Topic: The Movie Thread

@LN78 The newer Star Wars stuff:

Now, careful here on in (again) everyone ***MAJOR POTENTIAL RISE OF SKYWALKER SPOILER BELOW***

According to the newer leaks, the Lucas thing with the secret Skywalker is either bogus or they chucked it out. Most of the what I put before stands, but the sequence of the 'throne room' scene is different. Palpatine is on life support and Rey confronts him. He introduces his new clone body which is Matt Smith. Kylo is barred from the throne room by the Knights of Ren. He's thrown away his lightsaber by this point and Rey teleports Leia's lightsaber (it's not clear if Rey just has it - or if Leia is meant have been there) to him and he kills the Knights. The star destroyer fleet all have Death Star cannons and are reliant on the flagship. That's the ship that the space horses are riding on as Finn leads an attack on it because ships can't destroy it for some reason. The First Order/Resistance team up is still a thing. Palpatine uses force lighting from the throne room to disable the entire(!) resistance fleet, destroying the Millennium Falcon - killing Lando, Chewie, C3PO, Leia(?) and R2. Rey and Kylo try to fight Palpatine, Kylo is killed and sent flying in to an abyss and Palpatine shoots force lightning at Rey, this is apparently when she 'channels' previous Jedi (Ghosts perhaps) and deflects it back and kills him. Rey uses force lightning herself to disable the Imperial Fleet and the resistance finishes them off. Rey takes the Skywalker name as a title of sorts and there's an ending on Tatooine. So yeah, still sounds pretty bad.

@LN78 Maybe. I think the tales of the reshoots and re-edits are real though, and all JJ seems able to do is recycle things that have already been done, failing that just throw as much as possible on to the screen. He simply can't make a film without visual escalation. JJ also confirmed in interviews as recently as late October that the film wasn't actually finished.

There's talk of Kathleen Kennedy being ousted and Favreau taking over Star Wars as a whole. Though what they actually do movie-wise from here on out is anybody's guess. There's an article out there about predicting box office numbers based on trailer views. Based on that, TROS could potentially 'only' make half of what TLJ did, which only made half of TFA. Literal diminishing returns!

@LN78 @KALofKRYPTON It all sounds a little ‘grade school fan fiction’ to me. Like just a bunch of randomness that a 12 year old came up with for shock value.
As far as the trailer views — I do know that many fans have avoided watching trailers, wanting to avoid spoilers and go in ‘cold.’ They will still see the movie opening week. But if the film has any prayer of getting close to Epi 7’s profits then it will have to stimulate multiple re-watches at the theater. The only way that happens is if the movie is great. It’ll have a great opening weekend, but will it stick around or will everyone just watch it once and then shrug off a second viewing since it will be popping up on Disney+ in a few weeks. That will probably cannibalize box office success unless it’s a transcendent piece of cinema.

@Th3solution Film making by committee! Designed for the sole purpose of making money as opposed to any particular creative vision.

I think a lot of fans are happy enough to go and see it - I'll probably go and see it out of morbid curiosity. I know what to expect, even not having explored the leaks and even if they all turn out to be false - it'll be a JJ/Kennedy film. Lots of flash but mind-numbingly shallow as there won't be any new ideas whatsoever.

I don't think it's a long shot to expect it to be worse than TLJ. TLJ is a bad film, it's badly paced, poorly directed, shot, written, conceived and worse of all - it's just now very good Star Wars. I expect TROS to be better than that in most respects, but I also expect it to be an wholly unfulfilling experience in visual excess and 'paint by numbers' nonsense.

@KALofKRYPTON Yeah, I must say - if the TV series Lost is any indication of how JJA wraps up a beloved long running series, then we are all going to be disappointed.
If they can only get near to End Game in the way it wrapped up the long storyline, yet left things open for future movies from the franchise. It’s a tough task to bring closure yet also leave the door cracked open. Especially the way Epi 8 ended.

@Th3solution They can't get near to Endgame. Whatever else can be said about the Marvel films, they successfully build a world, situations and characters to inhabit them in a running continuity of story, theme and character progression. The entire MCU could stop right now and there'd still be a largely satisfying conclusion for most character's journeys in place - as well as a narrative conclusion that makes sense in-universe.
We've been given nothing even close to that for the last two main sequence films from Star Wars. Our central characters are hollow stand-ins for Luke and Vader, our 'bad guy gone good' stand in for Han has a promising start but gets regressed for TLJ then summarily wasted for rest of the run-time, the series observers in R2D2 and C3PO are hardly ever around and other original characters are sidelined and or killed off in at best, insulting and worst spectacularly belittling and character breaking ways.

We've got nothing endearing here to care about, other than a not-R2D2 droid. The stakes are too vague, the players on each side seem to have little to no sensible motivations since Disney didn't care to share any more money than they had to with Lucas - so we get The Resistance and The First Order as opposed to the Rebellion and The Empire - neither of which make much sense as entities anyway, but TFA does nothing to explain what either faction actually is or why and how it exists.

Biggest problem, I just don't care. I'm just watching a corporation wring money out of a franchise they bought, tore down and tried to remold to their own advantage by wiping away what's gone before and cynically sticking on superficial virtue signalling.

@KALofKRYPTON Well said. I hate to admit it but I think I agree with a lot of your sentiment. I’m just trying to foster some emotional denial, though, and coaching myself up to keep my Star Wars fandom alive. When I go to the theater to see Rise of Skywalker I will check my expectations at the door and adopt a youthful and naive approach to the spectacle and just hope for the best. But the fact that a lot of my friends have already pre-ordered tickets to opening weekend and I can’t seem to motivate myself to do so is telling. Perhaps the closer it gets I’ll feel the hype build and start caring too.

@Th3solution
Thankfully - whatever they do/have done - what I do like is still there.

I watched Mother! on Netflix earlier today. Mind blown 🤯, in a good way. Anyone else seen it?

@jacobia I found it a bit of a head f of a movie, and quite frustrating in places to watch! I had no idea what on earth was going on half the time and had to watch a couple of vids on YouTube to wrap my head around it. I'm not sure if I found entirely enjoyable, but credit to everyone involved for trying something different. It would probably be worth another watch, the film takes on a different perspective knowing what happens at the end.

@JohnnyShoulder haha, likewise! But I do enjoy it when a movie engages me like that and I head to YouTube for analysis stuff.
Definitely felt uncomfortable and a bit anxious during a lot of the film, what with the close camera positioning around Jennifer Lawrence during the bizarre things that start happening around her.

@Arugula Yup, The Perfection was 🦇💩 crazy, great movie. All I knew about it beforehand was to not know anything about it before watching it.
Have you seen The Invitation, also on Netflix?

@Arugula @jacobia Not seen either of those movies, but will give them a look. Mother was released in the cinema though and had nothing to do with Netflix, which makes even more intresting that it was given the go ahead.

I saw Le Mans '66 /For v Ferrari yesterday. Decent film. Not the most touching of biographical flicks you'll ever see, but Damon and Bale make it. The pace keeps the relatively long runtime feel brisk too.
Bale's accent is rather inconsist, I had to google where his character was actually from (not far from me) to confirm what he was going for 😂 It's a good performance though.

Michael B. Jordan has reportedly pitched his vision to WB for Superman. JJ Abrams has had meetings with WB for Superman as well.

Also, there are rumours that Pattison is having trouble bulking up for the role as Batman.

@WanderingBullet If WB have any sense (they don't), they'll shift that very much to the back-burner, or at least just make him John Henry Irons or have him show up as Calvin Ellis in some multiverse thing. There's no need to ethnicity or sex-swap characters, certainly not major players.

JJ will probably get Superman (though I was under the impression that a deal was already done). If TROS 'bombs', perhaps WB will get cold feet though.

They could get away with an incredibly athletic build if he could manage it. That said, there's nothing to say that we actually have to see him in any particular state of undress and still have the portrayal a convincing one. In addition to that, even Affleck and Cavil'ls suits are padded and sculpted. There are very few ways to get the look of a defined physique (no matter how defined that physique is) without relying on incredibly thin materials that probably wouldn't look great on screen.
So long as they don't go overboard with the muscle suit like Shazam or make him look like an action figure (Routh in Superman Returns) - it'll probably be fine. I expect it'll be the same team behind the new bat suit as have done them for years anyway.

@LN78 FlyBy was McG's film in the end, but JJ did the script - early 2000s. The only reason that didn't happen was because McG refused to film in Australia.

EDIT: on the casting, Matt Bomer was wanted by Brett Ratner when he was in charge. We've all seen the Cavill screen test pic by now too. WB wanted Hartnett. I don't think I've ever seen anything saying that Chris Rock was attached. But Den of Geek reckons as I've read elsewhere that Shia Labeouf was cast as Jimmy, Scarlett Johansson was the preferred choice for Lois Lane and RDJ was signed up up as Lex Luthor.

There's a couple of versions of the script out there. Both very JJ, and mostly not very good. Elements of it all can be seen in both Superman Returns and Man of Steel.

@LN78 Interesting. That would've been around '98 or early '99 - well before Flyby was a thing. Maybe WB were turning over some of Smith and John Peter's stuff in prep of getting something moving.

@LN78 Yeah. Just happy cashing the cheques! Which is Fair enough.

If you want the weirdest Superman movie stuff - see if you can find Ilya Salkind's original story treatment for Superman 3

@LN78 It's certifiably bonkers. Braniac yes. In a weird love triangle with Superman and Supergirl that involves time travel to medieval England and Superman and Braniac posing as rival knights. I am not making this up!