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GendoIkari

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1425 on: May 03, 2019, 03:03:48 pm »
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By my count, they created two very divergent parallel universes (Loki escapes with the Tesseract in one, Thanos and his army flat out vanish in another), and then maybe 3 with minor divergences (stolen Pym particles in 1970, Jane attacked by a racoon in Asgard, and Cap staying in the past in some other universe).

I think your third "minor" is actually a major.

Cap marrying Peggy changes her whole life. She originally would have gotten married to someone else; so that drastically changes that guy's life as well. Also, there is now a non-frozen Cap from 1945-2012. We don't know for sure what he did other than married life, but he's still a super hero. Everything he did for the next however long while he was living there would have been an impact that would make that timeline different than the prime timeline.
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1426 on: May 03, 2019, 03:45:35 pm »
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The plotholes that bothered me were Thanos and his whole army going through time with no Pym particles, despite that being a major plot point for our protagonists.

The Russo's actually addressed this one in an interview:


Q: How did Thanos bring his army to the future?

A: There is a guy called Maw in his army, he was a great wizard. Thanos himself was a brilliant genius as well. Those two easily reverse engineered and mass produced Pym Particles.

WTF. At the very least, this "explanation" should have been in the movie. It doesn't take long, just a few seconds to have Thanos tell Maw to study the Pym particles.


By my count, they created two very divergent parallel universes (Loki escapes with the Tesseract in one, Thanos and his army flat out vanish in another), and then maybe 3 with minor divergences (stolen Pym particles in 1970, Jane attacked by a racoon in Asgard, and Cap staying in the past in some other universe).

I think your third "minor" is actually a major.

Cap marrying Peggy changes her whole life. She originally would have gotten married to someone else; so that drastically changes that guy's life as well. Also, there is now a non-frozen Cap from 1945-2012. We don't know for sure what he did other than married life, but he's still a super hero. Everything he did for the next however long while he was living there would have been an impact that would make that timeline different than the prime timeline.

Well, there is also a time-travelling Cap in the prime timeline. While I don't remember it being spelled out, it's implied that he did the same as the Cap that left the prime timeline: marry Peggy and live in the down low. He says that he took the piece of advice from Tony to get a life seriously, so I don't think he does any more superhero work after returning the stones and getting back to Peggy. If this Cap didn't affect the prime timeline, then the Cap that leaves this shouldn't change the one he goes to either. By the way, note that we don't know when exactly he goes back. Could have been 1945, could have been 1970, who knows.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2019, 03:49:22 pm by pacovf »
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GendoIkari

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1427 on: May 03, 2019, 04:18:08 pm »
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Well, there is also a time-travelling Cap in the prime timeline. While I don't remember it being spelled out, it's implied that he did the same as the Cap that left the prime timeline: marry Peggy and live in the down low. He says that he took the piece of advice from Tony to get a life seriously, so I don't think he does any more superhero work after returning the stones and getting back to Peggy. If this Cap didn't affect the prime timeline, then the Cap that leaves this shouldn't change the one he goes to either. By the way, note that we don't know when exactly he goes back. Could have been 1945, could have been 1970, who knows.

I don't quite get what you mean. There is only one Cap who travels through time, assuming you don't count being frozen and waking up in the future as traveling through time. In the prime timeline, Cap gets frozen in 1945, Peggy goes on to marry someone else, Cap wakes up in 2012 when Peggy is old. Now there's a new timeline in which Cap (from the prime timeline) shows up at some point (some point before Peggy gets married presumably), and marries Peggy and lives a life with her.
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1428 on: May 03, 2019, 05:26:42 pm »
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There are two time-travelling Captains. The one that disappears at the end of the movie, and the old man that reveals himself right after, who is also a time traveller. Since in the MCU, you cannot travel to your own past, old man Steve has to be a different Captain from a different timeline. It's just implied that his timeline was basically identical to the prime one, so that the protagonists can get some closure on prime-timeline Captain.

EDIT: Read the link to the interview you provided. Apparently the Russo brothers say old Steve is the same Steve as the one that just jumped to another reality, and is only now stopping by, after living a full life in that reality, to give the shield to Wilson and give everyone some closure. This is... terribly unclear in the movie. If it was the same Cap, I would expect him to appear back in the platform, since that's how they've been back to their timeline every time before. It works so much worse than having it be a Captain from a different timeline altogether...
« Last Edit: May 03, 2019, 06:58:23 pm by pacovf »
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1429 on: May 03, 2019, 06:34:57 pm »
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Are they really going to ignore the thousands of parallel universes they created, like the one where Loki has the Tesseract? 

No, they aren't going to ignore it; in fact they are going to turn it into a new TV series. Seriously. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9140554/

Didn't know this! Cool!
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1430 on: May 03, 2019, 07:39:37 pm »
+3

So one thing I didn't like as much: I didn't like that they went with a time travel route at all. Sure we all knew that it was a likely possibility of what the movie would be about... but given the way that they actually ended up doing everything; it turns out the writers didn't even need time travel. I am glad that they didn't just use time travel to change the past and undo everything that happened... that would have been worse. But since the plan was never to alter the past so that things never happened that way, then the same basic heist movie could have happened without time travel.. just make it so that instead of Thanos destroying the stones, he hid them somewhere. And then instead of fighting past Thanos at the end, they would be fighting present Thanos again. I can't say for sure that that would have been a better movie... I'm no writer. It's just that there's always so much extra complexity when you have time travel that they probably could have done without.

I really disagree with this!

I think the use of time travel is really valuable for the movie for two reasons. The first is basically: It's Fun. Time-traveling back to earlier movies, especially Avengers 1, allows them to work in a lot of fanservice and easter eggs. There's callbacks to and jokes on recognizable earlier scenes (what does Peter Quill's hunt for the Power Stone look like to someone who's not in Quill's head? What happens when Steve is stuck in an elevator with a bunch of Hydra agents?); they get to feature cameos from actors whose characters were killed off or written out several movies ago, like Natalie Portman, Robert Redford, and Tilda Swinton, broadening the epic sweep of the films. Without time travel you don't get Cap wielding Mjolnir, let alone Cap fighting Cap. Having a heist take place in the backgrounds of other movies is way more fun than a heist in other locations where Thanos hid the stones. And I honestly love that there's exposition dialogue whose purpose is just to tell the viewer "No, shut up, time travel in this movie works in the way we, the writers, say it works, so that we can make the movie we want to make."

And then, also, in addition to just allowing some goofy fun, I think it really contributes to the overall themes of the film: Without the time travel plot, we don't get the stunning anticlimax of the Avengers just flat-out executing Thanos in the first ten minutes of the movie and then being like, well, now what—which lays the groundwork for one of the main themes the movie is working with: what really matters isn't just killing the bad guy; what matters is our connection to the people we love. Killing Thanos by itself isn't worth anything, so the movie makes it really easy. And then the use of time travel allows the movie to build on that theme of connection and love: it's how we get scenes between Stark and his dad, and between Thor and his mom; it allows Nebula to return the favor by helping Gamora turn against Thanos, just as Gamora helped her do the same. It also lets us see directly how much the characters have grown over the course of these movies: not only Nebula, but also Steve and Hulk, and even Thanos I guess, get juxtaposed with their past selves so we can be reminded of how they've changed.

It's a lot like the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Picard time-travels back to the first episode of the series—it helps increase the scope of the movie to really feel like the finale of a whole series by tying the earlier stage in its history directly into the capstone story.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2019, 07:47:42 pm by AJD »
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ThetaSigma12

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1431 on: May 03, 2019, 09:45:59 pm »
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Also how is Thor still worthy even though he is a complete bum?
That's not really a plot "hole" per se, just a disagreement with the movie's interpretation. You can't explain it away without saying "he's just worthy because the movie said so". Why I like that choice though, is because I think it shows redemption for Thor. He never lost his worthiness, only doubted himself. It wasn't tied to success or victory, just to the attitude of his heart.

Are they really going to ignore the thousands of parallel universes they created, like the one where Loki has the Tesseract?
Apparently multiverses are supposed to be the driving plot behind FFH, or so it has been rumoured.

How did Rocket and Hawkeye survive that massive explosion without any injuries at all? That was just really stupid.
Rocket is a little inexcusable I guess, but didn't War Machine have his armour on?

They certainly undid some bits from previous movies. Those are pretty glaring plot holes.
Excuse me? The whole point of time travel in Endgame is that it creates diverging timelines and you can't undo anything from previous movies. I thought they made that pretty clear.

And also, the gauntlet was such a big deal. You had to go to this race of dwarves to harvest the power of a star to forge it. Or you can be Tony Stark and make your own damn glove. While Tony Stark is not completely a Mary Sue, the fact that he can solve just about any problem puts him pretty darn close.
More or less fair enough, but I don't think that the gauntlet was a huge deal. If they had mentioned it had to be forged at Navaldier or wherever it would be a hole, but I don't think they mentioned that. It feels implausible but not inexcusable.

Honestly, I thought the movie was really tight. To me, there weren't any plot holes, just plot contrivances. Tech seemed to be developed about as fast as the plot needed, and the power of characters was inconsistently strong. That's been an issue with the MCU for a while now I guess.
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1432 on: May 03, 2019, 09:49:12 pm »
+1

EDIT: Read the link to the interview you provided. Apparently the Russo brothers say old Steve is the same Steve as the one that just jumped to another reality, and is only now stopping by, after living a full life in that reality, to give the shield to Wilson and give everyone some closure. This is... terribly unclear in the movie. If it was the same Cap, I would expect him to appear back in the platform, since that's how they've been back to their timeline every time before. It works so much worse than having it be a Captain from a different timeline altogether...

On the contrary, I thought that was terribly clear in the movie, and I'm a bit surprised it's a sticking point for so many people. Different minds I guess.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1433 on: May 03, 2019, 11:20:26 pm »
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There are two time-travelling Captains. The one that disappears at the end of the movie, and the old man that reveals himself right after, who is also a time traveller. Since in the MCU, you cannot travel to your own past, old man Steve has to be a different Captain from a different timeline. It's just implied that his timeline was basically identical to the prime one, so that the protagonists can get some closure on prime-timeline Captain.

EDIT: Read the link to the interview you provided. Apparently the Russo brothers say old Steve is the same Steve as the one that just jumped to another reality, and is only now stopping by, after living a full life in that reality, to give the shield to Wilson and give everyone some closure. This is... terribly unclear in the movie. If it was the same Cap, I would expect him to appear back in the platform, since that's how they've been back to their timeline every time before. It works so much worse than having it be a Captain from a different timeline altogether...

Wow yeah, I never would have thought of interpreting it the way you did!

I’m fact, I did misinterpret a part of that scene; but quite different from you.

I originally thought that the old man Cap didn’t time travel to get to that bench at that time, but rather had simply naturally aged to that point; after having gone 70 or so years into the past. And then just waited until the right day and time to go to that bench. This doesn’t work though; because Cap would have been living out his life in an alternate timeline (universe where Peggy marries him instead of original husband). So 70 years later, he wouldn’t arrive in a 2023 where the avengers were waiting for him; he would have arrived in an alternate 2023 instead. So rather than him just waiting until that moment to show up; he has to have time jumped again to get there.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1434 on: May 03, 2019, 11:25:21 pm »
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So one thing I didn't like as much: I didn't like that they went with a time travel route at all. Sure we all knew that it was a likely possibility of what the movie would be about... but given the way that they actually ended up doing everything; it turns out the writers didn't even need time travel. I am glad that they didn't just use time travel to change the past and undo everything that happened... that would have been worse. But since the plan was never to alter the past so that things never happened that way, then the same basic heist movie could have happened without time travel.. just make it so that instead of Thanos destroying the stones, he hid them somewhere. And then instead of fighting past Thanos at the end, they would be fighting present Thanos again. I can't say for sure that that would have been a better movie... I'm no writer. It's just that there's always so much extra complexity when you have time travel that they probably could have done without.

I really disagree with this!

I think the use of time travel is really valuable for the movie for two reasons. The first is basically: It's Fun. Time-traveling back to earlier movies, especially Avengers 1, allows them to work in a lot of fanservice and easter eggs. There's callbacks to and jokes on recognizable earlier scenes (what does Peter Quill's hunt for the Power Stone look like to someone who's not in Quill's head? What happens when Steve is stuck in an elevator with a bunch of Hydra agents?); they get to feature cameos from actors whose characters were killed off or written out several movies ago, like Natalie Portman, Robert Redford, and Tilda Swinton, broadening the epic sweep of the films. Without time travel you don't get Cap wielding Mjolnir, let alone Cap fighting Cap. Having a heist take place in the backgrounds of other movies is way more fun than a heist in other locations where Thanos hid the stones. And I honestly love that there's exposition dialogue whose purpose is just to tell the viewer "No, shut up, time travel in this movie works in the way we, the writers, say it works, so that we can make the movie we want to make."

And then, also, in addition to just allowing some goofy fun, I think it really contributes to the overall themes of the film: Without the time travel plot, we don't get the stunning anticlimax of the Avengers just flat-out executing Thanos in the first ten minutes of the movie and then being like, well, now what—which lays the groundwork for one of the main themes the movie is working with: what really matters isn't just killing the bad guy; what matters is our connection to the people we love. Killing Thanos by itself isn't worth anything, so the movie makes it really easy. And then the use of time travel allows the movie to build on that theme of connection and love: it's how we get scenes between Stark and his dad, and between Thor and his mom; it allows Nebula to return the favor by helping Gamora turn against Thanos, just as Gamora helped her do the same. It also lets us see directly how much the characters have grown over the course of these movies: not only Nebula, but also Steve and Hulk, and even Thanos I guess, get juxtaposed with their past selves so we can be reminded of how they've changed.

It's a lot like the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Picard time-travels back to the first episode of the series—it helps increase the scope of the movie to really feel like the finale of a whole series by tying the earlier stage in its history directly into the capstone story.

All interesting points. Stuff I’ll keep in mind for my second viewing next week.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1435 on: May 03, 2019, 11:30:33 pm »
+1

Has anyone complained here yet about how Ant-Man was freed? That really bugged me. Such a lame deus ex machina. I would have loved it so much more if it had been Louis who freed him; with some line about how he’d been trying to track down the van for years.
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1436 on: May 04, 2019, 01:15:38 am »
+1

EDIT: Read the link to the interview you provided. Apparently the Russo brothers say old Steve is the same Steve as the one that just jumped to another reality, and is only now stopping by, after living a full life in that reality, to give the shield to Wilson and give everyone some closure. This is... terribly unclear in the movie. If it was the same Cap, I would expect him to appear back in the platform, since that's how they've been back to their timeline every time before. It works so much worse than having it be a Captain from a different timeline altogether...

On the contrary, I thought that was terribly clear in the movie, and I'm a bit surprised it's a sticking point for so many people. Different minds I guess.

It goes against the time travel rules they had implied until then. They admittedly never really explain them, besides saying you can’t change your past. But then they also focus quite a bit on the quantum “platform”, and it seems that you can only go back to your timeline through it. Like some sort of dimensional anchor. So when Cap leaves on the platform, but never comes back through it, I had to assume old Steve was a different Steve. They could have had old Steve reappear on the platform, their interpretation would have been a lot clearer that way, at least to me.

Has anyone complained here yet about how Ant-Man was freed? That really bugged me. Such a lame deus ex machina. I would have loved it so much more if it had been Louis who freed him; with some line about how he’d been trying to track down the van for years.

It didn’t bother me. It could have happened in countless other ways (someone moving the van to another storage, or reappraising for a sale, or a janitor touching it by accident... whatever. The rat was representative of random chance over an extremely long time (5 years). It didn’t have to be a rat, it’s just what ended up happening.
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1437 on: May 04, 2019, 06:58:21 am »
0

Has anyone complained here yet about how Ant-Man was freed? That really bugged me. Such a lame deus ex machina. I would have loved it so much more if it had been Louis who freed him; with some line about how he’d been trying to track down the van for years.

I interpreted it as Dr. Strange's doing. He chose the exact world where that random event would happen precisely when it needed too.

EDIT: Read the link to the interview you provided. Apparently the Russo brothers say old Steve is the same Steve as the one that just jumped to another reality, and is only now stopping by, after living a full life in that reality, to give the shield to Wilson and give everyone some closure. This is... terribly unclear in the movie. If it was the same Cap, I would expect him to appear back in the platform, since that's how they've been back to their timeline every time before. It works so much worse than having it be a Captain from a different timeline altogether...
On the contrary, I thought that was terribly clear in the movie, and I'm a bit surprised it's a sticking point for so many people. Different minds I guess.

It goes against the time travel rules they had implied until then. They admittedly never really explain them, besides saying you can’t change your past. But then they also focus quite a bit on the quantum “platform”, and it seems that you can only go back to your timeline through it. Like some sort of dimensional anchor. So when Cap leaves on the platform, but never comes back through it, I had to assume old Steve was a different Steve. They could have had old Steve reappear on the platform, their interpretation would have been a lot clearer that way, at least to me.
Yeah, the portal thing was a bit weirder and I wish they would have clarified that. I guess I can see how that would trip people up.
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GendoIkari

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1438 on: May 04, 2019, 04:16:17 pm »
+2

Yeah, the portal thing was a bit weirder and I wish they would have clarified that. I guess I can see how that would trip people up.

Yeah, I think that's maybe the reason I originally misinterpreted the scene, and thought that Old Cap did not time travel to be there, but rather simply waited and aged through normal time until arriving at the right spot at the right time.
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1439 on: May 06, 2019, 10:09:10 am »
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They certainly undid some bits from previous movies. Those are pretty glaring plot holes.
Excuse me? The whole point of time travel in Endgame is that it creates diverging timelines and you can't undo anything from previous movies. I thought they made that pretty clear.
 

Well, no, I wasn't referring to time travel undoing anything. I just mean that the movie undoes some of its own internal consistency, mainly Giant-Man lasting longer than usual and the Infinity Stones being wielded in a mundane gauntlet.

Which you already addressed.

For the former, there could be a nebulous period of time off-screen where he practices this mode and is doing better at it. And I suppose one could argue that the latter wasn't really that safe to begin with, which is why we have that ending. I could concede that point.

As for the rat, I think it's fine. The whole movie is predicated on lucky events. Actually, just about any movie is predicated on luck. Raiders of the Lost Ark would've gone differently if Marion's medallion didn't fall into the fire. Star Wars would've gone differently if that R5 unit hadn't malfunctioned. Back to the Future would've gone differently if Marty hadn't been carrying that clock tower flyer with him (though that opens a whole new can of worms on that plot hole).

So a wild animal stepping in the right place at the right time doesn't really bother me, especially since given a long enough time, such an event was likely to happen anyway. It's just the timing that could be questioned, though not by me. I was cool with it. At the very least, it resulted in some pretty funny movie posters with the true hero of the story.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1440 on: May 06, 2019, 10:15:51 am »
+1

So I finally watched Shazam! over the weekend. That movie turned out much better than I expected. The marketing did not do this movie justice.

It was really just a fun movie, and I wouldn't have placed it in the DC universe if I didn't already know it was there—well, and all the various references to DC lore, which was part of what made it so fun.

I'm not a kid person, but even I found the foster home to be utterly charming. If this movie doesn't create a bunch of new foster homes because of how it's been portrayed, then I'll be surprised. Of course, maybe some people will try to host foster kids who shouldn't, but that's a different matter. It was a really heartwarming piece of the movie.

It pretty much was Big but with a Superman-like character. That comparison was not lost on the filmmakers as they inserted an homage to Big.

And I liked how they resolved the ending because the movie avoided the trope of the hero being outclassed but then inexplicably gets good enough to defeat the villain.

I highly recommend this film. It's a bit of a YA escapist fantasy, but then again, many comic book stories are.
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1441 on: October 09, 2019, 08:57:28 pm »
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So I just watched Joker yesterday, and a question has been bouncing in my head since then. Staying vague to avoid unmarked spoilers: does Arthur Fleck become the Joker by the end of the movie, or just turn into a vaguely Joker-like character? I’ve been leaning towards the later (or rather, he’s still missing something by the end of it), but I am also wondering if there’s a meaningful difference between the two. Thoughts?
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1442 on: October 13, 2019, 09:26:20 pm »
+1

So I just watched Joker yesterday, and a question has been bouncing in my head since then. Staying vague to avoid unmarked spoilers: does Arthur Fleck become the Joker by the end of the movie, or just turn into a vaguely Joker-like character? I’ve been leaning towards the later (or rather, he’s still missing something by the end of it), but I am also wondering if there’s a meaningful difference between the two. Thoughts?

Aren't all the Jokers "Joker-like characters" though? It's such an iconic character and there have been hundreds of different takes on him in movies, television, comic runs, etc. Is there even some baseline you can argue defines the joker anymore?
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pacovf

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1443 on: October 13, 2019, 11:56:40 pm »
+2

I think the reason why I bring up the difference is that, if you want to make a story about the origin of a character, then the story must cover the characteristics that are common to most of the previous interpretations, or at least justify any large deviations. If you miss something, then on some level the story failed for me. For example, if somebody makes an origin story for Batman, but doesn’t explain his refusal to kill, then that’s a problem.

What I thought was missing from Joker was his manipulative side. Arthur Fleck wears his emotions on his sleeve, and mostly kills when his anger takes hold of him. However, something common in Joker portrayals is that he likes to toy with his victims, either going back and forth on whether he kill tell them, bringing them to their emotional breaking point, or something else. He also controls his minions through some combination of mind games and fear. Nothing of the sort is shown in this movie. Arthur, through sheer luck, finds himself at the centre of a violent social movement, but I see no reason to believe he can leverage that into larger scale crime. We’re shown the origins of a serial killer, but the Joker is more than that.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1444 on: October 16, 2019, 05:31:45 pm »
0

Okay, I saw the Facebook ad for the Banana Splits movie, and I instantly set the DVR. I wasn’t sure I wanted to watch this, but I eventually braved it.

It was…better than I expected. Of course, my expectations were low, so that’s faint praise. The family’s story was actually pretty decent. Not overly deep but clearly some writers spent a bit of time crafting the tale. A few of the supporting characters devolved into caricatures. I will say that the two kids they cast in the lead roles did a really good job considering their ages. The casting was a good call.

Honestly, when the horror started, I found it a bit pedestrian. It was a step up from a Troma film. There’s the trope of the person running away from danger in a straight line, which was, of course, completely avoidable.

Turning the Banana Splits into animatronic robots was amusing. I’ve seen accusations that they couldn’t get the rights to Five Nights at Freddy’s, and I could certainly see it. Honestly, does it matter which intellectual property they use? Freddy’s, Showbiz, Disney’s Hall of Presidents? The movie probably would’ve stayed the same. The big difference is attracting the audience. Having Freddy’s name would’ve brought in some audience members, but so does having the Banana Splits’ name. At least it worked for me in that morbid curiosity sort of way.

The important thing here is: Simpsons did it.

The movie does allow for a sequel. I hope they don’t try it, but it’s not up to me.

In all, I enjoyed the movie. There was zero groundbreaking going on here. It was your typical slasher fare with the bonus of having a story that doesn’t suck. Was my enjoyment enhanced by the inclusion of the Hannah-Barbera content? Maybe. I would’ve certainly only had a passing interest in this movie if it was about some generic animatronic band. Attaching the Banana Splits caught my attention. While I liked Five Nights at Freddy’s, even if they did release a movie based on that, I’d probably shrug it off. This is likely a cash grab, and it worked on me (assuming I bought anything as a result of their commercials).
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1445 on: October 18, 2019, 06:46:30 pm »
0

I just saw Parasite by Bong Joon-ho. That was one hell of a movie.

Truth be told, the main reason why I watch movies these days is when I'm with people and we don't have anything less awkward to do together. I find that it's just so rare for even very highly hyped movies to be worth my time these days, unless my time is temporarily not worth very much due to being with people and not having anything less awkward to do — like yeah sure I can keep myself entertained by watching movies, but if I'm by myself and I have a full-length movie's worth of time on my hands, there's other stuff that I can do instead which is beyond entertaining, either because it's actually useful or because it's moving, inspiring, thought-provoking, etc, which movies can also be, but few of them are more than very mildly so compared to some other forms of media such as music or visual novels.

Parasite is one of those movies.
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1446 on: October 20, 2019, 06:56:28 pm »
+2

I feel like many movies are slipping sideways into an alternate reality where communication is just extraordinarily difficult. X wants to say something important to Y but then Y says something at the wrong moment and so X doesn't get to say the important thing. Not something that ever happens in real life, but common in movies. Or something super weird happens and for some reason, the characters only talk about it for half a minute. And various stuff similar to that. Particularly common in movies that start from a fairly normal situation in the present.

I don't think I'm super hard to please, I mostly just want my characters to not be doing obviously stupid and unrealistic things. But often that's too much to ask!

There should be like a test for this. A movie fails this test when there's a situation where it would obviously be a good idea to sit down and have a real discussion and yet that's not happening. A shocking amount of stuff would fail that test. Or maybe I'm just watching the wrong things.

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1447 on: October 21, 2019, 06:31:43 am »
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Expanding on this thought... some youtuber I'm following, when talking about Quentin Tarantino, said that his movies are obviously motivated by autism or something to that effect. I think there might be something to that.

In Quentin Tarantino movies, there are often scenes where some character explains their current take on the situation fairly elaborately and in very basic, easy-to-understand terms. King Schultz does this several times in Django Unchained, Warren does it in The Hateful Eight, Oswaldo also does it in The Hateful Eight, Hans Landa does it in Inglorious Bastards, and there are lots of other examples. This is in some sense also a parallel reality, because people IRL don't tend to do this as much, and not in this particular way. The important difference, though, is that it's behavior that actually contributes to the character's goals.

In every QT movie, every character always actions in a way that reasonably contributes to their current goal set. They're not always doing the smartest thing, but they're always doing something where you know how they think it's sensible. Without fault. The kind of behavior I was complaining about has never happened in a QT movie, and I'd bet a lot of money that it never will.

The connection to autism would then be that people who have some kind of autism but are also very smart tend to have a more logically coherent world view, because they're lacking the social intuition about lots of things, and thus have to reconstruct a lot of stuff from first principles. And so they won't slip sideways into an alternate reality that doesn't survive any serious thought. This is my reformulation of what the aforementioned youtuber said, anyway. I certainly know too little about autism to make this anything but speculation. And granted, there are other directors and shows that are never guilty of this stuff.

But this could go some way in explaining why QT's movies are so good (or at least popular, but I think they're quite good). Ostensibly he's not doing anything special. What's special about the plot or setting of the Hateful Eight? But I take what happens far more seriously than when most other films do it. It feels like everything has more gravity.

Titandrake

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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1448 on: October 22, 2019, 02:27:47 am »
0

I feel like many movies are slipping sideways into an alternate reality where communication is just extraordinarily difficult. X wants to say something important to Y but then Y says something at the wrong moment and so X doesn't get to say the important thing. Not something that ever happens in real life, but common in movies. Or something super weird happens and for some reason, the characters only talk about it for half a minute. And various stuff similar to that. Particularly common in movies that start from a fairly normal situation in the present.

I don't think I'm super hard to please, I mostly just want my characters to not be doing obviously stupid and unrealistic things. But often that's too much to ask!

There should be like a test for this. A movie fails this test when there's a situation where it would obviously be a good idea to sit down and have a real discussion and yet that's not happening. A shocking amount of stuff would fail that test. Or maybe I'm just watching the wrong things.

I think this is an easy trap to fall into writing-wise, where you can manufacture a lot of conflict if people fail to communicate with each other, and writers want the conflict for the plot, so they make people act like fake people instead of real people.

I feel the problem is that writing real people is hard.
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Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« Reply #1449 on: October 22, 2019, 01:52:45 pm »
+1

Funnily enough Silverspawn, I think autistic people would write the opposite kinds of stories that you want. People with autism often have a hard time imagining the viewpoints of other - see for example the "sally-anne" test which most autistic children fail. Characters created by autistic people tend to be pastiches of existing characters with their motives and actions templated by cliches and prior work. I'm not ragging on them though - most people are bad at writing characters!
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