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You're just not getting it. I could post a video of any space battle ever, and you'd say NOT UNIQUE FROM STAR WARS because it has one of the following a) spaceships b) battles c) explosions d) piloted craft.

This should suggest to you that your metric for 'innovative' and 'surprising' is probably not very useful, or that you're astonishingly narrow-minded or ignorant. I assumed you were talking about cinema concepts like how the battle is shot or shown, how its composed visually etc, but you're not.

Stark wrote:You're just not getting it. I could post a video of any space battle ever, and you'd say NOT UNIQUE FROM STAR WARS because it has one of the following a) spaceships b) battles c) explosions d) piloted craft.

The battles in the older Star Trek movies are different visually, especially in the wrath of Khan.

The effects exist to serve the story. Without a story worth telling, who really cares about the pew-pew?

You are correct in that Star Wars did a lot of things first visually but don't forget that half of it was adaptation. WWII in space, dam-busting in space, car chase in space with asteroids replacing fruit carts to crash into.

The thing is, absent a shit to give about the people in peril, who cares? The pod race was adapting chariot racing to a scifi setting. It was as "new" as dogfights in space. And guess what? It was terrible. Ok, sure, there are people who liked it just like some people like Jar-Jar.

Babylon 5 could do things that Lucas couldn't touch due to cgi. He couldn't waste the money to build half-destroyed models of damaged ships after explosions, could have had Newtonian space combat where it would make sense but didn't. Imagine Luke spinning his x-wing 180 and shooting at Vader while still flying backwards! B5 also featured spin gravity which we have seen in movies but would be too complicated to model on television in the past.

But would any of that matter if we didn't give a damn about the characters, if we weren't invested in the story? Not to me. It would just be a technical achievement of little consequence.

The way your argument comes across would be similar to this:

Braveheart is awesome because there's no censoring sword fights. It's bloody and brutal and you've never seen it before. Did those fights serve the story? Not the question I'm asking. It's clearly a better movie than anything Errol Flynn did because bloodshed. So is 300 even better because more blood and fighting in leather g-strings? No, because Braveheart invented ultra violence with swords. If Mel Gibson directed another sword fight movie, we might see innovative decapitations and maimings. What about Spartacus having a guy's head chopped at the jaw so you see his tongue tasting air before the body falls? I haven't seen that movie. Not have I seen that same kill shot used in Samurai Assassin. But they're clearly ripping off Braveheart.

As far as the Battle Over Coruscant goes,
I thought it was sloppy and confusing and bad. It wasn't quite to the level of Bourne Identity where bad editing makes everything incoherent, it's just that they threw so much at the screen and give our Jedi a buddy movie action sequence that didn't feel earned or convincing. But I don't doubt that the bones of that sequence are sound and a better movie could accomplish the same feeling. Say, a small ship dodging through a swirling space battle to make an atmospheric entry to impossibly crash-land, torn up but everyone alive, that is until the pilot is speared through the chest with debris and pinned to his seat like a bug on an entomologist's board. I bet that would have emotional weight.

jollyreaper wrote:The effects exist to serve the story. Without a story worth telling, who really cares about the pew-pew?

You are correct in that Star Wars did a lot of things first visually but don't forget that half of it was adaptation. WWII in space, dam-busting in space, car chase in space with asteroids replacing fruit carts to crash into.

The thing is, absent a shit to give about the people in peril, who cares? The pod race was adapting chariot racing to a scifi setting. It was as "new" as dogfights in space. And guess what? It was terrible. Ok, sure, there are people who liked it just like some people like Jar-Jar.

Seems like a lot of people is misunderstanding my position. I agree with everyone here that the effects complement the story. What I am saying is that weak or boring effects can on the other hand, undermine a good story as well. If the dogfight in Battle of Yavin was replaced with a battle that is similar to Star Trek:TWOK, would the movie be able to achieve the same dramatic impact?

Braveheart is awesome because there's no censoring sword fights. It's bloody and brutal and you've never seen it before. Did those fights serve the story? Not the question I'm asking. It's clearly a better movie than anything Errol Flynn did because bloodshed.

Good job strawmanning my position.

So is 300 even better because more blood and fighting in leather g-strings? No, because Braveheart invented ultra violence with swords. If Mel Gibson directed another sword fight movie, we might see innovative decapitations and maimings. What about Spartacus having a guy's head chopped at the jaw so you see his tongue tasting air before the body falls? I haven't seen that movie. Not have I seen that same kill shot used in Samurai Assassin. But they're clearly ripping off Braveheart.

Not even a valid comparison. Gore has been around ever since cinema began and it is not as if gore was the main reason why Braveheart stood out from other sword and sandals epic.

Star Wars on the other hand practically created a new way to depict science fiction. Fast, dynamic and action packed.

So you are asking if a picture designed as spectacle would be undermined by weak spectacle. Of course it would. Its like asking which leg of the tripod is least important. But likewise, if we don't care about the people at risk, no amount of money splooged on 'splosions will save things.

There's actually a good comparison in Star Wars. The drama behind the Vader v Kenobi fight is great. The fight itself? Pretty cheesy. Didn't matter. The scene still worked. Liam vs Darth Spikey, it was the most amazingly choreographed light saber fight we had yet seen put to film and it carried zero emotional weight. I'll take the Death Star fight any day of the week. But I think the fight in Jedi had the best balance between writing and execution. That's my favorite. Empire's was done well and had amazing emotional weight but Luke was meant to be getting his ass kicked, it was not a fight between equals. Jedi was two masters clashing.

jollyreaper wrote:So you are asking if a picture designed as spectacle would be undermined by weak spectacle. Of course it would. Its like asking which leg of the tripod is least important. But likewise, if we don't care about the people at risk, no amount of money splooged on 'splosions will save things.

I'm not even sure how this end up as me asking whether a spectacle film would be undermined by weak effects. My original point was simply pointing out that I do not believe JJ Abram has the imaginative chops to pull off a visually refreshing space battle.

There's actually a good comparison in Star Wars. The drama behind the Vader v Kenobi fight is great. The fight itself? Pretty cheesy. Didn't matter. The scene still worked.

This is a good case of good drama being let down by poor choreography/editing. Would a much quicker cut of the duel levitate the drama? Most definitely.

This is the original cut of the fight scene



This is a fan edit/cut of the same fight, but with a much quicker pacing.



Notice how the second cut gave the fight so much more tension?

sorry the second video ruined all the tension that was in the scene it also went on for too long

zman wrote:sorry the second video ruined all the tension that was in the scene it also went on for too long

YMMV I suppose. I hated the original cut of that scene because the pacing was too slow.

Pacing is tricky to nail. Modern stuff moves too quickly to even take in the scenery.

I hate the talent reality shows. I've been shown clips from them of the most notable performances. While the person on stage might be talented and I might actually be interested in seeing them actually, you know, performing, what we end up getting are frantic cuts from the stage to the judges and crowd shots and some idiot on the side of the stage offering scripted ad lib comments. No shot lasts more than 3 seconds. It destroys my ability to even make sense of what's on stage.

But people must like it or else these shows would not be so successful.

Stark wrote:There's that whole Death Star thing. :V And they fire a single beam in ROTS. Obviously, the cartoon does this sort of thing much more.

I'm embarrassed for forgetting about the Death Star beam. As for the other beams, I don't remember them so video would be helpful. But also completely irrelevant when my point was about B5 beam weapons slicing up the enemy, a very distinctive visual aspect of B5 space combat. A point that ray245 has ignored.

Watch ROTS, there is a shot of one Republic ship slicing an enemy ship with some sort of beam. Additionally, Star Trek is also another prominent show whereby laser beam slicing through each other is quite common.

Err actually no it's not. Nevermind the fact that Trek weapons are most often called phasers, disruptors, or something else technobabbly, they slice through the target where exactly? They use beam weapons all the time, and they punch through targets on numerous occasions, but at least prior to VOY, I can't recall an incident of slicing.

ray245 wrote: Look at how imaginative George Lucas is when it comes down to creating space battles for his film.

you mean how every scene was almost exactly taken from WW2 movies?

And when you say Lucas, you mean the people working for him. And the best contributions were the ones he didn't overrule, either through recognizing a better idea or being powerless to thwart.

I agree that the prequels represent Lucas as sole artist which means he only has his own skills to fall back upon, total executive power with no one to stand in his way. The work suffered for it. I celebrate the lack of executive meddling but mourn the lack of artistic debate with his staff. No one was free to say "George, this is terrible but you know how we can make it great?"

Stark wrote:

Look at the movies/TV series before Star Wars and tell me the battles in Star Wars aren't innovative.

Look at Sink the Bismarck and tell me they're innovative.

You misspelled Dam Busters. (Which, I think was the footage Lucas used in screeners to show "this is the effect I am going for with the pew pew scenes)

Though it's not innovation, it's actually a pretty clever thing to steal if you want Hero Pilots doing Heroic Fighting, because it turns out people respond pretty well to that presentation.

ray245 wrote:Watch ROTS, there is a shot of one Republic ship slicing an enemy ship with some sort of beam. Additionally, Star Trek is also another prominent show whereby laser beam slicing through each other is quite common.

Did you just respond to someone providing an example of something not seen first in Star Wars with... an example of Star Wars doing it afterward? I already mentioned this example (and to my recollection there's no 'slicing' at all, it's just a sustained beam because they're hanging an artillery walker out the bay) and its now a part of Star Wars 'innovation' to do it a decade after B5?

You are a lost cunt. Nothing in the prequels had the 'wow factor' of a ship being literally chopped in half in B5 or emerging from a nuclear fireball to crash into the ground and pull its shattered bits together like in Skyline. TPM has a Death Star Level, AOTC has ... nothing? and ROTS has a battle over Coruscant that was less interesting and visually entertaining than the cartoon lead-up to it.

If you were talking about shot framing or storyboarding or perspective or composition you could probably have an interesting discussion (especially considering how most of it wasn't Lucas' innovation anyway).

I kinda liked how the massive space battle was just a backdrop to bad dialogue and retarded droids.

Stark wrote:Did you just respond to someone providing an example of something not seen first in Star Wars with... an example of Star Wars doing it afterward? I already mentioned this example (and to my recollection there's no 'slicing' at all, it's just a sustained beam because they're hanging an artillery walker out the bay) and its now a part of Star Wars 'innovation' to do it a decade after B5?

I never said that slicing beam was an innovation of Star Wars.

You are a lost cunt. Nothing in the prequels had the 'wow factor' of a ship being literally chopped in half in B5 or emerging from a nuclear fireball to crash into the ground and pull its shattered bits together like in Skyline. TPM has a Death Star Level, AOTC has ... nothing? and ROTS has a battle over Coruscant that was less interesting and visually entertaining than the cartoon lead-up to it.

I've never defended the rest of the battles in the PT as innovative nor visually exciting.

If you were talking about shot framing or storyboarding or perspective or composition you could probably have an interesting discussion (especially considering how most of it wasn't Lucas' innovation anyway).

Isn't this what we were talking about?

I kinda liked how the massive space battle was just a backdrop to bad dialogue and retarded droids.

It still a more interesting backdrop than most other films.

The lava planet fight was actually amazing in how poorly it was executed. It was green screen and looked it. And it was perfect that LOTR was being released in the same timespan because this meant we could see how contemporary technology could be used convincingly. Just as many effects shots but middle-earth felt real. Jar-jar vs Gollum. Heh. Back before Menace was released I was totally stoked to see this new synthetic thespian Lucas was talking about and ready to hail it as yet more proof of his genius. Totally bought into his hype at the time, Director With a Thousand Faces.

I think what you could say Indiana Jones and Star Wars did best was take the black and white serials and punch everything up to the state of the art, sort of like how Tchaikovsky would take simple peasant tunes and use them as the basis for major orchestral works. This was good, this was valid. Most importantly, it was great fun!

There's also a way towards simulating innovation by being the person to introduce an old or foreign idea to a new audience, either because they are too young to remember it or were never shown it in the first place. This happens so often where new fans will first encounter x as homage in a new work and think it's the first time it's ever been done.

Stark wrote:

ray245 wrote:You are a lost cunt. Nothing in the prequels had the 'wow factor' of a ship being literally chopped in half in B5 or emerging from a nuclear fireball to crash into the ground and pull its shattered bits together like in Skyline. TPM has a Death Star Level, AOTC has ... nothing? and ROTS has a battle over Coruscant that was less interesting and visually entertaining than the cartoon lead-up to it.

It may be because I only tried watching it very recently, but I found B5's CGI to be pretty much unwatchable.

Try watching an episode of voyager first. You'll forget about higher production values and come back for the story.

the atom wrote:It may be because I only tried watching it very recently, but I found B5's CGI to be pretty much unwatchable.

It hasn't aged well at all. At the time, it wasn't top of the line but it was servicable, and they tried to show interesting stuff like ships being chopped up, set on fire, and give battles a better sense of spatial relationships through longer shots (to that time, usually the domain of movies rather than shows). But I mean, B5's acting and much of the writing is also pretty ropeable. The 90s were a different time.

I mean, a show about elite government agents travelling the country solving mysteries and ... staying in motels? Driving shitty rentals? Filling out req forms? It was a different planet.

jollyreaper wrote:Try watching an episode of voyager first. You'll forget about higher production values and come back for the story.

Flagg wrote:

jollyreaper wrote:Try watching an episode of voyager first. You'll forget about higher production values and come back for the story.

I must not have been clear. Let me try again.

If you watch b5 and can't get by the primitive cgi, go watch a show from the same period that had great production values and terrible writing and then you can appreciate what b5 has to offer.

Ahh, ok. Now I get you.