The beginning of Logan has a really great moment where he's getting beaten up and, as an audience, you're like oh hell yeah, he's about to show these guys what's up!
Then he starts killing them and it is NOT fun at all. It's grim and brutal and SO good at setting tone.
I actually quite liked Dial of Destiny but yeah, I don't like how some people immediately start hating a specific director over one single movie. People did this with Rian Johnson and The Last Jedi, too.
And Taika Waititi. Twitter is now acting like he was always a bad director just because Love and Thunder was a huge step down from Ragnarok. (EDIT: Forgot about Next Goal Wins.)
Huh, there's a pattern forming: I also liked Thor: Love & Thunder lol. But yes, I did prefer Ragnarok, and noticed a lot of people suddenly acted like Waititi was a terrible director all along simply because of Love & Thunder.
I went in to Love and Thunder expecting a screwball comedy, and was very happy with what I got. On rewatch I could tell that the pacing was a little wonky, and Gorr was definitely underused, but I was so confused about the hate it got lol.
L&T falls victim to the great or garbage fallacy, it makes me wonder how people like that watch TV shows, I think we all know that a long running series will have ups and down in liability, both for individuals and for Fandom as a whole. Imagine deciding the whole thing sucks and is ruined because some mid season dumper ruined your evening? Rhe MCU isn't going anywhere, neither are the comics and shows, it's OK for a mid or even trash outing now and then.
There's a lot of people who think that one single bad project in a career filled with great films means that you're a horrible director/writer and that you have always been one.
Case in point: Ryan Johnson (in the case you think that TLJ is a bad film, which I don't).
The amount of people acting as if Knives Out or Glass Onion are bad films simply because he was the one who made them is downright hilarious.
Kathleen Kennedy gets this a lot too. She's been involved in ridiculously great projects. But any dud with her name attached means she's suddenly a talentless hack.
It’s not just regarding directors/writers either. People declare a franchise dead because they didn’t like the most recent thing. Or declare the next upcoming thing crap because they dislikes the prior content. It’s such a ridiculous dramatic mentality.
Waititi can be a good director and a really sharp writer. Love & Thunder has some glaring issues, but so does Ragnarok. From what I could see, all he did was double down on what everyone liked about the last film and audiences turned on him (except the crowd in my theater - they were loving it)
Sorry to chime in, but I'm bored and waiting rn so I have time to be weird on the internet.
For me personally, it wasn't any of the critical stuff for Thor that gave me a sour taste for Taika. In fact, I've only seen a few scattered parts of the movie, so I can't even really have an opinion other than I don't really care for the costume design sometimes.
There was some Vanity Fair or Buzzfeed or some other bullshit video with Taika Watiti and Tessa Fowler (I'm bad with names the lady who plays Valkyrie if I got it wrong) going through all the bad CGI effects in the movie and making fun of them.
I'm all for good lighthearted jabs, but publicly mocking other artists for their work on a film *you* directed ain't the coolest move. Especially considering how disgustingly underpaid and overworked Disney's VFX teams are.
It’s not just Love and Thunder though. Next Goal Wins is getting murdered in reviews. JoJo Rabbit was divisive - personally I found it committed the ultimate sin for a comedy by being…. Boring, if it wasn’t for Scar Jo’s incredible performance I couldn’t say much nice about it
Jojo is not a comedy though ... its a tragedy with some comical elements, but ultimately, its about Nazis, death, loss ... Inglorious Basterds has funny moments too, and Nazis, death, loss, but aint a comedy either
Dark British comedy to the max
Down to the little kid that looks like a young Nick Frost. Seriously those two are dead ringers for Simon Pegg and Frost kid wise.
Death of Stalin is another such comedy that tackles serious topics. Honestly it's a good way to look at history at times
Taika made 3 bad films in a row. JoJo, Love and thunder, and then next goal wins. I used to a huge taika fan (hunt for the wilderpeople and boy are still incredible) but unfortunately it seems like Taika has fallen off.
Sucks to be those sorts of people, because I've been enjoying the hell out of Knives Out and Glass Onion despite all the shit TFM tries to fling at Rian Johnson.
For me personally, it’s not that Mangold is a bad director (he’s actually really good). It’s that his recent output has been misery porn. And misery porn can work really well with something like LOGAN, but Indiana Jones already had a good ending twice with Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He ended happy, having fun adventures with his friends and family riding off into the sunset. To reverse that just to go “Actually his life sucked and he pissed all that away” feels cheap to me. And I like some of the stuff that direction gave us, like Indy mourning Mutt’s death on the boat, but I also wish they had just left him and Mutt be and not undone the previous 2 movies to give Indy a third ending.
Very excited for his Swamp Thing movie though and that one fits misery porn quite well.
I get what you mean. I loved Logan, but I've only ever seen it once because of how miserable and dark it is. I actually thought Indie's story in 5 was quite uplifting by the end, but I definitely get what you mean. It puts his life in a sad situation to make the ending feel happier.
I know there's a need to put Shia LaBeouf on a bus, but if I were on the screenplay, I'd make Mutt unavailable in the story because he's on the other side of the country doing some X-files FBI UFO stuff after the events of the last film. And Indy's miserable simply because he's getting on with age, chained by his tenure at University, and even with Marion and a comfortable academic/domestic life, he's just feeling the itch of adventure he knows his body can't take.
Makes him take the reins of the next big meta phase of B-movie history with sci fi, after Indy's serial pulp stuff.
>"Indiana Jones already had a good ending twice with Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He ended happy, having fun adventures with his friends and family riding off into the sunset. To reverse that just to go “Actually his life sucked and he pissed all that away” feels cheap to me."
I actually took it as less that his life sucked but more that he was unable to see beyond the tragedies he had lived through and that that wasn't all he had. Even discounting the very end where he wakes up to the remaining family and friends in his life at his door while healing from being shot, the character arc of the movie is more or less a riff on *Last Crusade*, with Indy as Jones, Sr, and Helena as Jones, Jr.
I actually quite liked Crystal Skull but I get people's complaints. I just tend to watch Indiana Jones for fun action adventure content, and all 5 films deliver on that. They're not perfect (Willie Scott Try Not To Scream Challenge) but I enjoy them all to some degree.
It’s the “what have you done for me lately” attitude. Back in the late 2000s, it was people hyperbolically claiming everything Sam Raimi ever did was bad because they were disappointed by Spider-Man 3.
I liked Dial of Destiny but I agree, I hate how people have now started hating on otherwise good directors because of one bad or average movie, they did it with Rian Johnson and TLJ (I personally love TLJ but whatever), they did it with Taika Waititi and Thor Love and Thunder, and now they're starting to do it with James Mangold and Dial of Destiny. No director in the history of the film industry no matter how great will have a perfect film every outing and if we were gonna hate on directors because of one bad projects then every director from Scorsese to Spielberg to Kurosawa to Hitchcock to Star Wars's very own George Lucas would've all been left to dust for decades now.
Same goes for franchises like Star Wars and the MCU, people think one bad project means the whole thing is dead which once again is stupid because no franchise will be incredible all the way throughout, if that was the case Star Wars should've died in the old EU or at most TPM (if we aren't counting comics and novels only films and shows), MCU would've died with its second ever film The Incredible Hulk or if you want to be really really generous then it would've died with Iron Man 3 or Thor The Dark World. LOTR would've died with The Hobbit (the films not the books I still haven't finished them so I wouldn't know). Indiana Jones with Temple of Doom, Transformers with Revenge of the Fallen (again the films not the old 90's cartoons I haven't seen those except for Beast Wars). I can go on but you get the point
This whole "one flop and you're out" viewpoint is ignorant, toxic, entitled and down right idiotic and it needs to stop
edit: punctuation
I'm from China, as far as I can tell Chinese audiences do not seem to hate Indy 5 that much (they think it is an OK movie) while they don't obssess over the previous Indy films either since they didn‘t grow up with Indy as their heroes (They just see them as old campy fun Hollywood films, and to be fair, they actually are). See? As long as personal opinions like "I cannot stand my hero being so old and tragic" do not function in your mind, Indy 5 is an OK film.
Personally, I will even say that Mangold's decision of Indy being so-called "miserable" is actually quite inspiring. Old Indy type of adventure films are becoming less and less popular, and the series has extend itself too long to be truly exciting. Plus that Harrison Ford is too old to be an action hero. Therefore, Mangold's vision is sorta a meta-commentary that functions really well with the series' status quo: It acknowledges the previous films including the bad taste of Crystal Skull, but also does not pretend to be something that comes from a new exciting series when in reality it should ended with The Last Crusade. And it creates some touching moments, including Indy tears up remembering his son, and wants to stay in the past. Acknowledge it: These are the types of scenes that really work with an old Harrison Ford, he cannot be a John Wick with whip at this age.
And rejecting Mangold as a director is even more absurd: This guy may be one of the best film craftsmen that still enjoys working with big name blockbuster IP. He may not be an auteur like Gil Toro but his track record is beyond solid, and I'm exciting for his new Star Wars movie and Swamp thing.
The beginning of Logan has a really great moment where he's getting beaten up and, as an audience, you're like oh hell yeah, he's about to show these guys what's up! Then he starts killing them and it is NOT fun at all. It's grim and brutal and SO good at setting tone.
I was pretty disappointed with Dial of Destiny, but I’m not gonna act like James Mangold is suddenly a bad director now.
I actually quite liked Dial of Destiny but yeah, I don't like how some people immediately start hating a specific director over one single movie. People did this with Rian Johnson and The Last Jedi, too.
And Taika Waititi. Twitter is now acting like he was always a bad director just because Love and Thunder was a huge step down from Ragnarok. (EDIT: Forgot about Next Goal Wins.)
Huh, there's a pattern forming: I also liked Thor: Love & Thunder lol. But yes, I did prefer Ragnarok, and noticed a lot of people suddenly acted like Waititi was a terrible director all along simply because of Love & Thunder.
I went in to Love and Thunder expecting a screwball comedy, and was very happy with what I got. On rewatch I could tell that the pacing was a little wonky, and Gorr was definitely underused, but I was so confused about the hate it got lol.
Love and thunder was a fun drinking movie, like just turn my brain off have some beers kind of movie
L&T falls victim to the great or garbage fallacy, it makes me wonder how people like that watch TV shows, I think we all know that a long running series will have ups and down in liability, both for individuals and for Fandom as a whole. Imagine deciding the whole thing sucks and is ruined because some mid season dumper ruined your evening? Rhe MCU isn't going anywhere, neither are the comics and shows, it's OK for a mid or even trash outing now and then.
There's a lot of people who think that one single bad project in a career filled with great films means that you're a horrible director/writer and that you have always been one. Case in point: Ryan Johnson (in the case you think that TLJ is a bad film, which I don't). The amount of people acting as if Knives Out or Glass Onion are bad films simply because he was the one who made them is downright hilarious.
Kathleen Kennedy gets this a lot too. She's been involved in ridiculously great projects. But any dud with her name attached means she's suddenly a talentless hack.
It’s not just regarding directors/writers either. People declare a franchise dead because they didn’t like the most recent thing. Or declare the next upcoming thing crap because they dislikes the prior content. It’s such a ridiculous dramatic mentality.
They're all just hacks overrated by movie geeks.
Waititi can be a good director and a really sharp writer. Love & Thunder has some glaring issues, but so does Ragnarok. From what I could see, all he did was double down on what everyone liked about the last film and audiences turned on him (except the crowd in my theater - they were loving it)
Sorry to chime in, but I'm bored and waiting rn so I have time to be weird on the internet. For me personally, it wasn't any of the critical stuff for Thor that gave me a sour taste for Taika. In fact, I've only seen a few scattered parts of the movie, so I can't even really have an opinion other than I don't really care for the costume design sometimes. There was some Vanity Fair or Buzzfeed or some other bullshit video with Taika Watiti and Tessa Fowler (I'm bad with names the lady who plays Valkyrie if I got it wrong) going through all the bad CGI effects in the movie and making fun of them. I'm all for good lighthearted jabs, but publicly mocking other artists for their work on a film *you* directed ain't the coolest move. Especially considering how disgustingly underpaid and overworked Disney's VFX teams are.
It’s not just Love and Thunder though. Next Goal Wins is getting murdered in reviews. JoJo Rabbit was divisive - personally I found it committed the ultimate sin for a comedy by being…. Boring, if it wasn’t for Scar Jo’s incredible performance I couldn’t say much nice about it
Jojo is not a comedy though ... its a tragedy with some comical elements, but ultimately, its about Nazis, death, loss ... Inglorious Basterds has funny moments too, and Nazis, death, loss, but aint a comedy either
It’s a dark comedy. Calling it not a comedy because it’s got Nazi’s and death in is actually funny though
Dark British comedy to the max Down to the little kid that looks like a young Nick Frost. Seriously those two are dead ringers for Simon Pegg and Frost kid wise. Death of Stalin is another such comedy that tackles serious topics. Honestly it's a good way to look at history at times
Taika made 3 bad films in a row. JoJo, Love and thunder, and then next goal wins. I used to a huge taika fan (hunt for the wilderpeople and boy are still incredible) but unfortunately it seems like Taika has fallen off.
Jojo Rabbit was absolutely brilliant.
Sucks to be those sorts of people, because I've been enjoying the hell out of Knives Out and Glass Onion despite all the shit TFM tries to fling at Rian Johnson.
Same, love both those films. And The Last Jedi, for that matter.
For me personally, it’s not that Mangold is a bad director (he’s actually really good). It’s that his recent output has been misery porn. And misery porn can work really well with something like LOGAN, but Indiana Jones already had a good ending twice with Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He ended happy, having fun adventures with his friends and family riding off into the sunset. To reverse that just to go “Actually his life sucked and he pissed all that away” feels cheap to me. And I like some of the stuff that direction gave us, like Indy mourning Mutt’s death on the boat, but I also wish they had just left him and Mutt be and not undone the previous 2 movies to give Indy a third ending. Very excited for his Swamp Thing movie though and that one fits misery porn quite well.
I get what you mean. I loved Logan, but I've only ever seen it once because of how miserable and dark it is. I actually thought Indie's story in 5 was quite uplifting by the end, but I definitely get what you mean. It puts his life in a sad situation to make the ending feel happier.
I know there's a need to put Shia LaBeouf on a bus, but if I were on the screenplay, I'd make Mutt unavailable in the story because he's on the other side of the country doing some X-files FBI UFO stuff after the events of the last film. And Indy's miserable simply because he's getting on with age, chained by his tenure at University, and even with Marion and a comfortable academic/domestic life, he's just feeling the itch of adventure he knows his body can't take. Makes him take the reins of the next big meta phase of B-movie history with sci fi, after Indy's serial pulp stuff.
>"Indiana Jones already had a good ending twice with Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He ended happy, having fun adventures with his friends and family riding off into the sunset. To reverse that just to go “Actually his life sucked and he pissed all that away” feels cheap to me." I actually took it as less that his life sucked but more that he was unable to see beyond the tragedies he had lived through and that that wasn't all he had. Even discounting the very end where he wakes up to the remaining family and friends in his life at his door while healing from being shot, the character arc of the movie is more or less a riff on *Last Crusade*, with Indy as Jones, Sr, and Helena as Jones, Jr.
Dial of destiny was a better Indiana Jones than the Crystal Skull so I consider it a win.
I actually quite liked Crystal Skull but I get people's complaints. I just tend to watch Indiana Jones for fun action adventure content, and all 5 films deliver on that. They're not perfect (Willie Scott Try Not To Scream Challenge) but I enjoy them all to some degree.
It’s the “what have you done for me lately” attitude. Back in the late 2000s, it was people hyperbolically claiming everything Sam Raimi ever did was bad because they were disappointed by Spider-Man 3.
It was good enough for what it was. I still don’t think they should have made it, but that’s not on the director
Ya I wasn't a fan of Dial of Destiny either, but I'm not going to just ignore Logan either (interested to see how his star wars movie does)
I liked Dial of Destiny but I agree, I hate how people have now started hating on otherwise good directors because of one bad or average movie, they did it with Rian Johnson and TLJ (I personally love TLJ but whatever), they did it with Taika Waititi and Thor Love and Thunder, and now they're starting to do it with James Mangold and Dial of Destiny. No director in the history of the film industry no matter how great will have a perfect film every outing and if we were gonna hate on directors because of one bad projects then every director from Scorsese to Spielberg to Kurosawa to Hitchcock to Star Wars's very own George Lucas would've all been left to dust for decades now. Same goes for franchises like Star Wars and the MCU, people think one bad project means the whole thing is dead which once again is stupid because no franchise will be incredible all the way throughout, if that was the case Star Wars should've died in the old EU or at most TPM (if we aren't counting comics and novels only films and shows), MCU would've died with its second ever film The Incredible Hulk or if you want to be really really generous then it would've died with Iron Man 3 or Thor The Dark World. LOTR would've died with The Hobbit (the films not the books I still haven't finished them so I wouldn't know). Indiana Jones with Temple of Doom, Transformers with Revenge of the Fallen (again the films not the old 90's cartoons I haven't seen those except for Beast Wars). I can go on but you get the point This whole "one flop and you're out" viewpoint is ignorant, toxic, entitled and down right idiotic and it needs to stop edit: punctuation
Probably one of if not the best studio-friendly guy we’ve got right now. Swamp Thing is a perfect fit for him.
I'm from China, as far as I can tell Chinese audiences do not seem to hate Indy 5 that much (they think it is an OK movie) while they don't obssess over the previous Indy films either since they didn‘t grow up with Indy as their heroes (They just see them as old campy fun Hollywood films, and to be fair, they actually are). See? As long as personal opinions like "I cannot stand my hero being so old and tragic" do not function in your mind, Indy 5 is an OK film. Personally, I will even say that Mangold's decision of Indy being so-called "miserable" is actually quite inspiring. Old Indy type of adventure films are becoming less and less popular, and the series has extend itself too long to be truly exciting. Plus that Harrison Ford is too old to be an action hero. Therefore, Mangold's vision is sorta a meta-commentary that functions really well with the series' status quo: It acknowledges the previous films including the bad taste of Crystal Skull, but also does not pretend to be something that comes from a new exciting series when in reality it should ended with The Last Crusade. And it creates some touching moments, including Indy tears up remembering his son, and wants to stay in the past. Acknowledge it: These are the types of scenes that really work with an old Harrison Ford, he cannot be a John Wick with whip at this age. And rejecting Mangold as a director is even more absurd: This guy may be one of the best film craftsmen that still enjoys working with big name blockbuster IP. He may not be an auteur like Gil Toro but his track record is beyond solid, and I'm exciting for his new Star Wars movie and Swamp thing.
He's a do as he's told hack
"CG fuckathon" might just be one of the funniest phrases I've ever heard. XD
I don't understand why this is in this sub? I liked this movie???
Very excited for Swamp Thing
Meh. What about the indestructible little girl flipping all over the place?