SuperMechagodzilla posted:

watchin barbu

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Ok, so: Matrix references. Lots of Matrix references.

The movie takes place inside the mind of the character Gloria, a Mattel employee. Gloria lives in "the real world", which is not the actual real world, but "reality" as depicted in what's explicitly a 'meta' advertisement starring various Hollywood actors. In other words, "Gloria" is actually America Ferrera, playing herself, playing Gloria - the fictional mascot who is set to become the new face of the Mattel company. This is how the movie cushions its messages: first by saying it's only a toy commerical, then by saying that it's all just this one person's silly fantasy within the commercial.

So, don't be fooled; we need to interrogate exactly those premises. But, given that we already agree that corporations are bad, any criticism of the film comes down to our ability to examine Gloria as she [strike]invents Flamin' Hot Cheetos[/strike] unironically reenacts the "Lisa Lionheart" storyline from that ancient Simpsons episode.

Like, where are Trans Ken, Wheelchair Ken, etc.? That's a rhetorical question, because the answer is simply that Gloria didn't think about that. It wouldn't fit into her conception of the Barbie brand, where Ken is (or should be) a vehicle for cisgendered girls* to safely confront harassment and microaggressions through parody. The "Kendom" thing clearly reveals that Gloria has no clue what kids actually like, outside her wheelhouse of "Barbie, but Weird Twitter". No way are Kendom products actually selling that much, even as ironic purchases.

In fact, isn't it kinda odd that there are effectively no children in the movie at all?


*The film's 'colourblindness' on such issues as trans rights leads to some odd scenes, like when Gloria makes Doctor Barbie stand up and... express generic criticism of tropes in romantic comedies? The elephant in the room is that Mattel wouldn't dare make Ken even subtly transphobic.

MacheteZombie posted:

Nwo looking ken

Cojawfee posted:

It was an accident. They did Earring Magic Barbie and that was successful and Ken was failing, so they decided to try Earring Magic Ken. When they went out to research fashion trends at that time, they accidentally went to gay clubs and researched gay fashions.

Android Apocalypse posted:

Why settle for being a Ken when you can be an Allan?

Macdeo Lurjtux posted:

What did the father say in Spanish at the end?

QuoProQuid posted:

i remember sucker punch more for being extremely horny and garish more than any other qualities.

QuoProQuid posted:

don't want to turn this into the snyder thread, but i eagerly await the day when i am able enjoy one of zachary's movie instead of a bunch of straight men sitting me down and explaining to me what a deep and insightful skewering of nerd culture im watching and how all the male gaze-y shots are actually empowering

quote:

The negative backlash against Sucker Punch is especially peculiar considering that many accused the film of condoning the very subject matter that the film was critiquing. Snyder has repeatedly and consistently stated in interviews spanning from 2011 to 2021 that the film is an indictment of the misogynistic parts of geek culture that objectify women. In a post-Me-Too world, it is considerably easier to understand and articulate the subject matter of the film. Oscar Isaac’s bone chilling performance as the villainous Blue Jones can easily be seen as emblematic of the powerful studio executives, producers, CEOs, etc. that have been exposed as subjugating women (or people from other genders) through coercion or brute force. Blue Jones sees the women in the brothel as his possessions, and his obsession with trying to own and violate Babydoll is deeply unsettling.

CapnAndy posted:

Right, they're not meant to be, but they are. Even the asylum level of reality is sexier than it should be. (Also the movie isn't helped by its recursively fictional/allegorical structure and the actual plot being kinda nonsense.)

Lobster Henry posted:

I have to admit, I was surprised by the extent to which I thought the movie did manage to make a virtue out of its bluntness. Usually I’m disgruntled when the subtext becomes text in a big grandstanding speech, largely because it punctures my smug self-satisfaction at comprehending media all by myself.

Roger Ebert posted:

"Starship Troopers'' is the most violent kiddie movie ever made. I call it a kiddie movie not to be insulting, but to be accurate: Its action, characters and values are pitched at 11-year-old science-fiction fans. That makes it true to its source. It's based on a novel for juveniles by Robert A. Heinlein. I read it to the point of memorization when I was in grade school. I have improved since then, but the story has not.

The premise: Early in the next millennium, mankind is engaged in a war for survival with the Bugs, a vicious race of giant insects that colonize the galaxy by hurling their spores into space. If you seek their monument, do not look around you: Bugs have no buildings, no technology, no clothes, nothing but the ability to attack, fight, kill and propagate. They exist not as an alien civilization but as pop-up enemies in a space war.

Human society recruits starship troopers to fight the Bug. Their method is to machine-gun them to death. This does not work very well. Three or four troopers will fire thousands of rounds into a Bug, which like the Energizer Bunny just keeps on comin'. Grenades work better, but I guess the troopers haven't twigged to that. You'd think a human race capable of interstellar travel might have developed an effective insecticide, but no.

It doesn't really matter, since the Bugs aren't important except as props for the interminable action scenes, and as an enemy to justify the film's quasi-fascist militarism. Heinlein was of course a right-wing saberrattler, but a charming and intelligent one who wrote some of the best science fiction ever. "Starship Troopers'' proposes a society in which citizenship is earned through military service, and values are learned on the battlefield.

Heinlein intended his story for young boys, but wrote it more or less seriously. The one redeeming merit for director Paul Verhoeven's film is that by remaining faithful to Heinlein's material and period, it adds an element of sly satire. This is like the squarest but most technically advanced sci-fi movie of the 1950s, a film in which the sets and costumes look like a cross between Buck Rogers and the Archie comic books, and the characters look like they stepped out of Pepsodent ads.

Richard Schicksel posted:

There is not, indeed, a base they fail to touch. The enemy is never particularized, so we never have a sympathetic thought for them. And scattered through the movie are online equivalents of those old-fashioned, pseudo-documentary short subjects designed to keep the home front heated up--cheerfully massed soldiers stretching as far as the lens can see, overheated descriptions of atrocious enemy behavior, that sort of thing.

Pretty funny. But not always very funny. For Starship Troopers contains an unexplored premise. There are two classes in this futureworld: civilians, who have sacrificed voting privileges for material ease, and warriors, who earn the right to rule by their willingness to die for the state. In short, we're looking at a happily fascist world. Maybe that's the movie's final, deadpan joke. Maybe it's saying that war inevitably makes fascists of us all. Or--best guess--maybe the filmmakers are so lost in their slambang visual effects that they don't give a hoot about the movie's scariest implications.

Rarity posted:

The Barney movie had better be a deconstruction of industrialisaton's effect on indgineous wildlife

Arsenic Lupin posted:

I stand by that. Characters in Barbie are consistently saying out loud, and not leaving you to infer it from the plot, that the patriarchy is bad and has bad effects on everybody. This is something I don't remember seeing before in blockbusters. I see women treated shabbily, perhaps saying they're treated shabbily because they're women, out loud, but I don't remember seeing a blockbuster that was entirely, explicitly focused on (a kind of) feminism. I have seen blockbusters where people monologued about justice, or patriotism, or were [the events of the movie] really worth it. I haven't seen a monologue about how much it sometimes sucks to be a woman.

L.H.O.O.Q. posted:

70mm film is male coded.

BioEnchanted posted:

Because most men are 70mm long.

Fangz posted:

Did you see the interview from the screenwriter who said that actually he went with that uniform because "everything German is cooler"?

I keep keep saying this. People give Starship Troopers a lot of credit because of Verhoeven but he was only one member of the creative team and there were other people who were involved much longer than he was.

Fangz posted:

Yes, Neumeier is the one I'm talking about. Neumeier loves the book.

Etc. There's a wide gaping gulf between Verhoeven's view of the project and his scriptwriter's view. See also all the sequels which only involved Neumeier.

Panfilo posted:

So is the movie woke or anti woke I've lost track
https://twitter.com/theserfstv/status/1686836974228029440?t=60CsmOs8P3vF3v1M2rJngA&s=19

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

You’ve come to a sort of backwards conclusion here. The joke with Ricky Bobby preferring the infant Jesus is that he’s rejecting the adult Jesus did all that intensely political stuff. And, you know, that’s in the context of Ricky Bobby being basically this parodic avatar of American conservative culture.

Cessna posted:

Lobster Henry posted:

Wait til you see the film “Barbie” (2023) and get a load of the jokes about Zack Snyder and the propensity of many men to drone on about the godfather. You’re gonna be so mad!!

L.H.O.O.Q. posted:

Fury Road, for all its right on political satire and feminism, visually worked on massive car chases, chrome, a guy shredding guitar riffs hooked up to a truck, empowered female characters who also happen to be models who also happen to not be wearing very much. There is such a thing as gendered aesthetics.

I’d say even Hidden Figures treads a ‘normal’ aesthetic line in the telling of the story and the setting of it that comes from a history of countless films about a minority character overcoming prejudice. That history of films is almost exclusively male in its tropes of story and feel. Colours, architecture, film grades, what have you, are gender coded. 70mm film is male coded. The Barbie movie starts in a colour saturated full physical set of actual Barbie houses and stays that blunt throughout. Whatever else, I can’t think of another massive blockbuster that’s done it that full on before.

L.H.O.O.Q. posted:

Sure. 70mm is used as a technical shorthand for the supposed importance and depth of the film. It’s technical dick swinging, similar to audiophile pure silver speaker cables and the like. That kind of craftsmanship fetishism tends to be reserved for male ‘auteurs’. A female director can use 70mm, sure, but in that they would be taking on a masculine aesthetic role.

These things are changeable and boundaries move over time of course.

Albatrossy_Rodent posted:

The conversation about whether the screemwriter or director had more say in Starship Troopers is exceedingly silly. No matter the ideologies of the specific creatives, you can watch the movie and it's ridiculously obvious within thirty literal seconds that it's mocking blind jingoism.

People bringing up "Starship Troopers is secretly critiquing fascism" like it's a fun fact is always annoying. It's not a secret, it announces its intentions immediately and loudly.

notenome posted:

Verhoeven is weird because he's extremely unsubtle and yet is frequently misunderstood, even by accomplished critics like Ebert (love him or hate him). Pretty much everyone nowadays accepts that Starship Troopers is a satire of fascism but Showgirls is still in critical limbo.

Breetai posted:

Bolding mine.

Panfilo posted:

https://twitter.com/lucacadamo/status/1688275481236246529?t=9e_WCymAV97I70G2WurSzQ&s=19

Breetai posted:

Not getting that Starship Troopers is satirical is the product of either being young enough that you haven't developed the capacity to examine the media you consume at all, or of being very stupid.

There is a scene where a recruitment officer tells the protagonists as they are signing up that "The mobile Infantry made me the man I am today", and then turns in his chair, revealing that he is missing three limbs.

The camera loving lingers on it for gently caress's sake.

How you can see that and not wonder if anything else you are watching should perhaps be viewed through the lens of satire is completely beyond me.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

That's exactly the point, I'm pretty sure.

Rarity posted:

Welcome to the SMG experience

Eason the Fifth posted:

He's been doing this for 20 years without missing a beat, and although it comes off as absurd a lot of the time, I absolutely have to respect the long-term effort here. Ngl,

is a hell of a read I never would have come up with, but it's supported by the text as far as I can tell, and is a more insightful critique than any actual movie critic would provide. SMG is CD.

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Splint Chesthair posted:

Two ovens, no toilets.