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.
Much of this thread be like…
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.
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.
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.
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
Deadpool.
I’m not sure if I absolutely hate it, but I definitely don’t get the hype—especially with Deadpool and Wolverine. There were some funny bits, but I feel like most of it is almost Family Guy-tier reference humor.
The plot feels as unimportant as ever—there are no real stakes or anything significant going on. It’s all about the “jokes,” fourth wall breaks (which get tiresome almost immediately), and Ready Player One-level “recognize the character” moments.
Maybe the last part is the biggest reason why I don’t connect with it. I’ve never really been into comics outside of film and television. But I feel like that shouldn’t be the main driving force for a movie anyway—or at least not for a good movie. Like, Ready Player One was fun, but not good.
James Cameron’s Avatar series.
Then again… Does anyone actually like it? It seems to have all this online hype when it’s such a boring visual spectacle.
It’s like the opposite of the other Avatar franchise, which wasn’t a commercial hit, and seems less popular on paper, but seems to have a massive cultural impact.
Anything by JJ Abrams. He only knows how to start his shitty mystery box plots but never finish them.
Harry Potter.
Before JK went mask off, I had dropped the books about half way though for being increasing annoyed with how they ended. Never any change to the status quo except Harry actually regressing in character development. I watched the first movie, but that was around when I dropped the books and never looked back.
I was able to just quietly keep my opinions to myself, but with with JK becoming increasing unhinged with both her tweets and books, I haven’t felt the need to be polite with the “separate the art from the artists” types. Especially when they just assume that you’re a fan if you don’t correct them.
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.
That meme always makes me think of Heavy Rain.
Which meme?
Hmm, I guess it’s not as prevalent as I thought, but I’ve commonly seen the “Murph!” thing referenced online. Perhaps “meme” was the wrong word.
In the video game Heavy Rain, there’s a scene wherein the protagonist loses his son and has to search a crowd for the kid. While playing through that scene, you can press a button to shout his name. There is no limit to how often you can do this. Additionally, sometimes the game will apparently glitch so you can do it throughout the entire game.
Warning, potential spoilers for a game from 2010: https://youtu.be/DAhG9D9UO7c
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.
I didn’t like the ending, it seemed like kind of a big letdown. I don’t remember it, I just remember being surprised at how bland it was when the rest of the movie had me on the edge of my seat.
For me interstellar suffered from it’s hype. i expected a great, innovative movie and found it… okay.
Interesting opinion. The ending of Interstellar made me cry like a baby. Shit was great.
For me I really hated the audio in that movie. It was the most stereotypical Nolan BWOM crap throughout and yet the dialog was whisper quiet.
Oh and the plot was just Contact again…felt really unoriginal
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.
I was done with this movie from the start. The story about setting the table differently because of the dust?! GTFO That’s why cabinets have doors on them! I was too miffed after that
But … wasn’t that story from someone who actually lived through the dust bowl?
I don’t think so…but even if it was, cabinets with doors existed long before the dust bowl. People understood and solved the ‘dust on flatware’ issue long ago.
People understood and solved the ‘dust on flatware’ issue long ago.
No, they didn’t. I live in a dusty city and dust gets in everywhere, no matter how tightly you pack it.
I don’t think so…
Then you’re wrong and you should do some thinking
While audiences will probably recognise actress Ellen Burstyn among the faces - who is later revealed to be portraying old Murph - the rest are all total unknowns.
The reason for that? They’re not actors at all, but real life survivors of the Great Depression, who are actually speaking about the Dust Bowl catastrophe of the 1930s.
More to the point, Nolan wasn’t lucky enough to film this footage himself: he borrowed it - with permission, of course - from legendary documentarian Ken Burns’ 2012 docu-series The Dust Bowl.
https://whatculture.com/film/10-movie-facts-you-probably-already-knew-deep-down?page=5
why would you put doors on cabinets then?? Mine seem to work properly…
To stop even more dust…? Are you someone who also thinks we shouldn’t do things unless they’re going to work 100%?
What kind of dumb gotcha is this?
Seems like right-wing idiot-logic. “Masks don’t stop ALL particles of saliva, therefore why wear them!? Sheeple!”
its just a dumb part from a bad movie, that’s all.
Oh shit I completely forgot about that. So dumb, absolutely love it
Elf.
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
What?!?
What?!?
As an older millennial, that movie was a work of art. I was about 20 when I seen it, stoned, and I couldn’t stop laughing.
Fellow elder millennial that also never understood the appeal of Napoleon Dynamite, still don’t and I’ve watched it stoned as hell
Also elder millennial. I watched half the movie and turned it off. It was horrid.
I just don’t get it. I absolutely loved every second of it. From the opening scene to the credits it was one of my favorite movies ever made and still is.
What about it was so good though? It was incredibly slow. Little to no character plot humor wasn’t even there. It felt like it was just “funny meme haha” kinda movie. Honestly curious, I do enjoy being proven wrong. And no hate on what you enjoy, I just don’t understand why people enjoy it.
I got that it’s a movie that subverts expectations, or cheekily thumbs its nose at norms, in a delightful way. It clearly derives its delight from the contrast with… something. I have no idea what those expectations or norms are, so the contrast (and the delight) is lost on me.
Only other Idaho movie is gay af Keanu. Vote for Summer, because she’s hottest girl in Idaho, and a good dairy cow should have 4 nipples tops, and sharp talons.
Whenever I see a mountain range Uncle Rico pops into my head.
how many dollars would you like to wager that I can hurl this pig skin overtop of that mountain range?
Same. But I re-watched it recently and it just aged terribly for some reason.
Hey, Rubber was a phenomenal movie.
Rubber is a masterclass in film making. We watched a fucking tire and it was entertaining as fuck.
Quentin Dupieux is a genius, IMO, musically and behind the lens. His works tend to be an acquired taste for sure, but I’m into it.
Dude made a tire have an amazing performance. Just shows how important the art is behind making a film vs what name is on the screen. Poor film making could make the best actor suck but if you’re truly talented you can make any actor, no matter how shitty, seem amazing. It’s def an acquired taste but I’d argue whether you like it or not you can’t deny the genius.
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.
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.
Hard disagree, lol. That’s a classic.
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
I only watched it once and it was just terrible. I would maybe give it another shot, I don’t really remember it much anyway.
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.
ITT: people using the downvote button as an “I disagree” button when the entire point is to name popular movies that you dislike. Sort by controversial for the real answers, I guess.
For me it’s Alien. Maybe because I’m not a horror movie buff, but I do like sci-fi and yet it just didn’t really do anything for me. I somehow found Prometheus to be more engaging.
Oh wow, complete opposite here - I thought Prometheus was hot garbage.
“Hey everybody, let’s just remove our helmets in this totally unvetted environment, we’re all scientists but trust me, this is supes safe!”
“Aw look at the little alien snake, so cute, better get real close!”
“I’m clearly showing symptoms of exposure to some alien pathogen, but let’s just hide it from the entire crew, including my girlfriend, who I will be fucking.”
“Oh, a huge ring is rolling toward me and I’m gonna get crushed, better keep running in a straight line!”
I mean, come on.
I’m clearly showing symptoms of exposure… let’s hide it
After seeing how people acted during the pandemic, that part is probably the most realistic.
See also, every zombie movie ever. There’s always someone who got bitten but decided to say nothing until it was too late.
Both can be true.
I never watched alien growing up, and only half-watched it with a girlfriend (sorry, good movies are great but… Boobs vs stereotypical teenager watching a movie…)
By the time I watched the movie fully, it just held no scare factor for me.
And so many dumb choices were made in Prometheus, it’s hard to take the people seriously when everyone is acting like children who have never been in space or a dangerous situation before.
Aw look at the little alien snake, so cute, better get real close!
The same can be said when in Alien the scientist shoves his face close to what is clearly a moving egg that responded to him as he got closer.
There were no scientists in Alien. It’s a bunch of space truckers and they’re infinitely more competent than the hand picked group in Prometheus.
Ah, shows how much I know about the film, thank you for correcting me
This is Ash erasure, and I won’t have it.
angry upvote
But honestly, fair. Alien is a 50-year-old movie, so when viewed with a modern lens it might not seem to be anything special.
Part of the legendary status of Alien is just how influential it has been. Before Alien, a horror-scifi movie would be some schlock about flying saucers piloted by men in gorilla masks terrorizing Hollywood. Audiences certainly weren’t expecting a psychosexual thriller about forced oral insemination and mpreg.
And the android! Robots in movies were walking vending machines, and yet the robot in Alien is just some guy until he starts to malfunction. Plus in the context of the franchise, it makes you distrust every single android in each subsequent movie, and might even leave you guessing who else in the cast could be a robot in disguise.
Other movies have done it better since then. We all stand on the shoulders of giants after all. And the funny thing is, a lot of the time when you look back at the movies that spawn the tropes, they don’t seem that impressive because they haven’t been totally refined yet.
I have a soft spot for Alien, it’s my favorite in the franchise. It relies so heavily on practical effects, it’s got those retro-futuristic computers which I adore, and the smart woman saves the day (sort of) after all the dumb men tell her she’s wrong. And yet despite what I just said, I don’t think anyone is actually very dumb, the characters are all quite human and I understand and relate to their motivations.
It’s a movie that feels far more modern than it is. You might even forget that it’s fifty years old until you see that explosive finale in gloriously bad 70’s CGI
I also liked Prometheus. It’s not the best in the franchise but it’s certainly not the worst, and it doesn’t deserve as much hate as it gets in the community
I was with you until you implied Prometheus was likeable because at least it’s not the worst.
Speaking of downvotes, I don’t think comments in a moderated forum should even have a downvote button. Every situation where a comment can be legitimately downvoted, like spam or bigotry or trolling, the comment should just be reported and removed by a moderator, instead.
People’s intuition about downvoting is simply that it’s the opposite of an upvote because that’s how it is presented in the UI. That might make sense for articles, but not for comments.
You didn’t list one of the main uses of a downvote: lowering the visibility of poorly made or unfitting content. If you believe that a post or comment does not contribute to or belong in the community or discussion, your only recourse in most places is to downvote. Yeah ideally mods would remove every such post but that ignores the fact they are few in number, often absent, and generally follow their rules to the letter instead of moderating on vibes.
If it’s poorly made, then you’re supposed to simply upvote other comments if they’re better.
If a comment is unfitting, then it is off-topic and can be removed by mods.
I honestly think comment downvotes should be disallowed, or if that isn’t possible, then the users who downvote each comment should be easy to find, like with a “click to expand and list downvoters” sort of link. I think you’d find downvoters to be mostly trolls and non-participators. Low value accounts.
To me, though, that sounds like calling the police to resolve a mild disagreement. It just escalates situations more than needed and creates drama where things could have otherwise been settled quietly by simply letting the content be buried and ignored.
I believe in using best judgment with downvotes and not simply using it as an “I disagree” button (which is why I did not downvote your comments, as some inconsiderate people seem to have done), but I do believe they have a place. They’re a form of community self-moderation that help keep discussions on topic and civil. I only really use the report button for content that I actually feel is somehow dangerous or detrimental that needs to be removed.
But I also do completely understand the instances out there that do choose to remove the downvote button entirely (check out blahaj.zone for one option if that’s what you’re looking for), and I know that is a preferable way for many to use Lemmy. I have an alt on blahaj myself, but I prefer being on instances with downvotes because it’s nice to see bigoted/heinous content be buried when moderators don’t or refuse to step in.
I think they’re downvoting my comments to try to be funny in this particular situation.
If people used the downvote like you suggest, it would be less of a problem. But speaking of policing, there is no real policing of votes. There’s just a button.
You give people a downvote button, and they’ll simply go through threads going up, down, up, down, up, down. It’s like they double their vote and it drowns out any more ethical downvotes. It hasn’t happened much on Lemmy, but it happens as a matter of course on Reddit. It will eventually be here, too, if Lemmy continues to grow. There is nothing to stop it.
Besides, apart from your point about essentially unmoderated areas, I think the upvote button is enough to achieve all the goals you listed. And if it’s unmoderated, it’s going to become unusably toxic no matter how people vote.
Downvoted
I loved how Alien brought together horror and science fiction. If it didn’t do anything for you, as you admit that you’re not into horror, then fair enough.
Now, I’ll throw in here that I can’t abide Aliens. To me, it betrayed the horror elements of Alien, making it more akin to some dumb action movie with some added schmaltz thrown in. Unlike many, I actually consider Alien3 the better film than Aliens (certainly not Alien), in that it does try to bring back the horror elements and darkness in a different way. Still, I can understand why many deride that film. The Assembly Cut does make amends, and is possibly worth watching if you didn’t care about the theatrical version.
I do really think the horror is what kills it for me, just not my genre of choice. And it’s not that I’m against things being scary, but I just never vibe with the format of most horror films. Same with horror games.
I also do see all of the faults that people pointed out with Prometheus, and I’m not going to really call that movie “good” either. But I think what makes it appeal to me a bit more is the worldbuilding. Alien is more understated and throws you into a well-imagined sci-fi universe that leaves a lot to be inferred, but Prometheus has a lot more of the “grand worldbuilding” type of atmosphere to it that had me really interested in what I was actually seeing.
FWIW I’m using the downvote button as a “You didn’t explain”, “That’s a band not a movie”, “That’s a show not a movie”, “That’s a genre of animation, not a movie” button ;p I’m definitely clicking it far more often that I typically do =p
It’s wild how many people can write but not read.
Ready Player One was so bad, but this is a rare instance where the book is worse than the film. At least the film has visuals the book is just cringe and rememberberries.
Agreed. That book was recommended to me by a few fellow sci-fi book fans, so I gave it a shot. Couldn’t get through it. It read like a 6th-grade kid’s fanfic about the 1980’s. Bad writing, bad dialogue, ham-fisted plot.
To be honest, isn’t it a ‘Young Adult’ book, i.e., intended for preteens/teens, not adults?
True, but it’s still poorly written. And so much of the content is GenX nostalgia, it’s obviously meant to be a crossover to those preteens’/teens’ parents.
Young adult means the content is suited for a younger audience, it’s not an excuse for unintelligent writing void of anything of value.
Lets be real here, young adults (I.E toddlers and teenagers) aren’t exactly the most critical readers or familiar with judging literary quality. The writers of books targeted at young adults know this, and tend to not do more work than they have to on plot and world building. Go ahead and write me a five paragraph essay on the value that Warriors added to the medium. No child read warriors for the themes, they read it for the premise of anthropromorphic cat drama and as fuel for their first role-play world building sessions. YA novels are the literary version of comfort food, enjoyable for those that like the taste but you would be foolish for expect a fufilling rich plot with well thought out characters.
By Warriors I assume you are talking about Warrior Cats? I have not read it but I was under the assumption that was a childrens book seeing as how it features cats. When someone says young adult my mind goes to books like Catcher in the Rye or Lord of Flies.
True! But I guess young adult readers don’t tend to be as discerning, which is why I never expect the writing to be any good.
The book is straight garbage. Probably the biggest Gary Stu ever. The movie is actually decent by comparison, because it removed a lot of cringe and toned down the main character.
Gary Stu? Is this the male version of a Mary Sue?
Yes.
Yeah, if OP thought the movie was heavy on the “good job being a teenager in the 80s!” content, they should steer well clear of the book.
The thing that baffled me about that movie was how many “startups” used it as reference for what they were trying to create. Like, did I watch the same movie? Real life was so shitty they had entire blocks of people living in trailers mounted to each other vertically. They used the matrix or whatever it was called to escape. And you want to create that for real?
Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.
Wasn’t it supposed to be bad though? Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought people liked it because it was ridiculous and campy.
The movie did ruin the Iron Giant, though.
I haven’t seen Ready Player 1, and now I have a reason not to see it.
You don’t disrespect Su-Per-Man.
I am not a gun.
Except when it makes for a cool action movie scene.
Oh hell naw. If you mean that they made him go superweapon, that’s damn near legal cause to burn down a studio
I haven’t actually seen the movie, only a few clips of it. I’m pretty sure they make him use his weapons, but maybe not his superweapon.
RPO is bad, yes. But Spielberg is a good director and that’s why the movie is at least entertaining. I hate-read the book, but I still enjoy the movie.
Agreed. The movie is just a fun action film wirh no brainpower needed. If you go into it with no expectations it’s fine.
The book? The author insists on yanking you out of the story with listicles of callbacks and references to obscure ‘80s shows or whatever. The main character is just an ass, and is also conveniently capable of meeting every challenge thrown at him despite being an impoverished basement dweller. The book became a slog of contrivances to get from A to B with “Aren’t all these retro references cool?” jammed in at every opportunity.
Very weird take. Everyone I’ve ever talked to loves that book. I honestly cannot picture any conceivable reality where the movie was better than the book.
