# Iconic but awful **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [October 11, 2021, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285 "2021-10-11T02:10:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/241 "2021-10-14T19:23:08Z")
> [@Quondam\_Mechanic](#): > > The movie doesn’t go into any such details (IIRC) because a) it’s a movie focused on atmosphere and Lime’s character, not plot and b) probably Wells never gave such issues a thought. _The Third Man_ is not a Wells film. It was based on a Graham Greene novel and directed by Carol Reed. I’ve heard Wells did insert the dialog about cuckoo clocks, though. ---
**Author:** ![Lancia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lancia/32/17174_2.png) [@Lancia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lancia)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/242 "2021-10-14T19:32:00Z")
_Star Wars._ I’ve tried to like it. I’ve watched all 9 movies, I’ve tried to get into the story, I’ve tried to understand the nuances of the films, and I Just. Cant. Do. It. Yeah, there’s some great lines. (I’ve been known to say to a new student being introduced to my classroom “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. You must be cautious.” Sometimes I get a chuckle, sometimes an eyeroll, often I just get a blank stare.) Yeah, it had groundbreaking effects for it’s time. But the I just don’t get the fawning adulation it gets. Last week I watched _Labyrinth_ on Netflix. I’ve heard much about it ove the years and have always liked Bowie so I thought I’d give it a shot. My God, what a waste of time. Stupid story with bad acting. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/243 "2021-10-14T19:33:00Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Eh, that’s just running through cue cards - with one or two words on them. The Love, Actually cue card thing was writing really romantic speech with random music playing, which would make an angry lover swoon. Tangentially related at best. Didn’t make me swoon. Made me want to projectile vomit. I _hated_ that movie. Such a pile of crap. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/244 "2021-10-14T20:07:58Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > I’ll call it awful. It takes a protagonist with great dreams to travel the world and imagination to be an innovative argument, saddles him with a failing family business, townie wife, and a gaggle of kids he clearly didn’t want, and the sends the inept angel Clarance to guilt-trip him into believing that he’d he’d had the audacity to follow his dreams or not be born the town would have become an apocalyptic wasteland and nobody else would have been romantically attracted to Donna Reed. It’s like a not-very-good episode of _The Twilight Zone_ stretched to feature length. I watch _It’s a Wonderful Life_ but only paired with _You Can’t Take it With You_ that has Lionel Barrymore essentially playing the George Bailey role. Also directed by Frank Capra, and starring Jimmy Stewart as well it makes a nice partner with the later movie.I’ll occasionally start the series off with _Mark of the Vampire_ making a triptych of Lionel Barrymore films with him getting progressively less mobile as the evening wears on. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/245 "2021-10-14T21:59:09Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Showing Rosebud at the end is the equivalent of the psychologist’s explanation of Norman Bates at the end of _Psycho._ It’s there for those who need a simple explanation because they can’t understand the story in any other terms. > > Rosebud is an important symbol in Kane’s life, but if you think it’s supposed to explain everything, you aren’t grasping the movie, and ignoring the “just one piece of the puzzle” line. It’s a pure Mcguffin, and the main characteristic of a Mcguffin is that it’s ultimately not important. Obviously I disagree — I think the idea is that they make it _seem_ like it’s going to turn out to have been a MacGuffin, only to then reveal that it _was_, ultimately, important; and I‘d figure the Watsonian point of the “just one piece of the puzzle” line is that it’s as comforting for the investigators as a fox saying ‘sour grapes’, and I’d figure the Doylist point is to get various audience members to nod while _thinking_ the real point is being spelled out for them, only to then yank that _right out from under them_ — but rather than us just stating positions at each other, let me ask you this: You say it’s a false analogy to compare **Kane** to a murder mystery. Fair enough; I’ve seen other types of stories that end on the same note, but let me discard those as well. Instead, imagine I sought out your advice on writing a script that’s a lot like **Kane** , but with one twist: _Given that Kane was a multifaceted character, with a last-word MacGuffin that was just one more puzzle piece instead of the key to understanding him,_ I say, as if I’ve bought in to what you’re selling, _I want to write about someone who only SEEMS to be like that: he makes seemingly-inconsistent decisions that sometimes lead to dizzying heights and sometimes lead to catastrophic lows, and folks discuss possible reasons why someone who seems so amazingly complex did this or that — and the one thing they wind up agreeing on is that we of course wouldn’t be able to explain all of it in terms of one simple thing — but then, as you say WASN’T the case with Kane, we do a BIG REVEAL at the end to show that, ha, no, THIS time, that WAS true! That’s my twist-ending idea: an explanation you’d say is the OPPOSITE of Kane!_ How do you figure I could get that idea across on film? ---
**Author:** ![peedin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peedin/32/14095_2.png) [@peedin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peedin)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/246 "2021-10-14T22:13:22Z")
> [@Seanette](#): > > Blasphemy alert: “Citizen Kane” was one of the most tedious slogs I’ve ever tried to watch. Incredibly boring. I hate that movie. And my undergrad degree is in cinema. Imagine how many times I had to sit through that. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2021, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/247 "2021-10-14T22:25:21Z")
_Mank, RKO 281_. Have any movies had as many non-documentaries made about them as _Citizen Kane?_ ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/248 "2021-10-15T00:19:58Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > **Saving Private Ryan** > > **INCREDIBLE** opening scene but the moment the D-Day landing ends you can turn it off. The rest of the movie is like a really mediocre 70’s WW2 movie just done with a higher budget. Terrible dialog, idiotic plot, and way too damn long. Incredible opening scene? That’s what people remember, but I’ll quote William Goldman’s take on the movie: _Saving Private Ryan begins, as I’m sure everyone has told you, with an incredible battle sequence. Maybe that was true for them, but the version I saw sure began differently: a fifteen-second shot of Old Glory a-wavin’ in the wind. With Copland-like music in the background. Even John Wayne would have been embarrassed to start a movie that way. Hearts and flowers, God bless America, all that awful stuff. Today, only the Farrellys could get away with something like that._ _Then there follows a weird sequence which I have sub-titled “The Man With the Big-Boobed Girls.” And I am not being facetious. This old guy lumbers around someplace, we don’t know where, and behind him are a bunch of Norman Rockwell types, but all I can concentrate on are these big¬boobed girls who are tagging along. Then we find that we’re in a cemetery, and a shot of a flag tells us France. Lots of crosses. He kneels, at a particular cross, weeps, some of the family run to him, the big-boobed ones hanging back._ _Then a long shot of his moist eyes and as the camera moves slowly into a close up of those eyes, we know this much: we are going into flashback now._ _The story that has moved this old man is about to be told._ _And now we are into the battle sequence._ ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/249 "2021-10-15T01:32:50Z")
I wonder if it’s one of those “you had to be there” things. I saw the original Star Wars the weekend it opened, without knowing anything about it. I was blown away. But when I see it now, it doesn’t seem so impressive. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/250 "2021-10-15T01:54:23Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > I found the entire _Matrix_ franchise to be thoroughly intolerable. This is what I came in to say. Except that the first one was so horrible that I never watched the others. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/251 "2021-10-15T02:29:25Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > I wonder if it’s one of those “you had to be there” things. I saw the original Star Wars the weekend it opened, without knowing anything about it. I was blown away. But when I see it now, it doesn’t seem so impressive. I think the best comparison is to look at the visual effects of original Star Trek series and then comparing to them to the visual effects of the first Star Wars film. It’s no wonder Star Wars became so iconic and when Rodenberry went to make Star Trek films he had to upgrade the visuals in order to compete. And now there so many movies made with special effects that the first Star Wars film almost feels as dated as Star Trek did after it came out. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/252 "2021-10-15T02:39:58Z")
No. I was too young for that and my daughter (who’s 23) was way too young for that, and she also loves Star Wars - the originals. The new ones are divisive but the older ones are at least liked. ---
**Author:** ![tricoteuse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tricoteuse/32/4334_2.png) [@tricoteuse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tricoteuse)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/253 "2021-10-15T14:19:16Z")
I’m another one who was blown away by the original Star Wars. I was 11 and super into space stuff so it pushed all the right buttons for me. We’d never seen a movie like that. Other space movies and TV shows were either comedies, or just spy shows or soap operas In SPAAAAAACE! It had action, and cool spaceships, and aliens who weren’t just guys in spandex outfits with capes and makeup, and lightsabers, Plus Mark Hamill 😍 Unfortunately I worked at Toys R Us when Phantom Menace came out. I refused to see any of the new movies because I was sick of them before they even happened. My ex husband never saw any of the Star Wars movies until he was in his 20s and he loves them. He doesn’t even hate the prequels 🤪 ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/254 "2021-10-15T16:21:58Z")
> [@ParallelLines](#): > > I’ll also toss in Top Gun. Iconic, yes, but from any rational POV Maverick shouldn’t be teaching, he should be in the stockade forever, roughly. And even if somehow you feel that his heroics at the end justify his GETTING HIS BEST FRIEND KILLED, his is NOT the example you want to be providing to future defenders. The story is weak, the love story is even weaker, and other than looking cool (by the standards of the day) it’s endless 'Murkia, F\*\*\* Yeah despite being some of the worst and most ineffectual people from the top down. All of that, plus the flying scenes were terrible. > [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](#): > > I recently saw **Network** for the first time. How it could have taken me this long to get around to watching it I don’t know but wow, what an unpleasant surprise. To start with, I had no idea it was a (dark) comedy. I can remember when it won awards and have seen the “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore” scene umpteen times and from that, I guess, thought it was high drama. Nope. _Network_ was brilliant when it came out. I think the problem is that the real world has caught up to it. _Network_ was made back in the era of Walter Cronkite, when news was serious and anchormen were trusted icons. The news program depicted within the film was satire bordering on blasphemy. Now that we have a couple decades of reality TV and 24-hour tabloid news under our belts, Howard Beale looks downright respectable. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/255 "2021-10-15T18:11:53Z")
A lot of Avatar content in this thread. My question, not having watched the entire thing is: Why would it have been neccessary to wipe out the tree people? If Earth wanted to mine the ore, what could the natives have done to stop them? What was their weaponry? ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/256 "2021-10-15T18:32:50Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > Yes. Recall that the producers created a pioneering internet-based campaign which fooled a lot of gullible people here in Baltimore. They got Stan Stovall, a prominent local newscaster, to take part, reading an account straight-faced. For me, this is the true legacy of BWP. And I actually enjoyed the movie for what it was. I haven’t watched it since it was in the theaters but I didn’t regret seeing it. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/257 "2021-10-15T18:36:35Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > If Earth wanted to mine the ore, what could the natives have done to stop them? What was their weaponry? Bows, spears, and USB-enabled jungle cats. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/258 "2021-10-15T22:44:53Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > USB-enabled jungle cats. And USB-enabled…dragons? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/259 "2021-10-15T22:46:34Z")
Pterodactyls is closer, I think. ---
**Author:** ![icon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c6cbf5/32.png) [@icon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/icon)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2021, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285/260 "2021-10-15T23:39:49Z")
I know a lot of people are commenting on the special effects, which were indeed spectacular, but one of the things that Star Wars did was give the whole thing a sense of being worn and used. Up to that point, space was mostly shinny, and so was the future. But by aging things, people were able to feel that they could be the protagonist. They did not have to be a scientist, or members of an elite force, or whatever, to be in space, or in the future (thought yeah, it is technically a long time ago…). So although the effects were amazing, the way they were used really changed how Science Fiction and space were done as a genre. `//i\\` [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iconic-but-awful/952285.md?page=14)