All-time favorite movies

The classic thread from the old THM, now resurrected.

Note: the original thread can be viewed in the archive forum.

1. The Lord of the Rings
   
2. Star Wars Trilogy
   
3. Pulp Fiction
   
4. Inception
   
5. Spirited Away

Probably subject to change again in the future.

I'll have to get in on this one when I have a bit more time.

GB

Having had time to think:

(1) Wizard of Oz
(2) Big
(3) Cool Hand Luke
(4) Strictly Dancing
(5) Beren and Luthien (when Tin makes it! )

Not necessarily in this order (it's so hard to choose):

1) The Matrix Franchise
2) The LotR Franchise
3) Blade Runner
4) a tie: The Star Wars Franchise and the Star Trek Franchise (especially the "Reboot")
5) The Narnia Franchise (at least the first two...havent seen VotDT yet )

And an honourable mention for the Riddick franchise.

GB

"the Star Trek Franchise (especially the "Reboot")"- GB

Please tell me you don't mean that GB. Please.

In this order, for the time being

1) The LotR trilogy
2) Every single Martin Scorsese gangster film (They're all excellent, so can't leave any of them out I'm afraid!)
3) The Last Samurai (for some reason, I doubt this film is a favourite around here, but I love it nonetheless )
4) Star Wars (PT and OT - I think they're both great Lucas' "home-made" clichés sometime make me cringe, though )
5) The Shawshank Redemption

For now

Pettytyrant101 wrote:"the Star Trek Franchise (especially the "Reboot")"- GB

Please tell me you don't mean that GB. Please.

They were all pretty good up through First Contact. After that, the rest of The Next Generation movies kind of sucked.

GB

Ringdrotten wrote:In this order, for the time being

1) The LotR trilogy
2) Every single Martin Scorsese gangster film (They're all excellent, so can't leave any of them out I'm afraid!)
3) The Last Samurai (for some reason, I doubt this film is a favourite around here, but I love it nonetheless )
4) Star Wars (PT and OT - I think they're both great Lucas' "home-made" clichés sometime make me cringe, though )
5) The Shawshank Redemption

For now

The Last Samurai was a great movie.

By the way, I forgot to add to my list Avatar, anything with Jet Li in, Bruce Lee movies, and Kung Fu movies in general.

GB

"They were all pretty good up through First Contact. After that, the rest of The Next Generation movies kind of sucked."- GB

First Contact was good up till they got to old earth. The rest were pretty poor, there was some nice esoteric ideas in Insurrection but they did an episode almost exactly the same as the main plot.
But was the 'reboot' I was concerned about. I assumed by that you meant the latest version with the new cast. And no sci in their sci-fi.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:"They were all pretty good up through First Contact. After that, the rest of The Next Generation movies kind of sucked."- GB

First Contact was good up till they got to old earth. The rest were pretty poor, there was some nice esoteric ideas in Insurrection but they did an episode almost exactly the same as the main plot.
But was the 'reboot' I was concerned about. I assumed by that you meant the latest version with the new cast. And no sci in their sci-fi.

The "Reboot" was really just a nice way to reintroduce everybody and see some damn good impersonations of the original cast members . The Ship looked awesome. The SFX and CGI was pretty seamless. Some cool action sequences. And just enough tech-speak to be convincing but not off-putting for the action crowd. All in all a damn fine film. I expect a bit more sci in future installments now that the new timeline has been established (technically it's not really a Reboot due to that nifty little plot device).

GB

And the fact the plot and character motivations makes no sense whatsoever from whatever angle you come at it doesn't bother you?

Agree it was fun however seeing the actors doing the old characters. Spock, Chekov, Sulu were good, Uhura was oddly much closer to the character of the star trek books I thought than the original tv show, but Mccoy was the stand out- great work from Mr Urban. Not so keen on Kirk as he was the most altered.

I actually liked the "new" Kirk. He has all the bravado and ego of Shatner's Kirk, but he dialed back the mannerisms so as not to seem like a parody (because Kirk has been done to death by comedians). Some of the mannerisms are still there, but subtly.

Some of the motivations will make more sense if you read the Graphic Novel "prequel" (most sci fi action film geeks don't really give a hoot about motivations nowadays anyway ). As to the Plot, well those "Time travel changes the original timeline" storylines NEVER made any sense to begin with. But over the years I've come to accept it as an entertaining if unrealistic plot device.

Anyone with more than half a brain should know that you can't change the past of your original timeline--you'd just shunt off into an alternate/parallel Universe timeline. I don't think I've seen anyone get that right except for the TV show Sliders.

GB

Gandalf's Beard wrote:Anyone with more than half a brain should know that you can't change the past of your original timeline--you'd just shunt off into an alternate/parallel Universe timeline. I don't think I've seen anyone get that right except for the TV show Sliders.

That was the point of the Star Trek reboot and all their talk about timelines and alternate universes and old!Spock vs. new!Spock. I don't know if they got all the mechanics down accurately, but they at least paid lip service to the idea.

My problem with the ST reboot plot was just it wasn't very ST.
Black holes as time travelling devices!
Why does a Romulan mining ship have more armaments than all of starfleet?
If the chain supporting the drill can be shot down by Spock why does not a single ship get scrambled on Vulcan or earth to intercept it?
Why does the Romulan blame Spock- it was a natural disaster- all Spock did was fail to stop it, he didn't cause it and at least he tried?
Why did the entire crew of the Romulan ship happily go along with mass genocide?
Where did they go while they waited for Spock to turn up, did they just hang about space for 20 years?
Why didn't they go to Romulus and warn them then hand over their uber ship so the Empire could destroy Starfleet?
None of it makes any sense.

Eldorion wrote:

Gandalf's Beard wrote:Anyone with more than half a brain should know that you can't change the past of your original timeline--you'd just shunt off into an alternate/parallel Universe timeline. I don't think I've seen anyone get that right except for the TV show Sliders.

That was the point of the Star Trek reboot and all their talk about timelines and alternate universes and old!Spock vs. new!Spock. I don't know if they got all the mechanics down accurately, but they at least paid lip service to the idea.

No, actually they didn't even pay lip service to the "alternate Universe" theory. In the TV show, sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't depending on what plot device was needed. In the movie "Reboot" (just like in First Contact) it is presumed that the new timeline created is still in the same original universe. There is no talk at all about it being an Alternate Universe. You are just confusing "Alternate Timelines" with Alternate (i.e. Parallel) Universes.

The perfect example of Star Trek actually getting it right, is in the Mirror Universe episodes. The rest of the time they get it wrong. You can't change the Timeline of the Original Universe, because that would be a Paradox.

GB

Pettytyrant101 wrote:My problem with the ST reboot plot was just it wasn't very ST.
Black holes as time travelling devices!
Why does a Romulan mining ship have more armaments than all of starfleet?
If the chain supporting the drill can be shot down by Spock why does not a single ship get scrambled on Vulcan or earth to intercept it?
Why does the Romulan blame Spock- it was a natural disaster- all Spock did was fail to stop it, he didn't cause it and at least he tried?
Why did the entire crew of the Romulan ship happily go along with mass genocide?
Where did they go while they waited for Spock to turn up, did they just hang about space for 20 years?
Why didn't they go to Romulus and warn them then hand over their uber ship so the Empire could destroy Starfleet?
None of it makes any sense.

Actually, physicists have long considered the notion of using Black Holes as Time Traveling devices (that bit ST got right. And I even have a book on that very subject written by a physicist) because they are essentially "wormholes" from one region of space-time to another. However, many (but not all) physicists believe that in doing so, one would actually end up in another Universe altogether.

As to the motivations of the characters and the armament of the mining vessel, you would have to read the prologue contained in the Graphic Novel. The film-makers rightfully concluded that most film-goers wouldn't care about motivations; they were aiming to bring in a whole new Action-SFX-loving Audience. So they put the motivations and the arming of the mining vessel in the Graphic Novel for die-hard fans (like us) who DO care about motivations.

As to scrambling Earth vessels and Vulcan vessels, they DID scramble, only to get blown to smithereens by the heavily armed retooled Mining Vessel.

As to the motivations of the Crew and Commander of the Mining Vessel, they were all people that had lost their families in the disaster that Spock had promised to prevent but didn't. They all blamed Spock, and they weren't particularly friendly towards Vulcan, Earth and the Federation anyway as Spock's overtures towards creating peace between the Romulan Empire and the Federation never really panned out. Spock only had a few supporters in the Romulan Senate.

They weren't interested in going back to Romulus and handing over the Vessel, because they had essentially become renegades who were much more interested in Revenge and the destruction of the "Founding Fathers" (Earth and Vulcan) of the Federation (and with the intention of eventually returning to Romulus and assuming power after the destruction of the Federation). Of course their motivations wouldn't make sense to reasonable people, but that particular group of Romulans were not in a "Reasonable" state of mind.

As I pointed out, much of the above information is in the Graphic Novel Prologue, and the rest is implied and inferred.

As to where they waited, it wasn't a problem...Space is a big place . They would have got food and resources from planets they knew about (being from the Future) that the Federation hadn't reached yet.



GB

Gandalf's Beard wrote:No, actually they didn't even pay lip service to the "alternate Universe" theory. In the TV show, sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't depending on what plot device was needed. In the movie "Reboot" (just like in First Contact) it is presumed that the new timeline created is still in the same original universe. There is no talk at all about it being an Alternate Universe. You are just confusing "Alternate Timelines" with Alternate (i.e. Parallel) Universes.

It's been two years since I read all the interviews and stuff about this and I thought I recalled the writers talking about alternate universes, but I can't recall that for sure now, so I probably just misremembered. Point conceded.

Gandalf's Beard wrote:Actually, physicists have long considered the notion of using Black Holes as Time Traveling devices (that bit ST got right. And I even have a book on that very subject written by a physicist) because they are essentially "wormholes" from one region of space-time to another. However, many (but not all) physicists believe that in doing so, one would actually end up in another Universe altogether.

Out of curiosity, do you know of any resources that discuss that in more or less layman's terms? I don't follow science news as closely as I used to, though not having gone far in the hard sciences I can't understand much of the esoteric aspects of modern physics without a substantial bit of "dumbing down".

As to the motivations of the characters and the armament of the mining vessel, you would have to read the prologue contained in the Graphic Novel. The film-makers rightfully concluded that most film-goers wouldn't care about motivations; they were aiming to bring in a whole new Action-SFX-loving Audience. So they put the motivations and the arming of the mining vessel in the Graphic Novel for die-hard fans (like us) who DO care about motivations.

I don't see how that negates the criticism of the movie for not developing the motivations of its villains. It's nice that they elaborated on it somewhere, but if you need to read secondary material in order to understand a film's characterizations, I'd say that the script needed a few more revisions prior to shooting. The graphic novel doesn't stop new-Trek from being a popcorn action flick that's pretty light on character development.

For the record though, I liked the Trek reboot, but was bored to tears by the first two Trek movies and the few episodes of TNG that I've seen. That's the extent of my Trek watching, and to be perfectly honest, what I've seen of the older stuff doesn't really make me want to go and see more. That could just be my bias as a Star Wars fan speaking, though.

Interestingly enough, it's because of Star Wars type fans that they spent less time on developing the motivations of the villains in favour of a more Action-SFX heavy plot.

Personally I'm a fan of both franchises.

GB

Well nu-Trek is certainly better than the SW prequels. But I think that the original Star Wars trilogy is a classic of sci-fi that has yet to be topped by another film of that genre.

I see your point though. Interestingly enough, JJ Abrams was interviewed along with a number of other directors (including Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson) for one of the special features on the Star Wars DVD release. Since then he and others have discussed at some length the influence of Star Wars on the ST reboot.

Well, I was just sort of teasing you!

But it's basically true. JJ Abrams wanted to bring in a new audience that was more interested in Big Budget SFX and more Action. Part of the problem Star Trek had in gaining new ground beyond its cult following was largely due to spending more time on developing characters and (relatively) intelligent stories. I think the first 2 Star Trek films are excellent myself, but I can see why they would seem boring to ADD Star Wars fans.

As it is, I'm very impressed by JJ Abrams film. Having the background from the Graphic Novel satisfied my need for more character development of the "villians." So I got the best of both worlds. Having now established the new actors in their roles, I'm looking forward to a combination of more interesting story lines AND the promise of more Action and SFX.

GB

I want to point out though, that I actually like the Politics Heavy story-lines of Star Wars prequels. In a lot of ways I think they surpassed the Original Trilogy on that score. Though the Original Trilogy was brilliant in capturing the Proto-Myth of the Hero's Journey, which is no surprise as Joseph Campbell himself described George Lucas as one of his best students.

Unfortunately, George Lucas doesn't really know how to direct actors. He's much better at plotting and directing Action/SFX sequences. There is a noticeable difference in Character development from the first SW film and the second and third films which were directed by directors more talented at directing actors, and character development (even though Lucas as a Producer was still heavily involved in directing the SFX and Action sequences).

GB

I think Star Wars was able to throw in quite a bit of character development to go along with the action, even in the prequels. I do think that the new ST movie is better than the prequels, but I also think that the prequels are far, far better than a lot of angry Internet nerds give them credit for. (Although if not for Natalie Portman the love scenes in AOTC would be quite difficult to watch. )

And while the original Star Wars follows the mythic archetypes to a T, the characters still have distinct journeys. I do agree that Irvin Kershner did a much better job on Empire in many ways, though. Star Wars is far from a great character drama, but it still has enough to keep me happy. It's he worlds, the setting, the technology, and the spectacle, and the underlying myth that makes them great for me.

On the other hand, Star Trek is a very different type of story. I don't mind slow-paced stories on principle, but the movies seemed very dull to me. I haven't seen TMP in years, but for Khan, part of it might have been that I was just expecting something a bit more grand and space operaesque given all the times I'd heard it hailed as the greatest ST film. Plus a lot of the acting was pretty dull and cheesy to me. But that's just my personal take on it, and I don't mean to discount your love for them.