The Like/Hate Thread

[Anzekay]

the new SW movies were the first movies of their kind. of course there is a learning curve to all new things, that doesn't make it wrong or bad. it's amazing that lucas was able to spearhead the film industry into a paradigm shift by combining complete digital film with extensive use of digital effects. it's been a little more than ten years since episode1 and things are not just better, it's getting better at an accelerating rate.

the same can be said of 3D technology. sure, it's a gimmick and is often poorly used today. by definition of it being new tech, the industry doesn't have many people who know what to do with it. what's really crazy is that things are changing so fast these days, 3D is going to be obsolete before the end of the decade.

Well, the new SW movies did have a lot of cutting edge tech that helped give the industry in general a push in the direction of digital filming, but you can't say they were the only movie that had that sort of effect. The Matrix came out in the same year, and it also had a similar effect on the industry, to name one example. But in the end, yes, they were pretty groundbreaking in terms of tech advancements. But being groundbreaking doesn't mean they are good, and doesn't mean they didn't sacrifice key elements of what makes a film good in order to use all that CGI to the extent they did. They used some awesome stuff that really had the potential to enhance the film, but in the end they just went overboard massively. By comparison, though, the Matrix (which still having a very heavy presence of digital effects) used them in a much finer way and produced a movie that was much more well regarded critically than Episode 1.

I'd dig up the interview, but it's a video one and I can't remember exactly which interview it was, but I remember Lucas himself stating that CGI should be used as a powerful tool to enhance a movie, not become the movie itself. It's just a shame he seemed to have forgotten that when he directed the PT.

Back to 3D. It certainly can be used as a powerful tool to enhance a movie (this has been shown a small handful of times, but as long as such examples exist it's true). But what's been happening with 3D tech since Avatar is that instead of using it to make a film better (most of the time) it's been used as a way to increase the profit that a film produces, and in many cases I would wager that the focus on adding 3D can severely detract from the focus on just making a good film. It is being used as a- if you will- gimmick. It being new tech doesn't really excuse how poorly it's being used; it's just a reason for why such poor use occurs so damn often.

[Vad]

I dislike 3D.

[Pinky]

Well, the new SW movies did have a lot of cutting edge tech that helped give the industry in general a push in the direction of digital filming, but you can't say they were the only movie that had that sort of effect. The Matrix came out in the same year, and it also had a similar effect on the industry, to name one example. But in the end, yes, they were pretty groundbreaking in terms of tech advancements. But being groundbreaking doesn't mean they are good, and doesn't mean they didn't sacrifice key elements of what makes a film good in order to use all that CGI to the extent they did. They used some awesome stuff that really had the potential to enhance the film, but in the end they just went overboard massively. By comparison, though, the Matrix (which still having a very heavy presence of digital effects) used them in a much finer way and produced a movie that was much more well regarded critically than Episode 1.

I'd dig up the interview, but it's a video one and I can't remember exactly which interview it was, but I remember Lucas himself stating that CGI should be used as a powerful tool to enhance a movie, not become the movie itself. It's just a shame he seemed to have forgotten that when he directed the PT.

Back to 3D. It certainly can be used as a powerful tool to enhance a movie (this has been shown a small handful of times, but as long as such examples exist it's true). But what's been happening with 3D tech since Avatar is that instead of using it to make a film better (most of the time) it's been used as a way to increase the profit that a film produces, and in many cases I would wager that the focus on adding 3D can severely detract from the focus on just making a good film. It is being used as a- if you will- gimmick. It being new tech doesn't really excuse how poorly it's being used; it's just a reason for why such poor use occurs so damn often.

er, the wachoskis used *minimal* cgi with a lot of old celluloid cameras and hong kong wirework to create 'bullet time.' it was a great contrast with lucas's new school digital film making, but they lost to SW. they got swept into the wake of huge budgets and excess cgi trilogies. and i thought the prequels were fine ;x

[Jonathan Meer]

whomp whomp whomp X is being used most often as a money-maker whomp means it sucks whomp whomp can't be used artistically whomp whomp whomp

[John Doe]

whomp whomp whomp X is being used most often as a money-maker whomp means it sucks whomp whomp can't be used artistically whomp whomp whomp

This is how I read most of your posts Meer.

[Jonathan Meer]

I like to think my arguments depend upon evidence and rational explanation.

[Anzekay]

er, the wachoskis used *minimal* cgi with a lot of old celluloid cameras and hong kong wirework to create 'bullet time.' it was a great contrast with lucas's new school digital film making, but they lost to SW. they got swept into the wake of huge budgets and excess cgi trilogies. and i thought the prequels were fine ;x

Digital effects aren't always CGI. There wasn't much cgi in the movie (mostly set pieces and scenery), but they used an amount of digital compositing and digitally edited special effects that hadn't been seen before in any movie really.

[Jonathan Meer]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/s...ref&ch=dic

[Jarka]

Hate: Gawker media's websites' layouts. They used to be super readable and understandable, organized purely chronologically. Now they're just a mishmash of articles - apparently, it's the three "hottest" articles, plus four or five callbacks to the most recent articles in their most prominent tag. There is a chronological sidebar on the right side of the page, but it doesn't act a primary scrollbar unless your mouse is hovering directly over the column - not in the two inches of whitespace to the right, it has to be over the column. So blech and bulky for my purposes.

I mean, I get WHY - highlight the most popular so that discussions can unfold, this leads to emotional investment and more likelihood of linking and pagehits. HOWEVER, if you're not logged in, it only shows you (what I'm assuming to be) the most active reply thread. Which means most people who visit are probably missing most of the discussion.

Oh, io9 and Jezebel, I want to go back to visiting your sites daily, I really do, but it's just so.... cluttery and gross.

[Vad]

Like: Alien chicks

[Kole T. Merr]

Not sure:

[Jarka]

Like: My school has a bunch of gaming labs. Not labs for working on game dev (well, it does have that), but labs where you just play games - there's a library of over 700 games. Doesn't have to be for class or anything (although a student that needs to do an assignment gets priority, natch). Awesomesauce.

[Jarka]

Like: Wizards is releasing a 5th Edition of D&D this year.

[Anzekay]

I still have no idea what to think of them doing 5e this year aside from "already?"

Oh and the PA comic from a few days ago.

[Belle Hibiki]

I still have no idea what to think of them doing 5e this year aside from "already?"

Pretty much my thought.

Of course what do I care, I obtain PDFs of the books off the net anyway, or else rely on the SRD.

[Rem-13]

I always buy the core books. Well, I bought the last two and inherited the previous ones. I like to support my hobbies, but their peripheral sales are 8 out 10 times money grabs. Fuck dat shit, yo ho ho.

[Belle Hibiki]

I guess the thing is, for the 4E books that I read, I don't ACTUALLY play the game all that often (I was in two 4E forum games a couple years ago that lasted weeks, and that's it).

[Sigfried Hunin]

Like: the pen and paper system I wrote for my own damn self.

[Ashe]

Hate: Have to drop another person from our World of Darkness campaign because he's just so inconsistent on showing up. We are now down to two people, myself and my wife, who both really enjoy it. This is really annoying because the guy DMing (used to very briefly play Oahun on here) put a lot of work into this and really likes this story, but I can't find anyone else that would be good to fill slots with. If Tryg had not been moving again, I'd have asked him (though I don't think tabletop is his thing).

Like: All of the Star Wars movies. Yeah, I get the bitching, but I actually side with Pinky a bit here. The acting is bad, I know, but watching those movies as a kid after growing up on the originals (which, regardless of age, you still watched through the eyes of a kid because you were fucking amazed at what they were doing), I was floored. The nearly seamless mergers of CGI and reality (to my younger eyes) was jaw dropping and I was experiencing a new development in a world that we'd grown to embrace as nearly Biblical in terms of a phenomenon (at least for me, as my uncle, before he died, was a major Star Wars fan from his kid years to the point of collecting things and the rest of the family was into it as well).

I really enjoyed it. I still think the Phantom Menace is mostly fine, and that Attack of the Clones is where it starts to fall apart with Revenge of the Sith being both completely amazing and completely underwhelming - in that it has so much happen within the movie, which is a double edged sword as the pacing turned into shit (since they had to squeeze tons of stuff into a single movie that should have been its own series of movies, to be honest, or as we now know, a mini-series).

I can critique that shit hardcore and agree with all of the problems for them, but at the end of the day I still enjoy them, still watch them today with my wife, and still feel that they play a major role in developing the world. And I'll always remember how floored I was being in theaters with my uncle watching Episode 1 on the the big screen, something I never thought would happen while growing up, especially when I was never able to make it to the Special Edition re-releases on limited big screen showings. Before I hit the age where finding a dozen reasons for everything to be a failure became the thing, I experienced something that, while it was riddled with faults (like the other Matrix movies), I could forgive them because it was worth it just to go where we were going.

[Anzekay]

Fair enough, Ashe. Enjoyment of the prequel triolgy is always going to be very subjective. My Dad saw the original movies as they first were released when he was roughly my age, and he despised the prequel trilogy for the horrible mess that he saw them to be.

I still think there is solid, convincing reasons why the movies are objectively sub-par. But the same goes for a whole host of movies that many people still find to be very fun and very enjoyable to watch even if they are pretty badly made. Just how it goes, really.