Star Wars 8 shit talk

imo that's fair! Appreciate sic giving this a good try as a Rian Johnson fan

I can't argue that approach, I should have done that with Lord of the Rings because I still have no idea who half the characters are. By the end of the second I couldn't tell which long-haired northern european-looking human dude was which. At least Star Wars characters look relatively different so tracking them scene to scene is a little easier.

early signals are that this is amazing to people who thought VII was amazing

eh this guy hated 7

Saw #TheLastJedi. By far the best #StarWars movie since the original trilogy, maybe the best since Empire.

— Tim Molloy (@TimAMolloy) December 10, 2017

point taken, though keep in mind that he's also the author of Is Taylor Swift’s ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ About Pennywise the Clown?

yep, until Armond White shits all over it I can't take any of this early press seriously

tbf that piece kind of sounds like it was lifted from the TS snake gifs thread on ILM

7 being fairly generic & essentially a retelling of 4 was kind of what I expected; Disney poured a zillion dollars into marketing this and making it into an EVENT and I think just really didn't want the reaction of "eh this kinda sucked" that the prequels got.

In unusual news: My wife (of all people, hadn't seen any Star Wars film until about 14 months ago) bought us tickets for this on opening night. Would be understandable if I was a fanboy but I hadn't even seen any of the prequels until we watched them together (see above timeframe).

More of a Bond family?

early signals are that this is amazing to people who thought VII was amazing

oh god wouldn't that be horrible to be amazed by a movie /s

your puny minds are tricked by a flash of light on a piece of celluloid WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!

I think you’re missing the point that was being made, there

did Harrison Ford specify "No ghost shit for me in VIII"?

IIRC they're planning to have his poorly-stuffed corpse propped up in the Falcon's copilot seat alongside an inappropriately-grieving Chewie.

luke can use the force to make it seem like he's talking

Head stuffed and mounted in Kylo Ren’s library

Only Jedis have the power to become exposition-ghosts afaik.

when they're having trouble in a battle his voice is heard, "I TOLD you to punch it to lightspeed!"

Embargo lifted and reviews everywhere and etc. I'll just say my girlfriend's take was that it was great, a more than good sign. Talk you all more on Saturday.

v v nice

Only spoiler I'll provide: we finally learn what a 'nerf herder' is and it's unspeakably filthy.

A friend was disappointed.

welp the new yorker is doing a little prequel rehabilitation in their review. was this the guy who wrote other contrarian/positive takes on the prequels?

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/star-wars-the-last-jedi-reviewed

I desperately miss the pseudo-Shakespearean dialectical wrangles and the exhilarating sense of C.G.I. discoveries that mark George Lucas’s last forays into the franchise—their sense of renewed personal investment in a cinematic universe that seemed to be growing ever more complex before its creator’s eyes, their sense that its creator was personally wrestling with a world that was escaping his own control and taking on a life of its own.

take your prequel rehab think-links to the prequel poll thread

oh good i nearly posted another one

was this the guy who wrote other contrarian/positive takes on the prequels?

lol people talk about people who like the wrong star wars movies like they're cryptonazis

there are several critics who like the prequels. most convincing pieces i've read have all been by mike thorn. don't know if i'd go as far as brody does in that quote

I desperately miss

wrong adverb there

If Force Awakens is better than the first and third prequels, the gap is not large.

Force Awakens at least mostly got the star wars look and feel right, despite its flaws. That puts it miles ahead of any of the prequels.

it mostly had the plot of the original

Brody -- author of a massive book on Godard, and regularly assailed as a "contrarian" -- is perhaps mourning the steam-cleaning of any idiosyncrasy out of what is now 'perfected,' big-budget product.

i would sorta disagree that it got the feel right; first twenty minutes of tfa i was like "what movie is this where i'm watching a fleet of storm troopers land on a planet via a shaky handheld camera"

The prequels introduced a lot of new (to SW) tricks camera-wise (e.g. those odd zooms throughout AOTC's final third). TFA got the balance right between old and new re look and feel imo.

yeah, TFA didnt "feel" like Star Wars at all to me. It looked like it for the most part, which I guess is how Hollywood types interpret feel.

The prequels did (and do I guess) feel like SW, but then SW was always flawed, and take the orig franchise out of its moment, and you might get....well, the prequels.

whenever i see the new one I hope Oscar Isaac has one joke as good as "Can't really understand you with the mask on"

I do laugh at that one every time

By "feel" I mean that TFA feels like a lived in, solid world that has a history. I think this has a lot to do with using physical props and models instead of CGI-ing everything. The world of the prequels felt way more artificial and video game-like.

half of that was George deciding 1080p was good enough forever

I fear I dare nto view it on the big screen - its all too much - maybe on my pone on netflicks

XP jedi power battels for dreamcast was fun

Brody did write a lengthy prequels defence, yes

the thing about Lucas that gets me is every time I hear him say something re: the prequels like "I couldn't do all this stuff originally because the technology just wasn't there yet". Why does no artist ever get the idea of limitations being a good, maybe the most important, thing?

"every time," good lord, mh

These films can still be monumentally successful by appealing exclusively to SW nerds instead of a general audience because there are enough of the first class now (doing multiple admissions), and the g.a. is staying home to stream and watch TV no matter what.

Why does no artist ever get the idea of limitations being a good, maybe the most important, thing?

it's a bummer that we didn't get that original, non-CGI jabba the hutt

Dominique, some artists do

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/78/FordandMulholland.jpg

lol sorry Morbs, I knew that'd get you :)

Honestly the most movie repetition is being around my friends' kids, who will watch the same ones over and over. my coworker knows all these details of the Marvel comics films that I never noticed or forgot because he's caught ten minutes here and there over the year.

xp
of course, that's all my message hyperbole. But seemingly not Lucas -- and I think that's part of the magic of those orig movies, because it's this push/pull of his vision/ambition versus his budget versus what was actually possible.

that's kind of why adding to or reworking the older films never made sense -- if your story and plot arc are crafted to the limits and contributions of your special effects and staging, altering the film throws everything out of balance

adding distracting, random window-dressing to the picture just because you have the technology is not unique to Lucas--it's a big problem in video games, for example.

but yeah, it's important to quell that impulse. it helps to have an editor with actual creative decision-making power, which the prequels did not have