Mithrandir

DominicCobb said:

Mithrandir said:
So, the story can’t be wrong just because it doensn’t match up to our expectations. That’d be close-minded.

I very clearly did not say that. To reiterate, just because it doesn’t match expectations doesn’t make it wrong.

Just because it’s not what you or I might have expected after ROTJ doesn’t mean it’s a definitively wrong way to do it (…) it’s pretty close minded to outright dismiss the story they’re telling just because it wasn’t what you expected

DominicCobb said:

Mithrandir said:
And the designs apparently are a minor things as well.

YUP.

Interestingly, we’ve crossed our points of view in this regard. Debate over TFA has been going on recurrently in the forum for over a year and a half under the rehash/not rehash label. Curiously not rehash team has, recurrently as well, claimed that despite the similarities in the general outline of the story and plot it is the details what prevent TFA from being a rehash of ANH. Amongst those details, the designs (of characters, of factions, of wardrobe, of props, of backgrounds, of ships, etc.) certainly are not a minor thing.

Details, and in this case particularly the visual language, are meant to characterize and utterly singularize a general structure, a story. From that point of view, they are relevant.

From other point of view, and since without that structure that sets an order (and the “order” of TFA is what is meant to be dangerously close to ANH according to the rehash team; only to say then that even the details are too close to OT) the details are meaningless, they are not relevant.

In the end it’s not a spectrum where you could say I’m more like here, more like there. It’s a contradiction with no singular resolution. And it’s a contradiction that depending on the scale of the analysis, ends up movilizing the approach always into something both new and old.

Not even a perfect copy of La Gioconda is La Gioconda even though they could be objectively identical. While the copy is something new, sill it never ceases to be a copy.

Why is this important? Because when you apparently take your position militantly in one part of the question, as if it was a spectrum, for instance:

You clearly have a very different way of looking at films than I do. (…) I will say that in my mind it’s all about the story, and what feeds into it and how.

Down that road you end up denying the formal, “accesory” details of the work. And further down that road, had your sentence be taken as a general law, it arises some questions such as

If a movie is all about the story and what feeds into it and how; in the end if a movie is about the plot (what happens) or the script (how does it happen) then what does make cinema something else than just filmed theatre in the first place? Or furthermore, what does make theatre something else than just outloud-read literature?

I think that when it comes to art, the platonic hierarchy between substance and detail, what’s essential and what’s irrelevant has to be constantly put in jeopardy, because there is no such thing as a clear and defined line.

DominicCobb said:

As for little things like stormtrooper armor? I mean really, is this the stuff we should be giving a shit about when it comes to the quality of these movies?

So, the story can’t be wrong just because it doensn’t match up to our expectations. That’d be close-minded.
And the designs apparently are minor things as well.

I judge TFA’s color palette to be way too Narnian for a Star Wars movie, somewhat close even to Fellowship of the Ring: ocres, greens, blueish whites. I suppose, answering myself, that is also a thing about which we shouldn’t be giving a shit.

I just wonder what can or is it socially allowed to be fallible in a movie in order to measure its quality. Because, again apparently, due to it being too subjective, or it being too irrelevant, nothing could fail. And that’s just the inconditional fan talking.

We’re a little more than half a year away of really knowing what’s the deal with the ST. We have some information, that of course could be wrong or fake, but when TLJ is out there will be no room for saying that we still don’t know when 2/3 of the movie is already out.

Bigger walkers, and First Order having the upper hand confirmed!

So now (finally, unless this rumor isn’t true, which probably is) there’s no more ground to say that the ST won’t replicate or mimic (if you find the word too bold) the political background of the OT.

So the nazis that fled to Argentina as a fringe group, somehow managed to gather resources they didn’t even have in Germany…

I think Anakin’s star shouldn’t eclipse Obi Wan’s, I think the whole situation could be strenghtened by just showing on screen how those two are the best the Jedi Order has to offer for a high priority mission like that.

Isn’t there material in the clone wars to establish a distress/mayday call by any of them two, when the fireships come? I mean instead of the ships just appearing, have some radio chat like “this is general skywalker/kenobi, this is an emergency, repeat, emergency”, etc.

By underlining the degree of peril you just make anakin and obi wan more heroic

This edit keeps looking more and more promising.

Only thing I’ll say is (if you cut it before and have the line at your disposal) I’d change the fireships line to "we’re on your tail general Skywalker "

imperialscum said:

Mithrandir said:

Unlike what most of people think, at times (and only at times) I believe he failed on looking and caring way too much what other people (the industry) was doing when he engaged the prequels. The chosen one thing was taken from Matrix. The Coliseum in AOTC from Gladiator. Qui Gonn came out of someone’s suggestion.

Matrix and TPM where released at the same time so it seems very unlikely.

I just don’t buy for a second that Lucas or Steven Spielberg didn’t have virtual access to any blockbuster script before its release. At some point, any creative environment works as a social web.

Delete

I think George’s worst decission was not to trust himself enough.

Unlike what most of people think, at times (and only at times) I believe he failed on looking and caring way too much what other people (the industry) was doing when he engaged the prequels. The chosen one thing was taken from Matrix. The Coliseum in AOTC from Gladiator. Qui Gonn came out of someone’s suggestion.

In his initial schemes for TPM back in '97, the Jedi duo was supposed to be ObiWan and a teen Anakin. Had it gone that way without caring about loosing market (sorry, audience) with Matrix or Lord of the Rings, the PT would have turned out a better arc. But from there on, a chain reaction of bad choices took place, of which Jar Jar was just the least important (though perhaps the most evident) of all (if there was no baby Anakin, there was no need of going to Tatooine, or at least not in the same terms where comic releaf was needed to make a light-hearted middle act in a dull desert planet).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GvpT_7BMAc

Found it!

Just in case, some other videos from awesome edits that never made it:

https://vimeo.com/51737196

https://vimeo.com/45886910 (I really dig of this video how the editor handles ObiWan’s reactions to what he’s done inmediately after he has cut Anakin down)

The only complaint I’d have with the inclusion of the line from rebels is the part that says “I destroyed him”. Within the context of the movie, and having watched ObiWan basically defeat and humilliate Vader only 10 minutes before, that part of the line sounds as Anakin rationalizing and making up for his failure in his mind.

But answering Anakin Skywalker was weak alone isn’t complete neither.

I remember there was a video made by TheCutter where he used another line that, when asked “anakin, can you hear me” went more or less like “that name no longer has any meaning for me. Now I know the power of the dark side” (and started crushing things). Perhaps if you added “anakin skywalker was weak” instead of the line borrowed from ROTJ could preserve the meaning and loose the pretension of Vader having the psicological structures of a weak person (esencially saying he won when he clearly lost).

Lord Haseo said:
What? lol

Haha, my english betraying me. I meant that you got that part diametrically wrong. I was saying that Luke didn’t choose to go on his journey. And that Rey, by basically being involved willingly, set up the tone of the rest of the movie as an adventure tale.

DominicCobb said:
“Move, ball” says a lot about his personality but nothing about his current situation in life. “Being Han Solo” doesn’t tell the full story.

What do you need the full story for? Or better, what’s the point of telling the “full story” if the character didn’t change at all since last time you saw him in OT?

As I said, there is nothing wrong with a stagnant character. The problem is when I film sets up a character for change but then doesn’t resolve it. If they wanted to tell Cassian’s story as the “unavoidable fate of a soldier,” they should have told that story. Instead that gave him a moral quandary but didn’t go anywhere with it.

They told that story. He died. He made decissions that made it unfair that he died, but he did because that’s how war is. The whole point of the film was exactly that, good and mortal people that are not as lucky destiny-blessed Luke but turned out to be exactly as important as him.

She has more to her than that. She has aspirations outside of the main plot, she has demons, she has a well defined moral compass though I would say Cassian’s is definitely more defined. Rey even has small litlle personality traits like being modest by shrugging off her saving Finn as mere luck

Well, Cassian has a personality as well. He’s an intelligence officer, his job is to have no-man’s personality. He only reveals his emotions when he knows his fate is sealed.

Why do all heroes need to choose to go on their journey?

You got this exactly around.

DominicCobb said:
If you don’t understand or like Rey’s character, too bad for you. But her story is much more fully formed.

Being a fan of the OT, I understand Rey’s character 😉

Her story isn’t “much more fully formed”, it’s just more explicit. In which grade that’s undoubtedly a better thing, I invite you to enlighten me.

To me, “Move, ball” will always be and say a lot more about Han Solo still being Han Solo than having 15 minutes wasted with the “guabian death gang”; but whatever.

Hasn’t it occured to you that perhaps the whole point of Cassian wasn’t to go somewhere? Maybe he was just all about showing the unavoidable fate of a soldier, and the shit that war is and how it hardens a human being.

I can understand that in the midst of this nineties youth, the idea that not everybody has the opportunity to choose in life doesn’t seem as appealing as all the free will stuff that sinks us today. But stories and characters that end up exactly where they started, (greek tragedies, death in samarra, etc.) are just an equally valid part of the spectrum.

Lord Haseo said:
Cassian was interesting and we got to know about his backstory and how he views the Rebellions more questionable actions but I felt there could have been more to him or that his moral ambiguity was made a larger focal point. If we compare him to Rey however he seems underdeveloped in comparison as we know certain things about Rey’s backstory, we have seen a myriad of emotional states from her, we have seen actions that show us what type of person she is […]

We may not agree on character development

We’ve seen Rey intensively cry, laugh, be amused by her abilities, be afraid, run away…all in one movie. You call this character development, I just think it’s an emotional rollercoaster where she reacts generically the way she’s supposed to. And just by the sheer quantity of emotional responses she gives, all I can think of is in an unstable character that doesn’t know or understand anything (but then magically knows how to do everything). Hardly likeable. She’s not even forced by the circumstances to leave Jakku, not at least in the same way Luke was by the death of his uncles.

There where Luke was Frodo, Rey is more like Bilbo going on an adventure, which in a way sets up the “disney” tone of the rest of the movie.

Cassian, instead, we don’t see him change much in Rogue One (except when he doesn’t shoot Galen Erso, and then joins Jyn to get to Eadu), but just one thing explains all you say it isn’t explained (where he comes from, what are his expectations, what kind of person he is and his emotional state) which is the brief, tense, open, non exhaustive scene inside the ship after the death or Jyn’s dad.

Why is it infinitely better than anything in TFA? Because it’s all based in Diego Luna’s acting, and in a dialogue in which it is more important what is implied and not said: Cassian lost his family in a war situation, war and loss is all he knows, and he is willing to die for a cause basically because he is left with nothing to live for.

Yes, I have completed the meaning of the scene and resignified the character with my interpretation, but that’s the whole point of a well (or at least, better) written movie and true character development , not just having the movie start with a character not liking chocolate and end it with it liking it. That’s just a cheap interpretation of Joseph Campbell’s cheap interpretation of (mainly) medieval cycles.

In the end, Cassian might be a little monolithic but reminds me of Javert in Les Miserables, where only in one point and just in one point, he confesses he comes from the drains of society as well, and suddenly all his actions and feelings including his overly rigid moral compass are explained.

And yes, it’s a reveal moment, only that not so overly emphasized and underlined; just human scale, totally relatable. It explains the guy and his motivations from a human point of view.

Was more actually needed?

DominicCobb said:

Rian Johnson is Gen-X and I doubt he has anything to do with when the foreign translations are revealed.

But sure. Let’s keep criticizing a film (that, again, isn’t out for another 10 months) for the most inane reasons.

Wow! Oh my god! The company marketing the biggest film of the year has a strategy for how to market it? How devious.

It’s not devious, it’s just plain stupid. As stupid as the people who enjoy those kind of common places.

Do you know what’s really unpredictable? A totally low profile blockbuster, with no big deals about title release or secrecy about the plot. That’s why Rogue One is up to date the best of the two Disney movies. It didn’t need to carry on any tradition, not even the tradition to surprise anyone on anything.

That’s what we need. A simple, effective story that doesn’t need to create mistery around anything to get you going. I want to see cinema, not the byproduct of a generation of videogamers.

It’s in the hands of your faaaaaaaaaathaaa…HAN…SOLO (duh duh duhhh)

It’s definitely plural. The translated title has been released simultaneously in several languages throughout Europe and Latin America, obviously it’s a coordinated strategy.

Milenials are already working in think tanks by 2017. Clearly they can’t come up with a decent spacially and emotionally human scaled plot for a movie but most definitely they will foresee these kind of ruses in marketing techniques about reveals and plot twists on almost every possible matter.

It’s all they know and love to do. Well played.

Dream like-oniric sequence where the training Rey meets Kylo confirmed by MSW as far as I remember
Superstar Destroyer
Character blood parentage reveal
Kylo being more prominent as lead villain, just like Vader was in Empire.
Tie Advanced
Luke, who has always been the voice of balance and common-sense thinking in OT, being all misterious like Yoda
The “resistance” as underdogs, still

Don’t like to call it rehash? Ok, however it still sounds like a movie that you will be able to predict if you’ve seen ESB.

All I hope is that instead of keep destroying everything that was achieved at the end of Jedi, at least they give Luke some progression, specially with the ghost and memory of Anakin.

You overestimate the secrecy they intend to have on this productions. Most certainly not rumors

http://makingstarwars.net/2017/02/star-wars-last-jedis-super-star-destroyer-finns-curious-outfit/

So the First Order is getting a super star destroyer as flagship. But it’s not the same because this time it’s a pure minimalistic wedge!! And Kylo, a Tie Advanced but all-different because it’s pill shaped!

Disney and Kathleen Kennedy seem to be insisting in turning the films of the Star Wars main saga into something as repetitive as any “new” season or episode of Power Rangers

If this keeps going this way, it’s just one more film until I’m claiming for GL to be back.

darthrush said:

Humby said:

I think ‘The Last Jedi’ refers to Luke abandoning the conceptual ideals of the Jedi, which is what led to their downfall in the first place (and possibly what led to his failure with Ben and the loss of his students).

Luke will be the Last Jedi because he abandons those ideals when he trains Rey. Rey’s training will embrace both the dark and the light, but only in an attempt to do what is right and just. We saw him sort of embrace that in ROTJ, and maybe that scared him, but after losing all of his students and reexamineing the ideals of past Jedi, he realizes that suppressing the dark side isn’t the best way to go. So he teaches Rey to embrace love, and to accept possesion and attachment as a natural part of life and the force.

So he, in the end, truly is the last Jedi. That would be a good way to both acknowledge the prequels, but also distance itself from them.

But I do think he will at least make it to Episode IX

I would LOVE this!

Resisting the darkness is a conflict, as well as it seems that for Kylo it is to resist the Light. Supressing that renouncement in both cases implies supressing the implicit conflict in those characters, whose development is strictly attached to how they learn to cope with their special conditions (being orphans, handling the force, etc.). If the Force is presented as an harmonic whole, a unity of both dark and light, then we might be left with just the story of some people with superpowers among regular people.

While I do think too that it would be nice and different to see in a Star Wars movie, the further implications of a superpowered person with a flexible moral compass doesn’t seem hollywoodsy, nor Campbellian enough to have a feasible development in IX.

The acceptance of a dark and a light in balance seems to be the meaning of elder wiseness in Star Wars, in Yoda and in Obi Wan (whose ridiculously just-because Jedi Code was responsible for the destruction of the Order), in Vader, perhaps even in this Sequel Trilogy Luke. But I don’t see it being appliable to an idealistic teen/young Rey that by her sole age should be the force that tries to fix the wretched world.

Lord Haseo said:

If memory serves Obi-Wan trained Luke in SW and then Yoda trains him in ESB…if that’s true that could only mean…

Yes, it does mean it. In both movies Jedi Masters are introduced as crazy old hermits that after their covers get blown up start speaking as mystical leaders. But that’s forgivable in Empire, and happily it’s something that wasn’t used again in the saga, now that I think of it.

I just read a supposed leaked script in reddit. If true, there is some ESB recycling, but there are some fun and well written moments, specially with Lando acknowledging Finn how to cope with friendzoning. But then the third act definetely gave it away it’s a fake.

I don’t know if this movie is going to be a soft rehash or not. I just wished the whole overarching trajectory of the trilogy wasn’t a soft reboot of the political state of the galaxy at the beginning of the OT, but that is what it seems to be: The Jedi gone. An Imperial opressive force. The good guys being underdogs.

Wow, cool, it feels so epic, so badasss!! How cool!

Seriously, it’d make for a great title if it wasn’t that only two movies before the Jedi were supposed to be returning. Still spitting in the face of where the OT ended.

Star Wars First Order Retaliates

Featuring another vision of the dark side where the hero meets the villain, and a half crazy super wise and powerful jedi master tells her she has to face the villain personally.

And no clue whatsoever about how the good guys are still underdogs after they defeated and took over a wealthy galaxy wide government thirty years ago, having the most powerful and wise Jedi master in their ranks and leaving the remnant Empire faction as an outcast marginal faction with no resources…

I think they will have an absolutely short and impactful title that in the end connotates but doesn’t directly relates to anything in the movie. It’s a fashion in the industry nowadays and specially in everything surrounding cool-epic-cool-plottwist Abrams.

Star Trek Into Darkness [?]

Star Wars the Force Awakens [almost a fourth wall breaking title, I feel it’s named after the return of the franchise above everything]

Star Trek Beyond

Terminator: Salvation

Terminator: Genysis

Cucumber: Legacy

Ninja Turtles: Retaliation

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Kellythatsit said:

Mithrandir said:

ATMachine said:

Mithrandir said:

ATMachine said:

oojason said:

http://www.starwars.com/news/a-statement-regarding-new-rumors

"We don’t normally respond to fan or press speculation, but there is a rumor circulating that we would like to address. We want to assure our fans that Lucasfilm has no plans to digitally recreate Carrie Fisher’s performance as Princess or General Leia Organa.

Carrie Fisher was, is, and always will be a part of the Lucasfilm family. She was our princess, our general, and more importantly, our friend. We are still hurting from her loss. We cherish her memory and legacy as Princess Leia, and will always strive to honor everything she gave to Star Wars."

The fact that Disney had to issue such a press release at all is testimony to the public unease on this issue in the wake of Rogue One. If LFL’s digital wizardry has no qualms about zombifying an actor who’s been dead for 20 years, why should they show any (the thinking goes) about resurrecting a mainstay of the SW franchise who died unexpectedly young?

It’s just as unethical as acting impersonating someone who’s been dead for 20 years. Should we regard all the Frankensteins that borrowed from Boris Karloff the acting mannerisms and similar-inspired prosthetics as unethical?

No.

It’s one thing for an actor to take inspiration from another actor’s portrayal of a role. It’s another thing for CGI effects houses to use computers to recreate in minute detail the visage of a human being who is no longer with us.

One is a performance, the other a mask. Without Guy Henry having Tarkin in RO wouldn’t have been possible.

Gary Oldman recreating Churchill’s likeness by prosthetics isn’t just a performance, it is a mask.

If the recreated character existed in real life then it seems to be legitimate. If the character is fictional (which would mean his likeness is that of the actor who played it), within a well established continuity of screenplays that without a doubt constitute an organic unity, then magically it is not legitimate.

Peter Cushing is the only face of Tarkin we know. ROTS portrayed Tarkin with the very likeness of Cushing. TCW and Rebels styllistically recreated Cushing’s facial structure. It is only logical that in a movie set 2 days before SW77 Tarkin has to look as close as Cushing as possible. The state-of-the-art of that possibility is what we had.

Theatre is supposed to be as real as possible. That statement is the sole justification of prosthetics, voice impersonations, scenography, imitation performances, even method acting.

It is strange that no one scandalizes about ancient Rome’s recreation in Gladiator because that city no longer exists. You may argue that Cushing or Fisher are far different than things but within these movie Cushing or Fisher just are not there. It’s only their physical likeness what are there, and yes, their looks and mannerisms indeed are things, resources of the screenplay to accomplish the goal of preserving the illusion. That is even the actual justification for the likeness being a transable asset.

It’s just a guy wearing a sophisticated mask of Tarkin/Leia, no one is making a fake Peter Cushing affiliate to the Nazi Party or do something he wouldn’t have done in real, personal life.

Excellent post.

In my opinion it is more about its effect stylistically on the medium rather than ethically. The uncanny valley effect. Simply knowing an actor is incapable of playing that character as they appear, either through death or age difference, is enough to create that shift. Our minds tell us that what we are seeing cannot be real. Even if an effects company were to create a flawless characterisation of an actor, I suspect we would still experience the effect.

This is where it is important for a film maker to use this technology wisely. I feel that recreating Carrie Fisher’s likeness for a character as central to Star Wars as Leia would be a disservice to the film and the story they are trying to tell.

The uncanny valley is the zone I fell into at times in RO, mainly because how wooden and different from 77 this Tarkin acted and carried himself.

And yes, I concur, I wouldn’t like to be in LFL’s shoes actually.

To kill Leia offscreen implies probably loosing a lot of money due to necessary rewriting/reshooting; a huge effort to a rather unpleasant result, which is not completing the character’s arc.

To recast would cause some troubles when the movie comes out, and then those troubles will be forgotten and the memory of the movie will prevail. If it’s good what they did, no one will say much about the recasting. And it’s cheaper. But if it is not good, or the recasting actress doesn’t perform a memorable part, then it will be remembered.

To use CGI/prosthetics will focus all the attention in the tech used. Provided that Disney is media-shielded and that no ethical issue will get viral status until it’s too late, at the moment of the premiere no one would be saying much, and it will all depend on how much the technology sticks out and how well it ages.

In anycase, with the accomplishments in Rogue One, today they have one more tool at hand to cope with the difficulties. To use and not to abuse of it is something they should have learnt from Lucas and his PT experience. And if perchance they break new ground, or develop a new method that allows more artistic freedom with an equal level of quality, then why not?