Chen G.
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Posts posted by Chen G.
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Yeah right...
When Ben tells Luke of Vader killing his father in the original Star Wars, he wasn't supposed to be lying; when Yoda says that "there is another", the identity of that person wasn't figured out, and it sure as hell wasn't envisioned to be Leia; when Ben tells Luke of first meeting Anakin, he wasn't supposed to be a ten-year old introduced to him by a third party (Qui Gon), etcetra...
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But he didn't have the plot all figured out in advance.
Also, the storytelling is just as important than the story itself. Empire Strike Back, which Lucas didn't write nor direct, is decidedly not a George Lucas film, and as such stands outside of the style of the rest of the films, much like Rian Johnson's work does here.
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Preferably, sure.
But it was never going to be like that. None of the previous two Star Wars trilogies worked like that. George Lucas didn't even write Empire Strikes Back!
Really, the only way to do this is to have the whole thing written, previsualized, pre-produced, filmed and assembled simultaneously, with the same production crew throughout - PJ style - which was never on the table for this trilogy.
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1 hour ago, SF1_freeze said:
But i disagree with your statement that the proven great stories of old starwars canon couldn't be a satisfying film continuation/adaption just because they are books.
As i said book series like the Thrawn Trilogy have perfect worldbuilding, influenced the film series a great deal (Coruscant first appeared in the Thrawn trilogy) and made complete sense in terms of in-universe logic.
As I said, to me, the point of a multi-film franchise, is to tell one story that's too big for any one film. As such, you'd want this overarching story to have a sense of structure: it probably won't conform to the three-act structure per se, but at least it would have an ebb-and-flow, and a sense of a defined beginning, middle and end.
Well, Star Wars (either as a sextet or just the first trilogy) doesn't have the ebb-and-flow of one, unified story, but it has a beginning, middle and end, which would seem to eliminate the possibility of more films. But than, it is possible to have a story that has a "fake" ending, followed by the real ending: In narrative structure, this is called a false third act.
But, the key to making this strucural choicework is: a) construct the "false" ending so it doesn't really resolve things; b) follow it immediately and concisely with the real ending. Both of these criteria don't really hold water when it comes to Star Wars, because Return of the Jedi does conclude the story of the trilogy/sextet, and there's nothing in it to suggest that there's something else to look forward to. Still, you could have made another little "epilogue" film and frame Return of the Jedi as a false third act; but you can't do the same with a whole new trilogy!
That still doesn't mean that you can't enjoy them as individual pieces of filmmaking, though!
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That doesn't change the fact that the main medium of Star Wars has been, and continues to be, film. The book you mentioned was developed out of the screenplay: not the other way around. Its not an adapted work. Even if it was, the books wouldn't matter because adapted screenplays need to work for people who have never - and never will - read the book.
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3 minutes ago, SF1_freeze said:
Besides, you know that for every film a screenplay is written -> thats like a book.
Screenplays are very, very different to books. Yes, they are written works, but they are written for the medium of film. They're written to make for a visually interesting story, first, and they have a different flow and a different narrative format altogether.
I assure you, if these books were all adapted to the screen as further episodes, they'd probably feel just as "tacked on" as this trilogy does. Probably much more.
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34 minutes ago, SF1_freeze said:
So i dont get your point Chen... again, the old canon proves its possible to continue after RotJ in an exciting new way while still keeping the in-world logic
Books don't count! This is a film series, its a completely different medium!
37 minutes ago, JTWfan77 said:But couldn't the ST have at least it's own consistency of narrative continuity, apart from the six prior films?
You can certainly watch them on their own. But they do at least attempt to jump off of the narrative of the existing films: out of the three, so far one has been a remake of the original film, and the other had the main character of the first three films as its protagonist. The whole premise of making this trilogy was that "George Lucas always intended to make nine films."
35 minutes ago, Score said:If you want these rules defined, then you should expect the filmmakers to explain in detail how the Death Star works, according to what rules spaceships fly into hyperspace, where do they find the fuel, and many other things (all of the things that are not explained in SW are probably listed somewhere).
Star Wars is a fantasy series, not science fiction. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have its own internal story logic. We don't understand the science of it, but we have a good, intuitive understanding of whos who, of The Force, of the Dark Side, etcetra....
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10 minutes ago, SF1_freeze said:
Have you forgotten our conversation? You replied to my review of the film with a comment how the mechanism of the world basically is not important. Now in your upper post you say continuity is important.
I think you fail to differentiate narrative continuity and narrative structure: a narrative can be continuous and seamless, but not have a well-defined structure.
This trilogy, from the outset, was never going to be congruous with the existing sextet in terms of an overarching narrative structure, because the narrative had already arrived at its conclusion in Return of the Jedi. If it were just one more film and not a trilogy, you could say that the series has a "false third act' in Return of the Jedi. But the third act can't be three-films long.
Also, sometimes continuity issues are relatively minor and the energy of the film is such that your mind doesn't really dwell on them, unless you make an effort to. In those cases, I find such errors to be negligble, as is the case in here, I would say.
And yes, I hold that it is a bit disheartening to see the cast of the original films come to these ends. But that will all depend on the conclusion in IX. If it all leads into something impactful and profound, than taking such a grounded approach in terms of the treatment of the original cast will have been in line with the approach of the trilogy. If its going to end with something more lighthearted, than why spoil a good thing?
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16 minutes ago, SF1_freeze said:
Worldbuilding is the most important thing of a franchise! So i fundamentally disagree with you Chen. If everybody would disregard all the worldbuilding, people would lose interest in any franchises, film series... the real fandom would die!
To my mind, the appeal of a multi-film narrative is that one can build character and drama film after film, to achieve greater results than are ever possible in a single, self-contained film. I don't watch it to appreciate the setting, per se. Because its just that: the setting, in which the narrative unfolds.
Of course, continuity is important so that we can suspend our disbelief as far as these films being parts of one larger story, which isn't always the case in the way they are made. But what did The Last Jedi do that was in such defiance of the continuity?
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2 hours ago, SF1_freeze said:TLJ was the greatest dissappointment i have ever experienced in terms of Starwars. It was a complete trainwreck of a movie, which completely disregarded the story- and worldbuilding of the SW Universe just to satisfy Rian Johnsons desire for stupid pseudo twists that make neither sense nor are in any ways exciting.
That's one of the core issues: for a Star Wars fan, the narrative exists to serve the world of the film: its essentially an opportunity to exhibit it for two hours, more than anything else. As such, when something doesn't correlate with such fans' perception of what that world is (e.g. Rey's lineage), its immediately derided.
But, for fans of good cinema, the world exists to serve the narrative. So, making Rey related to anyone within the main cast of the previous films would undermine the sense of grandeur of the narrative by keeping it focused around a very small group of people, and not much else. Likewise, the optimism of Luke's character is also there for the filmmaker to twist for the sake of the drama.
In fact, I would go as far as to say there shouldn't be any worldbuilding in films, as such. One of the things I most dislike about the prequels (and to be fair, it happens once or twice in Empire Strikes Back, too) is when characters make on-the-nose references to earlier adventures, naming certain places and people, which we don't ever see. The world should be explored through the narrative alone.
Again, all of this coming from someone who wasn't particularly taken with the film. But its not a bad film, by any stretch of the imagination.
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It’s just the introduction figure to her theme proper. It occurs two or more times in the score, I believe: once before she starts training with her lightsaber, the other as the Falcon flies across the Crait landscape.
It has no narrative meaning on its own. It’s part of the unabridged theme, and can be used on its own as a shorthand for the entire piece. Has Williams ever even indicated that he wrote more than one theme for Rey? It just isn't how he works, typically.
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I've said it before: have Jar-Jar Binks make an appearance in the film (with his theme for all I care) only to be brutally killed.
You could write it to be the "James Bond opening" of the film; So right after the crawl with the new music!
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Speaking of which, seeing as IX is supposed to be more than just any other episode, I'd mark that by breaking the mould of the opening credits music!
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Yeah, the film doesn't seem like it would lend itself to the heft that The Force theme denotes.
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16 minutes ago, crumbs said:
Can't believe this hadn't occurred to me!
It hasn't occured to you, because there probably isn't any authorial intent there.
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On 4/11/2018 at 8:39 AM, Richard said:
as far as the score goes, its a nice little hors d'oeuvre.
I think the only Star Wars album that has the theme presentations stacked up at the beginning after the manner of an overture is The Phantom Menace. Being the first in the narrative order, it kind of makes sense, too.
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7 hours ago, filmmusic said:
Hmmmm...as much I love Debney's score for The Passion of Christ, I'd love to hear what Williams would come up with.
Or Horner!
”Mel, I’ve found this Libyan type of bagpipe. Should we use it for Jesus? No? Okay, I’ll just use Ulieann Pipes, than!”
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5 hours ago, Matt S. said:
Qui-Gon buries his lightsaber in the bridge’s blast door and there’s a quick snippet of the Force theme played by high French horns.
I remember Doug Adams saying something to the effect of “that’s the imagery to which The Force theme is first introduced? A Jedi pushing a laser sword through a door?!”
I don’t really mind that. It’s just the opening. When’s the first full statement?
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I've said it before, but I really hope Amazon steers out of the first age and make their Television series' about the early third age.
The Great Tales lend themselves to the big screen. Something like The Fall of Gondolin would make for one hell of a film!
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52 minutes ago, John said:
I know you disagree, and that's fine, but BOTFA is just not a very good movie. Which is a shame, because even as flawed as the first Hobbit was, the first hour did so much to build up the dynamics and heart between the dwarves, Gandalf, and Bilbo. And then you get to BOTFA, and all of that has been flushed away in service of empty CGI spectacle.
Last time I rewatched the trilogy, I enjoyed the first two and I genuinely believe they're fine movies. The third one killed all my enthusiasm, and I haven't revisited the trilogy since.
Well, it does suffer from the trappings of a concluding film, which tend not to be all that great, in the same way that the first film suffers from the trappings of an establishing film in terms of pace.
But, to my mind, even if the CG is not convincing, the battle itself isn't empty because it does leverage some good drama. The relationship between Bilbo and the Dwarves pays off multiple times, such as when Bofur allows Bilbo to leave, no questions asked; and especially when Bilbo attests to the character of the Dwarves' in front of Thranduil and Bard. Even a small moment like Dwalin, who we last see try to follow Thorin as he walks into Azog's trap, coming back to help Bilbo as Bolg arrives.
Its also kind of an extension of Thorin's inner struggle, or at least a cause of tension within the company, due to Thorin's refusal to get involved. One of the reasons I've said that I've grown to like Dwalin more on rewatches was that I noticed that he has one of the most well-defined individual arcs of all the Dwarves: he moves from being Thorin's most blindly-loyal follower, to standing up to him. That happens because of the battle. And of course, once the company does get involved, it pays off the animosity of Thorin and Azog, as well.
The main thing that gets short-changed is actually Thranduil's personal story, in favor of Tauriel's romance. But both of those were secondary storylines from the outset, and do not take a lot of the film's running time either way. I do mind that their stories conclude after Thorin's death. As Lindsay pointed out, it kind of dilutes the drama. But it certainly doesn't undermine it for me entirely.
But, as you said, we disagree, and that's fine.
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6 minutes ago, Margo Channing said:
The first two films are lot of 80s creature horror fun
That they are.
There's a great discussion about the first film here:
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12 minutes ago, artguy360 said:
I did think it was interesting how in ROTS the Force Theme reverted back to being Obi-Wan's theme a bit.
I've heard people say that, but I doubt it was intentional.
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30 minutes ago, Josh500 said:
1. The melancholic, wistful version: The Binary Sunset (A New Hope)
2. The action-packed, militaristic version: at the beginning of the track "Revenge of the Sith," right after the Main Title (Revenge of the Sith)
That, and the regal, almost anthem-like variation at the Throne Room.
Extreme polarisation in modern film reception, aka TLJ didn't suck that badly
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I'm sure some of the books that @SF1_freeze alludes to work arduously to explain all these discrepancies after-the-fact; but that's just what it is: retrofitting. Any discerning viewer will notice that.
Continuity shouldn't require added explanations. If you have to apply too much thought to settle continuity issues, you're out of the film. And you certainly don't need anchiliary material to do so!