What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

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Great Britain _NT_sven
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What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by _NT_sven »

I have tried bringing up this topic in real life many times, and found the discussion pretty interesting. People give radically different comments, well, curious to know, what's your opinion?

My own is: it's a good movie but not a great one.

1. The good parts are in details. These scenes are impressing: that discussion about "foot massage", Mia and Vincent dancing, the boxer talking with taxi driver, underground raping and killing with that katana, how mr. Wolf handles the situation calmly, etc. These scenes are great in themselves.

2. However, the movie taken as a whole is not great. The story-telling structure is surprising, and very genuine, I agree, but it does not have its due effect. There are just very few correlations between different scenes, except for the beginning and the ending.

For example: When Butch killed Vincent just coming out from bathroom, Vincent can be anyone: there is no necessity that he has to be Vincent, because his identity as a normal gangster suffices for pushing the story ahead. Same for Mia: does she has to be that guy's(forgot name) wife? No need for it, because that guy in three different scenes doesn't have a unified character: throwing people out for nothing, being raped, sending Mr.wolf - that's all he did. But they could be three people as well.

So basically the circular structure does not really help this movie, for the same character in different things is merely an illusion. They can be different people, just that the director didn't choose to do so. A structure which is surprising but not helping anything is still, empty.

3. Given the length of the movie, and still many other insignificant scenes and conversations in the movie, I will say that much time isn't properly used, so I did feel kind of bored at some point when watching it.

4. The environment is not realistic. Everyone just kills people without any real worry for anything like being arrested or avenged (except for Butch but I didn't feel like he was in danger either), and overall no one really has a special individualistic personality. They are all very daring, hippy, humorous, that's it. The only exception is Mr. Wolf, but I do expect more.

Curious to know your opinions, and maybe there can be some fights xD
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Dolan »

Yeah, I think it's overhyped, but you have to see it in the context of the year 1994, when it was the coeval of Forrest Gump, Speed, The Lion King, Dumb and Dumber, Interview with A Vampire, etc.

So, against this backdrop, Pulp Fiction brought some "innovations" in mainstream movies, such as the non-linear timeline structure, which bound together time sequences that were a bit disjointed. It really made the movie feel like it was a collage of timelines that could have happened separately. But the tone of the movie and the way they were combined made it look like they weren't just randomly pieced together, like in some surreal stream of consciousness movie, but the result of a devious and humorous planning.

Of course, this is nothing new, nonlinear timelines have been used in literature for more than a century (eg, Proust, James Joyce) and in movies ever since the 1920s (Buñuel) and later (Godard). So it's more like Tarantino brought it to popular, mainstream movies, rather than inventing it himself.

It made the movie look like it wasn't as much a director's movie as was a viewer's movie, as if someone was both a viewer and a director and was playing with timelines, with a remote in his hand and a screen where different channels played the same movie at different points in time.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Snuden »

6.66/10
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

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Post by Goodspeed »

I have watched this movie so many times and still am thoroughly entertained each time I rewatch it. Its charm, as you mentioned, is mostly in the individual scenes and in the dialogue.

There's not much of a plot, but there isn't supposed to be so it seems unfair to judge the film based on that. There are few "correlations" indeed, but there are enough. It's not connecting scenes for the sake of some overarching plot, it's about the characters. It makes the audience feel more invested in each individual scene when there is a character in it that they already know.

Viewers can be put in 2 camps. There's those who watch mostly for the plot, and those who watch mostly to see characters interact. For the second category, Pulp Fiction is great. For the first, not so much.

3. Given the length of the movie, and still many other insignificant scenes and conversations in the movie, I will say that much time isn't properly used, so I did feel kind of bored at some point when watching it.
This I particularly disagree with. There are no "insignificant" scenes and conversations in the movie. Insignificant to what? The non-existent plot?

4. The environment is not realistic.
The film doesn't take itself very seriously, yes. It's ultimately a comedy, so I don't think it's supposed to.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Laurence Drake »

I want to watch Lady Bird
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Goodspeed »

Same
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Netherland Antilles Laurence Drake
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Laurence Drake »

It doesn't come out here until February wtf
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Goodspeed »

April here. But I'll be in the US end of Jan :hmm:
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Dolan »

Sorry, but saying the plot doesn't matter in a movie is just ignorant.
Everything matters in a movie.

But you can see a movie and understand it on different levels. You can choose to see it like a comedy if you will. Or you can choose to see that there's more to that than just a comedy. Surely you see something more in it than just "Dumb and Dumber", right? :uglylol:
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Kaiserklein »

_NT_sven wrote:2. However, the movie taken as a whole is not great. The story-telling structure is surprising, and very genuine, I agree, but it does not have its due effect. There are just very few correlations between different scenes, except for the beginning and the ending.

I don't see how that's a downside. It's not because most movies have the same (boring?) classic structure that opting for something different is bad. There are just enough correlations to have a story that makes sense. But not too many of them, because then it gives room to imagination. Imo, that's great.
It also means that you actually need to use your brain to understand the movie, it's not like every single thing is explained to you like in a fucking disney movie.


_NT_sven wrote:For example: When Butch killed Vincent just coming out from bathroom, Vincent can be anyone: there is no necessity that he has to be Vincent, because his identity as a normal gangster suffices for pushing the story ahead.

- What fun is it if it's a random guy dying, instead of the character we followed for half the movie?
- At the beginning of the movie, Butch meets Vincent shortly (after he met Marsellus), and they "flame" each other. So Vincent is not a 100% random guy to Butch, there is a small grudge.
- There is a joke all over the movie about Vincent being always in the toilets at the wrong time, when shit happens. First, when Mia does an overdose. Then at Butch's place. And finally, in that restaurant at the end. So again, it makes a lot of sense that it would be Vincent there.

_NT_sven wrote:Same for Mia: does she has to be that guy's(forgot name) wife? No need for it, because that guy in three different scenes doesn't have a unified character: throwing people out for nothing, being raped, sending Mr.wolf - that's all he did. But they could be three people as well.

- At start, they say that Marsellus Wallace (the guy you mean) has thrown someone through a window, just because that guy gave Mia a foot massage. So of course, it makes sense that Vincent has to take care of Mia: it sounds risky (he even says in the toilets he should just go back home and jerk, trying to talk himself into not flirting with Mia, because he's afraid of the consequences), and it also means they could continue the "foot massage" conversation, this time between Mia and Vincent, in that restaurant.
- Of course he has a unified character. Talking to Butch at start, saying that he shouldn't care about pride etc, then fighting with the same Butch later after he ran into him with his car. Then yeah, it's not a main character of the story, so he doesn't do that much. But it's still coherent: he's the boss/associate of Vincent, Jules and Wolf, the husband of Mia, and he's betting on Butch losing his match on purpose.
- Vincent was to take care of Mia because it's Marsellus's wife, and he's working for Marsellus, so again it does make sense.


_NT_sven wrote:So basically the circular structure does not really help this movie, for the same character in different things is merely an illusion. They can be different people, just that the director didn't choose to do so. A structure which is surprising but not helping anything is still, empty.

Like I explained there's a reason why these characetrs are the same all along the story. I'm afraid you just didn't understand why Tarantino wanted it like this when you watched the movie, and then thought it made no sense. But I can't really blame you, it's not the simplest movie out there. You might just want to see it once more, to appreciate it fully :p


_NT_sven wrote:3. Given the length of the movie, and still many other insignificant scenes and conversations in the movie, I will say that much time isn't properly used, so I did feel kind of bored at some point when watching it.

But yeah, properly used for what? The purpose of the movie is mostly the dialogs and the funny situations. So the conversations/scenes aren't insignificant, they're the core of the movie.
Do you have an example of boring parts? I can understand people get bored at some points, it's a weird movie.


_NT_sven wrote:4. The environment is not realistic. Everyone just kills people without any real worry for anything like being arrested or avenged (except for Butch but I didn't feel like he was in danger either)

Of course it's not realistic, it's not supposed to. You're probably not familiar with Tarantino's other movies. Pulp Fiction is not the only movie that isn't realistic, especially when it comes to people killing each other and etc. Tarantino loves to have his characters take a pleasurable bloody revenge on their opponents, for example:
- Butch hitting Marsellus and talking about pride
- Marsellus explaining to Zed that he's gonna suffer in a medieval fashion, after having shot his balls
- Vincent and Jules shooting an exaggerated amount of times to the guys at the start in that flat
- Butch killing Vincent in his toilets
Also in Django Unchained, the whole movie is about punishing the slaves owners. In Inglourious Basterds, it's the same with nazis. In the Hateful Eight, well I don't wanna spoil, but they're really happy to hang someone too. Etc, etc.

Tarantino doesn't want to bother with stuff he's not interested in. This movie isn't about the police trying to catch the gangsters, so he doesn't care, and you probably shouldn't either.

_NT_sven wrote:overall no one really has a special individualistic personality. They are all very daring, hippy, humorous, that's it. The only exception is Mr. Wolf, but I do expect more.

Butch and Marsellus aren't. I don't think you can say the characters are all alike, imo they're really different. The only thing is that there isn't really "good" and "bad" guys. Everyone is somewhere between, and that's one common point between all these characters. But if anything, it makes it more interesting than manichean movies imo.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Kaiserklein »

Dolan wrote:Sorry, but saying the plot doesn't matter in a movie is just ignorant.
Everything matters in a movie.

Then consider that in this movie, the non-existence of the plot is what matters. It's on purpose, and the whole movie is turning around that.
And yea I know the plot isn't 100% non-existent. There is still a plot. But it's really not the center of the movie.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Goodspeed »

@Dolan
:huh: What was that post?
The plot matters, it's just not why you go see Pulp Fiction. There are multiple smaller plots going on, so if you're watching and waiting for all of the stories to come together and turn out relevant to some single overarching plot you're going to be disappointed. Point is the OP was pointing this out as criticism of the movie which I don't think is valid.

And yes, obviously when 2 movies are of the same basic genre that means there is exactly the same amount of depth in them. ??
What is Pulp Fiction if not comedy?
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Dolan »

The key to every Tarantino movie is that he makes meta-films. All his movies are made from other movies. It's just a bunch of collages and reinterpretations of classic spaghetti westerns, classic Japanese samurai movies, some Hitchcocks and so on.

Some Tarantino movies are actually downright plagiarism, such as Kill Bill:

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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Dolan »

Tarantino is a viewer-director, he makes movies as remixes of older movies. He DJs and freestyles based on shit that has been made before.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Dolan »

Or maybe the term meta-film is not the most precise here. What Tarantino thinks he does is po-mo pastiche. Post-modern non-linear narrative, with a plurality of plots that are broken like a shattered piece of glass and which makes viewers confused about what is the logic that binds the narrative shards together.

It's made like this on purpose. Which doesn't mean that there isn't a plot or that it's less important. It just means he wants you to be confused about the plot. He thinks he's smaht Image, pomo, and whatnot.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Goodspeed »

Dolan wrote:Or maybe the term meta-film is not the most precise here. What Tarantino thinks he does is po-mo pastiche. Post-modern non-linear narrative, with a plurality of plots that are broken like a shattered piece of glass and which makes viewers confused about what is the logic that binds the narrative shards together.

It's made like this on purpose. Which doesn't mean that there isn't a plot or that it's less important.
We don't disagree. I just disagree with the OP's criticism about the plot. He looks at it as one story, or wants to, but there are multiple. The link is through the characters and the characters alone, which is why I pointed out the distinction between a viewer who watches for the plot and one who watches to see characters interact. That doesn't mean there is no plot, just not an overarching one. It's not all B&W.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by Goodspeed »

And hey, if the result is a highly entertaining movie I don't really care what the guy thinks of himself or of his intentionally confusing and supposedly very sophisticated plot. Maybe you should try and judge the movie for what it is, not for who made it and with what intention.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

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It's a good movie.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by InsectPoison »

It's a good movie but it the plot doesn't make any sense, i guess thats why its great.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by lemmings121 »

I have almost the same opinion @_NT_sven there are a bunch or great scenes, but the film is just "ok". Its a good movie, but its more of a collage of good scenes.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by gibson »

I don't think it's a good movie. I found it rather boring and very forced.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by gh0st »

okay-ish movie with a bunch of decent scenes. Felt quite overrated.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by deleted_user »

You know what was overrated? Shawshank Redemption.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

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Overrated.
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Re: What's your opinion on Pulp Fiction

Post by oats13 »

I can recall people debating in earnest which was the more postmodern film, American Beauty or The Matrix but Pulp Fiction had beaten them to the punch in a mainstream format by several years, except that it hadn't,really.

If you want high and low brow in the same box with no regard for conventional structure go read Cities of the Red Night by Burroughs.............. Tarantino used the template to frame some set pieces, black comedy and wise-guy shtick- 'you know what we got here George'- 'Whadda we got?'- 'we got some snappy dialogue'etc.

Generally entertaining and with some great use of music IMO. 7/10
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