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Blood Boils posted:Wait, the zombies also live in a society Zack Snyder in 2017, after seeing Josstice League: I'm going to become the Joker
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May 10, 2021 20:52
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Army of the Dead Review Contains *BIG SPOILERS* I'm a Snyder fan. This is a pretty divisive thing to be these days, but I've always enjoyed his work, even when he misfires (and he does misfire). What keeps me coming back to his movies - and why I find Snyder such a fascinating auteur - is because he nakedly wears his influences on his sleeves, and these are my influences as well. The other quality I enjoy about Snyder is that he has zero pretention: he grew up scanning Heavy Metal, reading comic books, and watching the great action and sci-fi films of the late 20th century and then decided that's the kind of thing he wanted to do, too. If you ever watch his interviews, he spends a lot of time just spit-balling with the interview about what he finds "cool". This also encompasses his reasons for doing movies, the kinds of shots he likes, and the thematic elements he chooses. They are "cool" or "awesome", full stop, nothing deeper. I admire that sort of mental clarity. Then he'll start talking about how he framed a shot, and suddenly he's spergin' out on f-stops and iris openings, and then you realize that despite his doofy personality, the man is a real filmmaker. Army of the Dead is not an original idea. It's Zombie Las Vegas, a trope so tired they made two Dead Rising video games about it over a dozen years ago; it's also Snyder's second zombie movie with Fast Zeds. It's a heist movie that follows every signpost of the genre, the action is shot in the typical Snyder way of gorgeously-composed speed-manipulated images, and the ending - after a real emotional downbeat that still offers a bit of light at the end of the tunnel - slumps into a typical "here we go again" franchise denouement. So, on paper, this is everything you've ever seen before. Except it's not, of course. One of the movie's most clever conceits is that it knows exactly what you're thinking when it says "Zombie Las Vegas Heist" and then proceeds to give that to you, either in the opening credits montage or in a meetup fantasy sequence of how the heist "should" go. Most of these shots made it into the Netflix trailer, and for good reason: they are Snyder indulging the audience and himself. Oh you want to see a bunch of strapped badasses just absolutely meat-grinder a zombie horde and look good doing it? Well, here you go champ. Enjoy. Oh you want to see showgirl zombies chase around a creep in his penthouse suite, totally emasculating him in the process? 20 seconds well spent. The dying boomer on oxygen is so obsessed with squeezing wealth out of his last few years of life that he can't see the catastrophe heading straight for him - good stuff! The opening credit montage is a mini zombie movie in itself; you could end it right as the last storage container crashed down and it's a compelling and complete narrative. Snyder shows exactly what you would want to see, but it doesn't last. It's literally over before the credits roll or is an explicit fantasy. So if you're not getting nothing but well-shot badass poo poo then what are you getting? The movie advances the fascinating idea of a bunch of medievil zombie dickheads who have re-invented feudalism in the wastes of abandoned Las Vegas. Who better than the dead to rule a dead land? So instead of a movie about fighting The Shambler Blob, it's a movie about not pissing off the Neanderthal assholes who have taken over the place. The movie advances the idea that this Zed society is not in equilibrium but actively trying to increase their numbers, possibly for a break-out or to expand their territory. Despite being ostensibly free from capitalism, they're still driven to expand and consume, despite needing literally nothing material. The Alphas are unable to escape the orbit of their old life even on the blasted streets of the Strip. And of course what stirs up these jerks is corporate greed; the Alphas and their leader don't give a poo poo about money and would have happily let Scott and his heist gang loot the poo poo out of the place. Alas, corporations don't give a poo poo about human (or zombie) relationships and there's never enough money. (one of the movie's cleverer conceits is that the heist itself is totally unnecessary as the evil corporation has already been reimbursed for the contents of the vault - but of course why settle for 200m when you could have 350m + a 100 billion bioweapon? Who is the real mindless expanding blob here?). This greed predictably kicks off real Clash of Civilizations stuff. I'm sorry to say it goes pretty much how you expect: each encounter is going to end with one or more team members picked off by the horde. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this - it's beautifully filmed and appropriately kinetic and exciting - but after never going in the obvious direction during the heist, the last act can feel a bit perfunctory. Oh here's the big escape sequence. Somebody is killed in a shockingly sudden way. Somebody dies to save somebody else. Somebody goes out in a blaze of glory. I really did enjoy Bautista's Die Hard-esque terrified face as he narrowly avoids a massive explosion; despite looking like he eats iron and pisses bullets, Bautista has a vulnerable energy that makes you think that HE thinks he could die any moment. I like that. The movie's emotional core is Scott Ward and his daughter attempting to repair their relationship and it largely lands, feeling emotionally true and never dipping into schmaltz. I hate to say it, but I'm sure that realness in part came because of Snyder's personal tragedy. The less said about that the better, beyond saying that they build the film around it and both the actors deliver the goods. There's a scene where Scott stammers out an apology to his daughter that felt like Bautista improvised the line, and that's a very good thing to see. Too often Snyder can shoot his characters a bit too statuesque and heroic to feel like relatable characters, but that's never an issue here. The amount of close-ups (necessitated by the special Canon Dream lenses the movie was shot with) keep things very intimate. A couple of the scenes in the movie didn't land with me. One involves a few of the characters standing around watching someone fight shamblers until they are overcome - and nobody watching even attempts to intervene beyond yelling encouragement, even though it's shot as though they could easily help. A second scene involves a self-interested character functionally committing suicide by placing herself in a situation from which there seems no escape - I still don't understand why she did it. Other than that, most of these characters behave like they should and there's no bizarre heel turns or anything else. The movie plays fair with the characters and fair with everyone's motivations. The characters who you expect to sell their lives dearly do, and the ones you expect to go out like punks do. Satisfying. Also if you want goofy stuff the weird Snyder touches are in full force here. The implication that zombies are caused by aliens, the return of the Zombie Baby, a bunch of Elvis impersonator corpses hanging by their necks in the dark, Sigfreid and Roy's tiger becoming a zombie, shamblers that "hibernate" in bizarre poses (including dabbing, the Thriller, and I think I saw a Gangham Style in there), zombies that dry out in the sun but come back to life (briefly) if it rains, the boss zombie forging a helmet so he can't be headshot, a vault named after The Ring of the Nibelung opera (for which the soundtrack blasts music from that opera whenever the characters view it), robot zombies with glowing blue eyes and metal endoskeletons that are only in frame for a handful of moments (I saw the eyes but missed the metal the first time through the movie), a visual gag and dialog that suggests that the heist is a time loop (!!!). Goofy, weird ideas that make you smile or roll your eyes (or possibly both at the same time). If I had a main complaint about this movie, it would be that Snyder's strength also occasionally becomes his weakness. I love that he's so on-the-nose with his themes and references but in this movie it can become a little too obvious. There's a couple of scenes ripped near-direct from Aliens. The zombie tiger attack felt like a rehash of The Revenant, although it certainly ends with more finality. The team-building of the heist sequence feels like the movie throws up its hands and says "yeah this is how all these movies go, so what?" and just embraced it to the point that the world's greatest living safecracker, completely by chance, works within a 30 mile radius of the main character. Well ok then. Whaddya want, that they CAN'T open the vault? Are you in, or are you out? Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 02:19 on May 19, 2021 |
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May 17, 2021 02:39
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Neo Rasa posted:This is kind of genius because of how we learn in AOTD that Bautista's team isn't the first to go in. They could do prequels forever. There's also the time loop stuff, they could literally start the next movie with Scott putting the team together and no acknowledgment of the previous movie. Which would own.
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May 20, 2021 17:48
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Neurolimal posted:Still looking forward to it though, some of these spoilers have it sounding a lot kookier than I expected. It is honestly an extremely goofy movie most of the time.
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May 21, 2021 17:31
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Army of the Dead: painful, entertaining, snydering, zombie
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May 21, 2021 18:28
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Necrothatcher posted:pfft, just cast someone that looks like him I don't think a 5 second cameo where he's getting dunked on is significantly helping or hurting him in any way. I agree that Spicer shouldn't have been cast but Snyder is a Hollywood lib, so he's going to do tone-deaf things like this.
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May 21, 2021 22:43
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Yeah Andrew Sullivan is a literal eugenics guy and he was in Batman v Superman. Snyder casts real right-wing pundits for whatever reason - probably "authenticity".
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May 21, 2021 22:50
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Are you really.using Wikipedia to argue about a race vs an undead zombie horse. What is going on here?
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May 22, 2021 16:42
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fart simpson posted:wanna give me an example? Swaggering into a DSA meeting and yelling "these are so weird, all my friends like capitalism" and then tearfully screaming "leave me in peace!" when they all boo me
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May 22, 2021 16:56
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fart simpson posted:yeah but this thread isn’t zack snyders fan club? i came in to see what other people were saying so far and stuck around to sate my posting addiction. why are you guys so sensitive about someone not liking your favorite director There are like 6 other negative reviews before you and nobody said a thing about them because those posts are actually about the movie. You have not said a thing about the movie, all you've said is that it's weird to like anything the director has done. I don't know if you're aware (and I'm saying this in good faith) but a very popular tactic online nowadays is to basically call people moral degenerates or mentally ill for their media consumption choices, and so a lot of people have a hair trigger about that. Try talking about the movie.
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May 22, 2021 17:03
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moths posted:This is needlessly inflammatory, and I say that as someone who's taken the bait every single time they derail a thread by pretending he's made a good Superman movie. The absolute perfect example. We know in our heart of hearts he's a bad director and we're just pretending/it's an objectively bad movie that nobody could actually like and we're contrarians. Thank you moths for so effectively illustrating this dynamic in a single sentence.
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May 22, 2021 17:06
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2house2fly posted:The zombie horse was really cool I flipped when I watched the making of and saw that it was a real horse in a costume! drat that was cool!
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May 22, 2021 17:12
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I watched this a second time with CineD Snyderdome folks last night. I already wrote a long rear end review on page 1 so I'll just focus on that fact that the weird sci-fi poo poo in this movie really comes to the forefront the second time through. There's tons of little dangling plot hooks sprinkled all through this film that could lead to entire other stories and ideas, and folks they are weird. I also do hope that Snyder goes a little bit more original next time. I've always enjoyed that he's extremely on-the-nose with his references and influences; he literally puts lines of dialogue from his favorite movies into his current movies ("the future has taken root in the present" is from Boorman's Excalibur, and Snyder lifts it wholesale into his Justice League). On rewatch, Army is very very influenced by Aliens and although it's by no means a pastiche, it's walking a little bit closer to that then I'd like. It also lifts a gag directly from his own Dawn of the Dead. So let's hope for a little more pure-grade Snydering in the future; more robot zombies and tigers and less plot beats from Aliens.
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May 22, 2021 17:24
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smellmycheese posted:I’m still lolling at the big effortpost early in this thread that claims putting all the decent stuff in the opening credits and trailer and then making the actual movie dull as hell is a stunningly clever reversal of expectations That's my post and if you took that from it then I failed as a reviewer, because that's not what I was saying at all. And in fact the movie is not dull, although I do maintain the last big action push feels a bit perfunctory, even if the action itself is very good. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 17:39 on May 22, 2021 |
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May 22, 2021 17:36
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This isn't hopeless. There's a very clear moral thoughtline through the movie. 1) If you do things for love in this movie, it succeeds. Scott is there for his daughter after abandoning her, and they reconnect. Geeta's kids (presumably) get bought out of the camp with Scott's wad of money. Dieter helps his friend Van live and succeeds. 2) If you do things for money, you die. Both Geeta and Scott are also in Vegas for money, and they don't make it out (you can make an argument that Geeta JUST wanted the money to help her kids, and I'm sympathetic - but the movie doesn't appear to make distinctions between good and bad greed). The money literally drags a Youtuber down to his death and it's the last thing he sees as he dies. Dieter and Van go back for the money and both are killed (the money metaphorically "poisons" Van the longer he holds on to it. he's baptized in the vault's money and emerges as the new Zombie Plague). Lilly betrayed them for money and gets speared. etc. 3) The only character who went in there with absolutely pure intentions and who didn't care about money at all lives (Kate). I am aware that there's one major exception to this rule: Maria, who says she just went along to try to rekindle her romance with Scott. I'm not sure if she's lying to herself or the movie just tossed the theme for a shock moment. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 17:55 on May 22, 2021 |
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May 22, 2021 17:48
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Funnily enough, I remember arguing with my friends who didn't like From Dusk 'Til Dawn back in 96. Too goofy, stupid premise, not enough action, bait-and-switch, etc. The more things change....
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May 22, 2021 17:56
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Zane posted:for a cool fight with a super zombie that is really dynamic and requires participation from the whole group in a way that builds upon the classic motifs of the genre--human ingenuity vs. zombie strength/numbers--see the original trailer for left4dead. Or the "fake heist" fantasy sequence in this very movie, which gives you the cool "entire team just mowing 'em down together" vibe.
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May 22, 2021 18:09
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CelticPredator posted:This isn’t a dome. It’s fine if they just want to say the movie sucks and leave it at that. Who cares They didn't say the movie sucks, that was the whole problem. But it's been rectified and we have moved on.
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May 22, 2021 18:13
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Judakel posted:The camera work was awful. I have no idea why he decided to be his own DP. Snyder continues to be unabashedly pro-life and I sort of respect him for it. Zombie fetus is a much more direct visual than zombie baby. There is literally no evidence that Snyder is pro-life beyond the bad faith ravings of the stupidist people on the Internet.
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May 24, 2021 01:10
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Violator posted:In the opening montage, it was interesting that the military commander guy jumps on top of the tank and shoots the gunner as he begs for his life and then takes over the gun before opening his purple smoke marker. He couldn't just tell the gunner "shoot over there!" instead of killing him? The gunner is not begging for his life, he's turned. He's doing the "reaching for your braaaaains" zombie arms. As for the time loop, there are three corpses in the hallway outside the vault. One is dressed exactly like Scott, with the tactical vest and the red scarf. One is dressed like Maria and has the key necklace. One is dressed like Marianne and has the Hawaiian shirt. All 3 are too rotted away to identify as the actual character, but what else could they be? Lastly, about the "lying to the people about the vault heist instead of just telling them to get a bioweapon sample": only the most amoral sociopath would agree to bring out something that terrifying. I mean, seriously: try to think about the mindset of someone who lives in a world where zombies are real and wiped out Vegas in 24 hours. Then imagine being approached by Blackwater or Chevron or something and offered money to get that poo poo out of the city and into their hands. No one would actually agree to that, anymore so than somebody would agree to get a sample of Super-COVID from a lab in our world. It's just too dangerous and it's also so incredibly illegal and has the potential to go so badly that you would never want anyone to know about it.
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May 24, 2021 01:34
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Speaking of promos, my boomer parents watched this movie (without my prompting). They are normies in their 70s. They enjoyed it, although my mom thought it was a little too gory and my dad wanted a happier ending. I asked them if they would be interested in sequels or prequels and got a "yes, absolutely" so Mission Accomplished, Netflix. You got your franchise.
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May 24, 2021 05:10
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Also who's to say he didn't have 50 amoral badasses who all got loving killed prior to talking to Scott? Big Cinemasins energy here. Also let's say you are a shithead billionaire. You can't exactly recruit for "steal a world-ending bioweapon" . If even one of the" amoral badasses" you hire gets cold feet and rats you out, you're absolutely hosed. Uncle Sam is not going to risk China getting a zombie army and will happily make an example out of you. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 06:39 on May 24, 2021 |
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May 24, 2021 06:37
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"I have determined that movies that include <a genre> are not allowed to go above <a certain time limit>" is some of the dullest criticism imaginable and totally worthless. This is the definition of an idiosyncratic taste and is of no value in sharing to anyone.
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May 24, 2021 15:28
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Snyder coming along and traumatizing a new generation with his patented neck maneuvers.
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May 24, 2021 15:55
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Comrade Fakename posted:Oh, except for when they hired the spokesman for a white-supremacist fascist regime that attempted to install a dictatorship in the US for a bit part. Please do not post your MSNBC lib poo poo in this thread.
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May 24, 2021 16:43
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NieR Occomata posted:But again, let me be clear, this is part and parcel with the Snyder brand. The whole "Snyder is too stupid to know what he's actually doing" is both boring and unverifiable. You don't have any inside knowledge on this, you don't know a single person on this movie personally, so all you've done is waste everyone's time with a 2 paragraph screed of your own fantasies and screech it at strangers on the internet. Bizarre.
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May 24, 2021 17:40
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"Any scriptwriter worth their salt" proclaims some rando poster who I personally guarantee does not work as a script writer, does not know any script writers, and is not in any industry adjacent to the movies. LMAO the dude is just writing fan fiction where he (in the guise of this "script writer worth a salt") loudly owns Snyder on all his "bad ideas" and sends him packing, unlike those idiot Netflix money men! (who this poster doesn't know the names or backgrounds of).
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May 24, 2021 17:52
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MacheteZombie posted:Is this part true? I never heard this, just that she showed up wearing a lot of makeup. The way she describes it they were mostly impressed with her big arms. It's been a while, maybe more info has come out?
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May 24, 2021 18:29
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moths posted:This is extremely flawed reasoning. You don't need culinary credentials to tell your steak's burnt, why is that somehow applicable here? That's not what they're doing. What they are doing is describing how they think the chef and his staff prepares the meal despite never setting foot in a kitchen. It's literally some dipshit in the dining room ranting about what the chef was thinking and ascribing motives to the owner (who they don't know and have never met), pure fantasy. Edit: to keep this metaphor going, a lot of this thread is people saying "well I NEVER want pickles on my burger, there's no excuse for that IMO" and expecting anyone else to care. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 18:53 on May 24, 2021 |
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May 24, 2021 18:41
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POWELL CURES KIDS posted:I'm not gonna comment on Zack Snyder's personal politics, because, frankly, I don't know or give a poo poo about them. But getting a member of the Trump administration to turn up as himself in your movie holding a sign that says "I am stupid and evil" is not exactly pro-Trump. He did make some money though and that's not great but...yeah. I honestly am kind of confused about the level of scrutiny this is getting. It was far more noxious when the dude was on Dancing With The Stars, actually getting Hollywood to help rehabilitate him. Also last week Snyder came clean point blank about his politics: quote:I vote Democrat! I’m a true lover of individual rights, I’ve always been a super-strong advocate of women’s rights and a woman’s right to choose, and I’ve always been surrounded by powerful women. And, of course, I’m a huge advocate for the rights of all ethnicities and every walk of life. I would say I’m a pretty liberal guy. I want to make sure everyone’s heard and everyone feels included. I don’t have a rightwing political agenda. People see what they want to see. For me, that was not certainly the point. He's a fairly typical Hollywood limo liberal.
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May 24, 2021 19:26
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The REAL Goobusters posted:there was that one extra on twitter who was like saying Zack Snyder was bad because he said to act like you were in NYC during 9/11 when the towers got hit lmao He actually started it with "Come on guys, you aren't sad enough!" THEN he asked them to imagine 9/11 and "put on their twin towers face". LOL (it was about looking sad after Superman died, btw)
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May 24, 2021 21:40
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"Why don't they just hire badasses to get the Alpha head?" He probably has. Think Mark think! We are expressly told that other teams have gone in and failed. The dumbest idea is probably Dillahunt's Burke character insistence that he use a helicopter to fly out, when (as far as he knew at that point) he had over 24 hours to just leave via the shipping container wall and drive out of there. That's a lot of driving! He could literally be in Canada by the time the nuke goes off for all he knows. If you want to criticize the plan, that's the actual dumb part. But not telling a bunch of mercs that you're trying to illegally obtain a doomsday bioweapon that every nation on Earth would kill millions for is actually a really good idea. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 00:27 on May 25, 2021 |
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May 25, 2021 00:22
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Quick think and the Snyder movies with female cast nudity are the Owl Movie, 300, Watchmen, and BvS. In BvS it's shot around.
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May 25, 2021 15:36
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Want to make a pun about "goon-blinked" but can't think of a natural segue, so here's "goon-blinked": goon-blinked
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May 25, 2021 17:01
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A HORNY SWEARENGEN posted:Except no one emotes. 
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May 25, 2021 19:24
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Neurolimal posted:[modern lamentation bellows] This is my new band name.
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May 25, 2021 19:30
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https://twitter.com/ZackSnyder/status/1397221044168036354
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May 25, 2021 20:04
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It's a heist movie, if anything it's not a zombie movie. There's virtually no siege scene, no tension that there's this unkillable horde slowly pressing in. The Alphas do function a lot like werewolves or vampires in the sense that they are conceivably capable of fighting each member of the team and winning a 1v1, which traditional zombies are absolutely not. Zeus is more of a Dracula than anything else, holed up in his figurative castle with his Bride and turning people that he finds in an initiation ritual. The heist part has the traditional "put the team together" scene, the planning scene, throws in a fun power fantasy scene for a good time, they find the money, there's a double cross, there's an escape. It passes all the signposts of the genre, while largely avoiding zombie genre stuff. I mean no siege, no running out of supplies, nobody hiding their bite from the rest of the group, etc. Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at 22:10 on May 25, 2021 |
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May 25, 2021 22:07
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Judakel posted:Not sure why people are angry about Snyder having fun. I don't think they're mad he's having fun, I think they don't like the way he has fun (which is to add extemporaneous elements that don't have any overt effect on the plot, or subvert genre expectations in ways they find unsatisfying)
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May 25, 2021 23:12
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 13:46 |
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SlimGoodbody posted:I don't know if you guys keep lolno-ing people's valid and well explained critiques See what's great is that this is an internet forum so we can literally rewind time (as though we are in a time loop) and interrogate this. Here's the first 5 negative reviews of this movie in this thread, in their entirety. Lucky for you, your review is listed in the first 5: admataY posted:Many years ago , when a game Called " Duke Nukem Forever " was resurrected from vaporware status and about to be released , there were hardcore DNF evanglists who swore this thing gonna be awesome and show everyone how a REAL MAN shooter looks and feel like . Then it came out, and the goal post moved from " its gonna be a masterpiece " to " it was always gonna be a basic oldschool meat and potatoes shooter " . Then, even the most hardcore admitted that it sucks . smellmycheese posted:The title sequence was the best bit, certainly the only bit that felt it was in Las Vegas. The rest is a dull slog of clunking twists that are telegraphed in BIG LETTERS from miles away, a couple of painfully awkward character development scenes, nonsensical decisions on the part of both humans and zombies, all finished off with a nice tribute to the worst scene in the Indiana Jones movies SlimGoodbody posted:I feel like I'm taking crazy pills when I read this thread. This movie was excruciatingly boring and predictable. It wasn't even that nice to look at! Shageletic posted:why is this movie so long. why is it so boring. why does it feel like everyone is stuck in the BLURRY ZONE While I believe these are all valid, I leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine if these are "well explained" or if they mostly involve people saying "you all are stupid/crazy, and this movie is boring"
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May 25, 2021 23:38
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