Ok, a little game.
Name 1-3 directors who went from quality to shit along with a few examples of their best and worst - subjectively speaking, of course :)
1. James Cameron
Quality
Terminator
Aliens
Shit
Terminator 2 (Yes, I’m serious)
Avatar
2. Ridley Scott
Quality
Alien
Blade Runner
Shit
GI Jane
Robin Hood
3. George Lucas
Quality
Star Wars - A New Hope (Ok, I was 9 and spellbound!)
Shit
The prequels
Can you top those? ;)
Francis Ford Coppola
Quality: The Godfather
Shit: Jack
That’s quite the drop-off.
Oh, indeed ;)
Good one…
I cannot participate in this thread because you are a crazy person.
I saw that coming :)
But you just participated!
Hehe.
I’d explain why I hate it, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t help much…
Tim Burton
Big Fish, Ed Wood
Planet Of The Apes
Oh wait, T2? Wtf?
I thought I was the crazy one for preferring 3 over 2, but I still loved 2.
I consider it the first step towards the dark side for Cameron. The Abyss wasn’t great, but it was not so obviously commercial and completely contradictory to what came before.
Frankly, I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Paul Anderson yet. That guy went from Magnolia to AVP in only, like, five years. I thought he’d redeemed himself with There Will Be Blood, but then he had to go and do Resident Evil: Afterlife.
Seriously, though, George A. Romero. Night and Dawn stand tall even today as touchstones of politically and socially-minded horror done right. What’s he done lately that’s even remotely close in quality?
Not to crowd my own thread, but I just had to get this one out there:
John Carpenter
Halloween, Big Trouble, The Thing, Escape, Mouth, Prince.
||||
Ghosts of Mars…
This is where I stopped reading too.
I appreciate your participation in the thread to inform me of why you’re not participating.
Also, not agreeing with the choice is an especially impressive reason not to name your own :)
I’m honestly curious why you think T2 was shit, if you don’t mind elaborating.
Yeah, I cannot name my pick until my curiousity over T2 is sated.
Sure.
First of all, you should know that I’m a big fan of the first Terminator - and I’m not a big fan of commercialism (when it becomes the primary factor behind a movie or any piece of potential art). Also, I prefer movies I can take seriously - and if I can’t - then I prefer straight-up comedies.
Those are important factors to keep in mind if you’re genuinely interested in going beyond “he must be insane”.
My primary problems with Terminator 2 are the tongue-in-cheek and overall family-movie changes.
Some examples:
It’s there from the very beginning, when Arnold exits the bar after taking the clothes from that dude. Rock music is playing, and he puts on the sun glasses looking super cool and rides off. Why does he put on sunglasses? He’s a machine.
Ok, it was cute - and I could deal with that.
Then Arnold befriends that whiny obscenely annoying kid, and agrees to not actually kill anyone. Maiming them is totally ok, of course - but he can’t kill anyone. Ok, he’s a flexible Terminator and he’s taking orders. I can deal with that. Not sure I buy him being able to not kill anyone with the kind of weaponry he uses, but apparently he succeeds according to the movie.
But the straw that broke the camel’s back - for me - is how he gives the kid the thumb as he descends into the fire. That’s just not what I want from my Terminator!
Then there’s the whole concept of Terminator 2. The first movie establishes that Kyle went through the time machine and he was the last to go through it. No one else comes through.
Yeah, yeah - I know. We’re dealing with a time paradox and all is fair. Except it doesn’t quite work when it turns out they can just keep sending machines over and over again. You know? The whole basic premise of the first movie is nullified.
Also, where’s the logic in going after the kid? Why not learn from their mistakes and go through the time machine knowing exactly what they know from the first time they tried? Wiping out the mother should be very easy - as well as preventing Kyle from doing anything.
But it’s not really about picking apart a time paradox, because it never works. It’s just that the first movie was perfect alone and didn’t need a repeat.
They took away the meaning of the first film.
Also, it’s just a spectacle of a film. It’s a popcorn film. Jumping through a glass window on a motorcycle and landing in a helicopter film.
It’s fine if you just want mostly brainless entertainment, and it was very pretty for its day.
But it just wasn’t very good material. The kid was obnoxious and Arnold became a teddy bear. Good for the familiy I suppose. It would have worked fine if the movie hadn’t been called Terminator 2.
Just call it The Kind Iron Giant or something :)
Oh, I fully understand if people don’t agree with me. I’m not sure I understand why I have to be insane and not worthy of contributions because of it - but I’ll leave that to others :)
I hope you’re trolling.
My problems with T2 as a science-fiction movie are more basic, because it sets up a tautology that is never resolved. (Cyberdyne creates Skynet partially from the technology in the arm left behind from the first Terminator… which never would have been created if it wasn’t for Cyberdyne.) And even that wouldn’t bother me so much except that the first Terminator managed to avoid such storytelling cracks.
The rest of it - the teddybearification of Arnie, the absurdity of making a movie with an anti-war theme where you maim like a thousand people, etc. - are way less irritating to me than that.
As an action movie, though, it’s fucking awesome.
It took me a second or two to realize you were not being serious.
Add A Very Good Year to Ridley Scott’s shit list.
Francis Ford Coppola really is the ultimate example though.
M. Night Shyamalan
Quality - The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable
Shit - Everything afterwards.