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posted by martyb on Monday December 28 2015, @03:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the can't-please-everyone dept.

[Editor's Note: By continuing to read this submission, you take full responsibility if the movie gets ruined for you. You were warned!]

Going against the tide of positive reviews for "The Force Awakens" the new Star Wars movie, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's daily newspaper, found much to dislike. Most of the review seems to fault the movie for being more glitz than substance, "more reboot than sequel":

"Not a classy reboot however, like Nolan's Batman, but an update twisted to suit today's tastes and a public more accustomed to sitting in front of a computer than in a cinema."

The reviewer was not impressed with the depiction of the evil characters, particularly when compared to Vader and Palpatine:

"The counterpart of Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, wears a mask merely to emulate his predecessor, while the character who needs to substitute the emperor Palpatine as the incarnation of supreme evil represents the most serious defect of the film," it wrote. "Without revealing anything about the character, all we will say is that it is the clumsiest and tackiest result you can obtain from computer graphics."

In contrast, the newspaper was very impressed with such movies as the James Bond Skyfall, and described Mad Max, Fury Road as a "real, true masterpiece."


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 28 2015, @04:53PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 28 2015, @04:53PM (#281738)

    I've heard the new movie compared to ST:TMP in that the editing feels weird, the fans will always be fans, the special effects are awesome for their time as a demo reel, and the non-fans are not terribly impressed WRT faithful following of classic cinematic formulas. Then again if they did follow the formulas closely, it would be boring and "just get the space stuff out of the way of the character drama" demands would mount.

    I recently re-watched Ep4 the original. The editing is tight. Simplicate and add lightness. Can't cut a scene without messing up the rest of the movie. Can't add a scene without bloating or making the rest of it worst. The problem with trying to remake/copy one of the most popular movies of recent memory is its difficult to top, and inflation adjusted etc, the new movie looks like a colossal flop compared to Ep4, but almost all movies are colossal flops compared to Ep4.

    So bringing up trek again, compared to a lower than average movies like ST:The Voyage Home or both recent JJ-reboot trek-themed action movies, I've heard its an OK star wars movie.

    I believe they knew they did not have a winner, thus six months of intense merchandising before Christmas yet release a week before Christmas. This might not be good for the 2nd and 3rd movies, at least WRT merchandising. My son had no interest in the merchandising, having not seen the movie and having seen the merchandise for months before the movie comes out, and as a parent having suffered thru Eps 1-3 I know better than to invest before seeing it. So both the kids and parents are not interested in the merchandise. Hmm. We still haven't seen the movie. I'll probably wait till I can stream it. There's a belief everyone loved the original trilogy but I did not, I was never a soft sci fi guy, although its truly excellent soft sci fi movie so it grew on me over time. In that way I donno if my son would like it, despite being in the target demographic.

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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 28 2015, @05:03PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 28 2015, @05:03PM (#281740) Journal

    You're right, also the editing is also an area where it failed to feel like star wars. We got hardly any wipes to big establishing shots of big vistas(another big point below). We got one good star warsy establishing shot, and it felt weird, because it was a walkthrough of an alien bar instead of a bunch of cuts like feels normal from Jabba's palace or Mos Eiseley Cantina.

    That was an area that Lucas never messed up the prequels. The importance of having different ecologies for different planets helped set a very important tone. That we had not-tatooine was okay, but every single star wars movie before this had at least one completely new environment.

    IV: Desert
    V: Ice and Swamp
    VI: Jungle
    I: Planet-wide city and underwater
    II: Ocean Planet and barren rocky land
    III: Volcanic Lava World

    VII: Snow, but this time there's trees?

    These are subtle things, and less important than good character plotting.

    • (Score: 2) by spxero on Monday December 28 2015, @05:57PM

      by spxero (3061) on Monday December 28 2015, @05:57PM (#281754)

      IMO, I thought the worlds were just fine, with the exception of the super death star. I might have missed something, but it didn't seem to explain why there were trees and snow growing on it- did it become big enough to be a planet, so it now has an atmosphere and ecosystem?

      I've only seen TFA once, but I recall:
      - Desert (Jakku)
      - Mountain-ish, lakes, forest, etc. (Takodana)
      - Hills and regular vegetation (D'Qar - Resistance base)
      - Show world (Super star destroyer)
      - Water world (Only 5 minutes at the end, but it's different)

      Maybe Rey has heard of such worlds, but coming from a planet of mostly dust with limited water and vegetation, I didn't think she was surprised enough.

      What other worlds can they do, without making it look like Star Wars flies to middle earth?

      • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 28 2015, @06:25PM

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 28 2015, @06:25PM (#281764) Journal

        I'm pretty sure this one was a modified planet rather than an assembled space station.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2015, @06:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 28 2015, @06:33PM (#281767)

    You can thank George's ex-wife Marcia Lucas. She was the editor of the first 3 films plus helping him.

    When they seperated, so did the tightness of the his work.