Pick One

Stamets@lemmy.world to Memes@sopuli.xyz – 387 points –
55

And I say he's the one
Who likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along
And he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means
Knows not what it means
And I say yeah
Nirvana - In Bloom

could do this with adults choosing between 'donnie darko' and 'inception'

How about Starship Troopers?

We’re currently experiencing a second wave of misunderstood Starship Troopers, due to Helldivers 2 getting popular.

For the unaware, Helldivers is basically a Starship Troopers video game. It has all the same themes and satire. And yet there’s a massive part of the player base that doesn’t catch the satire, and believes it’s just the greatest alien-killing game to ever be made.

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I never really understood how people didn't understand Inception. Maybe it's because Nolan's head was entirely up his own ass during the writing phase that the ending seemed rushed, obscure, and very "first year creative writing class" in its resolution, but it's pretty straight forward that the intent was to ::: spoiler spoiler create an ambiguous ending where the viewer debates whether or not Cobb is still dreaming. ::: Donnie Darko is some next level mind fuckery though. ::: spoiler spoiler He fulfills the Grandfather Paradox on himself in order to save reality from being destroyed. ::: Crazy shit. Now I need to rewatch DD.

Thank you for actually explaining Donnie Darko. The people I've talked with about it think it's about a boy and his schizophrenia

he fulfils the grandfather paradox on himself.

Taking "go fuck yourself" to new heights.

What's to misunderstand about Donnie Darko? I get a complete lack of understanding (particularly if the person had only watched it once), but I've never heard a real misunderstanding of it.

Oh I watched this when I was in my teens and was and still am confused on what it's about lol. Something time travel and Jake G letting a plane engine land on him while laughing...

What is the intentional meaning of Scott Pilgrim besides being an awkward teen brained romance plot?

Scott objectifies Ramona, and through a series of physical fights with her exes, learns that he was fighting for a person that only existed as an idealized version of a perfect relationship. He subconsciously devalues Ramona, Knives, and himself throughout the entire film and only at the end does he realize that Ramona is a real person who should be treated like a real person and not a trophy.

Most people just like it because of the stylistic graphic novel aesthetic that they NAILED.

Let's be fair here. While that is the point of the Scott and Ramona story, the movie didn't really put a lot of effort into portraying that. The comics went a little more deeply into that dynamic and fleshing out the relationship, it was still pretty much the background against the character personality showcasing, and over the top dramatic fights. The movie really did nail the vibe and the characters but the whole "I think I learned something" and the end of the movie really downplays the "lesson" of the whole plot. So much so that I don't think Scott himself even fully understood the actual lesson he just learned. Just that what he was doing was wrong, and needed to change, but not why and what exactly it was he needed to change.

Great movie for sure, even better comic series, but a deep complex plot it isn't.

Scott not really understanding what he learned or why he needed to change actually fits very well with the new anime.

And the books! The big takeaway from scott pilgrim really shouldn’t be idolizing either scott or ramona. They both need therapy.

I am not usually one to roll my eyes at literary analysis, but these themes are not well developed in the movie at all. It is absolutely meant to be a visually interesting teen romcom first, with some commentary about relationships tagging along for the ride.

Those original concepts were in the movie but it was a missed landing. If the ending had been done differently the themes would have fit well enough with the majority of the film.

I'm going to be honest, I watched it once in high school because a friend was a fan. It has been a long time since then. This is a casual viewers input with maybe a decade viewing gap lol.

I remember the cool graphics, and I remember not liking Scott very much. The drummer chick was cool, but the focus on Scott's perspective demanded focus over her for telling the story you describe. Cera put me off some films back then, but I find I appreciate his earlier work in Arrested Development more nowadays.

No real valuable input to be had from me, but as a fan from other fandoms, I can appreciate the struggle of enjoying a setting and then having it consumed for cheap visual entertainment.

I think the films original ending was really nice.

For the uninitiated: after saying goodbye to Nega Scott, he realises he was only infatuated with Ramona, and goes back to dating Knives.

They go back to the ninja arcade dancing game where they broke up, and have fun playing together again.

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The movie doesn't get into it as much, but the comic focuses a lot more on how Scott is always the good guy in his own head, but in actuality he's kind of continually been shitty to his partners. Really recommend the comics, because while the movie did a great job of capturing the look and feel of the comic, there's a lot of material in the comic that the movie just didn't have time to cover.

Capitalism destroys the human will to live.

Isn't this an underpinning of every story produced under capitalism?

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TBF, the Scott Pilgrim movie made him out to be the Protagonist of his own life while the comics made him out to be the Antagonist of his life.

I'd put 500 Days of Summer in there as a third choice

The first time I watched 500 Days of Summer, I remember just staring at the screen after it was over for what seemed like an eternity. It made me reexamine a lot of past relationships and the mistakes I made assuming things about the other person or our relationship that weren't grounded in reality.

My first time I was like fuck yeah I don't care how good a girl is you can always go meet someone new! Screw Summer! Tom doesn't need her!

Then eventually I realized that Tom was really the one who was unrealistic and immature. But it took a couple viewings.

Why is the "dont talk about fight club" dude holding soap?

Honest question? If joke, I don't get it.

Our protagonist meets Tyler Durden on a plane. They start a conversation, and Tyler talks a bit about his work as a soap salesman. Later in the movie we learn he uses human fat from a liposuction clinic to make it. Later still, we find out the process of making soap creates nitroglycerin he uses to make a bomb. That's all I remember about soap in that movie.

I might be explaining the joke out of turn, but the soap says “fight club” on it held by the guy who says not to talk about it. At least that’s what I thought the poster was pointing out. Not sure why they’re getting downvoted..

By-products of soap can be used to make nitroglycerine, which when stabilised with an inert binder, is approximately dynamite (commercial dynamite is far more refined tgan this crude early recipe produces)

It always made me laugh when he's just like "you get glycerine from this process. All you need to do is just add some nitric acid." As if youre baking brownies.

Glycerine can be purchased in bulk very easily. Nitric acid is exceptionally difficult to buy, very hard and dangerous to synthesise (outside of a well provisioned chem lab) even if you have the precursors (concentrated sulfuric acid and potassium nitrate) and to then produce nitroglycerine requires a lot more care than just mixing them together.

Even in a well provisioned lab you're gonna have a hard time coming across large amounts of nitrogen rich compounds, exactly because they're crucial to making explosives.

I never saw either. Explain plz?

Okay, I'm very sick so this may or may not make sense. Both movies are satire.

Fight club is about emotionally damaged men in the modern day doing a fight club to fill the emptiness in their lives. Then they do a terrorism, and the twist is that the MC was mentally ill the whole time and just needed to work on themselves.

Scott Pilgrim is a teenage romance where Scott must fight seven evil exes before getting the girl. The twist is that the entire time Scott has been an immature douchebag putting a random girl on a pedastal, and devaluing himself any everyone else as a result. Peak example is his previous girlfriend, who is a high schooler he stays with just because he wants someone around. Iirc no sex/statutory rape occurs, but still.

Both require an amount of self awareness to understand that the protagonist is the problem, and a small but noticeable number of people miss the satire. I recommend both, they're great movies.

My take with fight club is he went all the way down the rabbit hole. Modern capitalism beat him down to the point he had a psychotic break

The other guys literally saw him punching himself in a parking lot, and they were so numb and hungry for something different that their first thought was "maybe getting punched would make me feel something". It wasn't a bunch of psychos, it was average people so numb and beat down they took the first opportunity to rebel against the norm.

One of them died. They didn't just do a terrorism, they destroyed the loans of hundreds of thousands of people, and killed no one. It was presented as an effective and morally justifiable act. If you could blow up an empty office building and lift a quarter million people out of crushing poverty, it's property destruction vs lives.

I don't think he came to terms with himself or worked on himself, he saw that he went from a fight club to a cult to the leader of freedom fighters in no time.

He doesn't come to terms with himself, he's terrified because he's not in control of himself and he just did something he would've found not only unthinkable, but logistically impossible before his psychotic break

He tries to kill himself rather than see where he'll go, how long before he'll blow up a building full of people.

Then he survives. He went down the rabbit hole, and came back changed. His life didn't get better, he didn't just work on himself. He came back where he started after glimpsing the other side, and he brought his adventure back with him to the life he was so desperate to leave.

It's the heroes journey - he wasn't just mentally ill in wonderland, he was hyper competent. People were willing to die for him, and to kill for him. He was able to blow up a building, and no people, and get away with it. He accomplished a heroic feat in magnitude if nothing else.

But it terrified the shit out of him, he had enough adventure. So he found himself happy to return home, and he picked up where he left off.

Willingness to go to therapy wasn't the journey, that's what an office worker does when they have a psychotic break. The journey was to be a hero fighting back against the orphan crushing machine, and he did it. He struck a meaningful blow, he destroyed the Ring. And then he went home, having had his adventure and appreciating the peace of mediocrity

Then stop whatever you're doing and immediately watch both of them, back to back. Both are excellent.