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Snowman_McK posted:Dredd was made with care. I honestly think the lower budget made Dredd a better movie, because they didn't need the last act being some insane city-destroying crap.
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May 6, 2017 10:11
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Dvd goes on sale in 2 months. I hope you guys who liked the movie place your pre-orders.
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May 13, 2017 20:50
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Tenzarin posted:Dvd goes on sale in 2 months. I hope you guys who liked the movie place your pre-orders. I'm holding out for the 4K release. Blu ray at the least.
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May 13, 2017 23:32
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Paid $2 to see this at the second run and left after 20 minutes. I expected it to be bad after the trailer having no hook at all, but a voice over saying You Are The Ghost In The Shell in the prologue was a bit much. Also subtitling a character was unbelievably tone deaf.
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May 14, 2017 00:04
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Sue me, but I liked the movie. You can't expect a blockbuster project with a-tier stars to be a spergin canon piece, and I'm really glad they poured most of the effect budget into the scenery, it really made Niihama Prefecture come alive. The Spider Tank fight scene sucked, though Also, it was neat as a Dane seeing Pilou Asbęk play a tough guy instead of the flaky weenies he usually do.
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May 23, 2017 18:33
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I can absolutely believe that a white washing controversy can bomb a movie. Especially a new franchise in this over saturated market. Think of how Get Out was such a hit because of word of mouth and think pieces that said it was was a must see. And now think of how a whitewashing controversy is the exact opposite of hype. Its almost like having to accept a political angle to go see the movie even if one doesn't exist. Also it's funny one poster mentioned their Asian wife and friend didn't care about the whitewashing. I saw the same phenomenon play out in my friend group (we're a mix of yuppie whites and asians) where a few guys wanted to see it. I was indifferent honesly, but a few other people brought up the whitewashing controversy and that was the end of it(we saw Lion instead I think). The thing is I think a lot of people don't personally care about whitewashing, but definitely won't stick their necks out and advocate for a movie with any kind of controversy they have to buy into to convince other people to go with them. And cinema movies are definitely group outings. Incidentally I think that's also why Birth of a Nation tanked. Who the gently caress was going to advocate for that movie as an outing or a date?
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May 23, 2017 23:54
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I think Paramount Pictures started the whitewashing rumor after they reviewed the final cut of the movie.
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May 24, 2017 00:11
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Thundercracker posted:I can absolutely believe that a white washing controversy can bomb a movie. Especially a new franchise in this over saturated market. Think of how Get Out was such a hit because of word of mouth and think pieces that said it was was a must see. And now think of how a whitewashing controversy is the exact opposite of hype. Its almost like having to accept a political angle to go see the movie even if one doesn't exist. Even if people didn't care about or even understand whatever was causing the blowback it would still colour their perception of the film if they hadn't already decided to go see it. If all you knew about it was that it's some futuristic scifi movie with robots and it apparently has a lovely attitude towards minorities that'd be enough for a lot of people to give it a miss, and most of the people who didn't care whether anyone was offended probably aren't the kind of people who'd be interested in an adaptation of a foreign cartoon that wasn't completely in English. Also people wouldn't be able to post cinema selfies saying "Catching GitS with my crew!  " without risking criticism and starting arguments and we really, really shouldn't underestimate how much that would influence a lot of people's decisions. 
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May 24, 2017 00:25
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I can't believe there are people who dont think the whitewashing controversy heavily affected sales. Literally that was all the buzz around the film. If your familiarization with the original film ranged from little to none, it was probably the only thing you heard about the film via word of mouth -- I did see a good amount of online ads, sponsored tweets, etc. but imo hype is mainly driven by word of mouth Get Out is a great example -- and if you were familiar with the source material, it could go either way with you either being swayed to think that it was a desecration of the original via whitewashing or enough of a fan to pay to see it anyway. I think the latter is the smallest category.
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May 24, 2017 07:19
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Thundercracker posted:I saw the same phenomenon play out in my friend group (we're a mix of yuppie whites and asians) where a few guys wanted to see it. I was indifferent honesly, but a few other people brought up the whitewashing controversy and that was the end of it(we saw Lion instead I think). I, uh.. who would admit to being a yuppie? I never quite supported the whitewashing controversy anyway, she's not clearly asian in the anime and the canon states that her name is fake( since it's very unlikely a Japanese family would be named 'Kusanagi') - I mean, it's obviously unfair and racist when clearly japanese actors and roles are turned white to turn a profit, but it's a comic, chill out.
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May 24, 2017 08:50
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an skeleton posted:I can't believe there are people who dont think the whitewashing controversy heavily affected sales. Literally that was all the buzz around the film. If your familiarization with the original film ranged from little to none, it was probably the only thing you heard about the film via word of mouth -- I did see a good amount of online ads, sponsored tweets, etc. but imo hype is mainly driven by word of mouth Get Out is a great example -- and if you were familiar with the source material, it could go either way with you either being swayed to think that it was a desecration of the original via whitewashing or enough of a fan to pay to see it anyway. I think the latter is the smallest category. I think that the marketing team didn't know how to both approach the material and the controversy. You can see it how they tried to turn the movie into some sort of "woke" feminist answer to action films and science fiction with the "I Am Major" campaign, which ultimately backfired because the people they're trying to appeal to were already well-versed with the whitewashing fiasco and hijacked the campaign. The DJ Aoki thing didn't help either.
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May 24, 2017 09:19
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Tias posted:I never quite supported the whitewashing controversy anyway, she's not clearly asian in the anime and the canon states that her name is fake( since it's very unlikely a Japanese family would be named 'Kusanagi') That's not actually all that relevant to the people who were actively campaigning against the film. The Netflix series Iron Fist had a similar whitewashing controversy and Danny Rand was always 100% not Asian in the comics. Young Freud posted:I think that the marketing team didn't know how to both approach the material and the controversy. You can see it how they tried to turn the movie into some sort of "woke" feminist answer to action films and science fiction with the "I Am Major" campaign, which ultimately backfired because the people they're trying to appeal to were already well-versed with the whitewashing fiasco and hijacked the campaign. The DJ Aoki thing didn't help either. I've been trying to think of how they might have headed off the controversy and at least quieted down the people being so vocal about it, if not bring them back on board. At the very least they needed Johansson and a Japanese co-star from the film to really aggressively take on the charge and say "No, we were aware of the issue right from the start, we've got this" but they were pretty timid in addressing it. She addresses it 50 seconds into this interview: https://twitter.com/GMA/status/846705727750135809 Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. She talks about how their portrayal of the character is supposed to be identity-less and that she wouldn't try to portray a character of a different race which doesn't actually answer the question that the interviewer put to her. Finishing up with "Hopefully any questions that come up will be answered when audiences see the film" was also a giant cop out. Edit: I also meant to say that I can also totally understand why trying to ride it out after making minimal lip service to the issue was preferable to starting a twitter war with the tumblrverse. If I was in Johansson's shoes I sure wouldn't want to become the Hollywood spokesperson in the whitewashing debate Snowglobe of Doom fucked around with this message at 13:56 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 13:52
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:That's not actually all that relevant to the people who were actively campaigning against the film. The Netflix series Iron Fist had a similar whitewashing controversy and Danny Rand was always 100% not Asian in the comics. I think that depends a lot on the activist in question. Some were tumblristas participating in 5 minutes of hate without actually checking the source, others thought her brain was actually Japanese and placing her in a white chassis is whitewashing. I can relate a lot more to the later argument, though I don't support either. I don't know anything about Iron Fist, but I'm guessing the argument was about cultural appropriation? Those always go completely off the rails.
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May 24, 2017 15:32
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Tias posted:others thought her brain was actually Japanese and placing her in a white chassis is whitewashing. Yeah that's actually what happened in the movie. The cybernetics company that created her kidnapped her, cracked her skull open and scooped out her brain, plonked it into a robot body, wiped her memories and gave her a completely new identity where she had a different name ('Mira Killian' because she's their 'miracle', get it?) and even a different race. Her character arc is that she slowly discovers that the bad guys whitewashed her both figuratively and literally (part of the cybernetic process is coating the cybernetic body in a white liquid which is then blown away to reveal her new pink artificial skin underneath) and erased her racial identity. Of course this is presented as a terrible crime in the movie and all the people responsible for it are killed as a result which the filmmakers probably thought was a great way to address the issue and solve any remaining difficulties over racial appropriation, which I guess is why Scarlett Johansson was on the one hand telling people that the movie would answer all their questions but on the other hand couldn't elaborate because they didn't want to give away the ending of the movie. The problem is that the film's handling of the issue was lovely and awkward and actually erases the Major's original identity a second time by choosing not to show her face in flashbacks ( at least, not clearly) or even show an old photo of her when the Major visits her mother. Her original identity is reduced to a macguffin which is discarded again when it's no longer needed to push the plot forwards and she goes back to using the name Major pretty much immediately. The evil characters in the film didn't give a poo poo about her original racial identity but the film itself also didn't really give a poo poo.
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May 24, 2017 17:42
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I agree the really funny thing about all the whitewashing controversies is that it still catches studios off guard. There's a new historical WWII movie "Niihau" that just cast a generic white guy in place of the very much Hawaiian historical figure. What's really funny is that the actors and producers are just doing a terrible job defusing the controversy. With the actor's dumb family even jumping into the fray. At this point you'd think they'd focus group messaging or something at the least.
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May 24, 2017 17:54
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I don't think it's a matter of of controversy catching studios off guard. It's often the case that they anticipate controversy in advance, but whitewashing is still the path of least resistance because it takes less effort to weather a controversy than to groom a leading actor or actress who isn't white. As for the question of whether controversy can cause a movie to flop, as someone who's been following this much longer than everyone else... I say it's complicated. Films like these need fans to evangelize their movie on social media. It's harder for people to root for the movie and make the case that whitewashing doesn't matter. (Because it loving does.) But Doctor Strange wasn't a flop. Even with that whole thing with Tilda and Margaret Cho. "Offended asian tumbrites" are still a comedic punchline; just look at that Kimmy Schmidt episode. And racist fanboys are already pushing back against "china pandering", which isn't exactly a call to cast Asian Americans instead, but rather a demand to not have any asians at all.
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May 24, 2017 18:33
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Tias posted:I don't know anything about Iron Fist, but I'm guessing the argument was about cultural appropriation? Those always go completely off the rails. I don't mean to also take this off the rails, but not a lot of people were calling Iron Fist whitewashing. Iron Fist was just setting itself up to be pointless and suck rear end by being yet another white savior kind of story. Iron Fist is awful for many reasons though and, honestly, some of them may have been fixed if they considered casting an Asian or Asian-American person in the role. As it stands now though: -The character is totally redundant in Netflix Marvel. Daredevil is already a cocky relatively well to do lanky white guy who is a master martial artist thanks to being trained by a good ninja master (who is played by Scott Glenn, who is awesome) and is the arch-enemy of both NYC crime lords and the evil ninja magic clan that controls them while being a vague rear end in a top hat to everyone around him at all times. And he's awesome, Danny Rand as they chose to develop him for this show brings nothing new to the table. -***LEWIS TAN*** auditioned for Iron Fist but they decided that it would be inaccurate to not have Rand be white. He got to play a minor foe towards the end of the show though. All the biggest bads in Netflix Marvel are treacherous foreign Asian conspirators and dragon ladies. That's not whitewashing, but in a series of shows where Asian people = evil foreign invaders out to sell drugs to fund their vague magic plans, it's kind of lame. Daredevil season 2's ongoing mystery was literally "why are evil blood magic ninjas digging a hole to China in our fair city?" -The guy they got to play Rand was given three weeks of training and given no fight choreography info until fifteen minutes before each fight scene was being made. Again not whitewashing, but the character is still written, and still plays it like he's the most awesome chosen one in town and an amazing person while appearing visibly nervous and incompetent most of the time and getting regularly outacted by every single person around him. Again that's not whitewashing, the woman that plays Colleen is just as awful, but it's a major lack of planning to take a martial arts action hero character who navigates a magical martial arts action world and then....make the casting and development decisions that they did. -The show's plot is a lot like the second half of Daredevil season 2 where it's a story about white people navigating this magical alien world of generic evil Asian cult stuff. But without Daredevil's much better action scenes or someone holding up a lot of it like Elodie Yung's Elektra (who is fuckin' awesome, does her own stunts and fighting, she had actually auditioned for Wonder Woman in BvS also), and with its script being about these wonderful super rich white people that would be doing great things if only the evil Asian people didn't get their hooks into them, it comes off as just stupid, like it may as well be a Fu Man Chu show. It basically made me want to see a series just about Colleen and Rosario Dawson's characters instead. Anyway I don't think any of the people that made Iron Fist wake up every morning like "drat I can't wait to be a bigot!" and I can understand why, in the world of social media impressions and 140 character limits some people would just say Iron Fist is a lovely whitewashing and call it a day, but there really is something to be said about how lovely the show is and how much of that shittiness comes from the kind of story they wanted to tell being inherently a by the numbers white savior one by wanting to keep Rand white. That combined with Rand's actor/writer making him an idiotic, uninteresting buffoon also makes Iron Fist MASSIVELY awful in comparison to the other three seasons of stuff we've gotten so far. I think it was just a mistake on every level to even bother making an Iron Fist series. And them giving the same "why this isn't controversial at all" "I had no idea this would be a thing" etc. boilerplate responses makes everyone involved look dumb as hell. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 19:51 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 19:48
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Neo Rasa posted:plays it like he's the most awesome chosen one in town and an amazing person while appearing visibly nervous and incompetent
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May 25, 2017 16:28
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I was referring to the actor's attempted performance and delivery vs the total lack of ability we see on screen. There's several points where the show hits the brick wall of "this dude just sucks" in moments done in such a way where we're clearly supposed to be impressed.
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May 25, 2017 16:32
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Yeah, it's real bad and doesn't sell the idea at all that he's a guy who beat every other warrior in a village of legendary warriors who had trained since birth, and then fought a literal dragon with his bare hands and won.
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May 25, 2017 16:34
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The idea that he was supposed to look like anything but an incompetent idiot is giving me mental dissonance.
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May 26, 2017 00:19
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Boss Baby getting a sequel, will Paramount make a Ghost in the Shell sequel to show them up?
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May 30, 2017 05:36
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Tenzarin posted:Boss Baby getting a sequel, will Paramount make a Ghost in the Shell sequel to show them up? Boss Baby made nearly half a billion dollars worldwide, almost three times as much as Ghost In The Shell. It was hugely popular.
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May 30, 2017 17:38
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Boss Baby made nearly half a billion dollars worldwide, almost three times as much as Ghost In The Shell. It was hugely popular. Paramount could take note, they didn't change the ethnicity of the main character from the picture books.
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May 30, 2017 21:15
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Neo Rasa posted:Paramount could take note, they didn't change the ethnicity of the main character from the picture books. Maybe they should have. Marlon Wayans could be at least as good a boss baby as Alec Baldwin.
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May 31, 2017 04:23
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Watched this last night, had a good time. However, I feel like I've been staring at a cyberpunk themed aquarium for hours while waiting for the doctor to see me.
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Jul 12, 2017 04:06
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Dr. Memory posted:Watched this last night, had a good time. However, I feel like I've been staring at a cyberpunk themed aquarium for hours while waiting for the doctor to see me. I still can't decide whether the optics are brilliant or distracting. It's the first time in a long time I've felt immersed in a visual cyberpunk setting, but it kind of overkilled it sometimes.
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Jul 12, 2017 11:42
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It makes for a pretty awesome synthwave background video.
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Jul 13, 2017 02:55
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Paolomania posted:It makes for a pretty awesome synthwave background video. the awesomest. But it should work in a movie, too 
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Jul 13, 2017 18:58
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I don't know why they made it so that she had a human brain in a robot body, not a human mind in a robot brain. Completely misses the point of the original. Too complex for audiences or something?
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Jul 14, 2017 06:49
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I really liked this movie. It's going with Robocop 2014, Godzilla, Chappie and BvS as movies are that are cool as gently caress but everyone hates for some reason. Lucy was also good.
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Jul 14, 2017 17:27
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Alan_Shore posted:I don't know why they made it so that she had a human brain in a robot body, not a human mind in a robot brain. Completely misses the point of the original. Too complex for audiences or something? I'm pretty sure that the cyberbrains in the original are human brains encased in a synthetic machine/computer interface, part of their brain might be replaced with neurocircuitry but not all of it. In the '95 animated film the Major's brain was shown to be completely encased when it was put inside her synthetic body but in the live action movie they changed the cyberbrain design so that the living human brain inside it was still visible, no doubt because they thought the audiences needed it spelled out clearer.
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Jul 14, 2017 18:53
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Cyberbrains in the show are also organic.
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Jul 14, 2017 18:58
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:I'm pretty sure that the cyberbrains in the original are human brains encased in a synthetic machine/computer interface, part of their brain might be replaced with neurocircuitry but not all of it. In the '95 animated film the Major's brain was shown to be completely encased when it was put inside her synthetic body but in the live action movie they changed the cyberbrain design so that the living human brain inside it was still visible, no doubt because they thought the audiences needed it spelled out clearer. And/or they thought it looked more visceral/visually compelling in a live-action context.
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Jul 14, 2017 19:08
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Alan_Shore posted:I don't know why they made it so that she had a human brain in a robot body, not a human mind in a robot brain. Completely misses the point of the original. Too complex for audiences or something? You missed the point of the original, because it was too complex for you. 1995's character has a cyborg brain: a minimum of organic human tissue is retained, because both clients and manufacturers operate under the near-mystical belief that this tissue stores a mysterious and unfathomable 'human essence'. The entire film is about the protagonist's (mostly symbolic) decision to discard this tissue. In 2017, the characters are under no such illusions. While the brain is made of meat, it has been fully objectivized and reduced to a mere mechanism to be precisely hacked with novel forms of sensory input and specialized neurochemical cocktails. You actually got it completely backwards.
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Jul 14, 2017 23:31
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:I'm pretty sure that the cyberbrains in the original are human brains encased in a synthetic machine/computer interface, part of their brain might be replaced with neurocircuitry but not all of it. In the '95 animated film the Major's brain was shown to be completely encased when it was put inside her synthetic body but in the live action movie they changed the cyberbrain design so that the living human brain inside it was still visible, no doubt because they thought the audiences needed it spelled out clearer. Ah yeah, reading up on it again the Major has a lot of her original brain replaced with synthetics, but not all of it. Whereas other members of Section 9 have only a small part replaced or just have the interface installed.
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Jul 15, 2017 02:40
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This is a film with nothing for everyone. It's not nearly clever or bizarre enough to gain any sort of cult sci fi audience, but it's not nearly streamlined or fun enough to be a genuine blockbuster. It's full of shots and scenes from the anime, but it also tries to do its own thing plotwise, while working around those scenes and shots from the original. There's a ton of great design, but the film still relies on expositional dialogue to explain what and who everything is, while forgetting to explain why anyone is going anywhere. So we have a film where a bunch of characters without a single distinguishing characteristic between them go from one yakuza hangout to another for compelling reasons like 'that's where the signal is coming from' Also the action scenes are bad, but I had very low expectations for those going in. Still, when every gunfight is people in different shots shooting off screen or slow motion kicks that were played out in the late 90s, I'm extra disappointed.
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Jul 17, 2017 00:22
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I still think paramount started the whitewashing rumors to get people not to see it themselves.
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Jul 17, 2017 00:32
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Snowman_McK posted:This is a film with nothing for everyone. It's not nearly clever or bizarre enough to gain any sort of cult sci fi audience, but it's not nearly streamlined or fun enough to be a genuine blockbuster. It's full of shots and scenes from the anime, but it also tries to do its own thing plotwise, while working around those scenes and shots from the original. There's a ton of great design, but the film still relies on expositional dialogue to explain what and who everything is, while forgetting to explain why anyone is going anywhere. So we have a film where a bunch of characters without a single distinguishing characteristic between them go from one yakuza hangout to another for compelling reasons like 'that's where the signal is coming from' For someone indifferent towards banal checklist-criticism, this is film of the year.
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Jul 17, 2017 00:39
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:For someone indifferent towards banal checklist-criticism, this is film of the year. If you want to dismiss my criticism towards it, you should have dismissed it as 'compare/contrast' not a 'banal checklist'
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Jul 17, 2017 00:46
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