The 7 Most Overrated Blockbuster Movies of the Last 20 Years
As a capitalist, it’s tempting to say that box-office receipts are a better judge of a movie’s worth than Hollywood award ceremonies. However, that ignores the sad reality that Americans sure do love some crummy movies. We’re not even talking “good crummy” either, like a fun zombie or chop socky flick; we’re talking “bad crummy.” Big-budget, high-powered, star-filled atrocities that bank hundreds of millions of dollars despite being average at best and mediocre at worst. Like, for example….
7) Inception
2010: Adjusted Domestic Gross — $295,152,300
Admittedly, in a theme that you’ll see repeated multiple times on this list, the movie looks great. It’s really cool to watch city blocks folding over on each other like a crisp dollar bill. The problem is that’s the only thing that makes the movie worth watching. Yes, it’s pretty… but it’s barely watchable, pretty garbage. The plot is dumb, the characters aren’t likable, the movie is full of overly forced action, and the rules the filmmakers come up with for their invented world are nonsensical. It’s almost like the CGI version of what’s going through someone’s head right after he takes bath salts, but right before he starts to eat people.
I thought Titanic had some monumentally stupid moments. One was having the jealous guy chasing Leonardo around the ship while it was sinking. ‘Cuz there wasn’t enough drama going on at the time. And pretty much the entire love story. I thought it was the most retarded movie I’d ever seen, except maybe Jurassic Park.
Then came Avatar. Again, visually amazing … but “nature fights back?” Nature always wins! All we do is delay it. James Cameron is a gifted technical film maker, but he can’t write, and the problem with his writing is that he’s an idiot. Or at least, became an idiot post-Terminator.
When Titanic was receiving it’s “rave reviews,” I ran into a guy wearing a T-shirt that summed it all up neatly. It showed a half-sunken ship, with the caption, “It was a ship. It sank, Get over it.”
See the 1950s film “A Night to Remember.” You will be astonished to learn that James Cameron lifted camera angles, dialogue, and entire scenes for his version. Original he isn’t.
I never understood why fictional characters had to be created to tell the story of the 20th century’s most famous liner sinking. In 1958, the Brits made a film about the Titanic entitled “A Night to Remember”, basing it on Walter Lord’s book of the same name, and having Eric Ambler write the screen play. It’s a black and white movie with limited special effects, but all the notable ship’s passengers and crew were real people.
The movie starred my favorite Brit actor, Kenneth More, playing the Titanic’s senior surviving crew member, Second Officer Charles Lightoller. David McCallum (now the NCIS medical examiner) played one of the ship’s radio operators. (It was chilling when his character suggests trying the new ‘SOS’ distress call in place of the earlier standard call ‘CQD’.) Fans of Brit movies made between 1955 and 1965 will recognize many of the movie’s actors and actresses.
But it had a nekkid Kate Winslet in it! That’s good for something, right?
“…a worldwide phenomenon that was launched on a romance novel that’s so unsophisticated that it’s two steps away from being a coloring book.”
LOL…nice one.
It was aimed at teenage girls, whatever their age.
Need I say more?
Maybe there should be a movie about how a few hundred men in loin cloths and cotton armor upend the Austro-Hungarian-Netherlands-Spanish Empire.
Cuz that’s happened so many times. It could be called, “The Resolve of Illegal Immigrants VS. the Politically Correct Suicide Cult.”
Everyone could wear wrestling masks. I already know how it ends. With men wearing loin cloths and cotton armor 200 years from now. Oh well, it was fun as long as we didn’t hate ourselves.
They never mention the dope.
A tiny band of Spanish adventurers come to Aztlan, a land we are led to believe was a GREAT NATION, replete with feasts (just don’t EVER ask what was the entree at said feast), even a state religion (cannibalism). They blew the Aztecs away, although outnumbered 20,000 to one. Indeed, Spain was so kind as to supply them with their own PERSONAL ovens in which to fight, yet they persevered.
I think it was pot.
At some point in almost every ancient nation, be it China, Egypt, or any of those interesting South American catastrophes, they always end up besotted of multiple drug and sex addictions. Europe didn’t, because both the Jewish and Christian systems say your body is a temple: Don’t pee in it! And, while you’re at it, don’t pee in anyone else’s temple, either.
Now, as America is in its twilight, what does one notice first? Tattoos. Drunkards. Drug addicts. Sex to the ludicrous point where the prisons need to pay for their inmates’ sex changes. Our society doesn’t abhor this, it PAYS for this sickness!
A handful of Spaniards destroyed and conquered what is now South America, because everyone was stoned and too busy getting laid. Because our God, Yahweh, and his Son, Jesus, knew them not.
Islamists ain’t that smart, but they’re determined. Democrats prove their innate stupidity every day. Yet, we still manage to give them the time of day, instead of just calling them liars. So, who’s stupid: us or them.
Are the stoner hippies finally winning? If you don’t think your ass and its survival mean Ostupidhead and his ilk must be utterly destroyed, think again. Mexico ain’t Aztlan, no mo’. And that isn’t an accident.
If you desire to follow them unto that civilizational good night, so be it. I, for one, ain’t comin’ quietly.
Anyone who’s read Victor Davis Hanson’s “Carnage and Culture” could predict the Avatar 2 plot in which “the humans return, blow the Na’vi to hell from orbit, cut down all their trees, and take all their unobtanium.” But anyone who’s read Frank Herbert’s “Dune” might imagine another scenario. The humans have the technology to grow genetically engineered avatar bodies, and the Na’vi have the ability to transfer entire personalities into them. Combined, you have immortality – which would be worth a helluva lot more than the (stupidly named) unobtanium. Rather than being destroyed, the Na’vi become rulers of the known universe.
Sigourney Weaver becomes the Alien queen and starts laying eggs infesting everyone on the planet sauf a small freedom-fighting colony of human/na’vi.
In the meantime the Evil Corporation is preparing an all-assault of an Android army. The transmissions however are intercepted by a Predator mother-ship, so the plot thickens.
In the end you have pterodactyls of sorts, chameleonic aliens, Alien aliens bursting from various species entrails, blue aliens and humans.
Pretty much like a SF version of The Aristocrats.
I’d pay to see that Avatar sequel.
The best comment about Avatar I heard came from the Cracked.com commentator: He joked that the movie ended 1/3rd of the way through. It’s like US westward expansion ended after Custer’s Last Stand. Humans (or any other animal) don’t work that way – a private company tries to get valuable material to help Earth’s survival get’s defeated so world governments with larger armies and (possible) WMD’s just say “ok, let’s die off everyone since we’re bad people!”. Nope, they’d gear up and send a force to wipe out all life, then simply pick up the Unobtanium and go home.
Meh… Dances With Smurfs
Exactly. 15 minutes into the Avitar DVD my wife screamed out, “This is nothing but Dances With Wolves in Space!”
Neither of us was impressed.
Cameron’s “Prometheus” was even worse. “The Alien Xenomorphs were designed to be wonderful creatures of Enlightenment. Then some stupid Earth Humans crossbred with them and in doing so turned them into insane super-predators*.”
OK, James. You Don’t Like People. We get it.
Now please go away.
(*Spoiler deliberately included to relieve others of the need to watch this really stupid movie, thereby wasting over two hours of their lives to find out what its theme is.)
cheers
eon
Err, Ridley Scott made Prometheus, and what you are describing didn’t happen in the film. Perhaps you should watch it first?
That wasn’t james. That was ridely scott, who made the first alien movie. Still stupid movie though. just wanted to get the facts staight.
You’re right, I got them confused. But the analysis of the film stands. The prologue with the advanced alien who “sacrifices” himself to start the process sets it up.
The fact that it contradicts the entire rest of the film series apparently was considered irrelevant.
cheers
eon
If Avatar wasn’t number one, I would have called shenanigans!
Megan Fox wasn’t in “Dark of the Moon”. And what could be cooler than robot explosion porn? :p
The best description for Avatar that I’ve ever heard was “Dances With Wolves…In Space!”
I’ve heard it called “Dances With Smurfs.”
It’s Pocahontas in space.
Elizabeth Warren was in Avatar? Who knew!
You forgot Independence Day – 1996 – $817,400,891 (Worldwide)
What a piece of crap.
Completely dissagree. Independence Day was a a by-the-numbers 50′s alien invasion movie. But unlike those B films from the 50s, actually delivered on the battle/destruction scenes.
Besides the script is HG Wells almost verbatim.
Yeah. Like defeating the one-dimensional aliens with a computer virus. Brilliant!
Yeah. Like they had the technology to fly millions of light years across space…but neglected to develop Norton Anti-virus? Right. And btw, after getting to earth they had to use earth’s satellites to coordinate their attack? Couldn’t they just have synchronized their watches, or something? Hell, if they’d arrived in the 19th Century I guesss they would have had to turn around and go home cause we didn’t have any satellites to coordinate their attack?
And one more thing. In Wells’ War of the Worlds, the Martians fly millions of miles to attack us but don’t have the medical technology to develop antihistemenes? Or Afrin? Sheesh.
War of the Worlds (by HG Wells) was allagory for Europe (Mars) invading Africa (Earth) so bacteria killing the invaders (Malaria) makes sense. Plus Wells was a Socialist in a time when it was still theory (ie before anyone had tried it and proven it was a failure) This means he was anti West.
Wells blew it big time in WotW.
Being a “big S” Socialist, he wrote it as an allegory of his view of the British Empire; a technological juggernaut that squashed less advanced peoples like bugs. He just turned it around; the Martians stood to the British Army as the latter stood to Zulu impis.
He was replaying Rorke’s Drift in his head, with the Martians in the role of the 24th Regiment (Foot) elements under Bromhead and Chard; they might be outnumbered, but their kill-potential turned the enemy’s numerical superiority into nothing but “the widest possible target selection”. (He conveniently ignored what happened to the main element of the 24th under Chelmsford at Isandhlwana the day before.)
The trouble was, about halfway through, he realized he’d written himself into a corner. He’d made the Martians so powerful that humanity didn’t have a chance. So, to save the story (which was, you must remember, written as serial to a magazine editor’s specifications), he did two things.
First, he restricted the invasion to England, after initially implying it was worldwide. The Martian “cylinders” are seen to be fired repeatedly over a week or so to land on Earth, in the first chapter. He then forgot about that fact completely; by the end, he has the United States Navy, among others “tearing to (England’s) relief”. No explanation given. (A century later, a collection of short stories, War of the Worlds: World Dispatches, made up for his lapse. And no, none of the stories were written by Wells.)
But his second, and biggest, cop-out was the use of viruses as a literal deus ex machina to get humanity, and himself, out of the fix he’d written himself into. I can never read that last line
(blockquote> When all Man’s efforts had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved, by the littlest things which God in His wisdom had put upon the Earth.
Without considerable amusement.
Because, you see, H. G. Wells was a self-avowed atheist.
You have to love the irony.
cheers
eon
Speaking of bad M Night Shyamalan movies, stupid aliens, and plot holes:
“Signs” wins in all three categories: the aliens in that film did not bring a raincoat to protect themselves from a deadly poison like H2O. That would be important to consider when invading a planet that was 70% covered by water.
Oh, and those beings that could cross interstellar space in giant crafts that had some sort of cloaking device could not figure out how to get through a half-inch of wood in a pantry door?
Military Lessons from Avatar: half assed is half assed no matter what planet you’re on and attitude is no substitute for a good plan.
Once you decide to win, everything else simply follows.
Deciding to win in a stupid, post-medorn culture, where there is no right nor wrong, is impossible.
I hate them “post-medorn” cultures.
Weren’t the “Medorns” subjugated and defeated by the Persians?
On Stranger Tides was a POS , no doubt : But it IS based loosely on a Tim Powers novel, and the novel is excellent, whether considered as a fantasy novel or as a pirate/adventure novel. I highly recommend the book, which is well worth seeking out.
I liked Sixth Sense the first time I saw it, but on repeated viewings, it lags terribly.
Second that! The book is an excellent mix of adventure, history, fantasy and horror. The movie is a waste of time.
As I rented Stranger Tides a few weeks ago (renting CDs is no doubt one more thing I do that’s past its expiration), and though I expected it to be
mediocre at best, but was more pathetic than I could have imagined, your comments about the book have piqued my interest; I’ll have to look into it – thanks!
For me it’s a shame (like the previous PofC sequels) ,because the original Pirates of the Carib was my (and my wife’s) absolute favorite film of the last decade (with the Lord of the Rings series a very close second).
I didn’t see any of the bottom five. Glad I didn’t miss anything.
I’ve seen four of the movies. I enjoyed Titanic and Avatar, was bored to tears by the Sixth Sense (love Bruce Willis…but, that movie sucked), and wanted to heave something through the t.v. screen when I made the mistake of watching (part of) Twilight.
Just my two cents.
“You forgot Independence Day – 1996 – $817,400,891 (Worldwide)”
Yeah, it’s silly, but I enjoyed that one too, especially when Will Smith cold cocks the Alien and says “Welcome to Earth”. That scene slays me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfPWpEKhgfk
Will ain’t taking no crap off some slimy wannabe immigrant alien!
i enjoyed ‘the 6th sense’…the rest were putrid, especially Titanic
Like the list, but I haven’t seen Twilight absolutely no interest in something someone summed up as:
The tale of a young woman’s struggle in choosing between necrophilia and bestiality.
Wish I could properly attribute the thought…
That was a poster that made the rounds across the ‘Net a few months ago.
http://verydemotivational.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/129145980065363434.jpg?w=492&h=420
The tale of a young woman’s struggle in choosing between necrophilia and bestiality.
Decisions, decisions…
The Sixth Sense was the last mainstream movie from Hollywood I actually enjoyed watching.
The rest I agree with you on.
“The Titanic was never a great topic for a movie because before you ever start watching the movie, you know how it’s going to end.”
Believe it or not there was a teenaged girl behind me in the line at this execrable flick that got mad at a guy in line for being a spoiler because he wondered aloud about at what point in the movie the ship would go down.
I’m a woman and I HATED Titanic. I also wondered why the hell Kate wouldn’t move her fat butt over and let poor Leo up onto the raft. There was plenty of room. And when she kept climbing back on board to go looking for him, I wanted to slap her silly. I was chanting “Please drown, please drown.” under my breath. I guess I am an unnatural female.
I haven’t seen any of the other pics on your list. The more a movie is hyped, the more likely I am to give it a miss.
Leo tries to climb onto the makeshift raft, but it immediately starts to capsize. It’s not big enough to support two people. If he had persisted in trying to climb on, he would have sunk them both.
And this would have been bad because…..?
There is only one compelling reason to watch Titanic. Billy Zane. The scene where is he standing on the lifeboat knocking people off with the oar yelling “Get back! You’ll swamp us!” had me in stitches. I just couldn’t help it. I found his character and his over the top portrayal of it comedy gold. Every scene he was in was hilarious.
You included Avatar and Titanic so I’m happy. An excellent list!
I would put a different film in place of The Sixth Sense. That film would be… (drum roll)… (trumpet)…. (another drum roll)…. The Shawshank Redemption. It’s an OK movie, but people act as if it is sacred, almost Holy Writ. The cult that has grown around that film is strange to say the least.
Shawshank wasn’t a blockbuster, so it doesn’t go on the list. I don’t treat it as “sacred”, but still find it pretty good.
While Avatar did have some merits the end really blew it. The humans have this nice fenced in base with automated cannon on top and solid buildings the Na’vi could really damage. Shoot, they could even leave the big landing bay wide open with the Mechs inside and catch the Na’vi in one heck of a fatal funnel when they came through the door. As for the windows: don’t they have shutters and more glass? Let the Na’vi bust it out, put on masks and shoot them when they try to crawl inside.
Besides, if blowing up the Tree of Souls would instantly cause a race-wide state of horrible depression that would last forever, just blow up the tree and their ground forces would be moot. If they all suddenly turned into a bunch of emos the wildlife would gobble them up in a few days.
Of the rest, I’ve only seen Inception.
I liked “Avatar” quite a bit. Despite people calling it “Dances With Wolves” the theme of coming to a culture as an alien stranger, learning it’s language and ways, and eventually dominating it, is repeated many time by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his novels and Cameron claims this legacy for it via John Carter.
“Avatar” is in fact closer in spirit to “A Princess of Mars,” at least in its bare bones journey of the diffident but ultimately fearless and not to be messed with hero, than the film “John Carter” is. In the film “John Carter,” the hero is either blundering about or leaping around like a kangaroo. Carter had more of a handle on the situation when he was a prisoner in the novel.
Though many people deride Burroughs, the manner in which his heroes came to overcome difficulties within an alien culture were consistently no more than good old American common sense and brash know-how and a going for the jugular method of problem solving. Burroughs books are quintessentially American and have a really fun spirit of muted bravado about the protagonists who are usually very calm and peaceful until messed with and then the killing starts.
Burroughs seemed to understand and have confidence in why America was so successful in his day – it was simply the way we thought.
As for the equivalent of the evil corporation, Burroughs quite clearly portrayed over-civilized Americans as a canker and his heroes as eccentric refugees from over-refinement. In “Tarzan At the Earth’s Core,” when Jason Gridley talks to Tarzan about how his proposed expedition will not be about profit, Burroughs offers – “‘And you are an American?’ asked Tarzan, smiling. ‘We are not all money mad,’ replied Gridley.”
After reading the above list, my advice is to nuke Hollywood from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
All rational people agree, but to quote what one of the Vikings says to Antonio Banderas in The Thirteenth Warrior, “there are others.”
After seeing Avatar I had one thought
Just like the film being “over rated” so is socialism and that is exactly what the film pushed from begining to end.
So that maybe why the director was so over the top with the “effects” he needed a better curtan to hide the socialism.
Your CrossOver poster would be would film I would happily shell out $9.00 for.
Avatar blows…
I thought the Sixth Sense was great. Wouldn’t watch Twilight on Netflix, much less pay for it – unless you had the crossover portion.
The rest I thought enjoyable to watch.
Saw all except #5. Have seen 7,6,and 2 more than once and enjoy their storytelling and acting. The other three overstepped the reality they established and I fell out of the movie. I can watch a wide range of movies if they can just keep me in the story.
Avatar: Why not just burrow under the big tree to get the unobtanium, rather than attack the Navi with ships out of The Thunderbirds that flew at about 20mph?
Twilight: The bad vampire could read Bella’s mind from about 1000 miles away, and then could only be killed by dismemberment and burning the pieces, because I guess he was like the metal robot out of Terminator 2.
Transformers: Saw it as part of a double bill at the drive-in and it lost me within a few minutes of the opening credits through stupidity of premise and the acting talents of Shia LeBoeuf.
Really?
The Sixth Sense and Inception are in the same crap universe as “Dances with Smurfs”?
REALLY!?!
You have got to…
Oh…I get it.
This is this thing movie reviewers do to garner attention for themselves, like making ridiculous statements and hating movies everyone loves so they stand out.
Gotcha. (wink)
Proceed.
Are trying to say that
“The plot is dumb, the characters aren’t likable, the movie is full of overly forced action”
isn’t educated film criticism?
Why beat around the bush defending your ideas with lengthy qualifying explanations when you could just fart out a few confusing broad 2nd grader adjectives and call it a day?
Why should the author tell us any more about himself? You can glean plenty of information through his reviewing process:
- Is the plot dumb? Is it labyrinthine enough? Can it pass a standardized intelligence test?
- Do I like the characters? Are they my friends?
- Is the action overly forced, forced, not overly forced, or not forced?
- Is that annoyingly handsome Leo in it?
Agree with everything on this list (which is unusual for me!), but will admit that I liked “Sixth Sense” the first time I saw it.
Unfortunately, that motivated me to watch other Shyamalan movies – which without exception sucked.
THEN I went back and watched it again years later and realized that the only thing it had to offer was the twist at the end. Once you know that twist, it loses all appeal and I can’t see how anyone would want to watch it anymore after that.
It just isn’t one of those movies that holds up well once you know the hook, and one of the hallmarks of a great movie is a willingness to see it over again.
I’ve seen three of Shyamalan’s flicks- “Sixth Sense, “Signs”, and “The Village”.
Every time I think he can’t create a movie even stupider than “Sixth Sense”, he does.
But all his Hollywood friends think he’s a genius. I can only assume that in Tinseltown, “genius” is defined as a “reverse Midas Touch”; the ability to turn anything into ca-ca by just looking at it.
That ability “Night” seems to have a superabundance of.
cheers
eon
But didn’t you like the creepy little kid who continued to be a creepy little kid in other depressing movies?
Heh…only the first time around. After that, not so creepy anymore.
Megan Fox was in the first two Transformer movies, not the Dark of the Moon.
The third one was far better than the second which had a scene that started insidethe Air and Space Museum Dulles Annex in Virgnia and then spill outside to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base on the other side of the US.
I have to disagree on some points, I’m a big fan of Inception, Sixth Sense was the only Shamala-whatever movie that is worth seeing (I have to also disagree about the twist being the only worthwhile piece, the scene where that father at his daughter’s wake is watched the tape which looks like a cute reminder of her life and turns into revealing she’d been poisoned by her mother… it brings a tear to my eye everytime), Titanic is hyped but it’s also not a terrible movie.
I haven’t seen the 4th Pirates but… it had been losing its appeal after the first one.
I haven’t seen Dark Side of the Moon but I detested the first Transformer movie. I can only assume Avatar is as terrible as I’ve heard.
Your biggest mistake is Twilight, you need to change your perspective; think of the Twilight movie as a parody and you’ll find few moments where you don’t laugh, the movie is seriously funny. Plus makes for a fantastic drinking game.
I cannot understand how Pirates of the Caribbean 4 made a billion dollars.
I watched it the other day on cable and it was a complete mess.
But the overseas audiences bought most of those tickets, so they’ll keep making them. God help us all.
Why is “Pearl Harbor” not on the list? Because it’s not overrated? (everyone knows it sucked) Or because it was not a sufficiently significant blockbuster? (not high enough gross receipts)
Agreed. All those you mention were ultimately crap but you forgot Forrest Gump. The crappiest of all.
Will I be alone here if I disagree with “Sixth Sense”‘s inclusion? Maybe it wasn’t profound or brilliant, but it was well made and entertaining, and no I was not thinking smugly 15 minutes in that I knew what was going on.
I recall that with particular vividness because shortly before I had just finished a computer game called “Amber” which involves a friend of yours who is stuck in an electronic coma, and you have to solve your way through 3 or 4 diffrent ghost stories to wake her (sending the spirits on to their rest.) Towards the end, I remembered that in the opening sequence, your car has skidded off into the lake, and I thought exactly that, OMG I’m a ghost this whole game too! I was wrong, as it turned out — it’s only relevance seems to be your friend asking you as the wrap-up “So — where did you park the car?”
Anyway, it was only a week or two after that I saw SS on TV, and I was really p’d at myself for not catching that!
Of the films on this list, I’ve only seen “Inception” and “The Sixth Sense.” Thanks for warning me about the rest.
Okay; I’ve seen TITANIC and the latest PIRATES movies; the later way too fantastic for a lover of rousing sea tales like me. The others I have no interest in. My adult kids rent current movies and some are so boring I fall asleep. A few nights ago waiting for the conclusion of 21 JUMP STREET, a clumsy, pointless attempt at comedy, I took out the garbage and cleaned out my fishing tackle box.
What ever happened to really good movies? Hey, Clint’s making another one…
Could not disagree more with Inception. It was simply excellent. The drama drove the visual effects, not the other way around. The story was multilayered an interesting. The characters were compelling.
The Sixth Sense was an accidental blockbuster. I personally loved it and the plot twist at the end caught me completely by surprise. The rest, quite simply were all horrible movies. Titanic and Avatar are visually excellent, but both have just an awful plot, dialogue, characters, etc.
Of these, the only one I saw was Titanic.
I have stopped going to movies because I don’t wish to support an industry whose members propagandize for political causes I detest.
It’s only a one-person boycott, but it works for me.
See, my problem is, I’m an Engineer. I remember watching this and asking “Um, they’re got hours before the ship sinks…Why are they all standing around trying desperately to get into one of the few lifeboats? They’re surrounded by wood. Wooden tables, wooden deck-chairs, big umbrellas, rope…Grab a freakin’ table, lash a bunch of deck-chairs around the legs and hoist the umbrella and wait for the silly thing to sink and sail away in splendor. Take a shuffleboard boom for a paddle.”
This kind of thing does NOT endear you to your date.
Orion
Because if you’re in the water(as opposed to in something on the water)for more then 5 minutes you’re dead. Hypothermia.
Hence the wisdom of building yourself a boat out of wooden tables and deck chairs and sailing away in comfort rather than attempting to swim to Newfoundland, or try to walk there, as Jack did.
Orion
The trees and the grass may have been the villains but the wind was in on it too.
Actually I just pretend they are being chased by zombies and then it makes a whole lot more sense…
Actually, James Cameron did not coin the word ‘unobtainium’ – he’s not that original. The word dates back to the 1950′s and comes from the aerospace industry. Engineers joked that the ideal aircraft material would be a metal that was stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum, plentiful, cheap and easy to fabricate. They called it ‘unobtainium’ because no such metal exists. Cameron must have heard the story and couldn’t resist using it.
feeling pretty cool, only watched 6 and 7, and liked them.
the rest, thought they would be cool trash and seen enough of that.
please, don’t spoil Titanic for me, no endings, please!
I concur with those on the list and other movies noted by folks as well.
I’ve got to add a few more.
-The Blair Witch Project – opened the door to other abysmal craptastic ‘found footage’ movies.
- Wild Wild West, Independence Day, MIB (all of ‘em), Bad Boys (all of ‘em), I Robot, Hancock.. NOT a Will ‘ah hell no’ Smith fan.
- Star Wars I-III – the stoic acting, whiny Anakin Skywalker.. ugh.
-Pearl Harbor – Affleck * Hartnett.. enough said.
-Armageddon, Deep Impact, Day After Tomorrow.. – Pure unadulterated idiocy. It’s hard to believe Steve Buscemi sold his soul and agreed to Armageddon. Bruce Willis, sure. He’s a crappy actor and does mainly crappy movies but Buscemi..?
-The Rock, ConAir, Ghost Rider, Snake Eyes, Face/Off – Nick Cage has proven to do ANY ROLE to maintain his bad hair plugs and stay in the public psyche.
I actually liked The Sixth Sense the first time I saw it. Avatar was great for the visuals in IMAX 3D, though the story was incredibly bad. I agree with you on the rest.
I agree with every movie chosen except for “The Sixth Sense.” I really liked that movie. I haven’t even SEEN most of these because they are targeted at teenagers and just watching the trailers I knew I wouldn’t want to see them.
Moderator: This is a slightly edited version of a comment that I had just submitted. If you could use this one instead. Thanks.
There have been many insightful comments here. I particularly like the Huxley quote because it gets more to the root of things.
Socialism-Communism-Marxism-Leftism-Leninism-liberalism — whatever — is not understood unless you get to the root of it. You can make many things out of Lego building blocks, for instance. But what you build will be very much contingent upon the specific personality of the builder, the ground upon which one is building (the society), and the unique circumstances of the time. But there is always the nature of the constituent blocks.
We must therefore understand the values and goals that influence the various expressions of the totalitarian/collectivist impulse. We can’t expect a single definition of this phenomenon because of the existence of so many contingent factors. For instance, it becomes somewhat academic to quibble about the difference between socialism and Communism. The collectivists/statists have, in the the West, determined that they can simply control business rather than own it. For one thing, this has the advantage of not being blamed when those policies fail. You simply blame the businesses and tell the public that what was lacking was more government control. (This is the real lesson to be learned from the recent housing boom and bust, for instance.)
There are broad economic, social, and moral factors in play in regards to the Left. For example, due to the success of the free market, we get a “friendly” sort of fascism (state control) rather than a militaristic one. People pine for more material “free stuff” and are less prone to being swayed by calls to national honor or territorial conquest (although that could readily change if an economic collapse comes).
No discussion of collectivism/statism is complete without a mention of Utopia (a nod to Mark Levin and others). This is what animates much of the Left’s thinking and why they are given to thinking in terms of slogans and cliches. Reality literally is an enemy to their goals and dreams. And Utopia acts as the means to justify taking a sledgehammer to everything that exists. An ideology built upon “compassion,” “sharing,” and “caring” has no links with, and cannot be dependent upon, a society based on something as ugly as “exploitation” and profit. The previous society is deemed by the Left to be based upon greed and oppression. It must all be replaced (aka “fundamentally transformed”).
But one need not be a committed Leftist to advance the Big Brother state. I readily acknowledge that George W. Bush was a “Progressive,” not a conservative. But he certainly wasn’t an America-hating Van Jones-like Communist or Marxist. And yet he gave us Medicare, Part D, and other things that advanced statism and central planning. And even supposedly great reformers such as Paul Ryan run on the promise of keeping existing entitlements, not getting rid of them. Statism always has the character of opening Pandora’s box. Once “bread and circuses” becomes the way people relate to their government, even the “nice guys” can’t help but take part in it…include ourselves.
So part of this ugly advancement of collectivism/statism can be explained by that famous Pogo cartoon: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” There are real and dire implications to the West becoming a post-Christian (or post-Judeo-Christian) culture. There is absolutely no way, for instance, to maintain freedom if grievance, rather than gratitude, is our guiding impulse. When we covet the property of others, instead of respecting it, liberty cannot last. When we have no greater context for our lives than what government can provide us, we can expect nothing less than an ever-enlarging state.
The building blocks of our culture are (according to Dennis Prager) liberty, E Pluribus Unum, and In God We Trust. The opposites on the Left are equality (of outcome), multiculturalism, and secularism (or atheism). And these opposite values *necessarily* have collectivist/statist implications. These are uncomfortable concepts for many because many would rather parse our current problems only in terms of economics. But our debt (up to 100 trillion of unfunded socialist entitlements) isn’t because we can’t do simple arithmetic. It’s a thoroughly moral problem.
Finally, we must admit and conclude that what drives collectivism is the desire for power and control. Many of the Left’s leaders do thoroughly believe their own socialist, Communist, or Marxist dogma. But it’s almost beside the point whether they do or not. The goal remains the same, the accumulation of power over other people’s lives. A conceit shared by collectivists (and RINO establishment Republicans, for that matter) is that they know better how to run and manage our lives. This conceit is a very convenient one for disguising a raw desire for power.
So a lot of this collectivist nonsense can be seen merely as a marketing tool of the Left. Yes, they do share different core values from conservatives. But mankind has always lusted for power. In this regard, there is nothing new under the sun. The Left may parse the *reason* they should have power in terms of race, class, and gender. But the end result remains the same: concentrated power in the hands of the few.
It’s important to understand the Left. But it is just as important to understand American Exceptionalism, our founding principles, and conservatism itself. All that the Left is trying to do today has been tried before and failed. Collectivism is inherently a retrograde ideology, if not an actual reactionary one (despite the smarmy “Progressive” label). America, on the other hand, is the true “forward” of mankind. We have learned that freedom, personal responsibility, and limited government work, particularly in conjunction with a cultured and humane population grounded in traditional Judeo-Christian values of hard work, integrity, and a disdain for being told what to do by our supposed betters.
The Left is one type of human pathology or another. And it should be understood as such. The labels for the broad collectivism/statist movement are many (even including “compassionate conservatism”). But America and American Exceptionalism are the proverbial narrow gate. The normal barbarism and despotism of mankind does not need explaining. What needs explaining is why America as founded works so well.
Oh come on, now! They’re talking about movies here. What’s up with the manifesto? Man, you just brought down the whole room.
I saw the Twilight movie on cable and thought, “Gee, they must have really butchered the books. This movie is awful.” So I bought the book and read it. No, the movie did an accurate portrayal of the books.
I used to say, “Reading is never a waste of time,” until I read Twilight, the book. I can no longer say that.
Ah, but you were reading books written for and SO LABELED for “young adults”. Not that I agree so-called young adults should read this nonsense — I guess the current thinking is “better they read ANYthing than nothing at all.” That’s a pretty awful thought …
Also the Harry Potter books were also written for the young adult crowd. I find it positively depressing that the 2 biggest impactors of our current culture are these 2 books series. Once again, they are books for “young adults”
(sorry about all the quotation marks
I find it gratifying that Cameron had the top 2.
But somehow, when I started the list, I knew that “Dances with Smurfs”
would be the top pick.
Anyway, well done Mr. Hawkins & PJM.
Well, it’s not surprising that two of the movies you mention have DeCaprio. I confess, I watched Titanic just to see how good a job Cameron did at recreating the ship on film and it was quite impressive for that and I would have liked a little more of that than boob shots and smeary hands on automobile windows, and a whole lot less of DeCaprio shouting “Rose!” at the top of his lungs. Seesm like the whole movie was mostly that last one. My daughters couldn’t bring themselves to watch it because it set a bad example for girls and ended up being three hours or so of bad-behavin’ girl and feminism. Oh well, your list pretty much is my own except for twilight. I agree with your comment, it’s just I have always been a sucker for vampire movies, even bad ones.
My 2 cents: Inception was fun but yeah, hard to like or care about the characters. Sort of a disposable movie.
The Sixth Sense is fun if you allow it to be, and I did. Not much in the way of replay value, though.
I haven’t seen any of the remainder. That’s right. I have seen neither Titanic or Avatar. Heh. You know, if Cameron can’t be bothered to tap Deep Forest as the obvious choice for the Avatar soundtrack, he shouldn’t expect me to watch his show.
Plus, I don’t know if I can watch Stephen Lang in any role but those he played in Gettysburg/Gods and Generals.
Not every woman thought Titanic was sweet and romantic and sad. Some of us thought Rose was a selfish, spoiled brat and Jack should have thrown her off the ship in the first reel.
But then maybe that’s why my marriage has lasted 27 years.