generalfrevious

Ok, I'll tone it down, even though I think he is still an idiot. Plus, why should I be mad at George if Disney owns the Sw franchise? It's a buried hatchet.

DuracellEnergizer said:

darklordoftech said:

Did Lucas intend the Jedi to be so stupid in the prequels or is Lucas himself actually as stupid as they are?

Well, he is an ageist jackass who thinks "old" methods of filmmaking (silent, B&W, 2D) are inferior to "modern" ones (sound, colour, 3D), so I doubt he's the sharpest crayon in the box.

 I think he was born with a large portion of his brain missing. I think he was too stupid to even come up with the original star wars film (remember, he just wanted to rip off Flash Gordon).

RicOlie_2 said:

dan76 said:

The fact that the films were made at all. Prequels are never a good idea, as if a film is successful enough to warrant a sequel it obviously means it doesn't need one.

 By that line of thought, Lucas should never have made ESB.

 And everything else afterward was shit; maybe he has a point.

But here's another question: why is there an excessive focus on politics in a two-hour toy commercial?

It's simple: the marketing department took over and the focus was on selling jar jar dolls rather than telling a story. They should have just watched the original movies and matched up the continuity for the prequels. 

the problem with episode VII is that marketing is still in charge of the movie (ever wonder why they had khan in STID?), and I'm afraid there'll be even more focus on selling toys (We are talking about Disney here) and making the films broad enough to bring in a larger audience. Abrams isn't going to bring "balance back to the force" guys; the only thing he can do is stop the films from being worse than the prequels, which might be easier said than done (eg. Man of Steel).

I used to have a few of them (mid 90s series) when I was a kid. Don't if they are around anymore. I sure miss the old school power of the force action figures, before Episode I came along and the action figures became the main focus of the franchise instead of the movies.

Remember, people, that George is still in the background for Episode VII, and has anyone forgotten about the hype for Episode I 15 years back? With Abrams being a Spielberg clone at best, we might have another perfect storm in our hands. Hopefully Abrams has more respect for SW than he had for ST.

bkev said:

generalfrevious said:

 the SW franchise is cursed with a mentally ill sociopath as its creator.

LOL.  You're the reason people like us who care about film preservation get a bad rap from casual fans. 

It's the chicken or the egg debate all over again. It's not my fault Lucas has OCD and transfers his obsessions onto the OT, and making it unavailable to the public. The situation with the originals is present in absolutely no other film franchise whatsoever. Lucas should not be able to distort history like this. I don't get how Lucas's irrational behavior should scare off casual fans from the real issues. It's not my fault, it's George's.

What if Abrams throws in his "mystery box" into the ST? Better run.

Maybe if the SE weren't the only choice, I would be more accepting of them. But if the SE just has enhances special effects only, I would think it would be disrespectful to the original films, seeing that the SFX used then were fine with most people. I mean, do you go back to Superman IV and add in present day CGI because the SFX were bad at the time? When we get down to it, the SW franchise is cursed with a mentally ill sociopath as its creator. And that is a terrible fate to befall a movie.

I change my mind. I think Abrams is going to make the SW franchise ten times worse than it is now, just like he destroyed Star Trek. He is the film equivalent of a necrophiliac. And he is the perfect director to make corporate cash cow products because he is their ideal director: safe and profitable. He might as well be an android. In two years time, we will all end up feeling nostalgic for the prequels. It's that bad guys.

The Abrams Star Wars may not be great in the end, but I don't think it's possible that he could turn in a movie that is worse than any of the prequel films. As much as I dislike Abrams as a director, I don't he could make a deadly combination of CSPAN, CGI demo reel, toy commercial, and bad soap opera. In other words, the bar has been set too low for him to mess it up.

DominicCobb said:

I've kind of had enough will arguing the merits of TDKR, for the most part people don't listen. I actually didn't even read all of what you said before because I didn't want a headache. I did read this^ post though. Yeah, killing Batman and having him fail would be extremely ballsy and original. And yeah, it would piss off the audience. Not because it wasn't a happy ending, but because it would mean Bruce's character arc and the film's thematic meaning was never resolved. Which would be dumb and would make it a bad film.

I will leave this threat now forever.

I would never have suggested this ending if the Nolan brothers did not write themselves in a corner like that. The first things that should have been written out from the film from the first minute were the nuclear bomb and Talia Al'Guhl. They should of just not go back to the league of shadows ever after Batman Begins.

I don't. You don't mess with nuclear weapons in this kind of movie. If Nolan did not want to piss off the audience, he would have stuck to the rules of physics. Hell, I would have liked it if the superhero actually failed to save the city in this film, and that he died and the city is destroyed. It would have made fanboys angry, but at least I would respect the man for taking a big risk (which BTW is nonexistent in Hollywood nowadays), and IMO it would have been an interesting take on Batman and add depth. As time passed, he would have been seen as the true visionary that people claim he is, instead of the turning point into mediocrity.

I'm sorry, but I'm still dwelling on the whole nuclear bomb subplot of TDKR, because it completely took me out of the movie. Is Nolan that stupid that he is ignorant of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the fallout from nuclear tests in Nevada and the Pacific, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima? Gotham was screwed no matter how far Batman could have driven out the bomb with his batwing; Talia and the League of Shadows had already won if the rules of reality took effect. But no, this whole subplot makes me think that Nolan is a fucking idiot and/or he hated the Batman franchise at this moment and wanted to sabotage the third film. And for a trilogy that focused on a realistic take on the comic book character, having it end where a human being can survive a nuclear explosion (KOTCS anyone?) and nuclear fallout does not exist (so Wayne enterprises made a perfect cold fusion reactor that would not produce any radiation? WTF), it breaks the spine of the whole fucking trilogy! This is bad writing that is not only offensive, but an insult to the audience and should be a capital crime. Because of Nolan, we have twice as many terrible Batman movies as we would have had they buried the franchise with Schumacher. I feel sorry for fans of the comic book character, who have seen their hero fail seven times in a row. This is Nolan's Phantom Menace, hands down.

TV's Frink said:

generalfrevious said:

I hate my country's (US) government right now, with the recent shutdown nearly causing a worldwide economic depression, and how the men responsible for the crisis will never be held accountable because they have picked the voters and cannot be thrown out of office in 2014.

That's sexist.  Women helped!

Ok, it was a slip. It doesn't matter anyway, they will stay in office until they die, which goes against the whole purpose of elected leaders. They shouldn't be kings or queens.

Neon Genesis Evangelion. Possibly the worst thing ever created, with characters no real human being could relate to in any situation, and is just an excuse for Hideaki Anno to play out his mental psychoses.

Lost is probably the most cynical exercise in television history. The writers did not care at all about what was going on, it was just circle jerking to funnel advertising revenue for ABC (basically a ponzi scheme).

I hate my country's (US) government right now, with the recent shutdown nearly causing a worldwide economic depression, and how the men responsible for the crisis will never be held accountable because they have picked the voters and cannot be thrown out of office in 2014. It has made me lose faith in the US constitution itself, which is one of the defining aspects of being an american, so I might lose faith in the country I live in.

I recently thought about the Dark Knight Rises again, and realized how stupid it all is. First, the whole narrative arc is derailed by having Miranda Tate being the mastermind of the whole plot instead of Bane. Second, the stupid pit sequence was just stupid stupid stupid; and since what we thought as Bane's backstory was Tate's, we have almost no idea of who Bane was anyway, other than just some random guy in the pit (talk about bait and switch). Third, have they come up with the technology of a clean nuclear bomb in this universe, because even if Batman were to fly the bat jet a far enough distance, how much radiation would have reached Gotham city and gave everyone radiation poisoning or cancer? they wouldn't put up a Batman statue if so many citizens slowly died of radiation sickness (much like Hiroshima/Nagasaki after the atomic bombs were dropped). Fourth, why are the Al-Guls even the focus in this movie and the Batman Begins? That to me was a fatal misstep on Nolan's part to include these villains in his 'realistic' Batman series and then have some weird secret society there. Fifth, did anyone notice the blaring continuity errors and plot holes that takes most people out of a movie?

Nolan is just a big fish in a small pond. He gets praised as the next Kubrick when in reality he would have been dismissed as a hack and sent back to England had he worked in Kubrick's peak years.The only reason fanboys praise him is because the bar for American films has been set so low that when barely competent people make a movie, they are seen as the next big thing by people who have never heard of the great directors. Just look at his films: Memento is just a gimmicky film (what if we shot the film backwards?), Inception just piles on dreams within dreams to distract us from the plot, and is a didactic lesson on film criticism; and how would we see the Dark Knight if Heath Ledger was still alive today? It would be nothing more than political commentary shoehorned into an average superhero movie. You don't see the director of The Crow getting this kind of praise just because Brandon Lee died mysteriously.

Anyways, let's see how his next film turns out, if TDKR was just a fluke (yeah right), or the success went to Nolan's head and he doesn't even realize his shortcomings are stating to add up as time goes by. 

Episode VII: The Beast Of Yucca Flats

Episode VIII: The Skydivers

Episode IX: NIght Train To Mundo Fine

Or what about TFN (the force.net)? They will permanently ban you if you even mention the OUT or have the slightest dislike of the prequels and/or the special editions.

Ryan McAvoy said:

SilverWook said:

generalfrevious said:

Is Abrams still going to direct Episode VII? Is he backing out like I heard a few weeks back?

It's a rumor denied by Lucasfilm at this point in time.

Odd that JJ hasn't denied it personally or just popped his head up. Here's a hypothetical...

IF JJ has quit, who is the worst possible replacement? (Realistic answers please).

I'll start... Paul W. S. Anderson?

George Lucas...again

Or they could go with Raja Gosnell

At least Williams was the one positive aspect of the PT. In theory, he should put out a decent effort, as long as he stays alive.

Is Abrams still going to direct Episode VII? Is he backing out like I heard a few weeks back?

No matter how many bad films the SW franchise will have, we can all hope that the OT will endure in spite of the PT and/or ST. 

Plus, how many westerns or samurai films dwell on boring political issues?

I remember when TPM came out I tried to think of James Earl Jones repeating Jake Lloyd's lines from the movie. There would absolutely be a disconnect between the two.