(no subject)
Man, I need to do a round-up of all the movies I have been watching lately for fandom purposes. So here it is! (Now let's see if I can get multiple lj-cuts to work.)
Reason for watching: RDJ and Mark Ruffalo. I have actually seen Zodiac before, and liked it, so this was not a hardship. I even tried to write fic for it back in the day! I got about 2000 words into Jake Gyllenhaal's character and RDJ's character talking in a bar and then deciding to fuck. I was not being terribly original. Which might be one of the reasons I never finished it. In any case, I didn't write the fic because of an overabundance of heterosexuality in the movie. Those two characters had at least the minimum required amount of chemistry for a decent ship (more than the minimum, actually, given that there is not actually a minimum and ships have started despite their characters not even existing in the same universe), and while the movie itself is very good, that was the icing on the cake for me.
Mark Ruffalo's character sparked no fannish feelings in me. I hadn't remembered he was even in it; I put this on the Netflix list for RDJ alone, and then was surprised when the summary told me he was in it too. In a bigger role than RDJ, even, so. He certainly didn't do a bad job, he just didn't provoke much of a reaction beyond that.
Back to the second part of the cut text, though. So. Uh. That scene where the main character goes to a guy's house at night because he thinks the guy has some evidence for the killer's identity? And then the guy casually says that the evidence applies to himself instead? And the main character is clearly freaking out on the inside but stays anyway because the guy says he has some useful stuff in the basement? And everyone who has ever seen a horror movie is screaming JESUS FUCK YOU IDIOT NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING but the main character evidently has never seen a horror movie and goes down in the basement with the guy? And there's only partial lighting and the guy is still being all casual and saying stuff that pretty heavily implies he's the killer? And the main character is alone in his house with him? And becoming more and more terrified? And then finally says he needs to go and rushes back up the steps and goes for the front door but the door is locked? And the guy walks into the room and looks at him? And then unlocks the door? And then the main character runs the fuck out of there and never goes back?
The first time I saw this movie, that was fucking porn.
Didn't change much the second time.
I have yet to find something that hits me quite as strongly as that.
And that's probably all you need or want to know.
I was under the impression that Ghost Protocol is one of the two films a movie-Hawkeye fan needs to watch; the other being The Hurt Locker, for fairly obvious reasons. The reasons for this one are also fairly obvious, but a complete 180. The Hurt Locker has depth and story and emotional engagement and Oscar material. Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol has a bit where the cameraman was clearly in love with Jeremy Renner's ass. So, you know. Totally a good reason.
I have no feelings about Tom Cruise, didn't know anything about the female character, and am still unsure whether or not Simon Pegg was in any of the other movies. His interactions with the others implied that he was? But I feel like I would have known about it if that were the case? I could look it up, but I don't actually care all that much. Jeremy Renner was, well, present, I guess. He fought some people. Have you guessed yet that I didn't really care about this movie. It wasn't bad, but The Hurt Locker and Zodiac can be appreciated for non-fannish reasons; Ghost Protocol is just sort of blah. He does get some decent action scenes, though. But that's about it.
Things I knew about Skyfall:
-apparently M gets some cool backstory or something I don't know
-Q wears cardigans and likes a painting and was immediately a fandom favorite before the movie even came out
-the male villain hits on Bond and Bond just shrugs it off like whatever man that doesn't bother me and the villain gives up because he was only trying it as an intimidation tactic anyway and the movie is unexpectedly smart about the whole thing
-Severine dies
-M dies
-Moneypenny does not die
-Bond dies? but not? is that the end of the movie?
-people are upset about Moneypenny getting a desk job or something
-Q is only actually in this movie for like fifteen minutes so don't get your hopes up
-who thought 'Skyfall' was a good name for a country estate
-like seriously did Papa Bond secretly want to be a poet
-should I have seen Quantum of Solace>
-something about trains
-M dies
-nobody likes the new M
-M dies
So I was not really surprised or disappointed by anything. Except Severine's death, which was all kinds of side-eye, and Moneypenny not sleeping with Bond, which was actually kind of cool. I was already expecting the Q scenes to not be quite what fandom describes them as, so no disappointment there; instead it was his personality that seemed a bit different from the fics (yes I read them before I saw the movie shut up)--in the movie he seemed a fair bit emotionally detached and not having a particularly wide range of expression or voice, but in fic he's more human. It's hard to describe. Anyone else see the difference, or is it just me?
I feel like I should say something about M. She's a cool lady? I liked that the movie was arguably just as much about her as it was about Bond? She is the best Bond girl? I will miss her? All of those things are true. The Bond/Q fics usually only have her as a background point; she's shown as being very important to both of them, but also very past-tense and not present in the actual events of the story. The M fics selenak recs do better than that by virtue of being, well, about her, but I wish there was a happy medium. Can't I have Bond/Q that also goes into actual depth about her role in their lives? Perhaps that is too much to hope for. Ah well.
Dahmer is something I discovered on a random IMDB trawl of Jeremy Renner. I thought, 'hey, cool, he played Jeffrey Dahmer in a thing! I should check it out!'. The Netflix reviews were unenthusiastic, but I remained optimistic. Jeffrey Dahmer! Maybe it's interesting! At the very least he's playing a gay dude!
I should have listened to Netflix.
Dahmer manages to make a story about a horrific serial killer boring. It was low-key through and through, and while I can understand the reasoning behind that--theoretically it would be more interesting to examine him without being all CANNIBALISM AND RAPE AND CORPSES--it just made it drag. Seriously, you're going to make a movie about Jeffrey Dahmer and not even mention the whole cannibalism aspect? That was Jeffrey Dahmer's thing, dude. Without it he's just some random murderer. Random and boring.
I will say that it does a great job making 30-year-old Jeremy Renner look like a teenager. Maybe it's the big eyes. Switching between the scenes where he's a teenager and the scenes where he's an adult wasn't confusing. Switching between the different stages of adulthood, not so much. I had a hard time following the timeline. I tried to be interested in it! I did! But I did not succeed.
Jeremy Renner does technically have sex with a bunch of dudes in this movie, but 1) you never actually see it and 2) they're all 100% date rape. Even if you could see anything, it'd be skeevy as all get-out and more awkward than enjoyable to watch. So it fails on that count, too.
Was there anything genuinely good about this movie? Am I a happier person for having seen it? These are the questions that keep me up at night. Except not, because I care about this even less than Ghost Protocol and don't recommend it even to Renner fans. Diehard Renner fans, maybe. Diehard Renner fans who are okay with living with disappointment over the fact that we could have had Jeremy Renner as a gay cannibal.
Also it's 4:3, what the fuck, I didn't know that was even possible in 2002.
Reason for watching: RDJ and Mark Ruffalo. I have actually seen Zodiac before, and liked it, so this was not a hardship. I even tried to write fic for it back in the day! I got about 2000 words into Jake Gyllenhaal's character and RDJ's character talking in a bar and then deciding to fuck. I was not being terribly original. Which might be one of the reasons I never finished it. In any case, I didn't write the fic because of an overabundance of heterosexuality in the movie. Those two characters had at least the minimum required amount of chemistry for a decent ship (more than the minimum, actually, given that there is not actually a minimum and ships have started despite their characters not even existing in the same universe), and while the movie itself is very good, that was the icing on the cake for me.
Mark Ruffalo's character sparked no fannish feelings in me. I hadn't remembered he was even in it; I put this on the Netflix list for RDJ alone, and then was surprised when the summary told me he was in it too. In a bigger role than RDJ, even, so. He certainly didn't do a bad job, he just didn't provoke much of a reaction beyond that.
Back to the second part of the cut text, though. So. Uh. That scene where the main character goes to a guy's house at night because he thinks the guy has some evidence for the killer's identity? And then the guy casually says that the evidence applies to himself instead? And the main character is clearly freaking out on the inside but stays anyway because the guy says he has some useful stuff in the basement? And everyone who has ever seen a horror movie is screaming JESUS FUCK YOU IDIOT NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING but the main character evidently has never seen a horror movie and goes down in the basement with the guy? And there's only partial lighting and the guy is still being all casual and saying stuff that pretty heavily implies he's the killer? And the main character is alone in his house with him? And becoming more and more terrified? And then finally says he needs to go and rushes back up the steps and goes for the front door but the door is locked? And the guy walks into the room and looks at him? And then unlocks the door? And then the main character runs the fuck out of there and never goes back?
The first time I saw this movie, that was fucking porn.
Didn't change much the second time.
I have yet to find something that hits me quite as strongly as that.
And that's probably all you need or want to know.
I was under the impression that Ghost Protocol is one of the two films a movie-Hawkeye fan needs to watch; the other being The Hurt Locker, for fairly obvious reasons. The reasons for this one are also fairly obvious, but a complete 180. The Hurt Locker has depth and story and emotional engagement and Oscar material. Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol has a bit where the cameraman was clearly in love with Jeremy Renner's ass. So, you know. Totally a good reason.
I have no feelings about Tom Cruise, didn't know anything about the female character, and am still unsure whether or not Simon Pegg was in any of the other movies. His interactions with the others implied that he was? But I feel like I would have known about it if that were the case? I could look it up, but I don't actually care all that much. Jeremy Renner was, well, present, I guess. He fought some people. Have you guessed yet that I didn't really care about this movie. It wasn't bad, but The Hurt Locker and Zodiac can be appreciated for non-fannish reasons; Ghost Protocol is just sort of blah. He does get some decent action scenes, though. But that's about it.
Things I knew about Skyfall:
-apparently M gets some cool backstory or something I don't know
-Q wears cardigans and likes a painting and was immediately a fandom favorite before the movie even came out
-the male villain hits on Bond and Bond just shrugs it off like whatever man that doesn't bother me and the villain gives up because he was only trying it as an intimidation tactic anyway and the movie is unexpectedly smart about the whole thing
-Severine dies
-M dies
-Moneypenny does not die
-Bond dies? but not? is that the end of the movie?
-people are upset about Moneypenny getting a desk job or something
-Q is only actually in this movie for like fifteen minutes so don't get your hopes up
-who thought 'Skyfall' was a good name for a country estate
-like seriously did Papa Bond secretly want to be a poet
-should I have seen Quantum of Solace>
-something about trains
-M dies
-nobody likes the new M
-M dies
So I was not really surprised or disappointed by anything. Except Severine's death, which was all kinds of side-eye, and Moneypenny not sleeping with Bond, which was actually kind of cool. I was already expecting the Q scenes to not be quite what fandom describes them as, so no disappointment there; instead it was his personality that seemed a bit different from the fics (yes I read them before I saw the movie shut up)--in the movie he seemed a fair bit emotionally detached and not having a particularly wide range of expression or voice, but in fic he's more human. It's hard to describe. Anyone else see the difference, or is it just me?
I feel like I should say something about M. She's a cool lady? I liked that the movie was arguably just as much about her as it was about Bond? She is the best Bond girl? I will miss her? All of those things are true. The Bond/Q fics usually only have her as a background point; she's shown as being very important to both of them, but also very past-tense and not present in the actual events of the story. The M fics selenak recs do better than that by virtue of being, well, about her, but I wish there was a happy medium. Can't I have Bond/Q that also goes into actual depth about her role in their lives? Perhaps that is too much to hope for. Ah well.
Dahmer is something I discovered on a random IMDB trawl of Jeremy Renner. I thought, 'hey, cool, he played Jeffrey Dahmer in a thing! I should check it out!'. The Netflix reviews were unenthusiastic, but I remained optimistic. Jeffrey Dahmer! Maybe it's interesting! At the very least he's playing a gay dude!
I should have listened to Netflix.
Dahmer manages to make a story about a horrific serial killer boring. It was low-key through and through, and while I can understand the reasoning behind that--theoretically it would be more interesting to examine him without being all CANNIBALISM AND RAPE AND CORPSES--it just made it drag. Seriously, you're going to make a movie about Jeffrey Dahmer and not even mention the whole cannibalism aspect? That was Jeffrey Dahmer's thing, dude. Without it he's just some random murderer. Random and boring.
I will say that it does a great job making 30-year-old Jeremy Renner look like a teenager. Maybe it's the big eyes. Switching between the scenes where he's a teenager and the scenes where he's an adult wasn't confusing. Switching between the different stages of adulthood, not so much. I had a hard time following the timeline. I tried to be interested in it! I did! But I did not succeed.
Jeremy Renner does technically have sex with a bunch of dudes in this movie, but 1) you never actually see it and 2) they're all 100% date rape. Even if you could see anything, it'd be skeevy as all get-out and more awkward than enjoyable to watch. So it fails on that count, too.
Was there anything genuinely good about this movie? Am I a happier person for having seen it? These are the questions that keep me up at night. Except not, because I care about this even less than Ghost Protocol and don't recommend it even to Renner fans. Diehard Renner fans, maybe. Diehard Renner fans who are okay with living with disappointment over the fact that we could have had Jeremy Renner as a gay cannibal.
Also it's 4:3, what the fuck, I didn't know that was even possible in 2002.