Films The Official bit-tech Movie Thread - What have you seen lately?

Look at us being all civil and constructively disagreeing! We really are the dad forum now, this would never have happened in the '10s.

The first point is true, on reflection. Some people do just see an increasing ratio of brown faces in their cities and go "bah!" and retreat indoors, and then see the same increase on their TV and go "curses!" and go to IMDb and write long screeds about why wokeness is intrusive on their comfort. Others harbor no racist values and are progressively minded but are sensitive to details of continuity, realism, historical accuracy and so on, and get upset because the changing ratio is breaking the immersion of the storytelling for them. Others are roughly apolitical and laissez-faire in their ideals but find the intrusion of any political agenda into their entertainment unpleasant.

So I disagree with the second part, I don't think your default assumption should be that anyone complaining about wokeness is a bigot. There are several reasons to object to it; only one of those is that you're a bigot.

Personally I tread lightly around the subject because - full disclosure - I was racist, homophobic and sexist when I was young (the unholy trinity!) and I wonder how much of it is still kicking around in my subconscious. You think you've matured and left a bad idea behind for greener pastures, but then you notice a new idea you like resembles the old ideas you've rejected, and you begin to question the underlying architecture of your thought processes.

So I'm on the fence on the "woke" debate, because I do cringe at it when I notice it in films and TV, but I also warily scrutinise my unconscious motives for cringing.

Needless to say, I'm not on board with any worldview that reduces all people to a binary of pro-representation/dumb bigot, though. I simply don't fit into that binary. See what I did there

edit -

Side note but I think sentiments like this will be viewed by future generations as one of the stranger side-effects of the culture wars: people on the side of tolerance and love, slapping themselves for being a particular combination of sex, ethnicity and orientation, as if the past harms visited upon others by intersecting prejudices could be healed by one group internalising them against themselves.

It's also a potent argument against wokeness-done-badly in film and TV - to the question, what harm could it possibly do? Well, if they have any sensitivity and compassion about them, straight white men end up hating their own identity. That's an odious result, even if it helps everyone else. The point of progressivism is to help everyone. I'll come down off the fence when it's obvious to me that wokeness helps everyone and harms no-one, but for now, one of the nicest blokes on the forum is down on the validity of his own voice because of his skin colour and gender, so we're not there yet.

Love thyself, man.

 

EDIT: Off-topic bit-tech tangents are alive and well!

I know, right? I don't think anyone's trolled anyone else in a while. It's weird, and it makes me slightly uncomfortable!

My point is more that, if you're (and I don't mean you specifically personally here) criticising something as being "too woke" without any other context or rationale then I have literally no idea what that means. What is it exactly that you're objecting to?

Like I said, the best way to sum up "woke", given all the different meanings that people assign to it, seems to just be "not being a d!ck to other people". If that's really what bothers you, the fact that people want a fairer and kinder society, then chances are that you really do fall into the category of "bigot". And you know what, most people don't fall into that category, because when they do use the word "woke" they mean something completely different to someone else.

Like some of the examples that @Pete J mentioned (sorry to pick on you ):

I've already mentioned the first one before, and this is a slight tangent, but... I suspect that, like many others, I fall squarely into a category of people who would probably never like a reboot/adaptation/etc of a cherished and well-enjoyed TV series, film, book, etc. I had the same reaction with Altered Carbon - try as I might, I cannot enjoy the TV series for what it is because I know the books so well; no matter why they made the changes they made, I would likely never have liked it because I like the books so much. See also The Rings of Power - I'm reticent to watch this because despite how good it might be, it will very likely fall into the same category. I've read The Silmarillion quite a lot, as well as The Children of Hurin and a bunch of other books, and I'm one of those weirdos who actually reads the LotR appendices. I don't give a flying f' that they've cast a black person as an elf, or a black woman as a dwarf, or whatever. But it's going to bother the crap out of me when they change established stories, change characters and events they take part in, etc.

And on the second point about Horizon: Zero Dawn, you could level the same criticism at any game with a strong female protagonist. Like Tomb Raider (which I haven't played btw) - Lara makes a huge deal about having to kill someone for the first time and then promptly spends the rest of the game gleefully murdering people in a variety of imaginitavely brutal ways. To be honest, you could probably make the same criticism of many games, regardless of what the protagonist is or isn't packing in their underwear: dramatically overpowered protagonists pitted against male (and often white male) antagonists who are usually incompetent in some way or evil just for the sake of it.

FWIW, I thought that H:ZD was a masterclass in portraying female protagonists. Aloy isn't just there as dumb eye candy for once, she isn't hyper-sexualised, she doesn't have supermodel-perfect looks, she isn't just a one-dimensional character with a half-arsed backstory & motivation; for once it's a character that people can actually relate to. Even if... you know... you can't necessarily relate to the whole "killing robot dinosaurs" part...

I think I badly explained myself, and I suspect that I'll continue to do so . I think what I was trying to say was that when it comes to representation in media I'm not necessarily the one that we need to listen to. Sure I have an opinion, but in some cases I do think that my opinion should carry less weight than others.

I think the best demonstration of this was in this very thread many many pages ago:

KayinBlack makes the point much better than I do, and that's exactly what I think I'm trying to get at. And like I said, you can argue the artistic merit one way or another until you're blue in the face. But as to whether or not it's appropriate or imbalanced? Don't ask me, ask the people who have been marginalised; ask the people who are under-represented; ask the people whose very existence is being denied. It doesn't mean that everyone else needs to shut up and isn't allowed a say in the matter, but if the point is to have a fairer and kinder society then people need to have their voices heard, they need to see themselves being represented, they need to feel like they belong.

 

It's slippery and I have entire pages of essay notes on this exact subject (I literally am drafting an essay on the conundrum of representation in fictional media, which likely nobody will ever see). But one thing I will say is that we should argue about it 'til we're blue in the face. The artistic merit of particular directorial, casting and production choices is central to film criticism.

To bite into one of the essential points in the subject without doing it full justice (because it'd take days), racial casting does matter a lot in certain stories. (It matters not a jot in others.) LotR is a particularly thorny example because, unlike much modern fiction, it is explicitly racial storytelling - every group of people is ethnically homogenous, exaggeratedly distinct (to the point of being biologically incompatible and having drastically different temperaments, motives and behaviours) and geographically separate.

The relevance and even palatability of such a setting is doomed to diminish over time, as our societies become more intermixed and varied. Beyond a certain point, it will be unrelatable and discomforting to the audience: we want fiction that tells our stories in analogue, that reflects our experiences on some level. The racially segregated world of LotR, with its island pockets of mutually confused alien peoples trying to jostle their often-incompatible interests and needs together, is of historical significance more than contemporary.

But if you want to pick up that setting and keep working in it, you're consigned to either trashing the source material's essence, or respecting its baked-in boundaries and concepts and making an out-of-touch product that many people find awkward. If you trash the source material and do colour-blind casting, you create a new product wearing the old product's clothing. Is this, then, a bad choice? That is the real contention there.

LotR is a TV franchise now, though, not a film franchise, so sadly this really is a tangent. Which is a shame because I could talk about it all day.

 

Predator 2 9/10

I've watched this movie so many times and, honestly, it just gets better with every viewing. It's got to be at least twenty-five years since I first watched it, and as a young lad I was captivated by the atmosphere, completely immersed in the almost fantasy-like depiction of LA. I've never lost that sense of wonder, no matter how many times I watch it.

Also, by way of trivia, the final cut of the movie was actually the very first working cut by director Stephen Hopkins, who was given very little time to edit the footage prior to its release in 1990 (it was originally scheduled for 1991).

 

Me and the boy watched it recently - I was sure Gury Busey had a bigger part... and I'd forgotten about the big-nose jab at Danny Glover which I racistly thought was a tad racist.

We then watched both the AVP movies. Jesus H Corbett, how terrible were they!? I like the idea of a training ground in the first one but the second one was just so awful? And what was with the Alien samples!? It seems they had a license to use one "alien death scream" from Aliens and then used the same one without any changes to the pitch or length at ANY point during the film on at least 15 occasions. It was like the Wilhelm Scream but less funny and even more obvious. I'm guessing they ran out of time or budget to re-dub those parts and just left the place-holder!

 

The second AvP film is a contender for worst film ever made. At least the first one was vaguely entertaining.

 

I haven't seen it, but AvP 1 was so bad I lost sleep being angry about it, so I probably shouldn't watch 2. That ****ing slow-motion bullet time shot of the face hugger jumping, christ, how can you jump the shark that badly...

 

Don't watch 2. Seriously, don't. I want my time back from it. If the first made you angry enough to lose sleep over it, the second will make you go on a murderous rampage on the off chance you manage to injure someone who had even the smallest connection with making the film happen.

 

Thor: Love & Thunder



Stop, he's already dead! / 10

My wife said afterwards, after a long silence, ".........they have to stop eventually, right? I mean..."

This film has pretty visuals and some nice visual design and artistry. That's the only good thing I can say about it. The things that look nice are directly plagiarised from Destiny 2, though, so foul ball there.

The script is bad, the actors are utterly wasted being forced to ham it up as dumb Flanderized versions of their former characters, the plot is Marvel Plot #3, Variation B, rolled fresh out of cold storage and microwaved for 30 seconds on high.

But the real deal breaker is the amount of pandering. Not even the dreaded wokeness kind of pandering, although there is a bit of that (thanks for letting us know in a 5 second throwaway line that Valkyrie is gay, homophobia is over, you defeated it you noble scriptwriters, you). No, it's mostly the kind of cynical, shallow executive calculated pandering that nobody likes, even and especially when it's aimed at them. Endless quips and lazy forced jokes. Children getting to do cool action scenes with zero peril. Tonnes of awkward pop culture references and memes. It's basically "Hello, fellow kids!", the movie.

 

Prey.
Dear god, stick a fork in it, it's done / 10

If you've never seen the original predator movie and / or are of a sensitive disposition then this is the predator movie for you, otherwise give it a swerve.

 

Agree with the ellyphant on the Thor film, though I did actually enjoy some of the throwaway jokes. Strange how sometimes as digital effects get better, the actors look even less like they are actually there and start to look a bit superimposed in the scene.

Prey, unlike beardy I enjoyed, but I do like his recommendation of it for those with a sensitive disposition

 

Thor: Love & Thunder
Realise I seem to be in the minority with this film but I enjoyed it, first Marvel I've seen since Infinity War I think. Don't tend to have high hopes with Marvel films, but I enjoyed it, silly and over the top, visually appealing, funny, not really sure what was bad about it.

 

The visuals in Thor were excellent and the scenes with Gorr (Sp?) in were particularly stand out. They did lean way too far into the "hur hur" type jokes which were a nice comic relief in Ragnarok but overdone in Love & Thunder. The storyline also seemed to be a bit jumbled with the pacing being way off in bits.

I also noted the talk of Valkyrie's sexuality was so shoe horned in that it could have been completely cut from the story and nothing would change - hmm I wonder if this film was released in China or other such totalitarian locations!?

 

It was likely "shoe horned in" as you say, precisely so it could be cut out for China etc.

 

I wanted to like it, and if I look at it in isolation it's a decent enough flick, but they 'borrowed' so much from the original film I just felt mugged off.
If they'd have upped the gore and action I might have given it a pass, but I came away thinking nanny had let me watch a film she knew wouldn't upset me

 

FYI

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This is just the first of the three. The other two won't air until 2023.

 

Thor L&T

It feels like they took the bits people liked about Ragnarok, which felt like a suprise hit, and turned them up to 11. But I guess you can have too much of a good thing! Saying that I thought the final 3rd of the movie was much better and saved me from turning it off.

 

Uncharted.
Spider man flips the bird at the Goonies / 10.

 

Cop Land: 8/10

Solid performances from a star studded cast. Gritty and ugly, good to see a film with De Niro and Mr White in.