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Victim of The Night




This was 45 years ago and it looks better than most of what you see today. Because it was made with practical effects you see the textures and dust on the objects the scene is built up so you can see what's happening.



But can they?
I mean, who is the really charismatic character that's in good movies now for the MCU outside of Peter Parker?
They're trying to act like Stephen Strange is the new Tony Stark but I don't think anyone's buying it. And they obviously don't have a ton of confidence in Captain Marvel. Eternals (relatively) bombed so I doubt we'll see any of them again. Awkwafina was the actual star of Shang-Chi, not, ya know, Shang-Chi. They didn't put in the work and now they have a bunch of characters a lot of die-hard fans don't really care about and aren't necessarily inspiring enough to be the groundwork for a soft reboot of the universe.
Maybe not! But I think good writing fixes everything, eventually. It's possible they'll need to maintain a higher level of quality for longer to "win back" people who have written off some of those heroes that started with mediocre introductions, though, I agree.



Victim of The Night
Maybe not! But I think good writing fixes everything, eventually. It's possible they'll need to maintain a higher level of quality for longer to "win back" people who have written off some of those heroes that started with mediocre introductions, though, I agree.
Well, I agree with you, I think they have the actors. The movies just suck.
I didn't think they could possibly miss with Taika Waititi, that cast, and the Mighty Thor storyline, and that movie was shit.
And it was still better than the last few.
If they would just, ya know, care again...



Maybe not! But I think good writing fixes everything, eventually. It's possible they'll need to maintain a higher level of quality for longer to "win back" people who have written off some of those heroes that started with mediocre introductions, though, I agree.
Another thing is that there’s so much to catch up on. I just can’t stomach most Marvel stuff and yet I try to watch everything in a chronological order unless something actually prevents me. So what am I supposed to do when it comes to Marvel? Most of it to me is unwatchable, yet to even attempt something, you need all that background.

Dr Strange is a rare one where I find the concept genuinely intriguing-ish, so I’d have liked to see that, but from my general contextual knowledge I figure it’s so integrated with everything else that I haven’t seen that it seems a bit pointless to start now…

And so I don’t. Maybe I’m not the most typical viewer (though I always feel I have a rather plebeian taste), but I just can’t imagine being “won back”/won at all with more stuff, even if character/story-driven. It’s all so entirely overwhelming, literally everything all at once (I read that one as pure Marvel satire).



I'm genuinely surprised, because I thought this was a property that should have been put to sleep a long time ago, but I cannot stop running into people who really liked it.
I dunno if that's gonna be enough to make me watch it but, hey, I have the next week off, who knows?

It's directed by Dan Trachtenberg who did 10 Cloverfield Lane. If I end up watching it, that'd probably set my baseline expectations (my bigger issue is I cancelled Hulu once I noticed they started inserting commercial breaks into the middle of movies again, and I'm not paying Hulu the subscription fee for no commercials).


But I've heard the nature/landscape shots were pretty good.


I guess the question is, do you go for the Comanche dub or not?
I've heard split opinions on the matter.



The trick is not minding
But can they?
I mean, who is the really charismatic character that's in good movies now for the MCU outside of Peter Parker?
They're trying to act like Stephen Strange is the new Tony Stark but I don't think anyone's buying it. And they obviously don't have a ton of confidence in Captain Marvel. Eternals (relatively) bombed so I doubt we'll see any of them again. Awkwafina was the actual star of Shang-Chi, not, ya know, Shang-Chi. They didn't put in the work and now they have a bunch of characters a lot of die-hard fans don't really care about and aren't necessarily inspiring enough to be the groundwork for a soft reboot of the universe.
Huge disagreement with most of this take. Dr Strange works on his own, not really as a Stark stand in. Shang Chi worked precisely because did Shang Chi.
I’ll give you Marvel and The Eternals.

I think the issue is too much of the same thing. What made these films stand out in the beginning is now becoming somewhat stale, writing wise.



I keep seeing this thread title and now I keep imagining the "Woke Predator" movie: Teenaged TikTok Predator comes to Earth to whinge endlessly about right-thinking and speaking, it armor and weapons operating all sort of social media apps, on its favorite kind of hunt, the witch-hunt.



I keep seeing this thread title and now I keep imagining the "Woke Predator" movie: Teenaged TikTok Predator comes to Earth to whinge endlessly about right-thinking and speaking, it armor and weapons operating all sort of social media apps, on its favorite kind of hunt, the witch-hunt.
And when it takes its helmet off, its dreadlocks are dyed neon colors, it's got tear tattoos next to its eyes, and it has a giant one of those hoop rings with the beads on the end through its nose.



Victim of The Night
Dr Strange is a rare one where I find the concept genuinely intriguing-ish, so I’d have liked to see that, but from my general contextual knowledge I figure it’s so integrated with everything else that I haven’t seen that it seems a bit pointless to start now…
I think Dr. Strange is one of the ones you can watch completely out of context and be totally fine. Maybe the last one of those they made. It's ok. Probably a little better than their average.



I think Dr. Strange is one of the ones you can watch completely out of context and be totally fine. Maybe the last one of those they made. It's ok. Probably a little better than their average.
Hmm, that’s useful, thanks. Might give it a try one of these days.



Victim of The Night
Huge disagreement with most of this take. Dr Strange works on his own, not really as a Stark stand in. Shang Chi worked precisely because did Shang Chi.
I’ll give you Marvel and The Eternals.

I think the issue is too much of the same thing. What made these films stand out in the beginning is now becoming somewhat stale, writing wise.
We do disagree because it's not too much for me, I grew up reading as many Marvel comics as I could get, one after the other, and if they were still making movies just at the First Avenger level, certainly at the WS or Civil War or The Avengers level, I would be first in line for every one. I was so excited for Shang-Chi and it was terrible. Terrible. The script was written specifically so they could have a huge CGI spectacle at the end, leaving my eyes sore from rolling so hard a some of the stupid shit that was involved, but also from trying to watch the appallingly bad CGI, for ten years ago, as an unnecessary giant CGI world-threat was dragged into the already exhausting proceedings. And Multiverse of Madness was probably worse as it's bad almost from the beginning of the film, a mad rush to string together as many action set-pieces as possible. I will admit that some of them were actually good, but who cares? I would say that Captain Marvel, a film I do not like, is actually far superior to both of those.
And, seriously, they could cram all the movies down my gizzard they wanted if they would just get back to making even passable films. Thor L&T was not one.
And, to stay on topic, it was woke too!!! Aighhh!!!

As for Stephen Strange, I agree he's fine on his own, though his latest movie wasn't, he's just not someone the whole MCU can revolve around in the way Stark/Downey Jr. was, but they're sure trying to make him one whether it works or not.



Victim of The Night
Yeah, man, they had like, women doing stuff. And I don't mean making coffee or vacuuming the den, I mean like actually being involved and stuff. And one of them was gay! I don't know why they gotta cram this stuff down our throats all the time! We all know that women and gays don't do stuff!



And when it takes its helmet off, its dreadlocks are dyed neon colors, it's got tear tattoos next to its eyes, and it has a giant one of those hoop rings with the beads on the end through its nose.
It's invisible, but you can always hear it coming. If it finds you in the real world, run up hill; it's morbidly obese and will get winded quickly. It tracks online movement with terrific speed, however. And it will find that Tweet you made when you were 15 and END YOU.



Yeah, man, they had like, women doing stuff. And I don't mean making coffee or vacuuming the den, I mean like actually being involved and stuff. And one of them was gay! I don't know why they gotta cram this stuff down our throats all the time! We all know that women and gays don't do stuff!
That sounds a tiny bit bait-y.

I would argue any Asghar Farhadi film has women (in headscarves) “doing” more emotionally and narratively meaningful “stuff” than anything Marvel has ever touched. And actually that’s exactly the point, Marvel has green furry LGBT+ people running around and “doing stuff” that you can’t even recall 10 minutes later. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve seen relatively few Marvel films (probably 8 in total), but I did suffer through The Avengers, Endgame and probably 2-3 more recent ones, and the only “stuff” I observed “women and gays” consistently doing was spitting cringeworthy “banter” (any Arthur Fleck anti joke was better than that) and being “sassy” in a hilariously PG way. It reminds me of those dating profiles female lawyers create where they describe themselves as “feisty”. That “snark” (E.g. Natasha Romanoff) sounds like something a sheltered 12-year-old would say while role playing an adult.

How do you define “doing stuff”? I genuinely believe seeing Natasha Romanoff make coffee/hoover the living room/bake a good Russian cabbage pie while some bad guy screams tied up in her basement would be more fun to watch, and more insightful, than any of that awful CGI fighting (and creepier, too, if we want to establish her as a menace).

So to me, the sarcasm is entirely unwarranted. Imo the exact nature of how women and gay people “do stuff” in Marvel films proves they are their own worst enemy, and that’s definitely a big part of what puts me off watching them for the most part. It is “crammed down” audiences’ throats in the very least because we hardly ever see women in these films do anything women actually do e.g., yes, brush their hair, put makeup on, make breakfast, go to the gym, get a massage (yes, if you do all that fighting you need a massage more than anyone to soothe muscle cramps). No, they exist solely to kick ass and twist balls.

About a year ago someone here said something that stuck with me, which is “if inclusion is a political act, then so is exclusion”. And I see how that can be argued, but I take issue with a lot of that reasoning. “Exclusion” assumes a conscious act on the part of the creator who may simply not have considered the impact of their art on the female audience, LGBT people and other demographics, and why should that be expected? It’s an incredibly taxing job to ask of someone to take on just because they want to write a book/make a film/tell a story.

If we can argue that explicit sex scenes are “not necessary” in narrative terms, especially in Marvel films, because they don’t advance the plot (this is from previous similar threads), then to me these “women and gays” “doing stuff” are equally unnecessary. Wonder Woman as a character makes no sense, even by Marvel standards. Natalie Portman becoming the God of Thunder makes less sense than Naked Lunch. I’ve done a fair bit of research on this, which I won’t post here, but nearly all (if not all) female-led Marvel films flop miserably. No, it’s not a nefarious conspiracy, they are just bad, and they annoy a certain portion of the audience who see this as disingenuous. Yet Marvel keep on making more. It’s exhausting and ridiculous.

This brings us back quite neatly to the discussion of Prey, where we have the little girl looking up at the protagonist in awe etc. “Inspired” and all.

The only thing I’ve been reading that I will post here is this, which is research (referenced in the below op ed) arguing that we need strong female superheroes because “girls are more likely to envision themselves in leadership roles” if they see such superheroes growing up. And just like that, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just admitted that the purpose of all this “inclusion” is a form of social engineering. We don’t make films for audiences to enjoy and engage in escapism, no-no-no. It’s actually all to encourage women to take on more leadership roles. I find that quite believable as an argument, but it’s also mind-blowing and I don’t see much acknowledgement of that side of the argument.

https://neiuindependent.org/10627/op...eroes-leaders/

Not to mention the obvious: that not all girls want to be superheroes, or prime ministers, or serve in the army, or go to space - some just want to be left alone. Girls who might not want to try to be great at everything and die of exhaustion do not benefit from this idiotic propaganda. I read Serena Williams’ Vogue interview this week where it’s widely accepted that she’s announced her retirement and I nearly cried, because among other things, it was a statement against all that Marvel-like empowerment crap. It was heartbreaking. All this “cramming of [strong] women down our throats” does is heap even more unattainable expectations and pressure on women: be a superhero, be a good mother, but it’s not in any way realistic, so I think for Marvel to propagate that unattainable bullshit is more unethical than any excluding they or other studios may have engaged in in the past. It would have been much braver and more mature to portray women having calm relaxed lives, yes, making coffee and living to please but themselves, not trying to complete with men.



Victim of The Night
That sounds a tiny bit bait-y.

I would argue any Asghar Farhadi film has women (in headscarves) “doing” more emotionally and narratively meaningful “stuff” than anything Marvel has ever touched. And actually that’s exactly the point, Marvel has green furry LGBT+ people running around and “doing stuff” that you can’t even recall 10 minutes later. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve seen relatively few Marvel films (probably 8 in total), but I did suffer through The Avengers, Endgame and probably 2-3 more recent ones, and the only “stuff” I observed “women and gays” consistently doing was spitting cringeworthy “banter” (any Arthur Fleck anti joke was better than that) and being “sassy” in a hilariously PG way. It reminds me of those dating profiles female lawyers create where they describe themselves as “feisty”. That “snark” (E.g. Natasha Romanoff) sounds like something a sheltered 12-year-old would say while role playing an adult.

How do you define “doing stuff”? I genuinely believe seeing Natasha Romanoff make coffee/bake a good Russian cabbage pie while some bad guy screams tied up in her basement would be more fun to watch, and more insightful, than any of that awful CGI fighting (and creepier, too, if we want to establish her as a menace).

So to me, the sarcasm is entirely unwarranted. Imo the exact nature of how women and gay people “do stuff” in Marvel films proves they are their own worst enemy, and that’s definitely a big part of what puts me off watching them for the most part. It is “crammed down” audiences’ throats in the very least because we hardly ever see women in these films do anything women actually do e.g., yes, brush their hair, put makeup on, make breakfast, go to the gym, get a massage (yes, if you do all that fighting you need a massage more than anyone to soothe muscle cramps). No, they exist solely to kick ass and twist balls.

About a year ago someone here said something that stuck with me, which is “if inclusion is a political act, then so is exclusion”. And I see how that can be argued, but I take issue with a lot of that reasoning. “Exclusion” assumes a conscious act on the part of the creator who may simply not have considered the impact of their art on the female audience, LGBT people and other demographics, and why should that be expected? It’s an incredibly taxing job to ask of someone to take on just because they want to write a book/make a film/tell a story.

If we can argue that explicit sex scenes are “not necessary” in narrative terms, especially in Marvel films, because they don’t move the plot along (this is from previous similar threads), then to me these “women and gays” “doing stuff” are equally unnecessary. Wonder Woman as a character makes no sense, even by Marvel standards. Natalie Portman becoming the God of Thunder makes less sense than Naked Lunch. I’ve done a fair bit of research on this, which I won’t post here, but nearly all (if not all) female-led Marvel films flop miserably. No, it’s not a nefarious conspiracy, they are just bad, and they annoy a certain portion of the audience who see this as disingenuous. Yet Marvel keep on making more. It’s exhausting and ridiculous.

This comes back quite neatly to the discussion of Prey, where we have the little girl looking up at the protagonist in awe etc. “Inspired” and all.

The only thing I’ve been reading that I will post here is this, which is research (referenced in the below op ed) arguing that we need strong female superheroes because “girls are more likely to envision themselves in leadership roles” if they see such superheroes growing up. And just like that, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve just admitted that the purpose of all this “inclusion” is a form of social engineering. We don’t make films for audiences to enjoy and engage in escapism, no-no-no. It’s actually all to encourage women to take on more leadership roles. I find that quite believable as an argument, but it’s also mind-blowing and I don’t see much acknowledgement of that side of the argument.

https://neiuindependent.org/10627/op...eroes-leaders/

Not to mention the obvious: that not all girls want to be superheroes, or prime ministers, or serve in the army, or go to space - some just want to be left alone. Girls who might not want to try to be great at everything and die of exhaustion do not benefit from this idiotic propaganda. I read Serena Williams’ Vogue interview this week where it’s widely accepted that she’s announced her retirement and I nearly cried, because among other things, it was a statement against all that Marvel-like empowerment crap. It was heartbreaking. All this “cramming of [strong] women down our throats” does is heap even more unattainable expectations and pressure on women: be a superhero, be a good mother, but it’s not in any way realistic, so I think for Marvel to propagate that unattainable bullshit is more unethical than any excluding they or other studios may have engaged in in the past. It would have been much braver and more mature to portray women having calm relaxed lives, yes, making coffee and living to please but themselves, not trying to complete with men.
I didn't mean it as baity, honestly, I rarely do that, it was just supposed to be taking the piss at the thread title, OP, and the general runaway idea of "wokeness" such that it almost seems as if the "anti-woke crowd" (I put that into quotes because I don't want to over-generalize or lump people together who maybe don't fairly belong together) have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that is not White Male oriented. Like after 74 Predator movies having one where the hero is a woman and not white is somehow an attack rather than just a normal variation of the story.
Surpised to hear you don't think the women in Marvel do any stuff. Given the key position of even the much-maligned Black Widow throughout the franchise (right in the beginning of the first Avengers movie she not only single handedly defeats a group of high-up Russian mobsters then turns around and brings in the HULK!), the introduction of Wanda and Captain Marvel as the actual two most powerful heroes in the MCU, the way that Black Panther is basically one dude completely supported by strong, even regal women (seriously, every positive character in that film that is not him is a woman and the only reason he's not dead 3/4 of the way through the movie is that 3 women make it happen), Salma Hayek being the leader of the Eternals, Ms. Marvel (the central character of the property) now being a gay brown woman, I don't know who's trying harder to support and normalize the idea that women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ folk are equal to White Males.
But look, I gotta tell ya, this paragraph of yours is far enough off the reservation that I think I'm gonna check out of this conversation:
"So to me, the sarcasm is entirely unwarranted. Imo the exact nature of how women and gay people “do stuff” in Marvel films proves they are their own worst enemy, and that’s definitely a big part of what puts me off watching them for the most part. It is “crammed down” audiences’ throats in the very least because we hardly ever see women in these films do anything women actually do e.g., yes, brush their hair, put makeup on, make breakfast, go to the gym, get a massage (yes, if you do all that fighting you need a massage more than anyone to soothe muscle cramps). No, they exist solely to kick ass and twist balls."
I mean, I hate to say it cause I like you, but this sounds like some real InCel-in-the-basement stuff here. We don't see the men sitting around drinking beer and talking about baseball either, but if we don't see women making breakfast and brushing their hair somehow the movie is being disingenuous and cramming it down our throats? That women are more than just making breakfast and brushing their hair in the same way that men are more than playing video games and looking at porn? The only time in the whole franchise we see that, with Thor, it is played as weakness and a fall on his part, but you don't find the female characters credible if they're not braiding someone's hair and having a tea party? How am I supposed to even respond to that?
I don't know where we go with this conversation from that point. If you need to see women doing more "woman stuff" like making breakfast and serving men to find them credible, we simply have no common ground to talk on and, given the rules of this forum that we won't argue about politics and stuff, I think maybe we better just drop it and find our common ground in film again, because no conversation about this topic between us starting at this point is going to go well.



I didn't mean it as baity, honestly, I rarely do that, it was just supposed to be taking the piss at the thread title, OP, and the general runaway idea of "wokeness" such that it almost seems as if the "anti-woke crowd" (I put that into quotes because I don't want to over-generalize or lump people together who maybe don't fairly belong together) have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that is not White Male oriented…

…I mean, I hate to say it cause I like you, but this sounds like some real InCel-in-the-basement stuff here….

…I don't know where we go with this conversation from that point. If you need to see women doing more "woman stuff" like making breakfast and serving men to find them credible, we simply have no common ground to talk on and, given the rules of this forum that we won't argue about politics and stuff, I think maybe we better just drop it and find our common ground in film again, because no conversation about this topic between us starting at this point is going to go well.
That sounds perfectly reasonable. I, too, like you and don’t see why this should impact any further interaction between us going forward. V. happy to leave that one there. My reference to “baiting” was not intended as personal or as a dig, though I realise it came off that way and I’m sorry about that. It was intended as me commenting on how sarcasm about such things doesn’t elicit the same reactions in everyone.

Obviously I did not literally mean “social engineering”, I meant steering the cultural conversation in one particular direction a bit too forcefully.

Edit: And no, I am not an incel (for some rather obvious reasons, but okay, anyway). I referenced (in a rather hyperbolic way) the “girly” things women do such as putting on makeup because unless we’re talking noughties stuff like Mean Girls, I find it’s rarely portrayed in film (though most women, even all-powerful CEOs, do them daily), which again I find a bit disingenuous. I did not mean that unless a woman is seen hoovering on screen, I don’t find her believable. I meant that it might make female characters more, not less, nuanced for us to see them doing such things too instead of incessantly kicking ass. E.g. Devil Wears Prada showed Miranda (unsuccessfully) trying to juggle childcare with running Vogue, and I thought that worked well.

End.



Haven't read most of the thread but I saw the movie as sort of anti-woke. They want to make a new Predator movie, but they want a lead who'll be underestimated and an underdog. So let's cast a woman? Much of the film revolves around the fact that she's not taken seriously as a warrior, not only by her own people, but by the predator as well. Instead of a strong capable woman kicking ass and leaving it as that, we get a woman who's only able to survive because the predator doesn't perceive her as a threat.



Haven't read most of the thread but I saw the movie as sort of anti-woke. They want to make a new Predator movie, but they want a lead who'll be underestimated and an underdog. So let's cast a woman? Much of the film revolves around the fact that she's not taken seriously as a warrior, not only by her own people, but by the predator as well. Instead of a strong capable woman kicking ass and leaving it as that, we get a woman who's only able to survive because the predator doesn't perceive her as a threat.
I agree, and I noted when I first became involved in this conversation that that kind of reading makes perfect sense imo. But that’s the question: do you choose to read it as a very deliberate tongue-in-cheek commentary that no, women actually can’t manage anything without men, or do you take it at face value? I just can’t imagine it being so ironic as to intend the point you’re making. But that would certainly be very interesting/original.