Don't Watch Dis-Topia, Watch Dat-Topia
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dys·to·pi·aSnakeoilSage said:
noun
an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.
A post-apocalyptic scenario could reasonably be considered a dystopia.
Alright Webster, while you skirt around the point on a technicality I'll remind you the point of this article was to talk about dystopian society created by an oppressive authoritarian government.VonBrewskie said:
Equilibrium?
I never considered that it might be borrowing from The Giver, because I was way too invested in how it blatantly steals from Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, without offering a single original idea of its own aside from Gun-kata, an imagined martial art so preposterously stupid that only middle-school boys could possibly get excited about it.
Equilibrium director Kurt Wimmer manages to direct Christian Bale into the stiffest, blandest performance of his career, and he kills off Sean Bean (who doesn't?) so fast that Taye Diggs actually ends up being the most interesting actor in the film, which is a shame because Taye Diggs is only given a cardboard cutout of a character to work with. Watching Taye Diggs in this movie only makes me want to watch How Stella Got Her Grove Back again, and I'm the exact opposite of that film's target demographic.
Nothing recommends this movie. The direction is passionless. It has the distinct feel of an Ivory-Merchant adaptation of Mad Max. The script is just a re-hash of several other far superior dystopian novels. The performances are delivered over the phone. The art direction actually manages to look as it were designed for an entirely different and improbably worse movie. And the DP appears to have lensed the whole affair through a dirty drinking glass. The only director who could have delivered a worse final product would be Ewe Boll. Even Roland Emmerich has never managed to direct a film this bad.
Prayer of the Rollerboys, which is maybe one step up from Megaforce in quality, is an infinitely better film if only because while it represents a failed vision, it does in fact have a vision. I couldn't bear to let my enemies suffer through Equilibrium.
I never considered that it might be borrowing from The Giver, because I was way too invested in how it blatantly steals from Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, without offering a single original idea of its own aside from Gun-kata, an imagined martial art so preposterously stupid that only middle-school boys could possibly get excited about it.
Equilibrium director Kurt Wimmer manages to direct Christian Bale into the stiffest, blandest performance of his career, and he kills off Sean Bean (who doesn't?) so fast that Taye Diggs actually ends up being the most interesting actor in the film, which is a shame because Taye Diggs is only given a cardboard cutout of a character to work with. Watching Taye Diggs in this movie only makes me want to watch How Stella Got Her Grove Back again, and I'm the exact opposite of that film's target demographic.
Nothing recommends this movie. The direction is passionless. It has the distinct feel of an Ivory-Merchant adaptation of Mad Max. The script is just a re-hash of several other far superior dystopian novels. The performances are delivered over the phone. The art direction actually manages to look as it were designed for an entirely different and improbably worse movie. And the DP appears to have lensed the whole affair through a dirty drinking glass. The only director who could have delivered a worse final product would be Ewe Boll. Even Roland Emmerich has never managed to direct a film this bad.
Prayer of the Rollerboys, which is maybe one step up from Megaforce in quality, is an infinitely better film if only because while it represents a failed vision, it does in fact have a vision. I couldn't bear to let my enemies suffer through Equilibrium.
I read this hoping to find a movie to watch. sigh. I've seen them all. But (with the exception of roller boys which I thought was just ok) I love and own them!
Webster. Right. I mean, you're just wrong bro. You tell me how Hell Comes to Frog Town is in any way a movie about an oppressive authoritarian government in the vein of Hunger Games or The Giver. Bob himself refers to it as one of the "Mad Max Clones" that littered the 80s about life in a post nuclear war world. I only mentioned A Boy and His Dog because I've seen Hell Comes to Frog Town and the two movies are very similar. Right down to the scrabbling for survival in a wasteland, lack of fertile men and a society kidnapping (in Hell it's virgins in A Boy it's a young Don Johnson) fertile individuals to reproduce. The themes are a bit different in each movie, in Hell Rowdy Rodney is the last fertile man where in A Boy Don Johnson is just one of a dwindling number of fertile men but they hover around the same ideas. I'm not skirting anything. You're just wrong and getting upset about it instead of being cool and going, "you know what? I misunderstood you. Sorry about that." I'll admit though that Hell is the better movie. I just like A Boy and His Dog better. it's goofy and fun, but takes itself seriously when it needs to. It's just a really weird movie. You are wrong about what a dystopia is. Get over it. It happens. I make mistakes all the time. It's not really a big deal. No need to get upset.SnakeoilSage said:
Big that big, self-defensive block of text's logic, you should have dropped the issue when I told you A Boy and His Dog doesn't fit the theme of Bob's list.VonBrewskie said:
Nah. You're wrong dude. I very carefully and easily explained how you are wrong. You are refusing to see it. That's fine. No sense arguing with someone who doesn't have the stones to admit when they make a mistake. Hell Comes to Frogtown and A Boy and His Dog are very similar films. What you call self-defensive I call a carefully worded argument. But you're not capable of contributing to something like that, are you? See you pal. Good luck to you. By the way, you didn't start this by saying the film didn't belong on the list. You made a mistake about what a dystopia is. It's right up there brah. Deal with it.SnakeoilSage said:
You gave me a reasonable estimation of why a post-apocalyptic setting could be considered a dystopia, yes. My point is that you're ignoring the theme Bob was going for, which clearly is about hard-line, authoritarian societies. A Boy and His Dog has some of the elements of such a society, but the focus of the novel and movie is simple inhuman barbarism. The only similarity it has with Hell Comes to Frogtown is genital electrocution.VonBrewskie said:
But since we're wielding internet "facts" like weapons, Wikipedia seems to be on my side. Guess that means I win. Sorry, buddy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia
What's sad, and I do mean sad, about this is that I'm validated in the very wikipedia link you've posted. Perhaps you just read far enough to feel like you're "right." Maybe you should read your own link a little bit more carefully dude. The post itself talks about environmental disasters as dystopias. You. Are. Wrong. But please, continue this. I find it amusing. I'll even be generous and let you have the last word. Go for it. Whatever helps you sleep at night. My part of this is done. You're wrong. Bye bye. Oh, have the last cookie though, please. Go right on ahead.SnakeoilSage said: