Star Wars 7 shit talk

There's a ton of bootleg recut SW movies out there. My faves are the one that smooshes the prequels into one long movie minus most of the garbage and Jar Jar-ing and the grindhouse version of ANH (featuring blood and '70s music).

so i know we've moved on but just for the record:

Empire >> Wrath of Khan >> Star Wars >>>>>>>>>>>>> Star Trek the Motion Picture >>> Return of the Jedi >>>>>> The Search for Spock

but obviously those could flop positions a lot based on whether one's feeling a star trek kinda movie or a star wars kinda movie. the voyage home would be above motion picture but not close to star wars - good disposable 80s comedy movie but come on. the final frontier would be down somewhere with masters of the universe.

it's tough. wrath of khan is a fantastic space drama with a brilliant tear-jerker finale, two giant-sized and deliciously hammy performances at the center, and yeah, really strong character relationships. it would be just as gripping as a stage play i think, and in fact a lot of it is really filmed like that: here are our characters talking. so if empire isn't shakespeare, it's so thrilling and so visually rich. almost every shot is iconic, almost every location overflows with the creativity of the team of people working on it. khan did not have the same kind of budget, obviously, but really most of it feels like an episode of the TV show, except for the botany bay sequence and the effects. i think that goes a long way in terms of which i'd rather spend an hour and a half looking at again. plus fisher/ford is a lot of fun to watch.

cool new poster for the imax release

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--ktTXKcmS--/1483742385134576303.jpg

huh, who's the artist there?

that is supercool.

I'd be curious to rank the ST IV-VI and the prequels. Voyage home at the top obv, undiscovered country at #2 imo. Final frontier compared to the prequels would be a tough pick, a real Sophie's Choice for #3.

Dan Mumford xxp

http://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-the-force-awakens-theatrical-poster-first-look-in-theater-exclusives-and-more

http://www.dan-mumford.com/

The Empire Strikes Back is the best film that millions (and millions) of dollars can buy.

final frontier is shorter than any of the prequels, i'll give it that. and there are maybe two or three minutes scattered around where it seems like there might be something interesting in play in a hard sci-fi "asks the big questions" way as in prometheus. IIRC that's all immediately discarded for a really stupid mind-control story or something and then a big head throws rocks at them but again, only 106 minutes. i haven't seen it since i was a kid, which is also very much in its favor - the oppressive familiarity of the prequels from endless TV airings, always on in the background somewhere, ALWAYS on when i'm home at christmas, has made me basically loathe every single frame of footage.

i went to see a marathon of all five star trek movies at my local cinema when V came out. boy, that day came to a bleak end.

i read that as "all five shrek movies" and had a vision of living hell

Star Trek achieved its ideal form first, as an hourlong TV series; II and VI are the only films i can see rewatching in the future.

VI or IV?

I don't think I've seen any of the Next Generation movies, nor the last two with the original cast. Maybe I should do that?

six! st IV too sitcommy.

first contact is by far the best next gen trek movie, better than all the OG cast flicks except II and IV imo

Maybe see First Contact. It's mediocre, but definitely has more going on than the other three Next Gens.

Star Trek: Insurrection is one of the worst movies I have seen in a theater, ever

I remember VI being pretty satisfying except for the ghastly stuff with Kirk and the shapeshifter on the prison planet. I think IV's a more fun movie in that 80s comedy way but VI is the best besides II at doing what you'd want Star Trek to do: sorta slow and talky, diplomatic intrigues and a murder mystery in space... but with real money put into the space battle effects and another outsized scenery-chewing villain. The end-of-the-Cold-War theming is also nicely done... much better than, say, Goldeneye at teasing the "have I become a dinosaur, nursing old wounds and fighting yesterday's battles?" thing. Would have been a totally fine sendoff for the whole shebang, Generations being wretched and none of the all-TNG movies being quite good enough to justify the effort (with Insurrection actually worse than Final Frontier by any reasonable standard).

The Motion Picture is also good but I'd recommend it more to fans of slow 70s sci-fi like Silent Running or The Andromeda Strain than fans of Trek.

The Motion Picture is beautiful to look at, but offers little else, imo.

I'd rank the ones I've seen khan>voyage home>undiscovered country (this one is better than first contact too actually>first contact>sttmp>search for spock>>>>final frontier and the rest

the motion picture is a '70s scifi flick in both the best and worst senses. really amazing production design for sure.

Morbz otm that II and VI are the best ST pics (IV is enjoyable but it is slight). III is okay, V is obviously straight garbage. I is an interesting failure, kinda want to see it on the big screen cuz it's all visuals and nothing but.

I don't rate Empire over Khan tho, as dlh says - Khan has people in it. Empire has action figures.

(Meanwhile, Shakey steeples his finger, pleased with what this thread has wrought)

Khan's a cyborg though

xxposts ehhh different strokes. i like ebert on this point:

The film was made in 1980 with full knowledge that ``Star Wars'' had become the most successful movie of all time. If corners were cut in the first film's budget, no cost was spared in this one: It is a visual extravaganza from beginning to end, one of the most visionary and inventive of all films. (...) There is a generosity in the production design of ``The Empire Strikes Back.'' There are not only the amazing sights there before us, but plenty more in the corners of the screen, or everywhere the camera turns. (...)

In the glory days of science fiction, critics wrote about the ``sense of wonder.'' That's what ``The Empire Strikes Back'' creates in us. Like a lot of traditional science fiction, it isn't psychologically complex or even very interested in personalities (aside from some obvious character traits). That's because the characters are not themselves--they are us. We are looking out through their eyes, instead of into them, as we would in more serious drama. We are on a quest, on a journey, on a mythological expedition. The story elements in the ``Star Wars'' trilogy are as deep and universal as storytelling itself. Watching these movies, we're in a receptive state like that of a child--our eyes and ears are open, we're paying attention, and we are amazed.

creepiest Montalban line reading: "buried allliiive"

Kinda hoping that for any scene with both Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver, John Williams throws in a few bars of "Please, Mr. Kennedy."

haha yes

I had no idea Oscar Isaac was in this, that's weird

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/underwire/images/2009/01/14/st2khan.gif

he's in that new trailer twice!

there's a new trailer?

I feel like this is probably not an original statement, but a lot of what I love about Star Wars is just its success at hinting at a much larger and very real universe (or galaxy or w/e) of which the movies only scratch the surface. I think I find all the novels and encyclopediae and the like not only boring, but something I don't even want to touch, because I prefer retaining that sense of peering in and only getting a glimpse of the vastness. The cantina bar scene is a great example -- who the fuck are all these creatures? It doesn't really matter, yet they are all there, obviously from all different species and possibly planets, all part of some sort of seedy element -- smugglers, bounty hunters, maybe drug dealers, who knows? It's not interesting to me at all to find out, it's just interesting to me the way the scene creates an excellent illusion with limited resources.

yup

Ep V, we're suddenly on Hoth. What the fuck is Hoth? Where is it? Childhood me wonders. But it doesn't matter that much, it's a harsh, frozen place and presumably a good location for a rebel base for that reason. But at the same time, it's not just a set, it has its own animal life. Does that animal life really help advance the plot? Not exactly, it's only good for a couple of meh sub-episodes, but it helps flesh out Hoth as a place that feels real.

Lucas was just working through the seasons. Summer was covered with Tattooine, winter on Hoth, spring on Endor. Much of the action on The Force Awakens will take place on the leafy planet of Foliagea.

Judging from the trailer, we're getting all three seasons in one film. Desert, snow, lakeside greenery

They released a music-only edit of the trailer and it might actually be better than the one we saw Monday...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci0C8ggQWys

Something that always irked me was ... well, a couple of things. With a few exceptions, there seemed to be just one of every creature - one wookie, one greedo, one whatever. Stuff like Jawas excepted. And then also the specificity of some of the tech, like the AT-AT's, which seem like they were designed for Hoth and nothing else. Minor quibbles, obviously, compared to major quibbles.

There was a Greedo(Rodian) in Jabba's palace

seem like they were designed for Hoth and nothing else.

well it is an entire PLANET...

There are AT-ATs on Endor, they showed one in a zoomed-out view of the base

One wookiee? Someone forgot the holiday special!

Not to mention that scene shoehorned into the prequels where Yoda is surrounded by them and shouts out Chewbacca

Several Twi'lek in Jabba's palace

"these chainsaws and french fries and haikus and umbrellas... they seem like they were designed just for Earth and nowhere else"

but yeah the species do mix it up quite a bit, you don't get big hordes of wookies taunting hordes of humans etc (that we ever see, at least)

that said we are pretty much always in a non-family type environment - backwater trading outpost canteens, forward operating bases, etc - so it makes sense that we don't see what are the usual larger species groupings of these dudes

not to mention this dude's posse
http://img.lum.dolimg.com/v1/images/databank_moncalamari_01_169_135967d9.jpeg?region=0%2C0%2C1560%2C878&width=768

lol yes

and Endor of course!

It's like going to a popular bar in a port of trade and wondering why there's one dude there from Brazil, one from China, and a bunch of locals.