Oh, I absolutely agree that the film wouldn't work if the kids had died. It's a very different beast from Jaws, where a kid could die - Jurassic Park is a ride movie, whereas Jaws is horror. That's why you can enjoy watching the T-Rex do what a T-Rex does.
Re: Spielberg and kids: I remember an interview with him on the Close Encounters of the Third Kind DVD, where he said that these days he couldn't have a father abandoning his children like that for an obsession. to me, this was a clear indication that while Spielberg used to put his sentimental streak to good use in his earlier films he's ruled by it now (or at least was at that time). What used to be earnest, well-earned sentiment turned to sentimental kitsch in the '90s.
I think that's one of the reasons why I enjoy Jurassic Park so much less than, say, Jaws. There's something wonderfully ruthless about the latter; the former is a kids' ride, and as such it's great, but it rarely feels like any of the leads (Grant, Ellie, the kids) are in any real danger. There are scenes where the Spielberg of Jaws appears briefly, but I wish there had been more.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
On one hand, the first....30? 45 minutes? Were fucking amazing.
Like, the entire time they were going deeper into the alien facility ship thing with Fassbender's character not so subtle manipulation of the entire team, that shit was fantastic.
However, there is one, extremely concise moment that, for me, kills the movie from being one of my favorite sci-fi movies ever, to a "whelp, I guess I need to turn my brain off" sci-fi movie.
The Scene with the Irish(I think?) geologist. You know, the one with the MAP ROBOTS. He makes an extremely logical decision and says FUCK THIS NOISE, you dudes are doing stupid shit, I'm getting the fuck back to base. And then he, and the biologist leaves. This is the high point of the movie, for me. Like, right here, I was thinking, fuck me, I'm buying this on Blu-Ray, getting the collectors edition, holy shit.
And then, cut back to them 10 minutes later, and they are both lost.
The dude. WITH THE MAP MAKING ROBOTS. WITH A GODDAMN MAP OF THE ENTIRE COMPLEX ATTACHED TO HIS GODDAM MOTHERFUCKING WRIST, GETS LOST.
I lost it there, I had to turn the movie off, right there, take a breather, and start watching it again, brain shut off.
I mean the movie has plenty of faults. But that, right there....yeah, I'm good. I'm spent right there Prometheus.
I disagree that the first 3rd is in any way amazing. The first chunk of Prometheus displays all sorts of problems and warning signs, especially in retrospect. It feels like a cheap knock-off of Alien. It apes the beginning, but misses everything that made it good.
The pace is sped up so much it's ridiculous. They head towards the planet, find the site instantly and land next to it in the space of like 5 minutes. They are rolling out to see the place in another 2. It's like a break-neck pace and full of coincidence and it completely breaks the pace of the start of the movie.
It's full of illogic and stupid, horror-movie-character thinking. Hey, let's have everyone not even know why we are here. That makes sense. Let's all take our helmets off. Let's not observe any kind of proper protocol for investigating a potentially ridiculously dangerous alien craft. Let's randomly leave the group, because apparently when you are a scientist hired to work on an expedition, no one minds when you decide "fuck it, I'm not doing my job" and randomly wander off alone.
On top of that, you get great exchanges like "Hello" "Fuck you, I hate you already guy I just met!" and a general complete lack of any sort of characterization. We've already engaged the main "alien-weirdness" plot and we know almost nothing about our characters, so why do we care what happens to them?
The sets they go through are as good as always (though not terribly sensible in some respects), but the whole thing is just ... not quite right. It's not actually good. It's passable at best. The film isn't sunk by this point, it's rescueable if the rest of the movie had been better. But it's just not well done and in hindsight it really foreshadows how sloppily the rest of the movie will be written.
To go back to a film with the exact same kind of beginning, but done well, let's look at how Alien does it.
Firstly, it's paced better. The beginning is leisurely. It's assured. The film doesn't assume it's audience is going to get bored within 5 minutes and so spends the time to build the atmosphere in the ship. (As an aside, Prometheus does this at first too with David's tour of the ship before everyone wakes up. It's only after that it starts to fall apart.)
Alien takes the time to build it's characters. You see them interact and chat and they behave like real people. You get a sense of them and their place and you begin to identify with them. There's not alot of character building done here, they aren't actually terribly deep, but the time is taken to establish traits and characteristics and hierarchies and relationships. It also takes the time to establish the ship and people's place on it and in it and such. All of this serves the future purposes of the film as it establishes both the milieu and the victims for the horror to come and serves to make us care about it all when it happens.
Continuing with the exploration, it establishes why they are doing what they are doing (to some extent anyway, there are secrets here after all) and gives people understandable reactions to the news and also understandable reasons for going along with it anyway. It all makes sense, from why they go, to how they go, to how they act. No one is stupid. No one is quick and nothing is rushed. The film and the characters take their time. They are methodical and cautious and wondrous and the audience is there to explore the whole new landscape with them and be amazed. And so when something startlingly goes wrong, it's shocking. It's jarring. It's not horror-movie-esque "Well that's what you get you dumbasses", but instead actually horrifying.
And honestly, at this point a fuck-load of time has passed. The movie has been running for quite awhile and the main plot has just really started. But because they take the time to set up all the pieces and establish the players as credible, relatable and not contemptibly stupid, the rest of the movie works better. We are shocked and horrified as it all unravels because, unlike in Prometheus, we can see how it could totally have not gone badly.
As a tribute, I'm gonna quote some Ebert here about Battlefield Earth:
the director, Roger Christian, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why.
Prometheus feels the same. Better films have done the same kind of opening, but Prometheus doesn't seem to understand why they did it or why it worked. So instead, it clumsily throws a facsimile of the same sort of shit at you and expects applause.
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Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
I seriously was just gonna walk out the theater after the abortion scene and how nobody fucking have any concerns about 1) a woman who's barely alive and have staples across her fucking stomach and 2) a motherfreaking alien in the ship.
One thing about Synecdoche NY is I'm not sure about the decision to make a gay character a child molester.
On a related note I caught School of Rock on TV last night and it's a pretty great film overall but there's one kid who exists just so you can laugh at how gay he is and it made me uncomfortable. At one point the kid presents sparkly costumes he designed for the band and Jack Black makes an "eww" face and the movie is basically saying "this gay kid is lame. Being gay is lame."
I liked Prometheus. It had a lot of beautiful scenes and the few logical inconsistencies in the movie didn't ruin the whole thing for me like it did for some others.
I agree that one scene that felt like it had been cut down too hard in editing was the aftermath of the abortion scene. There needed to be some more acknowledgment of that event. The rest of the stuff I could live with though and I'm looking forward to the announced sequel
I liked Prometheus. It had a lot of beautiful scenes and the few logical inconsistencies in the movie didn't ruin the whole thing for me like it did for some others.
I agree that one scene that felt like it had been cut down too hard in editing was the aftermath of the abortion scene. There needed to be some more acknowledgment of that event. The rest of the stuff I could live with though and I'm looking forward to the announced sequel
I agree, however I found the aftermath of the abortion scene to be okay since where I lost it was when map guy got lost. And then again when bio guy touched alien snake. Actually, I think I lost it when they all decided taking off their helmets was a good idea.
II found the abortion scene to be both gross and funny. Preggers with a squid! I thought that sort of stuff only happens in Japan!
We just stumbled on a movie on Netflix this weekend called Mary & Max and now it's easily my movie of the year (if not several years). It's absoluteluy horrifying I never heard anything about it; the thing should have raked in the dang awards.
Anyway, it's a claymation film about an 8 year old Austrailian girl who ends up being a pen-pal with a 40 year old man living in New York with Asperger's. Absolute must-see 4 reelz, yo.
I liked Prometheus. It had a lot of beautiful scenes and the few logical inconsistencies in the movie didn't ruin the whole thing for me like it did for some others.
I agree that one scene that felt like it had been cut down too hard in editing was the aftermath of the abortion scene. There needed to be some more acknowledgment of that event. The rest of the stuff I could live with though and I'm looking forward to the announced sequel
The mind-boggling thing is that the BRD has a cut scene that does just that. Like, literally, every single complaint about the movie has a deleted scene that covers it. Ok, there's one it doesn't cover but - seriously - everything else.
It doesn't cover the geologist getting lost when he controls the map drones.
There are legitimate reasons to dislike the movie and after pondering it for a while I'm not nearly as strong on it as I was originally. There's a phenomenon where when you argue about something you don't like, you tend to start to dislike it more strongly the longer you argue. I was pointing out that the Prometheus thread (as well as pretty much every TV thread in D&D) was like that. And I did the same thing when arguing about Cabin in the Woods, so I'm not innocent either.
I was surprised by how much I liked Easy A. It's mainly Emma Stone as well as Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson (they're the sort of parents that only exist in movies, but they pull it off IMO), but the script is also mostly witty and sweet in the way that some of those '80s teen comedies were. The main flaw is the Christians in the film, since they never become anything more than total caricatures, but other than that I liked the film a lot.
And while the reasons are *very* different, I actually liked Lars von Trier's Melancholia as well. For once it didn't feel like I was watching von Trier pull the wings off his (predominantly female) flies. Yes, the film isn't exactly light and fluffy, but neither did it feel smugly sadistic in the way that some of his other movies do.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
We just stumbled on a movie on Netflix this weekend called Mary & Max and now it's easily my movie of the year (if not several years). It's absoluteluy horrifying I never heard anything about it; the thing should have raked in the dang awards.
Anyway, it's a claymation film about an 8 year old Austrailian girl who ends up being a pen-pal with a 40 year old man living in New York with Asperger's. Absolute must-see 4 reelz, yo.
I saw this a couple years ago. It was wonderful and I want there to be more semi-serious claymation films like it.
Seriously, anyone who has not seen it should go and see it.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
As to Prometheus, the proper way to watch that film is in IMAX 3D. Because it's so beautiful to watch you really stop giving a shit about the plot holes and contrivances.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
There are some films that should be framed and hung on the wall... with no sound or subtitles. Prometheus is one of those. Gorgeous to look at, but the plot and dialogues are filled with stupid. I have a fairly high tolerance for character stupidity, but this film put 99% into visuals and 1% into smarts. But yes, it would look gorgeous if framed and hung on the wall.
Thirith on
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Saw The American last night. Was pretty darn good.
It's hilarious that even the DVD back is pitching a different movie. You expect some sort of like spy or crime thriller going in, but it's not that at all. It's actually a beautifully shot, moody and measured character piece about a man involved in crime and what that's done to him. It's almost got this Drive-esque quality in it's love for long, slow, gorgeous shots with minimal dialogue and just letting the things the main character is doing on screen tell the story or letting the tension in the tense scenes ramp up based on the subtext of what's going on. (although it's not actually anything like Drive)
It's extremely simple, but it's well done and it knows not to draw it out or play out it's few actions scenes for ages and Clooney does a good job in it. Quite liked it, though nothing like I expected. Just a slow burn examination of one man.
Also, Violante Placido is smoking fucking hot. And there's tits. Just saying.
Seems to me like On the Road and The Great Gatsby should have swapped directors. I didn't read The Great Gatsby as loud and bombastic, despite being about obscenely wealthy people and cocktail parties and the decadent 20s. It is about those things, but the tone is quiet and contemplative. The naturalistic tone of the novel contrasted with Luhrmann's style-heavy aesthetic is jarring to me. On the Road, on the other hand, is a loud, flashy book. I didn't see the movie, but the majority of the criticism seems to say that the film failed to match the novel's fiery, jazzy energy.
As to Prometheus, the proper way to watch that film is in IMAX 3D. Because it's so beautiful to watch you really stop giving a shit about the plot holes and contrivances.
I think this is something that everyone can agree on. That's how I originally saw it and it was gorgeous.
First I should probably admit that I unapologetically loved Prometheus, but aside from trying to convince you of the merits of the movie, I just have to say this form of critique is really tiring, not just because it lacks merit, but also because it's wrong:
I disagree that the first 3rd is in any way amazing. The first chunk of Prometheus displays all sorts of problems and warning signs, especially in retrospect. It feels like a cheap knock-off of Alien. It apes the beginning, but misses everything that made it good.
Firstly, saying "Movie X wanted to be Movie Y but failed" is just an unfair, unmerited comparison. What in the movie suggests to you that they were trying desperately to ape Alien and Alien alone? And the reason I know it's misguided to say is because I happened to listen to the screenwriter commentary just last week, and the screenwriter states pretty plainly, "I like to think of this movie as an Alien and Blade Runner mash-up" which probably has something to do with why I liked it so much, because I personally adore Blade Runner and only saw Alien once on VHS some time back in the '80s, and I left the theater initially comparing Prometheus most strongly to Blade Runner as the reference point in Ridley Scott's prior work.
And actually just re-watched Alien because it's available on HBO right now for the first time since I was a kid, and I'd really say that outside of the horror aspects of both movies and the deep space settings, there's actually very little to connect the two. I guess there's the "corporate v. human interest" angle a bit, but thematically I would say Prometheus and Alien have very little in common. Oh I guess dangerously autonomous robots, too. Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that in the commentary (I guess I should spoiler here)
they also mentioned that Noomi Rapace's final battle was initially scripted to be with the alien creatures, but they realized that the ultimate theme of the movie really revolved around creator v. creation so they made it a confrontation with the Engineer (with the alien creature cameo to round it all off).
Anyway, if you don't like the movie, that's fine, I'm not really going to try and change your mind, but to dismiss the film on the basis that it "wanted to be Alien but failed" is an extremely poor (and like I said, ultimately misguided per the people who made it) critique.
First I should probably admit that I unapologetically loved Prometheus, but aside from trying to convince you of the merits of the movie, I just have to say this form of critique is really tiring, not just because it lacks merit, but also because it's wrong:
I disagree that the first 3rd is in any way amazing. The first chunk of Prometheus displays all sorts of problems and warning signs, especially in retrospect. It feels like a cheap knock-off of Alien. It apes the beginning, but misses everything that made it good.
Firstly, saying "Movie X wanted to be Movie Y but failed" is just an unfair, unmerited comparison. What in the movie suggests to you that they were trying desperately to ape Alien and Alien alone? And the reason I know it's misguided to say is because I happened to listen to the screenwriter commentary just last week, and the screenwriter states pretty plainly, "I like to think of this movie as an Alien and Blade Runner mash-up" which probably has something to do with why I liked it so much, because I personally adore Blade Runner and only saw Alien once on VHS some time back in the '80s, and I left the theater initially comparing Prometheus most strongly to Blade Runner as the reference point in Ridley Scott's prior work.
And actually just re-watched Alien because it's available on HBO right now for the first time since I was a kid, and I'd really say that outside of the horror aspects of both movies and the deep space settings, there's actually very little to connect the two. I guess there's the "corporate v. human interest" angle a bit, but thematically I would say Prometheus and Alien have very little in common. Oh I guess dangerously autonomous robots, too. Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that in the commentary (I guess I should spoiler here)
they also mentioned that Noomi Rapace's final battle was initially scripted to be with the alien creatures, but they realized that the ultimate theme of the movie really revolved around creator v. creation so they made it a confrontation with the Engineer (with the alien creature cameo to round it all off).
Anyway, if you don't like the movie, that's fine, I'm not really going to try and change your mind, but to dismiss the film on the basis that it "wanted to be Alien but failed" is an extremely poor (and like I said, ultimately misguided per the people who made it) critique.
Except that's not at all accurate. I mean, firstly, it's obviously trying to copy the Alien opening. Really, really obviously. So one could easily evaluate it on that account.
But more importantly, it's doing the same kind of opening as Alien. We can compare it the same way we can compare any two movies. Some are good, some are bad and we can look at both those and see where one failed and where one didn't. One action movie may not be trying to copy, say, Die Hard, but we can certainly compare both movies by talking about similar things the two movies try to do and why one succeeds and one fails.
Prometheus by the end is not trying to be a copy of Alien. Hell, the parts where it tries to tie itself to the Alien franchise only weaken the movie.
But we can certainly compare it to a better movie. Especially when the beginning is trying to do the same things the beginning of Alien did.
And, again, we can talk about all sorts of other ways Prometheus fails if you like. Hell, my post there mentions at least 3 that can easily be evaluated as bad without any comparison to Alien.
If they would have pulled the L-lysine and killed the dinosaurs, the movie would be hated by all. Yes the T-Rex almost killed characters you liked, but you LOVED the T-Rex even more. Hell, he was the hero of the movie and you applauded him for it. Everything about that movie was about the T-Rex being the loveable hero and the velociraptors being the villains.
The T-Rex was Godzilla, just doing his thing, some bad some good. And you felt her doing that thing. You weren't upset about the goat, you weren't upset about the lawyer, and you were not upset about the herd dino either. That's just what T-Rex does. Hell, she could have eaten Malcom and you would have forgiven her. (Malcom being the most lively of the group) She was the star, and Spielberg let her shine.
Amazing contrast to Jaws. Jaws could easily have been held in such regard, but Spielberg knew how to make us want Bruce to die by going after Michael and Hooper. Quint had it coming, and yet it still sucked to see him die. He knew how to make Bruce the villain, and T-Rex the hero.
The T-Rex did try to eat the kids, Ellie and Grant. Your right that the T-Rex was an animal, but it wasn't a hero. It only helped the protagonists by accident. Had the raptors not been there in the finale the T-Rex would have killed the heroes.
The T-Rex getting out of the pen doesn't make sense in the context of where the drop off is. He comes out of the same place that the car falls down, meaning that he would have to be over 100 feet tall to climb out of there.
The whole scene when they arrive at the T-Rex stops making sense once it leaves its cage.
Was I the only one who wouldn't have minded if the dinosaurs had eaten the kids, especially the girl? (Joseph Mazzello is better, but I always disliked the electric fence scene for its dumbness.) I have major problems with '90s Spielberg kids. He did pretty great in the '80s, but somewhere around Hook his kids became cloying, annoying and dreadful to watch.
I think only because the tone of Jurassic Park so upbeat, it would have changed everything dramatically if either of the children had died.
But I do agree with you that while Spielberg was a fucking champ with kids in the 70s and 80s, the lost it in the 90s and never got it back.
Looking at his IMDB page, it would seem that Hook was indeed where he lost it. Contrast that odd collection of performances against the kids in ET, and despair.
Munich and Catch Me If You Can were wonderful films. Minority Report was serviceable.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
What did you like so much about Munich, Harry Dresden? Personally I found it a deeply underwhelming film, but I'd definitely be interested in what you got out of the movie.
Catch Me If You Can is a film I can't rightly judge; I saw it at the cinema, but that was after a massive fight with my then-not-yet-girlfriend. I remember individual scenes, but I did not get into that film at all, through no fault of its own.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
CMIYC was just a fun film with likable characters and some good inter-character dynamics. It wasn't timeless, but it was a good film.
Munich struck me as okay, but unremarkable. It seemed to want very much to be important, like this decade's Schindler's List, but it didn't leave much of an impression.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
What did you like so much about Munich, Harry Dresden? Personally I found it a deeply underwhelming film, but I'd definitely be interested in what you got out of the movie.
Been a long time since I watched Munich. I remember liking the tone, acting, the violent scenes and how the "heroes" were unsure whether their actions were right. A scene that really stuck out was when a protagonist stuck a bomb in a house and they had to disarm it to save an innocent person from getting killed.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Don't forget The Terminal, I love that film. It's a little hokey but it's the right kind of hokey.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
So, I'm watching Jaws right about now, and it occured to me that the thing that dates the movie most noticeably is the use of music. Full on orchestra, very loud, overpowering a lot of the scenes. In today's movies the use of music tends to be more subtle, in the background, not on top of everything else like it is in Jaws.
Good movie still, by the way. The structure is a bit weird (half the movie in the town, the other half on a boat), but that's not automatically a negative.
So, I'm watching Jaws right about now, and it occured to me that the thing that dates the movie most noticeably is the use of music. Full on orchestra, very loud, overpowering a lot of the scenes. In today's movies the use of music tends to be more subtle, in the background, not on top of everything else like it is in Jaws.
Good movie still, by the way. The structure is a bit weird (half the movie in the town, the other half on a boat), but that's not automatically a negative.
I noticed that in The Graduate, which is iconic for its use of pop music but it is just wayyy off from the way music is used in movies today. The Sound of Silence plays like four damn times in that film.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Also, there wasn't one of those boring and stupid shithangers that modern horror movies all have. You know, the one where they're all like "well that sure is done, let's go home and live happily eveOH GOD ANOTHER SHARK RAAAAAAAAWR".
First I should probably admit that I unapologetically loved Prometheus, but aside from trying to convince you of the merits of the movie, I just have to say this form of critique is really tiring, not just because it lacks merit, but also because it's wrong:
I disagree that the first 3rd is in any way amazing. The first chunk of Prometheus displays all sorts of problems and warning signs, especially in retrospect. It feels like a cheap knock-off of Alien. It apes the beginning, but misses everything that made it good.
Firstly, saying "Movie X wanted to be Movie Y but failed" is just an unfair, unmerited comparison. What in the movie suggests to you that they were trying desperately to ape Alien and Alien alone? And the reason I know it's misguided to say is because I happened to listen to the screenwriter commentary just last week, and the screenwriter states pretty plainly, "I like to think of this movie as an Alien and Blade Runner mash-up" which probably has something to do with why I liked it so much, because I personally adore Blade Runner and only saw Alien once on VHS some time back in the '80s, and I left the theater initially comparing Prometheus most strongly to Blade Runner as the reference point in Ridley Scott's prior work.
And actually just re-watched Alien because it's available on HBO right now for the first time since I was a kid, and I'd really say that outside of the horror aspects of both movies and the deep space settings, there's actually very little to connect the two. I guess there's the "corporate v. human interest" angle a bit, but thematically I would say Prometheus and Alien have very little in common. Oh I guess dangerously autonomous robots, too. Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that in the commentary (I guess I should spoiler here)
they also mentioned that Noomi Rapace's final battle was initially scripted to be with the alien creatures, but they realized that the ultimate theme of the movie really revolved around creator v. creation so they made it a confrontation with the Engineer (with the alien creature cameo to round it all off).
Anyway, if you don't like the movie, that's fine, I'm not really going to try and change your mind, but to dismiss the film on the basis that it "wanted to be Alien but failed" is an extremely poor (and like I said, ultimately misguided per the people who made it) critique.
Except that's not at all accurate. I mean, firstly, it's obviously trying to copy the Alien opening. Really, really obviously. So one could easily evaluate it on that account.
But more importantly, it's doing the same kind of opening as Alien. We can compare it the same way we can compare any two movies. Some are good, some are bad and we can look at both those and see where one failed and where one didn't. One action movie may not be trying to copy, say, Die Hard, but we can certainly compare both movies by talking about similar things the two movies try to do and why one succeeds and one fails.
Prometheus by the end is not trying to be a copy of Alien. Hell, the parts where it tries to tie itself to the Alien franchise only weaken the movie.
But we can certainly compare it to a better movie. Especially when the beginning is trying to do the same things the beginning of Alien did.
And, again, we can talk about all sorts of other ways Prometheus fails if you like. Hell, my post there mentions at least 3 that can easily be evaluated as bad without any comparison to Alien.
What part of the opening would you say is obviously copying Alien? The extensive landscape shots which open the film? The immediate introduction to the foreign Engineers? The CGI sequence which shows us intricate DNA imagery? The humans excavating earth geography? Once we're in space, is it the dream sequence we see for Noomi Rapace? The lengthy David-by-himself montage? The Lawrence of Arabia scenes?
Like, I get it -- there are some echoes and recalls to Alien in the opening spaceship shots and then the crew awakening from cryo-sleep (and in the commentary they actually said that the scenes on earth, of the archaeological discovery, were pick-ups filmed after the movie was done because they decided they needed more context as to why this space mission was occurring, so yes in the original drafts it was very reminiscent of Alien) and they're somewhat related, but to say "the film wanted to be <insert> so badly but failed" is just reductive. That sort of statement is not a comparison, it's just misleading. And then like I said, even using Alien as a comparison film is a pretty poor comparison choice, because the two films are telling pretty drastically different stories, and in both the posts I saw you made re: Prometheus you compared/contrasted heavily to Alien.
Like I said, I'm not going to try to convince you that Prometheus was good or defend it against your gripes -- if you don't like it, you don't like it -- but I did want to take issue with what I saw as a reductive, unfair critique in a false/reductive comparison (that you made a ton of times...).
I was surprised by how much I liked Easy A. It's mainly Emma Stone as well as Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson (they're the sort of parents that only exist in movies, but they pull it off IMO), but the script is also mostly witty and sweet in the way that some of those '80s teen comedies were.
There is an interesting theory on the web someplace that the parents in that movie are actually intended to be separated but living together to finish raising the daughter and adopted child. That theory holds up really well and gives their scenes (especially together) a weirdly satisfying vibe.
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JuliusCaptain of Serenityon my shipRegistered Userregular
I know borrowing stuff is Tarantino's whole thing but I was a little disappointed to discover that the opening credit sequence in Jackie Brown is a copy of the opening credit sequence in The Graduate.
If they would have pulled the L-lysine and killed the dinosaurs, the movie would be hated by all. Yes the T-Rex almost killed characters you liked, but you LOVED the T-Rex even more. Hell, he was the hero of the movie and you applauded him for it. Everything about that movie was about the T-Rex being the loveable hero and the velociraptors being the villains.
The T-Rex was Godzilla, just doing his thing, some bad some good. And you felt her doing that thing. You weren't upset about the goat, you weren't upset about the lawyer, and you were not upset about the herd dino either. That's just what T-Rex does. Hell, she could have eaten Malcom and you would have forgiven her. (Malcom being the most lively of the group) She was the star, and Spielberg let her shine.
Amazing contrast to Jaws. Jaws could easily have been held in such regard, but Spielberg knew how to make us want Bruce to die by going after Michael and Hooper. Quint had it coming, and yet it still sucked to see him die. He knew how to make Bruce the villain, and T-Rex the hero.
The T-Rex did try to eat the kids, Ellie and Grant. Your right that the T-Rex was an animal, but it wasn't a hero. It only helped the protagonists by accident. Had the raptors not been there in the finale the T-Rex would have killed the heroes.
The T-Rex getting out of the pen doesn't make sense in the context of where the drop off is. He comes out of the same place that the car falls down, meaning that he would have to be over 100 feet tall to climb out of there.
The whole scene when they arrive at the T-Rex stops making sense once it leaves its cage.
Was I the only one who wouldn't have minded if the dinosaurs had eaten the kids, especially the girl? (Joseph Mazzello is better, but I always disliked the electric fence scene for its dumbness.) I have major problems with '90s Spielberg kids. He did pretty great in the '80s, but somewhere around Hook his kids became cloying, annoying and dreadful to watch.
I think only because the tone of Jurassic Park so upbeat, it would have changed everything dramatically if either of the children had died.
But I do agree with you that while Spielberg was a fucking champ with kids in the 70s and 80s, the lost it in the 90s and never got it back.
Looking at his IMDB page, it would seem that Hook was indeed where he lost it. Contrast that odd collection of performances against the kids in ET, and despair.
Munich and Catch Me If You Can were wonderful films. Minority Report was serviceable.
Regardless of intent, she was the hero in the end. She triumphantly crashed the door and killed the cold calculating murder machines, John Williams score booming, saving "us", and let loose a magnificent uplifting victory cry.
If they would have pulled the L-lysine and killed the dinosaurs, the movie would be hated by all. Yes the T-Rex almost killed characters you liked, but you LOVED the T-Rex even more. Hell, he was the hero of the movie and you applauded him for it. Everything about that movie was about the T-Rex being the loveable hero and the velociraptors being the villains.
The T-Rex was Godzilla, just doing his thing, some bad some good. And you felt her doing that thing. You weren't upset about the goat, you weren't upset about the lawyer, and you were not upset about the herd dino either. That's just what T-Rex does. Hell, she could have eaten Malcom and you would have forgiven her. (Malcom being the most lively of the group) She was the star, and Spielberg let her shine.
Amazing contrast to Jaws. Jaws could easily have been held in such regard, but Spielberg knew how to make us want Bruce to die by going after Michael and Hooper. Quint had it coming, and yet it still sucked to see him die. He knew how to make Bruce the villain, and T-Rex the hero.
The T-Rex did try to eat the kids, Ellie and Grant. Your right that the T-Rex was an animal, but it wasn't a hero. It only helped the protagonists by accident. Had the raptors not been there in the finale the T-Rex would have killed the heroes.
The T-Rex getting out of the pen doesn't make sense in the context of where the drop off is. He comes out of the same place that the car falls down, meaning that he would have to be over 100 feet tall to climb out of there.
The whole scene when they arrive at the T-Rex stops making sense once it leaves its cage.
Was I the only one who wouldn't have minded if the dinosaurs had eaten the kids, especially the girl? (Joseph Mazzello is better, but I always disliked the electric fence scene for its dumbness.) I have major problems with '90s Spielberg kids. He did pretty great in the '80s, but somewhere around Hook his kids became cloying, annoying and dreadful to watch.
I think only because the tone of Jurassic Park so upbeat, it would have changed everything dramatically if either of the children had died.
But I do agree with you that while Spielberg was a fucking champ with kids in the 70s and 80s, the lost it in the 90s and never got it back.
Looking at his IMDB page, it would seem that Hook was indeed where he lost it. Contrast that odd collection of performances against the kids in ET, and despair.
Munich and Catch Me If You Can were wonderful films. Minority Report was serviceable.
Regardless of intent, she was the hero in the end. She triumphantly crashed the door and killed the cold calculating murder machines, John Williams score booming, saving "us", and let loose a magnificent uplifting victory cry.
That is how heros do it in the movies.
In movies when a hero does that the other heroes don't flee as soon as possible to avoid getting eaten by the animal that rescued them. Nor do they almost succeed in eating the same people when they first encounter each other.
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Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
If they would have pulled the L-lysine and killed the dinosaurs, the movie would be hated by all. Yes the T-Rex almost killed characters you liked, but you LOVED the T-Rex even more. Hell, he was the hero of the movie and you applauded him for it. Everything about that movie was about the T-Rex being the loveable hero and the velociraptors being the villains.
The T-Rex was Godzilla, just doing his thing, some bad some good. And you felt her doing that thing. You weren't upset about the goat, you weren't upset about the lawyer, and you were not upset about the herd dino either. That's just what T-Rex does. Hell, she could have eaten Malcom and you would have forgiven her. (Malcom being the most lively of the group) She was the star, and Spielberg let her shine.
Amazing contrast to Jaws. Jaws could easily have been held in such regard, but Spielberg knew how to make us want Bruce to die by going after Michael and Hooper. Quint had it coming, and yet it still sucked to see him die. He knew how to make Bruce the villain, and T-Rex the hero.
The T-Rex did try to eat the kids, Ellie and Grant. Your right that the T-Rex was an animal, but it wasn't a hero. It only helped the protagonists by accident. Had the raptors not been there in the finale the T-Rex would have killed the heroes.
The T-Rex getting out of the pen doesn't make sense in the context of where the drop off is. He comes out of the same place that the car falls down, meaning that he would have to be over 100 feet tall to climb out of there.
The whole scene when they arrive at the T-Rex stops making sense once it leaves its cage.
Was I the only one who wouldn't have minded if the dinosaurs had eaten the kids, especially the girl? (Joseph Mazzello is better, but I always disliked the electric fence scene for its dumbness.) I have major problems with '90s Spielberg kids. He did pretty great in the '80s, but somewhere around Hook his kids became cloying, annoying and dreadful to watch.
I think only because the tone of Jurassic Park so upbeat, it would have changed everything dramatically if either of the children had died.
But I do agree with you that while Spielberg was a fucking champ with kids in the 70s and 80s, the lost it in the 90s and never got it back.
Looking at his IMDB page, it would seem that Hook was indeed where he lost it. Contrast that odd collection of performances against the kids in ET, and despair.
Munich and Catch Me If You Can were wonderful films. Minority Report was serviceable.
Regardless of intent, she was the hero in the end. She triumphantly crashed the door and killed the cold calculating murder machines, John Williams score booming, saving "us", and let loose a magnificent uplifting victory cry.
That is how heros do it in the movies.
In movies when a hero does that the other heroes don't flee as soon as possible to avoid getting eaten by the animal that rescued them. Nor do they almost succeed in eating the same people when they first encounter each other.
Anti-Hero then. Look man, the T-Rex is the hero. Take her out and everyone dies.
Actually, she is also the star. Take her out and the movie isn't nearly as good.
Saw The American last night. Was pretty darn good.
It's hilarious that even the DVD back is pitching a different movie. You expect some sort of like spy or crime thriller going in, but it's not that at all. It's actually a beautifully shot, moody and measured character piece about a man involved in crime and what that's done to him. It's almost got this Drive-esque quality in it's love for long, slow, gorgeous shots with minimal dialogue and just letting the things the main character is doing on screen tell the story or letting the tension in the tense scenes ramp up based on the subtext of what's going on. (although it's not actually anything like Drive)
It's extremely simple, but it's well done and it knows not to draw it out or play out it's few actions scenes for ages and Clooney does a good job in it. Quite liked it, though nothing like I expected. Just a slow burn examination of one man.
Also, Violante Placido is smoking fucking hot. And there's tits. Just saying.
I'd say The American and Drive are almost the same movie; their whole thing is taking a straightforward genre story and then stripping it to its barest bones. Noise and dialogue are replaced with silence and music; action is replaced with passivity; excitement is replaced by atmosphere. Huge chunks of the running time are given over to long close-ups of the actors' still faces, inviting us to try and get inside their characters' heads.
I think Drive works a bit better, ultimately. Its main character is an enigma almost the whole way through but the movie surrounds him with other, more conventional people for us to care about, and while much of the action is stripped-down or deemphasized there still is action; The American starts with a situation and then seems to put the resolution or development of that situation on hold until the last thirty minutes, using the rest of the running time as a Tuscan travelogue (I think this is probably the biggest issue; I've seen a zillion cobbled piazzas saturated with impossibly yellow Mediterranean sunshine, so it doesn't really stick out the way Drive's weird, synthy, pastel-colored take on LA did).
But I still liked it. Something about it stuck with me. And yeah, tits.
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Re: Spielberg and kids: I remember an interview with him on the Close Encounters of the Third Kind DVD, where he said that these days he couldn't have a father abandoning his children like that for an obsession. to me, this was a clear indication that while Spielberg used to put his sentimental streak to good use in his earlier films he's ruled by it now (or at least was at that time). What used to be earnest, well-earned sentiment turned to sentimental kitsch in the '90s.
I think that's one of the reasons why I enjoy Jurassic Park so much less than, say, Jaws. There's something wonderfully ruthless about the latter; the former is a kids' ride, and as such it's great, but it rarely feels like any of the leads (Grant, Ellie, the kids) are in any real danger. There are scenes where the Spielberg of Jaws appears briefly, but I wish there had been more.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
On one hand, the first....30? 45 minutes? Were fucking amazing.
Like, the entire time they were going deeper into the alien facility ship thing with Fassbender's character not so subtle manipulation of the entire team, that shit was fantastic.
However, there is one, extremely concise moment that, for me, kills the movie from being one of my favorite sci-fi movies ever, to a "whelp, I guess I need to turn my brain off" sci-fi movie.
The Scene with the Irish(I think?) geologist. You know, the one with the MAP ROBOTS. He makes an extremely logical decision and says FUCK THIS NOISE, you dudes are doing stupid shit, I'm getting the fuck back to base. And then he, and the biologist leaves. This is the high point of the movie, for me. Like, right here, I was thinking, fuck me, I'm buying this on Blu-Ray, getting the collectors edition, holy shit.
And then, cut back to them 10 minutes later, and they are both lost.
The dude. WITH THE MAP MAKING ROBOTS. WITH A GODDAMN MAP OF THE ENTIRE COMPLEX ATTACHED TO HIS GODDAM MOTHERFUCKING WRIST, GETS LOST.
I lost it there, I had to turn the movie off, right there, take a breather, and start watching it again, brain shut off.
I mean the movie has plenty of faults. But that, right there....yeah, I'm good. I'm spent right there Prometheus.
The pace is sped up so much it's ridiculous. They head towards the planet, find the site instantly and land next to it in the space of like 5 minutes. They are rolling out to see the place in another 2. It's like a break-neck pace and full of coincidence and it completely breaks the pace of the start of the movie.
It's full of illogic and stupid, horror-movie-character thinking. Hey, let's have everyone not even know why we are here. That makes sense. Let's all take our helmets off. Let's not observe any kind of proper protocol for investigating a potentially ridiculously dangerous alien craft. Let's randomly leave the group, because apparently when you are a scientist hired to work on an expedition, no one minds when you decide "fuck it, I'm not doing my job" and randomly wander off alone.
On top of that, you get great exchanges like "Hello" "Fuck you, I hate you already guy I just met!" and a general complete lack of any sort of characterization. We've already engaged the main "alien-weirdness" plot and we know almost nothing about our characters, so why do we care what happens to them?
The sets they go through are as good as always (though not terribly sensible in some respects), but the whole thing is just ... not quite right. It's not actually good. It's passable at best. The film isn't sunk by this point, it's rescueable if the rest of the movie had been better. But it's just not well done and in hindsight it really foreshadows how sloppily the rest of the movie will be written.
To go back to a film with the exact same kind of beginning, but done well, let's look at how Alien does it.
Firstly, it's paced better. The beginning is leisurely. It's assured. The film doesn't assume it's audience is going to get bored within 5 minutes and so spends the time to build the atmosphere in the ship. (As an aside, Prometheus does this at first too with David's tour of the ship before everyone wakes up. It's only after that it starts to fall apart.)
Alien takes the time to build it's characters. You see them interact and chat and they behave like real people. You get a sense of them and their place and you begin to identify with them. There's not alot of character building done here, they aren't actually terribly deep, but the time is taken to establish traits and characteristics and hierarchies and relationships. It also takes the time to establish the ship and people's place on it and in it and such. All of this serves the future purposes of the film as it establishes both the milieu and the victims for the horror to come and serves to make us care about it all when it happens.
Continuing with the exploration, it establishes why they are doing what they are doing (to some extent anyway, there are secrets here after all) and gives people understandable reactions to the news and also understandable reasons for going along with it anyway. It all makes sense, from why they go, to how they go, to how they act. No one is stupid. No one is quick and nothing is rushed. The film and the characters take their time. They are methodical and cautious and wondrous and the audience is there to explore the whole new landscape with them and be amazed. And so when something startlingly goes wrong, it's shocking. It's jarring. It's not horror-movie-esque "Well that's what you get you dumbasses", but instead actually horrifying.
And honestly, at this point a fuck-load of time has passed. The movie has been running for quite awhile and the main plot has just really started. But because they take the time to set up all the pieces and establish the players as credible, relatable and not contemptibly stupid, the rest of the movie works better. We are shocked and horrified as it all unravels because, unlike in Prometheus, we can see how it could totally have not gone badly.
As a tribute, I'm gonna quote some Ebert here about Battlefield Earth: Prometheus feels the same. Better films have done the same kind of opening, but Prometheus doesn't seem to understand why they did it or why it worked. So instead, it clumsily throws a facsimile of the same sort of shit at you and expects applause.
On a related note I caught School of Rock on TV last night and it's a pretty great film overall but there's one kid who exists just so you can laugh at how gay he is and it made me uncomfortable. At one point the kid presents sparkly costumes he designed for the band and Jack Black makes an "eww" face and the movie is basically saying "this gay kid is lame. Being gay is lame."
I agree that one scene that felt like it had been cut down too hard in editing was the aftermath of the abortion scene. There needed to be some more acknowledgment of that event. The rest of the stuff I could live with though and I'm looking forward to the announced sequel
I agree, however I found the aftermath of the abortion scene to be okay since where I lost it was when map guy got lost. And then again when bio guy touched alien snake. Actually, I think I lost it when they all decided taking off their helmets was a good idea.
II found the abortion scene to be both gross and funny. Preggers with a squid! I thought that sort of stuff only happens in Japan!
Anyway, it's a claymation film about an 8 year old Austrailian girl who ends up being a pen-pal with a 40 year old man living in New York with Asperger's. Absolute must-see 4 reelz, yo.
The mind-boggling thing is that the BRD has a cut scene that does just that. Like, literally, every single complaint about the movie has a deleted scene that covers it. Ok, there's one it doesn't cover but - seriously - everything else.
@Shryke There are legitimate reasons to dislike the movie and after pondering it for a while I'm not nearly as strong on it as I was originally. There's a phenomenon where when you argue about something you don't like, you tend to start to dislike it more strongly the longer you argue. I was pointing out that the Prometheus thread (as well as pretty much every TV thread in D&D) was like that. And I did the same thing when arguing about Cabin in the Woods, so I'm not innocent either.
It's a meta-Prometheus discussion
But yeah, the actually details of Prometheus are well past argued out.
And while the reasons are *very* different, I actually liked Lars von Trier's Melancholia as well. For once it didn't feel like I was watching von Trier pull the wings off his (predominantly female) flies. Yes, the film isn't exactly light and fluffy, but neither did it feel smugly sadistic in the way that some of his other movies do.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I saw this a couple years ago. It was wonderful and I want there to be more semi-serious claymation films like it.
Seriously, anyone who has not seen it should go and see it.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
It's hilarious that even the DVD back is pitching a different movie. You expect some sort of like spy or crime thriller going in, but it's not that at all. It's actually a beautifully shot, moody and measured character piece about a man involved in crime and what that's done to him. It's almost got this Drive-esque quality in it's love for long, slow, gorgeous shots with minimal dialogue and just letting the things the main character is doing on screen tell the story or letting the tension in the tense scenes ramp up based on the subtext of what's going on. (although it's not actually anything like Drive)
It's extremely simple, but it's well done and it knows not to draw it out or play out it's few actions scenes for ages and Clooney does a good job in it. Quite liked it, though nothing like I expected. Just a slow burn examination of one man.
Also, Violante Placido is smoking fucking hot. And there's tits. Just saying.
I think this is something that everyone can agree on. That's how I originally saw it and it was gorgeous.
Firstly, saying "Movie X wanted to be Movie Y but failed" is just an unfair, unmerited comparison. What in the movie suggests to you that they were trying desperately to ape Alien and Alien alone? And the reason I know it's misguided to say is because I happened to listen to the screenwriter commentary just last week, and the screenwriter states pretty plainly, "I like to think of this movie as an Alien and Blade Runner mash-up" which probably has something to do with why I liked it so much, because I personally adore Blade Runner and only saw Alien once on VHS some time back in the '80s, and I left the theater initially comparing Prometheus most strongly to Blade Runner as the reference point in Ridley Scott's prior work.
And actually just re-watched Alien because it's available on HBO right now for the first time since I was a kid, and I'd really say that outside of the horror aspects of both movies and the deep space settings, there's actually very little to connect the two. I guess there's the "corporate v. human interest" angle a bit, but thematically I would say Prometheus and Alien have very little in common. Oh I guess dangerously autonomous robots, too. Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that in the commentary (I guess I should spoiler here)
Anyway, if you don't like the movie, that's fine, I'm not really going to try and change your mind, but to dismiss the film on the basis that it "wanted to be Alien but failed" is an extremely poor (and like I said, ultimately misguided per the people who made it) critique.
Except that's not at all accurate. I mean, firstly, it's obviously trying to copy the Alien opening. Really, really obviously. So one could easily evaluate it on that account.
But more importantly, it's doing the same kind of opening as Alien. We can compare it the same way we can compare any two movies. Some are good, some are bad and we can look at both those and see where one failed and where one didn't. One action movie may not be trying to copy, say, Die Hard, but we can certainly compare both movies by talking about similar things the two movies try to do and why one succeeds and one fails.
Prometheus by the end is not trying to be a copy of Alien. Hell, the parts where it tries to tie itself to the Alien franchise only weaken the movie.
But we can certainly compare it to a better movie. Especially when the beginning is trying to do the same things the beginning of Alien did.
And, again, we can talk about all sorts of other ways Prometheus fails if you like. Hell, my post there mentions at least 3 that can easily be evaluated as bad without any comparison to Alien.
The T-Rex did try to eat the kids, Ellie and Grant. Your right that the T-Rex was an animal, but it wasn't a hero. It only helped the protagonists by accident. Had the raptors not been there in the finale the T-Rex would have killed the heroes.
The whole scene when they arrive at the T-Rex stops making sense once it leaves its cage.
Munich and Catch Me If You Can were wonderful films. Minority Report was serviceable.
Catch Me If You Can is a film I can't rightly judge; I saw it at the cinema, but that was after a massive fight with my then-not-yet-girlfriend. I remember individual scenes, but I did not get into that film at all, through no fault of its own.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Munich struck me as okay, but unremarkable. It seemed to want very much to be important, like this decade's Schindler's List, but it didn't leave much of an impression.
Been a long time since I watched Munich. I remember liking the tone, acting, the violent scenes and how the "heroes" were unsure whether their actions were right. A scene that really stuck out was when a protagonist stuck a bomb in a house and they had to disarm it to save an innocent person from getting killed.
Good movie still, by the way. The structure is a bit weird (half the movie in the town, the other half on a boat), but that's not automatically a negative.
I noticed that in The Graduate, which is iconic for its use of pop music but it is just wayyy off from the way music is used in movies today. The Sound of Silence plays like four damn times in that film.
What part of the opening would you say is obviously copying Alien? The extensive landscape shots which open the film? The immediate introduction to the foreign Engineers? The CGI sequence which shows us intricate DNA imagery? The humans excavating earth geography? Once we're in space, is it the dream sequence we see for Noomi Rapace? The lengthy David-by-himself montage? The Lawrence of Arabia scenes?
Like, I get it -- there are some echoes and recalls to Alien in the opening spaceship shots and then the crew awakening from cryo-sleep (and in the commentary they actually said that the scenes on earth, of the archaeological discovery, were pick-ups filmed after the movie was done because they decided they needed more context as to why this space mission was occurring, so yes in the original drafts it was very reminiscent of Alien) and they're somewhat related, but to say "the film wanted to be <insert> so badly but failed" is just reductive. That sort of statement is not a comparison, it's just misleading. And then like I said, even using Alien as a comparison film is a pretty poor comparison choice, because the two films are telling pretty drastically different stories, and in both the posts I saw you made re: Prometheus you compared/contrasted heavily to Alien.
Like I said, I'm not going to try to convince you that Prometheus was good or defend it against your gripes -- if you don't like it, you don't like it -- but I did want to take issue with what I saw as a reductive, unfair critique in a false/reductive comparison (that you made a ton of times...).
There is an interesting theory on the web someplace that the parents in that movie are actually intended to be separated but living together to finish raising the daughter and adopted child. That theory holds up really well and gives their scenes (especially together) a weirdly satisfying vibe.
Regardless of intent, she was the hero in the end. She triumphantly crashed the door and killed the cold calculating murder machines, John Williams score booming, saving "us", and let loose a magnificent uplifting victory cry.
That is how heros do it in the movies.
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In movies when a hero does that the other heroes don't flee as soon as possible to avoid getting eaten by the animal that rescued them. Nor do they almost succeed in eating the same people when they first encounter each other.
yessssssssssssssss
that looks awesome.
Anti-Hero then. Look man, the T-Rex is the hero. Take her out and everyone dies.
Actually, she is also the star. Take her out and the movie isn't nearly as good.
The T-Rex is damn near the movie.
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I'd say The American and Drive are almost the same movie; their whole thing is taking a straightforward genre story and then stripping it to its barest bones. Noise and dialogue are replaced with silence and music; action is replaced with passivity; excitement is replaced by atmosphere. Huge chunks of the running time are given over to long close-ups of the actors' still faces, inviting us to try and get inside their characters' heads.
I think Drive works a bit better, ultimately. Its main character is an enigma almost the whole way through but the movie surrounds him with other, more conventional people for us to care about, and while much of the action is stripped-down or deemphasized there still is action; The American starts with a situation and then seems to put the resolution or development of that situation on hold until the last thirty minutes, using the rest of the running time as a Tuscan travelogue (I think this is probably the biggest issue; I've seen a zillion cobbled piazzas saturated with impossibly yellow Mediterranean sunshine, so it doesn't really stick out the way Drive's weird, synthy, pastel-colored take on LA did).
But I still liked it. Something about it stuck with me. And yeah, tits.