Most intellectually insulting movies you can think of

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drummond13

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Shanicus said:
Vault101 said:
Shanicus said:
Inception.

The movie puffs itself up as this big, deep, intellectual thing (though that may just be it's rabid fanboys) but when you sit down to watch it it's just a stock-standard action-flick with some neat slow-motion.
erm...are you sure its the movie or you?

its just an action film with a neat gimmick and (IMO) good execution, while I wouldn't call it deep I'd say its pretty damn good
I've seen it lorded as this amazing intellectual movie that questions existentialism and reality pretty much everywhere I've gone - Tumblr, Facebook, University, even on the Escapist. Granted, it could just be me and the people I run into, but...

It's a good action flick and it is well made, but jesus does it get far more praise than it deserves. I am also SUPER hostile towards it due to having to sit through an entire semester of people hailing it as this amazingly deep, intellectual film and practically sucking Christopher Nolan's dick.
Still sounds more like other people "puffing the movie up" and not the movie itself, or Nolan.

I don't think it was ever meant to be more than a solid action movie.
 

Izanagi009_v1legacy

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Shanicus said:
Vault101 said:
Shanicus said:
Inception.

The movie puffs itself up as this big, deep, intellectual thing (though that may just be it's rabid fanboys) but when you sit down to watch it it's just a stock-standard action-flick with some neat slow-motion.
erm...are you sure its the movie or you?

its just an action film with a neat gimmick and (IMO) good execution, while I wouldn't call it deep I'd say its pretty damn good
I've seen it lorded as this amazing intellectual movie that questions existentialism and reality pretty much everywhere I've gone - Tumblr, Facebook, University, even on the Escapist. Granted, it could just be me and the people I run into, but...

It's a good action flick and it is well made, but jesus does it get far more praise than it deserves. I am also SUPER hostile towards it due to having to sit through an entire semester of people hailing it as this amazingly deep, intellectual film and practically sucking Christopher Nolan's dick.
From all i've read, Nolan may have wanted Inception to be "a movie about how I make movies". The idea of a muse, immersing someone in a fantasy, the roles of crew members and the like are supposedly discussed. The following sites have it

5 Great Movies with Mind-Blowing Symbolism that You didn't notice (yes, its a Cracked article, no I don't think it's an invalid interpretation) [http://www.cracked.com/article_20497_5-great-movies-with-mind-blowing-symbolism-you-didnt-notice.html]

The Key to Inception: It's a movie about making movies [http://www.theawl.com/2010/07/the-key-to-inception-its-a-movie-about-making-movies]

As for why some would think it questions reality: the top scene. My two cents on it, the top is pointless. Cobb has faced his own past and guilt and is able to reach some sort of peace, even if fake. Whether the world is real or not is not the matter at question: he is happy and finally free of his biggest burden

On the topic of the OP, This is a minor nitpick but the trailer for the new movie "Lucy" still has the whole "only 10% of brain is used" thing. As a guy in college, that just rubs me the wrong way since all of the brain is active; some parts may be less active or only showing baseline activity but there is no part of the brain that is unused in day to day life. Semantically, if they said "only 10% of maximum processing capacity of the brain is used at most", I would be less pissed, a bit skeptical on how you can possibly find out the max processing capacity of the brain and how much is used, but still not a total lie.

P.S. Lucy seems to be an interesting movie regardless of the stupid line: good actors, special effects seem to be in top form, premise of a compound that enhances mental and physical capabilities of a human appeals to me as a Transhumanist and, if nothing else, we get to see Scarlet Johansson kicking ass in a movie other than the Marvel line
 

PrimitiveJudge

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ecoho said:
PrimitiveJudge said:
Any religious based movies ruin it for me. I get it, your on a mission/crusade/struggle to find a path in life. BAH. The real culprits are:

Starwars episode 1 and 2: Fuck Aniken and JarJar. ( I liked the third one because he killed children like a true dark knight)
Druids: Shoot me now.
Transformers 2: WTF, Megan Fox is hot, we get it, why does a RC robot need to hump her leg?
2012: Stupid Russian kids
Day After Tomorrow: nuff said
the Scary Movie franchise: Not funny, at all.
(not a movie but deserves the absolute worse nuking ever) Here comes Honey booboo and Toddlers in Tierra's: Ok what the fucking hell has happened to society? I get that this is a free country and all but those people who place there children in those situations need to receive full Persian and North Korean labor camp situations. Just wrong.

Side note for the Marvel fans: I thought of a theory for the trio Marvel movies. 1st one is good, 2nd one is better 3rd one is a complete dump in the crapper.
Examples:

Iron Man
X-men
Avengers
Thor
Hulk
Spiderman
Blade

Yeah I am done for now
ok got to fix this, Iron Man is the only marvel film on here that has had three movies.(still loved the third but you know different tastes) All the other ether don't have a third movie or were made without marvel.(just their license)

OT:
the last fucking air bender: only movie in recent memory that pissed me off enough to demand a refund of my money.

Eragon: or as I like to call it how to fuck up a great franchise.

Elysium: stupid movie with a stupid premise. A shame too cause I hear it was made by the same guy who did District 9.
Oh I know, the ones that do not have a 3rd installment will be made eventually and it will suck.

I agree with Elysium, the trailers for it made it look badass untill you watch the actual movie
 

Mikeyfell

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Shanicus said:
Inception.

The movie puffs itself up as this big, deep, intellectual thing (though that may just be it's rabid fanboys) but when you sit down to watch it it's just a stock-standard action-flick with some neat slow-motion.
Ding ding ding ding ding!
We have a winner.

Inception is such schlock

I can't place a single line in the whole movie that's not hamfisted exposition.
Every line is repeated 3 or 4 times. It's like the scientist guy will say something, then Joseph Gordon Levitt will repeat it in simpler words, then Ellen Page will say the same line again in language a 12 year old can understand Then maybe 15 or so minutes later Cob will say it again.

There's absolutely no attempt to characterize anyone beyond the broadest stock caricature, the rules they set up aren't consistent. The pacing is a fucking nightmare.

I'm glad at least 1 other person sees this movie for what it really is
 

ecoho

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PrimitiveJudge said:
ecoho said:
PrimitiveJudge said:
Any religious based movies ruin it for me. I get it, your on a mission/crusade/struggle to find a path in life. BAH. The real culprits are:

Starwars episode 1 and 2: Fuck Aniken and JarJar. ( I liked the third one because he killed children like a true dark knight)
Druids: Shoot me now.
Transformers 2: WTF, Megan Fox is hot, we get it, why does a RC robot need to hump her leg?
2012: Stupid Russian kids
Day After Tomorrow: nuff said
the Scary Movie franchise: Not funny, at all.
(not a movie but deserves the absolute worse nuking ever) Here comes Honey booboo and Toddlers in Tierra's: Ok what the fucking hell has happened to society? I get that this is a free country and all but those people who place there children in those situations need to receive full Persian and North Korean labor camp situations. Just wrong.

Side note for the Marvel fans: I thought of a theory for the trio Marvel movies. 1st one is good, 2nd one is better 3rd one is a complete dump in the crapper.
Examples:

Iron Man
X-men
Avengers
Thor
Hulk
Spiderman
Blade

Yeah I am done for now
ok got to fix this, Iron Man is the only marvel film on here that has had three movies.(still loved the third but you know different tastes) All the other ether don't have a third movie or were made without marvel.(just their license)

OT:
the last fucking air bender: only movie in recent memory that pissed me off enough to demand a refund of my money.

Eragon: or as I like to call it how to fuck up a great franchise.

Elysium: stupid movie with a stupid premise. A shame too cause I hear it was made by the same guy who did District 9.
Oh I know, the ones that do not have a 3rd installment will be made eventually and it will suck.

I agree with Elysium, the trailers for it made it look badass untill you watch the actual movie
I doubt thor hulk and avengers will be bad movies. Maybe lack luster compared to the first two but never bad.(Iron man 3 was a good movie, not as good as the first two but good)
 

IrenIvy

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Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Because of that fridge scene. This is not how nukes work!
 

hermes

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I would say 2012, specially with those golden lines like "the neutrinos have mutated". But that would be to assume it had any intelligence to addressed my own; but that would be to give it too much credit...

Also Lady in the Water. Specially insulting because all the time it tries to act like it has some deeply symbolic script, while the symbolism is the kind it would sound trite coming from a 12 years old.
 

Shiftygiant

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jademunky said:
The Tree of Life. Honestly I cannot think of a movie with less to say that was given such a large budget with which to say it.
Second. That movie made me feel stupid because I could not understand why It was apparently good; all I saw was a pretentious singularity. Same for Thin Red Line, but I understand those movies had amazing cinematography.

Personally, all of Adam Sandler's Post-Funny People movies. They make me feel so stupid I want to punch a brick wall because that has more intellectual challenge then his movies.
 

jademunky

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Shiftygiant said:
jademunky said:
Personally, all of Adam Sandler's Post-Funny People movies. They make me feel so stupid I want to punch a brick wall because that has more intellectual challenge then his movies.
My understanding is that most (all?) of Adam Sandler's movies are just projects to keep people in his hometown employed.
 

Jacco

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TwilitWolfAmaterasu said:
As a huge Silent Hill fan, I feel that the movies just tried... TOO hard to appeal to fans and non fans.

"Hey let's have her get raped in the bathroom, why else would she be crying" "Hey let's burn her she must be a witch because she... has no dad?" "Here's an idea, Claudia can actually be the Mercenary!"

It just... it tries to cram ALL THIS STUFF into this movie and connect all the dots when they don't need to be shown connected. It panders to non fans by saying "heyyyy look at this, isn't it cool? We have an explanation for that, no need to do any pesky thinking on your own" and turns to the more hardcore fans by saying "Well... I had to make sense of it SOMEHOW. I mean... would YOU keep the protagonist a male? That don't make sense", etc.

It just boils my blood to see my favourite game series of all time just slathered up on a screen for money, using stupid explanations to try to get the audience to understand
I really like the first Silent Hill movie. In my opinion it is the best video game adaption out there now. I was never huge into Silent Hill, but I definitely thought the movie was good as a movie.


Pacific Rim. The premis, concept, and script is so dumb it offends me. The acting is shit, the writing is shit, the dialogue is cringe worthy, and even the effects are bad. Picking up a giant oil tanker to use as a club? Cause you know, it's not like it has structural weak points or anything.
 

Jacco

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barbzilla said:
Shanicus said:
Inception.

The movie puffs itself up as this big, deep, intellectual thing (though that may just be it's rabid fanboys) but when you sit down to watch it it's just a stock-standard action-flick with some neat slow-motion. The 'Dream' layers are poorly explored and incredibly dull, acting solely as different settings for 'shooty-shooty bang-bang', the characters 'existential crisis' is painfully obvious right from the start and makes the last quarter of the movie inane and the final 'brilliant' scene of the spinning top is... well, an annoying thing film-makers do on occasion to make it look deeper than it is.

Christ, I have a dislike for this movie that is stronger than normal. Probably because I had to watch it in film studies and listen to 30 undergraduate students praise it's 'brilliance'. Fucking Zoolander was smarter then this.
I'm glad that I'm not the only human on this planet who loathes this odious turd of a film so much.

A: When you are considering dream states, why are you failing to use some stronger imaginative leaps. So many chances to go outside of itself as a movie, but instead it wants to keep you near the action.

B: The build up and pacing were very off to me. It doesn't do a whole lot to draw you into its world in the first quarter, so you spend the next quarter trying to figure out why you should care.
I agree completely. Dr. Parnassus was a far better film and what Inception should have been. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Nolan is an overrated hack.
 

Zen Bard

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ColdinT said:
Anything directed by J.J. Abrams. :)
...and written by Orci, Lindloff and Kurtzman.

I know there are plenty of other truly intellectually insulting films, but "Star Trek:Into Darkness" just jumps out at me.

Credibility was strained to the breaking point within the first few minutes of the movie.

If you want to hide a STARSHIP...a vehicle specifically designed for space travel...from an indigenous population that has yet to invent the telescope, wouldn't it be smarter to just park it IN ORBIT than hide it underwater?

The movie is just filled with stupid shit like that.

Just more proof that Abrams and his team are allergic to logic and don't get science fiction.
 

Metadigital

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I'll add another vote for God's Not Dead.

Not only does it misportray the nonreligious, but it's extremely offensive to anyone in academia - especially philosophers. The philosophy professor in that movie is the antithesis of a any real philosophy professor anywhere in the world. I'd be very very surprised to find even one approaching the sort of mindless dogmatic egoism as the one portrayed in the movie. Then his inevitable coming to God as he's dying... it's completely bonkers.

There's a lot of bad movies and a lot of stupid movies out there. Prometheus assumes the audience can't follow a basic plot. Avatar assumes the audience can be emotionally manipulated with special effects. The latest Spiderman reboots assume an audience will swallow anything with a familiar franchise. Yet none of them misportray serious theological, philosophical, existential, or epistemological concerns as poorly as movies like God's Not Dead.

When Nietzsche said that God was dead (stealing the line from Hegel), what he meant was that belief in God and in the values of Christianity was dead. Movies like this are further evidence that he was right rather than a defense against his claim.
 

Cybylt

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Torque2100 said:
Avatar, Full Stop.

Seriously, this movie one of the WORST pieces of cinematic garbage to ever may wayyyy more money than it should be allowed to in a sane and rational universe. Avatar sucks and, if a person I know likes it, they are a worse person in my eyes for having liked it.

Let me delve into the reasons why. The plot is insulting, the bad guys are CARTOONISH caricatures who would make Cobra Commander look balanced and worst of all isn't just that the movie is bad, it's Insidious. The central theme of "Technology is Bad and Nature is God" is taken so far that the audience is un-ironically presented with the idea that the ENTIRE Human race, every man, woman and child are all evil because of what we've done to the planet and we all deserve to die. And they bought it; Hook, line and Sinker.

Don't believe me? Go back and watch that ending over again, that is literally what is happening and it is literally the central message of the film.

So not only is Avatar a horrible, horrible movie, it's also one of the slimiest propaganda pieces I have ever seen. This crap is right up there with Jude Suss.

It is often said that people were distracted by all the pretty CGI and didn't really grasp the film's central themes, but I would rebut with the fact that is how Propaganda works. They draw you in with pretty imagery and a simple, easy to follow story. You will then start to internalize the message of the film without even realizing it. Seriously, go back and watch Jew Suss and you'll see this happening. You'll catch yourself rooting for the film's heroes even though they are vicious anti-Semites written by Nazis.
If it helps, the only logical ending to that story is the actual earth army showing up and curb stomping the entire population of the planet for their attack on a company security team. Because this exact thing has happened before in history and as far as the general population knew the natives were violently opposed to any form of co-existence from the start.
 

katsabas

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I am very selective about films but often I cave in when it comes to going somewhere with friends so I got dragged to see the 3rd Pirates Of The Caribbean. Boy, was that a mistake. I think it even surpassed Batman & Robin in terms of wasted potential. Calypso was hyped throughout the movie and all she could do was create a giant whirlpool. The only thing that saved that movie was Depp. I mean yeah, everybody's dialogue sucked but he sort of reveled in how bad it was. All the rest with the possible exception of Barbossa sucked, sucked , sucked.
 

Sutter Cane

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Zen Bard said:
ColdinT said:
Anything directed by J.J. Abrams. :)
...and written by Orci, Lindloff and Kurtzman.

I know there are plenty of other truly intellectually insulting films, but "Star Trek:Into Darkness" just jumps out at me.

Credibility was strained to the breaking point within the first few minutes of the movie.

If you want to hide a STARSHIP...a vehicle specifically designed for space travel...from an indigenous population that has yet to invent the telescope, wouldn't it be smarter to just park it IN ORBIT than hide it underwater?

The movie is just filled with stupid shit like that.

Just more proof that Abrams and his team are allergic to logic and don't get science fiction.
This just seems like a bit of a nitpick. Perhaps the crew had a reason for parking it underwater, perhaps they didn't. It's not shown because it isn't important. On top of that, the moment passes quite quickly. A far more egregious example from that film is Kahn's magic blood that can apparently bring things back to life which is both stupid and central to the plot.

On the whole though i still like the movie, and I actually think the script seems better than the product we end up with on screen since Abrams apparently doesn't know how to direct an action scene with any sort of tension. I though the conspiracy/mystery portion of the film worked quite well, that the film was on point thematically, and that the character interactions were fantastic.
 

Happiness Assassin

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Eddie the head said:
Man of Steel was intellectually insulting, but not the most. That one just sticks out in my recent memory. For one thing evolution doesn't work like that. And for another thing the whole eugenics thing was handled much better in an episode of Star Trek. And they didn't need to destroy a city to do it. In fact quite the opposite.
*Bolded for emphasis*

I would just like to expand on this point; I hate any movie (or any piece of media) that fundamentally fucks up the point of evolution. Evolution is adaptation to our environment over time, not some kind of road leading to apotheosis. It has many branching paths, not a single fucking line. Seriously, looking at all of sci-fi, I am amazed how so many fuck this point up at a basic level. From Star Trek, to Neon Genesis Evengelion, and even Mass Effect (which I love to death) all fuck this up to one degree or another.
 

McElroy

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Some terrific examples have been mentioned already, and I won't repeat any of them. The Fantastic 4 films come to mind first. Everything about them is dumb, cliché crap. The second one especially is cringe-worthy.

It's also pretty intellectually insulting how Transformers movies make so much money.

Oh yeah, the third Transporter film as well. Of course the action is mindlessly stupid but the plot is too! And the female lead... oh man I wished for her death much more than any of the villains'.
 

Warachia

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Happiness Assassin said:
Eddie the head said:
Man of Steel was intellectually insulting, but not the most. That one just sticks out in my recent memory. For one thing evolution doesn't work like that. And for another thing the whole eugenics thing was handled much better in an episode of Star Trek. And they didn't need to destroy a city to do it. In fact quite the opposite.
*Bolded for emphasis*

I would just like to expand on this point; I hate any movie (or any piece of media) that fundamentally fucks up the point of evolution. Evolution is adaptation to our environment over time, not some kind of road leading to apotheosis. It has many branching paths, not a single fucking line. Seriously, looking at all of sci-fi, I am amazed how so many fuck this point up at a basic level. From Star Trek, to Neon Genesis Evengelion, and even Mass Effect (which I love to death) all fuck this up to one degree or another.
Evolution isn't necessarily adaptation, Evolution is minor changes/mutations that lead to said thing with the mutation being better suited to its environment then those around it, so the mutant flourishes while the others will probably leave or die off, and then this leads to the mutated gene getting passed down.
If everything is equal and all have an equal chance the mutations can still happen, they just won't flourish as they would otherwise and it won't be nearly as prominent in the area.

As for the OP, I'm going to have to vote God's Not Dead, and I'm saying this as a Christian, that movie was insulting to watch, because the thing I absolutely hate is when you strawman those you are arguing against, which is exactly what that movie did with Atheists. That movie was nothing more than propaganda, and as such it gets me angrier than it just being a bad film.
 

GladChimer93

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I actually went to the movie theaters yesterday and was shown three trailer of three movies that are already insulting to me.
I won't bother listing the three (Sex Tape, Let's be Cops, 22 Jump Street) so I'll just mention one that I actually watched and that I was actually reminded of yesterday because of those trailers...

Good lord, Bad Teacher is the dumbest movie I've ever seen. It's insulting in every way. I don't know who this caters to, but I hope that audience they were aiming for does not actually exist, and everyone who watched it just didn't know what to expect (like me).