Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

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Jonny2x4
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by Jonny2x4 »

Squire Grooktook wrote:
Sometimes, I think back to the fact that they decided for some unholy reason to rotate directors for each film for no reason, giving each one full permission to overwrite the last one's plans...and I stand in awe.
People keep saying this, but I don't buy that as the reason why this new trilogy turned out to be a dud. The original trilogy was just as made-up on the spot as this new one, with constant change of plans and a different director each, and they turned out to be all pretty good, even if ROTJ is the weakest of the bunch. The original Star Wars wasn't even called Episode IV until later prints when it was being re-released after ESB was made.

The real problem with the sequel trilogy is that J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson were basically engaging in a dick-measuring contest of trying to undo what each other wrote. And on top of that, you have people like Kathleen Kennedy disregarding years of Star Wars literature that took place after the OT just to come up with worse ideas for her own sequels.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by dan76 »

Jonny2x4 wrote:
Squire Grooktook wrote:
Sometimes, I think back to the fact that they decided for some unholy reason to rotate directors for each film for no reason, giving each one full permission to overwrite the last one's plans...and I stand in awe.
People keep saying this, but I don't buy that as the reason why this new trilogy turned out to be a dud. The original trilogy was just as made-up on the spot as this new one, with constant change of plans and a different director each, and they turned out to be all pretty good, even if ROTJ is the weakest of the bunch. The original Star Wars wasn't even called Episode IV until later prints when it was being re-released after ESB was made. .
That's not really true. Lucas had a very vague idea of the stuff he wanted when he wrote Star Wars, he knew it was a stand alone film but had things he wanted to do in a possible sequel. Still, it was vague enough that he didn't come up with the idea of Vader being Luke's father until the third or fourth draft of Empire. He knew roughly what to do with Luke which is the important core of the OT. The events were constantly changing during writing, shooting and editing - I've been reading those "making of" books and some of the ideas were bonkers. Two Death Stars originally in Jedi and Leia doesn't go to Jabba's Palace, she's on Corusant. The Emperors throne room is over a pit of lava....

Either way, it's the writing that's the problem, not the change of director. Directors get way too much credit in these types if films, it's the script!

Disneys Trilogy doesn't really know what it wants to be about. I think JJ Abrams had an outline, a possible trilogy with Rey's story at the centre of it. They let Rian Johnson ignore most of what was set up (though there is a fan edit of TLJ called The Fallen Knight which cuts out virtually everything apart from the Rey, Kylo and Luke stuff which is very good). Then Abrams comes back and ignores most of what Johnson set up. TRoS is an attempt by Abrams to bring it back in line with his original idea, but he can only do so much.

They should've split this film in two ending the first part
Spoiler
just after Rey has stabbed Kylo, Leia dies and Kylo has his chat with Han and becomes Ben Solo. Then open the second film with Rey on Ach-Too, eventually resuming training with Luke to take on Palpatine. Spend a bit more time amassing that's fleet of rebels etc.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by neorichieb1971 »

My take on the trilogy.

TFA trailer was unbelievable. If I watch it right now, I get goose bumps, I get emotional, I get "I need to watch this movie right now".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGbxmsDFVnE

Thats where my positives end.


I didn't like that Finn was a defector, I always wanted to believe that something evil was under those helmets. Not shaggy from Scooby doo.
Most of the other characters were really weak, didn't gel with the old ones that well imho.
The light saber fights (especially in TFA) were really choppy and weak, youtube versions are better.
John Williams score rarely upped the tempo in the movies.
A galaxy far far away looked like fields about 1/2 mile from my house and an island in Scotland.
The droids didn't get any shenanigans or humorous lines.
No matter how many storm troopers were on screen, they died within 5 seconds of coming on screen (The OT at least had the main characters fear them)
Most of the storylines were regurgitated or remixed from previous movies
The bad guys were Nancy
Some of the endgame plot should have been put in TFA about 3/4 in. But you watch the whole trilogy without knowing what the endgame really is.
ROS was really bad. Non sensical and stupid. If bad guys had that much firepower they wouldn't lose. When they had the advantage they were useless, when they were at a disadvantage they were even more useless. You could have thrown a stick at those star destroyers and they would blow up. Just stupid..

To sum it up, I like to get emotionally involved. I could watch Rocky IV and see Rocky getting the shit beaten out of him and really hate Ivan Drago. I Want to hate the final order, but I can't. I just don't care, I didn't care about anything in this trilogy at all. I saw no reason for the characters to get motivated to do anything and thus I didn't feel the need to get engaged with it either.
This industry has become 2 dimensional as it transcended into a 3D world.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by BIL »

Lost Stars manga was a fun read. Takes place over the OT, follows childhood friends who end up on opposing sides of the war. It's pretty short, doable over two/three evenings at most. Critically, the iconic material from the films is compellingly woven into its original narrative - it's not just pasted-on datapoints to make Eric Butts jizz his serotonin-deprived drawers.

I can't feel anything at all for the ST, it's been a giant nothing since they took the easy way out with the First Order v "Resistance." Come up with a convincing premise first, thanks.

Rian Johnson's shitting on the floor and subsequent wounded animal routine when onlookers pointed out his ideas stank was unhelpful, but there was nothing to go back to in the first place.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

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ST is good if you watch on it's own trilogy (disregarding previous trilogies), and from filmmaking perspective they are well-made movies.

But damn, at this time I might just stop care about this trilogy at all. PT might have poor script but they're at least feel like Star Wars and Revenge of the Sith is now my favorite SW movie.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

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RegalSin wrote:New PowerPuff Girls. They all have evil pornstart eyelashes.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

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GaijinPunch wrote:Forbes ranks all SW films
Christ, people get paid real money to write this shit.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by BIL »

What was the "critique of older fans" in TLJ, I wonder? I've a critique of the movie, ignoring the soap scum that needed summarily hosing off (read: anything involving Finn, Rose, Poe and/or Admiral Dangerhair). It's a house built on sand, and that sand is shitty fanfiction. Superb performance from Mark Hamill as a self-indulgent nihilistic coward.

A common, misguided defense is that it's "subverting expectations" by pointing out "Luke isn't the perfect hero." There is no heroism in owning your mistakes, and there is most definitely none in watching out for your friends and family. That is called "not being a contemptible asshole." A second, related defense (I'm not making this up, I swear) is that he totes done the right thing eventually. This is a sacrifice hopelessly dwarfed by the wrong committed, or "too little too late." To paraphrase Joe Pesci as Nicky Santoro: anyone who thinks this movie says anything of value about human frailty and redemption should never be trusted with so much as a cup of fucking coffee.

Were this about another character, and were it rinsed of said detritus, I could almost enjoy it. Somewhat. I am all-in on Space Adam Lanza as portrayed by Adam Driver, but I am not certain the movie is. What is with this trilogy and having its "grey" characters shaded by doing the most heinous shit to their families? "I murdered Dad in cold blood, and Mom by proxy, because Reasons, but at least neither was asleep in their beds at the time!" Why is calculated familial slaughter being treated like ditching medical school for Youtube?

It's almost like these people haplessly mashed up whimsical space swashbuckling and Totes Serious Character Study, only to come up short on both.

What really works me up is the damage to Palpatine's character by TROS.

Because now it's established he and his acolytes can "conjure" an unfathomably powerful, Galaxy-subduing fleet of Star Destroyers out of sweet fuck all, I'm forced to conclude he was clearly lying to Vader about not being able to buy him shoes that fit.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by GaijinPunch »

I guess I'm not cool -- I always tough Attack of the Clones was far better than the Phantom Menace. Not saying it's good... at all... it was just a less convoluted mess than TPM.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

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With regards to Palpatine - has anyone watched the half in the bag episode about this. Mike Stoklasa comes up with a pretty good reading of what is going on, I'm just not sure he made it up or if it's in the film and I missed it.

He thinks that the Palpatine from Return of the Jedi is a clone. That there have been many clones and that the Palpatine we are seeing in Rise of Skywalker is the pure original sith version. I thought we were watching the same Emperor, but maybe not?
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by BIL »

Image

Image

I thought that was workable enough from Mike, too. It's definitely not in the film - the sum total of lines addressing it are Kylo's "I'll kill you," Palpatine's "I have died before," and some later conjecture from Hobbit dude about "dark Sith arts, cloning."

Sith Fleet is handled similarly, with one officer scoffing at "cultists and conjurers" and his colleague firing back "they've conjured a massive fleet, STFU!" Then skeptic dude asks what Palpy really wants and Kylo bounces his head off the ceiling very painfully.

Speaking of... I would've loved some late twist where the fleet was just a mind trick, and Palpy went full Berserk Eclipse on the rused Imperials. :lol: Like the rebels get there and it's just an ocean of gore, then a Gynoug Dickman comes screaming up at them. :shock: Really play with the "magic, ain't gotta explain shit" angle.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by Gus »

I was kind of negative on the Palpatine revival from reading the leaks, but having watched the movie I really dug how they handled it. Palpatine's line at the beginning, "The dark side is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural," is a direct reference to the memey opera scene from ROTS where he happens to be talking with Anakin about his master's research into achieving immortality. There's also a somewhat well-known comic where Vader uses a portal to the dark side in a failed attempt to bring back Padme. Not hard to imagine from those things how Palpatine could have been revived in some sort of ritual by dark side cultists.

I've also seen a theory, which I dig, that the Palpatine in the movie isn't just a revival of the senator but also a vessel of every Sith lord of the past. This is kind of implied in the movie when he says that he is "every Sith" and with the scene where he tries to goad Rey into killing him so he can live on through her.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by BryanM »

Since SW is basically the same as those old "go kill the demon king, hero!" excuse-plot jrpgs, this entire thing... it reminds me of that Hero Union BBS chapter where the guy and his team fight the demon lord, he unleashes his "true form", and with his dying breath taunts them that they need to go into the dark world in order to defeat the "true demon king". So they go and off that guy too, and with his dying breath he tells them they're still in peril due to the "true ultimate demon king". This continues many dozens of times - always supposedly escalating, but never reaching a conclusion. The hero's allies get sick of this nonsense, and eventually go back home to be responsible adults before they die of old age. Due to the sunk cost fallacy, the hero stubbornly carries on to the point of slaying a supposed demon "god" before finally giving up.

(Another parallel to Star Wars is in this story, I think the hero is eventually given immortality by a jerkass god curious to see how long he'll keep going? For his own amusement? This is similar to how the original cast isn't allowed to die and forced to live on in CGI! FOREVER.)

To this day still wondering why Darth Plagueis, or something like him wasn't in the prequels. Would make too much sense I guess.
neorichieb1971 wrote:I didn't like that Finn was a defector, I always wanted to believe that something evil was under those helmets. Not shaggy from Scooby doo.
SW has always amused me that way. Sometimes a reason for having aliens in fantasy is to dehumanize them and make them acceptable targets for violence (whether it's those damn xenos or knife-ears), but in SW, the opposite is true. The aliens have more personality and character than any of the humans.

It's why I think Lucas is a secret furry.
___

Another somewhat related thing, almost all female characters in these old sci-fi children's power fantasies were basically porn stars. Flash Gordon, Star Crash, Leia in that painting they used for the laserdisc cover.... the Rose character is basically the complete antithesis of that aesthetic, and I always get a hearty guffaw thinking about it.
Either way, it's the writing that's the problem, not the change of director. Directors get way too much credit in these types if films, it's the script!
I'm a big base content guy myself, but often a director has the power to select, modify and reject scripts. That in itself effectively makes them god on a project.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by Mischief Maker »

I'm a broken record at this point, but post OT star wars is basically Game of Thrones after they ran out of books.

Seriously, go watch Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, your jaw will hit the floor.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by dan76 »

BryanM wrote:
Either way, it's the writing that's the problem, not the change of director. Directors get way too much credit in these types if films, it's the script!
I'm a big base content guy myself, but often a director has the power to select, modify and reject scripts. That in itself effectively makes them god on a project.
No, generally that's the producer. The producer is God on a film, unless you're a director who has worked with the same producer for years. It's all a creative thing but often the director gets elevated way above everyone else. Anyone who works in the film industry knows this is bollocks.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by neorichieb1971 »

I still believe there are no Star Wars fans under the age of 37. Doesn't anyone believe that the franchise should have grown up with its audience?

Disney was possibly the worst candidate imho for buying it out.

The Mandalorian has produced a great toy in Baby Yoda which when it hits the streets will no doubt fly off the shelves. I can't see anyone doing this for Ep XII XIII and IX. But there lies a problem, if the movies are a mechanic that pushes toys then you have a push/pull on where to take the audience.

What annoys me most about the last 3 movies is that people actually like it. There is an audience out there that love it regardless of the movies having some of the lowest scores in Star Wars imdb history.
These audiences are the same with Fast and the Furious. Where the ending is the good guys sipping on a martini on a beach with a job well done, even though somewhere in the USA a city is in total shambolic state with buildings crumbled to the ground. Thats like celebrating a school shooting.

Hollywood in general is polishing turds with Special effects. Its just up to the audiences to know what is good and what is bad. I know this is subjective but we shouldn't give any studio a licence to print money regardless of their efforts.

I'm sorry, but if you praise the last 3 SW movies, I don't want to talk to you :lol:

Does anyone not find it strange that the story boards and scripts were not fan tested (with non disclosure agreements) before filming a single scene? The whole trilogy should have been story boarded before the cameras were rolled out. I saw on youtube the other day that since the TFA was mega successful that Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson were giving free creative control on TLJ. Did they even consider that it made so much money because people wanted to see an unknown story and that the proof was in the reaction, not the box office receipts. :roll:
This industry has become 2 dimensional as it transcended into a 3D world.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by BIL »

BryanM wrote:Since SW is basically the same as those old "go kill the demon king, hero!" excuse-plot jrpgs, this entire thing... it reminds me of that Hero Union BBS chapter where the guy and his team fight the demon lord, he unleashes his "true form", and with his dying breath taunts them that they need to go into the dark world in order to defeat the "true demon king". So they go and off that guy too, and with his dying breath he tells them they're still in peril due to the "true ultimate demon king". This continues many dozens of times - always supposedly escalating, but never reaching a conclusion.
Incidentally, as of 20/12/19, the TRUE and HONEST Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary has officially confirmed that the Sith Fleet was constructed (not "conjured," as Admiral Baldhead scoffed in-film), in factories on Exegol, with materials, funding and expertise funnelled in by Sith loyalists within the highest levels of leading arms manufacturers.

The many thousands of flight personnel are the children of the Sith Eternal cultists - an army of fanatics raised and trained from birth to fulfil Palpatine's ambition. The "Sith Troopers" are much the same, a standing army of 250,000 diehards.

Image

So the enemy force is an ancient cult the size of a small nation, its tentacles deep in heavy industry, wielding unprecedented military might and capable of staging a generation-long conspiracy... one which only failed at the eleventh hour, when its leader literally sent a galaxy-wide broadcast warning everyone about it.

That's the next trilogy all sorted out then! What, did you think this whole shebang went "poof!" with Palpy's bullet-cancelling Boss Explosion? Pshh. You didn't consider SENATOR JANNO FORZI, the grandfatherly former CEO of BIG SKY CRAFT LTD. Turns out, as a youth on EXEGOL, he pledged his wiener and balls to the Sith in exchange for a terrible dark power... one that now steps into the light. Image

Let's all get excited for the concluding film of the next three...

Episode XII: SHIN PALPY FUKKATSU

*JOHN WILLIAMS BGM*

Image

"Fools! Tremble before the might of THE SPACE THIRD REICH!"
"No! The INSURRECTION will not fail!"


PALPATINE speaks:

"GYAAAAHAHAHAHAAA! NOW, MY FLAGSHIP HAS TWO BIGGU, BLACKU DIKKUS!"


(from off-frame, the sound of Eric Butts simultaneously weeping and climaxing into his own mouth)
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by BryanM »

neorichieb1971 wrote:I still believe there are no Star Wars fans under the age of 37.
It has been pretty impressive for an old pop culture craze from the 70's. Honestly I really wish they'd bring back disco instead.

Maybe both? That Dangun Feveron hollywood blockbuster everyone truly wants in their hearts? No?

aw....
You didn't consider SENATOR JANNO FORZI, the grandfatherly former CEO of BIG SKY CRAFT LTD. Turns out, as a youth on EXEGOL, he pledged his wiener and balls to the Sith in exchange for a terrible dark power...
goddamnit bil, I'm choking to death from laughter here
dan76 wrote:
Either way, it's the writing that's the problem, not the change of director. Directors get way too much credit in these types if films, it's the script!
I'm a big base content guy myself, but often a director has the power to select, modify and reject scripts. That in itself effectively makes them god on a project.
No, generally that's the producer. The producer is God on a film, unless you're a director who has worked with the same producer for years. It's all a creative thing but often the director gets elevated way above everyone else. Anyone who works in the film industry knows this is bollocks.
Oftentimes, yeah. It's usually a political clusterfuck at the top - a big hollywood script has often been compared to a public toilet. I think in this particular case it's apparent Johnson and Abrams were given a large amount of power.

(Jon Peters's giant spider fetish has given the world so much grief. Further unknown horrors lie behind the curtain, for certain.)
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by Udderdude »

SHIN PALPY FUKKATSU still sounds more entertaining than whatever Disney managed to crap out.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

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BIL's trilogy sounds more interesting than everything ST combined.
neorichieb1971 wrote: I'm sorry, but if you praise the last 3 SW movies, I don't want to talk to you :lol:
Last three SW movies are TRoS, Solo and TLJ. does this mean TFA and Rogue One are passable?

For me, stick with 1-6 is more than enough. Rogue One and Solo imo are good gaiden movies but the latter has one scene that well you must watch cartoon series for explanation. Heavy Tie-in medias are bad marketing practice, and Disney Star Wars suffers from this.

Prequel haters are strong in this forum, they might have poor script and sometimes cheesy acting (ANH has problems of the latter) but those are work as Star Wars movies. When I rewatch TPM and AOTC I actually liked the political intrigue, just to show that SHEEV is intelligent bastard.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by Mischief Maker »

TFA is the decent one that got people's (very low) hopes up.

Rogue One is a fan-film made with unlimited dumptruck-loads of money.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

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Don't be so mean to fan films >: (
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by GaijinPunch »

My phone keeps telling me everyone is mad there was so little Rose. I assume she's cut out of the TLJ fan edit.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by EmperorIng »

My friends and I all toasted to the end of Star Wars at the bar after our viewing. Recquiescet in pace.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

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Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

Then he says to the white dude "Watch out for that black dude, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by kitten »

i had really hoped everyone was just getting their dunks in now that the trilogy is over and this would be watchable, but it was seriously dreadful :[ just saw it last night and i was astonished. rest of the theater was in this stunned awe when palpatine fired dubstep lasers out of his fingertips and into the sky and i impulsively did a very shrill laugh and then quickly covered my mouth when i realized i was the only one who found it funny. at some point during the ending, i stopped giving a shit and said "wow, star trek is woke" at the 1.5s token lesbian kiss and laughed out loud again at the ewoks (holy shit! they literally put ewoks in, just holy shit). i am almost always perfectly quiet and respectful at a theater, but this just brought something out of me. i felt bad at being a minor disruption but felt equally uneasy at the rest of the theater's total silence throughout almost the entire movie - even so far as to forsake laughing at the quips, which usually get an audience chuckle in similar movies. they seemed to be... drawn in? really entertained? maybe i misinterpreted and some were as baffled as i was and just stunned into silence.

i sort-of enjoyed the middle third of the movie (on the snowy planet and then up to the end of the fight on the trashed death star) and thought maybe it had moved past its relentlessly stupid first third, only to not realize the final third was going to one-up the first. dismal! genuinely dismal. i'm sure the writers are as much to blame as abrams, here, but i couldn't help but be uncannily reminded of how similarly awful his star trek movies were, particularly the last one.
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by BryanM »

EmperorIng wrote:My friends and I all toasted to the end of Star Wars at the bar after our viewing. Recquiescet in pace.
sit down and strap back into that chair, buddy

we got three more trilogies to get through before this trolley runs out of rail
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by BrianC »

I was hoping for a video of the three stooges, but that works!
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by Sumez »

So much TLJ hate, still.

Here's the difference between ROS and TLJ's versions of "bad".

TLJ is a decently competent selfcontained movie, that makes the mistake of fucking up the flow of the "planned" trilogy by basically disregarding everything from the previous movie and setting up a "back to square 1" scenario for what is supposed to be the trilogy's finale (and ultimately ended up being ignored by this movie). I guess that is a perfectly valid reason to not like it, but as a movie I don't think it's terrible, and it had a lot of really good elements to it, such as a very genuine feeling of danger and excitement.

The last element is exactly what Rise of Skywalker lacked. As a Star Wars setting, it's doing a fine job. I had much less of a problem with the
Spoiler
revived emperor than I imagined, and the super cheesy satan throne room they gave him only fits the naive adventure atmosphere of the series.
But as a movie, as a means of storytelling, it's completely absurdly incompetent. There's a lot of stuff to potentially like here, but the movie does nothing to make us want to like it. I think the RLM review is completely on point here - they could have thrown half of the story beats and setpieces in the trash, kept the few things that mattered, and actually have had a completely decent movie all things considered.
Instead all we have is just a bunch of stuff thrown on to the screen with little reason to care about any of it.

It's just not a good movie.
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Sumez
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Re: Star Wars Episode IX released 12/20/2019

Post by Sumez »

kitten wrote:rest of the theater was in this stunned awe when palpatine fired dubstep lasers out of his fingertips and into the sky and i impulsively did a very shrill laugh and then quickly covered my mouth when i realized i was the only one who found it funny. at some point during the ending, i stopped giving a shit and said "wow, star trek is woke" at the 1.5s token lesbian kiss and laughed out loud again at the ewoks
The entire theater I was in (which was a special showing reserved by a local toy shop whose owner is a friend of mine, so most of them were big geeks and star wars nerds) just burst out laughing during what I assumed was supposed to be a major dramatic moment near the end of the movie when
Spoiler
kylo dies after having revived and kissed Rey
Aside from the completely unintentionally hilarious timing, that "twist" did also feel completely useless in the context of storytelling, and is just one example of how completely incompetent the character direction was in this movie, despite Adam Driver doing his best to raise the overall level.

Honestly, the trilogy should just have focused entirely on the relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren, which is the only thing that was handled consistently well throughout all three movies. Getting rid of Snoke in the second movie was a great choice, but of course it went nowhere, like everything else.
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