f13.net

When The Matrix came up in the Willing Suspension of Disbelief thread, I suddenly thought of a second metathread that might be be a good discussion and would play back into some perennial themes in our individual movie conversations.

Sometimes nerdraging involves either unrealistic or unappealing fanfic-ish beliefs about how a movie could have been better. Say, "'The Incredibles' would have been better if everyone's powers were based on a completely accurate understanding of quantum mechanics" or "If only the Star Wars prequels had included a scene where Palpatine foresaw the Yuuzhan Vong's attack on the galaxy and decided to prepare by militarizing the Republic, he's actually the hero of the whole story".

But I also think geeks sometimes come up with much better, totally plausible ideas about how a different plot could hade make a badly flawed film or a franchise better. I'll give you my personal example: the Matrix sequels could have been great instead of mostly sucking. How? With this simple but completely plausible (imho) change in the entire idea. What if in the second film we find out that everything that Neo and Morpheus and the people of Zion (and let's not make them cave hippies, but that's a different matter) think is wrong? That the machines haven't enslaved humanity and they didn't destroy the world in the first place. Humans destroyed the world themselves and then built the Matrix as a way to hide from what they'd done. Their last order? Keep us in here, keep creating new humans, keep us healthy--and protect us from the small group of dissidents who think that most of humanity should be euthanized and the survivors should have to work steadily to reclaim the surface from massive environmental damage. But over time, the Zion folks have forgotten their own history--they don't remember that they were the people who refused to be plugged in, who believed in the idea of reclaiming the surface, etc.

But now the machines have a rebel faction that think it's time for humanity to pay for its sins, who want to try and realize the original vision of reclaiming the surface for organic life no matter how many millennia it takes--and they give the "red pill" to the people of Zion (e.g., show them the real truth). So the second film is about deciding whose side you're really on--the machines who are following the orders of the human beings who created the Matrix or on the side of ugly truth and a nearly impossible ambition. Third film is the 'falling action' of that decision--Neo and some of the people of Zion decide the Matrix must be destroyed no matter what, and Morpheus decides that it's better that the Matrix and Zion stay mostly as they are (preferring his illusion about the truth rather than the truth about the truth) and allies himself with the Agents and the "loyal" machines--flipping around their relationship from the first film.

I honestly think that's way better--and I think it's plausible (e.g., could have been written, could have been filmed, could have been kickass).

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What "better movies" are you sure about, that you've 'seen' in your own mind?

Andrew Blakes 'Girlfriends' could have done with the addition of me.

Never should've let that other thread be a thing. Now we have 2 threads that don't have movie titles in them in this forum.

300 would have been better with reverse genders.

This has been bothering me too but I thought I was the only one.  Now I am emboldened.  TO GENERAL!

This is like some episode of monty python I'm living in right now.

"No no sir, the movie thread is specifically for individual movies. If you wish to speak generally about movies you go to the general forums. However if you wish to speak specifically about movies in an ironic way you go to the serious business forum, which is not serious at all.  Now, if you wish to talk about movies based on video games that is fine so long as you talk only about that movie but if you start talking about the game, you must go to the video game forum."

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/wtf-lol.gif)

Independence day: blowing up the mothership disables the shields, no hacking involved.

Yay, someone moved it! =D

Ninth Gate - If they provided some payoff, ANY payoff other than the typical "we ran out of ideas so cut to black" bullshit so many bad writers seem to want to defend now.

To the OP, I like your idea.  Reminds me a bit of the twist in Isaac Asimov's The gods themselves.

Iirc the reason the first matrix was so good was because it was plagiarism.  Need to hunt down that old salon article.... Meh smartphones

http://www.republibot.com/content/great-day-writers-matrix-ruled-plagiarism-updated

That isn't the original article I read but hey that is the first time I have ever cut n pasted something with my iPhone

Read to the end: Story wasn't true, lady actually missed her court date and lost.

--Dave

I like this thread, though agree it needed a movin'.

Pacific Rim: instead of inventing, when the monsters come up, they find the ruins of Atlantis where they learn the monsters were genetically engineered for sport fighting against giant mechs Atlantians  also invented to fight them. Having established that in the first 8 minutes, cut to the rest of the movie as it was.

And I'm kinda convinced Star Trek VI didn't need to suck, had it followed the book a bit more. Wouldn't have been awesome, but a competent Director coulda done something with the idea of a niave prophet getting suckered into breaking an almost all powerful being out of the center of the galaxy, going against various organizations and playing up the Klingon and Romulan parts more. Especially with all ample array of Trek MacGuffins they could have tapped into.

Nothing was going to save Generations though. Man that sucked.

Hmm I seem to recal reading a "legit" article that she had one?!?

New thread idea: meta lawsuits tha we wish had turned out different.  If it was true at least that would explain while the 2 me and 3rd films were so bad.   /shrug

That was V.

*shrug*. I don't think the Star Wars prequels were...rescueable...in any real sense, but I always felt there was a missed opportunity -- it's sorta hinted at, like he was laying the ground work for it, but never really came to anything.

Anakin? Should have been Palpatine's kid. Either via rape/memory modification or that alluded to method of 'creating life' via the Dark Side.

There would have been a kinda "um, you did that twist" with the "Oh, he's Anakin's dad" -- but I wouldn't have had Anakin ever learn. Or anyone, really. It would have given it a whole three generation tragedy feel that I think would have helped.

*NSFW*

Mission Accomplished. (http://www.adultdvdempire.com/1584771/the-four-porn-movies.html)

*NSFW*

God fucking no.  That would've made the prequels actually worse than they already were and that's pretty fucking hard.

The premise behind Anakins fall: that it was because of his love for a woman was about the only semi-decent part of those movies.
It was the writing, acting, effects, characters  special effects , that were the problem.

Nah, the premise of the prequels was fine in my mind. All the right pieces were there. It was the storytelling that brought it down.

So, I don't think the prequels fit this thread. Maybe we need a meta-thread about movies that had fine concepts but the narrative or direction was all wrong?  :grin:

Shit, you're right. VI wasn't actually half bad either.

I'm a fan of a good tragedy. Nothing quite as tragic as three generations of a single family fucking each other, killing each other, and generally destroying the universe.

Problem with love of a woman is, well, it required Anakin to hold the idiot ball. None of his actions make a lick of sense, internally or externally. I'd imagine the novels around the time period have to go into contortions to try to get this to work.

As written, it pretty much requires you to go "Okay, so you're the Devil, the Lord of Lies and have been lying to me and everyone else for, well, the entire time I've known you. Your little minions have tried to kill my ass. I'm gonna go ahead and trust you on this"

I would argue that even simply "let's make it about Anakin turning evil" is an initially flawed premise. Darth Vader is a bad ass, he has his moment of redemption at the end of Jedi, and it's easy to imagine why he became evil without an exact explanation. Seeing him as a good guy humanizes him too much and is essentially redundant with the end of Jedi.

Why did Anakin become evil? Because the dark side of the force is powerful and seductive. I mean, FFS, the end of Jedi is about that power of seduction and how it almost gets Luke as well - it IS the explanation for how Anakin became evil. "Anakin became evil for the same reasons Luke almost became evil." Done. The audience can fill in the rest. I mean, did anyone leave the theater thinking "man, I wonder why Darth Vader was a bad guy?"

Furthermore the explanation for why he became evil is awful. "Because of a woman." Ok. If you dig even one level deeper into what that means it becomes stupid. He turns evil because he has bad dreams about how his wife is going to die so he gleefully kills everyone around him based on the vague promise that maybe at some unspecified future point he'll gain the power to stop death or bring people back to life or something - what?

He isn't even really seduced by the dark side, it's just "ok, become all evil now or your wife will die" "k, I'm evil now."
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As far as Star Trek 5 goes, the high level plot was fine and the premise is great. I don't think it needs fixing on that level. The skeptical crew of the Enterprise accompany a religious prophet to the center of the universe where he claims God resides - and discover God. Or do they??? Sounds good to me.

In the end they just made a bad movie.

Every time I think about Star Trek 5 I think to myself "why don't I like this again? It seems great" - then I try watching it.

See, I think it was the execution too. Anakin was a person with controlling tendencies. When things were out of his control, he got petulant and violent. Shit, watch Darth Vader in the very first movie, choking bitches and hollering at his underlings. Things aren't going his way, so he hurts people.

That's a powerful story there, if told correctly. If we understand that Anakin is a generally good person with a deep character flaw that Palpatine took advantage of to turn him to the dark side.

But Lucas told it very poorly. It did boil down to "ok, become all evil now or your wife will die" "k, I'm evil now." And then Lucas starts up with his "They're only movies." bullshit. If they're only movies, if we aren't supposed to take them that seriously (and I'm not talking cancer serious, just good story serious) then why toss in all the abusive partner, fighting destiny, turning to the dark side stuff? He could just have made "Jar Jar's Big Adventure"

I think the prequels were kind of screwed the moment that Anakin starts the films as an active part of the story as a young boy. You maybe could have had him marginally involved as a little kid but making his action key to the plot of the first film fucks up everything, including his romance with Padme. In a great many ways, it would have been better if the first time we meet him, he's just a very very strong young teenage padawan whose head is kind of swollen because this weird dissident Jedi (Qui-Gon) once said that he was "the Chosen One". E.g., you establish from the beginning that he's a prodigy, with all that implies (admired but also the target of envy and fear; arrogant because of it).

Make Anakin Padme's contemporary. Cut Jar Jar. Cut Newt Gunray. Remove Qui Gon so Obi Wan has room to be an actual character. Completely rewrite Padme so she has personality. Rewrite all the walking and talking scenes so most of the exposition is showing and not telling. Hire a competent director. Find a way for Anakin demonstrate he isn't a whiny useless twat to Padme. Cut the robot guy with fifteen lightsabres, trim the crappy distracting background cgi in every fucking scene, lay off the tribal vs industrialised motif. Fix the mother dying scene because holy shit.....    oh wait....

So what you're saying, if I can sum up for you, is just start over except don't be Lucas ?

Yeah, I think that's about right. Which makes it not the best example of this concept, because the best "better movies" are the ones where the counterfactual just involves a better idea (that the director or writers could have had) or a better specific twist or turn in the plot (that could have been filmed), or a single better casting decision, etc. Star Wars prequels are so thoroughly fucked in so many ways and Lucas is involved in all of them that the only counterfactual worth talking about is Lucas falling off a cliff in 1992 or so.

If Mr. Plinkett has taught me anything it's that the Prequels are not salvageable. You can't really remove them from the canon despite Disney having the ability to do so now, and there's just so much wrong with every movie you'd have to lay out a complete beginning to end reboot to fix them rather than just changing a handful of scenes or removing a character(s).

They reboot everything these days.  I can see them just starting over from episode 1 and going all the way through.

Um, they've already confirmed new star wars is ep 7/

So that rules out a future reboot, huh? 

This thread needs a thread to make IT better. Lets start with no more Star Wars talk.

A nerd website has a thread about movies.  It's an inevitable discussion.

They're not going to reboot Star Wars. Maybe remake it someday. Disney doesn't really do reboots, though they do modern remakes every once in a while, or animated/live action remakes of things that were the other before. They're far more likely to do things like sequels or animated versions or what have you.

I don't think they've ever had anything quite this valuable on their hands, as far as a single movie franchise.  I'm don't think you can rule anything out.  They didn't pay that much money for it to put out a bunch of piddly animated stuff.

Keep in mind they bought Marvel for more than they bought Lucas. Additionally, The Mouse is worth quite a lot of coin. Though, both of those are arguably different than Star Wars, of course.

Also, they aren't going to do just animated stuff, we already know that. They're making new movies.

I don't think you can reboot Star Wars.

You can reboot something like Spider-Man because in comics ret-cons and reboots are already commonplace, comic book stories get altered over time the same way myths do, and the character and broad story points are more important than the exact details. That Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider is pretty important but how exactly he got into that situation is not. That he starts out selfish then becomes a do-gooder after his negligence allows something tragic to happen is important but not exactly how that transpires.

Star Wars has pretty shitty characters and the broad themes are a little too broad, like "good fights evil", so telling a story with the same broad points and characters doesn't amount to much. On the other hand being movie-based it has a lot of memorable scenes that form the basis for fan affection, and changing those would be problematic as they are largely the appeal of the IP.

There's also the fact that comics are generally set in the present day and arguably need updating from time to time - at some point it stops making sense for Iron Man to be tied to Vietnam. But Star Wars is set in an unspecified place and time that is what it is, it can't become outdated.

All of that sounds like it could be said about Star Trek, too, but it was rebooted successfully (at least the first movie was successful, I've heard the second isn't so good, but haven't seen it myself).

That said, I'm not really in favor of a Star Wars reboot myself.  I'd rather they just concentrate on different periods of the setting.  After the original trilogy, and before the prequels are all periods that seem like you could set lots of movies in them.  And there's already a lot of stuff established in the EU that they can (carefully) pick through to pull out the good stuff.

Not really.

Dude, it's completely different.  Neither Marvel or their own in-house IP are a single movie franchise, like Star Wars.  


Have you read the New Jedi Order series?  No retcons there....


Addendum-  you guys are putting arbitrary limits on the stupidity that can be induced by the prospect of trashbags full of money.  And a reboot isn't necessarily a bad thing.  I, for one, really like the new Star Trek movies.  Changes with technology in the past 10 years have been significant and can make a big difference to a shitty story with the right directors and actors. 

"Marvel" is not a single movie franchise, nor is "Disney", but both have incredibly valuable individual franchises. If you're going to say "Marvel" and "Disney", you have to say "Lucasfilm". I don't think it's QUITE as different as you make it out to be, honestly.

Well, you were the one that compared Marvel and Disney to Star Wars, not me.  And Lucasfilm is almost 100% Star Wars-  a big difference.  Out of Marvel you get Woverine and Xmen and Spiderman and Captain America and Thor and Iron Man.....

I only used Marvel as shorthand, but I can see where things got crossed.

Yeah.  My point is that it's a shit ton of money for IP and you can be sure that Disney is going to milk it for everything they can.  Because of that fact alone I wouldn't rule out a reboot. 

Disney doesn't really do that. I mean they milk shit, sure, but it's never in that context. They make cheap direct-to-dvd stuff, but they are pretty specifically not a reboot thing, considering how vertically integrated they are. They would have to change all their Star Wars stuff as it is, and they just did that for Star Tours.

Yeah if it was some other studio I wouldn't blink at the idea of them rebooting it, but this is Disney, they treat their top-end stuff like museum pieces and make a shitload of money doing so. They'll happily make a billion spin-offs direct to DVD but I don't see them messing with the core too much.

Is that irrelevant EU bullshit? EU is just fan-fiction, what happens in it is completely irrelevant.


By the time Star Trek was rebooted it existed as 5 or so different TV series and 8 or so movies - I'm talking only canonical TV and film stuff, not cartoons or comics or books. In addition the reboot isn't even a real reboot, it has Original Formula Spock and an attempt to square it with classic Trek. It's essentially an extended alternate universe / time travel plot - a plot quite common in Trek. (I assume this alternate branch will end as soon as this set of movies does)

In addition I don't think Star Trek really has a lot of classic scenes or individual lines and that's not why people like Trek. The core of Trek is more a philosophy and an approach to science fiction storytelling than any particular story or characters. My point about Star Wars is that it's not really about anything other than the particular story and characters contained within. Star Wars is the cantina scene plus the Slave Leia scene plus Darth Vader choking a dude plus the trash compactor etc etc, which is why other stories set in the same universe have mostly failed. There's nothing particularly interesting about the fiction as a whole.

In short I would say that Star Trek is organized around a concept, whereas Star Wars is organized around a specific set of narrative beats.

This has been a huge problem for Star Wars games, they use very similar characters and settings regardless of what time period or location they ostensibly take place in. Star Wars doesn't really have Bounty Hunters, it has Boba Fett, so most bounty hunters in Star Wars are Boba Fett variants. You can write a game that takes place 1000 years in the past with a different set of characters and the tech is all the same and a dude force chokes another dude - it's all based on "hey remember how this happened in the movies?"

This is so true.  It would actually be nice if Disney would come up with some decent story lines that had absolutely nothing to do with the Empire or Palapatine or the Skywalkers.  The universe could actually lend itself to some pretty decent adult level story lines, as well. 

As for the EU stuff, it may be irrelevant, but it's still out there.  The purists who don't like anything but episodes IV-VI may ignore it, but it still exists.  I think that Disney will have a hard time reincarnating Chewbacca.  I guess it's possible.

Disney made a statement after they bought LucasFilm that the EU was scrapped except for choice characters they would bring-in to their narrative.  They will write Episodes 7-9 in the fashion they choose using the character back stories they want.

Chewbacca never died.

They didn't say that, they just said they weren't going to feel bound by EU stuff if there was a change they wanted to make. That already happened with the 2nd Lucas trilogy anyway. It's hardly scrapped, especially pre-movie timeline parts.

The EU stuff is so convoluted and contradictory anyway that I think it would be tough to make it all match up. 

Place your bets!

Not in the next 20 years anyways.

I can see it in 6.

Why 6?  Revenge of the Sith was in 2005.  That means there are third through sixth graders that may not know enough about Star Wars to buy figures and Legos and all that bullshit. 

I can only assume that Disney is going to go for broke with their first effort and put out a quality film.  Because of reasons discussed before, i.e. there's really only one Star Wars story, they may resort to a reboot, at least of the original films.  I could see them doing 4-6 again first.  That might piss some people off and it would be a big risk, but it could be ridiculously lucrative if they could pull it off.  I'm sure it has been discussed within their organization. 

It has been scrapped for all practical purposes by hiring JJ Abrams and Michael Arndt. I cannot for the life of me imagine either one of them even looking the Yuzhan Vong up, let alone respecting Mara Jade's beverage preferences.

I imagine they'll do want Abrams did on trek. Hire an editor in charge of bullshit fan service and have him sprinkle tribble references over the script once the real writers have the story locked down.

Lucas wouldn't have done those things either. EU shit has always been 'canon until they ignore it' at best.

I can see SW7 coming out in a few years: It doesn't flop, but it doesn't break a billion, so it's considered a flop. Disney then decides that Star Wars isn't hip enough, and reboots the whole thing.

I just googled Star Wars VII and something about Ryan Gosling playin Luke Skywalker's son popped up.   :why_so_serious:

That's a possibility.  While the first movie was flat-out stated to be a continuation of the original Saga when it was announced, if it doesn't do well enough I can see them changing the plan.

Side discussion at work touched on this today and I'm not the only one who remembers a Disney exec saying along the lines of "We bought it for the Main Characters, not the EU.  We'll use what we want and discard the rest."  a few days after the sale was announced.  I can't find the actual article, though, for all the fanboi tear-wank on the web.

Ed: Found one article where Kasdan talks-around not using the EU.  In Hollywood speak it's as good as a "no."
http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/star-wars-writer-lawrence-kasdan-wants-spinoff-film-to-start-fresh/#/0

Kasdan's movie isn't even part of the next trilogy, it's a stand-alone. And again, the EU has always been 'until they make a movie that contradicts it.'

Only because Lucas saw the advantage of creating another license and merchandise revenue stream.

The EU was created to give a place for fan fiction to be published while lining Lucas' pockets.  It's as canon as the strips that ran in the newspaper in the 80's.  In a canonical liturgy it would be below passing comments from George during a drunk interview.

Despite what people desperately keep wanting to believe, it matters not at all. Stormtroopers all being clones and The Clone Wars not being Jedi fighting against some clone army should have driven that home 14 years ago.

How predictable is it that this thread is about Star Wars?

Well, they did bother enough to maintain a database of EU shit to stop it from contradicting with *itself*, which is a level of effort somewhere above what you're describing. Anyone with a brain had to know that anything happening in a short enough time frame after the movies was eventually doomed, though.

Star Wars makes sense as a focus for the thread in that it's a property where a lot of us have "our" version that we think is right and good and then we have the reality which is very unmistakeably not good--just about no one is going to say, "I think 'Phantom Menace' is completely how the saga should have progressed". For the most part, almost everyone even feels that was about Ewoks, which are a good example of the 'my better movie' idea: just about everyone can see that if Ewoks had been Wookies, "Return of the Jedi" would have instantly been 100% better as a film. Apparently even Lucas has conceded that he should have stuck with his original idea to make them Wookies.

Another good example of films (and TV serials) that trigger the "my better movie" instinct are films that are almost great until the ending, and the ending is bad enough that it fucks everything else up. "Dark Knight Rises" would have been way better for me without the ticking time bomb thing at the end--just have Batman return with a good plan for retaking the city and undoing the 'Bane Revolution', make him and the cops smarter, and you can still even have the fake sacrifice/happy ending if you like.

Return of the King would have been better, whether you like or dislike Jackson's take overall on LOTR, with a smoother and more compressed approach to the ending(s).

The Golden Compass is a 'my better movie' that I can just go on and on about because everything they needed to make that a good movie is right there on screen--good casting, good visual direction, but it's all mish-mashed and ham-fisted and gutless where it needed to go balls out and just do Pullman's story the way he wrote it. The ending is the most brutal example of that, though. You could probably recut the whole film and make it significantly better and then fix it entirely if you could get Craig, Kidman and Richards into the studio for one reshoot.