Topic: The Movie Thread

@RogerRoger you know Aquaman and Shazam look like they will be good films

and yeah i don't get the hate either as i enjoyed both BvS and JL and i really liked Cavills Supes and Affleck BAtman because you see for me i like characters not publishers although with the MCU Marvel has been able to make EVERY character they base a film on likable even some of the more obscure ones like Ant-Man for example but all DC /WB had to to was take their time and establish the characters before jumping to a big team up event but they didn't and it came back and bit them in the butt

@JohnnyShoulder yeah i would say the villains have been pretty bland over the DCEU and that's probably part of the problem although even with a bland villain they could make a good film just look at Wonder Woman, great film but a pretty bland baddie

@FullbringIchigo The one I'll really miss is Ray Fisher's Cyborg. I could take or leave Ezra Miller's Flash (he was pretty cookie-cutter) but I thought that Cyborg had some amazing potential. He was connected heavily with the specific plot of Justice League, so again he's been relatively wrapped up and could be discarded without much issue, but I was really looking forward to a standalone film with him in. I thought he was great, and definitely my favourite outside of the trinity.

But you're right; character comes before brand. That's why I think I might prefer Shazam over Aquaman, because I know nothing about Shazam at all.

Went to watch the new Predator movie and thought it was rubbish. I wasn't interested after seeing the trailers but my dad wanted to watch it.haha

@WanderingBullet Nothing in the trailers has made me want to watch it.

I know some folk who've loved it and others who said the same as you.

I actually detest the idea of the 'better' predators if I'm being honest. It annoyed me watching Predators and it just reeks of a notion that escalation must equal better in all things.

Even from the trailers and previews I read that the special forces dude sends evidence of a crashed alien to his son through the post is one of the dumbest set up ideas going!

So I watched a gob of movies on vacation, and I thought I'd post little rants about them, in descending order for favorite to least favorite.

The Incredibles 2 - The biggest surprise for me. What a fantastic little movie! This goes more interesting places than the original, and continues with that film's family-friendly superhero deconstruction storyline. The family drama is well-written, the writing is often surprisingly intelligent, the action is engaging, the social commentary and metaphor is certainly there, but handled with a measure of grace, and I actually really liked the villain. The setting, again, is interesting: what people might have thought the future would look like decades ago.
Score: 9/10

Black Panther - I'm not sure I'm fully on-board with the racial politics of this film, but it's an intelligent, interesting, well-paced action movie and I enjoyed watching it. Reminds me of the original Iron Man in certain ways, actually.
Score: 8.5/10

Solo: A Star Wars Story - OK, whatever, yes, the way Han gets his last name is stupid. No argument here. It's sad that this film bombed like it did, though, because it was incredibly charming. Great performances all-around. It's a fun blockbuster with a very classic and time-worn plot, but it WORKS, and, to be honest, this is tied with Rogue One as my favorite of the Disney Star Wars films. These prequels are way more fun than the mainline SW films. If it suffers from one problem, though, it's that, like a lot of modern blockbusters, it can get way too loud and chaotic at times. Still a good time, though.
Score: 7.5/10

Coco - A predictably written but unsurprisingly emotionally resonant film. This is polished Disney being polished Disney. I still think Book of Life was a more interesting take on Mexican mythology, though. The film is gorgeous in 3D, too.
Score: 7/10

The Nun - A big disappointment after the surprisingly scary Annabelle: Origins. The atmosphere is on-point near the beginning, but the film doesn't go anywhere interesting, and the monsters near the end are straight up ridiculous. Not quite as bad as The Conjuring 2 or the original Annabelle, but still not great.
Score: 4.5/10

Thor: Ragnarok - WHAT A MESS! Seriously, this film is a total mess. It wants so hard to be "cool" and "funny," but it just comes off as cringe-inducingly flippant. The film just... does stuff, and you watch, flabbergasted. I will give it this, though: it's more fun to watch than Infinity War, and it's hilarious to see Jeff Goldblum not even bother acting in his role. He doesn't act! Half the time the man is wearing an expression that might be read as "I can't believe they're paying me tons of money to sit in a chair and just be Jeff Goldblum!" The bad guy is Thor's sister, and she's apparently very powerful, but there's no logic to who is so powerful, and why some characters become more powerful. Force of will, I guess. It's like watching Dragonball Z.
Score: 3.5/10

Avengers: Infinity War - A loud, mindless, and sometimes frustratingly poorly-written action movie. The whole plot is a dull McGuffin hunt. The film is filled with long, tedious fight scenes, because there's really no plot here: just a premise ("Bad guy want to get stones to kill a bunch of people") and characters reacting to that premise ("We gotta stop bad guy from getting stones!"). No time is spent developing Thanos at all: he utters some vague Malthusian logic to justify wiping out trillions of lives throughout the universe, and... HE'S OFF. Why is his design so boring, by the way? He looks like one of the random aliens you kill in the Gears of War games. Anyway, the stakes are apparently high, but this doesn't stop the characters from acting incredibly stupid throughout so that they can justify drawing this out for far longer than it should, and even setting it up for a sequel! Some of the character moments are fun, but this is a surprisingly bad film. Oh, and can we talk about the edginess of this film? This is a very edgy Marvel film. Lots of suffering and talk about genocide. It's all treated in such an adolescent manner, though. I refuse to believe anyone other than a teenager experiencing a rush of hormones wrote this script. Finally, I don't appreciate the writers clearly trying to milk drama by killing characters you know they won't even leave dead. This film won't even have the decency to accept the consequences of its events, marks my words.
Score: 3/10

Thor: The Dark World - I couldn't follow this. I hate this movie. It's boring. The characters are all non-entities. One of the worst movies I've ever seen.
Score: 1/10

@KALofKRYPTON Yeah, the movie was pretty dumb. Also, it's more action/survival/comedy than action/survival/horror.

@Ralizah Enjoyed reading your mini-reviews! And as a result, I'm actually looking forward to seeing Solo when it hits Blu-Ray in a couple weeks, even more than I was following a couple other positive reactions from folks around here (because your reactions to the Marvel films you saw are pretty much in line with how I've often felt after watching one, so that tells me that I may end up agreeing with you).

@RogerRoger It's kind of you to dignify my little rants that way.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Solo. It's a shame a film like this practically flops at the cinema while TFA and TLJ and, heck, Infinity War smash box office records left and right.

@Ralizah If there's one thing I don't usually do, it's dignity, so you're welcome.

I've never understood box office trends either, but I think Disney's release schedule and pattern has a lot to answer for. Of course people won't mind skipping the standalone stories if you're pumping out ongoing episodes of a larger narrative. Rogue One traded a lot on the iconic Vader and Death Star images and came a year after the reintroduction of the franchise, but recasting iconic characters and making the Millenium Falcon look different was always gonna be a tougher sell, even if it weren't a couple months after The Last Jedi.

Money talks, though. I'm sure Disney won't care that there's a decent film in there; they'll just see the numbers underperform and shut it down. Always a shame.

I guess I'll have another "controversial underdog" film to add to my favourites list soon.

@RogerRoger Good analysis. I imagine those factors did play heavily into Solo's lack of box office success.

Have you seen Transcendence? That's another film I enjoyed that... almost nobody else did. It got horrendous reviews. It was a decent sci-fi film.

@Ralizah I've never even heard of Transcendence, but on your word I'll totally add it to my list, thanks!

@Ralizah @RogerRoger I think Solo took the heat of TLJ to be honest. That combined with awful production reports; from the first directors being fired, heavy re-shoots leading to a character being cut, and even Aiden Ehrenreich needed acting lessons on set(!) really set the market and fan base against it.

Rogue One suffered many of the same issues, but I'd say it wasn't really hobbled with the same bad taste that TLJ left for so many people, coming off the back of the perfectly enjoyable TFA set it in a better position than Solo.

Transcendence is little more than an OK passing of time. Utterly predictable though. Johnny Depp doesn't help it along in the slightest and the script is shocking.

@KALofKRYPTON Oh yeah, that whole boycott thing surrounding Solo made me ashamed to be a Star Wars fan. I had to leave the PS4 Star Wars Community because it was just so relentlessly toxic.

@RogerRoger I was more referring to the actual fan reaction to what a mess the film is rather than the boycott - but that too wouldn't have helped it much either.

It is a massive shame Solo took such a beating. I'd love to see more of the cast in their roles.

If you've ever read the excellent Scoundrels by Timothy Zahn (recommended if you haven't), that would make a great sequel!

@KALofKRYPTON Ah, okay.

Given that I know about the surprise cameo at the end, I'd hope that any sequel would pick up on that thread and finally deliver the film I've been dreaming of since I was eleven.

But I'll reserve final judgement until I've actually seen the film.

@RogerRoger If you keep up with the animated stuff, then the cameo makes total sense. I should imagine it would actually throw a lot of people off if they don't. As far as incorporating that in to a sequel, I think it would be a better thing to keep at arms length given Han's later disparagement of all things Jedi related. And there's nothing Jedi related in Scoundrels.

@KALofKRYPTON I guess I meant sequel in a loose way; I'd love for the next film to be all about Maul, ditch Han and Chewie and Lando because we know what's gonna eventually happen to them (and I'm guessing Solo leaves them in a good enough place to do that). If the forthcoming episodes of The Clone Wars don't give us the originally-planned resolution to Cad Bane and young Boba Fett's storyline, I'd adore a Maul film where he's some massive crime boss, going up against bounty hunters and trying to build his underworld empire. A live-action Cad Bane would be incredible.

@RogerRoger Solo does leave the characters in a good place to move through to ANH certainly - I'd just like to see more of them. While I've no particular issue with the cameo or the positioning of Maul as a crime boss - it does seem a bit moot to try and build much more of a story around it. Anyone he encounters is immediately going to have to have some way of overcoming his powers, which is unlikely unless they all get Ysalamir!

@Ralizah Very Interesting reviews. I also enjoy reading your takes.
Of note, your ‘bottom three’ there of Ragnarok, Infinity War, and Dark World we’re all movies I actually enjoyed significantly more on the second viewing. Although I doubt you would entertain the idea of seeing any of them for a second time, for some reason it made a difference to me. Especially for Dark World, which although it wasn’t a 1/10 for me it was a large disappointment initially. Going back a second time a year or two later I was able to enjoy it. I’m not really sure why that is, but I have some theories. Some movies are much less enjoyable on subsequent viewings and some are more fun. Maybe it has to do with anticipation and expectations which are held in check on the next go around, or maybe it’s the fact that it’s easier to pick up on plot nuances. I think this applies especially for action heavy movies and movies with a lot of rapid fire jokes or one-liners that are sometimes easy to miss (Ragnarok would fit here). Without the pressure of trying to interpret the plot in the midst of sensory overload and a constant barrage of attempted wit, one can relax and just appreciate each set piece or run of dialog on its own. I don’t know, it’s just a theory. I’m not sure how other people feel about that and maybe it’s just me that has a different experience when I see a film 2, 3, or 4 times. But either way, I can completely appreciate some of the criticisms you mention regarding those films.

But I would be interested to see if other people had examples of films that they either A) enjoyed much more when they saw it a second or third time, or B) had the opposite experience where they went back a second time to a film they loved but found that they actually disliked it.

@KALofKRYPTON I'm assuming you've seen The Clone Wars, right? There are some stunning fights between Jedi / Sith and non-Force-users like the aforementioned bounty hunter, Cad Bane. I won't link directly in case it gives away what we've spoiler-tagged thusfar, but search for "Obi-Wan & Quinlan Vos vs. Cad Bane" on YouTube and you'll find one of my favourite action sequences from all of Star Wars, although it's more of a running escape than anything; however, there's also a face-to-face duel between Maul and a certain Mandalorian which is incredible. Just because the Force makes you a flashy fighter doesn't mean you're above a good beat-down!