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euphronius posted:It has other purposes besides comedy so ok you didn't laugh. I applaud your sensibility. Yeah, the audience wasn't meant to laugh at it as a joke. It's like George Bush (either one) always saying "Eye-raq." They weren't doing it to get a laugh, they weren't doing it because they didn't know any better, they were doing it to gently caress with the Iraqis and piss them off. Being a petty, juvenile little gently caress has a long and storied history in war and diplomacy.
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Dec 20, 2017 21:31
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I just saw the movie last night and I feel like I would have liked it a lot more if they replaced literally everything with Finn and Poe with more island stuff. I haven't read much of the thread how hot of a take is this? I feel like it probably isn't very but I never know when it comes to star wars. The movie in general felt way too disjointed to me with some really weird pacing issues. I really liked Driver and Ridley in general, I feel like they carried the poo poo out of this movie, even though I'd give it an "eeehhhhh *hand waggle*" rating overall.
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Dec 20, 2017 22:36
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This movie felt like it hated the OT and TFA. The biggest problem is the existence of the First Order means all the work in 4-6 meant nothing. I don't feel like any of these characters have progressed since the start of TFA - maybe Finn. I don't like that Snoke didn't get an explanation. It's not a thing where I want every detail of his life explained on Wookiepedia, but I want to know who the gently caress he is, why he was able to turn Kylo Ren, and where this loving FO came from in the first place. TLJ wasn't bad, but it wasn't good, and it was a mess. 50-75% of the plot was pointless.
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Dec 20, 2017 22:53
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Waffles Inc. posted:What you're suggesting is "guns don't kill people, people kill people", but with the force. A gun sitting on a shelf inert is not "light". Using the gun to prevent a murder is "light". The Force itself is not light nor dark. Controlling and using it to do good is "light".
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Dec 20, 2017 22:53
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Maybe Rian Johnson should have gotten the first new movie. Instead of letting JJ Abrams JJ the gently caress out of the movie with no mind for how to solve any problems because he never has to make the movie that comes after his schlock.
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Dec 20, 2017 22:56
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read the thread at least pleaseWaffles Inc. posted:It's a bad analogy, and I'm sorry. My overall point was that the original conception of the force was that it was, by default, Good(tm), thus any negative uses or applications of it were Bad(tm). The Dark Side (bad) was described by Lucas as a cancer; the natural, standard state of the force was good.
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Dec 20, 2017 22:57
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Waffles Inc. posted:read the thread at least please I'm sorry. For some reason my browser refreshed and it posted that again. I can't remove it or I'm too stupid to find the option.
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Dec 20, 2017 23:15
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sleep with the vicious posted:This movie felt like it hated the OT and TFA. The biggest problem is the existence of the First Order means all the work in 4-6 meant nothing. I don't feel like any of these characters have progressed since the start of TFA - maybe Finn. No one knew anything about the Emperor after ANH, other than that he apparently rules the Evil Galactic Empire and that he hates Senates. No answers were given in anything leading up to and including ESB other than us finding out that Vader considers him his master, wants to over throw him with Luke at his side and that he has a large hologram face. We meet him in RotJ and while we witness his considerable power in the dark side and watch as he attempts to pit father vs son to retain the strongest most angry Skywalker, we don't even find out how he started the Empire or managed to make Vader his apprentice until Lucas decided he wanted to make the Prequels years later. I don't understand why so much about Snoke and the First Order needs to be found out NOW RIGHT NOW THIS GODDAMN MOMENT AND IN THIS FUCKIN MOVIE.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:07
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You can actually look up bulletin board comments from the eighties and see what people thought of ESB and RotJ. I used to have a link but it's long gone and I can't get google to give up the goods.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:19
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AndyElusive posted:No one knew anything about the Emperor after ANH, other than that he apparently rules the Evil Galactic Empire and that he hates Senates. No answers were given in anything leading up to and including ESB other than us finding out that Vader considers him his master, wants to over throw him with Luke at his side and that he has a large hologram face. I'm sure everyone having access to the internet where they can discuss movies and speculate endlessly has something to do with it
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Dec 21, 2017 00:20
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You didn't need to know much about the Empire and Palpatine because they were part of the preexisting power structure in place before the events of the original film. Snoke and TFO are new elements introduced out of nowhere in the 7th film. Sure, Snoke is just some guy and TFO are Neo Nazis, but it could've been handled better.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:25
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AndyElusive posted:I don't understand why so much about Snoke and the First Order needs to be found out NOW RIGHT NOW THIS GODDAMN MOMENT AND IN THIS FUCKIN MOVIE. Snoke I can understand, we don't need to know a ton about him personally. But this isn't the same as ANH, where Lucas was painting onto a completely fresh, blank canvas. This is an ongoing series where fans have seen 7 films to this point that all make up one continuous story. So the First Order, and really the New Republic as well, are holes in that story that it's very natural for people to wonder about and be frustrated over. We don't really know anything about the New Republic that Leia, Luke, and Han fought so hard for in the OT, we don't know what it looked like or how it functioned. We have no idea where this First Order came from and how it was connected to the old Empire. And it's especially confusing because in The Force Awakens we also have to swallow this idea that Leia has to lead a small resistance force despite presumably being a fairly prominent figure in the Republic. Why is this resistance necessary? Why isn't the First Order the resistance and the Republic the larger, more dominant force? Apparently a lot of this is covered in the new EU novels, but that's not really an excuse.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:28
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I think it helps that the empire was self explanatory. Right from episode 4 it was clear there was the senate, the bureaucrats, the career military, megalomaniacs like Tarkin and space samurai like Vader. Plus the empire was clearly a government. Power - unlimited power - I am the senate- Palpatine, the emperor was the living embodiment of all that. Snoke I guess represents some sort of abstract evil? What is the first order anyway?
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Dec 21, 2017 00:30
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Sinding Johansson posted:Snoke I guess represents some sort of abstract evil? What is the first order anyway? They "rose from the ashes of the Empire", that's literally the only information we have about who they are, where they came from, and what they're all about.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:31
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They could add it in the next trilogy. Prequels to the Sequels (My point is we have already seen the story about an Empire being created, it'll just be the same thing. Leave it to a TV series or something)
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Dec 21, 2017 00:35
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Sinding Johansson posted:I think it helps that the empire was self explanatory. Right from episode 4 it was clear there was the senate, the bureaucrats, the career military, megalomaniacs like Tarkin and space samurai like Vader. Plus the empire was a government. Power - unlimited power - I am the senate- Palpatine, the emperor was the living embodiment of all that. We know roughly the same amounts about the Empire and First Order at the beginnings of the respective trilogies, you're just being stubborn if you refuse to acknowledge that. That notwithstanding, it doesn't matter. There is no compelling reason why we need to know anything more about the First Order than we already do. We know: - Evil - Fighting against the Resistance - Has the remains of the Empire's military machine, evidenced by stormtrooper gear and spaceships and all that What more is necessary to know? How it got established in the first place, after the events of RotJ, may be an interesting story, but it's irrelevant to episodes VII and VIII.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:37
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First Order was Thrawn using resources from the Chiss to rebuild if I remember correctly.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:40
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Koirhor posted:First Order was Thrawn using resources from the Chiss to rebuild if I remember correctly. I don't know what any of these things are or whence they come, and it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the films at all! QED.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:42
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Panadol posted:(My point is we have already seen the story about an Empire being created, it'll just be the same thing. Leave it to a TV series or something) Why does it have to be the same thing? What if it were something more interesting than that, like, something worthy of doing a movie about. Why does Star Wars have to be about rebels fighting an evil Empire. Is that really a requirement? Are you expecting things to reset after this trilogy, and we'll be watching Rey's kids fight another, different Empire?
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Dec 21, 2017 00:44
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PT6A posted:We know roughly the same amounts about the Empire and First Order at the beginnings of the respective trilogies, you're just being stubborn if you refuse to acknowledge that. That notwithstanding, it doesn't matter. There is no compelling reason why we need to know anything more about the First Order than we already do. We know: Uhh did you read my post? It was clearly stated in episode 4 that the empire was a new government, now led by the military, that transitioned relatively seamlessly from the republic. It would rule by fear, ie it was a dictatorship and it was opposed in places like Alderan but had some measure of support in places like Tatooine (recall Luke was going to join the academy). It was concerned with maintaining order and concentrating power. That's quite a fair bit of information. It's not clear at all what the first order is. Is it even a government? What's their goal? Sinding Johansson fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Dec 21, 2017 |
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Dec 21, 2017 00:45
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Yeah, I want to see Rey's half-wookiee kids end up fighting Broom Kid (who has become evil) (and also still has the broom) (and also uses it in combat).
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Dec 21, 2017 00:46
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Teek posted:What kind of review are you looking for? Fans who enjoyed it and go over points, or a more in-depth film student-esque critical view of various things?
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Dec 21, 2017 00:47
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PT6A posted:We know roughly the same amounts about the Empire and First Order at the beginnings of the respective trilogies, you're just being stubborn if you refuse to acknowledge that. That notwithstanding, it doesn't matter. There is no compelling reason why we need to know anything more about the First Order than we already do. We know: This is disingenuous and I think you know it is. In one single scene we know who the Empire are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnNSnJbjdws A group of dumpy white guys around a board room table, one of them is concerned that the Rebellion is gaining control in the "senate", then Dracula walks in and says Tarkin posted:The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away So people living in a democracy in 1977 these guys are bad guys. Dissolution of a democratic "senate" is Western Democracy code for "bad guys" I'm not arguing that the FO are good or we don't know why they're evil; they bad because they destroyed 7 planets and all that jazz. I get it. The point people are expressing is that the Empire is a tangible force. You can easily imagine what power they have, who they control, where they reach. Hell, we see Stormtroopers on Tatooine, which we know is as far as possible from the bright center of the galaxy. The FO is...not like that
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Dec 21, 2017 00:49
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AndyElusive posted:No one knew anything about the Emperor after ANH, other than that he apparently rules the Evil Galactic Empire and that he hates Senates. No answers were given in anything leading up to and including ESB other than us finding out that Vader considers him his master, wants to over throw him with Luke at his side and that he has a large hologram face. Sure, that kinda makes sense in isolation, but these movies aren't in isolation. If Ep9 ends with Kylo Ren taking over the galaxy and killing everyone except Finn, then in 5 years Finn is in charge of the Republic Order and Ren is forgotten and 56 year old Supreme Master Jarg'woth is revealed as having masterminded all the events of 6-9, but then Jarg'woth is killed by Ren's kid, it is fair to ask what the gently caress is going on, why should I care, who are these people and why does it matter if Ren's kid turns on this guy who is supposed to matter.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:51
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I finally saw the Star Wars. Most of the nerd quibble stuff didn't annoy me at all. The Marvel humor was humdrum but fine, Space Jesus Leia was fine (I was okay with all the Force power stuff), Space Monaco was fine, and the endless subversion of TFA was tiresome but nothing to screech about. I thought all the Skywalker/Rey/Kylo crap was excellent, most of the second-act b-crew shenanigans decidedly un-excellent but passable in a Star Wars animated series sort of way, and all the ships doing cool blasty space things was a-okay. I found the film's KOTOR 2 speculations interesting enough, even though Luke sells out in the end. Force sweeping was fine too, even if it felt more like something out of Star Wars Rebels than a coda to an epic film. Most of my issues are structural. The film is 40 minutes too long, and there are too many meandering plots. Normally I wouldn't be too bothered by over-plotting, but the way the story jumps between the "serious" Skywalker Island poo poo and the goofy Poe/Finn/Rose poo poo seems really haphazard tonally, and I found the differences in pacing between the two (or three?) plot threads to be incredibly jarring. It felt like they took a ten-episode miniseries, selected three different episodes and then edited them together. Finn/Rose is like the b-characters' one-off whimsical(ish) adventure episode, the Poe is the cool space battle episode, etc. The almost seventies sword and sorcery pacing of Skywalker Island really feels like a different film altogether. I get that SW is all about the episodic cliff-hanger serial thing, but two or more stirring adventures in one film leaves me feeling pretty maxed out. Also, other than Skywalker's kick rear end "duel", the whole final battle was just incredibly tiring after two overstuffed hours. At some point after LOTR the studios forgot economy in franchise storytelling and decided to start producing sprawling spectacle films with characters just hanging out. I would love a new era of 90-minute three-act storytelling, but I'm guessing being succinct provides fewer merchandising tie-in opps. What a shame. Love Rat fucked around with this message at 01:01 on Dec 21, 2017 |
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Dec 21, 2017 00:53
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On the way home today it occurred to me that Phasma maybe isn't a total waste of time: where Hux is a believer at the top of the fascist food chain, Phasma is at the hypernationalist bottom, wanting to root out and hurt traitors to the great cause. Not "there are heroes on both sides" level, but still, not the same personal agenda as Hux.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:55
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Yeah speaking of which, going on FN's choice of disguise fo apparently has a diverse group of officers including black men and asian women. So the white male supremacy subtext of the empire is absent in the fo.
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Dec 21, 2017 00:58
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I think it's pretty obvious that the FO aren't anything like the Galactic Empire outside of the shared visual motifs. They're just a large scale fringe fascist-like military organization. They're Space North Korea. The New Republic got royally hosed by the Order in TFA because no one in the Republic took them seriously and also because they refused to stop Leia from creating the Resistance in direct opposition to them.
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Dec 21, 2017 01:03
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PT6A posted:How it got established in the first place, after the events of RotJ, may be an interesting story, but it's irrelevant to episodes VII and VIII. Well, it would be irrelevant if Han, Leia, and Luke weren't principal characters. As-is we're presented with a pair of films that intend to continue the story of the previous six. How did this new villain fill the vacuum that our heroes left when they defeated the Empire? Why didn't they deal with Snoke or the First Order at any other point in the 30 intervening years? I see the problem as being this; Snoke's an Orientalist caricature. He's a looming, unknowable evil capable of tearing families apart and marshaling hordes of faceless others to no apparent end. But he's also weak, decadent, and easily supplanted. Having this caricature as the avatar of the Dark Side, is unsatisfying in a film that promotes the old fanon idea of "balance" in the force being between the light and the dark. What's the point of balance if half of it is EEEEVILL?
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Dec 21, 2017 01:04
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Mameluke posted:Well, it would be irrelevant if Han, Leia, and Luke weren't principal characters. As-is we're presented with a pair of films that intend to continue the story of the previous six. How did this new villain fill the vacuum that our heroes left when they defeated the Empire? Why didn't they deal with Snoke or the First Order at any other point in the 30 intervening years? Maybe Disney intends to parlay these gaps into Star Wars Standalone Films #12 through 14. I'm eagerly waiting Hux: the Early Years.
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Dec 21, 2017 01:07
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Mameluke posted:Well, it would be irrelevant if Han, Leia, and Luke weren't principal characters. As-is we're presented with a pair of films that intend to continue the story of the previous six. How did this new villain fill the vacuum that our heroes left when they defeated the Empire? Why didn't they deal with Snoke or the First Order at any other point in the 30 intervening years? Why didn’t who? I’m sure there will be 400 extended universe books explains the heroic failed raids on snokes base and it’s not like Luke sky walker was going to deal with it in the middle of his raid on the Death Star
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Dec 21, 2017 01:09
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Mameluke posted:I see the problem as being this; Snoke's an Orientalist caricature. No he's not really
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Dec 21, 2017 01:11
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AndyElusive posted:
North Korea is a country though, with an actually comprehensible policy. I think you're overstating what's been said about the Fo. If it's a military, then whose? One of the problems with episode 8 is that there are no clear stakes. It's about the survival of like 20 rebels who no one in the galaxy cares about and who are defined solely by their opposition to Fo, a group that's even less defined.
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Dec 21, 2017 01:13
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AndyElusive posted:I think it's pretty obvious that the FO aren't anything like the Galactic Empire outside of the shared visual motifs. I think that the analogy that was passed around after TFA was the FO was Space ISIS. Which is kind of apt, given that the Resistance is Space YPG and most of the galaxy either doesn't give a poo poo unless they're physically threatened, cowed by fear, or openly collaborating with the FO.
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Dec 21, 2017 01:17
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Sinding Johansson posted:North Korea is a country though, with an actually comprehensible policy. I think you're overstating what's been said about the Fo. If it's a military, then whose? I'd like to think they're right and left-wing extremists fighting a LARP war at the rest of the Republic has washed its hands of. In all seriousness though, the galactic stakes are not well defined (other than I guess they dirty bombed the Republican capital). Whatever one thinks of Rogue One, thems some stakes. Love Rat fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Dec 21, 2017 |
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Dec 21, 2017 01:20
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Sinding Johansson posted:North Korea is a country though, with an actually comprehensible policy. I think you're overstating what's been said about the Fo. If it's a military, then whose? The stakes are whether every single sympathetic character in the film gets murdered by space Nazis. Mameluke posted:Well, it would be irrelevant if Han, Leia, and Luke weren't principal characters. As-is we're presented with a pair of films that intend to continue the story of the previous six. How did this new villain fill the vacuum that our heroes left when they defeated the Empire? Why didn't they deal with Snoke or the First Order at any other point in the 30 intervening years? Your mistake is thinking Snoke is the main antagonist, which he is not. I agree that he could use some more context though but it's not a showstopper.
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Dec 21, 2017 01:21
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Young Freud posted:I think that the analogy that was passed around after TFA was the FO was Space ISIS. Which is kind of apt, given that the Resistance is Space YPG and most of the galaxy either doesn't give a poo poo unless they're physically threatened, cowed by fear, or openly collaborating with the FO. I was going to call them Space ISIS, but went for Space North Korea due to their lack of real religious fanaticism. Sinding Johansson posted:North Korea is a country though, with an actually comprehensible policy. I think you're overstating what's been said about the Fo. If it's a military, then whose? Well before the mid-point of TLJ it was Snokes. Now it's Kylo Rens military.
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Dec 21, 2017 01:29
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PT6A posted:We know roughly the same amounts about the Empire and First Order at the beginnings of the respective trilogies, you're just being stubborn if you refuse to acknowledge that. That notwithstanding, it doesn't matter. There is no compelling reason why we need to know anything more about the First Order than we already do. We know: We actually know a lot about the Empire from A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back! In ANH, their activities on Tatooine imply a far-reaching, bureaucratic authority. They can inspect every vessel that enters and leaves the planet. To avoid this kind of inspection is a crime, specifically smuggling. This alone is sufficient to establish the Empire as the rulers of the galaxy, and poor rulers at that since they kill Luke's family for basically no reason, strangle and torture senators and diplomats, oh and they blow up planets too. The Empire Strikes Back builds on that portrayal. They're lawless rulers, willing to work with assassins and crime bosses to get what they want. Even those who submit to their authority have their deals altered ("Pray I don't alter it any further!") ESB goes into more of the individual Imperial soldiers, explaining how they got their power. They serve at the pleasure of the Emperor. The ones in charge are the ones who have not been murdered by him or Darth Vader. We only ever see the First Order on their spaceships or after they blow up a cantina. From this, all we can gather is that they have a lot of spaceships and military hardware and they want take over the galaxy. This is sufficient provided we know something about the status quo that they're trying to disrupt. This is the point of the Shire in Lord of the Rings. We don't need to know a lot about Sauron and the orcs; their desire to mess up Hobbiton is enough. Unfortunately, we know literally nothing about the Republic. Having the Resistance separate from the Republic just confuses the issue. Why isn't the Republic invested in protecting its sovereignty? Having Leia be the face of the Republic would have done a lot of work here, but Abrams made the bizarre decision to not do this. That means that the First Order must present a big political threat (not just a military one) on its own, but it doesn't. Hux makes a big speech about the First Order, but it's hokey and boring and doesn't really say anything at all. The scariest thing about them is that they're run by immature children, which isn't frightening at all. How did Hux come to be in charge, anyway? Snoke likes him, I guess. Speaking of Snoke, his power appears to be overwhelming. He's able to corrupt Jedi from lightyears away. Even Luke is scared of him! So, where did he come from? How did he amass this much Force and military power in the time it took for Han and Leia to have a kid when he was invisible for the entire events of the OT? If his presence is to be relevant to characters that were around during the OT, there needs to be more explanation than "he's scary!" And now, there never will be, because he's loving dead. And LOL at the idea that people who aren't satisfied by the portrayal of the First Order and Snoke are being impatient. We are two thirds of the way through the trilogy and we still have no idea what the political situation is in the galaxy. Without that knowledge it's impossible to know the stakes of the conflict outside of its direct impact on the characters onscreen. Would all the child slaves in the Casino Night Zone be freed if the Resistance won? It's impossible to say.
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Dec 21, 2017 01:31
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Decius posted:Maybe, who knows yet? Nnnnno. PT explicitly fits into this concept, with the "prophecy" referenced by the Jedi being that Anakin was born of the force, to bring balance to the force. Which, y'know, he kind of does. The Jedi order was Light Side way out of balance. He killed them. Then the Emperor was Dark Side way out of balance. So he killed him. It's made clear in TLJ that Rey explicitly awoke in the Light Side as a balance to Kylo Ren's coming to power in the Dark Side. This is why she only sees herself when looking for her parents, regardless of who they were. "Where did I come from?" You came from the Force inside you is the answer. OT doesn't ever state or imply that the Force itself is good. The clearest explanations that we're given of it are from Obi-Wan ("The force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field, created by all living things. It surrounds us, and penetrates us - it binds the galaxy together.") and Yoda ("Life creates it. Makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminous beings are we. Not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you. You. Between you. Me. The tree. The rock. Everywhere. Yes. Even between... the land. And the ship.") None of which remotely contradicts anything shown in TLJ, and indeed reinforces it. Luke had a fairly imperfect understanding of it in the OT and seems to have gained a certain amount of philosophical perspective on it along with a heaping dose of nihilism since his new Jedi temple was destroyed.
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Dec 21, 2017 01:36
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That doesn't really explain what the light side of the force is supposed to be other than not the dark side. The jedi were never all that good even in the OT. Obiwan and Yoda try to trick Luke into abandoning his friends to die and committing patricide. When Luke declares himself he's a jedi, like his father before him, the thing to take away from that is that he isn't like his father at all. Luke was explicitly a new kind of jedi in RotJ which makes episode 8 super dumb.
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Dec 21, 2017 01:50
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