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Stover can can write a god drat fuckin action scene. His action is almost TOO good for Star Wars. The bit at the beginning of Shadows of Mindor where Luke's flagship gets suicide bombed is so raw, the jungle fights in Shatterpoint are right out of Apocalypse Now, it's almost too good for the gee whiz clone wars droid army stuff. On screen Star Wars action is always fun, Stover wants it to hit a little harder.
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Jul 19, 2023 21:31
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Arc Hammer posted:Best part is that you can thank the Tuskens for telling you the story of their people by having HK-47 translate your apology for killing their tribesmen and stealing their clothes. HK thinks this is a wonderful idea which tells you something. "Warming blasters: combat is inevitable". Cross-Section posted:She does also make a reappearance (probably her most substantial one too) later on when you kill Tenebrae for realzies no-take-backs but yeah, Drew Karpyshyn should be in the Hague Oh yeah, didn't remember that for some reason. General Battuta posted:Stover can can write a god drat fuckin action scene. His action is almost TOO good for Star Wars. The bit at the beginning of Shadows of Mindor where Luke's flagship gets suicide bombed is so raw, the jungle fights in Shatterpoint are right out of Apocalypse Now, it's almost too good for the gee whiz clone wars droid army stuff. On screen Star Wars action is always fun, Stover wants it to hit a little harder. Not just the action, the Revenge of the Sith internal Anakin dialogue was brutal. "This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker. Forever..."
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Jul 21, 2023 00:54
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I love the prologue describing the battle of Coruscant so much. Two is enough, because the adults are wrong, and the younglings are right. Though the age of heroes is ending, it has saved its best for last.
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Jul 21, 2023 01:00
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Dawgstar posted:They really kinda did the Exile dirty in SWTOR. they kinda did revan dirty too. I don't like "brainwashed into evil" explanaition that SWTOR gives. i loved that reavan was just a jedi who tried to do good and fought assholes and monsters while the republic poo poo itself and the jedi did nothing. and gee wow making hard hosed up choices hosed him and his men up super duper badly. i dont even mind him learned about viciate and confronting him and it going to piss. but my view would he comes back and doubles down super hard on the "hard men doing hard things" bullshit and tries to create his own sith empire to fight viciate because the republic is too weak to fight or some poo poo StashAugustine posted:I love the prologue describing the battle of Coruscant so much. Two is enough, because the adults are wrong, and the younglings are right. Though the age of heroes is ending, it has saved its best for last. yeah i genuinly love the ROTS novel. i really love the scenes with dooku and i love the whole ending of anakin realizing that he hosed up and is hosed forever and their was no shadow or dragon or tempter, he loving killed a ton of people because he was a paranoid idiot who broke bad and didnt ask for help. like yeah the jedi hosed him over but its like jesus dude. quote:“And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end you don't even want to. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself—And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.” always thought this was a great summery of the dark side. Rochallor posted:There's a podcast called It's All Stover going over the works of Matthew Stover (unsurprisingly), and since I enjoyed their episodes on Shatterpoint and the ROTS novelization I decided to pick up Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, since I had never read it. Quite good so far, but there's two things that immediately jumped out at me: 1) it's almost a sequel to Shatterpoint, which I was not expecting, and 2) the following passage, concerning the bad guy studying Luke's mannerisms in preparation for taking over his body: i have issues with last, but i genuinly like doomer crack ping luke and i like him coming to terms with stuff and his ending. I like that he had visions and in a moment of panic tried to head something off and then just made it worse. i loving hate rise so much for loving gutting anything interesting that movie tried to do. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Jul 22, 2023 |
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Jul 22, 2023 22:15
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quote:"This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker. Forever..." quote:“And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end you don't even want to. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself—And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.” It's a testament to how god drat good that book is that I think that ending monologue, which is the bit of it I see quoted most often, is one of the weaker bits. At the very least, it needs the context of the previous "This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker" passages for it to really hit. The whole middle section of the book feels like a waking nightmare, and to be fair, it's the strongest section of the movie as well. Anakin is written as completely sleep-deprived, blurry vision, having constant nightmares. He's a complete wreck, and the only person he can be open about it with is, of course, Palpatine. The Jedi just give him platitudes, honestly Padme's not much better on that front, but Palpatine (pretends to) listen to him, to accept him, to love him. And so he makes a rash decision and then another and another and another. It was really hard for me not to just quote like, the entire chapter, but this bit from the opening Dooku fight I think is superb. quote:But Palpatine’s words rage is your weapon have given Anakin permission to unseal the shielding around his furnace heart, and all his fears and all his doubts shrivel in its flame. Which pairs really well with the later passage of a scene that I assume was written but got cut (I read in an interview that Stover said he stuck incredibly close to the script he was given, it's just that that draft would have been like a 3 hour movie) just before Palpatine reveals himself. Hell, let's post it: quote:He spread his hands as though offering a hug. “Share with me the truth. Your absolute truth. Let yourself out, Anakin.”
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Jul 26, 2023 00:10
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Yeah, the book absolutely sells the fact that Anakin's tired, exhausted, pushed well past his physical and emotional limits, and would in fact do whatever it takes to save the people he loves Even the dad jokes are enjoyable
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Jul 26, 2023 00:40
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Vinylshadow posted:
Let's not go that far. "Palpatine promised he would leave us in peace!" "He said he would leave you in pieces." I vaguely remember lines like that from reading the novel ages ago, and those jokes stuck out like a sore thumb. They did feel pretty Lucas though.
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Jul 27, 2023 20:31
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With or without the one-liners, that scene never really worked for me. It's the second of three killings Anakin does, the first of which involves him slaughtering a bunch of people he knows, and the third of which is a single, extremely personal murder. And in the middle of these you have him killing a dozen guys who all frankly kind of have it coming. My dream version of Episode IX hinges on the idea that when Benicio del Toro is going on about how there's a bunch of businesses profiting off all these star wars, the big reveal is the Trade Federation is still one of them, still doing the same exact thing for half a century because you need to buy weapons from somebody. The audience is surprised, but not the characters, because they're all just kind of aware that's how this whole thing works. It would be a nice tie-in to the prequel trilogy, and the audience whoops with joy when the capitalist akk dogs are finally dealt with once and for all and the galaxy enacts full communism.
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Jul 27, 2023 23:19
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https://twitter.com/DelilahSDawson/status/1681479317308440576
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Jul 28, 2023 07:26
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Dave Syndrome posted:I vaguely remember lines like that from reading the novel ages ago, and those jokes stuck out like a sore thumb. They did feel pretty Lucas though. According to Stover, Lucas line-edited the novel manuscript, so they conceivably could have come from him. Finally, the throngs of the Kenobi show fans are being appeased! I kid.... Dawson is a decent author and probably on the higher end of the Disney era authors but I am slightly skeptical that this book is going to be on the level of anything Stover.
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Jul 28, 2023 15:16
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Chairman Capone posted:According to Stover, Lucas line-edited the novel manuscript, so they conceivably could have come from him. i liked kenobi or at least the vader and kenobi stuff. Reva was a cool idea that was kinda poorly developed, i do hope they do more with her. i like her being a survivor and then joining the nazis as way to kill vader, i like that she is also stupidly cocky and smart enough to survive but dumb enough to not realize that vader knows and also that she is completly disposible. Dapper_Swindler fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 15:54
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The Kenobi vs. Vader stuff from the show was... I'll try and put it this way, I think it was a fundamentally bad idea from the start and the basic storyline in general was deeply flawed, but if you just accept that as something that happened, then the Vader vs. Kenobi scenes were the best realization of that bad idea possible. I actually thought their final fight was pretty well done and had good acting from MacGregor. But it is funny that Book of Boba Fett completely stole what should have been the ideal Kenobi plot.
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Jul 28, 2023 19:48
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I wouldn't even say it's the best of a bad idea. Kenobi has some of the worst cinematography and direction I've seen in anything star wars related. Technical prowess can soften the blow of bad writing but Kenobi doesn't even have that. People might poo poo on Lucas's shot-reverse-shot boring camera work but at least he can hold a camera steady and properly light a scene. Kenobi just looks awful from a visual standpoint.
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Jul 28, 2023 20:43
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Arc Hammer posted:People might poo poo on Lucas's shot-reverse-shot boring camera work but at least he can hold a camera steady and properly light a scene. Kenobi just looks awful from a visual standpoint. Really it's the exact same problem as Lucas in the PT, in that it's a spectacularly bad implementation of a recent technology. Like, the Volume doesn't look perfect in the Mandalorian but when used properly it's pretty effective and a clear improvement on greenscreen across the board. If all you had seen of it was Kenobi, you'd think it was garbage, much like you'd think CGI was awful if you'd only watched AotC and not, say, LotR.
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Jul 28, 2023 20:57
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It would have been so much easier to just adapt the JJM novel.
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Jul 28, 2023 22:00
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Red blade rules so hard. One of the best SW novels lately. Some heavy CWs though, like the book opens with a foreword from the author talking about how there's a depiction of self harm in the book
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Jul 29, 2023 00:12
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Chairman Capone posted:The Kenobi vs. Vader stuff from the show was... I'll try and put it this way, I think it was a fundamentally bad idea from the start and the basic storyline in general was deeply flawed, but if you just accept that as something that happened, then the Vader vs. Kenobi scenes were the best realization of that bad idea possible. I actually thought their final fight was pretty well done and had good acting from MacGregor. agreed. i think i think the did the best they could with a very dumb idea. personally i think the vader poo poo saves alot of it because i like seeing multiple sides of vader and the last fight/talk was one of my favorite star wars moments. i like vader trying to in a weird way "comfort" obiwan. jivjov posted:Red blade rules so hard. One of the best SW novels lately. Some heavy CWs though, like the book opens with a foreword from the author talking about how there's a depiction of self harm in the book interesting. might have to try it someday.
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Jul 30, 2023 01:52
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Dapper_Swindler posted:agreed. i think i think the did the best they could with a very dumb idea. personally i think the vader poo poo saves alot of it because i like seeing multiple sides of vader and the last fight/talk was one of my favorite star wars moments. i like vader trying to in a weird way "comfort" obiwan. The Vader/Kenobi dialogue post fight is what saved the series for me, I just loved the little bit of Anakin coming through to assuage Obi-Wan's feelings before Vader took over again. It's just a shame the rest of the series was so hit and miss, especially with some of the direction. Also, the use of The Volume was extremely obvious, especially in the flashback fight scene.
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Jul 30, 2023 20:50
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chaosrefined posted:The Vader/Kenobi dialogue post fight is what saved the series for me, I just loved the little bit of Anakin coming through to assuage Obi-Wan's feelings before Vader took over again. It's just a shame the rest of the series was so hit and miss, especially with some of the direction. Also, the use of The Volume was extremely obvious, especially in the flashback fight scene. yeah. the issue is that they clearly had a good idea for the vader and anakin stuff and probably reva to a degree but then they didnt know how to make it work. i dont hate kid leia and i like obi wan playing the befuddled dude trying to lay low. I get why people dont like reva and i dont think she is well done until near the end. i like her "fight" with vader. yeah vader kinda saves that series. to me its Andor>mando>>>>obi wan>>>>>>>fett and the tuskans meet the mod squad.
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Jul 30, 2023 22:50
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Should've swapped Obi-Wan and Fett's plots Obi-Wan works with Tuskens and the townsfolk to drive spice out of Mos Espa, and Kenobi's actions there force him to move out closer to Mos Eisley and Luke, much to Owen's chagrin Fett works with Vader and the Inquisitors to hunt down Jedi while Bail and Leia are trying to help the Path
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Jul 30, 2023 23:58
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Are you really suggesting that the murderous bounty hunter who owns a spaceship named Slave I might do something so untoward as hunt bounties?
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Jul 31, 2023 02:08
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Rochallor posted:Are you really suggesting that the murderous bounty hunter who owns a spaceship named Slave I might do something so untoward as hunt bounties? Somebody was really opposed to Fett being an actual crime lord. Lucas was never a fan of that sort of thing. He didn't even like smugglers being referred to as criminals according to the West End Games folks.
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Jul 31, 2023 02:38
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Dawgstar posted:Somebody was really opposed to Fett being an actual crime lord. Lucas was never a fan of that sort of thing. He didn't even like smugglers being referred to as criminals according to the West End Games folks. He'd changed his mind at some point before KJA was writing bad trilogies: https://www.tumblr.com/quendergeer/720270768101048320/pagannerd52-prokopetz-alexanderrm quote:So The Husband and I were at Sci-fi Weekender (a British based annual Sci-fi and Fantasy convention) last year, and one of the guests that year was Kevin J Anderson, one of the very notable Star Wars Expanded Universe writers. During one of the events, a quiet little interview in a cafe on the event site, he fielded a question from an audience member about what it was like to write for a franchise like Star Wars which often had lots of cooks working on one broth, and he had the following to say (wording recounted as best as I can from memory): (line breaks added by me for readibility)
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Jul 31, 2023 03:04
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Dapper_Swindler posted:the issue is that they clearly had a good idea for the vader and anakin stuff and probably reva to a degree but then they didnt know how to make it work. This seems to be the result of the story starting out as a movie, then becoming a series, with several different creative teams attached at different times. There was:
Deborah Chow was brought on when the project became a series, so if the Vader and Reva stuff seems more fleshed out, it's because those were her ideas. All the other bits would just be things she inherited from earlier versions of the story, but maybe wasn't as interested in. Dawgstar posted:Somebody was really opposed to Fett being an actual crime lord. Jon Favreau, I'm guessing. In some of the behind the scenes stuff for The Mandalorian, he talks about how Boba Fett was his favorite character and he pitched a generic Mando show to Kathleen Kennedy because thought they would never let him make a show about Fett himself. He's put the character up on a pedestal so won't let him actually get dirty. It's not like it couldn't have worked, though. Having a throughline of Fett being rescued by the Tuskens, becoming more community minded as he spends time with them, and then avenging them by taking out the Pykes is a good idea for how they wanted Fett to evolve - they just fumbled the execution a bit. Instead of running Jabba's organization into the ground accidentally, they could have made it part of the plan all along. Maybe he would have decided that the Pykes were only a symptom of a larger problem, and orchestrated a gang war that would see the Pykes, the Hutts, the various minor gangs, and even the corrupt local government eliminated. If his plan were explicitly to torch the entire Tatooine underworld and then leave it all behind, then his decision to stay at the end would actually have some meaning because rather than strictly seeking to avenge the Tuskens, he could actually grow and change over the present-day portion of the show rather than it all happening in flashbacks.
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Jul 31, 2023 08:22
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Yeah like Boba Fett does Yojimbo sounds like a good idea but man they did not execute well
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Jul 31, 2023 13:28
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Robot Style posted:This seems to be the result of the story starting out as a movie, then becoming a series, with several different creative teams attached at different times. There was: yeah. i genuinly like the idea of fett living with tuskans and saying "yeah gently caress this bounty poo poo, i almost go digested and living with tuskans changed my outlook, ill take over jabbas outfit and do it better be the Big boss of bounty hunter" My biggest issue is anytime you think their will be conflict or tension. its undone, "oh poo poo the hutts want jabbas poo poo" or etc. but lol nope.
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Jul 31, 2023 13:29
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Can’t believe Rodriguez of all people didn’t keep Danny Trejo around for more than one episode.
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Jul 31, 2023 14:06
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Chairman Capone posted:Can’t believe Rodriguez of all people didn’t keep Danny Trejo around for more than one episode. yeah like the issue is they clearly wrote themselves into a corner so they just made it mando season 2.5
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Jul 31, 2023 14:15
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Lemniscate Blue posted:(line breaks added by me for readibility) Yeah, it's quite possible, even probable, that the stuff people ran into was LucasFilms purity police and not George himself. Like over on RPG.net a former WEG editor/writer talked about how West End Games ran into trouble about stuff like they wanted to call an early book Smuggler's Blues,* were sternly told no and Lucasfilms fought against the book because you can't make a book about crime - by which I mean it was a book of adventures for smuggling runs - despite there being, you know, smugglers since Star Wars started. This probably didn't take it all the way to George, but she said he did personally veto things, usually anything to do with what would have stuff around the Clone Wars (basically anything that would have contradicted the prequels). They'd get a big ol' 'NO - GL' on their notes some times. Also no sex. The RPG wasn't even allowed to hint at the possibility. *WEG went with The Politics of Contraband so Glenn Frey was still honored.
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Jul 31, 2023 16:31
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Lemniscate Blue posted:He'd changed his mind at some point before KJA was writing bad trilogies: Lmao that this exact strain of puritanical misunderstanding of the source material resurfaces in Rise of Skywalker, where noted outlaws Rey and Finn are simply appalled that Poe may not have walked the straight and narrow in his youth
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Jul 31, 2023 18:55
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ninjahedgehog posted:Lmao that this exact strain of puritanical misunderstanding of the source material resurfaces in Rise of Skywalker, where noted outlaws Rey and Finn are simply appalled that Poe may not have walked the straight and narrow in his youth what sucks is how little character any of them have in that movie gently caress i hate rise.
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Jul 31, 2023 19:33
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The Old Republic has a weird split where the smuggler storyline is on the side of the Republic while the bounty hunter storyline is on the side of the Sith, which always struck me as somewhat backwards. I partially blame Zahn for setting the precedent for this, but smugglers in Star Wars don't really do as much smuggling as you'd think, they're more like independent couriers or freelance space truckers.
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Jul 31, 2023 19:51
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Smuggler™️ the Star Wars noun and smuggler the real world noun do definitely have divergent meanings. And I'd argue "bounty hunter" is up there too
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Jul 31, 2023 21:21
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jivjov posted:Smuggler™️ the Star Wars noun and smuggler the real world noun do definitely have divergent meanings. And I'd argue "bounty hunter" is up there too Are you saying Boba Fett and Dog the Bounty Hunter aren't the same?
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Jul 31, 2023 21:45
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Also like a lot of things in SWTOR it's just lazily copying stuff that happened in the movies and not thinking through the context
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Jul 31, 2023 22:06
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ninjahedgehog posted:Lmao that this exact strain of puritanical misunderstanding of the source material resurfaces in Rise of Skywalker, where noted outlaws Rey and Finn are simply appalled that Poe may not have walked the straight and narrow in his youth Also cool and good to make the Latino character a former drug dealer.
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Jul 31, 2023 22:16
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Lord Hydronium posted:The Old Republic has a weird split where the smuggler storyline is on the side of the Republic while the bounty hunter storyline is on the side of the Sith, which always struck me as somewhat backwards. I partially blame Zahn for setting the precedent for this, but smugglers in Star Wars don't really do as much smuggling as you'd think, they're more like independent couriers or freelance space truckers. they carry stuff that's contraband according to the laws of the republic, but legal cargo in various independent polities like hutt space. so the republic/empire consider them smugglers even though mostly they're just space truckers that's the best i can do at coming up with a coherent explanation anyway
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Jul 31, 2023 22:42
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Dawgstar posted:Also cool and good to make the Latino character a former drug dealer. Well the space Mexican is a thief in Andor and nobody cares. This is because Andor is well written, mind you.
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Jul 31, 2023 22:50
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Lord Hydronium posted:The Old Republic has a weird split where the smuggler storyline is on the side of the Republic while the bounty hunter storyline is on the side of the Sith, which always struck me as somewhat backwards. I partially blame Zahn for setting the precedent for this, but smugglers in Star Wars don't really do as much smuggling as you'd think, they're more like independent couriers or freelance space truckers. I doubt the thinking was more sophisticated that "Han Solo is a good guy, so people who want to play characters like that will be playing good guys and will therefore be on the side of the Republic." And the inverse for bounty hunters, Boba Fett worked for the Empire so PC bounty hunters will also work for the Empire.
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Aug 1, 2023 00:14
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ninjahedgehog posted:Lmao that this exact strain of puritanical misunderstanding of the source material resurfaces in Rise of Skywalker, where noted outlaws Rey and Finn are simply appalled that Poe may not have walked the straight and narrow in his youth
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Aug 1, 2023 00:34
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