average guy. They could have gotten real creative with the methods he uses to locate people, obtain firearms, plot his revenge, etc. I feel like his character went into the whole thing already having the upper hand. It would have been a better movie to watch him rise up from real rock bottom and still kick everyone's ass in the end.
The movie you’re looking for, generally, is called Peppermint and stars Jennifer Garner (in between credit card commercials). It’s a fun movie.
You seem to hate them for the exact reason people love it - that's the sign of a cool movie. It's not a work of art by any stretch, but it knows what it is and it executes well.
I honestly liked the first one in isolation, it was when I watched all 4 back to back that I came to dislike the franchise. It was too much John Wick all at once I guess
Oh yeah the John Wick hangover is a real thing !
I haven't seen them, but based on your description, I think this xkcd explains how these movies were conceived:
(source)
It's not that deep, you just shut your brain off and go "People died lol!"
It honestly wasn't until the last movie that I gave a shit about the plot. I feel like till the finale, there really wasn't any deeper meaning than "Wow Keanu Reeves is a bad motherfucker with a gun! Who knew? Oh right everyone who saw the Matrix when it came out 50 years ago, but still!"
Borat.
Supposedly it's a comedy, but it's completely devoid of humor.
I'm not gonna downvote you because unpopular opinions is what this thread is about, but it's just plain factually incorrect to say it's devoid of humor. You may not personally find it funny, but there are a zillion jokes per second in this movie, and many people find it hilarious. It isn't devoid of humor, it's devoid of *your type* of humor
Yeah, I remember laughing out loud in the theater many, many times. But I was a 19-year-old dude in 2006, and was 20 when Superbad came out, and so that brand of humor hit me square in the funny bone.
That being said, comedy is very subjective, I'll agree, but to call Borat unfunny is objectively wrong.
Listen lady...
Maybe you Used to be good on plow, before having such an opinion, but now your vagine is like sleeve of wizard.
Borat isn't my favorite of the genre but I love those kinds of movies that mix fictional plot line with interactions of real strangers. I wish there was more love for those kinds of projects.
Borat (and SBC in general) is known for treating those real strangers like shit and leaving the places they film in worse off than when they got there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borat check under controversies.
Tbf, some of the people in Borat deserved it. I laughed seeing Ted Cruz get punked
Giuliani scene was incredible in Borat 2
True, but as funny as tricking him into a To Catch A Predator like situation, then streaming it across America for all to see..
Is no one else concerned that the President at the time's lawyer was filmed trying to have sex with someone he thought was 14, that millions of people saw the footage, and it didn't lead to any investigation being launched? Or really anything at all?
Well yeah, because he exposed those areas for having garbage people living there. He didn't make the area worse by damaging honorable people, all he did was hand a spotlight to people and let them show who they are. They very obviously were aware they were on camera the entire time
Yeah.... The part where they tricked the town into thinking it was a real movie and gave them scripts reflecting as such, then just put the jokes the studio ACTUALLY wanted in the subtitles was really low of them to do. I don't see how that's at all removed from just doing "Kazakhstan: The Minstrel Show"
I will say I liked the movie a lot better before I knew that. When I first saw it I was a highschooler who had assumed Kazakhstan was a fictional place made to be a stand-in for Eastern European countries. Even when I learned it was a real place, I thought surely they just made a set or something.
Because only a monster would actually fly to a third world country, say you're going to bring in a lot of money for a town that desprately needs it, pay them far less than they were promised, and blatantly lie and say that it's a film about a guy going off on a big fantasy adventure instead of some white guy doing brown face to show how backwards and evil not only the town, but the nation as a whole is....
I know this is the sequel, but remember when they filmed Rudy Giulani trying to have sex with a woman he thought was 14, put it on TV, and that didn't warrant any investigation at all despite millions of people seeing the evidence?
Inglourious Basterds.
However much I liked all the Tarantino flicks before this one, I just cannot get into Inglourious. Also, everything Tarantino made after that movie is also tainted by the same uneasy feeling I get. If pressed to guess why, I'd say he took the stories out of the 'now' and transported them to other times and places, which just does not seem to agree with me.
For me, Inglorious plays like a short film anthology and its praise comes from how good some of those shorts are. The opening (farm) scene and the bar scene are masterful examples of suspense. I never praise the film as a whole, but I will always praise those two scenes.
And the scene where Hans Landa perfects his English. "It's a bingo! Is that how you say it? *It's a bingo?*"
And the infamous *Arrriverdurrchi* scene. Etc. It's pretty full of memorable moments but I do agree with you in general.
I think Basterds was his first movie that casually re-wrote history, which threw off the movie's tone for me. Like a historical "what if" movie. And every movie he's done since then has the same feel to me now.
Tarantino films are a process of him masturbating over old movies and extracting pleasure in people not getting all of his references
And having a foot fetish and constantly casting himself on scenes with feet or racist comments.
Django riding in his purple clothes on top of that ultra green grassland with Skrillex blasting - fuck that shit
You're miss remembering (is that a word?) things. Because it's not purple and it's not Skrillex... That scene is awesome, the whole movie is
it's heavy color contrasts and what we came to call brostep in the historic context of mid 19th century. we may disagree but this was the moment i lost touch with tarantino's esthetics
Titanic.
The hype here was insane, when I finally saw it the experience was.. underwhelming. Such a boring slog of a movie, mediocre CGI when disaster finally struck and that stupid end.. Get on the piece of wood that is obviously big enough to hold you both, you dolt.
Only upside is that I watched it on TV, so apart from some hours of my life I'll never get back it didn't cost me anything.
The explanation about the door is that it wasn't about the size, it was about the buoyancy. If they both got on it then they both would've sunk
It wasn't about size or buoyancy, it's about the plot. Jack had to die, and that was the prop they had.
If you wanna retcon an explanation onto it, I'd say its about stability. They'd both be kept afloat, but they'd get wet.
I didn't retcon anything, I knew it, and I googled it to confirm before i posted. Cameron has said this himself. Mythbusters even tested it and showed that unless they did a trick with the life jacket then they both would've drowned if they both tried to stay on the door
Right, that was my first point. It is whatever the plot said it is. Reality be damned. If James Cameron says it'd stink if they both got on, then it would. They never say or show this in the movie, though, so it's a retcon.
Myth busters never showed that it'd sink at full scale, just that two people couldn't stay on it and stay dry at the same time. It could keep them from drowning, just not from getting hypothermic.
I think Titanic would have been a better film if they had cast someone other than Leo DiCaprio.
I have no desire to ever watch it. The romantic fantasy doesn't work for me as a straight man. I'm not attractive enough for some rich, hot woman to take an interest. Even the hot, male love interest dies in the end, but like Bill Burr said, I'd be the guy ricocheting off of the propeller as the ship breaks up.
Dad dragged me with him to see it in the cinema, saw it once, but never again, it is a well shot and acted film, but I never enjoyed the romance plot.
The sinking in the film was more like a subplot that suddenly grabbed focus in the later half of the film, only to have the romantic plot wrench the focus back and then have a continous fight which plot was more important
Titanic is not a good film, but the best part about the film was that my mom assumed since it was rated PG-13, it would be ok for me to watch at 10 years old. She was shocked and upset when I got to see some 70mm film boobies!
Not necessarily hate, but did not like as much as the rest of the internet: Oppenheimer
The moment I left the theater, I thought it should have been longer. Yes, I think an already 3hr film should be even longer. Just torture the audience at this point. But I thought that there was just so much stuff to cram into that 3hr length, there was not enough room for the story to breath, even if those stories were needed to paint a better picture of Oppenheimer's life, morals, and conflicts.
I'd still recommend it to people. If anything, it's still a visually well directed film. But if you aren't a physics/history buff, you might not enjoy the story as much.
In my opinion, a better history based movie would be The Imitation Game. Much more focused story, even if some aren't historically accurate.
If you know the actual story of Oppenheimer, you know the movie is garbage. It made it about this mostly fictitious investigation before Congress because of a pretty feud
Hmmmm
https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/oppenheimer/
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I thought the nuclear explosion was pretty disappointing. It was hyped up so much and it's just like, a normal explosion zoomed in. It didn't look like a nuclear bomb went off to me.
Exactly this. You can't hype up an audience to that degree and make them sit through 3 hours without showing them something theyve never seen before. And at this point you can't just Nolan your way out by making the blast larger than life, because I think by now we possibly all imagine it bigger than it actually was. But what you can do is some sort of trippy shit where the blast goes on for ages, where it ripping things apart is shown in some sort of artistic and novel way, perhaps something emphasising an old world is being torn apart and this is a new nuclear age. ANYTHING. except a half hearted blast that looked and felt like half hearted CG. And the irony is the production team went out of their way to avoid using CG. It was just immensely unsatisfying and rushed and all the momentum of the film was lost. It just didn't feel momentus enough.
If they'd been bolder they've have culminated with the bombing of Hiroshima and shown the horror in some new terrifying light..
I don't know if you've seen Twin Peaks, Season 3, ep 8, but if not... well, I think you'll find it matches your description pretty well. Plus there are weird spooky Abraham Lincoln lookalikes covered in soot. And a performance from The Nine Inch Nails.
None of the above is made up.
Twin Peaks Season 3 was chaos. That episode was perfect for it. My wife and I did all three seasons in a row a couple or few years back, and the 20-something year gap gave David Lynch a whole lot of time to make the show bananas. The first two seasons had their oddity. Season three was on another planet.
It really was, and I loved every minute of it. Did you also watch Fire Walk With Me in your watch through? Wild stuff, although significantly less fun than much of the show, obviously. Brilliant though.
It was honestly the one time where I was like, ya, CG would have been better. Or restored footage or something. It also looked like they used the cotton technique like they do on models but I might be misremembering.
Admittedly I haven't watched it, but at this point wouldn't it be a better idea to divide it into two parts?
It would, but it also probably would be a bad idea to do so. How many people would come back for a part 2 of a documentary film? I think not a lot.
Comic book movies.
They have dominated the box office over the last 10-15 years, there are infinity reboots/origin stories, and all of them use the ”man, I really hope the bad guy doesn't use the super heroes loved ones as hostages" as a plot point. All of them are so predictable.
They've gotten so much worse over the years. It's kinda hard being a Marvel fan. I used to be a huge Marvel Fangirl, and was happy that the movies were giving more obscure characters the spotlight. I was thrilled I lived in a world where the general public knew who Rocket Raccoon was.
But ya know then End Game came out and I was all "It's been a wild ride, a shame it's over, but all good things must come to an end!"
Then they kept making movies and, they're just horrible. They've gotten formulaic, bland, and worse the comics aren't even enjoyable anymore because they've become glorified adverts for the movies.
As much as people gave Morbius shit, I actually loved it because it felt like a breath of fresh-air. The characters weren't just expies of Tony Stark (Seriously, they basically try to rewrite every character's personality into Stark), they didn't mug to the camera with stupid jokes about how, "This is a silly stupid movie and it sucks, but since I'm calling it out as being stupid and silly that means it's good", it took itself seriously, it felt like there were actual stakes, they were true to the character of Morbius instead of doing.,.. *gestures to MODOK in Ant-Man 3* whatever this is....
Ugh yes I have a disdain for these movies.
"Have you seen captain costume, petty crime bat vigilante, and other rich guy vs alien probably and evil lady?"
"Yeah I saw the first one. Was lame."
I want a serious super hero movie where the villains fucking wreck them lol
The only good super hero movie is Mystery Men.
Unbreakable, The Incredibles, Chronicle, Logan, I may even defend *Super*.
Came to mention Unbreakable, and I can stand behind your list in general. Unbreakable came around right before or contemporaneous with the uprising of comic book movies, with Spiderman a la Tobey and X-Men with Tiny Jackman, versus the Huge Jackedman we know today. And this includes everything that came after them.
Unbreakable was a nice homage to the whole genre while being it's own original story. And it came out at a time that I loved Bruce Willis (currently have a 14 year old cat named after him) and Shymalan had just wowed us, so it all just landed perfectly.
Unrelated to the thread here, but Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs was a solid, fun three-film run.
We fucking need a Flaming Carrot movie.
I avoid superhero comics (with a few exceptions like Watchmen) so sure as hell I was going to avoid the films
Oh boy, you don't wanna see the actual comics then.
Oh I have another one. Thor Ragnarok. People loved it because they liked the Thor character and found his earlier films too dull or something, but I loved that they were unapologetically serious about themselves, using comedy in ways that felt very authentic to the characters.
But Ragnarok? It came out later the same year as this excellent essay about bathos, and it was *dripping* in it. I was hyper tuned to the problem with bathos, and it leaned even harder into that took than nearly any other MCU film did.
What sucks so much is that it had the bones of a really good dramatic story. The Bruce Banner/Hulk storyline had built up over multiple previous films, and come the climax of this film it's established that he's in Bruce form now and has enough control to stay that way, but if he transforms into Hulk it'll be a big deal and he may never be able to be himself again. So they arrive in Asgard at the climax of the film and it's pretty urgent. In a dramatic moment you can see him steel himself to make the sacrifice; he jumps out of their aircraft onto the rainbow bridge, clearly intending to transform into Hulk to fight Fenris.
…and he splats. Faceplants on the bridge. Still in human form. It's played for laughs. The ultimate conclusion of Hulk's story in this movie and probably the most important moment of his arc over the entire MCU to this point, and it's undercut by a joke. Not even a very funny one. A slapstick joke that would make Charlie Chaplin cringe.
And it means *nothing*, because the very next shit, he's transformed *anyway* and throwing Fenris around like a doll.
Not to mention it undermines the verisimilitude of the movie. I can suspend my disbelief in these movies pretty hard, but Bruce Banner, in human form, is meant to be painfully average, physically speaking. He should have *died* from that fall, given he didn't transform. That's certainly not the worst thing about the moment, but it is was the sprinkling of salt on top of the wound that just made it that little bit worse.
That moment was the worst bit, but the film as a whole was full of lazy humour and bathos, and it was really just the worst example of what was wrong with a lot of MCU movies at the time. I was shocked to hear so few people came away disliking it in the same way I did.
Bruce did die from that fall, but they established in the first avenger movie that he can't die, anytime he does, the Hulk takes over and heals.
I'm sorry but all the previous Thor movies (and the one after this) are ASS. Ragnarok is the only good Thor movie.
Sorry, and you're entitled to enjoy what you enjoy, but it's just not good. Fundamentally undermining your own characters within your own story, let alone undermining arcs that have built up over multiple movies before you, at the climax of those characters' arcs, does not a good movie make.
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I *really* don't like this sentiment. First of all because it doesn't match my experience on the ground, where many of the most highly-regarded superhero films *do* take themselves quite seriously. The first two Toby Maguire Spiderman films. First two X-Men films. (And, the third of each of those trilogies also takes itself seriously but is not as good. But the point isn't that being serious is automatically good, but that being serious is in no way a detriment to being a good film.) The Nolan Batman trilogy and The Batman, as well as The Penguin from a live-action TV perspective. Logan received widespread critical acclaim even outside of the comic book world. Or we can leave the live action realm and look at cartoons like BTAS, whose excellent dark tone basically *defined* what the title character should be like, and whose early crossover with STAS often received favourable comparisons to the far inferior Batman v Superman live action film two decades later.
But even if there *weren't* good counter-examples, I wouldn't like that sentiment, because it's essentially admitting "it's impossible to make a superhero film that is also good". And I fundamentally do not agree with that defeatist message. The superhero genre is one that is capable of a great range of tones and subject matter and of instilling a wide range of emotions in its audience.
Ragnarok was good though? Entertaining and overall engaging. The original was a snooze fest, dark world is AWFUL and ugly looking. The last one is as bad only with bad jokes and unfinished CGI
When your main character is shit and the side characters are almost all worthless? Ragnarok was the right call
Literally everything Taika watiti touches turns to shit. I don’t understand his appeal. He’s like a 14 year old in the head that can’t take anything seriously. I know if I’m watching one of his shows or movies it’s just going to be lame joke after lame joke and then at some point he will remember he needs to get a story in and rush everything.
Also, I can’t stand anything JJ Abram’s touches. I know a lot of people say that now post StarWars disaster, but I remember being very disappointed when I heard he was directing the first sequel and people were acting like I was crazy. I absolutely hate his “mystery box” story telling because I either never cared about “item A” or I know the payoff for discovering what “item A” actually is I’d going to be lame.
Apart from the two Thors, the only Waititi I've seen was Jo Jo Rabbit, which I thought was incredible. It's a shame someone capable of touching that subject in such a sensitive yet humorous way could turn around and be supportive of genocide elsewhere. But yeah I don't like either of his Thor movies.
As for Abrams, I completely agree that his mystery box style is terrible. I actually was hopeful when it was announced he'd be doing Star Wars though, especially when it was going to be only the first film, and we didn't know that there was no planning ahead. I thought that the studio as a whole would rein in his mystery box style by insisting on a plan across 3 movies. And as much as I hated Abrams' Star *Trek* films, I thought that their action style might work well for Star *Wars* in a way it *didn't* work for Trek. So I was reasonably hopeful, and I don't even think I was *too* let down by the first movie *per se*. The problem came when he returned for the third movie and revealed that there were no good answers for the mysteries set up at the start (which, admittedly, itself came about because the mysteries *had* been set up in the first one without thought for how to resolve them). Fuck mystery boxes.
Part of the problem is that Abrams *has no idea what's in the box.* Basically his entire career was writing the first act of a story with some mystery to solve, handing it off to someone else to finish, then, when they ask what's in the box, he tells them, "I dunno, figure something out."
Wtf is wrong with you. I hope you get eaten by the swear wolves, when the vamps bring you as food to the masquerade party, Steve.
And the problem is further minimized when smart hulk is revealed with no effort at all in the next film. I hated it.
100% agree with you. There's a lot of stinker Marvel movies but Ragnarok is really where they started sucking pretty consistently (with a few exceptions like GOTG 3). I fucking hated that movie almost from the start and felt like I was taking crazy pills afterwards when I saw people's opinions on it. Fortunately I had a couple other dudes at work who agreed with me that I could vent to. Then the last Thor movie came out and everyone was saying the same shit about that one that I was saying about Ragnarok and I'm just confused.
OMG YES. I just don't understand it. I didn't love the 4th Thor movie, but it seemed to me like it had all the same problems that Ragnarok did. If anything, I was happy that it walked back the Jane Foster erasure that Ragnarok had committed. But everyone thought it was terrible even though it did most of the same stuff as the movie they all loved.
I also liked the slightly more serious Thor in the former movies, even though the second one was shit and I have watched it twice and don't remember anything from it....
Ragnarok was OK, good even but it was the first step into making Thor a comedic joke character that occasionally does hero stuff. I could live with Ragnarok, but Love and Thunder showed that they completely lost it and don't get what made Thor worth watching. There was some funny jokes in that movie, but apart from that the entire thing feels like a parody of Thor to me. It's all turned too unserious, which removes any weight from the moments in the movie. Feels like the IQ of everyone just keeps dropping every movie at this point.
On a vaguely similar note, God of War: Ragnarok was hot garbage that had shit gameplay and worse plot and was a Marvel wannabe (also I detest marvel shit)
The only God of War games I've played are the first two, on PS2, which is the only console I've ever had (well, apart from the Wii, which barely counts).
The Big Lebowski
Interminably dull. Watching it made sense of why the people bigging it up were stoned..
That's just like....your opinion man
Sorry I just can't agree with this one. Stoned or not, that movie is absolutely fantastic. I'm trying to do some mental gymnastics to empathize with people who disliked it....but I can't....movie is just one of the best. There's no getting around it :-/
Well for some people the word vagina scares them. It is a misconception that feminists don't like coitus.
The whole scene with Julianne Moore there is so quotable. I say "He fixes the cable?" to just about anything remotely resembling "You can imagine what happens next."
That's a fair criticism. It's the anti-noir which by definition means that the mystery isn't smart or sexy. It's a bunch of idiots and coincidences that resolve their problems through happenstance. I happen to be one of the people who finds those idiots unbelievably engaging. Honestly there's a lot of similarity to Seinfeld
Obligatory "well that's just like, your opinion, man."
I think you hit the nail on the head answering OP’s question, sorry you didn’t like it! To be fair it wasn’t popular when it came out and became a cult classic in the 00s. I think it captures an absurdist side of America of the 90s (not to mention starring Buscemi, one of my favorite actors)… bowling alleys for social meet ups, roughneck Vietnam vets, drug-slipping Porn kingpins. I watch it maybe a couple times a year when I have a hankering for a White Russian :)
I'll watch it again at some point so my review is under review
I was reading the comments expecting this movie to pop up. I only watched half, because it wasn't interesting enough, but also want to re-watch because maybe I was just not ready or something ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
How do you feel about other Coen brothers movies?
Fargo - fantastic
Oh Brother Where Are Thou - not very memorable
Burn After Reading - funny and entertaining but not very memorable
No Country For Old Men - one of the best films of the 21st century
I feel the reason that this movie is so good is because it is almost 100% exactly as the story in book
Not very memorable? Yeesh. I could probably quote-along O Brother's entire length, and tbe soundtrack is phenomenal.
Buster scruggs needs some love
All excellent. Best is ladykillers, then hudsucker proxy.
Hudsucker is such a great film. I didn't care for much of their stuff but that and Lebowski were great.
Fwiw, I wasn't sure about it at all, first time round. Liked it more the second time and every time since.
I up voted you bcz I want others to see how wrong and correct you are.
I always think of The Big Lebowski as a Fletch remake.
Spirited Away
No consistent world, cringy behaviour of the main character, love story out of nowhere, you can't have a plot twist if you didn't have any previously established lore. It felt a bit like a dream that was trying to take itself seriously as an actual story.
HOT TAKE
*hella disagree upvote*
Spirited Away, and to some degree all Ghibli stuff leans very heavily on a shared cultural Mythos. It doesn't do exposition in the same way that zombies or angels aren't explained; everyone knows that stuff because we all grew up with a million references.
*how dare you*
Upvote
Why?
Edited my comment
I gave up on spirited away half way through it.
Ghibli it's very hit and miss for me, it's either really amazing or really tedious and boring.
It's weird, because I loved Spirited Away upon first watching it. But I can't do it anymore. It's like you say, a dream with no consistency. I let it fool me once, but now I'm lucid and see through the facade.
That's not to say I think it's bad, per se. It's still beautiful, and fascinating, and has a great score... But for me personally it has no re-watchability for precisely the reasons you mention.
i agree with you, and i pretty much felt the same the first time i watched it. plus, Chihiro feels like a very reactive character, driven from one errand to the next, and nothing feels really earned.
however, my opinion changed a little bit, because i got to see its theatre adaptation on stage. this is more or less my first time seeing a stage play, so it was a very new, and different experience for me. basically it is a big make believe, because unlike film or animation, what you can do with props on stage is very limited. i had to try very hard to turn the analytical part of my brain off, otherwise the whole thing will just be ridiculous. and that somehow made it a lot more enjoyable.
so i guess what i am trying to say is, don't think too hard about it? 🤷
I think the acting and dialogue of the original Star Wars trilogy is just awful. Bad writing delivered poorly by most of the cast.
I totally understand why people love it and why it has its place in film history but man.....not for me.
If you think Episode 4 is bad now, you should see the original cut before George's wife got her hands on it. It's a very different story.
I believe it. I know she basically saved the film but shame on her for not adding Maclunkey as George originally intended!
That's been publicly released?
I dunno. Found the file over a decade ago on the webblag
Something to keep in mind when watching stuff that old is that we were still trying to figure out how acting for a camera was different than acting for a live audience. Star Wars was at the tail end of that, but skip back ten years to the original Star Trek and it's *really* noticeable. A lot of the acting feels bad now, and a decent amount probably did then, but part of that is just what acting was at the time.
However, Lucas did know that his ability to write dialogue was pretty poor, even calling himself the king of wooden dialogue at one point, and was fine with actors coming up with better lines. Unfortunately, Lucas also wasn't very good at communicating that and only a line or two in the entire series was adjusted by an actor.
Ehh I don't think that's a good excuse. It wasn't the early days of acting or anything, movies had sound 50 years prior. It was what you, I, and George Lucas himself said: he's bad at writing dialogue.
I think the casting was pretty good, though.
Shit like, the godfather came around that time and the lines and acting were superb
Yeah, we're not talking about Casablanca here lol
In movies, they live in the same era, but in genres the Scifi genre was ironically so behind the times that they were still learning back then.
Scifi and Fantasy as genres were not, and hell pretty much not until the 2000s accepted as proper forms of art back then. I was talking about with my dad how there was some movie that came out and I just couldn't be faffed to see it and he remarked I've gotten that way about it, and I expressed back when I was a kid growing up in the 90s, we got one, maybe two big budget scifi or fantasy movies, and the rest was handfuls of low end drech. The rest was standard comedy, drama, etc in "modern" or past eras and that's where all the big names of Hollywood were at. For him it was even worse, if you were a scifi nerd you basically got whatever you could get.
Star Trek came out and told the world that Scifi could be successful, Star Wars showed up and told the world that it could be successful without everything being gleaming and polished and sterile like Star Trek. Hell I was about to bring up the absolutely wooden example of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as a perfect example of before, and then a quick check, nope that was made two years AFTER Star Wars.
It's probably why we have as many actually A-List scifi movies, and the hose of not so good ones, coming out now though, a lot of people growing up on these shoulders just wishing for more are now behind the cameras and the actors who grew up on these are willing to do them instead of "No, that's for the C-List actors."