Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 128
- 1
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm a big fan of Blade Runner (1982). I don't want to bother listing all its positives, but one of the things I like about it is, as far as I understand it, the movie ends ambiguously. Is Deckard a replicant or not? I was pissed when Blade Runner 2049 came out and removed all doubt: turns out he's a guy after all. Still a good movie though.
This ambiguity at the end was also something I liked about John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). I have a family member who works in Hollywood and somehow we got onto the subject of The Thing. She said she didn't like it because of the same ambiguity, but then as a matter of course in doing her job she got to spend time with John Carpenter and asked him to clarify the ending. Apparently he gets this question a lot.
Turns out he has no idea what the confusion is about.The last frame of The Thing is Kurt Russel and Keith David staring each other down, harshly backlit, and it's completely, glaringly obvious that Kurt Russel is breathing and Keith David is not.
I said it seemed to be a bit too subtle for a movie where a head grows spider legs and scuttles away. She said no, it's why Carpenter is a genius.
The mere suggestion that Deckard is a replicant pisses me off honestly because it reeks of "midwit twist" and directly plays against the very theme of the movie and of the book it's based on. The point is Deckard is an asshole. He's a shitty person, and the replicants show more genuine emotion, more humanity than Deckard does. The whole keeping animals thing, the Voigt-Kampf test, it's performative, it's technical, it's irrelevant. Which is a great point, a poignant message, and is completely fucking ruined if Deckard is a replicant himself. Ridley Scott is an infuriating director to enjoy the works of. He seems to be an accidental genius, but as soon as he's self aware of having made something significant, he just fucks with it until it's ruined. Remember Prometheus?
Carpenter deserves respect, here's a director who's smart enough to resist the lure of fucking with something good. No matter how much midwits (and dumbers) cared about "but wha happen to Michael?" at the end of Halloween, Carpenter was smart enough to know that it's not important and if you really need to know then another director can make that stupid schlock for you.
I think Scott's reputation as one of the all-time greats is almost wholly unearned. Alien is a masterpiece and Blade Runner is brilliant, but aside from those two, can you name a third film he directed which rises above the level of "pretty good"?
Black Rain? It was okay. Gladiator? Haven't seen it in full since I was a child, remember thinking it was pretty good. Ditto Black Hawk Down. Matchstick Men was elevated by a predictably great Nicolas Cage performance, but was ultimately a pretty shallow and predictable conman movie. The Martian was a lot funnier than I expected it to be, but I watched it for a second time a few months ago and found that I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the first.
Obviously there are stacks of other films in his filmography I haven't seen, but of those I have, none are even approaching the standard set by Alien.
Isn't The Martian's rewatchability something of a victim of it being so plot-heavy? Watney's a good enough character to keep us invested, and the setting is realistic enough to delight space fans while feeling novel to non-space-fans, but the great fun of the story is the series of suspenseful "how's he going to get out of this shit?" and "how much more shit is his hack for the last shit going to get him into?" questions. Once you know all the answers you lose that suspense, and the tiny bit of extra dramatic irony doesn't make up for that.
Still one of my favorite movies and books of all time, but it is what it is.
I also liked the movie better than the book, but that wasn't flawed directing; it's hard to turn a long novel into a short movie and retain as much quality as they did.
Before seeing it, I was expecting a rather gritty survival movie, sort of like The Revenant IN SPACE! When I finally got round to watching it, what surprised me about it was its lightness of tone and comedic elements. In principle that's the sort of thing that should survive a first watch, but on the second watch I was disappointed that I didn't find it nearly as funny as the first time round. A lot of the quippy dialogue sounded positively MCU-tier to my ears.
This is just Andy Weir's style of writing and if the movie captured that (I have not watched the movie) it succeeded surprisingly well at adapting the book, I guess.
I have DNF'd all of Weir's books because of that. His prose and dialogue is just grating; the constant ironic quipping and attempts at relatable humour in impressively dire and panic-inducing situations feel very out of place. One of the most horrendous examples of millennial ahh writing in existence. I find it honestly surprising that he isn't actually within their age range because he shares that same pathological inability to take anything seriously that is so typical of that whole cohort.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link