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There's nothing necessarily wrong with making the Jedi into Goku (and pardon my glibness here, but I love comparing things to Goku) depending on the particular thematic content of the work they're featured in. The problem is more that the Force became a background object rather than a narrative tool in the prequels. Let's take one of the more obvious uses of the Force in The Empire Strikes Back: Vader and Luke's duel. At the midpoint, Vader picks up a bunch of miscellaneous objects and hurls them at Luke. This is meant to establish two key points for the scene: 1) Vader is considerably more powerful than Luke, and Luke's attempt to duel him is, ultimately, hubris. This serves as a counter to earlier in the duel where Luke actually seems to gain the upper hand at several points, or, at the very least, hold his own. 2) Vader is deliberately toying with Luke. He doesn't want to kill him, even though there are clearly points where he's hucking garbage at Luke where slipping a lightsaber in would be easy. This is interesting, since we've previously only seen Vader as a merciless executor of the Emperor's will, gladly choking the life out of anyone who so much as fails him. It helps to set up the eventual "father" revelation. Obi Wan in the original movies uses his Force manipulation to show that he's long since past the point of being the "great warrior" Luke believes him to be, preferring subtlety and guile over hitting people with a lightsaber (which makes his eventual sacrifice more believable). The Emperor shoots lightning out of his hands to emphasize his limitless cruelty and malice. Luke frequently uses the Force to grab his lightsaber, as it's very clear that, for a great deal of the films, he considers "Jedi" and "warrior" to be synonymous. The Force, in this case, is an extension of the person using it. At the opening of The Phantom Menace, meanwhile, Qui-Gon Jinn thrusts his hand forwards and - bwoomph! - some battle droids go flying backwards. Neat! This has jack diddly to do with who Qui-Gon is (a peaceful, heterodox diplomat), but it has everything to do with what a "Jedi" is in the tactically realistic world of the prequels. Yoda and Count Dooku fight and - cracko! - his fingertips flare with dark Sith lightning. Again: What the gently caress does this have to do with Count Dooku? He's not shown to be a particularly cruel or maleficent individual - in fact, he's downright genial. He shoots lightning because, again, it's tactically realistic that a Sith would know how to shoot lightning from his fingertips. The powers don't serve as extensions of the people as much anymore, aside from the obvious implications that certain powers are "bad" (like shooting lightning). They serve only as special effect receptacles, which is why they tend to feel far more like anime superpowers than the magical abilities of the original series. Generally, good works that feature supernatural powers are cognizant of the fact that these special powers are merely extensions of the person wielding them. The prequels don't "ruin" the Force because people can shoot lightning and push everyone around or whatever (and, in fact, it would be quite natural to expect this in a series of films about a massive war). Rather, the Force simply becomes another accessory, like the lightsaber or a Jedi's robes, devoid of any kind of thematic meaning beyond merely being expected. Vermain fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Nov 11, 2012 |
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Nov 11, 2012 00:16
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The themes of a film ought to be able to stand on their own merits rather than being forced to reference another work that happens to take place in the same "universe." Even if they did desire to keep things thematically consistent, there's nothing that says they can't give everyone amazing superpowers like jumping around everywhere and shooting lightning. It would have made the Jedi more interesting, since they're now using this supposedly peaceful, transcendental power to straight-up murder dudes, with the Jedi becoming human weapons or whatever. Again, though, these potential ideas are never touched on, and the superpowers are simply "there." They're as natural as Cyclops' eye beams. Where the previous films had used the Force as a method of extrapolating on character motivations, the prequels use them to blow poo poo up in a spectacular manner without thematic backing.
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Nov 11, 2012 00:33
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Hbomberguy posted:It's not a very good allegory. Is it meant to represent how democracy wouldn't work if an incredibly smart near-superhuman with impossibly rich allies and the power to control the natural force that permeates the Universe, including clouding rational judgement, actually existed? Because I'm fairly certain that's not a message we needed to receive. The point isn't that the Emperor is literally a guy with supernatural powers and lots of money - he's a representation of elite, fascist control, and the entire Senate buys into him readily. Hitler isn't the only person to ever seize power from a democratic government. A closer example in this case would be someone like Julius Caesar, who seized power based off of his popular will and of a desire for some sort of "reformation" of a society that was perceived to be ill due to senatorial infighting and the like. Keep in mind that one of the pivotal moments in The Phantom Menace is a demonstration of how ineffectual the Senate is: Amidala goes to plead her case before the Senate, and everyone bickers and argues endlessly about it, forcing her to requisition the help of the native Gungans in a desperate attempt to regain control of her own planet from capitalists. In the second film, everyone in the Senate very quickly buys into Palpatine's warmongering, giving him a real Roman dictator's prerogative. This is despite any strong evidence that the Separatists have any plans to invade the Republic at all. They're building a droid army - so what? The Republic makes war on the Separatists because they cannot stand the idea of there being another political power in the galaxy beyond their own. You see a similar kind of dilemma in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where everyone is flabbergasted that some planets would rather not be a part of the Federation: quote:"I know you. I was like you once, but then I opened my eyes. Open your eyes, [Captain Sisko]. Why is the Federation so obsessed with the Maquis? We've never harmed you. And yet we're constantly arrested and charged with terrorism. Starships chase us through the Badlands and our supporters are harassed and ridiculed. Why? Because we've left the Federation, and that's the one thing you can't accept. Nobody leaves paradise. Everyone should want to be in the Federation. Hell, you even want the Cardassians to join. You're only sending them replicators because one day they can take their "rightful place" on the Federation Council. You know, in some ways you're even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You're more insidious. You assimilate people and they don't even know it." The techniques used by Palpatine - double-deals with supposed enemies (Molotov-Ribbentrop), the creation of a "foreign" enemy to blame for social/political issues that demand some kind of "remedy" (in this case, the Separatists and then, later, the Jedi), the creation of a cult of personality (in the form of the mysterious, sorcerous Emperor) - are all well in line with typical techniques used by fascists to control a political system. It doesn't really matter that Count Dooku manipulates the Separatists, because they were doomed the moment the Republic made war on them. A powerful democracy like the Republic, in reflection of something like the United States (and these films were being made during the opening shots of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars), only goes after enemies it knows it can defeat.
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Nov 30, 2012 02:31
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The funniest character of the entire prequel series is probably Yoda, who spends half of his on-screen time going, "This mysterious Dark Side power is blocking my ability to sense evil!" as he leads a bunch of troops to fight some foreign robots on a distant planet under the authority of a dictator. It's a pretty damning critique of the New Age spirituality the Force originally aped. All of Yoda's mystical koans fall flat when he completely fails to see the rise of a tyrant happening right in front of his nose.
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Nov 30, 2012 03:15
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I think you're right, actually. The prequels effectively "de-mythologize" the Star Wars "universe." That actually puts the tactically realistic Force powers and the endless CGI battles into more perspective: They end up making what was at one point fantastic and mystical into some banal filler, like watching a History Channel documentary.
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Nov 30, 2012 03:23
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There's absolutely nothing in the prequels to imply that Palpatine has anything approaching mind control powers or whatever. Like, when Obi-Wan uses the mind trick in the original films, it's extremely obvious that something's up. We never get anything like that in the prequels: no weird hand movements, no oddly stilted dialog, nothing. When Jar-Jar brings up the vote to give Palpatine dictatorial authority, it's in the form of an eloquent speech. Jar-Jar here is clearly meant to represent the typical "duped" politician of a democratic government who means well but ultimately does not understand the tidal wave he sets off, not some mind-controlled puppet. Why do you need magic powers when plain-old psychology will do the trick instead?
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Nov 30, 2012 22:26
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Also dark force powers don't literally exist and serve only as a metaphor for, in this case, capitalism. I'm not really certain about this. I see Palpatine's influence as a more conventional sort of "allure" of authoritarianism. Like: Everyone buys into Palpatine not because they're being paid off from the dividends of his dark powers or such, but because they no longer have to think about things. It's evident from the first film that no one on the Senate really gives a good drat about any of the other worlds beyond their own (their staunch refusal to help Amidala seems to cement this), so they're more than glad to cede power to Palpatine so they can focus on their own business. I can see a potential capitalist reading of Palpatine, wherein he intentionally starts a war in order to create a sort of Orwellian depletion of surplus production (it's notable that both sides are, essentially, commodities - identical clones versus robots) and then creates a monopoly by literally killing most of the major capitalists of the galaxy. I'd be interested in reading if you wanted to go more in-depth with this.
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Nov 30, 2012 23:01
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Andrew Verse posted:Are you trying to make a point that plot isn't the same thing as story, or where is this going? Why are people captivated by Luke's journey specifically? What exactly resonates within them that has made Star Wars such a popular cultural phenomenon? It's not merely enough to say "people enjoy the Hero's Journey" - well, yes, but why? Why, particularly, are they interested in it now? There isn't a Platonic ideal of the "Hero's Journey" that exists within the soul of mankind, but rather as a relation between ourselves and the society that we live in. We might speculate that, for example, it captivates modern audiences today because it provides an element that is evasive in modern society: that of the "milestones" or "goalposts" of life, especially the perceived (non-biological) transition from childhood to adulthood. These usually take the form of rituals or events that are intended to signify the inclusion of a young person into the sphere of adulthood, allowing them to take on a new form and identity. At issue in modern society is the lack of such rituals or events, or, rather, their relative uncertainty. In previous decades before the film's release, the "American dream" fulfilled the purpose of these milestones, in that you would grow up at your parent's home; you would go through the various stages of public schooling; and then you would either go to university to get a degree (which would almost always lead to some sort of profession), or get a job in manufacturing or some similar trade, thus eventually enabling you to purchase a home (the ultimate symbol of American freedom). This milestone would signal your ascent into adulthood. Nowadays, this certainty has all but eroded. For many young people in the United States today (as well as the rest of the world), a not-atypical situation is: You go through public school, and then go and get a degree, and then you are stuck at your parent's house without a job that pays well enough for you to acquire a home of your own. You are denied the milestones that represent the completion of your journey into adulthood. Even though you may be physically and mentally an adult, you are not socially one - the mirror of society upon yourself is blemished. A film like Star Wars provides a certain catharsis specifically because it is about the transition from childhood to adulthood. Luke starts the film still a "child," stuck on his uncle's farm. Slowly but surely, the assistance of Obi-Wan (a father figure and social "mentor" or wiseman) allows him to transform himself from "a farmhand" to "a Jedi Knight." In gaining this new role, he also redefines himself, transitioning into adulthood in the process (since he now engages in war, has romantic infatuations with a princess, and so on). For an audience of today, the surety of this transition is heartening and speaks to our own ambivalence about our own "adulthood" in the consumerist world of today, where the culture that previously provided us with the milestones of life has all been but obliterated. In the obfuscated reality of today's capitalism, such a clear journey as the one Luke undergoes provides us with a vicarious experience of truly "becoming" an adult in a clear and unambiguous way.
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Jun 3, 2013 19:58
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Sir Kodiak posted:The idea that the Hero's Journey is central to the success of Star Wars is sort of bizarre. I claim that, in this case, one doesn't necessarily exist without the other. There are a lot of technically competent films today that receive nowhere near the popular acclaim of Star Wars. There must be something deeper than cinematography at work here.
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Jun 3, 2013 21:02
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Sir Kodiak posted:I listed six areas, none of which were cinematography, in which I thought Star Wars excelled, not just was technically competent. Sorry, this is my fault. I tend to use "technical" in a very broad way - that is, to encompass the overall aesthetics of the production (acting, set design, music, and so on). My comment was essentially just stating that technical competence, while important, doesn't seem to be the main decider for audience appeal in this particular case.
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Jun 3, 2013 21:38
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Hbomberguy posted:Joke aside, I get what you're saying but don't understand the end-goal or what that goal even really is, even though I basically support the same observations you've made of the prequels and the Nolan Batmens. The essential goal of the "communist idea" is the creation of an economically egalitarian society. The "ideal" is a society free of overt economic coercion and inequality of the sort seen in modern capitalism, where vast swathes of the world population struggle to merely achieve the essentials of life, and where men and women in even relatively industrialized countries are given the stark choice of either selling their labor power or living in misery. The hope is that radical economic justice goes hand-in-hand with radical social justice; you have few reasons to hate immigrants if you're not constantly on the knife's edge of losing all gainful employment to them. The reason why you often see SMG and others harping on the whole dictatorship of the proletariat/excessive love thing is that it's key to preventing the society from regressing backwards. The promotion of radical, Christ-like love is meant to stymy the creation of new groups of the oppressed that would lead society back into either capitalist relations of production or, worse, the direct master-and-servant relations of the Soviet Union. The cyclical failing of the Star Wars universe is that Luke ultimately seeks to resurrect the very social order that led to the creation of the Empire, rather than attempting to forge a new set of economic and social relations. The fact that Lucas ultimately chose to make prequels instead of sequels, and that they're highly cynical with regards to the capitalism and liberal democracy of the Republic, says volumes. They're as much a commentary on the shift in world politics since the release of A New Hope as they are a response to the politics of the original films. Politically, there are many ideas for what an actual, egalitarian society would look like, though they often lack the magic of the old communist days, where the dialectical force of history was supposed to simply sweep capitalism into the dustbin. I think many leftists today are more realistic in terms of their demands (e.g., universal health care instead of full communism immediately), but it still remains important to hold onto that radical vision and to try and reify it as much as one can. Vermain fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Mar 19, 2014 |
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Mar 19, 2014 05:32
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Lunatic Pathos posted:If what the folks doing close readings pick up on is indeed intentional, then the fact that almost everybody missed it says that they could have done more to cue the audience in. I'd say that's far more the fault of illiteracy than Lucas not spelling it out clearly enough. People obviously felt uncomfortable over Jarjar, midichlorians, the weird Anakin/Padme romance, etc., but have rarely articulated why, nor have they integrated their reading of those elements with the rather scathing critique of liberal democracy the film has to offer. I say this mostly because it's a consistent problem across films (especially mass media entertainment), not just this one. I submit for evidence the Elysium thread, where the idea of people intentionally denying the poor medical care was seen as too cartoonishly villainous. Vermain fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 18:09
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Lunatic Pathos posted:I just used "If" because I don't like to speak in absolute terms on topics that are so subjective. If someone looked at all the same evidence and still disagreed, I'd understand why. Well, the key thing is: does it matter if they're intentional or not? Your interpretation cannot be made with the hope of getting it "right," because there is no "right answer" for the interpretation of a piece of art. Even if we presume that George Lucas was a bumbling fool who managed to chaotically throw this whole thing together, does this diminish what it has to say with regards to our own modern society?
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Mar 23, 2014 18:13
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Myrddin_Emrys posted:SOrry SMG your posts fail miserably here. Lucas just isn't that clever. What is your evidence for this claim?
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Aug 27, 2014 16:27
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One of the strange facts of the history of slavery in the United States is that slave owners generally treated their slaves quite well, considering that they were massive capital investments. They could have families, got their own living quarters, had free time to do with as they pleased, and so on. This fact does absolutely nothing to diminish the criminal, unjust nature of slavery. It is wrong, and the fact that a representative of the Jedi Knights doesn't really care about it is a key point of characterization.
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Aug 27, 2014 17:50
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The "canonical" explanation from the Knights of the Old Republic series is that Tatooine used to be a regular ol' planet that was lorded over by the Rakata Empire a zillion years ago. The indigenous people (the Tusken Raiders) eventually rose up in rebellion, causing the Rakata to obliterate the whole planet with space weapons, thus turning it into a desert planet.
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Aug 28, 2014 01:06
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Clone troopers aren't real. They're clones. There's a weird assumption that CGI is always used because the director is "lazy" or something, but it's a valid stylistic choice. The use of CGI in the Death Note live action films, for example, was deliberate, as it highlighted the "unreal" nature of the shinigami (the spooky-looking dude in the back of the bus scene) and immediately clued audiences in as to their unnatural origins.
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Oct 10, 2014 21:21
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SALT CURES HAM posted:I mean, the fact that Ryuk looks like a mix of Cesare from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and a piranha would have done that, CGI or no. The use of CGI inevitably creates a different effect, however, than a "practical" costume would have. Think about The Thing and its modern sequel. There's a difference in how we receive them, even though they should, in theory, both be extremely gross and offputting. The original's practical effects give a feeling of the "natural" grotesqueness of the Thing (like seeing roadkill, where the regular form of an ordinary being is distorted and twisted), whereas the sequel's CGI simply feels alien and disharmonious, like an intrusive force that's wandered into the film. Even though both are inherently "false," we are aware that one of them is more false than the other (in that it literally only exists as digital signals), and our perception thus changes.
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Oct 11, 2014 05:39
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Is there a sort of precedent in franchise films for Episode 7 at all? I can't really think of any other major film series where the "main cast" returns long after the fact to play older versions of their previous characters. It's fortunate it worked out that way, but it's still a little weird to think about.
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Nov 28, 2014 22:03
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computer parts posted:Sherlock Holmes fandom is literally the original fandom. They were the precursors of the nerds that dress up like people from Star Trek. "Fandom" as a concept goes way, way back. You have a dude writing a sequel to The Odyssey (The Telegony), and someone liked Don Quixote's first part so much that they created and released a fanfic version of the second half (which Cervantes even references in part two).
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Dec 3, 2014 18:04
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unlimited shrimp posted:There's nothing wrong with reading them as satire. The trouble comes with reading them as intentionally satirical. How have you determined that they aren't intentionally satirical?
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Dec 16, 2014 04:22
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It's worthwhile to rewatch the opening scene of Episode 1. The Neimodians are scared shitless of these two dudes. One of them absolutely refuses to go into the same room as them even just to deliver some tea. Their leader has to be directly ordered by Darth Badguy to kill them, and even then he's hesitant about it. There's the aforementioned scene where Qui-Gon is trying to cut into the control room doors slasher-movie style, which is not the place you'd be going if you were an honest diplomat just trying to get back to your ship to escape. They're only stopped because of superior battle droids rolling in. To say that the Jedi are just "negotiators" is being dishonest.
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Dec 17, 2014 00:08
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Nessus posted:Really, the clones are even more weirdly unethical than a droid army would be. At least droids actually are industrially manufactured custom-built objects. The clones were all a bunch of guys... what was going to happen to them after the war? Is that covered in any of the EU stuff even in passing? If I recall, the EU stuff sees them form the brunt of the Empire's army (which is why they're largely identical-looking in 4-6). The real answer, though, is, "Exactly." If we're going along with the Vietnam parallels: what happens to someone who is, quite literally, bred to kill when there isn't a war to be fought?
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Dec 17, 2014 22:58
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G-III posted:I don't necessarily agree with this. Luke throws away his life saber and gives up his life, ending the cycle of violence between the jedi and the sith that is the hart of the violence throughout the galaxy. I would say, if Luke picks that lightsaber up again, especially in these new movies, then he's performing actions that essentially reestablishes the conflicts of old. At the end of ROTJ, luke's actions don't amount to anything relative to the success or failure of the rebels with respect to the destruction of the new death star. It's actually one of the greatest things about the story in my opinion. Luke doesn't truly become a "good guy" and vanquish evil until he throws down the sword. The great part about the entire battle between Vader and Luke is how totally pointless it is with regards to the outcome of the conflict outside. In bad speculative fiction, the destruction of the "embodiment of evil" (here the Emperor) is the primary goal. Only their deaths (or otherwise removal from the system) will restore some kind of proper harmony, and it's usually something accomplished only through the efforts of a small non-affiliated group or a single Nietzschean hero. The greatness of RotJ is that it manages to embody the importance of personal ethics and "taking a stand" (Luke's confrontation with the Emperor) while emphasizing the higher importance of collective action and the destruction of the underlying system that supports evil (embodied in the Death Star II). Luke putting his sword down is an acknowledgement of his own ethics (refusing to kill a disarmed and helpless opponent) and his trust in his allies outside. That isn't something you see a whole lot.
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Dec 30, 2014 23:06
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HIJK posted:...so? The point is that having a "kingdom" (in specific) as the ultimate goal of a fairytale is still an ideological statement, even if (and, perhaps, especially because) it's "escapist." A kingdom is not some neutral, invented idea. Stating that it's "ideal" is making an ideological statement. There's nothing wrong with that; it just means that saying it's "escapist" is not an effective defense against criticism or analysis of it.
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Dec 30, 2014 23:12
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There ain't "good" or "bad" people. There's good or bad actions taken by people, sure, which is the only way to judge them.
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Dec 30, 2014 23:16
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HIJK posted:There are people who find pleasure in that kind of analysis. I just think that getting bogged down in the details like that ("an ideal kingdom is an ideological statement") is missing the forest for the trees. Meaning can be pulled out of a rock but eventually it descends into esoteric silliness so I don't get the appeal. You're not "pulling meaning out." The meaning is right there in the fundamental words (which always, inescapably carry certain symbolic meanings) that we use to communicate ideas. If I write a story in which the heroine ultimately ends up inhabiting a world of perfect and fair democracy, am I or am I not making a particular statement of what I consider to be an ideal system? Like, you're right now asserting that the idea of a "kingdom" lacks any kind of substantive meaning: that we literally do not know what a kingdom is, and that our desire to live in one and be a prince/princess is a "natural" impulse devoid of context. C'mon!
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Dec 31, 2014 00:01
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HIJK posted:I mean, looking at stories like SW and Snow White, we see a figure being held up as a princess/the Chosen one/a knight and the stories tell us "these people are special and cool and wouldn't it be great if you, audience member, could be one of them?" Okay, but why is a kingdom specifically chosen at the end point of the story? You've asserted several times that the inclusion of the kingdom at the end of Snow White is, at best, a tertiary fact: HIJK posted:That's missing the point of the fairy tale, which is in its immediacy. [..] HIJK posted:It barely exists at all dude, it's just a destination for the prince and Snow White, and is also a metaphor for happiness everlasting. Your view is that the kingdom is unimportant in the story and that it represents a vague "everlasting happiness" - but there are plenty of other words that could be used to describe everlasting happiness (paradise, eternity, etc.). As SMG said, you could have just cut the kingdom out and said, "And they all lived happily ever after." The author, however, did not choose to do this. Why? To bring this back to Star Wars: the fact that Luke is specifically attempting to bring back the Republic is important, especially in the face of the prequels. It's not just some metaphor for "everlasting freedom." The word "republic" carries with it actual, real-world connotations and ideas. It's dishonest to say that it's a value-neutral term or one only associated with positive emotional feelings. Nessus posted:I think you could make a good case that while there are shades and connotations, "kingdom" for us is just a kind of old-timey way to describe "a place, a location." Like how an ancient Greek might have said "polis," it doesn't necessarily mean - overtly - an endorsement of the structure of an ancient Greek city-state. If you want to make that case, I'd be glad to read it. For the moment, though, I disagree that the use of kingdom in the context of Snow White is a neutral term simply describing a place or location. We can use Star Wars as an example: if Luke were trying to restore the "Galactic Kingdom," we would understandably be less willing to go along with him than if he were trying to restore the "Galactic Republic." This is because these words have separate contexts and carry different ideas along with them. Vermain fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Dec 31, 2014 |
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Dec 31, 2014 00:28
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HIJK posted:If you mean "using metaphor to decry overanalysing poo poo" sure What is the correct level of analysis?
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Dec 31, 2014 02:59
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:And the kicker is that Terminator 2 isn't that radical of a film. It's no Elysium, for example. I'd say it actually is pretty radical, but it's tunneled into the popular consciousness in such a way that we tend to overlook its radical elements. The main villain of the film is a cop; John's delinquent hacking behaviour is actually a key point in destroying Cyberdyne's research; Sarah Connor is a radical feminist; the Terminator explicitly goes out of its way to avoid actually killing people as much as possible; the film ends with the destruction of private property, which is taken as a good thing; etc.
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Dec 31, 2014 20:11
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Cnut the Great posted:Yes, the Rebellion's actions are clearly justified and even necessary. The movies go out of their way to make that clear--and they also go out of their way to tell us that that's no excuse. You should let the bad guys win. Turn the other cheek. Leave your fate in the hands of God or destiny or whatever. It's a radical message, and one that's difficult for 21st century liberal secularists to accept, but it's the message of the films. As I mentioned before, I think this is misreading the battle between Luke and the Emperor. The reason he throws down his sword is because he knows that striking down either of these two crippled old men won't change the outcome of the actual battle going on outside. The real evil - made inherent in the Death Star II - is something Luke can't reach or destroy by himself. Luke fully trusts his allies and realizes that this petty individual violence isn't going to solve anything. He's willing to die with his morals intact rather than weakly attempting to "do something" simply to feel like he's the hero. It's a huge reversal from his original perception of himself as this big-time "ancient warrior" figure.
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Dec 31, 2014 21:54
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Treating symbology as though it is mathematical - as though a post-apocalyptic playground always represents the same thing in all contexts - is silly, but at least I understand where you're coming from now. What are the alternative metaphorical implications of a post-apocalyptic playground littered with skulls, in your view? What other media uses this imagery that precedes Man of Steel?
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Jan 7, 2015 22:45
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MacheteZombie posted:Can we get some comparison shots of The Terminator's playground and skulls with the one from Man of Steel? Here's one from the Man of Steel thread:  I have access to both, so just ask if you'd like different/larger shots. Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I mean I agree with SMG that Snyder was probably influenced by Terminator but we can't know for sure - objectively - that he meant to homage/reference it in that particular scene. Is this stance controversial? It's impossible to know anything with absolute, objective certainty, though we can understand things within a framework of reasonable objectivity. I argue that, given that Man of Steel was released after Terminator 2, deals with similar themes, and comes from a similar cultural (and geographical) context, that the imagery used in both is objectively evocative of a lost, dead future haunting the past. As stated by SMG, "intentionality" isn't relevant to the discussion. Rather, the shared symbolic framework is what's important. If both of these images are used in similar contexts, in similar media, then it is reasonable to assume that they both stand for the same thing. Vermain fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 22:58
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zVxTeflon posted:why are there only skulls? where are the rest of the bones? are complete skeletons not spooky enough? Faces are the biggest identifier of someone being human. Showing a million skulls is far more evocative than showing a million femurs.
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Jan 7, 2015 23:31
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thrawn527 posted:Okay, I'm starting to love your posts. These screen shot posts are great. I don't have anything to add, but you clearly have an eye for these things, so thanks for pointing them out. You should try it! It's actually really easy to understand composition and general cinematography if you follow some kind of simple methodology. When I look at a shot, I generally ask myself: 1) What is the overall purpose of the shot? What is it trying to evoke? This is a question mostly found in the plotting. In Empire, Luke's arrival on Dagobah is supposed to be a mythical experience. Yoda, after all, is this mysterious ancient warrior he's heard of only in legends who's sitting on a planet at the rear end-end of some galaxy. Therefore, it's a question of how well the shot emphasizes the awesome (in the archaic sense) nature of where Luke is headed. Making Luke seem relatively small and uncertain in the shot as he's surrounded by dense, barely-lit fog adds a sense of foreboding and timelessness to the encounter. 2) What is the main focus of the shot? Generally, you should try and look at the shot and see what your eyes are immediately drawn towards, instead of searching around for certain aspects (characters, etc.). This is the best way to tell if a shot is good or not: it puts your focus where it matters in the plotting. This will then let you investigate the rest of the shot in order to determine how the compositional elements either lend itself to this focus or detract from it. The most common methods of drawing attention are:
All of these things go towards visual clarity, the "grammar" of the visual arts. Placing an emphasis on something (or choosing not to) informs the audience as to what's important in the story and what isn't, which makes the film as a whole easier to read, and, therefore, more enjoyable. Creating scenes that lack visual clarity are equivalent to a poorly-written novel: there's probably a good story sitting underneath there, but the amount of time you have to spend straining at the page and trying to sift through the poor grammar or odd flow detracts from your ability to enjoy the work as it is. Like, RotJ is generally considered the weakest of the OT, and it ain't all because of "plot" or "dialogue," which tend to be the more common go-to cases when people dislike a work but have trouble understanding why. I think that, the more you pay attention to the visual clarity of a film, the more obvious it becomes that "bad" films are generally ones that are poorly communicated more than anything else. Vermain fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jan 10, 2015 |
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Jan 10, 2015 00:30
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LinkesAuge posted:I wish people would stop using words like race or racism in totaly inappropriate (wrong) ways. What's the inappropriate way it's being used in this thread?
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Jan 12, 2015 00:01
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Nessus posted:I thought it was Evangelion that was about penises. You'll notice there's a few small differences, in that one is hailed as a seminal work of art yet hated in equal measure for questionable writing decisions, and the other one has multiple female characters per episode. Evangelion is actually - no word of a lie - a retelling of the myth of Oedipus.
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Feb 21, 2015 00:58
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:It's an odd thing to notice, but the floor on the first shot of the Jedi Council looks really nice. It's an excellent choice, taking the general structure of a mandala. It ties in well with the Buddhist trappings of the Jedi.
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Mar 4, 2015 20:16
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Gargamel Gibson posted:What's LOGH? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i5A9SB-ACM LoGH even has a Death Star equivalent in the form of Iserlohn and Geiersberg Fortress, although the destruction of one is portrayed in a somewhat more morally ambiguous way. Vermain fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Apr 26, 2015 |
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Apr 26, 2015 02:01
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I said come in! posted:Well Episode III sure as gently caress wasn't. Empire Strikes Back has a man being imprisoned in cement, seemingly forever, and a dude attempting to commit suicide rather than accept the truth of his father's crimes; Return of the Jedi has Mark Hamill rolling on the ground, screaming in agony. Star Wars has always had a lot of dark stuff hanging around in it, but I think that young'uns are more adept at dealing with darker themes than we give them credit for. Keep in mind that there was a six-year gap between Phantom Menace and Revenge, too. You can afford to put in darker themes and images in a trilogy series like that under the assumption that the kids who first watched it back in 1999 have matured since then and are okay with stuff like a man being cooked like a marshmallow.
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Aug 30, 2015 15:50
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