Star Wars: 4000 posts later we are no closer to consensus

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Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

4 > 5 > R1 > 1 > 3 > 6 > 7 > 2. Droids are people.

:getin:

on the thread title.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 03:04

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 18:25

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

I feel like it's really only spoilery if you repeatedly rewatch and dissect it. Mostly outside of a couple of moments I just have a lot of fleeting impressions of places and characters. There's one big part in particular that's almost certainly a fakeout (Ren targeting Leia), and the rest are moments you could probably predict would happen (although Snoke and Rey is a surprise).

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 03:13

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Davros1 posted:

I'm not. It's lazy. It's like when a popular series regular leaves, so the producers panic at the thought of losing popularity, so they replace that character with someone who's just like them, but they overcompensate by telling the audience that the new character is even better than the last one.

It's something the EU would do. "Think Luke and Vader were powerful? Well, these new characters are better than them because they're even more powerful!"

I mean, the difference between raw power and what you do with that power is a running theme throughout Star Wars, and it seems in line here with how it's been used in the past. I didn't get the impression from TFA or the TLJ promotional materials that Rey's power is inherently supposed to make her better in our eyes, but rather that it's going to feed the main conflict for her through these movies (like it did for Anakin and Luke).

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 03:17

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

YouTube version is up.

oddium posted:

the gorilla arm at-ats rule

Yeah, I wasn't sure about those at first, but I liked them in action.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 03:25

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

lelandjs posted:

Where the gently caress does Finn keep getting lightsabers from

Watching it again, it's some sort of glowy electric sword (maybe the same thing TR-8R had?). I thought it was a lightsaber, too.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 03:38

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

oddium posted:

4 and 7 kind of float around each other but yeah

berserker posted:

Agreed actually, I kinda like them both equally.

Makes sense, they're the same movie after all. :v:

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 03:45

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Elotana posted:

Trailers usually have unfinished CGI

(I hope)

If that is it, I wonder why Chewbacca is CG in that scene. Might not be, but he looked weird to me too.

kilus aof posted:

Adama never sends the Pegasus anywhere.

An Adama sent the Pegasus in. :colbert:

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 04:08

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

The trailer music since the Disney takeover has really been on point. I like the use of the new themes in the TLJ trailers, and it goes to show how nicely Williams' sequel material fits with the previously existing music.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 04:35

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Rip Testes posted:

What all is being re-purposed from ESB?

Finn in the recovery pod is akin to Luke in the bacta tank.
Luke as Yoda doing the training bit on a watery world.
Walkers taking on a rebel base with a giant blast door on a white world.
Hard to tell, but looks like Kylo Ren is pulling a 'join me on the dark side' Vader moment with Rey.
Luke saying 'this is not going the way you think'a possible admonition to Rey jetting off before completing her training.
That bit where it looked like Rey was suspended and being tortured hearkens back to the Han Solo torture scene.

Additions/corrections?

Honestly, even if all these things are the case, I'm more focused on the execution than whether we've seen some version of a plot point before. Like, the problem with Laser Moon III in TFA wasn't that we had yet another Laser Moon, it was that the movie did absolutely nothing interesting with the parallel other than calling attention to it with a bad joke. ROTJ, for example, gets away with its Death Star IMO because it uses Luke's conflict inside to mirror the battle outside - the drama isn't just about getting to the exploding thing and blowing it up (as in ANH), but also about Luke having to win his own physical and spiritual battle at the same time.

Say Rey has some sort of vision of poo poo going down and leaves Luke to take care of it, which seems likely from the trailers. You can make that parallel mean something: have Luke reflect on his own history in a similar situation, show how Rey's approach and Luke's differ, something like that. Or you can just have it repeat the plot point beat for beat. The former is what the PT does well, I think, while the latter is the last act of TFA.

Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Oct 10, 2017

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 16:08

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Terry Grunthouse posted:

https://i.imgur.com/Eq8rLlP.gifv

Kinda want to see this loop back and forth.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 21:21

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Seaniqua posted:

ask and ye shall receive

Awesome, thanks. :cool:

# ¿ Oct 10, 2017 22:11

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

thrawn527 posted:

Ben finds out, while training away from his parents, that he is the son of Darth Vader.

Man, the Skywalkers are a pretty hosed up family.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 02:11

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

MonsieurChoc posted:

As proof, people who discover the Star Wars prequels without baggage usually don't have the same weird hatred. They either liked them or didn't like them like normal movies.

Anecdotally, a friend of mine who'd never seen Star Wars before we started watching them loved TPM when we got to it (she'd seen the whole OT and Rogue One at the time). Funny thing, she'd been told so many times by a friend of hers how much "everyone" hated the prequels that she thought I would be upset she liked it.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 05:56

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

The MSJ posted:

Disney ignore the Prequels, except for all the times they market Prequel era stuff like another returning Clone Wars character in Rebels (and Rogue One), the new Clone Captain toys, and Battlefront 2 being introduced with a Naboo map (after players of the first EA Battlefront demand more PT content).

They are not even ignoring the old EU. There's going to be a new Jaina Solo toy.

Not to mention all the prequel era comics Marvel has been and continues to put out.

Hell, the last Star Wars movie to come out had actual prequel characters in it, so the idea that Disney is ignoring them sounds a lot more like wishful thinking.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 15:25

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

Jimmy Smitts appears in Rogue One, and the entire plot is about the aftermath of Episode 3. The narrative of Rogue One also addresses the specific issues raised by the prequels (droid personhood, the failure of the Republic's liberal centrism, etc.).

Also Genevieve O'Reilly reprises her role as Mon Mothma from ROTS, and Mustafar and Coruscant make appearances in the movie.

For a movie set just before ANH, Rogue One really does a nice job of using both the PT and OT in good measure to craft its setting.

Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Oct 11, 2017

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 20:17

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Bongo Bill posted:

Rogue One extends the ending montage from Revenge of the Sith all the way to the opening shot of A New Hope.

I like this take.

thrawn527 posted:

To be fair, the Mon Mothma scenes from ROTS were cut, so they're not really part of the PT.

Apparently she does make an non-speaking cameo in the final cut of the film, but I'm not sure where (I'd guess either the big crowd of Senators at the beginning or Palpatine's speech at the end). But yeah, O'Reilly finally getting a speaking role in Rogue One was a nice touch after her ROTS material was cut.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 20:27

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

euphronius posted:

Uh it's in a bunch of Star Wars movies. 4? 5?

Five. All the PT, flashback in R1, ending montage in ROTJ.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2017 20:32

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

I always view Clone Wars as more of a jumped-up TV pilot, even though it was in theaters.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2017 02:09

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Brother Entropy posted:

it's boring because it's rushed, it's far more interested in speeding along to the next epic setpiece or OT callback than slowing down to provide a larger context for why anything is happening or characterizing any of its new cast(except kylo ren)

Yeah, the worst case of that for me is in Maz's castle, where the movie stops even bothering to wait for a scene to end before jumping to the next one. Finn leaves, Rey hears about it, and you'd think this would be a nice point for a good conversation and character moment, but NOPE -- she takes like two steps and gets her vision, and then it's on to the whole lightsaber scene and then she runs away and Ren attacks immediately after and on and on. Everything just happens all at once, plot point after plot point, with no breathing room or sense of pacing.

Look at something like the Death Star segment of ANH for comparison. There's parts with nonstop action - everything from entering the detention level to leaving the garbage compactor is one big setpiece, for example - but there's also lots of moments in between where everything can pause for some nice little character building conversations and to ease the tension before it builds up again. Luke snapping at Han in the control room, Han making fun of Chewie after the trash compactor, Leia making fun of the Falcon. Obi-Wan has a pretty quiet and uneventful trip to the tractor beam, which both lets the tension build in his subplot and contrasts with everyone else making a ruckus all over the Death Star. For the characters being trapped in the enemy's home base, it's surprisingly slow, but it works because of that.

TFA has a couple of those moments (the little montage of Rey's life stands out in particular), but they're few and far between after the first act.

E: Now that I think about it, Star Trek 09 had this same issue in its second act, so it seems to be a general problem Abrams has.

Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Oct 13, 2017

# ¿ Oct 13, 2017 00:33

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Zeris posted:

I'm not a fan of Portman's performance, but I also find her character unrealistically bending to fit the needs of Anakin's development. When he's a snot in front of her staff, she has no problem putting him down; when he makes her uncomfortable she tells him so immediately (and then the boundary-setting is immediately forgotten in the next interaction); when he tries to be a Good Boy and stay on Tattooine per Windu's orders, she forces him to leave with her. These actions simultaneously speak to someone who knows exactly what they want, and someone who has no idea what they want. Padme's character doesn't quite come together as a result.

I generally like Christensen's Anakin, but yeah, my main issue with the AOTC love story is that Padme's character is really hard to read, from a mix of Portman's acting and the general flow of the love story. Everything up to the scene on the freighter is pretty straightforward: we start with Anakin very interested in Padme and Padme not noticing/being put off by it, then she slowly warms up to him. But then we get the scene with the queen, and that whole progression takes a big step back as he gets big for his britches and she puts him down, and then immediately after they're making out, and it's full on forbidden romance from there. It's not like it's impossible to reconcile, but there's something missing from the script or Portman's performance to show why Padme is reacting in these ways, even if it's just that she's kinda flighty (which I don't think is consistent with the rest of her character). Anakin's side of the story is pretty straightforward, in comparison; he's interested in her from the beginning and sometimes acts like a dick to impress her because he's a teenager.

I think your post is a good articulation of the issue I have with Padme; she feels a lot more like an obstacle for Anakin to overcome in his own arc than someone with her own feelings and motivations. Her best scene is probably the one where they talk politics in the field, because you can actually see Padme's own personality coming through strongly, where it conflicts with Anakin's, and the roots of the oncoming tragedy as she convinces herself that Anakin is just kidding.

I know that a lot of people probably think that the last thing AOTC needs is more love story, but the deleted scenes with Padme's family - which would have gone right in that gap that gives me the most pause - might have really helped, both in giving Padme more of her own character outside of Anakin and in giving them time to grow closer before they go full requited love in the lake country.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2017 21:59

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Bongo Bill posted:

The voyage through the core of Naboo rhymes with the asteroid field chase in The Empire Strikes Back. It isn't just the big monsters. Jar Jar panics and Qui-Gon telepathically sedates him, in much the same way that they switched off a panicking C-3PO.

Well I'll be damned. :aaa:

Almost 20 years I've seen that movie and I never caught that.

E: Just to have something substantial here, you mention that it highlights how superior the Jedi feel to Jar Jar, but the comparison also really makes me feel for Threepio, and just how weird it is that the characters in ESB can casually turn a person off. Threepio isn't exactly respected throughout the OT, but he's usually disrespected in the way you would a human, with insults and threats. Offhandedly treating him like a piece of machinery is actually kind of strange and stands out.

Lord Hydronium fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Oct 16, 2017

# ¿ Oct 16, 2017 01:32

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Solo II: Duet

# ¿ Oct 18, 2017 04:15

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

jivjov posted:

Fun fact, if we treat A New Hope as occurring in May 1977, then the events of The Force Awakens would have taken place in 2011.

That wasn't as fun as I was promised. :colbert:

Besides, Star Wars takes place well before the 1930s :v:

# ¿ Oct 18, 2017 18:14

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

R2 had a girlfriend in Legends. She was of course pink and had heels:

# ¿ Oct 21, 2017 05:28

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Snooze Cruise posted:

I only learned earlier this year that people will say "at, at" instead of "a, t, a, t" and it has destroyed my entire foundation of the world.

They pronounced it that way in an episode of Archer once and it took me a few moments to even realize what they were saying. And how do those people pronounce AT-ST?

# ¿ Nov 5, 2017 03:34

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

teagone posted:

Oh wait, the press release straight up says this lmao.

This rules out Old Republic content yeah?

"That Star Wars lore has never explored before" could just be marketing talk with an implied "in the new canon". They've done that a few times before.

# ¿ Nov 10, 2017 00:06

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

And still no complete release of any of the prequel soundtracks. :argh:

# ¿ Nov 11, 2017 19:45

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

turn left hillary!! noo posted:

Are you talking vinyl, because I have the 2-disc complete Phantom Menace score on CD.

That CD is better than any of the other prequels got, but it's still basically just the music audio track of the movie. It's got all the edits and looped music that are in the movie, and is missing a fair amount of material not in the final edit , rather than the original unedited recordings like the OT Special Edition soundtracks have.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2017 20:27

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Mechafunkzilla posted:

Bareback a Dewback

Roger Roger.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2017 07:02

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

jivjov posted:

What's the history of trailer music making it to the final film? I really hope the more intense version of the Jedi Steps theme is in the final cut of TLJ

All the Disney SW movies have had music composed specifically for the trailers by ad music companies. For a few examples I found googling, TFA had music by Frederick Lloyd and John Samuel Hanson, and one of the Rogue One trailers was scored by a company called Ninja Tracks. The Lucas era trailers were all scored with edited music from previous SW movies, although TV spots released near or after the release date tended to have music from that movie.

# ¿ Dec 5, 2017 01:29

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

The MSJ posted:

He also suggests making a Jar Jar movie in black and white in the style of The Wrestler.

I hope The Last Jedi is good, because Rian Johnson owns.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2017 01:41

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Schwarzwald posted:

I'm not trying to say that the Phantom Menace is the equal to Jurassic Park (or Oedipus) but rather to point out that criticizing it for not having an immediately identifiable main protagonist or main antagonist (Palpatine, btw) is very limiting. Many stories don't have main protagonists or antagonists. Many well respected stories don't.

Yeah, the antagonist criticism is weirder than the protagonist one (though while TPM doesn't have a single protagonist, no one's said why that's bad), because Palpatine is a pretty textbook main antagonist, in that he's the source of pretty much all the opposition to the heroes pursuing their goals. There are other minor antagonists, like the Trade Federation and Maul, that provide a more immediate source of conflict, but that's like every narrative ever. Viral spiral seems to be using some weird definition where an antagonist has to be literally the only thing standing in the way of the heroes, and the heroes have to know they're the antagonist. I don't know if that's from RLM or their own invention, but neither are necessary.

AOTC would have been a better argument, since its antagonist changes from Zam to Jango to Dooku right up to the very end where we learn that it was Palpatine all along, but again, that just makes it different, not an inherently bad narrative choice.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2017 01:53

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Danger posted:

If so, he movie is going to be prequel level divisive.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2017 01:56

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

It sounds from the reviews I've read that Johnson isn't afraid to get weird, which is what I want to hear. I've been thinking recently about what it is exactly that's appealing about Star Wars and how that relates to the new movies, and a big part of it is the sense that the universe is a near-infinite canvas. I mean, the first film of the series is a sci-fi fantasy samurai Western war movie, and I think the best Star Wars movies (and even EU) recognize that the franchise is at its best when it's expanding on that weird mish-mash and pushing into new territory. It's a tremendously adaptable franchise, capable of telling a wide variety of stories, themes, characters, and settings while still having whatever that common thread is that makes it Star Wars and not some other franchise. And that's a thing that I think R1 got and TFA didn't, and everything I've heard about Johnson and TLJ makes me hope/think that he got it too.

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 00:42

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Let's focus on the important issues: does this mean that we can get the fanfare back at the start of the movies? :v:

# ¿ Dec 13, 2017 08:13

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Milky Moor posted:

I wonder when we'll see something that acknowledges that the prequels happened, be it a character or a world. Something definitive. Otherwise, I do think they're going to just reboot them.

There's two prequel characters (even played by the same actors) and two prequel worlds in Rogue One.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2017 07:40

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Milky Moor posted:

Bail Organa and Mustafar? What're the other two?

Mothma and Coruscant (in Jyn's flashback).

# ¿ Dec 15, 2017 15:28

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Milky Moor posted:

OT character and not explicitly identified as Coruscant. Same thing as Mustafar it is but also isn't.

This feels like nitpicking at this point. Like half the PT characters are also OT characters, and it's a dream sequence/flashback, so yeah, it's not going to have a subtitle. TFA also mentions clone troopers and the Sith and had Ewan MacGregor do a voice cameo as Obi-Wan. If Disney's trying to pretend the prequels don't exist, they're doing a really lovely job of it (and that's not even mentioning all the EU stuff and other merchandising they're still doing in that era).

Like really, this idea feels more like "I wish Disney would ignore the prequels."

# ¿ Dec 15, 2017 16:16

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

Movie owned. Luke owns. Porgs own.

More collected thoughts later, since I just finished seeing it. But I'm coming out of this one with a much better feeling than I did from TFA.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2017 01:38

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 18:25

Lord Hydronium: Sep 25, 2007; Non, je ne regrette rien

I love Rogue One, I think I've made that clear. And I loved TLJ (I think; I'll wait until the immediate post-watch buzz has died down to form a more solid opinion), and the funny thing is, it's for some of the exact opposite reasons as Rogue One. R1 feels like a very focused, consistent movie, where Edwards had a specific vision for a type of Star Wars story that hadn't really been done in the franchise (in movie form, at least) and everything in the movie is purposed towards the end of delivering that vision.

TLJ on the other hand, is Rian Johnson's gloriously unchecked id. It's him being given a chance to do Star Wars and going nuts, throwing the whole drat kitchen sink in and then some. It's big and weird and sprawling and doesn't always cohere, but by god, is it fun to watch. It is, in short, the most like George Lucas' Star Wars this franchise has been since he left it, so no wonder it's going to be controversial. It's not perfect - the entire Poe/Holdo/fleet plot just feels kind of weird, and it's paced really oddly slow for a movie where everything else is so breakneck; the beginning of the movie took a while to click for me, with the tone going a little too self-aware at times; Canto Bight is a narrative dead end, but it's a lot of fun so I forgive it; it's got a few too many climaxes - but it gets Star Wars in a way that TFA didn't. It's the Star Wars that gave us the cantina sequence and a backwards talking Muppet samurai monk and a slug crime boss and a water world inhabited by grey aliens. It's a Star Wars that feels unbounded, and not just pushing around the stuff people loved as a kid back in 1977.

And not to poo poo on TFA too much, but it's kind of funny that a lot of people (including myself) assumed that it would look better in retrospect after we knew the answers to all its mystery box questions. TLJ answers most of those questions, but the answers are interesting in a way that makes the movie asking the questions look more boring for hiding them. It's like, "Why were you making this a mystery when you could have been doing this cool poo poo instead?" Example: I was convinced Rey had to be a secret Skywalker to make that plot worth its time, and not only did they make her a child of nobody, they made that reveal a really awesome character moment between her and Kylo.

Also my audience was no fun, there wasn't a single reaction to Luke doing the Force Hologram thing and I had to stop myself from reacting noisily even though that was the best drat moment of the film. :mad:

# ¿ Dec 18, 2017 03:27

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > Star Wars: 4000 posts later we are no closer to consensus

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