Topic: The Movie Thread

@RogerRoger Megan Fox... what a disappointing career that has been. She was supposed to be the next Angelina Jolie. Transformers seemed to jettison her into top tier billing, and then it seems like she just disappeared. I always wonder why some actors and actresses fall by the wayside while others explode and end up in dozens of big budget productions.

@RogerRoger Yeah, “selective” ...😄 that’s one way to put it.

@RogerRoger I know this was a full day ago, but your comment on Bumblebee: "I heard a lot of buzz around its release"

Very nice.

@Th3solution @RogerRoger A note on Megan Fox; she was chewed up, typecast, overexposed and scorned by the Hollywood powers that be when she dared open her mouth about it and be honest about the roles she was taking and being offered.
She'd made plenty of money and started a family. She became a little more choosy over the roles she took. On paper, some of the stuff she did should've been dynamite.

There was a Fathom (I read a few issues of it, it was OK) film in the works with her attached to star but it didn't go anywhere.

Also Bumblebee! Totally worth it for the G1 looking Cybertron scenes!

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah, the premise was a bit similar to the first Transformers movie I felt. I thought the movie was decent but I think a lot of people loved it mainly because it was better than the previous movies.

Guess the studio had no choice because they wanted the PG-13 rating but I thought it was a weird decision to have the humans liquefied and explode into a pool of slime when they got shot by the Deceptions, though. It made it felt like a kids movie.

I recently rewatched Starship Troopers, for the first time on Blu-Ray. A fun satire of militant nationalism with a sci-fi flair, I enjoy myself every time I watch it (despite the fact that the special effects are dated in spots, I love the first scene in space where Carmen flies the little shuttle around the space station).

Also ordered my next batch of Blu-Rays:

• Evangelion 1.11 (first film in a series that retells the story of Neon Genesis Evangelion).
• the Living Daylights (my next Bond film. I actually forgot to check to see if this or License to Kill was next after A View to a Kill, but I figured in the end it really doesn't matter which I watch first).
• Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace (figured I'd start collecting the series).
• Stripes (This Bill Murray comedy is definitely a guilty pleasure).

@WanderingBullet Bang on, not a bad movie by any means and an improvement on the second film (which is as far as I got), but that is not really saying much. It just seemed to repeat what was great about the first film and not bring anything new to the table.

@RR529 If you enjoyed Starship Troopers, you should try Verhoeven's other films from around the same time. Robocop and Total Recall are two of my favourite films from that period. Just be wary of the remakes, they are not a patch on the originals.

Watched The Prodigy on Netflix last night.

The first third or so is great - but as it moves on it falls in to relatively generic fare.

Very nicely directed in spots and the young lad does an incredible job!

Worth a watch, but don't trip over yourself rushing to it.

Rewatched the masterpiece that is The Lighthouse last night, easily the best film of 2019 and shows why Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are two of the best actors around in my opinion.

@RogerRoger Yeah
And just the brilliant, recognisably G1 influenced designs all round really.

Soundwave is probably the best G1 Decepticon.

Paramount seem to be in some sort of quagmire of how to 'sort out' Transformers following the critical mauling of Last Knight and disappointing financial performance of Bumblebee. It's perfectly obvious - make a live action Transformers: The Movie - they can even just run a 'soft reboot' to the design work to G1 everyone up and follow in from the Last Knight!

That would make all the money in the world!

@RogerRoger
Ha! Seriously though, for all of the iterations of Transformers, in various media and especially the toys (and the rabid fan base for the toys) - everything revolves back around to G1 in some way, at some point and does better than before.

Bumblebee 'only' made £465m - which is half of what Revenge of the Fallen made and even less than The Last Knight - which is just as awful. So yeah, bit of a failure for the franchise despite the promising marketing campaign.

@KALofKRYPTON I was thinking something similar when watching the stuff on Cybertron from Bumblebee. I would absolutely make a trip to the cinema to watch that!

@KALofKRYPTON Wow I didn't realize that Bumblebee did that bad at the box office. I guess by the time that came out people were just done with live action Transformer movies.

@JohnnyShoulder it would make so. Much. Money! 😂😂

@Genrou I think people were skeptical.
Making a separate Bumblebee film was entirely cynical; the begrudging G1 fans were showing signs of checking out of the film franchise after The Last Knight and since Bumblee had become the go-to kids Transformer, that was where the money should've been. All of the best trailers in the world and even the best film in the franchise so far can't always overcome the general feeling of being taken for a mug.

@RogerRoger It is a shame it underperformed at the box office. I guess the hive mind didn't like it

(I'm so sorry, I can't let this go)

@Gremio108 @RogerRoger I’m surprised there wasn’t more cross-pollination between the fans of the other Transformers movies.

@Th3solution @Gremio108 @RogerRoger You lot need to buzz off with all the bad bee puns.

@DonJorginho Definitely one of the standout films of the year. Amazing cinematography, and DaFoe's manic performance is just wonderful.

Pattinson was great, too. Hopefully people stop mentally connecting him with Twilight at some point.

@JohnnyShoulder Ouch, that stings!