Movies 2: Electric Boogaloo

Saw Wreck It Ralph 2 the other day, it's a enjoyable family film.

Then today Hellboy, we booked a few days ago before the review's, it's not great but isn't 13% on rotten tomatoes more like 33 or 43%.

So the first trailer for the next Star Wars film dropped, and I'm sure the trailer wasn't supposed to make me laugh more than a funny comedy but that's honestly my main reaction.  

TFA: "We've got to restore faith in the franchise, people loved the OT so we'll plagerise A New Hope with tributes to the rest of the trilogy, even if it doesn't make a lick of sense in worldbuilding and invalidates the ending of Return of the Jedi!"

TLJ: "Actually no the past sucks, the heroes of the OT suck, logical storytelling sucks, and good characterisation sucks!  Lets kill that past because it really sucks!  Also purple-hair lady is a goddess of logic and YOU.  WILL.  WORSHIP HER!"

RoS: "Actually actually no, the past is paramount, forget TLJ ever happened, the past is SO important that it turns out we've been building up to the return of the greatest evil ever this entire time and we certainly aren't just desperately trying to get people in the door by bringing back an old villain after a certain hack killed off the new one!"

God this trilogy is such a clusterf*** of inconsistency.  I mean two films in and we still don't even have a coherent story.  

Also Rise of Skywalker is such a dumb name and as on-the-nose as a wet fart.  It also screams of more desperation after the backlash over what they did to Luke in TLJ. After two movies and everybody not giving a crap about the new characters (because they did such a good job making the audience empathise and emotionally invest in them) they now look set to throw the lot of them under the bus that drove over the OT characters while dredging out the corpse of said old characters because they are the only thing people actually like.

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Yeah, well, they need to do something special after the last Jedi only made $1,332,539,889.

I forgot James Cameron's Avatar is the best film ever.

Star Wars looked like Star Wars to me in my expert analysis.

I'm not saying TLJ is good or bad but I don't think Disney give a glass of blue milk what manchildren on the internet say about it.

Even if it some how flopped, they've still got all that Marvel money this year to come.

Plus Disney+ sounds rather decent, hopefully comes to the UK this year as I certainly will be watching the original MCU show's and all the film's in 4K HDR.

Star Trek is better anyway.

Drunkalilly wrote:

I'm not saying TLJ is good or bad but I don't think Disney give a glass of blue milk what manchildren on the internet say about it.

Ah yes, name-calling.  Truly the best way to debate someone you disagree with, and truly the firmest of foundations you can create as a counter to their points.  Such a sign of maturity!  

If they didn't care about the main complaints those "manchildren" made then why is the latest movie literally titled "The Rise of Skywalker"?  You do realise one of the largest complaints many had towards the last movie was the character assassination and removal of Luke Skywalker, right?  

Lets get something clear.  If I come off as bitter regarding Star Wars it is only partly because The Last Jedi was such a hilariously bad movie.  A larger part is the very behaviour you yourself are demonstrating.  How were critics of the movie treated by the makers of the movie itself?  They were called sexists, manchildren, trolls, nazis, racists, and every other name under the sun designed to devalue their opinions and criticisms, regardless of the validity of said opinions and critical analyses.  Unsurprisingly such behaviour tends to incite anger in people, who'd have thunk!  

And for what?  Because once-passionate fans of a franchise dared to criticise what it has become.  

Rather than take it on the chin and, perhaps, acknowledge that they were the ones who messed up and they would work to rectify the issues in future movies, they instead turned upon and tried to silence the fanbase.  Which, I would like to remind you, are the ones bankrolling them.  

Honestly at this point I question why I even bother to dignify you with a thought-out response.  

Drunkalilly wrote:

Yeah, well, they need to do something special after the last Jedi only made $1,332,539,889.

A solid 40% or so drop in money from TFA.  Sure, it was a financial success, but I somehow doubt any company is going to look at something making 700 million dollars less and say "yep, that's exactly what we wanted!".  

And then Solo made -$ which would've removed another chunk of The Last Jedi's success in Disney's bottom-line.  Meanwhile all the toys for the sequel trilogy are rotting on store shelves in discount shops because nobody is buying them.  Remember Star Wars isn't just big because of the movies.  In fact its merchandising power is likely far stronger than its movie money power (or rather it was stronger).

But yeah, sure, Star Wars is the mega-franchise it was a decade ago.  It's fiiiiine.  That's why they've gone to w***ing off ot fans for this final movie, because their attempt at building newer stuff went that damn well.

The thing is . . . I liked Luke's characterisation. So for me, most of the complaints I saw about TLJ boiled down to people not looking the prevalence of female characters. In that situation, I feel more than justified in calling the bad men names.

I won't deny that the last Jedi was imperfect - Laura Derns character would have been better replaced by Leia and while the casino planet was thematically strong it didn't add up to much.

On the other hand, the characters, themes, action and story was the best Star wars has been since the eighties.

Maybe you're right. Maybe Disney are overly pandering to the bad faith crowd. If that's the case, fuck them. Big capitalist cowards.

The problem with Luke isn't that they tried to take him in a different direction.  It's that it completely contradicts Luke as he was established in the oriiginal trilogy.

Luke in the Original trilogy:

-Optimistic even in the face of personal tragedy, embraced adventure even in the face of his aunt and uncle being burned alive
-Shouldered the mantle of taking on the Death Star
-Heeded the call to save his friends even in the face of his mentors telling him it will doom him and his friends
-Felt light in his fathers heart, was willing to gamble his life on the light being stronger

Luke in the Sequel Trilogy:

-Felt darkness in the heart of his nephew, tried to murder the child in his sleep
-Ran off to die in the middle of nowhere after setting a new darkness upon the galaxy, even when he was one of the few people capable of fighting back
-Refuses to help even after hearing his friends are dying and in immediate peril

The cynical jaded veteran hero is a trope that can work.  In fact I actually really like it when it's done correctly.  Problem is it was not done correctly.  You cannot simply write a character completely differently and then make the reason "he's old now".  That does not work.  This is a massive transformation for a character, and it is one that, if you want to have work, need to actually develop properly.  Not simply state it is so and spend a two minute flashback that adds in even more contradictions.  

As for the criticisms for the female characters, that would have less to do with sexism and more to do with the fact that all of them fail on every critical level.  Rey has no arc, no personal tests and challenges to overcome, and she saves the day the same way she did in the first movie (by tapping into the Force and gaining skills from it, which isn't how the Force works).  

Holdo spent the entire movie condescending Poe and being such a awful commander that the audience is led to believe she is actually a mole.  Only for a reversal that says "nope, she was the only smart person there, and if you'd only trusted women you'd have known that!"  It's a awful metaphor made even worse by shoddy writting, because she spends the entire movie attacking a established character that the audience has come to emphasise with from the first movie for saving them at the start of this movie.  For this character to work Poe had to actually be out of line and screwing up, and yet every decision he makes in the movie is actually the correct one for someone in his position with the information he has access to.

As for Rose Tiko...  this 50 second clip from the movie sums it up rather nicely.  This clip right here is so bad that it would be perfectly in place in a satire.

As for The Rise of Skywalker, I'll just leave this out here to let people digest. Every single victory earned in the original trilogy has now been invalidated.

Luke? His life's calling blew up in his face to such a degree he went off to die in complete solitude and self-loathing.

Han? His relationship with Leia fell flat on its ass, his son turned into a tyrant that went on to shshsh him, and after learning to be a selfless hero he reverted back into a selfish smuggler only out for his own interests.

Leia? Basically stuck in the same back-end job she had in the original movies.

As far as we the audience have been told nothing changed because of Return of the Jedi. The Empire simply reincarnated into a more malicious tyrannical organisation, the main cast went on to live awful lives, and nothing of note was achieved.

And now to put the cherry on the s*** cake the one victory we had from Return of the Jedi, that is the death of the Sith order, is possibly being undone in some capacity (Snoke wasn't Sith, so his existence didn't invalidate the events that went down on the second Death Star).

What fantastic storytelling this trilogy has been.

I guess the other thing is. . . Star Wars was never actually good. It's pretty and fun but it's pretty stupid. The new ones are also pretty and fun, and equally stupid. So I just don't care as much as you.

Ps everything you said about Rey applies to Luke so are you sure you're not just saying it because she's a girl?

Drunkalilly wrote:

I guess the other thing is. . . Star Wars was never actually good. It's pretty and fun but it's pretty stupid. The new ones are also pretty and fun, and equally stupid. So I just don't care as much as you.

Ps everything you said about Rey applies to Luke so are you sure you're not just saying it because she's a girl?

Luke struggled, Luke royally f***ed up multiple times (and most importantly paid severely for those f*** ups), and Luke grew as a person over the course of the trilogy.  

He started out a naive farmboy.  Over time his optimism led him to believe that he could achieve anything he wanted without consequence, and his best asset was shown that it could also be his biggest weakness.  He paid for that in blood.  He grew as a person, and after achieving a maturity he did not have at the start of the story he was able to defeat his enemies.  He grew as both a man and a warrior, and in doing so attained the means to become a hero (this is another factor in why people despise what TLJ did to Luke.  The movie threw every piece of character development Luke received in the garbage to tell a story that did not fit with the character he was made into).  

Rey is completely different.  Two movies into a trilogy she is exactly the same person she was at the start of the first one.  There has been no growth as a person from her, no actual character arc.  Meanwhile all of her skills are, quite literally, attained from merely tuning into the Force (in other words her power is being able to summon a Deus Ex Machina as the story calls for it.  This in fact directly contradicts every single thing that was established about the Force in the first two trilogies).  

I'll be blunt.  People that say Luke is the same at Rey didn't pay attention to either trilogy.  From my observations they primarily use it to try and turn the argument into one they think they can win, by trying to say that people that think Rey is poorly characterised are sexists (and you of all people should be well aware I like my well-handled female protagonists and should therefore know far better than to make such dumb claims and insinuations.  Heck in Star Wars alone two of my three favourite characters are, in fact, women).  

As for the quality of the original movies, you do them a disservice to call them "stupid and not good".  They were simple stories about good vs evil.  That however does not mean they were bad.  They did many things objectively correct.  Characters were well-established and acted in a way that was consistent with them for the entire series.  The plots moved in reasonably logical ways. The rules of the universe were established and consistently adhered to in a believable way.  And they were emotionally satisfying tales.  

I'm going to take a wild guess that your next argument will be "they're kids movies so who cares about quality?"  I'll preempt that.  Why does quality matter in childrens stories?  Because being a childrens story should not be a metric to determine quality (I hope you don't like Nintendo if you think childrens media should be devoid of quality...).  Being a story made for children simply means a story will deal with less adult themes and plotlines and will have a simpler presentation, it has, or at least shouldn't have, anything to do with actual quality of execution.  

On top of that I would say that the ideology that quality doesn't matter in childrens entertainment is, in fact dangerous and harmful to children.  Children are impressionable, their minds are developing.  If you raise a child on media that pushes them, makes them think, and broadens their world views they will grow up better for it.  The reverse is also true, the less you push a childs mind the more close-minded they will be as an adult.

I think you're doing a disservice to Rey and giving Luke too much credit at the same time. They both go through very similar heroes journeys in their first film and they both close their eyes and let the force solve everything in their climax.

Then in the second movie, they both want to learn the ways of the force, are too stubborn to listen to their teachers, learn something of a lesson but then rush away at the last minute. Rey failed to save kylo, maybe only made him worse, and then just barely saved a few of the resistance.

For the record, I don't think you personally are a sexist. I do however feel that just as I'm quick to assume arguments are being made in bad faith by internet men, you are quick to take the other stance for fear of accidentally siding with what you see as reactionary false positivity.

I'm all for giving children something good, and I also love the original star wars films. But they are dumb and clunky, and apparently they didn't deliver their message well enough cos we still got Nazis.

I'm a member of a Nintendo forum, why did you think I'd immediately dismiss something just because it was for kids?

Athrun888 wrote:

A solid 40% or so drop in money from TFA.  Sure, it was a financial success, but I somehow doubt any company is going to look at something making 700 million dollars less and say "yep, that's exactly what we wanted!".  

And then Solo made -$ which would've removed another chunk of The Last Jedi's success in Disney's bottom-line.  

I'm not going to get into all the sequel trilogy chat because I don't really care enough about Star Wars to bother and I've said my piece on TLJ on here before, but I don't think movie financials hold any water when speaking about a film's quality. Avatar made billions and that film has had the cultural impact of a small pebble dropping into the ocean. Pixels made nearly $250,000,000 worldwide.

The drop from TFA to TLJ is almost definitely because TFA had the added benefit of being the first proper Star Wars film in over a decade with a hypersonic hype train behind it and a cast of beloved returning characters. Solo has nothing to do with TLJ - that movie looked guff in its early trailers and had very little hype behind it as a result.

Anyway, in regards to Episode IX - I'm looking forward to it! That scene with Rey and the TIE fighter barrelling towards her was straight out of North by Northwest and there were some really cool visuals in the trailer. I'm looking forward to seeing how Rey and the gang have moved on after TLJ as I think I read we're getting a short timeskip. I love timeskips in movie and shows - staying within Star Wars, seeing Luke go from a defeated and naive young lad in Episode V to this mysterious and unflappable Jedi Knight at Jabba's Place in VI was great. I hope they do something similar in IX.

I'm going to enjoy watching the big space fantasy film and anyway I didn't think RotJ was that great when I watched it recently don't @ me.

"Empire had the better ending...."

I've finally seen Thor: Ragnorock & Guardians Vol. 2. They were decent. Loud and dumb but fun.

Going to see infinity war next week and i think I'll be all caught up on most of my marvel ahead of the next avengers film.

I thought age of ultron was poop so since then I'd avoided most of the marvel films at the cinema, save spiderman and black panther. But someone's paying for my ticket to the new one so I have to get caught up now.

I got taken to see that new Stephen king film the other day too. If you want to see the death of everything that made the original book interesting go see it. That's how you actually butcher the original.

Muss wrote:

I thought age of ultron was poop...

I saw this quite recently, and having heard mediocre things I was pleasantly surprised. I thought the Maximoffs made it really, especially Quicksilver; but after the previous film's non-villain, Ultron was pretty fun as well.

I have heard nothing good about the new Pet Sematary though, and I didn't even enjoy the book much. Not a horror fan.

Thor Ragnarok is one of those movies that gets worse every time you view it.  It's still great (unlike certain other movies i have mentioned), its problems are that it's so reliant on a form of comedy that's only really funny once.  

GotG2 is a weird one.  It's a more engaging movie in terms of characterisation and themes, but in terms of pacing and comedy it's worse than the first one.  And the final fight stretched out foooooooooreeeeeeeeeeveeeeerrrrr.  I'm far more likely to rewatch the first GotG, but I honestly consider the second movie to be the superior one in terms of actual character journeys and emotional payoffs.

Speaking of that am I the only one who honestly finds movies that have bloated climax fights to be ridiculously boring?  Most superhero movies fall victim to this.  There's never any suspense about the action, and so their length usually leaves me completely bored once the "oooh pretty lights!" effect of the spectacle wears off.  

GotG2 has a great example of this, if the final battle with you-know-who was ten minutes I'd have been far more engaged than the half-hour slog we got.  The reveal about the villain had me honestly going "holy.  S***.  Rip his head off Star Lord!   "  But by the end of the fight when our heroes win I'd honestly stopped caring.

I enjoyed guardians 2 because I though it was fun but it's nothing compared to the original. Whereas the first was novel and offbeat this one feels much more forced. The opening scene is really good though.

It's biggest crimes are probably the arbitrary break up at the start, when coming together was a huge point in the original, and that the film might as well have been a star lord movie for all the significance the other guardians had.

Muss wrote:

Whereas the first was novel and offbeat this one feels much more forced.

Yeah, I agree with this - the second film felt like standard superhero fare for the most part whereas the first movie felt like something new. I suppose the characters being totally new to most audiences helped with that, though.

It reminded me of Beverly Hills Cop. The first is hilarious because a cast and director came together and just naturally had lots of fun and banter. Then in the sequel they try to hard to forcibly write a comedy and it just doesn't have the charm.

I've only seen Ragnarok once, in theatre, and I loved it. Should I keep it that way and just watch for of Watiti's other stuff?