It Was Great Until....

[Treblaine]

I don't have the energy or the desire to argue with your entire wall of text, but I especially disagree regarding the Unobtanium and the tree. He's said repeatedly that Unobtainium does a variety of cool stuff (hence its value), so there's every reason to believe that it's no accident that a dwelling was built over a large deposit of it. In fact, native populations gathering around seemingly unknown deposits of minerals is not unheard of in the history of North America (many of the largest deposits of natural radioactive elements were, or rather are, holy sites for several native groups).

Also, while I enjoyed it immensely, District 9 actually bothered me in how hard it was trying to drive home the fact that it was an apartheid allegory. Every damn sign may as well have read "THIS IS APARTHEID! DO YOU GET IT YET?". It was obscenely heavy-handed and I felt like I was being treated like an idiot, an hour in there were still "IN CASE YOU FORGOT THIS IS A LOT LIKE APARTHEID" moments. Essentially, I didn't find it particularly subtle. To be fair, I didn't think Avatar was subtle either, but that didn't particularly bother me.

Dwelling "built" over it? It was TREE! It wasn't built! They are in the tree because it is huge. It's still cheap writing to say there is "oh there is some link between unobtanium that we can't even be bothered to even begin to explain". By not explaining WHAT unobtanium is (other than it has an arbitrary value) this again gives the human miners no reason to be on the planet, again any contrived writing.

Also you seem to have completely and utterly missed the point with District 9 which is fundamentally NOT an Apartheid Allegory. It's an allegory for refugees, poverty and culture clashes. The "no aliens" just make for good iconic imagery. District 9 is FAR MORE an allegory of modern post-apartheid South-Africa and the Sub-Sahara in general. District 9 was subtle... just too subtle for you!

 

[KwaggaDan]

Music:
Teenage Wasteland
by: The Who

The last minute of the song has a different feel than the first 4 minutes and seems to be building to something that never happens. What the hell?

I assume you are talking about Baba O'Riley? Interestingly enough the original song was almost 30 minutes long, but as you probably know a radio can't play a 30 minute song. So ultimately Townsend edited the song down to it's current 5:09... Hence the fact that some rifs just come in from nowhere or the song just falls a bit.

Almost 30 minutes!? Are you serious? Is it obtainable?

I'm not too sure. Maybe find out from an old record store or a Who fan...

 

[Kurokami]

Basically the point of this thread is to ask, what movies/TV shows/games/books have you watched/played/read that you loved up until one particular point that either completely ruined the movie or just lessened your opinion of it a bit?

What got me thinking of this specifically was the anime Death Note and its ending. I personally love Death Note. It's one of my favorite manga. Yet, the ending really (in my opinion of course) brought down the feel of the entire series.

What pissed me off most of the last volume of Death Note was

Spoiler: MAJOR SPOILER

the entire last bit in which Light and Near are revealed to be outsmarting one another during the final chapters. Specifically, I mean when it is revealed that Near switched Death Notes from Teru and gave him a fake one which means no one will die if he writes their names in it.

Light's thoughts at the time are shown and when he realizes what's happened, he exclaims to himself "Exactly as I planned it!!"

How exactly? How can someone plan that far ahead in the future and perfectly predict another's actions of whom he knows nearly nothing about? It was a bit too far fetched for me and for some reason, I didn't think Near doing the same was hardly as contrived as Light's seemed to be.

But overall, the last volume left me somewhat disappointed and actually lessened my opinion of the anime/manga despite me loving every volume before.

So Escapist, has this ever happened to you?

Wolverine Origins,

Loved it until... Y'know... The movie actually started.

I was told to watch Bleach once too, and though I found it Okay, the deal breaker for me was that... well:

Person 1 and Person B (cause I like to mix it up) will be fighting, Person 1 will clearly be winning and then unleash his ultimate attack which he claims no one has ever or could ever survive... then Person B will go ahead and survive it.

From memory this happened quite often, and is common in most animes in a way, but in Bleach they really seemed to hype their attacks up quite a bit before they fail miserably to impress their opponents.

 

[KwaggaDan]

I don't have the energy or the desire to argue with your entire wall of text, but I especially disagree regarding the Unobtanium and the tree. He's said repeatedly that Unobtainium does a variety of cool stuff (hence its value), so there's every reason to believe that it's no accident that a dwelling was built over a large deposit of it. In fact, native populations gathering around seemingly unknown deposits of minerals is not unheard of in the history of North America (many of the largest deposits of natural radioactive elements were, or rather are, holy sites for several native groups).

Also, while I enjoyed it immensely, District 9 actually bothered me in how hard it was trying to drive home the fact that it was an apartheid allegory. Every damn sign may as well have read "THIS IS APARTHEID! DO YOU GET IT YET?". It was obscenely heavy-handed and I felt like I was being treated like an idiot, an hour in there were still "IN CASE YOU FORGOT THIS IS A LOT LIKE APARTHEID" moments. Essentially, I didn't find it particularly subtle. To be fair, I didn't think Avatar was subtle either, but that didn't particularly bother me.

Dwelling "built" over it? It was TREE! It wasn't built! They are in the tree because it is huge. It's still cheap writing to say there is "oh there is some link between unobtanium that we can't even be bothered to even begin to explain". By not explaining WHAT unobtanium is (other than it has an arbitrary value) this again gives the human miners no reason to be on the planet, again any contrived writing.

Also you seem to have completely and utterly missed the point with District 9 which is fundamentally NOT an Apartheid Allegory. It's an allegory for refugees, poverty and culture clashes. The "no aliens" just make for good iconic imagery. District 9 is FAR MORE an allegory of modern post-apartheid South-Africa and the Sub-Sahara in general. District 9 was subtle... just too subtle for you!

It was more an allegory of the Xenophobic attacks in South Africa, and prejudice in general. But I also have to question the subtlety, because while watching it you know within the first couple of minutes what it's about. Although don't let the S.A setting fool you, because it's true for most of the world...

 

[Kapol]

For me, it's easily Harper's Island. I loved the idea of a murder-mystery TV series, and I hoped SO HARD that they wouldn't go for the cliche' killer(s)... and then they did. Though I will admit, even though I hated the choice of killer, the way they did the ending was very well done, and a few of the later episodes were amazing.

 

[Woodsey]

OT: In Inception when Cobb...

Spoiler

Wakes up and gets off the plane to his kids and everything is cool until the shot cuts at the top wobbling...ARGH!

You didn't like it? I loved that ending.

He was clearly

Spoiler

dreaming

though, I'm sure of it.

 

[Woodsey]

Delete this, chaps.

 

[malmodir]

Lost. I guess there is nothing more to say about it.

 

[Fogold]

Bioshock.

It was great till after the reveal of the "you know what", then it was okay till the final boss battle.

That battle was terrible.

 

[Jake the Snake]

There was this sic fi show on NBC a while back called surface in like 2005. It was a great show, with three dimensional characters and an interesting plot. But the last episode's ending was so anti climactic and poorly written, I felt completely betrayed by what was otherwise a good show. Frowny face

 

[JIMMYXD]

Avatar (Movie), until i saw it and wondered what all the hype was about.

 

[lagmanyoda]

WoW, until they raised level cap and basicly destroyed everything they done before which was better then new stuff.

Amen. I'm still trying to get Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros for my totally not nerfed Shaman.

 

[Danpascooch]

Inception was good until

Spoiler

They introduced "limbo" which ruined the movie because it made no sense, I could go on for hours about how Inception was filled with plot holes that ruined a movie with massive potential, but I'll hit a few key points instead

1.) When you have a movie this complicated, based on technology that doesn't exist in the real world (dream briefcase) all the audience has to go on are the rules the movie says are true (such as, external stimuli wakes you up, subconscious white-cell-like defenses, ect.) but they changed all of the rules in the middle with limbo, which disillusioned the audience.

2.) The thing that really ruined it was this question: HOW DOES SOMEONE LEAVE LIMBO!? It is said that time moves much faster in limbo, so by the time the timer ends and you wake up, it's been decades, but about halfway through the movie, with NO EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER, you figure out that the main character and his wife left limbo by killing themselves via a train, but the sedative and briefcase would still be working, so why does that get them out? Also, if that's how it works, why fuck with her brain instead of just killing her, then himself? and why was Limbo so scary to all of them, when they could have just made a pact like: "BTW guys, if you enter limbo, just shoot yourself immediately" problem solved

It may seem like I'm nitpicking, but when a plot hole throws completely into question the motivations and events that form the core climax of a movie, it's a big problem

If you want to know the rest of the plot holes in Inception (fat chance I know) just reply.

 

[Hurray Forums]

But speaking of this: I watched Candy Boy yesterday (now there is a misleading title) and it is *so* much better. It was great.. until it stopped. But the manga is new and still going on, so there is hope. If you liked SP, check it out!

Waaaayyyy ahead of you. Glad to see that series is getting some love, I think the subject grosses a lot of people out which is a shame because it's really quite good and deserves more attention. Random bit of information I'm not quite sure how I know: the nonsensical name comes from the fact that the original episode was basically a really long music video for a song called "Candy Boy"(name of the artist escapes me x.x).

 

[Le_Lisra]

*snip*

Huh, and now I know. *gg*

It's pretty weird that it grosses people out.. I've read through Angel Sanctuary several times, and that is so full of controversial themes they leak out but still pretty successful.
Shame really, but if people dismiss it because of that.. their loss. We know better.

Edit:
To get back on topic: Quake 4. It was a good if linear shooter until they murdered all your teammates and left you alone shooting sprogg after sprogg until you were sooo bored. After the dropship bit somewhere in the middle it was just meh. The scripted bits with the AI made the game for me at first.

 

[baseracer]

Daybreakers. It was good until Wilhelm Dafoe entered the picture. Then it went to shit.

 

[Doclector]

Personally I'm struggling to think of one, but I do have a friend who cannot post this himself due to currently no doubt in a field in a drunken moshpit (for those of you who don't know, this is called sonisphere and I'm called slightly jealous) for whom die hard 4.0 was completely ruined due to the line "you just killed a helicopter with a car!".

Apparently, his problem wasn't the stunt per se, but the use of the word "killed" for an innaminate object making the whole thing sound stupid.

Can't say I agree, but meh.

 

[cheese_wizington]

Red Dead Redemption until

Spoiler

Jack kills Ross, what the fuck, John's death is useless then!!!!!!

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Indigo Prophecy needed more of a burn time. I filled in the blanks that the plot left myself (and reading about it later I was mostly right about what they'd intended to do) but it did go a little off the rails and I needed some heavy suspension os disbelief to get through it. Still love the game though, one of my favourites.

Star Wars. The second that

Spoiler

Jacen Solo became Darth Caedus

I put the book down and never went back. I then proceeded to throw out everything after The Unifying Force, which might have been mediocre and annoying, but at least it didn't completely misinterpret every single aspect about the plot developmet and character development of one of the most interesting people in the entire Expanded Universe. Also, Karen Traviss can bugger off back to Gears of War.

Ultimates. I read Ultimates 1 by Mark Millar and thought that aside from one or two unfortunately recognisable Millar-traits it was a fun read and well worth pursuing. Then I read Ultimates 2. Dayum did he wreck that series as hard and fast as he could. I don't respect his writing at the best of times but seriously in Ultimates 2 he didn't even play to his (limited) strengths.

There are others of course, but generally I prefer to give series the benefit of the doubt and hope they pull through a bad patch rather than turn it into a permanent losing streak (I hear that the new team of Star Wars writers are doing everything they can to try and turn the mess that was Legacy of the Force around but no amount of Aaron Allston is going to convince me to return, no matter how much I loved the Rogue Squadron books.)