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Naked Bear posted:It may be sacrilege to suggest, but I think Rogue One is now my favorite Star Wars movie. Yes, even over Empire Strikes Back. 
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Dec 8, 2017 04:07
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:40 |
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Just saw it with some of my kids. They loved it (no surprise). Luke getting to be a badass and then ascending into the Force was awesome. He had just the right amount of humor, and Hamill nailed it (to the surprise of no one). His force ghost had better be all over the next movie, because I need me some Mark Hamill. Loved the Yoda text text text cameo. It was cool to finally see a force ghost give a sample of just how powerful they are. I was expecting Obiwan and/or Anakin to show up as well. The Kylo/Rey subplot was really well done. Both actors did a great job at selling the tension, and the team-up before they split is a great bit of action. The master codebreaker subplot was the weakest bit, both because of the lack of payoff, and because Rose is terrible and Finn is the worst of the new hero trio. For a janitor, his knowledge is way too convenient as an expository/plot-driving device. To that end, they should really use Poe more where they use Finn. Oscar Isaac is great. He's got the Han swagger that is needed on those side adventures. His first scene was one of my favorite parts. Snoke's death text to make spoiler longer was great in that it was unexpected and a gutsy move from a story standpoint, and it fit Kylo's arc. On the other hand, it doesn't satisfy a lot of curiosity from TFA and leaves a big villain gap, since Kylo still comes off as too young and inexperienced to squash the heroes on his own. Overall, it's a fun ride. For someone my age, it's worth it just for Hamill's bits.
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Dec 19, 2017 02:40
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I really enjoy RLM, but some of this was contrarian/obtuse. The legit criticisms have mostly been mentioned in this thread already.Godholio posted:How often do flag officers explain to O-3/4s what's going on? He was also on the poo poo list at the time. I only know this from playing X-Wing back in the day, but Commander is just a grade or two below General for the rebels. Luke was a Commander in ESB, and he was described as the leader in the opening crawl. Granted, Poe had just been demoted, but that whole plot was just bad. Sax Offender fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Dec 23, 2017 |
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Dec 23, 2017 06:36
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Handsome Ralph posted:This has been my go to explanation for people who get all up in arms about why Poe wasn't brought in from the get go. "We have an escape plan, but it will require stealth and discipline, neither of which you have exhibited recently. Dismissed." That makes Poe look like he needs to learn something in the end. As written, it looks like he's the only one even trying to save the resistance until the sudden reveal.
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Dec 23, 2017 09:52
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Arc Light posted:R1 finally made the Y-Wings useful, so I will excuse literally every other minor flaw in it. Anyone who played X-Wing knows that the Y-Wings were essential for their ion cannons. Until the B-Wing came along and bested them in every category.
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Dec 25, 2017 00:19
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https://youtu.be/K-Zmuoze65U
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Dec 27, 2017 22:53
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He looked cool and had a jetpack. That was pretty much it. I wasn't even totally sure of his name until years later. The only time it's said out loud in the original trilogy is by Han on the skiff, and he blurts it out so fast that I thought he said something like "bola attack" because of that rope thing. Remember that books and TV shows--except for a couple of really bad cartoons (Droids and Ewoks) around 1985--were not a thing for a long time by kid standards. Star Wars was a huge hit and phenomenon for my generation, but it got weird in the 90s. For context, I mostly watched Star Wars on Betamax as a kid.
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Dec 28, 2017 00:26
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Crakkerjakk posted:Gray Jedi was a convo option in KOTOR I think? Basically saying that trying to cut things like "love" out of the human psyche because it might lead to anger being loving stupid. Basically, it embraced emotions while saying you should still be the master of them, not vice versa, because emotions are what make people people. The gray Jedi from KOTOR II was just a light side Jedi who was old and bitter. Yeah, his "Force-o-meter" wasn't all the way to the light, but his dialogue was all good guy with some old painful memories. He was married as a Jedi; it wasn't forbidden--at least not back then. His wife fell to the dark side, and he couldn't bring himself to kill her at the end of a duel. She went on to kill a bunch of people during the civil war. The reason he left the Order was because they didn't punish him for sparing her life. He was bitter that the Jedi masters were not cold and calculating about his actions. Honestly, most internet nerds can't stop slobbering all over KOTOR II because "Oooooh, Gray Jedi. Kreia so edgy and cool. A real mature plot that recognizes the importance of balancing light and dark." Putting aside the rushed, half-finished second half of the KOTOR II, the first game was still much better in terms of story. Or at least that's how I remember it from...however long it's been since the original Xbox was the console du jour. Crakkerjakk posted:And that generally the force seeks balance, so if you have a a bunch of super hardcore light side Jedi, you will get a bunch (or a few REALLY powerful) dark side Sith to balance them out. This was only explicitly stated by Snoke. The idea that the Force wants/needs more dark side users to balance the light and vice versa is not as dumb as midichlorians, but it's pretty dumb. The pseudo-Buddhist philosophy behind the Force has usually been portrayed with Jedi trying to be in tune with it and achieve one-ness with the universe while the Sith try to twist and master the Force for their own passions and ambitions. It's less "hot vs cold" and more "harmony vs discord". If they're trying to change that starting with TLJ, it might be more interesting for older viewers, but it won't really be the same fantasy tropes as classic Star Wars. Crakkerjakk posted:I like the grey Jedi angle, I'm not sure that's where they're actually going. Rey stole/saved the texts, after all. And it's the middle of the trilogy that they seem to be modeling a fair amount on the OT, so it may just be the downer ending episode that sets you up for victorious comeback in the next one. I agree. In addition to the preservation of the texts, there's Yoda, who is still portrayed as the wisest character in the series. He didn't mind burning the tree, but when Luke told him "It's time for the Jedi to end" his reply was "It's time...for you to get your head out of your rear end and get to the problem at hand." He didn't endorse the "end of the Jedi" point of view, and regarded any failures of the Jedi (including Luke's) as valuable sources of wisdom rather than a justification for giving up.
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Dec 28, 2017 19:13
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Arc Light posted:But it was probably the only RPG to effectively justify you *and* your companions growing stronger as you progressed through the game, so all is forgiven. Both KOTOR protagonists had a solid reason for quickly getting stronger. I can't remember any plot points for the rest of the party getting stronger; refresh my memory. Was it "something something Wound in the Force"?
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Dec 29, 2017 01:02
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The Shep posted:Yeah, it's not like they completely set up the character in the first movie for payoffs we never got or that his actions/powers are internally inconsistent across the two movies. It's totally cool with me that the guy who apparently singlehandedly resurrected the empire and constructed a planetary sized weapon couldn't envision or predict his own death, mid-trilogy, in the cheesiest possible manner with a lightsaber he conveniently placed right next to him. Seconds after showing his ability to read minds. While I share a sense of disappointment that Snoke wasn't fleshed out (  ), the way he died wasn't so bad. Like Sheevy Baby, his weakness was his hubris. Palpatine said Vader could never be turned and was practically a slave to his will, and got tossed down a hole by a guy he should have been able to electrocute if he had noticed his feelings for his son. Snoke thought he had complete control of Kylo, who managed to mask his thoughts with very careful control. I took Snoke's dialogue to be what he was getting from Kylo. E.g., "He turns it to his true enemy" or something like that was how Kylo was obfuscating his intent.I think the difference between the two are 1) Sheev's death was the climax of a trilogy and all of the plot and character delivery rate that accompanied it and 2) there was some foreshadowing of his blind spot both by Luke ("Your overconfidence is your weakness") and in a prior scene where Palpatine could not sense Luke while Vader could, demonstrating a blind spot in his self-supposed omniscience. ONE oval office WOLF PACK posted:lol Finn's got a good overall arc, but it wasn't served all that well in this movie. That, and the way the writers keep giving him detailed technical knowledge that's hard to believe for a janitor takes me out of the story for a second. Think about it: Finn knows all about the Starkiller Base shield system, the hyperspace tracking system, the "miniaturized Death Star" battering ram. If they wanted him to always know First Order tactics and secret tech, they shouldn't have made him as a lowly janitor.
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Jan 1, 2018 22:11
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The Shep posted:Kylo was never really shown as a character with strong amounts of self control He's shown and stated to be very powerful, but raw. That Snoke was caught blind could be attributed to his overconfidence and his (and our) underestimation of what Kylo is capable of. That he threw a couple of tantrums during the week or so he was pursuing Rey doesn't preclude any and all discipline. After all, he's also shown to do some impressive feats like freezing blaster bolts and extracting information from minds. I mean, Vader would get pissed, yell, and/or choke a bitch, but he was still in control of his powers. My lack of satisfaction with Snoke's death is not how it happened, but when (i.e., while we were still waiting for further characterization). quote:And the comparisons of the emperor to Snoke are not warranted. The emperor was a background item in the original trilogy, whereas Snoke was prominently featured in TFA. What was Snoke other than an Emperor analogue? Hell, half of reviewers can't help but call him "the Emperor" and the First Order "the Empire". He needed more to differentiate himself before they killed him off. Understand, I agree that they goofed on Snoke. They featured him prominently from the start, and that deserves a more fully-realized character even more than Sheev needed it going into ROTJ. But I don't agree that the Emperor didn't feature prominently in the plot of the duology of ESB and ROTJ. I think its fair to look at those two separately some of the time, since they were written that way. ANH was a standalone film that became a phenomenon. The bigger plots (total victory of the Rebellion, Vader's redemption, Han/Leia, etc.) really only spanned those two. So Sheev may not have been a big personal factor in most of the OT, but he was the personification of the Empire, an omnipresent entity. The Vader redemption plot really only spans the latter two movies, except for a passing comment by Obiwan that only factored in retrospect. The Emperor is shows to be the power behind his corrupt nature in ESB and Ian McDiarmid gives us everything we need to understand his place in the saga in ROTJ.  quote:Also, the OT doesn't allow room to question the empire since the story starts from that point, but in TFA and TLJ we are correct to question Snoke and the prominence of the first order simply because we've seen the empire defeated in the previous movies. If the new movies existed in a vacuum, sure, but there's history to the universe they built that we somehow shouldn't be questioning I guess. That's a fair criticism that most of us share. What's kind of mind-boggling is that the writers of TFA were obviously aware of that weakness. Han alludes to the fact that they've been down this road before ("How do we blow it up? There's always a way to do that."). No one's arguing that The First Order isn't a rehash of the Empire that was just defeated thirty years or so prior. Likewise, the "New Republic" died in a much less impressive way (plot-wise) than the Republic that had died twenty years before that. It's not very satisfactory from a mythos perspective, but I guess they do show The First Order's triumph over the Republic. The First Order wiped out the New Republic in TFA, which I guess didn't have a military since instantly the three ships of Resistance Fighters are the only opposition they have. Not great story-telling based on the history we know from the original trilogy. Even the ragtag rebels managed to muster a fleet that could hold off the bulk of the Imperial Navy long enough to win the Battle of Endor. A government ruling at least a decent chunk of the galaxy doesn't have a navy? Obviously, the First Order has some kind of connection to the Empire. Their navy and army are essentially the same (Star Destroyers, Tie Fighters, Stormtroopers, AT-ATs, etc.). So the threat was always there, as opposed to a pacified galaxy with little need for armed forces. I guess they could say that only a fraction of the galaxy was ever liberated before the remnants of the Empire were consolidated into the First Order, explaining the extremely limited resources of the Republic, but they haven't done that. The Shep posted:I wish he figured something out other than 1) kill 2) ignore 3) downplay.  Bringing in the New Year talkin' Star Wars on the internet. That's one resolution that went down in record time.
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Jan 2, 2018 01:23
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"Palpatine" was in the novelization of the both first Star Wars movie and ROTJ, and even back then he was a Senator who rose to power on the promise of restoring the Republic to glory. It's kind of like "Ewoks", "Wicket", "AT-AT", or even "Lord of the Sith"*. Fans knew the terms, and they popped up in books, games, toys, trading cards, etc. before the EU was a thing. According to wikipedia, "Sheev" was added in 2014. Since I grew up with the original movies and early video games and only ever read the original Thrawn trilogy, I can usually distinguish whether something preceded the EU. Still, the easiest way is that if it's completely retarded, it's from the EU. *Back in the day, "Lord of the Sith" was only attributed to Darth Vader. We all assumed it was a title unique to him. The Emperor was never "Darth" anything, even in those first books and games. Most of us assumed it was some special group or philosophy of the Dark Side of which Vader was the head. Comparable to Kylo and the Knights of Ren--no evidence that Snoke was a member. Edit: Looking through GIS at old trading cards brought me to even more evidence that Mark Hamill is a treasure: 
Sax Offender fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jan 2, 2018 |
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Jan 2, 2018 22:51
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 11:40 |
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Holy poo poo. They're all great, but that last one...  Btw, he's still doing Trump tweets from time to time.
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Jan 3, 2018 19:48
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