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Oilspill Battery said:
THe thing that makes the substance stand out for me is that its extremely minimalist and everything in the plot is relevant to the plot. The entire movie more or less takes place in 1 appartment but you don't really notice.

You say that its not the best thing ever, but I think its hard to argue that it is not incredibly tightly writen, sans the ending.
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On further reflection, I really like the triarchy of beautiful bodies, old bodies, and wholly unnatural bodies

The production crew may not realize it, but they made a comment on how deviating from the natural progression of things just creates abominations and ugliness, and not necessarily due to WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY factors, but individual weakness
 
BullfrogBill said:
The Substance is just too up it's own ass with cringe feminist shit that it really hurts the movie to me.
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Tbh, the movie is only as feminist as you want it to be. For every "the patriarchy made her do it!" you can also raise a counter argument.

Fred loved her despite being old and past her prime, he valued her for her, not for her looks, he was someone she could have settled down with but because she had a huge ego she thought he was a gross nerd and rejected him until she was desperate for validation, before standing him up. She's clearly the bad guy here no matter which way you look at it.

Harvey is gross and meant to be gross, but nothing he does is because of personal prejudice, bussiness is bussiness at the end of the day and his sole motivation is money and nothing else. In fact he was perfectly understanding on her sick mother and let her chose the schedule with no issues. He didn't force her to work on off weeks. He reworked the entire show around her demand. Harvey didn't force her to steal time from her other self.

The first time she steals time it isn't because of work or anything, its because she wants to get wasted with and fuck a bad boy she met in a bar.

At the end of the day she is the source of every single one of her problems. She got greedy and stole time, she had a huge ego and rejected nice men she thought were "below her", she refused to take responsibility for the fact that she is one and treated her other self as a stranger and refused admit that the rules also applied to her when she went on the 3 month bender.

At the end of the day, she was a single woman during her 50 with no skills other than shaking her ass on camera, no family, no connections, no other abilities. She could literally vanish for weeks at a time and nobody cared.

She was gifted with beauty in her prime that put her ontop of the world that she procceded to completely waste drinking and fucking, making zero plans or contingencies for the future. The substance gave her a miraculous second chance to try again, and then she completely wasted that second chance too because she is a selfish egomaniac that wants everything NOW NOW NOW.

And honestly, the reading of the movie as the innevitable downfall of a narcissist is way more compelling as a tragedy narrative than "The patriarchy made her do it".
 
Doctor of Autism said:
I saw Presence and I didn't know anything about it except that it was "haunted house movie from the perspective of the ghost". But it was really worth watching and going in blind cause I really didn't expect the ending.
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Same. I think opinion is divided based on whether or not you saw the trailer first.
 
After seeing Smile 2, I don't know if comments predicting how it would end when the trailers first came out ruins the whole movie or not.
 
Finally watched The Substance a few nights ago.

It was awesome. Loved it. Definitely the best movie of 2024 (though that isn't saying much). It's one of the few movies that could be labeled as a "feminist film" while still being a damn great movie. I think that's because "The Substance" in of itself is totally something that would appeal to men as well-- this movie could have easily been made about a retired professional male athlete or something. It's just that this movie was a narrative about beauty standards and the toxicity of Hollywood. And, honestly, that's a message I can get behind.

This movie violently told its audience to love themselves, lol.

Thinking about it, this movie actually conveyed what the Barbie movie tried to convey far more successfully. This movie makes me despise Greta Gerwig as a storyteller even more. lol. All the Barbie movie did was talk about "patriarchy" and literally soapboxed about how "hard" it is to be a woman ... The Substance successfully showed how hard it can be to be a woman under certain circumstances.

I also appreciate movies that try to tackle different tones, and manage to do it successfully. This movie creeped me out, grossed me out, made me feel sad, and also made me laugh my ass off. It's great.
 
I, too, watched The Substance the other night due to seeing it mentioned so much here. Pretty good movie overall. I disagree with @StarkRavingMad's opinion that it could be labeled a "feminist movie" though. To me it was one big look at over the top vanity and narcissism.

Elisabeth Sparkle's character is tragic insofar as she never really had any depth to her as a person, and it seems to be her own fault. Like the comparison of an athlete, making your living off of your looks has a shelf life, and you become more and more of a niche as those looks fade and it's something that you have to come to terms with or face devastating consequences. Elisabeth never appeared to have anyone or anything other than her looks. We're never shown any family or friends or anything indicating she was anything other than what her looks provided her. On one hand I suppose it could be argued that she was strong and independent, but to me she comes across as absorbed by herself. At most there was the dorky "Fred" character who she was going to blow off until she was desperately in need of an ego boost.

Elisabeth represented a self-imposed death while Sue showed the highs of being shot to the top of the world like she came out of a cannon. Born on third base as an experimental bastard, to be lived through vicariously to a mother who wanted more time in the warmth of Hollywood lights and the affections of people who only love you when you're in your physical prime.

Finally the deranged narcissism it takes when the Elisabeth-Sue monster actually lives in her own delusions to the point that she thinks her fans will still love her despite looking like something from a nightmare. Still, even after everything she's done, she fails to understand that even she didn't really love or even like herself, just her looks. After everything, and fittingly dying on her sport on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, all she wanted was to be that star. Utterly pathetic.

Margaret Qualley looks really good in a body suit or in a birthday suit by the way. Dennis Quaid was hilarious as that over top top scumbag of a producer. Not a bad way at all to kill a couple of hours.
 
@Local Fed I'll start off by saying that I completely agree with you about Elizabeth Sparkle.

That said, I still think that the movie can easily be labeled as "feminist" by those who want to. No, not "feminist" in the way where we're supposed to view Elizabeth Sparkle as this "girlboss" who got ruined by the dreaded patriarchy ... But "feminist" in the way that Elizabeth poses the questions to the audience, "Do you really want to be this focused about your physical appearance? Don't you think there's more to life than this?" Lots of feminists talk about and criticize society's beauty standards, and I'd say that this movie was a commentary on that, in my opinion.

Not to get into a whole debate about feminism (especially since I am not a feminist myself lol), but while I think The Substance could have easily been made about a man (such as a professional athlete), the specific narrative told about the lead character in this movie is inherently female, IMO. In short, both men and woman deal with crap, but it's different crap. We all talk and joke about that dreaded "Wall" that every woman hits eventually ... This is definitely a horror movie and a black comedy where the main character has hit hers, haha.

That said, the narrative is clever enough where you could not label it as feminist, like with your analysis of the movie. I think that @Oilspill Battery's post explained well, too.

By the way, there's one moment in the batshit crazy third act that really stood out to me:
The NYE Event that Sue was supposed to host ... I noticed the mother who brought her very young daughter to watch the show in person. She had her daughter dressed up like toddlers and tiaras, perfectly happy to let her daughter watch a bunch of almost completely naked women on stage, ready to perform on stage with their almost pornographic "exercises" they do on TV. She only covers her daughter's eyes when "Monstro Elizasue" (lol I still can't stop laughing at that title card) reveals her face.

That was definitely the movie saying, "Don't raise your daughters to look up or aspire to what Hollywood portrays on TV or the movies." This message can easily appeal to a lot of feminists as well as non-feminists or "traditional" people.
 
StarkRavingMad said:
but while I think The Substance could have easily been made about a man (such as a professional athlete)
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I mean it writes itself doesn't it? If they ever did a sequel, it would be fun to focus on other people using the substance and what they use it for, like an anthology black mirror esque series.

Most obvious choice would be an athelete past his prime using the substane as a super anabolic steroid, and the side effects from those are already horrifying enough in real life.
 
I'm gonna be 100, I am kind of retarded, and I see all of you talking about The Substance, I was confusing it with the ice cream horror movie The Stuff and was wondering why it was suddenly getting praise.
 
TV's Adam West said:
I'm gonna be 100, I am kind of retarded, and I see all of you talking about The Substance, I was confusing it with the ice cream horror movie The Stuff and was wondering why it was suddenly getting praise.
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I haven't thought of that movie in ages, Mr. West!
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Local Fed said:
I, too, watched The Substance the other night due to seeing it mentioned so much here. Pretty good movie overall. I disagree with @StarkRavingMad's opinion that it could be labeled a "feminist movie" though.
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The movie has modern feminist undertones all throughout, it insinuates that chauvinist men are the source of toxicity in Hollywood and the reason they place such standards on beauty. It uses many modern feminist buzzwords all through the script to keep leftists entertained enough to keep watching the film and also to get that best picture nomination of course. I think Substance is a good movie but I don't think there's any doubt that it's a "feminist movie"
 
BullfrogBill said:
The movie has modern feminist undertones all throughout, it insinuates that chauvinist men are the source of toxicity in Hollywood and the reason they place such standards on beauty. It uses many modern feminist buzzwords all through the script to keep leftists entertained enough to keep watching the film and also to get that best picture nomination of course. I think Substance is a good movie but I don't think there's any doubt that it's a "feminist movie"
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Plus it gots nekkid breastesses
 
hey, guys who made 1978
great title assholes, glad to hear you just came out of a thirty year coma
 
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