Of all the movies, you chose Casino? Which is at most only half historically accurate by the way (not referring to the names obviously, they had to be changed).
But if anything Casino shows that while every scene can have a purpose, it doesn’t lead to a well paced movie either. Plenty of purposeful scenes in other movies get left on the cutting room floor to help the movie keep moving along. Shit, Goodfellas is about as historically accurate if not moreso than Casino is yet Scorsese actually kept the pacing relatively brisk throughout the movie because quite a bit were self-contained arcs around interesting events. He kept the movie and its surrounding plot interesting.
Nearly everything he did near flawlessly in Goodfellas he did much more poorly for Casino and I’d argue that even goes as far down as the actors’ performances. Casino is a fine movie, but there’s a reason nearly everyone just considers it “lesser” Goodfellas.
Which is double talk for you can’t criticize me if parts are boring or dumb because “that what happen” despite the thick liberal coating of artistic license on every single thing.
Check the books. Casino takes way less liberties than Goodfellas. There are a number of extraneous scenes in Goodfellas like the Christmas party that serve no purpose. Outside of Joe Pesci, Ray Liotta, and Lorraine Bracco a lot of the performances are flat. The supporting cast in Casino has much more relevance. There is also no build up to a major climax with a bang like in Casino and it is instead a string of largely unrelated events leading up to something long foreshadowed.
I would argue that the next best historical based mob film after Casino is Donnie Brasco. I would even say as an embellished biopic 2001’s Blow is far more entertaining than Goodfellas.
All of it’s opinion, there just may be more people that have the same sensibilities or provide a more convincing position. As long as you like it you win.
That’s why I’m being careful to be VERY clear and specifically say that I think it’s stupid to make objective judgements based not on factual observations but just how you feel. As i said, many, MANY times now, I have no problems with anyone hating or loving anything. I have problems with people conflating those feelings with actual problems with the ACTUAL thing.
I most ABSOLUTELY did NOT say you can’t feel away about a thing. I’m annoyed by people saying that the way they feel about a thing MAKES the thing itself ACTUALLY bad.
But with most things, especially entertainment mediums whether it’s good or bad is subjective. So? There’s nothing really objective about them.
So all I’m reading every response is “you can say what you say, just make sure I’m okay with how you say it” or “I’m open to having a discourse with you about but I don’t actually want to have it because I automatically feel like you’re wrong and I’m right because I’m thinking “objectively” and you’re not”
I actually disagree with the notion that everything in enterteinment is subjective.
There are actual objective qualities in all media.
What is subjective is the enjoyment one finds in said media, since not always is tied to the objective qualities of the medium.
Saying that all of it is subjective is what lead to the whole ampart garbage that has plaggued art for some decades now, where someone puts toguether random shit and calls it art, like that stupid hoe that smeared her period and shit on some walls and called it art.
Liberties were taken, but they were taken with counsel from Henry Hill himself. As for Casino the most important side character in that entire movie (at least arguably, James Woods’ character) is someone who doesn’t even exist in real life nor has even anywhere close to an allegory and that character helped cause half the damn conflict in the movie. So while Casino did go through painstaking detail on certain aspects of Spilotro’s life, on others they went completely sideways to try and make “Ace” as sympathetic as possible so people would actually be bothered to follow along (Spilotro was a completely vile human being).
You say there’s no build to a climax like in Casino but Casino’s build is so boring and plodding that by the time you get to the climax you’ve long since stopped caring, especially since everyone in the entire film are assholes (and that’s even with Spilotro/Ace’s glowup). Scorsese was trying to make a very specific point in Goodfellas. The lifestyle of the mafia is intoxicating, easy to fall in love with and get addicted by but ultimately the mafia are just vile criminals. He does his best to show how easy it is to fall in with them, especially if they like you but then pulls back the curtain to show that these are not people that should be supported. In fact Scorese doesn’t even glowup Henry all that much and even at points makes him a bit worse in real life (the glowup was the fact that they go out of the way in the movie to state that Henry never killed anyone, but he most certainly did in real life…but in real life he also wanted and tried to get away from the Mafia at a FAR earlier date realizing how dangerous the crowd he was running with was).
With Casino, he spends most of the movie basically waxing poetic on how Ace was great for Vegas and is surrounded by imbeciles. Nothing that happened was HIS fault, it’s everyone else that are assholes. And then he even makes Ace a chump at the end compared to the actual Spilotro where he has Ace still working for the Mafia at the end whereas Spilotro decided not to work with the guys who just tried to kill him anymore. Most of the changes made just made the movie duller and the characters not worth getting invested in.
I usually “react” with a smile on my face. In fact, I may or may not have actually thrown a couple logs on the fire when it comes to TLJ, just for the sake of flaming up the conversation for my own entertainment of seeing how triggered people act when it comes to that movie. I usually don’t have a problem with people hating on it until they start throwing personal insults. And even then, at the end of the day we’re just a bunch of dicks on the internet who like to give each other shit, so it’s all good.
Lester Diamond was based on Lenny Marmor. An ex-boyfriend of the wife that ran off with her, the children, and the money. Embellishment endorsed by the subject of a movie does not make it any better. Goodfellas goes out with a whimper regardless. There are similar anti-organized crime messages in Casino that are equally as irrelevant to this discussion. Contrary to your opinion every misfortune Ace encounters is linked to a short sighted decision he made (like firing the relative of Vegas Gambling License Board member). In many scenes Ace is an asshole to his employees. Nicky has a clear break from management at the end of the film as evidenced by his actions stepping on everyone’s toes and drawing heat.
There are mechanical elements of any media being created. Given that most of what I do is technical writing, I can see how you can objectively judge how something is constructed. Whether or not you like it is another story.
