24th August 2010, 2:24 PM
(This post was last modified: 24th August 2010, 2:38 PM by Dark Jaguar.)
lazy I think you miss my point. Firstly, if you liked it, that's all that really matters. It's just not my cup o' soup.
Secondly, no that's not what I wanted. That's a false dichotomy. I'm saying that I didn't see any of the conversations as realistic. I've never met people who talk or argue like that. Again, Sixth Sense is where that style works, but the rest? That's where I find a problem.
Independence Day is a popcorn flick, that's it. I don't consider it "well written" or something Night should work towards. Day After Tomorrow sucked too, it was just as bad as The Happening. Both had an environmentalist message that falls apart because the science of both is just as bad as Captain Planet.
Oh, and I HATE most of the "teen comedies" being made today. However, HOWEVER, Scott Pilgrim is NOTHING like any of those. You need to see it yourself. I myself had thought it was going to be like what you said. Hot Tub Time Machine is lame, all those "<blank> Movie" movies are aweful. American Pie I hated. I hate MOST of the "teen comedies" you describe for exactly the reasons you listed. I'm glad we're on the same page there. HOWEVER, that's NOT Scott Pilgrim. If you've seen Zombieland, or Hot Fuzz, or Shaun of the Dead, you know the style. That's the thing you'll be seeing if you see this movie.
I personally don't like M Night. I find his movies predictable, stilted, tiring, and insulting to my intelligence (with some exceptions in each of those categories). Oh, here's something I should mention. I like SOME but not ALL of Twilight Zone and SOME but not ALL of Star Trek, for the same reasons. Some Star Trek episodes are truly amazing with some interesting messages and plot twists, but SOME are insultingly stupid getting everything wrong from human behavior to the science to a plot that makes no sense. An example? There's that Next Generation episode with Barkley's Disease where everyone "de-evolves", where I just couldn't get over how stupid the plot was to really enjoy anything. There's that Voyager episode where they hit "warp 10" and two characters turn into newts. I guess the shock was supposed to be "intelligence may not be selected for in evolution" but that's not really very interesting for a story. I remember an episode of Outer Limits where people find out all of humanity went extinct because genetic engineering made people too different from each other to mate (which is idiotic because the moment someone notices this problem, if you've got the tech to MAKE it, you have the tech to FIX it), and then there was that Twilight Zone movie where they took the rather good episode with the kid who could control the universe and ruined it by focusing for most of it on the "cartoon" he made real that, uh, was just... it looked nothing at all like any cartoon character I've ever seen, and it wasn't really scary either because it was too stupid looking.
You can't dramatically run from wind. It doesn't work because wind doesn't work like that. That's why I had a problem there.
Human behavior is a vast rainbow, that's the thing that frustrates me about M Night. It's not JUST the behavior that ruins it, the biggest problem with Signs is the aliens are complete morons. I don't care how different their brains work, if they are going to build ships and attempt to take over, they shouldn't pick a planet that's 70% stuff that instantly melts them. It would be like humans deciding one day to take over Venus. Heck there's water in the ATMOSPHERE, wouldn't that really mess with them? What's the lethal dosage, the humidity level, that does the damage? What if it... rains? Snows? What if a particularly lingering fog forms? Oh, and how did they invade? Did they bring weapons of any kind? No! They depended entirely on what they're born with, a cheap little poison "spurt" out their wrists. Well, I think a gun or even a sword beats that. The humans are no smarter. Yes it's terrifying, but if you want understanding human behavior, there's a scene where they are inside a basement with an ax propped up against the door handle to hold it shut. Fine, until one of them decides to check out what's going on upstairs. They pull out the ax, SET IT ASIDE, and go upstairs. Ugh. There is NO person on the face of the planet that wouldn't HOLD the ax with the intent to use it. I don't care if it's a small passage, you take the ax! That's human instinct! You can always drop it if it doesn't work, but you can't just "will" it to you when you do want it, so TAKE it.
This is the sort of thing I'm talking about. The premise of Signs is something I think was brilliant. Don't get me wrong, the idea of taking an alien invasion story and telling it from the perspective of a completely unimportant average family that WON'T be playing any part in "saving the world" and are just trying to survive themselves, completely ignorant of what's going on. That's great, I love it, but the execution comes off, again to me, as downright insulting and idiotic.
Secondly, no that's not what I wanted. That's a false dichotomy. I'm saying that I didn't see any of the conversations as realistic. I've never met people who talk or argue like that. Again, Sixth Sense is where that style works, but the rest? That's where I find a problem.
Independence Day is a popcorn flick, that's it. I don't consider it "well written" or something Night should work towards. Day After Tomorrow sucked too, it was just as bad as The Happening. Both had an environmentalist message that falls apart because the science of both is just as bad as Captain Planet.
Oh, and I HATE most of the "teen comedies" being made today. However, HOWEVER, Scott Pilgrim is NOTHING like any of those. You need to see it yourself. I myself had thought it was going to be like what you said. Hot Tub Time Machine is lame, all those "<blank> Movie" movies are aweful. American Pie I hated. I hate MOST of the "teen comedies" you describe for exactly the reasons you listed. I'm glad we're on the same page there. HOWEVER, that's NOT Scott Pilgrim. If you've seen Zombieland, or Hot Fuzz, or Shaun of the Dead, you know the style. That's the thing you'll be seeing if you see this movie.
I personally don't like M Night. I find his movies predictable, stilted, tiring, and insulting to my intelligence (with some exceptions in each of those categories). Oh, here's something I should mention. I like SOME but not ALL of Twilight Zone and SOME but not ALL of Star Trek, for the same reasons. Some Star Trek episodes are truly amazing with some interesting messages and plot twists, but SOME are insultingly stupid getting everything wrong from human behavior to the science to a plot that makes no sense. An example? There's that Next Generation episode with Barkley's Disease where everyone "de-evolves", where I just couldn't get over how stupid the plot was to really enjoy anything. There's that Voyager episode where they hit "warp 10" and two characters turn into newts. I guess the shock was supposed to be "intelligence may not be selected for in evolution" but that's not really very interesting for a story. I remember an episode of Outer Limits where people find out all of humanity went extinct because genetic engineering made people too different from each other to mate (which is idiotic because the moment someone notices this problem, if you've got the tech to MAKE it, you have the tech to FIX it), and then there was that Twilight Zone movie where they took the rather good episode with the kid who could control the universe and ruined it by focusing for most of it on the "cartoon" he made real that, uh, was just... it looked nothing at all like any cartoon character I've ever seen, and it wasn't really scary either because it was too stupid looking.
You can't dramatically run from wind. It doesn't work because wind doesn't work like that. That's why I had a problem there.
Human behavior is a vast rainbow, that's the thing that frustrates me about M Night. It's not JUST the behavior that ruins it, the biggest problem with Signs is the aliens are complete morons. I don't care how different their brains work, if they are going to build ships and attempt to take over, they shouldn't pick a planet that's 70% stuff that instantly melts them. It would be like humans deciding one day to take over Venus. Heck there's water in the ATMOSPHERE, wouldn't that really mess with them? What's the lethal dosage, the humidity level, that does the damage? What if it... rains? Snows? What if a particularly lingering fog forms? Oh, and how did they invade? Did they bring weapons of any kind? No! They depended entirely on what they're born with, a cheap little poison "spurt" out their wrists. Well, I think a gun or even a sword beats that. The humans are no smarter. Yes it's terrifying, but if you want understanding human behavior, there's a scene where they are inside a basement with an ax propped up against the door handle to hold it shut. Fine, until one of them decides to check out what's going on upstairs. They pull out the ax, SET IT ASIDE, and go upstairs. Ugh. There is NO person on the face of the planet that wouldn't HOLD the ax with the intent to use it. I don't care if it's a small passage, you take the ax! That's human instinct! You can always drop it if it doesn't work, but you can't just "will" it to you when you do want it, so TAKE it.
This is the sort of thing I'm talking about. The premise of Signs is something I think was brilliant. Don't get me wrong, the idea of taking an alien invasion story and telling it from the perspective of a completely unimportant average family that WON'T be playing any part in "saving the world" and are just trying to survive themselves, completely ignorant of what's going on. That's great, I love it, but the execution comes off, again to me, as downright insulting and idiotic.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)