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HotCanadianChick posted:Lucas made sure to include fan favourite one-line-of-dialogue, v.important-to-plot character Boba Fett in the prequels. Because having him be the clone son of the guy they used as the template for the clone army definitely added tons of meaning to his adult appearances in empire and jedi. Oh no, wait, it didn't add anything and he could have totally been named something else in the prequels and the story wouldn't have changed one iota. Shhh, shhh. No need for a level headed look at things.
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Jun 23, 2016 20:39
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Boba Fett was always planned as related to the stormtroopers from the moment of his creation sometime in 1977 or 1978. His appearance in the prequels was just the final form of a story element closing in on 40 years old now. Furthermore, given how much vitriol got directed at this plot element, it must by necessity be a kind of anti-service, negative gratification.
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Jun 23, 2016 20:55
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Timeless Appeal posted:That's a pretty broad definition. Doesn't a quality story validate fans? The main character literally had Star Wars toys in the first movie.
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Jun 23, 2016 21:02
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homullus posted:The main character literally had Star Wars toys in the first movie.
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Jun 23, 2016 21:15
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homullus posted:The main character literally had Star Wars toys in the first movie. Even as a kid I thought Luke was too old to be playing with that toy ship.
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Jun 23, 2016 21:25
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The term expresses nothing more than the notion that something isn't 'for' you, which makes it identical to the various assertions that Star Wars is 'for' children, and so-on. What this misses is that Star Wars is pretty good - much too good to be left to the fans. C3PO can be read as fanservice, but can be far better understood as a multifilm subplot about this one character's search for a purpose. He goes from brother, to god-king to spy, to pilot, to soldier, and so-on. We can look at Ghost Dog the same way. That is, you can waste your time editing wookipedia, or you can do an ideological critique of this upcoming film in relation to the cartoon episode. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jun 23, 2016 |
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Jun 23, 2016 21:26
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Y Kant Ozma Diet posted:Even as a kid I thought Luke was too old to be playing with that toy ship. In Top Gun naval officers use little toy airplanes to illustrate combat tactics. :-D
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Jun 23, 2016 21:34
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I you dismiss something as pointless, you've stopped looking for a point. That doesn't necessarily mean that it was pointless (although it can be). I keep looking at Star Wars Underowlrd and it sounds amazing. 50 hours worth of episodes plus a tv movie were written with no regards for the budget and that's what eventually killed the seres. They wanted to make 20 million dollars episodes on a 1 million dollar budget. Still, the fact that Disney is now cannibalizing this stuff is pretty interesting. Not just Saw Guerrera, but the Church of the Force (the organization of Max von Sydow's character) was created by Lucas for the tv series originally. The Wiki article is full of crazy poo poo, like this: Star Wars Wiki posted:Kratos's character arc from the upcoming God of War game was inspired by the unproduced Underworld scripts. Former LucasArts developer Cory Barlog revealed he read scripts for episodes featuring Palpatine, where "They made the Emperor a sympathetic figure who was wronged by this [...] heartless woman. She's this hardcore gangster, and she just totally destroyed him as a person. I almost cried while reading this. This is the Emperor, the lightning out of the fingers Emperor. That's something magical."
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Jun 23, 2016 22:14
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Jun 23, 2016 22:57
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I scrolled by this really fast and originally saw this surreal image of Stormtroopers applauding while standing ankle deep in water.
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Jun 23, 2016 23:06
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Timeless Appeal posted:I scrolled by this really fast and originally saw this surreal image of Stormtroopers applauding while standing ankle deep in water. It's still not as weird as the actual photo of the Deathtrooper holding a child's doll.....of a Stormtrooper.
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Jun 23, 2016 23:09
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Timeless Appeal posted:Fan service is a silly term like Mary Sue to avoid actual criticism. It's a dressed up way to say something is bad and dismiss things without much thought. The Millennium Falcon feels plenty lived in without randomly shoving a jarring non-sequitur callback into our faces front-and-center. Stop-motion holochess in particular doesn't mean anything to Finn. He hasn't seen the original Star Wars. He's a brainwashed child soldier who grew up in Space North Korea and fed propaganda about how Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were the bad guys. The character has absolutely nothing in common with and nothing to do with kids in the 20th-21st century who grew up watching the original trilogy and pretending they have lightsabers. He sure acts like he does, but that doesn't mean it makes any sense. The entire movie is incoherent in this way, because it's extremely hyperaware of the fans watching the movie but gives short shrift to the actual characters in the movie. This movie isn't going to be relevant in thirty years, let alone a hundred, because no one's going to care about or understand the concept of original trilogy nostalgia by that point. This movie isn't about anything except previous movies in the series and how the "fandom" relates to them, and that limits it enormously as a timeless commentary on the universal human condition, which is what previous entries in the series aspired to be.
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Jun 23, 2016 23:14
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I'm hype for them using a Laputan war-robot as a design inspiration for that droid.
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Jun 23, 2016 23:23
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It's unlikely any of the Star Wars movies are going to be 'relevant' in a hundred years. Star Wars has always been dismissed as infantile trash by a lot of critics and it's often blamed with the Dumbing Down of Cinema: Pauline Kael posted:“Star Wars” is like getting a box of Cracker Jack which is all prizes. This is the writer-director George Lucas’s own film, subject to no business interference, yet it’s a film that’s totally uninterested in anything that doesn’t connect with the mass audience. There’s no breather in the picture, no lyricism; the only attempt at beauty is in the double sunset. It’s enjoyable on its own terms, but it’s exhausting, too: like taking a pack of kids to the circus. An hour into it, children say that they’re ready to see it again; that’s because it’s an assemblage of spare parts—it has no emotional grip. “Star Wars” may be the only movie in which the first time around the surprises are reassuring…. It’s an epic without a dream. But it’s probably the absence of wonder that accounts for the film’s special, huge success. The excitement of those who call it the film of the year goes way past nostalgia to the feeling that now is the time to return to childhood. I don't find the prequels or OT to be thematically dense. Or at least more dense then a lot of sci-fi movies that preceded it. It's a shallow mish mash of Buddism and Hinduism. Philosophy 101 stuff. Streamlined and neatly packaged to be inoffensive and easily consumed by the masses. The Force Awakens is a wildly entertaining blockbuster movies. Ain't nothin' wrong with that.
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Jun 23, 2016 23:39
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I like those pictures Looks liek Star Wars
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Jun 23, 2016 23:44
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Please give me that Sicario sunset shot but w/stormtroopers, I like fanservice like that.
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Jun 23, 2016 23:50
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Stacks posted:It's unlikely any of the Star Wars movies are going to be 'relevant' in a hundred years. Most of those critics are nerds I could easily stuff into a locker by force of will alone.
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Jun 24, 2016 00:12
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Production design on Rogue One is absolutely insane so far.Cnut the Great posted:The Millennium Falcon feels plenty lived in without randomly shoving a jarring non-sequitur callback into our faces front-and-center. Stop-motion holochess in particular doesn't mean anything to Finn. He hasn't seen the original Star Wars. He's a brainwashed child soldier who grew up in Space North Korea and fed propaganda about how Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were the bad guys. The character has absolutely nothing in common with and nothing to do with kids in the 20th-21st century who grew up watching the original trilogy and pretending they have lightsabers. He sure acts like he does, but that doesn't mean it makes any sense. I think it's important not to be too dismissive here, because the content itself is not the issue. If you look at the prequel films, there are tons of little jokes about the viewing order of the films. The 'Jedi prophecy' is literally foreknowledge of Episodes 4-6, C3PO begins Episode 4 as a blank slate with no knowledge of the prequels, etc. This all slots into that vital theme of differing points of view in conflict, and of knowledge not being the same as belief. The recurring joke of Force Awakens is, unfortunately, that Force Awakens is garbage without the other films as context. FN is literally throwing away these old artifacts, because they mean nothing to him. R2 in a coma is the same deal: if Force Awakens is your introduction to Star Wars, R2 rising from the dead is meaningless. Abrams' message is that Star Wars is worthless without Luke as its 'heart'. Hence an entire film about 'searching for Luke'. The trouble is not that these images are meaningless to FN, but that they are meaningless to absolutely everyone. Not one character in the film cares about the holo-chess, or the target-practice ball - not even Han. There's like ten seconds where C3PO is kinda-sad about R2, and that's it. Shouldn't the resistance be trying desperately to wake him up? That's the vital flaw. With the prequels, you get new information that switches things around. R2's backstory reveals that he's somewhat of an rear end in a top hat and a bit of a Republic stooge, while C3PO is made much more sympathetic. The events of Episode 1 are important to R2. It's where, we find out, he had essentially trained to become a soldier. In Force Awakens, we are given no reason for why any of the characters are obsessed with finding Luke. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Jun 24, 2016 |
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Jun 24, 2016 00:26
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Cnut the Great posted:The Millennium Falcon feels plenty lived in without randomly shoving a jarring non-sequitur callback into our faces front-and-center. Stop-motion holochess in particular doesn't mean anything to Finn. He hasn't seen the original Star Wars. He's a brainwashed child soldier who grew up in Space North Korea and fed propaganda about how Luke Skywalker and Han Solo were the bad guys. The character has absolutely nothing in common with and nothing to do with kids in the 20th-21st century who grew up watching the original trilogy and pretending they have lightsabers. He sure acts like he does, but that doesn't mean it makes any sense. I don't think his response to seeing the chess set is meant as anything more than confused fascination. Once again, I think my attic comparison is apt. It's like stumbling on a weird toy your parents had. It's even weirder for Finn though because as you said, he's not someone who ever experienced play. It's easy to dismiss me bringing up video game commercials and toys, but it's because both the original and this Star Wars have a fascination with the act of play as a formative act.
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Jun 24, 2016 01:27
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Production design on Rogue One is absolutely insane so far. Insanely good, or just insane?
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Jun 24, 2016 02:41
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The events of Episode 1 are important to R2. It's where, we find out, he had essentially trained to become a soldier. Can you elaborate on this?
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Jun 24, 2016 03:15
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Timeless Appeal posted:It's important to remember how the First Order is presented in relation to Finn. They are less Space Nazis, and more Super Corporate. Phasma in particular is played as a lovely overbearing boss. There's an ad for I think the new Star Wars video game that is trying to invoke similar stuff to Finn. It's of a guy in an office, and there is a x-wing outside his window with R2 beeping for him to hop in. Finn isn't just a guy with a boring job, but a guy who realized he works for the bad guys. Exactly right; it's that Matrix imagery. FN is a Tom Anderson who, one day, begins to hallucinate that robotic agents are sapping his essence and scanning his mind. An office janitor who escapes into the realm of illuminati conspiracy. This raises the question of why we don't, at any point, see a hint of this janitorial work. You can show ten billion people die, but not even a glimpse of who's mopping the floors. Like a lot of recent blockbusters, the imagery is obvious enough to see what they were going for. C3PO stands for the Republic, with the red arm representing the New Order. The New Order is literally just a 'bad arm' of the Republic - a part of the boring Republic that rebels and upsets the organic unity of the body. The message of the film is, again, that C3PO (the Republic) is worthless garbage without Luke - and Luke's sidekick R2. Everyone and everything is garbage without Luke. EX-GAIJIN AT LAST posted:Insanely good, or just insane? Insanely good. Like compare TFA's 'tactical' stormtroopers with these black designs. Akett posted:Can you elaborate on this? I don't think people pick up on just how 'naturally' R2 slides into the role of a killer over the course of the prequels. The character in Episode 4 is recontextualized: not a little worker tossed in over his head, but a veteran who has spent his entire life fighting for the Republic-Empire and its Jedi Order. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Jun 24, 2016 |
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Jun 24, 2016 03:20
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:This raises the question of why we don't, at any point, see a hint of this janitorial work. You can show ten billion people die, but not even a glimpse of who's mopping the floors. quote:The message of the film is, again, that C3PO (the Republic) is worthless garbage without Luke - and Luke's sidekick R2. Everyone and everything is garbage without Luke. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Jun 24, 2016 |
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Jun 24, 2016 04:17
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Timeless Appeal posted:The Force Awakens asks the audience to clap its hands to bring R2 back to life. When I saw TFA on release day, tons of people in the theater started clapping both times that R2 appeared on screen, and didn't clap at anything else in the movie. It was really weird.
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Jun 24, 2016 04:34
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Timeless Appeal posted:I like that the moment Finn snaps and realizes what he's a part of is when he essentially gets promoted. Yeah, I said the same prior a while ago; the film isn't about clutching past relics and nostalgia, it's about moving forward and embracing ones role in the current, new world. Rey is at her lowest point when she's in an ancient war machine playing with a rusted pilot helmet and eating microwave snacks. Finn is at his lowest point when he's an unofficial Stormtrooper realizing just what he's aspired towards. If we judge A New Hope or The Phantom Menace on their own, they both appear quite simple and disappointing. It's when seen through the context of their trilogy and roles in the overall series that they find greater appreciation. TFA already has plenty of interesting aspects even without its second and third parts, I wouldn't be so quick to brush off the new trilogy just because the introduction had familiar aspects. Neurolimal fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Jun 24, 2016 |
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Jun 24, 2016 05:11
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Neurolimal posted:If we judge A New Hope or The Phantom Menace on their own, they both appear quite simple and disappointing. I don't think this is true at all, for either film.
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Jun 24, 2016 05:25
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Schwarzwald posted:I don't think this is true at all, for either film. It's been a while since I've rewatched ANH, but TPM's primary story is incredibly simple, with multiple sidestories and details left unaddressed for the rest of the series to complete. Stripped down to what is finished and resolved in TPM, space samurai end a blockade starving a planet, Mentor Figure dies, Young Pupil is allowed to be trained after proving himself, Scary Bad Man is killed. By virtue of being a prequel you can guess what those hooks will entail, but without any knowledge of the successive films it's a lot of loose ends and unfulfilled aspects. Which is why its role as part of a trilogy is important.
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Jun 24, 2016 05:30
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Neurolimal posted:By virtue of being a prequel you can guess what those hooks will entail, but without any knowledge of the successive films it's a lot of loose ends and unfulfilled aspects. Certainly, but the films aren't disappointing because of that.
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Jun 24, 2016 05:44
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Schwarzwald posted:Certainly, but the films aren't disappointing because of that. Probably the wrong word to use, I admit. My point is simply that TFA stacks up fine with ANH and TPM when removed from the context that they are enhanced by their respective trilogies, and that I'm sure TFA will hold up just as well to those trilogies once its second and third parts are finished.
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Jun 24, 2016 05:50
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Timeless Appeal posted:I like that the moment Finn snaps and realizes what he's a part of is when he essentially gets promoted. FN does not get promoted onscreen. That's a formal choice that compromises the film. In the same way, R2 is no Tinker-bell, because he was never alive. He's not even a character, so why not hide the map inside that holo-chess game? At least that would be foreshadowed. The point of Tinker-bell is the rather complex illustration of the mechanism behind prayer: you are not clapping because you believe, but because the act of clapping causes you to believe. And then, you can imagine the terrible awkwardness that would occur if no-one clapped. There's an enormous pressure placed on the audience, to believe or else. Or else the actors will be forced into increasingly desperate improvisations, then utterly humiliated, the show will be cancelled, etc. There's a violence to this audience participation that is absolutely distasteful. So I have no sympathy for this apolitical-generic 'playful What you are saying only makes sense if we ignore Ray entirely, and focus on the part where - quite obviously - Leia has never even considered helping the enslaved Stormtroopers. Countless men, women, and children, each with tons of vital information. They could have learned about Starkiller years in advance. That this was never even considered gives lie to any claim that the film is progressive. All FN gets is a ruined spine. The power of play lets children be heroes? You should know well by now that there are heroes on both sides.
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Jun 24, 2016 06:07
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For all your prequel lovers out there I am cleaning out my closet and I found a Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Portfolio which came out back in 1999. Its full of Doug Chiang's concept art for star wars on white card stock. I am just gonna throw it out, so I am offering it up to this thread of deranged prequel maniacs. I'm willing to mail it to anyone who wants it, so long as you pay whatever flat rate shipping I use from USPS. This is what the box looks like:  these are what the concept arts look like, they are pretty big:  (images not mine, i can take pics of it if you want but i assure you it looks like this) PM me if you want to own this piece of star wars history.
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Jun 24, 2016 08:57
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:FN does not get promoted onscreen. That's a formal choice that compromises the film. quote:In the same way, R2 is no Tinker-bell, because he was never alive. He's not even a character, so why not hide the map inside that holo-chess game? At least that would be foreshadowed But to me, the intent of that performance informs what I'm saying about Force Awakens. The tether between play and aspiration and the fiction is stronger in Force Awakens because Force Awakens provides characters who tread the line between existing in Star Wars and reality. There is an implicit call to action. quote:So I have no sympathy for this apolitical-generic 'playful quote:What you are saying only makes sense if we ignore Ray entirely, and focus on the part where - quite obviously - Leia has never even considered helping the enslaved Stormtroopers. Countless men, women, and children, each with tons of vital information. They could have learned about Starkiller years in advance. That this was never even considered gives lie to any claim that the film is progressive. All FN gets is a ruined spine. There doesn't need to be a scene where they discuss Leia's politics being wrong. The black stormtrooper picking up the lightsaber and saving the day and the little girl stealing all the boy toys show that her focus on the past is wrongheaded. The Force Awakens argues the only value of the past is for the best of it to transcend into myth and into play that fuels and informs the future.
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Jun 24, 2016 12:43
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Timeless Appeal posted:I scrolled by this really fast and originally saw this surreal image of Stormtroopers applauding while standing ankle deep in water. 
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Jun 24, 2016 14:15
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Timeless Appeal posted:You're ignoring that Finn and Poe's existence in the films are acts of rebellion in of themselves. Poe is the film's rightful protagonist, but Finn--someone who should be cannon fodder--steals the role from him. Whatever the films reveal about Rey, she is not initially called into action for anything besides her acceptance of BB-8's personhood. As opposed to Luke who is simply declared the hero by the wizard; Rey becomes the film's hero initially by passing a test that you would recognize many in the Star Wars Universe as having failed. Together they kill slave soldiers. Rebellion! BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Jun 24, 2016 |
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Jun 24, 2016 14:58
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:Together they kill slave soldiers. The problem that I feel a lot of people have is that the Republic and Resistance have no substance to them to really stand as the good guys. It's not a matter of the prequel trilogy's intrigue. The Republic lacks any sort of coding in the way that you the Empire is so clearly presented in A New Hope without much exposition or time spent on the nitty gritty. To me the ending of The Force Awakens is similar to the ending of The Dark Knight Rises or Children of Men or Snowpiercer. The film champions the rise of the new redeeming the sins of the past without giving much detail on what that new world actually looks like. It acts closer to The Dark Knight Rises in my mind because unlike Children of Men or Snowpiercer, the old is not completely irredeemable, but transcends into mythology to guide the new. And I have little hope that the sequels won't pee on my reading quite a bit, but as it stands as a standalone film--albeit one that plays off cultural knowledge--I'm happy with my reading. Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Jun 24, 2016 |
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Jun 24, 2016 15:23
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The Republic in The Force Awakens is implicitly the same as the Republic in The Phantom Menace - except that this time, instead of just impeaching the impotent chancellor, the queen starts a proxy war against the terrorists, and fights them everywhere instead of just her home planet (or maybe the whole galaxy is Alderaan). The situation unfolds differently because this time they have a nuke instead of a horde of conscripts. Is the Republic structurally unequal to the task of combating ISIS? Or did the attempt to wipe them out just cause the situation to escalate to planetary destruction by non-state actors?
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Jun 24, 2016 16:21
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I'm still of the opinion that First Order itself more closely resembles fascist nostalgics across the western world currently. While I'm sure that children are being indoctrinated in Islamic State, that wasn't its defining method of recruitment (which is the adoption of alienated arab citizens near and abroad). Especially with the intention to return to The Good Old Times (additionally contrasting well with Rey and Finn's growth in leaving their pasts), rather than the creation of a new superior state. I will admit that there are strong similarities in the Iraq-IS/Empire-FO though, especially in how they represent the impotence of even the greatest forces in crushing ideology.
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Jun 24, 2016 16:28
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The First Order is just another https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ourB80IQEes
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Jun 24, 2016 16:51
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The impotence of some fighters and a boxy transport is certainly very grandiose compared to the plucky little three-mile warship of the First Order.
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Jun 24, 2016 16:55
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Zordon is really old, to the point that he's a geriatric white man living in a glass tube or something. But then Rita escapes, and Zordon's robot servant recruits a team of teenagers with attitude! There's a black ranger, yellow ranger, pink ranger, etc. And together they step up to do what Zordon can't: enter into endless war against the corruptive enemy. This is not to be dismissive. Power Rangers actually does everything you say, and does a far better job of it - expressing the exact same (heavily scare-quoted) "political" concerns in clear terms. The multicultural teens are using the mythology of Power Rangers, but combining it with fresh attitude. They walk the line between the real world and the Power Rangers world. Their weapons are like toys, but play allows them to imagine adult roles for themselves.... And then: the young fascist Anakin certainly uses the mythology of the Jedi, but combines it with fresh attitude. He walks the line between the real world and the Jedi world. His weapons are like toys, but play allows him to imagine an adult role for himself.... Timeless Appeal posted:I guess I'm curious what your issue is here. I think that SMG's comparison to The Matrix continues in this way. Both Finn and Neo kill the enslaved for the sake of eventually killing the slavers or at least for their own freedom. The point is that The Matrix is a mad libertarian fever-dream where the thing that enslaves us is fantasized as being a reptilian conspiracy. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Jun 24, 2016 |
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Jun 24, 2016 17:38
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