Topic: The Movie Thread

Thought's people?

@LN78 wouldn't they save Doom for fantastic 4 though?

@FullbringIchigo @LN78 I reckon he’ll be Gorr the God Butcher. It fits the intergalactic slant Waititi’s going for and he’s physical enough for Bale to not feel like a human ping pong ball suit. He’s also from the newer comics, which Waititi’s lifting from since Jane Foster will also be Thor in the movie.

@nessisonett I'm still dubious on them having Jane Thor in the movie, i don't think Natalie Portman has the chops to pull it off frankly

@FullbringIchigo I dunno, Portman’s a brilliant actress. The problem is that every mainstream movie she’s done has had awful scripts. If you watch movies like Black Swan, Closer and Léon, you can see that she’s an accomplished actress but one who requires a script that pulls out her full potential. Thor and TDW are not particularly well written, just like most of the MCU so a lot of the big actors and actresses end up falling flat due to not being properly utilised.

@nessisonett i guess but i still have reservations about it, plus Ragnarok was awesome and Chris is really good as Thor i don't want them to replace him with an inferior version of the character

@FullbringIchigo He’s a good Thor but the MCU needs to move forwards and stop treating female characters as only supporting characters. This Black Widow movie is about 7 years too late and feels utterly pointless and every other solo movie has had a decent actress portraying generic love interest with nothing to do. It’s about time they utilised their talent and gave them something to do, especially given how Jane Thorster was a long running storyline in the comics.

Sure Portman is a fine actress, but her character in the Thor movies I have always found to be such a bore. It was such an odd choice to base a whole movie on. Taika's involvement has slightly increased my interest but not by much. As @LN78 said I've really liked his previous stuff, the What We Do In The Shadows film and series are the most funniest things I've seen in recent times.

@JohnnyShoulder It’s important to note that Portman’s character was a bore because the first two Thor movies could have been written by children. It’s hard for her to have been a stand out character when she was essentially written to be background scenery.

@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"