I think it went:
“This movie is gonna suck and bomb in the box office”
then,
“This move is amazing and is breaking all the records”
then,
“That movie sucked and I don’t know why people liked it.”
My own personal opinion is that this year’s The Descendants is going to quickly hit this heap.
Right now, it has all the Oscar buzz, and I will not be surprised if it gets nominated, but I doubt this is a film people will be raving about in next few years (or even the next few months) after the initial glow.
I thought the opening battle of Saving Private Ryan was an amazing piece of film. But I wouldn’t watch the rest of it again. Goodfellas I watch every time I catch it channel surfing.
Spielberg loves jerking our emotions around and is quite masterful at it. But outside of Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark, I don’t rewatch his stuff. Schindler’s List was a very important film because the subject matter needs to be out there, and is a good use of Spielberg’s talents, but I will not be able to watch that horror again.
The only movie mentioned so far in this thread I really disliked was Dances With Wolves, and it’s primarily just because it’s boring.
Saving Private Ryan I’ll echo sentiments that it’s good the first time (especially the depiction of the Normandy landings) but it’s actually not that compelling a movie story wise for the rest of the film. (I can point to at least 10 WWII movies filmed in the 60s and 70s that had stronger end-to-end story and were more captivating throughout.)
I’ve always liked Forrest Gump, I think a lot of the backlash against it is because most people felt that it was good but that it didn’t deserve Best Picture, especially since Pulp Fiction is a better movie and lost out on Best Picture to Forrest Gump.
I think if* Forrest Gump* had come out a year before or a year after it would have won Best Picture against a non-Pulp Fiction movie and there would have been little backlash against it.
I mean hell, the very next year *Braveheart *won Best Picture and while I love that movie as a cheesy medieval slugfest it is not a great film. I put it in the category of “guilty pleasures” like Commando and Escape From New York, it’s really far worse that Braveheart won an Academy Award for Best Picture than Forrest Gump winning it. I think the reason you don’t hear much backlash on that is primarily because Braveheart wasn’t going up against a very strong lineup like Forrest Gump (which beat out both Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption.)
Getting off topic but the worst thing about Braveheart (and again, I enjoy the movie) is how it depicted medeival warfare and specifically the actual battles William Wallace fought in. One of Wallace’s biggest victories was because of his strategic use of terrain, at Stirling Bridge by letting part of the English force cross and then attacking, he effectively locked much of the English army out of the battle because the narrow bridge prevented them from being able to effectively cross, and the portion of the army that had already made it over was cut off from aid and flanked.
In the movie the battle is depicted as having occurred on a flat field with both sides lining up in long parallel lines and then running into each other full force and mindlessly hacking at each other with swords fro 10 minutes until the English broke and fled. That’s also how every other battle in the movie is depicted.
In the 13th century they may not have had most of the finer things we have now, but these weren’t idiots when it came to warfare. Leaders in the 13th century that won battles did so because they understood tactics, they understood combined arms, utilizing terrain, maneuvers, properly flanking and protecting your flank. In the movie its more a portrayal of Scots being more brutal 1v1 so they were just able to overpower the physically weaker English by swinging their swords harder and faster.
Hell yes. Finally people are starting to hate on that movie.
What a trite collection of lame cliche characters, and even lamer people who “got it”.
The superficial, egocentric real estate agent, the moody teenager, the gay-hating father who is really gay himself. And that last one was revealed after the most cringeworthy contrived shadow-illusion thing. How anything in this cliche-fest could be labelled as deep is beyond me.
In many cases the backlash is because the “hated” move won an Oscar and a beloved movie didn’t.
For example, Forrest Gump got so much backlash largely because it beat out Pulp Fiction and Shawshank Redemption for Best Picture.
Dances With Wolves beat Goodfellas.
As already noted, Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan, which outraged many.
Crash beat Brokeback Mountain, which many loved passionately.
While I agree that Forrest Gump and Crash didn’t deserve their Oscars, I can also see that the intensity of the criticism of those movies is partly a function of sour grapes.
I don’t think BBM was that great. Oh, they finally made a romantic movie about guy guys!! That does not a great movie make. Maybe they need a category for “groundbreaking” subject matter.
By “backlash”, are you referring to negative commentary by the Internet hordes after a movie achieves critical and commercial success? If so, then the answer to the OPs questions is “every single movie ever made” and the greater the critical and commercial success, the greater the backlash.
The reason? At the end of the day, it’s just a freakin movie. A bunch of people spent a lot of money to tell a story. It may be entertaining and enjoyable and visually interesting. But at the end of the day, it’s just a movie, made by a bunch of people looking to make a lot more money. So whenever these actors and producers and directors and critics start getting too full of themselves about what a great work of art they created, people have a natural tendency to want to take them down a peg.
Arrrrgh.. Gay guys. Not guy guys. Not Lady Gaga, either.
And if those movies won, they would get just as much shit.
I think I’m the only person who liked that movie. I thought it was brilliant.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan, and I thought LiT hit it just right. Loved that movie!
Here is the reason for the backlash:
Titanic - Biggest chick film of all time.
Avatar - Visually groundbreaking, but nothing really new from a storytelling perspective.
Silence of the Lambs - I didn’t know there was any backlash against this film. Is it because of the “mangina” scene?
American Beauty - I can see how this tale of alienation and failed expectations in suburban America can be perceived as a condescending critique from elitist Hollywood types.
Lost In Translation - I can see how this tale of alienation and failed expectations might not do it for some people.
Pulp Fiction - The interblogs are REALLY going to support Tarantino winning an Oscar?
The Hurt Locker - I liked Green Zone much better
Saving Private Ryan - Fuck you, SPR kicks ass.
Forrest Gump - The point of this film is NOT just float through life all retarded and shit will just work out.
Braveheart - People hate Mel Gibson now. Also offensive to history nerds.
Fight Club - Can be a bit too Gen-X-y philosophical for it’s own good.
Little Miss Sunshine
Juno
Sideways
Garden State
These films I would describe as “indie Sundance dramadies”. I’ve gone over this at length before, but there seems to be this very formulaic approach (Michael Cera - Check, Zach Braff indie alt rock adult alternative singer songwriter soundtrack - check, plot unresolved ending - check, more “ironic” than actually “ha ha” funny - check, etc etc). Not that it makes them “bad” films.
How about the backlash against the Twilight movies.
To me that largely seems to be fueled by men who feel threatened by and jealous of the way women react to it(similar to Titanic) as well as a significant number of women upset that so many teen and twentysomething females seem to react so positively towards a fairly regressive(from some POVs) movie.
Try reading my entire post before you start taking it out of context. Neither of the films you mention could in any way been seen as blockbusters either at the box office or otherwise.
The gays got all into a frothing spazz because they wrongly thought Gumb was gay and his character’s portrayal as a serial killer who skinned his victims was somehow “unfair” and “cruel” to the gays at large. This despite no evidence that Gumb was straight/gay/asexual. And when the gays had worked themselves into a fine spazz this of course brought out the right wing bigots to counter protest against the gays.
They both pissed me off because their lame ass protests in front of the theater made me 20 minutes late to re-seeing the movie for the 4th time and thus through off my whole seduction schedule for that day.
On behalf of the gays, I’m sorry for what they did to your seduction schedule that day. (Not that I’m one of the gays; I just figured you were overdue an apology).
Silence of the Lambs as a seduction movie? :dubious:
Seriously, dude, when Evil Captor is telling you that your mixing of captivity stories and romance is icky, you need to pay attention :).