Movies Are Getting Away With Too Much These Days

By Atari · Feb 19, 2009 · ·
  1. Yet again I am subjected to the endless preaching of movies that feel it their responsibility to force some stupid, hackneyed agenda down the throats of all of its viewers.
    Here's a clue: not everyone believes in the same regurgitated cliche' of 'truth and justice' as you do! Stop trying to make a point and get to the action scenes, already!

    Like, for example, Narnia. I was watching the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspien the other day because it looked a lot less like kids being annoying than the first. (And I was right, this one had less of kids being annoying and more of people standing around staring for at least a combined forty minutes of the movie)
    Instead of them going into Narnia, living for eighty years, then going back and becoming kids, then going back into Narnia and living another eighty years, and doing that same thing over and over in order to be immortal, they go just long enough to 'learn all that they can [from Narnia]' and then they have to stay in the real world.

    Belay that malarkey! Why do they have to learn some kind of lesson in fantasy-land that most people learn in the real world? Why do they have to return to earth? What is the point of that?
    If these kids had any sense, which they don't, they would be immortal like I would, only I wouldn't, because people suck and I don't want to be here any longer than I have to without killing myself.

    The reason they put this 'lesson' in there is because the producers realized the kids were really just too stupid to stay in Narnia, so they made up some nonsense about how they really only stayed long enough to gain knowledge in an obsolete, unnecessary manner in order to make some kind of sense and to appeal to mothers who lap that kind of stuff up and think it's 'whole-hearted' goodness for their children, not realizing that the kids don't care because they're only there for the action sequences.
    And was it just me, or did that movie have the worst camera work ever?

    Take, for example, the part where the camera panned to the sky and did a time-lapse to nightfall. At this point, the obvious thing to do would be to pan the camera down to reveal the children and their fire, (or it could have been the opposite and time-lapsed to morning, same difference) but instead, it just shifted from one view to the other instantaneously, making everyone lose the mood and possibly wake up from the nap they took while waiting for the characters to stop standing there with their mouths agape.

    Then, the poorly-done scene where that one soldier shot the arrow and it did the 'follow-the-projectile' camera move, only it did it in the most anticlimactic way conceivable, as if the people making the movie just did not care that much-- or wanted to annoy the ever-living out of me. . . which they did.

    And then we have conflict which is never resolved, like the whole argument between the prince and the High King-- Pete I think his name is. . . what a lame name for a high king. If I were a king, my name would be Asimoth Leon Grand, with unnecessary accent marks everywhere, so it would look like, As'imoth' Le'on Grand', and would be pronounced 'Jake Terrymore'.
    Man, my subjects would love me just because of my name, never mind the monarchy dictatorship.

    So like I was saying, we need to stop putting these unneeded, heartfelt tidbits of knowledge and wisdom having to do with abstract concepts such as love and friendship, and instead start making movies that have a REAL point.
    Or, if you have to have two apposing viewpoints, why always make the obvious choice the right one?

    Consider the end of the Daredevil movie-- the man has already killed two people, one of them in the first ten minutes of the movie-- in cold blood. . . and then tells the world about it.
    Then, he gets to the crime-lord himself, the kingpin, fights him in an epic ending duel. The final move consists of the Daredevil sliding underneath the kingpin, between his legs, kicking the front of his knees making him double-jointed but non-the-better for all it does him, and prepares to unleash the final blow which would no doubt have been something awesome such as bludgeoning him over the head with his cane and then tossing him out of the window.
    Suddenly, the writers decide that the movie was going too well and the Daredevil has a spontaneous lapse in judgment, gets an over-developed conscious and an excessive sense of compassion and pity, so instead of killing him he listens to the kingpin declare that he will rip out the Daredevil's intestines and strangle anyone close to him with them, then cut off his head and eat it raw, to which the Daredevil responds, "I know."

    Wait-- what! "I know"? No! You don't know, apparently, because if you did you would have thrown him out the window!
    That is stupid! He could have gotten rid of a great evil, but because he is supposedly 'different' than the bad guys, (that difference being the inability to kill, because, obviously, killing, regardless of what the bad guy has done, is simply a 'bad guy' thing to do) he will probably be mourning over the loss of his dear lawyer associate in the sequel, who has been impaled with a large but finite quantity of sharp and not-usually-deadly objects.

    That is what compassion, when staring at the deathly glare of Satan, will get you; more dead colleagues.


    Down with compassionate, media-crafted lessons! Down with all of these accursed CHILDREN in our movies!
    What on earth!
    The next movie coming out where these people have to escape from a city-- why with kids? Why! That movie could be done just as well with all adults!
    As a matter of fact, the movie could do with JUST Billy Murray! No kids, no cast to figure out what is supposed to be happening, just Billy Murray being funny and unwittingly stumbling upon clues in a comedic fashion.
    That would work-- honestly, what is with all of these movies coming out with kids in 'em? Nims Island, Chronicles of Narnia, that one with the kid in it-- who. . . did some stuff and got strength and at the end had a twin brother.
    People have some kind of obsession with kids getting powers or discovering some kind of wonderful destiny.

    My brother bought these books about teenagers who become vampires or some such rubbish. Anyone who speaks like this: "Becoming a vampire the first day of school is, like, SOOOO totally the worst," deserves to be shot, not gifted with the powers of a vampire and then left to sit around crying about being unable to go outside in the sunlight.
    "Boo hoo, woe is me, I can't go out in the sunlight! Wah wah!"
    Then how about we just stake you through the heart and get it over with.

    I've figured it out: Hollywood has decided, in its infinite wisdom in the art of making our lives miserable, that it is going to wear down America by making so many movies that have kids for NO REASON AT ALL that everyone will get high blood pressure and be unable to defend themselves when the time comes for the takeover because they'll be too busy counting to a hundred.
    Well, not me.
    In my book, all of the characters are going to be thirty or older and its going to be nothing but witty dialogue and snappy repartee. That way if it is ever made into a movie, at least the dialogue wont be awful.

Comments

  1. Acglaphotis
    Man, you're gonna love this movie. It's called Hard Candy. Have you seen Dexter? It's somewhat like that. It isn't explicit in who you have to sympathize. In fact, it's probably better not to sympathize with either of the main characters. Check it out, you're not gonna be dissapointed. The camera work is terrific, and the atmosphere they made with the coloring is superb.
    OK, I have to step up and defend DD here. First, they somehow managed to twist a good script (except for that park fight scene) into a horrible mess starring Affleck and Garner. The directors cut is much better. The reason DD doesn't kill Kingpin (the dude playing him was magnificent) is because he doesn't kill, full stop. It's similar to batman's philosophy: he worries he'll like it. In the comics, he does struggles with the burden of the people killed because he failed to kill the kingpin, but not for very long or in a very annoying manner.

    In short, DD is awesome and requires a reboot movie.
  2. Atari
    I have to say, I thought Daredevil (even the park fight scene) was GREAT! I've watched it several times, (the director's cut and otherwise) and the ONLY part that gets me is his not killing the Kingpin because it's 'wrong' despite the fact that he'll get out of prison in less than a year and ravage him and anyone close to him.

    I like Affleck, a lot; he's a good actor, and the same with Tom Cruise, another good actor persistently shot down by everyone for NO reason.

    Maybe in the comics there is a more detailed reason he doesn't kill, but I'm gonna say that it still isn't good enough.

    I mean, he killed two bad guys near the beginning, and then (almost) kills Bullseye. (He had a cool ability, I think.)

    Then he chickens out when the one IMPORTANT one is at his mercy.
  3. Acglaphotis
    What put me off Affleck's performance was the roof scene... It looked, I don't know, forced? Anyway, according to wikipedia, he is getting a reboot.
  4. Eoz Eanj
    You should probably stick to independent films and arthouse works if mainstream movies raise your blood pressure so much

    I fear for your cardiovascular health!

    0_0
  5. Penny Dreadful
    You seem to be contradicting yourself there. You want movies to be more open and ambiguous... but still obvious? ... I be mildly confused o.o... >.>.

    Stop looking in the American mainstream for deep movies. As it was already mentioned, Hard Candy is awesome about showing you different viewpoints. For a good chunk of the movie I was definitely rooting for a pedophile.

    There's also, Run Lola, Run - a bit more obvious with the different choices and routes, but an awesome movie all the same. Funny Games is another one where the POV switches between killer and victims. I'm speaking of the German original though, I refuse to see the remake.

    Speaking of remakes, the original One Missed Call (Japanese) has one of my favorite 'wtf' endings regarding the concept of love... as does my absolute favorite movie, Ichi the Killer (another film that follows many POVs).

    Oldboy, a Clockwork Orange, Brazil, the Host (my favorite monster/family unity movie ever, any animated film by Miyazaki... I could go on and on. There's plenty of amazing stuff to find out there. You just have to explore a bit. Trust your Netflix recomendations XD. Ooooh, Netflix, how I miss you...
  6. Atari
    I must have made myself unclear.

    I don't want movies to be deep at all.
    Complex and 'deep' are two different things. Also, I don't like B-movies or movies with sad endings.
    I'm very simple in my taste in movies: Awesome action, intricate, smart plot, and fun characters.
    That's really all that counts, for me.

    So. . . yeah.
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