Editorials - Turn Your Brain Off

[HowardC]

I like these types of films simply because they are a quick and easy way to determine the intelligence level of the people around you. The Kevin James movie, for example. For someone ot be looking forward to it a few things must be assumed. Firstly said people must have found the King of Queens sitcom funny. I don't really have a response to that it is someone along the lines of finding George W. Bush a good president, but there you go. Also said person must have found the previews funny. This also astonds me as I can see points in the preview in which a joke was supposed to be, but was instead replaced by a fat man that can't control a seg-way.

One thing I disagree on though is the blatent hate over the transformers movie and the new indy movie. While I'll agree that they aren't up to par with previous attempts, you need to understand that the source material isn't THAT great to begin with. Go back and watch the original transformers cartoon... go ahead, I'll wait. Now go back and watch the Indiana jones movies... not the good ones, the bad ones. (I'll leave it up to you and decide which is which.) The new ones aren't that far off from the source material.

See the thing is your mind is playing tricks with you. Over the years you have evolved and demand a more sophistiacted film than when you were younger, your belived franchises, however haven't. When they do these "re-boots" they have to dumb down the level of comprehension back to the original source material, in other words you have to be able to understand what is going on even if you've never heard of a transformer, or never seen indy crack a whip.

I honestly think remakes are directly responsible for all of this "stupid cinema". Personally, I think it is the viewers responsibility to do their research before watching a film. Never seen Star Trek? Well maybe a star trek film isn't for you as you'd have to have been in a cave never to have seen the second longest running sci-fi franchise of all time. Producers and directors who wish to get people, that after 30+ years STILL haven't experienced star trek to watch a new film by "rebooting" the franchise is equally foolish.

Reboots happen because talented, but often short-sighted directors write themselves into corners. Maybe, just maybe when tim burton decided to kill-off the most famous villian in batman's history in his first film somebody should have taken him to the side and told him that in comic books the villians NEVER die unless they are supernatural and there is a way to resurrect them. If they had then we wouldn't have to suffer through this craptacular new film franchise in which batman drives a tank, has a guy that sounds like he should work for mary poppins as a butler, and sounds like he ate gravel and steroids for breakfast just because he dons a rubber suit!

So I think the dumbing down of media has a lot more to do with all the ideas already been taken than society being stupider. Perhaps peope are so starved for new media that they are willing to watch a sub-par form of entertainment so long as it is something new.

[Grislygus]

Originally Posted by HowardC

Now go back and watch the Indiana jones movies... not the good ones, the bad ones.

How many movies do you think a trilogy consists of, exactly?

[Dr. Boogie]

What follows is an exceedingly long post about Indiana Jones, and a little about Transformers:

Originally Posted by HowardC

One thing I disagree on though is the blatent hate over the transformers movie and the new indy movie. While I'll agree that they aren't up to par with previous attempts, you need to understand that the source material isn't THAT great to begin with. Go back and watch the original transformers cartoon... go ahead, I'll wait. Now go back and watch the Indiana jones movies... not the good ones, the bad ones. (I'll leave it up to you and decide which is which.) The new ones aren't that far off from the source material.

The Transformers series wasn't exactly the pinnacle of artistic achievement, that is true. But what I said in the article is that Transformers: The Movie is a bad movie. The dialogue was terrible, the film focused on a bunch of uninteresting human characters, that sort of thing. That the movie was about robots that turn into common objects wasn't the problem. People hated the non-Transformers part of the Transformers movie.

For Indiana Jones, I'm not sure which ones are the bad ones in your mind, but for your last comment about the new one being not that different than the old ones, the new one is different enough that people don't like it.

Icculus said earlier that unbelievable things happened in the earlier movies, like Indiana Jones using a raft as a parachute. The difference between something like that and the fridge nuking part is that you could imagine a big raft being somewhat useful as a parachute because when flipped upside down, you could see how something that big might potentially work to slow his fall enough that he could survive it. Suspension of disbelief then kicks in for how he slid down the mountain without injury.

Now consider the fridge scene from the new movie: Indiana realizes he's at a nuclear test site, so he climbs in a refrigerator. The camera then pans to show you that the fridge is "lead-lined". Suspension of disbelief might let you believe that the lead lining in a refrigerator might protect Indy from the radiation, and you might further believe that Indy could survive being hurled miles across the desert in said fridge without breaking any bones (after all, the man slid down a mountain on an inflatable raft and was fine). However, it takes more than a stretching of one's imagination to believe that a couple lead panels could protect the fridge from pressure greater than half a million tons of dynamite, and temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun.

Then you've got scenes like the one of Mutt learning from monkeys how to swing on vines to get through the jungle in a hurry. The entire idea is just silly, and it looks incredibly fake thanks to all the CG. Things like that make it seem as though the movie was made for 8-year-olds, rather than fans of the series.

Also, Icculus mentioned Mola Ram removing a guy's heart as being another weird thing. The reason we let things like that, and the Ark of the Covenant melting faces, go by is because Indiana Jones dealing with the occult has always been present in the series. By comparison, the new film had him dealing with aliens, and as we learned from Stargate, aliens are sci fi even when they interact with ancient civilizations. The things that happen with these aliens maybe similar to occult phenomenon, but it's different enough to seem out of place to those familiar with the previous movies in the series.

And all that is to say nothing about the flip-flopping magnetism of the titular skull.