The Movie Thread Reloaded

[oggsmash]

I watched Rebel Moon.  It's astounding how stupid all of this is.  This might be one of the very stupidest of all of the advanced sci-fi civilizations that are too stupid to really exist.  A civilization with spaceships and advanced robots sends a dreadnought out to shake down some Medieval farmers for 10 bushels of grain.  Someone wrote that.  Multiple someones approved that.  That made it into the actual movie.  I'm not doing a bit.  That actually happens and it's just the start of the stupid shit.   

  I went into watching it with the conscious decision I was watching a WH40k story and took disbelief and completely suspended it.  The Trailer showed a small woman man handling men...which is completely stupid as well...so I was already on the "its all magic" bus to watch this nutty disaster.  I find it entertained me...but not in the way my big space operas should.   The good guys and the bad guys are in a competition for dumbest MF'ers the entire movie.  If a warship can be brought down by a angry dude with a makeshift spear...your high tech death machines may be sorely lacking.

[yosemitemike]

It wasn't 10 buchels, it was 10,000 out of the 12,000 they grew. To put that in perspective, twelve thousand bushels of grain is enough to fill five full semi-trailer loads and, with modern farming techniques, would take over 250 acres to grow. It is also enough grain to feed 1,000 people for a year so the 2,000 bushels that the bad guy left them would be more than enough to feed their small village especially if they have animals they can hunt.

And, yes, people approved this. But I don't think it was out of stupidity (maybe a bit of laziness though). This just follows Hollywood's weird obsession with fetishising subsistence living, even down to the villagers in this movie purposefully not using machines to plant their crops because they want to "get close to nature" or some crap. Zack Snyder's wife (who wrote this script) worships farmers but doesn't even know the first thing about farming.

10,000 bushels is still a piddly amount for an advanced civilization like that.  The US alone produces something like 2,000,000,000 bushels a year.  It's not as silly as I remembered but it's still silly.  Also, that village produces 12,000 bushels a year?  What?  How?  Why?  None of this makes any sense and it's all stupid.  I can tell it's stupid just on the face of it and I don't know jack shit about farming.  Everything is stupid and nothing makes sense.   

The good guys and the bad guys are in a competition for dumbest MF'ers the entire movie. 

I spent the entire movie wondering what the hell is wrong with these people and why they the hell are all morons.  Everything is stupid.  Everyone is stupid. 

[Lurkndog]

I enjoyed the first season of Reacher on Amazon Prime, and the second season is even better so far.

This time around, Reacher is working with the members of his old Army unit after two of them turn up dead. This is a really good character dynamic, as they already know and respect Reacher, but are more than willing to question his life choices.

You do not mess with the Special Investigation Unit.

Three episodes dropped in the middle of December, and they are releasing a new one every Friday, so five are out, and three are yet to be released.

[Thornhammer]

I enjoyed the first season of Reacher on Amazon Prime, and the second season is even better so far.

Wife and I were laughing our asses off at the reveal immediately following the "Sarah Connor" bit.

[yosemitemike]

A lot of indie sci-fi movies start out promising but just fall apart at the end.  It's like they have an interesting premise but have no idea how to end the story so they just throw some vague shit at you and then the movie stops.

[Omega]

Personally Battle Beyond the Stars works as its so small scale. One carrier type battleship vs a bunch of lighter agile vessels, some nearly fighter class. Theres no vast space war going on. Just some little planet being raided/conscripted by a warlord.

It's a Seven Samurai knockoff, the little planet replaces the humble farming village in the original story.

And Magnificent Seven (original)
And A Bugs Life
and probably many more using Seven Samurai or Magnificent Seven as the template.

[yosemitemike]

The Magnificent Sevenm was based on Seven Samurai which came out years earlier. 

[oggsmash]

I enjoyed the first season of Reacher on Amazon Prime, and the second season is even better so far.

This time around, Reacher is working with the members of his old Army unit after two of them turn up dead. This is a really good character dynamic, as they already know and respect Reacher, but are more than willing to question his life choices.

You do not mess with the Special Investigation Unit.

Three episodes dropped in the middle of December, and they are releasing a new one every Friday, so five are out, and three are yet to be released.

  You would think that given the massive eyeball appeal Reacher has had the folks in entertainment would get the hint.   I suppose its up to the few who can figure out people just want to be entertained and heroic bad asses are entertaining.

[hedgehobbit]

You would think that given the massive eyeball appeal Reacher has had the folks in entertainment would get the hint.   I suppose its up to the few who can figure out people just want to be entertained and heroic bad asses are entertaining.

The actor who plays Reacher would make a perfect Batman.

[DocJones]

Three episodes dropped in the middle of December, and they are releasing a new one every Friday, so five are out, and three are yet to be released.

I remember "seasons" used to be 22 to 25 episodes a year.   I feel ripped off.

[hedgehobbit]

I remember "seasons" used to be 22 to 25 episodes a year.   I feel ripped off.

Movies are getting longer and TV shows are getting shorter. Pretty soon they'll meet.

And it makes sense, movies are around 2 hours because that's the most people want to sit in a room at a time. And TV shows were needed to fill half a year of weekly content. But with streaming, neither of those apply.

[yosemitemike]

We're already there.  Rebel Moon is a mini-series edited into two long movies.  Picard season 1 is a long movie cut into multiple streaming episodes. 

[Omega]

The Magnificent Sevenm was based on Seven Samurai which came out years earlier.

Except that some of these movies are using Magnifcent 7 as the basis instead. And now we have Rebel moon basing off Battle beyond the Stars that was basing off Magnificent 7. God only knows how far the chain will go in some distant era.

[yosemitemike]

I watched the 2020 adaptation of Carmilla.  Well, I watched a movie called Carmilla anyway.  It was sort of like the original novella if you threw out about half of it.  I am now watching something called Are We Not Cats because what the fuck even is this?  I will probably regret this decision.

[Omega]

I watched the 2020 adaptation of Carmilla.  Well, I watched a movie called Carmilla anyway.  It was sort of like the original novella if you threw out about half of it.  I am now watching something called Are We Not Cats because what the fuck even is this?  I will probably regret this decision.

Thats how it is sometimes with movies old and new. The Thing uses only a handful of story beats from the book. I Robot uses nothing from the book. Sure they have some place names. But thats practically it.