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kscherer
Which way is up?
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
 
2019-11-26, 14:37

Quote:
Originally Posted by pscates2.0 View Post
I probably just need to adjust/tweak the stuff I watch.
This!

We have reached a point where poorly conceived, CGI story-telling and "comedy" is just plain nonsense. From the sensory overload of 3-hour Transformers movies to the stupid, manufactured drama of The Walking Dead, story-telling is just … bad. I mean, you spend your day running, and every time you look around the walking people are within yards, right on your heals! Run as fast as you can, but never get ahead. Nightmare scenario, and I suppose that is what draws people. "Hey, it's just like in my nightmares where I'm running but can never escape!"

Bull!

Back in the '70's and '80's George Lucas had no CGI and only minimal models and stop-motion. He had to think outside the box, and the story had to carry the weight of the film. The music had to back up the story, and the effects only had to provide a reasonable canvas for the action to happen on. Thus, Star Wars was a smash hit because the story carried itself. Everything else was there to support the story, to give it life and emotion. Now the story no longer has to carry itself because CGI can fill our eyeballs with so much sensory BS that our brains don't have time to make sense out of anything else. This is why Episodes 1-3 flopped in the minds of the public. Once we got out of the theater and had time to actually think about what we had just seen, it became clear that is the only thing that happened. We "saw" something, but there was no story behind the scenery. It was just a dense puddle of bad dialogue and CGI. The story had nothing to stand on.

All three of the prequel movies leaned heavily on the method of "CGI carries the story" rather than "Story carries the CGI". This made for some very bad and poorly conceived narratives. Episode 7 was the first movie to march ahead without George Lucas, and even though he fell on his face with 1-3 the "story" was still there inside his head. Kathleen Kennedy should have known this, but I am guessing that she spent so much time just saying, "Yes, George, that sounds great" that she doesn't really have any sense of the "story". Abrams also had no sense of the story, but it is clear that he loved Episode 4. Thus, Episode 7 was just him retelling a story that he loved while using a mixed crew of old and new characters to rehash something successful. Rian Johnson had neither a sense of the story nor the old things to stand on, so he just threw both away and scribbled some crap on a chalk board. Kathleen Kennedy, whose imagination is limited to "Yes, George, that sounds great" simply looked across the conference table and said, "Yes, Rian, that sounds great!"

Now, with Episode 9, Abrams is back with a love for Star Wars, a severely damaged position, and no story to stand on. My guess? He looked in the mirror and said, "JJ, Episode 4 was awesome, and the people mostly loved the way you retold it. So, Episode 6 was great, too. Yeah, just retell Episode 6!" So, that's my prediction for The Rise of Skywalker. Episode 6 retold with new characters and new worlds, but basically the same thing. The rebellion is up against a wall, they've just been put in the "worst position they've ever been in", and oh, look, the Death Star (again) and Palpatine (again) and speeder bike things (again) and …

Yep, that's where I'm going with this.

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