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.
Forest Gump. The 1994 Best Picture nominees were some of the most highly competitive the Academy has ever had, and they went with the one that was just a straight-up terrible fucking movie. It has no value except as nostalgia bait for Americans and propaganda for those who want to believe in the myth of American individual exceptionalism.
Its musical score is also probably the worst thing I’ve ever had the misfortune of performing in an orchestra. Dull and repetitive.
And its most famous line is straight-up bullshit. I’ve heard the book does it differently, but the movie puts “something that kinda sounds deep to a 14 year old” over a level of rationality that stands up to 20 seconds of thought from an average person. A box of chocolates tells you precisely what you’re going to be getting.
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 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.
In the spirit of this post, drag doesn’t like Spider-Man 2. The first half of the movie is just watching Peter suck at his life and be punched down down down. It’s torture porn. No wonder he lost his mojo, being Spider-Man sucks. And if Peter isn’t Spider-Man, then people die in burning buildings. Peter’s arc is realising that he needs to intentionally ruin his life and suffer, because the alternative is worse.
It’s maybe a good piece of ethical philosophy and it makes us admire Peter, but it’s just fundamentally unfun and depressing.
Spirited Away
No consistent world, cringy behaviour of the main character, love story out of nowhere, you can’t have a plot twist if you didn’t have any previously established lore. It felt a bit like a dream that was trying to take itself seriously as an actual story.
how dare you
Upvote
Spirited Away, and to some degree all Ghibli stuff leans very heavily on a shared cultural Mythos. It doesn’t do exposition in the same way that zombies or angels aren’t explained; everyone knows that stuff because we all grew up with a million references.
Inglourious Basterds.
However much I liked all the Tarantino flicks before this one, I just cannot get into Inglourious. Also, everything Tarantino made after that movie is also tainted by the same uneasy feeling I get. If pressed to guess why, I’d say he took the stories out of the ‘now’ and transported them to other times and places, which just does not seem to agree with me.
I think Basterds was his first movie that casually re-wrote history, which threw off the movie’s tone for me. Like a historical “what if” movie. And every movie he’s done since then has the same feel to me now.
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. 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.
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.
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.
Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.
Have you been around the car culture?
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.
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…”
Zeus being a caring father?
And a loyal husband ha
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.
Interesting opinion. The ending of Interstellar made me cry like a baby. Shit was great.
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.
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
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.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.
i disagree on atleast one movie: Interstellar. it is absolutely devastatingly emotional, atleast for me.
the scenes where Cooper sees his kids growing up without him after coming from the water planet, and the ending sequence when he goes into the black hole and the tesseract will never not make me bawl out like a baby.
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.
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.
I can’t stand Will Ferrell. He’s basically Adam Sandler at this point, only without the redemption arc of Uncut Gems and Hustle.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
It’s just “Fern Gully”… But with blue people. Go ahead, watch Fern Fully (1992) then watch Avatar.
It’s a rip off.
THANK YOU! I’ve constantly called it “Fern Gully as reinacted by Starship Troopers and the Dragonriders of Pern”
Someone called it more succinctly “Dances with Smurfs”.
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
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.
I grew up small town America, older Millinial, I’m the demographic for that movie.
I couldn’t finish the movie.
Hard disagree, lol. That’s a classic.
I tried to watch it a couple of times and never finished it. Apparently, it’s a fairly divisive and hard-to-predict pick for recommendation systems as well.
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.
Ted.
Juvenile fratboy humour done badly, very badly with lots of fan services to get the brainless cheering.
Made me laugh once in the first few minutes (I can’t even remember the joke) and walked out of the cinema after about an hour.
You tried to watch this movie sober, didn’t you?
That’s the problem, lol. You have to turn off a bit of your brain to enjoy yourself properly.
You have to turn off a bit of your brain to enjoy yourself properly.
People with this attitude are my enemies. Specially if they propose alcohol as method.
That just means the film is stupid.
Elf.
Explain
I don’t really have a reason for it. I just find Will Ferrell annoying as shit, especially dressed up as a little elf boy pretending to be ignorant about mundane facts of life.
Really anything with that dude is just not funny to me. But that movie is a real low point.
Borat.
Supposedly it’s a comedy, but it’s completely devoid of humor.
Borat isn’t my favorite of the genre but I love those kinds of movies that mix fictional plot line with interactions of real strangers. I wish there was more love for those kinds of projects.
Borat (and SBC in general) is known for treating those real strangers like shit and leaving the places they film in worse off than when they got there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borat check under controversies.
Yeah… The part where they tricked the town into thinking it was a real movie and gave them scripts reflecting as such, then just put the jokes the studio ACTUALLY wanted in the subtitles was really low of them to do. I don’t see how that’s at all removed from just doing “Kazakhstan: The Minstrel Show”
I will say I liked the movie a lot better before I knew that. When I first saw it I was a highschooler who had assumed Kazakhstan was a fictional place made to be a stand-in for Eastern European countries. Even when I learned it was a real place, I thought surely they just made a set or something.
Because only a monster would actually fly to a third world country, say you’re going to bring in a lot of money for a town that desprately needs it, pay them far less than they were promised, and blatantly lie and say that it’s a film about a guy going off on a big fantasy adventure instead of some white guy doing brown face to show how backwards and evil not only the town, but the nation as a whole is…
