In Stars Wars III, there is some dialogue that just seemed poorly written. Just before the final fight scene, Obi Wan tells Anikan that he is evil. Anikan says, “From my point of view you are evil.”
Why put in the “from my point of view” part? If he had simply said," No, you are evil." that would obvioulsy be a statement from his point of view. It just seemed like the audience was thought to be too dumb to figure that out on their own.
If I were about to fight my long time friend to the death, I just wouldn’t say that.
There was one other Ani line the film that also seemed out of place, but I can’t think of it right now.
I know this is going to make me sound horribly sexist, but anytime a movie casts a hot, young starlet in a role as a top expert in some complex field. I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist in The World is Not Enough, or Angelina Jolie as a Ferrari mechanic in Gone in 60 Seconds.[/QUOTE]
It can also be a hot young male star, too. But the best recent example is the new Superman film, where they have the single-mon, world-wise, experienced, pulitzer-prize winning hardbitten reporter being played by a startlet who could only be beleivable as an intern. :rolleyes: :dubious: Ah, for Margot Kidder, instead!
OK, how about this one from episode IV?
Obi Wan hands Luke a lightsaber and says, “Your father wanted you to have this.” (or something along those lines). He should have said," I chopped off your father’s arms and legs, took this from him and left him for dead. Here, you take it."
I just watched the Godfather for the zillionth time (my wife had never seen it!). The one part that takes me out of the movie for a second is when Michael suggests he be the one to take out the Turk. Everyone starts to laugh. It would work if he was just an Ivy league college boy but he is not. He is a Marine who won the Navy Cross. You don’t get that for having the prettiest uniform or for “shooting someone from a mile away.” You usually get it for killing people, usually a lot of people in a situation that is above and beyond. His family seems very aware of his war record. The circumstances of an award of the Navy Cross would be in all of the local papers. As a Marine he would have been in the Pacific where long range combat wasn’t the norm. I find it very unlikely that he would be laughed at when he suggests he is the one who should pull the trigger.
Now that I think of it there is a scene in Godfather II that pulls me out of the movie. A hit is put on Hyman Roth. He gets whacked in the airport when he turns himself in surrounded by federal agents. Mafia hitmen generally like being paid for killing people and they like to be around to spend the money. The hit on Roth was a suicide mission. I have never heard of the mob doing anything like this. Takes me right out of it.
Of course I still love both movies. I won’t mention III which I still liked but didn’t love. It had way too many flaws to mention.
A couple of things that threw me out of the movie:
In Broken Arrow, Stealth pilots John Travolta and Christian Slater are on a training exercise with live nuclear missiles. I’d really like to know what happened to the guy that authorized live nuclear missiles on a training exercise over U.S. soil.
In Enemy of the State, a computer recreates a “back side” image of Wil Smith, complete with a tell-tale bulge in the shopping bag Smith is carrying. There’s no way the comptuer could have seen anything of the bulge from the “front side” and therefore no way to know the bulge was there. (Oh, wait, I’m wrong. They have a special device to do this --a plot device.)
What a coincidence: I just read The Godfather for the first time this weekend, after having seen the movie a dozen times. In the scene you describe, everyone does laugh at Michael for suggesting he be the one to kill Sollozzo. However, it becomes clear that Sonny is laughing, not in disbelief or doubt, but in amusement that after staying out of the family business his whole life, it only took one sucker punch to turn Michael into a murderer.
This American Life on NPR once did a piece about a Southerner who was so annoyed by fake or inconsistent southern accents in films that he investigated it. He discovered that pretty much one dialect coach is responsible for most of the southern accents in Hollywood being terrible.
A coach who had never been to the south and was pretty unaware that even different counties might have different accents.
Another LOTRs one.
There are numerous examples of overt audience manipulation but the one that pissed me off the most:
In Fellowship when Frodo gets stabbed by the Cave Troll… It was one thing for the other characters to think Frodo was killed, it was one thing for the audience to think Frodo was killed… it made no sense for Frodo to act like he was killed.
Frodo playing dead maybe works while the fight is still going on but once the fighting stops he still lays there so the audience and the other characters can look wide mouthed thinking “He’s dead?” Then he’s all “Mithirl shirt. Pwned!”
The Ghost Army helped kill ROTK for me as well. Once you have a magical army that can do anything… all tension is lost and all those soldiers who died before are just suckers instead of heroes.
One scene in an otherwise great movie nearly ruinied it for me- in Ray, when Jaime Foxx takes off his glasses in the flashback/heroin dream sequence, back at his childhome home when talking to his mother. Up until that point I had totally believed Foxx as Charles, but when he took off the glasses, I immediately thought- there’s Jaime Foxx. He was no longer Ray Charles to me.
I disagree. Sonny says (not a direct quote), “This isn’t like the Army where you can shoot someone from a mile away. You have to get right up close and bam get his brains all over you Ivy League shoes” He is laughing at what he is suggesting and doesn’t think he knows what he is getting into. Actually Michael has probably seen more and caused more death than everyone in the room. And they would have know that.
I never read the book so I can’t say how it was written.
Wait, Passion of the Christ had a sequel? I thought Gibson had pretty well sewn up the ending so as to make a sequel impossible! I mean, the dude dies!
Sorry; I should have been more clear. I was referring to how the scene plays out in the book, as opposed to the movie. We pick up where Sonny, Clemenza and Tessio have been laughing at Michael’s suggestion:
Michael: Don’t you think I can do it, you son of a bitch?
**Sonny: ** I know you can do it. I was just laughing at how funny things turn out. I always said you were the toughest one in the Family, tougher than the Don himself. [. . .] I’ve been waiting for you to become my right arm so we can kill these fucks that are trying to destroy our father and our Family. And all it took was a sock on the jaw. How do you like that?
Got it. That is much different than how it played out it the movie. I always heard that the movie was much better than the book so I never bothered to read it.
There’s a similar scene in Part III, when the hitman kills the archbishop. After stabbing him, he makes it like five steps before being mowed down by the archbishop’s bodyguards. Duh! Did he really think he might get away? Was he just that loyal to the Corleone family, or did they threaten his family to force him to do it, or what?
(Not to mention the outlandish method of the hit-- stabbed in the neck by a shiv made out of a pair of glasses?)
I had heard the same thing, and was expecting to be underwhelmed by the book, but it’s actually pretty good. The movie is extremely faithful to it in most situations. Of course, I’ve seen the movie so many times and it’s become so ingrained in me, that I couldn’t help but see and hear the actors in my mind as I read. That may have led me to like the book more than it deserved.
Star Wars I (Phantom Menace).
Okay so the whole movie sucked. But were talking about what “pulled you out” of the movie right?
So Star Wars is in a galaxy “far far away” right? We got that from the original trilogy. Another time, another place, yada yada.
So we get to the pod race sequence and what do they throw in? A two headed sports casting announcer based on every American major leauge sports caster stereotype. Like somehow the western world invaded the Star Wars universe.
For the first time in a long time, I saw a horror movie in a theater this weekend, Saw III. On at least two occassions the antagonist appeared out of somewhere that the antagonist could not be. This isn’t a supernatural flick. The antagonist was hidden in the room, wearing a big-ass mask, where s/he should have been easily spotted hours earlier. Rather than being frightened, I’m thinking, “How did s/he get there? How did the victim not notice?”
Ah well, back to watching them on TV, where I’m paying even less attention and not watching closely enough to nitpick.
The very last scene of Goldeneye; James and Natalya have foiled the evil plan, destroyed his headquarters (the satellite dish in ‘Cuba’), and been carried to a nearby field by helicopter. As they move in for the final clinch, James assures her there’s no one around for miles. Just then, the CIA guy shows up, a squad of Marines pops out of hidden foxholes (how did they know which field to hide in, and why didn’t they, you know, help?) and helicopters descend into view. Yes, that’s right, the helicopters were hiding BY BEING OFF THE EDGE OF THE MOVIE SCREEN!
