Azal

In movies, they live in the same era, but in genres the Scifi genre was ironically so behind the times that they were still learning back then.

Scifi and Fantasy as genres were not, and hell pretty much not until the 2000s accepted as proper forms of art back then. I was talking about with my dad how there was some movie that came out and I just couldn't be faffed to see it and he remarked I've gotten that way about it, and I expressed back when I was a kid growing up in the 90s, we got one, maybe two big budget scifi or fantasy movies, and the rest was handfuls of low end drech. The rest was standard comedy, drama, etc in "modern" or past eras and that's where all the big names of Hollywood were at. For him it was even worse, if you were a scifi nerd you basically got whatever you could get.

Star Trek came out and told the world that Scifi could be successful, Star Wars showed up and told the world that it could be successful without everything being gleaming and polished and sterile like Star Trek. Hell I was about to bring up the absolutely wooden example of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as a perfect example of before, and then a quick check, nope that was made two years AFTER Star Wars.

It's probably why we have as many actually A-List scifi movies, and the hose of not so good ones, coming out now though, a lot of people growing up on these shoulders just wishing for more are now behind the cameras and the actors who grew up on these are willing to do them instead of "No, that's for the C-List actors."

So as an anime fan I'll give a hint on terminology if you want to take an approach at it. What you're talking about is the genre Shonen which is targeted for boys in school, roughly translates even to "young boy." Because of that it's the ones that you have a group that's relatively easy to cater to... hence drag on for ever and ever like US comic books. There are a LOT of genres in anime like there are in western tv and it'll still be a YMMV because completely different culture, but because of the medium there are still some small studios that are willing to do some stories that are difficult to get in western media because it's too risky for corporations (granted that's been less the case with streaming coming out)

The number one that I'm sure anyone would recommend if you want to make an attempt is Cowboy Bebop because it's a good blend of western sensibility, it's a noir in being a group of down on their luck bounty hunters in space, set to a jazz, blues and rock soundtrack and has a good English dub from an era back when that was rare. And importantly, the story ends.

Why don’t we turn the world into a real life Mad Max while we’re at it.

Have you been around the car culture?

I'll disagree having come in as a complete outsider to the demographic for that movie who only watched it because of the love it had. I was pretty damn impressed with the movie as an overall. The story, yea, you're not wrong, it's not absolutely worldbreaking of a message. But it's one of those movies the work put in to it impressed me, in a time where CGI allows for cookie cutter movies to be made rapidly with green screens knowing the work behind it was fucking impressive to me. Also knowing how much they worked on the history of the IP, and getting the company to try to make a movie that called out its own product as problematic while celebrating it in an era where everyone is too timid and wants to make every movie palatable for everyone, or "family friendly" was ballsy as fuck and I'll respect it.

But hey, I'm a cinema nerd who loves the weird lol, I respect your thoughts and you're right, the baseline message didn't say anything new to me.

I grew up small town America, older Millinial, I'm the demographic for that movie.

I couldn't finish the movie.

Honestly at this point I think he's saying whatever he can to continue funding his submarine hobby.

See, I'm baffled by this one, now I've only seen the first movie so maybe there's something in the second I don't know about in world building. But the first, the world building was to me... meh? Okay, the alien planet was interesting, they have a culture, they seemed to do a fine job with that, cool. But the story makes humanity so blitheringly stupid that I cannot comprehend the worldbuilding beyond "We need some Captain Planet level villains." They're after unobtanium, a mineral that has properties for anti-gravity and wrecking havok on radar. Soooooo.... We're going to work hard on inserting someone to convince the locals to dig up under the religious tree for the major vein of it instead of the MULTIPLE floating mountains all over the place.

Which then when the military decides to do its thing, this spacefaring species uses glorified helicopters that fly lower and slower than modern military aircraft, again through the mountains of unobtainium in a low altitude approach for a strike operation that only makes sense if the enemy has radar... which the aliens definitely did not. I seriously might have missed something but I couldn't get past humanity in it was just carrying the idiot ball throughout the movie.

Also interesting when someone’s reasons for hating something are someone’s reason for loving it. Like a review says “It’s full of sad gay shit” and one chunk of people are going to boo and the other are going to perk right up.

I love this! I joked on a music album with a group is that we all liked it but not a single one of us could agree on a favorite song, I was like "That's as successful as you can ask for for a band." because you learn a lot about everyone with that. I don't enjoy the "it sucks" commentary because it's nothing to work with to understand where people are coming from, at least "Boring" helps get an idea from someone.

But you expressed 100% why I love this thread.

THANK YOU! I've constantly called it "Fern Gully as reinacted by Starship Troopers and the Dragonriders of Pern"

Huh... weirdly this makes me want to go watch this movie.

Somehow you well expressed Barnum's legacy in a manner that makes the movie seem like an accidental critique on him and that's funny.

The books, too, drag on like Tolkien was being paid by the individual word. Thankfully with books I can set the pace at which things go.

The only way I ever got through ANY of Tolkien's books was being read to by Andy Serkis while I was working at my job. It's worse when it's Tolkien somehow goes out of his way to write about the absolute most boring parts in excruciating detail, sets up all the drama, things are getting tense, oh shit, shits gonna go down "And that's when the Battle of the Five Armies happened. Afterward..." OH COME ON! Hell I wondered if I just couldn't read on a high enough level then devoured Herbert with Dune so easily it's, no... no I can't stand Tolkien's writing.

And I will die on the hill against anyone who thinks Tom Bombadil needed to be in the movies. That was a shit part in the book that took away any character agency from the main characters for an absolutely pointless diversion.

It's funny, I'm another who knows nothing about Marvel except what the movies had, and I loved the Thor movies the most because of the lore building LOL. But then I've said I get tired of later Captain American movies because "Things are too realistic and down to Earth, if there's superheroes I want things to get WEIRD.

But I want to say, as much as I love the other two Thor movies, I agree with you, Ragnarok is the best one. It did a fantastic job of building quite a lot of lore while being absolutely hilariously entertaining. But if you like Guardians of the Galaxy, I suggest you look up the TV show Farscape. When GotG was advertised I told my friends "I've always wanted to see Farscape on the big screen" so you might like it.