Hawki said:
There's an entire chapter in the fourth Harry Potter novel dedicated to describing how the Three Unforgivable Curses work. It's one of the most engrossing chapters in the novel, because it recontextualizes a lot of prior material, sets the stage for a lot of further material, and gives us a good sense of how the 'rules' work for the curses, since they're repeatedly used by the antagonists. Part of why it's engaging isn't just because of this though, it's because of the character reactions to them - Neville is terrified of the Cruciatus curse (for reasons we don't learn until much later), Harry surviving Advada Kadavra becomes even more shocking, etc.
You can write these kinds of things well.
You can, as I said. But it rarely works out well.
There's a segment in one of the old EU novels where Luke describes the feeling of holding Anakin's lightsaber for the first time. It's only a paragraph or so, but it adds a lot of depth to the original scene.
And most people who will go into a cinema to watch Star Wars overwhelmingly do not give a shit about the EU stuff.
Just like the people who watch Doctor Who don't read the novellas that were written as if a companion canon to the Classic Who. I read metric fucktons of them and loved them, but at the some time I'm not going to criticize Nu Who and the people who watch it for wanting the show to have new angles and concepts to play with.
I will say UNIT is shittier, but meh.
If that dragged on for pages and pages, sure, but you seem to be advocating that any kind of description or worldbuilding is inherently negative. If I spent four pages on a lightsaber all at once, it would be pretty bad (unless I did a Rowling or Herbert and made it engaging). If the info of that four pages was spread out, then it becomes much more paletable.
No I didn't, I didn't advocate anything of the sort. And I would argue spacing out a technical explanation of how lightsabers work might even be worse than just confined to one chapter.
It wouldn't be shit, but that says more about a film's pacing restrictions than the know-how of a lightsaber.
Which is sophist way of saying
it would be shit. The film would not benefit for it, and would
be worse for it.
Yes ... do I win?
They also show Jedi at the peak of their power, and makes the lightsaber a viable weapon in its universe.
Don't care, because it looks shit.
The duels don't do as well on the emotive angle mind you, but Last Jedi fixed that.
Um ... no.
Swinging your lightsaber around madly in the hope of hitting something?
I'm sorry, but have you actually seen the prequel movies?
Swinging madly? Check.
No weight behind lightsaber swings? Check.
Ridiculous bullshit?
Oh
boy, check.
Ain't just AotC that has problems there, bucko. And that was meant to be the epic battle of Master and Padawan. Pretty anticlimactic and ... utterly stupid.
After all, this was also Kenobi...
Lots of people care. Just because you don't doesn't give you the right to say "fuck anybody" who does.
Correction... 99% percent of people willing to pay money to be entertained at the theatre
do not give a flying fuck and
will not give a flying fuck no matter how many times you pretend like they ought to.
Just like 99% of people that go see Infinity War
will not give a flying fuck about Marvel comics as a whole.
You're doing something wrong then.
As per my stipulation alone ...
to bring the scene to conclusion.
You actually have to talk
in detail about the environment, why it matters, and so on.
That was my point. Don't pretend otherwise.
Unless you mean "show" as in "visuals," no, they can't. Not if we're doing a 1:1 comparison.
That is precisely what I mean, and there is more than enough evidence of that. Whether in animation or in live action (particularly ones with a high desire to show mobility and unrevisited locations) use comicize storyboards and storyboard editors to actually bring a scene to conclusion.
As was my argument you cut out because, seemingly, you didn't have an answer for it.
Try writing
to bring the scene to a satisfactory conclusion.
Not merely vaguely hint at it, or leave it to the reader to try to formulate in their headspace. To actually show the scene coming to a conclusion and make it as detail rich as film allows. And that form of writing is beyond books unless it starts to look as if a meticulous chronological historiographical analysis of events as well as associated discourses on culture, fashion, etc...
Writing alone can't do everything. Which is precisely why whether in live-action or animation, no one relies on just writing to help illustrate how a scene should be handled before they go to actual direction.
They use comicized depictions of scenes. Hand-drawn images of key shots. Extensive crew instructions beneath each one.
Again, name an adaptation of a book that has more worldbuilding than the book it's based on.
Which isn't my argument, and you know it.
Films are still reviewed and held to a standard.
Ditto above.
Yes, and? What does this have to do with worldbuilding?
I don't know ... does visual symbolism and performing artistry not count for anything anymore? They say a picture is eorth a thousand words, but what I've found is a single frame of a movie can more so tell up to 10,000 in stage direction, scene exposition, effects, camera type, reason for being shot like that, use of props, likely transitioning angles, quality of stage costumes, historical time period, obvious inspirations to other works ... need I go on?
The shot depictibg Lord Humungus' gun case and pistol tells a fantastic story and oodles of social commentary, character backstory, and symbolism ... in a span of 4.3 seconds. Every element of it perfectly arranged, perfectly positioned, perfectly wearied by age, carefully dusted with the dirt with his assumed travels and travails, the values to which Lord Humungus lives by, and the ravages of war.
And that is worldbuilding still. This still tells a story on its own and yet makes it brutally honest as to his character, and still yet mysterious.
And that frame alone is probably the best reason why an artist creating an entirely creative film without derivation will end up writing many millions of words alone just trying to bring a 100 minute movie to life.
It seems you're equating worldbuilding with wordpainting. Those are two different concepts.
Which is perhaps why you don't seem to quite grasp why Mad Max 1 is clearly a Dystopian setting... why it is
arbitrary to put a hard divider between the two.
When the director says as such, why you missed hints it's set in the future, why you have no appreciation of the vehicles the movie highlights and makes incredibly important. Where those vehicles, wordless on their own, silent save for their enginery, speak volumes of the world these characters live in by their relationship to them... just why do you think it is set at least a decade after its intentional release? Maybe the director wanted to, IDK, show a darker future Australia perhaps?
The details that you missed like Mad Max clearly set in a far enough future from its 1979 theatrical release, Australian car culture at the time, Australian police force composition and resourcing, the 1973 Energy Crisis that was an obvious inspiration for the setting... And all of that is fucking important if you want to analyze the film. And yeah, film can tell such things better than a book
because the weight of discovering hintsand characteristics as to when the film is actually set would be lost if the book
just told you those details. The imagery of the vehicles and their weight and historical importance
would be less meaningful if a book just told you.
Just because you seem to be blind to the relevance, don't mistake it for not
writing volumes of the world that Mad Max exists in. The
writing of the world of Mad Max. Because a fuckton more words necessary to bring that vision to life were written than the entire LotR trilogy. George Miller writes ridiculously fucking long backstories on all his characters and props he wants to use. Taken collectvely, it is
many millions of words. But how well do you think any of that would lend to writing a novel if you just smushed them together and pretended to call it a story?
Then screenwriting, to direction, to storyboards, to costume direction, to weapons depiction, to car detailing directions, to stuntwork, to shot composition, to location choices, to everything that goes into giving the viewer a
rich world to be lost in. Books do POV better than film. But they can't do 'panorama shots' and provide the same level of world detail in a manner that makes film a brilliant tool for showing someone
the world these characters live in. A shorthand reason for this is
film shortcuts the need for personal investment that literature can never provide ...
And hell... this even has political dimensions. Like Soviet and Maoist era communists proclaiming cinema is the highest aspirational art to capture the imaginations and message of the people. Precisely because of the sheer density of information that it can grant to a controlling power that has the reins on the cultural war underpinning the age.
Ever seen how a traditional writer handles film direction? It's called
Maximum Overdrive... and anyone with a note of understanding film would know it would be an
embarassment, but you still had Stephen King talking it up, saying; "See the movie as I would intend for it to be shown!" It doesn't work out well, suffice it to say.
Turned out he needed a Kubrick after all ... Remember how Stephen King fucking derided and whined like a petulant child how Kubrick 'didn't follow his vision'?
Big slice of humble pie there...
You want to see how a director and creative film producer wants to replicate a novel in storytelling, shot composition, and direction? Hitchcock's
Rope.
And it is fucking phenomenal. A tour de force of characterization, presence and psychology. The nominal size of a book chapter is about 5K words. What
Rope does in a three act cinematic tradition-transformed into one... is what novelists could only dream of.