Table of contents

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• Screenwriting
  

Movie recommendations

Movies recommended by Tarantino

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• The motivation
  • Lucas seems motivated to explain things that are best left unexplained.
    • Ex: Saying the Force is microorganisms.
  • Lucas seems motivated to pander to young children.
  • Lucas seems motivated to pander to fans' desire to see their favorite characters and do fan service.
  • Lucas seems motivated to increase the spectacle without regard to its effect on the story.
    
    • Fans want to see the familiar (lightsaber duels), but also want to see something they've never seen before, so Lucas concludes that he should just make more-fantastic lightsaber duels.
• The script
  • The intended audience
    • The story / script isn't likely to appeal to any audience: the language in and plot of the film often gets extremely formal / complicated, which will be boring for a young audience, but the story is so flexible about what the characters think is a good idea that it won't appeal to a thinking audience either.
  • The characters - Mike says this is the #1 problem with the movie.
    • There is no one for the audience relate to and feel tension on behalf of.
      
      • No character goes through the 'hero's journey'.
      • We don't spend more time with one character in particular to get to know them better.
    • The 'main characters' don't show much / any emotion.
      • They don't show emotion about wanting something in the same way Luke / Han / Leia all wanted something in the original film.
    • The 'main characters' don't have very distinct personalities (distinct emotions and thought patterns).
    • Many of the main characters use very formal language.
      • Amidala, Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan.
    • There is no clear villain with a clear motivation.
    • The enemy forces (battle droids) are totally ineffective, removing any tension from scenes featuring them.
    • Key plot factors are left unseen.
      • The crisis on Naboo caused by the blockade is never shown.
      • It isn't explained why the Neimoidians are taking such a huge risk on behalf of Palpatine when it isn't clear what leverage Palpatine has over them.
  • The story and the way it's told - Mike says this is the #2 problem with the movie.
    • The story is too complicated.
      • The ending has four separate threads going on at once, with several of the threads showing conflicting emotional situations (comedy vs. sadness).
      • The different parts of the story are intertwined in such a way that it's not possible to cut significant chunks of the film.
      The script takes too much time to explain things
      • .
    • Characters from the original trilogy end up together in TPM in bafflingly-unlikely ways.
      • This is clearly done for fan service.
      • R2 and C-3PO are both in the film.
    • Deus ex machina
      • There's a child-sized helmet and goggles in the ship Anakin flies.
    • Characters frequently do not behave in believable ways.
      • This unbelievable behavior is often clearly in service of setting up some set-piece fight / battle or keeping some important-to-the-audience character on the screen.
      • Characters frequently make bafflingly sub-optimal decisions.
      • Characters will suddenly know things that we have no reason to believe they should know.
        • Ex: Knowing that the Jedi went up the ventilation shaft.
      • Characters will unrealistically pay special attention to characters the audience cares about from the original trilogy, like R2-D2 and C-3PO.
        • Ex: Amidala thanking R2.
      • Misc Notes
        • This is by far the most common criticism in terms of the amount of time dedicated to it.
        • See Part 2, #3 for a bunch of examples.
    • The script isn't concise / doesn't take full advantage of visual storytelling / tells rather than shows.
      • The opening to ANH uses the size of the rebel ship and the Star Destroyer to get across the state of things in the universe, while TPM uses a lot of dialogue.
    • The script sometimes doesn't show a pay-off for a main character's action.
      • When escaping Naboo R2 fixes the shield generator but the shields aren't shown protecting the ship against further hits.
    • The script has small inconsistencies / head-scratchers which show a lack of care.
      • The opening crawl mentions "two Jedi Knights" despite Obi-Wan not yet being a Jedi Knight.
      • The Jedi willingly drink tea that's given to them right before they're gassed.
      • The Queen orders a servant to clean R2, but it later turns out that that was a servant ordering the Queen to clean R2, which seems out-of-character.
• The casting
  • Jake Lloyd was a bad casting decision.
  • Natalie Portman was a bad casting decision.
• The cinematography
  • There are shots at boring flat angles.
• The effects / sets / choreography
  • Using blue-screen for everything makes things look too clean.  There's a lack of grit.
  • Using blue-screen makes it harder for the actors to react realistically (emotionally?) to what they're supposed to be seeing.
  • The frame is often packed with too many effects, too many things to distract viewers from the story.
  • The spectacle of the choreography of the lightsaber duels dominates instead of the interactions between the characters.
• The process
  • Lucas doesn't have enough people around him who are willing to challenge him.
  • The script didn't go through enough drafts to fix the problems it had.
  • Everyone involved assumed they couldn't mess it up.

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