Topic: The Movie Thread

@Ralizah @FullbringIchigo Yeah, sometimes it’s best to not go back and rewatch old classics as they rarely hold up. Unless it’s Star Wars.

@Ralizah because it's basically a fairy tail story in space, in terms of how it did it was was revolutionary, the effects and cinematography at the time was ground breaking but as for what the story boils down to it's a generic hero saves the princess form the dark knights castle story nothing that hasn't been done a hundred times before

and if you watch it now it's full of wooden acting, poor writing and cliched characters

Luke is the hero raised on a farm who gets hold of a message from a captured princess
Obi-Wan is the old knight hiding after his protege turned on him
Han is the rouge in it for the money who has a change of heart at the end
Chewie is the rouges big strong friend
Vader is the Black Knight who turned on his master
Tarkin is the Count/Duke who holds the princess in his castle
the Death Star is the castle

the hero finds the message meant for the old knight and while he goes to find him his family is killed by the black knight and his men, with no where to go he journeys with the old knight to rescue the princess and train in the ways of the sword, on the way the meet a rouge who agrees to go with them for a reward and so along with his strong friend sneak into the castle and rescue the princess which they do but as they escape the dark knight runs into the old knight and they duel ending in the death of the old knight after wards the princess rally's her forces to launch an attack on the counts castle and a big battle ensues, the rouge after getting his money has left, during the raid the hero meets the black knight and just when it seems he is about to die the rouge comes in to save him after having a change of heart, the castle is destroyed, the count dead and the black knight escapes, the hero and rouge are then given honours by the princess and the story ends

sound familiar?

don't get me wrong i still love the films ALL of them but the original is the weakest of the entire franchise

yeah all 3 prequels and both sequels are better than a New Hope and the ONLY reason most people hold it so high is because it's SO ingrained in them by their parents or grandparents, the original trilogy is full off all the issues people bring up about the other films but for some reason most fans just ignore them

@FullbringIchigo I think they say that there are only seven basic types of stories in all of literature anyways.
According to Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots : overcoming the monster (as in Beowulf ), rags to riches (as in Cinderella), the quest (as in King Solomon’s Mines), voyage and return (as in The Time Machine), comedy (as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), tragedy (as in Anna Karenina) and rebirth (as in Beauty and the Beast).
And I’ve seen the number be as many as 36, or as few as 3, depending on the analyst. But the point is, there is a limited number of plots and all movies, literature, and even video game narratives are variations of common themes. So to say the story lacks originality, is only partly true and could be said for nearly every epic storyline out there.
That being said, I agree about the poor quality of some of A New Hope’s acting, dialog, and visual effects.

@Th3solution yeah your right what is it they say about hollywood "every story that can be done has already been done"

maybe that's why current hollywood is on the "bending" craze, you know instead of making something new they just remake something old but change say a male character into a female one or change the time and have a story that was set in lets say the Victorian era set in the modern day

@FullbringIchigo Even given each plot line is recycled in some way, shape, or form - I enjoy an epic “good versus evil” and “common man rises up to defeat powerful villain” and “unlikely romance blossoms between snarky headstrong princess archetype and bumbling buffoon underachieving hero”, etc, etc. As long as holleywood can present the story in a unique setting and throw some twists in there with a modern fresh coat of paint, I’m good.

@FullbringIchigo Joseph Campbell helped with the script, so the parallels to mythology and fairy tales were conscious and deliberate. It's actually one of the reasons it's my favorite film in the series: it takes the foundations of ancient storytelling and puts it in a bombastic science-fiction context. Structurally, it's basically perfect for what it is.

But I respect the fact that this doesn't really resonate with you.

Saw Venom tonight and I really enjoyed it. I know they had to take some liberties and not mention Spider-Man at all. I thought they did a good job rewriting Venom's backstory to exclude Spider-Man.

Definitely one of the better films I seen in 2018.

@Ralizah like i said i still enjoy it but i still feel it's the weakest of the franchise and it has quite a few incontinuities with the other films that they are still fixing it in the expanded media today

and like i said they still did it in a new and exciting way but going back to it today it really shows it's age

Having re-watched the prequels last year, I think I'm gonna watch the original Star Wars trilogy over the next couple days. It was on my list anyway, but having read the conversation over the last couple pages, I'm determined to update my opinions before weighing in.

I'll be back!

...aaaaaaand back.

I realised I had a clear evening and took the opportunity to do something I've wanted to do for a while, but never found the time for before; I watched Rogue One and then Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope as a double feature, one immediately after the other.

This was both great fun and a terrible mistake.

Rogue One is fantastic. Every time I watch it (this must've been my fourth or maybe even fifth viewing, cinema included) I almost forget how enjoyable it is and end up pleasantly surprised by the time the credits roll. Do I have issues with some small parts of the story? Yes. I don't like how it started the trend of "there is no good or evil, just grey" (continued much more forcefully, and with clumsy fists of ham, in The Last Jedi). The moral ambiguity of Cassian Andor's character, not to mention his Rebel superior who advocates assassination without knowing all the facts, always makes me recoil at first, but I trust the rest of the film's runtime to correct itself and I reckon it gets away with it... just. It's as close to that line as I ever want my Star Wars to get, but that's okay, because this is a separate component to the core saga, the very place to do a little deeper digging if you want to. Would I have done it differently? Heck yeah I would, but that doesn't mean I hate what we actually got.

Otherwise, it's a beautiful, stirring, spectacular story of heroic sacrifice with some excellent characters on both sides; both K-2SO and Director Krennic immediately joined my shortlist of franchise favourites upon leaving the cinema the first time, and they're still firmly in place. Tarkin still gives me chills and I'll still defend his CGI resurrection, and Vader is appropriately underused. I'm looking forward to the Cassian spin-off show because I think that could give greater context to his darkness, and they're rightly moving an extra step further away from core Star Wars and into television to do so.

Oh, and when John Williams retires from the franchise after Episode IX, future Star Wars films could do far, far worse than Michael Giacchino. I love the score.

Jumping straight into A New Hope, as one is encouraged to do, was a lot of fun in the immediate, to see the connections and resolution to the Rogue One storyline in the first ten or fifteen minutes of the film. Vader catches up to Leia's fleeing ship, there's a bit of "you must be mistaken" and the Death Star plans are neatly hidden after such a brazen and costly theft. Neat. Those crafty Rebels. Mysterious lines like Vader's random "there will be no-one to stop us this time" suddenly make sense and we're off, continuing the chase.

Except, for all the production efforts to make the visuals match, no amount of improvements can hide A New Hope's age and scrappy beginnings, especially not on Blu-Ray. You see every cardboard set, every dodgy model and every split costume. Stormtroopers are constantly falling over themselves. There's a Tusken Raider who has to hold his mask on whilst running. TIE Fighters explode in black and white. This is a film I must've seen, ooh... a good thirty times since the cinematic release of the Special Editions; I've worn out two VHS tapes of it and know the script off by heart, and yet I still noticed two new production errors this evening.

And I think it's because I watched it in such close proximity to Rogue One, a near-flawless modern film with sumptuous CGI and a vast budget thrown at its sets and costumes. The most jarring difference is Yavin IV. When shown in Rogue One, the Rebel's base is a sprawling outdoor landing area filled with ships of all types, but then we see it in A New Hope and it's either a static matte painting or it's a mid-sized hanger with half-a-dozen cardboard X-Wings surrounded by a black curtain (of all the tweaks they could've done, extending the hanger beyond that cheap curtain would've been one of the easiest and the most impressive).

Speaking of tweaks, A New Hope is the film that needs the most (and still could use EXTENSIVE work in both the audio and visual department to make it feel like it belongs in the most successful cinematic saga in history). I love all of the Special Edition, DVD and Blu-Ray tweaks (with a one-half exception in Return of the Jedi, which I'll cover later) and it's already jarring enough when you're watching the final battle and a plastic X-Wing Micro Machine flies past a cardboard turbolaser, then a second later you're treated to a gorgeous panning shot of the same X-Wing being chased by a TIE Fighter in detailed, HD-ready CGI. I really think that it's gotten to the point where A New Hope needs to either remain untouched as a piece of history from now on, or be completely overhauled from top to bottom, because despite watching on Blu-Ray it still feels like a product of 1977.

Depending on your perspective, this is either the fault of Disney making Rogue One to highlight the flaws in a beloved classic, or simply the steady march of time exposing a cheap old Flash Gordon rip-off for being a cheap old Flash Gordon rip-off. Me? I'm probably leaning towards the latter. A New Hope didn't know what it was gonna become and you kinda can't hold that against it. Do I like the film? Sure. Nowhere near as much as I loved it when I was a kid, but it was never my favourite because the others had bigger and better action sequences, not to mention The Imperial March, and isn't that the whole point of watching the original Star Wars trilogy? Big fights and THAT theme tune? Because the story certainly isn't, at least not in this first film.

The pacing of A New Hope is still difficult to defend, from long meandering droid adventures in the desert to breathless exposition dumps at Obi-Wan's house and then neverending, pointless run-and-gun sequences through the Death Star corridor sets. It doesn't help that at this stage, the characters are two-dimensional at best; the only ones I like are Threepio and Artoo, who are instantly sidelined as soon as they meet anybody else on their adventure, and Leia, who doesn't get let out of her prison cell until the last third of the runtime. Oh, and the villains, but only because they realised that, without any real depth, the key to being a successful baddie is looking, sounding and scowling the part. Everybody else just winds me up, either individually within this particular film or when applied to the context of the wider saga.

But that's okay, because I have the benefit of being from a generation where this film was always one chapter of a larger saga; at first, it was the introductory set-up for two superior sequels, and then it was the final destination of the prequel trilogy, a flag atop a mountain I spent my teenage years climbing up. It's just a shame that now, when you finally reach that flag and see it up-close, it's a little tatty.

And if it were the only flag of the set, I wouldn't be a collector.

Thank goodness for toy sales.

@RogerRoger Thanks for your excellent objective review of a re-visiting to a classic. I tend to agree with most of your points. Especially the fact that A New Hope’s Special Edition upgrades do have a tendency to just highlight the rest of the poor native visual effects.
And you’re right in the sense that when A New Hope was made, there was no guarantee that it would be a success. In fact, it was quite a gamble, I’m sure. And the smaller budget, coupled with the technology constraints didn’t help in the presentation department. So considering it was an experiment in Sci-Fi storytelling, it stands as quite a feat historically. Nevertheless, the chinks in the armor become more apparent with each passing year, as you have adequately outlined already. But it is my understanding that Lucas had the whole saga written and of course had to choose a small part to make for the first movie. He had to make it self contained enough to stand on its own, as there was a possibility that he would not be able to tell the whole tale if the film flopped. In fact, he modified the original storyline and characters extensively leading up to the final screenplay.
Overall, I would compare A New Hope to a Monet — a beautiful piece of art when held at a distance and taken as a mood piece to inspire and enjoy, but it’s a mess if you inspect it too closely.

@Th3solution I completely agree with (and love) your Monet comparison. Brilliantly put.

You're right in that George Lucas had the saga mapped out, at least in broad strokes, and had to pick the right point to make a self-contained film. He has always maintained that the first part of a trilogy should be a complete story, with just hints and nods to things which could be picked up later (like Vader surviving the Battle of Yavin, or equally the camera focusing ominously on Palpatine during Qui-Gon's funeral in The Phantom Menace). I agree with him, and I think the decision to end The Force Awakens on a cliffhanger is what's caused a lot of the damage to the new films; of course, they didn't have the added worry of whether or not they'd be successful.

I've just finished watching Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back and the chinks in the armour, to borrow your phrase, are immediately far less evident. Yesterday I noted how jarring the switch between original footage and new CGI was during the finale of A New Hope; today, when watching the Millennium Falcon approach Cloud City (a sequence I know to be similarly tweaked and expanded) I could barely tell the difference between original content and new shots. The shocking, culture-changing popularity of Star Wars is evident in every frame of this first sequel, because the budget was obviously inflated and so the production design and special effects are immediately two, three or four leaps ahead. There is no point in the film where you can look at it and go "ah, they cut a corner there", at least not when thinking of its place in history.

Does it hold up today? Again, in places, no. Yoda might've been the height of puppet wizardry back in the day, but he looks rough to the point of immersion-breaking in HD. Whilst the stop-motion animation is nowhere near as offensively bad as the dejarik board from the previous film, the Tauntauns and AT-ATs are still a little janky. But overall, the raising of the quality bar helps sell those moments and ensures they're nowhere near as bad as they could've been (although I'd still advocate for a CGI replacement of the space worm sock puppet).

I'll know for sure when I watch Return of the Jedi this evening, but I still don't think Empire is my favourite of the original trilogy. It exemplifies everything both awesome and terrible about Star Wars, simply because it's about half an hour's worth of story, plot and character development stretched out into over two hours of noise. In the first forty-five minutes of Empire, we go from an overnight misadventure with a Wampa Ice Creature to an Imperial ground invasion, to an asteroid chase and then suddenly crash-landing on Dagobah... and there's barely any dialogue, at least none of any importance. You could skip to Yoda's introduction and all you'd need to have seen is the thirty seconds in which Obi-Wan popped up and said "Luke, go here. Cheers!" Usually, this level of pacing would spell doom for any other film, but Star Wars just sits back, throws raw imagination at us, blasts John Williams out of the speakers and we lap it up. I adore the Battle of Hoth and the asteroid chase sequence as visceral experiences, but if you try and engage your brain at any point, man, are they boring.

It feels like a film built around a plot twist (yes, THAT plot twist) and falls victim to needing a cliffhanger to set up the third and final instalment of the trilogy. The introduction of Lando and Vader's elaborate trap to ensnare Luke is a much more interesting, complex chunk of story but there's a lot of semi-pointless running around to get there. During all that fluff, we get an attempt at a love story, but Han still feels like a letch (he always has; I like him for his happy-go-lucky everyman attitude and reactions, but Empire always made me feel uncomfortable, even as a kid, because when he's not being needlessly abusive to Threepio he's harassing Leia) and unfortunately, Leia's character is lessened slightly as a result.

To compensate, we get Vader dialled up to eleven in his full, officer-choking glory and Yoda's a delight, rubber face be damned. My two favourite characters remain Threepio and Artoo, playing the comic relief more than ever but with gusto and charm. I also like Lando, because his arc (however rushed) is what I turn up to these kinds of films for; he makes a mistake and fixes it, and his approach to Leia is more "gentleman thief" charming than "unashamed douchebag" forceful (yeah, still looking at you, Han). Boba Fett, now appropriately-voiced by Temuera Morrison, rounds out the parts of the film which still make me grin like a child.

Overall, then, it's a nice piece of fluff and a perfectly suitable stepping stone in the story. The major moments still work, but every time I return to it I find myself checking my watch at key points and thinking the editor could've been a bit more brutal. How many things to we need to see our heroes running away from in one film? According to Empire, a lot.

But if you're gonna compensate for a lack of character development, compensate with lingering shots of Super Star Destroyers and The Imperial March at full volume.

That works... just.

@RogerRoger Fair points, all, on Empire’s virtues and shortcomings. Most Star Wars enthusiasts list it as their favorite of the series. I used to like Return of the Jedi more as a kid, but recently I favor Empire more. I think it has to do with the Ewoks and the Battle of Endor. I am actually a big fan of the movie trope whereby against all odds the simplistic natives overpower the evil technologically advanced oppressors. It’s just that the Ewoks, although cute enough, don’t feel quite heroic enough. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Other than that, I adore the conclusion of Anakin’s Redemption arc. I really like the other memorable set pieces in Jedi like Jabba and the Sarlac pit, the New Death Star, and the revelation of the Emperor and his massive powers. Endor is a great setting too, it’s just the Ewoks have grated a little bit on me on subsequent viewings.
I’ll be curious to read your comments after rewatching Jedi.

@Th3solution Ewoks have always been the undoing of Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (which I watched last night). When reflected upon and analysed separately, you're right, there's a quality to them which feels like they were mishandled, like a shot wide of the bullseye marked "original intention" fired from a gun helpfully provided by the marketing team and toy companies.

And yet every single time I watch the film through, and therefore see the Ewoks in context, I find myself having no problem with them. Everything about the world created by Jedi is high-concept, high-imagination, inventive fantasy fun and the race of teddy bears living in the treetops of Endor (who are only cute once they stop trying to cook and eat our heroes, lest we forget) fit right in with that. It leads to some Disney-brand 80s "magic" complete with flute solos, and adds a mystical quality to the end of the second act, not to mention an awesome, gag-filled third of the final battle (favourite shot: a bunch of Ewoks trying to rope an AT-ST, but only slowing it down and getting dragged along). Sure, we could have had something a little more serious, but the rest of Jedi is surprisingly dark and complex, so they balance things out better than I reckon Wookiees or human slaves would have.

Because yeah, I've seen this film probably the most out of the original trilogy, and yet it still catches my emotions off-guard with scenes like the death of Yoda (involuntary tears, even moreso now that he was such a huge part of the prequels and The Clone Wars), Luke's revelation to Leia about his, and therefore their, parentage (more tears), the death of Vader after his redemption (even more tears) and then the final triumphant montage of planets leading to the appearance of Anakin's ghost alongside Yoda and Obi-Wan (happy tears, not least because that hideously offensive 'Yub Nub' song has now been rightly consigned to the trash heap of history). So many focus on the Ewoks and therefore dismiss Jedi, but the emotional pay-off delivered by these moments is absolutely fantastic. They don't just help fix the pacing problems; they provide much-needed weight and consequence to the previous two films' haphazard, madcap adventure. They finally give Mark Hamill a chance to act (and he doesn't disappoint) and the overall tone adds the tragic dimension to Vader which makes him such a timeless, awesome character; if he'd have remained the grim, blank slab of darkness he was in the previous two episodes, he'd have been boring, but it's this film specifically that does almost all of the heavy lifting. I wouldn't particularly want statues of a Space Nazi in my apartment, but I've got statues of Vader.

Suddenly, I care about the characters from the original trilogy, even Han (who's obviously done some thinking whilst frozen in carbonite, shown so well in that simple pause and apology to Leia after Luke leaves). Without this film framing the previous two, providing such insight and depth and actually stopping to explain things once in a while, I don't think I would be as big a Star Wars fan as I am.

Everything else feels like a grand, sweeping crescendo as well, even in terms of action and spectacle. There's the appropriate escalation of the endgame (A New Hope had one final battle, Empire had two, so now Jedi has three) and the stakes couldn't be higher, what with the Emperor in play and the entire Rebel fleet throwing itself at a second, more powerful Death Star, and yet we learn that it's all a carefully-orchestrated trap to manipulate and break Luke's spirit (another reason why the sight gags between Ewoks and AT-STs are probably more important than just throwaway nonsense, because they help balance what could've been a crushingly bleak finale). Oh, and the whole start of the piece, rescuing Han from Jabba? Brilliant. It's like a mini-film within a film, and the detail in crafting and presenting the criminal entourage surrounding Jabba always continues to amaze me; I notice new things every time, especially now on Blu-Ray where everything holds up just as well as Empire, if not better. The swashbuckling escape from the Sarlacc never fails to force an involuntary grin, thanks to some tight editing and, as always, the genius of John Williams.

This is definitely, hands down, my favourite film of the original trilogy. It also beats one of the prequels, namely Episode II - Attack of the Clones, in my personal rankings.

Because of that, however, it's also one of the very few times where I'll indulge a very small degree of "Lucas Bashing" with regards the new tweaks and additions over the years. I love and support all the tweaks to the original trilogy... except half of one, in this film. I don't mind, and even quite like, the idea of Vader yelling "Nooo!!" as he picks up and throws the Emperor to his doom. What I can't stand is that, before doing so, he says a shorter "no" which now completely drowns out Luke's final, desperate "Father!!" plea. I always thought that hearing that final plea was the trigger for Vader's decision to intervene; it was perfectly timed and worked so well alongside the music, but now you can't hear it. We're talking one second of a two-hour-fifteen film here, but it's pretty much the most important second of the entire runtime, if not the most important second of the entire trilogy.

Am I being a nitpicky fanatic? For that specific moment, for just that first "no", yeah, I sure am. But if I'm also walking away from a film and can only find fault with one single second of its audio design, then I'd pretty much call that a win. When re-watching things like Star Wars at home, I don't mind pausing the Blu-Ray and getting up to make a cup of tea, maybe fetch a snack, or even answer some texts. When I watched A New Hope, I paused during the cantina scene, after roughly thirty-five, maybe forty minutes. When watching Empire, I paused after Luke crashed on Dagobah, which is about forty-five.

When I watched Jedi last night, I didn't pause it at all.

@RogerRoger I don't really see Ewoks in themselves as the problem with Jedi. It's not like other SW films didn't have cute aliens running around at times. It's that the sequences on Endor completely throw off the pacing of the movie. They feel... fillerish. You mentioned Empire had a lot of sequences where people were just kind of... doing stuff... with no plot development, and that's very true, but that running around heightened the gradual sense of desperation building up throughout the film until the final, very bleak, act. Empire isn't my favorite film in the trilogy (that would be ANH), but it comes together as a cohesive experience by the end, and I think everything needed to happen the way it happened in that movie for it to achieve the effect it did. I can't say that for Jedi: it feels like three movies in one, if you count that, yes, extremely entertaining opening section where they rescue Han as one. So, it's a much more unfocused film than the first two. I think how much it resonates with you also depends on how invested you become in the Luke/Anakin soap opera, which I didn't. The way their storyline ends is great, but what I've always appreciated about the first two films is their ability to subjugate plot and character to the sweep of filmic grandeur (the simplistic but oh-so-satisfying original film, in particular). Jedi has some of this, of course, but it's much more invested in the development of its characters and its worldbuilding. This focus on character development and worldbuilding (and wooden acting, and terrible pacing, but I digress) is what killed the prequels for me, and I can see shadows of that approach in this film.

Anyway, great write-ups! I'm really enjoying reading your takes on these films, and your passion for this property is quite infection.

@RogerRoger @Ralizah I agree that the use of the cute and/or strange looking toy-like creatures are prevalent throughout the Star Wars series, and not just Ewoks. And really toy and knick-knack products have been sold in affiliation of many movie and TV series since. I would surmise that Star Wars pioneered the market of movie toys, action figures, and other products related to a film. It seems more transparent to me now that subsequent to the success of the toys from the first film, this evolved into a conscious decision to include such characters for their marketability since movie related toys and products overflow on store shelves nowadays. Characters like the jawas and the randoms in the cantina in A New Hope were obviously not placed with the thought that they’d make good toys since that wasn’t really a practice back in the 70’s, I would think. But the inclusion of the porgs in The Last Jedi just seems like a blatant attempt to plan for the inevitable plushies that would follow.
Selling related collector items and toy merchandise is a practice that is seen in everything from Stranger Things and The Walking Dead, to Harry Potter and Frozen, so it’s definitely not isolated to Star Wars.
But anyways, I ramble...
The Ewoks will forever be as polarizing amongst fans as Jar Jar is. I did like the presence of some comic relief in the midst of death, destruction, and torture scenes in the closing act. If only there would have been a more grounded realism to the guerilla tactics of the Ewok tribe. With all the comic and lightheartedness of the Endor sequence, it was a hard sell to have the battle trained imperials fall in such a way. I’m not sure why I have trouble suspending disbelief on that one minor issue, in a series filled with ridiculous feats and grandiose heroics. Nit-picking on the believability of Ewok nation is similar to the issue of the timing of Vader’s first “no”, I suppose. But in the end, I quite like Return of the Jedi and I see myself trying to watch these again sometime soon.
It’s been really fun to read both of your thoughts on it.

So as to not completely highjack this thread into a Star Wars only discussion, I will say I saw two movies recently:
Crazy Rich Asians and Incredibles 2.
CRA was actually better than I expected, but, in the end it was little more than the Cinderella story. Wouldn’t ever necessarily watch it again, but it wasn’t terrible.
Incredibles 2 was likewise predictable. It was a good bit of fun, but didn’t really offer anything that the first film didn’t, as far as character progression or fleshing our the world. It didn’t help that it was the third recent movie to play the “superheroes are bad and should be outlawed” card. That narrative piece is getting worn thin.

@Th3solution I also watched Insane Wealthy Orientals recently. It was... mediocre. Too much of the movie was just prosperity porn, showing off all the wasteful behaviors of this family. That might be captivating for the sort of people who watched Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but I just kind of found it boorish. The main love interest, Nick, is a total non-entity: the sort of "perfect boyfriend" that mediocre chick flicks are replete with.

I did get a laugh out of that ending, though, when the main character is telling off the mother, talking about herself like she's some sort of ragamuffin bum when she's actually a privileged and well-off university professor. Imagine Pretty Woman if Julia Roberts was an upper-middle-class professional instead of a prostitute!

I saw Aquaman. It was awesome! The fight choreography and cinematography achieved the main goal of the movie very well - to make Aquaman cool. The plot was good, if a bit tried and true with the formula. It didn’t try to reinvent the wheel and didn’t need to. Overall I was very pleased and give it a strong 8/10.
I also feel like Dante and Aquaman would get along very well.

@Ralizah As somebody who adores the prequels, I can't disagree with your closing assessment of Jedi. It's great that there's all sorts of folks who take all sorts of things from the films, however different they may be. I'm glad you and @Th3solution have enjoyed reading my walls of aimless Star Wars text and have appreciated the thoughts and perspectives you've added, either in agreement or to provide balance in response to certain points.

But yeah, I could continue to write an entire tome on that subject, so I'll leave it there with my thanks and start talking about another mega-franchise I'm catching up with.

I'm a DC fanboy but like to try and keep up with the Marvel films, if only to see what all the fuss is about and / or keep tabs on what the enemy is up to. NowTV has added quite a few of the newer films to their selection over the holidays, and so my best friend (who prefers Marvel to DC, in an effort to settle our friendly disagreements about superheroes) offered me use of her NowTV code. Because it was the first chronologically, however, I started with Doctor Strange on Netflix.

The first half of the film was awful. I hated Strange, he was a total jerk who would randomly insert out-of-nowhere quips and sarcastic jokes because "remember kids, this is a Marvel movie", whilst the rest of the plot was just boring. When everything started to go wrong, however, and he was pushed through to New York, things picked up. There was better context for his changing attitude, more of the gags started to work, and the action sped up to the dizzying crescendo of that chase through the city. The end "I've come to bargain!" ploy was pretty neat and there seemed to be a small, if not entirely sufficient, effort to acknowledge and rectify his character faults. Overall, I thought it was perfectly fine.

Then I watched Spider-Man Homecoming and had less of a good time. I quite liked all the efforts to connect Spider-Man to the wider Marvel universe, and the film was obviously designed to have more fun than the comparatively-morose Doctor Strange, but it didn't grab me (not least because Spider-Man films have always tapped into that "quiet schoolboy wishes he could be more" feeling a little too effectively for me). Keaton was excellent, though, and managed to rescue everything with a decent, sinister performance of a pretty-well-written villain. I don't mind admitting that I was genuinely a little shocked and caught off-guard when he opened the door and it was revealed that he was the father of Peter's homecoming date but by then, the larger story was kinda by-the-numbers anyway, so it felt like a bit of a "c'mon, stay awake" ploy more than anything. The finale zipped along nicely, though, and the last-minute cameo made me smile... but then, just when I was prepared to give it a pass, the disgusting end title sequence bludgeoned my senses into submission and I barely made it to the first post-credits sequence. Way to leave everybody on a sour note. Yuck.

This morning, I watched Thor: Ragnarok and had a much, much better time. This was a genuinely entertaining flick, with just enough heart peppered throughout its otherwise-bizarre, no-holds-barred two hour runtime. I laughed a lot, which is rare for me in a Marvel movie where the humour is often so bland, safe and predictable. The big-name cast were allowed to chew the scenery a little more and, wisely, Goldblum was allowed to Goldblum, setting the tone for the junk planet over which he ruled. Cate Blanchett proved once again, after stealing the show in Indiana Jones, that she makes a brilliant villain, and whilst Karl Urban's arc was very predictable, it wasn't mishandled. Finally, and most surprisingly, of all the superheroes I've ever seen anything about, Thor, Loki and the Hulk have always been the most mind-numbingly boring... and yet, in this film, I really liked them. They were great. If all future Marvel films are more like this one and less like, well, everything else, then I'll show up.

I've got Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War left to go, and then I'm all caught up.