Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Vympel »

ray245 wrote: Considering that Disney is inviting this kind of fans onto sets for publicity stunt AND hired a writer for SW: Rouge One with a history of posting comments like "George Lucas raped my childhood", I think that is something fairly apparent.

Although the writer was embarrassed when fans found out about it that he tried to delete all of his forum posts. This is the exact bunch of people that Lucasfilm under Kennedy were hiring.
I think the fact that he deleted his tweets (i.e. in an attempt to hide them from his bosses) would indicate that whoever hired him didn't hire him on the back of colourful tweets. In any event, he hasn't been attached to the film since January 2015.

Not to mention a lot of those tweets would hardly set the world on fire:

About the Special Editions:

I just want my original ROTJ ending with the original non-shitty Ewok victory music and non-shitty Hayden ghost Anakin.

Oh, and no Greedo shooting first, and no fucked-up Jabba’s palace GGI musical number and (etc etc)

About Yoda:

It’s so amazing to me how their ability to create a living breathing Yoda seemed to actually decrease even as the tools at their disposal improved. I agree the CGI Yoda wasn’t bad but the Ep I puppet was an abomination. Nothing comes close to the original though.

About not seeing Episodes VII-IX:

Having seen 1-3 maybe it’s for the best.

Worst change in the Special Editions:

Sorry that honor still goes to Greedo shooting first.

The A New Hope Jabba Scene:

Best way to improve it would be to remove it. I don’t know why Lucas ever felt we needed two scenes practically back-to-back that serve almost exactly the same purpose.

Some Prequel posts:

Obligatory joke about how Lucas already made Star Wars comedy, it’s called Episodes I-III, etc etc

I mean the OT. I don’t know what Revenge of the Sith is, is that fan fiction?

Guess what, those movies fucking sucked too.

Ripping the original editions:

OG editions of Episodes IV, V, and VI ACQUIRED! Ripping them to AppleTV this afternoon, then I plan to watch the trilogy the way I remember it! Fuck Lucas and his vandalized Blu-Rays. He’s turned us all into scavengers, scraping around in the trash cans of the internet for our childhoods.

He didn’t like Clone Wars either:

<---- sick of the clone wars.

His Get off My Lawn Post:

Was accused today by a twitter follower of boycotting the BDs because I am “old and jaded”. That motherfucker got BLOCKED.

People saying “I don’t like these changes but I’m still buying because I love Star Wars” have got it all backward. You’re putting up with this bullshit because you don’t love it enough!


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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Soontir C'boath »

Finally saw it at an IMAX theater. The visuals were fantastic and the characters were good, but golly the story was a snooze. There are only so many times I can watch X-Wings and stormtroopers, and of course the next big bad superweapon of the week... If I hadn't paid the matinee price, I think I would have felt cheated. I hope they do move on in the next movie to something more expansive.

Anyway, the main reason I wanted to post here is that Oscar Isaac looks like a young Bruce Campbell and I simply could not get that thought out of my head which reminds me I should watch the Evil Dead movies for nostalgia's sake.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Elfdart »

Vympel wrote:
Elfdart wrote:Don't bet on it. The baying mob is so toxic and obnoxious that Disney wouldn't dare cross them. Prequel bashers are the original GamerGaters, only without the charm or the rugged masculinity of the stalkers of Zoe Quinn.
How is that even remotely the same? Who are 'prequel bashers' running around the internet harassing?


I guess you didn't notice that GamerGate wasn't the only internet hate campaign ginned up by creepy internet fucktards against a person whose only "crime" is pissing off a man-child horde? Nope, no similarity whatsoever. The only difference is that Lucas, being filthy rich, can afford private security and office workers to keep his haters at bay while Zoe Quinn cannot.
That they're shit-to-mediocre films is an entirely mainstream opinion with very few dissenting voices of any real persuasive power.


I don't doubt that prequel-bashers are popular on the internet, along with 9/11 truthers, anti-vaccination nuts, holocaust deniers, global warming deniers, lolbertarians and other ass clowns. Oh, and the fucktards who think yukking it up over Glenn Frey's death and how they hate the Eagles makes them kewl (for the record, it doesn't). Yet only a neckbeard with an axe to grind would point to the ubiquity of these morons on the web as evidence that they are right and everyone else is wrong -in the face of actual evidence to the contrary.
The sole argument one could make for a crap film like TPM being popular as opposed to disliked was its box office success


Since that is the only objective standard, what would you propose as a measure? The voices in your head? Because everything else is a matter of opinion.
- something it never would have achieved if not for the existence of the Original Trilogy
Were it not for the Star Wars IP, plus Ford, Fisher and Hamill agreeing to do TFA, Disney would have been lucky to produce another John Carter.
(note the subsequent AotC going on to be the lowest grossing film of the PT and becoming the first SW film to be outgrossed in its year of release - surely an indication that the shine had come off).


I know, being only #90 on the all-time box office list is proof that the series had jumped the shark, and something Lucasfilm should be ashamed of. I mean, ANH faced stiffer competition with Smokey and the Bandit; TESB had to contend with 9 to 5 and Stir Crazy, while ROTJ had such formidable opposition as Terms of Endearment. The shame of not selling as many tickets as Spider-Man or The Two Towers must be unbearable.
Going by that reason alone (leaving aside all the other reasons why TFA is a far superior film to TPM - which are many), by that logic we would have to conclude that Disney made the right call with TFA - after all, its destroyed TPM's box office performance and is the highest grossing film in the franchise by a gargantuan amount only a month after its release.


It's earned $100 million more than TPM, but it cost almost three times as much to make and market:
Hollywood has repeatedly missed the mark with mindless remakes and sequels, but “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which cost an estimated $350 million to make and market, also represents an effort to improve the quality of mass-audience films.
TPM cost less...

Much less:
To help cool the overheated expectations, the advertising budget for ''The Phantom Menace'' is less than $20 million, not much for a film with a budget of $115 million competing in the blockbuster sweepstakes.
Get back to me when TFA earns almost three times as much as TPM.
And that's off the back of a 10 year period of prequel bashing, not a 16 year period of pining after the OT and a widespread belief TPM was going to be amazing.
It was amazing. Not that it mattered since media types and hipsters had already developed a hate-on for George Lucas long before the Special Editions, let alone the Prequels. The fact that many a man-child got bent out of shape because TPM was aimed at grade schoolers and not them only allowed the virus to spread to internet forums -including this one.
ray245 wrote:Considering that Disney is inviting this kind of fans onto sets for publicity stunt AND hired a writer for SW: Rouge One with a history of posting comments like "George Lucas raped my childhood", I think that is something fairly apparent.

Although the writer was embarrassed when fans found out about it that he tried to delete all of his forum posts. This is the exact bunch of people that Lucasfilm under Kennedy were hiring.
Strangely enough, when I coined Whitta as a verb describing the act of simultaneously trying to ride an artist's coattails while pissing on his leg, I had thought of referring to the act as Pegging, but that was already taken to describe another act that shouldn't be done in public. There really is something foul about the current owners of the franchise taking so many passive-aggressive shots at the guy who created it and sold it to them -and hiring others to do likewise. I doubt that if Pegg or Whitta had said similar things about Bob Iger that they would have been allowed on the premises.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Channel72 »

Elfdart wrote:I don't doubt that prequel-bashers are popular on the internet, along with 9/11 truthers, anti-vaccination nuts, holocaust deniers, global warming deniers, lolbertarians and other ass clowns.
???

Oh dear.

You seem to have profoundly lost touch with reality, if you genuinely think those things are in any way similar. You know, kittens are pretty popular on the Internet also. You might need to set some time aside to relax and look at kitten pictures.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Ender »

If there is an actual defense for the prequels, particularly for Attack of the Clones, I'd love to hear it. That's not a challenge for the aggro boys, it is a serious question, can anyone objectively defend them as acts of film?

The visual design sure, cinematography yeah, Lucas' use of extended visual metaphors absolutely (the battle of Geonosis is spectacular in that regard). But I've never seen a defense of them as objective pieces, they are undone by other elements. The editing in AotC is just godawful, and the writing in any of them has never been spectacular "You can write this shit George, but you sure cant say it" remember? Even the sound has some missteps.

So if there is an analysis of the film that can salvage it, I'd be very interested.

And since I remember where I am, I would remind you all that the term "objective" means something very different in art/film/literary criticism than it does in common parlance.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

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CmdrWilkens wrote:Sure...but how often have our political leaders talked about the bases for Al Qaeda or ISIS.
Extremely often. Remember how hyped Tora Bora was? Or that COBRA style AQ complex image that Newsweek ran? Or any of the similar "cave network bunkers" Fox hyped for years? Really it only fell off around 2007, and it has made a big comeback lately with how leaders (particularly Hollande post Paris attacks) talk about Raqqa

Channel72 wrote: Writing a scene where Leia like, travels to some other planet, changes ships, or meets up with Rebel operatives somewhere else before going to Yavin IV would have just slowed down the story, and denied us the climactic ending battle that changed cinematic history. People need to just fucking admit this and get on with things.
The base framing of the films that this place was founded on was diegetic reasoning.

I've certainly come to appreciate the films more on getting away from that and looking at them as art, but treating the text as historical fact is the raison d'etre of this board
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Vympel »

Elfdart wrote: I guess you didn't notice that GamerGate wasn't the only internet hate campaign ginned up by creepy internet fucktards against a person whose only "crime" is pissing off a man-child horde? Nope, no similarity whatsoever. The only difference is that Lucas, being filthy rich, can afford private security and office workers to keep his haters at bay while Zoe Quinn cannot.
No, I didn't notice that, because its not something I've ever heard of.
I don't doubt that prequel-bashers are popular on the internet, along with 9/11 truthers, anti-vaccination nuts, holocaust deniers, global warming deniers, lolbertarians and other ass clowns. Oh, and the fucktards who think yukking it up over Glenn Frey's death and how they hate the Eagles makes them kewl (for the record, it doesn't). Yet only a neckbeard with an axe to grind would point to the ubiquity of these morons on the web as evidence that they are right and everyone else is wrong -in the face of actual evidence to the contrary.
Which is what? Box office? Because that's literally the only objective evidence you have. I guess that makes Transformers 4 a good film then?
Since that is the only objective standard, what would you propose as a measure? The voices in your head? Because everything else is a matter of opinion.
It is a matter of opinion. Since awful movies like Transformers 4 make stupid amounts of money, this is the logical conclusion.
Were it not for the Star Wars IP, plus Ford, Fisher and Hamill agreeing to do TFA, Disney would have been lucky to produce another John Carter.
So what? I'm not the one waving around a film's box office success as an objective measure for it being a good or popular film, you are.
I know, being only #90 on the all-time box office list is proof that the series had jumped the shark, and something Lucasfilm should be ashamed of. I mean, ANH faced stiffer competition with Smokey and the Bandit; TESB had to contend with 9 to 5 and Stir Crazy, while ROTJ had such formidable opposition as Terms of Endearment. The shame of not selling as many tickets as Spider-Man or The Two Towers must be unbearable.
I don't see how that refutes anything of what I said. If TPM was so well liked, as opposed to receiving the natural benefits of being a critic proof movie that was going to be watched in huge numbers no matter what, because its the first new Star Wars movie anyone had seen in 16 years, why didn't AotC make about the same money? Because it went up against Spider-Man and the Two Towers? So what? Its Star Wars. TPM was amazing, wasn't it? Everyone except neckbeards on the internet loved it, didn't they?
It's earned $100 million more than TPM, but it cost almost three times as much to make and market:
$100M? I assume that's domestic gross adjusted for inflation:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=starwars.htm

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=starwars7.htm

TPM domestic box office: $474,544,677
TFA domestic box office: $879,110,994

TPM international box office: $552,500,000
TFA international box office: $1,060,700,000
Get back to me when TFA earns almost three times as much as TPM.
So your argument is that TPM is more well liked than TFA because of advertising budget math?

This is an absurd argument. If the argument is 'TPM is well liked by a silent majority because of its big box office takings' then the same clearly applies to TFA. How much they spent on the film is totally immaterial - we're talking about people who went to see it, not how much money the studio made. This should be obvious.

Again - I don't actually think box office matters, because if it did we'd be talking about how Transformers 4 is an amazing movie as opposed to being utter garbage.
It was amazing. Not that it mattered since media types and hipsters had already developed a hate-on for George Lucas long before the Special Editions, let alone the Prequels. The fact that many a man-child got bent out of shape because TPM was aimed at grade schoolers and not them only allowed the virus to spread to internet forums -including this one.
It was amazing at being a crap film. What was amazing about it?

Was it TPM's complete failure to capture the tone of the original trilogy, what with its tone deaf, unfunny Jar Jar slapstick and toilet humor? You know, when an animal farts on him, or he's juggling junk for no reason, or he steps in shit?

Was it TPM's casting of a child actor who couldn't act) and then senselessly placing him in situations where he had no reason to be - and then having him resolve those situations by accident, while he has no idea what the hell is going on?

Was it the total waste of Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan, as he sits around on the Royal Yacht for most of the movie, complaining and saying boring shit like "the Queen's wardrobe, maybe. But not enough for you to barter with"

Was it the utterly ineffective villains that were the Trade Federation - useless out-of-the-loop alien nincompoops, and their legion of incompetent robot soldiers who were by design meant to be useless against Jedi, robbing nearly every action scene in the movie of all tension?

Was it the interminable pod race that went on and on and on, and for which the entire Tatooine plot was contorted, against all comon sense?

How about the teletubbies-esque ground battle that was totally immaterial to the plot and should've been written out of the film altogether? A ground battle where the only character we have reason to care about - Jar Jar (who we actually didn't care about) - scores victories against the bad guys completely by accident not once, not twice, but three times in succession? This is good writing?

And why is 'TPM was aimed at grade schoolers' a defence of this film? You know what grade schoolers also loved? A New Hope. A movie that somehow captured grade schooler's imaginations - nevermind those of older people - without having a bad child actor, an awkward alien buffoon doing things like stepping in shit and getting farted on by animals, and so forth.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

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Really, when you say a movie was aimed at children in hopes of defending its extremely obvious shortcomings, you may as well just stop right there and take to your router with a sledgehammer.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

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Really, the argument that box office must mean the movie was popular or good is ridiculous. I was 17 going on 18 when the Phantom Menace came out - I saw it at least two times, possibly three, I can't remember. Because it was Star Wars, and I was so confused in how I felt about the film when walking out, I told myself I'd have to see it again to decide if I liked it. It didn't take long to decide it was actually terrible, no matter how much I didn't want to admit it. There's so many parts of that movie that are shit, and I can remember shifting uncomfortably in my seat, getting constantly distracted by thoughts like "wow, that dialogue delivery by this pilot guy is really shit. That sucked."

TFA is properly defended as a superior film to TPM on the merits, even leaving aside its a greater box office success.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

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Vympel wrote:Really, the argument that box office must mean the movie was popular or good is ridiculous. I was 17 going on 18 when the Phantom Menace came out - I saw it at least two times, possibly three, I can't remember. Because it was Star Wars, and I was so confused in how I felt about the film when walking out, I told myself I'd have to see it again to decide if I liked it. It didn't take long to decide it was actually terrible, no matter how much I didn't want to admit it. There's so many parts of that movie that are shit, and I can remember shifting uncomfortably in my seat, getting constantly distracted by thoughts like "wow, that dialogue delivery by this pilot guy is really shit. That sucked."

TFA is properly defended as a superior film to TPM on the merits, even leaving aside its a greater box office success.
Honestly, I enjoyed TPM more than TFA. I've enjoyed the visuals in TPM more than the visuals in TFA.

Sometimes I enjoyed a movie not because of the writing but visual and cinematography. Ep 1 felts like an epic space adventure happening on a scale unheard of. Ep 7 felt like a movie that you can make before cgi was invented.

I was bored by the dogfight at the end AND the lightsaber duel. I hate JA Abrams sense of scale, or lack of thereof. It should not be that big of a ask to make a star wars movie that felt more epic than Avatar (2009).
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Galvatron »

Vympel wrote:Really, the argument that box office must mean the movie was popular or good is ridiculous. I was 17 going on 18 when the Phantom Menace came out - I saw it at least two times, possibly three, I can't remember. Because it was Star Wars, and I was so confused in how I felt about the film when walking out, I told myself I'd have to see it again to decide if I liked it.
Same, although I was closer to 24. I remember what it was like to be one of these poor, dumb bastards. I had to see it at least twice just to be sure it wasn't my fault that it sucked the first time.

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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

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Here's the thing with TPM: it's a very, very different movie depending on whether you watch it as a 1999 movie-goer, versus now. Seeing it in 1999, it had some compelling things going for it - all of them superficial, certainly - but compelling nonetheless. I remember thinking it was really cool to see Jedi in their prime, for the first time, effortlessly wielding lightsabers, deflecting blaster bolts and using force pushes like it was nothing, etc. We had only really caught a glimpse of these things before in the OT, so to see professional Jedi doing their thing was pretty fucking amazing. Then... there's the ending lightsaber battle, complete with an operatic score, a double-bladed lightsaber, and ninja acrobatics. Again, pretty amazing at the time because I had never seen anything like that before.

But man... TPM ages horribly. I mean, I don't even know of another mainstream blockbuster that has aged worse. The CGI pretty much sucks (even compared to older films like Jurassic Park), and once the awe of seeing superficial things like cool lightsaber battles wears off, there's just nothing left. It's an empty shell of a movie with literally no characters that serve as any kind of emotional anchor. Even the ending battle, which my 1999-self remembered as being awesome, seems really fucking lame when you watch it now. Not only is it sort of boring since Darth Maul has no connection with the main characters, but they keep fucking cutting away to that stupid CGI droid battle on a bright green 64-bit field somewhere. So you can't even just sit back and enjoy Darth Maul's acrobatics without having Jar Jar constantly slapping you in the face. I mean... it's like this movie is almost literally impossible to watch nowadays. (To say nothing of the interminably boring sequences like the Pod Race or the whole damn time they're on Coruscant.)

And the thing is, when you go back and watch the OT, you're actually shocked how well it's aged, not just in terms of special effects, but how the characters are still fun to watch after all these years. I mean, really, just go back and rewatch the ending duel in ESB. It's really just a fucking masterpiece. The lighting, tone, pacing, everything is amazing. Even though the lightsaber choreography is much less refined, the battle is just 1000x more interesting than anything in the Prequels. I suspect TFA will also age pretty well, since it has all the ingredients necessary for a film which doesn't suck 20 years later - such as great, memorable characters, and special effects that will likely still hold up in another two decades. (Except for fucking CGI Snoke, dammit).
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Galvatron »

Yeah, I was in denial for a good month after I saw it in 1999. I actually lied and told people "it was pretty good," but even then I felt that damning it with faint praise was deceitful because I knew deep down that it didn't deserve even a luke warm review.

I wasn't nearly as delusional as the majority of the people in that video, but I still couldn't bring myself to denounce a Star Wars movie at that time. I also clung to hope that Episodes II and III would make up for it and maybe even retroactively justify the things I didn't like about it in some way. Then AOTC came out and was even worse...
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

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ray245 wrote:Honestly, I enjoyed TPM more than TFA. I've enjoyed the visuals in TPM more than the visuals in TFA.

Sometimes I enjoyed a movie not because of the writing but visual and cinematography. Ep 1 felts like an epic space adventure happening on a scale unheard of. Ep 7 felt like a movie that you can make before cgi was invented.

I was bored by the dogfight at the end AND the lightsaber duel. I hate JA Abrams sense of scale, or lack of thereof. It should not be that big of a ask to make a star wars movie that felt more epic than Avatar (2009).
Yeah, that doesn't make any sense to me. When I watch a film, I'm not looking for stuff like appropriate scale*. I'm looking for good writing, good performances, good villains, and good action. TFA delivered on that. The visuals of TPM can look pretty great (though some have aged poorly). But there's nothing behind them. No substance.

No one is ever going to remember Jar Jar saying "how rude!" (twice!) like Stephanie Tanner off of Full House:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYdX9geon6U

except in the context of rolling their eyes at just how shitty, dated, and tone deaf it was.

*Besides, TFA had a planet-sized superweapon. That's plenty of scale for my tastes. Its not really that important anyway.
Channel72 wrote:Here's the thing with TPM: it's a very, very different movie depending on whether you watch it as a 1999 movie-goer, versus now. Seeing it in 1999, it had some compelling things going for it - all of them superficial, certainly - but compelling nonetheless. I remember thinking it was really cool to see Jedi in their prime, for the first time, effortlessly wielding lightsabers, deflecting blaster bolts and using force pushes like it was nothing, etc. We had only really caught a glimpse of these things before in the OT, so to see professional Jedi doing their thing was pretty fucking amazing. Then... there's the ending lightsaber battle, complete with an operatic score, a double-bladed lightsaber, and ninja acrobatics. Again, pretty amazing at the time because I had never seen anything like that before.

But man... TPM ages horribly. I mean, I don't even know of another mainstream blockbuster that has aged worse. The CGI pretty much sucks (even compared to older films like Jurassic Park), and once the awe of seeing superficial things like cool lightsaber battles wears off, there's just nothing left. It's an empty shell of a movie with literally no characters that serve as any kind of emotional anchor. Even the ending battle, which my 1999-self remembered as being awesome, seems really fucking lame when you watch it now. Not only is it sort of boring since Darth Maul has no connection with the main characters, but they keep fucking cutting away to that stupid CGI droid battle on a bright green 64-bit field somewhere. So you can't even just sit back and enjoy Darth Maul's acrobatics without having Jar Jar constantly slapping you in the face. I mean... it's like this movie is almost literally impossible to watch nowadays. (To say nothing of the interminably boring sequences like the Pod Race or the whole damn time they're on Coruscant.)
The space battle has its own problems, too. Leaving aside the obvious story problem of Anakin's accidental participation, every pilot looks like they don't belong there, and how they manage to completely fail at landing their delivery - even when they've only got one or two lines to deliver - is really amazing. Its like nearly everyone in those scenes was a producer's cousin or something.

As to TPM's effects, having recently seen it (my girlfriend asked, without prompting, I swear to God - after seeing it she declared the movie "a piece of shit" and "a waste of a movie"), I think a lot of the effects hold up really well. Better than AotC, to be sure. The ones that don't are the Gungan/droid battle, and Jar Jar generally, IMO. Shots of Coruscant, or spaceships etc, still look great.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Purple »

To be fair the pilots probably don't belong there. Between the small number of craft and pilots and the general absence of a Naboo army to resist the invasion I very much doubt that these guys have any form of actual combat experience. My feeling was always that they are essentially like the army of say Monaco. A small ineffectual force mostly there to serve as a token on parades.
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Now there is only one thing left to do. Let us see if I can sum up the strength needed to end things once and for all.
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biostem
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by biostem »

Purple wrote:To be fair the pilots probably don't belong there. Between the small number of craft and pilots and the general absence of a Naboo army to resist the invasion I very much doubt that these guys have any form of actual combat experience. My feeling was always that they are essentially like the army of say Monaco. A small ineffectual force mostly there to serve as a token on parades.

One thing I found curious, if we assume that TCW is canon, is that there are some pretty powerful pirate/raider groups out there. Given the paltry defense force Naboo demonstrated, it would seem ripe for plundering. Is Naboo considerd to be in the outer rim, or a core world? If it's in the outer rim, I suppose I could see how it's remote nature would make it less likely to be visited, but then again, even Wattoo recognized Noobian technology when they went to him for parts, so they can't be that unfamiliar.

As a side note, it seems odd that many planets would be so reliant on external trade - I suppose it is so ubiquitous that they may even forego local farming and industry...
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Lord Revan »

biostem wrote:
Purple wrote:To be fair the pilots probably don't belong there. Between the small number of craft and pilots and the general absence of a Naboo army to resist the invasion I very much doubt that these guys have any form of actual combat experience. My feeling was always that they are essentially like the army of say Monaco. A small ineffectual force mostly there to serve as a token on parades.

One thing I found curious, if we assume that TCW is canon, is that there are some pretty powerful pirate/raider groups out there. Given the paltry defense force Naboo demonstrated, it would seem ripe for plundering. Is Naboo considerd to be in the outer rim, or a core world? If it's in the outer rim, I suppose I could see how it's remote nature would make it less likely to be visited, but then again, even Wattoo recognized Noobian technology when they went to him for parts, so they can't be that unfamiliar.

As a side note, it seems odd that many planets would be so reliant on external trade - I suppose it is so ubiquitous that they may even forego local farming and industry...
I dunno how it's now, but pre-Disney Naboo was a mid-rim system and a sectorial capital so while not quite as isolated as a random outer-rim system it was still more isolated then Core Worlds.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by ray245 »

Vympel wrote: Yeah, that doesn't make any sense to me. When I watch a film, I'm not looking for stuff like appropriate scale*. I'm looking for good writing, good performances, good villains, and good action.
If I wanted that, I would have watched some other films besides Star Wars. The OT had decent writing and performance, but that is not the main draw. It;s like watching a Fast and Furious movie, I don't go into the cinema expecting excellent writing. I go in to watch cars exploding.
TFA delivered on that. The visuals of TPM can look pretty great (though some have aged poorly). But there's nothing behind them. No substance.
I've just rewatchd TPM and somehow I enjoyed the final battles a lot more than the one in TFA. I don't mind watching the battles in TPM on its own. I can't do the same for TFA.

*Besides, TFA had a planet-sized superweapon. That's plenty of scale for my tastes. Its not really that important anyway.
It's not about how big the weapon is, but how you depict it. The planet was under attack by one squadron of X-Wings, and we did not even get any explanation why the new empire did not even deploy enough fighters to fend them off. We have visuals whereby the planets being destroyed by the new death star can be seen instantly from another star system.

When a freaking CGI Cartoon has the ability to depict a more massive universe and more engaging battles, I am wondering why am I spending extra money to watch a much bigger budget film fail at such a task.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Vympel »

ray245 wrote:If I wanted that, I would have watched some other films besides Star Wars.
What I just listed is a pre-requisite for any action/adverture film to be considered good. Your criticisms of TFA are entirely rooted in Star Wars maximalist/minimalist nerd argument criticisms. There's a time and a place for them, but they're absolutely not legitimate criticisms of the film as a film. TPM's battles fail on every single level as actual effective beats for a well written film. With the exception of the lightsaber fight, they're a cavalcade of idiocy and accidental fortuitous happenstance that never ends, with no tension and no stakes.
Purple wrote:To be fair the pilots probably don't belong there. Between the small number of craft and pilots and the general absence of a Naboo army to resist the invasion I very much doubt that these guys have any form of actual combat experience. My feeling was always that they are essentially like the army of say Monaco. A small ineffectual force mostly there to serve as a token on parades.
To be clear, when I say they don't belong there, I mean the actors don't belong in the movie, because they can't act. They can't even make something simple like "Roger, Bravo Leader" sound cool. They sound like doofuses. The horrendous costume design doesn't help. Those goggles ...
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by biostem »

To be clear, when I say they don't belong there, I mean the actors don't belong in the movie, because they can't act. They can't even make something simple like "Roger, Bravo Leader" sound cool. They sound like doofuses. The horrendous costume design doesn't help. Those goggles ...
That last point makes me wonder - perhaps the fighter pilots are from a more generalized "pilot corp", who is also responsible for operating various speeders, swoops, and so on - that would at least explain why they'd have the goggles in a fully-enclosed cockpit...
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Patroklos »

If we are inventing excuses, a better one is that the goggles provide some sort of instrumentation.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Vympel »

There's nothing wrong with eye protection per se - Rebel pilots had it, after all. I figured it was for flash protection or something like that.

However:

Image

No.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Vympel »

Galvatron wrote: Same, although I was closer to 24. I remember what it was like to be one of these poor, dumb bastards. I had to see it at least twice just to be sure it wasn't my fault that it sucked the first time.

Oh, wow. I saw the name of one of the fans and did a google search. Funny story:

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/ ... -interview
"I love the film," Rotan said then. "It's going to do incredibly well, to say the least."

John did not love the film. He told me recently that he looks back and cringes a bit, although his words felt true at the time.

After all, it's easy to forget how intense the anticipation was for the opening of “The Phantom Menace.” There was no social media, no endless stream of leaks and tweets about the movie, just whispers. John and his brother would set their VCRs to record whenever George Lucas would appear on talk shows, just to see if he said anything about the new films. There was a vacuum of information, and hype rushed inward to fill it.

The night the “Phantom Menace” premiered, as the lights went down, John said he and everyone there cheered.

And then the movie happened.

Later that night, John and his friends staggered home in a daze. They tried to make sense of a world where, after so much anticipation, there were were no longer three Star Wars movies, but four, and one of them really sucked.

"We were all just mostly like, 'what the hell was that?'" John said. "We were just stunned."

"All this stuff about the senate and senators and trade routes, who even cares about all that gobbley gook?" John continued. He added that they also took issue with the acting, and with Jar Jar Binks.

And yet something happened just a few hours later, as John and his friends were interviewed on live television.

They began to doubt their feelings. They began to doubt themselves. Perhaps, were they the ones in the wrong? "We wanted to see it again, just to make sure what we saw, just to double check," John said.

Only one person was willing to describe how they really felt about the movie. For the rest of them, their faces were drawn in shades of denial, mixed with dabs of disappointment, as if they were cultists eager for the end of the world who had just found George Lucas was a false prophet, and who now had to reconcile their beliefs after the long-awaited day had passed without their cherished apocalypse.

The term cognitive dissonance was coined for these true believers, who are capable of amazing rationalizations, and such cognitive dissonance is also a feature of fandom in another arena: sports.

It’s almost as if Rotan and his friends had become Cleveland Browns fans. It’s something somewhat nuts: there's the buildup of hope in some sort of communal glory, the investment of faith and emotional energy into something one has absolutely no control over, and then after all that, at the end of the movie or game, sometimes you're just left in the parking lot in a dumb costume, wondering where it all went wrong.

John already has his tickets for the premiere of new Star Wars. That said, he said he simply cannot be as disappointed as he was when the prequels came out. He is older and more cautious now. Two and a half failed prequels will do that to a person.

And yet, like any true believer, he's already talking himself into a new hope, a new prophet: J.J. Abrams. Who knows what will happen when the lights dim and the Force Awakens finally begins?

Either way, there is something beautiful and inherently human in the hype. After all, irrationality, as Kurt Vonnegut once said, is what makes people fascinating.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by Galvatron »

No wonder TPM made so much money. It left so many viewers thinking WTF that they were compelled to buy another ticket and see it again. :lol:

And any time someone associates the "neckbeards" with the prequel haters, I can't help but think of the infamous TPM review by the ultimate neckbeard himself: Harry Knowles.
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Re: Ep7 Reviews (Spoilers)

Post by ray245 »

Vympel wrote:
ray245 wrote:If I wanted that, I would have watched some other films besides Star Wars.
What I just listed is a pre-requisite for any action/adverture film to be considered good. Your criticisms of TFA are entirely rooted in Star Wars maximalist/minimalist nerd argument criticisms. There's a time and a place for them, but they're absolutely not legitimate criticisms of the film as a film. TPM's battles fail on every single level as actual effective beats for a well written film. With the exception of the lightsaber fight, they're a cavalcade of idiocy and accidental fortuitous happenstance that never ends, with no tension and no stakes.
It's not about what is considered "good". People continue to flood the theaters watching the Transformers movies despite them being considered as a horrible film by every critic. Surprising, there are a lot of people out there that don't mind enjoying "bad" movies.

I do enjoy a movie with good acting and excellent writing, especially the ones that are set in space. But if I am looking for such movies, I will look for movies like Gravity, The Martian and etc. I don't go into a cinema featuring Star Wars expecting the kind of qualities, just like how I don't go into a movie like Fast and Furious expecting good writing or excellent acting. If a Fast and Furious movie have excellent acting and writing, but boring car races, I will walk out of the movie feeling bored because that is not I paid for.

I go into a movie called Star Wars expecting epic space battles ( especially on a scale unmatched by other sci-fi movies) and worlds that felt grander and different from other sci-fi/fantasy movies. The old Star Wars movies did that by shooting in locations that felt grander than most sci-fi films of the time. Take Hoth for example. How many blockbuster movies were shot near the Artic circle at the time?

I was hoping Ep 7 will be able to match the visuals we saw in Avatar, and on a much grander scale. Instead we have a movie that tries too hard to recreate the feeling of ANH ( not even ROTJ). The story we saw in TFA could easily be depicted on a TCW cartoon budget. Why should I pay money to see the space battle in TFA when I can enjoy the space battles in TCW?
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
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