I’ll go first. Mine is that I can’t stand the Deadpool movies. They are self aware and self referential to an obnoxious degree. It’s like being continually reminded that I am in a movie. I swear the success of that movie has directly lead to every blockbuster having to have a joke every 30 seconds
Shrek 2 is mid as fuck and the cover of I Need a Hero was its only saving grace. I really don’t get why people ham it up as one of the best films of all time.
I love the first Dune book, and I love the goofy 80’s Dune movie, which was pretty close to the book in terms of getting a lot of the internal dialog in place. But I hated the new Dune movie. I didn’t like how sterile and empty they made the palace, or the weird anus mouth design of the sand worms. Or the silly use of balloons to help lift harvesters. I very much didn’t like how they made Lady Jessica an emotional mess, instead of being in control of her outward emotions, as she was trained to do.
They also screwed up the personal defense shields REAL BAD. The idea that the shields react to kinetic energy, so a fast moving project from a firearm would get stopped, but a slow moving blade would pass through. The fight near the end had people being killed by fast sword strikes by hitting the shields, it was just so jarring and lazy. They also completely misrepresented who and what the Sardukar are. Based on how many people loved the movie, I have an unpopular opinion. Though I found that most people who absolutely loved the movie hadn’t seen the original movie, or read the first book, so they didn’t know anything to color their impression.
Though I found that most people who absolutely loved the movie hadn’t seen the original movie, or read the first book, so they didn’t know anything to color their impression.
Can confirm. I haven’t read the book or watched the old movie and I absolutely loved the new one.
Heck, did I write this in my sleep? 100% my impressions as well. The ‘pretty but soul-less’ feel, the Lady Jessica constantly looking about to burst into tears, the glossing over things… A personal peeve was the conversation Leto had with Paul back on Caladan; don’t even remember what it was about, but remember grumbling out loud in the cinema because it was just so… one-dimensional. Something like ‘I know how you feel because I felt exactly the same way back in the day!’ Oooohhh buggerrrr ooffffffff! Where are the deep complicated powerful characters, the complex politics, the strong relationships and love? Nah, we’ll just blah blah…
It bothered me that the scale was barely conveyed. For example, I don’t think it becomes clear how massive the troop movement is when the Atreides take control of Arrakis. I think that would have been fairly easy to illustrate visually by doing a better wide angle shot of Arrakis in space with thousands and thousands of ships heading towards it. I mean, the scene with the ships emerging from the sea as the Atreides leave Caladan is nice, but it seems like it’s just the ruling family and their court moving - not a gigantic force that can permanently occupy an entire planet. But maybe I just don’t remember it correctly.
That bothered me a ton too. The movie gave the impression that JUST the Atreides and their entourage moved to Arrakis, the palace was so empty, it definitely lacked the grandiose scale the original story had.
I also feel like because the movie didn’t explain as much as the book or original movie did, people just assumed the new movie was profound and deep, and loved it because of it. I asked a friend who loved it but hadn’t read the book or watched the 80’s movie, who the Sardukar are. He answered that they were a religious order who were good fighters. Again, the new movie just doesn’t give enough context or answers to stuff.
I also can’t express how much I didn’t care for the new Worm design.
Agreed. The whole movie felt sterile, without any emotional involvement. I’ve read the books, saw the OG movie, the TV series, and all of them did the revolt against atriedes right. This movie plodded along so slowly, that I forgot they were fleeing for their lives. Also, Zendaya. I don’t understand her popularity. She’s got this weird squashed face so having her portray the love interest, Chani, is weird. I don’t get her as MJ in Spiderman for the same reason.
If you didn’t love the first one, I doubt you’ll like the others. I haven’t read all of them yet, but everyone I know who has read them all always started by enjoying the world of the first one first.
Is it a popular opinion that people didn’t like Predator 2? Nearly everyone I know loves it. Not as much as the original mind you but they still love it and so do I.
I thought Alien 3 was popular. I’ll give you an unpopular opinion: Alien 4 was pretty okay and I’d watch it again. Predator 2 is an overall beloved movie, just like Terminator 2.
The movie is set almost entirely aboard the Titanic, barring a brief couple scenes in port, and the framing device set on a research boat in the present day.
The Titanic is realized in excellent detail. The sets, costumes, special effects are all exceptionally well done.
Most of the runtime of the film is dedicated to a teenage love story between Kate Winslet’s Rose and Leonardo DeCaprio’s Jack. Honestly I think it holds up. It drags a bit here and there (spitting lessons?!) but if Romeo and Juliet is a great love story, Titanic is fantastic.
The sinking sequence holds up amazingly well. The set pieces are of extremely high quality and bring the disaster to life in ways only James “puckered asshole” Cameron can. Life-size sets that actually flooded and tilted, miniatures, and a restrained use of CGI come together beautifully.
The choice to set this fictional love story into this historic disaster setting is perhaps somewhat dubious.
The soundtrack, especially Celine Dion’s utter caterwaul of the title theme can be a bit much, and was severely overplayed in the years following the movie’s release.
The giant blue diamond was a pointless macguffin that failed to pay off. It was given(?) to her by her fiance that she hates, she decided to have her portrait drawn in the nude wearing the diamond for some reason, retrieving the diamond from the coat the fiance had put on her was the reason why the psychotic guy was shooting at them, she only realized she had it when aboard the rescue ship, and then she throws it overboard at the end…for some reason. Audiences reacted pretty poorly to the thing, didn’t stop them from merchandising it.
Overall a pretty well-crafted movie with some questionable choices, made by a canker sore of a person.
I actually really disagree about the whole diamond thing…
In addition to it being the primary plot device to get rose to actually tell her story, it plays a pivotal role in the story aboard the ship & is a key element in one of the main themes of the movie (money doesnt buy happiness).
Regarding the 1st part (wearing it for the drawing)… the drawing was intended to be malicious… effectively a way to tell cal “we’re over”… hence the note that accompanied it saying “darling, now you can keep both locked in your safe”. It was effectively a vulgar display to cal showing that she cant be “bought” (essentially what her arranged marriage was… selling her as effectively a slave so that her mother would remain wealthy).
Regarding the shooting scene, id argue it wasnt about the diamond at all, but about what happened just moments before… jack and cal were both trying to get rose on the lifeboat. It was super macho aggressive where they were both kind-of attempting to one-up eachother to win her affection (hence cal removing jack’s blanket and giving her the coat). This is also when cal gave his “i always win, one way or another” remark. Rose jumps back onto the ship and right into jacks arms (passionately kissing in front of cal). Enraged by this, cal chases them with the gun… id argue, this is cal’s last ditch attempt of “winning” (attempting to force them apart through murder). I think the comment about the diamond was just more of an afterthought once the adrenaline wore off.
Regarding throwing it overboard, what was she supposed to do? Give it generously to bill paxton? Rose’s entire presence on the modern ship & all of her actions are purely malicious. Bill paxton getting the diamond is literally the worst case scenario.
Think of how rose got involved… Bill paxton was showing off the drawing on tv to essentially say “see, we arent grave robbing, we are simply preserving history”. Rose saw right through that though due to her knowledge of where the drawing was (in the safe). Her phone call to bill paxton saying “have you found the heart of the ocean?” Wasnt a sincere question, but more of a “i know exactly what youre doing” threat. She is there to stop them, not reward them… her excessive luggage & wasting a whole day of their time to ramble about old grandma stories prove that. (on a ship like that, schedule is everything and wasting a day to listen to old grandma stories is most certainly a worst case scenario that will cost them millions).
Sure in theory, she could sell it, but doing so would create 3 issues…
1- the sale of such a priceless artifact would garner tons of attention. Everyone with even the slightest potential stake in it would likely come after her with an armies of lawyers (think insurance companies, cal’s heirs, the UK government/royal family, bill paxton’s company, etc)… Sure, enough time has passed that different statutes would limit their effectiveness in achieving success, but she (and her family) would be put in a precarious position of spending years entangled in legal battles while simultaneously being both “rich” and “not rich” (cant exactly buy a lawyer with a diamond that may or may not be yours after the fierce legal battles)… its really being stuck between a rock and a hard place.
2- it would go deeply against her moral compass. Her entire life story was essentially being enslaved by wealth & escaping/ living an amazing life it by essentially faking her death to become poor.
3- The diamond is really the only tangible item associated with her past life, jack’s entire existence, and an event that played such a pivotal role in completely changing every aspect of her life. likely not a single day goes by where titanic isnt in her mind… Considering this, id argue the sentimental value of such an item likely holds more value to her than all the money in the world.
Personally, I always saw her throwing such an item in the ocean being similar to putting a cherished possession in the casket of a deceased loved one… frankly, i think it is the single most profound scene in the movie. Ive watched the movie literally hundreds of times & that scene is without fail when i start crying. The solitude nature of the act coupled with the look of relief on rose’s face just get to me. Its like shes been holding her breath for the last 84 years & that moment was the first time she was able to finally breathe.
The Exorcist (original) is one of the most boring horror movies I’ve ever personally sat through and I have no earthly idea why it caused such a stir at the time. Whole movie is a snooze fest until the last bit, but I found it less scary and more humorous.
When so many people have done similar things but have improved and refined those things before you see the original, its very hard to have that same reaction to it.
Like people shitting on Greta Van Fleet for sounding like a Zepplin 2.0.
Have multiple generations come since the last time zepplin was on tour? Yes.
Does the world not get to enjoy people who sound like that live in concert because zepplin existed and there are unmistakable similarties? Kinda shitty if so
To understand this you have to know that at the time when “Jaws” came into cinema there were people leaving cinema during the film because they “couldn’t handle it”. There were even newspaper articles about how the movie allegedly traumatized people. The same goes for movies like “The Shining”.
When “The Exorcist” came out people were not prepared.
Cillian Murphy was good, the historical figures were well represented if you know a bit about the history of quantum mechanics, and the overall movie was a disappointment compared to the hype at the time, but it will be forgotten. That doesn’t mean it SUCKED though.
Sucking is subjective. The same film can not suck for you and suck for BoastfulDaedra. That’s what an unpopular opinion is about - if you disagree with them, you should upvote them!
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original) was a terrible film. The only reason people say it is the greatest classic horror film is because of nostalgia. The acting was horrible and it wasn’t scary in the slightest (I understand it was probably for the time).
its a terrible movie but its a fucking amazing film.
if you ever watch it again, look at its edits and specifically the gore. You never actually see Leatherface inflicting any damage on someone. It’s always a trick of the mind that you see the violence but it never actually happens on the screen.
I agree its kinda lame but it is actually an amazing creation.
They used pigs blood and maybe there’s a cutting but it would have been framed in a way that it just makes you believe it’s someone’s leg.
I studied film in college and that film was one of our subjects because of the diy and extremely low budget it had while creating something that is still considered peerless
I could get on board with this. Both were amazing at their best and pretty mediocre at their worst. I’d love to see what Carpenter could have done with some bigger budgets. Although maybe the results wouldn’t have been as good. He seems like the sort of director where necessity breeds invention.
Yeah exactly, it seems like a such a shame that The Thing (1982) didn’t find its audience until years later. Because I feel like that’s as close as we got to seeing a John Carpenter film with a big budget and it was great.
I like a lot of the campy horror movies that typically have 5 or below on IMDb. One of my favorites is Sorry About the Demon (2022) on Shudder/AMC+, which currently has a 4.9 rating.
I find it hard to use IMDb ratings as a metric for picking a good horror movie. The scores sometimes seem like they’re just all over the place, when looking at the horror genre. I just watch a trailer, maybe read about it a little, and check it out myself. I would’ve missed a ton of good horror flicks if I had gone with ratings alone
Didn’t see Sorry About the Demon, but “campy horror movies that typically have 5 or below on IMDb” makes my brain scream Dark Angel: The Ascent and Modern Vampires.
Last year’s DnD movie is the best film of the last ten or so years. It succeeded on every level, except in the box office.
My hypothesis is that Hasbro insisted on branding it “Dungeons & Dragons” to push the brand, and non-gamers figured it wasn’t for them. If they’d have made the main title “Honor among Thieves”, all the game nerds would have seen the DnD logo, and others wouldn’t have been turned off *. As it stands, people will find it and it’ll become the new “Starship Troopers” that bombed but shines forever in retrospect.
I wouldn’t give it that high of praise, but I went into Honor Among Thieves not expecting anything and thought that it was a lot of fun. It doesn’t do anything exciting but it’s just a fun little flick. I’m not a DnD person, but I also enjoyed the references that I did get (which purely come from being a casual Magic: The Gathering player, so I knew some things from the DnD set that came out the other year).
This wasn’t an art film… but it had an original plot, was genuinely unpredictable throughout, awesome, imaginative action sequences, epic high fantasy, great comedy (I laughed my ass off), and real emotional tenderness (well, I cried). Often weaving these together in the same scene. I think you have to judge a movie based on what it’s meant to be, and for a fun high fantasy jaunt, this was a monumental achievement. IMHO.
I think it deserved to do better at the box office but I disagree calling it that good, primarily by counterexample (which I’ll get to). It had an entertaining cast, an entertaining plot and some good twists but it wasn’t unpredictable and the audience it was best for was the audience who recognised the constant homages to the experience of playing DnD - my primary example is the scene of the main character breaking out of prison completely unnecessarily.
The movie was made by Hasbro to sell dungeons and dragons (which, to be fair, you do mention) and I think as a fan of the ttrpg it did a great job of capturing that experience as a movie. I can’t call it the film of the year though, let alone the decade.
What makes you say it’s better than, for example, Blade Runner 2049 or Avengers Endgame, both being movies similarly sprouting from established brands? I would argue Dune is significantly better (talking about movies with a brand) also.
Outside the established brand space, you see movies like JoJo Rabbit, Marriage Story and Power of the Dog. All of my examples have been off arbitrary top 10/top 50 lists of the last 5 or last 10 years and I’m honestly curious about why you think the DnD movie beats all of them?
Edit: in saying that, upvoting because this is almost certainly an unpopular opinion
Bladerunner was pretentious film school drivel. It’s a montage of poetic, symbolic imagery that makes no sense as an actual narrative. Dune was far, far superior because the mythic reality is tied together into a classic hero story, and the whole thing is fantastical enough for Villaneuve’s whole thing to work. I can’t wait for the second one.
Avengers Endgame was just more of the same MCU formula, trotting out the usual tropes on an ever-increasing scale. Pretty good, as far as all that goes, but really devoid of any tension or depth, IMHO. Guardians 1 is a far better film.
As for those others, I haven’t seen them, though they’re all on my list. I’m open to any of them being better… of course my opinion will be limited to movies I’ve actually seen. But aside from glib hot takes, there’s not much meaning in comparing completely different films. My essential point is that DnD is an utterly superb movie, and I’ll maintain that in its freshness, surprising depth, and comedic sparkle, it’s at least the best movie of its kind in a long time.
Completely agree with your last two sentences, mostly. I can’t personally call it the best movie of its kind just because I don’t watch a lot of movies in the same vein. But you’re right that it’s hard to compare across genres, and the movie was definitely far better than I expected. I think the last couple of years have generally had some great releases.
I only watched DnD recently, mostly just accidentally at a friend’s place. Also thought it was really good, well made, funny, a really pleasant surprise all around. For me, it reminded me of what I felt about some 90s movies - a movie made to be fun, not to make you feel deep feels, think deep thoughts, or shock in the shockingest way of all. Just fun. That is not a bad thing…
Add comment