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I'm shocked, shocked to find that [Movies] are going on in here!

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  • RocketSauceRocketSauce Registered User regular
    gjaustin wrote: »
    Nocren wrote: »
    gjaustin wrote: »
    Thorn413 wrote: »
    Panda4You wrote: »
    Haven't seen a movie that caters directly to me more than Event horizon yet.
    It's a great, almost seamless, fusion between my two fave genres, (hard) scifi and horror; It's visuals are very well-crafted; Curiously high-profile and competent cast, and plenty of other little filmmaking details that just makes it thouroughly enjoyable.

    Alien, Sunshine, and Event Horizon are a three way tie for best sci-fi horror in my mind, I have tried to pick between them but I just cannot do it.

    Sci-Fi Horror is perhaps my favorite sub-genre. I'd say that Alien and Thing are the clear winners. (Though I still need to see Sunshine). Jurassic Park is a clear winner as well, but I'm not sure I'd classify it as Sci-Fi Horror. It's Sci-Fi and it's (at least partially) Horror, but I'm not sure the two interact sufficiently for it to count as "Sci-Fi Horror".

    I dunno if I'd label Jurassic Park as horror though... I mean, I think of the Dinos as forces of nature just kind of doing their thing, not out of any malicious intent or psychological need, but because they are just really large and extremely dangerous animals.

    I don't think malicious intent is required for horror. Neither The Thing or the xenomorph in Alien ever have malice established. It's more an issue of the protagonists being powerless, combined with the film involving the audience in the dread and terror that accompany that.

    And even if malice was required, the velociraptors are portrayed as highly intelligent predators. Their tactics are identical to those a malicious human would apply, so our natural reaction is to label them evil. They may not be evil in the strictest sense, but that doesn't affect the emotional beats of the story.
    If Sci-fi Horror is all about the perils of technology and scientific endeavors, then I think Jurassic Park qualifies.
    I think that simply discussing the perils of technology is still just Sci-Fi. For example, Minority Report is about the perils of technology that allows seeing the future but has no substantial elements that are associated with the horror genre.

    I have trouble defining Sci-Fi Horror, because even the clear example have some substantial differences between them. I would say that it requires some kind of "alien" (whether an actual extraterrestrial, a modified human, or a machine) that cannot be reasoned with. It's designed to invoke fear of the unknown (more so than other Horror). It reminds us that humanity is all alone in the darkness - or even worse, there are monsters in the darkness. And then the theme of the movie usually revolves around Hubris (e.g. Event Horizon), Identity (e.g. The Thing), or Loneliness (e.g. Pandorum).

    Jurassic Park does have the theme of Hubris and the antagonists can't be reasoned with. Yet, the dinosaurs ARE knowable and the presence of peaceful dinosaurs (veggiesauruses) undermines the horror. So I think my overall categorization is that there are scenes of Jurassic Park that are spectacular horror scenes (e.g. the T-Rex scene or the Kitchen scene), but the movie itself is not a Horror movie.

    An example of a similar movie with a good horror scene that isn't a Horror movie is Return of the King. Jackson draws on his experience with Horror movies in the scenes with Shelob, but the movie itself is clearly not Horror.

    I wasn't saying it was a horror movie. I don't think you can just call it straight sci-fi because the horror elements are so present (unlike your example of Return of the King) throughout the film. It uses the primal fear of being eaten alive to great effect throughout the movie; the opening scene, Dr. Grant describing how a Velociraptor would eat a snarky young boy, to the very end when they are being cornered by the Raptors. The threat of being eaten by scary monsters with claws and teeth is there the whole time. It's a primal fear that goes back thousands of years. Minority Report doesn't do that, that's why it's not Sci-Fi/Horror.

    Jurassic Park isn't straight horror, but it uses enough of the same conventions that I think calling it Sci-Fi just isn't enough.

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    Sci-fi/horror!

    Oh, Alien was already mentioned?

    Well, then.

  • So It GoesSo It Goes We keep moving...Registered User regular
    Hmm. I would never consider Jurassic Park a horror film.

  • HounHoun Registered User regular
    I wasn't aware that Sci-Fi was a true film genre; I always thought it seemed more a backdrop or classification for other genres...

  • So It GoesSo It Goes We keep moving...Registered User regular
    Houn wrote: »
    I wasn't aware that Sci-Fi was a true film genre; I always thought it seemed more a backdrop or classification for other genres...

    noooooooooooooooooooooo

  • HounHoun Registered User regular
    Well, I mean, I get that Science Fiction is supposed to be Fiction about potential scientific advancements and their impact, but let's be fair here: when talking about movies, "Sci-Fi" is generally applied to any movie that takes place in "the future", regardless of whatever else it is. I mean, Total Recall (the original) is labeled "sci-fi" but, if we're being realists, it's just an action movie with futuristic sets.

  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    i think the "noooooo" bit is referring to the fact that this thread devolves into mindless wrangling about what exactly "sci-fi" "genre" "movie" "art" "speculative fiction" etc. etc. mean about twice a week.

  • HounHoun Registered User regular
    Ah, heh. Understood.

  • CommunistCowCommunistCow Abstract Metal ThingyRegistered User regular
    edited June 2013
    kA0rpNo.jpg

    I would watch this too. CROSSOVER!

    Edit: He can't turn left so he just has to turn right really fast.

    CommunistCow on
    No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
  • AstaerethAstaereth In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
    KalTorak wrote: »
    i think the "noooooo" bit is referring to the fact that this thread devolves into mindless wrangling about what exactly "sci-fi" "genre" "movie" "art" "speculative fiction" etc. etc. mean about twice a week.

    Indeed! Once more into the breach, dear friends!

    So the reason this sort of confusion exists is that the loose groupings of films we call "genres" are actually founded on several different types of groupings. My film studies professor called them themes, styles and iconography, but I prefer to think of them in the more accessible terms of ideas, effects, and setting. The ideas are what the movie is about in a broader sense; the effects are what feelings the movie wants to create in the audience (and the techniques it uses to do so); the setting is physical location, time period, world-building.

    There are genres that are solely built around one of these categories. Hyperlink movies, for instance (Magnolia, the later Crash, Babel) can tackle many subjects in many settings but are aligned by the specific intended effect of watching multiple interlinked stories. Women in prison films take place in prisons, period. Dystopian movies arguably don't even need to be set in the future or contain science fiction (Fight Club and Lord of the Flies are two good examples) in order to share a common idea about human nature.

    The problem arises because most of our main genres use some or all of those categorization types. A Western can be defined by a setting (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) but that can get very loose (No Country for Old Men) and it can also be about specific effects (the climax of The Matrix, for example, uses the stylistic feel of a Western showdown to great effect) and it can also be defined by specific types of stories about morality, adventure (Star Wars), and politics (Firefly uses its Western elements to recast the Civil War in terms of the conflict between authoritarianism and individualism).

    This is why completely separate genres can be combined to interesting effect. The Grudge series, for instance, is a hyperlink/horror hybrid, with the former providing the structure and the latter the ideas, iconography and mood. Even "sci-fi period piece" isn't incompatible when the latter is supplying the setting (say, Victorian England) and the former is supplying the effects (an otherwise boring chamber drama is enlivened by a bunch of whizzing gears and steam-powered inventions).

    So sci-fi can be about the ideas (the upsides and downsides of technology or social innovations, typically--Primer looks at the destructive nature of time travel but is set in present day), the setting (Another Earth posits the discovery of a second inhabited planet, but only uses that as a metaphor for examining the nature of regret and loss), or the effects (Close Encounters of the Third Kind is basically about making the audience feel awe, but keeps the sci-fi concepts to a minimum).

    And the same goes for horror, which can be about the ideas (often very conservative stuff: Goodfellas, for instance, has the soul of a horror movie because it shares that Catholic bedrock notion about the wages of sin) or the setting (Casper isn't a horror movie in the slightest, but it does take place in a haunted house with lots of Gothic trappings) or the intended effect (fear, terror, horror, revulsion--Open Water is a prime example of a movie that is basically only a horror movie in terms of effect).

    Obviously I'm deliberately picking some odd examples to show how these things can be separated. Usually they're all together: A Scanner Darkly uses a "7 years from now" setting to examine the future of drug abuse, surveillance, and police work via a very specific form of paranoia, and the classic Don't Look Now examines the dangers of spiritual ignorance in haunted, haunting Venice, producing an overpowering sense of dread interspersed with terror and finally one great whack of horror right between the eyes.

    ...what was I supposed to be talking about? Oh, sci-fi as backdrop. That's true for a lot of combinations that use a sci-fi setting without the emotions or themes, particularly sci-fi horror and sci-fi action. But sci-fi comedies typically tend towards legitimate satire (Idiocracy, for instance), taking up sci-fi themes through humor; sci-fi dramas don't tend to ignore the implications of their setting either (Bicentennial Man). And even Jurassic Park (which I would more properly term a sci-fi thriller because it's typically trying to effect tension in the audience rather than horror) stops every once in a while to give you good old-fashioned awe and wonder at the spectacle of living dinosaurs.

    Pure sci-fi is pretty rare, and typically involves a sci-fi plot element that isn't scary, dangerous, thrilling or moving so much as it is interesting. Examples would include movies like Contact, Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, where humanity explores contact with alien life forms seeking greater understanding; or certain technological-based films (I mentioned Primer above, and would put Moon in this category as well). It'd also include social constructions but I can't think of any more examples at the moment (although The Beach comes to mind, as does Pay it Forward, but that one's more than half straight-up drama).

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  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    Was Pandorum Dead Space: The Movie, or was that something else?

  • LoserForHireXLoserForHireX Philosopher King The AcademyRegistered User regular
    Horror films absolutely do not require an evil villain. Relentless forces of nature with inhuman motives are perfectly relevant antagonists.

    see: Jaws

    This is interesting, because I read an article last semester by Noel Carrol that I found pretty convincing that horror requires there to always be a monster. He's pretty liberal with what monster means, as a monster just has to violate the rules of nature in some way (so the alien has acid blood, and looks like a penis, Jaws is big enough to eat a damn boat, Freddy Kreuger is a ghost thing, as well as the normal werewolves and vampires etc). One rebuttal that I read was that it doesn't account for slasher films very well, because they are just normal people without super powers (in the slasher movies where that is the case, not like Jason or Freddy). I think though that slasher movies are all about the moral monster. Here's someone who breaks the most fundamental moral rule, don't kill. And it's all about breaking that rule, and the thrill comes from the particular ways in which the monsterousness is displayed.

    It's an interesting read, and I actually have a friend in my department that's writing his dissertation on Horror and it's accompanying paradox. If you can find it, it's Noel Carrol's "Why Horror"

    "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
    "We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    Fencingsax wrote: »
    Was Pandorum Dead Space: The Movie, or was that something else?

    Pandorum was Antje Traue's unofficial audition for Man of Steel.

  • TomantaTomanta Registered User regular
    Alien > Thing >>>>> Sunshine > Pandorum > Event Horizon >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> something crappy, I'm sure I'll think of something five minutes after I post this.

    I loved Pandorum so much I bought the blu-ray. I have very few blu rays. It was also only $4.. I need to watch Sunshine and Event Horizon again, but I enjoyed both of those as well.

  • UltimanecatUltimanecat Registered User regular
    I don't really get a horror vibe from Jurassic Park either, because the movie never inspires in me the sense of dread that a horror movie seems to rely on; moreover, the sci-fi angle isn't played up as humans toying with forces beyond our understanding or control. Sure, characters may talk like that's the case, but the errors leading to the events of the film are actually pretty avoidable: don't base your genetic engineering on incomplete data, have an HR department worth a damn, and don't let your security systems be controlled by one dude.

    That's not to say that faceless natural forces can't be horrific. One movie that can actually be pretty scary is The Ghost and The Darkness, and all it's about is two lions that were really good at hunting people.

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  • HounHoun Registered User regular
    @Asteareth, that is pretty much exactly the basic idea I had in my head, only far better expressed and far further thought out than I ever got with it.

    You, sir, deserve more than the click of a button with a heart on it.

  • ElJeffeElJeffe Moderator, ClubPA mod
    Horror films absolutely do not require an evil villain. Relentless forces of nature with inhuman motives are perfectly relevant antagonists.

    see: Jaws

    This is interesting, because I read an article last semester by Noel Carrol that I found pretty convincing that horror requires there to always be a monster. He's pretty liberal with what monster means, as a monster just has to violate the rules of nature in some way (so the alien has acid blood, and looks like a penis, Jaws is big enough to eat a damn boat, Freddy Kreuger is a ghost thing, as well as the normal werewolves and vampires etc). One rebuttal that I read was that it doesn't account for slasher films very well, because they are just normal people without super powers (in the slasher movies where that is the case, not like Jason or Freddy). I think though that slasher movies are all about the moral monster. Here's someone who breaks the most fundamental moral rule, don't kill. And it's all about breaking that rule, and the thrill comes from the particular ways in which the monsterousness is displayed.

    It's an interesting read, and I actually have a friend in my department that's writing his dissertation on Horror and it's accompanying paradox. If you can find it, it's Noel Carrol's "Why Horror"

    I might define horror as requiring something alien, in the sense of being something either unknown, unknowable, or both. That something can be a person (whose desire to do harm is alien to most moral individuals), or a monster, or an animal that's gone bad (Cujo and Jaws both feature animals that totally want to kill your shit for reasons you can't hope to understand), or lots of other things. I think the successful horror movies, then, are those which effectively communicate the alien nature of its antagonist. The ones that force you to look at something and acknowledge that you'll never know how it can do what it's doing.

    Consider that a lot of horror films fall apart and lose their scariness right around the time they explain the motivations of the monster. A ghost that kills people for no reason is terrifying - anybody could be next! When you find out the ghost is killing people it blames for its death, well, that's less scary. Now it's predictable, and possibly even empathetic. This is why Jaws is terrifying right up through the end. Why is the shark trying to eat you? Because fuck you, that's why. What the hell is up with the alien in The Thing? Who knows? It's this crazy pissed off thing that evolved to mimic other beings because, hell, I dunno, and it'll rip you open, and even at the end you're never really sure it's dead. It still could be anyone.

    I mean, the fact that horror revolves around the unknown isn't really a revelation; everyone pretty much knows that. But I think it's interesting to examine the ways in which different movies try to achieve that, and the ways in which some movies fail because they don't do that one, basic thing.

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  • KingofMadCowsKingofMadCows Registered User regular
    Fencingsax wrote: »
    Was Pandorum Dead Space: The Movie, or was that something else?

    Kind of, except people run from the monsters.

  • Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Horror films absolutely do not require an evil villain. Relentless forces of nature with inhuman motives are perfectly relevant antagonists.

    see: Jaws

    This is interesting, because I read an article last semester by Noel Carrol that I found pretty convincing that horror requires there to always be a monster. He's pretty liberal with what monster means, as a monster just has to violate the rules of nature in some way (so the alien has acid blood, and looks like a penis, Jaws is big enough to eat a damn boat, Freddy Kreuger is a ghost thing, as well as the normal werewolves and vampires etc). One rebuttal that I read was that it doesn't account for slasher films very well, because they are just normal people without super powers (in the slasher movies where that is the case, not like Jason or Freddy). I think though that slasher movies are all about the moral monster. Here's someone who breaks the most fundamental moral rule, don't kill. And it's all about breaking that rule, and the thrill comes from the particular ways in which the monsterousness is displayed.

    It's an interesting read, and I actually have a friend in my department that's writing his dissertation on Horror and it's accompanying paradox. If you can find it, it's Noel Carrol's "Why Horror"

    I would say, quite simply, that a human can be a monster.

    -edit-

    As far as Jaws goes, Bruce isn't unrealistically large. What makes it a monster is that its behavior goes past what we see with sharks that attack humans. The monster succeeds quite well at being believable, but upon closer examination it becomes obvious that Bruce the shark is not behaving within the boundaries of natural shark behavior.

    Regina Fong on
  • AstaerethAstaereth In the belly of the beastRegistered User regular
    Horror doesn't always need a monster: consider the first 90% of Sunshine, where motherfucking space is the source of all your terror. Or the Andromeda Strain, where it is quite a stretch to say that a naturally-occurring virus is a monster. The same goes for all the other plague movies (that don't have manmade sources). Also, consider movies like Jacob's Ladder (which is fueled by existential/spiritual terror), or movies where a character descends into insanity (no monsters in Repulsion), or the horrors of the truly surreal (I'm thinking of the Exterminating Angel, here). To define these so broadly as to call them "monsters" is getting close to the near-tautology of "wrong things are scary." Well, yeah. But that doesn't tell you anything.

    Nor do movies necessarily need the unknown to be horrifying. Think about it--horror is the combination of fear and revulsion, and the whole beauty and difficulty of the genre is that fear is powered by suggestion (and mystery and ignorance and plain old "what will happen next?" tension), while revulsion is powered by reality, by (in the movies) visual and auditory cold hard facts. It's the source of the age-old tension between keeping the monster off-screen and putting it on and hoping it scares the fuck out of the audience anyway. And it boils all the way down to the decision every horror movie has to make, about how much gore and violence it must show in order to work properly.

    Anyway, the point there is that you can get by on horror that's alllmost all revulsion. Psycho is a very classy example, but this also applies to torture porn, movies like Alive! (about the soccer team whose plane crashes in the mountains, therefore cannibalism), and George Romero's zombie films. Push hard enough on revulsion and you start to break taboos, and that is horrifying. All the way over on the fear side of the scale, though, you get elegant (but sometimes bloodless, metaphorically but also sometimes literally) chillers like The Blair Witch Project, Wise's The Haunting, and The Innocents, where ambiguity and suggestion allow you to creep yourself out.

    There's also a lot of horror that trades on a much more mundane sort of unknown: a very solid, comprehensible monster (Jaws, or Cujo, for instance) that spends its time lurking offscreen. You know exactly what it is; just not where it is.

    Overall, I would say there's no wrong way to achieve horror, and no hard requirements either. We humans are too easily scared for that to be true.

    @Houn Thanks! :D

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  • LoserForHireXLoserForHireX Philosopher King The AcademyRegistered User regular
    Astaereth wrote: »
    Horror doesn't always need a monster: consider the first 90% of Sunshine, where motherfucking space is the source of all your terror. Or the Andromeda Strain, where it is quite a stretch to say that a naturally-occurring virus is a monster. The same goes for all the other plague movies (that don't have manmade sources). Also, consider movies like Jacob's Ladder (which is fueled by existential/spiritual terror), or movies where a character descends into insanity (no monsters in Repulsion), or the horrors of the truly surreal (I'm thinking of the Exterminating Angel, here). To define these so broadly as to call them "monsters" is getting close to the near-tautology of "wrong things are scary." Well, yeah. But that doesn't tell you anything.

    Nor do movies necessarily need the unknown to be horrifying. Think about it--horror is the combination of fear and revulsion, and the whole beauty and difficulty of the genre is that fear is powered by suggestion (and mystery and ignorance and plain old "what will happen next?" tension), while revulsion is powered by reality, by (in the movies) visual and auditory cold hard facts. It's the source of the age-old tension between keeping the monster off-screen and putting it on and hoping it scares the fuck out of the audience anyway. And it boils all the way down to the decision every horror movie has to make, about how much gore and violence it must show in order to work properly.

    Anyway, the point there is that you can get by on horror that's alllmost all revulsion. Psycho is a very classy example, but this also applies to torture porn, movies like Alive! (about the soccer team whose plane crashes in the mountains, therefore cannibalism), and George Romero's zombie films. Push hard enough on revulsion and you start to break taboos, and that is horrifying. All the way over on the fear side of the scale, though, you get elegant (but sometimes bloodless, metaphorically but also sometimes literally) chillers like The Blair Witch Project, Wise's The Haunting, and The Innocents, where ambiguity and suggestion allow you to creep yourself out.

    There's also a lot of horror that trades on a much more mundane sort of unknown: a very solid, comprehensible monster (Jaws, or Cujo, for instance) that spends its time lurking offscreen. You know exactly what it is; just not where it is.

    Overall, I would say there's no wrong way to achieve horror, and no hard requirements either. We humans are too easily scared for that to be true.

    @Houn Thanks! :D

    I think that Carroll would alternatively say that some of those movies are not horror movies (like I doubt that he would count Jacob's Ladder. For that matter so would I.) Sunshine would be because of the third act, and were it not to have that, then I think Carroll would say that as well is not a horror movie. It's more of a disaster movie. I mean, Armageddon isn't a horror movie, and a space rock is the enemy. Andromeda Strain he might argue that there is a monster there. The disease breaks our rules, it's a special case that doesn't play by the rules of disease that we had.

    He might even be comfortable saying that what qualifies as horror changes over time. Andromeda Strain might not be horror anymore because it isn't very far outside the norm. But disease movies are so close to disaster flicks that maybe they just aren't horror. They might be thrilling, causing our heart to race, but not be horror.

    For Carroll I think that horror does entail a certain degree of revulsion (in the sense of "do not want") as well as fear.

    I'm not really sure that Carroll is correct. My friend writing his dissertation disagrees with him, and he's done a lot more thinking about this than I have. That alone gives me some reason to believe such. I'm very interested in the Paradox of Horror though. Which there doesn't seem to be an SEP article on....doody. You can get Berys Gaut's paper here (http://aaablogs.uoregon.edu/aad250-shuette/files/2010/05/6-gaut.pdf), he's responding to Carroll, but not effectively I think (he's the one who brings up slashers). It's really crazy why we would seek out revolting experiences that we would normally avoid. We do it, but how can we make sense of such a desire for something that we don't desire.

    "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
    "We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    Horror is a matter of tone

    Sci-Fi is a matter of setting

  • gjaustingjaustin Registered User regular
    zagdrob wrote: »
    @gjaustin

    I think you have an excellent and well thought out post...but I have to disagree. I would have to say Jurassic Park is sci-fi horror in the same genre as The Mist. In fact, taking away the twisted ending of The Mist, the two movies are very comparable.

    You have the 'humans are bastards' line running through both movies - Nedry fucking up the computers in Jurassic Park, the crazy religious cultish stuff in The Mist. The creatures - dinosaurs in JP and the animals in The Mist weren't necessarily malicious, evil, or anything like that. Just forces of nature with their own motivations.

    I believe that in The Mist, there were a few creatures that pretty much didn't give a shit about people or weren't malicious. There was that gigantic thing that we only saw the leg of, and I think there were a few other things that weren't harmful or dangerous - parallel to the non-aggressive animals in Jurassic Park. It's been a long time since I've watch The Mist, so I can't remember too well.

    I definitely think JP didn't aim to be as much of a horror as The Mist, but it definitely had enough horrifying traits that it's the same ballpark.

    That's an excellent point you make about the large monster in The Mist. But I still can't agree that Jurassic Park is Horror. There's some ephemeral quality it lacks, that I'm having difficulty expressing in words. I'll give it another shot.

    The difference between Jurassic Park and The Mist is that the latter doesn't relent. It is constantly pressing you with the terror of the situation. Every action is related to the fear of the mist and the creatures inside it.

    In contrast, Jurassic Park makes sure to stop every so often and give you a chance to recover. Now, some Horror movies can use this to great effect (e.g. the climax of Alien in the escape pod) to knock you off your guard. But Jurassic Park spaces the scenes and allows them to be long enough that they are legitimate respite.
    Astaereth wrote:
    And even Jurassic Park (which I would more properly term a sci-fi thriller because it's typically trying to effect tension in the audience rather than horror) stops every once in a while to give you good old-fashioned awe and wonder at the spectacle of living dinosaurs.
    Oh, @Astaereth already beat me to it! That seems to happen a lot :)
    Astaereth wrote:
    So the reason this sort of confusion exists is that the loose groupings of films we call "genres" are actually founded on several different types of groupings. My film studies professor called them themes, styles and iconography, but I prefer to think of them in the more accessible terms of ideas, effects, and setting. The ideas are what the movie is about in a broader sense; the effects are what feelings the movie wants to create in the audience (and the techniques it uses to do so); the setting is physical location, time period, world-building.
    I'd come to a conclusion similar to this regarding video game genres. Both Dark Souls and Final Fantasy are roleplaying games, but they're nothing alike.

    Can I use this quote next time there's a stupid argument in G&T about what counts as an RPG?

  • RT800RT800 Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    You know, I had this exact same argument with myself whenever I stood in the Horror section of the video store as a kid.

    Blade? What the fuck is that doing in the same section as The Shining?

    RT800 on
  • Harry DresdenHarry Dresden Registered User regular
    RT800 wrote: »
    You know, I had this exact same argument with myself whenever I stood in the Horror section of the video store as a kid.

    Blade? What the fuck is that doing in the same section as The Shining?

    Blade is a horror movie for vampires.

  • emp123emp123 Registered User regular
    It still blows my mind that Jaws is rated PG, mainly because this movie has been scaring the shit out of me since I first saw it probably 20 years ago at the way too young age of 6.

    I only bring this up because while Jaws isnt available on Netflix, it is available on HBO Go.

  • Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    emp123 wrote: »
    It still blows my mind that Jaws is rated PG, mainly because this movie has been scaring the shit out of me since I first saw it probably 20 years ago at the way too young age of 6.

    I only bring this up because while Jaws isnt available on Netflix, it is available on HBO Go.

    The logic is probably that the film instills a pants-wetting terror of sharks in anyone when they see it regardless of age.

    It's also nearly impossible to avoid seeing it ever.

    Why not just get it out of the way early?

  • Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    RT800 wrote: »
    You know, I had this exact same argument with myself whenever I stood in the Horror section of the video store as a kid.

    Blade? What the fuck is that doing in the same section as The Shining?

    Blade is a horror movie for vampires.

    I immediately visualized whatshisname from Twilight watching Blade and sobbing.

  • Mild ConfusionMild Confusion Smash All Things Registered User regular
    Jaws is why I refused to get on a boat until age 30.

    There may be some hyperbole in there, but not much.

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  • So It GoesSo It Goes We keep moving...Registered User regular
    I didn't need jaws to be 100% freaked out about sharks as a kid. but I mostly blame it on james bond.

  • UltimanecatUltimanecat Registered User regular
    Jaws was released before the PG-13 rating even existed, if I recall. The PG rating encompassed a lot more content then, when it really meant "parental guidance" suggested and not "family friendly".

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  • gjaustingjaustin Registered User regular
    emp123 wrote: »
    It still blows my mind that Jaws is rated PG, mainly because this movie has been scaring the shit out of me since I first saw it probably 20 years ago at the way too young age of 6.

    I only bring this up because while Jaws isnt available on Netflix, it is available on HBO Go.

    The thing to remember is that Jaws was released in 1975. The PG-13 rating wasn't created until 1984. And Jaws isn't quite violent enough to warrant an R rating.

    But the rating that always boggles my mind is Ben-Hur. It's rated G! Now, the MPAA wasn't around when it released, but it seems like whoever went back and rated it didn't watch the entire movie!

  • shrykeshryke Member of the Beast Registered User regular
    RT800 wrote: »
    You know, I had this exact same argument with myself whenever I stood in the Horror section of the video store as a kid.

    Blade? What the fuck is that doing in the same section as The Shining?

    Blade is a horror movie for vampires.

    I immediately visualized whatshisname from Twilight watching Blade and sobbing.

    ???
    twilight-ending-blade.jpg

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    EDIT: Beaten!

    DarkPrimus on
  • Mild ConfusionMild Confusion Smash All Things Registered User regular
    Oh man, now I can't decide which is the best image of the day:

    Man of Blue Steel

    or

    Blade: Sparkle Hunter

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  • TaranisTaranis Registered User regular
    For those that are fans of Jaws, I'd recommend watching Chaw on Netflix. It's a mildly cheesy (but in the self aware sense) Korean parody of Jaws with a Boar terrorizing a rural town. Not a great movie, but it's fun and provides a few genuinely funny moments.

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  • NocrenNocren Lt Futz, Back in Action North CarolinaRegistered User regular
    edited June 2013
    Jaws is why I refused to get on a boat until age 30.

    There may be some hyperbole in there, but not much.

    "You didn't use the toilet for a month after you saw Jaws."

    "Sharks live in water, there's water in the toilet. I rest my case."

    Nocren on
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  • knitdanknitdan In ur base Killin ur guysRegistered User regular
    Was never scared of Jaws.

    But am still convinced that toilet snakes are a real thing.

    “I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
    -Indiana Solo, runner of blades
  • Regina FongRegina Fong Allons-y, Alonso Registered User regular
    So It Goes wrote: »
    I didn't need jaws to be 100% freaked out about sharks as a kid. but I mostly blame it on james bond.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7hgPwyQUTc

This discussion has been closed.