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**Marcel Birgelen** · 01-14-2020, 04:59 PM

I have posted the results a couple of times the last few years, but to me, the whole thing is becoming less and less interesting every year. I guess it's still a great show for those who like following stars around, but it seems to have to do less and less with the movies themselves each and every year... Over the last years, the show also has become a podium for proxy-politics, which, no matter what your "own side" is, I personally dislike. You have every right to make a politically loaded movie, but please keep it away from those kinds of shows, please. Let's pretend it's like the Olympics, that night, we can all just be friends, no matter if we dream of elephants or donkeys....

Since what makes a movie a good movie is for a large part a very subjective, personal thing, I've never attached too much value to any of those awards, neither now nor in the past. For me, the end results often feel more like a loaded lottery than a genuine attempt at finding "the best" in a particular class.

**Bobby Henderson** · 01-14-2020, 09:27 PM

I'm not entirely sure what to think of the Oscar nominations this year, other than it looks like some cronyism influenced the list of nominees. I haven't seen all the movies nominated for Best Picture. I'll probably get around to watching most of them, but honestly I have no desire to watch another damned remake of Little Women.

For whatever reason Joker earned the most nominations. It's the only movie in the Best Picture category that does NOT have a "certified fresh" score at Rotten Tomatoes. I can only guess Warner Bros did an excellent job campaigning for the movie's nominations. It looks like Joker has a lot of momentum in its favor, enough that Joaquin Phoenix might get an Oscar. Although I have a sneaky feeling Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson could win the leading acting categories for Marriage Story.

The Oscars have been political to some degree for at least the past 50 years. So I think it's kind of funny the Oscars have kind of become a victim of its own politics. I don't agree with all the complaints about the lack of diversity on the group of nominees. However, I do think Lupita Nyong'o (a previous Oscar winner) delivered an Oscar-worthy performance with the dual role she played in Us.

The only legitimate way to improve the level of diversity in Oscar nominations is by breaking down the very white and very male "good 'ole boys network" in Hollywood. The reason why the Oscars are often so white, male and straight and is the vast majority of opportunity in the movie industry goes to people who are white, male and straight. Some of that is on purpose, thanks to the long tradition of Hollywood Whitewashing. They'll still to this day cast white actors in parts originally written for people of color. And the American public deserves blame for this as well. Remember all those people losing their shit over a Black Stormtrooper?

One other thing I find annoying about this year's list of nominees: The Academy is once again tossing lots of technical award nominations to movies in the Best Picture category. It seems like the Academy and its voters don't really try very hard to look across the entire year's worth of movie releases to judge categories like cinematography, editing, sound editing, sound mixing, production design, set decoration, makeup and visual effects.

Speaking of visual effects, I halfway expect The Irishman to win the Visual Effects Oscar for the de-aging CGI work in the movie. I was a bit let-down by The Irishman. It wasn't as good a movie as I was expecting. And the CGI stuff didn't look all that impressive either.

**Marcel Birgelen** · 01-17-2020, 02:16 AM

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

For whatever reason Joker earned the most nominations. It's the only movie in the Best Picture category that does NOT have a "certified fresh" score at Rotten Tomatoes. I can only guess Warner Bros did an excellent job campaigning for the movie's nominations. It looks like Joker has a lot of momentum in its favor, enough that Joaquin Phoenix might get an Oscar. Although I have a sneaky feeling Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson could win the leading acting categories for Marriage Story.

While Joker was quite a controversial movie, which probably lead to the low Rotten Tomatoes rating, I think the performance of Joaquin Phoenix rightfully deserved at least a nomination.

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

Remember all those people losing their shit over a Black Stormtrooper?

To be fair, I think the argument about a black stormtrooper was primarily because somewhere in the prequels we learned they were all clones of Jango Fett. Jango Fett wasn't black. To be honest, I was somewhat surprised too, but I don't follow all the minute story details of Star Wars, so I guessed I must have missed something somewhere. So, for me it wasn't a racial thing at all, but a consistency thing. Furthermore, I couldn't care less what original color the original stormtrooper had, but when they're all supposed to be clones, you may expect not only them to have the same skin color, but also exactly the same look. Either that, or your movies got the general accepted idea of cloning wrong.

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

One other thing I find annoying about this year's list of nominees: The Academy is once again tossing lots of technical award nominations to movies in the Best Picture category. It seems like the Academy and its voters don't really try very hard to look across the entire year's worth of movie releases to judge categories like cinematography, editing, sound editing, sound mixing, production design, set decoration, makeup and visual effects.

Most of them still watch those movies on crappy DVD screener releases at home. It still beats me how you can judge about stuff like sound editing, mixing, production design, makeup and visual effects this way...

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

Speaking of visual effects, I halfway expect The Irishman to win the Visual Effects Oscar for the de-aging CGI work in the movie. I was a bit let-down by The Irishman. It wasn't as good a movie as I was expecting. And the CGI stuff didn't look all that impressive either.

The best special effects are those you can't recognize as such. I think the aging effect in The Irishman looked somewhat strange, because it wasn't how we remembered a younger Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

**Bobby Henderson** · 01-17-2020, 10:09 AM

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

To be fair, I think the argument about a black stormtrooper was primarily because somewhere in the prequels we learned they were all clones of Jango Fett. Jango Fett wasn't black. To be honest, I was somewhat surprised too, but I don't follow all the minute story details of Star Wars, so I guessed I must have missed something somewhere. So, for me it wasn't a racial thing at all, but a consistency thing. Furthermore, I couldn't care less what original color the original stormtrooper had, but when they're all supposed to be clones, you may expect not only them to have the same skin color, but also exactly the same look. Either that, or your movies got the general accepted idea of cloning wrong.

I still call it bigoted hypocrisy. Even though we never saw their faces, the stormtroopers in the original Star Wars trilogy just sounded like typical white guy Americans. They didn't sound like Māori people from New Zealand. So there's one problem with "consistency" there.

The whole stormtroopers are clones angle didn't come about until "Episode II" was released. If the hardcore Star Wars nerds really wanted to get into the hair-splitting details about cloning they would discover it's never a good idea to make lots and lots of copies from the same genetic source. Diversity in genetics is what builds superiority. A High tech version of in-breeding leads to all kinds of problems. Just look at the horror show present in many dog breeds. None of them are superior to their wolf ancestors.

Episode VII takes place many years after Return of the Jedi. It's not out of bounds for the "New Order" to have made some changes with the kinds of "clones" they were putting into stormtrooper suits. So I personally have zero problem at all about a stormtrooper being black. A pretty large percentage of professional athletes are black. Yet there used to be a time when plenty of white Americans were losing their shit over the prospects of a black baseball player.

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

Most of them still watch those movies on crappy DVD screener releases at home. It still beats me how you can judge about stuff like sound editing, mixing, production design, makeup and visual effects this way...

I don't think their choice of viewing platform, be it a DVD screener on a TV at home, a professional private screening room or a commercial movie theater, is making any difference on this.

The real problems are two-fold. One issue is the aforementioned cronyism, insiders taking care of their friends. The other is marketing. I think the Academy and its voters try really hard to pad the number of nominations for those few chosen movies. It doesn't seem so impressive for a movie nominated for Best Picture to just get a couple or so nominations in the top categories. It sells better for the movie to have at least several or more nominations. So some quiet drama or high brow costume period piece will get a shit-ton of technical award nominations despite the fact there were probably dozens of other movies that put a hell of a lot more work and innovation into things like their editing, visuals and sound mixes.

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

The best special effects are those you can't recognize as such. I think the aging effect in The Irishman looked somewhat strange, because it wasn't how we remembered a younger Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

Forrest Gump was a movie where some of the visual effects were impressive (in 1994) for being effects no one would immediately notice, like getting rid of Lt Dan's legs. The de-aging stuff in The Irishman didn't seem to do much good. The problem was compounded by the issue these actors don't move around like young men anymore either. Not a very convincing illusion.

**Marcel Birgelen** · 01-17-2020, 12:19 PM

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

I still call it bigoted hypocrisy. Even though we never saw their faces, the stormtroopers in the original Star Wars trilogy just sounded like typical white guy Americans. They didn't sound like Māori people from New Zealand. So there's one problem with "consistency" there.

The way someone talks has hardly anything to do with his or her DNA but is mostly a product of where you grow up. I don't know anything about how stormtroopers are supposed to be "produced" and raised. Do they get a memory imprint? Are they raised from baby to "being ready"? Do they age like normal humans do? Because if they do, they must have ordered new ones in between, maybe they were not made of clones? All questions I don't have answers to. That's why I initially was surprised by a black stormtrooper but put away all that, because there are many questions that can fill it in. So, no racial motivation there, if others ask the same question, that doesn't say its racial motivated at all. If a character magically changes skin color between two episodes without explanation and anybody calling out the absurdity of this is called a racist, then the term "racism" is in for some major recalibration...

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

The whole stormtroopers are clones angle didn't come about until "Episode II" was released. If the hardcore Star Wars nerds really wanted to get into the hair-splitting details about cloning they would discover it's never a good idea to make lots and lots of copies from the same genetic source. Diversity in genetics is what builds superiority. A High tech version of in-breeding leads to all kinds of problems. Just look at the horror show present in many dog breeds. None of them are superior to their wolf ancestors.

Real life cloning is still in very early stages and I don't really want to go into the ethics of it right here. But the whole idea of cloning and the way it has been portrayed in most fictive stories until now is that cloning creates an exact genetic copy of the original. That's not the same as inbreeding, like what happened with e.g. dog and cat breeds, that eventually amplified weaknesses. Your "source" can still have genetic weaknesses, but they shouldn't be amplified after x number copies. (There was this bad Schwarzenegger movie where clones degraded after each new "generation", but that was an explicit part of the convoluted plot.) Maybe cloning in the Star Wars universe is something else, but as long as nobody explains it, you should be able to safely assume it's the same as what is generally meant with it. If they're talking about a stone brick, I assume a stone brick is the same in the Star Wars universe as a stone brick in our universe, if not, then please explain...

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

Episode VII takes place many years after Return of the Jedi. It's not out of bounds for the "New Order" to have made some changes with the kinds of "clones" they were putting into stormtrooper suits. So I personally have zero problem at all about a stormtrooper being black. A pretty large percentage of professional athletes are black. Yet there used to be a time when plenty of white Americans were losing their shit over the prospects of a black baseball player.

Like I mentioned before, I really don't care about skin color, as long as it doesn't conflict the consistency of the story at hand. If you'd portray Jesus as someone with a darker colored skin I'd probably say bravo for choosing something that was probably more close to what such a person would actually have looked like. I never made a big point about having a black stormtrooper, other than that I was surprised, because of consistency implications. Maybe they could've offered just a few seconds of exposition to explain what the relation is between "stormtroopers" and "clone-troopers" in one of the many movies and sideshows, since both happen to look eerily similar and are by many considered to be the "same thing". There is also a difference between simply pointing it out and going bonkers about it. It's something that caught my attention and was, in my mind, quickly filled in with "story gaps". Yet, I'd say that good storytelling should probably not leave such gaps wide open, at least as long as they don't serve a deeper purpose to the story itself.

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

I don't think their choice of viewing platform, be it a DVD screener on a TV at home, a professional private screening room or a commercial movie theater, is making any difference on this.

The real problems are two-fold. One issue is the aforementioned cronyism, insiders taking care of their friends. The other is marketing. I think the Academy and its voters try really hard to pad the number of nominations for those few chosen movies. It doesn't seem so impressive for a movie nominated for Best Picture to just get a couple or so nominations in the top categories. It sells better for the movie to have at least several or more nominations. So some quiet drama or high brow costume period piece will get a shit-ton of technical award nominations despite the fact there were probably dozens of other movies that put a hell of a lot more work and innovation into things like their editing, visuals and sound mixes.

Well, I do think it makes a difference if you want to remove bias as much as possible. In order to be able to judge about some of the more intricate qualities of a movie, you have to see a movie in a proper room. For example: If you want to judge the sound mix, you need to be sure you're watching it in a room that can reproduce the full extend of the sound mix of a movie, or otherwise all kinds of objectivity flies out of the room. If you want to judge the make-up, then what are you actually judging if you're watching a crappy DVD with watermarks all over the place? You should see it on the BIG screen in FULL RESOLUTION. And don't forget your glasses if you need them...

What you're saying sounds plausible, although it's probably hard to prove, but my statement is essentially in line with yours: If you do not watch the movie in a proper screening room or theater, you can't judge objectively about many of the technical aspects of the movie, hence what else do you base your opinion on? Well, maybe your opinion was made-up already...

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

Forrest Gump was a movie where some of the visual effects were impressive (in 1994) for being effects no one would immediately notice, like getting rid of Lt Dan's legs. The de-aging stuff in The Irishman didn't seem to do much good. The problem was compounded by the issue these actors don't move around like young men anymore either. Not a very convincing illusion.

The first thing my wife said: Heck, that looks awfully strange. I also thought it looked somewhat weird, but I at first couldn't really put the finger on it. It was clear the actors looked different than the younger version of their selves, but that was probably a conscious decision. The way they moved was indeed off and probably compounded the effect. Yet, I guess hiring a bunch of younger actors and dubbing them would not have been better. Scorsese probably wanted to stick to a bunch of a-list actors of old, but in the end it would probably have been better to hire a bunch of younger actors and age them for the parts in the "future".

**Bobby Henderson** · 01-17-2020, 11:38 PM

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

The way someone talks has hardly anything to do with his or her DNA but is mostly a product of where you grow up. I don't know anything about how stormtroopers are supposed to be "produced" and raised. Do they get a memory imprint? Are they raised from baby to "being ready"? Do they age like normal humans do? Because if they do, they must have ordered new ones in between, maybe they were not made of clones? All questions I don't have answers to. That's why I initially was surprised by a black stormtrooper but put away all that, because there are many questions that can fill it in. So, no racial motivation there, if others ask the same question, that doesn't say its racial motivated at all. If a character magically changes skin color between two episodes without explanation and anybody calling out the absurdity of this is called a racist, then the term "racism" is in for some major recalibration...

The stormtroopers in the original Star Wars trilogy sounded like white AMERICAN guys. Plain and simple. It has nothing to do with anyone using "urban" slang. Black men tend to have a different baritone in their voices compared to white men, regardless of accent or level of slang used. George Lucas had some American "honkeys" doing the voice work of those original stormtroopers. They didn't sound black at all. And they sure as hell did not ever sound like they were from New Zealand.

I remember the kind of outcry going on when the black stormtrooper was first revealed in the Episode VII trailer. Argue as much as you like, but a bunch of people were letting their hatred shine through bright and clear with their reactions. And the whole thing makes zero sense at all, given the voice of Darth Vader was that of an African American. Of course George Lucas could have gone with the dialog of the white guy who actually wore the costume!

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

Real life cloning is still in very early stages and I don't really want to go into the ethics of it right here. But the whole idea of cloning and the way it has been portrayed in most fictive stories until now is that cloning creates an exact genetic copy of the original.

The problem is cloning is NOT anything near remote to a "perfect" science. Just look at the differences between identical twins. Two of my coworkers are identical twin brothers. They have the same exact DNA, but they're still different from each other in all kinds of subtle ways. Playing God with genetics can lead to some weird and unfortunate outcomes. So to reiterate my earlier point, it's totally plausible for the New Order to have regrouped and re-tooled it's stormtrooper program to feature black dudes. I don't think a bunch of geeky, boring exposition is needed to explain it either.

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

Like I mentioned before, I really don't care about skin color, as long as it doesn't conflict the consistency of the story at hand. If you'd portray Jesus as someone with a darker colored skin I'd probably say bravo for choosing something that was probably more close to what such a person would actually have looked like.

Jesus was a Jew. I don't for one second believe he looked like Idris Elba. But he probably didn't look like fucking Michael Fassbender from 300 either. Scandinavian Jesus is one of the original examples of white-washing in popular culture.

Star Wars at its core is a ridiculous, make-believe sci-fi "western." If a space craft or even the Death Star explodes in outer space in real life it's not going to make the slightest bit of noise. But in these movies we have loud explosions in outer space, and have space craft flying like they're biplanes dogfighting in World War I. It's all a put-on. In that vein, who should give a rat's ass if a stormtrooper turns out to be a black human being? The nerds out there just need to take a step back and see the big picture.

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

Well, I do think it makes a difference if you want to remove bias as much as possible. In order to be able to judge about some of the more intricate qualities of a movie, you have to see a movie in a proper room.

Academy voters for the most part are not doing that. They certainly can't lower themselves to watch a movie in a public cinema with common people. And it's too much of a pain in the ass for them to view the movie in a professional private screening room facility. In the end, pretty much all of these movies are being judged on the basis of the TV screen these voters have in a certain room, be it the living room, bedroom or even on a computer in an office. The AMPAS is prioritizing convenience over presentation quality.

But that issue is a whole other matter compared to the marketing slant obviously taking place with a select number of movies the movie industry chooses to push for the Oscars. This habit of padding nominations to a very limited number of movies has been going on for decades. The only thing that saves the Oscars is that in most years the movie that wins an award like Best Sound Mixing or Best Sound Editing is usually a big action epic deserving of the award. But there's still at least a couple or more WTF? nominees grouped alongside the winner.

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

The first thing my wife said: Heck, that looks awfully strange. I also thought it looked somewhat weird, but I at first couldn't really put the finger on it. It was clear the actors looked different than the younger version of their selves, but that was probably a conscious decision. The way they moved was indeed off and probably compounded the effect.

There was one scene in The Irishman where Robert DeNiro's characters shoots someone on the front steps of a New York Brownstone and takes off running. I started laughing due to the way DeNiro was getting the hell out of there. He moved like an old geezer hit man. It was unintentionally funny. When a hit man in his 30's or 40's makes a kill like that in a movie it usually plays out in a more grim, menacing fashion.

**Marcel Birgelen** · 01-18-2020, 03:48 AM

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

The stormtroopers in the original Star Wars trilogy sounded like white AMERICAN guys. Plain and simple. It has nothing to do with anyone using "urban" slang. Black men tend to have a different baritone in their voices compared to white men, regardless of accent or level of slang used. George Lucas had some American "honkeys" doing the voice work of those original stormtroopers. They didn't sound black at all. And they sure as hell did not ever sound like they were from New Zealand.

We all know that nobody put any real thought into how stormtroopers sounded when they first were introduced back in 1977. But it wouldn't make sense to have them sounding like they're from New Zealand either, it's a fictional universe that in no way I can remember connects to Earth anywhere.

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

I remember the kind of outcry going on when the black stormtrooper was first revealed in the Episode VII trailer. Argue as much as you like, but a bunch of people were letting their hatred shine through bright and clear with their reactions. And the whole thing makes zero sense at all, given the voice of Darth Vader was that of an African American. Of course George Lucas could have gone with the dialog of the white guy who actually wore the costume!

I don't think Lucas had any racial motivations in order who would play the voice of Darth Vader. Keep in mind that voice-altering techniques back then were in no way as sophisticated as they are today so I guess they simply picked a voice they felt matched the tone of the character. Darth Vader's voice is by all means one of the most recognizable assets of the franchise. When they picked the voice actor for Darth Vader, there also were no other episodes in sight.

Having a black Darth Vader wouldn't have bothered me, even back then, but then you couldn't go along with a white Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa...

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

The problem is cloning is NOT anything near remote to a "perfect" science. Just look at the differences between identical twins. Two of my coworkers are identical twin brothers. They have the same exact DNA, but they're still different from each other in all kinds of subtle ways. Playing God with genetics can lead to some weird and unfortunate outcomes. So to reiterate my earlier point, it's totally plausible for the New Order to have regrouped and re-tooled it's stormtrooper program to feature black dudes. I don't think a bunch of geeky, boring exposition is needed to explain it either.

We're talking about a fictional universe where they have hyperdrives and planet-destroying super-weapons. Technologies so far out of reach of our current level of science, yet cloning is pretty much in reach. So, given the progress on those other aspects, you'd expect they have perfected cloning.

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

Jesus was a Jew. I don't for one second believe he looked like Idris Elba. But he probably didn't look like fucking Michael Fassbender from 300 either. Scandinavian Jesus is one of the original examples of white-washing in popular culture.

I've seen a fairly good BBC documentary about the topic quite a few years back. They concluded, based on pictures of around the 3rd century of Jewish people from the region, that such a person would probably have had darker skin and curly, short hair. Obviously, there is a lot of room for interpretation.

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

Star Wars at its core is a ridiculous, make-believe sci-fi "western." If a space craft or even the Death Star explodes in outer space in real life it's not going to make the slightest bit of noise. But in these movies we have loud explosions in outer space, and have space craft flying like they're biplanes dogfighting in World War I. It's all a put-on. In that vein, who should give a rat's ass if a stormtrooper turns out to be a black human being? The nerds out there just need to take a step back and see the big picture.

I don't really think that the nerds discussing intricate details of the Star Wars universe are really the problem, as long as those discussions aren't racial motivated. Discussing someone's skin color based on continuity implications is something different than someone spewing hatred about "wrongly colored characters". People discuss all kinds of stuff, like mentioned in another topic, even the color of someone's lightsaber. While I couldn't care less, others might find it worthwhile to discuss it. It's not for me to judge if they should do that or not.

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

Academy voters for the most part are not doing that. They certainly can't lower themselves to watch a movie in a public cinema with common people. And it's too much of a pain in the ass for them to view the movie in a professional private screening room facility. In the end, pretty much all of these movies are being judged on the basis of the TV screen these voters have in a certain room, be it the living room, bedroom or even on a computer in an office. The AMPAS is prioritizing convenience over presentation quality.

But that issue is a whole other matter compared to the marketing slant obviously taking place with a select number of movies the movie industry chooses to push for the Oscars. This habit of padding nominations to a very limited number of movies has been going on for decades. The only thing that saves the Oscars is that in most years the movie that wins an award like Best Sound Mixing or Best Sound Editing is usually a big action epic deserving of the award. But there's still at least a couple or more WTF? nominees grouped alongside the winner.

In order for me to take those awards serious, all those issues need to be fixed. Until then, it remains just a semi-corrupt incest pool, the industry patting itself on the back. I guess that's also the reason why we're the only two even discussing this topic. The interest into this whole thing is waning. The main-stream news media might still be all over it, by lack of anything more worthwhile to report and still being entangled with it, but otherwise, I don't know a lot of people that get excited about this year's Oscars.

Originally posted by Bobby Henderson View Post

There was one scene in The Irishman where Robert DeNiro's characters shoots someone on the front steps of a New York Brownstone and takes off running. I started laughing due to the way DeNiro was getting the hell out of there. He moved like an old geezer hit man. It was unintentionally funny. When a hit man in his 30's or 40's makes a kill like that in a movie it usually plays out in a more grim, menacing fashion.

I remember the particular scene and I was wondering if it was done intentionally or not. It indeed didn't convey a lot of emotional distress and it was more funny, like in a Tarantino sense of way than it was dramatic. Maybe it was done to increase the likeability of "The Irishman", but you'd expect the movie to portray him as a conflicted soul, at least that's what the ending tries to do very hard. I watched on a big screen, in a proper screening room, so maybe the effect was somewhat muted down on your average TV set, yet I don't think Scorsese filmed this flick with just the TV as presentation medium in mind.

**Bobby Henderson** · 01-18-2020, 03:14 PM

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

I don't think Lucas had any racial motivations in order who would play the voice of Darth Vader. Keep in mind that voice-altering techniques back then were in no way as sophisticated as they are today so I guess they simply picked a voice they felt matched the tone of the character. Darth Vader's voice is by all means one of the most recognizable assets of the franchise. When they picked the voice actor for Darth Vader, there also were no other episodes in sight.

Lucas' problem during the production of Star Wars was David Prowse's dialog was so bad the only choice was to get a different actor to loop his lines in post production on the ADR stage. James Earl Jones was one of very few actors around at that time with a voice deep and imposing enough to fit the part. So, yeah, it certainly wasn't racially motivated. Still, James Earl Jones' genetics are a big part of why he was blessed with a voice like that.

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

I don't really think that the nerds discussing intricate details of the Star Wars universe are really the problem, as long as those discussions aren't racial motivated. Discussing someone's skin color based on continuity implications is something different than someone spewing hatred about "wrongly colored characters". People discuss all kinds of stuff, like mentioned in another topic, even the color of someone's lightsaber. While I couldn't care less, others might find it worthwhile to discuss it. It's not for me to judge if they should do that or not.

The overall tone of backlash when the first trailer of Episode VII was released was a negative reaction to "political correctness" run amok. Bigots were getting triggered by what they saw as a deliberate choice to make a cast more diverse. It added to their view that Hollywood is constantly trying to over-reach and re-define the norms of American culture. There's still a bunch of Americans out there who get outraged at the sight of an interracial couple or a gay couple. Many of the bigots have embraced a type of victim mentality, as if they're losing their rights. Consequences are much greater today against behavior that is sexist, racist or homophobic. Bigots don't like it that they're having to watch their mouths now. So when a black stormtrooper appeared in a Star Wars movie trailer they weren't going to stand for it.

I spent most of my childhood on a number of Marine Corps and Navy bases. My own perspective on what a military force looks like (particularly an American military force) is one that is very diverse. My neighbors and classmates were a mix of White, Black, Latino and Asian people. I had some friends whose parents were of different races. This was back in the 1970's and 1980's, before the term "political correctness" was even coined. Stormtroopers in a Star Wars movie are different from anything in real life, but genre movies very often play with allegory related to real life.

Originally posted by Marcel Birgelen

In order for me to take those awards serious, all those issues need to be fixed. Until then, it remains just a semi-corrupt incest pool, the industry patting itself on the back. I guess that's also the reason why we're the only two even discussing this topic. The interest into this whole thing is waning. The main-stream news media might still be all over it, by lack of anything more worthwhile to report and still being entangled with it, but otherwise, I don't know a lot of people that get excited about this year's Oscars.

I think the movie industry overall is in a kind of decline. And the decline for the most part has been self-inflicted. The traditional 2 hour feature movie is suffering from several problems. Because these movies are expected to perform globally their content is often watered down and far more predictable. The studios are relying too much on "established brands" with all the re-makes and sequels. Series TV is gaining more interest since those shows have more creative freedom and are tailored more to specific audiences. The absurdly short theatrical release windows are making the situation worse. The consolidation that has taken place in movie theater chains has not helped.

The Oscars appear to be getting challenged more and more by rival awards shows, like the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards and even the DGA and PGA. By the time the Oscars roll around the announcement of Oscar winners feels almost anti-climactic. Often there's little surprise since the SGA, DGA and PGA presentations usually telegraph the winners in major Oscar categories.

**Leo Enticknap** · 01-18-2020, 05:22 PM

Very disappointed that Apollo 11 wasn't nominated for best documentary.

**Bobby Henderson** · 01-18-2020, 06:30 PM

Yeah, not nominating Apollo 11 was a pretty huge oversight.

**Mike Blakesley** · 01-18-2020, 11:31 PM

Probably not enough people of color in it.

(Disclaimer: That was sarcasm, don't flame me)

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2020 Academy Award Nominations

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