ST The cinematography of The Force Awakens - Based on the teaser trailer

One of the worst (or best depending on how you look at it) examples of gratuitous movement is Man of Steel. Even when it's two people stood/sat still and taking, the camera is constantly moving. There's no contextual or narrative reason for it... it's really poor application of technique.

PS - I don't really dislike Zack Snyder as a director, it just seems that many modern directors have this extremely bad habit (IMHO)... and some are worse than others for it.

 

To be fair, I don't believe anyone can achieve that. I mean, just take the most harmless of shots in the trailer. Guy popping up into frame and the rolly droid. These are very "Star Wars" moments, imo...and completely harmless and kinda trivial. Okay, it's a scared guy lost in Tatooine, it's a crazy looking droid...and people STILL complain.

eh, that's not true. it just means that person doesn't have a problem with JJ's style for Star Wars. If they don't mind JJ's style for Star Wars, there could still be directors out there that they would have a problem with.

 

New theological riddle: Could God make a Star Wars movie every fan would enjoy, or is this beyond the domain of omnipotence?

 

I'll say it then: Zack Snyder is an awful director... but my biggest issue with that film is the writing, which I blame Nolan for.

 

What does God need with a Star Wars movie?

 

man I was going to post just that haha

 

Deities get enough criticism in the 21st century without pissing off the whiny fanboys as well. No one wants to complicate their (eternal) life that much.

 

No, but the Force could. However, it'd first have viewers be seduced by evil, live 23 years in cybernetic iron lung suit, and be redeemed by their children before they could experience that one original goal they were seeking: a Star Wars film everyone would love.

The Force likes tough love!

 

"I need my SW movies!"

 

I think Goyer wrote. Nolan helped with story.

 

Yeah, that's what I heard. And the story beats were the problem. The contrived, overly-complicated way that that film unfolds is consistent with the way Nolan tells his stories, particularly his more recent work. It sort of works for him - it didn't with DKR and Interstellar - but that's because he's a much more insightful director than Snyder. But I mean, Snyder's an Art Center guy, he's really just someone who tries to make things look cool.

 

ill just blame the fool that made that 2nd half of the movie look like an eye gouging mess. that zod was an awful fraternity _ _ _ _ and i was sick of seeing animated kicks and punches and giant death rays long before it ended. im gettin too old for this _ _ _ _

 

Just baffling to hear that an intelligent director, who's films make you think and dont assume you're a 'kin idiot so he has to purposefully dumb them down to cater for your lack of intellect are seen as contrived and overly complicated?? Well, word of advice. Stick to Transformers and such then. You'll be as happy as pig in shhh.sugar

 

the only transformers i liked was the first half of the first one and after the first hour it was too busy

 

That insult only makes sense if your cinematic experience consists solely of Transformers on the lower bound and Christopher Nolan movies on the upper bound.

If your movie's plot requires every other scene to be close-up dialogue shots of characters relaying expository information to the audience (Inception, Interstellar), you are dumbing things down and probably not making a very smart movie in the first place. A smart movie isn't necessarily the one that packs the most plot twists and explanations into a 2 hr 45 minute runtime.

 

Refrain from personal insults directed at other posters.

 

Well I just disagree with that right there. If you don't think this one will be a little different in terms of cinematography, then I have news for you.

 

I read tilts as another word. I'm sorry for the lascivious nature of my brain.

 

That is, quite possibly, the most ill-conceived post I've ever had the pleasure of responding to.

Sure, I'm not going to make any assessments as to whether or not Christopher Nolan is an intelligent man. And I agree, he doesn't make spectacle for the lowest-common-denominator the way Michael Bay or others do, and I appreciate that about him.

But Nolan needlessly complicates his stories to their own detriment. Dark Knight Rises is a perfect example - why did Talia al Ghul have to be a part of it? What did that "twist" really contribute to the plot besides completely undermining Bane's motivations?

Then there's the whole stock market theft plot. Nolan creates a really "intelligent" seeming plot for Wayne's competitors to take over his company, but fails to answer the question as to why any trading would be honored on the day a masked mercenary shot up the stock exchange. It seems like an interesting idea, but his need to go for some indirect, "sophisticated-ish" plot point actually opens up a massive plot hole.

Also there's that action sequence that opens the film which, for all of it's elaborate cinematography, really wasn't that exciting. I'll not go into all of the plot holes in the scene itself, but instead dwell on the idea that, while it's serving a similar dramatic function as the "teaser" scene in a television show, that function is diminished by it's lack of clarity. The plot reason behind the aerial heist was to kidnap a scientist who isn't really talked about again until deep into the film, and then only plays an incidental role in the story. The indirect nature of the heist wasn't obscure or tantalizing enough to make us have an "ah-ha" moment later in the film, nor was it clear enough for us to really feel any sense of dread about what was going to come next.

This isn't necessarily a good correction, just a clearer one: had Bane been stealing the atomic device he threatens Gotham with later in the film, the audience would have been like - oh crap, that guy's a big, smart, badass who has an atomic bomb now, and the teaser would have been much more effective.

Instead, the audience was like, "I want to like Christopher Nolan and insist that practical effects are always amazing, so I'll say I like this scene because we're all supposed to, even though I couldn't understand a word Bane was saying, and wasn't quite sure what was going on or why that guy that they took out of the plane was so important."

 

Did you see TKDR in IMAX?

 

I did see it in Imax.

 

I like the way the camera moves in the falcon shot, but I hope that sort of effect is used in a very specific way, to try to convey the sense of being in a dogfight. Most camera techniques (yes, even shaky cam and lens flare) can be fine if used for a specific purpose that suits them, but fall apart when overused. A camera that swoops to follow a dogfighting spaceship makes sense, one that swoops all the time for no damn reason does not. I'm hoping the movie sticks to the former.

I will say though, that to me the most JJ Abrams-y shot in the whole trailer is the opening with Boyega. Something about the way he pops into frame reminded me far more of Lost than it did Star Wars. But I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, because for me at least the shot achieved its purpose which was to immediately grab my attention and get me wondering who this guy is, what's he doing out here, who's chasing? Having him burst on to the frame just grabs the viewer and forces them into the moment in a way that worked well. But, again, its all about using techniques where they make sense. In this case a shot like that worked, but that doesn't mean "dude bursts into the frame" shots should somehow become the norm.

 

It just seems you're picking unnecessarily at the film to me. With regards to Bane's dialogue? I saw it in IMAX and had no problem interpreting what he was saying. The scientist kidnap was a very well staged piece of action. However insignificant you perceived his role in the plot, it indicated to me that these villains were treating every aspect of their plan very seriously. Their goal was to take control of Gotham and destroy it. Every detail counts for it to be pulled off successfully. Plus it introduced us to Bane. Talia al Ghul played Bruce Wayne pretty good, and her revelation as the mastermind behind it all made sense to me. It certainly wasn't a nothing role. A review I read of it summed up the film perfectly. The reviewer went to see the film with a friend, who remarked that 'well, the end was good. But what was all the stuff about before?" He replied, "The end was good, BECAUSE of all the stuff before."

 

Well, if you enjoyed it then I'm not going to persuade you not to like it.

I think that all of the details you mention could potentially have that effect, but a major thing that makes a film/story/sequence/scene resonate with an audience is clarity of intention, and after that scene I wasn't really scared of what Bane had in store, nor did I have any clue what he was about to do. Contrast this to the clarity of the Joker scene at the beginning of the Dark Knight. Robbing a bank doesn't need a whole lot of explanation, so it's already got that going for it. A kidnapping scene invites a question; stealing money is readily understood. The fact that Joker had each of his henchmen offing each other raised the stakes, but as soon as Fitchner pulled out that shotgun, the scene was turned on it's head and it became clear that Joker's motivation was something quite different from merely amassing a fortune. The question of why he was doing it is the thing that makes Joker so compelling in the first place. But because Bane was kidnapping a scientist who was going to help transform Wayne enterprises' fusion generator into a big bomb (a bomb whose ultimate detonation undermines the internal logic of Talia's plot anyway) the motivation and stakes of the heist aren't immediately clear.

I would also agree that the airplane sequence was a well-staged set piece, but not a particularly well-shot one. Nolan strikes me as someone who makes big spectacle films, but is sort of ashamed of the fact that they're for mass consumption - at least that's how Insterstellar in particular struck me - and he's almost willfully obtuse when it comes to directing sequences like that one.

I think he's often influenced by Michael Mann, Heat and The Insider in particular, as Mann is someone who often drops a lot of these floating details and asks the audience to pick up on them. There's also a lot of indirect entries into the plot points in those films, but I would argue that they're handled with much more clarity and dramatic effect than what Nolan does. (Mann is also miles beyond Nolan in his ability to direct action scenes.)

But a quick response to something you mentioned earlier, I agree that Nolan attempts to "make his audiences think" - whether that means by literally provoking the audience into asking "was it a dream?" by spinning that top, or whether he's screwing with our basic assumptions of narrative like he did in Memento. (Interstellar, however, made me think "what a colossal waste of time and money," but that's beside the point.) (Also, Nolan's most interesting work arises from this notion of narrator, whether it's the dream-levels in Inception, the journals inThe Prestige, or even the wandering investigation in his Insomnia remake.) Still, I would say that the bigger accomplishment for a filmmaker is to make audiences feel, and not in a disposable sort of way, but in a profound, awe-inspiring way. Nolan's pseudo - intellectual blockbusters are clinical to a fault. It's almost as though he's purposefully asking us to compare him to Kubrick while at the same time shooting $200 million blockbusters.

 

I think you may be giving Nolan too much credit in guessing that he is deliberately obfuscating his action scenes due to some sense of shame. My take on Interstellar was that he decided to emphasize practical effects, which handcuffed him and led to the over abundance of shots from the perspective of the side of the spacecraft. I mean that angle was cool the first few times, and maybe during the docking scenes, but it felt like 90% of the scenes in space were shot from that angle and it got tiresome.