I can understand when people say the basic story of the prequels was OK.
Then I found these videos online and this guy shows how even the basic story could have been improved much more.
[quote]Nards wrote:
I can understand when people say the basic story of the prequels was OK.
Then I found these videos online and this guy shows how even the basic story could have been improved much more.
I think the prequels would have been much better with some of these ideas. The episode 1 changes are more about how the story is told rather than changes in the actual story (with the exception of Darth Maul living, which would have been awesome). I never said I loved the prequels or that they couldn’t have been better. I just really didn’t like episode 7.
In addition to basically being a remake of episode 4, Kylo Ren came off as more of an emo teenager with a laser sword than a supervillain and Rey intuitively mastering the force and jedi arts the first time she tried leaves her nowhere to grow. She literally won the fight by reminding herself to use the force. From what we saw, she doesn’t know anything about the force other than it exists. She doesn’t even have a reason to believe that she is force sensitive (beyond the fact that it works when she tries to use the force).
Also, beyond Ponda Baba, Star Wars doesn’t do blood. Except now it does. And although they have computers that can easily route interstellar travel in four dimensions, they can’t tell you where a specific configuration of dozens of celestial bodies is. Even if there are billions of systems in the galaxy, BB-8 should have been able to tell us where that map was in the galaxy before he made it into the desert. If the whole Luke hiding and leaving a map behind pays off in a satisfying way this might be excusable, but otherwise it’s a plot bandaid that covers up the fact that they tried to re-use a 38 year old plot rather than think up something new. And it doesn’t really make sense that for 30 years the Republic has existed openly on many planets and yet continues to operate a shady organization called “the resistance” instead of just having an official defense force. (Unless you consider that Abrams seemed to want to make the First order look like the Third Reich and calling it the resistance reinforces that).
I’m highly skeptical we’ll get a satisfying explanation for what Luke’s plan is. But that admittedly may be premature. I agree that Snoke better get a satisfying origin story or it will be very lazy.
not technically a movie but I’ve been getting into Marvel’s Daredevil of late.
I’m a bit meh about Marvel in general but this is actually really good! Much darker than other Marvel stuff
I watched Bone Tomahawk yesterday. Fantastic!! There were a couple of scenes that were not for the faint of heart, but they weren’t gratuitous for the sake of gore.
I had to imdb the movie before I realized the one character was Matthew Fox. He did an awesome job. And…well…of Jack Burton was bad ass 
[quote]Silyak wrote:
[quote]roybot wrote:
This is the scene that evoked three prequels worth of backstory but delivered nothing:
It’s also the basis for the new movie.[/quote]
Once it was established that Vader=Anakin, that scene was never going to have a completely satisfying explanation. But that issue arose long before the prequels.
[/quote]
There’s far more to the scene than that.
George Lucas has never been subtle when it comes to villainous names. ‘Vader’ was always going to be Luke’s pop. He originally planned to make Vader Luke’s deadbeat dad with Anakin his surrogate father. The daddy of all twists just made them the same person. Alec Guinness is brilliantly shifty in that scene: he’s definitely lying about something when he talks about Anakin’s murder …just not the twist they told him about at the time. He’s deceiving Luke about his true parentage…from a certain point of view.
The ‘Clone Wars’ were shoehorned in when they should’ve been the backdrop to the prequels, and ‘Clone Wars’ BTW, is false advertising when there are only clones on one side.
[quote]
I’m not sure what the scene has to do with Episode 7 though. [/quote]
It’s a scene about a lightsaber with a lot of history. The same weapon recovered in TFA. Don’t make me call it a passing of the torch.
Also, note Luke messing with C-3PO’s arm after it was pulled off by sandpeople… never been the same since.
[quote]SmilingPolitely wrote:
I watched Bone Tomahawk yesterday. Fantastic!! There were a couple of scenes that were not for the faint of heart, but they weren’t gratuitous for the sake of gore.
I had to imdb the movie before I realized the one character was Matthew Fox. He did an awesome job. And…well…of Jack Burton was bad ass
[/quote]
Damn,that looks good! I sure wish Netflix had it.
[quote]CLUNK wrote:
[quote]SmilingPolitely wrote:
I watched Bone Tomahawk yesterday. Fantastic!! There were a couple of scenes that were not for the faint of heart, but they weren’t gratuitous for the sake of gore.
I had to imdb the movie before I realized the one character was Matthew Fox. He did an awesome job. And…well…of Jack Burton was bad ass
[/quote]
Damn,that looks good! I sure wish Netflix had it.
[/quote]
You know its available on Amazon Prime, right?!! 
[quote]SmilingPolitely wrote:
[quote]CLUNK wrote:
[quote]SmilingPolitely wrote:
I watched Bone Tomahawk yesterday. Fantastic!! There were a couple of scenes that were not for the faint of heart, but they weren’t gratuitous for the sake of gore.
I had to imdb the movie before I realized the one character was Matthew Fox. He did an awesome job. And…well…of Jack Burton was bad ass
[/quote]
Damn,that looks good! I sure wish Netflix had it.
[/quote]
You know its available on Amazon Prime, right?!! ;)[/quote]
Oh~! I just signed up for a free month last week!
Thanks for the reminder!
One scene from Bone Tomahawk seriously made me squirm in my seat…
Watched Deathgasm
If you like silly 80s horror films like Night of the Demons, you’ll probably enjoy this.
Ted 2 - holy lulz, this should be mandatory viewing if you want a good laugh.
[quote]dt79 wrote:
Watched Deathgasm
If you like silly 80s horror films like Night of the Demons, you’ll probably enjoy this.[/quote]
I will probably enjoy that
[quote]dt79 wrote:
One scene from Bone Tomahawk seriously made me squirm in my seat…[/quote]
Yup, me to… Good movie though.
Watched Mortdecai for no particular reason other than to see how bad it really was. Just one of many films this year that were unfairly lambasted. It’s based on a series of novels from the '70s and draws on the crime caper movies of that era. It might have been better received if it spoofed itself or ‘went meta’ which is the usual treatment for dated/ potentially laughable material.
Johnny Depp is fine as the dictionary regurgitating protagonist (one of his better eccentric roles), but he has to stop trying so hard. I could talk about why trying to play character parts as a lead is folly but the fact is, like Nicolas Cage, he absolutely has to be the weirdest fucking thing in any movie he makes.
[quote]Nards wrote:
The Force Awakens was incredibly good.
It really made the prequels look even worse and such a horribly wasted opportunity. It really makes it look like the prequels were made by a computer that had been fed the components of a Star Wars movie and it spat out gibberish. The cartoony special effects piled on top of more cartoony effects with horrible over acting by CG characters and terribly misused real human actors are left even more inexcusable after this new movie.
George Lucas seemed to have lucked out when making the very first movie. I heard he was saved from disaster in the editing room with the original movie. He had a fluke and people thought he was a great director. I think he may have a good eye for things but he should have stopped there and let someone else do the prequels. [/quote]
He only wrote Star Wars when he was refused the rights to Flash Gordon. The one thing he never seemed to understand with the prequels was that his creation was already bigger than him. He even found it hard to let go after selling Lucasfilm to Disney. My issue with the prequels is that it was such a no-brainer: Anakin should have been the same age as Obi-Wan or slightly older. An inexperienced master and an over-powered apprentice would’ve been more compelling. Qui-Gon was tacked-on. Clone armies raised to fight a phantom war is a movie in itself.
[quote]Nards wrote:
The Force Awakens was incredibly good.
It really made the prequels look even worse and such a horribly wasted opportunity. It really makes it look like the prequels were made by a computer that had been fed the components of a Star Wars movie and it spat out gibberish. The cartoony special effects piled on top of more cartoony effects with horrible over acting by CG characters and terribly misused real human actors are left even more inexcusable after this new movie.
George Lucas seemed to have lucked out when making the very first movie. I heard he was saved from disaster in the editing room with the original movie. He had a fluke and people thought he was a great director. I think he may have a good eye for things but he should have stopped there and let someone else do the prequels.[/quote]
I thought the story lacked a lot of depth. It was basically the original movie remade and told in a ridiculously simple way. They had a death star, only bigger but just as easily destroyed. A young person strong with the force growing up in the desert… Han Solo and the Falcon. The villain was less convincing as an emo teenager, and how would someone with no training in the force beat someone with training? Everything was accompished easily. As posted above, if the resistance has existed for 30 years why are they still operating on only one planet like shady rebels? Wouldn’t they be more established?
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie. Abrams does a great job telling the story, but the script/story had absolutely no creativity. I like how someone else said it, it was a terribly story told very well.
[quote]Drew1411 wrote:
[quote]Nards wrote:
The Force Awakens was incredibly good.
It really made the prequels look even worse and such a horribly wasted opportunity. It really makes it look like the prequels were made by a computer that had been fed the components of a Star Wars movie and it spat out gibberish. The cartoony special effects piled on top of more cartoony effects with horrible over acting by CG characters and terribly misused real human actors are left even more inexcusable after this new movie.
George Lucas seemed to have lucked out when making the very first movie. I heard he was saved from disaster in the editing room with the original movie. He had a fluke and people thought he was a great director. I think he may have a good eye for things but he should have stopped there and let someone else do the prequels.[/quote]
I thought the story lacked a lot of depth. It was basically the original movie remade and told in a ridiculously simple way. They had a death star, only bigger but just as easily destroyed. A young person strong with the force growing up in the desert… Han Solo and the Falcon. The villain was less convincing as an emo teenager, and how would someone with no training in the force beat someone with training? Everything was accompished easily. As posted above, if the resistance has existed for 30 years why are they still operating on only one planet like shady rebels? Wouldn’t they be more established?
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie. Abrams does a great job telling the story, but the script/story had absolutely no creativity. I like how someone else said it, it was a terribly story told very well.
[/quote]
Well, like Silyak said we’re going to have to wait for episodes 8 & 9 to see JJ Abrams’ endgame. I personally have no problem with TFA touching base with the movie that started it all when ANH uses the most archetypal plot in storytelling as long as it takes the sequels in new directions - which I believe it will.
I don’t consider Rey’s arc to be forced (bad pun intended) at all. I didn’t want to get into spoiler territory but here we go…
SPOILERS
There was a big Max Von Sydow shaped neon sign singling Rey out as someone who wasn’t dumped randomly on some lackwater desert planet. The fact that said planet isn’t Tatooine is telling. It’s the first place they’d look for her or any fugitives. Instead she’s on a new planet being watched over by a devotee of The Church of the Force/ Jedi sympathizer who also happens to have in his possession part of the map to Luke Skywalker’s secret retreat who’s played by none other than Max Von Sydow.
Also, and I can’t stress this enough…it’s Max Von fucking Sydow.
/SPOILERS
IMO, the other criticisms were adequately explained during the movie.
Watched me “The Lobster” this week.
A bit of an arty flick but if you’re into that sort of stuff it is one hell of a trip.