29
votes
What are your unpopular movie opinions?
There are already a few threads like this, but I don't think there's one about movies specifically. You can post any movie-related opinion you want, as long as it's unpopular.
There are already a few threads like this, but I don't think there's one about movies specifically. You can post any movie-related opinion you want, as long as it's unpopular.
Comic book movies are typically not good. Super predictable, barely string together a plot, only made in such volume because they're considered a safe investment. We live in the golden age of television and the đź’© age of movies.
It's gotten to the point that I actively avoid comic book movies because they now come with so much 'required reading' with the other films that I need to have seen (and which I need to discard because this film isn't on the same 'reboot cycle' or whatever).
Genuinely curious, was there ever a time in cinema where the highest grossing were also the most critically acclaimed? I don't see it that way, so the current trends don't shock me all that much.
I don't think it necessarily worked like that, but the problem is movie studios are a lot less inclined to take risks. Imagine a film like The Princess Bride being made today - it probably would be a Netflix series. There's no built in audience so it wouldn't be worth the investment as a movie.
Are you equating the volume of comic book films with a decrease in quality of films in general?
I think it's the same trend leading to both. Movies are such huge investments, studios don't want to gamble on anything. Comic books have a built in fanbase and have been successful in the box office so they keep getting made. The creative projects have migrated over to HBO and Netflix etc, where one season of a show is basically a couple movies.
Seems a reach to base such a wide conclusion on the fact that a small category of films is getting attention now.
There have been excellent TV series before comic book films became popular, and there will be once the genre dies down. There are also still excellent films in production that aren't comic book films and were major risks. You do hear about them, too – John Wick comes to mind – but only if you don't focus on a specific subset.
John Wicke is a comic book film, and isn't very good.
John Wick is terrible story wise, but incredible action wise.
I normally get pretty lethargic from watching action films but John Wick is the first series where I don't feel bored/tired from watching the action - perhaps because the moment-to-moment action feels somewhat unpredictable.
Whether you liked it or not – or even assigned it to a correct category – it was a major investment, a lot of work to produce, and a surprise hit.
YES! Thank you so much for saying that.
What I really don't get is why there's still so much reliance on guns in superhero movies. They're supposed to be superhuman! Why do they need guns to fight? Like didn't one of the Thor movies end with people bringing a bunch of guns into Valhalla and slaughtering their enemies? How is that superheroes? That's just low-level thugs.
You sound like you've never seen the goddamn film – or the rest of them, for that matter.
The only superpowered characters to have used firearms in the MCU films were Captain America (during WWII), Bucky Barnes (he was in some way physiologically-enhanced similar to Captain America), and Skurge, that Asgardian guy in the bizarre Thor: Ragnarok film played by Karl Urban.
(That last one is the one you referred to. He brought two M-16s to Asgard because they were weapons of war to him – him, an Asgardian warrior, from a culture with an imperialist streak – and he thought they were cool because they "rain fire".)
The rest of them used a firearm as a means to compete against outstanding foes. Natasha Romanoff used it because she's a spy trained in combat and had to kill people. Nick Fury used it 'cause he's a head of an extranational paramilitary organization who had to fend off enemies. Sam Wilson used it 'cause he was a US Air Force-trained soldier, whether or not he had a set of advanced personal flight apparati. Colonel James Rhodes used it in Iron Man 3 'cause he's a US Air Force Colonel fighting Extremis-powered combatants.
And that's just some of the major characters. None of them had superpowers. Many of the good and the bad guys used firearms or similar weaponry throughout the MCU because well, that's how fighting's done in this day and age when you can't readily withstand getting smacked by the Iron Man armor.
DCEU has a similar deal. The only people who use firearms in those films are the people who either need them or can use them very effectively against the kinds of threats they face.
On the other hand...
Tony Stark had to get inventive with the weapons he used to go against armed mooks in Iron Man 3. Embedded HYDRA soldiers used taser sticks against Steve Rogers in The Winter Soldier. Most of the Iron Man armors use repulsors offensively. There's energy weapons, metal shield's being used as an effective weapon, there's a guy that can't miss with a projectile even when he's not looking, there are deity-level non-humans disappearing into thin air and flinging lightning at enemies...
But you've decided to focus on the five minutes of that one guy toting his two assault rifles in one film.
That's unnecessarily combative in a thread, about movies, specifically designed to elicit unpopular opinions.
Simply removing the swearword would help reduce your combative stance, or you can phrase it as a question.
This isn't about banning specific words. I am not the word police.
This also isn't a festivus thread, where we get together as a family and air our grievances.
This is about whether a combative stance belongs in a thread focused on controversial opinions.
Hostility has a chilling effect. You either maintain a higher level curiousness and civility, or the entire thread will turn to shit.
Good point.
I'm sorry. I'm at a loss. It would be helpful to me if you would share the relevant link.
Thats funny, usually I'm the big idiot with the faulty memory.
I think your overall point probably stands however, and I am also being unnecessarily hostile.
I absolutely intended to be combative – in order to counter a badly-formed, knee-jerk opinion about a subject the person seems to know nothing about.
Most of this thread's opinions are from people who've seen the film they're referring to. That's fine. It would also be perfectly fine to have not seen the film and express why you think you may dislike it.
Badmouthing – not critiquing, badmouthing – a film that by all apperearances you haven't even touched does not sit well with me. It's not a mere opinion: it's an opinion made in bad faith.
You mean like Martin Scorcese?
This post is incredibly hostile - I get that you are enthusiastic about the films, but you could've explained it much better without using language and phrases that attack the person you're replying. And by this, I mean.
I would have instead phrased it as
It shows you disprove of the comments but removes all of the aggression. And remember, we are talking about entertainment - there's no need for any kind of aggression.
If you think that, you haven't parsed the reason I said what I said from my perspective. Given that you're giving me no benefit of the doubt, I see no reason to elaborate further.
Next time you're talking to someone whose position you don't understand, it may be wise to assume that their actions are guided by values you may or may not share. This often leads to a better understand – and less talking down to.
So I've come back to this post after a long break and I've been drinking so I'm feeling pretty chill, and I read what you said, and you know what? Reading the entire thing wasn't so bad. I barely remember the marvel films, so I'll take your word for it (it's not the drinks - I pretty much watched them and let the whole experience wash over me).
I don't know if I agree with what I wrote knowing how I feel now, but I do know that when I initially read your post, I saw this line
and immediately I got flashbacks of all the times I spent wasted arguing with a toxic redditor/Twitter account. In fact, I couldn't even properly read your post because I was blinded by all the hurt and the rage from past experiences.
I know you aren't responsible for those actions, but for people like myself, when I see words that one have (admittedly a mild) swearword coupled with this overly generic assumption of my views or beliefs, I just want to curl up inside and not respond.
The sad thing is that everything between the two sentences I quoted was absolutely great. But unfortunately I've used the internet for discussing things that I've liked and I've wasted endless time "fighting" people in my youth, and those two sentences are the kind of sentences that other people would use to... well... stir drama, cause fights, troll, etc. You get the idea.
I feel bad as I've now read the post and I understand it really wasn't as bad as I originally thought when I read it 6 in the morning. But at the same time (this is something I struggle with) it's not what the words mean to us, it's what it means to the recipient.
Maybe it's the time I've spent away from posting (I tend to go away for a while from any social website, especially when I get that feeling of hostility), maybe it's the drunkenness, but I can now see that the post isn't that hostile. And maybe I've got some sort of lizard brain that automatically saw that as concerning, but I don't think I'm alone?
Especially when dealing with people on Reddit, that has left me with a very sour taste in my mouth. I came here to seek refuge from that, and while I admit I won't get that 100% of the time, the optimist in me hopes I can at least get closer to that goal than before.
Sorry in advance if this is an incoreherent ramble.
I wouldn't say what I wrote was great – I just recited what I remembered – but I get what you're saying.
The nature of the Internet as a medium – exemplified by forums such as this one – is that all you have to go on when conversing to the other person is barely more than a text. It would be ideal if we were never to make false assumptions about those we talk to – especially when confronted with what amounts to a minor trauma – but none of us can admit to that in honesty.
Don't beat yourself up for not having perfect insight.
I did not find it any more hostile than the comment it was replying to.
Though I've found that there's still too many good movies dropping in cinemas to keep up with. Good is not 6-7/10 either. There's plenty that are 8/10+ and >= 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
On top of that, the CGI usage, while impressive in scope, is often pretty fuckin terrible.
I don't know if this counts, but I tried rewatching Scott Pilgrim vs the World - I watched it as a teenager and loved it, but nearly a decade on I can barely stand it. I got to about 30 minutes in before I had to turn it off and do something else.
I'm really wondering, what do you (and other comic-book-film-haters in this thread) think about M. Night Shyamalan's “Eastrail 177 Trilogy”? On the one hand it still is a comic-book film series, but on the other it has a few original twists heh that set it apart of stuff like Marvel and DC films.
I'll edit your quote to point to why.
To be fair, they build off the source material which, by and large, aren't exactly bastions of depth in the first place.
Are there amazing comics? Yes.
Are they the norm? No.
I genuinely enjoyed Cats and don't think it deserved the low review scores it got. I'd actually give it a solid 9/10.
It doesn't suffer from Tom Hooper's usual awful camera angles and cinematography. It's like he actually learned his stuff after the awful Les Miserables adaptation four years prior. Unfortunately, this flop is most likely going to sink his career as a director.
To address the obvious elephant in the room, I don't particularly like the CGI humanoid cat designs but I got used to them after the first few songs. I think it would've been better if they just put the cast in catsuits like the musical.
There were a few miscasts like Rebel Wilson, who turned Jennyanydots into an obnoxious lazy glutton with terrible ad-libs throughout her part. Jennyanydots is actually a motherly cat who takes care of all the animals and nothing like how Rebel Wilson portrayed her. Though the Old Gumbie Cat was bad more-so for the unsettling CGI humanoid mice and cockroaches it introduced. Thankfully she doesn't see much screen time beyond this part.
I'd also say that Jason Derulo was miscast as the Rum Tum Tugger. His performance was vocally weak compared to the musical. Personally, I would have cast Brendon Urie, the vocalist from Panic! At The Disco in the role instead, because he actually has the vocals and the metrosexual energy to deliver this performance.
But there were a few moments that genuinely surpassed the musical, like:
I haven't watched it because even if it was absolutely stellar in every single category, Cats isn't my type of movie - not a fan of musicals. But I'm glad someone liked Cats. I was actually starting to feel sorry for all the people who worked tirelessly making the film for it to bomb in cinemas because the CGI was bad.
I didn't enjoy the movie much, but I also didn't enjoy the musical much when I saw it and I disliked them for the same reasons. It's weird. It's not about anything but overdramatizing the life of a cat. It's disturbingly horny.
But that all tells me it was actually a good and faithful adaptation of the spirit of the musical so I have a hard time holding any of that against it. If it wasn't all those things it wouldn't be Cats.
Yeah, this reminds me of books about writers. I know they say "write what you know," but come on! Think a little further past the end of your nose!
I felt like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood goes was pretty self-aware of that masturbatory quality though. Felt like they played into it, and didn't take Hollywood too seriously.
24 fps needs to die almost completely. The only stigma against it are simply unfortunate associations with low quality media. It is called the "soap opera effect" because it reminds people of soap operas, which are not known for great storytelling. The only big name movies that even tried high framerate (HFR) were the hobbit movies. These movies were comically bad, with terrible CG, whether you watch them in 24 or 48 fps. People who say that they don't like the HFR in these movies simply don't like those movies.
HFR is just a better temporal resolution, in the same way that imax is better size resolution. The decision to film in imax or not is usually a financial one (imax cameras can be very expensive, and you need 2 cameras and lenses if you also shoot 3d). The decision to use 24fps is laziness and habit. HFR should not cost any more than 24, once technology catches up. When everyone in the industry makes the same decision, is a habit, not a decision.
I disagree with this one strongly. Higher frame rates really ruin the suspension of disbelief. It makes it very clear that people are wearing costumes and using props and are not the real thing. It's like watching a bad play. People have even said this about very high-end productions like the Hobbit.
Because they're associated with cheap low budget productions that use shitty costumes and cheap props. If you had spent your whole life watching everything in high FPS, you wouldn't think that because there's nothing inherently about high framerates that makes stuff look cheap.
This is not just a matter of association. Higher framerates make film closer to reality, and we, in turn, are more prone to draw comparisons with the real world.
I thought the "soap opera effect" was motion smoothing. Because motion smoothing looks fake and terrible.
Yes, the soap opera effect is usually an argument against motion smoothing. Yes, motion smoothing is mostly bad (some people seem to like it for some content. Anime in particular seems to benefit from it). I think the effect is mostly due to the high framerate (soap operas were often shot at 50 or 60 fps) and not due to bad interpolation. I seem to remember the soap opera effect being cited when people were talking about The Hobbit and HFR. I thing that high framerate content is mostly unavailable unless you use motion smoothing.
Are there any examples of good HFR movies (even if not a big budget movie)?
I do tend to buy this argument in principle, but I’m not sure I’ve seen the difference in frame rates before.
I think the new Will Smith movie
Gemini Man, is that the one?
It sure feels very different. While I know it's the super-high frame rate, I can't put the finger on the feeling it produces.
Your argument may make sense from a naive technological standpoint, but it ignores film history and does not provide any evidence toward the advantages of a higher frame rate on film. What is good for videogames, news, sports and soap-operas isn't necessarily a good idea for film and film-like content. Among other advantages, lower frame-rates gives the content a dream-like cadence that removes them from our real life perceptions and expectations.
Doesn't it double the cost and time of a render? I heard VFX companies have huge render farms, so it can't be cheap. And I assume some VFX stuff is also handled manually frame by frame, so this would also double manual work.
It also eliminates some tricks available at lower framerates. I watched a few "VFX Artists React" videos today and one of them talked about how for Gemini Man they had to use CGI to smooth out punches/kicks because at a higher framerate it's much more obvious when an actor holds a punch/kick or fake-reacts to it.
It's not like modern cinematography let's you actually see punches and kicks anyway. Aren't they too busy doing rapid jump cuts in underlit, rainy spaces for people to see much of anything?
Yeah possibly. Please do note that I am not involved in the movie industry, so this is complelety armchair directing.
That being said, I think that if the movie industry moved to higher framerate, the costs would quickly normalize back to slightly higher than they were before. Rendering is not the expensive part of CG (as far as I know), it's the artist and programmer time. The big issue high framerates cause is with bad CG. A lot of bad CG can be 'hidden' with the blurriness of 24fps. When an action scene looks like somebody spilled a tub of Vaseline on the lens, even crappy things can look OK. Increasing the framerate (and thus allowing the viewer to actually see something in motion) will mean that OK CG will look terrible. The industry will have to stop shoveling out subpar content and actually make good CG.
This is not just about render. Higher framerates require more lights on the set, increasing the overall temperature and quite literally melting makeup, irritating the performers and requiring more retouches.
There's also a whole range of knowledge, from design to cinematography to colorimetry to post-production, that was created with 24fps in mind.
It seems silly, I know, but that's the kind of thing someone with experience on actual productions (like me) will think about...
Yes, it does double the cost and work to shoot at twice the frame rate. Much of VFX is automated, but it still takes time to render those frames. There is some work done by hand, but because it's costly studios try to do as little as possible.
The problem with CG in anime is that it objectively looks like shit. I was watching Akira the other day, and it's mindblowing how a production from 1988 can be so superior to current animation. I tolerate the use of CG for backgrounds, but I never saw a CG anime character that I liked. They're stiff and lifeless.
Western animation solved this problem by adopting an entirely different style for CG animation, while the Japanese industry struggles to mimic the hand-drawn tradition.
This could, of course, change. And I'm open to it. But IMHO the time has not yet come.
If you haven't yet, I agree with @mundane_and_naive that Land of the Lustrous has been one of the best examples of CG used well in anime. Instead of treating CG as a way to cut animation costs while trying to fit a hand-drawn style, they embraced what CG brings to the table as a method. Smooth dynamic cinematography and action, more realistic and detailed lighting with the gemstones and fluids, etc. It's also a great show underneath the technical aspects.
I saw a clip of this anime on YouTube after reading the comment. It's vastly superior to any other anime using the same technique I have ever seen, but I don't think even that is superior to regular hand-drawn animation. This might change, but right now the reasons for pushing CG on anime are entirely economical. It's a compromise at best.
I agree with you that higher fps should be used more—but I certainly wouldn't want 24 fps to die out. As technology inevitably gets better and better, 24 fps will retain a nice nostalgic quality.
The issue with using the hobbit movies as an argument against hfr is that they are bad movies even without hfr. If every movie today looked like the hobbit movies in 24fps, without any hfr, I too would stop watching movies. Hfr is not the bad thing about the hobbit movies. Hfr just makes the bad much more visible.
Also, it is possible that you didn't even see the hobbit movies in hfr. As I recall, hfr was only offered in select theaters, in 3d only. If you saw it in imax or 2d, or in 3d at most theaters, you likely saw it in 24fps. It really wasn't advertised very well at all.
It is interesting that you say this is an impossible combination. It seems to be that this is the most common combination in the movie industry currently.
Anyway, you are correct about your last statement. The only current way to experience higher framerates is through motion smoothing, which has enough issues without people's misconceptions. We just haven't ever seen media that is both high quality and high framerate. The only thing close that I can think of is video game cutscenes. I have never heard of anybody having a problem with 60+fps cutscenes, but there are many issues with comparing cutscenes with movies.
If my understanding is correct, this'll still give a different effect to a film shot at 24fps. The Hobbit was shot at 48fps with a 270° shutter angle, so 1/64 second exposure, while most films are shot with a 180° shutter angle at 24fps, so 1/48 second.
You've got about a third less motion blur on the frames, even if you then choose to display in a different format.
John Wick 3 sucks compared to the previous two.
It's something I've been meaning to write a fuller review about, and I'm not sure I won't, so here's the condensed version:
What made the first film special were:
It had its flaws, but for what it tried to achieve, it was outstanding and deserved the praise it got.
John Wick 2 reached a little higher by extending its reach. With more resources, I think it managed to do so, while keeping the story level. It even gave us an interesting twist at the end – a twist that made the story all the more enjoyable because it made a statement about the depth of character (something the first one did, but not at such high stakes).
Then the third film came along.
It took that grounded, mysterious character – and shattered his appeal by humbling him way too much. So, John Wick's a Belarussian Roma? At what point would I have ever wondered about where he came from? Did I need to know that? And now that I do, I think less of John as a character: it's as if his essence had been diluted. I would feel exactly the same if he came to that theater, kneeled in front of his former teacher, and said "I eat tacos with ketchup, I like the taste of green tea, and I need a passage to Morocco".
What?! Where the fuck did that come from?
The whole film, a guy that's had a decent grasp on the situation loses his wits and submits to a higher authority, cuts off his fucking ring finger, and goes back into it just to turn his back on the whole affair because he had to murder Winston to finish the deal. (That last part is okay with me. The rest isn't.)
We see a guy whom the previous two films built into a powerhouse of martial confidence and very good work ethic – very good work ethic of an assassin – squirm and wiggle like a worm, even though the very last two minutes of the film promised something closer to what the third one's ending did: "I'll kill them. I'll kill them all" – and he goes underground, above the High Table, where he isn't that loved either, but where he has to make do with the tasks he's given or risk total alienation, bringing thousands of people on his tail.
That never happened. Instead, John's thrown around the plot like a ragdoll, there are ninjas that are somehow more effective than guys with guns, they kill a guy in a crowd and nobody bats a fucking eye – and in the end, John fights guys in armor that can't physically exist because they really, really needed to up the ante... for some fucking reason.
I was very excited to watch it when it came out. I tried to keep the mood up while all of its glaring flaws kept popping up: at least I'm watching another John Wick film. I even waited for CinemaWins' episode on the film to try and see it from the other side.
Nope. It's bad. It's really, really bad. It had its good moments – plenty of them – but it ended up a fucking mess where the people in charge seemed to think that bringing the bizarre-but-in-a-good-way nature of the film up to eleven is what the viewers really want. Instead, it moved too quickly, brought in too much stuff, shoved it all down your throat, and the tablecloth it gave you was the cheap, fast-food kind where you can see through it if you unfold the piece.
I mean, even the fucking intro is so outlandish for the steady pace the first two films aimed for...
They traded the grounded nature – bizarre yet somehow grounded ("hyperreal and real", as Lee of CinemaWins called it), a unique mix that worked well – and the steady pace for an LSD trip. I'm okay with LSD trips, but only when I expect one from all the things the film had told me so far. Instead, the third film mixed it in with the meal and expected you to enjoy it.
I agree with you. I really like Boban Marjanović so it was great to see him in a movie (he's the guy John kills at the beginning), but the third (and to a lesser extent the second one too) movie didn't keep the realism of the first one.
I watched it last night and i don't know whether i was in a particularly grumpy mood but it felt like they were intentionally loading it with lazy, almost racist, action film tropes. It wasn't a commentary on the tropes or doing them in a "realistic" manner, they weren't doing them in a completely over the top humorous way or making them a homage to other films. They were just there like in bad action films from the 80s and 90s.
As much as I enjoyed JW3, I did notice that and laugh at how ridiculous it was.
I agree with all your points, but when I watched it I pretty much shut off the part of my brain that did any sort of critical thinking and I enjoyed the film. No doubt if I watched the films back to back I'd have these exact gripes.
There have been quite a lot of those in the silly unpopular opinion thread. I hope it's fine if I just repost stuff from there and add a couple of new ones:
I don't think DKR is rubbish, per se, but there's absolutely a drop in quality of the film established by the first two movies.
It definitely felt lacking in some way, because it never captured my interest the same way the second or even the first movie did. Watching it makes me feel I'm on the verge of being bored, aside from a few scenes.
But honestly it had the odds stacked against it from the start, due to Heath Ledger's performance and subsequent death in the previous film.
I'm not a fan of The Godfather either for basically the same reasons. And oooh, another Stalker fan on Tildes... nice! Almost everyone I have talked to that has seen it, hated it... but I love that film too.
I agree that Memento wasn't hard to follow at all, but Primer? I hard disagree there. When you need a chart like this to explain a movie, that's a bit much IMO. I genuinely had no idea WTF was happening in that movie, even after my second viewing... and honestly, not even the chart really helps with that either IMO.
So, I'm something of a fan of neo-surrealist science fiction movies.
I quite liked Tarkovsky's Stalker and Solaris, thought Memento and Primer were reasonably straightforward, and appreciated Alex Garland's interpretation of Jeff Vandemeer's Annihilation.
But Cloud Atlas was so-so. The Fountain was mostly annoying, even though I like Darren Aronofsky's other work.
I think all the people on different sides of the Primer debate here aren't really talking about the same thing despite using similar terminology. I "understood" Primer and it was pretty "straightforward" in the sense that I get the overarching plot involving time travel, and there being multiple timelines interacting. But where I quite literally lose the plot, is in failing to be able to understand which character from which timeline we are witnessing at any given moment, not really being able to determine each character from each timeline's exact motivations, or the order that anything was actually happening in... which leads to a confusing mess of a movie, IMO.
I am also a massive fan of surrealist cinema (scifi or otherwise) too, BTW. However I actually loved Cloud Atlas... but I do agree that The Fountain was not great, even though I am also an Aronofsky fan as well (♡ π). And speaking of non-linear surrealist scifi films, have you seen Mr. Nobody yet? I quite liked it, but it was definitely not without its flaws. Gilliam's The Zero Theorem was also quite good as well, IMO.
I'm in the same boat as you are with "understanding" Primer, but that level of comprehension was sufficient to enjoy it on the first pass. I trusted the writing enough to give it a second viewing to tease apart the timeline strands, and found it even more fun on the rewatch.
I love David Mitchell's books, and couldn't tell you exactly why I found the adaptation for Cloud Atlas mildly disappointing. Maybe because it made fewer timeline shifts than in the novel. Even with the same actors appearing repeatedly, it still felt like completely different stories were being told, rather than each being so intimately interrelated with the others. I'm also not a Tom Hanks fan; there's something about his voice that I find goofy and intrusive.
Thank you for the recommendations - Mr. Nobody and The Zero Theorem have been on my watch list for a while, but I just haven't had a lot of stomach for tales of anomie and disillusionment lately.
I haven't actually read Mitchell's book, so that could be where our difference of opinion comes from about Cloud Atlas, since book-to-film adaptations rarely live up to the original, but I only had the film to judge the story on. I also don't mind Tom Hanks either (although I can't help but always see him as just Tom Hanks playing a new part rather than as him truly embodying a new character), so that is probably a factor as well.
I know how you feel there. I have to be in the right mood for watching mind-bending, potentially existential crises/dread inducing films too. And these days, when so many real life events elicit similar feelings, I find myself rarely in the mood to seek that out in fiction. :/
Cloud Atlas was everything I want out of a big budget feature film; great actors doing a great job together with filmmakers who are doing something nobody has ever seen before. You may have seen it as a flawed film, but for what it was attempting it was far better than it had any right to be. And unlike other big budget feature films, it was an independent production made by people who were absolutely convinced in their vision.
I realize that I'm being harsh towards Cloud Atlas for some of the same issues that I gave Watchmen a pass on, but the adaptation just didn't resonate with me. I don't hate Cloud Atlas, it's often visually gorgeous; I just feel that my experience of the movie didn't add any new enjoyment value over having only read the book.
I'm also not sure what the filmmakers did that no one had seen before. There had been prior movies that featured reincarnation (metaphorical or otherwise), multiple parallel storylines played by the same characters, and so on.
I'm not exactly trashing the Wachowskis here, either - I loved the first Matrix and Sense8 (not for necessarily for legible plot, novel dialogue, or brilliant acting). It's just that I think I'm more attached to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas than the movie version.
I always thought Primer simply had bad, overly convoluted storytelling.
The charts and many explanations of the series of events make sense, and it's simple enough to follow after you know what you're looking for, but the base issue seems like the movie itself did a poor job of conveying it to the audience. After all, you need a third party to tell you what to look for because the movie does such a poor job of it. If you have to study it so intensely for details and then still wind up with so many people interpreting what should be a linear series of events in different ways then that doesn't seem like the product of good storytelling.
The subplot about being attacked at the party is the most egregious example I can remember. On first watch, it felt like totally out of left field. On second watch, it still felt like that since the movie didn't properly set that up like it did various other plot points.
The writing really reminds me of this SMBC comic.
Honestly when I saw Memento with a bunch of friends in college I was shocked how few of them were able to actually track or understand what was happening and they were shocked that I actually could. That was one of the first times where I started to actually consider that maybe I really am just way smarter than everyone else (jk). Same thing with Inception.
But really, it's astonishing how little attention most people pay to movies or shows they're watching. I don't understand how people enjoy some of the shows and movies they do considering how many details or even major elements of plot would glide right through their brains without leaving any impression. I don't even get what they enjoy about these things, but I guess I'm glad they're seeing something there to like.
Meanwhile, movies that are actual mindfucks, like Mother, only I seem to enjoy.
Standalone cut or the Grindhouse version? As I understand, it was intended to be released as part of the latter, and then padded with half an hour of filler for the standalone release.
I don't remember for sure, but I think it was a stand-alone cut. Do you think that rewatching it in the grindhouse cut would improve my opinion?
I think it probably would, at least somewhat. It's not going to make it a totally different movie, but the pacing is a lot better in the shorter version. It's also different seeing it in context, where the mood has already been set by Planet Terror and then the fake (except now real) trailers in the intermission, rather than in isolation.
It's not going to make you love it if you previously hated it, but in my opinion it's a film that loses a lot when taken out of its intended context and recut.
People are genuinely ruffled over this?
Less so about Memento, but Primer is notorious for this. Lots of people saying that the film “totally blew their mind” and how they “couldn't figure it out without a graph”. Don't get me wrong, it's a genuinely good indie sci-fi film with a couple of good twists. It's just not, in my humble opinion, that mind-blowing for anyone who thought about time travel for more than two minutes.
I think it's fair to call the base concepts interesting rather than mind blowing, but did you really have a firm idea of which "version" of each character was in each scene on your first watch?
I'm wondering if we're meaning different things when we talk about following the film. Figuring out the overall "replace self and use future knowledge for personal gain" plot seems reasonable, but I'm not ashamed to say I have trouble juggling nine separate timelines in my mind and keeping track of which one a specific instance of a character crossed from at any given time.
I'd expect pretty much anyone to need a few repeat viewings and a pencil and paper to follow at that level of detail.
Spoilers for Primer below the line.
The thing is, I don't think you really need to know exactly which version you're looking at. I don't even think that the film creators themselves thought it was necessary. Once you grasp the two main “innovations” of the film, those being the concept of a “fail-safe time-machine” and “yo-dawging a time-machine through another time-machine”, the rest is just you watching two dudes trying to out-heist-movie each other.
Spoilers for Primer above the line.
Totally reasonable - I think that's at least partially where the difference of opinion comes from on how difficult it is to follow: some people are talking about the plot as a whole, others about untangling all of the individual threads.
I feel incredibly seen (at least with the films I've watched - have no idea about Speed Racer/Stealth/Russian films/Primer).
I would say that I thought everyone knew Death Proof was rubbish? If I remember correctly, even Tarantino acknowledged it was his worst film.
Hoo boy, I thought Speed Racer was good till I watched it again recently and man did it not age well (for me). One of my favorites when I was younger though. The finale felt super hammed-up on a rewatch, but I still remember the chills I got when I saw it the first time.
Just because something is stupid and repetitive doesn't mean it's a comic book movie.
How so? Is it that you think violence unpunished encourages viewers to dish out violence easier?
Is there anything in particular that makes you worried about desensitivity stemming from this sort of violence without consequence? Do you think you've seen the results?
I enjoyed the Marvel movies for the most part, but I also wasn't a fan of the comics beforehand. I can't stand the sequel trilogy, but I was previously a huge Star Wars fan.
So I'm probably hugely biased when I say that I thought the Star Wars sequels were worse than most of the comic book movies I've seen. Not DC levels of bad, because they at least had some redeeming qualities. But objectively speaking, there's less depth of plot, less coherence between movies, less character development and less originality, by comparison to the average MCU movie as the franchise stands currently.
I could go on for a while but honestly I should probably stop myself here.
2001: A Space Odyssey is boring. It might have been ground-breaking visually, but it's not an enjoyable movie. It's tedious. It has a few interesting moments, and some breathtaking visuals but, overall, it's as boring as watching paint dry. Kubrick and Clarke made a bad movie out of an interesting story.
2001 is one of those films that I appreciate, but don't enjoy. I enjoyed watching it with the commentary track, though. I watch 2001 every year or so, even though I don't like it. I think it's an important film. I also didn't like Citizen Kane as a film, but I absolutely LOVE it as a technical achievement -- and, like 2001, watch it somewhat regularly.
Why?
I appreciate it as a film and I hope that one day something will click and I'll truly enjoy it. I enjoy it more now than the first time I saw it, so there is movement in the right direction.
For me, there's so much more to film than, 'I was entertained by the story.'
Are you sure it's not a celluloid version of Stockholm Syndrome? :)
I would say, 'no', but that is definitely what someone with this condition would say. :)
I love the sets, the overall tone, the tension, etc. I wrestle with this film more than anything because I like it, but I don't love it. I think it boils down to my desire to love it not matching my actual enjoyment of it. If I made a list of things I like about the film, it would check all of the boxes. I just can't put my finger on it.
Could it be that it's boring? :)
yes, but at a later date I hope to look back at this thread and wonder how I could have been so blind to... whatever the hell I may discover.
I'll usually try to see why something has a following... but there are limits. I will watch 2001 every so often, but I will never read Imzadi again. :)
I'm going to say something that will get me a lot of flack. Kubrick just plain isn't that good of a filmmaker.
Sure, he makes films that achieve the goals he set out to do. But I don't think entertaining the audience is some of those goals. The pacing of his movies is far too slow and he puts so much "meaning" into his movies that people LITERALLY go crazy trying to catch it all.
ha. your reasons for not liking his work are the very reason I adore his work. :) My two favorites of his (by a wide margin) are Eyes Wide Shut and Barry Lyndon.
But there's nothing to get flack about. If we all liked the same film, life would be so boring.
It's been many years since I read 'Imzadi', but I remember enjoying it.
It's funny. I was trying to get into ST books and nearly every must read list has that and a few others. It just wasn't for me... at least at the time.
Thinking back on it, I was expecting something different. But it was a tight little adventure with some great moments (like Riker at the wedding.)
Have you watched other sci-fi movies from the time?
I'm glad you said that. This is a discussion the spouse and I have about all art forms on a regular basis - "is it good, or is it important?"
There are essential instances of film, literature, painting, etc. which are important to the development of the artform, e.g. Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou, James Joyce's Ulysses, Joseph Alber's Homage to the Square series... They're all important, as experiments to express new stylistic or theoretical principles of the form, but not necessarily pleasing or entertaining. It takes work for the general public, rather than connoisseurs or practitioners, to understand the impact. The pleasures of viewing are more in the nature of joy at achieving new understandings as the result of cognitive effort, than simple consumption of entertainment.
The "good" works usually use previously established principles of the artform to make accessible, seamlessly integrated exemplars. I personally think 2001 was about as well done as the technology of the time and the original story would permit, but it doesn't stand up to present day movie expectations for entertaining narrative structure, dialogue, and pacing.
it's such an important distinction -- especially once you get into experimental stuff.
Have you watched The Story of Film: An Odyssey from Mark Cousins? It's a nice series that gives a great breakdown of the progression and transformation of film.
Not yet, now it's on the list. The breadth and depth of movies covered is amazing, and I don't think it will be difficult to convince the spouse to pick this up after we run out of the current season of Peaky Blinders. We're both fascinated with cinematography, screenwriting, SFX, and film history, so The Story of Film should be a good few popcorn dates.
It’s a great balance between entertainment and academics.
Tarantino is a one trick wonder who just keeps releasing new, tired, iterations of his same one trick. Thirty years ago his whole schtick might've at least been novel, but now it is just repetitive and dull. I don't know why anyone pretends his movies are higher quality than say, a marvel movie.
Thank you! Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a misogynistic dumpster fire. I can't believe I wasted three hours of my life watching it and genuinely wondered if I was losing my mind because it garnered such positive reviews.
To date, there's never been a decent Batman live action film. Chris Reeves' Superman was the only decent mainstream DC film until Wonder Woman.
I have the complete opposite opinion: To date there has never been a decent Superman movie.
Superman is inherently one of the most boring of superheroes. He has all the super powers. He is impervious to everything except kryptonite. He has very little skin in the game, which creates very little tension.
Christopher Reeve's Superman, is unnecessarily child friendly. None of the interesting adult themes are even broached. Corporate conglomerates are making Clark Kent's parents farm unprofitable: does he use his super powers to benefit his parents? Global warming is threatening all plants, but the only solution is to take out all the coal plants, does he do this? The US government uncovers his secret identify and try to force him to fight in the Vietman war: superman knows it will save US lives but thinks it is morally wrong. He loves Lois Lane, but if he tries to get intimate with her it will kill her, does he? When does he use his powers to enforce what he thinks is morally right? Does superman express his political opinion? What does he do if the world overwhelmingly wants him to leave the planet?
We're getting a (direct-to-DVD, animated) film version of Red Son next month, which I'm tentatively excited about. I'm on the fence about how much it'll actually bring to the story (comic to animation isn't necessarily a huge jump), but I'll be interested to see what they've done with it.
The Boys is a really good show IMO.
It looks it - haven't had a chance to watch much TV lately, but that and the Watchmen series are both on my list.
I'm not convinced Wonder Woman is anything near a good film, but I do otherwise agree with you.
btw it's TV not a film, but Pennyworth is the best Batman-to-screen adaptation I've seen so far. It doesn't actually have Batman in, which might help. Really good show though.
I personally loved Wonder Woman (obviously), mostly because WB showed they can finally make a superhero movie with some lighthearted moments.
I wouldn't go so far as to say there haven't been any decent live action Batman movies, but I would say there hasn't been a good live action representation of the character of Batman himself yet. The movie versions always seem to overplay a trope or two.
FTFY
I'm a fan of Wonder Woman, but I didn't like the live-action movie. They turned her into just another grim-dark angsty hero. And why shift her origin story from World War II to World War I? That was an entirely unnecessary change. It didn't add anything to the movie at all. It was just gratuitous.
Mind you, I don't like most superhero stuff made after 'Watchmen' changed everything into grim-dark misery. Superheroes used to be good and virtuous, and were inspirational. Now they're just ordinary action heroes with gimmicks and attitude.
I think the change to WWI was to avoid comparisons to Captain America: The First Avenger. Also, honestly, there are plenty of WWII movies.
Thematically, the "all sides are being manipulated by a cynical war God" works much better for WWI than WWII. The narrative around WWI is much more focused on the fact that it was an unnecessary and accidental war that the great powers stumbled into because they couldn't put their differences aside.
In WWII, one of the chief belligerents in the conflict is now regarded as a generic stand-in for the concept of an "evil regime." Their reputation is so bad that even modern Nazi sympathizers sometimes try to rationalize away how they're not really Nazis.
I thought the whole deal with Wonder Woman in that movie is that she's trying to stop everyone else from being so grimdark. She's the one who's not grimdark when the rest of the world is (since everyone's off fighting WWI). Themyscira is an idyllic paradise, Diana doesn't seem to understand why the rest of the world isn't one, and she's constantly idealistic when everyone else is not. Even the big lesson at the end seems to be going against the grain of grimdark, since she's championing hope and love over Ares' notion that humans are doomed to ruin themselves through violence and avarice.
I have four, off the top of my head.
Most modern films are bad. Badly made, technically. Weakly plotted, abysmally characterised, boring rehashes of the Hero's Journey (Christopher Vogler has a lot to answer for), assembled clumsily with little regard for showing not telling and assigning little to no intelligence to the audience. There are still good, even great, films around but they're increasingly few and far between.
Peter Jackson's career peaked with Braindead. The Tolkien films were dreadful.
Blade Runner is unwatchably bad. I have never been able to watch it all the way through. I adore the book and the mess the film makes of it is inexcusable. 2049, fwiw, was much better but the genius that is Roger Deakins goes a long way to make a fairly weak film better, if only as eye candy and 2049 was jaw droppingly beautifully shot.
In a broader sense, film just isn't as good as TV. At it's best, TV is the greatest visual storytelling format humans have so far come up with. Films are just too short. People either try to put too much into them, or not enough.
Um...
Er...
San Dimas high school football rules!
I get why one wouldn't like them (especially The Hobbit films), but dreadful? Really?
I didn't enjoy the books either. But the films managed to be even more boring.
I maybe shouldn't have watched the ultra-extended editions.
All of them. Although I've never seen one with a voiceover, that looks awful. The one I've seen most of was the late 90s director's cut but it was still bad enough to make me turn it off. Scott can be a great director but I think either he fundamentally doesn't understand Dick's book, or the people controlling the final releases don't. I'd probably err on the side of the latter. On that note, see also: Dune.
To be fair, the point is usually missed with K Dick adaptations. Minority Report utterly ballsed it up, if I remember rightly, Total Recall was pretty much spot on. Very hard to entirely stuff that one up though.
Not at all. The extra length of a TV series encourages excessive padding and extremely sloooow, ponderous story-telling that goes nowhere.
Back when shows were meant to be episodic it wasn't so bad as the episodes themselves were fairly self-contained and had their own sense of a beginning, middle, and end that sometimes built towards something bigger.
As we've moved to series meant for binging all that discipline about economy of story has been thrown out the window. Story elements that should have been left on the cutting room floor get shoehorned in leading to thoroughly unfocused and thematically inconsistent stories. They get a lot more space, but they end up cramming it with extra stuff that they can't fully develop.
Bad TV, sure. But I'd argue that at it's best, TV can be much better than the best film. The canonical example of good long-form visual storytelling is The Wire, but there's plenty of non-padded, well-paced TV out there. I recently watched The Young Pope which hugely benefited from being able to be slow, in a way impossible in traditional cinema. The climactic scene of that show would have been far weaker if it hadn't been able to be built to over 7 hours.
Put it this way - you can't fit a novel into a movie, the best a movie can manage is a short story. You can put a novel into a TV series. I don't like short stories, I do like novels. I like long novels. Hence I tend to prefer TV as a format. If you prefer short stories then obviously movies will be better for you.
Nerds by-and-large like terrible movies.
I do, too.
In fact, I often watch bad movies before I go to bed. Mostly because I'd feel bad for not giving good movies my undivided attention (I'm usually browsin'). But, I kinda like to watch them with a somewhat open mind and find things to appreciate with regards to film-making (usually not the story or acting...).
Embarrassing admission - I have a really squishy soft spot for movies that are gloriously, unselfconsciously bad, or so pretentious that they're endlessly MST3K-style mockable. Russ Meyer, Ed Wood, and Troma films, 1950's and 60's B-grade science fiction, Sharknado, and the rest of that ilk.
Some of it is the car-crash fascination of trying to figure out all the myriad ways things went wrong. Sometimes these trash-bin productions are hysterically funny (even without MST3K or herbal aids; more emphatically, you don't want to watch Meet the Feebles while stoned).
And then there's intentional camp and misunderstood satire, like John Waters, or even Tank Girl and Starship Troopers...
I'll never try too hard to dissect exactly why I enjoy it, but it's lighthearted fun. And I'd never have found a nuanced appreciation for Hong Kong martial arts and action movies like Drunken Master if I hadn't gone looking for crap.
I agree, and I count myself as a nerd who likes terrible movies as well.
What gets under my skin though, is when nerds like to pretend that their wish fulfilling action movie is a cinematic masterpiece, while looking down on all movies for women as crap. Have some self awareness.
It's not a movie, but I've seen this most recently on a Witcher subreddit. There was a huge, rambling discussion, de-constructing why women keep throwing themselves at Geralt in the books. Meanwhile the same subreddit commonly accuses the female show runner of the new TV show of self insertion and wish fulfilment because the female love interest got given a backstory. Zero self awareness, and zero acknowledgement that maybe your books about a big strong man going from town to town killing monsters and sleeping with women might just be male self insertion or wish fulfilment.
Here's my take on it:
I've been a fan of films that were panned, critically and/or publicly. I enjoyed the new Power Rangers film (even though even I acknowledge it was badly-made), Burnt, and I even liked Bad Ass (even though it was terrible cinematically).
I think it boils down to the fact that, even though these films are bad, they appeal to a particular desire, need, or a fantasy that nerds might have. I really liked the genuine teenage drama they had in Power Rangers, no matter how ill-cut or compressed it was plot-wise. I love chef films. I also really, really like "man does the right thing despite incredible odds" films.
Let's look at the movies in my MovieLens list with the biggest difference in personal vs average rating...
Movies I liked
Cloverfield: it's one of the best disaster movies ever made. It does so by staying grounded and focusing on the perspective of actual people during the events while staying suspenseful, action-packed and intriguing. The characters are flawed in their personalities and motivations in a way that few disaster movies even try to accomplish. Despite the found footage style, the movie manages to pull great shots.
It seems unpopular because there's a general dislike of disaster movies, and also shaky cam seems to turn people off, which I can understand, but that's pretty much the only thing you ever hear in discussions around the movie.
TRON Legacy: I'll concede that the scenario isn't groundbreaking, but it's still interesting and most of all moving. But how can you not love the visuals, the fight choreography (I swear some of Rinzler's moves are John-Wick-1-tier) and that fucking soundtrack, holy shit, it's one of Daft Punk's best albums ever made on its own right.
Ad Astra: I think people saw space footage and were expecting it to be the focus of the movie, ala The Martian. It manages to be extremely realistic in its portrayal of space travel and space exploration and put all of that in the background to keep our protagonist's story in focus. The scenario might be unrelatable to people who've never been depressed and that could have turned people off.
Movies I didn't
Donnie Darko: I don't understand this movie. I don't understand what it's trying to tell me. I don't understand the appeal. People that recommended the movie to me only seem to take joy in its portrayal of violence so that didn't help. If someone that likes it could explain what they see in it.
Every Quentin Tarantino movie after Reservoir Dogs: likewise, his movies seem to revel in portraying absurdly extreme violence and that's just not for me.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: I've rarely hated a movie that much while watching it, my eyes rolled too many times to count. The story is actively boring, main characters are archetypal, side characters come and go to serve a singular purpose without adding much. I just feel like that movie is one of those theme park rides designed to show the whole family a good time with a bunch of pretty settings and some action. I loathe the fact that they took a relatively strong woman and by the end turned her into a literal bride to be saved.
Both Lord of the Rings and the original Star Wars: they're boring as all hell don't @ me.
@VoidOutput them fightin' words.
Movie Theaters are going to show less movies and more "special events" with more studios going direct to internet, and ticket sales going down year over year.
But if you want something more traditionally controversial, the Matrix Trilogy as a whole isn't nearly as much as a garbage fire as popular opinion would lead you to believe, and are necessary context to understand the original Matrix in that the conflict between Humans and Machines is just another way to occupy the humans. The Wachowski's came up with the corrupted Red Pill metaphor before the Red Pill became a corrupted metaphor, and that's super impressive.
And to close this sandwich out, Demolition Man is still the most accurate prediction of the future to take place in a movie. Change my mind.
Given that they both came out and transitioned since, it makes a lot of sense. The red pill represents transitioning from one gender to another and escape the "prison" of biological essentialism. But then you start to wonder, maybe the entire idea of gender was a prison to begin with? DUN DUN DUUUUN!
Don't forget about the character of Switch, who was male in one world and female in the other.
In the parlance of the medium, "woah." That's a really interesting take, whether or not it was the intended metaphor. I groked the trans metaphor after that was tossed around, but never heard that connection made before today.
I'm pretty damn cool with that, if the trend of theaters serving alcohol continues. I think it'd be damn fun to watch, say, a UFC event at a theater eating popcorn and sipping booze with a buncha rowdy fans. Party on!
Might sound stupid...but what exactly was the metaphor? I thought it was just a classic fork-in-the-road scenario for the main character.
I remember watching that movie as a kid, approaching 1996 thinking "oh shit...." (well, we could see the Rodney King riots fires from our apartment window)
The idea of the Red Pill was corrupted by Pick Up Artists in that women totes rule the world and men need to band together to get the sex. The rebellion against the machines is canonically a tool used by the machines to pacify the humans into thinking they won just because Zion is a place they can go to be safe and free. In reality, it's just an analog Matrix to keep the humans in that broke out of the digital one. Same with the IRL Red Pill in that there are problems that exist in society with masculine expectations and the commodification of self, but playing into that particular rebellion is just a tool of the oppressors, see Gamergate and the Alt-Right. Which is why revisiting the Matrix in a post 2010s world could be incredible, to see how to do good when nothing is true and everybody has got a world to save from one another.
Them's fightin' words
All is forgiven my son
Ooof, ouch... yours actually stings. Pan's Labrynth is one of my favorite films of all time, so is the original Blade Runner, and original RoboCop. :(
Have a vote anyways though, since you did as the OP asked. :P
Oof, I choose to take offense to that.
Are there some movies in his filmography that you don't consider to be that way?
I don't think you'd hold that opinion if you've seen Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.
There is nothing cold about that movie - it seethes with bitter comedic fury at its own need to have been made.
So... I almost love Zack Snyder's adaptation of Watchmen, particularly the Ultimate Director's Cut including the realization and intercutting of The Black Freighter. That's even outside the pale of the most forgiving "unpopular opinion" review I've seen.
It's hard to forgive the abominable casting, where the actors seem to have been chosen exclusively for their resemblance to the comic characters, without reference to whether they could act or not. The sole exception was Jackie Earle Haley, as Rorschach.
But otherwise, the fidelity to both the graphic presentation of the comics and Alan Moore's underlying ideology about heroes is very good, given the need for commercial success. If Every Frame A Picture took a closer look, it would be evident just how vividly Snyder's sets realized individual comic panels and how the action was staged within them.
Edit: The original Watchmen comics were both good and important, as discussed above. I'm not sure Zach Snyder's iteration of it was either, but it entertained me enough.
I actually like motion smoothing, despite the fact that it's almost universally reviled in the film community. I interpolate most things I watch up to 144hz using SVP, which is almost certainly better than the tech built into modern day televisions with underpowered mobile CPUs. For me, it makes everything (animated or live action), look smoother, more immersive, and a better experience in general.
@Weldawadyathink mentioned that low frame rate content is outdated, and that we should move past 24fps, and I wholeheartedly agree. I think people are just too used to 24fps, and if they watched higher frame content more regularly, they'd get over the 'soap opera effect.'
Keanu Reeves last great movie was twenty years ago.
Dear Zachary is emotional porn at its absolute worst. I'm pretty easy to get emotional when watching TV/movies but this provoked me so much that I had to turn it off halfway through. It did nothing for me and I am to this day baffled that so many people think it's the most heartbreaking and draining doc ever. How can they expect to get invested in a doc where the main characters just cry from the beginning with no context whatsoever. It pisses me off to no end that nobody seems to "feel" the same way but there you go.
The Host is good, but not amazing. I actually have a hard time explaining why because on paper everything is there for it to be great, but something about it doesn't click for me.
I loved Henry Cavill as Superman and Ben Affleck as a darker, more cynical interpretation of both Bruce Wayne and Batman. Both characters had some goofy writing at times, but I love the images they embody and would watch a better Batman v. Superman with those actors in those roles in a heartbeat.
That's a good way to put it.
Negative on that assessment. I watched one of the very few iconic characters of mine go into retirement in Endgame. Millions of fans saw their favorite character sacrifice themselves for a worthy cause, after struggling with ego and pride for years. What kinda climax for "casuals" is that?
The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars movie since Empire Strikes Back. I also thought The Force Awakens was a disappointment.
This isn't that unpopular, I kind of agree with you.
Don't go around saying this on Reddit. To them, The Last Jedi is the worst thing since the Holocaust.
My unpopular opinions are Die Hard is overrated and so is Hot Fuzz.
I'm not a fan of Star Wars series, but I think that's just me and my individual tastes rather than anything I can point to and say "that doesn't seem right".
The avengers films are utter shit