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

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.

imo the admission that George Lucas really likes this film, along with the fact Star Wars was merchandised and marketed more than... hell, more than pretty much every franchise that had existed until Star Wars, makes me think that maybe this is what George Lucas wanted all along

the claims that a diverse cast is some sort of pandering to an international release schedule is some "film criticism was invented here and only exists here" garbage imo and it makes me want to read perspectives on film that aren't from americans/europeans

1. It sounds like he has mistaken "uncanny valley" nausea and discomfort with an actual moral opposition to something that he then does a poor job of defining (what is any of that besides the obvious trajectory or recording technology since the first wax cylinder with a dead guy's voice on it?)

2. which completes the Mouse House corporatization of Star Wars that began with last year's J.J. Abrams-helmed The Force Awakens.
Truly, no one is left who will protect our sacred texts from being desiccated by the makers of Frozen.

3. Another threshold: It seems that prosaic competence is the low bar most globalized Hollywood blockbusters must now clear.
You know who really knew how to throw together a hodgepodge of set pieces into a giant money machine, Cecil Blount DeMille.

weird I think my formatting tags warning ate my xpost warning

anyway massive xpost, that was a response to the link Alfred posted above.

the claims that a diverse cast is some sort of pandering to an international release schedule

tbh, this I regard as one of the few silver linings of Hollywood globalization

never doubted you for a minutre

damn Eric how old is that ILX nickname of yours

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, December 14, 2016

I quit this court!

re: "silver lining" of H'wood G'lization, I also agree that it is good when capitalism accidentally does something that makes the world better.

except don't all these new characters die? that's kind of a cop-out

disney are making a valuable contribution to society by showing that people of all races, creeds and colours die imo

We can only hope.

An Old Hope.

I heard they had a whole army of space folks consulting to ensure they represented space traditions as respectfully and accurately as possible.

Well that's the real trick, innit; we are all gunna die, just as long as our (onscreen) deaths have purpose or meaning and contribute to the Greater Good. Everybody rebel dies in a hail of blaster fire; not every rebel truly lives.

Well that's the real trick, innit

I see what you did

I see what you did

Well, I'm as human as the next man.

I'm sure this is canonically answered somewhere: did they ever get a refund?

On what? The deposit for the space station?

http://www.vulture.com/2016/12/star-wars-politics-violence.html

And that’s the heart of the problem in using Star Wars as a political metaphor: If you’re flying an X-wing, everything looks like a Death Star.

That’s why Star Wars has been used time and again to frame causes both Democratic (MoveOn.org co-opted “Save the Republic” from Revenge of the Sith in 2005) and Republican (Reagan first called the U.S.S.R. an “evil empire” in 1983, the same year Return of the Jedi was released).

If you’re flying an X-wing, everything looks like a Death Star.

koan

you ppl see this while a Warren Beatty film about Earth dies at the box office

I'm not seeing either of those turds fwiw