quote:

Originally posted by colin:
The real problem I had with the prequels was described very well in a "top ten SF movies never made" thing I saw recently that I have since lost the link for. The prequels compressed the universe. The same dozen characters showing up everywhere, traveling down a steadily narrowing path towards a known conclusion, takes the whole galaxy teeming with billions that seemed to exist just off stage in the first three movies and turned it into a place with three, maybe four planets, each with a single small city consisting mostly of facades, and occupied by at most a hundred people. That was the real disappointment.

Fascinating insight, and a potentially excellent object lesson for creators of fiction.

Poor Lucas. He perhaps thought he was being artistically clever starting the series way deep in media res (and perhaps he was) but the result was he then began in media concrete.

Plotlines can often suffer from excessive tidying. Call it "Shawshankitis"? Does everything need to pay off?

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:
Plotlines can often suffer from excessive tidying. Call it "Shawshankitis"? Does everything need to pay off?

I think one thing that happens is that for many of us creators of fiction, tidying up everything is how we at first create a whole plot. This premise creates that consequence which engenders this ramification which births another premise. One knows, or believes, that to understand all this one must 'symmetrize' it all, make things match up, balance, cancel out.

Once that's done, then the trick is to back up and see where the structure can afford to have some members kicked out and still stand, and then to see which removal provides the most mystery, intrigue, wind behind the plot-craft's sails...

...upon which understanding being achieved, one finds one has to almost write the $(*(^%$^*%^#ing thing all over again.

A game of narrative Jenga!

colin, kenmeer, Justy, maybe you've already all seen and read this.

I hope Koepp fashioned something appetizing from the 20-year slag. Repeating at last his so-called "singular feat", Jurassic Park.

Made me google Jenga. I suppose I'll have to relent and google Koepp as well.

Taskmaster, you.

quote:

Wonderful eye candy of course. But . . . God. The dialog and acting and characterization were hideously, egregiously, graceful-as-a-engine block-tumbling-down-a-spiral-staircase AWFUL. Anakin / Darth and "Padme" in particular.

Pretty much captures my feelings about Ep. III now.

quote:

Originally posted by Metro Dynamics:
Kambo, turns out.

There's your new creepy-crawlies!

quote:

Originally posted by colin:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
To be fair, getting a good likeness is hard.[snip]

You do it well. I bet you wouldn't make Harrison look like Jean-Paul Sartre.

It looks better than the one the guy did from Club Obi Wan.

You're good, Colin.
Well, maybe, but that's more because I couldn't make Jean-Paul Sartre look like Jean-Paul Sartre. You overestimate me. I think I'm just getting into the realm of the barely recognizable:

quote:

Originally posted by Kradlum:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
This is the same Lucas who recalled tons of Ewoks figures and blacked them out on the back of the packages because he didn't think the fur looked real enough!

I think that was actually because the cardbacks came out before the movie and the Ewoks were blacked out to prevent a spoiler. Those are known in the trade as the 65A backs. The 65B card backs were exactly the same, just without the Ewoks blacked out.

quote:

It is interesting to note that the 65A back has two figures blacked out on the card. These are both Ewoks. The reasoning behind this is that these cards were released before the movie Return of the Jedi was actually in theaters. George Lucas wanted to keep the Ewoks a secret, so he insisted that Kenner not reveal them.

But when I was a kid, and the movie had been released and they delayed the Ewoks and I remember it being because the fur didn't look real enough. Quite probably someone lied to me, as grown ups lie top all children about there being Santa Clauses and Sky Gods and the like.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:


Never liked that midichlorians thing. Something like the Force doesn't need explaining.

That's exactly what my friend and I said after we saw Ep. 1.

And we said Yipee a lot.

We were tripping. What can you do?

(not tripping wasn't an option)

quote:

...upon which understanding being achieved, one finds one has to almost write the $(*(^%$^*%^#ing thing all over again.

That's why we get paid the big bucks.

... Hey, wait a sec.

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:
Plotlines can often suffer from excessive tidying. Call it "Shawshankitis"? Does everything need to pay off?

This is the central problem with "the well made play" theory of screen writing, the precision of the piece doesn't allow for reality, it doesn't feel real. Clint Eastwood's films I feel are like this.

I wouldn't call the Star Wars prequels suffered from the same thing exactly, but they certainly tightened the matrix to the point of silliness.

Boba Fett's dad is all the clones? Why? That was stupid for one.

There are of course many more...

quote:

Originally posted by kenmeer livermaile:

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:
Plotlines can often suffer from excessive tidying. Call it "Shawshankitis"? Does everything need to pay off?

I think one thing that happens is that for many of us creators of fiction, tidying up everything is how we at first create a whole plot. This premise creates that consequence which engenders this ramification which births another premise. One knows, or believes, that to understand all this one must 'symmetrize' it all, make things match up, balance, cancel out.

Once that's done, then the trick is to back up and see where the structure can afford to have some members kicked out and still stand, and then to see which removal provides the most mystery, intrigue, wind behind the plot-craft's sails...

...upon which understanding being achieved, one finds one has to almost write the $(*(^%$^*%^#ing thing all over again.

This stems from the subsumed need to create an ordered universe, a universe by design and with meaning. Fiction is a direct expression of attempting to posit meaning on the world.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:

quote:

...upon which understanding being achieved, one finds one has to almost write the $(*(^%$^*%^#ing thing all over again.

That's why we get paid the big bucks.

... Hey, wait a sec.

Yeah, no shit.

quote:

Originally posted by Metro Dynamics:
A game of narrative Jenga!

colin, kenmeer, Justy, maybe you've already all seen and read this.

I hope Koepp fashioned something appetizing from the 20-year slag. Repeating at last his so-called "singular feat", Jurassic Park.

David Koepp did a good job with Spider-Man and The Trigger Effect was a good script. He's a decent writer.

quote:

Fiction is a direct expression of attempting to posit meaning on the world.

That and to keep the reader from chucking it after chapter three. Or, as you read once before:

"The world ‘in here’ of language and other symbologies (we’ll leave emotions out of this; the limbic system seems an old and labyrinthian awareness of its own) is as “real” as are those external actualities we generally refer to as the world. It has its internal and external aspects. Language exists in our minds and ‘out there’ in books and conversations and the explanatory thread holding together the weave of multimedia like movies and song, a fiber called plot. [‘Plot’ is an entire field for exploration unto itself. Plot is a form of energy transformation, a formation of a semantic macrosystem which participants ingest and experience like a drug or food or, again, Reality (henceforth referred to as “Big R”).

fanboizgeekery....
BLOP!

That's what we're here for.

Since we gave up on the big bucks.

Another gotta right-clicker: