Re: Looper

OK, so I just started listening to this commentary, and skimmed through the posts here.

I guess I just think differently than other people.
I simply don't understand why you can't have 2 "magic beans" in a movie like this.
Automatically if I am watching a Sci-Fi movie, either what you guys are calling "hard Sci-Fi"
or not, I turn off any form of logicmaking where it comes to  what is possible.
Scientists say that time travel is impossible in real life, so to that I say if you are complaining
about "TK" in this movie, you should never even have bothered to turn on this movie
in the first place, along with BTTF or any movie dealing in time travel.

I watch a movie, if it is badass, like this one was, than thats that.
Don't get me wrong, there are many movies that I know were big
hits and that people loved, but I couldn't watch 5 minutes of.
But for 4 people to say "well the movie was good, but it just
had too much sci-fi in the plot", that just sounds insane to me.

Last edited by mkeithddc (2014-03-14 17:58:54)

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

Have you heard us talk much about magic beans and "Wonderlands" in other commentaries?

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

I did a post about magic beans on my blog recently after Rian Johnson started complaining about the theory on Twitter. It's not about there being "too much sci-fi" as it is about making your story as strong as possible in its structure. In my opinion, anyway. I think the guys explain it differently.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

Teague wrote:

Have you heard us talk much about magic beans and "Wonderlands" in other commentaries?


Yup.


If I thought you guys were a bunch of hacks, I wouldn't have listened to about
40 or so of your commentaries. I agree with you guys most time, sometimes things
are said by one or more of you in a certain movies, of course.
But in this case I just dont agree. You can't say, "well, its OK if you have 2 magic beans if they
had just put the second magic bean as a surprise at the last minute when we learn the
the kid is the rainmaker, but to have the TK the whole movie, well that just ruins it"
now that is an opinion, which is different to when you guys say that they cant do something
then to when they shouldn't have.
So if you say they would have been more effective if we didnt know anything about the TK at all,
and blamo, this kid has it, in the last 20 min, and thats why he is the rainmaker, which is what
Trey says, I would totally 100 percent agree. Rian says that people would have flipped out
if they didn't put the TK in the beginning, and I disagree with that.
But that was his decision, or so he says, and that is that, you guys can disagree, I can disagree,
but to say that he totally messed upa big part of the plot, and it is a screenwriting no-no, ya,  I
don't buy that at all.

Last edited by mkeithddc (2014-03-14 22:29:21)

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

http://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/t31/1658247_528697810583916_603879792_o.jpg
TWO MAGIC BEANS!!!!

---------------------------------------------
I would never lie. I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.

Re: Looper

And you're allowed to not buy it. They're guidelines. To the opinion of the panel, a story's focus and the audience's suspension of disbelief becomes strained when it's pulled in too many directions. Personally, it doesn't distract me. In a thematic way, in a movie about the reciprocal relationship between an individual, their environment, and their ability to change it, TK totally fits.

And speaking of opinions of how things are put together, your syntax and 100 character line breaks are pretty inscrutable. What gives? It's like you paste all your posts out of a hostile vim buffer.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

It's not that the magic bean principle "doesn't count" in fantasy stories, it's that the scope of the bean tends to be broader. There is still an upper limit to what the audience will generally accept. If the Fellowship arrived at Gondor to find them packing laser guns and speeder bikes, or the example we often give of aliens invading Hogwarts, those would be unacceptable because they are not reasonable extensions of the established "magic bean." As it is, Harry Potter comes dangerously close to violating its magic bean in Azkaban with the introduction of the Time Turner. A LOT of people find that objectionable even given the blank check of the existence of magic, because the magical world should be COMPLETELY different if time travel is a thing.

I personally, as I'm pretty sure I made clear during the episode, don't think introducing the TK suddenly in the third act would be more acceptable. But it might as well be introduced in the third act for all the use it serves to the story in the first two. Johnson using his screenwriter powers to go back to an earlier page and have someone mention it is not the same as integrating it into the story. He wants to have his cake and eat it too -- to have a villain with telekinetic powers without actually having telekinetic powers affecting the story or the world in general. That's lazy worldbuilding, and lazy storytelling. It would have been possible to make the two magic beans both aspects of the same overarching magic bean, but that would have entailed making TK part of the story instead of just a magical gun the kid can wave around for a few minutes at the end.

Thumbs up +2 Thumbs down

Re: Looper

No, ya,  I understand totally about fantasy plots and all, I just realized that I left that part
of my post in, I was going to say something else, and didnt, so I cut a part of the middl...

OK, lol, I'll just go and edit it out... roll



Dorkman wrote:

That's lazy worldbuilding, and lazy storytelling. It would have been possible to make the two magic beans both aspects of the same overarching magic bean, but that would have entailed making TK part of the story instead of just a magical gun the kid can wave around for a few minutes at the end.
.

But see I disagree, and in turn you disagree with me, just as long as you are not saying that
what you are saying there is fact, and that someone MUST NOT write in this manner period,
or may they walk the plank, or get the Rack, perhaps thrown in the Pit of Despair... I think you know
where I am going here...


http://www.thereturnedmissionary.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Pit-of-Despair-words.jpg

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

AshDigital wrote:

http://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/t31/1658247_528697810583916_603879792_o.jpg
TWO MAGIC BEANS!!!!


LMAO!!!

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

I think it goes without saying that this show is an expression of opinion about what works and what doesn't in a movie, and what a movie should or should not do in reference to whether we find it satisfying. In fact while I think it goes without saying we have nonetheless taken care to say so on quite a few occasions. You are welcome to disagree but I don't much care for being told how or whether we should express our tastes on our show.

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down

Re: Looper

paulou wrote:

And speaking of opinions of how things are put together, your syntax and 100 character line breaks are pretty inscrutable. What gives? It's like you paste all your posts out of a hostile vim buffer.

vim buffer?
To me that stands for a buffer in a Vehicle Interface Module, but I am an Auto Tech, so...

Ya, its not that I don't care about grammer, um, I am just not good with it. I got A's on all
my story writing, but D-'s on the grammer part. Probably was watching a movie when
I should have been doing homework.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

Dorkman wrote:

You are welcome to disagree but I don't much care for being told how to express our tastes on our show.


Wait.... Someone, who hosts a podcast that sometimes tries to completely rewrite
award winning filmmakers' movies, can't listen/read opinions on how they should change???
Why is it that your posts always get so hostile, even your avatar looks mean, lol.
No one is saying how you should run your show. But it comes across, in this episode,
that what they did with this movies plot was not right, and it didn't sound like an opinion on this
episode.
But thats just me, and that is all I am saying.

Last edited by mkeithddc (2014-03-15 00:00:32)

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

mkeithddc wrote:
Dorkman wrote:

I think it goes without saying that this show is an expression of opinion about what works and what doesn't in a movie, and what a movie should or should not do in reference to whether we find it satisfying. In fact while I think it goes without saying I think we have nonetheless taken care to say so on quite a few occasions. You are welcome to disagree but I don't much care for being told how to express our tastes on our show.


Why is it that your posts always get so hostile, even your avatar looks mean, lol.
No one is saying how you should run your show. But it comes across, in this episode,
that what they did with this movies plot was not right, and that it wasn't an opinion.
But thats just me, and that is all I am saying.

So you're saying no opinion should ever render judgment on whether a movie was right or wrong to make a choice? I'm sorry, that's just ridiculous.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

Darth Praxus wrote:

So you're saying no opinion should ever render judgment on whether a movie was right or wrong to make a choice? I'm sorry, that's just ridiculous.

Um... What are you talking about??? Who is saying this?
Who's posts are you reading?

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

I don't see this going anywhere but in circles, so let's move on.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

Beans, Beans, the magical fruit!
The more you use, the more you toot!

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

WAYDM does a great job of looking at a movie from multiple points of view (4 of them, typically) and having a wide open discussion on what works and what doesn't work, and that extends to the forum.

If this movie's plot structure works for you, then the movie works for you, and that's fine... for you. But it doesn't work for a lot of people, and WAYDM is good at figuring out why when that's the case.

I think if the movie works for you, you're less in a position to disagree with someone else's opinion about why it doesn't work for all those other people. You're at the side of the elephant saying "This is a great elephant!" while most people are at the back saying "This is a terrible elephant!" And Mike is saying "I think it's because we're looking at the butt hole." And you're like "Stop looking at the butt hole!" And We're like "This is the direction we approached the elephant from! If Rian Johnson wants us to see it some other way, he needs to turn the elephant around!"

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: Looper

I'm not sure that analogy "escalated," but it certainly did something quickly.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

Elephanted.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

yebmv

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

paulou wrote:

yebmv

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lj80wbu6Rk1qbvn8yo1_500.gif


/Best Bless You gif I could find hmm

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2014-03-15 01:20:15)

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Looper

Zarban wrote:

"This is a terrible elephant!" And Mike is saying "I think it's because we're looking at the butt hole." And you're like "Stop looking at the butt hole!" And We're like "This is the direction we approached the elephant from! If Rian Johnson wants us to see it some other way, he needs to turn the elephant around!"

LMAO!

Thumbs up Thumbs down

Re: Looper

http://lh3.ggpht.com/-cbZIyD4SCxQ/TcG4pt9Q2iI/AAAAAAAAADo/HmH6YRXKVfM/s1600/man-in-elephant-ass.jpg
Well, I for one sure liked that movie!

---------------------------------------------
I would never lie. I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.

Re: Looper

AshDigital wrote:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/-cbZIyD4SCxQ/TcG4pt9Q2iI/AAAAAAAAADo/HmH6YRXKVfM/s1600/man-in-elephant-ass.jpg

I love the look of disappointment from the dude on the right.

"You're gonna take a picture of this, huh? Gonna have a good laugh about the elephant butt? I thought better of you."

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down

100

Re: Looper

Doctor Submarine wrote:
AshDigital wrote:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/-cbZIyD4SCxQ/TcG4pt9Q2iI/AAAAAAAAADo/HmH6YRXKVfM/s1600/man-in-elephant-ass.jpg

I love the look of disappointment from the dude on the right.

"You're gonna take a picture of this, huh? Gonna have a good laugh about the elephant butt? I thought better of you."

Fun fact: there should be four guys in the photo. It's a rescue mission.

Thumbs up +1 Thumbs down