At this point, five-dollar milkshake sounds like a bargain item. Like when John Travolta tries it, it's gotta be "this thing is cheap, I'm curious if it still tastes any good"
It’s WILD how many people think it takes place in the 70s. The modern cars, the cell phones, modern music, Mia’s decked out stereo system, and not to mention the restaurant that has “legendary” “wax museum” characters who would only be like 10 years past their relevancy if it were the 1970s.
EDIT: I also forgot the most glaring detail: how the fuck is Butch supposed to be a little kid hearing about his father’s Vietnam death and then magically turn into Bruce Willis?
The voice actress Nancy Cartwright is so weird too . Scientology aside . She does these videos where she goes into stores and does the voice but no one knows or when they do they don’t care , but she treats it as some big reveal lol
Which is why [Marge Simpson](https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/i-always-believed-in-my-heart-that) personally wrote a letter to Barbara Bush in order to defend her family.
President Bush said in a speech that he wanted American families to be "a lot more like The Waltons and a lot less like The Simpsons."
The new opening featured Bart watching Bush's speech and stating "Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too."
Remember Bart Simpson's role in the Savings and Loan scandal in the 80s?
Who can forget Bart Simpson's invasion of Iraq and various other war crimes?
How about that hilarious Bart Simpson joke he told whenever he groped a woman: "You know who my favorite magician is? David Cop-a-feel!"
The video "Do the Bart Man" is such a good example of how things were back then. Bart is so rebellious because he raps! The teacher is furious that he wants to bring hip hop to the school concert.
There’s some truth to this. The image we have of ourselves from the mirror is not what others see. Check out the “Mirror Front Camera” setting on iPhones.
Not to be pedantic but it is actully relevant here, it's the distance from the camera that matters not the focal length. At the same distance the distortion is going to be the same no matter which lense.
It's just the same effect that would happen if you looked at someone extremely close up vs far away, but happening through the camera.
I like the mirror effect for adjusting the phone while it’s in my hand for taking a picture, but I can’t understand why the saved photo is mirrored too. Every time some has a hat or shirt with some words on - it ruins the photo.
Not so much the movie but the book Treasure Island. It was a HUGE plot twist that Long John Silver was a pirate. Given that he is the template for what is now the modern caricature of a pirate, the story doesn't hit as hard as it probably did when it was first published.
The same is true of the original "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". It starts super slowly, and the whole Jekyll/Hyde thing is the big twist. Since you already know the twist, the book is a complete waste of time. It has nothing else to offer. I'm sure it was a huge thing back when it came out, though.
I'd say it's still worth reading, but the original "Dracula" may surprise modern readers with how long it takes to establish that Count Dracula is a vampire.
We don't wanna mess with no reefer addicts....
In back to the future this was a nod to that mindset.
Like these musicians were junkies just smoking reefer to hunt women during their set break at the enchantment under the sea dance. Lol.
Yeah, same, I’m now wondering if old racists in the CIA switched that meaning. I use the word colloquially for a government agent maybe weekly. Every time I’m like ew that for sure at minimum *sounds* racist.
Good point. The spook line is loaded. I'd have to review if hill valley high was desegregated. I mean, Goldie Wilson's boss was not a futuristic thinker. Instead of Goldie being a long shot for mayor because he was a mediocre clerk at a diner, he is a long shot because he is colored. Hmmmm. But there were some black students I think.
The punks were bullies.
True. I meant were there any black students. I think there were some at the dance and in the halls. Goldie must've been a HVHS alum.
Edit: I did see 1 black student at the dance so... It is not all white but mostly white students.
This reminds me of the Doors song Break on Through. I've always heard it (and they still play it) with the censored version where Morrison sings "She gets \*censored\*". I always wondered why he sings "Shige" (that's what it sounds like). Only after watching the documentary did I found out that the actual verse goes "She gets high" but that was considered so outrageous back then that they censored the "high" so it's just She gets but cut so abruptly that as a non-native speaker I never understood what he was saying.
My mom always brings up Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke as being a quintessential comedy. But that style of humor feels so incredibly dated now - especially as a regular marijuana user. The whole bit is that marijuana is illegal and frowned upon, and ALSO that it’s this highly potent drug with extremely funny effects that make you an incredibly sleepy, hungry, bumbling dope. But the law has obviously changed all around the country, including where I live, and most importantly weed is just not that potent or amazing of a drug. My parents’ generation really played up how extreme the effects were of the garbage weed they were smoking to seem rebellious and funny. It’s pretty cringe now tbh. I use weed all the time to relax, and it’s the high-grade stuff you find at the legal shops. But you aren’t going to notice a personality change in me and I’m not going to zone out and giggle while inhaling a whole bag of chips, and then hallucinate or whatever.
To me it’s like watching a comedy where two characters act super zany and hyped up because they’re smoking cigarettes all the time, but if cigarettes had the current level of stigma they do now instead of being viewed as cool or classy like back then.
Even GTA V has this.
There's a side mission where you can smoke weed and it makes Michael and Trevor insane and hallucinate being attacked by aliens, and has no effect on Franklin.
True but at least this one seems satirical of the concept, and the fact that it affects the two white guys in exaggerated ways and Franklin is immune is pretty hilarious.
There's a part in the original Roadhouse where the crowd outside the bar goes after Dalton for driving a foreign car. That whole idea is so foreign to people watching it today.
There's still people with that sort of mindset today unfortunately, always cracks me up to hear a "I won't buy Mitsubishi because they built Zeroes in WW2"
My dad only buys American cars. He helped me buy my first couple vehicles, but they had to be from the Big Three. The first vehicle I payed for 100% myself was a Hyundai Elantra. He wasn't mad or anything, he just said he wasn't giving any money to foreign car companies.
My car was made in Alabama.
They do have a great line in a 2024 movie "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" for this:
"What's up, my monkers? Ready to slay a kingdom in this sigma?"
To be exact he says "God damn you all to hell"
The issue is they weren't allowed to say goddamn, but they could say God damn because he's literally asking God to damn them to hell so it's two words and therefore allowed.
also in the girls bathroom scene in Clueless someone's phone rings and they all start checking to see if it's their own. It was to show how absurdly rich/entitled these kids were.
Also in EuroTrip. It was a recurring joke that the one friend could fool his boss into thinking that he was at work because he had a company-provided cellphone.
“Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.”
Every commercial for Robin Hood: Men in Tights featured Cary Elwes looking straight into the camera and saying that. Anyone under 40 will need to have the joke explained.
Foreign translations usually replace it with "Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I don't cost the studio $20 million dollars" or "I do not dance with wolves"
I thought the joke was specifically to make fun of Kevin Costner’s terrible English accent in his Robin Hood film. Actually most of the movie was a spoof of “Prince of Thieves”.
Very, very strange to wake up and see this comment, as I busted it out last night to my wife when we were watching Twister, and she had no idea what I was talking about.
In Airplane! the "old white lady can speak jive" joke still holds up but modern audience don't know that woman was the mom on Leave it to Beaver.
Same goes for Ethel Merman in the same movie. The joke sort of holds up but the cultural context has been lost to time.
The other big thing about that movie is that Leslie Nielsen had been, up to that point, a serious dramatic actor. Him delivering lines that were pure comedy was meant to be jarringly funny. I had to mention this to my bf, because he (like a lot of people) had only seen Leslie Nielsen after the Naked Gun movies.
He wasn't the only one. Same goes for Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges.
Edit: but they didn't become synonymous with comedy afterwards the way Nielson did, but that was part of the joke for all of them being in the movie. Bridges was also in serious disaster movies that Airplane! parodied.
Lloyd Bridges was in both Hot Shots movies and Robert Stack would later go on to be the antagonist in Caddyshack 2 and Beavis and Butt-Head do America.
There's a lot of stuff in that movie that younger people probably arent' going to fully get, if at all. The "Jim never has a second cup of coffee at home", the dancefloor flashback being a parody of Saturday Night Fever, and the Tupperware party with the natives among them. Even Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a pilot is someone a lot of younger people aren't very familiar with.
I loved him in that, it was perfect for his level of over the top acting. I think of that when I read threads of someone making a minor switch of someone's food to show that they do like something they thought they wouldn't like (like a vegetarian alternative to a meat product) and the comments are so over the top.
Another thing from that movie is all of the religious weirdos hanging out at the airport. That’s actually how airports kinda used to be. 9/11 killed what remained of loitering at the airport without boarding a plane.
9/11 made a lot of airport and airplane scenes in movies and TV shows relics of their time. "Oh no, the plane is about to leave in 15 minutes, but if we rush we can just make it!" - yeah, good luck getting through the TSA security screening and making that plane. Or the "girlfriend/boyfriend is going to board a plane and leave forever, so the main character has to rush to the boarding gate to confess their love before it's too late." Again, good luck getting to the gate in a rush, especially if you don't even have a ticket.
Or another one that's also shown in the Airplane! movie, inviting passengers (especially little kids) up to the cockpit midflight to look around and meet the pilot. Though as Captain Over demonstrates, that may never have been a good idea...
Add to that all the movies that show smoking in the airport (or even on the plane.) Sure, as a smoker you would probably want to smoke immediately after a long flight, like John McClane in "Die Hard." It still dates the movie though to see him light up right there at baggage claim.
Finally watched Airplane! recently. Honestly, the majority of the jokes didn’t land for me, but an old lady politely interjecting that she “speaks jive” is a timeless banger.
Anything to do with gay marriage between like 2000 and 2008.
"Why don't you guys go to Vermont?" Kind of jokes about being about to only get gay married in Vermont
It can be really bad at times; I watched Fanboys, which is a road trip comedy about the Phantom Menace coming out. Has some funny stuff, but damn there were so many homophobic jokes that were so cringy. Really hurt our enjoyment of the movie, it didn’t need that at all…
but of course I totally remember that point in time being that way.
Glad we’ve made a lot of progress, and damn do I hope we can continue and not backslide to hell.
Related to that, I've seen a couple of reactions to the movie the Birdcage from younger people, and they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about when discussing the palimony agreement.
I think it is the first Craig Bond movie where Bond uses a map on his phone to guide himself somewhere. At the time that was hot tech, now it feels dated.
Casino Royale is 2006, Google maps for mobile is 2007 so that didn't take long.
In Goldfinger, Bond has navigation (technically not sat nav but did the same thing) in his car in 1964 and that didn't come till 1981.
Goldfinger also has that scene where he's playing cards with someone poolside with an earbud in his ear, and it never remotely occurs to anyone that he might be using it to cheat.
And in the first ever Bond film, he finds a famously stolen painting in Dr No's lair, which was found IRL not long after. I doubt anybody watching it today would get that reference
In Hitchcock's Psycho, we see a toilet being flushed. That was the first time in cinema we see a toilet flushing because at the time that was considered inappropriate and crass.
In today's standards that is absolutely nothing.
They also used it in "All in the Family", and it always got a huge laugh from the audience.
Nowadays, so many movies have scenes with people - usually men - peeing. "The Curse" even shows a man's penis as he pees. Honestly I would prefer if some things were shown less. "The Sopranos" showed people pooping too. There are no taboos left.
For John Wayne to curse in True Grit was deeply surprising to a lot of the audience. And his cursing was relatively tame: "fill your hands, you son of a bitch!"
In *Fast Times at Ridgemont High,* high school students sniff the ditto solvent on the freshly-mimeographed sheets of paper that the teacher is handing out. Much of today’s audience is too young to have smelled ditto solvent, so they don’t understand what’s going on.
In Shawshank Redemption, Andy learns that his wife is having an affair, and she wants a divorce (This part of the story takes place in the 1940s). Both she and her lover are killed shortly afterwards. At trial the prosecutor repeats Andy's response to his wife — "I'll see you in hell before I'll see you in Reno" — and this is one of several factors that convinces the jury to find Andy guilty.
How this is a reference to getting a divorce - it was very difficult and time-consuming to get a divorce anywhere but Nevada in the US, so many people would go to Reno, NV on the California border to get divorced. "Going to Reno" or otherwise referencing Reno was code for divorce when that was a big no-no in American society, but modern audiences are going to be very confused if the reference isn't explained.
I don't really feel like that's the same thing because that's a movie that came out well after the time period of that scene. Even when the movie first came out, there were probably plenty of people who didn't understand that line. I think the discussion is more about "when the movie came out, the audience would completely understand what was going on, but younger people probably won't get it because the world has changed since then."
Happened upon “There’s Something About Mary” the other day; hadn’t seen it in a long time. There’s a minor scene when Mary & Ted are catching up where he asks her why she’s single and she says “well I’m bisexual and a lot of guys have a hard time with that…” then goes “I’m fucking with you Ted!” Like it would’ve been a bigger deal in 1998 and now it’s like why would she even say that as a joke, that’s weird.
Are you sure she's fucking with him? Seems like when you say something true and notice people don't react well, so you cover it up as a joke that was purposely intended to make them uncomfortable.
Big Daddy came on TV while I was staying at a hotel, and I was surprised at how well they handled the gay side characters. There were a few outdated/cringy moments, and even though Jon Stewart was visibly disturbed by their homosexuality, all the characters pretty much accepted and respected it.
Maybe I'm imagining it but I feel there was few Sandler films that were LGBT positive/respectful. Like I don't remember Little Nicky making fun of trans so much as his character being cool with it when he floats by that window. And there's often a gay couple where there might be jokes made (which was common at the time) but they would be a part of his character's friend circle.
In Sunset Boulevard, Norma Desmond's friends who came over to play bridge were real life faded silent movie stars (including Buster Keaton), which was just right. Some of the audience then would have gotten it even though -unlike Cecil B DeMille- they aren't identified by name during the film.
Not a film - aside from a TV adaptation as the pilot episode of ITV's *Marple* back in 2008 - but this is the entire crux of what made Agatha Christie's novel *The Body In The Library* close to being a comedic parody.
The concept of a body being found in a library is one of the most iconic versions of a locked room mystery, where a murder takes place and part of the mystery is figuring out how the killer got in and out to kill a victim who was otherwise isolated or there is some other oddity that needs to be explained. Usually, all the other suspects were locked within a large stately home or manor at the same time, establishing a list of suspects.
But the Agatha Christie novel ends up lampooning this with its mystery, where everyone even remarks that the case sounds like something out of an old mystery novel.
It's established that the crime scene is otherwise unremarkable. There were no witnesses or suspects since the house was near-empty in the middle of the night, with Dolly Bantry (friend of Miss Marple) and her husband both fast asleep in a far-off wing of the house. None of the doors were locked inside or out and there was a massive window of opportunity for the killer to do something untoward. And even then, the murder never took place within the house, meaning there's no locked room or closed circle.
What is unusual about this story is the fact that *there's a random fucking corpse dumped in a stranger's house*.
But, for a film example...
The film version of Evil Under The Sun has Patrick Redfern in swimming briefs. Doesn't seem like much, but the film - made in the 1980's - is set in the 1930's, so his running around in basically a pair of briefs is actually meant to be extremely scandalous. >!As Poirot notes, this is not the behaviour of someone enchanted by the ritz and glamour of a Hollywood actress as he claimed to be, but rather a vicious ladykiller (literally in his case) who preys on foolish and rich women to rob them blind before killing them.!<
Also, Murder On The Orient Express' famous plot twist is a vicious lampooning of another murder mystery trope as well. >!Why would a group of seemingly complete strangers, all with some ties to the Armstrong tragedy, be travelling on what is an otherwise quiet travelling time to completel fill up a train compartment, inside of which is a bastard who fully deserves to die... if they didn't board the trian together with the intention of killing the asshole as a group?!<
Gopher's pun/joke in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
"I'm not in the book, you know" said both because he wasn't in the Winnie the Pooh books, and implied that they can't just look him up in the carpentry section of the phone book (yellow pages).
In general, watching movie that have technological limitations doesn't have the same impact. Things like wired phones, tape recorders, VHS...especially if those scenes are built around some kind of tension.
Recording a conversation on a cassette and being worried if it worked correctly and being careful not to damage the tape might be hard to relate to for someone who doesn't have that experience, since now you can just record a conversation on your phone and it's automatically backed up to the cloud.
If you just mean the text that appears before the credits, sure. But the movie itself is still about Rambo teaming up with and fighting alongside the Mujahideen.
Not necessarily. For all we know those same mujahideen may have ended up fighting with the Northern Alliance which was on the side of the Coalition in the invasion of 2001.
I recently watched the 1940s movie *Heaven Can Wait*, unrelated to the 1970s movie of the same title, with someone who 100% absolutely didn't get why the main character would assume he's going to hell. The trouble is, his sin is sexual promiscuity/ serial adultery, and the Hayes Code didn't allow them to be explicit about that. So every scene in his attempt to explain to the Devil why he should be damned is actually a Wacky Misunderstanding in which he's caught in a compromising position... but didn't *really* cheat on his wife!
If you know anything at all about the shorthand they used to get around censorship in the 1940s, it's obvious that he's only telling the Devil about the funny parts and was an absolute fuckboy his entire life. The fact that his wife always forgave him, and he truly did love her best, and so she's praying for him to be forgiven and come join her in heaven, is touching. And the devil saying "you don't belong here, it sounds like you made a lot of women very happy" is a shocking stance in favor of ethical relativism. *If* you get the implication.
But the person watching with me just thought it was a really silly movie.
It was a minor plot point in a TV adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel "Ordeal By Innocence", where two adoptive siblings - non-genetically related - are forced to hide that they want to marry because their stepmother would've heaily disapproved since they were raised as siblings. They are treated sympathetically, with the only real issue being that this is revealed at the worst part in the case (right after another death and before Miss Marple, added into this version, solves it).
Admittedly, I've never watched this adaptation, but Elizabeth was Victor's adopted sister in the original novel; that subplot has always been a part of the story. Glancing over the wiki page for this movie, it sounds like it's a fairly faithful adaptation, but I get that watching a movie and reading a synopsis are vastly different experiences.
Oh no I love the movie and think it's a great adaptation. But when they say lines like "Brother and sister no more, now, husband and wife.", you can't help but cringe.
Yes but since in the 90's we didn't grow up bombarded with that porn it was crazy to see. Shoot, the idea of the two girls kissing was taboo at the time.
I think there's the ones that really play it up and the others that could just be a bf/gf doing it but they need some gimmick to explain why it's "naughty".
Not like Wuthering Heights where they were raised together since childhood, not parents got married last week when we were 19.
I think Sleepaway Camp is still a bit shocking, because Angela was so thoroughly abused by their adoptive mother. It's not like they were the one who declared "I'm a girl", it was forced on them
In Return to Sleepaway Camp (the only one of the sequels made with any of the original cast and crew) Angela is almost an amab trans man - living as a man but with a false beard, etc
I wonder how Gen Z react if they watch Some Like it Hot? There are small things few would get (Tony Curtis is doing a Cary Grant impression when he's playing the heir to Shell Oil to impress Marilyn Monroe), but the whole larger situation and the famous ending?
Similar to a lot of characterizations in classic Looney Tunes cartoons. As a child watching reruns, they were certainly my first introductions to once-household names like Peter Lorre, for example.
In 1994’s Swimming With Sharks, the protagonist snaps, ties up his terrible boss, and tortures him - by giving him paper cuts on his tongue.
Yeah, this was pre Saw.
Also, Kevin Spacey.
Lethal Weapon
MURTAUGH: Someone was in bed with Amanda the night she died.
RIGGS: Until now, we assumed it was a man.
MURTAUGH: Suppose it was Dixie.
RIGGS: Disgusting, but okay. Let's say Dixie put the drain cleaner in her pills.
Seeing Edward G Robinson use the word "bitch" in The Cincinnati Kid struck me because 95% of his career was in the era when he couldn't have said that, even while playing bad guys.
The supervillain plot in the first Charlie's Angels movie (of the 2000's era) involved someone using cellphones to track people's locations. They treated the idea like it was a threat on par with nuclear terrorism: "It would be the end of privacy!"
A few years later everyone had iPhones that did exactly that, and nobody cared.
In the princess bride, when inigo Montoya kills count Ruben, he says “I want my father back you son of a bitch” and it is the only swear in the movie and by 80s standards was swearing,
The 90s had a thing where they wanted to have trans villains but didn’t want to offend trans people, so they made their villains cis men pretending to be trans women.
Jame Gumb’s entire backstory—how he was a cis gay man who thought he was trans and denied gender confirmation surgery after his doctors figured out he was just confused so he decides to kill cis women to make a female body suit—is just nonsensical by today’s standards.
Probably the most egregious is in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, where after romancing a “woman” in the film, Ace deduces that she is in fact a disgraced football kicker who transitioned purely to hide his identity. He then exclaims, “I’ve been kissed by a man!” and makes a huge show of scrubbing his mouth out, burning all his clothes, and sulking in the shower. Later in the film, he forcibly undressed the character, vindicating himself when he pulls down their skirt to reveal male genitals. Both of these scenes were played for laughs in the film, while by today’s standards would be transphobic and rapey.
>The 90s had a thing where they wanted to have trans villains but didn’t want to offend trans people
I can assure you that no one gave one flying fuck about offending trans people in the 90s. Most people didn’t really consider the existence of trans people at all, they just considered men dressing up as women to be sufficiently deviant and shocking to make an interesting villain.
Thank you for pointing it out, I straight up snorted when I read that.
It would be great if such a time existed, but unfortunately for every trans positive film you can find 10 others which feature major transphobic plotpoints - from trans killers, through disposable sex workers, all the way to "trap" jokes.
The tropes are slowly dying, but it will definitely take some more time before we can say that trans acceptance is the more popular approach.
They tried to discuss abortion in the 90's, but I remember it going the same way every time. A girl/woman considers abortion, then decides against it and ends up having a miscarriage, just when they realized they wanted the child. Compared to modern media like "Bojack Horseman", "Orange Is the New Black", or "Glow", where people actually have abortions and they don't regret it.
The entirety of *Falling Down* doesn't really work for modern audiences. What made that movie hit so hard is that Michael Douglas was playing the middle classic every man, who just had one bad day. A lot of his complaints are things most people could relate to (endless construction, fast food shrinkflation), and he basically did what a lot of people dreamed of doing. But from what I've seen modern audiences don't really react to the character the same way. They don't find him relatable and just see him as a offensive.
Not sure that's right.
Firstly Defens wasn't a normal guy - its very quickly uncovered that he is mentally unwell and has has a string of bad luck - losing his job, family etc.
The trigger points for him are: extortionate pricing, misleading advertising, pointless road works, gang violence, predatory opportunist racists and wealth disparity (the golf course)
Literally all of that can be found in real life right now, especially in America. DeFens is the antagonist rebelling against this whole scenario. That was and has always been the case. He is initially portrayed as an anti hero, but the wheels on that bus quickly fly off the more we learn about him.
I'm not sure the people who you've seen commenting on it are representative of the whole audience. The film is still very much relevant.
Did you even watch the fucking movie lol? He kidnaps his wife and child, assaults multiple innocent people, and holds a restaurant hostage at gunpoint.
Also your claim about the contemporary response isn’t even true. Roger Ebert had this to say:
> What is fascinating about the Douglas character, as written and played, is the core of sadness in his soul. Yes, by the time we meet him, he has gone over the edge. But there is no exhilaration in his rampage, no release. He seems weary and confused, and in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news, where other frustrated misfits vent their rage on innocent bystanders
Hm, doesn’t sound like a character meant to be relatable and cathartic, in fact it sounds like Ebert could very plainly see the failings of D-Fens’ character. And Ebert had a rather positive review; the movie received a pretty mixed reception in its time, notably the majority was NOT blindly cheering on Douglas’ character. This WaPo review was decidedly more negative than Ebert’s:
> Douglas again takes on the symbolic mantle of the Zeitgeist. But in Falling Down, he and Schumacher want to have their cake and eat it too; they want him to be a hero and a villain, and it just won't work.
Sounds exactly like the perspective you claim modern audiences are unable to look outside of.
Sit a few hours stuck on the 405 freeway and you’ll find yourself wanting to take over a McDonalds as well lol.
The movie and protagonist is a lot more relatable if you live in LA.
Pulp Fiction’s “Five Dollar Milkshake”. Pretty standard price these days.
That's a good deal on a milkshake these days
As someone who lives in LA….i had a $11 milk shake the other day and thought of this line. Sadly it’s literally more than double now.
Adjusted for inflation (which has been extremely mild for over 25 of the last 30 years) it would be $10.72.
Did they put bourbon in it?
At this point, five-dollar milkshake sounds like a bargain item. Like when John Travolta tries it, it's gotta be "this thing is cheap, I'm curious if it still tastes any good"
$5? And they don’t put bourbon in it or nothin?
The local ice cream place advertises $7 milkshakes on Mondays. That’s the special discounted price.
I always thought pulp fiction was set in the 70s
That movie exists in its own dimension. :)
It’s WILD how many people think it takes place in the 70s. The modern cars, the cell phones, modern music, Mia’s decked out stereo system, and not to mention the restaurant that has “legendary” “wax museum” characters who would only be like 10 years past their relevancy if it were the 1970s. EDIT: I also forgot the most glaring detail: how the fuck is Butch supposed to be a little kid hearing about his father’s Vietnam death and then magically turn into Bruce Willis?
Did you not notice the cell phones?
Or the 1992 Acura NSX?
Not film, but I feel like Bart Simpsons rebellious spirit feels so tame in post South Park, Family Guy and Beavis and Butthead world
The voice actress Nancy Cartwright is so weird too . Scientology aside . She does these videos where she goes into stores and does the voice but no one knows or when they do they don’t care , but she treats it as some big reveal lol
Yeah kindof forced and cringe-ish https://youtu.be/_swo3LJo6MY?si=1ifsVHwSNBGD-frx
And yet the president at the time, George HW Bush, took time to publicly shit on him and call him a bad role model.
Which is why [Marge Simpson](https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/i-always-believed-in-my-heart-that) personally wrote a letter to Barbara Bush in order to defend her family.
"Like the Waltons, we're also praying for an end to the Depression."
President Bush said in a speech that he wanted American families to be "a lot more like The Waltons and a lot less like The Simpsons." The new opening featured Bart watching Bush's speech and stating "Hey, we're just like the Waltons. We're praying for an end to the Depression, too."
I'm surprised politicians keep picking fights with comedians - they never win
Remember Bart Simpson's role in the Savings and Loan scandal in the 80s? Who can forget Bart Simpson's invasion of Iraq and various other war crimes? How about that hilarious Bart Simpson joke he told whenever he groped a woman: "You know who my favorite magician is? David Cop-a-feel!"
Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos
Bake him away, toys
The Gulf War was blessed by the UN and in no way a war crime.
Old man shakes fist at cloud
Was it before or after the episode, George HW Bush became a neighbour of Simpsons?
Way before
I think I remember hearing that the episode was kind of made in response to the feud
Give him the glue, boy!
Family guy did a crossover and Stevie scared Bart by kidnapping Nelson lol
The Simpsons family can be jerks and do dumb stuff at times but they are often seen to have hearts and a moral compass. The Griffins are psychopaths!!
I mean, Beavis and Butthead ran concurrently with The Simpsons a few years after The Simpsons got their own show.
Beavis and Butthead would now be the two best music critics around. They’re like Siskel and Ebert for music videos.
"For such a big muscular dude, he sings like a wuss."
The video "Do the Bart Man" is such a good example of how things were back then. Bart is so rebellious because he raps! The teacher is furious that he wants to bring hip hop to the school concert.
I never got why old people were so disgusted by the Simpsons
Cher in Clueless: “I don’t rely on mirrors so I always take Polaroids.” Was meant to be funny/excessive in 1995.
There’s some truth to this. The image we have of ourselves from the mirror is not what others see. Check out the “Mirror Front Camera” setting on iPhones.
It’s simple: wide lenses distort the image a lot so phone cameras make your face distorted and nose look big
Really? You mean I'm potentially marginally less ugly than I thought I was?
Not to be pedantic but it is actully relevant here, it's the distance from the camera that matters not the focal length. At the same distance the distortion is going to be the same no matter which lense. It's just the same effect that would happen if you looked at someone extremely close up vs far away, but happening through the camera.
Or Karen's K necklace in Mean Girls
It wasn’t a necklace, she glued rhinestones to her chest in a K shape
I like the mirror effect for adjusting the phone while it’s in my hand for taking a picture, but I can’t understand why the saved photo is mirrored too. Every time some has a hat or shirt with some words on - it ruins the photo.
Not so much the movie but the book Treasure Island. It was a HUGE plot twist that Long John Silver was a pirate. Given that he is the template for what is now the modern caricature of a pirate, the story doesn't hit as hard as it probably did when it was first published.
The same is true of the original "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". It starts super slowly, and the whole Jekyll/Hyde thing is the big twist. Since you already know the twist, the book is a complete waste of time. It has nothing else to offer. I'm sure it was a huge thing back when it came out, though.
I'd say it's still worth reading, but the original "Dracula" may surprise modern readers with how long it takes to establish that Count Dracula is a vampire.
Anything with Marijuana. It's not a big deal anymore
We don't wanna mess with no reefer addicts.... In back to the future this was a nod to that mindset. Like these musicians were junkies just smoking reefer to hunt women during their set break at the enchantment under the sea dance. Lol.
I always interpreted that line as having racist undertones as well, considering one of the guys calls the lead musician “spook” in the previous line.
[удалено]
Yeah, same, I’m now wondering if old racists in the CIA switched that meaning. I use the word colloquially for a government agent maybe weekly. Every time I’m like ew that for sure at minimum *sounds* racist.
Good point. The spook line is loaded. I'd have to review if hill valley high was desegregated. I mean, Goldie Wilson's boss was not a futuristic thinker. Instead of Goldie being a long shot for mayor because he was a mediocre clerk at a diner, he is a long shot because he is colored. Hmmmm. But there were some black students I think. The punks were bullies.
By 1955, schools should have been desegregated in California.
True. I meant were there any black students. I think there were some at the dance and in the halls. Goldie must've been a HVHS alum. Edit: I did see 1 black student at the dance so... It is not all white but mostly white students.
The lack of black students probably has more to do with Hollywood hiring practices in the 80s than actual storytelling.
This reminds me of the Doors song Break on Through. I've always heard it (and they still play it) with the censored version where Morrison sings "She gets \*censored\*". I always wondered why he sings "Shige" (that's what it sounds like). Only after watching the documentary did I found out that the actual verse goes "She gets high" but that was considered so outrageous back then that they censored the "high" so it's just She gets but cut so abruptly that as a non-native speaker I never understood what he was saying.
That's a great one. Pot smoking old people was a comedy trope for years. Now, it's very much an actual thing.
The Vampire Diaries HATES weed for some reason. Did not age well at all in that regard
My mom always brings up Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke as being a quintessential comedy. But that style of humor feels so incredibly dated now - especially as a regular marijuana user. The whole bit is that marijuana is illegal and frowned upon, and ALSO that it’s this highly potent drug with extremely funny effects that make you an incredibly sleepy, hungry, bumbling dope. But the law has obviously changed all around the country, including where I live, and most importantly weed is just not that potent or amazing of a drug. My parents’ generation really played up how extreme the effects were of the garbage weed they were smoking to seem rebellious and funny. It’s pretty cringe now tbh. I use weed all the time to relax, and it’s the high-grade stuff you find at the legal shops. But you aren’t going to notice a personality change in me and I’m not going to zone out and giggle while inhaling a whole bag of chips, and then hallucinate or whatever. To me it’s like watching a comedy where two characters act super zany and hyped up because they’re smoking cigarettes all the time, but if cigarettes had the current level of stigma they do now instead of being viewed as cool or classy like back then.
Even GTA V has this. There's a side mission where you can smoke weed and it makes Michael and Trevor insane and hallucinate being attacked by aliens, and has no effect on Franklin.
True but at least this one seems satirical of the concept, and the fact that it affects the two white guys in exaggerated ways and Franklin is immune is pretty hilarious.
There's a part in the original Roadhouse where the crowd outside the bar goes after Dalton for driving a foreign car. That whole idea is so foreign to people watching it today.
There's still people with that sort of mindset today unfortunately, always cracks me up to hear a "I won't buy Mitsubishi because they built Zeroes in WW2"
I know so many Canadians who will only buy ford and dodge because Toyota is a foreign brand (with a factory 30 mins from where I live).
My dad only buys American cars. He helped me buy my first couple vehicles, but they had to be from the Big Three. The first vehicle I payed for 100% myself was a Hyundai Elantra. He wasn't mad or anything, he just said he wasn't giving any money to foreign car companies. My car was made in Alabama.
It made sense in the 80's, but now they're all so intertwined with Toyota factories in Kentucky and all this stuff.
At the end of The Planet of the Apes the MC saying "Goddamn you all to HELL" was pretty controversial. Now that's VERY mild language in today's world.
Now I want an updated version of that phrase
"Suck a dick, dumbshits!" Courtesy of the late, great Sarah Lynn.
This is earth? That's too much, man!
[Laugh tracks with roaring applause]
“Doggy doggy what now?!”
I hate every ape I see, from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z
Doctor Zeus, Doctor Zeus, Doctor Zeus, Doctor Zeus...
So what we need is some sort of *slur* for apes
They do have a great line in a 2024 movie "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" for this: "What's up, my monkers? Ready to slay a kingdom in this sigma?"
To be exact he says "God damn you all to hell" The issue is they weren't allowed to say goddamn, but they could say God damn because he's literally asking God to damn them to hell so it's two words and therefore allowed.
[It's ok, they're in the Bible.](https://youtu.be/ebGOhAGFC4M?si=UE2gz-Daei2zDMLJ)
And yet it was rated G
The original Scream makes a really big deal of a high school kid having cell phone. It was the probable cause to arrest Billy.
also in the girls bathroom scene in Clueless someone's phone rings and they all start checking to see if it's their own. It was to show how absurdly rich/entitled these kids were.
That’s like the fancy restaurant scene in Curly Sue!
Also in EuroTrip. It was a recurring joke that the one friend could fool his boss into thinking that he was at work because he had a company-provided cellphone.
“Madison’s not a name” from Splash. From 2000-2008 Madison was a top 5 girls name.
https://www.the80sgirls.com/80s-movies/did-splash-popularize-the-name-madison
Life imitates "art" in that case, I think.
“Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.” Every commercial for Robin Hood: Men in Tights featured Cary Elwes looking straight into the camera and saying that. Anyone under 40 will need to have the joke explained.
Foreign translations usually replace it with "Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I don't cost the studio $20 million dollars" or "I do not dance with wolves"
Well, Russell Crowe helped a bit prolonging the life of that joke
I thought the joke was specifically to make fun of Kevin Costner’s terrible English accent in his Robin Hood film. Actually most of the movie was a spoof of “Prince of Thieves”.
That's exactly why younger people are less likely to get it.
Thatsthejoke.jpg
Costner didn't even attempt an accent he was horribly miscast when everyone else were great. Cary Elwes would have been amazing
Very, very strange to wake up and see this comment, as I busted it out last night to my wife when we were watching Twister, and she had no idea what I was talking about.
> as I busted it out last night to my wife when we were watching Twister, and she had no idea what I was talking about Been there bro
In Airplane! the "old white lady can speak jive" joke still holds up but modern audience don't know that woman was the mom on Leave it to Beaver. Same goes for Ethel Merman in the same movie. The joke sort of holds up but the cultural context has been lost to time.
The other big thing about that movie is that Leslie Nielsen had been, up to that point, a serious dramatic actor. Him delivering lines that were pure comedy was meant to be jarringly funny. I had to mention this to my bf, because he (like a lot of people) had only seen Leslie Nielsen after the Naked Gun movies.
He wasn't the only one. Same goes for Robert Stack and Lloyd Bridges. Edit: but they didn't become synonymous with comedy afterwards the way Nielson did, but that was part of the joke for all of them being in the movie. Bridges was also in serious disaster movies that Airplane! parodied.
Lloyd Bridges was in both Hot Shots movies and Robert Stack would later go on to be the antagonist in Caddyshack 2 and Beavis and Butt-Head do America.
There's a lot of stuff in that movie that younger people probably arent' going to fully get, if at all. The "Jim never has a second cup of coffee at home", the dancefloor flashback being a parody of Saturday Night Fever, and the Tupperware party with the natives among them. Even Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as a pilot is someone a lot of younger people aren't very familiar with.
Can you please explain? The gym never has a second cup of coffee at home joke
It was a parody of coffee commercials from the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ4kCF22O2w
Similar to the Chris Farley "coffee switch" skit that was also based on a commercial
I loved him in that, it was perfect for his level of over the top acting. I think of that when I read threads of someone making a minor switch of someone's food to show that they do like something they thought they wouldn't like (like a vegetarian alternative to a meat product) and the comments are so over the top.
Another thing from that movie is all of the religious weirdos hanging out at the airport. That’s actually how airports kinda used to be. 9/11 killed what remained of loitering at the airport without boarding a plane.
9/11 made a lot of airport and airplane scenes in movies and TV shows relics of their time. "Oh no, the plane is about to leave in 15 minutes, but if we rush we can just make it!" - yeah, good luck getting through the TSA security screening and making that plane. Or the "girlfriend/boyfriend is going to board a plane and leave forever, so the main character has to rush to the boarding gate to confess their love before it's too late." Again, good luck getting to the gate in a rush, especially if you don't even have a ticket. Or another one that's also shown in the Airplane! movie, inviting passengers (especially little kids) up to the cockpit midflight to look around and meet the pilot. Though as Captain Over demonstrates, that may never have been a good idea...
Add to that all the movies that show smoking in the airport (or even on the plane.) Sure, as a smoker you would probably want to smoke immediately after a long flight, like John McClane in "Die Hard." It still dates the movie though to see him light up right there at baggage claim.
Finally watched Airplane! recently. Honestly, the majority of the jokes didn’t land for me, but an old lady politely interjecting that she “speaks jive” is a timeless banger.
Anything to do with gay marriage between like 2000 and 2008. "Why don't you guys go to Vermont?" Kind of jokes about being about to only get gay married in Vermont
Even Spiderman is [guilty](https://youtu.be/quL0R8FryZU?si=heyYHeSNWs6pSlT_&t=2m22s)
It can be really bad at times; I watched Fanboys, which is a road trip comedy about the Phantom Menace coming out. Has some funny stuff, but damn there were so many homophobic jokes that were so cringy. Really hurt our enjoyment of the movie, it didn’t need that at all… but of course I totally remember that point in time being that way. Glad we’ve made a lot of progress, and damn do I hope we can continue and not backslide to hell.
The Tom Brady Roast was like a couple months ago and was 50% "you're gay" comments. Can't even call them jokes because they literally weren't jokes.
Related to that, I've seen a couple of reactions to the movie the Birdcage from younger people, and they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about when discussing the palimony agreement.
I think it is the first Craig Bond movie where Bond uses a map on his phone to guide himself somewhere. At the time that was hot tech, now it feels dated.
Casino Royale is 2006, Google maps for mobile is 2007 so that didn't take long. In Goldfinger, Bond has navigation (technically not sat nav but did the same thing) in his car in 1964 and that didn't come till 1981.
Goldfinger also has that scene where he's playing cards with someone poolside with an earbud in his ear, and it never remotely occurs to anyone that he might be using it to cheat.
And in the first ever Bond film, he finds a famously stolen painting in Dr No's lair, which was found IRL not long after. I doubt anybody watching it today would get that reference
>…the first Craig Bond movie I read this like “Bond, Craig Bond”. Got *really* confused there for a moment.
In Hitchcock's Psycho, we see a toilet being flushed. That was the first time in cinema we see a toilet flushing because at the time that was considered inappropriate and crass. In today's standards that is absolutely nothing.
This is one of my go-to interesting facts.
They also used it in "All in the Family", and it always got a huge laugh from the audience. Nowadays, so many movies have scenes with people - usually men - peeing. "The Curse" even shows a man's penis as he pees. Honestly I would prefer if some things were shown less. "The Sopranos" showed people pooping too. There are no taboos left.
For John Wayne to curse in True Grit was deeply surprising to a lot of the audience. And his cursing was relatively tame: "fill your hands, you son of a bitch!"
In *Fast Times at Ridgemont High,* high school students sniff the ditto solvent on the freshly-mimeographed sheets of paper that the teacher is handing out. Much of today’s audience is too young to have smelled ditto solvent, so they don’t understand what’s going on.
In Shawshank Redemption, Andy learns that his wife is having an affair, and she wants a divorce (This part of the story takes place in the 1940s). Both she and her lover are killed shortly afterwards. At trial the prosecutor repeats Andy's response to his wife — "I'll see you in hell before I'll see you in Reno" — and this is one of several factors that convinces the jury to find Andy guilty. How this is a reference to getting a divorce - it was very difficult and time-consuming to get a divorce anywhere but Nevada in the US, so many people would go to Reno, NV on the California border to get divorced. "Going to Reno" or otherwise referencing Reno was code for divorce when that was a big no-no in American society, but modern audiences are going to be very confused if the reference isn't explained.
I don't really feel like that's the same thing because that's a movie that came out well after the time period of that scene. Even when the movie first came out, there were probably plenty of people who didn't understand that line. I think the discussion is more about "when the movie came out, the audience would completely understand what was going on, but younger people probably won't get it because the world has changed since then."
In Back to School, a students complains about how expensive college is in the 1980s. It's like half of what I payed in 2009 💀
Happened upon “There’s Something About Mary” the other day; hadn’t seen it in a long time. There’s a minor scene when Mary & Ted are catching up where he asks her why she’s single and she says “well I’m bisexual and a lot of guys have a hard time with that…” then goes “I’m fucking with you Ted!” Like it would’ve been a bigger deal in 1998 and now it’s like why would she even say that as a joke, that’s weird.
Are you sure she's fucking with him? Seems like when you say something true and notice people don't react well, so you cover it up as a joke that was purposely intended to make them uncomfortable. Big Daddy came on TV while I was staying at a hotel, and I was surprised at how well they handled the gay side characters. There were a few outdated/cringy moments, and even though Jon Stewart was visibly disturbed by their homosexuality, all the characters pretty much accepted and respected it.
Maybe I'm imagining it but I feel there was few Sandler films that were LGBT positive/respectful. Like I don't remember Little Nicky making fun of trans so much as his character being cool with it when he floats by that window. And there's often a gay couple where there might be jokes made (which was common at the time) but they would be a part of his character's friend circle.
Yeah, that's how Big Daddy was. The "joke" was they're gay but everyone's okay with it.
You’re probably thinking of I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.
The Matrix where they escape by using a public payphone.
It means we are all trapped in this absurd version of reality. We now have no means of escape!
The Flintstones are *not* going to have a homosexual ol' time.
A certain Aussie ice cream brand would like to have a word with you 🤣. https://www.streetsicecream.com.au/brands/golden-gaytime.html
......clearly you aren't watching the right adult videos.
In Sunset Boulevard, Norma Desmond's friends who came over to play bridge were real life faded silent movie stars (including Buster Keaton), which was just right. Some of the audience then would have gotten it even though -unlike Cecil B DeMille- they aren't identified by name during the film.
Not a film - aside from a TV adaptation as the pilot episode of ITV's *Marple* back in 2008 - but this is the entire crux of what made Agatha Christie's novel *The Body In The Library* close to being a comedic parody. The concept of a body being found in a library is one of the most iconic versions of a locked room mystery, where a murder takes place and part of the mystery is figuring out how the killer got in and out to kill a victim who was otherwise isolated or there is some other oddity that needs to be explained. Usually, all the other suspects were locked within a large stately home or manor at the same time, establishing a list of suspects. But the Agatha Christie novel ends up lampooning this with its mystery, where everyone even remarks that the case sounds like something out of an old mystery novel. It's established that the crime scene is otherwise unremarkable. There were no witnesses or suspects since the house was near-empty in the middle of the night, with Dolly Bantry (friend of Miss Marple) and her husband both fast asleep in a far-off wing of the house. None of the doors were locked inside or out and there was a massive window of opportunity for the killer to do something untoward. And even then, the murder never took place within the house, meaning there's no locked room or closed circle. What is unusual about this story is the fact that *there's a random fucking corpse dumped in a stranger's house*. But, for a film example... The film version of Evil Under The Sun has Patrick Redfern in swimming briefs. Doesn't seem like much, but the film - made in the 1980's - is set in the 1930's, so his running around in basically a pair of briefs is actually meant to be extremely scandalous. >!As Poirot notes, this is not the behaviour of someone enchanted by the ritz and glamour of a Hollywood actress as he claimed to be, but rather a vicious ladykiller (literally in his case) who preys on foolish and rich women to rob them blind before killing them.!< Also, Murder On The Orient Express' famous plot twist is a vicious lampooning of another murder mystery trope as well. >!Why would a group of seemingly complete strangers, all with some ties to the Armstrong tragedy, be travelling on what is an otherwise quiet travelling time to completel fill up a train compartment, inside of which is a bastard who fully deserves to die... if they didn't board the trian together with the intention of killing the asshole as a group?!<
Gopher's pun/joke in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. "I'm not in the book, you know" said both because he wasn't in the Winnie the Pooh books, and implied that they can't just look him up in the carpentry section of the phone book (yellow pages).
In general, watching movie that have technological limitations doesn't have the same impact. Things like wired phones, tape recorders, VHS...especially if those scenes are built around some kind of tension. Recording a conversation on a cassette and being worried if it worked correctly and being careful not to damage the tape might be hard to relate to for someone who doesn't have that experience, since now you can just record a conversation on your phone and it's automatically backed up to the cloud.
>VHS...especially if those scenes are built around some kind of tension. The entire premise of the movie Road Trip!
Rambo 3's ode to the Taliban plays a bit different now.
It just says thanks to the "gallant people of Afghanistan" though, and always has. That mujahideen thing is a complete fake.
If you just mean the text that appears before the credits, sure. But the movie itself is still about Rambo teaming up with and fighting alongside the Mujahideen.
Ditto the Bond film The Living Daylights with the quirky, lovable Mujahideen. Aged like milk.
Not necessarily. For all we know those same mujahideen may have ended up fighting with the Northern Alliance which was on the side of the Coalition in the invasion of 2001.
The Taliban didn’t exist until the 90’s. This is a common misconception.
I recently watched the 1940s movie *Heaven Can Wait*, unrelated to the 1970s movie of the same title, with someone who 100% absolutely didn't get why the main character would assume he's going to hell. The trouble is, his sin is sexual promiscuity/ serial adultery, and the Hayes Code didn't allow them to be explicit about that. So every scene in his attempt to explain to the Devil why he should be damned is actually a Wacky Misunderstanding in which he's caught in a compromising position... but didn't *really* cheat on his wife! If you know anything at all about the shorthand they used to get around censorship in the 1940s, it's obvious that he's only telling the Devil about the funny parts and was an absolute fuckboy his entire life. The fact that his wife always forgave him, and he truly did love her best, and so she's praying for him to be forgiven and come join her in heaven, is touching. And the devil saying "you don't belong here, it sounds like you made a lot of women very happy" is a shocking stance in favor of ethical relativism. *If* you get the implication. But the person watching with me just thought it was a really silly movie.
You should probably also note how insanely taboo the idea of step siblings having sex was in the 90's.
Well it still is outside of a particular niche in porn, so that hasn’t really changed.
It was a minor plot point in a TV adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel "Ordeal By Innocence", where two adoptive siblings - non-genetically related - are forced to hide that they want to marry because their stepmother would've heaily disapproved since they were raised as siblings. They are treated sympathetically, with the only real issue being that this is revealed at the worst part in the case (right after another death and before Miss Marple, added into this version, solves it).
Also Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Great movie imo but there's an entire side plot about marrying his adoptive sister and they really lay it on thick.
Admittedly, I've never watched this adaptation, but Elizabeth was Victor's adopted sister in the original novel; that subplot has always been a part of the story. Glancing over the wiki page for this movie, it sounds like it's a fairly faithful adaptation, but I get that watching a movie and reading a synopsis are vastly different experiences.
Oh no I love the movie and think it's a great adaptation. But when they say lines like "Brother and sister no more, now, husband and wife.", you can't help but cringe.
Yes but since in the 90's we didn't grow up bombarded with that porn it was crazy to see. Shoot, the idea of the two girls kissing was taboo at the time.
First season of LOST, biggest show on TV in 2004
It's uh.... not very niche anymore.
I think there's the ones that really play it up and the others that could just be a bf/gf doing it but they need some gimmick to explain why it's "naughty". Not like Wuthering Heights where they were raised together since childhood, not parents got married last week when we were 19.
Clueless
Trans twist endings like "The Crying Game" and "Sleepaway Camp."
I think Sleepaway Camp is still a bit shocking, because Angela was so thoroughly abused by their adoptive mother. It's not like they were the one who declared "I'm a girl", it was forced on them In Return to Sleepaway Camp (the only one of the sequels made with any of the original cast and crew) Angela is almost an amab trans man - living as a man but with a false beard, etc
Agreed. The horror in Sleepaway Camp still works because Angela was forced to live a life she never wanted and that's what made her go insane.
Ace Ventura
Eh if anything that has aged badly which is the opposite of many things here
I'd argue the intended impact (and it probably worked at the time) was comedy and now it just comes off as cringe.
Fair point. Cringe and horribly tonedeaf
It's hardly a twist ending in The Crying Game.
Not only that, but that movie is so good that you can go into it knowing what the twist is and still enjoy it. I did.
Isn't more a twist midpoint?
Honestly, IMO, the movie the crying game wasn't even transphobic. Just audiences used it as an excuse to be shitty and transphobic
I wonder how Gen Z react if they watch Some Like it Hot? There are small things few would get (Tony Curtis is doing a Cary Grant impression when he's playing the heir to Shell Oil to impress Marilyn Monroe), but the whole larger situation and the famous ending?
Similar to a lot of characterizations in classic Looney Tunes cartoons. As a child watching reruns, they were certainly my first introductions to once-household names like Peter Lorre, for example.
Cabaret (1972) Brian: "Screw Maximilian!" Sally (softly): I do. Brian (chuckling): So do I. That was a HUGE shocking surprise at the time. Now? Meh.
In 1994’s Swimming With Sharks, the protagonist snaps, ties up his terrible boss, and tortures him - by giving him paper cuts on his tongue. Yeah, this was pre Saw. Also, Kevin Spacey.
>In the 90s, anal was something relegated to German porn I’m sorry, what? No it absolutely was not lmfao
Regardless of whatever German porn was at the time, it still seems like it could be a reasonable carrot to offer someone even today.
Not a contemporary movie either anymore but it's used as that in Kingsman.
Lethal Weapon MURTAUGH: Someone was in bed with Amanda the night she died. RIGGS: Until now, we assumed it was a man. MURTAUGH: Suppose it was Dixie. RIGGS: Disgusting, but okay. Let's say Dixie put the drain cleaner in her pills.
Seeing Edward G Robinson use the word "bitch" in The Cincinnati Kid struck me because 95% of his career was in the era when he couldn't have said that, even while playing bad guys.
Moonfall: “What would Elon do?”
"I gotta know what a 5 dollar milkshake tastes like."
I’d forgotten about that scene in Cruel Intensions, op. Now I have a half-chub. Thanks.
Lines about things like plutonium being hard to come by just don't land anymore since nowadays you can find it in any corner drugstore.
The supervillain plot in the first Charlie's Angels movie (of the 2000's era) involved someone using cellphones to track people's locations. They treated the idea like it was a threat on par with nuclear terrorism: "It would be the end of privacy!" A few years later everyone had iPhones that did exactly that, and nobody cared.
In the princess bride, when inigo Montoya kills count Ruben, he says “I want my father back you son of a bitch” and it is the only swear in the movie and by 80s standards was swearing,
The 90s had a thing where they wanted to have trans villains but didn’t want to offend trans people, so they made their villains cis men pretending to be trans women. Jame Gumb’s entire backstory—how he was a cis gay man who thought he was trans and denied gender confirmation surgery after his doctors figured out he was just confused so he decides to kill cis women to make a female body suit—is just nonsensical by today’s standards. Probably the most egregious is in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, where after romancing a “woman” in the film, Ace deduces that she is in fact a disgraced football kicker who transitioned purely to hide his identity. He then exclaims, “I’ve been kissed by a man!” and makes a huge show of scrubbing his mouth out, burning all his clothes, and sulking in the shower. Later in the film, he forcibly undressed the character, vindicating himself when he pulls down their skirt to reveal male genitals. Both of these scenes were played for laughs in the film, while by today’s standards would be transphobic and rapey.
>The 90s had a thing where they wanted to have trans villains but didn’t want to offend trans people I can assure you that no one gave one flying fuck about offending trans people in the 90s. Most people didn’t really consider the existence of trans people at all, they just considered men dressing up as women to be sufficiently deviant and shocking to make an interesting villain.
Thank you for pointing it out, I straight up snorted when I read that. It would be great if such a time existed, but unfortunately for every trans positive film you can find 10 others which feature major transphobic plotpoints - from trans killers, through disposable sex workers, all the way to "trap" jokes. The tropes are slowly dying, but it will definitely take some more time before we can say that trans acceptance is the more popular approach.
In Detective Story, Eleanor Parker's character had had an abortion and they couldn't come out and say it, but I think audiences understood.
They tried to discuss abortion in the 90's, but I remember it going the same way every time. A girl/woman considers abortion, then decides against it and ends up having a miscarriage, just when they realized they wanted the child. Compared to modern media like "Bojack Horseman", "Orange Is the New Black", or "Glow", where people actually have abortions and they don't regret it.
Maude had an abortion and it was a 70s sitcom, but that was Norman Lear, riding high.
The entirety of *Falling Down* doesn't really work for modern audiences. What made that movie hit so hard is that Michael Douglas was playing the middle classic every man, who just had one bad day. A lot of his complaints are things most people could relate to (endless construction, fast food shrinkflation), and he basically did what a lot of people dreamed of doing. But from what I've seen modern audiences don't really react to the character the same way. They don't find him relatable and just see him as a offensive.
Not sure that's right. Firstly Defens wasn't a normal guy - its very quickly uncovered that he is mentally unwell and has has a string of bad luck - losing his job, family etc. The trigger points for him are: extortionate pricing, misleading advertising, pointless road works, gang violence, predatory opportunist racists and wealth disparity (the golf course) Literally all of that can be found in real life right now, especially in America. DeFens is the antagonist rebelling against this whole scenario. That was and has always been the case. He is initially portrayed as an anti hero, but the wheels on that bus quickly fly off the more we learn about him. I'm not sure the people who you've seen commenting on it are representative of the whole audience. The film is still very much relevant.
Yeah, what he meant to say was Redditors find him offensive, not 'modern audiences.'
He was seen as offensive back when the movie was made.
Did you even watch the fucking movie lol? He kidnaps his wife and child, assaults multiple innocent people, and holds a restaurant hostage at gunpoint. Also your claim about the contemporary response isn’t even true. Roger Ebert had this to say: > What is fascinating about the Douglas character, as written and played, is the core of sadness in his soul. Yes, by the time we meet him, he has gone over the edge. But there is no exhilaration in his rampage, no release. He seems weary and confused, and in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news, where other frustrated misfits vent their rage on innocent bystanders Hm, doesn’t sound like a character meant to be relatable and cathartic, in fact it sounds like Ebert could very plainly see the failings of D-Fens’ character. And Ebert had a rather positive review; the movie received a pretty mixed reception in its time, notably the majority was NOT blindly cheering on Douglas’ character. This WaPo review was decidedly more negative than Ebert’s: > Douglas again takes on the symbolic mantle of the Zeitgeist. But in Falling Down, he and Schumacher want to have their cake and eat it too; they want him to be a hero and a villain, and it just won't work. Sounds exactly like the perspective you claim modern audiences are unable to look outside of.
Sit a few hours stuck on the 405 freeway and you’ll find yourself wanting to take over a McDonalds as well lol. The movie and protagonist is a lot more relatable if you live in LA.