ST Rian Johnson to write and direct Episode VIII (and also new SW Trilogy - see page 194)

I very much agree.

To me, the difference boils down simply to this:
In the OT, on the whole, the actors are able to say the lines and sound like they mean them.
In the PT, this was far from always the case. Actors spoke the lines but they weren't able to say them and sound like they meant what they said. This made the dialogue forced and contrived and it sounded fake. I did not see character having dialogue, I saw actors reading lines.

I likewise don't buy the excuse that the dialogue was "supposed" to sound fake, bad, wooden or what ever.
ALL dialogue should sound like the character talking and not like an actor reading lines.
If the dialogue comes across as the latter, then it has failed. At least to me.

In Star Trek, the actors playing Vulcans have been hit and miss. The late, great Mr Nimoy was great ta playing a calm, logical and reserved character and yet show that he still had feelings, he just didn't act on them. Other actors were less good and their Vulcans came across as less animate than road-kill.

I have hopes with JJ and Rian as both have gotten quite good performances out of their actors and they have had quite a lot of less than normal dialogue and yet they made it work.

Speaking of Rian Johnson and Looper.
SPOILER











The kid in that film, there are some parallels to Anakin Skywalker.
The kid has great powers, like Anakin, and in one time line he looses his mother in terrible circumstances and becomes a bad guy. Not unlike Anakin.
Had Shmi not died, then maybe Anakin, like the kid, would not have turned.

In closing, I would say that the acting from that kid in Looper was better than Jake in TPM.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Yu

yup, all of this.

 

With all due respect to Looper, Episode 8 better be a whole lot better.

 

The good thing is Rian is a talented writer and director but he gets to draw from the Star Wars universe instead of come up with every idea himself.

 

Besides Nimoy, Quinto, and the guy that played Spock's Dad what other Vulcan was in the movie, or should I rephrase that, What other Vulcan's were prominently featured in either Trek Movie that Abrams Directed?? and I thought all the actors that I mentioned were good representations of Vulcan's for any Trek Movie.

 

I was mainly talking about Star Trek on TV, TNG, DS9 and ENT and there you have had many different Vulcans. Some good and some very bad.
Sure many had been bit parts but even so, some of the performances are less than good.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

i agree, Rian Johnson cant act

 

It sucks that we know major spoilers like character deaths. *sigh* The Internet Age...

 

I think the ‘cop out’ is not being able to contextualise the style and tone of the dialogue and delivery. The ‘cop out’ is not being able to perceive that the dialogue and delivery in both the OT and PT, even if the OT is ‘better’, inhabit (broadly speaking) the same space within whatever measuring device one chooses i.e. if 10 is the best and 1 is the worst, all SW is probably somewhere in the middle. Once one accepts that, then there is increasingly less reason to engage in the “no I think X is better”... “no I think Y is better” etc. etc.

 

I think the difference simply boils down to personal taste. I think some of the worst acting is in the OT, be it some of Dave Prowse's awful miming or Fisher and Ford's phoned in performances in ROTJ. The best, most clever thing I think Lucas did in the OT was cast to type for the leads... For example... I think there’s a lot more Fisher, Ford and Hamill in Leia, Han and Luke than there is HC, EM, NP in Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme... and I think a lot of that comes from a retrofitted story/characters.

 

Again I don't agree with this reasoning.
To me the issue is simple, do I believe that the characters means what they say? If yes, then the style of the dialogue doesn't matter. If no, then it becomes a problem. Any time this happens then I am not seeing the character talking, I see an actor reading lines. This takes me out of the film and if the dilaogue is very corny, cheesy, stiled or overly wordy, then I notice it more.

This happened more often in the PT than in the OT to me. As a consequence I found the dialogue and delivery of the dialogue less good in the PT than in the OT.
Overall I found the dialogue more "wordy" in the PT than in the OT. Had the delivery worked then I would not have had a problem with this. But since I did then I also noticed this about the dialogue which made it stick out even more.

"Regular" dialogue delivered poorly won't be much of a problem beyond the bad delivery.
But if the dialogue is something special, like Trek's technobabble, Shakespeare or things like that.
If the delivery don't work then it becomes a bigger issue.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

The reasoning is sound... but you don't have to agree with it. If what you stated was a universal truth, then we'd all be in agreement, but clearly we are not.

I do however agree that the dialogue was more "wordy" in the PT, and there was probably too much reliance on exposition... but the trade off, for me anyway, is something that lends itself to a deeper thematic resonance. Do I believe Obi-Wan when he says "you were my brother Anakin”? Yoda when he says “the shroud of the darkside has fallen”? Or Palpatine when he states “the Republic is not what is was”? Sure I do. What's not to believe?

 

Obviously I don't expect everyone to agree with my point of view. I'm just letting you know why I prefer the OT. Nothing more, nothing less.

No biggy! Believe it or not I enjoy all the Star Wars movies, I just would like the OT to be the template for inspiration. Again, not everyone agrees with that and that's perfectly fine. It's nice that the series has so many different flavors for people to like.

 

I agree with that... "different flavours"... and much of it different flavours of ultimately the same dish. We find one flavour better than the other etc

 

I'm just excited to see what the new series brings. The trailer reaaaaalllllly needs to hurry up.

 

Sure. Honestly it took years before I really though about the "quality" of the acting in the OT. When you are 5, 6 and 11 "quality" of acting isn't top of mind.

That is a trap that comes with years and years of rewatching.

The point I would make about personal taste is this. The more we rewatch something the more we look for and find meaning in what we are seeing. It's really the same kind of thing whereby when Star Wars didn't just fade away as a kiddies movie that was eventually forgotten but kept going for 3 years until TESB and then another 3 years until ROTJ and then kept going on a smaller scale for years more until it was first revived by the SE's and the the PT and it's never stopped being relatively huge even after ROTS finished it's run. Of course with new movies it's going to start all over again for the mass general audience in a way that hasn't happened in 10 years.

The critics and analysts decided there must be some bigger underlying reason for all this popularity and Lucas provided it with the mythic underpinnings etc that sounds to some people a whole lot better than it being a success because of movie serials, SF and comic books being huge in pop culture.

We as fans look and find the elements that make it a bigger deeper story than it might actually be. I think though the base difference between the OT and PT is that George was looking to pop culture elements first and mythic material in support while for the PT Star Wars was now it's own myth and Lucas did use the knowledge he gained from his association with Campbell in a far more textured way than he ever did.

If we look at the whole Ring Theory that was a conscious decision of Lucas' to use the ring story telling device to guide the text of the PT and layer new subtext into the OT that wasn't really there before.

For those who only watch the PT movies once or twice and don't like them then they were never going to get the benefit that we who did like them right from the start were going to then or over time as we watch them each time and continue to peel back more and more layers of storytelling within the PT itself and at the same time in the OT as well.

I think there is something in that though I am not sure about the degree. The original film one-off film was very simple while the plan for a trilogy was much broader and deeper from the start so it was known that the PT trio were going to age 10 years then a further 3 and be presented in very different ways in each movie as opposed to the OT trio where there was no such plan.

 

That's the only thing I don't like about these arguments. I get a strange vibe of ...

Well you aren't seeing what we are seeing in the PT. You haven't given it enough viewings...etc.
It's okay for people to not like something as much, everyone has their reasons for preferring one thing over another. It doesn't have to be because they don't get it or they didn't view it enough to peel back the onion.

I've viewed the PT many times and I've viewed the OT many times. I still prefer one over the other....and someone might think the opposite. That is completely fine, and it doesn't have to be because someone is missing something.

Just preferences!

Back to the main topic at hand.

Rian Johnson makes perfect sense. Hell, Looper had telekinetic people in it. It was almost like his intro into the force with his movie.

 

I don't see it that way.

The point I specifically made was this:

"For those who only watch the PT movies once or twice and don't like them then they were never going to get the benefit that we who did like them right from the start were going to then or over time as we watch them each time and continue to peel back more and more layers of storytelling within the PT itself and at the same time in the OT as well."

So if you watch them the once or two or however many times in the theater and don't get into it then what you might see is all the things that were wrong for you
so your analysis is about how this is wrong and that is wrong. All rewatches of them and the links into the OT are going to do is probably reinforce that view.

Obviously those people in each group aren't seeing what the other group sees. The one group sees it one way and the other sees it the other and of course there is all the in-between.

The thing about the PT is that it does change the reading of the OT tremendously and for some people they don't want that reading changed. So they might be more likely to be fine with the ST since it isn't going to change the past so much. Now I think that the ST probably will eventually add new subtext to the PT and therefore the OT so whether that will work in combination with those who aren't into the PT's rewrite of the OT I don't know.

We can't objectively assign the idea of a right way or a wrong way to these views.

Now my way with is to take it all in is a hell of a lot more fun of course than for those who don't get the same enjoyment from the PT. So in that sense that way is the more fun way while not being into them is certainly the less fun way.

 

It's not so much the change of anything. I just don't think they were as good of 'movies'.....

Everyone has a different criteria though.

 

I don't think we have to assign good to any of it. You can think they are all great as I do or only good and still get all the other benefits or even so so and still take in all the effects on the overall story.

There are movies I would say are great that I don't really like and movies I like that aren't really great. My favourites movies are not always the same as my best movies though in the case of Star Wars they are.

 

Lol

Like I said, I enjoy all the movies. I think the originals are genuinely good movies and I think the prequels are hit and miss. I enjoy the overall story it's trying to tell though. I can appreciate that aspect. It's when it gets into the finer details that I start having complaints.

Either way, I'm big enough a fan to where I spend my days on a message board. lol

 

I haven't claimed to speak for anyone except myself. That is why I said;

So I was explaining why I though that the dialogue in the PT wasn't as good as the OT. And the big reason was the delivery. So I was disagreeing with the idea "Oh you don't like just because it is different." This is not the case for me. I find it less than good because to ME the delivery is sometimes forced, wooden or just plain not believable. I simply find what the characters say rings false in my ears. I don't believe they mean what they say.

[/QUOTE]

That may be but if what is being said rings false in my ears and then any "deeper thematic resonance" are totally lost.
Another problem I had was that the PT sometimes told things instead of showing them.
That people say that they are great friends but they don't show it.
Anakin is said to be so very powerful but we don't see all that much of it.
Dooku might have worked better had we met him in TPM and seen him as a good Jedi but one that was frustrated with the system. Or showing Griev being a Jedi killer instead of just saying it.

As for Obi-Wan, I found what he did to Anakin quite horrible. He dismembers Anakin and leaves him to burn to death. To me that was very cruel. So him saying all that just made me go "If you loved him like a brother why are you letting him die in a very horrible way?"
Sorry, to me what Obi-Wan did just seemed totally at odds with how the character otherwise acted and was needlessly cruel.
Anakin needs to get burned but survive so Obi-Wan can't just kill him. What might have worked for me, is Anakin falling down a pit and Obi-Wan can't get to him, thinks he is dead and speaks the words to himself/the air.

In closing, these are my issues with the films, they are not universal problems, just some things that I felt made the PT films less than great.
I don't hate them or find them to be bad films, ok to good to me. But one reason why I keep coming here and talk about them is that to me, there was potential there for so much more. I saw some really great ideas there, the basic story is excellent. But I found the execution lacking. There is great stuff here but it is dragged down by mediocre stuff.

With the OT, Lucas had very little but he made something extraordinary with what little he had.
With the PT Lucas had almost everything but he just made something fairly good with it.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Remember in ROTS Anakin said his powers doubled since their last encounter? In the OT when Luke fought Vader on the Death Star you could see Luke was stronger without him saying it. It is ok to see the flaws in something you love. I agree the delivery of the lines in the OT was more convincing. Both OT and PT has a lot of cheesy dialogue. The PT is swiss cheese the OT cheddar and it all comes down what cheese you enjoy. Im so hungry Im going to get a snack now.

 

Combine the inauthentic delivery of lines, inauthentic dialogue and inauthentic-looking visuals, and you have the reason why I (and I suspect lots of people) have issues with the PT.

Back on topic: Rian Johnson's gonna knock this film out of the park. I can feel it in my bones.

 

Yeah, Rian Johnson is gold. If you want to hear an (old) interview with him to get to know his vibe, check out his episodes of Smodcast / Smoviemakers he did with Kevin Smith. He wasn't allowed to see Temple of Doom as a kid so he read the novelization!

http://smodcast.com/episodes/skip-to-my-looper/

http://smodcast.com/episodes/smoviemakers-15-rian-johnson/

Johnson's movies are really fun to listen to and watch. This is gonna be great. And, yes, I fully expect Joesph Gordon Levitt to be in it, somewhere.