Spielberg has forgotten what a Spielberg movie is!

svonkampen · 11:53 AM

Spielberg has forgotten what a Spielberg movie is!

Remember Jaws, Poltergeist, ET, Close Encounters?

You cared about the characters deeply, didn't you? The characters above all were thoroughly developed, you knew them, so by the time something happened to them, you cared!

Like the Scar-trading stories between Dreyfuss and Shaw in Jaws....THAT is what Spielberg movies are all about!

So now we have "War Of The Worlds", which had NONE of the above mentioned moments.....What a missed opportunity.

CG (computer-graphic FX) are DESTROYING character-development in movies....It seems as though the film-industry is soooo worried about the success of Video-Games, that they feel the only way to compete is to make films that resemble video-games........when in-fact there is a way for both to exist in harmony......

BTW: I'm in the games-industry and I believe since you can get your action-freak on way more with games than film......why not return film to a more cerebral art-form and focus on "Characters" again.
SvK

bell · bell's Garage

war of the worlds is one my favorite books.......h.g.wells was well ahead of his time.

i'm going to hold out until the spielberg version comes to dvd and even then i'm not hoping for much other than some cool dolby digital sound effects.

Hugh R · 07-04-2005, 12:31 PM

I tend to agree, Look at "Saving Private Ryan" War of the Worlds, was just very OK. Directors today are confusing visual effects with a good plot.

dd74 · 07-04-2005, 02:10 PM

That's disappointing to hear, particularly since W of the W was such a phenomenal broadcast on the radio: what you do is when the broadcast comes on - it does about every Halloween, you turn off all the lights in the house and blast the broadcast on the stereo - it'll garauntee scare the crap out of you!

CGI, for my money, is a dinosaur with moviegoers - the future is in character development. An exploding personae is much more powerful than just explosions.

umgang · 07-04-2005, 02:24 PM

Spielberg is a gunzel, and has never made a good movie in his life, except maybe Duel with Dennis Hopper! What a POS.
Let the grovelling begin.
Nick

SilverPoly · 07-04-2005, 02:50 PM

I work in the FX/CG Movie biz doing freelance work. And it is true that many directors use fx as a crutch instead of an enhancement to their films. Resulting in cheeseball FX films that go nowhere. Anybody remember Sphere?

Haven't seen War of the Worlds and even though I'm a Spielberg fan, I'm over Tom Cruise and don't want to support any of his films really.

The right character development i.e. Batman Begins, Spiderman 2 are good examples of well thoughtout storylines mixed along w/ good visual effects.

With the game industry generating more $$ than feature films now, the lines are blurring. It's a progression. Take a look at the new Superman Returns... my friend who is working on that tells me they are shooting it on 5 digital cameras.

cowtown · 07-04-2005, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by svonkampen

CG (computer-graphic FX) are DESTROYING character-development in movies....

I agree completely. I still haven't seen the newest Star Wars, and I don't think I will. I remember seeing the first one, and thinking "how did they do that?" Now it's just like simulated fireworks...lots of colors and sounds to sit through, until it's time to get up and fight traffic going home.

This is exactly one of the reasons I really like the new "Battlestar Galactica" TV show. It's set in space, but the characters are built up to the point where you relate to them. Someone on that show realized that CG is a tool, not a reason for being. The people are believable and have flaws. So when it's time for them to go into that big CG-generated dogfight, you actually care about what happens.

svonkampen · 07-04-2005, 03:08 PM

Steve...

you are right!

Spiderman is a great example of good balance between Character / CG.

SvK

KNS · 07-04-2005, 08:27 PM

I go to the movies a lot less these days because of all the CG effects. Even when the day comes that you will really have a difficult time trying to tell if the shot is CG or not, the scene is presented in such a way that still screams...FAKE, would never happen that way, etc. A shot traditionally filmed from a helicopter for example moves in a certain way. CG is great for fantasy films and Sci Fi but gets in the way of the story in a regular feature. Seeing a bullet travel through the air and into a guys head makes me say "gee whiz" once. After that, it's overkill, so to speak.
How many movies in the last few years are not some sort of re tread from the past. I wish Hollywood would concentrate on some good, original scripts. The original Star Wars blew my mind when I was a kid too. I haven't been able to make myself go down to the theatre to see the latest one.

Justin R · 07-04-2005, 09:27 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by umgang
Spielberg is a gunzel, and has never made a good movie in his life, except maybe Duel with Dennis Hopper! What a POS.
Let the grovelling begin.
Nick

Dennis Weaver

techweenie · techweenie's Garage

There's a final scene in WotW that looks inferior to the old 'matte painting' technique they used in 50s movies.

It's also a complete tack-on to a movie that's otherwise seen pretty much from a ground-level POV.

I'm formulating my review for IMDB on this one, and it won't be pretty. The list of mistakes, IMHO, is long: resetting the original story to 'present time' is a bad idea. "Titanic" wasn't put in present-day. Audiences can adapt. Well, maybe not Spielberg audiences...

The plot changes that Spielberg made not only don't add to the movie, they raise unnecessary plot holes and questions you shouldn't be dealing with in a movie like this.

I won't give details in case some here want to see the movie without knowing what takes place...

dd74 · 07-05-2005, 08:50 AM

I've heard from a couple people that re-takes were being shot on War of the Worlds all the way to two weeks before its scheduled release. That was my first hint that something wasn't right with this film.

techweenie · techweenie's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by dd74
I've heard from a couple people that re-takes were being shot on War of the Worlds all the way to two weeks before its scheduled release. That was my first hint that something wasn't right with this film.

Has Spielberg done 'press junkets' for his weaker films? He was notably absent on this one.

With the wordwide release, the movie has grossed over $300 million so far. As I recall, the distributors get roughly 80-90% of that for the first week, and then a declining percentage. The movie allegedly cost $500 million to make, distribute and promote. I predict ultimately, worldwide b.o. will be over $600 million and DVD sales will eventually bring in nearly that much. So it'll be a money-maker.

And really good films make bupkis.

dd74 · 07-05-2005, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by techweenie
Has Spielberg done 'press junkets' for his weaker films? He was notably absent on this one.

With the wordwide release, the movie has grossed over $300 million so far. As I recall, the distributors get roughly 80-90% of that for the first week, and then a declining percentage. The movie allegedly cost $500 million to make, distribute and promote. I predict ultimately, worldwide b.o. will be over $600 million and DVD sales will eventually bring in nearly that much. So it'll be a money-maker.

And really good films make bupkis.

Spielberg, I think, was more disappointed with Tom Cruise's bizarre behavior. But you're correct: I haven't seen him on any of the talkie shows.

No doubt it'll make money. It has the proper ingredients. Problem is, the proper ingredients don't make necessarily make it a good film, and the viewing public has started to...um..."get the picture" about that. The fact is, mostly everyone out there knows what a good character is. Million Dollar Baby is an outstanding example of great characters working within a simple and understandable storyline. Simple plots with increasing complex characters (i.e. who change throughout the story), are the ingredients. Spielberg had this right with Saving Private Ryan . Each character in that film changed throughout the simple story of finding as Hanks said, "...a needle in a stack of needles."

Really good films make bupkis? Not necessarily. Again, Million Dollar Baby ...

Moneyguy1 · 07-05-2005, 01:35 PM

I liked the original (1953) movie a LOT better. Look at it on the time it was made, and the special effects were state-of-the-art and used to move the story along. The new one is less involved with the characters than "Independence Day" was, and the special effects in "I.D" were just as good as the new "WofW".

I like the "tell me a scary story" type of movie (not the gorefests, please!!) Like "Sixth Sense" types.

Creativity has left the building, to be replaced with bling.

techweenie · techweenie's Garage

Quote:

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
I like the "tell me a scary story" type of movie (not the gorefests, please!!) Like "Sixth Sense" types.

Creativity has left the building, to be replaced with bling.

Well, have I got a movie for you. You probably already know about it. The original "The Haunting" had probably one of the scariest scenes ever, with (obviously) no CGI. Avoid the recent remake. The good one was done in 1963.

What's disapointing to me is that WotW, while losing the 'kiddie-centric' focus of the Jurassic Park series, is still not up at the level of either of SS's first two movies.

Moneyguy1 · 07-05-2005, 06:20 PM

Ahhh, tech

the aging of the old lady in the opening scene and the "breathing" door and walls.....

techweenie · techweenie's Garage

The 'breathing' door did me in.

Moneyguy1 · 07-05-2005, 10:37 PM

The remake of "The Haunting of Hill House" sucked big time. Nowhere as scary as the original. Same for "13 Ghosts", although there were a few funny lines like the lawyer who "had to split".

Sonic dB · Sonic dB's Garage

Speilberg Jumped the Shark after Private Ryan....or was it Shindlers List or maybe even after Duel.

A couple of Private Ryan problems:

1) Would the US really send a unit of 8 men out into enemy territory for an indefinite period of time, just to walk around and expect them to find one man who may be dead anyway?

fubar?

2) When the Nazi troops came for the bridge, why not just wait until they were on the middle of it...then blow it up and shoot the hell out of them? US reinforcements could have arrived shortly and they could have just rebuilt the bridge using taxpayers money and thus sparing the lives of the movies heros.

3) At the end of the movie, the old man Ryan is looking at the tombstone cross of Captain Miller, and he is crying. His wife or mistress comes up and he says "tell me Ive been a good man". She looks at the cross and reads "Captain John Miller?" not knowing who the guy was. So... all those years later, and he has never told her this story?