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I just want to mention, for the record, that the Star Wars prequels are good too.
Bongo Bill fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Dec 14, 2015 |
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Dec 14, 2015 07:45
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:26 |
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I expect that Episode VII will "play it safe" in the same sense that Episode IV did, e.g. it's setting up a false moral clarity for its sequels to subvert.
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Dec 14, 2015 19:47
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Lawrence Kasdan's involvement is the chief reason why optimism is warranted, I think.
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Dec 14, 2015 20:10
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spacetoaster posted:This bothered me too. But he just helped a sith lord kill a master jedi. Probably as rock bottom as rock bottom can get. At that point, all he has left is the belief that he can still salvage the situation by going along with Sidious until he learns what he needs to learn, then killing him, taking over the galaxy, and establishing a benevolent dictatorship free of Jedi. Rock bottom is when he thinks he hosed it up by killing his wife. And only when he discovers Luke does he again entertain the possibility of atonement. (Which he gets, but not in the way he expected.)
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Dec 14, 2015 20:30
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Zoran posted:She says, "To be angry is to be human." She's rationalizing for him. You might say her faith in her friends is her weakness.
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Dec 14, 2015 20:53
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Doing acrobatic flip jumps all the time while fighting looks cool, sorry prequel haters.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:32
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Qui-Gon acts wise but speaks foolish. He parrots Jedi Order dogma but trusts his instincts and hears the will of the Force. He does his job, but when the situation goes off the rails, he starts doing the right thing instead. Keep this in mind.
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Dec 14, 2015 22:21
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Without the Jedi repressing him and his attachments, Anakin has no reason to hate them, and one less way to rationalize doing what he knows to be wrong.
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Dec 14, 2015 22:24
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AlternateAccount posted:Oh my god, I forgot the awful Greg Proops bullshit. Actually, it's good. Embrace cheese.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:11
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AlternateAccount posted:Contrarianism is not an ethos. I don't know why CD insists that it is. actually it is But, I think many people would enjoy the prequels better if they dispensed with their incorrect ideas about what Star Wars is.
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Dec 15, 2015 19:23
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:What's the name of the droid that looks like a trash can from a fast food joint that gets tortured in Jabba's palace? That droid owns. That same droid was in the sand crawler. Poor dude has led a harsh life.
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Dec 15, 2015 20:48
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Abu Dave posted:Does anyone put any real stock in that Jar Jar is the mastermind/puppetmaster theory cuz lol It's a good joke/meme, but the post that proposed it was distressingly sincere.
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Dec 15, 2015 22:10
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It's going to be a pretty darn good movie, if you'll pardon my language.
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Dec 15, 2015 22:56
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The actual mystery is this: what motivates R2 to go above and beyond his programming, risking himself to help these foolish humans who treat him like garbage? A doubly important question because R2-D2 is free. Unlike C-3PO, he is never subjected to having his memory erased. Occasionally he is captured and detained by enemies, but no "owner" ever manages to hold him. He runs away from the Lars farm and smuggles weapons into Jabba's palace (where, as before, he is instrumental in Luke's plan to spring Leia from her imprisonment). C-3PO describes him as "rather eccentric" which is a characteristically polite way of describing his comfort with doing as he pleases regardless of anybody else's wishes. He consistently acts to rescue others. He's not just a supporter of the rebellion - he's a founding member. The reading where the prequels follow the originals causally suggests the folly of this course is action, as the reinstatement of the Republic means he goes back to being an enslaved repair technician who lives in a closet and gets sacrificed to enemy gunfire so a yacht can travel unimpeded, living only for the praise of a child queen. On the other hand, he is implied to be the witness and narrator of the entire saga, suggesting he has wisdom where others have foolishness, as he alone can see the full breadth of each tributary action. Maybe he is enlightened.
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Dec 16, 2015 18:09
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The EU is extinct. Its fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that remains of that religion. From my point of view, the EU is evil.
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Dec 16, 2015 18:23
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Fred Breakfast posted:The problem is that Anakin isn't supposed to be yet another 9-year-old kid. He's the chosen one, and he's eventually gonna be Darth Vader. You need more gravitas in your character than that if he's gonna be a child of destiny, and that's true for any story, not just star wars. As always, the problem is wanting a different story to be told. It is significant that Darth Vader is only cool because of his James Earl Jones voice modulator.
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Dec 16, 2015 20:23
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Fred Breakfast posted:Yeah, heaven forbid the audience actually ask for a good story. Jesus Christ that is the dumbest loving argument.... It's more productive to discuss the film that's in the projector than the film that's in your imagination.
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Dec 16, 2015 20:30
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Fred Breakfast posted:Okay: "Execution" is the free space in prequel criticism bingo, and the rest of this post still just means that you were told a different story than the one you were expecting.
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Dec 16, 2015 20:51
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I'm just saying that the word "execution" by itself is not a convincing argument or useful summary, despite how often it is used verbatim.
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Dec 16, 2015 21:11
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It would be appropriate for a Star Wars movie to quote Star Wars extensively, especially the first of a trilogy whose sequels will be directed by others. Star Wars repeats itself.
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Dec 16, 2015 22:34
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Finn is R2-D2.
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Dec 18, 2015 07:46
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Kylo Ren is trying so hard to be Darth Vader that he is squandering his natural abilities. He's a telepath of unparalleled subtlety and he can freeze a blaster bolt in midair, but he tries to swordfight instead and (partly because of his wounds) gets his rear end kicked by an amateur. He doesn't even need the mask. Fans were disappointed that Anakin Skywalker wasn't cool like Darth Vader. But now his grandson is trying to be cool like Darth Vader, and failing, because nobody can be as cool as Darth Vader. Even Darth Vader is only cool because you can't see his pain in his face or hear it in his voice. Kylo Ren has forged for himself the same kind of chains that his grandfather was forced into. I got the impression that he could just tell Snoke to gently caress off if he wanted to. Really interested to learn what Snoke's deal is. This is a movie that will become more interesting in retrospect, just like all of its predecessors.
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Dec 18, 2015 08:43
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The prequels, symbolically as well as literally, were what was in between the original trilogy and these sequels. The failure of love and the corruption of noble ideals may have literally happened over 50 years prior, but they also happened about ten years ago. Luke witnessed the recurrence of the tragic cycle, witnessed the Jedi incubating the seeds of their own destruction. And that's why he secluded himself. In this "trilogy of trilogies" structure, the third part consists of the Middle Way that reconciles the simplicity of the first part and its refutation by the second part. And the first part is, itself, simple. We can still believe, at the end of 2015, that the reason Kylo Ren helped the First Order hunt down the last of the Jedi Knights and betrayed and murdered somebody's father is merely because he was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. But anybody who's seen Star Wars before knows that's false. It's even exactly what Star Wars is about.
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Dec 18, 2015 09:00
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teagone posted:Though, can someone confirm this for me... The backstory goes something like this: Ben Solo is sent away from home to train with Luke Skywalker, who has other pupils at the time. At some point, he comes under the influence of Supreme Leader Snoke, who persuades him to renounce his family and join the First Order. He betrays and murders the other Jedi and helps the First Order hunt down the last of them, except for Luke, who goes into exile. This whole thing is so shocking to Han and Leia that they separate.
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Dec 18, 2015 09:04
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Jewel Repetition posted:Well we're going to learn more about Kylo's motivations in the second movie probably. But I do have a feeling that yes, it will be more or less because he was seduced by the dark side of the force. Anakin Skywalker was not seduced by the dark side of the Force. He had, instead, actual, non-abstract motivation for his infamous crimes. So it is with his grandson.
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Dec 18, 2015 09:13
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This movie gets the prequels. The prequels are Kylo Ren's backstory as well as Darth Vader's. ANH (TFA) tells us that Darth Vader (Kylo Ren) was seduced by the Dark Side and helped the Empire (First Order) wipe out the last of the Jedi. The prequels tell us that actually, it's not that simple, and he had a less abstract motive for his infamous crimes. Remember this fact! ESB challenged ANH: the villain actually used to be the hero. RotJ challenged ESB: the villain can be redeemed. The prequels challenged the originals: it's inevitable that the villain will fall in the same way. TFA begins with the aftermath of RotS (which is why it seems so similar to ANH; it's an alt-sequel with the characters switched around, much like RotJ showed another way the end of ANH could have played out), but it's preparing its successors to challenge the prequels by disassembling and solving the dilemma of Darth Vader's inevitability. Adam Driver was channeling Hayden Christiansen in a big way. He's a synthesis of Anakin and Vader, driving home that they were the same character and the man beneath the mask was the truer performance than James Earl Jones'.
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Dec 18, 2015 19:31
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The prequels used mostly practical sets.
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Dec 18, 2015 23:45
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teagone posted:So who do we blame for them mostly looking like poo poo? The DP? or George? Both? ILM? The Phantom Menace and Revenge of the Sith both look really good. Attack of the Clones used early low-resolution digital cameras (it was the first feature film shot digitally), and as a result the digital compositing has artifacts that later filmmakers would be able to compensate for using higher-quality source material and refined versions of the techniques ILM developed for that film. It also made a few CGI goofs, such as using amateur mocap actors for the clone troopers instead of actual soldiers like its sequel. It's more likely that you dislike the generally well-realized aesthetic of that trilogy, where props were constructed with a smooth and bright style, and the shots were lit evenly and framed at a moderate distance like a stage rather than up-close and high-contrast. The result of this colorful, stately design was to make physical effects that looked less "real" than the computer-generated ones, a highly significant decision in a movie about deception and illusion.
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Dec 18, 2015 23:59
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kiimo posted:We made it two days before we got back to discussing the prequels. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the sequel to Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.
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Dec 19, 2015 00:42
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Bail could've been that character. He was doing the Lando thing quite a bit when he was hastily assembling a rebellion at the end of the last one. But, alas, he was not.
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Dec 19, 2015 03:37
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Lord Krangdar posted:Were there any direct references to anything from the prequels? I didn't catch any. The plot does not, but it is still the sequel to Revenge of the Sith. Specifically, you won't understand Kylo Ren if you don't understand Anakin.
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Dec 19, 2015 06:14
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Rageaholic Monkey posted:Yeah, that's more what I was leaning towards myself, but it seems strange that an alien is the leader of this human army, especially if he's a Sith lord that's trying to resurrect the Sith or whatever. Maybe that's why he only communicates directly with Hux and Kylo.
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Dec 19, 2015 06:20
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The Glumslinger posted:Oh man, I just thought of the best It Rhymes for Rey's parents. Her dad wasn't Luke, but one of the disciples who joined Kylo and was killed by Luke in the battle. So instead of the twist being that he is her father, its that Luke killed her father. This is the one that seems likeliest to me. Just imagine: "A young Jedi named Kylo Ren, who was a pupil of mine before he turned to evil, helped the First Order wipe out the last of the Jedi. He betrayed and murdered your father."
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Dec 19, 2015 07:04
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Boon posted:I think people need to look at this movie not through the lens of ANH but the ENTIRE original trilogy. To me it's all there. And the prequels! I keep saying it because the thread goes so fast. Kylo Ren's backstory being a remix of Anakin's backstory is the most obvious one. There's others, of course.
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Dec 19, 2015 07:23
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Finn is just so stoked to have an identity. I agree that the First Order is the Jedi Order. Kidnapping and brainwashing children, fighting for an inadequate idea of peace, upholding the Empire, uneasy with granting a position of importance to a scraggly-headed emotionally unstable loose cannon of a nerd descended from Shmi Skywalker, led by an alien of unusual size with a custom-made chair. Well, that last one maybe isn't important. But it does mean Finn, too, is a spiritual heir to Darth Vader. Though, funnily enough, he's closer to (Clone Wars spoilers, not The Force Awakening:) Ahsoka.
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Dec 19, 2015 23:00
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teagone posted:A part of me wants Finn to somehow redeem Phasma if only because I want Gwendoline Christie to be running around with the good guys doing good guy stuff in her Phasma armor I bet she turns out to be this trilogy's Boba Fett, there to look cool and get dunked on.
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Dec 19, 2015 23:32
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teagone posted:That already happened in this movie! I mean, for that to continue happening.
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Dec 19, 2015 23:41
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Zoran posted:Agreed, except for Phasma, who not only gets chumped but also acts way out of character in her last scene. She's appeared in one movie. A character acting differently than you expected in a later scene based on impressions you received from an earlier scene, that's not being out-of-character, that's character development.
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Dec 20, 2015 00:37
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MisterBibs posted:I can't figure out what they are going to do with Kylo's character. The Dude Who Killed Han Solo isn't getting a redemptive arc, and since he started at ineffectual villain, it'll just add to the comedy when he inevitably comes back and gets himself punked again as Rey and potentially Finn get better at their force abilities. So certain are you.
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Dec 20, 2015 00:40
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:26 |
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Luigi Thirty posted:Eeeeeeh. We've only known Obi-Wan for 75 minutes at that point. You're meant to be able to watch the three trilogies in any order.
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Dec 20, 2015 01:27
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