star wars 9 spoilers and postmortem shit talk

I'm here for MACLUNKEY: A STAR WARS STORY

Never has there been a book widely enjoyed by kids that so flagrantly employed the word 'jizz'.

Man, those Bithans sure do lob some hot jizz!

Here's a poll waiting to happen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Mos_Eisley_Cantina#Contents

xp I KNOW, RIGHT

Hey guys, there's a new, non-Legends Thrawn trilogy by Zahn starting soon!

it's already a couple books in iirc

Although 'jazz' basically means 'jizz', so maybe Lucas was just making some sociolinguistic commentary

Long, long ago I had this screensaver/Windows 3.1 package that had a bunch of Star Wars related Windows tidbits (i.e. start-up sounds like R2-D2, icons, etc.). One of the things was a screen saver with screenshots from the cantina scene for which you could click on any of the aliens and read more about their names, home planets, reasons for being in the cantina, so on. It was pretty neat at the time. I don't remember how well it all tied in with Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina book.

Not only were many of the stories in the two books tied together but there was at least one crossover between the two books with that creepy dude who turned people into soup or whatever weird thing it was that he did. These were complex works. High-level stuff, man.

The only story I really remember from the Bounty Hunters book was the IG-88 one but it was a game changer.

Yeah, that IG-88 one really stuck with me. I'm about to start The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, which I never got around to when it originally came out.

wanna chime in here to say i also loved the Tales From anthology books; read them and ST:TNG novels pretty obsessively... was also a sucker for the zahn books.

I also had that star wars windows 3.1 thing and enjoyed it quite a bit. The only thing I remember now was that one of aliens was a salt smuggler, which I thought was a pretty cool idea at the time.

I never read a single star wars book though, I just assumed they were all terrible (I think I was probably mostly right, but probably I missed out on some stuff I would have enjoyed)

xxp

FWIW, I don't think you'll find many haters wrt those short story collections.

That's about as close to a full-on recommendation of a Star Wars Expanded Universe book as my moral code will allow.

i am also gonna rep for Jim "Pupshaw and Pushpaw" Woodring's comic work on Jabba's Palace for Dark Horse
http://static3.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/jabba-eats-norba-nuum.jpg

Halfassedly scanned your post and thought you were just dropping an out-of-left-field endorsement of Woodring's work in general in the SW episode 9 thread. Which my moral code would have allowed me to heartily endorse, had it happened.

if you like pulpy War Stories and mandalorians, then the Republic Commando series of paperbacks is definitely worth a read

xp lol, well that too! but the jabba comics are fun. Basically star wars universe vignettes are great; it's the long form where they lose me. i'm apparently supposed to care about trade wars.

Look, there's more to a star war than just 'pew' sounds.

there's also 'clang'

and bleep-bloop

All somehow occurring in the airless void of space, mind.

In space, no one can hear you scream over all the bleeping and clanging.

has anyone linked the tony millionaire jar jar binks comic yet?

well now i've watched and obsessed over A LOT of star wars; i am a nerd spurned not a never-was-a-nerd! i tried both the new trilogies and found them deeply wanting and will likely in a moment of weakness watch Last Jedi. I'm just saying (again and again), don't pay for this stuff in theaters when it's clear by every critical analysis that i've read - both fan and pro - that this is a botched bit of work. Skip day one and wait for some feedback before investing, same as you would with most films and maybe we'll live in a less culturally shitty world.

First off, I think I misread this as saying you'd seen the The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker, but not The Last Jedi, which would be nuts, right? So, sorry about that.

I don't think that it's clear that critics thought the trilogy was terrible though - it largely goes "fanservice pastiche with good-looking young actors who work well together" / "actually interesting film that has thought some thoughts about the world (also featuring good-looking young actors)" / "more fanservice which explicitly ignores the second film (and leaves half the characters without any arc at all)". But the only films that are on the radar are by the guy who made the middle film, so I don't get your risk/reward values?

I mean, if you're just saying "don't go see bad films" then yeah, but how likely is that?

Also yes to the Woodring Comics! I think I still have my copy of The Gaar Suppoon Hit somewhere around here. The recent Darth Vader ones are fun too.

i may be projecting: i hate what i've seen of these shitty films and am not watching more until someone i trust can tell me with a straight face that they succeed on their own merits

I like 100% of the Star War films I've seen in the past 33 years

rest in power, king

It's been confirmed that Nien Nunb was killed during the Battle of Exegol in #TheRiseOfSkywalkerhttps://t.co/DIP2MPqy8B pic.twitter.com/agqRngp0gx

— Star Wars Stuff (@starwarstuff) January 8, 2020

Jed Porkins was one of the Sith ghosts in Exegol, he died again

That was obvious from the movie, no?

xpost

I don't think so. And I find it weirdly irritating. I mean, he was a tertiary character, but come on. It's like tweeting that Max Rebo went home after his onscreen performance and died in an autoerotic asphyxiation accident.

that did happen tho

Well, I assumed, but why deny the audience is the thing here

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Flr0ijmo9cqq01.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

Naturally, that was the first thing that popped into our minds my mind when you posted that tweet.

And so the Clone Wars resume.

that clone wars resumé in full

http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5671a00b2340f817008b60ee-1600-2263/darth%20vader%20resume.jpg

I watched about 6 episodes of Rebels last night. It's good, isn't it? A plucky band of rebels having adventures against the Empire, occasionally showing tidbits of what normal life in the Galactic Empire is like. No Death Stars or massive bacterial Star Destroyer fleets.

i watched phantom menace and attack of the clones last night. the scene in attack of the clones where anakin finds his mother is prob my favorite scene in all of star wars, it is so sad and bleak and is filmed in deep shadows; lucas may not know from romance but he knows from grief

also the main criterion by which i defend the prequels is that lucas is no director of actors but he never loses his sense of visual style (even though the digital filming technique/splicing in of artificial backgrounds in attack is so crude that no one feels naturally placed (a feature not a flaw imo, especially in the clone factory, which is truly otherworldly)). there's a scene in the very busy lightsaber duel with dooku where he locks in on anakin's face in the dark, only illuminated in wavering flashes by his lightsaber, and it's a really lovely shot that lasts for all of five seconds

the only cgi that i feel looks very bad and even looked bad at the time are the cgi stunt doubles. just use computer graphics as a living matte painting george, i don't need to see fake jango fett rocketing through the air. (though cgi stunt doubles are also a problem in the matrix reloaded, one of my favorite movies, so whatever)

did they have a lot of cgi stunt doubles in speed racer? I don’t think they did

I feel like George could've spent a couple weeks of preproduction time on watching clips of human beings jumping. Because most filmed instances of such in the first two prequels suggest that he's working from a vague and deeply-flawed recollection of what that looks like.

AOTC in particular has lots of really interesting visual stuff going on.

The visuals improve immensely from the first film to the second imo. Compare the respective scenes on Coruscant, for example. I don't know if Lucas was just making a conscious effort to darken the palette relative to the tone, but it worked.

i think phantom menace looks gorgeous but lucas was right to go full digital bc the main thing keeping phantom menace from looking completely gorgeous is: scenes almost completely rendered in early cgi pasted onto 35mm

all in bright daytime scenes too

all muppets except keep samuel l jackson imo

Yes, in addition to the aborted Lynch SW I wish we'd also gotten a Dark Crystal-esque Henson SW. Just imagine an alternate universe where this cultural behemoth actually lives up to the hype.

oh man i MUCH prefer the look of phantom menace to the other prequels! AOTC especially has this combination of low-res digital video and really flat, even lighting (to make it easy to composite in the CGI) that for me just deadens every frame, even beyond all the flat, lifeless compositions of people standing in rooms talking to each other. whereas at least Phantom has some practical sets, actors being able to interact directly with their scene partners, etc.

love that Brad is a prequel stan though, and i'm with you on the matrix sequels <3

I've still never seen the Matrix sequels. next sick day, maybe