Most Mindblowing/Ambitious films ever made

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

I don't actually understand what is ambitious or mindblowing about TDK? Not crying, just a serious question.

It seems to me, like alot of movies, very similar Rashomon.

In Rashomon, it's seemed to be about how people lie about there own true nature to save face with distorted viewpoints on what really "is". In the Dark Knight this seems to be what the Joker is attempting to prove, that society's sense of "morality" is a distortion of reality, that everyone is corrupt. While Rashomon does this through a series of alternate events the Dark Knight channels it through the Joker.

At the end of Rashamon, one of the story-tellers who attempts to stop a bandit from from stealing an abandoned child's wrapping, is revealed to be corrupt himself, as he didn't just witness the events, he actually stole a dagger from the scene for personal profit. However, in a selfless act he takes the child to raise as his own, reassuring the other story tellers faith in man (both standing in a similar manner to Dent And Batman at the of the Dark Knight) with the Takishi Shimura's characters wandering off for a closing shot.

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At the end of the Dark Knight, although Harvey Dent has been corrupted, and the Joker has more or less proven his point, Batman selflessly takes the blame, with Gordon given a narration in a similar manner to Roshasmon that more or less reassures his (as well as our) faith in man.

That's my pretentious take on it. Although The Dark Knight is nowere near as good as only gets praise because most superhero movies are actually garbage designed as fluff for the mainstream.

 

[The Morningstar]

Ehh i think comparing TDK to Rashomon is kinda insulting to Rashomon.

I can understand the whole filming in IMAX thing being technically ambitious. But as a movie in general? Not so much.

Oh and i hate Gordon's monologue at the end. Spoon feeding at it's worst. He might as well have been staring into the camera going "This is for all you idiots out there who didn't understand what transpired in the last 2 and a half hours!"

 

[Why Are You Crouching Spock?]

The problem I had with the Dark Knight is that it wasn't emotionally engaging. Everyone (like alot of Nolans movies) has this cold monotone quality. Just because a movie has all this supposed stuff going on, it doesn't mean very much if you aren't invested in it. The movies too long as well. It's all over the place.

 

[Boom]

The Lord of the Rings.

Filming three big-budget films back-to-back-to-back.

 

[Visceral]

Wasn't crying about it just saying that it comes up in every thread eventually, similar to how Nazis will come up eventually.

oh ouch



I would add Jaws to this list if it hasn't been mentioned already

 

[Eddie Dean]

Ehh i think comparing TDK to Rashomon is kinda insulting to Rashomon.

I can understand the whole filming in IMAX thing being technically ambitious. But as a movie in general? Not so much.

Oh and i hate Gordon's monologue at the end. Spoon feeding at it's worst. He might as well have been staring into the camera going "This is for all you idiots out there who didn't understand what transpired in the last 2 and a half hours!"

You have no soul. Gordon's speech is wonderfully epic.

 

[PSYLENTGuardian]

And, of course, The Room.

t:

 

[jonathancrane]

-Antichrist
-The Dark Knight
-The Searchers (which has also been vastly imitated, to limited success.)
-Chinatown
-Alien
-Halloween (1978)
-The Mist
-Inception
-Nosferatu (1922)

 

[November Rain]

rocky, a low budget fight film where the lead character loses.

who the hell would have thought it would have won and oscar and become a cult classic and spur on a massive billion dollar franshise.

ambitious is not even the word.

toy story, the first fully cgi movie, about toys that come to life, the entire film was based on having the technology available to believe the characters.

i think the same goes for jurassic park (could have easily gone wrong).

editing and cinematically, to edit together the scenes in top gun to give the impression of combat is just completely sublime and to this day it is the definitive aircraft battle film.

storywise, i'm not quite sure yet.

 

[dude stannis]

TDK definitely was ambitious. You just don't take a comic book and make a sprawling crime epic in the vein of Heat and American Gangster with out it being a huge risk.

Mine;

Star Wars, all six of them.
Alien
Blade Runner
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Watchmen
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
The Matrix Trilogy
Speed Racer
Sin City
The Abyss
Terminator series.
Pan's Labyrinth
Crank films.

 

[Ponyboy]

I have to go with DUNE.

 

[Eddie Dean]

Jodorowsky's Dune would have been mind blowing for sure. Salvador Dalí was cast as The Emperor!

 

[Rocketman]

TDK definitely was ambitious. You just don't take a comic book and make a sprawling crime epic in the vein of Heat and American Gangster with out it being a huge risk.

Agreed 100%. As far as superhero movies goes, there's no equal... In my opinion. And I've seen (and own) them all, and enjoy most of them. So don't call me a Batman/Nolan fanboy, or a DC fan, or anything else. I love the Spider-Man films, the X-Men films, the Superman films, and even Blade, Hellboy, and so on and so on. TDK is the best.

 

[dude stannis]

Agreed 100%. As far as superhero movies goes, there's no equal... In my opinion. And I've seen (and own) them all, and enjoy most of them. So don't call me a Batman/Nolan fanboy, or a DC fan, or anything else. I love the Spider-Man films, the X-Men films, the Superman films, and even Blade, Hellboy, and so on and so on. TDK is the best.

Since I've grown up, I don't see fanboys, just people with individual taste and opinions. I love all the films you've mentioned.

In fact, they all belong on this thread.

 

[Rocketman]

Since I've grown up, I don't see fanboys, just people with individual taste and opinions. I love all the films you've mentioned.

In fact, they all belong on this thread.

Again, totally agreed.
Throwing around the word "fanboy" has become so tiresome. People like what they like. It's as simple as that. I don't understand where "facts" came into the equation. I can't imagine what it would be like if the Internet existed when Kubrick and Hitchcock were alive.

For instance, I love M. Night Shyamalan, and I would consider The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village, as ALL ambitious films. His later work completely disappoints (for me), but his first four films were totally non-Hollywood, against-the-grain films. And they were original, and not adapted or rebooted or remade or re-imagined!!

I mean, the marketing for The Village was so ballsy, and the concept of Unbreakable was so original, before TDK ever did it.

It saddens me that his later work is now representative of everything he's made. I mean, between 1999 and 2004, everyone loved Night. He was nominated for Oscars, he was hailed as the next Spielberg and Hitchcock, he smashed box office records, and so on. The Sixth Sense is in AFI's 100 Greatest Films of All-Time.

Then he flops 3 times, and you'd swear he was the Anti-Christ.

 

[Tron Bonne]

It's obviously way off the topic, but I don't really see what's wrong with the word 'fanboy'. Yeah, people are just people with opinions, but there are people who are overzealous and incredibly bias in their opinion, and that's all a fanboy is. I think it's just a word people have come to over examine for some reason. Like how people get all pissy about calling something 'overrated', like it's some kind of internet curse word, when all it means is you simply don't think something is as good as it's generally considered either critically or commercially.

 

[Rocketman]

It's obviously way off the topic, but I don't really see what's wrong with the word 'fanboy'. Yeah, people are just people with opinions, but there are people who are overzealous and incredibly bias in their opinion, and that's all a fanboy is. I think it's just a word people have come to over examine for some reason. Like how people get all pissy about calling something 'overrated', like it's some kind of internet curse word, when all it means is you simply don't think something is as good as it's generally considered either critically or commercially.

The word "pretentious" is another Internet curse word.

But regarding "fanboy," I think it's a necessary word if it actually applies to the appropriate situation. Calling someone a "Nolan Fanboy" because they liked Inception and you didn't... it's just so immature, and exhausting.

Especially on IMDB. That place is 1,000x worse than SHH will ever be. This place actually feels like a community where you can end up having a meaningful conversation (with some hilarity and adolescence along the way), but I close my laptop some nights and don't feel like I wasted my time here (sometimes, lol).

But IMDB is like the 4chan of movies. You can't even have an opinion. Literally. People are automatically hostile. It's shoot first, never ask questions later. I go there to browse the ratings and that's it. Life is too short to be engaging in hostile name-calling with 14 year olds, or 40 year olds who live with their parents.

 

[DACrowe]

The problem I had with the Dark Knight is that it wasn't emotionally engaging. Everyone (like alot of Nolans movies) has this cold monotone quality. Just because a movie has all this supposed stuff going on, it doesn't mean very much if you aren't invested in it. The movies too long as well. It's all over the place.

I understand those criticisms about Inception, The Prestige and Memento (though all three are great films, IMO) but I don't see them applying to Nolan's Batman movies. They're not cold or non-emotive, so much as subdued and adult. I felt Bruce's pain over losing Rachel was genuinely moving. Harvey Dent's arc was beautifully tragic and sympathetic and the level of guilt Jim Gordon feels first for Harvey's predicament (starting in the interrogation scene) and then for his family at the end was truly moving. The palatable sense of defeat and failure that Gordon and Batman have at the end standing over the Joker's dead body is exhausting and thus makes their decision to cover up Harvey's crimes cathartically satisfying (take that Joker!). I'd even say the level of cruelty by the villains (Joker's murdering of judges and police commissioners, his creepy speech to Gamble, killing Rachel, Two-Face killing his victims) was just authentic enough in this hyper-fantastical world to be unsettling.

I think Nolan's Batman films are actually quite cathartic. Inception or Memento? Not so much, but those are brilliant.

 

[Rocketman]

Not to mention that there's a real sense of warmth in the Alfred and Lucius characters. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman bring fatherly-figure roles to those movies, and their scenes are anything but cold or monotone. Between the two of them and Gary Oldman, all three of them bring light and warmth to two movies that really could be cold and dark.

Alfred seems like someone who genuinely cares and loves a small boy who never really got a chance to grow up (normally).

Fox seems like a guy who's intrigued and along for the ride. There's a warmth there, and the scenes between him and Bruce are among the highlights (for me) in both films. He doesn't want to know, he's not going to ask.. He's just going to help.

Hell, Linus Roache's performance as Thomas Wayne is ALSO very good, and brings a great sense of love and emotion.

I mean, there's so much more, but it's quite obvious (to me, anyway) that Nolan's Batman movies are even perhaps warmer and lighter than previous Batman films (just not in tone or theme, obviously).

 

[S.A.A.D.]

My picks for mind blowing movies:

-Batman (it's the first theatrical Batman movie)
-Tron Legacy (self explanatory)
-Blade Runner (self explanatory)
-Thor (the CGI when it came to the realms)
-Green Lantern (it was the world of Green Lantern come to life on the big screen)
-Transformers (the Transformers in CGI mode)
-American Psycho (Bale as Patrick Bateman and the lines)
-Naked Lunch (self explanatory)
-Lost Highway (complicated direction, story wise)
-Punisher: War Zone (Frank Castle being hardcore)
-Sleep Away Camp (self explanatory)
-Dead Ringers (the mutant dream and the tools that one of the Mantle brothers created)

 

[Ipodman]

Most ambitious film ever is probably Avatar...

 

[S.A.A.D.]

I don't have any picks for most ambitious films ever made since I am nihilistic when it comes to the idea of them.

 

[redhawk23]

Why Are You Crouching Spock, try not to act as if you were the only one to ever see both Jurrassic Park and Avatar in theaters.

As it would happen I just saw Jurassic Park in a theater again just a few months ago. It was a trip after 18 years. Still a very solid movie. The creatures in that film actually have character, which as I'm sure you'll agree cannot be said for most of the non-Na'vi creatures in avatar.

I agree with you on some of the camera swings on Avatar but does that really take away from the ambition? Mocap may have been done before 09 but, especially with faces, not to the degree that Cameron did with Avatar. The project, for better or for worse, was born out of ambition and a need to challenge the limits of technology. I agree the story ended up being somewhat shallow or at least well worn, but I think that came out of wanting to tell the broadest story possible, the whole 8 to 80 thing, not the emphasis on effects. Many of the technologies they used didn't exist when they started the project. Much of Wetas effects software was created in house and Cameron built his own cameras.

Furthermore, Cameron brought about sweeping changes to theaters all around the country, for better or for worse. In anticipation of Avatar thousands of screens were equipped with digital projection. I can't stand most of the glut 3d releases but the fact of the matter is the greater proliferation of digital project has begun to bring the cost down. Many of these projectors will only require software updates to be adapted to some of the technologies coming down the road like 48 fps films. Whether you welcome it or decry it, Cameron contributed in a significant way to both how movies are made and how they are shown with a single movie. That is ambition.

-edit, also just on an action film basis, Avatar has some of the more awesome scenes that I've seen in recent years. Am I still more impressed by some scenes done by real stuntmen in other films? Sure but a 9 foot tall thundercat jumping off of a dragon, throwing a grenade into an airship turbine and then jumping back onto the dragon is suitable mindblowing on the action front.

 

[November Rain]

but is it only ambitious if he were to profit from it by having already produced sequels for it (or other similar scaled 3d films) before the release of avatar?

or is it simply just pioneering?

 

[November Rain]

christ, i forgot about cleopatra,that is the definitive most ambitious movie ever made

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra_(1963_film)

an adjusted budget of over 300 million, that's insane...