Cinema Thread, because movies is a stupid word

[DirtyRed]

Waiting for TLJ to start now. This better not suck.

Exceeded expectations

Good to hear.

A lot of other people in this thread have criticised it (some justifiably so, on reflection), give us your thoughts! I REALLY wanna go see it again now.

Spoiler free. The entire movie other than literally the last 10-15 minutes was predictable, and my wife leaned over and told me the ending "twist" though I didn't see it coming. But the set pieces they used were gorgeous, and that made it an enjoyable ride.

Welcome to the cancer of annual releases. Write a bog standard script that's more interested in checking off a list of standard high spots than anything else, and throw lots and lots of money at making it shiny. Just attach it to literally any IP you can market at nerds or kids and watch the idiot marks on the street convince themselves it's actually a great movie.

It is still a very "safe" movie. It is an action movie with funny parts, which is very "in" right now. The characters are wafer thin archetypes, though Kylo Ren gets more interesting.

See? Standard script. You got your Funny Sidekick, Mentor Figure, a Hero with some sort of Inner Conflict, and a Bad Guy that is either Troubled, Greedy, Psychotic, a literal Nazi, or a combination. Some ancillary authority figure ostensibly on the good guys' side that nonetheless ALWAYS does something incredibly stupid in order to manufacture some additional conflict or drama in a last ditch effort to add Stakes to the happenings because the writers spaced and skipped that step earlier in the Script Toolkit, and probably does so out of some Too Dumb To Live dedication to rules or regulations or some such stupid shit, is optional.

Now, did I just describe Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or Star Wars?

Spiderman shakes the trend by having the Conflicted Hero and the Funny Sidekick be the same guy.

[hsilman]

Waiting for TLJ to start now. This better not suck.

Exceeded expectations

Good to hear.

A lot of other people in this thread have criticised it (some justifiably so, on reflection), give us your thoughts! I REALLY wanna go see it again now.

Spoiler free. The entire movie other than literally the last 10-15 minutes was predictable, and my wife leaned over and told me the ending "twist" though I didn't see it coming. But the set pieces they used were gorgeous, and that made it an enjoyable ride.

Welcome to the cancer of annual releases. Write a bog standard script that's more interested in checking off a list of standard high spots than anything else, and throw lots and lots of money at making it shiny. Just attach it to literally any IP you can market at nerds or kids and watch the idiot marks on the street convince themselves it's actually a great movie.

It is still a very "safe" movie. It is an action movie with funny parts, which is very "in" right now. The characters are wafer thin archetypes, though Kylo Ren gets more interesting.

See? Standard script. You got your Funny Sidekick, Mentor Figure, a Hero with some sort of Inner Conflict, and a Bad Guy that is either Troubled, Greedy, Psychotic, a literal Nazi, or a combination. Some ancillary authority figure ostensibly on the good guys' side that nonetheless ALWAYS does something incredibly stupid in order to manufacture some additional conflict or drama in a last ditch effort to add Stakes to the happenings because the writers spaced and skipped that step earlier in the Script Toolkit, and probably does so out of some Too Dumb To Live dedication to rules or regulations or some such stupid shit, is optional.

Now, did I just describe Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or Star Wars?

Spiderman shakes the trend by having the Conflicted Hero and the Funny Sidekick be the same guy.

Yeah, but that's only a problem if you expect a multi-million dollar blockbuster from Disney that has a literal generation of expectations to live up to, to be as good or innovative as whoever the next generations Da Vinci of filmmaking is, working on a shoestring budget.

That is, literally retarded. Or from Kentucky it seems, but I repeat myself.

[Idlehands]

Waiting for TLJ to start now. This better not suck.

Exceeded expectations

Good to hear.

A lot of other people in this thread have criticised it (some justifiably so, on reflection), give us your thoughts! I REALLY wanna go see it again now.

Spoiler free. The entire movie other than literally the last 10-15 minutes was predictable, and my wife leaned over and told me the ending "twist" though I didn't see it coming. But the set pieces they used were gorgeous, and that made it an enjoyable ride.

Welcome to the cancer of annual releases. Write a bog standard script that's more interested in checking off a list of standard high spots than anything else, and throw lots and lots of money at making it shiny. Just attach it to literally any IP you can market at nerds or kids and watch the idiot marks on the street convince themselves it's actually a great movie.

It is still a very "safe" movie. It is an action movie with funny parts, which is very "in" right now. The characters are wafer thin archetypes, though Kylo Ren gets more interesting.

See? Standard script. You got your Funny Sidekick, Mentor Figure, a Hero with some sort of Inner Conflict, and a Bad Guy that is either Troubled, Greedy, Psychotic, a literal Nazi, or a combination. Some ancillary authority figure ostensibly on the good guys' side that nonetheless ALWAYS does something incredibly stupid in order to manufacture some additional conflict or drama in a last ditch effort to add Stakes to the happenings because the writers spaced and skipped that step earlier in the Script Toolkit, and probably does so out of some Too Dumb To Live dedication to rules or regulations or some such stupid shit, is optional.

Now, did I just describe Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or Star Wars?

Spiderman shakes the trend by having the Conflicted Hero and the Funny Sidekick be the same guy.

wonder if there is anything Dirty Red likes.

[Shane]

See? Standard script. You got your Funny Sidekick, Mentor Figure, a Hero with some sort of Inner Conflict, and a Bad Guy that is either Troubled, Greedy, Psychotic, a literal Nazi, or a combination. Some ancillary authority figure ostensibly on the good guys' side that nonetheless ALWAYS does something incredibly stupid in order to manufacture some additional conflict or drama in a last ditch effort to add Stakes to the happenings because the writers spaced and skipped that step earlier in the Script Toolkit, and probably does so out of some Too Dumb To Live dedication to rules or regulations or some such stupid shit, is optional.

Now, did I just describe Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or Star Wars?

Spiderman shakes the trend by having the Conflicted Hero and the Funny Sidekick be the same guy.

Yeh, tropes gunna trope. But Spider-Man:Homecoming went full sidekick, man.

[DirtyRed]

Waiting for TLJ to start now. This better not suck.

Exceeded expectations

Good to hear.

A lot of other people in this thread have criticised it (some justifiably so, on reflection), give us your thoughts! I REALLY wanna go see it again now.

Spoiler free. The entire movie other than literally the last 10-15 minutes was predictable, and my wife leaned over and told me the ending "twist" though I didn't see it coming. But the set pieces they used were gorgeous, and that made it an enjoyable ride.

Welcome to the cancer of annual releases. Write a bog standard script that's more interested in checking off a list of standard high spots than anything else, and throw lots and lots of money at making it shiny. Just attach it to literally any IP you can market at nerds or kids and watch the idiot marks on the street convince themselves it's actually a great movie.

It is still a very "safe" movie. It is an action movie with funny parts, which is very "in" right now. The characters are wafer thin archetypes, though Kylo Ren gets more interesting.

See? Standard script. You got your Funny Sidekick, Mentor Figure, a Hero with some sort of Inner Conflict, and a Bad Guy that is either Troubled, Greedy, Psychotic, a literal Nazi, or a combination. Some ancillary authority figure ostensibly on the good guys' side that nonetheless ALWAYS does something incredibly stupid in order to manufacture some additional conflict or drama in a last ditch effort to add Stakes to the happenings because the writers spaced and skipped that step earlier in the Script Toolkit, and probably does so out of some Too Dumb To Live dedication to rules or regulations or some such stupid shit, is optional.

Now, did I just describe Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or Star Wars?

Spiderman shakes the trend by having the Conflicted Hero and the Funny Sidekick be the same guy.

Yeah, but that's only a problem if you expect a multi-million dollar blockbuster from Disney that has a literal generation of expectations to live up to, to be as good or innovative as whoever the next generations Da Vinci of filmmaking is, working on a shoestring budget.

That is, literally retarded. Or from Kentucky it seems, but I repeat myself.

You know, I look at a billion dollar corporation pouring millions of dollars into a project and expect it to be really good as a result. What sort of fucking cretin expects and is then happy with Merely Average from that?

It doesn't have to do anything INNOVATIVE to actually be good. It'd just be nice if they took the Star Wars IP and actually did something with it that merited the Star Wars IP in the first place, and maybe put a few of the millions into making something other than a completely Color-By-Numbers action/hero movie.

Really, the fucking thing could have just as easily been Dungeons and Dragons 8: Medeival Boogaloo, changed the character names, and the whole thing would have just fell in the cookie-cutter script.

wonder if there is anything Dirty Red likes.

For the most exceedingly mild use of the word, I like this movie all right. It is decent. Anyone saying it's any better than that should kill themselves. It's like watching two competent pro wrestlers wrestle for the 58th time. They just hit all the goddamn spots I've seen before 1000 times already, but they don't fuck anything up because they are competent.

It is the Nickelback of movies. The difference is that you marks have been told Nickelback is uncool so you all dislike it to be trendy, but you've been told this was the hip current thing, so you like it to be trendy.

[hsilman]

You know, I look at a billion dollar corporation pouring millions of dollars into a project and expect it to be really good as a result. What sort of fucking cretin expects and is then happy with Merely Average from that?

It doesn't have to do anything INNOVATIVE to actually be good. It'd just be nice if they took the Star Wars IP and actually did something with it that merited the Star Wars IP in the first place, and maybe put a few of the millions into making something other than a completely Color-By-Numbers action/hero movie.

Really, the fucking thing could have just as easily been Dungeons and Dragons 8: Medeival Boogaloo, changed the character names, and the whole thing would have just fell in the cookie-cutter script.

your problem is you think Star Wars is a good IP to begin with. That somehow the original movies are some amazing pieces of art. But you're wrong. So it doesn't have some legacy to live up to, except in your own mind. Star Wars was always flash and magic, and not deep story telling with well written characters.

Fucking Ewoks, for christ's sake.

[cwd]

your problem is you think Star Wars is a good IP to begin with. That somehow the original movies are some amazing pieces of art. But you're wrong. So it doesn't have some legacy to live up to, except in your own mind. Star Wars was always flash and magic, and not deep story telling with well written characters.

Fucking Ewoks, for christ's sake.

So true. Star Wars means:

* top-budget effects

* nostalgia

Everything else about the movies in this franchise is sub-par.

[mgil]

You know, I look at a billion dollar corporation pouring millions of dollars into a project and expect it to be really good as a result. What sort of fucking cretin expects and is then happy with Merely Average from that?

It doesn't have to do anything INNOVATIVE to actually be good. It'd just be nice if they took the Star Wars IP and actually did something with it that merited the Star Wars IP in the first place, and maybe put a few of the millions into making something other than a completely Color-By-Numbers action/hero movie.

Really, the fucking thing could have just as easily been Dungeons and Dragons 8: Medeival Boogaloo, changed the character names, and the whole thing would have just fell in the cookie-cutter script.

your problem is you think Star Wars is a good IP to begin with. That somehow the original movies are some amazing pieces of art. But you're wrong. So it doesn't have some legacy to live up to, except in your own mind. Star Wars was always flash and magic, and not deep story telling with well written characters.

Fucking Ewoks, for christ's sake.

Agree with most of this. The story nothing new.

However, imo, John Williams should be commended here in composing a score that harkens to other good (and knowing) pieces of repertoire with excellent timing. He’s a fantastic composer for film. Specifically to the original trilogy, he elevated the art form.

Also, @DirtyRed likes The Punisher movie with Dolph Lundgren.

[Allentown]

The Disney-ride casino scene and the puffin lol-splatting on the falcon killed the movie. I literally cannot believe people are putting it above New Hope, and even more shockingly Empire Strikes Back. In 30 years, no one will be putting reaction videos of their kids watching Last Jedi for the first time like they do with Empire.
A week after seeing it and I dislike it more than I did walking out of the theater.

[hsilman]

The Disney-ride casino scene and the puffin lol-splatting on the falcon killed the movie. I literally cannot believe people are putting it above New Hope, and even more shockingly Empire Strikes Back. In 30 years, no one will be putting reaction videos of their kids watching Last Jedi for the first time like they do with Empire.
A week after seeing it and I dislike it more than I did walking out of the theater.

I agree. It's great until you have time to think about it for more than a minute.

Also agree on the orchestra MAKING the originals. Empire is clearly the best of the series, who even can argue with that?

But it's a top notch popcorn flick.

Anyway, anyone seeing The Post? Looks oscar-y. Will probably watch it later this week.

[Idlehands]

Waiting for TLJ to start now. This better not suck.

Exceeded expectations

Good to hear.

A lot of other people in this thread have criticised it (some justifiably so, on reflection), give us your thoughts! I REALLY wanna go see it again now.

Spoiler free. The entire movie other than literally the last 10-15 minutes was predictable, and my wife leaned over and told me the ending "twist" though I didn't see it coming. But the set pieces they used were gorgeous, and that made it an enjoyable ride.

Welcome to the cancer of annual releases. Write a bog standard script that's more interested in checking off a list of standard high spots than anything else, and throw lots and lots of money at making it shiny. Just attach it to literally any IP you can market at nerds or kids and watch the idiot marks on the street convince themselves it's actually a great movie.

It is still a very "safe" movie. It is an action movie with funny parts, which is very "in" right now. The characters are wafer thin archetypes, though Kylo Ren gets more interesting.

See? Standard script. You got your Funny Sidekick, Mentor Figure, a Hero with some sort of Inner Conflict, and a Bad Guy that is either Troubled, Greedy, Psychotic, a literal Nazi, or a combination. Some ancillary authority figure ostensibly on the good guys' side that nonetheless ALWAYS does something incredibly stupid in order to manufacture some additional conflict or drama in a last ditch effort to add Stakes to the happenings because the writers spaced and skipped that step earlier in the Script Toolkit, and probably does so out of some Too Dumb To Live dedication to rules or regulations or some such stupid shit, is optional.

Now, did I just describe Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or Star Wars?

Spiderman shakes the trend by having the Conflicted Hero and the Funny Sidekick be the same guy.

Yeah, but that's only a problem if you expect a multi-million dollar blockbuster from Disney that has a literal generation of expectations to live up to, to be as good or innovative as whoever the next generations Da Vinci of filmmaking is, working on a shoestring budget.

That is, literally retarded. Or from Kentucky it seems, but I repeat myself.

You know, I look at a billion dollar corporation pouring millions of dollars into a project and expect it to be really good as a result. What sort of fucking cretin expects and is then happy with Merely Average from that?

It doesn't have to do anything INNOVATIVE to actually be good. It'd just be nice if they took the Star Wars IP and actually did something with it that merited the Star Wars IP in the first place, and maybe put a few of the millions into making something other than a completely Color-By-Numbers action/hero movie.

Really, the fucking thing could have just as easily been Dungeons and Dragons 8: Medeival Boogaloo, changed the character names, and the whole thing would have just fell in the cookie-cutter script.

wonder if there is anything Dirty Red likes.

For the most exceedingly mild use of the word, I like this movie all right. It is decent. Anyone saying it's any better than that should kill themselves. It's like watching two competent pro wrestlers wrestle for the 58th time. They just hit all the goddamn spots I've seen before 1000 times already, but they don't fuck anything up because they are competent.

It is the Nickelback of movies. The difference is that you marks have been told Nickelback is uncool so you all dislike it to be trendy, but you've been told this was the hip current thing, so you like it to be trendy.

I never liked nickleback.

I like TFA more than TLJ. I enjoyed TLJ but would have been more fun to talk about it with the wife. Which I can't do. So I'm stuck talking to DR. That's like a punch to the head.

[BenM]

I watched The Dark Tower last night. Kinda agree with Shane, it was a bit poo. Enjoyed the last half an hour though.

[DirtyRed]

You know, I look at a billion dollar corporation pouring millions of dollars into a project and expect it to be really good as a result. What sort of fucking cretin expects and is then happy with Merely Average from that?

It doesn't have to do anything INNOVATIVE to actually be good. It'd just be nice if they took the Star Wars IP and actually did something with it that merited the Star Wars IP in the first place, and maybe put a few of the millions into making something other than a completely Color-By-Numbers action/hero movie.

Really, the fucking thing could have just as easily been Dungeons and Dragons 8: Medeival Boogaloo, changed the character names, and the whole thing would have just fell in the cookie-cutter script.

your problem is you think Star Wars is a good IP to begin with. That somehow the original movies are some amazing pieces of art. But you're wrong. So it doesn't have some legacy to live up to, except in your own mind. Star Wars was always flash and magic, and not deep story telling with well written characters.

Fucking Ewoks, for christ's sake.

The Star Wars IP is excellent, in the same way that a fitted set of top of the line golf clubs are excellent. They are a great tool to accomplish great things if the wielder knows what the fuck they are doing. I'm playing KOTOR because everything Star Wars from 15 years ago was on sale on Steam for, I shit you not, 'bout tree fiddy. Aside from the Dragon Age-y "real time but all characters are on auto-pilot unless you pause every 3 seconds to tell them what the fuck to do" combat, the game is a fucking masterpiece. It shouldn't be THAT hard to come up with some really fly shit with an IP that involves magical space samurai.

But now EA has killed both BioWare and Star Wars. Because government.

There were even the expanded universe books, that introduced a whole bunch of fun concepts, like "grey" Jedi and some asspull to bring Boba Fett back in the game. But Disney retroactively declared ALL OF THAT SHIT non-canon because it wasn't sterile enough that a 6 year old could understand it and because they apparently hate money, respectively.

Waiting for TLJ to start now. This better not suck.

Exceeded expectations

Good to hear.

A lot of other people in this thread have criticised it (some justifiably so, on reflection), give us your thoughts! I REALLY wanna go see it again now.

Spoiler free. The entire movie other than literally the last 10-15 minutes was predictable, and my wife leaned over and told me the ending "twist" though I didn't see it coming. But the set pieces they used were gorgeous, and that made it an enjoyable ride.

Welcome to the cancer of annual releases. Write a bog standard script that's more interested in checking off a list of standard high spots than anything else, and throw lots and lots of money at making it shiny. Just attach it to literally any IP you can market at nerds or kids and watch the idiot marks on the street convince themselves it's actually a great movie.

It is still a very "safe" movie. It is an action movie with funny parts, which is very "in" right now. The characters are wafer thin archetypes, though Kylo Ren gets more interesting.

See? Standard script. You got your Funny Sidekick, Mentor Figure, a Hero with some sort of Inner Conflict, and a Bad Guy that is either Troubled, Greedy, Psychotic, a literal Nazi, or a combination. Some ancillary authority figure ostensibly on the good guys' side that nonetheless ALWAYS does something incredibly stupid in order to manufacture some additional conflict or drama in a last ditch effort to add Stakes to the happenings because the writers spaced and skipped that step earlier in the Script Toolkit, and probably does so out of some Too Dumb To Live dedication to rules or regulations or some such stupid shit, is optional.

Now, did I just describe Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or Star Wars?

Spiderman shakes the trend by having the Conflicted Hero and the Funny Sidekick be the same guy.

Yeah, but that's only a problem if you expect a multi-million dollar blockbuster from Disney that has a literal generation of expectations to live up to, to be as good or innovative as whoever the next generations Da Vinci of filmmaking is, working on a shoestring budget.

That is, literally retarded. Or from Kentucky it seems, but I repeat myself.

You know, I look at a billion dollar corporation pouring millions of dollars into a project and expect it to be really good as a result. What sort of fucking cretin expects and is then happy with Merely Average from that?

It doesn't have to do anything INNOVATIVE to actually be good. It'd just be nice if they took the Star Wars IP and actually did something with it that merited the Star Wars IP in the first place, and maybe put a few of the millions into making something other than a completely Color-By-Numbers action/hero movie.

Really, the fucking thing could have just as easily been Dungeons and Dragons 8: Medeival Boogaloo, changed the character names, and the whole thing would have just fell in the cookie-cutter script.

wonder if there is anything Dirty Red likes.

For the most exceedingly mild use of the word, I like this movie all right. It is decent. Anyone saying it's any better than that should kill themselves. It's like watching two competent pro wrestlers wrestle for the 58th time. They just hit all the goddamn spots I've seen before 1000 times already, but they don't fuck anything up because they are competent.

It is the Nickelback of movies. The difference is that you marks have been told Nickelback is uncool so you all dislike it to be trendy, but you've been told this was the hip current thing, so you like it to be trendy.

I never liked nickleback.

I like TFA more than TLJ. I enjoyed TLJ but would have been more fun to talk about it with the wife. Which I can't do. So I'm stuck talking to DR. That's like a punch to the head.

TFA wasn't anything revolutionary, obviously. It was basically Another New Hope. Which, given the scenario Disney and the franchise were in, wasn't really a bad thing. They needed a film that just wasn't objectionably bad, and generally in the spirit of Star Wars, in order to get the taste of the prequels out of everyone's mouth. TFA accomplished that nicely. It was a base knock to hopefully start a rally. Followed up by a walk and a fly out.

Two years later, I expect better out of this. And really, TLJ would have went from two to three stars (on the wacky pro wrestling -5 to 5 scale where 2 stars is somehow average) immediately if the bullshit, silly movie-by-marketing-committee shit wasn't in it. They're one GIDP from ending the "rally" and putting Star Wars as a movie franchise back in the ground.

BASEBALL

I watched The Dark Tower last night. Kinda agree with Shane, it was a bit poo. Enjoyed the last half an hour though.

That movie would have been better if they just shot the annoying, useless kid in the first 10 minutes and let the whole thing be Idris Elba battling Evil!McConaughey.

Of course, that fucking twerp might not have been such a goddamn irritant if the trailers ever indicated that the movie was actually about some autistic teenager, instead of the bitching cool magic gunman.

[Wilhelm]

We just watched this.
It was nice.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4714568/

[hector]

I watched The Dark Tower last night. Kinda agree with Shane, it was a bit poo. Enjoyed the last half an hour though.

I thought this movie was dogshit before I knew how the books ended.

SpoilerShow

It turns out that the book ends with a recursive, infinite loop type scenario. Roland is sentenced to begin his journey all over again, from the beginning. And likely will be forever. So the movie wasn't actually an adaptation of the books. The movie was the next iteration of the journey, and that's why some things were different.

This made the movie more interesting to me.

[hsilman]

I watched The Dark Tower last night. Kinda agree with Shane, it was a bit poo. Enjoyed the last half an hour though.

I thought this movie was dogshit before I knew how the books ended.

SpoilerShow

It turns out that the book ends with a recursive, infinite loop type scenario. Roland is sentenced to begin his journey all over again, from the beginning. And likely will be forever. So the movie wasn't actually an adaptation of the books. The movie was the next iteration of the journey, and that's why some things were different.

This made the movie more interesting to me.

The movie is still dogshit. Jake has always been the least interesting character, and keeping him instead of any of the better characters was a stupid choice.

[chrisd]

I may have to look up the review I saw of the original Star Wars in the Soviet Weekly. It made some telling points.

If you left out all the stuff about politics, the reviewer pointed out that it was simply a Western with space ships instead of horses.

[cwd]

Saw Bright, it was unsurprising but fun.

It's a netflix movie starring Will Smith. Buddy-cop X wizards & elves mashup.

Smith is an LAPD cop trying to hang on until retirement, and his rookie partner is a diversity-hire Orc. Bad guys lose a magic wand on the bad side of town, which is equivalent to a loose nuclear warhead. Many chase and fight scenes follow.

Everything you expect will happen, happens, in the order you expect. But it was still fun to watch. Recommend beer -- you don't want to think too hard for this one.

[DirtyRed]

I may have to look up the review I saw of the original Star Wars in the Soviet Weekly. It made some telling points.

If you left out all the stuff about politics, the reviewer pointed out that it was simply a Western with space ships and magic samurai instead of horses.

The importance of that to the general allure of Star Wars can't be overstated. I'm pretty sure westerns would be better if they had more magic samurai in them.

Saw Bright, it was unsurprising but fun.

It's a netflix movie starring Will Smith. Buddy-cop X wizards & elves mashup.

Smith is an LAPD cop trying to hang on until retirement, and his rookie partner is a diversity-hire Orc. Bad guys lose a magic wand on the bad side of town, which is equivalent to a loose nuclear warhead. Many chase and fight scenes follow.

Everything you expect will happen, happens, in the order you expect. But it was still fun to watch. Recommend beer -- you don't want to think too hard for this one.

Okay, so is this a TLJ type movie that at least does nothing special fairly well, or something where I have to give myself another concussion before I watch it to avoid being offended by how much shit blatantly doesn't make sense?

[chrisd]

Saw Bright, it was unsurprising but fun.

It's a netflix movie starring Will Smith. Buddy-cop X wizards & elves mashup.

Smith is an LAPD cop trying to hang on until retirement, and his rookie partner is a diversity-hire Orc. Bad guys lose a magic wand on the bad side of town, which is equivalent to a loose nuclear warhead. Many chase and fight scenes follow.

Everything you expect will happen, happens, in the order you expect. But it was still fun to watch. Recommend beer -- you don't want to think too hard for this one.

Oh, one of those.

An LA/New York/Small Town America cop is partnered with a dinosaur/alien/his ex wife and he's not keen. They get involved in a case where the partner seems to be involved/hiding something/strangely unconcerned. They find a bag of powder/glowing amulet/photograph and the partner says "Oh NO! Not this again". Research leads them to an old warehouse on the edge of town/down by the docks/on an abandoned airforce base where they are captured and kidnapped. A sinister dinosaur/alien/ex-wife's new boyfriend reveals a plan to take over/destroy/redecorate the world. They escape and are pursued. During the chase the partner uses amazing dinosaur/alien/feminine techniques to defeat the pursuers. It is revealed that the partner is an ex-conspirator/rightful king/pregnant. The pursuers have them cornered, the back up has been sent somewhere else, the alien/dinosaur/boyfriend overlord is about to finish them off when there is a collossal explosion/mysterious blinding light/outbreak of mumps. The back up turns up and cuffs all the villains. the chief of police/mayor/marriage guidance counsellor congratulates the lead character who then turns to the partner and says something tough and uncaring with an ambiguous tone/something placatory/something so schmaltzy that you want to jump through the screen and punch him in the bollocks. The camera zooms out to reveal the devastated scene/the galaxy/the town including the new happy home of the reunited couple.