So I finally saw Good Will Hunting

[Darth SS]

I finally saw Good Will Hunting today. And..um...wow. That is an incredibly good movie. It's really moving. What I wasn't prepared for? That scene on the bench with Robin Williams. Just that exchange punched me in the chest in a way that I haven't been punched since I saw Life Is Beautiful. First of all, I wasn't aware that Robin Williams was a bonafide actor in that way, and wow what a powerful scene.

My friends have recommended that I see "The Road" next, but I'm worried that it may be too sad to watch all the way through.

What are some movies that you guys took years, if not decades, to finally see? Especially the ones that at the very end you said "Holy crap that was amazing."

[Magus]

Don't watch The Road, read The Road. The book is about a hundred times better than the movie. Even though it's a pretty good movie and accurate to the events of the book, Cormac McCarthy's use of language and poetic prose is something that has to be experienced. I say the same of No Country For Old Man, as amazing as the movie was the book was even more amazing.

As for Good Will Hunting, while the travails of a wunderkind engaged in the day-to-day drudgery of janitorial work because...he hates himself and has low self-esteem, I think was what it was? Because of child abuse he suffered when younger.

While that was all pretty novel at the time upon repeated viewings I've become jaded towards this movie. Matt Damon is kind of annoying if you really think about it--he can do doctorate level mathematics but ultimately chooses to go be a hippie in California or chase after a girl or something. Like I'm sure he can get a job at UCLA Berkeley or something but still, part of the theme seemed to be about not wasting your potential, but the ending kind of implies that wasting your potential is what Matt Damon is totally going to go do now, or at least that was the impression I got.

Also Boston accents are actually horrifically grating and annoying. I hate to tell this to everyone from Boston but the rest of us actually hate you and and wish you would die, because of this movie (also The Departed and The Town and anything involving Ben Affleck). So if you are actually from Boston you should hate the shit out of this movie.

[Seil]

Go watch The Dead Poets Society. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrBk780aOis)

[The Sevenshot Kid]

I've become jaded towards this movie.

Hey, Magus. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

[Darth SS]

Hey, Magus. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

Yes it is. Don't treat him like people.

Also, Dead Poets Society may be the next in line after "The Road." I mean assuming I don't just watch "X-Men: First Class" and "Captain America" a bajillion times after "The Road" to counteract the pure sad.

[Amake]

The movie doesn't say not to waste your potential, professor Lambeau does. Sean argues that it's more important to have a personally fulfilling life, and we're free to decide who is right. Sean is a skilled psychologist who may actually understand something about how humans work, but on the other hand Lambeau is one of the most successful and influential mathematicians of our time. Will listens to Sean in the end, but I don't think that's any indication that we're supposed to.

Also, I'm going to watch the movie now.

PS. The Community parody where Troy discovers he's a natural plumbing genius asks some interesting questions I think. If you have the potential to be better than anyone else in the world at something, to completely redefine the field, do you have a responsibility to do that even if it's a field most people pay good money to not have to involve themselves with? It's not that plumbing isn't a useful science, it's like a third of the infrastructure of modern civilization, but it's not glamorous, it won't make you rich, and no matter how prodigiously gifted you may be there's little chance of revolutionizing plumbing in any meaningful way. Plumbers may see it differently though.

[Betty Elms]

Don't watch The Road, read The Road. The book is about a hundred times better than the movie. Even though it's a pretty good movie and accurate to the events of the book, Cormac McCarthy's use of language and poetic prose is something that has to be experienced. I say the same of No Country For Old Man, as amazing as the movie was the book was even more amazing.

Yeah, The Road is a good movie, but living up to a McCarthy novel is a hell of a job. The main reasons it's worth seeing are the production design is pretty great (the end of the world looks even bleaker than the book had prompted me to imagine), and you get to watch Viggo Mortenson act his balls off.

On the topic of living up to a McCarthy novel and No Country for Old Men, I actually liked the movie more than the book in that instance. With the book you get the pleasure of McCarthy doing some brilliant work as per usual. But with the movie you get just about EVERY SINGLE PERSON INVOLVED IN THE PRODUCTION doing brilliant work. The Coens have pretty much mastered the mechanics of filmmaking by now to such a degree that I just assume that they've insufflated the ground up remains of Hitchcock and/or Welles and now shit celluloid.

[Kim]

I saw the movie of No Country for Old Men and loved it. Read the Road and loved it. I should probably see Good Will Hunting.

[The Sevenshot Kid]

If you're like me and you read The Walking Dead before watching The Road then you probably hated it. Rick Grimes and co. had to deal with real problems!

[The Sevenshot Kid]

I saw the movie of No Country for Old Men and loved it.

Shit, you liked that too?! That's awesome!

[Fifthfiend]

First of all, I wasn't aware that Robin Williams was a bonafide actor in that way

Sadly he stopped being that immediately after this movie.

[Nique]

That is until appearing in commercials for Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D.

[Magus]

Didn't he try on some other dramatic roles? What Dreams May Come? One-Hour Photo?

...Patch Adams? Millenium Man?

Okay yeah terrible actor, funny comedian.

Hey, Magus. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

I know. I know. I know that. DON'T FUCK ME WITH SEVENSHOT! NOT YOU! NOT YOUUUUUUU

EDIT

Oh dear god did you know what when writing up some of the quotes the people actually PUT THE DAMN ACCENT INTO THEM IN TEXTUAL FORM

See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you're gonna stahhht doin some thinkin on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certaintees in life. One, don't do that. And Two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fuckin education you coulda got for a dollahh fifty in late chahhhges at the public library

OH GOD I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO FIRST, IF I SHOULD CUT OUT MY EYES OR STAB OUT MY EARDRUMS, HELP ME OH GOD MAKE THE PAIN STOP

[The Sevenshot Kid]

OH GOD I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO FIRST, IF I SHOULD CUT OUT MY EYES OR STAB OUT MY EARDRUMS, HELP ME OH GOD MAKE THE PAIN STOP

I'm sorry, but I fuckin' lahv the Boston accent.

[Fifthfiend]

What Dreams May Come? One-Hour Photo?

...Patch Adams? Millenium Man?

Exactly

[Mr.Bookworm]

If you're like me and you read The Walking Dead before watching The Road then you probably hated it. Rick Grimes and co. had to deal with real problems!

You are dead to me.

Buy yeah, go read and watch the Road/No Country for Old Men, because the books are fucking fantastic and both of the movies are amazing adaptations.

[Seil]

He was in August Rush. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5ab6RtA-KE)

[The Sevenshot Kid]

You are dead to me.

Oh, I'm sorry it's ashy outside. Meanwhile Rick and co. are dealing with fucking zombies and the worst human beings the world has left to offer.

And you can bet your ass that Walking Dead won't end with a giant ass cop-out ending like The Road.

[Darth SS]

You guys, you guys, YOU GUYS. I saw The Road.

That movie was really sad. Like unbelievably sad. I actually stopped watching after an hour because it was so unbelievably sad. Holy shit I have never been more depressed and disappointed and without faith in humanity than during that movie. It punched me in the chest in a very bad way, and I did not like that chest punch.

[The Sevenshot Kid]

You guys, you guys, YOU GUYS. I saw The Road.

That movie was really sad. Like unbelievably sad. I actually stopped watching after an hour because it was so unbelievably sad. Holy shit I have never been more depressed and disappointed and without faith in humanity than during that movie. It punched me in the chest in a very bad way, and I did not like that chest punch.

DON'T. READ. THE. WALKING. DEAD.

[Darth SS]

DON'T. READ. THE. WALKING. DEAD.

Is it somehow even sadder? Because I'm not entirely sure how that would even be possible.

In other news; Next movie? Screw it, I'm going to go and see Moneyball. That should have some feel-goods. That or Drive, which was described to me as "A fairy tale with random spasms of insane ultraviolence."

[Mr.Bookworm]

Oh, I'm sorry it's ashy outside. Meanwhile Rick and co. are dealing with fucking zombies and the worst human beings the world has left to offer.

...man, you didn't actually read the Road, did you? Every single living thing on Earth except for a few humans are dead. Most of the humans are only surviving through cannibalism, because almost all of the stored food is gone.

Anyway, my point was that they're two very different types of stories.

The Walking Dead is a very visceral horror story. It's a, well, zombie story. A very well-done zombie story (seriously, I love the Walking Dead, don't get me wrong), but I think just saying "zombie story" gets across most of the tropes presented in there.

The Road is bleak and grim. It's about living in an empty world where everything is dead or dying and the slow grind towards extinction.

Both are depressing as hell and horrifying, but they have very little in common besides genre. Comparing them, let alone trying to say who had it "worse", is stupid, which was my point expressed in an overdramatic way, because this is the Internet, where absolutely everything is fucking important enough to knife-fight over.

Anyway, SS, the Walking Dead is probably less depressing than the Road. The Road is just one long grimfest from start to finish, which I can certainly understand not liking, but the Walking Dead has a lot more ups-and-downs and is overall a lot less relentlessly brutal and grim. The TV series is good too, if different from the comics, so you might want to check that out sometime.

And you can bet your ass that Walking Dead won't end with a giant ass cop-out ending like The Road.

Uh, it had the exact same ending as the book, and it sure as hell wasn't a cop-out there.

[The Sevenshot Kid]

Uh, it had the exact same ending as the book, and it sure as hell wasn't a cop-out there.

So you're saying the whole "sorry your dad's dead but now you get a new, nice family to live with." wasn't a total cop-out? For such a grim story the ending was just completely incongruous. It was too happy. Well, until they all die because of fallout. And I understand that whole theme of trying to keep the good in the world alive and all that jazz but that ending was too neat.

[Magus]

The book goes into more detail. Like remember those people in the basement that the father finds? The one guy who was missing his legs was BEING EATEN A LIMB AT A TIME OVER THE COURSE OF DAYS.

The theme of the novel is about what makes us human. The father and son have grasped the one single tenet of not committing murder and cannibalism as the only thing keeping them alive, especially when death waits them around every corner (not the least of which in suicide, since the prospect of the world ever being made right again is next to impossible).

As for the ending, the whole point of the book is to beat us down with the utter hopelessness of the situation and then provide us with a single ray of light. The book is an allegory of Biblical proportions (and of course contains many Biblical analogies and allusions). It's not meant to be taken as literally as a series of events, which is mostly what a film can aspire to. The movie is about as good an adaptation as could ever be done of The Road--which is to say it pales miserably next to the actual book.

Like No Country for Old Men, the way it is written, while I still think the book is slightly better, there is literally almost nothing left out of the movie. The book didn't make a lot of literary allusions, thematic jumps that couldn't carry over to the screen. But The Road does possess massive amounts of exposition, thoughts of the main character, symbolism, etc. that could not be adapted to the screen adequately. Still an amazing movie, but the book is ten times as amazing.

As I said, the book is better than the movie at getting the MASSIVE amounts of symbolism that McCarthy was trying to get across. He does not write books to be taken at face value--if you ever read Blood Meridian (well worth your time), you'll see. They are also trying to adapt Blood Meridian, which I personally think would be even harder to adapt as a film. Not the particular plot events in chronological order, but the literal ESSENCE of the book would be near impossible to put on screen.

EDIT:

Oh, I just thought of the best way to explain why the ending of The Road is such a "cop-out" in terms of pure plotting (but not in symbolism).

You see, if you read the novel version of The Road you're going to find several allusions to the Book of Job from the Bible. In the Book of Job Job is relentlessly punished by the Devil. He loses his house, belongings, all his children, etc. He is inflicted with boils and sicknesses and so on. But he refuses to give up his faith in God through all of this.

Then, right at the end, in a literal Deus Ex Machina, God rewards him for his longsuffering by providing him with twice the wealth he had before and the exact same number of children he lost. Seems like kind of a "cop-out" in terms of storyline, but the purpose of the story is to deliver a message and theme. That's what McCarthy was trying to do with The Road, deliver a message and theme based on multiple Biblical and mythological allusions. It doesn't line up exactly with the Bible obviously (since there are also multiple Jesus allusions made by the father when thinking about the son in the novel, etc.), but the point of the book is it's an allegory, not concerned with total realism, which is the impression the movie would give people.

[Betty Elms]

You guys, you guys, YOU GUYS. I saw The Road.

That movie was really sad. Like unbelievably sad. I actually stopped watching after an hour because it was so unbelievably sad. Holy shit I have never been more depressed and disappointed and without faith in humanity than during that movie. It punched me in the chest in a very bad way, and I did not like that chest punch.

Quick, watch Requiem for a Dream before feelings of joy and hope are able to take root within you again.

DON'T. READ. THE. WALKING. DEAD.

I agree, but I suspect for entirely different reasons.

[The Sevenshot Kid]

I agree, but I suspect for entirely different reasons.

There are other reasons than the fact that it gets so bleak at times that you just can't bear seeing how it can get even worse for everyone?

[Betty Elms]

There are other reasons than the fact that it gets so bleak at times that you just can't bear seeing how it can get even worse for everyone?

Eh. Apparently I'm in the minority, but I find it to be something of a schlocky horror soap opera, with trite zombie convention after trite zombie convention, and a level of grim bleakness that the author has no idea how to elevate beyond "oh wow that's fucked up" or utilize to forward any remotely interesting idea. I suppose the chapter in which Michonne brutally tortures a man for several pages with all sorts of lovely close ups of the eye scoopin' and dismemberin' in which Robert Kirkman's attitude toward that storytelling decision is IT'S OKAY BECAUSE HE TOTALLY DESERVED IT is the point where the visible disparity between Kirkman's artistic maturity and the story's bleakness caliber tipped over into fully off-putting. Also the whole "this story is gonna go on for ever and never end" thing is something I can almost never get behind.

If you don’t write an ending for a story, you know what you are? You’re a hack. You’re not a storyteller. It may not be that you have the skills of a hack. You might be a hell of a writer, but you’re taking a hack’s road. You’re on the road to hackdom and there’s no stopping you because stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

[BitVyper]

I dunno, it depends on what qualifies as an ending. Like, I've done the absolute bare minimum of research on the ending to The Walking Dead (I read the last three sentences of its plot summary on Wikipedia), and it does sound like kind of a shitty ending that created loose ends for no reason. However, if your definition of a non-ending is gonna include something like say NYPD Blue's final episode, we're gonna have to step outside.

I think that quote is kind of bullshit though. I don't really hold with the ending of a story validating or invalidating the rest of it. Journey is the destination, yadda yadda. He's not only suggesting that it does, but extending it as far as it will go.

Edit: That said, an ending is definitely a big deal, don't get me wrong. I just see it as subordinate to the rest, and not so much about tying things up as about focusing all the disparate plot threads down to a point.

[Fifthfiend]

followed by an Ingmar Bergman/The Wire marathon!

The Wire is the greatest television series ever created that is actually the Anti-Life Equation.

[BitVyper]

I guess I understand Simon's frustration with a professional writer making money on what is essentially an unfinished job, I just don't think he's entirely right.

[Premmy]

I think that kind of does a disservice to episodic story-telling and shared stories and such.

[BitVyper]

Well I mean, ideally even an episode is a self contained story that contributes to a greater whole. Extra Credits did a really great video explaining how this can play into the most minor of things in a videogame, like firing a gun in an FPS.

Look at uh.... the old episodes of Doctor Who (especially in number 5's era), where they would pretty much just end at completely random spots and invent a cliffhanger for no good reason. That definitely detracted from the quality of the individual episode as well as the whole itself.

However, I don't think those episodes were just hack-jobs, and I can see ways where a certain type of incompletion makes a complete work, although I can't come up with a good example just now. I'm just saying I think the guy is venting a bit, extending his valid point way too far. I don't see the format being 100% necessary, at any rate.

[Fifthfiend]

Episodic stories and deliberately open endings are both examples of complete stories so unless David Simon is a crazy person that is probably not what he is complaining about.

And since David Simon is actually Darkseid we know pretty well that he is indeed not crazy. Ruthless, pitiless all-powerful tyrant bent on turning all of reality into a mirror image of his own fathomlessly evil self? Yes.

Crazy? no.

[Fifthfiend]

http://www.supermansupersite.com/darkseid1.png

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/3237/simonbd.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/202/simonbd.jpg/)

I mean come on he's not even trying to hide it.

[BitVyper]

Episodic stories and deliberately open endings are both examples of complete stories so unless David Simon is a crazy person that is probably not what he is complaining about.

I'm pretty sure the quote was meant in reference to something just meandering around and not really going anywhere except into more meandering around. Like a bad comedy skit where they initiate five different jokes but never hit any kind of punchline. I mean like I said, episodes still have a proper beginning middle and end. And if someone's complaining about open endings, then they're complaining about the ending to NYPD Blue and I am honour bound to destroy them.

But then sometimes the whole business of meandering around aimlessly works really well, like with Seinfeld or Lucky Star. Both of those were pretty much all middle, and the actual series endings could be removed and you'd never realise that they were supposed to be there. Hell, Lucky Star's ending was barely even an ending. I guess you could argue that they weren't really stories, but that's not the same as saying the writers were hacks. In fact, I think that's a big part of the problem with the quote: It assumes the complete story is the only goal of writing.

[Nique]

I mean come on he's not even trying to hide it.

That is uncanny.

[Fifthfiend]

That is uncanny.

http://nuklearforums.com/showpost.php?p=1143046&postcount=57

[BitVyper]

Wait...

David Simon = DS = Darkseid

It's been right under our noses all along!

[Magus]

Who is Superman in this metaphor?

[BitVyper]

Metaphor?

[Magus]

Who is secretly Superman to oppose David Simon?

[Fifthfiend]

Whoever produces the USA cable network's lineup of viewer-friendly hour-long dramedies.

[The Sevenshot Kid]

Who is secretly Superman to oppose David Simon?

Steve Franks: creator of Psych.

[Betty Elms]

I think that quote is kind of bullshit though. I don't really hold with the ending of a story validating or invalidating the rest of it. Journey is the destination, yadda yadda. He's not only suggesting that it does, but extending it as far as it will go.

Edit: That said, an ending is definitely a big deal, don't get me wrong. I just see it as subordinate to the rest, and not so much about tying things up as about focusing all the disparate plot threads down to a point.

An ending is just one part of the story, but to not have one is to not have a key component of narrative structure. Mind you, I'm not advocating for conventional structure so much as I'm advocating for having a consciously designed structure. A writer should put as much thought into it as any other facet of their work.

If you don't plan to end a story, you've just about tossed away the possibility of your story actually functioning as a unified whole. It doesn't invalidate the rest of the work, all the rest might be damn good, but it will suffer from the decision. There's no sense of every element building upon one another towards any payoff, the meaning behind every piece of the whole is diminished, and almost everything is disconnected from the structure.

When Robert Kirkman gleefully babbles about how great it is that Walking Dead is never going to end, what he's talking about it how great it is that Walking Dead will be unpolished, inconsistent, inaccessible, meandering, and will spend too much time saying rather little.

Who is Superman in this metaphor?

Chuck Lorre?