I have my new, definitive method of telling whether a movie sucks. Just watch it again a few months later. For example, I just got Episode II on DVD. Now, mind you, I didn’t think it was all that great in the theater. The Yoda fight scene at the end and the Jedi battle made up for it, since it was on the big screen and we had the crowd though, so I walked away thinking it was alright.
Well, watching it on DVD the other night just made it so clear how painfully bad that movie is. I mean, it sucks. Horribly. The story is miserable and the movie plods along painfully between action sequences. Lucas can’t do romantic scenes or decent dialog.
Anyway, I’ve come to realize that this is fairly consistent in determining really bad movies (it doesn’t work for figuring out if a movie is good, though… how else can I explain watching Lethal Weapon 4 about 8 million times). Some other movies this works for:
- Tomb Raider
- Star Trek: Insurrection, or any Star Trek movie with the next gen cast for that matter
- Episode 1
- The World Is Not Enough (and it pains me to say this about a Bond flic)
Of course, I own all those on DVD (what that says about my taste in movies is another issue).
November 19th, 2002 at 7:16 PM
Were you *awake* during the movie the first time? How could you have watched the leaden acting of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman and have thought it was anything *other* than a steaming pile?
November 19th, 2002 at 9:43 PM
OK, they all sucked the first time… my point isn’t that I couldn’t tell the first time, but that we can actually calculate the subjective suckiness of a movie.
November 20th, 2002 at 9:57 AM
I disagree, I believe your point was you did not realize the suckieness of the movie the first time, otherwise you would not have wasted 20 bucks on the DVD. Or would you. Does this imply that you are compulsive shopper who just likes to go to best buy and purchase things?
November 20th, 2002 at 4:19 PM
Have you seen his apartment? I think the answer to that is a resounding *yes*.
November 20th, 2002 at 4:50 PM
you are not allowed to gang up on me.
i repeat: you are NOT allowed to gang up on me.
November 20th, 2002 at 5:44 PM
besides, you know I’m a compulsive shopper (forget my apartment… both of you know the state of my bank account…)
November 21st, 2002 at 10:23 AM
Now, to take sujal’s side, it isn’t his fault he likes crappy movies. It comes from a society which breeds crappy movie after crappy movie. I mean really, can you believe there’s going to be a Scooby Doo 2? Or what about “Scream if you know what I did last Halloween”? Seriously.
On the other hand, Suj, yeah, II did suck, but not as much as Episode I. Lucas just likes whiney actors, I think.