Movies

David A. said:
Disney did the same thing to Star Wars, fwiw. The fact that The Last Jedi exists is a fucking miracle. A personal blockbuster? Subverting expectations? Coming to grips with the past, embracing a future that isn't beholden to the Skywalker line!

And then you've got S2E8 of The Mandalorian... smdh
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Sometimes I feel completely gaslit by the narrative that Favreau/Filloni are exactly what Star Wars needs.
David A. said:
Wakanda is a fascinating setting, Black Panther is the Marvel movie that is most adept at handling sociological questions that bear legitimate weight in our time and place. A crazy, kinetic Afrofuturist vision with love and family and betrayal. A villain who channels pure anger at the nature of colonial rule. It questions Wakanda's role (or lack of it) on the global stage. And it's fun.

Winter Soldier, great as it is, is too scared to really question the military industrial complex and the villains are just splinter cells within the authorities we've come to trust.
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Black Panther deserves a lot of credit for 1) having a villain with a clear perspective and motivation for his actions 2) having the protagonist grow as a result of being challenged by the villain.
 
Civil War was basically Avengers Light: We're All Mad At Eachother.

Guardians felt like a separate sci-fi entity entirely, which helped it feel fresher than the others.

Winter Soldier was good. I think the first Iron Man holds up pretty well too.

Infinity War and Endgame are where the plots actually felt like they had real stakes, instead of just superheroes bobbin' around for 2+ hours.

I did rewatch Black Panther after thinking it was a bit of a slog the first time around (likely due to MCU fatigue) and enjoyed it more the second time around.

Haven't seen any of the Ant-mans or new Spider-mans or Dr. Strange so can't comment there.
 
David A. said:
Disney did the same thing to Star Wars, fwiw. The fact that The Last Jedi exists is a fucking miracle. A personal blockbuster? Subverting expectations? Coming to grips with the past, embracing a future that isn't beholden to the Skywalker line!

And then you've got S2E8 of The Mandalorian... smdh
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I don't think TLJ is the masterpiece a lot of folks make it out to be, but it's the only Star Wars thing that did anything even remotely intriguing in 40 years. Then they turned around and spent 275 million just to dump on it. Kind of hilarious. Never even saw episode 9.
 
I enjoyed WandaVision but I also didn't fool myself into thinking it was ever anything other than glorified promotion for Doctor Strange 2 like some people did. I've grown up alongside the MCU (I was 9 when Iron Man came out, for perspective), so it's admittedly difficult for me to look at it completely cynically as I have a ton of deep rooted nostalgia for the MCU. But I also take them for what they are most of the time, Marvel movies are engineered to please a mass audience and they do what they do exceedingly well imo. The run from Iron Man to Endgame makes for an engaging franchise that I will always have some form of appreciation for. I will admit, though, I'm hesitant of everything post-Endgame right now. Endgame felt like a fitting conclusion to the last decade's worth of movies and it feels very unnecessary to stick around for anything after it.
 
ayayrawn said:
I don't think TLJ is the masterpiece a lot of folks make it out to be, but it's the only Star Wars thing that did anything even remotely intriguing in 40 years. Then they turned around and spent 275 million just to dump on it. Kind of hilarious. Never even saw episode 9.
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I agree. The Force Awakens was nice because it felt like a return to form, then TLJ felt like something new and exciting. Then The Rise of Skywalker bored me out of my gourd. Not even sure if I finished it.

If anything, the prequels were good for the occasional memorable WTF moment and I find them somewhat rewatchable, maybe just due to nostalgia.
 
I plan on watching the Zach Snyder DC trilogy today. I haven't seen any of them and only watched some of Wonder Woman while on a plane. I didn't have any audio....and the screen was a few seats in front, so I didn't really watch it closely.
 
ayayrawn said:
I don't think TLJ is the masterpiece a lot of folks make it out to be, but it's the only Star Wars thing that did anything even remotely intriguing in 40 years. Then they turned around and spent 275 million just to dump on it. Kind of hilarious. Never even saw episode 9.
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The Last Jedi is a pretty great movie that could have been an amazing one with some editing/rewrites. I think where I stand on it is that it raises some great ideas for a Star Wars movie and that the movie that followed it could have been one of the best SW movies if it had followed through on the potential that came with those ideas. Instead, it did the exact opposite and as a result The Rise of Skywalker is pretty much the most pointless movie that could ever exist. It sucks a lot, mostly because it didn't have to.
 
CaptainFog once gave me shit for loving TFA. I rewatched it last night and he was so right. J.J. Abrams is a great journeyman director but I don't know how these Spielberg comparisons began save for the fact that he modernized the E.T./Close Encounters aesthetic and helped pave the way for millennial nerd culture co-opting '80's nerd culture.

He's not very creative.

Edit: I made a boo-boo
 
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David A. said:
CaptainFog once gave me shit for loving TLJ. I rewatched it last night and he was so right. J.J. Abrams is a great journeyman director but I don't know how these Spielberg comparisons began save for the fact that he modernized the E.T./Close Encounters aesthetic and helped pave the way for millennial nerd culture co-opting '80's nerd culture.

He's not very creative.
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TLJ wasn’t JJ. Or do you mean that JJ should have been able to do more with the final movie? Otherwise why did he give you shit for loving it?
 
David A. said:
CaptainFog once gave me shit for loving TLJ. I rewatched it last night and he was so right. J.J. Abrams is a great journeyman director but I don't know how these Spielberg comparisons began save for the fact that he modernized the E.T./Close Encounters aesthetic and helped pave the way for millennial nerd culture co-opting '80's nerd culture.

He's not very creative.
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I assume you mean TFA, in which case, same. I rewatched it leading up to TRoS, and thought "huh, this kinda blows." I feel like 60% of my original enjoyment of it was hype.
 
ayayrawn said:
I assume you mean TFA, in which case, same. I rewatched it leading up to TRoS, and thought "huh, this kinda blows." I feel like 60% of my original enjoyment of it was hype.
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I'd liken it to when your favorite band, with an extensive catalog of 20+ albums, puts out a new album that sounds almost exactly like their debut. You're into it because you loved their debut, but after a while it becomes a chore to listen to because, after all, if you wanted to listen to something like their debut, you'd probably just go listen to their debut.
 
Melt Face Molly Drop said:
I'd liken it to when your favorite band, with an extensive catalog of 20+ albums, puts out a new album that sounds almost exactly like their debut. You're into it because you loved their debut, but after a while it becomes a chore to listen to because, after all, if you wanted to listen to something like their debut, you'd probably just go listen to their debut.
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Poor Weezer fans.
 
I don't know what to say about the Star Wars movies.

I was born in 1977, my parents say they took me to a drive-in to see Star Wars that summer and to Empire when I was 3. I remember seeing Return in a theater...I was 6.

I had a lot of the Kenner action figures - even the Death Star play set.

The prequels bored me. Trade disputes??? Really exciting stuff.


I liked the new sequels. I thought Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi was the best of the 3...but I enjoyed the other 2 as well.


I don't hold the Star Wars films in such high regard as some people tend to, and I love them - but they are popcorn summer flicks.

I also liked the other movies, too. Solo was better than I thought it was going to be, and Rogue One was better than TFA.
 
Melt Face Molly Drop said:
Civil War was basically Avengers Light: We're All Mad At Eachother.

Guardians felt like a separate sci-fi entity entirely, which helped it feel fresher than the others.

Winter Soldier was good. I think the first Iron Man holds up pretty well too.

Infinity War and Endgame are where the plots actually felt like they had real stakes, instead of just superheroes bobbin' around for 2+ hours.

I did rewatch Black Panther after thinking it was a bit of a slog the first time around (likely due to MCU fatigue) and enjoyed it more the second time around.

Haven't seen any of the Ant-mans or new Spider-mans or Dr. Strange so can't comment there.
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It's funny. My wife and I have been watching all the Marvel films at home the last few weeks because she never really had much interest in them until now. We're watching Black Panther tonight, which we did see in theaters, but didn't really like it much at the time.

I will say that the Ant Man and new Spiderman films are some of my favorite in the MCU but only because I feel like they're more comedic than some of the other films. They've all been pretty decent though. We watched Ragnarok a couple of nights ago.
 
Melt Face Molly Drop said:
Was thinking about having a dabble tonight. Reviews have been promising. 4 hours is intense though. Almost wish they would've broke it into episodes not unlike they did for The Hateful Eight.
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Yeah, 4 hrs is a big undertaking. I tried to start it this morning, but my signal sucked. They have marker points on the runtime meter, so I think they have it set for good break points.
 
LeeVing said:
I don't know what to say about the Star Wars movies.

I was born in 1977, my parents say they took me to a drive-in to see Star Wars that summer and to Empire when I was 3. I remember seeing Return in a theater...I was 6.

I had a lot of the Kenner action figures - even the Death Star play set.

The prequels bored me. Trade disputes??? Really exciting stuff.


I liked the new sequels. I thought Rian Johnson's The Last Jedi was the best of the 3...but I enjoyed the other 2 as well.


I don't hold the Star Wars films in such high regard as some people tend to, and I love them - but they are popcorn summer flicks.

I also liked the other movies, too. Solo was better than I thought it was going to be, and Rogue One was better than TFA.
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I agree with all of this.
 
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