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Post #1313222

Author
RU.08
Parent topic
JJ's style and shaky cam in TFA and TROS
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1313222/action/topic#1313222
Date created
22-Dec-2019, 7:32 PM

DominicCobb said:

The camera does not shake in that shot. I’m losing my mind. There is a difference between a non-static camera in shaky cam.

Shaky-cam is just one part of the overall filming style that JJ goes for.

More to the point, the sequel trilogy is standard Hollwood style, that’s a big part of the problem for me. Disney turned down making the original Star Wars movie because it was sci-fi and Hollwood didn’t like sci-fi, horror, or “blockbusters” in the 70’s. Lucas didn’t want to make his movie in the standard Hollywood style. Within the standard Hollywood formula you only hire the top 10% of attractive actors, your most attractive actor is always the leading man (by that formula Harrison Ford should be the leading man), no children or animals, and so on. The “Hollywood universe” often feels completely unreal.

Disney took Lucasfilm, and instead of respecting the flexible ambitious nature of the film-making that made Star Wars and Indiana Jones special and unique, decided to make them using the standard Hollywood conventions and the using the contemporary “superhero genre” of the 00’s-10’s (not to be confused with the older superhero genre of the 70’s-90’s). The visual style of Lucas’ movies was to make it grounded in reality so it felt real and relatable. Whereas the sequels have been made in the style of Marvel or Transformers and other comic-book/superhero movies that don’t appeal to me. Those movies have their fans, one of my friends his favourite movie of all time is one of those movies - I can’t even remember which movie it is because they’re all the same to me, I did watch it but I found it forgettable. Another movie in this genre I saw was Guardians of the Galaxy - I didn’t want to see it, but a friend and I were going to see another movie and it was completely sold-out at the cinema, he wanted to see Guardians (and he just loves those kind of movies) so we saw it, there are lots of people that love that kind of aerial action and adventure, but I really don’t remember much of it at all because for me it was a forgettable face-paced meaningless action ride. Jodie Foster might go a bit far in my opinion, but I agree with her frustration - this kind of “superhero genre” content has become so dominant that it has swallowed-up entire franchises.

An entire generation has grown up with these new movies, and for them that’s what Star Wars is now. Its been moved out of its own niche genre that Lucas created and into the dominant mainstream “superhero” genre. This has had the effect of making force-users superhumans, instead of regular people. Palpatine surviving Return of the Jedi makes him superhuman. Rey’s powers go well beyond Luke’s and those displayed in the OT and PT where the characters require deep concentration to move objects with the force, and even struggle to do so. In the superhero genre the only people who can oppose a superhuman is another superhuman, this is why in ROS it is Rey and Kylo who fight against Palpatine. In TLJ Snoke moves Rey around with the power of the force - that was never possible in the Lucas-saga films - once you allow a force user to simply levitate other people rendering them completely powerless like that the only people that can fight back are other equally-strong force-users. Whereas in the Lucas saga films the resistance is powerful in itself, they’re able to oppose the galactic empire effectively, and in fact ultimately succeed where the Jedi failed. Luke’s ethical dilemma in TLJ is taken right out of the superhero genre’s songbook - it’s one of the most common story tropes “with great power comes great responsibility” - it’s the force-users that caused all the galaxy-wide problems, the sooner they’re gone the better for humanity.