Red Letter Media

[Flexo]

Please, if @Flexo is going to call people "meatbags" on a regular basis, I'm gonna call 'em vode and aruetiise (at least in the Star Wars thread).

Damn straight! Don't let any meatbag tell you how to express your culture!

I guess it would depend on which movie you selected. Context matters a great deal, I think.

A shame as we are then at an impasse. At least with a standard, the idea is to apply it widely.

For example, let us suppose we were performing a color test. If we pull an object out of the bag, how do we know if it's green? I can at least establish that if it has a hue values in a certain hex range, then it would fit for the definition of "green." If it's hue value is outside of that range, then it is "not green."

Onto a movie example, let's bring this back on topic:

I'm not familiar with that.

The RLM character test can be summed up as: Describe a character to someone who has never seen the story you are talking about WITHOUT utilizing anything within the story itself. (So no job, costumes, roles, physical appearances, etc.)

For example: Han Solo - you can describe as "roguish" but you cannot describe as "smuggler." The more words and descriptions you can use, the stronger the character.

It's a very handy and quick test you can engage normies with without going into autistic writing sperging.

And you know what? I will FULLY admit that a WHOLE lot of the characterization in the Original Trilogy is conveyed by the actors. If you pull up a script of the movie, or try analyzing it just on the words and actions presented dead on the page, there is a very thin branch to hang anything on. And that's even a good exercise you can play with actors sometime. Give 3 of them the exact same line, and have all 3 create a different character JUST from how they deliver that line (especially if the line is an important, character-building one).

From what I understand, that is kind of how George Lucas is. I've heard he's a director that likes to let actors explore and express themselves with words. Or at least - that's a big difference between the two eras. In the OT, George was young and unknown enough, the actors felt free to bring their own spin on things. By the time of the PT, the mystique of Star Wars had grown so much, the actors acted more like they were reciting holy writ than doing an acting job. (someone else used that line once, I forgot who) Liam and Ewan are arguably exceptions to this.

I am disappointed RLM didn't carry the character test around to other reviews. The ST I think BARELY pass some of them - except for Rey. (You can see even in interviews Daisy ends up faced with the test and has trouble describing Rey.)

Just because it took you all day to reply back, doesn't mean the same is true for me. I'm very fast; I can reply back to things in-depth faster than anyone else you know. Anyone who's ever chatted with me one-to-one can vouch for that.
It took up 10 minutes of my day, if that. As I wrote on your profile, I was mildly curious about how someone of your mindset could justify the mess of the prequels. The actual SW answers didn't matter. I don't care about Star Wars anymore.

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to respond to @Guts Gets Some posts. His points are extremely subtle....

(sorry, couldn't resist)

 

[Dom Cruise]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=b3p4rm2Mku0

Great episode.

When they play a clip from Best Worst Movie, this is the face I was talking about in a post in this thread https://kiwifarms.net/threads/best-worst-movie.65174/

There is a part where they show some hipster doofus laughing at Troll 2 so intensely, with his mouth wide open, in a way that seems to convey that smug cynicism that typified hipsters and evolved into part of the SJW mentality we all know and hate.

 

[Cyril Sneer]

Damn straight! Don't let any meatbag tell you how to express your culture!

A shame as we are then at an impasse. At least with a standard, the idea is to apply it widely.

What I mean is that I wouldn't be certain of how to go about determining whether the movie in question was providing sufficient information to its audience or not until I had actually seen it. There's such a broad cinematic spectrum in terms of telling stories, from ultra-realist to surreal, abstract and everywhere in-between, that I don't think that you can have one standard for determining how effectively the story is told that applies everywhere to everything.

The RLM character test can be summed up as: Describe a character to someone who has never seen the story you are talking about WITHOUT utilizing anything within the story itself. (So no job, costumes, roles, physical appearances, etc.)

For example: Han Solo - you can describe as "roguish" but you cannot describe as "smuggler." The more words and descriptions you can use, the stronger the character.

It's a very handy and quick test you can engage normies with without going into autistic writing sperging.

Interesting, but why forbid mention of profession? Characters' personalities aren't necessarily defined by their work.

And you know what? I will FULLY admit that a WHOLE lot of the characterization in the Original Trilogy is conveyed by the actors. If you pull up a script of the movie, or try analyzing it just on the words and actions presented dead on the page, there is a very thin branch to hang anything on. And that's even a good exercise you can play with actors sometime. Give 3 of them the exact same line, and have all 3 create a different character JUST from how they deliver that line (especially if the line is an important, character-building one).

There's also the fact that Star Wars by its nature is very much in the vein of the old pulps and planetary romances, so lots of long, made-up words describing everyone and everything (compare Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Bendu, with "Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium").

From what I understand, that is kind of how George Lucas is. I've heard he's a director that likes to let actors explore and express themselves with words. Or at least - that's a big difference between the two eras. In the OT, George was young and unknown enough, the actors felt free to bring their own spin on things.

Dunno if this is relevant, but one of the interviewees for the Elstree 76 making of Star Wars documentary mentioned that Lucas apparently oversaw the hiring of all the extras for ANH personally, and apparently gave each of them some kind of formal classification based on whether they were, in his view, most suited to be aliens, Stormtroopers, Rebel soldiers and so forth.

By the time of the PT, the mystique of Star Wars had grown so much, the actors acted more like they were reciting holy writ than doing an acting job. (someone else used that line once, I forgot who) Liam and Ewan are arguably exceptions to this.

I remember that too, although I can't recall who said it, either. On that note, I've always wondered, when the development team of The Force Unleashed asked Lucas if they could give main character a "Darth" title, and Lucas told them that they could only use either "Darth Icky" or "Darth Insanius," if it was actually some sort of secret test to see if any of them would have the guts to get up and tell him that those names were ridiculous.

I am disappointed RLM didn't carry the character test around to other reviews. The ST I think BARELY pass some of them - except for Rey. (You can see even in interviews Daisy ends up faced with the test and has trouble describing Rey.)

Something about "she wants to do the right thing," wasn't' it?

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to respond to @Guts Gets Some posts. His points are extremely subtle....

(sorry, couldn't resist)

LOL

 

[KrewlKween]

I hadn't considered that Breen was a long con troll. I still don't think that's the case but damn what if?

I guess we also now know why Mike never grew a beard. He can grow a hell of a 70s porn stache, but he was cursed with the weird two tone look. It's crazy how much his beard is gray despite being so dark on top. Meanwhile Jay out here shifting from twink to bear.

 

[Flexo]

Interesting, but why forbid mention of profession? Characters' personalities aren't necessarily defined by their work.

That would be exactly why. Professions aren't personalities. I can tell you a character is a "cop" in a movie but that doesn't tell you about the character of the character. You've got to add "cowboy" or "by-the-book" or "crooked" to that title to get something about the character.

Here's the text on screen from the Plinkett review:

There's also the fact that Star Wars by its nature is very much in the vein of the old pulps and planetary romances, so lots of long, made-up words describing everyone and everything (compare Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Bendu, with "Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium").

Yes but that doesn't say anything about the character. It is up to the character to show and describe to the audience what those things are by how they act. You could really get the star trek thread going over this idea and examples. lol

Something about "she wants to do the right thing," wasn't' it?

Yep, that's the one. And do you see how that's only just barely fits under the above? That it could almost fit into the "role/profession" part of the character?

For one thing, you can keep breaking down "do the right thing" into further motivation. Why? Are they very empathetic to people? (Superman) Hate injustice? (Wonder Woman) Had a wrong done to them and now wants to prevent other wrongs? (Batman) etc

 

[Dom Cruise]

I hadn't considered that Breen was a long con troll. I still don't think that's the case but damn what if?

I guess we also now know why Mike never grew a beard. He can grow a hell of a 70s porn stache, but he was cursed with the weird two tone look. It's crazy how much his beard is gray despite being so dark on top. Meanwhile Jay out here shifting from twink to bear.

There's no way anybody in 2005 (when Breen made his first movie) would think "I'm gonna make a "so bad it's good" movie and prank everyone" when that wasn't really a phenomena yet.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Nothing will ever be more funny than Gwendolyn Christie trying to describe Phasma's character and her importance to the new trilogy and media as a whole.

 

[Replicant Sasquatch]

Nothing will ever be more funny than Gwendolyn Christie trying to describe Phasma's character and her importance to the new trilogy and media as a whole.

I dunno, George's "Jar Jar is the key to all of this" line is pretty funny.

 

[Commander X]

They showed some imagery from the Eclipse graphic novel "adaption" of Barker's story - I think this may have been the last book published by Eclipse before the company completely fell apart in 1994 due to various problems - it was one of those adaptions of a story that is mostly illustrations and as much of the text as possible littering up the pages in boxes. Still, you have to give it to Les Edwards, the artist for giving Rex a very raw HEADed look, you see.

 

[BrunoMattei]

They showed some imagery from the Eclipse graphic novel "adaption" of Barker's story - I think this may have been the last book published by Eclipse before the company completely fell apart in 1994 due to various problems - it was one of those adaptions of a story that is mostly illustrations and as much of the text as possible littering up the pages in boxes. Still, you have to give it to Les Edwards, the artist for giving Rex a very raw HEADed look, you see.

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I read the story back when I was 16. I believe it was in Books of Blood vol 2. I didn't like it too much although I think a good movie adaptation could be made. Basically, Rawhead is part of a species of giants that predate Christ. He was sealed away in what later became a farm and a farmer removed a stone. I don't remember anything about Rawhead being repelled by women or anything. It was kind of an undercooked story for Clive because, despite needing an ancient seal to stop him originally, Rawhead is susceptible to small arms fire. There's a part in the story where a small mob fire on him and he covers his balls and runs away. Later, he discovers the virtues of gasoline and burns cars and homes but ends up injuring himself leading to our main character using a cunt statue to stop him. Oh yeah, as shown in the comic Commander posted, it's not the cunt itself or pregnancy that repels him, it's literally period blood.

Also, he pisses on the priest he doesn't cum on him. In the story, in an extremely rushed way, the priest is infatuated with Rawhead and worships him as a god and begs him to piss on him.

It's not one of Clive's best.

 

[FernandoPooTragedy]

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[Preferred Penne]

I don't think so, Mike.

 

[Flexo]

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So all those recent 90s movies reviews have started to morph Jay into a platonic ideal of the decade?

The math works and your logic is sound.

 

[FernandoPooTragedy]

So all those recent 90s movies reviews have started to morph Jay into a platonic ideal of the decade?

The math works and your logic is sound.

Who said anything about a *platonic* ideal?

 

[Flexo]

Who said anything about a *platonic* ideal?

Well we are talking about a combination of the two manliest hunks of that decade. Seemed self-evident.

 

[Cyril Sneer]

That would be exactly why. Professions aren't personalities. I can tell you a character is a "cop" in a movie but that doesn't tell you about the character of the character. You've got to add "cowboy" or "by-the-book" or "crooked" to that title to get something about the character.

Not necessarily. A character's profession, in many if not most cases, is going to carry with it certain assumptions in the audience's minds about the characteristics of someone who's taken up that particular vocation. To use one of your examples, Han Solo may have been attracted to smuggling as a consequence of his roguish personality, or his roguish personality may be a consequence of making his living as a smuggler, but it's fair for the audience to hear "smuggler" and think "roguish personality" because that is a character trait strongly associated with smuggling. Similarly, a character who is a cop is likely (albeit not guaranteed) to be more comfortable with being confrontational and/or initiating violence than the average person.

And that's something that really bothers me about the RLM methodology: Most people do not build a ground-up, 100% unrecycled mental impression of each new person or thing they encounter. Rather, newly-encountered things will be, consciously or unconsciously, understood on the basis of previously-encountered things with which they share similarities, at least until sufficient differences crop up to justify creating a new category of classification to slot the thing into. Consequently, by forbidding such details as the character's profession, it feels as if the RLM test is, intentionally or not, cutting an important aspect of the human cognitive process out of the equation.

Yes but that doesn't say anything about the character. It is up to the character to show and describe to the audience what those things are by how they act.

That was my (I guess rather vaguely-worded) point, actually. No one is going to know at first blush what a Jedi Bendu or a Jeddak of Helium is, so not having an immediate real-world analogue for the audience to bridge the gaps puts more pressure on the character to be sufficiently demonstrative.

You could really get the star trek thread going over this idea and examples. lol

Yep, that's the one. And do you see how that's only just barely fits under the above? That it could almost fit into the "role/profession" part of the character?

For one thing, you can keep breaking down "do the right thing" into further motivation. Why? Are they very empathetic to people? (Superman) Hate injustice? (Wonder Woman) Had a wrong done to them and now wants to prevent other wrongs? (Batman) etc

Also left unstated is the issue of scale/effort. Someone who wants to "do the right thing" by, say, ensuring that naughty words are banished from internet discourse is probably going to exhibit a personality that's markedly different than whose idea of "the Right Thing" involves establishing and running a leper colony until death.

 

[Flexo]

And that's something that really bothers me about the RLM methodology: Most people do not build a ground-up, 100% unrecycled mental impression of each new person or thing they encounter. Rather, newly-encountered things will be, consciously or unconsciously, understood on the basis of previously-encountered things with which they share similarities, at least until sufficient differences crop up to justify creating a new category of classification to slot the thing into. Consequently, by forbidding such details as the character's profession, it feels as if the RLM test is, intentionally or not, cutting an important aspect of the human cognitive process out of the equation.

. . .What?

I seriously cannot understand what your difficulty is. It's like you're saying the RLM test doesn't apply because language exists and people must use words to express the idea, and those words pre-existed the idea.

I mean even you in the previous paragraph as an example, used other words and expressions that would fit the character test, to explain why you need disqualified words for the test. You don't need "job/role" for the test - you've literally proved it yourself in your examples.

Another reason to eliminate that category? Because background characters and extras can have those same things so it also acts as a filter to distinguish between characters and props. A guy in uniform, with his back to the camera, can be described as a "cop." That doesn't make him a "character" he's freakin' set dressing. A mailman delivering an important letter in a scene that kicks off the story, isn't a "character," he's a plot device.

That was my (I guess rather vaguely-worded) point, actually. No one is going to know at first blush what a Jedi Bendu or a Jeddak of Helium is, so not having an immediate real-world analogue for the audience to bridge the gaps puts more pressure on the character to be sufficiently demonstrative.

Yes - hence why the test says "don't bring up their role or profession." Besides not being that descriptive of who a character is, it could even be uninformative if those things are completely made up. Thus you wouldn't tell someone "Obi-Wan is a Jedi" for this test, you would say things like "he's wise, seasoned, a little snarky with dry wit, but powerful in mysterious ways." etc

 

[Cyril Sneer]

. . .What?

I seriously cannot understand what your difficulty is. It's like you're saying the RLM test doesn't apply because language exists and people must use words to express the idea, and those words pre-existed the idea.

I mean even you in the previous paragraph as an example, used other words and expressions that would fit the character test, to explain why you need disqualified words for the test. You don't need "job/role" for the test - you've literally proved it yourself in your examples.

Another reason to eliminate that category? Because background characters and extras can have those same things so it also acts as a filter to distinguish between characters and props. A guy in uniform, with his back to the camera, can be described as a "cop." That doesn't make him a "character" he's freakin' set dressing. A mailman delivering an important letter in a scene that kicks off the story, isn't a "character," he's a plot device.

Drawing a distinction the main characters of a film and the bit players on the basis of the former being described solely by their personality traits and the latter by their occupations seems like unnecessary artifice for the sake of showing off one's mad writing skillz rather than simply focusing on telling the story, something like the screenwriting equivalent of maxing out a particular class build and then running around the map in your underwear punching end-game mobs to death with your bare fists.

That major characters should, in a film, have distinct, memorable and identifiable personality traits seems like a reasonable premise, but how many widely-acknowledged "great" films describe their characters only in such terms? Citizen Kane opens with an extended narration of Kane's career as a newspaper magnate. Taxi Driver's screenplay begins with a three-paragraph physical description of Travis Bickle. I think the RLM crew are just overthinking things a little.

 

[Mola Ram]

Citizen Kane opens with an extended narration of Kane's career as a newspaper magnate.

You must have missed the part where the newsreel producer says this doesn't tell them anything about who Kane was as a person. I can understand the oversight, since it's merely the hinge on which the rest of the movie turns.

 

[Cyril Sneer]

You must have missed the part where the newsreel producer says this doesn't tell them anything about who Kane was as a person.

That rather reinforces my point.