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Jewel Repetition posted:Good point. Although one problem I still have with Rey beating Kylo is that the dark side of the force is supposed to be more powerful than the light side (at least in combat, but also in general). That's why it's so seductive and why it's meaningful not to use it. No, it is not.
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Dec 18, 2015 06:27
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Jewel Repetition posted:It's definitely implied in the OT. Otherwise why would the dark side be seductive and obsessed with power? Why would anyone go to the dark side at all? Luke: Vader... Is the dark side stronger? Yoda: No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive. Also, Yoda holds his own against dark powers in the prequels.
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Dec 18, 2015 06:37
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Jewel Repetition posted:I am a fan of rhyming, it's just that there can be too much. How in the world would you resolve Rey's desire to reunite with her family otherwise? I guess you could just skate over the issue of who her parents were and why they left her behind and focus on her new adoptive family, but that seems like a really big aspect of her character to ignore. And if we do find out that her parents are both totally new characters, then what's the point of us finding out? We don't care about those people. No, Rey is Luke's daughter, and we'll learn more about who her mother is and what happened to her later on. For the guy who said it, I agree, there should be more politicking in this movie. e: Now that I think about it, maybe the insane fan theory that Rey's mom is the star of Rogue One might actually be right.
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Dec 18, 2015 06:43
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Soul Glo posted:I'm not seeing TFA until Sunday so I watched ESB last night instead. They fly to Bespin without their hyperdrive, which takes a long time. But yeah, it could maybe have used a line explaining things—perhaps Han telling Leia to get comfortable because they'll be in transit for a few weeks or months.
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Dec 18, 2015 16:06
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Bucswabe posted:I really. really enjoyed this. To me, it felt like almost any criticism of the prequels was completely eliminated in this film. The main one for me being the fact that I actually cared about every ship battle, character, and scene of people shooting blasters. My feeling after digesting it for a few hours is that the TFA team tried very hard and succeeded at rectifying issues with the prequels, but at the expense of some of the things that the prequels were great at. This film sorely misses George's talent for world-building.
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Dec 18, 2015 17:24
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Megasabin posted:I'm not sure it really works as a reboot per say, as it requires explicit knowledge of the originals. If you haven't seen the originals you would be confused right at the opening scrawl. And TFA makes a mess of establishing its own setting.
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Dec 18, 2015 18:07
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No.
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Dec 18, 2015 18:16
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teagone posted:I think I convinced myself that Rey is the daughter of Leia and Han, born sometime after Ben had turned to the dark side. I need to watch the movie like 5 or 6 more times to help confirm that notion. They almost certainly would have said something. It would be profoundly weird for her to go through this film and meet her father, brother, and mother, two of whom are strongly force-sensitive, and not have any of her family say a word to her. I think the timeline goes like this: Han and Leia have Ben shortly after ROTJ. Luke and his love interest have Rey 8-10 years later. Ben shows both strong force potential and some jealousy toward Rey, which is the "too much of Vader in him" that convinced Leia to send him to train with Luke. Ben is a teenager (14-16?) when he encounters Snoke, and Snoke corrupts him, telling him that Rey has stolen his heritage and that he can reclaim his grandfather's power by destroying Luke's academy. Luke and Rey escape. Luke leaves his young (age 4-8) daughter behind on Jakku to keep her hidden and seeks out the original Jedi temple.
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Dec 18, 2015 20:33
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teagone posted:Would a "I'm your sister!" reveal in an attempt to bring Ben back to the light be too much? Kylo Ren obsesses over heritage. He obviously already knows who Rey is, since he gets really upset when he finds out that BB-8 was spotted with a scavenger girl on Jakku. Given that, I don't think it makes any sense for Rey to be completely unrelated; if she were just some rando, then Kylo wouldn't care about her. And it's possible that she's his little sister, but then I think it's hard to see why he hates her so much. If Ben aspired to take on the family legacy, then why does a little sister threaten that? But the cousin angle makes Rey a huge threat to Ben's birthright. She's the heir not just of Anakin but of Luke himself, greatest Jedi in the galaxy. The Rey & Leia scene still makes sense if it's niece & aunt. There's a hint that Han might've suspected something, since Maz asks him, "Who's the girl?" right before we cut away. So if Leia had her suspicions as well, it's easier to see why she sent Luke's daughter to bring him back from exile instead of just going herself. Plus R2 only activates when Rey arrives at the Resistance base for the first time.
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Dec 18, 2015 21:07
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Ahahahahahahaha this is great. I'm stealing this. Wonderful. You do realize that the prequel Jedi are depicted as hypocritical and short-sighted on purpose, right?
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Dec 18, 2015 22:14
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Yes I did, but this is a great shorthand for it and draws a nice parallel that I hadn't noticed! Oh okay, I mistook your meaning then. Sometimes people use that sort of thing to snipe at the prequels, as though it's somehow wrong for a film to make one of its factions flawed in any way.
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Dec 18, 2015 22:18
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Thoughts on Rey's origins: I was thinking that Luke took Rey and left her on Jakku, but I've just been reminded of some other clues that got me thinking. Maz tells Rey that the people who left her on Jakku are never coming back, but someone else might—and Rey immediately jumps to "Luke." Also, the flashback shows younger Rey getting left with the junk dealer, who's not the kindly surrogate parent type. So I don't think it was Luke who put her there. When Kylo hears that a girl on Jakku has been spotted with BB-8, he rages. He has already jumped to the conclusion that Rey found the droid, which makes me think that not only did Kylo know of Rey before, he knew that she was on Jakku. So I suspect it was Kylo who took Rey when he attacked Luke's new academy. Even though he hates what Rey represents, he can't bring himself to kill someone in the exalted Skywalker bloodline. He abandons her on some godforsaken backwater instead.
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Dec 18, 2015 22:32
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Bongo Bill posted:The prequels used mostly practical sets. The one that blows my mind most is that the ethereal Kamino throne room was a miniature.
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Dec 18, 2015 23:47
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Zombies' Downfall posted:I can't deny that makes a lot of sense while simultaneously rolling my eyes at that line of argument because it feels like the gateway to a bunch of people saying this movie is utter garbage compared to the much smarter, more visually interesting, better directed prequels and that's an even more absurd narrative than the one about how the prequels are the worst films ever made Is it okay if I think that the prequels are good films that are smarter and better-plotted than this movie; that they have a distinctive visual style that's no better or worse; and that George got solid performances out of his actors, but sometimes (in TPM and AOTC) he squandered those performances by playing up classical archetypes at the expense of the character or vice versa? For example, much of Anakin's story in AOTC is intended to be a classical courtly romance where the gallant knight seeks to prove himself to the noble And Jar Jar has the opposite problem: he fills a perfectly fine archetype (the wise fool), but George got carried away with the character's gimmick. Meanwhile, I think this film was very fun, put together some awesome action scenes, and had engaging main characters. However, it had an unmemorable score, it missed out on the world-building that Star Wars usually does so well, and it mishandled minor characters like Phasma and Snoke. Zoran fucked around with this message at 02:34 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 02:25
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Zombies' Downfall posted:The end result are films that have a wildly inconsistent tone as the actors struggle to nail the loving weird dialogue and pin down their characters, the filmmakers struggle to balance trade disputes with family-friendly gags, and everybody is just trying to pull all the disparate stuff going on together. Can I ask where you think the films struggle with tonal consistency? The major example that jumps out to me is how the final battle in TPM is half silly and half grimly serious. Other than that, I felt that TPM was pretty light-hearted throughout but had a sort of nagging unease, which is pretty good for a film where our heroes appear to win but unwittingly put the bad guy in power. AOTC is entirely about the failings of the old Jedi order, and I think it strikes the right level of grimness while keeping a bit of banter and slapstick. ROTS makes a nice transition from bombast in the last glory days of the Republic to crushing pain and grief. The one time I noticed an actor really struggling to handle a character was with Natalie in AOTC, and I don't really blame her for that. But I'm also in that minority that doesn't mind Jake Lloyd in TPM, and I think pretty much all the politicking is well-handled, so maybe I'm a robot.
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Dec 19, 2015 03:38
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Gamerofthegame posted:Sadly apparently he really hasn't been able to do it for a while now. He's slated to reprise the Joker role in an animated adaptation of The Killing Joke, I thought? And he's the Joker in Arkham Knight.
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Dec 19, 2015 03:53
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This movie is the same whether Starkiller Base has a planet-destroying superweapon or not. It's totally divorced from what the main characters are doing.
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Dec 19, 2015 16:52
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OldSenileGuy posted:How old are Rey and Kylo Ren supposed to be? If they're supposed to be the same age plus or minus a year or two, wouldn't that contradict the theory that Luke hid child Rey on Jakku when Kylo Ren fell and killed Rey is confirmed to be 19. I'm not sure we know how old Ben is yet, but Adam Driver is ~9 years older than Daisy Ridley. If child Rey was left at age 5 after the attack, Ben could have been about 15 at the time.
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Dec 19, 2015 19:27
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"You have that power too" is in ROTJ, but it's a few lines before "The Force is strong in my family."Operant posted:I've rarely seen a movie in which the actual plot is so rushed, unoriginal, and weirdly lacking in stakes that is carried entirely by the new characters being really, really good. I god drat loved everything about the new cast, even Kylo Ren, who I thought I would hate. Agreed, except for Phasma, who not only gets chumped but also acts way out of character in her last scene.
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Dec 20, 2015 00:33
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I'm about to touch the third rail. Occasionally I read criticisms of the prequels that highlight the "I don't like sand" scene and say that it's a microcosm of everything wrong with those films: it looks pretty, but the dialogue is really awkward and Hayden's performance comes across as fumbling, like he doesn't know how to say his lines correctly. This is proof that George was just obsessed with CGI and effects and backstory and costumes, and because of that he forgot how to develop characters and how to direct his actors. But this scene is actually one of the finest romance scenes in the saga. It's an authentically human moment with (*gasp*) a believable bit of dialogue. quote:(Padmé has just been telling Anakin of an old boyfriend. She and Anakin arrive at the lake house by boat and walk up to the balcony.) Everything I just mentioned up above is true! The lines are awkward and Hayden plays it as though he doesn't really know how to say these things. But that's a character moment. Anakin tries to shrug off a moment of romantic jealousy with a weak joke, but in doing so he reveals his own vulnerability. He lets slip that his past on Tatooine still haunts him, and he also hints that he sees Padmé as a way of fixing his pain. We see that Anakin is bad at this—he's perhaps the worst smooth-talker in the galaxy—but he's still trying his best to put the moves on his crush. That's characterization and plot advancement and foreshadowing all in a single line. Natalie does a competent job here as well. She moves pretty smoothly from matter-of-fact but slightly wistful speech to a moment of entranced fixation, and then she snaps out of it suddenly. We also learn something about her character: for Padmé, Anakin's charm has nothing to do with his poise and everything to do with his earnestness. There is nothing at all wrong with this scene. It has purposeful writing, convincing performances, an appropriately beautiful setting, great costumes, good cinematography, and a masterful use of the musical score. That said, I still totally understand why some people hate it. An awful lot of OT fans really love the Han Solo character. They identify with (or aspire to be like, or just enjoy watching) the dashing rogue type, the stone-cold badass with a heart of gold who always has a snappy line and who's never vulnerable if he can help it. AOTC Anakin is essentially the polar opposite of Han Solo. Anakin wears his emotions right on his sleeve, without the least bit of subtlety. He's brutally honest at all times. He's also wildly insecure, though he covers it up with the occasional show of reckless bravado. Anakin has zero cynicism and possesses no regard for his own safety, a trait that's related to his lack of self-esteem. This scene really shoves in your face just how unlike Han he really is. He's profoundly uncool. So in this way, the "sand" scene does encapsulate what's wrong with the prequels. If what you love about Star Wars is seeing a charming anti-hero running across the galaxy spouting witty banter and getting wrapped up in crazy adventures with his friends, the prequel trilogy sucks. It has almost nothing to offer you, except maybe in the first thirty minutes of ROTS. Instead, all three of the main heroes are idealists, and it's actually really important for the story that there is no Han Solo Sr. around to keep them grounded.
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Dec 22, 2015 20:15
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CelticPredator posted:Anakin is a nice person who comes to really care about other people besides than himself. He starts off a little whiny and wanting more, but he eventually risks his life for his new friends. That makes him a hero. I watched The Phantom Menace.
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Dec 22, 2015 20:39
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CelticPredator posted:Yeah, Phantom Menace Anakin is fine. Sort of. Him and Attack of the Clones Anakin are completely different characters. Zoran posted:AOTC Anakin is essentially the polar opposite of Han Solo. Anakin wears his emotions right on his sleeve, without the least bit of subtlety. He's brutally honest at all times. He's also wildly insecure, though he covers it up with the occasional show of reckless bravado. Anakin has zero cynicism and possesses no regard for his own safety, a trait that's related to his lack of self-esteem. Everything here is true of TPM Anakin as well, though the flaws are more muted.
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Dec 22, 2015 20:43
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Bongo Bill posted:George Lucas is too skilled a visual storyteller to fail to convey the story to the audience, but because he is not similarly skilled as a screenwriter, he failed to provide the expected cues that the story they're seeing is actually the story they're "supposed" to hear. This is why you see people noticing that e.g. the Jedi are fools and hypocrites, but thinking that it's a problem with the movie instead of the point of it. This also comes up with Qui-Gon in TPM. He's terrifically funny, but only if you pick up on the split-second smug grin he gives when Padmé reveals herself to the Gungans. You're meant to understand that he was messing with handmaiden-Padmé every time he spoke to her, but it's easy to miss, and if you miss it then Qui-Gon just seems stoic and boring.
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Dec 22, 2015 21:11
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LinkesAuge posted:He is a little kid and you could argue that kids aren't real personalities (there is precedent in many human cultures for this view). —The Jedi Council, probably
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Dec 22, 2015 21:33
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turtlecrunch posted:But it did and it ended up not telling us anything at all that wasn't already covered by "Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father". It told us that Darth Vader wasn't simply seduced by his lust for Dark Side power. It told us that the petulance, the moral confusion, the self-doubt, and the attachment to his family we see from him in the original films were always a part of him from the beginning. It told us that Obi-Wan and Yoda weren't just misinformed about the possibility of turning away from evil; rather, they believed Vader couldn't be saved because of a combination of lifelong indoctrination and lived experience. It told us that Yoda wasn't always the wizened sage he appeared to be; Yoda acted the part in the prequels, but was always preoccupied with seeing what lies ahead, the very thing he eventually warns Luke against. It told us that Obi-Wan was indeed partly to blame for Anakin's fall, but only to the extent that all Jedi were: Obi-Wan and all the Jedi embraced a narrow-minded dogma that made them blind to real human needs, and even though Obi-Wan cared more for his apprentice's feelings than the other Jedi Masters did, he ultimately fell in line. It told us that an order of noble heroes was brought down by its own arrogance. It told us that democracy was subverted by engineered crises, corporate greed, and political factionalism. It told us of the dangers of fighting proxy wars where no one cares about the lives of the faceless soldiers. It told us how important it is to recognize the potential of "lesser" beings. It told us to pause and check that we are truly serving the cause of justice. It also told a bad fart joke.
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Dec 22, 2015 23:55
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greatn posted:Captain Tanaka. I promise I knew that from memory Panaka.  e: drat you Serf
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Jan 8, 2016 16:39
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Hat Thoughts posted:I dunno wtf problem ppl have with the sand thing, he's right about sand. It's poo poo Because it's a terrible pickup line, which is proof that Lucas had no idea what he was doing. Anakin is supposed to be a really cool and badass and awesome anti-hero. Right? Beeez posted:It's because people don't want it to be the obvious solution, really. Her being related to the Skywalkers makes the most sense with what we know about her(though every theory has some things that don't quite fit), but people think with the foreshadowing and the fact that most of the main characters are already related in some way, it would be too obvious. To me, though, Rey has to have some reason for being so special, and her being related to the Skywalkers would make the most thematic sense and would fit in the most with the fact that the main "saga" movies are supposed to be about the Skywalkers. Rey being Luke's daughter is great! It connects Rey to a very powerful legacy. It gives Luke some measure of accomplishment after ROTJ, so he's not a total failure, while making his reunion with Rey personally important and automatically investing him in her future success. And it gives the relationship between Rey and Kylo depth because as cousins, they have competing claims to the Skywalker inheritance—which plays out in a very memorable way on-screen.
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Jan 9, 2016 16:10
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hemale in pain posted:Do people really defend the awful romance stuff in attack of the clones. I thought everyone hated those embarrasing scenes. The romance in AOTC has issues because it strings together three major bits of progression (Anakin's anguished declaration of love at the fireplace and Padmé's rejection, comforting Anakin after he's distraught at losing his mother and confesses to mass murder, then Padmé admitting she loves Anakin when they're about to die) in a way that makes Padmé's character seem downright weird and inhuman. The problems have very little to do with the fact that Anakin is bad at playing Casanova. Honestly, the scenes where Anakin gets all huffy because someone has emasculated him are the funniest ones in the movie. G-III posted:While they sound awful to listen to the expose a lot about the characters I find interesting. Even the silly cut scenes involving anakin meeting padme's parents in which it's clear that Padme comes from a ivory tower liberal family. She herself goes on later about her charity work and it becomes more clear why Padme is drawn to anankin in the first place. Yeah, I think this is possibly the most sensible interpretation of what Padmé does in AOTC, but I think there wasn't enough of this part of her character communicated in the final film for it to make much sense. Phylodox posted:The romantic scenes in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith don't read as awkward, self-conscious teenagers being dorky. They read as a middle-aged man either trying to sound that way and failing or a middle-aged man trying to write grand, moving loves scenes and failing abysmally. You need to meet more teenagers.
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Jan 9, 2016 17:03
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Yaws posted:Anakin goes way past sounding awkward. He sounds like he's genuinely retarded or autistic. He sounds exactly like the kind of person who would spend ten whole years of his life rehearsing the big speech he's going to give to the girl he likes.
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Jan 9, 2016 17:25
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JonathonSpectre posted:My main problem with Rey being a Skywalker is it means Luke at some point deliberately abandoned his daughter to the living death of life as a scavenger on Jakku and I have a hard time seeing Our Luke doing something that awful to an innocent stranger, much less his own blood. I'm sure they can come up with something like, "Well, he knew that NO ONE would ever imagine someone stranding their child there in such a horrible place so Kylo Ren wouldn't come looking for her," etc. but still. Maz's line about the people who left Rey on Jakku never coming back (but someone else might—"Luke!") strongly suggests that Luke wasn't the one who left her there. If I had to bet, my money would be on Kylo—he kills Luke's students but can't bring himself to murder another descendant of Anakin Skywalker, so he takes her and abandons her on some wasteland world instead. He keeps this secret from Snoke. e: wow, beaten
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Jan 9, 2016 17:50
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Neurolimal posted:I'm a fan of this idea, that a young Kylo couldn't bring himself to kill a literal child, and instead dumped her on an obscure garbage planet and claimed he totally iced her. In the novelization, when Kylo talks to Snoke, he's pretty insistent that she's just a scavenger who randomly has great Force potential, nothing more. But obviously (even in the film) he knows her, or suspects he knows her, from somewhere. It seems pretty clear he's hiding who she is from Snoke.
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Jan 9, 2016 17:56
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Neurolimal posted:Both this and his reaction to Qui-Gon's death feel really out of place in the film, simply because it's an actual display of emotion that is absent in both the preceeding and succeeding moment (as the RLM review points out). It feels so strange in that there's actual signs of life to his character (that then go nowhere) Obi-Wan is consistently at his most charming and likable when he cuts loose, ignores the teachings of his order, and acts like a decent human being who loves his father and his son. He has great rapport with Anakin when they're out adventuring in the field and trusting each other, but he's terrible when he reverts to being The Good Jedi. This also makes him a giant hypocrite. The fact that he acts all stoic at Qui-Gon's funeral, when he's in the presence of the entire Jedi Council, reflects this.
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Jan 9, 2016 19:06
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Phylodox posted:Beyond a certain point they're older, married, and expecting a child, but the tone of their relationship doesn't reflect that. They still come off as stilted and unnatural. At no point does their love feel real or natural enough for me to get invested in the tragedy of their fate. I've always thought the "Ani, I'm pregnant" scene, at least, was one of the best in the whole saga. It's a really great portrayal of two young people in way over their heads. You can tell that both Anakin and Padmé are loving terrified of what a pregnancy means, but Anakin does the right thing and finally decides what's important to him. It's just a tender moment that Hayden and Natalie play marvelously. Squinty posted:The robots still shoot at the jedi, but only a little bit to make sure there's enough bullets around for them to bounce back but not so many that they might actually hit a jedi. It's done this way so that people can actually see everything that's going on and make sense of the action. This is one of George Lucas's greatest skills.
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Jan 9, 2016 22:43
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PT6A posted:Also, ESB probably suffered because people thought that sequels would suck, since that's true in 90% of cases. According to contemporary audiences, the sequel to Star Wars kind of did suck. It still made a lot of money, though.
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Jan 10, 2016 03:12
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greatn posted:Well the resistance construct a giant lightsaber on their base to deflect the next Death Star weapon back at them? This is so ludicrous I almost want to see it happen.
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Jan 11, 2016 18:59
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Lord Krangdar posted:Of course they're all idiots, to some extent, and there's a certain farcical nature to the whole tragedy. Another example is how the Jedi sent Anakin to spy on Palpatine, knowing that they were friends, but then later in the film we see the Jedi temple had access to holographic security cameras in chambers. Its a comedy of errors! (not that this is not the same thing as 'bad on purpose', lest we get into all that again) The camera footage isn't of Palpatine's chambers. It's still set at the temple, where Palpatine has arrived to congratulate Anakin on how awesome he is.
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Jan 12, 2016 01:48
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Lord Krangdar posted:That makes more sense in a way, but doesn't seem to fit how I remember the timeline of events. Because isn't Palpatine right back at his chambers for his next scene, the big fight with Yoda? Or is that much later? It's not as though Yoda and Obi-Wan got to the temple right after Anakin killed everyone there. The massacre happened in the evening, but they arrived there in the middle of the day.
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Jan 12, 2016 02:15
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Y Kant Ozma Diet posted:Why are all the rooms in the PT so barren? It's like they just moved in. It's part of the aesthetic of Coruscant. It suggests grace and harmony, but in a way that's empty and unreal. Kamino is similar, but other locations like Tatooine, Geonosis, and Mustafar are much more cluttered and lived-in.
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Jan 12, 2016 02:36
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I'm pretty sure there are at least two years between age zero and age nine?
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Jan 12, 2016 22:56
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Ersatz posted:What makes you sure that they "feel" the pain that they're programmed to avoid? What makes you sure that you feel the pain you're programmed to avoid?
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Jan 13, 2016 06:45
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