I don’t believe for a second Lucas intended this line to be realistically awkward. If he did, Padme’s reaction would have been a realistic roll of her eyes. Plus, there wasn’t a shred of “naturalistic” dialog in the rest of the movie (or really in the whole series), and you think Lucas picked this particular moment to say “Wait, I should realistically reflect that Anakin wouldn’t know how to talk to women?” I don’t buy it. I feel quite sure Lucas intended the line to be romantic, and if failed spectacularly.
Yeah, 30 years before Attack of the Clones. Is there really any doubt that the stuff George Lucas was writing in the 21st century isn’t on par with what he was writing in the '70s?
The real point is that The Matrix was only pretending to be science fiction. It was actually high fantasy. Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity were wizards. Computer technology was magick. Agent Smith was a demon. And most people had a sleeping spell cast of them so their souls could be stolen.
I always thought this line from Casablanca was really puzzling: “Who are you really, and what were you before? What did you do, and what did you think?”
Also: Star Trek VI: “That thing’s gotta have a tailpipe.” Uh, what?
The Kingdom of Heaven has the worst lines ever for me. I know that one-liners are dramatic and has sometimes, eh, have gems of wisdom in them, but in that show, it’s full of witty one-liners.
The ending lines:
Balian of Ibelin: “What is Jerusalem worth?”
Saladin: “Nothing…and everything.”
Buh-huh?
Or this scene, where this group of knights are riding off to war
Balian: You go to certain death!"
Knight: All death is certain.
AARGHH…
Plus lots of other inane lines which you can find here:
Mr. Furious: Okay, am I the only one who finds these sayings just a little bit formulaic? “If you want to push something down, you have to pull it up. If you want to go left, you have to go right.” It’s…
The Sphinx: Your temper is very quick, my friend. But until you learn to master your rage…
Mr. Furious: …your rage will become your master? That’s what you were going to say. Right? Right?
The Sphinx: Not necessarily.
It makes sense if you think deep about it - 'cos if I remember correctly, Alessan is from that part of the world. I’m sure to people staying there, where the daily ‘problems’ (that’s really an understatement on my part) are happening, that city has a lot of significant (“everything”), but it is just a material city and will fade away (“nothing”). Or that how I will choose to read it.
The point is, it’s just not a good line, and it’s a groaner. Not really my commentary on state of thing there. It’s totally unnecessary, IMHO.
Would I be correct in stating that you pronounce “yeah” as something like “yuh”?
I ask because “yeah” and “young” sound nothing alike in most of the accents I’ve come across. This would at least explain how you could have misinterpreted the line.
Despite popular conception, that’s not the director’s job. It’s the actor’s job to interpret the dialogue and Berry failed pretty badly at this one. A good director might’ve surreptitiously coaxed it out of her somehow, but a lot of them (esp. action movie directors) don’t give a lick about dialogue.
Screenwriters have little to nothing to do with the actual production of the film. Unless he had another job (if he directed, for instance), Whedon wouldn’t have been on the set and no one would’ve cared what his opinion was. A screenplay is a rough outline of a movie that the director follows or doesn’t follow at his whim.
Wasn’t it true that the only thing that remained from his draft was that line? I mean, he essentially wasn’t involved in that movie at all by the time it was filmed.
No, I pronounce “yeah” and “young” perceptibly differently. Dunno why I misheard that line all these years (esp. given Dr. Carol Marcus’s earlier lines about the glory of Genesis’s handiwork making one “feel young again”).
Just FTR, I posted that more because I was annoyed at someone using the Matirx as a source for some silly and misanthropic ideas about vegetarianism. I actually enjoyed the Matrix and can overlook the thermodynamic absurdities (pretending that the matrix had some other purpose, though it would have been nice to see someone from Zion suggesting that) and the many silly portentious lines, like the one quoted.
This might just be my fanwank, but if I remember right, the machines and the people in Zion never make any claims that the humans are there for power generation. It’s Morpheus and his acolytes who say that. In the sequels Morpheus is shown to be more than a bit of a fanatic, and profoundly mistaken about the foundation of both Zion and the Matrix. As it turns out, nearly everything that Neo was told is revealed to be a lie.