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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit MACLUNKY -- The Lit Forum Maclunky Thread, v3

Discussion in 'Literature' started by Point Given , Sep 12, 2015.

  1. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    You mean when Ego tell Quill his origin or is it some other part you are thinking of?

    Is that news or something? Was not that more or less the mission statement to the concept art people?

    I don't know about you but I would say that those visuals was new since that combination of the visuals from those cultures in that way with future-technology had not been seen before on the big screen
     
  2. Havac

    Havac Former Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    I'd say Arrival is another recent sci-fi movie with some creative visuals. And Blade Runner 2049 is largely drawing on Blade Runner's aesthetic, but it's definitely not generic or typical. But yeah, aside from a handful of genuinely creative directors like Nolan and Villeneuve, you're unlikely to get really distinctive visuals. But Villeneuve's working on a new Dune adaptation, so that's something.

    Anyway, I've been away from Lit for a while thanks to various stuff going on, including Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. But I'm going to try to be a little more present. In honor of my return, here's something cool and Assassin's Creed related:

     
  3. Barriss_Coffee

    Barriss_Coffee Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 29, 2003
    @Gamiel -- Ahhhh I forgot about Valerian. For what it was (Fifth Element 2), that was pretty creative. It wasn't like its source but the quirky inventions and creatures were still going in the right direction.

    On the subject of inventions... that's what seems to hold people up. Creating an invention that does something different than anything what we use on earth right now. Not just a sci-fi version of a toaster or a car or an elevator.

    Jupiter Ascending though was... like all those Dune made-for-TV remakes they keep producing. Every other year.

    @Dr. Steve Brule - Yeah, I remember Black Panther's producers claimed before the movie came out that they wouldn't mix or stereotype African cultures like other films had done. But... they totally did in every scene. Which isn't to say it's entirely bad (if you don't use real African cultures, you're disassociating the film from Africa, so that wouldn't make sense), but don't say you're not doing something when you are.

    I did not see Annihilation. I guess I'll get to seeing that in my next double-feature with Ant-Man 2.

    @Havac - Arrival sort of goes on my list of stories that have been done before, but I'll give it a pass for trying to be different. Sign-language, music (Close Encounters), math (Contact, more Sagan's book than the movie), lights, etc have been done repeatedly to communicate with aliens.
    At least it showed aliens, which was more than I expected it would do.
     
  4. spicer

    spicer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 14, 2012
    On the topic of movies - I must say that I'm tired of all the superhero flicks. I used to see the MCU films as guilty pleasure until several years ago, but with the exception of Thor: Ragnarok (to a degree), I find virtually all the rest to be bland, generic and repetitive. I don't have the time to watch movies too often, and thus I haven't seen everything released in recent years, but Blade Runner 2049 is definitely one of the highlights from the past couple of years or so. I am looking forward to Villeneuve's Dune and hope that it is succesful. We need some balance to popular sci fi due to oversaturation from the MCU, and Star Wars deserves some serious sci-fi competition too (not counting the MCU here nor the forthcoming Avatar sequels).
     
  5. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

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    Dec 16, 2012
    Seems I have missed something, I only know of one Dune made-for-TV adaptation.

    Lets just disagree on this, I fund it lacking.
     
  6. Onderon1

    Onderon1 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 18, 2008
    I liked Sci-Fi's first effort at a Dune mini-series; Lynch's '80s work flirts too much with camp to be to my liking (it's undeniably classic, but I find it earns that for different reasons than other people might give).

    AFA the Sci-Fi version, It's hard to go wrong with William Hurt, Saskia Reeves and Alec Newman. And Ian McNeice, who portrayed Baron Harkonnen, found just the right mix of sleazy and malicious.

    Sci-Fi's Children of Dune was ... not horrid. If nothing else, it's a fun little time capsule of James McAvoy's work before superhero films. :)

    Jupiter Ascending, though? Great idea horribly hamstrung by awful plot construction and presentation. You can't drop audiences into the deep end the way the Wachowskis did here and expect it to work. (Plus, the acting was ... not great from the leads.)

    Valerian was, IMO, a good popcorn flick, with a leading couple who had actual fun with each other on the screen ... but its release date condemned it. Any other weekend, this would've done well, but it came out against Dunkirk, and it got steamrolled. :(

    I do think we've reached peak superheroes, tbh. I'm not confident that even with the needed course correction of Days of Future Past that the X-franchise can escape its doldrums.

    And the MCU is on the brink of falling into what I fear snakebit Solo - too many films in the same 'verse coming out too close together. I genuinely liked Solo for what it tried to do - giving us Han's nu-canon backstory - but the lingering furor over TLJ, combined with the proximity of an SW film so close to said furor, did Solo no favors.

    Still, Captain Marvel looks very promising. And if nothing else, I want to see how the main MCU metaplot wraps up, so I'll see Endgame.
     
  7. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    It's always a little weird to me whenever people wax rhapsodic over Thor: Ragnarok. I liked it, but I also pretty much liked the first two Thors (yes, even the second one), and even without considering that, generally I've always had extremely mixed feelings about the "abrupt soft reboot with new creative team" concept making its way in from comics proper.
     
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  8. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    It worked for me, but I agree that the leads acting was not great
     
  9. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 7, 2012
    I've said it elsewhere, maybe not on this forum, but I feel that Jupiter Ascending is what TPM would be like, if TPM had been released as the first Star Wars movie.

    Valerian had good visuals but the two lead actors were charisma black holes. I've never seen two less-compelling/interesting leads, especially for an action/comedy movie. Outside of the opening credits and Rihanna's few scenes, almost none of the movie really sticks to mind, a year and change later.

    And I'm going to go there... Jodorowsky's Dune is the best Dune movie we've gotten so far. And I mean the documentary, not the actual unproduced film. (I do honestly like the Lynch version, though.)

    This, but there's also a few other scenes in the movie where the set clearly takes inspiration from the Science Council at the start of MOS.
     
  10. spicer

    spicer Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 14, 2012
    Agreed that the documentary is good, although going from the info in it on the unproduced film, I can't say I regret it was never made.
     
  11. Vthuil

    Vthuil Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 3, 2013
    On an unrelated note, I recently went back and reread a big chunk of the Lit Dark Disciple thread, and now I can't stop laughing. Seriously, it's amazing how much of a smile it put on my face.
     
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  12. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2005
    Yes. More specifically, Jupiter Ascending feels like a movie based on a ridiculously popular YA book series with a massive, totally obsessive fanbase that somehow fell into our reality where neither that series or that fanbase exist.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2018
  13. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    Well, exercises in frustrating back-patting aside from white audiences, BP raises a lot of complicated questions about diaspora, identity, and culture that I can't even begin to wrap my head around. Or I should say, re-raises.

    That's also putting aside the routine cultural pillaging in cinema (oh look, Star Wars and Game of Thrones!) and how annoying that can be.


    Thor is always good. Fewer superheroes, more gods.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2018
  14. Ulicus

    Ulicus Lapsed Moderator star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 24, 2005
    JA did have the best romantic exchange in the history of cinema, mind you:

    "I have more in common with a dog than I do with you"

    "But I love dogs! I've always loved dogs!"

     
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  15. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

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    Dec 16, 2012
    Are you certain? Because that kind of scene is note something MoS thought up, we have seen similar scenes in many earlier movies, I would think MoS and GotGII just mined the same earlier references.

    I like the payoff after he has left and she admit how stupid that line is.

    Maybe its because I'm not in USA but I feel I'm not certain what you mean. Can you expand? It sounds a bit interesting

    I would love for them to do a Hercules movie.
     
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  16. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

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    Sep 7, 2012
    It raised questions about them, but then answered those questions in a very uncomplicated way. Black Panther is the perfect neoliberal movie: its look is very progressive, but its message is ultimately conservative. It's a movie where the hero is an absolute monarch who works with the CIA to launch a coup to overthrow a revolutionary Pan-African government (happily using drone warfare during it, too) and then once the actual revolutionary has been defeated, adopts the lip service of his popular message while adopting a minimalist reformism that completely defangs the actual movement.
     
  17. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    Oh, I mean much more general questions about diaspora and cultural identity and all that going into the movie making and costume design itself, as with the lady from the video you linked. That's a thornier question that I don't think is as easy to answer.

    The movie itself fits in a pretty standard Disney framework -- and I don't mean in an MCU = Disney way, but just the general conservatism of those types of fairy tale stories produced by the West.

    The standard upholding of the social order and royalism seen in a lot of these fairy tales does quite amuse me so.

    edit: Although speaking of incrementalism, it is entirely possible that this is the first time a lot of people have taken any of these ideas seriously or heard them articulated out loud. By safe Hollywood standards it's transgressive, even if it's still very commercially packaged.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2018
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  18. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

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    Dec 16, 2012
    At the same time it do show the problems with having a absolute monarchy - with the only real criteria being that you come from one of the right families and defat any challenger in physical combat - when Killmonger come to power. Hopefully the coming BP movies will show them giving the crown more checks and balances and giving the people more to say when it comes to their government.

    I don't think it could really be called that. Killmonger talks the talk but when it comes down to the walk he seems more interested in watching the world burn then help the rest of the continent or the African diaspora; when it comes to the rest of the counsel: W'kabi seems only interested in weakening potential enemies of Wakanda and possibly expanding its power while the others was just going along with what their king ordered them to do.
     
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  19. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 7, 2012
    It doesn't really seem to show the problem with the absolute monarchy, just the claim that you need the right person in the spot, and when the wrong person is in power (always "illegitimately") the common people will rise up to put the "right" dictator back in power. As is the typical Disney trope - last year's live-action Beauty and the Beast was another very heavy-handed defense of absolute monarchy and the technocratic managerial state. As for Killmonger - it's the common thing of realizing you've written a villain who's more compelling than the hero, so you have to make sure to put in a few over the top mustache-twirling things so your bland hero becomes acceptable to root for. (And I have to admit... I thought Andy Serkis beat them both in terms of pure enjoyment to watch).

    On the topic of just how much Disney values African culture, there was a big furor in East Africa the last few weeks when it came out that they trademarked hakuna matata, which is a very common Swahili phrase. Imagine them being granted the trademark to "good morning" or something like that.
     
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  20. MercenaryAce

    MercenaryAce Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 10, 2005
    I mean, to begin with it was incredibly praised by black audiences too - and not even just in the US, but in African countries too.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2...g-emotional-response-black-panther-humanised/

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fans-in-africa-react-to-black-panther/
    http://www.africanews.com/2018/02/17/black-panther-wins-the-hearts-of-africans//

    And the lead visual designer is black herself and did this as a love letter to various African cultures (and because it is really hard to make up a complete believable culture whole cloth, so blending different cultures together and having that represent a new culture influenced by its neighbors is a pretty solid way to do it. Now, Wakanda does have a lot more cultural influence than just the immediate neighbors around where it is supposed to be, but I think it could work if one assumes that Wakanda wasn't always isolationist and used to be a major trade center. Also if their extensive spy network brings back cultural trends for some reason)

    And to leave the scholarly discussion aside for a moment and just speak as a fan of visual design, I think there is a clear difference between art that blends different different cultural influences together out of laziness and that which does so deliberately to create a new synthesis out of the results - for example, there are plenty of fantasy Asian settings that throw ninja next to Shaolin monks because they can't be bothered to keep Japan and China separate, and then there is Guild Wars factions which has a nation that blends Japanese, Chinese, and half a dozen other nations together into a new result that feels very deliberate and not lazy at all, and frankly a bit different from all of its inspirations.
    Side note, Guild Wars also has a pretty cool Africa setting:

    Anyway, Black Panther's art design very much strikes me as the second kind, especially since they also took into account that it was high tech and clearly did some thinking about how something could look high tech while not looking western.
    (I have to admit, comics Wakanda is not nearly so impressive to me - sometimes it is spears and loincloths in the Jungle, sometimes it is generic modern nation looking, sometimes it is kind of cool in a GI Joe over the top way, but nothing seems to match the interesting use of Afrofuturism like the movie does, at least before the movie came out)

    As for Killmonger - eh, he might have black skin and talk about people a lot, but when push comes to shove he is just another self-righteous imperialist (you commented on T'Challa working with a CIA member, but Killmonger is CIA too, and frankly embodies how it infamously operates better than T'Challa's sidekick whose name escapes me). I am rather reminded of Liberia, where a bunch of free American blacks went to Africa, set up their own country, and immediately started oppressing the local Africans. I am also reminded a fair bit of imperial Japan, who conquered Asian nations, tried to destroy their cultures, enslaved local populations for labor and all that - but they said it is ok because we are fellow Asians and we are just protecting you from white imperialists!
    (Side note, I remember there was this interview with some Kenyan fans of the movie after it came out and they agreed that the Killmonger-Wakanda conflict reminded them of African-American attitudes towards Africa. I am having some trouble remembering the details though and I can't seem to find the exact article again.)

    (And speaking of the American aspect, the fact that Wakanda is a superpower shouldn't be ignored I think, and I would go so far as to say the central thesis of the movie is about how to be a responsible superpower. Shutting oneself away and ignoring the rest of the world's problems clearly doesn't work, but going around trying to counter imperialism with more imperialism isn't exactly productive either. I mean, Killmonger's strategy of giving weapons to whatever pissed off group wants them and hope that produces justice and freedom is something the US has tried a lot with a success rate than be generously described as "not great" - and with that in mind, I think the ending is less about black people accepting gradualism and more about the US using its wealth to support local development instead of arming potential allies and hoping that works)

    At the risk of rudeness, it is this kind of criticism that strikes me as far more "White person backpatting" than the movie or the reaction to it is. Or at least, besides you (which I don't know) and one other person, every person I have heard make the same criticisms that I see here has been white.

    ....anyway, I know that looked super defensive, but I just like to be thorough and one thought led to another.
     
  21. Charlemagne19

    Charlemagne19 Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Jul 30, 2000
    I always felt that complaint was nerfshavit.

    Because it implicitly denies a multi-cultural African society could exist...which they do.

    It's even in the movie with multiple Wakandan tribes sharing one nation.
     
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  22. Charlemagne19

    Charlemagne19 Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Jul 30, 2000
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  23. Jid123Sheeve

    Jid123Sheeve Guest

    I found this interesting video from the Escapist about the deeper implications of Galaxy of Adventure and how it might show what Disneys plan for the Star Wars franchise are moving forward

     
  24. Dr. Steve Brule

    Dr. Steve Brule Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 7, 2012
    @MercenaryAce I appreciate your long post, and was going to respond in kind, especially on the idea that Africans embracing something makes it devoid of problems, especially because the Wakandan origin story is itself one step removed from the colonialist ancient alien concept, and given the utter lack of knowledge (to put it politely) in Charlemagne's own thinly-veiled expletive response... but since I can sense I'm going to be accused of being a condescending racist for criticizing a Disney comic book movie, I'll just bow out because it's not worth it ;)

    Anyway, going back to the earlier topic that spawned this of sci-fi movies, what do people think of Alien 3? I'm reading the DH adaptation of William Gibson's unproduced script and it makes me want to watch the movie again. Fincher may have disowned it but I think he did a better job of continuing Alien than anyone else, including Ridley Scott's own two most recent attempts.
     
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  25. Onderon1

    Onderon1 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 18, 2008
    Not a terrible film, although I wish they'd let the franchise trail off after that (the abominations that are the Alien vs. Predator films, coupled with the pure nightmare fuel of Resurrection, are proof, IMO, that some classic franchises don't do well after a certain threshold of sequels).

    What bothers me about Prometheus isn't that Scott attempted to revive the franchise, it's that there were great ideas there that fell flat. It's almost as if seeing the Engineers opened a door best left closed, that the imagined "secret history" was better than the "actual history."

    Is there a point, perhaps, that great artists should just put their voluminous IU backstories into a "making of" coffee table book and not create prequels? Does the auteur's skill fade out after a point, and they should let the audience satisfy themselves with their headcanons? [face_thinking]