Star Wars 7 shit talk

Trailer doesn't reveal if they're bringing back Ice Cream Maker Guy.

http://threads.rebelscum.com/photogallery/data//1451/willrow3.jpg

Incest is more or less acceptable in the star wars universe

the thing with beating up on jedi is, yeah, it's not as good as empire but to move it down to the level of the prequels is basically like saying "i have never seen any other movies." specifically any other 80s fantasy or sci-fi adventure type movies. it towers above all of them, at the very least by virtue of the craft of an enormous design/effects team running basically round the clock and pulling out every trick in their toolbelts. okay, it's not blade runner, and it's not raiders of the lost ark... but everything else you could plausibly pitch it against, i think it comes out looking really good. it's not super focused and lucas/marquand (but seemingly mainly lucas) don't really have any big new ideas - hence such bad moves as "another death star" (but damn, that space battle, lando's big bombing run) and "leia's your sister" (i don't really care about this but sure, yeah, it creates pointless plot holes)... but it's fine, it's all fine, and in its best moments it produces star wars ~feelings~.

so even though we all agree the ewoks aren't so good now, it seems clear to me that if the new movie were as good as return of the jedi, that would be basically the rousing best-case scenario, return to classic old-school filmmaking etc. etc. nobody is seriously imagining something as good as empire being made in 2015; that unique mix of 70s hollywood and special-effects super-adventure is not coming back. the main thing it has to achieve is not just feeling like a disposable 2010s remake where everybody either immediately forgets it happened (like new total recall, new robocop) or hates it forever (like... the star wars prequels). getting past that point is the bare minimum for this to not feel so empty and hollow that it's as damaging to our impressions of the franchise as the prequels. somewhere between that minimum, and the "feels of a piece with return of the jedi" point could be about what i was hoping the prequels would be, back in 1997/98.

who knows? it's not impossible even with the bajillions of dollars sloshing around that it could be decent, good, or even very good. they'll never be necessary but the integrity-of-the-series ship already sailed with the prequels, so like i said when these new movies first got announced, the worst case scenario is actually a good one: a glut of bad latter-day star wars movies de-centers the prequels and detaches everything post-Jedi as "the later ones" that you really obviously don't have to watch to experience star wars. it'll be like the Oz books or the Boxcar Children, or direct-to-video sequels to kids' animated movies. the more Land Before Times there are (13, with #14 coming next year), the more clearly the first one comes into focus as the only Land Before Time.

rotj does not "tower" over conan the barbarian or the road warrior

Casino

https://media.giphy.com/media/ehnBGPgDOusUM/giphy.gif

so even though we all agree the ewoks aren't so good now,

No. We don't! The biggest problems are pace and editing, which are the same problem. Thanks to the decision to hurry through basic plot points, none of the characters interact. Lando and Han? "Good luck -- you're gonna need it!" Leia and Han? "I love you. I know," pt. 2. The Vader-Luke scenes are awful, the Luke-Palpatine atrocious ("Soon I'll be dead. And you with me" -- huh?).

okay i did forget the road warrior. conan, i dunno. it's good though. maybe "towers" is a bit much. it's definitely better than return to oz and the neverending story... though there's a lot good in both, especially in terms of the creepiness of the first and the sheer bleakness of the latter, which petersen clearly got from empire and from which jedi could have taken some cues. it's WAY better than labyrinth, "towers" is fair there. haven't seen dark crystal. it's better than dune, even if the design work and a few performances in that could have really helped it out.

https://instagram.com/p/9DN_LbsCtp/
okay, i like this guy

it seems clear to me that if the new movie were as good as return of the jedi, that would be basically the rousing best-case scenario, return to classic old-school filmmaking etc. etc.

ROTJ is garbage school filmmaking. The first Star Wars is classic whatever.

Best bit of Ewok trivia is that not once in the film are they ever referred to as Ewoks, and yet, we all know they are called Ewoks. Hmm ...

No. We don't! The biggest problems are pace and editing, which are the same problem.

^^^^ otfm

lonely guy just angry baout things

https://twitter.com/TexanDMVLyfter/status/656596931251183616
https://twitter.com/TexanDMVLyfter/status/656597088361435136

Biggest prob I have with "Jedi" - apart from everything else - is that the film stock has shifted from that cool, gritty '70s look to that gross '80s look.

yeah everything bad about the ewoks came in the stuff after rotj, plus most of that is fanboys angry they didn't get some wookiee action. well they can take that wookiee and stick it up their yeah!

I liked the pace

like I don't think there's really that much conceptually wrong with any of the "new" stuff that showed p in ROTJ - Jabba and his crew, the ewoks, general lobster, new death star = sure why not, they're not any more or less ludicrous than stuff in the first movie (ewoks are basically cuter ugnaughts, which are basically just a riff from the Wizard of Oz), it's that storywise it's a slapped together mess. events just sort of happen in the clumsiest manner imaginable.

xxp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPXVaJKvSzY

see but that's the thing, i'd agree about a number of those problems (though i think generally the problem is more that the plot isn't that interesting than pacing/editing specifically - we basically have three major 'chapters' in a row and most of the characters don't have conflicts they're dealing with or anything) --- but i don't think any of it makes it into this shambling mess of a movie, or an emperor who's been waiting thirty years for someone to point out it has no clothes. it's not "butt" as the kids are apparently saying. it's at worst fine and at best pretty darn good.

"garbage school filmmaking" within this genre would be, like, masters of the universe. i watched that recently and i can confidently say jedi "towers" in this case. it doesn't have to either be a masterpiece or incompetent dross. i'd say events just sort of happen in a pretty clumsy manner, y'know?

it's basically they all meet at the club and then they get in a fight w/ these bros that were messing w/ leia but it's cool, no prob, then they take a camping trip and have this awesome cookout w/ these hippies they met and o yeah take down the empire.

Woah, kids are saying "butt"? That's news to me.

Let me guess - it's short for butt ugly

Alfred is otm. Also - "Conan the Barbarian" ain't that great, c'mon now. Most of the casting is atrocious. I realize Arnold was the only guy at the time who could've possibly played the role but the man seemed uncomfortable throughout. Even as a kid seeing it in its first run I thought - and yeah, I do remember thinking this - "This isn't the Conan I've read".

conan the barbarian is amazing

idk if its better than Jedi

it does maintain a consistent tone and atmosphere, which is something

i do, it's better

Thulsa Doom should've been revealed as a bald old white guy when Conan kills him.

Casino, you're saying "Trust me, it's a good movie b/c I have good memories watching it."

beastmaster also better than rotj imo

I am..... Dar

Listening to Kershner's commentary track on TESB was educational a decade ago. To deepen the characters, he'd add bits of business that weren't in the script: R2 on tiptoes eavesdropping on Yoda and Luke; a toolbox falling on Hans' head; Han and Threepio's battle, like out of a Laurel & Hardy picture, over the hyperdrive; Chewbaccca doing "Alas, poor Yorick" with Threepio's head; weird unexplained shit like Lobot opening his eyes. Lucas hated this stuff, according to Kershner, which, if true, says a lot about his attitude. Even unremarked bits of cinematographic finesse, like the Welles-ian shot of Imperial commanders in the Star Destroyer looking up at Vader pacing the deck giving the bounty hunters their orders.

The only reason the Star Wars movies have resonance is thanks to The Empire Strikes Back and its visual sumptuousness.

love The Beastmaster. Rip Torn with braids and skull + witches + John Amos + Tayna Roberts = yums.

these dudes

http://www.i-mockery.com/halloween/greatest/pics/beastmaster6.gif

+ directed by Don Coscarelli!

http://comicbook.com/2015/10/20/star-wars-the-force-awakens-has-already-sold-6-5-million-in-imax/

The new numbers coming in from IMAX state the film has already claimed $6.5 million worth of IMAX screenings in advanced tickets sales. The previous single-day advanced sales record for IMAX screenings was less than $1 million.

@ Alfred - I'm not, really. Just suggesting that recognizing it's not an A+ or even a B+ doesn't mean it has to be demoted to a D. I'd give it a solid B, though if you were blindfolded and couldn't enjoy the incredible miniature, effects, compositing and animation work, then it'd be down in the C range, as the story and character stuff is quite ropey and unexciting apart from the inherent pathos of Luke's quest.

I am, admittedly, saying that it is enjoyable to watch, which I do think is a sign it may not be garbage film-making. Is some of that enjoyment down to memories of watching it on earlier occasions? Sure, probably, that's inevitable. But there's shit I liked as a kid that I really can't sit through now, that not only doesn't "hold up" but for which "holding up" doesn't even seem the appropriate criterion (thinking here of a recent, unpleasant experience watching The Sandlot)... and Return of the Jedi isn't that.

Can't believe that Burneko writes x thousand words about why as the films came out they got worse and worse and doesn't mention the name 'George Lucas' once.

I mean, I get that the pitch was "write something about the new film", and once you admit the linking factor is missing, you're pretty much just doing therapy in the round, but FFS.

Jedi has so many good parts tbh, but yeah the pacing...that space battle is one of the best things in the trilogy and you intercut it with an "okay" forest battle scene and luke (and the viewer) being forced to listen to the emperor drone on.

it does however feature words like "dick-shitter." there are seven "dick"s and thirteen "shits," and actually "butt" only shows up twice but "fuck" is also in there thirteen times. hard to fit in "george lucas" at that point.

Also I think he's completely wrong about it being the film's ruination that Vader isn't a cartoon villain - it's the mirror edge of Luke being a dark-wearing force choking badass in the first half of the film, and that kind of hippyish outlook is def. part of the series success.

You want to see a good John Milius film? Watch "Dillinger".

Conan towers over Jedi easily.

Meanwhile, coordination. (This is about the group tracking everything in the current fictional universe and how things are doled out/planned/assigned:)

http://www.gamesradar.com/how-do-you-keep-track-everything-massive-star-wars-universe/

A fave quote:

Kieron Gillen is writing for one of the most iconic characters in popular culture. Set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader picks up the Sith Lord’s story after Han Solo sent his TIE Fighter spinning. “We pitched freely in that [time period], but I’m a writer who knows how story works,” says Gillen. “There’s a start to this story – Vader, disgraced, after the loss of the Death Star. There’s an end to this story – Vader, on the bridge of the Executor, more powerful than ever, hunting his son across the universe. I’m not going to pitch a story that doesn’t tell how Darth Vader got from one to another, y’know? Even with my reputation, I’m not going to suggest an arc where Darth Vader packs it in and becomes a superstar DJ in the Star Warsian equivalent of Ibiza.”

ehhh the forest battle maybe rises a little above "okay." ernest goes to camp's forest battle was "okay." but you're not wrong exactly. the forest leg is definitely the movie's weakest in part because there is just no character story being told at all since leia and han don't have one. luke is on a quest but the rest of them are just getting into some scrapes - together again, here we go, gang! that's not super compelling.

but i think the emperor stuff all works. it would be better if it was its own, super-tense thing by itself, without the intercutting... luke gradually realizing maybe he's fucked up and his big hunch isn't going to work out at all. hammill probably plays him a little too confidently throughout, also. but i still think it's got great atmosphere, with that awesome set. and mcdiarmid's ice-cold galaxy-ruling monk motherfucker is great. you can see why lucas kept going, wrongly, back to the well of "character confrontation scene with major space battle as backdrop outside."

rotj looked pretty poor in comparison with the first of the new Star Trek films. good news i guess for the new films!

Was it Jedi that had the giant asteroid worm?

i don't have a problem with the emperor stuff in theory, i just think the glacial pace of those scenes is a poor substitute for tension. like we know vader and luke are going to do battle again, the emperor just has to give a two day speech while they stand there.

asteroid worm = ESB

By Jedi they were just too focused on making the particular Luke-Vader myth payoff. It was never really the central focus of the movies until after Empire came out. When they dropped the twist in Empire it really doomed Jedi to be the cleanup episode. Too many soap opera style speeches not enough space exploration.

Also the tone of Jedi is just cartoony, even wo the Ewoks. There are a few Harrison lines that should have been delivered deadpan and have this really over the top wide eyed "Whaddaya gunna do?" performance to them instead. Or for example when he is sneaking up to that one stormtrooper in the woods and he steps on a branch and everyone is looking on from the side. Straight out of a Scooby Doo cartoon.