Or you watch something that you thought was just awful and you find out that people on the internet loved it…
This was me trying to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey
Either I didn’t get it, or I watched it too late to appreciate the ground-breaking effects. Maybe I’ll give it another try someday.
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That’s what I’m thinking it must be. It was probably 2010-2011 when I watched it, and I just got so bored with the long shots of nothing, no dialogue, no conflict. It makes sense if they knew the audience would be in awe of the whole spectacle.
I watched part of a documentary on the making of the movie the other day, and it helped me appreciate some of the creative choices and see it how audiences would have viewed it when it was new. I need to give it another shot.
Some of that is also the director. It’s Stanley kubric. He really liked having his scenes sink in. I also found it effective to feel a sense of the vastness of space.
The movie is very philosophical. I think it is similar to blade runner 2049 in terms of slow pace sci fi setting not there for your entertainment but to get you to think.
I think while it could be something to watch for entertainment, I’m not sure that’s actually where it shines or what critics even value about it.
Maybe my attention span has been ruined, but Bladerunner 2049 was another that I just couldn’t get into. I can see that there’s something there, but I think I need to be in the right mood for a slow-paced movie.
That’s fair. Personally, between all the dreck I wind up watching as compromise with my partner and kids, getting to pick a movie purely for myself is really rare. If I get to pick a movie for myself, I almost always go for the slow-paced, artsy, philosophical media.
Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy popcorn movies and sharing experiences with my family, but when I get time to myself, I’m not going for lighthearted action/comedy.
I think it’s apt to compare it with Star Wars. As someone who grew up with the prequels, I went back & watched the original trilogy on Disney+ and… oh boy, it was rough. I silently came to the conclusion that nostalgia has a massive effect on your perception.
Sorry to all the older OG Star Wars fans, but, they’re not very good; they aren’t even George Lucas’ best movies, I thought American Graffiti was tiers above Star Wars.
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2001 is one of those movies that’s really important historically, but doesn’t really hold up to modern standards.
Prior to 2001, there wasn’t really a market for non-schlocky SciFi movies, the whole genre was just cheap horror stories about aliens and monsters.
That movie opened the door to let us have more thoughtful genre flicks with much higher budgets.
2001 still holds up because it’s still the most realistic space travel movie ever made. Very few movies come close, 2010 comes close by default, Ad Astra had moments, but it’s a very short list.
Being realistic doesn’t automatically make something a good movie to watch. Much of reality is quite slow and boring.
Your opinion is just an opinion buddy
Try watching it on LSD and see what you think
2c-e for me, blew my damn mind.
But so did The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
Parts of 2001 are more art than a movie telling a story. 2010 is a far better scifi movie overall and a favorite of mine. But there are critics of that one too that say it’s terrible. I always think back to when I was a kid and reading a newspaper review of the new movie out I hadn’t seen yet. “Star Wars is a failure and departure from the science fiction standard.”
there are definitely people back then who treat empire strikes back like people treat the last jedi
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I was going to say I think of it more as a piece of abstract art, than a movie.
I felt this way about Arrival. I absolutely hated it, and then found out it was super popular lol
Damn what didn’t you like about it?? It’s one of my favorite movies, I’ve had friends who didn’t care for it but never seen someone say they hate it haha
It’s been a while since I watched it, so I don’t remember specifics, but I felt like the end of the movie ruined the rest of it. She destroyed poor Jeremy Renner’s life!
Oh wow, I just watched this and absolutely loved it.
I believe that movies based on books are generally not as good, or lacking in some substance, so I always try to read the novel version first before watching the film. This was the case for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
What I didn’t realize is that the movie and novel were created simultaneously. The novel is, in fact, a companion piece for the film, providing more context. So over the decades, I’ve watched as people struggled to understand the hidden meaning of this classic film. There are hundreds of articles written, or YouTube reviews posted, theorizing what the monolith is about, or what the big deal is with the giant space baby, etc. But if you read the book, it explains exactly what it is, right there!
If I had watched the movie on its own, I would’ve been totally lost. But reading the book first helped me understand the more “artsy” scenes, and the film actually makes sense from start to finish. It not only explains exactly what’s happening in each scene, in simple non-metaphorical language, but you also see the inner dialogue of the main characters. Where there are quiet scenes throughout the movie (the film itself is about 90% quiet scenes), there’s actual inner-monologues or exposition going on in the book.
So I’d highly recommend reading the book before you rewatch 2001: A Space Odyssey. You might get more enjoyment out of it.
I had no idea it was also a book! Ok, that sounds like what I need to do.
The books are better for content, as is usually the case. There’s so much more you can do with words that can’t be translated well into visuals. I didn’t care much for 3001, but 2001,2010, and 2061 were good. Even though 2061 both messed up the warning from 2010 as well as the epilogue.
You’re in for a treat! Arthur C. Clarke wrote the book and is probably my favorite sci-fi author. If you like it be sure to check out his other books too.
It was pretty mid.
The first Star Trek movie is kind of a more accessible version of 2001. It’s still pretty slow, but it at least has a semi coherent plot.
Would you believe that I adore that movie?
Well now that I notice the username…nah.
I think it’s better than a lot of people give it credit for.
Fwiw I’m with you on the film but turns out the book is great.
Oh, I just had a flashback to when 2001 was broadcast on television when I was a kid!
I said the next day that I liked it, and damn I was cross examined in the school yard for it. Every detail that made anybody confused was enough to crucify twelve year old me for liking an awesome space thriller with trippy effects and ambiguous ending. I mean, I didn’t get all of it, but I got enough of the vibe. The ending was confusing, but I mean it arguably still is and intentionally so. Especially for the protagonist that goes through a portal and wakes up
deadand… yeah, well, you decide for yourself and I’ll stick to mine.Anyway, the judge was the popular kid that also claimed that in western movies, people that wanted to die were shot for real, so there.
I’ve had that with tons of ‘must see classics’. I’ll sit there and be like ‘I’ve already seen this a thousand times’. And while I of course appreciate the fact that the reason I’ve seen it so often is because that movie did it first back then, doesn’t mean that it’s impactful or interesting to me now.
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Rocky Horror is more campy than just bad imo. It doesn’t take itself seriously, unlike the room. Plus the music is fire.
Plus Tim Curry
Isn’t Rocky horror supposed to be better as a play or something? Something about having the audience there and breaking the 4th wall.
“Better” is subjective. It’s certainly more fun.
Like, as a gay, it almost feels like a betrayal to say I don’t care for Rocky Horror, but I legitimately can’t sit through it…in my living room.
At a midnight showing of Rocky Horror, with the community, it’s a blast.
The fact the Room takes itself so seriously is why it’s so enjoyable. The distance between what it’s trying to accomplish and the result is so profound that it’s an absolute spectacle in and of itself. The sheer confidence behind every single choice makes it so much more funny.
The movie is terrible. It’s the music that kept me going back to it, and the callbacks
“So bad it’s good” movies are another category on its own and I don’t blame you for it. I personally went to a showing of a Neil Breen film but I wouldn’t blame anyone for not being interested in it lol
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I saw his latest film “Cade: The Tortured Crossing” a few months back. The entire theatre of 50ish people were so rowdy and yelling jokes at the film. I’ve never lost my voice watching a film before 10/10 would recommend.
I like The Rocky Horror Picture Show while it has a plot… but about halfway in, it forgets about the plot and devolves into random musical numbers, one after the other. If it kept up its story, I’d enjoy it, but I can only watch the first half before I lose interest.
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How boring. I can’t imagine not being able to find amusement in the Room.
It’s making you “pissed”? Why on earth would it? Why do you care about it enough to be pissed off by it?
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Honestly nothing makes me more curious about a movie than when the the critics score and audience score on a movie are vastly different. Sometimes I’ll agree with the critics, sometimes I’ll agree with the audience, but either way I’ll probably find the movie to be have been worth the watch and interesting if nothing else
That was my experience with Spider-Man Across the Spiderverse. It started really strong, but it drags on for 2.5 hours just to end on a cliff hanger? Fucking what? They couldn’t have cut spider-cat and baby spiderman and fit the ending in there? There was so much fluff that contributed nothing to the movie that it being half a movie completely ruined it for me. 5/10.
Exactly, happens more to me than the other
Yeah, like Dune. Watched it a month ago because it was so hyped. Turned out it was great to fall asleep to 💤
You didn’t like WHAT!?
(ง’̀-'́)ง
Bram St®okers Dracula
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I have a close friend who has absolutely no taste in movies. He likes everything! I’ve learned to stop listening to his feedback for movies, because it could be the worst movie ever made and he’s like “wow, that was such an amazing experience!”. I kind of envy his state of ignorant bliss.
I want to be that way. It seems like a more pleasant way to experience everything, like how kids do.
I started to make a conscious effort to do this for the media I consume. I’ve noticed I’ve been a far less negative person in general since I started doing that.
The secret is mostly to judge a work based on the intent rather than the execution. Most movies have something about them that is interesting, even if the direction/cinematography/acting completely failed to convey it accurately.
My mom is like this. She liked Battlefield Earth lol
Did you have her checked for Scientology?
She’s not religious, she’s just easy to please lol.
Lmao I’m that person. I’m autistic though and because of that I simply don’t notice if acting is good or bad, and I also am very uncritical of the story because I believe everything. Unless it’s really egregious of course, but that doesn’t happen that often.
I used to be this person. I figured, with all the people and money and resources thrown into a full-length feature film project, there always had to be something redeeming about it. Someone loved this film enough to see it through to completion, so why can’t I appreciate that? Even if the acting wasn’t all that good and the sets weren’t super appealing, at least the overarching story was interesting enough to sit through and ponder about afterward.
What cured me was actually watching a ton of Nostalgia Critic videos. His original purpose with his show was to see if nostalgic films from his childhood ('80s/'90s) still held up today. And in almost every case, he tore them apart for being awful films that only his innocent, naive, child self could’ve enjoyed.
He helped me understand what makes a good film. I learned that it’s not just a good story that makes a movie, but in how the story is told. How it impacts audiences emotionally. How well the actors disappear into their roles; how well their lines are written and delivered. As well as many other factors.
I started being more critical of films since then, and I even started my own personal blog to review films in more detail than “It was good; I enjoyed it.” My friend all saw me as the untrustworthy advocate for films, since I used to enjoy absolutely everything, so writing a blog was my way to show them I had changed and could seriously analyze a film for its positives and negatives. Which worked; my friends are more willing to take my film recommendations seriously nowadays.
So you used to enjoy every movie, and now you don’t. Sounds like he did you a disservice.
Just because you can criticize something doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy or appreciate it. Criticism and appreciation are not mutually exclusive.
It usually means you enjoy it less.
Tearing something apart just to tear it apart isn’t “criticism”, it’s just cynical bs.
Good thing that’s not what we’re talking about then.
That’s literally all nostalgia critic and the like do, my dude. The whole schtick is being angry about movies, tv, games, w/e. All they do is look for problems.
I mean the nostalgia critic has plenty of his own shitty takes and opinions when it comes to films, I wouldn’t take his word as law. I say that as someone who used to be a fan.
You might want to check out Your Movie Sucks (YMS) on YouTube as well, even when I don’t agree with his assessments he usually has a good explanation for why he feels the way he does about something in a film, and he definitely has more insightful opinions about music and sound design in films than I do.
He also has some great videos about why the live action Disney remakes suck, which automatically gets my approval.
I’m currently in a similar situation with a close friend. He’s seen more movies than almost anyone I’ve met and yet his tastes are not at all discerning. He’ll also rewatch movies all-the-time which I seldom do.
I love good movies that are actually good. But lately I haven’t been feeling too well physically (health problems -.-) and needed something to watch. And I ended up watching a lot of movies that are generally considered bad. And I liked them. Because I watched them for what they were and didn’t have any expectations.
I thought some were actually ‘decent’. Not the best, but definitely not the trash people said it was (on IMDB and RT) . And then there were some that were really really bad. But most of them were fun! Not good, but fun, which is what I’m usually looking for when watching a movie anyway.
The types of movies or TV shows I like to watch really depend on how I feel. Sometimes I want to watch movie that makes me think or have a big impact and sometimes I want to watch a movie for its entertainment factor. In the end, if I was entertained while watching the movie, the movie was good enough to me at that time.
The 80’s was full of bad but fun movies. Movies like Roadhouse, or Lambda are terrible by today’s standards, but still heckin fun to watch. Anything from Van Damme during that era is amazing. Bad, but amazing. IDK if Big Trouble in Little China counts as bad, but it’s such a joy to watch.
«Heureux les imbéciles» !
One of my biggest pet peeves is when critics judge a movie on what they think it should be, instead of what it’s actually trying to achieve. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine for a film to be big, loud, and nonsensical. Sometimes, a movie needs to be “complex” (although what critics call “complex” makes me think that a lot of them consider filmgoers to be idiots with the attention spans of goldfish).
Are there plenty of problems with any given popular film? Yes, but if it satisfies the audience it’s for, shut up.
I knew a dude that didn’t like any movie that didn’t teach him anything. That’s fine. That’s preference I guess no judgment… Until you had to work with him and listen to him drone on and on about how uncultured or unintelligent an animated Disney movie is for eight hours. Every now and then I see a review with someone complaining about how they didn’t learn anything/the movie is too dumbed down and I wonder if he’s still at it lol
Oppenheimer didn’t teach me to build a bomb zero stars
But it did teach me to how to bag Florence Pugh, 7/7 erections
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filmgoers to be idiots with the attention spans of goldfish
Why do you think big, loud, and nonsensical is so popular?
Yeah but critics have to say good films are shit and shit films are good, because that way we think they’re really smart and have some god-level insight that we’re too dumb to perceive, so we keep giving them money to be smart while we carry on enjoying the shit films.
If they said good films were good and shit films were shit then we’d all go “well duh” and not think they’re doing anything useful.
I agree 100%. Before rating a movie I always ask myself if the team behind it managed to reach the goals they set for themselves. If all they wanted to make was a cheesy but entertaining slasher movie and succeeded, it can get the same score from me as some Oscar-nominated drama with a triple-A cast.
I had a friend at school who did this. At the cinema, after the movie was over, he would be one of the loudest voices in the group, talking about how awesome the movie was, how it’s going to do so well at the box office and how he couldn’t wait for the next one to come out.
The very next day, he’d come in armed with research on all the plot holes and ways the movie failed from other critics, and then just lay into the movie as if it was the worst movie he’d seen and how it was a waste of his money.
We would point out how annoying he was for convincing himself that he hated it. The only opinion that counted was the one right after the movie ended; that’s the best and most honest review one could give. He kept on doing it. It wasn’t cool, Chris.
Always a gd Chris ain’t it
everybody hates chris
My brother is a Chris and has watched that show all the way through several times.
I often look at reviews after I watch a movie and it’s usually a terrible idea. It’s like we’re training ourselves to become angry. On the other hand, every once in a while reading reviews makes you realize a whole bunch of stuff that you otherwise would have missed. This happened to me with Mother!, the movie with Jennifer Lawrence.
That’s funny, yesterday when I was reading this thread I thought specifically about Aronofsky as an example of a director that tells deep, layered, surrealistic stories that don’t go over well with the average moviegoer. My mind went to Pi and The Fountain, but I had forgotten mother! completely, so thanks for the reminder.
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I think the music is incredible and the story itself was amazing… but the whole film is a slow trudge to get to its point. I wish it had more substance instead of just dragging us along on sidequests to get to the climax.
When Anne Hathaway’s character started going off about love being the most powerful thing in the universe or something, I started tuning out. You have all these scientists, supposedly logical and rational people, who are fighting to save humanity from extinction, and you wanna trust in an emotional concept like love to guide you?! Nope, credibility revoked.
If memory serves, I think her argument was to save a loved one who was sent on a potentially suicidal mission by himself to another planet. Instead of picking a logical course to a planet that might be good for humanity, she wanted to go after her lover and save him. Which might doom humanity.
I agree that the “love” argument was poorly stated, and framed in a stupid way (as a force, really?).
But I think it ultimately makes sense, in a Richard Dawkins’ Selfish Gene kind of way. Our species has strong pro-social tendencies, where we are willing to put in huge amounts of labor, resources, and sacrifice for loved ones. In the aggregate, across large populations, that can add up to some pretty powerful emergent group behavior that adds up to something that is difficult to model through its individual components. Our species has done some amazing things, and will probably continue to do amazing things, motivated by a bunch of emotions that include what we call “love.”
I thought it was a pretty good mid-season episode of TNG.
My wife and I walked out of the first iron man movie. It was so stupid and cheesy. 1 gazillion dollar franchise later, I still don’t get it. People had fun with those movies and I’m glad for that.
I thought the first one was entertaining and pretty good. The ones that follow are very bad though, and still massively popular. They get so stupid that I just can’t suspend disbelief any more, and have to turn them off.
Felt similar when a girl I was seeing in college dragged me to Ant Man. Afterward, the entire group of people we went with were raving about how good it was,am and I was left wondering if we all saw the same movie.
I loved this movie when it came out, but you’re right, there isn’t much worth in it if you think about the plot or the science for more than 2 seconds. Soundtrack is still one of my favorites, though. Last time I watched it, I was high as a kite, and that made it pretty enjoyable.
Emotionally, I think it does a great job. Logically, it’s pretty stupid. The music, the effects, and the plot all work together to make you feel something, but the plot doesn’t really make sense when you think about it at all. I don’t think that should be a requirment. There are plenty of stories that do the same thing.
I think the issue is that it’s sci-fi, which has a certain expectation of logic. The characters are all scientists, but then they just ditch logic. I think it took themes from another genre and put them into sci-fi and it did it fairly effectively. It’s just the sci-fi is usually there to make you think, but Interstellar you’re just supposed to feel and not think.
I had the same exact impression of it. It’s so refreshing to see other people thinking the same of it.
It is useless to read these review of movies that target certain market. People who love science fiction would glorify the movie, while other who don’t care will not bother writing or thinking about it.
I went to see it in a theater, and left half way through it felt like a waste of time.
My wife and I went into The Northman blind, and we honestly loved the experience. I don’t give a shit whether or not it’s realistic or historical accurate on any front. It was like John Wick with Norse mythology. Just an intense and barbaric ride from start to finish. I was genuinely surprised to learn how universally disliked it was. But people are out there buying tickets to 9 Fast 9 Furious 9, so I don’t exactly value the reviews of opinions of strangers.
I know people who swear The Prestige is the worst movie they’ve ever seen, one person said they turned it off half an hour in because “nothing made any sense”
But you better believe they praise every MCU movie like it’s Shawshank Redemption.
There are plenty of movies I love but will readily admit they’re garbage. Like Evolution. Hot garbage but I love every second of its shiny, flake-free existence.
I feel very strongly about hating the Prestige, but only because of the ending. I spent the whole final act thinking “oh, he’s not actually cloning himself, he’s just making it look like he is so that he can get back at his rival.” That’s what the message throughout the movie seemed to be, that you can make normal things look like magic. Kept waiting for that final twist, only to find that actually yes, Jackman’s character was using real magic. It felt like a cheap shot that a movie about rival stage magicians had to resort to fantasy magic in the end.
spoiler
Purely from a plot perspective, Jackman’s character using fantasy magic is very deus ex machina (no pun intended), but it really works from a symbolism POV. The whole point is that Jackman’s character was so driven to best his rival(s) that he was willing to literally (metaphorically) kill himself, just like Bale’s character is willing to die to keep his secret.
The whole movie is a story about being consumed by competitiveness or dedication to art to the point of self-destruction, and to that point, I think it’s very successful
I get the symbolism, it just fell flat to me because of how much it felt like a cop-out. To each their own, though.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you; I’m just saying that it seemed to me that it was an intentional choice by the writers and director rather than a cop-out. A little bit of magical realism about how his drive manifested the technology he “needed” creating a monkey’s paw situation.
Then again, I don’t think I’ve seen the movie more than once since I saw it theaters, so I might just be reading too much into it and remembering it with rose-colored glasses.
I love the Prestige. And MCU movies for the most part. Shawshank redemption was fine
Don’t get me wrong, I was SO HYPED for The first half of the Endgame series. It kind of petered out and I didn’t even end up watching endgame until over a year and a half after it left theaters. But knowing I wanted to see it I avoided most spoilers. I think we know which one I LITERALLY COULDN’T avoid.
I don’t have much interest in the ones that came after endgame, they could be better than the originals for all I know, I’ve just lost my taste for them for now.
My wife and I did watch all of them in Chronological order though two years ago, since she had never seen most of them.
People have different tastes in movies, and that’s okay. I won’t hold shawshank against you lol my own wife didn’t care for it, though for my sake she claims it was great.
I guess my very lazy point is that your taste in movies can be whatever you want, but we can’t pretend basic action movies are cinematic masterpieces, or that being a proclaimed “cinematic masterpiece” means you’ll like the movie. (I’d argue a movie can be a master class of cinema while still being an objectively bad movie)
And this is why I only really care what critics think. Maybe that makes me pretentious or a movie snob, but fuck it. I like paying attention and analyzing movies (along with books, music, video games, etc.), and IMO, the average viewer can’t handle being asked to think about anything with more depth than a bird bath. On the other hand, 90% of the people that are paid to put a little critical thought into their media consumption reviewed The Northman positively, and I agree with them. It was fucking great, and I don’t care what the unwashed masses think.
When critics and audiences agree, I generally know I’m in for an enjoyable experience, but probably nothing too great. But when critics love it and audiences don’t, I get excited.
Reviews are only useful insofar as you vibe with the reviewer. If you’ve got really specific taste, mass appeal isn’t a helpful data point.
This is definitely true. Seeing who liked or disliked a film is particularly helpful (to my mind, even more so when talking about music). On average, I tend to prefer the taste of critics and other people who dedicate their energy and thought to analyzing a particular media form, but beyond a simple RT/Metacritic score, I prefer to see who wrote what.
The Northman is an excellent film experience. A very unique film and an interesting take on the original tale that Hamlet is based on.
What you described sounded a lot closer to FF9 than something that would allow one to look down on the tastes of others lol
9F9F9*
Who cares, as long as you liked it?
Rotten tomatos had Interstellar listed as 70% fresh, the week it come out.
Thr “critics” called the characters half baked.
I was so stoked for that movie i ignored it. And im so glad I did.
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But that is like your opinion man, I think the whole “love” thing is hot garbage. Nice pictures, garbage movie.
Better plot point than Gravity which starts off with a mysterious force of acceleration pulling the astronaut dude away.
I dont know how you feel this way. Tbh.
I can get some of the hate on the love travels thru time thing.
But come on. There was so many cool aspects to this movie. I think my favorite part is the shallow sea plant. Or the accurate black hole imagery.
Matt damons character is perfectly flawed.
The inside of the Tesseract!?!Please tell me another movie you do like so I can jugde you for it.
/s
If there’s a problem with Interstellar, it’s not the characters, because the characters aren’t really the point…
Interstellar was the first thing I thought of too. I thought the reading of the poem was badass and fit in perfectly.
Ironically, I took that challenge when I first read the XKCD and found quite a few pretty quickly. It’s either surprising how little people agree with each other OR how bad my movie tastes are :)
The hard parts are that post-2000 it was harder to find a <50 movie at all… and the fact you can’t easily just grab a list of <50 movies after 2000 to read through and pick. In the 90’s it’s the opposite, since movies were so polarizing. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective sits at a freaking 48%. In fact, almost every movie I grew up loving is <50%… but then 2000 hits and it changes. I spent an hour and found a dozen back then, then moved on. But it’s still so much easier to pick your favorite pre-2000 classic and find it’s sitting well under 50%.
Ace Ventura, although enjoyed at the time, hasn’t aged perfectly. There are some fun moments, and there are… others.
It’s still a reasonably funny movie. I watched it a few years back and enjoyed it.
Importantly, I can probably come up with 50 movies I liked before 2000 that are <50. Hell, I grew up with Richard Pryer’s “The Toy”, which sits at 3%. College-me really liked Toys, sitting at 29%. If it’s pre-2000, I can literally name almost any non-disney movie I love and find it in the “rotten” bin.
Im not saying some bits aren’t funny, but it depends on whether “parts are funny” is more important to you than the following statements, vis a vis your enjoyment of a body of work, which may affect your enjoyment in a cultural way (as these considerations could set a context that is uncomfortable for a vehicle for jokes and humor), or might affect your enjoyment in a critical way (as these considerations could, to some be hallmarks of poor writing and dramaturgy).
- dolphins are better off in captivity
- mental health institutions are wacky fun
- it’s OK for private detectives to interrogate the parents of leads under false pretenses
- medical health records should be available to private, sole traders even if they have to engage in espionage to obtain them
- kissing a trans person is extremely disgusting and wrong
- a man kissing “a man” (with all apologies, cf supra bullet) is extremely disgusting and wrong
- if you suspect someone is trans you should forcibly remove their clothing in front of law enforcement
- to “free” someone’s dog, it is ok to stalk them, destroy their property, and kidnap the dog
- white men in Africa are saviors and extremely sexually desirable (sequel)
he also
- has a massive disrespect for women
- opens conversations with women with unwanted sexual innuendo
- trafficks illegal exotic animals, keeping them in squalid, urban living conditions
- doesn’t pay his creditors
- desecrates holy places of tribal persons (sequel)
it was also absolutely panned by critics at the time for being homophobic(! in the 90s!) — and for being quite annoying, which, of all these criticisms are the two most fair ones.
Looking at your bullet points, I’m thinking you’re going way too political about this. I’m a believer that comedy gets “the hall pass” so long as the comic is not racist/sexist/whatever. I am a huge fan of a stand-up comic with serious disabilities who spends an entire hour making fun of those disabilities. Of all genres of book/film that fail to age well/badly because of the changing in political winds, I would say comedy is the most protected and protectable.
I’ve seen your argument used to ban Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer from schools. And those aren’t comedies.
You have every right to avoid old movies that happen to do things unacceptable in current society. I support that. But unless you have evidence that the actors/directors feel the way you implied OR that the movie is going to influence society’s disposition, it should not be affecting an objective metric of the movie’s quality. You can laugh at bad things as long as you know they’re bad things and you’re not going to support bad things in the real world.
Let me remind you of Mel Brooks’ Spanish Inquisition. Nothing you mention above is darker than that.
I was writing in the detached/supposed-omniscient voice of “The Critic”, not necessarily me qua me.
I think its an interesting discussion to participate in, but I’d request a generosity of not thinking I am 100% ideologically committed to one side of any of those points (note my frequent use of “depends”, “might”, “may”, “if”, etc). I think they are interesting starting points for a conversation about this particular piece.
But - I also recognize that further up the chain, someone notes their displeasure at the very concept of art criticism. I take pleasure in it, others may not. Cest la vie.
Fair point about art critique. I’m not saying a person can’t rate it low. I’m just not a believer that comedy can age badly. If anything, the opposite. It is a statement for the flaws of our past.
Take any classical book where slavery was commonplace, or men lorded power over women and abused them. Any book before suffrage, or before the 1850’s will depict that. The classics we read or watch are of a worse time, and that should itself be a lesson for us.
Of Mice and Men. George killing Lenny. There’s a laundry list 100x longer than Ace Ventura. Some parts of that were a statement about society, but some parts only became a statement about society 100 years later.
Easy, I genuinely love the Constantine movie.
Everybody else hates it because it’s very different from the comics, oh no.
And it’s 46% on rotten tomatoes.
I loved that movie as well and didn’t understand the hate.
Classic problem of shoving a good/decent movie into an existing franchise and expecting the fans excited enough to see it not to mind.
Sometimes not knowing the source material is bliss, I genuinely enjoyed Constantine as well. Even my GF liked it, to my surprise. 😁
After watching the TV series, which is more faithful to the comics, I can understand the wasted pontential of the movie, but as is, is still a fantastic fantasy thriller!
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Well when the character makes sense or it really doesn’t matter, it works. But when it’s shoehorned in and there is that one scene where they tell their backstory or explain their identity and it’s out of the blue and takes you out of the story at hand it’s bad and really ruins the movie.
I haven’t experienced this at all, but I might not be viscerally bothered by a trans person existing to the point of ruining the movie for me.
It’s not the person it’s how the scene is portrayed and how last minute added the scene feels.
What you’re saying is a good point, even if it’s being downvoted to hell. The shoehorned is the difference between say:
Snape and Dumbledoore supposedly being gay lovers despite it not being hinted at even once in the entire film’s chronology up to the point JKR said so.
Vs. Something like Modern Family where they came right out the door with Mitchell and Cameron being gay, and then used that as an actual story element throughout the series rather than just shoehorning it in to appeal to the LGBT crowd then never bringing it up again.
One feels like a tasteful, meaningful addition to the story, the other feels like a marketing gimmick.
The harry potter thing isn’t shoehorning if it was never originally in the story, that’s retconning
You do understand that something can be both shoehorned in and a retcon right?
It is a retcon shoehorned into the lore to appeal to the LGBT market - and if anything is worse than that, because again this is never brought up in the main movies (not sure about the spin-offs). It’s literally just marketing.
Exactly, like in the Witcher they made the bard have a gay love scene even though it was not in any of the games or books. That scene was not needed, we knew he was a horny fella but the scene felt out of place.
I mean, I don’t know if he’s gay, but in Witcher 3 he made a drunken pass at a cross-dressing male elf, who rebuffed his advances and told Dandelion that he wasn’t into men. So…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO7dTrOoO6Y
This being said, I hate it when they crowbar that shit in. You can tell it’s not been written by a gay man, and often they really play to stereotype. Inevitably they make a character that is gay, rather than make an interesting character who is also gay.
Although, and let’s be honest here, the reality is that people complaining about gay characters are more often than not low-key homophobic.
Jaskier (dandelion) did have some male partners, hinted at in 3 even with an elf in drag who is one of dandelions lovers.
Not something I found in the books, but it does seem to be in the games
I feel that way about left-handed people.
They’re so sinister aren’t they?
Do you think a male or cisgendered person can be “shoehorned in”, or is this something that you believe can only happen with women or trans people?
Yes, any time they throw a dude in and make him super stupid or overtly “manly” or a horn dog it is the same feeling. Any time a character is a super exaggeration of a human trait it ruins a movie/show. The characters trait does not progress the story so it feels forced
It seems like your issue has more to do with stereotypes, as opposed to “shoehorning someone in” that happens to be a particular demographic.
Do you have any examples for comparison?
There is one in every season of Star Trek Discovery. But also the Quantum Leap reboot the nerdy tech person, they stop everything in their quest to rescue Ben to give the traumatic backstory theirs. It was very loosely based on the episode and felt really not with the flow of the story. I’ll have to look up the episode and timestamp.
For movies there was one I watched recently but I can’t remember the name.
I know what you mean that some aspects in Star Trek Discovery felt a bit forced, but on the other hand a 100% cishet crew would have been even more forced, especially with non-human crew members or human-like ones from different solar systems.
I think you’re being downvoted for this because, even if it’s a good point in isolation, it’s in the direction of “trans person bad”, and thus indistinguishable from a transphobe adopting the point without believing it. You gotta include a few instances of “_____ did it really well. We need more like that.” to balance it out.
The problem is that it isn’t a good point in isolation, it’s a point uttered only by people who are bothered by the presence of queer characters
Sorry my fist sentence was meant to be a positive one. ST Discovery did it well with the Trill, Trell? Character.
Also USA Shameless had a character that flowed well with the story line.
Shoehorning is a lie. queer people exist IRL wherever they want to and movies need to reflect that
Yes, but there is a difference between a protagonist that happens to be queer and a protagonist whose whole persona is that they are queer.
It gets worse when them being queer is the only justification for why they are good instead of the movie showing us they are a good person (or strong, or charismatic, or whatever).
The same can apply to female protagonists as well.
Some people in real life make their sexuality their entire persona.
Those people exist.
Why shouldn’t they be allowed to be a protagonist?
Because in a story you generally don’t want your characters to be as vapid as a puddle of water, like people who make one trait their entire personality.
Having a character with a varied personality makes it easier for people to view them as an actual person, rather than just a narrative tool, which makes them take the characters struggles more seriously.
The other person said it better than I ever could.
But also: they can be a protagonist. It’s just that these movies are usually pretty shit.
The difference between real life and fiction, is that real life doesn’t follow a story. Things happen because things happen.
But if you’re going to introduce an element into a story, it should have some kind of impact on that story - more than just a drive-by “I’m queer” that never gets elaborated on.
I used this as an example elsewhere, but tell me which feels more shoehorned in:
Snape and Dumbledoore supposedly being gay lovers despite it not being hinted at even once in the entire film’s chronology up to the point JKR said so, and is never brought up again (at least in the main movies, never saw the spin-offs).
Mitchell and Cameron in Modern Family where not only is their relationship introduced right away, but also used as an actual story element throughout the series.
Which one feels like it was a meaningful addition vs. a marketing gimmick?
That’s what shoe-horning is. It’s adding a trait to a character just to make them more marketable, or to make them seem deeper than a puddle of water, without ever eluding to that trait anywhere it actually matters.
Does “I’m straight” have to have an impact on the story?
If you’re going to make a character’s straightness an explicit character trait, then it should have impact.
Think “How I Met Your Mother” for example. You have three guys in the main cast (Ted, Marshall, and Barney), all of whom have their straightness pointed out right away, but pursue it throughout the series in different ways due to their other characteristics. Marshall the married man, Ted the hopeless romantic, and Barney the bachelor/player (ironically played by Neil Patrick Harris)
Or the James Bond movies, almost infamous for having heterosexual romantic subplots (lacklustre plots IMO, but still). Those subplots alwayd tend to have some impact on how the movie plays out - whether he gets tricked by her, has to rescue her, or is even rescued by her, his romance with the Bond girl always affects the story in some way or another.
Given we live in a hetero-normative society, of course most heterosexual romantic plots are going to focus purely on the romance aspect rather than the intricacies of being straight, but could you replace the Bond girl with a guy? In theory you could, but in reality Bond’s sexuality is so well defined in canon at this point, you would be told you shoehorned it in if you tried, as it has had not just an affect on the movies, but also people’s perceptions of Bond.
This is to say that a character’s sexuality is a fundemental trait of a person, something that paints their dynamic with other people (sometimes subtly, sometimes very unsubtly). Just tacking that sexuality on as an afterthought in such a way that you could take any and all mention of sexuality away and it’d have literally no affect on the character dynamics or the story being told is just bad storytelling no matter the sexuality being exploited for marketing.
It’s wild that you pick 2 of the most egregious, sexist womanizers in fiction as if that’s a meaningful precedent against the countless heterosexual characters and relationships that just exist, as homosexual characters and relationships should be allowed to. Sexuality can be an important trait of a character, but acting like it has to be is absurd.
One, I could give you that for James Bond, but are you really telling me you think How I Met Your Mother is sexist?
Two, I pulled two prominent examples out of my head, I apologise if they weren’t perfect examples by your definition.
You want other examples, pick basically any media where relationships are a thing:
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Friends, exploring the on and off again dynamic between Ross and Rachel, the more stable relationship of Monica and Chandler, or the rather innocent bachelor lifestyles of Joey and Phoebe. The characters heterosexual traits have a huge effect on how the series pans out.
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Superman, in almost every iteration of Superman, he falls in love with and pursues Lois Lane. Every iteration handles the dynamic differently, but him falling in love is nearly always subplot.
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Spiderman, his first relationship with Gwen Stacy, or rather how it ends plays a large part in how Peter handles being Spiderman, and that’s without mentioning how MJ influences him in most iterations.
All three of these, the character’s heterosexuality is explicit and has an impact on the story.
When I say it has to have an impact on the story, I’m not saying it has to have a huge impact and be a deep introspection into being LGBT, I just mean that if you’re going to say a character is LGBT, it should have at least a minor impact on the character in the story, i.e. you should actually show them acting as such rather than mentioning it and going nowhere with it as if it’s just a throwaway line.
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Well, as this is something that happens often with OP, the chances of that happening every time, and them not being aware of that seems pretty slim. Really weird, random, and oddly specific thing to suggest, though.
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Same problem, different movies I guess… Donnie Darko is a personal favorite.
I also have this disorder. The entire last 15 years has been really rough.
Man I hated that movie and it felt so weird because I generally always have some sort of consensus with movies, but everyone enjoyed Donnie Darko, except for me.
Know how I can tell you watched the Director’s Cut?
Alien? Masterpiece. Great audio, atmosphere, and tension, story, with realistic characters. I loved how Ripley wasn’t the main focus out of the gate and gave time for the rest of the crew to be seen.
Aliens? Trash, garbage. I hated everything about it. Drivel. Okay audio, horrible cast, bad characters, stupid conclusion. Ripley went from “scared captain” to “Fuck you I’m an alien killing badass” fuck.
I don’t normally shit on people for liking something, but to the people who enabled that trilogy to continue in the way it did…fuck you.
Random fun fact: in older titles Hungarian translators loved giving weird names to movies (probably though it was a bit generic), so they named the first Alien “The 8th passenger: Death”, which is like kinda cool.
They probably though it was gonna be one off thing, so after they announced Aliens, translators were like, ok, what now. We cant name it the same, but still the audience need to know they are connected, so they double down, calling it “The name of planet: Death”. not as cool but crisis averted.
So when Alien 3 is announced, they are like we are fucked, but its the end of the trilogy, so go big, final title: “The final solution: Death”. (This has some wierd implications, but no more Alien movies, we can leave these namings behind.)
So Alien 4 get announced and they are finally like fuck it, we had enough of this shit, we just translate it literally. “Aliens 4: resurrection of Death”
After that, they drop transitions, like any, they release them with English title only. This has more to do with the gap between films and how the majority of sci-fi audience probably already know English, but its funny to think that the translators finally just gave up.
Post fun fact fun fact: you know those TV channels that play old dvd movies? They are stuck with these transitions. Ads on those are “Tune in for the classic hit horror movie, the 8th passenger, Death”
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Broke: Wahhhh everyone hates the movie I liked. They are all wrong and stupid.
Woke: Yeah that movie was crap. I loved it!
People need to accept that a film can be entertaining without actually being good.
Street Fighter is my go to for this. It’s objectively awful. Half the cast can’t act for shit. The plot of a 2D arcade fighting game was never going to stand up to a cinema audience trapped with it for an hour and a half. But then Raul Julia shows up and old-school chews the scenery. He knows it’s shit too, but by fuck he’s going to make you enjoy it.
Why I enjoyed all Resident Evil films and Doom. Bad, but I don’t care. It was fun for some reason and that’s good enough for me.
I’m convinced if you don’t love the sonic movies, you missed the whole point.
You can’t make a good sonic film. It’s a stupid concept with no nuance or reality, and has a plot of bad guy hates fast animal.
So someone made the movies so absurdly stupid that they’re good again. I’ve been playing sonic since I was 3, from the original until now. The only thing I wanted from a sonic movie was unrelated product placement, ham fisted sensitive scenes, Jim Carrey doing whatever he fucking feels like, and forced olive garden.
The first movie legit gets one more star for every olive garden ad. Then the second cast fucking Idris Elba as knuckles and had a character referred to as the olive garden guy.
Absolute genius. It could never be great, so go for absurdism.
I did enjoy it, ngl.
But I swear they did the teeth thing for the free marketing. There’s no way they intended to put it out like that. Pure nightmare fuel.
I kind of wish they went with the original shitty design. It would have helped my cause.
I love shoot em up, it’s so bad, same style as kund fury. It’s gold.
I’m very discerning with media in general, and it has to be worth my time if I’m going to watch it. I love movies you discover more in on every rewatch, and can get in to solid discussions about character motives or possible themes. But you have to know what you’re getting into. Some movies are definitely just bad and not worth watching, but others have a goal and meet it.
I’ve had superhero fatigue since about 2005, but that being said, a friend wanted to watch Venom with me a few weeks ago. It’s not a good movie, but I wasn’t not entertained.
Why is that embarrassing? Feels good to break from borg mentality. Means it spoke to you in away it didn’t for others. Fly your freak flag.
I’m old, it used to be “emperor’s robes” :/
That’s the opposite, that’s when everyone says they like something that’s bad, but you admit to not liking it.
But with some extra pretentiousness, where you also claim that everyone secretly agrees with you that the thing is bad and refuses to admit it rather than acknowledging the fact that others genuinely hold a different opinion.
Damn. Humanity is complicated.
Rotten Tomatoes is one of the worst rating systems out there. I use IMDB, and even then I take ratings with a grain of salt.
Rotten Tomatoes just combines all the ratings they can get their hands on, they don’t rate anything themselves.
And they have recently found to have paid fornsome reviews.
I have just learned to accept that if I enjoy the movie watching experience and feel it was worth my time, it doesn’t really matter what others think. That doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the film in the slightest. I may be curious why people disagree though, at the very least.
Movies don’t always have to be a slam dunk or a masterpiece. I watched the detective pikachu movie on edibles and had no clue what any of the plot was but I loved every minute because the visuals were stellar and something I’d wanted to see as a kid. The Ryan Reynolds shit had me mega confused lol
Even if I didn’t like a movie, at least I have an experience to share (more applies to watching with someone else) and something to discuss and keep my mind occupied for a bit on something that is low-stakes at the end of the day.
Even if I absolutely do not like a movie at all, at least all I’m out on is a little time and maybe money; and maybe I can bitch to a friend if they’ve seen it.
