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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7706091" data-attributes="member: 4937">I'm not laughing at them.  They are entitled to want to see entertainment that demands nothing from them and requires them only to absorb and enjoy a series of visceral experiences.  Besides, only about half the people that watch those movies claim to even like them, much less love them.   The consensus seems to be "stupid but fun".  Certainly they may have a point when they ask me, "Why do you have to overanalyze everything?" or "Why can't you just let something be what it is?"  I mean, even my favorite author complained about his fans wanting to turn his stories into some sort of elaborate game (never mind that his stories seemed to have started as some sort of self-therapeutic word game, that he more or less invented modern world-building, or that he took the time when writing to create ability time lines and map moves and travel times so that all the pieces would believably synch up.)  So I'm not laughing at people for having brains that work differently than mine.  God knows that I've been teased enough for not having a brain that works like what everyone considers normal.And yes, they clearly do some things right, albeit that they work only for a small subset of the potential audience in a way that more universally beloved movies don't but instead find a way to reach almost all the different sorts of critics that a movie might have.  I think there is some accounting for taste.In, for example, the goodreads community, you'll notice trends in how people review books.  Some reviewers are 'X^2' reviewers, where almost every book that they read gets 5 stars.  The rare exceptions to this seem personal and emotional, leaving a thin smattering of reviews that don't get 5 stars.   Other reviewers are binary.  They either love something or they hate, with almost every review getting 1 star or 5 stars.  But even they tend to give more 5 star review than 1 star reviews.  Most reviewers average review is over 4 stars, meaning that they absolutely love everything they choose to turn their hand to.   Then you have the true critics that want to measure books against each other, and they tend to produce normal curves or at least distributions of some sort.  "How much did I enjoy this compared to something else?"  "How well written is this compared to something else?"  And you have skeptics that tend to believe that 95% of everything is crap, always look for flaws, and produce more low star reviews than high star reviews even after winnowing down skeptically what they want to bother to review.  And those are just broad categories and one way to think about how people decide what they like.  I don't entirely agree.  Even despite being a decidedly anti-intellectual sort, I think there can be merit and objective value in techniques discussed by experts.  Sometimes you'll see fashions and fads, but underneath it all there are basic biological and emotional instincts common to most humanity that techniques appeal to.   Music and rhythm do have underlying biological components and you can somewhat predict how much appeal something is going to have.  Story structure is likewise deeply embedded in the human mind.  Sometimes you see people intellectualizes value in running counter to these intuitive methods, and I suppose their is some value in that experimentation, but I'm not at all surprised if it never seems to have broad and lasting appeal outside of highly trained experts who've studied consciously these structures and are dissecting them consciously.   For my part, I consider making new stories by old formulas to be harder than consciously breaking the formulas, so I tend to admire things like perfectly timed firing of your Chekov Guns, well concealed but perfectly predictable in hindsight twists, or amplifying innocuous small themes into highly resonate ones, or perfectly timed musical swells to drive emotions, because doing those things well is so hard.  Everyone is trying and mostly failing, but if you do it right, it will be timeless.  People listening to Homer 3000 years back and modern preteens will get it perfectly.Sure.  I suppose that is true.  But it's also I think odd that if it is always dependent on taste how lasting can be a consensus regarding on say, "Pride and Prejudice", "Les Miserables", "The Lord of the Rings".   It might just be taste whether you like them, but there also seems to be some objective craftsmanship.I disagree.  Any animator would disagree as well I'd warrant.  Yes, the sum is more than the parts, but to claim that the sum isn't made of the parts seems ridiculous.  I've seen plenty of scenes broken down into individual gestures and facial expressions and what good actors are doing is just amazing.  You might not catch it all in real time, but when you break it down it's communication and whether thoughtful or intuitive the little gestures and expressions can be perfect.   Heck, learning the language of body language probably literally saved my life.  I can even reference the book that first opened that vista up to my nearly autistic little brain and the wonders that opened up when I could start reading it.  What does this gesture mean?  What does it express?  What is the character thinking?   These are all perfectly valid questions to ask, and they help you understand why you think (or don't think) someone is a good actor.Oh, she's very expressive.  She's probably even a good actor.  The fault her is as much or more with the director.  Again, going back to the prequels, virtually everyone working in those movies was an excellent actor.   The cast has stellar credentials and did excellent jobs in other movies.  The problem is that everyone seems so wooden because of the clunky leaden predictable script, poor direction in the scene, poor shot selection, and half the characters in the movie belonging to an organization that prizes suppression of emotion (and being directed to that point).    You keep talking about 'three' and 'trios', but I don't think we have a trio in this movie.  I don't see the stretch on any character in R1 except perhaps Bodi, whose arc we don't see start and whose insanity/mental trauma is inexplicably dropped.  Everyone's else's motivation and certainly main character's motivation is clear, with the showing and telling syncing up.  And most importantly, no one changes motivation without the sort of scene that you'd associate with motivational change.  Unlike TFA, we never have a scene where a character changes there stated motivation 5 minutes after declaring it with absolutely no establishing scenes for why, or acts in a way that is inexplicable to their stated motivation.   For example, "I must find the map, so I will blow everything up and kill anyone who might provide me clues."  Compare with Vadar's statement, "Tear this ship a part, and bring me prisoners - I want them alive."   Clear motivation inspires clearly logical motivation for the action.  No one in the TFA EVER states a clear motivation and follows it up with logical action based on that motivation.  I have a hard time thinking of one scene where the action follows from the stated declaration, rather than is directed by Out of Character knowledge of the plot hoops.  It's a hopeless mess as much as 5 minutes in and never gets better.Perhaps he could mentally and emotionally mature to the point that he's at least as mature as 10 year old Annie.  I suppose "It's a spoiled toddler with a light saber and godlike force powers!" could be scary if there was the slightest consistency in his presentation.  ("Is he more powerful than Luke, as implied by the backstory, or can an untrained Storm Trooper nearly defeat him in a light saber duel?", "Can he literally freeze blaster bolts in midair and force paralyze heroes, or does he have trouble defeating a mook without any training who may or may not even be force sensitive?")And I note you still haven't tried to answer my challenge of one scene that is acted well.Forced in what way? How unearned?  How are they reversed?  Cassian takes no sudden and unexpected actions at any point in the movie, and never changes motivation without an establishing scene.  He's got a straight forward three act arc, with establishing shots for each, and a clear epiphany which makes sense in the context of the films theme of the redemptive power of hope and the heroes being people with unclean hands because they need hope more than anyone else.  What more do you want?It would be utterly unbelievable to me that a character with her background has any tears left in their body at this point.  No one goes through that sort of emotional trauma and still cries while under stress.   I suppose we might could have seen a shot of her locked in a closet allowing herself to cry, and that might have been a good shot, but we aren't dealing with a naive farm girl at this point.   She and Cassian are both hardened soldiers and she's given only as much loss of self-control as I would find believable.  Again, three arc structure.  Clear shifts of motivation only occur in response to major establishing scenes ("hears Father's message to her", "witnesses death of Father").   Clear epiphany scene when she confronts that her father has not died, has never forgotten her, and has never given up his beliefs.  I don't know what you are talking about.  Now that is a matter of taste.  I thought Cassian Andor and his crew of sinners giving a speech about hope was a shining moment of awesome that drew together his character and gave him substance. It wasn't his story.  The ensemble cast complicated the pacing enough as it is, having to shift between it being his story and his daughter's story, then having to bring together all the pieces.Watch it again.  Well timed firing of the Chekov's Guns, plus a clear sense of playing against the audience expectations despite having told the audience up front what to expect, until it finally dawns on the audience what the price is.Beyond that, the fact that they seek to not only make a movie without major plot holes, but which actually starts plugging up famous plot holes in A New Hope that people have gently laughed at for decades now, and manages to do so in ways that are powerful and made believable.   That's just thoughtful intelligent writing.   Is it perfect?  No, I could set here and write pages on its defects as well, but it outshines its problems.</blockquote>

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