Topic: The Movie Thread

@nessisonett don't care about gender, i just want a good film that's well written, well directed and well acted

as for not wanting to lose Chris's Thor that's more to do with the fact he is the last of the "Old Guard" so to speak, once he is gone there will be no one who connects the films to the beginning of the MCU anymore

not that it matters much now anyway because i've got to the point where it's starting to wear out it's welcome, as strange as it is to say i think it's gotten too big and there are too many releases on the horizon and they are all starting to meld together that i feel once Thor goes and the last of the originals are gone then that's it for me

i have already stopped going to the cinema to watch them and i don't even buy the blu-ray's anymore, just the standard DVD release and not even at release day either, for example it was only last month i got round to getting Antman and the Wasp, Spider-Man far from home and Captain Marvel and i STILL haven't watched AM&TW yet

@LN78 yeah i might go watch X-Men in the cinema depending on how they handle it of course

Yeah totally agree. Getting bit a sick of hearing about some kind of diversity hole that needs to be filled in most things I'm interested in.

I think diversity is incredibly important in any medium and shouldn't be taken lightly at all. The responsibility however is definitely on the creators, so I don't see it as a negative that someone would be less invested in seeing it happen as a viewer. It's certainly harder to actively stand for such a cause when you're the ones already being represented, making it not feel as urgent of a need too. Recently, Apple TV+ had a docuseries called Visible: Out on Television which chronicled LGBT representation on TV over the years. Anyone doubting how important diversity and inclusivity in media is should really watch that. Great docuseries to boot.

@Tjuz oh please don't misunderstand i absolutely believe all representation of every kind is important but i also feel that because these are films (or TV shows, or Books or games etc) that it's also just as important to have a strong story, good writing, the right actors and so forth because at the end of the day these are entertainment and it doesn't matter who representative it is or how social significant it is, if it's a bad film then it's a bad film

it's important that these messages are delivered but you also have to make damn sure you deliver it right otherwise it falls on deaf ears because being representative just for the sake of it is just as damaging as not being representative at all

as they say "a good message no matter how progressive can still fail if it's delivered wrong"

@FullbringIchigo Yeah, I think Bale would make a great villain. I didn't read Thor comics back then so I'm no that familiar with his rogues gallery. The only villains I know prior to watching the MCU movies were Loki and Enchantress.

John Krasinski not only wants to be Reed Richards but he has now expressed his interest in directing the Fantastic Four movie as well. Both he and his wife Emily Blunt have been strongly linked to play Mr. Fantasic and the Invisible Woman for quite some time now.

Personally, I would've love to see David Harbour as Ben Grimm too but I'm not sure that's going to happen since he's already playing the Red Guardian. So far, Gemma Chan is the only actor to play two different characters in the MCU.

Oh yeah, Krasinski had previously auditioned for the role of Captain America.

@LN78 @FullbringIchigo I didn't mean to imply that either of you are against diversity in media. Sorry if it came across that way. I agree that a backlash on progressivism is definitely slowly starting to emerge more and more. Personally, I'm not very worried however and would much rather keep pushing for it than stand back and let ignorant people get in the way. I care much more about the people who the diversity actually benefits than the ones who try to stop it. It probably also helps that I don't really go on Twitter to see these kind of sh*tstorms! Getting angry about Ellie remaining a lesbian is positively ridiculous though. What a world we live in sometimes.

I also agree that the quality of media comes first in most occasions. I don't really buy into the philosophy some people do have where you should always go for the obvious "perfect" choice for any project, though. There are many, many people in the world who could competently execute a certain job, and they're of all kinds of races and sexualities. I know it's not what you mean exactly, but diversity I think isn't anything that is at all related to quality. It's always possible for there to be both, and I believe it should be actively encouraged. In an ideal world we would be entire colourblind in our casting of movies, our hiring of employees and whatnot, but it's an unfortunate reality that racial biases do exist. Diversity hiring should always be encouraged if only to combat that.

Star Wars Episode I: the Phantom Menace (Blu-Ray) - Just for clarification I want to preface this by saying I've never been a huge SW person. I know I've seen all the films through at least once, have caught bits & pieces over the years when I've stopped on a channel that happen to have one on (and have actually seen Episode I in theaters as a kid, though it's been so long I didn't remember much), and have played a few of the games, but it would be a fair guess to state that most of my experience with the series comes from watching the Family Guy parody trilogy 10-20 times over the years when the show is at that point in it's endless Adult Swim rotation.

With that said, I actually had quite a bit of fun watching this. Sure, the CGI was obviously out of date at first glance (and there's a lot of it), but oddly I think it works really well for the tone of the film. It really does invoke feeling of the kind of classic sword & sorcery fantasy (just trade dragons for spaceships) that a parent might read to a child at bedtime, and the CGI reminded me of a sort of theme park ride (it kind of felt like I was riding the Back to the Future ride), like it was in on the fact that this is supposed to be the kind of epic adventure you're not to take too seriously (even if that wasn't the original intent). It's also impressive that the creative world building shone through (Naboo, the underwater Gungan city, & the endless cityscape of Corsucant were awe inspiring), further tying together the feeling that the otherwise "cheesy" vibe is an intentional choice.

Sure, it had some of the political talk that people mention a lot as a negative, but it honestly wasn't as overbearing in terms of the runtime as I'd feared, and actually found it decently interesting. The action was good fun too. I especially liked the Pod Race, the Space battle Anakin got dragged into, and the flashy Light Saber combat.

Diversity for the sake of diversity is stupid. Changing an established character for diversity is even worse as a form of it. I want to see male characters rebooted as female about as much as I want to see Black Panther replaced with a white guy his dad adopted as an orphan. I'd rather see a new character, that was supposed to female or whatever instead. There is a lot of justified backlash honestly, because they're not doing diversity for the sake of good art, but as a quota. When you do it like that, it's almost like reverse of specifically avoiding diversity.

@Tjuz well you can't be completely blind in casting after all if you was doing an historical movie about say, the America Insurrection (hey i'm British that what it was to us) then you would expect them to hire a white male actor to play Washington not say an African American woman

and i also believe that if you adapting an already established fictional character then you shouldn't be changing it either because their race, gender and sexuality are part and parcel of what the character is and that's whats getting so many people bent out of shape, for example you don't need to make Bond Black or a woman or gay just create a new character, call them say Jane Smith 009 and there you go

it's not the fact Hollywood wants to be more diverse that get people but how they are doing it, they are disregarding the people they are already representing in an attempt to woo another group they aint when they should be creating new characters so they can represent all

it doesn't matter if one kind has had more representation in the past than others, to say things like "you already have enough" is just as bad as when they didn't represent others in that past because they are still marginalising a group of people based on their race, gender and sexuality

a person is not responsible the the actions of their race or fore bearers especially if people actually went back and studied history, every race has been a slave to another at some point and different genders have been dominant at different times

equality means everyone gets treated equally, not transitioning power from one to another like many seem to think it is but sharing it

"if a person wants their race or gender to stand above others then they don't want equality, they want power and so they are just as racist and bigoted as the people they are supposedly fighting against"

Any Snake Eyes fans here? His solo movie has wrapped principal photography last month. He's my favourite G.I. Joe character but I'm not so sure about Henry Golding being cast as the lead role, though. Storm Shadow will be played by Andrew Koji and Iko Uwais will star as Hard Master. The last two movies were really bad so I don't have high expectations for this one but still I'm still interested to see what they do with his origin story.

This is the only official image so far I believe:

@FullbringIchigo Well I dunno, Shakespeare plays work perfectly well with colourblind casting, even the historical ones. They did them a while back on the BBC with Sophie Okonedo as Margaret of Anjou and she was brilliant. Plenty of shows with historical basis deviate from history in far worse ways than having a character be a different race. Although the Bond example’s interesting. I think it’s a bit patronising to turn all these movies into having female leads and such. Instead they should be focusing on writing good female character driven movies instead of handing out male leftovers. I mean, Ocean’s Eight? They couldn’t even find 11 actresses, one of which is Rihanna?

@LN78 Woah, I’d never heard of that before. It’s really interesting to read about, especially considering Orson Welles was only 20 years old. I wonder how many of the actors actually went on to find work though, there can’t have been many opportunities for them in the film industry back then.

@LN78 Lots of great movies are flopping or underperforming at the box office these days. Hard to be really successful any more if you're not part of a few mega franchises owned by a very old and greedy rodent.

Glad you enjoyed it! Yeah, the director threaded the needle to make it BOTH a Stephen King story as well as a follow-up to the film of The Shining (which is incredibly hard, because... well... Kubrick). I'm also glad he didn't attempt to ape Kubrick's style. Even if you love Kubrick (I don't, personally), you have to admit that there's no real way to recreate the cold, harrowing feelings of the original. This story, despite the terror and suffering involved, is one that's warm with humanity.

I really liked the actress they found for Wendy. She looks very similar, but she has an inner fortitude that Kubrick's terrified waif didn't possess. Jack is less... he's alright, but it's difficult for me to separate Nicholson's iconic performance from the character. Still, there is a bit more humanity with this character. They both feel like they were torn from the original Shining novel.

Actually, my least favorite aspect of the movie is that it attempted to connect back to Kubrick's film at all. I understand why they did it, but The Overlook in this film just doesn't have the cold, alien film from Kubrick's film, so the imagery that originated in that movie feels gimmicky ripped from that particular context.

But overall, yeah, I really dug it. It's my favorite (unofficial) X-Men film.

I've not seen Gerald's Game, but I guess I need to add it to the list of movies to watch.

@Ralizah Jack’s actually played by the wee boy from ET. It’s a strange choice but he played it alright.

@nessisonett Looking at the actor's credits, it looks like he's been in most of the director's previous films. Seems like they work closely together.

He did well enough. Nobody can (or should try to) replicate Nicholson's performance.

@nessisonett @LN78 yeah but plays have always been like that, for some reason when it comes to the stage there is less of an issue about this kind of thing and i think it's because when it comes to plays the casts change so much and so often because each time it is live that it's no longer a issue where as with film it's a more permanent thing for example as i mentioned Bond take Dr No there will always be a version you can watch that has Sean Connery as Bond even if they remade it or rebooted but with a play if you watched one ten years ago you can't watch that same one again

and i also think because films have a wider reach that will last decades there is more of a need for historical characters to be as accurate as possible because they will more likely be held up against the people they are supposed to be

@FullbringIchigo Honestly, the amount of ‘historical’ movies I watch that have terrible accents anyway, I don’t care what race the person is. That Mary Queen of Scots movie made me cringe so hard, they had Saoirse Ronan (Irish) playing the title character and Margot Robbie (Aussie) playing Queen Elizabeth I. I would genuinely be happier having that lassie who played Cho Chang be Mary Queen of Scots, at least she’s got the accent 😂😂

@nessisonett yeah a lot of the time when people put on accents they are terrible you would think IF they couldn't get someone with a natural accent to play the role they would at least coach the actors they do choose in how to use one properly or just forgo the accents altogether