: No, a little whimsy would be great. But a lot will ruin it.
: Can you imagine Gimli saying to the balrog: "Ello. My name is
: Gimli son of Gloin. You kills Balin. Prepare to die."

LOL! That would be a great out-take!

: : This movie will be a classic purely because of the interplay
: : between Sean Connery and Dennis Quaid. In fact, Quaid alone
: : almost makes up for the scenes where the secondary actors do
: : their best to butcher the movie. But when Quaid and Connery
: : are going at it, I can forget all the bad stuff. The movie
: : could have been better, but Quaid and Connery were at their
: : best for these type of characterizations.

: Granted, in review of the Quaid/Connery moments, this was a
: great movie. Everything else should have been left on the
: cutting room floor.

Sadly, I have to agree that there was some LOUSY acting coming from others in that movie.

: : Robert Trebor (Salmoneus on Hercules and Xena) characterized
: : the movie as a two-hour pod race. I can't disagree with him,
: : but I think it was a great two-hour pod race. Liam Neeson
: : did a fantastic job as Qui-Gon Jinn. I could have done
: : without the kid, but as he was central to the storyline,
: : well,...

: And therein lies the rub. The whole story is supposed to be
: focused on young Skywalker prior to his conversion to the
: darkside and his emmient overthrow of the evil Emperor. If we
: hate the boy already, how can we empathize with his plight
: later? Bad, bad, bad movie-making.

No, there's more to the story than Anakin. I mean, Palpatine's intrigue is quite well-done, in my opinion. If I didn't know going into the movie he was the bad guy, I probably would not have guessed he was, though there were obviously some visual cues.

And I liked the interaction between Qui-Gon and Padme. Even though I also knew going in that Natalie Portman would be playing two roles, Padme's open disapproval of Qui-Gon's decisions showed that the Jedi weren't exactly cut-and-dried good guys. Showing that the Republic's defenders are arrogant and manipulative helps to underscore the value of the whole conflict, which is to restore balance to the Force. I believe the subtle message is that the Jedi have strayed too far. They have become too powerful and are no longer balancing the Dark Side.

: : It's not the format, it's the feel. The pacing, the acting,
: : the panache that impacts on the audience. These films would
: : go over well in today's theaters, I'm sure. "The Wizard of
: : Oz" did pretty good when it was rereleased a couple of years
: : ago. That's because people love quality.

: They go over well because (IMHO) they are re-released as the
: classics they are. But honestly, no one would sit through The
: Wizard of Oz if it were released for the first time today. It
: would be termed boring, poor f/x . . . etc. As a movie of it's
: time, sure, great, I like it, I own it, I watch it. But not as
: a modern story-film. It doesn't work for todays audience.

On the contrary, if someone tried to do "The Wizard of Oz" today, they would rely too much on cheap special effects. You can't get sets and costuming like they had back then. The film industry just doesn't put out that kind of money. Somewhere along the way it became too expensive to do movies the old fashioned way, and they started looking cheap and spineless as a result. The biggest complaint I've seen about "Phantom Menace" is that it's a special effects extravaganza. I don't agree that that is a problem, because I liked the characters and storyline, but George Lucas was obviously proud to show off the technology.

Look at how clumsy and amateurish low-budget fantasy films from the last 20 years appear to be. They don't invest in the extravagant sets and costuming that the old films used to. The only movie to really do that recently was "Hook", and though it had some powerful moments, great sets and costuming, and some really decent shots, it fell short of the mark. I don't believe it will be a classic. Julia Roberts' poor performance is, I'm sure, part of the reason. But there was something else missing, because Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams did a great job with their roles. Bob Hoskins as Smee was unforgettable.

For Peter Jackson's films to succeed, his actors are going to have to take the audiences' minds off the sets and costuming. If people come out of the theaters saying the best things about the movies are the sets and costuming, then the movies will quickly be forgotten. He's finally got the money to do a movie the way they used to, even though they are relying heavily on CGI. He almost had 15,000 extras from the New Zealand army. The only recent movie I can recall which staged large battle scenes with thousands of extras like the old films used to use is "Braveheart".

Lucas and Jackson are finally bringing computer technology to the point where it is beginning to compensate for the lack of grand sets and hordes of well-costumed actors. But a great movie has to have great acting, great dialogue, and panache. It's got to reach out and grab the audience.

If they were to redo "The Wizard of Oz" today, using sets and costuming similar to what was used in 1939, and if the actors were equal in talent to the cast of the original movie, I believe it would do just as well through the decades as the last one.
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