You know, medical science has discovered where kids come from and how to prevent it

Also, we have a new Star War film to bash. Let's focus on that

As a creationist I resent that

ETA: speaking of controversial opinions, and to avoid derailing this thread, please feel free to PM how much I'm wrong.

Last edited by fireproof78 (2016-05-08 18:21:17)

I don't think that that is all that controversial.  I think that's baked into the satirical cake.  When NPH says, "It's afraid," and everyone cheers to swelling music....it's kinda giving you a gigantic wink.

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.

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:

Insightful.

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So with that basis established:

"Confusion" seems to come up quite a lot:

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.

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.

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?

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

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?

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.

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":

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

Though that last bit is arguable.

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.

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

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...

Last edited by El Nameaux-Standardon (2016-10-22 10:44:25)

As a literature major myself, I resent the implication that we somehow aren't capable of understanding and writing SF.

That said, agreed re: most television. FilmCritHulk wrote a great piece about the issue that contrasts Breaking Bad with Luke Cage to demonstrate how we've lost the art of episodic storytelling.

I'm obviously a huge fan of Breaking Bad, and I love Hannibal to death, but outside of those I don't invest much in modern TV because of this problem. The only current show I'm watching is Orphan Black, and it's a *huge* example of the problem described above--seasons 1 and 2 are pretty great television, but then season 3 is basically one episode's worth of content stretched over ten and season 4 can't really recover from that. I love the idea of extended storytelling as opposed to solely episodic work in principle, but it's really rare for it to be done well.

Last edited by Abbie (2017-03-05 19:03:57)

Oh shit, was that one before the transition? Apologies.

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.

My contribution (it's a doozy):

Ok, I think Christopher Reeve is an awesome Superman (that's not the controversial opinion). But here's the thing: I don't care for the Donner Superman movies. Like, any of them. Old guys, don't tell me I just don't understand because I wasn't alive yet (well, for the first one). Overall, they're fairly goofy movies. Margo Kidder is insane. Gene Hackman plays a goofy, dopey, comic-relief Lex Luthor. Lex is a character who, in the comics, is one of the smartest and most calculating people on the planet. He's also all kinds of evil, and he's more than just a mustache twirling Snidely Whiplash wannabe. Do I think Superman is fine? Sure. Do I respect it as a benchmark of its time? Of course. Same with Superman II. I think the groundwork is there. That's not what bothers me about these movies. What bothers me is that, whenever a new Superman movie comes out, everyone loses their damn minds if it's not like the Christopher Reeve films.

Let's get one thing straight. Superman (as a character) is much, much older than the Richard Donner films, and the majority of his adventures have been on a comic book page, not on screen. The Donner movies are not the be-all end-all baseline of how a Superman movie absolutely HAS to be.

Does that mean I think Man of Steel was good? No. Man of Steel was pretty much shit. At best it was mediocre. But that was for its own reasons. Not because it wasn't like Reeve's Superman. In fact, if anything, the fact that it tried to borrow Superman II's plotline worked against it.

Bryan Singer's Superman Returns suffers from an even worse problem, which is that it couldn't decide if it was a reboot, remake, or a sequel. Chronologically it took place after the events of the last Reeve film. But the crisis point and several dialogue lines were stolen from the first Donner film.

It's like filmmakers keep forgetting that Superman was (and is) a comic book character first and a movie character second.

To quote Forest Gump, "That's all I got to say about that right now."

Please.... be gentle.

Yes I'm afull

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