This isn't your thread, nor is it a megathread or a discussion thread.
This is @Athene's own media essay thread, where she discusses the media she's seen and reviews it.
You hijacking it to try and discuss your own opinions would be off-topic and incredibly rude. There are other threads in which to do this. Many, many other threads.
This isn't your thread, nor is it a megathread or a discussion thread.
This is @Athene's own media essay thread, where she discusses the media she's seen and reviews it.
You hijacking it to try and discuss your own opinions would be off-topic and incredibly rude. There are other threads in which to do this. Many, many other threads.
...also I just now realized there isn't really a thead specifically about video game storytelling, and I'm going to assume you thought that this thread was gonna be useful for that because
>ludo
Really, Athene was referencing the Ludovico technique from A Clockwork Orange, rather than ludonarrative. At least I'm assuming that.
Airport: Ah yes, the film credited with starting the Disaster genre in the 70s. Naturally, it's not actually a disaster movie. At all. It set's the elements of future disaster movies, but its actually just a plain old drama about one shitty night at an airport. Oh sure, a bomb goes off in an aircraft but that isn't the focus. If you go in expecting an Irwin Allen movie with cruel and random deaths, you're going to be disappointed. If you go in expecting a bad movie, you're also going to be disappointed, aside from some bizarre special effects. Its a pure drama for all its reputation.
The movie is a night in the life of an underfunded airport outside Chicago. Its a snowy night and the runways are having problems. The airport doesn't have enough funding for proper snow removal and a jet is stuck on the runway, rendering it unusable. An old lady keeps conning her way on board aircraft, flying around the world for free. A rich citizens group is protesting noise from the airport. The board of directors is riding the manager to fix issues but without the funding to fix things. His relationship with his wife is failing because she's just awful. He has a professional relationship with a colleague that might turn romantic. A mad bomber has bought a one way ticket and a quarter million in insurance. Dean Martin accidentally got his mistress pregnant and is conflicted about it.
Its competent at what it does and there are some good characters. Cheating on or divorcing your wife is treated with maturity! No outright condemnation or moralizing! In most "disaster" movies, you end up as greasy smear after an affair or are forced back into your toxic relationship by the hand of an angry god. There are interesting digressions on random plots involved with running an airport. Its not the best movie but its entertaining enough as long as you're not looking for mayhem.
Oh yeah, and Joe Patroni. The rest of the movies are going to try to cram him into random places as a pseudo main character tying the series together. Here he's a talented ground chief brought in to get the plane unstuck, interrupting Hot Dickings Night. Oh and to lovingly blow all of Boeing's aircraft. I guess all the male leads have a mistress then, his is just a 707 but he likes it rough.
Airport 75: Released of course in 1974, you have already seen most of this movie if you've seen Airplane. Well, except for the fact that Diane is more competent and not as useless. Oh and its a light plane crashing head on into the cockpit. But mostly, Nancy could be replaced by Joe's kid or the blinded pilot or a particularly well trained chimp and things would have gone smoother.
See, Nancy is useless. Her greatest skill is being dicked by the chief flight instructor. That way he has an emotional investment in saving her after she accidentally kills the previous rescuerwho was trying to descend into the cockpit. The drama is in "Can Nancy follow simple instructions?" and "Oh god, Nancy disabled her own radio again". I'm not sure where the world was in the 70s on knowledge of controlling aircraft, but you would think she would have picked up something by cultural osmosis. Or like, paying attention? What's worse is that the idea of a stewardess flying a plane is treated as ridiculous and her not nosediving a plane that's on autopilot into the ground as treated as a triumph for her gender. Amelia Earhart Wept.
Because the trained men do such a great job in this movie
Joe Patroni shows up as the VP of operations for the company, as part of their attempt to make this a sequel. His wife and son are on the doomed plane adding some cheap, easily resolved drama for his character! His wife is bland and his son is a little shithead. This will be the last either are ever seen again. They kill his wife off in a single line of offhand dialogue in the 4th movie, one can only hope it claimed his son too.
Oh and Gloria Swanson is in the movie as Gloria Swanson. She's Adam Westing her fucking heart out as a version of herself obsessed with her image after she dies, and is dragging around a secretary with a tape recorder. If you don't know who Gloria Swanson is, get thee to Sunset Boulevard. Its not her that got small, it was the air disasters!
It's a bland mess that made for a great comedy when subjected to parody, but on its own its too incompetent for Good Movie Town, too slow for Bad Movie Mountain. Its bland palp unlike:
Airport 1977: Alternate titles include "At Least its Not Airport '79" and "Oh shit accidentally I bought a water tank for my airplane movie". The shadow of the next movie looms over this one something fierce. When watched in order, you're going to be like "Oh this is the worst, this movie is fucking stupid." Then suddenly the sequel barrels in wearing a t-shirt as pants and holding a fifth of gas station whiskey in each hand, yelling "HOLD MY BEER".
"But you're not-"
"HOLD MY BEER" it yells, pissing in the direction of your hands through the neck hole. It then yells "Yeehah" and goes on ebay trying to find a 50 gallon drum of surplus Donkey Sauce.
"Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who is the most mediocre of them all"
The story is quite simple really: A luxury 747 with no seatbelts, unsecured furniture a plenty and easily damaged children crashes after art thieves hijack it for its cargo of All The Paintings Ever, and accidentally clip an oil rig while trying to fly below radar. The airplane is then trapped underwater in one quasi airtight piece. Standard plot really.
When they were coming up with this idea, I imagine someone pitching the crash to a room of writers and producers who were all jazzed about it. Then some lone person goes "And then what happens?" and they all sit quietly for three hours, avoiding eye contact. It does indeed fail the most basic of plot tests "And then what happens for the rest of the movie?". Whole lot of talking, that's what! The solution turns out to be that they haven't been all that far down the entire time and a dude just swims out with a beacon to get help. Some random people die but it can't figure out any danger that would pick random people off, so it really just fizzles.
Joe Patroni shows up long enough to say he supports the navy's efforts to rescue these people and for the producers to cut George Kennedy a check for vaguely linking these movies into a series. Christopher Lee randomly dies to desperately attempt to add drama and his shocked, floating corpse outacts everyone else in the movie. What a legend.
Its a movie that has one idea and that happens in the beginning. Nobody is likeable and the problems are easily solved, albeit with random, pointless and preventable deaths thrown in. Drama or something.
And yet, its hard to talk about how awful it is. Because Airport 79 is coming. Its coming and its so incredibly stupid that we had to keep rewinding it out of sheer Not Believing This Shit. It has a female lead so dumb she probably set feminism back a good two weeks. I'm writing about a series of movies but yet...I just want to talk about That Movie.
I've been extremely, extremely busy and harried lately. I don't have images because we rented these and the rental expired before I could get content. More reviews are inbound, especially for the next movie in this series. I just had to get through the previous movies first. My apologies. :O
Christopher Lee's corpse acting is hands down the best thing that came out of '77.
Director: "Okay, your character died last scene. We just need a quick shot of you under water with your eyes closed."
Lee: "I just reread the last scene and I don't think that will do. You see, my body would be swept back in to the rigging. One shot just wouldn't do."
Director: "Lee, just get in the tank, close your eyes, and play dead so we can shoot this thing."
Lee: "Dead bodies don't just close their eyes. From experience, if something kills you that fast then your eyes will bulge with the pressure of the hit and shock."
Director: "What?"
Lee: *Jumps in to tank and refuses to come up to breath until filming is done*
Then suddenly the sequel barrels in wearing a t-shirt as pants and holding a fifth of gas station whiskey in each hand, yelling "HOLD MY BEER".
"But you're not-"
"HOLD MY BEER" it yells, pissing in the direction of your hands through the neck hole. It then yells "Yeehah" and goes on ebay trying to find a 50 gallon drum of surplus Donkey Sauce.
I think I remember my mom's company translating both Airport and Twister series in China... The SOD just went out of the window after the second one in either series.
Okay, I just saw Valerian (my dad rented it for reasons.) @Athene you were absolutely right about everything. If anything, you may have been too charitable towards the scriptwriting.
All I can say in Valerian's defense is the cinematography is gorgeous, and the bit at the start with Space Oddity was more emotionally moving than the entire rest of the film combined. The three or four commanders of Alpha Station we see during that sequence are more compelling characters than... everybody else, really. Honestly, that bit works perfectly well as a short film.
Its still coming. Coming tomorrow in fact! My continued, endless and sincerest apologies for the delay, I've just been completely exhausted with work. :O
Here's a short quiz for you: Let's say you're a sexy 70s lady reporter. A panicked man shows up at your door saying he has proof that his employers, a major defense contractor, have been selling weapons to terrorists and the NVA. It goes all the way to the top. He has documents that his wife will deliver them to you at a later time because he's afraid for her life and believes people are after him. He's then immediately shot dead not 3 feet from you and you are forced to fight for your life against his assassin. You barely escape What do you do?
Well in Airport 79, the answer is "Go to the CEO of the company and have him console and gaslight you." Let him convince you its an invention of the man who was shot to death in your house. He obviously got involved in some fake news blackmail scheme. What a shame, he was always such an honest guy afterall. Maybe do a little light petting and kissing as he tells you there aren't any documents at all. He is of course, planning to kill you if you are provided with the documents.
Welcome to the central plot of this movie.
Maggie is dumb. In a movie full of idiots, she makes everyone else look smart. Barbara Walters had only recently broken through this glass ceiling when this movie was made. Forty years of distance had me not realize that this rock stupid woman is supposed to be based on her. This is what unconsciously sexist dudes thought an intrepid female reporter would look like. Unable to control her emotions and easily falling into the arms of the man who's obviously guilty.
Harrison meets her by the gate to gaslight her some more and make sure she hasn't gotten the documents. "See, aren't I always right?" he assures her. She agrees that yes, his possession of a penis in the 70s makes him unquestionably wiser than her. Then the wife shows up, hands her the documents and she reads them on the way to the plane while he skulks and glares at her like Donald Trump at a debate. She discovers clear proof that he's a real piece of shit and a traitor.
So what would you do in this situation? Did you say "Tearfully call the traitor to tell him you've discovered his duplicity and feel personally betrayed?" No? Well that's Maggie does! Harrison is the owner and operator of a dick in the 70s, so he gets her to agree to tell nobody until she meets with him in Paris. 20 minutes later a drone from his company is trying to blow her plane out of the sky. Being an intrepid reporter, she sees no connection between these two events or any other events.
I have to backfill the plot at this point with all the fluff cacooning Maggie like a particularly dumb egg in an egg drop competition. So the other subplots that matter are...ok almost none of them matter. Joe Patroni is president of an airline taking delivery of a shiny new liverly-less Concorde. His wife is dead, we learn in a single one off sentence he delivers cheerfully. Even worse, he's cheating on Boeing with the Concorde. Do you even look at the flight manual of a 747 while you make love anymore Joe?
His copilot is the actual assigned pilot of the plane, played by Alain "Apparently a Nazi These Days To My Severe Disgust" Delon. Long past his Le Samourai coolness but well before he apparently became a real piece of shit whose IMDB photo looks like Richard Gere melted. There is the minor plot of Delain having sex with the head stewardess -"Your hair is my French Fries" he croons- and having some conflict with Joe over who flies the most perfect plane ever.
Rounding it out is a ton of shit that doesn't matter. The plane is headed to Moscow from DC by way of Paris, which I'll get to in a separate post because its annoying but ultimately not worth the time here. The reason is, its a good will mission before the 1980 Moscow games. Among the characters that don't matter is:
The sexy Soviet gymnast and the American reporter who she's pole vaulting. They're trying to keep their relationship a secret from the gymnast commissar but she ultimately approves of their relationship and so nothing matters.
The soviet gymnastics coach and his adorable deaf daughter, who are legitimately the only interesting characters in the movie and have the only human relationship.
The woman who keeps stress shitting in the bathroom
Jimmy Walker as the Black Guy Hired To Do Stuff The Writers Think Are Black Guy Things. Smoking gigantic blunts, playing a saxophone, jive talking, etc.
David Warner, who plays a man not really appearing in this movie.
The pussy crazed owner of the Airline, who generally doesn't matter.
Yet another parent of a sick kid, delivering a heart to her son. Just double down on your own cliches I guess.
Bunch of fucking randos
Oh right and a group of ecoterrorists named Air Peace trying to attack the Concorde with a hot air balloon. I forgot about it almost as quickly as the movie did. That's right, its a movie so stupid you forget about attempted murder with a hot air balloon.
What an exciting cross section of the human condition we have here. The first movie was about the intersection between personal dramas during a crisis, this movie is about a bunch of nobodies who are caught up in one idiots attempt to kill another idiot.
Oh right, the attempted murders.
So plan number one is to reprogram the drone they're testing to go after the Concorde instead. Nothing says inconspicuous like a guided missile suddenly flipping a bitch to go after a randomly specific plane.
I'm sure that a missile Vincennesing a major airlines plane over the US would raise no questions, investigations or senate subcommittees. Plus I'm sure the woman whose husband you just killed made zero photocopies before showing up at the airport. Well, actually, everyone is so stupid in this movie she probably didn't, but I can't think of a more obviously flawed way to kill someone until the next time.
So the missile is in hot pursuit of the Concorde. An aircraft which has half the visibility of a person in a neckbrace wearing shutter shades. "4 O'Clock!" yells a man looking at 3 O'Clock while the missile zooms in from 5 O'Clock. David Warner from his position of irrelevance looks around frantically. Sure he has no windows, but he might still see something as Joe keeps dodging the missile with the force.
They lose track of the missile and David Warner, excited at having something to do, asks why they aren't still maneuvering. Joe tells him that's what the missile expects you to do and that they're going to let it make the first move.
They're going to let a guided missile make the first move when they don't know where it is.
*Leans in*
They're going to let a missile make the first move. A missile they can't currently see. Of course it works, because Joe Patroni is the One who will bring balance to the fucking force. He dodges that shit and the USAF shoots it down.
He goes to the back and tells everyone there was a minor mishap involving an experimental military weapon trying to kill them and continues the flight. Ho hum, they only were doing barrel rolls like it was Star Fox. The Concorde is a holy, invulnerable gift from the gods that can, according to the pilots in the movie, outmaneuver fighter jets. PS, the next thing that attacks them is a fighter jet.
Harrison contracts a mercenary pilot in an F4 to attack the Concorde through a shady fixer. I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but your plane will arrive 5 hours after hers: Just have someone kill her on the ground while she waits for you. She has zero survival instincts and loses at Memory to goldfish. She didn't put together the random missile attack on her with the defense contractor she is going to bring down. Have a hitman walk up to her and ask her if this gun smells funny and shoot her in the face when she sniffs it. But no, he's going to try to shoot down a major airlines brand new jet with a mercenary fighter pilot. But that fighter jock didn't count on the sheer survivability of the Concorde, or something. Alain Delon is flying now, but Joe manages to randomly catch sight of it, despite it being directly behind them, and instantly realizes that this plane is after them.
The first missile, Delon just barrel rolls away from it. Peppy would approve, as it causes the missile to miss by scant inches. Fortunate this is an alternate universe where sidewinder missiles don't have proximity fuzes or they'd be pretty fucked!
However Delon tells Joe that the airframe can't handle much more of that, and so they get the idea to try to spoof the missile by opening the window and firing a flare gun out. I unfortunately already ruined this part by sharing the gif early, but here, look at this shit again:
"We can't stress the airframe"
*Immelmans at Mach 2*
But oh no, there are two missiles left! And Joe dropped the fair gun, setting it off in the cockpit. How will they get out of this? By turning off the engines because its a heat seeking missile. Yes, its below zero no matter whether you use Rational or Freedom units of temperature. Yes, your engines are still scorching hot and glowing like the sun to IR. Yes, this idea works. We abandoned sense when the dude rolled down the window at Mach 2 to stick his hand out and fire a flare gun. Questions are meaningless, eat at Arby's.
The plane is now caught in a deep dive that does...something to the passengers.
The entire point of the shitting woman subplot is to do this to her
I have no clue what this is supposed to be. G-Forces? A tiny black hole opening? A giant ACME Magnet? Luckily, the F4 manages to dash itself against the waves after the Concorde barely pulls up in time. They're safe for now but they have to use experimental nets to land and there isn't going to be any tension because of course they're going to land, its only 50 minutes into this thing. It is as I said, the rare movie where it goes into a *layover* during an air disaster movie at the halfway point. They need to easily repair missile damage after all. And it's here that I pause, as I have already written near 2000 words and there is much stupidity to come. Because this is a movie where after two separate attacks, almost everyone gets back on the plane to be imperiled further by the world's dumbest reporter.
Because she doesn't realize that maybe someone is trying to kill her. Part 2 coming soon.
...I went and looked up the plot summary to this bizarrely stupid movie already, but now I have an urge to force-feed the movie's writer their own script and watch them choke on it.
Does this make it a critique of capitalism, then? America's worst enemy is itself and its worship of capitalism such that corrupt industrialists sell weapons to its enemies out of a desire for profit?
Yeah, we all know how Boeing loves hearing that one of their expensive airliners is now going to need tweezers to be taken into the hanger over, surely they'll just laugh it off and not raise 9 kinds of hell.
Meanwhile I'd be running to my travel agent, and telling him to book me a ticket on the next train to Moscow, I don't care how long it takes. It's gotta be safer. Also yelling at the ticket counter for a refund, because I booked a plane ticket, not a goddamn rollar coaster!
Does this make it a critique of capitalism, then? America's worst enemy is itself and its worship of capitalism such that corrupt industrialists sell weapons to its enemies out of a desire for profit?
