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I have very [CHAT] expectations for this thread. Very [CHAT] indeed.
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Alright, i'll come back after you guys get off your menstrual cycle or whatever.
Maybe you should re-read what has been posted, nothing has been that bad- and you're the one who's made the biggest deal about some people voicing their opinion. Pot meet Kettle much?
This is also the only reason I enjoyed Jurassic Park 3 when I saw it in the theater, even though I was all the time aware while watching it it was pretty terrible as a movie, it was pretty decent for a ride.
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Calling the visuals and the 3D a gimmick that prop up a "shitty movie" or something seems pretty dismissive with a movie that was basically all about creating a completely imaginary place and making it as real as technology could possibly do. Honestly the actual story going on there in the movie is sort of beside the point.
Orik: Are you trying to make a point, or what?
Not if you're James Cameron. If you're James Cameron, your movies get greenlit because you're James Cameron, and are going to make a ridiculous amount of money for the studio, even if it's a story about talking toilet seat covers being paradropped into Antarctica to save a stranded nuclear submarine crew from killer mutant penguins.
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Movies get greenlit because the execs think it will make money.
Kind of like asking why someone who doesn't dress stylishly bothers to wear clothes at all. Audiences expect Sci-Fantasy Action/Adventure movies to have a narrative, because that is how the filmic tradition has evolved over the past century.
You got me there... but that's how crap like GI:Joes gets made.
Kind of like asking why someone who doesn't dress stylishly bothers to wear clothes at all. Audiences expect Sci-Fantasy Action/Adventure movies to have a narrative, because that is how the filmic tradition has evolved over the past century.[/QUOTE]
Shouldn't we expect a good narrative from our movies? I mean, the narrative and characters are the foundation of damn near every single classic movie. Sure, some of them have visuals that will give your eyes orgasms but they aren't renownd just for the visuals. Look at LotR. Great story, great characters, supurb visuals. They all work together to make an amazing movie.
Transformers 2- Great visuals... and... well... great visuals. Sure, it made a shitload of money, but it has a 6.1 rating on IMDB.
Sure these are two quick examples but overall, there is a consistency there.
But then again I liked Speed Racer and I think there is a giant conspiracy going on where millions of people only claim to like mushrooms on their pizza but don't actually like it.
e: and my view on being critical on movies isn't so much that "My view is right and your's is wrong!" but that I like to have discussions- to hear other people's opinion and share mine. That is entertaining to me. Only on very rare occasions am I actively trying to change someone's opinion.
No? If I expected that I'd be disappointed constantly, because studios and their shareholders don't care if anything they make turns up on the AFI top 100, as long as it makes them money. Maybe if you were unfeasibly wealthy and had an X-Prize type scheme going where you handed a billion dollars to the guys who made the best movies in the every year, you might start to expect studios to try to make something good on a consistent basis.
It's easier to just assume everything is going to be complete horseshit and treat it as such and then be surprised when things are less shit than you expected, rather than assuming every movie is going to, or aims to be, or should aim to be, Casablanca-level quality.
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Jurassic park is one of my favorite movies ever. Jurassic park was a movie with a story that can be boiled down to "So, what if there was a dinosaur amusement park, and then THEY GET LOOSE?!!?!! SHENANIGANS ENSUE!"
Frankly I cannot imagine any scenario where a better story would have made Jurassic Park a better film, because at the end of the day once the velociraptors are loose who gives a shit (besides film critics).
Also, JP is different because it is a story that hadn't been told 100's of times before out side of the most basic "techonology bad!" trope you can parse the move down to.
It's 1993, and dinosaur amusement part tycoon John Hammond is dead. The opening shots show Jurassic Park, Hammond's vast, elaborate, now unkempt island in Costa Rica. Interspersed with segments of his newsreel obituary are scenes from his life and brutal, velociraptor-induced death. Most puzzling are his last moments: clutching an amber cane, he mutters "Chaos Theory." The newsreel editor feels that until they know who or what Chaos Theory is they won't have the whole story on Hammond. He assigns a mathematician called Ian Malcolm to find Chaos Theory.
EDIT:
What?? Jurassic Park's plot is not even remotely original. King Kong? The Lost World? The Valley of Gwangi? Any 50's sci-fi B movie with a scientist and a giant creature of any sort? What part of Jurassic Park's story is supposed to be original?
I mean, I love Jurassic Park, but I'm not going to pretend that it's anywhere near being a novel concept.
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When did they ever try to make a theme park of dinosaurs? King Kong comes close, I suppose. Like I said, the base "Techonology BAD!" is a trope and big monster movies have been around forever but... really it was a pretty unique twist on it
edit: and... I suppose it should be noted that I haven't seen or read JP since I was 13. My memories might be lying to me.
closing shot is a chunk of amber with a mosquito in it being thrown into a furnace
The Valley of Gwangi. They have an Allosaur as an attraction in a circus...and then THINGS GO OUT OF CONTROL.
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Like clowns throwing Pies?
At Dinosaurs?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXRkwR9zDRc
See, I would have said his old flea circus.
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At first I was dissapointed there weren't any clowns.
Then I thought it was amazingly hilarious.
Then I was glad Spielberg waited until technology made Dino's more or less believable.
Except he didn't. He was going to make it with stop-motion before some guys at ILM convinced him with some CGI tests to let them give this new-fangled computer thing a whirl.
Some of the animation for it was done by the stop-motion guys they were going to use originally- ILM made a metal skeleton with a bunch of sensors on it, and it would translate the position of the skeleton to the computer model, on a frame-by-frame basis; exactly like stop-motion.
Spielberg just wanted to make a big monster movie with crazy dinosaurs.
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I think i remember something that looked incredibly like that movie durin one of the greenscreen games on Who's Line is it Anyway.
e: Waited, or stumbled upon. He went with the right choice. Something tells me that, had they gone for stop motion, they would have been laughed out of the theater when it premiered.
Well, maybe not that bad, but it would not have been received nearly as well- the immersion wouldn't have been there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEK9mitagS8
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And that just looked silly, even to my young, highly untrained eye.
e: Maybe that was very very early test footage?
e2: the one where it like... snarls and pulls its upper lip up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hox0UfY0YQ
Yeah that was a planning animatic. Going by that, his real stroke of brilliance was going with actual actors.
EDIT: I think I've just exposed myself as tragically massive Jurassic Park dork now...
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I forgot that there was absolutely no reason to have Goldblum's Cassandra excursion be a mathematician, let alone spout a bunch of goop about Chaos theory. I can only assume that Crichton had a massive fractal boner at the time. Actually, it surprised me how much I had forgotten.
A song by the Cold War Kids comes on and I start wanting to listen to 'We Used to Vacation'. Bam, that's the next song which plays. Then as that finishes I find myself wanting something cinematic, maybe something from the Metal Gear soundtrack... Up next is the 'Theme of Love' from MGS4.
Maybe they'll do a "Special Edition" for 2013, where, since chaos theory is no longer the Hot New Thing, they'll just go back to the original plans and digitally replace Jeff Goldblum with a warty, doom-prophesying witch speaking in iambic pentameter.
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