OT: Capitals Cinema Club: TV and Movies

[AlexBrovechkin8]

Big announcement here: just watched Star Wars Episides IV-VI for the first time. I feel like I’m part of society now.

Going to watch all of them, I think, but dreading watching Episide I. Went with some friends to watch it in high school and found it so awful I walked out and hung out in the arcade until the movie was over. Maybe I won’t hate it as much now but not holding out much hope that Jar Jar Binks will be any better now than he was 20 years ago.

 

[Hivemind]

Big announcement here: just watched Star Wars Episides IV-VI for the first time. I feel like I’m part of society now.

Going to watch all of them, I think, but dreading watching Episide I. Went with some friends to watch it in high school and found it so awful I walked out and hung out in the arcade until the movie was over. Maybe I won’t hate it as much now but not holding out much hope that Jar Jar Binks will be any better now than he was 20 years ago.

I’m gonna piss off some people by saying this, but the prequels are still worse than the new sequel trilogy.

I’d be curious if you might want to just immediately jump into some of the other Star Wars content, namely Rogue One and The Mandalorian. Rogue One is a great movie that fits directly before Episode IV. Solo might be best saved until after the prequels, but could maybe work without seeing them. Clone Wars and Rebels should be saved until after the prequels (and watching them can enhance the Mandalorian), but The Mandalorian can definitely be watched without having seen those series or anything beyond the original trilogy.

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

Big announcement here: just watched Star Wars Episides IV-VI for the first time. I feel like I’m part of society now.

Going to watch all of them, I think, but dreading watching Episide I. Went with some friends to watch it in high school and found it so awful I walked out and hung out in the arcade until the movie was over. Maybe I won’t hate it as much now but not holding out much hope that Jar Jar Binks will be any better now than he was 20 years ago.

this is funny. He won’t be better, but you’ll be more prepared to ignore him this time around.

 

[kicksavedave]

Big announcement here: just watched Star Wars Episides IV-VI for the first time. I feel like I’m part of society now.

Going to watch all of them, I think, but dreading watching Episide I. Went with some friends to watch it in high school and found it so awful I walked out and hung out in the arcade until the movie was over. Maybe I won’t hate it as much now but not holding out much hope that Jar Jar Binks will be any better now than he was 20 years ago.

Heh, Ep I is still hot trash, but it tells part of a story that spans all 6 movies, so it has a place. If you want a good cliff notes version, watch Lego Star Wars, Droid Tales, where C3PO recites the history of it all for the gang (its 20 mins). He starts like this: "The taxation of the trade federation was in dispute... " and everyone falls asleep on him.

BTW, you probably watched George Lucas edited version of Ep IV, where Han doesn't shoot first at Gredo and there is a CGI Jabba. I have a copy of the original theatrical release on DVD with Han shooting first. Its a pretty big thing to Star Wars nerds, so if you can seek out the original, even with its lesser special effects, its worth it.

 

[kicksavedave]

I’m gonna piss off some people by saying this, but the prequels are still worse than the new sequel trilogy.

I’d be curious if you might want to just immediately jump into some of the other Star Wars content, namely Rogue One and The Mandalorian. Rogue One is a great movie that fits directly before Episode IV. Solo might be best saved until after the prequels, but could maybe work without seeing them. Clone Wars and Rebels should be saved until after the prequels (and watching them can enhance the Mandalorian), but The Mandalorian can definitely be watched without having seen those series or anything beyond the original trilogy.

I agree with the exception of Revenge of the Sith (EPIII). I liked it a lot... cheesy, sure, but it tells a vital story about how Anakin becomes Darth Vader, and I liked how they presented it. I'd rank it 2nd of all the movies (of the original 6), but I know thats not a popular opinion.

 

[tenken00]

I actually only liked 3 out of 1-3 and 7-9. 7 was okay, but for obvious spoiler reasons I kind of just rolled my eyes. Rogue One is the best one of them all though. Its a little darker than your standard Star Wars fare.

Edit: it was also really hard for me to get through Episode 8 like Episode 1.

 

[AlexBrovechkin8]

Not good. Everything will be behind the paywall on Peacock now.

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

Not good. Everything will be behind the paywall on Peacock now.

son of a....

 

[Ajax1995]

Not good. Everything will be behind the paywall on Peacock now.

Good. I’m tired of paying the same price now for limited version of content that I used to get a more complete version of in the recent past.

I’m not buying Peacock and this pandemic has definitely taught me I don’t need sports.

 

[HTFN]

I’m gonna piss off some people by saying this, but the prequels are still worse than the new sequel trilogy.

I’d be curious if you might want to just immediately jump into some of the other Star Wars content, namely Rogue One and The Mandalorian. Rogue One is a great movie that fits directly before Episode IV. Solo might be best saved until after the prequels, but could maybe work without seeing them. Clone Wars and Rebels should be saved until after the prequels (and watching them can enhance the Mandalorian), but The Mandalorian can definitely be watched without having seen those series or anything beyond the original trilogy.

That's a hard no. You don't really gain anything from it, it's not a good movie on its own (no character arcs, paint by numbers, almost objectively pointless plot), and it makes the episodes that come after it make less sense (Vader).

It's a prettier Star Wars with the classic aesthetic but it's not actually a good movie

 

[Hivemind]

That's a hard no. You don't really gain anything from it, it's not a good movie on its own (no character arcs, paint by numbers, almost objectively pointless plot), and it makes the episodes that come after it make less sense (Vader).

It's a prettier Star Wars with the classic aesthetic but it's not actually a good movie

Don't agree with any of this. It's a great war movie set in the Star Wars universe. And in no way does it make Episode 4 make any less sense.

 

[HTFN]

Don't agree with any of this. It's a great war movie set in the Star Wars universe. And in no way does it make Episode 4 make any less sense.

It's definitely a movie set in the Star Wars universe. The characters are thin and don't do any growing, they're like side characters in a video game rather than some colorful Ocean's Eleven style group. They have cosmetic differences but they're basically all pawns with a unified goal, and the goal just so happens to be something we already know happens so character development is really the name of the game.

I'm not saying you can't know the ending and still enjoy it, or tell a story

Spoiler

where everyone dies at the end

well, but the way you do it is by building your characters and there's also just nothing there. They tick off the boxes the plot requires them to tick and then disappear, or the movie tells you they're one way

Spoiler

(watch out, this guy's even morally greyer than Han Solo, uh oh! Tension! Can we trust him?! And this girl is so hardened, cynical and tough) and then spends its runtime doing pretty generically plain things (our smuggling con artist? Just a super nice and supportive guy, really, no big deal, he's just here for our I-guess-lovable, baby-saving heroine).

Then there's the way they kind of all identically die, one after the other, just after fulfilling their most important task and almost always by taking a slow motion second to stare out into the audience and reassure them that everything is fine and not to feel too bad... You guys are the ones who decided to make a movie where all the people die, don't also soften the blow to the audience by letting us know that they're happy about it and it doesn't really matter. It removes the stakes, makes me forget why I should care.

and no, it doesn't actively introduce plot holes to the original trilogy, but it weakens it when you add it to the timeline. Rogue One draws inspiration from the original trilogy, including some character beats (again, Han Solo), but the problem is that when you also set that movie as an intro to the original trilogy you accidentally water down the originality of the things you drew from to begin with. It's like in Solo,

Spoiler

how they f*** up Han Solo from the original trilogy by showing you that "oh, no, he was already a hero at heart and all that smuggling is sort of a big misunderstanding, he's a good guy through and through" and it makes sense to us because we know Han Solo is a hero, but actively undermines three other movies (and makes you wonder what the f*** he's doing in them) when you consider it as a part of the whole.

EDIT: also, someone put this really well, but even if you ignore Vader going from bloodthirsty badass to "guy smacking poles with Alec Guinness" that whole part of the movie is tone breaking fan service.

Spoiler

Imagine watching a "good" WWII or Civil War movie where there's a part at the end where this big roided out Nazi (or Confederate soldier) tears through like twenty good guys and the tone of the movie is "f*** yeah, this guy rules, look at how raw and awesome this guy is" even though he's the bad guy (and you won't know any different for almost three whole movies). That's definitely good fan service, it's not good movie making.

 

[Ovechkins Wodka]

Its Award season and going to a screening today for "The Little Things" 3 of my favorite actors Denzel, Rami, and Jared Letto... looks it comes out on HBOmax the 29th

 

[AlexBrovechkin8]

Started watching Bridgerton with my better half... liking it more than I thought I would.

 

[CapitalsCupReality]

Digging The Purge season 2....

 

[Hivemind]

It's definitely a movie set in the Star Wars universe. The characters are thin and don't do any growing, they're like side characters in a video game rather than some colorful Ocean's Eleven style group. They have cosmetic differences but they're basically all pawns with a unified goal, and the goal just so happens to be something we already know happens so character development is really the name of the game.

I'm not saying you can't know the ending and still enjoy it, or tell a story

Spoiler

where everyone dies at the end

well, but the way you do it is by building your characters and there's also just nothing there. They tick off the boxes the plot requires them to tick and then disappear, or the movie tells you they're one way

Spoiler

(watch out, this guy's even morally greyer than Han Solo, uh oh! Tension! Can we trust him?! And this girl is so hardened, cynical and tough) and then spends its runtime doing pretty generically plain things (our smuggling con artist? Just a super nice and supportive guy, really, no big deal, he's just here for our I-guess-lovable, baby-saving heroine).

Then there's the way they kind of all identically die, one after the other, just after fulfilling their most important task and almost always by taking a slow motion second to stare out into the audience and reassure them that everything is fine and not to feel too bad... You guys are the ones who decided to make a movie where all the people die, don't also soften the blow to the audience by letting us know that they're happy about it and it doesn't really matter. It removes the stakes, makes me forget why I should care.

and no, it doesn't actively introduce plot holes to the original trilogy, but it weakens it when you add it to the timeline. Rogue One draws inspiration from the original trilogy, including some character beats (again, Han Solo), but the problem is that when you also set that movie as an intro to the original trilogy you accidentally water down the originality of the things you drew from to begin with. It's like in Solo,

Spoiler

how they f*** up Han Solo from the original trilogy by showing you that "oh, no, he was already a hero at heart and all that smuggling is sort of a big misunderstanding, he's a good guy through and through" and it makes sense to us because we know Han Solo is a hero, but actively undermines three other movies (and makes you wonder what the f*** he's doing in them) when you consider it as a part of the whole.

EDIT: also, someone put this really well, but even if you ignore Vader going from bloodthirsty badass to "guy smacking poles with Alec Guinness" that whole part of the movie is tone breaking fan service.

Spoiler

Imagine watching a "good" WWII or Civil War movie where there's a part at the end where this big roided out Nazi (or Confederate soldier) tears through like twenty good guys and the tone of the movie is "f*** yeah, this guy rules, look at how raw and awesome this guy is" even though he's the bad guy (and you won't know any different for almost three whole movies). That's definitely good fan service, it's not good movie making.

You can make these kind of points about basically any movie if you approach it with a cynical mindset and with the goal of pointing out any tropes you find. You can do the same with the original trilogy and comparing it to the material that inspired it (Kurosawa and westerns). You can do the same with The Mandalorian. And while watching critically is valid, watching a movie with the intent of tearing it down doesn't really mean it's a bad movie. Han Solo's character is an archetype derived from Westerns, it doesn't mean it can't be used in other movies afterwards.

 

[HTFN]

You can make these kind of points about basically any movie if you approach it with a cynical mindset and with the goal of pointing out any tropes you find. You can do the same with the original trilogy and comparing it to the material that inspired it (Kurosawa and westerns). You can do the same with The Mandalorian. And while watching critically is valid, watching a movie with the intent of tearing it down doesn't really mean it's a bad movie. Han Solo's character is an archetype derived from Westerns, it doesn't mean it can't be used in other movies afterwards.

If that were what I was doing you'd have a point, but it's not. I didn't go in wanting to hate it, I wanted to like it, but by the end I felt hollow and sort of... vacant, so I went back and watched it again to figure out why and that's about where I landed. It's a movie that takes place before events we know about, but acts as though it also knows about them, it's got random fan service plugs in it that shift the tone of the whole film, and it rushes through the development of the characters it bothers to try developing.

It's great eye candy, and you don't necessarily notice, but it's not good. It's like... first Transformers movie good.

Spoiler

Seriously, it's just flawed. I said earlier, if you're asking me to watch a movie about a suicide mission that's just fine with me, we don't judge war and horror movies on how many characters make it to the end and telling tragic but heroic stories works. But, when that's the point of your movie you need to make us feel for them. Maybe some of them aren't super cool with dying, maybe they're scared or don't all do the right thing like robots. Everybody in this movie starts wherever their "diverse" background says they start, immediately discards all elements of their personality that aren't useful or witty, does exactly what the script needs them to, goes "what? oh no, I guess it's my time" and then die basically back to back with these sort of tonally identical slow camera moments (which there are too many of). The "conflict" between characters is usually talking about how they don't understand each other cosmetically, but it doesn't really impact things.

Of the main characters, the girl is again played like someone who had their background told to them in an open world game ("you're a tough girl, in and out of prisons and whatever and blah blah rough life because of the Empire") and then just hits the Paragon option on all the dialog. Her mood shifts really fast from potential wildcard to self-sacrificing hero, and when she does the guy just sort of follows.

And I'm not saying George Lucas invented the rogueish anti-hero, or calling for an embargo on one across movies like Star Wars did it first, but when you have Han Solo in your universe it's going to draw comparisons and you might want to consider doing something to differentiate yourself and I think the main difference between the two was that we saw the other guy kill somebody he didn't have to kill (and Han shot second ). Smuggler turned rebel hero for the main female protagonist was a good arc over three movies because it was earned. This guy goes from "possibly even sketchier than Han Solo" to "pretty much guaranteed to help and be super supportive" pretty early and doesn't believably waver.

Waving away criticism by insisting that the other person came in "with the intent of tearing it down" is a weak thing to do. I'm not against using tropes, people have been telling stories a long time and it's pretty much impossible to avoid them. The trick is to understand them and do them well instead of using familiar ones to prop up portions of your film and rushing to the next scene before anyone notices (kind of the same thing Abrams kept doing).

 

[Roric]

Say what you will about the prequel trilogy with its acting, script, jar jar, etc. but the lightsaber duels alone were worth the many watches for me, the choreography was very well done in all 3 movies. Also, phantom menace was the first time anyone had ever seen the jedi/sith in their prime which made it all the more badass. Not even a contest for me prequel > new sequel. I love star wars and i almost fell asleep in the theater for Last Jedi, whereas I never get tired of revenge of the sith

 

[hb12xchamps]

We need Hayden Christensen to kill it as Vader in the Obi Wan series so Disney gives Vader his own live action show. I just want to see badass Darth Vader in live action, similar to Rogue One. That end scene was incredible

 

[John Price]

this is funny. He won’t be better, but you’ll be more prepared to ignore him this time around.

You barely notice he is there upon rewatch

also



If Qui Gonn hadn't rescued him out of nowhere there wouldn't be a Jar JAr

There probably wouldn't also be

Spoiler

much of the plot like them using the Gungans to escape or anything like that either

 

[John Price]

The prequels were also good, I recently reviewed 2 and 3 last year I believe (or the year before that) off cable recordings. (probably 2018)

The originals were best followed by the prequels and then the sequels. That being said...the Disney Star Wars were not as bad as people said they were. People widely considered TLJ a disaster. It is not that bad

 

[tenken00]

The prequels were also good, I recently reviewed 2 and 3 last year I believe (or the year before that) off cable recordings. (probably 2018)

The originals were best followed by the prequels and then the sequels. That being said...the Disney Star Wars were not as bad as people said they were. People widely considered TLJ a disaster. It is not that bad

I dont know why, but I just couldn't handle 8 The Last Jedi. By the time they arrived at the space casino, I just threw my hands up lol..

 

[AlexBrovechkin8]

Finished Bridgerton S1 last night. Really, really good.

 

[Hivemind]

There's plenty of stuff set in the era of the prequel trilogies that good, but the prequels themselves are pretty awful. Nothing ruins the prequels quite as much as actually watching the prequels and remembering first hand how awful the dialogue and acting are. Even normally gifted actors like Liam Neeson and Natalie Portman completely mail in their performances (or are crippled by awful dialogue). Ewan McGregor is the only one who gives a good performance, and even he has to put up with bizarre scenes like Dax's diner. The prequels have their moments (Dual of the Fates is a great tune and the light saber duels are cool, even if I think Yoda doing backflips kinda ruins his character) and they are technically impressive, there's just too much bad to ignore about them. They spent tons of effort making a CGI pear float and interact with water and actors (a technically impressive feat at the time), but did nothing to fix the cringe-inducing dialogue or robotic acting in the very same scene.

The sequel trilogy movies are each okay in their own right, but as a trilogy they fail from misdirection and poor planning. There's definitely things each of them could have done better individually, but they're okay as C-grade popcorn flicks. Obviously Star Wars should have a higher standard than that, but I'll take them over the prequels.

 

[usiel]

Regarding the SW prequels have to remember Lucas completely funded them himself so had ultimate creative power. As much as some people complain about creative interference by studio execs I do feel kinda feel a what if might have happened on someone calling on the terrible script.

I did think the 3rd prequel was actually decent.