The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by sendô »

last.caress wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 11:32 am For me, it's every bit as bad as its reputation. Worse, maybe. Imho, it's the second film, Attack of the Clones, which isn't as bad as people say. Many consider AotC to be the worst Star Wars movie of them all but I think it's the best of the prequel trilogy and, tbh, I prefer it to The Force Awakens as well.
Well, maybe best is a bit too strong a word to use. Least **** is maybe more apt. It's really hard to rank them all, as they're all pretty disappointing films, both as stand-alones and when put against the original trilogy.

I suppose The Phantom Menace at least had a storyline that you followed. The biggest issue with Revenge of the Sith (the worst of the 3 for me), was the completely non-sensical way that Anakin decended into blood-thirsty tyrant mode. That and he was a whiny little bitch.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by last.caress »

sendô wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 12:55 pm Well, maybe best is a bit too strong a word to use. Least **** is maybe more apt. .
A good point. I concur. :thup:
sendô wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 12:55 pm The biggest issue with Revenge of the Sith (the worst of the 3 for me), was the completely non-sensical way that Anakin decended into blood-thirsty tyrant mode. That and he was a whiny little bitch.
Indeed, and this is kind-of why I think AotC is the best - sorry, least **** - of that trilogy. Middle movies in trilogies usually (not always of course, but usually) suffer through having neither a proper beginning or proper end to their tale. This particular trilogy, however, ****ed up its beginning and end so badly that Episode II gets away relatively unscathed, by either Episode I's tedious - well, tedious everything - or by Episode III's f*ckawful handling of Anakin's deadline-day transfer to the dark side.

That's not to say Episode II doesn't have a raft of problems of its own, of course. A number of pivotal plot points make no sense, and the central wooden-as-f*** non-romance between Natalie Portman and whining Hayden Christensen is bollock-smackingly dull. But AotC has that terrific scene with Jango Fett and Obi-Wan sizing one another up in Jango's quarters on Kamino, followed by a cracking little fight scene out by SLAVE-1 in the rain (among a fair few other decent enough set-pieces imo). And I enjoy Christopher Lee's scenery-chewing turn as Count Dooku.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by sendô »

Yes, the biggest drawback for AotC was the sheer cringe inducing way that Whiny Bitch Skywalker "seduced" the former Queen who had previously known him as that annoying little kid with the **** hair, who had somehow not been a whiny little bitch back before his voice broke.

If I had the time, I'd watch all of the Plinkett reviews again.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by WCpete »

I watched AoC last night in spite of saying I never would again because my daughter has decided she wants to revisit the entire franchise. I was surprised to find that AoC wasn’t as bad as I remembered it being. In fact, if the entire romantic mid section had been removed, and maybe if all of Anakin’s lines were muted and we were left seeing his mouth movement and his facial expressions, Id call it a decent film. That means that the new trilogy is so bad that they’ve made the mid trilogy look ok. At least there’s a consistent story arc in those films. Imagine that. Films that contain Jar Jar Binks, The whiniest Anakin imaginable, a terribly convoluted plot and a horribly miscast Natalie Portman blow the latter day Disney wars out of the water. What a time we live in.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by sendô »

I'm tempted to go so far as to say, if you took Anakin Skywalker out of Episode II and Episode III, they'd actually be decent films. Well, not decent films. Okay films. Or not-terribly-****-awful films.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by Up the Junction »

It strikes me there's an awful lot of words spared in this thread for fillums few appear to like.

It also strikes me that I may never have watched much of the middle trilogy. Quite intrigued to see what all the non-fuss is about.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by smuts »

Although the prequels have massive problems, the Emperor's plan to grab power going from instigating a trade war on his home planet to manipulating a galaxy wide war creating his own army in the process under his control is pretty bloody clever.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by Gormalysis »

sendô wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2020 4:04 pm If I had the time, I'd watch all of the Plinkett reviews again.
Red Letter Media, one of the best channels on YouTube :thup:
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by Bend it like Repka »

I saw ROS at the weekend. It was OK, an entertaining enough romp, but that said it's a bloody tired format by now. It did feel like I was watching the same old thing respun yet again. Obviously at the end of the day it's a moneyspinner, so why do anything too risky? It feels like the 1980/90's Batman movies where they kept churning out the predicatable cast and plot lines and just banked the safe money.

It's not until The Dark Night came along that you really see how a film with such a iconic history should be made. I'd love to see someone have the balls to make a much Darker Star Wars film, but with Disney at the helm? Never happen. Got to end up with all the stars having a big hug and celebration at the end.

Can you imagine a plot where in the final scene Rey has turned to the dark side and sits on the Throne holding Kylo Ren's severed head aloft to the cheers of the Sith? Film ends, credits roll, kids leave the cinema crying. :lol:
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by wolf359 »

Bend it like Repka wrote: Tue Jan 14, 2020 11:47 pm much Darker Star Wars film
Rogue One is darker (slightly grey, not exactly dark) and is by far the best of the modern films.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by Bend it like Repka »

wolf359 wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 11:35 am Rogue One is darker (slightly grey, not exactly dark) and is by far the best of the modern films.
Yeah, I watched that over Christmas. Again it was ok, I agree a little less trapped by nostalgia. But still didn't blow my socks off.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by fjthegrey »

Attack of the Clones

2nd up and by far my least favourite of any of the Star Wars films the last time I watched them. I didn't find it quite so dull this time, but there's something very hollow about it. Yes, the love story has all the conviction of a Mark Noble free kick, and Hayden Christensen is as bland as a cream of wheat/oatmeal main/dessert combo, but it's something else.

I think it's the CGI. It was still in it's relative infancy around this era and the real actors talking to CGI characters seemed really unconvincing. It didn't stand out quite so starkly in the previous film but this one I struggled with the alignment of the green screen acting. Too many of the sets are almost entirely computer generated and it really felt like the characters were withdrawn from their surroundings. It didn't feel immersive. There was a palpable sense of motion being superimposed over images. A kind of hollow insincerity to the whole thing that leaves it a really cold experience.

Plot wise it's much stronger than I remember though. The layers of deception, the embryonic beginnings of the recognizable Empire, the manipulated consequential ripples of the deterministic universe. They all make sense, they all follow a pretty strong logic and you aren't left questioning any of the more important moments.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by Rio »

Rumoured details of the Colin Trevorrow aborted project

https://www.gamesradar.com/star-wars-ri ... xR31RGCMMY
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by szola »

I've enjoyed the last set of triologies much more than the second one.
Glad Lucas is out of the equation.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by fjthegrey »

Revenge of the Sith

A fast paced, unrelenting film that hit's a bit more than it misses. But where it misses, it's putting penalty kicks out for throw ins and clipping full ball tosses back into the bowlers hands.

The CGI is miles better. The actors seem much more comfortable with the medium, better directed, able to create more of a rapport with the CGI creatures they encounter. The universe seems more dense and involving. Plot is thrown at you continuously as the film develops and doesn't give you much pause to consider the logic of what is happening. This works in it's favour, there are certainly implausible hinges on which the story is pushed forward but the pace keeps it moving along at a rate that renders those smaller moments largely ignorable. The problem comes in the big moments, or rather, moment.

No matter which way you view it, analyse it, attempt to justify it, that Anakin turn to the darkside is absolutely dreadful. In order for it to work, he needed to have been shunned continuously by the Jedi council. I get that he wanted the master title etc, but he's just too up and down for the turn to be plausible. 15 minutes before the pivot he's joking with Obi Wan and wishing him good luck and may the force be with him. Their parting should have been on bad terms. Really he needed to have been on bad terms with basically all the main Jedi. His disillusionment with the Jedi is hideously contrived. Then he's talking about ruling the galaxy when he see's Padme again. Where did that come from? He'd never demonstrated any desire to rule or be in charge and he never does in any of the proceeding films either.

The scene itself where he turns is just laughable. Sidious couldn't be more visibly evil, red lightning shooting out his hands, a deep gravelly cackle, luminous yellow eyes. Upon taking out Windu there is immediate regret, followed by an immediate pledge to slaughter children. Is the dark side a cliff edge that you fall over and are then in? The fact that in a future film he's able to come back and eventually do the right thing and slay Sidious suggests its much more a spectrum. And I don't buy the whole saving his partner from death thing. You'd want assurances before you killed everyone you knew right? 'We can learn how to do it together' isn't really gonna cut it for me given that she's nearing the ****ing due date.

Apart from that though it holds up pretty well. But you can't really look past that can you, because it's essentially the moment we've spent three films building to and the defining moment in pretty much the history of the entire Star Wars universe.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by sendô »

fjthegrey wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2020 1:52 pm Upon taking out Windu there is immediate regret, followed by an immediate pledge to slaughter children.
No, no fj. Not children. Younglings. Quite different. We can't have a Star Wars film turning into a kiddie snuff movie, with George Lucas flogging lightsaber-through-the-chest 7 years olds by the boxload, with collectable Red Lightsaber Anakin that fits right through the stab wound. These are young Jedi, who obviously knew exactly what they were signing up to and are, of course, fair game.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by fjthegrey »

He already said that he killed women and children in the 2nd one, dunno why they felt the need to differentiate.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by sendô »

They were sandpeople children, or in other words Godless foreign savages and therefore fair game.

But yeah. It was all a bit weird.

It would have been a better story if he was a power-hungry full-of-himself because his dad was the force little **** from the start, who became more and more disillusioned with the Jedi the more they rejected himself, and was then seduced by Sidious who offered him the power he so craved.

They could have made Luke & Leia's mum a brass. Fit right into the bad guy Anakin character. A missed trick if you ask me.
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by James P »

The funniest bit is after Anakin has slain everyone and Palpatine’s face has melted. Palpatine turns to Anakin and says something along the lines of “the power to cheat death has only been achieved by one person but I’m sure if we work together we can discover it.”

Padme is literally giving birth in like a day or something. There’s no time for discovering the cure to death. Anakin turned to the dark side because he was promised a way to save his wife and then he’s told “I don’t have the answer but I’m sure we can figure it out! But before that I need you to go and kill the Trade Federation guys while I kill all the Jedi. Then I promise next on the list is discovering how to save your wife from dying in childbirth.”

“Yes master”
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Re: The Star Wars Thread - May the Force be with us (Spoilers!)

Post by PrawnSandwich »

Personally I think the overriding problem with the final trilogy is that Disney, for all the money they threw at it, didn't really know what to do with it.

Apologies if this has been said before.

The original trilogy, once the Episode IV had it's success, had a clear arc and a story to tell.
The redemption of Darth Vadar, the defeat of the empire and the triumph of good.
The execrable prequels (AOTC is the most soulless piece of **** I have endured, watched it before Xmas thinking things would improve after TPM) at least had to get to the point of the start or set up for IV.
Yes Midiclorians, "are you an Angel?', 'It's over Anakin I have the higher ground', Darth Pointless Maul, ****ing Turbo Yoda, JaJa Mortherfucking Binks are all as welcome as blood in your stool, but they had a framework to hang on, the rise of Palpatine and the fall of the Republic.
They just botched it like Brock Lesnar doing a shooting star press.

So fast forward and Disney need to make a gazillion dollars from their shiny new acquisition and Lucas always banged on about there being 9 films.
The plot summary I read years back doesn't feature Star Wars: SJW Edition, but another hamfisted lost plot by the Beardy Weirdy.
So they task Abrams to make people make a Star Wars film to fall in love with Star Wars again, but brought up to date with girls and **** because they do big numbers in the demographic.

So we get TFA:
"Yea!" says half the world who find themselves wrapped in the joyous child-like glow of nostalgia (me included I'll be honest) as they reboot episodes IV and VI with not just a Death Star but a whole ****ing Death Planet...
"Boooooooo!" says the other half mainly on the internet because it's hokey, full of holes and about as original as any of Vin Diesel's final speeches in every Fast & Furious movie since 4 (Ride or die, one last time, family, quarter mile).

'****' says Disney, 'here Johnson, have TLJ, you've done some stuff, we need Star Wars to show us some new things and not be a total rip off of everything that has gone before or they'll catch us out'.
'Yea?' says a confused part of the internet who got focused on the pretty sand bit at the end and the fact that they at least tried to step out of the box with it.
'Booooooo!' says half the world, 'What the f*** is this?' 'That's not my Luke Skywalker', 'What is this pointless segment about going to get a code that didn't even matter?' 'What the f*** is up with Space Leia?' 'The f*** have you done to my Star Wars Johnson you talentless ****?'

'**** again', says Disney, 'this is the last film we can reasonably make out of this for a while without seeming like we're milking the crap out of this for the sake of exploiting the generations that grew up on the originals like they accused Lucas of doing... Abrams, do that thing with the lens flare again...'
So TROS takes everything that Johnson had gone and completely ****'s it off in the opening text crawl rendering TLJ almost insignificant in one foul swoop, mashes together a brand new plot off the back of a fag packet and everyone gets medals and friggin Ewoks again (to clarify I actually quite like TROS - the end scene on the planet literally no one knew about ever was proper Black Metal).

If the end saga had been about the unlikely return of the dead emperor they had three films to build it, to make it believable, to flesh it out, to make it work but instead the most significant Muguffin of the whole damn thing happened of screen in between two films and was explained away in two ****ing lines.

The last trilogy has all the check points as was suggested early, but is essentially 6 hours of fandom either jerking themselves off like they have been shoving down Member Berries or cry ****ing because the internet has given everyone a platform to fling virtual sputum through the bars of their cage Miggs style (and I say that in complete self awareness).

There was no idea, or if it was they lost it down the pub on a Hangover style bender and pieced it back together crying on the train ride home the next morning.
It's not necessarily Abrams fault, it's not even Johnson's fault.
Disney had no idea what story they wanted to tell and lazily relied on the fact that it is Star Wars and they would make money despite themselves because of it.

I enjoyed them, but they are not 'good' films in the sense of it.
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