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.
Scary Movie and Avengers. I know Scary Movie is a parody but it’s just to much parody for me tbh.
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 mean they’re silly by default. They are not supposed to be high art. I like half of the MCU. Raimi spiderman Is as silly yet I consider it a masterpiece of a film, 2 even more.
My problem is witg cg fights. I feel like I’m just watching a three hour long cut scene.
Kind of agree with you. I liked it until endgame, but it was a downward slope afterwards
I liked the MCU, at first, but it had no business continuing after End Game.
I feel the same. Everything up until Endgame had some entertainment value. Most of what’s after is a low-quality cash grab
With so many a-list actors, they all get different story arcs, and fight for screen time, so there isn’t time to tell a nuanced or interesting story, and when they’re together it’s just an orgy of showing off how cool they are
It makes me feel snobbish to say you have to be literally juvenile to enjoy it. I just don’t get it. There’s no suspense at all, no surprise in anything. They’re all boring, intelligent characters. Even as films aimed at kids they’re bad, but I’m eternally surprised at the traction they get with 20s-30s…
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Wasn’t it supposed to be bad though? Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought people liked it because it was ridiculous and campy.
Yeah, the book was meant to feel a bit cringey, because the story is told from the perspective of a teenage gamer obsessed with pop culture. It’s the entire reason he wins the egg hunt, because he’s always got these obscure references floating around his head.
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.
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.
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.
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
Disney’s Hercules.
Because it completely butchers greek mythology. Of course, that’s to be expected from a kid’s movie (especially Disney) but I’ve been a greek mythology fan from an early age and this movie really disappointed me as a child.
Zeus being a caring father?
And a loyal husband ha
This was a really popular opinion at the time if I recall.
Counterpoint: it’s one of the better Disney movies IMO. The gospel soundtrack slaps, and Danny DeVito, James Woods, and Susan Egan are all perfect in their roles.
Also, I blame Meg at least in part for my lifelong weakness for skinny dark-haired sarcastic women. But that’s on me.
I’m not sure if you’re saying my opinion was popular at the time- I’ve never met anyone in person who agreed with me, not then and not now either. Occasionally some people say, “ok, I get what you mean” but they don’t really share my opinion. Most of the times I get “what? Hercules? Such a great movie!”.
And fair enough, I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, simply that I was thoroughly disappointed which isn’t the same. Objectively the art direction is really good, the voice acting and animation is solid, and yes the soundtrack was also objectively good but unfortunately not my type, what can I say. It’s just not a movie for me.
The cycle:
Step 1: (as a child) “wow this movie was great, I love Greek stuff!”
Step 2: learns a ton about Greek mythology over the next many years due to interest sparked by the movie
Step 3: (likely as a teenager or older, re-watching it one day) “holy shit this movie is absolutely nothing like Greek mythology, why did I ever think it was good…”
I’ve rewatched some of the old Disney classics and I was thoroughly disappointed by Hercules. I personally don’t care that much about the mythological accuracy of it but it was just kind of meh my memorys of the movie were much better.
Much of this thread be like…
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.
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.
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
Some Nolan stuff.
Inception: I understand it, it’s just extremely convoluted and dumb.
Oppenheimer: It’s a movie with 95% dialogue, and he decided to put loud droning music under every conversation so you can barely hear the people talking.
The dark knight trilogy: I just can’t take batman seriously in it. The voice is so silly, and the pointy ears just look really out of place in this very serious take.
Anyway, I do like some of Nolans movies, these are my pet peeves.It’s a movie with 95% dialogue, and he decided to put loud droning music under every conversation so you can barely hear the people talking.
The audio mixing in his movies is genuinely terrible. If you aren’t watching them with subtitles, you’re probably missing half the plot because of background noise.
I guess he refuses to use ADR but also films with an imax camera which is about as loud as a lawnmower. So all the dialogue needs to be extracted from all that noise and it sounds like shit.
Nearly all Nolan stuff. His movies are cold and impersonal, and his characters are just dull (and he can’t write a woman character that’s not one dimensional). I can’t remember the name of any of the characters bar the main ones. I feel like that’s his main job and he can’t do it. Everything else in the movie has a team of people (sound, lighting, design etc) but his area is always the let down.
That Bane movie was one of the most comically bad I’ve ever seen. Terrible acting, ridiculous plot points, dozens of plot holes.
I think Nolan is good at putting things together, but he lacks emotion and depth.
Bane:
Mhhphhm hmmph mugghhh hnnnph!
???
Nolan is so overrated his Batman trilogy sucked except Heath Ledger as the joker. Everything since the WW2 film he did has been overly pretentious.
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Snowpiercer. The movie was just a weak attempt at socio-economic metaphor, with an absolutely terrible premise, bad effects, action sequences shot mostly in the dark, weird pacing, and goofy characters. It seemed like a live-action Anime, and I hate Anime. I sat through that movie, the whole time wondering how and why it got such great reviews.
I felt like I was taking crazy pills while watching it as I tried to reconcile what I was experiencing vs what I heard from others.
The socio hierarchy stuff is the point of the movie. Well done metaphor. Thought provoking even if you hate the exposition.
I will eat your best tasting babies for not being in line with the movie critic hierarchy. Back of the train with you.
Nothing wrong with metaphors… Until they are so dull and ridiculous as if thought up by a sixth grader doing a lit assignment. Snowpiercer is that. That’s all it is. There is nothing profound on insightful or interesting or new. That’s all it is: the embodiment of a really dull metaphor. Just my opinion of course.
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.
I went into Bridge to Terabithia at 11 years old excited to watch two kids have a fantasy adventure and I still haven’t forgiven it
THIS! Me and my mom thought it was a fun fantasy story from the commercials. The kids going into the forest into another realm of fantasy creatures. All of that in the commercials was just 1 scene in the movie, and the rest was boring or heartbreaking. I will never forgive their marketing team.
Okay but like the whole point I feel is that tragedy is impossible to avoid. It’s supposed to be a slap in the face. If you haven’t forgiven it, then the film achieved its goal.
My ex would cry just bringing this movie up. She made me watch it but I was around 23-24 so I don’t remember it.
Read the book in 4th grade, due to the marketing I did not have any interests seeing the film but judging by your comment it seems they more or less kept in line with the source. It is not a happy story.
Your friend Leslie is dead
Borat.
Supposedly it’s a comedy, but it’s completely devoid of humor.
The John Wick series
Watched them all over the course of a weekend - its the same fucking moving over and over and over and over again. The amount of disbelief I needed to suspend got exponentially larger so by the time I got to the last movie I just couldn’t take it anymore. There is no real plot or any development of characters, it’s just implausible fight scene after implausible fight scene.
I think if I put a few months between each movie I wouldn’t have this opinion - on their own the movies can be mindlessly entertaining but all together was too much for me.
The whole point of those movies is to see the action. The martial arts, guns, cars, everything is an incredible stunt or piece of action camerawork. John Wick is what happened when stuntpeople made a movie. People liked it because it looked realish and the stunts were cool. So they made more.
Exactly. The lore and such is an interesting attempt at world building, but I enjoyed it because of the insane level of tight choreography and flow, when many action films merely imply martial arts by showing a single punch and then shaking the camera violently lol.
I think a prequel with less emphasis on action could be pretty good
Brain off. Guns go pew
I love the first one and would argue it’s fairly grounded, it’s the sequels that quickly got unhinged.
Dude murders everyone over a dog. So grounded.
We were talking about the action scenes being believable.
I saw this movie in theaters with no expectations, and I’ve seen a lot of action movies in theaters. There was a palpable shift in that moment, a few people audibly gasped, and then we were all on board.
He doesn’t kill anyone that doesn’t have it coming, most of them many times over. He lets the bouncer go, makes peace with Viggo’s brother, lets Cassian live, and honestly seems to just want to live in peace after he sends a bunch of souls for judgement. It’s like Creasy in Man on Fire; forgiveness is between them and God, it’s up to him to arrange the introduction.
Well…
The first movie feels like it could take place in the real world. That society as we know it exists, drug cartels and mafias and all, and the organized criminals have worked out a deal with a hotel owner. When a gun fight erupts in a night club, everyone screams and runs away.
The second movie blows that all up; everyone is a secret underground hitman pretending to be a normal civilian, the hotel owner is a quasi-religious figurehead who only fears the Truly Evil Council, and when a gun fight erupts at a concert, everyone cheers.
They came up with a cool setting and then shoved it straight up its own ass.
I enjoyed the first movie; The “I hear you have struck my son.” scene sold it for me; if the movie was perfectly cliche that scene would have ended “Sorry sir, it’ll never happen again!” while a red laser dot is wiggling up his chest and then Viggo says “I know.” and we hear a gun shot through the phone. No, that “He stole John Wick’s car, sir; and he killed his dog.” “Oh.” It was a fresh helping of big Hollywood action movie. And for a big improbable ridiculous one man army action movie, it still had some restraint. It was at least a little grounded.
The second movie went right up its own ass. So, literally everyone everywhere in the world is a secret underground contract killer? I haven’t seen…I saw a thread about “there probably won’t be a John Wick 5 because Keanu’s knees” so 3 or 4. I enjoyed the first one.
I find they are always on when I stay at hotels. A few years ago it was always Harry Potter, now its always John Wick. The first movie is pretty good to watch in one sitting. But I am convinced the rest of the series is mean to be consumed in 5-10 minute chunks. Like coming and going through the hotel room while your doing other things. For that its pretty good cause you don’t have to know any story to follow it for a minute or two. Just have to remember that you don’t need to know who is who because they will probably die in the story soon anyways.
I haven’t seen them, but based on your description, I think this xkcd explains how these movies were conceived:
(source)
I didn’t like these either. I think it would have been better if he WASN’T already some badass guy with access to firearms but instead just some regular dude that got his life ruined, and then he had to figure out how to get revenge on everyone while being just an average guy. They could have gotten real creative with the methods he uses to locate people, obtain firearms, plot his revenge, etc. I feel like his character went into the whole thing already having the upper hand. It would have been a better movie to watch him rise up from real rock bottom and still kick everyone’s ass in the end.
The movie you’re looking for, generally, is called Peppermint and stars Jennifer Garner (in between credit card commercials). It’s a fun movie.
It’s not that deep, you just shut your brain off and go “People died lol!”
It honestly wasn’t until the last movie that I gave a shit about the plot. I feel like till the finale, there really wasn’t any deeper meaning than “Wow Keanu Reeves is a bad motherfucker with a gun! Who knew? Oh right everyone who saw the Matrix when it came out 50 years ago, but still!”
