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Rogue One is a completely standard paramilitary action movie with a really good Star Wars space battle at the end. Plus a few moments of terrible fanservice and comic relief thrown in to make the rest of the movie seem more Star Warsy.
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Jun 23, 2017 15:11
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Sir Lemming posted:Rogue One is a completely standard paramilitary action movie with a really good Star Wars space battle at the end. Plus a few moments of terrible fanservice and comic relief thrown in to make the rest of the movie seem more Star Warsy. Look, I know the Vader scene at the end is fanservice, and feels tacked on after our movie has "ended"...but I don't care, I loved it. Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba were really dumb to include, though.
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Jun 23, 2017 15:17
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The Vader scene is absolutely fanservice, but it's purestrain fanservice. It's great. My only gripe is that Rogue One wasn't two hours worth of Vader walking in a straight line through interconnected star freighters, slaughtering more and more rebels.
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Jun 23, 2017 15:21
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All of the lateral connections to A New Hope were aesthetically well-realized. It fits in with the persistent dramatic preoccupation of the story, which is, again, this feeling of marginalization from the real thing, alienation from fantasies of, like, victoriously using space magic so that they can be given a regal pageant for their service. The comical interpolations of Artoo/Threepio and Ponda/Dr. Cornelius are very deliberate, as is the fact that these 'fanservice' characters both appear in pairs. They too are, thus, within the margins of a glorious spiritual renewal that specifically will not happen to them, or, in the case of Ponda, will find themselves the brutalized victims.
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Jun 23, 2017 15:32
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I've said it before, but even the score highlights this division; at Yavin IV we hear some of the classic themes when Bail Organa and Mon Mothma are around, and of course there's the Empire. But these characters don't get much in the way of fanfare; they're very much on the periphery of the main saga, only briefly coming into contact with it as it goes on around them.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:21
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Sir Lemming posted:Rogue One is a completely standard paramilitary action movie with a really good Star Wars space battle at the end. Plus a few moments of terrible fanservice and comic relief thrown in to make the rest of the movie seem more Star Warsy. The way I think of it, Rogue One has a few clunky moments of fanservice, while The Force Awakens just is fanservice. turn left hillary!! noo posted:I've said it before, but even the score highlights this division; at Yavin IV we hear some of the classic themes when Bail Organa and Mon Mothma are around, and of course there's the Empire. But these characters don't get much in the way of fanfare; they're very much on the periphery of the main saga, only briefly coming into contact with it as it goes on around them. Bail Organa gets some pretty strong fanfare when he steps out of the shadows and a musical theme subtly kicks in. He's such a minor character in the movie he doesn't really merit that entrance, I can imagine somebody who hasn't seen the prequels in a while saying "who is this again?" Veshpo fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Jun 23, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 17:45
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I meant this film's protagonists don't get the fanfare. Organa, for all he is a minor character even in the prequels, is the major tie to the main saga here of all the characters they have any contact with.
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Jun 23, 2017 17:56
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Sir Lemming posted:Rogue One is a completely standard paramilitary action movie with a really good Star Wars space battle at the end. Plus a few moments of terrible fanservice and comic relief thrown in to make the rest of the movie seem more Star Warsy. The space battle left me cold, honestly. It was mostly just a series of shots of ships flying around doing whiz-bang maneuvers and blowing things up, without much rhythm or purpose. There's an art to staging that sort of action that can't be discounted. It requires a deep understanding of how to arrange objects moving through the frame, when to throttle down and throttle up the sense of motion and activity, and exactly how and when to cut from one shot of one thing happening to another shot of another thing happening. The opening space battle of ROTS is in my view the series apotheosis of this holistic art, especially that first long shot following Anakin and Obi-Wan in their starfighters twisting and weaving through various deliberately staged action tableaus as the camera swoops and zooms around them dynamically to emphasize in equal measure both the breakneck speed and agility of the fighters and the massive scale of the battle which serves as a backdrop. The battle in space over Scarif, in comparison, is staged in a way that feels indifferent and scattershot. There's only one shot in the whole battle that stands out as even approaching that kind of visual dynamism (apologies for my reliance on the lovely Imgur gif maker):  The main thing I like here is the way the X-wings pursue some TIE fighters leftward through the frame and away from the camera, followed by some TIE fighters flying rightward through the frame pursuing an X-wing which then explodes and flies into pieces, preparing your eyes for the Y-wings which then swoop down from the top of the frame and bank left towards the camera. There's a nice element of alternation, both of direction and of action concept, which communicates an overall idea about the nature of the battle and tells a compelling little mini-story. This is the kind of thing which to my taste makes for an interesting action shot and, when strung together with shots possessing a similar clarity of purpose and economy of storytelling, an interesting action sequence. But then most of the rest of the battle in Rogue One (save the ending corvette maneuver, which is at least creative) just tries to get by with showing us stuff we've basically already seen before, in ways that aren't to me all that visually interesting. Combine that with the weak narrative and what I perceive to be a distinct structural apathy relating to the intercutting of the ground battle and bunker infiltration, which themselves suffer from similar problems, and the overall effect is underwhelming. thrawn527 posted:Look, I know the Vader scene at the end is fanservice, and feels tacked on after our movie has "ended"...but I don't care, I loved it. The Vader scene is well-staged and effective. I also think it made enough sense from a narrative standpoint to have that epilogue with the plans reaching the Tantive IV. My only problem with it is the absolutely, unnecessarily boneheaded way it unfolds in a plot sense, especially given the way it's clearly meant to serve as a seamless bridge into the beginning of ANH, but I don't really want to get into that argument again. Cnut the Great fucked around with this message at 18:13 on Jun 23, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 18:07
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The SSD listing/drifting right into the force field was really a sight to behold though. I had a big grin on my face during that scene.
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Jun 23, 2017 18:14
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thrawn527 posted:Whoa whoa, hey now, let's not say things we can't take back. It earned that 19% aggregate rating.
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Jun 23, 2017 18:24
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RedSpider posted:It earned that 19% aggregate rating. That's one of the lowest I've ever heard of from a decently budgeted studio film, not to mention starring Tom Hanks. Usually they don't ever go below the mid-20s.
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Jun 23, 2017 18:26
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Veshpo posted:The way I think of it, Rogue One has a few clunky moments of fanservice, while The Force Awakens just is fanservice. The Force Awakens is about fanservice. Well, at least fandom.
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Jun 23, 2017 18:31
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back that up. seems to me its just fan service
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Jun 23, 2017 18:38
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The opening space battle in ROTS is a goddamn overstuffed incoherent mess.
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Jun 23, 2017 18:39
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Wild Horses posted:back that up. seems to me its just fan service This is largely borrowed from an article I read a while back, but I'll try. Rey is a fan of the original characters. She reveres them, even if she see Luke as a myth. She's heard of Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon, remembering him mainly as the smuggler. She lives in an abandoned AT-AT, literally sitting in the shadow of a symbol of the most popular Star Wars movie, wearing a Rebel pilot helmet for no reason other than she thinks it's fun. She clearly looks up to the characters and actions of the original trilogy, which you can see clearly in the look of utter joy when Luke or Han first come up. She's a metaphor for the fans who want to revisit the old stories, play with their toys, and not move on. But her story is realizing that she is in her own story, and embracing that. She's also the female Star Wars fan, who just wants to have meet her heroes and share her fandom. But the old ugly fandom is trying to control her. Which leads us to... Kylo Ren is the kind of fan who worships Darth Vader and the Dark Side, completely ignoring that they're the bad guys, and that he's learned all of the wrong lessons. He's a surface level fan, obsessed with the aesthetic, not the meaning behind it. People who think Darth Vader is a total "badass". Who cosplay as a Sith member, or sometimes as Vader himself. He's shunned all connections to other people, even his family. His fandom of the Dark Side is the most important thing ever, and he wants to be as "good" as Vader. He also embodies the entitlement fans can have. He feels entitled to being able to recreate what Vader had, even if he is also sometimes overcome with a lack of self confidence. He's a cosplayer and a collector. Vader wore the mask because he had to. Kylo wears the mask to be more like Vader. He's also angry that things aren't just working out for him. He wants to recreate Vader's story and it isn't working. Maybe if he just got that one last In fact, the whole First Order is a stand in for cosplayers. They might as well be called the 501st, though that would be insulting because at least they do lots of good charity work. But they have created costumes and ships that look extremely similar to the Empire. They worship the Empire, trying to be more like them. They're the Empires biggest fans. Where they go with this moving forward, I'm not sure. Maybe it'll just be what The Force Awakens is about. But I hope they build on it. thrawn527 fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Jun 23, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 19:11
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Reading it as an elaborate allegory for fandom is one way of approaching it. Another way is to note that both factions in the war are motivated by nostalgia. The First Order idolize the Empire and intend to recreate it; the Resistance consists of people who fought in the Rebellion and are acting like they still are. It's not a coincidence that the amount of real time since the release of Return of the Jedi and the amount of in-universe time since the assassination of the Emperor are identical, and whole interval in between appears to have been filled with unchanging Star War. The threat facing the galaxy is that history has repeated itself and is repeating itself; the challenge the heroes face is to get it to stop doing that, even when their allies are resigned to that idea (most obvious in Maz describing the conflict as just another recurrence of an ancient cycle). The teaser for The Last Jedi seems to back this up, featuring Luke attempting to break the cycle of history by ending the Jedi, after witnessing the apparent recurrence of his father's tragedy in his nephew (which provoked him to go into exile to try to understand what his deal was). It's cyclical in a more explicit way than what you get by interpreting The Phantom Menace as a distant and symbolic sequel to Return of the Jedi, where the victorious Rebellion establishes a Republic just as doomed as the previous one. Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Jun 23, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 19:15
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thrawn527 posted:This is largely borrowed from an article I read a while back, but I'll try. Rey is a fan of the original characters. She reveres them, even if she see Luke as a myth. She's heard of Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon, remembering him mainly as the smuggler. She lives in an abandoned AT-AT, literally sitting in the shadow of a symbol of the most popular Star Wars movie, wearing a Rebel pilot helmet for no reason other than she thinks it's fun. She clearly looks up to the characters and actions of the original trilogy, which you can see clearly in the look of utter joy when Luke or Han first come up. She's a metaphor for the fans who want to revisit the old stories, play with their toys, and not move on. But her story is realizing that she is in her own story, and embracing that. Worth noting the First Order was made from remnants of the Empire that escaped to wild space after the battle of Jakku. Regardless, I love this take on things.
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Jun 23, 2017 19:18
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Palpatine escaped death and lived in Space Argentina.
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Jun 23, 2017 19:19
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Covok posted:Worth noting the First Order was made from remnants of the Empire that escaped to wild space after the battle of Jakku. Regardless, I love this take on things. Sure, but that's background supplemental material not mentioned in the movie. I'm not saying it's wrong, and it is indeed canon, but it's not in The Force Awakens, so it's not what that movie is about.
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Jun 23, 2017 19:29
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Abrams seems to do this a lot. The villain of Star Trek was a trekkie who was mad about the reboot, and Super 8 centered around kids trying to make their own monster movie, while ending up as part of one themselves.
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Jun 23, 2017 20:12
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Robot Style posted:Abrams seems to do this a lot. The villain of Star Trek was a trekkie who was mad about the reboot, and Super 8 centered around kids trying to make their own monster movie, while ending up as part of one themselves. Which Star Trek movie was that?
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Jun 23, 2017 20:23
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Covok posted:Which Star Trek movie was that? Star Trek
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Jun 23, 2017 20:24
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Robot Style posted:Abrams seems to do this a lot. The villain of Star Trek was a trekkie who was mad about the reboot, and Super 8 centered around kids trying to make their own monster movie, while ending up as part of one themselves. Yup, my favorite reading is that the villain is the personification of dark, gritty, ugly sci fi (headed by a canon obsessed nerd screming, "Don't tell me it didn't happen! I saw it happen!") going back in time to do battle with bright, colorful, literal "ship of lights" sci fi (headed up by characters acknowledging that things have changed, so we need to focus on that), and losing hard core, being sucked into oblivion. Star Trek '09 loving owns.
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Jun 23, 2017 20:24
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thrawn527 posted:Star Trek '09 loving owns. Word. It's a legit ride with some great performances in it. I watched Beyond the other night because it went up on Hulu, and was surprised by how much fun it was as well.
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Jun 23, 2017 20:41
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Yaws posted:The opening space battle in ROTS is a goddamn overstuffed incoherent mess. It sure is overstuffed! That's the point. But it's far from incoherent. The action is easy to follow, even amidst the chaotic backdrop. The primary action lines are always clearly drawn and the objects of focus are always carefully distinguished from the background commotion of war through various means (lighting, color, motion, position in the frame, etc.). I can think of no better way to have executed the sequence than how Lucas did it. It's not as if he didn't realize the nature of what he was doing. That's why we're introduced to the battle with a continuous shot following two consistent subjects as they pass by and through various major landmarks and tableaus, giving us a spatially un-manipulated sense of the general layout of the battle zone, while familiarizing us with the basic physical constituents of the battle which will from that point on serve as a backdrop to the main action. Frankly, I suspect the notion that very many people were confused by what was going on or what they were seeing, at any point, is a mere pretense of disability put on for rhetorical purposes. I don't think it was really that hard for you. I have more faith in you than that. Really, I think your real quarrel arises from a belief that the basic ambition of the sequence--to depict a full-scale space battle on a titanic scale never before seen in cinema, with the attendant large-scale chaos and mayhem serving as an ever-present backdrop to the action in the foreground--is by its very aesthetic nature an act of folly. This is a common sentiment, it seems. There are just certain things that you're not allowed to depict. These sorts of things are just too vulgar to abide, I suppose. Too messy, too audacious. Like punk rock, maybe.
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Jun 23, 2017 21:00
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Cnut the Great posted:It sure is overstuffed! That's the point. But it's far from incoherent. The action is easy to follow, even amidst the chaotic backdrop. The primary action lines are always clearly drawn and the objects of focus are always carefully distinguished from the background commotion of war through various means (lighting, color, motion, position in the frame, etc.). I can think of no better way to have executed the sequence than how Lucas did it. It's not as if he didn't realize the nature of what he was doing. That's why we're introduced to the battle with a continuous shot following two consistent subjects as they pass by and through various major landmarks and tableaus, giving us a spatially un-manipulated sense of the general layout of the battle zone, while familiarizing us with the basic physical constituents of the battle which will from that point on serve as a backdrop to the main action. There is simply far too much going on. It's a nightmare of excess and a prime example of Lucas' utter lack of restraint in the prequels. Every shot has half a dozen capital ships in the background with almost no regard if it makes any actual sense. Obi-Wan and Anakin are rather effortlessly flying through all this while all hell breaks loose around them. Just randomly throw a bunch of poo poo on screen and hope the audience doesn't take note of it's incoherence. It's an inert and lifeless lights and effects show.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:03
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Yaws posted:Obi-Wan and Anakin are rather effortlessly flying through all this while all hell breaks loose around them. Looks like you understand the scene just fine.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:04
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By the time they crash on Dooku's ship you learn everything you needed to know from the previous two movies about Obi Wan and Anakin and their relationship.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:07
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Bongo Bill posted:Looks like you understand the scene just fine. Yeah. Anakin and Obi Wans mission it too rescue Palpatine from General Grievous. We haven't been introduced to this character yet so whatever but we can discern he's a big meanie because of his big meanie name. Yaws fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Jun 23, 2017 |
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Jun 23, 2017 22:10
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The manner in which the movies veer from incredibly restrained to wildly self-indulgent is one of the greatest strengths of the films, especially AotC and RotS.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:11
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Every time I catch AOTC on tv, I always completely forget about the whole "Obi-Wan visits a 50's diner to gather information about a weapon like a Raymond Chandler character," and every time it comes off as complete godfuck lunacy. There's a part of me that appreciates Lucas being so incredibly indulgent with such little oversight. Did it make for strong, coherent films in the prequels? Hell no. The results speak for themselves. But I doubt we'll ever see anything quite like it again in Hollywood.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:26
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The first movie had a 30s style speakeasy they visit to gather information about a ship. I think it's only lunacy because they didn't do it before 1983.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:30
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thrawn527 posted:This is largely borrowed from an article I read a while back, but I'll try. Rey is a fan of the original characters. She reveres them, even if she see Luke as a myth. She's heard of Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon, remembering him mainly as the smuggler. She lives in an abandoned AT-AT, literally sitting in the shadow of a symbol of the most popular Star Wars movie, wearing a Rebel pilot helmet for no reason other than she thinks it's fun. She clearly looks up to the characters and actions of the original trilogy, which you can see clearly in the look of utter joy when Luke or Han first come up. She's a metaphor for the fans who want to revisit the old stories, play with their toys, and not move on. But her story is realizing that she is in her own story, and embracing that. But does Rey really take control of her own story? She's a very reactive (as opposed to proactive) protagonist. She embraces her gifts in the force in order to not die, not because she's ever convinced of any larger role she has to play, or even out of any sense of self-betterment. The one moment where she truly exercises much agency is when she volunteers to go find Luke, and that's presumably because she needs someone to tell her what's next.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:30
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Veshpo posted:She's a very reactive (as opposed to proactive) protagonist. I like that the movie actually leans into this, actually. All of Rey's interactions with the Force come from reactivity - she has to learn to 'let it in' rather than actively control it, and most the powers she demonstrates have to do with her receiving things (lightsaber flashback, reading Kylo's mind, pulling the lightsaber). If anything, they didn't go far enough with it. Someone existing solely to be a consequence could go to some interesting places.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:43
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Electromax posted:The first movie had a 30s style speakeasy they visit to gather information about a ship. I think it's only lunacy because they didn't do it before 1983. What would someone have to do convince you that they dislike the prequels on their own merits and not simply because of rose tinted glasses?
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Jun 24, 2017 00:04
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Tender Bender posted:What would someone have to do convince you that they dislike the prequels on their own merits and not simply because of rose tinted glasses? No one needs to be convinced of that. Everyone here is aware the films are divisive.
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Jun 24, 2017 00:09
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Veshpo posted:But does Rey really take control of her own story? She's a very reactive (as opposed to proactive) protagonist. She embraces her gifts in the force in order to not die, not because she's ever convinced of any larger role she has to play, or even out of any sense of self-betterment. The one moment where she truly exercises much agency is when she volunteers to go find Luke, and that's presumably because she needs someone to tell her what's next. I didn't say she took control of it, but that she embraced it. She spent most of the movie avoiding it, trying to go back to Jakku to live the life she's always known. But by the end of the movie, she pulls the lightsaber, saves herself and Finn, and then goes in search for Luke. Not because she has to, she could go back to Jakku. But she's leaving that life behind and embracing that her story isn't playing in the sandbox with her toys anymore.
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Jun 24, 2017 00:35
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Electromax posted:The first movie had a 30s style speakeasy they visit to gather information about a ship. I think it's only lunacy because they didn't do it before 1983. Sure, if by speakeasy you mean a regular dive bar. The diner scene is much more egregious because it leans very heavily on Americana aesthetics. And that might be easier to brush off if we weren't talking about George "American Graffiti" Lucas.
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Jun 24, 2017 01:02
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Fart City posted:Sure, if by speakeasy you mean a regular dive bar. The diner scene is much more egregious because it leans very heavily on Americana aesthetics. And that might be easier to brush off if we weren't talking about George "American Graffiti" Lucas. So that scene is bad because it leans on Americana aesthetics? How does that make it bad?
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Jun 24, 2017 01:07
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UmOk posted:So that scene is bad because it leans on Americana aesthetics? How does that make it bad?
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Jun 24, 2017 01:24
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