I still can’t stop but think how stretched out the Hobbit films were, for an otherwise short book. That’s a sin that stains forever with me. The Lord of the Rings films, do have their own flaws, but they’re fairly contained and can be debated as to whether they were good or not. I have so much trouble excusing anything with the Hobbit though.
And I hope we never, ever see anyone tackle The Silmarillion. Simply because, there will be so much improvised fluff in that would-be film, that it’d make the Hobbit films blush.
Bill Maher has had a prime television slot since 1993.
That ignorant asshole has been pretending to represent the “left” for 33 years while being a smug reactionary idiot.
Podcast recommend: I Hate Bill Maher.
and now he went through the full maga-ficaiton of his personality and hangs out with TRUMP, and fetterman.
Another podcast that ruined me If Books Could Kill. It is increasingly clear to me that being popular and established are two enormous red flags. And, comically, “being a rebel” is part of the armor all these people wear. The podcast covered an economist who labelled himself, “the bad boy of economics” despite being an established professor and having won a ton of prestigious awards… it’s all an act because just coming out as an obvious bootlicker is disqualifying, you have to camouflage yourself with trivial rebellions (Maher smokes pot! omg!) or against people not in the power structure (in Maher’s case, most often women, trans, and gays).
I’m super ignorant about celebrities’ self-marketing but i thought Maher was a libertarian only pretending he wasn’t racist. he actually claimed to be on the leftish region of politics?
In the skewed US scale, yes. He has usually described himself as a liberal, which is as close as anyone on mainstream TV got to being on the left until Bernie Sanders made waves in the 2016 campaign.
He recently had dinner with Trump while kissing his ass and said that he may vote for JD Vance next time because of the woke.
i dont think he was ever left.
he pretends to be “Aethiest” but he really isnt, since he subscribes to judiasm/zionism just not out loud as right now.
Every time a company does a tax write off and trashes the film. If they’re canning it, it’s ours. It’s public domain. Take it as a loss, we subsidize it, then it’s ours. Coyote vs Acme is the unicorn that got released. It should never have been thrown away.
I’ve felt this for a long time. Taxes are for public benefit, if you’re writing off an intellectual property to avoid taxes that property is now for public use.
Fox screwing Firefly with that stupid broadcast schedule (although it was cancelled before Joss could make it weird)
Star Wars: A LOT of things, but I’ll focus on Episode 9 being absolute dog shit
Game of Thrones, I don’t think I need to expand on it
Probably the most unforgivable thing is the legacy and ongoing sexual exploitation of minors in the entertainment industry, but I don’t think that’s what OP had in mind
It would have gotten so weird with Joss! Now it gets to live in my brain where it only gets mildly weird!
On the other hand, a drinking game based on how often there’s a close-up of bare feet would have developed
The graphic novel sequels were actually pretty rad though…but those were sequels to Serenity, to be fair.
Thewhat
Are these generally available for download?
Possibly! Although know what? I got mine from the local library. Many libraries have digital editions too. Worth checking to support your local one if you can. :)
Here’s the most non-reddit, non-amazon-related list of them I could find if that helps!
They do try to do a lot, but I appreciate the effort toward closure and like to imagine how it would have played out on screen.
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/2258/Serenity-Graphic-Novels
I didn’t even bother with Episode 9 after the slap in the face that Episode 8 was. Ugh.
The end of Battlestar Galactica.
They literally tied up all the loose threads into a bundle labeled “God did it” and then refused to speculate about God because that’s distasteful.
It’s sci-fi. You speculate. It’s what the genre does.
Not a fan of the ending myself but c’mon, it’s been a religious sci-fi since season one, dealing with prophecies, visions and existential questions. God was always going to be a part of the equation. Unless they revealed the nature of god being some machine or a more developed civilization, at which point they would never be able to finish the show because that wouldn’t be an answer but a whole new set of questions.
You are 100% correct.
I have rewatched the series and come to some peace about it, but it is still the first one to come to mind for this thread.
Religion was always woven into the series, and the original was somewhat Mormon inspired.
But that last bit, the evolving nature of god and the whole new set of questions was what I was hoping it would touch on.
I can’t tell if this is about the original or the remake. Didn’t the original end with them getting to Earth?
It’s about the remake.
I had a Classics professor call it a sci-fi version of The Odyssey. It does have some aspects of it. I’m not sure how intentional it is. It would make the god stuff all the more appropriate though.
I love/hated BSG ever since they expanded the number of Cylons for like the 3rd time. It was around that time it leaked that they didn’t have any plan and Ron Moore had been lying to the fans for years.
After it was over he said, (paraphrased) “LOL, There was no plan. If someone suggested more hidden cylons and it sounded dramatic we would go with it and figure out what that would mean in the next writing session.”
Yeah, if you put in the opening the line “They have a plan,” you better damned well know what that plan is.
In the end the plan was “We’re gonna kill 'em all!!”
Their plan was to scam the fans into believing there was a plan so they’d watch.
also the humanoid cylon, shouldve got more origin arc in thier creation. by the time of the series they were fully there already. also kinda ignoring the og series too.
I thought it was pretty clear that Bob Dylan was God. Did I just read too much into it?
My interpretation is that they landed on earth. The godS did it and the survivors would be the Greek population, hence all the mythological names (Apollo, Trace. Adama, Aghathon) The monotheistic plotline is a froreshadowing for what would happen on earth.
In a way they themselves become the gods, as knowledge of spaceflight dilutes and the old stories got retold. Eventually monotheims would rear it’s head again. with a Gaius like person to kindle it.
But somehow some fear of foreign tricksters persist, it there in philosophy and in myth. The cylons keep a certain base level of fear untill humanity will develop them again, against it’s knowing better.
I guess it’s how you interpret it? I thought it was a good ending and spoke to an endless loop of humanity and meaninglessness.
I agree the ending was lame, and really for a while leading up to it was too. However, I can’t see it ever having a payoff that it deserves for how good it started. I don’t think there’s any conclusion that would satisfy fans. It could have been better, but I think it always would have been viewed as not as good as the start.
it was terrible, because the showrunner was also religious thats why the god stuff was all in there in the first place. he hated the sci-fi aspects of it, to “Trek-kie” so he removed all the material form the og series, lasers,etc. other alien races.
It’s happening right now.
The oligarch’s buying out the US mass media is fucking criminal and truly unforgivable.
Social media, print, video and television is all owned by a few elites that have been manipulating the minds of society, gaslighting and outright lying to our faces.
It’s why we have a fascist pedophile as president, our social support systems being dismantled and the right of women, minorities and immigrants being taken away.
oh yea they had to make all these movies/shows to include more “wide audiences” which you know what it means. the new sg was cancelled for this very reason, they dint want to make it too broad and turn it into a slop/drama like SGU.
They gave the star trek movie reboots to a director that didn’t like or watch star trek.
I was rather excited when I heard about the reboots. And for the most part, I did enjoy the different takes on things. But I couldn’t stand how small they made the galaxy. Few hours to get to Vulcan, a transwarp system that sent a man to Klingon space in a matter of days. No scale at all. But it took me years to watch the third one, and didn’t like it at all.
Even in Star Wars, the one he claims to like more, he sort of broke the fuzzy-time that Hyperspace travel seemed to take.
They were never explicit about travel times (and fair enough, Star Wars is what it is), but clearly in ANH they had time to come down from the adrenaline-dump of escaping the Imperials at Tattooine and settle in, such that Chewy was playing board games with the passengers and Ben thought it was going to be leisurely enough to kick off history lessons and lightsaber drills. Everything about that screams hours-long flight at an absolute minimum, and to my mind more like a few days on a tramp steamer. JJ turned it into “HERP DERP INSTANT LOLZ! The implied passage of time is BORRRRRING!”
(Love the meme)
They just released yet another spinoff last month
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Fails_to_Save_the_Universe
another one? young sheldon wasnt enough.
The worst part was if I wore any of my many Flash or Green Lantern shirts people would assume it was a Big Bang reference. I had to explain, that no, I was just a nerd.
My first girlfriend loved that shit. It didnt make it past a few months, because she constantly braught me in comparison to one character due to me having autism. Go figure
I forgot that they made multiple The Hobbit films.
After watching the first one, I mentally erased their existence.
There’s a fan edit that’s pretty good that cuts all 3 into one 3-4 hour movie and removes the cgi orc
I actually enjoyed the beginning of the movie, but halfway through that stupid barrels down the river scene, I was over it.
As a young person, I loved A Wrinkle in Time and the entire set of sequels.
And so I say a heartfelt FUCK YOU to Ava DuVernay, who crappified this masterpiece into vapid pap film that felt like it was written by Kellogg’s marketing team in conjunction with the Ad Council of America.
Apparently the film lost $130 million. Thank God there is little chance of a sequel.
My wife loved the book in her tween years and encouraged me to read it… I’m not the intended audience for sure and some of the ideas were cool but that book sucks lol
I had a crush in middle school. Back then you signed your name on a physical card to remove a book from the library. I saw that she had rented A Wind in the Door just before me. I was so thrilled to ask her about it. She vaguely remembered losing interest and hadn’t read Wrinkle. Heartbreak.
I got married to a completely different woman a few decades later. She had a long commute, was looking for audiobooks, ofc I suggested Wrinkle . Her take-away? “Couldn’t get past what a whiny bitch Meg Murray is. Had to stop.”
Jesus fuck what is with you people
I mean, I didn’t like the book either… and looking on goodreads we’re not alone. It doesn’t even have 4 stars.
I haven’t read them, so I can’t give my opinion. We’re all allowed to enjoy (what others may call) garbage though. There’s no need to justify it. Hell, I will fully agree some things I like are total trash, and that’s alright! Art isn’t objective, and all kinds of emotions can make what could be a totally underwhelming thing something special.
LoL
It’s strongly in the no go category of, “Don’t ruin by reexperiencing it.”
I really enjoyed the books as a kid too, and was disappointed with how bad the movie was. But–from what I remember of the book–it was pretty faithful. I think the book doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of adulthood.
did not know a movie had ever been made.
See the low-budget Canadian one from 2003. It’s much more true to the books and is objectively better storytelling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wrinkle_in_Time_(2003_film)
The proper movie of these novels has not yet been made.
LotR should have been 6 movies and The Hobbit should have been 1
There was enough material for 3 if you include the long part of mirkwood wandering around and then sneaking around the elf camp and Beorn.
Creating consent for the Gaza genocide
I guess a decade of slop media where nothing is sacred and everything must be exploited has hardened my heart from caring about anything anymore. A younger me cared about why the Star Wars sequels are bad or that they cancelled Firefly too quickly or that Community fired Dan Harmon. But all these properties are just tools of corpo oppression at this point. Art doesn’t have the same impact if they are just trying to squeeze every last dollar out of them.
I firmly believe that there are real artists trying to say things and tell cool stories in these companies, and real shit does somehow sneak out on occasion (see Andor, perfectly imperfect jewel), but the utter financialization and commoditization of media means there’s so many filters a work has to push through before it’s allowed to survive. Like mass marketability etc — stuff that non artists make up to justify their salary.
PS not hating on non-artists (kind of don’t believe the category exists, but as a role) it’s just that when the share of people expecting to get paid from a work is mostly admin, marketing, logistics, rather than the people actually making the thing, incentives and culture get warped.
Yeah tbh there’s actually been a bit of a revival in the movie space ever since the Marvel universe had its final moment. Everything Everywhere All At Once is actually legitimately one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. One Battle After Another, Eddington, even smaller movies like Mickey 17. So clearly creativity isn’t dead.
I never watched Andor, not because I don’t think it’s probably good, but because it probably didn’t need the Star Wars license to be good. I’ve heard there anti capitalist themes in there and I just have a hard time seeing anti capitalist themes in mass market media as being genuine. It’s like buying a Che Guevara shirt from Urban Outfitters.
It definitely transcends its IP, which is why I feel it snuck through. If it wasn’t actually rock solid on top of being obviously subversive it would never have seen the light of day. It’s basically a manual on the dos and don’ts of rebelling.
I loved the early internet, where people were doing art for arts sake and funslop for funslops sake.
Then there was a tiny tiny period where people started making money doing it, and I was young and naive enough to truly believe we could have a kind of content-utopia where creative types would flourish etc etc.
The trend-chasing algorithm-humping stifling any chance of financial success for creativity and inventiveness was pretty inevitable in hindsight, but still.
The feelings gone and we’ll never get it back.
I loved the early internet, where people were doing art for arts sake and funslop for funslops sake.
I affectionately call this the “Peak Newgrounds Era.”
Aside: Kudos that the place is still up and people are still embodying that spirit.
Have you heard of dropout.tv?
It’s College Humor reborn under Sam Reich (the former Secretary of a Labor’s son) and it’s incredibly unique. They have a bunch of shows (go watch some Game Changer clips on YouTube) that are all hosted by and starring comedians and they profit share with all their talent, and their ToS service says you can share your account with anyone, etc.
They are very much the new media that is springing up while the old giants collapse.
If you’re at all interested in genuinely creative content, do yourself a favor and check them out.
thier the OG youtubers that adapted to the times, most other ytubers fade into irrelevance after a while, often times with the worst possible pivot like being maga, or zionist.
You remember Highlander 2?
Yeah, me neither.
Editing to add: Eragon. The only, one singular, thing that film got right was the opening scene. The rest of the film was an epic, blot-out-the-sun middle finger to the book and the fans.
And Highlander 2 isn’t even the worst Highlander movie. Hell, I’d argue that on a ranking list of all Highlander movies and shows it would be right in the middle.
To be clear, I’m not saying Highlander 2 isn’t bad. I’m just saying that the franchise has somehow managed to produce things that are far worse. There’s a reason that basically every entry in the series is a reboot of one kind or another.
Highlander 2 was so bad you can’t even find it anymore. All you can find is the Renegade cut, which is also very bad.
My biggest gripe with Eragon… It’s Dragon, with the first letter switched out.
To the very next letter, no less.
Could have had Bragon and Cragon as prequel’s and Fragon and Gragon as sequels
… goddammit, it’s been 20 years and I never caught that.
I read the series as a child so I didn’t know any better, but Inheritance came out when I was in high school and it made me realize Paolini really isn’t a great author. It was the sword forging, where he basically copy-pasted a step by step of how to make a katana that took MANY PAGES and I realized I really didn’t give a shit.
To be fair, the book was a middle finger to the book and fans.
The Halo games.
I think Bungie fumbled a bit but overall did a good job telling the story of Master Chief. Halo 3 really felt like it was intended to be his end because MC was right back where he started - A super weapon kept in cryo, only this time drifting indefinitely into space with very little chance of ever being found.
Then Bungie did Halo: Reach as a follow up and showed you could have a good Halo game without MC as the protagonist, telling a new(ish) story with new characters.
Then of course Microsoft ditched Bungie and kept the IP, now looking at now the vast amount of Halo novels and comics and other media, decided to dig up Master Chief again and shoehorn him into a bunch of other game plots.
I won’t say Halo 4/5/Infinite are terrible or anything to that level but I don’t think 343 nailed it.
Even more frustrating now that Microsoft seems keen to remaster the whole Halo Master Chief story arc (again).Apart from Master Chief Collection and Campaign Evolved, I haven’t touched a post-Bungie Halo game, so I can’t really comment on the quality of 4, 5 or Infinite. From what I’ve heard, 4 had a divisive campaign and horrible multiplayer, Halo 5 had decent multiplayer and a terrible story, and Infinite was heavily flawed.
What I can say is that 343 Industries fucked up hard with remastering the old games. Not even Rare (a development studio with a similarly bad reputation for pumping out shit game after shit game under Microsoft) have managed the feat of fucking up a remaster. Halo 1 Anniversary genuinely has updated graphics that do not align at all with the level geometry, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the Truth & Reconciliation mission where you had to sneak past Covenant forces, and if you were playing on the updated graphics, they could see and shoot you through boulders.
The studio rebrand and switch to Unreal 5 was a huge gamble that clearly didn’t pay off, because Campaign Evolved had terrible gunplay, glaring bugs, prequel missions with bad design and more exposition than a Shounen anime, and a redesign of Cortana where she has an incredibly masculine jawline and genuinely looks like Jerma985 wearing a wig.
I once saw a comment on Facebook about how the Halo Studios logo looks like an ODST being pounded in the ass with a giant dildo and I genuinely cannot unsee that image. It’s also a very fitting metaphor for what they did to the Halo franchise.
Disbanding Halo Studios, waiting for Marathon to inevitably fail and then buying Bungie from Sony for chump change is probably the best thing Asha Sharma can do with the franchise right now.
a redesign of Cortana
I’m still kinda mad that they decided Cortana had to be sexy and ditched the purple/green pixie of the first design. The AI companion of an asexual super soldier doesn’t need jiggly tits!
I think it was a consequence of them fleshing out the Halo lore after the first game became a surprise hit. To me Halo 2 Cortana will always be the best design.
I mean, it was fanservice to sell copies too. Even my child ass could see that back then.
I mean, do we really want the Destiny 2 dev working on Halo now?
I say give it to a studio with proven writing chops (Arkane, if they hadnt killed them?) or let it die.
Man, an Arkane Halo game…
Do what they did with Killer Instinct 2013 and Battletoads 2020. Bring in another studio but keep the main company associated with the IP in an advisory/support role. Rare clearly shouldn’t be trusted with solo developing another game and neither should Bungie.
Or, do what Activision did with Neversoft when they effectively merged them with Infinity Ward and became one of the three core CoD developers. Merging Arkane with Bungie could make one hell of a team.
Bungie holds serious brand recognition with Halo fans.
Rare clearly shouldn’t be trusted with solo developing another game and neither should Bungie.
I find the phrasing of this amusing. In my head, I’m picturing Arkane and Bungie in a room, and Sharma is pointing at Arkane and saying “Dont leave Bungie alone in a room with the cookie jar. Dont do it.”
Halo 4 was terrible to me.
I marathoned it blind, and I wasnt a Halo lore nut or anything, and I love me some space opera, yet it was just… a soap opera in a bad way? I couldnt believe it was a Halo game.
I heard even worse things about 5. And Infinite was such a waste of potential given the massive budget and the giant open world they barely did anything with.
So I say it was pretty dire.
A super weapon kept in cryo, only this time drifting indefinitely into space with very little chance of ever being found.
That really sounds very similar to what the later modern Doom games did to Doomguy. Where he was such a threat to demonkind they just, sealed him away or something and only summoned when in need.
But the Halo series was the worst. The opening scene had me, I will admit. It was bad ass to see it in real life like that, being part of some humans who had no chance in hell of survival. But the storyline from there… so stupid.
Reach was indeed the best Halo game. Bungie’s last was thier finest in both tone, story and gameplay.
Did that one still have some Dunki DNA on it, or was she long gone by then?
ROTJ was the first movie I recall having seen in a theatre; I loved it, and I still have a very soft spot for it. I can slough off criticisms of Ewoks without completely disagreeing that they were the beginning of the end and a backslide from ESB. I think I’m on the other side of the same cohort as Simon Pegg. He would have been 7 when ANH (aka just Star Wars) came out, and would only have been 13 when ROTJ came out. Unless you got into your teen ennui and “cooler than thou” mindset a bit early, 13 is still young enough to take it in with no judgment. Add another 16 years of livin’, and George pushing things even a bit farther, and yeah, JarJar is not getting the same leeway.
Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong, I love the Ewoks myself. Never really had a problem with them :-)
