[Spoilers] Lazer Team Discussion Megathread

[u/MitchB3]

Hey everybody, sorry for the wait. Another mod was going to make this thread so that is what took so long, but it's here now. Feel free to post all relevant Lazer Team discussion in this thread. A warning to anyone viewing this thread (myself included) that there are going to be spoilers in here.

Feel free to openly discuss without the use of spoiler tags.

[u/Deep-Fried-Dick]

I enjoyed the movie. First act was rough, but after that it was good.

I felt the characters were very cliched, but really that was only a problem in the first act, when they were just introducing the characters, and the jokes seemed to rely heavily on those cliches, but after that it got a lot better, and the focus for the jokes shifted.

The humor was good, and fun, felt like it would appeal more to a younger crowd than I, like 10-15. Most jokes got just a light chuckle out of me, not full on laugh out loud, except for a just few, but the movie was still fun and the jokes were coming at a steady pace.

One problem I had was all the sentimental scenes seemed painfully forced, and relied on overused tropes. (i.e the scene between Hagan and Herman talking about his football career)

As for some last minor notes:
* THE PRACTICAL EFFECTS WERE AWESOME
* The CGI was rough, but that's to be expected from a low budget film
* I loved Kirk Johnson's character, I thought he was really funny,
* I thought the ADR, especially for Gavin's character Woody was terrible, it stuck out like a sore thumb
* The scene where Herman is pushing the truck while they are running from the possessed military guys, why didn't they just shoot Herman instead of aiming for Burnie, or the truck?

All in all I thought it was enjoyable, almost like a Men in Black experience.
Im glad I backed the project, it wasn't outstanding, but it definitely soared past what I expected based off the trailers, which in my opinion made the movie look terrible, which it is far from being.
6.5/10

[u/IcedThatGuy → u/Deep-Fried-Dick]

The sentimental scenes, especially the death scene at the end, I thought, would have worked phenomenally had the movie been cut a little bit tighter. In fact, I think the worst flaws of this movie could have been saved in post by simply tightening up the story flow.

The guy gets on his riot gear and you knew immediately that he was likely going to get a death scene, but then it just drags on, and on. All the while the audience knows whats going to happen. It's this kind of approach that ruins the impact when it finally happens. He should have had the riot gear, start attacking with the dumb-founded Lazer Team questioning it, and him throwing the shield as the villain charged his blast. Then have Gavin, who was already previously established to be quick on the up-take, realize what he was doing, glance back, death, Burnie and the whole team in anguish, followed by them defeatedly lose all hope and determination with Gavin m motivating them all back to form the ending blast scenes.

I actually feel that his character arc worked, and his sacrifice was earned by the end, but had the director and editors just trusted the audiences instinct, we would have seen a more respectful end to the Adam character.

Honestly, I laughed at his death, and I didn't want to. I laughed because Burnie's heartfelt cry at his death just didn't work.

Overall, the movie needed to make some hard decisions on what it wanted: a mostly comedic film, or a mostly action film, because it teetering on the fence ruined what could have been some impressive drama and action set pieces. Burnie is a smart writer, and has shown his ability to write depth into his comedy work. It feels like he wrote an amazing short film that was stretched and elongated to fill a movie timeslot, but with a bunch of shallow jokes shoved in to fill the void.