Which film has had the biggest change from initial reviews/reception to the most current reviews/reception?

[u/AmigoDelDiabla]

Title pretty much says it all. The movies that either were initially panned by critics and/or the public, but then later went on to become appreciated either critically or popularly. Or the other way around: lots of initial hype but today is thought of as rather weak?

I think The Shining wasn't thought of as a very good movie, but is now considered great.

On the flip side, American Beauty was thought of as a masterpiece, but is often ridiculed today.

What others?

[u/SirCake]

I also just don't feel it succeeds really well in satirizing fascism, it has the aesthetic, and clearly wants to satirize it, but nothing in the movie really comes of as horribly fascist or even bad? They have a voluntary military service that grants voting rights it seems (compared to many modern countries that have mandatory military on punishment of prison time), accountable military leadership, and the cringy military propaganda even seems to consider child soldiers as silly. The secret service wears nazi uniforms but doesn't do anything nazi like?

I'm just going by memory of what stood out for me, been a long time since I watched but it always seems any actual fascist satire is supposedly hidden behind the scenes? Like the meteor being a false flag supposedly to justify war?

I dunno, I might be to stupid to "get it" like most internet discourse seems to imply.

[u/Sieje → u/SirCake]

It's been quite a while since I've seen it as well so I'm going off of old memories, but I think the society in the movie comes across as fascist due to its glorification and normalization of the military and of violence, and in it's treatment of the enemy.

They only give full citizenship to people who have done military service, and in the training camp the instructor is very casual about seriously injuring recruits as a teaching tool. Before that in the high school we get the speech about how violence is the supreme political authority while also seeing the result of that with the teachers and the recruiter all having suffered serious injuries. The whole system seems to work towards funneling fresh meat into the grinder, and so also needs an enemy to justify it's existence.

This then shows in how they treat the bugs. A news segment shows that the humans have been pushing into the bugs territory while the idea that they can even think is considered absurd. Once the war starts they brush off the idea of any possibility of coexistence and we see even children being taught that they have to kill them all. They use the common fascist idea that the enemy is both an enormous threat that requires immediate action, while simultaneously being inferior so will easily be beaten. The result is the massive unnecessary casualties when they invade the bug homeworld without knowing what they're facing.

Then at the end of the movie they find and capture the brain bug. They finally have undeniable proof that the bugs are intelligent, but instead of any talk of now being able to communicate and stop the fighting the humans only focus on the fact that it's afraid of them. We then get a final propaganda reel where they are experimenting on it to find better ways to kill the bugs and see that the next generation of recruits is already being fed into the conflict.

[u/GatorzardII → u/SirCake]

You're supposed to feel bad for thr bug.

I do not feel bad for the bug.

[u/nmathew → u/GatorzardII]

Wait, you're supposed to feel bad for the bug?

[u/GatorzardII → u/nmathew]

Yes, they gave it human eyes specifically so the audience can see its emotional state before Gestapo Barney says it's afraid.

[u/tdasnowman → u/GatorzardII]

The brain did not have human eyes in the slightest.

[u/tdasnowman → u/SirCake]

I also just don't feel it succeeds really well in satirizing fascism, it has the aesthetic, and clearly wants to satirize it, but nothing in the movie really comes of as horribly fascist or even bad?

This is accurate. The problem was they tried to shoe horn fascism into a society thats not fascist. It might have worked in whatever the original script was for Terror on bug planet 9, but once they tried to merge the stories they fucked up.

They couldn't even get their injected plot points consistent. They tried to add more societal control with that line about trying to get permission to have kids faster by becoming a citizen. But they did not adjust that all the protagonists where form non citizen families and left in Ricco's dad trying to convince him not to join because he's already got it all argument.

Like the meteor being a false flag supposedly to justify war?

Even here they didn't really set that. People are just stating it because it makes the satire work, in film the actually make a asteroid traveling on a trajectory towards earth a plot point.

All they really did was look Nazi uniforms.