Continuing the discussion from Disney to rid Star Wars canon of spinoff books’ “expanded universe”:
Movie Thread!
The digression of this topic into discussions of other franchises gets me thinking.
@steampunkbanana jokingly rejects Alien3, but for me that’s a film that despite its fair share of flaws I still really like. I think it had a lot of potential and I think it’s pretty underrated. It has a great cast and brilliant director, and I really appreciate the attempt to go back to the claustrophobic creature feature feel of the original. I think it worked pretty well. If only they could have set it up without torpedoeing their credibility immediately by killing off Hicks and Newt off-screen. (I’d still like to see William Gibson’s unfilmed movie, though).
Hell, even Alien Resurrection wasn’t all bad - who doesn’t love Ron Perlman and Dominique Pinon?
While I’m here, I’m also going to stick a couple of other films up here to be shot at, that, on reflection, removed from critical media responses at the time, are actually much better than they’re given credit for.
The Last Action Hero - this film is just much cleverer than people think. Very post-modern, very knowing. (Hey, another Charles Dance film, too). I think it got slated because it wasn’t what people expected of a Schwarzenegger film.
The Cable Guy This was just totally mismarketed. It’s not a mindless comedy like Ace Ventura, but the trailers suggested it was. It’s a really good, very dark comedy thriller.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Maybe this is more of a guilty pleasure. I just really like it.
On the flip side, of course, you have films like Crash and Shakespeare in Love that were popular and won Oscars, but are, with hindsight (and not too much for Crash), kinda crappy (I’m willing to bet that The King’s Speech ends up here too - was it really that great? Firth was better a year earlier in A Single Man, f’rinstance).
So, have at it.