This is the "General discussion forum". Everyone is welcome to vent, within the GOG forum rules.

What grinds your gears?

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Disney films that try to change facts or cannon, and cynically regurgitate older and better writing, because 'children have never seen that trope before', grinds my gears.

Exploitative and cynical recycling of what was done much better by previous filmmakers is becoming a trope in itself.

I just watched Jungle Cruise. Every scene is a poor recreation of what was done better previously, and the woke is so thick you can hardly see the screen.

Rated highly by critics (whose careers rest on their estimates of the Zeitgeist). It's like the bastard child of The African Queen and Harry Potter.

I wouldn't have watched it if I knew it was full of magic and physics defying imaginary rubbish. (Some people like that. I don't).

This is a children's film. They are trying to re-create Indiana Jones as a woman, and his sidekick as a gay.

None of it is convincing. The CGI is constant and 'suspension of disbelief' breaking. Indeed, the CGI is so prevalent and obvious that I'm not even sure that any of the actors were in the same room at any time. Adapting to COVID maybe?

This is the new Disney?

You can keep it.

Disney used to be a great bastion of originality, storytelling and talent. Now it's a corporation with profits paramount (see what I did there?), and no effort to create new stuff.

How is this not considered baiting? "A woman" and "a gay" (sic) will, in your view, apparently corrupt the youth?...Really?

DRM grinds my gears.

Not sure what "baiting" means, but I never said anything about corrupting youth. Do you have an axe to grind?

Please tell us more.

I've just mostly stopped watching movies, actively. Ie. I don't go to cinemas almost at all, never rent anything (but then rental shops are apparently long gone), I don't subscribe to any movie channels etc.

I have no idea which has changed (more), me or the movies, that I have so hard time finding 99% of them interesting at all. Ok I liked watching cheap kung fu and ninja movies too so there it definitely is me having changed (truth to be told, they were always pretty crappy, but I still liked many of them), but...

...I wonder if kids and young adults of today ever get a similar feeling in movies, that I got when I saw e.g. Terminator, Aliens, Robocop, Brazil, The Hitcher, Kill Bill, Raiders of the Lost Ark etc. the first time? Being on the edge of my seat all the time, being so excited after seeing the movie, wanting to see the movie repeatedly etc.?

Oh yeah and I can't stand The Rock's movies (like Jungle Cruise) anymore. For some reason I used to like some of his movies earlier, but nowadays his smug grin just annoys me to no end, his roles are so ho-hum and "safe" (maybe he is thinking of a political career, like Schwarzenegger after lots of goody roles), and he is the worst actor ever. The Jumanji remake was ok, even for him.

Some comedies I still find entertaining, like when I (finally) saw "The Interview", I chuckled at least occasionally. And I am hopeful if Coen Brothers or Quentin Tarantino release something, but even their newer movies tend to be hit or miss for me nowadays.

Oh well, fortunately I have other interesting past times besides just movies.

Pondering about it, also in my childhood and youth I didn't like many blockbuster movies either. I found e.g. the Back to the Future trilogy... ok at best, but at least the two sequels were pretty boring and ho-hum for me. The same for many Steven Spielberg's praised kid's movies like Hook (the Peter Pan movie), or the Ghostbusters movies... So yeah I guess not everything was great for me back then either.

The one with Sean Connery was good.

;) Totally! And?

Saturday is a special part of the week for me. I live alone and have to isolate. Saturday night is 'movie and booze' night.

The movie was shite, and I'm going to be embarrassed by my posts later.

It is not you. I guess in our time the question has been answered: If media is a mirror of culture or media dictates culture?

Although I am not sure if it changed or just became obvious with the digital age.

I'll play: (This is more in line with a mildly infuriating sort of deal) I don't really watch much in the way of new movies these days. (I saw one in 2015, one in 2018, another one in 2019, and the last movie I saw in the theaters was 1917 in January last year.) Anyway, the thing which bugs me is that costumes since about 2012 or so just don't look anywhere near as convincing as they used to. They just kinda look like costumes. Every time I try to explain this to others, they seem to to have difficulty understanding what I mean. Usually it is just handwaved as, "Well, cameras are better now, so details are more obvious" or "Higher resolutions on TV's makes it easier to see flaws" or "CG is used more nowadays."

At any rate, so to try to explain: I first noticed this back when I was forced to watch The Hunger Games for an English class (Argument and Persuasion). The costumes in that movie just didn't look like actual clothes that people wear, and this did not help with the immersion in what was supposed to be a serious story. They looked to me like the cheap versions of costumes you might see in a Star Wars parody or something.
Although, speaking of Star Wars, exhibit B for me was The Force Awakens in 2015. When I first saw the trailers (I was not able to hear the narration and haven't bothered to actually watch them since) I thought it was a parody. Again, upon closer inspection, the costumes to me seemed like things which were supposed to remind you of Star Wars, but ultimately looked more fake than the ones used in Episodes I-VI.
Thinking about it, the same might be said of the Hobbit films vs the original LoTR trilogy.
Again, not sure I can explain what exactly looks so fake to me about them. It nearly keeps me from enjoying movies. Not sure what broke for me. I can even watch old movies (4K restorations at that) and not feel the same about the costumes in those. Ah well, it irritates me.

Be less embarrassed and more in the mindset of (next time) "do not operate heavy gogery while under the influence"

nowt wrong with movie and booze night, nor ranting on a movie being shite - but theres a thread for that anyway.

personally the only really redeeming feature was surprisingly jack whitehalls gay character i thought (normally cant stand him, though the "bad education" film was pretty funny - mostly not him tho).

Ever hear of the "token black guy"? It is never a position of quality. But then again, it has been forever since I have seen the movie or television awards where they give out trophies. Maybe they have an award for being "the token {type of human}", because maybe it has become a vital role in stories nowadays?

Or consider the quality in "recreating Indiana Jones". How will a similar movie stand on its own? How can it be convincing? Having "a woman" and "a gay" be what distinguishes the movie from other movies is a setup for associating poor quality with "a woman" or "a gay". How about better opportunities instead of seeking sympathy for a poorly crafted movie?

Remember "Better off dead"? The dinner scene. I think I can recall it rather well.
"I used a recipe from a magazine, but it had gotten wet and I couldn't read it all, so I improvised. I added raisins. You like raisins, {name of son}, right?"
Note this was moments after the scene where the mother had lifted a large hunk of meat out of boiling water, to check on how well it was cooking.

When a movie is like what was served at that dinner, it does no one any good, either woman or gay, to be an ingredient in such a meal.

Get it? There is no baiting. Well, except for a discussion about the quality of movie making. But you digressed to DRM, and I think I am with you on that. Partly why I avoid movies, because there is no referencing anything that is obscurred by DRM, as DRM makes bibliographical references worthless.

Hmm, though upon reflection, what 'grinds my gears" and gets me thinking too much is when someone tries to associate racism, sexism, religionism, whatever-ism with what someone else said. I mean, I am all for making fun and exploring possibilities, but looking for "harm" within words is a distraction from either fun or discovering original intent. Too much like nitpicking on preferred grammar characteristics when nothing is being published for sale, it is just a free flowing discussion.

I skipped Disney altogether, at least everything they made after The Black Cauldron.
It became a hollowed out corpse shitting out formulaic movies with misguided idealistic overtones over and over. Me neither, tough Pain & Gain was good, which is pretty remarkable as I don't particularly like Mark Wahlberg or Michael Bay. Welcome to the Jungle was also good but Chris Walken makes every movie watchable.

edit:
Welcome to the Jungle is called The Rundown apparently.

I've become less and less interested in American movies and TV-shows in recent times.They often feel preachy, generic or are just too predictable. Yesterday I watched the 2019 re-make of Black Christmas, which was just socio-politcal marketing disguised as "horror", and a terrible version of the original. There's even a 2-3 second shot in the movie, of a poster saying "Neoliberalism in colleges now" or something like that. No other political posters.The bad guys were designed to fit the political narrative, not the original horror-movie theme. And this was in a 2019 movie. I stopped watching season 7 of Bosch because I got annoyed by the [very badly presented] messaging. Corrupt cops are nothing new in detective shows, but it's the way they presented it that hit me, it felt political, rather than being good writing.

There were exceptions though, I enjoyed movies like Underwater, The Midnight Sky, Color Out of Space, Midway, Godzilla vs. Kong, etc. My favourite though was Greyhound.

On the positive side of this, I've been exploring international movies and tv-shows a lot more, which has been very rewarding, I even got back into watching anime. Netflix has a large number of all of this stuff. Despite their promotion of diversity, HBO and Disney/Star have basically no international movies and tv-shows.

I'll never understand adults who watch children's movies only to complain about them.

Unlike what main steam claims, children are born extremely hateful little buggers and you need to teach them acceptance and teach them not to make fun of other children who are different. It's actually important to break race and gender stereotypes as early as you can because children who haven't been exposed to it before DO pick on other children who are different.

The boy who likes playing with barbies gets picked on by boys, the girl who likes climbing and doing boy things gets picked on by the girls. Of course we also have issues with how girls and boys are meant to end up together because that's what happens in all the stories.

Thick "woke" is a good thing, it is a kids movie targeting kids... if you don't like it then stop watching movies that you aren't the target audience for.