[quote=demonrail666]I couldn't agree more, at least in terms of the unnecessary bloating of The Hobbit. I enjoyed all three Rings films even if individually they were a little too long. The Hobbit, though, was one solid 2 hour film but Jackson killed it by stretching it beyond credibility.
Yeah. One move would have been just fine. Even as a prequel. Low expectations, use the building tension to make people want to watch Fellowship again right when it's done.. y'know?
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Originally Posted by demonrail666
Fair enough on liking it, and I agree that it probably works better as a stnd alone film (and but for the design of the alien ship and the very final scene it pretty much is). But even as a stand-alone I actually thought it had a similar problem to Hobbit: it was like a short story stretched until it broke. A huge amount of storyline padding. And for a film with such a limited, generally enclosed setting, and relatively small cast, it was still too jumbled. The idea behind Prometheus is complex on a philosophical level but Ridley's direction only makes it even more difficult to understand it. The fact I didn't like the actual idea behind it all is just my thing, others may like it for valid reasons. But beyond that I do just think the films simply a mess. A good idea (maybe), but very poorly told. Look at how those old (pre-reboot) Dr Who could tell a very sophisticated story in 90 minutes (3 episodes) which let you think about the idea without wasting energy trying to remember who's doing what, where and why. I honestly feel a lot of the more idea-centric sf movies being made at the moment could learn a lot from those older Dr Who stories.
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I couldn't agree more about Doctor Who.
Honestly, I'd take Doctor Who over just about anything else in sci-fi, just about any day.
I read a neat article about Doctor Who and Star Trek (original series) and how the two shows, respectively, used their very different limitations to inspire creative and powerful storytelling.
Like, Star Trek started a couple years after Doctor Who, no doubt buoyed a bit by that show's success in the UK. And compared to DW it had a massive budget, but Roddenberry's eutopian, post-conflict vision presented some real problems in... y'know... creating
conflict, which is obviously a necessary piece of any narrative. They came up with some interesting ways to present obstacles (mind control, more mind control, insanity, silliness), and eventually they sort of found their footing... usually by venturing outside Federation space where things weren't "post-conflict" anymore.
Doctor Who on the other hand, was overflowing with ideas, but they had fucking NO money, so they really had to work with what they had and present a philosophical fantasy space opera in a compelling way using, like, two interconnected sets and six people. Haaa!
The takeaway was that Doctor Who succeeded even more than Trek in expanding the framework of sci-fi and television despite having an aged, half-empty toolbox and being black and white. I agree. They used the limitations to their advantage. They thought outside the "box" (eh? Get it?) and turned those limitations into strengths by embracing them, making them iconic. Doctor Who has always been (and, I'd argue, still is) an extremely influential and wonderfully smart show, with a very rich universe surrounding it, and I would love to see more SF that could hold a candle to any era of Who.
I actually get a bit bitter about all the nonstop Star Wars hubbub, and intermittent Star Trek hubbub, because frankly I think Doctor Who puts both universes to shame in virtually every possible way. I would KILL for a feature length major motion picture of Doctor Who. Kill, I say. BUT Star Trek hasn't NOT been in the movie business for damn near 40 years, and even when there's not a Star Wars movie coming out every year for the forseeable future, as there is now, people never shut the fuck up about Boba Fett!!
A Doctor Who movie, in theatres, with a deserving writer and director, the right cast, and enough of a foundation in Who mythology and series nostalgia would probably give me a brain aneurysm. Of awesomeness.