Often true, but not always. The 1982 film The Thing, directed by John Carpenter, was much better than its 1951 predecessor.
Yes, and then the most recent version was a hell of a lot worse than the '82 version. I honestly think I can count on one hand remakes that were better than the original. The Departed, The Thing, True Grit... and I'm running out now.
Re-watched Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I'll resist the urge to mention the eagles as the logistics of not using them to simply fly our characters to their destination has been discussed to death, undeath, and redeath. I'll just mention one thing though: the final battle where they're all up on the tree looks...weird to me. From a battle standpoint. Seems all the albino Orc had to do was simply order the other orcs to light up the trees and call it a victory for the forces of evil. Instead, he unleashes the warghounds (sorry if I completely missed the name) and sorta gawps around with killing main dwarf dude (Thorin?) and gets angry when the heroes escape. Um, no shit, dude. You just gawped there and did nothing! That was an easy fight and you blew it. And is it just me, or does he and his men look painfully CGI?
I really liked the first LOTR movie, then I thought they got progressively worse (although I still enjoyed them). The first movie allowed you to share that sense of discovery with Frodo, introduced interesting characters and locations, and used CGI sparingly. Then everything started to escalate over the next two movies, until you had the crescendo of the third film and it was just a horrible mess of CGI. And then after this you had to sit through 50 bloody endings. I then watched the first Hobbit movie, and genuinely it is in the list of the worst movies I have ever seen. The source material was stretched so thin, it was so fucking tedious, the dwarves were just annoying, the comic relief was strained and unintentionally irritating. The only good point in the entire film was Martin Freeman.
That's a bad line for sure, but prefer: "Remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future."
You know what's a fun movie to watch well for me at least is The Usual Suspects. Has the best plot twist ever!
I watched a newer "red box" horror movie an it was not very good. A bad plot, over acting ect... I looked it up and found out it was the directors first movie so I had to give him a pass not having much experience and all. That is until I saw that it was produced by Micheal Bay.... need I saw more
Martin Freeman is literally one of the few good points about The Hobbit trilogy. Smaug attacking Laketown isn't bad either. And some of the visuals aren't bad I guess. Maybe I'm sensitive about it, The Hobbit is my favourite childhood book but nothing seemed to be right about them. Everything added was pointless, and if they wanted to include everything in the original book then they went a weird way about it.
Yes, if he had cut out all the chaff and just made a two hour film it could have been great. It seems to be a habit these days though, for studios to profiteer off stretching source material over several films unnecessarily. Thank God some of my favourite films (from books) were made years ago: - 2001: A space Odyssey: the Trilogy. The Shawshank Redemption Quadrilogy (fucking stupid word). One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest: The Octalogy.
I agree, it would have been much better if they had made it a two hour episodic children's story like the book was. Instead of some attempt at an epic trilogy to recapture the magic of the original trilogy. And it's even quite weird, they had 9 hours (there about) and didn't include the beginning of 'Flies and Spiders', with the river of forgetfulness. Mind, having a trilogy, especially a trilogy in four parts is a hangover from Ancient Greece so there is no surprise there.
Even he looked bewildered/awkward most of the time. I get it, he's supposed to be playing a Hobbit who hadn't seen anything outside the Shire up to that point and now here he is right where the action is, but c'mon, it's a little distracting. And I agree with @Chinspinner , they really didn't need to make a trilogy out of this; the whole plot could've easily fit in a 2-3 hour movie.
Just watched the rest of the Hobbit last night. Some of the CGI was absolutely woeful. There were places the perfectionist in me wondered how on earth they could have released it like that. Like knowingly releasing a novel where the the plot didn't add up. I'm someone who has no problem with chroma key... in fact I'll actually seek out films that feature it, as it can lend itself well to very theatrical, set piece kind of scenarios, but sometimes it just looked so cheap and tacky, it spoiled my immersion into the film. That's not to say some of the effects weren't good, in fact some were great, but it amounted to bad apples spoiling the barrel for me.
Doesn't help that the battle scenes in The Hobbit trillogy make it look like someone filmed a LARP event and then threw a load of CGI into each frame and put it in the film. All the best sets are left-overs from Lord of the Rings, and the new sets they've made for the film look like some Broadway stage production.
Interestingly, or maybe uninterestingly I recently re-watched two movies I first watched when I was nineteen. The first was the original Matrix. When I first saw this I was in two minds about it, I hated the cod philosophy, general pretentiousness and the excess of people talking endlessly about shit all. I also hated the two leads, they couldn't carry a movie. And the many, many plot holes were quite annoying. However, I loved the action sequences (this was long before bullet time was appearing in everything). The second was Fight Club. I loved this film; it had that sort of childish and confused level of subversive that an idiot nineteen year old can really go for. I had an excess of testosterone so the very idea of a fight club appealed. And stupidly (looking back) the twist actually caught me out. So I watched both of them again within the last couple of months and I was cringing so hard I almost had to hide behind the sofa. I mean I found them both almost unwatchable. Strange how your tastes change.
Up is brilliant. I still like a lot of the same films I did when younger, but these two films appeal to that sort of adolescent, mistaken sense of profundity you have. You know when you listen to Russell Brand and the guy is 39 but the shit that spews out of his mouth sounds like the musings of a teenager after his first beer/ spliff; it is just embarrassing to listen to. That is kind of how I felt re-watching the Matrix and Fight Club. It just made me cringe.
I remember when Fight Club came out and everyone loved how cool it was, and everyone was listening to The Pixies that summer. I was part of that whole thing hook, line and sucker. I can't imagine going back to rewatch it now. Especially after an old uni flatmate making me watch the entire film when drunk, and he paused it every second to tell me and another flatmate something else about the film or the frame or whatever.
You wanna try watching a flick in the company of my daughter. It's as if she can't bear to see the story develop without having prior knowledge of what's going to occur, and needs a constant running commentary of how the event she is witnessing is going to effect the film as a whole. The moment she says something to the effect of "but he's not really going to die, is he?" I roll my eyes, and she knows better than to ask again. Just watch the damn thing ffs!
