Sequels and Prequels and Remakes, Oh My! (Upcoming Films)

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Tweek thought that you were all being goofy with your Die Hard puns, so he shut down the other new thread, even though I was willing to be lenient. He's the one you should all make sad, pitiful faces at -- well, sadder and more pitiful faces than usual, that is.

[Reply #1 on:]

Mod Hard - John McClane battles his way through Tweek's legions of death troopers to fight him for his job as a PEEL Moderator.

Tweek wins.

[Reply #2 on:]

Wait, Tweek is a man?!?!

[Reply #3 on:]

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS

I'm looking forward, to, er Prometheus... but am pretty sure we already had the trailer for that.

So here's a bunch of cats:

[Reply #4 on:]

Wait, Tweek is a man?!?!

Strictly speaking, no. Tweek is a genderless and ageless demon from the pit of sheol, who is referred to by male pronouns simply due to ancient convention regarding gender-neutral living entities. His breath is of finely-misted nitric acid, and his blood is boiling pitch. His heart is an irregularly-pulsing neutron star, and his skin is principally composed of the collapsed waveforms of the probabilities of humanity's deaths through the millennia.

Don't upset Tweek.

[Reply #5 on:]

I saw a trailer for Brave last week when I went to see the re-release of Beauty and the Beast. Though I tend to be resistant to Pixar's supposed charms, this one looks kind of neat.

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Supposed charms? I'd give Pixar my first-born child if I could just hug Wall-E.

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I am going with Gorky here.  Pixar is all right.  But I think anyone willing to give their first born for that should have their first (and sequential) born taking away from them.

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Pixar is much better then all the animation movie companys that are on the market at the   moment.

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I've got a really bad feeling about 'Brave'.

I used to be sold on it because it was Pixar's work, but 'Cars 2' has undone that good faith by showing me that they're now capable of producing a dud.

And yeah, the trailer just doesn't look very good to me. The character designs all look incredibly bland (minus the bear), the story itself feels messy and poorly defined... the humour looks weak... I'm just not sold on the basic concept of it. I'll still happily go and watch it when it comes out but I'm not eagerly anticipating it like I once was.

Pixar is much better then all the animation movie companys that are on the market at the   moment.

That doesn't make them infallible and it doesn't mean that no other companies are worth looking at. Dreamworks has stepped its game up recently. 'Kung Fu Panda' was excellent, 'How to Train Your Dragon' and 'Kung Fu Panda 2' were both great and I loved 'Puss in Boots'. The later two films are easily better films than Pixar's offering for that year.
Disney's non-Pixar wing are also proving themselves to be worth paying attention to. Both 'The Princess and the Frog' and 'Tangled' were good and 'Wreck-It Ralph' stands to be incredible.
And Paramount made a very impressive debut with 'Rango' this year, although who knows if they'll be able to follow up with success.

But yes, Pixar is great.

[Reply #10 on:]

Pixar is much better then all the animation movie companys that are on the market at the   moment.

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I hate those gifs.

Why is he wrong? What current animation movie companies are better than Pixar? I'm not saying that there aren't better, just that for the sake of discussion, you ought to mention them.

[Reply #12 on:]

I hate those gifs.

I used to be sold on it because it was Pixar's work, but 'Cars 2' has undone that good faith by showing me that they're now capable of producing a dud.

Not for me. Cars 2 was brilliant, and even improved my opinion of the original.

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Best animation Studio?
Well definitely Studio Ghibli, it's the studio that the Pixar guys are looking up to and admire.

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I hate Studio Ghibli's films for the most part, but I also seem to be completely alone in that. That's probably a big part of what fuels my hatred, thinking about it.
I love 'Grave of the Fireflies' to pieces but every other offering from them that I've bothered with ('Spirited Away', 'My Neighbour Totoro', 'Howl's Moving Castle' and 'Princess Monononononononoke'), has actually angered me to sit through. Not as much as 'Akira' though. I fucking loathe 'Akira'. I genuinely consider it to be the 27th worst film I've ever seen. So maybe I just hate anime in general.

But then, I did love 'Grave of the Fireflies' and I also loved 'Barefoot Gen'. And 'Summer Wars' wasn't half bad, either. I think I just hate bloated, high-fantasy nonsense. I was never a big fan of 'Lord of the Rings', either.

Not for me. Cars 2 was brilliant, and even improved my opinion of the original.

'Cars 2' is a gigantic mess of a film. The spy stuff is all utterly wonderful - I loved all of those sequences and Finn MacMissile is up there with my favourite Pixar characters of all time. The problem is that that's only half of the movie. The other half deals with Lightning McQueen going on a round-the-world race and every time a race or Lightning McQueen or radiator springs show up, the film stops dead. It's not interesting and all of the gags that come in these sections are tired and unfunny.

Essentially, the film is left feeling like 2 different films badly smushed together. It's incoherent and as I said, it's messy. It's a shame because there's an awful lot of brilliant stuff in there, but there's also an awful lot of stuff that's genuinely bad. And I should emphasise that this all comes from someone who liked the first 'Cars'.

I think that 'Cars 2' would have been much better off if they dropped all ties to the first film and just created a spy story with new characters set in the 'Cars' universe. They could have given Lightning and Mater a cameo somewhere if they had to.

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I think that 'Cars 2' would have been much better off if they dropped all ties to the first film and just created a spy story with new characters set in the 'Cars' universe. They could have given Lightning and Mater a cameo somewhere if they had to.

My thoughts exactly. And I had a bad feeling just from watching the trailers that the story would focus on Mater over Lightening McQueen. That definitely ruins a lot of the movie for me.

And Brave looks like a Dreamworks movie, which I don't think is a good sign. I'm really not interested. I don't understand why the main girl has to be a princess, it seems like the only way for a strong female character to exist in the Disney/Pixar universe is to be a princess of some sort. Which is BS considering how good a character Ellie was in Up, and she didn't have any dialogue and dies within the first ten minutes!

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I think that 'Cars 2' would have been much better off if they dropped all ties to the first film and just created a spy story with new characters set in the 'Cars' universe. They could have given Lightning and Mater a cameo somewhere if they had to.

My thoughts exactly. And I had a bad feeling just from watching the trailers that the story would focus on Mater over Lightening McQueen. That definitely ruins a lot of the movie for me.

And Brave looks like a Dreamworks movie, which I don't think is a good sign. I'm really not interested. I don't understand why the main girl has to be a princess, it seems like the only way for a strong female character to exist in the Disney/Pixar universe is to be a princess of some sort. Which is BS considering how good a character Ellie was in Up, and she didn't have any dialogue and dies within the first ten minutes!

I feel the same way.  Pixar should've just made an original spy movie, with their Pixar magic.  I didn't see Cars 2, but I felt it was going to not be as good as their previous films.

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Cars aren't actually sentient. They're inanimate mechanisms. So the whole concept is flawed.

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I disagree with the mentioned sentiments of everyone here regarding Cars 2, although I do understand where your disgruntlement lies.

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I fucking loathe 'Akira'. I genuinely consider it to be the 27th worst film I've ever seen.

Had to go look, noticed 26 is Funny Games. I watched the original Austrian film for the first time a few months ago, and adored it. In fact, it's become one of my favorite horror films of all time. It's decently scary and suspenseful at parts, hilariously macabre at other parts, and one part in particular is genuinely heartwrenching. I love the way it messes with your head and your expectations of what would happen in this sort of film. It's also shot incredibly well, the use of dead space and silence at certain parts is brilliant. Sure, its message is kind of pretentious, but I don't feel it needs to be taken that seriously. To me the "message" is more of just a silly inside joke, and I appreciate it as such.

I haven't actually watched the remake that's on your list, but I know it's shot for shot and line for line the exact same, just with American actors. Did you just hate the acting in the remake compared to the original, have you never seen the original, or have you seen both and just hate the film completely?

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I'm not a fan of Michael Haneke because I feel that his films, whilst very well crafted, are are an intentional middle finger to his audience and I don't like being talked down to. The entire film is constantly saying "Shame on you for enjoying this" whilst making huge, sweeping generalisations about the nature between fiction and an audience that I don't really agree with

The remake of 'Funny Games' is pretty much the epitome of why I don't like him. Not only is it a shot-for-shot remake of a film I wasn't a huge fan of to begin with, but it comes with the arrogance that he, himself, remade his own film in a shot-for-shot fashion, as if he felt there was absolutely no way in which he could improve upon it - essentially as if he'd made a perfect film.
Also, I dislike unwarranted English-language remakes.

So yes, that particular film is on the list mostly because it's a remake and such, but I don't like either version and I hate 'Hidden' with a real passion.

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The only upcoming films I'm looking forward to are The Hobbit and whatever the next Bond movie is gonna be called.

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The only upcoming films I'm looking forward to are The Hobbit and whatever the next Bond movie is gonna be called.

Is Daniel Radcliffe gonna be in it? If so, I'm looking forward to it!

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Certain plot aspects of Akira are downright atrocious, specifically the macguffin that guides the story along and all the pretentious philosophical implications (which make no sense) that carry along with it.  However, Akira is a spectacular film for many reasons.  The social interactions depicted by the main characters are provocative, stimulating, and insightful.  The animation is solid and an excellent example to its form.  Lastly, as a whole the film is a great depiction of the general mood of its decade and the pretenses for the world to come.

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Frankly, I think that the animation is disgusting. I'm talking about the animation here as opposed to the art-work. As in, how it moves and flows. The frame rate is practically non-existant. I know that the film was made on a budget, but I don't care. You can literally see each frame before your eyes as opposed to it creating a fluid movement.
And the budget argument isn't really valid when you look at other films made on similar budgets. 'The Illusionist' cost roughly $3,000,000 less than 'Akira' and it's one of the most beautifully animated films I've ever seen.

This is admittedly an issue I have with anime in general but 'Akira' is one of the worst offenders that I've seen and unlike films such as 'Grave of the Fireflies' that also have horrible animation, the film's story doesn't even begin to make up for it.

And being a good depiction of a tone, mood or even an era doesn't make something good. It might be a good aspect of something, but it's not enough on its own. Countless Italian horror films from the '70s (such as the work of Lucio Fulci) capture an incredible dream-like feeling of dread - but they're still awful films.
One could argue that something like 'Resident Evil' or 'Sucker Punch' serves as a summation of the cultures in which they were made but again, that doesn't make them good.

I agree with your first few points though.

Also, it's far too long for its own good and is incredibly dull.

[Reply #25 on:]

Neither are either of those two movies recognized by many as being revolutionary in its vision or by the conceptualization with which it attempted to grasp that measure.  Akira captures this dark premonitory tone entirely in its setting and its depiction there of through the vantage point of the characters.  As you point out, despite the nonsensical nature of the plot focus, it is also demonstrative of its cultural heritage as a society truly living in a post-apocalyptic world, the advent of nuclear weaponry that stand at the edge of humanity to serve as some of greatest achievements of us as a species and the eerie precipice which we have built with the frightening awe of power that seems god-like in its sheer magnitude.

Your statement on the nature of its animation is an opinion on that style; whether we like the style or not, Akira does generally stand as an excellent example of its artistic design.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should love Akira, but despite its flaws, I believe that from an objective perspective it can be regarded a good film.

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I honestly think that being as objective as I can, the animation is awful.

The artwork comes down to your subjective opinion though, you're right. Personally I don't think much of it because the film doesn't really have a unique visual style. It's just "anime". Animated manga. It offers nothing new to the look of the medium.

As for its tone, concept and ideas - it's all been done before and done better. The film's essentially a mish-mash of aspects from other post-apocalyptic works of fiction with a super-powered-psychic-freak thrown in at the end - something that can be found in countless other places as well. Off the top of my mind, 'Star Trek' did it.

I believe that if you're going to make a narrative-film, then the film stands on that narrative. 'Akira' doesn't tell a good story, and it tells it badly. I can forgive messy storytelling in favour of good ideas or if the messy-nature is justified somehow by the content, but 'Akira' has none of that going for it. It boils down to being a load of pretentious nonsense.

[Reply #27 on:]

If only The Thief and the Cobbler ever got made.

[Reply #28 on:]

Could be next film in the Cornetto Trilogy?

[Reply #29 on:]

I just came here to post that! I'm glad to have been beaten because that means there's at least one other fan on here!

And it is the next in the blood and ice cream trilogy, we've known that its been called "The World's End" for a while.

It's one of the only things we know in fact... the other things being that the cornetto flavour will be mint and that the film will be a sci-fi homage of some sorts. I imagine they'll go for something a bit more X-Files/conspiracy-y as opposed to something set in space with lasers and aliens.


Also, for those of you who don't know, there are special features on the 'Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz' DVDs where they basically scroll through a big pad like the one you can see there and talk through each page. It seems to be the first thing they do when they start writing their films together properly. They write the general storyline, character biographies and so forth on it. All of the skeletal elements that'll go to make the first draft. It's cool to see if you're interested in writing.

[Reply #30 on:]

I was so excited when I saw that photo on Twitter today! I've been waiting for any sort of confirmation that they were actually working on The World's End.

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I fucking loathe 'Akira'. I genuinely consider it to be the 27th worst film I've ever seen.

The 1985 Transformers is on that list, I couldn't continue reading it.

[Reply #32 on:]

Awful film.

[Reply #33 on:]

Best animation Studio?
Well definitely Studio Ghibli, it's the studio that the Pixar guys are looking up to and admire.

Studio Ghibli is releasing "The Secret World of Arrietty" in the United States next month, which is their version of "The Borrowers". However, the film was already released last year in both Japan and the United Kingdom, with the latter dubbed to English. So, now we have the same movie being dubbed in the same language twice.

If any of you bronies out there follow Lauren Faust's deviantArt page, she did comment a few months ago on how Pixar actually fired their original director, Brenda Chapman, due to creative conflicts. She was the one with the original vision for the film. She's still employed to Pixar, but who knows how involved she still is with the film. She could still be actively overseeing production, but I fear that her role may have been demoted to a level where she just pops into work and basically keeps her mouth shut, which is similar to Lauren Faust herself when it came to the production of the second season of "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic".

I'm really looking forward to both "Brave" as well as the "American" dub of "The Secret World of Arrietty". "Brave" is entirely new territory for Pixar, being set in the Dark/Middle ages and featuring a female protagonist for the first time. I really didn't have any particular interest in "Arrietty" until I saw the trailer. The voice acting (yeah, for an "American" dub featuring a Disney Channel star as the voice of Arrietty) and the human movements in the animation really got me.

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I fucking loathe 'Akira'. I genuinely consider it to be the 27th worst film I've ever seen.

The 1985 Transformers is on that list, I couldn't continue reading it.

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy's Revenge is on that list. It's a bad movie but I love it to pieces. Prey-tell what are your thoughts on the rest of the franchise? Oh and props for An American Werewolf in Paris, drivel that film is.

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FW: Why settle for terrible dubbing that disney always manages to do on Ghibli films, when you can just watch the subbed, original, unedited version?

[Reply #36 on:]

Picture of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright starting to write The World's End

YES. FINALLY. This has by far been the film I've anticipated most over any other since Hot Fuzz came out.

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I haven't anticipated it as much as him^, but still pretty stoked they're finally doing it.

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Could be next film in the Cornetto Trilogy?

That question's rhetorical, right?  Because it's answered in the links at the bottom of the article you linked.

[Reply #39 on:]

I genuinely consider it to be the 27th worst film I've ever seen. So maybe I just hate anime in general.

I assume, then, you have not seen Star Wars Episode I, Episode II, Episode III, Indiana Jones 4 and Avatar.  As those five at least should have topped your list.