Good films that are actually bad


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I saw recently Inception, and found it incredibly horrible, despite all the good reviews from the magazines and friends.


I read almost all Philip K. Dick books, so this film just bored me.


Also, i read William Gibson's Neuromancer, so Matrix 1 was one of the few movies i wanted to quit before the end.
 
All of the Harry Potter adaptations.


I know that in their own right, for folks who haven't read the books, they probably stand up well, but I've found that not one single one does the books any justice at all - things are dumbed-down or outright removed (including characters key to the plot), and cringe-inducing, insulting-to-the-intelligence "mood-setting" scenes were added to at least the fifth one (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is my favourite of all of the books, with the final one close to it, so I found this VERY annoying).


Moreover, since media based on the films has been possibly more pervasive than media based on the original books, it has had a knock-on effect of lessening the impact of the books for people whose views of them were influenced by the films (or outright putting them off of reading them at all, depending on how they found the movies to be). It's the same thing as the phenomenon of how almost every young person's impression of a Hobbit nowadays, is a mental image of a digitally-shrunken Elijah Wood in funny clothes.
 
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Oh gads, dozens.


Titanic, Memento, The new Batman films, Indiana Jones 4, Inception, Donnie Darko, Twin Peaks Movie, Heat, Lord of the Rings part 3...


Those were what popped into my head right away...
 
The new Batman films
I'm so pleased that someone else thinks the new Batman films are crap. To me, the Michael Keaton Batman films are so much better (especially Batman Returns). Jack Nicholson's Joker is THE Joker.


Donnie Darko - I just don't get it either.


Indiana Jones 4 - I've used brain bleach; this movie does not exist. It was just some horrible nightmare.


War Of The Worlds (the Tom Cruise one). Absolute shite.
 
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Absolutely agree, Nicholsons Joker is amazing. Sometimes I watch the film just for his performance, it's brilliant.
 
inception sucked ass quite frankly as did all harry potter movies anything with leonardo di caprio is crap.The sound of music.Best movie ever made.My arse
 
I can't help but fall asleep in the Harry Potter movies. They kind of just flick a switch in my mind. It's like cinematic hypnosis.
 
Planet of the Apes.


Admittedly, I didn't see it until after seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which is far superior and kind of gives away Planet of the Apes's "twist" ending, but I found Planet of the Apes to be lacking, partly because the only thing there was to the ending was "OMG I've been on Earth this whole time!" Which, if you really think about it, makes the most sense anyway; what chance is there that you're going to run into extraterrestrial life that's exactly the same as life on Earth with only one minor difference, and even speaks the same language? It's just as likely for another Statue of Liberty to exist on another planet.


Other than that, I just found Planet of the Apes to be filled with stupid. I mean, I don't care how primitive the apes are, why in the holy hell would they not leave any recordings at all of their great victory over man? Why would they completely abandon human technology which they are perfectly capable of using and start from the stone age? Why didn't they even keep records of this technology (evidenced by one of the apes claiming that flight is a "scientific impossibility")? And if they did start from the stone age because they're too stupid to adapt human technology for their own use, how did they manage to permanently make all humans so stupid that they can't even talk, a feat which would require a modification of DNA that even we, with modern science at our disposal, cannot currently make (AFAIK)? The whole movie was loaded with questions like that.
 
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War Of The Worlds (the Tom Cruise one). Absolute shite.
This movie is not The War of the Worlds, it is Tom Cruise Versus The Aliens!


I'll stick with Jeff Wayne's musical adaptation, thankyou very much. :p

how did they manage to permanently make all humans so stupid that they can't even talk, a feat which would require a modification of DNA that even we, with modern science at our disposal, cannot currently make (AFAIK)?
This is actually very obvious, and was touched upon in one of the sequels: Lobotomies. Something that was still extant in living memory at the time the films were made, if my memory serves me correctly...


EDIT: I assume that you're talking about the original movie, here, and not the godawful remake from the 90s?
 
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This is actually very obvious, and was touched upon in one of the sequels: Lobotomies. Something that was still extant in living memory at the time the films were made, if my memory serves me correctly...

The important distinction is permanent, i.e. a change that would be inherited. Lobotomies don't change DNA, they're an acquired trait, so they won't make a lobotomized people's children stupid. The apes would have to lobotomize every newly born child to maintain human stupidity this way, and it would be kind of difficult to do this at all, let alone without the public knowing about it.

EDIT: I assume that you're talking about the original movie, here, and not the godawful remake from the 90s?

Yup. I've never seen the remake, though it seems to be from 2001, not the 90's.
 
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The important distinction is permanent, i.e. a change that would be inherited. Lobotomies don't change DNA, they're an acquired trait, so they won't make a lobotomized people's children stupid. The apes would have to lobotomize every newly born child to maintain human stupidity this way, and it would be kind of difficult to do this at all, let alone without the public knowing about it.
I do know what permanent means, but thankyou for your kind explanation. ;)


Anyway, like I said, one of the sequels either implies or outright states/shows that it's something carried out with some frequency, on all (or at least most) humans. It really creeped me out when I was a kid... :wacko:


EDIT: I looked up which movie this came up in, and it seems that it was actually the first one - my bad, on that!

Yup. I've never seen the remake, though it seems to be from 2001, not the 90's.
Ahh, ok - thanks for the correction! It briefly melded with my recollections of the late 90s, for some inexplicable reason...


Man, now I have the most awesome memories flooding back to me of the live-action TV series...
 
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Anyway, like I said, one of the sequels either implies or outright states/shows that it's something carried out with some frequency, on all (or at least most) humans. It really creeped me out when I was a kid... :wacko:


EDIT: I looked up which movie this came up in, and it seems that it was actually the first one - my bad, on that!

Really? I didn't catch that when I saw it...


In any case, even with that, nothing else about the movie that's absolutely silly is any less silly. In fact, I think that makes it even sillier. It's just not possible to successfully round up every single human on the planet and lobotomize them all; some of them are going to make it with their intelligence, and lots of apes are going to find out over the course of time. It's an impossible-to-keep conspiracy, yet it's apparently been successful for thousands of years.
 
@onpon4 - I just did some looking into it, and it's different in the original novel (surprise, surprise :p ) - seems that the explanation there (devolution over many, many generations) is a better one. Also, the ending twist is apparently totally different, as well.
 
I love the movies and the short-but-sweet 1974 TV series, myself, so I'll probably grab the book, too. :lol:
 
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