Post: #301

The entire movie setup as a shitty copy of Episode IV was already mind-cancer. Then they added the Mary Sue, the rampant diversity of a 50% female fighting force. That rebellion would be wiped out in battle like flies.

The ending was just bullshit on top of bullshit.

They should have started out after Episode VI with a liberated galaxy, a new Jedi academy trained by a super-powerful Luke. Then the return of powerful Sith Lord, a genius blue-skinned remnant Admiral Thrawn and the betrayal at the academy from the most talented student. Such a movie would have made 2 bio. $.

That would be Episode VII. They could even top that in Episode VIII and IX.

Whatever - it is all bullshit anyway, since they have to squeeze in so much propaganda into the movies so that stories, sense, meaning or even money is sacrificed.

Post: #302

^^ preach Zelcorpian. Are you an EU reader?

Post: #303

I absolutely hate the new star wars franchise, the member berries nonsense and the straight up plagiarism would of been horrible. My idea for an an intriguing ending is Rey accepts Kylo's invitation and joins the dark side then Luke wakes Finn's punk ass up and trains him to be a badass, but yeah right.

Post: #304

If there anything positive to say about the new Star Wars films, the characters look like they aged in comparison to the various Legends painting/pictures. The Legends pictures looked like they only aged a few years.

Those were interesting videos about Mark Hamill not liking the new films, George Lucas said similar things about the Force Awakens being a redo of Episode 4 (I felt the same way). Let's be honest too, they had to do it that way since the prequels were condemned to hell just because they weren't like the original trilogy. It doesn't help George surrounded himself with yes men and didn't bother to get second opinions. But re watching the prequels, I could see how Anakin would turn to the dark side. After all, the Jedi had him abandon his mother, told him to "get over it" about his feeling and concerns and wouldn't let him be on the Council. Now, the transformation to Vader is a painful turn of scenes to watch (not cringe, but just see how far he falls). I kind of wonder what would've happened if Qui-Gonn lived to help him.

Disney will milk the franchise for all it's worth just like what they're doing with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Post: #305

Kurgan I feel the same way and think the prequels went over most people's heads. It wasn't about member-berries but an expansion of the universe and a tragic hero's tale

Post: #306

(05-05-2017 10:28 PM)Kurgan Wrote:  If there anything positive to say about the new Star Wars films, the characters look like they aged in comparison to the various Legends painting/pictures. The Legends pictures looked like they only aged a few years.

Those were interesting videos about Mark Hamill not liking the new films, George Lucas said similar things about the Force Awakens being a redo of Episode 4 (I felt the same way). Let's be honest too, they had to do it that way since the prequels were condemned to hell just because they weren't like the original trilogy. It doesn't help George surrounded himself with yes men and didn't bother to get second opinions. But re watching the prequels, I could see how Anakin would turn to the dark side. After all, the Jedi had him abandon his mother, told him to "get over it" about his feeling and concerns and wouldn't let him be on the Council. Now, the transformation to Vader is a painful turn of scenes to watch (not cringe, but just see how far he falls). I kind of wonder what would've happened if Qui-Gonn lived to help him.

Disney will milk the franchise for all it's worth just like what they're doing with the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I wonder what would have happened if they had made exactly the same movies - same script, same direction, same hokey dialogue and plot holes and all - but with competent actors.

I could have forgiven even Jar-Jar Binks had the prequel series leads had the same charisma and chemistry as the original series' cast. Or any charisma and chemistry, for that matter. Somehow the actors made me actively not care about any of them, if not actively dislike them.

But you're right in that there was a ton of decent plot and character material in the prequels as-written that should have made for a good story. The promise of the young Anakin Skywalker, the corruption of that promise not just by the seductiveness of evil but the tragic ineptitude of the well-meaning, and the role of Obi-Wan in all of that and how it makes him the tragic, fatalistic character we encounter in the original trilogy. The same story, told with a little more focus on these essentials* (and as noted, better actors), would have been a worthy addition to the franchise.

* -- As opposed to spergily accounting for every last worldbuilding detail of the fictional universe shown in the first trilogy. One major element of the appeal of the fantastical fictional worlds seen in good science fiction is that not everything is explained. Some things are hinted at and then deliberately left to the (speculative) imagination of the audience to give the world a certain depth and reality - the audience's imaginations are better engaged, and their own minds fill in the blanks each in their own personalized way. Encountering a fictional world in medias res, you just have to roll with the hints and allusions and unexplained references to the Noodle Incident and such, accept the world as it is, and enjoy the story and thinking later about what all those cryptic details mean.

The prequels set about explaining every last little hint, allusion, and reference encountered in the originals. The origin of R2D2 and C3PO, the origin of the stormtroopers and Boba Fett, the origin of the Death Star, the origin of Vader, the origin of Luke and Leia, why Leia is a "princess", the significance of her (adoptive) father, where the "force ghost" stuff comes from, what the force actually is, what the Clone Wars were, exactly how the Emperor came to look so gnarly, etc. It seems like Lucas made an inventory of every random aside in the originals and then made an effort to cover every one of them with a needless explanation. And in so doing, he destroyed the magic of the franchise by eliminating the need to imaginatively engage with it.

Post: #307

Impossible. There are no actors that could have made those lines sound good. Natalie Portman can act, but her character was just abysmal. The acting for child anakin could have been better, but the lines were still cheesy as fuck.

Post: #308

(05-06-2017 07:39 PM)Mochihunter Wrote:  Kurgan I feel the same way and think the prequels went over most people's heads. It wasn't about member-berries but an expansion of the universe and a tragic hero's tale

The main problem with the prequel trilogy to me is no one challenged George Lucas about his writing or directing because he surrounded himself with yes men and didn't accept second opinions.

Post: #309

I still subscribe to the theory that Jar-Jar Binks was really an immensely powerful and evil sith lord, and that only after seeing the disastrous public opinion on the character Lucas chickened out and had to rewrite it.

Post: #310

(05-07-2017 11:46 AM)Alsos Wrote:  I wonder what would have happened if they had made exactly the same movies - same script, same direction, same hokey dialogue and plot holes and all - but with competent actors.

It would have still be terrible. Nearly every one of the actors in the prequels has given Oscar-caliber performances in other movies. The entire problem was George...he isn't a good writer or director.

He came up with 2 pretty good treatments for movies that turned into huge franchises (SW and Indy) - and it's made him a multi-billionaire. Beyond that, most of the world building is the work of other, more talented, people. But it's hard to argue against 5.5 billion dollars.

George has always wanted people to think he's as good a director as Spielberg, that's why he insisted on doing everything in the prequels. It didn't work out. But that doesn't explain American Graffiti. That movie was a massive critical success as well as being one of the most profitable movies of all time. Either George was great but lost his edge or Coppola kept a close eye on him during production. I'm guessing it was Coppola.

Post: #311

(05-07-2017 02:22 PM)Captainstabbin Wrote:  

(05-07-2017 11:46 AM)Alsos Wrote:  I wonder what would have happened if they had made exactly the same movies - same script, same direction, same hokey dialogue and plot holes and all - but with competent actors.

It would have still be terrible. Nearly every one of the actors in the prequels has given Oscar-caliber performances in other movies. The entire problem was George...he isn't a good writer or director.

He came up with 2 pretty good treatments for movies that turned into huge franchises (SW and Indy) - and it's made him a multi-billionaire. Beyond that, most of the world building is the work of other, more talented, people. But it's hard to argue against 5.5 billion dollars.

George has always wanted people to think he's as good a director as Spielberg, that's why he insisted on doing everything in the prequels. It didn't work out. But that doesn't explain American Graffiti. That movie was a massive critical success as well as being one of the most profitable movies of all time. Either George was great but lost his edge or Coppola kept a close eye on him during production. I'm guessing it was Coppola.

George Lucas is quite good at crafting a story, the details etc, but very bad at giving actors directions. The wooden performance of the cast was not their fault. The first 3 movies in the 70s and 80s also had a similar problem, but you don't see it that much because the novelty factor then superseded anything else. Still the new prequels were good in terms of story especially in the last 2 episodes with false flags, power takeover - it behaved just like in real life with the globalists doing their plans.

In any case - Disney will run that ship to the ground, but it will keep on making money anyway, because the population is getting dumber and dumber like in some global idiocracy test. But they will manage to jump the shark one day maybe in 20 years after having done 15-20 movies.

Post: #312

I'm basing that on the stories of how the original cast ad-libbed on occasion, delivered the lines differently from how Lucas intended, etc. (the most famous case being the "I love you" "I know" scene in Ep. V). And "direction" was the wrong word to use there - was thinking about the visual mechanics of filming (staging scenes, etc.) rather than the actor-related part of it. Yeah, if he wouldn't let them act, it doesn't matter the actor.

Post: #313

What is the main goal of the Sith? Or the new order? Why are they always bad? They should do a film of a young boy, whos father works as a construction worker on the dead star. He works there to support his family, with no evil intention. And then the Jedi blow it up and kill this man and many other innocent workers in Return of the Jedi. The kid of this dead construction worker becomes a secret agent or a bounty hunter for the Empire to take revenge. This is an emotional story. People will like him, feel him and then he still becomes "bad".

Post: #314

(05-07-2017 04:21 PM)Parzival Wrote:  What is the main goal of the Sith? Or the new order? Why are they always bad? They should do a film of a young boy, whos father works as a construction worker on the dead star. He works there to support his family, with no evil intention. And then the Jedi blow it up and kill this man and many other innocent workers in Return of the Jedi. The kid of this dead construction worker becomes a secret agent or a bounty hunter for the Empire to take revenge. This is an emotional story. People will like him, feel him and then he still becomes "bad".

Yeah - they could have brought the story into some kind of realistic emotional level with the new episodes. Because part of the tale is rather simplistic and childish, also does not make much sense (like the Sith rule of two bullshit - one master having an accident and the order is finished - heh). There are other matters like motivation and the partly stupid rules they have for both Jedi as well as Sith. I think that a third force-sensitive order that breeds like rabbits and works in clans would wipe out both Jedi and Sith easily. If it is hereditary, then the most powerful ones could impregnate 100.000 women and have an army of force users instead of clone troopers at his disposal.

But hey - it is all a story anyway and fiction.

Post: #315

Relevent:

Post: #316

Post: #317

(05-07-2017 04:21 PM)Parzival Wrote:  What is the main goal of the Sith? Or the new order? Why are they always bad? They should do a film of a young boy, whos father works as a construction worker on the dead star. He works there to support his family, with no evil intention. And then the Jedi blow it up and kill this man and many other innocent workers in Return of the Jedi. The kid of this dead construction worker becomes a secret agent or a bounty hunter for the Empire to take revenge. This is an emotional story. People will like him, feel him and then he still becomes "bad".

Some random thoughts on all this.

First question: what do you want your Star Wars story to be about, ultimately? Do you really want to cheer on the bad guy? I'm not talking about cheering on Han Solo the scoundrel, I mean cheering someone who's on Darth Vader's scale?

Some people are saying that Kylo Ren's story arc is going to be one of redemption, that he's going to turn back to the Light in the same way Darth Vader did.

If this theory is correct, and accompanied by Rey falling to the Dark Side of the Force, I would class it as a satisfying turn of events and also the best shitlording twist on a popular film in decades, the sort of thing to make SJWs picket Lucasfilm and/or Disneyland for months. Leaving that hilarity aside, it would also be a strong declaration of what Star Wars is about: a declaration that there are moral absolutes, that there is good and evil to which the Light Side and Dark Side are attached.

But I doubt that's the way the films will go. If Kylo Ren does turn back from the Dark Side, it'll be something of a pointless exercise because the films are firmly taking us down the path that both Dark and Light Side are erroneous and shit, that's it's all fucking Grey Jedi stuff. So Kylo's redemption doesn't mean much at all.

The point at which Star Wars began to mutate into something else was the moment Alec Guinness uttered the line "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."

Up until then we had fairly straightforward delineations of good and evil in the saga, as set out by Yoda: A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defence, never for attack. The Dark Side isn't more powerful, only quicker, easier, more seductive. You know the Light Side from the Dark by being calm, at peace, passive. Anger, fear, aggression are all the Dark Side of the Force, and once you start down the dark path, forever does it dominate (as opposed to control) your destiny even if you ultimately turn away from it (as Vader did).

But when Obi-Wan suddenly pronounced -- from the afterlife no less -- that truth was simply a point of view, we were off down the road of moral relativism. Admittedly there were damn few ways out of that box canyon of a plot: Obi-Wan had flat-out lied to Luke that Darth Vader murdered his father, and they had to make Obi-Wan's conduct acceptable somehow. But the moment he said that (or rather Lucas allowed him to say that) he sowed the seeds for the bullshit we're going to see in Episode VIII.

The prequels were basically Lucas trying to rehabilitate Darth Vader, to basically indicate it wasn't the guy's fault that he turned to evil, that he only did it out of love for Padme. In other words, that he had an excuse. This wouldn't have been such a problem if they hadn't made the audience identify with him rather than with Obi-Wan Kenobi. The result of this was to again grind in moral relativism into the universe: remember the (really, really bad) line "From my point of view the Jedi are evil!"

And the reason they were able to have Darth Vader spout that line and not have the audience start guffawing in disbelief was because over three films Lucas had portrayed the Jedi Order as an ossified, aspie organisation of virgins armed with lethal weapons who seemed to invoke the Witcher's Law of Surprise with the full backing of the Republic. The only guys we were ever allowed to find as sympathetic among the Jedi were Qui-Gon Jinn (who was rebellious against the Jedi teachings) and Yoda (who basically is in the three films for marquee value, let's face it).

The prequels are designed to remove as much agency as possible from Anakin Skywalker's decision to turn to the Dark Side. You never get the sense that he makes a conscious choice to embrace the Dark Side for its power, you get the sense he's pushed around by other factors. At every turn, he is given an excuse for why he did it. In the first film there was a deleted scene where he beats the snot out of a Rodian who accuses him of cheating. In the second film he turns to mass murder because his mother has just gone "Glacck!" right in his arms. Which is why when he finally does do his flip-flop to the Dark Side in the third film, it has all the emotional impact of a Hallmark card.

And as said, when they do remove his agency, they turn him into an agent of moral relativism. "I killed thousands of people, but I had an excuse." "I murdered my wife, but I had an excuse - I thought she was banging Obi-Wan."

The new film is going to amp this shit up to eleven. Rey is going to be permitted to slaughter people mindlessly because she has an excuse, yo. Meddling with the Dark Side won't touch her because she has an excuse, yo.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #318

(05-07-2017 04:21 PM)Parzival Wrote:  What is the main goal of the Sith? Or the new order? Why are they always bad? They should do a film of a young boy, whos father works as a construction worker on the dead star. He works there to support his family, with no evil intention. And then the Jedi blow it up and kill this man and many other innocent workers in Return of the Jedi. The kid of this dead construction worker becomes a secret agent or a bounty hunter for the Empire to take revenge. This is an emotional story. People will like him, feel him and then he still becomes "bad".

Like how muslims are "radicalized" by the evil US bombing a factory that's making WMDs?

That would play pretty well to the new breed of Islamic apologists in Hollywood.

Post: #319

Rewatched Rogue One last night, still an amazing movie and so, so much better than the pile of shit that is TFA. The movie actually has a vision compared to the pandering, written-by-committee crap of TFA. The characters are great and much more grounded, it has a stunning sense of scale and place, and it shows the rebels as a disparate band of morally conflicted, flawed people.

No idea how they could possibly salvage Episode 8 after the damage the previous film did, so now I'm much more looking forward to the other spinoffs instead.

Post: #320

Got to thinking while commuting today about how TFA might have been good with largely the same plot.

No, really.

First, avoid the blatant, studied ripoff of Ep.IV by making the callbacks a bit more interesting and novel. Make the First Order an emerging coalition of remnant factions of the Empire. They've recently turned to conquest, taking over a heavy-industry planet and its orbital shipyards and using it to produce not Super-Duper Star Destroyers (Bigger and Even Bluer Than Last Time!) but huge numbers of modestly-sized ones...equipped with a scaled-down version of the weapon from the Death Star(s). The text crawl at the beginning concerns this emerging threat again casting the (new) Republic into squabbling and "Gathering Storm"-style dithering and denial, suggesting that the hammer could fall at any time, with the Good Guys completely unprepared. Yet...the first order waits.

Meanwhile, on Desert Planet That Looks Exactly Like Tatooine But Isn't, Rey finishes a hard day scavenging with a nice warm food packet and a curious bit of meditation: "Remember, remember, remember..." she intones as she drifts off to sleep, but what is she trying to remember? Even she doesn't know, just that she knows nothing from before a year ago but vague flashes of memory in dreams.

Finn, likewise, is trying to remember. The First Order needs stormtroopers, so it applies a military levy to the systems it conquers. The young conscripts have their identities wiped and are retrained as soldiers.

Thus, both have ready explanations (if vague at this point) for how they know things that they don't know they know and in the film as-made are shown no reason to have known.

With this prompting, we can guess that Rey is a Jedi apprentice (or more deviously, a Sith apprentice) but not yet why she forgot herself or how/why she ended up on Tatooine II as the Galaxy Far-Far-Away's equivalent of a Can Man. And that little bit of mystery makes us actually want to know who she is and what's going on. With Finn's story in parallel, they have something in common to make their teaming up believable. And played right, Finn's mind-wipe can involve him unwittingly knowing (a la R2D2 in Ep.IV) something really important to the plot.

This something important turns out to be not Death Star 3D and its ability to swallow stars whole and then chunder them across the galaxy, but something really disturbing and ominous: the First Order, fed up with shitty conscripts like Finn, has fired up the clone factory to turn out not merely the standardized combat Maoris who can't hit the broad side of a barn with a spread-beam blaster, but clones of someone immensely Force-sensitive (like, say, the missing Luke Skywalker...). All of them bent to the Dark Side from the moment of decanting, in a deliberate upending of the "two Sith" crap the antagonists now freely admit was a rather short-sighted and self-limiting policy on the part of the previous administration.

Admit it, that would be pretty damned scary to someone in that universe.

With that foundation, Rey can do all the things she did without explanation in the film as-made, and have it make sense in the context of the story (however implausible in practical terms) - we're not surprised to see her force-grab objects or telepathically influence people or leap about like a cartoon ninja, because we're pretty sure as to why it's possible. And all her Grrl-Powering leads up to a big combat set-piece concerning the destruction of the heavily-defended clone factory, which is (unbeknownst to the protagonists arriving to attack it) protected by the hastily deployed and not-fully-operational Production Lot #1 Sithtroopers (who may or may not look a lot like the missing Luke Skywalker).

In the epilogue, Rey and Finn and Chewbacca travel to Prison Planet that Looks Like Ireland to free Luke Skywalker. But it ends on an ambiguous note (as in the as-made movie), leaving the audience to wonder if he's relieved to see her (again...?) or cheesed that she wrecked his (admittedly narcissistic) plans for a Galactic Army of Me.

It's not perfect, but it's really not any worse than what was actually produced. And seriously, the addition of simply that one element of Rey meditating in an attempt to remember who she is/where she came from would have mitigated a lot of the Mary Sue issues with TFA.

Post: #321

Force Awakens was the worst Star Wars movie ever made. Yes, worse than Phantom Menace. At least that movie had funny stereotypes.

The you-go-girlism, forced multiculturalism and political correctness totally ruined this series and there's no salvaging it unless Rey either dies or decides being a Jedi isn't for her and she'd rather be a caring mother and wife.

Star Wars is dead. It has been sacrificed at the altar of the Social Justice Warrior cult. With Disney at the helm, I shouldn't be surprised.

Post: #322

The Anti-Cheese version of The Phantom Menace is worth a watch; a genuinely better film than Force Awakens.

Post: #323

Star Wars has already had strong female lead characters.

Look at Leia for example.

Or if you're into the Expanded Universe, there's Ania Solo from the Legacy storyline who isn't much of a Force user but more of a techie and smuggler like her ancester Han. Jaina Solo is also another example of having to kill her brother because guys in the Skywalker family tend to go to the dark side a bit.

Post: #324

Just in case you thought John Boyega, the guy who plays Finn, had any brains...

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/mov...de8aba8c7b

Quote:STAR Wars actor John Boyega has taken aim at two of the world’s biggest franchises specifically over their distinct lack of diversity.

The 25-year-old actor, whose parents are Nigerian, recently called out Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings over their casting and how they only feature “one type of person on-screen”.

The British-born star sat down with GQrecently to explain why he doesn’t watch Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings.

“There are no black people on Game of Thrones,” Boyega told the publication.

Quote:“You don’t see one black person in Lord of the Rings,” he continues.

Quote:“I ain’t paying money to always see one type of person on-screen. Because you see different people from different backgrounds, different cultures, every day. Even if you’re a racist, you have to live with that. We can ruffle up some feathers.”

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #325

^^

The guy has a clear interest in guilting people into creating more roles for people like himself.

Shoehorning black people into European fantasy settings just breaks verisimilitude.

Now if they want to make a cool new series about high fantasy in an African setting, go right ahead and cast majority black actors.

But this guy saying he doesn't watch shows with 'too many white people' in them and then talking about ruffling the feathers of racists. What a joke. I'm sure a white actor could say he doesn't watch shows with 'too many black people' and get his interview published in GQ no problem.