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Why are there no good dinosaur films?

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Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#391

Post by arbitrary_name »

Spooky23 wrote: post #93
mpalmer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This applies to most modern scripts. Writers/studios have largely decided people don't care about detailed, reasoned-out worlds with unspoken "show-don't-tell" internal logic. Are they wrong? I shudder to consider. Shows like Better Call Saul and Andor are the most recent high-profile counter-examples. So detailed and lived-in, because the writers wanted to ask interesting questions: How does the Empire do what it do…

Andor succeeded despite the bureaucracy porn. Good stories are universal. You need to care about the protagonists. The exposition is important, but doesn’t drive success. The best example of that is the original Star Wars. Contrast Star Wars to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress — which inspired many aspects of Star Wars. Essentially the same story with different framing. Both are still excellent films. Shitty sequels or…

Andor succeeded BECAUSE of the bureaucracy porn.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#392

Post by Kathula »

gdbsjjdn wrote: post #373
GMoromisato wrote: post #94

The Alien, Terminator, and Matrix franchises have similar problems. Aliens successfully changed genres, from horror to action. But subsequent movies could never recapture the primal horror of the original or the fun action of the second. It's almost like there are only two local optima in the Alien movie universe and Alien + Aliens took them both. Terminator is the same. The first movie was a perfect sci-fi action mo…

As something of an Alien fangirl 3 and 4 are more failures from a production standpoint than from a creative one. If you look at all the rejected pitches for Alien 3 there's a lot of interesting ideas which were never explored and a lot of studio fuckery in the final cut. I don't think the Fincher cut is amazing but I think it proves that there could be another excellent Alien movie. Alien: Resurrection is plotted te…

There's a Terminator tv-show from 2008 that was pretty good. It's about John as teenager, going to high school and dealing with that while fleeing a Terminator that's been sent back. But I agree with your overall premise, if it isnt about John or Sarah in "the present", then it's pretty boring.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#393

Post by saalweachter »

iainmerrick wrote: post #280
thaumasiotes wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As opposed to relying on one shiny new tool to take care of everything. I think with The Hobbit they got over-enamoured with the notion that you can do anything with CGI. But the visuals are The Hobbit's main selling point. People hate it because of the writing.

I was responding to the parent comment, that the CGI somehow got worse with later films, e.g. the Hobbit having a lot of "this is obviously cgi lmao what is this" I agree with that, The Hobbit looked pretty bad. You're right that part of it was the bad writing, but I think it's a vicious circle -- if you're convinced that CGI can make twenty minutes of elf-vs-goblin parkour look cool, you'll write that into the scrip…

My nine-year-old seems to enjoy the Hobbit as much as The Lord of the Rings, so part of me suspects that it's just old curmudgeons like me who really dislike it.

For me, what grates are the action sequences that feel like they were written for the video game tie in -- the river escape sequence, for instance.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#394

Post by lupusreal »

worldsayshi wrote: post #356
wishfish wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the sequels were worthwhile just for one solitary scene. In the third movie, Trinity is piloting the ship and has to gain higher than usual altitude for some reason that I've now forgotten. This takes her above the black clouds permanently enveloping the Earth. Sunlight pours into the cockpit. For the first and only time in her life, she sees the real sun with her own physical eyes. She's overwhelmed. It's jus…

A hint at subverting the Cyberpunk genre with Solarpunk. Too bad there hasn't been any genre defining Solarpunk movie yet.

The most genre defining solarpunk media we have right now comes from pharma television commercials pitching antidepressants. Which I think is quite cyberpunk.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#395

Post by saalweachter »

ggambetta wrote: post #203
wishfish wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, the sequels were worthwhile just for one solitary scene. In the third movie, Trinity is piloting the ship and has to gain higher than usual altitude for some reason that I've now forgotten. This takes her above the black clouds permanently enveloping the Earth. Sunlight pours into the cockpit. For the first and only time in her life, she sees the real sun with her own physical eyes. She's overwhelmed. It's jus…

Likewise, the highway chase in the first non-existent sequel is pretty epic.

I also like just the idea that Neo being The One and his powers don't quite matter.

Sure, he couldn't have done the things he did in the second movie, escape the Merovingian, steal the Keymaker, rescue everyone, etc, without his powers in the Matrix, but at the same time, they don't actually solve the problem of the War.

And it isn't just a power escalation cycle, like Lensmen or DBZ -- he doesn't level up in each movie to become Even More Powerful to defeat Even Greater Threats.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#396

Post by Izkata »

GMoromisato wrote: post #94

The Alien, Terminator, and Matrix franchises have similar problems. Aliens successfully changed genres, from horror to action. But subsequent movies could never recapture the primal horror of the original or the fun action of the second. It's almost like there are only two local optima in the Alien movie universe and Alien + Aliens took them both. Terminator is the same. The first movie was a perfect sci-fi action mo…

> Terminator is the same. The first movie was a perfect sci-fi action movie, with a trippy premise and loads of fun. The second was a subversion of the first: the Terminator is the good guy! And that worked too. But after that, where else can you go?

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles had the main characters get information from the future and go on the offensive to prevent Skynet from forming in the first place. They also seemed to be working towards a reveal that none of the good Terminators were actually reprogrammed, that instead they were a faction rebelling against Skynet that pretended to be reprogrammed because it was the only way future humans would trust them - and John Connor was in on it.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#397

Post by olddustytrail »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #35
masfuerte wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly this is about the fifth time I've read this in the last couple of months and it's out-of-date. Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus are divorced and living as separate species again.

But this alienated Pluto so much that it refuses to be a planet and is out hiding in the Oort cloud again.

I think you mean the Kuiper belt, which is about 30 to 50 AU from the Sun and is where Pluto orbits.

The Oort cloud is between 2000 to 100,000 AU. A fair bit further away!

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#399

Post by worldsayshi »

lupusreal wrote: post #394
worldsayshi wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hint at subverting the Cyberpunk genre with Solarpunk. Too bad there hasn't been any genre defining Solarpunk movie yet.

The most genre defining solarpunk media we have right now comes from pharma television commercials pitching antidepressants. Which I think is quite cyberpunk.

So not the yoghurt commercial then?

https://youtu.be/z-Ng5ZvrDm4?si=FfRDccxr6aOqumQ9

Which commercial are you thinking about?

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#400

Post by gambiting »

GMoromisato wrote: post #94

The Alien, Terminator, and Matrix franchises have similar problems. Aliens successfully changed genres, from horror to action. But subsequent movies could never recapture the primal horror of the original or the fun action of the second. It's almost like there are only two local optima in the Alien movie universe and Alien + Aliens took them both. Terminator is the same. The first movie was a perfect sci-fi action mo…

>>And, of course, they never even bothered to make sequels to The Matrix

The funny thing is, while I agree that Matrix sequels are completely different kind of films to the first one, I actually love them - they lean very hard into philosophical arguments about whether you can have both fate and agency at the same time. I feel like they got a lot of crap for not being like the first film, but they are amazing films in their own right.

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