It really seemed like 2012 was going to be a special year for sci-fi. Ridley Scott returning to the Alien universe, a lush interpretation of John Carter of Mars from Pixar bigwig Andrew Stanton, the much-anticipated movie adaptation of The Hunger Games -- there was a lot to look forward to.
Of course, some of these mega events didn't quite live up to the hype, but thankfully a number of smaller sci-fi movies (such as Looper) snuck onto the radar, making up for some high-profile disappointments. In the end, 2012 may not have always delivered quality, but it certainly offered sci-fi fans abundant quantity. I've watched a dozen science fiction movies in theatres this year without even trying -- in past years tracking down even half that many sci-fi flicks would have been a chore.
So, here are some of the bests and worsts of this busy year in sci-fi. Keep in mind, this is merely a list of moments, scenes, characters or whatever other little things I liked or didn't like about 2012's crop of sci-fi films. In other words, giving a movie a "best" doesn't necessarily mean I liked the movie as a whole, nor does a "worst" mean I hated a movie. Cool? Okay, let's go...
Note - Oh, also I'm not including superhero movies on this list. Had to whittle down the list somehow. So, even though it had aliens in it, no bests or worsts for The Avengers.
SPOILER WARNING - I'll try not to be too explicit when it comes to plot points, but there's bound to still be plenty of spoilers ahead, so beware.
Best
Jump John Carter, Jump!
I can see why John Carter didn't do it for a lot of folks -- the movie feels three hours long despite being only a little over two. It's a pretty turgid slog at times. That said, I still liked the movie, largely because of all the jumpity, jump, jumping!
See, because Mars has less gravity than Earth John Carter can jump really high while there. That's it. Above average leaping ability is the only thing that makes him special, but dammit he makes the most of it. This guy manages to completely redirect the course of an entire planet via jumping.
The filmmakers go to desperate (and frankly kind of loveable) lengths to make sure every obstacle John Carter faces is jump-solvable. All the bad guys travel around on these flying catamarans that float juuust low enough to be easily accessibly by a super powered jumper, every important person or MacGuffin is always at the top of some sort of tower and so on. It's wonderfully stupid. John Carter is the Super Mario Bros. movie we'll never get.
Best
McNulty of Mars
Reason number two I liked John Carter -- Dominic West (aka the Wire's Jimmy McNulty) as the main bad guy. You keep waiting for him to drunkenly crash his hover catamaran into a bridge support or spend an entire five-minute scene using nothing but the f-word. It never happens, but it adds some much needed suspense to an otherwise slack film.
Worst
Costco, For All Your Alien Invasion Needs
The Watch was a pretty bad movie. It was basically just Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill screaming at each other about dicks, cum, and cumming dicks over a 100-minute commercial for Costco. The Watch may be the mostly shameless example of product placement I've even seen (and I've watched Mac and Me).
Everyone works at Costco, everyone spends all their time talking about Costco and yes, the entire climax of the film involves aliens invading a Costco. It's bizarre, but not in a funny "so good it's bad" kind of way. It's just kind of depressing.
Worst
Men in Black 3's Ending Was Really, Really Stupid
Apparently Men in Black 3 started filming without a finished script. It showed. The movie's ending was a completely out-of-nowhere barf-inducing mixture of nonsensical time travel crap and sentimental sap.
Read no further if you're afraid of spoilers, but come on, it's Men in Black 3...
So, Will Smith has travelled back in time to 1969 and has to attach some gizmo to Apollo 11 to blah, blah, blah. Anyways, here in the last 10 percent of the movie we're suddenly introduced to this black colonel guy. Hmmm, he seems to be getting a lot of screen time. Wonder why? Oh well, he's dead now -- and then suddenly we notice some random truck. Parked on a beach? Near Cape Canaveral? Uh, sure okay. Out of this truck emerges a young boy.
"Where's my daddy?" bleats the child (with his dad's corpse laying about five feet from him). Will Smith's eyes widen. Yup, this isn't just some random kid, it's young Will Smith.
As adult Will Smith watches on speechless, young Tommy Lee Jones (played by Josh Brolin) decides the best thing to do is to immediately mind wipe young Will Smith. Young Tommy Lee Jones then tells young Will Smith his dad was a hero and they walk off into the sunset, and apparently young Will Smith never asks another question about his father ever again. Or wonders who the corpse on the beach was. Oh, and I guess Tommy Lee Jones dumps him in an orphanage at the soonest available opportunity, because Will Smith certainly doesn't recognize him when they meet again in the earlier movies.
So yeah, at the very last moment they retcon MiB's mismatched partners dynamic, replacing it some sort of warped father-son thing that doesn't work at all. It's unneeded, unearned and makes no damn sense at all. But hey, up until those last 20-minutes the movie was actually pretty good.
Best
The First Half of Looper
The first hour-or-so of Looper is fantastic. It's got everything good sci-fi needs -- a cool, fully realized futuristic world, a clever twisted hook and some good ultraviolence. Why, if this movie can keep it up we may have a new Blade Runner-like classic on our hands!
Worst
The Last Half of Looper
But Looper doesn't keep it up. Around halfway through Joseph Gordon-Levitt decides to chill on some farm, Bruce Willis starts shooting kids and this movie goes limp fast. It all culminates in a simplistic, flat ending unworthy of Looper's initial high concept or great first hour. Also, man, whose idea was it to cast Emily Blunt as a tough-as-nails mid-westerner?
Best
David
David may have been my favorite movie character of 2012. Not just sci-fi -- any movie, period. Michael Fassbender, a dude at the height of his powers, masterfully and seemingly effortlessly, managed to make David both loveable and deeply menacing all at once. I would absolutely watch an entire movie of nothing but David chilling out before the rest of the crew wakes up. Just two hours of basketball, root bleaching and dream spying.
Worst
Charlie
If David was one this year's best characters, Charlie Holloway is one of the worst. He's supposed to be a scientist, but he's completely devoid of curiosity. When confronted with David, an amazing feat of technology and engineering he just rolls his eyes and makes with middle-school level insults.
His entire life has apparently been devoted to finding evidence of extraterrestrial life, but when he does find this evidence, he doesn't give a s--t. He lands on a planet, immediately finds giant alien structures and perfectly preserved alien corpses everywhere and he's all "Ehnn, whatever, let's go home. Better luck next time".
Oh, and he gives poor Noomi a space-octopus STD. This guy is the worst.
Best
The Elevator
If you've watched The Cabin in the Woods you know the elevator of which I speak. Up until the movie's protagonists enter the aforementioned elevator, The Cabin in the Woods is a good movie -- once they go down the elevator though, it becomes freakin' amazing.
Worst
This is the Dumbest Dystopian Totalitarian Government Ever
The Hunger Games takes place in a dystopian future society in which a corrupt and decadent central government holds sway. Numerous times throughout the movie Donald Sutherland shows up to expound on the importance of keeping the proles sedate and submissive.
So, how do they do this? By holding an annual televised fight to the death starring children! Yes, that's the best way to keep the people from rising up. Now, it'd be one thing if this society was depicted as being so fundamentally rotten that poor folks actually enjoy watching this sort of thing, but no, later in the movie a particularly cute little girl is killed and everyone's outraged, because yeah, of course they are. Basically, nothing about the society in The Hunger Games makes any sense whatsoever, but hey, at least it's not Twilight, right?
Worst
Basically the whole thing, but if I had to pick one part...
Yup, the mega budget alien invasion flick based on the board game Battleship was bad. I mean, of course it was, but man, I was genuinely surprised by just how bad it was.
So, the good guys have had their battleship sunk. Game over right? Time to play Hungry, Hungry Hippos instead? Of course not, but all of America's battle ships are stuck under an alien dome! And apparently no other country on the earth has any usable warships either. Nope, the only option is the USS Missouri, a WWII-era steam-powered ship that's now a museum. But wait! There's no crew! Or is there? Out of nowhere a bunch of 80-year old veterans show up to run the ship and the barely seaworthy USS Missouri is off to defeat an alien invasion! Sure, okay, whatever.
Best
The first 5-minutes of Prometheus
No five minutes of film have stuck with me more firmly than the first five of Prometheus. The gorgeous alien-like landscapes that were actually from earth, the amazing 3D, the first appearance and self-destruction of the engineer -- the rest of the movie may have been confusing or frustrating at times, but those opening minutes were among the best in sci-fi history. Up there with the first minutes of Star Wars or Ridley Scott's own Blade Runner.
So, those were some of my favorite and least favorite sci-fi moments from the year 2012. How about you folks? Good or bad, what about this year's sci-fi movies stuck out to you?
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I really liked John Carter (of Mars) too. I was bummed that it tanked.
We won’t see another good jumping-based movie for decades now.
Totally agree with you. It was an enjoyable movie with a kind of amusing silliness about it.
Right? It wasn’t great, but it was fun, and it definitely doesn’t deserve to go down as a massive bomb.
And I’m not just saying that because Michael Chabon is awesome and should write more movies.
John Carter could have been good if it actually had John Carter in it.
Didn’t John Carter have increased strength too. I remember when he broke out of his chains and swung a huge boulder around
Occasionally he seemed to have mildly increased strength, but then so did lots of folks on Mars (all the green guys for instance). It was the jumping that set him apart.
@Carbine – In the books, John Carter had more strength because he was used to Earth’s gravity, and Edgar Rice Burroughs assumed Mars had much weaker gravity (and he was right; it’s about 38% of Earth’s).
Agree on all counts. It was just a really fun sci-fi romp. I was thoroughly entertained throughout the whole movie and definitely didn’t deserve the critical panning it got. Also, the actress who played the princess was gorgeous and the alien dog thing was awesome.
Totally agree about John Carter, totally disagree about the Men in Black 3 ending.
Why didn’t they call it “John Carter from Mars?”
You’re gonna get a lot more people in the theatre with that title. And that’s the original title! People see that in the paper, it peaks their interest. “John Carter?” There’s nothing to be curious about.
Dochaze — I’m guessing because they figured people wouldn’t buy the premise of a sci-fi fantasy movie set on Mars anymore. Also, four word title? Forget that, too much reading.
I heard Lifetime has a script for “Jumping out the Hood: The Spudd Web Story.”
john carter was incoherent mess. if you have a fantastical reality, you have remain true to that reality and not abandon it as soon as it’s convenient for story progression. lazy.
@dochaze
I believe the original title of the book is “A Princess of Mars”.
Jack Swagger of Mars > John Carter (of Mars)
Jack Swagger of Mars > Kofi Kingston of Mars (he’s gotta be from Mars too, right? It is common knowledge that he jumps.)
I thought John Carter was good too, I really looked forward to Prometheus and liked it enough but when it ended i immediately wanted to see what happens next. Wasnt the sales pitch, ‘Questions will be answered’ or some shit?
No? At least not that I recall. They wouldn’t even admit it was even related to Alien.
Prometheus was an absolutely beautiful looking film, and I enjoyed it while I was watching it, but then the more I thought about it and the more I talked about it with other people, the shittier it became in my mind.
Not about Alien so much. I heard the denials that it was an Alien prequel. Maybe it was referencing the beginning of humanity? ‘Scuse me while i go take my next bong hit..brb
Aside from a few sequences in Prometheus, I thought it was a really lazily put together movie. I’m down with filmmakers trying to make films wide in scope, and throwing out some big questions, but jesus was this boring.
I didn’t care about any of the crew at all. Especially both players in that romance. Bullshit.
@yellowmenace – Completely have the same thought process.
What really bugs me with these Alien universe movies is that they really jump through hoops to ensure that everyone dies at the end except the heroine. I can maybe understand the co-pilots realizing there wasn’t much point to living another 2 years on a mysterious planet, but the Charlize Theron death was silly. An engineer should’ve split her in half if anything
prometheus = weak ass shizzle. i don’t know what that means but is just seems so right.
I liked John Carter as well. Led me to buy a hardcover book of the 1st three novels and the 3D Blu-Ray combo pack, despite not owning a 3D TV and not seeing the 3D movie in theaters.
Between Robot F. Assbender and that opening sequence, I feel like all the good stuff in Prometheus outweighed the bad.
And I’m assuming that the sequel will have way more David, so yay.
that’s because you’re a fucking idiot.
I didn’t expect to like Cabin in the woods but I did. It was fun and sarcastic. I hated Hunger Games, it looked like nobody did any effort to make a decent film although they had money for it. It’s just shitty.
Looper was a surprise and I think Emily Blunt so pretty and talented (not to mention that adorable english accent) that I totally forgive them for casting her.
Prometheus… I saw it twice and still thinks that lacks personality to be a kind of prequel for Alien although I loved Noomi Rapace (whom I already knew from Millenium mini-series as Lisbeth Salander) and Fassbender. Let’s see what they will present in Prometheus 2.
You’re absolutely insane. Not only was Emily Blunt excellent in Looper, the last half of the movie is the most emotionally satisfying portion, and the ending blew me away. I have literally no idea where you’re coming from at all. It’s like talking to an alien about Earth movies.
Yeah, you shut your mouth about Emily Blunt and Looper in general. That movie was the tits all the way through.
I found last half dull. As for emotionally satisfying, who did you have to root for?
*Spoilers*
Kid murdering JGL/Bruce Willis? Evil Children of the Corn kid? Incessantly cranky model-looking “scrappy mid-western” Emily Blunt? There was nobody to cheer for by the end.
I was cheering for both Blunt and JGL at the end. Willis was meant to challenge the audiences acceptance of child killing, similar to Remender’s X-Force arc. He had a list of 5 or so kids, would you kill that many children if one of them were Hitler?
What is an example of an “emotionally satisfying” sci-fi flick for you and at what point does that matter when kids are ‘splodin bad guys with sweet visual effects? I thought it was an excellent sci-fi film with an extremely satisfying conclusion, which is pretty rare for the genre.
I’m with @SatanBigsby. The fact that we can still debate who to root for at the end of Looper shows how well the movie actually worked.
Emily Blunt just gives me a big ol’ boner.
In the end, that’s all that really matters.
I know Emily Blunt is objectively attractive, but she does nothing for me. Read also: Beckinsale, Kate.
To SatanBigsby — I don’t require a sci-fi movie to have an emotionally satisfying ending. I liked Prometheus and it’s bleak, cold ending. It seemed like the ending of Looper was trying to tug the ol’ heartstrings though, and I just didn’t really sympathize with any of the characters by that point.
Speaking of endings, let me continue my John Carter boosterism — it’s twisty ending was more satisfying than Looper’s my opinion.
I loved Looper. The ending was a little corny, but I think Rian Johnson managed to create this amazing fully realized world that was totally engrossing.
Nate and I must come from the same alien planet,since he and I share the same opinion — and I thought I was the only one on planet Earth who saw LOOPER as anything but pure, unfiltered genius.So, thank you for that Nate; it’s good to know that I’m not alone out here.
Looper was amazing and shut your whore mouth about Emily Blunt.
Looper would’ve played a lot less positively if it’d come out after Sandy Hook. That kid killing subplot was tough to watch as it was.
On a more serious note, Emily Blunt playing on that bed smoking was about the hottest thing I saw at the bijou this year. Johnny K is a gawddamned lucky dude. I’d smirk my way through a shitty sitocm too if I was coming home to that in my million dollar home each night.
I can see why someone might not like Looper’s second half — it went from Blade Runner to X-Men really fast. I love both of those things and loved it all.
looper descended into nonsensical bollocks. great set up, piss poor pay off. time travel stories are always are very tricky theme to deal with. but if you lay out your world and then work within the rules you created for that world, you should be able to make a decent story work. they didn’t do that here.
John Carter was okay. That’s all. I really don’t like completely CGI characters, they never look real, and always look like some brain damaged George Lucas hallucination. I feel like Tim Riggins was born to play Tim Riggins and nothing else, I can’t buy him in any other role so far. Still haven’t seen Savages though.
Cabin in the Woods was one of the more enjoyable theatre experiences I’ve had in the last few years. The Pirhana remake had the same kind of enjoyment for me, but this years 3DD was kind of a mess although still absurdly enjoyable.
I guess you’re not including Chronicle because it was a super hero movie? That was excellent stuff.
Savages is absolute garbage. For a movie about drug dealers that had a hammy over-acting Benicio del Toro and Salma Hayek looking hot as fuck, holy shit, was it boring.
The worst part about Prometheus was Charlize Theron’s death. It was like she suddenly got stuck in Crash Bandicoot.
I love this joke but hate you for making fun of Prometheus.
I also love this joke, but hate him for making fun of Crash Bandicoot.
love the joke, hate both of you.
Worst: Bruce Willis’ ridiculous killing spree in Looper. I get that he’s a badass (and Bruce Willis), but taking out the ENTIRE armed-to-the-teeth mafia by himself? Come on.
Best: The rest of Looper.
yeah, bruce obviously became an elite special ops soldier during his 30 years away. oh no, wait, we just saw him become a thuggish, violent criminal over 30 years and then settle down with his wife. lazy writing.
Cloud Atlas cornered the market on best and worst science fiction. A dystopian Asian future without Tom Hanks > any future where he talks babytalk Creole.
Too harsh on Looper, that movie was the tits. The torture scene when the dude is driving his car is crazy awesome
Best: The first half of Looper.
Worst: The last half of Looper.
I love you so much right now, no homo. The first half is truly one of the finest movies of the year. I don’t know why, but Rian Johnson decided to wish his movie into a fucking cornfield! (corn field, cane field; work with me, here) Sadly, this was not a good thing. Surprisingly, people are willing to ignore this. Why? Don’t people recognize that there were two movies at war here and that the wrong movie gained the upper hand? Thanks for being one of the sane few.
And love for John Carter…there can’t be enough.
Completely concur about Looper. Thought the ending was dumb and predictable as well.
the mark of a great film is consistency. its no good having a great idea/premise if you haven’t got the ability to make a consistent satisfying resolution. all this apologetic bullshit about movies that are lazy cgi wankfests is nauseating. SCRIPT FIRST visual eye candy LATER, when you’ve fucking earned it.
for me, looper may be the most overrated movie ive ever seen.
i completely agree about the first half vs. the second half, but to be honest, i didn’t even really think the first half was all that great.
i literally felt within the first 15 minutes of the movie that something was very off about it: the structure, pacing, and writing just felt very unpolished. my fears were confirmed as the longer the movie went, the worse it got.
the futuristic world was never well established visually or conceptually. i literally just felt like they found some back alley in chicago and threw some cardboard boxes and bums onto the street and started filming.
the concept of time travel made no sense and was inconsistent but that was all ok because bruce willis told us to not think about it because it would scramble our brains…. ok?
and yes, the epic scene where bruce willis single handedly kills a small army of men by himself without getting a scratch. ummm. ok?
the faces and sounds the little kid made were so scene breaking the entire theater starting laughing….
i expected a slick, intelligent, complex sci-fi movie and instead i got an insultingly dumbed down, die harded movie with an endless farm and a kid with super powers….
@ d.darko – nailed it there, son. you should be reviewing the films here, not the tools that are paid to be apologists for mediocrity.
Hello there.
I only sign in just to say one thing to this reviewer.
Yes Battleship movie wasn’t great but have you seen the movie??? I’m sorry but everything you wrote about the movie was wrong…. have you seen the damn movie?? Have you seen the 1st 30 minutes of the movie or you just skipped to the end??
1st : When the aliens raised the dome shield only 3 warships stayed inside of the dome because they were the ships assigned to check the weird looking metal floating in the sea and were close to it. All the other ships were out of range and got stuck outside of the shield with no means of entering. Hawaii islands and the Battleship that was docked on the island were inside the shield.
2nd: The old crew of the USS Missouri was on the island to watch the navy exercises. Or maybe they live in Hawaii, why not… !! Maybe when they looked at the sky and saw a weird shield thingy they just tried to find its source…. Many reason for the old guys to be there.
Yeah the movie wasn’t awesome but i liked the small story and the action.
Next time try to play attention and do a good review.
Battleship shots fired!
I reviewed Battleship with all the care and accuracy it deserved.
The USS Missouri is more seaworthy than you seem to expect. But she did carry a crew of more than 1,500 men so I’d be a little surprised to find enough Korean War vets to man her, even if Aliens!
Battleship was total and complete shit. I watched it in the hospital, because there was nothing on at 2:00 am in the morning. After watching that pile, I called the nurse to give me a shot of morphine, so I could try to get some sleep and forget what I had just saw. True Story.
SatanBigsby wins. Looper is fantastic throughout. SPOILER The scene with the rainmaker being a bad ass was insane. The slow pan, the silence, the violence, the power. And even at the end of the movie…you don’t know that he doesn’t become future Hitler. We assume because his mom is there to love him…but he already has a taste of the power…f*ckin sick movie.
well executed set pieces and individual scenes do not make up for the sloppy collusion. they’re supposed to be telling a story, not an episode of heroes.
Worst: Idris Elba’s accent in Prometheus. You have a handful of people using British accents, and he’s forced to use this shitty fake southern accent. Just let him use his natural British accent, it would be far better. I like Idris Elba a lot, but holy hell was that terrible.
Elba as Janek talking with RDJr as Lazarus playing Osiris would be entertaining.
I hear him getting a lot of guff (“Guff?”… “I mean, shi—-”) for that accent but accents are always evolving. You’re telling me in a hundred years it’ll be impossible for an accent to sound like that? I buy it. Now as for the engineers giving humans a map to where their military experimentation lab planet is….
elbas accent was just embarrassing. like ray winstone in the departed.
John Carter was solid, but about 20 minutes too long and Andrew Stanton had Lucas-itis when the Princess was the focus of any scene. Too much exposition and stilted dialogue from her mouth, and her “dramatic turnarounds”were laugh-inducing.
If it had been called “JOHN CARTER and the Warlords of Mars” or something, and tightened up just a little, it could have made more money. But oh well. At least despite there being dozens of Barsoom stories to tell, the ending was mildly satisfying enough to give closure.
Yeah, I wasn’t wild about the Princess. She was like a character stolen from the Prince of Persia movie or something.
I liked Dejah, a lot. Not only was she a fine looking woman, she was very true to the spirit of the character from the books – and the dramatic turnarounds are sort of a tribute to a more dramatic, romantic era of storytelling. And the actress didn’t embarass herself in a crazy story.
I’m guessing most people who saw the movie haven’t read the books though, so they’re consuming it differently than those of us who have.
I thought the C-section scene in Prometheus was incredible.
Dredd being ignored by audiences was the biggest disappointment.* Hopefully it goes on to have solid DVD success.
*the AV Club’s review and comment section free-for-all was annoyingly, well, unfair. Otherwise it received mostly solid reviews.
I finally got around to seeing The Watch last night, and, ho-lee sheet, that movie. THAT MOVIE. It’s like putting Old School and Attack the Block on two separate screens, then bludgeoning yourself about the head with a lead pipe.
Um, no, not “everybody” was outraged when little Rue died in The Hunger Games. The people from District 11, that is her district if you remember, were, as we saw, and as you’d expect. People from the poorer districts probably were. But most of the Capitol citizens sure weren’t. They’re the target audience for the Hunger Games. We can also assume that most of the people from the “Career districts” loyal to the Capitol, who see participation in the Games as honor, weren’t either. Maybe you should try paying attention when you watch movies. Things tend to make sense then.
But I suppose you’re right that it’s unimaginable that there could be a society where the masses in the powerful capital city enjoy watching games in which people from poorer parts of the country slaughter each other in arenas, it’s not like anyone could ever think that giving people food and such violent games, bread and circuses so to speak, could work well for their rule…
Oh, wait.
You clearly read the books Ivana, the author of this article did not. I found the books great and the movie mediocre. I agree that the capitol was not menacing enough, and didn’t give us a true villain. I think it was constrained by the PG13 rating.
I am not saying the books are great, but Honest Trailers clues you in to what the movies left out. THG movies will copy the “Twilight” series formula: Follow the books enough to keep the kids buying tickets while making the movies as cheap as possible.
Honest Trailer: [www.youtube.com]
AG: If the producers of TGH movies actually cared about the movies, they would shoot a PG13 and an R or unrated version. It wouldn’t cost much more and they actually might make more money off of it in the long run.
Best: John Carter, and I’m sorry I feel this way, because sci-fi movies these days are nowhere from the level of older stuff, like 2001/2010 Space Odyssey, or even They live.
Worst: I’m hesitating between Prometheus and Hunger Games. Actually Hunger Games would be good, but the depiction of the dystopic dictatorship is like from a movie 30 years ago (not from a specific movie, just it’s quality is so lame and somehow feels totally dumb), so Hunger Games is only good from the actual start of the games. Which actually surprised me. The fact that it was good I mean.
Prometheus was like scenes thrown together without a strong logic, it happens with the wrong pace, it’s missing the “nothing really important happens” scenes from between the “important thing happens” scenes, which (the “nothing really important happens” scenes) make a movie actually a movie, not just what it is: scenes thrown together.
Thanks for bringing up Prometheus again. Ugh. I was so excited for it to come out and was convinced that it was going to be arguably the best sci-fi movie of all time. But then the characters had to start opening their mouths. Some of the dumbest dialogue and character decision making ever.
That doctor/Charlie/Tom Hardy-lookin’ dude was the worst. We referred to him as Dr. Bro when talking about the movie afterward because he seemed like some wayward frat boy who wandered onto their ship.
Prometheus was visually incredible, and had some great scenes, but was so disappointing overall.
Can we get a movie just based on the beginning of Prometheus? Shit was unreal!
there may be a decent movie in all the footage filmed of prometheus, some where. but it will need a major re cut. several characters need to go. sad thing is, this is apparently ridley’s version of the film. which is so very sad. i genuinely thought this movie got lost in editing/committee and it was lead astray by focus group testing etc. but if this his version, then he’s fucking lost it.
I’d honestly like to hear how you (or anyone else) thought Looper should’ve ended. And this isn’t intended as a malicious “hey why don’t YOU try writing a movie script” comment. I’m just curious how you would’ve improved upon things. Would you just have it continue as a cat-and-mouse game of JGL vs. Bruce vs. the mob in the city?
I would,yeah.
It should have ended with Bruce Willis remembering how to run after a god damn child.
I watched Cabin In The Woods last night. It was a very good movie.
John Carter was just alright. What really bothered me was just how underwhelmed he was when he found himself transported to a strange location surrounded by 4 armed green aliens. Not until he rescues the princess and intervenes in a giant air battle (even though his entire character stance is to not take part in fighting) does he finally start asking questions about where the hell he is and what the hell is going on. Not to mention one of the most unenjoyable, lackluster climax battles I’ve ever seen.
John Carter – I do not recommend this movie . Really we need real sci-fi movies. MIB 3 also not the best of the MIB 3 movies. My question is always will I watch it again?. for these 2 movies no thank you.
I was completely disappointed by all aspects of Prometheus. I literally dragged several of my friends I work with at DISH to watch it after one of our shifts, and I felt terrible that I made them sit through such a tragedy of a film. I do think that Dredd deserves to be on the best of the best of this list because of the superb acting, cinematography, and 3D graphics. I just streamed it through my DISH Hopper’s Blockbuster @Home app in 3D and I loved it! I was saved the high price to see it in theaters, and I still got to see the goods.