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.
Lord of the Rings.
I understand and respect the seminal role LotR (Book) has as a fantasy work. I have to, as a fantasy nerd myself.
I also believe that those three movies that everyone loves could be edited down into one and not much would be lost.
God DAMN do those films drag ON and ON and ON.
The books, too, drag on like Tolkien was being paid by the individual word. Thankfully with books I can set the pace at which things go.
Probably most films by Darren Aronofsky. Pi and The Fountain are some of the worst movies I’ve seen. Feels like someone’s artsy shroom trip. I dislike most “artsy” movies without a coherent story.
Also a lot of horror classics bores me to death. For example The Omen, Poltergeist, The Exorcist.
Requiem for a Dream still slaps tho
If you mean like slapping a puddle of diarrhea, then I agree. IIRC the movie’s style was so annoying and the plot so boring that it’s a small miracle I managed to finish it in the first place.
And the soundtrack, it freaking slaps
I’ve always felt like Darren Aronofsky makes great movies but absolutely sucks at ending them. Every movie of his, that I’ve seen, I’ve enjoyed up until the last 5-10 minutes. He just makes the most depressing endings, that make me regret watching the movie.
The Omen, Poltergeist, The Exorcist.
Makes sense. Those were groundbreaking at the time, but the ground has been broken, repaved and built into a massive skyscraper now.
Inception. Hard to explain why. Interesting visual fx with a weird plot played by admittably world class actors.
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.
Titanic.
Why? Hmmm, hard to say. Seems obvious to me. I’m totally ok with a love story but I don’t really care for romance stories. Let me explain the difference to me. I’m not saying this is a formal definition. To me a love story is drama and romance is melodrama. It felt more like melodrama to me.
And to interest the men, let’s throw in a disaster flick. If people fall off the boat and hit the propeller on the way down, men will love it and women will love the rest. No pandering at all.
Plus screw the priceless gem, just toss it overboard.
Skinamarink
2 minutes of storyline and any sort of movement at all
98 additional minutes of “atmosphere”
I learned, back in the 1990s, how to spot a movie I won’t like. So for me it’s The Edge (about a thoroughly dislikable protagonist who we’re supposed to admire just because he’s played sympathetically by Anthony Hopkins) and Accidental Hero (aka Hero, a satire so brimming with sickly earnestness that it fails completely at satire).
Dumb and Dumber.
I don’t find people mentally limited or crass humor to be funny.
And Jim Carrey is despicable. He was even before supporting an anti-vaxxer.
I can’t stand Love Actually. It’s too schmaltzy and none of the characters are likeable. Especially the young boy.
Scary Movie and Avengers. I know Scary Movie is a parody but it’s just to much parody for me tbh.
Godfather. Sooooo boringly slow
The Matrix
I thought it was tedious, self-satisfied nonsense. Some impressive visual effects and a bit of half-baked philosophy did not a good movie make. Everything about it seemed to be focused on being cool, rather than telling a decent story.
The matrix trilogy is an excellent story. And I cannot agree with you. I’m sure you don’t wanna hear an essay about it though. Everything fits so well and it’s full of significance. The ending of it was brilliant.
They fucked up with that cringe 4th movie though
Iirc, the 4th movie was intentionally bad and meant to be a bomb because the wachowski sister that did come back only did so that no one else would touch their story.
Intentionally bad still bad. And a middle finger to the fans, plus stealing their money
The movie literally tells you what it is doing at the start when Neo talks to that CEO person. “We’re making this with or without you.” I didn’t really like it either until it turned into a heist movie halfway through and I got it. She was just taking the piss. It’s not a FU to the fans but to Warner Brothers.
Ironically if you accept it’s a “fuck you” film, like you’ve been invited round to the wachowskis to watch one of the their random side projects it becomes enjoyable again
That’s the only way to enjoy it imo. If you watch it seriously you’ll be like, wtf is this shit. But if you imagine the wachowski being like, look at this bullshit I made them do, it becomes a sort of meta comedy. I am not joking when I say I was in a state of bewilderment before the heist scene. Then I busted out laughing because of how ridiculous it was and the movie became enjoyable.
The irony is the matrix has always been “meta”. Repeatedly breaking out of each paradigm to show you the last one was an illusion. So in a weird way it is a proper sequel, just not in a way that anyone’s going to like.
The people paid to see the movie, a good movie
Yeah but did we really expect it to actually be good?
I didn’t see it, but IMO based on your description the appropriate thing to do would be to make the best movie she could, or to have refused, even if that meant them making it without her. Taking up the offer of making the movie and then deliberately doing a bad job is a giant “fuck you” to everyone who bought tickets.
(If they did make it without her, it might still have been bad or even undermined her intentions with the franchise, but at least her name would be clear. And fans are very good at saying “yeah no we don’t consider these corporate-made extensions of the auteur’s world to be very good. We consider it a separate canon.” Look at Star Wars, or the Dune novels after Frank Herbert’s death, or how people were reacting to Netflix’s Avatar after Mike & Brian left the production even before it released.)
There’s a whole story to this movie. I’m sure someone’s made a 3 hour deep dive into it explaining why she did it and what the studio was doing, but I think she saw the script they were pushing and just couldn’t let them make it. I don’t think the movie is bad bad, it just doesn’t make any gd sense unless you watch it through the lense of this wachowski sister going through transitioning and dealing with the loss of several close people. She’s just slapping random shit together because it made her feel good.
I completely understand why huge matrix fans wouldn’t like it though. They didn’t sign up for a meta commentary on Hollywood and trans people. But as more of these completely shit super hero movies come out the more I can appreciate what she did.
The first movie was okay, but they dropped the ball on 2 and 3 in my opinion. They weren’t bad but definitely not what I’d consider brilliant.
I enjoyed the 2nd, but 3rd just missed the mark completely.
1st: Yes, let’s explore this rabbit hole
2nd: Let’s explore it some more and progress the story
3rd: same as 2nd but neo becomes wizard Jesus when blind, apparently.
Each to their own I guess. I enjoyed the ending, because that meant it was over ;-)
Do you mean just the first one or the trilogy as a whole?
I thought the first one stood up far far better on its own rather, many things left unsaid, rather than the rest which tried to fill out the story, and not too well
I mean the first one, as I’ve never seen the others :-)
I get that many people do like it, and that’s all good, but I dislike how it often seems to be verboten to say even the slightest negative thing about the film.
The Matrix is great, it has some good explanation of philosophical concepts, yet is action packed and intelligent.
The rest of the trillogy, just meh…
The. rest. of. the. trilogy. is. also. widely. panned…
Removed by mod
The matrix is good precisely because they don’t spoon feed everything to you.
Ready Player One was so bad, but this is a rare instance where the book is worse than the film. At least the film has visuals the book is just cringe and rememberberries.
Agreed. The movie is just a fun action film wirh no brainpower needed. If you go into it with no expectations it’s fine.
The book? The author insists on yanking you out of the story with listicles of callbacks and references to obscure ‘80s shows or whatever. The main character is just an ass, and is also conveniently capable of meeting every challenge thrown at him despite being an impoverished basement dweller. The book became a slog of contrivances to get from A to B with “Aren’t all these retro references cool?” jammed in at every opportunity.
Agreed. That book was recommended to me by a few fellow sci-fi book fans, so I gave it a shot. Couldn’t get through it. It read like a 6th-grade kid’s fanfic about the 1980’s. Bad writing, bad dialogue, ham-fisted plot.
To be honest, isn’t it a ‘Young Adult’ book, i.e., intended for preteens/teens, not adults?
True, but it’s still poorly written. And so much of the content is GenX nostalgia, it’s obviously meant to be a crossover to those preteens’/teens’ parents.
Young adult means the content is suited for a younger audience, it’s not an excuse for unintelligent writing void of anything of value.
True! But I guess young adult readers don’t tend to be as discerning, which is why I never expect the writing to be any good.
Lets be real here, young adults (I.E toddlers and teenagers) aren’t exactly the most critical readers or familiar with judging literary quality. The writers of books targeted at young adults know this, and tend to not do more work than they have to on plot and world building. Go ahead and write me a five paragraph essay on the value that Warriors added to the medium. No child read warriors for the themes, they read it for the premise of anthropromorphic cat drama and as fuel for their first role-play world building sessions. YA novels are the literary version of comfort food, enjoyable for those that like the taste but you would be foolish for expect a fufilling rich plot with well thought out characters.
By Warriors I assume you are talking about Warrior Cats? I have not read it but I was under the assumption that was a childrens book seeing as how it features cats. When someone says young adult my mind goes to books like Catcher in the Rye or Lord of Flies.
Wasn’t it supposed to be bad though? Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought people liked it because it was ridiculous and campy.
Yeah, the book was meant to feel a bit cringey, because the story is told from the perspective of a teenage gamer obsessed with pop culture. It’s the entire reason he wins the egg hunt, because he’s always got these obscure references floating around his head.
RPO is bad, yes. But Spielberg is a good director and that’s why the movie is at least entertaining. I hate-read the book, but I still enjoy the movie.
The thing that baffled me about that movie was how many “startups” used it as reference for what they were trying to create. Like, did I watch the same movie? Real life was so shitty they had entire blocks of people living in trailers mounted to each other vertically. They used the matrix or whatever it was called to escape. And you want to create that for real?
Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.
Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.
Have you been around the car culture?
Yeah, if OP thought the movie was heavy on the “good job being a teenager in the 80s!” content, they should steer well clear of the book.
The movie did ruin the Iron Giant, though.
I haven’t seen Ready Player 1, and now I have a reason not to see it.
You don’t disrespect Su-Per-Man.
I am not a gun.
Except when it makes for a cool action movie scene.
Oh hell naw. If you mean that they made him go superweapon, that’s damn near legal cause to burn down a studio
I haven’t actually seen the movie, only a few clips of it. I’m pretty sure they make him use his weapons, but maybe not his superweapon.
The book is straight garbage. Probably the biggest Gary Stu ever. The movie is actually decent by comparison, because it removed a lot of cringe and toned down the main character.
Gary Stu? Is this the male version of a Mary Sue?
Yes.
Very weird take. Everyone I’ve ever talked to loves that book. I honestly cannot picture any conceivable reality where the movie was better than the book.
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
Ready player 1 - oh yeah, I agree with you. Garbage film. Just an excuse to do fan service. I viewed it like a music video or clip compilation. It was neat to see all the random franchise together on the big screen but worthless as a narrative. I enjoyed it like I enjoy godzilla films, turn brain off, watch the spectacle.
I hate Avatar (blue cat people). Dances with Wolves but Halo. It was pretty! However people seem to act like it was an actual film and not a tech demo. They literally called the mineral unobtanium. It’s a meme. Smh.
