I've never been a huge fan of Star Wars, just like I wasn't of Star Trek, and JJ made me absolutely love it with the last two movies so hopefully he'll manage to turn SW into something more watchable and entertaining for me just like he has done with ST.
Movie Reviews 2.0
- Thread starter Dresden
- Start date
to me the fights in the original trilogy were lacking, and not in line with the supposed powers and skills above humans that jedis have. It was better in the last trilogy but still not enough to my taste.
Hee he. Well, wouldn't a company like Lucasfilm have some say over the bitrate of their trailer? I haven't looked at the trailer in itunes store, but would the quality really be that much different? The Falcon's engine glow for example has that pale-CGI look to it (compared to the old movies' much richer, more intense blue), and would (alledgedly) harsh youtube really cause that to happen?Might have been the crappy youtube compression as well, but let's just blame JJ instead, right?
Gah. I knew it. What are they saying?
I mean, we don't even know if the guy's actually a stormtrooper or not yet. Shit, we're not ready, as a species...
Alex Guinness, even at the time of the original Star Wars movie, wasn't that young a spring chicken, and CGI basically didn't exist; it was pretty much at the level of the Death Star attack run simulation we see in the movie, so you couldn't have done face replacement and shot the fights with a younger actor, or done a digital double (which looked crap even as late as Matrixes 2 and 3, as well as the infamous Yoda battle sequence.) It would have required Obi to wear a facemask like Vader or a stormtrooper, and that'd looked strange. You would have lost the suspension of disbelief when an supposedly old man would suddenly fight like a banshee. There's no way we could have seen old Obi-Wan fence with anything even approaching the prequels' level of intensity.
Star Wars is a much more moderately paced movie, as a whole, compared to modern movies. All movies in the 70s were slower than they are today. There's none of the shaky-hand-held crap or over/undercranking to emphasize certain events, or speedy cutting like many movies have these days (here's looking at you, Quantum of Solace!
) And mainly for the better, too! Very fast, intense swordfighting would have looked oddly out of place, IMO. And, been impractical to shoot in the first place, as mentioned.yes i'm aware of that, and these were fine at the time and when i was young, i should have precised by today's standards.
But now that i've been spoiled by awesome fight choregraphies in games or even fan movies, i'd like to see some awesome looking and other the top fights, but that's just my point of view
But now that i've been spoiled by awesome fight choregraphies in games or even fan movies, i'd like to see some awesome looking and other the top fights, but that's just my point of view
My biggest hope with Star Wars is that JJ will basically completely ignore obsessive fans and just make a good movie. Instead of catering to people that worry about whether a stormtrooper is black, or whether a tie fighter can fly in the atmosphere, he'll just make something good. The original trilogy is great, and then there's a boatload of video games, novels, cartoons and other garbage that should basically be 100% ignored if they actually want to make another film that is going to have the same appeal as the originals.
Are these supposed powers you speak of the powers that were made up after the movies were made? I more or less remember the original trilogy first time around (though I was young), but my overwhelming impression of the Star Wars franchise since 1980-ish is that a lot of stuff has been made up post facto to fill in the perceived blanks in the back-story of the original trilogy. To my mind the original trilogy worked extremely well because it was a fantasy romp (which is why we're still talking about it 35 years later), the second trilogy was a bag of crap because of all the post-facto-back-story and lore it tried to cling to.
So as others have already said, hopefully Mr Flare can do for SW what he did for ST, ie. kick the nerds out of the room and get back to making decent movies that are fun and accessible for the rest of us.
Some of the post-RotJ Star Wars books were actually pretty good. A detailed and cohesive set of stories about the Rebellion continuing to fight the various but still very powerful groupings of the Imperial remnant following the death of the Emperor. Some of the books were better-written and plotted than others, but they all kept within a framework of the same storyline/timeline.
They only really jumped the shark with the 'New Jedi Order' stuff.
Anyway, I'd imagine Abrams will just do his usual trick and ignore all this useful 'canon' of work and give us some flashy fx-laden bullshite whose plot doesn't really hold together under the slightest scrutiny. This would still be better than the dreadful prequel trilogy from Lucas, of course!
They only really jumped the shark with the 'New Jedi Order' stuff.
Anyway, I'd imagine Abrams will just do his usual trick and ignore all this useful 'canon' of work and give us some flashy fx-laden bullshite whose plot doesn't really hold together under the slightest scrutiny. This would still be better than the dreadful prequel trilogy from Lucas, of course!
Don't need to kick the nerds out, per se - I'm an ST nerd, and I enjoyed JJ's reboot movies quite a lot. Not the story of the first one so much, but the cast and the atmosphere. The second was overall a much better movie, plot-wise, which you'd probably expect, working with an already established cast.
Besides, all you really need to satisfy a nerd is to give a nod to them every now and then - doesn't have to be big, just something the ordinary person wouldn't necessarily notice. Like the weapons vault of the original Thor movie for example. To most people (me included, in this case), that room was just a bunch of impressive-looking artefacts, but to Marvel nerds, they knew and recognized each object, understood their significance and back-story. The Marvel universe movies have tons of these little nods for the true fans. If JJ's smart, he's realized the wisdom in this strategy and will implement it into his movie.
However, if you - as a nerd - go into a movie like Mariner seems to be doing with the mindset that all that you hold dear is going to be violated, then it doesn't matter what the movie does from then on out - it's still going to lose. Because you can't win against such dogged determination...
FWIW, I used the inverted commas on the word canon because I did notice some mild inconsistencies when I read through 20 or so of the post-RotJ Star Wars books. Nothing too surprising as they were written by several different authors, some obviously better than others. However, as we've seen with the Star Trek movies, Abrams is likely to ignore all this stuff in any case.
Grall, I really don't hold Star Wars particularly dear. I enjoyed the first trilogy but, other than receiving a Darth Vader figurine for Christmas as a kid, didn't really bother about it too much until I read the other books as they were published many years later.
My problem with Abrams is that the first Star Trek film especially contained some stupid nonsensical shit. No real effort would have been required to tweak the storyline to avoid these issues (a couple of lines of exposition here and there), but it seems to me that he generally prefers not to bother thinking about this sort of stuff and instead just sticks some more whizz-bang special effects or 'comedic' elements. Put it this way, my view of the first Star Trek film would have probably been a bit higher without the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory scene levered in there, possibly as a bet?
As I noted, I expect his new Star Wars trilogy will be a lot better than the last 3 films and don't doubt I will watch them in the cinema, but I'm not expecting too much. I quite enjoyed his recent Mission Impossible film and thought Super 8 was pretty good but for a weakish ending (and the Star Trek films weren't bad, either), but I'm certainly not Abrams' biggest fan.
Grall, I really don't hold Star Wars particularly dear. I enjoyed the first trilogy but, other than receiving a Darth Vader figurine for Christmas as a kid, didn't really bother about it too much until I read the other books as they were published many years later.
My problem with Abrams is that the first Star Trek film especially contained some stupid nonsensical shit. No real effort would have been required to tweak the storyline to avoid these issues (a couple of lines of exposition here and there), but it seems to me that he generally prefers not to bother thinking about this sort of stuff and instead just sticks some more whizz-bang special effects or 'comedic' elements. Put it this way, my view of the first Star Trek film would have probably been a bit higher without the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory scene levered in there, possibly as a bet?
As I noted, I expect his new Star Wars trilogy will be a lot better than the last 3 films and don't doubt I will watch them in the cinema, but I'm not expecting too much. I quite enjoyed his recent Mission Impossible film and thought Super 8 was pretty good but for a weakish ending (and the Star Trek films weren't bad, either), but I'm certainly not Abrams' biggest fan.
Last edited:
Sigfried1977
Legend
It wasn't just an established cast. It was an established plot. I thought the approach he took to making the second film was incredibly by-the-numbers and lazy myself. So he altered the space time continuum of an entire franchise, and instead of doing something imaginative with it, he remade Wrath of Khan.
Don't get me wrong, it was still a fun movie. That said, if you completely disregard the core of a franchise, which in ST's case has always been brains over brawns, why the hell remake it in the first place.
Last edited:
This. It's as if they put in Khan just to make it more appealing to the oldschool trekkies, without considering that most of them are mature, wise and intelligent enough to question why in a totally altered space time continuum you'd end up with the same nemesis in slightly different circumstances. Apart from that though; I did much enjoy the movie I have to say. From an entertainment perspective, I even enjoyed it more than the first reboot - though both are very good IMO.
I'm not privy to the thinking that went on behind the scenes when making these movies of course, but just purely watching the end result, it seems the reasoning was that people liked the characters in Star Trek, they're bloody culture icons by now, even though many maybe not aren't so familiar with the various series themselves. Brains over brawn works on television, but not so much in big budget movies. It's hard to pull in a crowd with brains over brawn, so they made two action romps instead, where Kirk is more of a knuckleheaded slugger than he ever was in the original series, annndd...IMO, it works.
Everyone's free to disagree, but I think the movies are perfectly legitimate as Trek re-interpretations. Like I said, the plot itself of the first movie was, well, shall we say crap? But, the mood, the cast, the acting, the ship - that bit worked just fine, in my mind. And I've been a trek fan since the late 80s.
I'm hopeful. I mean, Empire Strikes Back was MANY years ago now (and so was Raiders), but it can't be worse than the prequels. It can't.
The Falcon doing a wicked high-speed immelman, hugging the dunes and dodging a pair of TIEs tells me this movie's gonna be fucking great! That trailer made my 7yo son ask for the Lego set of the Falcon for Christmas. I know exactly who is going to spend his Christmas putting that damn thing together too.
Sorry, son. I'm going to have to put this together first, just to make sure it isn't missing any pieces ...
Sigfried1977
Legend
Watched The Raid 2 and loved it. When I watched the first one I didn't think it managed to live up to the massive hype at all. It was basically Dredd 3d with fists and without the wit. Felt like watching someone pumping quarters into an old Double Dragon arcade machine. The fights just dragged on and on. The second movie delivers in truly spectacular fashion, though. Well, mostly it does. It's definitely too long. The connective tissue between the explosive action bits is a ponderous and convoluted mess of internal affairs-meets under cover cop meets-mafia families triple crossing each other kind of nonsense, and it takes up an awful lot of screen time. Thankfully the film's focus shifts more and more towards hyper violent fisticuffs as it goes, and the imaginative blood letting is truly a sight to behold. The 30 minutes long boss marathon at the end gave me goose bumps. You might take the hammer fight for a lazy homage to an old Korean classic, but it ends up being so much more than that. Lovely use of an aluminum baseball bat too.
Mostly highly recommended if you can deal with the carnage.
Mostly highly recommended if you can deal with the carnage.
Similar threads
