Star Wars Anthology shit talk (Rogue One, Young Solo, TBD)

yeah that sucks, if true.

well fuck there goes my plan to keep my expectations deliberately low

Ste are you familiar with the story of the tar baby

lol

or br'er rabbit even ;)

some complained about an abundance of fan service, with numerous in-jokes and references for die-hard fans

this gives me the same reaction a lot of people feel towards undecided voters

https://twitter.com/GermainLussier/status/807868306694602752

all of the little team-building cuts in the trailers were extra clips, maybe?

there were a couple lines that sounded like voiceovers just for the trailers

Yeah I was expecting one of the characters in the movie to say "in theaters Friday!" but apparently that line is not in the movie :(

disappointing

reviews are in. The more negative takes sound sadly plausible

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/rogue_one_a_star_wars_story/reviews/?sort=rotten

although Richard Brody does rather undermine his credibility with this:

There’s none of the Shakespearean space politics, enticingly florid dialogue, or experiential thrills of the best of George Lucas’s “Star Wars” entries (“Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”).

Yeah, he wrote a piece on that last year in the wave of prequel revisionism:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-the-seven-star-wars-films-reveal-about-george-lucas

oh yeah I remember that now. That was a weird little interlude

http://www.avclub.com/review/rogue-one-adventure-star-wars-dark-side-247345

Liked it.

That reminds me to remove bookmark

http://www.avclub.com/review/rogue-one-adventure-star-wars-dark-side-247345

Liked it.

"B."

the [redacted OT character] stuff sounds awful

"the journey is about as exciting as a long drive down the Florida Turnpike."

http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies-news-reviews/article120594658.html

Bilge Ebiri has successfully moderated my expectations. I think I'm good to go.

do they blow up the death star in this one

you're really ruining this for everyone

is the last line in the film

I have a bad feeling about this

please tell me there is no pandering or nostalgia or callbacks in this. /s

And the reaction:

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/how-the-fuck-high-was-this-new-yorker-guy-when-he-wrote-1790058128

"half-baked and overcooked"

Brody hated it!? That's it. Gonna give my ticket away to Best Costume On Line.

I love how Brody reviews every mainstream movie, when they're thrown his way, like it's the first time he's ever seen a mainstream movie. "Star Wars," Hou Hsiao-hsien, same dif. Rosenbaum would do that kind of stuff, too, the type of guy who would reference Indiana Jones and then state as an aside that Crystal Skull was far and away the best in the series for its self-referential deconstructions of Cold War tropes, recast as a contemporary fantasy undermining the fiction of 1950's male hyper-potency or something.

I hope this movie ends with them making an emergency landing on the crawl that starts New Hope.

The crawl is revealed to have actually emanated from the Death Star, sculpted from its inner command chamber by a tearful Jar Jar.

I read one not-reall-spoiler spoiler and am pleased that the movie ends how it should

btw everyone dies

It's one gigantic shaggy dog story being narrated by Alan Tudyk's droid

A shaggy droid story, even

my theory after reading too much was that Tarkin kills everyone, which may be true

except Vader, he does not kill Vader

like I am guessing that at some point someone is like "uhhh rebels" and just kills all the characters introduced for this film with a lightsaber or Death Star turbolaser after they transmit the vulnerability

after they transmit the vulnerability.

This is Star Wars, remember; no wireless, everything is air-gapped, as Tombot pointed out months ago.

That shot in the trailer where Jyn in running on the beach with a blaster in her hand? She has to be carrying the Maltese Falcon in her other.

I am going to see this on Sunday morning :D

Def enjoying the revisionism the machine-tooled, deliberately impersonal product-making force this latest cycle has wrought, backing them (us) into a corner of giving the Lucas prequels credit for at least still retaining the threadbare shoddiness of the entire universe he built.

seeing this tomorrow night in glorious three-dee cuz they were the only tickets left

my prediction: tudyk's robot will be the best character, diego luna will be immensely charming and die unexpectedly, wen jiang and donnie yen will be criminally under-used, and the question of whether or not darth vader has a dick will be definitively answered. rating: b+

also: i think the rebels will succeed in stealing the plans for the death star

bold prediction

I made it through 2016 without once getting in a flame war over Trump. One day and I'm doing it over this crap. Truly, Star Wars fan service is my Trumpland.

I saw some facebook shenanigans regarding reviews. It's getting heated?

This was wonderful (h/t Eric H): http://letterboxd.com/keithuhlich/film/rogue-one-a-star-wars-story/

Richard Brody declaring Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith the best movies in the whole franchise ... because they're the dumbest ones, I guess.

imo that is a brave, hilarious stance and I applaud him

I rewatched the latter on television and the two things that really stood out were the inability to follow the action -- there's some really bizarre camera movement combined with computer animation that gives scenes this weird visual effect that's really ugly, and the acting is really hampered by a lack of direction or really weird direction. Every review of the time mentioned that

Grafting a two-pronged government coup conspiracy on to a franchise that started out as a love letter to pulp science fiction was a weird choice

I think I self-truncated: Every review mentioned that the constant use of green screen in lieu of more traditional sets disconnected the actors from context, which is a decent theory

yeah, one of the best observations from those redlettermedia videos were that the use of greenscreen meant that even though the digital sets were often huge the actors could only move like 20 feet in any direction, which is impossible to ignore once you see it and makes them feel weirdly claustrophobic

damn Eric how old is that ILX nickname of yours

also episodes 2 and 3 were shot digitally in just 1080p, which is ludicrously low-res compared to 35mm, so they're only going to look worse as time goes by

biggest example of CGI ruining the films is the Obi Wan fight w that CGI droid that is spinning like 4 lightsabers just inches from his face and Obi has the reaction of staring at a ping pong ball stuck to a wall. not to mention when he jumps on that lizard and the film momentarily turns from a 99% toy commercial to a 100% toy commercial.

i rewatched all of them this year. Empire is still the best by miles.