Okay, I have a soft spot for Legally Blonde thanks to a civics teacher who said it did a better job in talking law than many procedural law movies. Now I wanna go watch it again, thanks for reminding me it’s out there!

I think frankly the thing that Barbie did that’s worldbreaking in the territory of these movies was not in the movie itself which is fascinating to me. I don’t have cable so dunno advertising there, but Oppenheimer coming out at the same time, no ads, just a few movie previews, the biggest ads were all the interviews with the cast. Barbie… could not get away from it, the ads were everywhere. So my thoughts were “okay, Mattel is definitely backing this.” Then I started hearing people talk about it and it was honestly surprising that Mattel was backing as well as it did, but okay, then when watching the movie that was the part that ended up shocking me.

I’m so used to executive meddling in movies, studios being cautious and companies being overprotective of their IPs that has ruined so many movies, that here was Mattel allowing themselves to be portrayed as definitely the bad guys, still their logo plastered all over VERY up front. I realize they got good advertising with the movie but I’m trying to remember another movie that the parent company backed while being made fun of this strong and the only one I can think of is Deadpool 3 and honestly that was easy because trying to tone it back would have lost fans, this had all the opportunity to not go over well.

Y’know… maybe I’m losing some of the magic in my older age but I wonder, since the internet became ubiquitous we almost got rid of secret clubs to gathering as many people as possible on a stage.

Now I know the Masonic Lodge is the number one we think of, with their secret rituals and the like. But I was in another in scouts, Order of the Arrow, that you had to be voted in by your troop, had their secret rituals, etc. Why secret rituals? Because being in a secret club is fun! Knowing things that others don’t is fun! Are the rituals little small things that once people learn them are “meh?” Sure! But it’s fun during that time.

Now since I don’t have kids can’t speak to young kids today, but lord only knows before that how many “Secret clubs” I was in throughout my life growing up in school. Now by secret club I mean, group of us would get together, have a club, secret handshake that would be forgotten by the next week, fall apart then a new one form in like a month when “Do you know what would be awesome? If we had a secret club! One with a clubhouse! Yea!”

The Masonic Lodge, Fraternal Order of the Eagles, and all these others were basically clubs where everyone hung out and bullshitted, then of course when they’re gathered they get pissed off about some social thing or another and then it becomes a movement. Shriners were apparently a drinking club that was “We should help kids!” and made a full non-profit hospital system in the long run… the main reason on helping kids, because if a bunch of chucklefucks are gonna get around and drink they figured they should do something.

But I’ve heard the Masonic Lodge is dying from lack of memberships going in, no one really cares on a lot of the secret societies, and hell I don’t think the trope of kids having their “secret clubs” has been a thing in the last decade in media. I wonder if this is something we’re losing as a culture. It’ll never quite go away, as long as there’s a group of people that wants to go “ours” it’ll happen, but it’s an interesting thing to see.

Look, I’m kind of an outsider on this conversation because until we get a DaVinci for mechanical work, I’m never going to be WFH, but there’s something interesting I’ve noted with all my programmer friends.

The industrial world, that’s where unions are, they’re getting pulled out but that’s the places unions live. The people working in stores are starting to push hard on unions. My industry, biomed, hasn’t really gotten unions off the ground, but it’s rumbling. We’re a small industry that’s so short on people it’s just easier to move jobs than start a union, but we’re a mix of tech and industrial backgrounds. But the programming tech backgrounds, at least here in the midwest, is apparently so anti-union I don’t know how it’d get off the ground from what I’m hearing from my friends. Their coworkers who are mad about RTO will immediately turn around and say the corporate lines about unions. I’m honestly kinda baffled and hope your industry gets it figured out.

In movies, they live in the same era, but in genres the Scifi genre was ironically so behind the times that they were still learning back then.

Scifi and Fantasy as genres were not, and hell pretty much not until the 2000s accepted as proper forms of art back then. I was talking about with my dad how there was some movie that came out and I just couldn’t be faffed to see it and he remarked I’ve gotten that way about it, and I expressed back when I was a kid growing up in the 90s, we got one, maybe two big budget scifi or fantasy movies, and the rest was handfuls of low end drech. The rest was standard comedy, drama, etc in “modern” or past eras and that’s where all the big names of Hollywood were at. For him it was even worse, if you were a scifi nerd you basically got whatever you could get.

Star Trek came out and told the world that Scifi could be successful, Star Wars showed up and told the world that it could be successful without everything being gleaming and polished and sterile like Star Trek. Hell I was about to bring up the absolutely wooden example of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as a perfect example of before, and then a quick check, nope that was made two years AFTER Star Wars.

It’s probably why we have as many actually A-List scifi movies, and the hose of not so good ones, coming out now though, a lot of people growing up on these shoulders just wishing for more are now behind the cameras and the actors who grew up on these are willing to do them instead of “No, that’s for the C-List actors.”

So as an anime fan I’ll give a hint on terminology if you want to take an approach at it. What you’re talking about is the genre Shonen which is targeted for boys in school, roughly translates even to “young boy.” Because of that it’s the ones that you have a group that’s relatively easy to cater to… hence drag on for ever and ever like US comic books. There are a LOT of genres in anime like there are in western tv and it’ll still be a YMMV because completely different culture, but because of the medium there are still some small studios that are willing to do some stories that are difficult to get in western media because it’s too risky for corporations (granted that’s been less the case with streaming coming out)

The number one that I’m sure anyone would recommend if you want to make an attempt is Cowboy Bebop because it’s a good blend of western sensibility, it’s a noir in being a group of down on their luck bounty hunters in space, set to a jazz, blues and rock soundtrack and has a good English dub from an era back when that was rare. And importantly, the story ends.

Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.

Have you been around the car culture?

I’ll disagree having come in as a complete outsider to the demographic for that movie who only watched it because of the love it had. I was pretty damn impressed with the movie as an overall. The story, yea, you’re not wrong, it’s not absolutely worldbreaking of a message. But it’s one of those movies the work put in to it impressed me, in a time where CGI allows for cookie cutter movies to be made rapidly with green screens knowing the work behind it was fucking impressive to me. Also knowing how much they worked on the history of the IP, and getting the company to try to make a movie that called out its own product as problematic while celebrating it in an era where everyone is too timid and wants to make every movie palatable for everyone, or “family friendly” was ballsy as fuck and I’ll respect it.

But hey, I’m a cinema nerd who loves the weird lol, I respect your thoughts and you’re right, the baseline message didn’t say anything new to me.

I grew up small town America, older Millinial, I’m the demographic for that movie.

I couldn’t finish the movie.

Honestly at this point I think he’s saying whatever he can to continue funding his submarine hobby.

See, I’m baffled by this one, now I’ve only seen the first movie so maybe there’s something in the second I don’t know about in world building. But the first, the world building was to me… meh? Okay, the alien planet was interesting, they have a culture, they seemed to do a fine job with that, cool. But the story makes humanity so blitheringly stupid that I cannot comprehend the worldbuilding beyond “We need some Captain Planet level villains.” They’re after unobtanium, a mineral that has properties for anti-gravity and wrecking havok on radar. Soooooo… We’re going to work hard on inserting someone to convince the locals to dig up under the religious tree for the major vein of it instead of the MULTIPLE floating mountains all over the place.

Which then when the military decides to do its thing, this spacefaring species uses glorified helicopters that fly lower and slower than modern military aircraft, again through the mountains of unobtainium in a low altitude approach for a strike operation that only makes sense if the enemy has radar… which the aliens definitely did not. I seriously might have missed something but I couldn’t get past humanity in it was just carrying the idiot ball throughout the movie.

Also interesting when someone’s reasons for hating something are someone’s reason for loving it. Like a review says “It’s full of sad gay shit” and one chunk of people are going to boo and the other are going to perk right up.

I love this! I joked on a music album with a group is that we all liked it but not a single one of us could agree on a favorite song, I was like “That’s as successful as you can ask for for a band.” because you learn a lot about everyone with that. I don’t enjoy the “it sucks” commentary because it’s nothing to work with to understand where people are coming from, at least “Boring” helps get an idea from someone.

But you expressed 100% why I love this thread.

So dunno if it will help, I’m a fan of it so YMMV, but Fury Road is one of the few movies that writing credit went to a storyboard artist. That’s why it’s actually so quiet on dialogue is they wrote it out with visual clues to avoid such so you’re forced to pick up the visual interactions on the characters. Basically it’s a comic in motion.

Now if you see t his and go “nah”, understandable! It’s why I like that movie but I went in knowing they were doing something different so I ended up loving it.

THANK YOU! I’ve constantly called it “Fern Gully as reinacted by Starship Troopers and the Dragonriders of Pern”

Huh… weirdly this makes me want to go watch this movie.

Somehow you well expressed Barnum’s legacy in a manner that makes the movie seem like an accidental critique on him and that’s funny.

The books, too, drag on like Tolkien was being paid by the individual word. Thankfully with books I can set the pace at which things go.

The only way I ever got through ANY of Tolkien’s books was being read to by Andy Serkis while I was working at my job. It’s worse when it’s Tolkien somehow goes out of his way to write about the absolute most boring parts in excruciating detail, sets up all the drama, things are getting tense, oh shit, shits gonna go down “And that’s when the Battle of the Five Armies happened. Afterward…” OH COME ON! Hell I wondered if I just couldn’t read on a high enough level then devoured Herbert with Dune so easily it’s, no… no I can’t stand Tolkien’s writing.

And I will die on the hill against anyone who thinks Tom Bombadil needed to be in the movies. That was a shit part in the book that took away any character agency from the main characters for an absolutely pointless diversion.

It’s funny, I’m another who knows nothing about Marvel except what the movies had, and I loved the Thor movies the most because of the lore building LOL. But then I’ve said I get tired of later Captain American movies because "Things are too realistic and down to Earth, if there’s superheroes I want things to get WEIRD.

But I want to say, as much as I love the other two Thor movies, I agree with you, Ragnarok is the best one. It did a fantastic job of building quite a lot of lore while being absolutely hilariously entertaining. But if you like Guardians of the Galaxy, I suggest you look up the TV show Farscape. When GotG was advertised I told my friends “I’ve always wanted to see Farscape on the big screen” so you might like it.

I mean… what did you expect? You came to a thread titled “What successful or popular movie that many loved you just HATE?” It’s going to be full of unpopular opinions that people are going to disagree with. Coming in and hoping to agree with everything is being that guy on a Lemmy thread.

Its called cocaine and its how santa and his elves get shit done

I am stealing this. I legit hurt from laughing at this line.

So, first preview for Alien Romulus happened and I was super excited. Riiiiiiight until I realized it was an Alien movie. I want a damn scifi movie set in the universe to explore the rest of where humanity is at. But Alien movies are so focused on the xenomorph and horror aspects that they create amazing set dressing then just forget about it. Like if they came out with a movie “Weyland-Yutani” and there was a promise there was no Xenomorph, just an exploration of humanities dystopia there, I’d be right there for that movie.

Saw.

It is on the very tiny list of movies that I am actively angry I watched because I’m never getting that time back. It is one of the single worst movies on “Tell don’t show” that I felt like I was being actively gaslit by the writers because what they were telling was opposite of what they were showing.

“Jigsaw tricks people into killing his victims” says the cops, and says all the people watching the movie. NO. He kills people and gives them a potential for a way out. Setting up a maze with cutting wire and a door sealing off if you don’t make it in time isn’t “tricking someone” it’s killing them with extra steps. It’s like blaming fucking landmine victims “Well if they didn’t step there they’d be okay”. Legit the logic that movie gives I find my blood pressure rising just going into it again.

And the ending. I guess spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie, I’m not gonna bother to figure out the formatting for it so here’s your warning to stop reading. The surprise twist was why my friends made me watch this movie, the logic above was explained and how clever Jigsaw was they said I’d like it. I’m not a horror guy but I love Scream because holy fuck it was clever and well done. Saw, the victims are looking for where Jigsaw is watching them and I just said “He’s the dead guy in the middle of the room.” and questioned why would I come to that so early in the movie my reasoning was simple. It was a dumb movie that was up its own ass so much to say that it was clever that was the obvious “clever” haha we got you option it could be. Anything else would have actually been clever.

I compare Scream and Saw so much. Scream is a very clever movie masquerading as a dumb movie that deconstructs a genre and pulls of a fantastic twist that if you didn’t see it coming will shock you and when you go back there’s all sorts of clues. Hell, part of the twist is realizing they put thought into the killer instead of just “slasher villain #85” that the genre had done for so long, but if you know what’s happening the movie is winking with you with such amazingly dumb and clever things like “He’s behind you Jamie”. Saw is a dumb movie that masquerades as smart, it wants to be clever and philosophize at you and wants to pull off a twist that is unearned because there’s no clues for the twist, so unless you watch a lot of movies and realize this one is up its own ass, of course you’re going to be surprised. It’s like a guy who built a tesla coil and (think he) knows how it works and no one else does so he shows up in a cheap top hat and a wand and expects everyone to applaud like he’s David Copperfield. Sure, everyone loves tesla coils, but that reaction is unearned.

From what I understand from others who’ve seen the rest, even what little cleverness goes away on the character and it just becomes a show to watch more elaborate ways to see people get hurt. It’s the only way I can comprehend that the series is loved by as many as it is. I work in healthcare, I can see plenty of that on the day to day basis.