Despite my over-the-top hatred of the latest Star Trek movie, this thread is not about that film. It is, rather, about movies which people hate for reasons that strike you as, well, stupid. I don’t mean that the movie itself can’t be stupid; just that the reason the hater gives is.
My example is a movie I’m ambivalent about: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I know a fellow who hated the movie, and by extension the entire series, because of the scene in which the Rohirrim, about to be besieged in Helm’s Deep and outnumbered approximately a bajillion to one, start arming every male above the age of puberty–“every man and strong lad,” as Theoden puts it. My acquaintance felt that the Rohirrim’s willingness to put their adolescent sons in arms for ANY reason, even self-defense, exposed them as entirely corrupt–no better, in his opinion, than the Orcs.
Though I enjoyed that movie, I think it has major flaws. But that line of reasoning is just…stupid.
A guy I served with in the marines back in the early 80s decided that he could no longer watch the John Wayne westerns written by Leigh Brackett when I told him Leigh was a she and not a he.
Likewise, off topic, he had given up on the SF of Andre Norton when he discovered that “he” was really Alice.
A friend hates the movie Forrest Gump only because it won Best Picture over Shawshank Redemption. The thing is he refuses to watch Forrest Gump – so he hates a movie he’s never seen.
i get it though. Shawshank should have beat out Forrest Gump but it’s a silly reason to hate an unwatched movie.
There’s always a topic that shows up here on the Dope every few months about “Things that ruin a movie for me.” It’s always chock-full of ridiculous reasons for disliking a movie. You can pick any one of them, really.
To add a gripe to the list, and a comtroversial one at that, I am annoyed when people demand slavish devotion to source material. I don’t want to use the word stupid because many Dopers disagree, but I simply do not get why someone could hate a film because Peter Parker uses organic webshooters instead of mechanical ones. I get disliking a film that butchers the beloved source to the point that only the name remains, but minor details? Baffles me.
I must cop to this type of behavior on a much smaller scale. While I do not hate them, I view (subjectively) undeserved Academy Award films with mild scorn due the fact that they beat more deserving films. Not that I hate the films. Some I even enjoyed. But there is a negative association in my mind.
Specifically, I am annoyed by Shakespeare in Love and Titanic. Saving Private Ryan and LA Confidential were so much more deserving. Especially SPR. However, SIL and Titanic were decent to enjoyable flicks.
Oddly, though I agree that Shawshank is better than Gump, I still love Gump (both films are in my top 25 all time). I just chalk that up to an exceptional year for films (Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, and 4 Weddings and a Funeral make for the greatest five films ever nominated in a single year to my estimation).
Yeah, my husband has an unreasonable dislike of Greg Kinnear because he “stole” Rupert Everett’s best supporting actor nomination when he got nominated for *As Good As It Gets *and Everett didn’t get nominated for My Best Friend’s Wedding. Not because Kinnear is straight playing gay and Everett is authentically gay :D; he just liked Everett’s performance better.
A hell of a lot of people on this messageboard hate Forrest Gump and the reason I see repeated over and over is something along the lines of “it sends the message that stupidity will [should?] be rewarded.” What a weird interpretation of that movie and stupid reason to hate it.
An ex’s mom hated Adam Sandler’s Big Daddy because she said it was one big nasty disgusting glorification of child abuse.
You know, I’ve heard this complaint enough that I’m starting to think it’s less a problem with the people saying it and more a problem with the fact that the title and advertising didn’t really make it as clear as they should’ve that this was going to be part one of a three part story. After all, not everyone’s familiar enough with Tolkien to recognize FOTR as the title of the first book in a three-part series.
While modern movies have a million sequels, most of them are at least somewhat self-contained. Even after LOTR, there really aren’t that many series where the whole thing is just one multi-film story, so I can see where it would be quite a shock (and feel like kind of a rip-off) if you weren’t expecting it.
That’s certainly true of my sister. She’s not stupid, she was just completely unfamiliar with LOTR. That doesn’t stop us from giving her shit about it, though. Every time any one in the family misses something obvious, someone else will say “You mean it’s a trilogy??”
I was annoyed for this very reason when I saw Push. It was a good movie but there was no mention made anywhere that I saw that it was the first part of a series.
I’ve read reviews where the critics appear to dislike a movie simply because it wasn’t what they were expecting it to be.
For instance, some folks had it in for the David Lynch/Brooksfilm production of The Elephant Man simply because it wasn’t based on Bernard Pomerance’s play of the same name (and had nothing to do with it). I can see being disappointed, but that’s no excuse to trash a perfectly good 9on its own merits) movie.
Similarly, some critics seemed to have thought that the Arnold Schwartzenegger film Predator was going to be about mercenaries in Central America (with no Science Fiction elements. Why they would think that of an Arnold movie (especially given the previews, I do not know. But it apparently ruined it for them.
That wouldn’t bother me, but I will admit being slightly annoyed by the presence of someone named wil.i.am in the Wolverine movie. The name struck me as silly.
Oddly, I think part of the reason people were vexed by this with LOTR is that Jackson did a wonderful job with the first installment. I remember my first viewing. The time just flew by, and it was hard to believe 3 hours had passed. And the girl I went with was more vocal–she wanted to know what happened next to Frodo NOW, damn it! A year was WAY too long to wait!