Star Wars Griefing Thread (SPOILERS) - Safety off

[Poe-Shen Zcela]

My father also argued vehemently that Sean Connery should have been in the Qui-Gon role (draw your own conclusions).

I can hardly imagine Qui-Gon as anyone other than Liam Neeson, but your dad clearly has good taste.

Anyone else looking forward to August 2020?

Cautiously, yes.

 

[Ihavetinyweewee]

I wish I could find the webcomic, but somebody made the point that the new TFA X-Wing designs were re:tarded because when the wings would open, they would bisect their turbines and immediately go tits-up. I don't think even McQuarrie intended his original design to have actual turbines.



I'm not so sure they succeeded, otherwise they wouldn't be losing money and asses in seats. They're certainly going in that direction.



Shit, I'll take an Alien 5 with old Michael Biehn and Sigourney Weaver. I'm not interested in yet another movie about David the gay genocidal android.



I remember this from The Secret History of Star Wars. George knew he couldn't write for shit since day 1, but to his credit, he did write the big Vader reveal in Empire, where before he was just the same second-in-command villain from teh first Star Wars.



Even taking him out, you still have Anakin as a 10-year-old engineering wunderkind and pilot who's strong with the Force. Still had more personality than Rey mind you, but I imagine people didn't like him that much more than Jar Jar at the time.



I would've liked to have seen or heard about Count Dooku in Episode I, assuming George already had plans for the character by then. I also would've reimagined much of the assassination attempt scenes up until Anakin goes off-world with Padme. I wouldn't have been against a chase, but the whole convoluted sequence from Padme's suite all the way down to Jango Fett conspicuously jetpacking into the sky needed to be scrapped or redone. I don't think it did much for Anakin's character that a more subtle sequence of events might have, like the same assassin trying to poison or shoot Padme at a dinner function with important parties. Anakin could stop a poisoned dart mid-air or get between Padme and someone trying to nick her with a poisoned pin, thereby initiating a chase.



Thanks, I didn't know about this. Too bad Cameron cares more about Space Indians than making good Terminator or Alien flicks.



Dyn shouldn't be a pushover at this point, but then neither should Boba. They ought to be evenly matched at first, having almost the same equipment. Maybe Boba got some upgrades after his disgrace on Jabba's sail barge.



Hope they enjoy losing money. Is this a case of "any attention is good attention"?



I think that's overstating it. It was the first real disappointment in a Star Wars movie, but I don't think it was ever a complete disappointment. While on the one hand you had Jar Jar, Anakin and midichlorians, on the other hand you had Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon Jinn, and Maul. Then of course there's Sheev, but he didn't really start to shine until Episode II.



Bad dialogue mostly, but there's enough bad writing in it overall (Naboo has a hollow core? Okay). I'm not sure I ever had a problem with the pacing of TPM.



As charming as Han Solo is compared to Luke, I always liked Luke more as a sword-wielding Jedi hero. I care more about seeing him on adventures post-ROTJ, but it wouldn't be complete without Han, Leia & co.

What I meant by Boba outshining Din, has nothing to do with fighting. It's narrative focus. The story is about Din and the child, if Boba can serve/improve that narrative...wonderful

But, if the inclusion of Fett leads to Boba Fett overpowering those two characters(narratively), don't bother...

It really comes down to having a point/message and not getting self indulgent...

 

[Shield Breaker]

Fucking thank you. Once again proving yourself as the best damn poster around.


Goblin Slayer and Dungeon Meshi are my only painkillers during this time...


Basically like my experience too. But what really bothered me and my company at the time was not Jar-Jar, casting or the acting (although we had our beefs with each) but the notion that Anakin built C-3PO. That was pretty much all we talked and complained about for days rather than Sean Connery or Jar Jar (although we would end up getting over it after Star Wars Tales came out). Everything else was just okay or we didn't mind as much. It felt like a wasted opportunity sure but nothing that felt like it raped any of our childhoods (Attack of the Clones was mostly that for some of us but it was mostly because the depiction of the clone wars was not like previous media had described it and the timegap felt too small, but we got over it after Genndy Wars came out) and in the end we really didn't care since the OT remained unchanged. Hell, my old man and his friends loved the shit out of the prequels more than me and my group did. One thing did strike me as pretty neat though rewatching it years later was that the parade theme at the end of the movie was a brighter and happier version of the Emperor's theme... Like some fucking masked foreshadowing of what was to come which looking back on it now was quite an impressive little easter egg which shows the Emperor was true star of the prequels.

Oh wow. I did not see that coming.
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I realized that when I first heard the soundtrack. I used to buy all of them. Back when they had heart. Before the dark times. Before the Mouspire.

 

[Reverend]

Here is someone who scraped 2500 rotten tomato reviews for RoS. TLDR: Most are fake bots posting the same shit.

 

[Poe-Shen Zcela]

Rewatching Episode 1 now. I'm reminded of MauLer and co talking about how the Force Speed was a stupid power to have in-universe, considering how and when it could be abused:

I'm not sure I agree with that. The thing is MauLer insists on only judging the movies by the movies, and not by any secondary, explanatory materials. This is fine, but then that would mean they had to have either not had that power at all, or had to show a scene where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were panting or something like that. The Jedi already have trained reflexes & foresight, so arguably a speed-up ability is superfluous. I'm just wondering how many times in the movies they could've used Force Speed but didn't.

Plus, that shit was cool in Jedi Knight. If you can have Force Jump, then Force Speed is similarly plausible.

There's a decent discussion about this here:

Why isn't Force Speed used more often?

Force speed is a light side power that many Jedi, including Padawans are capable of. In Episode I, Qui-Gon uses it twice (once to outrun droids and once on Jar Jar's tongue), Obi-Wan uses it once and

scifi.stackexchange.com

What I meant by Boba outshining Din, has nothing to do with fighting. It's narrative focus. The story is about Din and the child, if Boba can serve/improve that narrative...wonderful

But, if the inclusion of Fett leads to Boba Fett overpowering those two characters(narratively), don't bother...

It really comes down to having a point/message and not getting self indulgent...

I agree with that. It shouldn't turn into the Boba Fett show, as much as I would enjoy a show all about Boba Fett. It shouldn't stray from being about Dyn and his ever-changing rogue's gallery. The most satisfying thing would be them fighting before teaming up at a later point.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

BTW, look at the bump for the Christmas day.
How bad were your life choices that, rather than spend your day with your loved ones, you instead consoom a shitty Disney product you almost assuredly already watched?

 

[Miller]

I'm not so sure they succeeded, otherwise they wouldn't be losing money and asses in seats. They're certainly going in that direction.

That's the thing, they don't care about money.

 

[TheMysteriousAHole]

I used to think like a RLM drone but now after watching Star Wars and Star Trek turn into crap I believe that you should let the creator do whatever he wants. It's the same for the Alien franchise for example, I know a lot of people want to see the IP taken away from Ridley Scott's hands but I don't want that to be given to Blomkamp the one-trick pony or someone else.

Scott wasn't the creator of the Alien IP, though, not like Lucas was with Star Wars. There are certainly moments in the first film where his influence seems obvious, story-wise (Ash randomly bloviating about the parasitic xenomorph being "perfect" mirrors Scott's weird fixation on "superior" synthetic organisms as seen in Blade Runner and his two Alien prequels), but on the whole, Dan O'Bannon and James Cameron should receive just as much if not more creative credit.

I don't want to get off on a tangent here but if there was ever a franchise that needed a new creative vision behind it (besides [Insert Your Franchise Here]), it'd be Alien. Scott has some interesting ideas. When he's on fire, he's on fire. Alien, Gladiator, Blade Runner, Kingdom of Heaven (DC, not theatrical), the list goes on. Then there's when he misfires like Alien: Covenant. Maybe it's me but it felt like Covenant was more of a response to the criticisms of Prometheus than anything but, you know, not actually doing any good. You want Xenomorphs? Bang, here's your Xenomorphs! You want answers regarding the mysteries of how the Xenomorphs came to be? We're going to give you answers! But you're not going to like them 'cause they're goofy and not well thought out.

I don't want to derail this thread so I'll stop there.

So my dad, a longtime Star Wars fan, just went to see this and deemed it boring and a "shameless ripoff" of beats from earlier SW movies. He said it was easily an hour longer than it needed to be.
He also proclaimed "Kylo Ren acting emo," "the Ewok ripoffs" (I'm assuming he means Porgs?) and "Rey in general" to be "totally gay."

I love my dad but I wish this could have been his reaction to the film as well. For the record, my dad's a Star Trek type of guy. He never liked Star Wars but for some godforsaken reason he liked this film. He can also be a bit of a horn-dog so I'd put betting money it's cause he finds Daisy Ridley attractive. It's one of his weaknesses: put a pretty face in-front of him and he's a bit more forgiving.

Since we're discussing the whole Prequels vs Disney reaction, I'll toss in my two cents as well as to what I could remember.

I don't even remember people being all that pissed off about it at the time. There were many active SW fan-communities online back then, some with thousands or even hundreds of thousands of active members, and my recollection of the period from 2002 through 2005 and beyond is that most of the other fans whose posts I was reading were either enjoying the prequel films as they arrived and eagerly anticipating the next, or at worst being fairly circumspect about what they saw as flaws in the films (I remember being a bit frustrated with my father, as he, an OG Star Wars fan, was one of the only people I knew who had no interest in the Prequels at all). The discussion was lively, generally upbeat, and about as far removed from today's Cultural Revolution-style denunciations of Disney-skeptics for wrong-think as you could possibly imagine, but maybe I was just swimming in a well-spring of online positivity, who knows.

As someone that has been around for a long time, either participating or lurking depending on the time period, I can more or less back this up. Yes, there were people disappointed in the Prequels but the reactions towards them wasn't anything like the current day. Yeah, we had the whole 'Prequels raped my childhood' people and the 'Kill Jar-Jar Binks' types but those were the more extremists than anything.

Hell, even when people didn't like TPM, they were still interested in seeing AOTC. The same with ROTS.

There has been some degree of revisionist history going on with the prequels and the reaction surrounding them. I can safely say this: You know the immediate backlash towards The Last Jedi? There wasn't any of that when it came to Attack of the Clones. You know, the film that a number of people now consider bad. Shit, when I stepped out of the theater after the midnight showing, I actually liked AOTC. I couldn't say the same for TPM. My immediate reaction towards that was: ...What?

Yes, that was my reaction. I honestly didn't know how I felt about the film. I even remember taking some of my friends and family aside after the film was over and asking them their thoughts on the film. They liked it but for me, I was still indecisive about the whole damn thing. It took me a while before I came to my conclusion.

Another thing to bear in mind is that the Prequels made the Jedi incredibly popular. Sure, everyone already loved Luke, Obi-Wan, Yoda and lightsabers, but the Jedi Order itself had always been a bit vague, due to George's keeping the Clone Wars era off-limits for EU writers (and the most popular character prior to 1999 was Han Solo, with the West End Games RPGs being organized with the expectation that most players were going to be adopting some variation of his archetype as their PC). But then, all of a sudden, you had dozens and hundreds of unique Jedi characters, a Jedi Temple, uniformic Jedi robes, Jedi starfighters, a formal Jedi code, detailed and distinct styles of lightsaber combat, enough detail and world-building to satisfy even the most autistic, and the fans just ate it up (maybe even a little too enthusiastically, since the PT era Jedi were supposed to be examples of how not to Jedi in many ways). It was kind of like what's happening now with this growing interest in the Mandalorians, but on a much larger scale, unhampered by all the recent unpleasantness.

I only take one exception to the above and that's concerning your statement regarding West End Game's RPG: I'd argue that, if anything, that by the end of its run WEG was becoming quite balanced towards any type of PC that the player would want to create. You wanted a bounty hunter? Cool. A Jedi? Fine. Smuggler? Fantastic! Diplomat? Have fun! Starfighter pilot? Vroom-Vroom! Annoying Squib? ...OK? Bimm Bard? ...Fine? Galactic Big Game Hunter? ...Have fun hunting? Industrial Espionage Agent? ...Are you jiving me? Rodian Dramatist? ...Now I know you're jokin-

Wait a moment. The last five were templates that came from Heroes and Rogues, a supplement for the game.

Don't get me wrong, you're right here... from a certain point of view. Yes, goddammit, I had to go there.

I do think they were expecting a number of players to just make Hong Kong Han Solo. But I feel it was more they were excepting people to rip off the main cast, famous supporting characters, and famous EU characters during character creation. They also give a shitload of other options as well as free reign to do what they wanted as long as the gamemaster and the game itself supported it.

I don't think some people give WEG enough credit when it comes to how creative they were and I don't mean the important parts that they added to the grander tapestry that is Star Wars.

And don't get me wrong, the 1st Edition started off as being essentially 'You're Rebels or Rebel-Aligned or Just Taking Jobs for the Rebels' and that was that. As the game grew along the way it allowed players to explore so many other options. Hell, they eventually started to support Imperial campaigns which they were initially non-supportive of (either a choice of their own or it was Lucasfilms who originally didn't allow them to do so*).


*If I'm not mistaken, Lucasfilms and Lucasarts weren't originally all that fond over the idea of the video game TIE Fighter. Sucks to be them.

 

[Quixotic Man]

BTW, look at the bump for the Christmas day.
How bad were your life choices that, rather than spend your day with your loved ones, you instead consoom a shitty Disney product you almost assuredly already watched?

I used to go see movies with my family on Christmas day, man.
Its not that uncommon.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

BTW, look at the bump for the Christmas day.
How bad were your life choices that, rather than spend your day with your loved ones, you instead consoom a shitty Disney product you almost assuredly already watched?

Probably it was people who didn't celebrate Christmas to begin with or misguided families who thought it would be a good time to see a movie with their kids, and to be fair to the movie I could only see really small children enjoy Rise of Skywalker.

On another note, one of the biggest crimes of this trilogy is wasting most of the actors cause this trilogy has a lot of great actors but they were either sidelined or had garbage scripts to work with. Andy Serkis was probably snubbed the hardest because he is probably the best Motion Capture actor they could've had and they wasted his character for "subversion".

 

[Uranus Pink]

But the sequel designs are straight-up lifted from Ralph McQuarrie's design prototypes of the X-Wing with VERY minor touch-up.
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View attachment 1070645

If anything, his original designs of them really look sleeker and more streamlined than the OT's one, which is clunkier (must also account that it's for practical effect's sake at the time, not the CG mish-mash we have nowadays) and you can see the differences from draft production to what they could actually do at the time.

View attachment 1070646

The Ralph McQuarrie's designs could have easily worked in Star Wars as X-Wing prototypes and/or a modded sub-variant. As is we could see a X-Wing using either four or eight smaller engines instead of the regular engines cause those are also in prototype stage. Or the fleet using them ran out of spare engines and made do with was is available until resupply or evacuation is completed.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Andy Serkis was probably snubbed the hardest because he is probably the best Motion Capture actor they could've had and they wasted his character for "subversion".

I remember him getting somewhat annoyed that his franchise characters were being killed off that year, between that and Planet of the Apes.

I get the feeling he was especially bitter about Star Wars because he assumed, like everyone else, that he would stick around for all 3 movies but since he was killed off in movie 2 that left him with less work.

 

[Grotesque Bushes]

Apparently Pablo Hidalgo has his own subreddit where he is worshiped as some kind of prophet or god where they compile all of his Disney gospel, but its members only.

Anyone have any idea of how cringe this shit is?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSupremePablo/

Basically this. My defense of the PT only goes as far as its ideas, visuals, creativity and a few characters. That doesn't change the crappy dialogue, terrible acting direction by George and bad ideas like the timeline and midichlorians. For example, Hayden is actually a good actor, but George wanted him to act stiff and robotic for reasons that elude me. And also while George may not have intended it that way, the mere implication of midis and the portrayal of the jedi within the film shows that they had become too secular and political to the point where their end almost seems like a necessary tragedy and it also makes Kenobi an even better character than we remember. But the prequels are still horribly flawed. Instead, it seems people are miffed over the idea that the PT can receive any positive praise even in a single area (like say complimenting its creature designs) or simply saying that its not as bad as the sequels because they at least tried to be original and memorable despite having an overall messy plot and dialogue. The people most mad by this implication always seem to be those who had an intense boner for TFA and genuinely hated anything outside of the OT or didn't think much of SW to begin with as most will claim it wasn't even their favorite franchise or even one that interested them outside of rewatching the OT annually.

They praise TFA for basically being a recycled mess that re-uses all the same predictable plot points and memberberries that stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain and making them feel like children watching ANH again for the first time, even though the movie goes out of its way to deconstruct everything from ANH and the rest of the OT for the sake of being able to repeat this same story. So the thought of a movie like TFA turning out to be a sham that lead to nothing seems to be a shock to them, which is why they'd rather go down saying that both trilogies are equally bad or that SW was always shit to try and make TFA sound like a polished turd among a pile of turds despite that not being the case. It was a just a hollow corporate approved and formulaic repeat that offered absolutely nothing new or even a creative venue for writers to expand upon, something even the prequels couldn't fuck up. The prequels are often labeled as having killed the franchise despite that they really didn't. Sales were up, it was all over the media, merch was doing better than ever, best selling video games, comics and books wouldn't stop coming out, and it created to highly successful and award-winning animated shows that beat the odds despite being based on a mediocre trilogy, simply because said trilogy managed to lend itself to a lot of story ideas and creativity, something the Disney Trilogy severely lack. Only thing the Disney Trilogy could do was just redo the original trilogy, but worse or pathetically safe, and it did. And unlike the prequels, the DT has wrought untold damage to the brand name. A name that once could be put on a dog turd and it would sale can't even be used to sell cheap toys on clearance sale anymore. Merch sales are down, comic sales are almost non-existent and can barely break 4 digits, video games are pretty much dead with only one decent release among a very VERY small pile of controversies, and a 4 BILLION dollar park that's been an absolutely unprofitable mess since day 1. Even the prequels at their absolute lowest couldn't achieve this kind of damage outside of pissing off snooty critics and neckbeards. Meanwhile DT has not only pissed off critics, but even the most casual of audiences while dividing the fanbase and killing any and all hope it had of being relevant in China because Disney just did not plan anything in advance. And without even accounting for IRL damage, the Disney films did something even the Prequels or even Dark Empire at its worst couldn't achieve, completely devalue the original films and the heroes that started it all in every conceivable way while humiliating them and destroying the very foundation on which this franchise was built on. For even the prequels at the worst could never change the future and the conclusions to the saga, while Disney purposely went out of their way to destroy it to replace it with their own monstrosity.

For reference, here is the new timeline.
View attachment 1070943
Its no longer one named after any event from the OT era, now its one named after the fucking sequel era that reminds you of what shameful rejects the old heroes were. Leia Organa... Ousted. FFS

I'm not the biggest lorelord for star wars, I'm not even that invested in the series altogether, but shouldn't massive world-defining facts (worlds seceding from the new Republic, the first order having a huge industrial base of an unspecified number of planets) be established in a movie, not in a chart?

 

[Doctor of Autism]

I remember him getting somewhat annoyed that his franchise characters were being killed off that year, between that and Planet of the Apes.

I get the feeling he was especially bitter about Star Wars because he assumed, like everyone else, that he would stick around for all 3 movies but since he was killed off in movie 2 that left him with less work.

Yeah and that was a shame since I really enjoyed his character in Black Panther. I hope he gets more work in the future since he is a great character.

Though I think with Planet of the Apes he was less bitter cause that was the last movie of the Ape Prequel Trilogy

 

[Creep3r]

I'm not the biggest lorelord for star wars, I'm not even that invested in the series altogether, but shouldn't massive world-defining facts (worlds seceding from the new Republic, the first order having a huge industrial base of an unspecified number of planets) be established in a movie, not in a chart?

Yep. But the movie was such a rushed mess that they didn't even have time to put half this shit in the film (either that or they left shit out on purpose to make you feel obligated to buy more expensive shit). Hell you won't even know the black chick in the movie is Lando's son daughter or who the fucking Knights of Ren even are unless you buy the dictionary. Even with Dooku's and Grievou's brief appearances in the prequels, the films themselves offered enough exposition to give you a good idea of who these random jerks (no offense to the great late Christopher Lee who's performance I will always love) are without feeling obligated to watch Genndy Wars.

Also here's the book's only attempt at trying to explain the "Holdo Maneuver":

 

[Godzilla@1989]

James Rolfe is right on the money, Episodes 1-6 are the true canon.

No post-ROTJ media with the exception of Mandalorian will ever come close to the passion, energy, imagination, and effort of Episodes 1-6.

 

[Jaimas]

My dad used to have the Star Wars Radio Drama set on audiocasette.

If you can flag 'em down, they're absolutely worth your time, especially if you're an OT fan.

 

[Poe-Shen Zcela]

1h23m into Episode I and it's still pretty fun. I'm watching a cut of it with some deleted scenes added back in, like the one on the pod race and the one when they get to Coruscant. Jake Lloyd got shit on too much by the media back in the day, his performance is fine. You still feel for the kid and what he's going through. The only scene I'd cut out involving Jar Jar was the pre-race fart gag, since we already had a dumb poop gag earlier on. Props to George's foley guy for the quality rip though.

I remember RLM criticizing Qui-Gon cheating with Watto's die roll, but fuck it. There's a galactic war brewing back in the inner core. People are dying (supposedly), so he didn't have time to bullshit around. He'll do everything he needs to to ensure he gets off the planet, and with the Chosen One in tow.

That's the thing, they don't care about money.

Yeah, but I'm sure people like Bob Iger do. Much of their political grandstanding I think is either out of fear or greed, if not opportunism. On the one hand, none of them want to get #MeToo'd or end up getting smeared by the media for not being woke, because either would surely result in a loss of money and confidence. On the other hand, supporting the Democratic platform means supporting more unfettered immigration, which means more cheap labor in the long run, among other policies that would benefit them. That it goes hand-in-hand with destroying Western culture is either a bonus or a goal, but at the end of the day, none of these people want to give up their wealth and privilege. Few people do.

Now people like Chuck and other Twitter socialists? Sure, they don't care about money as long as they get free stuff. KK likewise I agree cares more about the cause than the business. There's plenty of people like her in the business, but I wonder how long the film industry will last with them calling the shots. At some point, they have to be replaced. Movies can't just go away forever and be replaced by TV, someone's going to pick up the slack. Same for comics. They can't hold onto people's attention forever.

My dad used to have the Star Wars Radio Drama set on audiocasette.

If you can flag 'em down, they're absolutely worth your time, especially if you're an OT fan.

Found this:

 

[Shield Breaker]

I always felt the pod race going two rounds was odd. Don't most races go one or three times around a track?

 

[Doctor of Autism]

Episode I probably is the most underrated Star Wars movie because while it did have dumb moments (mainly with Anakin and Jar Jar) it still felt like a fun and intriguing movie even if it's far from the best