Topic: Movies in the Theater (Read 106716 times)

Burrito Al Pastor · « **Reply #720 on:** February 24, 2011, 06:21:01 AM »

You know, the prequel trilogy to the Star Wars trilogy that George Lucas was planning before his sudden, tragic death in 1990?

It's too bad, really. Those probably would have been awesome movies.

Büge · « **Reply #721 on:** February 24, 2011, 12:20:29 PM »

We'll always have the Extended Universe, the wildly successful West End Games RPG and the superlative Decipher CCG.

Mongrel · « **Reply #722 on:** February 24, 2011, 12:35:12 PM »

Only 98% of the EU is a seething mass of horrifying fanfiction.

Royal☭ · « **Reply #723 on:** February 24, 2011, 12:40:03 PM »

Yeah, first thing that jumped into my head after that was European Union fanfic

Brentai · « **Reply #724 on:** February 24, 2011, 12:48:10 PM »

Hetalia is set before the formation of the EU, doesn't count.

Mongrel · « **Reply #725 on:** February 24, 2011, 01:20:00 PM »

I think my all time favourite is the writer who is pretty prolific in the EU (but doesn't write any other material, obv), made up a daughter for Boba Fett based on some woman he was stalking online, admitted he was in love with his imaginary creation, and then tricked another EU writer to put in a real book so that it would be canon and so that he could write about her in later books.

Like, is this a sci-fi franchise or is it a "post your SW stories" SA forum board?

Mothra · « **Reply #726 on:** March 09, 2011, 12:20:22 AM »

Quote from: Mongrel on February 24, 2011, 12:35:12 PM

Only 98% of the EU is a seething mass of horrifying fanfiction.

Mongrel · « **Reply #727 on:** March 27, 2011, 01:13:15 PM »

This does not look particularly auspicious.

TA · « **Reply #728 on:** March 27, 2011, 01:43:48 PM »

Quote

...this tricked up female empowerment tale undercuts itself with its fetishized slutty schoolgirls and its repetitious steampunk anime aesthetic.

Now, I haven't seen Sucker Punch. I think I saw a trailer a while back but I know only very loose things about the movie. But looking at those reviews? Kevin Smith might have been talking out of his ass about Jersey Girl, but there definitely do exist movies where criticism isn't applicable.

Most of those reviews seem to be casually insulting with broad stroke stereotypes. "Schlock treatment for comatose gamers", "should satisfy the fantasies of most heterosexual teenage boys and many men", "it's the fantasy of a 14-year-old boy steeped in kung fu, Call of Duty and online porn", "Like watching someone channel-surf through five video game boss battles at the same time". Even the positive reviews are saying shit like "it might be the priciest bit of softcore porn for otaku and gamers ever produced".

Sometimes movies have target audiences, and it is not a sin to fail to cater to people outside those target audiences. It is, however, lazy and shitty criticism to pretend that your personal tastes represent an objective, correct standard for the appeal of a film. "I didn't like this movie because I came in wanting A, B, and C, and it didn't give them to me" is a nonsensical criticism if the film is written and marketed with D and E in mind, and the people who came in wanting D and E walk away happy.

Maybe it does suck. Like I said, I haven't seen it. But I really don't think it sucks for the reasons these people think it sucks.

Joxam · « **Reply #729 on:** March 27, 2011, 01:49:31 PM »

Actually I bitched about the whole 'this movie is for gamers' thing too, but in more of a 'most gamers I know are the worst fucking movie snobs on the planet' line of thinking. I think that the at large public is confusing gamers with Bros, in my opinion.

Mongrel · « **Reply #730 on:** March 27, 2011, 01:57:00 PM »

To be fair, I was waiting for someone to use CGI in a film and just say "Oh fuck it" and do nothing but blow all the doors off to show what you can REALLY do, and to hell with a plot.

Kind of like wanting to see a really good car chase movie. When you're in that mode, you're quite deliberately not looking for oscar material, you just want CARS GO FAST AND SMASH STUFF and unashamedly make vrooming noises.

Norondor · « **Reply #731 on:** March 27, 2011, 03:01:24 PM »

Quote from: TA on March 27, 2011, 01:43:48 PM

Sometimes movies have target audiences

The term isn't catering, it's pandering.

Nothing that panders to an audience can also be good; that's more or less the definition of the term.

Thad · « **Reply #732 on:** March 27, 2011, 04:50:37 PM »

Quote from: Joxam on March 27, 2011, 01:49:31 PM

Actually I bitched about the whole 'this movie is for gamers' thing too, but in more of a 'most gamers I know are the worst fucking movie snobs on the planet' line of thinking. I think that the at large public is confusing gamers with Bros, in my opinion.

That and "It looks like a video game" has become a ubiquitous criticism from lazy, illiterate critics who don't know what fucking video games look like.

As I mentioned when it came out, District 9 looked a fuck of a lot like a video game -- in point of fact it was the ultimate result of Peter Jackson not making a Halo movie -- but critics never said that, because they never say anything they LIKE looks like a video game.

Büge · « **Reply #733 on:** March 27, 2011, 07:20:10 PM »

Sucker Punch seems like it was created by polling G4's target audience for what they'd like to see in a game, and then making it into a movie.

Burrito Al Pastor · « **Reply #734 on:** March 27, 2011, 08:34:47 PM »

Sucker Punch is... an odd movie.

First, it's not exactly what it looks like at a glance; the advertising has, I think, been exceptionally good at masking the presence of anything except tits and explosions.

I don't think I can really talk about it without spoilers.

[spoiler]
Sucker Punch is actually quite a bit like a video game - specifically, Sanitarium. The story - yes, there is one, more or less - is presented through strongly allegorical nested psychological fantasies - think "Inception", but with motifs instead of faux-realism. There's the "real world", in which the main character has been imprisoned in an insane asylum; her primary coping fantasy allegory, a "Casablanca"-style brothel, and then a series of sub-fantasies in a variety of abstract settings, where she and her friends are fighting to obtain or retrieve something of significance.

All of the crazy combat sequences with the slow-mo and the katanas and the dragons and the steam-powered nazi zombies and etc. are from those sub-fantasies. Everything on the movie poster is imagery from those sub-fantasies.

The movie is riddled with motifs; with two major settings and something like four minor settings to work with, there's a lot of room for recurring elements. Some of these elements (shattering lightbulbs) have some reasonably apparent significance; others (the kid in the trench in the world war scene who later reappears on the bus at the end of the movie... I think?) are inscrutable.

The movie is absurdly sexual, both in plot and style; this is really weirdly juxtaposed with how aggressively PG-13 it is. (There was a thing about how Zach Snyder isn't allowed to make R movies anymore.)

The ending is terrible; there's a "twist" where the main character is lobotomized and ceases to be a character, because - vat a tveest! - the primary supporting character was the secret main character the whole time! There's an allegorical element here, too, but it still feels like a poorly-implemented infernokrusher-style twist.

I don't think I can sufficiently emphasize just how motif-heavy this movie is, by the way. It feels like it's trying really hard to have a real coherent artistic merit, but at the same time it has that more-guns-more-fishnets-more-dragons thing going on, but they're turned up to, like, thirteen, so it's like a parody, but...

I just can't decide if the movie is one enormous poe or not.
[/spoiler]

Great soundtrack, though. I'll have to buy it just for the "Search And Destroy" cover.

Burrito Al Pastor · « **Reply #735 on:** April 11, 2011, 03:50:44 PM »

Last night I saw Hanna; today I saw Source Code. They were both good. Minireviews in spoilers in case you care.

Hanna: [spoiler]As you may recall, I work in a movie theater, which means I get to see a lot of previews, especially when they're on loop in the lobby. Because I can so readily compare previews and movies, let me tell you: previews are lies. You cannot trust anything in a preview; music may be different, dialogue may be different, footage may be different, even the apparent premise of the movie may be different.

Hanna is not one of those movies. The trailer is an extremely accurate portrayal of the movie. It's exactly what it looks like: some kind of loli battle machine with a great UNCHA UNCHA UNCHA soundtrack.[/spoiler]

Source Code (with spoilers for Moon, which you should have seen anyways):[spoiler]I was very careful to avoid spoilers for this movie. The implicit premise from the trailer alone, as you may recall: military technology that lets one man relive the last eight minutes of another man's life. That makes this a time-travel movie, which means that there's no way on god's green earth that there won't be twists, and thus, spoilers would be a thing.

Did you see Moon? You should have. Even if you didn't, the biggest spoiler is that there's no real spoilers. The main character is a clone, yes, but that's obvious very early on, and explicitly the case before the movie is even half over. It's a premise that, by genre conventions, should have been rife with spoilers and last-minute twists, but it wasn't. The movie was all about working out the implications of the twist. Source Code does the same thing.

Source Code is not as good a movie as Moon. The soundtrack is less impressive, the visuals are of course less interesting, etc. But it's still good, and has the distinction of being the only "serious" time travel movie I can think of that actually has a happy ending. [/spoiler]

Actually, there's one big problem with Source Code - it's incredibly implausible. Chicago never has weather that nice.

Mongrel · « **Reply #736 on:** April 15, 2011, 09:09:21 AM »

So I didn't know Atlas Shrugged had actually come out. Oh well whatever... but wait!

In an TOTALLY UNEXPECTED TWIST (

) it is so appallingly bad that it's apparently making M Shimian Nightstalker's Avatar look good (I think it has a stellar 6% rating on RT, though the audience rating is a gassy 86% - talk about a point spread).

This is where things get good. Apparently the nonsense making the rounds is that the movie is this bad on purpose, because the whole thing is a secret liberal conspiracy to bury the Greatest Book Evar and prevent parts 2 and 3 from ever being made.

Brentai · « **Reply #737 on:** April 15, 2011, 08:18:17 PM »

Who exactly is saying it's bad? Because it could be Casablanca levels of technical excellence here and I'd still probably leave the theater wanting to throw up on the director until he is slowly eating alive by trace amounts of stomach acid.

TA · « **Reply #738 on:** April 15, 2011, 10:02:35 PM »

Ebert is saying that even if you set aside the ideology, it's just badly made.

Mongrel · « **Reply #739 on:** April 16, 2011, 02:44:20 AM »

Yeah, I've heard even the raving ideologues who went to see it were like "Well, it's not TOO bad..."

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Author Topic: Movies in the Theater (Read 106716 times)