Your Unpopular TV/Film opinions.

[Gunstar Green]

Battlestar Galactica 2004 reboot is meh.

The mini-series and the first season or so was all right but then it became plot-twist after plot-twist and there was no consistency to the characters whose motivations would change on a whim and the ending was terrible. By the time it was over I actually hated it.

[Tanooki]

Here's two I know surely fit with enough.
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is no worse than the others
- Star Trek Enterprise was a fantastic show with a badly dragged out middle that really deserved a longer life

Indy fits the mold of the other films for style, context, and historical play off the decade it was intended. The old being in the 30s was Film Noir, Nazis for the bad guys, Religious/Fantasy object mcguffin, implausible survivable moments, unrealistic enemy/group of enemies death sequence, and other decade centric stupidity on the whole.

KOTCS was the 1950s -- Shlock 50s SciFi interdimensional beings, Commies for the bad guys, crystal skull for the object, flying nuke fridge, giant pile of ant death, greasers vs jocks brawl. It's all there, just 20 years removed.

ST Enterprise was just fascinating, the pre-birth years of the federation with an early star fleet. Brand new ships, exploration, early shady shaky teleporters, phaser cannons but not beams, no such thing as shields, old style pre-glowy object medicine, and the works. Xindi part got way long in the tooth over 2 of the 4 seasons, but season 1 and 4 were fantastic stuff that could have been drawn out 3 more years like the others.

[Gunstar Green]

It's not the plot of that Crystal Skull that I dislike really, I never got behind some of the complaints about how silly it is because Indiana Jones has ALWAYS been silly. It's stuff like the acting, bad CGI, etc that gets to me. It just feels like it's lifelessly going through the motions.

I rewatched Enterprise this year and actually got into it quite a bit. I think it aged well now that the controversy around it has died down (and Discovery has come along with far more severe retcons). I think one of the big problems is it doesn't have any "great" episodes like the other series. It has a lot of good episodes but none that I'm left thinking about years later like I am with some of the best TNG episodes. Aside from that it's a consistent show that was held back by the stupid temporal cold war stuff and some annoying network mandates. I think if it had gotten another season we would have really seen it hit its stride as they were just starting to get into the birth of the Federation stuff that everyone wanted in the first place. I think I like it more than Voyager at the very least.

[Segata]

Manny Coto took over Enterprise season 4 and it was indeed great. The final episode is bad but Berman came back for that finale. Season 3 was esp bad. I would still take Season 3 over the 4 episodes of STD I saw. Orville is the new Trek so at least have that and happy. Braga and other former trek writers are on board and quite a few former Trek actors.

[Tanooki]

Oh yeah I'm loving the Orville and was thrilled to see it setup for a full season 2 too next year.

STE is a solid show, just that Xindi bit was taken a season too far. Before it really got going it got screwed by network idiocy beyond its finest with those assclowns at the UPN playing time slot whack a mole with it. If it wasn't for earlier cable tv based DVR I would have missed the entire last season since they kept dicking around with its time and day of the week slot too like real jerks. Duh the ratings sunk (reason to cancel it) you could never find it because it moved around like a paint shaker. Had they left it where it was all along and with the vast improvement of writing and design that last season had it would have got at least another year plus out of it.


And yes Indy had some weird CGI going on but I didn't think much of it as it wasn't ugly CGI, just kind of unnecessary in some places and necessary in some others though. All the movies had some questionable spots in there if you think too hard about it but at least they were real locations. The only acting that bugged me was Shia leDouche. Kind of wishing Spalkos rapier went just a few inches the other direction.

[Sarge]

The dumbest thing in that movie was Shia swinging with the monkeys through the trees. Man, that was really stupid in a movie with a lot of stupid things.

I haven't actually watched the old ones in some time, but Crystal Skull was one that I disliked the more distance I got from it. I should probably watch them all again sometime soon.

[Exhuminator]

It's not the plot of that Crystal Skull that I dislike really, I never got behind some of the complaints about how silly it is because Indiana Jones has ALWAYS been silly.

Crystal Skull taught me that if another country ever nukes us, I can just hide in a refrigerator and I'll be OK.

[Tanooki]

It's not the plot of that Crystal Skull that I dislike really, I never got behind some of the complaints about how silly it is because Indiana Jones has ALWAYS been silly.

Crystal Skull taught me that if another country ever nukes us, I can just hide in a refrigerator and I'll be OK.

The fridge part wasn't that far off though as in that era they were thickly lined with lead which stops a lot of radioactivity pass through. The BS part was being punted probably a good half mile or so, slamming into the ground, then more with the roll and not breaking any bones. That's where it really left the realm of possibility. To me though even the most asinine points of that movie aren't any worse than a bald psycho rambling like an idiot and pulling a heart out of a living persons chest, and on top of that it remotely catching fire and not incinerating the murderers fingers in the process.

[Gunstar Green]

STE is a solid show, just that Xindi bit was taken a season too far.

I actually liked the Xindi at first. Their concept was really cool, a bunch of different sentient species that evolved on the same planet. The reasons for the war itself were stupid though and they did linger on it for way too long. It also drastically shifted the tone from, "we're explorers," to "we're soldiers," which was annoying. It felt like they were trying to copy the success of the Dominion War in DS9 without understanding why that plot worked for the show it was in (and with half as interesting villains).

I'm glad The Orville overcame the lashing from critics and found its audience because it really is the spiritual successor to Trek, even more so than I imagined it would be.

Crystal Skull taught me that if another country ever nukes us, I can just hide in a refrigerator and I'll be OK.

You also have to be Indiana Jones. That last point is important.

[marurun]

One of the things I didn't like about Enterprise was that some of the actors were as bad as any bad ST actors from times past, but some of them were really good, so there's that tonal mismatch between serious and campy. It felt like most of the actors were on Star Trek, but
a couple of them thought maybe they were really on BSG and hadn't got the memo it was a Star Trek show. I also hated all the time travel stuff. Time travel is a mess and hard to get right. Additionally, the sexualization of the obviously silicone-enhanced Vulkan. That early shower scene? Pointless and unnecessary. Further, they tried WAY too hard to cram in the discovery or development of Trek technology, like planting the seeds for cloaking and the holodeck. It felt like they were trying too hard to make all this unnecessary connective tissue and tech, when it might have been simpler to just let them have adventures.

There were things I liked about Enterprise, but I just couldn't stay with it. The whole package just felt off, and the parts I couldn't jibe well with kept intruding into the bits I did like.