Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[TheStarWarsTrek]

From the Barge of the Dead Review, Chuck says that Janeway putting her foot down on Torres trying to recreate a near death experience is hypocritical when other times starfleet officers are allowed to do dangerous things. (He specifically mentions Worf's bat'leth competition, Data removing holodeck safeties, Kirk rock climbing, the game paressee's squares, and Chakotay going off in a shuttle by himself to meditate).

First, I think there's definitely a world of difference between doing a sport or other activity where injury or death is an inherent risk, and deliberately stopping your heart with the hopes that the doctor can restart it. It's like saying a parent is a hypocrite because they'll let their high school student play football, but won't let them deliberately smack themselves in the head with a sledgehammer to knock themselves out.

Second, most of those examples take place in the alpha quadrant. Millions of lightyears from home it's more understandable not wanting to risk the safety of your officers. (And the Chakotay example was criticized as being a stupid thing to do anyways in the review of the episode where that happened).

[Yukaphile]

I disagree when he said "Gene was already knocking on heaven's door at this time." If there is any universal justice, and the afterlife system is impartial, assuming it conforms to our idea of heaven and hell, bad people go down, good people go up, I think Gene would be going something a lot hotter with more fire and smoke and pain.

[Robovski]

Gene was a deist, disavowing organized religion. I would suppose he considered himself subject to God's judgement, but not any church's.

[Artabax]

Distant Origin and The 37's are where I disagree most.

I thought both of those episodes were utter, absolute bottom of the barrel garbage, and still do even after watching his review and rewatching the episodes. A lot of it is because of how lazy and preposterous the 'earth thing in the delta quadrant' storylines are.

Shit you'd expect out of bad TOS...

What I hate at 37 is that ALL of the Crew stayed and NONE of the 37s joined. Status Quo is God.

[Yukaphile]

Oh boy, that gives me an idea...

[Robovski]

Distant Origin and The 37's are where I disagree most.

I thought both of those episodes were utter, absolute bottom of the barrel garbage, and still do even after watching his review and rewatching the episodes. A lot of it is because of how lazy and preposterous the 'earth thing in the delta quadrant' storylines are.

Shit you'd expect out of bad TOS...

What I hate at 37 is that ALL of the Crew stayed and NONE of the 37s joined. Status Quo is God.

Seriously! That was a huge opportunity to refresh the cast with a new member or three and to end some characters off as not wanting to endure this trip anymore and just call a decent enough place home.

[MerelyAFan]

I'm inclined to give more kudos to Masks (TNG) than Chuck does. Yes it is from the season 7 "we're out of ideas" period and yeah Picard looks silly in the mask. But I like the general weirdness of the concept, and I appreciate them just going all in with the ship transformation concept the point with even the ready room becoming a swamp off screen.

Its the kind of episode idea that seems like something out of latter era Voyager goofiness, but the direction keeps it decent and as Spiner hams it up at points, there's still a novelty to seeing him shift from role to role.

[lightningbarer]

Throughout the review I got the feeling that Chuck had a decent grasp on the "idea" of the movie but missed the "point" of the movie.

It definitely takes a lot from Lovecraft in its story, themes, ideas, etc. And while Chuck admits that he's read Lovecraft, he isn't an authority on it. Which few people are, and one which I'm certainly not qualified to attempt to be.

But in this situation, I feel like I can point out an aspect of the movie that Chuck missed entirely.
It feels like he believes the world is slowly succumbing to the madness of the Sutter Kane books, that during the course of the movie, we see society break down and become the madness that we see in the end.

When its entirely the wrong perspective to look at.
The problem with looking at this film as being coherent is that you cannot take it as being in anyway sane at all.

Sutter Kane is outselling Stephen King. He's the Biggest Name in Horror novels in this world, and we've been told repeatedly that his books make you feel like they can be true.

This coupled with his works being a gateway into our world for the Eldritch Horrors that come at the end gives a glaring image of what the story is about.

John Trent isn't a horror reader, he's not read the books of Sutter Kane. He hasn't opened his mind to the possibility of these things being real. He doesn't for most of the movie.

Until near the end, after seeing things like Linda crabwalking and the ripping apart of the "person" Sutter Kane.

The moment he does that, he's allowed the Eldrich into his mind in a sense and they-through their vessel Sutter Kane-slowly drive him to madness, but a madness that isn't complete yet, he's not read or seen the last story Sutter Kane wrote.

The one we've been told is what drove his Editor and Linda completely insane. So he attacks someone on the street who just bought the book, to get himself locked up.

And why? Well we hear about it from John himself when he's asked "what about the people who don't read his books?" and he replies with a lost smile "there's the movie."

Its why John goes to the movie at the end, he is the last sane person in the world of the mad who knows he's going mad. Its why he's laughing and crying at the same time, he "knows" he's going insane due to the things Sutter Kane brought into the world via something that I don't think Chuck linked with stuff said in Prince of Darkness.

In Prince of Darkness, the unconscious is used to deliver both hope and destruction upon the world at the same time. In the Mouth of Madness, the imagination is the gateway to insanity.
Because what do you do when you see something that your imagination brings up that makes no logical sense? You try and rationalise it.

And if there is no way for a Human mind to rationalise the thing you saw? Well you end up with a mind that doesn't act rationally as it tries repeatedly to fix something that cannot be fixed.

The images of the eldritch being in our reality is likely the madness people have, otherwise the streets would be filled with the dismembered corpses of the human race as John walks towards the cinema. Remember, John has read all but In the Mouth Of Madness to try and research where Sutter Kane is. Its implied that he made up the entire trip to Hobbs End and Linda, from the other man who likely hasn't read the books, Harglow.

There was a line in the movie that Chuck left out of the review that I think speaks more to the point of the movie. And while Chuck hit on the "reality is a point of view" thing, I think he missed the more important part of the sentence.

"Sane and insane could easily switch places...if the insane were to become the majority...You would find yourself locked in a padded cell...wondering what happened to the world."

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah again, with the Dark Knight, I don't think that Batman's issue with his imposters had to do about competency so much as they were simply just using illicit means to accomplish their goal. If they're like ANTIFA and just want to fight the gangster establishment, then I don't see it particularly as an issue of escalation necessarily.

[Admiral X]

I'd say his problem had to do with how they basically made what he was doing a lot more complicated. IIRC, the imposters show up just as he was about to get the jump on Scarecrow and his mooks and effectively ruined whatever he had planned there, an ended up getting him hurt in the process from what I remember.