I’ve recently played Resident Evil 6 for the 1st time after playing Resident Evil 4 (an absolute masterpiece) & Resident 5 (a pretty good game). I was already aware of the hate this game got over the years. But after experiencing it, it’s only bad in an artificial way. Like yeah, it’s nothing like the classic games and it’s too much in the action category.
Otherwise, as someone who loves action games, it’s a pretty fun game. Especially in Mercenaries Mode, where it’s fun to mow down body-horror themed enemies. As a Resident Evil game, it’s pretty bad. But…as an action third person shooter with splatter punks, it’s quite well executed
Kraven the Hunter. I was entertained by it and it was beautifully filmed.
I really like the 90s Romeo and Juliet, set in present day with the lines unchanged (mostly). I’m alone in this, I think.
That was huge when it came out. Pretty much everyone I knew loved it. I think it only started getting shit on recently.
I got so much shit for liking it, maybe it was just my school though.
I’m sure there were people who didn’t enjoy it (as can be seen in this thread haha), but even though we didn’t have wikipedia to check at the time I think it was generally known to be big. And checking the stats it opened to box office #1 and then made 10x its budget, and the critics mostly liked it.
Anyway, it fortunately endures as a triumph for basically anyone who appreciates lit.
It’s sick.
“Fetch me my sword” grabs a gun named sword. Plus it has the best Mercutio.
I remember someone saying it’s like the Rockstar Games’ version of Romeo & Juliet. I liked it in general, but that 90-second or so prologue always gives me goosebumps.
That’s actually a great way to frame it
I’m alone in this
Alone with every single girl coming of age in the 90s who swooned over it cuz of Leo “Heartthrob” DiCaprio.
I skipped it back in the day but my gf made me watch it last year and I liked it. Very stylish.
He was actually annoying in it I felt.
Weirdly, I think that is a strength of his performance. Romeo is a misunderstood character: people associate him with romance and chivalry when the Romeo from the play is obsessive, fickle, and impulsive. Kind of a dweeb, really. Juliet fails to see through his bullshit because she is so, so young.
Romeo is annoying as a character, in all fairness.
They’re both annoying af I think that’s half the joke. I’m a big fan of Shakespeare’s sense of humor.
It was alright but the fact that they didn’t modernize the language is what ruined the film for me. Who the hell spoke like that in the 90s? It made no sense.
That’s… that’s the point. It’s Shakespeare’s words given modern visual elements to make it more comprehensible by a modern audience. It’s the prose of Romeo And Juliet that make it Shakespeare, not the swords and doublets.
Yeah and as someone who hated Shakespeare back in my grade school days (and still does), I couldn’t care less about that. I simply want to see a modern take on his plays with the script translated to a prose that I can actually understand.
As someone with ADHD, it’s difficult enough as-is to focus on words on a page written in a modern dialect, let alone an ancient one! Canterbury Tales was an even worse time for me because of this. I have to be fully invested in the story, or I can’t understand a damn thing in these old manuscripts because my brain refuses to pay attention to anything that isn’t urgent, interesting, or novel to me.
As someone with ADHD, it’s difficult enough as-is to focus on words on a page written in a modern dialect
This kinda comes off as someone with red-green color blindness wondering why more paintings aren’t done with primarily blues and yellows.
I guess if you want modern language you could always watch West Side Story.
Are you aware you’re asking for something that cannot exist? If you don’t have the Shakespearean prose, it’s not Shakespeare. It’s the identifying element of the thing. You can bend and stretch many aspects of a work, but you can’t remove the identifying elements. For poets, like Shakespeare, their word choice is core to the identity of the work. The ‘story’ is almost meaningless.
e.g. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Loveliest of Trees have the same ‘story,’ a man takes a moment to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of a treed landscape in winter, but one would never say they were the same thing.
Why not? If religious people can update the Bible translations to use modern English, why can’t we do the same with non-religious texts?
Because the goals are different. They aren’t trying to share the poetry of the various original authors of the bible. They are trying to share the stories of the christian mythos to enable/convince people to be christians. We can create things like a movie from a book or translate a book/movie and somewhat call it the same thing (though, even then, it also somewhat isn’t) because the story/plot is the identity of the thing and word choice is considered secondary, but in poetry, so much of what makes a poem itself comes down to individual words and punctuation marks, changing one can be significant, let alone changing the entire text.
Reversed but I think french is a horrible sounding language and the only reason people think it’s sexy or romantic is because popular culture tells them it is. It sounds like a coughing fit. Likewise I think german sounds cute, and again I think most people don’t because popular culture tells them german sounds like an angry man yelling. “Hallo, viele dank, bitteschön” it’s always so light and cautious.
The only exception is somebody moaning “oui” and “ja” respectively.I was fine with Waterworld.
Iirc most of the press was just “this cost waaaaay too much to make” rather than “its a bad movie”
Thanks for reminding me I still need to actually watch it, though. And ive got a few hours to kill.
Just watched it for the second time last month educating the youth of today. Deserves a sequel more than Moana did.
I was recently shown this hilarious Simpsons skit, but someone had to explain it to me haha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qause0z-9tM
Context
The arcade game is desperately trying to make back the movie’s budget, so it’s an extortionate quarter-muncher. Lol
And The Postman.
But I tend to like post-apocalyptic movies anyway.
I’ve always liked the Postman. With the exception of
spoiler
The scene at the end where society is totally back to normal in a totally unrealistic amount of time and they’re unveiling a statue of him. They should have just skipped that and had it end with him riding by the kid and grabbing the envelope.
The idea of The Postman was really neat. I remember it was a very slow paced epic though. A lot of Costner movies are kinda…contemplative that way. Kinda chill I guess? Haha his Robin Hood was like that too.
Especially back in the day. It was a major action movie event.
I kind of feel the same way about Cutthroat Island. It was a massive failure, but the production value was great and I thought it was a fun action flick.
Side Note: Waterworld is one of the few movies I recommend NOT watching the extended cut. The scenes are very low quality and feel like a TV production compared to the rest of the theatrical cut scenes.
Waterworld, Sahara, and John Carter are all amazing movies that BOMBED… but by what metric? Tons of money in production and/or inept expensive marketing and it didn’t make it back.
That’s all. It wasn’t a “market success.” But I’m glad they’re a part of culture.
Sahara is the Uncharted movie we deserved. I wish we got more Clive Cussler movies. One of my favorite films.
John Carter is the reason I will never properly pronounce “Virginia” again.
Waterworld’s stunt show is incredible and the world building was awesome.
It’s mad max on the water, what’s not to love? Now postman on the other hand…
Hey now, I actually liked Postman.
The Stunt show at Universal Studios was really cool tho
Yes, which reminds me of another hated movie I love: The Cable Guy aka Cabo Goobla:
“Dry land is not a myth. I’ve seen it.” Kevin Costner. Waterworld. I don’t know what the big fuss is about. I saw that movie nine times. It rules!
- Chip Douglas
So much so that I’m always surprised when they get the quote wrong in Waterworld itself! 😅
I watched that movie when I was a kid and genuinely liked it. (I do still have really broad taste, the question can be answered for me with “most media, apparently”)
It has a special place in my heart as one of a few dozen vhs we had that I could watch with no restrictions. (One of the banned movies was A clear and Present Danger, and I still don’t know why because I can’t stay awake through it because its boring. Another was Pulp Fiction. Maybe the first was a ruse!)
Is it a good movie? Idk. But smeat is still funny to me in ways that probably would have hit the same if I’d watched it today for the first time, so…
Big Bang Theory. I don’t think I would enjoy it on a rewatch but watching that show became a ritual for me and my family.
It is not a piece of art, but I always had fun watching it, stereotypes or not.
David Lynch’s Dune. I understood the hate it got. It is a horribly difficult book to put on film. I thought the style and feel of it was great and so over the top at times. I read the book so I knew what was going on but I understood the criticisms. Sting in a speedo though, wtf? lol
Edit: Almost forgot, a great lineup of actors too.
Best Dune movie ever and I’ll die on that hill. Never read the books and I had no problem following it.
I’ll join you on that hill.
“I did not say this. I am not here.” Goes so damn hard. Too bad only the guild decided to act in that scene.
I loved that scene. So otherworldly. The guild gave that machinations behind the scenes combined with alien feel. The imperial look is like a combination of the Shah of Iran mixed with 1600s royal Spain mixed with WW1 royal navy.
The hallucinatory scenes on Giedi Prime horrified and fascinated me (I was way too young when I watched it).
Different entertainment genre, but Nickelback.
Although I’m reasonably certain that 99% of people who hate on NB would sing along if it came on the radio.
We sing along because it was forced on us 😭 a few songs are ok I guess, they’re like the junk food of music, small doses.
The big problem, at least to me, is that they were massively overplayed on the radio and I grew tired of hearing the same song over and over again.
Now hearing them again after a long break, I can recognize that they made some decent - not great, but still decent songs.
That’s how I feel about Adele. Rolling in the Deep might even be objectively good but it GRATES on me because you’d hear it EVERYWHERE. ALL THE TIME.
I think a lot of decent artists are foisted upon the public so forcefully they become loathed.
For me it’s sweet child o mine. It’s a classic song, but I’ve heard and played it myself so many times that I can’t stand it anymore. I always skip it when I can
I can’t bring myself to hate Nickelback because they gave us one of the greatest meme templates in meme history.
I have a friend, whom I typically respect, who surprised me with that hot take one day. He had similar things to say about Creed and Taylor Swift.
Hes also been known to cheat at DnD, though. I love the guy but…
This makes D&D very unfun. You don’t win DnD. You enjoy DnD with friends.
Yeah, as the DM i was very much tempted to call him on it a few times, but i figured it would do more harm than good. So I tried to get creative, which mostly worked.
You’re a good DM
Aww thanks <3
We’re all here to have fun after all.
How do you even cheat at that game?
He fudged die rolls. Claimed he hit or rolled a crit waaaaaay more often than statistically likely. I 100% saw him roll low and claim a hit anyway multiple times.
Nickelback, Daughtry, i don’t get what the hate tbh.
I don’t mind their one song. But that’s the thing, they only have one song. (They all sound the same.)
Well, not really. For example, my favourite Nickelback song, Sister Sin, is rather different from This Afternoon, or For the River, or Just to Get High, or many others. But they definitely do have a number which are rather similar to others of theirs - but then, I honestly have never listened to a band which didn’t have some that sounded a bit similar to others? Like, most Ed Sheeran songs are Ed Sheeran songs, most Sleep Token songs are Sleep Token songs…
That said, Chad Kroegar’s voice is so distinctive that it makes everything they do sound instantly Nickelback.
But that’s the thing, they only have one song. (They all sound the same.)
Mumford & Sons, Hootie & the Blowfish, and Live all say “Hi!” and want to know if they can join the party.
It’s the ultimate “pop” rock. It really works for a lot of people but anyone who doesn’t like formulaic music designed with the broadest appeal will absolutely dislike it.
I am not ashamed to admit that I have their first album, and it’s a solid one with quite a few solid tracks on it. However, I always hated that song, which by far became the most popular one.
I don’t know much about their later stuff, though.
How I Met Your Mother. There’s a ton of hate, and it’s well deserved. Ted is annoying, Lily’s selfish, and Barney could never be a character on national TV now. It tapers off around season 5-6 and then fails in season 9.
However, it had a profound effect on me. I grew up in rural nowhere, Midwest USA, in a town with 2 bars and a gas station. Watching the group go out in the city going to bars and growing up there made me really connect, and made me feel a bit less isolated. I finally did move out and to a different city, and HIMYM did give me the hope to someday be like that, and now I am. I still re-watch every few years. It definitely hasn’t aged well, but it’s nostalgic for me.
I’ve always interpreted that show with Marshall as the main character. He goes through the most growth and also has the most altruistic intentions throughout. I see it as a demonstration that your friends and loved ones can be holding you back. Marshall deserved better than that friend group and he rarely if ever sacrifices his morals for the others.
Lily especially in this watchthrough I’m noticing how much she does manipulate him. Season 2 leaving of course just destroys him, and then she comes back and just expects to be taken back like it’s nothing. Then expects the wedding and everything right after, wanting everything to move on like she didn’t just destroy all trust with him. The really sad thing is she left to see if she could be a painter while he never prevented her from doing that while being together, as Ted said there are so many ones in NYC why SF? She wanted to go off and be single, and he took her back way too easily.
Then getting mad that he talks to his parents, or that he dreamed of maybe living somewhere else, or the credit card debt, or then being mad that he became a corporate lawyer to pay off her credit card debt. I feel bad for the guy
Thank you! I genuinely believe that Lily is the least agreeable character in the show. Everyone else’s vices are brazen and loud, but she manages to sneak around and not get noticed because of how cute her demeanor is.
Yeah I just watched the episodes today where Marshall is having a crisis of character working for GNB and she gives him the go-ahead (or even the push) to quit his job to pursue his dream, and literally the next episode she is mad at him for doing exactly what she told him to do, and puts Ted on the spot again as she plans to just up and leave for a trip without talking to her husband. Her character wants to be supportive, but wants more to live her lifestyle
I like her character for this, gives her more dimension and imperfect characters are more interesting to me.
I love that show. It’s just… fun.
I loved watching that show, but the premise is a bit off. “Hey kids, let me tell you about all the chicks I banged before your mom.”
Iirc Ted mosby (the real guy, not his character) asked if they were still doing that original ending.
To this day it still ranks up there with one of the worst final seasons ever for me.
It’s no scrubs
This is kind of how I feel about Friends too. It gets hated on for very valid reasons. But I will always remember being a teen watching the episode where Rachel and Monica have 1 condom left in the apartment and compete over who gets it. Then Monica goes to tell Chandler (I think?) that they can’t have sex because Rachel won the condom. He whines a bit, but she holds her ground. It’s one of the earliest pieces of media I remember watching that emphasized the importance of safe sex.
Sex and the city for me. They’re rich assholes. They’re also outspoken, assertive, strong. They taught a lot to teen me, a nerdy people-pleaser. They were the ones who made me realize I could just say no to men, and that having standards was a good thing.
Richard!
I love HIMYM, but it does indeed have a lot of issues. I did a rewatch and some things were painful to watch I have to admit. It will nonetheless have a special place always in my heart.
The best it has are probably the songs. Neil Patrick Harris is so talented.
I’m with you, I love that show. I liked friends too. I love trashy TV, it’s like frozen pizza, hits the spot.
I think sitcoms are an art form, people compare them to high price dramas and they aren’t. Sitcoms are your “friends” after a long day if work that you can count on to be reliable and low pressure. You watch them not for a good story necessarily, but to unwind after a day. Sadly I think that’s been lost over the last few years.
Exactly, you watch them to just watch a bunch of characters get into crazy hijinks that aren’t real. Sometimes the writers throw in a serious storyline or some lessons, but for the most part they’re not meant to be taken seriously.
(2002) Time Machine with Guy Pierce and Jeremy Irons
Wasn’t a big hit when it came out and it’ll never be as iconic as the George Pal Time Machine from the 60’s. But the 2003 adaptation has the coolest looking time machine to come around in a while (at the time it was the most expensive prop ever built, might still be but I’m not sure.)
Critics shit on it for not having the cataclysmic event that destroys humanity be global warming. While I’m all for talking about global warming I can kind of understand why they didn’t use that and why they didn’t reuse the 60’s disaster of nuclear war.
spoiler
In the 2002 film humans destroy the moon while nuking underground living spaces to build a low gravity retirement community for the elderly.
But to be fair to the writers their choice to destroying humanity was original, kind of a tongue-in-cheek joke about the elderly crisis we’re currently entering into and the plan is in fact an idea that has been discussed before.
Aside from that the film is pretty solid. In the book by HG Wells and the 60’s film the Time Traveller (doesn’t even have a name) has zero motivation aside from achieving a new scientific advancement. Thats cool and all but modern audiences, having had several successful time travel stories since Wells time, do need a better eureka moment than that. The 2002 film provides a good and believable motivation.
spoiler
His girlfriend is killed while he proposes to her. His first time traveling event is going back in time to save her, only to have fate killed her in some other cruel way. So instead of repeating the event he goes forward in hopes someone in the future will figure out how he can change the past.
The film also features a believable super-distant future where the human species splits, just like in the original stories. Samantha Mumba is a member of the tribe of humans that live above ground and are technologically ignorant, thought not exactly like the child-like race we see in the 60’s version. They do maintain that there are no old people and why that is.
spoiler
Morlocks are eating them up before they get old and the meat gets all tough and stringy.
Samantha Mumba did a great job in her role and while I don’t normally discuss a persons race the fact her father was Zambian and her mother Irish did kind of lean into what a future race of people could look like. She has a distinct look which played to the role.
Orlando Jones makes a couple appearances as a sort of AI librarian. It’s nice to see him in the odd movie role.
Jeremy Irons is the head morlock, the race of humans that stayed underground, and doesn’t disappoint, although his character is more of a cameo.
spoiler
He is the one who eventually explains that the issue with changing the past is a temporal paradox since Guy Pierce wouldn’t have built the machine if his lover hadn’t die, thus she must die because without the machine he couldn’t have went back to save her. Then to save his new future girlfriend the 2 fight to the death and he uses the time machine to sort of blow up all the other morlocks.
The film also had a good soundtrack and special effects that features the classic “years passing in seconds” stuff that was iconic from the 60’s film.
But ultimately the film is mostly forgotten to audiences.
This is one of my favorite popcorn flicks. The first half of the movie is amazing (up to the part where the moon gets destroyed), but I feel like they could have done more to make the second half more entertaining. I don’t know what, but it feels like it’s missing something. I also like how the film predicted the concept of LLMs and giving them an avatar, even though they predicted it happening about decade too soon IIRC.
The core problem is the source material is also boring. Aside from the motivation issues and the fact Wells never even bothers to name the Time Traveller, the whole plot is a bit slow. Sure, the morlocks eating people is creepy but it never manages to get to the horror level like how Jurassic Park or Jaws was able to achieve. You never really felt like they were going to sneak up behind you and slash you or tear you limb from limb.
The changes they made to the story helped: named the character, moved him to New York instead of London, gave him a deep motivation, even the morlocks had a more organized system that was more believable (hunted the Eloi and were controlled telepathically by Jeremy Irons.)
Maybe having more Irons in it would’ve helped but with the plot elements they had to work with it would’ve been tricky. The good thing is they didn’t drag it out, 90 minutes is the proper length. Nowadays they’d try to make it 2 1/2 and it’d be bogged down.
I still like watching the time traveling sequence.
That and the machine itself are the real star of the film. I came across some behind the scenes of the build years ago and it was impressive. The wood deck is all steel painted to look like wood. Since the spinning bits weighed a ton, acrylic and brass, they had to have it be secure. Even the geared computer (forget what it’s called… a baggage computer?) worked. Really impressive prop that doesn’t get enough love. Makes the Pal time machine look like a joke.
I was a young man when this came out and I certainly remember Samantha Mumba’s performance.
Yeah she was fun. Shame she didn’t do more stuff. I’d probably blow up my time machine and live with her instead of going back too.
Definitely!
I really enjoy the original live action Super Mario Bros movie from the early 90s. The production was an absolute mess from beginning to end, but somehow, an actually watchable movie came out of it, and the story is actually somewhat entertaining, even if it has nothing to do with the actual games.
Lol the “deevolution” ray that turns a dude into a monke. 😂
That movie was bizarre and wild. I like it too. I firmly file it under “Task failed successfully.” Lol
It’s just a fun movie. I don’t know if I only think that because I grew up with it though.
I have to say I enjoy that movie a lot too. I’m not denying that it’s a terrible movie, but it’s terrible in a very watchable and enjoyable way.
It was silly like a cartoon. It was deeply flawed on nearly every critical metric but it made us laugh, with it or at it.
I like the Super Mario Bros movie, I don’t care how loosely connected it is to the games.
I’d watch Bob Hoskins read the phone book.
The old Super Mario Bros movie is a fantastic B scifi movie, it’s just a terrible Mario Bros movie. I still love it!
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There was actually a deleted scene originally in the movie where an executive from Nintendo met with Mario and Luigi to buy the rights to their story and that the movie was actually what happened and the games are the ones that changed things, which I’ve always thought was a fun tongue in cheek nod at the source material (or lack thereof).
I know a lot of films and TV pilots start as a writers original idea, sometimes even a great idea, but for one reason or another never get picked up. Or even worse it does get picked up. But in both cases someone says, “This won’t sell, can you make it Super Mario themed?”
The writer, creative as they are and just happy to get work, then mashes the two together.
I think a film featuring a parallel New York ruled by evolved dinosaurs and deevolution guns is a wild but potentially interesting film. What it has to do with Mario… I have no idea.
There’s so many movies / shows that feel like “They just pulled a generic plot off the shelf and branded it with this popular franchise.”
I think that’s why Paramount Halo was painful. :(
Sucker Punch
The internet has been shitting on it for years. I don’t even remember why. Maybe something along the lines of sexualizing female hero figures. I think a lot of people don’t like Zack Snyder. I don’t care. It’s stylish as hell, looks awesome, has fantastic action sequences, and a killer soundtrack. And it has a whole inception vibe. I love watching it.
Man, this movie is such a trip! Definitely not great, but I don’t think it’s that bad.
Sucker Punch
This was a movie that was like “hey! wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a world where the nazis brought back dinosaurs to fight with- Wait! wouldn’t it be cool if there was like, a world where space travel was affordable and we had a moonbase an-wait! wouldn’t it be cool if there was a world where-”
And each time I’d be like “hey, there will be cool lore and world-building I’d love to see aaaand they already shifted into a different thing.” That movie pissed me off so much. Shoulda just been either a softcore porn, or leaned more heavily into the idea of a real-life “Heavy Metal” remake.
I love that movie and I think it is a lot better than most give it credit for. Snyder is either overhyped or over shat on in most cases depending on whho you talk to. But sucker punch is pretty good no matter what.
I’ve shown the video game Antichamber to about a half dozen people and watched them bounce right off it.
You know how sometimes snobs of any particular thing tend to start liking things a general audience hates? Like, I’ve seen movie buffs express a love of stuff like Street Trash, or whiskey snobs really like whiskey that tastes like smoke, leather and iodine. I think you’ve got to be like that with video games to like Antichamber.
Antichamber is a non-euclidean 3D first person puzzle platformer. It’s set in an abstract series of stark black and white corridors that in many cases don’t make sense. It’s a strange place that doesn’t behave like the real world, it is internally consistent, but you’ll encounter all kinds of weird shit like falling a long distance only to wind up above where you started, multiple paths leading through the same doorway, things appearing and disappearing, mazes that aren’t physically possible…and somehow it makes all the bizarre little puzzles you find yourself in parables for living a human life.
I can’t fault anyone for not getting it. It’s arthouse bullshit. I’ve shaken my head mouthing “what the fuck are you doing” to modern artists, I recognize this as arthouse bullshit, but it’s arthouse bullshit that I at least partially understand.
The game reminded me so much of exploring museum in all the right ways where you weren’t sure what was to come, but it was all loosely connected. The arty elements complemented this mystery and feeling like you were in some sort of other reality, which is honestly appreciated (not Backrooms vibes of unwelcoming). My only regret was having to use solutions a couple of times.
I’m glad you picked this niche game to talk about. I still think about it sometimes despite it being over a decade old. You’ve inspired me to pick it up again all these years later.
It’s a solo project I think? So in some cases yeah it has the feeling of a children’s science museum? What’s over here? What does this do? OOOOOOH! In one case there’s a room full of what I’m pretty sure was the test assets the developer used to learn how to create the shenanigans the game is made of.
For me, it’s at it’s best when it presents the player with something unfamiliar, like the layout that doesn’t spatially make sense, it has strange abstract things in it, like the hallway full of balls you have to walk slowly through. You’re unfamiliar with how this place works, you then learn, and it offers a checkpoint that relates that to some aspect of life. Then you get a cube gun and it’s a video game again.
I watched a couple friends make their way through that one together. I’d never play it on my own, but I rarely play games anyway. I’m very much a voyeur with them and had a blast watching/listening. The friend helping was yelling things like “do the jiggle jump” and shit
The Last Jedi. It took me a while to even process the hate, and I still don’t really respect it, but I think I understand it. TLJ is flawed but by far the best sequel, and an Ep9 where Kylo is beyond redemption and rebels and force users are bubbling up from everywhere could have been really interesting.
Even if they’d backtracked thematically, The Rise of Skywalker made a huge mistake in overtly shitting on it, literally fucking over its own story (such as it was) and pacing to do so, and thereby pleasing no one. Even if you don’t like what your partner did, you have to “Yes, and…,” not go full “Michael Scott in improv class.”
It’s always going to be one of my favorite Star Wars sequels because I got into it around the tail end of a deep depression and watched it early enough not to fall for the bad press
Luke’s story hit home in a weird way and I liked that Johnson at least tried to make Rey’s parents irrelevant as a much-needed dismissal of the whole idea that the fate of the galaxy far far away hinges on at least one magical bloodline
On top of that it’s given me a good litmus test for what differences in opinion should actually be respected. Don’t like the movie? Fine, but it is rather telling to me in all the ways people get downright aggressive over hating on it
Luke’s story hit home in a weird way
IMHO it it home because that is almost the only way it could have been done, especially after what JJ set up in The Force Awakens. We know that Luke blamed himself. We know he ran away. We know not even Leia can locate him via the Force. At least being a grumpy hermit was a way to take back a little bit of agency. When you have a hero’s journey, and the hero’s journey ends, you’re not really supposed to revisit them thirty years later with a massive new threat, because now they have to face it, but not as the hero. Once you decide you have to have Luke in the damn story, there is nothing you can do except make him a mentor or a villain. Villain was right out, but having him fall back into old habits (doomerism, jumping to conclusions, whining) and having all that make him start as an ineffective mentor was actually really clever.
It also maybe hit a little close to home for the generation that grew up idolizing Luke, re-evaluating what he was after reaching his heights in his mid-20s. That said, it also tells that same group, “Yes, you are fatter and angrier and grabbing breakfast and a latte is the most interesting thing you’ll do most days, but you have wisdom to pass down, and you have the power to beat back the darkness and learn from your own mistakes, and there is so much more to you than you’ve come to believe about yourself.” I actually walked out of the movie thinking that once you have a Luke that let the First Order arise at all, then this Luke was a god-damn hero and saved the galaxy one last time.
Not that I’m on top of such things but I heard episode 7, 8 and 9 were conceptually laid out together. But the new director for 8 found it limiting or something so threw it in the trash to create something else.
Beautifully said
I thought that most of the movie was somewhere between fine and fun, but that casino planet sequence was so unbearably bad that it soured the entire movie for me. I thought it was poorly-done, ham-handed social commentary awkwardly shoehorned into a strangely long sequence. And then at the end of it, they were in the exact same position they were at the beginning. It took a huge chunk of the second act, and it basically amounted to nothing.
Canto Bight hits different after you burned out doing odd jobs at the sleazy casino on the edge of town
It took a huge chunk of the second act, and it basically amounted to nothing.
Love it or hate it, and the fact that some people will decide they hate it is what I had to come to terms with, this was very intentional and played into the theme of Poe’s arc while letting Finn get the small amount of character growth they layered on in TLJ. It also made it clear that Rose is not so much a fully fleshed-out character as she is a stand-in for the entire Resistance, so she gets a chance to make its case and show its impact. Fighting the good fight is worth it even if, in the short term, it seems doomed. Narratively, I thought Canto Bight did a lot.
Yeah it’s the best of the 3, but it’s also just about the worst middle part of a trilogy they could do. It rejects the setup and doesn’t really set up well for the finale, while going off and doing its own thing. The trilogy was pretty doomed before it, but it was the killing blow
You see, i don’t think so. I think it is definitely redirecting the setup, but apart from sheer number of remaining rebels, I think it tracks really well with ESB. The great victory from the opening movie reveals vulnerability and removes the threat of clean and instant apocalypse, but doesn’t truly alter the new balance of power (sigh… JJ could have given us a functioning New Republic dealing with an insurgency of its own, but no…). Our chosen one meets a reluctant mentor who eventually acquiesces to train her. She has a troubling but cryptic dark side experience and leaves after learning some but not enough. Hero confronts a dark truth about her history but ultimately can’t truly defeat the villain. Through pluck and sacrifice, our heroes live to fight another day and we are left only with the implication of useful resources (“the fleet” in ESB, the allies who hadn’t yet answered in TLJ).
Now, I’ll concede the time jump would have needed to be more like ANH->ESB than ESB->ROTJ for it to work, but I also think the set up for an Episode 9 where the call is answered/being answered could work. In Canto Bight we’re made aware that the Alliance/Resistance’s iconography is inspirational, and we learn that the Force is out there, and there are people who want to believe in the cause of both. Additionally, we have a villain who is struggling between the light and the dark, but ultimately rejects both, as he understands them, to make his own path and pursue his own goals, motivated by emotional torment and a tragic sense of abandonment. There’s good bones there, much better than “here’s a hatful of fan theories. Pick one and let’s chase some mcguffins.”
The biggest issue with TLJ that I don’t see brought up a lot is that it left no where for the story to go.
We enter the movie with the First Order the only force in the galaxy after only destroying a few planets in the last movie, and somehow the resistance is even smaller than it was before.
We end the movie without really anything changing (except the resistance is even smaller - like 20 people).
Unless it was going to be four movies, TLJ doesn’t leave a lot of directions for the story. It basically has to be Rey trying to decapitate the head of the First Order by killing Ben. Rise of Skywalker fails because TLJ didn’t do anything to move the plot, forcing two movies worth of plot into one.
Yeah, that’s the part that bugged me too. There was so much “subverting expectations” to be clever and huff ones’ own farts…But no satisfying storytelling in place.
It was written like an on-the-fly television show like “Ah HAH this will be unexpected and get eyeballs and maybe we’ll explain it in season 6!” . . .but it was a movie, and it was just over…and a bunch of empty threads kinda went nowhere for ~2 hours straight.
It was entertaining! I watched it and first said “WOW. That was like the BEST Star Wars in a WHILE.” Then we thought about it…and realized nothing actually made any sense. Kinda like when you look at Ai stuff, weirdly enough. Lots of flash but it’s clear there was no actual intent behind it.
Also Finn was supposed to be a force-sensitive Stormtrooper who grows a conscience and turns Jedi. Finn was robbed. That bothers me so much that he just got relegated to backseat supporting sidekick to a cardboard cutout who should’ve had some depth.
My take away was that the protagonists were too caught up in being the protagonists and the outcome would have been better if they had just done nothing.
Which just isn’t a very good adventure story.
It’s the GOTCHA! (well that’s a good part of it.)
TLJ is just about the best movie in the whole series. The hatred is 85% pissed-off fans who thought the franchise belonged to them. And the rest is just anti-woke hysterics.
In time, TLJ will get the respect it deserves.
I do think the movie was weak on the handwavium when a few lines could have turned the siege/chase into something a little more compelling. Some of the dialogue skewed a bit Marvel-y, and Finn’s TLJ arc was way too similar to his TFA arc, only nudging forward his circle of empathy a bit. I also wish wish wish somebody had simply said the Holdo maneuver worked because she locked onto the hyperspace tracker: BOOM, two birds with one battlecruiser. Casino planet dragged a bit, but I didn’t mind it nearly as much as others. Maz was wasted, and in some ways, the whole movie actually mapped too closely to ESB (subversion indeed).
However, Luke’s arc hit me exactly right given that they were forced to revisit a Hero’s-Journey hero whose journey was done, because JJ Abrams set up the galaxy in possibly the least compelling way possible. Luke’s return from backsliding into his own old habits, accepting his failure, and using the energy he had left to secure a future for the next generation… that’s good stuff, and a lot of the boomers and older X’s who idolized him would do well to heed the lesson.
The initial tone poem with Rose’s sister was beautiful. DJ absolutely fit as a tweak on Lando and commentary on what all this is supposed to mean. The Poe arc that he can’t simply Maverick his way into leadership, the idea that Rey was no one and yet everything, that Force users and resistance could come from anywhere, and that Ren was on a path apart from Snoke’s but equally irredeemable, all these things were HUGE improvements from TFA and were setting things up for a very compelling finale.
Instead, JJ crammed in his own Episode 8 into the first 45 minutes, left no time to have his own movie make any sense, just channelled Harry Potter and the Avengers for its conclusion, and repeatedly reminded people that TLJ was being undone (“come with us, Rose!” “Can’t! Leia gave me homework!”… We picked “Yer a Palpatine, Rey!” from the hat full of fan theories!), thereby reminding TLJ’s fans that it was being undone, and its haters that it existed. Just a piece of shit movie all around, and to top it off, with my “ACKSHULLY” cap on, it still didn’t connect the tracker with the Holdo maneuver!!!
Finally, for what it’s worth, TLJ is the only ST movie to engage in good faith with the PT, which is something you need to do, even if (like me) they’re far from your favorites.
Mando and Grogu, and for that matter Skeleton Crew. Just mindless fun. Dude, it’s Star Wars, not fuggin’ Shakespeare.
