MovieChat Forums > The Hateful Eight (2015) Discussion > The most visually impressive of Quentin'...

The most visually impressive of Quentin's work

posted 3 years ago by Querelle (1603)
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But I don't really connect with it on the same level as most of the others. It's fine, but doesn't blow my mind like Basterds, Pulp Fiction, or Jackie Brown.

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[–] brux (14666) 3 years ago

I could not stand "Pulp Fiction". There were provocative scenes, but I think it is my least favorite of all his movies. "Inglourious Basterds", "Jackie Brown" and "The Hateful Eight" really showed a lot of thought and cleverness ... but Pulp, and Kill Bill I just found kind of stupid. Still up in the air about Django, but it is not one of my tops.

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[–] Querelle (1603) 3 years ago

I love Pulp, not because I'm holding it to any revolutionary cinematic standard, but just because it's very fun. I find it to be a very enjoyable watch.

My list (today) is probably like so:

worst to best

9. The Hateful Eight
8. Django Unchained
7. Death Proof
6. Kill Bill
5. Reservoir Dogs
4. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
3. Inglorious Basterds
2. Jackie Brown
1. Pulp Fiction

If I were to include True Romance, it'd be somewhere in the top 4.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

Inglourious Basterds
Kill Bill
Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
Pulp Fiction
Django Unchained
Jackie Brown
Reservoir Dogs
Death Proof
The Hateful Eight

My ranking changes every now and again, though, and the distance between Inglourious Basterds and Reservoir Dogs isn't that big.

I feel like Quentin had the most to "say" in IB, about violence as entertainment, and managing to show us different facets to morality in warfare, who is "right" what is "good", that kind of thing. Kill Bill, on first viewing, seemed quite shallow to me - just a revenge tale the main point of which was, "Quentin loves samurai movies (vol.1) and also westerns (vol.2)". On further examination, it's about finding your place, family, and its ideas about revenge are a bit more sophisticated than a surface-level reading. Once...Hollywood is the one I'm least "sure" of. It was transportive, so...that's powerful. But I'm not sure yet... Pulp Fiction, naturally. It was groundbreaking. It's easy for me to slide it down going, "Maybe I love it from the hype...?" but then I remember that the hype is come by honestly.

Django Unchained is an epic. It's filled with brilliant performances and great moments. It's also a brutal, honest poem about the tragedy of slavery as well as a cathartic released from that nastiness. It's lower rank is just because I feel this is "peek Tarantino" - like Budapest Hotel for Wes Anderson - and if Tarantino pushes his tropes further, it'll become annoying.

Jackie Brown is a solid film, but it's his least-Tarantino, and that, too has its downside. It's still supremely well-made and Elmore Leonard's genius is felt, too. Plus, you gotta love Michael Keaton!

Reservoir Dogs is so tightly scripted it's hard to put it so low, but these are relative, flexible rankings, and something's gotta give.

Death Proof is nice catharsis for women striking back at abusive men, but it's not terribly deep into that subject.

Hateful Eight is the only Tarantino I don't like, as I've said.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

Funny, I was just having a massive Quentin conversation over on the Chinatown message boards, and it centred around The Hateful Eight! This is the board, if you're interested: https://moviechat.org/tt0071315/Chinatown/60296bcdbdfe5245b62f20df/Forced-myself-to-watch-it-didnt-like-it

My summary is that, although the film is extremely good and high-quality, it's overall attitude presents as wallowing in evil and spite; it felt to me like watching Jerry Springer, just hateful people (naturally, I suppose) being nasty and we the audience got no takeaway. It was dreadfully nihilistic and quite the switch-off. We were contrasting this to Chinatown, or at least I was, which depicts evil, but with purpose, and perhaps more "truth" and less "exploitation". That's the best way I can put it, although I'm not sure my nebulous dislike of the film is easy to describe. I hope I'm getting it across.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Dropping by to note: YES...EASILY the most visually impressive of Tarantino's work.

Part of the great value of The Hateful Eight is being privileged to LOOK at it. The outdoor snowy vistas are gorgeous, but when things go inside and snowy night falls -- the candle- lit super-cabin("Minnie's Haberdashery") comes alive in vibrant blues and golds and grays. The images are literally mouth-watering...evidently due partially to QT's use of that super 70mm lens. I do believe that the cinematography was Oscar-nommed.

So gorgeous is the cinematography in The Hateful Eight that when QT brought his next film out four years later -- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- I was disappointed that THAT movie didn't have such rich, gorgeous cinematography(but it looked plenty good enough and played great.)

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

Yeah, it's a beautiful film. It's absolutely gorgeous and I really wish I'd enjoyed the product more. The script is sharp; it's top-grade. It's literally just that nihilistic bent that makes me dislike the film. When the message of the picture is so far down, it just degrades the whole thing for me, apparently.

But, yes, it looks so good.

OUaTiH looks pretty good, too. I kinda liked its languorous pacing, too, and I had a much better time watching that film.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

My summary is that, although the film is extremely good and high-quality, it's overall attitude presents as wallowing in evil and spite; it felt to me like watching Jerry Springer, just hateful people (naturally, I suppose) being nasty and we the audience got no takeaway. It was dreadfully nihilistic and quite the switch-off. We were contrasting this to Chinatown, or at least I was, which depicts evil, but with purpose, and perhaps more "truth" and less "exploitation". That's the best way I can put it, although I'm not sure my nebulous dislike of the film is easy to describe. I hope I'm getting it across.

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You ARE getting it across. I myself have a little difficulty in "selling" the pleasure of this film with its cast of hateful, nihilisitic characters, but I think I have a "hook" now.

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Yeah, it's a beautiful film. It's absolutely gorgeous and I really wish I'd enjoyed the product more. The script is sharp; it's top-grade. It's literally just that nihilistic bent that makes me dislike the film. When the message of the picture is so far down, it just degrades the whole thing for me, apparently.

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Apparently. You and a number of others. This was one of QT's lowest-performing films at the box office.

Side-bar: When the movie came out, QT made some comments(and demonstrated) in favor of Black Lives Matter and against "killer cops." The police unions demanded a boycott of The Hateful Eight. When it performed so low, a police union boss said the boycott worked.

But DID it? Maybe people were just put off by a Western with nihilistic characters, too long a length and no "big stars" like Leo and Brad in it(though I say it had some very good stars, if not the biggest.)

Meanwhile, QT wasn't exactly putting his money where his mouth was. The Hateful Eight wasn't quite "all in" with African-Americans. Samuel L. Jackson's character is a black man who joined the Union Army to kill white Southern soldiers, but it is revealed that he killed a bunch of white Union soldiers too. Indiscriminately. He just liked to kill white people. It is suggested, as the film goes on, that he's a bit of a race-based psychopath. But counterbalanced by the white psychopaths in the room. (Including hidden Domingue gang members who we saw indiscrimately kill all the black AND white people at Minnie's Haberdashery.)

CONT

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

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SPOILERS here.

I watched The Hateful Eight again the other day. Or -- days. QT for Netflix has split the movie into four episodes of "mini-series" and restored about six minutes of footage(one of which is a GREAT new take on an existing scene.)

But I think I put my finger on why these "nihilistic" character worked for me:

For the most part, all of them in varying degrees are FUNNY. As with The Sopranos and The Wolf of Wall Street, despiciable, evil people become palatable because they talk in one liners almost all the time and make us laugh a lot. (And most of them in all these movies DO get their comeuppance -- death or jail.)

The funniest character is (to me) Oswaldo Mowbray, the British hangman played by Tim Roth with a full tilt accent and over-articulate glee. It is said that not only does Mowbray SOUND like a Christoph Waltz character, but that Waltz was offered the role(converted to German from British?) and turned it down. QT says no, it wasn't for Waltz. I figure that after back-to-back Oscars for QT, Waltz CANNOT ever work with QT again.

So we have Tim Roth as Oswaldo Mowbray making the role his own -- one over-juiced, over-articulate, over-gesticulating moment at a time. Hilarious and charming, start to finish.

Start:

Kurt Russell: What's your name, buster?
Roth: Well, its certainly not Buster. Allow me to introduce myself: Os-WAL-do MOE-Bray!
Kurt Russell: (Smiling) Os-wal--do, huh?

Finish:

Even when he is revealed as a ruthless outlaw killer with a different name, who cold-bloodedly shot a young black woman to death -- and is dying of mortal wounds...Oswaldo is STILL polite, articulate..caring. He even offers his body for bounty after his death if needed.

CONT


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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

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Other funny characters:

Walton Goggins as the Southern-fried possible Sheriff of Red Rock, in full hillbilly twang and saying things like "Well, double-dog damn me" or "Well cut off my legs and call me stumpy" and "Well, I say that the killer is the ugliest one of you --I'm looking at you, Joe Gage."

Demian Bichir as "Mexican Bob." His vocals are like a deep-voiced, growling Cheech Marin at times, always with extra flavor. "You calling me a liar?" "You have any proof, Cabron?" and "Everybody has a mother" are lines of no great humor UNTIL Bechir says them. Moreover, Bichir -- a very handsome man -- rather allows his face to hide deep beneath a beard, a hat, neck scarves, and a high coat...to very comic effect.

Jennifer Jason Leigh as Daisy Domergue. Its amazing how much of her role Leigh plays SILENTLY...always looking at the men around her in calculation, amusement or contempt, sometimes looking like a cute little thing and sometimes looking quite evil. When she says "Thass right, me and one these other fellahs are in CAHOOTS"...its a full on Granny Clampett voice.

James Parks as "OB the Stagecoach Driver." He's not one of the Hateful Eight. He's actually quite the decent fellow. But he says funny things, like about the wonderful comic/symbolic device of the door that has to be nailed shut from the roaring snowstorm: "That door's a WHORE!"

Kurt Russell: He looks like Yosemite Sam, sounds like John Wayne, and proceeds with such bullying bluster towards everyone around him that even if he doesn't SAY funny things...he's still funny.

Samuel L. Jackson: He gets lots and lots and lots of speeches, and his expert line reading makes most of them quite funny to listen to.

And so forth and so on. I daresay that this "Hateful Eight" would be a lot harder to hang out with if QT had not supplied them with great one-liners (and VISUALS -- Russell and Bichir), and the actors had not provided such great line readings.



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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

OUaTiH looks pretty good, too. I kinda liked its languorous pacing, too, and I had a much better time watching that film

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It IS "a much better time" of a movie. Probably the most warm and happy movie QT has ever made , in his own way. Jackie Brown is nice, but ends sadly for its "romantic couple" even as they survive. But the two buddies in OUaTiH weather the storms and come out OK -- and still buddies -- in the end.

QUaTiH DOES look good...QT's movies are nothing if not top-grade professional looking these days. The photography captures 1969 Los Angeles in sun dappled days and neon nights. But...and maybe its the absence of the 70mm lens...its never as rich in color and depth as The Hateful Eight, to me.

I might add that I like how for a couple of scenes in The Hateful Eight, QT deigns to take his camera out into the raging dark blue swirl of the blizzard to watch characters struggle to get the horses in the barn and to stake out a chain path to the outhouse(poor "employee" JB usually gets this "out in the snow" duty.) Gorgeous cinematography of "white murk and swirling winds" -- with a blue tint and a suggestion of "The Thing" from 1982 and its arctic setting. The sound effects and music in the blizzard scenes are top notch.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

OUaTiH's very happy ending is the one thing that give me a little pause on the film. I know the whole thing is set up like a kind of fantasy or faerie story (Once Upon a Time, after all), but there is a part of me that thinks his re-writing of history turns away from the important truth about the Manson family. I'm not going to say it was disrespectful to Sharon Tate, but it's somewhere along that continuum. Like, maybe he shouldn't be pretending it was "all okay".

It's kinda the opposite of what he did with Django. Django shoved racism and America's history with slavery into the faces of filmgoers.

Even Inglourious Basterds, which provides a catharsis (like Django) for Jewish survivors of Nazism, didn't really re-write World War II. It re-wrote specifics, but the War did end with the Nazis dead, Hitler dead, the War won, and so forth. So, while he changed the details, the outcome was largely the same. In that manner, it didn't feel like it was shying away from the horrors of the war. If anything, it highlighted those, as well.

I loved the snowstorm scenes in Hateful Eight. In fact, looping back to my original points about the film, there are no individual scenes I dislike in H8. It's only the aggregate that leaves me with an empty feeling. I'll clarify a bit, it's not just that it's sad, or that these are bad people, or anything. I don't need my art to be happy. It's this x-factor of voyeurism that skeeves me out.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

OUaTiH's very happy ending is the one thing that give me a little pause on the film. I know the whole thing is set up like a kind of fantasy or faerie story (Once Upon a Time, after all), but there is a part of me that thinks his re-writing of history turns away from the important truth about the Manson family. I'm not going to say it was disrespectful to Sharon Tate, but it's somewhere along that continuum. Like, maybe he shouldn't be pretending it was "all okay".

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I"ve given a lot of thought to QT's decision to "re-write the outcome" of Sharon Tate, and to leave her and her baby and her friends alive (and even unaware of what almost got THEM -- I had wondered if the movie would have Brad and Leo entering the Tate house and rescuing her -- no, the big showdown happens at fictional Leo's fictional house.)

One critic said it was OK for Inglorious Basterds to change how Hitler died because, at least, in real life, Hitler DID die(just differently) and the Nazis were defeated..but Sharon Tate WAS killed, so giving her this "reprieve" on screen felt wrong to some.

I end up being VERY OK with how Hollywood(my shorthand) ends...because I feel that it DOES capture the sad , tragic, HORRIFIC reality of what happened to Sharon Tate(if you follow her story through her final meal at a Mexican restaurant and her return home with her friends with murderers coming for them.) If you KNOW the real story, you feel: "What a horrible event. What a normal final night for Sharon Tate...")

CONT


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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

But then, QT pulls his twist and sends the Manson killers to the wrong house(by their choice) and I was satisfied seeing them get so royally killed by Brad(mainly) and Leo because...I've always felt that the Mansons got WAY too much friendly publicity over the years after the murders. Some SDS types praised them for "killing the Man," and they gave jailhouse interviews and obtained fans...

..and QT told us..."No..they were stupid and swine and worthy of our utter contempt, and wouldn't it be great if they had just been wiped out brutally like THIS?'

BTW, whereas Brad Pitt dispatches the Mansons with the usual super-strength and courage of a movie action hero(taking away the gun pointed at his face), in real life, the men at Sharon Tate's house DID try to fight back, but were quickly shot and immobilized(a killer gave this eyewitness account.) So..its not always like the movies.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

It's kinda the opposite of what he did with Django. Django shoved racism and America's history with slavery into the faces of filmgoers.

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Yes, though -- on a smaller historical scale than Hitler or the Mansons -- QT still allowed his slave to kill all the bad guys and reclaim his bride. Truth be told, QT has delivered happy endings for his protagonists many times -- The Bride in Kill Bill; Django and his wife; Brad and Leo. Jackie Brown wins, too -- but loses her possible lover. The Hateful Eight all die because...they're hateful.

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Even Inglourious Basterds, which provides a catharsis (like Django) for Jewish survivors of Nazism, didn't really re-write World War II. It re-wrote specifics, but the War did end with the Nazis dead, Hitler dead, the War won, and so forth. So, while he changed the details, the outcome was largely the same. In that manner, it didn't feel like it was shying away from the horrors of the war. If anything, it highlighted those, as well.

--

Agreed. The movie also went to the queasy trouble of portraying Brad Pitt and his team as cruel and ruthless as the Nazis -they even recruit a serial killer for their team. The scene where "the Bear Jew" happily beats a Nazi to death with a baseball bat is not as satisfying as maybe it could be. Still...the point is made: you had to be this bad to defeat WORSE.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I loved the snowstorm scenes in Hateful Eight. In fact, looping back to my original points about the film, there are no individual scenes I dislike in H8. It's only the aggregate that leaves me with an empty feeling. I'll clarify a bit, it's not just that it's sad, or that these are bad people, or anything. I don't need my art to be happy. It's this x-factor of voyeurism that skeeves me out.

--

Well, at this point, I am not really trying to get you to change your mind about The Hateful Eight. I wouldn't...and I bet I couldn't. Perhaps I've been trying to make clear to MYSELF why I like it so much.

The cinematography is a big deal. So often at moviechat, the chat is about plot and story almost exclusive. But movies are meant to be SEEN, and some of the best ones are simply gorgeous to look at. The Hateful Eight meets that criteria, even if maybe it is not "great."

I have also convinced myself that the reason I could "like the hateful eight" people is that they are written so funny and played by a pile of my favorite actors (I've followed Kurt Russell since his Disney days.)

But..this is just me, now. Convincing MYSELF. I have no feeling that I should try to convince you. I've played my hand! Thank you for talking about it, though.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

I do appreciate the funny. I love the characters Quentin wrote, too, to the extent that they are well-written characters. It's more that the final "message" of the film seems empty to me.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

I think the unpalatable grossness was what turned most people off, yeah, but all that did was kill word of mouth. I don't think people were even finding the film. Here are the factors, as I see 'em:

1) QT's BLM support and the police boycott might have done some damage to the film's bottom line. While Quentin himself seems pretty left-wing, I get the feeling a lot of his big fans aren't. A friend of mine, a college-age guy, once told me he was "getting 'in' to film" and asked me to guess his favourite director. I didn't even hesitate. College-age and male? Tarantino. I think the demographics that like QT's movies aren't so gung-ho on stuff like BLM. Probably a lot of rowdy cops like his stuff, too. But...

2) ...they aren't the only factor, here. I think you're right insofar as the film is just a harder sell in-general. It's not action-packed. There's a lot of action, but not of the car chase and gunfighting variety. There's enough, but it's a slow-burn thriller, and Tarantino's core audience is probably looking for a little more "Crazy-88 vs. The Bride" stuff, or wrist-mounted punch-guns to kill Nazis. So, the movie itself isn't the easiest sell.

3) He butted heads with Disney. Apparently they muscled him out of a premiere at a movie house he loved because Disney wanted The Force Awakens to open there. He voiced his displeasure on Howard Stern. But more to the point, Star Wars might have siphoned off a lot of his audience. Hateful Eight went up against Star Wars. Both have "younger male" as the biggest money-making audience. I think this had to be part of it.

As for Tarantino's commitment to anti-racist filmmaking, I'd personally let him off the hook. First of all, because he treats his black and white (and Asian, and Hispanic) characters the same. As you point out, Jackson's character has very detestable qualities (or lack thereof), but that's the point of the movie: they're all hateful. Second, because he has consistently done this throughout his career. Third, Jackie Brown should let him off the hook for all time. Dude made a movie centring a middle-aged black woman. Any other mainstream filmmakers do that?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I think the unpalatable grossness was what turned most people off, yeah, but all that did was kill word of mouth. I don't think people were even finding the film.

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I've always wondered about that. The Hateful Eight has two really "gross" scenes in it. Did some people see those scenes and tell others to stay away? Did the reviews give enough away that people just didn't come? Or..."people weren't finding the film." Hmm.. Why? Poor adveristing?

I know this: Westerns may be liked but they don't always do too well. Supposedly women don't like them. One or two I dated in my lifetime said for a date movie "I'll see anything with you except a Western."

Django and The Hateful are back to back Westerns. But they AREN'T Westerns. QT called Django(his biggest hit , or close) a "Southern." The Hateful Eight mixes Ten Little Indians and The Thing into the mix.

And thus...a theorem can't be proved here. Django wasn't so much of a Western that it kept people away. (And IT had about two gross scenes in it, too, plus a load of other violence.)

Its a mystery. Maybe a "star thing": Django had Leo.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Here are the factors, as I see 'em:

1) QT's BLM support and the police boycott might have done some damage to the film's bottom line. While Quentin himself seems pretty left-wing, I get the feeling a lot of his big fans aren't.

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Interesting point. Well, QT has certainly (and in some ways, solely) gone against this whole "woke" thing. Race is all over the place. Profanity is rampant(especially that dreaded N word.) Women get beaten and killed(generally, women who deserve it, and sometimes by other women.) Men get raped by men. Brad Pitt beat up Bruce Lee(but Pitt insisted the fight end at a tie, not a win.)

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A friend of mine, a college-age guy, once told me he was "getting 'in' to film" and asked me to guess his favourite director. I didn't even hesitate. College-age and male? Tarantino.

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I myself am not college age...much older ...but that mentality never left me. "So sue me." Hah. Meanwhile: and to think, once upon a time, college age folk really liked Ingmar Bergman.

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I think the demographics that like QT's movies aren't so gung-ho on stuff like BLM. Probably a lot of rowdy cops like his stuff, too.

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QT's relationship with African-Americans -- the actors who work with him and the audience he draws from them(very big for Django) -- is interesting.

Spike Lee was attacking QT over Django and finally Samuel L. Jackson(who has worked for both directors) stepped in with a stinging public quote: "Quentin makes good movies...which, frankly, I don't think Spike has done in some time." Ouch. I hear Sam and Spike made up, though. And Spike HAS made more good movies.

Meanwhile, QT claims he grew up (in LA) around blacks and that a number of his mother's boyfriends were black. He has written great roles for Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Chris Tucker...

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

It's not the individual "gross" scenes, but rather that if a person (me, for instance) leaves H8 feeling like the content was, overall, gross (even if they can't articulate why) they'll tell their friends that the movie wasn't very good. Tarantino's audience can handle plenty of gore (Kill Bill), trauma (Pulp Fiction, et al.), and intense content (...all of them).

It's a shame Westerns aren't more loved. There are some GREAT Westerns. But, yes, you're right; that couldn't have helped.

Hateful Eight and Django Unchained might not be Westerns if you break them down, but most people don't feel that way. Cowboy hat? Six-guns? Western. That's most people. I maintain that Harry Potter has more in common with James Bond (spells = gadgets) than with Lord of the Rings. It's wearing fantasy clothes, but they're thrillers, not faerie tales. They aren't high fantasy. But most people say they are. Same thing here, I think.

I do agree with you that star power mattered. Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio put bums in seats. Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh? Not so much. Samuel L. Jackson's a good draw, though.

Good draw? Western?

Pun intended.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

2) ...they aren't the only factor, here. I think you're right insofar as the film is just a harder sell in-general. It's not action-packed. There's a lot of action, but not of the car chase and gunfighting variety. There's enough, but it's a slow-burn thriller, and Tarantino's core audience is probably looking for a little more "Crazy-88 vs. The Bride" stuff, or wrist-mounted punch-guns to kill Nazis. So, the movie itself isn't the easiest sell.

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Agreed. I recall being quite stunned at the sheer action overkill (with great style) in Kill Bill whent he Crazy 88's arrived . QT had made his name with talk...not action. And here he goes away for 6 years and comes back as a Kung Fu mass action master. And Django had that great one against many shootout at Candieland. I still think writing great dialogue is a greater gift than action directing(which many can do) but..damn QT got it right in Kill Bill and Django.

The Hateful Eight got staged as a play before it was a movie so...you can see where QT's head was. And I guess word got out on THAT too. Whereas I personally found the "Jew Hunter interrogation" at the beginning of Basterds to be much too long, I was engrossed and amused by every dialogue scene in The Hateful Eight. (One example people forget is Channing Tatum weaving a verbal web around Bruce Dern and teasing the old man's survival. This dialogue is razor sharp.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

3) He butted heads with Disney. Apparently they muscled him out of a premiere at a movie house he loved because Disney wanted The Force Awakens to open there. He voiced his displeasure on Howard Stern. But more to the point, Star Wars might have siphoned off a lot of his audience. Hateful Eight went up against Star Wars. Both have "younger male" as the biggest money-making audience. I think this had to be part of it.

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Hmm. I knew nothing about this -- didn't hear about it or read about it. It all makes sense.

Hey, I saw the original Star Wars at Twentieth Century Fox studios in 1977, before it hit theaters. Free tickets, full house, SRO, sitting in the aisles,cheers from start to finish. I KNEW it was going to be a giant hit.

That was in a galaxy a long time ago"

To my mind, there was only one "Star Wars." The original. The classic. With that one title("Star Wars.") Not Episode IV A New Hope. And: "The Empire Strikes Back" wasn't better than Star Wars. It felt like a "middle part" without a beginning or an end. Nice twist ending though. And -- get off my lawn. Hah.

This is why I keep away from all Star Wars boards. Hah.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

As for Tarantino's commitment to anti-racist filmmaking, I'd personally let him off the hook. First of all, because he treats his black and white (and Asian, and Hispanic) characters the same.

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Yes. I get into this -- and QT's background personally in black areas of LA -- elsewhere on the thread. there were various Asian character in Kill Bill, and The Hateful Eight has "Mexican Bob."

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As you point out, Jackson's character has very detestable qualities (or lack thereof),

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I think that's something interesting about The Hateful Eight. Jackson has top billing(the first time in a QT film) and is the "hero" or at least the "master detective" ala Hercule Poirot, but...that backstory about killing Union soldiers and some of speeches about killing white people...he's not what you would call principled. And in his infamous speech to Bruce Dern...his capacity for verbal sadism is unmatched("You startin' to see pictures, aren't you?")

Jackson was also a horrific villain in Django Unchained -- a house slave who had come over totally to the whites(without being honored as one) and totally against his fellow blacks. But he had Jamie Foxx as a corrective.

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but that's the point of the movie: they're all hateful.

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Yes, and I think the interviewers in the mainstream press and the movie press elected to sidestep asking him about it. WHY did he elect to tell that story right now? To warn us, maybe? Because the hate in all directions: white, black, Mexican...north/south...male/female. The film pointedly ends with a racist white man and a racist black man joining forces to brutally kill a woman. ???

On the other hand, this film could just be an analogy to the nastiest chat pages at moviechat, where you see a range from seething anger ready to trigger, to fully unleashed rage. (Rather like road rage in the safety of our cars, from what I've read.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

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Second, because he has consistently done this throughout his career.

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QT recently forfeited a lot of income by refusing to cut the Bruce Lee scene out of OATIH in order to be shown in the millions of theaters in China.

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Third, Jackie Brown should let him off the hook for all time. Dude made a movie centring a middle-aged black woman. Any other mainstream filmmakers do that?

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Not too many. Maybe back in the 70's. Jackie Brown is my favorite of QT's works. Easily his least violent(though there are killings.) And it didn't make a lot of money. I think its made its money since in various TV venues.

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Note in passing: After making The Hateful Eight in which the "N" word is flying fast and furious and several members of the cast are African-American(with Jackson in the lead)...QT gave us Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, and I believe he "threw a curveball." I don't recall a single African-American in the movie. Its about two white guys and one white woman. The "N" word is never spoken. And we're reminded that Manson's psycho cult gang was...all white hippies.

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[–] NGMI (1184) 3 years ago

I guess even QT has got Jogger Fatigue. You know it's bad when even he needs a huge break from them.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

I love Quentin not giving a single care about stuff like China wanting the Bruce Lee scene gone. You've probably seen "I reject your hypothesis."? I love that. Quentin walks the walk. He writes every character as three-dimensional, fully-fleshed out, and fairly-treated. Samuel L. Jackson talked in an interview about how Tarantino has often made Jackson's characters the smartest in the room; if he was racist, he couldn't do that. So, Tarantino knows darn well that he's not racist or sexist or whatever, so when he's "called out", he just goes, "Piss off".

Jackie Brown is underrated. I can't stress it enough to QT's detractors: the man made a movie about a middle-aged black woman. He gave her all the brains, the sex appeal (without going tawdry or pretending her age wasn't a thing), a romantic plotline, and a great part. As far as I'm concerned, that's checkmate, because regardless of what Quentin thinks or feels, he put that out there.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

That last thought is interesting. If intended as a commentary on the amount of hate in society right now, the film might lose some of its aimlessness for me. Maybe I should revisit the film...

Indeed, one of the absolutes right now - crossing all other borders and boundaries - is the vitriol and invective heaping up and pouring out from all sides. How can you pick a team these days? On the Left is cancel culture and calling people out (i.e., scoring points based on how many witches you find to burn), while the Right is bursting with "Proud Boys" and "Nyah-nyah Gotcha" pundits who pretend like they weren't the witch hunters ten years ago. It's madness.

The ray of light is that I do see a lot of people responding to open dialogue and discussion, so I suspect that the sensible centre are larger than the loudmouths to the extreme poles would have one believe. But everybody seems to have a "weak point" or "blind spot" where they are mostly sensible, but then WHAM! they support conspiracy theories about ________ whatever, and their brain is riddled with cognitive dissonance. For my part, I try to watch out that I'm not doing it, gently challenge bad ideas where I see them, and always, always try to listen.

The idea that Hateful Eight is nothing more/less than a critique of message boards is a hilarious idea. I kinda hope that's true. Minnie's Haberdashery is actually just a chat room and every character is just some angry teenager, hate-tweeting, trolling, and piling on with their juvenile, impotent 'net-rage. Major Marquis is a rapid BLM supporter, Mannix is a troll (I'm racist! I'm the sheriff!), The Hangman has hacked Ruth's computer and won't let her sign out until he can report her the mods, and Oswaldo is Ta-Nehisi Coates pretending to be Piers Morgan.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The idea that Hateful Eight is nothing more/less than a critique of message boards is a hilarious idea. I kinda hope that's true.

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Its kind of what I think, and maybe I'm wrong or "too on the nose."

But: The film posits a group of people of whom some (not all) have a "tribal" dislike of the others based on either their race, their sex, or their region (North/South in the Civil War, which is race-based but could pit white people against each other.)

I haven't have found any good interviews of QT getting into WHY he wanted to tell this story. I think
Black Lives Matter was a "misdirection" on his part -- given how hateful Sam Jackson's character is. Django fits Black Lives Matter better.

The Hateful Eight certainly tells us this: if tribal groups can't live together, they will kill each other off. In real life, there are enough barriers and civility to avoid that, but the separatism remains.


One thing I am certain of: the cable news channels in America which now take sides and snipe at each other do so for one reason only: money. Somebody checked the ratings and saw that un-checked anger sells. America's cable news networks are quite willing to sacrifice political stability and civility for cash. From my browsing of these shows, I've found that Fox and CNN routinely attack their counterparts on the other network; and routinely show clips of personalities from the other network to feed raw hate towards them. The over-used professional wrestling simile works perfectly here. Heels and babyfaces.


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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

I wonder if the Civil War remains relevant today because it's when the States forgot the final part of E Pluribus Unum. The South decided they wanted to get out, secede, and no longer be "one" with the North. Humanity seems so divided into groups, tribes, and ideologies, and the American identity has taken hit after hit, with Democrats v. Republicans, North v. South, and racial hatred being reignited (or fuelled, I suppose, since that fire never really went out) often by the very groups that are ostensibly against it. Tarantino must have punched into that by accident, if not purposefully, and is showing us division, hatred, and what a lack of understanding does. After all, the root (so they tell me) of hatred is fear of the unknown and the "other". Hateful Eight is a mystery. It's unknown who any of these people are (also lending credence to the online thing: these are all "avatars" and we have no way of knowing who (if anyone) is truthful, sincere, or trolling).

The worst is stuff like news or politicians who have important jobs to do (informing the public, leading the country) but they use division as power-mongering. News needs "clicks" - sow the seeds of discord.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

I'm almost entirely in agreement with you on Star Wars. I do love the original big three, so I'm not quite there. But I do think Star Wars is better than Empire Strikes Back. As a whole, though, the original trilogy tells a complete arc of farmboy to Jedi master, and it's satisfying and great.

Me personally, I don't care for the PT or the new stuff. At best, they're diversionary entertainment, but that's not the lofty heights that the first film made.

Star Wars fans are nuts, yeah. Megafans are almost always nuts. I think the biggest problem they have is a lack of self awareness. The Marvel guys freaked out when Scorsese said their treasured films weren't "really movies", but were more like theme park rides. I knew what he meant. I like superhero movies (or, I did before the over-saturation), but the Marvel fans flipped their lids.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

The key with Tarantino is that he is - combat or dialogue - always engaged in "action" in the storytelling sense. There is always forward movement in his works. You're right to highlight plays. Plays don't (usually) have armies fighting one another (except in Shakespeare, I guess - that dude knew how to write!) but they always move the story forward. That makes a story feel good and engaging. Tarantino might use violence or words, but he's always moving things forward.

It's easy to do an action scene, it's easy to do some talking (even witty talking with quirky characters) - or, at least, comparatively easy. What's REALLY hard is stitching it together into a 2+ hour story that people love. Making the dialogue or gunplay MATTER: that's the magic trick.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I'm almost entirely in agreement with you on Star Wars. I do love the original big three, so I'm not quite there.

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Oh, I'm roughly in the same place....I lived through the original (first) Star Wars as a really big deal that created desire for more. I lived through The Empire Strikes Back and the critical huzzahs that greeted it (and it had a much bigger budget and Lucas was given all the freedom he wanted -- its his Godfather II). And I lived through Return of the Jedi and the celebratory feeling that "this was it: the big ending."

I recall loving the chase through the redwood forest in Jedi and the battle on Jabba's ship(a nod to the bikini-ed Carrie Fisher playing Princess Leia as a sexpot for the first and last time) and how it ended with the three ghosts happily attending the celebration. That was MY Star Wars trilogy.

But I noticed one thing in Jedi : Harrison Ford, now a much bigger star thanks to Indy Jones, seemed to have requested to be "sequestered" off in his own fairly short sequence, with cuts to it all through the film. In short, now Star Wars felt like more of an obligation to the key star in it; his heart wasn't quite in it, and it showed. The whole thing felt rather "expert but obligatory." It wasn't 1977 anymore -- it was 1983 and that was a lot later in time "back in those days."

I do recall that Lucas gave interviews back then that a lot of us didn't really believe -- like how the first Star Wars was really Episode 4 and that a prequel trilogy was in Lucas' head, and how the story could continue PAST Return of the Jedi for three more, and how Lucas felt he could do nine.

Yeah, right. Sure. Well, Lucas said that in 1977 or 1978 and it turned out I have lived long enough to see that ...jeez, he wasn't kidding.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

In these years, I try to fight the urge to say "it was better back in the old days." I know that younger generations want the later Star Wars films for THEM; the old ones are ...old. The special effects in Star Wars dazzled us in 1977 as the best we'd ever seen -- now I see articles called them "crude and primitive." Yikes.

Its the same way for me with James Bond. I started(alive) with the Connery ones, and even if THEIR effects(and process shots) look pretty bad today, and even if they seem fairly cheapjack compared to the perfectly made Bond movies of today -- these are really the Bond movies that MATTERED. Connery was the only real superstar to play Bond; his Bond was dangerous, sexual and sadistic -- the first Bond films were adult and rough and dangerous. Here was a man with a "license to kill"(that was in the posters -- creepy, no?) Here was a man who didn't end his films getting married and having children -- he met and bedded new women with every movie. Here was a Bond series that broke a lot of taboos and introduced a new age.

But I know I lot of folk for whom James Bond is Roger Moore, or Pierce Brosnan, or Daniel Craig. Depends on when you were born, I guess.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

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But I do think Star Wars is better than Empire Strikes Back.

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Star Wars suggested that a sequel was coming(Vader's alive and spinning around in space) but it ENDED, with the Magnificent Six getting their rewards at a public ceremony(and my theater going so nuts in applause and cheers that I couldn't hear.) "Empire Strikes Back" ended as if the words "To Be Continued" should have been slapped on it. It felt like a "part" to me; not like a movie. Hah -- that's ALL big franchises now. To be continued.

And of course, Mark Hamill had a new face in Empire. He'd had a car accident that rearranged his face, I think -- so they "wrote in" a monster smacking his face and he continued the series never looking the same again.

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As a whole, though, the original trilogy tells a complete arc of farmboy to Jedi master, and it's satisfying and great.

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There you go. We may live in the era of series and sequels, but the classical "three act structure" makes for tighter drama. The three acts of Star Wars; the three acts of the original trilogy.

I have dutifully seen every new Star Wars film since the trilogy. It was interesting in the prequel seeing a young boy become Darth Vader and the birth of Luke and Leia -- you feel "the original being set up and coming into view" but getting there was an CGI animation-ridden drag.

I trust the new sequels have wowed a new generation, but they aren't for me. Best: seeing Han Solo and Chewie emerge -- it was a great feeling(not so much what they DID to Solo.) Interesting: leading the new sequels with the biggest star -- Ford -- but making us WAIT for the lesser star(Hamil) -- thereby conferring a bigger sense of stardom ON Hamill. Pretty smart. And Carrie Fisher's participation has been, partially...as a REAL ghost. Poignant.

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Me personally, I don't care for the PT or the new stuff. At best, they're diversionary entertainment, but that's not the lofty heights that the first film made.

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I agree with you. But new generations (from me) are welcome to their own version of the saga.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Star Wars fans are nuts, yeah. Megafans are almost always nuts. I think the biggest problem they have is a lack of self awareness. The Marvel guys freaked out when Scorsese said their treasured films weren't "really movies", but were more like theme park rides. I knew what he meant. I like superhero movies (or, I did before the over-saturation), but the Marvel fans flipped their lids.

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Well, these films are a reminder that movies DO matter, very much, to millions of people in different ways. Megafanship speaks to the fact that we humans seem to crave "something bigger than ourselves" and seek the fellowship of a common myth. Again, I've elected to understand that the Marvel films ARE something special to a whole new generation.

By the way -- shifting back "on topic"(but I believe that everything is interconnected) Tarantino rather rapidly developed his own massive fan base. Pulp Fiction alone did it, and I always rather liked that he followed that with a much more mellow and "middle aged" movie in Jackie Brown. QT's younger "fanboys" (more on that ghastly phrase in a moment) were evidently taken aback by this movie populated by people over 40 and 50(save Bridget Fonda), but QT was announcing, "I'll make the movies I want to make." Then he came back with Kill Bill and violent younger action.

Fanboys. Nice insult. I guess I'm a fanboy of advanced years, but more to the point, I've had no interest in abandoning QT ever since I saw Reservoir Dogs. He has a real talent -- writing -- that hasn't really diminished over 25 years, and he keeps improving on the technical/directing side. He's earned my fanship(and my money) film after film...EVEN AS most of his films have had one or two scenes I found repellent and/or indicative of a warped sexual thing in QT(directors like QT and Hitchcock became big enough to make whatever THEY wanted to make, as long as they could bring audiences along.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Interesting to me: the worst scenes in QT (say, the mandingo fight to the death in front of Leo on his couch in Django; or Sam Jackson's long speech about what he did to Bruce Dern's son, in The Hateful Eight) have bothered me -- but not really offended me. What has bothered me is knowing how OTHER PEOPLE will be offended -- "Aw, QT -- why'd you have to go and put THAT scene in there?"

QT knows why -- he feels an obligation to shock and push boundaries at least once per film. I guess he admires John Waters? (He never said that, I'm guessing that.) Also, he calls himself a "heavy metal director" and that without the outrage, his movies would be lesser.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I love Quentin not giving a single care about stuff like China wanting the Bruce Lee scene gone.

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Yes, and evidently, had he made the cut and gotten the China release, OATIH would have been his biggest hit ever(his hardly "out of gas.") But QT evidently felt (unlike others in Hollywood) that he has more than enough money already, and can always make more.

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You've probably seen "I reject your hypothesis."? I love that.

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Yes. Though sometimes QT has been unduly harsh to interviewers, in that case he was really saying: "Please don't insult our intelligence with that predictable question. You don't know what you are talking about." It was said by itself.

Because there are no African-Americans in QAITH, I guess the pc reviewers felt that all they could attack was the Bruce Lee scene(which is funny and gives Bruce his due) and -- with extreme stupidity -- the "violence against women" at the end. Given that the women at the end were women who, in real life, slaughtered a pregnant woman near term and her baby with a butcher knife , and a few nights later, slammed a fork in to the belly of a male victim of stabbing...these chicks DESERVED that violence. If only in satisfying fantasy.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Quentin walks the walk. He writes every character as three-dimensional, fully-fleshed out, and fairly-treated.

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Yep. You invariably feel like you KNOW these people, and their backgrounds, and their quirks.

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Samuel L. Jackson talked in an interview about how Tarantino has often made Jackson's characters the smartest in the room; if he was racist, he couldn't do that.

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That's all very true. In Django, Jackson's very evil Stephen the House Slave is CLEARLY smarter than his "master" (Leo's Calvin Candie.)

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So, Tarantino knows darn well that he's not racist or sexist or whatever, so when he's "called out", he just goes, "Piss off".

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It just doesn't matter to him; his interviews are very confident. Plus: he's got the arrogance of a man who knows he has made it in Hollywood, and succeeded at the box office, AND with Oscars AND with a fan base AND with critics who will gratefully get three weeks of think pieces to write whenever one of his movies come out. He has the contempt of a Hollywood winner at times - but he earned it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Jackie Brown is underrated.

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It is my favorite of his films. I sure had liked Reservoir Dogs and I was amazed when Pulp Fiction hit so big, and I waited patiently for "the next one"(it took three years.) I loved the poster with the great cast all assembled (Robert DeNiro's look is dumb cool personified.)

I had always liked Robert Forster. Way back in the 80's, he had played a Middle Eastern terrorist in Delta Force, and I remember I couldn't BUY him in the role. He projected NICENESS in his face and sympathetic expressions. BOOM -- over a decade later, QT FOUND that niceness and made Forster a sympathetic, rumpled hero. (DeNiro wanted that role, but QT said: "No it is for Robert Forster.")

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I can't stress it enough to QT's detractors: the man made a movie about a middle-aged black woman.

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...and that woman had been white in the source novel by Elmore Leonard. This is, to date, QT's only movie from somebody else's material -- that may account for why I like it so much. It has a certain "narrative control and character."

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He gave her all the brains, the sex appeal (without going tawdry or pretending her age wasn't a thing), a romantic plotline, and a great part. As far as I'm concerned, that's checkmate, because regardless of what Quentin thinks or feels, he put that out there.

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Exactly. I'm sorry , but a lot of folks in the entertainment press(and the political press) are just very limited people. They all think alike. QT knows better.

Jackie Brown has been well likened by QT himself to ...Rio Bravo! Both films are long...but not overlong(if you like them.) We comfortably hang out with a bunch of(mainly) likeable characters and just let them talk and hang out themselves. A "Western" plot is there in Rio Bravo; a "caper" plot is there in Jackie Brown. But the REAL fun is just ...hanging out.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And about Jackie Brown, QT also made this great point: with any great movie of a certain type, there is that first time you see it at a movie theater -- and then there are all those LATER times when you can watch it again, reliving the experience, relaxing into the movie like a comfortable couch. That's Jackie Brown. That's Rio Bravo.

Jackie Brown didn't make the money that Pulp Fiction made. That was OK with QT. It made ENOUGH. He took six years off! And came back with Kill Bill and a whole new career.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The key with Tarantino is that he is - combat or dialogue - always engaged in "action" in the storytelling sense. There is always forward movement in his works. You're right to highlight plays. Plays don't (usually) have armies fighting one another (except in Shakespeare, I guess - that dude knew how to write!) but they always move the story forward. That makes a story feel good and engaging. Tarantino might use violence or words, but he's always moving things forward.

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I come for both things with QT. You know, Death Proof -- which QT himself has ranked as the least of his films -- actually falls down on the DIALOGUE side -- but climaxes with one of the most exciting car chases ever put on film -- reinvigorating a tired trope. (Also, the canny QT notes that even if Death Proof is the least of his films, it is still one of his films and "good enough." I agree.)

QT is a unique, gifted writer and both Harvey Weinstein(BOO) his original benefactor, and the studios who today court him -- know that makes him VERY special. He's one of the few auteurs we got.

Talks I like in QT:

All the dialogue in "The Bonnie Situation."(Pulp Fiction.)

Sam Jackson talking to bail bondsman Robert Forster about putting up bail for Beaumont. (Jackie Brown.)

The strip club boss verbally abusing bouncer(and trained killer) Michael Madsen in Kill Bill 2. (A hilarious scene.)

Chris Waltz FINALLY talking directly to Brad Pitt ("Dat's a BINGO!") in Inglorious Basterds.

(More later_

It's easy to do an action scene, it's easy to do some talking (even witty talking with quirky characters) - or, at least, comparatively easy. What's REALLY hard is stitching it together into a 2+ hour story that people love. Making the dialogue or gunplay MATTER: that's the magic trick.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

My favourite dialogue in a Tarantino film is definitely the opening "act" to Inglourious Basterds. There's always great stuff in his films, but that was phenomenal writing (and a great example of his moving the action forward with dialogue).

I'll do my favourites from each film:
Reservoir Dogs - the opening table talk is great, but I'm going to go with the panic of Pink and White reuniting while Orange bleeds out in the next room.

Pulp Fiction - Vince and Jules chat on their way to Marvin's place. This one's FILLED with great dialogue, though, so picking that over Jackrabbit Slim's or the "pot" conversation, or the cabbie, or anything with The Wolf is hard...

Jackie Brown - Jackie laying it out for Ordell "I want a hundred-thousand dollars." But for one single line? "AK-47..."

Kill Bill Vol.1 - The Bride chats it up with Hattori Hanzo, casual first, serious later.

Kill Bill Vol.2 - Bill shows up to the wedding. The high tension and everything the characters *can't* say is genius.

To your choice, Budd talking with his boss, I will say that Budd is an underrated character, and one of the most intriguing parts in that whole film. He comes the closest of all the Deadly Vipers to actually icing The Bride, yet he seems the most sluggish. He clearly has skills and power remaining, yet he chooses to live in that trailer? I think he's punishing himself. He's very complex.

Death Proof - gotta love Stuntman Mike chatting it up with the girls in the bar.

Inglourious Basterds - already mentioned it.

Django Unchained - there's something so great about Django hearing the faerie tale of Siegfried and Brunhilde from Dr. King.

Hateful Eight - it might be them discussing the letter in the carriage.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Cliff talking with Squeaky Frome was my first thought, but I think it's actually Rick with the little girl.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

My favourite dialogue in a Tarantino film is definitely the opening "act" to Inglourious Basterds. There's always great stuff in his films, but that was phenomenal writing (and a great example of his moving the action forward with dialogue).

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I have mixed feelings about that scene. It IS, in a general way, great -- Christoph Waltz arrives as a very peculiar kind of star; funny and menacing. And the suspense builds and builds.. We feel for that poor farmer on general principles and THEN we see the people he is hiding.

Waltz also -- as villains always do -- elects to try to make his murderous anti-Semitic beliefs...reasonable. Understandable. Acceptable. In HIS mind...but it appalls us.

Still...and this is just me....I felt it rather went on too long, Waltz started to become less interesting, the scene made its point earlier, etc.

By the way, I love the symmetry: Waltz won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Inglorious Basterds playing a very evil man. Waltz won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Django playin a very GOOD man. Yin and yang. Two Oscars.

I don't think Waltz can ever work for QT again. Hell, evidently there's only one movie left, anyway.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

Fair enough, and to each their own. I remember watching the thing build, tension upon tension, and I could even see how Quentin was using quirks - not for their own sake - as tension builders (the "I don't want to sully the French language" thing was part of the plot, not just a quirk of Landa's - although it was revealing about that character, too). Then, at the fade-to-black right before "chapter 2", I remember thinking, "Was that it? Was that the whole movie? Where were the Basterds?" and then I realized I wouldn't really care. I'd received such a masterful story in that one scene that I didn't care if that was the whole movie or if Brad Pitt was cut from the movie. Didn't matter. Didn't care. It was brilliant. 20 minutes and I wouldn't have asked for my money back.

On that note, awhile back I watched Inglourious Basterds one chapter at a time like it was a miniseries, and it kinda works like that, too... It's interesting how it's a game of dominoes, just everything being set up until the final push.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

Well, I'm glad Tarantino went with Forster over DeNiro for that part. Good call on Forster's "nice guy" charms. I always thought his character and his "aura" were at odds with one another on Breaking Bad, too. That guy was written to be a real hardcase, but I kept waiting for Forster to be a lot kinder. I think it's something around his eyes.

Thank you for reminding me about the race-swap from the novel! And thank goodness it was produced then, not now, or we'd have morons crawling out of the woodwork to howl about QT "going woke", when it's patently obvious that the man does what he wants; he's not bowing before anybody.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Well, I'm glad Tarantino went with Forster over DeNiro for that part. Good call on Forster's "nice guy" charms. I always thought his character and his "aura" were at odds with one another on Breaking Bad, too. That guy was written to be a real hardcase, but I kept waiting for Forster to be a lot kinder. I think it's something around his eyes.

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Something around his eyes. Exactly. Maybe this -- they are sad eyes(insert joke here.) Forster projects a man who can be tough, but is really just kind of worn down and tired of the terrible aspects of life. He looks like he has been hurt, deeply. And we EMPATHIZE with that in Jackie Brown.

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Thank you for reminding me about the race-swap from the novel! And thank goodness it was produced then, not now, or we'd have morons crawling out of the woodwork to howl about QT "going woke", when it's patently obvious that the man does what he wants; he's not bowing before anybody.

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I suppose the irony is that -- THEN -- it was a fairly brilliant switch on QTs part that gave Pam Grier a vehicle, and he wanted her to have one. NOW, race switching on roles seems to have a defiant element to it, doing it just to DO it. And when everybody does it...

Part of the key to QT's success is that he does NOT bow to anybody. He's won "final cut" privileges on making his films and on WRITING his films, and he gets away with things others cannot. The attacks on him are pretty constant and he just gets it: they don't matter. And I think a lot of us dig that. We certainly can't live our lives that way.

When Weinstein went off to prison, QT offered his next movie(which became OATIH) to various studios and they pulled out all the stops competing to woo him . Practically down on their knees.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Well, I'm glad Tarantino went with Forster over DeNiro for that part

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And the funny thing is, DeNiro's got a GREAT part...one of his best roles, one of his best performances. For a lot of the movie, he just sits there, vacantly; he looks dumb(and he IS dumb) but not THAT dumb. He's also got a great macho look in the film with his beard and longish hair.

Of course, DeNiro delivers a shocker revelation about his character near the end, and then has a brilliant final discussion with Jackson(its funny, but its dangerous for both men.)

Bottom line: star level aside, QT cast both Robert Forster AND Robert DeNiro perfectly in Jackie Brown.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

DeNiro was brilliant in that role, too. He was really great.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

That's astute about the sad eyes. We probably see them and think, this is a guy who's weary and sad, and he's put the bad times behind him, even if he is a touch melancholy.

I think a lot about why some race or gender swaps work and others don't, and almost all of it seems to come down to that: the motivation. Nobody complained about Jason Momoa being blonde-haired Aquaman. Nobody whined that Samuel L. Jackson was playing Nick Fury. But that's because saying, "Samuel L. Jackson is going to be Nick Fury," makes everybody go, "Of course he is." It's easy to believe (for most people) that the casting decision was based on truth to the source material. Of course, it becomes harder for things not to be perceived as a stunt if it's a bigger character than Fury or Aquaman. To race-swap Superman, for instance, and have it come across as, "We just found the right guy for the job," would be tougher.

And, yes, most of the race or gender-swaps now aren't because somebody had a great idea for a new take on a story, but as an end in-and-of-itself, and it becomes this commercial for social justice. Worst of all, if you say, "I don't like it," well, you're a racist. You don't even have to dislike the casting itself. People disliked the gender-swapped Ghostbusters film and were called sexist. They didn't have to bring up the all-female cast, just disliking the movie was "wrong".

So, yeah, all of that pisses people off.

With Jackie Brown, I think it helps that Elmore Leonard gave it his blessing. They cast a black woman as Death in the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Sandman, but Neil Gaiman was involved with casting, so it's hard for me to care (especially because The Endless morph forms anyway).

Yeah, being able to stick a middle finger at the mob does make us love QT's 'tude because we can live vicariously a little bit through that.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

The quirks also feel really "earned". It's not just "quirky 'cause". Smokin' Aces had that. They had "quirky" characters, but they felt like they sat down to write the characters so everybody would talk about how quirky they were, not because they had quirks that works with the plot, themes, personalities, and storylines of the film. I had the same response to the twisting ending in Inception. I love that movie, but I felt like the ending was designed to make people talk about the ending, not end the movie in a way that the story demanded.

Stephen is a brilliant performance by Jackson. I feel bad saying it, because he's so despicable, but it's one of his finest pieces of work. My favourite of his might be Black Snake Moan, though. Jackson's a very fine actor.

You're right: he can be arrogant and abrasive sometimes; that's not such a good look on him. But, I'm just glad there's somebody in Hollywood willing to flip off the status quo. I have mad respect for people who do that. I respect Scarlet Johansson, for instance, for never flipping on Woody Allen.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The quirks also feel really "earned". It's not just "quirky 'cause". Smokin' Aces had that. They had "quirky" characters, but they felt like they sat down to write the characters so everybody would talk about how quirky they were, not because they had quirks that works with the plot, themes, personalities, and storylines of the film.

---

The issue here, I think, is that "Tarantino imitators" are as much endemic to our times as Hitchcock imitators were to his. QT gets the extra power of writing his own stuff and its even tougher to copy him. They come close, to some of it, but never to speaking in the voice of the man himself.

And this: when Hitchcock imitators were doing "NXNW" homages, he was on to doing horror(Psycho", The Birds.) When imitators were on to doing "hip LA crime stories," QT was on to...WWII movies? Westerns?

---

I had the same response to the twisting ending in Inception. I love that movie, but I felt like the ending was designed to make people talk about the ending, not end the movie in a way that the story demanded.

--

Agreed...except I can remember the ending. I remember my reaction to it. so..agreed.



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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Stephen is a brilliant performance by Jackson. I feel bad saying it, because he's so despicable, but it's one of his finest pieces of work. My favourite of his might be Black Snake Moan, though. Jackson's a very fine actor.

--

You will notice that Jackson wasn't in the posters for Django. I'm guessing his "Uncle Ben" white haired look would be seen as condescending in some quarters, and he's such a horrible villain(against his own race) that I don't think folks wanted Stephen "promoted." There was no Oscar nomination.

I love it when Stephen sits down to lay down the law to Django(who is hanging upside down, nude). Not only does Jackson SPEAK great -- he looks increasingly weird and creepy with his white hair and red eyes. Its a combo of acting(Jackson) and lighting/direction(QT). He's scary funny here too -- "And then, outta nowhere...Miss Laura gets the bright idea..."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

You're right: (QT) can be arrogant and abrasive sometimes; that's not such a good look on him.

--

Here's a comparison:

Some Frency guys interviewed Hitchcock about his new movie, North by Northwest , in 1959, for print. Here is some Q and A:

French guy: I am sorry Mr. Hitchcock, but the color doesn't seem to good during the Mount Rushmore sequence.

HItchcock: Well, I can't help that, this happens in the lab.

Me, I think the color is GREAT (blue night) in the Mount Rushmore sequence, but here is a lowly interviewer HASSLING Hitchcock about his NEW movie. Impossible today, witness:

Some interviewer pushed QT on "violence" or some such, on camera, and QT blew up:

"Hey, listen...don't you understand your job here? You are supposed to help ME sell my movie. That is your only role here."

Imagine if Hitchcock said that to the French guy. Hitchcock took an even worse interview with a toughie named Orianna Fallaci or something, and she insulted his every answer. When Hitchcock talked about cool blondes attacking men sexually in taxicabs, the woman interviewer said: "What would YOU know about that?" Hitch's response: "I hear things." Hitchcock took it; QT I daresay, would not.

---
, I'm just glad there's somebody in Hollywood willing to flip off the status quo. I have mad respect for people who do that

--

Yes. Arrogant he may be, but Tarantino has done it "his way" pretty much since Reservoir Dogs. As many have said, he's about the only major writer-director out there making movies that could have played in the rough-and-ready 70's.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

There's such a charming way to the British comeback, the British wit, that makes such verbal slaps far more endearing than when a guy like Tarantino barks out, "I'm shutting your butt down," no matter how deserved. Hitchcock was a genius.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

Yes, the apers of an original are rarely, if ever, as satisfying as the genuine article, and Tarantino's wannabes have characters rambling on with forced pop culture references and cuss words being spouted by characters with meaningless, tacked-on quirks.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

You're right: (Tarantino) can be arrogant and abrasive sometimes; that's not such a good look on him. But, I'm just glad there's somebody in Hollywood willing to flip off the status quo.

---

By sheer coincidence -- as we here discuss a film of his from 6 years ago - QT has emerged for a group of interviews (in June and July of 2021) to promote his new "novelization" of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

And to keep flipping off the status quo. He's covered and defended:

Daisy Domergue getting beat up in The Hateful Eight.

The Bruce Lee scene in OATIH.

His right to make his movies his way -- and for critics to try to make their own movies.

On Bill Maher's HBO show, Maher closed his interview with QT (which was largely given over to debating QT's desire to make only one more film and quit; Maher called that "ridiculous") by praising QT for his willingness to take on all critics and never back down.

Meanwhile, in another interview, QT told his critics (except Bruce Lee's daughter -- "he was her father, after all") to "suck his d..k."

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[–] Mrmojo4700 (20392) 3 years ago

“But, I'm just glad there's somebody in Hollywood willing to flip off the status quo.”
That’s one of the big reasons why I love the guy.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

Isn't it sad that there are a subset of journalists, critics, and reviewers out there who spend whole films looking for stuff to be offended by? Instead of reviewing the movie, they just go, "Oh, this is insensitive. That's triggering. I'm offended. We should be offended."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Isn't it sad that there are a subset of journalists, critics, and reviewers out there who spend whole films looking for stuff to be offended by? Instead of reviewing the movie, they just go, "Oh, this is insensitive. That's triggering. I'm offended. We should be offended."

---

Personally...I think that they are paid to write those things. Its their job. On the internet this "generates clicks" and also is meant to generate debate.

It can certainly be dangerous to people's careers...if they aren't major enough. QT cannot be taken down. At least not yet. That said, I think that OAITH is in some ways a "backing away" from the excesses of The Hateful Eight. No "N" words. No ultra-violence until the very end, and we WANT it (its on the Mansons.)

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

They're probably encouraged to write it, but I think a lot of people do feel that way, so it wouldn't surprise me if that mindset was worming through journalism. A lot of people weep for the lost age of journalism where there was a lack of bias and where "real news" happened, but I'm not sure it ever existed. I think journalistic dispassion might be a dream we've never really achieved. But, that makes me hopeful that enough people will really seek it out.

QT might be backing away, but I think it's just as likely that he's just making the movies he wants to make. When they need n-words, he puts that in, but when they don't, he doesn't put it in. I think that's part of his eye-roll at the question asked of him about Margot Robbie's line count. He didn't care because he wrote the number of lines necessary for the story, and he was annoyed because the journalist didn't understand (or didn't care) that that's how one writes a script.

Bottom line: only Tarantino knows for sure if he pulled some punches, but personally I doubt if he did. He might write more conscientiously in the post-metoo era, but I doubt he'd take it all the way to self-censorship. It's more like...his worldview has probably shifted a significant amount from his younger self. Heck, who isn't a different person? If there was somebody who didn't mature from twenty-five to fifty years old, would you even want to hang out with them?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

They're probably encouraged to write it, but I think a lot of people do feel that way, so it wouldn't surprise me if that mindset was worming through journalism. A lot of people weep for the lost age of journalism where there was a lack of bias and where "real news" happened, but I'm not sure it ever existed. I think journalistic dispassion might be a dream we've never really achieved.

---

Well, we know of "yellow journalism" way back when, and Citizen Kane told the Hearst story in a fictional manner.

What's likely changed today is that "internet publishing" allows "news" sites of all political persuasions (but mainly, two) in America to mix news and opinion into one mushy whole.

The "offense" writing (which is really big at the late Roger Ebert's site) is a mix of the cynical(to get clicks) and the people writing it(who, evidently, really DO get offended). But so many movies today are NOT offensive. Its a very non controversial time.

---

But, that makes me hopeful that enough people will really seek it out.

---

Unbiased journalism? I don't think it exists anymore. What exists is "advocacy journalism" (in the US, Democrat/Repbulican or Progressive/Conservative) in which the base gravitates to the side they like and -- others of us find our balance by reading both and reading between the lines.


CONT

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

QT might be backing away, but I think it's just as likely that he's just making the movies he wants to make. When they need n-words, he puts that in, but when they don't, he doesn't put it in.

---

Its a hard call. I think it took me several viewings of Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (OATIH) to realize: "hey, there are no black characters in this." (After Hateful Eight and Django.) Thus, no "n" words.

The movie is also -- for Tarantino -- extremely non-violent for much of its running time. He's much more interested in "hanging out" and dialogue in this one. The violence arrives first with Brad Pitt punching out Clem at the Spahnn ranch(QT lingers on the blood) -- and then the big finale, which is totally satisfying because "the right people get killed." But for about 2 hours and 45 other minutes...no violence at all. (Note in passing: QT barely does sex scenes at all; right now, I can only think of a funny one between Robert DeNiro and Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I think that's part of his eye-roll at the question asked of him about Margot Robbie's line count. He didn't care because he wrote the number of lines necessary for the story, and he was annoyed because the journalist didn't understand (or didn't care) that that's how one writes a script.

---

The reporter had an "agenda." QT spotted it and rejected it, literally. He said "I reject your hypothesis." And it ended right there.

I'm losing track of where I'm posting what. Have I mentioned that in the same year, Scorsese took the same hit for Anna Pacquin barely speaking in "The Irishman"? But that was the whole point. The whole MOVIE is moving towards the moment when she DOES speak. She says to her father(Robert DeNiro): "Why didn't you call?" and in that moment she is telling her father that she knows he is a hit man, and that he killed Hoffa. And she never speaks to him again . Powerful stuff.

I'll admit it is different in OATIH. Paquin's silence in The Irishman is noticeable and meaningful and pays off when she finally speaks. With Robbie's Sharon Tate, the point seems to be: this story is really about Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt...and Sharon is meant to rather float in and out of the story, as a true innocent (the movie makes the point that if it had not been for her horrible murder, Tate would just be...another Hollywood starlet out to dance and have fun and that's it.)


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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Bottom line: only Tarantino knows for sure if he pulled some punches, but personally I doubt if he did.

---

Its a hard call. When the violence finally arrives in OAITH (killing the Manson killers)...its his usual over-the-top and ultra. But the movie sure is mellow in the two hours-plus before then.

And there's another gimmick: in the "fake" TV series scenes that we see, Leo's Rick Dalton. is killing people left and right. As does "Lancer"(Timothy Olyphant) in the sequence he shoots with Rick Dalton. So there is "fake violence" in this film, too.

===

He might write more conscientiously in the post-metoo era, but I doubt he'd take it all the way to self-censorship. It's more like...his worldview has probably shifted a significant amount from his younger self. Heck, who isn't a different person? If there was somebody who didn't mature from twenty-five to fifty years old, would you even want to hang out with them?

---

Yep..that happens. People change. Filmmakers change. Woody Allen and Spielberg certainly changed in the movies THEY made.

QT revealed in his interview with Bill Maher the other night that he is married(to a beautiful model) has a 15-month year old child("Leo")...and lives in Israel(home of his wife.) Gives him a new world view, I would say.

CONT

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

An interesting twist on the "pulling of punches" in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

As I post(July of 2021), QT is making the interview rounds to promote his paperback novelization of QUATIH.

I bought the book. (NO SPOILERS.) I'm only about halfway through, but in the BOOK...QT does have characters use the N word. And the book is much more violent than the film. And the book seems to be painting Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth - a real John Wayne-style hero in the movie -- as a much scarier human being. (He would not have won the Oscar if he played THIS version of Cliff Booth, I don't think.)

So QT has gotten to have his cake and eat it too. Make a "mellow" movie with less violence than usual -- and no N words -- BUT: write a book and put it all back in.

I can't wait to finish it.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

I think the "hard look" scenes in Tarantino are great. He isn't afraid to "go there". And stuff like the mandingo fight in Django, or the dog attack, those scenes (for me) made the movie. They were brutal. I was uncomfortable watching them. King Schultz, in those scenes, looks like he wants to throw up, and I'm right there with him. Those scenes pound home Quentin's point about how barbaric and inhuman this stuff was. It wakes Schultz up to realities of human cruelty he thought he was inured to and makes him angry. It should make us angry. It's great.

I don't think Tarantino is trying to shock the way John Waters is. I think he's just doing what he thinks the movie needs. Some of that is his fascination with Italian horror, so "shock" is part of it, but it's as much (I think - my guess, anyway) about including that stuff as part of the tradition of filmmaking and storytelling. Why have scenes of sexual violence? Because in the (original) Brothers Grimm faerie tales, Little Red Cap is preyed on like that by the wolf. He's working on a mythic level, and sometimes that means carrying forward the ugliness of those myths. Saturn gets castrated. Don't look away. Learn from it. It's part of our (humanity's) story.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I think the "hard look" scenes in Tarantino are great. He isn't afraid to "go there". And stuff like the mandingo fight in Django, or the dog attack, those scenes (for me) made the movie. They were brutal. I was uncomfortable watching them. King Schultz, in those scenes, looks like he wants to throw up, and I'm right there with him. Those scenes pound home Quentin's point about how barbaric and inhuman this stuff was. It wakes Schultz up to realities of human cruelty he thought he was inured to and makes him angry. It should make us angry. It's great.

--

Well...I agree with you...to a point. Those scenes surely disturbed me. I could handle them. I think I end up more worried about OTHER people being disturbed. And not the "usual suspects" who are paid to be offended. Just "regular people" who "go to the movies."

But I suppose QT knows "regular people who go to the movies" these days CAN take these scenes. The Mandingo fight in the nice quarters of Calvin Candie for his amusement is at once a brutal scene AND an indictment of an inhuman mind set ("We're having ourselves a bit of fun.") This scene is laying the groundwork for QT's point in the movie: "Why don't these slaves just rise up and kill their white masters." Calvin Candie surely could not best one of those Mandingo fighters on his own. But he's got his one henchman(James Remar) nearby with a shotgun ready at all times, and, it turns out, a small army of henchmen out at Candieland. He's got backing to enforce his bigotry.

CONT

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT Interestingly, Sam Jackson's Major Marquis in The Hateful Eight, rather "flips the tables" in out to verbally torture General Bruce Dern(and the audience, with "pictures") about his own merciliess cruelty to a white man(Dern's son). Its no less disturbing.

But here's the thing: for all of the "relevance" and "daring" of QT's disturbing scenes of violence, this trails along with them: are we looking at the work of a sadist having been given a studio's full support to enact his sadism on the screen (the car crash murders of young women in Death Proof; some of the girl fights in Kill Bill.)

Hitchcock got the same bad press in his final decade of work: Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain Topaz and Frenzy -- all of his 7 final films except one(Family Plot) featured bloody and cruel killing scenes, some lingering. Was Hitchocck "doing something profound" with these disturbing scenes - or somehow getting off on filming them and foisting them on a public once acquainted with the lower key thrills of Rear Window and To Catch a Thief?

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

This is some of the coolest concepts I've been thinking about for awhile, and I'm glad you brought it up. Movies are myths (I mentioned this elsewhere) and they are that important to people. They are religious for people. Some of this might be connected with Nietzsche's idea, "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?" I think skepticism in tradition, spirituality, religion, history, and institutions has lead us to a dark place. I think, culturally, we've done so much postmodern deconstruction that we're almost in danger of forgetting how to build things up again. One of the things we have done as a counter-weight, I think, is to invent new gods that we know from the start are make-believe, but then we worship them anyway.

Why are people so bent out of shape because Han Solo was a deadbeat dad? Or why do they chafe at the idea that the next James Bond should be a woman? It's because these characters have become gods, and messing with them is blasphemy.

Back to the specific from that bigger-picture thing, though, I know what you mean with the Marvel fans having found something meaningful there, but I wish they were more self aware of it. I love the first Avengers film. I think it's brilliant. But it isn't really a great "movie". There's so little tension in the final fight (will they win!?), and the enemy forces aren't even presented as a challenge. Whedon wasn't writing it for that, though, he was writing out a one-hundred million dollar version of kids playing with action figures. I know I didn't want a "good" movie, I wanted the action figure thing.

I think fanboy is used too much, but it certainly applies in some circumstances. I think when people have lost self-awareness regarding a particular property, and when they are obsessed with that thing, and so forth...yeah, I think it applies. And for the record, just because somebody REALLY loves superhero movies, or Star Wars, or anything, that wouldn't make me call them a "fanboy". It's just these angry, trollish types with a babyishness to them; those are the "fanboys".

There are fans and there are fanboys.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Back to the specific from that bigger-picture thing, though, I know what you mean with the Marvel fans having found something meaningful there, but I wish they were more self aware of it. I love the first Avengers film. I think it's brilliant. But it isn't really a great "movie". There's so little tension in the final fight (will they win!?), and the enemy forces aren't even presented as a challenge. Whedon wasn't writing it for that, though, he was writing out a one-hundred million dollar version of kids playing with action figures. I know I didn't want a "good" movie, I wanted the action figure thing.

---

The domination of MCU and DCU films at this time in film history will perhaps best be understood by future generations when it ends. If it ever ends.

I know Marvel from my personal life, over decades. As a child I moved with my family into a new house and waiting in my room was a box full of Marvel comics from the kid who lived there before me.

Over a decade later, I had a teenage friend who swore from Marvel comics; he even named his dog "Spider-Man." And he was not a "nerd type." He was a muscular athlete who dug the muscular superheroes (and had relationships with young women.)

So I was aware of this universe well before -- DECADES before -- it became zillion dollar movies. Its been there as long as I can remember. Its a "parallel world" to a real life world which can range from dull to depressing (if you LET it -- go on a hike, go to the beach, have sex -- maybe you'll like life better.)

But people need an alternative universe, and want it, and its a mystery why they do, but they do. The Avengers also -- like The Magnificent Seven, The Guns of Navarone, The Professionals, and The Dirty Dozen before it -- offers up the camaraderie of "a group on a mission," forced to be friends.



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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

I really hope it ends. I really do. It wearies me to think of this never-ending obsession with superhero movies. To be clear: I love superheroes, comic books, and the idea that a kid can watch a movie based on them, but just the extreme obsession to the exclusion of 90% of other potential films is disappointing. We used to get stuff like Heat and Plans, Trains, and Automobiles. Now we get thirty-one flavours of tights and flights.

Comic books can be mythological and valuable as art and as the stories that shape culture, but it's not healthy to wrap oneself in - as you put it quite well - the alternate universe. I think we need the alternative universe because storytelling is one of the most important factors of humanity. It's how we process the universe, in some way.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

That definitive ending - the tight script in general - is one of the reasons why the original Star Wars is my favourite one. It's the best-made one, I think, and there's something special about the magic of the world being revealed for the first time by people with dreams, visions, and no money. It's special. It feels special.

The defiance of three-act structure is, in my opinion, what killed the PT and ST before they even began. People have pointed out how utterly disposable The Phantom Menace is, in terms of plot, and that's strike one. After that, it shows us two movies of a petulant man-child "going" to the Dark Side, but he's clearly already there. It's a character study without a good central character.

Star Wars is, to me, Luke Skywalker's journey, and by trying to expand the world without him, the story got lost. I think one of the reasons people hated The Last Jedi's treatment of Luke was not because it gave him flaws, a bad side, made him screw up - no. Of course not. We watched a trilogy of him becoming impatient, failing, and tripping himself (and others) up. That wasn't it. The problem was that he was in the role of a mentor in The Last Jedi, but he was a bumbler. His "student", meanwhile, was allowed to be flawless. The real problem, though, is that by removing him from being the lead character (or even a primary-support character) is that we know that he doesn't get an arc. The final film won't be about Luke redeeming himself as a failed teacher and finally saving Kylo Ren. We know that's not going to happen, so Luke is just doomed to be bad at his job.

My point being: if Star Wars began as Luke's story, then the prequels told backstory we didn't need (and told it badly), and the sequels went spinning off in a whole other direction like Vader in a TIE fighter.

Han and Chewie coming on-screen was a beautiful moment. You're right. And for all my ranting up there, I won't pretend like there were a lot of good things in the other Star Wars movies. The problem, though, is not that they failed on a scene-by-scene or moment-by-moment basis, but that they screwed up the foundations. The basic stories were bad, so they failed. They needed to spend more time at the script phase.

I do deeply agree with that last point you made: if somebody else disagrees with me entirely and the magic of the movies and Star Wars was revealed to them through Rogue One: great. Everybody gets to love the movies they love. I might debate movie quality on message boards, but I'll never (try never, anyway) judge people for their choices or for having fun with a film.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

That definitive ending - the tight script in general - is one of the reasons why the original Star Wars is my favourite one. It's the best-made one, I think, and there's something special about the magic of the world being revealed for the first time by people with dreams, visions, and no money. It's special. It feels special.

---

Absolutely. You have to remember that in the 70s, science fiction(or SciFi, or Sci-Fantasy) films were being made, but were often pretty clunky and cheapjack even if their premises were good. I am thinking of The Omega Man and Soylent Green(both with Charlton Heston, not a good thing) and Westworld. Later, Logan's Run. Indeed, in the summer of 1977, Fox had greater hopes for a rather chintzy SciFi movie called "Demolition Alley" than for Star Wars.

Star Wars and that opening shot (the little bitty spaceship being chased by a GIANT spaceship that just went on and on filling the screen) made the statement right from the bat: this was NOT going to be a cheap, silly, unprofessional venture. Even if the characters spoke some rather tinny and campy dialogue at times ("I could smell your foul stench from here, Lord Vader) the visuals were A-number one, top notch, big budget, you name it.

The film mixed several genres at once: medieval fantasy(ala Camelot), war movie(especially of the Air Force dive bomber variety); Western (Han Solo was called "The John Wayne of the universe" and drew his hand gun like a gunfighter) and children's film(R-2 D -D; C-3P0.) There were shootouts AND swordfights and those swords were so COOL (kids mimicked the sounds of light sabers in their backyard play). References to The Wizard of Oz, The Magnificent 7, and Triumph of the Will played for those of us with memories.



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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

My point being: if Star Wars began as Luke's story, then the prequels told backstory we didn't need (and told it badly), and the sequels went spinning off in a whole other direction like Vader in a TIE fighter.

--

"...like Vader in a TIE fighter." Hah. Great line. Well, as I see it , "Star Wars" was a stand-alone classic(which is why entirely successful attempts to call it "Episode Four: A New Hope" are deflating to me), "Empire Strikes Back" is "the one for debate"(better than the first? I'm a "no," but others are "yes" -- see Godfather/Godfather II); Return of the Jedi nicely but a bit too patly wraps things up...and...

...everything after has made a ton of money but with no real relevance to our hearts and minds at all. Except, I guess, for a new generation that has been jaded by every series of CGI adventures AFTER Star Wars.

Interesting to me: the star who came out of Star Wars was Harrison Ford. Because of his CHARACTER: the tough guy, the action hero. I recall Nick Nolte coming out of Rich Man, Poor Man the year before the same way: the tough guy, the action hero(though Nolte wanted a more arty career than that.) Mark Hamill in Star Wars and Peter Strauss in Rich Man Poor Man were the "also rans" -- good guys in their stories, but a bit too boyish and straight arrow. Ford and Nolte were "guys for guys to like and for women to love."

Which is why Star Wars went astray in the prequels: there was no Harrison Ford.

Which is why it WAS great to see him and Chewie(and Chewie's nostalgia voice) come back.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I think fanboy is used too much, but it certainly applies in some circumstances. I think when people have lost self-awareness regarding a particular property, and when they are obsessed with that thing, and so forth...yeah, I think it applies. And for the record, just because somebody REALLY loves superhero movies, or Star Wars, or anything, that wouldn't make me call them a "fanboy". It's just these angry, trollish types with a babyishness to them; those are the "fanboys".

There are fans and there are fanboys.

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Well, I'm a fan...of certain filmmakers. But I was called a fanboy once and I thought..."hmm...am I the world's oldest fanBOY?" An honor?

Its been two directors for me, decades apart, with some in between.

Hitchcock(when I was young) and QT (for the past 30 years.)

With Hitchcock it was easy. He was a "fun" presence what with his TV show, his short story collections for kids, his Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series of Hardy Boys like books.

And then I saw some of his best movies, all on network TV, all in about a two year span: Vertigo, Rear Window, North by Northwest, The Birds, The Man Who Knew Too Much...plus, Psycho was a big deal on TV even though I wasn't allowed to see it. Hitchcock did ALL of those?(they were great.) AND the TV show? AND the books?

Hooked. Easy. I eventually got to see Psycho -- and liked it best of all. And this -- I would dutifully watch the works of other directors during this time(Ford, Hawks, Wilder, Preminger ) and...not ever as exciting as Hitch. And lesser directors? Forget it.

CONT

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

Fast forward -- through Peckinpah and Altman and Nichols and Spielberg and Scorsese and Lucas(a little bit, he rarely worked) and -- Tarantino arrived with a splash in the 90s and it was the same deal: I liked everything he made(like Hitchcock, he dealt in death) and I was excited thinking about when the next movie would come and what it would be. QT disappointed a lot of people with The Hateful Eight...but not me.

Hitchcock and QT rely on great scripts first(QT writes his own), and great cinematic style. Plus both men often used great movie stars to tell their tales.

So...I'm a fan. Hitchcock is long behind me(he died in 1980) but QT is here for me now.

Plus any number of other directors and writers who deliver the goods.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

100%, yes. I've seen (and enjoyed) a lot of those slap-dash sci-fi films of the pre-Star Wars era. They have their charms, in their own way, and some are great for their concepts if not the execution, but you're right: Star Wars was a major game-changer. The positive influence of Star Wars was to show studios that sci-fi could be taken seriously and presented with credibility instead of as a bit of a joke with cardboard monsters. The downshot of its legacy, of course, is the invention of the blockbuster - with all that merchandising and infantilization of the audience - that took us out of the '70s era of "art films as major releases" (Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola, et al.), and paved the way for the superhero era.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

100%, yes. I've seen (and enjoyed) a lot of those slap-dash sci-fi films of the pre-Star Wars era.

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As I sit here in the CGI effects perfection of the 21st Century, I'm here to tell you that we KNEW movies like Omega Man and Soylent Green were pretty clunky(they were made by movie studios in financial trouble) but....they were all we had, so we took them. They also invariably had great premises, often from great SciFi novels.

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They have their charms, in their own way, and some are great for their concepts if not the execution, but you're right: Star Wars was a major game-changer. The positive influence of Star Wars was to show studios that sci-fi could be taken seriously and presented with credibility instead of as a bit of a joke with cardboard monsters.

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Yep. Once we all saw the crystal clarity and big budget effects of Star Wars -- plus the exciting "movie-ish" pace and style of the film, we KNEW SciFi would never be th same again. I will note here that one of George Lucas favorite movies in college was "The Wild Bunch" which is far more violent and "for adults" than Star Wars, but which inspired George to make HIS space opera a film of cinematic dazzle and speed.

And hey, "Star Wars" had ALEC GUINNESS in it. Though he eventually hated being known for Star Wars only, he came to it as a Best Actor Oscar winning star(The Bridge on the River Kwai) and "prestige actor" of the highest level. Guinness alone made Star Wars look classy and "A."

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CONT

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The downshot of its legacy, of course, is the invention of the blockbuster - with all that merchandising and infantilization of the audience - that took us out of the '70s era of "art films as major releases" (Scorsese, De Palma, Coppola, et al.), and paved the way for the superhero era.

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I look at it this way: for about the first two decades, the summer blockbusters were usually -- at least once -- stand alone classics and "surprises": Jaws, Star Wars, Alien, Raiders, ET, Ghostbusters...even Burton's Batman.

But now, there seems to be a "rotating mix" of the SAME blockbusters every summer -- Marvel movies; Superman movies, Batman movies. Bond has been relegated to the fall or spring(whenever HE gets back.) The small scale action of "The Fast and the Furious" back in 2001(I saw it, liked it) became this garguantuan behemoth franchise we have today. I guess the original WAS a surprise, but now its a theme park ride.

Note in passing: he's DC, not Marvel, but I guess Batman is the biggest franchise guy out there. Especially when the Joker is the villain. I think this is because Batman does NOT have super powers, and is hence more in the James Bond/Mission Impossible mode. "In the beginning" the Batman movies were "costume parties for superstar villains" (NIcholson, Arnold, Jim Carrey) but now lesser lights do just as well. Key: keep Robin out the movies to keep the James Bond effect.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

I don't think it was better back then. Star Wars was. I'll say that. I think those films will stand the test of time in ways that the newer films won't. I think the PT and ST will remain big with their respective generations, but the OT will be perennial. Just a prediction.

Love the early Bond films, too. You're right: the originals were more adult. I miss that quality. I love each incarnation of Bond for what it is, but none of them are quite what Connery was: that perfect blend of gentleman and thug.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Love the early Bond films, too. You're right: the originals were more adult. I miss that quality. I love each incarnation of Bond for what it is, but none of them are quite what Connery was: that perfect blend of gentleman and thug.

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Connery remains the only "true movie star" to play Bond. Which is to say, he could carry and open OTHER movies on his own. Pierce Brosnan did that a little bit, but not for long. Daniel Craig kept failing except now he has ANOTHER franchise("Knives Out") which wasn't really his doing.

Meanwhile, Connery's "gentleman and thug" bit was quite the reason for his Bond standing out. Here was a man who looked a bit scary on the screen, who carried an edge of sadism and seemed to get as much pleasure out of killing bad guys as bedding women. Roger Moore could not project that at all, nor really much of any of them until...Daniel Craig. But by the time Craig got the role, the sexist womanizing was removed, so THAT part of Bond was gone, and even the brutal fights seemed more like combat than sadism.

Dr No and From Russia With Love "made Bond's name" but with Goldfinger and Thunderball, Bond was now a hit of "Titanic" proportions and Connery became a superstar. It was a BIG deal back then in the 60's.

And it faded. All the TV spy shows went off the air(The Man From UNCLE, The Wild Wild West, I Spy.) You Only Live Twice underperformed, and Connery quit. Lazenby was quite good in the very good "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," but IT underperformed. Connery came back in Diamonds Are Forever, but it was the 70''s and Bond seemed passe. Moore specialized in "spoofy" Bonds that referenced big hit movies of the 70's -- Shaft(Live and Let Die); Enter the Dragon(The Man With the Golden Gun), Jaws (The Spy Who Loved Me) and Star Wars(Moonraker.)

Bond has survived, for decades...but not necessarily as anything important.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 3 years ago

Ford definitely was bummed out that he didn't get his hero's death like he wanted. So, yeah, I think he phoned it in a bit in Return of the Jedi. I also think that his slightly harder-edged character didn't fit as much in Return of the Jedi's lighter tone. Credit where it's due, criticism, too: Jedi does pander to the young crowd a bit too much.

Lucas went back-and-forth about how many movies it was "supposed" to be. I looked it up once, and he yo-yos between 1, 3, 9, 6, 9 - it's changing - up and down. I don't think he had as much of a long-game plan as he pretends sometimes. Not unlike J.J. Abrams' claims with stuff like Lost, ironically.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Ford definitely was bummed out that he didn't get his hero's death like he wanted. So, yeah, I think he phoned it in a bit in Return of the Jedi.

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I"ve always felt it is interesting when you can SENSE a star "phoning it in," not being committed to the part. Paul Newman said when he didn't like a scene, he would "play it leaning against a wall" -- in his MIND. No commitment. Newman played a LOT of the so-so Hitchcock movie "Torn Curtain" leaning against a wall.

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I also think that his slightly harder-edged character didn't fit as much in Return of the Jedi's lighter tone. Credit where it's due, criticism, too: Jedi does pander to the young crowd a bit too much.

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Yes. The Ewoks. Also, by now Ford knew that Indiana Jones had made him TRULY a stand alone superstar(Star Wars made him a star - -but Jones was HIS movie.)

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Lucas went back-and-forth about how many movies it was "supposed" to be. I looked it up once, and he yo-yos between 1, 3, 9, 6, 9 - it's changing - up and down. I don't think he had as much of a long-game plan as he pretends sometimes.

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Yes...but...I've lived long enough to see Lucas' 'yo yo musing" become REALITY. Three prequels. Three sequels.

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Not unlike J.J. Abrams' claims with stuff like Lost, ironically.

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Well, I suppose its a "promoters game" to keep us interested. Interestingly "sequels" are often bad and have a bad rep: "continuing a story that ended perfectly, just to make money." But SERIES (James Bond, Star Wars, Indiana Jones_use the TV idea to say "we are not exploiting a stand alone movie, we are making a series of adventures.) Works a LITTLE better.

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[–] Mrmojo4700 (20392) 3 years ago

I’m a huge Tarantino fan but I place The Hateful Eight on the bottom of his films. I do agree with you that it is visually stunning though.

Tarantino borrows here from Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence (1968), an absolutely great film also scored by Ennio Morricone.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1h1zpQkX6gA

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