JFF: What Was the Last Film You Saw, and How Would You Rate It? (Pt. 19)

That is a remake of the 1962 film of the same title, as you probably already know. Interestingly, there was no public knowledge of the MK Ultra program back then and probably no public knowledge of similar programs conducted by agencies of any sovereign nation's government back then.

@jeorj_euler​ 

I already knew that it was a remake of a 1962 film, but I haven't seen it. Is the 1962 film's story as far-fetched? Because this to be honest wasn't more intelligent than Catwoman (2004), just better acted and directed. There is a threshold of stupidity that a film must not exceed. A vice-president candidate is mind-controlled into serving the evil schemes of a big corporation. Sounds like the scenario of an X-Men film. I could not tolerate it. There is a big gap between the mk ultra torture program vs. having a secret mad scientist lab hidden in the closet of a vice-president candidate's residence, and people being completely mind-controlled into committing murders by a simple "trigger" sentence, and an FBI agent sleeping with an ex-soldier just to verify if the conspiration theory of a psychiatric patient is true, and an ex-soldier having a German friend who has a lobotomization room (notice that the FBI agent is present during the lobotomization and does nothing), and a Senator (Jon Voight's character) believing Washington's character after the assault he had committed on Schreiber's character.

This film is so full of obvious plot holes. It gives me a headache. 

On The Manchurian Candidate, I've not seen the original and don't remember very many of the details of the remake. I was left with the feeling that the storytellers behind the one that I did see took way too many shortcuts, for lack of a better word.

I'm a little bit more familiar with the X-Men movie franchise, and I'm in agreement with most fans that the most suitable among those was Logan, X2, X-Men and Days of Future Past. One interesting thing about the evil megacorporation trope is that usually those corporations with unusual capabilities only exist as are they thanks to one sovereign government or another, just like in the real word, but of course, fictional stories often fail to highlight the essence of the trope. When you brought up X-Men movies, I immediately thought of Trask, an anagram of Stark. Rogue defense contractors much? What is interesting is that fictional story media franchises in popular culture never really touch on the university component some of these unethical operations, but maybe that component is rare anyway.

I suspect that a lot of storytellers in the Western bloc look at the various clandestine atrocities committed by the Axis Powers and the Soviet Union government, and ask, "What if that happened in the United States?" Perhaps to make things more interesting, the storytellers throw in supernatural identities, paranormal concepts, interdimensional beings, extraterrestrial lifeforms, mysterious aberrations or the "ancients", if not entertaining an attempt of hard science fiction or something like that.

On the matter of plot holes, I usually like to think of these things as blatant contradictions/paradoxes within a story that are essentially impossible to explain, but indeed more loosely, we think of plot holes as including anything that could be explained yet which the storyteller didn't bother to reconcile or publish. Sometimes studio interference causes this, but I have to wonder whether or not studio oversight could ever sanely do the contrary. The modern filmmaking process has so many elaborate departments (pre-production, production, post-production) that we just can't know where to assign credit/blame, hence the occasional director's cut that is almost completely different from a studio-endorsed original release. The magic can be lost simply by the loss of the leader or any given department.

I always found The Dark Knight to be gimmicky, for lack of a better word. Something about the scene when the prosecutor and the detective effectively direct the vigilante go capture a gangster located in the lands of a foreign sovereign nation and bring him back to Gotham City also always rubbed me the wrong way. That was really low of the prosecutor and the detective to place morality and utilitarianism above ethics and law. The vigilante ought to have done this on his own. Seeing as how the vigilante committed this crime at the behest of public officials (civil servants), those officials are guilty of the crime too. I somewhat subscribe to the notion that when an agent of the state/commonwealth (or of the local community) feels the need to become a vigilante, he or she ought to surrender his or her badge/robe/crown, i.e. resign from the job. Of course, naturally, this means that I can't be too friendly to the promotion of the likes of, say, Harry Callahan, or the type of law enforcement personnel who always bitch about how problematic the Bill of Rights (or even the ninth section of the first article of the United States Constitution) is for carrying out the duty of serving the public trust and protecting the innocent.

@cinephile​ Oh, The Dark Knight (2008), while a good movie with some legendary performances, is definitely overrated.

The true revolutionary piece of the trilogy that reshaped the superhero genre as we know it was Batman Begins (2005). Producers cite it as an influence for Casino Royale (2006), it was definitely what early MCU tried to emulate tone-wise and while people often say that The Dark Knight (2008) was responsible for a whole wave of gritty superhero movies, when it came out said wave was already in high gear. First two MCU movies came out the same year and they were very close in tone to that, rather than recalibration that occurred mostly in early 2010's.

@cinephile​ 

no nominations in my "home-made award" ceremony. I hoped for a "best film" or "best director" nominations. It would have made my "award ceremony" look less snubish. But, things are the way they are, it looks like I won't give any awards to a blockbuster this year. 

Well, thanks for the heads  up, cinephile​.

@cinephile​ Nightmare Alley (2021) is one of the best movies from 2021-2022 I've seen (admittedly, haven't seen enough). We need more neo-noir like that.

@cinephile​ 

After you write your review, check mine, I also reviewed the original version made for TV in 1967. You should check the early Loach films, especially that one