Ask Lemmy

Much of this thread be like...

Pretty much all of the Avengers films.

They aren’t engaging in any way. The characters are unintelligent and full of self importance. The whole franchise is Just loud noises and shark jumping.

Not one comment in here about Lord of the Rings.

Which I agree with. Amazing movies. Glad everyone's on the same page.

For me, it's James Cameron's Avatar. Visually stunning, especially for its time, but the story has to be the most cliche, predictable, boring, lazy piece of writing to ever have existed. It's like they held an environmentally conscious 11 year old at gun point and made them write a story. The cigar chomping military guy working for corpos wants to pilfer a beautiful planet for its resources with disregard for the native populations that live there. Where have I seen that before? Oh yeah, ALL AROUND ME, EVERY FUCKING GOD DAMN DAY. Get an original idea.

Fuck this stupid piece of shit dumbass movie. It's intellectually insulting. It's a disgrace.

/endrant

I like these threads when people complain that “old classic movie” is formulaic and trope ridden or unoriginal… seemingly forgetting these films set the tropes, formulas and genres that all subsequent film makers hopped-on. That’s why, in retrospect, it appears clunky.

In another similar thread somebody said the band Queen were boring… yeah, maybe now. But fifty years ago when they first released? Not so much.

Marvel movies. Yes all of them. They're trash. It's just cgi slop, badly written one-dimensional characters, cliché tropes, formulaic stories, plotholes bigger than meteorcraters and brainless action sequences. A cashgrab.

A saw a couple; I gave them a fair chance. They're all the same. The appeal is beyond me. Brainrot at its finest.

Deadpool.

I’m not sure if I absolutely hate it, but I definitely don’t get the hype—especially with Deadpool and Wolverine. There were some funny bits, but I feel like most of it is almost Family Guy-tier reference humor.

The plot feels as unimportant as ever—there are no real stakes or anything significant going on. It’s all about the "jokes," fourth wall breaks (which get tiresome almost immediately), and Ready Player One-level "recognize the character" moments.

Maybe the last part is the biggest reason why I don’t connect with it. I’ve never really been into comics outside of film and television. But I feel like that shouldn’t be the main driving force for a movie anyway—or at least not for a good movie. Like, Ready Player One was fun, but not good.

James Cameron’s Avatar series.

Then again… Does anyone actually like it? It seems to have all this online hype when it’s such a boring visual spectacle.

It’s like the opposite of the other Avatar franchise, which wasn’t a commercial hit, and seems less popular on paper, but seems to have a massive cultural impact.

Saw.

It is on the very tiny list of movies that I am actively angry I watched because I'm never getting that time back. It is one of the single worst movies on "Tell don't show" that I felt like I was being actively gaslit by the writers because what they were telling was opposite of what they were showing.

"Jigsaw tricks people into killing his victims" says the cops, and says all the people watching the movie. NO. He kills people and gives them a potential for a way out. Setting up a maze with cutting wire and a door sealing off if you don't make it in time isn't "tricking someone" it's killing them with extra steps. It's like blaming fucking landmine victims "Well if they didn't step there they'd be okay". Legit the logic that movie gives I find my blood pressure rising just going into it again.

And the ending. I guess spoiler if you haven't seen the movie, I'm not gonna bother to figure out the formatting for it so here's your warning to stop reading. The surprise twist was why my friends made me watch this movie, the logic above was explained and how clever Jigsaw was they said I'd like it. I'm not a horror guy but I love Scream because holy fuck it was clever and well done. Saw, the victims are looking for where Jigsaw is watching them and I just said "He's the dead guy in the middle of the room." and questioned why would I come to that so early in the movie my reasoning was simple. It was a dumb movie that was up its own ass so much to say that it was clever that was the obvious "clever" haha we got you option it could be. Anything else would have actually been clever.

I compare Scream and Saw so much. Scream is a very clever movie masquerading as a dumb movie that deconstructs a genre and pulls of a fantastic twist that if you didn't see it coming will shock you and when you go back there's all sorts of clues. Hell, part of the twist is realizing they put thought into the killer instead of just "slasher villain #85" that the genre had done for so long, but if you know what's happening the movie is winking with you with such amazingly dumb and clever things like "He's behind you Jamie". Saw is a dumb movie that masquerades as smart, it wants to be clever and philosophize at you and wants to pull off a twist that is unearned because there's no clues for the twist, so unless you watch a lot of movies and realize this one is up its own ass, of course you're going to be surprised. It's like a guy who built a tesla coil and (think he) knows how it works and no one else does so he shows up in a cheap top hat and a wand and expects everyone to applaud like he's David Copperfield. Sure, everyone loves tesla coils, but that reaction is unearned.

From what I understand from others who've seen the rest, even what little cleverness goes away on the character and it just becomes a show to watch more elaborate ways to see people get hurt. It's the only way I can comprehend that the series is loved by as many as it is. I work in healthcare, I can see plenty of that on the day to day basis.

Harry Potter.

Before JK went mask off, I had dropped the books about half way though for being increasing annoyed with how they ended. Never any change to the status quo except Harry actually regressing in character development. I watched the first movie, but that was around when I dropped the books and never looked back.

I was able to just quietly keep my opinions to myself, but with with JK becoming increasing unhinged with both her tweets and books, I haven't felt the need to be polite with the "separate the art from the artists" types. Especially when they just assume that you're a fan if you don't correct them.

Anything by JJ Abrams. He only knows how to start his shitty mystery box plots but never finish them.

Interstellar. That ending was so unbelievably dumb that I can't even stomach the rest of the movie thinking about it.

I know it's got rave reviews, a stacked cast, Nolan directing. Plenty was pretty, cool concepts, high stakes scenes. But that ending... shudders

Napoleon dynamite was fucking garbage and don't think it should have ever existed. No humor and barley anything. Honestly feel like the movie rubber was better

Ready Player One was so bad, but this is a rare instance where the book is worse than the film. At least the film has visuals the book is just cringe and rememberberries.

Elf.

Once you’ve seen the first 3 minutes and get the premise, then the entire rest of the film is so predictable in its jokes and situations that I derived absolutely zero pleasure from watching it and it just grated the entire way through.

Films can be funny because the initial premise leads to really entertaining, unexpected or clever situations… or a film can super straight up and shallow in its humour.

I really don’t get why Elf is so incredibly popular.

Ted.

Juvenile fratboy humour done badly, very badly with lots of fan services to get the brainless cheering.

Made me laugh once in the first few minutes (I can't even remember the joke) and walked out of the cinema after about an hour.

ITT: people using the downvote button as an "I disagree" button when the entire point is to name popular movies that you dislike. Sort by controversial for the real answers, I guess.

For me it's Alien. Maybe because I'm not a horror movie buff, but I do like sci-fi and yet it just didn't really do anything for me. I somehow found Prometheus to be more engaging.

Disney's Hercules.

Because it completely butchers greek mythology. Of course, that's to be expected from a kid's movie (especially Disney) but I've been a greek mythology fan from an early age and this movie really disappointed me as a child.

Forest Gump. The 1994 Best Picture nominees were some of the most highly competitive the Academy has ever had, and they went with the one that was just a straight-up terrible fucking movie. It has no value except as nostalgia bait for Americans and propaganda for those who want to believe in the myth of American individual exceptionalism.

Its musical score is also probably the worst thing I've ever had the misfortune of performing in an orchestra. Dull and repetitive.

And its most famous line is straight-up bullshit. I've heard the book does it differently, but the movie puts "something that kinda sounds deep to a 14 year old" over a level of rationality that stands up to 20 seconds of thought from an average person. A box of chocolates tells you precisely what you're going to be getting.

The Greatest Showman is a masterclass in style over substance—a glittery spectacle that sacrifices depth and integrity for catchy tunes and flashy visuals. Beneath its feel-good facade lies a shallow, formulaic narrative that romanticizes P.T. Barnum’s exploitative history while failing to give meaningful voices to the marginalized characters it claims to celebrate.

The musical numbers, though undeniably infectious, feel jarringly modern and out of place, prioritizing audience pandering over authenticity. Despite its popularity, the film’s sanitized themes and lack of emotional nuance reveal it as more empty circus than cinematic triumph.

If you’re looking for substance, you’ll find the tent empty.

Some Nolan stuff.
Inception: I understand it, it's just extremely convoluted and dumb.
Oppenheimer: It's a movie with 95% dialogue, and he decided to put loud droning music under every conversation so you can barely hear the people talking.
The dark knight trilogy: I just can't take batman seriously in it. The voice is so silly, and the pointy ears just look really out of place in this very serious take.
Anyway, I do like some of Nolans movies, these are my pet peeves.

Snowpiercer. The movie was just a weak attempt at socio-economic metaphor, with an absolutely terrible premise, bad effects, action sequences shot mostly in the dark, weird pacing, and goofy characters. It seemed like a live-action Anime, and I hate Anime. I sat through that movie, the whole time wondering how and why it got such great reviews.

Saving Private Ryan

I like Spielberg, but compared to others in the war drama genre like Band of Brothers or Full Metal Jacket, SPR is laughably bad.

The tone of the movie, trying to be more inspirational than realistic, was awkward at best. Acting was pretty mediocre, probably because the script and characters were 1 dimensional.

It completely disregards the historical context of the war. You could watch this movie and learn absolutely nothing about the history of WWII.

Now Band of Brothers. That was some amazing retelling of true war stories. It wasn't trying to be inspirational. It was just honest about the chaos and brutality of war. That made it harrowing heartbreaking, infuriating, and inspirational all at once.

Borat.

Supposedly it's a comedy, but it's completely devoid of humor.

Titanic.

The hype here was insane, when I finally saw it the experience was.. underwhelming. Such a boring slog of a movie, mediocre CGI when disaster finally struck and that stupid end.. Get on the piece of wood that is obviously big enough to hold you both, you dolt.

Only upside is that I watched it on TV, so apart from some hours of my life I'll never get back it didn't cost me anything.

I went into Bridge to Terabithia at 11 years old excited to watch two kids have a fantasy adventure and I still haven't forgiven it

The John Wick series

Watched them all over the course of a weekend - its the same fucking moving over and over and over and over again. The amount of disbelief I needed to suspend got exponentially larger so by the time I got to the last movie I just couldn't take it anymore. There is no real plot or any development of characters, it's just implausible fight scene after implausible fight scene.

I think if I put a few months between each movie I wouldn't have this opinion - on their own the movies can be mindlessly entertaining but all together was too much for me.

Elf.

2001: A Space Odyssey was rightfully not well received when it was first released. It is incredibly well crafted in terms of visual effects and has about 30 minutes of great, tense sci-fi in it. Shame about the other six hours (perceived) of tedium. Even in the late 60s people in ape costumes smashing things while the soundtrack goes aaaAAAaaUuuAaa wasn't interesting for more than a minute, don't even get me started on the stewardess, docking, moon journey or the damn screensaver. Which, yes, is iconic, but 20 minutes?

It does make sense that people would get high before subjecting themselves to this and then put on a Pink Floyd album during all the tedious scenes.

2010 is a better movie. It starts with dialogue and knows when slowing down increases tension.

It's kind of interesting how the reasons people dislike things range from "it sucks" to "here is a carefully constructed argument showing why the film's thesis promotes toxic ideas of etc etc"

Also interesting when someone's reasons for hating something are someone's reason for loving it. Like a review says "It's full of sad gay shit" and one chunk of people are going to boo and the other are going to perk right up.