Star Wars: Episode VII

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Originally Posted by Dolemite

Slow pacing only makes it hard to re-watch a movie only if said slow parts aren't interesting or well-done. Alien is a very slow-paced movie, but I can watch that shit all day long.

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Agreed 100%. I could watch Seven Samurai all day every day, briskly paced it is not.

https://vimeo.com/149357656

The only time the pacing stuck out for me was in the two-shot sequence with (not a spoiler if you've seen trailers) Han and Leia talking alone for the first time. It was shot blandly and felt like it went on for ten minutes. None of the tension we were told to expect between those characters came through in 20 or so shot/reverse shot medium close-ups of talking heads trading flat lines. Give me some sparks, if not in the writing, then in camera movement or background or something. What should have been the movie's most memorable dialogue scene was probably its least. I can't recall a single line from it.

This is why Leigh Brackett deserves more credit for ESB. Remember the dialogue between those characters in that movie? I bet you do! People who haven't even seen ESB do.

I liked that sequence, actually. There was a lot of mutual admiration and disappointment going on there, it made sense to me that it would be a little deflated.

You can deflate by shooting from farther away once in a while. You can emphasize connection by showing both characters' faces in the same shot. You can show us some body language and movement; Han's body has always been especially emotive. Maybe it was here, but the camera was never far enough to show us. The scene had all the stylistic rigor of a 60 Minutes interview.

If the rest of the movie weren't shot so well, I probably wouldn't have even noticed how perfunctory that scene was.

I think maybe a big factor in that scene was that Carrie Fisher was being shot from the shoulders up. There's probably a very good reason for that.

My fave bit was when Terra and Locke accidentally released the Malboros in the Falcon to save Edgar and Sabin.

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Originally Posted by YellerDog

I really liked it. Extra kudos for keeping the stupid obligatory wilhelm scream downmixed to barely audible.

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I thought I heard it in the hangar deck when Finn and Poe are tethered in.

You did. Waaaaay at the bottom of the mix, nice work.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

You guys are nuts. Temper tantrums are are hardly awesome. He's basically an idiot teenager who struggled to defeat a non-Force sensitive Stormtrooper and a Force sensitive with zero training. I still think I nailed it earlier that he's basically Hayden Christensen with better writing but less (in character) skill, and I can't insult him much more than that.

I'm curious to see what else they do with the Knights of Ren though, since they seem to have different powers than the Sith.

edit: Maybe his inevitable redemption in Episode IX will be to take the awkward Stormtrooper to the prom.

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I thought the temper tantrums were perfect. When we first see the guy he is a total bad ass with a deep voice. He catches lasers in mid air. Then he throws the tantrum and we're like "Maybe he's not so bad ass". Then he takes the helmet off and we're like "this guy has a good bit of weenie in him".

It's great characterization. Rey even reads his mind and tells us flat out he knows he's not a bad ass. Cool villain. It makes him insecure, therefore volatile and dangerous.