M.C. Myers Profile picture
Jun 6 5 tweets 3 min read
#FilmTwitter
Regardless of anything else, Obi-Wan Kenobi has an astonishing lack of attention to the logic of its action.

People teleport constantly for convenience, bad guys "lose" good guys even though they're RIGHT THERE, Leia outruns adults constantly. It's so distracting. Image
As an example of the exact opposite, Part 3 of Clone Wars (2003) is an immaculately attentive presentation of space and POV. The action never loses the audience for a SECOND.

Obi-Wan's creators seriously need to take notes. You couldn't pass a film class w/ what they're doing. ImageImageImageImage
You know "out of sight, out of mind?" This is "out of frame, out of mind." Like that roof chase in Part 2. HOW did Reva lose them? The director just snapped their fingers and teleported everyone to the next scene w/ no connecting visual logic.

It's aggressively incoherent. Image
I want to be fair though, so it's worth acknowledging a scene for which this does NOT apply. The Order 66 recreation at the beginning was great! There was no lost time or space in the editing and it was exciting as a result.

All the action should be directed like this scene. Image
Buster Keaton had a saying: "We do it in one take or we cut the gag."

His premise was that showing the logic of action in space is how you make audiences believe it.

If the camera covers up logic rather than accentuates it, the scene doesn't feel real. So it'll never be tense. Image

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More from @filmobjective

Jun 7
This is a well-spoken thread justifying The Last Jedi in Star Wars canon and explaining the intent of its narrative. Check it out!

While I appreciate this assessment of its intent, in this thread, I want to discuss some execution issues I think should be PART of the discussion.
Arcs like Poe outgrowing the hot-head hero persona are good ideas, but if it was thematic that his plan was bad, Holdo's should have been great. "Releasing escape pods" is not complex enough to justify putting the audience through the runaround. That gap obscures the theme. Image
The same applies to Rose and Finn. A great plan executed well that still failed might have been relevant. But a comedy of errors doesn't have as clear a point since better heroes MIGHT have succeeded, which is beside the point. The themes are reverse-engineered, not demonstrated. Image
Read 8 tweets
Jul 2, 2021
#FilmTwitter
Polanski’s Bitter Moon (1992).

I rarely say this. But this is a demeaning film. Its POV is sexist in a way that makes everyone worthless. It's SO cynical. It has the rare dishonor of being a film I hate thematically far more than the actors and visuals deserve.
The reason is not just its execution, which prioritizes cheesy narration to sell every small emotional detail, falsely excusing the visuals from being as creative as they could be. That just makes it boring.

What makes it truly vile is its completely unempathetic worldview.
Movies that lack empathy for men are not uncommon but rarely are they this ambitious. Every male drive and desire is shown as evil in Bitter Moon, utterly condemnable. Even the capacity to love is portrayed as WEAKNESS. A man's desire to kill himself is portrayed as inevitable.
Read 10 tweets
Jul 2, 2021
#FilmTwitter
Glass (2019)
W/ its nice presentation, it's just so painful that the crucially flawed element is the script's dramatic priorities.

All I would do is rewrite the film to include a full character thread for David, including his relationship w/ his powers and his son.
Instead of him just vanishing from the entire 2nd act and waking up after a literal nap for the ending, I would include him!

I love the idea of the Clover Organization being beaten by a normal guy, not because of his strength, but his normalness.
And I know M. Night craved subversion. But David does NOT seem like he's been doing this for 20 years. He and his son are shown to be PITIFULLY disorganized and unambitious if you think about it.

Their last scene together is in the hardware store! It's so painfully underwritten.
Read 5 tweets
Jun 30, 2021
#FilmTwitter
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is a 2001 CBM made 10 years late. Expectations in 2011 were COMPLETELY different. Does this mean the film is “underrated?”

It’s respectably loony. Cage expresses it facially to a level of enjoyment that prevents it from being boring. Image
But it sidesteps its ability to be, even on its own terms, a "good movie."

Its problems are in conventions. The henchman villain is dramatically inert. The girl has no energy at all, not dramatic, not romantic, nothing. She really should have had crazy charisma. Image
They set it up that anything Ghost Rider "rides" transforms in his image …

so the natural punchline would have been a ridiculous sex scene, Cage screaming on fire as she transforms into a hardcore demon queen. Something WAY over-excessively, memorably, nonsensically perverse. Image
Read 10 tweets
Jun 30, 2021
#FilmTwitter
Snow White is still one of the best animated films. It not only forged feature animation but recaptured the particular dark optimism of the European fables.

I think the scene where Snow White wakes up in bed is still THE most important scene in animation history. ImageImageImageImage
Why that one?
What we have to remember about animation is that it was not SELF-EVIDENT that it would stylize characters based on their personality. It could have been used (for someone less artistic, it would have been) simply to turn realistic people into animated forms. Image
Instead, however, Disney used animation to translate essential characteristics of personality into physical traits, which defined the art of animation forever.

When Snow White wakes up in bed, she names the dwarfs by SIGHT based on the artistic process of drawing them. Image
Read 5 tweets

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