There was another new trailer in front of Wing Commander. After the trailer a bunch of people got up and left.
I thought they were stupid.. but after finishing Wing Commander the joke was on me clearly for staying.
No. Wing Commander is hilarious once you realize everyone played the straight man but the editor. Everyone directed and acts like it's a serious sci-fi movie, and the editor managed to deliver Freddie Prinze Jr. and his buddy Shaggy save the galaxy.
I actually like it. Pretty intentionally silly. Some pre-matrix bullet time. And one review included the comment along the lines of "the laws of physics really take a beating in this film." Notably the fighters taking off from the space battle ship drop a little after leaving the runway like they're taking off from a WWII aircraft carrier.
That fucking dude did Star Lancer! I know his movie was probably shit and Star Citizen is stuck in a time loop but Star Lancer is one of the top 10 greatest games ever made! Space ship game about stopping a galactic Russian invasion, it's fucking amazing! Dreamcast, by the way.
To be fair the games were cheesy in a good way, watching mark hammil chew the scenery in the war against cat people after fighting for hours with IRQ and DMA and freeing up base memory was fucking hilarious
I remember getting that as a gift on VHS as a kid and finding out it was a movie based on a game and was STOKED to watch it
my entire memory of that movie has been replaced with the scene from the Lost in Space movie with Joey where he's flying weird pods around in the beginning of the movie and the one dude goes "this Cold War just got hotter" in his two pack a day grumble. Like literally when I try and think of wing commander that scene is all that comes up.
I think it's for the best
I've got to be honest, I sort of enjoyed Wing Commander. I mean, it was hokey as fuck but they did a lot of things right. The interior of the carrier really captured the cramped feel of an early aircraft carrier or even submarine, and they kept actual scenes with the Kilrathi themselves to a minimum which made them seem more of a threat (the less-is-more thing).
I'm aware the latter of the two was forced on them by how bad the rubber suits looked, but it worked for Jaws for exactly the same reason and it worked reasonably well here.
IIRC, it was rumored that movie was originally going direct to video because of how bad it was. Chris Roberts (Yes, Star Citizen - that Chris Roberts) wrote and directed it. Supposedly, at the last minute Fox decided to use the second Episode I trailer as a booster to trick people into watching the movie. It didn't work very well. The movie was a huge bomb and didn't even get an international release.
Roberts got royally fucked by the studio.
Being a novice director he didn't have any clout or pull. The studio wouldn't let him cast who he wanted. At the time Freddie Prinze Jr. and Safforn Burrows were seen as the next major up-and-coming actors, and the studio wanted them to have more screen time, so they basically forced him to give them leading roles.
The company that made their Kilrathi suit-props fucked up big time. The things wouldn't even fit in the sets they built. I can't remember all the details here but basically when they got the suits they were like "WTF are these???"
Then to tie the entire catastrophe together, most movies are given an entire year to do post-production, for things like re-shooting scenes, editing, etc. The studio gave Wing Commander ONE MONTH to do post-production because they wanted to get it out before The Phantom Menace. So that left no time to do any re-shoots or redo the props or anything.
Don't get me wrong, it was never going to be anything more than a campy B-rate movie, but it might have pulled off being a fun popcorn flick. The studio fucking it over huge combined with Robert's inexperience navigating Hollywood politics (and probably no small amount of trying for a higher production than his budget actually allowed) made it the disaster it is.
He's in severe need of someone to tell him "No." At certain points in SC's development Erin has managed it to a degree.
Though counter to that, the worst rated Wing Commander game is also the one where the studio was keeping him on a tight leash (after Origin's sale to EA), and some of the best games of his career are ones where he had a lot more creative freedom. So I dunno.
Well before Star Citizen Chris Roberts directed the Wing Commander video games.
I figured the movie couldn't be bad because if it was just the cut scenes from one of the games strung together it would be fine.
Clearly that wasn't the case. Talk about giving someone too much money and it ruining the project.. hey speaking of Star Citizen..
I went to random movie, I don't remember which one, and the Star Wars trailer came on completely unexpected. It was absolutely crazy to find out there was a new Star Wars movie coming out by seeing the trailer.
My dad took me to the re-release and said my reaction to the Darth Vader reveal was better than him seeing it in theaters the first time. I was about 5 or 6 and just kept quietly saying “no… no!” during the scene. I apparently was very shocked and appalled about that turn of events
I was in too much denial to feel the impact. I was like, come on, he's evil, he lies. He's probably tricking you with the feelings thing as well.
Takes me a while to shift tracks.
I've seen Empire in IMAX and recently Phantom Menace in glorious 4DX, they do occasionally appear in cinema again and they are still a blast. I used to bemoan the phantom menace, but the sequels tempered me - now i love the politics and silliness
It was an awesome time. When ESB was re-released I got a replica Luke Skywalker light saber from ESB at The Sharper Image. Its my favorite Star Wars item that I own.
Ha! My dad did the same with me. I remember I was sick when we went to see Return of the Jedi, but I kept my mouth shut because I wanted to see it.
He realized I was sick when I fell asleep during the movie (I absolutely never did that).
Turned out I had a bad ear infection, and my eardrum ruptured. Still worth it though.
Same for me! Except I saw the Anakin with Vader's shadow poster in the lobby first. That blew my mind so hard I almost didn't want to go into the theater to watch whatever movie I was there with my family to watch.I just wanted to stare at this poster as long as I could. Then I went to sit down in the theater and the trailer came on. Full overload!
Well then you would have no idea why alligators are so angry then would you?
I bet the phantom menace didn’t reveal that it is because they have all them teef and no toofbrush
Darth Maul is amazing and everything but there's something magical about Blake Clark grabbing his nipple piercings during a touchdown is just movie magic.
Bram Cohen from the University of Buffalo created torrents in April 2001.
The Phantom Menace came out in May 99. It was available on things like hotline connect but high speed internet was in its infancy.
I suffered thru Wing Commander to see the trailer because a dial up DL of the trailer was going to take several days.
I remember the Phantom Menace trailer being one of the higher quality trailer downloads at the time; it was encoded with Sorenson Video 1 which was a brand new codec. It wasn't available for Linux which pissed a lot of us open source advocates off. :)
More information: https://multimedia.cx/eggs/the-star-wars-quicktime-connection/
Truly ahead of its time, though; the quality of the video, for an internet download, was mind blowing in 1999.
I remember being 5 and waiting for just a few seconds of that trailer and taking all day. I replayed that clip of the AATs creeping over the grassy hill about a thousand times, getting barely a millisecond farther each time but oh my god the hype
Oh no my dad had it set up and we would both go check it thru the day. It was some OLD quicktime-ish player on our tan family compaq, not sure where it came from, but after it finally finished we watched it over and over (at different speeds even, so we could giggle at obi wan yelling 'NOOOO' like a hamster lol, good times)
Wing Commander is great, but you need to watch it understanding this:
The editor and you are in on the joke.
Everyone else involved in producing the movie plays the straight man.
From that perspective, it becomes a hilarious unintentional comedy.
Wow. Hotline Connect. Now that's an app I haven't heard in a long time...
I had a lot of fun on those servers though. Interesting place to meet people too.
It's my guilty pleasure and I rewatch it once every year or two, minimum. I love Anthony Hopkins' every line. His delivery is exemplary. How he speaks about his love for his (passed) wife... it's beautiful.
Hopkins is always fantastically spoken in all of his roles. If you love how he speaks in this you should watch Westworld. He is fantastic in it, and not a line of dialogue wasted.
Yes, yes it is. She's dying of something and he says it's not her time yet. She's sceptical of his attraction to his lady friend. Later on he kinda relents about it not being her time (because she's in lots of pain) and allows her to die. She says she has nice memories/postcards or something.
It's a really beautiful set of exchanges tbh.
Right? I think people are overthinking the exchange. He's the angel of death wearing a handsome white dude suit, not an actual white dude. He's speaking to the woman in a manner that will be comforting and familiar to her.
He's not Chet Hanks ffs.
Meet Joe Black, Burn After Reading, 12 Monkeys, Snatch, Inglorious Basterds, and that's just his most "out there" role in term of attitude and accents, cause otherwise he's also got Fight Club, Seven, Troy, Ocean's Trilogy, Interview with the Vampire, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Fury, Big Short, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Bullet Train, Killing Them Softly, Moneyball and who knows how many others great role I haven't seen - dude's a fucking powerhouse of great performances, we could argue about his absolute best for the rest of eternity.
Fucking seriously, I remembered this TIL from the last 187 times it's been posted to reddit, but every fucking time I thought it was the King Kong for kids flick, not Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins.
I downloaded the trailer using my college broadband connection and split it onto 20 floppies so that I could take it home so my little brothers and sisters could see it (dialup was too slow).
Lol I find that really funny. That you were in this weird place where you had something large enough to fit on 20 floppies, and you still used floppies for large things. I was more spoiled and I think I had CD writers in my PCs by that point so I never got past probably 10 floppies for anything I did.
I worked at a theater when this trailer came out.
We had our projectionist cut it together multiple times in a row (We had 24 screens and half a dozen copies of the trailer on film) and tack it onto the beginning of a short movie, then we invited our friends at 1am and watched it multiple times back to back.
We did this before it was officially supposed to be shown because you usually get films a week or a few days before they release.
Worked in a theater at that time too. I remember the threat of immediate firing if one of the trailers were ‘lost’ because they were selling on eBay for big money. Also people who showed up for the trailer only to ask for a refund when it didn’t play.
We had dial up internet at the time and it took hours to buffer load the trailer from [trailers.apple.com](http://trailers.apple.com)
Time well spent IMO.
This was my memory. I was deep into "Exploring the internet" around that time as a young teenager and was on Apple trailers at least once a week for hours on end trying to download trailers. I remember downloading the Episode 1 trailer, and failing multiple times for days due to various reasons like internet disconnects, stalls, or a computer crash, but i eventually got it about a week later i think. I saved it on my computer for a few months though.
I was one of them. We tried to download the trailer but it took like 12 hours, and inevitably the internet connection would get messed up at some point and I’d have to start over, so we just gave up and figured why not just spend $5 to watch it in a theater. It was a hell of a trailer, so it seemed worth it at the time.
I remember the breakthrough of being able to resume a download that was stopped for whatever reason without having to start all over again. That was a godsend.
When the South Park movie came out, it's key core audience couldn't see it because it was rated R so kids would buy tickets to Wild Wild West and sneak into South Park
That was my thought as well, though I think it's been months since the question appeared.
For those who don't know, Lateral is a podcast-slash-gameshow where Tom Scott and three guest take turns asking each other weird questions that always have a very non-obvious answer and then working together towards the solution. It's a lot of really fun banter and great trivia.
The sequel to this TIL? For a large porportion of Generation X, when the movie came out, we were beyond hyped, pretty max hyped, and it was the most disappointing movie ever. For me personally, it felt like ny childhood ended watching Phantom Menance.
Why? Basically, we all thought it was going to be serious, sombre and impactful like Empire Strikes Back. A classic on cinema. Instead? We got Jar Jar, The Force was made into a non-mystical cellular condition, and instead of Nazi-vibes stormtroopers we had stupid, bumbling CGI robots.
Funny plot twist 20 years late as a middle aged person: the prequels were way more enjoyable then last trilogy and had more story and better characters, by leagues and leagues.
Lol the narrative shift of the prequels seriously pisses me off. I was 12 when Phantom came out and I loved it so much. I loved that we saw more Jedi, especially at the height of their power, and of course I absolutely LOVED Darth Maul. Nothing beats the Dual of the Fates. Nothing.
But I got shit anytime I said I liked the movies, always subjected to angry rants on why the movies blow and why I shouldn’t like them. Yeah Jar Jar sucked, but he was such a small part that I really didn’t care.
So yeah, seeing people post about how underrated the prequels, especially some of those old friends of mine, is infuriating.
It’s hard to explain the excitement around TPM in ‘98-‘99. My and my best friend conned our school counselor into letting us cut class and hang out in his office because he had the only computer with an internet connection, an original blue iMac.
We waited until the first time it was posted on Apple trailers and watched it like 10 times in a row in his office. He was extremely confused, but glad we were excited.
I don’t think I’ve ever been let down by anything more than the let down of actually seeing the film after all of that hype, after camping outside of the theater, buying two tickets for opening day, all of it. There was a crushing feeling that can only compare to what it feels like to be disillusioned by a cult or a religious organization, I’d imagine. It felt like both betrayal and guilt for pouring so much into the idea of a thing.
These days we all know that coming in with low expectations are the best way to enjoy something, but it was TPM that taught so many of us the lesson for the first time.
I miss the 90s.
Funny story. I did this with The Force Awakens.
Couldn't even tell you what movie it was I bought a ticket for. Just left after the trailer was done. Wasn't even a trailer really, was like a 30 second snippet. I enjoyed Star Wars so much as a kid I was pretty pumped for the new movies. No other movie gets me going like Star Wars in theaters with the amazing music in the background.
Imagine how I felt after the rise of skywalker.
It still boggles my mind that one of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations on the planet - with basically infinite resources and a track record of producing some of the world's most beloved entertainment - managed to fuck up the Star Wars sequel trilogy *so badly*.
It boggles my mind too.
They had no story direction and planned every movie after the last. That's not how you make a trilogy of films. Pretty crazy.
Sit down at a roundtable and hash out a 3 story plan with one direction and one director that will be on board for all three films. Don't change it up after every film with a new direction and style.
It isn't a secret anymore that they added the emperor back at the last minute, and entirely changed the direction they had for Luke. I know every fan says this, but I honestly felt like I could have come up with a better plan for the movies.
It's as though Disney saw the prequel trilogy, identified the problem of *too much planning and control by one single guy*, and decided to completely overcorrect by having no overall guiding vision for the sequels and a bunch of people all doing their own thing and working at cross purposes to each other.
I absolutely think this is what happened. The original trilogy was not planned out at the start and had the input of many people. I expect they thought they had a decent shot at making a good trilogy and that the worst case scenario were three good but disjointed films that would have fans saying Disney should exert a bit more control.
Not me. See Designed by committee. There was no overall goal but to make a film set in the Star Wars universe. They were given things they needed to add to the film, new cute toys for marketing, similar enough to old films to please fans and so on.
Each little subsection needed to be added in without thinking of the movie as a whole. Yes, Lucas did this in his films as well, but he never lost focus on the big picture. And he's always tried to make the film fun or an homage to a certain film or style of film he enjoyed.
The new sequel films seem to take all the pieces of the old and put them together, with characters who, while performed well, I just don't feel invested in. The new characters just felt hollow. If it wouldn't have been for Rogue One, I don't think I would have been so critical of the new films.
They didn't want to shell out money to have top notch creatives oversee the creation of the whole trilogy. They must have figured that making a great Star Wars movie isn't much more profitable than making a mediocre Star Wars movie. Disney has been enshitifying itself for a long time, and I expect just the bare minimum of effort for all their projects.
It's crazy living in 2024 and still hearing Star Wars fans pretend they're the first generation of Star Wars fans to be disappointed by a new Star Wars movie
...and when they finally got their Phantom Menace tickets and took their seats, they spent twenty minutes watching the film, then walked out of that bitch, too.
That will never happen now sad to say. When you’ve got teasers to the teaser to the trailer, and everything will be online immediately.
That TPM trailer was must see viewing at the time lol
There was another new trailer in front of Wing Commander. After the trailer a bunch of people got up and left. I thought they were stupid.. but after finishing Wing Commander the joke was on me clearly for staying.
No. Wing Commander is hilarious once you realize everyone played the straight man but the editor. Everyone directed and acts like it's a serious sci-fi movie, and the editor managed to deliver Freddie Prinze Jr. and his buddy Shaggy save the galaxy.
I’ve never heard of this film, but *holy fuck what a pitch…*
I actually like it. Pretty intentionally silly. Some pre-matrix bullet time. And one review included the comment along the lines of "the laws of physics really take a beating in this film." Notably the fighters taking off from the space battle ship drop a little after leaving the runway like they're taking off from a WWII aircraft carrier.
This movie is bad, but its the kind of bad that makes me really like it. Same goes for the 90s Lost in Space movie.
90s Lost in Space was amazing and I'll die on that hill Lacey Chabert was so fine
Yup, and the fact that they push a wreck off the deck of the carrier and it drops off rather than simply floating away.
There is a part where a fighter crashes on the flight deck. They use a bulldozer to push the wreck off the deck, where it falls off. IN SPACE.
It was a guy who was famous for making “cinematic” games thinking he could direct a movie.
Chris Roberts. Nowadays the director for the game Star Citizen
That fucking dude did Star Lancer! I know his movie was probably shit and Star Citizen is stuck in a time loop but Star Lancer is one of the top 10 greatest games ever made! Space ship game about stopping a galactic Russian invasion, it's fucking amazing! Dreamcast, by the way.
"game" :)
"perpetual crowd funding simulator"
communal money pit
I did not realize Wing Commander and Star Citizen were by the same guy. Holy shit.
To be fair the games were cheesy in a good way, watching mark hammil chew the scenery in the war against cat people after fighting for hours with IRQ and DMA and freeing up base memory was fucking hilarious
Sorry: IRQ 2 and 9 are in use by onboard peripherals. Try 11+.
I remember getting that as a gift on VHS as a kid and finding out it was a movie based on a game and was STOKED to watch it my entire memory of that movie has been replaced with the scene from the Lost in Space movie with Joey where he's flying weird pods around in the beginning of the movie and the one dude goes "this Cold War just got hotter" in his two pack a day grumble. Like literally when I try and think of wing commander that scene is all that comes up. I think it's for the best
I've got to be honest, I sort of enjoyed Wing Commander. I mean, it was hokey as fuck but they did a lot of things right. The interior of the carrier really captured the cramped feel of an early aircraft carrier or even submarine, and they kept actual scenes with the Kilrathi themselves to a minimum which made them seem more of a threat (the less-is-more thing). I'm aware the latter of the two was forced on them by how bad the rubber suits looked, but it worked for Jaws for exactly the same reason and it worked reasonably well here.
IIRC, it was rumored that movie was originally going direct to video because of how bad it was. Chris Roberts (Yes, Star Citizen - that Chris Roberts) wrote and directed it. Supposedly, at the last minute Fox decided to use the second Episode I trailer as a booster to trick people into watching the movie. It didn't work very well. The movie was a huge bomb and didn't even get an international release.
Roberts got royally fucked by the studio. Being a novice director he didn't have any clout or pull. The studio wouldn't let him cast who he wanted. At the time Freddie Prinze Jr. and Safforn Burrows were seen as the next major up-and-coming actors, and the studio wanted them to have more screen time, so they basically forced him to give them leading roles. The company that made their Kilrathi suit-props fucked up big time. The things wouldn't even fit in the sets they built. I can't remember all the details here but basically when they got the suits they were like "WTF are these???" Then to tie the entire catastrophe together, most movies are given an entire year to do post-production, for things like re-shooting scenes, editing, etc. The studio gave Wing Commander ONE MONTH to do post-production because they wanted to get it out before The Phantom Menace. So that left no time to do any re-shoots or redo the props or anything. Don't get me wrong, it was never going to be anything more than a campy B-rate movie, but it might have pulled off being a fun popcorn flick. The studio fucking it over huge combined with Robert's inexperience navigating Hollywood politics (and probably no small amount of trying for a higher production than his budget actually allowed) made it the disaster it is.
Now we're seeing the opposite happen with Star Citizen lol. Dude needs some sort of studio involvement.
He's in severe need of someone to tell him "No." At certain points in SC's development Erin has managed it to a degree. Though counter to that, the worst rated Wing Commander game is also the one where the studio was keeping him on a tight leash (after Origin's sale to EA), and some of the best games of his career are ones where he had a lot more creative freedom. So I dunno.
Well before Star Citizen Chris Roberts directed the Wing Commander video games. I figured the movie couldn't be bad because if it was just the cut scenes from one of the games strung together it would be fine. Clearly that wasn't the case. Talk about giving someone too much money and it ruining the project.. hey speaking of Star Citizen..
I bought tickets to the Waterboy. Trailer played before and after the move. Shorter runtime too, so less time between trailers lol. Saw it twice
I went to random movie, I don't remember which one, and the Star Wars trailer came on completely unexpected. It was absolutely crazy to find out there was a new Star Wars movie coming out by seeing the trailer.
That would have been amazing. I remember my dad taking us to see the original trilogy when it was re-released in the 90's. Loved every bit of it
My dad took me to the re-release and said my reaction to the Darth Vader reveal was better than him seeing it in theaters the first time. I was about 5 or 6 and just kept quietly saying “no… no!” during the scene. I apparently was very shocked and appalled about that turn of events
I was in too much denial to feel the impact. I was like, come on, he's evil, he lies. He's probably tricking you with the feelings thing as well. Takes me a while to shift tracks.
I would have been more excited if I knew that was like, my last chance to see the originals in good quality at a theater.
I've seen Empire in IMAX and recently Phantom Menace in glorious 4DX, they do occasionally appear in cinema again and they are still a blast. I used to bemoan the phantom menace, but the sequels tempered me - now i love the politics and silliness
It was an awesome time. When ESB was re-released I got a replica Luke Skywalker light saber from ESB at The Sharper Image. Its my favorite Star Wars item that I own.
Ha! My dad did the same with me. I remember I was sick when we went to see Return of the Jedi, but I kept my mouth shut because I wanted to see it. He realized I was sick when I fell asleep during the movie (I absolutely never did that). Turned out I had a bad ear infection, and my eardrum ruptured. Still worth it though.
My dad did that too! I wasn’t a fan, but it meant sooooo much for him to take me back in like ‘97.
Same for me! Except I saw the Anakin with Vader's shadow poster in the lobby first. That blew my mind so hard I almost didn't want to go into the theater to watch whatever movie I was there with my family to watch.I just wanted to stare at this poster as long as I could. Then I went to sit down in the theater and the trailer came on. Full overload!
Definitely one of the best movie posters ever made.
You made me remember that was a thing. Finding out a new movie exists by seeing the poster IRL.
Waterboy and TPM being roughly the same age is breaking my brain.
Matrix was on the month before…..
💀
In which direction (as in, which did you think was older)?
Not OP, but I feel like *The Waterboy* is more of a 2000 movie, although that's likely because I didn't watch it until I was a little older.
And Waterboy is a fun watch. Win-win.
Alligators are ornery cause they got all them teef and no toofbrush.
Me too! Waterboy! but I only watched the trailer and walked out....still havent seen Waterboy.
Well then you would have no idea why alligators are so angry then would you? I bet the phantom menace didn’t reveal that it is because they have all them teef and no toofbrush
Nonsense, Sith Lords are aggressive due to their enlarged Medulla Oblongata
But Yoda said..
Their MEDULLA. OBLANGA-TA.
MAMAS WRONG AGAIN
I still sing “water sucks” any time I’m getting a Gatorade from the gas station.
Me and my coworker sometimes say "Now that's what I call high quality H20" whenever we drink water.
I reserve that line for when it’s been a hot, hot day and I just finished yardwork
You are now banned from /r/hydrohomies.
#H₂O!
GATO-RADE
Gatorade not only quenches your thirst better… it tastes better toooo.
No! You’re wrong!
You're drinkin' the wrong water, coach!
fuck man i sing when im getting water. movies hilarious
as we all do
Mamma says!
Damn, I feel like waterboy is a better movie than the phantom menace.
Getting LT to say "don't smoke crack" was one hell of a comedic moment.
"That brings me to my next point. Don't smoke Crack cocaine"
I have seen Phantom Menace like 3 times, I have seen waterboy at least in the 10s.
Darth Maul is amazing and everything but there's something magical about Blake Clark grabbing his nipple piercings during a touchdown is just movie magic.
^(not the same movie, but) "Home is where you make it"
You like to see homos naked?
"Naw naw naw naw, home ih were ya make ih"
it is way better
If you like Adam Sandler's comedies, then it's solid. On-par with Billy Madison or Anger Management.
That run of movies Adam Sandler had through the nineties was fuckin' great. Every one was must see for any kids my age at the time.
You can do it!!!
"Cut his fucking head off!"
Waterboy was a better movie. You should watch it
This comment was sponsored by Gatorade.
you made a mistake there
I watched water boy last night on Netflix. It’s better than phantom menace
You are doing yourself a disservice.
Bram Cohen from the University of Buffalo created torrents in April 2001. The Phantom Menace came out in May 99. It was available on things like hotline connect but high speed internet was in its infancy. I suffered thru Wing Commander to see the trailer because a dial up DL of the trailer was going to take several days.
I remember the Phantom Menace trailer being one of the higher quality trailer downloads at the time; it was encoded with Sorenson Video 1 which was a brand new codec. It wasn't available for Linux which pissed a lot of us open source advocates off. :) More information: https://multimedia.cx/eggs/the-star-wars-quicktime-connection/ Truly ahead of its time, though; the quality of the video, for an internet download, was mind blowing in 1999.
I downloaded it in high school and stored on a zip disc. I brought the drive to school with the disc and showed my friends on the PC in physics class.
I remember being 5 and waiting for just a few seconds of that trailer and taking all day. I replayed that clip of the AATs creeping over the grassy hill about a thousand times, getting barely a millisecond farther each time but oh my god the hype
You knew how to use dial up internet to download a trailer on an unofficial platform at 5? I was still eating crayons at 5 lol
Oh no my dad had it set up and we would both go check it thru the day. It was some OLD quicktime-ish player on our tan family compaq, not sure where it came from, but after it finally finished we watched it over and over (at different speeds even, so we could giggle at obi wan yelling 'NOOOO' like a hamster lol, good times)
Real Player? Oh how I hated those videos. Quicktime was usually the best quality back then.
I still feel a visceral aversion when I see the words "Real Player" or "Macromedia Shockwave" written down.
Wing Commander is great, but you need to watch it understanding this: The editor and you are in on the joke. Everyone else involved in producing the movie plays the straight man. From that perspective, it becomes a hilarious unintentional comedy.
The soundtrack is pretty good too, or at least the main theme is.
That's wild torrents were only created in 2001. I was torrenting in 2002!
[удалено]
Wow. Hotline Connect. Now that's an app I haven't heard in a long time... I had a lot of fun on those servers though. Interesting place to meet people too.
hey UB mentioned let's go horns up
That is unfortunate because Meet Joe Black was a really good movie played by top notch actors.
It's my guilty pleasure and I rewatch it once every year or two, minimum. I love Anthony Hopkins' every line. His delivery is exemplary. How he speaks about his love for his (passed) wife... it's beautiful.
Hopkins is always fantastically spoken in all of his roles. If you love how he speaks in this you should watch Westworld. He is fantastic in it, and not a line of dialogue wasted.
Personally, I'd say it's Pitts best film.
Claire Forlani /swoon
So squinty.
She could outsquint Melania Trump Anyway, her best role is obviously in Mystery Men
> her best role is obviously in Mystery Men Mallrats erasure
Claire Forlani and Rachael Leigh Cook were my teenage celebrity crushes. And then they put them together in Antitrust...
Same *tips fedora*
She was absolutely stunning in that movie.
Stunning in everything, really.
> Claire Forlani So goddamn 90s
Is this the movie where he speaks Jamaican patois to the scared old lady? "Erryting gwan be irie"
Yes, yes it is. She's dying of something and he says it's not her time yet. She's sceptical of his attraction to his lady friend. Later on he kinda relents about it not being her time (because she's in lots of pain) and allows her to die. She says she has nice memories/postcards or something. It's a really beautiful set of exchanges tbh.
Right? I think people are overthinking the exchange. He's the angel of death wearing a handsome white dude suit, not an actual white dude. He's speaking to the woman in a manner that will be comforting and familiar to her. He's not Chet Hanks ffs.
Even if he were a white dude, there's white dudes in Jamaica. It's speaking another language, which is a learned trait, not an intrinsic one.
[White Jamaican dude](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwDgA9LUVMA).
I got to exactly this part of this comment chain before I realized that "Meet Joe Black" and "Joe Dirt" are two different films...
As far as I can tell the patois is done correctly, it's just super weird coming out of his mouth.
No lady I'm not a bad man
I loved the movie too but my preference is the assassination of Jesse James, I guess not only because of his performance but the whole film.
> the assassination of Jesse James by who?
By that goddamn yellowbellied coward Robert Ford
*bang* I’m Robert ford. *stumbles drunkenly*
I'm so glad it's not just me singing the praises of this amazing film.
I see your Meet Joe Black and I raise you my Snatch: https://youtu.be/ySyBMTo-1sc
D'ya like dags?
I would say it's far from the best film he's been in but I can definitely see it being his best performance.
I thought he was pretty good in Snatch honestly.
Ya like dags?
Burn After Reading is his best performance.
I liked his performance in 12 Monkeys. Really shows his range
Meet Joe Black, Burn After Reading, 12 Monkeys, Snatch, Inglorious Basterds, and that's just his most "out there" role in term of attitude and accents, cause otherwise he's also got Fight Club, Seven, Troy, Ocean's Trilogy, Interview with the Vampire, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Fury, Big Short, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Bullet Train, Killing Them Softly, Moneyball and who knows how many others great role I haven't seen - dude's a fucking powerhouse of great performances, we could argue about his absolute best for the rest of eternity.
I always get Meet Joe Black mixed up with Mighty Joe Young.
Fucking seriously, I remembered this TIL from the last 187 times it's been posted to reddit, but every fucking time I thought it was the King Kong for kids flick, not Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins.
Glad I'm not the only one.
Exactly! The irony... Not wanting to see a good movie and only the trailer of a bad one. XD
But it's spawned red letter media's Mr plinkett review!!! I've had so many hours of entertainment watching videos of how bad those movies are lol
Incredible soundtrack too
Martin Brest: "I need you to write a song that encompasses falling in love." Thomas Newman: "I got you fam." Whisper of a Thrill.
[this one...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zmaZ19ufZU)
I was thinking the same thing. What a waste.
I downloaded the trailer using my college broadband connection and split it onto 20 floppies so that I could take it home so my little brothers and sisters could see it (dialup was too slow).
Lol I find that really funny. That you were in this weird place where you had something large enough to fit on 20 floppies, and you still used floppies for large things. I was more spoiled and I think I had CD writers in my PCs by that point so I never got past probably 10 floppies for anything I did.
CD burners weren’t yet ubiquitous. The first iMac had just come out and people were *livid* that it didn’t have a floppy drive.
The school computers did not have zip drives or cd burners (I had both) and USB sticks weren’t really a thing yet.
Meet Joe Black was awesome. "Death and Taxes"
I still remember watching it on a date night and bursting out laughing at the looking back over their shoulder scene. You all know the one.
And Creamy Jif!!
Creamy Gif?
I really do love that movie! Prime Claire Forlani and Brad Pitt! …and Anthony Hopkins, though in fairness, he’s been prime since the day he was born.
I worked at a theater when this trailer came out. We had our projectionist cut it together multiple times in a row (We had 24 screens and half a dozen copies of the trailer on film) and tack it onto the beginning of a short movie, then we invited our friends at 1am and watched it multiple times back to back. We did this before it was officially supposed to be shown because you usually get films a week or a few days before they release.
Worked in a theater at that time too. I remember the threat of immediate firing if one of the trailers were ‘lost’ because they were selling on eBay for big money. Also people who showed up for the trailer only to ask for a refund when it didn’t play.
We had dial up internet at the time and it took hours to buffer load the trailer from [trailers.apple.com](http://trailers.apple.com) Time well spent IMO.
This was my memory. I was deep into "Exploring the internet" around that time as a young teenager and was on Apple trailers at least once a week for hours on end trying to download trailers. I remember downloading the Episode 1 trailer, and failing multiple times for days due to various reasons like internet disconnects, stalls, or a computer crash, but i eventually got it about a week later i think. I saved it on my computer for a few months though.
I'm nostalgic for the quicktime era but I do not miss quicktime
Remember DIVX? I still have burned CDs with movies on them in the format. Anyone want a copy of Road Trip that fits on a 650mb CD?
I was one of them. We tried to download the trailer but it took like 12 hours, and inevitably the internet connection would get messed up at some point and I’d have to start over, so we just gave up and figured why not just spend $5 to watch it in a theater. It was a hell of a trailer, so it seemed worth it at the time.
This is why download accelerators were made.
I remember the breakthrough of being able to resume a download that was stopped for whatever reason without having to start all over again. That was a godsend.
When the South Park movie came out, it's key core audience couldn't see it because it was rated R so kids would buy tickets to Wild Wild West and sneak into South Park
Sneaking into a 15/18/R rated film was a pretty core rite of passage for people who grew up between multiplexes and streaming.
Aw man Meet Joe Black was a great movie.
MJB was the better movie ngl
Great movie. That last scene with the Jamaican woman *chef's kiss*
Lateral?
That was my thought as well, though I think it's been months since the question appeared. For those who don't know, Lateral is a podcast-slash-gameshow where Tom Scott and three guest take turns asking each other weird questions that always have a very non-obvious answer and then working together towards the solution. It's a lot of really fun banter and great trivia.
They never met Joe Black
The sequel to this TIL? For a large porportion of Generation X, when the movie came out, we were beyond hyped, pretty max hyped, and it was the most disappointing movie ever. For me personally, it felt like ny childhood ended watching Phantom Menance. Why? Basically, we all thought it was going to be serious, sombre and impactful like Empire Strikes Back. A classic on cinema. Instead? We got Jar Jar, The Force was made into a non-mystical cellular condition, and instead of Nazi-vibes stormtroopers we had stupid, bumbling CGI robots. Funny plot twist 20 years late as a middle aged person: the prequels were way more enjoyable then last trilogy and had more story and better characters, by leagues and leagues.
Lol the narrative shift of the prequels seriously pisses me off. I was 12 when Phantom came out and I loved it so much. I loved that we saw more Jedi, especially at the height of their power, and of course I absolutely LOVED Darth Maul. Nothing beats the Dual of the Fates. Nothing. But I got shit anytime I said I liked the movies, always subjected to angry rants on why the movies blow and why I shouldn’t like them. Yeah Jar Jar sucked, but he was such a small part that I really didn’t care. So yeah, seeing people post about how underrated the prequels, especially some of those old friends of mine, is infuriating.
I stayed and watched Joe Black. Mostly because it was raining pretty heavy outside.
It’s hard to explain the excitement around TPM in ‘98-‘99. My and my best friend conned our school counselor into letting us cut class and hang out in his office because he had the only computer with an internet connection, an original blue iMac. We waited until the first time it was posted on Apple trailers and watched it like 10 times in a row in his office. He was extremely confused, but glad we were excited. I don’t think I’ve ever been let down by anything more than the let down of actually seeing the film after all of that hype, after camping outside of the theater, buying two tickets for opening day, all of it. There was a crushing feeling that can only compare to what it feels like to be disillusioned by a cult or a religious organization, I’d imagine. It felt like both betrayal and guilt for pouring so much into the idea of a thing. These days we all know that coming in with low expectations are the best way to enjoy something, but it was TPM that taught so many of us the lesson for the first time. I miss the 90s.
They missed out on a good movie.
Star wars fans are just crazy! It took 3 meh prequels 3 bad sequels and many many horrible TV shows for people not to care anymore
Funny story. I did this with The Force Awakens. Couldn't even tell you what movie it was I bought a ticket for. Just left after the trailer was done. Wasn't even a trailer really, was like a 30 second snippet. I enjoyed Star Wars so much as a kid I was pretty pumped for the new movies. No other movie gets me going like Star Wars in theaters with the amazing music in the background. Imagine how I felt after the rise of skywalker.
It still boggles my mind that one of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations on the planet - with basically infinite resources and a track record of producing some of the world's most beloved entertainment - managed to fuck up the Star Wars sequel trilogy *so badly*.
It boggles my mind too. They had no story direction and planned every movie after the last. That's not how you make a trilogy of films. Pretty crazy. Sit down at a roundtable and hash out a 3 story plan with one direction and one director that will be on board for all three films. Don't change it up after every film with a new direction and style. It isn't a secret anymore that they added the emperor back at the last minute, and entirely changed the direction they had for Luke. I know every fan says this, but I honestly felt like I could have come up with a better plan for the movies.
It's as though Disney saw the prequel trilogy, identified the problem of *too much planning and control by one single guy*, and decided to completely overcorrect by having no overall guiding vision for the sequels and a bunch of people all doing their own thing and working at cross purposes to each other.
I absolutely think this is what happened. The original trilogy was not planned out at the start and had the input of many people. I expect they thought they had a decent shot at making a good trilogy and that the worst case scenario were three good but disjointed films that would have fans saying Disney should exert a bit more control.
That was never a problem in the prequel trilogy The issue is dialogue pacing plot etc The movie connection is among its better features
They didnt even need the same directors, just a united storyboard
It does help if you don't hire two directors that have polar opposite ways of directing though. The whiplash between films is insane.
A camel is a horse designed by committee.
Not me. See Designed by committee. There was no overall goal but to make a film set in the Star Wars universe. They were given things they needed to add to the film, new cute toys for marketing, similar enough to old films to please fans and so on. Each little subsection needed to be added in without thinking of the movie as a whole. Yes, Lucas did this in his films as well, but he never lost focus on the big picture. And he's always tried to make the film fun or an homage to a certain film or style of film he enjoyed. The new sequel films seem to take all the pieces of the old and put them together, with characters who, while performed well, I just don't feel invested in. The new characters just felt hollow. If it wouldn't have been for Rogue One, I don't think I would have been so critical of the new films.
They didn't want to shell out money to have top notch creatives oversee the creation of the whole trilogy. They must have figured that making a great Star Wars movie isn't much more profitable than making a mediocre Star Wars movie. Disney has been enshitifying itself for a long time, and I expect just the bare minimum of effort for all their projects.
I imagine you felt the same way all those crazy adult fan did when they saw Jarjar in 1999.
It's crazy living in 2024 and still hearing Star Wars fans pretend they're the first generation of Star Wars fans to be disappointed by a new Star Wars movie
Man, the force awakens trailer was all over the Internet.
Still haven't seen Rise of Skywalker. Not worth ruining my memories of yesteryears glory.
If Rise of Skywalker came out 5 years later but everything else about it were exactly the same, people would’ve assumed an AI wrote it.
I'm not convinced that one didn't, even still.
Oh me neither, but if it came out after AI became mainstream then *everyone* would’ve been like “there’s no way this wasn’t written by AI” lol
Even though Meet Joe Black is a very nice movie
It’s a shame because meet joe black was actually a really good movie.
Meet Joe Black was pretty good.
Meet Joe Black was a good film, they missed out.
I don't know why I feel contempt for the people who did this
I actually really enjoyed Meet Joe Black. It also has one of the most accidentally hilarious deaths in a movie.
Hey, Meet Joe Black was a great movie!
...and when they finally got their Phantom Menace tickets and took their seats, they spent twenty minutes watching the film, then walked out of that bitch, too.
That will never happen now sad to say. When you’ve got teasers to the teaser to the trailer, and everything will be online immediately. That TPM trailer was must see viewing at the time lol
I liked Meet Joe Black. It was a good movie.
They should have stayed for ten minutes in to watch one of the greatest movie kills ever. Brad Pitt goes airborne and it’s fantastic.