ray245 wrote:
They aren't exactly the pinacle of story-writing and acting either. I think you are putting the orignals on a much higher pedestral than they really are.
Not at all. That's why they're much loved and the shitty movies like Fast & Furious and Transformers you're trying to lump them in with aren't. Not even Avatar approaches their enduring popularity - even though its the highest grossing movie of all time, it had no enduring popular culture impact whatsoever.
If the only thing you have to say is tell everyone about how your taste is superior to others, then there's hardly any room for any discussion. I did not imply the old Star Wars films are poorly written. Not at all. All I am stating was they aren't exactly the pinnacle of writing in cinema.
Good/=enjoyment.
You lumped them in with Fast and the Furious, did you not?
If that is the case, the battles we saw in Star Wars won't be a highlight at all, nor would they be so fondly remembered. People continues to praise the battles of Yavin, Endor and Hoth till this day.
The scale is intergal to Star Wars, together with the script, story and cast.
The battles are part of a greater whole. They fall into nearly every thing I just listed. They aren't seperate.
I'm talking about popularity and enjoyment. Your argument about the quality of a film did not explain why movies like Transformers and F&F remains popular with the public despite their poor writing. I'm making an argument to explain why, and I am saying the prequels were enjoyable to a large audience, even if they aren't "good" by your standards.
We aren't living in a world where good films earn the most money. We are living in a world where films that gave the audience the most enjoyment, not matter how good or bad they are, make the most money.
You're not making an argument to explain why, you're espousing your personal taste as to why you enjoyed TPM more than TFA. Like I said, that's your personal taste, but as a matter of judging a film, I think that's a bad joke.
Better than a handful of fighters going up against the enemy new battle station while failing to explain why they didn't get crushed immediately. At least with ANH, we understood that the Imperials were too arrogant to believe the rebels could win.
Did we? Or is that a rationalisation you made up after the fact? Why
should they get crushed immediately? Any particular reason? I can't think of a single one. Can you give me a reason? Before you do so, explain where it comes from, organically, from the film - not an assumption you invented in your head.
And yet I enjoyed the sequences and many episodes in TCW more than the one in TFA. ( I'll bet you are just going to say this is due to poor taste)
Yes, it is. When talking about the quality of the film, its always a matter of competing tastes. It is necessarily subjective.
Lol, I can question your taste if you think the space battles in TFA is actually good. In fact, there's hardly a space battle at all, with most of the battles happening in the atmosphere.
Who gives a shit? What's the difference?
The entire battle at the end was a mere afterthought, with the aim of recreating the battle in ANH. Bigger budget don't necessarily produce better scenes.
The battle is hardly woven well into the script.
Give me an argument as to why it wasn't. By way of analogy of the sort of analysis you should try and engage in to back this sort of argument up, the Phantom Menace was weighed down with four seperate battles in its last act, two of which were totally superfluous and could've been written out of the movie entirely:
- The battle to capture the Viceroy. Totally pointless.
- The battle to destroy the Droid Control Ship. Actually matters.
- The battle between the Jedi and Darth Maul. Actually matters (though why Maul needed to be there is not exactly clear).
- The battle between the Gungans and the Droid Army. Totally pointless.
Look, I am not saying you can't find TFA enjoyable. There are many people out there that do, judging by the box office and the critical reception alone. Do I think that TFA is a horrible film? No. But that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it.
The way you are arguing and defending TFA, it seems to me that you can't accept any reasons put forward by people who genuinely did not enjoy the film. I am interested if you think there are any flaws in TFA at all, or are you just being a massive fan that want to shut any criticism of your favourite movie.
I've already indicated my thoughts as to its flaws - real, film writing flaws, not inane, made up flaws like "the movie didn't have enough Base Delta Zeroes" or "the underdog should've been defeated". Chiefly, the movie's pacing is too fast, making it seem like Abrams is terrified of boring the audience, leading to hardly any scene where characters can sit and take a beat before moving on to the next crisis. We lose exposition this way, and it robs scenes of some of their impact - e.g. the destruction of the Republic capital and the death of Leia's aide (deleted scene).