Am I the only one that feels like fanfilms have (maybe always have been) the FX equivalent of a dick-waving contest.
Nope. It's also a set-measuring contest.
Agreed with the both of you (I tried to multi-quote and your posts disappeared).
I mean, who has time for a script when there's
pewpewpew to make? Why focus on plot development when they have to get the exact number of lights correct on a comm panel no one will see for more than 2 seconds?
It seems to be an issue with many fan film productions. The demand is for bigger and better, but it almost always turns out tedious and mediocre. Don't get me wrong, I like big stories, with big action/adventure sequences, but that's the key: Big stories!
For example, why do I like
Raiders of the Lost Ark? Because it's the story of an archaeology professor being handed the greatest assignment he could ever receive. Who hasn't dreamed of such things?
Granted, the government wants him to keep Hitler from acquiring its purported powers, but that isn't
why he's doing it (at least not until much later). Indiana Jones is a man who treasures knowledge over profit, to seek out the tangible history, and enshrine it for everyone's benefit, and this is the chance to gain the
ultimate knowledge.
This is the real motivation! It's clear, easy to understand, and we can sympathize with it. We're already in Indy's corner before we've even left for the grand adventure.
Renegades doesn't even have a strong motivation. Oh, they're out to save the galaxy, or some shit, but I never feel like anything is really at stake. Who is Lexxa Singh? Why is she willing to do this? What is her personal motivation behind all of it? Hell if I know. I mean, I pieced it together over the course of the film, but I never had a clear picture. Quite frankly, I found her character flat and uninteresting.
I didn't even bother learning the names of most of the characters, because I had no interest in any of them beyond a momentary curiosity. They weren't people, they were cardboard cutouts of what some writer thought people were like in the future. The characterization (lack of) doesn't take the cake for me. No, that belongs to the script.
It's awful. How many revisions did the script get? The correct answer, regardless of number, is "not enough." Everything seemed slapped together. The sentences that were used could have been put in random order, and they would have made about as much sense as they did in the film.
The dialogue was unnatural, stilted, uninspiring, unemotional, uncaring, ineffective, and inconsequential to its own surroundings. There was this artificial separation between what I saw happening on screen, and what I heard coming from the actors. I made a quip earlier about how the dialogue sounded like something wrestlers say to one another when they're standing in the middle of the ring, preparing to face off against one another. I still stand by it.
If this was an honest attempt at producing a series for television, it failed miserably. I don't care about the visual effects, or about the sets. I want a strong story. I want natural, intelligent, flowing dialogue. I want motivations that make sense. Those are the least expensive aspects of any production, and yet here they failed on every level.
If CBS had greenlit the series, it would have burst into flame in less than a season, because there wasn't enough here to get it off the launching pad.
