The Movie Thread Reloaded

[oggsmash]

Anyone watched Without Remorse yet?

Sadly, I did 

Let's ignore the fact that the main character in the books is white (in a novel he muses that he could be played in a movie by Tom Selleck). This isn't "Without Remorse". Not even remotely. I wonder if they took another script and slapped the name on it. It is not even a good movie. Boring and implausible storyline, flat characters, listless direction... Not even the action scenes are any good.

(The best way to infiltrate Russia is to openly violate their airspace and try to reach Murmansk onboard a normal plane...)

As someone who grew up with Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, James Earl Jones, Harry Czerny and Harris Yulin (not to mention Willem Dafoe as Clark) playing various Clancy's characters so well that I now picture them as these actors in the novels, there is nothing in this movie that makes me think of Clancy.

   That is too bad, if the book is the same one I am thinking of... IS it the one where Clark waged a private war on street criminals after a prostitute he fell in love with is murdered?   That was an excellent book IMO (I like some of Clancy's stuff, but I remember that book being good) even though it did read a bit like "what if Charles Bronson was a SEAL instead of a doctor"? 

[oggsmash]

  Read the wiki recap of the movie "without remorse"....holy crap its nothing like the book I am thinking of at all.  The movie recap reads like a huge anti russia propaganda piece.   Why did they gender swap the Admiral?  It also seems odd to race swap Clark, i mean the guy in  charge in the book is Greer....ah well I guess boxes have to checked. 

[Omega]

Because blackfacing characters is all the rage in Idiotlwood, again. Just pushed this time to even more stupid levels than the last iteration did.
Expect to see more and more offensive redoes soon.

[oggsmash]

Because blackfacing characters is all the rage in Idiotlwood, again. Just pushed this time to even more stupid levels than the last iteration did.
Expect to see more and more offensive redoes soon.

Well, the thing is, I do not think I would mind if Clark is now a black guy in the movie....but it seems to be for no reason other than to just make him black.  In the book Greer is the high ranking officer, the person with real power and influence.  Clark is just a former SEAL who is pissed and from what I remember more or less unemployed, a nobody in the context of the world (beyond his past exploits and accomplishments).  On any scale Greer is a the black guy and a much bigger fish.  So it does perplex me as to why they gender swapped Greer, and made Clark black just to be black....I guess they though Mike Jordan was going to draw bigger numbers than any white dude they could find, but heck they changed the story completely from the book anyway, so why not just make a different story with different characters and just do that?   Art by committee is a shit show.

[hedgehobbit]

they changed the story completely from the book anyway, so why not just make a different story with different characters and just do that?

Because the vast majority of people have no idea what the original story is about and they just think "I like Tom Clancy movies". Of course, it doesn't take too many of these for it to turn into "Tom Clancy movies suck".

The real question is why do IP holders seem to care so little if their IP get attached to crappy projects?

[Godfather Punk]

Wasn't it this line of reasoning that killed the Die Hard franchise? Not sure about Die Hard 4.0, but definitely A Good Day to Die Hard was a generic spy thriller with McClane bolted on for brand recognition.

[oggsmash]

Wasn't it this line of reasoning that killed the Die Hard franchise? Not sure about Die Hard 4.0, but definitely A Good Day to Die Hard was a generic spy thriller with McClane bolted on for brand recognition.

   I know this, John McClane leveled up his character like nothing I have ever seen before.  He went from a lucky grunt to a guy who makes John Matrix run and hide when he comes around.

[Lurkndog]

This week I watched Hotel Artemis, which was a 2018 movie about a bad day at a black market hospital in near future Los Angeles. It features an ensemble cast including Dave Bautista, Jodie Foster, Charlie Day, Sofia Boutella, Zachary Quinto, and Jeff Goldblum. Take one part film noir, one part sci fi supermedicine, one part cyberpunk, and one part crime movie, mix well, and garnish with violence and regret.

I thought it was a well made mix of genres, and I'll probably buy the blu-ray at some point.

I am a little behind, but that is a really unusable ensemble. How did they work together in terms of performance?

The movie holds together quite well. Jodie Foster is in full character actor mode, playing the Nurse who runs the black market hospital as a collection of quirks masking her inner insecurity, and this is effective. Bautista plays the hospital's orderly/bouncer, and he does a good job being loyal but conflicted, and staying on the same page as the other actors. Charlie Day plays a scumbag, and Sofia Boutella plays an assassin whose personal history gets tangled up in her mission. The actor playing Waikiki does a good job as a gangster with a heart of gold.

If you like a good B-movie, I think you will be entertained at the very least.

[Ghostmaker]

they changed the story completely from the book anyway, so why not just make a different story with different characters and just do that?

Because the vast majority of people have no idea what the original story is about and they just think "I like Tom Clancy movies". Of course, it doesn't take too many of these for it to turn into "Tom Clancy movies suck".

The real question is why do IP holders seem to care so little if their IP get attached to crappy projects?

Well, for starters, Clancy died in 2013. Death of the primary creator is usually when things start to unravel unless someone steps into the role of wrangling the idiots. The Tolkien estate is facing this with Christopher Tolkien's demise, and I strongly believe Good Omens avoided sucking because Neil Gaiman was there with Pratchett's notes to step on the necks of the retards.

Also, Hollywood is by and large a sausage-making machine. By which I mean whatever you get out of the meetings may only bear a passing resemblance to what you fed into it. Well before wokeist crap was a thing, executive meddling and lawyers could fuck up a production in fascinating ways.

Hollywood loves waving fat gobs of cash at people for their IPs, and they don't always even make it into movies. That's a heck of an inducement if you're not J.K. Rowling and can wipe your ass with $100 bills. Clive Cussler optioned out 'Raise The Titanic' disliked the result, avoided doing it again for the longest time, and then I guess he needed to pay some bills and optioned out the rights for 'Sahara'... which was a disaster. Cussler then committed a very stupid move and sued over it, lost the suit, and pretty much spent the rest of his days cranking out potboilers to pay off the judgement. Sometimes the wisest decision is to walk away.

[Omega]

Sometimes they make these movies by slapping the name of one IP on the script for another simply to retain the IP and cut losses on scripts bought.

[Zelen]

Cash is a big motivator. As a creative person, lets say some Hollywood studio wanted to option a story or novel I wrote. I am not at all interested in my work being used for pushing Hollywood propaganda, but if I could get 5-10 million and live comfortably for the rest of my life without ever having to work again? Not ruling it out.

[Wntrlnd]

Wasn't it this line of reasoning that killed the Die Hard franchise? Not sure about Die Hard 4.0, but definitely A Good Day to Die Hard was a generic spy thriller with McClane bolted on for brand recognition.

The Die Hard movies have one singular theme. The bad guy wants to do a heist, tricks the police into thinking its about something else like terrorism, and McClane is there in the middle, just minding his own business and caught up with having to stop it.
Basically, the bad guys are just trying to steal something in the guise of being fanatics as a diversion.

That pretty much describes the first 3 movies. 4.0 might be about cyberterrorism but I dont remember what the actual heist is.

Only thing I remember about the last one is that they're trying to steal something from the abandoned Chernobyl and a CIA agent trying to stop it..  Remove Bruce Willis character and it would not much different a movie.

[jhkim]

Wasn't it this line of reasoning that killed the Die Hard franchise? Not sure about Die Hard 4.0, but definitely A Good Day to Die Hard was a generic spy thriller with McClane bolted on for brand recognition.

The Die Hard movies have one singular theme. The bad guy wants to do a heist, tricks the police into thinking its about something else like terrorism, and McClane is there in the middle, just minding his own business and caught up with having to stop it.

Actually, the second and third and fifth Die Hard movies were all generic thrillers with McClane bolted on for brand recognition. The second movie was based on Walter Wager's 1987 novel 58 Minutes. The third movie was based on a spec script called Simon Says by Jonathan Hensleigh, that the studios originally wanted to make into a Lethal Weapon sequel. I think the closest thing to an original was the fourth movie, which adapted material from a non-fiction article, but the plot was at least written for McClane.

And the first movie was adapted from the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp, though with a bunch of changes.

[Thornhammer]

The first fifteen minutes of Army of the Dead are absolute perfection.

Boobs, zombies ripping people apart, somebody getting torn to gobbets with a .50 cal machine gun, A-10s hammering the Vegas Strip, all with Richard Cheese belting out Viva Las Vegas.

[Omega]

Saw some of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Its one idiot plot after another wrapped in woke agenda.
Called it that they would replace Captain America with jackass John Walker Cap.