Movie Reviews 2.0

I was never one of the "Anakid" haters, because I always enjoyed Jake Lloyd's performance; I thought he was great for his age, with great facial mimicry. In the extended cut of the movie he emotes far more with his face during the pod race as he struggles to fix his crippled racer than many grown action stars could ever hope to. :D
I don't recall being enthused with his performance, although in part I agree with the general sentiment that it is hard to get a good teen/adult audience connection with a child actor. It isn't impossible, although it takes the sort of writing and directing chops that weren't in evidence. I don't blame Lloyd, since there's so many Oscar winners and lauded actors whose talents didn't seem to be utilized.

I haven't seen the extended cut, but if some of Lloyd's best work is in it, then again it shows choices made higher up in the production were not helping. Outside of the movie, the amount grief I later learned he got over what should have been a positive experience from realizing a fan kid's dream saddened me. One can't really blame Lucas for the actions of kids and the fandom, either.

Still, the character is just way, WAY too young for the shoes he's supposed to fill. He's a natural-born mechanic, pod racer and builder of droids......at age SIX. That's simply beyond the realms of credibility "force prodigy" or not. Then he's supposed to be an accomplished starfighter pilot too, only he hasn't ever sat in a fighter by the time Obi-Wan meets him in Episode 1, making Obi of Episode 4 a doddering misremembering old fart. :p
Making Anakin so deeply embedded into the other characters, like building C-3PO also had an effect of shrinking the universe.
Also, as Lucas intended the prequels to be a fall from grace tragedy, Episode I effectively wasted an entire movie of time building up the emotional component, since neither Obi-Wan or Padme really interacted with him in anything that carried over, and the later movies had to "tell not show" or rush things. Whatever investment was put into Qui-Gon was burned up as well, since he spent more time caring (sort of) about Anakin at all and his impact on Obi-Wan was such that he was barely commented on ever after (except that cringe-worthy callback in III).

...And the Jedi of the prequels are nowhere near a religious order, as suggested by dialogue in episode 4. Rather, they simply seem a very highly technically advanced law enforcement agency.
I think there was an off-hand comment made by the office Vader force-choked about it being his religion. I wouldn't say it's enough to produce specific monk formulation, or the policies on self-denial.
The desert robes made sense in the original trilogy on Tatooine, for example, but perhaps Lucas in some desire for consistency decided to retcon that into making them Gregorian monks with "laser swords".

If anything, after all these movies and books, I would have figured their one job would have been to hunt down the planet/system destroying superweapons that someone builds every 10-20 years. Nothing else seems sustainable.

Lucas dropped the ball on so many levels with his shoddy writing, it's really sad. :(

The weird romance handling and the movies' treatment of love seemed alienating to me. I'd wonder if it would have been better if the movie started with the adult actors and had focused on the treatment of Anakin's mother and the Jedi Order's complete insensitivity to the persistence of slavery (and then embracing of a form of it) to better justify his character's fall from grace. It would have required that he remembered his slave mother more often than just once over a decade later, though.
 
Lucas dropped the ball on so many levels with his shoddy writing, it's really sad. :(

He was a much older man by the time he did the second trilogy? So he probably didn't have the same energy or passion for the story.

Though after he made his big payday selling LucasFilm and the SW properties to Disney, I hear he's been carping about the new SW movies Disney put out.

Whatever, he got his billions (though I'm not sure what billions do for people who are of a certain age because he was able to afford a very luxurious lifestyle, if that's what he wanted, long before he made the second trilogy).
 
He was a much older man by the time he did the second trilogy? So he probably didn't have the same energy or passion for the story.
It's a possibility, although there are other factors.
A lot of what audiences frequently latch onto are elements of the movies or universe that were the product of other contributors, like writers, directors, editors, and actors making choices or cutting things in the original trilogy. A lot of the most acclaimed movies had limited involvement from him.
When we see what captures Lucas' enthusiasm, it's often the more FX-driven elements or specific ideas or points that might not seem like the point to many. In the past, that may have been constrained by resources, technology, or the inputs of others with more say in a collaborative process.

There are signs that he didn't physically go through some of the physical extremes that he did as a young director getting a a movie put together in the face of the elements and many difficulties, but in some ways his vision of technologically transcending the limits of location, actors, and perhaps even the commonly accepted strictures of storytelling, played into that.

Lucas may have still had passion for his specific vision, but what that was and what seemed to capture the attention of audiences or popular culture aren't necessarily the same. The gap in perception is in some ways shown by his tendency to keep going back to re-edit the existing movies, how he's treated some of his former collaborators, and even something of a tiff with the US Library of Congress when it came to preserving the original versions of the trilogy.

Though after he made his big payday selling LucasFilm and the SW properties to Disney, I hear he's been carping about the new SW movies Disney put out.
Anecdotes are that Disney tried to play nice and provided something of an advisory role given to him during early production of the Force Awakens, which may have ended with some mutual hard feelings. He then went on to make some critical, and sometimes baffling or tone-deaf remarks while saying that Disney discarded all his input.
I think it goes to show that sometimes things become something greater than the sum of their parts, and sometimes what makes them part of the greater culture is something that transcends any single factor or person. Maybe seeing what happened when it started to boil down to Lucas and his personal resources is an example, and depending on whether Disney can sustain the franchise long-term even with its resources and perhaps many competing visions/focus groups it may be that the opposite approach doesn't necessarily grant success either.

Whatever, he got his billions (though I'm not sure what billions do for people who are of a certain age because he was able to afford a very luxurious lifestyle, if that's what he wanted, long before he made the second trilogy).
One thing it might go into is his own personal cinematic museum with his personal Star Wars collection, estimated to eventually cost over a billion dollars.
 
One thing it might go into is his own personal cinematic museum with his personal Star Wars collection, estimated to eventually cost over a billion dollars.
He also said at the time of the sale that he planned to make sizeable donations to charity. I don't know what, or if, he may have donated to however, I don't really keep track of rich peoples' doings... :p
 
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2:

Juvenile, entirely forgettable, and in fact downright boring. Full of epically bad dialogue; the movie essentially has no story to it whatsoever. What is there is just tacky sludge to glue together each occurrence of overly and ridiculously gratuitous computer-rendered special effects and explosions. Michael Bay would be envious, in GoGv2, even stone can explode!

Even the 1980s nostalgia is overloaded, and reaches into facepalm territory when a giant yellow rock pac man wakka-wakkas across the screen in the final battle sequence. Sound effects included, ludicrous but true!

I did not care for this movie at all, I thought it was dumb and stupid and boring. It's so juvenile, and anyone juvenile enough to laugh at its many unbelievably juvenile "jokes" is a dumb and stupid and boring person. Marvel cinematic universe just jumped the shark as far as I'm concerned. Or maybe they did it already with Deadpool, it's about 50/50 whichever of these two movies I like the least.

Yes, I was seriously disappointed. I'm a big fan of the first movie, it does have a soul, but the second its just incredibly bad! Also glad to see I'm not the only one who didn't really like Deadpool. All my friends loved it and I cant understand why. Grossly overrated.
 
Well I saw the new IT yesterday and it's easily, hands down, the best horror movie and one of the scariest films I've seen in my life. While at the same time very funny and simply brilliant.

I loved it, but did not find it scary. Then again I never found clowns scary. The scariest film for me its still the first Conjuring. There is something about it that absolutely terrifies me, never mind how many times I've seen it already. I can see most horror movies by myself, but that one is a big fucking NO.
 
Yes, I was seriously disappointed. I'm a big fan of the first movie, it does have a soul, but the second its just incredibly bad! Also glad to see I'm not the only one who didn't really like Deadpool. All my friends loved it and I cant understand why. Grossly overrated.

I think the main positive part of both Deadpool and GOTG were that they tried to do something very different in the context of super hero movies, which is why people loved them so much.

Both very silly but at least they gave something a little bit different than the ocean of samey super hero films we got recently.
 
I think the main positive part of both Deadpool and GOTG were that they tried to do something very different in the context of super hero movies, which is why people loved them so much.
A.K.A. the "Star Trek IV Phenomenon" then, in other words... Not my personal favorite Trek movie, in part because it is more light-hearted, but the audience's favorite (by far, as I recall), because it's more light-hearted, and also relatable to non-sci-fi nerds due to the contemporary setting (of 30 years ago, naturally...)
 
I don't think GOTG2 deserves quite so much flak.

Watched it the other night and thought it was OK and preferred it to Deadpool which had just a bit too much in the way of 'knowing' winks - even though that was obviously what they were going for.

I thought some of the humour in GOTG2 was reasonably well done though the plot was a bit, well, crap.

Let me just say that the sooner we see, or rather don't see, 'cameos' from Stan Lee, the better. Don't wish ill on him but it has become very tedious indeed.
 
GotG2 was slightly disappointing, but I sill enjoyed some parts of it very much. Any movie in which Michael Rooker goes "I'm Mary Poppins, y'all!" is at least a-okay in my book.
 
Transformers: The Last Knight

What an utter pile of shit. I don't even know where to start on how to fix it. Oh wait, I do. Nuke it all. Start from scratch.
 
What an utter pile of shit.
It can't be worse than the Shia transformers. It just can't.

It's not even Shia I disliked so much; the guy has done good acting in other movies. It must be Michael Bay that makes him absolutely intolerable to me. I have like, poison ivy reactions in my brain to the Shia shenanigans (Shianigans?) that go on all through those movies. Especially the 2nd and 3rd ones were particularly awful. 4th was pretty alright I thought, by brainless, completely implausible action movie standards... :p
 
The latest Transformers was really bad, by far the worst of the bunch and that is saying an awful lot... I don't say this lightly, but it just might be the worst movie I have ever seen :)
 
The latest Transformers was really bad, by far the worst of the bunch and that is saying an awful lot... I don't say this lightly, but it just might be the worst movie I have ever seen :)
Is it wrong that I want to watch it because someone said that this is the worst movie thus made me curious about it? I wasn't planning to watch it all until I read your post (and everyone else reviews).
 
I guess I will watch it then...
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Hhhaahahahaha! :LOL:
 
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