Favorite frames in the ST & Spinoffs
Jun 9, 2021 11:25:04 GMT
Cryogenic, Pyrogenic, and 2 more like this
Post by Ingram on Jun 9, 2021 11:25:04 GMT
Ugh.
Let's get this over with.
Gran Turismo.
Let's get this over with.
Make no mistake, for Disney-era Star Wars across the board is, bare minimum, cosmetically topnotch. They're luscious works of production value and commercially pleasing photogenic capture. As a discipline of pop-mythic visual lexicon? Eh, let's just say...they struggle. Primarily, they just look like expensive blockbusters—because that's what they are. Lucas fashioned himself historically-minded, exhibitional works of pop-art nonetheless stylistically beholden to the quaintness of old Hollywood and even the provincials of retro-pulp. Disney/Lucasfilm mostly just made blockbusters. And ya know what? Star Wars as a blockbuster in the main isn't particularly all that interesting. But that's not to say it should be swept aside entirely, either. For me, pulling from this nextgen of installments my favorite frames demanded that I had to sorta rewire my brain a bit.
I'm doing the whole Sequel Trilogy all in one go, and boy is it visually edgelord. LoL. Whatever. Fuck it.
If -- and that's an if -- you're going to appreciate JJ Abrams' visuals proper, best to do so in motion. That's where he works natively: constant panning, tracking and punch-editing. Sure, his camerawork is tactlessly counterfeit (hint: what rhymes with Beevun Cheeldurg) and his attempts at iconic imagery are like food proportions that far exceed their nutritional value. But the guy also has momentary verve, like muscle reflexes, that yields elastic action-imagery or in the pre-preduction phase is never one to kick out of the shower copious amounts of Star Wars related page art akin to the contest entries you'd find in a Spectrum book. Between the two I'm partial to Rian Johnson whose framing is bigger, steadier and more cleanly lined; and whose cinematic fantasy aesthetic houses airier designs with a touch of Annie Leibovits-style 'en vogue'.
The Force Awakens...
Canted angles and MTV lighting. Yep. Here we are.
Always fun are the binocular-vision designs in Star Wars.
Inventive approach to a known quantity of the franchise.
Reyday.
Abrams' chemical element visualized.
Close encounters.
Ford pointing. It's in his contract.
Finn's always getting tagged in one fashion or another in this movie.
Whiteout.
The Falcon missing neither the forest nor the trees.
Han and blast doors.
Bowcaster range.
The Force awakening.
The wipe itself almost looks like a planet. Planet Skywalker.
The Last Jedi...
Clear.
Thermal detonation.
Snoke's chamber of posh and reprimands.
Interesting choice of landscape matching.
The scars we carry (or Carrie).
The same look the eopie gave Jar Jar.
Thorn.
Four-eyes plus eight.
Johnson's little Darren-Aronofsky-like montage.
A neat bit of symbolism, stressing this newfound literal mechanism of the Force.
Infinity Snap.
Star Wars' hidden spectrum of analog video signals.
I like how it spews out almost like a gelatin.
Seismically charged. This really was a dazzling execution of FX spectacle, even if the storied dramatic sacrifice was weak.
Salt and paprika.
REDЯUM.
Johnson keeps both foreground and background in focus.
The geode caverns really capped-off the whole 'red' motif with a bang.
AT-ATs meets Cylons meets T-800s.
The Rise of Skywalker...
This is the end. Beautiful friend.
Abrams really went full-blown Halloween with Episode IX.
Kylo's schizophrenia.
Ghostbusters and Goosebumps all the sudden. Shit. I almost wished Abrams did the whole movie in this color. Why not, at this point.
I like the simian creatures involved. There's a kind of Planet of the Apes weird savagery-tribalism going on here.
Rey's sure in the middle of it now.
Maybe my favorite shot from Abrams' Star Wars.
Poe's third-person platforming.
Yes, it was a trailer gimme but it nearly bespeaks the storied direction this trilogy should have dared.
The fluorescent lighting per capita in this movie...
Adam Driver is at times a French comic book rendering come to life.
Rey's crouching tiger.
With the blast shield up.
Rey in Hades.
I wish I enjoyed this sequence more that the visuals offered, but I still dig the initial scope of it.
With thunderous applause.
The Ewok word for déjà vu.
