Red Letter Media

[Pokemonquistador2]

Getting back to the Picard review, I'm glad Plinkett pointed out the most glaring flaw of the series: it was written by people who had never seen the original TNG show. That's why Data and Picard were portrayed as soulmates when, in the original series, Data was a respectful subordinate, at most. It's also why the Romulans were the Big Villains. In the original series, the Klingons were the Big Villains, as they were a stand in for the cold war Soviets, and the Romulans were basically an evil foil to the Vulcans. They answered the question "What if the Vulcans were militaristic (like Ancient Rome) instead of peaceful and stoic?" But in post JJ-Abrams Trek, the Romulans were an angry, vengeful people who lost their planet. Pathetic wanderers who had a love-hate relationship with their Federation benefactors. That's why we got the Romulan Refugee subplot. (It's America's The Federation's job to take care of The World's Romulan Refugees! Who would be opposed to helping out the poor and downtrodden? Bigots! That's who!)

Didn't the writers of Picard admit the show was made to dump on the character of Picard and chastise privileged white men? Why yes, yes they did. And Patrick Stewart went right along with it. I wanted to believe that he was as classy and wise as the character he used to portray in TNG. But in the end, he turned out to be a deranged, anti-Brexit goofball who thought the world needed to see his moist fart of a series. You can't cure that kind of derangment, only be glad that all of the other gentlemanly British actors whose work you've enjoyed over the years are dead so you don't have to hear them screeching over no longer being ruled by a cabal of unelected bureaucrats living in another country.

 

[Mola Ram]

You can't cure that kind of derangment, only be glad that all of the other gentlemanly British actors whose work you've enjoyed over the years are dead so you don't have to hear them screeching over no longer being ruled by a cabal of unelected bureaucrats living in another country.

Christopher Lee was based as fuck. They ain't all mewling pussies.

 

[Ira the Weatherman]

Anyone who defends the prequels as "actually pretty good" is a lolcow.

The one thing the PT generally did well was design: creatures, worlds, vehicles. There was a fair bit of creativity on display there, even if it was ultimately made redundant by how godawful everything else in those movies was. It contrasts heavily with the ST, in which pretty much everything was a slight redesign of existing work, and the few cases of genuine OC were incredibly bland and generic.

If someone put a gun to my head and told me to decide between the two trilogies I'd probably choose the bullet.

I'd honestly choose the PT, because it's such a trainwreck that it becomes amusing to watch because of how terribly-executed nearly every part of it was. I recently rewatched TPM and AOTC for the first time in over a decade and I was laughing my ass off the entire time. The terrible greenscreening, the cringeworthy autistic dialogue, weightless and supenseless action scenes, amateuristic cinematography... they feel like more like fan films made by spergs than actual movies. It's almost fascinating.

The ST doesn't quite reach the same levels of hilariously bad, which makes it boring and means there's nothing redeemable about it. Everything wrong with it feels more offensive than funny, because you know its the result of design by committee or Rian Johnson's hackiness, rather than imagining George Lucas smoking a doobie as he's writing this shit.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The one thing the PT generally did well was design: creatures, worlds, vehicles. There was a fair bit of creativity on display there,

It's impressive to me how radically different the visual design of stuff often got in the Prequels from the original trilogy while still looking recognizably "Star Wars" and like it belonged in the same universe.

The Naboo starfighter is a perfect example of this, it's the polar opposite of an X-Wing, all curves instead of angles and yet it still looks "Star Wars"

 

[KrewlKween]

Their loss. Shatner's twitter is all emojis and shitposting. Sir Stew is pet causes and pretentious poetry.

Shatner's account is run by a team. He has stated before he has no idea what Twitter is and how to work it.

 

[Stab You in the Back]

I recently rewatched TPM and AOTC for the first time in over a decade and I was laughing my ass off the entire time. The terrible greenscreening, the cringeworthy autistic dialogue, weightless and supenseless action scenes, amateuristic cinematography... they feel like more like fan films made by spergs than actual movies. It's almost fascinating.

Fuck you, AOTC is a great film.

They're not perfect, but George Lucas knows how to construct a great scene, which is more than I can say about JJ Abrams.

 

[Flexo]

Getting back to the Picard review, I'm glad Plinkett pointed out the most glaring flaw of the series: it was written by people who had never seen the original TNG show. That's why Data and Picard were portrayed as soulmates when, in the original series, Data was a respectful subordinate, at most. It's also why the Romulans were the Big Villains. In the original series, the Klingons were the Big Villains, as they were a stand in for the cold war Soviets, and the Romulans were basically an evil foil to the Vulcans. They answered the question "What if the Vulcans were militaristic (like Ancient Rome) instead of peaceful and stoic?" But in post JJ-Abrams Trek, the Romulans were an angry, vengeful people who lost their planet. Pathetic wanderers who had a love-hate relationship with their Federation benefactors. That's why we got the Romulan Refugee subplot. (It's America's The Federation's job to take care of The World's Romulan Refugees! Who would be opposed to helping out the poor and downtrodden? Bigots! That's who!)

Didn't the writers of Picard admit the show was made to dump on the character of Picard and chastise privileged white men? Why yes, yes they did. And Patrick Stewart went right along with it. I wanted to believe that he was as classy and wise as the character he used to portray in TNG. But in the end, he turned out to be a deranged, anti-Brexit goofball who thought the world needed to see his moist fart of a series. You can't cure that kind of derangment, only be glad that all of the other gentlemanly British actors whose work you've enjoyed over the years are dead so you don't have to hear them screeching over no longer being ruled by a cabal of unelected bureaucrats living in another country.

Well romulans were the most often reoccurring villains in TNG and had one of that show's few ongoing plotlines.

 

[RumblyTumbly]

Christopher Lee was based as fuck. They ain't all mewling pussies.

"Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody’s stabbed in the back? Because I do."

That is something Lee said to Peter Jackson when going over Saruman's death scene in Lord of the Rings. He used his past knowledge and experience to the film in a bad ass way.

Lee was awesome!

 

[BScCollateral]

Both are bloated, unprofessional disasters which completely miss the mark on what people actually liked about the original films. Just one is an exercise in auteur laziness and the other a bland corporate product.

To go all Tolstoy, good movies are all alike; every bad movie is different.

 

[Mola Ram]

"Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody’s stabbed in the back? Because I do."

That is something Lee said to Peter Jackson when going over Saruman's death scene in Lord of the Rings. He used his past knowledge and experience to the film in a bad ass way.

Lee was awesome!

There's a story about Lee that is probably apocryphal, but is too good not to share.

So as any bad movie buff is aware, Lee was in the atrocious The Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf. This movie is, believe it or not, historically significant, and not just because of the werewolf threeway or Sybil Danning yanking her top off 20 times in the end credits. It was only the third American movie to be filmed behind the Iron Curtain, the first two being Yentl and Amadeus, placing it in strangely exalted company. As the crew was landing in Prague, it soon became evident that there was a crowd waiting to welcome them with a parade. Lee informed the director that it was probably for him, and it was. Why, you may ask?

It's a matter of record that Christopher Lee did some very hush-hush work during WWII, so secret he never really discussed it, but almost certainly the source of his information on what a man sounds like when he's stabbed in the back. While no one's sure what he did, there is speculation that he was very active in Czechoslovakia ... specifically, that he was responsible for training the partisans who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich. And the Czechs never forgot, which is why they wanted to throw him a parade while he was filming a shitty werewolf pic.

Is it true? Who knows? But it's definitely not true of Patrick Stewart, which probably explains a few things.

 

[BScCollateral]

Is it true? Who knows? But it's definitely not true of Patrick Stewart, which probably explains a few things.

I hope it is true.

And I'm not going to lie. I do not like the Prequels; I do not like the Willy Wonka remake, but I am happy they each gave Lee a good role, and hope that he died thinking, "Well, my career is going well; I wonder what my next offer will be?"

He deserved all the love he got, and not just for his work in film. I hope he died with a glad heart.

 

[Flexo]

He deserved all the love he got, and not just for his work in film. I hope he died with a glad heart.

Christopher Lee was a very fine meatbag. I would have cried over killing him. (thankfully the Reaper beat me to it - and he was probably just offering tips over how to play himself*)

*Christopher Lee voiced Death in the Discworld adaptions.

There is a big difference though. The only real information we had about the Jedi order is biased as hell and, in general, it seems like the order contained a lot of noble heroic people but suffered from being leashed by the senate and clinging to past dogma. It wasn't a case of shitting over the Jedi to put some postmodern message but applying realistic limitations on the Jedi that makes them dependent on the clone troopers, which eventually spells their downfall.

I don't know, it might be because I've seen the prequels when I was young, but I can't really hate them. I can appreciate the world building and the attempted arc they tried to do with Anakin (plus shitload of memorable moments for good and ill). The plot could have easiely been written so the Jedi are impossibly perfect and were betrayed from the inside but that's both unrealistic and cliche. Plus the characters in the prequel actually occasionally fail and get overpowered.

This is what bugs me about the prequels, and it's worse in the sequels and more films today. It's largely what @Cyril Sneer and I were autistically slap fighting over in the Star Wars thread too.

Blank Canvas writing.

Let's use the prequels as an example. Let's take this statement: "suffered from being leashed by the senate and clinging to past dogma"

If I were to ask anyone to back up the statement with scenes or actual lines within the movies themselves, you really can't. At best you would be able to take a line here or there and construct an explanation from it, BUT (and this is key), I or anyone else could take those same lines (or a few others) and construct a counter explanation that would be just as valid.

Let's use a counter example. Let's use the statement: "Leia Organa is Luke Skywalker's sister." Can that be proven? Quite. You can use lines from RotJ and the actual scenes of them being born, named, and given away in RotS. This is a plot statement backed up by the text.

Now, I do know there is the extended universe, and a LOT of plot holes were filled in there. That's another topic. The point is that a story should be self contained, and any exploration outside of the story should be a bonus for fans, not a requirement for viewers.

This doesn't mean you have to go into long autistic details of exposition on every minute detail, but you do have to make sure you cover a bare minimum for the plot to function. The OT is a master class in this as it has the moff council scene. Are we told every little detail about galactic politics? Nope, we're told just enough to make it all work. Contrast this with the Prequels which don't explain shit. Take the opening crawl about "taxes and trade routes." Why exactly is the Trade Federation messing with Naboo over taxes? Oh sure you can find in supplementary material that it was Palpatine sponsoring the tax bill that pissed off the trade federation, but that is no where in the movie. (heck it could have been one added sentence in the opening crawl)

I trust from here you can start to see how it gets even worse with the Sequel trilogy.

That's what makes discussions about these films (and many others) so frustrating. Scott Adams has used the phrase "1 screen, 2 movies" in the past to describe reality, the problem is that it actually describes movies nowadays as well. We can both see the same movie, but if we both have to construct additional points in our head to make the film work, then obviously there's going to be 2 different movies. Because the framework I constructed for the plot is going to be different from the framework you constructed for the plot. i.e. In your mind, the hero had a dead wife to motivate him, while in my mind it was a dead little sister that was motivating the hero.

I think the worst part is that people are becoming so accustomed to it, they're doing it to movies that don't even require it. So you get things like people hating on Bright for seemingly reasons of the movie they constructed in their mind, even though the text of the film is pretty explanatory on the whole. (I'd say there's about... 2-3 points that are a little too blank and needed details.)

Anyway, all this to say, part of why I like RLM and even MauLer is that they are popular youtubers doing their part to fight this blank-canvas scourge.

 

[Mola Ram]

So you get things like people hating on Bright for seemingly reasons of the movie they constructed in their mind, even though the text of the film is pretty explanatory on the whole.

I hated Bright mostly because it was painfully obvious that somewhere in one of Max Landis's apartments there's a stack of old Shadowrun books and probably a copy of that old Urban Arcana supplement for d20 Modern covered with notes and hi-lighter marks.

But your other comments are very on point.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I thought Bright was okay. I'm glad it exists for novelty value.

 

[TheImportantFart]

And I'm not going to lie. I do not like the Prequels; I do not like the Willy Wonka remake, but I am happy they each gave Lee a good role, and hope that he died thinking, "Well, my career is going well; I wonder what my next offer will be?"

Christopher Lee is one of the only things I like about the Prequels and why, even though it’s an objectively worse film, I would watch Attack of the Clones over The Phantom Menace (which I still consider to be one of the most boring films I’ve ever seen). I still think Lord of the Rings gave him a more worthy role to be remembered for, but at least Star Wars opened him up to one of the most dedicated fandoms around.

 

[Mola Ram]

Christopher Lee is one of the only things I like about the Prequels and why, even though it’s an objectively worse film, I would watch Attack of the Clones over The Phantom Menace (which I still consider to be one of the most boring films I’ve ever seen). I still think Lord of the Rings gave him a more worthy role to be remembered for, but at least Star Wars opened him up to one of the most dedicated fandoms around.

In keeping with what @Flexo talked about earlier, there is a fascinating story lurking in the wings about Lee's character: respected, seasoned Jedi grows disillusioned with the Republic in general and the Jedi Order in particular, winds up making a devil's bargain with a Sith Lord, possibly thinking he can outwit him and twist his powers for a good cause, ends up provoking a ruinous war that ends with his death at the hands of his unwitting successor, outplayed at last by the master manipulator he thought he could control.

And not one scrap of that is onscreen.

 

[Cyril Sneer]

In keeping with what @Flexo talked about earlier, there is a fascinating story lurking in the wings about Lee's character: respected, seasoned Jedi grows disillusioned with the Republic in general and the Jedi Order in particular, winds up making a devil's bargain with a Sith Lord, possibly thinking he can outwit him and twist his powers for a good cause, ends up provoking a ruinous war that ends with his death at the hands of his unwitting successor, outplayed at last by the master manipulator he thought he could control.

And not one scrap of that is onscreen.

I think there were more than enough breadcrumbs left by Lucas in the films to put all of that together, personally.

 

[Guts Gets Some]

That's why Data and Picard were portrayed as soulmates when, in the original series, Data was a respectful subordinate, at most.

To be fair, the awful TNG movies did a lot to heighten that relationship as BFFs forever more so than Nu-Trek.

 

[Mola Ram]

I think there were more than enough breadcrumbs left by Lucas in the films to put all of that together, personally.

Possibly, but it would have been a better story to see fleshed out than Anakin Loves Padme: Sound of Music in Space.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

This is what bugs me about the prequels, and it's worse in the sequels and more films today. It's largely what @Cyril Sneer and I were autistically slap fighting over in the Star Wars thread too.

Blank Canvas writing.

Let's use the prequels as an example. Let's take this statement: "suffered from being leashed by the senate and clinging to past dogma"

If I were to ask anyone to back up the statement with scenes or actual lines within the movies themselves, you really can't. At best you would be able to take a line here or there and construct an explanation from it, BUT (and this is key), I or anyone else could take those same lines (or a few others) and construct a counter explanation that would be just as valid.

Let's use a counter example. Let's use the statement: "Leia Organa is Luke Skywalker's sister." Can that be proven? Quite. You can use lines from RotJ and the actual scenes of them being born, named, and given away in RotS. This is a plot statement backed up by the text.

Now, I do know there is the extended universe, and a LOT of plot holes were filled in there. That's another topic. The point is that a story should be self contained, and any exploration outside of the story should be a bonus for fans, not a requirement for viewers.

This doesn't mean you have to go into long autistic details of exposition on every minute detail, but you do have to make sure you cover a bare minimum for the plot to function. The OT is a master class in this as it has the moff council scene. Are we told every little detail about galactic politics? Nope, we're told just enough to make it all work. Contrast this with the Prequels which don't explain shit. Take the opening crawl about "taxes and trade routes." Why exactly is the Trade Federation messing with Naboo over taxes? Oh sure you can find in supplementary material that it was Palpatine sponsoring the tax bill that pissed off the trade federation, but that is no where in the movie. (heck it could have been one added sentence in the opening crawl)

I trust from here you can start to see how it gets even worse with the Sequel trilogy.

That's what makes discussions about these films (and many others) so frustrating. Scott Adams has used the phrase "1 screen, 2 movies" in the past to describe reality, the problem is that it actually describes movies nowadays as well. We can both see the same movie, but if we both have to construct additional points in our head to make the film work, then obviously there's going to be 2 different movies. Because the framework I constructed for the plot is going to be different from the framework you constructed for the plot. i.e. In your mind, the hero had a dead wife to motivate him, while in my mind it was a dead little sister that was motivating the hero.

I think the worst part is that people are becoming so accustomed to it, they're doing it to movies that don't even require it. So you get things like people hating on Bright for seemingly reasons of the movie they constructed in their mind, even though the text of the film is pretty explanatory on the whole. (I'd say there's about... 2-3 points that are a little too blank and needed details.)

Anyway, all this to say, part of why I like RLM and even MauLer is that they are popular youtubers doing their part to fight this blank-canvas scourge.

You have a point but I think that at the very least the dependence of the Jedi on the senate is pretty clear, at least from the second movie onward with the use of the Jedi for babysitting officials and solving bureaucratic issues like taxation and trade routes and the use of clone troopers for waging a war rather than their own troops, plus a lot of councils to decide issues rather than having a clear leader. It's kinda like the Shin Godzilla film that drove the point of Japan's leadership inability by having scene after scene of committees rather than have a guy saying it outright.

The clinging to past dogma might be something that won't be apperant, but it's at least clear that the Jedi fail to help Anakin which pushes him to the dark side.