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.
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
Pocahontas in blue
Avatar is at least notable to me as the last movie that was able to wow me with special effects, which also makes it the last movie where I was able to at least sort of overlook the attempt at a story that was used to glue all the eye candy together. Everything since then, I really don’t care how good your special effects are, that stuff is boring and routine now.
That’s also why I haven’t watched Avatar since it was originally out in the theatres. There’s really no reason to.
And the worst part? Unobtainium - ugh.
Regardless of your opinion of the movie, Unobtainium is a real term used in engineering and material sciences. A modern example would a material to make the walls of a fusion reactor with. The movie example was implied to be a room temperature super conductor.
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”
1st- I agree. 2nd… Most people I tell my fern gully theory don’t see the connection. You took it to a whole new, although very accurate, level. 3rd… I’m glad I’m not alone in seeing this. Thought I was crazy.
Lucifer. My sis loved it and I hated it with a passion. I don’t think Ellis is any good in it and they’re just relying on him (and the other actors) being hot instead of actually telling a decent story or making enjoyable characters.
I loved it, but not the last season and how it ended.
Into the Wild. So much potential in this story and general theme, but cinematically so overloaded with pathos and clichés. Overly scattered storytelling, restlessly leaping through space and time leaving no pause to connect with nature. The film has its strengths but a lot of people I know mentioned it as one of their favorites and couldn’t accept that I found it rather mediocre. (Didn’t hate it though. So sorry for being off-topic)
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.
Just saw someone comparing Blade Runner to Ghost in the Shell and Fallout 4. (They had other criticisms too, though.)
Much of this thread be like…
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.
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.
What is that other Avatar franchise? I watched the first movie when I was just a kid so my opinions highly influenced by my emotions. I don’t think it is the best sci-fi movie out there but I really like Avatar (2009).
Avatar the Last Airbender, and the Legend of Korra.
The animation, specifically. The Netflix series is OK, and there is absolutely no movie adaptation.
Funny enough, I watched them when I was like 19, but Korra, Zuko and Iroh are still three of my favorite characters in anything ever. I remember it vividly, where I can’t remember a single line from the James Cameron Avatar (which I watched as a teen when it came out).
I believe the impact was mostly to do with the visuals. And, honestly, that is very fair. While it is inctedibly dull and cringe story-wise, the visuals are phenominal, especially since the movie is now already 15 years old.
I feel the same way about Jurassic Park in that sense, though it is much less cringe than Avatar (but still pretty basic story-wise).
But the original Jurassic Park was fun. The writing was sharp and memorable, the cast charismatic, even if the plot is not that important (which is fine).
I did love JC Avatar’s alien flora and fauna, and some small details like the realistic spaceship, but I guess it feels much less exciting in hindsight without anything to “attach” it to.
And again… the IP its name collides with is nothing to sneeze at, visually. You can pause it almost anywhere, even in “mundane” scenes, and get gorgeous fantasy shots and incredible music:
the worldbuilding is what’s interesting in Avatar, imho. The visuals support that. Story wise it doesn’t do a good job of being surprising
See, I’m baffled by this one, now I’ve only seen the first movie so maybe there’s something in the second I don’t know about in world building. But the first, the world building was to me… meh? Okay, the alien planet was interesting, they have a culture, they seemed to do a fine job with that, cool. But the story makes humanity so blitheringly stupid that I cannot comprehend the worldbuilding beyond “We need some Captain Planet level villains.” They’re after unobtanium, a mineral that has properties for anti-gravity and wrecking havok on radar. Soooooo… We’re going to work hard on inserting someone to convince the locals to dig up under the religious tree for the major vein of it instead of the MULTIPLE floating mountains all over the place.
Which then when the military decides to do its thing, this spacefaring species uses glorified helicopters that fly lower and slower than modern military aircraft, again through the mountains of unobtainium in a low altitude approach for a strike operation that only makes sense if the enemy has radar… which the aliens definitely did not. I seriously might have missed something but I couldn’t get past humanity in it was just carrying the idiot ball throughout the movie.
Yea all that to me belongs to script. And I agree it’s not very good. When I say worldbuilding, I’m talking about the ecosystem and its interconnectedness. It does a good job of mirroring the Earth’s and I consider it to be a proper -although indirect- awakening to the beauty of terrestrial biology.
Saw.
It is on the very tiny list of movies that I am actively angry I watched because I’m never getting that time back. It is one of the single worst movies on “Tell don’t show” that I felt like I was being actively gaslit by the writers because what they were telling was opposite of what they were showing.
“Jigsaw tricks people into killing his victims” says the cops, and says all the people watching the movie. NO. He kills people and gives them a potential for a way out. Setting up a maze with cutting wire and a door sealing off if you don’t make it in time isn’t “tricking someone” it’s killing them with extra steps. It’s like blaming fucking landmine victims “Well if they didn’t step there they’d be okay”. Legit the logic that movie gives I find my blood pressure rising just going into it again.
And the ending. I guess spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie, I’m not gonna bother to figure out the formatting for it so here’s your warning to stop reading. The surprise twist was why my friends made me watch this movie, the logic above was explained and how clever Jigsaw was they said I’d like it. I’m not a horror guy but I love Scream because holy fuck it was clever and well done. Saw, the victims are looking for where Jigsaw is watching them and I just said “He’s the dead guy in the middle of the room.” and questioned why would I come to that so early in the movie my reasoning was simple. It was a dumb movie that was up its own ass so much to say that it was clever that was the obvious “clever” haha we got you option it could be. Anything else would have actually been clever.
I compare Scream and Saw so much. Scream is a very clever movie masquerading as a dumb movie that deconstructs a genre and pulls of a fantastic twist that if you didn’t see it coming will shock you and when you go back there’s all sorts of clues. Hell, part of the twist is realizing they put thought into the killer instead of just “slasher villain #85” that the genre had done for so long, but if you know what’s happening the movie is winking with you with such amazingly dumb and clever things like “He’s behind you Jamie”. Saw is a dumb movie that masquerades as smart, it wants to be clever and philosophize at you and wants to pull off a twist that is unearned because there’s no clues for the twist, so unless you watch a lot of movies and realize this one is up its own ass, of course you’re going to be surprised. It’s like a guy who built a tesla coil and (think he) knows how it works and no one else does so he shows up in a cheap top hat and a wand and expects everyone to applaud like he’s David Copperfield. Sure, everyone loves tesla coils, but that reaction is unearned.
From what I understand from others who’ve seen the rest, even what little cleverness goes away on the character and it just becomes a show to watch more elaborate ways to see people get hurt. It’s the only way I can comprehend that the series is loved by as many as it is. I work in healthcare, I can see plenty of that on the day to day basis.
Alien Romulus
This movie seems to get a lot of love for some reason. I understand the bar was set really low by Prometheus and Covenant but that’s not an excuse.
Romulus is just a collection of greatest hits from all the previous movies. None of the beats were new or original. Not a single protagonist or element added to the story in a meaningful way. None of the main characters are memorable in the slightest (compare to the phenomenal characters in Alien or Aliens). It was just so…bland
So, first preview for Alien Romulus happened and I was super excited. Riiiiiiight until I realized it was an Alien movie. I want a damn scifi movie set in the universe to explore the rest of where humanity is at. But Alien movies are so focused on the xenomorph and horror aspects that they create amazing set dressing then just forget about it. Like if they came out with a movie “Weyland-Yutani” and there was a promise there was no Xenomorph, just an exploration of humanities dystopia there, I’d be right there for that movie.
As an Aliens fan, I absolutely hated this movie too. A lot of people I know we’re comparing them. I didn’t kill them. I swear.
Pretty much any of the popular comedy movies. The Hangover, Hot Tub Time Machine, Elf, etc.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. What a stupidly overrated movie.
Oppenheimer.
It’s probably an interesting movie, but holy shit each shot is less than 3 seconds long and it just cuts around to different camera angles every 3 seconds for 2 hours…
Not only was this making me feel physically sick and disoriented, but this erodes tension in the film and is completely unnecessary. You don’t need 14 shots of someone walking down a damn hallway or having a think, you need one (1).
Take all that shit out and you’re probably left with a story worth actually telling.
I honestly can’t stand the vast majority of popular movies. They also keep getting longer and longer, and I already struggle to sit through an hour and a half long movie
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.
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.
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.
