Why are there no good dinosaur films?

Post by slg » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 7:45 PM UTC

4gotunameagain wrote: post #440

slg wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were disappointed because they wanted just another rehash of The Matrix, but why do that when The Matrix already exists? The more interesting idea is to explore why people wanted another rehash of The Matrix, so the movie is about that instead.

I disagree. Nothing of value could be added through the contemporary lens. So leave it at that, no need for a new cash grab. It's not like Warner Bros is poor anyway..

Post by olddustytrail » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 8:25 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #402

olddustytrail wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you are referring to The Council of Elrond, I think perhaps you're misremembering. The only characters who speak at length at the Council are Glóin, Elrond (whose account is mostly skipped over), Boromir, Gandalf (the longest account), Aragorn, Frodo and Bilbo. All of these are previously known characters except Boromir and he is certainly a major character. Plus they all add either new backstory about the r…

Glóin is Gimli's father, but it's true that he does really only appear in that chapter (if you've not read the Hobbit, you won't know much about him). Afterwards, though, Gimli travels with the Fellowship. Tolkien could have (and I believe in his notes he has versions) written the entire council, but he elides the parts that are "told elsewhere" - Bilbo, much of Gandalf and Elrond, and anything directly already told…

Post by MengerSponge » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 8:44 PM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #411

fwip wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the same way LotR is not an allegory for WW1, but it's difficult to miss the connections, whether Tolkien intentionally placed them there, or simply because those themes were something he felt deeply about.

In both cases the artists were, as one would say, working through some stuff...

Post by MattGrommes » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 8:51 PM UTC

wishfish wrote: post #180

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…

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…

Post by jiggawatts » Tue, Jul 08, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

trq01758 wrote: post #286

doubleg72 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t think lotr used cgi

Andy Serkis was great, but not as good at shape-shifting. For LOTR renderfarm WETA bought a bunch of SGI 1200 dual core Pentium III 700MHz servers with 1GB RAM, 9 GB SCSI disks all running RedHat Linux. I've read at some point they had 192 SGI 1100 and 1200 servers working.