I would have added Jim Henson's "The Dark Crystal" but other than that, quite a perfect list up until that craptastic Batman movie.
The Movie Nerd Bible: Part II
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
Huzzah! I have seen every one of those movies, and loved most of them.
Honorable mentions include (some of these are from the '90s): Willow, The Wizard (a horrible hour and a half Nintendo commercial, I know, but still worth a mention for helping gaming culture grow in our hearts and minds), Monster Squad, Virtuosity, Lawnmower Man, and Robot Jox.
Ha! Kidding about that last one. What a pile of shit.
Honorable mentions include (some of these are from the '90s): Willow, The Wizard (a horrible hour and a half Nintendo commercial, I know, but still worth a mention for helping gaming culture grow in our hearts and minds), Monster Squad, Virtuosity, Lawnmower Man, and Robot Jox.
Ha! Kidding about that last one. What a pile of shit.
I'm curious why MovieBob makes a distinction between the star war's trilogy special edition and the original, yet neither he nor anyone else has pointed that there are at least three versions of Blade Runner. Since there are separate people in the thread complaining about the movie being either too subtle in portraying the book's meaning or missing it entirely, I don't think we've all seen the same version.
People who said it left out most of the moral's from the book: You saw the original, which was heavily edited by executives to make it lighter (a new "happy" ending that makes no sense) and easier to understand (by getting Harrison Ford to do a narration, something that he was NOT happy about as he liked Ridley Scott's original plan for the movie).
Ridley Scott then released a director's cut of the movie without the narration and with the original ending, but there was still stuff missing because he had been unable to get hold of cut footage.
Finally, very recently, he released a third version, which was the director's cut with the extra stuff thrown in. Since I've seen both the original and this version, I would strongly advise anyone who didn't like the original (I know I didn't) to find this new version. It is much better, and worth seeing.
People who said it left out most of the moral's from the book: You saw the original, which was heavily edited by executives to make it lighter (a new "happy" ending that makes no sense) and easier to understand (by getting Harrison Ford to do a narration, something that he was NOT happy about as he liked Ridley Scott's original plan for the movie).
Ridley Scott then released a director's cut of the movie without the narration and with the original ending, but there was still stuff missing because he had been unable to get hold of cut footage.
Finally, very recently, he released a third version, which was the director's cut with the extra stuff thrown in. Since I've seen both the original and this version, I would strongly advise anyone who didn't like the original (I know I didn't) to find this new version. It is much better, and worth seeing.
Well, I think they're important for different reasons. Ghost in the Shell, to me, is probably the single most important speculative fiction piece since Metropolis. It encapsulates SO many of the themes that frequently run through great SF literature but rarely find their way onto the screen: What does it mean to be human, Cartesian mind/body dualism, dangers of neural networking, and more that I could (and nearly did) write a thesis on. It is important for far more than it's introduction of a generation of nerds to Anime and Japanese media.MovieBob said:
Matrix did for the Anime/Hong Kong films what Star Wars did for the Space Opera. SW wasn't the first space opera on film, and it wasn't the best one either... but it was THE ONE (no pun intended). Matrix was the same, and I believe Avatar will be a similar film for the concept of realistic CG-created worlds. Pixar and Square did it first, someone will eventually do it better... but Avatar DID IT... you know. they put the possibility of hopping over the uncanny valley on the map. Matrix DID IT in respect to blending anime, Hong Kong action and western big-budget blockbusters... creating a movie people still talk about years later. As important (and better) as I think eXistenZ is, with similar themes, Matrix did it bigger, badder, and became important to a whole lot more people.
Though, honestly I do understand the fact that we need distance to determine import... and perhaps in another 10 years, Matrix really will be a footnote in a larger movement. The Dark Crystal to someone else's Labyrinth.
I'd go with Escape From New York over The Thing - marginally - only because The Thing is a remake. They're both absolutely outstanding, though, and I've seen them many, many times. The practical effects in The Thing hold up incredibly well, and it doesn't get much better than Donald Pleasance screaming "You're the Duke!" Great, great stuff.Andronicus said:
I get the feeling this is a pre nineties list. I believe the assumption is that since we're having this discussion on a video game culture site's forum, we've all probably seen lord of the rings, Spiderman, The Dark Knight ect...KEM10 said:
otherwise he'd probably have added District 9, which his review seemed to imply might have made a modern version of the list.
Again, these are really more about the cultural impact of the films than it is how good they were or how fondly we remember them. Though I agree Kurosawa should have gotten at least mentioned.
I actually saw most of these, with the exception of Blade Runner and a few others but I have to say Bob, no musicals?
Not a single one... What a shame since I am a big fan of the nerdy ones (Hint: If it has the word horror/horrible in the title I a a big fan.)
Also I can't remember was Dr. Strangelove in the first list? Actually were any Kubrick films on the list?
Not a single one... What a shame since I am a big fan of the nerdy ones (Hint: If it has the word horror/horrible in the title I a a big fan.)
Also I can't remember was Dr. Strangelove in the first list? Actually were any Kubrick films on the list?
I DID go back and check. Before my post, actually: "What we're going to do here is a straight-up, roughly chronological list of the movies that every self-respecting nerd in general (and movie nerds especially) really ought to have seen by now." My point is that there are at least a dozen movies that should be on the list from the last two decades. In Part II, Bob doesn't say, "1977-1990," He says "till today," so why the arbitrary cutoff?Stiffkittin said:
Um... he actually addressed this on the previous page:dante brevity said:
And while I completely agree with him, I think many movies CAN be mentioned as having significant impact. Ghost in the Shell I mentioned directly in my reply to him. Pan's Labyrinth would be another (especially along the lines of the discussion about Labyrinth... I wonder if the similarity in... naaaaaw). But much of the "modern" repertoire needs time to age and have their impacts be felt along a broader timeline than we currently can see.MovieBob said:
I've seen quite a few of these, but I might want to get a Netflix account going if I intend to watch the whole list through.
How much time? Why is 20 years the magic cutoff? In an age where we can view, edit, comment upon, remix, repost and blog about media incredibly quickly, can't we feel the impact of important movies more quickly also? Won't those cycles be shorter-lived than before? Bob mentioned the shortening of the nostalgia curve in his first paragraph in Part I [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/moviebob/7944-The-Movie-Nerd-Bible-Part-I] of his list. Why can't a movie from 2005 be considered important when the creation and commentary cycle has gone from years to weeks or days?Ravariel said:
Example: "Kill Bill Vol 1", a movie that leaned heavily on its own movie influences, has been around for 7 years. How might we judge its "impact"? Well on IMDB, there are 70 entries [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266697/movieconnections] listed under the "Referenced In" list on the movie connections page. "Big Trouble in Little China", a movie that's been around three times as long, has 23. (For comparison's sake, "The Godfather: Part II" had about 150; I lost count).
70 times that people have noticed, Kill Bill has been name-checked, referenced, been alluded to, or paid homage to in movies, TV, video games or online media. That's just the stuff people have added to the list. Because of information technology that was not really available in the '70s or '80s, people have very quickly decided that this movie is part of their shared ideas about culture. That's influential. That's having an impact.
I know this metric is unscientific and subjective, but can't we take from it the idea that the Kill Bill movies, and other from the era, might be important, that they have stuck in the mind of the American consciousness, and some ideas from those movies have had influence over other artworks? The idea that "Kill Bill" needs 13 more years of "aging" seems pedantic.
Shallow and pedantic.
Obviously there is no universal metric for this sort of thing. And honestly I think the Kill Bill example is slightly flawed due to it's own admitted referencing of past films. Are references in current films to Kill Bill really references to Kill Bill... or to the movies that Kill Bill itself referenced? Is it Kill Bill that is really the important one, or is it Kurosawa and the myriad other directors, films and tropes that are the intended eventual landing point of the reference? It is kind of harmed in this respect due to it's own meta-influence. This is similar to MovieBob's thoughts on the Matrix.
Reasonable people can disagree, of course, and 20 years is certainly enough time for many films to be considered important and influential... and perhaps 10 years is enough for others. I mentioned several films that I believe can be considered important without the 20-year wait... however, many films do need that time and more. I don't think we need to set an arbitrary date or anything, but when making a list with limited space... ya gotta stop somewhere.
Reasonable people can disagree, of course, and 20 years is certainly enough time for many films to be considered important and influential... and perhaps 10 years is enough for others. I mentioned several films that I believe can be considered important without the 20-year wait... however, many films do need that time and more. I don't think we need to set an arbitrary date or anything, but when making a list with limited space... ya gotta stop somewhere.
Solid list Bob, but there's on problem. In the Indiana Jones series thing you put that it ended in 2009, but I'm pretty sure that this 4th Indian Jones movie my friends desperately try to convince me existed, just very shittily, NEVER HAPPENED!