Captain Crimson wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2020 2:16 pm
You know, that's kinda what upsets me about the modern-day spectacle. It's no longer about character, which was all-important in the past.
Uh, when was this. The film industry has always had tons of stuff that put spectacle ahead of character. "Oh my God, the train is coming right at the camera! Run!"
That very early stuff was more in the line of technical demonstration. You need the technology to advance enough so you can do something with character first (compare with video games, which have only reached the point where they can do decent character stuff recently-ish).
Feels like you are coming from an alternate dimension. Either that or you mean something completely different from what you seem to be meaning. Care to elaborate?
Early film, like the train arriving in the station, was just about technical demonstration of this new medium. It took a while before it developed enough to start being able to make use of character. I chose video games as an example of a medium with a similar development from that perspective. When the height of technical possibility was Space Invaders or Pacman then the ability to do character stuff is very limited. Nowdays though that's very much not the case, and we have a new entirely valid storytelling medium thanks to it. Some games are still all about spectacle, others are very heavily character-driven.
So the point was that the train arriving at the station example wasn't really a good example of "it used to be about spectacle rather than character." You need a medium capable of doing both before you can fairly argue that what people want to do with it has changed.
Then your definition of recent is really wierd. The Famicom already had a number of story-driven games and basically every text-adventure fulfills the criteria. We're talking of a time-span of over 30, almost 40 years by now (if we take Famicom-RPGs as a baseline)...
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
I said recent-ish, and really that was hardly the main thrust of my point, so why get so obsessed over that word? For some reason you're concentrating on the unimportant details rather than the actual point. I just hope I'm not dealing with people whose idea of "old" is anything from beyond last week.
But if you must, with the earlier stuff you can have some character-based aspects but it really was up against the limits of the technology, whereas now I'd argue that the technology isn't really that limiting a factor at all. And you can also probably find exceptions, don't get too hung up on trying to pigeonhole stuff when talking about a fairly generalised concept.
Last edited by Riedquat on Fri Apr 17, 2020 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Riedquat wrote: ↑Fri Apr 17, 2020 5:06 pm
I said recent-ish, and really that was hardly the main thrust of my point, so why get so obsessed over that word? For some reason you're concentrating on the unimportant details rather than the actual point. I just hope I'm not dealing with people whose idea of "old" is anything from beyond last week.
But if you must, with the earlier stuff you can have some character-based aspects but it really was up against the limits of the technology, whereas now I'd argue that the technology isn't really that limiting a factor at all. And you can also probably find exceptions, don't get too hung up on trying to pigeonhole stuff when talking about a fairly generalised concept.
I'm not obsessing over it, it just undermines your entire point. I tend to agree, that story-focusing is increasingly a thing in games, quite likely because technology more easily allows for it, given you ain't stuck with up to 6MB of available storage (for a SNES-cartridge), so that even the most baseline arcade game easily ends up with a more expansive story, but story-focused games have been a thing for quite a while now, especially that many of the earlier games told their story not in videos and cutscenes, but through their gameplay and design. I'd even go so far to argue, that the constraints of older technology forced the developers to be way more creative in how they tell their stories.
"If you get shot up by an A6M Reisen and your plane splits into pieces - does that mean it's divided by Zero?
- xoxSAUERKRAUTxox
Not arguing with any of that but I still disagree that saying "recently-ish" undermines my point at all. The older examples are in this case analagous to the silent film era. They certainly didn't rely on just looking impressive (for their time) and nothing else, but the technology needed to advance before character-driven storytelling could really shine at its brightest and reach its full potential.
thevirtualjim wrote: ↑Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:17 am
1, Ugh! It always frustrates me when he uses whatever video service this one is - i can't fullscreen these videos! Go back to ANY of the other ones please!
I'm afraid that is the site of last resort. If you see it, I already tried everything else first.
I tried getting an invite to Floatplane. Got a form letter rejecting me, saying that as someone just starting out I need to work on building my audience. So that's going well.
Ah! I didn't realize that was the situation. man it must be a pain to deal with that crap (like that letter)!
Oh sorry I'm late for the party. First off. Great review from Chuck always. Surprised it took us this long to get here but get here we did.
Overall this was the best of the Kelvin timeline films. Though i must admit the bar wasn't that high. Ya 09 is a fine shooty bang bang action film with sci fi elements on it.But its not very deep unless ya read all the comics and that.
Into Darkness is the poor mans wraith of Khan with 9/11 and evil secret government agencies trying to start wars for ...reasons while getting its own people killed throwing in for good measure. Oh and Alice Eve in her underwear. Part of me wants to say that's a plus but well while Trek has been pretty shameless with fan service... this is pretty bad even by that low standard.
Beyond.. actually felt like an effort to meet both fronts. A film with action and special effects for the general audience. That also has themes and explores interesting idea's and concept that Trek would allow while allowing the Trek Cast to have their own little moments. And for the most part it worked. I member going in thinking it would be shit and coming out going "That was good. I wouldn't mind more Trek films like this." Sadly thanks to crap marketing again it bombed and put an end to the trek films.. FOR NOW!"
Confession time: I like the USS Franklin so much (such a cute itty-bitty starship, wooo !), I've even included it in a funny Trek fanfic I started slowly writing in July (it's a crossover, with a few characters and tech from various eras of the overall setting).
This was the best of the Kelvin Timeline films, hands down. Not flawless, but I finally felt the makers of the film are having genuine fun, rather than trying to make these alternate timeline prequels into a poor clone of Mission: Impossible and James Bond in space.
