Just saw Red Dawn. The idea of WW3 just happening so quick you don’t realize is so real: no one expects war to break out in their back yard, it’s something that happens elsewhere that you’re conscripted into… until it isn’t, and suddenly you’re doing your best to just survive as everyone you know and love dies around you. You weren’t trained for this. Since the 1950s, America has been constantly on the brink of WW3, picking as many fights as they can; it’s incredibly prescient, as much so now as it was then.
But the movie instead relies too much on “BOOO HISSS EVIL, LYING, JOYLESS COMMIES,” only occasionally coming close to getting it: actually, they’re just like us. Like every other American war movie, it’s basically defanged of an accurate portrayal of war so that instead it can be a “YAY Patriotism!” story. Even the ending wraps, after watching all but 2 of the main characters get killed while fighting for their freedom and survival, with the conclusion that they “died so that this nation shall not perish from the Earth.”
And yes, I get the reference… It’s still nationalist propaganda no matter how famous the speech was.
War movies piss me off so much in general. War is an incredibly interesting topic, and we have so much to learn from it… And yet the majority of stories told about it seem to center around superhuman feats of combat and how great We™ are and how evil They™ are, and so few actually seem to really portray it for what it is:
a bunch of pretentious apes brainwashed into thinking the others are soulless monsters, while they have more in common with each other than with the pack leaders who pretend to be on their side (so that they can stay safe and comfortable while the grunts do all the dying for their greed).
Wanted (2008) - The comics are brilliant, sharp, funny and intelligent. By leaving out everything smart/interesting from the comics they managed to create a mediocre action movie.
The comics were ‘edgy’ and somewhat needlessly abrasive, but yeah they were enjoyable
Except for shooting around corners and that thing with the car, those bits were cool.
Mutant Chronicles, except i don’t think about it normally, but immediately comes to mind when somebody asks similar question. Also it wasn’t mediocre, it was incredibly bad and the second biggest disapointment movie ever for me (worst was Starship Troopers 2).
Premise seems pretty cool (mutant/zombie machine), and I guess it’s kind of a cool but forgettable action flick?
I played a lot of tabletop and card games in this universe in 90’s so i was pretty excited for a movie, and while it was forgettable (but also bad) action flick its main fault was that it has basically nothing in common with the Mutant Chronicles universe.
It’s like getting “Lord of the RIngs” movie, but about some gang war in a village southeast of Umbar.
It’s like getting “Lord of the RIngs” movie, but about some gang war in a village southeast of Umbar.
I mean. I would watch that.
In this case i would like to recommend some books for you:
- The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov
- Ring of Darkness series by Nik Perumov
Basically unlicenced Middleearth fanfics written by Russian authors but a good ones and getting officially published in multiple countries.
thanks, starred your comment!
It’s like getting “Lord of the RIngs” movie, but about some gang war in a village southeast of Umbar.
Hey, War of the Rohirim was actually pretty alright! :p
The Fall Guy. The show had a very simple premise (stunt crew moonlights as bounty hunters) that really couldn’t hold up after multiple seasons. The movie just floundered trying to do too much, and ended up far too inside baseball for normal viewers to really identify with.
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Yeah, rushed is part of it as well for a full 120+min movie.
And, I should say, I also loved the movie and was disappointed to see mostly negative reviews afterward, but I get it. I initially loved the fact that 87North, the director’s own production company, is both listed in the opening credits and is the company making the movie in the movie. But as the final (contrived to look awesome, which is the point, not the actual plot points) moments wrap up, it felt like it was as much an industry commercial for the director’s own production company as it was a movie just being a movie. Maybe that’s a selling feature and I overthought it, but it sort of took me out of it.
Not a film, but a TV series? It’s called Jericho, and the synopsis in the Wikipedia reads:
Jericho is an American post-apocalyptic action drama television series, which centers on the residents of the fictional city of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of a nuclear attack on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States.
But yeah, the execution is mediocre at best. Both the action and the drama are unbearably flimsy and cliche, even the argument flops as metal.
I love Jericho. On my third watch right now actually. Would agree that it’s frequently cliché, but overall I’d say it’s very good. Skeet Ulrich is transfixing.
Did you read the season 3 in comic books? I was surprised about the following they’ve got as I was reading that Wikipedia entry.
yeah but it’s been aaages, I forgot about what happened in those. I remember it was good.
I remember starting watching that. I have no idea how far I got, but I don’t remember a thing about it.
Same here. Aamof I just try watching it last year. Visually, it was cool to come back to those years, but I don’t think I finished season 1.
Oh man I haven’t thought of Jericho in a minute. I used to watch that after The Unit.
Nuts
Yeah, I can’t stop thinking about that show either.
What was that anime where you wear a VR headset and if you die in-game, you die in real life?
Ya that one
Sword Art Online had a pretty decent few opening episodes, it just… for some reason decided to go full-blown Knights of Sidonia and turn itself into a weird harem anime.
I HIGHLY recommend the SAO Abridged series. It’s one of the few “parody/satire” projects that actually makes the original story better and most regard SAO Abridged as the better version as a whole.
I love TeamFourStar!
Same! I rewatch DBZ Abridged all the time! Funny enough, never actually watched DBZ or any of Dragon Ball in its entirety, but I’ve played a LOT of the games and basically know the entire story, front to back, from the games and Abridged lol
I would absolutely say Something Witty Entertainment is 100% on par with TFS. They do such a great job taking SAOs original story and making it ACTUALLY make sense, while adding a lot more comedy and sometimes some actually heart breaking moments.
Added bonus, it’s still ongoing! They basically only release one episode a year now, but I think every episode is worth the wait because they put in a lot of effort. They do some other Abridged series as well (like a newer ongoing series of My Hero Academia,) but I believe SAOA is their longest running one right now.
All I wanna do,
is see you turn into,
a Super Saiyan (•a super saiyan!•)
What Sword Art Online Alternative. Amazing plot and characters.
that’s pretty much a whole manga subgenre now
Spy Kids 3D
Mortal Kombat (2021) opened with a great “feudal China with elemental magic” clan story that could have been an amazing movie, but then they jumped forward in time and everything after that was a let down.
many
The original Purge. I thought all the background stuff and setting were super interesting, but the film itself was a generic home invasion movie. The sequel expanded on all the stuff I was interested in, though.
I in no way call this “mediocre”; Its just a flat our terrible low budget bullshit film that the director made as an excuse to hang out with shirtless dudes.
But years ago the guys at Red Letter Media did a segment on “Bigfoot vs D.B. Cooper”, and that premise alone (what happened after D.B. Cooper landed) has lived in my brain ever since.
It legitimately angers me that such a great high concept idea was completely wasted on what basically amounts to gay porn.
Lmao, the reviews are somewhat illuminating
Yep. And therein lies my frustration.
David Decoteau (or he’ll sometimes use his alias “Richard Chasen”) stole the perfect premise for what could have been a great shlocky low-to-mid-budget action movie. And no NO ONE can ever make it without being compared with…that…whatever it is…
Not a movie, but a TV show. Revolution.
A sci-fi post-apocalypse show where the premise is that all of a sudden all technology (specifically anything that uses electricity) just stops working and nobody knows why. The show takes place 15 years into the apocalypse. The US has Balkanized into various regional states (although you don’t learn this until later). Some regions have devolved into chaos while others have basically reverted to a steam-punk type of society. Since all modern ships use electricity, they’ve begun to revive large ships from the age of sail. The remnants of the US military at Guantanamo Bay eventually return to the mainland and try to reestablish a much more explicitly authoritarian control over the US. You eventually learn that what caused the global blackout was the creation of a self-replication nanotech which rapidly spread across the planet and shut off all electricity.
Great premise, but it got too much into the soap-opera CW-style of writing and didn’t last more than 2 seasons.
Yep. Sounds like what happened with Jericho. Mystery and intrigue in the starting seasons, and then just weird petty soap-opera style squabbles towards the end
If the writers want to tell a story focused on inter-personal relationships, that’s perfectly fine. There are PLENTY of people who enjoy that kind of thing. They just don’t tend to be the same type of people who enjoy post-apocalyptic sci-fi puzzle-box shows. I don’t know why you go through all the trouble of creating this expansive world and lore only to focus your show on character dynamics that aren’t centered around the conceit of the show.
If you’re going to build this complex world, let us explore that world!
Poor Jericho, I need to hunt down the graphic novels that supposedly gave it a proper ending.
Ah yes, the Lost-likes.
Manifest, Fast Forward, Continuum, Revolution, Terra Nova… loved them all. All of them canceled.
It was such a good show, but man did they just keep pushing it
Yeah really fun premise slathered in boring characters.
If I recall it devolved into some CW-flavor bullshit revolving around the girl, who is her real father, why is she special. Blah blah blah.
The Last Jedi. Bombers in zero gravity but it’s Star Wars, you continue to watch no matter what.
Downsizing
First 20 minutes (give or take) seemed like a solid start. But then they did absolutely nothing with the concept.
Equilibrium
The Man from Earth
B4
Triangle
Time Lapse
Daybreakers
Evolution
Knowing
You take that back about The Man From Earth. It left nothing wanting in execution.
Knowing is soooo frustrating. Great premise, Nic Cage Nic Caging tha fuck out of everything. Then it seems like the writer hit a block and turned to a random word generator that spit out “space angels” and called it a day.
Still 2/3 of an interesting movie.
The Man From Earth is definitely one I think about. The things he must have seen, must have done, that over time shaped him into who he was. Is he the embodiment of mankind, as well as its own self-hatred? The religious stuff was a bit much. I still haven’t seen the sequel, with genuine anxiety to.
Daybreakers is also a good one. A bit deus-ex with the “solution” at the end, but very good thought experiment
The sequel’s plot is somehow weak with a couple of cringe moments. Given the twist is revealed in part one, the movie expresses one of many solutions to what should be free roaming of your own thoughts after the first film.
Sequels can be awful at destroying the ‘blew my mind’ effect in general by streamlining a great, open idea to a specific plot I guess.
Exactly how I feel about the Dark Tower
