The reverse of that post I’ve made a week ago…
Rules: pick one movie or series and explain why you actually enjoyed it despite the criticism.
For me: The JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, by far the best ST stuff ever made, I couldn’t take seriously the original universe with the dated effects and stiff acting, same goes for NG… These movies did ST actually great looking and much more believable, not just the effects.
Zardoz. Say what you will about Sean Connery running around in a bright red romper, it was original.
Star Wars Ep 1 gets more hate than it deserves. It’s not a masterpiece by any means, but it’s enjoyable.
Dare Devil, directors cut. I thought it was as good a super hero origins movie as any of the others.
Same
For me, it’s the movie Waterworld. I cannot get enough of that movie. So many people hated it. 🤣
I thought Waterworld was fine.
Rat Race
Jupiter’s Ascending… it was nice 👍
The Prince of Persia movie. Also God’s of Egypt.
Terminator Genesys. It’s loathed by terminator fans for a variety of reasons and I won’t defend any of the writing or casting decisions, but I do give it credit for trying to do something new with the story and time aspect. I think it could have been a lot better if they took a bit more time with it and recast a few characters, but overall it’s a popcorn flik to me, turn your brain off and enjoy.
Lots of people love to hate Cloud Atlas. I see it as flawed work of art with a good message and an amazing cast, produced under such nearly impossible circumstances that we are more than lucky it ever saw the light of day.
I absolutely loved Cloud Atlas and I was crying at the end. I didn’t know anything about it, didn’t know about the book, didn’t know it was hated until now. Just a movie that I liked the trailer for, so I watched it and I’m glad I did.
Not universally hated by any means. But there are plenty of people that expect a movie to fit a certain Hollywood formula, which includes not challenging your audience too much. And so they judge movies by standards that an epic artistic endeavor like Cloud Atlas was never trying to meet.
Also the whole “gender- and race-bending” made some people uncomfortable, even though it’s merely the same actors portraying completely different characters.
Add to this that certain influential studio voices in Hollywood had previously rejected the project outright when they were first approached by the Wachowskis. So it was clear they would never give it a fair shake after it was produced in Europe, against their judgment and without their blessing, and under such unconventional circumstances.
The concept behind Cloud Atlas made for a much better movie than book, IMHO.
Having the same actor play the same part in each time made following the plot easier, at least for me. The book was a bit of a slog at times and following each characterization was confusing.
Plus some of the casting in the movie was really good. Jim Brodbent in particular, I thought, delivered a spectacularly good performance.
I can watch really bad movies as long as the score is good, and cloud atlas has a banger score. How they weave the different timelines while playing that music really does it for me. I’ve watched it a few times and now that you reminded me I’ll probably watch it again soon.
Man, I love that movie totally unironically. Cannibal Hugh Grant, dude.
Ain’t that the tru-tru.
What’s the message? I didn’t really catch any, besides some notions about souls, reincarnation and sex not being fixed.
People hate the JJ Star Trek films? I’ve only ever heard nothing but praise for them.
A lot of Star Trek fans didn’t like them. Star Trek trends more towards, “traditional,” sci-fi, which is more focused on exploring scientific and philosophical concepts in fiction (think Jules Verne or Isaac Asimov). What Abrams produced was basically just an action movie in a futuristic setting. It’s sorta like how, even though Star Wars is set in an advanced galactic civilization, it has more in common with the fantasy genre than traditional sci-fi.
That doesn’t necessarily mean classic Star Trek is better or smarter than the Abrams movies or Star Wars. In fact, a lot of Star Trek is cheesy, dated, and kinda dumb (and not just the original series; even TNG has a lot of cringe in it). However, it does mean that the Abrams films were a pretty big genre shift that put a lot of fans off.
I enjoy both. The original series is so dated (buttons, knobs, switches, and lights on the control panels? Pffff) that even as a fan I find it hard to look at.
No one seemed to take the show that seriously. I don’t think anyone had a clue it would turn into a whole franchise, and the acting is so hammy I can’t stand looking at a lot of the scenes.
All that said that even old start tell movies were more action oriented than a typical episode plot. (Except for maybe the first movie, which unless I’m remembering wrong literally was almost a carbon copy of an episode)
For me, what becomes even more dated than the old tech are the cultural attitudes. The original series is supposed to be an egalitarian, utopian society, but they men treat the women like it’s an episode of Mad Men. TGN, on the other hand, is trying so hard not to be sexist that the romance scenes sound like they were written by a virgin who only learned about sex from HR meetings.
I didn’t mind the first Abrams movie. I thought the story was pretty mediocre, but it looked good visually, and they captured the characters nicely. The second movie went off the rails, though. They invented interplanetary transporters and cured death. It feels like that would have had massive, status quo changing consequences for the entire franchise, but I guess not.
The original movies certainly have more action in them than the series (though they’re definitely not as action-packed as the Abrams movies), and they’re also not as interested in exploring sci-fi concepts as the show, but to me, they’re defined by fan-service more than anything else. They found an excuse to put the characters in modern times, let Kirk create peace with the Klingons, and literally met God.
Yeah that was a bit crazy. But I didn’t really think about it too long because almost everything else is supposedly a whole other timeline now, so it’s a not point.
Also I’ve seen “Beyond” twice now, but got distracted both times so I still don’t know much about it.
Breakin’
Breakin’ 2 Electric Boogaloo
Surf Ninjas
All arguably bad. All enjoyable and I have a good time watching them.
Arguably? lol
Wild Wild West has a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes but I genuinely enjoy that film. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen also at 16% and also a movie I enjoyed
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen aka How audiences unjustly bullied Sean Connery out of acting.
Wait, really? That was an excellent movie. I wanted them to build a franchise around it
Indeed.
Sean Connery’s agent had scored him the roles of Gandalf for Lord of the Rings and Morpheus in The Matrix, but turned them down due to feeling the plot was too complicated for audiences to follow. After both of these became money-printing machines, he picked League of Extraordinary Gentlemen despite still having problems with the script believing it would be as big as the other two films and that he wasn’t going to miss out on a solid payday three times in a row…
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would go on to be a box office bomb, and Sean Connery felt he was too “out of touch” with modern audiences to be an actor.
There is good news though, if you want more from the franchise you’re in luck. As the movie itself was based off of a comic book which has pretty much the same plot.
The only difference is the movie added “Tom Sawyer” to the group, he isn’t in the comic book and had been requested by executives so that there was a token American in the group, fearing audiences wouldn’t be able to relate without a member from the good ol’ US of A.
Tom did seem kind of tacked on there, rather than fitting with the rest. But of course the executives were right, my American pride liked the symbolism of the ending
Fun fact. Will Smith passed up playing Neo in the Matrix for WWW. I think we got the better deal but it’s fun to picture it.
No way ! WWW is a treasured childhood memory of mine, this rotten tomato guy can suck ass
I honestly thought Morbius was a breath of fresh air for ditching the “Self-aware, meta, woke!” trends that MCU was chasing and just told a dark transhumanist story with super heroish themes.
Like I’d rather watch Morbius again than most of the MCU films made Post-End Game.
And Warcraft really wasn’t a bad movie at all, it was just bitten by the “Anything that is in the Fantasy Genre is automatically a LOTR ripoff!” bug that had been going around for awhile.
If it had came out around the time when audiences stopped caring about what critics think (Sonic’s 2020 film seems to be where that started), it would have done a lot better (Sonic leading the way for video game movies being taken seriously also would have helped)…
Hell if Warcraft (2016) had come out in 2020, that would have been after Blizzard’s fall from grace (“Don’t you guys have phones? No? Time to shit all over the WoW lore and ruin Overwatch then!”), meaning that people would probably
Finally, I’m still firmly in the camp that in 10 years people will come around on the sequels like they did for the prequels (Last Jedi might still be considered the “Not as good” one admittedly). I can’t say the same about the various “Franchise fatigue? What’s that?” shows that Disney
keptkeeps greenlighting though.“Alcolyte was a good show, but no one saw it? Damn, time to release Skeleton Crew I guess!”
Man, I’m so sad about the warcraft movie… partly because I agree with you and I think it was pretty good and it deserved sequels but also partly because it feels like it could’ve been better? Felt a bit hard to follow at times, and I remember reading some of Duncan Jones’ tweets that implied the final cut wasn’t his decision and that there was quite a bit of footage left out. Shame… They should try a tv series.
At this point I just want Blizzard to be forgotten
Super Mario Bros. with Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo. I don’t care how bad it is. It’s in the campy so-bad it’s good pool of movies and nothing anyone says can change my mind. The fact that they were drunk off their asses just makes it even funnier in my opinion.
I saw that shit in theaters. Also Final Fantasy Spirits Within.
Neither time did I fully comprehend what I had just witnessed.
Specifically because the directors had no idea what they were doing, the whole thing ended up being wildly creative. I’ve always unironically enjoyed it.
Seeing it in the theater as a kid was wild. I was confused but I loved it. I could tell it wasn’t Nintendos Mario Bros but it definitely has its own charm.
