Best John Carpenter Movie?

[Deimos 100]

My personal favorite director. Any given day a large chunk of these movies can be my favorite. He's legendary whether you're a horror fan or not.

[Vic Boss 612]

I've only seen Escape From New York and Big Trouble In Little China. I took Big Trouble because that movie's just a perfect dumb-fun movie... but I've also only seen Escape once and if I watched it again I feel like that one could overtake it.

[Deimos 100]

You should watch They Live for Roddy Piper if nothing else.

[webhead 519]

It's a toss up between Escape From New York and The Thing.  I leaned towards the Thing but honestly, I fucking love Escape From New York so much.  I saw it long after the fact and still fucking loved it for what it is.

 

CALL ME SNAAKE

[Vic Boss 612]

Just now, Deimos said:

You should watch They Live for Roddy Piper if nothing else.

 

Ye, I've always meant to, and always meant to see more JC movies in general.

[webhead 519]

Me too.  I'm gonna be using these topics to make watch lists.

[Nairn Smoith 73]

I haven't seen any of these.

[Deimos 100]

Just now, Nairn Smoith said:

I haven't seen any of these.

 

You're an extreme disappointment.

 

Your favorite would probably be Big Trouble though.

[webhead 519]

You haven't seen The Thing?

[Galeigh 308]

I went with Big Trouble in Little China. I think it honestly holds up better than ANY of his other movies. The whole thing is a dissection of hollywood storytelling where the classic "Male hero lead" is actually and incompetent loud mouth who had no business even being involved. Depending on your perspective you could watch 2 or 3 different movies in this one film. 

[Deimos 100]

The thing about his movies are they ALL hold up. It's fucking weird how they do that. 

 

I think They Live is more relevant today than ever before. 

 

Halloween is still going strong 40 years later. 

 

The Fog is extremely underrated because if the rest of his movies, but it's beautiful.

 

The Thing will always be a top tier horror movie. It's basically the horror Jurassic Park when it comes to special effects. 

 

Prince of Darkness also doesn't get enough love. 

 

The music in all these movies is fantastic too.

[Galeigh 308]

Never said they didn't. The critique of Hollywood formula in Big Trouble is, sadly, still very true today though. So not only does it hold up as film, but it's underlying message still hits home despite being decades old. 

[Deimos 100]

I never said you said they didn't!

[Galeigh 308]

[webhead 519]

Side note:  John Carpenter really likes Kurt Russel.

 

I have to say, I don't see anything wrong with that.

[Deimos 100]

1 hour ago, webhead said:

Side note:  John Carpenter really likes Kurt Russel.

 

I have to say, I don't see anything wrong with that.

 

Yup. It's the same as like Burton-Depp and any group of friends that love working together.

[Hornet 114]

Adore They Live and The Thing. Those are my go-to "Cool Uncle" movies that I showed to my brothers growing up; and that I frequently throw on for older service users.

I Didn't know Christine was him, though! One of the few movies based on Stephen King properties I've seen.

 

I've read, incidentally, only 1 Stephen King story, and that was 1408, which I really liked. No idea why I haven't read more (any?) Stephen King and intend to rectify this.

 

I remember watching Escape from New York as a kid and remember liking it a lot, but I feel like I'd appreciate it a lot more as an adult. Need to rewatch.

 

(They Live weirdly absent from the poll, so I went with The Thing)

[webhead 519]

3 hours ago, Hornet said:

I've read, incidentally, only 1 Stephen King story, and that was 1408, which I really liked. No idea why I haven't read more (any?) Stephen King and intend to rectify this. ?

 

You really should.  I've always been a fan.  The book version of IT though is...well...really fucking weird.  Still...lot of good stuff.

3 hours ago, Hornet said:

I remember watching Escape from New York as a kid and remember liking it a lot, but I feel like I'd appreciate it a lot more as an adult. Need to rewatch.

 

Definitely.  I've got them both on Blu-ray now.  Been a while since I watched though.  We should try and simulwatch.

[Deimos 100]

3 hours ago, Hornet said:

They Live weirdly absent from the poll, so I went with The Thing)

 

Huh. Total oversight. I obviously know it's Carpenter. I probably thought I put it in and didn't notice.

[Hornet 114]

I just put on these weird shades, and now it's there... wtf?

[Deimos 100]

Wat

[Hornet 114]

(that was a "They Live" joke)

[Deimos 100]

I thought it was a general glasses joke lol

[Hoob 10]

I was secretly hoping to see a troll vote for Ghosts of Mars

[webhead 519]

Never even heard of that movie.  It has REALLY bad ratings holy shit.

[Hoob 10]

I'll be honest, even though I had it on dvd I never finished watching it, for some reason it just couldn't hold my attention 

[Deimos 100]

Ghosts of Mars is a sad story...

 

It was originally planned to be Escape from Mars and the 3rd Snake movie. However, Carpenter couldn't get the budget he wanted for it so he scrapped that idea and it became Ghosts of Mars. 

 

Desolation Williams was Snake in the original concepts.

[webhead 519]

A 3rd escape from movie honestly wouldn't have been good.  Even the second is like a straight up copy of the first.

[Deimos 100]

Says the guy that loves all the Spider-Man movies. 

[webhead 519]

I definitely don't LOVE...ALL of them.

 

Spider-Man 3 and ASM2 are dumpster fires.

[Galeigh 308]

ASM1 was a dumpster fire too.

[webhead 519]

ASM1 was fine.  It wasn't great but it wasn't bad like ASM2 or Spider-Man 3.

[Galeigh 308]

tell me the plot off the top of your head without google. I bet it sums up into "something about the lizard"

[webhead 519]

The lizard is a scientist living in the sewers whose reptile brain wants to turn everyone else into reptiles.  Spider-Man finds him and destroys his dispersal mechanism.  Dennis fuckin Leary is Captain Stacey (he dies telling Pete not to date Gwen because he doesn't want her to get hurt...he does anyway in the next movie and uh... should have listened to dad).  Gwen Stacey (Emma Watson) appears as the love interest (closer to the comics) and has amazing on screen chemistry with Peter.  Andrew Garfield is kind of a cocky Peter.  Not my favorite but they definitely play up the genius part a lot more and show him making his own webshooters (love that).  He's funnier in a cheeky way than Toby.  Eventually that'll come off kinda douchey but in this movie I thought it was fun.

 

They also very interestingly tied in some background with his parents which we've not really seen in the movies or cartoons before.  Uncle Ben dies a little quick which is fine because we've already done this (Homecoming just skips that to save everyone time lol).  The rest of the movie is just the origins of Spider-Man man with a sort of twist more towards Ultimate Spider-Man.  I can keep going on if you like.  I've seen the movie several times.

 

I'm not sure why you're asking a guy named webhead to recount the plot of a Spider-Man movie to you like you think I've only seen it once.

 

Rating is green (66) on metacritic with a 7 audience score which I would say pretty accurately reflects that I said it was "fine" and not great or bad.  I'd place it probably 4th in the line of Spidey movies.

 

Yeah thanks for asking I will rank them:

1. Spider-Man 2

2. Homecoming

3. Spider-Man

4. Amazing Spider-Man

 

Yikes:

5. Spider-Man 3

6. Amazing Spider-Man 2

 

Worst of the good ones?  Sure.  Bad movie?  No.  It's middle of the road.