Topic: The Movie Thread

@JohnnyShoulder @RogerRoger No problem. Was thinking of pre-ordering it myself but I already have The Art of Metal Gear Solid I, II and IV (Japanese versions).

I watched Split again last night. Quite enjoyed it last time and probably more so this time. Mcavoy is really quite amazing.

Also, a trailer to its sequel Glass is now out, which looks like it could be pretty special too!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=95ghQs5AmNk&ebc=ANyPxKpEIMy...

@kyleforrester87 Yeah that was an outstanding performance by Mcavoy. That ending took me by surprise. Cheers for the trailer!

I don’t see any reports on Marvel’s latest entry, so I guess I’ll give my impressions.
Ant Man and the Wasp was, in a word, disappointing. That’s not to say it wasn’t a decent movie, but expectations are high and I was hoping for something as clever as the first Ant Man (and it wasn’t) and a suitable step toward more integration into the overarching story of the MCU (and it didn’t). It’s sad when my favorite part of the movie was the post credits scene.
The high points- the action is decent, with the growing and shrinking mechanic put to good use. Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly perform well in their respective roles, as do Douglas and most of the support cast.
The low points- the humor was hit and miss, in my opinion. There were laugh out loud moments, but most of the attempts fell flat, which is surprising because the first Ant Man I found to be quite witty and most of the other Marvel movies have done well in the humor department (Guardians, Rangnarok, the Iron Mans, etc). But my biggest gripe was the story. The whole quantum physics thing just didn’t set wel with me. I’m no quantum astro physicist or an expert by any means, but I feel like I am a relatively informed person and I would like my movies to at least seem somewhat reasonable and believable. I am happy to just suspend my disbelief if a movie concept is presented like it is magic or unexplainable, but here the movie tries to make all these crazy things fit into deep discussions of fake scientific reasoning. The quantum physics, matter shifting, nether-realm visiting, ESP type communicating, and the use of Hank Pym’s inventions to do the things they do — it all just doesn’t quite work for me. Many, many major plot points revolve around Hank’s lab and scientific research and then yet as much science babble that they go on and on about, then in the next scene they will make a huge jump in logic where I was thinking that it didn’t make basic sense compared to the rest of the universe they had tried to build. And again, I can live with science fiction, as we see in all other franchises where logic and science is used just enough to make the concepts seem feasible. They all do it. But here it just felt a bit much. A lot of scientific talk, and yet not much that really made sense or explained how things work in a realistic and believable way.
Certainly I am overthinking it, and I probably need to watch it again.
But the first post credits extra scene was what I was hoping and waiting to see and has me properly excited for future movies. All the mumbo-jumbo in the rest of the movie about trying to find the mom, was basically forgettable.

@Th3solution I saw Ant-Man and the Wasp too. I liked it, and it was interesting to see such a focus on the personal life of the hero and opposed to saving the day, but I also thought it lacked the humor of the first one, because while it still had its moments, it ditched some humor in favor of a more serious tone, which doesn't work as well for Ant-Man. Good movie, I'd still recommend it, but don't expect it to be better than the first.

@Jaz007 Yes, I agree it is definitely worth watching, especially for MCU fans. Did the quantum physics stuff put you off at all? Maybe I just overthink movies, but I had a hard time with concepts like the phase shifting enemy and how they tried to explain why she does that after that accident. And how exactly did the mom communicate and take over his mind? It was a strange leap there. Then they had some random part of the original suit that they had to use to triangulate her location in the quantum realm and it just didn’t make sense.
Plus I was hoping to see more about how Ant Man will be involved after the events of Infinity War. I had read online the theories that it was key that Ant Man was not present during the time when Thanos destroys half the world, because his ability to shrink into other dimensions was going to be a major piece of going into the Soul stone to save the Avengers that were disintegrated into another dimension. I know it’s all just internet theories, but I was expecting at least a slight clue as to how he might play a role in the next Avengers movie, and the end credit scene was the only thing that alluded to it

What do you guys think of the new Aquaman and Shazam trailers? Personally, I thought they both looked quite good. For the first time, I'm actually really looking forward to a DCEU/Worlds of DC movie or in this case two movies.

There's also the Godzilla: King of the Monsters trailer.

@WanderingBullet After watching Justice League I am done with the DCMU.

What does everyone think of James Gunn being fired by Disney of Guardians 3 for some almost 10 year old tweets? I don't condone what he said but something like this really grates with me, when someone intentionally trying to get people into trouble. That blogger (I've left his name off on purpose) sounds like a right menace to society.

@JohnnyShoulder I am annoyed by the whole Guardians thing and also the implications. Firstly, obviously not condoning those jokes - they were really bad. However, these actually surfaced during the filiming of Guardians 1 and James Gunn and Disney addressed them there and it went no further. However, after the Roseanne firing all this has taken a political aspect. Disney own the network that fired Roseanne and due to the left wing stance of James Gunn, bloggers have been digging, found these and basically held them up to Disney who then just washed their hands of James Gunn.

I'm not commentating on the politics of left and right because I think they can be as bad as each other, but I don't like the idea that someone said some very bad taste jokes 10 years ago, has not repeated it, was not in the employ of a company that had already worked with them for over 5 years (where they were well aware of the tweets) at the time but out of fear of a supposed backlash that company ruined their career. It's just hypocrisy to me.

@WanderingBullet yeah i saw those trailers and they look pretty good but i'm still weary because the Suicide Squad trailers looked good too and look how that turned out

@JohnnyShoulder @FullbringIchigo Yeah, I'm a bit weary too but at the same time looking forward to them. I had low expectations for the previous DCEU movies after watching their trailers, tbh. Tone wise, I'm glad that these two movies looks and feels completely different compared to the previous movies.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was suppose to start filming at end of this year I think. Second movie was good (except for the ending) but I loved the first one. If I'm not mistaken, Gunn also wrote scenes that involved the Guardians of the Galaxy in Infinity War and for the most part I thought they were good. I read that Gunn had already turn in the script for the third movie. It'll be interesting to see who Marvel will hire to replace him.

@Rudy_Manchego It is hypocrisy. The way Disney's statement was worded is like they only just found out about the tweets.

I got this from a comments section on a article about the firing.

"ABC, which is owned by Disney, employs Jimmy Kimmel, who used to be the host for a TV show called " The Men Show " which was vulgar and objectified women on television. He’s apologized about it and pretty much anyone would agree that he’s a much nicer and respectful person now. Will Disney fire him too?"

I don't if that is true or not, but seems a bit of double standards by Disney.

@Th3solution I just accepted the phase sbjcting since Marvels lost any realism they tried to have with Iron Man when they first started. The mom thing felt like a bit of a jump in logic, but then I just accepted for what it was lol. I didn’t expect to see Ant-Man and Infinity War explained, but that’s because the house arrest excuse was stupid as all get out. It made for a good personal life dynamic, but it’s utterly ludicrous to thing they didn’t get him for the battle of the worlds with Thanos because of it. Since he wasn’t in Infinity War I already accepted that part of it, and consider an Infinity Problem more than a Ant-Man problem.

Batman: Hush is getting an animated movie!!

Also, Disney are of course reactionary hypocrites in the James Gunn matter, but I don't see them reversing the decision.

Western society has never had to deal with the long-term ramifications of something like social media before. People create permanent records of their stupidity on something like Twitter now and it's haunting them long into the future.

Well, anyway, Disney is pretty famously averse to ANYTHING linking them to racism or pedophilia (pretty much the reason they'll NEVER pull Song of the South out of the memory hole by re-releasing it), so once this became a big thing, Gunn's firing was only a matter of time, even if they knew about the possibility that it would come out into the open. Just as ABC knew very well about Roseanne's tendency to post insane rubbish on her twitter account when they rebooted her show.

It has been pretty interesting watching conservatives wise up and start weaponizing the left's techniques against them to claim scalps.

@JohnnyShoulder @Ralizah I think the interesting thing is that there already was a trial be media back in 2013-2014 when these tweets originally surfaced and they were addressed by Gunn and Disney. What we have here is double jeopardy on social media.The implications are pretty scary - essentially anything ever said or done in your past can be weaponised. Gunn's jokes are horrid and very very offensive however you can see similar on plenty of 'edgy' shows from comedians or networks. I wonder what the impact will be to the creators of that content?

Absolutely right about the interesting use of this and it being weaponized. I hate the false outrage at everything - while there are successes in calling out obvious injustices, boiling down everything to a simple right or wrong is just turning everything into a witch hunt which means real injustices get lost in the mix.

@Kidfried It was weaponised. Perennial arse Mike Cernovich was the chief instigator this time around.

There's very little surprise in Disney's reaction. The far right mob-minded have found their perfect weapon against anyone like Gunn who is routinely critical of them - snowflake-like reactions to any highlighted behaviour that they can't deal with; so you may never be seen to be or have been anything other than perfect; never having succumbed to any particular 'ism'; be utterly and totally 'liberal' or progressive in all things at all times.
Any differing opinion, any dare to question the liberal hive-mind, and sadly - even a few bad taste, vulgar jokes are now the bullets that will sink you. Because not enough people and companies - how ever well intentioned are able to stand back and just say: 'so what?'.

Al Franken's resignation was largely the same sort of thing. His tasteless joke became a weapon to use against lefties and their "one drop rule" in terms of public morality (any sort of display of perceived sexism, racism, etc., regardless of context or severity, and you're 'unpersoned' by the mob).

Of course, it's not like influence in the culture wars doesn't go both ways. Lefties going after right-wing figures on youtube and getting their videos demonetized by targeting their advertisers is the EXACT same tactic Gators employed in 2014 to hurt Kotaku and cause it to lose millions of dollars in ad revenue.

And, of course, siccing mobs on people via social media is something both the alt right and the snowflake left are fond of doing. Doxxing, too.

Extreme political views and communities are especially bad on reddit. Tons of digital ink has been spilled on extreme right wing communities on that site, but, strangely, they never seem terribly interested in the equally crazy leftist subreddits on there. I guess this is to be expected with communities like r/late_stage_capitalism and whatnot, but r/politics, one of the bigger subs on the site, has been totally radicalized. I browse it every day and routinely see people calling for revolution, violence against politicians, against conservative neighbors, against supreme court judges (recently saw one highly upvoted post suggesting Justice Kennedy should be executed as a traitor for letting Trump pick his successor), etc.

Needless to say, I find this societal insanity to be both fascinating and utterly infuriating. Although I'm tired of being called, variously, a "nazi," a "soyboy," etc. so I've stopped offering my opinions online for the most part.

ON TOPIC: I saw The Equalizer 2 yesterday, and I really don't understand the lukewarm reviews. It's a fantastic movie! A definite improvement on the first one, too. This one is much more of a moody spy thriller. It still has some awesome action sequences, of course, but the film takes more time to set them up, and it's less interested in lingering on the aftermath. Denzel's healthy masculinity brings a lot of charm to the character, as it did in the first film.

@Ralizah On topic indeed!

I quite enjoyed the first film, and must admit that the reviews for the second have put me off (paying cinema prices at least). They're not unexpected, and seem to indicate the sequel I expected of such a tenuous movie reboot anyway. I can forgive Denzel a lot though, so I'll get around to it.

Have you seen the Death Wish remake? Surprisingly not awful. Willis does sometimes seem like he's in a different room to the rest of the cast; just seems like a bizarre disconnect with his performance and other people in some scenes, could be an editing thing I suppose.
But yeah, if you enjoyed The Equalizer, give Death Wish a shot.

@KALofKRYPTON I actually saw Death Wish opening weekend. It's about what I expected: a fun, if somewhat toothless remake of a classic exploitation film without the troubling racist subtext. Although the way the public reacts to his vigilante killings makes it feel a bit more like mid-series Dexter than the original Death Wish.

Ultimate Shymalan plot twist: The Sixth Sense was actually true all along and nobody on set could actually see Willis.