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| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
It definitely wasn't perfect. The opening 20 minutes in particular were pretty bumpy. A lot of rapid chopping and changing between planets and a slew of introductions to characters, some of whom I still didn't know the name of by the end of the film. There are also a couple of minor plot hang-ups throughout the story if you pay close attention. For a film with so much money thrown at it, these are rough edges you'd expect to have been smoothed down.
With that said, once it built up a head of steam it just went from strength to strength. The last hour was pure Star Wars pornography for the type of fan (like me) who'd spend his childhood imagining huge space battles between Star Destroyers and Mon Calamari cruisers, or AT-ATs rampaging across alien landscapes.
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Well given that Edwards had really only directed a handful of medium, and one big budget films in his entire career, I don't think it was ever going to be perfection.
It was further complicated by the fact the studio hated his first cut, and then demanded 40% of the scenes reshot, and that's probably why the film is a little disjointed in flow. For commercial reasons (i.e. making the biggest year in revenue for any studio in history for BV) they coulnd't push back the release date and apparently only just made the deadlines for the final cut of the film. I have no doubt we'll eventually get a director's cut with the CGI faces fixed and a better edit.
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I expect The Force Awakens and its cuddly young adult characters played better with the kind of touchy-feely dipshit who always wanted to dress up in costumes and pretend to waft a light-sabre around while using Jedi mind tricks on bullies.
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Absolutely right; in fairness to Abrams though, he was primarily concerned about getting the "tone" right, which given the pressure on him to deliver a sequel of the biggest franchise in history was no small task, and he did deliver a good movie.
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I've noticed recently that established film critics seem to be getting increasingly out of line with science fiction fans I know and trust personally. Everyone I know thought Rogue One pissed all over TFA, and yet the latter had a much better critical reception. Similarly (and on the subject of new films) the critics lathered Arrival with praise as big, thoughtful science fiction, and yet all the SF fans I've spoken to agreed with my opinion that it was a load of pretentious, vacuous dogshit. |
Don't forget the payola that happens with Critics. While the ones worth their salt will not call a turd a rose, they can be easily swayed to say an average/good film is incredible, and with TFA, the marketing pressure was probably intense. I've seen instances where a a major studio's film was crap, they did press screenings and there was a an agreement that if nothing nice was to be said then it wasn't said at all. One fairly well known critic broke the embargo two days before release and there was an out and out war between the studio and the critic. It resulted in that critic basically being blacklisted from most press screenings and film festivals and the sad part was, he was absolutely right, the film was dogshit but it cost the studio nothing to make and there was a lot of hype around it so they stood to make a nice profit.
Similar thing happened to the girl with the dragon tattoo.
I think more than ever, you're seeing a disconnect between critics and well educated fans opinion and I reckon it has a lot to do with marketing and money towards the former.
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