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Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

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Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#291

Post by RobertMiller »

mrslave wrote: post #121
birksherty wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watch using headphones and dialogues are still difficult to hear. Now I use vlc method to make them audible. https://lifehacker.com/how-to-fix-movies-that-are-really-qui...

How to do this in mpv? Then we'll automate it with a short shell script!

There are a few ffmpeg filters you can use with mpv to get this effect, though you may have to fiddle with their options to get what you want. acompressor or dynaudnorm might be what you're looking for.

https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#acompressor

https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#dynaudnorm

To use them with mpv you'd do something like `mpv --af=lavfi="[dynaudnorm=param1=value1:param2=value2:param3=value3]" ...`

(make sure the first parameter is preceded by a '=', not a ':' because reasons)

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#292

Post by dragontamer »

dudul wrote: post #284
dionidium wrote: post #248

It's not a coincidence that all the main characters featured in this video are women. The main thing the filmmakers are trying to show is that these are girl-bosses who can do anything men can do (and more) and it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have…

You can also note a parallel with female villains. Yeah they're bad, but you know, it's not their fault. They had such a tough life. And really are they that bad? And don't hear me wrong. I do love fleshed out bad guys/gals. I do want deep bad characters, but when the backstory can always be summarized with "she went through tough time because of bad men, so now yeah she's kind of bad" it doesn't really count.

> You can also note a parallel with female villains. Yeah they're bad, but you know, it's not their fault. They had such a tough life. And really are they that bad?

Popular Hollywood female villains, maybe.

My favorite female villains are Granny Goodness and Amanda Waller from DC Comics.

Granny Goodness runs an orphanage for Apokolips. On the surface, she's a sweet old lady who recruits superheroines into Darkseid's machinations. But when the going gets tough, she pulls out her super-powers to punish any orphan who goes against her will.

There's no "terrible backstory" or "not her fault" going on here. Granny Goodness is 100% loyal to the "evil new gods" of Apokolips and is incredibly competent at her role in raising new villains for the evil gods.

--------

Amanda Waller is gonna plant a bomb in your head and force you to do what she wants. Why? Cause that's what she does. She's the official government's response to counteract the rise of superheroes / metahumans (Superman / Flash / etc. etc.), and feverishly works to blackmail any prisoner into building her super team.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#293

Post by RobertMiller »

dionidium wrote: post #266
RobertMiller wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic action movies of the 80s often had very flat good-at-everything male heroes. What weaknesses does John McClain ever show in Die Hard? Vulnerability to walking barefoot on broken glass I guess, not much. There are obviously exceptions, but generally action movies don't have very interesting characters.

He's presented as a sad-sack alcoholic at the start of the movie!

I guess I missed the alcoholism, I don't recall that. I remember he starts the movie with a bad relationship with his wife, but that's so he can win her back in the end with his counter-terrorism prowess (lol), not with any real character development that I remember.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#295

Post by hackerfromthefu »

Beldin wrote: post #27
watwut wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Superman, spiderman, hluk, any of these got skills by accident. Even karate kid which shown some training, shown imaginary low effort low time investment training. The typical action movie of my youth had guys winning all the fights for no reason other then that they are awesome. Audiences loved it. The past movies had enough of pure power fantasy or other "just gonna win" in it for the whole generation to drawn…

> Even karate kid which shown some training, shown imaginary low effort low time investment training. The point of his training is that the moves have completely become muscle memory/second nature. I have no clue how long that would take, but it would be significantly more than "low time investment". Note also that (1) he claimed to have had karate training before; (2) after hebuilds up the needed muscle memory, trai…

2-3 years of regular training is a good guideline for the movements to become autonomic in real-time situations with fluent synchrony situational context, for someone reasonably coordinated at the start.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#297

Post by sandworm101 »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #270
dionidium wrote: post #248

It's not a coincidence that all the main characters featured in this video are women. The main thing the filmmakers are trying to show is that these are girl-bosses who can do anything men can do (and more) and it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have…

I think captain marvel is an interesting one on this note. It is a problem in recent films that writers want to overpower women to make things fair, and they do a disservice to the women by doing so. Captain marvel seems to address this directly and in a more mature way. Her character does start weak. She is shown losing repeated to her officer in physical fights and feeling inferior. Later she becomes the most power…

A character who is put down, becomes angry, then becomes powerful and carries that anger forward. Yawn. That is the background of about half of comic characters. Compare Captain America. He was week and abused, became powerful, but actively decides not to carry baggage. It is a fish-out-of-water character that has to constantly reconcile ideology with army-inspired pragmatism and loyalty. And he has a foil (Iron Man). That's a balanced character that I can like. Captain Marvel is a hyperbolic one-sided character. Those Superman characters are doomed to be boring. Batman-like characters with complex stories are unpredictable and therefore have the potential to be interesting. Gender has nothing to do with Captain Marvel's fundamental problems.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#298

Post by RobertMiller »

dudul wrote: post #284
dionidium wrote: post #248

It's not a coincidence that all the main characters featured in this video are women. The main thing the filmmakers are trying to show is that these are girl-bosses who can do anything men can do (and more) and it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have…

You can also note a parallel with female villains. Yeah they're bad, but you know, it's not their fault. They had such a tough life. And really are they that bad? And don't hear me wrong. I do love fleshed out bad guys/gals. I do want deep bad characters, but when the backstory can always be summarized with "she went through tough time because of bad men, so now yeah she's kind of bad" it doesn't really count.

> Yeah they're bad, but you know, it's not their fault. They had such a tough life. And really are they that bad?

A little bit of that can make for a good villain I think. Villains who were truly victims earlier in life, or have a lot of seemingly rational rhetoric to back up their position. But usually there's a point where the audience is told that yes, they really are bad, despite their background or arguments.

Ma-Ma in Dredd or Solidus in MGS2 are examples that come to mind. Ma-Ma is a heavily scarred ex-prostitute and drug addict, but shamelessly has people tortured to death and thinks little of condemning thousands of innocents to death to protect herself. Solidus talks about taking the country back from the censorious AIs that control discourse and rig elections, but he's also a former warlord who trained child soldiers and has no remorse about it.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#299

Post by ComradePhil »

bendergender wrote: post #243
ComradePhil wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Why are adults enjoying things clearly meant for kids? There are many potential reasons. Abnegation, power fantasy, sense pleasure, social cohesion (being able to discuss with your peers what's in the zeitgeist). I could spend a paragraph on each of these and why they are reasonable for adults. Your attitude is narrow minded, and you've resorted to insults to try to make your point on several occasions, rather than…

No post body was provided.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#300

Post by ReactiveJelly »

dionidium wrote: post #248

It's not a coincidence that all the main characters featured in this video are women. The main thing the filmmakers are trying to show is that these are girl-bosses who can do anything men can do (and more) and it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have…

Have you seen the feminist reading of Mad Max: Fury Road?

You might find it interesting. YouTube is not loading for me, but it's called "The avenging feminine": https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/9jzuci/bringing...

My favorite part is something the essayist points out about the mothers [1] in Fury Road: They help in every fight. They shoot, they reload guns, they operate bolt cutters, they deny guns to enemies, they assist with _any_ light work that the buff action hero and heroine are too busy to do. And if there's nothing to do, they take cover without being asked.

The mothers don't start weak and become strong, the movie isn't about that. In fact I don't think anyone in the movie gains strength. Nux has a heel-face turn, but that's all I remember for character change.

Just because they're _side_ characters doesn't mean they _aren't_ characters. There's no scene (that I recall) where you have to ask, "What are the non-combatants doing right now? Standing and watching?"

And even though they're still physically weak at the end of the movie, their actions still matter. The movie doesn't imply there's anything wrong with weakness. Even if they are like pawns on a chessboard, every pawn still matters. I think that's very empowering.

[1] I think only one of them is pregnant, but they are all escaped slaves, so they're not in shape for direct combat.

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