You find it hated?
I feel it’s the other way around. Everyone seems to love it, despite its glaring flaws.
I’m actually surprised by the number of Cars fans we have here, compared to other Pixar movies (like say, A Bug’s Life, which is woefully underappreciated). There’s, of course, the Toy Story crowd, but they rarely venture outside their board. 
Most of my friends and work colleagues IRL who have seen the film said they liked it, but maybe this is because they were casual fans and weren’t so attached to the Mandarin character.
I seem to encounter a lot of online vitirol (not from you, I know you’re pretty balanced on the film) who whined about the Mandarin twist (which I keep thinking of as a very sweet and fizzy soft drink, haha).
But yeah, I think the box-office figures speak for themselves. I remember trawling through the online booking systems of the various cinema chains here on its opening weekend and a lot of the sessions were sold out. Think it made an opening-weekend record in Singapore, too.
Does it deserve all those butts in its cinema halls’ seats? Well, I felt to a certain extent. While Shane Black certainly pulled off a competent (and daring) sequel, I felt that there were some part that could’ve been more fleshed out, and the action sequences (other than the villa trashing and the final fight) were underwhelming. Not to mention the [spoil]happy[/spoil] ending, which one netizen said could’ve been more powerful if they had [spoil]killed Pepper and ended it on a dour note, leaving Tony to take revenge against the real Mandarin in Avengers 2[/spoil].
I’d rather more people go and support the more well-polished Star Trek Into Darkness, which is doing pretty well from my last cinema-chain count, but not selling out as many halls as Iron Man 3 did. And certainly for Epic, which - due to its mediocre promotional campaign - I feel will be a box-office bomb but a future cult classic.
Not that I think that site’s scores are a good reference for a film’s actual quality, but it has 7.7, which is pretty good.
But yes, you can’t make a film like that and hope not to get an uproar from a group of fans. Even Shane Black acknowledged it.
Don’t pay attention to IMDB reviews. People go on there simply to troll.
I think Iron Man 3 deserves a lot more hate that it gets. They took the best villain (and my favourite character) in Iron Man Comics and made a mockery of him.
Perfectly understandable. I’d be angry too if I was a fan of the character; a friend and fellow film critic of mine said it’s tantamount to [spoil]depicting the Joker in the Dark Knight movies as a fraud[/spoil].
Shane Black and his writers really had the c*jones to pull that off, I have to give 'em that. The fan backlash is but an inevitable result, but for ambivalent folks like me and those I’ve asked about the film IRL, they were kinda “meh” with it.
I only hope that [spoil]the real Mandarin[/spoil] shows up in Avengers 2, but at the moment it’s wishful thinking.
I saw both Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness yesterday. I deeply enjoyed both.
As someone with no comics knowledge, I thought the twist was hilarious and kept the movie fresh towards the end, although [spoil]Killian was a pretty lame villain.[/spoil] Overall, though, I really enjoyed it as a piece of popcorn entertainment.
Star Trek Into Darkness seems to generate nothing but strong feelings. I know a lot of people that like it, even love it, but I also know a lot of people that hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. Very little middle ground reaction. I for one enjoyed it and thought it was entertaining. Not as good as the first, but still worth the price of admission 
I’m gonna have to say either Barnyard or Hop.
Ok, I’m going to come out and say it, but…
I really liked Shymalan’s The Last Airbender adaptation. The main reason why is because one morning, my mom and I decided to check it out on Netflix. I had never watched the actual Avatar: The Last Airbender series before that (I only knew about it through Nickelodeon commercials), so one morning back in June 2011, we saw it, and we both liked the story, action, and special effects very much (I actually almost cried when I saw Yue transfer her life force to the fish in the oasis), and my interest was even more heightened with the cliffhanger that showed Azula ready to begin her pursuit. We then watched the episode “The Siege of the North: Part 2” just to compare the two versions, and they were pretty consistent, just with some minor differences.
So basically, the story is that the movie actually sparked my interest in the series from then on. I ended up watching the entire Book One the very next summer, and I could see that they couldn’t fit all the details in to one movie; they just got the most important points. But overall, I still do like it, even though I know the whole original series as well.
^ Now that is a near-universally panned film. Even a friend of mine who’s a fan of the Airbender series hated the film (he was annoyed they tried to cram a lot of things into the movie and changed things around). I was more annoyed with the whitewashing. Yes, I know our notion of race on earth does not fit Airbender’s, much like Dragonball Z’s. But still, they don’t look that Caucasian.
So it’s refreshing to hear a fan like you, JSWeC, who watches the series and enjoys the film. I might give it a shot one day, if only because I’m a fan Shyamalan’s earlier works like The Sixth Sense and The Village.
evspixarfan2012: I didn’t really like Hop (the chocolate poop gag kinda killed it for me, although the voice actor of the chick whose name escapes me at the moment was quite good). But Barnyard wasn’t too bad. I think I watched it before.
lennonluvr: I immensely enjoyed STID. I gave it four stars in my published review in my newspaper (and it was fun to drop all the Star Trek puns and references like “Resistance is futile” and “Where no man has gone before” into my writing). I’ll see if I can find a photograph I took of it. But I loved it and Iron Man 3 (which I gave 3 1/2 stars and rewatched with a friend).
I have mixed feelings on The Last Airbender. I really hate that the Fire Nation is Indian, and the WT guys are white. It would make more sense to have done those two the other way around, since they seemed convinced not to get actual Inuits. Why? Are Inuits very hard to find? Do they wish not to be filmed? I feel very conflicted on that. I don’t mind what they left out, and plot wise, the film is remarkable faithful. I could even tolerate the names being pronounced differently. But oh my gosh, the acting. The writing. Sokka, Katara, and Aang are so horribly out of character it hurts me. I really like Dev Patel most times, and he really is the best actor in the film, as well as my favorite character. The effects are good, visually. Very pretty and realistic. However it is an insulting view of bending. Oh yeah, let’s have 10 guys do kung fu for 10 seconds to move one rock. From bonus material and interviews and the like, Noah Ringer seems like he would be the perfect Aang, and even does really resemble him. I think the failure to stay in character is in the directing myself. Sokka and Katara’s actors I just don’t like. Period. And while they should NOT be so caucasian, that could be over looked, if they understood the characters at all. And what’s up with Ozai? I can’t even explain what I didn’t like about that actor. Yue was probably my favorite in the film, along with Zuko. Race and features aside they were much better than anyone else in the movie. I didn’t mean this as a rant, or to argue with JSWeC. I just felt like I should comment on this [articular thing. If you want to see/hear an excellent review of it, watch this! It’s also great for all the Avatar and Korra inside jokes. 
thatguywiththeglasses.com/videol … -airbender
Cars and Cars 2. It’s mostly the recent Pixar films that people tend to rag on and on. Like I said when I joined, Pixar has yet to disappoint. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Alice In Wonderland and Dark Shadows. Those are some of my favorite Tim Burton films. I Love all his films excluding his version of Planet Of The Apes. The original 1968 version is superior. The Care Bears Movie, The Flintstones movie, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Jawbreaker, Jetsons: The Movie, The Power Rangers film, The Pagemaster, The Pebble & The Penguin, Problem Child 1 and 2, Quest For Camelot, Rock-A-Doodle, Space Jam, Spice World, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Thumbelina, A Troll In Central Park, We’re Back! A Dinosaur Story, The Wiz, and Xanadu. Those are notably my favorite under-rated films.
This movie was one of the most hated movies of 2014, but I loved it. DON’T JUDGE ME
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). DON’T JUDGE ME
The Nut Job
Norm of the North
*That’s all I can think of right now…
Oh, and Free Birds, I guess.
