Monster of the Day #3330

Updated on January 11, 2022 By Ken Begg 31 Comments

At the opposite end of the spectrum from yesterday’s (presumably) low-budget practical effect driven monster movie, there was lots of theoretically cool cameos–he fights the Iron Giant!–in (which I completely forget) Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One. By the way, and this is no insult, but it’s probably time for Spielberg to admit he doesn’t have his finger on the cultural pulse anymore. By which I mean, he’s not really set up to make blockbusters–which barely exist–anymore. And if he makes a film like West Side Story, he probably shouldn’t spend a $100 million on it, although I’m sure he thought that was a budget movie. His heart seems to be in his mostly boring ‘important’ films now. Go ahead and make those, you’ve earned that right, but don’t expect them to make a lot at the box office.

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  • Beckoning Chasm

    Spielberg made one masterpiece, and that was Jaws. After that, he became Spielberg.

  • kgb_san_diego

    Discounting the weird “1941”, his next three movies were Close Encounters, Raiders, and ET. All three of those are masterworks as well.

  • kgb_san_diego

    I don’t know… Discounting the weird “1941”, his next three movies were Close Encounters, Raiders, and ET. All three of those are masterworks as well.

  • The Rev.

    Oh, this is from Ready Player One? No wonder I was confused; I haven’t seen that. I was wondering why I was not familiar with this particular Mechagodzilla design. It’s like they updated the OG version. Kind of cool.

  • The Rev.

    Oh, this is from Ready Player One? I was wondering why I didn’t recognize this particular Mechagodzilla design; I haven’t seen that movie. This is kind of cool, though. It’s like an updated version of the OG style.

  • The Rev.

    Whoops! Didn’t mean to double post like that. My apologies.

  • You double posted? How dare you! You must pay penitence! Go watch DEATH KAPPA now.

  • Spielberg is in the “Coriolanus” stage of his career. There might yet be a “The Tempest” in him, but his best works – the ones everyone will remember – are all probably in his past.

  • Don’t bother with the movie. Or the book. Or the sequel.

  • Gamera977

    Doesn’t count till you triple post.

  • Gamera977

    I’d heard a lot of bad stuff about the novel and the movie. A friend loaned me his copy of the film and I enjoyed it. Still haven’t read the novel though. Yeah, it’s loaded to the gills with nostalgia but it’s still fun. It’s not in the same zip code with Spielberg classics like BC and KGB-SD listed but it has a little bit of the Spielberg spark in it.

    Biggest issue to me was the whole use of ‘The Shining’ as a sub-plot. Slight spoilers but as I remember ‘The Shining’ was a somewhat mentally unstable guy going over the edge from isolation and loneliness. In this movie the hotel is full of zombies and ghosts.

    Anyway the main bad guy is a mega-corporation gobbling up smaller intellectual properties to load them with ads. I saw the bad guys as Apple and Google. Today I’d swear the villains are almost a perfect screen version of Disney. Just strikes me funny that Hollywood often trots out the mega-corp as a foe- when so often the mega-corp is a perfect screen representation of Hollywood itself.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    They’re fine films, I just don’t rate them as highly. There’s something mechanical about all three, whereas Jaws feels like an actual story unfolding naturally. We can agree to disagree.

  • Ken_Begg

    I think Jaws is the best of them, but I also agree that the other three are also classics–or at least they were until Spielberg started reediting two of them. It’s one of the greatest runs–again, as noted, discounting 1941–in cinema history.

  • Ken_Begg

    Other than that, though…

  • Ken_Begg

    Yes, although I think West Side Story will finally give me a Best Picture (as producer) Oscar. It will be a) a lifetime achievement Oscar, which the Academy is notorious for, b) help out a big studio film that bombed at the box office, another notorious Academy trait, and then you got the retarded social garbage where Spielberg refused to let them subtitle the Spanish dialogue because it was imperialist or something. I’m sure people in, for example, were very confused when, I have to assume, Spielberg didn’t allow either the Spanish or English dialogue to be subtitled.

  • Ken_Begg

    Yep, they’ve been doing that for years now. It’s akin to the “Rich People are Evil!! (but not us)” thing.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Well, how long has the ‘But It’s Different When We Do It’ attitude been around?

  • hypocratus

    No love for Jurassic Park?

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Didn’t he win Best Picture for Schindler’s List?

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Like the others mentioned, it’s a fine, enjoyable film and very well made. And while I like it, it feels like a well-constructed machine.

  • kgb_san_diego

    On this, we agree. Jurassic Park is fine, and the first time I saw the brachiosaurus go up on its hind legs to reach higher leaves, I cried. But just not quite the movies that the others are. For me.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    The problem is, as always, is that movies are “art” and our response to that art is always going to be subjective. One can say “these are great films” and others can agree…but everyone has a sneaking liking for films that are (shall we say) not considered great–but we like them anyway. Heck, it’s why Jabootu exists in the first place.

  • kgb_san_diego

    Amen

  • Ken_Begg

    As usual, I muffed that. I’m not sure how I missed it. Thanks for the correction!

  • Ken_Begg

    As long as there’s been people, certainly.

  • Ken_Begg

    Yeah, I also liked JP but didn’t love it. (And JP2 is gawdawful.) It could be when it came out. I was in jr high and high school, really one’s formative years, when the big Spielberg Quartet came out. Also, by JP you expected a great film from Spielberg, so it didn’t feel like a discovery. I have to tell you, Raiders came out of NOWHERE. The big buzz that weekend–before word of mouth started circulating–was for Clash of the Titans, which came out the same day.

  • thunderclancat

    Or the other book, Armada, written by Ernest Cline. Worse than Ready Player One, in my opinion.

  • thunderclancat

    My favorite Spielberg film is Duel.

  • The Rev.

    I’ve already seen it so done and done!

  • Chad R.

    I’ll take this moment to plug one of my favorite podcasts, 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back. It’s a book club podcast by two of the writers from Rifftrax. The title refers to Ready Player One and it focuses on bad books of varying levels of entertainment value. They’ve discussed all three of Ernest Cline’s books as well as books by William Shatner, Sean Penn, Dan Brown, E.L. James and many self-published authors never heard of before. I find it extremely funny.

  • thunderclancat

    I actually listen to that podcast as well. I actually liked TekWar, as I might enjoy an enjoyably bad film. The oeuvre of Cline, Shadow Moon (By George Lucas (!) and Chris Clermont ) and the works of Sean Penn and Tyra Banks, were rather painful reads though.