How the hell did they pad out Maccy's biopic to get to 3.5 hours? 3.25 hours of boozy escapades and shameful hangovers?
Unless it was a typo and hours=inches?
This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 28 November 2019 - 08:18 AM
"Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious." - Indomitable Courteous (Icy) Fist, The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes
"Well well well ... if it ain't The Invisible C**t." - Billy Butcher, The Boys
"I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it." - Colonel Orhan, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City - KJ Parker
Watched that most recent Robin Hood movie. The one with Jamie Foxx. Yikes, it's pretty crappy. I'm not sure what was going on when they were writing the movie, but it seems like it is trying to be one part Assassin's Creed (video game, not movie), and one part Ocean's Eleven (intense heist setup and execution). I wonder how many start overs and rewrites were done to the script, and how many different people worked on it? I guess they were going for action full tilt to make people's eyeballs quiver? dunno. But it sure falls short of whatever they were trying to convey. And only a brief mention of Sherwood Forest at the end. I guess the story told is the brief interactions Robin had after coming back from the Cruades and before the full team of his 'merry men' were assembled and took root in Sherwood Forest? dunno. It seems that way though, because the ending sets up for there being a sequel (bad idea) with the new Sheriff of Nottingham reveal. It had moments though that were pleasant enough, so I probably didn't hate it as much as the press reported the movie getting and how it was received on its release. But yeah, overall, a lot of turd, tbh.
Finally got around to watching the Emmy-nominated EMPIRE OF DREAMS Star Wars OT Documentary (which is on D=), and it was absolutely wonderful! Reminded me of why I fell in love with this series as a kid. George Lucas really is the architect of my childhood.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
“Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone.” ~Ursula Vernon
Watched KNIVES OUT, really good. Nice spin on a whodunnit, and not as quirky/zany as the trailers make out.
It did make me think though, just what particular hell did the Star Wars people put Rian Johnson through? Because it turns out he can direct and put a semi-complex story together!
This post has been edited by Khellendros: 04 December 2019 - 10:05 AM
"I think I've made a terrible error of judgement."
Khellendros, on 04 December 2019 - 10:04 AM, said:
Watched KNIVES OUT, really good. Nice spin on a whodunnit, and not as quirky/zany as the trailers make out.
It did make me think though, just what particular hell did the Star Wars people put Rian Johnson through? Because it turns out he can direct and put a semi-complex story together!
I would argue that his DIRECTION is pretty solid and always has been. His BB directed episodes are proof enough of that (not written by him).
This is what I heard about Knives Out and it lines up pretty well with all the other stuff he's written and directed. For me anyways.
"Johnson has always been a filmmaker whose love of genre somewhat exceeds his results, and so in the same way that The Brothers Bloom is about the "idea" of a screwball comedy more than it is a great example of one, Knives Out celebrates the twisty, all-star murder mystery without ever outshining the films that clearly inspired it"
That said, if you follow the notes about what happened behind the scenes in TLJ production, you will see why he's so defensive even to this day without saying outright what happened.
This goes into the weeds, so I'll spoilerize it so people don't have to read if they don't want to.
Spoiler
Originally the Crait sequence was in the opening of the film, this is most obvious by the fact that the scene in the opening of the final film is Re-used TFA footage from D'Qar with escaping transports CGI'ed in overtop of them (it stands out a mile once you know that is the case) as they never shot at the Royal Airforce Common at Berkshire than stands in for D'Qar in TFA. Crait was originally at the opening and was an homage to Hoth from TESB (right down the walkers, white surface, and rebel speeders). This would have meant a time jump for the Resistance from D'Qar escape, to Crait landing and defence. The battle of Crait was supposed to be very one-sided to the First Order, and the Resistance has to escape THERE instead of D'Qar, and THEN the slow chase through space continues on from there. This was deemed WAY too much like TESB, and Lucasfilm made him re-write it in Jan 2017.
The Canto Bight sequence was WAY longer in the original script, with a crime lord who befriends and dressed up Finn and Rose and the love story he had intended for them was going to develop there....they were going to steal the plans for helping the Resistance form HIM, and it was HIS co-opted Canon Bight Police who chase them through the city, before they reach their ship and escape. No space horses, not poor kid stable hands. That sequence, though, was BEYOND expensive though (200million....more than half the damned budget), and Lucasfilm put the kibosh on all the sets and time to shoot it. This is why Canto Bight in the final film is a mere 15minute diversion, where the space horses show up, the weird little theme of having Rose mansplain poverty and slavery to a former child slave, why they get caught on a parking infraction, and why DJ exists at all. That was all a fix that was thrown in to basically make the Canto Bight sequence not a compete waste of time and money for Lucasfilm (sunk cost fallacy and all that). It's also why the moment of Rose expresses her love for Finn at the end falls so flat and dull and out of nowhere...because all the buildup to it that was meant to happen on Canto Bight is entirely gone.
It also means that Holdo was completely changed in the edit and ADR and reshoots from what she was (you can actually notice this in a few scenes where her words don't match her lips). She WAS meant to be a sort of romantic foil for Poe, flirting with him throughout and they had the same type of relationship that Leia and Poe have (friendly, but mildly antagonistic) but with a romantic edge to it. The ONLY remnant of this version of Holdo is when Poe is incapacitated and Leia and Holdo are both Cougar-ing over him and saying how they find him yum. Everything else is gone, and Holdo becomes the weird insular commander. The Holdo maneuver was another last minute moment add, as the original film did not need it becuase Crait was at the beginning. When the fleet catches up with them, the last we see of everyone in the fleet is a space battle.
Which brings me to the ending. The film was SUPPOSED to end after the throne room scene. Kylo kills Snoke, Rey and Kyle fight the Red Guards, Kylo gaslights her about her parents, and then offers his hand to her to join him. CREDITS.
That was how it was supposed to end. No Luke and Kylo Hologram fight, No Rey on the Falcon whooping it up on Crait after all the drama she'd just witnessed, no boulder lift scene, none of that. No broom boy ending scene. It was meant to end with the fleet in space facing off...and Kylo offering Rey a hand to join her after he'd killed his master. This is why Rey seems to go from standing over Kylo's incapacitated form on Snoke's command ship to being on the Falcon with Chewie out of absolutely nowhere, acting like the previous 45 minutes didn't happen and grinning while shooting tie-fighters down. And most of all, the film originally didn't feature Luke's death.
The most telling aspect of the above is during the throne room fight. Rey is attacked by one specific red guard who has a two ended blade that he splits into two separate ones, this is focused on and he advances on her after this and they fight, she gets the upper hand of his right blade, but the left goes behind her back and DISAPPEARS...that was SUPPOSED to be the moment that Rey was injured and Daisy even reacts like she's been injured in the sequence even though she's not. So in the final film Mr. Two Blades On Purpose has one of them disappear now and she doesn't get wounded. The wounding is what was supposed to end the fight, as Kylo takes out Mr. Two Blades after that and then offers wounded Rey his hand...
But all the rewrites that were caused by it resembling TESB too much for Lucasfilm's tastes (after facing public ire about TFA being ANH-Redux), and the ones that were caused by Canto Bight being a monetary fiasco (the word is that RJ had never worked on such a massive franchise and he had 180 different sets in his original script...which is fucking MENTAL...and the accountants were like "Um...dude...no? How about no." and he had to cut that in half. That caused all the later film changes as well.
TL;DR: TLJ as it is in the final film is not remotely the one Johnson wrote and planned to shoot. As a result it became a weird mishmash of fixes and other ideas that led to what we got instead. I maintain that IF RJ had been able to shoot his film as he'd planned (TESB copy or not)...it would have been scads better. It would not have been "great" to me, but it would have been a much more cohesive film. Because then the chatter leading into IX would be "Will Rey join Kylo? Is the fleet doomed?" ect.
Anyways, as much as I personally don't like the guy (I find him intensely smug and feel like HE feeds the trolls himself to keep his movie in the media zeitgeist), I feel like he has it in him to make decent films...and it sounds like Knives Out is MOSTLY a decent film.
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
“Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone.” ~Ursula Vernon
And Fabian Wagner (DOP for JL) did a Master Class yesterday where someone asked him about the Snyder Cut, and he replied that Whedon did 80 pages of rewrites and 55 days of reshoots 7 months after Snyder had finished Principle photography and wasweld into Post-Prod...and that a bare 10% of what he and Zach shot ended up in the Theatrical cut that Whedon released. Junkie XL also said he had fully completed the score he'd done before WB turfed him and Whedon got them to hire the Oingo Boingo guy to redo it...
Snyder was SEVEN months into post...this means that the Snyder Cut is not only real, it's probably near enough done that WB could have it finished up and released...which is probably what ALL of this has been about....marketing.
This won't just be his directors cut of the film, it will be a completely different film entirely. Holy shit.
Craziness. I want to see it!
"When the last tree has fallen, and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no." ~Aurora
“Someone will always try to sell you despair, just so they don't feel alone.” ~Ursula Vernon
Free Guy. Ryan Reynolds discovers he’s an npc in an open world video game.
And I think it looks awesome. Though that could just be my man crush affecting my judgement.
That looks like more fun than would be legal.
"Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious." - Indomitable Courteous (Icy) Fist, The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes
"Well well well ... if it ain't The Invisible C**t." - Billy Butcher, The Boys
"I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it." - Colonel Orhan, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City - KJ Parker
Tsundoku 
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