Star Wars 7 shit talk

and this is presumably before anybody had to go and write 20 page design documents to help explain the space-naval-architectural ethos and office dress codes of the respective organizations in the universe. somebody just drew some ships and some outfits and tweaked them here and there and then we end up with incredibly iconic things that literally have a higher Q rating than any of the actors involved.

dredging the x-wing in empire is still pretty special imo. genuinely stirring moments in blockbuster fx bombast. and then after that, yoda's crowning diss.

All the Dagoba scenes are incredible. What they did to Yoda in the prequels was a travesty.

I take issue with the direction not being great (at times). The superior aesthetic qualities wouldn't come through or work as well if not for the way they're shot, edited, etc. Probably editing as much as anything (the prequels and special editions do bear that out) but you also can't splice a shot that wasn't ever there.

the subtext (there isn't really any)

droid racism leads directly to the downfall of the empire. if they'd considered droids to be alive they would have detected them on board the escape pod, destroyed it, and lived happily ever after.

Also, sound design better and weirder than anything else out there. Tie Fighters sounded like nothing else, speeder bikes sounded like nothing else, imperial walkers whose audio design complimented and enhanced their story role, etc.

As effed as Phantom Menace was, I so dug how Ben Burtt varied up the engine sounds in the pod race, from what sounds like a V1 to something like a mic'd leafblower fed thru a flange pedal.

droids are a race now?

surely the term should be droidism or something

"We don't serve your kind here" from a joint that allows Rodian bounty hunters free entrance

the inclusiveness of the rebels is pretty clearly the reason they win out in the end. They pretty much take anybody who seems like they give a shit, which makes it seem like they would be easy pickings for imperial double agents, so perhaps there's a hidden side to all this where there's brutal rebel counterintelligence and potential innocents getting wiped out in "accidents" because they couldn't be trusted. Maybe Biggs' death was arranged, you know? Like, isn't that a little convenient that he just happens to ditch Luke for the Empire, then gets disillusioned as a cadet and joins the rebellion, just in time to find himself BEHIND LUKE in the the trench run on Bespin? Aw man I would like to see the SW version of The Departed now, please.

if there's one thing the world doesn't need any more of it's SW fanfiction

brave stance

"Lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing. How embarrassing."

Pretty sure that's Yoda's only attempt at humour in the prequels. Padawans must love him.

well, Count Dooku was one of his padawans, so

he did beat the hell out of Dooku in a lightsaber battle (lol) until that damn sith pulled the classic "drop part of the building on your friends while I make a quick exit" move

fuckin' sith

unlike everything in Star Wars, which totally does not defy the laws of physics ever

if you accept that the force is a thing I can allow for some flexibility in the behavior of matter. Whereas transformers are 50 foot tall robots on earth who pretend they're cars.

If you can accept the force then the allspark can't be much of a jump

allspark, did someone say?
http://news.tfw2005.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2010/02/Yoda_1266125789.jpg

this is totally it. cuz it sure ain't the dialogue, the direction, the acting, the subtext (there isn't really any), the characters, or anything else that typically makes a film great.

― Οὖτις, Friday, 2 October 2015 21:20 (Yesterday) Permalink

Not that this could possibly convince you, but I'll go ahead and say it's silly to say there are no worthy characters or performances in these movies. I mean, come on, for all their flaws, there are a number of memorable characters, charismatically performed--Han Solo, Vader, Yoda immediately jump to mind. This is an obvious component of the films' lasting success!

I mean, I've also watched the movies through my adult eyes and realized how creaky some of the dialogue is, how wooden certain performances are, and how they're generally more inert than I remember. But there are reasons beyond awesome set and sound design why it became iconic and, like, Logan's Run and The Black Hole did not.

Not that these movies need my prosaic defense in any way! And I'm totally tired of them too, but when you look at other space opera sci-fi, it seems pretty clear what Star Wars has going for it.

agree! Although I loved The Black Hole as a kid.

not to put something out there that I don't feel like expanding on (much) but...

one of the things that I liked about the OG star wars trilogy had is the sense of infiniteness -- there were all these AWESOME ALIENS in the cantina but none of them had names (at the time), or all the dudes wandering around Bespin or w/e and that gave the illusion that the galaxy went on and on and on and you could never hope to see it all. The idea that there was so much out there in the world that could be seen but not understood or compartmentalized is pretty powerful to a 6 year old who sees the world through that same lens. I never got into the EU stuff for pretty much that reason. Once you start trying to give a name to everything some of the wonder goes away.

otm

tbf the black hole is not bereft of good design work - the model stuff of the big ship rules, and maximilian stuck with me. but almost everything else is goofy or clunky or both. costumes look like costumes; sets look like sets. and obviously the characters might as well be wax dummies, even borgnine. so even before you consider effects, story, or cinematography, it's clear that star wars has got something that this has not.

Actually guys I just realized that a guy who claims to "care less" about stuff yet spends a day or two trying to ensure that we all understand that Michael Bay's most hated films - about some shit that was a toy set before it was ever even a shitty series of movies- are the cultural equivalent of a landmark trilogy that millions of people loved right away even though they'd never heard of it before (from a nobody director) - that guy might be trolling. What do you think.

You know what never mind, let's entertain this argument some more. I think the TF movies and Avengers and Star Wars are all the same, because they are all in full color, and loud. None of them discuss how the Swiss invented the cuckoo clock, or what that means.

XP The Black Hole fucking rules. I hum that score on the way to work on the regular.

oh yeah the theme is awesome. the titles too. I found it very hard to watch as an adult, is all. never a problem with star wars obv.

both Black Hole and Tron are much easier to digest as an adult if you treat them as the biblically-inspired operas that they are.

star wars benefits a lot from lucas being at that time a pretty classic '70s style filmmaker with a good eye for imagery. I think the original is really exceptionally made and edited and acted. The dialogue is the weak link but most of the cast is good enough to make you forget it. most of the time. ford especially. guinness was on point too. I think the weak part is in some ways how quickly it moves from the escape from death star to the assault on death star. it feels like there's a good 20-30 min of training or prep or intrigue missing in there. luke's a pretty good pilot for a kid who's only shot womprats imo.

Anyway Lucas is easy to clown for the prequels and rightfully so, though even there he exhibited great imagination and there's stunning individual visual moments even in those flicks. Hard to find with the writing, acting, plotting, pacing, etc, but they're in there. Clearly the guy's no George Miller wrt dusting himself off and returning to form and then some. But back in the '70s he was good.

it's the mysticism of SW that i loved - do your training blindfolded! fold that hi-tech visualizer away and look at it FOR REAL! so exhilarating

There's a great history, probably linked up thread, that makes a strong case that a lot of early excellent Lucas is actually his first wife Marcia Lucas.

yeah she's been completely written out of the official narrative

So I just bought tickets to a slightly-early screening of this to benefit the Greater Cleveland Film Commission. It will screen at 7pm on 12/17, about 5 hours before the wide US release.

not to put something out there that I don't feel like expanding on (much) but...

one of the things that I liked about the OG star wars trilogy had is the sense of infiniteness -- there were all these AWESOME ALIENS in the cantina but none of them had names (at the time), or all the dudes wandering around Bespin or w/e and that gave the illusion that the galaxy went on and on and on and you could never hope to see it all. The idea that there was so much out there in the world that could be seen but not understood or compartmentalized is pretty powerful to a 6 year old who sees the world through that same lens. I never got into the EU stuff for pretty much that reason. Once you start trying to give a name to everything some of the wonder goes away.

― How Butch, I mean (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Friday, October 2, 2015 11:33 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah totally. The fact that it left so much unexplained made the universe so much more real, and it was probably my first exposure to a story told in that way.

The Black Hole is sort of hurt by a lot of the Disney touches, e.g. those cartoonish floating robots with their corny dialogue, but there are aspects of it that are genuinely terrifying, and yeah, the theme rules.

gosh watching clips on youtube it really does look a lot worse than I remembered

I re-watched The Black Hole not too long ago and yeah, does not age well. Schell is hammy *even for a Disney movie*, and most of the actors seem bored. (Borgnine puts in some effort.) Maximillian robot still genuinely, and I love that he just leaves Schell for dead like "Would love to help, but I have a thing."

I can't help but think that the makers of Event Horizon were fans, though.

I watched it within the last decade and yeah it doesn't hold up - plot and characters are largely nonexistent

Jeez, next you're going to tell me that The Last Starfighter hasn't aged well. Whither my childhood memories.

Counterpoint is that The Last Starfigter was always awesome

I am eyebrow-tilted by the fact that sometime between when I gave a shit about this stuff and the SW: Battlefront beta, the pronunciation of AT-AT changed from an acronym (at, at) to an initialism (ay tee ay tee).

gr8080

Exactly. Who wants to go up against an 8080? of any grade.

I know I am gradually turning into a gawker media stan already but these two listicle / clip mixes have really made me want a PS4

http://kotaku.com/eight-players-who-killed-it-in-the-star-wars-battlefron-1735641858

http://kotaku.com/10-priceless-fails-from-the-star-wars-battlefront-beta-1735757709

wait what board am I on

I bought a PS4 yesterday, see u on the BATTLEFRONT.

Man, I am not precious about Star Wars at all, but it has done nothing to deserve FPS players.

How so?

The gif at the top of http://kotaku.com/one-gif-sums-up-star-wars-battlefronts-modern-multiplay-1734746714 is a decent place to start? Basically multiplayer in general is (I know, I know) a hive of scum and villainy, console and PC both.

just downloaded this :/

see you in 2016

Oh, you mean pubbie scum

I spent about 2.5 hours playing the Drop Zone map in the beta, to discover that I am really, really out of practice on FPS. I've been playing platformers and MMOs so much, I was just getting decimated.