Movie Thread

[Rushy]

Apparently, Coscarelli's original cut of Phantasm was three hours long. I would watch the shit out of that

[Rapeculture]

Apparently, Coscarelli's original cut of Phantasm was three hours long. I would watch the shit out of that

Same here, I would really love to have seen what was cut, but apparently that footage has been lost. Otherwise I think Don would have rolled out a director's cut with that footage re-inserted by now.

[Rushy]

Phantasm 5 was too muddled even for this franchise's standards. I liked a lot of the ideas they were going with, but the constant shifting between realities left me feeling like Hartman couldn't really decide what the story was about.
It also appears that he decided Reggie was the heart of the franchise, because the one semi-coherent idea this film had was giving him a sort of sendoff at the expense of all other characters.

At the start of the film, I was okay with it, because it seemed like the Tall Man had won over Mike and this was a sort of epilogue chapter, or "Reggie: A Phantasm Story" or whatever. But most of the film seems to be spent on giving the audience multiple explanations for how the Phantasm universe even functions, all of which are also contradicted by what we see on screen. That just kills the investment.

Aside from the shit story, I quite admired the scope Hartman was going for(though he really should've been told to use more practical effects) and the main cast were as great as ever, minus the annoying dwarf. I hated not being able to follow what was going on, but at least I wasn't indifferent to it, so I'd say it's not the worst film.

I > IV > III > V > II

[Rushy]

Ways to fix Phantasm 5?
Try not to be clever and make the dementia stuff be the future, where Reggie defeated the Tall Man, but lost Mike and Jody. When he dies, he imagines them.
Also cut the whole invasion of Earth, or make it a dream sequence. But by all means, retain the sequence set on the Tall Man's homeplanet, that was awesome.

How to kill off the Tall Man? Well, since we saw Mike being there when the Tall Man came to being, perhaps you could tie him back to being a living form of Mike's fears that needed to take him over to achieve independent existence, and Mike's death defeats him for good and restores him to Jebediah Morningside(who then goes on to live with old Reggie in the hospital).

[Rapeculture]

Damn Rushy, I really like your ideas, they would have made Ravager a more interesting watch for sure, or at least a more coherent one. I also agree about the dwarf, he got on my damn nerves for real. The dementia stuff with Reggie, I saw that as sort of an analog/bookend to Mike's "it was all a dream" ending in the original Phantasm, so while I wasn't totally okay with it, I could see why Don went with it.

I'm probably in the minority here, but I was never 100% on board with the ending of Phantasm. I've never cared for the events of a piece of fiction being a dream of a character in the story. I've always felt that it was narrative poison and makes my investment in the story feel pointless. I wonder if Phantasm's cut content would have made the ending more digestible for me somehow, but that's all I can do, wonder. Don't get me wrong though, I love just about everything else about the original Phantasm, it's surreal and compelling, and I love the characters.

I'm a newer fan of the series, but I'm intrigued enough to have come across this book about Ravager:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/06920 ... 82fdabb7f9

The author apparently wrote another book called Phantasm Exhumed about the series in general that I'm also going to pick up, but this one I'm linking to is about the making of Ravager specifically. I've read an excerpt from it elsewhere, apparently Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm got into an argument on set about how to handle a specific scene that they had together. I thought that was pretty funny. They really cared a lot about this series.

[Liar Revealed]

Latest token diversity movie is tanking. Funded by and co-starring Oprah, starring an mini-Oprah lookalike for a role that's supposed to be for a little brown-haired girl envious of her mother's red hair.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_wrinkle_in_time_2018
Even RT gives it 42%. When you factor in the SJW factor, the score is likely in the low teens.

[Kugelfisch]

The synopsis reads like a load of crap.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Well, at least they start to figure out you can't win the masses by overhyping every single piece of garbage connected to your ideology. Just make good movies, dammit.

[da PAC Nigguh]

I saw one trailer for that and it left me dumbfounded as to what the film was supposed to be.

[Liar Revealed]

I saw one trailer for that and it left me dumbfounded as to what the film was supposed to be.

I think that was everyone's reaction.
I read the book in 3rd grade, but I remember very little. This triggered no nostalgic memories.