Reprehensible Movies

[Flagg]

300 being a biased story from an unreliable narrator sounds like an excuse made up to address criticisms after the fact.

I thought it's biased-and-unreliable status was obvious in that the narrative framing device was the movie was being told to Greeks by one of the Spartans. We also get other indications, like when they claim that the Persians used their "magics" on them (the gunpowder bomb things), and possibly when he said that Zeus was throwing thunderbolts at them (although this could just be him trying to be poetic).

Yeah, I have to agree with this sentiment regarding '300'. Though after subsequent viewings I find it rather offensive in that the less intelligent (most) of those who saw it just came away with 'RAAAR SPARTAAA!!!!' and it's unsubtle pro-war message (in scenes not present in the comic, but made specifically for the movie) considering 'the enemy' were essentially hordes of filthy brown Arab looking people.

Still, you can't deny the artistry of the movie.

[Formless]

Still, you can't deny the artistry of the movie.

Haven't seen the movie myself, but... sorry, I disagree. Too many homoerotic overtones, too heavily stylized. Generally I don't think trying to emulate comic book style in other mediums is a good idea.

[hongi]

No offense, but I think you have this precisely backwards. 300 precisely adopts the attitude that the Greeks themselves had about themselves, the Spartans, and the Persians. If you've read Herodotus, he pretty much depicts the Persians as the sort of effeminate, culturally barbaric and primitive but military very powerful group. Meanwhile, the Greeks are seen as democracy-loving, freedom-fighting god-men. It's not that it's an excuse: it's just that the attitudes taken are lifted directly from contemporaries rather than imposing our own moral values on the time period.

The Greeks never thought the Persians were monsters. Barbarians yes, but not monsters with swords for hands and deformed faces. Since the Greeks didn't do it, it must have been a modern day decision to depict Persians as monsters. Why?

Mehh, at least The Prince of Egypt had this really awesome song. Even if it played to the wanton cruelty of God against the Egyptians, all because of their Almighty Leader...

I like Prince of Egypt. I know it never happened historically, I know the morality is repugnant...but for some reason I do.

P.S the best song from the film is the first one.

[Guardsman Bass]

I like Prince of Egypt. I know it never happened historically, I know the morality is repugnant...but for some reason I do.

The characterization was pretty good for the most part, although what God does in the story is pretty horrific.

[Master of Ossus]

The Greeks never thought the Persians were monsters. Barbarians yes, but not monsters with swords for hands and deformed faces. Since the Greeks didn't do it, it must have been a modern day decision to depict Persians as monsters. Why?

Because you can't show a modern audience how alien other peoples were to the Greeks without taking liberties with their physical appearances. If you actually read Greek travelogues, they often talk about physical differences that distinguish other peoples from them right alongside their bizarre impressions of the foreign cultures. I don't claim that the depiction of the Persians is faithful to the text of the Greek accounts, but to their attitude towards foreigners.

[Artemas]

I believe Herodotus mentions that after Platea, a 7' tall skeleton with a fused mandible and bones was found amongst the Persian dead. In the context of the Hellenic world, that is unbelievable.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well animated: that homerotic, futuristic, MTV version of Alexander the Great whose name my brain has sucessfully blotted out, comes to mind....

I still prefer suspense over splatterfest or torture porn any day, give me Rynn Jacobs, over anything by Wes Craven (or it's remake). However the Rape/Revenge Genre really pisses me off, your basically making a movie so that you can show some breasts, a group of guys beating a girl, and probably her friend, and then you try to justify this by having the survivning girl come back and kill everyone. (why I hate Earnest Borgnine still)

Another bit that's true to the book, but The Count of Monte Cristo is a truely reprehensible character....

[Lusankya]

Still, you can't deny the artistry of the movie.

Haven't seen the movie myself, but... sorry, I disagree. Too many homoerotic overtones, too heavily stylized. Generally I don't think trying to emulate comic book style in other mediums is a good idea.

Hey! Don't you be dissing the homoerotic overtones. They were fan-fucking-tastic. You could see all of their muscles. I think you seriously misjudge how awesome that is.

[Raptor]

I am going to just say it…Grease. In terms of a message it is seriously one of the worst one, aimed at a young audience anyway. Young nice girl goes to a new school where she meets her holiday sweetheart, (who took her virginity) who is in fact not a nice guy, but in a gang, failing school, getting in street races. Felt rejected by him, for her not being in the ‘in crowd’ (teenage pregnancy scares, smoking acting slutty); she then becomes slutty to get his attention. And this is presented in a way to be life affirming and a good ending.

You could probably add in Ocean’s Eleven. It’s OK to steal money, as long it’s by George Clooney and Brad Pitt, against Andy Garcia. Thing is Garcia, is a bit rough in his manner in the film, but I can’t remember being a criminal, just a casino boss, he isn’t even mean to Julia Roberts who leaves him for Clooney, after stealing his money.

[Jim Raynor]

I am going to just say it…Grease. In terms of a message it is seriously one of the worst one, aimed at a young audience anyway. Young nice girl goes to a new school where she meets her holiday sweetheart, (who took her virginity) who is in fact not a nice guy, but in a gang, failing school, getting in street races. Felt rejected by him, for her not being in the ‘in crowd’ (teenage pregnancy scares, smoking acting slutty); she then becomes slutty to get his attention. And this is presented in a way to be life affirming and a good ending.

The moral message of Grease: Give in to peer pressure.

I remembered this movie while reading this thread. I held off on posting it because I saw it when I was a kid and its "message" just didn't go through with me. Most of the movie was just fun little musical numbers, and the greaser punks were hardly portrayed as the type of people to follow...then Sandy just becomes a slut and conforms to them in the last scene.

[Master of Ossus]

I believe Herodotus mentions that after Platea, a 7' tall skeleton with a fused mandible and bones was found amongst the Persian dead. In the context of the Hellenic world, that is unbelievable.

He does.

Moreover, there appeared also this still later that that: The corpses bared of their fleshes all round, since the Plataeans were bringing together the bones into one place, there was found a head that had no suture but was made of one bone, and there appeared also a jaw and the upper part of the jaw that had teeth grown as one piece, all made out of one bone, the teeth and molars, and bones of a man of five cubits appeared.

[Ghost Rider]

For those who haven't read the Frank Miller original of 300, let's just say at least the movie has these two points in it's favor.

One, the Spartans are BUTT NAKED MANLY MAN-MEN who are already the most manly naked men who enjoy the company of other MANLY MEN. The whole reason that sentence looking so ridiculous? Because the way the pictures have them depicted and the shit they spew. He has them prancing around naked with just a shield, spear, and helmet as they enter battle and as they prepare for war. I was fucking amazed they had that and not more liberties weren't taken in comic, and amazed he didn't push it for the movie.

Two, the women were shown in said movie at least long enough to not make you wonder if the Spartan woman in that one panel of the comic wasn't just a large breasted man that couldn't fight.

Please continue but I wanted this so people don't think that garbage pile of a movie was worse then the graphic novel. Frank's unbidden thoughts of men, women, and history are far worse.

[Patrick Degan]

Here's a candidate movie I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned already: Gone With The Wind. Four hours romanticising a racist, plutocratic culture built on the back of human misery peopled with characters who have all the depth of a sidewalk puddle.

[Shroom Man 777]

Ghost Rider, I fail to see why the lack of completely naked men is a point in the movie's favor, and the presence of completely naked men makes the comic "worse".

[The Dark]

Well animated: that homerotic, futuristic, MTV version of Alexander the Great whose name my brain has sucessfully blotted out, comes to mind....

Reign: The Conqueror. It was done by the same guy that did Aeon Flux (the animated one, not the movie).

Ghost Rider, I fail to see why the lack of completely naked men is a point in the movie's favor, and the presence of completely naked men makes the comic "worse".

Because the Spartans actually did wear armor. If it was about Greek Olympics athletes, completely naked men would be appropriate. For Spartan soldiers, not so much. And GR's right - the comic was worse than the movie.

[Thanas]

For those who haven't read the Frank Miller original of 300, let's just say at least the movie has these two points in it's favor.

One, the Spartans are BUTT NAKED MANLY MAN-MEN who are already the most manly naked men who enjoy the company of other MANLY MEN. The whole reason that sentence looking so ridiculous? Because the way the pictures have them depicted and the shit they spew. He has them prancing around naked with just a shield, spear, and helmet as they enter battle and as they prepare for war. I was fucking amazed they had that and not more liberties weren't taken in comic, and amazed he didn't push it for the movie.

Having seen the comic in question, I can only support this. What struck me most was this one panel where SPARTANS are standing atop other SPARTANS and use them as doormat in order to TOUGHEN THEM UP. Also, they do not address each other by names. It is just "Do this, SPARTAN" or "Does this hurt you, SPARTAN?"

[Big Orange]

[*]"You Only Live Twice". Yes, it's one of the hallowed James Bond movies. It does have some redeeming qualities; Sean Connery adds a point to any movie just by being in it, and the SPECTRE launch base in the volcano is the penultimate classic James Bond super-villain base. Having said that, the racial bullshit in this movie is simply intolerable, and when they bring out the ninjas ... well, it's time to head to the kitchen to make a meal and hope that the movie has improved by the time you get back.

I actually thought Dr. No and Goldfinger were more anti-Asian, with the Asian characters just being villains and goons, and not love interests and significant allies, though Japanese society in YOLT was depicted in broad, simplistic strokes in the vein of Team America: World Police (but without the thin excuse of satire).

James Bond is reprehensible in general with the Bond character lying, stealing, killing, and fucking for Queen and country, while the orignal novels were steeped in gross misogyny and national/ethnic stereotyping (the movies were somewhat toned down). Ian Fleming was one of the more reactionary, snobbish, meanest asshole novelists this side of H.P. Lovecraft.

Sean Connery's dumb, unconvincing transformation into a Japanese man put YOLT in at number 45 in The 50 Most Racist Movies (You Didn't Think Were Racist) list (the segment was spoofed in Team America); at number one is Breakfast at Tiffany's, due to Mickey Rooney's much more disturbing impersonation of a Japanese man.

And while Sean Connery has a presence that nobody else has and was barnstorming as James Bond, he seemed to have mostly played the same person since Highlander and has recently turned up in a terrible advert. But I like ninjas and volcano bases.

John Wayne's The Green Berets can easily be seen as another reprehensible movie, since John Wayne weaselled his way out of the military in WWII and The Green Berets was trying to depict the Vietnam War as a just cause (from what little I saw of it). And John Wayne himself came across as a swaggering bully in general. And what about The Matrix which featured human protagonists just as aloof and immoral as the AI killing machines they're fighting against?

[Rye]

Steven King's 'The Stand'. I can only really tolerate watching the first two thirds of that movie/miniseries. A lot of his books have this theme, but this is the most glaring example I can think of in movie format: God's a mass murderer, but you should implicitly trust him anyways because... something.

Really, everything's fine up until the point that God enters the story. I loved Desperation up until that point. I loved The Stand up until that point. Then the preaching starts and my eye begins twitching. The really annoying part is that most of the stories, the characters admit that this God is all powerful, yet letting all this crap happen anyways, and they they still jump to the conclusion that it must be a good god while giving no fucking reasons for it.

King is actually quite interesting on that point. He says he believes in God but doesn't go to church and he does read the Bible, and he does clearly have an interest in religion as a cultural force rather than necessarily being from God. He explicitly states somewhere in The Stand's foreword that the series was used to "explore Dark Christianity" which I interpret as him being able to use his own religion and the popular religion of his location in a fictional setting and explore it as a concept. That to me implies both a lack of "classical" reverence and more creative reverence, perhaps overlaid on a bedrock of a more mysterious, atypical theistic outlook. I suspect how much he believes frequently wavers too, but that's a more personal interpretation that could be eisegesis on my part.

[Big Orange]

The Stand is heavily tied into the Dark Tower series, with the demonic Randal Flagg (who's a lot worse than that pious elderly woman) the chief servant of the extremely evil, omnicidal Crimson King.

[Darth Wong]

The Greeks never thought the Persians were monsters. Barbarians yes, but not monsters with swords for hands and deformed faces. Since the Greeks didn't do it, it must have been a modern day decision to depict Persians as monsters. Why?

Because you can't show a modern audience how alien other peoples were to the Greeks without taking liberties with their physical appearances. If you actually read Greek travelogues, they often talk about physical differences that distinguish other peoples from them right alongside their bizarre impressions of the foreign cultures. I don't claim that the depiction of the Persians is faithful to the text of the Greek accounts, but to their attitude towards foreigners.

That's the problem; the film totally identifies with the bigoted ancient Greek mentality. It's like making a film about Jews from the Nazi point of view and then wondering why anyone's offended, because you're just being accurate to the source.

[Lord Pounder]

I remember being disgusted with certain aspects of Watchmen when I saw it in the cinema. I'd never read the comic but heard that it was a bit fucked up. I had no idea. The movie excused mass murder and rape all in the name of America's dominance over Russia. I needed a few showers after watching that movie to get rid of the unclean feeling.

[Jim Raynor]

I remember being disgusted with certain aspects of Watchmen when I saw it in the cinema. I'd never read the comic but heard that it was a bit fucked up. I had no idea. The movie excused mass murder and rape all in the name of America's dominance over Russia. I needed a few showers after watching that movie to get rid of the unclean feeling.

The comic (and movie as well) was overwhelmingly dark and violent, and posed the question of whether doing evil for the greater good is justified or not. But it didn't make excuses; almost every character was portrayed as fucked in the head. And it certainly wasn't jingoistic pro-American propaganda. The Soviets weren't dominated in the end, and the original writer was a British guy who's pretty left wing and critical of America.

The movie did turn me off at several points. The comic was already oozing with graphic violence, but Zach Snyder, gore fiend that he is, felt the need to turn it up another notch. That scene with the inmate and the power saw was over the top, and it wasn't NEARLY that bad in the comic. He even extended the killing and graphic violence to two of the characters who were supposed to be relatively well-adjusted, detracting from their characterization.

Over-the-top movie adaptation or not, Watchmen is not a feel-good story by any means. The original comic was very intricately constructed and had interesting characterization and world-building, but it's about as grim and depressing as you can get. The writer himself thought that the book would make for a good read on a Saturday afternoon, while relaxing with a cup of coffee by the fireplace...I don't see how anyone can read it in that way.

[adam_grif]

I remember being disgusted with certain aspects of Watchmen when I saw it in the cinema. I'd never read the comic but heard that it was a bit fucked up. I had no idea. The movie excused mass murder and rape all in the name of America's dominance over Russia. I needed a few showers after watching that movie to get rid of the unclean feeling.

What? Where did you get that idea from?

Showing a character doing something isn't "excusing it". The whole point was to act as a deconstruction of the traditionally morally black and white superhero genre by having a cast made up of villain-protagonists with one or two genuinely good people scattered amongst the morally depraved majority.

Mass Murder isn't excused, but the characters agree that since it's already been done, the best course of action is not to expose the fraud. Rorschach refusing to compromise on this point gets him killed by Manhattan, who doesn't ascribe to the same kind of moral absolutism. If you're referring to the Vietnam scenes, against it's not "excused", any more than the helicopter scene from Apocalypse now was. It's portrayed as a merciless slaughter.

Rape wasn't excused, every single character except the woman who was raped by him remembers him as a complete monster and refuses to forgive him for what he did. Laurie's mother only did so in her old age, because in retrospect she got the most meaningful thing in her life from it. Remember, she actually went back to have sex with him after the attempted rape, which is when she got pregnant with Laurie. She's obviously fucked in the head somewhat, and the kind of "you brought it on yourself, its your fault" attitude isn't exactly uncommon for victims of abuse. Regardless, the comedian is not portrayed as in the right, in any respect, and his crimes are never excused by the film.

That scene with the inmate and the power saw was over the top, and it wasn't NEARLY that bad in the comic.

The thing that bothered me the most was taking out Hollis Mason's death scene. That was probably the most moving thing in the comic for me. Thankfully, they restored the scene for the extended cut of the movie.

[Kanastrous]

Strange Days, by Kathryn Bigelow.

Don't get me wrong: I'm generally a fan of her films and I like her well enough as an individual, but confronting me with a protracted violent rape and murder and placing me in the position of having to see it from the rapist-murderer's point of view is something that still annoys me when I think about it, and strikes me as a reprehensible thing to do, as a director. I remember sitting in the theater thinking I'm walking out of here if this shit doesn't stop in three...two...one...

It's a pity. There are other things in the film that I like, but every time I think about watching it again that rape scene comes to mind and I just lose interest.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed by Ben Stein (and cohorts).

Where to start? If you've heard anything at all about this smarmy disgusting chunk of Bible-whacky propaganda, there's probably very little I can add.

[Big Orange]

I can see the plodding, disjointed PotC: At World's End as bordering on the reprehensible when you're supposed to root for the pirates as full blown heroes (who were depicted as villains and anti-heroes in the first movie)