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Snowman_McK posted:Taking that to its logical conclusion, the movie doesn't need to exist. Similarly, everyone has their own imagined way of picturing what's off-screen in the movie's "world", or how they would react in a given situation that makes the movie resonate more strongly with them individually. If you want to go really philosophical with it, it's like Platonic Forms or Ideals. There's an Ideal depiction of a dinosaur theme park, but there's no way to depict it in reality because it's different for everybody. So yes, in order to achieve everyone's ideal, the movie shouldn't exist because their individual imagination works better than any filmmaker ever could. But I'm glad when filmmakers take a crack at it, because it gets me thinking about what I personally want from the concept, and what I'd do differently. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 02:34
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Febreeze posted:I think you missed his point.
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Jul 15, 2015 02:36
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Xenomrph posted:I get that, what I'm saying is it doesn't matter. If the movie is "poorly shot" but still manages to entertain and make people think and feel things, then who cares how it was shot? Why criticize Bud Light if people enjoy it?
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Jul 15, 2015 02:49
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computer parts posted:Why criticize Bud Light if people enjoy it? Well, the easy rebuttal to that is what's to criticize? It's so devoid of character or substance.
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Jul 15, 2015 02:57
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computer parts posted:Why criticize Bud Light if people enjoy it?  And in a world where there's a trillion different beers for me to try, I'm pretty okay with letting people drink what they want. When you think about it, both sides of the issue are reaching the same conclusion but reacting to it differently. SMG is complaining about how things are shot or what actions aren't included in the movie, and the people saying "oh man a petting zoo" are recognizing that what they want also isn't in the movie. The difference is that the latter are using the movie as a springboard for their own imaginations, rather than fixating rigidly on what the movie does or doesn't show. SMG is even engaging in it when he talks about what he'd rather see, such as a monorail attack scene. He's using his imagination, just like the people who wish they could pet baby dinosaurs. The fact that the movie is making money hand-over-fist shows that it's resonating with people on some sort of level, even if on a technical level you can argue that some things could have been done "better" (and even that is at least partially subjective, and feeds back into what I was saying earlier about each individual person's "ideal" vision). To be clear I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about ways the movie could have been improved, and in fact i think that stuff is important and interesting because it gets me thinking about what I would have done differently and why. But I feel that SMG's approach of pooh-poohing those who still enjoyed the movie and got an imaginative spark out of it is missing an important part of the moviegoing experience. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 02:59
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Xenomrph posted:The fact that the movie is making money hand-over-fist shows that it's resonating with people on some sort of level Sequel to a massive popcultural phenomenon?
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Jul 15, 2015 03:10
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Xenomrph posted:I get that, what I'm saying is it doesn't matter. If the movie is "poorly shot" but still manages to entertain and make people think and feel things, then who cares how it was shot? Why have opinions or ever try to discuss anything, ever?
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Jul 15, 2015 03:20
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Xenomrph posted:that's exactly why good horror movies don't show the monster, because the individual person is far better at scaring them self with their own imagination than the filmmakers are. That's actually a myth. What's happening is that the filmmakers are busy using various techniques to affect you the entire time that the monster is not onscreen. There's no 'blank space' to fill in. Jurassic Park is just an insanely good film that's largely about people being driven around by a robot car.
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Jul 15, 2015 03:26
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Xenomrph posted:I get that, what I'm saying is it doesn't matter. If the movie is "poorly shot" but still manages to entertain and make people think and feel things, then who cares how it was shot? Clearly it does matter to some of us, even if it doesn't to you, which is why we are talking about it.
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Jul 15, 2015 04:04
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Hbomberguy posted:Sequel to a massive popcultural phenomenon? Terrorist Fistbump posted:Why have opinions or ever try to discuss anything, ever? Febreeze posted:Clearly it does matter to some of us, even if it doesn't to you, which is why we are talking about it. I agree that it's important but SMG's attitude of talking down to people who still enjoyed the movie despite his complaints is a pretty garbage attitude and misses a lot of the point. SuperMechagodzilla posted:That's actually a myth. What's happening is that the filmmakers are busy using various techniques to affect you the entire time that the monster is not onscreen. There's no 'blank space' to fill in. And there's a lot more to Jurassic Park than the robot car, and if that's somehow the only thing you got out of the movie, then... lol, just lol Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 04:11
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Xenomrph posted:The fact that the movie is making money hand-over-fist shows that it's resonating with people on some sort of level, even if on a technical level you can argue that some things could have been done "better" (and even that is at least partially subjective, and feeds back into what I was saying earlier about each individual person's "ideal" vision). I think this argument falls flat the moment that you realize that Aliens Colonial Marines made more money than Alien Isolation. Yeah, I guess it does resonate on some level, but you largely have a pile of poo poo that people bought because you get to shoot guns at xenomorphs. Xenomrph posted:
Alien would fall pretty flat if it wasn't for the environment that it takes place in, the characters, and the way it was shot. It takes much more to make an effective horror film than simply not showing the monster.
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Jul 15, 2015 04:46
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blackguy32 posted:I think this argument falls flat the moment that you realize that Aliens Colonial Marines made more money than Alien Isolation. Yeah, I guess it does resonate on some level, but you largely have a pile of poo poo that people bought because you get to shoot guns at xenomorphs. By your logic, Jurassic World's box office returns should have plummeted after word of mouth from the early adopters revealed that it was poo poo. And yet, here we are. quote:Alien would fall pretty flat if it wasn't for the environment that it takes place in, the characters, and the way it was shot. It takes much more to make an effective horror film than simply not showing the monster. I totally agree with what you're saying that the framework is important, but SMG's claim that the gaps are unimportant (or, somehow, don't exist) is demonstrably false. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 05:03
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:This movie is loving garbage. Read this in the voice of The Architect
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Jul 15, 2015 05:31
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Xenomrph posted:I don't disagree I just wanted to highlight one of the most useless and disingenuous phrases in the English language
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Jul 15, 2015 05:31
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Jonah Galtberg posted:I just wanted to highlight one of the most useless and disingenuous phrases in the English language Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 05:40
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Xenomrph posted:It's almost as if neither of you read the last paragraph of my post. Anyway, to address what I originally quoted, the poor direction in the petting zoo scene blunts its emotional impact. Any shot of a kid hugging a baby dinosaur will elicit a "wow neat" reaction from most people. But with proper direction it's possible to show exactly how cool and awesome and joyful and lifechanging a moment it is for the child on screen. The audience could have, through the power of empathy and the cinematic language, experienced the wonder that child must have felt rather than merely fantasizing about hugging a dinosaur themselves.
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Jul 15, 2015 06:13
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:I'm glad you were moved by the film, but you seem more interested in defending it against perceived attacks than discussing it as a work of art like most of the posters you are engaging with. It's a weird, counterproductive thing to say "Who cares?" in a discussion such as this regardless of the "attitude" others have (as though it were a bad thing to communicate your thoughts confidently, clearly, and concisely). I absolutely agree with SMG that more could have been done with the monorail as a concept. Back when I was kicking around my ideas for a JP4 several years ago and I wanted to see a functional park, I wanted to see a monorail running through the park and being a sort of successor to the Explorer Tour from the first movie, with the added benefit that the monorail can change elevation. In my idea, when things break down in the park, I wanted some of the characters to be stranded out in the park when the power goes out, and some of them would be on the monorail and now it's stranded. I wasn't thinking a full-on JP tour car style attack on the monorail, but rather that the monorail is on a track section that's suspended 30 feet above the ground above some trees when it stops. The characters onboard can hear some sort of large animals moving under the monorail and you can see the trees moving around, but they don't know if it's an herbivore or a carnivore. Either way they have to disembark the monorail while it's up in the air, and have to find a way down to the ground. I think something like that could be suspenseful with the characters not knowing what's beneath them, and it also takes something that was once familiar and awe-inspiring to them (the monorail moving through the park, showing them dinosaurs up close) and now making it a source of danger as they have to figure out how to escape it. There were a ton of moments like that throughout Jurassic World, where I'd see how they did something and say "that's actually a better execution than how I'd have done it", or "drat, that's one hell of a missed opportunity", etc. Hell, there's a lot of moments like that in a lot of movies. Talking about that sort of stuff is cool and important, I just don't think SMG's downplaying of the "imagination" angle is helpful when it's actually approaching the same idea from a different direction. I'm not defending the movie itself from perceived attacks, I'm defending other posters from SMG's attacks on how they're articulating what they got out of the movie.
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Jul 15, 2015 06:31
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Actually, I don't wish anything about the film was different at all. What I described was simply one possible scenario that might have emerged if the technical execution of the shot was more artful instead of perfunctory. It's more of a hypothesis about a what-if than wishful thinking. Ultimately, the film succeeds or fails as a work of art based on its actual content, not fan-fiction or speculation about what it could have been. With Jurassic World, we have a very interesting failure because despite being very flawed, it evokes passionate positive emotions in a huge chunk of its audience. The debate over a brief petting zoo scene is a great example of this phenomenon in action.
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Jul 15, 2015 07:33
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CelticPredator posted:It looks like a place where the only way to enjoy it would be to double fist 10 dollar margs. So "literally be Jimmy Buffett's cameo" then?
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Jul 15, 2015 07:52
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sticklefifer posted:So "literally be Jimmy Buffett's cameo" then? That was the intent, yeah. Also, Godzilla 2014 is so loving good. It being cockteasy is really awesome. It made the ending much more powerful. I'll defend that movie forever.
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Jul 15, 2015 08:00
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Xenomrph posted:I agree, but not showing the monster is still a huge, key part of it. It's extremely well documented that what's in people's heads is more emotionally effective on an individual level than what the filmmakers can show. We see the same phenomenon when you get movie adaptations of books, and people complain that the casting choices don't match what the individual would have personally picked. Granted sometimes the casting works even in spite of the source material or reader expectations (Red in 'The Shawshank Redemption' comes to mind), but the point is that the reason the book resonated with the reader in the first place is because they were filling in the sensory gaps around the author's framework. It's actually a very safe bet that what's in your head is not more effective than Ridley Scott's Alien. There is nothing special about your imagination. If you've seen the movie Alien, you know that the monster is already shown in the first few minutes. It's in the imagery of the ship's computer engaging in a conversation with a row of empty helmets. Empty suits, hung on the walls, appear throughout the film. They appear to haunt the characters. The alien itself is simply one more empty suit, 'come to life', with nothing underneath its domed helmet but a faintly-visible skull. You say "lol just lol" at the fact that Jurassic Park is largely about a car, but the imagery is likewise of an inanimate object that has 'come to life'. In its battle against the Rex, the car - painted like a dinosaur, remember - is constantly moving, and constantly threatening to crush the protagonists. It seems to chase them. In several shots, it's a CG effect - just like the dinosaurs themselves. This battle between the Rex and the 'inanimate' object is vastly superior to the fight at the end of this film. When the imagery is of the car as prey animal, details like the robotic driver (actually given a set of binocular eyes!) fall into place. As in Aliens, the car functions like a cyborg suit of armor that is brought to life by the people inside (the kids' motion makes the Rex identify the car as 'alive'). It is also initially just a preprogrammed drone, then takes on 'a life of its own' and threatens those it served - exactly like the dinosaurs themselves. In this film, there's a very badly-shot and edited chase sequence, where a van is driven down a road in a straight line. There are three metaphorical gags linked to this van: 1) A raptor attacks the same window as that 'attacked' by the PMC a few minutes earlier. The imagery is of the frightened mercenary, who left the bloodied handprint, 'turning into' a velociraptor. 2) There are no seatbelts, so the kids need to hold hands. Because holding hands is lame, they both grasp the cattle-prod instead. Obvious. 3) Chastain drives the van, and Pratt quickly pulls up beside them on his motorcycle. The larger and smaller vehicles, very vaguely, foreshadow the team-up of the larger and smaller dinosaurs at the end of the film. Once you understand that the scene is written this way, you can understand how it's presented visually. The result is not good. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 08:58
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:Actually, I don't wish anything about the film was different at all. What I described was simply one possible scenario that might have emerged if the technical execution of the shot was more artful instead of perfunctory. It's more of a hypothesis about a what-if than wishful thinking. Sort of like the arguments that, say, Michael Bay makes bad movies, and yet they keep having a colossal repeat audience that brings in tons of money without fail, and despite all the critic complaints, audiences exit the theatres in droves saying that they enjoyed them. Sure from a technical level one can say they're "bad" (juvenile, puerile, sexist, etc), but if they're resonating on such a cultural level that you've got people lining up to see them over and over and setting box office records, I have a hard time believing that there's not something there, even if it's not the conventional definition of "good movie". Also if you don't like the shot as presented in the movie, why don't you wish it was different? You yourself provided some ideas on ways it could have been "better". Also on this: quote:It's more of a hypothesis about a what-if than wishful thinking. SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's actually a very safe bet that what's in your head is not more effective than Ridley Scott's Alien. There is nothing special about your imagination. SuperMechagodzilla posted:You say "lol just lol" at the fact that Jurassic Park is largely about a car, Edit-- also "If you've seen the movie Alien". lol, just lol 
Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 10:04 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 09:21
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Bad movies do well, because as much as we like to pretend otherwise, teenagers are not particularly discerning. Big budget dinosaur movie with marketing with some chris pratt being sassy for the trailers was all this ever needed.
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Jul 15, 2015 09:59
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The car ride past the enclosures is Jurassic Park's main attraction - and the only ride shown onscreen, besides the educational video. Until they get out of the car, the entire film is about the breakdown of this specific ride: the fences go down, communication is cut, the car goes off the rails, there aren't adequate washroom facilities, and so-on. Michael Bay is, objectively speaking, vastly more talented than Colin Trevorow. Money has nothing to do with a movie's level of quality. Jurassic World made bank because it is absurdly well-advertised, blandly inoffensive, and 'delivers the goods' in the sense that there are technically CG dinosaurs onscreen. In terms of both quality and content, it's almost identical to Avengers 2 - a loving horrible movie that was butchered in editing, and yet made 1.5 billion dollars and 75% on your fave review aggregate sites.
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Jul 15, 2015 10:18
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Maybe the success of this movie means someone will adapt Dinotopia books.  (lovely tv miniseries need not apply)
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Jul 15, 2015 14:47
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:
My main issue with this scene was that there was no love. Its just a case of here is some baby dinosaurs and kids can pet them. Compare it to the Triceratops scene in JP. The touches like Grant leaning up feeling it move while breathing. JW struggles to give you a sense of awe. It has a few moments that I like but all through it i was just thinking "workmen like". At least Garth Edwards put his fingerprints all over Godzilla.
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Jul 15, 2015 15:32
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Bigsteve posted:My main issue with this scene was that there was no love. Its just a case of here is some baby dinosaurs and kids can pet them. I thought the point of that scene was to show that dinosaurs just aren't that special anymore.
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Jul 15, 2015 15:35
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Cole posted:I thought the point of that scene was to show that dinosaurs just aren't that special anymore. That was my original take but then I think kids are excited in a normal petting zoo. And rabbits and sheep have been around for ages. Perhaps a better way would be to film it with love and attention but only actually have two or three kids there and they look bored. The kids themselves looked fine but it was shot boring,
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Jul 15, 2015 16:11
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Bigsteve posted:That was my original take but then I think kids are excited in a normal petting zoo. And rabbits and sheep have been around for ages. Perhaps a better way would be to film it with love and attention but only actually have two or three kids there and they look bored. The kids themselves looked fine but it was shot boring, That's exactly my point. Dinosaurs should be way more awesome than something in a normal petting zoo, but they aren't anymore. It's just another petting zoo. And that's what that scene was trying to convey.
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Jul 15, 2015 17:00
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Cole posted:That's exactly my point. Dinosaurs should be way more awesome than something in a normal petting zoo, but they aren't anymore. It's just another petting zoo. And that's what that scene was trying to convey. That's a pretty fair point, actually. The plot is about how a monster got created because audiences get bored with the status quo so a terrible petting zoo makes sense. It might also explain why the opening pano is so uninspiring, hell why most of the attractions feel generic theme park-y and stale to look at. Problem is the movie seems like it's trying to have it both ways, have it be about dinosaurs and awe but also serve the plot about how nobody gives a poo poo anymore. Nobody is ever shown not giving a poo poo except the big brother, and that's mostly due to him being a teenager and leering at girls. And even the big bro starts getting into it at the Mosasaur exhibit. The petting zoo has tons of children seemingly clamoring to see and ride. The T-Rex has a ton of people looking at it. We see no evidence that people aren't interested anymore. We see no evidence that people aren't completely enthralled, and the shots that show these enthralled people are bland. There was no reason for the bad dino to get made if you look at the rest of the park, people seem pretty happy.
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Jul 15, 2015 18:20
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Febreeze posted:There was no reason for the bad dino to get made if you look at the rest of the park, people seem pretty happy. Clearly you must not be aware of a company's drive for growing profits, or the public need for moremoremore when it comes to entertainment like they said in the movie, or as it is in real life. It was kinda inadvertently poking fun at itself. Drifter fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 18:38
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The people who paid thousands of dollars to get on the island and look at dinosaurs of course they're going to be happy. Even then you've got the bored older brother, and then the gyrosphere ride operator just doesn't give any fucks, etc.
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Jul 15, 2015 18:58
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Drifter posted:Clearly you must not be aware of a company's drive for growing profits, or the public need for moremoremore when it comes to entertainment like they said in the movie, or as it is in real life. Well, to really be nitpicky, the film explains that profits were UP 2%, the board of directors just wanted extra extra growth on top of that. Which, granted, is normal, but it sends a mixed message that "audiences demand moremoremore" when it's specifically stated that the park is doing just fine. It's like the film passed through 15 different writers who didn't collaborate, so it's all over the place in terms of what any particular element is driving at.
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Jul 15, 2015 19:23
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Anal Surgery posted:Well, to really be nitpicky, the film explains that profits were UP 2%, the board of directors just wanted extra extra growth on top of that. Which, granted, is normal, but it sends a mixed message that "audiences demand moremoremore" when it's specifically stated that the park is doing just fine. It's like the film passed through 15 different writers who didn't collaborate, so it's all over the place in terms of what any particular element is driving at. No, they said revenue was up by 2%, but costs were still increasing faster than that.
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Jul 15, 2015 19:31
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The real joke is (or, rather, should be) that the big kids are running around terrorizing the tiny dinosaurs. Doesn't the kid in the white shirt, reaching out to hug the baby brontosaur but choking it, foreshadow the mass killing by the antisocial Irex later? Again, it's good to be specific. The three baby dinosaurs are the brontosaur, gallimimus, and triceratops. I've already gone over how gallimimus no longer fills the same role as the original film. You only get a brief shot of the adults running, and that makes the one kid start pondering his family's divorce. As with the van chase scene, you can kind of see the theory if you squint. In the original film, Grant marvels that the dinosaurs are moving as a flock, which is part of that film's themes of interconnectedness. Each individual dinosaur is stupid, but complex behaviours emerge when you put them together. It's part of the butterfly effect, the tropical storm imagery, and all that. The Rex makes a step, and water ripples everywhere. Jurassic World seems to be relying on our memories of the first film to tell us that 'these dinosaurs move as a flock, while Tommy's family is all disorganized - like the little dinosaurs being constantly hunted and terrorized in the petting zoo'. This doesn't come across at all. The correct approach would be to show the adults running as a flock first, then have Tommy visit the petting zoo to see how the unruly children are causing chaos and fear. Then he can sympathize because he is being terrorized by something big and scary outside his control - the metaphorical 'monster under his bed' from the opening scenes. The third dinosaur is the triceratops - and the gag there is the part where the pteranodon grabs one by the saddle and tosses it around. Again, it's relying on nostalgia - we're to connect this to the triceratops in the first film. But then we're going back into the complex play of what the pteranodon represents - the bullying older brother's repressed desire to hurt people (children like his brother/the baby triceratops, and women like the assistant). He wants his little brother to grow up, so gently caress this place, right? Babies are weak. Of course the character's bullying was edited out of the film, so the attack on the triceratops doesn't really mean anything now. There's no connection between it and the brother except the single line where he expresses his disdain for 'babies'. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jul 15, 2015 |
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Jul 15, 2015 19:32
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ruby idiot railed posted:The people who paid thousands of dollars to get on the island and look at dinosaurs of course they're going to be happy. Even then you've got the bored older brother, and then the gyrosphere ride operator just doesn't give any fucks, etc. What Etc? These are the only two bored people in the entire park, and one of them is an employee, so he doesn't count. The park isn't designed to please the low level ride operator who has to stand at a booth and hit buttons spouting the same 3 lines of direction for 8 hours. The Big Bro is a lovely horny teen, and lovely horny teens who think they are too cool for everyone will ignore literally anything. Plus, he starts getting into it at the Mososaur exhibit.
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Jul 15, 2015 19:37
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Febreeze posted:What Etc? These are the only two bored people in the entire park, and one of them is an employee, so he doesn't count. The park isn't designed to please the low level ride operator who has to stand at a booth and hit buttons spouting the same 3 lines of direction for 8 hours. The Big Bro is a lovely horny teen, and lovely horny teens who think they are too cool for everyone will ignore literally anything. Plus, he starts getting into it at the Mososaur exhibit. Precisely the point of the Board. They won't have relevant profit gains until they have bigger, more violent features.
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Jul 15, 2015 19:41
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ruby idiot railed posted:No, they said revenue was up by 2%, but costs were still increasing faster than that. Fair enough, I stand corrected!
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Jul 16, 2015 00:47
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turtlecrunch posted:Maybe the success of this movie means someone will adapt Dinotopia books. I'm hoping for a Dinosaurs Attack! movie.
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Jul 16, 2015 16:46
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Bobby Digital posted:I'm hoping for a Dinosaurs Attack! movie. Insha'allah.
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Jul 16, 2015 17:08
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