Star Wars [2]

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Lance!! Great to see you back- Figg been in fits wondering where you'd got to you know.
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((((  I have really ))))))

Sorry - don't get much of a chance to get on here these days. Too much to do!! Nice to pop by every once and a while like nothing is different though.

Good to hear you are busy Lance, though that's no surprise with your jet setting, city business and being a secret agent to Queen Tinuviel (even if you do seem to have currently lost all track of her in Scotshobbitland   ). But hope you can pop by as often as possible.

Yes, please get back to tracking down Tin!

davidjoneshoward wrote:
also, my main problems with Return of the Jedi, that they basically sit around and do nothing, with little to no character development, can easily be summed up with this article:

http://www.lasertimepodcast.com/2015/11/11/the-return-of-the-jedi-we-should-have-seen/

Interesting article, as a child ROTJ was my favourite, and even now I have a soft spot for it (the speeder bike chase, and the final confrontation with the Emperor are two of my favourite scenes in the saga), though it's clearly the weakest film of the three, the acting (Ford clearly stopped giving a shit by the end of the film, not surprising as Han as pretty neutered in the film), pacing and cinematography don't match the level of the prior films, and for such a short movie it crams alot into its plot,if it were made today I could see it being split into two films...

Actually, looking back on The Force Awakens, I'm starting to feel royally ripped off.  

With the exception of Return of the Jedi mentioned above (which still at least gave us Jabba), and the Revenge of the Sith which I only watched once, there was always a sense of wonder at new worlds discovered.
- New Hope of course was pure discovery
- Empire Strikes Back has Hoth, Degaba with Yoda, Cloud City
- Phantom Menace actually had a beautiful Planet and cities, with a whole new look at Tatooie
- Clone Wars had Coruscant, the water clone world, and whatever that world with the bugs was

Force Awakens, the new planets didn't feel NEW, there was no sense of discovery.  The cultures didn't feel new.  Say what you want about Jar-Jar, at least he was something different.  

In the discovery department we pretty much got shafted.

I reckon this film was playing safe. maybe the next one can blow our socks off in the amazing new planet department. I haven't seen it yet though. going to wait until the Christmas rush is over.

Oh, I understand the reasoning. But I can still kvetch about it!

So go see it expecting to be fulfilled as a fan; just not with wonder.

(OK, Daisy's big round eyes fill me with wonder. From watching interviews it's clear that's not their natural state).

I think the default state is a small eye to grin ratio.

Loose ends tied up, though some of the sources are not clear:

https://www.yahoo.com/movies/star-wars-the-force-awakens-ultimate-faq-164511371.html

I saw the movie last night with my sister!  

The Good:
It was a quality movie! I liked most of the cast quite a lot. Ridley's character was cool, and Boyega's character was fun. Seeing the original cast members didn't grab me like it must have for fans of the series, but it was still nice seeing Han Solo and Chewbacca (although I couldn't help but wonder what Chewie's family was up to back home, if you know what I mean  ).
The villains were pretty fun too. I had known that Domnhall Gleeson was in the film, but assumed that he was going to play a good character. It was entertaining therefore, to see him 

Spoiler:

Also, Thomas Brodie-Sangster had one of the shortest first-appearance-to-character-death spans it's possibly to have in a movie as a First Order officer who gets blown away about 5 seconds after we first see him. 
I only know Adam Driver from the tv show Girls. In that he plays a rather manic but self-driven boyfriend of the main character. He's my favourite part of that show, so I really enjoyed his scenes in this film (particularly when we actually got to the parts where he showed emotion with his helmet off). 

Spoiler:

The best parts of the movie for me were when it was having fun. I mean it had some solid dramatic sequences, and those were impactful.
I loved how the first scene with the attack on the camp on Jekku had pretty much just practical special effects. I had known to expect not as much CGI going into the movie, and this sort of scene was, simply put, just comforting in its believable-looking action. 

So the drama worked well when, say,

Spoiler:

But what I enjoyed the most was when, say,

Spoiler:

Of course there were good action scenes early in the movie. The bit on the cargo ship with the tentacular-thingums was silly but fun too. The chases did not go on too long, and the destruction of 

Spoiler:

But I just thought the movie was more effective when it wasn't trying for a serious tone.

Spoiler:

The Bad: 
Oscar Isaac was, I thought, rather underused. I've seen him recently in so many dramas (Ex Machina, A Most Violent Year, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Two Faces of January, Drive) that I have a solid handle on what kind of emotional range he tends to portray. It's rather underwhelming, therefore, to see his most emotional moment to be

Spoiler:

Christie-what's-her-name (Brienne from Game of Thrones) kind of took me out of the movie. We never got to see her face, but that kind of made it worse because I just imagined Brienne under there. I don't know. Considering that she was put out in the advertising for the film as A NEW VILLAIN OF STAR WARS having her denigrated to a faceless figure with few lines was kind of lame.

Visible Spoilers Below!!

Perhaps if I had actually seen the rest of the Star Wars films more recently, I would be more appreciative of the lore and universe-building of the saga. But as it is, I can't help but feel that the world of Star Wars is kind of small. For obvious reasons the use of warp-drives or whichever shrinks distances between worlds (and this, in space, is a really good thing.) But coming from the perspective of Tolkien, the movie just doesn't feel like anything more than a home-made fantasy sci-fi that is primarily concerned with only ever two main sides (the Empire/Sith/First Order and the Rebels/Republic/Jedi) and for whom all the endless possibilities that alien races can offer never really means anything other than, "Hey, look at how many different types of aliens we can fit into this bar! That one looks like a hairy giant mosquito, and that one is part machine, and those ones are playing a game. And haha, that cow-monster has a giant butt!" 


Apart from the brief bit with the tentacle-balls of eyeing doom not a single one of the aliens does ANYTHING that would not be done by a human nor even shows off any abilities that make it effectively different from anyone else. This can only strike me as incredibly unimaginative. I mean, I know that 95% of Classic Who monsters were after the exact same thing (take over human base/planet/society in order to spread their own kind across the world/return to their former power) but at least they had interestingly different ways of doing it! 
(Alright mostly they just had invisible powers that made the Doctor wince and groan dramatically, or they held out a claw and Sarah Jane/anonymous man with a gun walked into it and started choking). 
If I were to run a game of D&D and I prepared, say, 5 different types of monsters so that some had wings, some burrowed under the ground, some cast lasers from their eyes, and some exploded into poisonous balls of gas. But then I took all those different creatures, gave them all clubs, and had them move toward the nearest Player Character and hit it repeatedly til it died, I would be a terrible storyteller!
What is the point of all this variety if none of it really means anything?   
I mean, I loved when the fish-dude was talking, because it was hilarious and great, but all those aliens in the bar-scene felt absolutely pointless. The residents could have all been sock-puppets and the dynamics of the scene would not have changed one bit. 

Perhaps the "smallness" that I felt relates to how we didn't get to see any new planets.   

I didn't really mind the CGI bits either, though. The chase on Jekku went on a little long perhaps, but it may have just been the over-loud speakers in the theater that annoyed me there. And the final fire-fight over the Bringer of Doom-Planet was only gratuitious when they started flying through the trenches. 

The Ugly:
HOWEVER, and speaking of trenches, the Uncanny Valley was indeed dabbled in too much when it came to a certain mouldy pea-soup small character. I don't know why dwarfed ancient wrinkly non-human-looking wisdom-dispensing creatures are entirely necessary for every film in this series, but the whats-her-name, Maz Kanata, character was unsettling to say the least. 
Snooki, or Tuco, or Snape? I forget his name. He was not so bad because of the shadowy surroundings, and the funny size-trick with the hologram that made him look like a giant (and this I was actually disappointed about. Speaking to my earlier comment about how Star Wars has aliens rather pointlessly, it would have been nice to have a giant in the movie!) And go figure that if there were a giant creature in Star Wars Andy Serkis would be the one to play it.

And, sadly enough, the dread Screech of Wilhelm cause me to shake my head at why major feature films still sport this ridiculous thing in the midst of their films.
I mean, people recognize it when they hear it, instinctively. It's not just an insider-joke or tongue-in-cheek thing like when Game of Thrones makes Monty Python jokes wherein you usually have to be told about it rather than catch it yourself.
Did everyone else hear it? I don't want to think that I'm projecting the stock scream onto films that don't contain it. It wasn't as glaringly in-your-face obvious as An Unexpected Journey, but it was still there. It happened when Finn and (Poe?) were escaping in the T.I.E. Fighter. 

I also wish that I had known that the junk-trader on Jekku was Simon Pegg. If nothing else it would have made the scenes a bit more tongue-in-cheek enjoyable!

Anyway, that's as many of my thoughts as I feel entitled to share at this time. Whew!

P.S.
I have just found out that the Wilhelm Scream only rose to popularity due to its inclusion in one of the original Star Wars films. This makes its inclusion in TFA excusable I'd say. Now its presence in a film based on Tolkien ON THE OTHER HAND!!! 

P.P.S.
CRIPES! Apparently Jackson also included it in two of the LOTR films. 
Wow I wonder which two... 

Good to hear your thoughts, Forest, and glad you liked the movie overall.

That's an interesting point you make about the creatures, but you could also make the same point for aliens in the Mos Eisley cantina. While it might add something to the story to make them a little less humanoid, ultimately they're not the focus of the story. And I agree about Maz Kanata, upon second viewing when Han enters the building all I could think was, "Oh I have to sit through this scene again." But Rey's vision scene really makes up for it, IMO.

I have just found out that the Wilhelm Scream only rose to popularity due to its inclusion in one of the original Star Wars films - Forest

You don't know how good it feels for me to finally have a named scream to hate, not just "that damn scream again". Thanks, Forest, I list this among my top discoveries of 2015

I missed the Wilhelm Scream in the movie. When was it?

bungobaggins wrote:I missed the Wilhelm Scream in the movie. When was it?

It was in the TIE fighter hangar during the escape scene at the beginning.  The Wilhelm generally annoys me but after its hideous usage in DOS-EE (during the supposedly dramatic death of a named character), I was like "at least they used it in a sensible manner".  It's also much subtler/softer in the sound mix; doesn't stand out so much compared to PJ's usage of it.

Forest Shepherd wrote:P.S.
I have just found out that the Wilhelm Scream only rose to popularity due to its inclusion in one of the original Star Wars films. This makes its inclusion in TFA excusable I'd say. Now its presence in a film based on Tolkien ON THE OTHER HAND!!! 

P.P.S.
CRIPES! Apparently Jackson also included it in two of the LOTR films. 
Wow I wonder which two... 

I too am sorta willing to cut Star Wars more slack on this, but I do think that the Wilhelm is way too over-exposed to retain much value as an easter egg/calling card. Maybe I'm just being a hipster on this, but yeah, I think it's too recognizable.

Apparently Jackson was unaware of the Wilhelm until he was doing post on TTT in 2002, or I'm sure he would have included it in FOTR as well. The scream is uttered by an elf falling to his death at Helm's Deep and a Haradrim being flung off the oliphaunt by Legolas in ROTK.

Fake edit: apparently it was also uttered by a Gondorian solder getting tossed around by a Ringwraith, though I had forgotten that one.

Well, I like to think I'm more attuned to the Wilhelm Scream than the average viewer, especially after LOTR and TH, and the fact that I didn't notice it after two viewings probably says something about its place in the sound mix.

Good review Forest, it's nice to hear your thoughts on it (and the same to you Lance!).

Forest Shepherd wrote:Christie-what's-her-name (Brienne from Game of Thrones) kind of took me out of the movie. We never got to see her face, but that kind of made it worse because I just imagined Brienne under there. I don't know. Considering that she was put out in the advertising for the film as A NEW VILLAIN OF STAR WARS having her denigrated to a faceless figure with few lines was kind of lame

I kinda wonder if this was done deliberately as a parallel to Boba Fett and Darth Maul. Both of those guys had really cool designs, merchandising out the ass, and tons of fanboy hype way out of proportion with the actual films, where they have only a handful of lines and go out like punks. Phasma dying in a trash compactor would be in keeping with that weird tradition. But I kinda expect her to have escaped in some ridiculous manner to feature in future films, which come to think of it, would actually perpetuate the analogy even further (in the EU, Boba Fett cut his way out of the Sarlacc and Darth Maul came back with robot spider legs).

Perhaps if I had actually seen the rest of the Star Wars films more recently, I would be more appreciative of the lore and universe-building of the saga. But as it is, I can't help but feel that the world of Star Wars is kind of small. For obvious reasons the use of warp-drives or whichever shrinks distances between worlds (and this, in space, is a really good thing.) But coming from the perspective of Tolkien, the movie just doesn't feel like anything more than a home-made fantasy sci-fi that is primarily concerned with only ever two main sides (the Empire/Sith/First Order and the Rebels/Republic/Jedi) and for whom all the endless possibilities that alien races can offer never really means anything other than, "Hey, look at how many different types of aliens we can fit into this bar! That one looks like a hairy giant mosquito, and that one is part machine, and those ones are playing a game. And haha, that cow-monster has a giant butt!" 

Lack of scale has unfortunately been a recurring issue in Star Wars films, though never nearly as bad as it was in TFA. The SW hyperdrive can pretty clearly take you across most of the Galaxy in a matter of hours at most, which is kinda ridiculous, but considering that our current understanding of physics rules out all FTL technology I don't mind that much. Them coming out of hyperspace a few hundred feet above the Starkiller Base's surface kinda bugged me since previous fluff had talked about gravity wells as a barrier to hyperspace travel, but that doesn't ruin the movie for me or anything. But I do think it's in keeping with Abrams' habit (from the ST films) of really flashy instances of disregarding science in favor of dramatic visuals (when the OT did stuff like this, like having the Falcon travel between star systems at sub-light speeds, it was subtler about it and you didn't necessarily notice the impossibility until thinking about the film later).

The most ridiculous aspect of minimalism in TFA is of course the scene where the Starkiller Base fires on the Hosnian system. It's unclear to me if we're meant to assume that the projectile travelled the entire distance at sub-light speeds, though it does appear to do so in the film. But the planets of the system are all super close together and the entire thing is visible from Maz Kanata's planet as if it was located closer than most of the planets of our solar system are to earth. Obviously we're not meant to think that the whole film took place in a single solar system, but it implies as much. Less smack-you-in-the-face obvious but actually more annoying to me is some of the worldbuilding type stuff. Apparently losing a single system is enough to wipe out the entire Republic, though it doesn't help that the situation in the broader Galaxy with the Republic and the First Order is pretty unclear without reading a lot of extraneous tie-in material. The original trilogy was pretty narrowly focused on its core characters (we never see the Empire's capital, for instance), but there's enough exposition (such as the conference room scenes in ANH) to establish the broad strokes of the Galaxy as a whole. With TFA, it doesn't really feel like there is a Galaxy beyond the planets we see on screen. One thing that I will give the prequels credit for is that they showed us a lot of the Galaxy and the events there felt like they were occurring in a larger context, though I was reading a lot of EU stuff as the prequels were coming out so I don't always remember how much is explicitly laid out in the films themselves.

The thing which annoyed me most was the pace of the film, there was hardly any breathing room, once things kicked into gear the film more or less descended into a series of set pieces strung together, (which was probably a very deliberate and cynical move on Disney's part) which is fine in an action blockbuster, but SW under Lucas weren't really action movies i.m.o.

Coupled with the recycled tropes and plot points from the original trilogy TFA strikes an odd (but very enjoyable, for me at least) balance between homage and re-boot rather than outright sequel, I think I'll make my final judgement based on how EP 8 turns out.

Force Awakens, the new planets didn't feel NEW, there was no sense of discovery. The cultures didn't feel new. Say what you want about Jar-Jar, at least he was something different.

In the discovery department we pretty much got shafted

One of the things I noticed second time round was the hyper energetic camerawork Abrams uses, obviously the shot, reverse shot and slows pans of the OT look pretty dated, but even so there were very few moments when he allowed the camera to linger or shot wide, letting us soak in the environment.

Eldorion wrote:One thing that I will give the prequels credit for is that they showed us a lot of the Galaxy and the events there felt like they were occurring in a larger context, though I was reading a lot of EU stuff as the prequels were coming out so I don't always remember how much is explicitly laid out in the films themselves.

Out of interest were you annoyed when they dropped the EU stuff? It was never exactly canon in the first place, but I know it peeved off alot of fans, I read two or three SW books when I was a kid, but I never really explored that stuff (though I plan to read the Thrawn trilogy soon)...I wonder if Disney is planning a Star Wars shared universe...

European Union stuff?

malickfan wrote:The thing which annoyed me most was the pace of the film, there was hardly any breathing room, once things kicked into gear the film more or less descended into a series of set pieces strung together, (which was probably a very deliberate and cynical move on Disney's part) which is fine in an action blockbuster, but SW under Lucas weren't really action movies i.m.o.

I think this is a good point. It's sometimes easy to forget (for me at least) how slowly paced parts of the OT are. The Tatooine scenes on ANH arguably drag a little bit (though nowhere near as much as in the script), and of course TESB is as carefully paced as Kershner could get it to be given the constraints he was working in.

Coupled with the recycled tropes and plot points from the original trilogy TFA strikes an odd (but very enjoyable, for me at least) balance between homage and re-boot rather than outright sequel, I think I'll make my final judgement based on how EP 8 turns out.

I feel kinda weird saying "wait and see how it plays out in the next film" since that was also a prequel defense (and also for TH), but I do feel it's kinda legitimate since TFA is obviously intended to be the first part of a larger story, and since it does so many other things well. It is a first for SW, having a trilogy-starter that will be fully integrated with the next two films, instead of being the odd one out in a "two part trilogy" structure.

One of the things I noticed second time round was the hyper energetic camerawork Abrams uses, obviously the shot, reverse shot and slows pans of the OT look pretty dated, but even so there were very few moments when he allowed the camera to linger or shot wide, letting us soak in the environment.

That's a really good point. There were a couple wide shots with Rey coming out of the crashed Star Destroyer, both from her perspective at the top of the sand slope and of the ship showing how huge those thrusters are. Those were really cool shots, both on their own and for what they imply/add to the broader universe. But unfortunately there weren't too many others like them in TFA.

malickfan wrote:Out of interest were you annoyed when they dropped the EU stuff? It was never exactly canon in the first place, but I know it peeved off alot of fans, I read two or three SW books when I was a kid, but I never really explored that stuff (though I plan to read the Thrawn trilogy soon)...I wonder if Disney is planning a Star Wars shared universe...

It had been a number of years since I was really into SW EU stuff for me, and I was never as passionate about that stuff as some of my friends growing up, so it didn't really bother me.  To be completely honest, a lot of the EU was trash, and the good stuff can still be read and enjoyed (a lot of it remains in print) regardless of its canonicity.  It was obvious that Disney was not going to constrain their new trilogy in the decades of post-ROTJ continuity that was already established, nor should they have.  It would have been ridiculous, basically tying the filmmakers' hands by their back just to appease a tiny percentage of the movie-going audience.  I guess my flippant attitude towards canon may come from my formative experiences in Tolkien fandom, where we have no real canon to speak of.  Reading THoME you get used to finding dope stories that you don't fit with the more famous parts of the franchise.  But that doesn't detract from those stories' own qualities.

There has been an ... awakening of Star Wars spin-off stories over the past year or so.  There are a bunch of novels in the new official sequel trilogy continuity.  The Marvel Star Wars comics (which were among the first SW things ever published) got relaunched with a bunch of new series.  And there's a currently airing animated show called Star Wars Rebels which, along with the CGI Clone Wars cartoon from a lot of the same guys, is part of the new canon too.  My understanding though is that Disney has done away with the old "levels" of canon and wants everything to remain entirely consistent in a single continuity.  That means they'll have to pace themselves and not publish anything taking place after the whatever the most recent movie to be released is, I suppose, but they seem to have put a lot of effort into planning this out.  As far as I know, all the Old Republic stuff (and the other pre-movie eras) was thrown out too, but since it's chronologically in the past I dunno if they'll resurrect any of it.  On that note, it's worth noting that

TFA spoilers:

Forest Shepherd wrote:European Union stuff?

Expanded Universe.  The old term for all the books, comics, video games, TV shows, and other assorted "fluff" outside of the six main movies.  It got thrown out by Disney after they bought Lucasfilm, with the exception of the CGI Clone Wars movie and TV show, although they promptly cancelled the show so that the crew could work on Rebels instead (and cause the show was really expensive, with Lucas paying for its insane production values out of his own pocket).  There were SW novels and comics since 1976 (the year before the first film was released), though it quieted down by the mid-'80s and went dormant for a while.  Then in the early '90s, the Thrawn trilogy, about a former Imperial general fighting the New Republic several years after ROTJ, became an unexpected smash hit and revived interest in Star Wars, leading to an increase in new narrative material as well as a relaunch of the SW toy line in 1995.

Despite it never being as big as the films and a lot of people knowing nothing about it, the EU is actually responsible for Lucas' return to active involvement in Star Wars.  In 1996, a few years after Thrawn, there was a big multimedia project called Shadows of the Empire involving books, comics, special toys, a video game, and even a soundtrack.  The idea was to produce everything that would be associated with a major movie except the movie, to see how successful it would be.  It turned out to be pretty successful, so Lucas filmed a bunch of new material for the Special Editions of the original trilogy and experimented with some of the new digital effects he'd already tried out on The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.  The Special Editions brought in a bunch of money, proved people would still go to the theatre to see Star Wars, and even won back the all-time domestic box office crown for the original film, which it had lost to E.T. 15 years previously.  Then it was on to the prequels, and I think we all know the story after that.

Eldorion wrote:That's a really good point.  There were a couple wide shots with Rey coming out of the crashed Star Destroyer, both from her perspective at the top of the sand slope and of the ship showing how huge those thrusters are.  Those were really cool shots, both on their own and for what they imply/add to the broader universe.  But unfortunately there weren't too many others like them in TFA.

Another that stands out to me, but that did not last nearly long enough, was the wide-angle shot of (Do we need spoilers stll?) 

Spoiler:

And oh my gosh, did anyone else feel the need to giggle and punch someone in the shoulder when the fish-dude showed up??