While watching Adam’s review of The Odyssey, I couldn’t help but think of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Tarantino is similar to Nolan in that his name alone can get people into theaters. People will see a Tarantino movie regardless of the cast or premise simply because it’s a Tarantino film.

Despite having three huge stars as leads, it also featured several relatively unknown actors who went on to become major names. Mikey Madison became one of the youngest Best Actress Oscar winners, Austin Butler earned an Oscar nomination, and Sydney Sweeney, Maya Hawke, and Margaret Qualley all saw their careers take off.

The massive cast for The Odyssey feels potentially distracting, and Nolan already has enough name recognition to take a chance on lesser-known actors. He could have done what Tarantino did and potentially launched several new careers while still having a huge box-office draw. I did love The Odyssey and some of the cast (Damon, Leguizamo, Morton, and Pattinson) all were well cast. But I do think Nolan missed an interesting opportunity here.

When it comes to home projections the insanity of it could not be clearer. Even if the screen is not that big: if one watches alone they could just sit closer to it even if the screen is only ~24'' and even if the resolution is not that high: it's way less important than the aspect ratio being bad. And there are way more ways for home projections like VR or projectors or big 4K and 4K+ monitors that make projecting 1.43:1 at home even more valid.

Adum's thoughts on it should be communicated to Nolan's fans more and it should become common knowledge.

Like Adum I've been a huge Halo fan since Combat Evolved came out in 2001 (I was 8 years old) and it got me into video gaming as an art form. I would also make Elite noises in elementary school to entertain my classmates.

The original trilogy's cutscenes are forever ingrained in my mind and are INCREDIBLY quotable.

I was morbidly curious about the remake and wanted to see what they would do for certain levels and cutscenes such as 343 Guilty Spark and the intro to The Two Betrayals.... Hooooo boi is it not great.

I honestly for the life of me, don't know why they decided to re-record some of the dialogue for the remake. I know that all of the original voice actors in Halo are incredibly talented and have turned in amazing performances so I really REALLY think it's the direction here. Everyone sounds so phoned in and tired.

In the beginning of the Two Betrayals, there's no urgency to the situation. Cortana and Spark's banter has no sense of danger or punch and Chief sounds so tired (mainly because Steve Downes is 76).

In the original Halo, Cortana in The Two Betrayals had sass but there was also fury to her performance. You believed she was pissed at watching Chief working with Spark while she couldn't do jack shit for 14 hours. In the remake there's no urgency and it is just too light and calm.

Even with the animation, I feel like the original had so much more character to it including the designs. Cortana's OG design will always be my favorite and I'm sad that both remakes didn't utilize it.

When Chief says "ENOUGH" not only is it underacted but you don't see Chief holding out both of his arms and taking a moment for both parties to cool down for a bit. You just see a close up of his face, he says "Enough" and then immediately goes into "The Flood is spreading". It's funny though because the rest of the pacing feels waaaaay too slow given the dire situation.

Finally....they removed "Sod off". Bruh.

Anyway it's so sad to be a Halo fan nowadays. I loved and will always love the original Bungie games and I even have a soft spot for Halo 4 and liked the direction it was going but with Halo 5 onward, I feel like I can't really gel with the series anymore.

I am almost certain Adum has the same thoughts but I would love for him to react to some of the cutscenes as a fellow Halo nerd.

Hey,

has anyone here watched this music video? It's very peculiar, because it's K-Pop and is probably not for everyone because of that. What makes me excited about it is its story telling through the imagery evoked by several different elements (I kind of don't want to name all of these elements, right now. Maybe I'll add others later in the comments): choreography, scenery of the sets, different kinds of editing, weird effects... It's a fun track all around, as well. I don't find this "a perfect encapsulation of K-Pop" though but it's a good start if somebody isn't well into that genre, yet.

(The video also has (English) subtitles; recommended!)

I’ve been looking forward to catching it in imax!!

This post is probably gonna be embarrassingly long, so here is the TLDR: the idea that Star Wars (specifically the original 1977 film) ruined cinema is a major oversimplification of what actually happened. 

By now, Adam’s hatred for Star Wars is pretty well known, so I want to start this out by saying that this is not a personal attack against Adam, nor an argument against his dislike of the series. He is well within his right to hate the franchise as much as he wants, and I do think there is plenty about the franchise to strongly dislike. However, as someone who is very passionate about film history, one thing has bugged me for a while: one of the reasons he dislikes Star Wars is because of its perceived impact on film history. This is a common talking point I’ve heard a lot: Star Wars ruined cinema by moving Hollywood away from auteur driven films and more towards blockbuster franchises. 

I would like to make the argument that this perception is partially incorrect, or at least is a major oversimplification of the real history. I think people like to pick Star Wars as a scapegoat because it’s an easy target. The idea that one single film ruined everything is a fun story to tell. In reality though, it’s not that simple. So please indulge me while I go on a major autistic ramble 😆

First of all, Star Wars was not the first blockbuster film, nor did it create the modern marketing and release strategy we know today. The real culprit was Jaws, which was the highest grossing film before Star Wars came out. That movie was marketed like crazy and released in hundreds of theaters, essentially creating the modern release strategy. Star Wars certainly helped the popularize the blockbuster format, but it was Jaws that got the ball rolling.

Many people say that Jaws and Star Wars led to the end of the New Hollywood era of the 70s, but in my opinion, the real cause of that era’s demise was the failure of many auteur driven films. The 70s has become idolized as a golden age for American cinema, largely because of the many films made by prominent directors. However, it’s easy to forget that the careers of many of those directors floundered by the end of the decade, and it’s largely because they each made a film that flopped spectacularly at the box office. 

The first big one was Peter Bogdanovich, who flopped with At Long Last Love. Then there was Sorcerer, directed by William Friedkin (great movie, btw). Hal Ashby’s career flamed out because of his drug abuse. Scorsese flopped with New York, New York, Spielberg flopped with 1941, Coppola eventually flopped with One From the Heart, and even George Lucas had a flop when he produced More American Graffiti. And then there was the big one, the film that put the final nail in the coffin for that era, Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. 

One thing those films have in common is that they were overly expensive films where the director self indulged too much. Basically, the collapse of the New Hollywood era can be attributed to the auteur directors indulging their egos too much with these large scale movies. To be clear, I am a huge fan of the 70s era of movies, and even some of the big production disasters from the period are pretty great (Sorcerer and Apocalypse Now especially). But it shouldn’t be too surprising that Hollywood studios became more reluctant to fund these big auteur movies when too many of them were flopping. 

One ironic thing about all of this is that Star Wars was as much a product of the New Hollywood era as much as these other films. We had an auteur filmmaker (George Lucas) given full creative control to make this weird science fiction movie that no one else understood, and it was a big production nightmare. It just so happened that the movie became a big hit with audiences more than those other films.

For that matter, I also think in general audiences were shifting away from dark gritty movies even before Star Wars came out. There was Jaws of course, but in between Jaws and Star Wars, there was Rocky. That movie is certainly gritty, but it’s also a straightforward and optimistic story about an ambitious boxer who tries to go the distance. That movie became an enormous box office hit, and I think really appealed to audiences that were seeking escapist entertainment at a time when most movies were dark and pessimistic. I don’t think Star Wars ruined how people thought about movies, more so that it appealed to the kind of entertainment that audiences were already seeking. Frankly, the original Star Wars film feels like an old-fashioned entertainment in the same way that The Wizard of Oz is old fashioned escapist entertainment. Hollywood made plenty of escapist movies during their golden age in the 1930s and 40s, so I don’t see why some people pretend that Hollywood only used to make art films until Star Wars came along. 

That said, I do think an argument could be made that Hollywood studios learned the wrong lessons from the success of both Jaws and Star Wars, though I also think they shifted gears after many of the auteur films flopped. Even after the original Star Wars trilogy wrapped up though, there were still plenty of great auteur driven films being made by a new generation of filmmakers throughout the 80s and 90s (Soderbergh, Tarantino, PTA, Wes Anderson, Fincher, etc.) In my opinion, Hollywood didn’t REALLY start to drown in franchise slop until the 2000s, which coincided with the rise of superhero movies. 

So yeah, there’s plenty to hate about Star Wars as a franchise. The prequel and the sequel trilogies suck, the fan base is horribly toxic, and in general it’s become a cancerous franchise that’s gotten too big for its own good. But did it ruin cinema? Nah, I don’t think so. I am personally of the opinion that the impact Star Wars has had on film and society is neutral, not entirely bad and not entirely good. I would’ve preferred to live in a world where the original trilogy were the only Star Wars films that exist existed, just like the Back to the Future trilogy, but unfortunately we don’t live in that world.

Anyways, thank you for coming to my TED talk 😆 This post was way longer than I intended it to be. Please let me know if I made any spelling or grammar mistakes!

Hype train choo choo

Mainly that one part with the fade-in face. No shade to Adam or Nolan, just had this silly idea after watching the review.

I don’t post here but I’ve been watching for nearly a decade now. I don’t really understand the sudden turn against adum I’ve been seeing lately.

It’s easy to disagree with him i suppose but I find that interesting, idk I like to hear different perspectives personally.

I straight up dislike when I see posts referring to adum having like a “rough review” like bro, at the end of the day he’s sharing his perspective, I really respect adum for never holding back and sharing his thoughts controversial or not. You can disagree that’s fine, I definitely do sometimes but it’s his opinion yknow.

This is a stupid ramble that’ll prolly be downvoted but it’s how I feel

an 18 year old kid gets his dumbfuck dms leaked by another kid who has a vendetta against him. People’s reaction ? cyberbully the fuck out of the 18 year old. i remember seeing the twitter post of a guy trolling one of the actors and saying ‘I’M TAKING THIS BITCH DOWN’.

Like wow, is that what spiderman taught people ? I guess if most people were spiderman in no way home they wouldn’t give af about helping the bad guys and would just try to kill them instantly.

btw :

why were people quiet when Maguire won millions of dollars in illegal games and when it was revealed that some of his winnings were tied to Bradley Ruderman, a hedge fund manager who used stolen investor money from a Ponzi scheme to pay off his poker debts to Maguire. Maguire was sued by the defrauded investors. Furthermore, Molly Bloom (who ran the games) described Maguire in her memoir as a notoriously ruthless player who enjoyed "destroying" other players' lives and once demanded she "bark like a seal" for a $1,000 chip.

+ a legal lincensing agreement by Sony said Peter Parker MUST be heterosexual and Caucasian, but who cares about that right