The Star Wars Thread

[GoGo Yubari]

5 hours ago, Jimmy said:

Saw it yesterday and liked it. It totally scratches the surface for what could and should be explored in the Star Wars Universe - really great casting, such a good score and some really nice obvious war and western genre influences. But as with so many recent blockbusters, I found myself asking how much do I care for these people - yeah, a bit - but enough to elevate it to what it wants to be. So, to me, it kind of represents potential of what a stand alone Star Wars can be: it gets a lot right, it moves at a blistering pace, but it's missing a few ingredients for me to really crank up any emotional investment. 

I think the blistering pace ended up hurting it because the stuff they went with to break it up were the main series cameos when really I just wanted, say, a quiet conversation between Bodhi and Chirrut about their motivations and history.

[Jimmy]

29 minutes ago, GoGo Yubari said:

I think the blistering pace ended up hurting it because the stuff they went with to break it up were the main series cameos when really I just wanted, say, a quiet conversation between Bodhi and Chirrut about their motivations and history.

Yeah, agreed. There's not any time devoted to getting to really know anyone - and I think the pace works in the moment, but upon reflection it doesn't feel like the fulfilling experience it should. 

[Hobo]

I could've done with a lot more Bodhi and Chirrut, tbh.

[MDK]

Carrie Fisher had a heart attack on a plane from London to LA :<

[MalaCloudy Black]

1 hour ago, MDK said:

Carrie Fisher had a heart attack on a plane from London to LA :<

NBC Los Angeles is reporting that her condition is "not good", and an LAFD spokesman said that they gave a patient "advanced life support, aggressively treated, and transported" the patient to the hospital. They didn't name the patient, but it's almost surely Fisher. 

EDIT: As of about 5 minutes ago, a source in the LAFD is telling Deadline that she's on assisted breathing. 

[Your Mom]

God damn it 

[King.]

Associated Press just announced that Todd, her brother, has told them that she is now in stable condition! TMZ confirms.

[Lint]

God dammit 2016 sucked but it could not take Carrie Fisher

[Noah]

1 hour ago, Happy HoLintdays said:

God dammit 2016 sucked but it could not take Carrie Fisher

If 2016 had taken Carrie Fisher as well as everything else that's happened in the world and in my life personally....I don't even think I could finish that thought but it'd probably involve lots of dick punching people who piss me off, as is the way frustrated older men deal with problems.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Quote

Update: 10:15 PM: Contrary to earlier reports, Todd Fisher has now told AP and several other press outlets that Fisher’s condition is currently uncertain, and that the actress is in Intensive Care. “She’s in the ICU and everybody’s praying for her,” Todd Fisher told Variety during a phone interview. “There’s nothing new from the doctors. There’s nothing new at all. … There’s no good news or bad news.”

 

[CobraKaiEnTai]

Hope she can make a strong recovery from this. Would definitely cast a pall over Episode VIII, let alone the original trilogy. It was hard enough to lose Han Solo just in the story, but losing Princess Leia in real life would be too much. Curse you 2016. Worst. Year. Ever.

[marksbros6]

On ‎19‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 01:23, Skummy said:

I really, really liked it. I thought it was at least twice the movie Force Awakens, and was a far better prequel than any of the previous prequels were - one of the many problems with those prequels was that you already know the parts of the story that matter, and they just try and fill in the blanks with a bunch of fluff, which makes the mythology and backstory of the original trilogy less enthralling, and all while conspiring to make the universe smaller, by drawing connections between characters that really didn't need to be drawn (Darth Vader built C3PO! Yoda and Chewbacca are friends!). This film did the opposite; it fleshed out a comparatively minor bit of the backstory into a compelling narrative of its own, and actually added a layer or two to the original film in the process. 

While, stylistically, it felt less like "a Star Wars movie" than Force Awakens did, it felt like it belonged in the Star Wars universe more than that movie did - does that make sense? It was less of a space opera romp, but it felt like it made better use of Star Wars' strengths; the mythos and the imagery that the universe allows them to have at their disposal. The numerous references and callbacks felt so much less forced, and - with only two exceptions I can think of - less of a nod and a wink than anything in Force Awakens, and there was nothing as cringeworthy as some of Han Solo's dialogue in that movie, or the big dramatic reveal of R2D2. Just hearing "Captain Antilles" over a PA in the background was a more pleasing nostalgic moment than forced references to trash compactors in Force Awakens, and contrast Leia's brief appearance to say one significant line to the ending of Force Awakens and the seemingly endless panning around a motionless Luke Skywalker in case you haven't figured out that this is important yet.

I love that they depicted the Rebel Alliance as flawed, and a little bit more morally ambiguous - in all the previous films they had always been whiter than white virtuous and always on the side of good, whereas this showed them to be human and fallible which, again, adds moral weight to the later films, not just to this one. The role of a prequel should be to add to the original text, which the Star Wars prequels had never managed before, and I think this movie just about does that.

 

I did have a couple of criticisms, though...like many, I wasn't overly fond of CGI Peter Cushing. The CGI itself was ridiculously impressive, but that he appeared as often as he did meant that the initial sense of being impressed gave way to more "uncanny valley" stuff just because you had to look at him for rather too long. Things like the lighting were off, so I agree that it's an effect that will likely age badly. It's a shame, because it could have carried so much more weight if they just used it more sparingly. Tarkin's role didn't necessitate him being on-screen all that much - he could have been referred to or, as he appears a couple of times, only seeing the back of his head, and a glimpse of his reflection. If you only got to see him in full once, the effect would have been more impressive, and his role in the film felt more significant. It didn't help that, outside of one or two lines, the voice actor didn't sound enough like Peter Cushing for my liking, which was distracting.

Speaking of overused....I didn't like Darth Vader in this movie at all. I think him making a rubbish pun quip belongs in the same category as "NOOOO~!" as far as unforgivably rubbish Darth Vader moments go. And him residing in a Sauron-esque supervillain tower was just ridiculous - it's Darth fucking Vader, you don't need to give us a big old visual cue that he might be the baddy. I also felt that the depiction of Vader as the Emperor's right hand man was, while in keeping with Vader's role in most of the franchise, at odds with how he's depicted in A New Hope. In A New Hope, he's clearly subservient to Tarkin, he follows orders, he pilots his own TIE Fighter into battle, and an admiral even feels he can get away with mocking him openly - you don't get the impression that he's a figure of authority, he's a samurai, he's the dragon. It's only in the subsequent films that he's presented as being in control. Admittedly, I've always assumed that's a case of George Lucas making it up as he went along, rather than a conscious narrative in which Vader rises up the ranks, and how Vader is used in this movie probably fits the overall character arc, it just disappointed me as the rest of the movie seemed to try so hard to fit its place in the timeline. Like Tarkin, again, I think Vader would have been better utilised if he had appeared less. He really didn't need to show up at all until the closing few minutes; his introductory scene serves very little narrative purpose whatsoever.

I wondered how they did Tarkin when I was watching the movie, it wasn't quite lifelike to me, but really good CGI. I originally thought it might have been Wayne Pygram (Scorpius himself) performing the role again with some appliances to make him resemble Cushing more? I think it will be fairly glaring comparing it to a photograph of the great man himself, but for the purposes of the film I can't complain. Same with the Leia cameo, though there was less time for it to register with the tiny amount of screentime.

 

Regarding Vader: I think he was very much the Emperor's right-hand man in this part of the timeline, but kept separate from the Imperial Military. I always viewed him as something of a wild-card in the first movie and really enjoyed the 'hinted' relationship between him and Tarkin (which was explored in some of the EU, though not sure if it's still canon) in that Tarkin is the only one who will stand-up to him in 'ANH'. In retrospect there was always the idea (looking back from later movies) that Tarkin and Vader were on a similar level in the Emperor's eyes (born out from the 3 of them inspecting the Death Star together at the end of 'Revenge of the Sith') with Tarkin being the Military-Leader and Vader being the Dark Acolyte. In the later movies I'd see it as Vader having assumed both roles after the death of Tarkin, being akin to a 'Commander-in-Chief' in the Imperial Military in 'Empire' and taking charge of overseeing the second Death Star in 'RotJ'.

 

Loved the film, all the call-backs, Jimmy Smits(!) and the 'classic' era ships cutting loose in a movie with modern production values. Even little nods like 'Red 5' buying in in the battle (thus explaining why the callsign was 'free' for Luke when he joins up) and I'm sure there was a tannoy for 'General Sendulla' at one point on the Yavin Hanger?

[MalaCloudy Black]

 

[Plubby]

I saw Rogue One today (because seems appropriate, right?) and I really enjoyed it. It was really weird seeing a Star Wars movie be primarily about Wars among the stars.

Also I really loved all the nods they give to episode 4. Even things as subtle as specifically having Red Five killed off when there was no need to name any of the individual starfighters being shot down, which opens the door for Luke Skywalker to be Red Five in the Death Star assault in Ep4 - that just really, really made me happy.

[Gabriel]

Through the magic of gift cards, I was able to see Rogue One yesterday. As an adult Star Wars fan, it was everything that it needed to be. I was a little bit disappointed that certain characters weren't utilized as much as I would have liked, but I'm hoping that opens the doors for additional films exploring those characters. They don't need to be direct sequels, which is what Disney has said they aren't doing, but giving more exposition to certain characters and the Clone Wars may still be a possibility in these anthology films.

The end 10 minutes of Rogue One brought out the fanboy in me though, which was a nice and needed little burst of child-like excitement after xmas.

[Maxx]

Seeing Rogue One again tomorrow at the Fort Worth Museum of Science's domed IMAX theater wooo.  Space battle at the end should be crazy in that format.

[HarshMillennium]

Really enjoyed Rogue One, but does anyone else think it would be better if they replaced the droid with HK-47 from KOTOR?

"Threatening Statement: For the Rebellion. Meatbags."

[Ruki]

10 minutes ago, HoHoHarshMillennium said:

Really enjoyed Rogue One, but does anyone else think it would be better if they replaced the droid with HK-47 from KOTOR?

"Threatening Statement: For the Rebellion. Meatbags."

No, because K-2 was perfect.

[Maxx]

10 hours ago, Ruki said:

No, because K-2 was perfect.

This

[apsham]

Saw Rouge One, little things here and there bugged me but I understand why they were done and all in all I saw them as needed, especially to tell the story in a single movie. The one thing that I looked over to my Star Wars buddy and had to cringe at was the same thing that Skummy pointed out. That scene started and I instantly recognized that they were doing Lord Vader's castle, I thought that was super awesome and then... the conversation wasn't really going anywhere and then the one-liner. The god damn one liner. That's worse than the 'NOOOOOO' for me in every way, because at least that moment came from the Anakin/Darth transition was fresh. If he had only showed up where he did at the end it could have been perfect.