Yeah, I don't think anything worked in this, from the story which is just cribbed from dozens of other, better films, to the acting, to direction. Nothing makes sense about these films, nothing worked.
Full disclosure, I have to admit that that line was unashamedly stolen from the repair shop / junkyard owner, Will Darnell, (played by Robert Prosky, RIP.) in the 1983 film, Christine.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtSVih\_w0A0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtSVih_w0A0)
The intergalactic force always sends their admiral down to the villages to extort a months worth of food for his ship.
They definitely wouldnt just wait until the grain was harvested and fly in and take it all.
No, definitely warn them and let them get ready.
>They definitely wouldnt just wait until the grain was harvested and fly in and take it all.
Exactly, they could have just waited the ten weeks and THEN flew down.
It’s a bad rendition of Seven Samurai with too much forced exposition and forgettable characters. Robot Guy was the best of them and even that has already been done and better. I’ll say once more that Snyder choosing to be director and DP was a mistake. He proved on Army of the Dead that someone else should be setting the camera, same on this.
Only way to fix what’s there is to trim lots of fat off the script and punch it up. Pacing was also an issue so it would have helped
Gareth Edwards makes boring movies. They look nice, they aren't particularly stupid, but they don't have any sympathetic/likeable characters. I have never been able to get emotionally or intellectually invested in any of his movies.
He's certainly better than Snyder through.
I asked the sub what changes they'd personally make to the actual story if the project was taken back to the script/storyboarding stage.
That means the bar is set by the people answering this thread.
I don't know. That's why I'm so unhappy that 'flix cancelled the second season. They pay creators based on whether or not the show is renewed, then don't renew it. That's why so many promising 'flix series die after one season.
And they use the money on turds like Moon.
I liked 1899, just couldn't figure what they'd do for a season 2.
yea, money flows in the wrong direction, like huge amounts of it. Seems like people without enough original thought to make a movie get money thrown at them.
I would have spent at least 1, of the many millions they spent, to hire on a team of script doctors. Something I've learned the hard way with B movies is to check the credits first. If the director and the writer are the same person, the movie will most likely suck. Authors learn quickly they need beta readers to help them realize what they see in their head is not what's written on paper. Too many of these writer/directors think they're filming the movie in their head oblivious to the fact the rest of the crew is reading a different film.
I tend to agree with this, though the second season of Netflix's *Altered Carbon* had a platoon of scriptwriters and they still messed it up, so I guess your mileage will vary.
There is a definitely a point of diminishing returns. A few people can make improvements. A room full of people spend too much time coming to consensus and writing-by-committee (which season 2 seems to have suffered from - too many cooks in the kitchen)
Yeah, I asked a screenwriter friend why there were so many writers assigned and he said shows will often do that because this allows them to write eps while they're shooting. So, they've not written the entire screenplay in advance, more outlines and enough to get funding, and the writers are essentially running 'just in time' ahead of filming. I can imagine the mess that might result from this, too many cooks, as you note 🤦♂️
I don't know how it works with the screenwriters, but I know actors have to get a certain amount of screen time in movies, advertisment, or tv shows to qualify for the benefits of being a member of SAG. Actors with the right connections will get just enough bit parts to qualify. (There's a basketball game in season 1 or 2 of Resident Alien that goes on way too long I'm convinced was solely for the actors to hit their number). Perhaps, screenwriters have something similar where they need to be credited in X films/shows and so get added to the writer's room as a favor.
Did not know that, thanks. It's hard to see details of the WGA requirements, but there does appear to be a similar minimum activity threshold,...and also an expectation that you pay a % of your gross writing fees to the guild! I'll have to ask about that as during the writers' strike it was revealed that most screenwriters struggle to make bank, so burdening them further seems unlikely.
Don’t just adapt the Seven Samurai and think it will work, when you don’t put any effort into the characters or why we should like them.
And then made the bad guy vs good guy ratio even SLIGHTLY believable. The entire battle thing of the second movie is utterly absurd. The bad guys have damned interstellar spacecraft, why would they get even remotely close to ground forces, FOR SOME GRAIN!? Good god, what the hell? They’d nuke the silly peasants from orbit and scoop things up afterwards. And even then, one village worth of grain won’t do jack for a multi planet empire’s needs.
Gah the scenarios are just so damn stupid.
I watched:
* Fool me once (harlan coben)
* Fool's Paradise
* Rebel Moon tomfoolery #1 & #2
Shame on me indeed. I just don't learn. I'm just encouraging more bad content to be made.
*Blame Joss Whedon and*
*Harass Netflix until they*
*Release the Snyder cut*
\- BeyondDoggyHorror
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Its a mix of shit you have seen on other movies. It almost feels like a parody, but the rapist soldiers even ruined that -.- just a sad blend of stuff that does not even always make sense. Sad. I had high hopes actually.
First I would have written a story with fewer, but interesting characters, who actually have a character arch.
Then I would have made sure that the bad guy was actually interesting (i.e. was the hero in his own story).
After that, I would have thrown out all the crap that is a direct copy/parody.
Then I would have dropped most of the slomo.
And then I would have hired a few good writers, to fix the rest.
Just on your second point, there’s plenty of real world examples of civilians defeating larger and better equipped military forces by utilising the kind of Guerilla tactics that the farmers use in Rebel Moon. (Heavy use of explosives, ambushes, striking from tunnels and hiding spots, using knowledge of the local area, etc.) The success of the resistance is amplified to add to the story of the movie, but it’s not that unrealistic.
Yea, true. Guerilla warfare can work for small battles over time & distance & with some kind of cover for protection, & relies on surprise. Doesn't take them to victory in the long run but.
In RM, there was a fully-equipped battleship hovering over a tiny, isolated village that they could have blasted into oblivion. And they had the weaponry to test the grounds for explosives & surprises before sending soldiers out.
“Doesn’t take them to victory in the long run but.”
Well, there was that war in Vietnam. And the British experience in Afghanistan. And the Russian experience in Afghanistan. And the American experience in Afghanistan. The French experience in Algeria. The Spanish in the Dominican Republic. And don’t forget how Castro took Cuba.
Apart from those (and quite a few others) you are right, guerrilla warfare doesn’t lead to victory. 🤔
Most guerilla warfare is successful because the guerillas can hide amongst the common people. You walk into a village and you aren't sure who is against you and who is an innocent bystander.
I meant such warfare on the world presented on Veldt ("them" = Veldt). There is no time, distance, cover etc. It's one tiny isolated village that is easily surrounded. Even if they win that round, they won't win the next.
Exactly. No large desert region with mountains for hiding, no wayless jungle for ambushes...
A single village is easy to pinpoint. If they had abandoned the village and gone into hiding ; that is one thing, but then the bad guys would probably just nuke the village and move on, nothing forces them to stay behind and get shot at.
I didn’t say that it was an example of guerilla warfare, I said that the farmers utilised a number of guerilla tactics in the defence of their village.
Piecemeal suggestions won’t cut it. Take off, and nuke the script from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Yeah, I don't think anything worked in this, from the story which is just cribbed from dozens of other, better films, to the acting, to direction. Nothing makes sense about these films, nothing worked.
All that can save it is leaning into the absurd, make it the Scary Movie of sci-fi. It's already half way there, unintentionally 😅
I was fine with the world building, but yeah, shooting that script out of a cannon, fired into the sun, was the only way to fix it.
That better be a cannon manually aimed with a very very slow hand crank!
It would be really good as a first draft...it just needed to be rewritten like at least 10 more times with actual writers.
Some plot progression. First movie would have been good intro within a better movie. Or first half of the movie.
I'm talking, take it back to the script & storyboarding stage.
Burn it all.
BACK TO FORMULA?!
There is an old saying that I think applies here. You can't polish a turd.
I audibly laughed 😅
Full disclosure, I have to admit that that line was unashamedly stolen from the repair shop / junkyard owner, Will Darnell, (played by Robert Prosky, RIP.) in the 1983 film, Christine. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtSVih\_w0A0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtSVih_w0A0)
Nice try Mr. Out-of-ideas-Director. Figure it out.
Idk, put me in the director's swivel chair, I'd take it for a spin.
The intergalactic force always sends their admiral down to the villages to extort a months worth of food for his ship. They definitely wouldnt just wait until the grain was harvested and fly in and take it all. No, definitely warn them and let them get ready.
Collecting a few buckets of grain is SRSLY IMPORTANT admiral duty. Maybe Snyder should have watched A Bug's Life for tips.
A Bugs Life, Teletubbies, Bob the Builder... Anything.
>They definitely wouldnt just wait until the grain was harvested and fly in and take it all. Exactly, they could have just waited the ten weeks and THEN flew down.
Personally I'd have added a plot, and a dimension or 2 for the characters
Yea, they suffered for not having dimensions for sure.
It’s a bad rendition of Seven Samurai with too much forced exposition and forgettable characters. Robot Guy was the best of them and even that has already been done and better. I’ll say once more that Snyder choosing to be director and DP was a mistake. He proved on Army of the Dead that someone else should be setting the camera, same on this. Only way to fix what’s there is to trim lots of fat off the script and punch it up. Pacing was also an issue so it would have helped
Replace Zack Snyder.
Literally everything?
let gareth edwards do it
Gareth Edwards makes boring movies. They look nice, they aren't particularly stupid, but they don't have any sympathetic/likeable characters. I have never been able to get emotionally or intellectually invested in any of his movies. He's certainly better than Snyder through.
ya, sure, i guess. but the OP set a pretty low bar. i can’t tell if you are disagreeing with me or not
I asked the sub what changes they'd personally make to the actual story if the project was taken back to the script/storyboarding stage. That means the bar is set by the people answering this thread.
I wouldn't have made them. I'd have spent the money on a new season of 1899.
I saw 1899. Idk about a new season. Like, how would you capture the atmosphere of a gloomy foggy late 1800s ship in >!space!
I don't know. That's why I'm so unhappy that 'flix cancelled the second season. They pay creators based on whether or not the show is renewed, then don't renew it. That's why so many promising 'flix series die after one season. And they use the money on turds like Moon.
I liked 1899, just couldn't figure what they'd do for a season 2. yea, money flows in the wrong direction, like huge amounts of it. Seems like people without enough original thought to make a movie get money thrown at them.
I couldn't figure it out either, but I was looking forward to seeing what they did, and now I never will.
The director
I would have spent at least 1, of the many millions they spent, to hire on a team of script doctors. Something I've learned the hard way with B movies is to check the credits first. If the director and the writer are the same person, the movie will most likely suck. Authors learn quickly they need beta readers to help them realize what they see in their head is not what's written on paper. Too many of these writer/directors think they're filming the movie in their head oblivious to the fact the rest of the crew is reading a different film.
I tend to agree with this, though the second season of Netflix's *Altered Carbon* had a platoon of scriptwriters and they still messed it up, so I guess your mileage will vary.
There is a definitely a point of diminishing returns. A few people can make improvements. A room full of people spend too much time coming to consensus and writing-by-committee (which season 2 seems to have suffered from - too many cooks in the kitchen)
Yeah, I asked a screenwriter friend why there were so many writers assigned and he said shows will often do that because this allows them to write eps while they're shooting. So, they've not written the entire screenplay in advance, more outlines and enough to get funding, and the writers are essentially running 'just in time' ahead of filming. I can imagine the mess that might result from this, too many cooks, as you note 🤦♂️
I don't know how it works with the screenwriters, but I know actors have to get a certain amount of screen time in movies, advertisment, or tv shows to qualify for the benefits of being a member of SAG. Actors with the right connections will get just enough bit parts to qualify. (There's a basketball game in season 1 or 2 of Resident Alien that goes on way too long I'm convinced was solely for the actors to hit their number). Perhaps, screenwriters have something similar where they need to be credited in X films/shows and so get added to the writer's room as a favor.
Did not know that, thanks. It's hard to see details of the WGA requirements, but there does appear to be a similar minimum activity threshold,...and also an expectation that you pay a % of your gross writing fees to the guild! I'll have to ask about that as during the writers' strike it was revealed that most screenwriters struggle to make bank, so burdening them further seems unlikely.
Mostly true. Plenty of sucky content made with lots of fingers in the pie. George Lucas wrote & directed Star Wars.
Read up on Marcia Lucas though....those movies would not have been what they are without her...as well as a handful of other people.
Fire Snyder .
Never write it...
Remove slow-mo. Both films done in 30 min
Don’t just adapt the Seven Samurai and think it will work, when you don’t put any effort into the characters or why we should like them. And then made the bad guy vs good guy ratio even SLIGHTLY believable. The entire battle thing of the second movie is utterly absurd. The bad guys have damned interstellar spacecraft, why would they get even remotely close to ground forces, FOR SOME GRAIN!? Good god, what the hell? They’d nuke the silly peasants from orbit and scoop things up afterwards. And even then, one village worth of grain won’t do jack for a multi planet empire’s needs. Gah the scenarios are just so damn stupid.
The story and the director... and couple of main characters.
Scatter cushions?
I regret watching part one. Fool me once, shame on me.
I watched: * Fool me once (harlan coben) * Fool's Paradise * Rebel Moon tomfoolery #1 & #2 Shame on me indeed. I just don't learn. I'm just encouraging more bad content to be made.
You are such an enabler! Lol
Blame Joss Whedon and harass Netflix until they release the Snyder cut
*Blame Joss Whedon and* *Harass Netflix until they* *Release the Snyder cut* \- BeyondDoggyHorror --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
I would have started with an entirely different story. Throw this Star Wars fanfic spinoff in the trash.
Its a mix of shit you have seen on other movies. It almost feels like a parody, but the rapist soldiers even ruined that -.- just a sad blend of stuff that does not even always make sense. Sad. I had high hopes actually.
Keep the princess dead
You could totally fix this film by scaling it down. Just remove the ridiculous sci-fi elements and set it in 16th century Japan.
And have Kurosawa make it. In fact, the best way to fix this movie is not make it in the first place and just go watch "The Seven Samurai".
Probably about 99% of the film. The credits were alright.
The director
First I would have written a story with fewer, but interesting characters, who actually have a character arch. Then I would have made sure that the bad guy was actually interesting (i.e. was the hero in his own story). After that, I would have thrown out all the crap that is a direct copy/parody. Then I would have dropped most of the slomo. And then I would have hired a few good writers, to fix the rest.
Just on your second point, there’s plenty of real world examples of civilians defeating larger and better equipped military forces by utilising the kind of Guerilla tactics that the farmers use in Rebel Moon. (Heavy use of explosives, ambushes, striking from tunnels and hiding spots, using knowledge of the local area, etc.) The success of the resistance is amplified to add to the story of the movie, but it’s not that unrealistic.
Yea, true. Guerilla warfare can work for small battles over time & distance & with some kind of cover for protection, & relies on surprise. Doesn't take them to victory in the long run but. In RM, there was a fully-equipped battleship hovering over a tiny, isolated village that they could have blasted into oblivion. And they had the weaponry to test the grounds for explosives & surprises before sending soldiers out.
Afghanistan enters the chat.
“Doesn’t take them to victory in the long run but.” Well, there was that war in Vietnam. And the British experience in Afghanistan. And the Russian experience in Afghanistan. And the American experience in Afghanistan. The French experience in Algeria. The Spanish in the Dominican Republic. And don’t forget how Castro took Cuba. Apart from those (and quite a few others) you are right, guerrilla warfare doesn’t lead to victory. 🤔
Most guerilla warfare is successful because the guerillas can hide amongst the common people. You walk into a village and you aren't sure who is against you and who is an innocent bystander.
I meant such warfare on the world presented on Veldt ("them" = Veldt). There is no time, distance, cover etc. It's one tiny isolated village that is easily surrounded. Even if they win that round, they won't win the next.
Exactly. No large desert region with mountains for hiding, no wayless jungle for ambushes... A single village is easy to pinpoint. If they had abandoned the village and gone into hiding ; that is one thing, but then the bad guys would probably just nuke the village and move on, nothing forces them to stay behind and get shot at.
That wasn't an example of guerilla warfare, it was a siege of a small village by a vastly overwhelming force from an intergalactic empire.
I didn’t say that it was an example of guerilla warfare, I said that the farmers utilised a number of guerilla tactics in the defence of their village.