Disagree that the movie was about evil robots. The movie was about the 3 laws not being enough to ensure safety from amoral robots.
The movie was about Will Smith conquering his prejudice against robots - he’s the protagonist, and that’s the change he undergoes. I thought it was a wonderful twist on the sci-fi “robots are evil” crutch.
Okay, it’s been awhile since I saw Super Size Me, but I gotta step in and say: I seem to remember that the whole point of the experiment was that he was inspired by a lawsuit against McDonald’s which was thrown out of court, in part because of the statement by (someone…McDonald’s spokesperson, perhaps? Like I said, been awhile) that they indeed felt that McDonald’s food could be incorporated into a healthy diet of nothing but. So Morgan (? I think) decided to try it out, and consulted with nutritionists and doctors the whole time, and when they urged him to please try and choose healthier options like the salads, he did that and the results still ended up the same. I think it was a stupid thing to do, but only because it seriously just about friggin’ killed him. I also think it was important for people to see the physical ramifications of subsisting on nothing but crap for only 30 days. Once upon a time, a trip to McDonald’s was supposed to be a special treat. Now people eat there for one, two and three meals a day, every day, and then wonder why they feel like shite.
(from NailBunny, who herself has a tremendous weak spot for the satanic sausage egg mcmuffin)
At the time of the movies main events, the supers are all in hiding and are actually forbidden to use their powers. Syndrome’s actions aren’t attributed to discrimination by supers but simply to his bitterness over his rejection by Mr. Incredible when he was a boy.
He not only has “real talents”, but is extremely wealthy… he owns a private Island and has VERY cool toys on it.
So, IMO, his actions are simply a very big tantrum over perceived slights… after all he earned his rejection by endangering the lives of the people on the train, at the very least.
For once, I saw a villain that quite deservedly earned that name.
You do recall, don’t you, that the name of the restaurant in question was “Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Grill”? I can think of a couple of reasons that that particular investment might stick in his mind.
When a toddler brings a gun into preschool and shoots another toddler dead, one has to wonder, “Where are the parents?” In this case, the sole parent was working at DC’s ABG, through a welfare-to-work program. A very long commute from her house, she had to get up at the crack to ride the bus to work, which paid so little that she couldn’t afford to live anywhere excpet with the child’s uncle, who had a gun.
I think it is quite fine for an interviewer to ask the man whose name is on the restaurant what he thinks about how the working arangements contricuted, if only in tiny part to this tragic situation (one can not be 100% sure that the parent’s availability could have averted it). I didn’t like that scene because Moore deliberately broadsided Clark in a parking lot, and then after Clark sped off, he did a laughably piss-poor job of acting like the Man was keeping him down, but I think suggesting that the restaurant’s most visible stakeholder is not a legitimate interview subject on this matter is ludicrous.
The only ones with talents. Didn’t you SEE Syndrome’s Island fortress-lab? I WANT one of those hover-copter-saucers! If he’d just sold them to me and everyone else who wanted one, along with all the other high-tech gadgets he knew how to build without a single super-power to his name, he’s be a celebrated billionaire, the next Bill Gates.
Instead he uses it to pretend he’s a superhero.
Granted, The Incredibles isn’t as cohesive a film as Pixar’s other recent features, so the message isn’t as well-woven into the narrative as it is elsewhere. It’s your basic villain-tries-to-kill-the-do-gooders plot, which is enough for movie.
You mean apart from the scene a few minutes later where the camera lingers on the nameplate of the Sony stereo?
To be fair, in the 2000 version (as opposed to the 1971 version), Shaft is not “on the side of the law.” He’s an **ex-**cop turned PI.
The most blatant product placement ever was the extended commercial that was Castaway (and I don’t just mean the FedEx stuff). THe funniest was Josie and the Pussycats and Double Team–bwahahahahaha! the best moment in a fabulous movie.
I agree entirely. OTOH, and just to keep it in perspective, real life is full of situations where people just doing their jobs are the bad guys. You don’t need to research the history of Nazi Germany to find that.
If you are a Super-Size Me fan, a great companion piece is the documentary McLibel, about a libel case the McDonald’s brought against a group of activists in Britain for distributing this flier (I don’t recall if this is the case that inspired Spurlock). Most of the group backed down, but two didn’t, and the case dragged on for a few years. While the net judgement was in McDonald’s favor, one of the points on which McD’s lost was that the activists had libeled them by describing their food as unhealthy, despite their advertisements to the contrary. Here(PDF) is their post-trial flier, having removed only the portions the court felt they couldn’t disprove were libelous.
So should Dick Clark have fired her? If Ed Zotti’s kid stabbed another student at school, should Moore go yell at the CEO of the Chicago Reader?
You mean Dante’s Peak? It gets fun in the end though. Due to a collapsing heap of rocks, Pierce Brosnan gets stuck in his car. For 24 hours! And he couldn’t move a limb for all that time! I know I laughed.
As for Super size me, I don’t feel disappointed by the movie itself. I’ll gladly stand up for a man who makes an effort to give loud criticism to the fast food markets. What makes me disappointed is that people apparently needed that documentary, you’d asumme it was well known and understood that global companies don’t have your personal best in mind.
:rolleyes: Not true in the least, JohnT. Read Dio’s post again. Hell, read it ten times. It appears you need that.
Agreed on all counts.
For reasons already mentioned: The Cook, the thief, his wife and her lover–it made me want to throw up, I fast-forwarded so I wouldn’t; Moulin Rouge–so irritating and obnoxious that I had to hit that ffw’d button again; Dead Poets Society–stupid story and characters; the Life of David Gale–total waste of time, unbelievable plot.
I thought it was more about a robot taking the Three Laws a little too seriously and deciding it knew better than humans what is good for humans. An idea not central to Asimov’s robot fiction, but one he did explore (though reaching entirely different conclusions about its implications) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_robotics#Zeroth_Law_added.
Stigmata was such a piece of shit that it inspired one of my favorite negative reviews from Roger Ebert. I was in high school at the time, and not Catholic, and even I could see how idiotic it was.
Paraphrased:
“The gospel of St. Thomas says that churchs are unnecessary! Think of what this means for the Church!”
Omigod! People who don’t believe churches and pageantry and hierarchy are needed? What if they call themselves…Quakers?
It’s almost as dumb as the episode of Sliders where Our Heroes are in a world where America is a totalitarian state, turned into such by President J. Edgar Hoover. They happen to acquire, on CD-ROM, the only remaining copy of the U.S. Constitution, and use it to bargain with the FBI for the freedom of one of them, I forget which one. Like, the rulers are really going to be afraid it’ll undermine the regime if people can read the Constitution!
People love having information spoonfed to them, even when it’s things they should already know or if it’s entirely false. They particularly enjoy it when it reinforces their own biases. Some local folks here at the office share a Netflix account, and rented the thing, and I heard them talking about it - you know what they got from it?
Perhaps the message that people need to take responsibility for their own eating? Nope.
“McDonald’s Food is Deadly Dangerous.” “McDonalds = Bad.”
Simplest concepts.
Dude, seriously, just because you know a couple of retards doesn’t mean that a movie they didn’t fully understand is not fully understandable. Who’s being spoonfed now? someone who actually sees a movie and makes up their own mind about it? or someone who absorbs the impressions overhead from a couple a retards and takes at as gospel? who’s just reinforcing their own biases now?
Seriously dude. These threads always draw some “I haven’t seen it but I know it’s bad” kneejerker out of the woodwork, but it never goes well for them. It’s an indefensible position. Do yourself a favor and limit your condemnation to movies you’ve seen. It’s mildly interesting to hear you explain why you don’t want to see a movie, but it’s making nobody look bad but you to hear you try to convince others who’ve seen the movie of what it’s *really *about, and how you’re the only one in the room smart enough to be immune to its “spoonfeeding.”