Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are there no good dinosaur films?

briannazigler.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 485 posts

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#461

Post by gamblor956 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #172
vkou wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't dwell on it, but Tolkien was incredibly meticulous about consistency, distances, travel times, how politics works in his universe, and logistics. And the films, for the most part, stuck very close to the source material. ... And then you get The Hobbit.

> And the films, for the most part, stuck very close to the source material. Although when they depart, they swung for the fences. Multiple times Peter Jackson felt the need to throw out Tolkien's central theme (that the Ring isn't all powerful, and there are stronger forces like virtue or friendship), just to get cheap drama when characters act out of character under the influence of the Ring. It was really aggravat…

Tolkien's central theme (that the Ring isn't all powerful, and there are stronger forces like virtue or friendship)

This is not the central theme of LOTR (the books). While forces like virtue and friendship are important, the central theme was you can survive even the worst evil if you retain your humanity. (Remember: LOTR was heavily influenced by Tolkiens' experience as a soldier in WWI.)

This best encapsulated by Sams' speech at the end of the second film:

"It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#462

Post by thehappypm »

MattGrommes wrote: post #447
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…

I love how that scene looks but it doesn't work for me story-wise. They go up that high to get away from the machines but why wouldn't the machines build up to that level and put in giant solar collectors up there? Seems a lot easier. But it ruins the world they've built up to then so I understand why they didn't go farther with it.

The machines would easily destroy a city up there. A single ship though could escape

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#463

Post by thaumasiotes »

saalweachter wrote: post #393
iainmerrick wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd be interested in how your nine-year-old thought the 1977 Rankin-Bass film compared.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#464

Post by bigyabai »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #446
bigyabai wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You have made a lot of incorrect assumptions. Like, almost all of them. Plus, as “a gay” I think it’s offensive you have confused our sexual preference with, an identity and then also conflated transgender to that. Sort of a mask off moment for you maybe?

So now we play the sexual identity card, just like clockwork. Am I supposed to feel bad for offending you? For piquing your queer insecurity?

Chin up. My own homosexual $0.02 is that you shouldn't throw stones with glass wrists. Take it or leave it.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#465

Post by Nasrudith »

IAmBroom wrote: post #338
card_zero wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shame me into making the effort to quote from the book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Dueling_Neuros... > Beyond simple line-detecting neurons, [David] Hubel and [Torsten] Wiesel also discovered neurons that love to track motion. Some of these neurons got all excited for up/down motion, others buzzed for left/right movement, and still others for diagonal action. And it turned out that these motion…

If you've never seen the optical illusion, it is stunning. You stare at the center (unmoving) dot in a moving field. The field remains; the dot fades away - and POPS back the second your eyes move. Your unconscious, constant "jiggling" of your eyes is called saccadal movement. Without it, only moving things would be visible - which is true for frogs.

That reminds me of the one 'trick' I was able to play on myself with a windshield mounted GPS. Placing it just so in the overlapping vision that it effectively becomes transparent from the brain's compositing of the two images.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#466

Post by AlexeyBelov »

bigyabai wrote: post #464
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have made a lot of incorrect assumptions. Like, almost all of them. Plus, as “a gay” I think it’s offensive you have confused our sexual preference with, an identity and then also conflated transgender to that. Sort of a mask off moment for you maybe?

So now we play the sexual identity card, just like clockwork. Am I supposed to feel bad for offending you? For piquing your queer insecurity? Chin up. My own homosexual $0.02 is that you shouldn't throw stones with glass wrists. Take it or leave it.

The user you're replying to has a pattern of this behaviour. Just don't engage, flag and move on.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#467

Post by crooked-v »

jerf wrote: post #293
crooked-v wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually an explicit plot point in the original book that the containment is insufficient because Hammond thinks he's a big brain brilliant genius who can do all this stuff from scratch better than any boring old normal zookeepers. The movie lost that in translation as part of the attempt to make him a kindly grandfather making bad decisions instead of a two-faced showman who's completely full of himself.

Yes, the book got this and did a much better job with it. I'm not even necessarily upset with the first movie dropping that as part of the adaptation per se. Crap like that happens in the real world all the time, and even if the movie didn't call it out very well it still at least fits the characters. HN knows all about SV startups trying to move into this or that space thinking they're the smart young hotshots who a…

It's funny, but I actually kind of like the helicopter crash because it's caused entirely because the CEO is too smug about being the cool hero, without any obvious moments that any average person doing their job might have counteracted it. It really gets at the whole 'greed and arrogance' theme in a very punchy way without requiring any of the normal people on the ground to be really dumb.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#468

Post by jiggawatts »

arbitrary_name wrote: post #391
Spooky23 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“Thesis?”

is one of the best quotes from that show, and could occur only because of the bureaucracy porn. It wouldn’t be the same show if it didn’t show the impersonal system talking about rebels like they’re maths problems to solve, to eliminate like an unnecessary variable from an equation.

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#469

Post by 4gotunameagain »

slg wrote: post #441
4gotunameagain wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

I find this mindset funny because the movie is about this exact idea so by saying this idea has no value you are criticizing your own opinion.

They could've made a generic meta movie about that topic, there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to defile the legacy of the Matrix.

You sound like you're one of the Wachowski's ? I've seen you in berghain ;)

Re: Why are there no good dinosaur films?

#470

Post by [deleted] »

slg wrote: post #191
GMoromisato wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really feel for the Wachoskis. They couldn't not do a sequel, but they had nowhere to go--The Matrix was already perfect. They couldn't recapture the key reveal of the Matrix. It would be like doing a sequel to "The Sixth Sense"--tag line: "He's Still Dead". And without that, it's just another action movie except "bullet time" is no longer innovative. Their solution was to go deeper into the mythology and the large…

>I really feel for the Wachoskis. They couldn't not do a sequel, but they had nowhere to go--The Matrix was already perfect. That is why the 4th is the best of the three sequels, it is specifically about this. Although I agree it still can't match the first movie.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN