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Sometimes you'll be watching a movie and an old wise man will appear on the screen. He will say little, but those few words will be full of sage advice that will guide the hero on his journey. You may even find yourself quoting him later. What is easy to forget is that behind that wise old man is just a hack Hollywood screenwriter, and that those ancient words of wisdom were thrown in on the third draft, at four in the morning, after half a pound of cocaine. #6.
Yoda
Hollywood loves it when wisdom comes from unexpected places. There is always a homeless man around to teach an uppity grad student about love or janitor or limo driver to offer some folksy homespun wisdom.
That's why The Empire Strikes Back introduces Yoda as a rubbery little nuisance, seeming at first to be the comic relief, until we realize this wacky little gremlin is the spiritual and philosophical heart of the trilogy. The wisdom that comes from this troll sets the foundation for a creed which is more adored and revered today than many religions. And it's pretty much all shit. Take Yoda's chilling warning to Luke about the consequences of his decision to go to Cloud City: "If you go now, help them you could, but you would destroy ALL for which they have fought and suffered..." Set aside that this is vague to the point of incoherence, it consists of two separate clauses which are both proven completely untrue within minutes of Yoda saying them.
The marginal "help" Luke provides to his friends consists in absorbing a Washington Generals-level beatdown from Vader, thus creating a painful and humiliating diversion to distract the Sith Lord from his friends' escape. Luke showing up at Cloud City has NO negative consequences for anything the Rebellion was fighting for or anything else we can see for that matter. And let's not forget that Luke also "helped" them pick up Lando Calrissian, the guy who eventually joined the Rebellion and BLEW UP THE SPACE STATION CARRYING THE EMPEROR. In other words, the guy who ended up winning them the war.
Great call, Yoda. With those predictive skills, you must have spent many a long, hard day at the race track. But even this comes after Luke's training, which largely consisted of slogans like: "Do, or do not. There is no try." Nonsensical lines like that one make Yoda the Yogi Berra of the galaxy. He seems to have picked up an incorrect definition of the word "try" at whatever community college he attended. You cannot do without trying first. It is impossible. If he'd said "get drunk, or do not, there is no drinking" it would have made as much sense.
Or was he just telling Luke to believe in himself, to plunge ahead against all odds, regardless of appearances? After all, Yoda said the line after Luke expressed doubt in his abilities. Well, we're all for self-confidence, but Luke's whole problem was that he overestimated his own abilities, and was charging into the situation without stopping to train first. The entire rest of Luke's training revolved around breaking him of that. Which brings us right back to the trip to Cloud City that Yoda tries to talk him out of. Wasn't that just Luke trying to seize the initiative and "do" instead of hiding on a planet with the swamp rats and doubting himself? #5.
Gandalf
Despite being generally the least useless of the forces of good, Gandalf is not immune to delivering little wisdom turds like these: Frodo: It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill [Gollum] when he had the chance. Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. No, someone should have really, really killed Gollum. It's precious that Gandalf wants a little Hobbit to keep his innocence, but the price of that innocence is thousands of other beings dying in a war over The Ring. Gollum is the one who told the bad guys where to find the ring, and later it's his betrayal that gets the ring within inches of being captured by Sauron (thanks to him feeding Frodo to a giant spider).
Also, why is Gandalf so uptight about killing people, when according to his own words: "End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path... One that we all must take. The gray rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass... And then you see it. White shores... and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise." Hell, you'd be doing him a favor! Only we see just minutes later that Gandalf and the good guys are delivered from their fate by, well, dead people. Dead people who have not actually been resting in beautiful fields, as much as trapped in a dark, dank cave for millennia.
It turned out they had been trapped there due to an old curse. So, no, Gandalf. In the Lord of the Rings universe you don't get to see those "white shores" if some third party, without your knowledge, casts the right spell. Better hope you never pissed off any powerful wizards when you were alive!
#4.
Mr. Miyagi
It was the 1980s and American spirits were at a nadir. We were still heavily ensconced in the Cold War, and recovering from a recession. Skinny, vaguely ethnic kids across the country were getting their asses kick by blond alpha-douches. America needed something to believe in.
Then a man with crazy moves and ancient wisdom emerged from the most unlikely of places (Happy Days) and taught America how to believe in itself again. That man was the Fonz.
But we were also introduced to Mr. Miyagi, the mentor every hapless kid dreamed of. He gives you a classic car, beats up high schoolers for you and speaks in a broken English that alternately sounds hilarious and wise. Between Miyagi and Yoda, we want to know what it is about clearly spoken English that interferes with sage pontificating. Quote: "No such thing bad student only bad teacher." No. That's not even sort of right, Mr. Miyagi. We are not blaming bad teachers for Hitler, Timothy McVeigh and Spencer Pratt. Each of these guys had probably dozens of teachers in their life and we highly doubt they were all assholes. And kids, whatever classes or karate trainings you try in your life, you'll only get out of it what you're willing to put in, even if your teacher is a cyborg with Bruce Lee's resurrected brain.
Do not write off your failure to a bad teacher. The thing is, Miyagi knows this from his own life experience. In Karate Kid 2 we meet Miyagi's nemesis, Sato, the guy who drove Miyagi out of Japan. How does Miyagi know Sato? They were both students of the same teacher, Miyagi's father! In what must be the most telling statement in the Karate Kid franchise, Miyagi essentially says that his father was a miserable prick, and apparently so is Miyagi. And while we're here, we'd like to point out another piece of wisdom that doesn't sit well. Upon Daniel finding his Medal of Honor, Miyagi tells him: "Daniel-san, this [points to heart] say you brave, this [points to Medal of Honor] say you lucky."
This is one of the real bad habits of movie wise men. It's not enough for Miyagi to say he won a medal due to sheer luck. No, he has to phrase it as an inarguable law of the universe: Every Medal of Honor recipient who put their life on the line in defense of their beloved country is just a lucky asshole. But, we guess Mr. Miyagi is a fictional character who made fictional heroic sacrifices so he's entitled to his fictional opinion. |
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Doesn't anyone find it funny that us Cracked readers are more Cynical than the Cracked writers. Haha, there are some articles where people just relentlessly criticize them. It's good for growth. No one is exempt from critique.
Well, I think it's safe to nominate this for "Crappiest Article in Cracked Movie History." And that's saying something; Cracked film articles are pretty consistently mediocre trolling. This one, though...
Did he even watch the films? At all? Did he do more than read the synopses, scroll for a few quotes, and then write?
Lucius Fox stands out the most. As many have said, if it's immoral to betray your principles once to save thousands of lives, and then never betraying them again, quitting the job that made you betray them, and destroying the machine which you used to betray them, then morality must be quite something.
None of the others are much better. Morpheus's displays a total lack of description of context, treating physical fact as a terrorist mentality. Alfred's failed to mention the fact that Alfred was very clearly telling him NOT to do that. Mr. Miyagi's completely forgot intent. Gandalf's was based on something that ten minutes of Google or Wiki would have solved. Yoda's is the only really legitimate one, and even that's a bit odd.
Oh, yeah, and I am a nerd. Get over it. It stopped being an insult around the turn of the century. And maybe I am "butthurt", but really, if somebody writes an article on science, and they get the laws of thermodynamics wrong and declare that we should all be in escape velocity, based on their bulls**t calculations, then would it be wrong to tell them their argument was flawed?
If a man declares that Superman is a Nazi, based on out-of-context panels and sixty-year-old covers, is it wrong to tell him that he's being an idiot?
If somebody insults the characters and universes that we love, cherish, and look up to, is it wrong to defend them?
Finally, a note to you "Comedy website! Facts don't matter!" people: This wasn't comedy. This was an essay with jokes stuck in it occasionally. No, it wasn't an essay, even, it was a rant. An exceptionally poorly informed rant, at that, considering Cracked normally tries at research. A rant that, such as this, deserves nothing better than to be picked apart with all the fury of a nerd legion scorned.
Good day.
Well said!
Exactly. I think the Yoda one is kind of right. But everything else is kind of a stretch. Mostly Alfred's statement. Completely out of context. Alfred said that with a sad demeanor, like he didn't like the fact he had to burn the forest down. He no other choice. Let the madman run loose and destroy everything including the people or make the hard decision of burning the forest down. The Lucius one is a misunderstanding of ethics as well. There science articles and sometimes there movie ones are often really warped to get some people to laugh. But if you know anything about what they are talking about, it isn't that funny.
And nobody except fanbois s**tting themselves cares.
"No, it wasn't an essay, even, it was a rant. An exceptionally poorly informed rant, at that, considering Cracked normally tries at research."
That's because it was a rant, as you said yourself. Rants aren't doctoral theses. Butthurt over an admittedly weak point in the plot of SW is more stupid than this article.
As for the "research"? LOL, the only research you have to do is watch the movies.
"No, it wasn't an essay, even, it was a rant. An exceptionally poorly informed rant, at that, considering Cracked normally tries at research."
That's because it was a rant, as you said yourself. Rants aren't doctoral theses. Butthurt over an admittedly weak point in the plot of SW is more stupid than this article.
As for the "research"? LOL, the only research you have to do is watch the movies. And even then, that point of contention falters on two points - A) It's (again) a rant and B) This Cracked, a comedy site; where intention of the author was obviously to cause butthurt among idiot fanbois.
Ill give credit where it's due...he at least has a point when he says that killing people in the matrix isn't justified cuz they're just living out their lives oblivious. After all, are they better off dead than alive as pawns? It's not like they're suffering. In that case the reward might not be worth the cost. Maybe Morpheus and crew should consider that and kill themselves if they don't like knowing the truth...I don't necessarily agree with him but I found that interesting.
But as for that crap about killing people to save the people being the creed of every terrorist and war criminal ( and I highly doubt they REALLY do it for the PEOPLE), haven't bloody wars been fought and justified, ei. WW2. The important thing to remember is that things are not black and white, something is only bad if the outcome is bad and on a world stage there are no perfect solutions. It's a question of finding the best answer, there will always be casualties.
I think I understand what he was trying (miserably) to get at- but there is a huge difference between terrorists who do something out of hate or differences in ideology and a group or nation who do something out of unarguable necessity, ei. f**ken MACHINES sucking the life out of humanity or tapping some phones and later destroying the technology to save a city. The author does a serious job of muddling everything up, but you guys covered it all.
This coming from a guy who is too lazy to use contractions correctly.
I think he may have missed the point about Alfred. When Alfred first tells the story about the bandit (it's a two-part story) he mentions that it was impossible to track him down or bribe his associates. All the bandit cared about was starting as much trouble as possible because he got off on screwing with people. Alfred was illustrating the futility of attempting to reason with unreasonable bad guys.
And the whole "burn down the forest" thing? That was the sad extreme he was forced to go to to finally rid himself of said bandit. He was warning Bruce that he needed to be prepared to take extreme measures to bring down the Joker.
On top of that, he missed the point about WHY Lucius gave in and set his morals aside to help Bruce. Several HUNDRED lives were at stake and the big illegal sonar thingy was LITERALLY the ONLY option available for Bruce to even HOPE to intervene in time to save ANYONE. In a stituation that urgently cut or dried, when they ONLY choice is "Suspend your morals or let hundreds DIE, there IS no choice if you truly are a strong moralled person. Which would you rather have? Several hundred dead people on your conscience, or a little guilt over bending the rules to save them all?
Seriously if you want to make comedy out of a character's supposed bats**ttery, do it with one that can't easily be argued into making complete sense. Also, don't pull a Religious Right and only use Selected bits of something to make your case hoping no one has seen the entire movie. It doesn't sound smart when Peter LaBarbera intentionally misquotes stats about gay sex, it ain't gonna work when a half-assed comedy writer ignored good chunks of the movie's plot to paint a character as a moron hoping to get people to laugh at your (non-existant) clerverness.
Dude, Yoda, you picked out one time where he was wrong, thats about it, theres nothing wrong with him, Gandalf, no, there's not a single thing wrong with what he said about gollum and being hasty to deal out judgement, Miyagi, nothing wrong with what he said, about the medal saying he's lucky, thats just his english for you, all he was saying was that you don't need medals and prices, but only your own heart to tell you you're worth something, morpheus, you just twisted him listing the people living in the matrix into letting neo kill them all, when what he was saying each one of the can potentially have ana gent spawn from them, batman, wont even bother explaining, you clearly don't understand any of those characters.
And you clearly don't understand satire.
Ignore Timothy, HE clearly doesn't understand Satire, which is comedy meant to lampoon glaring flaws in the object of it's affection. As the author of this article clearly has no such grasp of what constitutes a glaring flaw, this article is not so much satire as lazy revisionist crap that creates flaws where none existed by hoping no one reading it ever actually saw the movies mentioned, thus knowing enough about the plots and relevant characters to know he's stretching further than Mister Fantastic's c**k at the Playboy Mansion to get anywhere close to a valid basis for his half-assed attempt at comedy.
Satire is using facts to make a humorous point about a subject. This article extrapolates from bulls**t to make a crappy rant.
Purplecarpet, you have no excuse, you already know about tampons. But the rest of you moron fanbois - read the directions so they don't fall out next time.
Gandalf didn't know that the ring was THE ring. If you read The Hobbit, he was only sus**cious of it, which is why he didn't go "hey bilbo let's destroy this s**t now."
But Gandalf did have a hunch about gollum. Gollum wasn't an evil character, though he wasn't so good either. In the end he made it so Frodo HAD to destroy the ring. If he just killed gollum, then Frodo would run off and be killed just like Isildur.
Besides, not knowing where the ring is doesn't stop Sauron. It may prolong the search but the ring had to be destroyed sooner or later, and it's better sooner or else Sauron's armies would have killed even MORE people.
He didn't know what exactly that ring was? He told the history of it, he sent the Hobbits off to have it destroyed. He knew what the f**k it was.
"Don't f**k with Alfred." I laughed for two whole minutes!
right, i was tearing up
"After all, he spends the finale refuting the Joker's thesis that people are only good when it's convenient... while actively doing something that proves the Joker right."
I think that was the whole 'thesis' of the movie. Why it was called "The Dark Knight' rather than just 'Batman Pwns Joker' or somesuch.
I made an account just to agree with this. At least I think, it's rather late. But the point I'm trying to make is that the whole movie is about how the joker pushes batman to do things morally unethical, which ties in with the "burning the forest down" quote, which, by the way, is most likely metaphorical.
And I'm not even a star wars fan and the "there is no try" makes sense to me.
@hellonell - "Burning the forest down" was metaphorical in this sense, as the way Bruce interpreted it (since he didn't actually, you know, burn down the city)...but you have to wonder about Alfred. I wouldn't put it past him to pull that s**t.
Lesson learned: don't just wholeheatedly trust in a character's goodness because he's played by a famous guy who's in general too old to not get cast as the all knowing mentor. But what you said about Alfred and Lucian doesn't exactly invalidate The Dark Knight, the whole point of that movie was moral gray area.
"No such thing bad student only bad teacher."
B.F. Skinner famously stated: "the organism is always right," which aligns quite nicely with Mr. Miyagi's philosophy. Of course, it is unlikely that all learning comes from one teacher, but if that individual wishes to be effective at teaching he or she must determine if their teaching strategy produces the desired responding. If not, then it is the teacher who must modify the instruction. The student cannot learn under the wrong conditions no matter how hard they try.
Yeah that part of the article is a misunderstanding of psychology. As Skinner's work would show anyone, the teacher can also be ones environment. The article forgot that. Bad environment, bad conditioning, bad person.
I've never seen the movie, but in what way does "I don't lie unless I really have to" not make sense?
Because when you make an arbitrarily defined qualification like that, you make it possible to rationalise any lie, provided it's convenient. Unless you are extremely specific in codifying what is and is not acceptable justification for lying, "when I really have to" can mean the same thing as "whenever the f**k I feel like it."
The only time I ever lie is when the truth is hurtful and damaging to the point it will seriously hurt someone, AND no conceivable good can come of telling it. If only one of those two conditions is met I won't lie even if someone gets hurt. I'm honest to a fault and it gets me in trouble. But if the truth will not make anything better, and the ONLY possible result of it is to cause someone pain that has no positive impact, then the truth is safe to hide.
For example, if I learned that my friend's grandfather was a serial rapist, but both Grandpa and all his victims had been dead for years, none of his victims' offspring new their parents were trauma victims, and my friend had no clue how evil his grampa was, what possible good can come from telling him? Justice for dead people? My friend's image of his grandfather would be forever shattered, and a bunch of other innocent oblivious people are suddenly associating their beloved parents with rape, and not only that but a rape they can't get justice for because the rapist died of old age. Telling the truth in such a situation would have only negative consequences. People would be hurt deeply and permanent emotional scars caused. So in such a drastic case, yes, I would lie rather than cause so much pain without any positive result. Shy of that however, no, I don't lie, so it IS conceivable the "I don't lie unless I HAVE to" CAN be taken literally and not just as an excuse to lie with moral impunity.
@purplecarpet - Nice rationale for why you're the exception to the rule, but nobody gives a s**t.
BWAHAHAHAHA! Look at all the butt-hurt nerds. This is why girls don't like you.
I am a girl, and I'm butt-hurt too.
you're a butt hurt girl huh? wanna hang out?
I'm a girl and I'm only butt-hurt by my wife's strap-on. You however just made a whole bunch of intelligent people laugh AT you for being a pathetic troll whose greatest acheivement will always be saying butthurt nerds on a website. Let that thought simmer for awhile there while your mom is reheating your hot-pockets there Jimmy.
@purple - And you're just making yourself look like more of a butthurt nerd.
You go after Batman and Lord of the Rings, you attack everything the nerds in denial believe in. Happens with ANY article here that says ANYTHING in a negative light about those two films. I want to thank the author for the hilarious comments of anger.
eh, I'm not even a big fan of The Matrix or Karate Kid, but I do feel the author over-simplified/over-analyzed certain quotes that weren't meant to be so literal as they appeared.
There's a difference between making legitimate complaints and spewing out poorly written attacks.
I'm sure that this has been posted before me (fans of The Lord of the Rings can be rather loquacious, to say the least. And I intend to) but Bilbo's fate did rule the fate of many as it was only through Gollum that the Ring was destroyed. No one, not Frodo, not Aragorn, not Elrond, could defy the will of the One Ring if they had it in the seat of its power: the Sammath Naur of Mount Doom. The Ring could only be cast in by accident. That and the fact that Gandalf and Sauron are both Maiar- Gandalf's name being Olorin- meaning that whatever Gandalf has to say about Sauron is right out of personal contact...
I think in much this writer was severely and willfully obtuse. Though funny as Hell.
tahe only good part in matrix is where persephone asked neo to kiss her
...should have asked Trinity *lecherous laugh*....
Pissed a lot of fan boys off with this one. There is, of course, an exhaustive rebuttal to all of these points made (Yoda says what needs to be said, not what is necessarily true, Golom was most certainly necessary for the rings destruction, Miyagi is correct for the most part to earn a MofH you have to be Brave AND Lucky, Regular people can be taken over by the Agents and therefore are all liabilities to Neo's pre "The One" safty, Alfred wasn't ALWAYS a reserved British butter, and it's not as if Fox could has said "Screw you batman I'm gonna destroy your chance to save the lives of, literally, a boat load of people.), But you're way is much funnier.
And you're right...Miyagi is totally a douche.
i think yoda being wrong was the point. He's not evil; he's just so caught up in dogma he can't see another way of looking at the world. In short he just doesn't care
Because Star Wars is all about taking down Buddhism.
Actually, SW's Jedi religion has more in common with Daoism, but that's a different point.
The Gandalf takedown must have inspired one of the comments in this guy's movie-year-in-review: http://www.madeinhead.org/anism/
Wha?
I'm confused.
This comes across as just shameless advertising for some schmuck's site.
I'm fairly certain it would be easier to write an article pointing out everything wrong with what you have just written than try to explain it to you in a comment.
Golem: was the only reason the ring went into the fire at all, his obsesion caused it, since frodo could not find the courage to do it at the end.
There is no try? Are you kidding me you don't get that. As in, you dont get to say " I tried to write a good article" you either did write a good one or you did not. PS: you did not.
I'd go on, but god it's pointless, this would be like trying to explain math to a puppy.
My puppy can do math.
Every day that i forget to feed him, he bites me 10 times. He possibly the only algebraically advanced doggy in the world.
(i don't really have a dog, and if I did, I woudn't forget to feed him)
Nope. That completely misses the point of the arguably fallacious statement. It doesn't matter what the actual result is, it's means and attempt that matter more. "I tried to write a good article" fails on your part of understanding because it assumes Yoda meant "you're didn't try unless you suceed at it"...no.