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teagone posted:Ben's soul was split. If you treat Kylo Ren and Ben Solo as two warring identities, then I think thematically it works. Having Ben find his peace with his father through his memories as "Ben" and not as "Kylo Ren" works in that sense. His coming back to the light due to the realization that even when he was Kylo Ren, his father still loved him, and him accepting that he too always loved his father works well enough for me as sealing his return to the light side. It gave us a surprise Harrison Ford cameo, and some really good material for Driver. I'd say turning back to the light through a vision of his father's love holds the movie together thematically.
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Jan 1, 2020 21:06
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Onmi posted:Have an original idea? Okay you don't want to ha e Kylo be the big bad... don't have a big bad then? Decentralised evil that can be fought on multiple fronts. Be a War story? All these ideas are poo poo. Star Wars works when they're adventure films with charismatic characters, the war part isn't that important. When you start shoveling dumb politics (Prequels) or make a war film (Rogue One) it doesn't work and it sucks.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:18
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Captain Splendid posted:One of the laziest parts of the production was that instead of coming up with a new ship they literally reused the ISD from Rogue One, scaled it up a bit and added a big gun. In-universe it's supposed to be a new design. It doesn't surprise me at all. I'm actually surprised they gave them a new TIE design, and I imagine they only did so because "OT TIEs, but darker and with some red on them" was already the First Order's thing.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:21
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sigher posted:All these ideas are poo poo. The prequels and Rogue One are good, though.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:21
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Here is my fanfic on how they should have brought back Palpatine if they really really wanted to do that: Palpatine is an evil force ghost, and dark side force ghosts are stuck in a physical place. In this case his deathstar throne room which sith cultists brought to exagol. You can still have Kylo travel there and find the ghost of Palpatine, and you can still have palpatine sending messages to the galaxy but in this case its his cultists doing it to lure Kylo there. Kylo can say all the same stuff, I destroyed Snoke I'll destroy you too. But in this case Palpatine is not snoke, we flashback to a young snoke looking like a kind of normal but still weird guy (like hes still 8 feet tall or whatever). He finds Palpatines ghost and Palpatine gives him a very devils bargain: Power in exchange for 1 thing, he has foreseen the birth of a force dyad, bring them to me. Snoke agrees and Palpy zaps him with red lightning, disfiguring him into the snoke we know but giving him monstress force power. Then we cut back to the present where Palpatine could say "In his hubris he thought to BETRAY our deal, and instead brought his own destruction. Ha Ha Ha." Palpatine then offers Kylo the devils bargain, bring the girl to me and I will grant you the power to truly rule the galaxy queue the dumb amounts of star destroyers (I like the idea of doing zombie star destroyers). In this case Rey is a nobody but we keep the force connection/dyad thing. Ghost Palpatine would possess Matt Smith's deleted cultist character at the end to fight them. And if I was really going to change it, I'd have Kylo kill Palpatine, become all the sith or whatever, then have Rey kill him and revive him, fading away and leaving Kylo to wander the galaxy (or Rey can survive, but Kylo becomes punished ben) This way they arent making GBS threads on TFA & TLJ
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Jan 1, 2020 22:22
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My initial impression of Episode IX, which time and reflection hasn't really changed, is that it's a Star Wars ripoff that just so happens to be an official Star Wars movie. As the final chapter of a story I've been following since I was a toddler, it's almost criminally irresponsible. I deeply loathe the sort of nerd who quibbles about how magic powers and warp drives work, but fantastical settings do need some rules, or else the story is just "And then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens..." from start to finish. Episode IX plays out like a Star Wars story ad-libbed by a little kid. It's Star Wars: Episode Starcrash: Axe Cop. Now you can have hyperspace chases across the galaxy in the span of a minute, sure. The Force can teleport things and heal wounds and grab spaceships and disable an entire fleet, sure. The entire sequel trilogy was a plot by the same villain, sure. Palpatine has an entire military literally hidden under a tarp on a secret planet, sure. A "Third World" coalition materializes out of nowhere to save the heroes. We never find out who the Knights of Ren are, but there's a stadium-sized Greek chorus of more spooky robed wizards. Also Leia was a Jedi this whole time, and some other stuff I don't remember. Episode IX discards all logic in the service of pastiche, and I think that in that regard it mostly succeeds. It's got dogfights, gunfights, and lightsaber fights. (I'm a lightsaber fight guy and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount and quality of lightsaber fights.) The Palpatine reveal is dumb as hell but also perfect: it's a mishmash of plot elements from Starcrash and Galaxy of Terror with a bit from Battle Beyond the Stars.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:24
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sigher posted:All these ideas are poo poo. Yes, the war parts in Star Wars aren’t important, as evident by the ending of ANH, the beginning of ESB and the majority of ROTJ
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Jan 1, 2020 22:25
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Why are all the dogfights in the sequels so bad?
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Jan 1, 2020 22:28
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Zoran posted:Why are all the dogfights in the sequels so bad? The best space battle is the TLJ bombing run & Poe's assault on the dreadnought, and its hardly that big of a space battle. The reason it is the best one is it has story and tells us something about the characters participating. The rest of the "space" battles in TFA & ROTS are just going through the motions of what they think a space battle should be in star wars. You get tie fighters, and X-Wings shooting tie fighters, and maybe they gotta blow something up. We cut to some pilots every so often so they can go "We can't break through!" or "Blargh!" as they blow up, but no one gives a poo poo about any of them. ROTJ has a very fun back and forth narrative where the Empire keeps revealing new layers of the trap, and the Rebels (with lando, ackbar, and wedge as the main people we follow with some other squad leaders we see multiple times) having to come up with answers. They pull their crazy evasive maneuver to avoid crashing into the still functioning shield. They fight off the tie fighters until its revealed the death star is operational. They get mixed in with the ISDs to avoid the death star's laser. They decide to go after the capital ship as a final gambit. The shield goes down they make their run and escape. There is no back and forth in any of the fights, and the ROTS one is so short for a "final" battle that even the plot back and forth that potentially exists is poo poo. The entire fleet is disabled for 5 seconds! Oh no! Lando to the rescue! Hooray! Edit: And the story logic and following some set characters is why the Rogue One space battle is the best any of the new movies have ever produced. You have clear teams to follow. Blue Squadron going down onto the planet, Red Squadron & Gold Squadron up top. Raddus in command of the fleet. You get some good beats, some reversals, and the eventual victory -> oh poo poo vader.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:33
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Zoran posted:Why are all the dogfights in the sequels so bad? Because they're directed by 20 year old previs artists.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:34
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Vinylshadow posted:Give me a Finn/Poe comic series at least Just make a romantic comedy comic series.
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Jan 1, 2020 22:43
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Halloween Jack posted:My initial impression of Episode IX, which time and reflection hasn't really changed, is that it's a Star Wars ripoff that just so happens to be an official Star Wars movie. Palpatine starting the movie as a force ghost and then gaining corpulence at the end is the same idea that I had. Having him start off as a zombie(?) gets a little too close to parody for me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sFbLppuhhs) Also I forgot that after I saw TFA and until the end of TLJ, I thought that Snoke was just Palpatine hiding out under a new name. Turns out he was just a really ugly test tube baby!
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Jan 1, 2020 22:44
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Zoran posted:Why are all the dogfights in the sequels so bad? OT: "What's the story function of this shot?" [Small group of beardy VFX boffins start sweating as they try to figure out how the gently caress they're going to make this one happen] The chase through the crashed Star Destroyer in TFA to me said everything early in the film. It's a hyperactive remake of something from the OT told at three times the speed with the camera weaving this way and that, and ultimately it amounts to nothing because they go in, they come out, and the situation hasn't changed. Did Rey use her knowledge of the SD's guts to trick a TIE pilot into crashing? That would have been good and clever, but nope. It's just "wouldn't it be cool if the Falcon flew into a Star Destroyer?!?"
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Jan 1, 2020 22:49
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boyega/Finn should’ve been the star of the trilogy. it should’ve been his story. honestly though imagine a trilogy that was about a child soldier stormtrooper turned reluctant rebel who learns he’s force sensitive and makes a run for it then gets swept up in the rebellion after his escape with his dashing new pilot buddy Poe. maybe the pilot was on a mission to find this girl named Rey who’s a lost Jedi of Luke’s new Jedi Order. maybe when they find her it turns outs she doesn’t need saving and is in fact on the trail of some real poo poo, having gone out on her own to chase this lead after inaction on the part of the Jedi Council then the three of them return to Luke with news of this real poo poo: reports of fleet movements and mysterious attacks on Imperial Remnant occupied Outer Rim colonies by forces calling themselves the First Order. maybe they find out those forces are emerging from the Unknown Regions and are led by a maybe Sith/Dark Jedi named Kylo Ren who may or it turns out may have a past with Rey that she isn’t letting on. i realized almost immediately this is just slightly remixed KOTOR but hey, KOTOR is a solid Star Wars story and you can fit better versions of all the ST characters into it pretty neatly where they all get to hang out, have agency, and have poo poo to do. plus you can still do a TLJ style older embittered Luke of terrified of repeating the mistakes of the past. pay me disney
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Jan 1, 2020 22:55
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You know its lucky that Moff Tarkin died otherwise Leia would have fallen in love with him. Isn't that what you usually do when you get tortured to poo poo by someone in the SW universe?
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Jan 1, 2020 22:59
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Yeah, those scenes between Leia and Tarkin with their shared Force connection helped sell the idea. That shared empathy through the Force also leading Leia to try and turn Tarkin back to the light because she felt his inner conflict? Strong rear end narrative work there imo.
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Jan 1, 2020 23:15
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happyhippy posted:You know its lucky that Moff Tarkin died otherwise Leia would have fallen in love with him. I don't believe it is. Leia wasn't tortured by Han and Padme wasn't tortured by Anakin, unless you count having to listen to him say George Lucas dialogue
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Jan 1, 2020 23:35
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Payndz posted:ST: "What's the coolest thing that could happen in this shot?" [Army of VFX geeks set to work rendering it, riffing off each other to add extra cool stuff as they go] Hyperactive, 3x the speed, "running hard as gently caress" weaving everywhere with quick cuts is the only thing Abrams has to his style. It's in MI3, it's in Star Trek, it's everywhere for him because its all he knows to make "exciting things" happen on the screen and use for tension somehow.
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Jan 1, 2020 23:37
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Currently, my favourite Official Star Wars Pastiche is "playing the arcade mode of Battlefront II while waiting for the story mode to load." I can be Kylo Ren or, even better, the Stormtrooper With Extra-Fancy Gun.
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Jan 1, 2020 23:48
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Even back in TFA, it was obvious that they would waste the character of Finn by the way the film treated stormtroopers. We learn Finn is a stormtrooper... Cool! So, they're just normal dudes that can be redeemed. But then in every action scene, JJ includes a hundred shots of stormtroopers being blown up. The camera gleefully lingers on stormtrooper bodies being blown skyward by Chewie's bowcaster shots. Bodies flying everywhere because that's fun to watch, but what about Finn? How can they pick up his storyline while treating stormtroopers as faceless targets to be blown up? The answer is, JJ cares way more about putting kinetic motion on screen than he does about any character poo poo whatsoever
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Jan 1, 2020 23:59
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Polo-Rican posted:Even back in TFA, it was obvious that they would waste the character of Finn by the way the film treated stormtroopers. We learn Finn is a stormtrooper... Cool! So, they're just normal dudes that can be redeemed. I feel the problem with this stems more from the whole "First Order personnel are abducted children" bit that the trilogy never really does anything with than it does from Finn's concept as a stormtrooper who defects/flees after being ordered to execute civilians. His story would make more sense in the OT era, or if the First Order's soldiers were conscripts instead of kidnapped children. Emrikol fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Jan 2, 2020 |
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Jan 2, 2020 00:07
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I just realized a couple more things about TROS: 1) The 2) Nobody has mentioned the droid with the big tire that Rey(?) I think fixes, which does nothing in the whole movie except be in there for Disney to move more toys Lol
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Jan 2, 2020 00:11
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Feldegast42 posted:I just realized a couple more things about TROS: 1. Yep, although I guess it’s implied that there is some time passage, since Rei is in training. 2. Doesn’t he have some part in figuring out where the sith homework’s is?
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Jan 2, 2020 01:07
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the purpose of d-0 seems to be a.) making half the plot pointless and b.) letting jj abrams voice something
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Jan 2, 2020 01:10
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feedmyleg posted:Because they're directed by 20 year old previs artists. Working off of nearly nothing because they're starting work on it six months before there's even a script done, JJ just shows up once or twice a week and says "looks good" or "maybe add more X-Wings here" before he has to run out and do seven hundred different things because there's approximately twenty months until the movie has to be an actual released product. Gatts posted:Hyperactive, 3x the speed, "running hard as gently caress" weaving everywhere with quick cuts is the only thing Abrams has to his style. It's in MI3, it's in Star Trek, it's everywhere for him because its all he knows to make "exciting things" happen on the screen and use for tension somehow. There's a Hitchcock quote that amounts to him explaining the most concrete rule he would follow: the camera doesn't move unless the characters do (or otherwise to highlight something in a larger scene than one framing allows), and it only moves to follow them. If you don't, you're not giving breathing room for the audience to figure out the geometry of a scene, to read the visual cues - who's in a dominant position? Is there an object that seems important, highlighted somehow? Any cute little details that'll crawl into the back of your mind and have you going "oh ho ho, you loving miscreant, I see what you did there" on the drive home or when you're half-asleep a day after watching it? Take Rear Window, which does feature camera movement - from the opening shot looking across the way from Jeffries's apartment, panning to Jeffries, asleep, panning down to his casted-up broken leg, and then moving across the room to fill the frame with the broken camera - passing by the shot he took with that camera that led to the situation he's in, and afterwards a pan over a dozen other pictures to tell us, hey, he's a bit of a hound for excitement, ending on a negative print of Lisa, as well as the LIFE magazine cover she's on promoting Paris fashions, telling us that while the rest of the world sees her as beauty, he sees her as terrifying (because, y'see, commitment scares the poo poo out of him, as we'll find out). He gets a phone call, his editor or agent or whoever calling to congratulate him on getting the cast taken off. Jeffries glances up to the rooftop where two young women are preparing to do something, then he mentions "hey, I don't want to get this cast taken off, really, because then I'll have to get married to Lisa like I promised her and that'll really be the end of my career". In neither of these shots does Hitch move the camera - there's no necessity to do it. No whip pans, just a cut that follows Jeffries glancing up to that roof, giving us his subjective view of the goings-on up there (also establishing that from his vantage point, context is threadbare at best, which will feed into the central conflict that arises once Hitch has set the table). When Lisa finally does arrive to nurse her should-be fiance, the established geography and geometry of this set has already been made, and the audience can almost subconsciously pick up on Lisa moving around in the space between Jeffries and his broken camera, reminding us that he feels like she's a constant blockade to him getting back to the exciting life he led up until that race car hit him. When she enters and puts down her things, the camera is right there, in a static shot, spatially visible as being closer to Jeffries than she is. Then, the camera finally moves - when she does, to track her walking forward with the cigarette box, stepping between Jeffries and his beloved camera, and the camera then only proceeds to move when capturing Grace Kelly or Jimmy Stewart moving (and since Jimmy is wheelchair bound, it... never really moves a lot when it's on him, instead generally moving by cuts to not bore us with the same composition each time). Otherwise, the scenes take place in simple close one shots, wider two shots, masters as needed. Simple film language used effectively. And it carries through the whole film. JJ Abrams has seemingly never heard of this rule. He instead learned that "to make something exciting, make it go fast". Which is true - standing on ground level watching a race is exciting, but there's also the long buildup as it goes around the rest of the track before zooming by you again. Tension, and release. JJ ain't much interested in the tension, on a purely spectacle level, and that's where his failures as a filmmaker take root. It's not a solely JJ problem - one could argue it's a problem with a lot of directors, especially ones that come up the further and further we get from Hitchcock and Lang and other people who worked in silent pictures and learned/developed techniques that conveyed exposition and story visually, rather than audibly - but no one really gets as big a swing as JJ does, or as many times.
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Jan 2, 2020 01:13
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I'm of the impression that JJ is addicted to making Trailer Moments. Shots like Rey facing down BenRen in the desert, lightsaber vs fighter - a cool shot in isolation, but the movie is blatantly distorted so that he can fit that sequence into it. Not only does Rey run down to the desert for pretty much no reason, but then Kylo gets in an incredibly bad accident which is completely ignored so that they can move on to the next plot beat, which is *another* cool dramatic moment that is then made utterly pointless to conform to the actual plot.
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Jan 2, 2020 01:23
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Did anyone else think that after Ben healed Rey and died that Rey would heal Ben and they'd kiss again and then Rey would die and they would just spend the next 20 minutes of the movie swapping life forces?
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Jan 2, 2020 01:26
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Tom Tucker posted:Did anyone else think that after Ben healed Rey and died that Rey would heal Ben and they'd kiss again and then Rey would die and they would just spend the next 20 minutes of the movie swapping life forces? This would be very close to the ending of Tales of Berseria, lol
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Jan 2, 2020 02:01
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Hey Rey thanks for bringing and burying out lightsabers here. I have very fond memories of discovering the charred remains of my Aunt and Uncle, the only family I knew, in this exact spot, and I know my sister loves returning to the planet she only knows about because she was a sex slave for a giant slug. Age of Ultron, another bloated and rushed movie, managed to be just OK instead of awful because it actually had some discipline and respect for the audience, no moment more clear than at the end when they had Captain America say "Avengers..." and leave the rest unsaid. While Rey being a Skywalker makes no drat sense as some sort of thematic conclusion to the movie or trilogy or universe it would have landed so much better to just leave it unsaid "Rey who?" Rey looks at Luke and Leia, Luke and Leia smile, Rey smiles, end credits. I spent this movie looking desperately for some sort of thread or something I could hold onto but it was so drat jarring jumping from one thing to another because if they let any of the actual scenes or plot points breathe and pause a moment you'd realize they make zero sense and only happen because we need character A to be at location 2. It suffered even more so because we had all just watched the Mandalorian tell an effective and character-driven star wars story and so the comparison was sitting right there. Yeesh. Hey look "people" showed up with all their spaceships to fight. (40 seconds later) oh Palpatine just zapped them all so much for that moment that was supposed to be meaningful and cathartic it is now made meaningless. Too bad we had to do it 40 seconds later because otherwise you'd stop to think hey why didn't these guys show up in the last movie? The only thing that's changed is the situation is WAY worse and the odds of survival are somehow even lower. All the middle fingers to Johnson holy moly. The catching the lightsaber, Rose getting sent offscreen and then faced with an identical moral dilemna (Finn sacrificing himself again) and making the exact opposite choice, hand-waving away the fact that ships can become insane weapons with hyperpace jumps as "one in a million" just wow I want to hear an oral history of the writing of this trilogy. Thanks for listening everyone I just got around to watching the movie!
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Jan 2, 2020 02:27
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:I'm of the impression that JJ is addicted to making Trailer Moments. Shots like Rey facing down BenRen in the desert, lightsaber vs fighter - a cool shot in isolation, but the movie is blatantly distorted so that he can fit that sequence into it. Not only does Rey run down to the desert for pretty much no reason, but then Kylo gets in an incredibly bad accident which is completely ignored so that they can move on to the next plot beat, which is *another* cool dramatic moment that is then made utterly pointless to conform to the actual plot. I actually enjoyed the trailer, it was pretty great even though you could tell the movie was gonna be poo poo. The emotional moments of the film hit much more effectively in trailer form too, like that C3PO friends bit which in the movie just felt like wtf you barely even know these kids.
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Jan 2, 2020 04:35
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Papercut posted:I actually enjoyed the trailer, it was pretty great even though you could tell the movie was gonna be poo poo. The emotional moments of the film hit much more effectively in trailer form too, like that C3PO friends bit which in the movie just felt like wtf you barely even know these kids. They could actually done something there by have c-3p0 say he's not referring to them, he's living in his memories, taking one last time to reflect on the people he genuinely does consider friends in a film where you aren't immediately going to undo it and you want to.play it serious. You could have him flashing back to moments of the OT in a perfect world where Carrier Fisherisnt dead and youn dont CGI abomination, her and Hans wedding, maybe like founding his order. Moments that he got to witness as an effective immortal, memories fading away so that, for the sake OF those memories, new heroes can progress and bring peace once more. A final barn traded between him and R2 before he's gone. And then you don't bring him back, you don't make it a joke, and maybe you have something that MEANS something.
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Jan 2, 2020 04:51
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Its really really bad on such a staggering number of levels and the person I use as my pop culture "is this mainstream successful" is livid. I know its a personal opinion but the lightsaber fights despite happening constantly looked like poo poo and had zero dramatic weight. They all felt like taking the worst parts of the original trilogy and prequel trilogies fights to make something that looks slow and badly choreographed.
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Jan 2, 2020 04:55
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:I'm of the impression that JJ is addicted to making Trailer Moments .
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Jan 2, 2020 05:04
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I thought the fight between Kylo and Rey here was decent, it was interesting dynamic where the good character is trying to kill the evil one and the evil one is actually just trying to reach her emotionally. It had no good follow up and it has nothing on the fight in the throne room of TLJ, but I liked it for what it was.
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Jan 2, 2020 05:51
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The best part of TROS is that absolutely nothing of value happens, so I can just ignore its existence and have a head canon that ends with the only good Star War, TLJ.
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Jan 2, 2020 06:10
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TheLoquid posted:The best part of TROS is that absolutely nothing of value happens, so I can just ignore its existence and have a head canon that ends with the only good Star War, TLJ. Also true. Just come up with your own ending. I mean as a Trek fan I already have practice ignoring awful movie entries. 
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Jan 2, 2020 06:26
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:I'm not sure I buy this. JJ Abrams would be the worst person to play a "yes, and..." improv game with.
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Jan 2, 2020 06:43
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Eimi posted:Also true. Just come up with your own ending. I mean as a Trek fan I already have practice ignoring awful movie entries. Like Star Trek Nemesis, for example... 
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Jan 2, 2020 06:44
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Take this with a boulder of salt, but there are more details coming out on how this movie was put together.quote:Since shortly after release weekend, I’ve been corresponding with someone who worked closely on the production of TROS and works for one of the major companies I cannot disclose here. I have verified the source to my satisfaction. To protect the source, I am rewording what we spoke about over the last two weeks and am submitting it to you in bullet point format I have written based on what they told me. The TLDR is that they were upset with the final product of TROS and wanted to share their perspective on how it went down and where it went wrong.
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Jan 2, 2020 07:49
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I like how even in the super sympathetic bullet list, the movie they describe doesn't sound very good.
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Jan 2, 2020 08:00
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