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Wasn't "unobtanium" only said once, by that corporate guy? I really don't understand how people are annoyed by it when it wasn't even the focus of the story, just a vehicle to move the plot forward. Would people still be mad if the element wasn't named at all?
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Sep 20, 2011 07:38
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Xander77 posted:Oh hey, that's right - the video game playing kid was 100% right about that device, and it annoys me that it was never acknowledged. I mean, there's "Wonka is a big goofy retarded child at heart" and then there's "hogging a device that could revolutionize transportation as we know it". I guess people can empathize with the first, but how can you support the second? The remake's implied answer to this is "if you are worrying about how he is wasting this technology on fanciful things, you're really too drat cynical." I actually really liked that part of the remake, that Mike brings this up. They actually put a lot more characterization into Mike and Violet than the original or the book -- originally, you have Augustus and Veruca embodying these great flaws of Gluttony and Pride, and then Mike and Violet's sin is "doing things Roald Dahl finds irritating". In the remake, they make it so Mike actually acts like someone who is exposed to way too much media: he's affected a posture of jaded seen-everything cynicism so he can act dismissively superior to everything else. And Violet's gum-chewing isn't just because gum-chewing is something Dahl finds irritating, it's something that is completely pointless and meaningless that she still is hypercompetitive over because she cannot stand not being The Best at anything. Then they kind of gently caress it up by using the songs from the book, which aren't about cynicism and hollow competition, just about how dumb TV is and how irritating chewing gum is.
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Sep 20, 2011 07:42
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FrancisYorkPatty posted:You can reach really far and assume that, but at the end of the day it's still James Cameron giving a stupid loving name to a MacGuffin because it's a MacGuffin. It's given the least amount of development in the movie (saying a lot) and it's the most important drat thing in the movie.
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Sep 20, 2011 08:01
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Kung Food posted:Yes, Cameron should have broken the pacing of the movie to give a ten minute exposition on the origins and properties of the magic space rock that nobody but nerds gives a poo poo about, because what every movie needs is more techno babble about pretend elements. Two minutes. Two loving minutes of dialogue to do something besides handwave away the entire motivation of the  big bad company with a magic space rock with a name this goddamn stupid. It takes zero effort to make it anything else. It takes marginally more effort to make it something only of value instead of practical usage. They could very loving well make it something that is directly responsible for the link the Na'vi have with the rest of nature, anything to cement the antagonist's motivation. It's literally the laziest loving thing you can do from a writing standpoint outside of giving them no motivation at all, but even that would create something more substantial because it would prove that they're just chaotic-loving-evil instead of marginally greedy mining people with robots. Or worse, the writers actually sat down together as a group and decided "Yes, Unobtanium is the best decision because _______" for any reason besides being lazy. Then they're just retarded.
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Sep 20, 2011 08:16
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I actually think they could have avoided naming the element at all. Just say the planet is more resource rich than any planet they've found before and that earth has been mostly tapped. It's the future, people will believe that.Eclipse12 posted:Any decent cultural anthropologist would agree with you. The vast majority of cultures that do exist (and almost universally before the 20th century) looked at marriage as an economic union; a merger or two corporations, to put it one way. There are contracts, bargaining, compensations, and profit planning. The idea that marriage is only about love is a fairly recent concept, primarily among modernized nations. For the majority of humanity that has ever existed, marriage was a business deal. Yeah but to any modern audience, especially the children that audiences are aimed at, it's a pretty horrifying thing to push. I realize this is the irrationally irritating thread but this comes off as very "You're a princess why can't you understand you're not allowed to be happy? You must make the economic decision in marriage beep boop."
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Sep 20, 2011 08:35
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headrest posted:In 50 First Dates, Drew Barrymore's family goes to great lengths to make Drew live the same day over and over again, so she does not realize she cannot remember any new information, making it appear no time has passed between the day before the accident that gave her the problem and the day she wakes up with a clean slate. What if she woke up and saw a mirror? What if she woke up and it was a different season? What if she woke up and some of her furniture had had to be replaced? What if she woke up and the hairdresser messed up and she had a different haircut? What if she woke up and had injured herself the day before?
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Sep 20, 2011 09:20
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FrancisYorkPatty posted:Two minutes. Two loving minutes of dialogue to do something besides handwave away the entire motivation of the There are a lot of problems with Avatar. This is not one of them. They have a valuable resource. Why it's valuable? Who the gently caress cares?
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Sep 20, 2011 10:44
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That's the whole point right away you know its all bullshit that doesn't matter because they don't even have a real name for it.
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Sep 20, 2011 10:54
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Christmas Jones posted:I had a college professor who freaked out about Romeo and Juliet (and Hamlet) about high school lesson plans and pop culture ruining it to the point where it was unteachable to college students. If it makes you or your professor feel any better. My English teacher made it very clear in the discussions that Romeo and Juliet was not supposed to be viewed as a romance. quote:In 50 First Dates, Drew Barrymore's family goes to great lengths to make Drew live the same day over and over again, so she does not realize she cannot remember any new information, making it appear no time has passed between the day before the accident that gave her the problem and the day she wakes up with a clean slate. I always thought that her two pregnancies must have been absolute hell for her. Imagine waking up, you think you're gonna go eat a big ol' pancake breakfast at Mama Hawaii's Luau hut and BAM! Third trimester baby bump. Even worse for those times she had to wake up and pee 12 times a night and Adam Sandler didn't have the tape prepped. Actually breast feeding and everything up until the kids are old enough to get "Mom is brain damaged" must have been nightmarish.
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Sep 20, 2011 10:57
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Sucker Punch is a fine, if incredibly bland, movie but good god the ending 'message' frustrates me to an unbelievable end - above and beyond any other movie. Yes viewers, you see you too can escape a life of immense physical suffering, sexual abuse and psychological disorders by using the power of ~imagination~ and pretending you're shooting orcs.
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Sep 20, 2011 10:59
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headrest posted:In 50 First Dates, Drew Barrymore's family goes to great lengths to make Drew live the same day over and over again, so she does not realize she cannot remember any new information, making it appear no time has passed between the day before the accident that gave her the problem and the day she wakes up with a clean slate. RagnarokAngel posted:I actually think they could have avoided naming the element at all. Just say the planet is more resource rich than any planet they've found before and that earth has been mostly tapped. It's the future, people will believe that. Kung Food posted:Yes, Cameron should have broken the pacing of the movie to give a ten minute exposition on the origins and properties of the magic space rock that nobody but nerds gives a poo poo about, because what every movie needs is more techno babble about pretend elements. "You've seen earth. We need to leave. This planet has enough madupium-90 to get every man, woman and child off earth with room to spare." Bam. Done. Splicer has a new favorite as of 11:42 on Sep 20, 2011 |
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Sep 20, 2011 11:30
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quote!=edit
Splicer has a new favorite as of 11:42 on Sep 20, 2011 |
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Sep 20, 2011 11:36
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I have a weird thing about how perfect teeth look. I don't care that the characters have wonderful teeth normally, but when they go through an extremely rough and dirty experience and still have freshly brushed teeth, it annoys me to no end. Latest example is 127 Hours, after he cut his own arm off after being stuck in the desert for five days, he collapses to the ground. Despite the fact he hasn't brushed his teeth for days, is covered in blood and dirt, and drinking his own wiz, he still has wonderful, freshly-brushed teeth. Seriously, every action movie in which the hero is covered in dirt, their teeth remain perfect.
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Sep 20, 2011 12:08
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RagnarokAngel posted:Yeah but to any modern audience, especially the children that audiences are aimed at, it's a pretty horrifying thing to push. I realize this is the irrationally irritating thread but this comes off as very "You're a princess why can't you understand you're not allowed to be happy? You must make the economic decision in marriage beep boop." See even from a political standpoint Aladdin kind of makes sense. Boy is best buds with a motherfucking genie who's got so much magic he doesn't know what the gently caress to do with it. Get the boy, you get the genie. Hell, get the boy a nice competent grand vizier who'll make sure the country gets run....oh, wait. Grand vizier. You never want a competent grand vizier.
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Sep 20, 2011 12:12
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Slime posted:See even from a political standpoint Aladdin kind of makes sense. Boy is best buds with a motherfucking genie who's got so much magic he doesn't know what the gently caress to do with it. Get the boy, you get the genie. Hell, get the boy a nice competent grand vizier who'll make sure the country gets run....oh, wait. Grand vizier. You never want a competent grand vizier. But then look at the loving sultan. You can't say that man was competent. If anything I bet Jafar loving ran that city; the guards clearly listened to him more than the princess and they threw a tied up Aladdin into water without question. But if Aladdin somehow were competent despite no training and a huge lazy loving background, he's friends with a goddamn genie. What other city is going to dare attack his for fear of the loving genie? He has a drat magic carpet when most places had camels at best. But he doesn't have loyal guards or a vizier to help guide him, so even at best the city will hit some drat hard times and if Al is lucky his head won't be on a pike within a year of his marriage. That was why in the cartoon series I always liked the rant by the foil character to Aladdin, that Aladdin just walked into his magic, he had it handed to him on a silver platter, not like Mozenrath, who had to work and study and serve under a bastard wizard, who lost a hand in his trials, unlike happy go lucky Aladdin who never suffered or learned. For Avatar, gently caress, Cameron could have had some clear issues between the girl princess and her intended, and maybe that's the reason she took to teaching Jake as a backhanded way to get back at her fiance/husband. Then oops, he dies, she's free to be with someone else or loving something. I mean, if you get married for a catperson by sleeping with them loving once, what if you were buzzed or drugged that night? Oh well!
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Sep 20, 2011 12:29
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Eclipse12 posted:Any decent cultural anthropologist would agree with you. The vast majority of cultures that do exist (and almost universally before the 20th century) looked at marriage as an economic union; a merger or two corporations, to put it one way. There are contracts, bargaining, compensations, and profit planning. The idea that marriage is only about love is a fairly recent concept, primarily among modernized nations. For the majority of humanity that has ever existed, marriage was a business deal. Well, it's good that most fiction isn't written by anthropologists, then, isn't it.
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Sep 20, 2011 13:06
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Tiggum posted:What if she woke up and saw a mirror? What if she woke up and it was a different season? What if she woke up and some of her furniture had had to be replaced? What if she woke up and the hairdresser messed up and she had a different haircut? What if she woke up and had injured herself the day before? The movie is set in Hawaii, so I guess seasons don't have to be taken into account as much. Obviously, they don't get it perfect everyday (as the scene with the cop writing her a ticket proved) so Lucy's father and brother have a contingency plan when she's "having another bad day." I still think it's kind of dick move for Adam Sandler to try and have a normal life with her. Imagine how much longer that tape's going to be when she's 45. "Here's the crash, here's us dating, here's us getting married, here's us having a baby, here's your brother getting married, here's your father's funeral, here's your daughter graduating, etc." Good lord, how long will it be when she's 65?
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Sep 20, 2011 13:31
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Pwnstar posted:That's the whole point right away you know its all bullshit that doesn't matter because they don't even have a real name for it.
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Sep 20, 2011 13:49
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Going off of Avatar, my friend who does graphics for a living flipped his poo poo over Cameron using Papyrus for the Na'vi subtitles. It didn't bother me in the least and we ended up arguing over it for like an hour after the movie. His big thing was that since Cameron is already spending $250 million why not spring for a custom font, and I argued that if only .001% of people viewing it are going to notice and/or care, it's not worth worrying about. Who is right, goons? P.S. - "Unobtanium" was a very bad choice and made me  in the theater when I heard it. Literally call it anything else.
WampaLord has a new favorite as of 14:15 on Sep 20, 2011 |
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Sep 20, 2011 14:02
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WampaLord posted:Going off of Avatar, my friend who does graphics for a living flipped his poo poo over Cameron using Papyrus for the Na'vi subtitles. I work in a job that requires a lot of font licensing and before people learn the deal with font licensing/creation they always get to the question of "Why don't the developers just make a new font and save themselves a ton of time and money?" Font creation and copyrighting is incredibly complicated and difficult because there are so many fonts out there. If you make a font, and it gets used for something that makes money, someone will come out of the woodwork with a nearly identical font that they made twenty years ago and sue you. The likelihood of getting "caught" is particularly high because font makers search for their fonts being used and for fonts similar to theirs being used because aside from legit licensing, this is a way for them to make a living. I think Papyrus was a pretty lame choice as it looks so phoned in, but it was certainly a safe choice. As far as Unobtanium goes, I really think, like many things in the real world, it can be seen as a placeholder science geek name that people just start using because of familiarity and convenience, like Pwnstar said earlier. Or when it was originally discovered no one knew it would be useful, so they made a funny name for it, like these:  http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm There is a picture of a butt.
Livingston has a new favorite as of 14:38 on Sep 20, 2011 |
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Sep 20, 2011 14:15
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Want to mark that link ? I know it's just one picture, but it is a picture of a naked rear end.
mandrake776 has a new favorite as of 14:35 on Sep 20, 2011 |
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Sep 20, 2011 14:32
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volts5000 posted:I still think it's kind of dick move for Adam Sandler to try and have a normal life with her. Imagine how much longer that tape's going to be when she's 45. "Here's the crash, here's us dating, here's us getting married, here's us having a baby, here's your brother getting married, here's your father's funeral, here's your daughter graduating, etc." Good lord, how long will it be when she's 65? That whole ending ruined the movie for me. It should have ended with the bit where he thinks she's remembered him but then he realises she hasn't and he leaves. There is no happy ending in that situation, and the one the movie had felt really forced and unbelievable. It was a lovely ending. WampaLord posted:Going off of Avatar, my friend who does graphics for a living flipped his poo poo over Cameron using Papyrus for the Na'vi subtitles. Any time any person is bitching about fonts, they are wrong. You know what? Comic Sans is clear and legible. Maybe it's not the font you'd choose; so when you're writing something, don't use it. That's fine. As long as I can read it, I won't bitch about your font choices, because it doesn't loving matter. (I'm not arguing that Comic Sans is a good font, I just don't care)
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Sep 20, 2011 14:51
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Not exactly a movie, but there's an audio error in the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop motion film. It's been awhile since I saw it, but I think it's during one of the times the snowman is singing. It just bothers me that this film has been around for over 40 years and no one has thought to clean up the audio.
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Sep 20, 2011 15:00
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Mu Cow posted:Not exactly a movie, but there's an audio error in the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop motion film. It's been awhile since I saw it, but I think it's during one of the times the snowman is singing. It just bothers me that this film has been around for over 40 years and no one has thought to clean up the audio. Why was the doll on the island of Misfit toys? It didn't seem like there was anything wrong with her.
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Sep 20, 2011 15:06
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headrest posted:What if she woke up on her period? Her period? Only icky, real women have periods. Drew Barrymore's too hot to have a menstrual cycle (or so goes the thought process of the guy who wrote what's two notches away from being a rape fantasy).
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Sep 20, 2011 15:29
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Tiggum posted:Any time any person is bitching about fonts, they are wrong. You know what? Comic Sans is clear and legible. Maybe it's not the font you'd choose; so when you're writing something, don't use it. That's fine. As long as I can read it, I won't bitch about your font choices, because it doesn't loving matter. (I'm not arguing that Comic Sans is a good font, I just don't care) Fonts have different uses for different situations. It's not appropriate to use comic sans and that totally awesome sparkle graffiti font you found for like, a funeral schedule. It's not the right tone for the situation, much like showing up to the funeral wearing speedos and shuttershades isn't the greatest idea either. Papyrus is fine for Avatar though and hulking out over the common font being used where it's tonally appropriate is stupid and that guys friend is a big baby.
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Sep 20, 2011 15:30
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My issue with Avatar's use of Papyrus is that they could have, like, hand-written all the subtitles, which would have been really cool (and not even a tall order), but no, they just hosed around with Papyrus a little bit and it comes off as cheap and lame and inattentive.
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Sep 20, 2011 15:34
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Who knows, maybe they were too busy creating and animating the entire rest of the movie to care about the font type used?
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Sep 20, 2011 15:48
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Xander77 posted:Yes, exactly! Why are people having a difficult time understanding this? It is literally the entire motivation for the antagonists to exist, outside of general dude wanting to kill a few aliens. No Unobtanium, no mining company, no conflict. It's the crux of the whole story make a drat bit of sense, but it's given no real development or any sort of reasoning for being important when it goddamn is. It's not like they forgot to flesh out exactly how their intergalactic travel is for my immersion or something, they just entirely ignore the purpose--and importance of--the entire reason the mining company even gives a poo poo about Pandora. It's the equivalent of "She really loves him" "He really loves her!" "You should care about this romance!" you get in bad romantic comedies. It's anti-character development, it's just simplifying the gently caress out of the humans to call them bad guys, it ruins the development of the antagonistic company as anything but a basic company, the only thing we get to give a poo poo about (for good or bad) from then on out is Mr. Jake Sully, Blue Alien Fucker Esquire. It pigeonholes humans as Stupid Evil right off the bat. There's nowhere to go but up, but it never goes up. The audience is just supposed to gasp about nature and then be furious at the guy who only wants to kill blue furry alien. And all of those lovely, lovely things are a result of how little of a poo poo the filmmakers gave for Unobtanium, and by extension how little of a poo poo the audience gives. It's not the cause, or at least not entirely the cause, but it is the most glaring symptom of "We Didn't Give A poo poo About Making A Meaningful Movie Outside Of These Fancy New Cameras We Have" and that pisses me right off. Especially when half the goddamned thing is a romance. It'd almost slide by if it was just action, but being meaningful and having a romance are pretty important to have hand-in-hand
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Sep 20, 2011 15:52
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Avatar. This is at least a hundred years from now. We somehow have the technology to create and psychically remote control an exact duplicate of an alien race we know almost nothing about. Why are our guns not as good as they are today?
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Sep 20, 2011 15:56
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Magic Hate Ball posted:My issue with Avatar's use of Papyrus is that they could have, like, hand-written all the subtitles, which would have been really cool (and not even a tall order), but no, they just hosed around with Papyrus a little bit and it comes off as cheap and lame and inattentive. I don't know, to me it comes off as art direction matching perfectly with the font selection. Literally the only reason to use a different typeface would be that a tiny percentage of people might notice that it's the same font their passive aggressive coworker wrote a fridge note in that one time and it looked out of place and silly, then get mad about it.
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Sep 20, 2011 16:02
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FROOOOOOOOG posted:Avatar. This is at least a hundred years from now. We somehow have the technology to create and psychically remote control an exact duplicate of an alien race we know almost nothing about. Remember that the soldiers in the movie are privately owned mercenaries, not the military. So, they probably blew their wad on the mechs, helicopter fleet, self-sufficient complex, and leasing the spaceships for that long-rear end voyage. Their weapons were also kicking rear end until the planet pulled out its bullshit "mind control everything" trump card.
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Sep 20, 2011 16:10
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I remember reading in the promo materials something about how people developed some military-grade lasers and poo poo, but that it was abandoned because an effective technology capable of disrupting the emitters was adopted soon afterwards. Also, yes, they are supposed to be using surplus, obsolete vehicles and light firearms.
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Sep 20, 2011 16:16
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headrest posted:In 50 First Dates, Drew Barrymore's family goes to great lengths to make Drew live the same day over and over again, so she does not realize she cannot remember any new information
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Sep 20, 2011 16:47
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FrancisYorkPatty posted:
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Sep 20, 2011 17:42
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I don't think I've seen this one posted yet. In generally every movie where it shows a car/truck slowing down or stopping the brakes always squeal. Doesn't seem to matter how old or new the vehicle is...
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Sep 20, 2011 18:43
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Thenipwax posted:I don't think I saw this, but if she can't remember new info, who cares if she realizes that? She wouldn't remember it the next day, right? Well sure, but it would be insanely traumatizing for a 24 hour period. Why not just lock her up? Not like she'll remember anything. What would have happened if she didn't sleep?
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Sep 20, 2011 19:04
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Thenipwax posted:I don't think I saw this, but if she can't remember new info, who cares if she realizes that? She wouldn't remember it the next day, right? Yeah, admittedly that's the worst that will happen, and the whole movie actually ends with Sandler showing her a tape of all the poo poo that's happened that she forgot, but my beef with the menstrual cycle thing is that it would probably make her realize something is up for more than just one day in a row. It fits the thread.
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Sep 20, 2011 19:07
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headrest posted:Yeah, admittedly that's the worst that will happen, and the whole movie actually ends with Sandler showing her a tape of all the poo poo that's happened that she forgot, but my beef with the menstrual cycle thing is that it would probably make her realize something is up for more than just one day in a row. I think she'd find it strange, but not like freak out or anything. It's not like every woman's menstrual cycle works perfectly, unless they're on the pill, I think. I think it's kinda normal for it to flunctuate a little and arrive a little early sometimes. And even when on the pill, lots of stress can still make it come a few days earlier than normal. But I'm not a woman, so I don't know for sure, all I know comes from observing my wife. Now, waking up one day and finding out you have a 7 months pregnancy is something straight out of a nightmare.
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Sep 20, 2011 19:22
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Xander77 posted:You're confusing the symptom with the cause. Or the egg with the chicken. "Unobtanium" is a nice illustration of "it's a McGuffin nobody should give a gently caress about", not the cause of said attitude. And if the Mcguffin actually had some meaning beyond "this will make the bad guys stinking rich", then Avatar would be a completely different movie. Which would've been a good thing, that's my point. My Irritating Movie Moment is the whole freakin' run of Avatar.
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Sep 20, 2011 19:22
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