Re: the Star Wars mega-thread

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Solo wasn't too bad. It's a good heist film. It's not really a Star Wars film, but if you take it as it's own thing it's enjoyable. I was happy they didn't overindulge the nostalgia like they did with Rogue One. Sure, they still deemed it necessary to hit just about every beat of something Han said once in a film (winning the Falcon, the Kessel Run, the gangster on Tatooine with a big job, and so on).

The Last Jedi was the film the series needed, but it could have been executed a lot better. They needed to move on and stop relying so much on the past. I was glad to see where the series went. The narrative of the film itself had some pretty poor pacing issues though, and some shit that just didn't make any sense. But I give them props for trying. At least it wasn't a retread designed to give fanboy's hardons like Force Awakens and especially Rogue One.
Just cut them up like regular chickens

Re: the Star Wars mega-thread

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I don't mind that they are adding more women and minorities to Star Wars and all the crap that Mens Rights Activists and stupid 4channers complain about. I want to see them move the story past the Skywalker family and expand the Star Wars story.

But TLJ is a shitty film. The stupid jokes at the beginning are immediately off-putting. Then the central part of the plot is about a group of ships trying to slowly outrun some bigger ships before they run out of fuel - this does not make for a really exciting sci-fi story. And they had to give every character some sort of plotline, so you wind up with garbage like the casino planet that doesn't really add to the main story (it's like 20 minutes of nonsense so that Finn can fall in love with what's-her-name and sympathize with other people being oppressed). The best parts were the training with Luke and Rey, and they had to make Luke behave totally out of character for that part. The whole thing is a mess.

Re: the Star Wars mega-thread

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darkness wrote:Solo wasn't too bad. It's a good heist film. It's not really a Star Wars film, but if you take it as it's own thing it's enjoyable. I was happy they didn't overindulge the nostalgia like they did with Rogue One. Sure, they still deemed it necessary to hit just about every beat of something Han said once in a film (winning the Falcon, the Kessel Run, the gangster on Tatooine with a big job, and so on).

The Last Jedi was the film the series needed, but it could have been executed a lot better. They needed to move on and stop relying so much on the past. I was glad to see where the series went. The narrative of the film itself had some pretty poor pacing issues though, and some shit that just didn't make any sense. But I give them props for trying. At least it wasn't a retread designed to give fanboy's hardons like Force Awakens and especially Rogue One.
Watched SOLO this afternoon. Can't really disagree with any of this.
This is a snakeskin jacket. And for me it's a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom.

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"Hey kids, remember all those movies you loved? We hope by front-loading this trailer with them you'll forget our more recent efforts and come see this new one. Please, we have toys to sell!"
[youtube][/youtube]
Just cut them up like regular chickens

Re: the Star Wars mega-thread

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Might as well be complete and post this:
[youtube][/youtube]

Me: "This actually looks good."
Also me: Remembers when I said the same thing about the Phantom Menace and Last Jedi trailers. You won't fool me again Star Wars.
Just cut them up like regular chickens

Re: the Star Wars mega-thread

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We took our kids to see Rise of Skywalker on Sunday after re-watching Ep IV-VIII over the last month or so. We all enjoyed it quite a bit. It was definitely rushed and choppy pacing, but it wrapped things up nicely. I'm still not a fan of TLJ, and this one was much better. And it was fun to look over and see my daughter's reaction when:
it looked like Rey had died. She loves Rey so much, and she was sitting there with her mouth covered in shock, about to cry, and then she was so relieved when Ben healed her. My son was so happy too when you find out that Chewie isn't dead. It was a good reminder of being a kid in the 80s watching the originals and just enjoying Star Wars without it being some social/political platform for debate.

Re: the Star Wars mega-thread

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i feel the exact opposite. this is easily the most disappointing film of the franchise. also probably the most fan-service-y film i've ever seen. felt like "plot" decisions were made by reddit. actively and violently ignored all the great work rian did on TLJ (probably the first or second best in the franchise). threw it all out the window for shoving every possible memberberry in that the internet screamed for after TLJ. editing/pacing (especially the first 20 min) felt like they watched GoT season 8 and said "oh yeah? hold my beer". such a wasted opportunity forsaken for making the internet feel better.
the whole "we have 16 hours" thing was completely unnecessary. why give the audience a reason to keep doing the math and thinking "there's no fucking way"?
really, really dumb. felt like a checklist of every possible marker the average SW fan wanted them to hit rather than expanding on the groundwork laid in TLJ. more re-hashing of things. perhaps this is in the spirit of the original serials that gave lucas the idea, but that's not a good enough reason to give up trying to do something new and unique in this expansive world (which, much as there is to not like about them, is exactly what lucas tried to do with the prequel trilogy). supremely irritating film. TLJ was leaps and bounds better in every way.

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I stand by what I said about TLJ earlier. Good try, but a fail. This one, yeah, a lot of fan service. But I feel somewhat for Abrams as Johnson really painted him into a corner narratively. He didn't have a lot of places to go, considering this was supposed to be wrapping up not only the trilogy but the entire saga. The biggest fail of the Disney era is that they didn't plan the whole thing out more, and didn't stick to the plans they did have.
Just cut them up like regular chickens

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darkness wrote:He didn't have a lot of places to go, considering this was supposed to be wrapping up not only the trilogy but the entire saga.
this was (and should have stayed) a trilogy about rey and kylo. if someone felt like this had to be "wrapping up the entire saga", they shouldn't have bothered with new main characters at all. just bring everyone back and have new "helper" characters. it's the fact that they felt the need to completely abandon all the character development RJ advanced on TLJ to simply do exactly as you said that made it an utter failure for me. "hey, forget about all the plot lines and characters that had been established already, those people are going to act way out of character anyway and do things that are in direct opposition to existing plot threads. everyone is just here to serve you lando and tatooine (examples), they aren't real. hey, remember that asteroid belt scene? check THIS out! hey, remember how finn and rose had a whole thing? well that was so TLJ, which we don't want you to remember, so here's this new girl! finn doesn't even look for or hug rose when we 'win' now. hey, remember the floppy-eared horse things from TLJ? well, we're here to completely oppose TLJ in every way so here's some new, completely different horse things!"
speaking of which, they're on a planet full of ex-stormtroopers, and we only ever meet one of them (even though all of them join in the battle). and then for some reason she's amazed there's another ex-stormtrooper? then an arena full of sith - what, like 60k or so, just living under ground in these seats? they seem to always be there - watch what rey and ben do to their master and do absolutely nothing? all the intricate tunnels everyone had to fly through to get to that place, then all the cavalry can just hyperspace directly to the blue sky there? and why in mortal fuck would babu frick need to go on this mission, just to stick his head up and go "hey, remember me? i'm going to be a great toy!"? he can't contribute to the air battle in any possible way. and what was he doing anyway, riding on the floorboard of this thing, staring at feet?
fucking ridiculous. the more i think about it, the more i hate it.

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big d note wrote:I still don't see what you like so much about TLJ, but to each their own. I really agree with this guy's reviews of both TLJ and the new one:
https://www.salon.com/2019/12/20/star-w ... tting-end/
https://www.salon.com/2018/07/12/toxic- ... last-jedi/
i had to stop reading after this:
Watching "The Rise of Skywalker," I couldn't shake the sense that director J. J. Abrams, his co-screenwriter Chris Terrio and their co-storytellers Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow were working to undo the damage wrought by "The Last Jedi," which is why that film has to be mentioned quite a bit in this review. (There is more than speculation going on here, as both Abrams and Ridley have criticized that movie.) When you view this film directly after "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi," you feel like you've watched a three-act play in which the second act was crafted by an artist with a drastically different vision than the ones who wrote Act One and Act Three. That makes sense, given that J. J. Abrams also directed "The Force Awakens" while Rian Johnson wrote and directed "The Last Jedi." Overall it gives the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy a weirdly inconsistent tone, jumping from classical storytelling to meandering subversiveness, and then back to a classical approach.
"classical approach"? TFA was a straight remake of ANH. they had the opportunity to play in lucas' toybox and build new things in it, and gave us exactly what we had already seen. i gave that one a bit of a pass, as it felt more like an apology for the prequels than its own film. then RJ shows up and actually does bring new approaches to the franchise, and crazy things like character development and a new story. it laid the groundwork perfectly for a conclusion that we hadn't seen before. but everyone, like this fucking jerkoff, whined online because it threw their beloved religion out the window and did something new (like this whole thing should have been from the beginning) so JJ swooped in and gave us a film that somehow had more memberberrries than i knew could be crammed into one film. he clearly had a 78-page checklist of beats they had to hit, story or characters be damned. it's going to conclude exactly like everyone expected/knew it would, everything is going to be very expected, etc. RJ made a film about duality in people and reminded us that the SW universe was built by and and inhabited by people. JJ went right back to this huge, larger than life archetype (literally, he couldn't think of anything so he brought back
the main villain that everyone knows so they can have a warm, fuzzy belly of 'berries
) that serves no purpose other than to give familiar characters something familiar to do.

we went to TRoS directly after re-viewing TLJ. that was a huge error. this guy seems to hold up only the two films that were just fresh paint on an old car as bible and completely throw out the one film that worked on new concepts (for the SW universe). everything he says (to the point i had to stop reading before i punched my screen) that's a positive is exactly why this movie didn't work, and why it will be completely forgettable. imagine watching episodes 4-9 as a marathon. by the end you'll be wondering why you watched two of the films twice. so disappointing.

Re: the Star Wars mega-thread

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i just started reading his TLJ review and stopped almost immediately:
I also think the people who have been harassing Kelly Marie Tran, John Boyega, Rian Johnson and other creative individuals who helped make "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" are racist, sexist and all-around deplorable human beings (and I use the term "deplorable" quite deliberately here).
oh, right - got it. if you liked TLJ, you're a racist. here's our apology movie. yes i realize that's not what he's saying, but it's clearly the implication.
The problem with "The Last Jedi" is that it doesn't logically connect everything we saw from the previous movies with what happens in this one. As Mark Hamill himself pointed out, Luke Skywalker's (Hamill) abandonment of his belief in Jedi teachings directly contradicts his personality and actions from the original trilogy, and the backstory filled in here to explain his sudden turn is delivered in startlingly brief monologues instead of scenes that actually flesh out the character dilemmas they're meant to reveal.
these are movie characters, they can't possibly change as they get older, or be deeply, traumatically affected by what they went through in previous films. got it.

seriously, fuck this guy. his entire gripe is that luke isn't the same guy we already know? reviews like this are exactly why we got the boring-ass conclusion we did. i want to kick this guy in the nuts. and just as i was thinking, "i bet this guy also defends the girl ghostbusters film for the same reasons", he does. christ. these fucking SJWs can have their internet. i'm done.