Star Wars - PTTSD

[IlyaP]

35 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

Yeah Cruise obviously has a lot of input on the MI films but there's enough distinction between the films of each director that I think it's pretty clear 'Cruise is the director in all but name' is not what's happening. Especially since if that was what was happening, they wouldn't bother with such big-name directors. It's possibly more true with McQuarrie, who last produced a film that didn't have Tom Cruise in it in 2013, and only ever directed one that didn't have Tom Cruise in it in 2000. 

That was the central idea - each film would have a different directorial style. And even though Cruise produced each of them (MI1 was the first movie he'd ever produced), they all retain the look and visual style of the people directing them. MI1 is *clearly* DePalma (Dutch angles, playing with colors/saturation, scene framing), MI2 is *clearly* John Woo (down to the fucking doves and slow mo action), and MI3 is clearly Abrams, down to the use of crane-like swooping camera movements and panning, characters talking between walls of destroyable stuff, wall-climbing, etc.). And MI4 is *very* Brad Bird, for anyone who's seen The Incredibles or Ratatouille, down to the camera framing, object-based comedy, etc. 

Enough analysis has gone into these movies over the years - particularly by Filmjoy and Patrick Willems, to thoroughly put to bed the idea that Cruise himself is directing these things. It's hard enough to just produce these kinds of movies, to say nothing of also acting in them. (That said - there's been a fair bit of speculation that he got heavily involved in the directing of The Mummy, but I haven't analysed that film's history well enough beyond mentioning the idle speculation around his levels of involvement.)

35 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

MI:3 was pretty good. Carried a bit by Philip Seymour-Hoffman but it was pretty tight and well-told. 

And a tight and snappy score by Michael Giacchino (who composed music for Alias), some terrific cinematography by Dan Mindel, whose credits include Enemy of the State, Spy Game, The Bourne Identity, Crimson Tide, and John Carter (all movies of different levels of quality, but it can't be denied that they look *good*), and importantly, the editing involved Maryann Brandon and Mary Jo Markey, the former of whom worked with Abrams on Alias, and the latter - Alias and Felicity. (There's clearly a lot of crew that Abrams brought over from previous projects, to help him achieve the style and look he had in his other shows - but with a bigger budget.)

And Seymour-Hoffman, for the ten or so minutes he's on screen is never anything less than absolutely magnetic.

Edited October 7, 2023 by IlyaP
Typo

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

So in conclusion, JJ is good as long as he aint writing the film and has good collaborators , which we've known all along

[IlyaP]

19 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

So in conclusion, JJ is good as long as he aint writing the film and has good collaborators , which we've known all along

Well he had Orci and Kurtzman as writers, with whom he's also worked regularly on Alias, MI3, Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Fringe, among other projects. Many of those projects are obviously going to speak to different tastes, and I'll die on a goddamn hill defending Fringe, which I only half-seriously refer to as X-Files Done Right (and then duck when I hear the guns being cocked), so, who knows.

Sometimes you take a punt as an artist and the project doesn't land the way you hope. Other times - it does. It's such a luck of the draw, this stuff. It's impossible, as an artist, to know if what you make will speak to people. You create it and hope for the best.

[sifth]

4 hours ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Super 8 was pretty good.

That movie feels like the prototype for Stranger Things.................just worse, lol

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

1 minute ago, sifth said:

That movie feels like the prototype for Stranger Things.................just worse, lol

Actually the original prototype for Stranger Things is every Speilberg movie in the 80s  

[sifth]

2 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

His TV show, Alias, was great, albeit went downhill after season 2

I remember that show. I was very young when it came out, but I recall people finding it rather funny how he was naming all his villains, after Halo antagonists. We had a Convenient, who were the main villains for a while. The Flood were another group or was possibly the name of a powerful weapon; it's been a while. Not just if he ever had the balls to put Sentinels in the story though, lol

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Ben Affleck agrees.

He’s entirely correct.  Abrams always makes galactic spaces seem tiny.  5 Mins TOS era… at warp… between Earth and Vulcan… what the fuck?

[sifth]

29 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

He’s entirely correct.  Abrams always makes galactic spaces seem tiny.  5 Mins TOS era… at warp… between Earth and Vulcan… what the fuck?

Don't forget Khan being able to transport himself from Earth to Qo'noS. It's amazing how much more powerful the transporters are in Abrams Trek. I mean why do we even need spaceships anymore, lol

[SpaceChampion]

Sir, this is a cantina.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

14 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Felt like a Spielberg clone tbh

Absolutely.  But it was a good Spielberg clone.

14 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Once again demonstrating that Abrams does not understand how space works…

In this case, it was probably more important to understand how Michael Bay works.

And, man, this is a Star Wars thread.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Absolutely.  But it was a good Spielberg clone.

In this case, it was probably more important to understand how Michael Bay works.

And, man, this is a Star Wars thread.

Which Abrams also fucked up… 5 planets in view of each other all destroyed by “Starkiller Base”.  He thinks “Space” on a galactic scale is really tiny.  

I still haven’t watched “The Rise of Skywalker”…

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I still haven’t watched “The Rise of Skywalker”…

 

You genuinely would not believe how bad it is. Like I don't much like most of Abram's stuff, though I think TF and the first Trek are fine (and as I say I like MI:3), but there's at least a general bland competence about most of it. Even Into Darkness, although it makes a huge mess of continuity and doesn't understand consequences in the slightest, has some entertaining, well-made scenes, and its internal arc, taken purely on its own if you don't think about the wider 'verse, makes sense. 

None of that in TRoS. Anything it does that could have conceivably be seen as a good decision is immediately undone in the very next scene. Anything it does that could be a bad decision is amplified and echoed and repeated. It's genuinely risible. Like on a technical level the acting and visuals are stronger than the prequels but as a film it's so much worse because the writing is so, so bad. 

 

I genuinely don't understand how it got made. The standard complaint about the Disney production-line method is that it leads to blandness, both for Marvel and Star Wars. And obviously as we've been discussing the same is true of Abrams. But TRoS isn't bland, it's dreadful. 

 

Zach Snyder and Michael Bay are both better directors than him at this point. 

[Rippounet]

It's hard not to chuckle a few times at how stupid the script is.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

What script? That movie might be the most cut/paste, daily-rewrites, try to edit it all together into something coherent, comittee movie in history. 

[karaddin]

9 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 But TRoS isn't bland, it's dreadful. 

My philosophy on watching media is to try and enjoy it on its merits. I'm not always good at doing that, but I'm decent at it now (to the point of getting into arguments on here with people that can't see anything good at all about a variety of shows) and I went to see TRoS with my brother who has mastered that attitude for 15-20 years. We walked out, half laughed at some detail and silently agreed it was terrible and didn't talk about further.

The only thing I can on that level of bad I've seen in the last 5+ years was the second season of Gen:lock which shared the issue of throwing it's previous installments completely under the bus.

[TheLastWolf]

FALLEN ORDER  speechless through the credits. Never finished a game with this much of a binge. Epic. Looking forward to Survivor.

Spoiler

LORD VADER UMMMMRRMMM VRM VROOM ZZZZ

Pardon me ahem

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

15 minutes ago, TheLastWolf said:

FALLEN ORDER  speechless through the credits. Never finished a game with this much of a binge. Epic. Looking forward to Survivor.

  Hide contents

LORD VADER UMMMMRRMMM VRM VROOM ZZZZ

Pardon me ahem

If you enjoyed this game, please play Kotor, its the best SW game story wise, period. Even better than most of the movies 

[TheLastWolf]

2 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

If you enjoyed this game, please play Kotor, its the best SW game story wise, period. Even better than most of the movies 

15% in, my kid brother took over

[sifth]

On 10/7/2023 at 7:28 PM, polishgenius said:

 

You genuinely would not believe how bad it is. Like I don't much like most of Abram's stuff, though I think TF and the first Trek are fine (and as I say I like MI:3), but there's at least a general bland competence about most of it. Even Into Darkness, although it makes a huge mess of continuity and doesn't understand consequences in the slightest, has some entertaining, well-made scenes, and its internal arc, taken purely on its own if you don't think about the wider 'verse, makes sense. 

None of that in TRoS. Anything it does that could have conceivably be seen as a good decision is immediately undone in the very next scene. Anything it does that could be a bad decision is amplified and echoed and repeated. It's genuinely risible. Like on a technical level the acting and visuals are stronger than the prequels but as a film it's so much worse because the writing is so, so bad. 

 

I genuinely don't understand how it got made. The standard complaint about the Disney production-line method is that it leads to blandness, both for Marvel and Star Wars. And obviously as we've been discussing the same is true of Abrams. But TRoS isn't bland, it's dreadful. 

 

Zach Snyder and Michael Bay are both better directors than him at this point. 

The script felt like it was written by children. Some elements felt like a video game.

[Corvinus85]

On 10/7/2023 at 9:05 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

He’s entirely correct.  Abrams always makes galactic spaces seem tiny.  5 Mins TOS era… at warp… between Earth and Vulcan… what the fuck?

While making ships huge to require the crews to run marathons through the hallways.