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• Screenwriting
  

Movie recommendations

Movies recommended by Tarantino

• "The three movies I'd bring with me on a desert island"
  • Blow Out by Brian De Palma
  • Rio Bravo with John Wayne
  • Taxi Driver

Movies recommended by the guys at RedLetterMedia (especially Jay) that I'm interested in watching

• Jay Bauman the film buff
  • This doesn't have all of his movie recommendations / references, but it has a bunch of them.
• A Ghost Story - Their unanimous favorite movie of 2017.
• Gerald's Game
• A Killing of a Sacred Deer
• American Movie - 94% (from the trailer I think I'm gonna love this one)
• Star Trek Beyond
• hidden by the duffer brothers
• under the skin - jay - "one of my favorite films of the past few years"
• brothers grimsby
• neon demon
• the nice guy
• the greasy strangler
• the conjuring 1/2
• peewee's great adventure and the new peewee movie
• Gone Girl
• Night of the Living Dead
• The Mist
• Tremors "a perfect movie"
• Silent Deadly Night 2 "The funniest movie ever made"
• Trick or Treat "Perfect Halloween movie"
• Krampus
• Logan
• Get Out
• bride of frankenstein (weird) 100%
• arrival 94%
• birdman 91%
• under the skin 85%
• enemy 75%
• interstellar 71%
• sicario 94%
• Maniac 49%
• Saving Mr. Banks (Mary Poppins was real?) 78%
• Tangerine 97%
• You're Next 75%
• The Comedy 45%
• Carrie (original)
• Her
• Looper
• Dredd
• The Descendants 89%
• Antichrist (lars) 50%
• pink flamingoes (weird) 80%
• Bad Grandpa
• rogue one
• the force awaken
• mad max fury road
• ex machina
• world's greatest dad - "one of the funniest movies of the past 10 years"
• call me lucky - "one of the most gripping and heart-wrenching movies I've seen in a long time"
• welcome to me - "i liked it a lot"
• black mass - mike - "good"
• the overnight - mike "I really liked it"
• --Horror--
  • lake mungo - one of the most creepy / unsettling movie jay's seen in years
  • The House of the Devil 86%
  • The Innkeepers 79%
  • Blue Ruin (violent / unpleasant)
  • Green Room (violent / unpleasant)
• --Not easily available
• thx1138

• Cabin in the Woods 92% - 3/5
  • it was certainly different, a really cool concept. I don't really enjoy seeing that kind of violence, though. There's a single 10 seconds towards the end of the movie where it's explained what's been going on.
  • The movie seems to revel in violating the expectations / norms / cliches that these kinds of movies tend to have.
• escape from new york 4/5
  • I really wonder if 9/11 was in part inspired by the opening sequence to Escape from New York. It literally shows exactly the same thing happening: a suicidal rebel hijacks a plane and deliberately crashes it into a NYC skyscraper in lower manhattan.
• The Thing 4/5
• The Hateful Eight 4/5
• Grand Budapest Hotel 5/5
• skyfall 4/5
• American Graffiti 5/5
• terminator 1 4/5
• Drive 3/5
• Cowboys and Aliens 4/5
• easy rider
• Glory
• Westworld (1973) 3/5
• Wolf of Wall St. 5/5
• the blackcoat's daughter (horror) 3/5
• the witch 5/5
• nightcrawler 95% 5/5
• American Hustle 93% - Stopped watching after ~15-20 minutes, it was too boring / stupid.

Movies I've enjoyed

• Hellzapoppin'
  • What I like about it:
    • Very fast-paced, a gag-a-second.
    • There's a kind of joy in the performances that I don't seem to see in modern movies. The performers are generally upbeat / energetic / exaggerated.
    • I like the songs. Modern movies don't really include song-and-dance numbers (Austin Powers is the one that pops to mind of having done something like that somewhat recently).
    • It plays with the format. It has the characters talking to the audience, talking to the projectionist, talking to their separate on-screen selves while watching their own movie, etc.
• The Godfather
  • Interestingly, both Citizen Kane and The Godfather seem to be about how a person transforms from being "normal" to being a very successful but also ruthless leader.

Film Critics

Red Letter Media

Summaries of their critiques

Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace

My thoughts while watching / summarizing this

• The underlying concept for the prequels itself seems like a kind of fan service: Darth Vader is a cool character and the audience wants to know more about him, so give it to 'em, regardless of whether it actually makes a good "hero's journey" adventure movie.  It seems like it would make a better Godfather-type movie, which would cater more to adults than kids.
• I'm reminded of the Jurassic Park sequel-analysis video I saw: the appeal of the original film is largely the awe of seeing something you've never seen before. So once the first movie has done and the audience has seen the new thing, it's very difficult to recapture that magic in a sequel. In Star Wars' case the sequels benefited a lot from the bond the audience had formed with the characters in the first movie.
• It seems that Lucas started out with certain constraints which made it more difficult to create a good story.
  
  • He wanted to include R2, C-3PO, young Anakin, young Obi-Wan, Luke / Leia's mother, and Palpatine.
  • Having young Anakin and young Obi-Wan significantly restricted Lucas' options for casting two of the main characters of the story, as the characters had to look a certain way.
• He then didn't have a process to verify that the script was great before expensive production work began.
• Mike doesn't mention this, but the entire film is very fully-lit.  You don't have the same kind of shadows and darkness that you see in the original trilogy.  It would be interesting to have some kind of graph of the luminosity of the screen throughout the film for both the original trilogy and the prequels.
• It would be interesting to apply the same level of scrutiny to the original trilogy that Mike does here.  I'm aware of at least some things in the original trilogy that people find as questionable as some of the things Mike pointed out here: Ewoks, the discrepancy in Luke's abilities between the end of ESB and RotJ.

Summary of the types of criticisms made

• 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.
    • 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.

Part 1

• Intro
  • 0:53 - Nothing in TPM makes any sense at all. It comes off like a script written by an 8-year-old. It's like Lucas finished the script in one draft and the team went with it without anyone telling him that it made no sense at all, or that it was a stupid, incoherent mess.
  • 1:11 - At this point no one is going to question George or tell him what to do; he controls every aspect of the movie, and probably got rid of the people who question him creatively a long time ago.
  • 1:35 - He suspects everyone thought a Star Wars prequel would be an instant hit, regardless of what the plot was; that it would be so easy to make a good movie that they didn't need to worry about screwing up.
• 1:52 - #1 - The characters
  • 1:57 - The biggest and most-glaring problem with TPM is the characters.
  • 2:15 - In most movies the audience needs a character to connect with, typically referred to as the protagonist.  Especially when the movie is full of weird aliens, the audience needs someone like them to guide them through the story. This doesn't apply to every movie, but it works best in the sci-fi, superhero, action, and fantasy genres.
  • 3:00 - The protagonist is usually an everyday kind of person, and often someone who's down on their luck, in a bad place in their lives, or just somewhere where things don't always go perfectly for them.
  • 3:32 - Eventually they'll be confronted with some kind of obstacle or struggle that they have to deal with.
  • 3:43 - If we like them, we hope they succeed. The drama in the film is a result of us rooting for them against their opposition.
  • 3:59 - Eventually the protagonist will find themselves at some lowest point where it seems all is lost.
  • 4:06 - But eventually they'll pull through and conquer whatever force opposes them. It's satisfying when our hero gets ahead of where they started off.  They make a change.  This is called an "arc".  Often too they'll get the girl in the end as icing on the cake.
  • 4:32 - I don't think all movies need to use the same kind of structure, but it works well in certain kinds of movies. Unless you're a truly great / experienced director (NW: presumably "someone who knows they're straying from the formula and knows why and knows it will work for what they're trying to achieve"), you shouldn't stray far from this formula, especially if you're making a movie intended to be seen by children.
  • 5:14 - The original Star Wars film followed this formula.
  • 5:28 - So: Who is the main character in TPM?
    • It's not the Jedi, because they're boring (i.e. not relatable) and were on a boring mission they didn't care about (i.e. no real struggle).
    • It wasn't Queen Amidala.
    • You might think it was Anakin, but the audience doesn't meet him until 45 minutes into the movie, and then the things that happen around him are mostly out of his control or understanding. If the protagonist has no understanding of what's at stake, there's no real tension / drama.
    • So the conclusion is: there isn't a main character.
    • Before the movie came out I was excited about Ewan McGregor as young Obi Wan, as I thought he'd be perfect as a lead for the movie, but he wasn't the lead, really. He sat on the ship and complained a lot.
  • 6:41 - "So you may like the characters, you know, if you're stupid."
  • 6:47 - I posed a simple challenge to some people: describe the following Star Wars character without saying what they look like, what kind of costume they wore, or what their profession or role in the movie was. Describe this character to your friends like they've never seen Star Wars.
    • He does Han Solo, then Qui-Gon Jinn, then C-3PO, then Queen Amidala.
    • (NW: Amazingly, the people he asks are Rich, Jay, Jack, and the redhead who showed up on one episode of Half in the Bag.)

Part 2

• 0:00 - #2 - The story.
  • 0:02 - The second biggest problem with TPM is the story and the way it was told.
  • 0:07 - It's almost mind-boggling how complex it is.
  • 0:10 - From the very start I could tell something was really wrong, just from how it started.
    • It starts with a boring sequence where a pilot asks for permission to land on a space station.  Two cloaked figures walk into a room, shot from a camera at a completely flat angle, they sit down in a conference room, drink tea, and wait to talk about a trade dispute. He found himself utterly bored by the time the action started.
    • Compare that to the opening of the original Star Wars. Shakespeare once said, "brevity is the soul of wit"; this means, "Don't waste my time". In ANH's opening we get all the info we need to know via visual storytelling: the small ship is the rebels, the big ship is the Empire. We get a sense of how powerful the Empire is. The low angle implies dominance. The length of the Star Destroyer implies the long reach of the Empire (NW: this seems like a stretch to me). That opening shot is so genius that he has a feeling Lucas had nothing to do with it.
    • The opening is a small example of the overall styles of both films. The original trilogy was an homage to the classic adventure serials of the 1930s: good vs. evil, the hero on a journey, the adventurous rogue, the damsel in distress, the wise old sage, and an epic quest of discovery. The new movies are about shoving as much crap into each shot as possible.
  • 2:25 - This idea of packing the frame with as many things as possible is part of what he hates about the Special Editions, because you'll be into what's happening in the story, and they keep shoving more shit on the screen to distract you.
  • 2:41 - Doesn't Lucas realize that cluttering the frame up with shit is not what makes Star Wars good?
  • 3:02 - There is no clear villain in TPM. This is a bad idea, because this movie is intended to be understood by children. Have a bad guy whose motivation is clear.
  • 3:35 - The prequels should be very similar in style to the originals, "because I don't like things that are different".
• 3:41 - #3 - Death and Space Taxes
  • 3:44 - When you find yourself thinking "Huh?" when you find characters acting illogically in a movie, that's not a good sign.
  • 4:04 - At the end of the movie Yoda makes Obi-Wan a Jedi Knight, even though in the opening crawl it talks about "two Jedi Knights".
  • 4:22 - The Jedis are on the space station in the opening to "settle a dispute over the taxation of trade routes". But why would Jedi be used for this?
  • 4:41 - The Trade Federation have formed a blockade around Naboo to stop them from getting space supplies, which instantly causes some kind of crisis that we never see.
  • 4:54 - Why would an organization called the "Trade Federation" want to blockade trade?
  • 5:23 - If the Trade Federation were merchants, then why do they seem to have armies of robots?
  • 5:49 - The point is, I'm still not sure what the blockade was there to do. And don't tell me it was explained more in the novelization; what matters is the movies.
  • 7:43 - He understands that Senator Palpatine was using the trade dispute to advance himself, but the conflict from the blockade and the subsequent invasion is the entire movie: understanding the role of the Trade Federation in all this is important: what the blockade was about, who was getting taxed, what kind of supplies were so crucial to Naboo? I would have accepted the idea of a mystery villain if the basics were at least clear.
  • 8:25 - When Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan show up on the trade ship, the assistant robot tells the head people on the ship that she thinks they're Jedi without any rationale given to the audience, even though lots of characters in Star Wars wear robes.
  • 8:52 - The head people then tell Palpatine that the two visitors are Jedi, without having actually confirmed this.

Part 3

• #3 cont'd (Death and Space Taxes)
  • 0:00 - This is what he thinks is supposed to have happened: Palpatine wanted to create a crisis on Naboo so that Queen Amidala would propose a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum. This would lead to Palpatine getting elected in his place. So how does killing the Jedi and creating a communications black-out on the planet allow word to get back to the Senate that there's a crisis?
  • 0:29 - At the end of the movie Amidala goes back to Naboo to solve the crisis herself, because the Senate didn't believe her or the two Jedi they had sent to resolve the dispute that the invasion was real. That doesn't make sense.
  • 0:58 - What would have made sense in the opening, from Palpatine's perspective, is if Palpatine told the head guys on the ship to tell the Jedi that there would be no negotiations, that they intend to invade the planet next, and that the Jedi should go back to Coruscant to inform the Senate.  That would have actually advanced Palpatine's plan.
  • 1:17 - Palpatine says he wanted Amidala to sign some treaty to make the invasion legal, but if she'd been a coward and actually signed the treaty, the crisis would have been averted and there would've been no need for a vote of no confidence, and Palpatine would not become the head of the Senate.
  • 1:40 - To kill the Jedi they blow up the Jedi's ship and start pumping in an easily-visible white gas into the room, making the Jedi alert to the danger. Also, moments earlier the Jedi willingly drank tea that was given to them while discussing that everything felt fishy to them.
  • 2:40 - How does Qui-Gon know what kind of gas it is before he smells it? (NW: How do you know he hadn't smelled it? Ah, he later grants that possibility.)
  • 3:14 - The Jedi don't immediately try to cut their way out of the room and instead just hold their breath, as if they know the battle droids are going to quickly open the door to the room.
  • 3:30 - Then the dumbest line in the movie is said: "They must be dead by now. Destroy what's left of them."  Why not just leave the doors closed for like four hours?
  • 4:17 - They could have just told the Jedi to leave, that they didn't want to negotiate, and then blown up the ship with the laser cannons that the movie establishes that the blockade ships have.
  • 4:24 - Also, killing two Jedi ambassadors would've been a pretty heinous crime in the eyes of the Galactic Senate. Yes, you could say they never arrived, but now you've got the wreckage of their ship in your docking bay.
• 4:52 - #4 - Who's Doing What? Where? Why?
  • Why are the Neimoidians taking orders from the mystery hologram? What did he promise them?
    • Darth Sidious can't really promise them political favors once he's elected because it would give away who he is. (NW: Is it clear that they don't know who he is?  I assumed they did know.)
• 6:01 - #5 - I Can't Put Enough Quotation Marks Around The Word "Story" So I Won't Try
  • 6:06 - An assistant to the Neimoidians tells them the Jedi had gone up the ventilation shaft, but it isn't clear how the assistant knows that.
  • 6:28 - Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan end up in the hanger bay; why don't they just start fighting all the battle droids, steal a ship, and head back to Coruscant?  Later in the movie they get through the blockade with a single ship, so it's a viable option.  Instead Qui-Gon says they're going to go down with the invasion force to warn the Naboo, but wouldn't that mean that they would get to the Naboo no sooner than the invasion force does?  And what will the Naboo do even if they're warned?  They don't have a real army.
  • 7:30 - For no specified reason Qui-Gon decides that they will stow away on separate ships.
    • Problems with this decision:
      • You double the chances of getting caught.
      • You have no one to help you if you get caught and get into a fight.
      • You increase the probability of getting separated by hundreds, if not thousands, of miles by not knowing where the other craft is going to land on the planet.
  • 8:18 - They then decide to follow a cartoon rabbit underwater (NW: without justification?  I'll need to rewatch the film.). What was Qui-Gon's plan from the beginning?  Did he plan to find an underwater ship that would allow him to go through the planet's core? Or did he plan to move along the surface?
  • 8:46 - This is the first point they should have ditched Jar-Jar. This is also the point when the movie starts to officially fall apart. This is the moment when the Star Wars saga is now damaged totally beyond repair. The lapses in common sense begin to compound on the movie and now it is broken.

Part 4

• 0:00 - #6 - Invasion! Of Boring...
  • 0:04 - A character says "A communications disruption can mean only one thing: invasion." Mike implies that that's an unrealistically-pessimistic interpretation: "It can also mean that you didn't pay your phone bill."
  • 0:14 - (Minor) The Naboo are a peaceful people with no army, but the old adviser seems to be an expert on the process of planetary invasion.
  • 0:25 - What is the purpose of this invasion? It's almost like after Lucas wrote the invasion scenes he didn't know what to do next, so he thought he'd have Amidala have to sign a treaty to make the invasion legal.
    • Forcing someone to sign a treaty contradicts the idea of a signature on a treaty.  Why not just forge the signature? (NW: This seems like a weaker point. Forcing people to sign treaties is actually something that has happened a lot through history.)
  • 0:45 - Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are in the underwater city.
  • 0:50 - Qui-Gon is talking about warning the Naboo that they're about to be attacked, when he doesn't actually know if that is what is going to happen.
  • 1:01 - Obi-Wan also jumps to conclusions, saying that the droid army will also take control of the Gungans.
  • 1:11 - The only thing that the Jedis know at this point is that they were sent to settle a dispute.
  • 1:37 - Obi-Wan says the Gungans and Naboo form a "symbiant circle, what happens to one of you will affect the other".  But that doesn't seem clear at all; the Gungans are a totally-isolated city under the water on the other side of the planet from the Naboo.
  • 2:23 - The fact that Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are on the other side of the planet raises the question: Why did the droid army land on the other side of the planet if they weren't expecting any opposition? Why not land right outside, or even inside, the Naboo capital?
  • 2:41 - Like idiots, Qui-Gon surfaces their ship right inside an occupied city in broad daylight, and Qui-Gon looks around without any attempt at concealing himself.
  • 2:52 - In the city, Amadala has been captured, but instead of forcing her to sign the treaty immediately, or keeping her locked up in the big capital building under heavy guard, they send her to be "processed" in "Camp 4", with only 8 battle droids to protect them, when they just discussed that there were two Jedi missing, and when they know that the battle droids are incapable of stopping those Jedi.
  • 3:50 - (Sarcastically) It really adds a lot of tension in a movie when the main enemy forces are totally ineffective.
    • He shows a clip of the black bodyguard saying "There're too many of them", and Qui-Gon responding "It won't be a problem".
    • He also shows a clip of Lucas saying about the battle droids, "Yeah, Jedi cut 'em down like they're butter, and they really are pretty useless."
• 4:08 - #7 - Escape!! From the Planet of Boring
  • 4:12 - So they free the Naboo air force and then they get in a silver spaceship to get through the blockade. The point of a blockade is to stop ships from getting through, so (as far as we know, not having information to the contrary) Qui-Gon could have very easily gotten everyone killed.
  • 4:46 - How does the ship's shield generator get hit if the shields are up?
  • 4:57 - The black guard says, "If we can't get the shield generator fixed we'll be sitting ducks". (NW: Mike doesn't say the obvious, which is that 'sitting duck' generally refers to speed, whereas 'shield generators' clearly don't affect speed. But that's a bit nitpicky, as it's clear what the line was meant to imply: without the shield generator they'd be extremely vulnerable to enemy fire.) This implies that with a shield generator they will be able to get through the blockade, which implies that any ship with a shield generator could get through the blockade. (NW: This seems like a stretch on Mike's part.)  It seems more plausible that a blockade would be able to destroy any ship, with or without shields, if the blockade focused their fire on that ship.
  • 5:53 - After R2 fixes the shield they don't get hit again, so fixing the shield did nothing at all.
  • 6:11 - After they show no emotion at all about droids being picked off one by one, they inexplicably send R2 up to the Queen to get a pat on the head. She thanks the piece of equipment like it's a person. Nobody thanked the ship, which did a lot more to help them escape.
    • 6:34 - In the original trilogy, normal people didn't think of droids as people. Even Luke responds with sarcasm when being introduced to R2-D2. Would a Queen really thank a droid?
  • 6:53 - (Regarding his 'Amidala thanks R2' point:) Whatever, this is a film for babies. (He then cuts to a scene between Palpatine and Amidala, where the language is extremely dry and formal.)
  • 7:06 - We learn later that the person dressed as the Queen is actually a decoy, and that Amidala is dressed as one of the servants. So when the "Queen" orders a "servant" to clean the droid, she's really a servant ordering the Queen to clean the droid.  Did Amidala coordinate with her servant ahead of time to do this?  Wouldn't Amidala want to stay in her 'throne room' to stay up-to-date on things?
• 8:08 - #8 - I'm Gonna Slit My Wrists
  • 8:14 - At this point, I still don't know who the main character is and why I should care about any of this.
    • Around this point in the original Star Wars movie, we've been with Luke almost the whole time, getting to know him. We see his plight, we learn his hopes and dreams, we feel his frustration, and then his sadness.  The slow build-up added depth and emotion and anticipation for the story to expand.
    • In TPM I don't care about any of the characters by this point, and we have to constantly question every decision made by Qui-Gon.
  • 9:02 - Almost every single line of dialogue makes no sense.
    • 9:04 - Qui-Gon says "We don't want to attract attention", but then takes Jar-Jar Binks into the city with him, and Jar-Jar proceeds to attract attention.
    • 9:17 - Qui-Gon says he took R2 into the city because it has the specs of the type of part he needs, but Watto seems to know what Qui-Gon is talking about, and Qui-Gon has a hand-held hologram that seems to show "it" (NW: Mike says "it", implying the part, but the hologram just shows the ship as a whole.)  R2 is never used for that purpose and does nothing at all.
  • 9:34 - The two most effective, clear-minded, logical guys stay on the ship and wait while the clumsy idiot, the slow-moving droid, a vulnerable, attractive young woman, and a "drunk" (Qui-Gon) go wandering around the dangerous city.

Part 5

• 0:00 - #9 - If I Get a Brain Aneurysm as the Result of This Review Can I Hold the Filmmakers Responsible?
  • 0:14 - The character of Qui-Gon is totally baffling to him and he doesn't know why Qui-Gon is in the movie. Obi-Wan should have been on his own. Obi-Wan should have been eager and adventurous, the guy who found Anakin, formed a bond with him, and really wanted to train him when Yoda told him "No". Instead Obi-Wan acts annoyed with Anakin the entire movie and only wants to train him at the end because Qui-Gon said to. If they had to have Qui-Gon, they should've just had him on the ship, saying very little, and just being very wise. Then when Qui-Gon dies Obi-Wan is left to go on without an older, wiser voice of reason, thus setting the stage for a poorly-trained Anakin.
  • 1:12 - For no reason, Obi-Wan is the one who does not want to defy the council. He's not a risk-taker, and he complains all the time.
  • 1:24 - The "older", "wiser" Jedi is the opposite of what he should be.
    • #1 - He has very questionable moral values. He repeatedly uses his Jedi mind tricks to his advantage. He uses it to get the underwater ship (which they end up trashing), to scam Watto out of his ship parts, or to fix a legitimate bet to his advantage.
    • #2 - He's incredibly stupid.
      • He could have used his Jedi mind-trick to trade his worthless currency at some other dealer for the currency Watto would take.
      • He could have traded their silver ship for a less-fancy but functional ship, or he could have hired a transport.
      • Instead of using the most common-sense approach, Qui-Gon concocts a convoluted bet with Watto so that we could get to the pod race.
        • While explaining this scheme, Qui-Gon lies to Watto about having a pod available for Anakin to use.
• 5:30 - #10 - Anakin Skywalker
  • 5:35 - Jake Lloyd couldn't act. It's a kiss of death for your movie.
  • 5:50 - The movie says that Anakin and his mother have bombs in their brains that will go off if they try to escape.  It's possibly the worst plot device ever shoved into a movie for convenience.
  • 6:00 - What did Anakin's mother do for Watto? It's never established.
  • 6:12 - He shows a bad prop: one of those plastic hand-lacrosse things turned upside-down is painted grey and hung from the ceiling in a scene with Anakin, C-3PO and Amidala.
  • 6:17 - The idea that Anakin built C-3PO is wrong for so many reasons.
    • Anakin says he built C-3PO to help his mom, but in the original Star Wars it's very clearly established that C-3PO is just an interpreter, basically like a diplomat, and is useless for anything else. His arms don't even bend.
    • If Anakin really has a knack for building things, why would he build the exact kind of droid that is mass produced somewhere? Wouldn't you build some kind of unique robot from your own imagination?
    • Watto already owned a protocol droid; it was lying around broken in one scene. Why not fix that one? (NW: This seems like a nitpicky point since the protocol droid was in the background.)
  • 7:41 - So Qui-Gon manages to pull off his convoluted bet and somehow manages to win everything he needs except Anakin's mother. Even at the end of the movie when everything is resolved and they have the cash to get Anakin's mother, they don't.
• 7:55 - #10 - On To Planet Number 3. Is It Time For Death Yet?
  • 8:04 - Coruscant has a lot of boring scenes.
  • 8:15 - Amidala is on Coruscant to save the Naboo, but you don't actually see any Naboo citizens at all other than ~20 pilots and a few officials.
  • 8:33 - The Jedi Council tells Qui-Gon that he can't train Anakin, but he does it anyway.
  • 8:39 - Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon talk about how Anakin is dangerous when he's standing right there near them.
  • 8:50 - Then Lucas ruins Star Wars forever by having Qui-Gon explain that the Force is microscopic organisms.
    • This entire idea and why this is in the movie is so baffling to him that he cannot wrap his mind around it. It's never explored or mentioned in the following two films.
  • 9:28 - Finally we get to the ending, where again nothing makes sense.

Part 6

• 0:00 - #11 - Please God Make It Stop Make It End
  • 0:10 - Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan go back to Naboo from Coruscant "for no reason" and bring Anakin to a war zone for no reason.
    • (NW: But then a few second later he shows a clip of Mace Windu telling Qui-Gon to go back to Naboo.)
  • 0:13 - No other Jedi go to Naboo with them, even though they know there might be a Sith there.
    • 0:19 - He shows a clip of Mace Windu saying the Jedi Council is going to investigate the identity of the Sith attacker, but then in a later clip Mace Windu tells Qui-Gon to investigate it himself.
  • 0:58 - Qui-Gon & Co. wait until they get to Naboo to have a discussion about the fact that they have no plans / no idea what they're going to do.
  • 1:11 - When they return to Naboo the entire blockade is conveniently gone, with no explanation given.
  • 1:17 - Qui-Gon tells Obi-Wan that they can't use their Jedi mind-tricks to convince the Gungans to help the Naboo, even though he had no problem doing this before.
  • 1:25 - They create a plan: the Gungans will distract the robot army while Amidala goes into the capital city to capture the Viceroy and the fighter pilots attack the droid control ship.  Amidala has a line that says "Without the Viceroy they will be lost and confused.", but that raises the question, "How do you know that for sure? The robots might not even know that he was captured, right? Maybe they're programmed to just keep doing what they're doing until they receive more orders? Why not focus on destroying the droid control ship? Then, if the name of that ship holds true, you could just walk up to the Viceroy and capture him."
  • 2:14 - Why is everyone following the plan of a young girl with no military experience?
  • 2:27 - He shows a clip of Qui-Gon saying "Gungans" followed by a clip of Lucas saying "Goongas". (NW: I'm not sure what the point is.  I guess it's to underline that Lucas didn't have a clear vision? But that seems like the kind of detail that would be open to changing during production.)
  • 2:42 - The Viceroy orders the droid army to meet the Gungan army outside the city; why leave a fortified position? Can't you see an obvious ploy to draw away your protection? (NW: I'm willing to grant that meeting the Gungan army outside the city could be a good idea.)
  • 2:56 - Palpatine responds to news of the Gungan army with "This will work to our advantage", but it isn't clear how, since the Galactic Senate doesn't know what's going on.
  • 3:06 - Qui-Gon tells Anakin to hide inside the city, further drawing attention to the fact that there was no reason to bring him along at all.
  • 3:20 - He shows a clip of the Viceroy watching fighting in the streets of the city and not grasping that the Gungan army outside the city could be a diversion.
  • 3:24 - Anakin hides in the cockpit of a fighter ship, which is a terrible place to hide and is obviously just setting him up to fly the ship.
  • 3:30 - The plan to capture the Viceroy depends on him being in the throne room, which they don't know for sure.  If the Viceroy was smart he would be in a place you wouldn't expect to find him.
  • 3:48 - Anakin "accidentally" flies the spaceship.
  • 3:57 - Why is there a child-sized helmet and goggles in the cockpit?
  • 4:01 - A commander on the droid control ship says "Nothing can get through our shields", but then Anakin is shown flying his spaceship through one of their docking bays.
  • 4:07 - Darth Maul then shows up out of nowhere.
  • 4:20 - The fighting Jedi / Maul end up in a huge room that looks like something out of the Death Star, but seems totally inappropriate for where they actually are. It also makes it seem odd that such an advanced civilization would have been in an immediate crisis without space supplies.
  • 4:43 - If the Sith have been extinct for a millenium, and only Jedi carry lightsabers, then why are the Jedi so experienced at sword-fighting?
  • 4:57 - At the start of the film we see that the Jedi are capable of running at a super-fast speed, but we never see the Jedi run fast again, and Ewan McGregor is later shown in a situation where running fast would have been extremely helpful (to get through some shield doors).
  • 5:18 - Palpatine orders the Viceroy to "wipe them out–all of them" (referring to the Gungans), but then the droid army is shown taking prisoners.
  • 5:29 - Amidala is shown at some point saying "I will not condone a course of action that will lead us to war", but then that's exactly what happens, and then it's shown that she actually keeps guns in the armrest of her throne.
• 5:56 - #12 - Obi-Wan Gets Mad And Then I Do
  • 6:00 - We're shown a fight between Maul and the Jedi, where we know very little about all of them, so we have no emotional investment in it.
  • 6:05 - "Their flawless choreography lacks all humanity and emotion."
  • 6:10 - Then Qui-Gon gets killed, and Obi-Wan is shown getting angry, and this is an opportunity for the audience to get emotionally involved.  But then it returns to highly-choreographed fighting.
  • 6:30 - In Return of the Jedi, when Luke snaps in his fight against Vader, he got really worked up and emotional, he just started wailing on Vader. There was no grace or complex choreography, Luke was just pounding Vader into submission, filled with rage. When you're worked up with emotion you begin to lose your composure and control. "You expose your humanity a little. Obi-Wan should have done that just a bit."
  • 7:01 - In Empire there's also very little complex choreography in the fight between Luke and Vader. There's a lot going on with the characters outside of the fact that they're swinging swords at each other.
  • 7:21 - There was even a lot more going on in the fight in RotJ: Luke was realizing he was kind of becoming his father and taking his place, and the Emperor was proving a point that hate and anger can be a powerful ally.
  • 7:33 - The fights in the original trilogy serve to allow for things like temptation, anger, revelation, defiance, sacrifice, and redemption. The fight at the end of TPM has none of that.
  • 7:50 - Lightsaber duels have less to do with the fight itself and more to do with the "internalization" of the characters.
  • 8:15 - Lightsaber duels are about moments like:
    • When Ben sacrifices himself at the end of ANH.
    • When Vader reveals himself as Luke's father.
    • When the Emperor tells Luke, "Fulfill your destiny."
  • 8:45 - You might be thinking that the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan, and you're be right that it had a little more going on than the other prequel duels.
  • 9:00 - The duel between Obi-Wan and Anakin didn't need to be 45 minutes long. The ultimate point is that Obi-Wan defeats Anakin.
  • 9:06 - Having Obi-Wan and Anakin fight in the most ridiculous of places was over-indulgent. The fight could have lasted 3 minutes in one location and still have had the same impact on the story.
  • 9:19 - The fight between Obi-Wan and Anakin goes on so long that it actually becomes boring, despite the amazing visual effects.
  • 9:34 - "You see, we need a deeper meaning to things; without it, none of it really matters, does it?"
  • 9:39 - He shows a clip of young George Lucas: "Special effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. People have a tendency to confuse them as an end in themselves. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing."

Part 7

• 0:00 - #13 - The Ending Multiplication Effect
  • 0:04 - Since the first Star Wars movie the endings have been getting more and more complicated.
    • In ANH it's just the trench run, with cutaways to Leia in the command center.
    • In ESB it's 1) Luke vs. Vader, and 2) Leia etc. trying to escape.
    • In RotJ you have 1) Luke vs. Emperor, 2) Battle on Endor, and 3) attack on the Death Star.
    • In TPM you have 1) the Gungan vs. Droid battle, 2) the Queen capturing the Viceroy, 3) Anakin in his fighter ship, and 4) the Jedi vs. Maul fight.
  • 1:01 - Too many ending threads was one of the major mistakes in TPM.
  • 1:05 - The first two movies with the fewest endings are the most interesting because the plot has built up to them and we can focus on them.
  • 1:15 - In the "Making Of" documentary on TPM, after the rough cut of the film for the first time, everyone looks distraught at how complicated the ending is. Lucas admits to throwing too much out there.
  • 1:28 - The editor then attempts to explain pacing and why four scenes with totally different emotional tones don't work well together.
  • 1:51 - Rick McCollum is frozen in utter shock at how horrible the movie was. "Internally he regrets not challenging Lucas on some of the things he was worried about."
  • 2:00 - Lucas then realizes that he can't remove major segments of the movie in editing because they're intertwined: "I mean, I've thought about this quite a bit, and the tricky part is, you almost can't take any of those pieces out of there now, 'cuz each one kinda takes you to the next place, and you can't jump..."
  • 3:00 - In the ending, Yoda tells Obi-Wan he fears "grave danger" in training Anakin, and Obi-Wan responds that "I gave Qui-Gon my word".  Common sense would seem to dictate that Yoda's very-serious warning would supersede a less-important promise to Qui-Gon.
  • 3:13 - The Jedi Council allows Obi-Wan to train Anakin for no real reason.  This is a body of decision makers who are all about the Force, feelings, premonition, and prophecy, and they all have a bad feeling about training Anakin, and yet they allow it anyway for no reason.
  • 3:57 - Yoda says "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering." But it isn't clear that those things necessarily lead to each other in that order.
• 4:38 - #14 - The Aftermath
  • 4:56 - So who's to blame for TPM? A: Everyone involved, but mainly the producers / those higher-up in the decision-making process.
  • 5:12 - The people who didn't challenge Lucas carry some blame. He quotes Garry Kurtz: "I think one of the problems...is the fact that he (Lucas) doesn't have more people around him who really challenge him."
  • 5:24 - You can really see the fear in the people around Lucas in the behind-the-scenes videos. They laugh at his bad jokes. When he comes into the room there's silence, fear, terror. Every so often you'll catch some looks of confusion and mistrust.
  • 6:00 - Lucas has always hated the studio system and wanted total control.
  • 6:09 - While a director should have control, filmmaking should also be a collaborative process.
  • 6:36 - "I think all this can be summed up with the expression, 'Art from Adversity'." The original movie was plagued with problems, but it came out great. When you can make everything in a computer and shoot against a blue screen, some of the magic is lost.
  • 7:01 - When Obi-Wan was walking around in Kamino, George showed Ewan McGregor concept paintings, but there was nothing for Ewan to actually look at while doing the scene.
  • 7:12 - It ends up all looking so clean and sterile, and it lacks humanity, it lacks grit.
  • 7:19 - TPM also makes you wonder: what if Lucas had the kind of money and control when filming the original Star Wars that he had when filming TPM?  Some of the wacky ideas you hear about that were supposed to be in the original movie make it seem like the film might not have been as good.

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

• Indiana Jones' appeal was that the men in the audience want to be him.  So that's gone when Indiana is old and his love interest is old.
• 1:50 - #1 - Uncovering a mystery (of why it was so bad)
  • The major jobs (director, DP, screenwriter) seemed to be competent people who could have avoided a disaster. So the mystery is: how did the movie end up so bad?
  • 4:00 - It's not easy to point out obviously-bad things that made the movie bad (except for Mutt swinging from vines); the movie is more of "a blur of bad".
  • 5:00 - The IJ movies aren't works of art and aren't meant to be. They're less about the characters and more about the spectacle and the adventure.
• 5:45 - #2 - What's this next film that no one wants to make going to be about anyways?
  • These are the questions that probably came up:
    • When do we set it?
      • Given Harrison Ford's age, it'll have to be in the late 1950s.
    • Who are the bad guys?
      • Since the Nazis are gone, the Russians seem like the obvious choice.
    • We need another character gimmick right?
      • People liked having Sean Connery to play against Ford's character.
      • How about we have a greaser?
    • What's the story about?
      • This was the first misstep. IJ and aliens is weird.
      • The film uses various ideas from Lucas' mid-90s idea "IJ and the Men from Mars", so the story feels like a hodge-podge.
• 8:28 - #3 - The IJ structure
  • The original trilogy, and many other sequels, have a pattern of following the same plot structure.
  • Given the amount of time that had passed, some risk in the plot structure may have been a good idea.
  • Taking risks is why he likes the Temple of Doom so much.
  • The issue is that the aliens idea is supposed to be an homage to the 1950s B-movies, but the actual movie is still an homage to the adventure serials from the 1930s.
  • (NW: I don't really see him giving a clear reason for why the structure needs to be different.)
  • Summary of the typical structure of an IJ movie:
    • IJ character intro - Indy always gets a cool intro.
    • Stock characters: There needs to be a main villain, a secondary villain, and the muscle.
    • The muscle character is there to have a fight sequence with Indy.
    • There needs to be a female lead.  It's preferable if the character is unique / memorable, i.e. has a different personality from the women in the previous films.
    • General plot shit:
      • The film opens with a sequence that has nothing to do with the main plot. It just establishes Indy and sets the tone.
      • Everything else follows the typical structure of an average screenplay. (He shows an interesting graph.) After the opening sequence Indy gets the info about what he's going to go after. He travels somewhere, gathers more clues and info, with maybe an action sequence.  Eventually Indy is put in a situation where everything seems lost.  Indy fights back and is pushed to his physical limit.  He overcomes the bad guys and there's some kind of resolution to the plot.
• 15:00 - #4 - Cracks in the Crystal Skull
  • IJ4 follows the typical IJ plot structure, so what went wrong? A: The details and all the ideas, which were mostly coming from Lucas.
  • In IJ3 Lucas wanted to put it in a haunted castle, but Spielberg pushed back.  It seems like this time Spielberg may not have pushed back.
  • IJ4 feels like a movie directed by 5 different people with the ideas of 27 different people.
  • IJ4 opens with a sequence that's directly tied to the main plot. (NW: But then he says it isn't, because it's a different kind of alien. So it seems more analogous to the opening of Raiders, where it shows him hunting an artifact of the same class.)
  • The fact that there are two different kinds of aliens, those in the opening and those seen in the rest of the movie, adds to the confusion.
  • When we see Indy for the first time, he looks like a confused old man.
  • We're introduced to the main villain, the subvillain, and the muscle all in the opening scene, and that Mack is of questionable allegiance, so there's little left to discover. It would have been better to doll out the information more slowly throughout the movie.
  • 19:38 - He shows an example of the film using an awkward take of Ford delivering a line, where there's clearly better takes available because they show up in marketing materials for the film.
  • In the past films the main artifact had an air of danger and mysticism around it, and the skull isn't built up in the same way.  The skull is kind of stupid-looking and they kept throwing it around in the bag, further degrading its ability to inspire awe.
  • 21:40 - Indy actually is actually helping the Russians when Mutt saves him.
  • 21:50 - Constantly exchanging the skull was of little consequence, because he knew they both intended to do the same thing with it anyway: take it to the ruin.  It could've helped if they showed the skull being used as a weapon, e.g. showing the FBI agents allied with the Russians after having been mind-controlled with the skull, or showing a film reel of what the Russians would do with the skull, like in the Rocketeer. Fighting to stop an unclear goal was boring.
  • 22:33 - Why was there treasure at the end?
  • 22:40 - Why does Indy keep bringing Mack along even though Indy knows Mack has been leading the Russians to him throughout the film.
• 23:10 - #5 - A never-ending series of bad ideas
  • TODO: Finish this.
• TODO: Finish this.
• 1:05:30 - Summary:
  • Indiana Jones can't be old.
  • Indiana Jones needs to murder more people.
  • The action needs to be realistic and practical (i.e. gritty).
• NW: It would be interesting to have a definitive list of what elements separate Indiana Jones and an Indiana Jones movie, from, say, James Bond and a James Bond movie.

Horror

• Mulholland Drive - Diner Scene