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.
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
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.
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.
Pocahontas in blue
You had me with LOTR for a sec 😂
And the worst part? Unobtainium - ugh.
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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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.
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.
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
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.
In the spirit of this post, drag doesn’t like Spider-Man 2. The first half of the movie is just watching Peter suck at his life and be punched down down down. It’s torture porn. No wonder he lost his mojo, being Spider-Man sucks. And if Peter isn’t Spider-Man, then people die in burning buildings. Peter’s arc is realising that he needs to intentionally ruin his life and suffer, because the alternative is worse.
It’s maybe a good piece of ethical philosophy and it makes us admire Peter, but it’s just fundamentally unfun and depressing.
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
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.
Same. I like animated superhero films more that live action ones, except for a few like Watchmen.
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.
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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.
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
honestly, i disagree. i really don’t see the big problems with the ending. i actually even like it.
the library (called a tesseract in the movie) is constructed by the future humans, who have control of 5d space, and who include Murphy, who actually lived in the room connected to the tesseract. it’s built to look like that, so Cooper, a 3d being, can actually understand it. it’s basically stretching out time and gravity into a 3d space. the library is not something the black hole made up because Cooper loves Murphy (which i thought what happened on my first watch), it’s what the future humans made with the help of the black hole. love ties thematically into it, 'cause Cooper loves and knows Murphy so well, he knows how to tell her the quantum data from the black hole, or something. and Cooper, or the future humans for that matter, can’t say or do anything directly, 'cause in the past, they’re only able to affect gravity (and because of the construction of the tesseract, Cooper can only control the gravity of that one room.) the reason for why the future humans don’t go just directly do it themselves is explained as them not being able to pinpoint a specific space, or time for it, which is why Cooper, who can traverse the tesseract for a specific point in time and space in that room to tell Murphy the quantum data, which allows the future humans to do all of the crazy 5d stuff.
anyway, sorry for the rambling. Interstellar is my favourite movie, and i really love even the ending of it. multiple scenes, including the ending, make me bawl like a baby, like no other movie has done to me, and i love all the hard sci-fi it has. sci-fi so hard, that physicists learned something new about black holes, because of the equations used to make the black hole cgi in it.
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.
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 interstellar suffered from it’s hype. i expected a great, innovative movie and found it… okay.
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.
Yes. Fucking yes. That movie and everyone in it is so dumb, I wonder who the people raving about this hot garbage are.
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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.
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)
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.
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!
Saving Private Ryan
I like Spielberg, but compared to others in the war drama genre like Band of Brothers or Full Metal Jacket, SPR is laughably bad.
The tone of the movie, trying to be more inspirational than realistic, was awkward at best. Acting was pretty mediocre, probably because the script and characters were 1 dimensional.
It completely disregards the historical context of the war. You could watch this movie and learn absolutely nothing about the history of WWII.
Now Band of Brothers. That was some amazing retelling of true war stories. It wasn’t trying to be inspirational. It was just honest about the chaos and brutality of war. That made it harrowing heartbreaking, infuriating, and inspirational all at once.
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The beginning of Saving Private Ryan is the only part worth to watch. It’s pretty meh afterwards.
It’s kind of interesting how the reasons people dislike things range from “it sucks” to “here is a carefully constructed argument showing why the film’s thesis promotes toxic ideas of etc etc”
Also interesting when someone’s reasons for hating something are someone’s reason for loving it. Like a review says “It’s full of sad gay shit” and one chunk of people are going to boo and the other are going to perk right up.
Also interesting when someone’s reasons for hating something are someone’s reason for loving it. Like a review says “It’s full of sad gay shit” and one chunk of people are going to boo and the other are going to perk right up.
I love this! I joked on a music album with a group is that we all liked it but not a single one of us could agree on a favorite song, I was like “That’s as successful as you can ask for for a band.” because you learn a lot about everyone with that. I don’t enjoy the “it sucks” commentary because it’s nothing to work with to understand where people are coming from, at least “Boring” helps get an idea from someone.
But you expressed 100% why I love this thread.
I know I’ll get shit, but Pulp Fiction sucks. It’s not about anything, Bruce Willis adds nothing to the film at all, and it’s confusing to watch without having any real reason to be or payoff.
The worst part is that it’s one of those things where if you don’t like it, the fans just belittle you and claim you’re “Just not smart enough to get it man.” or they’ll be passive aggressive about it. “Oh it’s okay, my ditzy blonde girlfriend doesn’t get it either.” or “Not every movie can be about guns and shit, I know you stopped paying attention after the opening.”
It’s a shame because it was hyped up to me as one of the best movies of all time, and I try to watch it thinking this time it will click, this time I can see what the fuss is about.
And each time, it’s just as terrible as I remember for all the same reasons as last time.
While on this subject It’s a TV Show and not a movie, but I legitimately believe Andor is one of the worst pieces of Star Wars media ever created and if given the choice I’d sooner watch the Holiday Special because at least it’s entertainingly bad. Instead of being a god damn hour straight of characters marching like they’re at a military parade just to get to a boring shoot-out at a heist where everyone dies, only unlike when everyone dies in the heist in Rogue One, I don’t shed a single tear because everyone involved with said heist has done absolutely nothing but bitch at Andor for not being “one of the cool kids” so if I’m feeling any emotion it’s annoyance that my time getting to know these losers was completely wasted and relief that such unlikable characters are dead.
But hey, at least it only ruined Cassian Andor, it could have ruined someone who’s been in more than one movie like Book of Boba Fett did. Ya know what Boba Fett’s “book” is called in this show; Character Assassination: A How-To Guide
I don’t know how you ruin a character who’s done nothing but say “He’s no good to me dead” in one movie, and have a retconned-in-most-continuities death in the next, but leave it to Disney’s second Dark Age to find a way. But hey, at least every one agrees that Book of Boba Fett is trash instead of kissing the ground it walks on like Andor. So there’s that.
Andor is a show so bad that there’s a character named Cyril who’s entire existence is dedicated to scenes where he eats Cereal. Absolute trash.
Anyway getting back to how the pulp of orange juice is more fun to watch than Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino is a hack who sucks at every aspect of film making that isn’t writing dialogue. Resevoir Dogs was okay though.
It REALLY didn’t need the rape scene… aside from that I am a fan tho :P
Napoleon dynamite was fucking garbage and don’t think it should have ever existed. No humor and barley anything. Honestly feel like the movie rubber was better
I wonder… is it because you have little/no experience with small town America? I loved Napoleon Dynamite partly because it’s somewhat nostalgic for me. The movie appeals to people who grew up in the sticks and knew people like Napoleon Dynamite.
I grew up small town America, older Millinial, I’m the demographic for that movie.
I couldn’t finish the movie.
It really was popular because its humor was so “fresh.” This was just before internet/youtube culture took off and most Americans hadn’t seen such a dry, peculiar film about their own culture. I fucking love it but it’s certainly not for everyone, that’s for sure.
100% respect your opinion. This isn’t me telling you you’re wrong, just sharing my experience with the movie.
When my wife and I first watched it, after we finished, we looked at each other and were like, “what the fuck did we just watch?”. We thought it was awful.
The next morning we were quoting it and laughing our asses off at the utter absurdity of the movie. We now both love the movie.
Edit: grammar and stupid autocorrect
Hey, Rubber was a phenomenal movie.
Rubber is a masterclass in film making. We watched a fucking tire and it was entertaining as fuck.
Lord of the ring. I think I just don’t like this kind of movies.
I’ve tried to read the books three times and watch the films twice. It’s just so long and boring…
Elf.
Once you’ve seen the first 3 minutes and get the premise, then the entire rest of the film is so predictable in its jokes and situations that I derived absolutely zero pleasure from watching it and it just grated the entire way through.
Films can be funny because the initial premise leads to really entertaining, unexpected or clever situations… or a film can super straight up and shallow in its humour.
I really don’t get why Elf is so incredibly popular.
I can’t stand Will Ferrell. He’s basically Adam Sandler at this point, only without the redemption arc of Uncut Gems and Hustle.
Christmas movies are loved bc of how comforting they are, the message 99% of the time is “i didn’t believe and now i do”. Honestly though it’s still unbelievable to me he ends up with a romantic love interest bc he’s basically a huge 5 year old, which was the joke the whole time. And it’s one of my fav xmas movies.
Hard agree.
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So are most Pixar movies. The problem is there’s nothing there for adults with an IQ above about 80.
If you didn’t watch it as a kid, you probably won’t enjoy it.
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.
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…”
“Sit down I’ve got a movie I want you to watch. It’s called What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.”
- some dumb wrong people I know
I really enjoyed this movie but I also really enjoyed how you phrased this comment
I just couldn’t with that film,
I watched that movie way too young(maybe 6ish?) and all I remember(warning: spoilers for a movie from 1992)was the mom dying and them lighting the house on fire because she was too large to move.
That movie was not for children. I cannot say whether it was good, since I only watched it the one time, but I wasn’t a fan of it either. I’m unsure of how valid my opinion on it is though given the circumstances.
That’s the right movie; it’s basically about a family that sucks but you’ve got to do what you have to, most of the characters are miserable and/or irritating and I don’t comprehend the recreational use of this film.