oh, god...  I heard you say it on the show or between shows.  I know for a fact that you said during the Episode 2 commentary that Episode 2 is better than Episode 1 by virtue of the fact that at least Episode 2 had something happen in it.  Sorry you caught me with my trousers down...

I'm going to have to go back and listen to all the DIF's you've been in just to give you a proper citation...

Last edited by switch (2012-10-19 23:39:59)

Really, the context is important - it seems likely that anytime we've said "nothing happens in this movie", it would be in the context of a discussion about how nothing happened.

If I said nothing happens in Transformers (seems likely I could have) then what I likely meant was nothing of any consequence happens.     Wasn't Transformers the movie that I described as a toddler banging pots together and screaming?    It may also have been the one in which I mentioned Mamet's "modern movies are circus, not theatre" analogy.   Circus is a form of entertainment, but it doesn't have a story - it's just spectacle.   An elephant does a head stand!  Neat!

So yes, things happen in Transformers - lots of big expensive elephants-doing-headstands - but for no particular reason other than it's neat.     The "story" is just a flimsy peg to hang the spectacle on.   Was there a single person on the planet that actually cared whether Shia got to bone Megan, or if the good trucks defeated the bad trucks?    And were these things ever in any doubt?   Maybe if the viewer was six, but otherwise no. 

And did Shia's character actually do anything?   Was there something about him that made the story unfold the way it did... or was he just a guy in the vicinity of an animatronic gang war who ran fast enough to not get killed?    I don't remember anything other than that, though I grant that I didn't pay that much attention.

Anyway, by my definition (as well as my fellow geriatrics like Goldman and Mamet etc)  a proper movie story is about person X with problem Y who solves it (or doesn't) by doing Z, and their life is forever changed as a result.  You can throw plenty of spectacle into that story - please be my guest - but that spectacle better be moving the story down the road at the same time or it's just filler.

This is already becoming a quaint idea, twenty years from now it may be as archaic as vaudeville (and so will Goldman and Mamet and I).  But that's what us old folks mean when we say "nothing's happening in this movie".

As for Episode One, we went on at great length in that commentary about how nothing happens.   It's right there in the commentary - Episode One is all back story that is completely unneccessary to the overall saga.    There's not a single thing that happens in Episodes Two and Three that requires a viewing of Episode One to understand.     It's an entire movie that should have just been the opening crawl of Episode Two.   "So there's a kid called Anakin Skywalker who wants to be a Jedi.  Moving on."     

Nothing CAN happen in Episode One - the real story is still two movies away, everyone's either spinning their wheels until they get to do something that matters in another movie, or is a temp character who lives and dies within the span of the movie just so it feels like there's a plot happening.    That Plinkett guy went on at length (and so did we) in pointing out that Episode One doesn't have a "main character" by any workable definition.   If the movie doesn't even have a main character to follow, then again - nothing to see here but elephant headstands.     

Although, you can TOTALLY see in the elder Kenobi how torn he was about his master QuiGon and how he died years ago... wait, no you can't because who the F cares about the Young Kenobi Adventures?   Only George Lucas and the sort of fanboy who must know what Vader did on his fourteenth birthday.