Re: The Future of Star Wars

Saniss wrote:

How is it even possible that J.J. didn't have anything to rewrite? Is he gonna piece Snoke back together with technoForcebabble, or had he already planned he wouldn't be here in 9?

"Oh look. Snoke was actually a defective clone from one of Palpatines many and numerous doomsday scenario cloning facilities scattered around the galaxy that activated when Palpy died in Return (Or escaped clone with his own agendaetc etc). Snoke dies and another one activates, but this one is actually Palpy. badda boom badda bing we've got a badass Sith lord in the mix to act as the villain."

That's pretty much the only way I can think to reconcile JJ planning for Snoke to be dead and Palpatine to come back for the 3rd movie. Assuming he's not bullshitting to save face about the clusterfuck behind the scenes, who knows.

I mean it would make a certain amount of sense given the prequels and Palp's penchant for clones, and the entirely  bizarre choice to somehow ramrod Palpatine back into these movies after all this time.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I'm fully prepared for this to be a shitshow of spectacular proportions. I'm not ruling out even the worst fan theory you can think of. Hell I'll be amazed if they don't somehow manage to canonize the Sun Crusher or some equally ridiculous EU thing.

EDIT: EDIT: Actually... doing something like that would actually be interesting. It's probably just gonna be safe and dull and predictable... but if I can't hope for it to be good, I can at least hope for it's fireball to be spectacular. *crosses fingers and makes a wish*

ZangrethorDigital.ca

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66sDIAEYeU4

That's how it's done right. 

But, Oooohwie!   Let's watch JJ put it in the Khan

Last edited by Beeg (2019-09-03 03:29:46)

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

Y'all are so mad.

"Storytelling is dead."
"This whole thing is fucked up beyond any kind of decency and respect for a story."
"There haven't been any new ideas introduced in the movies since ESB."
"I'm fully prepared for this to be a shitshow of spectacular proportions."

Just wow.
I thought I'd hung up my TFN-era defense tactics, but goshdarnit I will roll up these sleeves and punch some love back into this internet if need be. I'd do it on Facebook, but those amateur critics don't deserve this epic a monologue:

IT'S STAR WARS. LET'S EAT SOME POPCORN AND WATCH THE SPACE PEOPLE FIIIIIGHT. WITH MOTHERFUCKING LIGHTSABERS AND STARFIGHTERS AND SOMETIMES THEIR WORDS TOO.

I've gotten plenty of fun entertainment for the cost of my ticket/BluRay each time. Don't get me started on the actions figures and these lively discussions.
What's holding up you guys? Too knowledgeable to enjoy things? Can't stand that someone else is doing it? Jaded by multimedia supersaturation?

It can't be the story alone cuz I watched it too, and I have watched, read, listened and written a lot of Star Wars and I still think TFA and TLJ are exceptional, respectful entries in the Saga. Perhaps a tad shallow in depth compared to the "Legends" novels they're supplanting, but I am truly disturbed that so many die hard fans don't get why these are great.
The momentum "#notmyluke" got made me physically ill. In The Last Jedi, did you see Mark Hamill turning in arguably his best Luke performance yet? Cuz I sure as hell did.

So. What's the real problem here? I'm sincerely trying to understand the hate for the sequels because I have tried and tried and I don't. Even after the critiques, complaints and CinemaSins, every time I watch them, I have fun. Are there plot points I can easily pick apart in the first viewing? Things I think could have been done better? Sure. I've got a degree in this shit.
What impresses me is that it is still following the trilogy structure Uncle George established with some new twists and turns, it's still clearly about generations and legacy, like the prequels/OT, and we've seen new and interesting Force abilities, we've gotten lovable new characters while getting some respect given to the classics, some fun, disgusting and scary creatures, endearing moments and enough sexual tension to make E.L. James blush.

And I'm not even talking about the spinoffs, which are the EU novels of my newly-obsessive preteen years brought to life.
I'm pretty happy with the Disney-built resurgence we've gotten, since when the closest thing we had to a fresh character post-Episode III was Ahsoka frakkin' Tano. To this day, whenever she calls Anakin "Skyguy"... my balls jump into my abdomen. They haven't wrecked it. They've taken 40 years of off-screen lore and started working it back towards its original medium. They've salvaged a fading franchise and blown it up to a proportion that gives countless new people the opportunity to come in and put their stamp on it. They've legitimized fanfilms, and the fans are ungrateful.

Every time I see a Star Wars fan go on an angry rant, I can't help but think they're missing the principle lesson of the OT. Everyone is smiling at the end of RotJ, you guys. And in the episodes they're not, they at least haven't given up hope. Their eyes are on the horizon, searching for it.

Alright. Got that out of my system.
http://www.howmanydaysuntilstarwars.com/

I love Star Wars. I wouldn't be the man I am without it.
'Nuff said.

"Defending bad movies is VaporTrail's religion."
-DorkmanScott

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

Uncle George is a lie.  (he's lurking out there selling some line about being 'disappointed' right now)

That said.

Watching the space people fight each other, pretending to be a space person myself, and dedicating a lot of neurons to the lore and words of those space people has been some of the happiest points of my life.

Going to see Skywalker with my siblings this December is more important to me then any family Christmas/NYE nonsense might be going down.

I saw TFA so many times.  It felt so good to be back in Star Wars again.

Didn't go quite as nuts for TLJ, but still saw it multiple times in theaters and is tied with ESB as best Star Wars IMHO.

I love watching it in 3D, on as big a screen as possible, sitting right in the middle, and a little too close, so the screen fills my whole field of vision.

The bullshit that the Internet has directed at the actors is just as stoopid as the shit Ahmed Best got as JarJar.  They've all been doing fantastic work.  The casting has taken a really nice turn in the hands of the Four Fingered Mouse.  Hamill and Johnson fill the screen with more mystery in Luke Skywalker than Guiness and Lucas (lol) ever managed.  Damn that was a good movie.  And the scene with Rey and the mirrors!  Ufda.

The writing is loads better with Disney.  I'm excited for what the end of the saga means for all the rest of Star Wars.  Since 1977 GL et all have been telling people "no no, don't write about THAT, cuz I'm gonna write about it later..."  For 40 years!  Finally, no more of that crap.  Aaaand they brought back hyperspace and big death lazers!

Nonnathat lets JJ off the hook, or forgives the tepid support Disney has shown the actors, or the wormtongueing GL gives anyone who will listen, or the producers for not finally doing their homework after 40 years.

But.

I agree.

Fuck that.

IMA go watch some Star War

One

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Last edited by Beeg (2019-09-26 10:02:28)

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

Huh. At :58, look over the top left of the Death Star. There's all kinds of frame-held elements floating there. Hm.

Anyway. I remember watching this as a kid (on some VHS or another) and thinking 'god, that story looks huge.'

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

So far TFA is the only one I haven't liked. Rogue One remains the best IMO. Loved TLJ's themes and execution. Solo was rockin' fun with a story/atmosphere/vibe that felt like Solo himself was telling it.

Witness me!

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

Teague, it kinda was huge at the time. Not that there weren't other movies with sequels or even trilogies, but usually (not always) sequels were considered cut-rate, and trilogies weren't as mythological in scope.

Massive trilogies and - dare I mention the elephant in the room, franchises like MCU and Fast and Furious that just keep churning out moneymakers - were absolutely not the norm until this millennium, unless I'm way off the mark.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

My dad brought it home on the cheepo rental 4:3PS VHS in like 1994 and we watched the 3 episodes over the course of like, a month?  It felt like years. 

https://starwarsblog.starwars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Original-1.jpg

I vaguely remember asking about it at a "Hollywood Video" and him saying something along the lines of "You haven't seen Star Wars?"  Fast forward a couple years I got the THX box set that trailer is advertising, as a gift. 

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/817bhNs0NhL._SY445_.jpg

Each tape included that trailer and Leonard Maltin interviewing GL about the episode and letting him say whatever he wanted.  I'd usually FF'd the interview, but I loved that trailer.  It was like a TV show theme that told you what the whole thing was about.  Must have watched those tapes and therefore that trailer, hundreds of times.

Perhaps what my soul needs is to make a star wars trailer of my own after it's all over.

Last edited by Beeg (2019-09-27 02:14:47)

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

Same, after watching it on tapes Dad had recorded from HBO or something, we got the THX Faces box set. I actually really enjoyed the Maltin interviews; this of course was before we learned of George's fallibility.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

I certainly wasn't nearly as cynical as a kid, I just wanted to get to the SPACELAZERS.  If you asked 12 year old me, I'd have told you Empire wasn't quite as good as the other ones since it was lacking a really big explosion at the end.

Also...  Somewhere there is a like, sizzlereel of my brother that I made for a birthday roast when I was 14ish? His onscreen antics aside, I narratated the shit out of the thing in my very best 14 year old Maltin impression.  He was clearly the greatest interviewer I knew of.


___________________________________________

It is pretty interesting to track interactions with with franchise at both a cultural level and an individual one.
Like you have the Typical stuff like you and me, @Boter, but does anyone here remember reading on the TFN boards about the guy in Denmark or Norway or some foreign place (to my uneducated american ear holes) who couldn't get his parents to take him to the movies, his dad was falling asleep/yelling at the screen, and then he met this other kid who'd never seen any of the films at all but had all the toys and had an elaborate backstory about how the Emperor was Chewy's grandmother?

Last edited by Beeg (2019-09-27 02:32:13)

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

Vapes wrote:

What's holding up you guys? Too knowledgeable to enjoy things?

The thing for me is simple. I'll use TLJ as an example, but there are other examples from the other Disney films I could pull as well. TLJ is just the worst offender in this regard, so I'm going to focus on it:

Very simply, the characters are not well-developed.

TLJ literally puts Leia to sleep for half the movie so that we can spend time with...Holdo. A new character. In Leia's place, in Leia's last movie. If this were due to Carrie Fisher's death, I'd be on board and sympathetic to the difficulty in re-writing around that. But they've repeatedly stated that this was the original plan. Holdo, a character we just met, gives her life for the Rebellion -- which seems like a wonderful send-off for Leia in her last film, doesn't it?

We're meant to believe that Finn and Poe are good buddies, but instead of spending time together actually showing us that, they go off on separate adventures, hardly speak more than a couple of lines together in the whole movie, all so that they can force a poorly-developed romantic relationship with...again, a new character.

I'm not against new characters. That would be silly. I'm simply against forcing them in to the point where we don't spend any quality time with the characters we want -- *that we are told that we're supposed* -- to care about.

It's contrived and results in a lack of emotional payoff. It's bad writing. There are a lot of great ideas in TLJ, but they all pale in comparison to how little the movie makes me feel.

Again, a lot of these topics, broadly speaking, can be applied to the other Disney films. It's a theme, and it smells strongly of "too many cooks in the kitchen."

I'm not angry, but I am disappointed in how little I feel for these movies. I can't believe that Star Wars Episode 9 is only a couple months away, and I'm just beyond caring. I'll go out of morbid curiosity, but there's been so little emotional setup that the payoff is all but guaranteed to be as stale as the rest of the trilogy.

Re: The Future of Star Wars

I don't really have anything else to add, I'm just exhausted by Star Wars these days, but +1 to everything Alex just said.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: The Future of Star Wars

Random side-thought, forgive me if it's been said already:

Anyone think that maybe an earlier version of TLJ didn't have Holdo, and Leia did all that? On one hand, it would have been hella hard to justify *anyone* pulling a mutiny against Leia (probably why they would have added Holdo as a character), but on the other hand...if they could have played the desperation enough, it might've worked. That would have consolidated the character pool a bit, would have required some tighter writing, but the structure is already there and (like others have definitely said) would have allowed Leia to go out in a kickass way.

I'm not trying to start another debate (I like TLJ a lot as is), I'm just wondering if it might have originally *been* Leia instead of Holdo, and someone was like "nah, that's too hard." If you squint at the movie, it would almost work as is.

EDIT: I think for it to work, Leia would have had to be waaaaaay angrier at Dameron after the dreadnought battle. Like maybe he actually failed, and she straight-up arrests him. She'd be fully justified in doing so. So yeah if she was less motherly and more angry general then it would work.

Last edited by Writhyn (2019-10-22 13:08:45)

Witness me!

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

I haven't seen it — so, it's insane for me to be replying — but I'm inclined to think you're right.

(I have similar opinions, moving in the opposite direction, about SW7: I think they probably had a version of the script mostly finished without the main actors being involved, which then got heavily tinkered-with to accomodate their inclusion. [I have no info to back this up; just inferences from script choices.] This could be the opposite.)

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

re: Retconning Rey's parents... if JJ doesn't pull some bullshit around bringing back Sidious' whole manipulating midichlorians to produce miracle force babies to bring balance back to the force'-thing as the twist, I'll be amazed.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: The Future of Star Wars

#PalpatineDestroyedVulcan

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

Got a few things on my mind.

The Blue text of Star Wars logo is this a reference to the end credits, or am I reading too much into it?

Spacehorses charging spaceships in space.  All the spaceships ever vs an Infinite Grid of Star Destroyers.  Force-based Marine Salvage of a Star Destroyer through solid water. So, we're uh, escalating.  OK.  It’s a little bit turning into the 1975 Chevy Van art that the original poster is so in love with.  Missing all the sophomoric boobs (though still dripping with the machismo).  Hopefully JJ doesn't take it too far.

The Internet is positively stalking my cookie based content recommendation engine feeds with reports of various Star Wars stakeholders saying they’re ‘disappointed’ by CLICK TO FIND OUT WHY GEORGE LUCAS IS "DISAPPOINTED" W...

WTF is wrong with you Taboola?

The Rey’s-parentage fight is really calling to mind the was-Darth-Vader-lying-in-TESB fight everyone had until ROTJ confirmed the previous film’s retcon.  Not saying I think it helps us predict the story at all, just funny watching the interaction in the press take place like a flashback to history.

The shot where the Falcon is leading all the ships I think is key to this film.  It represents the enormous pressure that this episode has riding on it to officially launch the Disney version of the Franchise.  Long after we’re all dead, they’ll be well on their way to telling the story of each and every one of those ships and their crews.   

I’m really looking forward to Carrie Fisher’s performance.  Looks like we might get a Leia/Rey training montage which will be cool.

The stuff in the trailer is starting to look really good.  Really enjoying pausing and looking around at all the design going on.  I think this one’s gonna be pretty.  Also, I think Teague is right, and this is gonna be off the chain.

+1 on the characterization of TLJ.

Very interested in the continuity of Kylo's Mask.  Sometimes he has it, sometimes not, sometimes it's Wabi Sabi'd together, sometimes it looks new.  Very intrigued.  Also, previously stated, I love all the OT stuff with the visions and the caves, so looking forward to more of that.

Also, Lando apparently still wears his clothes from High School.

Last edited by Beeg (2019-10-23 01:09:20)

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

Star Wars movies have just appeared on Disney+ in UHD (at least in the US) and guess what? The "Han shooting Greedo" scene was changed again... by George Lucas himself back in 2012.

https://twitter.com/starwarsviscomp/sta … 84097?s=21

Uncle George had to have the last laugh.

So honor the valiant who die 'neath your sword
But pity the warrior who slays all his foes...

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Re: The Future of Star Wars

So, do we need spin off a discussion for The Mandalorian, or is that game in here.

Because... that friggin' ending.

Re: The Future of Star Wars

I was about to start one

Witness me!

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