Brad Bird is not some kind of raging conservative Randian. He just believes some people are more talented than others and likes making stories which favor the perspective of talented people with a balanced form of individualist ideology. He doesn't think the people who are talented are high society elites or anything. The exact opposite of that is the whole point of Ratatouille.

I've been reading that name as Big Bird this whole time.

Yes but all of Star Wars's influences go back much earlier than that, if the makers of these new films fail to have a firm grasp of what fueled the imagination behind Star Wars in the first place and all they can reference is Star Wars itself then they will fail to go any deeper than DeviantArt fanfiction.

For me the perfect director for a Star Wars movie should understand all those influences and learn how to make them work in a more cohesive way than Lucas ever could, someone who shares Lucas's appreciation for old school genre fiction but is a much better director, which is why I think Raimi would be great.

He may not be the most consistant director out there but when he's on he's dead fucking on, people need to get the fuck over Spider-Man 3 already, Spider-Man 2 is the only genuinely great superhero movie from this century.

Yeah like going back to the real original star wars made by Jack Kirby whom Lucas blatantly ripped off and turned himself into a billionaire.

Wut?

i just hang around critforums too much, but I'm always finding ways to shit on Star Wars

Oh my fucking God you were actually serious.

Star Wars has like a trillion influences, you do realize that right?

Shit like this always reminds me of when people can't decide if Smells Like Teen Spirit is a ripoff of Louie Louie, More Than a Feeling or Godzilla.

sounds like one girl was bigger than others tho

lol really reaching to hate on Star Wars there

Radiohead are just a shitty ripoff of The Hollies.

and so you should. but seriously he's the only guy who, while clearly being influenced by spielberg and lucas and their ilk, also has his own identifiable style, a style which would work so well in a galaxy far, far away.

*film snob contingent moving in*

I kept it spoiler free.

To get the snobbiest paragraph out of the way first, before closing on another really snobby paragraph: this is the only Star Wars film that I would consider watching all the way through ever again. Congrats to the canonical Star Wars series for finally arriving at the level of competence we see in other spectacle blockbusters such as Titanic and the first Pirates of the Caribbean film (which are more impressive films btw, because they can't rely on fanservice whatsoever). Achieving this level of "hey the editing doesn't give me a headache and the actors are actually acting" makes it the only canonical Star Wars film that even qualifies as being very good (that is at least 3.5/5 stars).

But I'm not sure if any of that makes it *a great film* even beyond my own idea of what that is. For a Star Wars film to be a great film it should have at least one orgasmic *blow up the Death Star* or *Luke I am your father* moment. This film has a lot of moments that are like a few decibel levels below Death Star blowup levels, but it needs at least one that's on par with that, and really it should have one that's I Am Your Father levels. I think it can almost be scientifically proven that it doesn't have either of those. It's just really inexcusable that what will end up being the most successful film of all time will not--at least justifiably--have one of those moments that they show in cutscenes of the most iconic scenes in the history of cinema.

And the thing is that even though it's still the best Star Wars film despite this, it'll probably only be able to reach 3.5 when I'm in a really good mood, which is a mood I tried very hard to be in today because believe it or not I would prefer to not be a dick about popular things. So yeah, I enjoyed every minute of this film. But only in the sense that I also enjoy every minute of at the very least 700 other films. Including around nine other films I've seen this year, six of which I would say are pretty definitively better than this one.

As for JJ Abrams, boo boo I'm sorry to disappoint you but you should really just calm the fuck down and enjoy this movie. I applaud Abrams for showing off all of his strengths while downplaying pretty much all of his weaknesses about as much as anyone could reasonably hope for. What I was worried about was conversational scenes being paced too fast, since honestly the lens flares don't bother me too much. Neither of these old demons of Abrams are problems here. I was surprised, actually, by what was: aside from the fact that for me it had no big truly over the top amazingly executed iconic moments, for me the continuous "error" of the film was the humor, which it seemed to me only worked occasionally. The humor often seemed to me poorly timed, not in the sense of like second-by-second, where the humor is timed well. But it seemed that some scenes which could have used some humor didn't have it, and then some scenes had it where it, for me, felt inappropriate. Especially a certain character throwing tantrums, which made me feel like I was reading a ragechan cartoon, which is not a feeling I want to feel when being thrown into mythic storytelling pitched at this level of epic. Star Wars designed for a post-ironical generation which still has vestiges of that former irony kind of fucks with that nice pure Star Wars vibe a bit, and appealing to that demographic is basically Abrams' whole thing. He suppressed it here about as much as he could. But most importantly to me, he also learned how to frame and hold establishing shots, and how to pace conversational scenes, and how to put contrary shots together--or else all of this was imposed upon him. Whatever the case, the film looks continuously great because of it, and not just in a superficial pretty cinematography way, but in a brass tacks good classic Hollywood filmmaking way which I never thought would be possible either with an Abrams film or with a Star Wars film. TLDR: Abrams managed to make a film which you can tell is directed by Abrams if you know a lot about Abrams, but nevertheless doesn't quite feel as thoroughly Abramsy as all his other films. And thank god for that.

Despite it not being a great film, I was smiling a lot. And I'm actually truly supportive of the political-race aspect of this one and not just going "yeah, of course" like some other white liberal people seem to be, behind closed doors. On the basis of this film, I'm going to truly look forward to and participate (mildly) in Star Wars hype until at least the next film. But don't get fucked up, this is just a good film, and if you think it's actually one of the very best films you've ever seen... well I guess I'm kind of happy for you. Like in the same way you would be happy for an artistically sensitive person who hasn't truly "gotten into music" yet, but who has their fair share of favorite albums inherited from their dad and older brother, and who thinks Beatles For Sale is a top 10 album of all time. I mean yeah it has 5 stars on Allmusic or whatever, and if it means a lot to you for personal reasons that's cool, but at the end of the day you have to admit that its level there for you is mostly historical circumstance working, and that once you start to learn about what music really is, you'll know the year was really about Another Side of Bob Dylan (aka Mad Max: Fury Road).

In other news:
trailer for Kubo and the Two Strings. Now that will be a masterpiece.

I dunno. Raimi for me is great (I even would say that Spider Man 3 was an okay film) but he's great for real world and underworld lookin stuff. He has a very physical earthy-cartoon aesthetic. Somehow I don't imagine him doing too well in outer space. Same with Del Toro or Gilliam or Luc Besson (The Fifth Element can get fucked). Abrams was a good safe pick for the first of this generation. Brad Bird would be the optimum pick going forward. Whedon is disqualified because the man is absolutely blind when it comes to the mechanics of cinema (although not to the same extent as Lucas, I suppose).

Ultimately I'm just glad we've got Denis Villeneuve doing Blade Runner.