JJ's style and shaky cam in TFA and TROS — Page 2

act on instinct said:

Ugh let’s just drop the phrase shakey cam, a discussion on style is much more interesting than a debate about semantics, it was clear from the start the term was being used in a colloquial sense anyway this is missing the point. We are in a pot hole.

+1
The original post is very good and an interesting topic for discussion.

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.

Broom Kid said:

So long as the tool is right for the story element being executed, to quote a certain Chancellor: DEW IT.

But that’s the point being debated:
Are these the right tools for this job?

Broom Kid, by your own logic (and I don’t mean this as a gotcha) do the prequels deserve more respect for pushing the boundaries of its visuals over TFA? This is more overall production design than specifically cinematography, but personally I am way over the clinging to practical effects as a savior and see it as another layer of this same stagnation.

Broom Kid said:

Star Wars was never a “niche” genre. It’s not a genre unto itself (despite various people’s attempts to make it as such) either. And if you see a similarity between superheroes and fantasy-based mythologies, it’s because they both draw from the same ideas. Jedi are, more or less, superheroes.

In 1977, what Lucas was doing with Star Wars was visually unlike anything ever tried within the sci-fi/fantasy genres, and it was also considered to be FAST. Very, very fast. It seems slow now, but in 1977 the editing and pacing of that movie was considered breakneck. You’re arguing it has to look and feel like it did in 1977 and that’s death. It’s got to speak to the kids who are watching the movies in the time period they’re coming out, so they can grab onto it without having to read a bunch of wikipedia entries or watch a bunch of YouTube videos to find a hook or an “in” for the movies.

Parts of Star Wars were fast for the time, but the first half of the film was fairly normal in pacing for the time, and even a bit slow at times in order to take the time to draw the audience into that world. You are acting as though filmmaking is fundamentally different forty or fifty years on, whereas there are movies being made right now which are paced and edited like Star Wars or to be even slower. Sure, most are faster, but take something like The Adventures of Robin Hood. That movie is a briskly paced breeze and came out decades before Star Wars. Immersing the audience in a world takes time, and to judge by popular consensus the new movie simply doesn’t allow for that in its breakneck pace.

If it shares the same visual language with other movies they like, and then uses that shared language to introduce new ideas on top of that, then it works! Part of the reason The Force Awakens made as much money as it did is BECAUSE it moved like an Abrams film while looking like a Star Wars movie, for lack of a better term. All the iconography people recognized for 40 years was being lit, shot, framed, and edited in a way they’d never seen it before, and that was EXCITING. It wasn’t JUST nostalgia at play. The filmmaking DID matter.

Everyone is different and has different tastes. For me it was a big turn-off to see the Abrams style and boilerplate blockbuster CGI effects applied to the Star Wars universe. Even the prequels had a more iconic aesthetic in their CGI than the sequel trilogy. Filmmaking does matter. Rogue One managed to get a ‘model’ look to most of their ships because Gareth Edwards worked hard with the art department to make the film feel of a piece with the universe and pushed the CGI in a new direction from what is usually seen, and people loved it. As for the rest of the elements at play in TFA, the choices are very much geared towards an action movie aesthetic and this can be hard to reconcile with the (at best) adventure genre of Star Wars.

There’s no real reason to handcuff directors and cinematographers who have more -and better- tools, to styles developed 40 years ago. Or even 30 years ago. It just doesn’t make sense. Star Wars can’t be hermetically sealed off like that, it’s going to suffocate that way. And it’s not like other films and filmmakers are going to sit around and decline using those tools to tell their own stories. People are going to go to the theaters not to hear new stories, because most stories have almost NOTHING new to them. But they will go to see new ways of telling them. Star Wars needs to be part of that. If that means whip pans, crazy camera moves, speed ramping… so be it. So long as the tool is right for the story element being executed, to quote a certain Chancellor: DEW IT.

Nobody is suggesting that Star Wars be handcuffed to an old way of filmmaking. George Lucas was pushing the boundaries of the technical craft all the way through the OT and the PT. Star Wars has always existed on the frontier of technology, in fact one of the reasons the ST feels so stale is because it stopped being innovative and started blending into the industry standard for effects. You can still innovate on effects while remaining true to the feeling of a classic tale.

Broom Kid said:

to Ray’s question:

I asked no question, just pointing out the original topic.
I haven’t even see these films, so I have no opinion, I just think it’s an interesting subject.

Broom Kid said:

Star Wars was never a “niche” genre. It’s not a genre unto itself (despite various people’s attempts to make it as such) either. And if you see a similarity between superheroes and fantasy-based mythologies, it’s because they both draw from the same ideas. Jedi are, more or less, superheroes.

With respect you’ve missed my point. Star Wars is a “niche genre” because of how Lucas combined other genres to make the movie. There’s a difference between superhero/villains who cannot be defeated except by other superhero/villains, and the much more relatable mortal superhero/villains who’s powers don’t make them impossible to defeat. Watto easily defeats Qui-Gon’s attempt at force-influencing him. Admiral Motti’s line to Vader: “Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerer’s ways”. Contrast that with Superman II - General Zod can only be defeated by Superman because he is too powerful. That trope is used so often in superhero movies, and pre-dates the modern superhero genre by quite a bit as you see with that example, it’s used because it’s very convenient way to explain away why the military, police, or other authorities can’t oppose the super-villain.

You’re arguing it has to look and feel like it did in 1977 and that’s death.

That’s not my argument - my argument is that the sequels have been made in a fundamentally different style and genre. One that lots of people enjoy, but which is not for me.

Broom Kid said:

Star Wars isn’t a genre. I haven’t missed your point, I think maybe you’re not grasping the terms you’re trying to use to arrive at the definitions that aren’t quite right. And your description of genre honestly doesn’t have much to do with filmmaking techniques anyway, because now you’re talking about character types and characterization tropes.

It’s made in a combination of genres, that’s the point. Lucas calls it “space opera”. Fantasy-adventure-drama is probably a lot more accurate than his description. In adventure films the protagonist goes on a quest, in action films they face a clear enemy usually in the name of justice or survival. There’s overlap of course, but the point of the quest in the adventure film (often the MacGuffin is a shared gaol between the protagonist and the antagonist rather than them having opposite goals) is to both propel the story and lead the protagonist (or antagonist) on a character arc, where they might learn new things, go on a journey of self-discover, be exposed to a foreign environment, that kind of thing.

One of the problems with Phantom Menace is that it’s not clear who is the main character. Do you know who it is?

The idea that Star Wars in a way was modernizing a throwback does seem to present a balanced path and what feels like the “trick” to the whole thing. The shots lifted from old westerns such as The Searchers, or classic samurai movies by cinematic master Kurosawa and so on, the mix of traditional and new was how Star Wars could push itself but still feel familiar. For me there are some traditions worth keeping and are in fact part of the whole Star Wars flavor. There really aren’t many scores these days as bombastic as Star Wars with a full orchestra, which itself also was a throwback even at the time. In fairness even to TFA I do think compared to other contemporary blockbusters it had much more thoughtful blocking, which also seemed to be a conscious decision to present a more classic staging reminiscent of the originals. To me that is the good side of upholding tradition, and shares a space next to the re-lighting of the candle that is retelling the hero’s journey, Star Wars’ identity is rooted in both pushing the envelope and paying homage to the classic epics.

That line, however, can and has been flanderized by this point, regressive circles will only lead to shallow results if taken too far, so the foundations should be solid on the shoulders of giants, not just Star Wars itself.