Greatoneshere

12 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

My thing is that after most movies that I watch, my entire reaction is “yeah, that was fine”. The other day I watched The American Friend, a fairly deep cut, because I wanted to see another take on the Ripley character before watching the new Netflix series with Andrew Scott. Other than thinking it’s really funny that Dennis Hopper and Matt Damon played the same character 20 years apart, I don’t have much of anything to say about that movie, good or bad. 

I mean, that's most movies. Almost every movie I watch ranks between a 6 to a 7.5. A movie being below that is usually abysmal, and a film being above that is a must watch. It's very rare for any film I watch to break that range of score (mostly because I know the bad movies to avoid so I don't end up watching them to begin with and great movies are hard to come by). That being said, it's still at least worth scoring and giving maybe a one sentence blurb about to let others know. But I agree, most movies just kind of come and go. I mean, I love discussing films, but most here just talk about the big, obvious, straightforward stuff like comic book films, etc. There's nothing to really talk about there, so I would love to get into better/stranger/more interesting films with someone more. Like discussing how How to Blow Up a Pipeline is basically a realistic, live-action Final Fantasy VII? That's a conversation worth having.

They fucking nailed the seppuku scene from the book. Goddamn.

The hyper capitalist/crony capitalist system we now live in is absolutely fucked. Any merit the economic system had in breeding competition and meritocracy is long gone. Almost everyone I know is either obsessed with being famous, rich, powerful, highly influential, etc. Everyone is obsessed with money and wealth at the expense of just living and growing as a person.

53 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

This game has already massively outsold the original.  I know people in my personal life who play one or two games year who either bought this game or have asked me about it.  The majority of players have never played the original and probably would have no idea this was a sequel if 2 wasn’t in the title.  Most people who play this game have no clue what was or wasn’t present in the original.  If you’re just jumping on the bandwagon now, I don’t think being surprised that an entire faction isn’t playable for a while is unreasonable. 

I'm not sure about the first game being played offline, I only ever played it online. But if your defense is that casuals are stupid, don't know they are playing a sequel, don't understand how the gameplay loop works even if there was a first game to go off of first, etc. you won't find any sympathy here. Their ignorance isn't a criticism of the developer, it's a criticism of casual gamers. I do think if you're just "jumping on the bandwagon now" that being surprised is unreasonable, that's my entire argument. The slightest amount of research (like with anything) would elucidate this for them.

If most people playing this game don't understand the gameplay loop, the articles are still stupid for not informing them better/more clearly rather than trying to drum up clickbait. I don't disagree with you that most Helldivers 2 players, like most people in general, are idiots, but idiots making stupid "jump to conclusions mat" Office Space style are to be chastised and educated, not justified.

43 minutes ago, TheLeon said:

I probably watch an average of 4-5 movies a week (and often a fair bit of TV), but I don’t like giving numerical ratings and don’t have it in me to give “real” reviews most of the time, so I’m not nearly as active in this thread as I could be. 

You're actually a really good film watcher! I've noticed you're always watching (or know of) even the smaller stuff like Nyad, etc. I get not bothering but you should participate more! I wish @Zeluge was around more too.

1 hour ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I read them! But it's only something you recently started doing, well posting them anyway. Seems like mostly a lot of sure bets and watching stinkers like Jurassic Park 3 before you see the first movie.

Yeah watching the Jurassic Park movies out of order was my younger brother's fault. And yeah, definitely some stinkers in there trying to catch my younger brother up on some franchises he fell behind on.  A good number of rewatches in the posts but new films as well. And yeah I did start doing it recently, I used to be far more thorough and write reviews wayyyy back but didn't seem like worth the work. But a simple rating seems easy enough. If someone is genuinely curious about a film or a rating I gave they can always follow up and I can elaborate at that point.

39 minutes ago, LazyPiranha said:

You’re reading a tone in the article that absolutely isn’t there.  The entire thing is littered with references to the fact that it’s almost certainly temporary.  It’s more of an interesting curiosity if the way the game runs than anything else.  If they wanted to incite rage, they could have been way more explicit about it.

 

As for them removing half of the game, they actually did for a short period of time.  Unless there’s some offline/private mode I’m unaware of, if I really liked fighting bots or the missions on bot planets, I literally couldn’t.  It’s an interesting choice to make, and one that I’m guessing they knew would piss people off because they came back very quickly.  

Why would it piss anyone off? The first game did the exact same thing over and over. That'd be weird to be upset by a mechanic people have known this game would have since the first has had it for a decade.

15 hours ago, Nokra said:

It legitimately impresses me with how many movies you watch pretty much every weekend. I can barely cook my meals.  

I'm glad someone's reading the posts!  Because I have to keep up with anime, games, movies, TV, books/manga/comics, politics, sports, working out, etc. I live a pretty regimented life so I don't fall behind on anything and I get as much done as possible per week so I do try to get at least four-five movies every weekend (usually don't do movies on weekdays, that's for TV, etc.).

39 minutes ago, Reputator said:

Jesus my nerd meter just went into warp 5.

The break definitely didn't help the season overall.

7 minutes ago, mclumber1 said:

 

It's a reference to the recent Dune movies.  

He looks like Baron Harkonnen looking to take back Arrakis from the Atreides family.

The weekend recap:

-Jurassic Park (1993; dir. Steven Spielberg): 10/10

-Only God Forgives (2013; dir. Nicolas Winding Refn): 9/10

-Sin City: Recut, Extended and Unrated Edition (2005; dir. Robert Rodriguez/Frank Miller): 8/10

-The Northman (2022; dir. Robert Eggers): 7/10

-How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022; dir. Daniel Goldhaber): 8.5/10

-Past Lives (2023; dir. Celine Song): 7.5/10

-Dragon Ball Z: Movie 1 - Dead Zone (1989; dir. Daisuke Nishio): 7/10

If it's anything like the first game once the bugs are wiped out too the story and galaxy will reset with the alien races back to fight all over again. They may use this opportunity though to introduce the third alien race, the illithids or illuminates as they were called in the first game. The devs have been saying that should be coming at some point.

And that's a wrap on Curb Your Enthusiasm! Twenty five years, one special, and 12 seasons later and we're at the finish line. Overall, the series finale was solid, pretty indicative of good but not great late stage Curb Your Enthusiasm. It was nice that Larry David (and Jerry Seinfeld, who shows up here) got their do-over on the Seinfeld ending, and it was great having Jerry back, even if only for a bit as his energy with LD is very different from everyone else's since he's far more similar to LD. Some great cameos as usual and some fun fan service. It's sad to see the show go but I do think it's been well past time for it to officially end since things haven't been the same with the show since the big time jump gap (in real life) between season 8 (2011) and season 9 (2017). Larry David stopped solely writing every episode and the longer episodes later in the show's life were shabbier and less tightly edited than the previous seasons. That being said, I'm glad we got so much Curb Your Enthusiasm, there are so many things I'll remember from this show from pants tent to "13 unbelievable hours" of Jerry Seinfeld having sex with all of his female co-stars during Seinfeld. 

X and Pearl were both really interesting, well done movies, I'm definitely in for this third one by Ti West.

5 hours ago, Mercury33 said:

12 years really isn’t as much of a time jump as it seems in terms of the way people look. Paul’s what, 20 at the end of Dune? Little make up and the right lighting and your good. 

Of course, I'm sure they'll make it work but being 20 vs. being 32 years old is a huge difference, especially when you have to look weary enough because of a 12 year genocidal space campaign on top of it all.

I see The Rock continues to get more entitled and obsessed with his brand as he gets older. A shame, when he was doing interesting work like The Rundown, Be Cool, Southland Tales, etc. I liked and rooted for him. He's pissed all that good will away in the intervening years.

4 hours ago, elbobo said:

The Marvels

 

I've been kind of checked out on the MCU for a while now, I watched most the recent movies except for Antman 3 but I had no clue what was going on in half this movie, was a lot of the backstory and characters covered in a show I skipped? I didn't have an issue with the odder parts of the movie surprisingly like the musical planet or the Cats sequence, comics are silly so its fine.

The Marvels is ostensibly a sequel to Captain Marvel, WandaVision and Miss Marvel so if you didn't see that film and both shows you'll definitely be lost regarding who Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan are, how they got their powers and what they are capable of.

I didn't mind the musical planet or the cat sequence, the problem with having those sequences (and Fury making constant jokes in every scene he's in) in a very short one hour and 45 minutes means there's no time for an actual film with real characters and stakes. You can only waste so much time on non-sequitur sequences if your film is short. It's also super weird for a jokey film to massacre the entire musical planet off screen and never mention it again.

3 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

It's been more than 30 years since I read those books, so my memory is VERY fuzzy.  My recollection is very similar to this.  Thanks.  It makes me want to reread the series.

They are very good reads (dense of course) but as an adult you intake and understand so much more than when I first read them in my teens. 

I remember living in Philly feeling the 2011 one. I was sleeping and the bed just started bouncing up and down on its own, was crazy. 

1 minute ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

I changed the thread title but the 3rd one hasn't been announced yet.

But it was confirmed to be in the works? Unless I'm missing something.

Front Mission 3 Remake Coming Alongside 1 & 2 Remakes - GameSpot

WWW.GAMESPOT.COM

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Nintendo outlined a release cadence for the planned Front Mission remakes on Switch and confirmed a remake of 3 is also in the works.

1 hour ago, SuperSpreader said:

Didn't it already end? 

It did end but because it was cancelled. The end of season 4 indicated that season 5 was clearly going to be the final season/final story arc but the show was cancelled despite everyone getting paid anyway so it seemed stupid for HBO to cancel the show right at the end after supporting it for 4 seasons to begin with but here we are.

'Westworld' Cast Will Be Paid Despite Season 5 Cancellation

COLLIDER.COM

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The series was abruptly cancelled on November 4.

Before season 1 came out back in 2016, Jonathan Nolan and co. said they had a five season plan worked out, so it's particularly annoying to have had it cancelled with one season to go. However, they were apparently offered to get to do a season 5 but at a severely reduced budget so the showrunners balked and walked away. For the dozens of us that cared.  

Westworld Showrunners Planned at Least 5 Seasons for HBO

COLLIDER.COM

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Though HBO's 'Westworld' has yet to debut, showrunners Jonathan and Lisa Joy Nolan have already planned out at least five seasons of the sci-fi series.

Westworld Showrunners Turned Down Season 5 Plans With Lower Budget

COMICBOOK.COM

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TV fans were stunned earlier this year when HBO announced that their once gold star series [...]

2 hours ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Do we really understand what Frank Herbert was trying to say without the ending of Heretics of Dune?  (I've never read the novels after #6).  I would have to reread the books, but does  Dune Messiah even come to a truly satisfactory ending?

2 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Paul's story arc does conclude "satisfactorily" in Dune Messiah as it absolutely reinforces Herbert's overarching theme of "beware of Messianic figures".

Yeah, having recently re-read the six Frank Herbert written novels the past few years, Dune Messiah does do a good job of wrapping up Paul's arc in many ways, but outside of that, it's very obvious there's a lot more story to tell as Dune Messiah sets up a lot of things that then play out in the much longer novel Children of Dune (Dune Messiah is like 200 pages by comparison to Children of Dune's 500-ish pages). I'm sure Denis Villenueve can find a way to make Dune Messiah end strongly enough but in no way do the books play out like it's some duology or trilogy. If you wanted a complete story of at least the current plotlines and the Atreides family arc, you'd have to adapt the first four novels, including God Emperor of Dune (my favorite one out of the book series but it is very obtuse, esoteric and philosophical). I think Denis VIllenueve says he won't come back but give it time and he'll one day say: "I see a way to crack Children of Dune in a two-part movie" after a few years, but we'll see (like Dune, Children of Dune is far too long to be adapted into one movie, honestly it could use three but I'll take two).

Either way, none of the books after the six Frank Herbert ones matter. The prequels and sequels written by Frank Herbert's son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson are fine but nothing special. They are typical sci-fi novels as opposed to the esoteric, centuries spanning stories of Frank Herbert's initial six novels. I tell most people not to waste their time past the initial six but be forewarned that Frank Herbert died soon after the sixth novel's release and he was clearly setting up new plotlines in that book. The new ones written by his son and Kevin J. Anderson do follow through in their sequels but it's not the same by a wide margin. But if you really need answers they are there in their books. 

The first four novels tell a complete story however and if you just read the first four novels and stopped you'd be completely satisfied. However, books 5 and 6 really are fascinating to read and well worth everyone's time but books 5+6 start a completely new story for the most part. But I imagine in terms of movies we probably would never get past adaptations of the first four books, if we even get that far. But man that'd be some wild sci-fi if we got to books 4, 5 and 6. 

Edit: I also really hope they don't call it Dune: Part Three because that's just confusing in terms of book to movie numbering. It's not a trilogy and Dune Messiah is the second book in the series, not the third book. Just call it Dune Messiah. Dune is a long novel, so it required two parts, let's move on, simple enough. I know they've threatened to do so but I hope they don't.  

It's a shame they don't give you the original version of the game along with the remake since the original Front Mission 1 and 2 never saw a release outside of Japan. I'm grateful we're at least getting the remakes on PC day and date now with Switch, though Front Mission 3 is the remake I'm most looking forward to. I guess there was at least a western release of the DS port of Front Mission 1 which would have been nice to see included with the Front Mission 1 remake, but it was not.

The OP thread title should probably be changed to reflect this is a thread about all three Front Mission remakes in one place.