In most of the non R rated superhero movies I've seen you could always walk away with the feeling that the main villain could have, at any moment, had a change of heart because he's not really evil - he's just made bad choices (lol.)
To me, that's not necessarily what makes the movie. I find that in most of the good superhero movies there is a sense of believability of the whole story, which you alluded to with the tie-in to realism of todays society. The rating of the movie itself is insignificant, as long as it succeeds in telling the story.
Part of what made the Wolverine + some Xmen (come now, Wolverine is their poster-child) movies actually work for me was the believability of Magneto. He's a villian that honestly thinks what he's doing isn't wrong. The Joker in The Dark Knight was a believable psychopath, there was no possibility for "change of heart". The Joker was well-defined as a character, he had some notion of what he was doing was "wrong", but he just didn't care. One of his great lines was in front of Two-Face "I just took your little plan and turned it on itself...", explaining that all he does is add a bit of chaos.
Of course, there are movies that just don't do that well. X-Men 3 and the Fantastic Four movies I just couldn't buy into as well. X-Men 3 suffered from the "lets-include-every-mutant-we've-ever-made-and-see-how-many-people-notice" syndrome that a lot of their cartoons did, and the Fantastic Four movies were all flash and not so much character building and story.
I'd consider Iron Man to be on the verge, there was a lot of good character development and build-up for Tony Stark, though I found the enemy to be underdeveloped. I could buy into the "you brought the company down" stuff, but there just wasn't enough of a build to give any sense of real conflict.
And if the user interface looks cheap and lazy, they're going to think, justified or not, that the entire operating system, therefore, was cheap and lazy./That/ is why there are so many, as you put it, 'gee whiz' features in new versions - it's the only thing most people will ever see.
It's true that users generally will see some 'gee whiz' feature and think "oooohhhh shiny". Although there is no utility in having hundreds of little gadgets lying around if nobody actually uses them. I'm sure some people out there actually liked the office assistant at one point, after the millionth "looks like you're trying to write a letter" I'm sure most wanted to destroy their computer.
I for one wanted to hack Office to replace the "hide office assistant" to "fuck off already"
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my PS1 could run Time Crisis... Unfortunately it kicked the bucket before Vista came out.
RAM on main board != RAM on video card. Maybe once my GeForce/Radeon card has 16 bays for PC10600 I can run Crysis...
I take your suggestion and offer one higher. Bittorrent, where all your friends and others you've never met host all your files for you.
In most of the non R rated superhero movies I've seen you could always walk away with the feeling that the main villain could have, at any moment, had a change of heart because he's not really evil - he's just made bad choices (lol.)
To me, that's not necessarily what makes the movie. I find that in most of the good superhero movies there is a sense of believability of the whole story, which you alluded to with the tie-in to realism of todays society. The rating of the movie itself is insignificant, as long as it succeeds in telling the story.
Part of what made the Wolverine + some Xmen (come now, Wolverine is their poster-child) movies actually work for me was the believability of Magneto. He's a villian that honestly thinks what he's doing isn't wrong. The Joker in The Dark Knight was a believable psychopath, there was no possibility for "change of heart". The Joker was well-defined as a character, he had some notion of what he was doing was "wrong", but he just didn't care. One of his great lines was in front of Two-Face "I just took your little plan and turned it on itself...", explaining that all he does is add a bit of chaos.
Of course, there are movies that just don't do that well. X-Men 3 and the Fantastic Four movies I just couldn't buy into as well. X-Men 3 suffered from the "lets-include-every-mutant-we've-ever-made-and-see-how-many-people-notice" syndrome that a lot of their cartoons did, and the Fantastic Four movies were all flash and not so much character building and story.
I'd consider Iron Man to be on the verge, there was a lot of good character development and build-up for Tony Stark, though I found the enemy to be underdeveloped. I could buy into the "you brought the company down" stuff, but there just wasn't enough of a build to give any sense of real conflict.
And if the user interface looks cheap and lazy, they're going to think, justified or not, that the entire operating system, therefore, was cheap and lazy. /That/ is why there are so many, as you put it, 'gee whiz' features in new versions - it's the only thing most people will ever see.
It's true that users generally will see some 'gee whiz' feature and think "oooohhhh shiny". Although there is no utility in having hundreds of little gadgets lying around if nobody actually uses them. I'm sure some people out there actually liked the office assistant at one point, after the millionth "looks like you're trying to write a letter" I'm sure most wanted to destroy their computer. I for one wanted to hack Office to replace the "hide office assistant" to "fuck off already"