I am not getting the excitement about the teaser trailers.

Fortunately Stephen Colbert was able to break down the first one, but sadly he is not here to elucidate us on the new trailer.

Star Wars Battlefront 3 looks great though.

Quote from: Kiero;825942Be that as it may, there is some absolute shit on that list. The Exorcist? Avatar? Titanic? Virtually everything pre-1970 (barring the animation)?

Are you for real?

Quote from: Rincewind1;825946So you loved 50 Shades of Grey?

I never saw it and have no intention to. But only a total fucktard would deny that the movie was a huge success. It boggles the mind that people can't tell the difference between opinions and facts.

Quote from: Elfdart;827266I never saw it and have no intention to. But only a total fucktard would deny that the movie was a huge success. It boggles the mind that people can't tell the difference between opinions and facts.

Here's a fact for you then:

Commercial success does not necessarily equal quality.

Quote from: Rincewind1;827368Here's a fact for you then:

Commercial success does not necessarily equal quality.

No, that's your opinion.

Quote from: Elfdart;827785No, that's your opinion.

No, this is an opinion. That was a fact.

Commercial success != quality is a fact, not an opinion. They are not the same thing despite their association with each other and the general assumption of the public.

The fact is, 700 million people will go to see this movie because of its predecessors; that in itself is not indicative of quality but of the massive following that this franchise has.

I'll go see it because I love Star Wars and I'll enjoy it whether it's good or not.

Commercial success = Commercial success, nothing more, nothing less.

Plenty of excellent movies that we consider "classics" today were actually not commercial successes when they were released. And vice versa. There are plenty of hugely successful movies you probably never heard of.

But of course, Quality = Opinion to a very large degree.

Quote from: Spinachcat;829500Commercial success = Commercial success, nothing more, nothing less.

Plenty of excellent movies that we consider "classics" today were actually not commercial successes when they were released. And vice versa. There are plenty of hugely successful movies you probably never heard of.

But of course, Quality = Opinion to a very large degree.

"Quality" is purely a matter of opinion. I brought up commercial success because it's the only objective standard.

Quote from: Elfdart;832897"Quality" is purely a matter of opinion. I brought up commercial success because it's the only objective standard.

One of the things the Red Letter Media reviews nailed, if you can sit through them, was how much George Lucas had completely lost it as a film-maker by the time he made the sequels.  We're talking everything from how to shoot a scene and camera setup to plot reveals and character -people go to college to learn that kind of thing.

The same long tracking shots where characters walk along a corridor talking, scenes that are obviously stitched together from actors working solo on greenscreens, an action film where characters sit around on couches discussing politics and economics, no structure in terms of action or character or plot.

Those three films have to do ONE thing - make Anakin's fall to the dark side plausible, tragic even.  Anakin falls because the Sith promise eternal life while Yoda tells him not to care about people.  The "tragedy" is that the Sith are lying, the Jedi have eternal life but only because they stumble across it offscreen five minutes from the end of the trilogy, and it wouldn't save Padme anyway - all that kind of happens in asides and it's never really brought to the fore.  Lucas boasted that his first draft of the film was what got filmed, and it really shows.

Star Wars isn't perfect, far from it.  Notably the dialogue and acting are atrocious, but the original film is pretty tight.  The attack on the Death Star is tensely written - the ships have a definite goal and a timer is counting down.  Compare with the sloppiness of the space battle scenes in episodes I and III where stuff just kinda... happens...

If you can't face another Red Letter Media video, Hulk Critic is also very good - an anonymous working screenwriter who does a good job of dissecting what works and doesn't about films.

Hindsight is obviously easy, but what doesn't fill me with joy is the thought of Abrams and his scriptwriting team let loose on Star Wars.  Prometheus may ask lots of deep questions and put all sorts of little Easter Eggs into the film (I'm pretty sure the final events take place on Christmas Day, but I'm not going back to check), but it's a really, really bad film.  Character and plot only serve to advance The Mystery, and are there to be changed as soon as The Script requires a little movement.  

Same with Into Darkness - by the time Spock is as confused as the audience, he just phones his alternate-universe future self to get the plot.  Possibly one of the laziest reveals since... well, since Yoda says "BTW - Immortalz!".  And let's not talk about "Hey, I brought a Tribble back to life - wonder what we could use THAT for".  Chekhov's gun was never so ill-used...

Of course I'm going to see it anyway..

Quote from: Elfdart;814070The "recent domination by CGI models over practical FX" is a myth. The problem is that people assume every effect is CGI. For example, the Prequels used more sets and models and on location shooting than the Original Trilogy by a huge margin. But that doesn't stop know-nothings from squealing "It's all CGI!"

I've been guilty of this. I thought Mad Max: Fury Road was a bunch of CGI nonsense, and then someone told me it was mostly "practical" effects.

However, I'd say we just need a new word - perhaps "Impractical Effects" - for unrealistic too-spectacular action sequences that are so excessive that it's a miracle they happened, and instead of each being a significant fluke unexpected thing that happened, they are shown one after the other, so that the amazing becomes commonplace, and the supposed danger and conflict of the film becomes low-risk and arbitrary, like a game where you get 10000 hit points and your enemies do 1d4 damage, and your saving throws mean you need to roll a 1 or higher unless the GM decides it's a dramatic moment and then it's a contest of who can make up the cooler-sounding more over-the-top thing to happen.

I plan to see Star Wars 7 to see what they do with it. I plan to reserve actual quality-judgement for after that.

Quote from: Skarg;837511I've been guilty of this. I thought Mad Max: Fury Road was a bunch of CGI nonsense, and then someone told me it was mostly "practical" effects.

Mad Max: Furry Road was pretty good as an extended chase scene. And most of the actors in it were pretty good.

Note that the misspelling in there IS deliberate.

I just hope John Boyega has more acting range than just sweating and giving everyone a "WTF!?" stare...

Quote from: Skarg;837511However, I'd say we just need a new word - perhaps "Impractical Effects" - for unrealistic too-spectacular action sequences that are so excessive that it's a miracle they happened, and instead of each being a significant fluke unexpected thing that happened, they are shown one after the other, so that the amazing becomes commonplace, and the supposed danger and conflict of the film becomes low-risk and arbitrary, like a game where you get 10000 hit points and your enemies do 1d4 damage, and your saving throws mean you need to roll a 1 or higher unless the GM decides it's a dramatic moment and then it's a contest of who can make up the cooler-sounding more over-the-top thing to happen.

I saw a review of the new Jurrasic Park movie where the reviewers pointed out the 'restraint' that movie shows in light of what is possible to put on the screen these days ala Michael Bay. They mentioned the movie itself takes a subtle swipe at the 'more is MORE' audiences who fuel the fire for such unwatchable Stimulapaloozas.
So maybe some folks are starting to back away from that...

I don't mind CGI in particular but dislike it when FX are used as a distraction from bad storytelling... 'Wait... that doesn't make any sense... ooooh! Shiny!'

Quote from: Elfdart;832897"Quality" is purely a matter of opinion. I brought up commercial success because it's the only objective standard.

One of the things the Red Letter Media reviews did, if you could sit through them, was show, pretty objectively, how terrible the prequels were in their filmcraft - you know, the stuff people go to college to study.

Long tracking shots in corridor exposition scenes that lasted the amount of time it took the actors to walk across a green-screen set.  Couch discussions in an action film.  No physicality or interaction with sets that didn't exist, little attempt to make the point of view anything other than room+ background.

Scripts that got seriously garbled and poorly structured when they got to the important bits - why DID Anakin fall?  How poor a reveal is it, right at the end of three films, to have Yoda say - "Oh BTW - Immortalz!!!".  And why bother when it wouldn't have saved Padme for Anakin anyway.  And how EXACTLY did she die again??? Lucas (famously) filmed the first draft of Sith - it shows.

Continuity - didn't Obi-Wan get his legs crushed in the first five fifteen minutes of Sith?  Oh no, no worries, he's walking around now.

Dialogue that's flatulent when it should be snappy ("Around the survivors a perimeter create!") - even Star Wars, with all its shit lines and bad acting, managed snappy.

Unstructured set pieces, the space battles especially - again, Star Wars managed to give the attack on the Death Star a map, a goal and a countdown.

Possibly the weirdest and worst-acted/dialogued love story in the history of cinema - IIRC Padme doesn't declare her full love for Anakin until he's admitted he's a crypto-fascist AND a mass-murderer.  Just checkin' baby...

And let's be honest - you, me and everyone else wanted Jango Fett's head to plop onto the ground with a thud when a grieving Boba picked up his father's helmet...

Episode 7 - I'll be queuing...

Quote from: Werekoala;837637I just hope John Boyega has more acting range than just sweating and giving everyone a "WTF!?" stare...

I dunno, Harrison Ford and Keanu Reeves both made film careers out of much less

Boyega is pretty decent in Attack the Block.