I listen to mobile music from a walkman (Sony) to a minidisc(sony) to a CD(philips) that eventually could play MP3(Fraunhoffer) and then my first HD MP3 player (Creative) then expanding to OGG/FLAC capable players (iRiver) and finally settling on my current one (Cowon).
And I bought my music first on tape, then LP then CD then Mini-Disc and then got it via Usenet and then Napster and now via Torrents.
Where is Apples involvement? Now I would disguss further, but the RIAA wants a word with me.
Spend days in the rain, barely sleeping on a boat.
Spend a seasick few hours being ferried accross the channel in constant fear or a torpedo blowing the entire ship out of the water with nothing you can do about it.
Get into a tiny rolling vessel and find out that you are at the front.
Get tossed around as the landingcraft slowly makes its way to the coast, while the bombartment stops and you know every german on the coast has plenty of time to get into position.
Get machine gunned as the ramp comes down.
Get reborn.
War sucks, this scene has been done a lot if games and for some reason you are always in the landing craft that isn't machine gunned. Magically, you are one of the handful of survivors of the first wave at Omaha. Funny that.
Or copyright the idea of a wastepaper basket to hold deleted files until you are really ready to delete them? I don't think MS wants to claim that, Apple would want to collect a few billion from a previous case were MS argued AGAINST your idea.
This gui is nothing new, there are lots of skins available for various linux desktops including every well known interface out there. So far nobody has taken this to court and I think because nobody wants to say to a judge "Copying an element from a gui is bad" because that is what everyone does.
You could role a male character? After all, as a male I am forced to run around in bulky all concealing armor with muscles that would have me collapse under my own weight.
And as for marketing, if you look at ads in magazines aimed at females, you see the same if not more skin then in lad's mags. Hell, some got more nudity on the cover then playboy.
A box like for Mass Effect with a male hero in all the ads (despite the fact that you can play a female) who is that aimed at?
I think giving the results (I see quite a few female gamers) that the marketing is actually working pretty well. The women who want to game are already gaming despite of everything. The women who don't, don't want to.
Yes, MMO's have the big boobies, but if you can focus for a second beyond the jigglies, then you see that 1 set of boobs is often accompanied by 2-3 sets of muscles. Look at the trailer for WoW (original) and count the females. Count the females showing cleavage in the Dragon Age trailer vs male muscle build few male gamers possess.
And if marketing were to focus more on girls, then would that not drive others away? How exactly would a gender neutral let alone a female friendly ad for a game look like? And wouldn't it drive the male audience away? Trading one customer for another is not what marketing is about.
Remember, if you didn't like the marketing for a product and bought it anyway, then they lost nothing. The only way to stop sexist ads is top boycott the products. And I think they will then just say "oh see, no girls buy games, so why should we aim for them as an audience".
Certain hardcore users would get physical withdraw symptoms, coma, then death.
And we would notice the difference how exactly?
Funny thing, Vodafone has had a lot of outages lately in Holland, and live goes on. The entire rail network was buggered because of a 10-15 centimers of snow, and live goes on. Belgium a while back went for months without a government, and live went on.
I think we let the media sell us to much the idea of drama. The tv especially needs some excuse for the drama of a live report from the scene of the action that any action will do.
Ages ago, we had an earthquake in Holland. Well a tremble. And all the tv news crews were desperate for a story. I remember one "These roof tiles have fallen down, in this bush, in the middle of the night. If someone had been standing in this thorny bush, then they could have been killed." Well yes. Small detail, the roof was barely 2 meters up. A person of average dutch height (2 meters) would hardly have his head split open by such an insane drop.
Yeah, because the US is the bastion of freedom for homo-sexuals. Tell me again in wich nation the people voted to make homosexuals 2nd class citizens?
Sometimes you got to think a little bit clearer before you comment. And China is pretty open about homosexual rights because they are not christians and as such do not have the WESTERN view that it is a sin.
Kids used to grow up on farms. Do you think the farm animals were trained to refrain from the facts of life just because a kid was around?
For that matter, kids used to sleep in the same room as their parents and since lots of families had lots of kids, the facts of life went on right beside them.
Puritan, you are doing it right.
You would give cows trousers to hide their shame if you could.
Kids are a lot less fragile then people think. But a lot of people like you seem to want to make up for parenting skills (have a full first aid kit and kisses to make the pain go away) with over-protectiveness. Childhood is a time for training for adulthood and this includes kids playing house and slowly learning that boys and girls got different bits and one day that may be important. But most young kids, if they are not ready to be interested simply ain't interested. I have dealt with young kids (6) and they think the whole deal has an appeal roughly equal to politics. Just allow them to experience the world and be ready to correct any misconceptions. But you are NOT going to stop them from seeing the cat from what comes naturally (hump the rabbit the wrong way around) because that is part of growing up.
A kid who googles vagina is ready to learn about it. You just ain't ready to talk to him about it on his terms and so you wish the entire world to be shut down because you still giggle at something we all been through. Grow up and face your responsibilities as a parent.
30 years after the originals, people still quote the movie and parody it. Nobody does it with the prequels. Popular is NOT the same as iconic. The original three movies are part of culture. If it was music it would like The Beatles and Elvis. It is not just about the movies themselves, but that they changed the industry. George Lucas and all the people who made it happen added a whole new segment to the industry. Some products go beyond just the money they earned. And some, no matter how much they earned, never make an impression beyond their economic lifespan.
Quick example. Michael Jackson vs Mc Hammer. Mc who? Exactly. At the time the guy claimed that he was even bigger then MJ. Eheh.
If you studie movies, then you must study A New Hope and its effects. TPM you can forget about other then its earning figures. It is just another blockbuster, but there are dozens of them each year and I bet you can't even remember the ones from 10 years ago. Be honest, if it wasn't for the originals, would you even remember TPM?
And you can already see how unsuccesful TPM is. Lucasarts swore up and down that AFTER the prequels all future game products would be based on the prequels. That changed quickly enough with "The force unleashed" and even an entire new era being created for Kotor and the upcoming MMO. 10 years after the originals people still wanted more. 10 years after TPM and people want less. Go ask a 18 year old what their favorite movie was. Bet you it ain't TPM.
That is called a running gag. It is SUPPOSED to be like that. What next, you cleverly going to remark how Kojak writers sucked because they could never get the lead to eat anything else then a lollypop?
That Columbo was bad because no real cop would always were the same trenchcoat?
Talk about missing the point. If the point was the center of the galaxy, then you would be on the planet farthest from it.
It drives the point home the clearest, it shows the difference between the light saber battles in the movies. The drama of the originals vs the choreography of the prequels.
As for the point about the characters, it is true. of course you can always describe the characters in a carefully written post, but the point is that if you ask a kid who saw TPM or a kid who saw ANH to describe a character then the kid who saw TPM would say "piss off, that is a kids movie".
And that says it all. Everyone who defends the prequels claims the originals were aimed at kids, when they were not. The merchandising (which only came AFTERWARDS as the powers that be thought it would flop) was aimed at kids, the Ewok Adventures were aimed at kids. But the movies were enjoyed by all ages. As you can see if you watch footage of the era where you see only adults standing for late night showings. The same can be said about TRUE kids movies like The Lion King.
My mom did NOT have the english novels for her six year old son who wouldn't speak English until several years later.
The movie was NOT a disney hit with parents reluctantly taking their childeren. The movie did NOT only have matinees and maybe a six o'clock showing. The entire idea that the originals were for kids is only because you were a self-centered kid who only saw your own world.
Read a bit more about the movies and their impact on society. They really were a huge event.
But Lucas said it himself (as quoted in this review) CGI without story is pretty pointless. And yet what we get in the prequels in endless CGI for the sake of CGI. Take the underwater chase vs the asteroid flight. We get only action underwater but in space we get the romance between Han and Leia developing between all the action shots. BIG difference.
If you want to see a Star Wars movie aimed at kids, watch the Ewok Adventures. The difference is obvious.
What right reasons? What exactly about killing kids was good? What was his motivation, why did he believe a single word, why did he need palpatine alive. Why did he not trust anyone.
If you think episode 3 explained this, then either you saw a different movies or you have very low expectations of story telling.
And if you think this is just about old people hating the movies (which can be explained because we already knew the movies because we had imagined them ourselves) then why do the kids hate them too?
Oh, merchandise sells, for a bit but it ain't the absolute hit the originals were. I remember the toys coming out and people buying the stores empty in hours, with the prequels, the toys were just another toy.
Where are the kids playing Star Wars out. Where are the quotes from the kids who saw TPM and are now in their teens? The movies sold, but they did NOT become the absolute cult hit that the originals were. Star Wars A New Hope must be mentioned in any serious discussion of the history of movies. The prequels are just another blockbuster hit, of which there a dozen each year.
But I see you ain't got a clue. You call Star Wars tacky sci-fi. Really, do yourself a favor and read a book, for once. Star Wars ain't tacky sci-fi. It is fantasy. Learn to know the difference. Blade Runner is Sci-Fi. Flash Gordon is fantasy. Just because something has spaceships does not make it Sci-fi.
All good stories have MULTIPLE characters, to appeal to our different tastes.
The hero is Luke, he is the guy you know you should wannabe like. He is the guy your sister knows she should want to date.
Han Solo is the guy you want to be, and the one your sister/mother REALLY liked. You can see that in part 1 of the review, the guys describe Han as a wannabe womanizer. The girl describes him as a succesful ladiesman. He can jump her hyperdrive anytime.
And Leia, Leia is the girl you wanted or the one your sister wanted to be.
While Obi-wan guides them until they are old enough to stand on their own feet. It is classic stuff. Kirk/Spock/McCoy. The Fellowship of the Ring. It works, because one person can't appeal to the entire audience or even one person.
But in the end, it is Luke in Star Wars who is the real hero, we just like to pretend he isn't because we want to be cool. But in the end, it is Luke whose struggle we follow. Luke who we see grow up from anxious teen farmboy to Jedi Knight who confronts the emperor and his past.
And that, as this review points out best in part 6, is missing. We don't care. Characters are not making sense and fights are about acrobatics.
I totally agree with the reviewer when he states that if you thought the prequels were okay because of the fights, then you don't get it. The slow fight between darth vader and obi-wan was never about swords-play. This is NOT a swashbuckler movie. And that was missing. The prequels are a Jackie-Chan movie. Very nice moves, but that is all there is. Early Jacky Chan movies don't even have an epilogue, they cut to credits the moment the boss bites the dusts.
At the time you had a lot of kiddies wowing about Darth Maul, but who or what was he. He was no Darth Vader. Rather amusingly, George Lucas is quoted in the review as saying that CGI is nothing compared to story telling. Boy did George forget that lesson.
What the review is wrong about is focussing on the story plotholes. The original got tons of them too, perhaps even more, but it don't matter because the core is solid. The CGI and even the story don't need to be good if their is a heart beating in the middle of it all. And that is ultimately what the prequels lack. There is no soul.
He was a whiny teen. Luke Skywalker just accepts his fate. In an ACTION movie, that is important. Leave the shallow soul searching for MTV. The problem with the movie is that Darth Vader it truly and wholy evil. The "saving" at the end of Return of the Jedi was already bad enough (in the books and expanded universe it is made clear that he can't cross over nearly as easy, hence the reason to burn the corpse where Yoda and Obi-wan just faded away) but it still doesn't sit well with the hero ending of the bad guy being blown away, but is excused because it is different enough to be seen as original.
But he AIN'T a hero character. And in the first three movies you are supposed to care about this guy who really is not going to end up saving the day. It would be like making a movie about Adolf Hitler's youth and expecting people to root for him. Sorry, no. And there was a remote possibility that we could have cared, if we had seen him fighting the dark side only to be tricked fatally in the end in a way nobody could forsee. But the entire 3 movies are like a Punch and Judy show, with the audience screaming "look out behind you" and punch looking the wrong way and saying "where". Hilarious when 4 year olds see it done in a good puppet show, but the political antics were beyond young kids and below adults. Where were those supersmart jedi, were was the mastermind of the emperor. No action hero to save the day, no intense manipulation by unseen puppeteer masters who turn wheels within wheels. Just... well just the 3 prequels which told a story that could have been told in a simple expanded universe book in a way that would not have focussed on the villain but on a new hero whose path crosses that of the villain.
There is a reason this guy takes 70 minutes to tear the movie down, because the prequels are really that fucking bad. Not the kinda bad that you get when a producer gets his hand on something he doesn't understand (Uwe Boll) or the producer just can't direct (Plan 9 from outer space) but the kinda bad that arrives when a lot of very talented people forget just what the fuck they are good at doing.
The simplest example of this is the CGI battle on the grassy plane. What did CGI do well in those days? Tech scenes, hard corners, steel and concrete. So what did they render, lush grass land. It looks fake! They managed to get a green lawn which you can shoot for real on any golfcourse looks horribly fake.
And if you think 20 minutes is 1/3 of the movie, then your brain must have carefully restructured itself to shut out the most damaging memories, memories that if they were to surface would turn you into a bliddering murderous psycho.
Proof, you think the movie could be fixed. Amazing healing capacities the brain has. I can remember it all, but I am sane! Ain't I Mr. Fibble?
Because I know this Java guy and he got the foulest breath you ever smelled before you nose shuts off.
And since I am a PHPer and god's gift to woman kind (he decided they could do with a laugh) we can now safely conclude that 1. PHP 2. C++ 3. Java 999999999999999. ASP
The original article is just silly however, C++ is overkill were you often end up writing stuff that has already been written and been written better then you can ever do yourself in the time a typical web project has.
And that the author is full of shit can be clearly proven that he has NOT approached facebook with a sample of new code that would safe them a fortune. I myself have made very good money helping companies reduce their server needs, if he can shut so many servers of with his code, he can earn millions. But he isn't, is he? Perhaps because as a C++ web programmer he ain't used to actually getting a working site out on time and on budget that can be maintained easily to deal with rapidly changing demands?
I seen "real" programmers completly loose it on web-projects. They want to do design and analysis when the time to setup the schedule is the time you got for the entire project. Yeah yeah, if you give them a year or two, the product is no doubt 100% better then the 2 weeks PHP job, but the web moves a bit faster then that boys. I have seen a project where a traditional programmer sought out a framework solution that was just perfect. Nobody had used it but no problem, he had setup a 1 month training schedule for everyone. The entire project was supposed to be delivered in 1 month.
PHP works people because it works FAST. It allows you to drill straight down to the thing you want to do with a website rather then first having to develop your own solution for things that have already been done. Yes, this ease has lead to a LOT of PHP developers who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, but this is like saying that because there are so many idiotic windows users, all windows users are idiots. Or indeed me saying that because I only seen C++/Java developers who over-engineered, all C++/Java developers do this.
And as for speed, when you use compiled PHP, it really ain't that much slower. Sure, you could optimize the hell out of your website with C++, but only if you spend ages doing this, making your site obsolete by the time it launches and extremely hard to adapt as demands change.
It ain't all that hard to upset the charts, it has been done in Holland by "One Day Fly" a comedian and his palls released a song with the clear published goal of getting it on one. And they did.
If you count the actual sales that make up the charts it doesn't take much of a group to make an impact.
And people really like this idea that they are upsetting the powers that be. In this case by showing Sony we won't take their crap, by buying their crap (check the parent label for both bands). In fact what this shows is that the system WORKS. Hype a song to a group and voila, instant hit. RATM is no different then X-Factor in that respect, both are fakes who just fake it to a slightly different audience but are now proven to be manipulated the same way.
Now if you REALLY wanted to show you could change mass marketing, you would have gotten NOBODY to buy ANY song. Because for Sony, the profits are still the same.
Slashdot Mirror
I listen to mobile music from a walkman (Sony) to a minidisc(sony) to a CD(philips) that eventually could play MP3(Fraunhoffer) and then my first HD MP3 player (Creative) then expanding to OGG/FLAC capable players (iRiver) and finally settling on my current one (Cowon).
And I bought my music first on tape, then LP then CD then Mini-Disc and then got it via Usenet and then Napster and now via Torrents.
Where is Apples involvement? Now I would disguss further, but the RIAA wants a word with me.
Spend days in the rain, barely sleeping on a boat.
Spend a seasick few hours being ferried accross the channel in constant fear or a torpedo blowing the entire ship out of the water with nothing you can do about it.
Get into a tiny rolling vessel and find out that you are at the front.
Get tossed around as the landingcraft slowly makes its way to the coast, while the bombartment stops and you know every german on the coast has plenty of time to get into position.
Get machine gunned as the ramp comes down.
Get reborn.
War sucks, this scene has been done a lot if games and for some reason you are always in the landing craft that isn't machine gunned. Magically, you are one of the handful of survivors of the first wave at Omaha. Funny that.
Well sort of anyway, but Arma2 is the same kind of game.
The word "start"?
Or copyright the idea of a wastepaper basket to hold deleted files until you are really ready to delete them? I don't think MS wants to claim that, Apple would want to collect a few billion from a previous case were MS argued AGAINST your idea.
This gui is nothing new, there are lots of skins available for various linux desktops including every well known interface out there. So far nobody has taken this to court and I think because nobody wants to say to a judge "Copying an element from a gui is bad" because that is what everyone does.
So you should only be convicted of drunk driving if you actually manage to kill someone?
Why is it so hard to just not drink and drive. Are you an alcoholic or something?
You could role a male character? After all, as a male I am forced to run around in bulky all concealing armor with muscles that would have me collapse under my own weight.
And as for marketing, if you look at ads in magazines aimed at females, you see the same if not more skin then in lad's mags. Hell, some got more nudity on the cover then playboy.
A box like for Mass Effect with a male hero in all the ads (despite the fact that you can play a female) who is that aimed at?
I think giving the results (I see quite a few female gamers) that the marketing is actually working pretty well. The women who want to game are already gaming despite of everything. The women who don't, don't want to.
Yes, MMO's have the big boobies, but if you can focus for a second beyond the jigglies, then you see that 1 set of boobs is often accompanied by 2-3 sets of muscles. Look at the trailer for WoW (original) and count the females. Count the females showing cleavage in the Dragon Age trailer vs male muscle build few male gamers possess.
And if marketing were to focus more on girls, then would that not drive others away? How exactly would a gender neutral let alone a female friendly ad for a game look like? And wouldn't it drive the male audience away? Trading one customer for another is not what marketing is about.
Remember, if you didn't like the marketing for a product and bought it anyway, then they lost nothing. The only way to stop sexist ads is top boycott the products. And I think they will then just say "oh see, no girls buy games, so why should we aim for them as an audience".
Rock Hard Place
The BBC has been involved with opensource before and they know that as a public entity they got a responsibility to more then just windows users.
Read up on the whole iPlayer history and their codec choices.
The BBC KNOWS about this subject and yet they are aiming to make a choice that would again excluse users who do not use windows.
And now we know why, they are all in the games.
And considering my own voice chat experience in MMO's, I am not all that surprised. Some seem to spend more time in game socializing.
But I have been told several times not to reveal their gender to others, or that they didn't want to use voice chat in PUG groups.
Certain hardcore users would get physical withdraw symptoms, coma, then death.
And we would notice the difference how exactly?
Funny thing, Vodafone has had a lot of outages lately in Holland, and live goes on. The entire rail network was buggered because of a 10-15 centimers of snow, and live goes on. Belgium a while back went for months without a government, and live went on.
I think we let the media sell us to much the idea of drama. The tv especially needs some excuse for the drama of a live report from the scene of the action that any action will do.
Ages ago, we had an earthquake in Holland. Well a tremble. And all the tv news crews were desperate for a story. I remember one "These roof tiles have fallen down, in this bush, in the middle of the night. If someone had been standing in this thorny bush, then they could have been killed." Well yes. Small detail, the roof was barely 2 meters up. A person of average dutch height (2 meters) would hardly have his head split open by such an insane drop.
It learned that the US government and its people are weak-willed and ineffective and can be manipulated at will to do their bidding.
What other lesson were they supposed to learn? IE6 still has to be accounted for if you make a website.
Yeah, because the US is the bastion of freedom for homo-sexuals. Tell me again in wich nation the people voted to make homosexuals 2nd class citizens?
Sometimes you got to think a little bit clearer before you comment. And China is pretty open about homosexual rights because they are not christians and as such do not have the WESTERN view that it is a sin.
Kids used to grow up on farms. Do you think the farm animals were trained to refrain from the facts of life just because a kid was around?
For that matter, kids used to sleep in the same room as their parents and since lots of families had lots of kids, the facts of life went on right beside them.
Puritan, you are doing it right.
You would give cows trousers to hide their shame if you could.
Kids are a lot less fragile then people think. But a lot of people like you seem to want to make up for parenting skills (have a full first aid kit and kisses to make the pain go away) with over-protectiveness. Childhood is a time for training for adulthood and this includes kids playing house and slowly learning that boys and girls got different bits and one day that may be important. But most young kids, if they are not ready to be interested simply ain't interested. I have dealt with young kids (6) and they think the whole deal has an appeal roughly equal to politics. Just allow them to experience the world and be ready to correct any misconceptions. But you are NOT going to stop them from seeing the cat from what comes naturally (hump the rabbit the wrong way around) because that is part of growing up.
A kid who googles vagina is ready to learn about it. You just ain't ready to talk to him about it on his terms and so you wish the entire world to be shut down because you still giggle at something we all been through. Grow up and face your responsibilities as a parent.
Should I be worried? Is it a freudian slip? And why is there such a big deal about freudian's underwear? Any pics of it?
Because my mother sure liked the originals herself.
30 years after the originals, people still quote the movie and parody it. Nobody does it with the prequels. Popular is NOT the same as iconic. The original three movies are part of culture. If it was music it would like The Beatles and Elvis. It is not just about the movies themselves, but that they changed the industry. George Lucas and all the people who made it happen added a whole new segment to the industry. Some products go beyond just the money they earned. And some, no matter how much they earned, never make an impression beyond their economic lifespan.
Quick example. Michael Jackson vs Mc Hammer. Mc who? Exactly. At the time the guy claimed that he was even bigger then MJ. Eheh.
If you studie movies, then you must study A New Hope and its effects. TPM you can forget about other then its earning figures. It is just another blockbuster, but there are dozens of them each year and I bet you can't even remember the ones from 10 years ago. Be honest, if it wasn't for the originals, would you even remember TPM?
And you can already see how unsuccesful TPM is. Lucasarts swore up and down that AFTER the prequels all future game products would be based on the prequels. That changed quickly enough with "The force unleashed" and even an entire new era being created for Kotor and the upcoming MMO. 10 years after the originals people still wanted more. 10 years after TPM and people want less. Go ask a 18 year old what their favorite movie was. Bet you it ain't TPM.
That is called a running gag. It is SUPPOSED to be like that. What next, you cleverly going to remark how Kojak writers sucked because they could never get the lead to eat anything else then a lollypop?
That Columbo was bad because no real cop would always were the same trenchcoat?
Talk about missing the point. If the point was the center of the galaxy, then you would be on the planet farthest from it.
It drives the point home the clearest, it shows the difference between the light saber battles in the movies. The drama of the originals vs the choreography of the prequels.
As for the point about the characters, it is true. of course you can always describe the characters in a carefully written post, but the point is that if you ask a kid who saw TPM or a kid who saw ANH to describe a character then the kid who saw TPM would say "piss off, that is a kids movie".
And that says it all. Everyone who defends the prequels claims the originals were aimed at kids, when they were not. The merchandising (which only came AFTERWARDS as the powers that be thought it would flop) was aimed at kids, the Ewok Adventures were aimed at kids. But the movies were enjoyed by all ages. As you can see if you watch footage of the era where you see only adults standing for late night showings. The same can be said about TRUE kids movies like The Lion King.
My mom did NOT have the english novels for her six year old son who wouldn't speak English until several years later.
The movie was NOT a disney hit with parents reluctantly taking their childeren. The movie did NOT only have matinees and maybe a six o'clock showing. The entire idea that the originals were for kids is only because you were a self-centered kid who only saw your own world.
Read a bit more about the movies and their impact on society. They really were a huge event.
But Lucas said it himself (as quoted in this review) CGI without story is pretty pointless. And yet what we get in the prequels in endless CGI for the sake of CGI. Take the underwater chase vs the asteroid flight. We get only action underwater but in space we get the romance between Han and Leia developing between all the action shots. BIG difference.
If you want to see a Star Wars movie aimed at kids, watch the Ewok Adventures. The difference is obvious.
What right reasons? What exactly about killing kids was good? What was his motivation, why did he believe a single word, why did he need palpatine alive. Why did he not trust anyone.
If you think episode 3 explained this, then either you saw a different movies or you have very low expectations of story telling.
And if you think this is just about old people hating the movies (which can be explained because we already knew the movies because we had imagined them ourselves) then why do the kids hate them too?
Oh, merchandise sells, for a bit but it ain't the absolute hit the originals were. I remember the toys coming out and people buying the stores empty in hours, with the prequels, the toys were just another toy.
Where are the kids playing Star Wars out. Where are the quotes from the kids who saw TPM and are now in their teens? The movies sold, but they did NOT become the absolute cult hit that the originals were. Star Wars A New Hope must be mentioned in any serious discussion of the history of movies. The prequels are just another blockbuster hit, of which there a dozen each year.
But I see you ain't got a clue. You call Star Wars tacky sci-fi. Really, do yourself a favor and read a book, for once. Star Wars ain't tacky sci-fi. It is fantasy. Learn to know the difference. Blade Runner is Sci-Fi. Flash Gordon is fantasy. Just because something has spaceships does not make it Sci-fi.
All good stories have MULTIPLE characters, to appeal to our different tastes.
The hero is Luke, he is the guy you know you should wannabe like. He is the guy your sister knows she should want to date.
Han Solo is the guy you want to be, and the one your sister/mother REALLY liked. You can see that in part 1 of the review, the guys describe Han as a wannabe womanizer. The girl describes him as a succesful ladiesman. He can jump her hyperdrive anytime.
And Leia, Leia is the girl you wanted or the one your sister wanted to be.
While Obi-wan guides them until they are old enough to stand on their own feet. It is classic stuff. Kirk/Spock/McCoy. The Fellowship of the Ring. It works, because one person can't appeal to the entire audience or even one person.
But in the end, it is Luke in Star Wars who is the real hero, we just like to pretend he isn't because we want to be cool. But in the end, it is Luke whose struggle we follow. Luke who we see grow up from anxious teen farmboy to Jedi Knight who confronts the emperor and his past.
And that, as this review points out best in part 6, is missing. We don't care. Characters are not making sense and fights are about acrobatics.
I totally agree with the reviewer when he states that if you thought the prequels were okay because of the fights, then you don't get it. The slow fight between darth vader and obi-wan was never about swords-play. This is NOT a swashbuckler movie. And that was missing. The prequels are a Jackie-Chan movie. Very nice moves, but that is all there is. Early Jacky Chan movies don't even have an epilogue, they cut to credits the moment the boss bites the dusts.
At the time you had a lot of kiddies wowing about Darth Maul, but who or what was he. He was no Darth Vader. Rather amusingly, George Lucas is quoted in the review as saying that CGI is nothing compared to story telling. Boy did George forget that lesson.
What the review is wrong about is focussing on the story plotholes. The original got tons of them too, perhaps even more, but it don't matter because the core is solid. The CGI and even the story don't need to be good if their is a heart beating in the middle of it all. And that is ultimately what the prequels lack. There is no soul.
It is so bad, that NEW star wars games were set in another universe, just to get away from it all.
Amazing.
He was a whiny teen. Luke Skywalker just accepts his fate. In an ACTION movie, that is important. Leave the shallow soul searching for MTV. The problem with the movie is that Darth Vader it truly and wholy evil. The "saving" at the end of Return of the Jedi was already bad enough (in the books and expanded universe it is made clear that he can't cross over nearly as easy, hence the reason to burn the corpse where Yoda and Obi-wan just faded away) but it still doesn't sit well with the hero ending of the bad guy being blown away, but is excused because it is different enough to be seen as original.
But he AIN'T a hero character. And in the first three movies you are supposed to care about this guy who really is not going to end up saving the day. It would be like making a movie about Adolf Hitler's youth and expecting people to root for him. Sorry, no. And there was a remote possibility that we could have cared, if we had seen him fighting the dark side only to be tricked fatally in the end in a way nobody could forsee. But the entire 3 movies are like a Punch and Judy show, with the audience screaming "look out behind you" and punch looking the wrong way and saying "where". Hilarious when 4 year olds see it done in a good puppet show, but the political antics were beyond young kids and below adults. Where were those supersmart jedi, were was the mastermind of the emperor. No action hero to save the day, no intense manipulation by unseen puppeteer masters who turn wheels within wheels. Just... well just the 3 prequels which told a story that could have been told in a simple expanded universe book in a way that would not have focussed on the villain but on a new hero whose path crosses that of the villain.
There is a reason this guy takes 70 minutes to tear the movie down, because the prequels are really that fucking bad. Not the kinda bad that you get when a producer gets his hand on something he doesn't understand (Uwe Boll) or the producer just can't direct (Plan 9 from outer space) but the kinda bad that arrives when a lot of very talented people forget just what the fuck they are good at doing.
The simplest example of this is the CGI battle on the grassy plane. What did CGI do well in those days? Tech scenes, hard corners, steel and concrete. So what did they render, lush grass land. It looks fake! They managed to get a green lawn which you can shoot for real on any golfcourse looks horribly fake.
And if you think 20 minutes is 1/3 of the movie, then your brain must have carefully restructured itself to shut out the most damaging memories, memories that if they were to surface would turn you into a bliddering murderous psycho.
Proof, you think the movie could be fixed. Amazing healing capacities the brain has. I can remember it all, but I am sane! Ain't I Mr. Fibble?
Because I know this Java guy and he got the foulest breath you ever smelled before you nose shuts off.
And since I am a PHPer and god's gift to woman kind (he decided they could do with a laugh) we can now safely conclude that 1. PHP 2. C++ 3. Java 999999999999999. ASP
The original article is just silly however, C++ is overkill were you often end up writing stuff that has already been written and been written better then you can ever do yourself in the time a typical web project has.
And that the author is full of shit can be clearly proven that he has NOT approached facebook with a sample of new code that would safe them a fortune. I myself have made very good money helping companies reduce their server needs, if he can shut so many servers of with his code, he can earn millions. But he isn't, is he? Perhaps because as a C++ web programmer he ain't used to actually getting a working site out on time and on budget that can be maintained easily to deal with rapidly changing demands?
I seen "real" programmers completly loose it on web-projects. They want to do design and analysis when the time to setup the schedule is the time you got for the entire project. Yeah yeah, if you give them a year or two, the product is no doubt 100% better then the 2 weeks PHP job, but the web moves a bit faster then that boys. I have seen a project where a traditional programmer sought out a framework solution that was just perfect. Nobody had used it but no problem, he had setup a 1 month training schedule for everyone. The entire project was supposed to be delivered in 1 month.
PHP works people because it works FAST. It allows you to drill straight down to the thing you want to do with a website rather then first having to develop your own solution for things that have already been done. Yes, this ease has lead to a LOT of PHP developers who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag, but this is like saying that because there are so many idiotic windows users, all windows users are idiots. Or indeed me saying that because I only seen C++/Java developers who over-engineered, all C++/Java developers do this.
And as for speed, when you use compiled PHP, it really ain't that much slower. Sure, you could optimize the hell out of your website with C++, but only if you spend ages doing this, making your site obsolete by the time it launches and extremely hard to adapt as demands change.
Explain please why disney used a german car and spielberg a british car then?
Where is the Jaguar E-type? Where is the american Mini-cooper? And I could go on and on. US cars just don't compete.
It ain't all that hard to upset the charts, it has been done in Holland by "One Day Fly" a comedian and his palls released a song with the clear published goal of getting it on one. And they did.
If you count the actual sales that make up the charts it doesn't take much of a group to make an impact.
And people really like this idea that they are upsetting the powers that be. In this case by showing Sony we won't take their crap, by buying their crap (check the parent label for both bands). In fact what this shows is that the system WORKS. Hype a song to a group and voila, instant hit. RATM is no different then X-Factor in that respect, both are fakes who just fake it to a slightly different audience but are now proven to be manipulated the same way.
Now if you REALLY wanted to show you could change mass marketing, you would have gotten NOBODY to buy ANY song. Because for Sony, the profits are still the same.