The Cube.
Most people saw it as an average horror movie where a bunch of people try to get out of a giant torture box. But there was a pivotal scene that stuck with me where one of the prisoners realizes he helped build part of it. The whole thing wasn’t some intentional torture device but just a bunch of people doing their day jobs that were lost in a bureaucracy not ever questioning what their work was creating.
A stark reflection of society and the systems we create and the dangers of not ever looking at the bigger picture.Of course they proceeded to shit all over this idea in Cube2 where it ended up being just another evil government experiment.
I actually liked Cube Zero for the backstory and set styles. I don’t remember much else so I’m assuming it was shit, but you can give it a try if you want.
I think OP pretty much summed up Cube Zero. The first installment is really just a horror fiction also depicting the structure of human society.
Yeah, Cube 2 is shit. It’s a scientific concept show.
I think the execution was amazingly well done. It’s one of the best character driven horror-thrillers I’ve ever seen, all the characters are memorable and well-rounded, the premise is explored as much as it needs to be, and it doesn’t really leave any loose ends. 9/10 movie for sure
Yeah it’s not a bad film at all really, but even just within the horror/scifi genre it can’t compete with higher budget films for popularity.
Just to ask, nobody understood the full picture of what they were making? Or was there someone who created the concept but intentional obfuscated it from everyone else via bureaucracy?
Granted it’s just the viewpoint of one of the prisoners but it’s the one I found most intriguing. To quote the movie: “Nobody knew what it was, nobody cared…there is no conspiracy, nobody is in charge. It’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan…somebody might have known sometime before they got fired, voted out, or sold it…this is an accident, a forgotten perpetual public works project. You think anybody asked questions? All they want is a clear conscience and a fat paycheck.”
That’s awesome sci-fi right there. It’s a bit campy, but it’s campy in the same way that all great social commentary is, until it isn’t and it’s too late.
Ok the last time I watched it was well before being exposed to corporate culture. That’s awesome.
The thing that stuck with me was: “TWO!”
Yeah, I even think Cube² was better.
Jupiter Ascending
They seed the galaxy and harvest whole planets to create an immortality serum. Fantastic world concept … but a subpar story to make a movie about within that world.
oh yeah, I remember liking the genetic aspect of that too. But yeah, poor story, and not Mila Kunis’s best acting
And all the stuff about the genetic lottery, there being so many humans that eventually a perfect match gets born randomly is a cool premise.
I wish Jupiter Ascending could have some sequels to spend going full space soap opera.
I know! The idea that a perfect clone/cop could be born was amazing. If only they would make a movie about … oh yeah, I forgot. They did.
I was so hyped when I saw the trailers, because the visuals and ideas of the story they showcased were exactly my jam. But oh boy, what a dumpster fire the whole movie turned out to be.
Edit: yep, still goosebumps watching the trailer
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Amazing world building and visuals that was destroyed by terrible casting and wooden acting.
The box art put me off thisnone, but skimming the plot and it reads like an amazing visual spectacle. Might watch this one
This was the movie I immediately thought of.
It’s a terrific LOOKING movie, but the two leads had absolutely no chemistry. At first I couldn’t figure out if they were partners, spouses, dating, brother & sister, etc.
The production design was spectacular, though.
Still definitely worth watching if you ask me, but yeah those main characters are… Not amazing.
Hot take, “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”. The radio play, books and 80s bbc show were not represented very well at all. They missed well over 75% of the jokes, Mos Def and Zooey Deschanel added nothing to it, and they added plots and scenes, I think just to get more “blockbuster actors” in, that ruin the original story of the radio play. Sam Rockwell, Alan Rickman/Warwick Davis and Bill Nightly were the highlights. One of the few movies I wish they would remake.
Sam Rockwell as Zaphod was spot on. He was the only one who actually read the books, and had to even tell the director to add “Froody” to the script. What a shitshow it must have been for the director not to know that…
That director doesn’t sound froody
Oh hey Zaphod, yeah he was not a frood indeed
Clearly did not know where his towel was.
I quite like the movie. I mean all your points make sense and i agree, but at the same time, it’s that movie that even introduced me to the books, and i now read them every year or two. The movie is far from perfect, but if you look at other things they try to convert into movies, this could’ve been so so much worse. Like imagine they made that movie now or somewhen in the past 5 or 10 years, it would basically be a disney marvel movie with marvel quips and: “he’s right behind me isn’t he’s?”
Not a movie, but a TV show. Revolution.
A sci-fi post-apocalypse show where the premise is that all of a sudden all technology (specifically anything that uses electricity) just stops working and nobody knows why. The show takes place 15 years into the apocalypse. The US has Balkanized into various regional states (although you don’t learn this until later). Some regions have devolved into chaos while others have basically reverted to a steam-punk type of society. Since all modern ships use electricity, they’ve begun to revive large ships from the age of sail. The remnants of the US military at Guantanamo Bay eventually return to the mainland and try to reestablish a much more explicitly authoritarian control over the US. You eventually learn that what caused the global blackout was the creation of a self-replication nanotech which rapidly spread across the planet and shut off all electricity.
Great premise, but it got too much into the soap-opera CW-style of writing and didn’t last more than 2 seasons.
Yep. Sounds like what happened with Jericho. Mystery and intrigue in the starting seasons, and then just weird petty soap-opera style squabbles towards the end
If the writers want to tell a story focused on inter-personal relationships, that’s perfectly fine. There are PLENTY of people who enjoy that kind of thing. They just don’t tend to be the same type of people who enjoy post-apocalyptic sci-fi puzzle-box shows. I don’t know why you go through all the trouble of creating this expansive world and lore only to focus your show on character dynamics that aren’t centered around the conceit of the show.
If you’re going to build this complex world, let us explore that world!
Ah yes, the Lost-likes.
Manifest, Fast Forward, Continuum, Revolution, Terra Nova… loved them all. All of them canceled.
Yeah really fun premise slathered in boring characters.
If I recall it devolved into some CW-flavor bullshit revolving around the girl, who is her real father, why is she special. Blah blah blah.
It was such a good show, but man did they just keep pushing it
Reign of fire. Don’t know if that’s what you were referencing in the picture but it’s immediately what came to mind when I saw the drawing.
Dude yes, I was so hyped for it, but it really underdelivered
Bits of it were good. Seems like something went wrong in production or they ran out of money or something. Some of the effects were really good and there was a real mood to the post apocalypse world but it was very uneven especially the way the entire process of civilization ending was just a montage of newspaper headlines. It’s ok to be post apocalypse of you don’t want to show the apocalypse but that was just cheese. Also there were the odd shots that were of just such a lower standard than the rest of the film. Like this scene where a guy climbs up a watertower and stands atop it getting ready to throw a spear and for some reason after the effects extravaganza up until that point in the film it looked a cheap television blue screen that was super awkward. I guess they wanted it to look taller than in reality and show the desolate landscape but it’s so weird that after all the aerial dragon combat they’d pulled off pretty well for the most part that THAT was somehow difficult. I seem to recall storywise there was some very disappointing ending too but it’s been rather too long for me to recall it now anyway.
Dark City (1998) could definitely fit the bill, it has so many unique ideas for that time in film and you can see there’s of all sorts of future sci-fi movies in it from the matrix to inception, it’s a very visually ugly movie and the acting is subpar but as a premise it’s super interesting. Generally I think remakes are a waste of time and money but I’d love to see this movie with a proper budget and modern technology
The city itself was interesting as hell
I really like that movie. But watch the directors cut, for the love of all that’s good! It removed the narration at the beginning that gave away the whole plot. Much better that way.
Jennifer Connelly is the best part of the movie
I just watched this! It felt like the director wanted to go real big with it but technology just wasn’t there with effects. It also tried very hard to be a mindfuck movie but also kept spoiling the twists somehow lol. Overall solid 7+ movie.
I don’t want a remake, I want a sequel. I’m glad I’m not the only one who disliked the visuals of the movie, tho.
Man in the High Castle tv show. The premise was interesting, Nazis taking over the US and the population figting back. However, the show quickly devolved into a confusing mess.
Nazis are in charge of the US government, yet there’s other Nazis on the run from the Nazis in charge? And they’re hiding bibles? I was left scratching my head wondering if there were any characters that weren’t Nazis. I guess it’s a story about how bad guys always turn on each other?
Also The Witcher season 1 tv show. I’ve never played the games before and knew nothing about it. I was hoping the tv series would be my introduction to the games, but… what in the actual fuck. Was the director drunk? Is this a show about medieval fantasy time travel and I’m just not getting it?
Is this a show about medieval fantasy time travel and I’m just not getting it?
The three main perspectives it follows take place at different points in and over different amounts of time but each one is internally completely linear and then they all end the season at the same point as each other. Basically, the less you’re making an effort to follow the plot the easier it is to follow because keeping track of the interconnectedness distracts you from the straightforward character stories.
This isn’t me trying to convince you to go back, to be clear, I’m just hoping this will give you some closure.
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Man in the High Castle
Although I liked the series, the “supernatural” elements in it really threw me off. I would still recommend the series but be clear that it is science fiction and doesn’t always adhere to physical limitations as we know them, without getting any more specific than that.
Season 1 is based on the first book, which was made some a bunch of serials in a fiction magazine. It’s honestly pretty spot on with the book and the following books and seasons are fully linear.
Man in the High Castle tv show. The premise was interesting, Nazis taking over the US and the population figting back. However, the show quickly devolved into a confusing mess.
Unfortunately the case for a good portion of Philip K. Dick’s work… Schizophrenia, amphetamines, and misogyny can do that I guess.
But when he was good… He was the best of his genre. Literally imo…
Basically every Terminator movie after T2. They have some great “what if” premises that could add so much depth to the world, but then struggle to see the vision through is a satisfying way.
T3: Let’s actually show Judement Day
T4: Let’s show the turning point in the war against the machines (edit: and why people follow John Connor as leader of the resistance)
T5: Exists
T6: What if all this time travel actually branched the timeline? What would it look like if one of Skynet’s terminators succeeded?
The Sarah Connor chronicles was the only sequel media that ever made sense to me
I know, right? I was quite mad when l heard the show was cancelled after season two. I still want to know if she survived after taking a shotgun shot to this day.
Not a film, but a TV series? It’s called Jericho, and the synopsis in the Wikipedia reads:
Jericho is an American post-apocalyptic action drama television series, which centers on the residents of the fictional city of Jericho, Kansas, in the aftermath of a nuclear attack on 23 major cities in the contiguous United States.
But yeah, the execution is mediocre at best. Both the action and the drama are unbearably flimsy and cliche, even the argument flops as metal.
I remember starting watching that. I have no idea how far I got, but I don’t remember a thing about it.
Same here. Aamof I just try watching it last year. Visually, it was cool to come back to those years, but I don’t think I finished season 1.
Oh man I haven’t thought of Jericho in a minute. I used to watch that after The Unit.
I love Jericho. On my third watch right now actually. Would agree that it’s frequently cliché, but overall I’d say it’s very good. Skeet Ulrich is transfixing.
Did you read the season 3 in comic books? I was surprised about the following they’ve got as I was reading that Wikipedia entry.
yeah but it’s been aaages, I forgot about what happened in those. I remember it was good.
Yeah, I can’t stop thinking about that show either.
I feel like the last 30 years of Star Wars movies could qualify here
The Last Jedi was an amazing deconstruction of Star Wars. I don’t think better execution would have helped it with a fan base that wants to be stuck in the past reliving the hero’s journey ad nauseam but it had a lot more potential than you see on screen.
with a fan base that wants to be stuck in the past reliving the hero’s journey ad nauseam
This seems counter to most complaints I’ve seen about the movie that they just rehashed the original trilogy.
That is an apt criticism of TFA and TRoS, but not TLJ at all.
TLJ takes a bunch of the exact same elements from the original trilogy including the young jedi training in a remote location, the empire/first order finding the secret rebel base with the main characters escaping at the last moment, the protagonist being captured by their rival and being brought before the sith leader where they wind up battling, the protagonist finding out that they’re related to their rival, the hermit jedi master sacrificing themselves etc, etc, etc. The last trilogy is just a recycling of the original to the point that they had to add stupid dialog like “it’s salt” in a vain attempt to convince people that they aren’t just copy and pasting major plot points from the original
TFA and RoS are rehashes, TLJ is a deconstruction
That seems like a distinction without a difference.
Just for the fun of it, I took a screenshot of Google AIs take on the “deconstruction” argument:
“Challenging the Chosen One narrative”
Rey’s parents were “nobody” yet so were Luke Skywalker’s parents. The final film is titled “The Rise of Skywalker” on her path to becoming the chosen one.
“Revisiting Luke’s Heroism”
Rehashes the same failures Obi Wan felt for not preventing Anakin from going to the dark side.
“Undermining Jedi Ideals”
Irrelevant point that could just as easily signify the film’s creator’s not being familiar with the intricacies of the source material.
“Exploration of Failure and Complexity”
Throughout all the films, the rebels are constantly facing failures. They get attacked, captured, fail to prevent events from occurring, etc.
“Subverting Expectations”
An expression ripped straight from the final season of GoT and widely mocked. This film didn’t subvert any of my expectations as it all plays out quite predictably in Disney fashion where the “good guys” come out on top in the end. The fact that this argument is even made illustrates the similarity to the previous films which set an expectation for how things are going to play out. I don’t see how they really differed in any meaningful way as it all plays out the same in the end.
i ain’t arguing with a machine
Well, I mean nobody has actually made any defense for the movie here other than repeating the word “deconstruction” without elaborating any further, and I’m not going to do a deep dive and write out a counter argument to my own position, so the machine will have to do. For all we know this is the same machine that Disney used to recycle these old plot points for TLJ 😆
Only losers and goobers use AI to make their argument for them. Try thinking like a real human.
I didn’t use AI to make my argument for me. I used AI to make their argument since nobody was willing to actually make an argument outside of saying the movie is a “deconstruction” three separate times without stating what they mean or how it isn’t just a blatant ripoff of the older films.
Disagree. The first two sequels kept making a defeated bad empire stronger and stronger without any explanation. The rebels then suddenly became just 400 to 20 people. A different type of journey would have been welcomed with open arms if clever enough.
And I think embracing the jedi, but killing the wars aspect, rather than trying to destroy the jedi but keeping the wars it would have been a much better answer to the franchise.I think I’m really unusual in that I dislike almost everything after IV. I think the first film was brilliant, back when Lucas was fighting for money and had to rely on vision and had Campbell to advise with. After that it was all introducing cutesy characters strictly for marketing, they all lacked the charm of the original.
I know I’m an exception. Nearly everyone liked V and/or VI more. Everyone dunks on Jar Jar, but I could not stand the Ewoks. It was so disgustingly blatant.
At the time I was dying for sequels, and when they finally came I was so disappointed. You know, I think I just realized that it was the Vader/Luke connection that sunk it for me. That all of the major characters had to be related somehow made the universe smaller, and more petty. They only got worse after that; I think I watched all of I-III, but I actively hated those.
Anyway, I think there might have been a path, and I’m no story teller so I couldn’t fix it, but I think the while thing went off the rails after IV.
Good friends have told me the Mandelorian was good, but “Baby Yoda” represents everything I loathed about the series and I refuse to watch it.
Anyway, what were you saying about the Hero’s Journey? Maybe I should watch The Last Jedi, because while the Campbell formula worked for the first film, it didn’t improve any of the sequels, so maybe I’d like it. As long as there are no obviously pandering character designs that exist clearly because they can easily be marketed as toys. Looking at you, BB-8.
There are a bunch of adorable space critters that you’ll think are that when you’re watching the movie, and they certainly were marketed and merchandised like crazy, but they’re actually there due to the unwanted presence of adorable Earth critters during filming. They couldn’t shoot the scenes without including these birds that lived where they were shooting so the solution they came up with was CGI-ing weird faces on them and including some close-ups to make them look deliberate.
I’m also pro-TLJ, but I do think it could have done with a few tweaks to the script to catch some stuff. In terms of how it looked and was acted on the moment-to-moment scale they nailed it though, so I’m not sure if that falls under “better execution”
I mean it’s a high budget Disney film, the script should be the only place for improvement.
True, but I would argue that TLJ actually did substantially better than the Disney and Star Wars averages on the visual front. Not necessarily in terms of the technical execution of the effects since they’re always basically as good as they get for the time in both Disney and Star Wars stuff, but in terms of the composition of shots
I understand your point, but imagine you go to the movies expecting to watch [something you like] and it’s actually a two hours long lecture on how [something you like] is dumb and bad.
It’s a bad star wars movie because of the hyperspace ram.
SciFi inherently requires suspension of disbelief and so I find the way these types of stories ground themselves is through the rules they set. For example fire/explosions don’t really make sense in space but its a consistent thing so w/e.
Hyperspace ramming breaks the entire concept of Star wars BC why hasn’t anyone done it before? Its the perfect weapon for asymmetrical warfare, its cheap and its very effective. Imagine how a weapon like that could be used with a robot piloting a junk ship, why even build a death star just strap a bunch of garbage to a hyperspace drive and ram it into a planet. Its so effective that every fight in the future needs to consider it as well.
I’d defend this movie far more if it didn’t do this. But it didn’t only damage its own movie it damaged every story star wars has told retrospectively.
As I recall, hyperspace is like a pocket dimension. They just speed up a whole lot to enter hyperspace. So you can’t collide with things ‘in hyperspace’, but only as you’re going really fast while transitioning to hyperspace, which is quite a bit more limited in capability.
Hyperspace drives are expensive, and droids are sentient (so its still suicidal). Using it as a weapon would be like having an shotgun in an fps game, where the first 5 feet is extremely lethal to really big targets, whereas anything after that is a waste of time. Also each shot is $10k.
The real question would be why didn’t she just splat against the cruiser’s shields as they established that was a problem in the previous movie (when they need to hyperspace through the shielding of that planet), unless they had a Galaxy Quest moment where they forgot to flip the shields on.
I guess I am thinking of droids as not having free will even if they are sentient.
I don’t find the expense of a hyperdrive to be a valid point though mostly because even if they are expensive they can’t be that expensive. Han Solo has one and he never seemed like a character with money. I.e. an individual likely wouldn’t be able to try this but an army, with unquestioning soldiers and an immoral general would absolutely try it imo. 1 life/ship lost to kill a fleet is a worthwhile trade
So actually to add onto this, this was bothering me so I had to look into it further:
I was very incorrect - Hyperspace isn’t a pocket dimension per se and you can hit things while moving through hyperspace. The reason they ‘sometimes’ get past shields is because shields have a refresh rate so it may be able to phase through if you get it just right.
I’m more with you on this now, its a little ridiculous that no ones really tried to weaponize hyperdrive engines.
As far as I know all droids in Star Wars have free will.
Han Solo gambled and won the Falcon from Lando (who appears well off), it was definitely too expensive for him to have bought normally.
I think the hyperspace battering ram is funky, but I believe it was less that it was a good tactical idea and more of the First Order being extremely arrogant by not having their shields up, not using a tractor beam, and not just sending a smaller ship forward to close the gap and blowing it up.
I think the movie wanted to show that they were savoring the victory and were willing to draw it out as they believed the rebels were drowning in hopelessness.
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Never watched it, but am intrigued. How so?
Rian Johnson is a master of deconstructing genres.
if you went this long without watching it I won’t spoil it but to say the themes are not typical of the rest of the franchise and the fans hated it for that.
How Ben and Luke tell the story of how the latter nearly killed his nephew could’ve used better execution/storytelling, that alone would significantly reduce the amount of discussion on how the movie “killed his character”
I really hate what they did to Luke’s character. It felt like they deliberately trashed him and everything he stood for so some random nobody gimmick character doesn’t look as 2-dimensional. :(
The Ben Swolo memes were hilarious though.
Christian Bale faking an actually decent London accent, Gerard Butler being a loveable scot, and Matthew McCaughnehey doing his best Norse/Spartan Warrior impression?
Horrible acting all around (except Bale at times), the lead female character was basically there to soothe/flirt with the lead (wish i was joking), you can barely understand anyone, and yet really impressive set/castle and overall atmosphere. You believe you are there, and that the world is gone.
Huge gaps in logic on the hunting patterns of dragons, helicopters seem to run on infinite fuel, and the final plan to take down the main dragon is just stupid at best… but the execution of fighting dragons in the air with nets dropped by guys without parachutes was a phenomenal air sequence.
Also, the dragon CGI holds up. You never quite see it, but when you do, you believe it’s there, and the CGI team did a great job with consistency in that the dragons are always depicted expelling fluid that they ignite, and you see it every time they cast fire.
Brilliant movie, and one of the best opening 5 minutes in terms of origin story. Just a lot of bad acting, and some questionable feats in logic plot-wise.
I’m a crazy, or did you completely fail to mention what movie you’re describing?
I remember being extremely well entertained by awesome dragons, and that’s it. Which means you’re probably correct.
What Bale’s native accent?
I know it’s a British one, I was wondering what region, since OP was talking about his London accent.
its vaguely welsh, but I actually can’t tell
Not a movie, but a TV Show. The Cape.
A former detective is forced into hiding where he is trained in stage magic, sleight of hand, circuscraft, and illusions. He uses them to fight crime.
I thought it was a really interesting concept, a more down-to-earth superhero like Batman, and stuff like this can plausibly happen in real life.
Unfortunately the show was so bad it was canceled mid season and the finale was only streamed on NBC’s website.
Six seasons and a movie!
Damn sounded hilarious
Twilight. My wife made me watch the first one and it’s actually got a really interesting world and hints at a lot of decent lore and possible content.
Then they fill the film with close-ups of their eyes meeting across the room for minutes on end.
I actually liked the weird depressing grey vibe of the the first film. If it wasn’t for all the vampire stuff, it’d be an interesting outsider story about boy-meets-girl with a slight supernatural vibe
The third and fourth books actually start to introduce some really wild lore and world-building. Shame it was wasted on such a terrible main plot.
