oh, lol…
About this “Steveno Spielbergo” character…
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From today- Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave.
Not funny. Just awful.
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I almost cried when the YouTube Copyright Squad got Billy Preston’s Sgt. Pepper number taken away.
I mean, sure they should’ve cast him as a hero instead of a villain but #$%&*!?+@ leave him ALONE, you bean-counting fiends!! 
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Rifftrax did that one, I looked up some clips out of curiosity.
I think the thing that makes it so bad is that nobody really seems like they want to do it. With other clunkers like Manos and The Room, SOMEBODY tried. Those were passion projects for at least one person involved. With Things, there’s a lack of enthusiasm that shows in every frame. They don’t care, why should we?
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I remember my friends put on Thankskilling, and about the time the murderous turkey told a guy to “bend over,” was where we shut it off.
I do get tired of the “Chucky clones,” where you have a potty-mouthed creature that terrorizes a bunch of people. I can only handle stuff like that in very small doses.
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I watched Cats through the power of Rifftrax. I actually hadn’t watched a Just the Jokes Riff in 10 years with the last one respectfully being Breaking Dawn Pt. 2, before I just had to give in. Of course I was tortured by this film like everybody else.
I actually saw the touring production of Cats in 2021 at the Paramount in Cedar Rapids, the same theatre where I saw the Time Bubble Tour show as well!
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If I’d stumbled into The Bubble then I’d probably feel like this. In the modern era though? I have to say the most soul-shriveling disappointment I’ve ever felt in a movie was when I watched Phantom Menace. I was in the opening night showing, and everyone in the crowd was obviously a fan of Star Wars. People cheered with the Star Wars opening fanfare and crawl, settling down for and expecting a great time.
But as the movie moved through the first 15 minutes or so I could FEEL the excitement deflating. People wanted to cheer and be excited, but the movie was making it very hard to do that and not feel like you were dirty somehow. It was very obviously trying to milk viewers for moments, but the writing was so shallow and empty that even the hardcore fans weren’t going for it.
The moment - for me - when I knew the movie was BAD? It was when after the ship had escaped the blockade and Amidala asked the captain the name of the brave droid. With gravity, seriousness, and total hamfisted sincerity he proclaimed …
Ar! Two! Dee! Two!
(insert pause waiting for audience applause)
There was a lot more that told me the script was bad before that point. But that was when I abandoned the pretense and with a sigh accepted that this was going to be a rough ride that wasn’t going to get any better.
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It’s funny, I also saw a stage production of Cats — a really good one! I mean it was still bizarre and unhinged but I did enjoy it. That didn’t prepare me in any way for the movie. I think part of the problem was they did a terrible job translating the theater elements to a movie screen
That’s terrible…
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Oh yes, I still remember the pain. “Deflated” is the perfect word, it was like a cloud descended over everyone in the theater that day. Still, ever the glutton for punishment, I had to see the second prequel when it was released, thinking maybe the first was an anomaly. It was not. And by the third, my only hope was that the end – where it would set up the original trilogy – would somehow make it worthwhile. Again, nope.
A trifecta of disappointment. No other series comes to mind that has (or could) survive that level of hype, followed by three consecutive epic flops. A lot of folks apparently aren’t happy with the sequels, but I have no gripe with them. Exciting action and space battles and dialog that doesn’t make me want to scratch my face off – I call that a win!
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Episodes 7-9 were a mixture of “meh” and “WTF” for me with very little of anything to really enjoy very much. The things that could have been good they fumbled, and the things they WANTED to be good were just … not. I did not even bother to see Episode 9 in the theater. I did out of curiosity manage to half-watch it on a cable broadcast at some point last year. It was stupid and I finished it more out of a sense of “might as well get it over with” than anything else. There honestly isn’t a single character in 7-9 that I cared about one iota. Finn was a character that COULD have been interesting, but they did nothing with him so who cares now?
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The movie that killed it for me.
The one that made me realise that budget, talent and all the other things that we usually hold up as examples of “better” films ring false.
A film that truly made me appreciate the “good” qualities of a cheapo film like Manos.
Was XMen Origions: Wolverine. I was actually working as a film critic when that came out, and I remember calling it an abortion of a film. Of the many offences in that…picture, I think the part that really got to me was the total lack of internal consistency. The motivations and actions of all the characters was simply “because the plot requires”.
Also the worst example of a prequel. Certain characters who you know will survive to the other films, then be put into life-threatening situations that the audience already knows the resolve to. Talk about a total lack of tension.
Rouge One had similar problems, but at least that was a better film.
Anyway, Origins. Blech. 
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Same experience for me, went in with such high expectations and really wanted to walk out less than half way through. The friend that dragged me to see it leaned over and just said “sorry”. Waited for the video releases of the next 2.
I think I tried to watch them again with Rifftrax but I don’t remember finishing any of them, so if Rifftrax couldn’t save them they are really bad.
Only other time I felt that way was the US version of Coupling. The UK version is so hilarious, one of my all time favorite shows, and the US version had some of the same people behind it. So it was quite a disappointment when watching it and not laughing once.
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This is indeed the great Plague of modern media. Bad writers have always relied on things that “just happen because the plot requires” over the years … but in the past that was viewed as the lazy, sloppy, slovenly province of hack writers, cheap directors, and budget producers.
Not anymore.
Today’s modern so-called “show runners” (more like BLOW runners) not only seem to have completely embraced “because the plot needs it to happen” as an acceptable writing technique, they seem to actually be defending it as if it is a good thing.
JJ Abrams is a good example of how someone who is supposed to be a ‘talent’ in today’s world but who proves he doesn’t understand jack-squat about what talent actually is with every word that flops artlessly from his moron-mouth…
Here you see his famous diarrheic drivel about writing just being ‘mystery box mystery box mystery box!’. And he uses that as justification to say that his nonsensical plots where “it happens because the plot needs it” are just fine. To him “Well - anything that tells a story is just a mystery box! Doesn’t matter what the mystery box is. Derp!”
Seriously - this fool’s TED talk made me want to punch the guy as hard as I wanted to punch the lead actor in The Bubble. And THIS guy was in charge of two Star Wars movies (and many other things) and is still considered a sought-after talent? His idiot take on writing explains exactly why his movies are so awful. And SO many shows and movies and media these days are full of this sort of lousy style.
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I instantly check out of anything with his name on it. My time’s too valuable to waste on his brand of crap. Or the DC brand of crap. Or the Jurassic World brand of crap. I don’t watch much new stuff.
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Heh. Calling out the “Mystery Box” when we see it is still a joke amongst me and my friends.
“Oooo, look. So mysterious.”
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It’s so annoying and obvious. It’s frustrating that today’s hacks actually think they’re doing something clever, when in reality they are doing something so outright BAD that it’s proving they shouldn’t be allowed to run a church roadshow … let alone a modern media production.
For example, is episode 9 there was some sort of knife thing that the protagonist just happened to stumble across at some point. There was no explanation. No leadup. No payoff. She just fumbled across it like a hapless idiot. Then lo and behold at a later point in the movie the shape of that knife turns out to be some sort of contour map of Death Star debris pointing to a place where some other thing they needed is. But as I recall NEITHER of those things themselves were plot centric … they were just ‘things that happened’ to push the plot around.
That’s how you know these guys are hacks. The headpiece in the Staff of Ra in the 1st Indiana Jones movie was a plot device. But it was a GOOD plot device that was contextually important, which drove events that mattered, and that followed a logical sequence with setup and payoff. Moronic hacks like Abrams just toss crap into a blender and then dive out the window. Idiots.
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To me, Carnivale was a good example of a show where a lot of information was withheld for a long while, and I guess that qualifies as a “Mystery Box”. But the creator of that show had a mythology designed ahead of time and was just doling out information piecemeal. I found it fascinating, especially the first season, and they certainly weren’t making it up as they went along.
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That’s because there’s a big difference between …
A: A skilled writer who is telling a proper story which uses plot devices with care, attention, planning, and intent VERSUS…
B: A talentless hack who uses the same plot devices without any attempt to couch them in a proper story.
Its fine to have a ‘thing’ in a story that matters to the plot, and is shrouded in mystery. But it has to have introduction (why is it important), buildup (events that are driven) and a payoff (the device gets used, and moves the story forward somehow). Hacks like Abrams don’t bother with introducing the device properly (it just shows up randomly) and they totally fail at buildup and payoff. That’s because their use of the device is purely as a shiny object they use to chew up time rather than tell a story.
So Abrams sees the basic concept of what a plot device does. But he has sod-all understanding of how to tell a story. He’s like a guy who understands that screws hold things together so he uses screws for everything versus an actual craftsman who knows when to use a screw versus a nail versus glue versus a clamp, etc.
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Chekov’s Gun (a rifle is placed on the wall in act one and the protagonist heroically fires it in act two) vs Abram’s Knife (there is no knife in act one but the protagonist randomly reaches into a box and finds a Very Important knife inside in act two. This is never acknowledged by the characters.)
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This is a very accurate description. The only addition I’d make is that Abram’s Knife gets used and discarded with no impact on anything that matters.
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