Whirl for a Twitter request! I had this started before christmas, and now that the holidays are over, I’ll be working on getting to the other characters y’all requested! I’m still taking Transformers requests btw, since I only have three more
The Phantom Menace is the best movie ever because the entire premise is essentially “Amazon has obtained its own private army and now two future samurai have to stop it from forcing Natalie Portman’s planet to use its services by cutting through Jeff Bezos’s army of robots and attempting to convince Congress to do something about it SPOILER WARNING Congress doesn’t do anything so Natalie Portman has to take matters into her own hands also the day is saved by a redneck kid the samurai picked up when the car broke down”.
The question is actually how the movie managed to suck despite that being the plot
The question is why you listened to people who told you it sucked instead of watching it and enjoying it like a normal person. There’s something new and fun happening in every scene. Secret meetings with shadowy figures, sneak attacks, fierce warriors, elegant queens, stampeding animals, mystical cities, monster attacks, harrowing escapes, whispered conversations, backroom deals, howling storms, thrilling races, ferocious fights, breathtaking skylines, political intrigue, worldbuilding, tests, infiltrations, sieges, rescues, spinning, explosions, all culminating in a fast-paced duel set to one of the most memorable cinematic scores of all time…then ending with a solemn funeral and a joyous parade.
It’s just as important to know how to enjoy a movie as it is to criticize it.
Counterpoint: Jar Jar Binks
You mean the founding father of motion-capture animation characters, the hapless castaway who was given a chance by war heroes because the Jedi value all life, the immature fool who matured upon the sun-scorched sands of a distant planet and the fire-blasted fields beside his home, the sole witness to the Battle of Naboo who survived to watch the Empire fall? That Jar Jar Binks? Frank Oz’s favorite character? Played so passionately by Ahmed Best, the man who nearly committed suicide because of the backlash and malice he suffered following the movie, but refused to do so and endures now to this day producing his own videos and delivering motivational speeches? Is this the Jar Jar Binks you speak of, or did you just jump on the first hate train that stopped by the station and say “well this seems like a fun ride”?
I rarely add onto posts, but if there’s an opportunity to further defend the prequel trilogy, I WILL DO THAT. If you were a kid who grew up with the prequels as your first intro to the star wars franchise, then you’ll also know that the only reason why they were hated SO MUCH was because Older Fans just… didn’t like it. They dictated all the criticisms and effectively made sure that they were the most hated films and that if anyone were to like them, well you just aren’t a good enough star wars fan.
No one’s denying Lucas’ clunky, and sometimes cringey dialogue writing. But I’m absolutely going to argue that TPT added more to the star wars universe than any of the other 6 films had. I’m talking the absolute grandeur of world building, costuming, score, an entirely new fighting style. The CGI is a product of it’s time, BUT we’re talking about a fully relevant narrative about how a democracy collapsed - which, I might add was completely enthralling, smart, and interesting.
All of the actors not only understood their characters, but their arcs, and essentially had an uphill battle of bringing back a 20 year franchise for a fresh audience - this meant pleasing the old fans as well as the new. And if we know anything about the star wars fandom, that was literally an impossible job. None of the star wars films are perfect - I’m definitely including the Original trilogy. But it’s absolutely unfair to treat them like trash when they were actually amazing. Literally just a bunch of neckbeards made you feel bad for having fun and you bought it.
(I’m going on a limb by saying Revenge of the Sith was probably better than any of them.)
Lucas created an incredible origin story for one of the most iconic villains ever. And whether people are willing to accept it or not, it was a goddamn good one. The fact of it is this - this fandom, particularly the old fans, are some of the most elitist and frankly TERRIBLE fans ever. It’s driven several actors to both career ruin, but mental breakdowns simply because they just didn’t like the performances. And the ripple effects have lasted so long because those incredibly loud voices have dictated the General Opinion. This is all despite what the Prequels have done for this franchise’s universe. I urge everyone to go back and try them again!
*plays assassins creed to study for my ap history exam*
This is actually really funny. In high school my humanities teacher told us a story about one of the Europe trips he had gone on with the school a few summers past. So him and the group of kids were in the middle of Rome and the tour guide had gotten lost. They could figure out how to get to some church they were going to see. All of a sudden one of the students like call attention to himself. He says he knows where to go and just start walking around the streets, taking back roads and side streets and within 20 mins they’re at the church they needed to get to. My teacher asks the kid if he has every been to Italy before. He says no, he just knew where to go because he played Assassins Creed Brotherhood.
“Smart” and “Cloud” also mean data gathering. I need to have a tangent, so pardon me while I run with this…
Here’s the thing: I’m a nerd. I want to be able to automate things in our home and to have usable data. So I want smart electrical plugs that allow me to have rules and show me what’s hooving up a ton of energy. That’s useful to me, but that’s not the bargain that tech companies are willing to strike with me, because they want to be able to gather data and sell it.
What’s annoying as hell is that every currently supported thing that does this wants to be a cloud-based application that requires me to install an app on my phone.
I. Do. Not. Want. This.
I want my plugs on a network so I can flip open a browser on my laptop or phone or tablet and access them that way. I do not want them on or touching the goddamned internet. I do not want an information-gathering-and-data-leaking-phone-app.
The one thing that I’ve found that semi-reliably does this is no longer supported by the manufacturer. Every other goddamned option requires me to have it be app-controlled and I can’t control the data gathering from the manufacturer.
In this case, I am DEFINITELY an old-coot yelling at THE cloud.
Honestly, same. This is one of the few things that I’m glad to be too poor to afford the cool toys on.
Same here. I don’t want my household appliances connected to the cloud. I don’t need my thermostat, fridge, or TV connected to the internet. I absolutely do not something like an Alexa.
“Smart” and “Cloud” also mean data gathering.“
I work(ed) in tech. I have a decent understanding of what sort of data can be harvested through those things. I’m not ready to go off-grid and become a witch that lives in the woods, but there are days when it’s a tempting idea.
tumblr: hey we flagged some of your posts :) just ask us to review them if you think we’re wrong :) no we won’t link you directly to the post we’ve flagged :)
A lot of the problem with the movies Disney is remaking as “live action’ is that they’re not MEANT to be live action. Many of them had a distinct use of art style, talking animals, and visual elements that simply don’t look as nice in a hyperrealistic medium no matter how well you apply special effects. And a lot of elements are so fantastical that you’d need copius amounts of CGI to replicate it in ‘real’ life but you still wouldn’t get the same feel.
The digitally-rendered animals in The Lion King look awkward. Dumbo looks nightmarish with his humanlike eyes. Beauty and the Beast felt lackluster with its dull realism instead of the saturated animation.
Now, Atlantis and Treasure Planet would work brilliantly in a realistic medium because it deals with mostly-human characters and visual effects in those movies would transition flawlessly into live action. The alien creatures of Treasure Planet, the pirate’s ships and technology would look beautiful if rendered into realism. Atlantis would work even better with an all-human cast and their technology, and it’d doubly work as a chance to cast nonwhite actors into lead roles.
