I erased the rest of that movie from my brain.
I always felt that while the Star Wars prequels suck spunk out of a dead toad’s funky cloaca, the lightsabre fight scenes are superb, and often breathtaking. I’d just cut everything out and have the whole series compressed into 20 minutes of Jedi leaping around and kicking ass.
The landing scene in Saving Private Ryan is rather impressive on its own but unfortunately it’s part of an incredibly horrible movie.
[Ben Affleck as Himself]
You’re like a child. What’ve I been telling you? You gotta do the safe picture. Then you can do the art picture. But then sometimes you gotta do the payback picture because your friend says you owe him.
[/BAAH]
For me it was the exact opposite. I thought the “look how amazing this stuff is” scenes were nothing special…as was the rest of the movie.
However, the word “lenscap” nearly had me peeing in my pants with hilarity.
-Joe
Noooo, there’s another. The charge of the giant evil elephants. Why? Because! GIANT ELEPHANTS! Name another movie with them!
Bulletproof Monk: Chow’s funny movements in the kitchen. Just amazing. Nothing to do with the story, but still amazing.
Snow Day. Emannuelle Chiqui. 'Nuff said.
House of the Dead: Jürgen Prochnow was in this movie, and that was more than it deserved.
The Empire Strikes Back.
So let’s see…Jackson stole that idea from Lucas, who stole it from Tolkien, whom Jackson was adapting. Not QUITE self-referential enough to destroy the Earth, but close.
I thought Bad Boys 2 was mostly complete crap. But I really enjoyed one of the scenes because of a couple lines. I’m doing this from memory, so it might be a little off:
Haitan Bad Guy “Who are you?!”
Will Smith “I’m the Devil.”
The more I think about it, the less and less I feel that the line was actually in the movie. It seems a little out of place in such a “Blow Up EVERYTHING” movie.
I plan on stealing the line, I mean, paying Homage to this line, by having it said in a movie of my own.
Mmm… I’m not sure his reactions are consistant with that, but it’s probably as good an explanation as exists.
That one drove me up the wall too, until I looked it up. H.G. Wells’ estate wouldn’t sell the rights to Griffen, so the moviemakers were forced to improvise. Not that it makes it much better, but still.
I also liked the ending battle in the small, french town. It justseemed so real to me. There are no Rambo-like warriors who are invincible to bulletfire; people die left and right 'til there’s nobody left. Or the small tidbit where two soldiers (out of ammunition) throw their helmets at eachother. Or the american GI soothed to death by the German soldier.
Now, all that sappy, tearjerking stuff does absolutely nothing for me, but the actual action scenes seemed more real to me than any other war movie.
In Saving Private Ryan, for me, it was one little bit of the opening landing scene. There’s a shot of a soldier walking around the beach, obviously in shock, carrying his own dismembered arm. That particular shot will haunt me til the day I die, and I think it pretty-well encapsulates the violence of the rest of the film.
I realize that I may be opening a can of worms here, but like Jack Burton always says…what the hell.
So it isn’t at all possible that Jackson said “Hey, there are giant elephants in this book. They’re eye-catching! I’ll use them!” and that was it?
And where do you get that the walkers in Empire were meant to be elephants? Not saying you’re wrong, just curious how you decided that.
A TV documentary “Making of The Empire Srtikes Back” show that aired around the time the movie came out had a scene where the model-makers who came up with the walkers were viewing movies of elephants walking, so they could get an idea of the mechanics involved in creating a plausible-looking four-kneed machine.
I never got the idea that they were supposed to be elaphants, myself. But it was pretty clear that their motions/construction had been inspired by elephants.
Sorry, I think the film was way better than the comic. The author had no right to steal other dudes characters (like Alan Q) and turn them into drug addict travesties- and then bitch about the filmaker changing his 'art".
Not the the idea of Turn of the century superheroes from literature was even original with him. ( Philp jose Farmer.)
Actually I was just being flippant, for the most part, and trying to make the point that I suspect LUCAS got the idea for the Walkers from Tolkien. In other words, though some persons might accuse Jackson of being derivative in that scene, I think both he and GL were working from the same source.
(Though I don’t think Professor Tolkien envisioned the mumakil as being anywhere near as being as those in Mr. Jackson’s World o’ Fantasy trilogy. I always envisoned them as being perhaps 50% taller than modern elephants – say 15 feet high at the shoulder – mammoths, basically. The 10-story-tall oliphaunts from the movies were just silly.)
Communist. 
The comic had one major advantage that the film did not: it was actually interesting. The movie was just another generic special effects laden action flick with no more interesting subtext than a fireworks show. If I want nothing more than an interesting visual spectacle I’ll buy a kaleidoscope.
Alan Moore. I really can’t stand it when people don’t bother to even LEARN THE NAMES of the persons they are criticizing. Of course that’s just me and my writer fixation.
YMMV. I just think that if you’re going to adapt a story, you should try to remain faithful to its spirit and its plot – otherwise, what’s the point? The persons who were most likely to see LoEG were persons passionate about the comic book, and they were the ones most likely to be irked by pointless/sexist changes (making Quartermain the leader because, hey, Sean Connery has a dick) and disappointed by the change in tone and reduction in literacy. LoEG isn’t as egregious as, say, Catwoman, but it’s up there.
I think the most rending moment of that movie (and I can’t understand how people describe it as “30 minutes of an awesome D-Day scene followed by yawns”) is the medic dying, asking for his mother.
The Jewish guy getting knifed is hard to watch, too, but that seems more like a contrived movie scene.
I knew his name, just didn’t want to mention it. So how about the *pointless changes * and being *faithful to the spirit * of the original characters Moore stole? Sean Connery was the leader becuase fuck, dude- he’s Sean Connery. Peta Wilson just plain can’t carry off "being the leader’ when fucking SEAN CONNERY is on stage. Sorry.
Star Wars bad? Return of the King bad? Saving Private Ryan bad? I sentence everyone who has made such a ridiculous contention to watch “Manos: Hand of Fate” and “Plan Z From Outer Space” until you can recognize a bad movie when you see one.
Deconstruction. Same reason Moore based his Watchmen heroes on old Charlton Comics characters.