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For some reason, my Google News feed has surmised based on Google algorithms that I am a 'Star Wars Fan' and as such, I'd be interested in every random click-bait article from various fan sites or YouTube videos. There's an interesting throughline that I've noticed - so many of them have sensationalist statements like 'George Lucas has made a new edit of Rise of the Skywalker, fixing all the issues and making an amazing film! and George Lucas fires Kathleen Kennedy, thus saving the franchise and restoring it to its former glory! Have we, the internet, collectively gone full circle once again back to idolizing George and wishing him back into the directors chair? I'm imagining this must mostly be driven by the now-adults that grew up as children with the prequel trilogies and don't judge them as critically, same way most of us older fans revere the original films. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Lucas' involvement in the Disney films is as much as getting him to show up at event or two and a series of polite 'thankyou for your feedback' letters for his various suggestions about how the films should revolve around midichlorians.
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Sep 7, 2020 11:08
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It's just weird how this narrative is popping up about him making a unique cut of the film with extra footage, like that's an actual thing that could exist, and it it even could, it would be able to save that trainwreck of a film. I dunno, I actually dig the idea of seeing more Lucas star wars, not because I think it'd necessarily be any good, but he would totally take it in another direction whether through trying to push for something completely different or just plain spite. I did love how in the height of the post prequel hate bashing and lead up to episode 7 at some point he announced that his plans for new star wars movies would have revolved around midichlorians.
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Sep 7, 2020 12:17
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The prequels also brought in a new era of crap merchandise and slapping Star Wars on literally every thing imaginable. I know this was the case in the 70s and 80s as well of course, but boy was it egregarious each time a new film came out. Disney has not surprisingly followed suit of course, but I feel like post TFA they looked at their mountains of unsold plastic poo poo, realised kids these days aren't into toys and instead decided to focus on marketing them to 30+ year old geeks instead. Also during the prequels it was disappointing for me to watch LucasArts go from being one of the most innovative and impressive game studios to simply a license holder churning out pretty lame video games. In the 1990s, everything they touched was gold, and nine times out of ten, a Star Wars game would be incredible. Honourable exceptions of course to Republic Commando and the Battlefront series.
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Sep 8, 2020 11:35
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That Finn rewrite stuff is fascinating. All in all I think it was probably a good choice not to have literally all of your new characters suddenly be Jedi, but boy did they fall to do anything interesting with him after the Force Awakens. Especially after John Boyega had such a memorable and enigmatic performance in that film. Seeing headlines about him swearing off Star Wars, complaining about the last Jedi and his general anger at Disney for perceived racism, at first I thought that was just partly actor ego, thinking they deserved a bigger part, but I then read about how he would receive death threats from fans, be edited out of Chinese posters, and generally be used / treated specifically for the demographics and I'm all too sadly reminded that people loving suck. No wonder everyone involved in the sequel trilogies are bitter.
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Oct 20, 2020 13:36
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Thinking back on it, I guess Last Jedi did try do something with him, giving him and Kellie Marie Tran a almost 'love' story, exploring his initial reluctance to die for the resistance, growing into a want to sacrifice himself for the cause, before being literally pushed back into reality at how a silly idea that is. I really liked all that. It was the b-plot casino planet slog in-between that really dragged it down. The resolution with Phasma was also pretty unsatisfying after the build up in Force Awakens. I've almost successfully entirely blocked Rise of the Skywalker from my memory, and barely remember what he did in that film at all. I wanted to say that they should have done more with the fact he was an ex stormtrooper, but then I remembered ROTS had ex stormtroopers on horses for some reason.
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Oct 20, 2020 20:51
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Robot Style posted:Yeah it's not really time travel in the traditional sense, but the idea of Vader specifically sending a psychic message-in-a-bottle back in time is cool, and is a more creative use of the Force than we usually see in the movies. It's interesting to think how that plays into Yoda warning Luke against responding to the visions - Yoda clearly doesn't know the outcome and it comes across as pretty callous when Luke's friends are in danger. But he was right that he wasn't ready to face Vader.
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Oct 23, 2020 03:28
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Pretty sure these are vague half fleshed out ideas in Lucas' head and probably didn't really amount to a full plan or anything. Bringing maul back wouldn't be that interesting since he has no real ties to anyone after Obi-Wan dies, and not a great bridging of series since he's only in the first prequel. Though it was a genuine suprise for me when he showed up in Solo, but not a good one. It feels like a bad retcon. I know he showed up in the cartoon or whatever and there was a yellow Darth maul, but I never watched that.
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Nov 11, 2020 23:10
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God, I hadn't watched Revenge of the Sith in so long, and seeing that clip of Sheeve battling the Jedi with a lightsaber is so loving stupid. Not even in a fun way, it's just badly edited. Though I'll always love Ian McDiarmid's beautiful hammy villainry. They never should have given him a lightsaber in the first place.
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Nov 11, 2020 23:13
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ungulateman posted:That much is a given; people generally complain because he doesn't look cool enough while he does it. It's like the opposite of the complaint 'i wanted the prequels to be three movies of anakin skywalker killing bad guys and then becoming a bad guy and killing good guys' Eh. For me it's more like they establish him as a master space wizard with before unseen unholy powers in the original trilogy, and throughout the prequels he's seen as a master manipulator who's managed to throw the wool over everyone's eyes through his dark side powers and then... he's just some guy with a lightsaber like every other character in the prequels. Same deal with Yoda really.
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Nov 12, 2020 10:27
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Neo Rasa posted:It's just impressive that Disney managed to get fuckin' STAR WARS to this point in not even five years lol It's pretty crazy as an old Star Wars fan who lived through the 'don't so anything with the franchise for 15 years' just how much Star Wars we get now, for better and worse. At least it's unique new content and not just merchandising.
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Nov 17, 2020 19:40
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galagazombie posted:The amount of Star wars games that aren't just good licensed games, but actually straight up good games, is quite frankly mystifying. No one else has ever really been able to replicate it. I think alot of this had to do with Lucas founding LucasArts and like his other projects such as ILM and Skywalker sound, ensuring they were on the cutting edge of technology and giving them the budgets and timeframes to produce solid stuff. Then somewhere along the line around the prequels release, LucasArts just became another outsourcing studio and those studios mostly released pretty ordinary stuff, save a couple of amazing gems, like JK2, Republic Commando and the original battlefronts. Really, the Disney games have been fantastic too - there just hasn't been alot of them. Battlefront 2015 was amazing, but lean on content and not as hardcore as mainstream shooter audiences wanted. 2017 was marred in a shitload of deserved controversy which ensured that the game itself was overlooked. Fallen Order is amazing, and Squadrons, though again light in content, is incredible and almost everything I've wanted in a X-Wing follow up since the 90s.
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Nov 19, 2020 06:41
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Shiroc posted:Its interesting how the myths of Evil George Lucas have slowly expanded over time. Starting from the reasonable "Star Wars was a collaborative effort, not just Lucas" even though he his hands in everything. Moving to the "from a certain point of view" untruths that Lucas barely had anything to do with Star Wars and it was Marcia and the other directors saving it from him. Now we have things that are flatly the opposite of what happened, when Lucas and the big three had a meeting together where he personally got them all to buy in on the idea. I think it's fascinating how this is coming full circle. My Google News feed continually is feeding me headlines and articles from lovely youtube channels and fansites about how George is going to redo the sequel trilogy, or George has a cut of Rise of the Skywalker that fixes all the issues or how George has fired Kathleen Kennedy for ruining Star Wars. I've never actually watched any of these, but my feeling is that it's coming from people who grew up with the prequels coming of age and have a weird particular axe to grind with the new Star Wars, just like many 30+ year olds like me did with the prequels.
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Dec 3, 2020 00:06
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Snowman_McK posted:does anyone remember when TROS fell apart in their eyes? For the first half hour or so (I didn't look at my watch, so I'm guessing) it seemed fine, if a little rushed. It was the Chewbacca death fakeout that clearly marks the line between 'an actual film' and 'whatever jumbled notes were left as they jammed scripts together' I've forgotten so much about that film, but I distinctly remember the opening lines of the crawl being 'SOMEHOW PALPATINE HAS RETURNED' or however it was phrased in the opening intro instantly throwing me off the film, and it was a continual down hill slide from there There was also at one point a string of really bad retcons to things established in TLJ by dialog, which was super off putting and seemed so pandering. Fair enough if you didn't like those things, but you have to live with them in the next film!
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Dec 3, 2020 03:15
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Yeah.JJ's relentless pacing of 'cool poo poo smash cut' with no real regard to plot, setting or believability just pisses me off, and ROTS was just so full of that. It feels like a Disneyland star tours ride where they have to cram in all the fan favourite characters and moments within 2 minutes before you are booted out for the next in-line. It's funny that the original Star Wars was both lauded and abhored for it's (then) considered incredibly fast pacing. I guess I'm just the modern old man equivalent of people that had a problem with that.
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Dec 3, 2020 09:59
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I do think other than the above traits, JJ is a competent and entertaining director. I just think the Star Wars property is clearly one with one too many cooks dictating what must happen in place of a planned and coherent story. It's funny. TLJ is clearly an answer to the spoken criticisms of TFA, for better or worse. It's much more evenly paced, has less moments outright duplicated from the old films, and when it does, it often inverts the situation on its head or does something unexpected. Then, of course ROS is a response to TLJ's criticisms in the most backward rear end way as possible that pleases no one.
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Dec 3, 2020 10:07
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fatherboxx posted:When they loudly proclaimed they need to find a mcguffin And the maguffin is used to solve a mystical puzzle that perfectly lines up with a location we know and have seen before and came about in living memory and makes no sense, other than it resembles something in a Zelda dungeon. God what a stupid loving movie.
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Dec 3, 2020 13:37
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Yeah, one thing the prequels had going for them was art direction. Things looked 'old' but elegant, the same way an art deco hotel looks, or a old railway carriage. It was a static contrast against the OT's lived in brutalist look - which was still somewhat modern by 70s standards. I didn't care for it much as a kid but it's definitely grown on me a lot. Though much of the sequels direction is pretty derivative, theres a few designs that really stand out as an futuristic evolution of the OT look - the first order stormtroopers come to mind.
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Dec 6, 2020 10:10
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I remember at the time people being super jazzed about giant scale battles, so every movie had to try and ape lord of the rings with their own Helms Deep. AOTC was Star Wars answer, and I always thought it looked stupid and really highlighted what an ineffective weapon lightsabers really are when you saw a giant group of them with extras swinging them randomly. It's been a long time, but I also remember thinking the scene where the lightsabers light up Anakin and Dookus faces being a neat idea that never ended including any coherent shots that showed them actually fighting, and the less said about the Yoda battle, the better. As ridiculous and over the top as the Phantom Menaces battles were in retrospect, they at least looked coherent. AOTC felt like George also figured he could not only digitally replace the sets and costumes, but the choreographers as well.
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Dec 7, 2020 14:29
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I think the age ranges actually work for the story they want to tell. As someone earlier put it, the prequels story is supposed to be ' the tragedy of Darth Vader' - which is a fantastic premise that they utterly fail to deliver on in any satisfying way. For movies with so much dialogue and people sitting around, there's suprisingly little dialog or direct moments that directly address the the more interesting messaging - so much about the Anakin's relationships, the downfall of the republic, issues with the bloated and prideful Jedi order etc is buried in the subtext and never really surfaced, and the movies play these moments so straight and stilted it's hard to believe they were intended in the first place, which is why we've had 19 years (oh god) of acctuuallly the prequels are about ... commentary. I mean I'm all for show don't tell, but you can't do a bad job of showing it also. I think the key issue with it is there's a dichotomy between the good triumphing over evil spectacle that Star Wars is known for, with themes and heroes and toysets that all ages can relate to, to the types of character study that it seems that the story wants to tell but never really does a good job delivering on.
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Dec 7, 2020 22:27
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It would have been nice for some of this subtext to come up in Anakin's own justification in turning to the dark side. It's well established that Anakin wants to save everyone, even when it's not possible - and you could see him draw the line that the best way to ensure peace is through brutal order and control, which would be a better way of bridging the gap between the heroic Anakin we know being corrupted into the fascist Vader. I know there's a line or two that aludes to this, but it's so stilted and awkward that it doesn't really come across very clear. By that I mean, wouldn't he saying "your inability to act ensured my mother died in slavery!" be a better explicit motivator than "from my point of view the Jedi are evil!"
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Dec 8, 2020 02:52
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Cartoon Man posted:Probably have to do away with that scene where he killed a bunch of kids. Haha yeah. And to that I don't think you need to necessarily remove that scene, or defend Anakins actions, just show how he gradually falls down the slippery slope of being corrupted by the Dark Side. I mean Yoda says it in ESB - the dark side is quicker and more convenient - in Anakins shoes I could see him being tempted by the fact that he could spend years with diplomacy to solve an issue the Jedi way - which won't fix a situation like his mothers... or solve it immediately with violence. The way it plays out in ROTS it looks like Anakin sees an old man being threatened, intervenes to prevent it happening and his first subsequent act is to murder children.
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Dec 8, 2020 03:03
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I feel like George probably didn't intend much of the subtext that deeper readings of the prequels like to explore... I get the impression that in George's world there's not much thought to the moral subjectivity of the Jedi - from most of his interviews I gather his version of Star Wars at its core is about good vs evil. There isn't much morally grey. I'm not sure if he'd confer exactly with the ideas of the Republic and the Jedi Order being corrupt / deeply flawed by nature, other than those parts where they're clearly being manipulated against their will into a war that they're not suited for. Especially when you read his comments about things like Han shooting last or the desire to not showing people dying. Though the prequels are played so drat straight it's hard to tell either way. If anything, it makes them infinitely more interesting to talk about than actually watch.
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Dec 9, 2020 09:37
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Alchenar posted:This interview is fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VRYKlnEP7o Thanks for sharing that. I love hearing about Lucas' accomplishments in creating and developing tech and visual effects, which is something I think often gets overshadowed by the quality of his films. I think it's hard to remember he's made pretty much all of his films outside the traditional movie studio environment, which was a pretty crazy undertaking.
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Dec 9, 2020 14:50
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Ah... Remember when they stopped making Star Wars movies for awhile when they realised the market was sick of so much Star Wars? Well they've had one hit again, so fire up the sludge factory! Well... Hopefully this means that all these shows will be able to concentrate on their own unique things and not be a sycophantic shoe horn reference of everything relating to everything else. This feels like recent Star Trek where everytime an executive likes a character they announce they've greenlit a series for them. Still holding out hope for that Max Reebo show... Isometric Bacon fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Dec 11, 2020 |
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Dec 11, 2020 10:53
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feedmyleg posted:I'm a firm believer that Hayden's bizarre acting choices/speech patterns in the films are due to him attempting to match the cadence of James Earl Jones to provide for a continuity of character (but failing to pull it off). Just imagine James Earl Jones' "I have you now!" or "You are part of the rebel alliance and a traitor!" in the voice of Hayden's Anakin. It's the same cadence and lilt. For me this has always been the disconnect between the Vader we know and the Anakin of the prequels, and it's more a fault of the way the character is written moreso then the acting. Vader has a rich, almost royal cadence. He enunciates each of his words carefully and with emphasis on the key words. I imagine this is James Earl Jones theatrical background coming through. It's what that Chad Vader guy could nail that every itger Vader impersonator in videogames and other media seemed to fail to do before hand, making it obviously not James Earl Jones. ROTSith makes the voice come across like something that comes about as a part of him being turned into a robot, just like how the emperor's creepy visage is because he scarred himself and not his 'true form' (which I much preferred the idea of).
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Dec 12, 2020 00:04
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The problem with using preestablished characters is that it very difficult to do to much new with them if you already know their end point, especially when their character growing moments were largely already done in a later film. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, Better Call Saul is the perfect example... But I'd rather see new things. Damnit Star Wars, didn't you learn your lesson about prequels?
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Dec 12, 2020 01:00
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Maxwell Lord posted:At this point in the fight it's basically become a mirror match, they can anticipate each other's actions and match each other's blows, so they're getting just a little desperate. Yeah I didn't mind that bit for that reason exactly. It is pretty fast in the film and from memory, culminates a moment in the fight. It's the rest of that fight that really bothers me. In a scene with some huge dramatic moments and great tragedy as these brothers bitterly fight to their death, there is Mario jumping on funky little robots and uncharted like videogame esque escalating scenes where the characters need to climb on ever changing environment that fall apart in a completely ridiculous and unbelievable manner I also liked how in contrast to alot of the lame flashy poo poo from the prequels, Obi Wan defeats Grevious ridiculous spinning blades of death poo poo with deft and careful flicks of his wrist. That feels alot more Jedi to me. Of course, that too is ruined by a unbelievable ridiculous OneWheel spinny car and lizard chase scene.
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Dec 16, 2020 08:47
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Schwarzwald posted:I hate it when a serious fight between a samurai and a bionicle gets interrupted by something ridiculous. It's less the concept and more how silly it is executed. Watching these moments there's always a clear break between scenes with live actors, cut to Wacky Races with Snidely Whiplash. You could blame the CGI but to me it's the editing, storyboarding and cinematography - there's decisions you could choose not to make it not be that awkward.
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Dec 16, 2020 22:22
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Calling it now. The next excuse to keep a franchise alive by regurgitating the same nostalgic poo poo again to audiences as the next evolution of the prequel /remake / reimagining / soft reboot will be the 'alternate history' or 'what if'.
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Dec 24, 2020 05:45
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Yeah actually, giving C3P0 a moment was one of the things I actually liked from Revenge of the Sith. Especially since I barely even remember his presence in any of the other sequel films. I really liked his 'One last look at my friends' line, though like everything else it would have hit harder had he actually been in the other films, and they immediately invalidated his whole memory wipe thing 30 seconds later.
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Dec 27, 2020 04:05
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For that Threepio memory wipe scene, I half expected his restored memories to kick in and he'd suddenly remember his role in all the films, including the prequels and perhaps a corny joke around being made by Anakin Skywalker and no one belieiving him, or thinking Babu inadvertently fried something. Missed opportunity.
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Dec 28, 2020 13:11
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Any attempt to 'fix' what VIII did in a sequel is bound to be a bucket of poo poo. Regardless of what they felt, they should have just run with it rather than wasting most of the film doing so. It, and the aforementioned studio mandated bullet points are the key reasons IX is terrible. It's like someone went through Reddit with a note pad and wrote down all the things people were angry about, shoved it infront of JJ and said 'Fix this'. It's weird to say, but I miss the days when these creators had nothing to do with, or completely ignored their fans and stuck to their own vision. Today you get the impression that cast and crew are often subjected to reading Reddit, or are continually bombarded with Twitter opinions, both for PR and also the fact we're now shoulders deep into the digital age. Those people (including us) are not the people you should be listening to, otherwise you end up with the same regurgitated hash of what they like again and again reheated in the microwave.
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Dec 28, 2020 21:30
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I really wonder if they'd actually bring Rian back, (or if he'd even want to), for a trilogy no less, after all the lovely viritol aimed at TLJ. I mean, they released a movie that was explicitly written to undo everything he did. My best guess is they're doubling down on tv and safe poo poo for movies since mandalorian was a hit. I don't think we'll see Rian again in any short term, sadly.
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Dec 29, 2020 07:22
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From memory The Revenge of the Sith novelization came out before the film was released too, at least by a week or so. I remember this because I read a good chunk of it ahead of time then stopped to not spoil the film for myself. I also remember being bummed out at the films depictions of the stuff I already read.
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Jan 16, 2021 21:17
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Martman posted:I feel like a lot of the emphasis on practical effects is just a movie visuals version of "Saturday Night Live was only good at the exact time when I was young and watching it." There's this arbitrary sense that movie visuals peaked in like, the 80s, and they're never clamoring for the physicality of King Kong claymation or whatever. I think a lot of the success and subsequent nostalgia for these old special effects was because they were forced to be novel and interesting with them to make up for the limitations of the physical medium. This led to clever closeups, sharp editing and especially story and directing conceits to hide the fact they were literally rubber puppets. This ended up leaving alot to the imagination. Nowadays you can pretty much throw a virtual camera anywhere and do anything - so there's less requirement to be subtle or careful. We watched Jurassic Park the other day and then whatever the new Jurassic World is called and boy, what a difference. The former is deliberately paced in a way where the slow lead up to the reveal of each dinosaur ensures that they fill you with a sense of wonder... Or fear. There's a lot left to your imagination. In the latter, it became a running joke in that every scene couldn't help itself but jam about 6 dinosaurs in every frame that are all doing something that's seems to be impressive. It just all seems so fake. I often wonder if 1993 Spielberg had access to today's CG technology whether it would be as memorable. Though with that said, there are plenty of forgotten examples from the 80s that don't hold up the same way. There's a reason why you see the same names again and again when looking at the practical effects practitioners and directors from the movies everyone remembers from that era.
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Apr 24, 2021 23:49
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I loved me some KOTOR back in the day, but I honestly don't see the appeal in a remake. The original still exists, and is mostly fondly remembered for 'Western RPG in the star wars universe', 'freedom of choice' and 'interesting twist and turns' at a time where videogames didn't have much of those. I mean, fine, I'm curious how it turns out, but it won't make me feel like I did when I was 15 anymore. I'd rather see them try to make a new Star Wars RPG. Hell who am I kidding? it's Star Wars! It's entire brand for the past 15 or so years has been to pander to nostalgia.
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Sep 10, 2021 04:17
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I never got the frothing anger over The Last Jedi, and in particular the Holdo ramming scene. Star Wars has never really been that internally consistent with its dogfighting in space veneer, and I thought it was at least a cool and different set piece over yet another trench run analogue. Then I watched Rise Of the Skywalker and I retroactively apologised to all the frothy nerds because of how much of an angry frothy nerd I got over the fact there was sixteen zillion star destroyers crewed by ghosts that required some central control ship to understand the up direction and how the entire galaxy was required to stop them or whatever the gently caress that all was.
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Oct 14, 2021 01:07
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I really liked the setpiece of The Last Jedi having a chase scene where the last of the resistance is being chased across the galaxy by a superior force and on the verge of losing it all. I feel like the biggest issue with it was they decided to have a group of the characters saunter off mid chase and have adventures on another planet somewhere in the meantime, which literally killed any tension there was and made the situation look pretty absurd.
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Oct 14, 2021 01:14
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FunkyAl posted:There was one star destroyer. The rest were complex holographic copies. They had to destroy the central transmission tower on horseback. Lol I'm assuming this is joke unless they've retroactively changed poo poo in comic books or whatever to try and retcon the film to make a lick of sense... Though I haven't watched it since the cinemas since it left such a bad taste in my mouth.
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Oct 14, 2021 01:18
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I really don't understand the hate directed at the Holdo manouvre stuff, I mean the movie prior established that hyperspace was instant and you can just travel inside 3 different planet atmospheres halfway across the galaxy in the space of 15 seconds like you're in the middle of Star Tours ride. That was much more egregarious and immersion breaking to me. The fact it was the heros most valuable capital ship, huge, and didn't even destroy the enemy, just winged them, seemed like it would be a tactic that couldn't be used unless extremely desperate anyways.
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Oct 14, 2021 13:55
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