Star Wars 8 shit talk

finally saw this, and didn't hate it. Still deciding if I liked it... I had some gripes, as far as too many obvious references to lines or actions in the original trilogy, and too many out-of-nowhere rescues or close calls, but I also thought that the tone of it, and "feel", were pretty good. It felt very much a "Star wars story", if not yet something that totally connects it to the originals for me. But I could see that happening if IX is good. I kind of wish Rian Johnson was doing that too, because it seemed like he got the SW style better than JJ Abrams.

In the ext installment, Bea Arthur returns as CGI only , reprising her role as cantina master, but reveling she is the chosen one

If this shit is canon then so is the wookie special dammit!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzXKySxPFCI

sick burn

The studious are throwing so much money at stupid ideas with untested directors it's insane.

I think the motivativation for this is deliberate. The only other film class I took was one on the Bond series, and the TA made the point that the Broccolis kept changing directors and picking ones without much of a directoral style(Guy Hamilton was the closest to a Bond auteur) to maintain the series as producer-driven, not director.

Similarly, the producers & the studio grab indie directors with maybe one or two breakout films to their credit and saddle them with a massive blockbuster franchise as to retain all the power. You put a person not used to dealing with a $250m budget and endless studio notes and producer fuckery and maybe they can’t call the shots as much. Hell, this sort of happened on Return of the Jedi, didn’t it, since Scorcese & Lynch passed up the directing chair.

Sometimes you get directors who can handle the weight with aplomb(James Gunn, Taika Waititi), and plenty times not(Trevorrow, the dude from Chronicle). The untested choices are a feature, not a bug.

I think it’s a different scale from what happened with 70-80s directors as the industry has changed. Lucas/Spielberg/DePalma/Carpenter/Raimi/Cameron/Bigelow had the more traditional ramp-up.

I think the examples of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are instructive - both directors brought on by Lucas so he could concentrate on running the effects sequences which were naturally going to be a huge portion of the movie. So basically there to do the "actor stuff." One has a much stronger visual sensibility and a knack for working with actors and that film, apart from having a much better script and more interesting story, is regarded as a classic; its actory scenes are all among its most iconic shots. The other has taken a lot of hits over the years and with a couple exceptions the actory scenes are at best serviceable-looking.

Feel like something similar might be apparent in the contemporary blockbuster world, where most of what you see onscreen is the work of those pages and pages of computer-effects people in the end credits, and the movies sort of stand or fall on whether what's in between the effects shots is at all memorable or just kind of flat and lifeless to look at.

It's honestly baffling to me to see Facebook threads from friends-of-friends who like TFA, but HATE this movie. I definitely prefer TLJ (felt more alive, more surprising choices, etc) but they weren't wildly dissimilar experiences. Can't decide if they're basic, or if I am.

i'm increasingly worried that audiences who grew up imprinted by the prequels are going to start demanding kylo slaughter the force-sensitive cleaning crew kids while soliloquizing about sand because to them, that's what star wars is really about.

"That's what Star Wars is all about, Charlie Brown."

*cue Vince Guaraldi arrangement of the main theme*

xxpost They're basic.

I get why you'd try and find the next Gunn / Watiti debut, but once you're down to hiring the director of A Royal Affair there's too many wannabe franchises and not enough directors suited for them. And not enough other possibilities for a director who should be out there making tasteful mid budget pap. He used to be quite good at that.

Basic as hell

As far as not being wildly dissimilar experiences, the gripes I don't get:

*People who liked TFA and hated TLJ for "how it ruined Luke's character". Like, his self-imposed exile was part of The Force Awakens. It's pretty obvious he didn't leave to gain secret mega-Jedi knowledge so he could fly back and kick ass later. The only bait and switch with this movie is we were meant to think he'd eventually train Rey and rejoin the fight, and he technically does both, just not in the way that we expected.

*People who say "the force doesn't work like that" as if there's ever been a manual that consistently explains what it can be used for. for all we know Jedis use the force to take quicker shits too.

*People who focused excessively on plot holes but loved the OG trilogy. I rewatched the original trilogy this weekend and while the impact of these films haven't dimmed in the least, I did find myself wondering a) why nobody ever seems to be required to use a keycard on Imperial bases, thus meaning all it takes to get into any access point is beating a soldier up and stealing his uniform, b) why it's so easy to dupe Imperial guards by merely hiding in the ship and beating them up when they walk by, c) why Vader goes through the rigmarole of freezing Han purely "to test the cryofreeze process" so they can freeze Luke for his visit to the Emperor, when he really doesn't seem to have any intention of freezing Luke since he is simultaneously trying to kill him or convert him to overthrow the emperor with him, and d) why Vader's team merely deactivated the hyperdrive rather than just making the ship outright inoperable or rigging it w/ a bomb or something. why? cos who cares, that's why!

People who disliked TFA and disliked this one, at least that's internally consistent.

The one thing I expected to maybe happen was based on Rey looking down into the water below the island and seeing the submerged X-wing, then later mentioning Luke having abandoned the force. Thought he'd get it together and raise his X-wing out of the water via the force and fly to battle. In ESB Yoda raised it up, so it might have been a nice way to call back to that scene.

Instead he did yoga on a rock. That's ok though bc I'm sure that fighter was waterlogged and fully non-operational.

My co-worker got the impression that Luke was dead / projecting himself during *the entire movie* and not just during the Kylo Ren showdown. Did others get this impression?

Only the porgs are alive. Everyone else is dead.

in that Luke was sitting somewhere else and projecting himself to Rey during the whole island stuff? No.

Amazing that a hologram picked up a real staff to parry with as well as grabbing and throwing Rey's, speared a huge fish, milked a...thing,

focusing on plot holes in SW, at least any of the ones that have to do with the inconsistent use of technology, is like I said, wondering why they don’t have a smoke detector in the stress test episode of The IT Crowd

can't wait for RPGs to add "force milk" to the roster of abilities.

There was a MAD Magazine gag that showed Vader using his Force abilities to fondle someone's ass

Lightspeeding into another ship seems like something they would do all the time, though (with unmanned ships).

hyperspace jumps can't melt mandalorian steel beams

hyperspace tracking seems like something they would do all the time
force ghosts throwing thunderbolts seems like something they would do all the time
shooting up the hangar bay before the fighters can launch seems like something they would do all the time

xpost that'd be pretty expensive building a bunch of Raddus-sized ships for the sheer purpose of destroying them as opposed to finding less expensive ways to inflict destruction

I mean this ain't WWII

the shooting up the hangar bay was dope

I thought it was pretty sexist tbf

The only other film class I took was one on the Bond series, and the TA made the point that the Broccolis kept changing directors and picking ones without much of a directoral style(Guy Hamilton was the closest to a Bond auteur) to maintain the series as producer-driven, not director.

damn i don't really agree with this ta at all. i mean maybe that was the broccolis' objective but 1. there are a lot of bond films directed by terence young (prob most responsible for how bond movies *feel*), lewis gilbert, and john glen, which gives me the sense that they tended to revolve between a few reliable directors including hamilton 2. hamilton's movies aren't even the most visually distinctive bond movies!

sorry if i have turned yet another thread into a bond discussion

xp all the women fighter pilots who have to work twice as hard to get anywhere show up on time and get killed, fuckin' Poe is 15 minutes late as usual because he's a rock god or whatever so he just gets tossed down the hall by the shockwave

The one thing I expected to maybe happen was based on Rey looking down into the water below the island and seeing the submerged X-wing, then later mentioning Luke having abandoned the force. Thought he'd get it together and raise his X-wing out of the water via the force and fly to battle. In ESB Yoda raised it up, so it might have been a nice way to call back to that scene.

Instead he did yoga on a rock. That's ok though bc I'm sure that fighter was waterlogged and fully non-operational.

― omar little, Tuesday, January 2, 2018 7:16 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark

yeah i think the submerged x-wing shot was a red herring included precisely to keep people believing that luke had shown up to krait until the plot twist

good callback to Dagobah, framing Luke’s exile, too

yeah, Rey's reaction is subtle when she sees that but reads as the moment she realizes he's dead serious about not coming back and getting him back requiring more than armtwisting

If I were a regular stormtrooper I'd be demanding the better armor that Captain Phantasm or whatever wears.

It doesn't provide extra protection, just looks fancier.

Phasma is the LTG Buckner of Star Wars

https://books.google.com/books?id=Eq9GhCY5c2oC&pg=PT34&lpg=PT34&dq=shiny+stars+were+likely+to+provoke&source=bl&ots=PyiGMAabSb&sig=FJ8yNgDdtIAABJ7JVXJm2PDgkxE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjNv9HU9brYAhUkT98KHfnpALkQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=shiny%20stars%20were%20likely%20to%20provoke&f=false

It doesn't provide extra protection, just looks fancier.

Not true -- Rose Tico's blaster shots bounce off Phasma's armor.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Laser_Reflective_Armor

Can Luke even park that thing on land ever, omg.

why didnt jedi's just always make bomb s float up behind their enemies and detonate - seems easy and non risky

Thought he'd get it together and raise his X-wing out of the water via the force and fly to battle.

i think the submerged x-wing shot was a red herring included precisely to keep people believing that luke had shown up to krait until the plot twist

i didn't even connect the x-wing to his arrival on krait and obvs He Wasn't Really There Anyway but man was i disappointed we didn't get a raising-it-outta-the-water shot

ideally he'd have promised the lizard nuns "hey, if you help me raise this ship out and fix 'er up, I'll come back and rebuild your tower and stuff" knowing full well he was gonna buy the farm

let face it its good to see peopel with huge powers - aht whats good about superheros - I want to see more Luke kicking ass - like he becomes 50 ft tall and battles the imperials ape walkers with huge swings of the saber that send them to the moon of endork

That was in Lucas’ original draft iirc

listen ok you may think rey is a mary sue but it takes a special kind of crazy to to doll up and fed ex yourself to the goth boy you met on space omegle

— [to the tune of star wars] (@See_Em_Play) January 5, 2018

I've seen it twice now in the cinema and the things that bothered me on first viewing (which were mainly tonal things in jokes, like Poe holding for Hux, or Luke tossing the lightsaber away) evaporated on second viewing.

I didn't get expectations from things like the shot of Luke's x-wing underwater, either; to me that just said he was done, washed-up, retired. The casino excursion didn't feel pointless either, far from it; while narratively it may have been a failed mission, it added some real depth to the world (rich arms dealers, indentured underclass kids, permeability between 'good' and 'bad'. Also I liked the horsecats.

I think it's probably a slightly better film than TFA, and feels like it will stand up better to repeat viewings better (a little like Empire). What it wasn't, was a fairground ride of a movie with whooping moments of joy and reveal and audience satisfaction - nothing like the Falcon unveiling, or the first whoosh of a lightsaber, or the Falcon flight through a ruined stardestroyer, or the ANH-aping shot of a speeder crossing a desert in silhouette to a giant red sun.

More of R2D2 and C3PO would have been good; the original trilogy IS about them, after all. Hopefully E9 will start with them walking through a desert on their own...

And of course, failed missions were massively narratively important to this film.

More of R2D2 and C3PO would have been good; the original trilogy IS about them, after all.

I wish they'd kept them as being the bumbling centre of the films, BB8 is is a great&cute looking thing but is basically just a poorer & more prequely cousin of r2d2 with worse noises (r2d2's noises ofc one of the greatest things in star wars - which makes me think there was a lack of incredible sound design in this; SW has had mb the most iconic sound effects in cinema from tie fighters to vader breathing to chewbacca to the lightsaber hum - even the prequels had the pod racing and those glorious space bombs)

the way they killed off snoke was a very satisfying use of a deeply corny & thin character and I agree that andy serkis should be pushed into the pit. the luke plotline was also surprisingly satisfying & convincing and skellig michael ended up being a great choice. adam driver remains the best thing in this by a distance and I'm more invested in what happens to kylo ren than I am in any of the other characters, which makes me apprehensive about ep9 as idk what they can do that will have the weight of a face-off with leia. as a kid the redemption of vader in ROTJ was a huge moment that elevated & defined the whole story for me. it would have always been a struggle to top that but something with leia had the potential. if he is just defeated&killed it will feel anticlimactic to me. mb rey could somehow sacrifice herself to turn him? or mb bb8 will take control of the new death star and blow him up from afar

just think of bb-8’s noises as all extracted from lost aphex twin songs and it works a lot better

Oh god the takes the hotness of the takes if rey sacrificed herself to turn a manchild into an adult oh Jesus the takes my eyes

mb the two of them will hook up, decide to pack the lightsabers away, and get into highbrow culture together