I used to say “if you’re gonna remake a movie, you should remake a bad movie but do it better.”
Then they remade The Crow. “Dude I said do it better. 🤦♂️”
You said “remake a bad movie.”
Every iteration of me from 1994 to now is coming to your home to kick your ass right up and out past your teeth for calling the OG Crow a bad movie.
Yes, most of us will be in face paint. Some of us may have black trench coats on. There may even be some hammer pants, but we won’t talk about that.
Remakes that are better than the original:
The Thing
The Fly
The Blob
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Cat People
Hmm. I’m noticing a trend here.
Seriously, there’s nothing inherently wrong with remakes but why do it if you’re not trying to make it BETTER? Or at least substantially different? Do a different take on the material, don’t just swap the CG animated boy for a real life actor while leaving everything including the CG animated dragon as it was, for fuck’s sake.
The Wild Robot in theaters. Not a sequel or a remake. It is based off of a novel though.
2024 was apparently the first year where all the top-10 highest grossing movies were sequels. List doesn’t include Moana 2 and Gladiator 2 which are expected to make a lot of money as well.
Wild Robot really surprised me… Score was fantastic and some scenes had me bawling
We took our toddler to see it and both my partner and I had multiple episodes of weeping. Lovely film.
Also, for those interested in more mature movies: Juror #2. I had good expectations and was not disappointed. At least, not by the movie. There were only a handful of people in an already small cinema room, only a week after release. Meanwhile, Gladiator II is drawing a lot of public.
While I love shitting on CEOs and business people as much as the next left-oriented person, this trend in the movie industry is very much, at least partially, at fault due to many of the consumers.
Juror #2
Thought provoking in that everyone who wants to convict is “because he’s a piece of shit, whether or not it is unlikely he did it”. How do you tell people they are pieces of shit themselves, without them reactively thinking you are? Is the big thought experiment this film provokes.
Y2K. It was better than I expected!
Also, I remember walking out of Everything Everywhere All At Once and being angry because it probably wouldn’t do well in theaters or win any awards, despite being one of the best original movies I had ever seen.
I was happy to be wrong on that one.
Another also, I absolute hate that the video game industry is jumping on this trend. Sometimes it’s nice to play games I missed out on as a kid but it’s getting so bad now, they remaster games from a couple years ago. Enough is enough.
Last solid remaster is probably Age of Mythologies Retold.
Most remasters by now are just junkware though.
Movies and shows that I have watched this year in no particular order and not all released this year:
The Beekeeper
Iron Claw
Say Nothing
Altered States
The Substance
Oppenheimer
Peaky Blinders (rewatch)
Kneecap
In The Name of the Father
The Batman
Lord of the Rings (rewatch)
The Departed (rewatch)
Deep Space Nine (haven’t finished)
The Devil’s Own
Sicario
Additionally, my wife has recently started watching Gossip Girl but I only catch glimpses of that show. Did anybody actually like that show when it came out?
You should check “The Penguin”. Somehow better than The Batman.
Additionally, my wife has recently started watching Gossip Girl but I only catch glimpses of that show. Did anybody actually like that show when it came out?
If you think of teenage girls as people, tons of people liked it when it came out. They also liked the books.
Poor marketing and limited theater releases is why and studios can blame themselves.
The huge improvements in TV screens have a lot to do with it too, I think.
When we only had CRT screens at home it was a big jump in quality to go to the theater. But when you have a 4K screen in your living room, there’s less reason to go to the theater.
It’s not just that they were CRTs.
You can get an excellent picture from the CRT computer monitors of the '90s and '00s, with high resolution (up to 2048×1536—better than 1080p!) and color rendering that’s arguably better than modern LCDs.
CRT TVs had low resolution, and NTSC/PAL has pretty bad color fidelity as well, but one of those high-definition CRTs connected to an RGB component video input (VGA or SCART) carrying high-definition content (DVD or Blu-Ray) is another story entirely.
Yeah I was talking about TVs… we are discussing movies after all. Moreover, TVs that the average person has.
There’s a huge jump in quality between the TVs the average person has now compared to 20+ years ago.
It’s to the point right now that a young person 20 years of age could spend a decade just watching all the old classics from the past 80 years to enjoy great films. If they stopped making movies tomorrow, there’s more than enough content now for people to watch.
My wife wants to keep watching the latest stuff but if it were up to me, I’d just take the time to watch at least all of the AFI top 100 films… last I checked I think I’ve only seen about 30 of them and I thought I watched a lot of films. My last rough count of watched films that I could list was over 1,500 films. And I still have a waiting list of hundreds more I want to see.
I’m a Trek fan and I thought I watched lots but I’ve only seen about half of all the TV series and most of the films.
That’s also not counting all the other TV series I’d like to see from the past … MASH, All In The Family, Adam’s Family, The original Batman series, The Munsters, X Files, Walking Dead, Arrested Development, Battlestar Galactica, Twilight Zone, The Office … and on and on
If my spouse wasn’t so stuck in watching the latest stuff I’d probably be happy just spending my time catching up on everything I wasn’t able to see for the past 30-40 years.
I agree. Its the same with literature as well. One thing I enjoy about older media is not feeling so drawn to reflect on any social commentary of my own time. To me it makes it more immersive and more about the timeless aspects of the story.
I’m exactly that young person. I won’t be even able to consume every work of art I’m interested in. That’s both sad and amazing.
I’m not a young person and I’m in the same boat
The price of movies is too damn high to go out and watch them. My system at home is far more comfortable and costs barely anything.
Just get Nick Cage to be in your movie, that seems to be the secret ingredient
This checks out. I think the most recent “original” movie I watched was The Color Out of Space. Not in theater though.
Hundreds of Beavers.
And I watched it by just sort of holding my eyes open while the video file played on my computer screen.
Does Barbenheimer count?
There was a theory somewhere that this is about power play. If you produce Spiderman 245, power shifts away from the director and towards the production company. Less artistic freedom, more money management. If you let the director create their own movie, they are mostly in charge of how things go, movies become more artistic and less focused on money (alone).
I have nothing to confirm this and don’t remember the source I have that from except “the internet”
Your comment is compatible with my ideology. It is therefore true.
Wild Robot - Piracy
Hundreds of Beavers - Piracy
Chocolate - Tubi
Don’t remember the last sequel I watched but movies are too long to watch in one sitting
Wild Robot - movie theater
It only cost us about $42 for two tickets, a popcorn, and a soda. The movie was truly wonderful and I don’t regret going, but it was our only visit to the theater in 2024 for a reason.
Chocolate, the kung fu movie about the girl with Taskmaster’s ability?
That’s a fun one, haven’t seen it in probably 15 years. I should do a rewatch.
Yes that one
I found the ending disappointing but my Thai friend said that’s what Thai movies do
People want to watch good movies. With remakes people want to see the original but with different actors and usually studios fuck them up by trying to fix what wasn’t broke.
People want original without taking the risk of watching an unknown movie that might be bad
I just can’t afford $30 for a ticket
Good thing the critic was invented, my tip is to follow one and getting familiar with them, not looking at aggregate scores, because even if they dislike a movie, you’ll know if you would like it since you are familiar with their tastes.
So they take the risk of watching a movie that is somehow familiar to them ahead of watching it, and that might also be bad.
The Banshees of Inisherin
i watched it in a theater, because i’ve heard the movie was good. Didn’t read up much on it beforehand and enjoyed watching it, albeit not fully getting it i guess.
It felt worth going to a theater for. Contrary to the last 3 or so Marvel movies i’ve seen in theater because friends dragged me and i ended up falling asleep every time.
