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bike tory posted:Verisimilitude? In my space opera about wizards and faster-than-light travel?? Yes. Even the most fantastic setting has to have its own believable internal logic and rule-set, otherwise it becomes unsustainable.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 03:53 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 17:09 |
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LeJackal posted:Yes. Even the most fantastic setting has to have its own believable internal logic and rule-set, otherwise it becomes unsustainable. This is the line of thought that gave birth to midchlorians
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 04:29 |
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Not exactly. Magic in a setting doesn't have to have a scientific explanation. But if the magic or sci-fi have clear constraints, either explicitly in text or dialogue or implicitly by example, then violating those constraints without sufficient explanation or set-up can still trigger the "bullshit" alarm. Verisimilitude is just about the fantasy being consistent with itself.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 04:36 |
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Why couldn't voldermort kill Luke at the Battle of Helms Deep? Is it because the machines were attacking in the real world?
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 05:06 |
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Besides, Warhammer 40K did the ship travelling at near FTL used as a weapon way more effectively.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 05:12 |
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Imperial infantry are usually employed on turkey shoots, securing ground facilities or with backup from giant mechs, Imperial pilots get put in glorified engines and guns strapped to a couple of solar panels in a cheap spacesuit and sent out by the dozen, and with every canon source ever indicating TIE fighters are made as cheaply as possible and completely expendable. (funnily enough, both the prequels and some supplementary material indicates they're descended design-wise from Jedi starfighters, which are designed specifically for precognitive superhuman pilots to use to maximum advantage. And Darth Vader is pretty drat good in his custom TIE interceptor) While the rebels have much less manpower, but a lot more focus on talent, and even then they're typically shown with an eclectic fleet of whatever they can find. (emphasised more in ESB and RotJ, but there's not a lot of focus on the Rebel forces outside the iconic fighters) Y-Wings in particular are basically ageing easy targets, but they're the best they've got at that point aside from X-Wings, which are pretty high-performance. And hyperdrive makes for easy getaways, important given the rebels usually lack carriers.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 08:45 |
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marshmallow creep posted:Not exactly. Magic in a setting doesn't have to have a scientific explanation. But if the magic or sci-fi have clear constraints, either explicitly in text or dialogue or implicitly by example, then violating those constraints without sufficient explanation or set-up can still trigger the "bullshit" alarm. Verisimilitude is just about the fantasy being consistent with itself. It's a frequently abused term (especially in RPGs), but basically yeah, and usually more about feel than fact but at least comes down to 'It should be relatively clear what happened and why'. People will get confused and bored even by huge setpieces if the stakes are vague and they're not sure how they're supposed to be feeling about what's happening. The OT's action setpieces worked great because the setup is relatively simple, while both the prequels and the sequels get more complex, more vague, and the sequels in particular are a bit allergic to meaningful exposition which amplifies the problems.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 08:49 |
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The Rebels were able to destroy the Empire's largest and most powerful spaceship with literally one of the smallest ships they had doing a kamikaze attack in ROTJ. Didn't even need to go at lightspeed. Why didn't they do that more often?
Wheat Loaf has a new favorite as of 08:56 on Sep 14, 2018 |
# ? Sep 14, 2018 08:53 |
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Wheat Loaf posted:The Rebels were able to destroy the Empire's largest and most powerful spaceship with literally one of the smallest ships they had doing a kamikaze attack in ROTJ. Didn't even need to go at lightspeed. Why didn't they do that more often? I mean, there's no reason why they wouldn't if they could get the plans and identify a similar flaw.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 09:01 |
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bike tory posted:I mean, there's no reason why they wouldn't if they could get the plans and identify a similar flaw. I mean specifically for star destroyers, the workings of which they clearly seem to understand.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 09:04 |
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Wheat Loaf posted:The Rebels were able to destroy the Empire's largest and most powerful spaceship with literally one of the smallest ships they had doing a kamikaze attack in ROTJ. Didn't even need to go at lightspeed. Why didn't they do that more often? They had spent a long time and multiple fighters by that time destroying its shield domes. I assume you're talking about the Executor? Which, now that I'm older and I know what estates and wills and poo poo like that are, is a much less cool name.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 09:10 |
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Memento posted:They had spent a long time and multiple fighters by that time destroying its shield domes. I'm pretty sure a single fighter destroyed its shield domes with maybe two or three shots. Edit: Actually, indulge me for a moment. I enjoyed Last Jedi a lot, but I believe that more people disliked it than liked it. What do people here think of that? Yes? No? Wheat Loaf has a new favorite as of 09:34 on Sep 14, 2018 |
# ? Sep 14, 2018 09:14 |
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I think it was ok but with some long stretches of boring moments like the entire casino planet. I also can't stand that the Laura Dern character won't just tell her loving plan to her subordinates. The movie also has the most uninteresting and slow chase sequence I've ever seen.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 09:41 |
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Wheat Loaf posted:I'm pretty sure a single fighter destroyed its shield domes with maybe two or three shots. Ohhh I thought you were talking about the Death Star V2 But yeah generally I think the justification there is that it was a suicidal, all-in kind of gambit that the rebels only did as a a last resort. Even managing to destroy the Death Star it was a pyrrhic victory. Ackbar says something like "concentrate all fire power on that ship" and you're only shown two rebel ships, but I think it took significantly more than two to inflict the damage and divert the guns. Basically the rebels don't have enough ships to carry out those kind of attacks. Re: Last Jedi, I liked it a lot. There are issues - everything relating to Poe and Finn was completely irrelevant to the plot so it ends up feeling a bit like filler content, which is unfortunate because they're excellent characters. Also the stuff they did with Leia was a bit dumb - there were two great opportunities to write her out of the series (either dead at the hands of Kylo or sacrificing herself in Holdo's place). I'm worried the last movie is going to significantly feature some uncanny valley Carrie Fisher cgi. But everything else about it was excellent imo and I think the themes and concepts it deals with means it'll last a lot better than The Force Awakens. And plot irrelevance aside, even the stuff with Poe or Finn was still entertaining in and of itself, and I suspect will become more relevant in the final movie. voiceless anal fricative has a new favorite as of 09:52 on Sep 14, 2018 |
# ? Sep 14, 2018 09:47 |
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I don't mean, what did everybody think of it; I mean, do you get the impression that more people in general disliked it than liked it?
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 09:51 |
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The Super Star Destroyer's destruction seemed more like a straw that broke the camel's back thing than some kind of brilliant strategem, combined with a possible unintentional kamikaze attack. (Since Star Wars space battles are basically WW2 naval battles/dogfights) The Last Jedi... I think most viewers enjoyed it, but I'm not sure it's going to be too many people's favourite in retrospect. Ed: I think I could put it this way: TLJ felt like Rogue One if they didn't have the balls to kill off the whole cast or the context framing it. Ghost Leviathan has a new favorite as of 10:08 on Sep 14, 2018 |
# ? Sep 14, 2018 10:02 |
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Wheat Loaf posted:I don't mean, what did everybody think of it; I mean, do you get the impression that more people in general disliked it than liked it? Anecdotally, everyone I've talked to about it enjoyed it. There's a very vocal minority (particularly on the internet) who think it's the worst movie ever for various lovely reasons and I think they tend to give the perception it was not well received though
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 10:12 |
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Isn't it the highest grossing film of the year so far? I think more people enjoyed it than not.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 10:46 |
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Pilchenstein posted:Isn't it the highest grossing film of the year so far? I think more people enjoyed it than not. It was the highest-grossing movie of 2017, yes, but consider things like the huge drop it experienced in its second weekend (the highest of any Star Wars movie, though Solo may have beaten it) and how it made three quarters of a billion dollars less than Force Awakens. That must speak to something.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 10:50 |
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I think that drop is from China not caring about Star Wars. After they saw Force Awakens they were done with the series.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 10:52 |
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It's only got a 45% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, for whatever that is worth
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 10:53 |
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It's very hard to judge "overall" enjoyment of an even somewhat divisive movie nowadays. Let alone a Star Wars one, which is mired in so much meta discussion that has nothing to do with the quality itself (how does it compare to the Prequels? How many ~females~ are in there? Is the Disney marketing behemoth to be shunned on principle?). I think it's borderline impossible to separate discussion of the movie itself from all of those underlying issues people might have with it, which can absolutely cement their opinion on it being awesome/terrible before they have even seen it, if you're talking strictly online discussions. And sadly, that is becoming louder and more visible even in traditional offline media and normal discussions between people on a lunch table ("I saw a YT review of the movie and they made some interesting points..."). I think you'd be best suited to look at review aggregates by hopefully professional reviewers who've been paid to try and objectively judge movies on their own merits for decades, not a flavor-of-the-month YT screamy rear end in a top hat who's a fan/non-fan and doing this to cater to his own fans/non-fans. Similarly useless are box office numbers tbh, because some people will watch everything in a given franchise no matter its quality, or everything that's marketed enough so they believe they have to see it because everyone does, and then they can talk about it next day at work. The "well a lot of people watched it so it must be good" argument falls apart completely once you reach the momentum of a franchise like Star Wars, unless they gently caress up SO BAD that people actually stop watching it because enough colleagues and sources they pay attention to confirm that yes, it's okay to admit that it sucked donkey balls and the next one will not be better, so why bother. Overall, I therefore think the question of "so did more people like or dislike it" cannot be answered at all and you'd be best served with two metrics: - did people you watched it with personally and/or you talk about it in real life like it or not? How do the opinions of those real, actual people who you hopefully like interacting with measure up to your own? Is there at least an interesting discussion to be had? - did you like it? For which reasons? Do those reasons matter? Do you think you should feel embarrassed for having the "wrong" opinion? And for the record because that's actually on topic, I really disliked TLJ for what I hope are personal reasons which are not coloured by the insane wanking on both the "loved it, best thing ever" and "worse than the Prequels, somehow" sides online. But you never know how much that influences you subliminally so whatever. I'll give you two things I disliked of which I've seen one addressed often (but rarely as the central critique) and one that's almost never talked about. a) Pacing. Many scenes go on for way too long with little reason because they ultimately affect very little in the overall plot (yes, I do hate the casino sequence), while others are almost painfully short, robbing them of gravitas...and the plot of logic. For example, it makes no sense that characters should just be able to pop out and in a desparate chase sequence the way it is shown, but I think you could explain that easily with a few sentences. Like "one small ship will slip by their scanners but if we all take small ships to flee at once, they'll notice, also we don't have enough small ship". Whatever. People on the "it's good" side say because you can come up with an explanation, it doesn't matter, people on the "it's bad" side say there can be no explanation, it makes no sense to begin with. I think the fact that you HAVE to come up with an explanation is bad, and it's not like the movie is afraid to have ANY kind of exposition, it just uses it in the wrong places. Hence, this is for me a pacing issue, not a logic issue. Also pacing: the movie has multiple climactic events and battles that feel like they should have some finality to them, but they don't because the runtime isn't over. Sometimes, those events anti-climax themselves (the Leia thing) even which I've rarely seen, and I think for good reason. Unless it's a comedy, of course. Which brings me to my biggest problem b) Tone. Within ten minutes, you go from a "your mom" joke and one guy who's overconfident and brash to a fault somehow succeeding just because he's so good at stuff, laughing as he blows up cannon after cannon effortlessly, to a desparate, doomed to fail bombing run with a huge number of casualties, climaxing in a noble sacrifice which sets up a huge trauma later in the movie. This is jarring as hell and I find is super weird that it's rarely talked about. It happens so often! Incredibly dramatic events are juxtaposed with weird quips at the most awkward moments, you have Rey almost lose control of her feelings, the Dark Side might take her...! But the actual end of the scene is a stone she knocked loose destroying some food or whatever by weird fish-nuns. Like am I supposed to laugh now? Every time tension is built up, it's released too early, too stupidly, drama is never allowed to just linger and the action scenes therefore never feel like they matter because you know they're just gonna deflate the suspense soon. Or have already at the start of the scene. You can absolutely write a movie that blends comedy and action and high stakes and drama, many Bond films do so quite well (and some fail, see most of Roger Moore's run), a more recent example is Kingsman. Or you go bleaker without being grimdark, but stick to it. Rogue One did that quite well, I didn't like it that much either but tone was not the issue. There were comedic moments, but, like, sarcastic, dry, dark humour - compare its comic relief character (the black droid) with TLJ's (the round droid). I was watching TLJ with my wife and we both started having the same reactions to the scenes as they came up: we cringed at the attempted humour and laughed when the movie tried going for drama because it seemed goofy of the script to even try to make us care after all the other nonsense it had pulled before. I personally enjoyed the experience because I like laughing at bad stuff, but it was quite terrible at its probably intended purpose. Oh, and I'm only mentioning my wife because she's the only person I've talked with about the movie in real life (most of my other friends or colleagues aren't frequent movie-goers at all), so to follow my initial argument, I think TLJ sucked because I personally thought it was stupid and the only real life person opinion I got from it was that it was stupid as well.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 10:54 |
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Mu Zeta posted:I think that drop is from China not caring about Star Wars. After they saw Force Awakens they were done with the series. The second weekend drop I mentioned was in America.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 10:55 |
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who picks monica over janice? beggars belief
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 11:40 |
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lol but seriously I posted:who picks monica over janice? beggars belief Early Monica was the best
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 13:09 |
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Wheat Loaf posted:The Rebels were able to destroy the Empire's largest and most powerful spaceship with literally one of the smallest ships they had doing a kamikaze attack in ROTJ. Didn't even need to go at lightspeed. Why didn't they do that more often? The Executor (so named because it Executes the Emperor's will) was destroyed thanks to a pretty specific chain of events and under conditions such a vessel would rarely be found to fight in. (Inside a massive gravity well.) The EU did have some instances of robot ramships, which were built in a simple process; slap a simple droid piloting package and engine on hunk of ship-shaped rock, wrap it in a hollow shell to have a ship's profile (or fill a hollow shell with rock), paint the outside and add rudimentary transmitters so it looks to sensors like the appropriate ship. After its built you then slam it into your enemy, and you're done. They never used them like in TLJ because it doesn't work that way, or even put hyperdrives as I recall - probably because its kind of expensive for a one-use craft. They weren't common, and certainly not in wide use for a variety of reasons most likely related to cost-benefit ratios that makes them less attractive except in some pretty uncommon scenarios. Simply Simon posted:It's very hard to judge "overall" enjoyment of an even somewhat divisive movie nowadays. Let alone a Star Wars one, which is mired in so much meta discussion that has nothing to do with the quality itself (how does it compare to the Prequels? How many ~females~ are in there? I really don't like this attitude; the amount of people that dislike TLJ because of ~females~ is probably in the dozens, but for some reason the larger dialog seems to focus on them almost exclusively. There are so many problems with the movie that have nothing to do with the sex of the characters, and to pretend that they don't exist to punch down a He-Man woman-hater strawman is disingenuous. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw7pcCj0ORk
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 13:11 |
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LeJackal posted:The Executor (so named because it Executes the Emperor's will) was destroyed thanks to a pretty specific chain of events and under conditions such a vessel would rarely be found to fight in. (Inside a massive gravity well.) wait are those windows painted on? oh f-" And it leads to the death of an important character (who, by the way, uses her rammed-to-poo poo doomed ship as a counter-ram), again, because they simply couldn't conceive of the tactic. The other example is when the good guys salvage a super star destroyer (yes, like the Executor) they overcame in a previous fight, and it's treated as super awesome that now they can use such an awesome giant ship! But the enemies of the day have an even bigger ship because it's Star Wars and the EU and it's dumb, and the super star destroyer is hopelessly outmatched, and the giant enemy ship is tearing it up, large chunks of the hull are being shot away...until the enemy realizes that it's all just hastily plated on, meant to be stripped away in big explosions that look like they're doing a lot of damage, but actually the core of the destroyer has been taken out and replaced by what amounts to an 8 km long solid steel rod which is pointed directly at their supership. I think this is also a suicide attack in the end because the constant shot barrage would drive the ram off course and a computer can't course correct on its own, obviously . I think overall the EU and pretty much all of Star Wars "works" on the principle that outside of what is happening on screen, nobody reads books or thinks about things, so whenever someone comes up with a tactic or idea, it's novel, genious, takes everyone off guard, saves the day and then they never use it again because the next time it's not a surprise, and only surprises work because they're dramatic. "Why don't they always do this" is a completely pointless question to ask, because them planning every battle super strategically and using only the most efficient tactic would be boring, so they don't do that. quote:I really don't like this attitude; the amount of people that dislike TLJ because of ~females~ is probably in the dozens, but for some reason the larger dialog seems to focus on them almost exclusively. There are so many problems with the movie that have nothing to do with the sex of the characters, and to pretend that they don't exist to punch down a He-Man woman-hater strawman is disingenuous.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 13:30 |
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Simply Simon posted:I think overall the EU and pretty much all of Star Wars "works" on the principle that outside of what is happening on screen, nobody reads books or thinks about things, so whenever someone comes up with a tactic or idea, it's novel, genious, takes everyone off guard, saves the day and then they never use it again because the next time it's not a surprise, and only surprises work because they're dramatic. "Why don't they always do this" is a completely pointless question to ask, because them planning every battle super strategically and using only the most efficient tactic would be boring, so they don't do that. Also because it would entirely break space battles and plots. Can you imagine if the rebels had just salvaged some derelict corvettes or cruisers, gave them working hyperdrives and pointed them at the death star? It may not have 100% destroyed it but it would've been torn apart and almost certainly be rendered non-functional. Like, even a single fighter with a hyperdrive could probably cut through a destroyer, maybe not lethally but with force equivalent to hundreds of torpedoes. There wouldn't be any space battles anymore, there'd just be enemies lining up hyperspeed rail cannons at each other. So they use it when it's super cool and fitting to the plot, then they don't worry about it. It's what 95% of fiction does, it's fine.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 14:18 |
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I dont recall offhand seeing any droid-helmed large ships in any SW films, so correct me if Im wrong here. That would mean that the answer to Why dont they do that all the time? with regard to kamikaze attacks is that youd need a volunteer to pilot the suicide ship. Some quick googling shows actual WW2 kamikazes had a 10-20% success rate in actually impacting their target, and out of the ~1500 impacts, only around 50ish sank.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 14:48 |
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In the Halo series (I think it was), you can use a hyperdrive to blow the poo poo out of things. The reason this isn't a common weapon is because the hyperdrive is the single most complex and expensive device ever created. In Star Wars, they're cheap and plentiful enough to put on single seater fighters.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 14:59 |
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Last Jedi felt like a movie that thought it was being clever by subverting expectations but in the end seemed to be doing it just to do it. Also it has like 45 minutes that could be cut without changing anything.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 15:12 |
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Gaunab posted:Last Jedi felt like a movie that thought it was being clever by subverting expectations but in the end seemed to be doing it just to do it. Also it has like 45 minutes that could be cut without changing anything. When you subvert expectations all the time it rapidly becomes both predictable and extremely tiresome because there's no point even trying to remember what was foreshadowed or hinted when you know it's going to be something different from out of nowhere.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 15:22 |
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Kwanzaa Quickie posted:I dont recall offhand seeing any droid-helmed large ships in any SW films, so correct me if Im wrong here. That would mean that the answer to Why dont they do that all the time? with regard to kamikaze attacks is that youd need a volunteer to pilot the suicide ship. And if you don't like Star Wars, why do you spend so much time "proving" that it's nonsense? Finally, as well, because Star Wars is much more magical in nature than other sci-fi things, you can always bullshit up another explanation if you really need one to be happy. Example: Megillah Gorilla posted:In the Halo series (I think it was), you can use a hyperdrive to blow the poo poo out of things. And now let's go meta: it's also a symbol about how little the Empire values individualism and the lives of the individuals, versus how much the Rebels care. It's very much good vs. evil. You could as easily write a story where the desparate masses finally rise up against the few mighty elites, but it's still a struggle because the masses have only manpower but little tech, so they need to resort to suicide tactics and winning by numbers. But Star Wars is not that kind of story, not that kind of message, so the imagined tech follows the needs of the story and message, not the other way around.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 15:23 |
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Gaunab posted:Last Jedi felt like a movie that thought it was being clever by subverting expectations but in the end seemed to be doing it just to do it. Also it has like 45 minutes that could be cut without changing anything. My big problem with it, aside from the horrible Finn and Poe story lines, was that they had a good idea, and just abandoned it in the end. No, there is no light side or dark side of the force. There's really no such thing as jedi or sith - they're just names people have given to themselves. No one is necessarily truly good or truly evil. The force just is, and you determine how you use it at any given time.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 15:31 |
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I thought that the hyperdrive moved the ship into a new dimension (that tunnel thing) and the tlj thing was a rare chance to just have enough room to hit lightspeed before you went into it (when they shrink and vanish). She just didn't enter the tunnel, and ended up bulleting snoke's ship. It didn't do that much damage if you think about it. Broke the ship in half but didn't make it explode or anything, and she was flying a big ship.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 15:36 |
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That's something that's always bugged me about Star Wars: in all the movies and games (including KOTOR 2! Which discusses the lightsaber/gun thing as a central story thing!) has nobody ever considered a lightsaber and a blaster? Seems like the perfect combo for Gymnastic Space Wizards. I'm sure there's an EU novel that explains why this is the dumbest idea ever/only Ursus Coolus can use that style because he's a super unique awesome guy. Doomsayer has a new favorite as of 15:44 on Sep 14, 2018 |
# ? Sep 14, 2018 15:42 |
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Doomsayer posted:That's something that's always bugged me about Star Wars: in all the movies and games (including KOTOR 2! Which discusses the lightsaber/gun thing as a central story thing!) has nobody ever considered a lightsaber and a blaster? Seems like the perfect combo for Gymnastic Space Wizards. But! He was actually not good in the Force, so it made "sense" that he was an undiscovered Sensitive for so long, all he could really do was push tiny buttons with a lot of concentrations and, indeed, fly his ship even better. So he did get a Lightsaber but still used the Blaster because he was used to that, and iirc custom-built his Lightsaber to do cheap tricks like extend the blade up to triple its length so he could win without actually having to learn how to swordfight. Which is far too smart for Star Wars, honestly. Of course, because the entire "Jedi all along" idea wasn't dumb enough, eventually he discovered that he was actually really STRONG in the Force (can't have a non super duper powered protagonist, after all), just not for the typical Force stuff: he could instead use the Force to absorb and redirect energy. So he became functionally immune to Blaster shots because he could just use them as fuel to power crazy Force lightning poo poo. Convenient for all the shootouts that he was getting into because, you know, Blaster user. Still dumb fun. It's Corran Horn for those In The Know (and I'm waiting for 20 correction posts for the tiny details I got wrong off 10-year-old memories). EDIT: lol your edit was spot on hahaha
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 15:48 |
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The rareness of the opportunity, with the other ships at such close range and a ship you're going to lose regardless plus "nobody tried it before because they weren't sure what would happen." is good enough for me.Doomsayer posted:That's something that's always bugged me about Star Wars: in all the movies and games (including KOTOR 2! Which discusses the lightsaber/gun thing as a central story thing!) has nobody ever considered a lightsaber and a blaster? Seems like the perfect combo for Gymnastic Space Wizards. The kid in the Rebels cartoon did this.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 15:57 |
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There's a star wars character named kit fisto. Always makes me laugh.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 16:02 |
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# ? May 2, 2024 17:09 |
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Gaunab posted:There's a star wars character named kit fisto. Always makes me laugh. The guy who lets them land is named Lando Now think of the implication.
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# ? Sep 14, 2018 16:06 |