Movies you've been watching...

[Spaced Out Ace]

Watched Rocky (1976) tonight with my girlfriend. We plan to watch the rest of the Rocky films this week, and work our way through the Rambo films as well.

 

[SalsaWood]

@Bloody_Inferno I was probably too harsh on it initially tbh. I should rewatch it.

 

[thebeesknees22]

i just finished the 2nd one (i never read the books either), and honestly it seems more realistic for it to go the way it did vs a more traditional hero story. I mean... most people would be real shitty like that if they had that kind of following I would think.

I still stand by my previous thought of zendaya and timothee whatshisface having zero chemistry though after finishing it. But overall is was an alright movie. I was entertained enough. Good visuals. Good score.

 

[Seabeast2000]

How many names and titles does Paul Atreides have? 4?

 

[MFB]

Watched Rocky (1976) tonight with my girlfriend. We plan to watch the rest of the Rocky films this week, and work our way through the Rambo films as well.

I might be speaking blasphemy, but I usually just skip Rocky and go right to Rocky 2 considering there's really not much development in one; it's just, Rock and Adrian get together (which still never really sits right with me, they just seem so blaise) and he fights Apollo in the end.

I also unironically love Rocky 4, and have four of the songs as part of my running playlist, it's probably the only reason I got the level of cardio I was.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

Considering you said you didn't read the book in a previous post, this reaction is expected. Frank Herbert made it a point to beware all charismatic leaders, and Paul's story is not a a traditional hero's journey but one turned on its head.

When Dune Messiah comes out, you probably won't like that either, since it continues to double down on that subversion. If any consolation, JRR Tolkien didn't like Dune either.

it's literally just Lawrence of Arabia in Spaaaace
(seriously go watch Lawrence of Arabia, Dune was heavily inspired by TE Lawrence's life).

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

it's literally just Lawrence of Arabia in Spaaaace
(seriously go watch Lawrence of Arabia, Dune was heavily inspired by TE Lawrence's life).

That's the simplistic way to put it. Obvious, but of course Herbert had written Dune to be far more nuanced than just TE Lawrence meets Lesley Blanch with lots of shrooms.

 

[KnightBrolaire]

That's the simplistic way to put it. Obvious, but of course Herbert had written Dune to be far more nuanced than just TE Lawrence meets Lesley Blanch with lots of shrooms.

It's definitely a simplified version of it, but the whole "he shall move and act as though he was one of us" schtick and his transition from white savior to white devil is very obvious in retrospect, as that is essentially lifted straight from Lawrence of Arabia.
I think Herbert definitely added a lot of really cool stuff like the whole ecology of Arrakis/space travel, but the guerilla warfare/inspiration for the Fremen draws heavily on Lawrence's campaign with the Arab Revolt of 1916. He even uses a bunch of Arabic words as part of the Fremen language.

It's not a bad thing that it draws from that. Tolkien pulled heavily from his WW1 experiences for LOTR. Vonnegut/Heinlein pulled from their experience in WW2, Halderman did the same thing for the Vietnam war with the Forever War.

 

[BlackMastodon]

The thing about Dune 2 (spoiler alert) I don't appreciate is how the protagonist basically plays right into his own fears and premonitions of changing from noble good into a primary agent of noble cause corruption/fanaticism. Like, bro, you had one job.

You also gotta remember that it isn't until Paul drinks the water of life that he does a pretty hard heel-turn. I remember it was discussed here pretty heavily (or maybe in the book thread?) a few months back, but in the book he's in a coma after drinking the water of life for years not days/weeks like what's portrayed in the movie, and given what the water of life does to him and shows him, it's not surprising that he plays into everything he feared. It also plays heavily on the trope of not being able to outrun your destiny.

 

[SalsaWood]

(Dune 2 spoilers) I do comprehend the character arc and all, I just don't find it compelling within the entire context of the world. I found many other characters' stories a lot more interesting than Paul's, but a lot of those characters are dead now. The completely recognized slide into villainy Paul does felt like watching Anakin drift closer and closer towards Vader, but while being fully aware of it. At some point, relatively early, the benefit of the doubt in regard to being a protagonist isn't especially valid for Paul. Playing that element out longer and fleshing it out in the movie would definitely have helped things I bet. All the same, whether it was willing or the tides of fate, in D2 we are shown that Paul never deserved to be seen that way in the first place. It's shaping up to be another one of those stories where it's a gaggle of jerks fighting to the top of jerk mountain. That's fine compositionally, just reminds me of a lot of stories I have seen where most of the time I'm praying everyone will just wipe each other out and a character worth rooting for will emerge or be revealed.

I definitely see how unique the saga is while having some parallels to other great stories. Cinematically it's outstanding. I think I'm figuring out it's not my normal cup of beer and I need to reapproach it for what it is instead of what I wanted.

 

[Louis Cypher]

Watched the Brendan Fraser Rachel Weisz version of The Mummy (1999) the other night. Bloody love this film, proper late 90's popcorn blockbuster that's now 25 yrs old (I'm so old).
Have so many reasons why I love this film, main one tho which unlike all of Stephen Sommers films, is that the story is tight and well written, it not a load of bloated convoluted nonsense like the sequel or Van Helsing. Also the special effects stand up too after 25 yrs imo unlike cgi scorpion Rock in the Mummy Returns.
Honestly, I do actually love the Mummy Returns as well even tho its basically a load of tosh story wise compared to the 1st one

 

[nightflameauto]

That first Brendan Fraser Mummy managed to be likable enough to make me enjoy the other films even when they got vaguely insulting, like when they focused on Scorpion King bad CGI fests. Granted, at that point you could have put The Rock in a My Little Pony film and I probably would have enjoyed it, if there was enough Rock to detect.

Speaking of which, I rarely see it mentioned, but Dwayne Johnson in Southland Tales was possibly one of the greatest displays of acting ever. His ability to swap his character, even mid sentence at times, in that film was nothing short of brilliant. Lots of other great cameos in there too.

 

[wankerness]

I saw the Mummy Returns for the first time this year. The Rock is TERRIBLE in it, but he's so bad that it's actually funny. I'm pretty sure that was his first actual movie and it shows. He figured it out pretty quickly (I remember him being pretty good already in The Rundown), but boy are his emotional displays in the opening sequence hilarious. "Oh, my whole army died and I'm left in the desert alone? That sounds like a job for MILD ANNOYANCE FACE!" And wow, was the CGI on the scorpion king hilarious. It actually looks like a PS2 cutscene, unlike most bad CGI that people describe as that.

Also the movie's incredibly loud and annoying, which is what I remember thinking of Van Helsing when I saw it in the theater. They just massively overdid everything in the name of spectacle, and with way too much faith in the abilities of CGI at the time. The climactic battle between the Anubis warriors and the tattoo face squad is even less convincing than robots vs the gungans in Phantom Menace. And that wacko scene with little pygmy mummies jumping out of the reeds at people like they're raptors in the lost world? Madness!

I also thought it was hilarious that they cast the actress who played Marta on Arrested Development as Anoksanamoon or however you spell it. It works in the first movie cause she just has to look smug and hot for like one scene, but in the sequel, she's supposed to be a major villain and a badass warrior and the actress just looks like a wholesome telenovela star. I thought it was funny that the movie got her and Rachel Weisz to have a big scantily clad martial arts fight, though - no wonder Rachel Weisz wouldn't come back for the third! It's pretty funny seeing a classy actress like that flipping around in a gold miniskirt while fighting with japanese weapons like sais in ancient egypt.

Also it does that "meta" thing I hate, where it just does all the same scenes from the first movie over again, but then always have a character going "WHOA, NOT THIS AGAIN!!!" to try and have their cake and eat it too. "See, us the filmmakers weren't lazily copying all the same scenes! we were just trying to be funny!"

I watched The Mummy last year and it's still good. Mummy Returns is just bad. I'm curious to watch the widely hated third movie (Curse of the Dragon Emperor or whatever, not Scorpion King)- as long as it doesn't have that snotty kid in it doing the worst english accent this side of dick van dyke I'm sure it's an improvement.

Another Stephen Sommers movie that's still entertaining is Deep Rising. It's slightly less good than The Mummy, but definitely a lot better than Mummy Returns/Van Helsing.

 

[Seabeast2000]

Is the Tom Cruise Mummy in the same universe?

 

[SalsaWood]

Rewatched Dune 2. Ended up picking up on a lot more stuff than I did the first time around and enjoyed it much more. I still don't feel like I have anyone to root for that isn't dead already, but it's still very enthralling. I take back my initial claims that it be shite. Must have originally been in the mood for more combat and tactics than social or political maneuvering, but it can stand on those aspects better than a resounding majority of other films of the same initiative.

 

[thebeesknees22]

I saw the Mummy Returns for the first time this year. The Rock is TERRIBLE in it, but he's so bad that it's actually funny. I'm pretty sure that was his first actual movie and it shows. He figured it out pretty quickly (I remember him being pretty good already in The Rundown), but boy are his emotional displays in the opening sequence hilarious. "Oh, my whole army died and I'm left in the desert alone? That sounds like a job for MILD ANNOYANCE FACE!" And wow, was the CGI on the scorpion king hilarious. It actually looks like a PS2 cutscene, unlike most bad CGI that people describe as that.

Also the movie's incredibly loud and annoying, which is what I remember thinking of Van Helsing when I saw it in the theater. They just massively overdid everything in the name of spectacle, and with way too much faith in the abilities of CGI at the time. The climactic battle between the Anubis warriors and the tattoo face squad is even less convincing than robots vs the gungans in Phantom Menace. And that wacko scene with little pygmy mummies jumping out of the reeds at people like they're raptors in the lost world? Madness!

I also thought it was hilarious that they cast the actress who played Marta on Arrested Development as Anoksanamoon or however you spell it. It works in the first movie cause she just has to look smug and hot for like one scene, but in the sequel, she's supposed to be a major villain and a badass warrior and the actress just looks like a wholesome telenovela star. I thought it was funny that the movie got her and Rachel Weisz to have a big scantily clad martial arts fight, though - no wonder Rachel Weisz wouldn't come back for the third! It's pretty funny seeing a classy actress like that flipping around in a gold miniskirt while fighting with japanese weapons like sais in ancient egypt.

Also it does that "meta" thing I hate, where it just does all the same scenes from the first movie over again, but then always have a character going "WHOA, NOT THIS AGAIN!!!" to try and have their cake and eat it too. "See, us the filmmakers weren't lazily copying all the same scenes! we were just trying to be funny!"

I watched The Mummy last year and it's still good. Mummy Returns is just bad. I'm curious to watch the widely hated third movie (Curse of the Dragon Emperor or whatever, not Scorpion King)- as long as it doesn't have that snotty kid in it doing the worst english accent this side of dick van dyke I'm sure it's an improvement.

Another Stephen Sommers movie that's still entertaining is Deep Rising. It's slightly less good than The Mummy, but definitely a lot better than Mummy Returns/Van Helsing.

Wow, I haven't heard anyone mention Mummy Returns in a long time.

I was one of the last guys to roll of that show at that studio we were in. Even my team lead had bounced and just left me there to finish stuff when I was still pretty junior. I got some ridiculously huge request to do at the last minute with just a day or two to do it. It was horrible. It just looked terrible. I needed weeks on it. Not a day or two... I'm not going to say what shot it was, but we were out of time and the sups just looked at it, shrugged and said it was final lol We were just out of time. ..then the studio actually put it on the company reel. lol smh.....

oh and we did not work on the Rock's CG monster. I forget which studio that was, but it wasn't us.

I'm fairly certain that movie ended Rob Cohen's directing career. Has he done anything since?

 

[SalsaWood]

I like the Fraser Mummy movies. He had big time Indy Jones vibes with the first one. Was a great, kinda spooky, action movie for the whole family. Fraser has a good way of throwing in some humor all over the place in his roles I think.

The Tom Cruise and Crowe one I watched wasn't great. Almost completely removed from any of the antiquity parallels which made the story of the first ones any good at all IMO. Could even say the same about the new Indy Jones movies. It's just that vogue looking midget running around in some fairytale adjacent setting, which didn't do it for me personally. The Scorpion King spin offs even before that were in no uncertain way complete garbage.

 

[wankerness]

As far as I could tell without watching it, the only good things about the Tom Cruise mummy movie were 1) The hilarious version of the trailer that accidentally got sent out which was missing sound effects, so it had what sounded like on-set audio or bad foley for people getting bounced around 2) that it killed the stupid "DARK UNIVERSE" attempt from Universal dead in ONE MOVIE. That's an achievement. Even the snyder trilogy couldn't kill the DCU dead, and that was three movies!

 

[Louis Cypher]

Is the Tom Cruise Mummy in the same universe?

Nah the Cruise Mummy is a full on reboot, nothing to do with the Fraser Mummy series. As Wankerness said was meant to kick start a Universal Dark Universe ip but the film is so sh1t it napalmed that straight away. If you aint seen it don't bother just re watch The 1999 Mummy. Or the Hammer Christopher Lee one or the original Universal Mummy with Boris Karloff, both of those are superb old school horror films, I love both of them too

 

[BlackMastodon]

Speaking of which, I rarely see it mentioned, but Dwayne Johnson in Southland Tales was possibly one of the greatest displays of acting ever. His ability to swap his character, even mid sentence at times, in that film was nothing short of brilliant. Lots of other great cameos in there too.

I only watched it once in the early 2010's, I think, but remember liking it quite a bit. It's one of those movies that I feel like should've gotten more attention but went very unnoticed. I also loved Donnie Darko since seeing it in high school around that time so I liked the vibe Richard Kelly brought to it. Not sure how well it holds up, but I actually remember being impressed with Seann William Scott's performance but should rewatch it for The Rock.

I like the Fraser Mummy movies. He had big time Indy Jones vibes with the first one. Was a great, kinda spooky, action movie for the whole family. Fraser has a good way of throwing in some humor all over the place in his roles I think.

I remember being traumatised for years after seeing it as a kid with those goddamn scarabs burrowing under peoples' skin. Pretty terrifying shit for a kid's movie, but yeah it absolutely kicks ass.

Millennial sexual awakening, etc.