The "It wasn't as bad as people said it was" thread.

[MindofShadow]

The Hobbit Trilogy

[sunofdarkchild]

Batman Forever is actually a pretty good Batman movie. It was the first live-action Batman film to actually do something with the title character. It has many great scenes. It would have been better if the 'red book' scene was kept in to tie the psychological elements together, but even as it is it's one of the better 90s summer action movies. I prefer it to the Burton movies, though Mask of the Phantasm blows it away.

BvS and Justice League. Not saying these are good, but they aren't Elektra, Green Lantern, or Steel bad. Their biggest sin is squandered potential, not creating a travesty of cinema like they're made out to be.

Spider-Man 3, the Amazing Spider-Man movies, and X-Men 3. All of these movies had great action and really funny lines, but they all had 1 flaw that everyone seemed to focus on while forgetting the rest that was good. Admittedly, sometimes that flaw really was huge, but I'd say these movies are overall more good than bad.

The Jurassic Park sequels. They can't compare to the original, but they're still cool dinosaur movies.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This is one I will never understand the hate for. It's another Indiana Jones movie and no more ridiculous than Temple or Crusade were. It's actually my favorite of the Indy sequels - though nothing touches Raiders.

[Alan2099]

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This is one I will never understand the hate for. It's another Indiana Jones movie and no more ridiculous than Temple or Crusade were. It's actually my favorite of the Indy sequels - though nothing touches Raiders.

I'm with you on this one. I really don't understand how discovering aliens is really any worse than any of the other weird things Indy has found.

[DennisTheMenace]

It counts for me--and since I'm the centre of my own universe that's all that really matters. For years I had read that the 1994 FANTASTIC FOUR was screened for comic book fans at conventions and how terrible the movie was. So I was hearing how bad it was long before I finally watched it online. And I was surprised that it wasn't nearly as bad as everyone had said it was.

I feel bad for Ioan Gruffudd--Mr. Fantastic in the 2005 movie--he never got the big movie career that I think he could have had. But still not as unlucky as Taylor Kitsch. I thought of putting JOHN CARTER here, but then I realized that I never heard anyone say that movie was bad. Everyone who saw JOHN CARTER seemed to enjoy it.

Absolutely agree on John Carter. I was familiar with the character already and enjoyed the hell out of that movie. Bad marketing doomed that movie; I think it had the potential to do so much better.

[80sbaby]

My short list:

Ironman 3
Thor 2
Justice League
John Carter
Dukes of Hazzard
A-Team
Fantastic Four (2015)

[Naked Bat]

Batman Forever is actually a pretty good Batman movie. It was the first live-action Batman film to actually do something with the title character. It has many great scenes. It would have been better if the 'red book' scene was kept in to tie the psychological elements together, but even as it is it's one of the better 90s summer action movies. I prefer it to the Burton movies, though Mask of the Phantasm blows it away.

BvS and Justice League. Not saying these are good, but they aren't Elektra, Green Lantern, or Steel bad. Their biggest sin is squandered potential, not creating a travesty of cinema like they're made out to be.

Spider-Man 3, the Amazing Spider-Man movies, and X-Men 3. All of these movies had great action and really funny lines, but they all had 1 flaw that everyone seemed to focus on while forgetting the rest that was good. Admittedly, sometimes that flaw really was huge, but I'd say these movies are overall more good than bad.

The Jurassic Park sequels. They can't compare to the original, but they're still cool dinosaur movies.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This is one I will never understand the hate for. It's another Indiana Jones movie and no more ridiculous than Temple or Crusade were. It's actually my favorite of the Indy sequels - though nothing touches Raiders.

i don't prefer it to the Burton movies, but I totally agree, Batman Forever is a really interesting movie with an unique identity. Sadly, some of the best scenes were deleted, including those who allowed Val Kilmer to really shine.

[Powerboy]

The Star Wars prequels. Lucas overestimated the audience's ability to navigate anything with nuance.

I agree with this. Don't get me wrong. The original trilogy (4, 5 and 6) are my favorites by far. But the complaints I usually hear about the prequels amount to little more than "We already know what's going to happen", "I hate the whole idea of the midichlorians because they weren't mentioned in the original", "The CGI wasn't perfected yet", "The actors that were cast were not how I pictured young Anakin", "I wish someone would kill young Anakin right now before he grows up to murder millions", which is just a variation on, "We already know what's going to happen".

In fact, I suspect that if a young person were to watch the Star Wars movies in numerical order, having never seen them before, they would say something like, "Wow, episodes 1, 2 and 3 have these complex plots with nuances and characters that are deep and have real reasons for who they are. Then 4 suddenly gives us this simplistic plot with black and white characters that are just the good guys and the bad guys. What happened? Did Lucas suddenly go brain dead and couldn't come up with a real story?"

Of course, this is because 4 was always meant to be watched first and the plots and characters grow more complex as the story progressed through 5, 6, 1, 2 and 3.

In fact, this is a great time for this thread because I had never seen "Solo" or episodes 7 and 8. But "Solo" just went up on Netflix and I watched it a couple of days ago. "The Last Jedi" also went up onto Netflix. I haven't watched it yet but I watched "The Force Awakens".

I didn't think "Solo" was some ultimate, great origin for Han Solo but it certainly was a decent, entertaining movie. I really don't get why it did so poorly other than maybe that it came out against some tough competition or something.

I found "The Force Awakens" to be very derivative of "A New Hope" but also that it introduced some cool ideas of it's own. I totally don't get the criticisms of the character, Rey. Other than maybe that she's a new character and how dare she be really the main character. Again, a good, entertaining movie. Certainly not the best Star Wars movie. But still.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1NjmlC_ZZk

Oh and "Rogue One" which I saw some time ago. Again, a movie that didn't do well at the box office but I personally found it the most moving and best of all the Star Wars movies.

[Personamanx]

I largely agree with what's been said here about Batman Forever, and the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

[Naked Bat]

What i like in the Star Wars prequel is that Lucas did work on them. It wasn't the same story retold with different characters (looking at you episode VII), it was something really different in the same universe, and in that regard, it was bold, even though not everything worked.

[Starter Set]

Van Helsing, i found it to be entertaining enough. Certainly not an immortal master piece but i can't understand the hate. Is that really any dumber than let's say, Underworld? Hell no.

Suicide Squad. I really enjoyed that Joker, the boomerang dude was the joke you expect him to be, Will Smith was...Will Smith, for best and worst and that woman villain looks badass. I don't know, i'm not sure what people expected it to be. Yes, the story didn't make much sens but come on now, since when is that even an argument when talking about super heroes movies?

[Powerboy]

Count me in on a lot of these. I actually liked the Schuemacher Batman movies, especially the last one. Yes they were silly but they harkened back to the fun of the 1960s Batman with Adam West which was a lot more fun than watching the Joker prance around breaking things in a museum wasting ten solid minutes of screen time.

I also didn't see how "The Crystal Skull" was bad because it was aliens. It's like the same people who didn't like the second movie because it wasn't specifically something that dealt with Judaism or Christianity.

I also thought "John Carter" was a decent movie. I heard one critic go on about how he couldn't shut off his knowledge and accept that Mars was this inhabited planet, etc. Dude, you shut off your knowledge of reality every time you watch Star Trek.

Speaking of which, I actually liked "The Final Frontier". It had flaws but I liked that Kirk got back to what he originally was in the early episodes and that it dared to tackle a subject like the early biblical god being a monstrous tyrant even though it got watered down.

I also liked Justice League. Seeing Superman finally behaving like Superman had me so hyped I could forgive anything and everything else.

I must admit, I've never heard anyone think "Mask of the Phantasm" was bad. The irony is that the first time I saw it, there were two little kids in the room. They wandered off bored with it within minutes because it was on too adult a level for them. In fact, it was was on too adult a level compared to the Burton and Schumacher movies. But it got dismissed by audiences because it was animated.

[Tuck]

I'm with you on this one. I really don't understand how discovering aliens is really any worse than any of the other weird things Indy has found.

It was also an intentional switch. The idea was to move from the kinds of adventure stories that were popular when the first trilogy was made to what was popular when the new movies were set (which was science fiction by the 50s).

(There was that whole bit of nonsense about how they're not aliens (at least not from space), but interdimensional beings . . . because someone somewhere thought aliens were overdone or something.

[Osiris-Rex]

Green Lantern
John Carter
Suicide Squad
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Justice League
Striptease
The Beverly Hillbillies movie. (1993)
The Three Stooges movie (2012)
Dukes of Hazzard
Spaceballs
Showgirls

[80sbaby]

Green Lantern
John Carter
Suicide Squad
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
Justice League
Striptease
The Beverly Hillbillies movie. (1993)
The Three Stooges movie (2012)
Dukes of Hazzard
Spaceballs
Showgirls

You may be the only other person I've seen say they also like the Dukes of Hazzard movie.


Also, who says Spaceballs is a bad movie? Pretty sure it's was well received?

[Yaw]

The five heartbeats. It has a 35% on RT but it's one of my favorite movies. Lol how people thought Eddie Kane Jr was a real person.

White folks. That is a Black American classic.