Half in the Bag: Jupiter Ascending and Battlefield Earth
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- čas přidán 14. 02. 2015
- Still at the bottom of Lake Michigan, Mike and Jay pass the time by discussing the latest Wachowski siblings flop Jupiter Ascending, as well as the comparable sci fi flop Battlefield Earth starring John Travolta.
- Zábava
Half-man half-werewolf would mean he is just to 1/4 wolf.
That would be kinda akward, like a human with a little bit more hair.
And a beet red dog dick.
He is actually a half werewolf half cyborg who was struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra while covered in mutagenic ooze and bombarded by strange cosmic rays from another dimension which had just been bitten by a vampire which had been injected with a super soldier serum developed by an ancient godlike warrior race who made a deal with the devil after discovering a powerful magical weapon. What is so complicated about that?
Would that make a half-man half-centaur a quarter horse?
Half man, half man, half wolf? I mean of course...
Manmanwolf.
I've decided to watch this review, *FOR ANOTHER 50 CYCLES!!!*
+pootis spencer With endless options for replaying!
+Kev *With endless options for replaying! With endless options for replaying! With endless options for replaying! TAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!*
pootis spencer WITH ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL!
22:29
@@themega10046 I like to invite someone over to watch it. Like YOUR FRIENDLY BARTENDER!!!
WITH ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL!
WITH ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL!
WITH ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL!
Project Redfoot So... do you want lunch?
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA - *50th chin intensifies* -
*[Leverage intensifies]*
Hansel Damnfer
Guess what happened next!
22:29
Jupiter Ascending, a movie so bad it didn't kill Sean Bean.
I'm sure it was filmed. Just never used.
Edit: it's on his contract.
They assumed everyone knew he would die so they didn't bother to include his death scene
Expectations subverted!!
Subway should change their slogan to 'Do you want LUNCH?!?!?!?!'
12" Rat on wheat for all Man Animals.
To be fair, that guy in the movie totally did eat fresh.
You emphasized the wrong word! The slogan should be "Do you WANT lunch?!" Lol
"Do you WANT LUNCH????" is the greatest line in cinema history.
I think “Crap! Lousy ceiling!” was brilliant improvisation by Travolta. The “I’m walking here! I’m walking here!” of our generation.
It's the benefit of filming on a real set
"our generation" what are you, 52
@@AlejandroSilva-mr7yylet’s just say I’m older than Mr. Plinkett
I will now start yelling "DO YOU WANT LUNCH?!" at my kids when lunch is ready.
Now that's parenting!
Dat's their favrite food!
Wave it in front of their faces while doing it
Feed them rat. If it's raw that just makes your job that much easier.
I already do.
"I'm gonna be the first man in history to have a cesarean fart"
I don't know how much positive reinforcement rich gets from the rest of the crew, but he is hysterically funny.
:-)
He's the 2nd funniest one of them, next to mike
Uhm that's not rich???? Thats Mr. Plinkett????
@@dracomundo1498 Rich and Plinkett are twins, so maybe that explains the mix up
Just for future reference: 16:24
I was watching this in Iraq. I stopped it and volunteered for a convoy across Baghdad.
And a stopover in fallujah for a weekend r and r.
@Fat Cat he is truly the Destroyer of Jokes.
OK, I know I'm over 5 years late with this idea.. but they should have shot the second half with random Dutch Angles.
The more I hear about L. Ron Hubbard's books the more I think he was just a failed writer that got lucky with a backup scam.
He didn't found it at all, of course.
That's exactly what it was. He is such a bad writer he makes Damon Lindelof look like an auteur, but he still wanted to be rich. He was clever enough to figure out "Hey, people throw money at religions, if I can't make this writer thing work I can just do that."
The only thing that the movie Battlefield Earth has in common with the books is aliens, the books have some hilarious dark humour and weirdly original premises not really found in other sci-fi of the era.
That's exactly right...his books were terrible...they could never really expand on anything interesting they had and he literally tried to tie his own fiction into fact...with his made up religion of horse-shit
the only reason they have any credence is becasue Scientology has literally gone out of it's way to push and promote them as world changing
MuffinHunterX It seems the greatest lesson of the 20th Century was that if you fail at art, you can always succeed in riling up the masses.
The Brazil reference really highlights the audience they were trying to reach with this movie and in doing so it highlights how badly this flopped.
Can't believe you guys didn't mention the worst line in movie history "Bees are genetically programmed to recognise royalty.".
SB deserves an oscar for not laughing.
Lol, no it isnt. The "queen bee" is just a metaphor we use as a shorthand to understand beehive organisation. We could easily call the queen bee a "colonel bee" or a "dictator bee".
No it isnt. An electron is an electron. The speed of light is the speed of light. The structure of a bee hive is a structure of a bee hive. They are all descriptions. "Queen" is a metaphor from politics.
Well a black hole is indeed a metaphor, being neither black nor a hole.
That doesnt mean all scientific terms are metaphors, nor does it mean that bee's generic programming to respond to the breeding female in their hive means they "recognise royalty".
Fun fact, the bee shortage is happening because Queen Elizabeth is summoning them all.
You mean Queen Elizabeeth.
Havent you seen "Jupiter Ascending"? All bees
Are genetically programmed to recognise royalty!!
the bartender is the key to all of this
If we get him working...
Because he's a friendlier character than we've ever had before.
I really love that this reference never dies. Mike enlightening the world to George's contempt for his audience is immortalized.
Yes, dimwits copy pasting a decade old meme is truly wonderful.
Spoorple I bet you're a lot of fun to be around......
Rewatching RLM reviews during a global pandemic... what a time to be alive!
Still at it! For another 50 cycles.
Oh, finally, movies that I _have_ watched.
Also, Battlefield Earth should get an award for the most dutch angles used in one movie.
It should get one angle for every two dutch awards
ButtonMasher try watching catwoman they have like 8 angles for every conversation
It has a whole forty degrees!!!
*Least camera angles in one movie.
He was inspired by his friend, George "over wipe" Lucas
I was at a party and the most pretentious guy there mentioned Boyhood, said it was very good and literally "it took 12 years to make" was his only praise for the movie.
@@christianalanwilson434 10/10 comment. Good show.
Should that ever be said to you again please reply with "so did Chinese democracy" and report back to us.
The first matrix must've been pure luck or something, I'm still scratching my head over those matrix sequels...
Just read Plato, it'll waste less time.
I love how patriotic the farting into a hot air balloon to lift the house out of the lake is.
It was about family
@@christianalanwilson434 😂
A friend of mine and I used to prank call Scientology places to see how long we could keep them on the phone. Then they upgraded their call systems. One lady sent me a giant book, and 6 dvds for free. We never watched or read anything, just burned them.
That's for the best. I've read some of the books and it's batshit insane.
"How to smarten the world with fire"
So edgy 🙄
Classic Adolf
You should have send the dvds to rlm
THE FRIENDLY BARTENDER!
John Travolta is amazing when he's hamming it up.
John Travolta's acting is like a horrific car crash I can't look away from.
@@janeeyre1990 CRAP LOUSY ACTING
Face off is one of the other few slices of the rare Travolta ham
One of the hammiest Travolta roll was for Punisher. He's pretty hilarious in that one
Can't talk, gotta poo
Not only does Terl not wonder how the primitive men smelted the gold into bars.
But he also does not question why each bar has impressed on its surface a serial number and the logo of the foundry where it was smelted.
Bane just constantly yelling back 'Bbwwwaaatt did bbwwwuuu ssaaayyy?' at somebody he can't understand is just hysterical.
Jupiter Ascending reminded me of a live action movie remake of an anime series. And the fictitious anime series was probably half decent, but the live action movie was weird, jumbled, and mis-cast. As I watched it, I kept thinking "y'know, as a movie this is terrible. If it were an anime, it'd probably fit."
Holy cow, I had the same thought! The normies wouldn't get it though.
@@mattrogersftw -- I think myself and the op would agree with you, not a good anime. We just said this movie reminds us of an anime, too much contrived bull$h!t to be good, however.
@@turbopokey Anime fans don't get to play the normies card anymore.
It felt like a series or show to me because of all the stuff it had on it.
So just like the Matrix? 😆
My brain can't stop looking at the number three in Mike's face stubble.
You are awful. Now I can't stop seeing it too. Damn it. It's right there, and I never saw it.
LOL! I never noticed that when I watched it. But my brain did.
*****
Have a pizza roll!
DO NOT READ FORFLUF'S COMMENT! DO NOT LET IT ENTER YOUR MIND!
I didn't read it...but my brain did.
"We watched this with our friend Rich Evans, who none of you know about, he's a guy we know."
Haha that's cute.
The fact they used AV8 harriers is so amazing. They are infamously difficult to fly, maintain and have awfully short flight times, but yeah some caveman made it work hahahaha
I'm pretty sure "Jupiter Ascending" is a Wachowski re-write. No one writing a script for a serious movie gives their main character a name like, "Jupiter Jones." I think the movie was originally sold to the studios as a light-hearted adventure comedy, like "The Fifth Element." And then someone thought it would be a great idea to let the Wachowskis get their hands on the script and they added all their usual, pretentious BS.
The criteria for recommending a movie should be 'will people feel ripped-off if they pay to see it or does the movie provide some entertainment value, was it interesting, worth paying to see, etc.'. 90% of movies feel like a rip-off when you pay to see them, and you feel like you're just wasting your time.
I think you're almost entirely right, except the rewrite stuff. The trailer was retarded, the casting was retarded... I think they really just wanted to make a brainless, but good looking movie - they just wanted to have fun. Thinking this in the theater, I had the maximum amount of fun this movie can provide, too.
Jupiter Jones is an incredibly good name for a 70's blaxsplotation film tho
@@NeODeLeuX Jupiter, the bitches done sniffed all the smack what we gon do? But Jupiter, I sell drugs to the community!
Yeah it checks out.
Jupiter's Ascending and Cloud Atlas have more emotional importance for the Wachowskis as they were transitioning to women rather than artistic value.
The first time I heard the title _Jupiter Ascending,_ I thought it was some kind of sequel to _Mercury Rising._
I'd like to keep RLM on for another 50 cycles with endless options for renewal with endless options for renewal with endless options for renewal with endless options for renewal with endless options for renewal
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With endless options for renewal.
wow these options for renewal seem endless
Endless options for renewal...at the gym at 4 in the morning? Oh no!!
"I may have gone too far in a few places"
Oh George
More like Stupider Ascending, am I right?
Mah nigga
handletag Actually,they wanted to call it Uranus Descending. ;-)
handletag The Daily Show did that joke first...
handletag YOU HACK FRAUDS
+handletag No...
"It's not for adults." Somehow it offends many adults when I say the same about every Hunger Games movie.
People don't like thinking they're extracting enjoyment for something targeted at people younger than them because they think it makes them looks immature and stupid.
My favorite line from Battlefield Earth is when a female Psychlo tells John Travolta she will make him as happy as a baby Psychlo on a diet of sci-fi berries. Like, why would she specify which kind of baby she means when they're both the same species? It would be like us constantly adding "human" as an adjective when talking about each other.
Wel humannd do say « men » all the time.
A sentence like « I wil make you the happiest men alive » makes sense, so imthink « i will make hou the happiest Pychlo alive » also makes sense.
Als,omit might have been the translation process that did this, I would much more question why it appears they are speaking English?
I love the fact that the DVD that they show (of Battlefiel Earth) is one of those early DVD realeases, with the cartboard cover. That shit must be almost 20 years by now...
oh shit, scientology is coming for you.
I think even Scientology has disowned that movie.
***** They have banned it to the planet Kola.
superotakushow the fuck else are rich people gonna do these days?
Rob Culligan No they're not, they stay the fuck away from this film.
Tony Midyett Have you seen Oblivion?
That ending was the most moving moment I've seen on camera since Bill Pullman's 4th of July speech in Independence Day.
Battlefield Earth really IS perfect for a sci-fi alien invasion comedy.
It's that sort of conman duo story, but set in the future with aliens as our charming pair of down-on-their-luck, but scheming friends.
These two alien men who work for this space corporation and want to make it big discover gold on Earth that the now barbaric and wild humans don't know about, so they keep it all in secret and teach the humans to mine. They get lazy and force the barbaric humans to do the work and they reap all the benefits without a single suspicion. Along the way, things go wrong, the humans are being obnoxious or dumb in the eyes of the aliens, the aliens don't know shit about the humans and get things wrong about them like the rat, and a whole bunch of hijinks where the duo's laziness and scheming comes to bite them in the ass in a chaotic, hilarious romp between the now taught humans piloting their star ships and the corporation catching on to their ruse and coming for them.
Seriously, that rat bit is hilarious and if it were in a comedy it would probably be one of my favorite jokes in a movie ever. It's so funny
I could never watch a movie with Rich Evans--his laugh just shattered all of the crystal stemware in my cabinet.
Watch at his place o
I'd love to see a re:View for Brazil.
You know what always got me about Battlefield Earth? When the main character gets the knowledge ray, and he tries educating his friends about math. At one point he mentions "Euclidean geometry." What's "Euclidean" supposed to mean? It has to be some kind of coincidence, because I KNOW that the Psychlos didn't ALSO have a mathematician named Euclid.
i have an immense hatred for anything Hubbard ever did/touch, so i never liked the movie, nor do i like Scientology or the actors who pay through the nose to be a part of it's cult.
Mckenzie .Latham so you're saying you would have liked this terrible movie if L.Ron hadn't had anything to do with it?
ZylonBane
no the movie is pure trash and stupid as hell (a testament how bad a sci-fi author Hubbard was), I'm just saying on principle (and knowing the kind of writer he was) i disliked the film from the get go.
To be fair, while the movie was a raging dumpster fire (With some bright points admittedly), the book does address almost all of the issues the movie ends up with, eg. -No gold bars -No Harrier fecking jumpjets -There's actually a really well thought out backstory for the Psychlos are the way they are -There's more but I digress...
And yeah the basic premise of the book had gaping holes but hell it's not like it's unique among scifi of the time period, a trend which does still exist today in a comparatively subdued fashion.(Namely "Large part of the story is hard science but almost always hingeing on one or more small bits of almost blatant fantasy.). A lot of scifi pretty much requires suspension of disbelief to one degree or another.
Besides, the book "Battlefield Earth" kinda reads more like a "feel good super hero" sort of thing. Rather silly, but an entertaining adventure especially if you have a somewhat romanticized view of the over the top "Hero archetype", like in the old Hercules style perhaps or more recently things like 300, or braveheart etc.
In fact, it shares many similarities thematically with the StarWars franchise. Over the top action, overly dramatic framing, more than a bit of pseudo-science, generally positive with horribly dark bits throughout.
In my opinion the book is crap.
My biggest fault with it is that the heroes, are not compelling, interesting and or really have a lot of draw, we're just supposed to like them/root for them becasue they're the heroes...
I can get aorund many campy and or ridiculous sci-fi plots as long as the characters are interesting, the action and or theme is evident and that effort went into it.
Ironically the Psychlos are the most interesting characters in the book and film (i love john Travolta's character/over hamming and forest Whittaker's toady character) which went agaisnt Hubbard's entire intention...
and once you realize/learn that the Psychlos are an allegory for pyschiatrists (which Hubbard and Scientology hate and forbid any of their followers from seeing) it tuns the whole experience a bit sour.
Again you can see how much of Scientology's principles/theology was put into the book and film, it sort of falls apart in my mind, it seemed like Hubbard was trying to more establish a fictional presence of his religion in a sci fi setting then making a sci fi novel.
I don't mind campy sci fi stuff, as long as the theme and or the message is evident, the characters are worth caring for and or the story is exciting.
one example, peter Benchley's creature or even Jurassic park itself. Screamers, etc. etc.
Battlefield Earth, the book is almost required reading to really make sense of the movie. The Psyclos are implanted with a chip at birth that gives a huge pleasure rush for any cruel act for male Psyclo, and female Psyclo go comatose if they try to do math. The entire movie is about 100 pages in a rather large novel. Yep.
Oh so kind of like how they did Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812... but horribly!
Funnily enough I read the book too... my excuse is I was young and I didn't know who L. Ron Hubbard was - not a reason not to read it, but I suspect I wouldn't have bothered had I known. Not a bad sci-fi novel, if in that 1930s schlock style. I went through a phase of reading 30s-50s pulp fantasy and sci-fi. Very, very, very... long. There is no way you could make a real film out of it without it being 8-9 hours long with the biggest budget of all time. I've not seen the film, I suspect Mike and Jay have already related the best bits.
You see, that’s a much more interesting bit of worldbuilding than “We’ve decided to keep you for another 50 cycles!”
"He's an idiot." But don't you know, he graduated top of his class!
While you were still learning to SPELL YOUR NAME!!!!!
One gets the impression that the director wanted to live out his fantasies of tossing Mila Kunis out the window.
Drakkenmensch Silverflare Kunis tossing eh, sounds like a Hollywood thing
I can’t be the only person who feels there’s a strong similarity, possibly on purpose, between Travolta’s character and Invader Zim, can I?
holy fuck dude you hit the nail on the head
Battlefield Earth seems like a strange rip off from Sitchen's translation of Sumerian tablets about The Anunaki making the homonids smarter to mine gold for them.
I mean, I can't say I'd be surprised if Hubbard was fond of Sitchen's theories or had at least heard of them, since both scientology and ancient astronauts are based on showing off a greater vision of the world and history largely steeped in trashy pulp sci-fi. Hell, scientology itself has its own equivalent to ancient astronauts.
It has the same problem in both cases, too: if aliens wanted to mine gold, then surely there are better targets than Earth. Psyche has more gold in it than we've mined out in all of human history, and that's one asteroid; any alien civilization capable of reaching Earth would be much better off mining Psyche if all they wanted was minerals.
"I may have gone too far in a few places"
haha
I haven't seen the movie yet, but the main antagonist's performance from what I've seen ranges from soccer mom with too much botox auditions for role in Hamlet, to Jeremy Irons' performance in Dungeons and Dragons.
To Stephen Hawking...
Thumbs up if you think they should make a Redlettermedia movie that retells all their adventures like this underwater saga
Ridley Scott can direct it
If it has to do with underwater stuff you pretty much are obligated to get James Cameron on it.
And then Ridley Scott can fuck it all up by insisting that Plinkett is a Replicant, and Mike is the secret Creator of life on Earth!
The ending to this video was a work of art
I really, really want a Mr. Plinkett review of Battlefield Earth. I can't think of too many things I'd like to see more on the Internet.
I love Rich's laugh, he's a miracle of the universe.
That was the best thing I ever heard the US anthem being played to!
Continuity error... Plinkett’s shirt had beans on it in the last episode
You think he washes his shirts???
I would expect nothing less of these *HACK FRAUDS!*
Oh God, Rich just had to say "I think I went too far in a few places" while farting into an air-balloon while the American Anthem is playng at the background.
An absolute unit of a legend that guy is.
*salutes*
Ugh, who's this "Rich Evans" guy? He's gonna be the Yoko Ono of this group, I know it.
OwenBruch22 Wait. A man masturbated a droid like it was his cock and put it on the internet? What kind of person would do such a thing?
OwenBruch22 How could you not like Boyhood? It took 12 years to make!
OwenBruch22
it took 12 years to make!
OwenBruch22 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty didn't take them a life to make.
+Jackmono1 Rich Evans.
Rich's laugh always fills me with such joy.
"I may have gone too far in a few places..." - George Lucas
Nice touch.
Wait a second.. wouldn't that knife shoved in the wall cause it to spring a leak? Talk about breaking immersion
+henryEZ .......Get out
+henryEZ lol just kidding bro you made me cry in laughter
It’s not an outside wall, pay attention but kudos for the input
These hack frauds can’t even properly submerge a house
I think it's plugging the hole.
Oh my god, it's like Half in the Bag and Best of the Worst, both at once! I demand more!
Mike: "That character actually had flavors, aromas, reminiscent of, uh . . . "
Me: "Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element."
Me: ". . . Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element."
Me: "Gary OLDMAN in The Fifth Element!"
Me: "GARY OLDMAN IN THE FIFTH ELEMENT!!"
Mike: "Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element."
I was recently trying to explain Jupiter Ascending to a friend of mine, and it didn’t click until I described it as “The movie where Mika Kunis falls a lot.” All these years later, the movie still holds up.
I love Jupiter Ascending. Somehow the elaborate daftness of it clicks with me. I've tried to turn my friends onto this film and consistently they give up about 15 minutes in when it becomes apparent what cosmic cobblers they're watching.
Battlefield Earth with the Rifftrax makes it even funnier!!! Alot of Welcome Back Kotter impersonations kept me rolling 🤣.
I think of jupiter ascending as "The Room" of sci fi. I thought it was hilarious and laughed all the way through.
Crap, lousy ceiling!
Do a commentary for this film! You know it would be class!
33:28 Mike looking into the distance, yelling "Put it by your ass! *Put it by your ass!* " is a great moment in cinema history
Jay's reaction at 17:14 is like reacting to your friend telling you he's taken up smoking meth
"Yeah, I tried meth"
"Holy shit, dude"
"Yeah, I was mostly bored"
I dont understand how the Wachowskis are still getting work. Almost every film they have directed after The Matrix has been a commercial failure. Who keeps funding these people?
Good question
Because investors often prefer the possibility of a huge payoff to a reliable bet of lower payoff. It's endlessly frustrating.
And before the objections, explain why the hell transformers movies make megabucks yet are indistinguishable from Jupiter Ascending
Tamlan Dipper because China.
@@cankhovich1796 lmao
they have ENDLESS OPTIONS FOR RENEWAL!
I'd agree about the Watchowskis being hacks if it weren't for my opinion that Cloud Atlas was a criminally underrated film.
***** Of course not. Everyone is entitled to their opinion no matter how stupid it may be.
***** For one thing, getting caught up on whether or not the film was "science fiction" because most of it is based in the "past" and "present" misses the movie's point, which only speaks to why it was so criminally underrated. Most people just seemed to expect a typical futuristic thriller when that was far from the movie's concern. Cloud Atlas' setting is somewhat transcendent in that its story arc simultaneously occurs in the past. present, and future with an ensemble of characters whose lives intersect with one another throughout time and space.
In light of this fact its baffling you would see each of Cloud Atlas' six "stories" as separate and having "no relation to each other aside from minor elements" when its entire plot is an exploration of how the actions individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul (Tom Hanks' character) is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness (Ewing saving Atua from bondage om the Chatham Islands) ripples across centuries to ultimately inspire a revolution (The Replicant rebellion in Neo-Seoul).
*****
1. "I wasn't caught up on anything. It's just the the tone of it seemed unusually different from the others."
You're the one who mentioned that Cloud Atlas wasn't "even science fiction" as if the film had an obligation to be exist within the genre. That's an odd expectation to have in assessing a film which is clearly drawing from a number of genres. Why that's important is beyond me but you were certainly hung up on it.
2. "I didn't know what to expect and realized almost immediately what this movie was about."
To be honest, If your previous synopsis is an indication of your understanding of what Cloud Atlas "was about" then I wholly disagree with this point. You seem to be focusing on the most superficial aspects of the film while missing its theme.
3. "That's not really true. That element occurs, but it is a minor part of the individual stories. I don't remember how Frobisher is affected by Ewing's journal. "
But it is. In each story a preceding artifact chronicling a moment of past love and resistance resonate with a new generation of characters. This overarching dynamic of the movie is reinforced by Sonmi-451's line, "Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future."
Ewing's Journal cataloging his awakening of political consciousness from an apathetic Victorian era lawyer into a committed abolitionist is the text which inspires Frobisher to compose the Cloud Atlas Sextet. The Cloud Atlas Sextet itself, as a six piece composition, is a work of art that with “overlapping soloists” in which each solo is interrupted by its successor as each interruption is recontinued, in an order of arrangement that mirrors the presentation of the six storylines in the book.
4. “While the story arc has similar elements across the stories, it can't be said that it occurs in all of them simultaneously.”
It does when you recognize that each character in the six stories is the reincarnation of a previous self. That’s why the Wachowskis and Twyker had the same actors play 6 different parts.
*****
1. "If it were, Sonmi's speech would have been unnecessary."
But her speech wasn't necessary to establish the movie''s theme. I’m not sure how you’re drawing that conclusion. The Wachowskis and Twyker could have taken her quote out of the film and the theme would still have been clear to anyone paying attention to the transhistoricality of the characters, the artifacts their acts produced in historical time, and how they resonated throughout the generations. The actual reason Somni makes that speech is to clarify her own awakening of political consciousness as a revolutionary to an archivist who will in turn make an artifact out of her tale of resistance for future generations to learn from. All I am pointing out is the clear fact that this quote reinforces a major theme in the movie by encapsulating it in a few lines.
2. "Okay, but it wasn't clear why Ewing's journal was so important as a unique inspiration. Anything could have been inserted as an inspiration and it wouldn't have had any effect on that particular story."
Its importance becomes very clear when one understands Cloud Atlas’ stories as parts to larger whole and not as series of separate vignettes. Again, these are characters who are coexisting with one another throughout the ages in six different lives in six different settings. For example, Frobisher speaks of Arys having him compose a song about a nightmarish cafe, deep underground, where waitresses have the same face - a clear reference to the Neo-Seoul storyline with Sonmi-451. The movie isn't trying to establish that Arys can see into the future but that “time” is synchronic in the film narrative. Artifacts like Ewing’s journal in and of themselves aren’t mere sources of inspiration, they are just material manifestations of the transhistorical struggle these characters are experiencing in their search for love and justice throughout the ages. These characters are drawn to and inspired by them because they lived/living their events.
3. “That doesn't make any sense at all. To be reincarnated, you have to have lived a previous life which obviously was in the past. Tom Hanks plays the doctor, then a hotel manager, then Issac Sachs, then Hoggins, then an actor who plays Cavendish, and then finally Zachry. While it's the same life in different period and bodies, they aren't occurring at the same time, any more than Sixsmith was simultaneously a physicist and Frobisher's lover.”
Then allow me to clarify that saying “reincarnated” is my attempt to reconcile the two forms of temporarily presented in the film:
It is true that according to the linear historical time they are not occurring at the “same time”. The events in 1849 precede the events in 1936 which precede events in 1973 which precede events in 2012 which precede events in 2144 which precede events in 2321. According to this diachronic concept of modern time the rules of cause and effect dictate that events in the preceding era will determine following events. Thus, one cannot live two lives in 1849 and 2321 at the same time. Each story shows how connected we all are and the effects out actions can have. So without Ewing’s altruistic decision to save the Maori slave, Luisa Rey is never born which means her story on the nuclear power plant never influences Cavendish and his biopic never influences Sonmi-451.
But according to the temporality of the film’s narrative itself these events are occurring simultaneously, which is why the film moves “back” and “forth” from events in each of the six timelines in a non-linear fashion, interweaving their stories together along the common axis of struggle and resistance they all share with one another. According to this synchronic presentation of character arcs, the six different timelines are just six different iterations of the struggle for love and dignity against systems of oppression. Every story has 'the strong preying on the weak,' and every story also has a central character that takes a stand against the strong and against oppression. Each story shows how the barriers that humanity constructs against one another (race, sexuality, class, age, genetics, culture) are meaningless, and shows people trying to tear those barriers down in their struggle for dignity and justice. Each iteration of a person with a birthmark signifies a re-incarnation of theme and not person, and the holder of the birthmark is the central person to each story and how that person dealt and stood up to oppression and cruelty from others. But the important thing is that film continually reinforces the idea that historical time is just an illusion for these characters *because the crux of struggle is timeless*.
*****
1. “It really was. Without it, nobody would have come to the conclusion that "All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended.”
I’m not sure how you arrived at this unsupported assertion. *You* may have been unable to come to that conclusion without her speech, but it seemed rather apparent to me and others who’ve seen the film that her point was just the reiteration of a recurring thematic point. Its just that by Somni’s timeline this realization becomes politicized on a revolutionary scale, archived for millions to see. Frobisher’s assertion that “all boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended” was apparent just looking at the directors’ decision to have the same actors play different roles of different races, genders, nationalities, and sexualities throughout time. It wasn't an arbitrary casting choice to have a biracial black woman in Halle Berry play a white European woman in Jocasta Arys or a South Korean actress in Doona Bae play a white American abolitionist in Tilda Ewing. Its why I thought the criticism of Yellow Face, with white actors playing Asians, that many critics leveled at the movie, were stupid for how they missed the humanist message of unity the film was trying to convey.
2. “And if that is the theme, it's wrong. There's no scientific evidence that anything occurs remotely similar to what happened in this movie and I would really pity someone who thinks that.”
And here is the problem: your literal interpretation of a fictional story. The use of themes like reincarnation aren’t to present an exact facsimile of everything that occurs in the world as proven by science. If that’s your emphasis you’re missing the forest for the trees. Its like rejecting Moby Dick because the main antagonist doesn’t behave the way sperm whales are proven by science to behave or rejecting The Metamorphosis because people don’t spontaneously turn into giant bugs overnight as the protagonist does. These are just plot devices to express profound ideas about the human experience in a metaphorical manner. In Cloud Atlas’ case David Mitchell, author of book which the film was adapted from, makes the point crystal clear:
*“Literally all of the main characters, except one, are reincarnations of the same soul in different bodies throughout the novel identified by a birthmark...that's just a symbol really of the universality of human nature. The title itself "Cloud Atlas," the cloud refers to the ever changing manifestations of the Atlas, which is the fixed human nature which is always thus and ever shall be. So the book's theme is predacity, the way individuals prey on individuals, groups on groups, nations on nations, tribes on tribes. So I just take this theme and in a sense reincarnate that theme in another context.”*
3. “I'm not seeing well interwoven narratives.”
Again, statements such as these are not an indictment of the film, only an indication of your failure to pick up the movie’s metaphors. Watch the film again and pay attention to the birthmarks or to the subtle ways which characters throughout the films mirror one another in the course of film’s narrative structure. Cloud Atlas was presented as pointillist mosaic where the audience is immersed in each of the film’s six storylines just long enough to be hooked, and then are quickly darted from world to world, revisiting each narrative for long enough to propel its story forward and back again like a circle which historically ends back in 1849 at the conclusion of the beginning story. Had the point of the film been to present individual and disconnected stories its narrative structure would have been linear from 1849 to 1936 to 1973 to 2o12 to 2144 to 2321.
4. “I'm not seeing how this was established in any other way than Sonmi's speech. I still haven't seen conclusive evidence outside of it that isn't just a collection of short stories edited together to provide an appropriate pacing for a film with minor elements placed it to give the illusion of simultaneity.””
Well, aside from what I’ve written about the narrative structure, or the using of the same actors in each of the six timelines, or the repeating visual cues, and the thematic repetition of struggle in each of the time lines there are multiple moments in the story where characters come to echo Somni realization that their lives are profoundly interconnected across time by a universal human struggle for love, dignity and justice You presented Frobisher’s point but Luisa Rey’s own infatuation with the Cloud Atlas Sextet (a six piece musical score intended to emulate the film’s six story structure) comes from her own infatuation with “Just trying to understand why we keep making the same mistakes... over and over.” The theme of interconnectedness is continually expressed via the realization by multiple characters that their place within a larger universal story is partly determined by forces larger than themselves. Isaac Sachs puts it in his own way when he states that forces like ““Fear, belief, love phenomena that determined the course of our lives...begin long before we are born and continue after we perish.” His own realization isn’t any different than Somni’s point that “Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
5. “It's also never established that all the stories take place within the same amount of time, so by simultaneous events.”
Where did I write the stories simultaneously take place in historical time? I wrote they are presented simultaneously in the movie’s narrative structure. Again, the point is that according to this synchronic presentation of character arcs, the six different timelines are just six different iterations of the struggle for love and dignity against systems of oppression.
6. “Also, how did Sonmi know any of this?”
Somni doesn’t. She simply arrives at the same realization of a transcendental universal truth as preceding characters in the past five storylines. Her declaration is simply its clearest expression writ large for historical posterity in the midst of a future revolution.
It seems to me you need to watch the movie again. Because regardless of whether or not you agree with my interpretation of its themes, its certain you missed important aspects established within its story.
The most unbelievable part of the movie to me was that a woman who looks like Mila Kunis would be scrubbing toilets for minimum wage instead of, say, making millions of dollars being a mediocre actress in Hollywood movies
2 words. Only fans
I heard that about Monster's Ball. Why is Halle sad? Just be a model or something.
There's plenty of beautiful people doing manual jobs...
There are tons of hot woman doing normal jobs
or a whore of some kind
4 years later this is still gold!
I watched Battlefield Earth for the first time in a livestream. It was an experience I'll never forget. Endless banter about Leverage
Is no one going to mention that gold is a substance you can find in abundance in space?
@@christianalanwilson434 It's like the opposite of cruelty-free meat, cruelty-filled gold!
No
The book is silly and very much pulp. I love pulp so Battlefield Earth is one of my favorite books. In the book, it claims that there are multiple universes and gold is rare in most of them. The Psyclos find the Voyager probe and the gold record on it and they track it’s origin to Earth. This was good enough for me back in the 80s. I’m not sure if it was known back then that gold was common in asteroids.
Much less the fact that they have all this space technology and teleportstion.
If you had such technology, you could fabricate and discover artificial materials far more valuable than gold. Heck! They'd probably even be able to use fusion technology to make gold.
"I'm gonna to be the first man in history to have a Caesarean fart."
- Mr. Plinkett Feb 15, 2015
I love Rich Evans. He's a luminary
Did you know that Roger Christian, the director of Battlefield Earth is an Academy Award Winner? In 1977 he was a set decorator on Star Wars and shared the Academy Award for Best Art Direction with John Barry, Norman Reynolds and Leslie Dilley. This was one of the 6 awards Star Wars won.
It's funny they picked up on the idea of the aliens in Battlefield Earth being lazy corporate buffoons because in the original novel that's exactly what they are. Not that I recommend the book that heavily, but Hubbard apparently intended them to be kind of dumb and pathetic yet possessed of superior technology that they didn't really deserve, a lot like the Vogons would be in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. For whatever reason, the people adapting the Battlefield Earth didn't realize that much of it was intended as comedy.
I think they did mean it as a comedy or at least somewhat comedic, and they failed and succeeded at the same time.
Yeah... as much as I love red letter media and think battlefield earth is awful these guy are definitely missing the basis of the movie which is a really lame and simple satirical concept. The psycholos or whatever they are called are basically our current business men obsessed with war metaphors for profit acquisition and treating their pets and families like total crap assuming they are so much smarter than everyone. Much of what the reviewers thought was done out of stupidity was actually done on purpose... the problem is the movie is still stupid because it's a weak concept that requires too much "forcing" to fit it into it's little container of sci-fi action. The one word review of the movie you could give would be "Hamfisted".
Apparently so hamfisted the reviewers here assumed that it couldn't possibly be intended to be the way it was.... which I almost understand.... Yikes!
Jackmono1 A few of the scenes between Terl and Ker are supposed to be funny, and they succeed. As for the rest of the scenes that are funny but they're not supposed to be... well that's about 90% of the movie...
Yeah, I read the book when I was 13 (the perfect age, seriously) and IIRC there was a bunch of office politics around Travolta's character being stuck on earth indefinitely. His boss saw him as someone who could indeed go far in the company, and because his own career was a dead end he wanted to spread the misery.
It sounds like the movie also dropped a major plot point of the book, the fact that the alien's "breathing gas" reacted explosively with radioactive materials. If there was radiation present there would be visible sparks when the alien's exhalations hit it, and the possibility of their whole life support mask blowing up and killing them. (yes, nothing works that way, but still...) That was the whole reasoning behind Travota's character use of human slaves, they could get at deposits of gold that were too near radioactive deposits and had been decided to be too risky to mine by the corporation.
Also I don't recall any fighter jets in the book, just some firearms the humans managed to get working, IIRC they mostly relied on stolen alien tech.
A dumb book to be sure, but from the sound of it not as dumb as the movie.
*****
The movie does mention the breathing gas thing. It's an idiotic premise, as their homeworld should have been destroyed eons ago by cosmic radiation. But it is addressed.
Fun fact: it took Mr. Plinkett 12 years to make that fart.
Something about the mere existence of Jupiter Ascending makes me feel bad.
It's like, despite years and years of evidence, a lot of people still think that special effects can be a total substitute for good storytelling and compelling characters.
Transformers movies make bank. I blame the people who watch them.
Good vfx sell movies. In a 90sec trailer you can't tell how good the story is or how compelling the characters are, but you can tell if it looks good. Studios will greenlight projects based on marketing potential, not quality scripts.
I had this exact argument after watching it. No, a giant vfx budget does not mean you have 'worldbuilding' it means you get 10+ minute long continual action sequences.
Magic Mike getting an endorsement from Mike Stoklasa! Simply the best
Can't wait until these two review "50 Shades of Abusive Relationship Confused with BDSM"
Oh my GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWD
is there such a thing as a falling fetish
like you get off on seeing women falling to their doom
The answer to "is there a fetish for x" is always yes.
like tarantino and feet
Like Palpatine and feet.
A quality magenta chicken mask
Sheev?
All these pseudo-art movies have faaaalling
Or a woman springs off a skyscraper
Finally a new episode of half in the bag!
I'm so glad they mentioned the friendly bartender scene. I remember watching this movie when it first came out, and that's the one scene that sticks in my mind to this day.
God, I love Mike's attitude at the start of this video. Dude cracks me up every time.
I was thinking about this review today and decided to rewatch it and I must say I have to buy this Jupiter Ascending movie. Channing Tatum as a wingless werewolf with boots of escaping is the kind of spectacle I dream about.
30:14 From what I remember reading somewhere, the over-the-top acting was due to the fact that the director seemed to be going for a particular tone. The second half of the movie seems to have much less of it (thankfully), so maybe they were filming scenes mostly in order, and he or someone else eventually realized how bad it was coming off.
Easily one of their best episodes! I’ve rewatched this so many times.
"DO YOU WANT LUNCH!"
I died of laughter when Travolta said that line.
I had a friend take to watch Battlefield Earth with some free tickets he won, I was so pissed leaving the theatre ! I love bad movies , but Battlefield Earth is like chewing your own teeth .
"Is DVD ironic?" A+
Rich laughing is theraputic I'm only here for it ..... and will be here forever .. thx for the laugh :)
Good thinking taking a Cinderella story (where the entire attraction is the unrealistic fantasy of lifting a person out of their life and into a higher up position in a class based system) and mixing it with a storyline attacking the brutal murdrous higher ups of a class based system.
Yas. Great Think. Good job.
Space socialism AND lovely dresses. Definitely a niche appeal.
From the films I've seen by them, the Wachowskis just aren't any good at writing screenplays (or at the very least need heavy editors to hack it into something manageable). They are quite competent directors, but their arguably best films (the original Matrix, V for Vendetta) weren't truly written by them, from what I've gathered.
I love how they talk about the roof tearing off like THAT'S what makes no sense about this plan.
Not the whole "filling a balloon with air that's already trapped in the goddamn house" part.
“Our friend Rich Evans, who none of you know about”
*And I took that personally*
Do I just have super ears or something? I understood everything that Bane said in TDKR.
Did you watch the dvd/blu-ray release or did you watch it in theaters?
Osutin Both
Troy Wullbrandt I agree. Bane was easy to understand.
However, I don't speak for everybody. I know people who can't tell the differences between different sets of headphones, and people who can't tell 40kbps mp3 from 2640 kbps FLAC. I honestly think some people just can't distinguish audio as clearly as others.
Troy Wullbrandt
In I-max theaters bane was super-gargled. Realizing this the sound designers did a whole 180 and made his voice incredibly loud and clear for the BD/DVD release.
I guess I also have super ears. Also apparently people couldn't understand the dialogue in Interstellar as well.