(no subject)

[shadowkat]

The slow inevitable death of the Romance Writers Association

This is an insane read of how an organization should NOT be run.

Edited to add...uhm, apparently Rise of Skywalker can be watched in 4D, which means you can get beaten up by your chair during the movie. Friend who saw it in 4D, said "Because nothing enhances film appreciation like getting beaten up by your chair" - she felt like she was on an episode of Distraction. (I don't know what Distraction is either - your guess is as good as mine.)

But I hunted down a review of 4D, to see if she was joking, she is not. (see link above to 4 D description.)


While there are notable issues in the story and action of The Rise of Skywalker, the best way to see the sequel trilogy capper is 4DX, if you have a theater near you that offers it. What J.J. Abrams and company have created is a nonstop series of quests that includes space battles, Force lightning, skiffing over giant waves, and an in-atmosphere ground assault on a Star Destroyer over a misty planet. It’s like the whole movie was designed to be an amusement park ride, and your local multiplex might have the equipment to play it as one.

[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for the first third of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.]

Here’s a taste of my experience: In the first 10 minutes of the movie, the 4DX theater chairs swooped and vibrated with Kylo Ren’s lightsaber as the new Supreme Leader cut his way through a Mustafarian village. Each time he stabbed a poor villager with his saber, the 4DX seat punched me in the back to feel the full impact. Later, my four-seat group bobbed and weaved with his TIE Fighter as he navigated the unknown regions of Exegol, and the theater filled with mist as both Kylo and the audience got their first look at the Emperor. Palpatine’s introduction, shot like a horror film, set off synchronized flashes all throughout the theater. The action cut immediately to a Millennium Falcon chase sequence. As each TIE fighter laser narrowly missed the ship, I felt blasts of air that went just past my head, as if I was the Falcon being shot at.
n March 2014, a company called CJ 4DPlex made a deal with the Regal Cinemas theater chain to build “4DX” theaters in selected multiplexes. The 4DX experience finds each patron seated in a chair that’s part of a four-chair unit, which is then hydraulically controlled (like a Star Tours flight simulator) to move with the pans, shakes, and tilts of the image of the 3D-projected movie. The “X” part of 4DX has to do with environmental effects: fog to haze the auditorium, large fans around the room to create winds and breezes, and misters to splash water on the audience if they are, say, watching a lightsaber battle that takes place on the wreckage of a Death Star.




Well, this certainly explains a lot of the reviews about the problems with the movie. It was not designed to be a movie -- but an amusement park ride.

While there are notable issues in the story and action of The Rise of Skywalker, the best way to see the sequel trilogy capper is 4DX, if you have a theater near you that offers it. What J.J. Abrams and company have created is a nonstop series of quests that includes space battles, Force lightning, skiffing over giant waves, and an in-atmosphere ground assault on a Star Destroyer over a misty planet. It’s like the whole movie was designed to be an amusement park ride, and your local multiplex might have the equipment to play it as one.

Sigh. I think I may pass. I'm not sure my blood pressure or for that matter tendency towards motion sickness can handle being tossed about and beaten up by my chair. Then again -- it may make the movie more interesting?

Although I have yet to find anything that explains the utter insanity that is CATS.
This review however... may well have you almost crying with laughter over craziness of the movie CATS.
The reviews of that movie are crazy. Weirdly, I think people are enjoying making fun of CATS more than seeing Skywalker.

Comments

[rose_griffes]

Chair movement to add to the movie experience? No, thank you.

The whole thing with the RWA (I read a bit yesterday) is just baffling; what a way to implode.

[shadowkat]

Yes, it is. Apparently there's some serious organizational issues in how they are structured and financed. Also they banned a really popular Chinese-American author, with a huge fan following, who is an attorney - with a background in corporate and intellectual property law - in favor of two authors that are little known and I've never heard of.

[cactuswatcher]

I saw and liked the first of the current trilogy of Star Wars films, and thought to myself, 'Gee, after all this time has J. J. Abrams learned how to create a coherent story?' The reviews were so bad for the second one I never saw it, and this most recent one just sounds like a dozen fanfics smushed together and gone terribly wrong. No, J. J. Abrams is deathly allergic to making any sense over an extended period of time. I suspect that seventy years from now film and TV critics will look back his career and wonder what in the heck did anyone see in this guy. Disney will make their money and be very happy, but those of us who remember what the original three movies were like will wish that George Lucas had put a stake in the franchise's heart after Return of the Jedi and left well enough alone.

[cactuswatcher]

I should have mentioned that the 4D gimmick kind of fits with the whole J. J. Abrams way of doing things. Lots of flashy bits to keep people happy, but not burden anyone with substance. Most reviewers have said the same thiing, they kind of enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker while they were sitting through it and thought very differently shortly thereafter.

[shadowkat]

It's gotten admittedly mixed reviews. I think A.O Scott of the NY Times liked it, albeit with reservations and the caveat that well it's a Star Wars movie.

From what I read -- it has some of the same problems as the last two. Last Jedi to be fair, was Rian Johnson's film not Abrams, Abrams washed his hands of the franchise and was brought back for Rise. And Johnson had some great ideas for expanding it -- but, alas, he tried to cram three different movies into one, and to please everyone. So many of the ideas - I felt got a bit lost, unless you were hunting for them. He needed a good editor badly.

Abrams, unlike Johnson and Lucas, has nothing to say. He just wants to put on a spectacle -- he's a showman. And yeah...you are absolutely right, the 4D gimmick fits with Abrams -- it's also about spectacle. Abrams is a frustrated amusement park ride director.

[wpadmirer]

I've been on the periphery of the RWA stuff on Twitter. Interesting to see more about it. It really is an awfully white group, and most with huge chips on their shoulders. (I've known several writers in the RWA.) Not my favorite group.

Which makes me think of the conversation at dinner last night with friends. The husband went on a tirade about people who want to use the pronouns they/them. It was utterly ridiculous. He doesn't even know anyone who requests that. It just pisses him off in theory. Pat and I were equally appalled and let him know we were.

[shadowkat]

I think it's hard for people to see outside of their own perspective? I ran into it over the holidays as well, and at work.

Although how anyone can think the Chinese have yellow toned skin is beyond me. I've been watching Korean, Japanese and Chinese television shows and movies, also know a lot of people from those ethnicity and their skin tone is the same as mine - and some are whiter than I am. Also I have deep eyes, with little to no eyelid, that disappear when I smile. One individual stated that most white babies are born with blue eyes. This is untrue. My brother, my parents, and my niece were all born with brown or black eyes. I was the only one born with light colored eyes -- but they were more green than blue.

People make odd generalizations based on their own limited experience, making asses of themselves in the process.

One of the problems with genre writing, be it graphic novels or regular novels -- is a lot of the writers never learned how to write good dialogue and description. (Actually 75% of them never took a writing class and taught themselves by reading the books. Writing fan fiction. Or getting guides from various writing groups. And it shows.) We don't necessarily need to know the skin tone, features or hair color of the characters. There are other ways of identifying them. Nor do we need pronoun identifiers and said after every piece of dialogue. There's no crime against using the character's name. (I've lost count of the number of poorly written novels and fan fictions that used physical description instead. "The brunette said" or the "China man said" or "the gypsey said" or "the yellow-toned guy said" - ugh! Every time someone does that, they should have their knuckles rapped sharply with a ruler. It's painful to read and racist. It also alienates the reader. As I'm writing this, I'm considering killing all the physical descriptions in my latest novel.)

[wpadmirer]

Yeah, I think it really is hard for most people.

And I will live very happily if I never read another "the older man said" or "the blonde replied."

[shadowkat]

Yep. Pronouns exist for a reason.