#the last i went to a cinema was to see across the spider verse | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zalrb · 6 months

Note

Overall thoughts on KOTFM? Do you think it lived up to the hype?

OK well what I'll say first is I'm not ignoring what some Indigenous people, some Osage people have said about the movie, like Christopher Cote and how he left the premiere feeling conflicted

and the issues that have arisen around Ernest being too sympathetic and the film not really being from an Osage perspective and needing an Osage director to truly do that and finding the violence gratuitous and the Osage characters underwritten

and I'm not going to contradict that or devil's advocate that because their views are what matters here.

I'm just going to talk about my experience with KOTFM, which is what you asked but I would be remiss not to put the criticism of the movie by people who are actually Indigenous first.

So, I have been thinking about the movie since I watched it yesterday and I can't remember a movie in the last two, three years that has had that kind of impact on me except for maybe Across The Spider-Verse and EEAO.

I watched it like this is fucking cinema. I was geeking out in the theatre. Those shots,

those gorgeous shots

that are almost like portraits

had me in awe.

It's modern, there is clearly a lot of money behind this movie that also feels very intimate but it also feels like watching history, like watching the life of those black-and-white photos you see which from a technical perspective they did through the cinematographer using current technology/lenses to replicate the same kind of look and colour that would've been around in the 20s and then 30s and then using the Western genre to showcase how white people, the heroes of Westerns, systematically oppress through violence, murder, the law...so many layers.

I watched it with someone and we had very different perspectives on the movie and on Scorsese as a director because he thought Scorsese moved really quickly and I said you are the first person that I've met who has said Scorsese is quick. The criticism I get from people who can't get into his work is that he's incredibly slow. And he said, he couldn't keep up with certain things like when Lizzie Q dies and is taken to the afterlife because he said it was abrupt and it seems so unintentional. And I had to calm myself down lmao and was like OK, Scorsese is incredibly intentional. In that scene, he is aligning us with Lizzie Q's experience in the moment. She was alive and then she wasn't and she went to the afterlife and we experience that with her, when we go back to the let's say earthly realm, it's to confirm her death by see the living mourning her passing. And he was like, well when you say it like that, it makes sense.

And we talked for a while after the movie and it kept being the same conversation, where I was like if you pay attention to more than the dialogue, which quite frankly I found pretty heavy-handed, and to the way the scenes are set up, it says a lot about the themes of the movie. So he asked what I meant and we ended up talking about King because he didn't understand what was happening with King in like a very basic way. He was confounded that King had acted friendly with the Osage and was also responsible for so many of their murders and I was like, OK barring the fact that I really think you need to educate yourself more on how colonizers colonize, within the context of the movie, it is made very clear relatively quickly that King doesn't see the Osage as people. It's clear in the dialogue but also in the way things are shot, like when King and Ernest talk about Henry, it's almost as if they have Henry mounted on the fireplace like a prize

which in concert with the dialogue where King refers to Henry as a dollar amount -- a $25,000 insurance policy -- speaks to the overarching themes of settler colonialism, capitalism, genocide, racism in this one conversation, one shot with these characters and he was basically like

and having this conversation just really solidified how much the cinematic language of the movie spoke to me and how his choices as a director, like not just having a voiceover that intermittently let's us in on Mollie's thoughts while we watch her expression but actually seeing things from her point of view elevated the movie and of course, that brings us to the acting. I mean we've discussed this but Lily's performance was so powerful, she does so much with her physicality, with her expressions

her scream when she finds out that Rita was murdered was hauntingly good, she 100% made this movie.

Leo was good as well, I particularly liked the moments where he didn't feel reigned in -- I liked his subtle performance, I think it's the least ... Leo of his performances -- but when he gets to be emotional

it's like a dam bursting.

I thought De Niro was good as well, between him and Leo, his accent slipped the most, it was a little fun for me to watch him and Leo and see when I saw their signatures come out and their roles couldn't hide certain things so for Leo when Ernest and Mollie are flirting at her house and he does his smile, I'm like oh there's Jack Dawson and with De Niro when he'd do the frown and nod I'd be like oh, there you are.

I was also quite taken with Tatanka Means,

he's barely in the movie but I found he had such a presence.

This isn't to say that I thought the movie was flawless.

Despite appreciating the ending -- i.e. rather than doing a typical text on black screen at the end of the movie to educate the viewers on more facts about the real people and instead making a commentary on how the genocide and exploitation and marginalization of this community (and other communities) becomes entertainment to a white audience and then including himself in the show to acknowledge that aspect of KOTFM and then ending it with the Osage people --- the third act is definitely when I felt the fact that the movie was made for white audiences the most because that is when we get to Ernest grappling with whether or not to testify, with his epiphany after his daughter dies, when we get to King trying to keep control, when we get to the other people involved in the murders turning on each other and I didn't find any of that necessary. Scorsese said that when he spoke to the Osage about doing this movie, they said he had to remember that Mollie and Ernest loved each other,

"We realized that was really the heart of the film. And having met with the Osage so many times and heard from Margie Burkhart, who was the great-great-granddaughter of Ernest, she knew them. She kept saying, “Don’t forget it isn’t as simple as villains and victims. You have to remember Mollie and Ernest were in love.” And that always stayed with me when we were still working on the other version of the script. I said, “Well, if they’re in love, we got to show that too.” And then that became difficult in terms of showing all the machinations of the Bureau investigation. Plus, this love story, it was getting unwieldy."

and he said in the transcripts he saw, the FBI questioned why Mollie stayed with him after learning about him conspiring to murder her family while also poisoning her since she only divorced him after the hearing and instead of trying to answer that question, instead of really digging into Mollie's perspective, Mollie's emotions about this, he aligned with Ernest and kind of reverted to the procedural that the entire movie was originally supposed to be but that they scrapped and it's a flinch, I found it to be a faltering of commitment. From what I remember, Mollie is the only Osage character with a voiceover but John gets one and while I understand why Scorsese would make that choice, it shows his limitations when it would've been more compelling to get one from Henry, and this is also to say that I know Scorsese hired Osage consultants, hired Osage actors, had an Osage costume designer etc.

All in all, I found it to be a flawed but powerful, technically masterful film and I think of what Lily said “Nobody is going to hand an Osage filmmaker $200 million,” Gladstone said. “There’s a level of allyship that’s absolutely necessary" and within that context, Scorsese did things that Nolan, for instance, in Oppenheimer didn't even try.

9 notes · View notes

miximagic256 · 4 months

Text

Points of Interest (June - August)

Welcome back friends! This is the last Points of Interest for this year (for reasons I'll explain in the Epilogue section), once again the sketches that were supposed to accompany the topics talked about aren't here yet so I'll leave an update notice for when that's sorted.

So with that said...

Norway Holiday Cruise

What makes this holiday interesting is it was a double bill as not only did I go on a cruise for the first time but I also went to Norway, which is a place I never went before even when considering the times I’ve been to different countries.

As for the cruise I can see why people take them so much, even though they’re expensive you have no responsibilities at all because everything you could want is done by the staff and it’s honestly incredibly weird to get used to that because normally you need to be responsible for yourself, but on a cruise you can just relax and ask for anything you want. That said cruises are very expensive so it’s no wonder the most active people that go on cruises tend to be retired! (Although in recent times advertising has been trying to push for families to go on a cruise as well).

With Norway, what I experienced was like how a lot of people describe the country: there’s a lot of clean energy and it’s full of incredible scenery with its famous mountains and landscapes, the cruise stopped briefly at several points in Norway with all but the last day with them being fjords, they were tiny and a lot of the time compact so it must have been very noticeable when the cruise would stop by and hundreds of people would explore around! However as mentioned on the last day the cruise stopped at an actual town so there was much more to explore for that reason alone.

Overall it was a very memorable holiday!

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse

I was probably one of many that were excited and curious when the trailer for the sequel was released earlier this year, considering the first film was absolutely incredible and raised the bar so high, it makes you wonder how a sequel could possibly top it?

I should mention I haven’t seen this sequel since seeing it in the cinema so my memory of it is a bit hazy, however I can say that it definitely was a worthy sequel with it being so expansive than with the last film which I can understand since with again with the bar so high raised you're limited on options with how you can keep the audience engaged, the subtitle “Across the Spider-Verse” wasn’t joking with the amount of characters, stories and universes that all appear together that you definitely can't catch on one viewing.

…Although the Spider-Verse here is so much bigger than the last film that it can actually be a determent (although I should stress a small one), one of the many good things about the first film was that you didn’t need to be a fan of Spider-Man to enjoy it due to the way it's structured, things are introduced in a way that someone that wouldn't know about the Spider-Man franchise can get a good understanding of what or who the character, location and settings mean but also shows them off in a way that even though the returning fans already know of all of these things they are executed brilliantly, making the film incredibly fun and engaging for both old and new fans. Since the sequel adds so much that ties into deeper Spider-Man knowledge and that again there's no way you can catch everything in one viewing, it can be overwhelming for someone that knows little about the franchise so definitely be sure to watch the first film before this one.

Another issue is according to some anonymous animators, the staff had to constantly rework already finished shots over and over again to the point around 100 animators left and the film was finished in May one month before its premiere in June 2023, now In fairness the film was delayed several times from its planned initial release in November 2021 to its eventual release in June 2023 however while the first few delays can be explained to be a result of the pandemic the last delay the film had makes you wonder if behind the scenes there was development hell going on.

Overall though the film was definitely worth the wait and the 3rd film in the Spider-Verse trilogy has me very curious on what it will be like whether it will end things neatly or blow it all up, be sure to watch both the first and second Spider-Verse films if you haven't yet!

Meeting an online friend

Even though I've been on the internet for a long time I never actually made an account on anything, even on YouTube despite it being the main site I went on growing up as well as the amount of time I spent on it, it was only in 2015 when I finally made my first YouTube account around 7 years after using the platform (with me making accounts on other sites as the months went on).

It was during this time I actually started befriending people online and one thing I really wished was to one day meet them in person, but this seemed like an impossibility because not only was I in education but most of the time said friends lived far away and getting the money to travel there would be really expensive. So I thought the moment I finished education and got a job that I may finally get my chance of seeing an online friend since I wouldn't be held back and would have the money, however I would find the difficulties of distance and money would still be there alongside the fact some simply weren't comfortable with a visit, which combined with so many stories of people actually meeting their online friends made me think that my chances were so slim that I should just give up on the idea even if it really hurt.

So then imagine my surprise when by chance a friend briefly stayed in the UK as a result of his job! I knew this was a golden opportunity so I asked them if we could visit each other at some point and eventually we did! We did walks together, went to town together, had food together and generally just talked away about all sorts of topics.

The visit was only for a few hours but honestly? This has been one of my highlights from 2023, not only because I did something I nearly gave up entirely on but also because the friend in question is one of the best I've made in recent times and I already wish I could see them in person again because I miss them so much! Thanks so much for giving me the opportunity and maybe we'll see each other again one day <3

Topic End: Epilogue

Well that's it! That's the last Points of Interest post this year! I've never written diaries in my life but I have to admit this series has been pretty fun to far and I'll definitely be continuing them in 2024!

If you're wondering why I'm not writing a Points of Interest for September - December, well the honest answer is not much notable has happened but also those months haven't been positive for me unlike the previous months, Points of Interest is supposed to be positive so I've decided this will be my last post for POI this year (I also was planning on writing an end of year post but like with the 4th 2023 addition of POI I decided to not go ahead with that for personal reasons so sorry if anyone would have looked forward to that).

Thank you friends for reading and I hope you all have a great new year!

#points of interest #jenposting

1 note · View note

bellmo15-blog · 7 months

Text

Remember how I said a few months ago that I had a way better experience watching the Super Mario Bros Movie the second time because I didn't have to put up with any annoying theatre patrons? Well, I got the Blu Ray of Across the Spider-Verse a week ago and decided to watch it tonight since I had just beaten Edge of Time which like Spider-Verse features Spider-Man 2099 as a major part of it's story and wow, maybe I should just stop going to the cinemas entirely if I'm going to end up having a better experience watching these films I enjoy from home!

I've been holding this in since I saw in theatres but to keep it short I originally went with some family members to see this film while my little cousins were visiting and certain members of our little group seemed disappointed that it was going to be an animated film, something they somehow didn't know until AFTER we had got to cinema, and even when the movie was finished they did the classic move of writing this whole thing off as a "kids movie" just because it's animated. Yeah if that's there attitude I'd HATE to see how they would write off Puss in Boots The Last Wish, an animated film that deals with some VERY heavy subject matter!

Let's just say this happening right after my Super Mario Bros Movie experience really made me question if going to the theatre is even worth it anymore.

#Spider-Man #across the spiderverse

1 note · View note

masakunai · 11 months

Text

mouse

so last saturday i went to central plaza, i was looking for a new gaming mouse cause old one just gone shit. yeah i've been using it for around 3 years and thanks to my friend who bought this one, truly hero!

i woke up at the morning 8 am perhaps, going out and arrive at 10 am. what i've found after is i had only 600 baht (thai currency) in my wallet. what a shame! i can only afford the low quality one, i kept walking around the plaza seeing many stores many things. that time i was walking at third floor there's a restaurants, buffet, swensens and YES cinema, the best entertainment place for gen z population and of course i am. lucky me that my friends are there for spider-man across the spider-verse and they invited me why don't i agree! it took around 2 hrs, it was very fascinating for who are in love with comic art style like me(i'm bout to write a review for this). after that i went to banana it with my homies the good thing is i found what i wanted, logitech g304 lightspeed wireless it cost 1250 baht yeah you know what it mean... i can't buy it plus i begged my friend everyone is broke and that time i was like 💀

i returned home with nothing i was so regret about that day and left my cash to moma so she can trust in me that i won't use it for buying anything unnecessary. next day at evening dad told me to go with him, what a surprise! he bought me a new one (still not what i wishing for but at least i can use it for now) it's a china brand guess what? Nubwo yes you know the story about it. i got x58 antares or whatever it called, i've been using it for 2-3 days till now everything just great better than the old one g102 so right now i can live peacefully and it's time to clear my work!

cya thanks for reading!

0 notes

britesparc · 2 years

Text

David's Best of Everything: 2010s

Hello and welcome to the very-nearly-now. My journey through space and time continues apace, as we enter the last decade. Y’know, the one that just happened. The 2010s. This is leading to a little bit of “didn’t this just happen?”, especially as this was probably the most significant decade for me personally.

I think we can see increasingly the importance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to my personal cultural psyche, with three of their films being my favourites of those particular years, as well as the MCU-adjacent Spider-Verse. Spielberg remains represented, with the simultaneously excellent and also underrated Lincoln. As for games, I’d say we’re fully in the Xbox era now, starting with the 360 and charting the entire Xbox One generation. There are a few PC outliers – most significantly Civ VI, which is probably my most-played game of any of these this decade – and a couple of Switch games, including the pandemic-defining Animal Crossing.

Ah yes, the pandemic; that’s probably worth mentioning briefly. It only effects one year here, but its impact will be felt in the next decade (yes, I know there’s only one year, but I’m doing one for the 2020s so far). I only saw a couple of films at the cinema before everything shut in 2020, so my favourite film ended up being a streaming TV movie of a 2016 stage show.

Speaking of streaming, we can see how that defined my TV-watching, going from prestige BBC stuff at the decade’s start, to almost exclusively Netflix programmes for the remainder (and Mando popping up to remind us of Disney’s dominance right there at the end).

I don’t think my eclectic musical taste really can account for anything other than I don’t pay attention to what’s new or popular and I tend to stumble across things ad-hoc. There are artists I like that I return to repeatedly, and sometimes I gravitate to a band or singer and then seek out their back catalogue. That actually happened late this decade as I sort of rediscovered Springsteen. And as for books, we can clearly see that I’m reading a lot of comics; this was a funny decade for me, as I stopped catching the bus so much and got a smartphone, and the two things combined meant I just didn’t sit and read a novel quite as much as I used to. I still read a lot, but other things; and the books I did read tended not to be new. However, I was going to the Travelling Man in Manchester every week, and devouring these amazing long-form serials by writers such as Grant Morrison and James Roberts. These stories utterly defined this decade for me, and have been a huge and long-ranging influence. Seriously, check out Morrison’s Batman and Roberts’ Transformers; two of the best stories I’ve ever read!

Now, of course, the big thing about this decade is how I became very time-poor. There are huge films or games or whatever that are missing, not necessarily because I didn’t care for them, but because I’ve simply never experienced them. Because this is the decade I had kids, and that utterly blew the knees out from under my social life. I went from seeing about 30-40 films at the cinema every year to seeing about six or so. I had no time for games, very little time to sit and read. We maybe managed to grab an episode of a show on an evening (there was quite a brief, fun period where we’d have tea watching Star Trek while our baby daughter would sit giggling in her little bouncy chair). Very, very gradually my life is returning to a place where I can experience more culture outside of whatever the kids put on YouTube; but it’s a slow process.

That’s probably all I have to say about this decade. It was a weird one, full of great highs and lows; probably the biggest of my life, from euphoric fatherhood, career highlights, career lowlights, and then a bloody great pandemic. But it was a decade that gave us my two favourite comic books, the best films of the MCU, and Lego Marvel Super Heroes. That’s gotta count for something, right?

#best of everything #2010s #best of 2010s

2 notes · View notes

marksinn · 3 years

Text

Passion Project: Inspiration

I don’t think I’m starting at the beginning with this post. Keep your eyes peeled for later posts that explain what I’m doing and why.

After a month of thinking about, sketching and painting designs, I have finally done something. Essentially, recently watching two films has pushed me into action, and a part of me is ashamed to admit it. There isn’t a word count or any typesetting to curtail my thoughts here, so strap in.

When I created this brief I figured I’d draw a million wee skateboards, colour a few of them in, then fling my favourites into Adobe illustrator and make them look good. From there I would take the 5 best up to the skatepark and ask some of the patrons there which designs stood out to them. Next, I would adapt the three front-runners and create sweet PhotoShop mockups that would show what my designs would look like as skateboards. If I had the time, inclination or money by the end of the project, I would have the design laid onto a real skateboard (I’ve been looking to buy a new one for some time) and then be proud of myself.

So I’ve drawn some wee skateboards. Then I started upscaling the designs onto the floorboards of my loft:

This was an exercise to let me see how small things need to be adapted to be blown up. Skateboards can have any level of detail that you like on them, I hadn’t considered this until I was trying to draw a semi-perfect triangle for the traffic cone, or until I was using chalk to recreate four cubes. It’s also been fun to work with different media on chipboard - I have learned that most kinds of pencil, paint, chalk and charcoal do not like being used on chipboard. Decorating paint, however, has no such issues. Thanks, Dulux!

And so, with a few of these under my belt, I decided to try some digital designs. So I jumped into Illustrator and totally ignored my sketchbook, coming up with three designs that were all inspired by the day I had just had. The top design, I’ll focus on last, for reasons that will become apparent (unless you follow me on Instagram, where you’ll already know that it’s an absolute hit, with over 19 likes already!). I was told by a guy at the skatepark that he likes decks with very basic designs, just a colour or two, nothing overly detailed. Another skater told me that he often likes the basic wood background with one small emblem or sticker just beside the wheels.

The duo-tone design felt nice, I’m usually one for over-complicating things. I definitely have an attitude of “If there’s more in it, there’s a greater chance someone will find something they like”. The first colour choice put my girlfriend in the mind of a hand-bag she had seen photographed in the arms of Carrie Fisher - it was designed to look like a Prozac pill. So I changed the colours up, and added the separating black lines and textures to give it some subtle character. I then went full meta with the Minimal design. And, if I’m being honest, I’m incredibly happy with how it looks like a wee character. Expect to see that making a comeback in the very near future. But the top design is what really got me going.

I’ve recently been watching...

...Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and have been loving Miles Morales’ multiple hobbies of graffiti, mixing beats and saving his neighbourhood from a variety of dangers.

I then went to the cinema to see In The Heights, telling the tale of the Latin community during a blackout in North Manhattan. I found myself wrapped up in the romance, tribulations and music of the cast, and was felt oddly proud of Lin Manuel Miranda - who wrote this as a stage-musical while he was in college, had a modicum of success with it, then went on to create Hamilton, one of the most important musicals of our time. With the success of that particular show taking the entire world by storm, he was given the opportunity to make his old, relatively only semi-popular play into a blockbuster film. You can’t help but be inspired by someone like that.

I often find towards the end of a film I’m inspired by the characters’ journeys: be that from zero to hero, from lonely to loved or from rags to riches. Then I walk out and carry on with my normal life doing normal things. And as the hero of the story’s dreams all came true in the closing minutes (sorry for the spoiler, but it’s a musical, they rarely end in despair), a thought floated across my mind:

I’m utterly sick of being inspired

Now, to my credit, I did figure out in the car home that ‘tired’ would be a far more fitting and rhythmic word to use in this sentence, but this was a mentality that I found resonated really strongly with me. I’m very good at being inspired, I think most people are. We hear stories of people starting their own business, achieving some sporting brilliance or overcoming a personal hurdle and we say “Wow, isn’t that inspiring?” or

“It really inspires you to go out and make a difference!” or

“They are such an inspirational speaker!”

Then we go off about our day, not acting on the inspiration, and, for the most part, remaining uninspired. So I decided to act.

I did some very quick research (/acquiring of images of graffiti) in order to get the right shapes and textures to create a spray paint effect in Illustrator. I did some very quick research (/confirming the colours) of South American flags, taking the blue and red used in flags of the home nations of Miles Morales from Spider-Man and Usnavi from In The Heights. And I created the top design.

YES! I had been inspired and I had drawn a wee picture to show that - I had acted on my inspirations!

Then I looked to my left and spotted three, blank skate decks that I had bought on a whim from Re:Ply (a wonderful wee company who do a great deal of charity work supplying boards to people who need them, selling boards to people who can afford them, and for a very reasonable fee, providing unusable decks to people who want to use them for artistic purposes). I realised I hadn’t acted on my inspiration, I had just drawn a few pictures of skateboards with the eventual aim of PhotoShopping them onto other pictures of skateboards.

So I took myself...

... into the city centre with a shoddily prepared speech: “I’m looking for some cheap, small cans of spray paint. I’ve no idea what I’m doing, or if I’ll be good at it, so don’t want to invest too much into this.” Hiding behind this self-deprecating shield I barged into multiple art-, pound- and model-shops and pleaded with the staff to help a young idiot out. Amazingly, a very kind shop assistant pointed me in the direction of Fat Buddha, a clothes shop I’d always ignored as it seemed a bit to “...” for me. I don’t know what it seemed, but I knew it wasn't my kind of shop. Happy to prove me wrong, the guys in there were super helpful and they helped me buy my first cans of spray paint.

Now I’d spent money...

... and as a skinflint, that meant I had to get use out of my purchases. I had tricked myself into being inspired. Inspiration led me to the drawing, inspiration had led me to buy decks and the paint, now inspiration had to make me spray paint.

I’ll stop yammering on now. Essentially, I had planned on creating some analogue designs then digitising them (I’m guessing I should do a post on my brief, yeah? Might just upload the PDF to save me talking more), but then I found that I was doing the complete opposite. Genuinely accidentally. I had played with a few typefaces from various websites to get fonts that represented the ideas I wanted. The top one was semi-stolen (I can’t use the word ‘inspired’ any more in this post) from the end credits of In The Heights. The larger font is something of a nod to inspirational quotes you see on Facebook or on glittery frames in B&M.

I printed those out and cut them into stencils (very impressed that my digital boards have been drawn to a workable scale, thanks Maths). And after putting down a tack-layer (GRAFFITI JARGON (I think)) I sprayed the whole lot in blue.

Next, I tried to get a little fancy. Using cardboard blockers to create straight lines I added stars* (borrowed from the Puerto Rican flag) and made the bottom stripes vaguely reminiscent of America’s Old Glory.

I peeled the lettering off, and I’d done it. I may have to explain the overtly-negative inspirational quote to people, but to me it’s a clear sign that there’s no point in just being inspired, and that’s all I wanted.

A weight I didn’t know I was carrying was lifted from my shoulders. The plan was to possibly end up with a self-designed skateboard. And now I have one.

*Yes, I know they’re crosses.

#pp_hncgd1 #allhandsondecks #skateboard

4 notes · View notes

smokeybrandreviews · 5 years

Text

The Force is Weak

The Star Wars Experience at Disneyland has grossly under performed. Merchandise sales is at an all time low. The Last Jedi and Solo were both bombs. Rise of Skywalker is getting all kinds of side eye from the community. It’s wild to see this happening because i love Star Wars almost as much as i love Marvel. Skywalker and friends was a sure thing. How the f*ck did Disney f*ck it up? If you listen to Iger and Kennedy, it’s an combination of toxic male masculinity and Star Wars fatigue. While that is true, it’s not the major problem with this franchise. I’ve poke on this before but it’s been several years and i have a much larger cross section to judge. In my humble opinion as a fan of the franchise since the 80s and a life long lover of geek culture, i wanted to dive back into this train wreck in a galaxy far away.

Problem: Kathleen Kennedy

Kennedy is the biggest problem Star Wars has encountered in a long time. She is the one-eyed, drunk, captain of this capsizing ship and she keeps throwing people overboard instead of actually patching the many, many, leaks that will follow. She’s the intern that was around that got Lucas his coffee for decades and came along in her position as a grandfathered in stipulation for the overall sale. Kennedy is not a creative. Kennedy does not know the lore. In fact, she has gone out of her way to declare her disdain for it. The decades of creative position outside of the initial 2 trilogies and Clone Wars simple doesn’t count, even though there are fan favorites and intriguing stories told in that now ambiguous mire. Kennedy seems to want to erase what Star Wars was and elevate what it’s going to be; What she is in charge of. It feels like she wants to be seen as equal to Lucas and that’s never going to happen.

Fix: Move Kennedy to a strictly executive position.

Get her out of the day-today. Effectively banish her to oblivion and install someone to take up that Kevin Feige roll. Maybe the cat that is in charge of Star Wars TV, Dave Filoni. You need someone who knows the lore and has a respect for it. Kennedy is neither of those things. That chip on her shoulder from years of being dismissed by the creatives at Lucasfilm has her literally dismantling everything the fans love because she hates it. I understand she has a contract but the fact that she gave Ryan Johnson a trilogy worth of Disney bucks after the way Last Jedi went, is very telling of where her head is. Basically Kathleen Kennedy needs to be removed from her responsibilities of the Day-to-Day of the Star Wars machine. She is the biggest problem. Literally everything wrong with this franchise begins and ends with her.

Problem: Rey

I don’t have a huge problem with Rey but i understand why everyone else does. Rey is mad OP for no other reason that “female empowerment” which is ludicrous because one of the strongest females ever set to film in Leia, is literally IN the same movie where Rey is introduced! How do you f*ck up the evolution of the next generation so hard when the blueprint is wlking around the set with you? Gender politics aside, i’ll get to that in a minute, Rey is more a prop that a character. We don’t know anything about her. At all. She’s super good at everything she attempts with no explanation. Like, a few throwaway lines here and there would fix the narrative laziness about her easily. “How can you fly this ship so well?” “I’ve been on Jakku my entire life. I’ve had time to study.” This exchange makes the fact Rey can fly the Falcon plausible. “How do you fight so well?” “i can kind of feel the flow of battle. I told you i can take care of myself.” This establishes Rey has a sense for battle that can’t be explained, ie. The force. Of course, this doesn’t explain how she bested Kylo or embarrassed Luke with a stick but it plants seeds for the real fix.

Fix: Rey HAS to be a Skywalker.

Not a Solo. Not a clone. Luke’s kid, specifically. Anything less will go down like glass with the fans. I think that’s where JJ was going when he wrote the treatment for these films. Objectively, that’s where it had to go. Star Wars is a Skywalker story. You can do so much with that line. Hell, the Expanded universe, f*cking Legends now i guess, did a wonderful job with all of it. Rey needs to be the child that Luke had in secret. Maybe those junkers stole her. Maybe he gave her away to keep her safe. In order to save that character, Rey NEEDS to be a Skywalker. This would only elevate her in the mythos, not belittle her accomplishments. But, again, Rey is a Kennedy creation. She can’t be linked to Skywalker in anyway because she’s hers and not his. This mentality is a mistake and it’s crippling one of the most compelling aspects of this brand new take on the franchise.

Problem: Gender Politics

Oh, this can of worms is about to get all over the place. So i get what Kennedy wanted to do. Star Wars is an inherently masculine story. It’s a story of fathers and sons. A patriarchy is strangling freedoms under threat of planetary destruction with the biggest phallus replacement in the history of cinema, until Awakens gave it some viagra for their climax. Throwing in a little estrogen would go a long way to level of this testosterone party. That makes sense and, like i stated above, Rey has potential. The community isn’t against female warriors. Look at Ahsoka. Ma started on a rocky introduction. By the time Clone Wars ended, she was held in the same air as Vader, Luke, Leia, and Solo. Ahsoka is literally my second favorite character in all of the mythos, after Vader. And that’s not counting any of the ancillary characters. Bastila Shan and Mira Jade immediately come to mind. Hell, Chelli Aphra has become one of my favorite characters! What these cats all have in common is the fact that they are well written characters with earned strength. None of these women are mary-sues who come across as more of a OC self insert than a proper Star Wars protagonist. None of these characters are plot derailing distractions with no substance or agency other than to save Finn, robbing him of his moment because “muh love.” Rose Tico. I’m talking about Rose Tico. Why is Rose Tico?

Fix: Tone that sh*t down.

It’s fine to have gender politics in these movies. They are political animals. It’s that the execution is scathing which, in turn, is alienating the community. “The force is female”? Really? Did that even need to be said, let alone printed on a shirt and paraded about while offending long time fans with your dismissal of their very valid concerns? There were, of course, asshole in that chorus. Hell, they might have been the loudest. But just because i have a critique about your movie, doesn’t make me sexist or chauvinist. It means that there are very real issues with character and narrative development that needs to be addressed. It means that, if i can see these flaws, they are very visible. That means a lot of people are seeing the same things i am because they are there. I don’t hate women. I don’t hate the female-led direction of this new trilogy. I hate bad stories and these, so far, are bad stories. Stop using your feminism as a shield to legitimate critique and fix the goddamn movies!

Problem: Direction

These cats, on the sword of Kennedy, have gone through a lot of directors, man. of these first movies, a little over half have had a director change in the middle of production. Hell, Solo had their directors changed because Kennedy fired them over that Droid, L3-37. Apparently, that was a caricature of Kennedy, herself. The directors, the cats who made Lego Movie and Spider-Verse, thought it was funny. Kennedy didn't so she fired them, even though their movie was 3/4 finished.Rogue One suffered a similar fate but that was more Kennedy hated the film and it was managed poorly so Tony Gilroy “directed reshoots” but it’s widely known he shot just under the amount that would give him a director credit. And then there’s the directors promised movies, who lost them before they even started production. Trank, i’m looking at you.

Fix: Vet your visionaries better.

I don’t understand why this is a such a problem for Star Wars when Disney owns the blueprint for this sh*t in Marvel Studios. Feige hires cats you wouldn’t expect and let’s them create to their strengths.The Russos have given us the strongest films in the MCU and Winter Soldier is, in my opinion, their Dark Knight. Taika Waititi literally saved the entirety pf the Thor franchise and is positioned to be the first in MCU history to get a fourth installment. Edgar Wright was tapped for Ant-Man but in a rare misstep by Feige, walked away. Instead, they hired Peyton Reed but had enough respect for what Wright brought to the table, that they used his screenplay and gave him credit for it. Kennedy has extended no such courtesies. It’s like she doesn’t make movies with any respect for the material but makes the movies she’s always wanted to make but couldn’t. It’s like a bunch of sporadic ideas that are all over the place. You can’t make a coherent, interconnected, cinematic universe by throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what will stick. hat’s what the DCEU did and we’ve seen how that has fared.

#Star Wars

0 notes

smokeybrand · 5 years

Text

The Force is Weak

Problem: Kathleen Kennedy

Fix: Move Kennedy to a strictly executive position.

Problem: Rey

I don’t have a huge problem with Rey but i understand why everyone else does. Rey is mad OP for no other reason that “female empowerment” which is ludicrous because one of the strongest females ever set to film in Leia, is literally IN the same movie where Rey is introduced! How do you f*ck up the evolution of the next generation so hard when the blueprint is wlking around the set with you? Gender politics aside, i’ll get to that in a minute, Rey is more a prop that a character. We don’t know anything about her. At all. She’s super good at everything she attempts with no explanation. Like, a few throwaway lines here and there would fix the narrative laziness about her easily. “How can you fly this ship so well?” “I’ve been on Jakku my entire life. I’ve had time to study.” This exchange makes the fact Rey can fly the Falcon plausible. “How do you fight so well?” “i can kind of feel the flow of battle. I told you i can take care of myself.” This establishes Rey has a sense for battle that can’t be explained, ie. The force.Of course, this doesn’t explain how she bested Kylo or embarrassed Luke with a stick but it plants seeds for the real fix.

Fix: Rey HAS to be a Skywalker.

Problem: Gender Politics

Fix: Tone that sh*t down.

Problem: Direction

Fix: Vet your visionaries better.

0 notes