hsilman wrote: ↑Sun Dec 24, 2017 6:05 am
DirtyRed wrote: ↑Sun Dec 24, 2017 12:42 am
You know, I look at a billion dollar corporation pouring millions of dollars into a project and expect it to be really good as a result. What sort of fucking cretin expects and is then happy with Merely Average from that?
It doesn't have to do anything INNOVATIVE to actually be good. It'd just be nice if they took the Star Wars IP and actually did something with it that merited the Star Wars IP in the first place, and maybe put a few of the millions into making something other than a completely Color-By-Numbers action/hero movie.
Really, the fucking thing could have just as easily been Dungeons and Dragons 8: Medeival Boogaloo, changed the character names, and the whole thing would have just fell in the cookie-cutter script.
your problem is you think Star Wars is a good IP to begin with. That somehow the original movies are some amazing pieces of art. But you're wrong. So it doesn't have some legacy to live up to, except in your own mind. Star Wars was always flash and magic, and not deep story telling with well written characters.
Fucking Ewoks, for christ's sake.
The Star Wars IP is excellent, in the same way that a fitted set of top of the line golf clubs are excellent. They are a great tool to accomplish great things if the wielder knows what the fuck they are doing. I'm playing KOTOR because everything Star Wars from 15 years ago was on sale on Steam for, I shit you not, 'bout tree fiddy. Aside from the Dragon Age-y "real time but all characters are on auto-pilot unless you pause every 3 seconds to tell them what the fuck to do" combat, the game is a fucking masterpiece. It shouldn't be THAT hard to come up with some really fly shit with an IP that involves magical space samurai.
But now EA has killed both BioWare and Star Wars. Because government.
There were even the expanded universe books, that introduced a whole bunch of fun concepts, like "grey" Jedi and some asspull to bring Boba Fett back in the game. But Disney retroactively declared ALL OF THAT SHIT non-canon because it wasn't sterile enough that a 6 year old could understand it and because they apparently hate money, respectively.
Idlehands wrote: ↑Sun Dec 24, 2017 1:21 pm
DirtyRed wrote: ↑Sun Dec 24, 2017 12:42 am
hsilman wrote: ↑Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:45 am
DirtyRed wrote: ↑Fri Dec 22, 2017 11:16 am
hsilman wrote: ↑Fri Dec 22, 2017 4:18 am
BenM wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 9:35 pm
hsilman wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 7:08 pm
hsilman wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2017 3:35 pm
Waiting for TLJ to start now. This better not suck.
Exceeded expectations
Good to hear.
A lot of other people in this thread have criticised it (some justifiably so, on reflection), give us your thoughts! I REALLY wanna go see it again now.
Spoiler free. The entire movie other than literally the last 10-15 minutes was predictable, and my wife leaned over and told me the ending "twist" though I didn't see it coming. But the set pieces they used were gorgeous, and that made it an enjoyable ride.
Welcome to the cancer of annual releases. Write a bog standard script that's more interested in checking off a list of standard high spots than anything else, and throw lots and lots of money at making it shiny. Just attach it to literally any IP you can market at nerds or kids and watch the idiot marks on the street convince themselves it's actually a great movie.
It is still a very "safe" movie. It is an action movie with funny parts, which is very "in" right now. The characters are wafer thin archetypes, though Kylo Ren gets more interesting.
See? Standard script. You got your Funny Sidekick, Mentor Figure, a Hero with some sort of Inner Conflict, and a Bad Guy that is either Troubled, Greedy, Psychotic, a literal Nazi, or a combination. Some ancillary authority figure ostensibly on the good guys' side that nonetheless ALWAYS does something incredibly stupid in order to manufacture some additional conflict or drama in a last ditch effort to add Stakes to the happenings because the writers spaced and skipped that step earlier in the Script Toolkit, and probably does so out of some Too Dumb To Live dedication to rules or regulations or some such stupid shit, is optional.
Now, did I just describe Wonder Woman, Thor, Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, or Star Wars?
Spiderman shakes the trend by having the Conflicted Hero and the Funny Sidekick be the same guy.
Yeah, but that's only a problem if you expect a multi-million dollar blockbuster from Disney that has a literal generation of expectations to live up to, to be as good or innovative as whoever the next generations Da Vinci of filmmaking is, working on a shoestring budget.
That is, literally retarded. Or from Kentucky it seems, but I repeat myself.
You know, I look at a billion dollar corporation pouring millions of dollars into a project and expect it to be really good as a result. What sort of fucking cretin expects and is then happy with Merely Average from that?
It doesn't have to do anything INNOVATIVE to actually be good. It'd just be nice if they took the Star Wars IP and actually did something with it that merited the Star Wars IP in the first place, and maybe put a few of the millions into making something other than a completely Color-By-Numbers action/hero movie.
Really, the fucking thing could have just as easily been Dungeons and Dragons 8: Medeival Boogaloo, changed the character names, and the whole thing would have just fell in the cookie-cutter script.
Idlehands wrote: ↑Fri Dec 22, 2017 12:29 pmwonder if there is anything Dirty Red likes.
For the most exceedingly mild use of the word, I like this movie all right. It is decent. Anyone saying it's any better than that should kill themselves. It's like watching two competent pro wrestlers wrestle for the 58th time. They just hit all the goddamn spots I've seen before 1000 times already, but they don't fuck anything up because they are competent.
It is the Nickelback of movies. The difference is that you marks have been told Nickelback is uncool so you all dislike it to be trendy, but you've been told this was the hip current thing, so you like it to be trendy.
I never liked nickleback.
I like TFA more than TLJ. I enjoyed TLJ but would have been more fun to talk about it with the wife. Which I can't do. So I'm stuck talking to DR. That's like a punch to the head.
TFA wasn't anything revolutionary, obviously. It was basically Another New Hope. Which, given the scenario Disney and the franchise were in, wasn't really a bad thing. They needed a film that just wasn't objectionably bad, and generally in the spirit of Star Wars, in order to get the taste of the prequels out of everyone's mouth. TFA accomplished that nicely. It was a base knock to hopefully start a rally. Followed up by a walk and a fly out.
Two years later, I expect better out of this. And really, TLJ would have went from two to three stars (on the wacky pro wrestling -5 to 5 scale where 2 stars is somehow average) immediately if the bullshit, silly movie-by-marketing-committee shit wasn't in it. They're one GIDP from ending the "rally" and putting Star Wars as a movie franchise back in the ground.
BASEBALL
BenM wrote: ↑Sun Dec 24, 2017 1:55 pm
I watched The Dark Tower last night. Kinda agree with Shane, it was a bit poo. Enjoyed the last half an hour though.
That movie would have been better if they just shot the annoying, useless kid in the first 10 minutes and let the whole thing be Idris Elba battling Evil!McConaughey.
Of course, that fucking twerp might not have been such a goddamn irritant if the trailers ever indicated that the movie was actually about some autistic teenager, instead of the bitching cool magic gunman.