TheBoost said:
twooffour said:
TheBoost said:
I still stand you have to be "retarded" not to "understand" the plot of this film on the first "viewing".
He understood and mentioned what there was, and explained how the lack of any additional information made a deeper understanding IMPOSSIBLE.
I honestly don't know what kind of 'deeper' meaning you're looking for.
Should Nute Gunray have done a PowerPoint to explain to the audience how taxes effect his business? Should the Queen have explained to her councellors why a blockade was bad for them? Should Qui-Gon have worn a t-shirt that read "Protaganist?" Should the protocol droid have said, "I'm mostly sure they're Jedi because they looked and acted like Jedi and had lightsabers and Jedi-brand boots"? Would these things have helped you reach that deeper understanding you so crave?
So you kinda admit the fact that the movie provides no information on those aspects, while simultaneously criticizing RLM for (intentionally?) "not understanding" those aspects? ;)
At the end of the day, you're pretty much painting yourself into a corner because what little understandable "plot" there was (i.e. Sidious using a trivial McGuffin for his own goals, which, in the movie, is nothing more than getting his alter ego promoted to chancellor), RLM acknowledged, and all the absent elaborations were criticized for not being there, rather than "purposefully not understood" (hint - by your admission, the movie didn't provide any of those details for anyone to "understand). ;)
So your entire accusation that the reviewer "acted dumb" by "not understanding the plot" falls flat on its face for being sheer nonsense.
The main problem in the movie being that it's ENTIRELY about the "irrelevant" McGuffin and only marginally about the truly "important" plot, and it doesn't actually elaborate sufficiently on the McGuffin... which is, even according to the review itself, THE ENTIRE MOVIE, which basically results in the plot not elaborating on its MAIN PLOT. What the viewer is left with is a bunch of lazy, empty NOTHING.
No, Nute didn't need to put up a chart of financial balances - but the movie left the viewer completely in the dark even about WHAT THEY WANTED at all, or their relationship to Sidious.
Based on the little info in the film, we don't know whether
1) the Trade Federation was motivated by their financial loss due to the "taxation of trade routes", accepting the help of Sidious, or
2) used that as a pretext while actually following orders from Sidious, in order to achieve some entirely different goal (like political favors? additional financial favors?) he promised them in return (for something we're never told about, if it isn't actually that same very pretext of targeting the Naboo / protesting against the taxation laws).
Whether
1) Sidious had orchestrated the taxation crisis, or
2) used it opportunistically.
Whether
1) they suffered tax losses from decreased taxation of the trade routes (being part of the government), or
2) suffered a financial loss from having to pay increased taxes (being an independent company).
Whether
1) the Neimoidians followed up on an offer by Sidious, or
2) agreed to cooperate with him based on a threat (considering how afraid they are of him).
The Neimoidians with Sidious in the background are going to be the main villains and plot point for the duration of the entire movie, and we know NOT A BIT about the set-up, or their relationship to each other, or their motivations, what Sidious wants aside from getting Palpatine promoted (apparently, the whoe thing kinda does grow into the Separatist thing later on, right?), what the Traders THINK he wants, aside from the threadbare "Sidious uses Traders, Traders obey him; Sidious is manipulative and looks like the Emperor, Traders might be greedy/afraid/ambitious".
All things that would've made the "evil chancellor manipulates financial/political interests of others in order to take over democracy" infinitely more interesting and engaging and challenging to write, and the lack of which gives off a clear impression of sheer laziness.
Then with all those elements left unexplained, we're furthermore confronted with actions ordered by Sidious of which we have no clue how they're supposed to achieve his supposed goal, except somehow the unpredictable effects of them leads to him achieving his goal. How was invading the planet and capturing the queen gonna help the queen escape by the Jedis' help and tell the senate about the invasion? How was ordering to kill the Jedi who ended up helping the queen escape, helpful to his goal of... having the queen escape to Coruscant?
How could he count on the Traders failing to kill the Jedi / failing to prevent the queen from escaping without any direct control over the situation? Or did he have alternative plans that had nothing to do with how it played out? Was it something about killing the queen? Or letting her escape? Were the events of the movie according to his plan, or did they just happen to achieve the same results he had planned for?
What were the Traders' plans? Did they plan to kill the queen? Or just make her make the invasion legal? What then? Why the invasion?
And again, the movie just throws the "everything that happens is part of the evil chessmaster's plan - by definition" formula at the audience without bothering to explore what the parties involved want, or what they do, or why hey do it. Which kinda takes the excitement out of a supposed "intrigue plot", and reveals extremely lazy writing that equates the "intrigue plot" it decided to go with instead of a "bad guys attack good guys" to... "bad guys attack good guys".
Everything in the plot that isn't explained, doesn't make sense, and everything that doesn't not make sense, isn't explained. It's a horrible mess, and there's nothing to understand about it apart from the obvious cliff notes formula that takes a line to sum up.
And you trivialize all these glaring problems to Nute not putting up a chart?!
Should the Queen have explained to her councellors why a blockade was bad for them?
That was the least of the problems. The reviewer just complains that the movie fails to create an emotional connection by completely glossing over whatever problems the Naboo gets because of the supply blockade. He also acknowledges the threadbare implication that "people are dying".
These plots are completely obvious in the movie, and so threadbare they don't get more than a few lines of mention.
Should Qui-Gon have worn a t-shirt that read "Protaganist?"
The reviewer never denied him being one of the main characters. And he's certainly NOT "the protagonist" of he film.
Should the protocol droid have said
She didn't get to see their lightsabers, though, and you just made up a bunch of shit about Jedi trademark boots. Point is, it was just two guys in robes.
And that threadbare assumption made them (and Sidious) risk their entire plan. Or maybe accerate it. Why should they have to accelerate their invasion just because the Chancellor sent Jedi for negotiations? Why did the Neimoidians think it was a good idea? Did they plan to start the invasion later? Or did Sidious orchestrate the Jedi mission in order to give them an excuse to start the invasion prematurely? Why was that needed? Why should he have a problem with Jedis being sent to negotiate? What if the Senate kept sending more Jedi negotiators, or investigators their way, would the invasion help anything? If there were no invasion, would it be more difficult for them to fend off he investigators/negotiators?
What was the purpose of the invasion from their point of view? Was it still in the context of protesting against the taxation in front of everyone? Or was that part of a hidden agenda we're never told about, considering they're trying to keep that secret? Or did they plan to reveal the invasion in front of everyone after it becoming "legal", after blatantly denying it all that time? Would that, like, increase the stakes for future negotiations? Would Jedi have no more possibility to "force" a resolution on them at that point? Are we supposed to just guess all of these important plot points (like the purpose behind the main plot crisis) for the movie?!
What RLM might've missed out on was that Palpatine might've known about the mission anyway, and would've found some kind of reason to order the kill. Except of course, we're not told that the attempted kill was a necessary part of the plan. Or why he ordered them killed in the first place.
The whole thing really reverts back to the stupidity of the Tattoine desert robes somehow becoming the Jedi uniform.
So um yea, not sure if you're trying to defend the movie, or just try to put down RLM's review for the sake of it, or because you didn't watch it properly and missed out on like 90% of its content, but basically, TPM fails and so do you.