Star Wars Anthology shit talk (Rogue One, Young Solo, TBD)

wait what

even as someone who mostly likes the prequels, this seems like an insane position to take

The labyrinthine opening shot of “Revenge of the Sith”— of Anakin and Obi-Wan giving chase to Dooku through the space vehicles on the planet of Coruscant—is a mighty and audacious gauntlet-throw, the digital equivalent of the opening shot of Orson Welles’s “Touch of Evil.” It wheels and gyrates and zips and pivots with a vertiginous wonder that declares, from the beginning, that Lucas had big visual ideas and was about to realize them with a heroically inventive virtuosity. And the rest of the movie follows through on that self-dare.
If I had seen “Revenge of the Sith” in real time, in a theatre upon its release, in 2005, I think that, at the moment when Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), sizzling in the blue lightning that Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson) reflects back at him, cries out to Anakin (Hayden Christensen), “Power! Unlimited Power!,” I would have leaped out of my seat yelling with excitement. The entire movie is filled with an absolute splendor of the pulp sublime, and that moment is its very apogee. Lucas reaches historic heights in the filming of action: the martial artistry of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s double duel versus Dooku, the gaping maw of outer space and of the airshaft into which the heroic duo drops, Obi-Wan’s light-sabre fight with the four-armed Grievous, and, above all, the apocalyptic inferno of the confrontation of Obi-Wan and Anakin (which, regrettably, cuts back to Yoda and Emperor, a much duller battle). I watched these sequences over and over—happily, with the sound off to get rid of the musical score—and was repeatedly and unflaggingly amazed by Lucas’s precise, dynamic, wildly imaginative direction.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-the-seven-star-wars-films-reveal-about-george-lucas

yeah, the prequels are cinema's greatest force-watches (no pun intended) for me. with a lot of prep and repeated watching, you can convince yourself that dialog and quality of FX really doesn't matter, and you're just watching for appreciation of the "history". Kind of like reading The Silmarillion

but then you see one of the old ones, and jesus it's like breathing real air after being submerged in crap for an hour

If I had seen “Revenge of the Sith” in real time, in a theatre upon its release, in 2005

see, this is what's wrong with binge watching. you can have entire sections of dud content, but the fact you're seeing so many scenes in a row makes the better bits stand out that much more. plus, if you're watching at home, you can do things other than strictly watching the movie

reviewing something as a movie, and reviewing it as hours seven through nine of twenty hours of viewing related junk are not the same

Or watch it with the sound off, for example.

'To get rid of the musical score'

ffs

there's much more Williams hate in the full piece

oh god I couldn't get far enough into skimming that to see that he didn't like John Williams' score

jesus christ

lol

it is tempting to follow this guy around online and comment "you are bad and your opinions are bad" on everything he writes

Brody is a High Cinema priest who has written a very thick book on Godard. He also values Personal Expression above all. Hids fave film of '15 was Chi-Raq.

he also loved the Woody Allen Rome movie, and the Obamas' First Date movie

Maybe all that's been keeping you from really high profile reviewing gigs is your lack of a head injury

i quit that shit shortly after seeing the Woody Allen Rome movie

FTR, I was not endorsing another Lucas-directed SW joint, just saying that it's entirely possible if not likely. The world of popular entertainment is filled to the brim with folks who return to a thing after making very clear that they would never return to a thing. And let's be honest, no one foresaw Ron Howard directing a SW movie so the future directing slate is a pretty open field.

NARRATOR VOICE: It wasn't.

So Rogue One popped up on Netflix and I figured I'd give it another chance. I got through the first act, basically to when they're about to go over to Mads Mikkelsen's rain-and-boulder planet, before sighing heavily and turning it off. I will say that one thing I don't think I gave it enough credit for last time around was the visual sensibility which generally was very vivid and memorable, e.g. the opening shots of Mads Mikkelsen's grass-and-igneous-rock planet, with Krennic's white imperial uniform contrasting nicely against the landscape. K2-SO and Saw have good designs, the obligatory cantina-esque "alien variety pack" scene had nice costumes and props, etc. God save us from the pointless walk-ons by the original cantina lowlifes and such grotesque franchise-dependent scene-derails as the music swelling into a bit of John Williams's classic stuff when Jimmy Smits walks into the frame to nod approvingly at something. God knows how that plays to anybody who hasn't memorized the minor cast of the first three prequels.

But man, the plot in this thing! On the second time through, knowing what gets paid off and what's a bunch of red herrings or threads abandoned in the reshoot phase, it feels really manic in its jumping between things. I checked this time - we have to adjust our minds to six different planets/locations in the opening thirteen minutes: igneous planet, prison, Jedha, wherever it is that Jyn gets busted out of a police van, kasbah asteroid where Diego Rivera kills that guy, and Yavin. Yeesh! But the real problem is how contrived and forced the conflicts are: the whole middle act happens because the Wrong-Headed Commanding Officer gives Kasabian secret orders to kill Mads Mikkelsen. Which are the same secret orders he already gave him, so the film is going out of his way to show the rebels reaffirming this plan upon receiving the news that the apparent defection of Mads seems to be legit, that the Death Star is already working and blew up Jedha, and that they should really get going to Scarif to get the Death Star plans. The commander has to say something like "who knows what Mads is working on! Stick with the plan of killing him!" You'd think Diego could muster "I think he was probably working on the Death Star, the one that blew up Jedha." So the next major leg of the movie - will he shoot Mads, be stopped by the others, or stop himself? - is based on complete silliness, like Diego's been in a different movie this whole time.

Meanwhile, our notional protagonist, Jyn has done absolutely nothing to advance the plot, and made no choices except agreeing to watch a hologram, half-heartedly. It's a good moment from her, reacting to her dad's message and her changed understanding of him, but meanwhile she's had about forty-five seconds of screen time with her estranged surrogate father figure which you'd think would be a pretty big moment too - - - but of course that would depend on us actually understanding their past, and it seems pretty clear, from the Band-Aid of the confused flashback dream montage, that this backstory was cut out of the movie late in the game, probably to make room for the superfluous X-Wing and Anonymous Assistant Commandos Video Game Objective stuff at the end. Then Saw sees the city blowing up and accepts death immediately (for no reason - some grizzled, ruthless extremist he turned out to be!) which from what I recall has no effect on Jyn whatsoever. Does she even mention his name for the rest of the movie? What a mess.

So you're saying you loved it.

Ha. Also: God, the Peter Cushing stuff is depressing, distracting and totally avoidable. If they felt they HAD to have that character in the movie, have it be in like, one scene, and have him conversing with Krennic over a hologram or a static-y, low-resolution video feed or something. Don't build a whole subplot around him as a substitute way of fleshing out Krennic, who doesn't get enough screen time with the heroes for that conflict to really take off. And definitely don't have him walking around on set with everybody at length. Terrible choice.

I'm still proud of my time in the Anonymous Assistant Commando Auxiliary, even if I never got to give all for a MacGuffin that serves as a figure of expositional dialogue in a more important and interesting story about completely different people written before I was born.

I liked the planet hopping craziness & oversized ensemble aspects, though. If this movie had been a little more Altman's MASH meets Thin Red Line i might have liked it more. Or Generation Kill: Star Wars, but that's kind of why we have a thread for Clone Wars / Rebels / etc.

lol I would be so down for R*E*B*E*L ... and the impossibility of that getting made really gives the lie to the supposedly wide variety of stories and genres that these "anthology" films were going to explore within the star wars universe. ehhhhhhh they're basically all gonna be adventure films that feel like 'the force awakens' and have some minimum number of prominently featured elements that derive from the original trilogy. so, marvel movies, but with even greater certainty of what you're going to get. disappointing, somehow.

but with even greater certainty of what you're going to get.

moar Deathstars

I am NOT ENTHUSED

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/08/star-wars-obi-wan-kenobi-stand-alone

Either way, there’s lots of tantalizing potential—as long as Lucasfilm finds a way to negotiate the knowledge gap between fans who have tuned in to the animated Star Wars Rebels series, which takes place in the years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and those who have not.

I don't think there is anything tantalizing in Obi-Wan's biography that hasn't been well covered in Clone Wars, the movies, and Rebels. I really wish they had a better idea than this.

Alternatively, this is telegraphing that OWK is somehow indeed Rey's grandad and they're going to cover how THAT happened. I don't care! Stop explaining everything!

negotiate the knowledge gap between fans who have tuned in to the animated Star Wars Rebels series, which takes place in the years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and those who have not.

yeah how are they going to market a Star Wars movie set in between two other Star Wars movies to people that haven't seen the TV show as well?

the answer of course is leave them for dead. they are horrible consumers and if they can't consume every piece of media they will never know true knowledge.

what is the thought you are trying to express?

They’re not really into adapting novels, but the Obi Wan Book which is pretty much a western is pretty good

Would be cool if the Obi Wan film was a modern day remake of El Topo.

i'm hoping for an obi-wan movie that covers what he gets up to between getting killed by vader and showing up as a force ghost in the subsequent movies

just bopping around doing ghost stuff, knocking over cups of coffee and rattling chains and shit

yeah the recent-ish obi wan comics are awesome

These are all worse than those Edinburgh Fringe jokes

http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/what-exactly-would-a-stephen-daldry-obi-wan-movie-look-like.html

It turns out that Obi Wan spent a lot of times learning a local Tatooine custom: shooting womp rats while racing around in a T-16

"knowledge gap" is some stealth consumer shaming.

We have title. It's obvious.

Hey #Twitterville we just wrapped production so here's a special message #StarWars pic.twitter.com/8QJqN5BGxr

— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) October 17, 2017

Trying is hard.

I would've gone for The Han Job but that's just me.

i like how he doesn't say it, so that it can be changed later in post

I'll be bitterly disappointed if Nerf Herder isn't played in the trailer.

finally saw rogue one this weekend, all of the jokes in that movie are horrible

Does K2 smacking Cassian count? That was good.

the k2 stuff was ok

At least it didn’t open with a “Can you hear me now?” Joke sequence.

otm

i am seeing the last jedi tonight so thanks i guess, but i’m talking about the movie with the bad jokes and the tonal incoherence and the unintelligible pointless space battle

sorry i should clarify further: the star wars movie with the unintelligible pointless space battle that introduces plot holes to episode iv

my friend said you can feel rogue one being rewritten as you watch it and that’s otm

adam c'mon there's a whole thread set up for you to try and rile people who enjoyed "the last jedi."

nah, im done with that. TLJ isn't good enough to pick apart. it would be like picking apart an episode of Scooby Doo. not really going to give it much thought because they clearly didn't give it any when writing it.

also im tired of Neanderthal shaming me for having the wrong opinion about Star Wars.

Vader may be tormented from having murdered his wife by choking, but he still enjoys a good choke joke.

TLJ isn't good enough to pick apart. it would be like picking apart an episode of Scooby Doo. not really going to give it much thought because they clearly didn't give it any when writing it.

who are they?

this is massive disrespect to the writers of classic icon Scooby Doo

that verizon gag had way more charm and character to it than nearly anything in rogue one, thanks no. 1 terminator genysis dan adam bruneau