ToothyBj | Bluesky
Transcript
3 Panel Comic
Panel 1: James sits clutching a mug nervously as he listens to a conversation he’s afraid of. He stares at something off screen. Near by, a woman and smartly dressed man talk movies over their drinks. The woman nods along.
Man: I’d say probably the best filmmaking I’ve ever seen, has been ‘The Sacrifice’ by Tarkovsky
Woman: Mmhmm
Panel 2: James is pulled from whatever holds his attention as he’s dragged into the conversation.
Man: What about you James? What would you say is the best film you have ever seen?
James: Huh?
Panel 3: James turns back towards the window he’s been watching as he feeds the man an expected answer.
James: Ah! Uhm y’know… ‘Mulholland Drive’, maybe ‘Vertigo’
Outside the window, the movie ‘Step Brothers’ bangs on the glass demanding to be acknowledged. knock knock knock
Whenever someone asks me what I think is the best movie I just say Robocop.
Some people will will be disdainful. These are people I'm not interested in talking about movies with because they equate pretentiousness with quality. These are boring people to have a conversation with.
Some people will be like "Fuck yeah! Robocop! Dead or alive you're coming with me! I'll buy that for a dollar!" These people don't care about getting any kind of deeper meaning from a movie, but that's cool. It's fun to talk about cool action scenes in movies.
Then there are people who are actually capable of understanding the subtext and are willing to look for meaning in a movie that from appearances is just a dumb 80s action movie. These are the people that you can have interesting conversations about movies with.
I do this for Starship Troopers since it's both a masterclass in parody but also works as a solid idiot filter. Though there is always the chance for it to devolve into two largely intelligent people devolving into a weird mashup of Earth Defense Force, Helldivers, 40k, and Starship Troopers memes.
Also go watch the sequels, they get increasingly weird and eventually devolve into weirdly horny 3d anime. Also read the book and then read any of Heinleins other books, the dude was a competent author and just kinda liked playing around with weird ideas like psychic sex cults and obviously fascistic protagonists.
I said devolve way too many times.
It boggles my mind that people can treat Starship Troopers as proof of Heinlein sincerely promoting fascism when Stranger in a Strange Land was published immediately afterwards. Dude liked playing with ideas, it's not that complicated.
Honestly I think people have problems with two major concepts, firstly the fact that the protagonist of a book can be morally repulsive, and secondly a book doesn't necessarily reflect an authors opinions. Honestly if you want a repugnant mid century science fiction author Hubbard is right fucken there.
Yeah but fuck, I do this with fight club and then it gets meta because it's even more misunderstood, even if you look past the "badass" filter
You're right to say RoboCop. It's a masterpiece of cinema.
What makes a man a man? What makes a human a human? When has society used us up? When have we sacrificed everything for nothing, and come to the realization in front of a house where we are no longer welcome? When can a sacrifice bigger than one's self close the final chapter on a life lived in naive folly?
If someone doesn't come away from watching RoboCop feeling nearly every feel, they missed the point.
The movie is also a pretty hardcore criticism of capitalism and its willingness to reanimate your corpse to make a buck and then kill you again when you start to question it.
You may want to check this comment for typos...
LOL, thanks. For what it's worth, Niger is the name of a large country in West Africa, and a state in Nigeria. I lived in the county for years. So my autocorrect defiantly knows the name and threw it in there instead of "bigger."
I choose to believe you meant to call autocorrect defiant :)
Gods above. Sorry, I need glasses and they're far away! But imma leave it like it is. Defiant-ass autocorrect
I know, but also bigger is spelled with two "G"s, so you got really lucky with that. Lol
Well, the slur isn't saved as a word in my phone. So autocorrect can't accidentally make me a bigot.
Robocop is a great movie and far from bring a dumb action movie. Behind its appearance it's actually a very deep and layered movie Even Paul Verhoeven couldn't see it when he first saw the script until he actually read it carefully. The title and the main concept are subtly satirical and it's not apparent until you actually watch it. When I say it is one of my favorites to movie people, they always look at me funny. Unless they actually saw it.
My favorite movie IS actually Mulholland Drive but I never say it to anyone because I'm always afraid people will think I'm a pretentious dick trying to look smart. This post doesn't help XD
Yeah, Blade Runner was great for the atmosphere, but it didn't really emphasize PKD's overall message about empathy. Robocop came out of that, it was about underlining that message. And yeah it's about a corporation literally taking away a person's humanity, but also removing humanity from society in general.
The US is at war with Mexico in Robocop, but nobody even cares. There's one line where a cop says "Damn! They bombed Acapulco!" the other cop says "So what?", and the first cop says "I booked my vacation there, I gotta call my travel agent!"
It's a world where there's virtually no empathy left, and turning a human into a robot is representative of what corporate culture is doing to people.
Alex Murphy is able to recover some of his humanity, but he doesn't fully escape from the system. He is still limited by the corporation's directives at the end of the movie, but he does have his identity as Alex Murphy in the end, so that's good I guess? It doesn't hold your hand about this, it's a smash cut to the end credits. It's just like "you figure it out!"
Is it your favorite because you love talking about it or because you loved watching it?
I loved watching it. And everytime I start to remember it, I get lost in a spiral of clips and reading about it...so I don't do it.
You must have a theory, then? (Sorry xD)
I'm sorry, I can't start talking about it. I'm taking my recovery very seriously.
I thought someone finally could explain the robe and the cup to me
RoboCop radicalized me.
I always pull out "Velocipastor" or "Iron Sky" for very similar reasons. There's quite a bit you can dig into on any level with those movies.
If you haven’t, you should check out Kung Fury.
Oh I love Kung Fury. And Kung Fu Hustle. And Shaolin Soccer.
I've just found around me more people have seen Velocipastor and Iron Sky, or are more willing to watch them, so they work better as discussion pieces with others. My real friends get introduced to everything.
How about a side of Kung pow?
That one has been on my list to watch for a while. I wanted to do a big drink viewing with friends though so it's gonna be a bit
I'm still mad that the follow-up/remake that was a full feature length film got shelved.
And the Iron Sky studio collapsed. I keep my fingers crossed something will happen eventually.
Yeah, that is a shame, I agree.
Holy shit someone else who knows about Velocipastor.
What are you getting out of Velocipastor?
I mean I'm not pulling anything new out of it that hasn't been done before but there's a lot in there.
Subversion of expectations with a hooker being a good guy and Christian ninjas being the bad guys (among other things). Discussions about VFX and what's actually needed to sell a scene. Pacing (the whole movie moves at a decent clip without feeling rushed, but still takes a moment for slower scenes). Camerawork and lighting especially for the nighttime scenes. Budgets. The acting is decently solid.
Like really there's a lot that the movie gets right with like a $30k budget that big Hollywood movies fail at. It's cinema stripped to some of its essential parts and it's much better than it maybe has any right to be.
But then I'll talk about it with people who don't care about all that and just think a velociraptor fighting ninjas is fun and, well, they aren't wrong.
Finally, someone has subverted those pesky expectations we have about Christian ninjas.
Yes. It's hard sometimes to tell who has been genuinely deceived by Christian Ninja propaganda, and who is just being paid to prop up Christian Ninja talking points.
Sorry, I'm in a silly mood, and just desperately wanted to yes-and your delightful post.
As if Chuck Norris was a Christian. Its clearly for show he is a satanist at heart
I remember when Harmontown existed, they invited Neumann over and most of the interview was just drunk Dan Harmon saying "ok so you wrote two of the best screenplays in history, what the fuck bro". (Second one was Starship Troopers obviously). On a podcast that was obsessed with dissecting storytelling, this must have been the most cited movie, along with die hard.
Personally my go to is Mad Max Fury Road, as a kind of filter similar to what you have going on. It's a movie you need to engage with on its own terms, otherwise it is completely meaningless and you will miss the whole entire point.
It seems a lot of people have a problem with clear and radical artistic choices, and will mistake them for defects. This kind of media "literacy" is utterly boring to me as they just train themselves to detect and detest any deviation from Hollywood norms.
The sunscreen commercial is possibly one of the most dystopian things I've ever seen in a movie. That might've been in Robocop 2 though. Still both films are legitimately two of the best dystopian sci-fi films out there.
I always give 2 movies.
Fifth Element as my personal favorite that everyone should see and holds up.
North by Northwest as my "Film" of choice.
That way I can still hold a conversation no matter what anyone wants to go on about. Plus it lets me push for someone to broaden their horizons no matter where they fall on the spectrum of movie nerd.
If they don't respect The Fifth Element as the iconic masterpiece that it is, I don't want to hold a conversation with them anyway.
Agreed haha.
I don't think anyone ever has, but I am meeting more and more people who don't know what it is
The Fifth Element is a movie that in theory I should hate, but I actually love it. The title refers to love and the romance plot doesn't work for me at all. They do an overly clever thing where the villain and the hero never meet (and kinda rub it in your face about it) and normally I hate it when movies are overly clever in that way. And Chris Tucker is annoying as hell.
But somehow that doesn't matter because it's so over the top about everything. The action, the costumes, the dialog, the visuals are all so over the top the stuff that normally would make me not like a movie doesn't really matter.
The overall meaning works even if the execution on the romance plotline falls flat for me. Gary Oldman and Bruce Willis not having any kind of confrontation is fine, since it's kinda how things work with billionaires. You oppose them without ever meeting them. Corbin Dallas is a man of action and Zorg is a man that's all about money, so they're from different worlds so it makes sense they never actually meet. And everything being weird as hell works because it's the future, things should be weird and unfamiliar. Chris Tucker is somehow the same kind of annoying as social media influencers are today, so even that works.
So the Fifth Element is a movie that is terrible on paper, but somehow everything fits together so well that it's actually great.
Perfectly summarized. It's so weird and really shouldn't hold up, but actually it just causes it to be a masterpiece.
It's just a constant good time.
I'm assuming this is supposed to be Hitchcock's North by Northwest, or is this a parody that I'm unaware of?
Ahahhaha it is. I was not awake when I wrote that lol!
Fixed it.
Here a weaponized film suggestion for "i need deep meaning" snobs. Dancer in the dark. It sucks the joy dry out of you and is a masterpiece.
I'd just be suspicious of they idolized any of the sequels. They were tacked on and not nearly as well written as the first one.
Was the first one a critique on the praxis of computerized sentinels and the morality behind that, the sequels where more of a celebration of the cool shooty cyber cowboy.
Robo want oreo