Red Letter Media

[Dark Edea]

it's always a horror show when RLM decide to talk about the work of an auteur. They're unwilling to accept the possibility that anybody's work is above them, or at least they're unwilling to admit the possibility on camera. they know 99% of the people watching this shit won't perceive any more than they do (most will even see less, saddening thought), and because of this they can express every dissatisfaction they have with the film as an objective failure on the part of the director. RLM viewers are happy to roll with this, because going along with everything RLM say means that the film really is simple. Nobody has been filtered. They tell people that all art they don't like is merely beneath them. This allows viewers to feel privy to the insider expert knowledge on how filmmaking really ought to be done, and it also tells them they're really smarter than the people who helm 1/10 of a billion dollar projects and have hundreds of people working under them to realise their personal visions. Sure you couldn't actually make one yourself, but you know George Lucas is a retard because The Phantom Menace doesn't have a single protagonist, and that's bad... because... "don't ask questions, consume web content and get excited for next web content".

This review, like all of their worst ones, is full of pacing and editing sleights to rush you through the lack of sense behind what they're saying. Plenty of what they say or show could easily be interpreted as a positive element but is clearly presented with the intention of making you think less of what Snyder is doing, or rather, feel less. They create a negative tone, then bombard you with noise. One example, Snyder deliberately visually quotes other genre-works in Army of the Dead. Mike and Jay recognise this and show side by sides. The zombie attack at the start being framed exactly like the werewolf attack at the beginning of An American Werewolf in London being something I appreciated. Jay and Mike show you this, but rather than taking it as Snyder's way of showing reverence for the history of genre film and perhaps suggestions that we should be looking for other repeating elements, they just shallowly dismiss it as a sign of a lack of creativity, and then suggest that doing things less like these past films makes you an objectively bad filmmaker. The treacherous bad guy dies quickly in Aliens, that's better because CONSUME AND STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

What really sold this as an artistically illiterate shitshow for me was their mocking of the military convoy's name, 'Four Horsemen', paying no mind to the significance of the theme of apocalypse/end of days in the film. No mention of Gotterdammerung, the name of the vault, the prize, the motivation of the main cast, the (i thought) rather bluntly telegraphed key to understanding the entire subtext of the film. Maybe Mike wouldn't have been so bored if he were sharp enough to not miss absolutely everything that the film had going on beyond its most superficial elements. I'll explain my reading of the film in another post if any of you think I'm full of shit on this. I feel like at least half of the richness of my viewing experience came from the enjoyment I got from understanding and observing how these ideas were worked into the film.

This might seem overboard but this wilful cretinous retardation, this pure resentment-fueled guerilla war against the great men of cinematic art has absolutely polluted a significant portion of modern film discourse. This desire to build an understanding of art in which nothing is above the philistine and everything displeasing is below him will destroy art. Example below.

Spoiler: Stupid Fucking RLM-brained Cretin

View attachment 2200629
Look at this moron in the comments. Something about the movie doesn't flow with him, A superficial contradiction in the actions of a character. What does this mean? Obviously Zack Snyder is a fucking retard and didn't realise the moral ambiguity present in his writing. Thanks Lelldorin84, why don't they let you write 90 million dollar movies? Life is just unfair isn't it?

Also yes you may have realised this is about more than Army of the Dead. This video reawakened my disgust towards their preposterously arrogant and nonsensical hit-piece against George Lucas. But there's a greater trend underlying their reactions to both works which I have attempted to explain here.

AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS.

 

[Cantercoin]

assblasted diatribe

where's your tard wrangler at?

 

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

it's always a horror show when RLM decide to talk about the work of an auteur. They're unwilling to accept the possibility that anybody's work is above them, or at least they're unwilling to admit the possibility on camera. they know 99% of the people watching this shit won't perceive any more than they do (most will even see less, saddening thought), and because of this they can express every dissatisfaction they have with the film as an objective failure on the part of the director. RLM viewers are happy to roll with this, because going along with everything RLM say means that the film really is simple. Nobody has been filtered. They tell people that all art they don't like is merely beneath them. This allows viewers to feel privy to the insider expert knowledge on how filmmaking really ought to be done, and it also tells them they're really smarter than the people who helm 1/10 of a billion dollar projects and have hundreds of people working under them to realise their personal visions. Sure you couldn't actually make one yourself, but you know George Lucas is a retard because The Phantom Menace doesn't have a single protagonist, and that's bad... because... "don't ask questions, consume web content and get excited for next web content".

This review, like all of their worst ones, is full of pacing and editing sleights to rush you through the lack of sense behind what they're saying. Plenty of what they say or show could easily be interpreted as a positive element but is clearly presented with the intention of making you think less of what Snyder is doing, or rather, feel less. They create a negative tone, then bombard you with noise. One example, Snyder deliberately visually quotes other genre-works in Army of the Dead. Mike and Jay recognise this and show side by sides. The zombie attack at the start being framed exactly like the werewolf attack at the beginning of An American Werewolf in London being something I appreciated. Jay and Mike show you this, but rather than taking it as Snyder's way of showing reverence for the history of genre film and perhaps suggestions that we should be looking for other repeating elements, they just shallowly dismiss it as a sign of a lack of creativity, and then suggest that doing things less like these past films makes you an objectively bad filmmaker. The treacherous bad guy dies quickly in Aliens, that's better because CONSUME AND STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

What really sold this as an artistically illiterate shitshow for me was their mocking of the military convoy's name, 'Four Horsemen', paying no mind to the significance of the theme of apocalypse/end of days in the film. No mention of Gotterdammerung, the name of the vault, the prize, the motivation of the main cast, the (i thought) rather bluntly telegraphed key to understanding the entire subtext of the film. Maybe Mike wouldn't have been so bored if he were sharp enough to not miss absolutely everything that the film had going on beyond its most superficial elements. I'll explain my reading of the film in another post if any of you think I'm full of shit on this. I feel like at least half of the richness of my viewing experience came from the enjoyment I got from understanding and observing how these ideas were worked into the film.

This might seem overboard but this wilful cretinous retardation, this pure resentment-fueled guerilla war against the great men of cinematic art has absolutely polluted a significant portion of modern film discourse. This desire to build an understanding of art in which nothing is above the philistine and everything displeasing is below him will destroy art. Example below.

Spoiler: Stupid Fucking RLM-brained Cretin

View attachment 2200629
Look at this moron in the comments. Something about the movie doesn't flow with him, A superficial contradiction in the actions of a character. What does this mean? Obviously Zack Snyder is a fucking retard and didn't realise the moral ambiguity present in his writing. Thanks Lelldorin84, why don't they let you write 90 million dollar movies? Life is just unfair isn't it?

Also yes you may have realised this is about more than Army of the Dead. This video reawakened my disgust towards their preposterously arrogant and nonsensical hit-piece against George Lucas. But there's a greater trend underlying their reactions to both works which I have attempted to explain here.

That sure is a lot of words.

 

[Flexo]

it's always a horror show when RLM decide to talk about the work of an auteur. They're unwilling to accept the possibility that anybody's work is above them, or at least they're unwilling to admit the possibility on camera. they know 99% of the people watching this shit won't perceive any more than they do (most will even see less, saddening thought), and because of this they can express every dissatisfaction they have with the film as an objective failure on the part of the director. RLM viewers are happy to roll with this, because going along with everything RLM say means that the film really is simple. Nobody has been filtered. They tell people that all art they don't like is merely beneath them. This allows viewers to feel privy to the insider expert knowledge on how filmmaking really ought to be done, and it also tells them they're really smarter than the people who helm 1/10 of a billion dollar projects and have hundreds of people working under them to realise their personal visions. Sure you couldn't actually make one yourself, but you know George Lucas is a retard because The Phantom Menace doesn't have a single protagonist, and that's bad... because... "don't ask questions, consume web content and get excited for next web content".

This review, like all of their worst ones, is full of pacing and editing sleights to rush you through the lack of sense behind what they're saying. Plenty of what they say or show could easily be interpreted as a positive element but is clearly presented with the intention of making you think less of what Snyder is doing, or rather, feel less. They create a negative tone, then bombard you with noise. One example, Snyder deliberately visually quotes other genre-works in Army of the Dead. Mike and Jay recognise this and show side by sides. The zombie attack at the start being framed exactly like the werewolf attack at the beginning of An American Werewolf in London being something I appreciated. Jay and Mike show you this, but rather than taking it as Snyder's way of showing reverence for the history of genre film and perhaps suggestions that we should be looking for other repeating elements, they just shallowly dismiss it as a sign of a lack of creativity, and then suggest that doing things less like these past films makes you an objectively bad filmmaker. The treacherous bad guy dies quickly in Aliens, that's better because CONSUME AND STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

What really sold this as an artistically illiterate shitshow for me was their mocking of the military convoy's name, 'Four Horsemen', paying no mind to the significance of the theme of apocalypse/end of days in the film. No mention of Gotterdammerung, the name of the vault, the prize, the motivation of the main cast, the (i thought) rather bluntly telegraphed key to understanding the entire subtext of the film. Maybe Mike wouldn't have been so bored if he were sharp enough to not miss absolutely everything that the film had going on beyond its most superficial elements. I'll explain my reading of the film in another post if any of you think I'm full of shit on this. I feel like at least half of the richness of my viewing experience came from the enjoyment I got from understanding and observing how these ideas were worked into the film.

This might seem overboard but this wilful cretinous retardation, this pure resentment-fueled guerilla war against the great men of cinematic art has absolutely polluted a significant portion of modern film discourse. This desire to build an understanding of art in which nothing is above the philistine and everything displeasing is below him will destroy art. Example below.

Spoiler: Stupid Fucking RLM-brained Cretin

View attachment 2200629
Look at this moron in the comments. Something about the movie doesn't flow with him, A superficial contradiction in the actions of a character. What does this mean? Obviously Zack Snyder is a fucking retard and didn't realise the moral ambiguity present in his writing. Thanks Lelldorin84, why don't they let you write 90 million dollar movies? Life is just unfair isn't it?

Also yes you may have realised this is about more than Army of the Dead. This video reawakened my disgust towards their preposterously arrogant and nonsensical hit-piece against George Lucas. But there's a greater trend underlying their reactions to both works which I have attempted to explain here.

Oh wait. I have no truce here like in the Star Wars thread. I can be let off the chain again!

Though it is hilarious to read this whole thing batching about RLM fans believing something only because the hacks said it, while defending the filmmakers by... "well they've got millions of dollars at their disposal."

Way to saw off your own branch.

 

[BubbleButt]

Though it is hilarious to read this whole thing batching about RLM fans believing something only because the hacks said it, while defending the filmmakers by... "well they've got millions of dollars at their disposal."

Huh, just another rube that believes that money is the only metric of success.

 

[BScCollateral]

Apologies for getting all film history nerdy:

"Let's use zombies as weapons" was in Revolt of the Zombies. Released in 1936.

 

[ddlloo]

I had a slim amount of interest in seeing this film (which is more interest than I have in 95% of films), because I like that Snyder is one of the few big budget guys with a very distinct style and I thought his first foray into the franchise was alright, but hearing about that minute long scene of the guy getting savaged by a tiger turned me right off. Just seems far too self indulgent. And rape zombies? Really? The film sounds like a grotesque mess of well trodden tropes mixed with an all too strong attempt at being in your face and disturbing. And when you're saying that about a zombie film of all things, that's not a good sign.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I had a slim amount of interest in seeing this film (which is more interest than I have in 95% of films), because I like that Snyder is one of the few big budget guys with a very distinct style and I thought his first foray into the franchise was alright, but hearing about that minute long scene of the guy getting savaged by a tiger turned me right off. Just seems far too self indulgent. And rape zombies? Really? The film sounds like a grotesque mess of well trodden tropes mixed with an all too strong attempt at being in your face and disturbing. And when you're saying that about a zombie film of all things, that's not a good sign.

The zombie tiger kill is great and the rape zombie thing is only hinted at.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

it's always a horror show when RLM decide to talk about the work of an auteur. They're unwilling to accept the possibility that anybody's work is above them, or at least they're unwilling to admit the possibility on camera. they know 99% of the people watching this shit won't perceive any more than they do (most will even see less, saddening thought), and because of this they can express every dissatisfaction they have with the film as an objective failure on the part of the director. RLM viewers are happy to roll with this, because going along with everything RLM say means that the film really is simple. Nobody has been filtered. They tell people that all art they don't like is merely beneath them. This allows viewers to feel privy to the insider expert knowledge on how filmmaking really ought to be done, and it also tells them they're really smarter than the people who helm 1/10 of a billion dollar projects and have hundreds of people working under them to realise their personal visions. Sure you couldn't actually make one yourself, but you know George Lucas is a retard because The Phantom Menace doesn't have a single protagonist, and that's bad... because... "don't ask questions, consume web content and get excited for next web content".

This review, like all of their worst ones, is full of pacing and editing sleights to rush you through the lack of sense behind what they're saying. Plenty of what they say or show could easily be interpreted as a positive element but is clearly presented with the intention of making you think less of what Snyder is doing, or rather, feel less. They create a negative tone, then bombard you with noise. One example, Snyder deliberately visually quotes other genre-works in Army of the Dead. Mike and Jay recognise this and show side by sides. The zombie attack at the start being framed exactly like the werewolf attack at the beginning of An American Werewolf in London being something I appreciated. Jay and Mike show you this, but rather than taking it as Snyder's way of showing reverence for the history of genre film and perhaps suggestions that we should be looking for other repeating elements, they just shallowly dismiss it as a sign of a lack of creativity, and then suggest that doing things less like these past films makes you an objectively bad filmmaker. The treacherous bad guy dies quickly in Aliens, that's better because CONSUME AND STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

What really sold this as an artistically illiterate shitshow for me was their mocking of the military convoy's name, 'Four Horsemen', paying no mind to the significance of the theme of apocalypse/end of days in the film. No mention of Gotterdammerung, the name of the vault, the prize, the motivation of the main cast, the (i thought) rather bluntly telegraphed key to understanding the entire subtext of the film. Maybe Mike wouldn't have been so bored if he were sharp enough to not miss absolutely everything that the film had going on beyond its most superficial elements. I'll explain my reading of the film in another post if any of you think I'm full of shit on this. I feel like at least half of the richness of my viewing experience came from the enjoyment I got from understanding and observing how these ideas were worked into the film.

This might seem overboard but this wilful cretinous retardation, this pure resentment-fueled guerilla war against the great men of cinematic art has absolutely polluted a significant portion of modern film discourse. This desire to build an understanding of art in which nothing is above the philistine and everything displeasing is below him will destroy art. Example below.

Spoiler: Stupid Fucking RLM-brained Cretin

View attachment 2200629
Look at this moron in the comments. Something about the movie doesn't flow with him, A superficial contradiction in the actions of a character. What does this mean? Obviously Zack Snyder is a fucking retard and didn't realise the moral ambiguity present in his writing. Thanks Lelldorin84, why don't they let you write 90 million dollar movies? Life is just unfair isn't it?

Also yes you may have realised this is about more than Army of the Dead. This video reawakened my disgust towards their preposterously arrogant and nonsensical hit-piece against George Lucas. But there's a greater trend underlying their reactions to both works which I have attempted to explain here.

….where do you people come from?

 

[Doctor of Autism]

….where do you people come from?

They come from the Star Wars thread where the biggest autists reside.

 

[The Valeyard]

They come from the Star Wars thread where the biggest autists reside.

There were a few users bashing RLM for a couple of pages in that thread, but @Scarmiglione has never posted there.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Learning this today made me lol seltzer water out of my nose.

 

[The Valeyard]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=zq5-6PkVGCg
Learning this today made me lol seltzer water out of my nose.

I think that the explanation for that is that it's a cue that the kid needed to go to the bathroom, but I could be wrong.

 

[BScCollateral]

There were a few users bashing RLM for a couple of pages in that thread, but @Scarmiglione has never posted there.

He's been around since Thursday, which is interesting.

 

[TerminalTryHard]

it's always a horror show when RLM decide to talk about the work of an auteur. They're unwilling to accept the possibility that anybody's work is above them, or at least they're unwilling to admit the possibility on camera. they know 99% of the people watching this shit won't perceive any more than they do (most will even see less, saddening thought), and because of this they can express every dissatisfaction they have with the film as an objective failure on the part of the director. RLM viewers are happy to roll with this, because going along with everything RLM say means that the film really is simple. Nobody has been filtered. They tell people that all art they don't like is merely beneath them. This allows viewers to feel privy to the insider expert knowledge on how filmmaking really ought to be done, and it also tells them they're really smarter than the people who helm 1/10 of a billion dollar projects and have hundreds of people working under them to realise their personal visions. Sure you couldn't actually make one yourself, but you know George Lucas is a retard because The Phantom Menace doesn't have a single protagonist, and that's bad... because... "don't ask questions, consume web content and get excited for next web content".

This review, like all of their worst ones, is full of pacing and editing sleights to rush you through the lack of sense behind what they're saying. Plenty of what they say or show could easily be interpreted as a positive element but is clearly presented with the intention of making you think less of what Snyder is doing, or rather, feel less. They create a negative tone, then bombard you with noise. One example, Snyder deliberately visually quotes other genre-works in Army of the Dead. Mike and Jay recognise this and show side by sides. The zombie attack at the start being framed exactly like the werewolf attack at the beginning of An American Werewolf in London being something I appreciated. Jay and Mike show you this, but rather than taking it as Snyder's way of showing reverence for the history of genre film and perhaps suggestions that we should be looking for other repeating elements, they just shallowly dismiss it as a sign of a lack of creativity, and then suggest that doing things less like these past films makes you an objectively bad filmmaker. The treacherous bad guy dies quickly in Aliens, that's better because CONSUME AND STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

What really sold this as an artistically illiterate shitshow for me was their mocking of the military convoy's name, 'Four Horsemen', paying no mind to the significance of the theme of apocalypse/end of days in the film. No mention of Gotterdammerung, the name of the vault, the prize, the motivation of the main cast, the (i thought) rather bluntly telegraphed key to understanding the entire subtext of the film. Maybe Mike wouldn't have been so bored if he were sharp enough to not miss absolutely everything that the film had going on beyond its most superficial elements. I'll explain my reading of the film in another post if any of you think I'm full of shit on this. I feel like at least half of the richness of my viewing experience came from the enjoyment I got from understanding and observing how these ideas were worked into the film.

This might seem overboard but this wilful cretinous retardation, this pure resentment-fueled guerilla war against the great men of cinematic art has absolutely polluted a significant portion of modern film discourse. This desire to build an understanding of art in which nothing is above the philistine and everything displeasing is below him will destroy art. Example below.

Spoiler: Stupid Fucking RLM-brained Cretin

View attachment 2200629
Look at this moron in the comments. Something about the movie doesn't flow with him, A superficial contradiction in the actions of a character. What does this mean? Obviously Zack Snyder is a fucking retard and didn't realise the moral ambiguity present in his writing. Thanks Lelldorin84, why don't they let you write 90 million dollar movies? Life is just unfair isn't it?

Also yes you may have realised this is about more than Army of the Dead. This video reawakened my disgust towards their preposterously arrogant and nonsensical hit-piece against George Lucas. But there's a greater trend underlying their reactions to both works which I have attempted to explain here.

God, these copypastas just keep getting worse and worse.

 

[BubbleButt]

I think that the explanation for that is that it's a cue that the kid needed to go to the bathroom, but I could be wrong.

That is correct.

 

[Scarmiglione]

>Zack Snyder

Yes, Zack Snyder, the great man of film.

Spoiler: What it means to be a great man of cinema

A man capable of rallying the wills of others and bending them towards the fulfillment of his own personal visions. Sure there are bigger films than Army of the Dead, but most of them are shit. And the reason why is because without the vision and will of a great man at the top capable of asserting order over that many other wills the whole thing falls apart. A handy relatively recent example being Solo: A Star Wars Story, officially the seventh most expensive film ever made clocking in with a budget of 275 million dollars, but who knows how high that number actually got in reality.

Solo is what happens when you try to synthesize greatness. This belief it's something we can just streamline, industrialise, do all of the processing by steam. No big heads messing things up with their idiosyncratic weirdness. great production by steam. Artistic rule by coffee-fetchers, button-pushers, middlemen and mere craftsmen. The result is a 275 million dollar car crash. No not even that much. Car Crashes are cool to observe. The Room is a car crash. And that's because in his own way Tommy Wiseau is also a great man of film. Almost no technical skill and a vision so shallow it reaches the point of charming naivete, but an auteur nonetheless. This vital force of will imbues his work with vitality and strength that has allowed it to outlast countless works that blow him out of the water in terms of competence. The auteur element is the lifeblood of art, it's the soul. It's the reason Tommy Wiseau is a little emoji you can post on this forum but even most of the people who saw it have completely forgotten that Solo: A Star Wars Story even existed. Solo is not an artistic car crash, it's more like the artistic equivalent to that tanker getting stuck in the Suez Canal. Slow, cumbersome, frustrating, inevitable. The works of great men run into the ground by the morons who crept into their system. Uncountable man-hours poured into a project that means nothing. All the work wasted on a result that's simply boring.

When you watch a Zack Snyder film you are getting a Zack Snyder film. He isn't just a name on the can. He's the essential element of the work. 90 million dollars to do as he pleases, and this vision is his from coming up with the name to personally pointing the cameras while shooting to editing the final cut to his own satisfaction. It's not often that one man is able to direct this much towards a vision that's entirely his own. Greatness is power. Making what you want happen from scratch. Zack Snyder is a man with a head full of very grand and idiosyncratic visions which he has been able to realise more or less entirely to his own standards several times over. This makes him a great man of cinema.

Right? They literally pointed that out. It didn't go over anyone's head. That's why they were making fun of it for being on the nose in the extreme.

Now if you'll excuse me I am going to watch them talk about decidedly non-auteur works like The Lighthouse, The Intern, Fire Walk With Me, True Stories, and Exorcist III.

Spoiler: A brief thought on the significance of apocalyptic themes in Army of the Dead

It absolutely went over their head because they were too stupid or lazy to connect 'Four Horsemen' to 'Gotterdammerung', as was everyone in this thread even though i explicitly said it. You apes still don't get it. The "four horsemen" reference doesn't just mean "bad things are about to happen". If that's all you see going on maybe this feels on the nose, but that's not all that's going on. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, old Christian vision of the end times composed under the Roman Empire. Think Rome. Think the light of civilisation almost going out. This explicit hint alone and a bit of perception should be enough to get you over the line but Snyder goes further. A German artisan craftsman who listens to Wagner has to open the Gotterdammerung.

Gotterdammerung. The Twilight of the Gods. Ragnarok. The death and rebirth of the world. The European epic of the cycle of life and civilisation. That is what this film is about. The Four Horsemen reference at the beginning is your early hint to direct your thoughts to a grander interpretation of the story than the direct and literal circumstances of the protagonists. The later Wagner references are your big nudge. This is what the film is about. The film is Snyder's Wagnerian vision of the end of America and the white first world.

The film opens with two opposed advanced strains of American culture that literally collide head-on, with an older simpler strain caught in the middle. Faustian man is starting to cross the final frontier, pursuit of power has pushed him to start literally leaving humanity behind. One of their pawns has fallen victim to an experiment that goes beyond the accepted level of human instrumentalisation that takes place in all militaries. Through some biomechanical engineering wizardry an American soldier has been turned into some kind of base, nigh-unstoppable killing machine, at the cost of all of his higher faculties. The (overwhelmingly white) American military portrayed in this film appear as the noble, good-intentioned and middlingly sophisticated pawns of powers incomprehensibly darker and more ambitious than they can imagine (our introduction to the military is them speculating as to what their masters could have given them to carry, their thoughts all revolve around americana lore with a tinge of darkness and awe of the power they know their side is capable of ("could be a briefcase nuke"), but they clearly believe that their side is fundamentally good, or at least they are again literally shown to be unable to imagine the inhumanity of what powerful Americans have done with their unwitting cooperation.

We have Faustian puppetmasters, we have noble, competent and capable of sacrificing boots on the ground, the third american strain present is the decadents. The careless vegas newlyweds who are too busy revelling in their successful mockery of what was once a sacrament to see what's coming right for them. This is true of both sides, the guys who still take america seriously and the ones who no longer give a shit are both blindsided by the freak event which unleashes the deranged ambitions of our civilisation's most powerful.

The freak event happens, the masters' project gets loose, and we get Snyder's visual quote of American Werewolf in London, a film about this irresistible base monster that lurks inside men breaking out and wreaking destruction. Maybe Snyder was trying to say more than "hey remember this horror film i'm making a horror film too let's make them look the same". He's giving you an early signal to tell you how we might think about the monsters in this film.

Then we get the montage of the destruction of Las Vegas. A vision of weakness, decadence and helplessness in the face of a new surging mass of pseudo-humanity. It's not even a fight, within Vegas the old order is swept aside by the new. The limited remaining spots of vitality, duty, power and courage in the old order resist, but it's not enough. The last vestiges of classical American heroism are overwhelmed. The tall, clean, intelligent and noble looking white army officer is overrun while fighting and calls down a plane to ensure his last job is done right. Too much of what's finer and more sophisticated in America has become fragile, decadent, or useless. Where we see true resistance is in the introduction-role of our main cast. We're shown their pre-apocalypse careers. Why do you think that is? Because class and social status are everything in this film. Nobody is just who they are. Everyone and everything stands for more than what's right in front of you. The greatest resistance to the fall seems to be coming from vital but unrefined portions of American society. The self-sufficient strugglers. Small business owners, labourers, we get an up-and-coming academic from an underprivileged background. These ones put up the fight, they're strong because they haven't had time to go brittle, their america is an america still growing and trying to become, they're coming into their full strength and potency. The academic literally fights with a working man's power-tool which he is shown to reflexively repurpose into a weapon when threatened. This character is the most culturally refined of the hard vegas survivors and the highest up the social scale. This moment is your clear sign that despite his education it is his hard worker's edge that saves him. American/faustian/white Civilisation has hit its zenith, or its greatest crisis, either way what is not robust will burn.

The film is about this cyclical process of striving upwards toward successively greater heights, successively greater ambitions and works, reaching great unique heights, and then a crashing return to a nadir only to start again. Look how much is going on just in the film's prologue. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this film. And it all went over nearly everyone's heads. Not catching this doesn't make you a bad person, but it absolutely makes you a poor critic.

This is the kind of detail one can realise as an auteur. This is the kind of subtext that can easily be coded into a film which still remains entirely watchable on its surface. Only seeing the surface is fine. Only seeing the surface and disliking the surface is fine. Only seeing the surface, disliking the surface, and telling people authoritatively that the work is stupid because of this is not fine. It's a conspiracy against society's cultivation of greater taste and sensitivity. It's a crime against the soul of humanity.

Oh wait. I have no truce here like in the Star Wars thread. I can be let off the chain again!

Though it is hilarious to read this whole thing batching about RLM fans believing something only because the hacks said it, while defending the filmmakers by... "well they've got millions of dollars at their disposal."

Way to saw off your own branch.

Spoiler: Brief Answer

The point is not that RLM fans believe what RLM say, though that is a separate problem. The great underlying issue here is the conspiracy between RLM and viewers to maintain the comfortable assumption that what is displeasing is bad and stupid and that these monumental works of human expression have nothing going on that we can't fully admire or dismiss within a few minutes. RLM is comfortable noise. And the comfort is in them assuring you, in their professional capacity as former wedding photographers, that the works of your betters are actually hot garbage. You don't challenge RLM and RLM don't challenge you. Everyone just submits to a vapid almost language-like droning until death. Much better than dealing with the shame of acknowledging anybody's better than you.

And securing a massive stack of money to put towards something pleasing to yourself is evidence of a kind of greatness, even if you fail. There's no question it's enough to incur resentment from those who don't, which is why so many love to hear of these endeavours failing. This here isn't so much a defense of filmmakers as an attempt at a pre-emptive defusal of criticism. The fact they're able to secure such vast resources for their own use is upsetting to the wretched and insecure. Not saying nobody can have a valid critique of film because of this, but it's something which should always be in the back of our minds, both when reading criticism and when preparing to make our own. My proper defense of the filmmakers is the rest of my posting about film on this site, and elsewhere.

And that's enough for now.

Yes this is a lot of words. Keep collectively chanting your incantation from the walls of Fort Dunning-Krueger like it means anything but the protective reassurance of your fellow idiots. "autistic!", "an autist!", "look how many words!", "autistic!", "autistic!", "imagine caring about cinema", "only an autistic would write this much about something!", "autistic!"

 

[Mola Ram]

Yes, Zack Snyder, the great man of film.

Spoiler: What it means to be a great man of cinema

A man capable of rallying the wills of others and bending them towards the fulfillment of his own personal visions. Sure there are bigger films than Army of the Dead, but most of them are shit. And the reason why is because without the vision and will of a great man at the top capable of asserting order over that many other wills the whole thing falls apart. A handy relatively recent example being Solo: A Star Wars Story, officially the seventh most expensive film ever made clocking in with a budget of 275 million dollars, but who knows how high that number actually got in reality.

Solo is what happens when you try to synthesize greatness. This belief it's something we can just streamline, industrialise, do all of the processing by steam. No big heads messing things up with their idiosyncratic weirdness. great production by steam. Artistic rule by coffee-fetchers, button-pushers, middlemen and mere craftsmen. The result is a 275 million dollar car crash. No not even that much. Car Crashes are cool to observe. The Room is a car crash. And that's because in his own way Tommy Wiseau is also a great man of film. Almost no technical skill and a vision so shallow it reaches the point of charming naivete, but an auteur nonetheless. This vital force of will imbues his work with vitality and strength that has allowed it to outlast countless works that blow him out of the water in terms of competence. The auteur element is the lifeblood of art, it's the soul. It's the reason Tommy Wiseau is a little emoji you can post on this forum but even most of the people who saw it have completely forgotten that Solo: A Star Wars Story even existed. Solo is not an artistic car crash, it's more like the artistic equivalent to that tanker getting stuck in the Suez Canal. Slow, cumbersome, frustrating, inevitable. The works of great men run into the ground by the morons who crept into their system. Uncountable man-hours poured into a project that means nothing. All the work wasted on a result that's simply boring.

When you watch a Zack Snyder film you are getting a Zack Snyder film. He isn't just a name on the can. He's the essential element of the work. 90 million dollars to do as he pleases, and this vision is his from coming up with the name to personally pointing the cameras while shooting to editing the final cut to his own satisfaction. It's not often that one man is able to direct this much towards a vision that's entirely his own. Greatness is power. Making what you want happen from scratch. Zack Snyder is a man with a head full of very grand and idiosyncratic visions which he has been able to realise more or less entirely to his own standards several times over. This makes him a great man of cinema.

Spoiler: A brief thought on the significance of apocalyptic themes in Army of the Dead

It absolutely went over their head because they were too stupid or lazy to connect 'Four Horsemen' to 'Gotterdammerung', as was everyone in this thread even though i explicitly said it. You apes still don't get it. The "four horsemen" reference doesn't just mean "bad things are about to happen". If that's all you see going on maybe this feels on the nose, but that's not all that's going on. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, old Christian vision of the end times composed under the Roman Empire. Think Rome. Think the light of civilisation almost going out. This explicit hint alone and a bit of perception should be enough to get you over the line but Snyder goes further. A German artisan craftsman who listens to Wagner has to open the Gotterdammerung.

Gotterdammerung. The Twilight of the Gods. Ragnarok. The death and rebirth of the world. The European epic of the cycle of life and civilisation. That is what this film is about. The Four Horsemen reference at the beginning is your early hint to direct your thoughts to a grander interpretation of the story than the direct and literal circumstances of the protagonists. The later Wagner references are your big nudge. This is what the film is about. The film is Snyder's Wagnerian vision of the end of America and the white first world.

The film opens with two opposed advanced strains of American culture that literally collide head-on, with an older simpler strain caught in the middle. Faustian man is starting to cross the final frontier, pursuit of power has pushed him to start literally leaving humanity behind. One of their pawns has fallen victim to an experiment that goes beyond the accepted level of human instrumentalisation that takes place in all militaries. Through some biomechanical engineering wizardry an American soldier has been turned into some kind of base, nigh-unstoppable killing machine, at the cost of all of his higher faculties. The (overwhelmingly white) American military portrayed in this film appear as the noble, good-intentioned and middlingly sophisticated pawns of powers incomprehensibly darker and more ambitious than they can imagine (our introduction to the military is them speculating as to what their masters could have given them to carry, their thoughts all revolve around americana lore with a tinge of darkness and awe of the power they know their side is capable of ("could be a briefcase nuke"), but they clearly believe that their side is fundamentally good, or at least they are again literally shown to be unable to imagine the inhumanity of what powerful Americans have done with their unwitting cooperation.

We have Faustian puppetmasters, we have noble, competent and capable of sacrificing boots on the ground, the third american strain present is the decadents. The careless vegas newlyweds who are too busy revelling in their successful mockery of what was once a sacrament to see what's coming right for them. This is true of both sides, the guys who still take america seriously and the ones who no longer give a shit are both blindsided by the freak event which unleashes the deranged ambitions of our civilisation's most powerful.

The freak event happens, the masters' project gets loose, and we get Snyder's visual quote of American Werewolf in London, a film about this irresistible base monster that lurks inside men breaking out and wreaking destruction. Maybe Snyder was trying to say more than "hey remember this horror film i'm making a horror film too let's make them look the same". He's giving you an early signal to tell you how we might think about the monsters in this film.

Then we get the montage of the destruction of Las Vegas. A vision of weakness, decadence and helplessness in the face of a new surging mass of pseudo-humanity. It's not even a fight, within Vegas the old order is swept aside by the new. The limited remaining spots of vitality, duty, power and courage in the old order resist, but it's not enough. The last vestiges of classical American heroism are overwhelmed. The tall, clean, intelligent and noble looking white army officer is overrun while fighting and calls down a plane to ensure his last job is done right. Too much of what's finer and more sophisticated in America has become fragile, decadent, or useless. Where we see true resistance is in the introduction-role of our main cast. We're shown their pre-apocalypse careers. Why do you think that is? Because class and social status are everything in this film. Nobody is just who they are. Everyone and everything stands for more than what's right in front of you. The greatest resistance to the fall seems to be coming from vital but unrefined portions of American society. The self-sufficient strugglers. Small business owners, labourers, we get an up-and-coming academic from an underprivileged background. These ones put up the fight, they're strong because they haven't had time to go brittle, their america is an america still growing and trying to become, they're coming into their full strength and potency. The academic literally fights with a working man's power-tool which he is shown to reflexively repurpose into a weapon when threatened. This character is the most culturally refined of the hard vegas survivors and the highest up the social scale. This moment is your clear sign that despite his education it is his hard worker's edge that saves him. American/faustian/white Civilisation has hit its zenith, or its greatest crisis, either way what is not robust will burn.

The film is about this cyclical process of striving upwards toward successively greater heights, successively greater ambitions and works, reaching great unique heights, and then a crashing return to a nadir only to start again. Look how much is going on just in the film's prologue. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this film. And it all went over nearly everyone's heads. Not catching this doesn't make you a bad person, but it absolutely makes you a poor critic.

This is the kind of detail one can realise as an auteur. This is the kind of subtext that can easily be coded into a film which still remains entirely watchable on its surface. Only seeing the surface is fine. Only seeing the surface and disliking the surface is fine. Only seeing the surface, disliking the surface, and telling people authoritatively that the work is stupid because of this is not fine. It's a conspiracy against society's cultivation of greater taste and sensitivity. It's a crime against the soul of humanity.

Spoiler: Brief Answer

The point is not that RLM fans believe what RLM say, though that is a separate problem. The great underlying issue here is the conspiracy between RLM and viewers to maintain the comfortable assumption that what is displeasing is bad and stupid and that these monumental works of human expression have nothing going on that we can't fully admire or dismiss within a few minutes. RLM is comfortable noise. And the comfort is in them assuring you, in their professional capacity as former wedding photographers, that the works of your betters are actually hot garbage. You don't challenge RLM and RLM don't challenge you. Everyone just submits to a vapid almost language-like droning until death. Much better than dealing with the shame of acknowledging anybody's better than you.

And securing a massive stack of money to put towards something pleasing to yourself is evidence of a kind of greatness, even if you fail. There's no question it's enough to incur resentment from those who don't, which is why so many love to hear of these endeavours failing. This here isn't so much a defense of filmmakers as an attempt at a pre-emptive defusal of criticism. The fact they're able to secure such vast resources for their own use is upsetting to the wretched and insecure. Not saying nobody can have a valid critique of film because of this, but it's something which should always be in the back of our minds, both when reading criticism and when preparing to make our own. My proper defense of the filmmakers is the rest of my posting about film on this site, and elsewhere.

And that's enough for now.

Yes this is a lot of words. Keep collectively chanting your incantation from the walls of Fort Dunning-Krueger like it means anything but the protective reassurance of your fellow idiots. "autistic!", "an autist!", "look how many words!", "autistic!", "autistic!", "imagine caring about cinema", "only an autistic would write this much about something!", "autistic!"

TL;DR: [autistic screeching]

 

[Flexo]

monumental works of human expression

LoL these movies may be immense, but they are not monumental. Cecil B DeMille, THAT guy did monumental movies.

that the works of your betters are actually hot garbag

"Your betters" - now that's a laugh.

Peter Jackson meticulously restored the footage of WW1, bringing forth to a new generation a bit of history into stark reality.

That man? Yeah, he's better than me probably. Zombie movie dude? Going to need to demonstrate more worth as a human being beyond "I have people throw lots of money at me."

And securing a massive stack of money to put towards something pleasing to yourself is evidence of a kind of greatness, even if you fail.

Bernie Madoff? Jeffery Epstein? "Great men."

LoL sure dude.

The fact they're able to secure such vast resources for their own use is upsetting to the wretched and insecure. Not saying nobody can have a valid critique of film because of this, but it's something which should always be in the back of our minds, both when reading criticism and when preparing to make our own. My proper defense of the filmmakers is the rest of my posting about film on this site, and elsewhere.

Who in the hell let Moviebob on the site?

 

[Sped Xing]

I think that may actually be the first time Mike heard the term "sex pest." He probably thinks Jay came up with it.