What Movies Have You Watched? 17: Blowed Up Real Good

[warpus]

Maybe it will work, but Dune isn't Star Wars - the audience seems to mostly be there due to the books. Would a Bene Gesserit prequel have much material in the original books to speak of? (and why not just present that in the dylogy/trilogy).

Exactly! Dune isn't Star Wars, it's full of sociological, political, religious, and other contexts running through the story as it's being told. The world building Frank Herbert did here is matched only by something like Lord of the Rings, IMO. There is a lot of material there and a lot of stories that can be told about the Bene Gesserit.

I wouldn't call it a "prequel". It'd be a set of stories about the sisterhood, not necessarily the story of how their involvement ties into the movie necessarily, although I'm sure that will be covered to some degree. I wouldn't think of this as "a prequel to the movies". Think of it as supplementary material that complements the story and does more worldbuilding to flesh out the Dune universe for the audience.

I disagree that the books drove most viewers to the theatres to watch this. It seems like most people who have seen the movie have never read the books (but it's not like we have stats to prove this or disprove it)

Besides, this first film wasn't Bene Gesserit-heavy, it was just Jessica-heavy, so not even the director seems to have had much to add about them.

Exactly! The n00b audience has not been told much at all about the sisterhood so far. There really isn't much time to do something like that in a movie format, even if it's trilogy. It makes a lot more sense to present this sort of material in a different way, such as a standalone TV series.

The intent here is to create a franchise like SW or MU, at least by the studio. You can expect them to announce more movies and TV series in the future, although I bet they'll first to wait to see if the sisterhood series is a success.

 

[JohannaK]

I liked the Prestige too, but I read the director significantly altered the plot in the end.
Tesla was played by David Bowie (a good casting).
For the original book plot, try the spoiler:

Spoiler :

I read that in the book it isn't at all ambiguous whether or not a working machine by Tesla was used. It was certainly used. Hugh Jackman's character seems to be killing copies (or himself, don't recall from the synopsis). In the movie this isn't entirely certain, since there is the sense it might be all another "magic" trick; when your attention was diverted from the doubles/machine, you made up your own mind as to what is going on, alluding to the possibility that the man in the water-tank was just the drunk/troublesome look-alike and not a copy produced by the machine.
That said, I am not aware of the director giving a definitive explanation (I doubt he'd provide one in the first place).

I completely disagree and I think it's perfectly and completely inambiguous in the movie as well. The first time he tries the machine it definitely produces a duplicate. We are shown a pile of hundreds of duplicates of the hat, and even the cat is shown with its duplicate. There can be no doubt.

 

[warpus]

Yeah. What's a bit ambiguous though is whether the machine teleports you or teleports your clone somewhere. I still can't shake the feeling that the magician who uses this machine is a DFJKLHDLKFJ moron for killing himself when he performs the trick. Drowning himself at that, which is a horrible way to die

 

[Kyriakos]

@JohannaK, the reviews I read stress this point, that since you only see duplicate hats (iirc also a cat), it can be seen as a magician's diversion in the way that you got some part of what was needed, but not teleportation (@warpus pointed that already in his original post). That this interpretation (in the movie, not the book) is a diversion can be reasonably surmised from the words spoken in the final scenes by Michael Caine (iirc), which are exactly about diversion and how "magic" works.
I personally doubt the movie means that Tesla's machine is what makes the act work. More than likely the drowned man was the troublesome look-alike of Hugh, placed there to cause the downfall of his rival. The act would be resting on that lookalike falling to the room below, through a trap-door, and the actual magician (Hugh) waiting in the edge of the theatre to make his triumphant entrance.Caine's actions might allow for a subplot about the stage-master, but since the story already has changed from the books, regardless of how you interpret what is going on (in the book you get passages examining the copies and metaphysical stuff), it's not likely the director of the movie fleshed out what has to happen with the stage master; what matters is making the audience find their own way to believe in magic/Tesla teleport tech (as you did).

As an epilogue, the stage-master (in the movie) never believes in magic. He only once argues that the Tesla tech is real, before the court. You may ask yourself why he did so - maybe because you never reveal how your "magic" trick is actually done, since then all can see it was basic.

 

[warpus]

Every single write-up of the movie I've so far found describes the machine to be a genuine duplication machine, and not just a parlour trick. That's not a great argument in itself, but it seems that it does point to the fact that this is what we were supposed to get out of the movie. However, I would love to read a writeup that explains an alternate interpretation, if such a thing exists

 

[Kyriakos]

Every single write-up of the movie I've so far found describes the machine to be a genuine duplication machine, and not just a parlour trick. That's not a great argument in itself, but it seems that it does point to the fact that this is what we were supposed to get out of the movie. However, I would love to read a writeup that explains an alternate interpretation, if such a thing exists

Try youtube, I recall a video in a popular movie-review channel, but it was a year ago.

 

[warpus]

If it begins with "Hellllloooooooo" then I will not be watching. I'd much rather read an article (I will look for one myself, so no worries)

 

[Broken_Erika]

If it begins with "Hellllloooooooo" then I will not be watching. I'd much rather read an article (I will look for one myself, so no worries)

Obligatory

Spoiler :

 

[Takhisis]

‘Helloooo’ leads to ‘Hello Sydney!’, which leads to my recent Scream marathon, which leads me to Scary Movie (the original) which barely holds up because it's a parody of something that was a send-up of the entire genre by itself.

The later Scary Movies actually were better in that sense, but not in others.

 

[Synobun]

I need to find a way to watch movies more consistently. I'll go through months-long droughts, then a streak of a dozen movies in a week, then back to drought. I still end up watching many movies when it's all said and done, but the feast approach feels lacking.

 

[warpus]

I didn't watch any movies for over a decade. Ever since the pandemic I've been catching up though.

Yesterday I watched Chappie

GREAT movie! I loved it. My only problem with the movie is that too many of the characters are just too .. cartoony. Yeah, I get that they hired a bunch of rappers who can't act or whatever, but the sort of over-the-top performance seemed to bleed into other characters as well. If they wrote the characters and casted them and directed them properly, this could have been such a classic. I still really liked it, but it seemed that this level of cartoony-ness was a really bad idea. It would have worked fine if it was 1997, but it isn't.

 

[Synobun]

I didn't watch any movies for over a decade. Ever since the pandemic I've been catching up though.

Yesterday I watched Chappie

GREAT movie! I loved it. My only problem with the movie is that too many of the characters are just too .. cartoony. Yeah, I get that they hired a bunch of rappers who can't act or whatever, but the sort of over-the-top performance seemed to bleed into other characters as well. If they wrote the characters and casted them and directed them properly, this could have been such a classic. I still really liked it, but it seemed that this level of cartoony-ness was a really bad idea. It would have worked fine if it was 1997, but it isn't.

Have you seen any Die Antwoord videos? 1997 would be positively modern for them.

 

[warpus]

I have and I have a bunch of their songs on some of my playlists. I'm not going to look up their individual names cause you'll know who I'm talking about, but the "mom" did a good job in the movie IMO. The dude was okay and not that bad really. I am not really sure who else is a part of their possee or whatever, but a bunch of the other actors seemed to put in a cartoony performance. Especially the baddies.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Gonna watch Dune tonight.

 

[warpus]

Gonna watch Dune tonight.

Make sure you don't accidentally watch this version

or this one

 

[tjs282]

Make sure you don't accidentally watch this version

or this one

*Checks release-dates on both*

It's a little worrying that hack movie-producers still consider cinema audiences really so clueless as to mistake such blatant rip-off-movies for The Real Thing...

 

[warpus]

Releasing a similar movie at the same time as a big blockbuster seems to be a strategy that leads to higher profits in some capacity, otherwise you'd think they wouldn't even try. Big studios do this all the time - if one studio is working on a movie like Deep Impact, another one will be at the same time working on Armageddon. The way it was explained to me.. The script for a movie is usually passed around a bit before a studio decides to go with it, so studios often see scripts that get passed around and eventually grabbed by others. If somebody's working on a movie about invading mutant cows, and spending a lot of money on it, all the other studios will know about this and worry that it might lead to "the summer of invading mutant cows", and so they want to ride that gravy train too and end up making something similar.

In this case it seems that they are trying to trick audiences into seeing these movies instead of the real deal, but it's probably the exact same sort of thing going on.. just with a smaller studio that has less money to spend on the production.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Releasing a similar movie at the same time as a big blockbuster seems to be a strategy that leads to higher profits in some capacity, otherwise you'd think they wouldn't even try. Big studios do this all the time - if one studio is working on a movie like Deep Impact, another one will be at the same time working on Armageddon. The way it was explained to me.. The script for a movie is usually passed around a bit before a studio decides to go with it, so studios often see scripts that get passed around and eventually grabbed by others. If somebody's working on a movie about invading mutant cows, and spending a lot of money on it, all the other studios will know about this and worry that it might lead to "the summer of invading mutant cows", and so they want to ride that gravy train too and end up making something similar.

In this case it seems that they are trying to trick audiences into seeing these movies instead of the real deal, but it's probably the exact same sort of thing going on.. just with a smaller studio that has less money to spend on the production.

I've noticed this phenomenon especially with children's movies/cartoons. A blockbuster Disney/Pixar or Dreamworks movie comes out, and immediately, the rival big studio releases something similar, related or at least aesthetically similar. A perfect example of this is 20th Century Fox's Book of Life versus Disney's Coco. Then of course, a bunch of low budget copycats start popping up on NETFLIX.

 

[El_Machinae]

There's some interesting game-theory there. If a big studio makes something impressive along a theme, then people get a 'taste' for that theme. A cheaper (but similar movie) can then have a receptive audience

 

[Kyriakos]

There's some interesting game-theory there. If a big studio makes something impressive along a theme, then people get a 'taste' for that theme. A cheaper (but similar movie) can then have a receptive audience

Prototype ---> meme