Most Revolutionary Movie

See thats just exactly what alot of people don't understand. Some movies are ment only to entertain. The Mummy Returns for one. While it may not have been entertaining, to me at least, thats what it was intended to do. Look at Jurassic Park 3. Thats not gonna win any awards, but it will be entertaining. Same with Starship Troopers and Hollow Man. Both weren't intended to be nominated for categories like Best Screenplay or Best Picture, they were intended for such categories as Best Special Effects, and Best Sound. (Just for the record I don't think Starship Troopers is a bad movie at all. I think it is a great movie. Everything about it was excellent, except for the acting, and well the acting wasn't supposed to be oscar worthy.)

But basically I'm saying, and I'm not saying you don't allow this Steve, but some people need to just allow themselves to be entertained by a movie. They don't always have to be so critical about it.

__________________
Horror's Not Dead
Latest Movie Review(s): Too lazy to keep this up to date. New reviews every week.

I didn't like all the use of CGI in the phantom menace. Jar Jar Binks would of been a much better character had he been an animatronic or even a guy in a suit. Many of the characters in that movie did need to be CGI, I understand, and as did every single backdrop, but still, I didn't like it. The movie would of been alot better, in my mind, had it had more than a total of 15 real people in it. Don't get me wrong, the movie was entertaining, but it was nothing great, as compared to the past ones. The past Star War's didn't rely on all CGI. Tatoine(spelling?) was an actual desert. I know they couldn't of made it using CGI at the time, but still. The past Star Wars use of more realistic things was what made it better in my mind.

STORY is the most important thing in a movie, because it IS the movie. A film cannot entertain if it doesn't have a story that works. I admired the first Mummy because it didn't take itself too seriously, it knew its story was contrived, but it reveled in its own cheesiness. But the second Mummy completely forgot the story and got caught up in how many action sequences it could fit in, making it as soulless and unenjoyable as other duds such as Wild Wild West and The Avengers.

Starship Troopers is a bad, BAD movie. I didn't enjoy its mixture of parody and war movie at all. I didn't know where it was satiric and where it was actually trying to make me CARE. So, when the only non-white character in the movie dies, I've got a problem. I've got a problem with Buenos Aires being an almost homogenous place. I've got a problem with the fact that we are an interstellar species, but the only way to kill Bugs is by firing thousands upon thousands of rounds into them. It's not exhilarating in the way the Star Wars movies are; it doesn't have any MAGIC. I can sort of make a case that Verhoeven was trying to stay faithful to the book in that it's shown the way a kid would have imagined it, but it's just too one-dimensional. The Bugs are killing machines. The humans kill them. Everyone's a hero. Everyone's white. Everyone is the SAME. Yet the movie still tries to make me care about these people, these archetypical teen idol kids. It can't entertain me when it doesn't engage me.

Hollow Man has no imagination whatsoever. The man becomes invisible, and all he does is become a slasher and a sex fiend? Does the director really think that all we want to see is people getting diced up? There's no imagination, it's just a slasher movie under different pretenses. And what a fall for Elisabeth Shue. She gave one of the best female performances I've ever seen in Leaving Las Vegas, but in Hollow Man she looked like she wished someone would shoot her between takes.

Also, who says the Oscars are the measure of quality? Hollow Man didn't get any non-technical nominations, but Chocolat did. They're not that far apart. The Oscars don't mean a thing in terms of measuring the "Best" anything. I thought the visual effects in The Cell wiped the floor with everything last year. Was it nominated for that award? No.

Dances with Wolves won over GoodFellas in 1990. Who do you know now that believes Dances with Wolves is superior to GoodFellas? It's the same thing with Gladiator. In ten years, people won't remember Maximus slicing people up, they'll remember Kate Hudson asking "what kind of beer?" in Almost Famous, or Chow Yun Fat and Zhang Ziyi in the trees in Crouching Tiger.

In case you didn't notice, every event in Starship Troopers is an equivelent of one that occured during WWII. The asteroid hitting Buenos Aires(Pearl Harbor), the invasion of Klendathu(Omaha Beach), the discovery of the brain bug(the taking of the decryptor as in U-571), and more. I even wrote a paper on this last year for Mr. Ondrof's class, got a 100 on it.

Starship Troopers is intended to make fun of society. It parralles the fact that all though the US had all this technology and power, and it was unable to beat a nation with less power and technology that just usedmore brute force. It pokes fun at that throughout time society has only focused on the idea of a posterboy model child, ie Johhny Rico. Johnny Rico is the stereoptypical white teenager. He's captain of the football team, he has a nice house(haha a bird just flew into my window) he has a gorgeous girlfriend, etc. Naming him Johhny even stereotypes him even more. He recieves the stereotypical "Dear Johhny" letter etc. The dominant all white Buenos Aires you see in the movie, reflects society's want as a whole, to be all the same. I'm not saying it wants everyone to be white, it just wants everyone to be uniform. Society's want for this is still going on today. The acting was bad because Verhoeven needed new teen actors inorder to pull off the posterboy look. I'm not trying to say this movie has some deep, profound message and its the most meaningful movie of all time(because it is not anywhere close to it), I'm just saying most people don't stop to think what that movie reflects. I'm not even trying to say it is a GOOD movie, because, honestly, it isn't.

As for Hollow Man, it reflected what would happen if a man were given such power. Let's say you, Steve, can turn invisible. What would you do? Would you want to run around the streets doing whatever you want? Doing everything you never could do? I would. Oh but wait, you can't do that because you are forced to be confined to live in a lab. Once you find away to use your powers, you just see how powerful you really are. You most likely abuse your powers, ie the rape scene. Now you don't want to go back to a normal person, without such power. But you are being forced to. Your coworkers are going to rat you out and have you taken away, and this wonderful gift lost. Would you try to stop them from taking it away from you. May sound bad, but I know I would. Now thinking about those things, how does that movie not convey it. Kevin Bacon didn't have to kill everyone, he could of gone along with the plan and gone back to a boring person. Would that of made an entertaining movie? No it wouldn't of. It would of made a rather dull and boring movie.

Thats alot of typing considering its all about two B movies.

B movie implies something with a lower budget, I think. You actually wrote a paper for school on Starship Troopes? D*mn, nice going.

Ya see, this is the one notion I really dislike: so-and-so didn't need special effects to be good. Now, this may be correct, but it also implies that the other films are somehow inferior for relying on CGI. Shawshank was a better movie than Mummy Returns, but it has nothing to do with the fact that it didn't use special effects. That's not really a factor when I choose my favorite movies.

All I pay attention to when choosing which movies I like is whether or not I enjoyed them -- be it through just smiling at the explosions, marveling at the scenery and CGI, or standing in awe of the drama and plotline. It's all part of the same thing, and I don't consider one "better" than the other, or more skillful.

IE: while I may like Shawshank for a mindblowing screenplay/cast, I don't think "less" of Jurassic Park or Hollow Man for going a different route, and relying on CGI. They are for different things, and I don't think that "dumb people" enjoy CGI, or that such movies are incapable of being as good, or better, than others.

LOTR can be made without special effects, but let's face it, it wouldn't be as good.

I didn't say that Shawshank didn't need special effects to be good, it's unfair to compare that and The Mummy 2 (for example). which is why I used Raiders of the Lost Ark as the example, because it is in the same "genre" as most of these effects-laden movies.

I don't have a problem with CGI, as long as it fits the story. All I'm trying to say is that you can have the coolest effects in the world and still have a terrible storyline, which in turn could influence how you recieve the movie. I've said it once, I'll say it again: Special effects a movie do not make. Hollow Man's special effects are nothing short of genius, but the terrible and contrived story make it impossible to be entertaining. Unless you're ignorant and only watch movies that are exploitative and sick.

So now Starship Troopers is stupid, unexciting, mindless, AND pretentious. What a disrespectful thing to do, draw parallels between a fictitious war with cheesy characters and the unthinking enemy with something as historically important as the second World War. The fact that the film thinks it is saying something of value is not only disrespectful, it's laughable. It's a campy piece of crap.

Maybe you didn't see it, but I know I did. You didn't think it was interesting that the humans were not necessarily the "good guys" there?

OK frankly im surprised so much could have been written on a bad movie like Starship Troopers. I mad right now because it took me around 10 minutes to read all of that. Ohhhh man. I dont even know what to write and frankly i dont want to write anything to drag this conversation on Starship Troopers on. Its bad movie and ill leave it at that. As for most revolutionary(you remember the subject the thread was started on) how about Friday the 13th. As far as i can remember that started the whole slasher movie theme.

Just wanted to chip in to agree with Steve N. Everything you've said is true.

Star Wars 1's mixture of CGI and real-life footage came off as a disappointment. Jar Jar Binks never looked like he belonged in reality. You could almost see the trace lines. He was a computer image, a special effect, it never once crossed my mind that his character was real. It was like the animated sequence in Mary Poppins except that wasn't taken seriously.

Hollow Man was the worst excuse for CGI I've ever seen. I admire Verhoeven and I saw good things in Troopers but Hollow Man. Let's just say it was suitably titled. It was a feature length experiment for a new form of special effects and I was angry that I paid money to see it. Hollow Man wasn't about the story. I imagine production meetings were more concerned with challenging the computer technicians. "Let's put him in water for no reason whatsoever" - "We can do that. COOL!"

__________________
I couldn't believe that she knew my name. Some of my best friends didn't know my name.

How about this: Hollow, Man.

Question?

If one appreciates a movie for its story line, then why not appreciate it for the other aspects of the film? You said before that movies require a solid plot and good acting. But what about a Sci Fi movie. A Sci Fi movie should be, in my opinion, graded on a whole different scale. If a large component of a Sci Fi movie's plot requires a CGI characer, what is wrong with that? Why do you all hate Hollow Man because it had a CGI character? Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I just don't get it.

My last post was just a joke -- and a damn clever one if I do say so myself. I think Hollow Man was a visual feast and nothing more. The guy turned into a superhuman mid-way through. It was just dumb.

The movie was not "bad" in my opinion, because it was all it was supposed to be: cool looking. I didn't go expecting much more. I had hoped for a suspenseful screenplay, but my experience did not hinge on that.

It was supposed to be cool to look at, it was cool to look at. Therefore, it accomplishes what it's supposed to. It's "good" for it's aim and type of flick.

EXACTLY!!

If you were to watch an interview with Verhoeven you would notice that he said he chose this movie because of all the things he could do with technology these days. I fail to see how his want to do that makes it a bad movie!

OG.

The story of an Invisible Man has been told for generations. Film was the first medium that had the opportunity of visualing the story. I'm not sure if it was actually based on a book but the first Hollywood attempt was Claude Rains version. I confess to not having seen it but I've only heard nice things about it. A clip that I'm sure most film fans have seen are the when the Invisible Man's footprints appear out of nowhere. Pretty remarkable for a 1930s film! Again, my knowledge of this film is sketchy but I believe that Rains goes on a murder spree after realising the potential of his gift.

Hollow Man had absolute no limitations. It had an opportunity to turn the Invisible Man into a masterpiece. Imagine the potential of having the Invisible Man murder people or steal from them, just for fun, just because he can get away with it. A real invisible man would have played around with his victims, freaking them out before knocking them off. Instead Hollow Man gave us an invisible gorilla and a sexed up Kevin Bacon. What a waste! The film was set almost entirely indoors when an Invisible Man would work far better if he was out in the open.

The film was hopeless.

Ok, so the whole moving objects around wasn't freaking them out? The moving the mirror wasn't to freak them out? The whole marco-polo bit wasn't freaking them out? I think the movie was more realistic having him confined to a lab instead of free to roam. I admitt having him outside would of made the movie alot better, but keeping him inside made the plot stronger than it was.

Just a thought, OG, but since when has a movie about the Invisible Man meant to be realistic? Realism means nothing in that movie. It's not realistic when people outrun giant flaming fireballs either. Or, for that matter, hide behind wooden tables in a gunfight.

I think this is a better way to say it:

Right now, an invisible man is not realistic, but it is something we can fathom in the future. However, man will obviously not be able to withstand 2nd degree burns and a shot over the head with a crowbar, unless we advance to become cyborgs -- which was not the case in that movie.

There is a "realism" factor, even in science fiction movies.