There are a lot of parodies that I'd rather listen to than the original, or comedy albums that are just bangers. I can't be the only one who would rather listen to Weird Al's "The Saga Begins" than "American Pie", so what are some that you enjoy?
I like Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories," but most days I would rather listen to "Random Access Fhqwhgads," which just takes every track and mashes it up with Strongbad's Fhqwhgads song.
How do you feel about everything being wireless/Bluetooth these days? On the one hand, I appreciate not having a tangle of cords everywhere. My TV area and computer desk look a lot cleaner now than they did in the early 2000s. And the number of times my headphones snagged on something as I walked by and they were ripped out of my ears or pulled my phone out of my pocket is too high to count.
But on the other hand, I hate replacing and charging batteries. Given the option, I'll pick devices with internal batteries instead of AA or AAA batteries to reduce waste. Even better if you can use it while it charges, especially if the battery gets too old and can't hold a charge anymore so you can still treat your device as if it were wired.
I had to buy a new mouse recently and there were two with the same ergonomic design that I liked. One took AAAs and the other was rechargeable but cost literally twice as much. It took some debating with myself, but I went with the rechargeable one because I don't need yet another piece of hardware chewing threw batteries.
What are some old games that still look and play great today? I'm not talking about games you're nostalgic for and still enjoy. I mean games that a new player could pick up today and still think is graphically appealing and doesn't have that retro-game "clunk" in the controls. You may still love an old game, but you have to admit that it is ugly and a chore to play compared to modern games in the genre.
I just replayed Doom 3 again today for the first time in years, and it inspired this thread. Modern shooters still play pretty much identical to how Doom 3 did, whether you're using a keyboard and mouse or gamepad. And the graphics still look really good. Stylized graphics always hold up better than realistic, and the bulky character designs and stark shadows aged really well compared to games like FarCry or Half Life 2 that came out around the same time (not to say either of those games are bad, but they definitely show their age compared to Doom 3).
You could really add any of the old Doom games as well. No matter how old they get, the style, soundtrack and gameplay of the classic Doom games always holds up.
Since it's so hard for most people to pick a single, overall favourite movie, I thought I'd break it down by genre to see if it makes it easier. There are a lot more genres than I've listed below, of course, and genres can't always be easily defined since some movies are a mix or defy genre conventions. These are just the genres that I have enough of an opinion about to put on my list.
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Comedy Without a doubt, my favourite is Weekend at Bernie's. This movie is ridiculously funny from concept to execution. It's peak '80s in terms of creativity without being too crude. There's still a bit of your typical '80s womanizing, but not much compared to most comedies of the time.
Fantasy I'm tempted to cheat and say the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, but if I had to pick just a single movie it would be The Fellowship of the Ring. I'm not really a huge fantasy fan, but LotR is so prototypical of the genre that it covers all of the expectations.
Sci-fi This one is hard because sci-fi is my favourite genre. Most of what I like is sci-fi/horror though, so I'm forcing myself to pick just a straight sci-fi film. I've always been more of a Star Trek fan than Star Wars, and my favourite of those films is Star Trek: First Contact.
Action I'm not a big action movie fan, so I'm going to flub my answer a bit and say Jurassic Park. It's definitely sci-fi and a little bit of horror, but I think it has enough action to qualify.
Horror It's really a three-way tie between The Thing, Alien and Pitch Black. They're all sci-fi as well, but of the three The Thing is the most pure horror movie so I'll make it my official pick.
Maybe it's just because he's the one I grew up with, but Pierce Brosnan is the actor who most embodies the character of James Bond for me. He's suave, conventionally handsome, and more lithe than brawny. He prefers to use tools and gadgets, and if he does get into a fight his fighting style is more about skill with martial arts than brute strength.
Timothy Dalton is a close second, but his Bond had a much more serious, hard edge to him. He has the look, but not the charisma.
Daniel Craig is definitely more of a brawler, and you could almost say the same for Sean Connery. Connery was also suave, but too much of a womanizer. I guess that's part of the character, but it's too uncomfortable to watch.
I'm not a Roger Moore fan because I don't like the sillier tone of those movies.
As for George Lazenby, I thought he was good in his single film, but I don't think Bond works as a family man.
As for who was in the best movie, I think it's a tossup between Craig in Casino Royale and Brosnan in GoldenEye. I really like Dalton in The Living Daylights as well, but I can't argue it's the best.
What order would you rank the Batman movies? Are there any you haven't seen?
I haven't kept up with the animated films and not all are worth mentioning, but I'll include a few. I also haven't seen The Batman.
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My least favourite is The Lego Batman Movie. I loved The Lego Movie so had high expectations, but it just didn't do it for me. I think I only got one laugh out if it when Robin puts on the old costume with the "revealing" shorts.
Under the Red Hood isn't much better. The story of Jason Todd is just too over-told. I was looking forward to hearing John DiMaggio's take on the Joker, but it sounded like he was trying too hard to emulate Mark Hamill.
I'm not sure if Justice League should count as a Batman movie, but I'll include it. I actually liked the theatrical cut more than the Snyder version. Neither are good, but at least the original wasn't as self-serious and was shorter so there is less of it to hate.
The Dark Knight Rises is... okay, but it has too many plotholes. The worst two are, how did Bruce get back to Gotham when all his assets were frozen, and why would every single cop in the city go into the sewers after Bane? They're big issues that the plot hinges on, so it all falls apart as a result.
I really do like Mask of the Phantasm, but I think it's a bit overrated. The plot is predictable, Joker feels tacked on, and it's paced like a 30 minute episode that got stretched out to feature length. But that said, BtAS is always good and the opening theme and credits are absolutely amazing.
Next is Subzero. This is where it starts getting positive. BtAS did a great job of reinventing Mr. Freeze, and I feel like this is the perfect conclusion to his story.
Batman Begins was the perfect way to reboot the franchise, and I love Scarecrow.
Batman Forever used to be one of my favourites, but after rewatching it recently I had to drop it a few points. I think Val Kilmer is a great Bruce Wayne, but isn't as imposing as he should be as Batman. Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones are the clear standouts.
I actually rank Batman & Robin a lot higher now than I used to. If you think of it as a sequel to the Adam West Batman movie instead of the Tim Burton movies, it's actually really great. Speaking of...
Batman '66 is one of the best comedies I've ever seen. A lot of older comedies don't hold up because the jokes age too much, but this one makes me laugh every time.
Batman v Superman is a lot better than people give it credit for. What cemented it for me was the scene where the cops are raiding a building and Batman is lurking inside. It's the first time a movie has nailed the stealth and fear that Batman is supposed to employ. Also, it fully realizes that Bruce Wayne is nuts. You can complain about how violent he is, or "Martha" all you want, but all of Snyder's DC films are a deconstruction of superheroes to reveal how they would look in the real world. As a result it humanizes Batman instead of mythologizing him.
The Dark Knight is just awesome. Heath Ledger's Joker is the all-time best. But it's at the bottom of my top three because it feels like Batman is barely in it. It's more of a Joker movie.
Batman '89 is the one that set the tone for everything outside of the comics going forward. It is the quintessential Batman movie, but it's no...
Batman Returns. It's not quite the perfect Batman movie, but it's a perfect Tim Burton movie. He clearly had a lot more control over this one. I just love the style. It's darker without being too serious, and it redesigned Gotham as a decaying art deco metropolis. It'll always be my favorite Batman movie.
What are some songs that always put you in the Halloween mood in October?
I love horror punk, so anything by AFI circa 2000 is a good choice. Choosing anything from All Hallow's EP is probably cheating, but I can't go the month without listening to "Totalimmortal" at least once.
Does anyone have a Steam Deck? What do you think of it?
I assume anyone who has bought one is probably a fan, since it's a not-insignificant commitment. So even if you don't have one, what are your impressions of it as an outside observer?
I just ordered one on the weekend once I read that their supply issues have cleared up. When I looked into it earlier this year, there was a six-month waiting list for it. That wait is now down to three weeks, so I figured it was a good time to jump on board.
I haven't had a gaming PC in a long time, and I have a pretty big library of older (5+ years) Steam and GOG games that I've been itching to get back into. All of my friends played Elden Ring on PC while I was on Xbox, so I'm going to try to get a PC copy during a Steam sale so I can finally play cooperatively with them. Mostly, though, I want to be able to lay in bed and play Poker Night at the Inventory
I like the idea of a handheld PC with fixed specs so you don't have to deal with some of the stability issues inherent in PC games, but I'm not sure about the form factor. The face buttons look like they're way too close to the edges, so I don't know if it'll be comfortable to hold. I haven't heard anyone else complain about that, though, so hopefully it's not an issue when I finally get my hands on it.
I always find it sad when I see a new video from a YouTube channel I love and it only gets a tiny amount of views. So I wanted to make this topic for people to share those channels or videos to help give them a boost.
One that I recently subscribed to is thesummerofmark. He's a Romanian game reviewer who focuses on longform retrospectives and has a really dry sense of humor that I enjoy.
I stumbled across his channel when I was looking for content on two of my favourite retro PC games, Sacrifice and Giants: Citizen Kabuto. His latest video is a look at the original Splinter Cell.
When I joined this forum, I expected it to be filled with a bunch of Millennials and Gen Xers nostalgic for their childhood and teenage years. But as I read through your introductions, there seem to be a lot more younger people who are here to appreciate the Web 1.0 era they missed out on the first time around.
So I'm just curious how the demographic actually skews. It'd be funny to find out that I'm one of the oldest people here, but I'm sure some of you must be those cool Gen X kids that I always wished I was. I weighted the poll toward the younger generations, so if you're a Baby Boomer please speak up.
I was born in '87, making me a mid-range millennial. I grew up in the '90s but get to pretend I have a claim to the '80s.
What are some games that you don't agree with the general consensus on? Something that was critically panned or commercially flopped but you fell in love with; or a game that everyone else loves but you can't stand.
One that I love but nobody else seems to is Metroid Other M. I'm not ignorant of its faults. The voice acting is awful, the story is a convoluted mess, and what they did to Samus's character is downright criminal. She went from being a badass bounty hunter to someone with such severe daddy issues that she would rather let herself burn to death in a molten volcano than disobey her father figure. It's really garbage and I agree with everyone who says it's bad and nearly killed the series.
But the gameplay is awesome! The mix of 2D and 3D level design is brilliant, and works really well with the Wii remote emulating an NES gamepad. The bosses are some of the best in the series, and I loved that it's a prequel to Metroid Fusion and we got to see earlier versions of creatures that were later replicated by the X parasite like Nightmare.
I loved playing it so much that I beat it on the hardest difficulty, which is basically a one-hit-kill mode. The final boss fight against Phantoon is a bullet-hell arena and one of the hardest ordeals I've ever faced in a game, but I did it just to show that 100% completion rating on the hardest difficulty on my save file.
I was really excited for Metroid Dread at the beginning of this year, but ended up unimpressed with it and wishing it was more like Other M. The series feels like it has been going backwards because they're retreating to what worked in the past, with strictly 2D gameplay and level design. But they learned the wrong lesson from Other M. More games with the same gameplay would be great. They only needed to ditch the overwritten story and dialogue and let Samus return to being the silent, lone badass we all know her as.
On the other side of things, a game that everyone loves and I hate is Super Mario Galaxy. I really should love it too. The art direction is great and the level design is cool. It even has a pretty good story compared to most Mario games. But the camera and controls are so bad! The 3D Mario games have never really had the best camera system, but it was serviceable up until that point. Once they threw in the gravity mechanics where you could walk on the underside of objects, it became unbearable. Mario would literally run in the opposite direction I intended and I couldn't move the camera to a position where the controls made sense. Eventually it made the levels totally unplayable and I had to give up. I was dying not because it was hard, but because the controls were doing the opposite of what they logically should because the camera couldn't be oriented in a way where they made sense.
I really tried to keep going, but I couldn't. And I know that other people either didn't have the same problem orienting themselves or at the least, for them, it wasn't a deal breaker. I'm not going to tell anyone they're wrong for liking the game, but I ended up hating it so much that I traded in the disk for the measly $0.50 or whatever EB Games would give me for it at the time.
What are some movies that you hated the first time you watched them, but grew to appreciate on subsequent viewings?
Most recently, I rewatched Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Not long before, I mentioned in another thread about how much I disliked this movie. Everything leading up to its release made me think it would be the spiritual successor to The Fifth Element, which is one of my favourite movies of all time. It definitely isn't that, but I think that now that I'm quite a few years removed from that initial disappointment and I don't have any expectations of what I want it to be, I was able to appreciate it for what it actually is.
The acting of the main characters is still stiff and mostly bad, but the visuals are amazing and the story is actually pretty good. Most of all, the world created around the story is brilliant, even if it isn't always shown in the best way.
Rewatching it reminded me of the first time I was excited for a movie only to be disappointed, and then years later learned to love it. That was The Chronicles of Riddick. Pitch Black is another of my all-time favourite movies, so my expectations were astronomical going into the theatre. It was nothing like Pitch Black, and unlike comparing Valerian to The Fifth Element, this was a direct sequel! It wasn't until years later when I rewatched it on DVD that I grew to like it, and now I genuinely love it as a great popcorn flick.
Ironically the next sequel, Riddick, tried to basically recreate Pitch Black and I ended up not liking it as much.
I was a big Blackberry fan for most of my adult life because I loved the hardware keyboard. I started with the Curve 9600, then the Q10 and finally rocked the KeyOne for five years that I wanted to be my forever-phone, but the battery eventually crapped out on me. When I was finally forced to replace it, it couldn't even hold a charge for a minute.
Since Blackberry is pretty much dead after their manufacturing deal with TCL ended, I was forced to find another brand. So after some shopping around I decided to get the Surface Duo 2 when it launched. Between my Blackberry Curve and the Q10 I owned two different Microsoft Lumia Windows phones and really liked them, and I've been a fan of the Surface device lineup for a long time so decided to give Microsoft another shot.
It was really expensive when it launched, but it's been so worth it. Just like Blackberry did with the KeyOne, this time around Microsoft went with Android instead of shoehorning Windows onto a mobile device, so it has all the benefits entailed therein. Plus, having two screens is so good for multitasking that I almost never use my desktop PC or laptop anymore unless I'm working on a project or need to type out something longer than a couple paragraphs because I still struggle with typing on a touchscreen.
It's a gorgeous device, too. With the bumper, mine looks exactly like the one in this image.
I know this is a controversial topic, so let's keep it as civil as possible. And be wary that this will be full of spoilers.
So, what do you think of the Disney era of Star Wars now that we're five movies and a few TV series into it?
I have mixed opinions, so I'll start with the positive things I think about the new movies.
Rogue One is amazing. It's without a doubt my favourite Star Wars film. Even though I'm trying to stick to the positives right now, it's a lot easier to talk about what I didn't like about this movie because there's so little of it. And it basically comes down to the shoddy CGI recreations of Leia and Tarkin. When you first see Tarkin, the camera is behind him and it's just the reflection of his face in the window. If they had left it at that, it would have been a perfect homage to Peter Cushing's character. But then he turns around and is a major character throughout the whole film. It's bad enough that I think it's disrespectful to recreate actors performances (especially when they're deceased), but they didn't even do it well. The CGI looks like something out of Shrek.
The Leia puppet is a bit more forgivable because Carrie Fisher was still alive at the time and it's only seen briefly, but when taken with the excessive Tarkin scenes it's harder to ignore how bad it looks.
The only other thing I could complain about is Vader is a little bit... sassy when he says "try not to choke on your ambitions." Besides those things, it's a nearly perfect movie.
The Force Awakens was promising but was held down by way too much nostalgia and in retrospect had no payoff. I really appreciate the diverse cast, and the few original things the movie did were really great. But most of it is just a retelling of A New Hope and making classic references. It planted the seeds of something that could have been good, but just like everything Jar Jar Abrams has ever made, it failed to deliver on any of that early promise.
And that's pretty much it for what I've liked, really. The Last Jedi had some cool set pieces and at least tried to do something interesting by subverting conventions, but the movie itself was terrible. Finn and Rose's story was the worst because everything they did was totally pointless in the end. It's really upsetting that Kelly Marie Tran got so much hate for her role in the movie because it wasn't her fault (plus a lot of the hate was from racist/sexist "fans":wink:. She did her best with what she was given, but what she was given was awful.
Vice-Admiral Holdo gets a lot of hate too, but she's actually the only protagonist I like because she's the only one who acts reasonably in the whole film. People complain that she could have avoided the whole mutiny plot if she had just told Poe about her plan, but Poe had literally just been demoted for insubordination at the start of the film. She had no obligation to tell him anything, and especially not her secret plan if she didn't think he could be trusted.
Really, I think Poe, Finn and Rose should have been discharged for their actions, but the movie hand wipes it all away because they're supposed to be the heroes who literally do nothing heroic in the whole film. They're actually traitors whose actions made everything much, much worse. Holdo sacrifices herself in the most badass way possible to save everyone after the "heroes" screw everything up, so as far as I'm concerned Purple-hair Laura Dern is my hero.
And then there's The Rise of Skywalker. Just... ugh. I'm not even going to talk about this one. I think most people can agree that it's the worst of the new trilogy. Everyone has their own reasons.
As for Disney's output outside of the movies, I have watched the first season of The Mandalorian and enjoyed it quite a bit. I love the western aesthetic, and I do eventually want to get through season 2 because I think Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka looks awesome.
I also watched Obi-Wan Kenobi but didn't think it was very good. Having Leia and Ben go through so much together really doesn't align with what is implied about their relationship in A New Hope. I will say, though, that Hayden Christensen absolutely nailed it as Vader this time. He totally redeemed his performance in the prequels. I always thought the transition from his voice as Anakin to James Earl Jones as Vader in the suit was too jarring in Revenge of the Sith, but when his mask is damaged and you can see half of his face and both voices coming through overlayed on top of each other... it gave me chills.
Besides that, though, the series did everything it could to not do anything at all because it had to leave things in the same state as they were at the end of RotS.
I don't have any interest in the Book of Boba Fett because I hear it isn't very good and I never really got on board with how much fans idolize him anyway. He has cool armor and that's about it. Maybe he does more to justify his status among fans in the Legends universe, but I've never followed that side of the franchise outside of a few books and games.
As for what's upcoming, I'm interested in the Ahsoka series because, again, Rosario Dawson looks perfect in the role. But for as much as I loved Rogue One, I'm not interested in Andor at all. He was the dullest character in the whole movie and now they want me to care about him through an entire series? Nope. If they made a series about Chirrut Îmwe, the blind monk from the film, I'd be totally on board.
The rest of what Disney has released or announced hasn't made any impact on my radar, so I won't go into it.
I will end on a positive note, though. Jedi: Fallen Order is an awesome video game. It combines Star Wars plus metroidvania and soulsborne gameplay into something glorious. I can't wait for the sequel and hope that Cameron Monaghan gets to make a live action appearance as Cal Kestis at some point.
Edit: Oh, I completely forgot about Solo. But I guess that says everything I need to say about Solo
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