Movies Everyone Seems to Love, and the People Who Hate Them.

And I thought I was the only one that could not stand Shrek.
Then again, I pretty much hate anything my Mike Myers.
If even your "dirty" jokes are only marginally funny, then you really suck as a comedian.
And his version of Cat in a Hat really just pisses me off.
It is a kids movie and he sticks his really sucky dirty jokes in it.
I didn't even bother reselling the dvd when my kids got it as a gift.
I just put that crap in the trash.

I don't hate this movie, but I didn't dig 'Shrek' that much. I like it but I don't see why people love it

I really don't care for The Fast and the Furious series, the Rush Hour series, or The Waterboy.

Matt wrote:
Also not to thread jack but I hate Family guy and any other of the Seth Macfarlane shows

Agreed. Family Guy blows.

Hasn't been funny since it's return, and only halfway through that 4th season to be honest.

Armageddon. Many love it, and I feel that I'm the only one that notices the preposterousness of it, even though it is a scifi flick.

I have to agree (and I've said it before both here and back in the days of WUMB). I'm English and I HATE Monty Python. And yes it is mostly due to idiots quoting it verbatim at me. Original humour, that you have thought up, is cool. Quoting old sketches out of context is just irritating. Please stop.
Also (and this is probably gonna get me a shitstorm from you guys).




STAR WARS




All of them




If I never see any of those overrated Space operas again it'll be too soon.



How much do I hate star Wars? Let me count the ways...


Lack Of Originality. It ripped off so much classic Science Fiction literature that subsequent attempts to film the originals were doomed to unfavourable comparison with Lucas's movies. For example Dune. (written 1965. Desert planet? Check. Ancient semi-mystical order? Check. sword fights? Check. Princesses? Check. I could go on).



The dialogue. The characters in the Star Wars movies don't so much hold conversations as stand there like cavemen, lobbing chunks of monologue at each other. As Harrison Ford said to Lucas in a moment of majestic exasperation: "You can type this shit, George, but you sure can't say it."


Its attempts at Myth making are clunky and cliched. Star Wars has assumed a Legendary prescence in contemporary American culture, but it lacks the edge, the depth and the resonance of the real thing i.e. Norse, Egyptian, Graeco/Roman or Celtic mythology. It doesn't even come close in detail and scope to something like The Marvel or DC Universes.


People that consider 'Jedi' to be a real religion.


Which brings me to...


Yoda. A problem with the English language has he. Plonking platitudes he generally utters. Spot this in case we, an amusing quirk he has been given. Sentences he chops in half! Then back together puts! The way round wrong! "The Force I sense in you," says he. "Teach you more, I can." Later, himself he excels: "Hard to see the Dark Side is." Please make it stop before it becomes the standard cliche way for wise aliens to talk...oh too late it is!

Merchandising. It's a movie about, and designed to sell, toys. It may have been the first but unfortunately it wasn't the last.

The politics. It starts as The Rebel Alliance v the Evil Empire, the little guy taking on the big machine - although, if you listen closely, it's stated that the Jedi had ruled for generations, so it's a restoration they're after, not a revolution. Still, clear enough. And in the age of the cold war, the USA could comfortably be anti-imperial. Ronald Reagan took the cue, built a defence system called Star Wars, and labelled the Soviet Union "the Evil Empire". But then that empire fell, and the only one left was the USA. So the Jedi changed sides. Darth Vader became not so bad. And the politics of the galaxy turned into a UN-style soup.

Character development what character development? When Han Solo swaggers into the story, he is a mercenary. Within two hours, he has become a star pupil, meekly accepting a medal from Princess Leia at an intergalactic version of a school prizegiving. The mercenary has turned into a boy scout.


Jar Jar Binks

Nice closer. I think you've made overwhelmingly sweeping statements that don't even come close to the balance of the overrating of the series, but it is your opinion.

I'm surprised you didn't point out the Flash Gordon correlation or, I forget the director's name, the samurai flicks Lucas took from.

In all fairness, we all take from something when building a story. It makes things understandable and relatable. Now, that isn't to say that he isn't original in the fact that he created the first successful, scifi mythopeia with movies. The guy made science-fiction not a pejorative term, something just for kids. I like Star Wars--I'm not hardcore like some--I just enjoy the mythos.

BlueMaxx wrote:I'm surprised you didn't point out the Flash Gordon correlation or, I forget the director's name, the samurai flicks Lucas took from.

Akira Kurosawa

BlueMaxx wrote:Nice closer. I think you've made overwhelmingly sweeping statements that don't even come close to the balance of the overrating of the series, but it is your opinion.

I'm surprised you didn't point out the Flash Gordon correlation or, I forget the director's name, the samurai flicks Lucas took from.

In all fairness, we all take from something when building a story. It makes things understandable and relatable. Now, that isn't to say that he isn't original in the fact that he created the first successful, scifi mythopeia with movies. The guy made science-fiction not a pejorative term, something just for kids. I like Star Wars--I'm not hardcore like some--I just enjoy the mythos.

And a nice rejoinder. Of course my view can't be anything but subjective and I don't expect or want to make any converts but...I just get tired of people holding up Star Wars as some examplar of how SF movies should be done when in fact it put the genre back thirty years and it still hasn't really recovered. Compare Lucas's movies with the SF movies made ten or twenty years previously, The Day the Earth Stood Still, This Island Earth or Kubrick's two SF masterpieces from the late sixties/early seventies- 2001 A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange or with Truffaut's Farenheit 451 or Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville or even Vadim's Barbarella. I think you have to agree after Star Wars the genre got a little dumbed down. Yes I know the original movies were an homage to, amongst other things, the old Republic serials like Flash Gordon and the films of Kurasawa and if we are to judge Star Wars as pastiche or as a kids movie franchise then fair enough it fulfills that brief admirably but people do tend to attempt to elevate the series into something more. That's why I hate Star Wars.

Jherek wrote:

Merchandising. It's a movie about, and designed to sell, toys. It may have been the first but unfortunately it wasn't the last.

Which movie are you talking about? Because the original Star Wars certainly does NOT fit with what you're saying here and, in fact, I don't really agree at all. The studio didn't even know at first that Star Wars was going to be a hit. The merchandising, etc came afterwards. And, considering the vision Lucas always had for these stories I'm afraid that I find the notion that they were being created just to sell toys to be absolute crap (to put it bluntly!).

Did they cash in on the massive popularity of the films by merchandising them to the hilt? Yep. Did the merchandising concept come first and therefore drive the creation of the films? Absolutely not.

^ I was gonna mention that, but forgot. It wasn't Smurfs, Transformers or G.I. Joe, it was its own thing that blew up with merchandising, sure, but wasn't this tool for a conglomerate.

comicgeekelly wrote:

BlueMaxx wrote:I'm surprised you didn't point out the Flash Gordon correlation or, I forget the director's name, the samurai flicks Lucas took from.

Akira Kurosawa

Thank you!

Jherek wrote:
And a nice rejoinder. Of course my view can't be anything but subjective and I don't expect or want to make any converts but...I just get tired of people holding up Star Wars as some examplar of how SF movies should be done when in fact it put the genre back thirty years and it still hasn't really recovered. Compare Lucas's movies with the SF movies made ten or twenty years previously, The Day the Earth Stood Still, This Island Earth or Kubrick's two SF masterpieces from the late sixties/early seventies- 2001 A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange or with Truffaut's Farenheit 451 or Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville or even Vadim's Barbarella. I think you have to agree after Star Wars the genre got a little dumbed down. Yes I know the original movies were an homage to, amongst other things, the old Republic serials like Flash Gordon and the films of Kurasawa and if we are to judge Star Wars as pastiche or as a kids movie franchise then fair enough it fulfills that brief admirably but people do tend to attempt to elevate the series into something more. That's why I hate Star Wars.

I'm not saying that earlier films weren't intelligent, like Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and McCarthyism, etc. But as far as everyone not looking at them with rolling eyes, Star Wars was the ticket to mainstream. Kubrick's 2001 was quite the success, but wasn't the type of scifi movie with an animated universe. It was basically AI and Dave throughout the movie. Always going back to humanity, rather than an all out diversity with alien races, robots, worlds, and The Force was a clever nod to ch'i and/or tao.

Now, I imagine living in Britain or Australia, that with all the Churches of the Jedi and their off-shoots are prominent, it can get a bit too silly than just a couple hundred dressed up and waiting a couple days in front of a theatre. Heh.

I feel your pain. I completely dislike Star Trek. Trek is just so...boring. You like Star Trek, though, don't you?

Aussiemandias wrote:

Jherek wrote:

Merchandising. It's a movie about, and designed to sell, toys. It may have been the first but unfortunately it wasn't the last.

Which movie are you talking about? Because the original Star Wars certainly does NOT fit with what you're saying here and, in fact, I don't really agree at all. The studio didn't even know at first that Star Wars was going to be a hit. The merchandising, etc came afterwards. And, considering the vision Lucas always had for these stories I'm afraid that I find the notion that they were being created just to sell toys to be absolute crap (to put it bluntly!).

Did they cash in on the massive popularity of the films by merchandising them to the hilt? Yep. Did the merchandising concept come first and therefore drive the creation of the films? Absolutely not.

Yeah okay I concede that point, but the succerss of Star Wars merchandising certainly started a trend.

BlueMaxx wrote:^ I was gonna mention that, but forgot. It wasn't Smurfs, Transformers or G.I. Joe, it was its own thing that blew up with merchandising, sure, but wasn't this tool for a conglomerate.

comicgeekelly wrote:

BlueMaxx wrote:I'm surprised you didn't point out the Flash Gordon correlation or, I forget the director's name, the samurai flicks Lucas took from.

Akira Kurosawa

Thank you!

Jherek wrote:
And a nice rejoinder. Of course my view can't be anything but subjective and I don't expect or want to make any converts but...I just get tired of people holding up Star Wars as some examplar of how SF movies should be done when in fact it put the genre back thirty years and it still hasn't really recovered. Compare Lucas's movies with the SF movies made ten or twenty years previously, The Day the Earth Stood Still, This Island Earth or Kubrick's two SF masterpieces from the late sixties/early seventies- 2001 A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange or with Truffaut's Farenheit 451 or Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville or even Vadim's Barbarella. I think you have to agree after Star Wars the genre got a little dumbed down. Yes I know the original movies were an homage to, amongst other things, the old Republic serials like Flash Gordon and the films of Kurasawa and if we are to judge Star Wars as pastiche or as a kids movie franchise then fair enough it fulfills that brief admirably but people do tend to attempt to elevate the series into something more. That's why I hate Star Wars.

I'm not saying that earlier films weren't intelligent, like Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and McCarthyism, etc. But as far as everyone not looking at them with rolling eyes, Star Wars was the ticket to mainstream. Kubrick's 2001 was quite the success, but wasn't the type of scifi movie with an animated universe. It was basically AI and Dave throughout the movie. Always going back to humanity, rather than an all out diversity with alien races, robots, worlds, and The Force was a clever nod to ch'i and/or tao.

Now, I imagine living in Britain or Australia, that with all the Churches of the Jedi and their off-shoots are prominent, it can get a bit too silly than just a couple hundred dressed up and waiting a couple days in front of a theatre. Heh.

I feel your pain. I completely dislike Star Trek. Trek is just so...boring. You like Star Trek, though, don't you?

Don't get me started on Star Trek