Makes sense, but yeah, they should have come up with something new for 6 to end with a bang . . . like a huge, I don’t know, monster SUN that eats galaxies, right?

Heh

In a way, it’s what makes writing unlike mathematics . . . it’s an undefinable sensation (not unlike music) that cannot really be graphed, much as we’d like to. So many of the industry gurus seem to wish to break down successful films in ways just like that, like math.

But too many great movies defy the math of McKee and his ilk.

Some moments, put together properly, equal much, much more than the sum of their parts.

And we can’t explain why. We can only point at the moment and go “There.”

Problem is, in a screenplay, many folks don’t look when you point. They’re looking for the “Arc” or any of the other mathematic structures they believe all successful films have. So there’s a disconnect.

But yeah, that’s some of my musings on it. More on this subject later.

And ya know, I understand what you mean. I don’t feel even remotely close to nailing why it works.

Great post, man. Loved it.

-MM

Terraling: I’d heard about that revenge edit, never saw it but it sounds cool . . .

James: I agree with you, and thanks for the shout out. One tiny thing, Raiders would be slightly different at the end had Jones stayed home - probably no one would have ever found the Ark (Nazis were looking in the wrong place) but your point remains the same.

And I never figured out how Jones knew to close his eyes but the French guy didn’t (but the French guy figured he had to dress in robes) or, once everyone was dead, how Jones got the Ark back into its crate without opening his eyes, heh.

but who cares, by that point, right? Heh.

Ray Anne - Yes, I guess you could view this as a potential act two (then how come Leia makes out with Luke, when they know they’re siblings in act III?) but than that doesn’t explain why this act was sooo much better than the other acts, right?

That’s what I’m trying to do. Whether we look at it as a part of a whole or an individual film, there were things in there that made it truly spectacular, right? That’s what this discussion is about.

Godfather I and II both were awesome. III not so much. All parts of one story and all individual stories themselves.

I do think one thing that separates EMPIRE from the others is Luke’s discovery of his father. It goes to the core of our being, finding out who we are and what we do (and when you think about it, Michael Corleone discovers the same thing when he kills for his father and goes back to Sicily, he discovers who his father was, what that means and now who he, himself, might be) and who may can or cannot become as a result.

there’s something in there, in the identity and humanity, that really rings for me.