Star Wars 7 shit talk

what proportion of under-30 fans of SW and Indiana Jones (not hardcore geeks, just y'know regular people) know that in '77 and '81, the selling line for both was "pastiches of old movie serials"?

I think many fans of all ages know this factoid, but only as that - there's barely any frame of reference for "old movie serials" though! Not like those things are getting re-issued as criterion sets

It's a straight shot from Vader's meditation chamber to the trash compactor

Xposts

Also the main thing about computers in Star Wars is that almost nothing is networked! As mentioned, everything is either sort of a purpose-built mainframe or what we'd call a PLC / SCADA system, every node is airgapped and the only way to interface with things is to physically plug a thing into another thing. The prequels break this model occasionally, maybe because they're happening "before the dark times" but still, when all the battle droids turn out to be connected to one giant satellite brain via wireless, it rings false.

Probably some good excuses in there like Dune's prohibition on thinking computers, where once, some clever humanoids DID invent fly-by-wire technology and develop advanced drones that could communicate via an open, intergalactic "web" of some sort, and then it all ended in terrible devastation and forever after anybody who tried to get two droids to talk to each other without audibly beeping was immediately Sarlacc'd

vader basically alec Baldwin in glengarry glen ross afaict. Ed harris = that sneering admiral he choked in SW, spacey = tarkin, mitch and murray = the emperor

Note how R2-D2 is able to shut down all the trash compactors but the tractor beam and the weapons systems are completely off-limits. You have to basically be standing in the beam path of the superlaser to operate it, and well you all know about the tractor beam nonsense.

"luke, you've turned off your targeting computer!"
"huh, how did you know that?"
http://i.imgur.com/taoM0yp.png

Actually it was because R2 tweeted it

via audible beeps, into his radio

(is there a little feed into the helmet earpiece that lets pilots hear their astromech's beeping? I assume this is how it works)

Artoo-Retwoot

Kind of rude that Luke refuses to talk to R2 in his native astromech bleep bloop language

R2 usually just tells old Henny YOungman jokes

I wanna know how those Threepio cornflakes taste.

solder and cinnamon

there's a suggestion that computers and robots gossip with each other as well - "R2! how did you know the hyperdrive had been disabled??" "tweet twiddle beep" "the city's COMPUTER told you???" "twooooot"

Just realised the lame battle droids and destroyer droids might've come off a bit better if all their dialogue to each other had been subtitled bleeps and buzzes rather than that awful high-pitched Dr. Nerdlinger accent.

Out of grim interest I just looked for a video of the droids and came across the battle at the end of TPM, my god the CGI looks so basic it reminds me of something on an N64.

well i know what Tombot is getting for Christmas

http://www.dvd-covers.org/d/82005-3/3123Flash_Gordon_Conquers_the_Universe_vol_1.jpg

flash gordon shamelessly copping a feel there

That Flash Gordon set is in my Amazon cart as we speak. I've heard good things.

Is kylo ren Luke's son?

Just realised the lame battle droids and destroyer droids might've come off a bit better if all their dialogue to each other had been subtitled bleeps and buzzes rather than that awful high-pitched Dr. Nerdlinger accent.

It would be kind of cool if one of the standalone star wars movies would feature an all-droid cast and all the dialogue was subtitled bleep-bloops

it would be even cooler if they didn't subtitle it - just a bunch of trundling trashcans burbling incomprehensibly to each other in the desert for two hours

I always liked how the movies let us know what R2 and Chewie are saying without resorting to subtitles. I dunno if that's at all original to Star Wars.

xpost A la Chewie's family in the first half hour of the Christmas special.

(Which I started playing for my girlfriend last year because she didn't believe that such a thing even existed. I don't think she was any more convinced of its existence after actually seeing it.)

the selling line for both was "pastiches of old movie serials"

The Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon movie serials had a nostalgic revival in the 60s, as did the newspaper strips ... when young George wasn't cruising around American Graffiti style, maybe he was making notes in the margins of this:

https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/575547.jpg

I always liked how the movies let us know what R2 and Chewie are saying without resorting to subtitles. I dunno if that's at all original to Star Wars.

I dunno, it's pretty much the same thing they as when you only hear one side of a telephone conversation in a movie or tv show, basically just repeating what the other person just said.

http://famousdude.com/images/harry-corbett-06.jpg

i think the FG serials were probably run endlessly on TV in the '50s when GL was a yute

(or maybe even smalltown matinees in the neigborhood bijou)

"What, Lassie? Old man Jenkins is trapped at Cedar Bluff??"

xp iirc after his car accident, he was laid up watching a lot of old TV and that's exactly where he saw them.

http://www.amazon.com/Anniversary-McQuarrie-Hasbro-Collector-Collectible/dp/B003GQQDQ0/ref=pd_bxgy_21_img_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0NT0A5FGJA6PXYZ1YHG3

mcquarrie designs turned into action figures

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/711qUPcLRWL._SX522_.jpg

I have the McQuarrie Luke, Vader, R2-D2 and C-3PO figures at home. They're really well done.

do you get a lot of quality playtime out of them

Luke didn't have to hear R2, a translation pops up on his console.

When he's not in his ship, he can only understand the droid thru tone.

"If you're saying coming here was a bad idea, I'm beginning to agree with you."

He understood those bleeps and bloops, he was just gaslighting R2 like a dick

Dicklighting

One thing about the Despecialized versions is that you can see far more errors, especially after watching the blooper reels. Fr'stance, the hooded PA crouched behind R2 at the Jawa sale and who had to give the droid a push, since they apparently didn't account for wheels on desert

The cut scenes are klunky as fuuuuuck, but they set up a lot of shit about Luke well, so his immediate jump to hyper-excitement when C3P0 mentions the Rebellion is far more of a piece when you've seen the interaction with Biggs mentioning his plans to go AWOL from the Academy to join the other side.

"Tibanna Gas-mining" is the preferred in-universe term, I believe

Biggs Dicklighter

Gaslightsaber

Luke actually doesn't understand language, he just forms vowel and consonant shapes that get mistaken for monologue

lol

All of these people dressing up as these new Star Wars characters for Halloween will be really embarrassed if this movie is all about racists

Or if the characters turn out to be really into bestiality

The hero of the prequels was a mass murderer of children, didn't really cause much shame at halloween

Citation required that anyone ever went out as Anakin for Halloween.