DigModiFicaTion said:
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
War of the Planet of the Apes (2017)
The ending isn't a great payoff for a 3 movie investment. 6.75/10
I liked these a lot more than you did, particularly the last 2, in which I thought the CG was very impressive. I really disagree about the ending, which I found to be a great payoff. I think Caesar should go down as one of the great tragic heroes in movie history. What an amazing arc.
DigModiFicaTion said:
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
I don't like anime at all so I have no frame of reference for this story and I'm also not a big Scarlet Johansson fan either. That being said, I don't really see why this movie got so much hate.
Well, you've probably hit a big part of it right there. You don't know the hate of an anime fan scorned, lol. You're right, this got a disproportionate amount of hate for the changes it made to the original. It's actually surprising how faithful it is.
The big quandry of the film is that (like a lot of anime, even now) many of the main characters look far more Caucasian than Japanese. So when you cast the film, it would bear more visual resemblance (and usually more star power and bankability) to cast a Caucasian. The film's efforts to try to explain that and lend an extra layer of depth where almost uniformly rejected. You had a huge portion of the potential audience who decided the movie was an abomination based on casting alone. Then of the people who wanted to see the story and were willing to move past that, most found the in-movie explanation unnecessary.
Personally, I think it was a valid choice, if uneven. It's very rare to have a film with depth that handles everything in a completely diversely balanced and totally inoffensive way to everyone. I feel like the filmmakers were caught in a bad spot on this one... if the film was released 5 years earlier, or maybe even 5 years later, it might've gotten a fairer assessment. It's not perfect, but it did a lot pretty well, certainly more so than many big action films these days.