Sfdebris.net

Opposite as in my other thread. I'd need to genuinely think this over. Because I'm gonna avoid the predictable answers given the nature of this forum (speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, etc...).

But what is yours?

Plan 9 From Outer Space

Here is one that's probably gonna draw some eyebrows. I'm gonna list a Cameron movie, and no, it may not be the one you think.

Granted, I haven't seen this movie in years, but even at the time, when I was younger, I always took issues with Abyss. Not for the stuff the movie did, but the ending and overall message. The aliens find our warlike ways distasteful, and yet THEY almost commit GENOCIDE in the fullest sense of the word, slam tidal waves across every continent, which wouldn't just kill US, but every single living being. What the hell did they do? Guilt by association? And it seems all too simplistic for them to insist that would mean the end of the military, which was the implication. These are genetic and cultural issues which have built up over decades, centuries, millennia. You can't fix that in one night. With a threat of force. That's an ultimatum, and it goes against everything the peace-minded thinkers of past have said. Like how peace cannot be held with force, only achieved by understanding. Besides, I think anything cool that Abyss did, Stargate did better, and alongside no "my genocide for your sins" bullshit message. Like the rising of Atlantis being like the ship at the end, or the drama with the Replicators under the seas on the Russian sub.

Hate is probably a strong word. Still, some movies that others love that I dislike or at least think far less of than others-

A Clockwork Orange
Eraserhead
Don't Look Now (maybe more fair to say I'm mostly indifferent)
Not hate, but I'm not nearly so high on a bunch of Tarantino movies as other people on the internet.

More sci-fi oriented, if not going with divisive ones like The Last Jedi, I might go with a different Cameron film and say Avatar. Again, hate is too strong a word, but I watched it years after release and was really baffled by the idea that it could possibly be the highest grossing film of all time. I do realize that it is most definitely meant as a theater experience, but every aspect of it outside the visuals were so aggressively not-great that I have a hard time seeing how people obsessed over it as a movie.

The thing with Abyss is murdering billions of unarmed people AND whole species of animals, all of them, makes those aliens as bad as what they hate in us if not worse, and really feels like a threat. "Shape up your ways or we'll kill you!" Yeah, life ain't that simple.

The Sixth Sense.

If there was a movie I really hated I probably would not have managed to watch it to the end, but even so I don't think I would watch Wag the Dog again unless you paid me, but some people really liked that movie (I am not sure everyone loved it), I just found no reason to care about anyone or anything that happened in the movie (and any broader point of critique or satire of the darker/shallower side of human nature just struck me as banal rather than profound, incisive or entertainingly ridiculous). Fargo would be another movie ([edit: NOT by the same directors]) in the got lots of critical praise and I saw not really much of anything of interest in it, at least it looked pretty once or twice and managed to generate a twinge of human interest here or there.

I think those kinds of films get a somewhat mixed reception anyway, but I can not think of a movie that was a popular hit that I did not find at least passable as entertainment, my standards are not usually that demanding.

Avatar. I simply cannot stand that movie and can't finish it.

Even when done by Rifftrax with their great jokes making fun of the movie, I can't tolerate it and didn't even get 1/3 of the way through.

BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 2:47 am Plan 9 From Outer Space

THAT'S JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE STUUUUPID! A STUUUUPID HUMAN BEING!

STUUUUPID!

STUUUUPID!

It's not every day a movie inadvertently makes the arrogant government/military into the sensible, sympathetic good guys as the movie tried for an atomic bomb metaphor.

Yukaphile wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 4:28 am Here is one that's probably gonna draw some eyebrows. I'm gonna list a Cameron movie, and no, it may not be the one you think.

Granted, I haven't seen this movie in years, but even at the time, when I was younger, I always took issues with Abyss. Not for the stuff the movie did, but the ending and overall message. The aliens find our warlike ways distasteful, and yet THEY almost commit GENOCIDE in the fullest sense of the word, slam tidal waves across every continent, which wouldn't just kill US, but every single living being. What the hell did they do? Guilt by association? And it seems all too simplistic for them to insist that would mean the end of the military, which was the implication. These are genetic and cultural issues which have built up over decades, centuries, millennia. You can't fix that in one night. With a threat of force. That's an ultimatum, and it goes against everything the peace-minded thinkers of past have said. Like how peace cannot be held with force, only achieved by understanding. Besides, I think anything cool that Abyss did, Stargate did better, and alongside no "my genocide for your sins" bullshit message. Like the rising of Atlantis being like the ship at the end, or the drama with the Replicators under the seas on the Russian sub.

Do NOT watch the Director's Cut!

I despise Cameron's original idea because of what it ruined in the theatrical release.

The way it originally was presented it gave the impression the EBEs were actually another species and civilization inhabiting Earth, simply too deeply located and cut off for either of us to really know one another, but that is over and we realize there's two intelligent forms of life on the same planet.

I loved that watching it as a kid. It was the only movie I'd seen that tried to present such an idea before and one without a dramatic ending, but the simple beginning of a new era for Earth.

Instead, they're just yet another alien species come to Earth to hector for being bad.

ChiggyvonRichthofen wrote: ↑Thu Jan 16, 2020 7:05 am
A Clockwork Orange

I used to like it when I was a teenager. That changed when I discovered the storyline of the book and how diametrically opposite the endings were and how nasty and nihilistic the movie's was.

Hector? And yeah, gotta love that hypocrisy. Like how God claims we're all evil, so what does he do? MURDER MOST OF US.