The Snyder Cut

[Tyndmyr]

Disney took the route of appealing to the majority with the force awakens. And, despite what a few vocal forum dwellers believe, succeeded. If you head out into the real world and ask any 100 people you meet if they liked it, 80-90 of them did. Here, in this forum we live in, you happen to have a disproportionate amount of haters.

It did make money. But making money doesn't always mean a film is great. To some degree, you're costing off inertia with these large franchises. The next Marvel film is going to benefit from a lot of built up fan enthusiasm simply because it's a Marvel film. That's just how franchises work. And Star Wars is a really, really big franchise.

TFA got a domestic box of $932M.
Rogue One got $532M.
TLJ got $620M.
Solo got $213M.
RoS got $515M.

So, look at that trend. Of the three mainline films, each made significantly less than the one before it. Rogue one was pretty well liked, but Solo was not, and dropped off a ton cashwise.

Yeah, Disney isn't going broke on these films yet, but if you look at the direction these numbers are going, it's pretty obvious why they scrapped all the additional film projects they had previously announced. Those are trouble signs right there.

[Precure]

I'm not sure why the mystery boxes were a bad thing just because "the answer is not important." MacGuffins too are not important themselves, but that doesn't automatically made them a bad thing.

[Lord Raziere]

It did make money. But making money doesn't always mean a film is great. To some degree, you're costing off inertia with these large franchises. The next Marvel film is going to benefit from a lot of built up fan enthusiasm simply because it's a Marvel film. That's just how franchises work. And Star Wars is a really, really big franchise.

TFA got a domestic box of $932M.
Rogue One got $532M.
TLJ got $620M.
Solo got $213M.
RoS got $515M.

So, look at that trend. Of the three mainline films, each made significantly less than the one before it. Rogue one was pretty well liked, but Solo was not, and dropped off a ton cashwise.

Yeah, Disney isn't going broke on these films yet, but if you look at the direction these numbers are going, it's pretty obvious why they scrapped all the additional film projects they had previously announced. Those are trouble signs right there.

And thing is when your big enough of a franchise, you can make almost anything and still make a profit, because almost no matter what you make its going to appeal to somebody, you cast your net wide, your going to catch fish no matter what those fish are. same people might not like all those films for example, just like how not all fans like one installment or another, its just a matter of maintaining recognizability enough that people don't care even though its not their "favorite" installment.

make a mediocre film that everyone in the world goes to see and kinda likes because its so bland and generic that it appeals to anybody watching it, but no one says is their favorite or mentions it as a great film, just...an okay one. have you made a great film? I don't think so.

[Peelee]

The truth is, there was no way to produce a follow up trilogy that was going to please everyone. It was an insurmountable goal, but that doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying.

{Scrubbed}

[Fyraltari]

Please everyone? Impossible.
Please most people? Hard but doable.

[Cikomyr2]

Coudda Woudda Shoudda.

And Stark Trek revival could have been better
And the 1st Godzilla movie of the 2000s could have been better
And how about decent Transformer movies?

Guys. We have to get over it at this point. Constantly revisiting the same failed cultural revivals is just not healthy and feeds in the very problem we complain about.

[Gallowglass]

Please everyone? Impossible.
Please most people? Hard but doable.

On Rotten Tomatoes, right now for the Force Awakens

93% favorable for critics
86% for audience.

Seems like they shot for pleased most people with that movie and succeeded. Despite the voices on here decrying it as a worthless pile of garbage.

Now, I'm not going to throw support behind the Last Jedi. I did not care for that movie myself. And I feel like the collapse of the trilogy (in so far as there was one) was mostly due to it

[Cikomyr2]

On Rotten Tomatoes, right now for the Force Awakens

93% favorable for critics
86% for audience.

Seems like they shot for pleased most people with that movie and succeeded. Despite the voices on here decrying it as a worthless pile of garbage.

Now, I'm not going to throw support behind the Last Jedi. I did not care for that movie myself. And I feel like the collapse of the trilogy (in so far as there was one) was mostly due to it

You know, thinking about the movies that I remember the most, I wonder if they all have to be good movies.

what's for sure is that I will remember The Last Jedi for a flippin' long time. I already forgot 95% of Rise of Skywalker.


Which is best? an okay movie you remember for 6 months, or a movie you have strong emotion about and is forever in your memory?

[Zevox]

Which is best? an okay movie you remember for 6 months, or a movie you have strong emotion about and is forever in your memory?

If that strong emotion is entirely negative and only makes even thinking about that movie an unpleasant experience, I'd say the okay-at-best but forgettable one, without question. That's pretty much exactly why I far prefer The Force Awakens to The Last Jedi.

[Azuresun]

I'm not sure why the mystery boxes were a bad thing just because "the answer is not important." MacGuffins too are not important themselves, but that doesn't automatically made them a bad thing.

The difference as I understand it is that it's fairly obvious from the start that a McGuffin doesn't matter in itself, the drama lies in what people will do to possess it.

Mystery boxes are built up as a hook in their own right, where their nature is really important and often the thing intended to get people hooked--you want to watch this and theorise on the internet to discover the significance of the opera house, what the secret of the island is, what happened to Mulder's sister, why they need to save the cheerleader, etc. So it's a rather rude bait and switch to reveal that it was just a cynical attempt to get people speculating on the internet and the writers never had a clue what to do with it, the answer wasn't that important.

[Taevyr]

I'm not sure why the mystery boxes were a bad thing just because "the answer is not important." MacGuffins too are not important themselves, but that doesn't automatically made them a bad thing.

Mcguffins are important themselves, as otherwise they wouldn't be Mcguffins: they may never do anything, but they always serve as plot drivers and items of clear importance to the characters: Aside from "Mcguffin of saturday morning cartoon episode 35 that never gets mentioned before or after", think of the Arkenstone or the Philosopher's stone from the first Harry Potter movie. All 3 serve to drive the plot, or part of it, and thus are of importance for a given period, before/after which nobody cares about them or they're quickly disposed of. If they weren't important for a given period, they wouldn't have any ability to drive the plot.

Meanwhile, the mystery boxes are a close equivalent to cliffhangers: draw people in because they want to know how things fit together, or what happens/happened. In itself, not a bad thing and an excellent writing/marketing tool.

As such, however, mystery boxes that aren't ever answered are the equivalent of cheap cliffhangers: A way to draw in people who want to know the answer to the mystery, only to give a cheap cop-out of an answer once they've been drawn in. It's still a great marketing tool, but simply terrible writing.

Additionally, Abrams often seems to construct his mystery boxes for the audience's sake without considering whether it actually makes any sense in-story: the "I am Khan" moment in his Star Trek is an excellent tool to get your audience excited, but in-setting it doesn't make the slightest amount of sense to be that dramatic. Again: good for marketing a movie/series, but not good writing.

[Tyndmyr]

On Rotten Tomatoes, right now for the Force Awakens

93% favorable for critics
86% for audience.

Seems like they shot for pleased most people with that movie and succeeded. Despite the voices on here decrying it as a worthless pile of garbage.

Now, I'm not going to throw support behind the Last Jedi. I did not care for that movie myself. And I feel like the collapse of the trilogy (in so far as there was one) was mostly due to it

RT scores have been, ahem, massaged a fair bit, and are rather less reliable than they used to be. Notably, TLJ shows a fairly decent score now, despite having a 55% audience score when it came out that was the source of some media attention, and a great amount of berating fans for giving it a "wrong" score.

The attempts to "fix" downvoting, as well as critics having very different views than audiences make it fairly difficult to affix any numeric score to quality in this fashion with any level of certainty. Do you trust the initial reaction of people? Do you prefer the later thing? Is downvote brigading legitimate, and how do you separate out legitimate downvotes from illegitimate ones?

[Lord Raziere]

Coudda Woudda Shoudda.

And Stark Trek revival could have been better
And the 1st Godzilla movie of the 2000s could have been better
And how about decent Transformer movies?

Guys. We have to get over it at this point. Constantly revisiting the same failed cultural revivals is just not healthy and feeds in the very problem we complain about.

Your not going far enough: Constantly trying to revive cultural stuff that fail because they're apart of some big franchise that get too big to ever please everyone so they coast on nostalgia is just not healthy in general. how long before its no longer worth it to keep reviving all this in the first place? how long before we realize that we need to move on from the 60's-90's big franchise nostalgia trip? I admit I like these franchises as much the next person, but at some point we got to acknowledge they might be overstaying their welcome.

[GloatingSwine]

Mcguffins are important themselves, as otherwise they wouldn't be Mcguffins: they may never do anything, but they always serve as plot drivers and items of clear importance to the characters: Aside from "Mcguffin of saturday morning cartoon episode 35 that never gets mentioned before or after", think of the Arkenstone or the Philosopher's stone from the first Harry Potter movie. All 3 serve to drive the plot, or part of it, and thus are of importance for a given period, before/after which nobody cares about them or they're quickly disposed of. If they weren't important for a given period, they wouldn't have any ability to drive the plot.

A macguffin is a thing the characters care about but the audience doesn't. They work because they serve to draw the characters into a different conflict which everyone cares about, usually a relationship between the characters.

The thing about Abrams is that his mystery boxes are reverse macguffins. They're things the audience cares about but the characters don't. Which means they fall apart as soon as you have to try and open them because they can't actually make the characters naturalistically do something. Kirk can never care who Khan is, he can only care about what he does.

Another classic example is Rey's parentage. By the end of The Force Awakens every character Rey could have cared about was eliminated because if it was them someone should have mentioned it. So now Rey can never be materially affected by the revelation of who her parents were, no matter the answer, because it can't possibly be anyone she knows or cares about. All answers other than "nobody" were bad for the story.

[Peelee]

Please everyone? Impossible.
Please most people? Hard but doable.

I don't know if if call it hard. Certainly not if you have the resources that Disney has.

On Rotten Tomatoes, right now for the Force Awakens

93% favorable for critics
86% for audience.

Which is very different from saying that critics gave it an average of 93 out of 100, or that audiences gave it an average of 88 out of 100, given how their scoring mechanism works.

[Gallowglass]

RT scores have been, ahem, massaged a fair bit, and are rather less reliable than they used to be. Notably, TLJ shows a fairly decent score now, despite having a 55% audience score when it came out that was the source of some media attention, and a great amount of berating fans for giving it a "wrong" score.

The attempts to "fix" downvoting, as well as critics having very different views than audiences make it fairly difficult to affix any numeric score to quality in this fashion with any level of certainty. Do you trust the initial reaction of people? Do you prefer the later thing? Is downvote brigading legitimate, and how do you separate out legitimate downvotes from illegitimate ones?

{Scrubbed}

[Yanagi]

Does it depress anyone else that a bunch of random people on an Internet forum can take the building blocks of a Star Wars movie and assemble them better than the actual, professional director and screenwriters managed to do with those same blocks? You have to wonder what sort of tangled mess was actually going on behind the scenes to produce that.

We have the advantage of not having to compromise with anyone else's vision because each of us is just playing auteur, not thinking about a budget, or experiencing the pressure to have certain elements because of marketing tie-ins or audience test reactions.

ETA: also, doing a re-write means someone's already done a bunch of heavy lifting. Moving the already created parts around actually is an important skill because scripts need polishing--respect to Carrie Fischer, a famous script polisher--but it's not the paramount one.

Nor do we have to think in terms of guidance for actors, shots, what's going to be dropped in later through CGI, etc.

I mean, I enjoy re-writing films that I kind of like but have some issues with because it's a fun creative exercise...movies I don't like I just move on from...but the idea of doing one of these scripts from scratch gives me hives.

Me trying to write a whole story would probably look and sound a lot like David Attenborough crouched in the foreground trying the explain the plot of Dune.

[Cikomyr2]

RT scores have been, ahem, massaged a fair bit, and are rather less reliable than they used to be. Notably, TLJ shows a fairly decent score now, despite having a 55% audience score when it came out that was the source of some media attention, and a great amount of berating fans for giving it a "wrong" score.

The attempts to "fix" downvoting, as well as critics having very different views than audiences make it fairly difficult to affix any numeric score to quality in this fashion with any level of certainty. Do you trust the initial reaction of people? Do you prefer the later thing? Is downvote brigading legitimate, and how do you separate out legitimate downvotes from illegitimate ones?

You should be required to provide hard evidence for anyone to accept this claim.

[Psyren]

Your not going far enough: Constantly trying to revive cultural stuff that fail because they're apart of some big franchise that get too big to ever please everyone so they coast on nostalgia is just not healthy in general. how long before its no longer worth it to keep reviving all this in the first place? how long before we realize that we need to move on from the 60's-90's big franchise nostalgia trip? I admit I like these franchises as much the next person, but at some point we got to acknowledge they might be overstaying their welcome.

Yeah but contrast the failure rate of established franchises with the failure rate of brand new IP. The safe bet keeps winning for a reason.

Even when there are high profile failures, all they have to do is wait and the hype train will get rolling again for a new installment or reboot. MK Annihilation was a dumpster fire, yet the MK reboot is generating all kinds of hype. Same with Matrix 4. Even the live action ATLA project over at Netflix is generating positive buzz.

[Precure]

"I am Khan" is not a mystery box though, it's more of a case of plot twist (the new villain revealed to be a villain we already know) and dramatic irony (Audience knows how evil Khan is, but characters don't know it yet).

[GloatingSwine]

RottenTomatoes' primary effort to fix audience brigading was making sure they had actually seen the movie.

Which is somewhat understandable, for a movie review site.


That said, lots of movies are reevaluated later, even the same people can have completely different opinions about movies once passions have cooled and they look again.

I expect if you got all of the same critics to review TFA now as are included on RT the score would be quite different.

"I am Khan" is not a mystery box though, it's more of a case of plot twist (the new villain revealed to be a villain we already know) and dramatic irony (Audience knows how evil Khan is, but characters don't know it yet).

It's not a plot twist though, because it means nothing in the plot. What his name is is irrelevant to the plot because it doesn't change what he does during it. It's hollow and meaningless to the characters, that's why they don't react to it at all.

[Precure]

It's not a plot twist though, because it means nothing in the plot. What his name is is irrelevant to the plot because it doesn't change what he does during it. It's hollow and meaningless to the characters, that's why they don't react to it at all.

Plot-wise, it leds to the original Spock warning them later. Still, it's not a mystery box.

[GloatingSwine]

Plot-wise, it leds to the original Spock warning them later. Still, it's not a mystery box.

It actually was though.

Y'see, the thing about Abrams' mystery boxes is, as I have already said in this very thread, that they predominantly exist outside the movie. You supposed to predominantly engage with them in speculative conversations either online or in the real in order to keep the profile of the TV show or movie in the public consciousness between episodes or before release.

The true identity of "John Harrison" was an intentionally constructed mystery box during the marketing of the movie. It was then "opened" during the movie and revealed to be stupid and irrelevant to the plot. Hooray!

[Peelee]

Plot-wise, it leds to the original Spock warning them later. Still, it's not a mystery box.

I'm tempted to agree, since his mystery boxes are designed to not have answers. However, I'm not terribly inclined to put that as a point in Abrams favor, given how he just straight up lied about it not being Khan. If you warn to argue that he's at least trying to foray into new and different ways to be crappy, I'll be in your corner on that.

[Gallowglass]

Precure and GloatingSwine,

As an aside, I just want to point out that because you both use the Flumph image as your avatar, its impossible for me to watch you two debate without imagining you are the two flumphs in Order of the Stick floating around arguing until someone lands on them.

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah but contrast the failure rate of established franchises with the failure rate of brand new IP. The safe bet keeps winning for a reason.

Even when there are high profile failures, all they have to do is wait and the hype train will get rolling again for a new installment or reboot. MK Annihilation was a dumpster fire, yet the MK reboot is generating all kinds of hype. Same with Matrix 4. Even the live action ATLA project over at Netflix is generating positive buzz.

And thus do people find ever more ways justify the stagnation.

[Keltest]

And thus do people find ever more ways justify the stagnation.

I would say that Hollywood being unable to recapture the magic of the originals and creating a train of largely bad movies is a separate problem from them not wanting to move on from existing brands. I would have no problem if the sequel trilogy was on par with, say, The Mandalorian in quality.

[Peelee]

I would say that Hollywood being unable to recapture the magic of the originals and creating a train of largely bad movies is a separate problem from them not wanting to move on from existing brands. I would have no problem if the sequel trilogy was on par with, say, The Mandalorian in quality.

I would flat out celebrate that.

[Lord Raziere]

I would say that Hollywood being unable to recapture the magic of the originals and creating a train of largely bad movies is a separate problem from them not wanting to move on from existing brands. I would have no problem if the sequel trilogy was on par with, say, The Mandalorian in quality.

I disagree. I can think of no reboot that I watched successfully ever captured the "magic of the original". I'm pretty sure such phrase is a mythical creature, the search for its existence sustained by nostalgia and wishful thinking. The Mandalorian given what I heard of bit being a western in space, probably isn't capturing the "magic" of the original at all, because the original was telling a completely different story from a wanderer with a gun, and was instead telling the story of a classic heroes journey. you can't say they are the same at all, they doing two different things, with different tone, plot structure and so on probably. the fact that you consider both good has nothing to do with similarity the rest of the franchise, The Mandalorian probably just does it focuses on well and people ignore how its magic is different from the original's magic to put it under the star wars label.

you cannot capture lightning in a bottle twice. you can only take a setting and use it in ways that work for you and the story you want to tell. in all probability, that is what Mandalorian is actually doing, not trying to retell a story, but tell its own with the things it has.

[Peelee]

I you cannot capture lightning in a bottle twice.

When I got to the second paintball episode of Community, I believed that. I changed my mind very shortly afterwards.