>>I always wonder why you guys are raving and ranting about the plot of the movie and everybody and their mother, here and elsewhere I read, raves about how great it is when, as cinema, it is mediocre at best.
>
>But then, I love the search for the hidden meaning in the inconsistencies :). I mean, it's fun reading what people who do that write.

Inconsistencies? I found several I didn't even mention.

>>The guy that plays Obi Wan is ok, except that his hair and makeup are always perfect. He fights in a volcanic world, lava running everywhere and flaming boulders falling from the sky. Yet he does not break a sweat. Every close-up shows his hair perfectly coiffed. No blood anywhere.
>
>That's what good Jedi training can accomplish... and fits perfectly with the cowboy cliche. Just like John Wayne movies - ever seen a lady there run out of a burning house with even a single hair out of line?

You've got a point, but John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart got very dirty and dusty in those great Westerns.


>>Anakin loses limbs and gets burned to a crisp, yet no blood anywhere and he still manages to claw his way through the ground, survive and talk.
>
>So did Terminator. So what's new. When would cliches wear out if they weren't repeated?

Terminator was a robot. This guy is a what??


>>- As a SF fan, I fault this as it is not SF but fantasy, as it has too much flying and defying of physics.
>
>26 years ago there was a shortage of SF movies because nobody dared do anything big after "2001". Then Lucas came with, ironically, "New hope"... which was not, IMO, a SF movie at all. It was a SF fairy tale. Which it remains to these days, despite any attempts to introduce more serious elements into it. A good mix of good vs evil, individual vs system, bits of love story, bits of fight movie, lots of pyrotechnics and amazing visual trickery. That's all.

Agreed.



>Yet there's a number of people who take it seriously. Was it the census in Australia when they registered 8000 people whose religious designation was Jedi Knights?

And they made fun of the Trekkies! Even Captain Kirk in one SNL show told them to get a life!


>>As a movie buff for over 40 years I cannot stop to compary the disgrace Hollywood has become today, compared with movies with good scripts, good storylines, and good acting like Casablanca or anything George Cukor or Hitchcock or Kubrik ever did.
>
>Casablanca would not be made if the script hit the studios nowadays. Or if, by some miracle, it would, it would most probably be a completely different movie, and it would suck.

Unfortunately true. The movies are nowadays made by corporations that care about profits and not one whit about quality.


>Speaking of today's Hollywood - I saw the so-called "Hitchhikers' guide" movie, against my better judgement. Laughed about three times... (felt much better when I realized that two of these were the moments when nobody else laughed but my daughter and I). I laughed more often just rereading the book at random. I actually knew what it would be, when I saw the tiny, 4-pixel font link to Disney somewhere in the deep cellar at the bottom of the movie's homepage. It was on display, though. And if you still go see the movie after that, don't be surprised if you get a Zaphod played by emulation of Roger Rabbit.

I haven't seen the movie as I enjoy the book too much to ruin it by Hollywood.

Want to see good SF? Rent the "Serenity" episodes on DVD or wait for the movie next September. Or rent Forbidden Planet or The Day the Earth Stood Still.