So the interview with Abercrombie & Fitch didn't really go anywhere, but I'm still waiting to hear back from Hot Topic. They said that they wouldn't actually get around to calling people back until October.
In other news, The Big E officially started this past weekend which is kind of a big deal here in my little corner of New England. My mom is working there for several days meaning that I'm often needed to help look after my younger siblings while she's gone. I'm planning on going there some time during its last weekend as SSI will have hit by then and I'll be able to buy some stuff and pig out on Deep Fried Oreos, Cream Puffs, hopefully some Chocolate Covered Bacon and the like.
Also this past weekend, Apple accidentally released the Halloween episode of MLP 6 weeks before it was even supposed to air, so naturally I had to hop on that little bandwagon cuz I'm kind of a rebel like that. XD The episode was very entertaining and had some great character development for my girl, Fluttershy.
Additionally, a few things happening this Saturday. For one, obviously, there's going to be a new MLP episode that I'm looking forward to, but also my grandma is going to be visiting for the next few months so that'll be fun. Also, the new Equestria Girls movie is going to be coming out.
I'm really looking forward to this movie as it's being released directly to TV instead of getting a limited release in select theaters. The problem I had with the latter was that it would never play at any theaters near me and any copy of the movie that people would put on YouTube would be taken down by copyright laws so I wouldn't end up seeing the movie until months after everyone else already had.
Even though I don't get the channel that the movie (or hell even the show) airs on, I can just watch it off of YouTube when someone uploads it, just like how I've watched the past several episodes. I've even been listening to the movie's soundtrack which has some great songs. Some of my favorites being Acadeca and Unleash The Magic (which I feel almost has a Tim Burton vibe to it).
Finally, my next countdown list of the Top 12 Movies I Like, But Everyone Else Hates will be coming out 2 weeks from now (though I might put out a post or 2 before then). So until then I hope you guys have a great rest of the week and I'll see you on the next post. Take care.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Top 12 Movies I Dislike, But Everyone Else Loves
Over the past several years, I've come to think of myself as somewhat of a connoisseur when it comes to movies. I've seen good movies, bad movies, and even movies that were just kinda meh. But, during this time, I've come across movies that a lot of people really love, but I just can't stand them. They drive me insane. The point I'm trying to make is that no movie is perfect and disliking a movie everyone else loves or liking a movie everyone else hates doesn't say anything about you being intelligent or stupid or better or worse than everyone else. In the end, it's all just opinion and how well you can explain it.
So to prove it, for this post, I'm going to be explaining/counting down the Top 12 Movies I Dislike, But Everyone Else Loves, which will later be followed by a Top 12 Movies I Like, But Everyone Else Hates list (following in the grand tradition of Doug Walker AKA Nostalgia Critic and Tony Whatley II AKA The Black Critic Guy). Before I start this list, I want to make it clear that I don't necessarily "hate" any of the movies on this list... for the most part (once we get to the Top 4 or 5 we'd probably land in "hate" territory). I just don't like them as much as everyone else does. Also there's going to be some talk about the plots of these movies so SPOILER ALERT!!!! Finally, if you like any of these movies, then good for you. I'm not gonna stop you from liking any of them. These are just movies that I personally do not care for because of the effect they had on me. So, without any further ado, let's start the list.
XII. Hercules (1997)
Now this was one of the 3 movies associated with the declining point of the Disney Renaissance after The Lion King, with the other 2 being Pocahontas and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, and I'm not gonna lie, I never saw this movie as a kid (neither did I see the other 2 when I was a kid) because my mom was part of a community of public schooling moms who, if one mom said something bad about a movie, all of us kids were screwed. None of us would be allowed to see that movie, but I digress.
All this time, though, I kept hearing people talking about how great Hercules was so, finally, a couple years ago, one of my friends invited me over to watch it for the first time. After watching it... it just seemed to be borrowing from whatever was popular. But before I get into that, I'll start off with what I liked about the movie, because it's by no means terrible.
I thought the musical style was interesting as it went for more of a Southern Gospel type of feel to it. I also liked the villain, Hades, mostly because of how different he was from other portrayals of him, being more along the lines of a fast talking car salesman. Finally, I thought the designs of these mythological creatures were pretty cool like the Centaur, the Hydra, and even the 3 Fates.
But the problems that I had with it were that the style of the movie seemed to almost be copying Aladdin with its whole Las Vegas feel and the fact that it's just another one of those underdog stories like Rocky. Hell, Phil the Satyr is way too similar to Rocky's trainer, Mick, for it to be just a coincidence. Not to mention that the story also majorly borrows from the earlier Superman movies especially the "god living among men" aspect.
Another thing that kind of bothered me was the whole Disney-fying of Hercules himself by making him a full on god, born of Zeus and Hera, who when he was a baby was made to drink a potion that took away his immortality but still left him with supernatural strength, when Greek Mythology says that he was a demigod, born from Zeus and a mortal woman.
Now I know what you're thinking. "C'mon, David, it's a Disney movie. There's no way that they'd be able to slip that in." Need I remind you that this was the same studio that tackled the topic of lust just 1 movie prior? Even a decade after this movie, Disney owned company Pixar released Ratatouille where they managed to slip in the fact that one of the main characters was born out of wedlock. They could've pulled something similar off here.
So yeah. Don't entirely get why people like this movie soo much because, to me, it all just amounted to being very average. Out of the 3 movies associated with the decline, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame is the only one that I think is decent while Pocahontas and Hercules I put on about the same level. Actually, maybe I'd put Hercules slightly higher than Pocahontas. I dunno. Let's just move on to the next one.
XI. The Terminal (2004)
This was a movie that I actually found out later was partially inspired by a true story of a man who was stuck living in an airport in France for 18 years. In fact, when this movie was released, the man had been at the airport for 16 of those years. When my dad had either borrowed this movie from the library or rented it from Blockbuster (those were the days) and explained the plot about a man from a foreign country who's basically in a literal limbo, unable to enter the United States or return home because of a civil war that broke out in his country midflight, I was interested.
I can hardly remember a thing from this movie. I vaguely remember something about collecting autographs, 2 characters getting married at the airport, and something about the main character developing a romantic connection with an air stewardess only for her to return to her relationship with an already married man. Nice! That's just what I want in my movies.
This movie was just really forgettable for me and I have no interest in remembering anything from it. So next number.
X. Monsters University (2013)
Little bit of backstory about me: Monsters Inc. was the first Pixar movie I ever saw in its original theatrical run and I LOVED it (but then again I loved pretty much every Pixar movie back then). Even as a 9 year-old at the time, after first seeing it, my mind was racing with all the possible directions that this movie could go in with a sequel. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted a sequel to become a reality.
Fast forward 12 years and we wind up with an 80s college movie prequel. FAIL!!!!!!!! This movie just borrows everything from 80s college movies from the overused cliches to the stereotypical character types we've seen countless times before. Aside from some occasionally interesting character designs (my absolute favorite is the design of Dean Abigail Hardscrabble with the appearance of a giant exotic centipede with bat wings), the story is just soo formulaic and predictable... for the most part.
I will admit that the ending of the movie is the one strong point to it as it has a message not seen much in kid's movies, about how you don't have to always go the conventional route to fulfill your dreams, but, at the same time, delivering the harsh truth that some dreams you have to eventually give up on when it doesn't work out for you. That's pretty rare and deep for a kid's movie to have that kind of message. Unfortunately, for me, it's not a movie that I intend on going back to anytime soon.
IX. Cars (2006)
I don't have any problem with saying that I think Cars is the weakest franchise in Pixar's film catalog, but even then I know that the worst Pixar movies are literally nothing compared to the worst Dreamworks movies.
The story is really nothing that interesting as it's already been told numerous times before. It's the basic "hotshot living in the fast lane who then gets dragged down to 'hillbilly hell' (as he refers to it) and has to learn about thinking of others instead of just himself." Boring. Doesn't interest me at all. Like... at all.
What really bothered me about this movie was that it came out after The Incredibles, which was like my all time favorite Pixar movie back then, and The Incredibles was such a great movie that I was really hoping that there would be a sequel to it. At the time, though, Toy Story was the only Pixar movie to have a sequel, so I was just like "O.K. Pixar. You wanna just stick with Toy Story as the only sequel producing money maker? That's cool. You just do you." But then when Cars 2 came out, I was just like "What the fuck, Pixar!?! Why the hell was Cars deserving of a sequel more than The Incredibles?!?" And of course, Cars 2 was a piece of shit (but again, I've seen worse from Dreamworks).
Thankfully, Pixar eventually announced that an Incredibles sequel is finally in the works (they also announced Cars 3, but I choose to ignore that). I've been waiting for over a decade for this sequel. I'VE EARNED IT DAMMIT!!! So yeah. Not particularly a fan of the Cars franchise and I think there's very little that might actually change that.
VIII. Avatar (2009)
O.K. I was never one of the people who originally saw this movie in theaters, which I've heard was the best way to see it with the 3-D, but I kept on hearing all of this hype for this movie; it was all over the news, nominated for several Oscars (including Best Picture), and it became the highest grossing movie of all time after spending months in the #1 Box Office spot.
When I finally got around to watching it, the visuals were really great, but the story is soo basic and boring. Just like I said before with Cars, we've heard this story to death. It's the same environmental bullshit that we've seen in Pocahontas, Ferngully, Dances With Wolves, Happy Feet (no offense as I genuinely like this movie), and countless others like it.
It's really frustrating because the visuals are that good, but the story is just completely predictable and half assed in favor of style over substance. And what makes it worse is that they've already confirmed that there are going to be at least 2 more sequels which are probably just going to be rinse and repeat versions of this. Still, I'll try to reserve judgement until then. Overrated movie IMO, but at least it looks pretty.
VII. Independence Day (1996)
This is a movie that I'm particularly surprised as to why people love it that much. The alien designs I didn't find particularly interesting, nor the majority of the characters, the whole movie seemed like an excuse to promote Apple computers, and there's just a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense about it.
First off is the fact that the ships are soo large that with a mass like that, they would've caused major flooding before they even blew up the White House. Next up is the fact that the President goes to fight in the final battle against the aliens. That was really corny. But the absolute worst part for me is the fact that the aliens are defeated by a computer virus. What? Where the hell did this come from?
The fact that a freakin computer virus defeats them is just so ridiculously laughable. It makes me think of the aliens from Signs who were simply defeated because they were allergic to water, which covers like 71% of the Earth or something, not to mention rain. I honestly don't know which of the 2 movie aliens are the biggest pussies. The ones from War Of The Worlds who were killed off because they hadn't developed an immunity to the microbes in our atmosphere I let slide because it was based off of a classic book by H.G. Wells and it actually makes sense if you think about it.
Still, with all that said, Will Smith was tons of fun here and seeing the White House get blown up is an iconic image in cinema. There was just too much that doesn't make sense to me.
VI. Big Hero 6 (2014)
AND
Brave (2012)
Now I put both of these movies in the same spot because both of them won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in their respective years and, in my opinion, there were much better Animated movies in those years that were far more deserving of that title.
Big Hero 6 was a movie that I was pretty hyped for when I found out it was going to come out as it was the first animated Disney movie to be based off of a Marvel property. I was also interested in the concept of San Fransokyo and a lot of the designs having more of an Eastern feel to them.
But, somewhere along the line, I just lost interest in it to the point where, when I finally did get around to watching it, it was just... O.K. Nothing terrible, but nothing that I felt made it stand out from any other superhero movie I'd seen. The character types are basically recycled, the story I didn't find particularly interesting... for the most part, and it seemed to have more in common with superhero movies from a decade or so ago than ones from today.
Not all of it is bad though. The moments that focus on Hiro and Baymax's relationship as the latter tries to help the former deal with the loss of his older brother are cute and where I believe the focus truly belongs. But when it tries to be a superhero movie, it just comes off as basic, standard, and predictable. I literally called every moment that happened in this movie.
The one thing that really pisses me off though is, when Oscar season was coming around, there were some great animated movies to be nominated for Best Animated Feature like How To Train Your Dragon 2, The Boxtrolls, and Song Of The Sea (which me and my friend Meredith were cheering for as we both LOVE Cartoon Saloon's work which you guys should totally check out if you haven't already). But on the weekend of the Oscars, Meredith shared an article where one of the panelists on the Oscar Board of Directors was interviewed about his selections for the different categories and, just like Meredith, I. Was. LIVID!!!
This guy basically said that he voted for Big Hero 6 because his kid liked it. He also went on to say that he thought that The Lego Movie should've been nominated instead of these "2 fucking Chinese movies (Song Of The Sea and The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya) that no one gave a shit about or even bothered to see."
O.K. Time out here. First off, Song Of The Sea is from Ireland and The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya is from Japan (Studio Ghibli no less). Get a fucking education before saying something stupid like this. Second, voting for a movie because your kid likes it doesn't make your opinion come off as being in any way intelligent or refined, not to mention it's not even your opinion here, it's your kid's. Third, few people saw them because they only had limited releases in certain places. I certainly know that I would've seen them had they been playing in a nearby theater. And finally, to paraphrase what Meredith said, it should be a law that anyone on the board who has the power to vote for or against these movies has to have actually seen them first. I shit you not, in that same article, this guy said that he only voted for a certain foreign film because he liked the poster. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?!
So it goes without saying that the 2 of us were pretty pissed when it won (and Meredith even went off on a Twitter rant shortly afterwards) because there were much better, more deserving movies than this.
Like Big Hero 6, Brave was a movie that I was pretty excited for as it was set in Medieval Scotland with a strong lean toward Fantasy (a first for Pixar). I was sure that this was going to be something within the same realm as The Legend Of Zelda. When I got around to seeing it, though, I was pretty disappointed. It was just another movie with a princess character who doesn't want to be a princess, butts heads with her mother regarding social norms, and then causes a mistake that she has to fix.
Like I said before with Hercules borrowing from whatever was popular, this movie seems to just borrow from previous Disney Princesses like Jasmine, Belle, and Pocahontas while also having the mother get turned into a bear. Wha- WAIT A FUCK!!! You're seriously borrowing the "character getting turned into a bear" story arc from Brother Bear?!? That movie wasn't even remotely popular!!! Are you guys really that desperate?!?
I give Pixar credit for the fact that it was trying to focus more on a mother/daughter relationship when those types aren't seen that much in kid's movies and the animation is great as usual (particularly the Medieval landscape), but I have a real problem with the personality of Merida. The problem being that she acts too much like a modern teenager with her whole attitude towards the norms of society. Why is this a problem? Because it doesn't match up with the Medieval, old timey, Scottish setting that it takes place in.
Now it's true that in one of my favorite Disney movies of all-time, The Little Mermaid, the main character of Ariel could be seen as somewhat similar in attitude when the story is set around the early 1800s, but I give that movie a pass because... you've got a Rastafarian crab singing Calypso so I don't think keeping to the norms of that time was their biggest concern.
Though to be fair, the last third of the movie is particularly good as it has both the mother and the daughter learning something from the other. Merida, a character who's more prone to taking action through her wild nature, ends up having to use diplomacy to keep peace between the different clans and the queen, who's more prone to using diplomacy, ends up having to channel her wild nature when protecting her daughter from an ancient evil being. This goes to show that both diplomacy and... "wildness" have their own place.
Brave came out in 2012 which was a gold mine for great animated movies. Yeah we had shit like The Lorax remake and Ice Age 4 (with a 5th one on the way. UGGH!!!!), but some of my favorite animated movies came out that year also like Madagascar 3, Wreck-It Ralph (which I saw 3 times in its original theatrical run), ParaNorman, and even Hotel Transylvania wasn't that bad either. Brave just seemed to be a continuation of what I like to call the "Pixar Slump", a period of time stretching from 2011-2014 where Pixar just put out really mediocre movies unlike what they normally do. Thank God that Inside Out came out this past summer because Pixar really needed that movie to succeed critically instead of just financially and it definitely restored them to my good graces again.
I feel like I should probably warn you guys that these next several entries fall very strongly into that "hate" category I mentioned earlier and therefore there will be a good amount of ranting to follow. Proceed with caution.
V. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
I've heard a lot of people point out Prisoner Of Azkaban as everyone's least favorite/least cared about movie in the Harry Potter Saga, but for me, my least favorite is Order of the Phoenix. Now there are plenty of reasons why I hate this movie, many of which can be linked back to one name: Dolores Umbridge.
I could punch this broad in the face I fucking hate her that much (and no I don't condone violence against women). The fact that this bitch gets away with all these illegal deeds just because she has a high position in the Ministry Of Magic sickens me.
So Harry starts off getting in trouble with the Ministry for underage use of magic in the Muggle world despite the fact that he was using it to protect himself and his cousin from attacking Dementors and the Ministry still doesn't believe him. Next, when Umbridge is appointed as the new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts, she doesn't teach any defense against the dark arts (you had one job AND YOU FUCKED IT UP). And I haven't even gotten to the illegal stuff she does yet.
First off, when she tries to get Harry to stop talking about Voldemort's return, as part of her own twisted agenda, she subjects him to torture via a cursed pen that magically carves whatever the person writes into the back of their hand. Second, she illegally uses Veritaserum (literal truth serum) to get one student to reveal where the other students are meeting to learn how to defend themselves from dark magic (which is what she SHOULD'VE BEEN TEACHING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE). And finally (and I mean the real fucking candle on the cake here), she threatens to use the Cruciatus Curse (a torture curse) on Harry to get information out of him.
I'm sorry. Did I... miss something here? Wasn't the Cruciatus Curse just one fucking movie ago established as one of the 3 Unforgivable Curses that anyone who casts them would immediately be sent to Azkaban for life and this whore bag is threatening to use it on Harry? What the hell makes her think that she can get away with it all of a sudden?!? I mean... there's abuse of power and then there's... this.
There were a few things that I found kind of interesting like Harry's PTSD from his first encounter with Voldemort and even his fears that he's becoming more like him, but those are few and far between. If you honestly want more reasons why I hate this movie, go watch CinemaSins. I'm just soo tired from that rant, but we've still got 4 more movies to get through so on to the next one.
IV. Frankenweenie (2012)
Now I'm a huge Tim Burton fan, but even I don't love all of his work. With that said, even with movies I don't entirely like, I've been able to find at least one thing that I enjoyed from his movies (except for Dark Shadows I honestly can't think of anything I enjoyed from that). So before I go about bashing this movie, let me start off with what I genuinely liked about it.
What I really liked about this the most was how this movie was basically a love letter to all the classic monster movies with all its references to Horror iconography. Mr. Rzykruski's design is inspired by Vincent Price, Nassor's design is similar to Boris Karloff's portrayal of Frankenstein's monster, and Edgar's appearance brings to mind Igor and that's just with the human characters.
The animals draw heavy inspiration from The Bride of Frankenstein to Boris Karloff's Mummy to the Wolf Man to Dracula to Japanese monster, Gamera, and even the Gremlins get a shout out here. There's even an homage to stop-motion classic, Santa Claus is Comin to Town, with the character of Mayor Bergermeister, who shares both the name and even somewhat of the appearance of the villain from the aforementioned Christmas special, Burgermeister Meisterburger.
So y'all have heard me sing this movie's praises plenty enough. What could I possibly find to hate about it? Well... none of the characters are that memorable to me. I mean sure, a lot of them look like famous horror icons, but I don't even remember their personalities and therefore I can't remember a single thing about them or relate to them. But the biggest problem I have with it is the godawful ending.
Now I already mentioned before that there was going to be talk about the movie plots in this list, but, just for the hell of it, SPOILER ALERT!!!! You guys all set with that? You are? Alright then. Let's continue.
So Victor's parents end up discovering that Victor resurrected Sparky and his dad tells him something that I thought was very important: meddling around with life and death (basically trying to play God) can be a very deadly path to walk and that, when a loved one dies, we need to accept it as part of the natural way of being and move on from that. That's a pretty strong message right there.
Then in the big climax, Sparky rescues Victor from a burning windmill, but is unable to escape himself before the building crashes down on top of him, killing him in the process. When his body was recovered from the wreckage, I was curious if they were going to stick to their guns and keep him dead or if they were going to puss out and bring him back.
Victor's dad asks him if he plans on reviving Sparky to which Victor says that he's going to choose to listen to what his dad had said earlier, coming to terms with the loss of his pet in the process. I was just like "Good for you, movie. Nice message to send out to anyone who might be suffering through the loss of someone close to them." What does Victor's dad say though? "Sometimes adults don't know what they're talking about." And what happens? They resurrect him anyways. If I may paraphrase something from a Nostalgia Critic review, my thoughts about that were something like this, "Oh that's great, dad. That's great. You basically threw the moral right out the window. Wonderful. (incoherent happy noises) WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING!?!"
I'm sorry, but that ending just pisses me off as I feel like it gave a big fat middle finger to anyone who might be dealing with a loss by being completely unrealistic with its handling of the subject and I just can't let it slide. I don't even think that was Burton's original vision for it to end like that. I mean, this guy has killed off protagonist characters in kid and adult movies alike. The one that comes to mind currently is Corpse Bride when Emily, at the end, has finally been set free and dissipates (much like Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda now that I think about it). This is clearly a studio decision because they didn't have the balls to leave the character dead.
I know a lot of people like this movie and there are some good things about it, but that puss out ending is too painfully obvious for me to ignore. I'd much rather watch that year's Hotel Transylvania or ParaNorman if I want a good monster movie. At least with those movies I don't feel like my intelligence is being insulted.
III. Iron Man 3 (2013)
I know a lot of people quickly point to Thor: The Dark World as being the weakest entry in Marvel's Phase Two lineup, but, in my opinion, that dishonor goes to Iron Man 3. Why? Because I feel like you could've completely taken it out of the MCU and hardly anything would change.
Now I had followed the first 2 Iron Man movies pretty closely so, when they mentioned this terrorist group in the first movie known as The Ten Rings, I knew that at some point they were going to introduce The Mandarin and I was hyped to see it happen. At first, I was pretty skeptical of Sir Ben Kingsley playing the role of The Mandarin as I thought it would be better suited for someone like Ken Watanabe, but after seeing him in costume with the hair even styled after The Mandarin from the comics, I thought to myself "Hey. Maybe he can actually pull it off."
But then what happened? You've got one of the worst plot twists in cinema history since the one in Breaking Dawn Part 2 where he's really just a British actor by the name of Trevor Slattery who merely acted the part, turning The Mandarin into a fucking joke in the process! The "real" Mandarin is some guy named Aldrich Killian (who doesn't in ANY WAY RESEMBLE THE MANDARIN FROM THE COMICS) and as if THAT wasn't enough, Killian's backstory is basically "copy and paste" ripped off from The Incredibles! Hell, they practically even have the same length of time between the flashback and present day of about 15 years!
WOW! That is a lot for you to just expect me to buy! Aside from that I just find it to be an unnecessary movie because I just don't see any way that it connects to any of the others in the MCU. I mean sure you've got Tony Stark suffering from PTSD after the Chitauri invasion in The Avengers, but... that's about it. Even the post-credits scene, where they typically try to set up hype for a future Marvel movie, is just Tony waking up Bruce Banner who fell asleep while he was telling him about all the events we just saw already. I'm sorry, but that just seemed really weak to me compared to what we've gotten in the past and are continuing to get now. To me, it's like the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Dark Knight Rises, X-Men: The Last Stand, or Spider-Man 3 of the Iron Man trilogy (fitting because all these movies were the 2nd sequels of their respective franchises).
II. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Again, going right back to what I said about Iron Man 3, this just seemed like an unnecessary movie as it's never brought up in any of the other movies in the franchise. This movie was released about 3 years after Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but, instead of a sequel, this was a prequel (the second one to make this list I might add).
One of the things that I always loved about the Indiana Jones movies was how kick-ass Awesome the women were. From Marion Ravenwood in Raiders Of The Lost Ark to Elsa Schneider in The Last Crusade to even Irina Spalko in Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, they were always a ton of fun to watch. But then you've got this movie where the leading lady you're stuck with throughout the film's majority is Willie Scott, or as the Nostalgia Critic referred to her as, "that pain in the ass who never shut the fuck up".
She's in no way funny, doesn't contribute anything to the group, and constantly has to be saved, all while she's constantly screaming at every little thing that bothers her. Many people point to Short Round as being really annoying, but I'm not nearly as harsh towards him because HE ACTUALLY DOES STUFF TO CONTRIBUTE!!! Some examples are that he can actually drive a car, he breaks out of his bonds after being captured, and at one point even has to come to Willie's rescue.
That's gotta be really pathetic, lady, when you have to be rescued by a 9 year-old Chinese boy who hardly understands English! Fluttershy from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is telling you to grow a pair for God's sake! FLUTTERSHY!!! I'm tempted to use the phrase "sexy lamp" to describe Willie (a phrase created by Lindsey Ellis AKA The Nostalgia Chick to describe a hot female character in a movie who you could just replace with a lamp and nothing would change), but, in all honesty, I never found Willie that hot. I certainly don't see whatever the hell Indy saw in her that he would take her along with him and constantly save her every time.
Many people point to Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull as being terrible because of how unrealistic some of the scenes are, particularly the scene where Indy hides in a lead lined fridge to survive a nuclear blast, and to those people I pose this question: So... you mean to tell me... that surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a fridge is going too far... BUT... jumping out of a plane on an inflatable raft, landing on/sledding down a snowy slope on said raft, AND flying off the edge of a cliff until you and the raft land in the river below all without sustaining any injuries is completely 100% believable and plausible?!? If your answer is "Yes" to this, I want whatever the hell you're puffing.
Aside from all that, the film's second half is extremely dark and not that pleasant to watch. Don't get me wrong. I love dark elements in movies like Pinocchio, The Secret Of NIMH, and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and the other Indiana Jones movies had dark moments too, but the difference between them and Temple of Doom is that they had a sense of fun and lightheartedness to them while this just shows kids constantly being tortured and begging for death. Sounds like a fucking blast to me!!!
Though to this movie's very little credit, it was somewhat more of a risk taker than some of the other Indiana Jones movies and it could definitely be said that late Bollywood actor, Amrish Puri, is very memorable as the villainous Thuggee priest, Mola Ram. I even heard somewhere that this was one of the movies responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating. Still, this is going to be one of those movies that I just avoid like the plague.
WARNING!!!!!!!! The following entry you're about to see might cause extreme anger for its inclusion on this list especially at soo high a spot. What follows this entry will be a no holds barred uncensored bashing of this movie. Side effects of viewing this entry and its bashing might include increased stress, fits of rage, extreme verbal lashing, and labeling me as the demon spawn of Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, AND Kim Jong Il (just to name a few). If you do not wish for any of these things to befall you, I suggest that you leave this list right now and find something else to do. For those of you who've chosen to stick around, you've been warned. So with all that out of the way, the #1 movie that I hate but everyone else seems to love is...
I. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Well well well. Going from a Willie who annoyed the fuck out of me to another Willy who just made me feel uncomfortable most of the time. To a lot of people, saying anything bad about this movie would be the equivalent of killing a sacred cow, but I just despise this movie soo much it's hard for me to put into words.
Now, when I was younger, I really enjoyed the book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. I loved how the Willy Wonka from the book was both charming and whimsical yet also eccentric and mischievous, the illustrations of the Oompa Loompas looked adorable as these little pygmy characters, and Charlie himself was representative of the type of character that most people wanted to be like: selfless and kind.
When I saw this movie, I hated how much it strayed away from the original book (and still do). The Wonka here seems to be much more focused on the charming, whimsical side to the point where there were moments I felt really uncomfortable around him. The way that he said the line "Two naughty, nasty little children gone. Three good, sweet little children left", (shudders) I don't know, it just sounded super pedo to me and I felt unsettled even as a kid watching this.
The one time that I think Wonka even got eccentric in the movie was with the infamous tunnel scene. Speaking of which, WHAT THE FLYING HELL WAS THAT SCENE EVEN DOING IN THE MOVIE!?! It was never in the original book and it just shows a whole bunch of really disturbing shit like decapitating chickens and bugs crawling all over people's faces.
The Oompa Loompas in this movie were hideous looking to the point where I actually had nightmares because of them. The book never said anything about them having bad spray tans, snot green hair, or even bleached white eyebrows so what the hell influenced that design choice? Oh and don't even get me started on their song.
Yeah. I said "song". They sing four times throughout the movie, but it's all just the same damn song that they tweak some of the lyrics to and change up the music to try to pass it off as something different each time. Rinse and repeat. And that song to me is just ear rape. Listening to that song just makes me want to kill myself so I don't have to listen to it anymore.
As for the other songs, I hardly even remember any of them. I couldn't sing a line from any of them to save my life. Also the kid who played Charlie in this movie seemed too much like a pessimist and a whiner throughout the beginning when the Golden Ticket promo was going on and he was even kind of greedy sometimes. The Charlie from the book I remembered as always trying to look at the positive side of things and was supposed to represent the shining example of what we as humans wanted to strive towards being.
As I said before, this movie strays soo far from its source material in many areas and I understand that some changes had to be made. For example, changing the squirrel nut sorting scene to instead have giant geese that lay golden chocolate eggs is understandable because they didn't have the technology to do squirrels much less have them attack Veruca. But everything else just annoyed me to no end and I'm not the only person who hated this movie.
Original "Charlie" author, Roald Dahl, was originally a scriptwriter for this movie, but was kicked out of the project when he failed to meet deadlines, therefore having no creative control over the final product. He didn't even want Gene Wilder to portray Wonka in this (more on Wilder in a later post). When the movie finally came out, Dahl hated it soo much that he forbid them from making a sequel based off of Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator (which I admittedly have never read as I didn't even know it existed) and, ever since then, Dahl's estate has been very strict and stingy with any and all film adaptations of his work.
What really pisses me off the most about this movie is how many people hold this film up as a flawless masterpiece even with all the divergences from the original book. To give an example, Stanley Kubrick directed the movie The Shining based off of the popular Stephen King novel and a lot of people hail it as one of the cinematic greats (you could even say that it was directed by one of the cinematic greats), but Stephen King himself didn't approve of the movie (just like how Dahl didn't approve of Willy Wonka). However, even with people still praising The Shining movie as a classic, I've heard plenty of people point out that the movie itself isn't the most faithful to the book it's based on.
With all that said, why the hell does something like Willy Wonka just get off scot free with straying from the author's original vision? Why the flying fuck does it just get a free pass here? Personally, I don't think it should, but I've ranted long enough so I'll just save the rest for another post.
So those were the Top 12 Movies I Dislike/Hate, But Everyone Else Loves and I'd like to know, what's a movie that you can't stand but everyone else seems to love? Anyways, stay tuned for next month when I'll be releasing my Top 12 Movies I Like, But Everyone Else Hates list and you'll be able to get your revenge on me. Take care.
So to prove it, for this post, I'm going to be explaining/counting down the Top 12 Movies I Dislike, But Everyone Else Loves, which will later be followed by a Top 12 Movies I Like, But Everyone Else Hates list (following in the grand tradition of Doug Walker AKA Nostalgia Critic and Tony Whatley II AKA The Black Critic Guy). Before I start this list, I want to make it clear that I don't necessarily "hate" any of the movies on this list... for the most part (once we get to the Top 4 or 5 we'd probably land in "hate" territory). I just don't like them as much as everyone else does. Also there's going to be some talk about the plots of these movies so SPOILER ALERT!!!! Finally, if you like any of these movies, then good for you. I'm not gonna stop you from liking any of them. These are just movies that I personally do not care for because of the effect they had on me. So, without any further ado, let's start the list.
XII. Hercules (1997)
Now this was one of the 3 movies associated with the declining point of the Disney Renaissance after The Lion King, with the other 2 being Pocahontas and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, and I'm not gonna lie, I never saw this movie as a kid (neither did I see the other 2 when I was a kid) because my mom was part of a community of public schooling moms who, if one mom said something bad about a movie, all of us kids were screwed. None of us would be allowed to see that movie, but I digress.
All this time, though, I kept hearing people talking about how great Hercules was so, finally, a couple years ago, one of my friends invited me over to watch it for the first time. After watching it... it just seemed to be borrowing from whatever was popular. But before I get into that, I'll start off with what I liked about the movie, because it's by no means terrible.
I thought the musical style was interesting as it went for more of a Southern Gospel type of feel to it. I also liked the villain, Hades, mostly because of how different he was from other portrayals of him, being more along the lines of a fast talking car salesman. Finally, I thought the designs of these mythological creatures were pretty cool like the Centaur, the Hydra, and even the 3 Fates.
But the problems that I had with it were that the style of the movie seemed to almost be copying Aladdin with its whole Las Vegas feel and the fact that it's just another one of those underdog stories like Rocky. Hell, Phil the Satyr is way too similar to Rocky's trainer, Mick, for it to be just a coincidence. Not to mention that the story also majorly borrows from the earlier Superman movies especially the "god living among men" aspect.
Another thing that kind of bothered me was the whole Disney-fying of Hercules himself by making him a full on god, born of Zeus and Hera, who when he was a baby was made to drink a potion that took away his immortality but still left him with supernatural strength, when Greek Mythology says that he was a demigod, born from Zeus and a mortal woman.
Now I know what you're thinking. "C'mon, David, it's a Disney movie. There's no way that they'd be able to slip that in." Need I remind you that this was the same studio that tackled the topic of lust just 1 movie prior? Even a decade after this movie, Disney owned company Pixar released Ratatouille where they managed to slip in the fact that one of the main characters was born out of wedlock. They could've pulled something similar off here.
So yeah. Don't entirely get why people like this movie soo much because, to me, it all just amounted to being very average. Out of the 3 movies associated with the decline, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame is the only one that I think is decent while Pocahontas and Hercules I put on about the same level. Actually, maybe I'd put Hercules slightly higher than Pocahontas. I dunno. Let's just move on to the next one.
XI. The Terminal (2004)
This was a movie that I actually found out later was partially inspired by a true story of a man who was stuck living in an airport in France for 18 years. In fact, when this movie was released, the man had been at the airport for 16 of those years. When my dad had either borrowed this movie from the library or rented it from Blockbuster (those were the days) and explained the plot about a man from a foreign country who's basically in a literal limbo, unable to enter the United States or return home because of a civil war that broke out in his country midflight, I was interested.
I can hardly remember a thing from this movie. I vaguely remember something about collecting autographs, 2 characters getting married at the airport, and something about the main character developing a romantic connection with an air stewardess only for her to return to her relationship with an already married man. Nice! That's just what I want in my movies.
This movie was just really forgettable for me and I have no interest in remembering anything from it. So next number.
X. Monsters University (2013)
Little bit of backstory about me: Monsters Inc. was the first Pixar movie I ever saw in its original theatrical run and I LOVED it (but then again I loved pretty much every Pixar movie back then). Even as a 9 year-old at the time, after first seeing it, my mind was racing with all the possible directions that this movie could go in with a sequel. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted a sequel to become a reality.
Fast forward 12 years and we wind up with an 80s college movie prequel. FAIL!!!!!!!! This movie just borrows everything from 80s college movies from the overused cliches to the stereotypical character types we've seen countless times before. Aside from some occasionally interesting character designs (my absolute favorite is the design of Dean Abigail Hardscrabble with the appearance of a giant exotic centipede with bat wings), the story is just soo formulaic and predictable... for the most part.
I will admit that the ending of the movie is the one strong point to it as it has a message not seen much in kid's movies, about how you don't have to always go the conventional route to fulfill your dreams, but, at the same time, delivering the harsh truth that some dreams you have to eventually give up on when it doesn't work out for you. That's pretty rare and deep for a kid's movie to have that kind of message. Unfortunately, for me, it's not a movie that I intend on going back to anytime soon.
IX. Cars (2006)
I don't have any problem with saying that I think Cars is the weakest franchise in Pixar's film catalog, but even then I know that the worst Pixar movies are literally nothing compared to the worst Dreamworks movies.
The story is really nothing that interesting as it's already been told numerous times before. It's the basic "hotshot living in the fast lane who then gets dragged down to 'hillbilly hell' (as he refers to it) and has to learn about thinking of others instead of just himself." Boring. Doesn't interest me at all. Like... at all.
What really bothered me about this movie was that it came out after The Incredibles, which was like my all time favorite Pixar movie back then, and The Incredibles was such a great movie that I was really hoping that there would be a sequel to it. At the time, though, Toy Story was the only Pixar movie to have a sequel, so I was just like "O.K. Pixar. You wanna just stick with Toy Story as the only sequel producing money maker? That's cool. You just do you." But then when Cars 2 came out, I was just like "What the fuck, Pixar!?! Why the hell was Cars deserving of a sequel more than The Incredibles?!?" And of course, Cars 2 was a piece of shit (but again, I've seen worse from Dreamworks).
Thankfully, Pixar eventually announced that an Incredibles sequel is finally in the works (they also announced Cars 3, but I choose to ignore that). I've been waiting for over a decade for this sequel. I'VE EARNED IT DAMMIT!!! So yeah. Not particularly a fan of the Cars franchise and I think there's very little that might actually change that.
VIII. Avatar (2009)
O.K. I was never one of the people who originally saw this movie in theaters, which I've heard was the best way to see it with the 3-D, but I kept on hearing all of this hype for this movie; it was all over the news, nominated for several Oscars (including Best Picture), and it became the highest grossing movie of all time after spending months in the #1 Box Office spot.
When I finally got around to watching it, the visuals were really great, but the story is soo basic and boring. Just like I said before with Cars, we've heard this story to death. It's the same environmental bullshit that we've seen in Pocahontas, Ferngully, Dances With Wolves, Happy Feet (no offense as I genuinely like this movie), and countless others like it.
It's really frustrating because the visuals are that good, but the story is just completely predictable and half assed in favor of style over substance. And what makes it worse is that they've already confirmed that there are going to be at least 2 more sequels which are probably just going to be rinse and repeat versions of this. Still, I'll try to reserve judgement until then. Overrated movie IMO, but at least it looks pretty.
VII. Independence Day (1996)
This is a movie that I'm particularly surprised as to why people love it that much. The alien designs I didn't find particularly interesting, nor the majority of the characters, the whole movie seemed like an excuse to promote Apple computers, and there's just a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense about it.
First off is the fact that the ships are soo large that with a mass like that, they would've caused major flooding before they even blew up the White House. Next up is the fact that the President goes to fight in the final battle against the aliens. That was really corny. But the absolute worst part for me is the fact that the aliens are defeated by a computer virus. What? Where the hell did this come from?
The fact that a freakin computer virus defeats them is just so ridiculously laughable. It makes me think of the aliens from Signs who were simply defeated because they were allergic to water, which covers like 71% of the Earth or something, not to mention rain. I honestly don't know which of the 2 movie aliens are the biggest pussies. The ones from War Of The Worlds who were killed off because they hadn't developed an immunity to the microbes in our atmosphere I let slide because it was based off of a classic book by H.G. Wells and it actually makes sense if you think about it.
Still, with all that said, Will Smith was tons of fun here and seeing the White House get blown up is an iconic image in cinema. There was just too much that doesn't make sense to me.
VI. Big Hero 6 (2014)
AND
Brave (2012)
Now I put both of these movies in the same spot because both of them won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in their respective years and, in my opinion, there were much better Animated movies in those years that were far more deserving of that title.
Big Hero 6 was a movie that I was pretty hyped for when I found out it was going to come out as it was the first animated Disney movie to be based off of a Marvel property. I was also interested in the concept of San Fransokyo and a lot of the designs having more of an Eastern feel to them.
But, somewhere along the line, I just lost interest in it to the point where, when I finally did get around to watching it, it was just... O.K. Nothing terrible, but nothing that I felt made it stand out from any other superhero movie I'd seen. The character types are basically recycled, the story I didn't find particularly interesting... for the most part, and it seemed to have more in common with superhero movies from a decade or so ago than ones from today.
Not all of it is bad though. The moments that focus on Hiro and Baymax's relationship as the latter tries to help the former deal with the loss of his older brother are cute and where I believe the focus truly belongs. But when it tries to be a superhero movie, it just comes off as basic, standard, and predictable. I literally called every moment that happened in this movie.
The one thing that really pisses me off though is, when Oscar season was coming around, there were some great animated movies to be nominated for Best Animated Feature like How To Train Your Dragon 2, The Boxtrolls, and Song Of The Sea (which me and my friend Meredith were cheering for as we both LOVE Cartoon Saloon's work which you guys should totally check out if you haven't already). But on the weekend of the Oscars, Meredith shared an article where one of the panelists on the Oscar Board of Directors was interviewed about his selections for the different categories and, just like Meredith, I. Was. LIVID!!!
This guy basically said that he voted for Big Hero 6 because his kid liked it. He also went on to say that he thought that The Lego Movie should've been nominated instead of these "2 fucking Chinese movies (Song Of The Sea and The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya) that no one gave a shit about or even bothered to see."
O.K. Time out here. First off, Song Of The Sea is from Ireland and The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya is from Japan (Studio Ghibli no less). Get a fucking education before saying something stupid like this. Second, voting for a movie because your kid likes it doesn't make your opinion come off as being in any way intelligent or refined, not to mention it's not even your opinion here, it's your kid's. Third, few people saw them because they only had limited releases in certain places. I certainly know that I would've seen them had they been playing in a nearby theater. And finally, to paraphrase what Meredith said, it should be a law that anyone on the board who has the power to vote for or against these movies has to have actually seen them first. I shit you not, in that same article, this guy said that he only voted for a certain foreign film because he liked the poster. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?!
So it goes without saying that the 2 of us were pretty pissed when it won (and Meredith even went off on a Twitter rant shortly afterwards) because there were much better, more deserving movies than this.
Like Big Hero 6, Brave was a movie that I was pretty excited for as it was set in Medieval Scotland with a strong lean toward Fantasy (a first for Pixar). I was sure that this was going to be something within the same realm as The Legend Of Zelda. When I got around to seeing it, though, I was pretty disappointed. It was just another movie with a princess character who doesn't want to be a princess, butts heads with her mother regarding social norms, and then causes a mistake that she has to fix.
Like I said before with Hercules borrowing from whatever was popular, this movie seems to just borrow from previous Disney Princesses like Jasmine, Belle, and Pocahontas while also having the mother get turned into a bear. Wha- WAIT A FUCK!!! You're seriously borrowing the "character getting turned into a bear" story arc from Brother Bear?!? That movie wasn't even remotely popular!!! Are you guys really that desperate?!?
I give Pixar credit for the fact that it was trying to focus more on a mother/daughter relationship when those types aren't seen that much in kid's movies and the animation is great as usual (particularly the Medieval landscape), but I have a real problem with the personality of Merida. The problem being that she acts too much like a modern teenager with her whole attitude towards the norms of society. Why is this a problem? Because it doesn't match up with the Medieval, old timey, Scottish setting that it takes place in.
Now it's true that in one of my favorite Disney movies of all-time, The Little Mermaid, the main character of Ariel could be seen as somewhat similar in attitude when the story is set around the early 1800s, but I give that movie a pass because... you've got a Rastafarian crab singing Calypso so I don't think keeping to the norms of that time was their biggest concern.
Though to be fair, the last third of the movie is particularly good as it has both the mother and the daughter learning something from the other. Merida, a character who's more prone to taking action through her wild nature, ends up having to use diplomacy to keep peace between the different clans and the queen, who's more prone to using diplomacy, ends up having to channel her wild nature when protecting her daughter from an ancient evil being. This goes to show that both diplomacy and... "wildness" have their own place.
Brave came out in 2012 which was a gold mine for great animated movies. Yeah we had shit like The Lorax remake and Ice Age 4 (with a 5th one on the way. UGGH!!!!), but some of my favorite animated movies came out that year also like Madagascar 3, Wreck-It Ralph (which I saw 3 times in its original theatrical run), ParaNorman, and even Hotel Transylvania wasn't that bad either. Brave just seemed to be a continuation of what I like to call the "Pixar Slump", a period of time stretching from 2011-2014 where Pixar just put out really mediocre movies unlike what they normally do. Thank God that Inside Out came out this past summer because Pixar really needed that movie to succeed critically instead of just financially and it definitely restored them to my good graces again.
I feel like I should probably warn you guys that these next several entries fall very strongly into that "hate" category I mentioned earlier and therefore there will be a good amount of ranting to follow. Proceed with caution.
V. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
I've heard a lot of people point out Prisoner Of Azkaban as everyone's least favorite/least cared about movie in the Harry Potter Saga, but for me, my least favorite is Order of the Phoenix. Now there are plenty of reasons why I hate this movie, many of which can be linked back to one name: Dolores Umbridge.
I could punch this broad in the face I fucking hate her that much (and no I don't condone violence against women). The fact that this bitch gets away with all these illegal deeds just because she has a high position in the Ministry Of Magic sickens me.
So Harry starts off getting in trouble with the Ministry for underage use of magic in the Muggle world despite the fact that he was using it to protect himself and his cousin from attacking Dementors and the Ministry still doesn't believe him. Next, when Umbridge is appointed as the new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts, she doesn't teach any defense against the dark arts (you had one job AND YOU FUCKED IT UP). And I haven't even gotten to the illegal stuff she does yet.
First off, when she tries to get Harry to stop talking about Voldemort's return, as part of her own twisted agenda, she subjects him to torture via a cursed pen that magically carves whatever the person writes into the back of their hand. Second, she illegally uses Veritaserum (literal truth serum) to get one student to reveal where the other students are meeting to learn how to defend themselves from dark magic (which is what she SHOULD'VE BEEN TEACHING THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE). And finally (and I mean the real fucking candle on the cake here), she threatens to use the Cruciatus Curse (a torture curse) on Harry to get information out of him.
I'm sorry. Did I... miss something here? Wasn't the Cruciatus Curse just one fucking movie ago established as one of the 3 Unforgivable Curses that anyone who casts them would immediately be sent to Azkaban for life and this whore bag is threatening to use it on Harry? What the hell makes her think that she can get away with it all of a sudden?!? I mean... there's abuse of power and then there's... this.
There were a few things that I found kind of interesting like Harry's PTSD from his first encounter with Voldemort and even his fears that he's becoming more like him, but those are few and far between. If you honestly want more reasons why I hate this movie, go watch CinemaSins. I'm just soo tired from that rant, but we've still got 4 more movies to get through so on to the next one.
IV. Frankenweenie (2012)
Now I'm a huge Tim Burton fan, but even I don't love all of his work. With that said, even with movies I don't entirely like, I've been able to find at least one thing that I enjoyed from his movies (except for Dark Shadows I honestly can't think of anything I enjoyed from that). So before I go about bashing this movie, let me start off with what I genuinely liked about it.
What I really liked about this the most was how this movie was basically a love letter to all the classic monster movies with all its references to Horror iconography. Mr. Rzykruski's design is inspired by Vincent Price, Nassor's design is similar to Boris Karloff's portrayal of Frankenstein's monster, and Edgar's appearance brings to mind Igor and that's just with the human characters.
The animals draw heavy inspiration from The Bride of Frankenstein to Boris Karloff's Mummy to the Wolf Man to Dracula to Japanese monster, Gamera, and even the Gremlins get a shout out here. There's even an homage to stop-motion classic, Santa Claus is Comin to Town, with the character of Mayor Bergermeister, who shares both the name and even somewhat of the appearance of the villain from the aforementioned Christmas special, Burgermeister Meisterburger.
So y'all have heard me sing this movie's praises plenty enough. What could I possibly find to hate about it? Well... none of the characters are that memorable to me. I mean sure, a lot of them look like famous horror icons, but I don't even remember their personalities and therefore I can't remember a single thing about them or relate to them. But the biggest problem I have with it is the godawful ending.
Now I already mentioned before that there was going to be talk about the movie plots in this list, but, just for the hell of it, SPOILER ALERT!!!! You guys all set with that? You are? Alright then. Let's continue.
So Victor's parents end up discovering that Victor resurrected Sparky and his dad tells him something that I thought was very important: meddling around with life and death (basically trying to play God) can be a very deadly path to walk and that, when a loved one dies, we need to accept it as part of the natural way of being and move on from that. That's a pretty strong message right there.
Then in the big climax, Sparky rescues Victor from a burning windmill, but is unable to escape himself before the building crashes down on top of him, killing him in the process. When his body was recovered from the wreckage, I was curious if they were going to stick to their guns and keep him dead or if they were going to puss out and bring him back.
Victor's dad asks him if he plans on reviving Sparky to which Victor says that he's going to choose to listen to what his dad had said earlier, coming to terms with the loss of his pet in the process. I was just like "Good for you, movie. Nice message to send out to anyone who might be suffering through the loss of someone close to them." What does Victor's dad say though? "Sometimes adults don't know what they're talking about." And what happens? They resurrect him anyways. If I may paraphrase something from a Nostalgia Critic review, my thoughts about that were something like this, "Oh that's great, dad. That's great. You basically threw the moral right out the window. Wonderful. (incoherent happy noises) WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING!?!"
I'm sorry, but that ending just pisses me off as I feel like it gave a big fat middle finger to anyone who might be dealing with a loss by being completely unrealistic with its handling of the subject and I just can't let it slide. I don't even think that was Burton's original vision for it to end like that. I mean, this guy has killed off protagonist characters in kid and adult movies alike. The one that comes to mind currently is Corpse Bride when Emily, at the end, has finally been set free and dissipates (much like Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda now that I think about it). This is clearly a studio decision because they didn't have the balls to leave the character dead.
I know a lot of people like this movie and there are some good things about it, but that puss out ending is too painfully obvious for me to ignore. I'd much rather watch that year's Hotel Transylvania or ParaNorman if I want a good monster movie. At least with those movies I don't feel like my intelligence is being insulted.
III. Iron Man 3 (2013)
I know a lot of people quickly point to Thor: The Dark World as being the weakest entry in Marvel's Phase Two lineup, but, in my opinion, that dishonor goes to Iron Man 3. Why? Because I feel like you could've completely taken it out of the MCU and hardly anything would change.
Now I had followed the first 2 Iron Man movies pretty closely so, when they mentioned this terrorist group in the first movie known as The Ten Rings, I knew that at some point they were going to introduce The Mandarin and I was hyped to see it happen. At first, I was pretty skeptical of Sir Ben Kingsley playing the role of The Mandarin as I thought it would be better suited for someone like Ken Watanabe, but after seeing him in costume with the hair even styled after The Mandarin from the comics, I thought to myself "Hey. Maybe he can actually pull it off."
But then what happened? You've got one of the worst plot twists in cinema history since the one in Breaking Dawn Part 2 where he's really just a British actor by the name of Trevor Slattery who merely acted the part, turning The Mandarin into a fucking joke in the process! The "real" Mandarin is some guy named Aldrich Killian (who doesn't in ANY WAY RESEMBLE THE MANDARIN FROM THE COMICS) and as if THAT wasn't enough, Killian's backstory is basically "copy and paste" ripped off from The Incredibles! Hell, they practically even have the same length of time between the flashback and present day of about 15 years!
WOW! That is a lot for you to just expect me to buy! Aside from that I just find it to be an unnecessary movie because I just don't see any way that it connects to any of the others in the MCU. I mean sure you've got Tony Stark suffering from PTSD after the Chitauri invasion in The Avengers, but... that's about it. Even the post-credits scene, where they typically try to set up hype for a future Marvel movie, is just Tony waking up Bruce Banner who fell asleep while he was telling him about all the events we just saw already. I'm sorry, but that just seemed really weak to me compared to what we've gotten in the past and are continuing to get now. To me, it's like the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Dark Knight Rises, X-Men: The Last Stand, or Spider-Man 3 of the Iron Man trilogy (fitting because all these movies were the 2nd sequels of their respective franchises).
II. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Again, going right back to what I said about Iron Man 3, this just seemed like an unnecessary movie as it's never brought up in any of the other movies in the franchise. This movie was released about 3 years after Raiders Of The Lost Ark, but, instead of a sequel, this was a prequel (the second one to make this list I might add).
One of the things that I always loved about the Indiana Jones movies was how kick-ass Awesome the women were. From Marion Ravenwood in Raiders Of The Lost Ark to Elsa Schneider in The Last Crusade to even Irina Spalko in Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, they were always a ton of fun to watch. But then you've got this movie where the leading lady you're stuck with throughout the film's majority is Willie Scott, or as the Nostalgia Critic referred to her as, "that pain in the ass who never shut the fuck up".
She's in no way funny, doesn't contribute anything to the group, and constantly has to be saved, all while she's constantly screaming at every little thing that bothers her. Many people point to Short Round as being really annoying, but I'm not nearly as harsh towards him because HE ACTUALLY DOES STUFF TO CONTRIBUTE!!! Some examples are that he can actually drive a car, he breaks out of his bonds after being captured, and at one point even has to come to Willie's rescue.
That's gotta be really pathetic, lady, when you have to be rescued by a 9 year-old Chinese boy who hardly understands English! Fluttershy from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is telling you to grow a pair for God's sake! FLUTTERSHY!!! I'm tempted to use the phrase "sexy lamp" to describe Willie (a phrase created by Lindsey Ellis AKA The Nostalgia Chick to describe a hot female character in a movie who you could just replace with a lamp and nothing would change), but, in all honesty, I never found Willie that hot. I certainly don't see whatever the hell Indy saw in her that he would take her along with him and constantly save her every time.
Many people point to Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull as being terrible because of how unrealistic some of the scenes are, particularly the scene where Indy hides in a lead lined fridge to survive a nuclear blast, and to those people I pose this question: So... you mean to tell me... that surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a fridge is going too far... BUT... jumping out of a plane on an inflatable raft, landing on/sledding down a snowy slope on said raft, AND flying off the edge of a cliff until you and the raft land in the river below all without sustaining any injuries is completely 100% believable and plausible?!? If your answer is "Yes" to this, I want whatever the hell you're puffing.
Aside from all that, the film's second half is extremely dark and not that pleasant to watch. Don't get me wrong. I love dark elements in movies like Pinocchio, The Secret Of NIMH, and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame and the other Indiana Jones movies had dark moments too, but the difference between them and Temple of Doom is that they had a sense of fun and lightheartedness to them while this just shows kids constantly being tortured and begging for death. Sounds like a fucking blast to me!!!
Though to this movie's very little credit, it was somewhat more of a risk taker than some of the other Indiana Jones movies and it could definitely be said that late Bollywood actor, Amrish Puri, is very memorable as the villainous Thuggee priest, Mola Ram. I even heard somewhere that this was one of the movies responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating. Still, this is going to be one of those movies that I just avoid like the plague.
WARNING!!!!!!!! The following entry you're about to see might cause extreme anger for its inclusion on this list especially at soo high a spot. What follows this entry will be a no holds barred uncensored bashing of this movie. Side effects of viewing this entry and its bashing might include increased stress, fits of rage, extreme verbal lashing, and labeling me as the demon spawn of Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, AND Kim Jong Il (just to name a few). If you do not wish for any of these things to befall you, I suggest that you leave this list right now and find something else to do. For those of you who've chosen to stick around, you've been warned. So with all that out of the way, the #1 movie that I hate but everyone else seems to love is...
I. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Well well well. Going from a Willie who annoyed the fuck out of me to another Willy who just made me feel uncomfortable most of the time. To a lot of people, saying anything bad about this movie would be the equivalent of killing a sacred cow, but I just despise this movie soo much it's hard for me to put into words.
Now, when I was younger, I really enjoyed the book Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. I loved how the Willy Wonka from the book was both charming and whimsical yet also eccentric and mischievous, the illustrations of the Oompa Loompas looked adorable as these little pygmy characters, and Charlie himself was representative of the type of character that most people wanted to be like: selfless and kind.
When I saw this movie, I hated how much it strayed away from the original book (and still do). The Wonka here seems to be much more focused on the charming, whimsical side to the point where there were moments I felt really uncomfortable around him. The way that he said the line "Two naughty, nasty little children gone. Three good, sweet little children left", (shudders) I don't know, it just sounded super pedo to me and I felt unsettled even as a kid watching this.
The one time that I think Wonka even got eccentric in the movie was with the infamous tunnel scene. Speaking of which, WHAT THE FLYING HELL WAS THAT SCENE EVEN DOING IN THE MOVIE!?! It was never in the original book and it just shows a whole bunch of really disturbing shit like decapitating chickens and bugs crawling all over people's faces.
The Oompa Loompas in this movie were hideous looking to the point where I actually had nightmares because of them. The book never said anything about them having bad spray tans, snot green hair, or even bleached white eyebrows so what the hell influenced that design choice? Oh and don't even get me started on their song.
Yeah. I said "song". They sing four times throughout the movie, but it's all just the same damn song that they tweak some of the lyrics to and change up the music to try to pass it off as something different each time. Rinse and repeat. And that song to me is just ear rape. Listening to that song just makes me want to kill myself so I don't have to listen to it anymore.
As for the other songs, I hardly even remember any of them. I couldn't sing a line from any of them to save my life. Also the kid who played Charlie in this movie seemed too much like a pessimist and a whiner throughout the beginning when the Golden Ticket promo was going on and he was even kind of greedy sometimes. The Charlie from the book I remembered as always trying to look at the positive side of things and was supposed to represent the shining example of what we as humans wanted to strive towards being.
As I said before, this movie strays soo far from its source material in many areas and I understand that some changes had to be made. For example, changing the squirrel nut sorting scene to instead have giant geese that lay golden chocolate eggs is understandable because they didn't have the technology to do squirrels much less have them attack Veruca. But everything else just annoyed me to no end and I'm not the only person who hated this movie.
Original "Charlie" author, Roald Dahl, was originally a scriptwriter for this movie, but was kicked out of the project when he failed to meet deadlines, therefore having no creative control over the final product. He didn't even want Gene Wilder to portray Wonka in this (more on Wilder in a later post). When the movie finally came out, Dahl hated it soo much that he forbid them from making a sequel based off of Charlie And The Great Glass Elevator (which I admittedly have never read as I didn't even know it existed) and, ever since then, Dahl's estate has been very strict and stingy with any and all film adaptations of his work.
What really pisses me off the most about this movie is how many people hold this film up as a flawless masterpiece even with all the divergences from the original book. To give an example, Stanley Kubrick directed the movie The Shining based off of the popular Stephen King novel and a lot of people hail it as one of the cinematic greats (you could even say that it was directed by one of the cinematic greats), but Stephen King himself didn't approve of the movie (just like how Dahl didn't approve of Willy Wonka). However, even with people still praising The Shining movie as a classic, I've heard plenty of people point out that the movie itself isn't the most faithful to the book it's based on.
With all that said, why the hell does something like Willy Wonka just get off scot free with straying from the author's original vision? Why the flying fuck does it just get a free pass here? Personally, I don't think it should, but I've ranted long enough so I'll just save the rest for another post.
So those were the Top 12 Movies I Dislike/Hate, But Everyone Else Loves and I'd like to know, what's a movie that you can't stand but everyone else seems to love? Anyways, stay tuned for next month when I'll be releasing my Top 12 Movies I Like, But Everyone Else Hates list and you'll be able to get your revenge on me. Take care.
Monday, September 7, 2015
Job Interview and my next countdown
So just last week I applied at Abercrombie & Fitch at my local mall and got called back for an interview tomorrow for 4 PM. Here's hoping that this actually turns into a job for me as I'm really starting to get discouraged after about 9 months of applying to places with nothing ever coming from them.
In my freetime, though, I've been busy going over the details of my next countdown which'll be posted 2 days from now. I'm pretty sure that I've made all the proper edits that I could possibly do and I feel like it's as ready as it'll ever be so look forward to that coming this Wednesday.
In other news, I've pre-ordered Dark Tide off of Amazon and it should be arriving the day it's released. The hard part now is just waiting for it. Finally, my grandma is coming to visit us 2 weeks from this Saturday and she's gonna be staying with us through Christmas so that's exciting. I also managed to capture her interest with the books of The WaterFire Saga that I currently have and she's eager to read them when she comes out here.
Aside from that, nothing else to report on except that the second half of Season 5 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic starts up this Saturday and the next Equestria Girls movie comes out on the day my grandma flies in, but I doubt many of you would care about that. So until the next countdown in 2 days, I hope y'all have a great Labor Day and I'll see you on the next post. Take care.
In my freetime, though, I've been busy going over the details of my next countdown which'll be posted 2 days from now. I'm pretty sure that I've made all the proper edits that I could possibly do and I feel like it's as ready as it'll ever be so look forward to that coming this Wednesday.
In other news, I've pre-ordered Dark Tide off of Amazon and it should be arriving the day it's released. The hard part now is just waiting for it. Finally, my grandma is coming to visit us 2 weeks from this Saturday and she's gonna be staying with us through Christmas so that's exciting. I also managed to capture her interest with the books of The WaterFire Saga that I currently have and she's eager to read them when she comes out here.
Aside from that, nothing else to report on except that the second half of Season 5 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic starts up this Saturday and the next Equestria Girls movie comes out on the day my grandma flies in, but I doubt many of you would care about that. So until the next countdown in 2 days, I hope y'all have a great Labor Day and I'll see you on the next post. Take care.
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