Super disappointment thread (Multimedia Edition)

[Product Placement]

Movies that disappointed me
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
After the prequels I was a fool to ever have hope this would turn out good, but at the time I thought having someone like Spielberg to rain in Lucas worst ideas rather than the yes men of the prequels could have least turn out something alright,

Dark Knight Rises
Up till that point enjoyed all of Nolan's movies, and this movie does have a few good set-pieces but the plot is incredibly poorly thought out and it kept taking me out of the movie. Also not helped by a miscast Anne Hathaway and an uncharacteristically bad Marion Cotillard.

The Interview
This movie has a killer idea for a comedy, "Aaron and Dave, who run a popular late-night show, get a chance to interview Kim Jong-un. The CIA decides to take advantage of the opportunity and devices a plan to assassinate the infamous dictator."
Yet the movie fails on every level, it's not even funny or shocking, it's a subpar stoner comedy. If it wasn't for North Korea hacking Sony over it, the movie would have been forgotten.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
So much talent behind the movie yet the movie itself is total trash. Never read the comic so no idea how close it is to that or if the issues are just with the movie.
The story and characters in this movie are just not engaging, worst of all is Ramona Flowers who has no personality what so ever but they even went out of their way to make the actress look ugly with the hairstyle they gave her.

Ali G Indahouse
I love the show, but they removed the reality part for the movie and just went for a totally fictional story which could have worked if the script was any good. It ended up being an unfunny movie made for the people Ali G was taking the piss out in the first place. The plot is pretty much the same as every movie based on a TV Show, got to stop an evil business/person who wants to destroy/ take over a place we like/live in.

Star Trek Into Darkness
I enjoyed the first reboot Star Trek wasn't great by any means but a solid 6/10 movie. To follow up they did a remake of Wrath of Khan rather than doing something fresh or even take a storyline from the TV show and they don't even rehash the plot of that movie well with every change being for the worse.
But the filmmaking is all-around bad here with J.J. Abrams worst tendencies turned up to 11.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

I liked Squid Game for the most part. My major gripes against it were:
1) The glass bridge exploding. It felt like a lazy, cheap way to make it easy to kill off one of the major characters and it seemed like it went against the spirit of the games.
2) The organ harvesting and cop plot line felt like unnecessary filler that never really goes anywhere and has very little impact on the main plot. It also leads to my next problem.
3) The Front Man being the cop's lost brother felt like something out of a much cheaper, poorly written drama or even a parody of a drama. Something you'd see in the Power Rangers.
4) The finale was a dud for me. All this build up to the final game... and it's basically just two dudes rolling around in the mud for ten minutes. Then it caps off with about twenty minutes of Gi-hun being mopey. I also don't buy the sequel bait -- what, the dimwit Gi-hun who largely won through plot contrivances is going to take down the Game?

 

[Cactus Concerto]

That said, Sae-Byeok is really the only one of the major players I feel sorry for. Everyone else either got themselves into their troubles or was just some kind of raving psychopath.

I'd argue Sae-Byeok absolutely got herself into this situation. She apparently had enough money at first to start making headway at making more and trying to secure something for her and her brother but she opted for optimism and selfish desires which led to her blowing all the money on an informant telling her her mother didn't make it across. She's the display of the small beginnings Gihun likely went through - one wrong choice too many and continuous blind optimism, clinging onto hope and what-could-be's instead of living in the here and now.

Going back to the Squid Game talk, I felt like the show had themes that were already done in the Danganronpa and Total Drama series, and the show doesn't seem to add much new. It's as if you can either play the Danganronpa games, or watch the Total Drama series, and you'd see very similar things in Squid Game, to the point that you don't even have to watch it. Granted, killing is not a thing in the Total Drama series, because it's a teen cartoon, so almost all of the characters (except the Interns) are all Immortal, which leads to injuries being done for laughs.

In my eyes Danganronpa is more what happens when people are exposed to Despair™ and how do they succumb to it, how long can the will of an individual withstand giving into that despair and making decisions based solely on it. Total Drama is a parody on reality television that focuses more on taking the characters you see on such shows and kicking the stereotypes up to an eleven. Squid Game, while similar to Dangan because Despair™, has their existing misery fuel their desire for money to magically solve their problems. Reacting to a manufactured environment versus examining how much people are willing to put on the line for that Won.

I liked Squid Game for the most part. My major gripes against it were:
1) The glass bridge exploding. It felt like a lazy, cheap way to make it easy to kill off one of the major characters and it seemed like it went against the spirit of the games.
2) The organ harvesting and cop plot line felt like unnecessary filler that never really goes anywhere and has very little impact on the main plot. It also leads to my next problem.
3) The Front Man being the cop's lost brother felt like something out of a much cheaper, poorly written drama or even a parody of a drama. Something you'd see in the Power Rangers.
4) The finale was a dud for me. All this build up to the final game... and it's basically just two dudes rolling around in the mud for ten minutes. Then it caps off with about twenty minutes of Gi-hun being mopey. I also don't buy the sequel bait -- what, the dimwit Gi-hun who largely won through plot contrivances is going to take down the Game?

YEP. Which finally brings me into the meat of this post.

I finally got around to watching the last 3 episodes and oh man. Oh man.

Spoiler: More Squid Game bullshit here.

THE BRIDGE GAME IS THE BIGGEST LOAD OF BULLSHIT I HAVE EVER SEEN.

I don't know what children's game they were mimicking aside from the general idea of "the floor is lava, skipping stones, jumping on stuff in the wild" but the VIPs killed any suspension and tension every time it cut to them. They brought some good laughs and a lot of eye-rolls but I hated the way they were used to jerk off the plot and explain and already self-explanatory concept over and over again. The show is amazing at being simple to understand, I don't need a lion and a deer telling me shit I could already tell because the script and direction told me everything I needed to know already.

The glass should not have blown up. Again, against the spirit of the games. And it makes no sense this far into the games. Red Light, Green Light works as a relentless murder fest because they're culling 456 people in one go. Those are revolt numbers. And even in the event that everyone fucking dies, they haven't spent numerous resources housing and feeding them. The VIPs likely aren't attached to anyone yet, especially if they die during the first game. It's a set back but a quick reset with minimal bite back.

Having a game BEFORE THE FINALE that could very easily end in every person dying is so unbelievably stupid. If Sang-woo hadn't pushed the glass man, they'd all be dead. Then who eats the steak? How miserable are the VIPs with the anti-climatic outcome? And, more in line with the in-universe explanations, this goes against EVERYTHING this version of the games is built on.

It's meant to be giving people a "fair" shot at money the creator doesn't need. All of the games up to that point had been directly based on the old man's youth and early life. He doesn't even make a connection for the glass spectacle during his death bed rambling. What the absolute fuck was that? If the show make an effort to show that yes, the games were a balancing act of the old man's warped hospitality and an entertainment show for the rich, this wouldn't matter because it would be a showcase of the old man's morality being starkly put into question. But no, the show doesn't act like this is completely out of place and wrong. The glass did a big bang, you guys!

The cop plot line.

Would have gone over better if the cop specifically infiltrated the games and found out his brother was one of the organ harvesting victims who had been directly involved in that year's version of the games. That or have the cop be following a lead about an organ harvesting operation and forgo the brother angle entirely. His brother was such a nothing cameo by Lee Byunghun which I find amazing because they handled Gong Yoo's cameo role so magnificently. It shows that the cop plot was an afterthought once the deal was made with Netflix, as the director mentioned.

Gi-hun, you're a fucking dolt.

He spends a year sitting on blood money that his childhood friend COMMITTED SUICIDE to give specifically to him. Instead of immediately helping Sae-byeok's brother and Sang-woo's mother at the very fucking least, he faffs about doing because his mother is dead, I guess. Which is even dumber because one of her last wishes was her son not getting his daughter ripped out of his fucking life. What does he do? Let her go to America, presumably not seeing her once throughout that year.

His entire arc took a sharp downwards turn during the confrontation after the glass game (where everything goes wrong, I guess). By this point he has been directly responsible for the death of an old man with dementia. I don't give a fuck that he didn't hold the gun to his head, he was the reason the man died. Sang-woo takes this in stride and commits to the reality of the games while Gi-hun continues to live in the make-believe land of every game post-tug of war, where helping himself didn't directly get someone else killed.

He doubles down on this and continues to bait Sang-woo, likely because he's dealing poorly with his guilt and absolutely refuses to accept that he's a murderer now. He's no longer the good guy, the paragon he wishes he was. He has blood on his hands and he cannot change that.

This in and of itself isn't bad writing. He's in denial. Perhaps we are seeing a shift: the show stripping back the heroic paint on our hero to show that he is as dastardly as the rest, wearing sheep's clothing. Except, during the encounter with the old man, HE HAS NOT CHANGED. The old man makes an off-hand comment about guilt and nothing else is said about Gi-hun blaming everyone but himself for what transpired. "There's still good in the world!" Gi-hun exclaims as cops collect a dying man off the streets, the man who refused to be that change and instead waffled around for a whole year doing nothing for anybody, not even himself.

He has devolved into a piece of shit. To the eyes of the audience, he is now everything that his mother claimed he was. It's understandable why his wife would have left him. He's a showcase of his every negative trait and he revels in it.

However, the show then says, "he's starting over!" Red hair, tan skin, he's going to change his life. Finally, he's going to come to terms with reality, accept it, and do his best to change his life with what he has, regardless of his guilt to denial or whatever.

But then, as he's about to board a plane to SEE HIS DAUGHTER, THE PRIMARY FUCKING REASON HE RE-JOINED THE GAMES AFTER THE FIRST GAME, THE MOTHER FUCKER GOES BACK BECAUSE "MUH MORALITY, GONNA STOP THE SQUID GAME."

No, you absolute cock. GET YOUR DAMN DAUGHTER BACK.

Throughout the first episodes, she is the ONE person that continues to believe in and have faith in him when every other person has given up or and abandoned him. She's smart enough to know he's in bad times but she stands by him and continues to openly love him regardless. And he finds a way to make it up to every person (even some random North Korean girl he barely knew who arguably helped get him into the Squid Game situation) EXCEPT HIS DAUGHTER.

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?

And we as the audience are supposed to support this fucker? No. Fuck off.

The show spits in the face of its supposed message by having its one 'shining beacon' step into the dirt, get saved at every fucking turn, refuse to acknowledge the sacrifices and choices other people carried on his behalf that got him where he is now, have him refuse to acknowledge his own flaws, and then ultimately step out of the pit to shit on his daughter so he can go on some crime fighting crusade.

And it's framed as a GOOD THING. NO. NO, IT ISN'T.

TL;DR: First six episodes are still incredibly solid but the last three take so many stupid turns, it's amazing it was the same show. Most frustratingly is that a lot could have been fixed with a couple of rewrites and some more time in the oven. In other words: I'm MATI but more importantly:

Sang-woo is the best character in this show. Unlike many of the other characters, the more I think about him and reference his actions and words and decisions, the more I admire the solid writing that went into him and the consistently of his decision-making even as he seemed to sway from 'good' to 'bad'. He never flipped on a dime and all of his choices are logical by the standards he sets himself even early on in the show. He's absolutely fucking beautiful to watch and if you want to stick it out despite all this 6 episode good, 3 episode bad shit, do it for him.

Bet on number 218, Cho Sang-woo.

 

[Basic Bleach]

@Cactus Concerto I can't reply (finally it's my turn lol) but I'd agree with you about Sang-woo.
I feel like he's the most obvious struggling-with-guilt character, which is why he chose to off himself in favor of betting on Gi-hun (plus, that buffoon having a kid, which Sang-woo didn't). Harsh because it felt noble from my pov.