Sunday, September 10, 2006

$tar War$

Here

The guy makes some decent points, nothing that hasn't been said before tho. I have to say that I already had his idea of not showing Eps 1-3 right away.

22 Comments:

Blogger Garble said...

Maybe we shouldn't say ep 1-3 sucked. But they sure as hell didn't live up to what they could have been. I know it's typical to say that "the movie would never live up to our expectations." But the amount that ep 1-3 did get it done is even more apparent when you compare it with the LOtR trilogy. Think about it, Lucas had a blank check because the studio /knew/ he'd make money and still peter jackson did so much better.

11/9/06 03:49  
Blogger Jack T Briggs said...

Because I didn't like a movie about gay midgets struggling with their homosexuality? I don't care, I think it was boring. Maybe it wasn't quite THAT bad, but I'll tell you what, it did NOT deserve best movie and sure as hell was not as good as the original Star Wars trilogy.

11/9/06 05:57  
Blogger Garble said...

Jack, You’re an idiot. Face it; Jackson did a MUCH better job with rings than Lucas did with ep 1-3. For someone that bitches like a little girl with a broken dolly whenever a movie isn’t 100% true to the source material I think you’d like the fact that rings actually followed Tolkien’s story line. There are days worth of movies badly adapted from books that show you how easy it is to screw them up.

I can see your version of the movie; Aragorn is a bitter ex-whatever that tortures orcs for fun and Gandolf spends 80% of his screen time grunting out large fireball spells. The remaining 20% is split between humorous eating and funny one line quips that you can recite at the bar.

The movies weren’t perfect, but they were much better ep 1-3.

11/9/06 06:24  
Blogger Garble said...

When you said it wasn’t as good as the original star wars: do you mean that one they showed in the 70’s of the official and corrected version where guido shoots first?

11/9/06 06:25  
Blogger Jack T Briggs said...

You're 100% right. Jackson told the story exactly as Tolkein did. Not to mention that the story was boring in the first place. The Rings trilogy was the only series of books that I actually got bored of and never finished. I have no problem with you liking it, that's fine. I'm just saying it couldn't sit through it again. It's just six hours of people walking and a wizard that doesn't cast spells. Why didn't they just give Gandalf some armor and a shield to complete his transformation to a fighter?

11/9/06 06:29  
Blogger Jack T Briggs said...

I mean the ORIGINAL Star Wars. The remastered ones are not canon in my mind. I only bought them because it was nice seeing it on DVD. Not shitty, worn out VHS tapes.

11/9/06 06:31  
Blogger Simon Hawk said...

LOL! "The main bad guy is a light house!" HAHAHA! That is so true, what was so fucking scary about a maglight on top of a mountain.

Booooooring.

I like the effects in lotr better than ep. 1-3 for some reason. Not sure why.

11/9/06 06:34  
Blogger Jack T Briggs said...

I'm not saying the effects were bad. The movie looked spectacular. The plot was boring. I was expecting so much more because, and I'm slightly embarrased to say this, I didn't read the Hobbit or LOtR as a kid. Then when I heard the movies were coming out I decided to read the books first to see what all the hype was about. I was very disappointed by both. I found Tolkien very long winded.

11/9/06 06:38  
Blogger Garble said...

Damn it jack! When I try to bait you you’re not supposed to respond reasonably.

If you didn’t like the rings story than I can’t really fault you. One of my biggest complaints about the books was all the time he spends describing trees. I don’t really care about trees that much. I definitely don’t care enough to want to read about them for a page and half. It’s a tree. I get it. I think your complaints about Gandolf are way off base. I’m guessing that you got your idea of what a wizard should be from D&D. D&D got their idea from Tolkien (among other places) and than introduced game balance and other crap. Anyway, different strokes for different folks.

I will disagree with you what’s cannon though. Lucas wrote the story for star wars, he directed produced etc. It’s his story, if he wants to say that guido was always supposed to shoot first, than that’s that. Otherwise Lucas is an even bigger tool that changed one of Han’s defining moments just to appease the PC police. This is really odd considering all of the trouble he had with stereotypes in the movies. (they’re all aliens but…The jar jar binks / minstrel act, the greasy mobbed up Italian diner owner, the slave owning Jew (watto), the army of identical Mexican looking people from the planet el camino) I’m not saying there’s much validity there, but after the jar jar binks thing you’d hope that he’d at least start paying attention to that stuff.

11/9/06 06:57  
Blogger Jack T Briggs said...

I can be rational, when I want to be.

That's what I didn't like! Just get to the story. The long names got to me too. But I have to disagree with you about the wizard thing. Gandalf is supposed to be one of the greatest wizards in any story and all he did was put on light shows. I don't think he should have been throwing fireballs or casting "web" constantly, but shit, ONE fireball would have been nice.

And let's get one thing straight about Episodes I-III, They weren't good. BUT I found it nice to finally see how everything went down. Could they have been done better? Fuck yes. But there was some good stuff. Seeing actual, true-blue Jedi stomp everything they came across was cool. And Ewan McGregor was excellent as Obi-Wan. And Palpatine was a downright evil, manupulative son-of-a-bitch. What people don't understand about the prequals is Lucas never intended to show them as movies. But as time when on people begged and begged until he finaly did it. He said, straight out in the late 80's that the story was not as good. Which is why he started with Episode IV.

11/9/06 07:13  
Blogger Matt McMinn said...

I really liked the fact that Gandalf didn't go around casting spells - why turn him into a walking special effects factory? That's one of the things that LotR has, balance. Sure gandalf could go around blasting bad guys out of the sky, but if he could do that, then his equally powerful nemesis could do the same with good guys/innocents. I also liked that Gandalf was in the middle of battles fighting alongside aragorn, etc - again, the whole balance thing. Gandalf is hella powerful, but he doesn't overdo it, the other characters in the story can be just as powerful. I mean, I could write LotR in one freaking paragraph if Gandalf was the powerhouse that he is, without balance:

Gandalf uses his powers to find the one ring, and telepathically throw it in Mt. Doom. Sauron teams up with Sauroman and they turn everyone into zombies. Trees are tall and green.

Obviously there are places where Tolkien is a bit long winded (Silmarillion anyone?) but what do you expect from an English professor at Oxford? Some people will like it, some won't.

11/9/06 07:35  
Blogger Jim Brannick said...

Say what you will about LotR, as a whole it can be boring, etc., depending on your outlook and opinion.

HOWEVER, ultimate badass/opening scene of a movie: The Two Towers, when Gandalf battles an ancient Demon whilst tumbling down a chasm. Possibly one of the best opening sequences ever. I think that proved his badassness (is that a word?).

11/9/06 07:59  
Blogger Matt McMinn said...

I believe it's spelled bamf-ness

11/9/06 08:05  
Blogger Garble said...

When I read the book and saw the movie it was pretty obvious to me that in middle earth a lot of what wizards do is just advanced technology. (Gunpowder) and the rest of it isn’t really that flashy. Off of the top of my head here are the ‘magic’ things I can remember from the movie/book

Fireworks,
Smoke rings in funny shapes (boats)
Knowing the future
Communicating over great distance
Communicating with insects and animals
Bombs
Mesmerism/being very persuasive
Seeing things over great distances (palantir)
Causing a river to flood Gandolf and Elrond did this one together
Telekinesis
Tricks with lightning Gandolf and the balrog
Creating a new race of orc (magic / genetic engineering)
Knowing things mortals don’t
Making people old
Countering the spell that makes people old


The fight with the balrog was the best though. He may have been forbiden from fighting souron directly, but nothing was going to stop the gandolf from kickin the balrogs ass.

11/9/06 08:07  
Blogger Simon Hawk said...

I wonder if you could clip the best parts from all three movies and then combine them into a movie that would fit on one DVD and still make sense. That would rock. The same goes for EP.1-3.

11/9/06 11:03  
Blogger Garble said...

Sure, you could make a movie that's all about Aragorn returning to gondor, a movie that skips that and focuses just on the hobbits and the destruction of the ring, or a movie that's just what gandolf was doing.

11/9/06 11:38  
Blogger Garble said...

for star wars check out the phantom edit. It's basically the phantom menace with all the stupid stuff removed. i.e. less pod racing, less anakin being a dork, less bad acting, and almost no jar jar.

11/9/06 11:39  
Blogger Jack T Briggs said...

Hey now! The podracing was awesome. If you have a good surround sound system, that was one of the best parts.

11/9/06 11:45  
Blogger Simon Hawk said...

I enjoyed the pod race.

11/9/06 11:59  
Blogger Cohort Mandibles said...

I enjoyed the end of the movie when I got leave the theater.

11/9/06 12:02  
Blogger Garble said...

the pod race was okay, But too long. Than they did basically the same thing again at the end of the movie with anakin in flying inside the space station. He's a pilot, I get it. Now stop interupting the kick as jedi light saber fight to show me the little kid looking scared.

theater, mall or mortal coils it's always good when cohort leaves

11/9/06 14:14  
Blogger Cohort Mandibles said...

Haha. Good one.

12/9/06 05:13  

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