Star Wars 8 shit talk

re: humor, some was OK, some felt like Joss Whedon punch-up type shit.

Saw it tonight with my daughters and just LOVED it. Could complain or critique but why, it was a huge fucking spectacle, funny, moving occasionally, irreverent, beautiful even. Simon you sound a little bitter.

fwiw there was no applause in my audience either except at the logo and dedication, so I don't think I was alone inn my nonplussedness

Oh - well none at mine either, but we're Australians, we are a little reticent. Altho now you say it my crew seemed to enjoy it more than most.

" the party scene in WINGS yet"

what wings? the sitcom?

if a tree falls in the forest...

Saw it tonight with my daughters and just LOVED it. Could complain or critique but why, it was a huge fucking spectacle, funny, moving occasionally, irreverent, beautiful even.

This was basically our experience with our kids. They were super into it, and we were v entertained too. And there was a LOT of applause during the film at our screening.

I mean, narratively, the series just gets more and more ridiculous the more times they tell the exact same story (O NO REBEL ALLIANCE IS DOOMED/WAIT THERE'S A NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED WAY TO SAVE THEM/NO WAIT, THEY'RE STILL DOOMED/BUT WAIT!...) But this one has a legitimately epic sweep, and I like this trilogy's cast. Even if their relatively high level of acting chops just highlights Hamill's hamminess.

hasn't he been doing the Joker voice for 30 years?

Gonna just *SPOILER* away now fuiud.

I would've liked more casino but mostly just because I like to look at all the different alien folk properly.

Phasma was wasted and should've appeared earlier in the film - hope she survived the drop...

The first full shot of Yoda immediately made me wish they'd gone back to a puppet but he looked better in all subsequent shots.

Shame in a way to have so little need for R2 in this.

Snoke (and his guards) just looked fantastic albeit DEAD SO SOON :O

hasn't he been doing the Joker voice for 30 years?

Well yes.

Guaranteed to piss off nerdboys (a mark in its favor).

How are we defining "nerdboys" here, because I'm a con-attending, toy-collecting saddo and I loved it. I especially love that prequel haters have to hear Luke Skywalker say the name "Darth Sidious" on screen AND lampshade the "actually the Jedi were arrogant fuckups" argument that Lucas made after Sith. (BTW I own that R2-D2 button down that HOOS posted and I wear it to the office often.)

Contra Richard Brody I think this was one of the most idiosyncratically directed SW movies! Not just things like the iron joke, but things like the Rashomon flashbacks involving Luke and Kylo Ren, the impressionistic flashes when Luke tells Rey to reach out with the Force, the pacing -- Tombot's description above "intentionally weird exercise in confounding expectations" is pretty accurate, but in a good way!!

Two specific expectation-confounding things I liked were rendering completely irrelevant the "Who is Snoke?" and "Who are Rey's parents?" questions.

Phil cited basically all of the things I liked, besides the lucid action staging/editing and all red everything.

Also BTW does the Dixney/FOX deal mean Disney could put the Fox fanfare back at the front of these movies?

I also like that the middle third of the movie was basically that episode of nu-BSG where the fleet keeps jumping every 33 minutes to try to stay ahead of the Cylons, except they couldn't even do that and had to remain just out of artillery range.

as i posted in the wrong thread -- not bad, but really wish it hadn't been super-over-duper-hyped as OMG BEST EVER

Yeah that was immediately reminiscent of BSG, loved it xp

Having the ground view of the Destroyers suddenly appear in the sky at the start...just one of countless great visuals I need to see again ASAP

Yeah, that was awesome. This statement from io9's spoiler-free review is a pretty decent summary statement:

From scene to scene Johnson is basically saying, “Look, if we can have talking slugs, laser swords, and lightspeed, why can’t I do this?” And then he does it.

And that's true for both good and bad. For every perhaps overly-broad comedy moment ("Could you put on a towel or something?") there's a scene like that or the Empire blithely destroying a medical frigate.

"And the "cute" Chewie sidekick that popped up multiple times really was a horrible idea."

WTF you have no soul

I must also have no soul because by the eighteenth new species of big-eyed furry creature all I saw was dollar signs.

99% sure most of my theater started crying when Luke is on the Falcon and tells Artoo, "Nothing you can say is going to change my mind" and he starts playing Leia's message.

Not me, obvs. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

"Could you put on a towel or something?"

She actually said "cowl" right? Legit LOL

The Porgs were pretty pointless - liked that they were nesting away in the Falcon though.

I believe it was "cowl", yes. xp

Er, not an xp there.

The only wave of emotion I detected in my screening was during the Luke/Leia scene.

The porgs were a positively tiny presence compared to Ewoks or Gungans, marketing people gonna market but if you break down the screen time, you'll prob find about 5-10 minutes of porgs

Two specific expectation-confounding things I liked were rendering completely irrelevant the "Who is Snoke?" and "Who are Rey's parents?" questions.

Laura the Baller

I was very confused as to why it took so long for the ramming to happen, did I miss something

That light speed ship-split shot caused audible gasps

"I must also have no soul because by the eighteenth new species of big-eyed furry creature all I saw was dollar signs."

you mean there is a consumerist toy driven aspect to the new star wars? heavens!

Sure, but they really stuffed this one to the brim and then kept going.

An important lesson from this film is to never, ever follow a plan cooked up by Poe or Finn. Those two dipshit cowboys are basically responsible for 99% of the resistance deaths in this movie.

To the extent that it feels like a cop-out when Dern is like "I like him!"

xxp to simon

they really didn't. compare it to ROTJ or the prequels

off the top of my head, the porgs, the horse things, the crystal dogs, and the little nun things were all on the cutesy end of new stuff. (if they market lactating toys of the teat creature we'll know they've hit the dregs)

The Porgs and Vupltices (yes) could've at least helped in the fight. Porgs shitting on AT-AT windscreens while the Vulptices (YES) gnaw at their cables.

Those two dipshit cowboys are basically responsible for 99% of the resistance deaths in this movie.

Haha, yes, and if Admiral Laura Dern had just trusted in Poe to tell him her plan, Finn and Rose wouldn't have had to do any of the things they did. That's not QUITE Ebert's "idiot plotting," but it's close. Still, I liked Dern's character a lot.

I also liked that del Toro's character actually took the money and ran rather than having a last second change of heart. For a split second I thought that would be him in the AT-ST saving Finn and Rose.

Benicio was the MVP for sure

Bit disappointed that BB-8 and its First Order counterpart didn't actually go one on one so let's book ten minutes of Ep in for that.

fingers crossed benicio is fleshed out in the han solo movies

This is canon now pic.twitter.com/lNvPKp1iPH

— Jackson McHenry (@McHenryJD) December 15, 2017

"fingers crossed benicio is fleshed out in the han solo movies"

is he supposed to have never aged? how would that even work

science fiction movies have magical makeup, costume, hair, and special effects sorcerers iirc

favorite image from the film (besides "Luke" facing down AT-ATs at dawn) is space wizard leia surviving the vacuum. tearjerking!

lmao I hated that scene so much and I'm not totally sure why

You know what I just realized is a very important choice that they made? Nobody gets their hand cut off in this movie. Thank you, Disney.

Each SW director is allowed to choose either a hand removal or a bisection, but not both.

*Shpoilers* I did like it a lot more than TFA. However, the only explanation I'll take for the Porgs is that Chewbacca took them as a sustainable source of meat on the Falcon. The Luke hologram sequence was bloody cool. However, like Simon I hated flying Leia...it felt very out of place in the sequence. The glossing over of Poe's coup attempt is ridiculous.

Things I probably thought too much about:

Are there not videorecorders in Snokes throne room? Or did the force disable them?

If a ship going at light-speed is so effective against Star Destroyers, why are there not kamikaze drone type ships? C3PO could also have taken one for the team instead of Dern and soulless old me wouldn't have cared.

Would they not physically inspect the gated cavern instead of trusting a schematic? These rebels are not smart enough to be worthy opposition to the First Order.

Also, as god is my witness, when the movie wiped to Rey and Luke for the first time, and he reached to take it, I was milliseconds away from leaning to my wife and saying "He's going to turn around and chuck it into the ocean angrily." Then I thought naaaah, no way. The actual choice was funnier.

"it" = his lightsaber

I think technically Snoke's hands were cut off...during the process of a wider sliceroo.

And if Luke shut himself off from the Force did that mean he was jumping on that big fishing stick with no manipulation? Impressive.