Now as I recall Con Air is a detestable movie for many reasons but I just happened to catch the end of it again and was struck by two brain dead visuals. It is just hard to imagine that someone suggested them and everyone else involved went, “great let’s do it.”
one - after the plane crashes on the LV strip and gradually breaks up down the road it crashes into a casino and the nose cone bumps a line of slot machines. The camera cuts to the front of one machine. Surely it won’t suddenly come to life, roll up 3 7s and start pouring out coins. Surely it will.
two - after all this we need another chase because the first climax is pretty damn lame. So the good guys in buddy movie style begin a tandem motorcycle chase of the remaining cons on a fire truck. As the speeding truck passes two motorcycle cops one cop drops something and they take off in pursuit. The camera cuts to the road where the bikes had stood. What do we see, surely it won’t be…yes it is. Standing upright on the road is a donut with a bite missing.
Not funny, clever or even interesting just crap.
What surprise shot has surprised you by it’s inanity?
In the last of George Lucas’ efforts to destroy my affection for the favorite movies of my youth, the Jedi have Palpatine cornered. The Emperor-to-be jumps in the air and spirals like a football toward the Jedi. That shot was so dumb it made flubber-Yoda seem reasonable.
Runaway subway train? Sure.
Somehow gets loose and up onto street level? Whatever.
As it is sliding to a halt, the last like two inches of its travel it bumps into a tour bus van thingy. Driver gets out and huffs and puffs. This incident goes exactly nowhere. Huh?
Dune, which was too complex of a book to make into a 2 1/2 hour movie, the result being many curious creative decisions.
The worst part about the movie, by far, is how they depict the Harkonnens. They wanted to depict them as decadent and depraved, but were unwilling to show the Baron molesting young men. What they decided to do was to have the Baron kill some young slave or servant type by pulling some kind of cork out of his chest which was apparently holding his blood in, then smearing the blood on the youth’s face as he bled out. It made no sense at all. The Baron was evil enough engaging in regular human depravity without having to make up some strange form of murder.
Wolf, starring Jack Nicholson. The last shot of the movie is a shot of a wolf howling at the moon. It would have been very dramatic, if it didn’t look like an animatronic puppet.
I think Alia kills the Baron in the movie the same way (that plug thing in his chest), instead of the way it happened in the book (a poison needle).
Another Dune weirdness…the rain during the final battle. WTF? No, there was no rain. There was a sandstorm. The ecological transformation of Arrakis was not some magical mystical instantaneous thing that Muad’Dib did by a wave of his hand.
Why do so many movies have the moment in the fight scene where the hero bends over backwards like he’s trying to get under a limbo stick in order to avoid his opponents attack. In the millennia-long history of combat, has anyone ever actually used this move?
I’ve seen it in everything from Spider-Man, to the Matrix, to the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
She uses both. She rakes his face with the gom jabbar, then yanks out his heart plug. Then he gets eaten by a sandworm.
It’s a sandstorm in the movie, too. The rain doesn’t start until after Paul kills Feyd. Earlier in the film, it’s established that the Fremen have been collecting vast stores of water to use to terraform Arrakis. Before the final attack, Paul orders the water released into the atmosphere. It’s still pretty dumb: how is this going to help terraform the planet? The stuff’s just going to get soaked up by the desert, and you’re right back where you started. But it’s not just a straight up miracle. There’s at least a pseudoscientific set up to the scene.
It might have been misused in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, but Spiderman, Neo and the Agents are exactly the sorts of people who could pull it off.
Exactly. What’s the point of the Heart plug when the Harkonnens no doubt have many sharp objects which with to have fun cutting people up?
And I’m still trying to figure out the whole “Milking the cat with the rat taped to it” thing. It’s not in the book and is just bizarre.
On a lesser note, why does Gurney carry the Pug around with him during the battle? I’m sure he likes the dog, but it would probably be easily to fight if he put the dog down.
In a trilogy that otherwise handles death scenes very well, Denethor’s death in Jackson’s “The Return of the King” was a big “WTF?” moment. He is knocked onto the flames, then somehow manages to run down the entire length of Minas Tirith’s upper level while on fire, before tumbling over the “prow” and plummeting several hundred feet. Again, all while on fire. What was clearly intended to be a dramatic illustration of a proud man’s downfall instead came off as silly and overwrought.
I tend to view purist complaints about the LOTR movie trilogy with a certain amount of disdain, as 99% of them can be answered by pointing out that what works on the page doesn’t necessarily work on film (and vice versa). But this one case where depicting the scene as written would have worked fine, and certainly wouldn’t have left audiences laughing.
I remember it as a needle scratch, then she messes up his flight suit so he goes spiraling out of control into the storm. I don’t remember any blood. Also, why would the baron have a heart plug? He makes OTHERS get them, for his amusement. Feyd doesn’t have one, as I remember, and Sting was shirtless for much of the movie.
Found a pic of Feyd. Couldn’t find one of the Baron without his flight suit, but that pic doesn’t show a heart plug either.
Btw, the answer to a lot of these DUNE questions is- David Lynch directed it. That renders everything moot.
In fact, maybe that can be used to explain all of life’s mysteries… Hmmm.
When I goof up at work and the boss asks me why I did that, “I’m sorry, Sir, David Lynch must have directed that.”
“Ohhhh! That’s why it doesn’t make any sense. OK, go back to work and don’t let him direct you again.”
I say this as a DL fan who hasn’t watched anything he’s done after TP:FWWM (I have LH & MD and I want to see The Straight Story, but watching DL’s latest stuff is no longer the burning obsession it once was.)
I think she punctures his suit so he’s flying like a deflating balloon. Either that or she pulled a cable that caused it to go out of control.
Re the pic of Feyd- that’s on your background, isn’t it?
Yeah, but even so, if you have the super-awesome reflexes to bend over backwards to avoid an attack, shouldn’t that just make it that much easier to duck forwards, jump sideways, etc. or the many other ways of avoiding an attack that normal people find far easier to execute than the “limbo dodge”?
It’s like Spidey, Neo, etc. are disproportionately super-powered in ways that lend themselves to cliche slow-motion effects (although in fairness the Matrix helped to make that a cliche).
I guess I should be more focused on how Peter Pevensie even learned to use a sword than worrying about how he limbo-dodged the White Witch’s sword.
