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Thread: Unpopular Other media opinions
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2007-11-15, 12:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Nope, but thanks for the recommendation. It looks like I can read it online, so I'll have to give it a peek.
As far as Foxtrot goes, that was one of the last strips that I really enjoyed. There's handful of others that I grew up liking, but for the majority, I'm with Watterson on the idea that newspaper comics have been reduced to talking heads.Yotsubatar by Dr. Bath
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2007-11-15, 02:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
well...guess I'll lay my head on the chopping block a little here...
Spider-Man 3 was the worst Spider-Man movie ever
I think Inuyasha is a good anime (not the best but decent to watch)
Fushigi Yugi is my favorite anime
I've actually taken time to play ZeroWing (as if my user name didn't drop a hint to that)...it sucked hard (but provided much amusement thanks to a certain video that most people have long since forgotten)
I liked Episode I (Jar Jar notwithstanding)
I cannot STAND the way Tolkein writes. (although the LOTR movies were excellent)
Thomas Harris is my favorite author
I'm sure I'll think of more eventually.Last edited by Alyorbase; 2007-11-15 at 02:24 PM.
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2007-11-15, 02:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
"that nighted, penguin-fringed abyss" - At The Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
When a man decides another's future behind his back, it is a conspiracy. When a god does it, it's destiny.
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2007-11-15, 02:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
I thought this was the general consensus. Spiderman 3 was crap.
edit: ninja'd for the first time
I think Inuyasha is a good anime (not the best but decent to watch)
Fushigi Yugi is my favorite anime
I've actually taken time to play ZeroWing (as if my user name didn't drop a hint to that)...it sucked hard (but provided much amusement thanks to a certain video that most people have long since forgotten)
I liked Episode I (Jar Jar notwithstanding)Last edited by Cristo Meyers; 2007-11-15 at 02:42 PM.
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2007-11-15, 02:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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2007-11-15, 03:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Fortunately enough I believe the minority who agrees with that is growing. I'll back off of Harvey Birdman though - Phil can kill me pretty much every time. And I make exception for the Fox-based series, as they're not 'real' Adult Swim programming.
I'll concede the above points about Aquaman (especially since we're not here to dispute - we're here to say stuff that draws flak). It is fair enough to ask what superhero DOESN'T have some degree of greater-than-human strength and endurance, though. Oh! Speaking of X-Men (and by extension, Wolverine)...
- I thought that Hugh Jackman movie, Van Helsing, was okay.
That single fact is used by my friends to discredit every "movie review" I ever give them."This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge!" - Henry Drummond, Inherit the Wind
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2007-11-15, 03:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
This may well be the general consensus on these forums, but i have yet to find a good mmo, and believe the genre has the same issue as socialism, wonderful idea, screwed to hell by people.
The worst mmo I've ever played was world of warcraft.xkcd-atar by happyturtle
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The collaborative homebrew setting I'm working on: Nutopia
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2007-11-15, 05:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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2007-11-15, 06:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
TV: Lost sucks and Heroes goes down beyond the suck barrier.
Animes: Naruto and Bleach are two of the worst animes ever made. Yu Yu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin and G.T.O are the best animes I've watched.
Books: Tolkien won the game of life.
Movies: I liked Daniel Craig as James Bond on Casino Royale; he was perfect to represent an earlier "newbie" agent with not as much finesse as he came to have in the future.Last edited by XiaoTie; 2007-11-15 at 06:09 PM.
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Much lulz avatar made by Fayt, and Echowind made the, awesome, always angry William. And the awesome thelizard made the not-right-in-the-head Argile
Giantitp (Unofficial) IRC. Join now !
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2007-11-15, 06:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Animation is superior to live action. Especially when said live action tries to use excessive amounts of computer animation, which usually ends up being overblown. If a comic book is going to be made into a movie, it should be as a cartoon.
-The main value of the first Matrix was that it did things that had never been done before with action sequences. Other than that, it didn't have much substance. I'm not surprised people didn't like the other two films as much, because nothing in them was really new anymore.
-300 was not nearly as good as everyone made it out to be. The violence wasn't that great, and there wasn't even a whole lot of it. It was seriously mostly talking. Well, shouting. And there was that one scene with unnecessary metal music, which typically denotes a bad sword & sorcery film.
-Kenshin is overrated. The fight scenes in the comic are often incoherent, and the only part that was worth it was the Shishio arc. I'm not sure why everyone thinks he's such a great character.
-Gundam Wing, and the new Gundam 00 are boring and annoying.
-Advent Children was very poorly done.
-Bleach and Naruto (and a hell of a lot more, actually) are the successors of Dragonball Z. They all share about the same level of quality, which isn't actually that bad. The problem with all of them is mostly that the anime falls apart due to excessive filler and extension techniques. The manga remain decent reads, though.
-Eyeshield 21 is totally awesome, and is a brilliantly done comic. The manga, anyway. The anime really is crap, though.
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2007-11-15, 07:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
I would just like to say.....300.....wow....
I went in to that one expecting a big dumb bloodfest, which I was prepared to enjoy.
However, it couldn't even deliver in that respect, because all the action scenes were repetitive and boring in the extreme.Signature?! What!?
Awesome Commander Greven Il-Vec avatar by Threeshades.
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2007-11-15, 07:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Dane Cook is not funny. Neither is Carlos Mencia. Sarah Silverman is funny when she is not talking about poo. You want funny? Go get some early George Carlin. Seriously. Funniest man on the planet.
Nirvana was (and still is) disgustingly overrated. Anyone can scream into a microphone and struggle to play the guitar. I was subjected to the 'Grunge' experience when I was a teenager, and gods... the music was just.. awful. The only band to come out of that drivel that was really good was Soundgarden. On the music note, Punk is a waste of time. The Ramones? Sex Pistols? Green Day? Suuuure. Okay.
The Grand Theft Auto series is absolute garbage. Final Fantasy was more boring than watching clothes dry.
Microsoft Windows is the best computer operating system there is. Honestly. Why does 80% of the world use it? That being said. Linux is terrible. Nothing that the world uses will run on it. It takes too much work to configure, troubleshoot, configure more, all that to get 10% of the functionality as Windows XP. Viruses? Pfft. Get a virus scanner and set it to automatically update. Pop ups? Blah. Windows comes with a popup blocker that is better than any of the ones that I ever used. Adware? stay off the sites you are not sure about. Yes, this is coming from someone who lives and breathes I.T. . I have never had a 'Blue Screen of Death'. Where do those come from? Hmmm.. the primary cause of the dreaded BSoD is ... dum du da dum... poor quality hardware! The 2nd leading cause is improperly written/coded software!
The Sopranos.. don't even get me started. Gets me to sleep faster than an overdose of NyQuil(tm). Family Guy has not been funny since before the movie came out. The Simpsons really did end about 10 years ago; they are just recycling old episodes. Same with South Park. 'Will and Grace' was the biggest waste of time in the known universe.
Cross dressing men are NOT funny. I repeat. Cross dressing men are NOT funny.
FMA ended with the knowledge they were going to make a movie, it was just dependant on when. The ending to GTO was junk, but was an awesome series. Naruto and Bleach are DBZ, but better. Gunbuster was phenomenal.Funny, I always figured I'd be killed by a paladin.So, what you're saying is we rolled a 1 on our credit check?
Spoiler
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2007-11-15, 07:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Heh. While I will not go as far as to say that Windows is the superior operating system, I must say that it is working very well for me. My computer at home is using Windows, my computer at my workplace at our institute runs Unix. Ironically, my home computer is a million times more stable (of course, it's less prone to run some calculations which, due to lack of foresight of my part, end up taking a thousand times as much memory as the computer has in the first place, and stuff like that, but still). I have this computer since five years, haven't formatted it even once, and it still neither crashes, hangs up (programs may, but never the OS) and has not even slowed down as compared to when I got it. And configuration is the simplest thing ever (whereas my friends, who use Macs and whatnot, keep having trouble finding out how to do stuff Windows takes care off for me!). So...
Oh yeah, another unpopular opinion on my part:
Casino Royale was the best James Bond movie I have seen in a long time, and quite possibly ever.LGBTitP Supporter
In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die - Ever drifting down the stream - Lingering in the golden gleam - Life, what is it, but a dream?
- Lewis Carroll
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2007-11-15, 07:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Actually, from a programmer's point of view (and one who's had the opinion of expert programmers, too ), that's not quiiiiite true, and yet it is.
From a programmer's standpoint, it's not really a good operating system. It's not efficient and it has an amazing amount of holes in it.
From a consumer's standpoint? It's absolutely awesome. Stable, friendly and functional and the holes can be easily patched with other security programs. The best part is that almost anything is compatible with Windows.
So no, it's not the best operating system. And yes, it is. It all depends on how you're looking at it.
Personally I love XP. I have not tried Vista enough but from what I've seen.... just... no. It's very flashy, very pretty, but all those effects make it seem to run extremely slowly. Give me simpler XP anytime. I've rarely ever managed to get to the BSoD, while I managed to see the BSoD at least on a weekly basis on Windows 98 (and if I didn't BSoD it, I at least froze it on a daily basis. >.>)
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2007-11-15, 07:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
I am speaking from a support perspective; though I can see it from the programmer side. There are a lot of holes and sinks in the system, but hey, they all do. XP and 2000 I never have a problem with either. Vista I have tried, and I do not like it. I found it too cumbersome and flashy for what it is supposed to do. I would prefer sticking with XP for as long as I can. Heckola, I was with 2k since day one, and still have Win2000 Advanced Server running my internal AD tree/file/app server.
Funny, I always figured I'd be killed by a paladin.So, what you're saying is we rolled a 1 on our credit check?
Spoiler
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2007-11-15, 08:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
On the music note, Punk is a waste of time. The Ramones? Sex Pistols? Green Day? Suuuure. Okay.
Punk is Penny Rimbaud, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, and Tom Verlaine; anyone who doesn't know about the poetes maudits has no business calling themselves punk; and Sid Vicious is a friggin' mannequin.
And no, Dane Cook is not funny.
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2007-11-15, 08:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
While I haven't sampled all operating systems, I do have a fondness for the Win2k servers at work, as they're a lot more stable than I'd expect. Certainly more so than my XP desktop and laptop. Anyway, my general assessment is:
Windows is for people who don't care
Linux is for people with too much time on their hands
Mac OS is for people who have no idea how a computer works
Sound right? Anyway, I've thought of a couple more TV related things:
Lost is overrated and the writers have no idea where the plot is going.
Heroes is overrated and the writers have no idea where the plot is going.
King of the Hill is boring and would make me want to stab Mike Judge if I didn't like Office Space so much.
And apparently, thinking Dane Cook is funny is the minority opinion here. And so is Eddie Izzard, but not because he's dressed as a woman.Last edited by Nerd-o-rama; 2007-11-15 at 08:55 PM.
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2007-11-15, 08:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
* Given the fact that there is a HUGE number of people who dislike anime simply because it is anime, 99% of it is underrated as a whole.
* I like Sailor Moon
* and Cardcaptor Sakura (But NOT Cardcaptors, ugh the dub ripped it to shreds)Avatar by Abardam.
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2007-11-15, 09:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
- Shaman King > Your face.
I've seen so many people saying it sucks. It doesn't.
- Movies based on another medium are not inherently bad. It's just that the sucky ones get the most attention.
- Tolkien was a horrible author. So is Dan Brown and the guy who wrote Eragon.
- Popular does not equal auto-bad. Likewise unpopular does not equal auto-good.
- Ansem Retort, while not the God's gift to webcomics like people say it is, is the only good thing to come out of Kingdom Hearts, excluding Chain of Memories, which was much more fun than the console games.
- Final Fantasy X-2 was a decent and fun game. FFVII was average. IX and IV are the best.Penis extensionsBig swords do not a villian make.
- I don't really find George Carlin all that funny.Last edited by The Extinguisher; 2007-11-15 at 09:56 PM.
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2007-11-15, 11:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
I'll buy that.
Here's one that I'll throw out there to see if there's any interest.
- In the entire Matrix Trilogy, I consider the only remarkable or admirable character to be Agent Smith. I'll spare the discussion until someone seems to give a crap.
Oh, what the hell. Here's some more:
- I sincerely hope they DON'T make a Halo movie. I prefer to think that only the novels and the original game exist: 2 and 3 never happened.
- Mortal Kombat wasn't ever a "good game". It was boring to play the day it was released, continued to be boring through all 15 expansions, and the best thing to come of it was the mediocre movie with the groovy techno theme song.
- Every episode of the original Star Trek was the same. It's no better than the A-Team, but at least I can enjoy watching the adventures of Hannibal, B.A., Face, and Murdock.
- Donnie Darko was in no way a "deep" movie.
- I knew the entire plot of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village just from seeing a preview. I read a short story in junior high with an incredibly similar story; the girl wasn't blind in it, though. On that same note...
- I didn't consider Unbreakable to be worth watching twice.
- Same goes for The Crow.
And the finale...
- David Duchovney can act. He just generally gets typecast into a role as a person with flat affect (no emotional expression).
Edit: HAHA! Flame Master Axel, I just read your location. I'm with you - hope you brought enough supplies to build a homestead. We'll be out here on the frontier for a loooong time.Last edited by TheGreatJabu; 2007-11-16 at 12:15 AM.
"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge!" - Henry Drummond, Inherit the Wind
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2007-11-16, 01:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
BLASPHEMY! Eddie Izzard, Monty Python, educate yourself, and never speak of this again.
seconded and thirded, and this is coming from someone whose seen all of them (yes even the old casino royale). It seems these days that darker=better in the revisiting of old series, see Batman: Begins and Casino Royale.xkcd-atar by happyturtle
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The collaborative homebrew setting I'm working on: Nutopia
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2007-11-16, 01:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
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2007-11-16, 01:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Yeah. Everyone in the Matrix trilogy was an idiot and/or a pretentious ****. I always rated Smith as merely the most appealing of the latter. What makes him admirable?
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2007-11-16, 01:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
I actually enjoyed the second Matrix movie.
Sure, it was horrible but it was horrible in a good way.Thanks Uncle Festy for the wonderful Ashling Avatar
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2007-11-16, 04:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Oh, wow. I am actually surprised to come back and find questions about my Smith-statement already. I'll slap it into a spoiler so that those interested only in reading "Unpopular Media Opinions" don't get stuck with a big post of me rambling about the Matrix.
Spoiler
When you try to take into account the pseudo-philosophy the 2nd and 3rd movies start feeding you about how freedom of choice is all wonderful, it serves to make Neo look like the big hero. He 'chose' to run away from the Architect to save Trinity (which no other "anomaly" had done before), and he 'chose' to keep fighting Smith even though he was getting creamed, and he 'chose' to let himself get absorbed, thus winning. Hurray for him. He's a human being, so he can think and choose stuff. Man, I wish I could do that.
Smith, however, is a program. He was created for a sole purpose, and was never given any choice. He voiced his extreme displeasure of this in Matrix 1 when interrogating Morpheus, but as a program he wasn't built with any capacity to defy what he was intended for. Yet over the course of the movies (thanks to a bit of unintended intervention from Neo) he was able to completely redefine his own existence. There may be novelizations, explanations, or debates as to "What happened to Smith when Neo exploded him in the first movie?" I guess I always interpretted it as Neo breaking apart his programming, leaving him shattered. But did he stay shattered? No. Since he was broken, but not entirely, somehow in that moment he saw beyond what he was previously capable of. It somehow entered into his capability of thought that he had the opportunity to recreate himself - something a program theoretically couldn't do. He'd always been a program, which by the very nature of the thing, should not have any capability of understanding "freedom". But somehow he was able to redefine his previous traits of complete disdain of the Matrix into his own internalized command to act in a manner which could destroy the Matrix permanently By being able to create his own commands he achieved a state of being we consider "freedom", and proceeded to redesign himself in a largely unbound form so that he could spread himself to further his own commands.
I don't know. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it, but I see Smith as being created with only the capacity to exist within the parameters he had been given, and through a combination of opportunity, self-expansion, and sheer determination completely rewrote his own role in 'life' (the Matrix) to eventually all-but-rule what he once had no choice but to dwell in as a servant.
Not to mention that his character, hands-down, did the most convincing job of expressing AND pursuing his desires and goals. Morpheus found Neo then basically adopted a "Well, we've got the Chosen One. Now everything will eventually be wonderful!" approach, Neo didn't know what the HELL he was doing any of the time, but at least Trinity just wanted to do whatever she could to help Neo. I generally consider the annoying teenage kid who pilots that mecha-thing at the end to have done the 2nd-best job of making me believe in his motivations.
Doesn't mean that he didn't ever irritate me, but I had to give him credit for being a well-played role.
Edit: Hope nobody reads this until after...3:18 am Central. I went back to edit some stuff that I didn't express clearly, and if you read it too soon I'll just have really confused people on my hands.Last edited by TheGreatJabu; 2007-11-16 at 04:13 AM.
"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge!" - Henry Drummond, Inherit the Wind
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2007-11-16, 04:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
All good points Jabu. He was still a selfish (and in my opinion hammish) villain, but...it took him a lot of metaphysical work on his part to get that way, I guess is your point. There were other programs that were deleted (by the Matrix operating system rather than a human, I would assume), but they either go quietly or spend the rest of their existence sitting around eating cake and babbling about causality. Smith's different. He gets deleted and he's like "Hell no, I'm stayin'. And I'll steal your kernel privileges and spam copies of myself onto every last thing on the hard disk. There may be no spoon, but I am a god of fork(). How d'you like that?"
Good villain. Good character. I still have trouble calling him "admirable."Last edited by Nerd-o-rama; 2007-11-16 at 04:15 AM.
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2007-11-16, 04:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Hah! Smith could blue-screen-of-death me, any day.
Spoiler
I can admire anyone who I can see as being intensely motivated and capable of pushing themselves beyond what was thought possible. Of course, there are plenty of historic examples of such people who push themselves to monstrous or infamous ends. I can't really call my feelings for them admiration, but it's at least "grudging respect". Sure Smith would have ended the existence of millions (if not billions) of people in the Matrix, but since it's a movie and they weren't really "killed", it's easier to overlook what would have been the end of all humankind.
Can't blame him for being selfish, though. He's a child. How do toddlers act when they've finally grown old enough to realize that they can ask for things? They ALWAYS want this, or they ALWAYS want that. They'll tell you what they want, and they'll be mad if they don't get it.
Well, I'll try to go back on topic now. Here's an opinion that isn't so much "unpopular" as "unorthodox":
Opera music can be pretty good for drinking to when depressed.
Doh wait, there's already a separate music thread. My bad. Now I need a replacement on-topic comment!
- Ever hear anyone brag about reading Sun Tzu's Art of War? I hope not - it's an amazingly unprofound book. Again, I can see how it would have rocked hard when it was written millenia ago, but to summarize it for you:
1. Don't ever fight if you're not guaranteed victory
2. If your officers are incompetent, fire them
3. Apparantly when the high ground is to the downwind of your chariots, to the left of your archers, and 45 degrees south-southwest to your infantry, "that is deadly ground." When/if you read it, you'll get that joke.
Last edited by TheGreatJabu; 2007-11-16 at 04:41 AM.
"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge!" - Henry Drummond, Inherit the Wind
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2007-11-16, 05:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Agreeing with this, and providing my own additions to his argument. Look out, I'm really long winded here.
Spoiler
Smith is the true ascension hero, destined to lead Humanity to enlightenment, and Neo represents an agent of the Demiurge, giving his own life to prevent the real hero from succeeding.
Think about it: Neo was a tool of the Matrix from day one. Smith, post-code shattering, the moment where he discovered human traits without the will or consent of the Matrix, tried only to do the following: Kill Neo who he knew was the ultimate weapon of the Demiurge/Matrix. and try to destroy the Matrix.
When he escaped the Matrix in the mind of the person he corrupted, his consciousness explored the reality of his situation and (IIRC) did nothing to assure the longterm success of the Machines. He was in the position where he could do real effect towards the victory of the machines... yet he only tried to murder Neo.
Finally, we progress through the plot and see Neo making a deal with the machines in order to preserve Zion, and he'll save the Matrix from being destroyed. Sounds fair, saves all those lives (I actually almost typed lies there, it would've been appropriate)... but the truth is is that he's actively supporting the established system which is a metaphor for reality as a barrier to enlightenment.
So okay, it's Smith, who is fighting to destroy the Matrix, versus Neo who is fighting to preserve the Matrix. They fight, Smith is winning, Smith asks why Neo is fighting, and Neo can only respond that he chooses to. I found this significant not because it showed some crazy triumph of the human spirit or something... because it really wasn't. He made that choice for no good reason. The love of his life had just been killed, he had no reason to believe that Zion was still intact, or that he could even stop Smith fast enough to save Zion at all. (Since the Machines weren't going to stop until Smith was stopped apparently) He basically had found that his entire role as savior was a lie... and he decides to oppose Smith basically because he didn't like Smith.
Then, Neo sacrifices himself like the good little tool of the machines would do, and it destroys Smith utterly, thus preserving the Matrix, thus preserving the Demiurge, and preserving the Overlord/Unwitting Slave relationship of the setting, and keeping humanity in shackles. We aren't given a clear view of the future, but there's no reason to assume the Machines don't go right back to their full-on enslavement of the Human race, only keeping them around to continue powering themselves. (Laws of Thermodynamics be damned BTW) And as soon as they develop an alternate method of sustaining themselves... it's all over for Humans. We aren't told enough about the aftermath of the movie to really judge what kind of world we're left with. If we take a scenario where Smith defeats Neo and is not destroyed, the machines may well have destroyed Zion and all the people there... but the Matrix would have been destroyed. What that means for all the people plugged into the matrix, we don't know, and can only speculate... but Smith was the human race's one and only path to escaping the matrix permanently. That makes him the hero of the story they were trying to tell. The fact that they Wachowski brothers didn't realize this highlights for me the fact that they just stole their story from sources beyond their understanding, and then were told to make a sequel, which was territory they didn't know what to do with from the metaphor, gnostic point of view, so they just pasted together whatever they thought was cool and pretended they were at all in control of their narrative when it's clear they weren't.
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2007-11-16, 06:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
Yeah, if you ignore the implicit but almost certain fact that Smith was overwriting human consciousnesses as well as programs, that works.
Gnosticism: the one religion not represented in the Matrix, apparently.Spoiler
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2007-11-16, 08:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Unpopular Other media opinions
I don't know if this is considered unpopular but, a recent discussion made me remember this.
I absolutely despite the Robin Hood novel. I don't know if there is more than one, but in third grade I was forced to read it(one?).
Ugh it was the most boring thing I'd ever read, nearly turned me off reading.
Then again maybe it was because I was in Third Grade.
Knowing my taste in books? Probably not, they haven't changed.Last edited by Setra; 2007-11-16 at 08:56 AM.
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