I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
Films where I don’t recognize a single actor among the whole crew are almost always better than ones where I’ve seen such and such actor in other movies. Just more immersive. And even if they’re not the best actors I’d much prefer that over whatever the hell Chris Prat or Tom Cruise or Leo D are up to.
I knew being faceblind must have some benefit. I often only realise I know an actor when I see their name in the credits. Then again it can take me half a movie to realise there are two men with dark hair, a beard and glasses, so I wouldn’t entirety recommend it.
en again it can take me half a movie to realise there are two men with dark hair, a beard and glasses
I’m not face blind, but this is the reason I never watched another Mission Impossible movie after the first one: Every single male in that movie looked identical to me, and I couldn’t follow any of the plot line(s?), as I never knew who was doing what to whom. I can only imagine how annoying it must be when that’s the norm.
Regardless how you feel about “woke Hollywood injecting forced diversity into films,” it’s really helped the issue of telling all the good-looking white people apart.
My experience watching The Departed while almost entirely sober felt like a face blindness simulator. I was baffled when one of the characters that had been killed came back and none of the other characters acknowledged it. Cool movie but so confusing.
I’m somewhat faceblind but great at voices. There’s no escape. It also totally ruins a lot of animated shows and movies because a very small number of voice actors get a majority of the work.
So many well known actors play themselves playing the character.
Brand/name recognition + marketing.
It’s part of the blockbuster model, which does everything it can to reduce risk. Before the 70s, studios would go bust when an expensive movie flopped. Studios became very risk averse, especially for the expensive stuff. So they make a sequel to a movie that’s done well, or a plot similar to that of a movie that’s previously done well, based on an intellectual property that sold well in another medium(comic, book, tv-show, …), in a genre that’s previously done well with audiences, starring actors people previously liked, preferably very attractive actors so that audiences like looking at them, pushed by a saturation marketing campaign that gets as many people to watch it on the opening weekend as possible, so that if it sucks they can’t tell their friends not to go and see it. It’s like McDonalds. It’s not the best meal you’ll ever eat, but you know what you’re getting, so you won’t have wasted two hours or your life, or shit yourself after eating it.
Also, video killed the radio star. It’s rare to be incredibly beautiful. It’s rare to be incredibly talented. It’s incredibly rare to be both. If you have to pick one, pick the incredibly beautiful actor, who looks good on posters and in promotional material. Acting isn’t that hard. Even a pretty moron can be a passable actor.
Tom Cruise has employees rewrite movies he’ll be in to make his part more, and more in his style.
He has more acting range and ability than so many other actors
Especially when there are a few examples of amazing actors that you can know and still sometimes struggle to recognize them in their characters. Like Gary Oldman, and … uh… OK well I’m not in a movie headspace, but he’s not the only one!
Tons of lesser names that play great side/background characters and it’s hard to tell, too, so I totally agree others need chances at lead characters.
Those are the actors I’m never tired of because their characters are almost always unique characters.
True to an extent, there are a few famous actors out there who are genuinely good at taking on different roles and immersing you in the character. A great example is Jim Carrey. Obviously I know Ace Ventura and Truman Burbanks are the same person, but it doesn’t feel like that when you’re watching them. They might share similar qualities, but they’re clearly different characters.
Anthony Hopkins is a better example IMO. Or goddamn Gary Oldman…
This is basically what I told people when I started to watch some of the most amazing international and documentary cinema in the early 00s. Ciudade de Deus, La Cité d’enfants Perdus, Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain, La Vita è Bella, Der Untergang, Lola Rennt, 올드 보이, Mononoke Hime, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Whale Rider. Documentaries by Adam Curtis or Errol Morris. So many people just don’t know.
Terminator is better than Terminator 2, and as cool as it is Terminator 2 should never have been made (or should have a different script).
I know the mob is raising the pitchfork, but hear me out, there are two main ways time travel can solve the grandparent paradox, these are Singular Timeline (i.e. something will prevent you from killing your grandfather) or Multiple Timeline (you kill him but in doing so you created an alternate timeline). Terminator 2 is clearly a MT model, because they delay the rise of Skynet, but Terminator is a ST movie. The way you can understand it’s an ST is because the cause-consequences form a perfect cycle (which couldn’t happen on an MT story), i.e. Reese goes back to save Sarah -> Reese impregnates Sarah and teaches her how to defend herself from Terminators and avoid Skynet -> Sarah gives birth to and teaches John -> John uses the knowledge to start a resistance -> The resistance is so strong that Skynet sends a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah -> Reese goes back to save Sarah…
The awesome thing about Terminator is how you only realise this at the end of the Movie, that nothing they did mattered, because that’s what happened before, the timeline is fixed, humanity will suffer but they’ll win eventually.
If Terminator was a MT then the cycle breaks, i.e. there needs to be a beginning, a first time around when the original timeline didn’t had any time travelers. How did that timeline looked like? John couldn’t exist, which means that sending a Terminator back in time to kill Sarah was not possible, Reese couldn’t have gone back without the Terminator technology, which they wouldn’t have unless the resistance was winning, and if they are winning without John, the Terminator must have gone back to kill someone else and when Reese went back he accidentally found Sarah, impregnated her and coincidentally made a better commander for the resistance which accidentally and created a perfect loop so that next time he would be sent back and meet Sarah because she was the target (what are the odds of that). Then why is the movie not about this? Why is the movie about the Nth loop after the timeline was changed? The reason is that Terminator was thought as a ST movie, but when they wanted to write a sequel they for some reason decided to allow changes in the timeline which broke the first movie.
Not to mention that it’s fucking stupid to have all your infiltration units have the exact same face and body. The first movie even showed other terminators with different faces, so why is every T-800 Arnold?
That said, T2 is one of my favorite movies.
This tries to play on the idea that skynet is terrifyingly smart in some ways, but still deficient in others.
It doesn’t really “make sense” but it’s the whole reason there’s a chance of an “ongoing” conflict between humans and skynet. If skynet was as smart as it should be, humans would be long gone.
My head hurts.
Never watch Primer.
You would love the episode in S4 of Miracle Workers which addresses this scenario.
Basically, the Terminators are in an endless loop killing Johns and being killed by them. It’s just a boring job for them now.
I thought everyone (skynet, the resistance) thought it was ST as of T1, but that was wrong, as seen in T2.
i’m like way, way late on this, but i just stumbled on this thread and have to say your analysis is well thought out and you explained time travel narrative structures very succinctly.
but your analysis completely falls apart because, and i’m not sure how, but you missed the entire fucking point of Terminator 1. In the extended edition of T2 there’s a scene in the first 15 minutes where Kyle explains it again for those in the back.
"The future is not set.”
added in T2,
“The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”
That’s what Kyle comes back to explain to Sarah. Until she understands that message and acts on it, Kyle is acting in a “ST” structure. Once the terminator is destroyed by Sarah, the MT is opened up. We can speculate that Kyle was supposed to kill the terminator with his last pipe bomb, but really any moment could have caused that schism. What’s important is that Sarah is now self-reliant in terms of killing machines. Fate is what Sarah was fighting, almost a meta-antagonist. That is her struggle through the entire Terminator franchise.
Terminator 1 is a time travel story that starts as a ST narrative, and by Sarah’s actions in the final act, becomes a MT narrative. T2 just further explores the opened-up MT narrative. There’s no inconsistency between the final moment of T1 and the opening of T2. Your gripe seems to be entirely with the first movie based on a limited understanding of the larger themes and philosophies explored in the narrative.
Terminator 2 is a damn fine sequel and a hell of a film on its own merit.
Kyle says that, he also talks about possible futures, but Kyle has no understanding of time travel
One possible future. From your point of view. I don’t know tech stuff.
He doesn’t even know why he has to travel naked, his answer is:
I didn’t build the fucking thing!
Also the quote you mention is part of the phrase that John Connor made him tell Sarah:
Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can’t help you with what you must soon face, except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist.
But here’s the thing, John says that to Sarah possibly because Sarah told him about it and how that exact phrase kept her going, knowing that the future was not set.
I don’t get why you’re speculating that Kyle was to kill the Terminator, but:
John Connor gave me a picture of you once. I didn’t know why at the time. It was very old. Torn…faded. You were young, like you are now. You seemed just… a little sad
She was always alone and sad in that photo, Kyle had always died, and she had always run away, to me she always killed the Terminator.
If you claim T1 is MT, let’s call timeline 1 the one Kyle comes from, and timeline 2 the one we see most of the movie, also there’s a timeline 0 where no time travel happened, with that in mind there are a few questions:
- How does timeline 1 differs from 2? They can’t be exactly the same otherwise it’s a perfect loop which can’t have a beginning, i.e. if timeline 1 is the same as timeline 2 it’s in a perpetual loop and timeline 3, etc will always be the same
- What happened on the timeline 0? Why was a Terminator sent to kill Sarah? John didn’t existed in that timeline, or at least not the same John that Kyle knows, he would at the very least be a lot younger (not to mention have a different father). Why was he sent to the 80s? If you’re going to kill Sarah surely you can go to the 70s or 60s, kill a kid or a baby is a lot easier and they know the city she lived in, or go to the 90s or 00s before the rise of Skynet, the internet and more technology would make it easier for them to find her. If T1 is ST it makes sense, because Sarah disappears after the 80s, and possibly erases herself from before that, so Skynet only has a small window that she left open because that’s when Kyle needs to go.
Also Eddie furlong is fucking insufferable
You’ve way over analysed it. It’d be like pissing on Star Wars because the Force has no basis in science.
As someone who enjoys the magic systems of Brandon Sanderson, I do piss on Star Wars for not having a logical basis for The Force.
Actually it’s not that bad. Harry Potter is much worse.
No, the problem is internal consistency, in Star Wars the force works the same way in all films. But imagine if on one movie someone was shown using the force to move objects, and on the next movie the same character was shown trying to reach for something important and failing and not using the force and when asked he replies “it’s not possible to move objects with the force”. That’s the problem here, internal consistency, on one movie it’s said it works one way, on the other it’s said it works differently. I love both movies, I just think T2 shitted on one of the main things from T1.
Except the prequels establish force powers that we never see again and so do the sequels. Like force super speed in the phantom menace.
Just because you don’t see them again doesn’t mean they’re impossible.
Horror films are where art flourishes and it has a huge culture of being outside of Hollywood which is just a plus. Also the acting is usually way better
I’m not sure whether to update or downvote. The first sentence doesnt seem too controversial, but hoo boy you nailed it on the second lol
Screw it, upvoted.
Removed by mod
I think you’re right and maybe that’s why I prefer horror movies so much over literally all else. And to your point about being outside of Hollywood, I really appreciate it when I don’t recognize any of the actors. It makes it much more immersive for me. Usually much better camera work and lighting too. And Less CGI - atleast the better ones. I hate it when the whole screen is just really good animation :(
Ouiji was the worst offender of this. The first half of the movie, it’s got some of my favorite subtle directing in it, keeping you on your toes, then BAM. Halfway through they’re showing the creature in full view and it’s some generic black goo. Not scary at all. Would have been way better if the horror never showed its face.
Most horror movies have worse acting than a porno.
There is no accounting for taste. Who’s to say what’s a better actor?!
Horror is a divisive genre, because it has some of the higher highs, but also many of the lowest lows.
I like The Last Jedi.
That should be controversial enough.
I think this is more popular than you think. Most serious SW fans appreciate Rian Johnson’s attempt to take the franchise somewhere it had never been before, storytelling-wise, and the shitty retcon-fest that was ROS seems to have made it better by comparison. I’ve seen plenty of people online say it’s the best aged film out of the sequel films.
Love TFA. Love TLJ. Love parts of ROTS but it’s… rough. Not a movie I’ll choose to rewatch without a really strong reason. Most of it is so disjointed. You can tell there were so many ideas that were cut from the movie and things that were put together in ways that weren’t. Then there’s that fucking dagger…
Weird you could replace the phantom menace with rots, dagger with “podracer” and your have another completely true sentence!
The movie was alright.
“Somehow the emperor returned” was terrible.
“Somehow the emperor returned” was terrible.
Okay. Rise of Skywalker is a walking pile of dog shit that has a wildly inconsistent take on everything. However. I have never had a single problem with that line and I am stunned so many people did. That was a rebel talking to other rebels. Why, exactly, would they know anything about how Palpatine returned? Dude was on a planet out in the middle of uncharted space. I literally cannot think of another way for them to tell each other that Palpatine returned without evoking vague imagery like that. They literally do not know what happened.
It’s not about the line itself, but more the sentiment behind it. The fact that the Emperor is just suddenly back without any buildup or hinting in the previous two movies is the problem.
First time I have ever seen that sentiment shared when people are talking about the line. Everytime it’s always people whining saying the line doesn’t make sense.
It makes sense that the rebels didn’t know about it. It doesn’t make sense that the first the audience hears about it is that line. It feels lazy. They could have mentioned, in an offhand way, that the remnants of the Empire is pursuing cloning tech. Not only would this tie the final trilogy to the second trilogy. (First? Episodes 1-3, anyway) But it would also make that line make way more sense.
As as much as the Thrawn trilogy feels like bad fanfic, it does tie the whole clone wars/rebellion thing together, and features someone who comes back as a clone. I think it would have made a way better trilogy than what we got.
“The dead speak! The galaxy has heard a mysterious broadcast, a threat of REVENGE in the sinister voice of the late EMPEROR PALPATINE.
Because it makes zero sense. What possible reason would Palpatine reveal himself. It’s not just against logic, it’s against character. Yes, that particular line was a rebel talking to a rebel, but it shouldn’t have happened at all.
Against character? No. It wasn’t. You can make a lot of fair criticisms but to say that the galaxies biggest narcissist wouldn’t narcissist himself up further and be like GUESS WHAT BITCHES IM BACK? That’s just silly
Darth Sidious spent the first two movies cosplaying a senator. He is the titular Phantom Menace, as in “hidden”. Palplatine would absolutely stay hidden if everyone thought he was dead.
He stayed hidden during that period because it served him. He showed his true colors (literally) in the fight with Windu and dropped all pretense. He didn’t even try anymore in the Senate. Just went full authoritarian and made it all about himself. The next 20 years were no different. Fuck sakes, he was still cosplaying as a senator but openly running around being a Sith and taunting Jedi as seen in the clone wars show.
While he does keep a low profile when needed for his plans, he will kick open the doors and announce his presence when he is confident his plans have gotten to a certain point where he’s sure he cannot be stopped. Saying he would absolutely stay hidden 100% is to ignore a massive amount about the character.
Because it was just saying out loud what hollywood writers have been doing on movies for a while. “somehow this movie happens. Just pay us.”
All I could think of when he said that was, Princess Bunhead in Thumbwars: “I escaped somehow, let’s go!”
Remember when they snuck off on some escape ship to go get help for their crew in imminent danger and then decided to dick around on some horse racing casino planet? It’s like they completely forgot why they were there. I thought TLJ had some neat ideas but I don’t know how anyone can overlook that weird loss of urgency in the middle of the film. It’s like your house is on fire and your family is trapped upstairs, so you run over to a neighbor’s house to call the fire department, but you discover that they got some dog fighting thing going on in the backyard so you decide to go deal with that first, then you call the fire department but it turns out the dispatcher was in cahoots with the arsonist who started it in the first place, and then you return home with your tail between your legs and your mom didn’t even know you had left. The whole second act could have been a dream sequence and it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
If you rip out everyone involved in the casino planet, you have a really cool dark and surprising twist on the franchise. The only really interesting things in the whole trilogy happened in The Last Jedi
Not controversial. You like what you like.
Now, if you had said something like “The Last Jedi is a good movie.” Well, that’s demonstrably untrue.
Nah. Disagree. It is a good movie.
It LOOKS good, I’ll give you that. The salt planet with the red soil was inspired.
It’s too bad Rian Johnson didn’t get an average 5th grader to proof read the script.
For example:
Leia and Rey have this touching scene where Leia gives her this tracking gem that will let her come back to the fleet no matter where they go.
Then, in the VERY SAME SCENE, the New Order pops out of hyperspace and another character says, out loud, “they tracked us through hyperspace???!? THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!!!”
First - you literally just explained how yes, it was possible 2 sentences ago.
Second - Tracking devices have been a thing since the first Star Wars.
“TARKIN You’re sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I’m taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work.”
No, I stand by the fact that it is a good movie. Just because it has some flaws doesn’t make it universally bad. It’s not even close to the worst movie in the franchise either. Rise of the Skywalker grabs that without hesitation (That outright is a TERRIBLE movie) but the Prequels are all significantly worse in both writing and direction than The Last Jedi. Revenge comes a lot closer and I’d say personally is tied with TLJ on coherence. George Lucas was a moron. He never had a plan but people constantly think he did. Within all three of the OT movies alone he keeps changing everything from characters to lore. The Prequels got worse because he had no one to temper him. That being said, this is about TLJ.
That being said, there’s no issue with the writing there in my opinion. Leia and Rey do have a touching moment, sure, but that was in the Force Awakens not The Last Jedi. Leia also straight up never gives her that bracelet on screen because JJ Abraams is a complete and utter fuckwit. The scene in TLJ is between Finn and Leia where Leia reveals the beacon to Finn. He asks how Rey would find us and Leia and shows him. He says “A cloaked binary beacon.” She says “To light her way home.” You are right in that the scene does continue immediately into the First Order tracking them but how they tracked them was completely different. The beacon tells Rey (and only Rey) where Leia is when tracked. But Snokes vessel outright tracked them through lightspeed itself. They didn’t check the location of her and then jump to her. They actively followed the fleet through hyperspace itself without needing end coordinates. This was shown later in the movie and Leia directly says it by saying "They tracked us through lightspeed.* Something that hasn’t been shown to be possible on screen.
Yeah. They’re in the same scene but that wasn’t an accident. There wasn’t people behind the scenes who were that monumentally braindead. That scene was written that way with the purpose of making people think that the two would be related. Now I will give you that it’s not well written how they use that throughout the rest of the movie but it was put there on purpose. It was to make people doubt Leia (supporting him through the Poe arc, which worked way too well despite the fact that he did not have a singular leg to stand on with his entire argument despite everyone and their mother thinking he was right) and seem like the clear and obvious fix. They completely dropped the ball there, I admit. But overall I didn’t have a problem with that scene specifically. Just how they used that scene. Especially considering that tracking device was never actually used. Seriously. They added in and then never really used it. I don’t know if it ended up on the cutting room floor or what. The intention was clearly to fuck with the audience because Rey doesn’t ever find the Resistance using that bracelet. She meets up with Kylo on Snokes ship and Kylo is the one who gives her the coordinates.
The logical writing progress would have been to have Finn doing his thing (that arc, I grant you, is fundamentally worthless. The whole casino segment is a waste of screentime and only manages to produce a couple of light gags which all focus on BB-8) and Poe advancing on Leias position during his mutiny. He gets to Leia and gets the bracelet, destroys it and they jump to lightspeed. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and then the First Order shows back up anyway, having tracked them. Holdo has a scene of “I told you so”, probably just by staring at him without saying anything, and then everyone freaks out on what to do. Leia is still out and Holdo is in command so she decides to try and ram them with the last lightspeed jump of the cruiser that they somehow manage to movie magic in the last second from all the X-wings, life support, yadda yadda. Forcing the rest to evacuate to Crait. Movie continues on as normal.
The issue to me isn’t that the writing didn’t make sense. It did. My issue was that they expected the audience to connect too many dots on their own. Ended up with people making different connections than were intended. Too many things were left on the cutting room floor while stuff like that Casino segment was allowed to go on for way too long. Or the kiss between Finn and Rose which was just fucking bizarre. So much so that even Finn in that scene has a look on his face like “What the fuck are you doing?” But with all the issues that TLJ has? I still find it to be a way more coherent story and more interesting one than either of the first two Prequels. And Rise of Skywalker because that movie is idiotic. Like a good script doctor could have fixed it and made it a decent movie but they made so many weird fucking decisions and bizarre writing choices that literally nothing about it makes sense. What pisses me off is people then blame Rian Johnson for the problems of Rise too when half of that was on the studio for not being able to make up their mind on directors/writers (that movie has way too many writers) and the other half falls squarely on the fanbase for reacting as strongly and negatively as they did to the first two sequels.
91% of film critics agree it’s a good movie. That’s more than feel that way about Return of The Jedi. And way more than any of the prequels.
91% of film critics didn’t want to be on the wrong side of a rabid fanbase. ;)
The rabbid die hard Star Wars fans are very loud about hating that film.
Sure, but the critics couldn’t have known that when they wrote the reviews.
Liking a film that 91% of critics gave a positive rating is controversial?
Best film from the 9. Has a very good story and leaves you wondering what is going on. It was exactly what it needed to be and did it in some new ways with older call backs. Seriously such a good flick.
This post is so confusing. Do I upvote opinions I strongly agree with or down vote them?!
Interstellar is a terrible movie that doesn’t say or do anything special and I still don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s so amazing.
I did really like the robot guy though.
Interstellar is one of my favourite movies, yet I can definitely say it’s not perfect. Hell, it’s got a few massive plot holes and the ending leaves a lot to be desired. Saying that, I still enjoyed it. I love the visuals, the BTS stuff is interesting, but most of all it made me feel. That’s what I value in media. Other people may value a coherent plot, historical accuracy, or a myriad of other things. We all like/dislike things for different reasons, and that’s okay.
I also agree that TARS was very cool.
Dude I cannot understand the love that movie gets. Even the “scientifically accurate” go-to gets under my skin. I don’t know what it was going for, but it bristles my skin when I see discussion about how great it is.
I really need to add this.
A friend of mine genuinely believes that it’s based on a true story.
Last year’s DnD movie is the best film of the last ten or so years. It succeeded on every level, except in the box office.
My hypothesis is that Hasbro insisted on branding it “Dungeons & Dragons” to push the brand, and non-gamers figured it wasn’t for them. If they’d have made the main title “Honor among Thieves”, all the game nerds would have seen the DnD logo, and others wouldn’t have been turned off *. As it stands, people will find it and it’ll become the new “Starship Troopers” that bombed but shines forever in retrospect.
* See “Arcane”.
The original Star wars trilogy was overrated, the sequels were underrated, and I’d rate them all to be equally mediocre.
The Mario movie was incredibly mediocre, despite its high production value. I’m talking MCU-levels of truckloads of money spent with shockingly little to show for it.
You mean the 93 movie? I loved that!
This is the only Mario film
When I first read this comment, I thought you were talking about Super Mario Bros (1993) and was about to throw hands. Because that movie is actually good, if deeply flawed. Its flaws make for a more entertaining movie altogether.
John Leguizamo is a hidden gem of cinema so the OG Mario punches way above its weight class.
If you like the YouTube channel “Some More News”, you should check out their “movie”. Yes, they made a movie and yes, it’s out there at times, but the way it ties real world to the 1990s Mario Bros movie is so fragmented that when they finally connect all the dots, it’s a mind blow!
Mediocre is too kind. The Mario movie was bad.
I took my kids. They kind of enjoyed it, but forgot about it almost immediately.
I finally watched it after hearing good things and wow, yep. Incredibly mediocre, cashing in on nostalgia.
I did enjoy the music, though, but probably mostly because of nostalgia and my love for NES/SNES Mario games.
Funny you mention the MCU because the audience for those movies is practically the same. For everything I’ve read and seen it basically sounds like a animated MCU movie
I made it through 5 minutes before I stopped and deleted it. Most of the time I just close the player and plan on coming back to it when my mood is different, but with Mario I felt this visceral sensation of “nope.”
No regrets.
What expectations did you have going in?
I don’t follow advertising hype for anything because I generally despise advertising of all types, so I had no expectations for this movie. The only information I had about it beforehand was that Chris Pratt would be the voice of Mario instead of the longtime English voice actor.
One day not long ago, it was a trending torrent so I picked it up.
I guess I am very far from the target audience. Immediately the tone, pace of the editing, and the dialogue did not sit right with me. It felt like a worse version of Detective Pikachu, which I thought was average at best.
The story feels rushed and incoherent. Characters without character and chemistry. It’s a film in which every aspect of its production was solely determined by the amount of money that was put into it. If Jack Black can’t save a mediocre film…
Tarantino is overrated. You have to watch a lot of movies to come to this realisation, because otherwise you don’t realise his movies are often in large part a collage of other movies. Movies which did what he does better. That means that it doesn’t actually matter that Tarantino is overrated for most movie goers. More generally, this is why critics’ opinions don’t actually matter that much. They’ve watched too many movies and likely know too much about movies, to tell the average audience goer if they’ll enjoy a movie.
Once you’ve watched a few thousand movies, and especially if you’ve ever studied film or read a few books about it, you’ll often find you enjoy interesting but shit movies more, than very well made but unoriginal movies. People who truly love film, invariably aren’t snobs. They enjoy absolute trash, they enjoy arty farty stuff. If someone has a related degree or even a doctorate or works in the industry, the likelihood is high that they’re also a fan of B-movies. They don’t need to pretend to be knowledgeable, because they are. A film snob will bore you with the details of a Tarkovski movie. A cinephile is more likely to bang on about 80s horror movies, lesbian vampire sexploitation movies, Albert Pyun’s Cyborg, or Troma’s The Toxic Avenger.
I enjoy Tarantino movies. It all boils down to: are they solid fun entertainment or not, and to me the answer is yes.
Someone else did it better elsewhere? Sure, and he is very forthcoming about his influences. So if you’re a fan, you’ll likely find his sources and enjoy those too. Win win.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. You’re not wrong to enjoy them. They’re still fun to watch.
It’s just that IME they’re less ‘great’ if you’ve watched a lot of the movies they’re based on.
Also, Tarantino is an excellent stepping stone to discovering some great stuff. He’s a true film nerd, so he knows his movies.
You might already know about his podcast “The Video Archives”, where he rants about old movies that may or may not have influenced him.
Thanks for recommendation. I’ll add it to the list.
This is how I’ve come to view anime. You can tell the age of an anime fan by whether they’re enamored by the latest hit series or they sigh and go “this is just a remake of [old series from the 90s/00s].” I don’t give a shit how well made a series is; if the premise is “been there done that” without an original take or twist, or a tired and worn trope gets trotted out (looking at you, every fucking series that includes a scene where a female character comments enviously on another female character’s large breasts, yes Frieren that means you), then I’m insta-jaded on the series. At a certain point you realize anime relies heavily on its perpetual fandom refresh, with new fans replacing the ones who “aged out.” For me, I knew it had gotten bad when I was struggling to enjoy Cyberpunk because I felt like I had heard all the voices before in previous series.
At a certain point you realize anime relies heavily on its perpetual fandom refresh, with new fans replacing the ones who “aged out.”
Not unique to anime, Hollywood has been remaking movies and TV shows ‘for a new generation’ forever. Anime is just following the same pattern.
It occurred to me why The Wiggles have been making so much money for so long: they only need to have enough material to entertain kids for a few years, and the ages that they’re targeting are the ones who love repetition anyway! Most entertainers need to constantly improve and evolve, but kids entertainers just need to enthusiastically do the same thing over and over.
At a certain point you realize anime relies heavily on its perpetual fandom refresh, with new fans replacing the ones who “aged out.”
Very good point.
otherwise you don’t realise his movies are often in large part a collage of other movies.
Isn’t that the definition of filmmaking? All movies are just collages of influences, style, and form. All art is a remix on previous forms.
It’s okay to not like Tarantino, I don’t care much about that, but your argument doesn’t really hold up for me.
Almost all art is influenced by other art. But Tarantino very closely copies some scenes. Think a literal collage, made up of photocopied bits of another work, rather than a painting inspired or influenced by another work. Tarantino is honest about this.
It’s a bit like Andy Warhol’s Mona Lisa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_Mona_Lisa
Is that a great painting? I quite like it, it’s iconic, but it’s not the Mona Lisa, and Warhol is not Da Vinci.
People who haven’t watched a lot of movies, think Tarantino is Da Vinci. That he created an iconic scene, like Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.
People who have watched a lot of movies, realise he’s Warhol. There’s an iconic scene, but it’s based on an original work, like Warhol’s Mona Lisa.
There’s nothing wrong with Warhol. Hell, it’s ok to think that Warhol is a better artist than Da Vinci, think that Warhol’s Mona Lisa is a better painting than the original Mona Lisa, art is subjective after all.
But it’s a mistake to think Warhol is a genius, because he painted the Mona Lisa. He didn’t. That was Da Vinci. If you’re going think Warhol is a genius, you should think he’s a genius because he took an existing work and manipulated it in a way that is genius.
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Can you recommend some of these films that his collage films consist of?
It’s been a while, and he references dozens of movies, so much so that you’re watching his movies and think “wait, I’ve seen this before” and then you’re distracted by the next scene you’ve seen before. But off the top of my head Vanishing Point, Foxy Brown, Lady Snowblood, Bruce Lee movies, and the Dirty Dozen.
But don’t watch those. I probably enjoyed Vanishing Point the most, Bruce Lee in Game of Death is also fun, but often they have a few good scenes, the ones that Tarantino copied (sometimes poorly), but the rest of the movie can be a bit meh. Instead watch Oldboy, Lady Vengeance, In the Mood for Love, Infernal Affairs, Unforgiven, and (why not) Enter the Void. Not that those are my favourite movies, but they’re movies that shouldn’t bore you.
I’m not sure I get your point, but I agree with your premise. Tarantino has made some ok movies but more often than not I find them boring, with poor acting and absurdly uninteresting story lines.
I enjoyed Sucker Punch. I’ll admit it’s very male gazey, but it’s still a fun movie and has a killer soundtrack (am a woman)
The original Blade Runner movie is not nearly as good as the sequel. The sequel highlights how lesser the original’s plot was. We overly praise the first one because of the Tear in the Rain Speech.
Mine is- the Marvel/DC superhero movies all but entirely ruined cinema.
Interstellar is a bad movie. The story takes too long, the supposedly smart characters are acting obviously dumb, and the whole “we solved it all along because we figured out timetravel” trope is the most lazy way to wrap up a story.
Oh and of course the small artifically built space colony near Jupiter does not care for fitting many humans, but instead is a shitty american suburb with lavish lawns. Because who needs to safe people from other cultures amirite?
Titanic is not a good movie.
