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Random Star Wars Thoughts

Doctor Cringelord

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Then they should just have personable actors. Gina is boring, she's one note.

That’s the point though. Most of the actors have been overshadowed by the visuals and boom booms for a while. Carl Weathers was pretty cool, but is anyone raving abou Freddie Prinze Jr?
 

Totenkindly

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Obi-Wan Kenobi Jar Jar Binks Appearance Not Happening – /Film

Alas.

Maybe they are lying and Darth Binks is manipulating it all from underneath. We can only hope.

images
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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I love this YouTuber and his drive to obsessively scour the films for obscure vehicles.

 

Doctor Cringelord

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They really did jump the shark with RotJ

It’s funny how that was the most loathed SW film prior to 1999.

That is a good point, why didn’t the rebel alliance just rescue Han, but maybe they couldn’t spare the resources at that time
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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Well we saw what we got when we had a Star Wars movie guided in response to fan complaints. I'll take Jedi any day over that; although I will concede that the Ewoks defeat stormtroopers a little too easily. I know they're based on the Vietcong but they had guns and so forth.

I'm just really worn out by this kinds of critiques, especially because they made a film guided by them and it sucked ass.
 

Julius_Van_Der_Beak

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TLJ response: "Why didn't nobody use hyperspace ramming before? Highly improbable!"

Actual character in Rise of Skywalker: "We can't use hyperspace ramming again, that was one in a million."

TLJ response: "How can there be people in this galaxy that aren't related to each other? It strains credulity."

ROS: Meet Palpatine's granddaughter!

TLJ response: "How dare Luke throw away a lightsaber like it's a joke or doesn't matter! A Jedi's weapon deserves respect!"

ROS: "A Jedi's weapon deserves more respect. "

This is why we can't actually do anything new or unpredictable in these movies, because there's a micro-industry of people making 2 hour long videos on Youtube something like that does happen. For instance, I remember people complaining about how the ships and tech in the prequels "doesn't fit the look of the universe", so in TFA, we just get X-wings and tie fighters again.

All the worst things about the sequel trilogy are reactions to complaints about the prequels, and for every valid criticism about those films, there were a lot of really dumb critiques. Which is why we have no world-building and reuse of OT designs, for instance.

ejks4ygv7w541.jpg


I was shocked I didn't see that at the end of Rise of Skywalker.

I'd like to pass a law that says that people who made all of those above complaints about The Last Jedi now have to claim Rise of Skywalker as their third favorite Star Wars movie.

Rise of Skywalker is a garbage movie in large part because it's pandering to fan critiques like the ones RLM and folks on reddit and youtube made. It doesn't help that it was rushed and they had no idea what to do when Carrie Fisher died.
 

Lark

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I just think of the Mandalorian and Rogue One carrying the franchise, those were better films than the Rise of Skywalker or The Last Jedi, although I liked those films alright to be honest, I liked the last one with the brother and sister fighting the resurgent Sith.

The thing about these films is that they will never deliver if people are going to insist on them competing with nostalgia, childhood memories etc.

Also, I've heard a lot of people make comparisons between them and Harry Potter, so the mold has maybe been broken or changed when it comes to epic struggles fantasy and magic is more predominant than sci fi even if its science fantasy rather than science fiction strictly speaking.
 

Totenkindly

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Rise of Skywalker is a garbage movie in large part because it's pandering to fan critiques like the ones RLM and folks on reddit and youtube made. It doesn't help that it was rushed and they had no idea what to do when Carrie Fisher died.

I'm still kind of in a daze about how bad it was.

I mean, there's bad.
And then there is amateur, hackneyed, and drunk off jawa juice with a dash of bantha blood.

And ROS was in another whole galaxy beneath that altogether.

I want to say it was even unprofessional, it was so bad, especially for a film with that large a budget, from a major studio, who had made better films in the same universe in the past.

If you made me choose between ROS and GoT Season 8, I'm still not sure which was worse. At least it was clear with GoT that the writing skill (i.e., flaws) of the showrunners + their boredom of being trapped in Westeros for ten years was a major contributing factor to why the final season or two sucked; there is no real excuse for ROS.

---

The Harry Potter films were much better in terms of the consistency of the writing, even if book readers had issues with some things that got dropped from the films. (As a non-book reader, I still find the later films emotionally powerfully and cogent.) They also played the long game on some major plot points, there was a method to the madness and it helps when your source material is complete when you are filming it.

All bets are off with the crap they've been peddling since then, though. The Fantastic Beast films are pretty tedious and are a case where they make prior films worse rather than better. (I love it when a film makes the connecting films better; heaven help the films that make connecting properties worse.)
 

Doctor Cringelord

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Well we saw what we got when we had a Star Wars movie guided in response to fan complaints. I'll take Jedi any day over that; although I will concede that the Ewoks defeat stormtroopers a little too easily. I know they're based on the Vietcong but they had guns and so forth.

I'm just really worn out by this kinds of critiques, especially because they made a film guided by them and it sucked ass.

I can't really speak to what other fans want in SW. I just know it was apparent to me Jedi was a weaker film well before the prequels even existed. But it looked a lot better after we got episode 1-3 and everyone, myself included, suddenly gave it a pass. There's just a rushed quality about it. It isalso easily the most toyetic of the original trilogy. Lucas was burnt out by that point, I think, and he was already making decisions based more on dollar signs than on creative vision.

I really think they should have just stopped after Return of the Jedi.

One point about Jedi, had they gone with the original idea of setting it on Kashyyk, it would have made a lot more sense to see wookies overtaking stormtroopers so easily. But teddy bears with spears, because we gotta sell toys and make some spinoff TV movies and cartoons to sell even more toys.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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I just think of the Mandalorian and Rogue One carrying the franchise, those were better films than the Rise of Skywalker or The Last Jedi, although I liked those films alright to be honest, I liked the last one with the brother and sister fighting the resurgent Sith.

The thing about these films is that they will never deliver if people are going to insist on them competing with nostalgia, childhood memories etc.

Also, I've heard a lot of people make comparisons between them and Harry Potter, so the mold has maybe been broken or changed when it comes to epic struggles fantasy and magic is more predominant than sci fi even if its science fantasy rather than science fiction strictly speaking.

Although Rogue One was basically one big fan service buffet, I think it works the best of any Disney era film because it didn't pretend to be anything more than what Star Wars has been for a long time.
 

Totenkindly

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Well, it was a weaker film (especially after TESB) but people didn't know there would be more + it could have just been a one-off, not an ongoing problem with SW in general.

The Jabba sequence is probably the most interesting to me, and the rest was kinda eh whatever. It doesn't help when he's recycling the same plotlines / refurbishing old death stars.

It's purely functional, it provides the resolution to the issues raised in the second film which was necessarily more provocative. In that, it succeeds, and it has a few interesting action sequences (like the speeders in the forest), but doesn't really add a lot of value beyond what we already had.



it's funny to me how Star Wars fandom is secular, yet is also typically fundamentalist as much as any religion. They cling with fervor to what has gone before and go over it in excruciating detail trying to make it conform even when it sucks or is in desperate need of an overhaul / realignment. Talk about not letting go of the past or accepting art as a work in progress, where you can adjust things as you go to make them better.

What is that old phrase by Emerson? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?

Sometimes to save the patient, you have to break with what came before. At least TLJ tried to do that, although it really screwed the pooch by just not bothering to truly honor the tone while it did so, nor honor its own place as the established MIDDLE of a trilogy but basically only gave a crap about itself as a film.
 

Doctor Cringelord

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I don't agree with everything those RLM reviews say, I just think they're funny critiques, and as much great satire on the nature of internet nerd critic culture as they are critiques on the actual SW prequels. Say what you will about RLM, there are some problematic aspects to that channel, but one thing I will give them is they have never been shills like many of the other big youtube channels that take money, schwag and early screening in exchange for glowing reviews and praise of anything released under the brand. Curmudgeonly old farts, sure, but so were Siskel and Ebert and most of the old school of film criticism.

They're not intended to be taken 100% seriously, and the joke is as much on people like Abrams and co who paid serious consideration to the views of internet critics in the first place. I'm with you, the internet fandom can be pretty toxic, but blame Disney, not people who have opinions on the internet. No one said Disney had to take that into consideration when producting these films, but that's kind of what happens when a film is made by corporate committee with the end goal of pleasing the most consumers and shareholders. One more good reason Lucasfilm should have just stopped making them after 1983
 

Doctor Cringelord

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Well, it was a weaker film (especially after TESB) but people didn't know there would be more + it could have just been a one-off, not an ongoing problem with SW in general.

The Jabba sequence is probably the most interesting to me, and the rest was kinda eh whatever. It doesn't help when he's recycling the same plotlines / refurbishing old death stars.

It's purely functional, it provides the resolution to the issues raised in the second film which was necessarily more provocative. In that, it succeeds, and it has a few interesting action sequences (like the speeders in the forest), but doesn't really add a lot of value beyond what we already had.



it's funny to me how Star Wars fandom is secular, yet is also typically fundamentalist as much as any religion. They cling with fervor to what has gone before and go over it in excruciating detail trying to make it conform even when it sucks or is in desperate need of an overhaul / realignment. Talk about not letting go of the past or accepting art as a work in progress, where you can adjust things as you go to make them better.

What is that old phrase by Emerson? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?

Sometimes to save the patient, you have to break with what came before. At least TLJ tried to do that, although it really screwed the pooch by just not bothering to truly honor the tone while it did so, nor honor its own place as the established MIDDLE of a trilogy but basically only gave a crap about itself as a film.

I think moving ahead with a new trilogy was probably the biggest mistake. The Skywalker saga was more or less resolved with those 6 original films. We didn't even really need the prequels but I am glad we got a Revenge of the Sith at least, flawed as it may be.

I don't have as much of a problem with Disney making the standalone films though. I think there's a lot of good stories that can be told in that universe without having to focus on the major characters and families of the original saga. Take a nod from Knights of the Old Republic and make more shit set thousands of years ago, or hell, move forward a few hundred years. It's all too familial and intimate at this point. Star Trek has made a similar mistake in constantly going back and retreading old ground instead of actually moving forward with new themes and characters.

Mando season 1 was the first thing to really work as a solid standalone with completely original characters, but we see even it is making similar mistakes in season 2 in having to once again tie everything back to old characters and conflicts. It's like they had this great premise, but they just couldn't help themselves and had to find a way to meander back to familiarity
 

Totenkindly

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I think moving ahead with a new trilogy was probably the biggest mistake. The Skywalker saga was more or less resolved with those 6 original films. We didn't even really need the prequels but I am glad we got a Revenge of the Sith at least, flawed as it may be.

Well, you did hit on it there -- "Skywalker saga." I was willing to allow the original characters cameos in the first film, as part of a transition phase... but what did they do? made it all about the same dumb old stuff again, just less adeptly. WE DIDN'T NEED MORE SKYWALKER. It's not the "secret ingredient," it's the residual poison that we're now overdosing on.

I don't have as much of a problem with Disney making the standalone films though. I think there's a lot of good stories that can be told in that universe without having to focus on the major characters and families of the original saga. Take a nod from Knights of the Old Republic and make more shit set thousands of years ago, or hell, move forward a few hundred years. It's all too familial and intimate at this point. Star Trek has made a similar mistake in constantly going back and retreading old ground instead of actually moving forward with new themes and characters.

Pretty much. They just need to get out of that era. And standalone films work. DC has had more luck with freestanding films. Solo was kind of a bomb (it was okay, just not worth making) -- they had no idea for a film, it was just a "Hey, let's make a young Han Solo film!" and simply packed it with explanations for all the stuff we already saw in the original SW trilogy, although we never asked for those explanations nor did we need them.

This common problem of making films and shows to make money / capitalize on a property rather than having an actual story to tell is not just a SW thing, although maybe it's a Disney thing -- because I am feeling the same about the "Falcon & Winter Soldier" "series" for Disney/Marvel. They didn't really have a compelling story, they just wanted to apparently set up characters for later use and get them into position. It's all been a muddled mess and uncompelling, there is no real "story" there at least that has clearly materialized.

Mando season 1 was the first thing to really work as a solid standalone with completely original characters, but we see even it is making similar mistakes in season 2 in having to once again tie everything back to old characters and conflicts. It's like they had this great premise, but they just couldn't help themselves and had to find a way to meander back to familiarity

Yeah. I was okay with Ahsoka because it was so well-done (that one episode), but the best stuff was when it just dealt with characters in their own dramas. I really enjoyed the episode where Bill Burr ends up shooting his old commander unexpectedly -- all character driven and all following from prior history, and it's like they didn't care about where things were going, they just did it and let it drive the plot. The best shows seem to be that way, where characters do inconvenient things based on what we've seen or understood and the show doesn't try to reel it back to be safe or controllable.

Everything about SW feels way too "managed" right now.
 
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