I'm getting all emotional here

I just want to clarify the argument I was making on the possibility for emotion in TTOL. I was distracted by your "big dumb face" puerile comment Brandon and I started making an argument that I wasn't trying to make. I think I just wanted to refute you at all costs, you scoundrel.

Anyway, you said "So NO you don’t bring any emotions, at least not willing fully." I agree about the fully part, but would say that on some level you can always choose. I think you CAN bring certain emotions to anything as long as you can control them (I sound like I'm training you to be a Jedi). However, in the context of the TTOL, I don't really care about this argument. What I was originally trying to say about TTOL is that by not limiting the range of emotion anyone can have for it through pigeonholing emotional cues (a la Titanic, Super 8, or hell any movie practically), it allows different people to feel different emotions for it.

I believe we are in agreement on this. You said the film doesn't make its emotions universal. Totally. That's why you and I could feel emotional watching it while John could not. I'm arguing that the film is not emotionally sterile, it is, in fact, quite emotionally liberating. By not telling its audience how to feel emotionally, it allows one person to feel one way, another person to feel another way, and so on.

I think the film respects the emotions of its audience by not pandering to them while sticking solely to its own aesthetic. I really don't think I ever said (or at least never meant to say) that the film is trying to evoke an emotion from you. It isn't. What I'm saying is that because it is not, it gives its audience the freedom to feel many things or no things. Certainly different people can have different emotions for something like Titanic, but with a film like that it is trying to get its audience to feel one way (some will or some will resist). To me, something like Titanic is more emotionally black-and-white than something like TTOL. Do you know what I'm saying?

This was my original argument. You just had to go and make it about something else, you big meanie.

P.S. War Horse, hell yes! Spielberg's back baby. I'm stoked.

P.S.S. Keep up the troll bug Brandon. Your post had me laughing hysterically.