Topic: The Movie Thread

@RogerRoger I know a lot of people with good hearts, which I just can't stand. I think hate is a pretty terrible word to describe anyone as, but I can be become so annoyed with them that I try to avoid being around them.

Personally I think Episode 1 has quite some problems in its writing, not only regarding Jar Jar. But I think people were looking for a scapegoat as to why they were disappointed with the movie.

@Kidfried

Midichlorians.

@Kidfried @Th3solution That's because George Lucas is always lauded as a 'great storyteller' - but actually can't write for toffee.

@RogerRoger I find Lucas' need to racially stereotype a lot of TPM alien races a distinct annoyance - Jar Jar and the Gungans being the worst of the lot. I don't think he's racist - but there's clearly a lack of imagination there.

@KALofKRYPTON The bad stereotypes clearly show for me how much Lucas struggled with writing engaging characters in Phantom Menace. Not only can they be considered offensive, but having stereotypes also hinders character development in general.

But as someone who watched this film in his early teens, I can also see why others really enjoy it too. It's not for me anymore, though!

Firstly, I don't condone any of the over the top fan backlash mentality at all. I feel sorry for the Jar Jar actor having had his life ruined, same as Jake Lloyd as Anakin.

However, I do get why Jar Jar is singled out so much in a way. He is very emblematic of some of the issues with that film - racial stereotypes, the jarring juxtaposition between kid/toy friendly aspects and the more adult themes of bureacracy and destiny and the confusion over the lore (midichlorians etc.). I also think the technology and green screen reliance in those prequels really hurt the actors who weren't used to it.

I don't really hate on TPM that much. I was lucky enough to see an early copy of TPM weeks before it came out in the UK and it made me a local celebrity and I loved it at the time. I think it is superior to AOTC which is my least favourite of all the Star Wars movies (with the possible exception of TLJ).

@Th3solution you mean those things Lucas introduced on the original draft of a New Hope in the 70's?

there is nothing wrong with Midichlorians

Midichlorians allowed for a connection with the pervasive energy field known as the Force; in sufficient numbers, midi-chlorians could allow their symbiont organism to detect the Force, and this connection could be strengthened by quieting one's mind, allowing the midi-chlorians to "speak" to their symbiont and communicate the will of the Force

in other words, what they are a bridge that allows you to feel and with training interact with "The Force"

basically if we use technology as an analog, your a computer the force is the internet and the midichlorians is your wi-fi router

they do not "create" the force nor are they the source of it as many people WRONGLY believe because they didn't listen to what was said in Episode 1 and later Clone Wars episodes, all they are is something that explains why everybody isn't throwing around objects with their mind so people should stop getting so bent out of shape about them

Just gonna say that Jar-Jar's (and the wider Gungan race's) mannerisms and speech patterns were developed collaboratively by Lucas and Ahmed Best (an African-American dancer and performer of I think Jamaican descent, but apologies if that's incorrect). In the interviews I've seen with him, Best reacts quite angrily to accusations of racial stereotyping in the prequels, particularly when centred around the work he did.

That's not to say that there aren't elements of racial stereotyping in the prequels; all the best intentions in the world can't change how some things are perceived, and I'm certain there are those who have been genuinely offended, but to condense all that down to "George Lucas wrote racist characters" is erroneous.

@FullbringIchigo I think the issue with midichlorians is attempting an explanation for something that doesn't need it. It is not just specific to Star Wars but is a problem with many narrative stories - basically, the explanation isn't as good as someones imagination.

The original trilogy didn't try and explain it so everyone could draw their own conclusions - for example, it is psychic force, some sort of law of the universe, whatever. Then to be told what it is, everyone who had in their own head what they wanted it to be was disappointed. Also, the explanation sounds odd.

The same is true as explaining the powers of the One in the Matrix trilogy. Keanu Reeves is the prophecised hero in 1 then in 2 and 3 finds out he wasn't prophesised but just a programme. In Highlander, you have mystical warriors fighting across time. In Highlander 2 they are aliens from the planet who cares.

If you try and explain something mythic and undetermined, it will disappoint.

@Rudy_Manchego true but i don't think in this case it was that kind of explanation, i think Lucas just needed to explain why Anakin, the Jedi and Sith were so special and different to everyone else for the story

but the thing is, is the message here for films/TV not to explain things or for people to NOT draw baseless conclusions? after all just because something doesn't end up as you imagined it to be isn't the fault of the people making it but your fault for believing you was right (and by you i don't mean YOU i mean people in general)

@RogerRoger Whether Best chooses to admit it or not, the Gungans aren't far removed from the the world of blackface caricature and old cartoons. They are depicted through the two main Gungans we see on screen as stubborn, intellectually stunted, easily manipulated and generally inferior throughout. That's not even getting started on the actual performances. Transpose the audio from Boss Nass and Jar Jar to one of those old cartoons and you'd be hard pressed to defend it. EDIT: (not that I think you have to)
Don't even want to start with the Nimoidians and Watto...

@KALofKRYPTON As I said, I'm not saying that the result is devoid of offence. I'm just saying that the intentions were (probably, we hope) somewhat more noble.

@RogerRoger Just lazy I think. Reeks of someone (with no one on hand to say 'no') trying to to be profound; but not really knowing what that means.

@FullbringIchigo I see your point and the audience has to take some of the responsibility for misinterpretation and poorly placed expectations (The Last Jedi is also an example of this as it was so far removed from what fans expected and wanted that it came under fire) but I have to agree with @Rudy_Manchego ‘s salient point that clearly Lucas didn’t appreciate the value of mysticism and the allure of self interpretation of his universe. He was just hell-bent on telling the story he created. It’s his right to tell his own story, but if you’ve read the early drafts of the Star Wars saga before A New Hope was filmed, then you know that there were many things that he changed and left out from his initial ideas. It’s quite entertaining to go back and see how the early drafts were so different. So in my opinion it was poor judgment to include his original idea of the midichlorians and lose the viewer imaginative investment that many had held for so many years. Obviously it worked out for him because he could buy each and every one of us here many times over with the mountains of money he possesses now, but the fan disappointment with the explanation of Force users is well placed, imo. But to each his own. I just envision all these little sentient microbes crawling through a Jedi’s bloodstream and it just sounds strange, so I choose to ignore the concept.
@RogerRoger @KALofKRYPTON Although it doesn’t make it acceptable, but we do have to take the racial stereotyping and cultural misappropriation present in Phantom Menace in the context of the time period it was made. Again let me reiterate, I’m not saying it shouldn’t be criticized, but we can’t expect social progress to be at the level in 1999 that it is in 2018. And in 20 years from now, current media will likely have offensive content we may not realize now. I remember reading a lot about James Bond in this thread and it’s the same situation. Those older Bond films are so insensitive toward the treatment of women, as are old John Wayne movies, etc. It’s been a couple years but I remember the Humphrey Bogart character in Casablanca made me feel a little uncomfortable with how he treated Ingrid Bergman, but the movie was so boring to me that it’s hard to tell. 😉
Point is, it’s easier to judge some of this in retrospect, but probably a little bit unfair.

@Th3solution i just tend to think of them in the same vein as the many different bacteria we have in our bodies, they are just something that's there

@Th3solution let's not pretend that the mid to late nineties were a more accepting time of things like blackface or obvious stereotyping - things haven't changed that much in 20 years other than the levels of collective outrage. The stereotypes in TPM stood out as clearly to me as a 17 year old as they do now.

I'm not particularly offended by TPM, without the benefit of being held back, Lucas tells stories with a cudgel - with all of the subtlety and finesse of a charging Rhino.

As I say, opposed to being offended - I largely find it distasteful, lazy and just indicative of a lazy storyteller.

EDIT: Anyway - go do the quiz!

@Th3solution @KALofKRYPTON @RogerRoger i watched The Living Daylights yesterday and i noticed in this one Bond was a lot more respectful of the female characters than earlier Bonds were, well apart from smacking Moneypenny on the backside although she was flirting with him as much as he was with her

but in regards to Kara he was a lot less predatory than previous Bonds were with their female leads, he even took her on a date

@FullbringIchigo That's because Dalton is the man! 😁

@KALofKRYPTON True

@KALofKRYPTON Lol, fair enough. I can’t say that I can be a good judge of societal norms through the ages, but just follow the trends I notice in cinema and the media. I haven’t been around to see or notice progress first hand.
And yes, I need to get my quiz answers in. I glanced through the questions briefly but just getting around to it. 😅

Just got back from the new Halloween. I'm... disappointed. Don't get me wrong: it's not a terrible film, which pretty much instantly makes it a top five Halloween film by default, but that's not really saying much. Despite it positioning itself as a sequel to the original Halloween, this is essentially a remake of H20. Same story: Laurie Strode is a PTSD-ridden mess after the events of the original film, and this has made life hard for her child and others in her life. The interpretation is different (Laurie is merely traumatized in H20, versus being a paranoid gun nut in the new film; in both, she's taken refuge in alcoholism).

Like H20, this film deflates any sense of tension or gravity it might have built up with inappropriate instances of humor. This film messes up in certain ways that H20 was better about, however. For one thing, we see WAY too much of Michael Myers in this movie. Several of his murder scenes are filmed in full daylight, and, in the first half of the movie, without his mask. That's not to say Michael Myers can't be presented in a frightening fashion whatever the time of day (the original has some amazingly spooky sequences that take place during daylight hours), but there's no sense of mystery here. He's just an evil crazy guy who is running around randomly killing people. Even when night drops, this is still a problem: there's no build-up to the kills at all. We just see him casually stroll into peoples' homes, brutally murder them, and then casually walk out. He was frightening in the original precisely because of how little we actually saw of him. He seemed to be everywhere at once, a phantom perpetually haunting the shadows of night and outer edges of waking life.

For another, there are way too many characters and subplots going on in this film. Halloween and H20 both benefited from having a tight focus on a limited number of characters. The film abandons or discards most of this by the end to focus on the core family unit, but it really hurts the film overall.

The film's insistence on throwing character gags into the fray, even as it's building up to its climax, is constantly annoying. H20 had exactly one comical character, and he didn't intrude on that film's atmosphere nearly as much as others did here. Sadly, some of these humorous moments are among the film's best. Jibrail Nantambu, in particular, plays a child who is being watched by a babysitting, and his dry wit and the way he delivers his lines are hilarious and steals the scene he's in. But it also brings way too much levity to the fray.

There are some really, really bad scenes that go a long way to undermine the film. The opening scene, for example, where a journalist who is researching Michael Myers and his crimes in the past confronts him in the psychiatric prison and holds out the mask he wore on the night of the killings (apparently this still being held as important evidence of... something by the Attorney General forty years after the fact). This causes other inmates to coo and holler like animals as the journalist tries increasingly hard to provoke Michael with it, to the point where he's yelling like a deranged lunatic. It's a remarkably stupid scene, which left a sour taste in my mouth. THE OPENING SCENE.

There's a scene in the second half of the movie, long after we're supposed to be feeling scared about Michael, where some random cops are sitting in a car having a pseudo-Pulp Fiction-ish conversation about some sort of foreign sandwich. Again... stupid, stupid, stupid!

There's a psychiatrist character who is useless, and when the writers revealed his actual character motivation, I felt intense annoyance. Terrible character writing that doesn't add at all to the movie.

It's probably worth mentioning that this film does some things right over H20. The eyes in the mask look blank and hollow, like in the original (in H20, you can constantly see Michael's eyes through the mask, which drove me nuts; he's pure evil. You shouldn't be able to see the eyes!). The mask, in general, is a lot creepier than the one in H20. And, unlike in H20, he's treated as a pure monster: there's no attempt to humanize him at all.

All-in-all, it was a disappointing film, although definitely not aggressively bad like most of the sequels. It's definitely not the return to form I was hoping for, though.