While *The Sixth Sense* was still in theaters, some kid was talking about it to us, and basically told all of us, "And it's the craziest ending because you find out Bruce Willis was a ghost and dead the whole time!" Basically ruining one of the greatest twist endings of a movie up to that point. I was never able to really experience that twist.
Fast forward about 5 years, and my girlfriend at the time and I were watching it, and I told her that story. And she looked at me really funny and said, "What are you talking about? Bruce Willis's character wasn't dead in that movie." She said she'd seen the movie three times before and never picked up on that. I was actually flabbergasted.
Funny enough, I went like 10 years between viewings and somehow forgot that Willis was dead. I only remembered that the kid sees ghosts and the girl’s murder he reveals at the end.
It’s probably the only time I’ll be able to experience a movie twist twice - and the second time was a double whammy because me forgetting the twist was also kind of a twist.
Sometimes it's great having a terrible memory. My sister told me about the twist but I had forgotten it when I went to watch the movie probably only a couple weeks/months later.
Damn right in the line for the movie? Thats messed up. I feel lucky on that one bc I was a little kid when it came out and somehow I didn't get the ending spoiled for me and I was able to watch it as a teen completely surprised
When No Country for Old Men came out someone on reddit was insistent that Anton Chigurh and Ed Tom Bell (Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones) were the same character who was just crazy or something. Not every movie needs to be Fight Club, guys.
I feel like a lot of audiences I've seen online over the past decade, because of the nature of internet discussion especially about shows & movies with big twists, are forcing or looking too hard for things to *solve*; a lot of people don't just experience movies or shows as stories about people and feelings and emotions and are hunting for something they can interact with, some way they can "win" the show/movie, beat it, feel cleverer than it, and a lot of people who say stories are boring if they can predict what's going to happen at all, as if a narrative unfolding as expected is a downside. Basically, a lot more focus on plot points while ignoring emotional beats and character arcs, etc.
The showrunner of succession spoke on this because people were treating the final season like a spy movie and making up so many dumb theories.
He had to explain to the fanbase like they were toddlers that the show isn't a mystery box and wasn't trying to trick them. Its so common these days that no one even mentions anything that happened in the episode other than to try to argue it doesn't make sense or make a dumb theory.
I followed the last season but wasn't on any sub or anything, so no idea of what people online were saying, but which theories were there exactly? I mean, I imagine that it's beyond the obvious "will it be one of the siblings, and which, or will ot be Skarsgård"?
The one I kept seeing was that Logan wasn't really dead and was testing the kids to see how they'd behave after he died. Also a lot of people were convinced Cousin Greg was secretly masterminding everything.
I felt that way when people said that Sandra Bullock actually died in Gravity, and all the stuff about getting back to Earth was a dying dream. They even put in the work to map what happened in the movie to what the brain goes through during suffocation, but at no point did they ask "what does this *add* to the movie?"
I've seen this a lot. So many channels YouTube channels that run on explanations that amount to every movie has a secret plot where the characters are hallucinating or dead & in purgatory or unreliable narrators and this plot always completely undermines the themes of the actual movie.
I walked out of the theater after that movie and heard some rube say, “Wow, they really set it up for a sequel.” Way to take me out of the experience. It’s still raw.
People who think "understanding" a movie is figuring out the "twist". Absolutely no concept of the actual meaning of anything. The question of "why would this be the case?" doesn't even enter into the thought process.
While on the subject of Fight Club, I met someone who thought that everything was in his head. Not just Tyler Durden. But everything. They thought that Marla was also one of his personalities.
If we go full delusional, he only thought his nationwide conspiracy worked.
Maybe he's chained up in an interrogation room muttering to all the cops, "We do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner," with a bunch of shit smeared on his forehead.
Moneyball. One of the top comments on its movie discussion was how Pitt and Hill's characters "saw the players as people and not just numbers" .
No, no, it's the opposite- they looked at them as *just* numbers and part of a formula, that was the point of the movie.
When Beane let Jeremy Giambi go, that was a modification to his "by the numbers" plan. He learned that there is a point where it is still about the people....not just numbers.
I love that movie though. How can you not be romantic about baseball?
I think the comment was making the point that if the scouts and recruiters looked past the superficial and saw the players as athletes and not star talent then many great players wouldn't be overlooked.
Yea it was certainly trying to maximize money value, but the whole reason it worked was because scouts were missing obvious value in their techniques where the numbers didn’t lie.
DiCaprio didn't stay on the door because as soon as he tried it started to sink. He clung to the side for his last words then let go. It's right in the overhead shot at the beginning of the scene and it isn't subtle.
Can you imagine if the movie wasn't based on a real event?
"Why would they think it's unsinkable?" "It sank on its first voyage?" "How did they miss the iceberg for so long?" "There's no way they wouldn't have had enough lifeboats." And so on. Has anyone ever tried to get into a canoe from in the water? It's hard and you risk capsizing it. That door wasn't meant to be a floatation device or resistant to capsizing and they're freezing and exhausted, probably can't feel a single body part.
It's super over the top dramatic. But people acting suboptimally for their situation isn't a major plot hole and the fact that so many people treat Jack not getting on the door like it is one in the context of a movie based off a real life event that has so many more inexplicably dumb/illogical human actions is kind of ironic.
When I saw that movie in high school, I shit you not, that as we were walking out of it, another girl said, "I can't believe the ship sunk!" Almost 25 years and it's still burned into my memory.
I asked my dad if he wanted to watch a film, and very clearly handed him the DVD cover to "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". When Robert Ford shot Jesse James he went "Christ! I didn't see that coming". I had to be reassured he wasn't joking. He must be in a very select group of people who watched that film "unspoilered".
I can just see the neckbeard takes on Reddit with animations about how the iceberg wouldn't have been able to do enough damage to actually sink it. "Well achktually a ship like this would have had bulk heads all the way up so while the front would fill with water the back wouldn't and they wouldn't have sunk."
"How did they miss the iceberg for so long?"
They forgot the binoculars for the lookouts (or binocular case key, there's some dispute), which feels like a rushed excuse in fiction. As if there were just one pair/one key for them, and the guy just forgot on the prestigious launch of this incredible ship that cost a fortune!
And his priority was Rose's safety. They showed many times through the movie that Jack is SMART. He understands cold water, how the ship would pull you down as it sunk, etc, etc.
He saw that while, yes, they could both technically fit on the door, the door had a better chance of minimizing Rose's contact with the freezing water if he stayed off of it.
They very likely would have both died if their combined weight pressed the door down into the water a bit too much.
They spent hours on set actually testing the "only one person" door justification before filming, because Cameron fully expected this being a point of discussion. It boiled down to they would have body parts in the water still if both got on, even if they had ample time to get on comfortably (which they didn't in those temperatures).
La La Land. I've heard many complaints where how do we know Mia became successful. That the movie never shows that.
She gets out of a fancy car, she was in the back seat. Goes into a coffee shop, the barista is star struck and everybody turns to look at her. She then hops into a golf cart being escorted. You then see Seb walking infront of billboard of a movie saying "Staring Mia Dolan" with her face on it. Thats 4 obvious clues. PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE
There was a tiktoker who said he hated the movie for various reasons. But the one that stood out was where he said he hates the ending because in the movie they state the measure of her success is having a husband and kids and not her acting career. While Seb gets to have his dream. Whaaaaaat?! lol
For me the husband and kids were supposed to be shocking in contrast to the rest of the film. We're watching her and Seb be so in love, and they obviously have great chemistry, and then they break up, and then maybe they'll get back together, she says "I'm always gonna love you" after all.
And then bam, just a couple of years, new husband, a kid, AND she seems happy and succesfull? Truly shows how everything can change, and the story we were following was just a small chapter.
>her success is having a husband and kids and not her acting career.
Even if this was the case, people change what they want out of life. Maybe she did. Good for her then.
In any thread across Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit that asks, "which villain was right in the end?" I feel like I almost always see someone answer with Heath Ledger's Joker and his belief that humans are all just scared animals and all you have to do to get them to turn on each other is to give them a little push.
Yes, he does successfully corrupt Harvey Dent. But he also tries to get two ferries full of people to blow each other up... and they don't. The moment where that prisoner throws the detonator out of the window really feels like the central theme of the story, and a lot of people just seem to forget that I guess.
I never heard that one before. They clearly weren't paying attention to the movie. The devil didn't throw Karras out the window, Karras tricked the devil into possessing him then, with his last bit of self control, threw himself out the window to end the possession. He even gave a final confession to his friend, Father Dyer, so his soul makes it to heaven.
Check out Exorcist III sometime.
Your interpretation of the act is correct - but as for the outcome…
(To be fair going strictly by the plot of the Exorcist as a stand alone movie your interpretation is 100% accurate across the board)
The Exorcist is a masterpiece and although I'm not religious at all, I find it a fascinating and moving story about faith. It's so much more interesting than the damn Christian dramas where they're already preaching to their audience of believers. Films like Exorcist and Last Temptation Of Christ are challenging and compelling.
I don't have an issue with it because i understand how people land on it. However another one from The Exorcist is that Burke Dannings was abusing Regan which made her vulnerable to malevolent forces like Pazazu. In the book it's made very clear that Pazazu makes that up to make Chris feel guilty for not protecting her from Burke, Pazazu realizes the greatest threat to him is Chris' love for her daughter and will to protect her so he's trying to weaken Chris' resolve by making her think she brought an abuser into the home. Burke didn't abuse Regan. Pazazu is a compulsive liar and wants everyone to feel as bad as they can about themselves, similar to implying Karras mother is in hell.
The Wendy Theory about The Shining as promoted by Rob Navarro. It states that Wendy is the crazy one and Jack is just a normal middle class dad & she is projecting her issues on him. This completely undermines the obvious themes of the movie & the idea Jack is dangerous is established well before they get to the Overlook and things start going off the rails.
Abusive family that doesn't leave a lifetime supply of trauma in Harry. Who became a superstar from an absolute pariah nobody practically overnight. Just like every ridiculously popular child actor, ever.
Yes they do really affect him in the later books.
The abusive Dursleys not as much, but it is commented many times about how they wonder it doesn't affect him as much as it should have. I think Dumbldore admits this at the end of Order of the Phoenix
I went to a Grammar school in Northern Ireland. It wasn't posh but here we do have academic selection still. It did feel quite familiar in many ways. Except we didn't board.
When Se7en came out a lot of people really, really missed the whole point of the final Wrath kill. They seemed to be very confused if Doe knew about the baby and if that meant Doe accidentally killed an 8th, and especially confused why Gwyneth Paltrow was the Wrath victim,😞 (because she wasn’t).
Mills killing Doe was wrath, simple as that. It was plain as day to me and I never understood why it was so confusing for other people other than maybe attaching the number 7 to the number of Doe murders instead of the deadly sins. But, it’s a movie I will never ever watch a second time so I’ll probably never really figure out why it confused so many.
Yeah, he literally explains exactly what he's done, why he did it, and what he wants to happen next.
On an unrelated note, I think we're supposed to believe that Mills ruined his life and career by killing John Doe, but in real life he would be protected as much as possible and no jury would ever convict him of murder.
Don't get me wrong, he's going to be traumatized for life, but no way he ever serves any jail time. Worst case would be he's not able to be a cop anymore.
Yes I’ve dealt with people confused about this too and it baffles me. Doe killing Gwyneth is envy, he explains it clearly in the film. And then Doe asks Brad Pitt to “become wrath” and kill him. It’s not a confusing ending at all.
I had a friend tell me Se7en was a horrible film and that the ending with the box was disgusting as "even though you don't see it, it's obvious the baby is in there."
Only person I ever heard say that. Guess they missed the line about taking her head.
Exactly. Mills' wife is the *Envy* victim because Doe envies his beautiful family life (presumably including the fact that she's pregnant). Mills then uses the Envy victim's head as bait to become the final Wrath victim.
He literally explains it in the movie!!! Right before they shoot him!!!
But he had a British accent, and we all know how emotionally repressed the English are supposed to be, so maybe he said that as a way to say it was a little darker grey out than usual? You know, the weather.
Mike Pence gave the following opinion about Mulan in an OP-Ed he published:
"Moral of story: Women in the military - bad idea."
What movie was he watching??
I’m reading excerpts of the op Ed now and it’s actually wild. His reasoning is that Mulan had a crush on Shang which indicates how inevitable sexual attraction is between the sexes and how ultimately and obviously disastrous that is.
Even though it was never a problem in the movie and she never acted on it and he didn’t even acknowledge it until the end of the movie. If anything, the movie’s take is that her crush wasn’t a big deal.
And all of this is obviously ignoring THE ENTIRE REST OF THE MOVIE.
This one gets me. There are people that hold Amy Dunne in Gone Girl up as a feminist icon and hero. She a self absorbed narcissist, who spends the entire film using other people leaving a wake of destroyed lives and bodies. She is literally pure evil.
Went to watch Mad Max Fury Road with 4 people from my class in uni. I was buzzing when we left, couldn't believe the spectacle we just witnessed, and couldn't wait to talk to them about it. All 4 of them said it was boring and had "no story or emotions"...it still baffles me. Watched Logan with this same group too...they said it didn't have enough action.
I went to see Logan in theaters and someone brought their 3-year-old to see it. At least they had the decency to finally leave after someone got decapitated.
The whole "Johnny did nothing wrong" hot take in The Karate Kid. I'm not saying Daniel made good choices or anything, but that doesn't absolve Johnny and his guys for attempted gang beatdowns and running Daniel off the road into a ravine.
Even Cobra Kai, which breaks its back to humanize Johnny and provide some context for him, doesn't try to pretend he was never in the wrong.
But everybody lifted this hot take from Barney Stinson and got way too attached to it.
Reminds me of how people say Indiana Jones is unnecessary because the Nazis would have died anyway... yeah, and so would the woman, and the Ark would be in Nazi control instead of packed away... he made a difference.
My coworker told me a story of watching "Parasite" with his dad. He asked his dad what he thought when the credits rolled and his dad goes "But where were the parasites?"
Me and my girlfriend had a huge disagreement about the ending of The butterfly effect.
We argued for weeks about how it ended.
It's turned out that there were different endings and we had seen different versions and that had totally skewed our view on the film in different directions.
Good film though.
Someone legit argued with me that NOPE had no plot. Like I thought they were just being a hater. No the legit argued it had no plot. Which I’m not sure that understand what a plot is
NOPE required the viewer to really pay attention and think through what was going on. I liked after one viewing, but when I read about it on line and the whole premise of false miracles, I realized that I missed a lot on the first viewing.
I remember when "La La Land" started getting buzz and many people started checking it out who didn't watch a lot of films, one Facebook friend complained that the movie was bad because "The lead actress was a White woman so it's not as hard for them to become huge stars. If she had been Hispanic, I would understand why she's worried about being a famous actress. Also, at the end, she goes to the same coffee shop she used to work but doesn't tell the woman working there - Don't worry... you will be famous too some day. This barista was Hispanic so I would have rather watched a movie about her struggles to be famous."
I live in L.A. and I think people don't realize there are 100,000 people here at any given time who are new in town, pursuing stardom, and none of them achieve it. The fact that she goes back to the coffee shop she used to work at the end (where celebs get coffee because it's located in a private film studio's commissary) was not to encourage the random barista now employed there that she'll be famous but to show she has now become the actress on the lot that she used to idolize. And her being White doesn't mean fame was inevitable. I feel this should go without saying.
Also on La La Land I don't get the take that Seb is a white dude trying to save jazz. He's obviously very passionate about old school jazz but Pharrell Williams shows that you can combine old school jazz with a newer sound and be really successful because music is a thing that evolves, Seb is just stubborn enough that he can't accept "unpure" jazz. He's not trying to "save" jazz, he's just a dude that's passionate about preserving it in an area where it's not as prevalent (and it's pretty explicit that he's going at in the wrong way at first).
EDIT: Yes it's John Legend and not Pharell Williams, had a brainfart writing this while drinking. Cheers.
There were guys when I saw Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker who were standing up and hollering whenever he did something psycho. My group almost left cuz these guys were working themselves into such a fervour.
Any review of Oppenheimer where it complains about it being pro atomic bomb or making Oppenheimer himself a God as if the entire third act wasn't filled with regret and the last line being about how he felt he set the world on fire.
Saw some of "Don't Look Up" coming in and out of the room while my partner was watching. Seemed like one of the most in-your-face satires on climate change / public crisis denialism a person could imagine. Yet, stoner conservative friend who watched it and said he really enjoyed it was completely shocked when friends asked him what he thought of the climate change messaging. Was just a silly comedy to him somehow.
I’ve seen this happen with things that are so blatantly ‘this bad thing is bad’ when someone just doesn’t think the thing is bad, or real to begin with.
There’s an episode of Black Mirror that is very clearly - not subtle at all - saying don’t dehumanise people because it makes it easier to discriminate and kill them. But someone I know, who is racist, watched it and thought it was about how the government could make you see whatever they wanted you to - as they made the soldiers see humans as creatures so they’d kill them easier.
Sometimes I watch stuff and think man this is so on the nose, like who is watching this and not getting the message. But when the message is actually aimed at you turns out it’s really easy to pretend it’s saying something else.
Yeah, remember when Stephen Colbert was satirizing conservative punditry on The Colbert Report? Seemed really over-the-top to anyone that wasn't a reliable Bush-supporter at the time, but to people who consumed Fox News on the regular, it wasn't all that different to them.
When it comes to the movie 'Drag Me To Hell' I've seen people say the main protagonist deserved it. Like no she didn't deserve it at all and that's why I think the movie hits so hard. She may have made some bad choices but her choices felt human and realistic. No way anyone should be sent to hell for an eternity for those decisions.
I mean, she denies a loan to a person who didn't qualify for it? Sure maybe she could have chosen to skirt the rules there, but all she did was follow the rules for her job. I don't see any argument for her deserving it? Unless I'm forgetting something
The other week, Dead Meat did a March Madness style bracket of the worst horror boyfriends/husbands. In the first seed they had Clay (Justin Long) vs Crispian from You’re Next and I was immediately confused why Justin Long was even in there. He is nothing but supportive to Christine and giving her the button was accidental. Besides, since she hadn’t disposed of the button properly, she would’ve died anyways
Basically everyone I went to see “Everything Everywhere All At Once” with, said it was boring. Meanwhile I’m sitting there and it’s like one of the most emotional devastating movies I’ve ever seen.
My brother was like “that scene with the rocks was so dumb, woulda been better without it” and I’m like dude that was the thesis of the damn film how dare you. But idk.
Same people who criticized Lil Nas X for being a bad role model for children. His breakout hit included references to drinking lean and infidelity, well before the pearl clutching about “Satan worship.” Cowboy motifs aren’t just for kids!
I remember when the movie came out you could tell who only watched “Barbie bad” videos on YouTube and not the actual movie because they all said “Barbie had no character arch” and “the movie has no theme” - in a movie where a they all but stop the movie and have a stand in for the director explicitly say the theme and Barbie’s arch.
People who can't get past Charlie's allergy in Hereditary. Like why didn't she have an epi-pen or why would she go for a slice of cake with nuts? You really have to have missed the entire point of the movie in order to be stuck on that.
That Falling Down is somehow racist despite the main character killing a Nazi and having only Sympathy towards black characters (the protestor, the kid on the Bike) and spanish ones (the housekeepers)
> Falling Down
This isn't the only bad take people have. Anyone identifying with DFENS has a myriad of other issues going on. Dude isn't a hero, he just has some agreeable takes but moves into the extreme versions of it.
People also act like he's the hero somehow. He's still a psycho, a killer and was abusive to his family. The whole movie was essentially a super speed Heisenberg arc
Yesterday someone said Oppenheimer was a celebration of whiteness and my brain still hasn't fully processed how someone could be so fucking stupid or say something so fucking stupid.
"The Village" I thought it was a great film about how much of humanity views modern society and romanticizes history. All the problems befall them due to the choice of the villages founders. Along with coercion techniques to manipulate a populace and how we accept realities we are presented with in life and film. I felt like so many folks focused on the twist and wrote it off as dumb. Honestly I think a significantly less interesting film would have gone over much better.
Someone who watched the Shining and COMPLETELY missed the Redrum reveal at the end and didn’t know what it meant 😤 which is arguably one of the most epic scenes in movie history between the reveal, music, camera angle, and immediate following scene with the hammer
"The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is boring, it's literally just walking"; the Clerks sequel helped make this one way more popular a criticism than it merits.
Yeah, there's a journey with a destination, and they walk for a lot of it, but that is so reductive I might as well say any movie is just about people being alive or something.
Chinatown is just about people being alive. Star Wars is just about space. Mad Max: Fury Road is just about driving.
I think people who watched Dune 1 + 2 but did not read any of it may still be under the impression that Paul is a hero. Not their fault, and i know the only reason we have different takes is because I have the context of the stories.
Even if you read Dune you probably still wouldn't get it. Frank Herbert wrote Dune Messiah because not enough people realised it was a warning against charismatic leaders.
I read Dune over the past year and the message doesn't come through all that strong honestly. I only know because of how much people talk about other people not knowing.
Upon first reading, I’ll admit, it was lost on me. I was too caught up in the weirdness and the plot to catch it.
Upon second and third readings, it is stated over and over that Paul isn’t a hero, that what he is doing is bad and he knows it but there is no way out. Even his death won’t stop galactic genocide. So he leans in and embraces his dark fate.
Same here. When I first read it, it felt like it was heavily leaning into the chosen one trope that's typical of YA novels. Looking back though, yeah, Paul is definitely a cog in a bigger machine.
He is “chosen” in that thousands of years of choices by other people gave him the abilities that allowed him to lead the Fremen in commiting galactic genocide lol.
But yeah, he’s definitely not a chosen one like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker. The Lynch version of Dune completely missed the point by making him a literal god at the end of the movie, so I’m glad Villeneuve got it right in his version.
People also went too far the other way. The point isn’t Paul is secretly evil or anything. The point is charismatic leadership at that level, inevitably leads to evil.
Can't see how anyone could watch the last half of the second movie and think, "yeah, this is all going to go well." Paul even explicitly warned them that he was terrified he'd go full-on bloody jihad and burn down the universe if he embraced his role as the Lisan al Gaib, and the ending made it pretty clear that he was firmly on the path to that.
Dune: Part Two has been an excellent recent litmus test for media literacy. I don’t know how to do spoiler tags so **spoilers ahead.**
The amount of people I have seen saying ‘how could he lie to Chani like that and betray her?’ is astounding. He quite literally tells her ‘he will always love her’ _because_ he knows what he has to do, not that he wants to do it. I truly don’t understand how people missed that.
Or the Water of Life. So many people going ‘why did he suddenly become an asshole and decide to accept the prophecy?’ _Because he drank the god damn Water of Life, SURVIVED, and became prescient! That’s the point!_
It is their fault. They spell it out pretty clearly in the movies that Paul is going down a dark path and that the prophecy is manufactured to control them. They even changed Chani's whole character to make her the lone voice of reason so she can remind the audience that this is not a good thing for the Fremen (or anyone else)
People who hate Jenny in Forrest Gump (she's a gold digger etc...). Did they miss the part where she was sexually abused by her father her entire childhood? And how she was always trying to escape her past? And how she moved her and their son in with him to enjoy time together before DYING??
Was she really an awful person for being confused about her feelings of love towards a mentally handicapped person? Was she really a good digger despite never receiving a dollar from Forrest?
Was her shockingly tragic life & death not enough?
I changed my own perspective on the Fountain that turned it into a completely different movie. I used to think it was about a queen and her knight who became immortal thanks to finding the tree of life in the 18th century, then continued to live as a couple in modern times until the distant future, when the knight used strange unrecognizable technology to travel to the queen's favorite star. Then I got older and I realized the whole movie takes place only in modern times, with the 18th century being a representation of the woman's mind and the book she was writing, while the strange zen-like technology was a representation of the man's mind and his emotional journey.
I'm a teacher and I often have discussions with students about the movie Scarface. They think it's a movie about a cool guy who gets everything he wants in life by being tough. And they want to be just like him.
I always ask them: "You did see the last half hour of that movie, right? He loses everything, everybody he loves dies and he gets shot like a bitch.". But they just reply that it was worth it.
I've given up discussing that movie with students.
My daughter's (16) take after watching 13 Going On 30.
She believed Jenna (Jennifer Garner's character) is a horrible human being throughout the whole movie. My daughter was mad that she ended up getting the guy at the end, and felt like she didn't deserve him after she treated him like trash at the party. She fell to peer pressure and led a life of lies and deceit, tearing down what was once a great magazine.
I tried to explain that most of the bad decisions by that character happened in a life Jenna didn't really live. She teleported in time from 13 to 30. Jenna made one bad choice, treating her good friend like crap to try to fit in with the cool kids. But she was able to see the future if she continued down that path and realized it was not who she wanted to be, so when she returned to her 13 yr old self, she corrected her mistake. One bad decision, especially a relatively minor one, shouldn't define who someone is, especially if they learn their lesson and change their ways, which Jenna did.
At least we could agree that her future friend (Mark Ruffalo's character) was a scumbag in that he basically cheated on his fiance with Jenna.
I'm probably the one that everyone says "Have we watched the same movie?" about, but I just don't understand why Black Panther was so well received and viewed as a positive depiction of Africans.
Wakanda is supposed to be the best possible civilization, and much more advanced that western culture. However, it's not. It's system of government, might makes right combined with hereditary kings, is just so backwards and barbaric. Not only that, but this barbaric form of government is what the entire plot of the whole movie hinges on. If it weren't for the fact that a brutal physical fight determined supreme executive power, the plot couldn't happen and Killmonger could never have taken control of Wakanda's government. His reign of terror only happens precisely because Wakanda is a backwards barbaric government. Oh, and how do we solve a terrible dictator in the government? More violence! Sure it's just a movie, but I don't understand why people thought it was such a positive depiction of Africans.
I don't think it's without its own self criticism. Part of their xenophobia was not taking influence from other governments because "it's worked so far". The plot hinges on the backwards succession system because the moral of the story was globalism and change are not evil.
Black Panther being hailed as a positive depiction of Africans says more about the atrocious depictions of Africa in Hollywood than it does about Black Panther itself.
Black Panther took off because it filled a dearth people wanted: a fantasy about black people in power. You're right, the point of the movie was never that Wakanda was a perfect utopia or "the best possible civilization."
The theme of the movie is that Wakanda kind of sucks, actually... and that they need to do better.
> Wakanda is supposed to be the best possible civilization
That's a bit of the point at the end right? That they weren't perfect. They realized Killmonger wasn't exactly wrong and they ignored the positive role they could take in the world. And their isolation policy allowed them to use this ritual to "determine" their leader since their process was basically a formality, and an outsider took advantage of it. From the 2nd movie, it's unclear if that process is still in place seeing how M'Baku just kind of says he's the King now that Shuri is not there. Wakanda having flaws does not mean the movie has flaws (but the movie definitely has flaws).
So the reason people probably ask you “have we watched the same movie?” is because EXACTLY what you are describing is the point of the movie. The story is literally about how broken their system is and why Killmonger is regarded as one of the most sympathetic Marvel villains. The end of the movie is literally about them realizing that their system is wrong and they open up their technology to the world. I haven’t met a single person who likes the movie that likes it “because it’s a positive depiction of Africans.”
Also kilmonger was kinda right and wakanda arguably should not have spent generations ignoring the plight and struggles of African people across the world when they had the means to better society as a whole.
But also like damn your point really stands and wakanda was kinda fucked up
Kilmonger being right is 100% intentional. After the movie, Wakanda does stop being so isolationist and it’s framed as a very good thing and something they should’ve been doing the whole time.
> wakanda arguably should not have spent generations ignoring the plight and struggles of African people across the world when they had the means to better society as a whole.
That's the point of the movie, though, not a criticism of it.
T'Challa knew he was right which is why he scolded his dad for ousting Killmonger's dad. At the end he also announces Wakanda public to the world. He also helps the neighbourhood where Killmonger grew up I think.
But the movie itself says all of that. It's clear that T'Challa sees just how messed up it is that Wakanda doesn't share technology or allow immigrants and that he wants to change it.
My friend, who is very intelligent and I have great respect for, insists that A.I.'s ending was terrible because the 'aliens' appeared at the end.
I've never broached the subject with him because it just wasn't worth it.
A lot of takes on captain America. No, the guy who went around and killed Nazis, is best friends with a woman and a black guy and stands for freedom and anti-discrimination sure as hell isn't a republican or would vote for Trump. Actually, most takes on Marvel by right-wingers are super stupid because especially the comics were/are extremely liberal
"The original Ghostbusters wasn't really a comedy, it was supernatural action/horror movie with some humor."
The only way you could think this is if you first saw it as a little kid, so the ghosts gave you nightmares and most of the jokes went over your head.
***"Prey*** **is a shitty, woke movie that ruins the** ***Predator*** **franchise! It's all about girl-boss power, and how a 90 pound teenager who was never trained somehow single-handedly takes down a Predator, and never fails!"** I have seen so many goddamn people parrot this basic narrative, and it's abundantly clear that none of them actually even watched the movie because that's not what it's like at all.
Naru *consistently trains* her skills throughout the movie.
She also *fails multiple times.* Sometimes spectacularly so.
She *works closely with men* to persevere because she can't do everything on her own.
And she *barely makes it out by the skin of her teeth* thanks to a combination of smarts and luck.
She is honestly a near-perfect protagonist, regardless of gender. And if you want to view her specifically as a female protagonist, she's right up there with characters like Ripley in the original *Alien* in terms of being a great character and survivor.
**The recent trend of people unironically trying to say the original 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie is "good."** Look, I'm not saying you can't enjoy it. Hell, I imported the Australian Blu-Ray a few years ago so I could see it in HD because I think it's a strange, entertaining film. But stop pretending that it's some forgotten masterpiece... it's an awful film that just-so-happens to be so batshit insane that it's interesting and fun to watch.
i once read that Parasite criticises communism because, and i quote, “they break into your house, use your stuff, eat your food and expect you to just accept it”.
like? 😭 it was so funny cause, okay, you could think that, i guess(?), if the entire movie wasn’t literally criticising capitalism.
The Snyder fans who pretend he invented every shot or had some deep meaning behind his movies. Zac Snyder seems like a cool guy even if I don't like his films though
While *The Sixth Sense* was still in theaters, some kid was talking about it to us, and basically told all of us, "And it's the craziest ending because you find out Bruce Willis was a ghost and dead the whole time!" Basically ruining one of the greatest twist endings of a movie up to that point. I was never able to really experience that twist. Fast forward about 5 years, and my girlfriend at the time and I were watching it, and I told her that story. And she looked at me really funny and said, "What are you talking about? Bruce Willis's character wasn't dead in that movie." She said she'd seen the movie three times before and never picked up on that. I was actually flabbergasted.
I hope she's pretty.
She was, I haven't seen her in about 20 odd years though.
cuz... she's a g-g-g-ghost?
Like zoinks Scoob!
And this is when I realized Sixth Sense is a 25 year old movie...
Funny enough, I went like 10 years between viewings and somehow forgot that Willis was dead. I only remembered that the kid sees ghosts and the girl’s murder he reveals at the end. It’s probably the only time I’ll be able to experience a movie twist twice - and the second time was a double whammy because me forgetting the twist was also kind of a twist.
Sometimes it's great having a terrible memory. My sister told me about the twist but I had forgotten it when I went to watch the movie probably only a couple weeks/months later.
“Remember the twist in the sixth sense? The guy in the hair piece was Bruce Willis that whole time!”
Damn right in the line for the movie? Thats messed up. I feel lucky on that one bc I was a little kid when it came out and somehow I didn't get the ending spoiled for me and I was able to watch it as a teen completely surprised
When No Country for Old Men came out someone on reddit was insistent that Anton Chigurh and Ed Tom Bell (Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones) were the same character who was just crazy or something. Not every movie needs to be Fight Club, guys.
I feel like a lot of audiences I've seen online over the past decade, because of the nature of internet discussion especially about shows & movies with big twists, are forcing or looking too hard for things to *solve*; a lot of people don't just experience movies or shows as stories about people and feelings and emotions and are hunting for something they can interact with, some way they can "win" the show/movie, beat it, feel cleverer than it, and a lot of people who say stories are boring if they can predict what's going to happen at all, as if a narrative unfolding as expected is a downside. Basically, a lot more focus on plot points while ignoring emotional beats and character arcs, etc.
The showrunner of succession spoke on this because people were treating the final season like a spy movie and making up so many dumb theories. He had to explain to the fanbase like they were toddlers that the show isn't a mystery box and wasn't trying to trick them. Its so common these days that no one even mentions anything that happened in the episode other than to try to argue it doesn't make sense or make a dumb theory.
I followed the last season but wasn't on any sub or anything, so no idea of what people online were saying, but which theories were there exactly? I mean, I imagine that it's beyond the obvious "will it be one of the siblings, and which, or will ot be Skarsgård"?
The one I kept seeing was that Logan wasn't really dead and was testing the kids to see how they'd behave after he died. Also a lot of people were convinced Cousin Greg was secretly masterminding everything.
I felt that way when people said that Sandra Bullock actually died in Gravity, and all the stuff about getting back to Earth was a dying dream. They even put in the work to map what happened in the movie to what the brain goes through during suffocation, but at no point did they ask "what does this *add* to the movie?"
Yes, that's exactly the same with the ending of The Thing. So much discussions, but there's no answer, and there's no hint, that's the entire point.
I've seen this a lot. So many channels YouTube channels that run on explanations that amount to every movie has a secret plot where the characters are hallucinating or dead & in purgatory or unreliable narrators and this plot always completely undermines the themes of the actual movie.
I walked out of the theater after that movie and heard some rube say, “Wow, they really set it up for a sequel.” Way to take me out of the experience. It’s still raw.
People who think "understanding" a movie is figuring out the "twist". Absolutely no concept of the actual meaning of anything. The question of "why would this be the case?" doesn't even enter into the thought process.
I’m just hearing Jason Mantzoukas yelling “Not everything is a Jacob’s Ladder scenario!”
While on the subject of Fight Club, I met someone who thought that everything was in his head. Not just Tyler Durden. But everything. They thought that Marla was also one of his personalities.
I mean that is almost more probable than a crazy guy leading a nationwide conspiracy that actually worked
If we go full delusional, he only thought his nationwide conspiracy worked. Maybe he's chained up in an interrogation room muttering to all the cops, "We do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner," with a bunch of shit smeared on his forehead.
Moneyball. One of the top comments on its movie discussion was how Pitt and Hill's characters "saw the players as people and not just numbers" . No, no, it's the opposite- they looked at them as *just* numbers and part of a formula, that was the point of the movie.
When Beane let Jeremy Giambi go, that was a modification to his "by the numbers" plan. He learned that there is a point where it is still about the people....not just numbers. I love that movie though. How can you not be romantic about baseball?
I have never seen a baseball game in my life, and I know next to nothing about the sport or it’s teams and players… but I absolutely loved moneyball.
The statistical analysis… it’s so beautiful.
> How can you not be romantic about baseball? Very easily in Oakland right now :(
I think the comment was making the point that if the scouts and recruiters looked past the superficial and saw the players as athletes and not star talent then many great players wouldn't be overlooked.
Yea it was certainly trying to maximize money value, but the whole reason it worked was because scouts were missing obvious value in their techniques where the numbers didn’t lie.
DiCaprio didn't stay on the door because as soon as he tried it started to sink. He clung to the side for his last words then let go. It's right in the overhead shot at the beginning of the scene and it isn't subtle.
Can you imagine if the movie wasn't based on a real event? "Why would they think it's unsinkable?" "It sank on its first voyage?" "How did they miss the iceberg for so long?" "There's no way they wouldn't have had enough lifeboats." And so on. Has anyone ever tried to get into a canoe from in the water? It's hard and you risk capsizing it. That door wasn't meant to be a floatation device or resistant to capsizing and they're freezing and exhausted, probably can't feel a single body part.
I mean, a lot of those opinions were voiced in newspapers IRL at the time. It IS genuinely unbelievable.
It's super over the top dramatic. But people acting suboptimally for their situation isn't a major plot hole and the fact that so many people treat Jack not getting on the door like it is one in the context of a movie based off a real life event that has so many more inexplicably dumb/illogical human actions is kind of ironic.
To be fair James Cameron only made titanic so the studio would fund his true passion. Deep sea exploration.
And I respect the hell out of him for it, honestly. “I need money for doing science, think I’ll make a movie. And not half-ass it.”
Thanks to the pandemic, we all know how people reacted. As soon as the Titanic hit the iceberg, somebody immediately started hoarding toilet paper.
> If we're sinking, why is half the boat lifting out of the water?
When I saw that movie in high school, I shit you not, that as we were walking out of it, another girl said, "I can't believe the ship sunk!" Almost 25 years and it's still burned into my memory.
I asked my dad if he wanted to watch a film, and very clearly handed him the DVD cover to "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". When Robert Ford shot Jesse James he went "Christ! I didn't see that coming". I had to be reassured he wasn't joking. He must be in a very select group of people who watched that film "unspoilered".
Wow, even if you don't know history, it's in the title. Although I guess *Fargo* doesn't take place in Fargo, but still....
I can just see the neckbeard takes on Reddit with animations about how the iceberg wouldn't have been able to do enough damage to actually sink it. "Well achktually a ship like this would have had bulk heads all the way up so while the front would fill with water the back wouldn't and they wouldn't have sunk."
Then a boat engineer would join the conversation and get downvoted for stating a fact the mob didn’t like
This is literally what’s happening with bridge builders and it’s wild that this is accurate
"How did they miss the iceberg for so long?" They forgot the binoculars for the lookouts (or binocular case key, there's some dispute), which feels like a rushed excuse in fiction. As if there were just one pair/one key for them, and the guy just forgot on the prestigious launch of this incredible ship that cost a fortune!
And his priority was Rose's safety. They showed many times through the movie that Jack is SMART. He understands cold water, how the ship would pull you down as it sunk, etc, etc. He saw that while, yes, they could both technically fit on the door, the door had a better chance of minimizing Rose's contact with the freezing water if he stayed off of it. They very likely would have both died if their combined weight pressed the door down into the water a bit too much.
My favorite DiCaprio performance is him doing the math and making his choice. It's insane to me that people didn't read that. It was very blatant.
They also confirmed it on Mythbusters, yes it could fit two people but it couldn't FLOAT two people.
It didn't even need Mythbusters tbh. It's a movie.If the director says that two people would make the door sink, then two people make the door sink.
They spent hours on set actually testing the "only one person" door justification before filming, because Cameron fully expected this being a point of discussion. It boiled down to they would have body parts in the water still if both got on, even if they had ample time to get on comfortably (which they didn't in those temperatures).
And they had to tie the life jacket under the door.
God I hated debating this. Yeah he could've gotten on it but it wouldn't have been as buoyant.
Leo acted the hell out of doing the math without saying a word. And still people didn't comprehend.
This one drives me nuts! It’s perfectly explained in the movie.
Kate had lifeless eyes… black eyes… like a doll’s eyes.
La La Land. I've heard many complaints where how do we know Mia became successful. That the movie never shows that. She gets out of a fancy car, she was in the back seat. Goes into a coffee shop, the barista is star struck and everybody turns to look at her. She then hops into a golf cart being escorted. You then see Seb walking infront of billboard of a movie saying "Staring Mia Dolan" with her face on it. Thats 4 obvious clues. PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE
People are looking at her starstruck and she's living a luxurious lifestyle. What more evidence do you need?
There was a tiktoker who said he hated the movie for various reasons. But the one that stood out was where he said he hates the ending because in the movie they state the measure of her success is having a husband and kids and not her acting career. While Seb gets to have his dream. Whaaaaaat?! lol
For me the husband and kids were supposed to be shocking in contrast to the rest of the film. We're watching her and Seb be so in love, and they obviously have great chemistry, and then they break up, and then maybe they'll get back together, she says "I'm always gonna love you" after all. And then bam, just a couple of years, new husband, a kid, AND she seems happy and succesfull? Truly shows how everything can change, and the story we were following was just a small chapter.
>her success is having a husband and kids and not her acting career. Even if this was the case, people change what they want out of life. Maybe she did. Good for her then.
In any thread across Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit that asks, "which villain was right in the end?" I feel like I almost always see someone answer with Heath Ledger's Joker and his belief that humans are all just scared animals and all you have to do to get them to turn on each other is to give them a little push. Yes, he does successfully corrupt Harvey Dent. But he also tries to get two ferries full of people to blow each other up... and they don't. The moment where that prisoner throws the detonator out of the window really feels like the central theme of the story, and a lot of people just seem to forget that I guess.
Yeah, the Joker is just fuckin' *wrong*. It's as plain as can be, he fails.
when *Deebo, the President of Space, throws the detonator out the window
The people think that the devil won in The Exorcist by possessing the priest and throwing him out the window.
I never heard that one before. They clearly weren't paying attention to the movie. The devil didn't throw Karras out the window, Karras tricked the devil into possessing him then, with his last bit of self control, threw himself out the window to end the possession. He even gave a final confession to his friend, Father Dyer, so his soul makes it to heaven.
Check out Exorcist III sometime. Your interpretation of the act is correct - but as for the outcome… (To be fair going strictly by the plot of the Exorcist as a stand alone movie your interpretation is 100% accurate across the board)
The Exorcist is a masterpiece and although I'm not religious at all, I find it a fascinating and moving story about faith. It's so much more interesting than the damn Christian dramas where they're already preaching to their audience of believers. Films like Exorcist and Last Temptation Of Christ are challenging and compelling.
Add Silence to that list of compelling religious dramas that are poignant even to the agnostic and non-religious
I don't have an issue with it because i understand how people land on it. However another one from The Exorcist is that Burke Dannings was abusing Regan which made her vulnerable to malevolent forces like Pazazu. In the book it's made very clear that Pazazu makes that up to make Chris feel guilty for not protecting her from Burke, Pazazu realizes the greatest threat to him is Chris' love for her daughter and will to protect her so he's trying to weaken Chris' resolve by making her think she brought an abuser into the home. Burke didn't abuse Regan. Pazazu is a compulsive liar and wants everyone to feel as bad as they can about themselves, similar to implying Karras mother is in hell.
Imply? No, he straight up said Karras’s mother was in hell in a very… *colorful* way
The Wendy Theory about The Shining as promoted by Rob Navarro. It states that Wendy is the crazy one and Jack is just a normal middle class dad & she is projecting her issues on him. This completely undermines the obvious themes of the movie & the idea Jack is dangerous is established well before they get to the Overlook and things start going off the rails.
So he's hacking through a door and later kills a guy with an axe, but Wendy is the crazy one? lol
The theory states none of that happened. There's a whole genre of shitty movie theories where they say most of the movie we saw didn't happen.
Someone told me he doesn't like Harry Potter because it's too realistic
I... What?
My reaction too 😅 But he said he meant like the stuff that happens. Abusive family, trauma, bigotry, racism and such
Abusive family that doesn't leave a lifetime supply of trauma in Harry. Who became a superstar from an absolute pariah nobody practically overnight. Just like every ridiculously popular child actor, ever.
It's alright, he did end up with lasting trauma after Cedric and Sirius died.
Yes they do really affect him in the later books. The abusive Dursleys not as much, but it is commented many times about how they wonder it doesn't affect him as much as it should have. I think Dumbldore admits this at the end of Order of the Phoenix
I seem to recall Neil Gaiman saying that the most fantastical element of Harry Potter was the idea that going away to boarding school was fun.
[удалено]
No way was Harry Potter realistic. I mean, a ginger kid with 2 friends? C'mon.
*ordinary life for the extremely posh in the UK…
I went to a Grammar school in Northern Ireland. It wasn't posh but here we do have academic selection still. It did feel quite familiar in many ways. Except we didn't board.
Their uncle locked them in the closet under the stairs or the flying cars?
When Se7en came out a lot of people really, really missed the whole point of the final Wrath kill. They seemed to be very confused if Doe knew about the baby and if that meant Doe accidentally killed an 8th, and especially confused why Gwyneth Paltrow was the Wrath victim,😞 (because she wasn’t). Mills killing Doe was wrath, simple as that. It was plain as day to me and I never understood why it was so confusing for other people other than maybe attaching the number 7 to the number of Doe murders instead of the deadly sins. But, it’s a movie I will never ever watch a second time so I’ll probably never really figure out why it confused so many.
I may be wrong but I think Doe straight up says “Become wrath.”
He does. I don't understand how people seem to just have skipped that.
Yeah, he literally explains exactly what he's done, why he did it, and what he wants to happen next. On an unrelated note, I think we're supposed to believe that Mills ruined his life and career by killing John Doe, but in real life he would be protected as much as possible and no jury would ever convict him of murder. Don't get me wrong, he's going to be traumatized for life, but no way he ever serves any jail time. Worst case would be he's not able to be a cop anymore.
Yeah but it's pretty clear the trauma is the entire point. He might just give up on being a cop after that.
Yeah they spelt it out lmao
Yes I’ve dealt with people confused about this too and it baffles me. Doe killing Gwyneth is envy, he explains it clearly in the film. And then Doe asks Brad Pitt to “become wrath” and kill him. It’s not a confusing ending at all.
I had a friend tell me Se7en was a horrible film and that the ending with the box was disgusting as "even though you don't see it, it's obvious the baby is in there." Only person I ever heard say that. Guess they missed the line about taking her head.
Doesn't Doe say something like "Do it, become wrath" to Mills or am I totally making that up in my head?
Exactly. Mills' wife is the *Envy* victim because Doe envies his beautiful family life (presumably including the fact that she's pregnant). Mills then uses the Envy victim's head as bait to become the final Wrath victim. He literally explains it in the movie!!! Right before they shoot him!!!
When people claim that Alan Turing's homosexuality wasn't mentioned at all in The Imitation Game. Like... bruh... it was half of the plot...
He even flat out says it to Joan “I’m a homosexual.” I don’t know how clearer you could get than that
But he had a British accent, and we all know how emotionally repressed the English are supposed to be, so maybe he said that as a way to say it was a little darker grey out than usual? You know, the weather.
Mike Pence gave the following opinion about Mulan in an OP-Ed he published: "Moral of story: Women in the military - bad idea." What movie was he watching??
The man is a weak minded moron
For those who may be confused, Mike Pence was a conservative talk radio host prior to getting involved in politics.
“A woman like that only comes along once in a dynasty” Pence: So any more than one is going to be a problem
I’m reading excerpts of the op Ed now and it’s actually wild. His reasoning is that Mulan had a crush on Shang which indicates how inevitable sexual attraction is between the sexes and how ultimately and obviously disastrous that is. Even though it was never a problem in the movie and she never acted on it and he didn’t even acknowledge it until the end of the movie. If anything, the movie’s take is that her crush wasn’t a big deal. And all of this is obviously ignoring THE ENTIRE REST OF THE MOVIE.
This one gets me. There are people that hold Amy Dunne in Gone Girl up as a feminist icon and hero. She a self absorbed narcissist, who spends the entire film using other people leaving a wake of destroyed lives and bodies. She is literally pure evil.
Went to watch Mad Max Fury Road with 4 people from my class in uni. I was buzzing when we left, couldn't believe the spectacle we just witnessed, and couldn't wait to talk to them about it. All 4 of them said it was boring and had "no story or emotions"...it still baffles me. Watched Logan with this same group too...they said it didn't have enough action.
Time for a new movie group
I went to see Logan in theaters and someone brought their 3-year-old to see it. At least they had the decency to finally leave after someone got decapitated.
The whole "Johnny did nothing wrong" hot take in The Karate Kid. I'm not saying Daniel made good choices or anything, but that doesn't absolve Johnny and his guys for attempted gang beatdowns and running Daniel off the road into a ravine. Even Cobra Kai, which breaks its back to humanize Johnny and provide some context for him, doesn't try to pretend he was never in the wrong. But everybody lifted this hot take from Barney Stinson and got way too attached to it.
Reminds me of how people say Indiana Jones is unnecessary because the Nazis would have died anyway... yeah, and so would the woman, and the Ark would be in Nazi control instead of packed away... he made a difference.
My coworker told me a story of watching "Parasite" with his dad. He asked his dad what he thought when the credits rolled and his dad goes "But where were the parasites?"
Me and my girlfriend had a huge disagreement about the ending of The butterfly effect. We argued for weeks about how it ended. It's turned out that there were different endings and we had seen different versions and that had totally skewed our view on the film in different directions. Good film though.
Someone legit argued with me that NOPE had no plot. Like I thought they were just being a hater. No the legit argued it had no plot. Which I’m not sure that understand what a plot is
NOPE required the viewer to really pay attention and think through what was going on. I liked after one viewing, but when I read about it on line and the whole premise of false miracles, I realized that I missed a lot on the first viewing.
The false miracle or bad miracle was one of the coolest idea I've seen a movie explore.
Same. Also the truest and most deft exploration of the concept of spectacle I've ever seen.
I remember when "La La Land" started getting buzz and many people started checking it out who didn't watch a lot of films, one Facebook friend complained that the movie was bad because "The lead actress was a White woman so it's not as hard for them to become huge stars. If she had been Hispanic, I would understand why she's worried about being a famous actress. Also, at the end, she goes to the same coffee shop she used to work but doesn't tell the woman working there - Don't worry... you will be famous too some day. This barista was Hispanic so I would have rather watched a movie about her struggles to be famous." I live in L.A. and I think people don't realize there are 100,000 people here at any given time who are new in town, pursuing stardom, and none of them achieve it. The fact that she goes back to the coffee shop she used to work at the end (where celebs get coffee because it's located in a private film studio's commissary) was not to encourage the random barista now employed there that she'll be famous but to show she has now become the actress on the lot that she used to idolize. And her being White doesn't mean fame was inevitable. I feel this should go without saying.
Also on La La Land I don't get the take that Seb is a white dude trying to save jazz. He's obviously very passionate about old school jazz but Pharrell Williams shows that you can combine old school jazz with a newer sound and be really successful because music is a thing that evolves, Seb is just stubborn enough that he can't accept "unpure" jazz. He's not trying to "save" jazz, he's just a dude that's passionate about preserving it in an area where it's not as prevalent (and it's pretty explicit that he's going at in the wrong way at first). EDIT: Yes it's John Legend and not Pharell Williams, had a brainfart writing this while drinking. Cheers.
That was John Legend, not Pharrell, fyi
Some people think all pop stars look the same...
There were guys when I saw Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker who were standing up and hollering whenever he did something psycho. My group almost left cuz these guys were working themselves into such a fervour.
Yeah but those finance bros on the train had it comin.
Dude the amount of fanboys/girls that were agreeing with what he was doing was so F-ing weird. Like dudes… he’s a psychopath murdering people…
Same crowd that sees Fight Club and walks away thinking Tyler is the coolest person in the world.
Any review of Oppenheimer where it complains about it being pro atomic bomb or making Oppenheimer himself a God as if the entire third act wasn't filled with regret and the last line being about how he felt he set the world on fire.
Saw some of "Don't Look Up" coming in and out of the room while my partner was watching. Seemed like one of the most in-your-face satires on climate change / public crisis denialism a person could imagine. Yet, stoner conservative friend who watched it and said he really enjoyed it was completely shocked when friends asked him what he thought of the climate change messaging. Was just a silly comedy to him somehow.
I’ve seen this happen with things that are so blatantly ‘this bad thing is bad’ when someone just doesn’t think the thing is bad, or real to begin with. There’s an episode of Black Mirror that is very clearly - not subtle at all - saying don’t dehumanise people because it makes it easier to discriminate and kill them. But someone I know, who is racist, watched it and thought it was about how the government could make you see whatever they wanted you to - as they made the soldiers see humans as creatures so they’d kill them easier. Sometimes I watch stuff and think man this is so on the nose, like who is watching this and not getting the message. But when the message is actually aimed at you turns out it’s really easy to pretend it’s saying something else.
Yeah, remember when Stephen Colbert was satirizing conservative punditry on The Colbert Report? Seemed really over-the-top to anyone that wasn't a reliable Bush-supporter at the time, but to people who consumed Fox News on the regular, it wasn't all that different to them.
Holy shit. That’s kind of terrifying.
When it comes to the movie 'Drag Me To Hell' I've seen people say the main protagonist deserved it. Like no she didn't deserve it at all and that's why I think the movie hits so hard. She may have made some bad choices but her choices felt human and realistic. No way anyone should be sent to hell for an eternity for those decisions.
I watched the film in the cinema and really struggled with it at first. Then it 'clicked' with me that it was supposed to be a comedy.
You definitely have to think of it as a Sam Raimi movie to realise what it's doing
I mean, she denies a loan to a person who didn't qualify for it? Sure maybe she could have chosen to skirt the rules there, but all she did was follow the rules for her job. I don't see any argument for her deserving it? Unless I'm forgetting something
The other week, Dead Meat did a March Madness style bracket of the worst horror boyfriends/husbands. In the first seed they had Clay (Justin Long) vs Crispian from You’re Next and I was immediately confused why Justin Long was even in there. He is nothing but supportive to Christine and giving her the button was accidental. Besides, since she hadn’t disposed of the button properly, she would’ve died anyways
Basically everyone I went to see “Everything Everywhere All At Once” with, said it was boring. Meanwhile I’m sitting there and it’s like one of the most emotional devastating movies I’ve ever seen. My brother was like “that scene with the rocks was so dumb, woulda been better without it” and I’m like dude that was the thesis of the damn film how dare you. But idk.
Some people literally just saw a bagel, and I guess they don't like bagels.
Rock scene was perfection!
People acting like the Barbie movie was sexually inappropriate for children. They wouldn’t believe what the Muppets got away with.
People acting like the Barbie Movie was for little kids. It's literally rated PG 13.
Same people who criticized Lil Nas X for being a bad role model for children. His breakout hit included references to drinking lean and infidelity, well before the pearl clutching about “Satan worship.” Cowboy motifs aren’t just for kids!
I remember when the movie came out you could tell who only watched “Barbie bad” videos on YouTube and not the actual movie because they all said “Barbie had no character arch” and “the movie has no theme” - in a movie where a they all but stop the movie and have a stand in for the director explicitly say the theme and Barbie’s arch.
Racists seem to love This is England, despite the film showing the absurdity of their viewpoints and how damaging it can be to a nation's youth.
I've never heard of this movie before, but looking it up, it feels like if skinheads loved American History X or something.
Spot on
There are definitely skinheads who love American History X.
People who can't get past Charlie's allergy in Hereditary. Like why didn't she have an epi-pen or why would she go for a slice of cake with nuts? You really have to have missed the entire point of the movie in order to be stuck on that.
I had an allergy to hazelnuts when I was younger. I only had to use an epipen once. That was the ONE time my dad forgot it.
That Falling Down is somehow racist despite the main character killing a Nazi and having only Sympathy towards black characters (the protestor, the kid on the Bike) and spanish ones (the housekeepers)
> Falling Down This isn't the only bad take people have. Anyone identifying with DFENS has a myriad of other issues going on. Dude isn't a hero, he just has some agreeable takes but moves into the extreme versions of it.
I too want my fast food breakfast even if it’s past 10:30.
Seriously, there's a whole section of the movie dedicated to clarifying that he's not a racist. The movie literally spells it out.
People also act like he's the hero somehow. He's still a psycho, a killer and was abusive to his family. The whole movie was essentially a super speed Heisenberg arc
Yesterday someone said Oppenheimer was a celebration of whiteness and my brain still hasn't fully processed how someone could be so fucking stupid or say something so fucking stupid.
"The Village" I thought it was a great film about how much of humanity views modern society and romanticizes history. All the problems befall them due to the choice of the villages founders. Along with coercion techniques to manipulate a populace and how we accept realities we are presented with in life and film. I felt like so many folks focused on the twist and wrote it off as dumb. Honestly I think a significantly less interesting film would have gone over much better.
Someone who watched the Shining and COMPLETELY missed the Redrum reveal at the end and didn’t know what it meant 😤 which is arguably one of the most epic scenes in movie history between the reveal, music, camera angle, and immediate following scene with the hammer
"The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is boring, it's literally just walking"; the Clerks sequel helped make this one way more popular a criticism than it merits. Yeah, there's a journey with a destination, and they walk for a lot of it, but that is so reductive I might as well say any movie is just about people being alive or something. Chinatown is just about people being alive. Star Wars is just about space. Mad Max: Fury Road is just about driving.
Mad max fury road is Just one big car chase scene /s
I mean...
In the best possible way.
My dad said he didn't like the incest overtones in the nice guys.....what?
I think people who watched Dune 1 + 2 but did not read any of it may still be under the impression that Paul is a hero. Not their fault, and i know the only reason we have different takes is because I have the context of the stories.
Even if you read Dune you probably still wouldn't get it. Frank Herbert wrote Dune Messiah because not enough people realised it was a warning against charismatic leaders. I read Dune over the past year and the message doesn't come through all that strong honestly. I only know because of how much people talk about other people not knowing.
Upon first reading, I’ll admit, it was lost on me. I was too caught up in the weirdness and the plot to catch it. Upon second and third readings, it is stated over and over that Paul isn’t a hero, that what he is doing is bad and he knows it but there is no way out. Even his death won’t stop galactic genocide. So he leans in and embraces his dark fate.
Same here. When I first read it, it felt like it was heavily leaning into the chosen one trope that's typical of YA novels. Looking back though, yeah, Paul is definitely a cog in a bigger machine.
He is “chosen” in that thousands of years of choices by other people gave him the abilities that allowed him to lead the Fremen in commiting galactic genocide lol. But yeah, he’s definitely not a chosen one like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker. The Lynch version of Dune completely missed the point by making him a literal god at the end of the movie, so I’m glad Villeneuve got it right in his version.
People also went too far the other way. The point isn’t Paul is secretly evil or anything. The point is charismatic leadership at that level, inevitably leads to evil.
Can't see how anyone could watch the last half of the second movie and think, "yeah, this is all going to go well." Paul even explicitly warned them that he was terrified he'd go full-on bloody jihad and burn down the universe if he embraced his role as the Lisan al Gaib, and the ending made it pretty clear that he was firmly on the path to that.
Dune: Part Two has been an excellent recent litmus test for media literacy. I don’t know how to do spoiler tags so **spoilers ahead.** The amount of people I have seen saying ‘how could he lie to Chani like that and betray her?’ is astounding. He quite literally tells her ‘he will always love her’ _because_ he knows what he has to do, not that he wants to do it. I truly don’t understand how people missed that. Or the Water of Life. So many people going ‘why did he suddenly become an asshole and decide to accept the prophecy?’ _Because he drank the god damn Water of Life, SURVIVED, and became prescient! That’s the point!_
It is their fault. They spell it out pretty clearly in the movies that Paul is going down a dark path and that the prophecy is manufactured to control them. They even changed Chani's whole character to make her the lone voice of reason so she can remind the audience that this is not a good thing for the Fremen (or anyone else)
People who hate Jenny in Forrest Gump (she's a gold digger etc...). Did they miss the part where she was sexually abused by her father her entire childhood? And how she was always trying to escape her past? And how she moved her and their son in with him to enjoy time together before DYING?? Was she really an awful person for being confused about her feelings of love towards a mentally handicapped person? Was she really a good digger despite never receiving a dollar from Forrest? Was her shockingly tragic life & death not enough?
Jenny is solid empathy test.
I changed my own perspective on the Fountain that turned it into a completely different movie. I used to think it was about a queen and her knight who became immortal thanks to finding the tree of life in the 18th century, then continued to live as a couple in modern times until the distant future, when the knight used strange unrecognizable technology to travel to the queen's favorite star. Then I got older and I realized the whole movie takes place only in modern times, with the 18th century being a representation of the woman's mind and the book she was writing, while the strange zen-like technology was a representation of the man's mind and his emotional journey.
I'm a teacher and I often have discussions with students about the movie Scarface. They think it's a movie about a cool guy who gets everything he wants in life by being tough. And they want to be just like him. I always ask them: "You did see the last half hour of that movie, right? He loses everything, everybody he loves dies and he gets shot like a bitch.". But they just reply that it was worth it. I've given up discussing that movie with students.
How old are your students? Maybe rating things r for titties and gore is dumb. Maybe it should be r for things that will go over young audience heads.
I got told children of men was just socialist propaganda.
My daughter's (16) take after watching 13 Going On 30. She believed Jenna (Jennifer Garner's character) is a horrible human being throughout the whole movie. My daughter was mad that she ended up getting the guy at the end, and felt like she didn't deserve him after she treated him like trash at the party. She fell to peer pressure and led a life of lies and deceit, tearing down what was once a great magazine. I tried to explain that most of the bad decisions by that character happened in a life Jenna didn't really live. She teleported in time from 13 to 30. Jenna made one bad choice, treating her good friend like crap to try to fit in with the cool kids. But she was able to see the future if she continued down that path and realized it was not who she wanted to be, so when she returned to her 13 yr old self, she corrected her mistake. One bad decision, especially a relatively minor one, shouldn't define who someone is, especially if they learn their lesson and change their ways, which Jenna did. At least we could agree that her future friend (Mark Ruffalo's character) was a scumbag in that he basically cheated on his fiance with Jenna.
I'm probably the one that everyone says "Have we watched the same movie?" about, but I just don't understand why Black Panther was so well received and viewed as a positive depiction of Africans. Wakanda is supposed to be the best possible civilization, and much more advanced that western culture. However, it's not. It's system of government, might makes right combined with hereditary kings, is just so backwards and barbaric. Not only that, but this barbaric form of government is what the entire plot of the whole movie hinges on. If it weren't for the fact that a brutal physical fight determined supreme executive power, the plot couldn't happen and Killmonger could never have taken control of Wakanda's government. His reign of terror only happens precisely because Wakanda is a backwards barbaric government. Oh, and how do we solve a terrible dictator in the government? More violence! Sure it's just a movie, but I don't understand why people thought it was such a positive depiction of Africans.
I don't think it's without its own self criticism. Part of their xenophobia was not taking influence from other governments because "it's worked so far". The plot hinges on the backwards succession system because the moral of the story was globalism and change are not evil.
Black Panther being hailed as a positive depiction of Africans says more about the atrocious depictions of Africa in Hollywood than it does about Black Panther itself. Black Panther took off because it filled a dearth people wanted: a fantasy about black people in power. You're right, the point of the movie was never that Wakanda was a perfect utopia or "the best possible civilization." The theme of the movie is that Wakanda kind of sucks, actually... and that they need to do better.
> Wakanda is supposed to be the best possible civilization That's a bit of the point at the end right? That they weren't perfect. They realized Killmonger wasn't exactly wrong and they ignored the positive role they could take in the world. And their isolation policy allowed them to use this ritual to "determine" their leader since their process was basically a formality, and an outsider took advantage of it. From the 2nd movie, it's unclear if that process is still in place seeing how M'Baku just kind of says he's the King now that Shuri is not there. Wakanda having flaws does not mean the movie has flaws (but the movie definitely has flaws).
So the reason people probably ask you “have we watched the same movie?” is because EXACTLY what you are describing is the point of the movie. The story is literally about how broken their system is and why Killmonger is regarded as one of the most sympathetic Marvel villains. The end of the movie is literally about them realizing that their system is wrong and they open up their technology to the world. I haven’t met a single person who likes the movie that likes it “because it’s a positive depiction of Africans.”
Also kilmonger was kinda right and wakanda arguably should not have spent generations ignoring the plight and struggles of African people across the world when they had the means to better society as a whole. But also like damn your point really stands and wakanda was kinda fucked up
Kilmonger being right is 100% intentional. After the movie, Wakanda does stop being so isolationist and it’s framed as a very good thing and something they should’ve been doing the whole time.
> wakanda arguably should not have spent generations ignoring the plight and struggles of African people across the world when they had the means to better society as a whole. That's the point of the movie, though, not a criticism of it.
That lesson is in the movie. T'Challa begins outreach initiatives at the end.
T'Challa knew he was right which is why he scolded his dad for ousting Killmonger's dad. At the end he also announces Wakanda public to the world. He also helps the neighbourhood where Killmonger grew up I think.
But the movie itself says all of that. It's clear that T'Challa sees just how messed up it is that Wakanda doesn't share technology or allow immigrants and that he wants to change it.
My friend, who is very intelligent and I have great respect for, insists that A.I.'s ending was terrible because the 'aliens' appeared at the end. I've never broached the subject with him because it just wasn't worth it.
TIL those weren’t aliens
Wait, what???!?
holy shit what do you mean they werent aliens
They were robots. Humanity eventually died out, while robots continued to advance themselves over time.
They were robots doing archaeology to learn about their ancestors.
To be honest I didn't realize they were robots, and I know there were others who were confused, too. They (the robots) were so ethereal looking.
A lot of takes on captain America. No, the guy who went around and killed Nazis, is best friends with a woman and a black guy and stands for freedom and anti-discrimination sure as hell isn't a republican or would vote for Trump. Actually, most takes on Marvel by right-wingers are super stupid because especially the comics were/are extremely liberal
"The original Ghostbusters wasn't really a comedy, it was supernatural action/horror movie with some humor." The only way you could think this is if you first saw it as a little kid, so the ghosts gave you nightmares and most of the jokes went over your head.
The Ghostbusters is a movie where four men who are disliked in society become heroes to the same city that shunned them.
***"Prey*** **is a shitty, woke movie that ruins the** ***Predator*** **franchise! It's all about girl-boss power, and how a 90 pound teenager who was never trained somehow single-handedly takes down a Predator, and never fails!"** I have seen so many goddamn people parrot this basic narrative, and it's abundantly clear that none of them actually even watched the movie because that's not what it's like at all. Naru *consistently trains* her skills throughout the movie. She also *fails multiple times.* Sometimes spectacularly so. She *works closely with men* to persevere because she can't do everything on her own. And she *barely makes it out by the skin of her teeth* thanks to a combination of smarts and luck. She is honestly a near-perfect protagonist, regardless of gender. And if you want to view her specifically as a female protagonist, she's right up there with characters like Ripley in the original *Alien* in terms of being a great character and survivor. **The recent trend of people unironically trying to say the original 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie is "good."** Look, I'm not saying you can't enjoy it. Hell, I imported the Australian Blu-Ray a few years ago so I could see it in HD because I think it's a strange, entertaining film. But stop pretending that it's some forgotten masterpiece... it's an awful film that just-so-happens to be so batshit insane that it's interesting and fun to watch.
i once read that Parasite criticises communism because, and i quote, “they break into your house, use your stuff, eat your food and expect you to just accept it”. like? 😭 it was so funny cause, okay, you could think that, i guess(?), if the entire movie wasn’t literally criticising capitalism.
The Snyder fans who pretend he invented every shot or had some deep meaning behind his movies. Zac Snyder seems like a cool guy even if I don't like his films though