The Star Wars Thread

[Benji]

I don't pay that much attention to what scenes are in or missing, at least not on a film like Star Wars, it doesn't bother me at all.

[RPS]

1 hour ago, MDK said:

 

[gunnar hendershow]

Some of the CG in the 97 versions is really glaring. It's what I own on DVD so it's what I've watched a lot. It's similar to what they did with scenes in The Force Awakens, but instead of using reality and blending in CG they just dropped CG on top of shit from the 80s.

[Mick]

23 minutes ago, damshow said:

Some of the CG in the 97 versions is really glaring. It's what I own on DVD so it's what I've watched a lot. It's similar to what they did with scenes in The Force Awakens, but instead of using reality and blending in CG they just dropped CG on top of shit from the 80s.

 

Under the premise that that is how George Lucas 'always saw it'. 

 

 

[SeanDMan]

http://www.avclub.com/article/traumatic-reason-c-3pos-red-arm-has-been-revealed-235297 holy shit.

[SeanDMan]

https://deadline.com/2016/05/star-wars-han-solo-movie-alden-ehrenreich-frontrunner-cast-1201737425/

Sounds a lot like we have a new Han Solo.

[gunnar hendershow]

I'm sure the movie will be good and all but nothing's gonna convince me I need to know more about Han Solo. 

[LL!]

It's a good choice at least. He was fantastic in Hail Caesar!

[apsham]

I'm just happy to find out that motherfucking Phil Lord and Chris Miller are doing that movie.

[Skummy]

I watched The Force Awakens. It was okay.

[Skummy]

And because I'm sure everyone's dying to see what I thought of it;

 Outside of the hype of OMGz A NEW STAR WAR, it was a perfectly serviceable sci-fi flick. Considerably better than the prequels and, in places, aesthetically stunning - the Imperial wrecks on the desert planet are amongst my favourite setpieces in the whole series.

The story felt meandering and without any real sense of u...rgency, though. The villain was more about slapping you around the face with backstory than about serving any antagonistic purpose to the story you were actually watching, which didn't help.

Meanwhile, the new protagonist characters didn't feel fleshed out *at all*, even by Star Wars standards - they were all tell and no show, and as a result it was pretty much impossible to get remotely invested in them. On top of that, when one of your central characters is a Stormtrooper who had a crisis of faith and joined the forces of good, that makes a moral quandary of having him (and everyone else) running around blindly gunning down Stormtroopers willy-nilly for the remainder of the film, now we know they're not just identikit Space Nazis.

As for the returning characters, they were - inevitably - a little heavy on the nostalgia, with Han Solo in particular being a walking fan-service machine ("HE SAID TRASH COMPACTER, YOU KNOW, LIKE THAT BIT IN THE FIRST MOVIE!"), with too much in the way of dramatic reveals of familiar faces, and Solo & Chewbacca's cringeworthy first appearance.

Carrie Fisher was sorely under-used, with one low-key conversation between Leia and Han carrying more emotional weight than the majority of the movie put together, with her performance being strong enough & believable enough to disguise that her sole purpose seemed to be to spout exposition. Chewbacca, also, got one convincing emotional, powerful moment utterly lacking in some of the more plausible characters.

The plot, for what it was, was a near enough carbon copy of the original movie, but overall kind of worked for it, though - as I said earlier - was a little meandering and lacked focus, with little to get your teeth in to. It showed enough promise that, hopefully, when the series is able to move away from its crutches of nostalgia and fan-service, it could drastically improve.

Also, BB-8 is a shockingly impractical droid. Give me that clumsy box dude any day.

[Benji]

On 10/05/2016 at 17:03, Skummy said:

On top of that, when one of your central characters is a Stormtrooper who had a crisis of faith and joined the forces of good, that makes a moral quandary of having him (and everyone else) running around blindly gunning down Stormtroopers willy-nilly for the remainder of the film, now we know they're not just identikit Space Nazis.

Eh, I think that's a bit unfair. The Stormtroopers are slaughtering civilians who are trying to defend themselves. It's not really a major moral quandary that he would fight Stormtroopers to try and save/protect the only people he's grown to know and trust since leaving that life and being branded a traitor, especially when his options are "fight back or most likely be killed for going AWOL".

I do agree about the lack of fleshing out characters, but I think that is more down to the fact this was clearly not a stand alone film, it's very much Act One of Three, and I think the ending indicates we'll see a lot more development of Rey in that film. Finn's backstory is what it is, Stormtroopers are picked from birth, so this is really the first step in his backstory.

The rest I agree with.

[gunnar hendershow]

3 things I expect in the next 2 films are Rey being fleshed out, a glimpse into Finn's raising as a Stormtrooper, and just what brought Poe into the Resistance.

Most of my problems with the film were in the way they forcefully treated it as a way to bridge generations, but given that they have 2 more movies and probably 4 1/2 to 5 hours of screentime with which to use they can justify it. Take my parents for example who loved everything with Han and Chewie.

[apsham]

On 2016-05-12 at 06:01, Benji said:

Eh, I think that's a bit unfair. The Stormtroopers are slaughtering civilians who are trying to defend themselves. It's not really a major moral quandary that he would fight Stormtroopers to try and save/protect the only people he's grown to know and trust since leaving that life and being branded a traitor, especially when his options are "fight back or most likely be killed for going AWOL".

I do agree about the lack of fleshing out characters, but I think that is more down to the fact this was clearly not a stand alone film, it's very much Act One of Three, and I think the ending indicates we'll see a lot more development of Rey in that film. Finn's backstory is what it is, Stormtroopers are picked from birth, so this is really the first step in his backstory.

The rest I agree with.

In addition to this a good half or more of the movie was predicated on him absolutely NOT revealing anything about his past, then he was separated and then shit was way too real to get into that any more than it already had been. Although I am REALLY happy that he told her and didn't just let her find out like so many other movies would do.

[Maxx]

New trailer is supposed to drop today too

[GoGo Yubari]

Kenny Baker, who played R2D2 in the first six Star Wars movies (and I think was billed as a consultant in TFA), has passed away at 83.

[Benji]

 

[Maxx]

 

[MDK]

Fucking hell, Riz Ahmed looks well different in this. And Forest Motherfucking Ghost Dog Whittaker, oh my. If he is a Jedi then he is even better than Samuel L'Motherfucking Jackson.

[GoGo Yubari]

Donald Glover has been cast as Lando in the Han Solo prequel.