ST ST Criticism Discussion Thread

That in itself doesn`t make a good story to me. I can take any movie that works and re-do, just having individual scenes end differently now. The likelyhood will be high that this new movie sucks because there was probably a good reason why the scenes were the way they were in the original.

To me TLJ is just interested in being faux-smart and meta and patting its own back. The ratio of destruction vs. rebuilding of mythological concepts and archetypes is so out of whack, it is a complete failure to me. It reminds me of those newbie hurt/comfort fanfics where someone writes 800 pages of ridiculously overblown hurt and a paragraph of "there, there" comfort and doesn`t see why that`s not working.

Yeah, sure, destroy the core characters and story people have been fans of for decades but give them unrelated side stories which may or may not be to their liking to make up for the damage? Who in their right mind would think that could ever work?

You wouldn`t burn down someone`s house and think giving them a bicycle would make that okay.

 

But the way it leads to those outcomes makes no sense at all. That's the problem.

 

At this point, episode 9 should end with a Rey and Kylo wedding - and it would be the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones. Even I might pay money to see Kylo`s head sewn on a direwolf`s body. I mean, it would copy something popular and it would be unexpected. What`s not to like?

 

Two things - absolutely nobody anywhere that I recall called TFA “new,” and TFA has the benefit of introducing wonderful, likable new heroes that had different characterizations from the OT3. The closest mirroring was Rey to Luke and Anakin, definitely, but she still felt fresh. She didn’t have character-based scenes outright stolen from Luke or Anakin in ANH or TPM.

Stealing stuff from the OT and slapping a new ending on it isn’t appealing to me, nor is it creative. That’s the kind of thing fanfic writers do. I don’t wanna see new characters imitate Luke and Vader only faux-Vader this time survives redemption. It doesn’t fit the stories of these new characters introduced in TFA. They’ve been contorted to obsessively tow the line of that “vision” (by vision, again, I mean theft). They deserved their own story.

 

I just wanted to chime in briefly on the topic of familiarity and I did so. I’ll be off again now since any time I’ve spent an extended amount of time in this thread it hasn’t ended great.

Perhaps I’ll see you on the IX boards!?

 

I pop in over there. If Reylo doesn’t happen, there’s a 99% chance I’ll see IX. If Reylo happens, the likelihood is zero... I suppose unless JJ throws a massive curveball and I can’t resist Finn or Leia or Luke’s stories by themselves for some reason. Though if Reylo happens, I can’t imagine Leia being used for anything but to prop them, so that one is exceedingly doubtful, and really they all are. I’m optimistic for now. JJ’s emphasis has been where I want it so far - on the heroes.

 

Again, much as is the case with Mark Hamill and his discontent with TLJ, acting like Ben Burtt hasn't been alienated from Lucasfilm is really nothing more than ignoring reality:

Of course Burtt isn't going to discourage his son from working at one of the most prestigious sound divisions in the film industry. The fact that he hasn't encouraged his son to torpedo his own career is absolutely not evidence against the fact that Burtt isn't exactly pleased with the current state of Lucasfilm.

It isn't hard to read between the lines. Ben Burtt was a powerful holdover from the Lucas regime who was accustomed to having a certain level of control over the creative process, and Disney/LFL decided they didn't want to deal with that. The only real alternative is that Ben Burtt is majorly withholding the truth about something he did to piss someone off, like insulting Bob Iger's wife at a dinner party. Disney/LFL's decision to apparently not even ask freakin' Ben Burtt to oversee the sound design on a Star Wars movie is otherwise completely inexplicable.

I for one don't have a problem "casting judgment from my keyboard" when the most likely answer is incredibly obvious. We might as well withhold our judgment as to why Rick McCallum didn't return.

 

Avatar is infamous for its plagiarism of Pocahontas. People can be sensitive with words all they want, but that is exactly what that example was. I don't know why you mentioned James Cameron, I am not a crazy fan of his work, and I think that the Titanic is a pretty average movie. However he has directed T2 and Aliens, two of the best movies ever made.

 

So would you consider Tarantino a plagiarist? Or De Palma? I'm simply trying to determine if you're going to apply this uniformly to essentially all directors. Plagiarism is a rather heavy word to level at the majority of directors.

 

The essential quality of plagiarism is that the plagiarist claims another person's work is their own. So from legalistic perspective, I'd say no, the ST is not plagiarism because it is blatantly obvious that it copies the OT and JJ and RJ have not outright claimed it doesn't. However, I agree that sometimes in interviews they convey a degree of arrogance and unfounded belief in their own novelty that does resemble the mentality of a plagiarist. For example, compare their attitude to Ron Howard's, and you can see the difference.

 

They stole their ideas from me. Does than mean I get to sue them?!

 

Actually, it's the other way around.

 

I would bet the farm this is about as close to what really happened to drive GL out of Episode 7 as any other theory.

 

I read endless Twitter comments about how TLJ reset and expanded or revitalized the SW saga but I have never seen any explanation that makes any sense to me. What new is brought to the table in TLJ? If we're being charitable, it's a remix with a lousy beat. I keep reading "oh, the SW movies needed to be freshened, changed, burned down" but what new thing is brought to the table in any of these movies? Deconstruction isn't new. Remaking Hoth with red dust isn't new. A Jedi being run through and disappearing isn't new either. But I have to read how it's the most Jedi thing evah! until I'm blue in the face.

 

Oscar Isaac is most likely crying because they are filming in a real desert. Is that the FO Sail Barge set i see there in the background?

 

Not remake in the direct sense since these are requels (remakes doubling as sequels). So while effectively picking up where ROTS left off in many ways once they regressed the story from an actual sequel standpoint (Empire in charge, Rebels on the run, Ren is Vader, Rey is Luke, Luke is Obi-Wan/Yoda, Snoke is Sidious) it also has to have some differences since the previous 3 movies did happen from their perspective in some kind of way. Not one that really lines up with what came before since the progression of Luke, Leia and Han as well as the rest of the galaxy doesn't follow a logical course from ROTJ. The Jedi, the Sith and the Force as seen in these movies doesn't line up with what we know from Lucas' movies, ie training isn't really necessary, the Light side and Dark side relationship is shifted to a different paradigm where essentially choice is lost. Rey simply is Light and controlled by that side while Ren is Dark and has no choice in what he does (as he is a monster) yet for Rey the Light is the quick and easy path while for Ren he's trained for years and years and he still isn't where he should be yet.

Nothing at all of any worth of value. It's just a lot of hollow talk not backed up in story. It's like praising TLJ for breaking down Luke then bringing him "back" except that it all happened to him decades ago already. What actually expanded the story from it's original presentation in the OT was first the PT then TCW. This was Lucas' thought for his ST stories which would further go into the creation myth that he touched upon with the Mortis and Yoda arcs.

 

They wanted to show that they had the guts to mess with something valuable.

 

This is one of the most annoying things that I cannot understand. How can these people not understand that when they take away the choice from the main characters they immediately make the setting less interesting?

 

Because not everyone consumes these stories the same way. Why don't you understand that you don't get to dictate what is or isn't interesting?

 

Huh?

 

Which again brings me to his superiors. Imagine if the Louvre administrators decided to "shake things up" and let a teenage grafitti artist spray on the Mona Lisa, then exhibit it, and scold the visitors for being upset. Would something like that make sense? This is cinematic equivalent.