Vaderisnothayden

Anchorhead said:

C3PX said:

I could be way off here, but I have never had any problem believing that Tolkien really did write Lord of the Rings allegory free (as he claims he did).

 

I believe the term he used to describe his work was applicable, as opposed to allegorical. He was certainly free to use whatever term he wanted, but they are very similar - in this case, a story being used to explain or demonstrate something that at first may appear unrelated.

 

I just don't see how it is even possible for a writer to delude himself out of truly understanding what he himself actually wrote about.

I don't think he was deluded about what he wrote at all.  I think he may not have wanted to appear as a political writer, so he chose to sometimes deny a connection. He said his work was more of a religious-based story about good vs evil - again, allegory or applicable.  He was a devout catholic and very outspoken on the evils of industrialization.  To think or state that those core beliefs aren't present - and at times a major theme -  seems like quite a stretch.

Just because important beliefs influence a work doesn't mean that work is allegory. Allegory is when the story is just code for a message and no more. You can have lots of influence from personal beliefs without having allegory. You can even have plenty of message without making a work allegory. Allegory is when the message is not only the sole reason for the work but when everything in the work is subordinated to the message to the point where the work is nothing but code for the message. Tolkien's Middle Earth work was not that. He knew what allegory was and when he said his work wasn't allegory he meant it.

Anchorhead said:

skyjedi2005 said:

books that have no topical allegory whatsoever....like Tolkien's lord of the rings.

Lord Of The Rings is one of the most famous pieces of allegorical fiction there is.

I've read before where Tolkien claimed to hate allegory - he was either deluded, or a hypocrite.  Lord Of The Rings is a thinly-veiled allegorical piece about how the industrial revolution destroyed bucolic England.  It's almost nothing but allegory.  Arguably, it's know as much for it's message as it is for it's story.

 

I find that a rather bizarre interpretation of Tolkien's work. Just because he had concerns and they might have influenced his work doesn't mean he consciously created his work just to bear a message. He was way more into the story than that. He was into stories and art for their own sake and their human value, which is why he despised allegory, which debases such things for the sake of a message. Allegory isn't just when something has a bit of subtext. It's when the subtext is all the work is about.

And it's pointless to talk of unconsciously created allegory. Allegory is when the author deliberately sets out to create such a thing, not when they unconsciously lend a lot of subtext to their work 

Anchorhead said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

Art is not about sending messages.

Art is almost always about sending some type of message.  By it's very definition, art is visceral. It is a creator's way of expressing thoughts or emotions so that others might also experience or understand them.  You may not dig the message, and in fact you may even be offended by it, but it's not an abuse of some higher, pure medium. 

Even the most base or serene paintings are the artists' way of saying something about whatever it was that inspired them.  Just because a piece isn't a Basquiat, that doesn't mean it's not sending a message.  The same goes for any form - sculpture, music, writing, film, etc.

Artists don't go to the trouble because they have nothing better to do that day.  They create because something moved them emotionally and they either want to share it, warn against it, or preserve it. Whatever their reasons, it's a message.

 

I've already made it very clear that I'm not talking about that kind of sending a message. I spelled it out repeatedly in three posts. Art is about communication but that doesn't mean art should be made into a political pamphlet in which everything in the work is subordinated to getting up on a soapbox and beating a message into the audience's head. You can have unintentional messages, intentional messages and plenty subtext without doing that. Art is about human nature, human feeling, imagination and the deeper recesses of our minds. To absolutely subordinate that stuff to beating out a political message is to abuse art. Art can communicate so much without everything in the work being subordinated to the purpose of a political message. And even some works that by and large subordinate themselves to a political message can manage to work as art, but it is very easy for a work that's all about the Message to be a debased work in which everything that's art about it is undermined by preaching. Preaching is not what art is about.

(A note: I keep going on about a political message, but it can sometimes be other types of messages that fuck up art that way.)

Also note, getting offended by a supposed work of art being turned into a preachy political pamphlet is not about whether you're offended by the message itself, it's about being offended by that being done to a would-be work of art with any sort of message.

C3PX said:

"I showed my wife and she rolled her eyes and told me my mother would be giving it to me for Christmas."

I think the idea was that when Jonzy's wife delivered that line, she was insinuating that he was being childish by having spent money on a large useless hunk of plastic; rather than her rolling her eyes as if to say, "Oh shoot! Your mother already got you one of those and was going to give it to you for Christmas"  as you seem to have understood it, canofhumdingers. (EDIT: I began this post before the OP's latest post, seems my assumption was also incorrect.)

You know, the nice thing about being a geek is that you like what you like, rather than feeling the need to like what others like you to like/expect you to like. I absolute hate watching televised sports, don't care about them one bit. When people ask me what team I like, and and reply with, "Actually, I don't watch sports", they often look at me as if I have just told them I ran over their grandmother with a lawn mower. Sometimes they actually seem offended. I am often given grief for my lack of interest in sports, I have been made fun of rather harshly in the past for not liking them. But I really don't care, because I really don't care for them and can't be bothered to waste my time conforming to what is "normal" (and not liking sports, I have been told, is extremely "abnormal", seemingly to the point that it merits the need for psychological help according to some). I have other friends who don't like sports who actually go out of their way to pretend to like them just to fit in. That saddens me.

...

All that to say, "cool geek" doesn't matter. Cool is not what being a geek is about. Unfortunately, in the last several years it has become increasingly cool to be geeky, which seems to have resulted in bringing all the baggage of the cool crowd into the geeky crowd. Now suddenly some geeky things are cool, and other geeky things are not cool. Forget about cool or uncool. If you like littering your living space with dust collecting items that serve no purpose other than to remind you of the things you love and how cool they are in your mind regardless of their popularity in the minds of others, I'd say you have a much healthier state of mind than that of your average individual who is constantly getting hung up on worrying if something is cool or not before he decides to form an opinion of it. 

Be proud of your geekiness! If the Neanderthalish sports fan can be overly proud of his obsession with watching groups of people knock balls around for hours at a time again and again, then surely you can be proud of your obsessions too!

 

 I've never seen the point in watching people knock balls around. Though it might be more novel if it was each others' balls they were kicking. 

xhonzi said:

My shunning of Gaffer was meant to be funny too, in case my constant sarcasm didn't come off.

I'm sure everybody understood it.

auximenies said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

 Gaffer got pissed off, which is a fairly rare occurrence.

 

 Oh, sure.  He is soooo well-known for flying off the handle. insert eye-rolling emoticon here

Which is why I said it's a fairly rare occurrence.

Due to his usually calm friendly demeanour, I was surprised by his reaction, most notably surprised that he felt the need to hit me over the head about my post AFTER I'd already apologized for it (see his response to xhonzi for what I'm talking about). His original objection to my post I could understand, because I was a bit tactless in my original post, but the later dig at me about supposedly chewing the poster's head off and making him feel unwelcome struck me as going too far and quite unnecessary. The question should have been asked who was making who feel unwelcome now? 

guywhoisanonymous said:

I'm new here, so here's my take on both SEs with bits I approve of and ones I don't.

 

- Temuera Morrison's voice added (it's more badass and threatening, it's like Morrison is Keaton and Wingreen is Bale, Wingreen's was too over the top, but Morrison's was perfect)

Morrison's performance was not badass and threatening at all. The original Boba Fett voice was badass and threatening. Temuera's version was bland and noncommital -a horrible performance. It was obscene to take an actor out of a recognized classic like they did with Wingreen's original Boba Fett voice. It's one of the worst things about the SE.

Mielr said:

What just happened here? :-P

 Gaffer got pissed off, which is a fairly rare occurrence.

Gaffer Tape said:

Yes, obviously.  You'll find me bitching about the prequels/SEs as well.  I'm sure a large portion of my nearly 6,000 posts have something to do with that.  However, we don't automatically shun those who have differing opinions.  That's what makes us different from places like theforce.net.  Sure, if someone's being an asshole about it, sure, take 'em to town.  But just because someone likes an element of something you loathe is no reason to chew that person's head off or make them feel unwelcome.

I may have been a bit harsh, but I hardly chewed his head off. If you look at my post, all of it is opinion about Star Wars. There's no personal abuse or judgement made of the poster I was replying to. And surely I am entitled to post personal opinion about Star Wars?

As for making him feel unwelcome, only the poster I was replying to can know whether it made him feel unwelcome, but it shouldn't have, because there was very obviously nothing personal about it. If posters are going to feel unwelcome every time you express dislike for a character they like or express a differeing view of Star wars then they'll be going around feeling unwelcome all the time. Personally I think posters should save feeling unwelcome for when they're given real reason to feel that way, such as when things get personal. Like right now, when I'm getting hit by this wave of disapproval about my posting (as if expressing my opinion makes me Mr Bad Guy). That certainly makes me feel unwelcome.

What I want to know is what griffons have to do with monkeys. 

DarkGryphon2048 Monkey Man!

Gaffer Tape said:

In terms of whether or not I would have enjoyed seeing that, it certainly would have gotten a laugh out of me.

But if I think it would have made it a better film or even a better moment in said film, then probably not since, as I said before, I would have just laughed at it.

Yeah, but if it made you laugh it might have made your viewing experience a bit more tolerable. Laughing is good for the system -proven fact. Particularly important when you're watching something that's not good for you, like Attack of the Crap.

Seriously, we needed every laugh we could get in that film, because we were drowning in bullshit. Though if you watch the film in a certain mindset you can get quite a few laughs. Like when the jedi first appear in the arena, they're all strking poses pointlessly. This establishes in a few seconds that the jedi are a bunch of wankers. Though, having watched the prequels up to that point, we would already know that. Still, useful in case anybody didn't catch on before. Pretty funny, anyway.

And when the jedi appear we get Samuel L Jackson acting "badass", which is so totally inappropriate for a jedi. Somebody should tell Mace Windu that bit about aggression leading to the dark side.

C3PX said:

Like Gaffer, I would have laughed if Jango's head had fallen out. So I definitely don't think it would have helped the film (though it couldn't have made it any worse, the film is already superlatively awful). I also think it would have added more to the identity crisis the prequels seemed to have, fart jokes galore, then a man get chopped in half, frolicking in flowers and riding giant ticks, then killing an entire village of people including the women and children,  and one films later the main protagonist slays a bunch of innocent children who look up to him and think he has come to save them.

I don't think we need to add a small child dumping his father's severed head out of a helmet to the mix. The idea of a kid holding his dad's severed head is kind of disturbing enough; the idea of that scene was that he was holding his father's helmet (I always assumed the head fell out during the rolling) and staring into it forshaddowing that he would take up his father's mantel and become a bounty hunter like his father. 

It was a stupid moment and I think it would have been greatly improved by a bit of harsh realism. Come on, wouldn't it have been fun? That stupid annoying kid picks up the helmet because he's going to look solemnly at it in a "meaningful" scene, and out pops the head (which we'd have had every good reason to expect was still in the helmet).

When he picked up the helmet and the head didn't fall out I went "Huh? Where's the head? Oh, god this is some more silly Lucas moralistic kiddifying castration." I recognized immediately that not having the head there when we'd good reason to expect it to be there was part of the same sort of shit as making Han shoot second. And it's pretty weird, because he does this stuff alongside having Darth Maul chopped in two and having hands and heads chopped off.

It seemed like such silly unrealistic censorship to not have that head fall out. It was really conspicuous.

Yes we would have laughed if Jango's head had fallen out. And why would that be a bad thing? The least we could get out of that awful film would be a laugh. Though I suppose you could also get a laugh from Anakin and Padme's romance, if you could keep your lunch down.

And I think it's idiotic the way censors want to stop little kids seeing things like this. I was pretty small when I first saw ESB and Luke getting his hand chopped off was pretty intense, but it didn't do me any harm. To this day I still relish the strong genuine emotional response I got. I loved that bit and I still do. Seeing Jango's head fall out would have done no harm to the kiddies and some of them might have loved it.

It would also have been a good kick in the balls to Jango, who was a really annoying character.

In the prequels, Jabba's running Tatooine. In the Clone Wars movie the republic has to consider Hutt-control of a large section of space as a factor in their plans. Now, I don't know anywhere in the old stuff where this Jabba/Hutt control of Tatooine was mentioned. Certainly not in anything back in the 80s, unless it was in Bantha Tracks or the Droids show or some interview somewhere or in the role playing game. I don't know if it pops up in the 90s EU before TPM. But as soon as we get to the prequels there it is.

Does anybody know if there was any sign of this Jabba/Hutt control of Tatooine or that area before TPM came out?

I wouldn't describe DiCaprio's acting in that film as decent. The filmed was a dumbed-down cheapening of a serious historical event. And it won all these bloody oscars.

My issues with it have nothing to do with comparing its success with that of Star Wars.

It's a bit inconsistent, because they seem to be quite happy with lopping off limbs and heads and frying people in lava.

C3PX said:

Tolkien is a very good example. He disliked allegory, and would protest when people tried to pull allegory out of Lord of the Rings, as they often did and still do. Yet, his books, Lord of the Rings being no exception, are chock full of messages and lessons.

 

skyjedi2005 said:

Subtext in films is not an abuse of art, it is an abuse of art for films to be a puff of air representing nothing other than noise, special effects and ticket sales.  The idea of film is that it is supposed to provoke a response in the viewer, whether of joy, sadness, fear, absolute terror, horror, being uplifted, or being shown the destitute and evil character of man.

 

Very well put. I think it sums up most of our frustrations rather nicely. I for one am getting very tired of puffs of air representing nothing other than noise, special effects and ticket sales. I think it is that emotional response we are all missing with the typical BS blockbuster these days. When I saw "silly" sci-fi films like Planet of the Apes or Star Wars when I was a kid, they provoked a huge emotional response from me. The trench run at the end of Star Wars was extremely intense to me, even after I had seen it several times, I was still on the edge of my seat. And for some reason, I still feel a bit of excitement and dread everytime Taylor stumbles upon the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes. Perhaps this is due to the age I was when I first saw that film.

Maybe kids these days are so used to seeing stuff like this and that is why so many of them tend to find Star Wars incredibly boring, and much prefer Return of the Jedi and the prequels. I suppose films like Attack of the Clones and G.I. Joe and their high paced action provides young audiences with a bit of a rush, much like the rush of excitement I used to get from watching Sean Connery or Roger Moore as James Bond when I was a kid. So I suppose the modern blockbuster does evoke an emotional response from its core audience, unfortunately, I am unable to tune into that emotion. To me, it comes off as little more than annoyance at the ridiculousness of what I am seeing before me.

Perhaps my grandfather felt this exact same way when he watched James Bond or Star Wars with me and labeled them as "foolishness". And I suppose the way I felt about his "boring" old black and white westerns that he'd play for me with pride, stating that they were "movies worth watching", is very much the same way my best friend's youngest brother (he is thirteen) felt when I tried to convince him that Star Wars (1977) was absolutely the best of the bunch, and that Revenge of the Sith (his favorite) was hardly worth watching.

Damn generation gap! Makes me feel really old... and disappointed that this younger generation will never experience the greatness of the films I love in the way I experienced them or feel the fondness for them I had.

There's a difference between something being made just to communicate a particular message and something having content capable of evoking an emotional response. A work doesn't have to exist solely to flog a message to get deep into your feelings and evoke a deep emotional response. There is so much more that can evoke emotional responses than just political messages and suchlike. Something that isn't all about a message is by no means necessarily something that can't evoke an emotional response or have depth. I rather think a work that concentrates on human nature and human feeling and imagination and puts that first has more depth (and more sincerity in its art) than one that has shouting a message as its number one priority. 

You mention the original Star Wars film, but while Lucas had some political subtext in mind, the movie wasn't all about flogging a heavy-handed message. That film wasn't there just for the message.

Maybe kids these days are so used to seeing stuff like this and that is why so many of them tend to find Star Wars incredibly boring, and much prefer Return of the Jedi and the prequels.

I don't think ROTJ deserves to be lumped with the prequels like that. The prequels do not evoke emotional responses of depth (except TPM in some places, such as various parts involving Qui Gon), but ROTJ evokes an emotional response easily. The Luke-Emperor-Vader sequence down to Vader's death and funeral pyre has great feeling, more than the vast majority of stuff in the OT. The Jabba's palace section is intensely imagined and has plenty capacity to evoke an emotional response. This stuff is a far cry from the feelingless action sequences and numb romance scenes that make up so much of the prequels. ROTJ is nothing like the prequels or like the shallower of modern blockbusters. ROTJ has some of the most emotionally intense parts of the OT. It's full of good honest sincere feeling. I don't know why it keeps getting crap lobbed at it.

Tolkien is a very good example. He disliked allegory, and would protest when people tried to pull allegory out of Lord of the Rings, as they often did and still do. Yet, his books, Lord of the Rings being no exception, are chock full of messages and lessons.

Well, Tolkien is a good example of what I WASN'T talking about. You can find messages in his work, but it wasn't made to shout a big message at the audience and wag a finger at them from up on a soap box. It's that latter form of message that's the problem. Nor does that include all films that or works of art that intentionally convey a message. It involves the ones in which everything in the work just exists to flog a message. Some films are about a message but are about other things too. But some films and works of art are just about the message and everything else is just window-dressing. Those latter works don't respect their fiction. They just use it to push the message. Ultimately, by not respecting their fiction they're not respecting the audience. They're a cheap sham.

And too often people get idea that flogging a message makes a work "clever" or  deep (they should try real feeling instead), so films like that can get acclaim. And it's because some people think a film is not "relevant" unless it's flogging a message that you get filmmakers trying to make their work look "clever" by including political stuff like ROTS did. What bewilders me is what the hell is not relevant enough about human nature and human feeling and human imagination. 

skyjedi2005 said:

"For example, literature, which by far is my favorite form of art, invariably always has some kind of message behind it whether intentionally or unintentionally placed there by the author."

When an author does intentionally place a message in their work it becomes an allegory, and and usually there is only one correct way to solve this allegory and the author offers the solution.

The other way the way i prefer and i think is less harmful to a story is applicability, an unintentional metaphor or reading pulled out by the reader.

There is pure allegory like Dante's Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost.

Middle of the road allegory still heavy of an allegorical influence like chronciles of narnia,

Or books that have no topical allegory whatsoever and its left up to the reader like Tolkien's lord of the rings.

 

Subtext in films is not an abuse of art, it is an abuse of art for films to be a puff of air representing nothing other than noise, special effects and ticket sales.  The idea of film is that it is supposed to provoke a response in the viewer, whether of joy, sadness, fear, absolute terror, horror, being uplifted, or being shown the destitute and evil character of man.

Even bad and poorly made films provoke a response.

I think it was Lucas himself who said film as art was a lot of pretentious bullshit, and that he preferred to think himself as a toymaker.

I don't have the direct quote, but i remember that from an article on the making of thx or graffiti.  Though it very well could have been during star wars.

I wasn't talking about mere subtext. I was talking about a whole work of "art" being made for the sole purpose of beating a particular message into the audience's head. You can have plenty subtext without doing that.

Nor was I talking about messages being put into things unintentionally.

Not all works with an intentional message are allegories. As for allegories, that's where it gets more dangerous. Sometimes an allegory can be done so it doesn't feel like the art is being abused, but allegories are often a pain, because they're just using their fiction to sell a message rather than respecting their fiction more than that and being thoroughly into it. I've always had mixed feelings about CS Lewis's Narnia books. There are works that go way farther than that. Like Zardoz, which has absolutely no depth of feeling because it's all about the message and the allegory and doesn't believe in its imaginary world and just uses it to say something. 

As for films provoking a response, that is nothing to do with messages. Films don't have to be made for the sake of a message to have the ability to provoke a response.

And it is a mistake to think that a film that doesn't flog a message is nothing but "a puff of air representing nothing other than noise, special effects and ticket sales".  There is so much more of substance you can put into a work of art than messages. Human nature, human feeling, imagination, letting the deeper recesses of the mind express themselves. That stuff goes a lot deeper, comes from a deeper place than flogging messages. That stuff is what art is about. Flogging messages is shallower and more cynical.

C3PX said:

Hmm, I have to disagree about art that tries to convey a message being an abuse of art (though if the message is over bearing and heavy handed, propaganda may be a better word for it than art, but a well thought thesis being argued in a film is perfectly respectable in my book). For example, literature, which by far is my favorite form of art, invariably always has some kind of message behind it whether intentionally or unintentionally placed there by the author. (Though I can imagine that dine-a-dozen mystery and romance and other such novels that are pooped out by authors on a monthly bases may forego any type of intellectual message for the sake of amusing fluff, much like your typical summer blockbuster, but I would hardly consider those kind of books to be art). Skimming my own collection of books, I can't see a single work of fiction that I have read that I cannot immediately associate with some kind of a message.

I don't suppose fiction in the form of film should be any different. I have not seen District 9, so I cannot make any personal comments on it, though I have only heard good things about it. When I first heard about it, my thoughts were that it sounded like complete crap, but now I am actually quite looking forward to seeing it, but unfortunately have yet to have the opportunity. That said, films like Revenge of the Sith including an obvious political message leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Not because of my own political position, but the way in which it painfully dates the film, and by the fact that rather than being well thought out, it takes the popular stance of the public and regurgitates it but hardly in any new or creative way.

Just my thoughts on the subject of films with messages.

As an additional 2 cents, I guess an author or film maker should always be aware of the views he is putting into his work, as good art should be able to speak to anyone, but strong biases alienate a portion of an audience. I am just not sure how it is possible to leave your biases out of a work completely and still have it be an honest work; I can't imagine a film that tries to please everyone not feeling rather fake.

 

There's messages and there's messages. I'm not talking about subconsciously-included messages or messages that are not what the work is all about. When a work just happens to contain some sort of message (or something that can loosely be called a message) than that's one thing, but when a work gets up on a soap box and beats you over the head with A Message then it's an abuse of art. Unintentionally-included messages are a far cry from when a work of art is made just to beat out a particular message. And you can have plenty works that have an intentionally-included message without the whole work being created just to beat you over the head in an unsubtle way with a message. When a work is all about the message then there's a problem. Because that's NOT what art is for. Art is for human nature and feeling and imagination and letting the deeper recesses of the mind express themselves, not for "Look at me, I'm making a point!!" A work of art is NOT supposed to be a political pamphlet.

skyjedi2005 said:

I don't care either way there is no way including it would have made the film any better, except get a pg-13 rating and lose lucas money and action figure sales and kids meal sales,lol.

Though it might have been unintentionally funny, which these awful films are known for.

There is no way Jango's death is going to be any more important than bobas, their smalltime henchmen and i blame the EU for making boba into this godly glorified figure.

Remember how Boba dies in return of the jedi, a freeze blind han whacks him with the butt of a spear and he careens off the side of the sailbarge into the sarlac for a cheap laugh.

I don't care either way there is no way including it would have made the film any better, except get a pg-13 rating and lose lucas money and action figure sales and kids meal sales,lol.

 

Well if it lost Lucas money that would have made me happier. Seriously, Jango was such an annoying character and so was his kid. It would have been therapeutic to see his head go plop and it would have been a relief from the castrated wimpiness of the films. And it was so obvious that it should have happened, so it was really conspicuous when it didn't.

The EU buildup of Boba and Jango is really annoying. Boba's death in ROTJ was fun, but I would have liked it if Han killed him intentionally and preferably more brutally.

Does anybody know about any releases not mentioned in that article sky linked me to?

They got the Ken Films ESB and ANH. Plus Kenner ANH. Plus 1982 ANH video. !984 ESB video. 1985 laserdisc ESB and ANH laserdisc (but they don't mention the 1985 vhs ANH). 1986 ROTJ. Advertsement as ttrilogy in 1988. Trilogy box set 1990. ESB and ANH on laserdisc 1989. ROTJ laserdisc 1990. 1992 widescreen vhs box. ANH rerealse laserdisc 1992. Definitive collection 1993 laserdisc (jesus, I had no idea it was 250 fucking dollars!)  1995 One Last Time release of the trilogy.

And that's all the OOT in the article. Were there more releases apart from that between 82 and 95?

Hey, I wasn't mistaken in thinking there was a 1985 VHS release of ANH, was I? It wasn't just laserdisc?

Shatterpoint has a prologue from GL, which sounds like a good reason to avoid it. Plus I get the impression it's Windu-glorification, which I don't need.

But you forgot to say whether you would have preferred if Jango's head had dropped out when the kid picked it up.

TMBTM said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

Oh you mean the ship sinks in Titanic? I didn't know that. ;) I bet some people went into the movie not knowing, actually.

 

What is smart in Titanic is that the people who search for the Titanic on present day show the sinking of the ship to old Rose with a nice CG animation. So everyone not only knows that the ship will sink (even people who may have never heard about the Titanic) but we see exactely where the water goes, how the ship breaks etc. 

That is smart because it adds a sens of danger by the end of the movie. The audience knows exately what will happen, unlike the characters. It is the definition od suspens by Hitchcock. (the famous: If you know the bomb will explode it's suspens, otherwise it's just suprise.)

But what worked in Titanic did not for the PT because Lucas did not take advantage of that "suspens factor".

GL did not take advantage of what the audience already know. In a way it makes sens since it is called EPISODE 1, but by doing this he did not allowed himself to make interesting two layers movies. Movies that could be fun for the young fans who did not see the old trilogy AND also fun for the old fans.

I've been thinking about The Titanic recently, because of Avatar. I was really pissed off about the Oscar success of that film way back and about the whole "I'm the king of the world" thing, and that's come to mind now that Cameron's pissing me off again with this bloody Avatar thing pushing the gimmicky 3d fad.

Don't feel old. I was older. Even when I saw the SE in 97 I was older than that. And I do feel old. 

Is it just me or did anyone else think it was blatant cop-out when kid (fake) Boba picked up Jango's helmet in AOTC and Jango's head didn't fall out?

I thought it was as bad as making the enemy armies droids so the good guys don't actually kill anybody. It's the same coddled pseudo-morality that had Han shooting second in the Special(ly Stupid) Edition.

We can poll it it. Who here thinks it would have been better if the head had fallen out?

Jango Fett pisses me off. As do the prequels. And the myth that they're Star Wars, which I think is important to counter. So I apologize if I was harsh, but I stand by the view I expressed. It wasn't my intent to be unpleasant to anybody, just to say some stuff that needs saying.

Again, sorry to guywhoisanonymous if I was too hard on you.

And now I've an idea for another thread, so I'll go off and start it.

skyjedi2005 said:

But it is in the true science fiction tradition of star trek and gene roddenberry to talk of such subjects under the guise of science fiction.  Imagine that another sci fi movie talks about something relevent in the same year that star trek was reborn as a dumb action movie for fratboys, and american football watchers.

District 9, judging from what I've heard, is a movie made for sake of sending a message. Art is not about sending messages. That's an abuse of art. It doesn't matter if the message is a worthy one like in District 9, it's still not what art is about. I'm not very impressed with what we get for sf this year -movie for a message (District 9), movie for a shitty little gimmick (Avatar) and movie for dumbing down an old story and shitting on tradition (Star Trek).