Friends In Your Discord!

2017-04-07 12:59:08

Alex wrote:

I was going to say the same thing. I totally agree with avatar's post, except for the Game of Thrones part. Good lord I hate that shit. I tried for, like, 5 seasons, and eventually had to admit that it's just The Walking Dead with ice walkers that don't do anything instead of walkers that don't do anything, and the occasional boob/penis.

I've not seen Walking Dead as of now, but as I understand it it's primarily about the zombies and is an ongoing series - so if the zombies there "don't do anything" it's clear why that would appear as if the show was treading water.

GoT isn't just about the ice zombies, however - its first several seasons were primarily about the wars and political conflicts between humans, and various travel adventures on the side (some which encountered supernatural things that had nothing to do with the Walkers); the "ice walkers" were set up as a looming threat that gradually and slowly built over 6 seasons.

It's a story that's designed with a beginning, middle and end, and now that the "3rd act" is about to begin, they're probably gonna start doing a lot of things in S7 if the leaks are to be believed.
They pretty much destroyed the Wildlings in S5, destroyed the Children sanctuary in S6 so you know where they're heading next

2017-02-19 13:41:50

Some of the assertions he makes can't always be verified.

2017-02-17 17:58:30

avatar wrote:

Thanks for the tip. Bought the book and am reading David Brin's accusation now - that Star Wars is more backward-looking medieval fantasy, rather than science fiction. He doesn't go for all this Princess, Queen, chosen one, destiny, prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the force, stuff. He likes meritocratic storylines where common people collaborate and solve their own problems without the legitimacy of birthright, aristocracies, predestination messiahs, etc.

Usurper; blood right

On a serious note though, I thought aside from those odd few, confused commie comments that are immediately followed up with other interviewees supporting artistic freedom, I thought this documentary was pretty swell and the opinions voiced pretty reasonable I think.

Sure it had a tendency towards fluff, and yes the "we still love you George" ending was indeed milquetoast, but overall it was quite decent - even all the Jar Jar comments, they weren't really bitching and whining as much as kind of analyzing and explaining what they didn't like about that sort of humor, and some other aspects of these movies.

I don't think Lucas could really point towards this documentary as a demonstration of how irrational his critics are, unless he cherrypicked those few stupid remarks - he'd have a much easier time with RLM or Confused Matthew if he wanted to do something like that;

with that said, Lucas is a highly unreasonable party himself and lacks credibility, so it probably doesn't matter too much either way.

2017-02-17 17:26:07

DarthPraxus wrote:

The jump from that outing to this one is comparable to the difference between Mad Max and The Road Warrior. This movie is a perfect example of a sequel taking the foundation laid by its predecessor and building upon it in the best possible ways.

I've not watched any of the John Wicks yet, but I don't see how that description applies to Road Warrior though - it's a completely different movie compared to Mad Max, in premise, tone, style and pretty much everything else; even Max' personality is entirely different.

There's a loose continuity connecting the two, but they're essentially two standalones with entirely different high concepts; I guess the biker villains are somewhat similar.

(The fight scenes here just further cemented in my mind what's wrong with the Star Wars prequels' approach to action—there's superhuman finesse and beauty to the violence in this film, but every punch is tangible and every bullet fired carries immense weight, thanks in no small part to the ear-splitting sound mixing.)

Like it/they did in ANH and Empire wink

Anyway this isn't a discussion thread from the looks of it and I've not seen the new movies, so who knows really..

2017-02-16 00:11:09

"They guard all the doors, they hold all the keys - which means sooner or later, someone will have to face them."
"Someone."

People always talk about how "at the end of M1, Neo becomes God, and then the sequel nerfs that again" - but what's rarely brought up is the way the M1 ending itself kinda goes against what the above exchange had set up.

Where did that whole "go out there and show people impossible things" come from, all of a sudden? The previous One didn't do that, did he - and earlier, Morpheus was talking about Neo having to fight through the Agents to get access somewhere, to presumably put a dent in the system or something.

All Reloaded really did, was retcon that odd and sudden ending that didn't match the preceding movie anyway, and instead pick up that earlier "keys and doors" concept again - albeit in an altered form, because now it's something the rebels apparently hadn't been aware of and is revealed to them by the Oracle and all the newly introduced rogue programs.

A good way to bridge the two, would have been Neo failing to get anything useful out of the agents the way Morpheus had thought (maybe the system reacted and stripped them of their access codes or something - or it turned out to be false info in the first place etc.); and then, as they learn the robot army is coming to kill them, Seraph, the Keymaker etc. start appearing and reveal all those additional hidden areas, the Merovingian's underworld network etc.

So yea, Reloaded isn't "the wrong sequel" anywhere to the extent it's often claimed - in fact, ignoring the original's problematic ending scene is the "wrongest" thing it does, in a way.

2017-02-15 23:31:32

Thought I'd say two things here:

Point 1

Trey wrote:

Which was the set up for the best scene in the original movie: when Neo and co. are in the Matrix and Cypher is on the ship with the power to kill them all with the flick of a switch - and Neo is utterly powerless to stop him.

Yes, but that scene ended with Cypher tempting "fate" to intervene - and then Tank turned out to have survived and fried him to death.

And then during the "heist" in Reloaded, a bridge screw gets loose, Final Destination style, which causes the Saw guy to fall to his death, and cause said bridge to impale the Vigilant's operator shortly before that ship gets blown up.

This seems to imply that had the two survived until the explosion, they might've alarmed the Neb crew in time for them to abort the operation - instead, Link and Trinity are too late to warn them, which causes Trinity to go into the Matrix and thus fulfill Neo's dream sequence.

Even if it doesn't imply that (which would be a flaw in the scriptwriting, I suppose), the way it's shot and presented still conveys rather strongly that the "loose screw" isn't just a random accident and there's a significance to everything that's happening.

So these 2 moments in M1 and Reloaded already set up the possibility of "magic in real world" - Neo's superpowers don't entirely come out of nowhere.

On the other hand of course, this set-up is one of the several things that get dropped by Revolutions - so it's not resolved at any point.

Point 2
So has anyone else noticed the close similarity between the last 2/3rds of Revolutions (i.e. minus the Jabba part), and Return of the King?

If you want to get the most out of this movie, here's a recommendation: start watching it somewhere into the 2nd act (Neo in the subway station right before he gets freed; the Oracle scene; or maybe after Smith takes over the Oracle and it cuts to Bane, just somewhere in that general area), and pretend like you haven't seen anything that's come before:
you just turned on the TV, and are naturally led to assume that the "Matrix trilogy" is some kind of LOTR rip-off redressed in a cyberpunk setting and you're watching the climactic 3rd chapter of it.

It... holds up surprisingly well. In fact, when you consider how LOTR tends to be universally praised in the same breath as M3 is "panned", it's baffling how small the difference in quality is: some small pacing/plotting issues, the Kid opens the gate pretentiously etc., but other than that it's almost as good.

2016-10-22 00:02:03

Focused way too much on the trees (i.e. different separate talking points), I kind of ended up missing the forest:
these reviews can be disqualified with only a few quotes, and (almost?) no commentary.

<RLM, EpII, Number 2: The audience is expected to accept too many things that we are and are not told> wrote:

So this movie – like the last one – still doesn’t have a main character. Instead now it’s got two:
Anakin and Obi-Wan. And I’m still not sure which one we’re supposed to relate to - I would think people could relate more to Obi-Wan cause he’s basically a good guy who doesn’t murder people? But at the same time he’s also very distant cause he’s like a weird monk without any personality. So take your pick, idiots

<RLM, EpII, Number 4: Love and Marriage> wrote:

Now all joking aside, why aren’t the Jedis allowed to love?
Cause we’re told they’re not allowed to, but it’s never really explained. Does anyone get like a creepy vibe from these movies? I guess it’s got something to do with, like, purging emotions to avoid being tempted by the Dark Side right?
But Obi-Wan you know, he smiles, he laughs, he gets annoyed, he enjoys a good sarcastic quip, sometimes he gets really, really pissed off:
“You will be expelled from the Jedi Order!”
So, so love leads to the Dark Side, but getting fucking pissed doesn’t?
“Come to your senses!"
I mean the Jedis aren’t supposed to be Vulcans right? Even Vulcans took wives and had sex.
So really the only thing that made Obi-Wan different from like a normal person, was that he didn’t express any interest in chicks.
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d got my message.”
[...]
So then Amidalan finally sees Anakin again, and for no reason she’s not allowed to love either.
“We can't. It’s… just not possible.”
What the fuck? She’s just a senator, why can’t she fucking date a guy? For Christ’s sake.
[...], men don’t love women, Mace is unmarried, Palpatine don’t got a wife - in fact the only person in the Galaxy who’s married is Jimmy Smits. Why is he in this movie? They should’ve just put Paul Blart Mall Cop in the movie - I mean, why not?
Look, I’ve been through a divorce too (), and I had some pretty bad relationships (), but really this is getting kinda creepy don’t you think?
“They do… decide to… give in to their emotions, and… ultimately they will suffer all the consequences of that.”
And you don’t gotta be a sex therapist to realize what this represents [Sarlacc Pit]...
Now you can see why people hate these fucking movies - cause the people in them act like weird space aliens and not people. Now technically they are weird space aliens, but we can’t relate to their fucking weird, sterile, sexless universe. They seem as cold and lifeless and boring as the computer generated world they’re projected against. Simple, real, genuine moments like this: [Han, Luke and Leia embracing], have been replaced by this: [Neimoidians get shot at]

Main characters, their personalities and their emotions are one of RLM's most central talking points - yet they can't describe Obiwan in EpII without contradicting themselves at every step of the way:
-Is he a distant monk without any personality, or does he snark, laugh and fume his way through the movie?
-Is he a normal person who's celibate, or a weird space alien and not people?
-Are his anger and sarcastic quips the closest this movie gets to having "genuine human moments", or is it Nute Gunray making comical noises while dodging blasters?

Interestingly enough, there is a pattern to this:

He remembers Obiwan's expressions, emotions, personality traits etc. whenever it's in the service of criticizing the supposed "plot hole contradiction" between his emotionality and the Jedi's supposed anti-emotion clause (which actually has never been established or hinted at*).

But as soon as it comes to making more general statements about "relatable protagonists" and how this is "essential to storytelling", all of this suddenly stops existing - for obvious reasons.

And this makes RLM inherently unreliable when making any statements about "characters" - case in point, let's revisit this famous section:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxKtZmQgxrI#t=480

Upon rewatching it recently, I realized that I had essentially wasted my time "refuting" what those guys are saying - the accompanying visuals on the right side of the screen already do that job:
They're struggling to describe Quigon as anything other than "beard, stern and stoic", yet every single image completely flies in the face of that.

Without context, this could be interpreted as "it wasn't memorable enough, hence why these people don't remember it even though it evidently exists" - however, given how disorganized and reality-divorced Mike's own thought process can be (as seen in the ^^Clones excerpts^^), it's entirely plausible that he thought the images actually supported and corroborated the crew's descriptions.

Different example, same pattern:

<RLM, EpIII, Number 14: I’m Done> wrote:

So I don’t know if there’s anything more to say about “Revenge of the Sith”, or the other Star Wars prequels. Sure, you can pick them all apart on the technical failings, the plot inconsistencies, and the lousy dialogue, but generally speaking they failed to connect with people, and that was the main problem.
It felt like someone came along [George entering the studio] and sucked all the excitement and emotion out of Star Wars, and then they left it in this vacuum of dull, sterile, boringness.

<RLM, EpIII, Number 2: Number 2: Here we go again… / 5. No stupid ass retarded love story.> wrote:

This film is filled with hate, revenge, choking, murder, betrayal, sadness, more murder, more choking, worrying, more murder, death, and so on. Hey anyone still wanna use the excuse that these movies are made for little children? I offer it now as the time for you to bring that up.
Lucas goes full on adult audience here giving us the very first Star Wars film that’s rated PG-13.
So why does this have to be so dark? I mean did we really need this in a Star Wars movie? [Anakin draws his saber on the kids]
Okay so Darth Vader was a bad guy, sure, but did he have to be a violent murderer?

<RLM, EpIII, Number 7: Is Everyone Blind AND Stupid? / Just how stupid is Yoda?> wrote:

Anyway when Anakin is raging with frustration and worry about Padme’s inexplicable impending murder by pregnancy, Yoda can’t tell that Anakin is:
1. Hiding something really big.
2. Is madly in love with hot pants Padme.
3. Is just teeming with irritation and frustration at the Jedi and at every aspect of his life.
I guess the Dark Side clouds everything, but by just looking at the guy I could tell all sorts of things are wrong, and I'm no psychologist - in fact I threw my last psychologist out a window for asking [...]
So how stupid is Yoda? The guy is like sweating, and he looks evil, and-

Insightful.

__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________

So with that basis established:

ShadowDuelist wrote:

The only emotions displayed by Obi-Wan in this movie are confusion and annoyance.

<RLM, EpII, Number 4: Love and Marriage> wrote:

But Obi-Wan you know, he smiles, he laughs, he gets annoyed, he enjoys a good sarcastic quip, sometimes he gets really, really pissed off:

"Confusion" seems to come up quite a lot:

<RLM, EpIII, Number 7: Is Everyone Blind AND Stupid? / Just how stupid is Yoda?> wrote:

So Yoda might be a powerful Jedi, but wise he is not. [...] Besides always having a look of utter confusion on his face about everything all the time,

Once again, this is accompanied by a series of images, of which not a single one supports the claim in the audio:

First shot: He's preparing to fight Sidious, looking angry and determined.
Second shot: They've just discovered the dead kids and he's realized they've been stabbed by a Jedi - so, fittingly one would think, his face channels grief, sadness, mournfulness, and possibly a hint of shock or disbelief upon said realization.

The next 2 shots are rather representative of his general demeanor throughout this movie (and the second one as well): worry, concern, suspicion, contemplation, grimness.
Entirely consistent with a "wise master" character - "confusion", especially "utter" confusion, would, on the other hand, make him look stupid, and hence inconsistent with a wise master character. Now why would Plinkett say that?

The final shot is him in that Anakin scene, looking I guess "wise and zen".

One amusing aspect of this is that, while the examples in the middle don't require utter insanity to mistake for "confusion", just extreme tone-deafness (both confusion and wariness/suspicion involve "uncertainty", and furrowed eyebrows), the first two and the last example kind of do - what we're talking about here, is a complete lack of discernment.

He does the same thing in the KotSC review: claims Ford looks like a "confused grandpa" in his reveal shot, even though he actually looks pissed off and grumpy; mainly pissed off.

ShadowDuelist wrote:

The only emotions displayed by Obi-Wan in this movie are confusion and annoyance.

He shows "confusion" in one or two moments: for example when he says "Master who?" or "the- the army?" - but even the second example is already a lot more (layered) than simply confusion: he's lost and confused, but is also trying, and barely managing to save appearances.

This is a pattern throughout his 1st 2 scenes with the grey aliens - however, comedic fish-out-of-water confusion stops being a thing once he starts probing Jango Fett with his gaze.
Earlier in the bar when looking for the assassin, there wasn't a hint of confusion either - some "annoyance", sure, but mostly he was on alert.

So those few bits aside, the emotions/expressions he shows throughout this mystery plot, are things like curiosity, worry, concern, doubt and uncertainty - which all seem quite fitting considering he's in the process of uncovering a worrisome shadowy conspiracy plot while receiving questionable pieces of information which he doubts and is uncertain about.

He goes about his quest like it's just another job and his reaction to even the clone army is basically "well that's fucking weird, moving on."

Well, what he "moved on to" was to report this clone army to Mace and Yoda - which part of that scene (i.e. the one where he's yelling in the rain) sounds like professional indifference to you?

His whole story has no emotion to it

And just like Plinkett, you go from "he shows this and this emotion" to "no emotion to it".

and just happens to show up at places that move the plot along while doing something mostly unrelated.

Wait.... where is he doing things that are "unrelated" to anything?

And how is following clues that lead to places = "just happening to show up at places"?
And when the plot is him going on a quest of discovery and chasing clues, is "moving the plot along" really a sensible way to describe him... doing exactly that?

ShadowDuelist wrote:

El Nameaux-Standardon wrote:
That's the least important part, though - what matters is the meat of the conversation, namely Dooku revealing that the Sith is controlling the Senate and claiming to fight against that, and the TF having joined him after having been betrayed by him after EpI.
This is part of that "red herring" that I described - at the end, it turns out that this "new development", the emergence of 3rd parties etc., was all just a ruse and it's always been that same conspiracy from EpI all along.
It also reintroduces Sidious back into the plot, after already having reintroduced the TF.
Except that Obi-Wan just ignores and dismisses all this information so it's actually just an excuse to talk to the audience 'cause George doesn't know how to show is these things instead.

He relates it to Mace and Yoda at the end, which sets up their search for the "Sith lord in the government" in the next movie.

ShadowDuelist wrote:

El Nameaux-Standardon wrote:
What a bizarre thing to say in response, considering that:
-ESB is acknowledged for standing on its own legs and in fact coming off stronger WITHOUT the sequel that undermines it
-my quoted statement emphasized how II was precisely not about "setting up the next movie", but about the plot of II

RLM's made two claims in part II/9:
A) Clones is "just a bunch of stuff happening between 1 and 3".
B) It cargo cults ESB by borrowing plot lines and imagery but forgetting all the substance.
B1) Oh and also that it tries to be the darkest of the three LOL!
Complete horse:
A) It's got its own point and direction: tensions with the separatists and suspected shadowy warmongers leads to discovery of secret "arms race" leads to war breaking out.
What at first seems to be a new crisis unrelated to I, gradually turns out to be that same crisis coming back with a vengeance - culminating in the Sidious reveal at the end.

B) All the borrowed imagery and plot structures are heavily modified to serve this new narrative with its own substance, and flair.
B1) When was the third where Vader would emerge and the Empire win ever NOT gonna be the darkest LOL - no refutation required, too silly.
--
Which is why these more than superficial similarities only make up 5% of the substance and it's therefore silly to focus on them while describing the movie, or the drama in it.
--
Actually Obiwan's the one possibly lured into a trap, if you go with the "Jango was in on it" hypothesis - Anakin certainly wasn't lured by anyone
And the parallels pretty much end there, 10 times flimsier than the one's named by Squiggly between 1 and 4.
I was going to write a whole thing here to better articulate my point but then I didn't. The core is that both these films are about journeys. ESB tells a strong compelling emotional story that causes our characters we care about to grow and change, AotC goes through the some the same motions but the only character that has any arc is Anakin and his is shallow. The actually journey that's taking place is the decent of the Republic into war. Maybe that works for you but I don't enjoy The West Wing either.

I don't watch the West Wing - but if it's a show about people chasing conspiratorial clues through exotic locations and danger, I certainly wasn't aware of it; I thought it was about politics inside the White House.

So you're talking about "character growth":

ShadowDuelist wrote:

El Nameaux-Standardon wrote:
Which of the plotlines are you talking about here?
If it's the mystery plot, i.e. the main plot mostly carried by Obiwan, then it's mostly carried by the discovery and tension and Obiwan/the Jedi coming off as appropriately concerned and worried about it all - those emotions are shown in a natural fashion, not "told".
Or are you talking about Anakin's subplot? LOL, well first of all this is sometimes true and sometimes not, but that storyline is a mess way beyond just emotions being told not shown
The only emotions displayed by Obi-Wan in this movie are confusion and annoyance. He goes about his quest like it's just another job and his reaction to even the clone army is basically "well that's fucking weird, moving on." His whole story has no emotion to it and just happens to show up at places that move the plot along while doing something mostly unrelated.

ShadowDuelist wrote:

El Nameaux-Standardon wrote:
He goes dark on Tattoine and is then mildly angrier/gloomier than before - how is that a reasonable "arc"??
More like THIS is a set-up for the next movie.
And while there's technically an "arc", or an overall sort of structure to the lovestory, once you zoom in even just one bit it's the most disorganized mess ever, so have fun lauding that
It's not a reasonable arc, but at least it is one. No one else in this movie has any kind of growth. Hell, Padme manages to fall in love without it having any kind of impact on her character.

But I already dismissed the HC/Padme storyline as an incoherent mess, didn't I?

The movie is held together by the mystery/discovery arc - led by Obiwan, though Anakin joins him in the first and final acts.

He doesn't change or grow in the process, as such - but what changes drastically, is the circumstances;
the viewer experiences this discovery and change in galactic landscape through his eyes, and actions - and, for what it's worth, he does appear more serious and contemplative at the end than he did at the beginning of the movie wink

Though that last bit is arguable.

ShadowDuelist wrote:

El Nameaux-Standardon wrote:
Jango dragging him around and shooting missiles at him and them suspensefully hanging over the abyss is all "fighting", baby.
More like awkward stumbling around because suddenly everyone for got how to fight, but sure.

There is no "stumbling" or "awkward" anywhere in that scene - no one forgot how to fight, Obiwan gets caught in the rope in the process of pulling his weapon, and Jango takes off on his jetpack and does a pretty good job of dragging him around.

So I've no idea what you're referring to here.

That's cause the point was never "omg is he gonna die", and the tone doesn't convey that either - compare the actual (considerably) pointless mess of an action scene in this movie, the droid factory, where the tone is implying that Padme is heading for her death but actually it's just a fun, tense action obstacle run.
Saying this scene is better than the factory scene isn't a very high bar for it to clear. Just because this is better than watching Jabba take a shit doesn't mean it's good.

I didn't say it was "better than", I said the factory one was gratuitous and inserted, while this was wasn't.

No, the point was trying and failing to capture Jango and get some answers out of him.
It was also a snappy pay-off to the tensions and hints between the two in their previous scene - the exhilirating effect is emphasized in the way the action suddenly starts after a few seconds of the camera hovering above Slave I.
Sure that's Obi-Wan's reason to fight Jango, but my point was what's the scriptwriters reason to have them fight here? Sure it pays off some tension between them, but the dogfight scene above Geonosis does that better. It exists purely to be an action beat and the fact that you could cut it and nothing would feel missing says a lot.

Eh, if we go with this premise that two scenes in a row of him trying to capture Jango are one too many, then the dogfight would be the one who ought to get cut - the first one's a legitimate, classic "trying to catch the bad guy before he takes off", it begins with both of them on the ground and ends with the escape; the dogfight begins and ends with Jango flying away and thinking he's gotten rid of his pursuer, so it's way more unnecessary and gratuitous.

With that said, "the hero fails to capture the villain twice instead of once" is certainly not a very damning criticism - the bigger (though still not that major of a) problem with the dogfight is Obiwan's motivation: as it's unclear whether he wanted to capture him mid-space, or just failed to stay undetected after leaving hyperspace.
After it's over, he manages to follow Jango undetected; but one would've thought if he was already observing Jango flying towards a mysterious planet, following him there undetected rather than trying to arrest him again would've been his goal in the first place.

So that bit's a bit murky - if Obiwan's objectives had been better explained or conveyed, this (relatively minor) structural problem would probably have been solved.

Anyway, should this topic be continued, it'd probably have to be a separate thread - as I doubt this one was meant to get "hijacked" by one single controversial subject for several pages.

But that's something for the forum residents to decide, so we'll see I suppose...

2016-05-06 23:08:19

My first two posts here were very short:
http://friendsinyourhead.com/forum/view … 793#p58793

The length of the last two pages is entirely proportional to the interest shown in this topic by the residents, and my interest in "debating" it is generally proportional to the interest of the environment.

theMaestro wrote:

I'm not sure that you're really contesting the "verdict" though. It seems like you're just criticizing other peoples' criticism. Which is fine, I guess, if that's your goal.

Yes, that's my goal.

But the crux of the matter is that when we watch a movie, we leave the theater feeling a certain way. We can like it, love it, hate it, not care about it, etc. And then we attempt to articulate this feeling into words; this is known as criticism.

Yes, and when the way it's articulated manifests itself in getting facts wrong, or less tangible but still quite tangible aspects such as tone, there might be something to discuss there.

All you're doing is refuting the criticisms that people had with these movies. And that doesn't accomplish much since it's not really changing people's feelings towards them. Like if I were to call AOTC boring and you refute that with "That's wrong because of scenes X, Y, and Z, which were all really interesting", then have your points really made me reconsider my stance on AOTC? Of course not! Because when I watch it, I still find it boring no matter how much "evidence" you can find that "proves" otherwise. So I'm not sure what exactly you're trying to accomplish.

The criticisms against these movies, for the last 6 years in particular, have always been associated with an authoritative tone and the idea that those who argue against it are "irrational apologists" - it's precisely that angle I'm debating against, the "controversial opinion" being that it's false, rather than correct.

People's feelings are their own business - along the same lines as the critics have been saying for years, "well you can like them of course but you can't deny that they're objectively awful movies watch the Plinkett reviews I mean".

Anyway, I've got one post to respond to still - continuation afterwards is entirely up to you'se wink

2016-05-06 21:31:48

Alex wrote:

these shitty films

At this very moment, I appear to be successfully contesting this verdict.

2016-05-05 17:48:47

ShadowDuelist wrote:

El Nameaux-Standardon wrote:
The short answer would be that the talking is suspenseful and contains humor, the "plot" and the way it's "set up" both have impact, and in fact those scenes focus on the present, and not the future plot: someone's secretly set up an army on a hidden, otherworldly hide-out, and the sense of mystery, worry and uncertainty associated with that are conveyed in the "talking", aesthetics etc.

I get what they're trying to do, the movie mirrors ESB which also mostly just set up for the next movie.

What a bizarre thing to say in response, considering that:
-ESB is acknowledged for standing on its own legs and in fact coming off stronger WITHOUT the sequel that undermines it
-my quoted statement emphasized how II was precisely not about "setting up the next movie", but about the plot of II

RLM's made two claims in part II/9:
A) Clones is "just a bunch of stuff happening between 1 and 3".
B) It cargo cults ESB by borrowing plot lines and imagery but forgetting all the substance.
B1) Oh and also that it tries to be the darkest of the three LOL!

Complete horse:
A) It's got its own point and direction: tensions with the separatists and suspected shadowy warmongers leads to discovery of secret "arms race" leads to war breaking out.
What at first seems to be a new crisis unrelated to I, gradually turns out to be that same crisis coming back with a vengeance - culminating in the Sidious reveal at the end.

B) All the borrowed imagery and plot structures are heavily modified to serve this new narrative with its own substance, and flair.

B1) When was the third where Vader would emerge and the Empire win ever NOT gonna be the darkest LOL - no refutation required, too silly.

These movies are carried by their character's arcs as they change from who they were to the people they need to be in the next movie. Padme's arc mirrors Leah's, Anakins mirrors Luke's and Obi-Wan's mirrors Han's. Except these mirrors are only superficial,

Which is why these more than superficial similarities only make up 5% of the substance and it's therefore silly to focus on them while describing the movie, or the drama in it.

Padme is stuck in a remote place with a man and falls in love, Anakin is tempted by the dark side and lured into a trap, and Obi-Wan gets captured and used as bait.

Actually Obiwan's the one possibly lured into a trap, if you go with the "Jango was in on it" hypothesis - Anakin certainly wasn't lured by anyone big_smile

And the parallels pretty much end there, 10 times flimsier than the one's named by Squiggly between 1 and 4.

The depth of character just isn't there to carry the film like it is in ESB, and George isn't a good enough director to show is their emotions so they constantly have to tell them to us. Egh.

Which of the plotlines are you talking about here?
If it's the mystery plot, i.e. the main plot mostly carried by Obiwan, then it's mostly carried by the discovery and tension and Obiwan/the Jedi coming off as appropriately concerned and worried about it all - those emotions are shown in a natural fashion, not "told".

Or are you talking about Anakin's subplot? LOL, well first of all this is sometimes true and sometimes not, but that storyline is a mess way beyond just emotions being told not shown big_smile

says nothing about the quality of said monologue.
Dooku literally explains the plot of the prequels then they do a "Join Me!" "I'll never join you!" bit so things can 'rhyme' with the OT. Non of this effects either of these characters or their arcs or matters again.

That's the least important part, though - what matters is the meat of the conversation, namely Dooku revealing that the Sith is controlling the Senate and claiming to fight against that, and the TF having joined him after having been betrayed by him after EpI.

This is part of that "red herring" that I described - at the end, it turns out that this "new development", the emergence of 3rd parties etc., was all just a ruse and it's always been that same conspiracy from EpI all along.

It also reintroduces Sidious back into the plot, after already having reintroduced the TF.

Interesting opinion - most didn't like Anakin that much and preferred when he wasn't on screen
Anakin is the only one with any kind of reasonable arc and Anakin - Obi-Wan is the only relationship that resembles anything real, the movie barely even exists when Anakin's not on screen.

He goes dark on Tattoine and is then mildly angrier/gloomier than before - how is that a reasonable "arc"??
More like THIS is a set-up for the next movie.

And while there's technically an "arc", or an overall sort of structure to the lovestory, once you zoom in even just one bit it's the most disorganized mess ever, so have fun lauding that big_smile

RLM actually thought it was the most interesting cause no lightsabers, but k.
That's just him wanking about how much he hates the Jedi in the prequels.

Correct - his point about lightsabers lightsabers is mostly off the mark, too, along with most of his other points.

It actually barely has any fighting at all.

Jango dragging him around and shooting missiles at him and them suspensefully hanging over the abyss is all "fighting", baby.

There is nothing driving this fight, there's no stakes. Any savvy film goer knows neither of them die here and Obi-Wan still plants his tracker. This whole fight didn't matter and had no reason to exist.

That's cause the point was never "omg is he gonna die", and the tone doesn't convey that either - compare the actual (considerably) pointless mess of an action scene in this movie, the droid factory, where the tone is implying that Padme is heading for her death but actually it's just a fun, tense action obstacle run.

No, the point was trying and failing to capture Jango and get some answers out of him.
It was also a snappy pay-off to the tensions and hints between the two in their previous scene - the exhilirating effect is emphasized in the way the action suddenly starts after a few seconds of the camera hovering above Slave I.

2016-05-04 16:48:16

ShadowDuelist wrote:

Could be I'm remembering wrong, haven't seen it in a while. Remind me, what interesting happens at Kamino? I recall: 1) lots of talking to set up the plot of the next movie,

Okay, I'm kind of more interested in addressing informed criticism, or criticism that is thought informed - sketchy memories like this lack any pretense, so I have much more of an "eh whatever" attitude about it.

The short answer would be that the talking is suspenseful and contains humor, the "plot" and the way it's "set up" both have impact, and in fact those scenes focus on the present, and not the future plot: someone's secretly set up an army on a hidden, otherworldly hide-out, and the sense of mystery, worry and uncertainty associated with that are conveyed in the "talking", aesthetics etc.

2) one of the least interesting fight scenes in Star Wars.

RLM actually thought it was the most interesting cause no lightsabers, but k.

On Geonosis I remember: Obi-Wan spying on a meeting, 2) Obi-Wan gets capture and

Spying and getting captured sounds inherently boring.

monologued at,

says nothing about the quality of said monologue.

4)more talking? some kind of trial? might have been a deleted scene,

Deleted, correct.

3) silly factory scene,

It had a silly subplot.

5) Awww, Padme and Anakin are in love,

That was very roll

6) buddy cops are back together, 7) finally the jedi show up. On further review, this movie is only interesting when Anakin and Obi-Wan are together, which they aren't for most of the movie. Their dynamic is the only interesting thing happening, everything else is just to set up for the next movie.

Interesting opinion - most didn't like Anakin that much and preferred when he wasn't on screen big_smile

2016-05-04 14:12:57

theMaestro wrote:

My arguments are:
Qui-Gon does have character traits beyond "stoic":
A.) strongly opinionated (insists that Anakin is the Chosen One)
B.) stubborn (insists on training Anakin despite everyone saying it's a bad idea)
C.) defiant & breaks the rules (defies the Council & decides to train Anakin, uses the Force to fix the Watto deal to his advantage, suggests leaving the Queen in the dark when informed that she may not agree with his methods)

As I've said here, these are his most defining character traits in the context of the main story, but also his least pronounced ones.

That'd be a valid criticism to make, and RLM ruined it for themselves with their "no arcs and chracter traits" nonsense.

Also, I find AOTC to be more boring than the others: couch scene on Courascant,

You mean the one where they're bickering about protecting / snooping?

Dexter Jettster scene, library scene, youngling scene, discovering the Kamino clone army, spying on the Separatist meeting, and all the Naboo scenes with Anakin & Padme.
Although, to be fair, I did like the Tatooine stuff and the early parts of the Geonosis sequence when they were fighting the creatures.

Now why would you list the scene with the annoying lisping children among all those others? sad

2016-05-04 01:17:11

Nothing interesting happens on Kamino and Geonosis is mostly a slapstick comedy in a factory and people standing around explaining the plot.

I think you're remembering it wrong...

Coruscant was at least a mildly entertaining buddy cop film.

The night segment, I was talking about the aftermath....

2016-05-04 00:30:49

Darth Praxus wrote:

Nah, AotC is genuinely worse.

There are some pros and contras compared TPM, but the gap can't be that huge...

Its central plot is a mystery that is never even remotely resolved,

It set up a resolution for the next movie, and the next movie dropped that plus retconned various things - so that's not a valid criticism of 2.

and unlike TPM which at least had Neeson to carry it there's not a single character who's entertaining or engaging to watch.

You're forgetting McGregor, like.

And while Neeson did look bored to varying degrees at certain places, Ewan, in this movie, does not.

And as the romance was billed as the centerpiece it's a pretty big problem for it to fail so spectacularly.

But I already said that big_smile

I'd say it is incoherent. Anakin claims Obi is like his father, but we never, ever see that in any meaningful sense besides Obi lecturing Anakin pedantically.

The whole notion that "they bicker all the time in Clones" is a myth - the "partner" dynamic is clearly shown in various scenes where there's no conflict, and the mentor-apprentice dynamic (where Anakin shows respect) is particularly visible while they're waiting for the assassin to strike, and later when he persuades him not to return for Padme.

Other scenes (or actually these ones as well) contain an organic mixture of positive dynamic and semi-bickering, with the overall impression being positive.

But anyway, if those scenes where Obiwan acts like a mentor lack a particular "fatherly" vibe, then I'd say that's pretty coherent overall.
Comparable to the romance? Forgeddit!

And "not true to Guinness but consistent within itself" (which, again, I don't agree with) is still a problem, as these are supposed to be prequels to the movies he was in and depicting a relationship that's faithful to the one he described.

It's a problem in this case, but film criticism doesn't end on that observation - also, this particular point was about internal consistency despite the external inconsistency.

It has none of the visual appeal of TPM due to its flat quality,

its pacing is utterly dire.

theMaestro wrote:

the main reason I dislike AOTC is that I just find it incredibly boring. Like it's just tedious for me to get through. I find that this isn't the case with the other prequels.

Hmm... tried skipping certain scenes?
I'm talking first Anakin/Obiwan scenes at day and then a while after the chase, the stupid kids, and Naboo of course.

Other than that I've no idea what you're talking about regarding the visuals and the pacing...

Teague wrote:

*roughly agrees that AotC is more boring than the other two for some reason*
*mentally scans through plot of AotC to see when it starts to feel like a slog*
Leaving Coruscant, maybe. I'm excited about the detective stuff with them and the mysterious bounty hunter, but I lose most of my excitement once Obi-Wan and Anakin split up. Correlation, causation, etc..

Are you saying daytime Coruscant (in this movie) is more exciting than Kamino/Geonosis? I'm, like, trying to wrap my left brain around it, my right brain around it, the monkey, the lizard and the amoeba and I'm still like whaaaaaaaaaaaaa-

2016-05-03 22:39:03

theMaestro wrote:

It's so fascinating to see the different sides of the spectrum. Over on the prequel forum at TFN, you have people who absolutely love those movies. And on the other side, you have Squiggly's thoughts about them.

There was an older thread somewhere around here making fun of the 108p rebuttal - which was written by a TFN regular.

Squiggly's "arguments" here aren't one bit more reasonable.

Personally, my feelings on them can be summarized as "disappointed". I don't think they're bad (except AOTC) because I am able to watch them and be entertained (again, except AOTC). They certainly don't stack up to the OT in my book and I wish they had been much better. However, I do stand by my opinion that Qui-Gon does actually have a personality other than "stoic"; but if you don't even want to accept the premise that TPM can be analyzed as a movie, then I get why you'd dismiss and not even entertain claims like that.

I'm convinced that whenever people say "PT is okay, but AotC is awful", they're projecting their hatred of the romance, and Anakin's personality, onto the rest of the movie - the rest of the movie being the actual main storyline, and hardly below TPM in quality.

Darth Praxus wrote:

^I'd say the romance is indicative of lots of things about AotC--namely, how horrid the other relationships in it are.
Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship may be the single most disappointing aspect of that movie for me. Every bloody time we see them on screen together it's just cringe inducing how utterly awful it is. It's painful to watch how George takes something that was supposed to be a great friendship and reduces it to petty sniping.

While Anakin does "kind of suck" in this movie, there's nothing hair raising or incoherent about this relationship - they're sometimes buddies, sometimes Anakin bickers and Obiwan is irritated, but while not true to Guinness it's consistent within itself, and not even 1/10th as cringe as the other one.

Also, this relationship doesn't represent the rest of the movie either big_smile

Any other relationships are...basically nonexistent, really, besides Anakin and his mom, who gets all of one scene.

So, it isn't representative, then big_smile

2016-05-03 22:19:25

Squiggly_P wrote:

I'm not really trying to analyze the films, really. The thing I want to get across is just that Lucas is a hack fraud idiot who made three terrible films that are bad and poorly made.

If you refuse to back up your claims and verdicts, you won't get anything across though wink

They're bad movies.
That there are people who try to analyze them and try

In my case succeed - if you disagree, make a case!

to find these character traits and stuff to make them feel more like real characters is not important to me.

You mean more like the real characters that they are?

You can feel however you like about Qui-Gon or Padme or Jar Jar. It's inconsequential to the larger picture, which is that the prequels are boring, poorly-made films.

A verdict you refuse to back up by analyzing the movie?

I can't watch them because they are terrible and dull and the action scenes have no emotional weight. There's no drama in the movies except what drama we are told is supposed to be in them by characters who explain things all the time. >---< The action scenes have their own little dramas that play out within them where characters might be injured or killed,

Contradicting yourself right there.

but then the action scene ends and we go back to watching people explain things to each other because the plot is so convoluted that it's the only way for any of it to make any sense.

I've already successfully challenged both the notion that the plot is convoluted, that the problem is too many explanations rather than too few, and that most of those scenes can be described as pure exposition.

The best way the films could be improved would be to completely throw them out and remake them entirely, focusing on an entirely different set of characters (some of whom would have the same names) and an entirely different backstory for the saga.

That's not improvement, that's making different movies.

Anakin should have been older when they met.

While that's generally a sensible statement, it should stressed that had the kid been Haley Joel Osment or Bran Stark, people wouldn't've complained.

"When I met him he was already a great pilot..." says Obi-Wan in A New Hope. [...] He could have been a smuggler himself or some Republic military pilot who was assigned to move Obi-Wan from A to B in some mission and then things went tits up and they end up having some kind of adventure together. And then Obi-Wan could have seen him really doing some interesting pilot shit and getting them out of hairy situations with his great piloting skills.

Here's my stance on this whole issue:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. … p;t=164158
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/sith … t-52821990

The core, foundation of plot elements in the films are broken and stupid and bad. Any argument to be made about the subtleties of the plots or characters or whatever are void and null as far as I'm concerned.

Respect the purism! Tame the film criticism!

I don't like talking about them. Thinking about them just makes me more and more aware that they exist, and that there are people who actually defend them as films.

Levelheaded people such as myself aren't "defensive" wink

My ultimate solution, and something they'll probably do later on, is to just replace them with better films that do a better job of telling a coherent story with likable characters who have thrilling adventures that I can get emotionally invested in. Almost like a real movie would do.

Well, you either back up these judgements, or you don't!

2016-05-03 21:48:36

Squiggly_P wrote:

But, no. I think Lucas wrote flat, purely expositional dialogue

Examples of such "purely expositional dialogue", please.

and sat people down on couches for every scene because he's a terrible writer/director,

It's not every scene, and Joffrey+Margaery were sitting on a couch.
Maybe Padme should've stroketh Anakin's crossbow...

and any hint at characterization that can be taken from the performances is purely due to the actors trying to inject some life into the dry-ass boring dialogue they had to work with,

Examples of such dry-ass boring dialogue, please.

which Lucas probably wanted to be read verbatim because he famously gets mad when people change the things he writes in his scripts, no matter if it's better than what he wrote. I think people want to see these things in the characters because otherwise it's just people standing there talking plot stuff with no characterization going on.

Are you accusing me of projecting my own hallucinations onto the screen? Then back it up!

Projecting emotional depth into the Phantom Menace characterizations lends Lucas far more credibility than he deserves.

Lend some credibility to yourself and back up your accusation - I've given plenty of material by now wink

In the second film especially, there are tons of sequences that could have been written indirectly or without dialogue at all, but he always put in very flat, exposition-heavy dialogue. All of the romance parts could have been done with little dialogue. That sequence next to the fire could have been done with no dialogue.

Like the love scenes in ESB big_smile

He could have moved the camera around. He could have shot it in interesting ways. [...] while the camera remained bolted down approximately ten feet away and panned when she got up to walk forward three steps and then turn before reading more of her dialogue off of the cue cards that Lucas was holding off-camera, probably with a gun pointed at Portman's face.

You've already classified the iconic scenes from ANH as horrible, so...

But he didn't. He had them talk about all the reasons they couldn't be together and profess their loves for each other

The incohesive hack mess that is the AotC romance is not representative of anything else in that movie, or that trilogy.
Even the horrible Alec Guinness scenes are better!

Ironically, this is where RLM fail to capture how bad that subplot is, rather than making it look worse than it is...

2016-05-03 21:33:49

So let's be clear about this: Lucas is a terrible writer and director. He's really bad at it. Like really really bad. And he always has been. The original Star Wars has the same sort of sequences, but he had really good actors and producers that wouldn't let him get away with all of his stupid shit. Look at the scenes in the original and how some of them were shot. Ben Kenobi tells Luke about his father's involvement in the jedi order. They're sitting on a couch and at one point he gets up, walks a few feet away, picks up an object, turns and gives more dialogue.
They're looking for some pilot to get them to Alderan. The conversation is shot with two cameras - A camera and B camera - doing shot, reverse-shot. The next sequence at the same location is shot the same way. All of the cockpit sequences he's ever shot in any film he's ever made with cockpits are all shot with the same angles and the same tricks at play. Sometimes it's a big cockpit, like the Falcon's, and he can actually move the camera around a little, but look at the angles for most shots. It's like a flat, head-on shot looking into the cockpit, just like the X-wings, just like Red Tails.
He's really bad at this filmmaking thing.

Well... if the PT is every bit as bad as SW'77, I'd say that's good enough for me.

big_smile

2016-05-03 20:30:14

Squiggly_P wrote:

EDIT:
In defense of Jar Jar's arc being the strongest, all you have to do is look at where he starts out and where he ends up. At first he's an outcast who none of his people like, and who have actually thrown him out with threats that he would be imprisoned (or killed?) if he returned.

Pyoonish'd.

By the end of the film he's leading an army. He's still an incompetent jack-ass in the end, but he does make some attempts to lead his force. Sorta. I mean, he says "Steady..." at one point.

Well theeeere ya go! big_smile

And "attack" I think? I mean, he does all of this shit on accident and it apparently works. He tries to do things when he gets the chance and inadvertently succeeds. So he goes from avoiding conflict at the beginning and running away from everything to at least trying to fight and lead his people.

All of this is true, even though he's still running away most of the time.

It's also true that he has more of an arc than Panaka.

Obi-Wan, Anakin, Quigon, and the queen all got incomparably more, though.

Obiwan's arc? What arc? He's the same basic character at the beginning of the film as he is at the end. He goes from agreeing with the jedi council that Qui-Gon is wrong about the kid to ... explaining to Yoda that he promised to train the kid? He doesn't really say that he disagrees with them. He's just doing it because Qui-Gon said to do it? Is that an arc?

He doesn't have a full arc, but incomparably more of an arc than Jar Jar:
-starts disagreeing with Quigon
-this culminates in a brief fallout between the two
-he chooses friendship over his convictions and they make up
-he certainly ain't gonna deny his master's dying wish now!

Surrenders his beliefs / conservative attitude out of personal loyalty - seems to internalize it, too.
That's a load more than "accidentally bring tribes together and promoted to hapless general"! Obiwan gets promoted too big_smile

Plus, of course, his PoV role in the duel, his emotional investment, the suspense, the lowest point and triumph, you know > juggling bombs on the battlefield.

Amadala's character can't really have an arc because you're never sure at which point she's actually the Queen and when she's the handmaiden.

She also kinda gets invaded and then leads her revolution to victory, but that doesn't count since you don't know she's the handmaiden! big_smile

Well if you wanna be precise, the few relevant moments where Keira poses as the queen, technically makes them both share the protagonist seat - but it only a few moments, so yea.

PLUS, as I said earlier, that whole secrecy in the first half kinda works together with the arc rather than against it.

You could argue that the Queen goes from idealist / pacifist at the beginning to deciding that they need to fight to end the blockade... So that's kindof an arc, but it's not really shown by any sort of internal struggle so much as it is just a frustrated act of desperation.

Following internal struggle wink

So I guess that's an arc.

clap

Qui-Gon dies, so whatever arc he does have is moot by the end of the film

He has a goal he achieves posthumanly, so that makes up for the death thing.

The rest I've already laid out wink

and I would argue that he's the least changing character in the film with the possible exception of Anakin,

As long as you strive to achieve a goal, or make gradual discoveries, "change" is not required to qualify as protagonist.

None of them are struggling internally with any sort of personal conflict, which is the basis of a character arc.

It's not the sole criterion, certainly not as defined by Plinkett.

who also has no arc because he's like 6 years old and ...

So you dismiss him on the grounds of being 10, but not Jar Jar on the grounds of being a nasally voiced amphibian fish beast?

I'm not taking this seriously.

So yeah, Jar Jar, in my opinion, has the strongest arc of the main characters.

QED: "Ah-nay."

You could say, tho, that maybe King Obese Gungan Dude has a pretty significant arc as well, going from isolationist who dislikes and distrusts outsiders to agreeing to essentially be pawns for a massive battle in order to help the Queen and her people.

He's not PoV, tho.

It's such a sloppy mess of a film.

Nowhere to the extent that your argumentation is big_smile

2016-05-03 19:02:57

Squiggly_P wrote:

El Nameaux-Standardon wrote:
Instead of identifying that as a gap within QG's arc, they were just more plot holes to him, and he kept insisting how "Jar Jar is the only character in the whole movie with an arc" even though of all the characters incl. Obiwan, Jar Jar's "path" resembles an arc the least.
This is sort of like a "horse shoe" thing, amusingly, where the PT's harshest critic, out to prove how this obnoxious cartoon rabbit for babies has the only character arc in the movie, starts resembling the most dedicated fanboys in existence who try to justify Jar Jar's presence or imbue him with heroism, in his arguments.
I wasn't aware that the RLM guys, or Mike at least, was of the opinion that Jar Jar was the only one with an arc. I'll have to check out their commentary, as I've only ever seen their videos.
I think the point of pointing that out, tho, isn't necessarily to try to justify Jar Jar's character, but instead to emphasize that Lucas was more interested in him as a character. He liked Jar Jar and considered him to be an important character in his story.

Well, what you are saying and what Plinkett's is virtually the same thing, so....

El Nameaux-Standardon wrote:

Squiggly_P wrote:
I stand by my opinion that Jar-Jar is the best character in the prequels. Not just in a 'Plinkett Test' sort of way (he passes that test where most of the characters fail it), but in the sense that he's basically the only character in TPM with an arc. Barely.
He barely has any agency. He has a contemplative moment where he takes pride in his warrior race, but then turns back into the clueless dork.
Goes fetch the tribe cause the others ask him to - kinda follows from that and leads the team to the hide-out, but doesn't do anything to resolve the tensions there.
For that, he gets promoted a general, then gets thrown off a horse reverts back to lucky coward who ends up surrendering.

That's incomparably less "arc material" (i.e. agency, accomplishment, investment) than Obiwan, Anakin, and let alone the two main ones - which means all it takes to insist in the polar opposite is either a lot of salt, or a lot of hipster

I, for one, would argue that people give Lucas far too much credit for writing characters like Qui-Gon as though they're subtle and have all of these personality quirks and emotional complexity buried beneath a solemn and stoic veneer. I think any hint of that can be attributed to the actor(s) playing the parts. Lucas has proven to be a horrible writer/director who is far more interested in plot mechanics than character subtleties or even general characterization. That he put so much effort into Jar Jar in that regard tells me that he really wanted Jar Jar to be like THE character in the prequels.

Well I'm talking about what's in the movie, not who contributed how much to what.

Not sure if this applies here, but I've noticed an amusing tendency among certain "anti-PTers", en emphasis on the "collaborative" aspect of the OT on the one hand, and a dismissal of anything PT that "wasn't Lucas" (supposedly) - it's like, pick one, you know?

Regardless, I'm not playing that game.

I, for one, would argue that people give Lucas far too much credit for writing characters like Qui-Gon as though they're subtle and have all of these personality quirks and emotional complexity buried beneath a solemn and stoic veneer.

That's not exactly what I said, and it's wrong too: the attributes I described are either not stoic in the first place, or just exist in a stoic / subdued / lacking (not the same things!!) form.

Nothing's really "buried" anywhere, it's all in plain sight.

You can break TPM down to it's basic plot elements and see a startling relationship to A New Hope. Two characters on a more or less diplomatic ship end up being attacked and escape to the surface of a nearby planet where they meet a native country bumpkin whose life is turned upside down and ends up embroiled in this multi-system struggle for power. They end up escaping from that planet with a few extra characters in tow and have a clear course ahead of them. They inadvertently end up somewhere they weren't expecting to go and have to figure out how to get away. While there, however, they find another character who they deem important and decide to free them and bring them with.

See, this sort of thing is precisely why I'm not buyin' all those "TFA is a remake" comments I keep seeing, because it's really easy to list parallels in this fashion, omit the differences, and then conclude that remake... or Luke = Jar Jar.

The characters that go from diplomatic ship to the evil station to the planet? In IV they're the peasants from HF - in I, they're the protagonists (well one of them is) and the exact opposite of clueless tagalongs.

Also, Amidala is the "equivalent" of Luke, not Jar Jar.
Anakin gets freed like Leia (in a completely different fashion, needless to say), other than that that he's also a Luke equivalent.

Both Jar Jar and Solo have fallen out of favor with a fat boss and "take the heroes somewhere" - the parallels end there, but if you insist, you should pick this one big_smile

They then head off to an intergalactic board room where they eventually hatch a plan to head back to one of the previous locations and fight a battle. They eventually win and everyone gets medals.

The final act is derived from VI and IV in more obvious ways, yes (mostly VI, though).

The fucked up part of that comparison is that Jar Jar is the Luke Skywalker equivalent in that outline.

Ah-nay.

My theory here is that the two most important characters in Lucas' head were probably Jar Jar and Anakin, and I'm willing to bet that JJ was supposed to have been like a catch-all side-kick character throughout the three films who would eventually be killed or something which would drive Anakin fully to the dark side. Or maybe Anakin would have killed him. Or maybe Palpatine would have been able to manipulate him as an indirect way to bring Anakin to the Dark Side or something.

So Jar Jar = Leia??

Just theorizing, but it makes more sense than what we got from the next two films, which were almost entirely disconnected from the first film. I could be completely wrong, tho.

Jesus... yikes mad roll

Alright, looking at TPM only, out of the two characters that Anakin befriends on Tattoine and maintains a friendship with... which one, do you think, would've made more sense to play a central role in his corruption, by virtue of an intense emotional bond, and possibly end up tragically dead in connection with that, Padme or Jar Jar?

But, no. I think Lucas wrote flat, purely expositional dialogue and sat people down on couches for every scene because he's a terrible writer/director, and any

^^Disconnected from your previous train of thought - to be continued...

2016-05-03 17:24:50

Squiggly_P wrote:

EDIT: This part is mostly unrelated ramblings, in retrospect...
Fanboys do also kinda piss me off, tho. There was a guy I went off on a while back because he was talking about the "Kessel Run" and what it was and how it worked and how Han lost the record but then got it back in some book. It bothered me that they mentioned it in the Force Awakens. Cause the Kessel Run was bullshit. Han was blowing smoke up their asses. They've even concocted a story for why Han would say "parsec" which is a measurement of distance and not time. Even if you allow that Lucas was just looking for a space word to use in his silly script about space battles,

Sloppily using parsecs as a time unit in a soft Sci-Fi movie is completely fine with me - however, the proposed fan explanation, if you're referring to the "picking the shortest distance is the challenge" one has something really neat and natural about it, I like it a lot

Probably one of the best pieces of "fanwank" out there.

Either way, whether Han's bullshitting or not isn't really connected to what parsec means - the characters all know what it means, so things are the same either way.

it's just a bullshit story to make him sound like he's the best pilot for their money. Like they're getting a deal for his asking price.
The Falcon is a pile of shit with a hyper drive. Solo is a scam artist. Obi-Wan's face says it all. The fucking jedi listening to Han's bullshit story is making a face like "That is such complete bullshit, bro". But he's a pilot who has a ship and is obviously very interested in making money, so Kenobi could just offer a big-ass 'on delivery' reward and count on this dude to agree, no matter the risk.

Ehhh... that's a valid interpretation, but it's just as possible that Ben's simply making fun of his cocky attitude, or the fact that he expects people outside his "racer circles" to know nerdy stuff like that.
The "truth", "probably" lies somewhere inbetween - Solo's no Flashheart, but no Jack Sparrow either.
I'd almost say that the "gag" is that he's kinda both simultaneously.

But fandom has turned that into a thing. It kinda pisses me off that people can be so fucking into a movie but fail to understand shit like that. It's where nerds are into this shit, but are too willing to take every aspect of it too seriously and treat everything like it's meant to hint at some larger universe or whatever. Fanboys will take the phrase "nerf-herder" and try to concoct the backstory for why the term 'nerf-herder' is this slanderous term. But it's the PG equivalent of "Piece of shit". And then Han's like "Who's scruffy-lookin?" It's a joke AND a character-building moment. But let's theorize about why herding nerfs is seen as such a distasteful position in the galaxy...

I kind of dislike the gimmick words in that scene, though... would've been better had they just used real insults, even though nerfherder>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>laserbrains. I'm sorry.

Point is, coming up with a culture where those terms were based in, might've been an attempt to make it sound more like a natural insult and less like a corny made-up gimmick word.

Banthas had that advantage.

2016-05-03 16:06:58

Squiggly_P wrote:

I stand by my opinion that Jar-Jar is the best character in the prequels. Not just in a 'Plinkett Test' sort of way (he passes that test where most of the characters fail it), but in the sense that he's basically the only character in TPM with an arc. Barely.

He barely has any agency. He has a contemplative moment where he takes pride in his warrior race, but then turns back into the clueless dork.
Goes fetch the tribe cause the others ask him to - kinda follows from that and leads the team to the hide-out, but doesn't do anything to resolve the tensions there.

For that, he gets promoted a general, then gets thrown off a horse reverts back to lucky coward who ends up surrendering.

That's incomparably less "arc material" (i.e. agency, accomplishment, investment) than Obiwan, Anakin, and let alone the two main ones - which means all it takes to insist in the polar opposite is either a lot of salt, or a lot of hipster wink

The thing I take away from the Plinkett videos is that the overall point of them is that the entire premise for the prequel trilogy is fundamentally wrong. The OT are about a small group of people having adventures together and fighting this big evil empire. the PT are attempting this epic political intrigue plot that culminated in a complex multi-system war with all of these different groups of people being manipulated by some evil force. There are so many variables going on that get over-explained and shit.

It's a lot simpler than that:
The first movie has the evil merchant who attacks the idyllic planet, and snivellingly manipulates the weak/corrupt government.
The next are about the evil Separatists who want to attack the Republic.

In both cases the villains have 3 layers: the TF/Separatists, Sidious' right hand, and Sidious himself.
Government's the officials, the Senate that represents the galactic society, and the Jedi are sort of the "spiritual branch".

And that's it.

Also, things don't get over-explained, they're under-explained - there's basic exposition missing regarding who the TF is and what their officially stated goals are, how the whole Separatist thing got rolling etc.

That's one of the major reasons why there's the feeling of confusion/incompleteness regarding it all, rather than a concise, well-structured intrigue.

Plinkett points out some correct things in that department, but is also quite sloppy, and his analysis terribly incomplete.

We have to see why this trade group is blockading this planet.

You don't, though!

For a "complete" narrative, you would've needed either:
-a known, stated goal that everyone's aware of - and obviously not identical to their real goal which is a mystery
-no stated, understandable goal, just this erratic behavior that startles everyone; the hopes of gaining clarity through negotiations are crushed etc.

The mystery then should've been revealed in the movie, or in the next movies - which doesn't happen.

We have to see where all the robots are coming from. We have to see where all the storm troopers some from.

That's not a "we have to see where the soldiers come from" - it's about the intrigue, and mystery of two armies being created in secret, and the conspiracy to push the world into a war behind everyone's back.

The armies are introduced as suspense, and the war breaking is the bad outcome, i.e. pay-off.

We have to see how the senate reacts to this news of separatists.

So you're saying if the OT had started earlier and they showed the rebels gasp in terror at the revelation of the super weapon, that would've been a dramatic failure?

If the movie's about a society under threat, it kinda calls for showing that society react to said threat... and, as it happens, 2-3 heavily neglected to do that, as opposed to doing too much.
That's also why it's a bit weird when they cheer for dictatorship at the end, their perspective has been neglected - them being worn out by the war / scared of separatists, and having a reason to believe the Jedi turned against them.

Not inexplicable, cause it's kinda obvious - but just kinda hovering in the air like that, because it hasn't been shown.

However...

There's not a focus on just a core group of characters having adventures. It's too wrapped up in the political machinations.

... what has been shown, is Anakin's perspective, and how he comes to believe it.

Less focus on protagonists than large scale machinations? I think not.

The trilogy revolves entirely around Quigon, Obiwan, Anakin and Padme - sometimes as representatives of the groups they're part of, sometimes on their own.
Same with 4-6, in a general sense.

With all that in mind:

That stuff is dull. The action is sometimes decent, but the movies are overly boring and dry.

Which stuff is dull, in particular?

Opening action scene, dull part, dry part, boring part, action scene, dull plot exposition, action scene, boring part, political part, planning part, space action scene, dull part...

Which you're referring to?

The OT are never dull, even when they've slowed down. The slow parts are mostly about the characters interactions, not about plot exposition. Even plot exposition scenes are generally focused mostly on the character moments more than the information being given.

"Pure plot exposition" is an exception in I-III, not the rule - in fact, I can only think of a couple scenes from the first half of Clones where that description would apply.

Calm scenes that don't revolve around characterization, still build up intrigue and atmosphere.

They lost the Falcon in the asteroid belt. Lets not just explain that, let's show the audience how fucking terrified of Vader the messenger is and then lets show the audience WHY he's terrified of vader by having vader force-choke a guy to death OVER THE PHONE... Yeah, they moved the plot forward, but that character bit was more important to the film overall. That's the difference.

Difference to what counterexamples?

The prequels are just fundamentally poor films. They're wall-to-wall exposition. The excuse for that is that the plots are really complex and that the exposition is necessary. The real issue is that the plots are really complex and the exposition is necessary. The excuses that a lot of people give for why it's OK that the movies are the way they are are often the core problems of the films.

The plot isn't that complex, it's really just one-level-up from OT - 2 protagonists, a couple villain layers etc., but it doesn't really get "complex" at any point.

Necessary exposition is mostly:
-absent
-drives the tension/atmosphere, and a lot of the times characters as well

Half of that is the writers fault for using dialogue when action and visuals would be better.

Well, that Vader example of yours (and Plinkett's) is made of dialogue, so...

Half of it is the director's fault for shooting the way he did with boring setups and blocking and flat lighting, etc. That the writer and director are the same guy just makes it that much worse.

As far as I understand it, "lighting" particularly refers to the way artificial (and natural?) lights are set up to illuminate the scene and create a particular effect - doesn't encompass the entirety of how a frame looks.

So I haven't really looked at the frames and tried to identify the "lighting", but most of those scenes feature juicy colors, gloomy tint and flair etc., so even if the lighting itself is dull, the actual shots are not. Maybe it's all in post?
Only exceptions I'd say are various daytime interior scenes on Coruscant, in the first half of AOTC - i.e. the same section that features most if not all of the "dull dry exposition" scenes.

The "blocking", also, should be judged in the context of the style and narrative - basic blocking is a natural choice for stylized aristocratic/clerical/formal/military settings.

RLM aren't thinking of that, and I haven't really seen anyone take that into account.

The films are pretty terrible on just about every level.

I'd say the ratings on Imdb/Meta/RT are reasonable.

2016-05-03 06:40:34

theMaestro wrote:

In addition to having strong opinions, I also think Qui-gon is a "ends justify the means" kind of guy as evidenced by his willingness to deceive the Queen and his use of the Force to make Watto's dice roll in his favor.

Seems more like a lack of respect for authority / obstructive assholes - what you said fits as well, but obviously not in the usual sense of that phrase, antiheroic tendencies, moral grey shades etc.

theMaestro wrote:

I get what their point was, but for Qui-Gon specifically I would definitely be able to come up with words like: stubborn, passionate, opinionated, compassionate. [...] But I really do think that there's a fully fledged character there in Qui-Gon. [...] Personally, I have many criticisms of the prequels, but the character of Qui-Gon was not one of them.

Picking up from:
"Qui-Gon displays various personality traits at different points - the most interesting question in terms of "critical analysis" is how well those fit together into a single organic character (I maintain that they do):"

His role in the context of the trilogy:
As Obiwan, Anakin and Padme are the obvious "big three" of 2-3, Quigon acts as a mentor to all three of them:
-protects/guides queen before she becomes proactive, acts as advisor in the final act
-the other two obvius, but basically leaves Obiwan a legacy
-finds / fosters Anakin and jumpstarts his progression

His role within I in particular:
-leads Amidala's cause, then advises when she takes charge
-discover what's gonna become the central plot by III, the Sith and the chosen one
-championing the chosen one in the face of opposition/skepticism from the establishment

With that in mind (or, rather, if you're on board with that as a cohesive arc), all the personality traits I listed in that post fit the picture:
-stern/disapproving and warm/fatherly is a natural combination for a mentor
-a professional and courtly demeanor matches the role of protecting and escorting royalty as a duty/job
-religious attitude and foreboding vigilance already brought up
-irreverence towards clerical authority when it goes against his judgement, naturally extends to irreverence towards royal authority when she questions his judgement, irreverence towards petty douchebags (Watto and Nass happen to be authority figures in their own turf, too, btw), and irreverence towards supposed conservative notions about "honorable" use of the force, or honesty in any area whether it deserves it or not

However, while this foundation stands, there are gaps in the execution all over the place - so there's lots to be criticized.

A relatively minor critical point is that the whole fallout with Obiwan isn't sufficiently set up - he kinda scoffs at some of his jokes which hardly counts, and is pissed at the council, noticing Obiwan's at being dropped by him; there is something, but it's nowhere sufficient.

A major if not THE major gap would be that after telling the council about Maul, he practically forgets about him until he shows up again. He doesn't seem to react much when the council brings him up after rejecting Anakin, and not a single thought or worried face expression wasted on the Sith inbetween those.

So why does he charge Maul so enthusiastically and blindly? Does he fancy himself as the chosen mentor of the Annoying One, destined by the fates to crush the first Sith and fulfill the messianic prophecy? Does he think Maul is out to hurt Anakin (certainly a reasonable assumption based on how things went down on Tattoine)? Some combination of those?

While the things that are established and shown priorly pretty much leave no doubt as to what "would've" been the motivation for all that, or can be "deduced" to be, the way it stands it's a huge, huge negligence.

Plinkett, ironically, made the basic "Jedi forget about Maul on Naboo" observation in his TPM audio commentary, as well as criticized him for not considering the "Maul was after Anakin" theory - but failed to draw any larger conclusions from those bits:

Instead of identifying that as a gap within QG's arc, they were just more plot holes to him, and he kept insisting how "Jar Jar is the only character in the whole movie with an arc" even though of all the characters incl. Obiwan, Jar Jar's "path" resembles an arc the least.

This is sort of like a "horse shoe" thing, amusingly, where the PT's harshest critic, out to prove how this obnoxious cartoon rabbit for babies has the only character arc in the movie, starts resembling the most dedicated fanboys in existence who try to justify Jar Jar's presence or imbue him with heroism, in his arguments.

2016-05-03 05:29:29

Teague wrote:

theMaestro wrote:
Additionally, he only had one movie worth of screen time whereas Han Solo had three (at the time of the review) and so that may play a factor in what people remember.
Solid. That's good.

I'd disagree with that: his character was already colorful enough in IV, plus I'm pretty sure that's the only movie they were thinking of while saying those particular things.

He's no longer a "thief" with a heart of gold in V, instead he gains this tragic/romantic pathos that I think none of them mentioned, and rather becomes the "pirate with a debt" instead.

In VI he's like this grumpy tagalong and more of an overt asshole, though characterization is certainly much less rounded in VI, and he pretty much lacks an arc there, too.

2016-05-03 05:02:34

2)

Teague wrote:

To what extent would you accept the argument that his point was, "this second, without having had any time to prepare, what do you remember about __________?," and that whatever people were able to come up with under those conditions was the actual point of the question. There are a lot of answers for Han Solo, there are not a lot of answers for Qui-Gon, QED.

It probably was, but in that case it should've been enhanced with an actual analysis of what's in the movie, and then some attempt to explain why it isn't memorable - with those spontaneous reactions as evidence that it wasn't.

That would've been a valid approach, but I don't really see how all those character traits are unmemorable, and don't accept that evidence either - all those people are RLM members and associates and they're all buddies with a history of "disappointed by the prequels", and having chats about it with each other.
Group dynamics etc., just not reliable.

2a)
Qui-Gon displays various personality traits at different points - the most interesting question in terms of "critical analysis" is how well those fit together into a single organic character (I maintain that they do):
-focused, professional courtly "FBI agent type" when leading rescue, protecting queen etc. - suspected - compare "schedule" guy from TDKR

-stern, disapproving mentor - when silently scoffing at Obiwan's jokes, extends to his contempt-filled reactions towards Jar Jar and Watto
-warm mentor/father figure, mostly to Anakin, and sometimes to Obiwan

-mischievous trickster - clearly has no respect for truth and honor when dealing with greedy merchants/slavers, stubborn tribesmen with chip on their shoulder, or queens' switcheroo games, and visibly enjoys playing for fools and disregarding their petty interests

It's ironic how the last one, appearing in the "marginal" subplots and mainly serving humorous purposes, does the heavylifting of conveying him as a "maverick".

His defining, central character trait in relation to the main story, is also by far the least pronounced one - however, it's still there and you can see the stubborness, the "headstrong", in his mannerisms, inflections etc. particularly in that last Council scene, but also the preceding and following ones where he discusses issue with Obiwan.
Those are particularly "unpronounced", and the very formulaic dialogue in those scenes doesn't help matters either - but there, nevertheless, it is.

And those bits are pretty much the sole basis that make his fatal recklessness during the duel not entirely come out of nowhere - his stubborness/arrogance relates to Anakin, Anakin is sort of but insufficiently connected to Maul, and he acts recklessly and arrogantly while combatting Maul.
Should've been WAY more in a complete narrative, but more on that in 1a)...

Two other central character traits that he has:
-particular, and invididually distinguished religiosity:
conveyed in a rather lacking fashion by him making statements about the "living force" or how the "force guides us", "this was no coincidence";
matching his role of discovering the chosen one and being particularly invested in the "prophecy" with the other Jedi acting way more reserved about the whole notion.
-(spiritual) vigilance:
expressed through the various moments where he "senses something wrong", and a shadow passes over his face;
matching his role of being the one (gradually) confronted with the Sith.

2b)
Amidala/Padme is a comparably simple case: she's a system-trusting idealist and pacifist who learns/decides to make unpleasant choices and take up arms.

At first, this is expressed very laconically: "not risk any action", "place with people".
On Coruscant, it wanders into the show, not tell territory where she hesitates to betray Valorum, but then displays empassioned anger and indignation about her dying people and her duty to them, and then decides to return home with arms while "praying" for her lost ideal etc.

One thing about her in this movie is that she appears in several personas - there's the queen, with her domineering imperious voice, and two emotional scenes already described above.

There's the handmaiden who's alternately warm, friendly/motherly and compassionate, and grim/disapproving/demanding (just on Tattoine).

And there's the authoritative, energetic, determined action leader from the final act.

In a way, all or some of those personalities come together in the closing scene, but that's debatable and probably not that important in this context - I don't think the movie really succeeds at holding all those together, or justifying* the extensive switcheroo in the first place.

[*In the 4th act, she's revealed to be an able fighter along with all the other meek handmaidens, and it turns out they've got all those secret crisis passages and hidden guns and knowledge how to attack the TF - and a few barely noticeable moments in the 1st act seem to set that up.
(More on that in 1a).)
The identity secrecy seemed to work along with that, and could've really been used had those hints been fleshed out into a proper build-up - that's the sole "justification" I can see, aside from being a neat gimmick.]

It seems to have something to do with the whole "symbiosis" theme strangely hovering over the movie, and is probably some kind of parallel to Palpatine... but all the traces end there.

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