RANT: One of the worst scenes in a movie I’ve ever witnessed and the death of “cinema”

[THG]

Case in study- this “scene” from Ryan Reynolds’s Free Guy (2021)-

https://www.twitter.com/thejoshl/status/1441833800397295616
I haven’t seen the entirety of Free Guy, but I genuinely believe that that sequence of events is one of the worst scenes from a movie I’ve ever witnessed- and my friends and people whom I respect have said that the rest of the movie is essentially like this. I don’t know if it even counts as a “film”- it’s so egregious that its badness is shocking. I genuinely felt embarrassed watching that scene, which is something that rarely occurs. But that isn’t the most shocking thing about this. Oh no.

In the last couple of years I’ve began noticing that screenwriters have seemed to abandon writing jokes or humorous dialogue, and instead seem to cram the movie with lazy one-liners as a replacement to comedic dialogue (which arguably started with Marvel Movies and the Star Wars reboots), but in recent years, it has genuinely gotten so horrific that I don’t know if some of these movies in fact even count as movies.

Even worse are movies that base their entire “script” on pop culture references to other works and properties (these are criticisms laid to movies such as the Wreck It Ralph series, Ready Player One, the Recent Space and of course Free Guy). There are movies that can pull this off with it working- I recall that the original Lego Movie was passable, and it was one of the first of its kind where pop culture references were frequent, but atleast it had somewhat of a story and a theme (even if it wasn’t deep).

What kind of a theme do movies like Free Guy have? I honestly would even go as far as to say that the scene I linked about features about as much depth as one of those horrible mid 2000’s parody movies. There are no punchlines and no attempts at writing- just references to popular franchises and celebrities (Star Wars, Marvel, Chris Evans, online streamers such as JackSepticEye, etc). And it all culminates in one of the most cringeworthy sequences of events I’ve seen put into a film.

You would normally expect a movie like that to receive lukewarm or terrible reviews, but this movie apparently received positive reviews from both critics and audiences. How? I don’t know. Either they’re paid, or worse- this kind of drivel is genuinely passable to both critics and audiences. But how do people enjoy this crap? There is absolutely nothing of value here. Is it because a well liked actor akin to Ryan Reynolds is in it?

Does this mean you could hypothetically produce or direct a movie with a “popular” actor like Ryan Reynolds and make the entire plot references to popular video games and movies, and not only make an exorbitant of money, but also receive critical acclaim? Is that “cinema” nowadays?

[John Dule]

I CLAPPED WHEN I SAW THAT! I KNOW WHAT THAT IS!!!

[KaiserDave]

That was terrible

[Mexican Wolf]

Free Guy and the commercial and critical response to it have about as much chance of "killing 'cinema'" (i.e., zilch) as any number of other mediocre to crappy movies that've been released over the years and gotten surprising strong box office returns and critical praise.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Awful.

[John Dule]

Free Guy and the commercial and critical response to it have about as much chance of "killing 'cinema'" (i.e., zilch) as any number of other mediocre to crappy movies that've been released over the years and gotten surprising strong box office returns and critical praise.

Correct. Cinema has been dead since June 14, 2013.

[THG]

Free Guy and the commercial and critical response to it have about as much chance of "killing 'cinema'" (i.e., zilch) as any number of other mediocre to crappy movies that've been released over the years and gotten surprising strong box office returns and critical praise.

Correct. Cinema has been dead since June 14, 2013.

I’d wager that it has been dying slowly for a while, but the 2010’s accelerated it.

What was released in June of 2013 that specifically marked the death of cinema to you? While I haven’t seen this piece of crap in its entirety, watching that scene and scenes from Space Jam 2: A New Legacy, (which is also built on lazy pop culture references in replacement for jokes) is what marked the death of cinema to me.

[free my dawg]

[John Dule]

Free Guy and the commercial and critical response to it have about as much chance of "killing 'cinema'" (i.e., zilch) as any number of other mediocre to crappy movies that've been released over the years and gotten surprising strong box office returns and critical praise.

Correct. Cinema has been dead since June 14, 2013.

I’d wager that it has been dying slowly for a while, but the 2010’s accelerated it.

What was released in June of 2013 that specifically marked the death of cinema to you? While I haven’t seen this piece of crap in its entirety, watching that scene and scenes from Space Jam 2: A New Legacy, (which is also built on lazy pop culture references in replacement for jokes) is what marked the death of cinema to me.

The-Film-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Free Guy and the commercial and critical response to it have about as much chance of "killing 'cinema'" (i.e., zilch) as any number of other mediocre to crappy movies that've been released over the years and gotten surprising strong box office returns and critical praise.

Correct. Cinema has been dead since June 14, 2013.

I’d wager that it has been dying slowly for a while, but the 2010’s accelerated it.

What was released in June of 2013 that specifically marked the death of cinema to you? While I haven’t seen this piece of crap in its entirety, watching that scene and scenes from Space Jam 2: A New Legacy, (which is also built on lazy pop culture references in replacement for jokes) is what marked the death of cinema to me.

The-Film-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.

I still think that 'Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Bulls***' is even worse.

[THG]

Free Guy and the commercial and critical response to it have about as much chance of "killing 'cinema'" (i.e., zilch) as any number of other mediocre to crappy movies that've been released over the years and gotten surprising strong box office returns and critical praise.

Correct. Cinema has been dead since June 14, 2013.

I’d wager that it has been dying slowly for a while, but the 2010’s accelerated it.

What was released in June of 2013 that specifically marked the death of cinema to you? While I haven’t seen this piece of crap in its entirety, watching that scene and scenes from Space Jam 2: A New Legacy, (which is also built on lazy pop culture references in replacement for jokes) is what marked the death of cinema to me.

The-Film-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.

I genuinely forgot that Man of Steel existed.

[THG]

Free Guy and the commercial and critical response to it have about as much chance of "killing 'cinema'" (i.e., zilch) as any number of other mediocre to crappy movies that've been released over the years and gotten surprising strong box office returns and critical praise.

Correct. Cinema has been dead since June 14, 2013.

I’d wager that it has been dying slowly for a while, but the 2010’s accelerated it.

What was released in June of 2013 that specifically marked the death of cinema to you? While I haven’t seen this piece of crap in its entirety, watching that scene and scenes from Space Jam 2: A New Legacy, (which is also built on lazy pop culture references in replacement for jokes) is what marked the death of cinema to me.

The-Film-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.

I still think that 'Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Bulls***' is even worse.

Batman vs Superman is probably worse in terms of quality but is definitely more memorable. It took Dule’s post for me to recall that a standalone Superman DCEU film was actually made.

[John Dule]

Free Guy and the commercial and critical response to it have about as much chance of "killing 'cinema'" (i.e., zilch) as any number of other mediocre to crappy movies that've been released over the years and gotten surprising strong box office returns and critical praise.

Correct. Cinema has been dead since June 14, 2013.

I’d wager that it has been dying slowly for a while, but the 2010’s accelerated it.

What was released in June of 2013 that specifically marked the death of cinema to you? While I haven’t seen this piece of crap in its entirety, watching that scene and scenes from Space Jam 2: A New Legacy, (which is also built on lazy pop culture references in replacement for jokes) is what marked the death of cinema to me.

The-Film-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.

I still think that 'Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Bulls***' is even worse.

That one was just inoffensive and funny to me. The pee jar in particular was laugh-out-loud material.

[Red Velvet]

American cinema has already been dead for quite a while. Too much power to big corporations kills product diversity and will keep getting worse with Disney oligarchy suffocating competition and producing just formulaic standard crap that both critics and mass audiences eat up simply because they have no other option coming from the established system. Zero creativity.

Some few independent movies and also horror movies (probably because they’re cheaper, therefore not as risk averse) are still good though, but that’s the most we can expect from US nowadays.

The economic empire is losing space to China and other places and the cultural empire is losing space to everywhere, as globalization slowly makes everyone less dependent of consuming made in Hollywood products. Friends would rather watch some South Korean series or a Spanish movie on Netflix than watch much of the stuff US currently produces. People like the increased diversity on the creative content.

I mean, even the heart of the Empire was forced to acknowledge this and awarded for the first time ever in its 80+ history a film of foreign origin for its best prize and the big center of recognition: “Parasite”.

That’s why you will see even more larger investments in the 3rd base of the empire, even if it’s something less relevant in this new century compared to the previous one, which is the military. But even that is showing the world that they aren’t infallible no matter how big they are. They are biggest power in the world and that didn’t help at all at pulling a victory in places that aren’t even that wealthy or powerful, like Afghanistan and others.

It won’t be a collapse like some people act, in a way that “OMG, US is irrelevant now”. It’s happening slowly and in a transitional way by other places gaining larger share of control and power. The US will still retain much of it to ever become “powerless”, it’s just that multilateralism will grow stronger than unipolar order that people have grown used to. Even in XX Century bipolarized 2nd half, most of what USSR achieved was only on the military stance. They never had much cultural reach NEITHER were big economic competition.

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

This movie was really big in China, I had people ask me to see it. Pretty happy I didn't see it now.

There is still some good cinema, I never buy this "cinema is dead" "rock is dead" whatever "is dead" rhetoric. Most people have pretty sh**tty taste in movies for no reason other than that it's the most they can understand. There have been super terrible, super commercial movies for a long time. It's nothing new.

Being in China, though, I've come to realize the internationalization of movies plays a big role in this. Film markets that try to produce films for an international audience (mostly the US) have to appeal to a much lower lowest common denominator, if only because most stories worth telling typically have some kind of cultural context to them. Making movies smooth to watch in vastly different cultural contexts tends to remove a lot of what makes them good.

There are other things you could talk about, like CGI, or the pop-culture references discussed in OP. My general feeling is that with any type of product that requires you to use your mind, too much commercialization will ruin it.

[FT-02 Senator A.F.E. 🇵🇸🤝🇺🇸🤝🇺🇦]

Well. That's a minute and a half I'll never get back...

[Alben Barkley]

We need a complete and total shutdown of Hollywood until we can figure out what the HELL is going on!

[Alben Barkley]

There is still some good cinema, I never buy this "cinema is dead" "rock is dead" whatever "is dead" rhetoric. Most people have pretty sh**tty taste in movies for no reason other than that it's the most they can understand. There have been super terrible, super commercial movies for a long time. It's nothing new.

Rock IS dead, though. Much as I hate to say it. It's just nowhere near as popular or culturally relevant as it was even a a decade ago, much less two or more decades ago. It died a slow death in (at least American) popular culture over the 2010s. Maybe it will make a comeback some day, or maybe it will go the way of jazz (i.e. still have a niche following, but mostly be known as "your dad's music"). But it's hard to deny that it's effectively dead as of right now anyway.

[Alben Barkley]

IDK if this was directed at OP or the scene, but to be honest I think hordes of neckbeards would be way more likely to applaud this kind of nonsense than anyone else.

Yeah OK here we go:

https://twitter.com/MediaOffline1/status/1441935125995008003?s=20

[Alben Barkley]

Sorry to like quadruple post here, but now I've been brewing over this and have to add my own rant:

The difference between today's Hollywood and the Hollywood of yesteryear is that today, the studios sit down and think "How can we make this movie connect to as many other properties we own as possible so we can get people to go out and buy more of our s--t?" Whereas in the past, they thought more along the lines of "How can we make this movie as entertaining as possible so that we can get butts in seats on the strength of the storytelling and quality of the filmmaking alone?"

Basically, every big budget movie today is nothing but one giant advertisement. That wasn't always the case.

I blame the MCU more than anything else for this.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Free Guy and the commercial and critical response to it have about as much chance of "killing 'cinema'" (i.e., zilch) as any number of other mediocre to crappy movies that've been released over the years and gotten surprising strong box office returns and critical praise.

Correct. Cinema has been dead since June 14, 2013.

I’d wager that it has been dying slowly for a while, but the 2010’s accelerated it.

What was released in June of 2013 that specifically marked the death of cinema to you? While I haven’t seen this piece of crap in its entirety, watching that scene and scenes from Space Jam 2: A New Legacy, (which is also built on lazy pop culture references in replacement for jokes) is what marked the death of cinema to me.

The-Film-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.

I still think that 'Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Bulls***' is even worse.

That one was just inoffensive and funny to me. The pee jar in particular was laugh-out-loud material.

I agree, it's one of my favorite movies to s*** on, but in terms of quality it's such a colossal failure in every way! Though I guess 'Man of Steel' is more depressing, which does make it worse in some way, at least.

[RI]

Man of Steel is the best movie in the DCEU.

[Alben Barkley]

Man of Steel is the best movie in the DCEU.

Talk about a low bar to clear...

In any case, I think that's easily Joker if it counts.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Man of Steel is the best movie in the DCEU.

Talk about a low bar to clear...

In any case, I think that's easily Joker if it counts.

In fairness, the DCEU's average has improved...slightly. To me the best is 'Shazam!' but that's while only ranking it equivalent with an average quality Marvel movie.

Though I haven't seen 'The Suicide Squad' yet...the James Gunn one (make better f***ing titles, DC!). I heard it was pretty good.

[Never Made it to Graceland]

Man of Steel is the best movie in the DCEU.

In addition to the Joker like Alben said, the Dark Knight movies are also considered to be great, mostly thanks to Heath Ledger's acting. Man of Steel was decent but nothing spectacular. Actually I think Superman Returns was better than Man of Steel.