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Gaffer Tape

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2-Jun-2005
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13-Nov-2019
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Post
#285492
Topic
The Now-Released Spider-Man 3 Thread
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/285492/action/topic#285492
Time
I loved the Raindrops scene personally. Hell, it's actually my favorite sequence out of the entire series.

But, yeah, Sandman's importance really diminished about halfway through the movie. His motivation just... died, and he just showed up from time to time to cause trouble. But in a way I was kinda glad because he seemed like something of a peripheral character, and it left more room for the more important things to play out.

I think it was something of a case of too many villains, and I actually thought that Sandman was dead when Peter flushed him away in the subway station. I mean, he didn't really do much after that anyway, and it seemed about time for Brock to actually do something. Hell, they gave Harry two fake deaths in that movie. I seriously thought he was dead when he, I don't know, blew up. But then they just didn't even follow it up, mention, or even allude to Harry again until Peter seeks out his help at the end of the movie. I seriously thought he was dead for about half an hour. And I wasn't sure how I felt about that. It was kinda cool to be so low-key, but, at the same time, just like when I thought Sandman had died, it seemed like they were rushing a bit to tie up the multiple plot threads that they had left dangling by having so many concurrent plots.

But, still, I enjoyed it overall.
Post
#285378
Topic
The Now-Released Spider-Man 3 Thread
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/285378/action/topic#285378
Time
I thought it would be better to start a new thread away from the old Spider-Man 3 speculation thread in order to talk about the new movie, which I just got back from seeing at the midnight showing. It was a great atmosphere. I never went to any of the Star Wars prequel openings, but this felt like the same kind of vibe I'd heard about. The only people who were there (and there were lots of them) were the ones who were really into this. Lines were out the door, people were being herded into different theatres, people were trading tickets to be in the same theatre as their friends. Employees frantically checked tickets to make sure people were where they were supposed to be.

After sitting for what seemed liked forever, the lights suddenly came on, and two guys came in. I thought that there was a projector death, and that the movie was ka-put. In fact, the guy even made it seem like that by starting out, "I have some bad... just kidding." Besides plugging the nearby GameStop's new shipment of Wiis, he was holding two Spider-Man dolls: the regular Spidey and the Symbiont Spidey. He asked who bought the largest sized popcorns, and I eagerly held mine up. He started to say, "Now if the bottom of your bucket says..." but by that point I had already looked at the bottom of my bucket and, to my surprise, written in marker on the bottom was "S2". "...S1 or S2, you win one of these." Nobody had the S1, but I excitedly cried out that I had the S2, and I was thrown the Symbiont Spidey who was my partner for the duration of the movie. That was great. And now, spoiler time:

*SPOILERS*

This was certainly a darker Spidey movie than the other two, in most parts. Peter is downright vicious at certain parts. But on the flip side, some of his evil antics are downright laughable, as he turns into a disco-dancing emo kid. While I enjoyed that montage, the "Raindrops" montage in the second movie still wins it for me. And, as television and movies have proven countless times, black eyeliner is the source of all evil. It worked for Captain Kirk, and, as soon as Peter turns to his dark side... BAM... he suddenly has black eyeliner. A little bit campy, but I forgave it. There's always been a slightly campy, irreverent undercurrent to these.

Gwen Stacy... totally useless. It seemed like her only purpose was for the moviemakers to say to the comic book fans, "Hey, Gwen Stacy's in the movie!" Of course, she couldn't have the kind of role she had in the comic books. They missed that boat by about two movies.

Harry... wonderful. I loved everything about his side of the story, and all of his seeming deaths and seeming recoveries and seeming hope was just so tormenting. How I wished he could have stayed happy and oblivious and continued to make omelettes. But Norman just refuses to actually die, continuing to possess the same mirror that Harry broke in the last movie (magically repaired) and give him Satanic messages. At one point, I just wanted to yell at him to just go away and die already, so we could all be happy. But then there wouldn't be a movie, and Harry's arc wouldn't be interesting. It was heartwarming to see Harry and Peter playing basketball and having the same friendship they had at the beginning of the first movie. It was wonderfully exhilarating to see Peter as Spider-Man and Harry as the New Goblin fighting side by side against Sandman and Venon, even though I knew Harry wouldn't make it out of it alive. And... he didn't. But at least he was able to redeem himself.

And as for Peter and Mary Jane... a hell of a lot of problems could have been avoided had they just been honest and open with each other like healthy relationships should work. But, no, they kept pretty much everything from one another, and it totally screwed them over. But once again, had it not been like that, there would have been no plot.

One thing I love about this series is its sense of continuity. Nearly every peripheral character that had a reason to be there was there again... all the members of the Bugle staff have been in all three movies. Mr. Ditkovitch and his daughter Ursula are back. Uncle Ben and Norman make cameos again (it's amazing how many different things they can have dead characters do, even though it's pretty much the same stuff over and over again). Dr. Connors is still doing his thing. Even the "killer" from the first movie comes back again. I found that very helpful to get right back into it.

Overall... I don't know. It ended rather downbeat, which isn't bad. I really want to see it again. The thrill of the experience is still with me, so I can't really objectively say, but, for right now, I'm very pleased. But... if Barnard, that damned butler, had been a little more forthcoming with information in the previous movie, he could have saved us from a lot of heartache. But once again, no movie...

So, yeah, go see it and add your thoughts to mine!
Post
#284618
Topic
Biff from BTTF song!
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/284618/action/topic#284618
Time
Oh, my gosh, that was great! I always knew that Tom Wilson had a stand-up act, but I'd never seen anything from it before. Seems he's doing well for himself, especially if he claims he's making more money than us!

And, by the way, Chalts, I'm the resident BTTF nut around these boards, and don't you forget it!

EDIT: By the way, it's also funny how the page only bills him as "Biff" and doesn't mention his real name. Rather ironic in light of the nature of the song.
Post
#284418
Topic
Revenge of the sith is the shite and the flies upon it
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/284418/action/topic#284418
Time
Yeah, if you want to get on the bandwagon of sequel-phobia, um, almost any straight-to-video sequel Disney has ever made! Especially when they're of movies that are at least a generation old. Did we really need a sequel for Bambi? Do we need two for Cinderella? Geez, give me a break! The time for sequels for those were about two or three generations ago.
Post
#284338
Topic
Revenge of the sith is the shite and the flies upon it
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/284338/action/topic#284338
Time
Originally posted by: ADigitalMan
Originally posted by: Marvolo
Co, don't take this the wrong way, but do you have a sequel phobia?

I'm patiently awaiting "Charlotte's Web 2: Revenge of the Spiders." More action, more FX, and a plot twist that will rival The Sixth Sense: Fern is actually Templeton's daughter.


Actually, I did see a sequel to Charlotte's Web on Cartoon Network recently. It starred Wilbur and Charlotte's daughters. Bleh. It was all modernized and bore little resemblance to the cartoon movie upon which it was based.
Post
#284176
Topic
Revenge of the sith is the shite and the flies upon it
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/284176/action/topic#284176
Time
Originally posted by: CO
Gaffer, not to get off topic, the BTTF sequels are good, but they don't have the magic the original had, and I guess it is hard to explain. The original BTTF was just about a kid learning about his parents growing up while he was stuck back in time, so in a weird sense, the time travel is the side story of the movie. What makes the Original great is that it makes everyone in the audience whether it be a parent of their kids reassess where they were at that time in their lives? Nobody pictures their parents partying and drinking in high school, because they are your parents! And some parents are naive to think that their kids would do the same because.....they're your kids! The great irony about the Original BTTF is that nothing changes between generations, and that your actions do have consequences, hence the changed ending in the new life Marty walks into after he gets back. I guess this is the reason those films back in the 70's/80's were great, cause they said something like this in the movie, and as a kid you may not get it, but years later this is why they stay great.


Honestly, I was going to say exactly that, but I didn't want to get too far off-topic, so I just stayed general. Yeah, the magic of the first one was amazing, and only as I got older did I realize that, and that's because I saw BTTF2 first. Therefore, I saw it in trilogy style. Of course, the "To Be Continued..." on the original VHS versions did little to keep me from thinking it was the first part of a time-traveling epic. It was only when the DVDs came out, and I realized it was just a single movie originally that I began to see and appreciate the original story for what it was. But the reason I didn't say this before was because I was trying to say that I think that all three movies are exceptionally strong. None of them fail to capture my interest or provide me with a compelling plot or characters. It's just that the sequels have a different story than the original. But, honestly, in that sense it's not much different from the Star Wars trilogy except that I feel the BTTF movies manage to maintain the same level of quality while ROTJ dips just a little bit.
Post
#284169
Topic
Virginia Tech shooting
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/284169/action/topic#284169
Time
I happen to agree with InfoDroid. It becomes much easier to handle things when you can just say, "Well, that person was evil." It desensitizes us against the side we don't agree with and allows us to hate that side like we're supposed to. Rather than attempt to find out what caused someone to "go bad" (aside from violent video games, obviously), we can just hate the evil killer and move on. I'm not even saying he wasn't evil. I don't know. I didn't know him. I never met him. I never interacted with him. Maybe he always had a sadistic streak and always desired to kill people, even before he was bullied or ostracized, and it simply grew and grew as time went on. But more than likely it seems that's not the case. I liked the parallel that C3PX made to Hitler. Even the people we find the most condemnable have thoughts and emotions like us. But, like I said before, we like to strip undesirables of those qualities to make it easier to rally against them. I admit it's very confusing to me to see a picture of Hitler, in his military outfit, smiling warmly while feeding a deer and then see pictures of Holocaust victims. It's simply easier and makes more sense to believe that someone who would do something so horrible as to murder other human beings could possibly have any feelings of warmth, fear, or love. But, like it or not, we're all human, not two-dimensional programmed machines. Once again, I have to reiterate that, while I say this, it doesn't make me feel anything but anger to think of the lives that were lost and leave me wondering how anybody could do something so horrible as to gun down helpless human beings. And there certainly has to be something hardened and cold-blooded about you to be able to lock people in a room and take shots at them like that. But everybody always has a perspective, as warped and confusing to us as it might seem.
Post
#284163
Topic
Revenge of the sith is the shite and the flies upon it
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/284163/action/topic#284163
Time
Personally, I think the two Back to the Future sequels manage to maintain the quality of the first one. But aside from that, I certainly agree that we are very lucky that ESB is as good as it is. That was pretty much the idiom that Lucas had at the time: ESB had to be good in order for Star Wars to survive. If it hadn't been, it would just be Star Wars with a few crappy sequels. Probably no prequels at all.
Post
#284091
Topic
Colony Collapse - Why are the bees dying and what is the impact?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/284091/action/topic#284091
Time
Originally posted by: C3PX
It is discomforting to me with how very dependant on technology we are. I think it would be a good thing to take a step back by choice and with caution and planning rather than be forced back by some sort of disaster. We are getting to the point where electricity and electronic information is as vital and essential to us as water. That is what I meant by my "this time carbon offsets wont save you", if it came down to giving up cell phones there would be no squirming out of it for the rich folks. I think we could do it, but it would hurt. In fact, I would be totally if we decided to fight global warming and loose of bees by getting rid of technology all together and going back to oil lamps and horses. That would be a dream come true! Imagine, no more media? Something dumb like VT happens and we wont know about it for weeks or months, and best of all, no copycat nonsense. Ah, one can only dream...


I don't know if we'd honestly be able to go back to the days of non-modern technology, especially if we simply cut it off immediately. Take transportation, for example. Over the course of the last century, towns and cities have become much more spread out due to the rise of the automobile making it possible for long-distance transportation, which just wouldn't be possible using a horse and buggy. And then there's data management. While it wouldn't be impossible, think of how difficult it would be to schedule several thousand students into a university by hand! Computer records make it possible to automatically tell if a student signs up for two classes in the same slot or doesn't have the prerequisites required to get into a class and make sure a class isn't overloaded (yeah, guess which level of education I'm currently undertaking, in case you didn't already know...). And, of course, there would be no OT.com and no Star Wars at all, for that matter. ^_~ I agree, though, that it is a bit discomforting how dependent we are on technology, but there really is no way to do it. It could either be cut off immediately, and civilization would collapse and have to rebuild itself. The only successful way to do it would take decades of regression. There's no way anyone would agree to that. Even if it was "outlawed" somehow, it would be about as effective as Prohibition. I would love a world without alcohol, but it's just never going to happen. Just like there was moonshine in the 1920s, there would be an underground technology racket if we were forced to regress back to a naturalized style of life. I'm not entirely against the premise, but I just don't think it's at all feasible.
Post
#283920
Topic
Splinter Of The Mind's Eye - review and thoughts.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/283920/action/topic#283920
Time
I'm sure you all know me well enough to know I'm not at all trying to rationalize with prequel knowledge. I just thought it was interesting enough to point out. I especially find it interesting in the wording itself. As MeBe pointed out, Leia was able to shut him down, so I find it interesting he specifically said that Darth Vader could shut him down rather than just any old shmuck who knows the first thing about technology. Interesting aspect, though, that anybody can simply say, "Shut down," to a droid. One, I would think that a droid would only obey his master's directive to do that. Two, it renders 3PO's quote as something of an exaggeration. But thanks for the clarification.
Post
#283895
Topic
Splinter Of The Mind's Eye - review and thoughts.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/283895/action/topic#283895
Time
I just got done reading its wikipedia page, and there is a bit of trivia that says that Threepio has a line in the book where he states that Darth Vader knows all the code words and commands to shut him down. Of course, the trivia hints to the later revelation that Anakin Skywalker built 3PO, and I have to admit that makes sense. But obviously that plot point did not exist in any way at the time this book was written, so how exactly would Darth Vader be so intimately aware with 3PO's programming? Is it explained at all?