Badmovies.org Forum

Ok it's been a while since "Avatar" was news, but I heard some criticism of it that I thought was the stupidest criticism ever made of a movie.

 Some boring, intolerant, rabid fanatics wanted the movie to be rated r, or even x, to keep kids from seeing it because-OHMIGOD!-Sigourny Weaver played a good character who-SWEET MARY, JOSEPH  AND BABY JEEZUS!-smoked!

AAAIIIEEE!!!!! Cover the kids eyes and run them out of the theater, for humanities sake! We can't let kids see a good character smoking!!!!! Only evil, stupid, vile people can be seen to smoke in a modern movie!!!!!

Ok, admittedly I'm laying the sarcasm on a little heavy here, but then again I'm royally sick and tired of these rabid, fanatical, stark raving insanely intolerant anti-smokers who, in all honestly, kind of remind me a little of the nazis in that they seem to be hell bent on utterly annihilating a group of people they don't like.

Seriously, the anti smokers seem to be intent on not stopping until it's utterly impossible for anyone to smoke anywhere. When they endorse laws allowing employers to fire smokers and to test for tobacco like it was cocaine or something, they've gone beyond reasonable and  into absolute fanaticism, AFAIC.

I don't smoke, I think tobacco execs are some of the most evil people who ever existed and I wouldn't like to be in a small space with a cigarette going, but I don't favor this endless jihad against smokers or allowing employers to essentially control worker's lives 24/7. Don't give me the economics argument either, rights and liberty are more important.

So I think the attacks on avatar for having a good character smoking were the stupidest attack on a movie I've ever seen. Runners up include ann coulter attacking superman returns for making superman gay and people who attacked 300 for not being historically accurate.

 What's the stupidest attack on a movie you ever saw?

One person went off on Final Fantasy 7 because there was no way in hell Sephiroth's or Cloud's swords would ever be physically possible. 

Never mind the presence of magic, giant monsters, aliens, giant cannons that shoot magic, undead creatures, full on genetic engineering, and all that. Those are minor details.  I mean, it's a Final Fantasy game.  A series where even boobs, hairstyles, and clothing aren't obligated to obey physics or logic.

Sounds like you've got a valid point about the criticism being stupid.

Not a movie but the British film critic Leslie Halliwell once described Sir Christopher Lee as "a limited actor". Halliwell also slammed the film The Gods Must Be Crazy as "racist: one for the Race Relations Board".  :question: :question:

I once heard a teenager say about THE SOUND OF MUSIC: "That would have been a really good musical if it weren't for all the songs!"

People who rent some cheesy '80s slasher, probably with scantily clad babes on the box cover, and then go on a rant about how they were expecting to see something like The Exorcist or The Omen. 

I was reading some review the other day that said the movie was very short, only 90 minutes. 

like 95% of movies! 

search for any thread on this forum by WyreWizard  :teddyr:

I think I remember on the imdb someone complaining that The Thing had to many men in it!  :question:
It needed a woman.
Apparently.

Halliwell had some crazy opinions.  He criticized PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE for being "boring."  Of the dozens of legitimate complaints he could have made about the movie, he felt he had to attack it's one strength---the fact that "at least it's not boring!"

I've heard a lot of people complain that foreign movies are bad because of the dubbing.  The fact that the dubbing has nothing to do with how the movie was made apparently means nothing to such people.  Of course, they won't even consider watching it in the original language with subtitles.

I seem to recall someone complaining about a film (possibly a play...I can't recall) having a bad influence on children because the villain smoked.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm generally not inclined to emulate the one person in the narrative who's the most likely to be unlikeable for one reason or another and is the most likely to have their plans foiled by other people.

My ex-sister-in-law slammed Christmas Story for being "lude, toilet humor."  Really?  Toilet humor? 

Yet she listens to a country station where the DJ's constantly play farts on air and spend a full two minutes laughing about.

People who complain that the movie left out stuff that was in the book.  Well duh, the movie would have been 20 hours long otherwise.

People who complain that, in the case of video game movies, they could have just transferred the plot to a movie and not lost anything. Sorry, but things get lost any time you move a narrative from one media to another. Case in point: Silent Hill. Yes, the games have interesting plots and characters, but you find out about a lot of that plot through exploration and piecing together clues you get over 20+ hours of play. I'm sorry, but watching characters wander around for extended periods of time is tedious in "Let's Plays", let alone actual films.

Criticism is opinion, but facts are facts, and when you get those wrong . . . ?

And I don't know any film critic who got more of his facts wrong, then Roger Ebert in his review of "Lair of the White Worm."

"on an archaeological dig in the wilds of Scotland"
Wrong! The archaeologicalist was Scottish, as he came from the Orkney Islands in Scotland, but the dig was in a remote area of Derbyshire, which is in England.

"who has made his find in the barnyard of the Trent Sisters"
Wrong! The archaeologist made his find in the front yard of the Trent Sisters' B&B. Actually, you never even seen a barn in the whole film.

"when he disappeared during a spelunking expedition in a nearby cave."
Wrong! He, refered to the Trent Sisters' father disappeared one night in Temple Grove coming home from the local pub. Along with his wife, who also disappeared.

"that the worm of Stone Rigg Cavern manifest itself in human form"
Wrong! Ebert must be thinking of the book, where the worm mainfests itself in both human and worm form. But the worm in the film never manifests itself in human form, but is always seen as a worm.

That many mistakes makes me wonder, whether Ebert even saw the film, before he wrote his review of it. Thus, the mistakes made bother me far more than any stupid or not so stupid criticism he made about the film.

A single sentence synopsis from TV Guide:
Horror Planet - Yet another scientist vs. monster in outer space movie.

Well, Silent Hill could have been a quite literal adaptation with minor trimmings, the same deal with Resident Evil and some other video game movies.  Resident Evil, in particular, could easily be condensed into a quite enjoyable 100 minute film (for what it's worth, I did find the first film entertaining).  I think the first Silent Hill game could have been adapted mostly literally with only minor alterations for the movie format. 

For the most part, I think criticisms like WyreWizard's are the stupidest.  Films breaking reality is half the point of many genres.  In particular, people who criticize films with giant, impossible creatures.

Not a criticism, but I seem to remember a blurb for Son of Godzilla that described the plot as being Godzilla and his son fighting off a swarm of deadly manti and spiders being sent at them by a mad scientist.  I'm guessing whoever wrote that blurb didn't actually watch the movie, and probably just had it on in the background.

A critic on Amazon also reviewed the first volume of Excel Saga with the same level accuracy, referring to Menchi as a cat and calling Excel's organization ACTION instead ACROSS.

I'm not saying that some games don't lend themselves pretty well to film adaptations, just that some parts will always be lost. Even if you transferred the plot, for a horror game the atmosphere would either be diminished or altered simply because a film audience isn't nearly as immersed as a video game player. For example, say a character comes up to a door where something bad might be hiding behind it. A film audience might think "I don't want that character to go in there," whereas a video game player might think "I don't want to go in there." All I'm getting at is that people shouldn't expect the movie to play out exactly like the game.

For the record, I enjoyed the Silent Hill movie, too. I thought the last act kinda ran out of steam, though.

I've heard and read plenty of stupid film criticism in my life. Here is a short list of some of the most idiotic complaints against a movie that I've ever heard:

1) "Friday the 13th part 5 sucks 'cause Jason wasn't in it!". Funnily enough, most of the fans that bash this entry in the Friday the 13th saga are the same ones who praise the Jason-less original.

2) "I hated Alien 3 because they killed off Hicks and Newt!". Considering the fact that I really didn't like Aliens, I was never bothered by the deaths of these two characters. Plus, hating a movie just because certain characters die is, in my opinion, a very poor excuse to hate the film.

3) "Halloween III is a piece of s*** because there's no Michael Myers!". If people bothered to do some research, they should know that the Halloween franchise was meant to become an anthology series after Michael's death. If they did, perhaps their judgement wouldn't be so overly negative.

 

I went to see "Elite Squad" in the cinema, and it was an excellent movie, though quite depressing. This was understandable as it looked at drug dealers and paramilitary police forces in a run down favela in Rio.

Feeling very interested and amped up about the various issues brought up in the film, I was quite shocked when a wannabe film student lassie behind me starts on about "That film was good, but it was unrealistic. How could nothing happy happen? It was just all bad things after bad things."...I didn't even know what to say. Maybe she was expecting a song number.

I find it funny when ever someone saids that a movie is so bad that thwy complain that it is the worst movie ever made. I always wanted to say "Have you've seen Xanadu, Manos: The Hands of Fate, Monster A-Go Go, Leonard Part 6, or Troll 2? If you did, then this movie is a step up!" :teddyr:

I wonder what that student would say if she had to see Jans Rautenbach's Katrina: one of the most emotionally devastating films that I have ever seen. If you don't cry at the end of that film, you don't have tear ducts in your head.

This woman i lived with on and off for almost 8 years had this to say at the end of An American WereWolf In London- well that was just stupid,why did they have to shoot him?  She wasnt the sharpest knife in the drawer

This from the imbd:

Bad: It had a lot of flaws in this movie. I don't know some of them, in case you understand.




 :question:

 I agree with judge death, the attack on "avatar" up to the point of some people calling for it to be rated "R" was the stupidest thing I'd seen relating to criticizing a movie.

 The intolerance of the anti smokers has surpassed reason and entered into extreme fanaticism, which is the stupidest thing to do.