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The trend established by Transformers 3 and this movie has me thinking that we will never escape the legacy of 9/11. It's as if all history has stopped and we go to the movie theaters to relive 9/11 in our summer blockbusters. Watching this movie nearly gave me panic attack flashbacks. Ragdoll bodies flying through the air as people are chased by grey dust through the streets of "Metropolis". What I hate more than anything is not the use of 9/11 imagery to evoke terror in the audience but the fact that the consequences of all this violence are never once shown. We never see bodies of humans unless they are in motion flying through the air. We do not see blood, we do not see moments of death. We don't see torn limbs or anything real. We are just on an amusement park ride of clean shrink wrapped terror with new car scent. It's almost like after Zach Snyder was done mashing his toys together he just happened to notice that there wasn't anyone to really give a poo poo about in this CGI wasteland so he inserted Laurence Fishburn and 2 people nobody gives a gently caress about in the streets to give it at least some human element. The callous disregard Superman has for the incubation facility seemed very unsuperman-like. I know that the pods weren't fertilized. The 13 year olds watching this poo poo, what in the hell do they even think when they see this? They have never known a time of not-war. They don't know a pre-9/11 world. This imagery is in recorded footage and textbooks for them. Anyways I enjoyed the first half of this movie so much, the second half was awful. The only good thing I can say about it is that whoever the casting director was has some sort of mad brilliance. Russel Crowe almost looked as if he wasn't drunk during his scenes. Having actors who play known archetypes on TV take up those roles on the silver screen was actually really convincing. The dude who played superman wasn't complete poo poo and had some measure of screen presence which is more than I can say for the last attempt to exhume Superman. The Walking Dad fucked around with this message at 08:22 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 08:05
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 06:11 |
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No that is not the case at all. This movie especially has scenes that are ripped directly out of 9/11 footage. Haha I forgot that the Law and Order: SVU guy literally flies a plane into the Kryptonian ship. On another note, my favorite part of this movie was the beginning where we see superman as a sort of incognito folk hero. Growing up that is what Superman was to me. He was the guy who would save the trapped men in the deep water horizon. He would have sealed the leaking oil with his laser sight too I bet. BTW everyone knows Mrs. Kent sewed superman's outfit out of the blanket he was wrapped in. The Walking Dad fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 08:23
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JediTalentAgent posted:It might also be that we're at a point in FX powers where the effects and scenes can mimic the actual destruction we're seeing. This I can agree with and understand. But just like Japan created Godzilla as a way to recount and understand their feelings about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there is something more to this than just making buildings tumble and fall over for fun. It just disturbs me on a fundamental level to see people tumbling around inside buildings and watching buildings fall around people for amusement. I sound like a moralizing old I guess. In transformers 3 there are scenes where people are tumbling around in a collapsing building like its a fun roller-coaster ride but nobody ever gets hurt. I don't know why this disturbs me. Why people not getting hurt makes me more upset than watching gore and carnage ever could. I have a fever of 102. I am probably not making any sense. Take the scene in Indiana Jones where the ball is tumbling after him. You know that India's life is in danger on a visceral level. This feels like something real and solid. When Indie escapes safely you feel that his escape was probable and possible. He escaped death, he didn't cheat death. Now you have movies where humans could never hope to survive, we are so god drat frail you know. The suspension of disbelief just isn't there anymore. Part of this is being older than a 12 year old I suppose. On the other hand I can go back and watch something like Jurassic park or Jaws and I feel the tension and danger still even though I'm approaching 30. Maybe it all comes down to the lack of blood. I'm a child of the 80s and 90s. The movies always had blood. The blood made things feel real. Bodily fluids aren't welcome in the era of Iphones. Metalic things interact with unwoundable humanoids in an epic battle movie after movie. A return to practical effects and solid seeming things would mean the collapse of entire warehouses full of men and women clicking and manipulating polygons while servers crunch and whir in rooms with better air conditioning than the sears stores they insert into the backgrounds of imaginary main-streets they are blowing up. When I was a child growing up in small town USA, just on the verge of the destructive force of Wal-Mart, before the state hospital closed down and everything became dull and similar we had small hardware stores and across the street from the hardware store was the pharmacy and inside the pharmacy there was an elderly lady who would sell you a sears catalog for 10 dollars and from that catalog you could order the entire world if you knew the code for the item and had the money for it in the bank down the street that was owned by the guy who owned the old movie theater in town where they played movies 10 weeks after they officially released in theaters. All of that doesn't exist anymore. This movie just made me realize it. I'm 30 years old and I live in a world I don't recognize. My grandpa was 70 before he said the same thing, and my dad was 50 before he said it. I think I need to go cry. The Walking Dad fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 08:50
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JediTalentAgent posted:Now I'm thinking of the climax of Titanic from over 15 years ago, which might have been the first time I recall a sort of slow, awkward and desolating destruction that could be compared to the likes of a modern film. In that movie you actually had a connection to the people dying. That was a movie that made you care about the dumb band members playing while the ship is sinking, and there are characters that face the consequences of their own actions that aren't contemptible villains. Jack is depicted as pale and frail at the end. He dies, actually dies and you watch him die. In Titanic the destruction was an event that effected the characters who the movie spent a great deal of time and effort making you care about. There was spectacle but it was functional spectacle. Does anyone ever feel like reporter a and reporter b tagging along with fat Morpheus are ever in any danger? Do we even care if they are in danger? If one of them died would that even feel like an honest emotional moment when the audience isn't even invested in them? The tornado scene where Sungmanitu Thanka Ob'wachi gets enveloped in the tornado goes to show that Snyder understands how to make you care about a character and how to make destruction serve a purpose in a meaningful way. You even feel like it's plausible that a man like that would risk his life over the family dog. You think a man like that probably has strong ideas about the order of things and he could be the last in a line of pastoral seers. A loyal beast is no less than a human to such a man. Zach Snyder can create moments like those. He just seems unable to restrain himself. The Walking Dad fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 09:28
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:That's exactly it - the goal isn't to destroy Metropolis, but to change the atmosphere, blocking the sun. At the same time, there is no reason that the dual craft had to touch down where they did and not in the middle of some fields or mountains other than to give a sense of immediate threat to the audience and provide an excuse for CGI spectacle buildings collapsing. I agree with your point about not needing to know people to care about them, but the movie never made me feel like the characters running through the maze of destruction were in any danger to begin with. There was a halo of plot armor around them even though their characters were insubstantial to the plot. The Walking Dad fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 10:18
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sassassin posted:This is saying more about you than the films in my opinion. You're making an distinction between the movies of your youth and those today, based on how you felt when you first watched them. On the one hand we have running from a rolling boulder. On the other we have a 20 year old male being tossed against concrete repeatedly in a manner that would break any real human's bones and rupture every organ in their body and then being flung around in a way that would easily dislocate their arms. Remarkably similar. Although I can understand how a mundane activity like running could be unimaginable to today's audiences. The Walking Dad fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 12:23
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