FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
50m ago
Last week @Lizzardspawn asked why none of the sequels to the first two Terminator or Predator movies have been any good. Having only seen the first Predator and Terminators 1 and 2, I wasn't really in a position to comment on the inferiority of the sequels, but offered my two cents anyway based on my secondhand knowledge of Terminators 3-6. This got me thinking about Terminator 2 and I ended up reading the entire Wikipedia article (and the sub-article dedicated specifically to its special effects). Last Friday we sat down to watch a torrented version of the rerelease for Blu-ray which includes all of the cut scenes. It still looks great, although annoyingly there were a few points in the first half of the movie in which the colour grading would change dramatically in consecutive shots (I don't mean consecutive scenes: I mean consecutive shots in the same location), which was distracting and a rather glaring oversight for a rerelease apparently overseen by Cameron himself. It also ends with the corny, sentimental ending I criticised last week, rather than the "open road" ending from the theatrical release. But all that aside, the film still holds up, many of the visual effects look positively jaw-dropping thirty-five years later, and the film is a true landmark in action films.
This got me thinking about my favourite action films, in no particular order:
- Terminator 2: As above.
- The Matrix: Perhaps the only film that can rival Terminator 2 for innovation in visual effects, and a spellbinding sci-fi romp on top of that.
- Die Hard: my brother and I have a tradition of watching this every Christmas, to the point that I daresay I could probably recite the entire film from memory with some prompting. Nothing beats bellowing "no more table!" in a thick Teutonic accent with a glass of Bailey's.
- The Rock: probably my single favourite action film ever. Whatever one might think of Michael Bay's "chaos cinema" style more broadly, it works here. Nicolas Cage's goofiness had not yet veered into outright self-parody, Sean Connery remained as wryly charismatic in his sixties as peak Bond, and Ed Harris lends palpable gravitas to an anti-villain whose motivation is more sympathetic than any of the protagonists' (it's amazing to me that Harris never served: he's completely convincing as a military man). It's an action film in which violence is deployed both for cathartic escapism and for heart-rending pathos (the scene in which the SEAL team is gunned down in the shower room is a moving audio-visual statement on the pointlessness of war), without any consequent feeling of tonal dissonance. It's an unusually cerebral action film which offers thought-provoking meditations on the morality of American military adventurism, while still finding the time to have fun and give us great lines like "Your besht? Loshers always whine about their besht. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen."
- Speed: I was positively obsessed with this film as a small child, a testament to the power of raw sound and image to overpower one's critical thinking faculties. Even ignoring the film's brazen disregard for the laws of physics, one could fill a book with the plot points that don't make a lick of sense or are dependent on contrived coincidences – and yet, in the moment, one simply doesn't care. Probably Keanu Reeves's best performance ever (admittedly not a terribly high bar to clear), his chemistry with Sandra Bullock* is believeable and irresistible, Dennis Hopper offers perhaps the most entertaining action-movie villain since Hans Gruber, and the soundtrack is memorable, exciting and emotive.
- Saving Private Ryan: More of a war film than an action film proper, although its impact on the genre is impossible to dispute. Even people who don't like the film as a whole will concede that its depiction of the Omaha beach landing set the tone for how action movies would look, sound and feel for decades afterwards.
- The Fugitive: I only watched this film quite recently, but it deserves its place in the canon of action-thriller films for grown-ups. On a second watch I was struck by how vacant and anonymous Harrison Ford's leading man turn is: Tommy Lee Jones is the film's real protagonist, and steals every scene he's in.
- Total Recall: As discussed here. The film which best encapsulates Philip K. Dick's entire aesthetic, and the best Paul Verhoeven film I've seen (I'm curious about Starship Trooopers and Showgirls).
- Heat: Like Saving Private Ryan a marginal example, and more of a crime thriller than an action film. It only contains one or two real action setpieces, but one of those happens to be one of the most tense, nerve-wracking and explosive shootouts in cinematic history, so it would be remiss of me not to include it.
- Predator: Right up there with Terminator 2 as far as action/sci-fi goes, and I like that it's not as self-serious in tone.
Are there any recurring patterns here? Nostalgia obviously plays a major role: several of these films (Speed, The Rock, Terminator 2) were films I watched repeatedly on VHS as a child. Relatedly, there are no entries from this century (excepting the marginal case of The Matrix Reloaded, which I'm counting under The Matrix). Every film is also American: I've heard great things about Asian action cinema, but both times I tried watching Hard-Boiled I turned it off about half an hour in.
What would you say your favourite action films are? Are there non-American action films that I really must see? Are there any from this century that I really ought to check out? (Before anyone mentions John Wick: I will concede that its action sequences are expertly choreographed and filmed, but when I watched it a few years ago I came away feeling distinctly underwhelmed, finding it stylistically confused and at odds with itself.)
*Rumour has it that no other than Ellen deGeneres was the frontrunner for the role. I feel quite confident that, had they gone with this, it would have derailed the entire film.
FtttG
3hr ago
Last week I finished Philip K. Dick's Ubik. Since completing my 2025 new year's resolution, I've become much less disciplined about reading: this one took me a full month to read, despite being accessibly written and barely 200 pages long.
I thoroughly enjoyed it. On my edition, the cover blurb is from the (now disgraced) Neil Gaiman, who notes how far ahead of his time Dick was. It's really striking that this book was published at the tail end of the 1960s, decades before its central theme (our fundamental inability to distinguish reality from illusion) became the go-to in Hollywood cinema: The Matrix, eXistenZ, Vanilla Sky, Total Recall*. The latter example is particularly interesting as, although it's officially an adaptation of Dick's short story "We Can Remember it for You Wholesale", it mashes up a bunch of different ideas and themes from assorted Dick novels and stories, such that it might be more accurately categorised as an adaptation of Dick's entire oeuvre rather than any specific work. The scene in Total Recall in which Quaid meets Dr. Edgemar in his hotel room has no analogue in its source material, but seems to have been drawn from a similar scene in Ubik.
When I first watched Total Recall only a few years ago, I remarked that one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much was that I love 90s action movies that are goofy and over-the-top, and I also love sci-fi movies that are existentially unsettling: Total Recall is the first (and to date, only) example I can think of where a movie tried to do both at the same time, and pulled it off. (Any goofiness in The Matrix is unintentional.) This is entirely in keeping with the source material: Ubik, like many of Dick's stories, is an existentially chilling nightmare, but also tremendously silly, with Dick clearly having enormous fun imagining the fashions of the future ("a cowboy hat, black lace mantilla, and bermuda shorts" or "a floral mumu and Spandex bloomers"). It's also, as I mentioned the other week, a tremendously horny book: there is perhaps no author in the Western canon who loved breasts as much as Dick did. The three-titted hooker in Total Recall may have no analogue in Dick's writing, but I can't help but think he would have approved. While Total Recall may not be the best cinematic adaptation of Dick's work (in terms of impact and influence, it's hard to argue with Blade Runner, and I loved its Villeneuve-helmed sequel; Spielberg's Minority Report is excellent, despite having nothing in common with its source material beyond the basic premise), I think it's the most faithful cinematic representation of his aesthetic: chilling, goofy and horny in equal measure. It's a shame he didn't live long enough to see it.
A colleague lent me Hua Hsu's memoir Stay True, and I'm about 80 pages in. Hsu is a second-generation Taiwanese-American who attended UC Berkley in the mid-nineties, where he befriended a Japanese-American fellow undergrad named Ken who tragically died young (although I haven't gotten that far yet). It's well-written and an easy read, but everything about it, from its nineties nostalgia (of course he meets riot grrls in college, of course he's devastated when Cobain dies) and polite airing of grievances about the Asian-American experience feels awfully familiar. I don't expect ever to read it again.
*The 1990 Paul Verhoeven film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, not the redundant 2012 remake with Colin Farrell.
FtttG
1d ago
From this comment I feel like you most be an incredible bubble.
It's called "Europe", and specifically Ireland.
FtttG
1d ago
They proceeded to burn all that good will and more with their conduct afterwards (not helped by Netanyahu being an extraordinarily repellent figure to all but the far right), which is when their reputation really started to tank.
I think this is just a straight up lie. I honestly can't recall anyone expressing even the slightest amount of sympathy for Israel in the immediate wake of October 7th. The idea that everyone in the West was on their side until they retaliated just seems flatly untrue to me. Even to this day I still encounter pro-Palestine types claiming that October 7th was a false flag, or that Hamas only attacked military targets (and the hundreds of hours of footage of their squaddies murdering civilians at a music festival were created with AI). Even pointing out that Hamas raped women and abducted people is widely seen as tantamount to endorsing Israel's "genocide" (massive enormous scare quotes).
FtttG
2d ago
Reductress can be funny from time to time, I think about this one a lot: "Stomach Flatness Checked in Mirror after Massive Dump".
The thing that makes tongue-in-cheek suggest that they are the same person is a similar writing style: blocky paragraphs with an abundance of links and an abundance of quips.
I regret to inform you that's just because they've both been subsumed into the Motte egregore. I genuinely find it startling reading over comments I posted here years ago: gradually but unmistakeably, my writing style has shifted closer to the Motte centre of gravity over time.
There are worse egregores to be subsumed into. Reddit might be the worst.
FtttG
3d ago
I still follow The Onion on Facebook, and it's sad how anodyne and unfunny their content has become. Every so often I stumble across one of their older articles, and it's heartening to be reminded of how funny and perceptive they used to be.
This is one such case: "‘This Here Is Probably Our Bestselling Love Seat,’ Says Man Who Would Have Been Powerful, Revered Warrior 4,000 Years Ago".
From that comedic premise, the entire article is a tour de force.
FtttG
3d ago
You still haven't answered my question.
FtttG
3d ago
We've heard all this before, remember Trump's first term? Trans genocide?
The specific claim that a trans genocide is around the corner is still being trotted out.
FtttG
4d ago
I recently got into an argument with a pro-Palestine guy, who argued that Israel is the world's sole remaining ethnostate. He did begrudgingly concede my counter-example of Liberia (in which citizenship is explicitly reserved for those of Negro heritage). However, he didn't budge when I characterised Japan, Korea and essentially every Arab nation as ethnostates in all but name. Would you think that's a fair characterisation of China?
FtttG
4d ago
Orwell once described fascism as "socialism shorn of all its virtues".
My immediate reaction was "what virtues?"
New year's resolutions check-in:
- Went to the gym three times last week and again this morning. This morning I did three sets of deadlifts, but found I simply couldn't do a fourth, which I'm attributing to a) going to the gym on an empty stomach and b) running out of whey protein a few days ago. Can deadlift 1.8x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1x for 8 reps and bench press .8x for 7 reps.
- Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
- Have completed 8/11 modules in the SQL course. Will do the ninth this evening.
How goes it, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble and @oats_son? (Incidentally if any of you no longer want to be pinged every week, just say so.)
FtttG
5d ago
I wonder if it would be worth my while investing in a rubber duck.
FtttG
5d ago
Following a suggestion I independently received from several sources, I'm recording myself reading my fourth draft out loud, then listening back to it and line-editing as I go. I'm only four chapters in and it's remarkable how this approach is throwing up infelicities I didn't notice when reading in my head.
FtttG
5d ago
remember "JUST DO IT"?
Do I remember one of the most inspiring motivational videos I've ever seen in my life? Of course I do!
FtttG
6d ago
It's pretty trippy. I like reading books where I have no idea where the story is going to go next and I feel like the rug will be pulled out from under me at any moment. I'm enjoying it a lot more than The Man in the High Castle (which I read last year), but not quite as much as A Scanner Darkly.
FtttG
6d ago
I watched The Animatrix when it came out on VHS (Christ, VHS? I wonder how many of the users on this board even know what I'm talking about), and remember finding most of the shorts quite entertaining and stylistically distinct.
Looking it up now, it turns out the protagonist in one of the shorts was literally named "Cis" lol? Let no one say the Wachowskis' insistence that The Matrix was always intended as a trans metaphor is just a retcon: it was staring us in the face right since the beginning.
FtttG
7d ago
"Failure" implies that ethnically cleansing it was their goal in the first place. Maybe both of the ulterior motives you claimed for their war in Gaza were just inaccurate?
Israel consistently claimed that their goals were to destroy Hamas and recover the Israeli hostages. For the last two and a half years you insisted that this was just window dressing, and their real goal was to engineer a massive refugee crisis on Europe's doorstep and/or ethnically cleanse Gaza of all Palestinians.
Your predicted refugee crisis never materialised, and millions of Palestinians still live in Gaza. Meanwhile, the majority of the hostages have been recovered, and Hamas has taken a severe beating. As a consequence, the war is winding down, consistent with Israel having achieved its stated aims.
Doesn't this strongly suggest that you were simply mistaken in your apprehension of Israel's real aims?
FtttG
7d ago
Agreed. With the exception of some questionable soundtrack choices and John's totally radical slang, Terminator 2 feels remarkably timeless.
Apparently he recently got around to denying the allegations, after staying silent for a full year. The article mentions that he's recently finished a new book: I suppose whether it sees publication will be the litmus test.
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