Love Michael Clayton.

and syriana

Looking forward to this:

Looks promising.

Damn, looks pretty epic.

What a trailer. Can't wait.

Force Awakens has completely dampened any excitement I have for future Star Wars movies.

Dark Helmet sighting at 1:27

Trailer looks great though. Can't wait.

Trailer for Force Awakens was great, too...

And many think the movie was too. I think it was pretty good myself.

banduan wrote:

Trailer for Force Awakens was great, too...

Yeah and so was the movie.

Looks pretty good. It'll basically hinge on how good the screenplay is, as clearly it's going to integrate a lot of exposition and new characters (and probably over-explain quite a bit of it).

Finally got around to watching star wars VII. It was shite.

Burnwinter wrote:

Looks pretty good. It'll basically hinge on how good the screenplay is, as clearly it's going to integrate a lot of exposition and new characters (and probably over-explain quite a bit of it).

I feel the same way, which is why I've gotten my hopes up a little bit ever since Tony Gilroy (speaking of whom, I noticed that Michael Clayton is mentioned at the top of this page) was brought in to fix the script. Rumor is that he directed the reshoots too.

Qwiss! wrote:

banduan wrote:

Trailer for Force Awakens was great, too...

Yeah and so was the movie.

A tale of unearned heroism. Was so meh. It doesn't help that I don't get the kind of goosebumps SW fans seem to get whenever a favourite appears.

Had positive feelings about The Force Awakens because it managed not to completely fuck it up—the standard will be different for Rogue One.

The first teaser trailer for TFA is a great work of art, and is far better than the film itself.

banduan wrote:

Qwiss! wrote:

Yeah and so was the movie.

A tale of unearned heroism. Was so meh. It doesn't help that I don't get the kind of goosebumps SW fans seem to get whenever a favourite appears.

I thought it was a bad film too. I was relieved initially when it didn't turn out to be as bad as the prequels, but that relief quickly settled into disappointment. There seemed to be so little point to it. The empire is gone, so here's a bigger, even more evil empire. The emperor is dead but don't worry, we've got an E.T. sith running things now. The death star got blown up (again), so here's a death star the size of a whole planet instead of a moon... that gets blown up too. Vader is gone, so here's his neurotic grandson.

The whole film is basically a redux version of A New Hope. Instead of R2 escaping Darth Vader with vital information you've got the ballshaped droid escaping Darth Emo with vital information. Instead of R2 accidentally finding Luke on Tatoiine you've got the ball accidentally finding Rey on Jakku. Instead of Obi-Wan Kenobi dying on the death star you've got an old Han Solo dying on the death planet. Mos Eisley has been replaced by Maz's tavern.

It's business as usual for JJ Abrams... tugging at nostalgic heartstrings while creating poor imprints of better, more engaging stories and characters that other, more talented filmmakers have established previously. He's got no scope, no ambition.

I feel comfortable agreeing with all of that (it's all very uncontroversial after all) and still pointing out it's pretty decent for the most part.

What really lets it down is a handful of incredibly bad moments, like Lupita Nyong'o as Maz Kanata, the cartoonish guy to whom Rey sells the junk that she finds, the tediously hackneyed Nuremberg rally the First Order gets up to, and most especially Snoke. A couple of the comic relief moments connected to Kylo Ren were also badly misjudged, and showed the writers didn't quite understand the genre.

Burnwinter wrote:

I feel comfortable agreeing with all of that (it's all very uncontroversial after all) and still pointing out it's pretty decent for the most part.

There are decent films that are a complete waste of time though and there is time-wasting entertainment that is worthwhile. The Force Awakens was neither to me at the end of the day. I don't like the indifference it made me feel. It's not a feeling I want to associate with Star Wars.

Burnwinter wrote:

What really lets it down is a handful of incredibly bad moments, like Lupita Nyong'o as Maz Kanata, the cartoonish guy to whom Rey sells the junk that she finds, the tediously hackneyed Nuremberg rally the First Order gets up to, and most especially Snoke. A couple of the comic relief moments connected to Kylo Ren were also badly misjudged, and showed the writers didn't quite understand the genre.

Don't forget Domhnall Gleeson, the acting equivalent of a vanilla-scented bar of soap.

I really enjoyed it first time out in the cinema. It's not perfect but it's decent and many sequences are flat-out entertaining. There are a lot of bum notes, yes.

I question the importance of an original plot, I place these films in the lineage of planetary romance, formulaic plotting is absolutely fine by me. The issue is getting the emotional beats and the optics, the aesthetics, and the creative concepts straight, though.

There shouldn't be comic moments that break the fundamental seriousness of the fantastic depiction, for example. There shouldn't be uncool or excessively childish or cartoonish creature designs, or things that are simply very lame, and there needs to be an integrated, holistic feel. And there really shouldn't be visual and narrative non sequiturs like the whole Maz sequence.

The number of clangers they produce across all those aspects always surprises me.