World Buildin' - Page 3

"To your planet, welcome!"

"I think that's my line, stranger."

Yeah, totally a pickup.

In this discussion, how many points do you deduct when you have an otherwise beatifully crafted fantasy world that has meticulously drawn you in, and then throws some wierd plot dictated set piece or prop that kind of ruins it.

For example, District 9. The Aliens look great, slums look great, space ship, great very lived in. Then the alien guns, they look like extremely fragile brand new super soakers. Very cartoonish and over the top.

that's probably a nitpick, but whenever those guns would show up on screen, I just thought they looked rediculous, took me completely out of the film.

And as two different ships in The DS9 pilot, and at the end of Generations, jeez Phil, weren't you paying attention?

The beginning of THE SWORD & THE SORCERER is atmospheric as all get out and let's you know exactly what kind of movie you should be in for. I'd argue that Pyun's flick almost doesn't live up to the first few glorious minutes (although the climax is rad), but it establishes a creepy and magical world from the start.

Jerk-King Richard Lynch and crew arrive on an island at night, enter a forbidden cave and resurrect mud-dripping giant demon Richard Moll with awesome finger extensions. The crypt is swarming with wailing faces and Xusia makes a witch's heart explode out of her chest and into his hand. The lighting and music in this scene are perfect and overall it is as effective now as it was when I was a kid. Well, almost. I didn't know it was Bull from Night Court back then.

Scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Emt53jHpc

Sword & Sorcery from the 1980's thread
80s Fantasy thread
The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) thread

World building, at its worst, tends to attract a certain type of individual.  In films and books, you find creators more interested in playing with the props they built than the people that are populating it.  James Cameron, Michael Bay, etc just tune into things better than they do relationships they're trying to depict.  The preeminent thing directors need a handle on is social interaction, and an avid interest in the way people work.

My opinion is summed up early on in the article. There's only a problem when the film is in service to the world building rather than the other way around. It doesn't matter if it's something forced externally upon the film like in Iron Man 2 or if it's what the film maker really wants to do instead of bothering with story and characters like in Avatar. Our world is immeasurably better built than anything anyone can ever devise. And yet I don't give a shit about 99.99% of the stuff that take place in real life. Why should knowing how Pandora's ecosystem works make me like the movie if I find the story boring? What did the existence of SHIELD and his father's involvement with them add to Tony's arc in Iron Man 2?

Interesting little article.
 

Noticing that more and more, especially in the wake of stuff like Avatar and Tron.  Immersion can only take you so far, and without a good story and good characters, its just a distraction.  I remember watching City of Ember and thinking how cool the production design was and how neat the sets were and how great the world building was and it took me the better part of an hour to realize I didn't give a shit about anything that was going on.

 

Recently, I thought Monsters did an excellent job of letting characters populate and exist within a fully realized world without drawing attention to it or having to fall back on massive exposition dumps to set it up.  

 

Not to mention the commercials.

 

Verhoeven rocked in this area of film-making.