Entertainment things everyone else is wrong about, and you are right about.

[drusselmeyer]

Trek fans have no room to criticize anything... Except maybe Dr Who.

LoL

 

[Treadwell]

Speaking of car chases, I finally saw The French Connection, and after the chase I thought, that's it?
To a lesser extent, kind of my reaction to the movie itself actually.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

The ending of The Special Edition of Return of the Jedi—and the removal of “Yub Nub”—improved upon the original ending.

No, it didn’t.

Has anyone sat back and listened to the acoustic version of “Yub Nub” and considered the meaning of the words?

What some may call childish, meaningless gibberish, devoid of meaning, and the first example of Lucas catching a case of “the cutes”, I call musical bliss and perfection:

 

[CessnaDriver]

You had to be there.

I was opening day. LOL. I expected
something very different.

 

[drusselmeyer]

That's not what I meant.

Those who were part of the MTV generation in the military at the time and young, there was a certain understanding that is not really in the film that is more about a time and context.

As Robin Williams said, if you remember the sixties, you weren't there.

 

[drusselmeyer]

The secret of writing good fiction:

1. The conflict between the antagonist and the protagonist is the most emotionally compelling element in storytelling.

2.The protagonist is the character that drives the story

3. The antagonist is the character that attempts to overthrow the protagonist.

4.The protagonist will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

5. The secret: the protagonist is almost always NEVER the hero.


I'm right. Everyone else is wrong. So there!

 

[batguy]

Bullitt -

McQueen did some driving but not the riskiest shots. Bud Ekins jumped the hills and rammed the bad guys.

The actor in the black Charger (Bill Hickman) actually did all his own driving. The hit man is only in the movie for a couple scenes so they just hired the stunt guy to play him.

Also interesting - you're looking at ONE copy of each stunt car. They were pretty stock compared to modern movies. No rollcages. The Charger had aftermarket shocks. The Mustang had aftermarket shocks, some engine mods, and chassis bracing.


French Connection -

That chase loses a lot of punch on a small screen.

What made it remarkable was how risky & uncontrolled the filming was. It was a bunch of guerilla shots with real cars (random drivers on a public road) all around. Gene Hackman's collisions were pure accidents too. And look at all those steel pillars around the speeding car - it's NASTY if you crash into (or get knocked into) one of those. Hackman's car had no rollcage or anything.

 

[blueraptor15]

In modern movies? Yes. If you want to see why people love car chases, watch Bullit with Steve McQueen. That is the best traditional car chase I've ever seen in a movie. What's even more impressive is that McQueen himself did all the driving. I really need to buy a copy of that movie!

In all movies, I'm afraid. Bullit included. They bore me to tears.

 

[dascoyne]

A.I. is a vastly underrated film and it is just as haunting, beautiful, horrfic, and heartfelt today as it ever was.

 

[HeartBlade]

I agree. I never read the books but I've seen a few seaons of the show. It's not bad but it's overrated.


I feel the same way about Harry Potter. That's probably down to my age. HP felt like a lot of the kid-oriented fantasy stuff we got back in the 1980s. The Harry Potter fan generation was young enough to have missed all that.

Growing up with Harry Potter, I was the target audience but upon watching the films again as an adult, I realized something. The Harry Potter books are regular teen mystery novels.

Every Harry Potter book is just a mystery. What is the philosopher’s stone? What is the chamber of secrets? Who put Harry’s name in the Goblet? The fact that “magic” can essentially be used to explain everything also ruins the “mystery” aspect (it wasnt Snape trying to kill you, it was me cause magic). While great books for young kids and still very beneficial since they encourage kids to read, the stories could be better structured and more varied.

While I have opinions on TLJ and ST as a whole, Ive talked about them ad nauseum so will skip to other thoughts.

Mission Impossible is better than the Bond films. There is more teamwork among the cast so its not just one dude doing everything (although Cruise does do most stuff), the gadgets and stunts are more fun, and the story is streamlined but engaging.

“Woke” movies arnt bad because “diversity” but because the writers are bad. The writers make their characters infallible or automatically right and it takes the audience out of the story.

Actors are overrated in terms of film making. While actors contribute to a movie, a movie doesnt need amazing actors of it has great camera work, lighting, sets, and writing. As long as the actor is passable, a good or amazing movie can be made if everything else is on point. On the contrary, an amazing actor cant save a film if one of the other aspects is lacking.

Animation films can be just as good, if not better, than live action films. The benefits of animation is that the animators have full control of the characters so can add subtext and facial features to tell another story that isnt always as well expressed in live action.

Part of more isnt better but longer stories do not make better stories. On the contrary, stories that are too long are bad because they meander too much and do not get to the point. Looking at the recent rise of relatively much shorter manga compared to the old guard (Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Hells Paradise vs One Piece) I think shorter stories told at a brisk pace are far superior to incredibly long ones. There is a tipping point and once you reach that point, your story only goes downhill.

 

[Captain Dunsel]

Actors are overrated in terms of film making. While actors contribute to a movie, a movie doesnt need amazing actors of it has great camera work, lighting, sets, and writing. As long as the actor is passable, a good or amazing movie can be made if everything else is on point. On the contrary, an amazing actor cant save a film if one of the other aspects is lacking.

Agreed…when I hear stories of various famous franchise actors in the 1980’s showing up to work after doing various recreational drugs—either before arriving on-set or while on-set—and later talking at length in interviews about how challenging the role was and the seriousness of “the craft of acting”…

I think Timothy Olyphant had the best take on “acting” that I’ve ever heard:

 

[Laspector]

Poltergeist was a better movie than E.T.

 

[Laspector]

Poltergeist was a better movie than E.T.

 

[Strikerkc]

I haven't even seen poltergeist, and I'm pretty confident agreeing with you.

 

[CessnaDriver]

Weekend at Bernies II is comedy genius.

 

[dascoyne]

Here is the inverse situation.
I have no interest in watching new Quentint Tarantino films because I feel like he's all played out.


But invariably I would get around to watching them, and every single time I end up thinking, "Damn. That was a really, really good movie."

 

[Solo4114]

1. I agree to an extent. Considering it's a part 2, it IS kind of beholden to part one. If it was part one, then yeah, i'm open to seeing where it goes with one exception - no character assassination, but that's complete separate argument. When you're part 2 of three, you have the duty to continue and flesh out what was begun in part one. When you decide throw it out the window and try and start anew - it's an utter failure of a part 2.

Yeah, I suppose that I should confess that I LOATHE JJ's "mystery box" style and have said as much many times here. I see it as non-narrative audience manipulation for the sake of ginning up interest. It's not actual storytelling, and JJ himself confesses that what's in the box is beside the point, because the point is to create that sense of "Ooooh, WHAT'S IN THE BOX?!?!?!" (it's Gwyneth Paltrow's head!) within the audience.

So stuff like "Oooh, what are the Knights of Ren?!?!?! Where did Snoke come from?!?!?" that's all audience manipulation, but it fueled speculation for several years here. Except it's all entirely beside the point. It's got nothing to do with the actual story. It's just background nonsense designed to grab your brain.

2. I thought TROS was about as good as it could be under the circumstances. Lose your featured OT actor right before filming was about to begin, losing the original director, bringing in a new team to direct and then having to rewrite based on losing Carrie AND trying to over compensate for the legitimate criticisms of part 2 (not the troll garbage), and having to do it all to hit a pre-determined release date that really limited you with all that you were trying to do, honestly, not sure how you do much better. But, I think a lot of the issues also are due to no cohesive plan.

Yup. This is the biggest issue: they had no clear plan going in, because JJ is not a planner. Or rather, I think the unspoken plan was always "We're just gonna re-hash the OT, right? I mean, that's what we're doing, right? Embiggen it, tweak a few elements, but basically all the same beats yeah?" And nobody ever bothered to step in and say "What if we actually planned out our story in detail?"

So you end up with...exactly what we got. It's a shame, too, because for all the many, many flaws of the sequel trilogy, there's some truly great elements. Production design is fantastic, cinematography is terrific, the cast is immensely charismatic, the characters themselves had the kernel of something interesting about them, etc.

3. More CAN be better, but it isn't always. I'm a firm believe of it takes as long to tell the story as it takes to tell the story. If you can do that in 90 minutes, or 120 minutes. Great. If you need 400...well, you need a trilogy I thought Stranger Things 4 illustrated that perfectly. To me that was literally the equivalent of putting a full book on screen. Loved it.

True, I suppose I should say "more for the sake of more." You tell the story that needs to be told. And then when it's "And then what happened?" the answer is either "They grew old and died" or "Nothing. Go to bed."

4. Pretty much agree. There was a lot of bad and contradictory stuff in the EU. Heir to the Empire was great (obviously i liked that given my screen name ) and maybe i'm the minority, but i also really liked the jedi academy trilogy. Past that nothing was really special or that memorable. Not to mention every author and reader was given warning before the first book was published that the should LFL make any more movies, they were not beholden to anything in the EU.

Yeah, I didn't mind the Jedi Academy series that immediately followed the Zahn trilogy. And the Rogue Squadron books I read were ok. The rest, though? Somewhere between utterly forgettable and total dreck.

5. Don't know. Never say B5

Ooooh, you absolutely should! It's a FANTASTIC show! I'm happy to provide a viewing guide if you like. I wrote one up for a friend for the first season (which is the roughest to get thru).

Yes I totally agree about the setup from JJA. Luke became a recluse and that requires a pretty galactic reason behind it. JJA left a big problem for the next movie to solve.

But RJ's solution to that problem, both general and specifics, was not acceptable IMO. It went too far into character & audience betrayal.


You can solve the problems of continuing the 'Terminator' franchise by having 13yo John Connor get waxed at the beginning of a new movie. But the audience is not coming into that movie in a neutral state. They are invested in Johnny and sending him off like that will cost the movie too much goodwill to recover from it.


There were other ways to handle Luke's TLJ situation. Luke has amnesia. Something has blocked his contact with the rest of the galaxy. Maybe it's the bad guy and he has been decieving Luke for years. Maybe Luke lost his powers and he doesn't know why or is trying to regain them. Maybe he would have to do something morally unacceptable to get his powers back and he's not willing. Maybe he saw the future and saw that his mission would fail (without the baby Hitler incident). Maybe he's concentrating with all his Jedi powers to retroactively change the final season of 'Game of Thrones'. There were so many ways to write TLJ that didn't involve grumpy-old-Luke throwing away the lightsaber & milking a space cow & trying to kill his nephew.

Eh, I think that the problem is that Luke's character fundamentally changed, or else...why's he on the island in the first place? Why isn't he coming back to save the day? Remember, part of the story elements are that (1) there's a map to find Luke, and (2) it's been hidden on purpose. Artoo has it, but won't divulge it for just anyone. So...why is that? Why the hell would Luke purposefully be in isolation? We get hints of it with the vision of the Knights of Ni Ren and the destruction of the Academy, but no real details (because, again, JJ ain't no detail guy).

I mean, we can hypothesize a bunch of different reasons, but I'm not sure how many of them make for a compelling story, even while they preserve the Luke we love.

Like, I can come up with an alternate story, too. I just don't think it'd be all that good or interesting.

Example: After the destruction of the Academy, Luke fled to Ach-To because he'd found a holocron that prophesied a Jedi Test that offered....a "Great Reward." He didn't want it to fall into Ben's hands, and he knew Ben was searching for it, so he peaced out and took all the info about it with him. Except he left a map because...uh...reasons. (Honestly, the "I left a map behind" thing is another HUGE problem with a lot of Luke's decisions -- it's internally inconsistent within the setup provided by TFA -- Luke's put himself in isolation but left a map? WTF? Why? Why like that?) Anyway, Rey shows up, Luke taps her to do the Big Test, and now she gains enlightenment and the ability to end the First Order. Blah blah.

Or let's say Luke went to Ach-To because he had some other kind of knowledge/info he knew he HAD to withhold, and he had to cut himself off from the Force altogether to keep it hidden. He left a map because he's secretly hoping a new prospective student would find it, and he could train them to go beat Ben. But...I dunno. That still seems kinda lame. And it still sort of undercut's Luke's heroism and desire to help fight evil. And then the knowledge is just a macguffin anyway, and blah blah blah. It's all pretty boring, really, and it's all due to the initial setup of LUKE SKYWALKER HAS DISAPPEARED AND IS LIVING ON AN ISLAND!!! that JJ introduced.

Also, I would argue that TLJ left the writers of the next episode in just as much of a mess as TFA did. (A different kind of mess, but still a mess.)

I walked out of TLJ with mixed feelings about it. But I had a clear feeling that I didn't care where the story went from there. It was clear that nobody was steering the ship and they weren't even respecting the old characters. I didn't need to follow the leaks & rumors about ep#9's troubled production for two years just to know it would be a disappointment. That outcome was baked in by the previous two episodes.

The writer of ep#9 turned out to be JJA again. But it could have been some other poor chump having to deal with the mess.

I agree here. The mess it left was "How the hell do they wrap this up in one film?!" And the answer apparently was "Rather poorly! Here, I'll show you..."

Exactly. Rian's option wasn't the only one.

Luke could have gone to that island to regroup and find a way to bring Ben back to the light. His ship malfunctioned and he was stranded there because there was no other way to get off planet. The planet is undeveloped with no transports on or off world. There. Simple way to maintain the character's integrity and explain his absence from the fight.

Again, yeah, we can come up with alternate answers, but how many of them are actually interesting stories, and how many of them are just protectiveness of our idea of the character?

Don't know if you did this on purpose but you just gave a very detailed explaination of why the Sequel trilogy should have never been made in the first place and how horribly mismanaged it was before The Force awakens even saw the light of day...absolutely nothing was thought out from the beginning and to justify everything that happened in these movies based on a different version of Luke who leaves everything and everyone behind(of course, leaves a map to his location so he can be found...huh?) so eventually, a scavenger girl could push him down on the ground with his back turned and lord over him somehow motivating him back to action(by a force projection, not in the flesh) is not just diminishing a character...but is insulting, disrectful to the origins and it's erasing the whole entire premise and redemption of the character itself...also by reinstating a character(Palpatine) thereby undoing what had already been completed.

We all know their motivation behind this mess. How? They are still doing it...currently! To justify the ends without justifying the means is just incompetent and lazy. I know a handful of people on this forum that could have produced something 10 times as good as what the audience got. I know...many will say, "well Lucas changed the OT as it went along too" Please! That is most definitely true yet, when you take the OT as a whole...It's a cohesive and complete story with a message that speaks to the heart. Where is any cohesiveness to the ST? What is the overall message of the ST? Is it inspiring or thoughtful or heart provoking? No it is not! ("oooh...Rey kissed Kylo...how romantic! It's so romantic kissing a guy that murdered his own father and broke his mothers heart to death, but for Him? He got to kiss the most powerful woman to ever exist!) Man, i think i talked myself right into loving this...not! lol

So, I was disappointed by the sequel trilogy for the most part (In spite of really enjoying TLJ), but I have to say I've really dug pretty much everything else they've put out. I haven't seen all the animated stuff, but the live action content has been great. Rogue One, Solo, Andor, Mando, Boba Fett, Kenobi, I've enjoyed all of it. But a big part of that is because my view has been for a long time that Star Wars is a setting and not just "The story of the Skywalkers and their assorted hangers-on."

I get why they went with the sequels that they did. But you can check back thru my post history and you'll see that I was very, very leery of the idea of bringing back the old characters at all. I liked TFA when it first came out, but it hasn't held up and I've become convinced that JJ would have just made a series of roller coaster films if he'd been in charge of the whole thing, and it still would've come out kinda muddled and slapdash.

And a big, big part of that is because the "plan" seems to have been "We'll make a new trilogy with younger actors and make bank." And that was about it.


Anyway, I still dig TLJ a ton. But I wish it had been its own trilogy and JJ hadn't been involved. I gather he's a super nice guy and a really great person, so I don't want to speak ill of him, but I'm really not a fan of his style of storytelling.

 

[Psab keel]

Again, yeah, we can come up with alternate answers, but how many of them are actually interesting stories, and how many of them are just protectiveness of our idea of the character?

The Empire Strikes Back is proof that you can develop a beloved character by challenging them in new ways without fundamentally altering who they are at their core. Luke grew in that film exponentially, without devolving into cynicism or becoming flat out unlikeable. My simple explanation was a means to explain his absence from TFA and since Luke was no longer the lead protagonist, the better story would have been how the hell Snoke turned Kylo to the point where Luke couldn't bring Ben back, because by the time Luke confronts him, Ben had been corrupted. Ben murdering all of Luke's students is a ridiculous response to Luke's actions because they had nothing to do with the incident that one night. So clearly Snoke must have done something truly sick to have warped Ben's mind into thinking the only way to survive was to murder everyone. That warrants a damn good explanation.

Given that everything hinged on Ben turning, it's crucial that it gets explained or shown. It's just too vague an explanation to have to mold Luke into essentially an entirely new character. Better yet they could have come up with a different story altogether with their own original characters. The OT crew's story was over. This is a case where more is just that, more. Not better. Passing the torch stories mostly suck anyway.

 

[Solo4114]

The Empire Strikes Back is proof that you can develop a beloved character by challenging them in new ways without fundamentally altering who they are at their core. Luke grew in that film exponentially, without devolving into cynicism or becoming flat out unlikeable. My simple explanation was a means to explain his absence from TFA and since Luke was no longer the lead protagonist, the better story would have been how the hell Snoke turned Kylo to the point where Luke couldn't bring Ben back, because by the time Luke confronts him, Ben had been corrupted.

Given that everything hinged on Ben turning, it's crucial that it gets explained or shown. It's just too vague an explanation to have to mold Luke into essentially an entirely new character. Better yet they could have come up with a different story altogether with their own original characters. The OT crew's story was over. This is a case where more is just that, more. Not better. Passing the torch stories mostly suck anyway.

It's not, though. Or at least, not the way you think.

Luke in that film is in a completely different situation. He's young. He's The Hero. He's new and fresh and wide-eyed. And yes, he makes mistakes in the film and learns and grows from them, but the story itself is all about Luke and his journey.

The ST isn't. Luke's a supporting character. In actuality, there is no analogue in the OT for the Luke character, because everyone we interact with in those films we do so for the first time. Obi-Wan and Yoda could both be kinda like Luke (former warriors who've now become mentors after suffering great tragedy), but when these stories were being told, we hadn't ever seen them at the height of their glory. If we had, though, if Episodes I-III had been the actual start, how might we have reacted to Yoda being kind of a dick to Luke? He's one of the greatest Jedi masters of all time! But he sits in this crappy swamp?! And he gives Luke a bunch of grief and such during his training? WTF! This isn't my Yoda! My Yoda would be out slicing up stormtroopers and saving the day!

That said, I absolutely agree that a key part of selling why Luke goes into hiding -- in any capacity -- is actually showing Ben's corruption and downfall. We don't even get that in TLJ (and it's definitely a weakness). Luke says he sensed the darkness (What? From where? Why? What the hell happened there? Was it always there? Did it spring from nothing?) and acted on it. Now, I think what TLJ is implying is that it's ultimately Luke's own actions -- his penchant for treating visions of the future from the Force as gospel and something he can prevent -- that sets everything in motion. But it's unclear whether Snoke had gotten to Ben before that, or whether Snoke took an already embittered Ben in after that point, and that's definitely a flaw of TLJ.

But anyway, my main point is that the ST is focused on Rey's journey. Not Luke's. Luke is not the star. Luke is the background guy. The story isn't even about Luke's fall. It's about Rey's rise.

I think Luke's actions make sense if you take them as they come. If you accept the premise laid out by JJ, then everything else follows. It's just...not what people wanted to see.

It's much the same as with the prequels. Anakin's story isn't bad. It actually is perfectly consistent the whole way thru. It's not a betrayal of his character, either. He's a broken, emotional, emotionally scarred individual with deep-seated attachment issues and the power of a demi-god, and nobody around him who has the capacity to help him process his psychological issues and move on. When Palpatine manipulates him, it leads to understandable, even predictable outcomes.

It's just...not the story I wanted to see. I wanted Anakin to have different motivations because I'd have liked that story better, and because I think it fits with the vibe of the overall series better if it had been done my way (Anakin would still have gotten super attached, but in stead of being "Wah, I miss my mom and don't want my wife to die" it would've been "These wars are too costly and the Jedi are powerless to stop it, and refuse to use the tools available to do so. I'll use the Dark Side to end war altogether, impose order, and it will be good." And that'd be how he justifies everything to himself until Padme's death when he realizes he's made himself a monster...so he embraces it and doubles down on that.). I still think my version (or at least something like that) would've been more entertaining to me than what we got.

But I honestly can't fault the story of the PT. It works perfectly well for what it's trying to do. I just wanted something different. I think that's ultimately what TLJ is for a lot of people: something that when viewed objectively mostly works...but not what people actually wanted to watch.

 

[Psab keel]

Obi-Wan and Yoda could both be kinda like Luke (former warriors who've now become mentors after suffering great tragedy), but when these stories were being told, we hadn't ever seen them at the height of their glory. If we had, though, if Episodes I-III had been the actual start, how might we have reacted to Yoda being kind of a dick to Luke? He's one of the greatest Jedi masters of all time! But he sits in this crappy swamp?! And he gives Luke a bunch of grief and such during his training? WTF! This isn't my Yoda! My Yoda would be out slicing up stormtroopers and saving the day!

This is a false equivalency though because when Yoda and Obi-Wan went into hiding they had no choice in the matter. Their order was eradicated and the Empire was in control of the galaxy. Add in the events of Episode 3 and they were fugitives on the run for their lives when Palpatine declared them outlaws. No allies other than Bail Organa, no Rebel Alliance in existence yet, nowhere to go. Then they had to hide the space twins. Even more reason to stay hidden to keep those two safe.

Luke by contrast in TLJ left the fight after he failed his nephew but when the Republic was in power and the galaxy was at peace. Too much of a coward to face his sister and own his mistake he selfishly ran off to sulk on that island. Luke had plenty of allies who could have helped him to rescue Ben or at least make an attempt, especially when the First Order was a growing threat and Ben had turned to their leader Snoke. He just chose not to do anything about it until Rey showed up because, reasons......