|
ToxicSlurpee posted:It's also the stupidest movie ever made but that's what made it so drat good. It know how stupid it is and just runs and leaps walls with it while doing cool kung fu moves. I routinely quote that movie and I will never stop. Making me the victor.
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 16:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:48 |
|
|
The star wars prequels are better than the hobbit films. The 1977 animated hobbit is also better.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 17:07
|
|
|
Edgar Allen Ho posted:The star wars prequels are better than the hobbit films. I'll agree with this. There are a lot of flaws with the prequels, but they're at least memorable, for better or worse. The Hobbit, on the other hand, feels like a fever dream. I can't remember much.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 17:11
|
|
|
I saw the first Hobbit movie and the only thing I remember is that it slipped into VHS quality for a few seconds.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 19:13
|
|
|
I once went out to rent Kung Pow: Enter the fist and rented Kung Fu Hustle by mistake and honestly I think that worked out well for me.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 19:21
|
|
|
Man I'm not a fan of the Hobbit movies (they had so much squandered potential though), but there is no way you can make a compelling argument that they're worse than the prequels. Do you remember how bad the prequels are? The Hobbit at it's worst is tone deaf and needlessly drawn out/padded. The prequels are barely movies. E: fruit on the bottom posted:I once went out to rent Kung Pow: Enter the fist and rented Kung Fu Hustle by mistake and honestly I think that worked out well for me. Kung Fu Hustle is the far superior movie, good choice.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 19:24
|
|
|
Jar Jar is the best character in The Phantom Menace. Hear me out. He's the best character because he's the only one that elicits an emotional response. Everyone else is so boring, bland and flat that they hardly qualify as characters. Jar Jar on the other hand elicits pure hated and loathing, and while that's bad, it's at least something.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 19:47
|
|
|
Fist and Hustle are both great movies, for different reasons.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 19:51
|
|
|
Jar Jar is actually a good character and one of the strong points of TPM. He and Qui Gon are the only good characters in the movie.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 19:53
|
|
|
The first film is called Star Wars, not Episode 4 or A New Hope.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 21:47
|
|
|
A New Hope isn't that good. Only the music and editing save it. The original cut had Luke hanging out with Biggs and his other desert friends for like 30 minutes.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 21:56
|
|
|
Mu Zeta posted:A New Hope isn't that good. Only the music and editing save it. The original cut had Luke hanging out with Biggs and his other desert friends for like 30 minutes. Nobody gives a poo poo, they like what they saw
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 22:35
|
|
|
But music and editing save every movie? Ever seen an unedited movie with no music? They loving suck!
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 22:39
|
|
|
It means that George Lucas was never good. Even when he was young and energetic.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 22:42
|
|
|
Aramek posted:But music and editing save every movie? They're like looking out the window.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 22:42
|
|
|
Mu Zeta posted:It means that George Lucas was never good. Even when he was young and energetic. That's not what you originally said, and isn't even an unpopular opinion
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 22:44
|
|
|
His og screenplay was terrible and had those long boring scenes with Luke's friends on Tatooine. This is all from the "making of" feature on the Blu Ray. And plenty of people thought he was this amazing maverick filmmaker when he was starting out with THX 1138. But go on IMDB and people say A New Hope is a masterpiece. Even the actors werent taking it seriously in that movie. I guess I should have said I think the movie is still bad with the editing and was surprisingly way worse originally.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 22:47
|
|
|
There are a few things that I have thought about for more hours than I can recall, mulling over in my head endlessly. Trying to find value in because they're so immensely popular there must be some redeeming features to them. I'll even go read/play/watch them multiple times trying to be fair and objective each time only because how can I possibly be right about these things when so many people seem to disagree with me. Nevertheless I'm absolutely convinced that there are some things that are just bad and also inexplicably popular. 1. Bethesda games 2. Harry Potter 3. Star Wars I'm not even going for a 'oh ho I'm so edgy I dislike the popular things' as I've been rabidly enjoying a ton of the marvel movies despite some of them having big glaring flaws (others are just objectively real good though). There's tons of popular things I like but drat if I just can't find anything redeeming in this poo poo. Bethesda is a peddler of mediocrity, Harry Potter isn't well written even by children's book standards, and Star Wars are at best inoffensive and at worst prequels/rogue one.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 23:33
|
|
|
The fact the Death Star attack on Yavin was added in editing is amazing. E: this isn't a PHUO.
|
|
#
?
May 15, 2018 23:54
|
|
Agent355 posted:Man I'm not a fan of the Hobbit movies (they had so much squandered potential though), but there is no way you can make a compelling argument that they're worse than the prequels. Do you remember how bad the prequels are? That's exactly it. I do remember how bad the prequels are. I can't emember anything about the hobbit. It's just that boring.
|
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 00:48
|
|
|
Agent355 posted:Nevertheless I'm absolutely convinced that there are some things that are just bad and also inexplicably popular. I haven't played many of Bethesda's games, but I have played a lot of Skyrim and you're right that it's not very good. But what it is is pretty unique. It doesn't do anything particularly well, but it does offer something that other games don't. It's similar in that way to The Sims or GTA. A mediocre FPS will be ignored and forgotten because there are a ton of them and they're all trying to do basically the same thing. But if you want the kinds of games Bethesda makes then they're pretty much your only option, and that gives them some value. The first Star Wars movie (episode 4) isn't some world-shaking piece of art, but it's a pretty fun movie. There's nothing wrong with it, and when it came out it was also pretty unique. I don't think any of the others are as good, and I certainly wouldn't say that A New Hope is perfect or anything, but if you really can't see why anyone would enjoy watching it then I wonder if maybe you just don't like the genre? Are there other, similar movies that you do like? And I think you're just plain wrong about Harry Potter. When you say Harry Potter isn't well-written, what do you mean exactly? 'Cause I hear that complaint a lot but I don't think I've ever heard anyone elaborate on it, and I think they're actually pretty well-written. That doesn't mean that everyone's going to like them, but if the complaint is that they're badly written then I'd like to know why you think that.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 02:36
|
|
|
Harry Potter is poorly written for a ton of reasons. I read all the books again last summer in an attempt to be objective again but I was constantly unimpressed with a ton of things. I'd have to go and at least scan through them right now to give actual concrete examples but overall there are a few themes that drag the whole thing down. Harry is not a good protagonist, he is A protagonist, but not an interesting one. Your normal protagonist has to, by definition, affect/drive the plot. The plot should hinge on his actions and his decision making drives the conflict, he doesn't need (and honestly shouldn't have) complete control over the plot but he has to at least exert some action. Harry does practically nothing across all 7 books. There are a few moments where he gets to do a thing but it's not nearly common enough. You could argue that the trio of Ron/Hermoine/Harry are meant to be a collective protagonist where they work as a unit but alot of times they don't. I think it was book 4 where Ron was made at Harry for basically no reason for 80% of the book and just straight has no involvement. And even if you take the generous outlook that the three of them are collectively filling the role of a good protagonist then why is Harry, who gets the most page-time by FAR, the least interesting of the three who brings nothing to the table? He's the know nothing audience stand in character, like a Luke Skywalker, but where Luke goes out and learns and masters something and becomes a hero Harry just kinda farts around for 7 books while the antagonists fail to kill him. There is very little control over rising/falling action. You don't need to do the standard 3 act thing (though really if you're as bad at pacing/plot as JK is please just go read the hero's journey and copy it word for word until you learn something), but the books are all over the place. They're adventure novels at the heart so you'd expect some action scenes interspersed with some hum drum and an overall sense of rising tension for some core conflict. Yet most of the time nothing is happening. In multiple books 80% of the school year goes by with nothing happening and then somebody tries to kill Harry in the last week of the year and fails, book over. In chamber of secrets we have an example of what a good sort of rising action feels like, a series of murders makes you feel the rising stakes of the problem at hand while the protags are busy doing detective work to try and figure out whats going on. It's the closest any of the 7 books comes to actually having a coherent structure. Tying into the previous point JK is very clearly writing off the cuff for alot of stuff (which is fine, by-the-seat-of-your-pants writing is a distinct and valid style), however she doesn't respect that the things she's explaining are going to be around for SEVEN books and you should probably take the time to fine tune some of this stuff. I don't think the magic needs to be explained in detail or anything, they're children books and that'd be boring, but at no point do the students actually learn any magic in a wizard school? Quidditch makes no sense and book 3 introduces a time travel mechanic that is so blatantly deus ex machina that the start of book 4 is 'oh we destroyed all those so the author doesn't have to write about them'. You can write off the cuff, it's how I do it, but you have to go back and handle this poo poo in editing. Even for children's books you can make a better book if you take the time and figure some of this poo poo out behind the scenes even if you don't put it down on paper. It adds verisimilitude, it makes your world feel real to the people who read it and that is almost always a good thing even for fantasy novels. The books are very non-serious serialized adventure tales for children and the gimmick/theory is that they are supposed to grow up with the readers so that if book 1 is for 10 year olds book 7 is for 17 year olds and it just doesn't really work very well. Book 1 is mostly nonsense stuff happening to a character who has no control over anything (it's very much like the hobbit in this regard except the hobbit is mostly just a series of vignettes and halfway through Bilbo DOES get his moment of heroism and comes into his own). This is absolutely fine for a stand alone book and I'd have none problems with it but it makes an incredibly shakey foundation for a whole series. Book 7 is just downright boring because JK had no idea how to handle this search for the mcguffins so it's mostly camping and nonsensical arguing between the characters because evil thing is evil and we have to introduce conflict in someway. I have so many words about how much I dislike Harry Potter. 
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 03:05
|
|
|
Tiggum posted:I haven't played many of Bethesda's games, but I have played a lot of Skyrim and you're right that it's not very good. But what it is is pretty unique. It doesn't do anything particularly well, but it does offer something that other games don't. It's similar in that way to The Sims or GTA. A mediocre FPS will be ignored and forgotten because there are a ton of them and they're all trying to do basically the same thing. But if you want the kinds of games Bethesda makes then they're pretty much your only option, and that gives them some value. I think that pretty much sums up the appeal of bethesda games in a nutshell. They don't do much particularly well, but they offer something no other games do, and they are fun.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 03:13
|
|
|
I feel like Bethesda is just coasting off of the success of Morrowind at this point. That, while flawed, was an incredible game at the time. Vvardenfel was enormous and the game world was unique and insane. Oblivion tuned down the crazy but fixed a lot of mechanical issues with Morrowind. While more advanced graphically it just didn't have the same oomph. Skyrim diluted what made the Elder Scrolls unique down so far that it was basically just a generic fantasy setting that said "here are some Elder Scrolls things because we own the IP." It was forgettable and bland but very pretty.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 03:20
|
|
|
Here's the truest statement about bethesda. They are the only people who make the particular type of game that they deliver. That makes them the only shop in town to get what, for a ton of people, is a super enjoyable genre. They are also absolutely trash at making that genre good and tons of developers could do an actively better job but nobody is interested in laying down the money to compete with that behemoth. Bethesda lately has just made games that fail to be actually good at what they're trying to do. An easy example is FO4 would've been better without the mock RPG elements tacked on, the core of the game is very obviously roaming through the dilapitated streets of boston, shooting, looting, and exploring. Thats fine, but the RPG stuff actually gets in the way of that. So you end up with this sorta lame system stapled to a half completed core that could be so much better.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 03:23
|
|
|
Agent355 posted:Here's the truest statement about bethesda. In the case of Fallout 4 they're just coasting on how god damned incredible the first two Fallouts were. 3 was pretty "meh" and New Vegas was very, very good. Fallout 4 is a buggy pile of garbage with entirely too much disconnected bullshit stapled on. Fallout is a great IP that people really want new games in but Bethesda is kind of making GBS threads on it at this point. I don't think these are problems specific to Bethesda specifically; the games industry is in kind of a bad state. They aren't willing to pay competent programmers so the games are buggy but all you really have to do to make AAA money is poo poo out another title in a popular IP. Like you said nobody is willing to pony up the dough to create a new IP to compete with the old ones. Even if they did it'd be "so you made a Fallout game?"
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 03:32
|
|
|
Agent355 posted:Harry is not a good protagonist, he is A protagonist, but not an interesting one. Your normal protagonist has to, by definition, affect/drive the plot. The plot should hinge on his actions and his decision making drives the conflict, he doesn't need (and honestly shouldn't have) complete control over the plot but he has to at least exert some action. Harry does practically nothing across all 7 books. There are a few moments where he gets to do a thing but it's not nearly common enough. Agent355 posted:You could argue that the trio of Ron/Hermoine/Harry are meant to be a collective protagonist Agent355 posted:I think it was book 4 where Ron was made at Harry for basically no reason for 80% of the book and just straight has no involvement. Agent355 posted:And even if you take the generous outlook that the three of them are collectively filling the role of a good protagonist then why is Harry, who gets the most page-time by FAR, the least interesting of the three who brings nothing to the table? He's the know nothing audience stand in character, like a Luke Skywalker  Agent355 posted:There is very little control over rising/falling action. You don't need to do the standard 3 act thing (though really if you're as bad at pacing/plot as JK is please just go read the hero's journey and copy it word for word until you learn something), but the books are all over the place. They're adventure novels at the heart so you'd expect some action scenes interspersed with some hum drum and an overall sense of rising tension for some core conflict. Yet most of the time nothing is happening. In multiple books 80% of the school year goes by with nothing happening and then somebody tries to kill Harry in the last week of the year and fails, book over. Agent355 posted:but at no point do the students actually learn any magic in a wizard school? Agent355 posted:Quidditch makes no sense Agent355 posted:and book 3 introduces a time travel mechanic that is so blatantly deus ex machina that the start of book 4 is 'oh we destroyed all those so the author doesn't have to write about them'. You can write off the cuff, it's how I do it, but you have to go back and handle this poo poo in editing. Even for children's books you can make a better book if you take the time and figure some of this poo poo out behind the scenes even if you don't put it down on paper. It adds verisimilitude, it makes your world feel real to the people who read it and that is almost always a good thing even for fantasy novels.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 03:32
|
|
|
Agent355 posted:Here's the truest statement about bethesda. Breath of the Wild absolutely blows Skyrim out of the water in every way
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 03:39
|
|
|
Agreed but it's not really the same thing. Not all big wide open world games are going for the same feel.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 03:43
|
|
|
I think people need to stop saying a book is "poorly written" or a writer is "a hack" when what they actually mean is "I didn't like it". It is well written for what it is. It is not trying to make deep philosophical points about humanity like a classic piece of literature. It is very well written for the genre it lives in. I'm not saying that just because it is aimed at young people it doesn't have to be good - there are plenty of young adult fiction that is just plain bad. Harry Potter isn't one of them, and to say it is and just offhandedly dismiss its success makes you sound elitist, like "all those plebs don't know what they are talking about, unlike I, the literature connoisseur". It is not perfect, and it does have some unlikeable characters and things that maybe could have been cut out or written differently, but it is what it is and it hasn't become so popular for no reason. I feel the same way when people call authors like Stephen King (or to a lesser extent, Dean Koontz) a "hack". Yes, he has flaws (can't write black people dialogue, bad at endings), but he's a very good writer in that genre. Whether you think that genre is "worthy" or whatever is irrelevant. You have to judge a book for what it is/tries to be, not what you think it should be.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 04:50
|
|
|
Guy Goodbody posted:Breath of the Wild absolutely blows Skyrim out of the water in every way I don’t feel like they are even remotely comparable experiences. Yes BOTW is a better game but they don’t offer the same thing at all.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 05:05
|
|
|
Wonderwall by Oasis is one of the best songs of the '90s. Kiss from a Rose is up there too.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 06:19
|
|
|
Ego-bot posted:Wonderwall by Oasis is one of the best songs of the '90s. Kiss from a Rose is up there too. I think everyone who has a friend or lives in a dorm or something with someone who is learning guitar is conditioned to hate wonderwall because that's all they seem to play. Over and over. Usually just the beginning 30 seconds or so. That's not the song's fault though i guess.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 06:22
|
|
|
Quidditch very deliberately makes no sense. It's meant to be parody of dumb, arcane rules in sport because Rowling was annoyed by an ex-boyfriend. That might have been a bad idea but it wasn't an accident.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 10:25
|
|
|
Doctor Spaceman posted:Quidditch very deliberately makes no sense. It's meant to be parody of dumb, arcane rules in sport because Rowling was annoyed by an ex-boyfriend. I'm not saying she intentionally designed a functional game, but she did leave enough of the details unspecified that it's quite possible to figure out ways to make it work (as well as it being a parody of real-world sports and a device for giving Harry something to be really good at). So yes, if you look at it and say "this game is dumb" then you're not pointing out a mistake, that's the joke. But also, you're not giving it the benefit of thinking about how it could work. You're coming at it with the preconception that either Rowling is dumb or that it's a joke and therefore can't also make sense. If you want to look at it as a joke, it works fine. If you want to look at it as a supposedly plausible sport then you should put a bit of thought into it and not just assume it's doomed from the start. Either way "quidditch is dumb" is not a good criticism of the Harry Potter series.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 10:37
|
|
|
ToxicSlurpee posted:In the case of Fallout 4 they're just coasting on how god damned incredible the first two Fallouts were. 3 was pretty "meh" and New Vegas was very, very good. New Vegas is a far better modernisation of the older games, but it remains only ok. For my own PHUO, Fallout 4 was a better game, because a suitably detailed LP of New Vegas would have been a better use of my time than playing it.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 10:43
|
|
|
yeah I eat rear end posted:I think everyone who has a friend or lives in a dorm or something with someone who is learning guitar is conditioned to hate wonderwall because that's all they seem to play. Over and over. Usually just the beginning 30 seconds or so. Nothing ruins a party more quickly and completely than a white guy with a guitar, and I'm including extremely emotional fights.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 12:53
|
|
|
Doctor Spaceman posted:Quidditch very deliberately makes no sense. It's meant to be parody of dumb, arcane rules in sport because Rowling was annoyed by an ex-boyfriend. I am convinced that she had seen Salute of the Jugger beforehand. The post-apocalyptic dog skull game bears too many similarities to Quidditch to be a coincidence
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 13:01
|
|
|
Harry Potter is at its core a boarding school series, and following the protagonists through the school year and their relationships with other students and professors is the whole point. The whole "defeating evil wizards" bit is just set dressing, and could just as easily be "solving a crime" or "convincing Hermione's parents to get a dog". They're not fantasy novels and thus not bound to the hero's journey. Read "St Clares" or something if you want to get a feel for the genre.
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 13:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:48 |
|
|
Since we are doing this: Bewitched is set in the Harry Potter universe and is a better representation of witches and warlocks in the new world than that weird horrible Bear totem mess she came up with. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOFdNWPP04
|
|
#
?
May 16, 2018 13:46
|
|
