Topic: The Movie Thread

@RogerRoger If you thought the The Force Awakeninfs was disappointing, The Last Jedi might be better. It was a really good movie, much better than the The Force Awakens. It changes things up and was original. It got rid what was never going to do well and just focused on telling a god story. I’m honestly concerned about JJ Abrams directing Episode 9. He can’t handle honestly. He didn’t make the cut with Episode 7 and I think has no business directing Episode 9 after 8 blew his movie out of the water with another director.

@RogerRoger I wrote quite a bit on this thread earlier about TLJ. And @Ralizah had an excellent breakdown of it which made me look at the film a little differently. Being a Star Wars fan means I look at things with a heavy dose of prejudice, but I liked both TFA and TLJ, but I liked them for different reasons. I really want to read your impressions after you watch it.

Edit: comment #521 and a few following that. After you see it, obviously, since multiple spoilers are there.

@JohnnyShoulder @Jaz007 @Th3solution Thanks guys; I read the non-spoiler parts of the discussion earlier in this thread at the time of the film's theatrical release, and even added a comment, because I've absorbed a lot of non-spoiler information about The Last Jedi and everything I've heard about the tone, style and direction makes me expect to hate it. I'll do my utmost to keep an open mind, but I really fear Star Wars isn't being made for the likes of me any longer.

The give some context to my views, nothing explains my unique perspective on the franchise better than a good ol' fashioned ranking.

1. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
2. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
3. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi
4. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
5. Rogue One - A Star Wars Story
6. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back
7. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
8. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

Some of the gaps between those positions are quite narrow, especially near the top where The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith are almost interchangeable, but the gulf between A New Hope and its soulless, hollow remake, The Force Awakens, is rather wide.

As I say, I'll do my very best to keep an open mind. I'd love to be surprised by The Last Jedi and am almost dreading watching it because, as it stands, I can set aside the (quite divided, I gather) opinions of others and imagine it being wonderful... but a big part of me fears that Rogue One was the last hurrah of a franchise that's rapidly moving on without me.

@RogerRoger I agree with you on VII being possibly my least favorite in the series. I haven't watched The Last Jedi because of it, either. (A New Hope is my #1, though.)

@RogerRoger @Kidfried In basic terms (and forgive me if this is redundant with previous comments) The Force Awakens seems very much an attempt to tap into the nostalgia of fans of the original movies and characters. By way of background, I believe when Lucas did the prequels, his goal was to move toward new and different content (new worlds, characters, and ideas) and there was a big backlash from many core fans who commonly rate the prequels as subpar. I’ve read comments that Lucas ruined Star Wars with the prequels and some choose to ignore that they exist. (I’m not speaking for myself, just what I hear and read) Multiple comedic memes, parodies, and songs have been made over the years poking fun at the prequels. (my favorite is “The Star Wars that I used to Know” a parody of Gotye’s famous song. Google it and watch the music video on YouTube. It is pretty hilarious, especially if you’ve seen the music video for the original song, which is also on YouTube) So with that in mind, I can totally see why Abrams went the direction he did with VII. It was very reminiscent of the original trilogy and A New Hope especially. (Desert planet orphan, Droid with secret information, Cantina alien scene, the return of Han, Chewie, Leia, Millennium Falcon, etc, etc, etc). So the movie seemed to be an attempt to give fans what they had been clamoring for for the last 10 years — more of the same. And they succeeded in that. (And Lucas was vocal, initially at least, about his disagreement with the direction of TFA, since it was just a copycat of prior films and didn’t innovate the story or world much.)

Now for fans who truly want to see the epic move forward, The Last Jedi does that to an extent. Since VII gave us all the nostalgia, now VIII appears to be designed to get back to what Lucas probably would have wanted — a reimagining of the story. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of SciFi and SW tropes, but I think many who dislike TLJ do so because it doesn’t feel as familiar to them, in the same way the prequels didn’t.
This is all just my opinion.
Personally, I like them all. Like I said before, I just like them for different reasons, but I know it’s possible I am just rationalizing it all in my mind to explain away my shallow enjoyment of seeing lightsaber battles and Jedi mind tricks.

@Ralizah bladerunner still made a worldwide profit of about 80 million +, not entirely a flop.

@Bad-MuthaAdebisi For a movie that cost roughly 150 m to make. The best film of the year was a massive flop. Even that Ghostbusters remake performed better.

@Ralizah Bladerunner 2049 cost between $150-$185m to make and therefore cost around $6-41m more to make but did take $30m more at the Box Office. If you take the 'lowest' figure of $150m, it made more money at the Box Office and was critically acclaimed - even winning 2 Oscars and a BAFTA. It was therefore a critical and commercial success - hardly a 'flop'. Maybe not as commercially successful as some films but the Original Bladerunner wasn't that 'successful' at the Box Office either - $28m budget with a $33.8m Box Office.

Isn't that the dictionary definition of being a Star Wars fan?

Thanks for your thoughts, though; I'll be sure to return once I've watched The Last Jedi and weigh in. If there's one thing I can always be sure of having, it's an opinion.

@BAMozzy You're right, I had totally wrong figures on the foreign gross!

Good to know. This was never going to be a box office smash, but it's nice to know that it didn't lose money.

@Ralizah What this does show is how much more films are costing to make - not just than other films but compared to games too. H:ZD for example cost around $45m and 'few' games cost more than $100m. Publishers, like EA, Ubisoft, Activision for example are becoming like Universal, Warner Bros, Paramount, 20th Century Fox etc. However Movies are still generally given a much bigger budget. The average budget for a Movie is around $140m (inc the lower budget films which brings the average down) where as AAA games its around $40m (not inc the low budget/indie games). Its interesting, only from the perspective of investment. However, with films, they do have secondary (and more) sales markets - like the Bluray market, broadcasters etc too. So whilst they may not be 'majorly' profitable at the Box Office, sales of blurays, income from broadcasters etc can add to their profit margin. Games have to rely pretty much entirely on the gamers so to expect $100m+ budgets is perhaps unrealistic. That being said, most recently Games have had the biggest opening weekends of any media - GTAv took $800m on its first day (within the first 24hrs) yet the highest opening weekend (Fate of the Furious) took $542m. Black Ops 2, Destiny etc had opening Sales of $500m. Its difficult to get a list of best opening sales for games as they don't all provide that information - some talk about units sold (MH:W sold 5m in 3days for example) but opening weekend Box Office takings are a metric that is documented.

Anyway that's a little off topic but its still interesting to see how the two compare.

300 (Netflix) - First time I've seen this. It was a bit more odd than I thought it'd be (a lot of the enemy warriors looked more beast than human, as an example), but still an entertaining watch.

So I watched the extended cuts of Batman Vs. Superman and Suicide Sqaud. They were both petty good movies. As a disclaimer, I didn’t see the regular versions of either movies.
Batman Vs. Superman: It was a little long, but it was a good movie. I feel like I could watch it again to better get some of the intricacies. It did a good job of depicting the conflict between them. I really liked the character of Lex Luthor’s son. If you view him as someone else than his daddy, then he’s a well done and acted character. The fights were good. Some of the parts I heard made fun of made sense to me or felt like if you missed a single line it wouldn’t make sense. The part of bat exaltation. If you hear the line at the end it makes sense as something artisctic to figure out. It had a lot of dreams to develop character after all.

Suicide Sqaud: I liked this one even more. I really liked the cast and their characters. They didn’t seem to comprosimise on their characters and kept them as much as villains as they should be. It was really funny and I liked Jared Leto Joker. I feel like I could watch it more to better appreciate his performensce though. And let’s not compare it Heath Ledger, Apples to oranges. And it’s not many, if any, movies are better than it so let’s not use it as the benchmark, because anything would come up short compared to it. Also, all the masks and costumes joker’s thugs had were hilarious.
I’m a fan of the DC movies so far. They offer a different feel to Marvel superhero movies, and to that, I’m grateful. Heck, I think I like the tone from DC more.
Also saw Wonder Woman, pretty good movie too.

@Jaz007 Huge thanks for posting your thoughts. Whilst I was less impressed with Suicide Squad, the extended cut of Batman V Superman is one of my favourite superhero films of all time. I'm glad you picked up on the hints throughout that afford a deeper understanding of the artistic vision (and on the flipside, there's a basic joy in releasing all that pent-up tension when Batman arrives at the warehouse and beats up all those thugs). One point, though; that's not Lex Luthor's son, that's actually Lex Luthor. It's explicitly stated in the film that the firm was named after him when he was a child ("Write cheques for Lex!") and that he rose to inherit it, and it's why his head is shaved during the epilogue, to show his evolution into the original comic book character. It's not the first interpretation of the character to do this; in the 1990s, the television show Lois & Clark had a curly-haired Lex who later became bald.

Part of me is dreading finally being able to see Justice League on Friday, because it sounds like the studio hacked it to pieces to make it closer to the Marvel tone, something I'd massively disagree with. It's okay for DC films to be different; heck, I'd say it's essential, otherwise oversaturation of the market will lead to its collapse and we'll never get any more great, exciting adventures with these characters.

@Jaz007 @RogerRoger My only issue with BVS is that Lex's plan doesn't seem to make any sense to me. There was no real explanation why he wanted them to fight and also why his back up plan was that monster thing.

In terms of style and cast, I quite liked i.t

@Rudy_Manchego Lex is being manipulated the entire time, as revealed in the epilogue. His whole theme of "devils don't come from beneath us, they come from the sky" isn't just talking about his perception of Superman as a threat, but talking about a lot of the other elements of the story they were trying to build, including the quick cameo from Steppenwolf and the Omega symbol in Batman's nightmare heavily hinting at Darkseid. Lex's final line about "the bell has already been rang... he's coming and he's hungry" reveals the set-up. The film is (or was at least originally, I'm not sure whether they've changed their plans now that Zack Snyder was forced out) supposed to be the first part of an epic, laying the groundwork for Darkseid's arrival and the Justice League rising up to stop him.

Aside from all that, if he really was just genuinely fearful of Superman and what he represented, then who better to kill him than Batman? Lex couldn't outright murder Superman, Lex never outright does anything, he always uses people to keep a distance and maintain his image. Batman, meanwhile, is an establised, powerful and unstoppable force who was directly wounded by Superman's arrival... the perfect tool, and the perfect fall guy.

@RogerRoger Maybe I got it wrong but I thought the bell was only rung after he started messing around in the spaceship and wasn't his plan originally? Because in the extended version, you see him talking to Steppenwolf. I get the idea that he wanted to kill Superman but his plan was, if I understand it correctly, frame Superman for something for no payoff as nothing happens there, manipulate Bruce Wayne into getting angry with Superman (fair enough, that makes sense), give Bruce Wayne the tools to kill Superman, fail to convince Superman to kill Batman till he kidnaps his mom. Then if all that fails create a giant unstoppable alien monster which only superman could kill. That last one seems like an own goal - if it had killed Superman, how would he have stopped it from destroying the world?

@Rudy_Manchego Lex wanted in to the Kryptonian ship from the very beginning, and knew exactly where to go and what to look for once inside. He knew he'd need Zod's body, too. These were things he asked for in his first scene, and he couldn't have known them without an external influence.

Everything was about destroying Superman, because Superman is a known threat to Darkseid / Steppenwolf / powerful beings. Lex was laying groundwork for the coming invasion by attacking Superman from all sides: getting humanity's heroes to fight him; getting him angry enough to commit murder; turning popular opinion against him; creating Doomsday to kill him.

Superman can't kill Doomsday; quite the opposite, Doomsday is the only thing capable of killing Superman. It was only because Superman used the kryptonite spear (a selfless self-sacrifice that ended up killing him, too, which wasn't supposed to happen) and had assistance from Batman and Wonder Woman (something Lex hadn't counted on; Batman was supposed to hate Superman or be dead by this point) that he was able to stop Doomsday. And so what if Doomsday succeeded and destroyed the world? That's what Darkseid wants, and that's what he was manipulating Lex into doing before his arrival. Lex was an unwitting pawn, brainwashed into compliance (with his mental ticks and intensity the unfortunate side effect; he was never calm, calculating and in control, like Lex is supposed to be, he was insane because his brain was being scrambled).

@RogerRoger Hmmm you may be right and that does all make sense. My complaint would be that in the original cut, none of that is made clear at all. The whole plan is very convaluted and doesn't make sense. That said, I liked Batfleck! Haven't seen Justice League yet. I liked Wonder Woman a lot.

@Rudy_Manchego Oh, for sure, the theatrical cut was hacked to pieces, which is a shame and specifically caused the plot to seem convoluted. It's why I'm worried about Justice League, which is apparently another three hour film squeezed down to a two hour runtime, only this time by a totally different director parachuted in halfway through production with a mandate to re-shoot a bunch of scenes to make them more funny "like Marvel" because Warner Bros. are a cowardly, overly-controlling studio. They're like the EA of cinema.

Wonder Woman was incredible. I'm gonna try and re-watch it ahead of Justice League on Friday. Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck's Batman (coupled with Jeremy Irons as Alfred) are why I'm holding out hope; I'd watch them in anything.