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The Star Wars Thread


Katsuya

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58 minutes ago, Bigal said:

I think there's some concern that the Solo movie will under perform, so putting it in the summer might be a conscious decision to have an "out" if it does. Helps if they can blame a poor box office on scheduling.

Why though? So far they haven't been given any reason to think too much Star Wars is a bad thing. There's been one out every year for the past three, all have done pretty damn well.

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Well, it's not a saga film, and there's been plenty of suggestion that the film might not actually be that good. Plus The Last Jedi has had a bit of a mixed reception.

I mean, I'm sure they'll be fine, but I don't doubt that at least part of the reason for the scheduling is to give them an excuse, and then if it succeeds, they can have multiple Star Wars films a year.

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Watched Last Jedi yesterday. I thought it was fine. More Porgs. Less run time.

 

I did like just now seemingly powerful the force is - in ways we hadn't quite ever seen. Ren and Rey talking to each other, Luke showing up on Crate the way he did. I also like that they didn't try to tie Snoke and Rey into anything grander. 

I did think the film suffered from being the middle movie. Nothing earth shattering happens. But its got some amazing visuals and some cool ideas. And also Porgs. 

The Casino planet is a was a really pointless diversion for me. 

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13 hours ago, damshow said:

I like the idea of December being Star Wars month. Just knowing that for every Christmas there's a new Star Wars to look forward to. I suspect that's what winds up happening with Solo, the posters I did see showed the May date but they still have a little while to move it out of summer.

Or, conversely, maybe they want to test the waters and see how much Disney properties people can handle in one summer.

Oh it's a definite test to see not only how a glut of Disney properties would fare next to each other but how Star Wars would during the summer so they don't limit their schedule flexibility.

Saw The Last Jedi the other day and I also don't get how people didn't just love this film. It was a little too long (what movie isn't these days though) but had enough going on that it didn't drag a ton. 

I can't wait for Johnson's separate trilogy now and I've barely cared about Star Wars in my lifetime so mission accomplished there. 

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8 hours ago, Bigal said:

Well, it's not a saga film, and there's been plenty of suggestion that the film might not actually be that good. Plus The Last Jedi has had a bit of a mixed reception.

I mean, I'm sure they'll be fine, but I don't doubt that at least part of the reason for the scheduling is to give them an excuse, and then if it succeeds, they can have multiple Star Wars films a year.

I'd say the mixed reception has been greatly overblown. It's divisive online, but it does not seem to overlap with general audiences at all. And I think once the dust settles, some of the haters are going to come around on it. Empire was not well received in 1980 and is the lowest grossing of the franchise, but 15 years later, everyone was hailing it as the best one. I legitimately think you can thank Kevin Smith and the scene in Clerks for that.

And I think the concerns over Solo's quality are this year's version of freaking out over Rogue One reshoots. It seemed like Lord & Miller made no friends on set and that everything was better once Ron Howard came on-board. Which, given how risky The Last Jedi is and how much freedom they gave Rian Johnson, I can't even begin to imagine what the hell Lord & Miller did to piss off Disney that bad. Of course, that doesn't address the fact that a Han Solo film doesn't need to exist at all and that all prequels are pointless, but I suspect it will do quite well. It's the fan favorite character from the biggest film series in history, it'll make $1 billion worldwide. 

I wouldn't be surprised with a delay though, we're 5 months out and haven't seen anything for it, but that could also just be Disney not trying to saturate things while Last Jedi is out. Seems strange to put it that close to The Avengers, but they also have that new Nutcracker movie next December and probably figure it's safer to own the summer with Avengers -> Solo -> Incredibles than cannibalize a new potential series-starter. Coco coming out three weeks before Last Jedi certainly didn't hurt either of them.

Eventually Disney is going to own everything anyway, so it probably doesn't matter when stuff comes out.

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This was good. Preferred Force Awakens and Rogue One tbh, but it is still good. I can see why people have taken a dislike to it though.

The Bad

Spoiler

The most immediate and jarring problem with this film is the decision to play for so many laughs. Every single scene it seemed had a joke in it, and not good ones for the most part. By mid Act 2 my eyes were rolling and I was sighing. It got cringe worthy at times.

Porgs were ... okay they were cute and I was perfectly okay with how they were being used at a certain point, but why are we getting a close up of one smashing into a glass pane? 

The entire first act was rushed and it felt like going through the motions. Like it just needed to be done and out of the way to get to the main bit.

Characterisation was a massive issue I thought. Po feels like someone who has been written as the Han Solo stand in. I imagine every note about Po passed to the writer's room reads "More like Han". I don't buy Rey yet as a character, there were no memorable new characters, and Phasma feels like someone they are trying to get the Boba Fett Effect on.

Snoke was incredibly mishandled. Its fine saying Rey came from nowhere, because we learned in this film that the Force doesn't need Jedi to be felt so if she is from no lineage that is cool. You can't do that with Snoke though. You can't just appear and be in charge. You can't just be that powerful and be secret. There has to be more to him and I'm hoping it will be explored and other .

Two other things that felt out of place: Leia: Force Astronaut and Ray: House of Mirrors. Felt like moments for the sake of moments and I thought they came off a bit daft and feux-artsy.

The Good

Spoiler

Kylo Ren. God. Kylo Ren is fantastic. In my opinion the most complex, well-written character ever presented in a Star Wars movie. Adam Driver is a brilliant actor. So many subtle movements and expressions alongside dramatic and frantic actions. 

I feel the overall message, "moral" if you will, has been lost on most people and that is a shame because its a huge achievement. It comes down to the Force and its status alongside the Jedi. I feel like through Luke, Kylo, Leia and Rey it has been explained that the Force isn't specific to the Jedi/Sith but to the world. You don't have to belong to either side to be able to feel and wield it. That explains why Luke, who saw good in his father, became conflicted and thought about executing Kylo. Thats why Rey can come from nothing and still be a Force savant. It also asks a question: maybe all Jedi and Sith have to be gone to truly bring balance to the Force.

I like Benecio Del Toro as well. He was cool.

Entire Act 3 was great. Turning point being Snoke-Rey-Kylo and that absolutely bad ass lightsabre fight. I can forgive every bad point I made in this act, except for constant forced jokes, because it was wall-to-wall excitement. Lightspeed crash was cool as fuck too. 

I like Finn too. Or at least the actor who plays him. I came out feeling Finn did more than he actually did. They definitely need to do more with him.

 

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7 minutes ago, WalkerAroundTheXmasTree said:

 

Spoiler

You can't do that with Snoke though. You can't just appear and be in charge. You can't just be that powerful and be secret.

 

 

Spoiler

That's exactly what The Emperor was in the original trilogy, though.

 

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11 minutes ago, stokeristmas said:

 

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That's exactly what The Emperor was in the original trilogy, though.

 

Spoiler

 

Well he wasn't. He was in power at the beginning of the movie, and in the prequals we saw how he got there. He didn't just appear and declared leader.

At some point between Episode 6 and Episode 7 Snoke became leader. Given how powerful he is he can't have come from nowhere. He's a Sith which means he has a master, and given how old he is he must have also been present in the original trilogy doing something significant in order to then be positioned as leader.

 

 

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Just now, WalkerAroundTheXmasTree said:
  Hide contents

 

Well he wasn't. He was in power at the beginning of the movie, and in the prequals we saw how he got there. He didn't just appear and declared leader.

At some point between Episode 6 and Episode 7 Snoke became leader. Given how powerful he is he can't have come from nowhere. He's a Sith which means he has a master, and given how old he is he must have also been present in the original trilogy doing something significant in order to then be positioned as leader.

 

 

Spoiler

 

Well yes we got a Palpatine backstory in the prequels... But for the original canon of Star Wars that existed for a full 25 years prior to that, we got nothing beyond "there's this evil Empire and this guy happens to be the one who's in charge of it". Quite how the Empire was formed, let alone how Palpatine got to his position, was never deemed important to the story.

It's roughly equal, therefore, that we don't get an explanation of whatever Snoke was or wasn't supposedly doing in the decades prior to his debut and are instead limited to essentially "there's this evil First Order and this guy happens to be the one who's in charge of it". Hell, his appearances even mirror Palpatine's by just being a holo-projection in Force Awakens (ala Palpatine in ESB) and then his throne room/gloating/killed-by-his-subordinate spot in Last Jedi (ala RoJ).

I'm not saying that Snoke's story wouldn't be interesting to hear. I'm saying that, since the prequels, I think a lot of people have come to expect every little thing mapped out for them when that's not the way Star Wars ever was originally.

 

 

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Spoiler

Episode 4 being the first movie and therefore a blank canvas allowed that to be so. We were introduced to a world with an Empire and an Emperor. That's fine.

The new trilogy doesn't have the same luxuries. We already know the world at this point. Saying hes just the one in charge now is lazy because once again he is too powerful.

You can do that with Hux. You can say he worked his way up to power because on the grand scheme of things hes an ordinary man. But Snoke isn't ordinary. 

I'm not even saying its a huge mark against Last Jedi for not explaining, I'm just saying it warrants an explation. I'm hoping it is explored in one of the side films if anything. 

Failing to do so at all makes it seem like they just made a character to be an Emperor stand in because they needed one and that is lazy. It would actually be detrimental to Force Awakens because it just makes the Snoke character insignificant. 

 

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9 hours ago, WalkerAroundTheXmasTree said:

This was good. Preferred Force Awakens and Rogue One tbh, but it is still good. I can see why people have taken a dislike to it though.

The Bad

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Nah.

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My reaction to Snoke was basically

Spoiler

"Oh, huh, okay. Someone will probably write a book about him or something. That's cool."

"This enigmatic character has a backstory but his backstory isn't really that important to the actual central characters of the movie, so you can find that story elsewhere" is extremely Star Wars, IMO. Hell, for all I know someone already has. The two Chuck Wendig books I read were pretty clearly preoccupied with how the dying embers of the Empire transform into the First Order over time, Hux's dad was even a character in the second one.

Snoke being a character who, in the context of the current trilogy, isn't important for who he is but rather what he represents (another guy who thought he could direct/manipulate Kylo Ren's power to their own ends only to be disastrously wrong) is totally fine with me. I was surprised when he was offed, it's not what I expected at all, but I'm honestly glad they did it.

 

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Here's a thought I just that never occurred to me before:

Is Owen Lars the greatest hero of the galaxy? I always thought the way he wanted to keep Luke on the farm was just him being a cheap dick; but was he doing it knowing that Luke joining the Imperial Academy would allow Vader to find his son, manipulate him to joining the Dark Side and thus enslaving the entire galaxy forever?

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Just imagine how different things could've turned out if Luke had gotten to go to Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. :P

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