Summer Movies 2013

Non-anime/manga-related TV, movies, books, and comics, especially but not limited to pre-2000 titles
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greg
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by greg »

Wow, a double feature? I didn't think those existed anymore, what with the lack of attention span these days.
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by _D_ »

Went to Despicable Me 2 with friends. They enjoyed it but I thought it was very cliche. Will do great Box Office over The Lone Ranger which I now have little interest in. Pacific Rim is what I am looking forward to...
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by greg »

I didn't know about this new Lone Ranger movie until recently when my coworker (the former Hollywood guy) told me about it and how terrible it turned out to be. They made it a lowbrow "pot-smoker" comedy, as he put it. When will Hollywood ever learn? I asked him what he thought started this tendency, and he attributed it to the Brady Bunch movie. It was a self-parody, and it seemed to work. Now it seems that every movie that is a rehash of an old franchise (Starsky & Hutch, etc) is being turned into lame comedies.

I bet a lot of senior citizens went to go see this movie and were sorely disappointed. In the right hands, somebody could have taken The Lone Ranger, whose legacy is legendary, and made it into something fantastic; something that pays great tribute to the legacy, has a great plot, all while simultaneously breathing new life into the cowboy western movie genre. It could have made the whole world and somebody else suddenly claiming to have been a Lone Ranger fan their whole life. But no, they had something great and wizzed it down their legs with Johnny Depp as a goofball Tanto. I refuse to watch crap like this. I look forward to the inevitable Red Letter Media review that will tear it a new one (although it really tears itself, it seems). Hollywood sucks.
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by usamimi »

Yeah, no one has anything good to say about The Lone Ranger, and I can't say that I'm all that surprised. I was also pretty annoyed to see Hollywood take another opportunity to hire a Native-American for a starring role and totally screw it up by hiring yet another white guy. :/ I mean, Depp's a good actor, yeah, but this was Disney's chance to really do something good and hire a non-white actor for something major...and look what they did. UGH. (And I love how people are trying to act like it's no big deal because a few members of a tribe "worked with him" so of course if THEY'RE ok with it, it "should be fine, right?" Uhhh....sure, whatever. :roll: ) But even regardless of that, you're totally right--to make The Lone Ranger into a stupid comedy is pretty stupid. I don't know what gave them the idea to do that, but maybe now they'll realize their mistake because it's totally bombing at the box office.

I am also totally excited about Pacific Rim and can't wait to watch it. Everyone who's seen it so far has said nothing but good things, so I'm really looking forward to seeing it.
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by llj »

The fact that this version of the Lone Ranger sounds like it sucks probably doesn't have much to do with its low box office returns. A lot of crap movies make money, and mainstream audiences have notoriously bad tastes anyway, so it would be a mistake to judge its failure on quality alone. I'm pretty sure its failure has a lot more to do with other factors relating to marketing and demographics.

That said, I think the Lone Ranger is an icon from a very different era. Very difficult to transplant him for modern audiences in a "hip" way. You can't make him too gritty, because the character itself is inherently clean. You could, I guess, play up the mythical factor of the Lone Ranger a bit more, which might have worked. Still, I've seen numerous takes on this character in recent years in books and comic books and they've all been pretty bad in my opinion. Maybe it's just not meant to be.
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greg
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by greg »

llj wrote: You could, I guess, play up the mythical factor of the Lone Ranger a bit more, which might have worked. Still, I've seen numerous takes on this character in recent years in books and comic books and they've all been pretty bad in my opinion. Maybe it's just not meant to be.
That's what I had in mind... play on the mythos of the Lone Ranger. It didn't need to be "gritty" per se, no more than Indiana Jones or The Mummy.

Has there really been some recent takes on the Lone Ranger in comics and such these days? I haven't stepped foot into an American comic book store in years. That's one thing I miss about living in the US, but in the Phoenix area, Atomic Comics disappeared as well as my favorite, lesser-known one. Others were struggling as well.
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by _D_ »

Not the local one:

http://www.hillcity-comics.com/

But my friend who owns the store really knows what he is doing...
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by _D_ »

Just came back from Pacific Rim...akkk! Some of it was dopey fun, some was good, some was cringe worthy. Some nice kaiju/jaeger fights. But a great film this was not. Not to say I didn't enjoy it but it wasn't what I was expecting. Not to dissuade anyone from going though. It was worth the $11 I paid to see it in 3D but since it was a conversion, you might want to watch it in 2D on cheap night. I can't even put it into the category of dumb fun. Hmmm...

Oh yes, don't walk out early as there is an extra scene during the rolling credits...

Wow, did the goofy scientist guy remind me of Commander Rick...

...and the Brit scientist kept me yelling in my head to "pick up the phone and call Torchwood"...

Apparently the fight sequences are all native 3D, while the regular movie was 2D converted to 3D...
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by greg »

The Spoony One made a good point about the Lone Ranger movie being a comedy. There are so many ways they could have made the movie great, by just keeping it simple. It could have been like Quigley Down Under or something. Just make the protagonist a badass bringing justice to the bad guys. EASY. But no, they made it a comedy, yet with a terrible attempt. Spoony said that it is possible that they could have made the Lone Ranger be a do-gooder dumbass and have Tanto be the real badass. Take Big Trouble in Little China. The movie makes you think the movie is about Jack, who wants to get his truck back. But the movie is really about his "sidekick" Wang, who is a kung fu master fighting to get his girlfriend back. Jack is actually the sidekick to Wang really, even though the movie is centered around Jack. Jack isn't a kung fu master or anything. He can't really fight much. He just does what he can to get the bad guys.

But nooooooooo, Disney had to really screw it up. As a dopey Disney "comedy" movie, this film apparently contains people getting massacred, a guy eating another person's heart, etc. Stupid.
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Re: Summer Movies 2013

Post by Animusubi »

I just came back from Pacific Rim and I loved it. A definite must see for any fan of mecha, tokusatsu, kaiju or anime. You could definitely see del Toro's love and passion for those things in the movie. There were plenty of throwbacks to older series. I really don't want to say much, it's something to see for yourself. Thanks to usamimi, I found out there was an awesome Yoji Shinkawa poster being given away when seeing the movie at participating Regal Cinemas. :O
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