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Vinny the Shark posted:Saw it today. This movie was loving great. Sounds like a really hackish combination of sadism and sentimentality. Can't wait to see it tomorrow.
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Mar 6, 2017 11:16
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So until very last minutes of the movie, Logan was a mediocre but still entertaining diversion. Before the very end, there were two parts that made it bad. First, the undercurrents of sadism, with comic book heroes turned pitiful old men writhing on the floor. Second, the was the thick, syrupy sentimentalism (which would once or twice immediately turn int more gruesome violence). They were bad things, but as an comic book ex-fan I would be lying if I said that seeing Wolverine mutilating people in all of its R-Rated glory wasn't entertaining enough and cathartic. But in the end.... well, this movie has Wolverine die, after so many adventures of varying quality. It wasn't a particularly impressive death scene, but not bad either. But after that, he gets an improvised funeral. All the mourners are kids, and one of the kids is mournfully squeezing onto his Wolverine action figure. It's a minor detail, but it really loving sums up the movie. After all, it's the last we actually see of Wolverine, since he's dead and buried.. It's so loving terrible that everything good and bad about the movie is now filtered through that one tiny detail, because it gets to the heart of what the movie is about : the death of an action figure.. However, if you want to see Wolverine cut up some people, you're probably going to enjoy this movie.
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Mar 7, 2017 20:39
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PJOmega posted:How can you be so spot on in your Rothfuss tear-ups but so incredibly wrong here? It's kinda baffling. Maybe you don't see it because in this scenario you are Jivjov 
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Mar 7, 2017 21:40
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:The last sequence of the movie is Logan going from The Wolverine, to Shane, to James Howlett, father and X-Man. You forget one step - action figure.
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Mar 7, 2017 23:47
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Hollismason posted:I really hope this is super successful and that people pay attention to how different this is from other super hero stories. Like I want a goddamn Gotham by Gaslight movie. It's a mediocre action movie with loads of sentimental drivel combined with.extreme sadism. Professor X needing help to go pee is not going to inspire any filmmaker. e: Steve2911 posted:If DC takes anything from this it'll be 'we are justified in having Batman kill whoever he wants, and we should make it bloodier'. Well the gruesome action was one of the more entertaining parts of the movie, so hopefully they think just that. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 09:20
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Snowman_McK posted:It's also really well structured. That's one odd thing to praise Deadpool for, because its structure was really un-cinematic and led it to feeling very anemic. The hero's lowest point and greatest struggle are contained entirely in flashback, while the main narrative ends up being very, very barebones (hero attacks villain, villain kidnaps hero's girlfriend, hero fights villain). This ends up diminishing the movie's conflict. The movie feels like a two part television pilot, where the flashbacks formed the first episode until they were cut up between parts of the second episode. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 09:50
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Snowman_McK posted:That's sort of my point. Every first movie in a comic book thing has ended up feeling really similar, and Deadpool did something else. I, and plenty of other people, found it worked well and felt a bit different. The smaller scale was, again, nice. I've seen enough world ending columns of light, and this one's main struggle was about Deadpool vs his own appearance. "Scale" has nothing to do with this. There are movies that are way "smaller-scale" than Deadpool but still feel like cinema. Like Snatch or The Hangover. Logan is roughly the same scale in terms of plot, and it has way more modest setpieces. It's not a good movie, but it's still cinema. Deadpool just feels like television, which is terrible for a movie. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 13:08
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Snowman_McK posted:Can you and will you explain what makes it feel like television? It can't be the anemic plot, because plenty of films, including a bunch of classics, have anemic plots. How strikingly inambitious everything in the movie is, and the structure and the pacing of the story. Aside from the few action scenes, there was almost nothing that couldn't be replicated on television. The scene of Wilson finding himself an outcast comes to mind, in particular. The budget didn't seem to help this: the evil lab and the X-Men school would easily pass for TV sets. Blind Al specifically comes off across as a character written as if they were being introduced in a TV pilot and going to be expanded on later. The most striking moment of television-level storytelling is how there is no absolute "low-point" or ultimate trial to the heroic struggle, except in a flashback (the cartoon animals part is the closest thing in the main narrative). It's such a basic thing, which is why it's absence is so glaring. There's no sense of escalation or overcoming obstacles. And it's not that it's a comedy, plenty of comedies have serious struggles and conflicts. e: and even by the standards of comic book television it's tepid: Legion exists, after all, to dominate Deadpool's niche. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Mar 8, 2017 |
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Mar 8, 2017 14:31
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CelticPredator posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_HuFuKiq8U All this shows is that Deadpool is not even good television.
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Mar 8, 2017 21:39
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Laura's character stopped being interesting the moment she started speaking.
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Mar 9, 2017 13:55
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It's true though, her being a feral child was more interesting than her being just unwilling to speak.
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Mar 9, 2017 14:35
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GigaPeon posted:Brutal and efficient action. A good movie. Not at all. The most shocking thing about the movie's violence is how bland it quickly becomes. It's an incredibly violent movie but hardly any of it registers after the first two action scenes, so that a child shooting someone's skull wide open doesn't even merit a blink. It's a surprisingly safe movie (and thus hardly leftist in style). Nothing indicates this as well as the moment it's revealed that Laura isn't actually a feral child but just unwilling to speak. It's a very safe choice.
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Mar 17, 2017 09:37
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coyo7e posted:Have you ever considered that it might be you who's desensitized - and that the movie itself was pretty okay while you just might need to talk to someone face to face about your inability to empathize? That's a pretty interesting leap of logic there - I was talking about how the movie's violence is not unsettling or discomfiting (except in how numbing it is), but you've made the connection that I must not be able to empathize with others (specifically, fictional characters). The latter is not hard at all with Logan, a movie that includes an expertly edited video appeal for the well-being of Third World children. The truth is that Logan's violence is bland despite the sheer amount of it. Logan's and Laura's "claws" are a good example - an animal's claws are frightening because they rip flesh apart, but adamantium claws are extremely clean killing devices. They cut as quickly as the camera does away from the gore. They're rarely as uncomfortable as Wolverine's awkward, pained walk after the carjacking gone wrong. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 10:16
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Brainiac Five posted:But that relies on a teleological assumption that the meaning of violence in this movie is to be shocking rather than blasé My evaluation is based on what the movie does as a story. The blandness of its violence makes the viewer numb rather than aware, unable to appreciate it even when the horror of violence is such an important theme.
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Mar 17, 2017 15:36
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Brainiac Five posted:Your evaluation is on the story, but actually on the political implications of treating violence as a dull thing. Okay, whatever, your politics are (heh, heh) liberal identity politics counter-revolutionaryism, blah blah blah. The politics are part of the whole of Logan's story. My criticism is essentially that Logan isn't leftist enough despite the anti-corporate trappings. Leftism (and great art) depend on an individual's conscious awareness. Leaving the audience unaware of the nature of violence and power is bad. There's a massive contradiction with the Shane quote according to which man can't live murder, but all the murder Logan and the kids commit is actually ultimately just and necessary. Also bland violence in a gory action movie is really boring. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 15:49
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Brainiac Five posted:The nature of violence that must be explained to people is that violence is exciting and sensual, but also bad? Yes. That's what violence is like. The violence in Logan is really numbing, in contrast. It makes child soldiers revolting against their corporate masters kind of dull.
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Mar 17, 2017 16:15
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Brainiac Five posted:So how often do you have a boner at the thought of punching someone? I think you've lost focus on 2017 comic book movie Logan.
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Mar 17, 2017 16:26
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Brainiac Five posted:You made a general statement about the nature of violence and now you've decided to make a cowardly retreat from defending it. If you did not wish to do either of those things, I recommend a Communications 101 course at your local institution of higher learning, which will help you say what you mean. Earlier you even stated that maybe the intention with Logan's violence was to be blasé and not shocking. The definition of violence as something "exciting and sensual, but also bad" was yours, and it was a fairly accurate one. But according to you, it's bad to make violence exciting and sensual in movies because then people might enjoy it. You're defence of Logan is that it's boring and that it's safer that way. The truth is that people are actually enjoying Logan's violence just like how soldiers enjoy FMJ and Platoon, and being blasé about it probably helped that. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 17:14
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Brainiac Five posted:The argument I am making is that your argument is politically nonsense, that it relies on a totalitarian view of the arts, and that it is derived from placing art within a straitjacket and concluding the art is bad if it doesn't fit. My totalitarian-based argument is that good leftism and art make people conscious and aware, while Logan's violence is so bland that the hardly registers. All the ad hominems seem like a very severe overreaction to such a statement. Now your argument seems to that it's completely okay for leftism and art not to make people conscious and aware, which seems a bit counter-productive for both. A True Jar Jar Fan posted:I personally found most of the film's violence pretty disturbing throughout the whole thing, the complete desperation made it hit me a lot harder than the blood and gore did. Logan feels like he's on his last legs even when he's winning and that seemed like a testament to good action. The bleakness of the near-future was convincing, at the very least. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Mar 17, 2017 |
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Mar 17, 2017 17:54
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Brainiac Five posted:Your argument relies on the assumption that all art is necessarily didactic and propagandistic, and art which is not such is inherently bad. No it doesn't. My argument is that good art makes it's audience aware - aware of its artifice, its content, its themes, themselves, the world, etc. Logan doesn't really do that. This idea that movies should be didactic is your own imagination at work.
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Mar 17, 2017 18:20
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Brainiac Five posted:You haven't offered any contradiction, just went "nuh-uh" and then repeated yourself. Your fallacy here is assuming that "making the audience aware" can only be accomplished through lecturing. In truth there's a lot of things art can do to make people aware and reflective (which does include didacticism). Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt is probably the most famous explication of the idea. Action movies tend to be made too absurd to watch with a straight-face, demanding some distance. Logan has blandly numbing violence and syrupy sentimentality, which aren't too good.
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Mar 17, 2017 18:44
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Phylodox posted:Logan very obviously isn't a typical action movie.... Each act of violence is costly. The movie doesn't shy away from that. That actually sounds like a typical action movie.
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Mar 18, 2017 01:16
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Fargin Icehole posted:I don't know. Me? i wasn't desensitized. When X-23 went all angry, I was kinda terrified at this little murder machine Her primal screams was the most unsettling part of the movie, certainly more so than the action. Which is why walking back from her being a feral child was such a weird choice. I watched John Wick, and it was a great counterpoint in how effectively it used action choreography to a certain effect. It was so restrained and professionally deliberate that it quickly becomes sickening how coolly the hero offs countless people, making it both exciting and repulsive. Logan's fight choreography is unremarkable, and doesn't evoke the animalistic motifs the characters embody. X-23's Caerbannogian jumps and flips are the obvious exception to that. When Logan returns in top form on a berserker rampage, what changes is that he runs a lot and jumps once. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 13:58 on Mar 18, 2017 |
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Mar 18, 2017 13:41
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Jedit posted:No, it doesn't. The typical action movie follows a standard plot of "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy picks up unfeasibly large arsenal and kills 300 people". The hero takes hits that don't matter in the next scene, he may get sweaty but he rarely gets tired, and if he ever bleeds it's in a way that says "the stakes are REAL!" when we know they're not. Logan doesn't do any of that. RealFoxy posted:But I feel like this movie could only exist because of all the movies before it, good or bad, just to swerve expectations. The idea thar Logan is somehow subversive seems surprisingly common. It's fairly safe in form and content. For example, it predicted and appeals to resigned liberal fantasies of the Trump era. The heroes are mostly impotent to change a world ruled by corporations and (as noted above) their white trash henchmen. Logan even has to go along with obnoxious rich WASPS as a limo driver. This resignation is replicated in a microcosm with the Munson family who are powerless against the Big Agri and their white trash henchmen. There's no burden of anything changing or getting overthrown, which suits a sense of resignation.
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Mar 19, 2017 15:31
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ungulateman posted:maybe if you ignore the part where they escape the corporation imprisoning and experimenting on them, kill dozens of their security forces, and flee to Eden (and then Canada)? The heroes lost a long time ago, and are just waiting to die. The children were just a loose end, and in the end disappear into an imaginary place. The infrastructure that made all this possible still remains, like how the robot trucks and harvest machines remain utterly indifferent to what happens. It's a pretty obvious end of history statement, where there's not really any hope for change anymore, which is why it appeals to liberal types. The Wolverine action figure is mostly unrelated to that, but remains absolutely hilarious. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Mar 19, 2017 |
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Mar 19, 2017 16:12
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Bill Dungsroman posted:It's like not remotely weird and one of the major plot point/character arcs though? Well, the more accurate wod would be safe. Before she starts speaking, there's a sense of tragedy to her character: her ruthlessly slaughtering people expresses how broken she was by Logan's superhero world. Then she starts talking, she's actually just a normal kid who is also a super-efficient killer. The same applies to all the other kids. By this point the audience is well desensitized to the sight of children killing people, so that the whole tragedy of it becomes a non-issue - instead the issue is that Laura wants daddy to stay with her. It's a narrative sidestep that throws the focus away from the unsettling question of violence, towards that inauthentic quoting of Shane (like A Tasteful Nude points out, the kids are already corrupted by violence). Bill Dungsroman posted:I agree, the fight choreography in Logan was unremarkable, except for the times it was remarkable. Well said. The remarkable choreography is in the minority. Logan's berserker rampage is only memorable because it's less bland, i't's still just Logan running at people in a line. ungulateman posted:It's like someone holding a cross during the crucifixion, imo. The kids are reclaiming Wolverine and the X-men as a symbol from the corporation that's trying to control them. That's the kind of logic that makes the action figure so funny: toys as religion.
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Mar 20, 2017 10:13
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Samovar posted:Good heavens, it's like the character has some kind of an ability which allows them to heal from the damage that tactic would occur. You seem to think that the issue is about tactical realism or something, It's just that the action is bland.
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Mar 20, 2017 12:57
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All the talk of Wolverine-as-myth becomes incredibly facile once you actually consider what that myth is.
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Mar 28, 2017 11:33
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ungulateman posted:All the talk of Jesus-Christ-as-myth becomes incredibly facile once you actually consider what that myth is. Wolverine is not a profound figure, let alone as profound as Jesus Christ. I mean, really, that's the comparison you're going to go with? BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 15:43 on Mar 28, 2017 |
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Mar 28, 2017 15:41
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:Look, I see why you don't like the idea, but think about it for a second. If not superheroes, then what would you consider the modern equivalent of mythic heroes? Historical and semi-historical figures, like Jesus, who are figures of common and shared cultural significance in our myths. Certainly not superheroes, since they're products of mass market pulp fiction rather than collectively produced mythology and folklore like Gilgamesh, Achilles, Odysseus, etc. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Mar 28, 2017 |
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Mar 28, 2017 17:40
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wyoming posted:Superheroes are most definitely myths, like I can't imagine what pedantic definition of myth you're using that doesn't concern a larger than life story of good vs. evil. "A traditional story, typically involving supernatural beings or forces, which embodies and provides an explanation, aetiology, or justification for something such as the early history of a society, a religious belief or ritual, or a natural phenomenon." - OED The lesson from that is that myth is rather opposed to superheroes. Myth appeals to sense of history and community, while superheroes are recognizably artifacts of pop culture that generally evoke a sense of play. We experience mythical figures as historical or semi-historical figures. In Logan superhero comics are explicitly recognized as fabrications. Of course, it's not like pop culture can't adapt myth, like with 300. Children don't find myth in toys. They find myth in their schoolbooks. e: Of course, there's an argument to be made here that the comic books are the kids' schoolbooks in the movie. There's also the uncomfortable part that people prefer to ignore, which is that this likens them to Alexander Pierce. wyoming posted:And I mean yeah, which is why I mentioned toys of soldiers and cowboys in my first post. Cowboys and soldiers exist, just not as our stories mythologize them. Which is why the comics are so great in Logan, he fills that role, and the kids using the co-ordinates in the comic to create their own Eden is beautiful. Not really, since it's not depicted at all within the movie. Community is alien and unknowable in Logan, so there is no Eden. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 06:30
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wyoming posted:"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about, and that's what these clues help us to find within ourselves." Okay, so you've appealed to Campbell's insipid pseudo-spirituality. You're making the argument that superhero products are fundamentally vehicles of spiritual satisfaction akin to the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. This seems more like a condemnation of modern culture than anything, as in how the children in Logan are so deprived of a normal childhood that they cling to comics as their scripture. And lol, you reject the purpose and meaning of history to defend funnybooks. Hodgepodge posted:Ever read Beowulf, Bravest? It's not very much like Logan, except for the most basic of similarities like "hero fights monster". BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Jun 2, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 12:32
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That's not particularly superheroic though, especially since he's not a crime-fighter with a colourful costume and alter ego. And the actual deed spoken in the flyting is that he swam for five days and five nights in a contest, only to get into a fight with sea-monsters that he slew. Now, I cannot recall any fight that you entered, Hodgepodge, that bears comparison. Hodgepodge posted:You also seem to assume that comic books are too lowbrow to derive "spiritual satisfaction" from. I'm very much in doubt of the notion that you have any substantial familiarity with the works you're mystifying here. I specifically said superhero products, not all comic books. e: There's maybe Snyder's Superman and that's about it. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Mar 29, 2017 |
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Mar 29, 2017 14:42
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Hodgepodge posted:Well, Beowulf is out to establish his fame (at least initially), and is wearing armor, etc. He isn't wearing spandex, of course, but in a sense he'd be most comparable to Tony Stark as superheroes go. No, I don't think Beowulf is much like Tony Stark, to be honest. ruddiger posted:'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Alas, good friend, what profit can you see In hating such a hateless thing as me? There is no sport in hate when all the rage is on one side. In vain would you assuage Your frowns upon an unresisting smile In which not even contempt lurks to beguile Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate. O conquer what you cannot satiate!
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Mar 29, 2017 16:27
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It should've been a life-sizeed cutout or a dakimakura of Logan. Breetai posted:This was the best-scripted, best-directed, best-acted superhero movie of all time. It approached the subject with an expertly-tuned degree of gravitas, and does a wonderful job of painting a world through overheard snippets rather than exposition dumps and monologues. It's probably the superhero movie that credits its audience's intelligence the most as well, and is by all means a very well-crafted bit of media. So the takeaway was that it had *~world-building~*. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 05:40
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Breetai posted:So nobody here has ever seen a movie that is technically proficiently made, receiving critical acclaim, and that they recognise is well-crafted, and yet didn't particularly float their boat for whatever subjective personal reason? Maybe people are bemused at someone calling it "the best-scripted, best-directed, best-acted superhero movie of all time" when it's barely superheroic as already pointed out. It's no Man of Steel. "The best superhero movie" even seems like a surrender, a tacit acknowledgement that it can only thrive under a very specific label It's not even superior to Road to Perdition, a competent but forgettable comic book movie about father and child navigating a dissolute world of violence.
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Mar 30, 2017 12:39
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Alan_Shore posted:Are you saying Man of Steel is better than Logan? I am also saying that Logan isn't even as good as Road to Perdition. Brainiac Five posted:Based on his posts so far in this thread, he believes Man of Steel fosters a proper Volksgemeinschaft like mythology does, while Logan only offers Gesellschaft relationships. Now, I would dispute these assertions, but I doubt there's any point in objecting because that would mark you as outside Volksgemeinschaft. Actually Man of Steel is good because of how well it translates the promises and potential of comic book fantasies into exciting cinema, and Logan pales in comparison as a sci-fi superhero adventure. Trying to treat pop culture as myth is misguided, and it's ill-served in that role. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Mar 30, 2017 |
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Mar 30, 2017 18:12
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Doflamingo posted:Those parts were great because they showed how desperate everyone was. Not really, it was rather practical. An action hero using a gun isn't particularly impressive in itself.
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Apr 1, 2017 12:26
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Snowman_McK posted:If you ignore context, sub-text, text and the circumstances under which it took place, you've got a really good point I love that you didn't include cinematography there. It's really about the complex subtext of Wolverine using a gun, instead of his claws, like other characters. e: Like the subtext with Logan using a gun isn't even about desperation. He doesn't use guns normally because it doesn't fit his fighting style that involes getting close and personal. Shooting the corporate guy (mid-speech) is Wolverine saying that he doesn't really care about him. BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Apr 1, 2017 |
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Apr 1, 2017 13:35
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Alan_Shore posted:It was all about desperation. He had nothing left, he had to use a gun for the first time ever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o9c1w8G94g
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Apr 1, 2017 15:20
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