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generalfrevious

This user has been banned.

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Join date
23-May-2006
Last activity
29-Aug-2017
Posts
2,022

Post History

Post
#1022279
Topic
General Star Wars <strong>Random Thoughts</strong> Thread
Time

DuracellEnergizer said:

Yet that doesn’t keep you from running around like Chicken Little with her head cut off.

I’m not too happy with Disney turning the franchise into the cinematic equivalent of Sonic the Hedgehog. Churning out a film every year is never a good idea, because you end up with a rushed product. At least in the prequel era we only had to endure one bad movie once every three years.

Post
#1022111
Topic
General Star Wars <strong>Random Thoughts</strong> Thread
Time

MalàStrana said:

generalfrevious said:

TV’s Frink said:

Nah.

I’m still calling it Disney Wars to differentiate it from the OT.

I’m calling it (SW stories, sequel trilogy) the “body snatchers era”: looks like SW, feels like SW, but it’s not SW.

In other words, Disney Wars.

Remember, this is the same company behind the 1976 & 1998 copyright acts. Their goal now is to make money with as many IPs as possible, not tell good stories.

Post
#1021964
Topic
The Phantom Star Wars Fan
Time

Fuck Disney. It’s becoming more apparent that we are going from one broken home to another. Episode VIII is going to suck. Hard. Attack of the Clones hard. The franchise is doing something I never thought possible: making Lucas seem like the good guy in comparison. Maybe that was his plan all along, to make him look better in hindsight. I can’t believe that man has emotionally abused us for 35 years and counting. There will never be another good Star Wars movie again. Instead of mutilating the OT every few years, Lucas should have written into his will that no one could make any more films, not even himself.

Post
#1021816
Topic
The Phantom Star Wars Fan
Time

DuracellEnergizer said:

I wish generallyfrivolous would return to off-topic (if he has to be on this site at all).

Not my fault Lucas sold the franchise down the river. Star Wars is like a novel that’s really great for 200 pages, and then nosedives into unreadable trash for the remaining 500 pages. Then some publishing conglomerate buys the copyright, and publishes a 15-book series based on your nostalgia for those first two hundred pages.

Post
#1021708
Topic
The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS **
Time

SilverWook said:

generalfrevious said:

DominicCobb said:

generalfrevious said:

DominicCobb said:

frevious please stop basing your opinions on other people’s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukk5TJL27pE

God I can’t watch that. “Epidemic”? That would imply it’s a bad thing that so many movies are passable. It’d be worse if they weren’t.

I wasn’t exactly wild about Rouge One. No internet reviewer gave me that opinion.

The Studios have more creative control than in any point in Hollywood’s history. Abrams was chosen because he was the ideal studio director: one that could be molded by the producers to churn out middle-of-the-road products designed to rake in enough money opening weekend. I don’t like the films made by committees as opposed to auteurs. Say what you want about George Lucas and the prequels; at least they had some kind of ambition, some sort of risk-taking of CGI boundaries, willing to bring in political themes unseen in previous films. They’re not good by any means, of course, but an ambitious failure is always more interesting than a solid yet forgettable blockbuster. Which film would you watch again, The Room or Captain America: Civil War?

I find it surprising that people on this thread are suddenly defending TFA when they have been bashing it only a few hours ago as “crap is crap.”

So, Tommy Wiseau should write, direct, and star in a SW movie?

No, what I’m really saying is that an infamously bad movie is often more memorable than an average one.

Post
#1021634
Topic
Ranking the Star Wars films
Time

Alderaan said:

Actually, I’m going to update my rankings this way…

Excellent, historically all-time great films:

  1. Empire Stikes Back
  2. Star Wars

Very good:
3. Return of the Jedi

Mediocre and derivative:
4. Rogue One

Mostly offensive and repugnant but with some redeeming qualities:
5. The Force Awakens
6. The Phantom Menace

And finally, the irredeemable deplorables of Star Wars movies:
7. Revenge of the Sith
8. Attack of the Clones

I agree with most of this, except for TFA.

Post
#1021473
Topic
The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS **
Time

DominicCobb said:

generalfrevious said:

DominicCobb said:

generalfrevious said:

DominicCobb said:

frevious please stop basing your opinions on other people’s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukk5TJL27pE

God I can’t watch that. “Epidemic”? That would imply it’s a bad thing that so many movies are passable. It’d be worse if they weren’t.

I wasn’t exactly wild about Rouge One. No internet reviewer gave me that opinion.

The Studios have more creative control than in any point in Hollywood’s history.

Totally untrue. See 30s, 40s.

The 1930s-1940s gave us Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, and John Huston, to name a few. Where are today’s auteurs that aren’t either puppets of corporate America or holdovers from 20 years ago?

Abrams was chosen because he was the ideal studio director: one that could be molded by the producers to churn out middle-of-the-road products designed to rake in enough money opening weekend.

This is a ridiculous notion. TFA would have made millions opening weekend regardless of director. LFL hired him specifically because he would bring something to the table, hence his impact on the story/script. This isn’t Marvel, LFL wants strong creative voices, hence why they aren’t hiring randos off the street like Scott Derrickson and Peyton Reed. If they wanted someone who they could control, they wouldn’t hire someone who has their own production company. They’d hire someone new and cheap who can’t say no to anything (which we have seen done on a SW film before, and not in this century).

TPM made millions regardless of quality. And Abrams is a Spielberg clone who basically combined ANH and ESB into one film. Otherwise you got me there.

I don’t like the films made by committees as opposed to auteurs. Say what you want about George Lucas and the prequels; at least they had some kind of ambition, some sort of risk-taking of CGI boundaries, willing to bring in political themes unseen in previous films. They’re not good by any means, of course, but an ambitious failure is always more interesting than a solid yet forgettable blockbuster.

Now I know you’re basing your opinion off others because this is the same tired bullshit I hear ad nauseam from internet d-bags. TFA was written by three people: JJ Abrams, Lawrence Kasdan, and Michael Ardnt. If by committee you mean the story group, well sure they were involved, but that’s mainly from a broader universe building/continuity perspective. If you’re talking about some sort of nameless committee of Disney execs looking at made up focus group opinions - that’s just utter nonsense.

And then to bring George fucking Lucas into it… no ambition there. Just a dude “writing” scenes last minute and telling his concept artists, modelers, costumers, etc. to create hundreds of different potential elements (based on half-baked, underdeveloped notes) that he’d just literally stamp for approval. They were mostly CGI because he was too fucking lazy to leave the studio and because he wanted to be able to basically continue to write and shoot the movies while he was editing them and realizing what important scenes they were missing. The political themes, I mean I don’t even know what to say. I mean good for him I guess to try it? But is it ballsy to put the most boring and poorly handled political subplots in your big budget movies? In a way maybe, but again, mostly just lazy in that he just threw shit against a wall and didn’t try to concoct any sort of interesting story out of them. It’s insane to me that people are saying TFA failed by not having enough politics. The OT didn’t have any politics. A film is not made good by politics. A film is made good by telling a good story. Since the PT didn’t do that, what I say when you said at least it had political themes is who gives a shit.

All I said was that the prequels were failed experiments. Lucas thought he could make a movie entirely with computers because he didn’t want to go through another nightmare like the production of ANH. It’s still lazy, I agree, but he was under the delusion that he could cut corners and make a great film (he could not), and with a 22 year gap since being in the director’s chair. Obviously he lost whatever talent he might of had in the seventies.

Which film would you watch again, The Room or Captain America: Civil War?

Captain America. Next question.

Which film is going to remembered ten years down the road? People will still be making fun of The Room and quoting the worst lines while Civil War fades into obscurity.

I find it surprising that people on this thread are suddenly defending TFA when they have been bashing it only a few hours ago as “crap is crap.”

I don’t think anyone here defending it ever called it crap. Most people are pretty constant in their opinions. Except you, I guess, who literally hours ago said you “really liked TFA.”

I said I might reconsider my opinion on TFA. I didn’t actually say that my mind was completely changed in the span of a few hours. I’ll probably hold the same opinion on TFA like I did when I saw it a year ago.

Post
#1021436
Topic
The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS **
Time

DominicCobb said:

generalfrevious said:

DominicCobb said:

frevious please stop basing your opinions on other people’s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukk5TJL27pE

God I can’t watch that. “Epidemic”? That would imply it’s a bad thing that so many movies are passable. It’d be worse if they weren’t.

I wasn’t exactly wild about Rouge One. No internet reviewer gave me that opinion.

The Studios have more creative control than in any point in Hollywood’s history. Abrams was chosen because he was the ideal studio director: one that could be molded by the producers to churn out middle-of-the-road products designed to rake in enough money opening weekend. I don’t like the films made by committees as opposed to auteurs. Say what you want about George Lucas and the prequels; at least they had some kind of ambition, some sort of risk-taking of CGI boundaries, willing to bring in political themes unseen in previous films. They’re not good by any means, of course, but an ambitious failure is always more interesting than a solid yet forgettable blockbuster. Which film would you watch again, The Room or Captain America: Civil War?

I find it surprising that people on this thread are suddenly defending TFA when they have been bashing it only a few hours ago as “crap is crap.”

Post
#1021424
Topic
The Force Awakens: Official Review Thread - ** SPOILERS **
Time

http://www.agonybooth.com/star-wars-the-force-awakens-2015-a-failed-review-51100

Makes me reconsider my opinions on TFA. JJ Abrams is the one director who might be destroying the art of cinema more than anyone else, even more than Michael Bay or Zack Snyder. I haven’t seen TFA in over a year, and only once, and now I’m uncertain if it would even hold up a second time. What I’m afraid of now is that Disney is going to treat this franchise far worse than George Lucas ever could. We live in the era of assembly-line cinematic universes where everything is middle of the road, no stakes needed, getting by just enough on nostalgia alone for commercial exploitation. Has there been any original movie in the last 10-15 years that had an impact in the public consciousness? No, there aren’t: they’re based on comic books, Harry Potter, YA trilogies, or some preexisting IP. This is the absolute worst decade in the history of film simply because there are no popular films that are not derivative in some form or another. The OT is being diluted piece by piece; it was bad enough in the 80s but each subsequent decade has exponentially built upon the other. By 2020 there will be twice as many films in the SW franchise than there were a decade ago. And I’m betting that there is not going to be even one that can measure up to ANH or ESB. It’s not two out of seven anymore: soon it will be two out of two hundred.

Post
#1021378
Topic
Easily The Worst <em>Star Wars</em> Article Ever Written
Time

Alderaan said:

The Ewoks aren’t that bad. Having them beat Imperial troops with rocks and sticks was obviously really really stupid, but it’s one blemish in an otherwise very good film. The Force Awakens has about a thousand blemishes that mar its sometimes really good parts.

Yeah I’ve never had a problem with Ewoks either, but some hardcore fans still hate them even 30 years later. And I still rank Jedi over TFA out of sheer stubbornness.