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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:Star Wars has humor? Han Solo is a comic relief character who gets a token serious arc in Empire Strikes Back before going right back to usual in Return of the Jedi.
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Dec 22, 2023 16:59
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 21:56 |
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i mean i get that 'sapient' is kinda implicit here, but the sandworms are definitely aliens
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Dec 22, 2023 22:26
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wasting resources to gently caress with local farming traditions (because the natives weren't growing cash crops, or because it gave them too much economic independence, or because it meant they weren't working in the mines, or even just out of sheer spite) isn't even close to the weirdest or most irrational thing actual colonizing powers did e: more to the point, none of those questions actually matter. Star Wars doesn't waste screen time on explaining the dynamics of "moisture farming" either, or why Luke personally hates the Empire despite growing up in an evidently sorta bougie family, etc. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Dec 23, 2023 |
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Dec 23, 2023 01:35
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anatomi posted:I liked the evil middle management guy. Seemed like the only actor who had fun being in this thing. He's the best part of the movie. Really threads the needle between pathetic and menacing, something I think nu-Star Wars has struggled with ever since Lucas left. I especially liked him basically getting off on the thought of his imminent death -- for a jock, somebody's read his Umberto Eco.  Overall I think the movie was fine. It didn't blow me away like Army of Thieves or Sucker Punch did but it's better than most of his superhero stuff. I mostly agree with the complaints that it could have used a little more time to let us get to know the supporting cast, with the proviso that at the same time it could have used less exposition and characters directly narrating their own past. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Dec 23, 2023 |
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Dec 23, 2023 17:43
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Kora's gun is literally an antique. A lot of the armor and weapons everyone in the movie uses is covered in intricate carvings, like it's ceremonial wear that was never really intended to be used in war. The technicians in this setting double as priests. The Motherworld's military, at least so far as we've been exposed to it, is undisciplined at best -- as illustrated not only by the brutish would-be rapists, but also by the teenage boy who clearly hasn't been very effectively propagandized. There are definitely some things I'm dissatisfied with the way the movie portrays violence -- as someone pointed out earlier it constantly cuts away from the impact of blows too early, probably due to some combination of wanting to maintain a PG-13 rating and the actors not actually being martial artists. (It's especially bad in scenes with lots of extras and better in ones where the stakes aren't lethal and/or where people are just getting glowing orange holes blown in them instead of e.g. getting carved up with an axe.) But "the soldiers miss a lot" isn't a technical flaw in the story; it is the story. The entire movie is about how the Motherworld rules through fear because they don't actually have the military might to keep everyone in line through force at once. If you're going "wow, these idiots are getting dunked on by a farmer, a drunk, and a deserter who hasn't seen action in years," you're having exactly the same reaction that an observer in this universe who sees or hears about would have.
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Dec 25, 2023 00:41
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How big someone is or how much training they have (the fictional character "they", at that) isn't a function of "choreography." There's no reason to conflate the two, unless, of course, you're trying to back down from the former because you've realized it's not a winning argument.
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Dec 25, 2023 01:29
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Jimbot posted:Yeah, I'm curious to see if the director's cut addresses this. But I also think it's a nice twist in the idyllic village under siege by the villains where that village is kind of a hetero-normative place where a requirement for really joining it is marriage and rearing children. It falls neatly into Snyder's wheelhouse of everything not being so squeaky-clean. checkplease posted:The Motherworld gave Kora a job of authority. She was a commander and traveled to various worlds. On Veldt, she would have to be a mother as you stated and likely never leave. Notably, the outskirts aren't untouched by the Motherworld; they were conquered and integrated once and now they're getting ideas. The village's cozy little fertility cult isn't that far off from the Imperial worship of a mythical life-giving queen, either. The movie puts a lot of emphasis on ideology and what motivates people to fight. Getting back to the question of training, one of the things we learn about the Motherworld's military is that even under the old king (who seemingly had a much stronger claim to ideological loyalty than Belisarius does) they didn't rely on loyalty to the cause alone to motivate their elite troops; they encouraged them to find a lover among their peers so they'd be motivated to protect that person, to have something immediate and concrete to make them fight. The one explicit example we see of this kind of relationship is heterosexual. Now, look at the jarhead assholes who attack the village: as checkplease notes, they're all men. They might all be gay, but if they are they're awfully keen to prove to each other how het they are. More likely, the system described above has either broken down or simply never applied to them. Noble also literally gives a speech on his theory of management: he prefers fear to either ideological or community bonds. e: conversely, most of the heroes are motivated by a sense of obligation; Kora is guilt-tripped into staying, she pulls the same trick on Darrian, Tarak's there out of a sense of honor, Den's survival is on the line but also it was his fuckup that made things as bad as they are, and Titus and Nemesis are doing it for people who died under their leadership or protection. e2: which given Snyder's Superman trilogy, his approach to Rorschach, the heroism of an artist willing to die for their art in Army of Thieves, the ending of Sucker Punch, etc. probably isn't good enough! i suspect Anthony Hopkins robot is going to show up in part 2 to push them towards a more durable reason to fight together than just guilt and a common enemy. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Dec 25, 2023 |
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Dec 25, 2023 01:44
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the actual problem is Noble's outfit. his suspenders of disbelief took me right out of the movie
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Dec 25, 2023 17:03
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H13 posted:Each time you re-watch a movie, it is less enjoyable compared to the previous time you watched it. Why stop there? Clearly even the very knowledge of what a "movie" is is a threat to your enjoyment; nobody else in history has truly appreciated a film the way the people who dived out of the way of the train in L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat did. With this in mind, there is really nowhere more dangerous to your future enjoyment of cinema than a movie discussion forum -- you should flee this place, now! Quick, before you learn something about artifice!
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Dec 25, 2023 17:28
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Titus's introduction is definitely the most jarring part of the movie. Like with Tarak leaving the bird behind we get a pretty succinct statement of who he is and what he's about. It's brief but it's not incomplete. With Titus we see make Kora make a case to him that doesn't even seem like it's totally convinced him and then bam he's part of the crew.
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Dec 25, 2023 22:02
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josh04 posted:I mean they just drag his drunk rear end onto the ship but that shorthand is clear, he's the guy from gladiator but in space. Would still like just a bit more there. If they drag him aboard the ship against his will that would be interesting to see! I didn't interpret it that way, though, it seemed like they got him on board with their proposal and just elided over the "how."
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Dec 25, 2023 22:14
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Sucker Punch and Army of Thieves are his originals, i'd say. arguably there's kind of an attenuated link between the latter and Romero's zombie movies but by the time you get to Thieves it's very, very thin
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Dec 27, 2023 02:51
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Nephthys posted:I pin it on the director because I don't think any of those other characters should be in the movie, even if they get an extra 15 minutes each. The movie would be much stronger if they were removed and it focused on the characters we already know instead. You could easily replace their roles in the story with the robot and soldier guy and save the extra hour or use it for something more interesting. see I'd agree with that if he weren't ultimately getting his way and getting the cut he wants after all. like if this were the only version of the movie that would ever exist, absolutely, that would be a bad deal. as a sacrificial lamb so the real movie can exist it's incredibly stupid, yes, but not on Snyder's part
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Dec 27, 2023 17:18
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to get people to subscribe twice, or stay subscribed from the release of one to the other and i'll admit they got me lol. i would not have a netflix sub right now if it weren't for Snyder (and I guess their k-drama back catalogue doesn't hurt)
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Dec 27, 2023 19:33
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KVeezy3 posted:Have you seen Persona? It’s an anthology of four short-films all written/helmed by different art-house directors centered around the same actress, and it features some slick cinematography. Quoting so I can find it easily later; thank you.
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Dec 27, 2023 22:42
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i can't tell what layer of irony everyone is on but for the benefit of anyone else who isn't deeply familiar with voice actors, Dave Foley is the voice of Flik the Ant
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Dec 29, 2023 20:03
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Pirate Jet posted:Here’s the terrible secret about Del Toro: remove Pan’s Labyrinth from his filmography and he’s suddenly really mediocre. ehhhh he's maybe a little overrated but that's going too far. man's made some stinkers recently but Cronos / Mimic / Devil's Backbone is a better 3-movie streak than most horror directors have in their entire career
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Jan 2, 2024 23:33
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speaking of 40k, someone pointed out earlier that "Issa" is pretty close to the Arabic name for Jesus; I don't speak Arabic and can't really speak to it myself but it's also just a breath away from "Isha," the Eldar goddess of Life in Warhammer 40k -- the last survivor of her family, and still alive but a prisoner of the god of disease, who she engages in subtle rebellion against by divinely inspiring cures in the minds of doctors and healers
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Jan 4, 2024 22:43
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it's a stupid argument from so many angles that it almost seems intentionally calculated to exhaust people out of responding there are plausible diegetic reasons they need the grain even if the numbers don't add up who gives a poo poo, it's a movie, not an accounting document every invading / occupying colonial force in history has done something like this the purpose is as much to discipline the colony for resistance as it is a matter of anything directly practical
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Apr 9, 2024 18:22
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Grendels Dad posted:Started watching Scargiver just now but had to stop and post because Ed Skrein's pronunciation has made me realize that Wheat-world is literally just called "World" in German (Welt). It's Veldt, according to the subtitles. Which is still pretty on-the-nose, but for slightly different reasons.
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Apr 19, 2024 22:52
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Luke isn't a peasant. The Lars family in A New Hope are (e: at minimum!) middle class. They own slaves and land, Luke basically brags about alien fox-hunting when he's explaining what a good shot he is prior to the Death Star sequence, and Uncle Owen's dead set on Luke staying out of politics.
Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 01:23
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why would you assume that the disconnect between tech levels is a mistake? it's a movie, not a Let's Play of Civilization
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Apr 21, 2024 18:00
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YggdrasilTM posted:"cause it was like a glimpse into a better movie" so just straightforwardly admitting "i don't like this so i'm going to play stupid about the themes on purpose?" like, to spell it out: the empire is clearly stagnant. they barely know how to use the tech they have (remember the droids from part 1? they're carting around killbots that nobody can convince to fight and just having them do manual labor instead); the stuff that is preserved is predominantly weapons or transportation so they can conquer places and bring back the tribute. there's plenty to dislike about this movie (its attitude towards monarchy and the dead princess is both strangely naive on its face and also only seems to exist to set up a theoretical sequel, and multiple people have made detailed and insightful posts about how weirdly action is blocked and shot) but it's incredible watching people more or less pick up on things like "okay, the fascists kind of suck at their job, it would be a tremendously humiliating if they got their asses kicked by farmers, but their arrogance and overplaying of their hand makes it possible" and go "wow, how weird. must be an accident, everyone knows empires are all-competent and indestructible"
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Apr 21, 2024 18:18
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When Hernando Cortez went to conquer Mexico, his men had an overwhelming advantage in technology (horses, gunpowder, armor, military organization, etc.) Amusingly for our purposes, a lot of this can be blamed on grain -- on having nine or ten thousand years of history of sedentary farming instead of two or three thousand like the people they were conquering. They won more fights than they lost, but still got their asses beat over and over for a variety of reasons; underestimating their opponents, failure to adapt their military strategy to a new environment, political disputes back in Spain or the Caribbean leading to support for their endeavor being extended or withheld seemingly at random, etc. At one point they tried to siege a native city by building a catapult, and completely hosed up the design (despite it being well-established in Europe and in use for centuries). The payload fell like two inches in front of the machine and damaged their own supplies, to the amusement of their enemies. They still won in the end thanks to a combination of disease, infighting among native polities that (at the time) had never previously had any reason to think of themselves as being all on one side vs. foreign invaders and just thought of Cortez and Spain as if they were a particularly strong Nahuatl polity themselves, and the political situation back in the Spain eventually coming around to supporting his project -- despite the fact that he did it all by brazenly ignoring orders and came very close to being viewed as a traitor instead. In particular, if Cortez's dad had been a little bit worse at kissing royal rear end it could easily have all fallen apart for him. Imperial power being brittle, incoherent, and frequently self-defeating is more the norm in history than the exception.
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Apr 21, 2024 18:59
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YggdrasilTM posted:What? They build the last dreadnought like 13 years ago, how can they "barely know how to use the tech they have" if they freaking built It? I mean, first and foremost, who cares? It doesn't necessarily matter why; if they demonstrably don't (like with the droids) then that's all you need to know. You watch the movie and you interpret what you see. Second, to humor you despite the above, there could be all kinds of ways: maybe they're good at engineering but are too secretive to train soldiers in proper use of their weapons. Maybe in those 13 years the massive fascist coup and takeover that happened devastated the equivalent of universities. Maybe they're not that good at engineering and are just dogmatically following ancient instructions. The movie's not really about the internal dynamics of the empire beyond how it relates to Kora and Titus's backstories, though, neither of whom are technicians, so it doesn't dwell on these things beyond a little bit of visual storytelling here and there. But that's not a failing, that's just... economy. The movie's pretty long as it is. JazzFlight posted:Also, this might be a bit of a stretch, but I got slight "Daily Wire movie without the overt racism/transphobia" vibes when all of the dying rebel soldiers in the village were basically heroic white American farmers with overalls/suspenders mixed with a bit of Norse/Viking overtones (which itself has some connection to modern neo-nazis). Like, if you took away the diverse casting of the seven samurai heroes, this could easily be a Daily Wire movie about the federal government stealing from "true Americans." Nah, you're absolutely right here. The farming community is presented as very small-c conservative while the empire is portrayed as much in terms of decadence and "unearned" power as anything directly relating to its colonial oppression. The stuff with the royal family happily going along with military conquest for most of their life only to be transformed into nice liberals by the miracle of family is also kind of disconcerting. Some of this is diegetic, mind -- like we're talking about what is, in the universe of Rebel Moon, a suppressed but nonetheless popular myth or religion, with at least some basis in fact, but filtered through the lens of a woman who was raised by space nazis to be the perfect soldier and a robot who was literally programmed to defend and obey the royals. But given we don't really learn anything about the princess except that she's probably still alive, we're just left with it as-is, and taking it at face value doesn't look great. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 19:08
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JazzFlight posted:Did anyone else think it was really silly that the Native American griffin rider's home planet was some kind of Victorian England steampunk world where they wore bowler hats? What it tells you is that Tarak's shirtless dirty barbarian, free spirit, Space Conan persona is kind of a put-on. He's not the Griffin Whisperer because he's close to nature or shares a bond with the animals because they have so much in common, he's the Griffin Whisperer because he's a rich kid who grew up on a world where griffins are like thoroughbred horses and his family could afford lessons. That said, it's consistent with the idea, which he directly admits to in Scargiver, that he's been running away from his responsibilities and acting like he has no connection to his homeworld, and that if he lives through the current fight, he's going to try to change that. Jimbot posted:It's a lot less cynical than this. The princess is literally a magical disney princess. The royal family was the source of the military conquest - they weren't just passive observers. The king was the driving force of it until his magic disney daughter was born and was shown to bring back the dead. Kora says that she had a healing influence on her parents. I'm not sure what we're saying is all that different. I'm just saying the whole concept of a Disney Princess is reactionary. I'd like to entertain the notion that it isn't being played 100% straight, but I honestly don't have a good argument for it from the movie we actually got. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 19:23
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Jimbot posted:Fair but I just don't know what sort of point you're trying to make about it being "disconcerting" in response to a post trying to moralize their position by not so subtly trying to paint the film as ultra conservative if not for a few pesky details. The film isn't going to bat for any aspect of the empire save the princess herself. I don't think the film is ultra-conservative. I do think it has something to say about people's motivations for revolution or political violence in general, on what is a lasting and durable cause vs. the sort of thing that might cause someone to fail or act with cowardice in a critical moment. The princess is part of that, along with Kora's near-surrender. I think the Netflix cut doesn't really give us enough for me to draw any clear conclusions, but I'm interested to see whether either a) I'm just missing something obvious or b) the director's cut gives us a clearer picture. e: Similarly, much as I like Snyder overall, I think his politics are mostly liberal and I'm skeptical about his ability to tell a story with a convincing theory of political power. The stuff that I've been talking about re: the depiction of the empire is promising! But it's also kind of low-hanging fruit, to be honest. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 19:51
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I think it looks cool, and I also genuinely love Ed Skrein's performance as Noble. There are a lot of little physical things he does, the occasional sniff of disgust, pulling his uniform down to get the wrinkles out, the face he makes when he drops down into the tunnels to start killing rebels. He really sells the idea of this guy who's obsessed with the ideal of "discipline," who at once is just this raging psychopath but also wants to be patted on the head and rewarded for being a good boy. e: the costuming too: the suspenders, the planet of the bowler caps, the hideous military haircuts, all that poo poo rules Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 19:58
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 21:56 |
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Lt. Danger posted:it's fine. it's just a fine, decent, edited-to-poo poo movie. it is no worse than any other sci-fi action blockbuster and in some very specific ways much better i mean, nu-Star Wars definitely had discourse that took swirling ambiguous discontent with the series (some of it for justified reasons!) and then focused on completely irrelevant and contradictory details as a retroactive explanation -- it's just that the superficial explanation and outrage was mostly right-wing culture war poo poo, and CineD is, to its credit, mostly above that. e: the MCU on the other hand just tries desperately hard to never provoke or upset anyone Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Apr 21, 2024 |
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Apr 21, 2024 21:45
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