Star Wars 8 shit talk

bring back Sissy Spacek imo

leia really hasn't brought a whole lot to the table these past couple of movies, just write her out imo

Pretty sure Leia's story will end like this
https://media1.tenor.com/images/fa8950c47e2ed420544078ea9e052b9d/tenor.gif?itemid=3715215

we all go on about poe's impetuousness, but finn and rose deciding to crash their shuttle into the resistance hangar coulda ended a lot worse than it did

Leia at the start of EP9 = Newt in Alien3.

Xpost

"Oh my God...Poe! Where's Leia?"
"Thanks to your crash landing, there are multiple answers to that question"

I’m a little worried we haven’t heard back from Alfred

I love Sigoyrney recasting Leia is a terrible stupid idea.

i mean, if they do that then why not recast Han and fkn Jabba the Hut too

I mean they're gonna have to do a jump forward anyway, unless Ep IX will be centered around the growth of the Resistance from 12 people to 14 people

or they could do a Bela Lugosi and have an actress wear a cape in front of her face while she speaks

lol

I'm in the minority: I thought this a muddle, an often boring one in the second third -- way too many fucking side plots. Half the theater bent over in hysterics after Leia survived the explosion in the manner she did.

carrie fisher died like a year ago iirc, probably could have figured some way to kill her off given the 12 times leia almost died and also considering she was not really an important part of the movie anyway....

― k3vin k.,

this bugged me too but nothing anyone can do except let a Star Destroyer land on her CGI image next film.

I feel like TFA’s humor leaned on the nerd humor angle too much? like, I know every bit of Star Wars, so something going against what I know and a funny rebuke to that, but still in that realm, appeals

there were funny bits in this one that seemed almost contemporary but an appeal to general humor. as if people have a sense of humor outside of the little circle established in the original series

rogue one, to extrapolate on the original plotters and social climate, seemed like a video game within the framework that we follow on a rail. there are necessary plot points, character beats that we recognize, and the necessary heroes but we know what’s at stake from the get-go

Poe’s first line in TFA is telling Kylo Ren that he couldn’t hear the speech he just gave because of his helmet - the Holding for Hux joke is not only completely in character, it’s a good tactic for stalling by getting the windbag to repeat himself.

Also brushing the dirt off his shoulder is not really modern humour? It could have happened in the original trilogy, and everyone would have known what it meant.

saw this at hastings odeon w/sister's family, sat beside niece (10): she was transfixed throughout so a big win there i guess

re joeks: the imagined notion of a film of this length and limit taking itself absolutely unreflexively seriously is p dreadful for someone in my position -- mildly bored and unconvinced adult companion of small ppl -- and obviously the dirt-brush moment was anyway good not bad bcz luke was undertaking this whole projected-self stunt to enrage kylo to stall for time: it was a way of flipping off the villain to break his focus

(basically if yoda gets a pass for saying "burn the tree" purely as a manipulative stunt, then luke-back-on-his-jedi-bullshit gets the same pass: jedis are all assholes, even the so-called "good" ones, this is canon)

(i also assumed poe was pulling the "on hold" stunt in the same spirit, entirely to wind up general hugs, but i'm happy to accept that my star wars universe is already defensively distorted to stop me -- a sceptic -- being uninterruptedly and hence disruptively annoyed next to the rapt small relative) (viz i *need* to be taken out of this universe now and then, and there was no evidence it de-suspended my niece's disbelief for a moment)

i liked that hammill played luke as present-day mark e.smith cosplaying yoda: i was cross on behalf of the fish-looking island curators who look after the jedi paraphernalia, that their lives and houses and jobs were all messed abt by thoughtless asshole jedi biz; the entirely casino sequence mainly reminded me of POMPEII, and bad as finn is he is better than JON FKN SNOW; i am bored with the trope of ppl trapped at a cliff edge being rescued by a flying vehicle rising up to rescue them; i actually kind of liked the whole DUMB FAILED MISSIONS aspect of finn and rose and poe, bcz this is after all STAR WARS not STAR PEACETIME © FGTI upthread, and as we know war is stupid people are stupid)

i hate BB8 *waaaaay* more than the porgs (my main argument with my niece afterwards was that chewie was obviously keeping them to eat later, she said no but she is wrong)

the force has long been the sonic screwdriver of this franchise: the hard-won mechanism of me becoming resigned to it at all meants that really the only problem i had with leia self-rescuing (ie utilising some of the arbitrary magical powers some characters have been given for confused reasons) is that when i was a kid i was taught* if you found yourself in actual space you would BURST from the pressure of the blood inside bursting outwards, not this modern genteel looks-saving frosting over

*by my dad, who was a scientist but not a space scientist, and to be fair often made things up, especially gruesome things, to appal small me and amuse himself

to be clear i have never called for these films to be humorless and self-serious; i just want the jokes to be better, to not appear compulsively thus flattening out the difference between heavy and fun scenes, and to seem like they come naturally out of the characters and their situation (including their universe). i have had this reaction to several non-SW movies of late so i don't think i'm just too precious about star wars. again i think this kind of thing was as destructive or moreso in Moana.

(my main argument with my niece afterwards was that chewie was obviously keeping them to eat later, she said no but she is wrong)

This is so great and makes me really look forward to the day I become an uncle :)

to be clear i have never called for these films to be humorless and self-serious; i just want the jokes to be better, to not appear compulsively thus flattening out the difference between heavy and fun scenes, and to seem like they come naturally out of the characters and their situation (including their universe).

otm

no one is saying Star Wars shouldn't have jokes

but i do think it was a fair assessment to say that han's comedy in the originals is in the lackadaisical murray/SNL pocket, and maybe we are stuck with the comedy we deserve in 2017. it's just a bummer to me cause i thought the holding-for-hux thing felt like something iron man would come up with, not something a space pilot would come up with. insofar as it had never occurred to me that prank calls and getting stuck on hold were things that happened in a spacefaring galaxy of laser swords and shaggy muppets. not a matter of star wars being sacred, but of jokes needing to feel like things that would actually come out of these characters' mouths. it'd be like if ben-hur suddenly launched into a variant on "who's on first?" - the gag is partly that this is a kind of gag that's out of place in this world, and i find that to be a pretty cheap way to get a laugh.

also, not saying these should or could be "timeless" but i feel like this current style dates the movie instantly and in a bad way. again some of the jokes here are good but some feel like they're scratching the same nervous itch of the studio notes. "i worry this scene might bum the audience out because it's about dreadful revelations and a character struggling with their destiny. can you add some comedy here? just have the actors improv some stuff and edit to the best bits, works every time!"

fred, yes: honestly the greatest thing abt a *lot* of pop TV and film is watching it with a 10-yr-old, their enthusiasms and cynicism have a very different rhythm, they see different stuff, they can (and will) argue, they are only still in the process of building intellectual or other defences against their less wanted emotions, they are much more honest abt their boredom than grown-ups, and you see everything you yourself discovered over decades of a life flattened out into a lump that can't be untangled (which can be frustrating, and -- sometimes -- startling and good for you)

t;,dr: children, they are (mostly) good not bad

xpost Fully agree with this. There should be humor in these films but not of the "genie in Aladdin doing Arsenio Hall" variety. It just dates them instantly.

Sorry - awful example but best I could come up with as I get off the subway

the complaint about the humor is not that it's there -- levity is fine, particularly in a 2.5 hour movie -- but that it feels forced. the bit with poe and hux is just so transparent an *attempt at humor*, it seems clear the writers wrote that scene with "let's have him say something funny" in mind rather than just letting it come naturally.

I laughed at the iron joke but it was far and away the most out of place or jarring joke in the film.

the ironing was delicious

If pressed I'd have to agree.

I've got no problem with the movie dating. It's light entertainment, not the portentous chronology of a metaphorically dense and richly symbolic alternate universe. The latter approach made the prequels into the ponderous expository videogame cutscenes they were. This movie breathes, and grabs you by the arm and says hey let's go do some Star Wars shit! And plays loose enough with the canon that I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen when Kylo invited Rey to join him. That's enough to make it the best in at least 30 years for me. Not analytically "the best for the following reasons" but just the most actual fun I have had watching since the original three.

I kinda wish R2 had been with Luke at the end. Might have broken me, but it would have been more compelling. I feel like these last few movies have forgotten that the two droids were the secret protagonists of the OT.

these were never the droids i was looking for

luke’s lack of droids disturbed kim

This wasn't great

Took an awful long time to do nothing

Didn't feel much like SW

TFA and RO were far better, former because although unoriginal gave us good new characters (mainly wasted in this) and latter because it did something different.

Didn't feel much like SW

^^^good not bad

No that's bad I specifically set out a context mark

Rebels has done a much better job with its droid characters than the new movies, that’s for sure

This was a mess, if often a nicely visualised one. Dialogue was woeful, even for a SW film. Laura Dern wasted and pointless. Snoke dead without being explained as to why he was so important and powerful and able to completely restablish and improve the Empire in all but name. Phasma another Darth Maul, supposedly badass but pissed away. Luke not really being there and in danger an annoying fakeout, not improved by having him then immediately die anyway.

Rian Johnson is ludicrously overrated.

Every single bit of alleged comic relief was greeted in my screening with the dead silence it deserved, except the bit with the iron. Also, felt like a film with several subplots but no real proper plot.

it has two main plot threads which conclude, but in a very ESB manner

the first, that Luke Skywalker must return to do something with the jedi and be the figurehead the resistance needs, and he fulfills the latter

the second, that the resistance must escape the first order following their victory at the end of the last movie, which they do at great loss

the cloudiest is Rey’s search for meaning, and it’s interplay with Kylo Ren’s turning point which remains open

why is it so important to have Snoke's entire backstory? the OG trilogy gave about ten minutes of screen time to the Emperor, two of which were a woman's face with chimpanzee eyes and Clive Revill's voice; all despite his being name-dropped a zillion times in the first two

I personally was glad Luke wasn't there, if his sacrifice had been a repeat of the Obi-Wan "strike me down and I'll be more powerful" scene, I would have been annoyed (and had anxiety about it happening when I first saw it). much happier w/ him dying due to body just crapping out after an intense mega-Force session.

i'm not interested in snoke's life history but it's kind of funny that they don't even try to sketch out one. you know like some line where he's like "while you squandered the access to jedi lore that skywalker foolishly gave you, i had to build myself up from nothing through the sheer power of the dark side!!!!" or something.

yeah that's still more than the emperor got, but in that case, we hadn't seen any backstory before that so a couple of lines of dialogue vaguely establishing that there used to be a republic and it's gone now and darth vader helped some guy called the emperor hunt down and destroy the jedi knights is basically all you need. and he shows up and his deal is he's an evil wizard who likes being evil and your imagination can sorta fill in the gaps - must be some evil force guy that took over the galaxy and turned vader to evil or something, cool. also it was a brilliantly hammy performance by mcdiarmid, relishing every spitty syllable of hatred, so that gave you enough for your imagination to find it interesting to even fool around with this.

anyway here we're coming in with a clear sense that the bad guys were all beaten at the end of 'jedi.' but i guess they weren't. and there was another evil wizard hiding in a barn somewhere. the fans wanting it to be bib fortuna or whoever were insane and clearly derive satisfaction from the wrong kinds of things in movies, but it IS a little weird to just drop in this new mega bad guy with no clear sense at all of who he is and what he wants. also he had a stupid name. the terrible name probably contributed to the dumb fan theories since it makes it seem more like an alias for someone else. if he'd been onscreen and not CGI in TFA nobody would have really gotten into speculating over his backstory i think - people would have gone "i guess we have to accept this arbitrary new emperor type guy the same way we have to accept that this new empire-from-scratch already has a death planet - it's a reboot ugh so it goes."

I think Snoke getting short shrift kinda proved he wasn't fit to lick the Emperor's shoes. yeah, he had impressive power, but lacked the discipline that allowed the Emperor to last as long as he did (I mean hell the dude had the patience to let a decade-long plan unfold without leaking his true intentions to anybody but the one guy he wanted to leak it to). Snoke was impatient and wanted results quicker and figured he could get there easily by bullying his apprentice and assuming it would just roll off his back, hence why he got bested by him so easily (well, that and force premonitions seem to always be misinterpreted by the person interpreting them).

Timothy Zahn made quite a living writing about Empire-sympathizers picking up the mantle afterwards. I guess there always has to be war cos nobody is interested in "Star Peacetime"

that a supreme evil force dude is super comfortable lounging around in that bathrobe is all the backstory you need.
come to think of it all the force users are wearing some kind of bathrobe...

Snoke was probably some old racist grandpa that used some kind of Force-steroids to get really buff with the Dark Side real quick

Snoke was an old racist grandpa who got force crazy off dong pills

he also nearly ruined the first order by plowing most of their savings into gold reserves

SNOKE = RON PAUL

Doc, i love u man but if they put half as much backstory in this as you want it’d be called The Phantom Menace

DO NOT WISH FOR THESE THINGS
YOU DO NOT WANT TO SIT THROUGH THEM
YOU ONLY THINK YOU DO

imo long-plotting emperor having a longer lifespan despite seeming less powerful in the force compared to blaze of glory Snoke is a good life lesson for despots