I'm a pretentious film student. Let's just get that out of the way first. I've seen a lot of movies and my “must watch” list grows longer by the day. And one thing that never fails to piss off my friends and family is to complain about the movies they love. A difference of opinion can be jarring enough without having some know-it-all list a series of what must seem like arbitrary reasons to dislike something you find excellent. But since movies are kind of my “thing” I can't help but prattle on about movies that get a lot of praise that don't deserve it.
That brings us to this article right here where I smash movies everyone loved but I didn't. Plot spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution if you were one of the five people who hadn't seen these three recent movies.
"Frozen"
Apparently this was a “love it or hate it” ordeal. A lot of people haled it as the “return” or Disney and compare it to their juggernaut “Lion King” franchise. And then I rear my ugly head and tell everyone that most of the Disney films from what is dubbed as the “Disney Renaissance” are all following one strict formula with paper-thin substance and produced by some of the dumbest executives in Hollywood history.
“Frozen's” plot is promising: two orphaned sisters, one with mysterious ice powers, shut off from the world have to come together to deal with being in front of people for the first time. When that goes awry, the two sisters have to find some sort of mutual understanding to fix the eternal winter one of them created in a traumatic PTSD-like panic attack. It was also sprinkled with progressive themes in a self-aware undertone to invert the standard Disney tropes. These girls don't need a prince to save them, they have to save each other.
Unfortunately, that premise alone doesn't sell it so we have to add in a dumb villain, a romantic subplot, showtunes, and a talking snowman to center the marketing on. It also isn't a Disney movie if someone doesn't use “love” as some sort of deus-ex machina device to inexplicably save everyone.
The conflict of this movie centers around the emotional instability of Elsa, a young princess who is afraid of hurting someone because she can't control her powers. The frozen village is an allegory for the cold relationship she and Anna have and their attempts to fix the kingdom represents their attempts to fix their broken relationship. This is an internal conflict, the problem the whole story revolves around centers on the issues going on inside the characters rather than what happens to the characters. The movie should have been focused on Elsa and Anna patching things together, not about Anna having to climb a mountain and falling in love with some guy to find Elsa. Because the movie tries to shift focus to the frozen town, the internal conflict only gets solved in the last ten minutes with no real arc.
“Things are bad because we aren't close anymore!”
“Then we should be close again!”
“Everything is better now!”
And the movie's attempts at showing Elsa as a dynamic character who prefers an introverted life gets thrown out at the last minute when when she decides that she never wants to close the palace doors again. Oh well.
It wasn't bad, the narrative took some interesting turns and some of the musical numbers weren't bad. It just refused to focus on the central conflict and left us with a lackluster movie.
"Now You See Me"
Does anyone actually remember this film? It had an all-star cast and apparently people liked it enough that it warranted a sequel. But I don't recall there ever being a discussion about it like other films at the time like “Gravity” or “Pacific Rim.”
That's because while the movie had a great trailer and premise anyone who actually saw the film saw a forgettable mash up of obnoxious stock characters, magic tricks done in CGI, and the most boring central character of all time. The film starts by introducing four magicians one by one with the actors already phoning it in with the horrible script. When these four one-note characters come together you'd think the focus would be on them and the mystery unwrapping before them- only it then instead focuses entirely on the FBI agent trying to tail them. This FBI having the logic of say a Scooby-Doo villain, in that an incredibly obvious trap will be laid out before him and he'll run right into it and we're supposed to be surprised.
The plot is essentially told to us. The four generic not-protagonists steal money from rich people using “magic” and then justify it by telling us that the rich guys did bad things offscreen that we weren't there to see. There is no effort to make anyone in this bile even remotely likable or human. There isn't an arc, the characters begin and end the exact same people they were before.
Near the end is a plot twist so convoluted and nonsensical that I was offended that a scriptwriter was paid money to write it. “That character that you thought was chasing the good guys? He was the good guy all along!” It'd be like if Frodo took off a mask and revealed himself to be Sauron the whole time.
Watching this movie is akin to watching your uncle doing that trick where he pretends to take his thumb off, only if your uncle then told you how he did it and then said, “Fooled you!” There is nothing redeemable about this movie and the fact that it was successful is downright shameful.
I left the theater in absolute rage after seeing this. If I ever see Louis Leterrier, the director of this wholesome slaughter, I will demand my eight dollars back. This is a promise.
"Star Wars: The Force Awakens"
Uh oh. I think I just painted a target on my head.
Star Wars is a franchise that got inexplicably lucky. George Lucas isn't a particularly good director, I mean he did “Howard the Duck” for god's sake. The only reason any of the Star Wars films were any good were because he had a lot of help. His original cut of “A New Hope” was apparently like watching a toilet flush in slow motion and it wasn't until his wife edited it that it got any good. Even then, George Lucas was upset that he didn't have as much creative control as he wanted. The rest of the original trilogy was directed by other people while he acted as producer. When “Return of the Jedi” came about, Lucas had lost his editor (his wife) and his co-writer. That's why it's the worst of the original trilogy and we had the accursed ewoks.
It shouldn't be a surprise that the prequel trilogy sucked so hard. Lucas was directing again and given far more control than he should have had. It was like a miracle when he handed the franchise over to someone else. It could have been anyone, it just couldn't be Lucas again. It seemed like the franchise was going to make a long awaited comback this time with talent.
And then they got JJ Abrams to direct it and it went downhill from there.
The Force Awakens wasn't a bad movie, but it didn't have any ambitions other than being better than the original trilogy. It just wanted to please the ravenous fans. So essentially they remade “A New Hope” complete with an even bigger Death Star and Harrison Ford shoved into every other scene.
The new characters were interesting and I wanted to see more of them but as soon as Act 2 starts, Harrison Ford steals the spotlight purely for fanservice. None of the conflicts get resolved because it's supposed to be the first of a trilogy- completely oblivious to the fact that the original Star Wars tied up enough loose ends to make a more than satisfying ending while leaving room for the next two sequels.
All of the characters become established and then act entirely out of character.
Rey is a responsible young woman who can fight with the best of them - but when given the opportunity to save the galaxy she runs off screaming. Finn refuses to kill anyone after witnessing a comrade fall in battle- only to then gundown a swarm of his former comrades. And Han apparently hasn't done much since saving the galaxy because he's back to being a smuggler and the entire plot of the original trilogy is made entirely worthless. Remember when we destroyed the Empire? Well, we weren't thorough enough and now they're back and even bigger. Also, we have another Darth Vader and another Palpatine. See, we're just like the good movies you love so much! Give us money, please!
I already saw the original Star Wars. Everyone already saw the original Star Wars. We didn't need to see it again and definitely didn't need to see it again with Abrams directing it.
It's a film that feels designed by a committee to milk out as much nostalgic love for the franchise as they can. I really wanted to like this movie but it just isn't that good and in a few years we'll probably come to the agreement that it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been.
