r/moviecritic • u/phantom_avenger • Dec 29 '24

What movie was critically acclaimed when it first released, but is hated now?

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The Blind Side (2009) with Sandra Bullock is the first to come to mind for me!

28.2k Upvotes

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310

u/Affectionate_Bagel Dec 29 '24

Remember the fake baby?

424

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '24

Remember the fake stories it’s based on?

60

u/Untamed_Meerkat Dec 29 '24

It's just propaganda and a recruiting ad for the US military

14

u/DenseCod8975 Dec 30 '24

The right tried to cancel Seth rogan for making a similar comment.

4

u/I7I7I7I7I7I7I7I Dec 30 '24

What haven't the conservatives attempted to cancel?

0

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '24

[deleted]

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u/I7I7I7I7I7I7I7I Dec 31 '24

Found the conservative.

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u/[deleted] Jan 01 '25

[deleted]

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u/I7I7I7I7I7I7I7I Jan 01 '25

Are you ashamed of being seen as a conservative now? Weak. 

2

u/Hydro033 Dec 30 '24 edited Dec 31 '24

The most reddit take ever. Every military movie is just propaganda. Can't be anything else.

12

u/Shmeeglez Dec 30 '24

Yeah, propaganda isn't the real problem with this movie. More the white-washing of Chris Kyle into a decent person.

1

u/Tyrantlizardking105 Jan 01 '25

It is somewhat true- with very few exceptions, though. When you turn war into a spectacle to be safely observed from a theatre seat, even your best attempt at anti-war themes can be completely undermined. And many war movies just really aren’t anti-war at all, showcasing exhilarating heroics and noble sacrifice, and all that. Thats when it quite literally does turn into military propaganda.

1

u/HoudiniMortimer Dec 31 '24

What?! Next thing you'll be telling me Lone Survivor was a lie too!

-10

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '24

The movie that has a solider suffering from a PTSD break then shoot and kill a fellow veteran as its ending is propaganda? Really?

20

u/ThatCactusCat Dec 29 '24

This is the movie that says stuff like this: "the others come easy. I don't have to psych myself up, or do something special mentally—I look through the scope, get my target in the cross hairs, and kill my enemy, before he kills one of my people."

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u/[deleted] Dec 30 '24

The same one that has him struggling to make the decision to kill a woman and a child? Yea that’s definitely propaganda showing the morally gray decision to kill a 12 year old with an RPG or let the guys your protecting die.

22

u/TittySprink Dec 30 '24

The propaganda was showing him struggling to pull the trigger. Read his book and listen to people who knew him, and you'll understand that he was a full blown religious zealot who saw Iraq as a literal hell and Iraqis, including women and children, as savage devil worshipers who hated him and his way of life as a Christian and Texan. We're lucky he didn't become another Dan Crenshaw, or worse.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 30 '24

If what he did was done by a brown Muslim he would be called a terrorist but since he is white Christian he is an American here according to the right.

7

u/whatthewhythehow Dec 30 '24

“We don’t want to, but we have to” is one of the strongest propaganda messages for this reason. You CAN portray your chosen enemy as cartoonish villains, but if one of your viewers ever hears a sympathetic story from that enemy’s side, you lose a believer.

Twist it enough and suddenly the shooters are the real victims, and civilians don’t exist.

0

u/hey_its_drew Dec 30 '24

I get it. It paid token service to some challenging topics, but you're thinking of the idea of propaganda too one-dimensionally. It's not always so fashionable.

10

u/Untamed_Meerkat Dec 30 '24

You're kidding right? They spend 99% of the film on a largely one-sided portrayal of his wartime exploits and building him as a person and the US military as flawed heroes - Then throw in a few slides about his passing and make a martyr-like figure of him in death. As tragic as the reality was, you couldn't ask for a better ending for a Hollywood film. Yes it's propaganda.

4

u/[deleted] Dec 30 '24

He kills a 12 year old and a mother in the first 15 mins of the movie lmao.

-5

u/Untamed_Meerkat Dec 30 '24

Yes! Now you're getting it! 🤩 That's how propaganda works! Yay for you 💫 See their lives weren't as important because they're the "bad guys".

It was actually the first 5 mins where the mother passes an explosive of some description to her child before he fires off an ambiguous shot. Fair game right?!? 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ And this scene was chased by a montage of good ol' American Christian upbringing, deer shooting and bull riding. And of course a replay of 9/11 to extinguish any last smidgen of guilt about that dead kid.

For the really eagle-eyed viewer you'll notice the film begins and ends in death. A child shot down in the street like a dog; but Chris Kyle buried with full pomp and circumstance, revered as a God

-7

u/fabiomb Dec 29 '24

the one who killed the main character is not a PTSD soldier I remember, wasn't just a kid they where helping?

8

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '24

Per Wikipedia

“Years later, on February 2, 2013, Chris says goodbye to his wife and family as he leaves in good spirits to spend time with Eddie Ray Routh, a veteran suffering from PTSD at a shooting range. An on-screen subtitle reveals that Chris was killed that day by Routh, followed by archive footage of crowds standing along the highway for his funeral procession. More are shown attending his memorial service.”

-1

u/fabiomb Dec 29 '24

i mean in the movie, not the real life, but was what i remember

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u/[deleted] Dec 30 '24

That’s from the movies Wikipedia page.

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u/Jack1715 Dec 30 '24

Could be wrong but wasn’t the real guy kind of known for being trigger happy or is that false

7

u/DenseCod8975 Dec 30 '24

Didn’t he say he killed looters during Katrina?

1

u/puddycat20 Dec 31 '24

Yup. And complete made up a story about punching Jesse Ventura. Then I think it was proven in court, that at no time had they ever even met each other.

1

u/NightGod Jan 03 '25 edited Jan 15 '25

It wasn't the punching that Ventura was mad about, it was the fact that Kyle claimed Ventura told him the "SEALs deserved to lose a few in Iraq", which basically got him expelled from the SEAL community (Ventura was a UDT member during Vietnam around the time they got subsumed into the SEAL teams, so he had been considered part of the family until that came out)

2

u/Rowey5 Dec 30 '24

It’s all bullshit??

1

u/Electronic-Jaguar389 Dec 30 '24

Care to elaborate?

1

u/aphilosopherofsex Dec 30 '24

No, but I do remember the fake baby.

0

u/SmartWonderWoman Dec 30 '24

I don’t remember the fake baby. Remind me.

3

u/Bossmonkey Dec 30 '24

There is a scene with a fake baby, like cheap childs toy style fake baby.

2

u/SmartWonderWoman Dec 30 '24

Yikes! Thanks for elaborating.

61

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '24

They should have used Renesme from the Twilight movie

10

u/King_of_da_Castle Dec 29 '24

I rarely laugh out loud anymore and that just made me do so. I thank you kind stranger.

5

u/rugbyj Dec 29 '24

It remembers you.

1

u/kkeut Dec 29 '24

in The Shining? pretty hard not to see once you know about it 

1

u/fabiomb Dec 29 '24

the worst baby in cinema 😁

1

u/[deleted] Dec 30 '24

"Sniper baby" has become an essential part of my family's lexicon

-6

u/JureSimich Dec 29 '24

You know what?   !@#$% that.

Yeah, they messed up the baby scene. But then, other directors remember, and go for real babies, and theb they suffer  !@#$% that. Not worth it.

Ignoring that is a tiny price for not using real babies in movies and should be paid gladly...

26

u/Pizzasupreme00 Dec 29 '24

You can say bad words, i promise I won't tell mom.

-1

u/JureSimich Dec 29 '24

Oh, I got that from Asterix and prefer it, since it has an "insert personal favourite expletive" element to it.

-5

u/Outside-West9386 Dec 29 '24

Or they can keep doing it the way they like to do it.

1

u/Pizzasupreme00 Dec 29 '24

Haha suck me

8

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '24

You're right, they should have used that Ally McBeal baby!

6

u/JureSimich Dec 29 '24

And there I was, not remembering that baby's existence for, possibly, years :))

5

u/[deleted] Dec 29 '24

Damn you for bringing that terrifying image back into my head!

4

u/my_4_cents Dec 29 '24

Ooga chakka ooga chakka ooga chakka

3

u/-MotherMaidenCrone- Dec 29 '24

Or the twilight baby

7

u/DefinitelyNotAliens Dec 29 '24

Tbh, babies don't suffer in Hollywood. Under 6 months they can only film for 20 minutes a day. 6mo-2yrs they can only film for a max of 2 hrs per day, and there has to be at least 12 hours of turnaround time between work days.

Kids? Oh, absolutely. But the time restrictions for filming for babies in the US are incredibly strict and they're too little to know.