|
skasion posted:Yes, it is okay for different movies in a series to have different villains, as well as the overarching villain of all three, Palpatine. Your complaint that the minor villains are in the event wasted potential is one that I’ve already made in this thread, and has nothing at all to do with the post you’re responding to, in which I favorably compared the individual prequels to TFA for coherence by noting that there are no points in them where it’s obvious that the plot was made up in post.
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 22:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 19:22 |
|
|
She's even over-packaged in an eye-catching wrapper.
|
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 22:38
|
|
|
That Maul is "wasted" is the joke. He's a cool scary demon Sheev sends out to die like a punk while he glad-hands his way to world domination. The obvious enemy falls while the phantom menace thrives.
|
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 22:44
|
|
|
sassassin posted:That Maul is "wasted" is the joke. He's a cool scary demon Sheev sends out to die like a punk while he glad-hands his way to world domination. The obvious enemy falls while the phantom menace thrives. He’d work better if we saw more of him, which is also sort of true for Grievous and definitely true of Dooku. I’m not saying Maul needed more depth or a tragic backstory or whatever, but he’s just underused. Before the big duel he’s onscreen for maybe a minute or two in the whole movie.
|
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 22:53
|
|
|
the true apprentice was drunk wushu jar jar all along
|
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 22:55
|
|
|
Fartbox posted:I didn't really like TLJ either but it does surprise me it got a lot more flak than TFA, which was just derivative garbage. Nothing in that movie makes sense most of these issues you identify are actually problems with TLJ, not TFA TFA doesn't suggest that the Republic doesn't have a military, and iirc makes a pretty clear distinction between the (unseen) bulk of the Republic's forces and Leia's much smaller group of hardliners, nor does it actually show/tell you the Republic got wiped out, nor does it imply the First Order actually has unlimited resources in TFA the First Order is a rump state of the Empire that still has a sizable military (which makes total sense) but is in what appears to have been a years-long shaky détente with the Republic (suggesting military parity, or an edge to the Republic blunted by war-weariness) they're portrayed as expending significant resources to build a new super-weapon that is then used to launch a sneak attack on what is apparently the Republic's center of government and a few population centers we don't see the Republic's government/military forces/etc., b/c the movie is focused on the actions of Leia's paramilitary group as they work to shut down the super-weapon in the immediate aftermath of nuking Space-D.C. at the conclusion of the movie we really know nothing about the political/military situation in the Republic either before or after the nu-death-star blew some planets up, but conversely there is no reason to assume the military forces of the Republic aren't a potential match for the FO if rallied (something that could be done by, say, Leia now that she's been publicly vindicated) at that point the films could have pivoted very easily to, say, more interesting politicking between various regional/factional powers within (and without!) the decapitated/disorganized Republic as it struggles to deal with a unified and expansionist First Order - there were a lot of possibilities, and having the Republic's political/military situation (and the Resistance's relation to the former) kept ultra-vague meant the creator of the next film(s) ostensibly had great freedom in deciding what the shape of the conflict might look like (including more esoteric possibilities like having the FO be something of a paper tiger and the whole thing part of a conspiracy of force-users Snoke is a member of/etc.) TLJ took that relative openness and decided, no, the First Order really is The Empire version 2.0, and quickly establishes that they do indeed have infinite resources, the Republic was actually defeated/didn't really have any forces, and the FO has successfully invaded the entire galaxy simultaneously, and all that's left opposing them (in a galactic military conflict!) is a single tiny Resistance fleet with cartoonishly incompetent political and military leadership (including, or even especially Leia) - it is a profoundly bad movie that is genuinely hackish on a level that surpasses TFA (despite TFA being, y'know, a loving flawed remake of A New Hope) LGD fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Nov 28, 2019 |
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 23:12
|
|
|
I think I got too old for all these star wars.
|
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 23:44
|
|
|
Intensely weird that 3 star wars threads had independent essentially simultaneous correct TLJ takedown posts. As we get closer to the Event the posting singularity is approaching
|
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 23:47
|
|
|
Just Chamber posted:It's pretty bad when your Boba Fett stand in is a worse character than Jango Jango wins just because of his comfy as gently caress looking casual wear. Sure he's basically a non-entity, maybe a good dad despite dealing drugs, but like, those clothes.
|
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 23:52
|
|
|
If you haven't seen the Jango-Obi bass battle, please treat yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utFRqsT61-k
|
|
#
?
Nov 27, 2019 23:56
|
|
|
Owlbear Camus posted:Grievous could have been cyborg Maul, who would at least have some stakes in fighting Obi Wan, even if it's just shallow revenge. Look at that, in a post that probably took you 10 seconds to write you've already spent more time thinking about how to build a cohesive narrative for the prequels than George Lucas did skasion posted:Yes, it is okay for different movies in a series to have different villains, as well as the overarching villain of all three, Palpatine. Your complaint that the minor villains are in the event wasted potential is one that I’ve already made in this thread, and has nothing at all to do with the post you’re responding to, in which I favorably compared the individual prequels to TFA for coherence by noting that there are no points in them where it’s obvious that the plot was made up in post. Do you not understand what "coherence" means? These figures play no role in the story. Introducing villains who have no reason to be in the movie is incoherent! Like imagine if this other poster's idea was what came to pass. Darth Maul could have been a character fueled by revenge in the third movie, maybe he compromises some other plan so that he can chase after Obi-Wan Kenobi in ROTS, unlike General Grievous whose actions in that movie are completely inexplicable. There's no coherence to the Kenobi vs Grievous scene at all, nothing in it makes any sense, it's just supposed to be a brightly-colored action scene to gawk at. "Coherence" is one of the words that cannot be used to accurately describe the prequels. They are an incoherent mess.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 00:45
|
|
|
But they do play roles in the story. They’re all different tools that Palpatine exploits to bring down the Jedi. Maul is a single-minded evil thug, a real threat to any individual Jedi but ultimately a foe that the order can defeat without going out of their way. He’s fierce and violent but that’s it: when the Jedi kill him, it lets them know that their enemies are out there but it leaves them none the wiser about what to expect from them. This is Palpatine’s way of making the Jedi doubt and fear. Because they’re on the lookout for more demonic Sith warriors attacking them with swords, they‘re wrong-footed and don’t consider that a Sith Lord might just be an unctuous politico. Dooku is very different. He’s a former Jedi and other Jedi expect nobility and restraint from him. They resist the idea that he could really be a Sith until it’s rubbed in their faces that he is. They think he’s just a misguided idealist, and one can see how he could project this image, but instead he’s a complete cynic manipulating his allies and enemies alike to start an aggressive war against him and drive the republic into militarism and absolutism. He’s the one who really needed more screen time, because he’s got the makings of an excellent character. But the only scene where he really gets to shine is his visit to Kenobi’s prison cell, and his backstory mostly got slashed away in the edit. Too bad. Grievous is very different again: he’s no Sith, but a Jedi killer. The Jedi hate him, they’re disgusted with him and want him dead. He’s a general, an opponent for the Jedi to war against. Like Maul, he’s violent and obviously evil, but unlike Maul, he’s a coward who never fights fair if he can run away instead — because his purpose is not really to threaten Jedi but to drag out the war. The Jedi single-mindedly chase after him like it will change anything to kill him, instead of realizing that they’re about to get purged.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 01:03
|
|
|
Owlbear Camus posted:If you haven't seen the Jango-Obi bass battle, please treat yourself: That, and loving Obi-Wan getting clean kill me every time. Also cannot see that Baby Yoda without hearing Creepio singing.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 01:19
|
|
|
skasion posted:But they do play roles in the story. They’re all different tools that Palpatine exploits to bring down the Jedi. Maul - None of what you wrote motivates his presence in the story. What is Maul doing in Tattooine? He accomplishes nothing while he's there. What is Maul doing on Naboo? He shows up just to challenge and fight the Jedi, which is not something that advances the story or Palpatine's plans. Said plans are also supposed to be clandestine; sending a Sith to fight the Jedi some 15-20 years before he kicks off the clone wars is completely pointless and reveals more than necessary to them. And then Palpatine apparently does nothing in those following years, further illustrating how pointless TPM is. Dooku - Dooku should have been the villain in the first movie, as the leader of the trade federation who eventually is the de facto leader of the "rebellion" against the Republic. Or better yet, a heavily rewritten Clone Wars should have been the first prequel movie, because TPM is a complete waste of time. The reveal that he's actually a sith would have been really great if he had been shown making impassioned speeches about the tyranny of the Republic or something, but he doesn't seem to have much of a public-facing role. His relation to Palpatine and his past are also not clear. As you accurately point out, he really needed some backstory. And everyone in the movie seemed to suspect that Dooku is a bad guy as soon as they met him, so there's not much to your theory that he's able to manipulate and play the Republic, because that's not shown at all. TCW sucks rear end and could have been way better if Dooku was given something important to do in it, as he had the greatest potential to be important to the story but that potential is completely squandered. Grievous - This character is pure spectacle. It'd be fine to have a character like that if not for the fact that he's supposedly such an important leading figure that the Jedi believe that removing him will quash the rebellion, which is their stated reason for pursuing him. So he's apparently a strategic genius, but all we're shown is that he spends all of his time fighting Jedi for fun. Grievous would have been better-off as just a Jedi Assassin, leaving Dooku to be the strategic genius leading the rebellion. And then Anakin, not Obi-Wan, should have pursued and killed him, and perhaps Palpatine could have orchestrated an ambiguous moral choice to make Anakin question the Jedi teachings. But instead, in ROTS we kill off Dooku immediately and Obi-Wan acts completely out of character in a drawn-out chase sequence so that he can make a quippy callback to ANH. What a waste. Anyway, the point is that Grievous is ill-defined and is given conflicting motivations that don't make sense, or put in another way, this movie is an incoherent mess.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 03:21
|
|
|
QuarkJets posted:Maul - None of what you wrote motivates his presence in the story. What is Maul doing in Tattooine? He accomplishes nothing while he's there. What is Maul doing on Naboo? He shows up just to challenge and fight the Jedi, which is not something that advances the story or Palpatine's plans. Said plans are also supposed to be clandestine; sending a Sith to fight the Jedi some 15-20 years before he kicks off the clone wars is completely pointless and reveals more than necessary to them. And then Palpatine apparently does nothing in those following years, further illustrating how pointless TPM is. Maul’s job is to find the Jedi and the Queen, kill the Jedi and make the queen sign the treaty. He’s on Tatooine to find them. He finds them but they escape in the nick of time. He follows them to Coruscant and then back to Naboo. Sidious doesn’t care that the existence of the Sith is no longer secret: he WANTS it to be revealed because his purpose is to trick the Jedi into losing their moral authority by having them start a galactic war, which is much easier if you can use the Jedi’s ancient enemy, the Sith, as a boogeyman. He didn’t intend (as far as we can tell) to get Maul killed in the process, but it doesn’t really matter to him if Maul dies either: the whole point of the Naboo invasion/genocide conspiracy he cooked up was to get him elected Chancellor so he could foment a big war. QuarkJets posted:Dooku - Dooku should have been the villain in the first movie, as the leader of the trade federation who eventually is the de facto leader of the "rebellion" against the Republic. Or better yet, a heavily rewritten Clone Wars should have been the first prequel movie, because TPM is a complete waste of time. The reveal that he's actually a sith would have been really great if he had been shown making impassioned speeches about the tyranny of the Republic or something, but he doesn't seem to have much of a public-facing role. His relation to Palpatine and his past are also not clear. As you accurately point out, he really needed some backstory. And everyone in the movie seemed to suspect that Dooku is a bad guy as soon as they met him, so there's not much to your theory that he's able to manipulate and play both sides. TCW sucks rear end and could have been way better if Dooku was given something important to do in it, as he had the greatest potential to be important to the story but that potential is completely squandered. I think a less drastic change would have been to just...regularly check in with Dooku throughout AOTC, the way that we regularly check in with the villains in every other Star Wars movie. AOTC is structured as a murder mystery where Detective Ben’s on the case and only at the end does he find Dooku was really a Sith, but I don’t think this was a convincing reason to try and keep this fact from the audience. Dooku is playing both sides though, or rather Sidious is playing both sides through him. Padme immediately guesses that he’s behind for the assassination attempt , but the Jedi shoot her down completely. “Oh he was a Jedi, he’s not that bad.” “He’s an idealist.” Then we meet him while he’s signing on megacorporations to start an open war against the government. It’s whiplash and it’s because of another deleted scene. In the script instead of the stupid action scene in the droid foundry, Padme just walks into Dooku’s office on Geonosis and tries to negotiate with him for Obi-Wan’s release, branching out into a big argument about the legitimacy of his cause. THEN he turns them over for execution and we get the big reveal that he’s a sith. I recommend reading this scene if you also think Dooku got underdone. It probably would have been the heftiest piece of conversation of any of the prequels so it’s not hard to see why Lucas replaced it with CG mayhem, but I think it was a really big miss. QuarkJets posted:Grievous - This character is pure spectacle. It'd be fine to have a character like that if not for the fact that he's supposedly such an important leading figure that the Jedi believe that removing him will quash the rebellion, which is their stated reason for pursuing him. So he's apparently a strategic genius, but all we're shown is that he spends all of his time fighting Jedi for fun. Grievous would have been better-off as just a Jedi Assassin, leaving Dooku to be the strategic genius leading the rebellion. And then Anakin, not Obi-Wan, should have pursued and killed him, and perhaps Palpatine could have orchestrated an ambiguous moral choice to make Anakin question the Jedi teachings. But instead, in ROTS we kill off Dooku immediately and Obi-Wan acts completely out of character in a drawn-out chase sequence so that he can make a quippy callback to ANH. What a waste. Anyway, the point is that Grievous is ill-defined and is given conflicting motivations that don't make sense, or put in another way, this movie is an incoherent mess. The point of Grievous is that he’s not actually important at all, just like the separatist cause wasn’t important at all and the separatist leaders were all Palpatine’s dupes who he callously kills off as soon as he no longer needs them. The Jedi THINK he’s important because he kills them. But he’s irrelevant. He’s not a strategic genius and no one ever suggests that he is. Sidious and Dooku (and really only Sidious) are calling the shots, not him. The opening crawl calls him “fiendish”, which is opening-crawl-ese for “rear end in a top hat”. He’s a coward and a patsy and Palpatine uses him as bait for the Jedi. Even his visual design reinforces this: he seems like a scary intimidating skeletal droid on the outside, but inside him is a gross, squishy bag of guts. His only discernible motivations are “I hate Jedi!” and “yes, Lord Sidious”. He’s an uncomplicated villain who the real villain used as a smokescreen to keep the Jedi off indulging their worst selves and fighting the war after Dooku was dead.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 03:56
|
|
|
I still remember leaving the theatre after TLJ. The threatre leaving was basically silent, like people leaving a funeral service. I didnt talk to my friend who was with me until we sat down at a restaurant for much needed beer. Thing is TFA despite its flaws was still a lot of fun but TLJ was shocking. I have seen a lot of poo poo movies but never anything as shockingly awful as TLJ.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 04:13
|
|
|
8 has a powerful “beat you into submission with stupidity” effect due to being so stupid and feeling so much longer than it actually is. For people who don’t give a poo poo this actually has a positive impact on the reception since they accept the many early signals to turn brain off and just enjoy the pretty good visuals. But if you don’t go along I can definitely see coming out feeling concussed
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 04:23
|
|
|
I thought TLJ was gonna end like three times before it actually did.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 05:17
|
|
|
Knives Out was so good so now I actually want to see TLJ!!
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 05:24
|
|
|
Pick posted:Knives Out was so good so now I actually want to see TLJ!! TLJ pretty much has the inverse effect re: the rest of his work
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 05:30
|
|
|
TLJ wasn't a movie, it was an improvised franchise sabotage explosive device
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 05:37
|
|
|
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/rian-johnson-knives-out-review this is review of Knives Out! is kind of rambling and chirpy in general, but I'm posting bc of the take on TLJ: 
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 17:15
|
|
|
It's so hilarious that RLM predicted the time travel poo poo/Palpatine coming back so accurately, RoS is going to be soooo stupid and bad, it's going to be hilarious and great. If only for ol' Palpy, but he really should be chewing even more scenery than he did in the prequels.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 17:36
|
|
|
Justin Credible posted:It's so hilarious that RLM predicted the time travel poo poo/Palpatine coming back so accurately, RoS is going to be soooo stupid and bad, it's going to be hilarious and great. If only for ol' Palpy, but he really should be chewing even more scenery than he did in the prequels. I'm pretty sure I predicted the (then unnamed) third movie in the trilogy to be a ROTJ remake after walking out of TFA. Anyone have a link to the previous Star Wars thread?
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 18:04
|
|
|
It would be better if it turns out to be Snoke pretending to be the emperor, because it would be y'know something, as opposed to what he has currently done which is nothing.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 18:04
|
|
Cat Army
|
dudeness posted:It would be better if it turns out to be Snoke pretending to be the emperor, because it would be y'know something, as opposed to what he has currently done which is nothing. Ian McDiarmid being in this thing in some capacity is the only thing that can make part of the movie watchable as youtube clips.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 18:09
|
|
|
Burns posted:I still remember leaving the theatre after TLJ. The threatre leaving was basically silent, like people leaving a funeral service. I didnt talk to my friend who was with me until we sat down at a restaurant for much needed beer. Thing is TFA despite its flaws was still a lot of fun but TLJ was shocking. I have seen a lot of poo poo movies but never anything as shockingly awful as TLJ. You're just dorks. It was mostly just a dull movie and there are thousands worse than it
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 18:31
|
|
|
Skywalkers. Rise Up.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 18:48
|
|
|
Would the real Skywalker please rise up
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 20:11
|
|
|
Zzulu posted:You're just dorks. It was mostly just a dull movie and there are thousands worse than it Thats sort of the thing. After TFA and Rouge One youd think there was a pattern set of decent, action filled adventure movies.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 20:12
|
|
|
Zzulu posted:You're just dorks. It was mostly just a dull movie and there are thousands worse than it
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 20:16
|
|
|
Zzulu posted:You're just dorks. It was mostly just a dull movie and there are thousands worse than it
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 20:24
|
|
|
thousands of worse movies didn't do damage to disney's potential revenue in the hundreds of millions though, and for that it should be lauded and celebrated
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 20:53
|
|
|
lol at calling people dorks in a thread dedicated to Star Wars. Also people can think a film is poo poo and know it isn't the worst movie ever made.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 20:59
|
|
|
Maybe disney's plan was to kill toys'r'us with TLJ because didnt they go into bankruptcy a few months after?
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 21:00
|
|
|
Nah Toys R Us was killed by something more insidious: a private rquity firm coming in and gutting them like Jawas leaving only a husk.
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 21:12
|
|
|
Zzulu posted:You're just dorks. It was mostly just a dull movie and there are thousands worse than it
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 21:34
|
|
|
The Protagonist posted:thousands of worse movies didn't do damage to disney's potential revenue in the hundreds of millions though, and for that it should be lauded and celebrated I don't think it's just that one movie that did that though, almost all of the Disney era of Star Wars has been mediocre Like even on the video games side of things EA is doing almost nothing with the license. At least Marvel made some cool comics
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 21:47
|
|
|
Isn't the new game supposed to be good?
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 21:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 19:22 |
|
|
"How dare they" I whispered aloud when Luke threw his lightsaber away. "This is a travesty. I am shocked at what I'm seeing here."
|
|
#
?
Nov 28, 2019 21:51
|
|