argh, beaten to it, answer either one or both I guess

Zarban laying down the truth

Sure, I don't mind at all. I suspect a big part of this is that I didn't grow up with it, I only saw the second one last year, but I just couldn't get into it.

I think the biggest issue for me is the tone, and how wacky and over the top everything is. The first movie skirted with those things tonally with the Biff character, but that was never the focus, and there was a sense of character realism, where you could relate with what was happening to Marty (being turned on by lea thompson) and what his parents were thinking/doing in the past and present. The sequel puts a MAJOR focus on Biff, who's extremely over the top and annoying to watch on screen. But even beyond Biff, a lot of the Marty stuff feels overly wacky this time around. I think the whole "Marty is easily provoked to do things" theme is handled really clumsily and on the nose, and the Marty character from the first movie feels smarter to me than that. Yes he could have that anger problem, but it could come out more organically and gradually in the story, instead of people just calling him "chicken" all the time. That's problem 1, and it ties into problem 2, which is that I find the future they go into really disappointing in a lot of ways.

The first movie ends with this epic promise of adventures in the future, but the future in this movie manages to feel too over-the-top and not-creative enough at the same time (bear with me). The costumes and set design is really ridiculous to me, without being grounded enough in reality, to where it gets a bit grating after awhile. I think I just would've liked something more in the vein of Blade Runner/Alien for the future, or something like Fifth Element if you want to look to an example of wacky designs that still feel grounded. At the same time, I feel it's not nearly ambitious enough, because all of the focus remains in hill-valley, and you can tell they've just redressed all the sets from part 1. There was a real opportunity to expand outward and have an awesome future adventure, but they really keep it scaled back, which ties into problem 3.

I really think it was a mistake to go so crazy with the time hopping and alternate realities. The first movie took place almost entirely in the past, which allowed it to set everything up properly and explore the time period. The 2nd movie they're jumping between 3 different time periods, which doesn't give enough time to develop any of them (except the last one, which was developed in the first movie). Personally, I really would've preferred if the whole movie took place in the future, and they were getting into crazy adventures there, maybe travelling into space, doing cool things.

I don't think they needed to have Biff as the "villain" again, they should've gone in a fresh direction with it and had some new threat to Marty's kids in the future.

My final problem is major believability issues (bear with me). I really think that having Marty's son look identical to Marty, and having Marty pretend to be him, is totally retarded. That's not how genetics works, your children do not look like identical replicas, and it really bugs me in this movie. I have similar issues with the end sequence. I know a lot of people really like the fact that this movie has Marty sneaking around the events of the 1st one in the past, and I do like that in concept, but ultimately, it doesn't really work for me in execution. It's insane the degree to where everyone seems to be completely blind, and Marty manages to not get spotted. There's like 5 different occasions where its OBVIOUS he would've been seen or heard, yet for some reason doesn't get noticed.

That's the gist of my criticisms, and why I think it's really a huge step down from the first one.
I will concede that the hoverboards and power laces are BADASS though.

Is the T-2 ride still there? That's the one I'd be really bummed about if they got rid off it, personally.

Very impressive stuff, your halloween parties must be so awesome

Rise of the Apes was one of the only decent movies this summer, in fact, it's probably my favorite "Summer Blockbuster", which I never would've thought going into this year. It does have logic problems in places, but it also does a really good job of building up to its set-pieces, and the set-pieces themselves are awesome with interesting staging where you can still follow all the action and be invested in the characters. Just on a pure action level I liked it waaaaay more than Transformers 3.

Also, ape riding a horse was one of the best moments, you're crazy if you think that's a negative.

@Squiggly_P: Couldn't agree more. The ending of Wall-E was the turning point for me as well. They had a potentially amazing tragic ending there that was perfectly setup and didn't have the balls to go through with it (though I can live with it, it's still a damn good movie as far as I'm concerned). Up was great for about 15 minutes, but I think the rest of that movie is horribly over-rated, its in the bottom half of Pixar movies for me.

I've been holding out hope for adult animation to take foot in the US for over a decade now, and it just doesn't seem to be happening. Beowulf I don't really count because they just animated it to look live-action, so it doesn't even feel like an animated movie at all. The Final Fantasy movie ended up being garbage. The closest thing I can think of that I really liked was Titan A.E (saw it opening day). I guess there was A Scanner Darkly, but that was shot live action and rotoscoped, so I don't really count it either.

It doesn't help that all the movies I mentioned were financial failures, so maybe its just a problem with American audiences, but I still think they should give it another shot. If marketed properly, there's no reason a PG-13 rated 2d animated movie couldn't be successful here.

I thought on it recently and I think I've realized how they could've fixed this movie with a bit of restructuring.

I think from the outset the biggest thing that breaks the movie is that the dream sequences are so disconnected and never have any consequences (no one dies), so you're not invested in them at all. Now early on in the movie, this makes sense from a story perspective because it wouldn't make sense for the girls to get killed in real life at that point, since it would pretty much have put a halt to the whole escape plan. The train sequence actually introduces stakes, since we see Rocket die, but the problem is its far too late in the movie, and only happens at the end of the last dream sequence.

And yet, it occurred to me that the one place where they legitimately could've used the dream thing and had characters getting killed off is the escape from the asylum itself, since you could represent a character getting caught/killed during the escape as a death in the fantasy sequence, and you could cut between reality/fantasy in those instances and the connection would actually make sense, unlike the random dancing metaphor.

What they should've done is gotten rid of one of the fantasy sequences from the middle of the movie, since they're just essentially fetch quests and serve no story function. Keep the samurai stuff, and lose either the WW1 or the middle earth set pieces. Do the train sequence and end it the same way, that's good because it establishes stakes. Then, instead of having Mr. Blue randomly kill off 3 of the main characters, just go straight into the part where baby doll stabs Mr. Blue and we start the escape. Now the escape itself should be the final big fantasy sequence. Our remaining girls do everything they can to escape the asylum, using the items they've already acquired, and we get an amazing corresponding fantasy sequence to close the movie out. The fantasy sequence would also incorporate all the items that had already been acquired, but in a fantasy context, and we'd get the same 3 girls killed off, but during the course of the fantasy/escape sequence itself.

Thus we'd actually get a final awesome action sequence that we cared about and had real stakes, and you can end the movie the same way with the sacrifice thing (if you really have to go there Snyder), but minus the retarded voice over.

There, movie fixed, learn screenwriting hollywood.

Any chance you guys going to do the Original Star Trek movies next year?

I just rewatched Wrath of Khan in glorious blu-ray, and I was struck by how perfectly structured it is. People always tend to focus on the technology or the actors, but the screenplay is really extremely efficient at how it sets up motivations and relationships for all these characters and then pays off on pretty much all the story arcs. I'd say its a perfect movie by the DIF definition. Especially watching this time, its also noticeable how tight it is, there's really no dead weight story wise, every scene is accomplishing something useful.

Also, for a movie from 1982, the computer screen graphics (this is always a pet peeve of mine) actually hold up remarkably well, better than many 90s movies, to where I find them totally plausible, and the exterior model work is mostly great. Would be a good commentary, and an opportunity to point out how it succeeds in many areas that the reboot fails (would also be an interesting compare/contrast with Star Trek the Motion Picture).

Good call Jimmy, I was actually going to bring that podcast up. The Room episode and the Punisher Warzone episode with the director and Patton Oswalt are really worth listening to.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one that caught the "they only come out at night" line in the pilot.

It annoyed me enough that I tweeted the following:

"Wow, they just called back to one of the iconic lines from Aliens....you don't deserve to use that line Terra Nova"