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The only legacy of Empire Strikes Back is the hilarious line from Raising Arizona, regarding the kidnapped baby's pajamas: "I don't know what his damn jammies looked like... they had Yodas and shit on them!"
Jesus. I'll be satisfied seeing the Godfather win, but how we got here is fucking excruciating.
This bracket killed me. Two films I adore beyond measure, two films I can quite in their entirety, two films I never tire of watching, one full of perfect character beats, glorious visuals, proper depth, from a universe that has run through my veins most of my life, the other full of whipcrack smart dialogue, at their very finest form performances, loose and complex structure, fabulous songs from a director and writer at the very top of his game. I have to go with the one that is a fundamental part of my life, if not my favourite of the saga, the one from a universe I'm obsessed with, but the other, if it had been against either film in the other bracket, would be the winner. Empire it is.
Empire may. be what made me fall in love with movies but Pulp Fiction made me want to make movies. So this is the adult me telling the child me that we all have to grow up sometimes. Pulp in a walk
Rashomon....er Pulp Fiction isn't even Tarantino's best. Let's let the bad guys win for once. Go Empire!
Of course, this is all in protest, as Goodfellas, should have taken me to the finals.... oh well, I'm going to go get the papers, get the papers.
Vertigo, Apocalypse Now, Goodfellas and Pather Panchali to choose from, and Filmspotting Nation delivers The Empire Strikes Back to the Final Four. Not only is ESB the least of the Star Wars films, but it's just a bad movie. How many times in a single film can some people watch Luke fail and Yoda sigh?
So I'm going ESP all the way! When reason has clearly left the room, the only response is anarchy. Enjoy watching your bantha poo films for eternity, Nation. TV is getting better and better.
How did we end up with these two movies in the final four? I thought Filmspotting nation was mostly composed of intelligent and informed individuals. I haven't been this wrong about the voting public since last November. You don't even have the Electoral College to blame. Shame on you all.
Unsure about voting against a movie I haven't seen. When facing uncertainty, I ask myself "What would Jules say?" If we equate Star Wars movies with pork products, Jules' instructions are clear: "Sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know, 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy morherfucker." I'm voting for Pulp.
I'm voting Pulp Fiction because I'm terrified by the possibility of Empire Strikes Back beating 2001: A Space Odyssey in the final round.
This is a near perfect match. Space opera vs. sprawling non-linear narrative, both possessing crackling dialogue and a level of confidence well above their predecessors. Both with fantastic pacing and stunning visual style. One clearly geared towards family viewing and one clearly adult, but both with a giddy sense of joy to temper the overall downbeat tone. In the end, I went with the one with perennial rewatchability because, let's face it, if you're going to be left with only one film to watch, you want the one that you can watch repeatedly without getting annoyed. For me, the answer is Empire.
When you go back to Adam's early comment about which movie he'd like to show to his children, this is an easy one. Empire is THE peak of the Star Wars saga, which in its entirety is the biggest cultural phenomenon in the last 40 years.
And I mean the CGI Yoda was terrible and unbelievable and the version in Empire was legit. Not sure if I needed to clarify that but whatever, this is a hypothetical tournament.
Empire. Not because of Darth Vadar, Star Destroyers, giant asteroid worms or Han Solo. Not because it's dark, or because there's a twist involving Dad. It's because of Yoda, who was a puppet with a goofy voice that was one of the most believable philosophers/spiritual sorcerers ever depicted in film. I was a child when I saw it but never have I been more convinced that he was real than when I saw his CGI counterpart years later as an adult. Yoda wipes the campy foolishness from Episode 4 away with a gesture and lifts the entire franchise out of the pop culture blockbuster bog. He holds it for a moment with his eyes closed and you believe in magic.
That, and Star Destroyers. It may owe a lot to 2001, but the space ships and special effects in Empire are just better.
Pulp Fiction is a blast and it's undeniably a great movie. But I owe it nothing. Imperial march plays.
I love how the two "art House" movies - though on the popular end, of course - face off while the two popcorn movies have their own battle here. I love Empire, but it's got that "laugh it up, Fuzzball" scene which moves the whole picture into sit-com territory. Pulp Fiction has style to burn. It deserves to move on, but not to win. (There is Another.)
I have been idly watching this tournament for I have had little to gain by voting my mind and losing more hair. This changed however when the confronted with possibility that my only choice in movie would be Empire, I had to justify my crazed decision to plunge into the fray. Avoiding alienating my fellow geeks, I will side step the production shortfalls of the movies; instead I will use the vessel that delivers the story. Even if we to destroy movies all together, the amount of linear story telling that exist is bountiful and easy to accesses. Greek tales (for example) could fill the “heroic exploits of well to do’s” void that Empires destruction would leave. The non linear flow mixed with the characters moral ambiguity makes Tarantinos film the one I would rather be stuck with. Thanks facilitating my inner soul searching, Dale Edeker (Ellsworth IA).
Ok, so first I voted Pulp Fiction on my phone. Then I remembered how it massacred my boy, The Godfather II, at the previous tollway. So, in an act of vengeance, I voted Empire on another device, thus negating my original vote for Pulp Fiction, which objectively should win. That's what I did.
It's fine to like Star Wars but let's remember that one of these movies is a masterpiece, and one is made for children.
Pulp Fiction kicked the door open for hundreds of inventive filmmakers who had similarly gritty stories that they wanted to film, but could not get the cash required to produce them. With Pulp Fiction making a profit, studios and independent producers now had a template that gave writers and directors more freedom to make more formally inventive films with far less risk. None of this means that Pulp Fiction is a great movie deserving of a place in the final four. But it did have a Gimp, a honey-bunny and Harvey Keitel's most memorable line of dialougue in any movie that he ever appeared in.
It's time to make this Madness great again! Drain the Dagobah swamp,and defund the sanctuary Cloud City! Despite the title, Pulp Fiction is not #FakeNews!
These 2 movies come down to the rescue scenes for me. Bruce Willis rescuing Ving Rhames with a Katana sword from further sodomy was far more compelling than the Millennium Falcon rescuing Luke from falling to his death. The dynamic of the rescuer and the person being rescued is more interesting in Pulp Fiction than Star Wars.
Quentin, Empire is your daddy.
Having revisited both these movies in the past year I was delighted by how much Pulp Fiction continues to surprise and shock me. It has aged fairly well and retains a kind of exuberance mixed with darkness that is rarely found. It remains, quite simply, my favorite Tarantino film - one I go back again and again.
Yet, that being said, The Empire Strikes Back was not only one of the most formative movies for me as a kid, but one that influenced the way I look at all movies I watch. It was, for me, the original "dark" film - one that brought to life the reality that evil triumphs over good more often than we think.
Jules: "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions." My vote for the Empire!
Ooof. Double-ooof.
I love Filmspotting Madness and I'm proud to call myself a member of Filmspotting Nation, but this is dumb and ugly, folks. Dumb and ugly. (This is the Final Four we've arrived at? This? Next thing you know, you'll tell me a casino magnate and reality TV star was elected president. THAT'll never happen.)
I'd blame us, the voters, but really, this falls on our dear leaders. You guys botched the seeding. I say this with love.
Anyways.... two great films, here, I guess. Love'em both. No where NEAR the top four movies in any sane person's catalog, but good stuff. I'll give my vote to Pulp, I suppose, for innovation's sake.
Ooooooof.
I thought about this matchup in the shower this morning. I thought about this matchup on 290. I thought about this matchup walking to work in Pilsen. I am thinking about this matchup now...
Two movies from my childhood - one appropriately seen (Empire), one seen under the cover of night, inches from the TV afraid my parents would wake up and see that Zed's dead, baby (Zed's dead). In the end I went for Empire, not because I own Kenobi's lightsaber bought from Skywalker Ranch, but because in 2017, I need a life with Star Wars more than I need Travolta's ponytail. Sorry Quentin, but "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship"
I'm not sure I could live in a world where only these movies exist! One glorifies a crime family, one a cocaine addicted killer, one a computer that takes over and the other...well let's just say Empire is entertaining but hardly a masterpiece with heretofore undiscovered nuances. I think it's time to reach for a good book. If I had to make a decision, I'd decide to make a movies about a killer shark and title it JAWS !
I lay awake last night thinking about this for ages and then this question came "which of these films would I show to my kids?" I knew straight away-
which film did I watch countlessly when i was growing up and now still know the entire script line by line. I know they will love this film - they are a bit young but I really can't wait to sit down and watch empire with them. Can this film stand alone without star wars.. maybe not (in this crazy universe you have created) but I'm voting for it anyway- I just can't imagine never seeing it again...
This is a tough decision, one of the toughest of this infernal decision-making machine. In the end, the curse of all films being destroyed makes this decision, while not easy, possible.
I've seen Empire so many times, I practically have it memorized. I'm still learning more from Pulp Fiction, and it still surprises me.
If only one film is left for me to watch in all the world, there could be worse choices than Pulp Fiction.
Two things.
1. "I love you." "I know"
2. I demand a recount on all cult films/directors. I'm still hurting from The Red Shoes. Barbarians.
If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions. Pulp Fiction. Time for Empire to just walk the earth, meet people... get into adventures. Like Caine from "Kung Fu."
We have Art Crime vs Art Sci-fi and Pop Crime vs Pop Sci-fi. That's not to say there's not art in Pulp Fiction or Empire Strikes Back but it's certainly how they're perceived. Especially, apparently, how they're perceived in these comments. Somehow a popular movie is not the worthy choice for the last surviving film from a destroyed society. If our society fails, than all the best lessons from our art clearly failed too, so why not at least entertain the survivors with a story that I can more confidently say they will love. Any of these four movies could win and I would be happy, because they're all immensely rewatchable and have each had an immeasurable impact on modern filmmaking. In the end, I have to go with the two Sci-fi movies. I wish I had some sound reasoning but I don't. I love all four of these movies with both my brain and my heart.
I've watched Pulp Fiction twice. I can't count the number of times I've watched Empire. Still, I voted for Pulp Fiction. I loathe Tarantino's sadism, but his sheer creativity wins for its infectiousness. His joy of the craft of filmmaking - script, editing, music, the lot - is enough in this instance to tip the scales against the rebel alliance. My only regret is that if Pulp Fiction takes the Filmspotting Madness title my kids will have to wait quite a few years before I can let them watch the only movie that is left standing in the bleak landscape of Adam's film apocalypse.
To quote Louie Anderson:
I felt ashamed for what I had done. I don't have any excuses. I did what I did. I take full responsibility for myself and my actions. I wouldn't pawn this off on anybody. I'm sorry it happened. And I hurt people.
What she said.
"Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy"
Some real negativity being thrown around...too bad. As far as I knew (correct me if I'm wrong) this tournament was not about which movie is the best achievement in filmmaking of all time. Rather, it is about if the losing films were to be destroyed and ultimately you could only watch one for the REST OF TIME, what would it be.
There may be some films that are an expose on the process of filmmaking that have been booted and others that are beautifully done classics which are lost to time. But would I want to be stuck on a desert island with a technical or classical giant that is semi-draining to watch over and over again, not necessarily.
For me both films that are left on this arm of the bracket are technically beautiful films that sweep me away to an exciting world that I can get happily lost in while at the same time causing me to reflect in some way or another on myself. Which is what I would want on a desert island.
Pulp Fiction is a great dialogue driven, fantastic winding story and ESB is dream-world of a hero's journey in a space setting and a show of what you can do with a camera pre-insane-CG.
Also: Miranda (below) FTW.
A lot of people are focusing on the 'masochism' of some of these choices or how ill-suited some of the victors are, but I think those takes sort of miss the point of the bracket. I mean, those things are true, but the complete bracket doesn't tell us anything about which movies are better (Empire over Vertigo – really?) any more than a poll taken on the second Tuesday in November tells us which candidate is in fact best qualified to lead a nation. But it does tell us a lot about the people who are voting, about the aesthetic and filmic tastes of the people who listen to FilmSpotting. I don't think anyone should be heartened by what we're learning. In far too many cases of a popular, fanboy, or nostalgia film running up against the genuine article of filmic greatness, FilmSpotting Nation...chose poorly. Perhaps no instance more egregious and shameful than Back to the Future soundly beating Raging Bull. It's like when people say Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows is a better novel than The Brothers Karamazov: this sort of thing never reveals anything about the novels, but only something...shabby about the person who uttered it.
In fact, this entire experience has made me reevaluate what *I'm* getting out of listening every single week (and attending my first live show at Schuba's last fall). So I'm buying whatever FilmSpotting is selling. But if what they're selling is the sort of thing that appeals to people who *by a ten-point margin* prefer Raiders to Chinatown, I have ask myself one question: is that *me*? And if it's not (and I sure hope it isn't) just what am I doing when I click "play" each week?
This year's Madness has been an alternately masochistic and enjoyable, but overall rather predictable exercise.
I think next year's bracket should be less Sacred Cow and more Sacred Hamburger- where the stakes seem not lower but smaller, more immediate, someplace where a John Wick might feel at home.
This is the moment when we find out just how much Filmspotting Nation loves Star Wars.
Star Wars probably got their fathers, maybe even their older brothers into movies, but it was Tarantino's early-mid 90s Sundance crew that got a lot more of us into movies.
Pulp Fiction all the way.
I think it could take this whole thing!
Who let these bozos in?
DOUBLE BLARGH!!
Picture this: smoke billows around a grungy platform lit, garish orange peeks through cast iron grates. A bearded, bespectacled man in jeans and a flannel stands at the center, his arms clad in manacles. By a platform of cobbled-together switches leans a hyperactive man-child with an unbelievably large chin.
*The Beard begins his slow descent into the Filmspotting Winner's Circle...*
The Chin: Your homage to sci-fi serials is going to beat my homage to everything else...
The Beard: I know.
Meanwhile in far background, Irvin Kershner can be heard crying out, "But I directed Empire!!!"
End Scene and End Tarantino's run in the tournament. ESB takes it.
Sorry Star Wars nerds, Empire is the best of the series, but I find this series overrated and one I have no sentimental attachment to, so voting for Pulp Fiction is so easy. I'm honestly surprised any Star Wars movie made it this far. But this is coming from I guess the only guy on the planet who also thinks Scorsese is overrated (excluding Taxi Driver; he's good, but I find his filmography to be shaky).
The love in my relationship with Tarantino left sometime around the ten minute mark of Kill Bill vol. 1 and since then has retroactively poisoned my appreciation for his earlier work. Whereas Empire and I have stayed friends despite the really really bad patch in our relationship during the late 90s and early 00s.
Pulp Fiction/Empire Strikes Back is the undeserving populist choice, and Godfather/2001 is the dry-establishment choice. It will be really weird if it comes down to Empire v. 2001, or Pulp Fiction v. Godfather. It will be weird if it comes down to any other combination too. That's it, I'm moving to Canada.
Seriously, guys? Let me guess - you grew up sleeping in Star Wars jammies and had a Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs poster on your dorm room wall? Sometime in the 90s you used the phrase "Tarantino opened my eyes to the possibilities of cinema"?
Sigh.
I voted Pulp for the innovative structure, but if either of these beat 2001/Godfather I am putting my money where my film snob mouth is and finding the 7 hours to watch Satantango.
This is actually pretty perfect as a final four, upon reflection. In one bracket you've got two established classics - cinematic "Greats," either of which would be a respectable victor, a Fassbender-like finale to FM 2017. And then in this bracket, you've got the "pulps," two films rarely in the all-time-greatest discussion but that punch way above their running lengths in terms of fan following and impact on pop culture.
ESB and PF are fitting adversaries because they're both extremely crafty scripts that borrow just about all the best tropes of their respective genres. Empire pulls on decades of space opera ideas stretching back to Flash Gordon and literary sources like the Lensman series, and Pulp Fiction pulls on decades of gangster movies and lone-wolf tough-guy plots. They are both full of innovative visual ideas for their time. I voted for ESB in the end because it just feels in the end it has more heart and lasting significance, but this is close.
Skywalker's dead, baby.
As much as I appreciate Pulp Fiction and Empire Strikes Back, I'm kind of surprised how indifferent I am, how little I care about this pairing. I guess it's because of all the better, more deserving films — Godfather 2, Unforgiven, Close Encounters, Grave of the Fireflies, freaking APOCALYPSE NOW — that have been voted off the island, so we're left with these two. Both fine movies, but I'm not convinced that either one belongs here.
Here's my unenthusiastic vote for Pulp Fiction, a cultural landmark that's still a lot of fun, but whose shortcomings seem more apparent as time goes on. Oh well.
People keep talking about how Star Wars is the reason they watch movies, or it's a movie they simply can't skip by on TV. But for another generation of us, that's Pulp Fiction. Whether we were in junior high, high school, or college the first time you saw it, Pulp Fiction hit us like a shot of adrenaline directly to the heart. Truly only a couple films fill me with as much joy as Pulp Fiction. It still feels fresh decades later, after all the imitators. I don't want to live in a world without Pulp Fiction.
And by the way, C-3P0 has way too much free reign in Empire. His interminable wisecracks anticipate Jar Jar by a few decades, but are only slightly less annoying.
The tyranny of Tarantino must end.
All my favorites and arguably better movies are gone and now my only concern is that neither of these two wins, this is really terrible! I hate this game, like someone else just said, this is exactly what is wrong with democracy, we need another system. I simply cannot imagine either these films being the flagship movie for the filmspotting pantheon, no!
This is whats wrong with democracy. Both of these are fine movies but they shouldn't be nowhere near the final, and I fear that one of them will win it all. Victory doesn't go to the most deserving but to the one who appeals the most to our feelings, and sentimentality is mighty. When historians look back at the fall of the western world, they'll be talking about Pulp Fictions victory. It left the world in apati. All we can do is pray that 2001 or the Godfather can beat it.
OK, so my Don Logan didn't help Vertigo.
The last few months have seen two great communities of people in which I have lived, which I love and admire, take collective decisions that (IMHO) could be classified as acts of self-harm. Brexit and Trump are already threatening consequences that even their deepest opponents could not have anticipated, nor delivering the promises their supporters hoped for.
Please, let's not add Filmspotting to this list.
So Empire makes it through the primaries, takes out a couple of 'complacent' classics and their metropolitan elite film school supporters... FINE.
So a vote for Pulp Fiction means condoning the spectacle of Quentin Tarantino bragging about coffee and throwing around the N***** word like he invented it... OK, not quite fine, but...
ESB is a terrific film, but the only one to survive, the last living testament of humanity's vision & creativity...? PLEASE.
If Pulp Fiction loses here I may very well quit listening to podcasts all together and return to a simpler time in my life.
What to say, what to say... this Cinderella matchup is like the cherry on top of the whip cream on top of the greatest chocolate cake imaginable. This matchup was my hope all along, but never did I imagine they would both end up here. Though I'm sad to see one of these films go, I'm just giddy at the fact that they've made it this far. With that in mind, I have to go with Empire. I love Tarantino's masterpiece, but Empire gives me all the warm feels like a cold night spent inside a recently deceased Tauntaun. Hal v. Darth for the final, please!