Best/Worst Deconstructions in tv and movies

[Username taken]

Best Deconstruction: Unforgiven, Superman 2, Logan, The Incredibles, Thor Ragnarok
Worst Deconstruction: Batman vs Superman, The Last Jedi, Ang Lee's Hulk

[numberthirty]

Since Unforgiven turned up a couple of times without either of these films being mentioned...

Best:

- The Wild Bunch
- Ride The High Country

[Powerboy]

If the original vision of Ragnarok, as hinted at in Thor's vision in the Norn pool in Age of Ultron, had been been carried out would the film have been as successful? What makes Ragnarok stand out is Taika Waititi's highly memorable direction and tone. If we'd gotten a darker Ragnarok it could have invited unwelcome comparisons with the DCEU, as well as the way the previous Thor films in the MCU are seen.

In-universe you could see the start of Infinity War being as the gravity of being the last of Asgard dawning on refugees, and as Thanos attacks with such brutality. Even if half the Asgardians did manage to evacuate they're an endangered species now and have been used to relative comfort. Who knows how many survived the finger snap?

Oh I readily admit it would not have been as popular and I understand why they did it. It's just that it made the whole thing feel like fluff which, of course, most of the audience ate up.

[AJBopp]

No no no.

That was them clapping their hands together and saying "Alright, this is how we make Thor."

And it's not a parody. It's an action adventure movie with lots of comedy in it.

Actually I think it was them throwing something against the wall to see if it would stick. It did.

It certainly felt like a parody, like Woody Allen doing Casino Royale. Completely out of any previous context, and completely devoid of any weight to what should have been the most emotionally dramatic moment in the MCU to that point.

[Zero Hunter]

Oh I readily admit it would not have been as popular and I understand why they did it. It's just that it made the whole thing feel like fluff which, of course, most of the audience ate up.

That was my problem with the movie. It just felt so out of sync with itself. Here is horror and end of the world stuff going on over here and then lets have a bunch of over the top jokes going on over here. It was like two movie crammed together making one bad movie. Thor Ragnarok is not a great movie tone wise and yet everyone eats it up and overlooks how sloppy it is.

[Tuck]

No no no.

That was them clapping their hands together and saying "Alright, this is how we make Thor."

And it's not a parody. It's an action adventure movie with lots of comedy in it.

Going to break this back out:

[Jim Kelly]

Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH (1969) is so profoundly great in so many ways, it almost seems beneath it to say it's a deconstruction. But it is in that it describes the decline of the Old West and serves to put to rest the tired conventions of the Western.

Deconstruction, however, either has to be really great or it fails in being a shadow of the thing it tries to deconstruct. HEAD (1968) by Bob Rafelson is an example of someone destroying the thing he created--the Monkees. It's not that there aren't brilliant bits in the movie, but the film deconstructs the charm of the Monkees to such an extent that the four performers were left to pick up the shards of their careers after this movie came out. I feel particularly bad for Davey Jones who put so much effort into his song and dance numbers for the picture, only to have the rug pulled out from under him by a director so self-involved he didn't care who he hurt.

Not quite as loathesome but much harder to sit through is Jean Luc Godard's SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL (1968). As with HEAD, individual bits and pieces of the movie are entertaining to watch, but Godard tortures the viewer with these incredibly long takes and non sequiturs. From an artistic perspective, I understand what the director is doing--and on that level he's far more admirable than Rafelson--but if you love the Rolling Stones then it seems like abuse to suffer through this movie for their sake.

[Cyke]

Deep Space Nine was great at deconstructing Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, something its successors Enterprise, the Abrams movies, and Discovery only touched upon. But moreso, the deconstruction served to help strengthen and make more concrete certain Trek tropes.

"It's easy to be a saint in paradise."

[Powerboy]

That was my problem with the movie. It just felt so out of sync with itself. Here is horror and end of the world stuff going on over here and then lets have a bunch of over the top jokes going on over here. It was like two movie crammed together making one bad movie. Thor Ragnarok is not a great movie tone wise and yet everyone eats it up and overlooks how sloppy it is.

It kind of reminds me of a Mel Brooks movie that he wrote and starred in called "Life Sucks". There's a scene in the movie where a homeless person the Mel Brooks character befriended dies on the street and he finds the body. They tried to find way after way to make it funny and Brooks finally realized, there is no way to make it funny because it's not funny and he realized he was going to have to film a deadly serious scene which he did. Unfortunately, "Thor Ragnarok" feels to me like two hours of it's not funny but let's play it as if it is.

Obviously, most of the audience ate up the fluff.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Penguin pretending to be a legitimate buisness man and running for mayor was a plot used way back in the Adam West series.

Is that what Batman Returns kinda did though? Penguins always been a bit of a freak who pined for being accepted by the upper class of society. In Returns he became the Mayor to reclaim his birth right yada yada and then lost it when Batman showed them how despicable he really was and he got rejected.

[numberthirty]

Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH (1969) is so profoundly great in so many ways, it almost seems beneath it to say it's a deconstruction. But it is in that it describes the decline of the Old West and serves to put to rest the tired conventions of the Western.

Deconstruction, however, either has to be really great or it fails in being a shadow of the thing it tries to deconstruct. HEAD (1968) by Bob Rafelson is an example of someone destroying the thing he created--the Monkees. It's not that there aren't brilliant bits in the movie, but the film deconstructs the charm of the Monkees to such an extent that the four performers were left to pick up the shards of their careers after this movie came out. I feel particularly bad for Davey Jones who put so much effort into his song and dance numbers for the picture, only to have the rug pulled out from under him by a director so self-involved he didn't care who he hurt.

Not quite as loathesome but much harder to sit through is Jean Luc Godard's SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL (1968). As with HEAD, individual bits and pieces of the movie are entertaining to watch, but Godard tortures the viewer with these incredibly long takes and non sequiturs. From an artistic perspective, I understand what the director is doing--and on that level he's far more admirable than Rafelson--but if you love the Rolling Stones then it seems like abuse to suffer through this movie for their sake.

Agreed. While it's bigger than simple deconstruction, the elements of deconstruction in it are brilliant.

[Commander Wort]

Worst: Batman vs Superman and Ang Lee Hulk.
Best: The Incredible and Ant Man.

[Alan2099]

Scream was so successful of a deconstruction of horror movies that it turned into a genre of it's own.

On a similar note, I'd also recommend Behind the mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon, which is like Scream from the killers point of view. How a wannabe killer sets everything up to follow the horror movie rules.

[numberthirty]

Got to thinking about it. The Addiction might just be a really great bit of deconstruction of "Vampire" films.

[ed2962]

Scream was so successful of a deconstruction of horror movies that it turned into a genre of it's own.

On a similar note, I'd also recommend Behind the mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon, which is like Scream from the killers point of view. How a wannabe killer sets everything up to follow the horror movie rules.

I'd like to add "Cabin In The Woods" as a good example.