Summer Movies Question

[Talon87]

I just watched Pirates of the Caribbean 1 for the second time and Pirates of the Caribbean 2 for the first time today. I've got a mild headache as a result of having to focus for so long on one story for so much time (nearly 5 hours straight!), but in the end, I made it, and I can say now that I've seen the 2nd movie and am ready to rent the 3rd. Yes, rent. I don't know what all the fuss is, but Pirates of the Caribbean 3 seems like a sure-fire rental film, not something warranting my money at the theaters.

I saw Spider-Man 3 the first Saturday it was out. It was good, up until the (vague enough to be non-spoiler?) "the part with the construction site." That part (onward) was slightly cute, but it made the movie lose its serious grip and become super-hokey, just like the other Spider-Man movies. And, it seems to have given the franchise some regrettably concrete closure.

So with Harry Potter 5 dimly on the horizon and Shrek 3 debuting this month, I'm left wondering what I've got to look forward to. After all, Harry Potter movie 3 was disappointing and movie 4 outright sucked; and as for Shrek, the original was great, but I thought the 2nd one was a big waste of time, and the 3rd looks to be more of that, so I don't plan on watching that even when it hits video. Basically, a summer with "four huge movies" for most young adults has already dried up.

So, I'm asking for suggestions/reminders from you guys of movies coming out some time between now and August 11th.

[Doppleganger]

Seems like a pretty slow year for movies. The only show worth seeing I hear was 300, and only if people can get over the bullcrack of it being historically accurate and NOT a veneer for American culture being wannabe warriors with an axe to grind against homosexuals and the Middle East.

[Talon87]

I should say (for fear of being misleading in my original post), I am psyched about HP5's movie because it does look like the first great Harry Potter movie ever. (I really do enjoy 1 and 2, too, but they're not epic, per se, like the books are. Movie 5 just might be.) The only reason I'm not allowing myself to get too carried away by the impressive trailer is that Movie 3 should have been able to be good (Book 3 wasn't too long) and it was crap, and Movie 4 should have been a lot longer than it was (and, as such, became crap). Book 5 is the longest book of them all, and there really isn't too much they can cut out. They could completely delete Luna ... they could delete all of Neville Longbottom's character development ... but even still, it's 840 pages, you can't cut it all. It's what makes the book the book. So ................. I've been too disappointed with the end of Movie 1 (how cheesily it was done with Voldemort's appearance and Quirrel's bad acting) and all of Movies 3 and 4 to allow myself to get too worked up over Movie 5.

That stated ... the trailer does look damn good. Well, one of them, anyway. The one right here.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/harryp ... /trailer2/

[Loki]

I saw Shrek the Third last night and it was alright. It wasn't great like the first move and it was only slightly better then the second, but the main catch of Shrek is getting all the references they make, from Disney shows to teenage dramas to popular music. The Led Zeppelin song was a great reference though. Anyway, it seemed like the movie was trying to target the adults who were taking the kids to be movie while still appealing to the kids with silly stuff. I mean, none of those kids could have know the Led Zeppelin song or, "You my friend are royally-[Ship Horn Blows]," but every adult should have easily gotten it.

[Talon87]

I don't like how it's become that, though. I felt like the original movie was made for the kids and had a good, wholesome, solid story but with a ton of jokes thrown in for the adults that the little kids wouldn't get. (Like the DuLoc animatronic booth in the first movie.) Kids get to laugh at Shrek and Donkey's funny faces, and we get to laugh at those as well as the lyrics to the song. "Face," indeed. Gets me every time. :P

Pirates of the Caribbean is reminding me of the Matrix. First movie was good, first movie was stand-alone, first movie was insanely popular, first movie spawned two sequel films that really feel forced. While I can't fully judge the third film till I've seen it, the trailer suggests a film as questionable as the second -- with a lot of stupid jokes for "Johnny the Idiot" to act out (poor Depp ) and a lot of silliness for poor Geoffrey Rush. (I can only hope he enjoys this sort of thing, an actor of his caliber. ) Oh well, I'm sure their salaries are pretty huge.

Does anybody know what Johnny Depp does with his money? He doesn't strike me as a particularly lavish celebrity and he's never really in the news much. Is he a pretty private dude? Anyway, that's a bit OT, sorry.

[Loki]

He lives in France most of the year iirc. Pretty sure he keeps quiet though.

[deoxys]

300, Simpsons Movie, HP5, Disturbia, the Invisible, 28 Weeks Later, Spider-Man 3, and ESPECIALLY TRANSFORMERS.

I work at the movies, I should know.

Yeah, I quit GameStop. It sucked balls.

[Talon87]

I forgot about Transformers. But that's a rental for me. It looks like it's going to be a let-down. Then again, Pirates of the Caribbean (1) looked like absolute horseshit from the trailers, and it was the sleeper hit of the summer. Nobody expected it to be so good, so, ... maybe the same'll hold true for a movie about androids that just so happen to resemble car and other electronic equipment (and the occasional gun or two) on a faraway planet called Earth.

[Sylar]

Talon, Transformers will NOT be a letdown. Anything Transformers is instantly awesome. As long as they don't kill Optimus again. >>;

[Talon87]

A very necessary disclaimer, Joe. I never saw the movie, but this makes me crack up with laughter every time.

http://www.outpostnine.com/editorials/source.html

[Loki]

I saw the trailer for Transformers, it looks awful story-wise, but looks cool CGI-wise and it will be seen by me purely because its called "Transformers." There's a very high likelihood of suckage though.

Also, Spidey 3 was pretty bad story-wise also. It came down to the coolness of CGI and Venom that makes me like it more then movie 2.

Lastly, Talon refused to see 300 despite how I recommended it as the most awesome movie ever.

[Talon87]

I saw a t-shirt the other day that probably spoiled the movie for me.

Originally Posted by 300 Spoiler. Don't highlight if you don't want to be spoiled.

299 Died

Spider-Man 3's plot was leagues better than 2's, but its dialogue was also leagues better than both 1 and 2's. The previous Spider-Man films consisted of hokey dialogue from start to finish; the third movie felt really serious from "the part after we leave Harry at the hospital" up until the construction site scene. I attribute a lot of this to greatness of the Sandman's backstory, but dialogue and story are two separate things (i.e. how you tell the story is different from the quality of the story itself, e.g. you can tell the story of the Ten Commandments shittily and you can make crossing the sidewalk with an old granny sound epic). And frankly, Spider-Man 3 had very little of the cheesy Peter Parkerisms (and, perhaps more noticeably, very little cheesy dialogue from villains) up until the final 15 minutes where Topher Grace just went apeshit with the horribly bad lines. I mean, fuck, I think "I like being bad ... it feels good :3" is burned into my mind as one of the worst Summer 2007 movie lines. Soooooo cheesy. @_@

[Blastoise]

Spiderman 3 was worse than the first two by far. How can you say otherwise when Peter Parker's crotch gets more screen time than Venom?

[Talon87]

WARNING! Don't read this post at all if you haven't seen Spider-Man 3. I'm tired of using the quote tag. -_-;

Movie 1 was so fucking hokey. And Movie 2 blew really badly -- I saw it once in a really shitty format (somebody took a lo-res QT file of the movie and put it up on a projector in a Purdue student-operated movie theater), and I never felt compelled to re-rent it for a rewatch. The story was so shitty. How Doc Oc became Doc Oc, what his motives were, everything. The movie really sucked.

Movie 3 had a great villain in Sandman. (Yes, it totally ruined Venom by (a) giving him no screentime and (b) killing him off in the same movie!) But it had Sandman, and did a great job there. It also had a FANTASTIC Harry, both amnesiatic Harry (funny) and post-amnesiatic Harry (sooooooooo fucking good!). Harry was pretty cool when Peter showed up on his doorstep asking for help after the whole grenade incident, but his character went down the toilet from there when the hokiest character in the entire movie (THE BUTLER!) gave Harry that lame speech about Norman Osborne and how Harry should go help Peter. From there, Harry was offering really cheesy lines and pretending to be a major character like Peter and not a minor supporting character like he always was.

Movie 3 also kicked ass with the Jameson scenes. Jameson was a lot funnier in Movie 3 than Movie 2 (not the same as when we first meet him in Movie 1, of course); the sexually provocative scene between Dark Peter and the secretary was one of the funniest setups for a Jameson quip I can remember ("I don't remember hiring you for that position, Miss Bell!" ... or whatever her name was); and I enjoyed the whole blood pressure bit.

Topher Grace's portrayal of "Edward Brock, Junior" was pretty fresh and I accepted it. He didn't begin to suck until he became Venom ... kind of ironic, since that's the opposite of how Eddie Brock's lifestory should be. XD

I dunno. The first 15 minutes of the movie (with Peter and Aunt May chatting like schoolgirls about marriage proposals) and the last 15 minutes of the movie (the tag-team fight, the lame death of Venom, and the overblown death of Harry) were pretty shitty, but that's just 30 minutes. Compared with the entirety of Movie 2. :P And a much larger chunk of Movie 1 ... I mean, come on, at least this movie's only patriotic plug was an American flag! Movie 1 had that fucking lame "WE'RE NEW YORKERS, GOBBIE! GO AWAY! LEAVE SPIDER-MAN ALONE! YOU MESS WITH HIM, YOU MESS WITH US! NEW YORK PRIDE, BITCHES!" Oh, stfu, stupid idiot, go choke on a Philly cheese steak or something. *really hate that scene from Movie 1 ... always makes me wonder why Osborne doesn't shove a Goblin Grenade down the guy's fat throat*

[Loki]

Sandman was so dumb. It was nothing like the comic Sandman. And he's the only villain Spidey lets go. Why? Cuz after beating the shit out of him, he says, "I didn't have a choice." Yeah. That makes perfect sense.

I'm not even going to go into the discussion of how retarded 'Dark' Peter was. A

lso, Venom, weak to high pitched sounds, screamed throughout his battles with Spidey. Nice logic there! And the scene were Brock was in church was so dumb. I was thinking they'd use the [retconned] Eddie Brock scene where he was going to commit suicide until he got the suit (and a new reason to live).

And by the end of the movie, each character had cried at least one time.

[Sylar]

Sandman was awesome. I don't care what anybody says, nobody can change my opinion. Also, Peter let Flint go because he knew that he actually was sorry, AND because Spidey was out of the black suit. He actually controlled himself, and wasn't some mindless drone controlled by the suit.

Now for reasons on why Sandman rocked! :P

SPOILERS AHEAD!!! :o

• Choice of actor was fucking awesome. Thomas Haden Church rocked.[/*86a74]
• Reasonably well explained Sandman backstory. :O I really didn't expect that. xfd[/*86a74]
• The molecular bonding scene rocked.[/*86a74]
• Sandman actually caught Venom off guard. Fucking Venom. That rocks.[/*86a74]
• You've gotta remember, everything he was doing was for his daughter. Even all the stuff at the end where he was killing Spidey before NewGobby got there. So he's not all that bad. After he got "killed" by Spidey, he sort of got good.[/*86a74]
• When he flew off as sand, he looked like the Smoke Monster off Lost. xD Woo![/*86a74]

Now Venom, he sucked arse this film. And I don't think I need to explain to anybody why. >>