Lurker > LinkMarioSamus

The best part is Tommy had access to an actual rooftop.

I've actually seen it. It gets everything so wrong it's glorious. Movie doesn't even have a decent rooftop set.

Thought Wonder Woman was decent myself.

One of my favorite movies of the past half-decade! But I get what you mean, the movie IS all setup.

Oh yeah, regarding Star Wars, I find it pretty annoying how much people dismiss the sequel trilogy out-of-hand just because it overrides the "happy ending" of the original trilogy. Part of this may be bias since I don't think even before TFA came out I ever found Return of the Jedi's ending to feel particularly "final", but even taking that into account I felt that the sequel trilogy at least provides a better explanation for why things went to hell than something like Alien 3 or Terminator 3 for example! Plus even if that explanation just amounts to "government is stupid"...is that really THAT hard to buy after a whole prequel trilogy showing that? Or heck, given real-life events? Really I could go on, but the Star Wars fandom is such unbelievable filth by this point.

Actually I will go on for now. Star Wars came to mind again due to the in-progress commercial failure of the new Indiana Jones movie, specifically how I was feeling like that movie simultaneously distanced itself too much from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to excite people who were still on board with the franchise while not distancing itself enough from it to win over those skeptical. That made me think that for all that went wrong with the sequel trilogy, it at least did a good job of distancing the franchise from the prequel era and from George Lucas more generally (and as someone who always thought Lucas got too much hate, at least regarding people re-evaluating his contributions to the original trilogy, I say good riddance to him because Star Wars is so huge it shouldn't be burdened by association with one guy) by comparison with the new Indiana Jones movie. The even dumber thing is that when I saw The Last Jedi with family, it just came off to me as another Star Wars movie and I didn't see much to get excited or mad about and didn't understand what expectations were being subverted - if anything I seemed to notice the parallels with the original trilogy more than I did with Abrams's films (this might have been because I just re-watched the original trilogy). It wasn't until I watched Knives Out that I understood Johnson's subversive intent with TLJ, and the more I think about what TLJ was trying to do the more I appreciate it - but the execution still came off to me as not so much bad as just lazy and if anything overly reverent.

And on the topic of Lucasfilm and Indiana Jones...while I do think Kathleen Kennedy is absolutely the individual most to blame for the state of the company and Star Wars franchise overall, the big thing with her is that George Lucas didn't really have much in the way of close business associates after about the '80s so he was kind of setting up whoever succeeded him as head of Lucasfilm to "fail" in this department. Lucas probably picked Kennedy because they had just worked together on Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and he just wanted to get the whole thing over with. And then the new Indiana Jones movie was announced in 2019, before Rise of Skywalker's release, and initially set for release in 2021 before the pandemic and production troubles led to a two-year delay. Wow this situation is so frustrating, and what doesn't help is the consistently appalling conduct displayed by many a Star Wars fan online - the kind of thing that would get them labelled loonies in public.

But then again, I'm the kind of guy who feels like Anakin's characterization in the prequel trilogy undermines Luke seeing the good in Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi more than Luke's characterization in the sequel trilogy does. Side note: boy does it seem easy to corrupt people to the Dark Side of The Force in the franchise or what? In hindsight, that Luke held it off for so long is nothing short of miraculous.

I know I've become a meme for complaining about the alt right, but I just find it all too priceless when Star Wars fans complain about newer movies not being made for them when no Star Wars movie has been made explicitly for fans. George Lucas made his six movies for himself (I know he didn't actually direct Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, but he still came up with the story outlines for them so they are still his works), and then all of the Disney-era content has been made specifically to capitalize on some bankable aspect of the franchise. George never intended for either of his trilogies to get the fanbases they did.

I'll admit I also really detest how the prequel trilogy and the controversial edits to the original trilogy caused people to re-evaluate George's contributions to the original trilogy. Conversely though I also think the best aspect of the sequel trilogy is how much of a middle finger to Lucas it is, specifically because Star Wars is such a big franchise it really shouldn't be held back by association with one guy.

To be also fair, most of the time I hear criticism of Phase 4 it's genuine and not ideologically-driven like a certain other Disney-owned property.

Also because The Marvels is the next movie to be released.

That's fair, it's just only yesterday I realized it was even worse than I thought. You see, the problem is I got in tight with the alt right crowd between 2016 and 2020, although I didn't realize their politics at the time.

Probably not the best thing to bring up, but I have a harder and harder time wrapping my head around why certain people thought Captain Marvel would flop before it came out, to say nothing of some of them insisting that it actually did and that Disney somehow covered it up. It was only yesterday when I realized that, considering the domestic viewing audience skewed more towards women than most comic book movies do, that said insistence comes across as horrifically sexist gatekeeping to boot. Dunces can't fathom the idea people other than them could possibly make something a hit.

I'd ask how Wonder Woman was largely able to avoid this kind of backlash, but I guess the DCEU wasn't on their radars at the time.

Wasn't a fan of Glass Onion but I honestly thought even the first movie was pretty lame aside from the twist, which was epic even though I knew about it going in. Rian Johnson just comes off as a wannabe Coen Brother to me, although I definitely don't hate him as much as some do.

Another thing I want to ask since I can't post in the main MCU topic, but did people honestly have problems with the Hawkeye series not being about Clint in particular? I honestly thought it was fascinating to see him through the eyes of a fangirl, especially given he wasn't used to having people admire him.

I liked the new Doctor Strange movie, haven't seen the original since it came out.

Done with Ms. Marvel. The finale didn't really disappoint or blow me away, but I was very satisfied.

Since I'm not allowed to post in the main MCU thread, I want to say here that I'm one episode away from finishing Ms. Marvel and I think it's the best MCU Disney+ series and second-best installment of Phase 4 I've seen behind Spider-Man, but I think I get why some aren't terribly fond of it even outside of BS racist and/or sexist reasons.

The monster comparison was more meant to refer to Natashas assassin training, but I get why people didnt quite get it.

The stupid thing is I found a YT video analysis that was quite fair on The Force Awakens, and then 60% through I made the mistake of reading the comments and finding the same old tired complaints. Honestly, while I won't say I don't understand the criticism, I find it precious that people act like the sequel trilogy is so similar to the original trilogy even though the aspects shared between them are hardly unique to Star Wars. Makes me think they're just anti-progressives appropriating common arguments because they don't actually care about Star Wars, especially since some of them did reuse rhetoric like TLJ being political somehow (and when I asked how they pointed me to "The Force is Female", which is not in the actual film) and the trilogy "reducing legacy male characters" (when I replied that sounded like misogynist rhetoric, I was labelled a misandrist for the crime of pointing out how the term "male" was singled out which basically confirms people like these have a victim complex - completely explains Gamergate too).

I could rant more but I'll stop by saying I think a big reason why I ran into all these anti-progressive YouTube randos I complain about is because I was only really first getting into Star Wars in 2018 and obviously there were many videos slamming TLJ and the whole trilogy by proxy at that time. I was once subscribed to The Quartering for heaven's sake! At the time I knew no better, and it seemed like this was the genuine core Star Wars fandom. Now I know better. Absolutely priceless when people complain about how the events of the original trilogy were supposedly undone in the sequel trilogy by government incompetence considering it's not like this franchise had a whole trilogy predicated on just that.

The Last Jedi repeatedly subverts expectations and doesn't make them meaningful enough. But yes, it is probably the one Disney-era Star Wars product that doesn't just revel in nostalgia.

More just amazed it's winning over even people who didn't like Rogue One but yeah.

Count me as someone else who had no interest in this beforehand due to not liking Rogue One.

Okay though to be fair I wasn't going to bring up "this rando said this" kind of deals, more just in general. Point taken though.

Not relating to Andor but I feel so stupid for realizing only in the last few days that Luke was specifically drawing from his own experience in warning Rey not to go through with her plan of heading straight into the lion's den in an attempt to convince Kylo to turn good in The Last Jedi.

I kind of hope this topic would be a bit more conducive to me bringing up "YouTube randos" than the MCU ones. I do kind of feel like the amount of smack talk about the sequel trilogy, particularly TLJ, combined with my general lack of Star Wars knowledge just played total havoc on me. I have also finished watching The Book of Boba Fett and I'm in complete agreement the best episode didn't have Boba! It doesn't seem like any of the new Star Wars shows have pissed people off the way the ST did though, at worst getting a shrug of "that happened".

I meant more in terms of dragging in the middle, which fits with what I've heard about the show just about everywhere else - it seems the consensus is that it starts and ends well and it's just everything between that's the problem.

Also, dunno if this was brought up earlier but Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (that's the subtitle, right?) will be 2 hours and 40 minutes long. Good riddance after the two preceding MCU movies got criticized for being too short (which I agree with at least in the case of Thor).

Only today I found out She-Hulk's imdb rating is below 5/10. Given just how many 1/10 ratings there are, not hard to draw conclusions.

I've only watched any of the shows with family. My mom watched Ms. Marvel herself for the representation aspect and said she wouldn't recommend it to me because there are too many high school shenanigans. To be fair that's kind of what I feared from the trailers.

For what it's worth Chris and Scarlett had been in two movies together before the MCU even existed, so it was easy for them to have such a strong rapport with each other.

That also makes me want to bring up how Johansson was asked in interviews about how it felt to be wearing such a skintight outfit she didn't even have underwear. You can see the problem with this picture, I hope.

Not entirely on topic but for all the crap Joss Whedon deservedly gets thrown at him, it's not like he's singlehandedly responsible for everything people don't like about Age of Ultron and the theatrical cut of Justice League.

Leonhart4 posted...

LMS returns with the "people who hate She-Hulk are bigots" posts

That was not the intention but whatever.

I feel like such an idiot for not realizing how much of the negative discourse surrounding certain parts of Phase 4 (mostly regarding the new Thor and She-Hulk) comes from people who said those parts looked bad anyway pre-release and then gloating about how they were "right" afterwards. I'd ask why they even feel the need to cover stuff they're obviously not interested in, but I guess they need some of that green. Not entirely on-topic but I feel similarly about Wonder Woman 1984, finding that movie to be merely mediocre instead of complete garbage.

I've lost a lot of my enthusiasm for the MCU lately, but I didn't feel the need to write that in this topic until now. Kind of sad since I'm still enamored with the Infinity Saga, particularly Phase 3, but sometimes you just have to let go.

Why would Cyberpunk affect Geralt when poorly received games didn't seem to make a dent in Samus's strength? Granted that might be a false equivalence given Geralt doesn't have the same rich (gaming) history behind him.

I'm in a similar boat.

For what it's worth though that ranking also has Love & Thunder ahead of Civil War, Infinity War, and the first two Spider-Men, Iron Man 3 above all those plus Guardians of the Galaxy, and Age of Ultron in the top 10 above all those and Ragnarok. Though on the flipside regarding Age of Ultron, while I don't necessarily think Joss Whedon's fall from grace isn't undeserved it's not like every problem people had with the movie was his handiwork. Same with the theatrical cut of Justice League.

Conservatives are the masters of cancel culture!

Want to ask who here has read The Godfather? I did and couldn't get the films out of my mind the whole time. You'd never believe Coppola disdained the novel from how faithful his movies are, though he was probably just putting a class act.

Putin is one of only two people in the whole world I would knowingly wish harm on.

Dark World is the only Thor movie I have never seen. I have no interest in rectifying that anytime soon given how mediocre I found the first Thor - even Love & Thunder, flawed as it is, is still way better IMO.

I've been curious about Dark World in the past just on a sheer "how could you possibly mess this up" level in similar vein to the early DCEU movies but there's so much I'd rather watch. That being said, how could pitting space Vikings against space elves be anything but awesome?

For what it's worth there's this one ranking of every MCU movie on Collider I follow that keeps getting updated with every new release. That ranking has Dark World ahead of both Doctor Stranges, both Ant-Men, the first Thor, Iron Man 2, Eternals, Black Widow, The Incredible Hulk, and Shang-Chi. So, it's not like everyone rags on Dark World.

Stupid idea: rank Kevin Spacey movies

Just to ask, in No Way Home did Doc Ock figure out the Green Goblin's true identity before or after Strange imprisoned both of them?

Lopen posted...

Actually true but Luthor at least has charm. Though you could (and I would) argue its the completely wrong type of charm for Lex Luthor. But he is a character.

Yeah, it was more akin to both Batman v. Superman and Civil War getting criticized for their respective villains having nonsensical evil plans. BvS probably became more infamous for it because of how Luthor's bombastic personality stands out from the movie's otherwise grimdark tone (also not entirely on topic but I unironically think Eisenberg made a better Lex Luthor in The Social Network than when he actually played Lex).

Yeah, I'm still amazed by how much of a slow-motion trainwreck the rival DCEU has become. Combine that with Sony's meme-worthy efforts to make its own Spider-Man cinematic universe and it seems like MCU movies will continue to do well if only to provide people with their superhero fix. Drat.

The above comment just makes me remember the same criticism being frequently levelled at Lex Luthor in Batman v. Superman.

Making me wish there was such a thing as thoughtcrimes.

Saw Thor: Love & Thunder. Remember finding Ragnarok decent, with it ultimately having a well-executed enough serious plot to balance out the repeated attempts at comedy. While I don't think this movie is much worse than Ragnarok, I do think it just about fell on the wrong side of that - I did find a lot of laughs in the movie but there were about twice as many attempted laughs that fell flat for me. At least the movie never ran any one particular joke particularly into the ground (the screaming goats if anything got funnier as the movie progressed), but it still tended to overdo them. The cast are on top form here: Hemsworth and Thompson must be amazing actors to keep up this goofy English accent! This movie also looks gorgeous, with the shadow realm scenes being particular standouts. Reminded me a fair bit of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. At first, I was a little off put by Thor constantly being the butt of jokes for acting like a dumb muscle, until I remembered he's probably not completely right in the head this time. Also, to be fair, the very first Thor movie didn't have him come off much different even if that was mostly fish-out-of-water comedy. Just another example of some Phase 4 naysayers not even knowing the franchise properly.

Despite not finding this movie anywhere near as bad as a lot of people do, I don't have a hard time understanding why this film seems so polarizing. Not only is comedy very subjective, but this movie also aims very much to be a feelgood kind of romp which is naturally not going to work with everyone. I was completely on board with what this movie was trying to do, and I simply wish it didn't try to turn everything into a joke 90% of the time. Just include those deleted scenes where Bale interacts with Dinklage and Goldblum, and this might be at least a decent movie if not a great one like its direct predecessor. Instead, it settled for whatever the next rung just below decent is for me.

IfGodCouldDie posted...

It's making you look worse. I'll be honest I got a lot of patience and I haven't been putting up with you as long as everyone else here, but you are starting to get on my nerves over this shit. You don't come into these topics for discussion and you only respond to posts that address the random youtubers you talk about and your responses to those posts is always just to repeat what you've already said.

In this case I figured it was about a reasonably relevant issue, but point taken all the same.

Just me trying to explain myself so I don't look as bad. Also, the whole reason I brought up Captain Marvel was to counter the whole idea that people only saw the movie because it would be pivotal to Endgame since the criticism of Phase 4 has having "no concrete plan" reminded me of that - as if the only reason to watch MCU content is to see where it's all going. Though I do say this as someone who isn't especially big on the team-up movies compared to other MCU films - I'd say that I prefer Captain America: The First Avenger, Black Panther, Iron Man, and Spider-Man: No Way Home to any Avengers film. Albeit it would be very close in Captain America's case.

Mostly to me that's an integral part of the franchise's identity, that there's something for everyone and you don't need everything. I've also always felt the MCU's supposed problems with continuity lockout are greatly exaggerated, though obviously you shouldn't do anything like starting with Endgame because that's stupid. I was able to go straight from Avengers to Ragnarok to Infinity War without feeling I was missing much, and just filed characters in the last one not involved in the other two off as heroes of other stories. Heck I hadn't even seen Iron Man or Captain America: The First Avenger until after watching Endgame and I found those two movies more poignant for it.

I don't like most of Phase 4 either. I wasn't speaking of every critique of it, more just the mob mentality than anything. Also, they're bigots because of the way they express their dislike towards parts of Phase 4, not just because they don't like it.

I've similarly come to realize that at least 60% of all negative online discourse surrounding The Last Jedi if not the whole sequel trilogy is rooted in an anti-progressive mindset, but that's another story. My point wasn't that everyone who hates these media must be a bigot, it's more that lots of people who ordinarily don't even care about the franchises in question are taking advantage of divisiveness to further their own political agendas.

Sorry I forgot to mention Bob Chipman is fairly big outside of YT as well, I just didn't know how to introduce him. Also, he made that mostly in response to how much the Internet seems to like hating on Marvel Phase 4, with him singling out MauLer's 5-hour rant on the new Doctor Strange.

I would say I don't entirely understand what the whole deal is with people hating on Phase 4 because it has "no plan" when I've always seen the MCU as an all-you-can-eat buffet situation where you just take whatever you want and leave the rest, except I know they're just bigots who like to complain about everything to advance their anti-progressive agenda. That was the main reason I saw fit to bring up moviebob. Also, I was thinking about how I was genuinely looking forward to Captain Marvel before its release on its own merits and not just for being a lead-up to Endgame.

Best science-fiction movie since Fury Road. Though I have not seen Arrival.

Prominent YouTuber Bob Chipman (aka moviebob) put out the first in a two-part examination of Marvel fatigue. He did quickly come to the conclusion that it's a bunch of hogwash given Marvel movies are still big obviously.

This is the same franchise that depicts farming activity in St. Petersburg.

colliding posted...

watched this over the weekend. I like the practical effects and the realness of it.

Story wise, it's the perfect combination of military propaganda and adolescent male fantasy. I feel like it's the first time in a while a movie has been so obvious and upfront in its intentions to purposefully fail the Bechdel test and uplift a white male hero without any sort of subtlety or character flaws, so I'm not surprised a bunch of men's rights activists and magats are into it. I'm not surprised it's making a gazillion dollars.

The question is if other blockbusters are going to follow suit. I think probably.

Uh, Maverick very much has character flaws, and the focus of the whole plot is his place in the modern world. Also the critics loved it too for whatever that's worth.

To me it felt like the first movie with better-written human drama, even though the plot wasn't really the same the basic appeal still is. Which is itself perfectly fine.

Like both Top Gun movies without thinking either is all that great.

The film is set at Christmas because the director likes setting films he writes then. See the first Lethal Weapon.

But here's the million-dollar question: is it still better than The Predator?