General Film News

[Wrathbone]

Why was the Terminator 2 4K so bad, I've forgotten the story on that one? Was it like Predator where everyone looked like they had a layer of grease on them?

Pretty much, DNR'd to shit. DNR being the crappy technology used to artificially remove blemishes and film grain, which results in everything being a blurry mess with faces looking plastic (which ironically resulted in human characters appearing less believable than actual terminators). If you see DNR in a film transfer, run away.

[Hatredsheart]

Indeed. The ultimate aim of a 4k transfer is to view the film as if you were watching it in the cinema on its original release. 35mm film has film grain, it's inescapable.

[Lenny Solidus]

What I find really sad about the situation with The Marvels is that Brie Larson is probably going to be unfairly targeted again. I really liked Captain Marvel and thought she did a decent job with it, but certain scummy corners of the internet decided to decry her as some terrible actress who was somehow miserable on screen and ungrateful for her role in the MCU. And those corners shouted loud enough to make THAT the whole narrative around the film and her character. It doesn't matter how good The Marvels is - superhero movie fatigue is abundant, interest for it couldn't be much lower and for whatever reason lots of people hate Brie Larson.

Hmm. I personally do not think that she did herself that many favours at all during her many press junkets, she just ended up becoming extremely polarising, then once those all too familiar bottom of the barrel content creators started to run with it the dislike ratio surrounding her just completely snowballed into what we see today.

I did not think Captain Marvel was a good film, in fact I think it was kinda flat and middling at best, but I do agree that she has been unfairly targeted far too much recently as an almost direct centre point for everything wrong with Marvel. Then again...need we remind ourselves that failure + hate + anger = clicks in today's Youtube landscape as there are just so many outright fucking negative channels all tent poling the exact same message, practically living for and celebrating disappointing results in what they deem as being totally necessary for change.

Like you said, superhero movie fatigue is abundant and there are a multitude of factors behind why this is the case, only Brie Larson directly isn't one of them.

[Animalmother]

I have a Blu ray copy of Robocop somewhere, makes it look like a made for TV movie.

Then again I have a Terminator one that makes it look pristine in the non effects scenes.

[Wrathbone]

What I find really sad about the situation with The Marvels is that Brie Larson is probably going to be unfairly targeted again. I really liked Captain Marvel and thought she did a decent job with it, but certain scummy corners of the internet decided to decry her as some terrible actress who was somehow miserable on screen and ungrateful for her role in the MCU. And those corners shouted loud enough to make THAT the whole narrative around the film and her character. It doesn't matter how good The Marvels is - superhero movie fatigue is abundant, interest for it couldn't be much lower and for whatever reason lots of people hate Brie Larson.

Hmm. I personally do not think that she did herself that many favours at all during her many press junkets, she just ended up becoming extremely polarising

I saw a few of them and she's clearly not comfortable doing interviews, which should have no bearing on her performance whatsoever. If you've ever seen a Harrison Ford interview, he comes across as cold, standoffish and very much like he'd rather be anywhere else, yet I don't remember anyone ever criticising one of his films based on his personality in press junkets. And you could argue that he's a far bigger star than Brie Larson and that's why he's given a free pass, but frankly most of his performances in the last 15-20 years have been pathetic phone-ins.

[Animalmother]

[Rusty]

1. I hope it's not all green screen/CGI shit and has a lot of practical effects.
2. I can see the cameraman in the reflection of the girl's glasses on the beach... rookie mistake.
3. It's Ghostbusters...

[Animalmother]

4 part documentary on the making of Robocop. Looks like they managed to get everyone involved who worked on it. It's been out in the US a while but looks it'll be available on streaming here in January.

[Lenny Solidus]

So The Marvels (previously Captain Marvel 2) is looking like being an astronomically low point for the MCU taking in less than a $50 million opener and with an almost 40% drop its second day, with big new releases next weekend it could even drop 60 or even 70% which means it's officially done before it even properly latched on to the teat. It will be on Disney+ by the end of January would be my guess.

Nov 13 Monday $2,372,375 -74.3%
Nov 27 Monday $339,774 -75.8%

Well then, it looks like Marvel are setting new records, only not in the direction they would obviously desire. That drop off is down right insane for any movie property, never mind an actual Marvel property and as such rumour is growing that the movie will indeed be thrown directly to the D+ winds come the tail end of January. The good news is that in due to its reception 2024 Marvel will release just one singular movie in Deadpool 3. Bring back that slow burn event style anticipation build up and something that actually not only fulfills but exceeds ffs - get us excited once again Marvel because things clearly cannot possibly get any worse than where the studio is at today.

You can get us there Marvel, you've reached those lofty heights before, and you can do so again. Just. Slow. It. Down.

[Raid]

I don't think the issue is the frequency of releases, it's just that there hasn't been any real hook since Endgame. Back then, you had to see every film because they all had something small (in some cases large) that fed into the continuing storyline, but now that's not the case, and the films aren't particularly good individually. There's no collective experience anymore, and really no problem with seeing the film when it starts streaming. I haven't seen a new MCU film in the cinema since 2019, and really don't feel like I've missed anything - I haven't even had to dodge spoilers.

[Wrathbone]

It’s definitely frequency for me, particularly with the TV shows. I enjoyed Loki season 1 and will probably enjoy season 2, but I’ve not remotely given thought yet to when I’m going to watch it. There are several other Marvel shows which I’m interested in that I doubt I’ll ever get round to at this point.

[Maturin]

Even the supposedly great Avengers movies I was starting to find too busy, ill-focused and a little tiresome tbh at the time, so any chance of me going to see any of these endless identikit variations they pump out these days are zero. Same goes for the TV shows. Although I'm maybe not the target market I guess.

It's got to the point where it doesn't even make any difference whether they're technically good or bad, I won't be bothering to go and see them. It won't be enough for them to start making quality Marvel films, I think they perhaps need to try and return to writing original adventure IP's for cinema instead. A creative renaissance of some kind.

These things are probably cyclic, nothing lasts forever. Or maybe they could just stick to the favourites (like occasional Spiderman movies). I dunno, there's clearly a major problem with it all now.

[Rusty]

I find most of the more recent movies are so CGI heavy that they have as much impact as a game cutscene (that I would skip) rather than actors acting.

[Alan]

Kind of feel a female centric marvel already has a handicap. I thought it looked quite fun from the trailer and I’m generally super harsh on marvel.

[Raid]

I'm still looking forward to The Marvels (I've enjoyed the individual outings for all three main characters), it's just that I have zero reason to go to the cinema for it and I'm already paying for Disney+ and have a good home-cinema setup anyway so may as well wait. I do tend to have fairly low expectations for MCU films now though, I tend to enjoy the TV shows more even if they're not exactly masterpieces either.