the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

those Red Letter reviews are amazing. the whole walking,talking/ bad framing section in part 3 is way better at articulating what's wrong with the prequels than anything else i've ever seen or read. who is this guy? does he really speak like that?

of course not

a quick look at their website makes it seem like a group. plus if someone was to do all that themselves they would have to be fucking psychotic (not out the question obv)

the first one was made in the 70s. it feels like a 70s movie. the haircuts, the attitudes. the others weren't. QED

Technically, the second one was made in the 70s too, its filming was finished in September 1979.

2nd is still pretty goddam AOK, fwiw

those Red Letter reviews are amazing. the whole walking,talking/ bad framing section in part 3 is way better at articulating what's wrong with the prequels than anything else i've ever seen or read.

otm. i'd love to see more long-form movie reviews like this---it's very rare in a written review to get the kind of close-reading of craft that the red letter guys got into. can't really imagine many other films that would warrant this obsessive treatment, though.

i told a friend who wanted to learn how to write to watch it.

The Star Trek (2009) review is really good, too, since he/they actually liked the movie. And he explicitly compares it to both OT and PT Star Wars to demonstrate what it got right that the prequels got wrong. (ALthough when it come's to the prequels, I'm pretty firmly in Dan's camp, here.)

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i must watch the Star Trek review one. Star Tek 09 is an all-time classic example of taking something old and making it better, i was freaking blown away by it. Dr Who, Star Wars, Superman Returns, that recent good BBC Sherlock thing, all the endless horror remakes etc.. all of them are bloody rubbish in comparison.

Well I wouldn't get that carried away about it, but it was a great reboot. Superman Returns wasn't much cop, so I'll give you that one.

This Red Letter guy is brilliant, because as easy as it is to say these movies are bad, he may be the only person I've encountered to peg just why these movies suck, and not just that they
suck. And yeah, the Star Trek 09 review is pretty vital, too, because it's a movie he likes but isn't beyond dissecting as a perfectly assembled product, which again goes back to his problem with the prequels - namely that they're poorly assembled products. Star Trek turns out to be a great point of comparison (just like Citizen Kane in the Sith review, which he concedes is unfair but still smartly knows how to employ as a useful reference).

tbh I really can't imagine watching these reviews based on the descriptions here

u should deffo skip these vids if you hate funny things

I must admit, they do provide satisfying closure to the whole ordeal.

they are hilarious and insightful and surprisingly dont seem too long but they are still reviews of a movie.

how can they not seem too long when they are JUST AS LONG AS THE MOVIE BEING REVIEWED

because they're way more interesting than the actual movie (which is a piece of shit btw)?

^^^^^^^

like dude i've seen other movies as long as ep3 that didn't seem too long because you know they were ~actually good~

ultimately, and keep in mind I spend large chunks of my work day posting here, I think my time is too precious to spend on multiple hours of someone dissecting movies I find enjoyable and inconsequential

I don't really have that many NERDS! moments but it seems like they're all triggered by ILX these days

haha dude my NERDS! moments are exclusively thanks to ilx

i find these reviews legitimately entertaining and dont seem too long because they're smart! (minus the serial killer sub-plot...)

i think the cross-cutting between Yoda's monologue on the force and the systematic contradictions of it in the prequels is sort of a high water mark for the whole series of reviews.

What makes these so great is not just that they're entertaining but that they're perceptive. You may think you know why you don't like these movies, but man, this guy offers a very educational breakdown that details stuff you may not have even noticed. Like, not mistakes or continuity issues, but good ol' film school 101 stuff that, tbh, will likely now affect not just how I watch certain films but how I critique them. Blocking, framing, writing, editing, the whole deal. And then chase it down with the Star Trek '09 review to get an idea how two very similar Hollywood productions can diverge so wildly when it comes to results.

the reviews dpn't ever even mention utility data, it's tragic

I dunno -- there's another series of nerd reviews by some anonymous kid that seems about as insightful, but the fact that the kid doesn't go to the effort of peppering it with serial killer jokes is what makes it fall flat.

also the kid sounds like the schaudenfreude kid from king of the hill + comic book guy.

I think the editing is the secret star of these videos. They do a good job of keeping your visual interest for TWO HOURS. Hard to do.

iirc the ep 1 one is broken into ten minute chunks and the first one ends with the interviews with people describing characters from the original trilogy, then the new ones. It's a great moment and probably a good place to start if you're wary of devoting precious unrecoverable hours of your life to such a seemingly pointless and nerdy enterprise.

I kind of wish the guy would do this for global warming deniers, because he does way more entertaining and effective lawyering than say, al gore

Michael Moore already does the mumbling "Then the President followed through on it... oh wait. Yeah... Nevermind" thing.

willing to bet MM movies would be improved w/ a bizarre "comedy" serial killer schtick.

well, the rabbit lady was the highlight of roger & me...

I think the editing is the secret star of these videos. They do a good job of keeping your visual interest for TWO HOURS. Hard to do.

― I Am Kurious Assange (polyphonic), Wednesday, January 5, 2011 4:28 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Gets v predictable tho, after you watch his Ep.1 review and go onwards - comparable to Family Guy, like you know the exact moment in which a joke isn't going to be made. They're sort on par as well, as far as that "I'm a fat serial killer" theme goes. All screaming is cut short, and the repetition shtick was never funny. But otherwise I love this guy to hell.

If they had to "go there", a simple pan in the basement showing just a glimpse of his prisoner would have been more than enough.

The repeating, like trying to explain Junga Gin's bet with Watto, or even the "what's wrong with your face?!?!" killed me.

Funnier than the hustage scenes at least.

That's just the Ep.1 review tho, right? He does the same basement hostage thing in each and every review and it gets tired fast. But, again, this is me bitching because I am bored and in this democracy of ilxor feel the need to state an opinion. I love the guy.

at least in this third review, the majority of off-topic stuff happened at the end of the videos, so you could skip if you didn't care. although i like nadine and her betty-boop voice.

i've threatened to make a fan-edit with the horror-comedy stuff excised before but it would feel too much like i was making greedo shoot first.

I never watched the new Star Warses because they looked shit, so sadly I don't get to enjoy the blissful closure provided by these rapey videos telling me they are shit

Not sure how to react when I hear comments like this. I myself haven't seen mega-blockbusters like Transformers 2 just out of lack of interest but Star Wars, of anything, is a cultural stape. Plus it's just like 2/24 hours of your day. It's not like you're committing to the army here.

6 hrs iirc

also it is universally acknowledged to have turned out to be even shitter than it looked

also there are about 20 Hitchcock films and a year of Mad Men I haven't seen, would you argue that they should get in the queue behind Attack Of The Clones?

There's plenty of quality stuff everywhere, I'm more saying that there are certain things in pop culture that almost bear a definition of being an obligation, no matter how bad they are. Like, as in, it's impossible to carry on conversation with most people without having seen them - and unlike flunkers of movies like Watchmen or Wolverine or whatever, the Star Wars prequels still continue to be discussed (of course, negatively) years upon years upon years upon years after they hit theaters.

I've still only seen 1.5 of the prequels (totally lost interest midway through Clones), and don't plan on ever "correcting" that.

It's like you guys are trying to make me defend the films. Your choice on not seeing them, I don't care; but you're missing out on luls.

Like, as in, it's impossible to carry on conversation with most people without having seen them

I guess I'm lucky in not having run into most people

to get the luls we have to watch 6 hours of horrible shitty movies and then another 8 hours of rapey comedy reviews of the horrible shitty movies? idk mayne there's a shitload of Wodehouse I haven't re-read since I was 14 that's guaranteed to have a massively higher lol/time invested ratio

this has been confirmed independently by many people: watch the movies with the english off, and it magically becomes a jodorowskian masterpiece. this alchemy will make you question if you can ever competently judge a movie with subtitles ever again.

xpost

If you had done it the right way, it would be 2 hours a year with intermissions of about 2-3 years between.

note: the turn english off trick also works with the matrix