It looks every inch the Michael Bay Transformers movie that we've already had three times before - likely with the same low level of coherence and plot absurdity. Perhaps the humour is slightly more on target this time as they won't be parents, Malkovich, Turtorro, Chang from Community, LaBeouf, etc. I am confident, however, that Mr Bay will disappoint and force some completely unfunny scenes in there.

I didn't much like Pacific Rim, but at least that movie did robots so much better.

I don't recall that being the explanation at all. My point was that on the one hand you're really reaching with that explanation (using knowledge from outside the movie as well) and then here you're questioning what is a perfectly valid interpretation of a scene.

Sorry, but

I'm going to be that film snob and say that the original "Infernal Affairs" is better

Edit: Saw After Earth - it's ok, I love the design work on the ships and Nova Prime, main flaw is that it hasn't really thought through the concept of how humans would handle the Ursa monster, and seems to insist on giving the human rangers only bladed weapons, which is utterly retarded. We don't try to fight lions and tigers with swords, we use these things called guns.

If you assume that people won't care, then eventually they won't care as laziness breeds laziness. Every time you think that people won't notice, you're just giving yourself an excuse. Stories function not just as entertainment, but as a means of teaching people about all sorts of things (love, life, happiness, morality, friendship etc.). Movies should aspire to make people want to notice the details and the accuracy, and inspire the viewer to want to find out more. I think that if you care, so too will your audience.

The other side of this is the prevalence of misinformation in movies and its potential danger. Like it or not, films have tremendous power and influence over a lot of people, and every time these misrepresent something - whether it be history, science or cultural - they shape or reinforce views. Thus if the information retrieved is false or incomplete, the damage can be irrevocable (first impressions tending to persist).

And whilst you can argue that something like Hackers is rather harmless in its portrayal of hacking as some ubercool magic VR nonsense, the insidious false reality of most films appears to go unnoticed. Take Braveheart for instance, a film that is utterly irresponsible in how badly it portrays actual history events and has the gall to have a narrator tell you that it's the 'true story' and that the English are lying.

Was one of those criticisms Jodie Foster's weird French accent?

I think some trailers have spoiled movies. Even by showing a particular shot, I felt The Avengers spoils a moment in the film's climax. It doesn't "ruin" it, but does remove the surprise and thus arguably diminishes the impact.

And I think that may be what it comes down to in a lot of cases. Does removal of the surprise diminish the moment and is this always the case?  Well, possibly. Whenever we re-watch movies we're often just as entertained by them and I think whilst we have in the back of minds a memory of our initial emotions, whether the moment works as well again depends on how well it has been executed and its impact on the characters. Darth Vader telling Luke he's his father still works regardless of whether you know it's coming because of the power of the scene and Luke's reaction to the news. Compare this to LA Confidential, where there's a sudden unexpected scene that works superbly when you first see it, but loses nearly all of its impact on a subsequent viewing. In this latter example, retaining the 'virgin' experience is paramount; a spoiler would rob the viewer of that.

Sometimes even describing the premise of a story can reveal things unintended. In the Outer Limits thread, I ended up deliberately obfuscating some of them because even by reading it the viewer has set up expectations of what the story is about, including about how it will end.

My view is that, whenever possible, people should be mindful of revealing any aspect of a movie/TV episode/game etc. that can be seen to negatively impact their enjoyment of experiencing that story for the first time. There isn't really a statute of limitations on this per se, but I think that common sense should be applied, e.g. little point to keep secret if someone says they never intend to watch/read it or is simply not a fan.

Oh yes! Please do, fantastic idea.

Some random thoughts. I have a problem with a story that announces a character to be a tactical genius but demonstrates that by showing only mass self-sacrifice. Also, the zero gravity game has practically no relevance to the actual battles that they're fighting. Finally, I love when movies show footage from earlier in the movie and pass it off as actual footage of the event.

And where are these magic cameras that are capturing all the real-time events of the end game?

Churches are nice though!

Well that sounds like a fair shake.

I've not seen the film in a long time, but I remember most of the film is actually about his friends, who are all professors representing various fields, engaging in an intellectual exercise with him (none of them actually believe him when they leave) because, well you know, they're all academics. That he isn't otherwise remarkable is also sort of the point, he's not a superhero or Connor MacLeod, and actually wouldn't retain memories of most things he has seen. He even makes a palpable point that his earlier degrees mean nothing because a lot of the knowledge is obsolete. The story is about "what if", possibly even "how?", not "he is, oh wow".

The film falls apart in its climax, which trades the air of ambiguity with a groan-inducingly awful revelation and an even worse 'tragic plot device' (which seems completely thrown in at the last minute to add some Drama!). However, everyone of us has seen far far worse so it just seems weird to call this garbage and even more bizarre to fixate on a character's name as being symptomatic of its quality.

I think you're getting too hung up on a perception that the screenwriter is trying to be clever with the name rather than understanding why the character is going by that specific name. Why is any name given to anyone - fictional or otherwise? And why did this character choose Oldman for what is a temporary alias? Folks use all sorts of names when they're pretending to be someone that they're not, and most often these are silly, derivative, or imitation. I don't think he even has an actual name, so his selection in going for names that are always plays on being very old is revealing, and thus demonstrates character.

My point is that there's a world of difference between the screenwriter calling their immortal character Oldman as some kind of 'see what I did there, aren't I clever' exercise and how the film treats it. If you've seen the film, you would realise they even hang a lantern on the name, as it's essentially revealed too that names don't actually mean anything to him. It's not an arbitary choice but multi-layered and whilst I think the film ends poorly, it's rather absurd to focus on that as some kind of key failing.

It's not like two last survivors of an apocalypse are revealed in the climax to be called Adam and Eve.