| Author |
 Topic  |
|
Dave Noisy
Minister of Chaos
Canada
4496 Posts |
 Posted - 08/20/2003 : 19:34:40
|
I would agree with the FX, they don't really ruin the movie for me, i find if anything it pacifies the movie and makes it more tolerable for me.
I won't fault the bad acting either...there was real bad acting in the 'originals'. (Remember the 'Hey Carrie!' scene?? Bwaaahahhaahah!)
There was a lot more PASSION in the first one, the characters were believable, even if they were calling out 'real' names.
These new movies are so damn dry... 'Padme' looks like she's about to puke every time she glances at Anikin. (I would too..that dude has NO charisma..)
And of course SW, etc, were groundbreaking, both cinimatographically (?) and socially. Part of my unhappiness is that the prequels haven't had a fraction of that effect. Maybe they're breaking some ground with technology, but these days it's really the same thing everyone is doing, and there is very little 'improvising' that left SW 'charming'.
It's dry, there's too much effort showing, and very little passion in it. And trust me, i'm no SW chump, i breathed SW as a kid, and have volumes of SW trivia buried in my brain.
Now it's like it's ruined. It really would be better if he hadn't done this. |
 |
|
|
glacial906
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1738 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2003 : 20:13:15
|
I have to put my two cents in here. I look at CGI as any other VALID art form out there. Yes, it can be abused. And yes, it oftentimes is. I look at it more from the point of view of the artist. I get the same satisfaction from using pixels to create as I do from sketching or any other artistic endeavor I pursue. It is simply a different medium. El Barto, I know that everyone has their own opinion and I respect that. It's no skin off my nose or anyone else's if you go on despising all forms of CGI for the rest of your life. But I wish you could separate your interpretation of the abuse of CGI from the real, artistic applications it can produce. I don't know if you've ever actually USED any CGI application; I know that there are like, trailers and stuff on the Phantom Menace and Lord of the Rings DVD's, and these oftentimes show CGI characters in various stages of development. But it is HARD WORK! I don't think that using it is laziness at all. It is lazy, I agree, to rely on it to sell a movie, which IS what happens alot nowadays. It is hard work for the sake of entertainment. I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't dismiss the whole field as some gimmick -- I don't think it's going away anytime soon. Like anything else, it will go through it's good and bad incarnations, just don't let your bad experiences with lazy writers form your whole opinion of CGI.
Yes, there are alot of crap Hollywood movies. They are not crap BECAUSE of the CGI, (except, yes, I do agree that the Incredible Hulk movie was slippery dog shit) but because of the writer/director's belief that they could pull the wool over the audiences eyes, and decieve them into believing that, just because they sat through an hour and a half of amazing things that they never would see in their entire lifetimes, they've witnessed a fine theatrical masterpiece.
I think, although George Lucas kind of failed with "The Phantom Menace," what he was trying to do was make it accessable to kids nowadays. I think he was trying to recreate what made kids respond to it when "Star Wars," "Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" first came out. He was trying to appeal to a wider audience than just the people who were alive back then, and who now see the prequels only to gripe about how shitty they are, and how they don't compare at all to the originals. I personally believe that if the CGI technology had been around back in 1977, hell yeah Lucas would've utilized it, and your memories of STAR WARS would've been remarkably different. By the way, I too think "Phantom Menace" sucks the big tallywhacker, and the only thing going for "Attack of the Clones" was the CGI. But, I kind of understand what Lucas is trying to do, and he IS rather constrained in storytelling freedom, what with them being prequels and all. I don't think that any of us that were born in the late seventies/early eighties would EVER be satisfied with the prequels, because they wouldn't fit with the first three, which for us are always ingrained upon our minds as more than just movies. They are a part of our psyche, and have become bigger than what they actually are.
glacial |
Edited by - glacial906 on 08/21/2003 20:21:18 |
|
|
|
Dave Noisy
Minister of Chaos
Canada
4496 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2003 : 21:56:26
|
Perhaps not 'satisfied', but it could have been a lot better...enough not to warrent a mass hatred of Lucas!
heh..i didn't even go to the theatre to watch the second one, i downloaded it before it was out, and watched it, and was so put off by the story and characters in the crappy version that i had that i don't ever want to waste my time watching it again.
I can appreciate many 'bad' films (hell, i liked Dumb and Dumberer, American Wedding and Ladies Man!) but other than the FX, there's very little in those movies.. |
|
|
|
glacial906
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1738 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2003 : 22:56:40
|
 What FX are there in those movies?
glacial |
|
|
|
Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11687 Posts |
Posted - 08/21/2003 : 23:50:42
|
| Well, I was born in '80 and I do like the prequels, but I suppose you have to take the movies for what they are. Anyway, aside from the whole 'disliking the prequels' part, I really think you put things quite nicely, glacial. That's what I've been trying to say (the first the paragraphs in particular). |
|
|
|
glacial906
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1738 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 00:12:38
|
Thank you, Cult of Frank.
...
Gotcha beat by a year!! '79, baby, YEAH!!! We seventies children ROCK!!!!!
Quantum nonlocality does not prove that "signals" travel "faster than light." Rather, it shows that at a deep level of reality the speed of light as a limiting factor is irrelevant because phenomena are instantaneously connected regardless of distance. |
|
|
|
The Holiday Son
= Quote Accumulator =
France
2010 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 02:30:39
|
quote:
Originally posted by Dave Noisy
i breathed SW as a kid
Exactly.
And if you were a kid now you would love the prequels as much as you love(d) the original trilogy.
And if we were honest we could spot bad things in the original trilogy as well.
The prequels are not perfect (especially the love story in Episode II... arrghl...) but they're very good.
And for El Barto:
I must insist: Episode IV V and VI are also kids movies!!
Star Wars IS for kids. Period. |
Edited by - The Holiday Son on 08/22/2003 02:37:06 |
|
|
|
glacial906
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1738 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 06:03:08
|
I agree. What is there that we can find adult about fuzzy little teddy bear aliens?
Quantum nonlocality does not prove that "signals" travel "faster than light." Rather, it shows that at a deep level of reality the speed of light as a limiting factor is irrelevant because phenomena are instantaneously connected regardless of distance. |
|
|
|
blackpurse
= Cult of Ray =
USA
299 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 07:10:04
|
Hmmmm… I've got a few points to say on this that may get me some flames.
I think the first series of Star Wars movies was not "just for the kids". Much of the mythology in them was based on baby-boomer pathos and mythology -- something a person who was a little kid in the late 70s early 80s wouldn't necessarily have gotten. But there were so many references to things that boomers -- and their parents for that matter -- would have picked up on. Especially WWII and Cold War references: the stormtroopers were so Nazi like (and most of the leadership of the Empire was decidedly german). I remember seeing that one alien general for the rebels and thinking how Eisenhower-like he was. And that one jet fighter communications lieutenant who looked and spoke like he was smack out of the French Resistance. The sleazy underworld figures were decidedly Godfather-esquely Italian. The woods/jungle and its inhabitants (the "fuzzy little aliens") was extremely SE Asia-like -- with the locals beating the technology with sticks and rocks much like we got out asses kicked in 'nam. The original Star Wars movies were arguably the best WWII battle movies ever made -- a remake of both "Sink the Bismarck" and "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" in some respects (with a little "Stalag 17" and "Von Ryan' Express" thrown in for flava.) Star Trek does this as well. The Cardassians -- with their efficiency and intellectualism that "justify" their mass murder -- are obviously the nazis. The bajorans are the jews. The klingons, with their honor and their poetic vision of battle (not to mention Worf's mega-Tai-Chi moves) are the Japanese -- half their dialouge is smack out of Yukio Mishima's short stories. Once again, Italians are the underworld businessmen types in the form of the Ferengi-- and operate all the trade, casinos, prostitution, etc. All have their strengths and weaknesses, their positive and negative attributes. "Good" ferengi are friendly enough businesssmen and are Donald Trump like in their charisma. "Bad" Ferengi (the episode where they use a forbidden knowledge to take over Picard's brain) are Ivan Boesky like, and eventually get caught and punished by the Ferengi's equavalent of the Securities and Exchange Commission. (remember, their crime was in wasting time in something that was not profitable!)
My theory -- take it or leave it, is that Lucas (and Roddenberry, for that matter) was able to build that mythology for that generation well because it was his generation's mythology. I'm a late 'boomer, not quite X'er so I probably enjoyed it for those same reasons. Much of the reading I've done that's tried to analyze X is theorizing that X has no common mythology -- no major pull-together event as boomers had with WWII and the Cold War to create that mythology. So the mythology in the prequels doesn't strike a chord with anybody in particular -- not today's kids but especially not with their parents. This isn't Lucas' fault.
Because I'm not up on post-tweener pop culture, I can't answer this question, but perhaps many of you can: What does the current generation have to draw upon to create a larger-than-life mythology? All that I see emerging through the din are Britney Spears, boy bands, and updated garage bands, re-hashes of old movies, etc. I can't believe this is it -- this generation has got to be capable of more (and I suspect it is the management of my generation that is stifling creative output in favor of the bottom lie). But Elvis and the Beatles and Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick and Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins et al were groundbreaking and creative AND moved millions of units. And 9/11 notwithstanding (perhaps we'll see this as this generation's unifying event, just as WWII, CW, the moon landings and 'nam were for mine), there seems to be no collective testing of wills for this generation. No zeitgeist, if you will. The "middle three" SW movies tapped heavily into the boomer zeitgeist. What is there for a series that relies so much on mythology to play upon?
Cartoon Network does this wonderfully -- I was just commenting to somebody that we are finally seeing cartoons again that are aimed for children, yet are tapping into their parent's references. The creator of the Fairly Oddparents came out and admitted this in a recent interview. I find myself watching the PPGs and Dexter's Lab for exactly this reason. Stella and I -- with a close to 40 year age difference -- watch them together and enjoy them for our own reasons. (and this is a good thing -- we can agree on something that is good, and she thus takes my word for it and agrees with me when I tell her that something is lame, like McDonald's.) But still, they're only parodying popular culture and make many references to MY generation's pop culture. The middle Star Wars worked because it didn't simply parody, it referenced and assimilated pop culture. I don't know enough about X's pop culture to see if the prequels even attempt this, but I don't think they do.
So I guess that's my question: What IS the current zeitgeist? And to steer back into the original topic of this thread, has Arnold tapped into it? Is it that we don't have an uberman, a larger than life, Kennedy/FDR/Ike/Truman figure to wave his big stick and speak softly (or at least with an accent)? Is this why Arnold's probably going to win? These are genuine, not rhetorical questions, BTW.
"Sacred cows make the best burgers!"
|
Edited by - blackpurse on 08/22/2003 07:13:04 |
|
|
|
Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11687 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 07:51:03
|
Veronica, that's pretty interesting. I've heard people say that it is a world war 2 movie, but never explain where they got it from other than the x-wing flight patterns and the fact that it is, in actuality, about war. I'm not very verbose today (thankfully for you), so I'll just say thanks for the food for thought. It's always cool to hear someone else's take. When I think of mythological references, I always think more along the lines of traditional prince/princess, cowboy/western, hero/villain, white/black magic (the Force vs technology), etc. but this is a decidedly interesting take.
As for pop culture and unifying events of our generation, I would have to say that it seems that the previous generation(s) are the ones who dictate ours as we will dictate our childrens' until they are old enough to be in a position do it for themselves. That said, as far as unifying events, nothing so all-encompassing as WW2 or 'nam or Woodstock, but definitely 9.11 would be one thing. No good vs evil there, just evil, which is sort of sad. At least WW2 had an honourable side to it, even if millions died in its pursuit. I guess 'nam didn't have any really positive side to it, in fact we (the west) were the agressors. I'm not sure what Canada's role in either that or the Korean war was, but it seems that our defining moments come from our southern neighbours anyway.
Hopefully there can be some positive events, too. I don't think we'll see a Mars landing in my lifetime, unless China and the US want to compete in a race to Mars. That was the good thing about a strong Soviet Union.... something to keep America in check and racing and keep testing the mettle of humanity. Sure, it was done under threat of nuclear war, but I think even most Americans would agree with me that HEALTHY competition wouldn't hurt that much.
We'd probably be on Mars if the cold war hadn't ended as it had. Which reminds me, the wall coming down was probably a big event of our generation too... I remember it from grade 4 or 5. And I remember princess Di's death, though I wouldn't call that a defining moment for our generation. Just something that caught the world's attention for a while.
That said, heroes of this generation might be people like Charles Thompson, less likely people like Rudy Guliani, and there are probably others who have defined what they do and set a good example (even if only under pressure) for humanity in general, but I'm not sure who/where they are. Sportwise, we've had people like Gretzky and Jordan, politically, I can only think of anathematic characters. Mandella, perhaps? I certainly hope it's not Arnie... that would be a sad state of affairs for the US and California in particular, though I admit to knowing nothing of his platform or his political/economic knowledge and background. I just have a hard time seeing him as a politician.
Alright, so I'm apparently long-winded, just a slow typer today. That's all for now. |
|
|
|
glacial906
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1738 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 12:27:18
|
No flames, blackpurse. You make a good point. So I don't guess Star Wars are kids movies, I just think that Lucas employed measures that broadened his audience a little bit. Ridley Scott did nothing to bastardize the dark, gloomy world he portrayed in "Blade Runner," (one of my favourite movies of all time) and look at how poorly it was recieved. (And, before any die hard Star Wars fans out there get offended when I used the term "bastardize" to describe the movies, just know that all I mean is that they pandered to a larger demographic than Blade Runner.)
I agree wit' Cult Of Frank about the "defining" moments of our generation. Most of the stuff out there that I like -- music, art, literature, etc. -- has fallen through the cracks of what is popular.
I read a sci-fi book once that took place on an alternate-history Earth. In it, Kennedy had never been assassinated, and mankind reached Mars by 1986. The reason for this was that Kennedy was apparently a big supporter of NASA and the space program. (In the book, men never went to the moon, because they wanted to invest all their efforts in a manned Mars landing.) I believe it could've happened. The only reason that we wouldn't see humans on Mars in our lifetimes is because of monetary reasons, certainly not because we wouldn't have the technology. Now THAT is sad. Don't mean to get philosophical on anyone, but there's a whole universe out there, waiting for us to explore. It doesn't seem to me as though it could be a coincidence that there are other planets, stars, etc. out there, and we're just supposed to sit here on our little blue planet and slowly but surely (pretty quickly on the evolutionary scale) destroy ourselves.
Quantum nonlocality does not prove that "signals" travel "faster than light." Rather, it shows that at a deep level of reality the speed of light as a limiting factor is irrelevant because phenomena are instantaneously connected regardless of distance. |
|
|
|
glacial906
* Dog in the Sand *
USA
1738 Posts |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 12:41:23
|
No flames, blackpurse. You make a good point. So I don't guess Star Wars are kids movies, I just think that Lucas employed measures that broadened his audience a little bit. Ridley Scott did nothing to bastardize the dark, gloomy world he portrayed in "Blade Runner," (one of my favourite movies of all time) and look at how poorly it was recieved. (And, before any die hard Star Wars fans out there get offended when I used the term "bastardize" to describe the movies, just know that all I mean is that they pandered to a larger demographic than Blade Runner.)
I agree wit' Cult Of Frank about the "defining" moments of our generation. Most of the stuff out there that I like -- music, art, literature, etc. -- has fallen through the cracks of what is popular.
I read a sci-fi book once that took place on an alternate-history Earth. In it, Kennedy had never been assassinated, and mankind reached Mars by 1986. The reason for this was that Kennedy was apparently a big supporter of NASA and the space program. (In the book, men never went to the moon, because they wanted to invest all their efforts in a manned Mars landing.) I believe it could've happened. The only reason that we wouldn't see humans on Mars in our lifetimes is because of monetary reasons, certainly not because we wouldn't have the technology. Now THAT is sad. Don't mean to get philosophical on anyone, but there's a whole universe out there, waiting for us to explore. It doesn't seem to me as though it could be a coincidence that there are other planets, stars, etc. out there, and we're just supposed to sit here on our little blue planet and slowly but surely (pretty quickly on the evolutionary scale) destroy ourselves.
Quantum nonlocality does not prove that "signals" travel "faster than light." Rather, it shows that at a deep level of reality the speed of light as a limiting factor is irrelevant because phenomena are instantaneously connected regardless of distance. |
|
|
|
Topic |
|
|
|
Topic Locked
