Star Wars 7 Spoilers Thread: This SPOIL bath is going to feel so good.

Its like having alec guinness not act in the original trilogy tho

rey is imo a much better heroic figure than luke was though i don't think this was the best SW. i actually suspect luke in this trilogy might be more interesting than he was in the original films.

dude's gone through some serious shit

The Kanjiclub scene dangles these amazing martial arts actors in front of us and then doesn't deliver any martial arts. That's breaking some basic rule of showmanship.

Putting two Chekhov's Guns in the same situation (monsters, badasses) and then having only one go off seems like a very modern thing to do

tracer hand (and kasdan) otm re it being delightful

i think that is the best encapsulation

Darth vader is a great villain.

Was it in this thread or somewhere else that someone made the point that an evil father is also waaaay more scary than an evil son, which is more just sad

Part of the charm of Kyle Ren is that he's kind of a whiney chump. He doesn't come off as all powerful and menacing like Vader.

yeah

i love when he takes off his mask & rey is thrown, like "ooookay not hideously disfigured waht is happening"

yup, felt the same

Yeah plus Kylo works because we know and love his parents so much (compared to both Anakin/Padme and Anakin's boring Mom and her mysterious midichlorian lover). The challenge is how they provide him with something different to Vader's trajectory as a retread of that redemption is unlikely to be satisfying.

He's already had a different trajectory, to an extent, in that he wants the darkness but the light keeps/kept calling to him.

I think I probably said this upthread, but frustrated young man incapable of living up to their expectations of strength is a very Age Of Reddit take.

What with the actual vader helmet on the wall of his room, id say thats a fair take

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--1SwI03eU--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/c9al0cakdacwilvoslpj.gif

xpost it's not expanded upon that specifically - here's the passage: "Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic. Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears."

― Hammer Smashed Bagels, Monday, December 28, 2015 9:50 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm who does this sound like

Obama

the massive organs of commerce

hawt

I assume the sarlacc is constantly being used as a toilet.

― jmm, Monday, January 4, 2016 11:54 AM bookmarkflaglink

lol cackled at this classic today. thanking u

The crimes of JJ Abrams really quickly piled up into a larger heap than the cumulative crimes of George Lucas with this trilogy, didn't they

I never got round to seeing any of the sequels (Andor’s great, though). I’m not even particularly into Star Wars but I didn’t really feel like watching Luke and Han Solo die? It feels antithetical to my childhood idea of what the movies are (i.e. fixed to conclude at a particular point with a happy ending that lasts forever). Am curious about the Rian Hughes movie though

Er Rian Johnson I mean

The people who like the JJ ones best seem to hate it, which maybe tells you all you might need to know!

It was definitely my favourite, if not essential.

it's the most interesting one, though after seeing it again i wouldn't say it's really that good. what puts it above the other two is the fact that RJ is a good director and there are a couple of stunning "big moments" which are among the best of the whole franchise. But in the end virtually the entire film is cancelled out and discarded by Abrams' backpedaling in the third film. the whole trilogy is so disjointed and incoherent, it's probably safe to regard it as non-canon.

The crimes of JJ Abrams really quickly piled up into a larger heap than the cumulative crimes of George Lucas with this trilogy, didn't they

― omar little, Thursday, August 3, 2023 12:34 PM bookmarkflaglink

disagree. Force Awakens is a fine movie, I enjoyed Rise of Skywalker as poorly as it was written, but ultimately these felt like star wars movies, whereas Lucas outright lost the ability to write an enjoyable tale or build engaging characters (other than the ones he'd already established in 4-6). Dialogue was execrable to the point where it spawned about 100 memes that STILL circulate to this day, Phantom Menace included the most boring trade blockage subplot in history and was abysmal visually. and Anakin's character arc was massacred. I still enjoy Ep 3 but even that one is flawed af, I just appreciate the darker tone.

I watched Eps 7 and 9 recently and they held up fine as a fun watch, but I can't even finish Eps 1-2.

yeah same

wait a minute, well *i* disagree. TFA "felt" like a Star Wars film but i think ultimately the shallowness of the narrative, the directionless tale that was told, betrayed a lack of confidence. and it was a problem to have a story that wasn't told organically from the seeds up to the top of the tree, but rather simply having new characters and different places draped ill-fittingly over the skeletal framework of a previously told tale, which was rearranged just enough that it couldn't be called theft, but not enough that it could be called original. not that Lucas didn't steal from some sources, but there was verisimilitude to his tale. the prequel trilogy is more mediocre than good, but more good than bad, and i think much of that comes from the clean, precise storyline, which has some genuinely awkward moments and not-good characters, and dreadful dialogue, but feels like the weird and pure vision of a specifically odd big budget filmmaker, and not the tale told by a focus group via a board of directors, executed by the guy who did Star Trek wrong, and made Mission Impossible boring.

BUT at least TFA has a solid first half before the derivative chaos of the second half.

I'll put it this way - can anybody summarize what actually happens in Phantom Menace outside of "Palpatine begins his nefarious work to ascend the political ladder, Qui-Gonn is killed, and Anakin is discovered?". because there's a lot of complicated, dull political mess that tbh feels like three filler episodes of Clone Wars before that show got good.

Lucas said the prequel trilogy was meant to be Anakin's character arc, which should have been great, but Lucas went and did it through a really awkward love story that didn't hold together. having Anakin be almost a secondary player in Phantom to time-jumping 10 years to teen Anakin being a lecherous perv who already seems to have demons means we never really understand why he's so borderline psychotic in Attack of the Clones, because all of that development happened off-screen. think it would have been better if they just started in the first film with him already being a teen Padawan and coming in contact with nefarious influences for the first time then going back all the way to childhood.

and as much as I do enjoy Revenge of the Sith, there were so many much more interesting angles Lucas could have taken, such as being brainwashed into thinking the Jedi were trying to take over the Republic, but instead they turned it into an awkward love story where he's so afraid of her dying in childbirth he learns dark powers. his motivation for turning is almost incomprehensible - he desperately needs Palpatine to show him the dark side powers to save Padme, yet first he decides to tell Mace Windau and go with him to apprehend Palpatine, knowing he'll either be killed, or imprisoned and unwilling to help Anakin since he betrayed him anyway. the fuck did he think was going to happen? and then after Windau is killed, he simultaneously in 5 minutes goes from reluctantly killing Windau to believing every anti-Jedi conspiracy theory. It feels like two parts of different films, like two screenplays were merged.

like one minute, he's begging Mace not to make him kill him, the next he's willfully slaughtering a bunch of kids without hesitation.

tbh they should have started the trilogy where Attack of the Clones began and put all three films in a much more compressed time period.

i don't know how sad it is that I just used my afternoon break at work to write this.

i don't necessarily think the complexity of the plot (i will also accept incoherence) is a negative counterpoint to the disjointed, made-up-along-the-way narrative of the sequel trilogy, but obviously the flaws in the prequels run deep. sometimes though i think it's a case of lucas overreaching where he should have simplified it. they at least don't feel like desperation ploys to the fairweather audience.

i'm too old for this shit though.

*breaks away from thinking about the upcoming Ahsoka series* Sorry, did you all say something?

I still wonder how things might have turned out if Lucas hadn’t backed away from the “dark Jar Jar” idea.

As ridiculous as it is I really enjoy the big pulpy space opera nonsense of Rise Of Skywalker the best out of the three sequels.