Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (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.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (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.