The Last Jedi. Bombers in zero gravity but it’s Star Wars, you continue to watch no matter what.
Lol, never watched it, I don’t like Star Wars. But I just watched that scene on youtube. Lol, like they’d intentionally tried to have the worst take on physics.
Idk why people have such a problem with that. The movie is about space wizards
Passengers (2016) is a shit film with an excellent premise but I never think about it, in fact it reminds me of its opposite, a superb film with a ridiculous premise called Sunshine (2007)
Sunshine is awesome, and I’ve never seen Passengers mostly because it has my two most hated actors in it.
Equilibrium
The gun fights were weird but fun, and his redemption arc was self-indulgent at best. But yes, very cool 1984 concept and sone pretty stunning visual action scenes
The punisher 2004. It’s fun.
Battlefield Earth. It’s a get drunk and veg kinda movie for me. It fucking sucks. But I like it.
Never seen BE, but yeah I liked the Punisher even though the plot felt contrived at points. Acting was decent, even the silly roles.
Not a film, but a novel:
Starflight 3000 by R.W. Mackelworth
If I remember, it was about this asteroid called “The Biosphere” that got hollowed out and sent on relativistic speeds through deep space to seed other solar systems with human colonies. The inside of it was set up like a giant rural town with massive skies, and a foot print the size of New York. And that’s a cool ass premise.
But the book was so fucking milquetoast and bland. I could not tell you anything about the protagonist, their challenges, or anything.
That reminds me of The Inverted World by Christopher Priest. Cool idea about a city on tracks that must always move otherwise suffer spacetime distortions. Thats the only interesting part about the whole thing.
Yeah, that’s pretty similar, the main difference being the setting. For me, I can only really tolerate books if they’re science fiction for some reason.
But yeah, that book was so bad it honestly makes me want to take a crack at the idea myself and see if I can do it better.
I know I probably can’t, I have very little writing experience. But it’s gotta be at least worth the attempt.
Downsizing
First 20 minutes (give or take) seemed like a solid start. But then they did absolutely nothing with the concept.
What was pitched as social commentary was just a nothing burger of an adventure.
It kind of did just wander.
Oof. Horrible movie. Bad Matt Damon!
Lucy
It’s entertaining as all hell. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more, so I don’t understand the hate it gets. Just turn off your brain, and have some fun. It’s not supposed to be hard sci-fi.
it gets hate because it’s all based on a long ago debunked urban legend about brain % usage… and made the legend grow….
Since when do we hold action movies to that kind of standard?
“turn off your brain” is a pretty ironic requirement.
LoL. Totally. Gotta use 0% of your brain in order to enjoy a movie about using 100% of your brain.
But anyway, it’s just code for ‘get stoned as fuck before watching this.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film)
The audience for Lucy was split evenly between men and women, with 65 percent being over age 25.[54] Nikki Rocco, president for domestic distribution at Universal Studios, said, “To have a female lead in an original property absolutely made a difference. Scarlett is a star, and her presence [in the film] made it a lot more appealing for women.”[55] Michael Bodey of The Australian commented that women having comprised half the audience is “a seemingly new precedent for an action film” and that, because of its box office performance, Lucy is the film out of all of Besson’s film work “likely to have the greatest cultural impact.”[18]
It seems like it definitely resonated with a lot of people, will check it out. Luc Besson can be hit and miss, but his films are always memorable
I think in Scarlett’s Hot Ones episode, she mentioned that Meryl Streep told her she loved Lucy. Which makes me think Meryl might be a big stoner. Hilarious.
and it’s only 89 minutes, it doesn’t get stale or repetitive!
Mortal Engines
Mortal Engines is literally a refutation of liberalism in a capitalist system. It’s about how municipal darwinism doesn’t work.
I haven’t watched it yet, but this basically confirms my suspicions.
It’s worth a watch if only just for the effects and the world-building. I’m not against the premise, either, but like the title of the sub points out there was poor execution.
The ideas behind They Live are fascinating and deserved better treatment than a 20-minute alley fight about sunglasses.
I love that movie, and that fight scene, but damn you’re right.
Thank you! I was being as tactful as possible, since negative statements about any aspect of that movie whatsoever, or the acting skills of Roddy Piper, usually receive nothing but douchevotes and insults lol. It’s a very entertaining movie.
I absolutely love Rody’s acting in that movie. If You think his acting is bad in this movies watch Hell Comes To Frogtown, you’ll appreciate They Live more.
Jurassic World. Just give me 90 minutes of dino mutants fighting, I don’t give a shit about Chris Pratt nor some random kids.
Gotta feeling the upcoming movie with SJ is going to be right on that list too. Just bad ideas getting recycled over and over.
+1 for I do not give a shit about Chris Pratt
He’ll never be my Mario.
Mortal Kombat (2021) opened with a great “feudal China with elemental magic” clan story that could have been an amazing movie, but then they jumped forward in time and everything after that was a let down.
Cabin in the woods
I feel like it would’ve been a little better if they held off on the reveal that it was staged for a bit, but it’s been ages since I’ve seen it. I remember enjoying it though.
I’m asking you politely but firmly to leave
Cabin in the Woods is fine art.
10/10 Premise 10/10 Execution
I’m helping my teenager get through all the horror tropes so we can watch Cabin in the Woods together.
Hot take.
I loved cabin in the woods!
Yeah, I don’t think anybody actually thought it was a bad movie. The real hot take is saying it was.
everyone and their mother did
Yeah, so much more there, they set up a very good universe to explore a tiny sand grain of it.
100% agree. It’s a fine twist on the subgenre, but the twist introduces an idea that begs to be expanded upon as part of a larger, cross-subgenre arc. And yet we only get a sliver and then it’s done.
My hot take is that Joss Whedon’s writing is like JJ Abrams’: perfect premises with bad sense of follow-thru, so all their work gets the Netflix “over before it’s satisfyingly concluded” treatment
If you want more you got SCP lol.
I feel like everything was explained. I’m not left with any lingering questions about why or how any of it happened
While I love the movie, but I got a few questions about the ancient one.
Ancient being that brings about the end of the world if his terror is not fed. Lives at the center of the world.
That’s a great point. It would be fun to see a G rated fantasy film that happens to exactly follow the rules to be a Cabin in the Woods prequel.
(Same enforcement of common tropes from much happier genres, but implying that the underlying reason is the same…)
you shut your bastard mouth!
CATS
Cats is not a complicated musical. All they had to do was animate it and get actual voice actors/singers. I’ve seen sketches for what I think was a Tim Burton sketch, and that would have been a million times better. I don’t know who looked at Cat’s and was like, “Yup, we need CGI.” It looks horrendous and sounds bad more often than not. The musical is already pretty out there, how much more fun would that movie had been if we had animators working on it. The creative visuals, colors, motifs. Not to mention a cat is a wonderfully complex animal to animate just because of how they move. That movie could have been a visual delight in part with the Spiderman movies if they let it, but noooooo. Let’s make a nightmare.
I still feel obliged to post it, so that the memories don’t fade.
Beautiful.
The original Purge. I thought all the background stuff and setting were super interesting, but the film itself was a generic home invasion movie. The sequel expanded on all the stuff I was interested in, though.
The sequels really explored the idea with impressive worldbuilding. I admit the first one was more a horror flick, but the others were definitely digging deep into social commentary
Yeah, it wasn’t even that the first one was bad, it’s just that all the things they mentioned in passing, like the New Founding Fathers and the exemptions for Level 10 Government Officials, were building a world that sounded super interesting. Then we got saddle with some boring rich family for 90 minutes. I only got around to seeing the first sequel, but it delivered on all the stuff I wanted to see after I heard that first announcement.
NostalgiaCritic did a pretty decent analysis on the Purge series a few years ago, and it touches on a lot of this:
I’ll be honest, I find that guy super annoying, but I appreciate you sharing it with me. It definitely makes me feel validated that someone else felt the same way
Oh I hate him too, and his needlessly pipsqueak voice and the stark unenthusiasm when reading out charity donations.
But his analyses can be pretty decent
I agree with all the other people in this thread mentioning ‘In Time’. It had such a great premise, and I didn’t even hate the execution, but it was mediocre. It was like they went 50% of the way to a flawless execution and just said “fuck it, that’s good enough”. The concept has a lot of elements to explore, like classism, labor exploitation, human rights, even free will to a point… A movie just isn’t the right vehicle for that story. It needs to be a series. Done right, you could explore all that while having an overarching plotline, and still have your weekly subplots and B stories. That would give the story time to fully develop the romantic connection between the poor guy who comes into a bunch of time, and the rich girl who empathizes with him. That romance felt incredibly rushed in the movie, but you could build it up over a whole season in a show.
I also want to mention another movie that I’m not sure belongs here. It’s not a bad movie, nor do I think the execution was mediocre, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why it didn’t do better. That movie is called ‘Push’, with Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning. I just watched it again the other night, and I freaking love it. The concept isn’t that amazing or original, but the way they present it is great. There isn’t a ton of exposition or world-building. They kinda just drop you in and let you figure it out, and I really like that. Evans and Fanning have great onscreen chemistry, and Djimon Honsou is a perfect bad guy. This is another one where I think it would make a great series, even though I think the movie was done really well. It’s just kind of a perfect mid-budget sci-fi action movie, and we don’t seem to get those anymore.
I thought “In Time” was a good movie. I agree that there is a lot that could be done with it, however only so much can be done in a movie. This sort of concept really lends itself to multiple movies or a series (just don’t drag it out too long).
5 seasons. No more, no less. It gives the overarching story enough room to breathe and play out a solid three act structure with a wide middle. It needs to all be written and plotted out before anything gets filmed.
Will check out both, thanks for this
