Confusing words 1

 

I don’t like Indiana Jones movies. They’re too fantastic.

 

How can you not like something that is fantastic?

 

And it would be strange call something ‘too fantastic’. Nothing wrong grammatically, but this particular preposition and adjective do not collocate. Fantastic (with the meaning ‘very good’) as an adjective collocates with really, truly, absolutely, just, quite.

 

I think what our speaker means is that THE Indiana Jones movies (note the adding of the definite article the, to make it clear that we are referring to a series of films featuring the character, and NOT an actor called Indiana Jones. Compare: I love the James Bond movies (the character) but I don’t like Adam Sandler movies (the various films this actor makes; but this does not necessarily mean the actor is disliked in anything else, just the movies).

 

Personally I quite like the Indiana Jones movies, but they do go into areas where the things that happen are often the kinds of things that can only be in our imaginations, or in our fantasies. So maybe our speaker believes that Indiana Jones is too much like fantasy…

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