I believe the “C” word you were looking for is “connoisseur”
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Well that was dangerously phrased…
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Excuse me, the correct term is “Jedi.”
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I keep seeing Joseph Campbell mentioned in connection with this, and I really do not understand why. Campbell’s thing was a general arc that heroic myths follow. It’s not about traveling from a desert world to a forest world to a round superweapon. The whole point is that there are a thousand versions.
Whatever their intent, I can see that for me it destroyed all emotional connection. The new characters were briefly interesting, notably Finn. But very quickly I got the feeling the movie didn’t care about developing them, their motivations, even their actions. It was just about shuttling them to the next scene from episode IV.
To the point where beloved character died, and honestly, it felt like nothing more than filling out a form. Of course the mentor figure died there. I can’t say it fit his character or was important to the story, but it sure did happen in the original.
This went for world building, too. There was no explanation of the new conflict, save calling it an echo of the old one. So at some point some planets were destroyed – what were they? Did they matter to our characters? I don’t know. They were simply new Alderaans, without any of the story that made Alderaan important. Film Crit Hulk wrote a review about this, talking about Abrams’s films and how different they are from Lucas’s films, that I thought was insightful:
As always, that’s not to say my reaction is the right one, if these things felt different or simply didn’t matter as much to you. But I do think it’s fair to say that their choice was to retrace the old movie instead of building a new one, on a level far beyond archetypes or myths. And that’s the effect it had on me.
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except he doesn’t. he maintains that he originally spoke too soon, and now that he understands the full picture, he loves the way his character arc went. if he’s ok with it…
i dunno. we could go back and forth about it for years. different strokes. i think it’s a great time to be a SW fan, and the future is exciting. some may be in the middle somewhere. others may feel the franchise has been destroyed. they are free to not watch anything further, too. but i think there will always be new fans to take their place.
That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. He was complaining about it after he’d filmed it, and long after he’d read it.
Looks to me like he didn’t want to air any dirty laundry in public. And I can’t believe that he didn’t understand what the arc was about until he saw the finished picture. Like he said, he’s dealt with this kind of thing before, with Lucas. When the director is also the writer, only the stubbornest, most arrogant actors are going to insist on their own interpretation over the director’s.
He’s just being professional about it. The man knows which side his bread’s buttered on.
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it’s not uncommon for actors to not understand the full story until the editing and everything is done. his future is secure, no matter what. he’s done filming SW movies as far as we know, and it’s not like he’s going to make any less money. i don’t think he has any reason to backpedal if he felt that strongly about it. he spoke regularly on twitter about his love for the movie and his arc after the movie came out.
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It would be illuminating to learn if Hamill got any back-end profit participation out of TLJ. Obviously he wants the movie to do well; he doesn’t want to undercut its success. Plus, he probably plans to work again, and there’s no financial benefit in being perceived as “difficult” in Hollywood.
But I’ve met him a couple times and worked with him once, and though he’s a bit screwy in the head, he’s also very very smart. I have no doubt he’s made his peace with the situation.
But he wasn’t wrong.
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yeah, that would be interesting info to have. i would love to meet him. i believe him when he said he misspoke, but i guess we’ll never really know either way.
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I didn’t look at this thread over the weekend, so apologies for replying late. Specifically, I’m going to speak about Saw. He has an on-screen story arc, but it’s spread across a couple seasons of Clone Wars (my boy was obsessed with this series for at least a year, I think I’ve seen every episode at least twice) and a season of Rebels before you see him in Rogue One. His appearance in Rogue One was a nod to fans of the animated series more than anything (and not the only Easter egg in this movie).
I can’t agree more with everyone who says Donnie Yen’s character needed more screen time. He’s freakin’ amazing and his talents were somewhat wasted.
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i DEFINITELY agree with this. i wanted to know so very much more about his character and their friendship. and Saw felt barely used, too, which was a damn shame.
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I am but I don’t care.
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Exactly. There comes a time where people’s desire to discuss outweighs one’s desire to be without spoilers. That time occurs within a few weeks of the film’s release. If you’re going to wait months to see a film, that’s on you.
'Course, I’m one of those people who’s seen The Sixth Sense at least four times and still jumps during the scary parts, so hey.
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I didn’t speak out against discussion. I merely feel that spoiler warnings or tags were merited.
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On the net, maybe, but even then. I’ve seen people call for such tags on films made before they were born, and that’s just ridiculous.
And to a large extent the whole spoiler idea is just ridiculous. If you don’t want to know, politely extricate yourself. End of.
In real life, you can politely say “no spoilers” for a while, but again, if it’s months after the fact and you’re the only one who hasn’t seen something, it’s ridiculous to demand people change the subject just for you.
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I have to side more with @ChuckV on this, in that spoiler tagging (or asking for same) is not trying to change the subject. I’m generally all about protecting against spoilers, and probably for longer than most netizens deem necessary, especially when a spoiler-tag tool is available, as it is here. This is not a SW-specific thread, and contains more than enough general-interest movie-related content that I don’t think it’s fair to exclude people just because they’d rather not have plot details revealed unexpectedly for a movie whose home-video release is only a couple months old. I should not have assumed that anyone who cared that much about TLJ plot points must have seen it by now. We’re near the upper reasonable limit, I imagine, for how long such mystery should be necessarily be preserved, but the area is still gray, and since the spoiler tag is available here, I should have used it.
Sorry about that, Chuck.
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No problem. I was arguing for others more than myself.
(And/or perhaps myself in a situation where I’m more interested in the content. It was no doubt a mistake to start out by saying I didn’t “give a shit about Star Wars,” as this may have put some on the defensive, but I was actually aiming for a “look I don’t care about this instance personally, but…” vibe.)
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- I can’t engage with you on that level. I haven’t noticed anything off with the timing, but then, I haven’t been taught much about that sort of thing.
- Agreed, 100%. If you exclude the deaths of villains and death-by-origin-story (Yensen and Erskine), there have been exactly two emotionally meaningful deaths in the MCU to that point: Bucky and Coulson. The fact that neither of them are actually dead makes it even worse. You’re freaking Marvel Comics. You have more superheroes than you know what to do with. Kill a few of them!
- I do find her attractive but… I don’t know. I don’t exactly watch superhero movies for the quality of acting. I haven’t noticed her being exceptionally bad at acting (and the fact that Widow is supposed to be an emotionally shut-down superspy would mask a lot of bad acting regardless), but I haven’t really been looking either.
As for the numbered lists, put a backslash (\) in front of the period for the list.
For example:
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
-
One
-
Two
-
Three
1\. One 2\. Two 3\. Three
1. One
2. Two
3. Three
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In my world there are two ScarJos: acting ScarJo and being-photographed ScarJo.
Acting ScarJo shows up first, in films like An American Rhapsody. She still shows up in films like Under the Skin and Hitchcock.
Note those are all non-blockbusters.
Being-photographed ScarJo shows up in the blockbusters. She does a series of poses with some choreography – which, I’m convinced, is exactly what’s wanted from her by the directors.
Keira Knightly gets the same criticism for the same reasons. So does Anne Hathaway. So does Keanu Reeves, who was amazing in Scanner Darkly long after he’d been written off as not being able to act.
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Quick re: Keanu. Let’s not forget Thumbsucker. He was the best part of that film.
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