Star Wars 8 shit talk

(my main argument with my niece afterwards was that chewie was obviously keeping them to eat later, she said no but she is wrong)

Thank you, Mark S. I have texted my 11yo with this theory, I look forward to the barrage of appalled emojis in response.

(My 12yo really struggles with all the death and destruction in these films - she was curling up behind my arm early on as all the bombers broke up).

Snoke was a pointless waste of time in TFA and didn't really do anything in TLJ either. That they might have fucked up his backstory as well - which they definitely would - does not make it better.

snoke was dead on arrival in TFA, i'm glad he went away

this movie and blade runner 2048 both feature far too much inconsequential talking by baddies in bathrobes

http://www.hermitary.com/literature/moomin/muskrat-05.jpg

Finally saw this! It feels a bit messy, but I liked it more than TFA.

Daisy Ridley is so great throughout and I loved that Rey’s parents are nobodies. Also really liked the little nod to this at the very end (which I’m glad I’d been told to look out for, cos it’s quick).

Skellig Michael looks stunning throughout. I’ll probably never get to see it now with all the SW visitors.

I still shamefully fancy Kylo Ren, even though he continues to be a complete mess.

Poe was AWFUL like he got so many people killed and just demotion? I really liked Rose’s sister in her scene and it made me dislike Poe even more.

Kylo Ren giving an order on Craik and then Hux basically screaming the same order, and Kylo’s sideways look, really amused me. As did Benicio peering at BB-8 and going “what’s your story, roundie?”

I really liked Kelly Marie Tran! I liked the casino part more than a lot of people even though it’s incredibly pointless. I hope they give Finn more to do in IX though.

rebellion run by a bunch of old lesbians

ARE Rey's parents nobodies? We seem to be taking that at face value. Of course it's all moot anyway if each film's individual story can be changed from the preceeeding film according to whoever is directing. JJ could decide, in fact has probably decided over the Xmas weekend, that she's somehow related to Ben Kenobi or some shit.

ugh

Poe was AWFUL like he got so many people killed and just demotion?

The Poe/Holdo stuff is what bugs me the most tbh

We seem to be taking that at face value.

Rey’s face when Kylo Ren is telling her she knows it sold it for me, tbh. That and her being her own parents means it doesn’t mean much if there’s some stupid retcon. The whole point is that she is who she made herself to be, she’s not bound by a legacy or a bloodline.

aw c'mon y'all, i said snoke coulda had ONE line of dialogue that points to a deliberately vague backstory! heck it could even be two lines and you're done with all you need to know about snoke: blah blah i'm a nobody who built myself up with the power of the dark side, then: "if not for the direction and purpose i gave you, your 'first order' would still be a few scattered regiments holding up transports in the outer rim!" or whatever. point is you can write dialogue that tells us a little bit about the characters and how they know each other and why they're working together, while simultaneously signposting "this is all you need to know about this." there is a huge gulf between that and devoting three movies to vader and obi-wan's boring backstory. original star wars did this very efficiently and evocatively between obi-wan, tarkin, and the beru and owen stuff about luke wanting to go off to the academy. the same lines that sketch in the world and the power dynamics also give us emotional hooks - who we're empathizing with, who's an evil bastard we hate, etc.

TFA created the problem because it wrote snoke the way you'd write him if his identity was intended to be a reveal, leading to the dumb speculation as well as a slight (though hardly fatal) sense of a missed beat when we get to TLJ. that's all i'm sayin here.

Both Gareth Edwards and Rian Johnson did massive amounts of work to expand the cinematic palette of a SW film

possibly too much in edwards' case, given how much rogue one got fucked with by disney prior to release

everything I've read about the production of Rogue One, as well as Edwards' career to date, makes me think he basically had no idea what was he doing

"if not for the direction and purpose i gave you, your 'first order' would still be a few scattered regiments holding up transports in the outer rim!"

This...would not be so good.

i mean i came up with it in thirty seconds. but that KIND of line, y'know, that just tells us wtf their relationship is. i mean he's the "supreme leader" - did hux get convinced this guy was the rightful fuhrer? get manipulated into pumping him up in the cult of personality? did he START the first order? who are these guys and why are they working together?

and along the way it m/l precludes the red herring of snoke's identity/origin mattering, beyond whatever's established in the line.

i sorted filled in the two lines myself, in my own head! i think it went something like "i'm a big ugly baddie and i'm in charge because i am uglier and more ruthless than the rest of you put together!"

Yeah, I mean...what more do you need?

he's a boring character and he's onscreen a lot, i think part of that is because he's vague and feels unreal. i think sketching in just an eense of what his deal is might make all his scenes feel more interesting and thus improve the film. ymmv!

But he's not onscreen a lot! Three quick holographic appearances over two movies, plus two throne room scenes, one of which is basically him taking a few lines to tell Kylo his mask looks stupid.

that's a lot!

also as with my proposed improvements to hux's ranting speeches, he's already talking anyway, just the lines only do one job at a time. just weave in a little more implied story and i'm good idk. y'all think star wars would be better and less stimulative to the imagination without tarkin's "the emperor has dissolved the senate" or the beru/owen "academy" stuff?

Five scenes of a total nothing character is five scenes too many

Snoke is awful

yeah Snoke's the obvious total washout of the 2 last films, no one finds him remotely scary and the cgi will date to
Jabba-on-the-special-edition level soon enough

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/93DzOXD_91o/maxresdefault.jpg

you don't think you get snoke
what do you do

I think it's all there in the very beginning -- the Emperor dissolved the senate, the Empire was a strongman fascist and anyone competent who would toe the line, and most of the really competent ones were killed with him. The only thing that'd hold together the remnants of the Empire -- which lost bureaucratic legitimacy, and now exists purely as a strong military force, would be the most compelling strongman to step in

feel like this debate between people who say “it would be nice if we knew a thing or two about a major character” and “actually it’s great that we know nothing about him” has reached an impasse

turns out he wasn't so major

feel like this debate between people who say “it would be nice if we knew a thing or two about a major character” and “actually it’s great that we know nothing about him” has reached an impasse

― k3vin k., Thursday, December 28, 2017 10:55 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh boy i guess we better stop

great posts by doc casino on this subject even if i don’t necessarily agree

Snoke was Ezra Bridger from the Rebels cartoon. Surprising, but that's how it shook out.

andy serkis should be banned from movies. just my opinion

thanks brad. i mean in the end what they did is fine but only because TLJ came up with a nice scene for snoke to get offed in, where the character matters in terms of choices made by other more important characters. that basically just makes him into a new Count Dooku which isn't so hot but before that he was a new General Grievous so hey.

i also think it would have been fine/better to not have him at all, since the kylo/hux dynamic is already enough to generate an interesting bad-guy team dynamic. vader/tarkin but as seething unhinged man-children wannabes, one consumed by father-killing hatreds and the other by father-redeeming fascist fantasies of imposing order, with no sense that either is taking orders from someone else. plenty of great tensions there waiting to crack open - you don't really need snoke. and it would have been another, too-rare way in which TFA wasn't just a retread of the old film. oh well.

they should have just given this to rian johnson from the beginning

The Poe/Hux thing at the beginning was funny but humor wise it reminded me more of Trebek getting annoyed by Connery on SNL Jeopardy than it did anything I'd expect from Star Wars.

Thought the Laura Dern battle cruiser scene was one of the top five illest things I've seen in the entire series. I liked her character a lot.

I liked this a bit more than TFA and RO.

ESB >>> SW >>>> TLJ > TFA/ROTJ >>> RO:ASWS >>>>>>>>> TPM >>> ROTS > AOTC

also think it would have been fine/better to not have him at all, since the kylo/hux dynamic is already enough to generate an interesting bad-guy team dynamic. vader/tarkin but as seething unhinged man-children wannabes,

otm -- I wrote as much in my review yesterday. You can apply a Marxist reading: Hux and Kylo Ren as imitating the gestures of their antecedents but the gestures emerge as parody or farce.

also think it would have been fine/better to not have him at all, since the kylo/hux dynamic is already enough to generate an interesting bad-guy team dynamic. vader/tarkin but as seething unhinged man-children wannabes,

otm -- I wrote as much in my review yesterday. You can apply a Marxist reading: Hux and Kylo Ren as imitating the gestures of their antecedents but the gestures emerge as parody or farce.

oops double post

I agree that Serkis should just stop. He's been hugely disrespectful of the vfx people who literally created the niche he has been somehow monopolizing. That's been pissing a lot of people off for a while now, so I gotta wonder if that somehow bit him in the ass and he was written out partly out of spite.

I was really thrown by Snoke just casually taking credit for enabling Force FaceTime between Ben and Rey. He can do that but also has no idea where she or Luke actually are - does that even make sense?

think it was somewhat ambiguous as to whether he was telling the truth there?

I don't think bridging their minds requires knowledge of location. Also Luke has 'hidden' from the Force.

Also at this point the Force basically seems to be arbitrary in what it can do. I gave up on the rules by RotJ lol

Yeah the force is just starry potter now tbh

as opposed to... when exactly?

midichloryphyll

The real reason yoda is so greeb

Greeno shot forced

you use the force as the Jedi you’re shining a flashlight at the very least. you block yourself from it, you’re a dark corner in the whole galaxy

whole lot of dark corners out there

the gag is partly that this is a kind of gag that's out of place in this world, and i find that to be a pretty cheap way to get a laugh.

Oh, I didn't think that at all - it seems odd that there'd be space chariot races and space coliseums and space samurai and space holograms, but space telephone operators are somehow just for a laugh? I mean, that's basically the job of the Uhura that put him through ("communication from the rebel ship" or similar).

also, not saying these should or could be "timeless" but i feel like this current style dates the movie instantly

It's basically a Abbott & Costello (or Scooby Doo!) level gag though? If it's jarring, it's not because it's too hip to the current sense of humour.

Also in 30-40 years it won't date at all, because kids will file all those non-VR movies like B&W films are currently, and they won't know we didn't have telephone operators in 2017 :)

any gag based on tech not working right is guaranteed to be timeless even if the tech involved is obsolete