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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3406 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 2, 2023

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I will now reveal my normie tastes in movies...

Looking at the lists, in addition to Avatar II doing well, Mario Bros also did really well, suggesting that people just don't want to see Elemental or the new Indiana Jones all that much. I watched Mario Bros on streaming (and enjoyed it), but might have gone to the theater if circumstances lent themselves. It has about the right combination of nostalgia for those who grew up with the games, actual fun and an alright plot, Jack Black making a fool of himself, and no particular wokeness. Everyone likes super talented Peach, it's pulled off well, with humor and fondness.

The rumors are, Indiana Jones is about setting the franchise up for Harrison Ford to be replaced by a younger woman. I don't know if this is true or not, since I haven't watched the movie, and don't plan to, but it certainly doesn't make it sound fun. I also didn't see Black Widow, because it sounded like it was about setting it up for Florence Pugh to take over from Scarlett Johansen, or that series about the guy with the metal wings taking on the mantel of Captain America, or the special about a woman taking over for Hawkeye. In general, movies about someone taking up the cape of someone else sound boring, it's much better when they just show up with swagger and without much explanation, like 007. This seems to be a common failure mode of long running hero shows. Assuming the rumor to be true, I don't think the recent trend of replacing older male heros with younger female heros is necessarily about wokeness per say, but more about stodgily following the tropes of the moment, even when people are tired of them and they've become stale.

Elemental looks... probably fine? Kind of like Zootopia, but for elements? I liked Zootopia, though not enough that I would have bothered seeing it in theaters. I haven't heard any rumors about it, it just seems kind of basic. Looking at a mainstream review, it sounds like they tried making a ham fisted racial allegory, but it didn't really fit, only fleshed out two of the four elements, and even the mainstream reviewers don't like ham fisted racial allegories. That's kind of how Bright was -- there was an attempt made, and Will Smith is fun enough to watch, but it was also kind of a mess. I'll probably watch it in a year when it comes out on Disney+, but will wait until I'm subscribing for a month for other reasons. I'm not sure if it makes sense to shorthand this to "woke," since the complaint is coming from the mainstream reviewers -- interracial love story (but with elemental spirits! who are not particularly magical, and basically just New Yorkers) probably just not a great concept, and would be really hard to do so well that a mass of people will go to the theater to see it immediately.

As an aside, I see that Spider Man: No Way Home did really well, and having watched it: why? It's terrible! So bad! Apparently fan service, done right, does bring in the cash.

As an aside, I see that Spider Man: No Way Home did really well, and having watched it: why? It's terrible! So bad! Apparently fan service, done right, does bring in the cash.

The same brain-dead Marvel fans who threw money at the first animated Spider-Man, like all movies in the MCU, had no problem doing the same for the sequel.

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That's a shame, I enjoyed the first animated Spider-Man and I was thinking of seeing that one. Life's just been too busy lately.

Beyond the Spiderverse, which is the sequel to the animated one, is pretty damn good.

though I would suggest that "stodgily following the tropes of the moment" is actually a key part of wokeness in organizations -- it's the movement of the hour, and so organizations follow it because it's what creatives seem to like and they don't see the elements (heh) of it that sometimes alienate audiences.

Maybe that's the problem. When it takes 18 months or more to make a movie, by the time your movie comes out the movement of the hour is last year's news. Even if the idea was fresh in the planning stages, it is completely played out by the time it is screening in the movie theater.

That's a shame, I enjoyed the first animated Spider-Man and I was thinking of seeing that one. Life's just been too busy lately.

I disagree, and happen to think that the second movie was just as good as the first. Catch it in theaters if you still can.

I liked it a lot, but I wouldn't say it's crazy to skip the theatrical release. Vague spoilers:

IMHO nobody's really seen the whole second movie. We've only seen the "Across the Spider-Verse" half, and that part has too much of a cliffhanger to be properly called a complete movie. I enjoyed this half-a-movie, cliffhanger and all, but now I'm stuck waiting for March 2024 for the rest, and how can you safely pass judgement on a movie before it's even resolved more than half of its central conflicts? Sometimes the resolution of this sort of pseudo-trilogy makes the penultimate part much better in hindsight (Back to the Future III...); sometimes much worse (The Matrix Revolutions...).

I mean, the part that did come out was worth watching, and while the ending was cliffhanger, I'd say that two good movies in a row at least raises my expectations enough to watch the next!

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