Unpopular Sci-fi/ Fantasy movie opinions!

One of favorite threads in General Trek is Unpopular Trek opinions. It's good to vent, good to go against the grain, and it's good to find out just how many people agree with you, or at least understand where you are coming from!

So this thread will do the same for sci fi and fantasy films.

Here's one of mine.

Ever since I was a kid, I hated the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Great film, bad ending. I mean, the actual ending (last five minutes, where they discuss "top men" is great) but after the truck chase, the film loses all steam. All of it. The only "Indy" moment (until the "top men" scene" is the scene where he beats up a Nazi and takes his uniform in the classic comedic way (a moment that is emulated affectionately in many films). But what else happens? He impossibly hitches a ride hanging onto a sub. Then, he and the heroine get tied up for the rest of the climax and no longer have an active part in what happens. All they do is keep their eyes shut. Indy is such a pro-active character that it is a shame that he is not involved in the ending of his own film. Of course I also think it's odd and disappointing that God would put angels or whatever in the Ark to melt faces, but, whatever. Even when I was a kid, I hated having the hero tied up to a pole. Stupid. And, by having the bad guys open the ark, it cheapens (or almost cheapens) the action scenes that happened earlier. Instead of all those great scenes, the could have captured him and the arc, and we would've gotten the same ending we got.

 

Jedi was better than Empire.

 

"Aliens" isn't very good.

 

Terminator 3 and Alien 3 are actually good.

 

The Abyss (SE) is one of James Cameron's better films.

Children of Dune is the weakest of Herbert's six novels in the series.

 

The Star Wars prequels were awesome, with Phantom Menace being awesome on so many levels, especially how it started every thread that the rest of lore would follow (with the exception of midichlorians, that was just lame)

All the TNG era movies blow with the exception of Generations.

The Matrix Reloaded is awesome

 

1. Return of the Jedi > The Empire Strikes Back. The Ewoks were fine. Would have preferred them as Wookies naturally, but the Ewoks weren't the Devil Incarnate.
2. Willow and Labyrinth were both fantastic films.
3. Sunshine, 2001, and Event Horizon, and other similar movies are all boring drivel. "Suspense" is not a synonym for "mind-numbingly boring."
4. Red Dwarf is a wretchedly lame show.
5. Firefly isn't much better. At least it has Adam Baldwin to make it watchable.

 

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was a lot of fun and left me with the biggest grin plastered on my face while watching it of any movie since the LotR trilogy...

Kevin Spacey's Luthor alone made Superman Returns worth watching, but it wasn't all that bad either...

Matrix is overrated Pysch 101 sophomoric crap dressed up in a pretty package [and Keanu Reeves is among the worst actors of the last fifty years] and anyone who thinks rotating yourself up onto a wall and into your opponents' arc of fire is a good tactic in a gunfight is very silly.

 

Firefly was only just 'okay'

 

"First Contact" is watchable. Just that. It's actually a terrible Trek movie, and a aweful TNG film. OF course, it's a masterpiece when put up against "Nemesis", though...


"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" was a quite lousey Indy movie. In fact, if it didn't have Harrison Ford playing Indy, or the Indy characterisms, and instead some unknown actor and character, it would just be a B-grade piece of archeaoligical flotsum.

"Independance Day" was fun to watch. Once. I could EASILY go the rest of my life without ever seeing it again.

If "Enterprise" didn't have any of hte familiar word and devices of the Roddenbery Trek universe, or the Trek name, it would have been another crappy TV series that got canned right before the end of the first season.

"D.S.9." is NOT the amazing series made out to be by it's fanbase.


"The Final Frontier" is not as bad as made out to be. I nfact, it's head-over-heels better than "First Contact", "Insurrection", "Nemesis", JJ's Trek, and very likely all future Trek films, which I predict will be very, very few.


Speaking nothing about the quality of Alex North or Frank Cordell's rejected scoring efforts, using the classical music pieces in "2001: A Space Odyssey", was a wise move.


Oh, and also ... "Firefly" is simply all kinds of awesome.

 

Harry Potter is rubbish.

Twilight is rubbish.

Lord of the Rings trilogy is pretty overrated.

 

The Dark Knight although undeniably solid and entertaining has a pretty overblown reputation, taking itself too seriously in comparison to the more entertaining Iron Man and Kick-Ass. Batman Begins was also better.

Babylon 5 creatively and commercially burned out quicker than Berman era Star Trek.

Stargate and Independence Day were both very fun pulp adventures, more entertaining than Generations, Insurrection, and Nemesis.

 

- I liked the SW Prequel Trilogy (and the Special Editions of the original trilogy).

- DS9 did not rip off B5 (nor the reverse).

 

I don't think this is an unpopular opinion.

 

Transformers was one of my favorite movies of all time.

How's THAT for unpopular?

 

I agree, It's not a great film, and it's not really art, but it is a lot of fun, and knows what it wants to be. It was a great time at the movies.

 

Also, I loved the last Indiana Jones movie and it was approximately gazzilion times better than The Temple Of Doom.

 

One of the main reasons I liked it so much was that it is totally unambiguous. You know exactly who is good, and who is evil, and there's never any doubt.

I'm not a big fan of moral ambiguity. In my very black-and-white worldview, there's good and evil and that's it. That's why movies like TF appeal to me. Megatron is evil, and loses; Optimus Prime is good, and wins. Optimus is the kind of hero that we need more of, because he is absolutely incorruptible and honest - he's not flawed, not weak, not plagued by self doubt. He's not just good, he *defines* good.

 

- Trek should have ended with DS9 (at the latest, I would rather it ended with TNG) and been put on the back burner for at least 5 to 10 years.

- The prequel SW films are fun movies and really no worse or better than the originals.

- I like A New Hope over Empire 99% of the time

- For every Space Battleship Yamato or Macross or Gundam, there's 100 suckie anime series that are over hyped by their fanbase.

- Fans need to learn to shut the fuck up and let people have their opinions.

- CGI is overrated and I still prefer models.

- Fans give Lucas and Roddenberry way to much credit and not enough to the production teams.

- Matrix sucks...all of them.

- 2001 is a great movie, but not the GOD of all sci-fi movies that some fans would have it to be.

- "The Cage" is by far the best TOS episode

 

I don't think the original Highlander is great -- awesome concept, below average execution -- but is that an unpopular opinion? It wasn't exactly a critically acclaimed movie, and aside from a few people on the internet I've come across who who are just like Ricky Bobby in thinking that Highlander is the greatest movie ever, it's not that big of a movie.