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People seem to forget lucas only directed ANH and the shitty prequels.
Still, he was the primary author behind the other two.
“Story by:…” and special effects are what he was good at (and darn good at). He should have stuck to those and let other people write the script, direct, etc.
luckydube56 said:
To say Raiders is somewhat shallow (if I may paraphrase) is both true and irrelevant in the context of the film. It never set out to be a deep film experience. It is one of high adventure and in that regard it didnt fail in any way.
I agree with you, that’s why I said Raiders is an excellent and extremely well made film.
Thanks 3PO.
I don’t think you understand what the character of Kylo Ren is supposed to be . Kylo Ren is not supposed to be a good villain yet. He is a mentally unstable kid who masquerades as someone who has power like Vader but has yet to be fully trained.
I don’t think you understand that we don’t care “what he’s supposed to be”. The character doesn’t resonate because he is poorly constructed. He’s no longer a threat. It was implied in TFA that he was a badass, I mean he stopped blaster bolts in mid air and telekinetically froze people and threw them through the air. Then suddenly he forgets he has these powers at the end of the movie and gets wasted by someone who has no training. It’s just bad storytelling.
If he were supposed to be a weak villain, he should have been made a weak villain from the start of the film. Let him get stronger and stronger in the dark side as the movie progresses, not weaker and weaker.
I clearly haven’t watched enough Indiana Jones since I found your rating surprising, lukcydube56. Raiders of the Lost Arc is rated higher than ESB on Rotten Tomatoes and rated only slightly lower on IMDB.
Last time I saw that movie, I was probably 7 or 8 years old and have little flashes of scenes in my head. Damn.
Raiders is a damn near perfect “fun” action flick. It is a very good and well made film in its own right. But it doesn’t have those extra things that take a movie from very good to 10/10 for me. It doesn’t have the emotional depth of Star Wars, let alone Empire Strikes Back, and nothing as suspenseful as the trench run. It also lacks the creative originality of the galaxy far, far away.
That said, it is still a very well made and entertaining movie.
Bosk, boredom3031 was mocking Fink, but it went right over your head. Which kind of made Fink’s point for him. Please don’t make his points for him anymore. Thanks!
We’re not supposed to take Kylo Ren seriously because like Luke he has yet to finish his training. Once he does there’s no telling how stronger he will become. Also seeing as how he has fully given himself to the dark side the worrisome traits he has exhibited are going to be exponentially worse. I see Kylo Ren as an idea that has yet to be fully realized.
He got weaker in the dark side as the film went along though. That’s the problem some people have with this character. It would have been so easy to fix too. He should have just wasted Finn, then play-fought Rey, only allowing her to live because he’s attracted to her, or he wants to train her or something. Then she taps into the force and fights him off for just a moment, then deus-ex-machina, the ground opens up and she escapes. Kylo would still be a threatening obstacle heading into the next film, and his arc wouldn’t have blown up.
cough ROTJ cough
Agreed, and that’s the weakest part of ROTJ, but only if you really stop and think about it, which the film tricks you into not doing. Vader killed untold numbers of people and terrorized the entire galaxy. He can’t possibly redeem himself by saving his own son’s life, but the film never allows you to dwell on that.
Bingowings said:
That way when the capital is destroyed there is a sense of connection to the place. I barely understood what the place was. In my after viewing report I thought it was Coruscant because it looked like the whole planet was one big city but I needed someone there to tell me.
Here’s another major issue with this film. There’s an adage: “Show, don’t tell.” It was seemingly ignored. Think about Luke’s piloting skills in the OT. The only exposition we receive about his ability is that he’s a pilot who wants to go to the academy. That’s it. As far as the audience is concerned, he’s nobody. Han calls him out in the Cantina, and Luke sticks up for himself.
“Yeah, but who’s gonna fly it, you?”
“You bet I will. (to Obi-Wan) C’mon, we don’t have to listen to this”.
Luke proves himself enough over the course of the film, that Han allows him to man the guns on the Falcon. Luke blows up one TIE Fighter, and Han’s line “don’t get cocky kid!” is so fantastic, because it shows such a transitional attitude towards the boy. Luke is gaining Han’s respect, and the audience’s, but there is still some skepticism there. When they finally escape to Yavin, Luke has fully earned Han’s respect, and you can see it between the two of them right before they go their separate ways.
By the end of the film, we, the audience, believe in Luke. We have never seen him pilot a ship before, but we already have confidence in his ability. We’re not surprised when other pilots complain it’s impossible to hit the exhaust port on the Death Star, only for Luke to respond it’s no big deal.
Beat by beat, the audience is taken from complete skepticism, to “great, but don’t get cocky kid!” to full acceptance. That is brilliant writing and filmmaking.
On the other hand, TFA has Poe Dameron. The guy is absent from most of the film. He’s really a cartoon. The filmmakers tell us he’s the best pilot in the Resistance. But how should we know? He just flies around in his X-wing blowing people up in the same boring way the prequel Jedi cut down battle droids like matchsticks. In case we didn’t believe enough when they told us the first time, the whole movie ****ing stops dead in its tracks during the battle at Maz’s castle, so Finn can look up in the sky at Poe and watch him blow up another meaningless ship and exclaim “wow that’s one awesome pilot!” Then if you’re still not convinced how awesome Poe is, just watch the final sequence. He blows up more meaningless ships and fires the last shot at the oscillator without ever being threatened himself.
Finn seems to be the audience’s reference point, the character who should be the skeptic in this film. But where is the skepticism? Where is the scene where Poe and Finn are together and Poe says he’s going to do something impossible and Finn says exactly what we are thinking. “What?! How can you do that?” And then Poe does it, and we’re convinced. Instead, Finn already expects Poe will be able to blast his way out of the Starship, to the point he busts him out of captivity and leads him to a ship. And that is a major, major storytelling flaw.
Similarly, you mentioned the scene where the Hosnian system gets blown up. There is no context for why that system matters. In the OT, Alderaan is Leia’s home planet. She is forced to watch it get destroyed. Obi-Wan reacts painfully when millions or billions of people instantly die. And most important of all, it’s the place where our heroes are trying to go. It’s their destination, and then it simply isn’t there anymore.
When the Hosnian system gets blown up, on the other hand, what does it matter? It has no relation to the rest of the film. None of the main characters are related to the Hosnian system. The plot doesn’t revolve around it like Alderaan did in the OT. It’s meaningless, it just comes out of nowhere. The filmmakers evidently realized there was a need to stop the film and mourn, so they came up with the idiotic idea for everyone at Maz’s place to be able to look up in the sky and watch planets get destroyed light-years away in real time. Just dumb stuff.
The only reason why the Hosnian system seems to matter is because we are told it’s an important place, but unlike Alderaan, we are not shown it’s an important place in relation to our characters and the plot.
There are several other instances of telling and not showing in this film, I have kind of rambled long enough and lost my train of thought, but you get my point.
My only problem with Leia’s scenes is the editing and position of the resistance base in relation to the stakes of the film.
I don’t know why Carrie’s appearance received so much criticism. I think she looks just fine for 60. Anyone expecting her to look like she did when she was 27 and be a sex symbol is delusional. That said, her acting wasn’t great but the real problem with her scenes was the writing. The dialogue between her and Han was painfully on-the-nose. Where was the subtext? They just stood there doing nothing and saying exactly what they meant to each other for a couple of minutes. Those scenes just died on the screen. Considering Kasdan wrote the script, I just don’t get it.
Her character just didn’t seem believable or well utilized, outside of the fact that we all know her from the other films. If you had no other context, you would wonder why the film is slowing down and stopping for this woman who basically doesn’t do anything. Imagine if Admiral Ackbar or Mon Mothma had their own scenes in the OT, wouldn’t it feel out of place? Maybe she just wasn’t in the acting shape to contribute more to the film, I don’t know, but her character just didn’t work for me.
Abrams and Kasdan have referred to Kylo as being a bad-guy parallel to Luke, or rather a reversal of his story-arc.
So I think the similarities are definitely intentional.
There is a line from Leia in the film when she’s speaking to Han, something like “there’s still good in him, we can bring him home.”
I don’t know if it was on this forum or somewhere else, but another user had a great response to that line. “Bring him home for what? To face war crimes trials, and pay for murdering an entire village of innocents? Punish him for murdering Han and untold numbers of other people? Bring him home to try and convict him and put him in jail and execute him by lethal injection?”
Count me out if this new trilogy is going to focus on some redemption plot for a mass murderer. Nobody wants to see that shit.
The “emo” thing bugs me. Luke was whiny as hell, and people seem to love it.
Yeah but Luke wasn’t a villain.
And also, Kylo’s arc wasn’t built as the film moved along. I could maybe see a place for complex villain wannabe (although it’s tiring by now), but by the end of the film he should be losing his mind and tipping over more and more to the dark side. Technically he kills Han, but it doesn’t really work one, that scene wasn’t all that emotional, and two, because of his gradual unmasking, and eventual emasculation by Rey. By the end of the film he’s just a putrid pretender, and can’t be considered a real threat to our heroes.
Yoda Is Your Father said:
Just out of curiosity, are you a filmmaker?I only ask because you’re throwing out some pretty big opinions, and I’m curious about your credentials.
First, I’m curious why you think it matters whether someone is a filmmaker or not when they offer criticism? There are critics who get paid for a living to critique films. They are professionals at it, and yet they don’t make any films themselves. There are countless other people who simply watch films and have a taste for what they see and what they like. Is their opinion and the way they express it any less valid?
My criticism may have sounded harsh to your ears, but I assure you that your response sounded condescending to mine, and probably others as well.
Now to answer your question, I’m a screenwriter. I’m also making my first documentary right now. I know it’s difficult to make any film, whether it’s two minutes long, or two hours long, and I certainly appreciate that process. Nevertheless, we are speaking about professionals here, people who are being paid very handsomely to produce high quality work. They aren’t students or amateurs, and there is no need for kid gloves, lemons at halftime, or participation awards. I criticized an aspect of the filmmaking, another user asked me to explain myself, and I did exactly that. Would you have preferred a blanket statement with no explanation?
Yoda Is Your Father said:
For the record, I make TV commercials. Admittedly I don’t make films, but it’s the same ballpark.
I checked out your website and I have to commend you for your casting decision on the Axe girl. Whatever else you do in your career that will be hard to top!
All kidding aside, I liked the commercial and thought it was well done.
Yoda Is Your Father said:
And you know what?.. I would NEVER pipe up about how terrible the editing was on a Star Wars movie. Sure, I might say I don’t like it, or this and that bit sucked, but real, granular filmmaking critique?.. I’m simply not qualified, and I know how amazingly hard it is to balance every voice in the room and still end up with a finished product that makes sense and entertains people.
For the record, I’d like to mention that I changed my wording from ‘terrible’ to ‘didn’t meet my expectations’. It’s easy to get caught up in anonymous internet hyperbole, so I already offered a full mea culpa in a previous post.
As for the rest of this, you seem to be chiding me not so much for my admittedly excessive word choice, but more because I had the audacity to offer specific critiques. Is that right? I simply cannot understand where you are coming from, since this is a discussion thread about the film. If you disagree with me, then let’s discuss in good faith.
Yoda Is Your Father said:
The director of every film you’ve ever seen, even the bad ones, deserves respect simply for getting a movie made and released in the first place.
This is just not true. Good work deserves praise; bad work does not.
I do feel bad for Lucas for the flack he gets from the prequels. Look, I hate the prequels as much as anyone, but Lucas just made some bad movies and people act like he purposefully messed them up just to make them angry. He was experimenting. He was trying to make good movies based on ideas he was passionate about.
The problem wasn’t that he made bad movies. The problem was that he infringed upon the movies we already knew and loved. The prequels introduced midichlorians and ruined The Force. They ruined Yoda. They took Anakin and turned him from a noble man seduced by the darkside, into a whiny teenager seduced by the darkside. Then he disappeared the OOT and ruined the films with his idiotic SE changes.
If he had just made bad prequels, he would still be looked upon in a very favorable light.
Here’s a video with Mark, Carrie, Peter, David Prowse, and the droids on some British talk show circa 1980. Carrie looks great here, and Mark talks about the prequels that were evidently already in the works before Return of the Jedi.
Didn’t like the pacing, fine. Could have been better, sure. But terrible editing? That’s just downright silly.
Perhaps terrible is hyperbole. I’m sure it could have been much worse.
I will just say I thought it didn’t meet my expectations.
TV’s Frink said:
What about all the time with Rey before she meets up with Finn? Plenty of time to enjoy the scenery and her performance.
The first sequence was a disaster and should have been cut. The rest of Act I with Rey on Jakku was done pretty well I thought. This was the only part of the film that was allowed to breathe. The bit on the freighter was intolerable. After that, the film just felt rushed and jerky, no rhythm whatsoever. As Ric pointed out, I think the editing of the space battle in the final act was really poorly done. There was no dramatic tension at all.
I remember in the trailer there is a wide shot of BB-8 in the X-wing set against the snowy landscape on Starkiller, and all these TIE fighters start closing in. Such a dramatic and foreboding shot, but it wasn’t even edited right in the final film … I remember seeing it at the theater and thinking “that’s all they did with that great shot?” Then it was just pew-pew yippee we did it! Game over.
Another potentially great moment in the film was the reveal of Darth Vader’s melted helment. As it turns out, the thing was on screen for a total of 0.5 seconds right at the end of a scene and that’s it. The camera was on Kylo talking to himself for 30 seconds or whatever, and then only so briefly do we see Vader’s helmet. There is no buildup towards this scene, no real context that Kylo wants to “finish what he started”, so this huge reveal really calls for the film to
Stop.
Call attention to the helmet. And Kylo.
Really let it sit in for a moment.
And then carry on.
…Instead, we see it on screen for half a second and then mid-transition – welp – we’re onto the next action sequence just like that, no big deal.
The editing in TFA was terrible. I had a conversation with a top Hollywood editor and he seemed offended I would think so and said I was wrong.
But I stand by my point. It’s downright terrible in TFA.
Of course it’s contrived in 1980. In ANH, Vader just happens to chase Leia to the planet where his son and her brother lives, and he just happens to take possession of his sister’s droids, one of which just happens to be carrying the stolen plans his father is trying to retrieve?
No. Leia is going to Tatooine because that’s where Obi-Wan is located. She’s not just passing through the neighborhood by coincidence.
I firmly believe Disney will release the OOT asap on or after May 2020, or May 2027 at the absolute latest.
Not a moment sooner or a moment later than those dates.
Plausible stops being a thing when you’re watching a movie that already has magical powers and lazer swords.
I don’t agree with all of Lizard’s nitpicks, but this specific statement is not true. Every film has an internal universe, where it establishes its own rules. In Star Wars, the half a dozen stormtroopers might fire their blasters in Han’s direction, and none of them are good enough shots to hit. But that’s a recurring movie trope that is consistent throughout the internal universe of the story.
However, if one of the stormtroopers in Cloud City had burst into Han and Leia’s room, and warned them that they were in danger and they need to hurry and get away, that would be seriously out of line. That is no longer an insignificant, oft-repeated trope, but that is suddenly a major WTF moment that (at a minimum) needs explanation, and probably shouldn’t be included in the story at all.
That’s why Finn defecting is not consistent with the internal world of the Star Wars universe. It could still work … but now the whole thing calls so much attention to itself, it needs some kind of context to justify itself. Just saying he’s a good guy with a conscience doesn’t cut it.
If Imperialscum takes a stance on something related to the OOT, there is a high chance I will be in disagreement. There are several visual improvements made in the SE of Star Wars, but the exterior shot of Kenobi’s hut is not one of them.
Maybe he will freeze it in carbonite and hang it up on his wall of shame.
Guinness and Cushing were outstanding of course, but Empire has Yoda, plus James Earl Jones and David Prowse combined to make Vader so much more intimidating than he was even in the first film. Harrison, Carrie, and Luke were all so much better too.
Disagree. While Empire might be the best Star Wars film, in my opinion the best FILM of the saga is Star Wars. That is, Empire is arguably the most defining and impactful piece in building the saga (the force, the family, the Yoda, the love story, the redemption, etc). But if each film were to be judged against the landscape of great films, in my opinion the only one that really stands on its own at a comparable level alongside the greats like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, etc., is Star Wars.
The quality of the making of the film Empire Strikes Back is, for the most part, superior to the quality of the making of the film Star Wars. The script is better. The acting is better. The characters are more three dimensional. The framing and blocking is better. The cinematography is better. The score is better. The pacing of the action is better. The special effects are better.
As good a film as Star Wars is … and its very very good … the only filmmaking aspect that stands up well to the quality of Empire is the editing, in my opinion.
