hello tis i

nicollekidman

natalie portman radiates such a terrifying energy i can’t describe it….. it’s not exactly evil but it’s not warm either…. i feel like she could unhinge her jaw and drag me into the ocean like a kraken but she wouldn’t bc it’s undignified

dancinginthesetrees

Wanna know why?

“Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman told the crowd at Saturday’s Women’s March in downtown Los Angeles that she experienced what she calls “sexual terrorism” as a 13-year-old after the release of the film The Professional.

Portman described her pride and excitement in releasing the film, only to encounter sexually explicit messages both directed toward her and made about her.

”I excitedly opened my first fan mail to read a rape fantasy that a man had written me,” she recalled. “A countdown was started on my local radio show to my 18th birthday, euphemistically the date that I would be legal to sleep with. Movie reviewers talked about my budding breasts in reviews.”

The experience, she said, changed the way she expressed herself publicly, in order to limit the ways she could be objectified by others.

”I understood very quickly, even as a 13-year-old, that if I were to express myself sexually, I would feel unsafe,” she said. “And that men would feel entitled to discuss and objectify my body to my great discomfort. So I quickly adjusted my behavior. I rejected any role that even had a kissing scene and talked about that choice deliberately in interviews. I emphasized how bookish I was and how serious I was. And I cultivated an elegant way of dressing. I built a reputation for basically being prudish, conservative, nerdy, serious, in an attempt to feel that my body was safe and that my voice would be listened to.”

Video of the speech here: https://www.vox.com/2018/1/21/16917130/natalie-portman-womens-march

shaelit

I support Natalie Portman unhinging her jaw and dragging every last man who made her feel this way into the deep like a kraken.

swan2swan

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”.

brotherv

The question is actually how the movie managed to suck despite that being the plot

swan2swan

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.

jakeander11

Counterpoint: Jar Jar Binks

swan2swan

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”?

grootiepie

@patrocles

patrocles

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!

pomrania

Counterpoint: the prequel trilogy is tragic and I don’t like tragedy.

earlgraytay

actual counterpoint pt. 2:
The prequels have… structural problems. (and so do the sequels.)

Like, don’t get me wrong. The story? Legitimately interesting. I really enjoy the politicking and the large-scale moral conflict with no right answer. I love the worldbuilding, especially the (criminally underused!) Gungans, the podracing (which isn’t…. actually boring, fite me), the sleek and gorgeous look of everything on Naboo… the aesthetic is top-notch and I do think most of the additions to the series fit in tone and style.

The trouble is that the story the prequels are trying to tell is not well-suited for the form it’s being told in. (IE: a 1d3 hour blockbuster movie.)

A blockbuster movie has to get a lot of information across in a very very small amount of time, and so clarity in storytelling is very very important. There’s not much time to develop characters and flesh out their motives and explain who these people are and what they want. It’s important to simplify, clarify, condense characters and subplots until everything makes sense within the context of the story.

IMO blockbuster movies are at their best when they’re focusing on either one character who has a clear goal and must grow to achieve it or a small ensemble cast who share one clear goal and must work together to achieve it. Having a clear goal and clear stakes at the outset means that you can tie everything in the movie to that goal, including character arcs. Focusing on one or two protagonists who want the same thing but disagree on how to achieve it means that you can flesh out their arcs and really take time to show how they grow and change, without taking time away from the story because their arcs are tied into how they react to the goal.

Rogue One is probably the best Star Wars movie for this reason. There is a clear goal established from the very beginning- the Death Star must be destroyed. You get a sense of the stakes from the first scene- not just the ‘this can destroy us all’ stakes, but Jyn’s personal stake in the situation- and most of the movie is Jyn and Cassian becoming the kind of people who can destroy the Death Star. It culminates in that destruction - and all the loss, and hope, that comes from it. The story has clear protagonists, a clear goal, a clear beginning and a clear end.

The OT movies are certainly not perfect in this regard, but it’s clear from twenty minutes into A New Hope that they’re Luke’s story. (And, yes, I would love to see the Star Wars where it’s Leia’s story or the droids’ story, but the first twenty minutes of ANH are a prologue and it shows.) Almost every scene in ANH is either directly about Luke or is relevant in some way to his story; ESB has the extended Cloud City subplot, but a) there are only two groups of important characters at any time, and b) the Cloud City subplot ultimately does wind up being directly tied into Luke’s quest, when he leaves his training to go after Han and Leia (and confront Vader). ROTJ is the only OT movie where you’re following more than two groups of characters at once, and that’s basically just for the final confrontation- which, granted, takes up a significant fraction of the movie, but it’s the payoff.

At any given time in the Original Trilogy, you know who the most important characters are, you know what the stakes are- both in the grander scheme and in the current scene- and, at least for the bigger stuff, you know what’s going to happen if they fail. You know that the Empire is wicked evil bad mean and nasty, and that if they’re allowed to keep doing the crap they’re doing, they’ll keep torturing and killing innocents. And not only do you know, but you see it- the destruction of Alderaan, the raided base on Hoth, and on a more personal level, Vader torturing Leia and the dead bodies of Uncle Lars and Aunt Beru. You know where you stand, you know what you’re looking at.

With the rest of the series, well… that kinda falls apart.

I can’t talk about the Han Solo movie because I haven’t seen it yet, and I won’t talk about the sequel trilogy because even though I have some major issues with the way it’s structured you kinda can’t talk about structure or pacing in a story until it’s done. But with the prequels…

Let me ask you this. Whose story is the Phantom Menace? Whose story is the prequel trilogy? Is it Obi-Wan’s? Padme’s? Anakin’s?

If the prequel trilogy is Anakin’s story, then why does the story start where it does? In TPM, Anakin is a MacGuffin. If you replaced babby!Anakin with a highly advanced drone that could take out the Trade Federation’s control center, nothing about the plot- the structure- of the movie would have to change. The core of TPM, emotionally, is Obi-Wan’s relationship with Qui-Gon; Anakin is tied into this core, but again, it’s more as a Macguffin than as a person. Qui-Gon wanted to train this boy, Obi-Wan was jealous, Qui-Gon died and left the boy in Obi-Wan’s care, Obi-Wan agreed to train him. As a character, Anakin is a nonentity in the first act of his own story.

If the prequel trilogy is Obi-Wan’s story, then why is so much screen time in ATC and ROTS dedicated to studying Anakin? Why do we get so much insight into what Anakin’s going through, what’s driving him, what’s making him feel the way he feels and think the way he thinks? Why do we get to see every detail of Anakin’s relationship with Padme unfold? And why- after TPM- do we get comparatively little of that for Obi-Wan, and instead, through his subplots, get worldbuilding and exposition?

Like…. okay. If you have lived in the USA at any time since 1980, you know that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father. It’s safe to assume that if you’re going to watch a Star Wars movie in cold blood, you have a good idea that this Anakin kid is going to be important, and if you’re part of the core target audience, you already know this is supposed to be Anakin’s story.

The problem is, the prequels aren’t just Anakin’s story. They’re definitely that, but there’s a whole lot more- way too much going on to be told in six hours. There are three major characters, each with their own personal tragedy; there’s a grand tragic romance; there’s the decline and fall of a Galactic Republic, the rise of an Empire, the start of two rebellions and one’s final conclusion, multiple overlapping grand conspiracies… And all of this in a medium that’s best for telling the story of a single character’s personal growth in pursuit of a single goal.

There’s a lot of things with the prequels that make a certain amount of sense if you know, going in, that Anakin is important…. but if you look at the prequels as a stand-alone series, without the foreknowledge that Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader, there’s a lot that’s just… off. Because there isn’t space to hold the entire story, so they lean on the viewers’ assumed foreknowledge that Anakin Skywalker = Darth Vader and use that as a convenient shorthand to lend emotional weight to scenes that otherwise would seem like pointless filler. Most of the bits with the droids in Episode 1, for example- it’s nice seeing how R2 and 3PO first met, but it adds nothing to the story we’re currently watching except for a couple sight gags.

Telling the story of the Star Wars prequels is like trying to cram Beowulf into a haiku- sure, you can do it, it might even be technically impressive, but there’s a lot missing. I think at least some of the prequel hate comes from seeing that stuff is missing, but not knowing quite what and blaming something that’s more tangible.

All Star Wars movies have dubious acting, dubious science, dubious plot points, bits of worldbuilding that boil down to ‘a wizard did it’, and ludicrously bad lines of dialogue. It’s part of what makes them Star Wars movies; they’re not good if they’re not also corny as hell.

But you don’t notice that the science is dubious or the dialogue is cheesy if everything is okay with the story on a more fundamental “How Stories Work” level. Han’s line about ‘hokey religions and ancient weapons’, for example, is corny as hell- but it gets across what kind of person he is, really quickly and efficiently, and it’s delivered in such a way that, yeah, you can almost believe that Han Solo is the kind of guy who’d say something like that.

There’s functionally nothing different between “hokey religions and ancient weapons” and “I HATE SAND, IT’S ROUGH AND COARSE”. They’re both corny lines, they both get across broad ideas about who a character is in very few words, the people saying those lines are people who you could almost see saying them if you translate Lucas-dialogue to English…. but the “I HATE SAND” line sticks out a lot more, because it’s in the middle of a particularly poorly-paced section of Attack of the Clones.

If you know that something is wrong with what you’re seeing, and you can’t pinpoint what it is, it’s easy to go for the low-hanging fruit. It’s a lot easier to go “this line is fucking memeworthy” or “romance sucks and Star Wars would be better without it” than it is to sit down and go “okay, this part of the movie is weak for reasons ABCD, it could have been good if you’d done ZYX but because you did EFG instead that hurts the rest of the movie in all these ways.” It’s a lot easier to casually tear something down than it is to pick it apart.

But that doesn’t mean that it’s bad to try to pick it apart, yknow?

TLDR: The prequels aren’t bad- but they’d be better as a Netflix miniseries. Also, you can have criticisms of something without hating it or being a joyless grognard.

fierceawakening

“BUT we’re talking about a fully relevant narrative about how a democracy collapsed - which, I might add was completely enthralling, smart, and interesting.”

In my Fundamentally Correct About Absolutely Everything opinion, the prequels were a fascinating and wonderful idea marred by a horrible execution.

There’s a very good reason people remember “this is how democracy dies. With thunderous applause.”

There’s also a very good reason many people don’t remember much else.

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

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