Weekly Box Office and Film Discussion Thread

[CensoredAlso]

To be fair with TMNT, they keep changing the origin.

This is true, lol. Which to me says their origins don't really matter (up to a point, Mr. Bay! Lol).

When I say an origin story is lazy writing, I mean it's obvious and literal, "we must start at the beginning." Whereas having the movie start from the point of view of April discovering the turtles as they are now was more creative.

 

[Oscarfan]

I feel that RT isn't really reviewing movies lately. Most of the ratings are based on reviews written by fans and other commentators, not usually actually reviewed by any of the critics.
Most of the critics are so great there anymore either. There are few good critics, but I don't check RT for new releases.

That fact is that Rotten Tomatoes doesn't do the reviewing though. The most they do is a like a sentence or two that covers what everyone else has said.

 

[jvcarroll]

I feel that RT isn't really reviewing movies lately. Most of the ratings are based on reviews written by fans and other commentators, not usually actually reviewed by any of the critics.
Most of the critics are so great there anymore either. There are few good critics, but I don't check RT for new releases.

Hmmm...Rotten Tomatoes hasn't ever written reviews. The tomatometer only references critics and can also be set for top critics only. I would agree that there are so many bloggers that have risen to the ranks of critic, but what credentials do actual critics need? I don't really see much difference.

Either way, I tend to follow a handful of critics and discard the others.

 

[Scooterforever]

I saw "This is the End Yesterday." SPOILERS. It's the literal Biblical apocalypse, with people falling into giant holes to heck, all the good people getting raptured, and giant demons walking the Earth. Surprisingly, at no point does it bash Christianity, even if it has fun with the whole Biblical Apocalypse scenario. The main cast (Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, Jay Baruchel) were pretty funny as they try (and fail miserably) t0 get along with each other as they hide out in Franco's home. Franco may well have been the funniest, as he plays a caricature of himself, artsy, vain, pretentious, and deeply entrenched in the ways of Hollywood (although I've heard him described thus even before the film came out, which made his performance even funnier).

 

[Muppet fan 123]

I saw 42: The Jackie Robinson Story yesterday. Great movie. I suggest you all should see it before it leaves theaters. It's an important movie, focusing on mainly the racisim in the American 40's and how J.R. became the first black American hero.
It's hard to believe there were no decent people back then. The 40's were really the darkest time ever in history, all over the globe.

Harrison Ford also stars in this movie. Wow! He has gotten really old. He doesn't look like himself at all! If I didn't know he was in the movie, and what his part was, I would never guess that's him.
I have no idea how he's going to step back into the role of Han Solo in two years, it'll be hard to see that happening.

 

[Drtooth]

I have no idea how he's going to step back into the role of Han Solo in two years, it'll be hard to see that happening.

Anything that can be related to the upcoming Star Wars movies will just be speculation and theories until we get an official synopsis. But there's absolutely no question there's going to be a time skip. There was a huge time skip between Episodes 3 and 4 (there's an animated series that's going to take care of that, though), so it's only natural that there's a large passage of time between 6 and 7.

 

[Scooterforever]

Anything that can be related to the upcoming Star Wars movies will just be speculation and theories until we get an official synopsis. But there's absolutely no question there's going to be a time skip. There was a huge time skip between Episodes 3 and 4 (there's an animated series that's going to take care of that, though), so it's only natural that there's a large passage of time between 6 and 7.

I've never read them, but the Legacy of the Force series apparently takes place 40 years after the original trilogy. Given the popularity of that book series, if they're doing a time skip and having the original cast reprise their roles anyway it wouldn't be a bad idea to draw inspiration from LotF. Anyway, with the hundreds of Star Wars books and comics released after the original trilogy, Abrams and crew would be better off drawing from them than struggling to come up with a completely new storyline.

 

[CensoredAlso]

It's hard to believe there were no decent people back then. The 40's were really the darkest time ever in history, all over the globe.

Well there were a lot of people who weren't racist, it's just that their voices weren't always listened to by the influential in society.

But I would agree that the '40s was certainly a dark time for everyone during the war and all.

Thanks for sharing about the movie, I might check that out!

 

[brkndwnbus]

Not going to go into any spoilers about Man of Steel, but my wife and I enjoyed it immensely. She even went as far as to say it was better than the Nolan Batman trilogy, acknowledging it probably had to do with MOS being so fresh in her mind.

The only thing annoying about seeing it during a special "premiere" showing (5 hours before the official midnight opening) was that they aired about a 5-7 minutes feature about the movie before the movie aired. Snyder and the cast talked about the movie while showing clips. I was doing my best to avoid watching too many clips, but that didn't work out.

For comparisons sake, this was a much more enjoyable movie going experience than Iron Man 3, and I liked that movie, too. MOS is a movie I'll see again in theaters, without a doubt.

 

[Drtooth]

I've never read them, but the Legacy of the Force series apparently takes place 40 years after the original trilogy. Given the popularity of that book series, if they're doing a time skip and having the original cast reprise their roles anyway it wouldn't be a bad idea to draw inspiration from LotF. Anyway, with the hundreds of Star Wars books and comics released after the original trilogy, Abrams and crew would be better off drawing from them than struggling to come up with a completely new storyline.

There's rumors that they either will or won't. I'm sure there's some inspiration in there, and that stuff really should be given a good look. The mystery surrounding this film is astounding. Any other film, we would basically have an entire script leaked by now. I'm actually glad that we don't know every single detail. We know that about the next Muppet film, and it's going to ruin every surprise. Like the cameo guest stars for instance. They're doing a good thing keeping any details about Star Wars as underwraps as possible.

Not going to go into any spoilers about Man of Steel, but my wife and I enjoyed it immensely. She even went as far as to say it was better than the Nolan Batman trilogy, acknowledging it probably had to do with MOS being so fresh in her mind.

While I don't usually take someone else's word for something (though I do on occasion), now I'm really excited. I really think Warner Bros can actually pull this off this time, and give us the Superman movie franchise they've been trying to do since the 80's. Let's face it. With the exception of Batman, DC films didn't really have much luck. Green Lantern's bloated budget and bad word of mouth made sure that film went under. And who even cared about the Jonah Hex film? Megan Fox was in it, it was released opposite a big Pixar film (make no mistake, there's going to be strong competition between MOS and Monsters University), and no one outside of a comic shop even heard of Jonah Hex. I barely did, and that's because I watched a Batman TAS cartoon.