Star Wars 8 shit talk

nice

this is a good thread if a bit long:

Are we at the point where we're talking about Star Wars spoilers? Because that is what I'm going to do, spoil The Last Jedi.

— Jay Allen (@a_man_in_black) December 17, 2017

yeah that’s excellent

I liked this from the replies too

“This was a fantastic write-up, Jay. Though as others have mentioned I do think it's worth pointing out that it's the literal illusion of heroism that in fact saves the day.”

TechCrunch has had enough

https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/17/the-last-jedi-should-be-the-last-star-wars-film/

.. meanwhile the troubled Solo movie is due in just 5 short months!

Rewatched yesterday. Still very corny but a better film than TFA. And I love any and all stuff with Luke. Dude stole the show.

The fish!

Speaking as someone who really enjoyed both The Force Awakens and Rogue One:

Everything that happened on Luke's island - lame
Space Monte Carlo - lame
DO YOU SEE??? class politics - lame
Under-utilising the younger cast - lame
Casting Laura Dern and giving her pretty much nothing to do - lame
Rey/Kylo Ren telepathy scenes - lame
Snoke - LAME
Tedious Luke/Kylo exposition - LAME LAME LAME LAME LAME

Action scenes - still pretty awesome

The entire movie felt hamstrung by the need to incorporate Luke but also giving him nothing of interest to do, which might have worked if it hadn't also meant leaving Rey stuck out there as well, and if the other main plot hadn't involved half of the cast floating in space going nowhere. Way too much time was devoted to those scenes and there wasn't enough plot or character interest to keep them going, and the whole film went weirdly baggy as a result.

It felt like you could see the strings moving throughout, maneuvering everyone into a place where they could press the Reset button to keep the whole franchise going indefinitely, but the Force Awakens did a pretty good job of pressing that in the first place. Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Oscar Isaac should have been the core of this but they didn't get anywhere near enough screentime together and their characters were left pretty underdeveloped, even by Star Wars standards.

One of the things the originals get right is that they understand that the Force and all the Jedi stuff is complete hokey if you explain or think about it too much. And that *no one needs to do that anyway*, we already know all we need to know about it. Whereas this script inflated the focus on all that stuff to the extent that everyone could see there was nothing there, those scenes were all so plodding and portentous and could have been cut down by like 3/4 in order to make room for other things.

https://kotaku.com/lets-talk-about-the-weirdest-and-best-scene-in-the-la-1821376910

Let’s talk about the moment where Luke Skywalker walked purposefully towards a gigantic fish/elephant/cow looking alien, squeezed a half litre of green, full fat milk from its engorged teat and gulped that strange liquid down with the gusto of a man satisfying a well-earned thirst.

".. we should look to the movie’s CinemaScore, an America-based exit poll system that scientifically works out an audience score.
The Force Awakens earned an A score, with 90% of all respondents being positive, the average score being 4.5, while Rogue One earned an A, 91% positive feedback and the same score. By comparison, The Last Jedi also won an A CinemaScore, 89% positive feedback, and a five-out-of-five score. With those statistics being so positive, how can the negative online reaction be explained? According to Deadline, non-Disney sources are saying the backlash has been primarily online “trolling”. The publication also points to one Facebook page titled “Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and Fanboys” who are claiming to use bot accounts to target the film’s score. "

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/star-wars-the-last-jedi-audience-cinemascore-rotten-tomato-user-score-a8116166.html

idk I liked all the force stuff. what luke taught rey and what yoda taught luke. seemed like a good steer away from ~explaining~ it and getting it back to the vague trust-in-it nature/zen/posthumanist thing suggested in Empire, now with more emphasis on the humility vs vanity. also think it was a really interesting character place to take luke skywalker, once a young hothead flyboy looking for the force to be an instrumental tool in his own quest. prob could have been done more efficiently tho and i agree totally that the slow ticking space chase was way too much of the movie, and that keeping the last film's three young leads separate was a weird choice. kind of strange that poe and rey are just meeting at the end of the second movie! but that's ok imo. if we really need to see them all on an adventure together i guess there's the next movie.

man what was great though was rey and kylo fighting those red dudes in the burning curtain dome room. and the red dirt salt planet. amazing visual that i got used to from the trailer and didn't fully appreciate when it was onscreen.

nice to see someone back me up on the trolls/bots theory xp

Yeah Jay Allen's thread v good

the online downvoting is the same old assholes as usual who are looking for a reason to create a backlash, or who genuinely were surprised by what they saw in the movie and aren't pleased unless a movie gives them exactly the thing they want

I'm seeing this thing again tomorrow, but after a few days of reflecting that the image of Leia using the force to float back to the ship seemed a little off, even if seeing her have a minor bit of ability is completely expected.

The casino planet might be overlong but I was using the toilet for part of it the first time I saw the movie, because as soon as they got out of the jail I thought "ooh this is the part that was in the trailer, I can pee now" but it took a little while.

Man, every time I read one of these threads one of you guys is always leaving the movie to use the toilet. Go before the movie starts!

I'm an old man

also my movie theater serves beer

Negbots arent the bots youre looking for iirc

wait, you guys didn't see the blinking "USE TOILET NOW" sign in the back of the casino? I guess my ability to read galactic basic text is a boon yet again

It was cool to see Dubrovnik as the casino planet, after being there over the summer.

I'm envious of some acquaintances who have been to Skellig Michael. I'm thinking tourism is going to be a problem there, now

but after a few days of reflecting that the image of Leia using the force to float back to the ship seemed a little off, even if seeing her have a minor bit of ability is completely expected

This is what bugs me about being people reacting so negatively against that scene. Leia actually using the Force to avoid death? Oh no! Maybe she should've adopted a different pose or danced her way back into the ship. No other characters even knowing it happened is also good or at least might've been if they'd been able to explore more Leia's history of restraint with her own abilities which was probably going to be more of a thing in the next one.

I'm still sticking with my "they trained the wrong Skywalker kid" stance

Yoda knows it, we know it, it's pretty obvious

I did go before I started! Honestly this was the first movie in recent memory where I did the bathroom run (in x parsecs ha ha) partway. Combination of catching an early afternoon show too soon after coffee (in order to snag a walk-up-to-the-counter ticket for moviepass purposes), limp theater cocktail, and it being two and a half goddamn hours long. the original Empire got it done in 124 minutes btw and i do think this could have gotten there by cutting some redundant stuff, some jokes, and at least one action set piece. at the same time there's other stuff that should have been left to breathe more so idk.

but there's so much little stuff that works in the moment but adds up the flab. evil imperial bb-8 spotting bb-8 on infrared... cute moment but it's thirty seconds of screen time that doesn't add anything to the movie and kinda cuts the tension of this desperate infiltration mission. i guess they want to sell iPhones shaped like evil bb-8 though. buy now and get your slidey rebel insignia ring for $5 off! i love the things in this movie that are generous and imaginative but even a movie full of delights can sometimes stand to be carved down a bit. kershner had directed ten feature films and a decade of TV episodes before 'empire' and i think it shows in how tight and yet abundant that film is.

BB-9E was good and I hope to see the lil bastard again.

He reminded me of the evil robot in The Black Hole.

I would have been down with a BB-8 version of Old Bob tbh

Is there a BB-8 toy with "special disguise" yet? It'd just be a box you put over him

but the neo-Praetorian Guard dudes had a little bit of Maximilian swag just on account of being all red and menacing and faceless.

hahaha. up there with the R2D2 "hyperdrive repair" playset from phantom menace.

Is there a BB-8 toy with "special disguise" yet? It'd just be a box you put over him

kershner had directed ten feature films and a decade of TV episodes before 'empire' and i think it shows in how tight and yet abundant that film is.

tbf RJ had to deal with what I can only assume was a hell of a lot more studio involvement/interference

Wanted a longer fight with the guards. Keeping them mysterious probably for the best but also means they end up seeming mysteriously kinda shit (part of the bigger complaint of the film not quite justifying its length meaning so many individuals and aspects get short shrift). It was good to see Kylo really struggling against them though however briefly and the catch-sabre-ignite-sabre-KILL moment was phenomenal.

oh for sure. but do studios want long movies? i'd assumed distributors and theaters would want short ones (more screenings) but maybe there's pressure to go "epic."

or I guess just "you have to include this, you have to include that" which would bloat the film. rogue one had massive, movie-breaking studio notes (ADD X-WING BATTLE SEQUENCE) written all over it so I'd buy that.

do studios want long movies?

they don't seem to care much either way as long as certain prerequisites make it in

I'm envious of some acquaintances who have been to Skellig Michael. I'm thinking tourism is going to be a problem there, now

― mh, Tuesday, December 19, 2017 10:39 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The Irish tourism board had a booth at Star Wars Celebration in April actively soliciting tourism for the Skelligs! You could get your picture taken against a backdrop of the steps from TFA, and sign up for information or a travel package.

they advertise at Dublin Airport too

skellig mob scenes, star wars creeps

I thought it kind of funny that it essentially ended with the opening Hoth battle from Empire but the face down the emperor climax of Jedi is sort of stuck in the middle. Maybe that subconsciously explains some of the perhaps strange pacing?

for some reason the people behind me thought the "it's salt!" line was hilarious

i chuckled/groaned at the salt line (gotta let the audience know this isn't a snow planet! we're not on hoth! we're INVERTING "empire!" )... as with other places where the seams and strings just got so obvious. the awful maz kanata phone call was the other big one. "can't talk right now but to advance the plot you will need to complete the following fetch quest!"

Would have been funnier if the rebel guy licked it and then died.

"it's.... poisonnnnnnn"

i was kinda hoping for some cool thing where they exploit the fragility of the thin salt pan to crack the ground out from under the walkers or something. maybe that happened while i was in the bathroom though.

I, too have enjoyed the *tastes dust* "It's sodium cyanide!" jokes going around

the resistance has sympathizers from all over the galaxy - even the scientists from prometheus have joined the cause

https://io9.gizmodo.com/16-fascinating-revelations-about-the-making-of-star-war-1821389649

At one point, there was a line in the movie where Snoke mentioned his gold slippers.

Red Letter review is up
http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag-the-last-last-jedi-review/

they have some interesting points as you can imagine.

Most of those are hilariously bad.

For Rey’s costume change after Han’s death, an early design had her directly influenced by the smuggler, with a short blue jacket and brown pants with red marks down the side.

Aw

There was a bathhouse sequence on Canto Bight that was designed and shot but not used in the movie. It’s not entirely clear how it would have played into the film, or why it was cut, but it seems like it may have been another elaborate, lavish location for the fathiers to smash through. It was a steamy place complete with aliens in all manner of dress, lounging around and sweating.

AWWW