Controversial movie/TV opinions

[Lacelle]

The only good Rambo film is First Blood.

Besides Conan the Barbarian and Predator none of Arnold's 80s films have held up.

Will Smith is one of the worst actors of the past 40 years.

Independence Day was terrible.

Seven by Fincher is horrible over-rated and kind of dull.

What do you have against Running Man?

[Burgundy LaRue]

The only good Rambo film is First Blood.

 

Besides Conan the Barbarian and Predator none of Arnold's 80s films have held up.

 

Will Smith is one of the worst actors of the past 40 years.

 

Independence Day was terrible.

 

Seven by Fincher is horrible over-rated and kind of dull.

 

[Jingus]

I really like Prometheus. It's an awesome movie that makes total sense if you put in the time to re-watch it and read some of the meta materials.

I never understood the "it makes no sense!" criticism.  Almost everything in the movie makes perfect sense, on a first viewing, with no meta-knowledge whatsoever.  Yeah, it kinda helps to have seen Alien, but even that isn't strictly necessary.  

 

Not to say that some of it wasn't DUMB.  An allegedly brilliant scientist decides to wander off alone in a clearly-dangerous alien dig, and then smokes pot (inside an oxygenated pressure suit) and pokes at unknown lifeforms?  Jesus, at least Jake Sully in Avatar had the excuse of being an ignorant grunt who was never really meant to be on Pandora in the first place when HE walked off alone and started poking shit.  But this one was just inexcusable, idiotic Friday the 13th-style ""characters in horror movies are automatically retarded" bullshit.  But even though it was dumb bullshit, it wasn't INEXPLICABLE bullshit; the dude's supposed to be impulsive and eccentric, so fine, whatever.  Same deal with Charlize's undignified demise; she's caught making bad panicky on-the-spot decisions when faced with an overwhelming crisis which she never anticipated.  It's irritating, but I don't see how it's nonsensical.  

 

 

Disliking it is fine.  "It's not a Hulk movie" is baffling.  If technobabble exposition is the best you have...

 

Seriously, even the fucking Hulk Dogs come straight out of a story from the comics.  Ditto for the daddy issues.  It's edited in a way specifically meant to mimic reading a comic book.  For all the changes to Hulk's origin, it still comes down to Bruce saving someone else and thus being hit with the gamma radiation (as opposed to the tv show/Norton disaster...)  The psychology elements come straight from Byrne and PAD's runs on the book...

Dammit Fowler, we're gonna either have to have a LONG talk sometime about your taste in genre sequels.  How the hell was the Norton Hulk movie bad, but the pretentious Bana mess good?  Norton was an INFINITELY better Bruce Banner than Eric Bana's worthless sleepwalking ass, the Hulk effects looked much better, it had a lot more action, Roth as a mad-for-power supersoldier Blonsky was a far superior villain compared to Nick Nolte's crazed overacting as Absorbing Man (But Not Really, And He's Also The Leader And Zzzax, But Not Really), and the Norton movie both used much better source material from the comics (and even the Bixby show too, in a fun complex kinda-reboot that still didn't really retcon itself into any huge plot holes from the first film) AND dropped Ang Lee's idiotic "comic panel" visual gimmick (which CAN be done well, Scott Pilgrim is one example, but Hulk botched it big-time).  Heck, even Stan Lee's cameo was better in the second one.  

 

In the first movie's defense, I will readily agree that Sam Elliot >>> William Hurt when it comes to playing Thunderbolt Ross (although Hurt did better than average, by his robotic standards); that the tank-fight in the desert was cooler than any individual action setpiece in The Incredible Hulk, and I guess Jennifer Connelly was probably a better Betty Ross than Liv Tyler (but Tyler herself certainly wasn't horrible, it's just that Connelly's an overall consistently better actor and this was right in the middle of her hottest streak of good work).  And, I guess it kinda sucks that the sequel couldn't also give us an onscreen Lou Ferrigno cameo; it seems kinda cruel to keep using a deaf guy to provide Hulk's voice.  But I don't see how those positives tilts the balance in Ang Lee's favor, considering that he turned the entire Hulk story from a Dr. Jekyll parable into "some emotionless guy is supposedly really angry, and oh yeah he has daddy issues and punches goofy-looking mutant dogs and then somehow kills Nick Nolte with sheer willpower".  

 

Hulk was an overbaked mess, lacking respect for the consensus-best-parts of the comics and suffering from an auteur director who would rather put his own spin on the franchise rather than just stick to the source material.  It also had a crazed committee of screenwriters with tons of heavy-handed studio interference, while The Incredible Hulk was pretty much solely written by Zak Penn.  And if ya wanna see another stellar example of how that works: Penn was the original story writer for X-Men 2 and The Avengers, with only a small number of other comic geeks coming in behind him to touch up the script.  Meanwhile, Zak Penn's scripts for Elektra and X-Men 3 were so thoroughly mutilated by interfering producers that I'm kinda surprised he didn't demand they take his name off the projects (maybe he needed the money).  

 

 

 

 

Don't worry, you're not missing anything.

Although I have warmed to 3 in my later years as its a better standalone than I gave it credit for. It still requires a lot of stuff to happen in Aliens that didn't and at no point was there enough time to.

Alien 3 is yet another project which was ruined by the studio.  SO many better ideas were rejected than what we eventually got in the final film.  Everyone kept shooting down every proposal for whatever dumbfuck reason (admittedly, Sigourney Weaver using her power to demand that there be no guns to easily solve the problems was something that could have been cool but ended up being lame) and Fox Studios were stupid and panicky enough to start building giant expensive sets before they even had a finished script.  

 

A similar thing happened in the even-worse Alien Resurrection, in which the studio decided that half of Joss Whedon's action scenes would cost too much so they were straight snipped out of the script; and then they brought in a flavor-of-the-month director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, because... shit, I'm still not sure why, because his movies were dark and involved some kinda-sorta scifi elements, I guess.  Now I love most of Jeunet's work, the man made Amelie fer chrissakes, but he had no business going anywhere near a genre franchise like Alien.  They needed a Neil Marshall, but they picked a Lars Von Trier, as it were.  You know that old saying, "a camel is a horse built by committee"?  It's entirely possible that a dromedary could shit out a better finished cinematic product than what we got with Alien Ressurection, even in the marginally-better "director's cut" on the Quadrilogy compilation.  

 

 

See I love Alien and hate Aliens. Aliens is like most Cameron movies,all flash with little substance.

 

 

Muthafucka say what?  Aliens has little substance?  Didya miss the Vietnam metaphor, the critique of the military-industrial complex, and the psychological subtext that Ripley's own biological daughter was dead and gone?  Go read my Aliens thread in the DVDVRMC folder for some more context.  

[Reed]

 

Will Smith is one of the worst actors of the past 40 years.

 

Ugh, you're just begging someone to post that Fresh Prince clip again, aren't you?

 

And besides, Will is fucking Olivier compared to Jayden.

 

 

I love Will Smith but it is difficult to forgive him unleashing his untalented kids on a poor, unsuspecting world.

[Brian Fowler]

Aliens is a flat out good action film.

Alien is so much better it's not even funny.

Also, by all accounts, it was Norton who demanded the change from the script in that awful Hulk movie.

[Reed]

I agree about Seven.  It's your typical bleak, grimy serial killer flick saved by a shocking ending and a decent performance by Morgan Freeman.

 

I'm beginning to feel the same way about True Detective, only with McCougheney's acting being the saving grace instead.

 

Too much serial killer stuff is mired in its own misery and weighed down by cliche. That's partly why Hannibal is such a breath of fresh air. It's about depressing stuff, but it's not actually a depressing show.

[pipGofern]

Hulk was an overbaked mess, lacking respect for the consensus-best-parts of the comics and suffering from an auteur director who would rather put his own spin on the franchise rather than just stick to the source material.  It also had a crazed committee of screenwriters with tons of heavy-handed studio interference, while The Incredible Hulk was pretty much solely written by Zak Penn.  And if ya wanna see another stellar example of how that works: Penn was the original story writer for X-Men 2 and The Avengers, with only a small number of other comic geeks coming in behind him to touch up the script.  Meanwhile, Zak Penn's scripts for Elektra and X-Men 3 were so thoroughly mutilated by interfering producers that I'm kinda surprised he didn't demand they take his name off the projects (maybe he needed the money).  

 

Actually, Penn said in a recent interview in GQ that both his Avengers and Hulk scripts got heavily re-written. Somebody wrote a bio of Whedon (with a foreword by Nathan Fillion!) and in it they say Whedon got the job as Marvel U Czar because he read Penn's Avengers script and basically told Marvel to trash it - and they did.

 

Anyway, they asked Penn about that story in the GQ interview and he said, "Well it's better to be re-written by a bonafide screenwriter and geek like Whedon than be replaced by the lead actor of your movie" - which everybody took to be confirmation of the urban legend rumors that Ed Norton totally hijacked the Hulk movie.

 

Not that I'm complaining mind you: I love The Incredible Hulk. I guess if I had to make a controversial movie opinion, mine would be, "Norton's Hulk is better than both Thors and the last two Iron Man movies by a fairly wide margin"

[Reed]

Was that why Norton was replaced for The Avengers? Because Disney didn't want to deal with his BS?

 

I'd wondered about that.

[Brian Fowler]

According to rumors, that was a big part of it.

[scraylo187]

The Dark Knight is a terribly paced, boring movie held together by an amazing Heath Ledger performance.

Also, fuck you guys, those rocket launcher penguins are bad ass, and Selina's breakdown into Catwoman (HELL HERE) is a top 5 Batmovie scene.

The 08 Rambo is the best Expendables movie.

Frozen was 3 or 4 drafts away from being a fantastic movie.

National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 and Hot Shots Part Deux are funnier than the Airplane movies.

I love this thread.

[Brian Fowler]

National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 and Hot Shots Part Deux are funnier than the Airplane movies.

 

Right here, you walked on to the fighting side of me.

[Reed]

I like that Tim Burton made the penguins evil. Everyone else makes them seem all cute and adorable, but this guy knows...there's something darker and sinister there.

 

We will strongly wish we had listened to his warnings when the penguin apocalypse comes.

[The Comedian]

 

National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 and Hot Shots Part Deux are funnier than the Airplane movies.

 

Right here, you walked on to the fighting side of me.

 

 

Hey guys save this for what I wanna propose for the next movie tourney after this Superhero shit is done...

 

 

 

 

 

 

OK, if you're interested here's what I got so far...

 

potential parody movie tourney

 

Blazing Saddles (1974, Brooks; westerns)

Young Frankenstein (1974, Brooks; Universal horror films)

Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975, Gilliam/Jones; Arthurian movies)

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975, Wilder; Sherlock Homes movies)

Silent Movie (1976, Brooks; silent films)

Murder By Death (1976, Moore; mysteries, detective films)

The Last Remake Of Beau Geste (1977, Feldman; historical epics)

High Anxiety (1977, Brooks; suspense films, Hitchcock in particular)

Monty Python's Life Of Brian (1979, Jones; Biblical epics)

Airplane! (1980, D. Zucker/Abrahams/J. Zucker; disaster films)

History Of The World, Part I (1981, Brooks; historical epics)

Airplane II: The Sequel (1982, Finkleman; sci fi films)

This Is Spinal Tap (1984, Reiner; rockumentaries)

Top Secret! (1984, D. Zucker/Abrahams/J. Zucker; Elvis films, spy films)

Spaceballs (1987, Brooks; original Star Wars trilogy)

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988, Wayans; blaxploitation)

Hot Shots! (1991, Abrahams; Top Gun)

National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993, Quintano; Lethal Weapon series and other misc.)

Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993, Abrahams; Rambo films)

Robin Hood: Men In Tights (1993, Brooks; Robin Hood films)

Fear Of A Black Hat (1994, Cundieff; Hip-Hop documentaries)

Dracula: Dead And Loving It (1995, Brooks; Dracula films)

Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood (1996, Barclay; hood movies)

Spy Hard (1996, R. Friedberg; spy films, James Bond films)

High School High (1996, Bochner; inner-city high school movies)

Jane Austen's Mafia! (1998, Abrahams; mafia films)

Scary Movie (2000, Wayans; horror films)

Scary Movie 2 (2001, Wayans; horror films)

Not Another Teen Movie (2001, Gallen; teen movies)

Kung Pow! Enter The Fist (2002, Oedekerk; kung fu films)

Scary Movie 3 (2003, D. Zucker; horror films)

Date Movie (2006, Seltzer; rom coms)

Scary Movie 4 (2006, D. Zucker; horror films)

Epic Movie (2007, J. Friedberg/Seltzer; various 00's films)

The Comebacks (2007, Brady; sports movies)

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007, Kasdan; music biopics)

Meet The Spartans (2008, J. Friedberg/Seltzer; 300)

Superhero Movie (2008, Mazin; superhero movies)

Disaster Movie (2008, J. Friedberg/Seltzer; various 00's films)

Vampires Suck (2010. J. Friedberg/Seltzer; Twilight series)

A Haunted House (2013, Tiddes; found footage horror, Paranormal Activity series in particular)

Scary Movie 5 (2013, Lee; horror films)

A Haunted House 2 (2014, Tiddes; found footage horror, Paranormal Activity series in particular)

 

[Niners Fan in CT]

 

Not that I'm complaining mind you: I love The Incredible Hulk. I guess if I had to make a controversial movie opinion, mine would be, "Norton's Hulk is better than both Thors and the last two Iron Man movies by a fairly wide margin"

 

 

That's not a controversial opinion in my house.

[Brian Fowler]

Wait, you want me to choose between Airplane!, Young Frankenstein, and Life of Brian?  You bastard.

[BurningBeard]

I never understood the "it makes no sense!" criticism.  Almost everything in the movie makes perfect sense, on a first viewing, with no meta-knowledge whatsoever.  Yeah, it kinda helps to have seen Alien, but even that isn't strictly necessary.

 

It really really didn't. There was zero filling in of the blanks, something that Spaits script did at least have. I'm not a fan of complex exposition but I'd take that over zero exposition any day of the week

 

You know what, people shit on Alien Resurection but that's my second favourite from the series, mainly for what it adds to the mythology. The Alien/human hybrid is horrificly amazing

 

Also, was the rumour that Ridley Scott would be directing a fifth alien movie written by James Cameron only for that to get torpedoed by the studio to make AVP instead truth or internet bullshit?

[Technico Support]

The missile launching penguins scene posted earlier was so camp that Adam West was like, "damn, dial it back a bit."

[Jingus]

You know what, people shit on Alien Resurection but that's my second favourite from the series, mainly for what it adds to the mythology. The Alien/human hybrid is horrificly amazing

 

Also, was the rumour that Ridley Scott would be directing a fifth alien movie written by James Cameron only for that to get torpedoed by the studio to make AVP instead truth or internet bullshit?

Amazing? The fat bipolar puppy-dog-eyed muppet that we got as the final boss in that movie? It was pathetic. Whedon's original script had it more like a Resident Evil final boss, it keeps mutating and changing, eventually growing wings (this is when the original climax was supposed to take place ON Earth). Hell, the Giger alien from Species would've been way better than what we got in Alien Resurrection.  

 

Aliens is a flat out good action film.

 

Alien is so much better it's not even funny.

 

Also, by all accounts, it was Norton who demanded the change from the script in that awful Hulk movie.

 

Dude: EXPLAIN your hatred, please.  Tell me WHY you think Norton's Hulk was so terrible.  The whole point of this board is to have DETAILED arguments over stupid bullshit. And hey, I don't think you ever elaborated on why you thought the first Alien vs Predator movie (one of the most horrid abominations ever to be perpetrated upon the disappointed fanboys) was superior to the second one.  

 

National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 and Hot Shots Part Deux are funnier than the Airplane movies.

 

I love this thread.

Aside from having a terrible fondness for Airplane! (the pretty-good-but-not-great sequel, not so much) I'd agree with you on all of the above. Both of those movies were spectacularly funny.  Shatner was used better as the villain in Loaded Weapon than he was as a carbon copy of Robert Stack in Airplane 2.

 

And yes, I love this thread.

[BurningBeard]

 

You know what, people shit on Alien Resurection but that's my second favourite from the series, mainly for what it adds to the mythology. The Alien/human hybrid is horrificly amazing

 

Also, was the rumour that Ridley Scott would be directing a fifth alien movie written by James Cameron only for that to get torpedoed by the studio to make AVP instead truth or internet bullshit?

Amazing? The fat bipolar puppy-dog-eyed muppet that we got as the final boss in that movie? It was pathetic. Whedon's original script had it more like a Resident Evil final boss, it keeps mutating and changing, eventually growing wings (this is when the original climax was supposed to take place ON Earth). Hell, the Giger alien from Species would've been way better than what we got in Alien Resurrection.  

 

 

1) The Aliens should never reach Earth. It's the entire point of their existence and when they do it would be game over (another reason to ignore the AVP films)

2) Why would it grow wings when it's based on human DNA? The look of it was upsetting and disgusting and disarmingly baby-esque. It kinda tugged at the heart strings while also being horrific. 'd take that over a fucking G-virus knock off any day of the week

 

200 years later/government as the big bad instead of Weyland Yutani I wasn't too hot on. The cloning thing seemed abit lazy/deus ex but presented interesting aspects of Ripley's character

[The Comedian]

Wait, you want me to choose between Airplane!, Young Frankenstein, and Life of Brian?  You bastard.

 

Yeah a parody movie tourney would be pretty damn epic I think...

 

...at least it would be after we clear out all the (insert genre) Movie fodder from the 21st century out in the first round...

[Raziel]

 

 

Don't worry, you're not missing anything.

Although I have warmed to 3 in my later years as its a better standalone than I gave it credit for. It still requires a lot of stuff to happen in Aliens that didn't and at no point was there enough time to.

Alien 3 is yet another project which was ruined by the studio.  SO many better ideas were rejected than what we eventually got in the final film.  Everyone kept shooting down every proposal for whatever dumbfuck reason (admittedly, Sigourney Weaver using her power to demand that there be no guns to easily solve the problems was something that could have been cool but ended up being lame) and Fox Studios were stupid and panicky enough to start building giant expensive sets before they even had a finished script.  

 

  

 

I still kinda dug the original script I read way back that transitioned Ripley out and made Hicks and Newt the main characters of 3, and had it taking place on a space station inbetween LV426 and Earth.  Wasn't a fan of the Virus reproduction mutation though.

 

There were parts of 3 I liked, and once it got past the shitty opening and you stopped thinking about how the whole first 20 minutes of movie shouldn't have been possible and the only way you wrote that opening is if you've never seen Aliens and only saw a synopsis, you can get there.

 

Really, has anyone involved adaquetly explained just how the fuck eggs showed up on the Sulacu when there was no way possible for it to have happened?  I know its nitpicking, but I'm a stickler for continuity between films in a series, and it just wasn't there between Aliens and 3.  I did grant a bit of leeway for 3 and Resurrection that they somehow managed to get a usable hybrid blood sample out of an active smelting chamber, because honestly, Resurrection was a perfectly ok Alien movie until the Pregnant Queen reveal and Hybrid birth.  I don't think I've ever seen a perfectly acceptable mindless flick go off the rails SO fucking fast, and I watched all the Resident Evil movies.

[Craig H]

You guys are destroying this thread by disagreeing with our controversial statements. So to put it like this:

 

AGREE OR GET THE FUCK OUT

[Raziel]

[Craig H]

Woah there Baby Stone Cold.

[Kuetsar]

 

Wait, you want me to choose between Airplane!, Young Frankenstein, and Life of Brian?  You bastard.

 

Yeah a parody movie tourney would be pretty damn epic I think...

 

...at least it would be after we clear out all the (insert genre) Movie fodder from the 21st century out in the first round...

 

Blazing Saddles is the best of that list, and I like all of those movies alot. . .