Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

Iduno · Post by **Iduno** » Fri May 03, 2019 1:29 pm

It's also likely that the studio cares more about making money from selling crap they spent no effort on than their reputation. The SyFy channel is still going despite years of movies with budgets in the mid to high tens of dollars.

shinimasu · Post by **shinimasu** » Fri May 03, 2019 1:51 pm

MGuy wrote:I wonder if it really matters at this point. The design has already made the very concept of the movie a joke at this point. The fact that rando fans on the interwebs figured out what would look better than the highly paid professionals aside this whole thing has to be deeply embarrassing for the studio. I can't imagine the actual plot will be any better. I'm already assuming DBZ Evolution levels of bad story telling on this one.

I'm thinking Smurfs bad. Like a bunch of studio execs trying to figure out what's "cool" these days level of bad. I am betting twenty bucks they do an ugandan knuckles joke in there somewhere.

The prospect of the studio redesigning their terrible CGI hedgehog is thrilling to me because it means a couple of things.

- I had assumed Sonic's weirdly human proportions were so that they could mocap his action scenes as opposed to needing to hand animate everything. If I'm right it means their "fix" is likely going to be fixing sonic's face while leaving the rest of him untouched. The end result is going to look like a child in a mascot character head.

- If I'm wrong about the mocap then that means Sonic's horrible design wasn't a result of budget or time crunch. If they have the time and money to redo the character then they had the time and money to get it right in the first place. Which would mean no one saw anything wrong with that design until the fucking internet pointed it out to them.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri May 03, 2019 6:21 pm

MGuy wrote:I can't imagine the actual plot will be any better..

Well the trailer has him superspeed timestop dodging hundreds of missiles and also getting KO'd by a single tranq dart, so expect that level of consistency throughout.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Fri May 03, 2019 9:17 pm

shinimasu wrote:
MGuy wrote:I wonder if it really matters at this point. The design has already made the very concept of the movie a joke at this point. The fact that rando fans on the interwebs figured out what would look better than the highly paid professionals aside this whole thing has to be deeply embarrassing for the studio. I can't imagine the actual plot will be any better. I'm already assuming DBZ Evolution levels of bad story telling on this one.
I'm thinking Smurfs bad. Like a bunch of studio execs trying to figure out what's "cool" these days level of bad. I am betting twenty bucks they do an ugandan knuckles joke in there somewhere.

The prospect of the studio redesigning their terrible CGI hedgehog is thrilling to me because it means a couple of things.

- I had assumed Sonic's weirdly human proportions were so that they could mocap his action scenes as opposed to needing to hand animate everything. If I'm right it means their "fix" is likely going to be fixing sonic's face while leaving the rest of him untouched. The end result is going to look like a child in a mascot character head.

- If I'm wrong about the mocap then that means Sonic's horrible design wasn't a result of budget or time crunch. If they have the time and money to redo the character then they had the time and money to get it right in the first place. Which would mean no one saw anything wrong with that design until the fucking internet pointed it out to them.

Tinfoil hat theory I heard repeatedly last night on the design is that was an early design the put out the trailer with it to get people talking about the movie then when the internet collectively bitches about it they pull a "We listened to your concerned and changed the design" for the free goodwill.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Fri May 03, 2019 11:24 pm

Considering the designs that are in Detective Pikachu, I think it's more likely that Hollywood just doesn't give a shit about not making horrifying nightmares out of beloved childhood memories.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sun May 05, 2019 5:08 am

Station Eleven has this jarring note of an aside:

but what she hasn’t told him is that she went from temporary to permanent at the end of her sixth week on the job.

Iduno · Post by **Iduno** » Tue May 07, 2019 9:34 pm

Am I missing something with "I think you should leave"on Netflix? It seems to be everyone's favorite thing, but instead of having jokes, they're just loud or someone being akward and unfunny? Not in a Family Guy "I guess that was a joke, it just wasn't good. Maybe comedy isn't your thing" way, just a lack of jokes at all.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue May 07, 2019 10:18 pm

It's a style. I don't get it, but some people love it. A couple of my friends love Neil Breen movies, and it's much the same, except unintentional in that case.

I honestly don't understand why people find this style of awkward loud "humor" funny, but... they do.

Those same friends also love this youtube video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUDoMLVLggg

Blade · Post by **Blade** » Thu May 09, 2019 12:47 pm

nockermensch wrote:Everything you wrote is basically true, except that are four kinds of characters. Eventually you'll meet find the fourth one: Oberstein

You're right, Oberstein is an interesting one. Or could be if he was given more space than just "enable Reinhard to be the bad guy".

MGuy wrote:'m already assuming DBZ Evolution levels of bad story telling on this one.

I've watched that one yesterday. It's impressive how consistently and terribly bad they were able to get.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon May 13, 2019 3:07 am

So GoT 805 was obviously a trainwreck. But the actual moment it lost me was when Jaime said he didn't care about saving the people of King's Landing from burning and never had. I don't think there could have been a clearer sign that the writers no longer had a single fuck left for characterization or consistency.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Mon May 13, 2019 6:31 am

Iduno wrote:Am I missing something with "I think you should leave"on Netflix? It seems to be everyone's favorite thing, but instead of having jokes, they're just loud or someone being akward and unfunny?

I Think You Should Leave is non formulaic comedy and is interesting as a result. Most sketch comedy you'll be exposed to follows a fairly rigid pattern you would be taught in any UCB sketch comedy class. Establish normality (a band recording a song) find the unusual thing (one band member's very enthusiastic cowbell playing), point out the unusual thing, reset to normality, then find an excuse to do it 2 more times, blackout. A nice easy formula. I Think You Should Leave is generally non-formulaic and non-formulaic comedy is generally viewed very positively by the comedy community because even when it fails it's at least seen as failing bravely. The thing to realize is that Tim Robinson, the creator, has been writing comedy for years and he absolutely knows how to do comedy in a way that would safely get laughs. I also imagine you would say it had "jokes" if those jokes were presented in the traditional 1,2,3 format. For instance in the Baby Pageant sketch a baby is established as the bad boy of the contest as beat 1 and it would be very easy to hit that beat 2 more times for a traditional sketch. If the joke is that this baby pageant has reality TV competition tropes like "bad boys" then you have that baby get into a drunken fight for beat 2 and be disqualified when they find out he made a sex tape as beat 3. Boom, comedy. The reason that something like I Think You Should Leave is cool is because Robinson absolutely knows how to write that sketch and he didn't. He wrote a sketch where the audience wants to kill that baby and then there was a scandal about the judges getting blowjobs and then they shut down the whole competition, and whether you like it or not it has some value in trying for comedy outside of a very safe tried and true formula.

Now for myself I liked the show just alright. It fell flat fairly often but it had some wins and the last episode was very funny I thought. So a mixed bag for sure. Still, I'm at comedy shows every single week and something like I Think You Should Leave is at least enjoyable for being someone's attempt to make their own unique brand of comedy and not make something cookie cutter as the safe bet.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon May 20, 2019 12:46 pm

On a similar note, Onion: ‘Game Of Thrones’ Showrunners Disappointed With How Quality Of Fans Has Dropped Off Over Past Couple Seasons

That last episode was pretty much just a goodbye episode. I get why they did that, but I think only two things of consequence happened during the full 80 minutes, which took up less than 10 minutes of screen time.

I found myself thinking about the E5 battle. The entire thing was rather one-sided. At no point did I feel any tension. Dany was in control the entire time. I liked Cercei being delusional, refusing to see the obvious. It was kind of a fitting end to her, since she was so inept, anyway. Still, they'd invested heavily in anti-dragon technology, and it was all obliterated by a full frontal assault by a single dragon. I kind of feel like they should have needed someone to sneak in and sabotage something, really. The only subterfuge employed by Dany was to fly in with the sun behind her back, which got her into medium range before Euron noticed her. She then destroyed all the boats and all the towers, and that was that. I'm not even sure why she needed the Unsullied, or anyone else, seeing as none of the other soldiers could even touch her.

Thaluikhain · Post by **Thaluikhain** » Mon May 20, 2019 1:53 pm

So, seasons 1-4 were a horse's arse? Only one's I saw, no argument there.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon May 20, 2019 2:04 pm

The whole point of the E5 battle was that Dany's position was so strong that she won and could have accepted a completely clean victory, but she chose to go full atrocity anyway. Yes, that contradicted all the exposition about how storming the capital would have necessarily been a bloodbath. The showrunners clearly chose to make that sort of consistency secondary to the character moment.

I think one of the show's great weaknesses was its unwillingness to understand Westerosi medievalism. Key elements (paternalism, misogyny, classism, etc.) were consistently framed as quaint and pointless prejudice without any cultural inertia or real institutional support, rather than logical and necessary results of the aristocratic power structure. For example, show!Catelyn's animosity to Jon Snow is explicitly depicted as a sentimental reaction to Ned's supposed infidelity; while book!Catelyn's is a completely rational understanding that Jon's mere existence is a continual and ongoing threat to the lives of her own children.

In a medieval context, storming a city is just understood to be catastrophic to the city and its inhabitants. If an army rolls up to your city and says 'surrender or die,' and you don't surrender before the attack starts, then it's completely expected that you get killed. The idea that there would be something wrong with the massacre of King's Landing should just be puzzling to people in Westeros. Sad, sure, but wrong? It's fucking war!

But the show has always catered to modern sensibilities rather than inviting you to understand archaic ones. So rather than Dany being unacceptable because she rejects the entire social order of the country (which the show expects the audience to do as well), she gets to be unacceptable for a very modern understanding of war crimes. Which meant that the war crimes had to be as unambiguous as possible, which in turn meant that her victory at King's Landing had to be bizarrely total to make excusing her actions as difficult as possible.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Mon May 20, 2019 5:47 pm

Eh, I agree with Danny's decision. Her attempt to be a fair and merciful ruler to people who predominantly loved her just resulted in an intractable insurgency that dogged her regime in Mereen at every turn. And that's when everyone loved her, except for a tiny minority.

In King's Landing, most of the people dislike her because of her dad, or they're indifferent at best. She walks into those gates as the merciful conqueror, and an long-term insurgency is all but inevitable. Especially since Tyrion doesn't have the stomach for the mass executions that will be necessary to put his house in order.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon May 20, 2019 6:00 pm

Spoiler for all of the episodes:

I agree with Bran that it is good to be the king, and it's cool when you manipulate all the dummies around you so that you can seize power.

Hiram McDaniels · Post by **Hiram McDaniels** » Wed May 22, 2019 5:33 am

Kaelik wrote:Spoiler for all of the episodes:

I agree with Bran that it is good to be the king, and it's cool when you manipulate all the dummies around you so that you can seize power.

Maybe that's why Ice Pence had such a murder boner for him. Maybe the white twerkers were the real heroes all along.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed May 22, 2019 9:07 am

Isn't half the point of GoT that there's no real heroes and everybody has good and bad traits?

Like Jaime who's an incestous prick who'll throw kids off balconies and is pretty murder happy, but also when the mad king was getting ready to set fire to the whole of King's Landing, Jaime shanked him and thus saved hundreds of thousands, plus he was always nice to his ugly little brother that everybody else despised and after losing his main hand he goes back to rescue Brienne and starts making a true effort of solving things peacefully.

So yeah the white walkers may've gone into a rampage at the North, but they also wanted to stop the omniscient druid from taking over. For all we know after taking Brann's head they would've just turned back and returned to the ice.

After all, they did let half the dothraki and unsullied live.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sat Jun 08, 2019 3:30 am

Since there's not a more neutral entertainment thread, after debate, I thought I would put Godzilla here. It's MUCH better than the 2003 Godzilla, and it does seem generally true to the classic monster designs. It does a good job with 'rising action', but ultimately I think it could have been much better, and should have been.

Maybe I was just tired, but I really felt like the movie was too busy. Spoilers in the spoiler block.

So a big part of the movie is that there is an organization that's like SEELE in Neon Genesis - formed to eradicate the 'Titans', called Monarch. But the timeline doesn't really seem to make sense to me. If I'm understanding the movie correctly, Godzilla shows up in 2014, lays waste to San Francisco and this program gets jump-started. Except one member of the program is 3rd generation Monarch (ie, her parents and her grandparents were in the program). If this movie-universe wanted to presume that the Godzilla movies of the 1950s and 1960s had happened, well, I missed that. So in roughly 5 years this organization ends up with dozens or maybe hundreds of military style bases all over the globe. Some of those things make a good visual (like a Helicarrier in Avengers), but ultimately it detracts from the movie itself.

There are things I liked about the movie, but there were a lot of things that I would change. Putting underwater tunnels throughout the Earth is probably not worthwhile; the furthest distance you can be on the surface of the globe is roughly 12k miles; the distance if you pass straight through the Earth and it is as far as possible is 8k miles. I don't think tunnels explain faster travel well enough to make them a plausible explanation IN THE MOVIE, let alone if you start thinking about it outside the movie.

And Godzilla lairs in what I'm going to call Atlantis - an ancient city much older than the Egyptian civilization and they detonate a nuclear bomb in it. If you're going to have Atlantis, don't just destroy it 5 minutes after you've introduced it - that's heartbreaking.

I also think the movie was somewhat guilty of trying to pretend that saving one particular child somehow makes up for potentially billions killed...

I'll still go see Godzilla versus Kong which I'm sure will come out soon, but I'm going to go into that one with significantly reduced expectations.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Sat Jun 08, 2019 8:34 am

In King Kong they establish that Monarch is an old Illuminati style organization of connected rich dudes who share a belief that the earth is hollow and there are monsters or ancient civilizations in there. Monarch might have a lot more power and authority once their crazy predictions turned out to be true, so they may only have been an organization with global power incredibly recently but they were supposed to have existed in some form for a long time.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jun 08, 2019 9:50 pm

DDMW wrote:Putting underwater tunnels throughout the Earth is probably not worthwhile; the furthest distance you can be on the surface of the globe is roughly 12k miles; the distance if you pass straight through the Earth and it is as far as possible is 8k miles. I don't think tunnels explain faster travel well enough to make them a plausible explanation IN THE MOVIE, let alone if you start thinking about it outside the movie.

The tunnels explicitly have high speed current vortices running through them. Once you're in the tunnel, high speed current sucks you to the other end of it. They explicitly say that twice.

Now I'm not saying it's weird that you didn't get that, because it's a weird conceit that references some old school fantasy science fiction. And more importantly, because unlike a lot of movies, Godzilla doesn't fucking bother explaining things by calling time and giving exposition. It's actually one of the things I really liked about the movie.

If a monster gains power by eating a power station, it doesn't cut away to some human you don't care about shouting "He's eating the power station to gain strength!" it just shows you that happening and you get to ponder how utterly fucked that makes everyone. Similarly, the movie never cuts away to some human you don't care about shouting that Mothra's dust has healing properties. They just show you the Mothra dust having healing properties and you either figure it out or you don't.

The high speed current in the Hollow Earth tunnels are mentioned a few times, but the important part is that once the humans go through them they've been dragged far and fast enough that they can't immediately tell where they are.

-Fran

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Jun 09, 2019 9:40 am

I finally saw Episode 3 of Star Wars.

I think, when they revealed that Chancellor Palpatine was the Sith Lord, and all the main characters did a "oh, woah, a Sith Lord, here" thing after, it's just ....

The basic promise of the prequels was we would see the Emperor gain power and turn Vader to the Dark Side. And it was extremely slow to get there and all very tepid about it when the moment came.

Like, Return of the Jedi, basic stuff, reveal of family secret causes emotional torment, Sith Lord encourages greater emotional response for power increase, offers position and rank in return for ghastly hateful act at height of emotional power gain, which Luke refused; just play that scene again and have Vader accept. Instead he's tricked all the time and rages at dreams of threats, again.

Just highlights the basic problems of the whole trilogy. Obviously Palpatine was a Sith Lord and obviously a lot of Jedi masters should have noticed that. It was constantly pulling me out of the movies when characters didn't notice yet. And then when it did, suddenly one bloke with a laser sword murders thousands of superheroes and soldiers on his own while the rest of the jedi masters are just casually shot by clones and stuff.

It's all bad. But, that bit, where "oh, by the way, I'm a Sith Lord and your adoptive parents are out to get me so you should join my side" ... is just such garbage, and it's garbage that reflects very poorly on the whole trilogy.

Like, original movie, Obiwan senses Vader when he lands on the space station, they know each other at a distance, they can see each other's feelings and emotions very casually. They can speak with the dead about stuff like "bro, who killed you?" Vader learns about Leia when Luke has a passing thought about her being his sister while on a nearby ship, which Luke immediately realised had happened.

So fucking notice the Sith Lord! Before that scene. Like in the first movie, when visiting the racist swamp planet. Have Vader join him because he needs that rage power to defeat his immediate enemies, probably in the 2nd movie against the borg Sith. Have a whole lot more Jedi die along the trilogy due to the plots rather than in a stupidly short pastiche near the end.

Also, Padme was creepy older than Vader, and Han shot first.

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sun Jun 09, 2019 2:44 pm

John Wick 3 was a lot worse than the second one.

It didn't feel like a continuous movie. It felt like it just sorta moved from one disconnected scene to the next. There were simply too many characters introduced for one spot and then done. It really needed more time in the oven.

The scene with the dogs was cool though. More action movies should include dogs.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Jun 09, 2019 4:20 pm

So why is Dark Phoenix so bad? I'm probably going to eventually watch it because it's x-men and I really enjoyed the other reboots. I know the series did a horrible job with the last Dark Phoenix, just curious how they failed this time.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Jun 09, 2019 5:16 pm

They played that saga on the X-Men cartoon every damn Saturday. I don't care if the dark Phoenix movie showers me with gold coins and titties, I refuse to see it.