1,526 Reply by Dorkman

(19 replies, posted in Off Topic)

downinfront wrote:

I've never had a problem with the FX accomplishments in the film. Whatever I said when I was drunk at 3 a.m. notwithstanding, my first impression was that the story was an awful mess and most of the visuals were awesome.

Well, my response at 3 a.m. was to the comments you made at 3 a.m. You can't discount what you said while simultaneously making a thing of what I said. If you misspoke, then okay -- let's strike both your statement and my response from the record and start over.

downinfront wrote:

Not to get into a semantics argument, but I wouldn't classify the statement you're quoting as one that includes visual effects. Filmmaking as an abstract is storytelling, in my mental dictionary.

I suppose that I could see the validity of this notion in theory. After all, the choices in lighting, production design, shot choices, and indeed the use of CG, etc, are all (or at least should be) in the service of the story.

However, even granting you that "filmmaking" and "storytelling" are interchangeable terms, I still don't think that it's a "failure...on every conceivable level." The CG was good. The cinematography was good. The production design was good. I can "conceive" of a lot of other ways that it was a fine film, and therefore -- according to our new definition of "filmmaking = storytelling" -- a successfully told story in a number of ways. It just had superficial characterization and a cookie-cutter plot, and again, that's more a disappointment than an abject failure, IMO.

We've been over this, but I had fun with 2012. I don't think it's an excellent movie, and I recall more than a few moments of bad science, but I was actually more involved with the plights of those characters than of the folk in Avatar.

You're free to try to explain how 2012 was more coherent and/or less predictable than AVATAR, which as I've noticed seem to be your complaints. If you hadn't gone into 2012 with the mindset of "This is a ~3 hour ridefilm" -- or if you had gone into AVATAR with that mindset -- I wonder if you'd be rating them in the same fashion.

Me, I try to judge movies based on more-or-less the same criteria, and I can think of no set of criteria in which 2012 comes out ahead of AVATAR. For god's sake, they used a 360-degree shutter. Talk about failure on every level.

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1,527 Topic by Dorkman

(9 replies, posted in Episodes)

Hey guys, it's Dorkman.

As you'll hear, of the four regulars on the show this week, I have the strongest emotional connection to this particular film, so it's fitting that I should start the thread about it.

I know I said I'd put this in the blog, but I lied. I'm putting it here.

Here's the first of the fly-on-the-wall, behind-the-scenes videos about the making of GHOSTBUSTERS 2 -- or, more specifically, the creation of the movie's major ghost elements. You can find the rest of them via "Related Videos," or under the other "ForscheDesign" uploaded videos.

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1,528 Reply by Dorkman

(19 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Uh, no. Your exact wording was that it was a "failure of filmmaking on every conceivable level," which is so stunningly indefensible I'm surprised I was able to form words in response. The only reason we're agreeing now is because you've altered your position to encompass only the storytelling.

I think it's perfectly solid filmmaking and, as I've said on several occasions including in this thread, the film I saw in theatres before AVATAR was 2012. You want inept storytelling? 2012 is the jackpot, and it's almost as long as AVATAR to boot.

AVATAR isn't inept, and I wouldn't even say it's a failure, it just isn't particularly clever or original. Which might not be so bad, really, except that when the production itself is so innovative, the lack of innovation on the page just leaps out even more by contrast.

Disappointment I could go with, but not failure.

By the way, in the VFXShow episode on AVATAR, David Stripinis was on and expressed his disappointment that a lot of the character stuff had been cut out to trim the runtime, which is just as I suspected. It's not the first time Cameron made the wrong cut for the theatrical version (see also: The Abyss). I really hope that we get an extended edition with all of that stuff back in, and that this assuages my complaints with the stiffness of the storytelling.

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1,529 Reply by Dorkman

(19 replies, posted in Off Topic)

I'm not sure you and I operate under exactly the same definition of "exploitation film." That aside...

I honestly don't think I ever saw Cameron say "Movies will never be the same." What I have seen is "Movies will never be made the same way," which is almost certainly true based on the production process. In addition, the film has broken through the "photoreal CG characters usually look like zombie puppets" barrier and for better or worse, there's no going back. This barrier had been breached previously by Gollum and Davy Jones (two examples he freely cites as being the reasons he felt the time had come to make this film), but now the line between live action and animated films has been erased, for those filmmakers so inclined to straddle that line.

To be fair, Cameron hasn't been brewing this story in his head for ten years. By his own account, he wrote the story 14 years ago, and by his own admission, he did it as essentially an excuse to push the visual envelope -- he owned Digital Domain at the time, and wanted to make them sweat and take a big leap forward. They were scared of it and he put it in a drawer, and by his account forgot all about it.

About 4 years ago, he dusted it off and started shooting it about a year later, after spending $10 million on R&D and art department.

The idea that this is the magnum opus that he's spent over a decade crafting is a misconception that he has done his part to dispel, but you know enough metaphors about rumors that I don't need to put one.

This movie's story will not blow your mind. Within the first 20 minutes Cameron has given you all the pieces and anyone who's watched any other movie in his life will know how they fit together. But the story is competently told if somewhat rushed, the visuals are astonishing, and this movie will go down in movie history, if not as a film that "started it all," then certainly as a significant milestone.

I mean, how much does a modern viewer actually know about the story of THE JAZZ SINGER? And yet what would any of us give to be able to go back and be there the first time a picture talked?

I hear a lot of complaints about the marketing, which I simply don't understand. What are they supposed to say? "This movie's a derivative turd and you probably shouldn't bother"? That'll really get the butts in seats! Marketing hypes movies. That's why it exists. And as far as it goes, I've seen very little marketing for this film up until this week -- and with the release looming of course they're on a blitz.

There are more billboards for DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? than for AVATAR, and we're talking in Hollywood. I've seen way more advertising for NEW MOON than I have for this film, and NEW MOON came out weeks ago.

Even if the marketing were totally obnoxious (and to be fair, I don't watch TV or listen to the radio so it might be saturating those markets for all I know), that's a completely separate beast from the film itself. I think you'd come to regret not seeing this film in theatres in its first run, with a fresh audience if at all possible, and you might as well catch in in 3D while you're at it. I didn't love it, but I liked it quite a lot, and that's frankly more than I can say for the other big FX movies in recent years (2012, for example, was so awful it literally made me lose the will to live for about 24 hours).

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1,530 Reply by Dorkman

(1 replies, posted in Off Topic)

We love to get suggestions on future movies -- it reminds us of films we may have forgotten and, if we hear a title enough times, it becomes clear what our listeners want to hear.

In the future, you can add your suggestions to the thread-in-progress here, which was previously titled less-than-clearly and which has been adjusted to be easier to find. Having the recommendations all in one place makes it easier to track which ones are popular.

Thanks!

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1,531 Reply by Dorkman

(12 replies, posted in Episodes)

Had this been the version that went into production post-Matrix, Shia would not yet have been on the map as a franchise hook, and would have been too young anyway.

(And I like Shia!)

I've occasionally had vague notions of how I might do one-off versions of movies (like Super Mario Bros.), but mostly I'm big on getting the sequel right once you've got the first one out there.

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1,532 Reply by Dorkman

(12 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Deamon wrote:

1] Unknown Vader

So with that in mind why should it be a mystery for who Vader is? What does this mean?

It means that Vader revealing that he is Anakin Skywalker in Empire still has the effect of being a powerful shock, rather than being a moment where the audience goes "Duh, I knew that five movies ago."

Deamon wrote:

The idea that its Anakin's story arc is a great one. I truly feel the central theme of watching someone who should be a great hero fall is a strong classical mythology thread. So why hide that?

I'm not hiding that. We see someone who could have been a great hero, falls under the influence of evil and is destroyed. It's just that as of movie 3 we think he died, and as of movie 5 we discover that he has in fact suffered a fate worse than death, but can still perhaps be redeemed. It adds more dramatic effect by changing the audience's assumptions and perceptions turn by turn. If you know Vader is Anakin then "A New Hope" is essentially a waste of time.

Deamon wrote:

But as much as the original trilogy is about the choices that Luke makes to overcome himself we need to see Anakin’s wrong choices and how they would run parallel for a while.

I agree. And I think we get that.

Deamon wrote:

This for me must also end only one way. Which would be the only reason to put in that he’s so mechanically inclined is that HE builds the suit!

I don't see there being any thematic value in that and it's been well-known since ROTJ (and hinted at in ESB) that the suit is a life-support system. What, he's going to cut out his lungs a la Davy Jones and hop in the suit as a rite of passage? Come on. 

Deamon wrote:

2] madalorians as a unknown outside threat.

The taxation of trade routes thing was terrible to start this but the vibe has always been that the clone wars was more a civil war then an us vs. them war.

The only thing we knew about the Clone Wars until the prequels happened was that there was something called the Clone Wars about a generation before ANH.

You think the ideas in the official prequels were good but the execution wasn't; I disagree. The themes and structure were, in my opinion, fundamentally flawed and in some cases ass-backwards ("ATTACK OF THE CLONES," for example, is a title basically meaning "ATTACK OF THE GOOD GUYS"), hence the impulse to do my own versions and toss out what's there almost entirely, rather than trying to simply revise them.

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1,533 Reply by Dorkman

(12 replies, posted in Off Topic)

Right, the first time we see "Darth Vader" he's another person distinct from Anakin.

Having written these treatments and knowing that's where it's going, if I were then to write scripts I would probably establish the character who will later become Darth Vader waaaaaay back at the beginning of PHANTOM MENACE -- the first time we see Obi-Wan he'll be sparring with the dude, maybe. And then we'll see him here and there, but he'd leave the Temple for ideological reasons somewhere in the middle of CLONES. It wouldn't be a big thing that the films focused on, just something that was happening in the background and you'd only realize the significance on a second view-through of the series.

I'd have the luxury of creating deeper levels of set-up and pay-off because, unlike Lucas, I wouldn't be making this crap up as I went along -- I'd actually have a plan.

And yes, it's depressing. You see where I'm coming from. All I can do is hope that if I ever create a series half as beloved as Star Wars, I don't blow the storytelling opportunities like he did.

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1,534 Reply by Dorkman

(12 replies, posted in Off Topic)

In the context of the series, the idea is that you can't tell at the end of SITH whether Anakin or Vader is taken out of the lava. When he is put into The Suit (meaning what we consider the Darth Vader suit), he identifies himself to Palpatine as Darth Vader, and that is how the name and the suit come to be associated.

What a first-time viewer watching sequentially would then discover in Empire, is that it's actually Anakin in the suit. It would be up for interpretation as to what motivated Anakin to do so -- most likely a desire to leave his former self, his "weaker" self, behind. In fact I'd probably throw a line about taking on a "Darth" title and leaving your old life behind somewhere in the big confrontation at the end of CLONES, just to make it resonate a little more.

(In Jedi, Palpatine has clearly known the truth the entire time, but I think it's within his character to play along -- as long as Vader does his bidding, he doesn't really care what he used to call himself.)

If your first exposure to the films is 4,5,6,1,2,3, then you'd know who is in the Vader suit at the end of SITH -- as you do with the current prequels. But, if you watched them 1-6 sequentially, the big shock of Vader's true identity would remain intact, which is something the current prequels don't accomplish.

Wanting to find a way to preserve that is, in fact, what initially compelled me to develop the alternate storyline.

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1,535 Reply by Dorkman

(2,061 replies, posted in Episodes)

I like Hellboy 1 well enough. Not so much HB2. So that'll make things interesting.

And we should definitely intersperse them with Pan's Labyrinth, which was the turning point in GDT's style, and which I hate so much I'm practically choking on my tongue just from mentioning it here.

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