Star Wars 7 shit talk

I want my cheap emotional highs

The only good thing to come out of TPM was Darth Maul

The best part of that was that Lucas created an interesting character and completely intended for him to immediately die

like the only new interesting character, you throw him down the well

I remember one scene in II, I think, where they were trapped in this giant absurd factory, running around on conveyor belts and trying to escape the giant stamping hammers, swinging blades, and jets of flame that you normally get in factories. The whole thing was transparently designed for a videogame (and ripped off of countless others). IIRC this was the scene where R2 suddenly developed the flying ability he'd never previously shown any evidence of. (Or that he would never again show any evidence of, in the movie timeline.)

it was about boba fett that's it

I will admit to some guilty lols about R2 and Yoda having these capabilities in Episode I-III. Overemphasizing that everything is shiny and new and acting like the original trilogy was old and broken was one of the stupidest things about the prequel trilogy. Everything was supposed to be dirty and piecemeal because it's an old universe, not because the Emperor took over.

at some point in that conveyor belt scene, a machine rips off the midriff of natalie portman's space outfit: lucas inserting Sex

Worth mentioning that the most reasonable scripts of the whole series (Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back) were heavily contributed to or edited by women. I think it's been shrugged off by Lucas, but his ex-wife had some strong contributions to script editing and not just film editing.

BEHOLD THE MIDRIFF

http://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md13t6U5HI1rg9byko1_r1_500.png

also, lol:

For the film's famous opening crawl, Lucas wrote a six-paragraph (with four sentences each) composition. He said that "The crawl is such a hard thing because you have to be careful that you're not using too many words that people don't understand. It's like a poem." Lucas showed his draft to his friends. Director Brian De Palma, who was there, described it: "The crawl at the beginning looks like it was written on a driveway. It goes on forever. It's gibberish." He said to Lucas, "You're out of your mind... Let me write this for you"; De Palma helped to edit the text into the form used in the film.

I would like to hear what De Palma thinks about the trade federation

all these posts about the prequels, preceded by enthusiasm for the new sequels, is incredible

xp

some sort of abuse survivor rationalization syndrome

it took YEARS for people to turn on the prequels and admit they were terrible

There are plenty of stories told in the expanded Star Wars universe that are interesting, even in what's now seen as canonical. There are a couple reasonable cartoon series, including a new one that precedes/runs concurrently with the rebellion. Three shit movies with one common denominator (George Lucas thinking he should write/direct them) doesn't mean that future movies will be bad. Lucas out of the writer/director role means there's very little linkage between Eps 1 - 3 and 7.

uh no, I firmly remember thinking "do I even need to see this in the theater" about Ep 2? Who are these people you're talking about?

xpost
no way! if i remember correctly the day after TPM came out everyone was barfing in the streets

70s trailers are pretty goofy compared to today's fare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kd5_WzYcH0

oh I dunno, how about these people? Ned, Ally etc. The Phantom Menace: What The Hell is Wrong With It?

xp

lol @ "looks like it was written on a driveway"

it took YEARS for people to turn on the prequels and admit they were terrible

The very first published review appeared on the internet, on a home theater forum, about 2 days before the wide release of the movie, and it was an absolute pan. As were many of the contemporaneous traditional media reviews.

YEARS meaning more than two? half the people on that thread were saying it was crap in 2001, two years after release

also hilariously the 2009 revive is half posts of Shakey complaining about Star Wars

tell me who this is really about, man

oh I dunno, how about these people? Ned, Ally etc. The Phantom Menace: What The Hell is Wrong With It?

xp

― Οὖτις, Monday, December 1, 2014 11:54 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a couple of ilx challops

you and rt both really need to take a step back from ilx imo

I guess I'd call myself a passive Star Wars fan (although I've read some of the books, for the love of christ), but I don't honestly know that I'd call any of the films legitimately Good Movies. I'm about as excited for the next sequel as I am about the prospect of a Last Starfighter sequel. It'll be fun to see and probably promptly forget about.

ANAKIN: I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and
irritating, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here
everything's soft... and smooth...

As were many of the contemporaneous traditional media reviews.

I'm talking about audiences not film critics

this thread also entertaining/relevant: Attack Of The Clones

Dan and Ned really drinkin the Kool-Aid in these threads :(

xp

it took YEARS for ned raggett, representative of the human race, to do a thing

barfing in the streets

They're barfing in Chicago...down in New Orleans...in New York City...

also irl lol:

If you watch four years after release at home on a Saturday morning, not remotely excremental. Even the Frankie & Annette in Space romantic scenes take on an Ed Wood-with-a-budget fascination.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, March 14, 2006 7:00 AM (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe for some fans, but I recall the general tide of opinion turning against the Phantom Menace almost immediately after it came out.

it took YEARS for ned raggett, representative of the human race, to do a thing

Hi there!

Like I said up the thread, the only thing I have to lose is ten bucks and two hours. Some years my favorite sports teams suck, it's not like I'm not going to watch them.

"it took YEARS for people to turn on the prequels and admit they were terrible

― Οὖτις"

talking shite

Hi there!

― Ned Raggett, Monday, December 1, 2014 12:00 PM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is such an honor

Uh....x post

it took YEARS for ned raggett, representative of the human race, to do a thing

look dude, these movies made bajillions of dollars. Loads and loads of people went to see them, repeatedly. They did not disappear from memory or from view after humanity's collective recoiling in horror. I am not making things up that people like(d) the prequels. The internet-driven narrative that they were uniformly awful/inept etc. developed later, and wasn't really firmly in place til the third movie came out and people started to get embarrassed about defending Lucas's shitty skills.

xp

your memory isn't better than everyone else's

seeing as how you guys are all happily repressing how unbearably shitty this franchise has been for 25+ years I'd say yeah my memory is better

"it's still good! it's still good!"

zeitgeisty monoculture movies making a billion dollars isn't a surprise

seeing as how you guys are all happily repressing how unbearably shitty this franchise has been for 25+ years I'd say yeah my memory is better

― Οὖτις, Monday, December 1, 2014 12:05 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

help us ned raggett you're our only hope

I was watching Star Trek V the other day and realized that it's better than any of the prequels.

― polyphonic, Friday, 15 July 2011 22:43 (3 years ago)

the sad thing is, this is totally true

Prequels kind of serves to show me it has always been shitty and that's more or less the point. Sci fi trash. Space opera pulp. Flashy special effects, fututistic vs. ancient tech juxtaposition, lots of silly names, etc. ROTJ in particular doesn't hold up well under scrutiny. It's basically a prequel movie made with the original cast.

The idea that people didn't think TPM was garbage immediately after release (or that the internet is why people think they are awful) is silly. And making lots of money does not prove anything.

a slightly below average summer blockbuster

Was going to protest this but I basically don't go to summer blockbusters that don't say 'Marvel' so I may have artificially high expectations.

One thing I did like about ROTJ was Liam Neeson's Kurosawa Jedi - not really very clear what film he'd fit in. It might actually have worked better to actually have him as Obi-Wan and Ewan McGregor as Anakin.

Actually while I'm letting my nerdlinger fly / annoying Οὖτις (reminded by a post above), here's a super dorky restructuring of TPM that improves it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgICnbC2-_Y

There's one surefire upside to Episode 7: it's sure to look golden in comparison to the preceding episode.

Contrariwise, I think ROTJ suffers a bit from the fact that it's after Empire. I know that Lucas's assumption of the mantle of Master Storyteller is the worst thing about him, but for once, he fell ass-backward into something that works for some people - obviously if you're not feeling the scene with Vader watching the Emperor fry Luke, then there's a lot less in it for you.

I also appreciate that these are all views that we've had for a long time.

I remember an interview with the fight choreographer for the Luke/Vader fight, who was told "nothing too flashy - if we care more about the fight than who's fighting then we've lost them".

i saw star wars on the teevee and on video when i was a kid, several times. It was great when i was under 12 and i had all the action figures and ralph mcquarrie books and shit. my darth vader was headless because i hung him from the venetian blinds and his noggin popped off. i still have my childhood star wars pillowcases, that's about the only memorabilia still in my possession.
empire was one of the first films I saw in the theater. I remember yoda being on the front page of the paper and thinking I AM SEEING THE NEWS TODAY. i fucking loved it.
i saw return in the theaters like six times.
in the early nineties dawn of the internet, finding IRC Star Wars rooms was an early obsession.
in college, i lived with a guy who would put on any of the original movies and parrot the dialogue in sync with the film from the couch. he would do this about twice a week and every month or two he'd have a geek gathering and they'd play all the films back to back. i found this annoying but not so much so as to comment on it.
in the run up to the prequels i bought A LOT of action figures that I never took out of the box. like a wall's worth.
i waited in line for opening night of the phantom menace. that shit was terrible. i think i rewatched it on video a year later with a friend who bought a copy and demanded we see it together. it was still terrible.
i saw whatever the fuck the second film was called on video about three years after it came out. that shit was also terrible.
Somewhere around here i sold or gave away all my old star wars shit.
i never saw the third one and yeah everyone says it's the best one. i am okay with never having seen it and never taking the time to see it.
i'll probably watch the abrams one when it comes out on netflix or hbo or whatever in 2016; it'll probably be fine.
i can see rewatching the canonical original trilogy if it's with a child who hasn't seen it before.
i cannot imagine ever watching or rewatching the prequels or any other accompanying cartoons or nostalgia or whatever.
star wars is really a silly phenomenon

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh. I'm with those who remember having to hesitate/justify/give up on Eps 2 and 3 re: should I bother? Should I get my friends to go? I remember leaving TPM citing the Roger Ebert review in my head, trying to get stoked for this really inventive, vivid world that had been created, but there wasn't anything that left your heart racing, made you want to be those characters or stuck in your brain at all really. And this isn't just being old and jaded; I remember leaving Pirates of the Caribbean a few years later and totally having that thing going of being a kid where after you leave the pirate movie you're ready to be a pirate all the way out the door and through the parking lot.

Recall how much of the push for III revolved around "No, it's better than the other two!" The title of "Attack of the Clones" also got a lot of people, not necessarily serious nerd types, to go "wait, this whole thing is kinda goofy."

The one thing AOTC has that I kinda liked, leaving the theater, was all the stuff with Obi-Wan going around solving a mystery on weird planets. It wasn't a good mystery, and they weren't great scenes, but at least it felt a little bit pacey, like there was a story going on, things were going to unfold rather than just happening. Similarly the one good thing in ROTS is Palpatine talking to Anakin, but they used most of that in the trailer. TPM has essentially nothing any Star Wars fan needs to see.

reminder when you say "people thought it was garbage" you actually mean adults thought it was garbage, because they were too bluntly reminded this was a family film first and went about edited out jarjar scenes in fanmade copies like george lucas post edit maniacs.

I remember an interview with the fight choreographer for the Luke/Vader fight, who was told "nothing too flashy - if we care more about the fight than who's fighting then we've lost them".

― Andrew Farrell, Monday, December 1, 2014 12:13 PM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was the biggest thing in the RLM takedown of TPM, comparing the original trilogy duels to the prequels

How anyone who loved all that camp kooky shit in the original trilogy had this massive problem all of a sudden with things they deemed too much aimed at kids. The prequels in other ways were a big step up in every regard. Other than II.

"Ja Ja Binks makes the fucking Ewoks look like Shaft!"