Crazedwraith wrote: ↑2018-01-04 11:18am
We do see Finn do something wrong. You just dont agree about the severity of their parking laws.
Rose was the one that parked the shuttle- we've been explicitly told Finn has no piloting skills. Since we're also told Rose grew up in a place like this she should perhaps have a clue it would attract some attention from the authorities (though blowing it up does seem to be an overreaction). I mean, what if they'd just done the SW equivalent of tow it?
Crazedwraith wrote: ↑2018-01-04 11:18am
And is there any reaaon the seige cannon might not be a standard bit of FO kit?
The cannon really is miniature DS tech, including the use of kyber crystals, which are supposed to be quite scarce.
Avrjoe wrote: ↑2018-01-05 03:48am
Does everything need to be explained? No, but world building is not ‘wrong.’ A lack of world building isn't wrong either but if your already in a large, well established world. However, running contrary to the established rules of your world is bad storytelling. Claiming after the fact you didn't want the in world lore to get in the way of your storytelling is not good work. I offer this as a reference to help illustrate what I mean.
These problems were both present in the Force Awakens as well. The added sin of being too derivative drove TFA down into ‘bad’ territory for me. Not awful, but definitely not good.
That's my issue with some of the more recent directors. Sure we see planets and cities being destroyed on screen, but those worlds are never developed enough for us to care about their destruction. Crait feels empty compared to Hoth. Canto Bright feels artificial compared to Tatooine. We never ever get a hint of what is the galaxy is like to live in with the new movies.
By the end of Ep 8, I could not care any less about the Rebellion 2.0 vs the first order. I'm not invested in their struggle because I've seen nothing about what people's lives are like in the Galaxy. We saw bits of a casino but we don't see anything that actually reflects the lives of the common day to day life of people living in peacetime.
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
ray245 wrote: ↑2018-01-05 11:51am
That's my issue with some of the more recent directors. Sure we see planets and cities being destroyed on screen, but those worlds are never developed enough for us to care about their destruction. Crait feels empty compared to Hoth. Canto Bright feels artificial compared to Tatooine. We never ever get a hint of what is the galaxy is like to live in with the new movies.
How is that different from the Death Star popping into orbit over Alderaan and just blowing up the planet, though?
jollyreaper wrote: ↑2018-01-04 04:24pmThe Death Star wasn't a planet-destroying super weapon but a peace station designed to reach out and help rehabilitate backwards planets.
ray245 wrote: ↑2018-01-05 11:51am
That's my issue with some of the more recent directors. Sure we see planets and cities being destroyed on screen, but those worlds are never developed enough for us to care about their destruction. Crait feels empty compared to Hoth. Canto Bright feels artificial compared to Tatooine. We never ever get a hint of what is the galaxy is like to live in with the new movies.
How is that different from the Death Star popping into orbit over Alderaan and just blowing up the planet, though?
Maybe because it was Leia's homeworld and that made it personal? Don't be daft.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
ray245 wrote: ↑2018-01-05 11:51am
That's my issue with some of the more recent directors. Sure we see planets and cities being destroyed on screen, but those worlds are never developed enough for us to care about their destruction. Crait feels empty compared to Hoth. Canto Bright feels artificial compared to Tatooine. We never ever get a hint of what is the galaxy is like to live in with the new movies.
How is that different from the Death Star popping into orbit over Alderaan and just blowing up the planet, though?
Maybe because it was Leia's homeworld and that made it personal? Don't be daft.
There's that, I suppose, but honestly it doesn't feel that significant. At least on Hosnian you got to see people actually looking up and seeing their doom coming down on them. In terms of it actually appearing in the movie... two minutes of screentime and then poof. The rest is 'Obi-Wan, come to Alderaan and help Daddy', more or less.
Part of the problem is the sequel trilogy never really spends a ton of time anywhere where people *live*. Jakku is about the only exception. We see glimpses of Takodana, but it's mostly either forest or Maz Kanata's bar. There's Starkiller Base, but we don't see anything but snow or trees, and the rest is interior scenes that could be Imperial Set #5-A and nobody would know the difference. Then in TLJ there's Ahch-To, and you do get a feel for that place with the fish-people and the porgs. All we see of Crait is an abandoned base and fancy caves; nobody lives there. Similarly, Canto Bight is a fancy planet, but it doesn't feel lived-in.
Cloud City on the other hand, we saw bedrooms, we saw people walking around and working, we saw a dining room. Endor, we saw the Ewoks and their homes. Naboo is a civilized planet with nice houses that look remarkably like Italian villas. Things like that help give the universe depth. Zooming around from planet to planet and showing a quick scene or two of fancy effects to highlight how interesting this world is... kind of doesn't.
ray245 wrote: ↑2018-01-05 11:51am
That's my issue with some of the more recent directors. Sure we see planets and cities being destroyed on screen, but those worlds are never developed enough for us to care about their destruction. Crait feels empty compared to Hoth. Canto Bright feels artificial compared to Tatooine. We never ever get a hint of what is the galaxy is like to live in with the new movies.
How is that different from the Death Star popping into orbit over Alderaan and just blowing up the planet, though?
Tatooine. Lucas established just how full of life a desert planet can be. You can actually imagine people living decent, comfortable life on a desert planet. Leia as a princess of a seemingly wealthy world with blue oceans are more than sufficient to established Alderaan as a planet full of even more life.
Imagine the movie is set on modern-day earth. The movie spends most of the time in a modern day small farming town, showing just how vibrant life can be in a small rural area. The next scene we saw New York being destroyed. The juxtaposition between the two places is sufficed to sell how many people would be killed if some bad guys destroyed the whole city. Tatooine was the set-up to convey the impact of Alderaan's destruction.
Let the characters "live" in the world before setting them on the path to an action or adventure. Lord of the Rings did the same, establishing what life is like in Hobbiton before allowing Frodo to go off on an adventure. We saw the daily life of a Hobbit in a similar way we saw the daily life of Luke. Luke's life on Tatooine is actually people won't have too many complaints about.
Jakku, on the other hand, is quite clearly not how life would be like for the "average people" living in the galaxy. It's a junkyard devoid of actual meaningful life. There's no bar, spaceport, the farmhouse of any kind. The world established in Ep 7 and 8 is a world where we don't actually see what it's like to "live" in it.
This video explains how to make a fictional world comes alive, and I don't think we saw this in the sequel movies.
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
Elheru Aran wrote: ↑2018-01-05 12:56pmThere's that, I suppose, but honestly it doesn't feel that significant. At least on Hosnian you got to see people actually looking up and seeing their doom coming down on them. In terms of it actually appearing in the movie... two minutes of screentime and then poof. The rest is 'Obi-Wan, come to Alderaan and help Daddy', more or less.
As an aside, when I first saw TFA, I thought they blew up Coruscant, because everyone kept talking about how the Republic capital was destroyed, the 2-second glimpse of the surface we saw was a bunch of people in a city, and nobody ever calls it Hosnian Prime on-screen. I wasn't keen on the idea of Coruscant being destroyed, but I was actually somewhat disappointed that it turned out not to be. Blowing up one of the most well-established planets in all of the movies (behind Tatooine and maybe Naboo) would have really had an impact. With Hosnian Prime, the only connection we get is that we see a bunch of randos on the planet look up and see the shot coming down at them. We never meet anyone from there, we have no interaction with anyone from the New Republic government in the preceding time, we don't get a single scene involving the planet before its destruction. Hell, you don't even get to know the name of the planet unless you read the supplemental material. At least with Alderaan, we knew what the name of the planet was as the Empire was busy blowing it up.
Hosnian Prime was like the red shirt ensign of Star Wars planets, right down to the part where it gets eaten by an evil space monster one minute after its introduction.
I finally got to spend enough time on dry land to catch this at the base theater. I was down on this movie upfront, but I recognized that going in and forced myself to not walk out after the first horrible five minutes. My entering impressions proved correct for the whole movie, it was awful in most ways imaginable. I also realize I am late to the party and most of you don't care about a review at this point.
The good:
1.) The sets, again. The locals and the ship interiors were believable and lived in. I even have to give credit to the completely inappropriate casino location because while it didn't belong in the film, it was still quality in physical execution.
2.) The CGI. It was better than in TFA, my chief gripe with that film was the googly eye aliens patrons all of which looked like cartoons. This one does better with what we see in the casino. The notable exception was Snoke, who when not city in his chair I could visibly see was not correctly positioned dimension-ally relative to the floor. He also looked like a cartoon character. I have no CGI complaints with the space scenes and sets however, and I especially liked the explosion effects in this film.
3.) Kylo. I was down on this character back at the release of TFA and I still feel for good reason. I like what they wanted to do with him but I felt it was botched in execution. He feels like a real person here. Oddly enough his worse scenes are when the actor is badly faking rage, particular at the end of the film. Where he makes his money is his interactions with Rey, where he calmly and coolly confronts her without backing down in a charismatic and sympathetic manor. That's how real villains work, people LIKE them as well as fear them.
4.) I have always liked the new destroyers but I had serious reservations about the siege dreadnought and the new command ship. I still think the dreadnought is inappropriate for the SW setting, but in and of itself it was not bad. The command ship looked fine, though its still far too big in my opinion.
Thats it.
The Bad.
1.) The opening scene was so fucking stupid. First those first wooden lines from recurring female Rebel officer nobody "THE. EVACUATION. IS. COMPLETE. Oh, you don't say? So why the fuck do I give a shit about anything the opening crawl just set up for the opening sequence? Seriously, we will pend the next five minutes watching InvinciPoe effortlessly charge a dreadnought to prevent it from destroying a base I was just told is no longer important. I could tell everyone in the theater, like me, was wondering why you needed to destroy the base if you could just destroy the ship they were evacuating too, but we were all forced to sit through the most pointless first minutes of any SW film, including TPM.
2.) Yo mama jokes. It was stupid, so fucking stupid. And so fucking unfunny. And the gag didn't just crash and pass, they ran the joke THREE FUCKING TIMES back to back. Each time a worse dumpster fire than the last. This is mere minutes into the film and they are not just shoehorning in a bad joke, but one completely inappropriate for the tone and setting of the film. This was their lead off.
3.) The bombers. They are stupid. You know they are stupid. You knew it the second you saw them working like they do. Its not just thaty they are functionally stupid, they are slow, and of course just one makes it through to JUUUUUUST make it to the finish line. That wasn't enough of course. There had to be ANOTHER photo finish race to the trigger button inside the first race. Tension, right? I have to admit that since I told myself I would give this a fair shake this seen was quite emotional for me. My heart was pounding, my hands were gripping the arm rests, I was leaned forward in my seat, back stiff as a board. There was no way, inside the first ten minutes, Disney would totally ruin this film with such implausible fake tension BS. I knew intellectually there was no way that dreadnought would not be destroyed the second I saw it because moder film makers are predictable, and of course thats exactly what happened. Bit this quick? This way?
4.) The completely nonthreatening villains, and the complete lack of tension. I never felt any of the characters were in actual danger at any time. I know of course that at best maybe one main character will die at the hands of a villain, but its a movies jon to trick my emotions into feeling they are imperiled. The move intentionally pulls the rug out from under the FO with Poe's charge up front. From that moment on I know the FO is smoke and mirrors. Any attempt to convince the viewer their weapons are devastating, their people are elite killers, their ships are looming threats has been subverted. There will be no clever ways to have our phone-in-heros beat the villains by the rules of the universe. Every triumph will be via writer fiat, and that was the case. Shiels stop working the way we just saw them work the next seen. Sensors don't work right on cue, unless they need to work better than they ever have before. You can communicate with whomever you want, whenever you want, unless you can't for no good reason.
5.) Cloaking devices. This a very subversive technology in a SW setting. The EU has been explicit for decades that this is a holy grail of tech achievement and we see it only in a very small number of places. Now its everywhere, people just throw it together at will from spare parts. Whenever sensors would be an issue, the writers shoehorn in a clocking device. Same with dropping the command ships shields. A lot of people have said in this thread that all this techno stuff is irrelevant, its there to serve the plot. I agree with to an extent, however if thats the case you don't need to invent a techno contrivance solution to your techno prop plot corner you have written yourself into. You need a new setting. The ships and other techno bits in an established IP with lots of world building are themselves characters. Having star destroyers destroyed inexplicably at will is no different than having a human protagonist all of a sudden display abilities or flaws there is no reason for the audience to accept.
6.) Already stated many times, there is zero reason why one or all of the escorting SDs didn't hyper ahead to cut off the rebel cruiser.
7.) Why is Rose an expert in tracking devices. More importantly, why is Finn? They complete each others sentences, so Finn is at least as expert on the tech being discussed as Rose. For no reason, and this is the first tech acumen Finn has ever shown. And of course just like the last film he knows anything any everything about what and where things are on any ship or facility the FO owns. At least last time they gave the completely inadequate but existent excuse that he used to work on Starkiller base. Was he the janitor the Supremacy too?At least she is an actual maintenance type, but holy fucking convenience that is some specific knowledge for a person to know about a mechanism she has never seen, located on a ship she has never been on, on a class of ship of the enemy faction she has no information on...
8.) So the FO is pursuing the rebel cruiser, who jumps to a new location and is speeding away at the fastest speed they can to avoid destruction. In a straight line. Don't you think the fact that there is a planet located directly on their escape route within just a couple days sublight travel? Very suspicious, maybe you would send something there first ahead of them if you were a villian who was the least bit threatening to the audience...
9.) So you have a cloaking device. Great. YOU ARE IN FUCKING VISUAL RANGE!!!!!!!!!! However the cloaks work and whatever scifi sensors they mask against they quite obviously don't interfere with electromagnetic radiation in visible spectrion of the MkI ModI human eyeball. The people we see over and over again staring out of the Supremecy's bridge windows can physically see the transports leaving the cruiser. They can certainly see DJ's ship approaching. Shall we just assume the super high tech SW universe doesn't include IR sensors on their warships?
10.) Poe and Finn are communicating effortlessly between the Supremacy and the rebel cruiser. Who is setting this up? How does this work? They didn't even know were the other ones were until they started talking. ST has their communicators, but they have fucking communicators to make that work. This is not an established SW thing. For instance, Obi Wan has to go back to his ship and establish a comm link to report back from Kamino. There is no casual handheld interplanetary comms in any of the OT films. This is LAZINESS on the part of the writers.
11.) But even though Poe and Finn have this magitek comms capability, why can't they call reinforcements now? Why can the call googly-eyed alien bar keep but not for help but nobody else? I have heard people say they couldn't call all of them at once because of power. This is not established in the film but okay, don't call them all at once then. Is the entire resistance is on this base evacuation mission? Every fucking one of them? This a galaxy wide resistance movement and you don't have cells, outposts, patrols, sympathizers, ambassadors, liaison officers, people on medical leave, ANYONE not on your only cruiser you can reach back to via comms who is a trusted agent to rally allies? Fuck you.
12.) This is a 2 and a half hour movie. Thirty odd minutes of it is wasted on the stupid, contrived, and completely pointless to any outcome of the movie Finn/Rose subplot. Oh, you have to give Finn something to do you say? If Finn has nothing to do, then kill him which is exactly what you should have done.
13.) Everything about SaltyHoth. First of all its Hoth. I don't give a shit that some redshirt spends two seconds to tell us its salt. Second, this movie is two and a half hours long, it doesn't need a second ending tacked onto the end. If you couldn't end the chase in a creative and intelligent way (they didn't), then you shouldn't have written your movie around it. A fucking dedicated battering ram weapon? Seriously. Thats a pretty specific weapon to have a round... But good thing you had to penetrate that door which was, well, no thicker than any other door we have seen in SW. What is this armored base armored in? Mithral? Valarian Steel? Also, whats the point in building an armored base on a world undermined in shafts you can fly the MF through? Also, they walked out of the place through a cave, and it was made clear as day that it wasn't designed with a exit but rather they were using natural shafts so that "heavily armored" but was BS. There was an open rock entrance into there, which means the FO could easily have bombarded them to death.
14.) They find some random craft on SaltyHoth. Whatever, its been done before. What fucking hack effects guy came up with those craft? What possible design benefit is there to having a craft that can fly (we see Finn do it and not die) but requires a doge be drag a stanchion behind you against the ground? Where did they come up with this shit? How is this better than a ground vehicle on a world that is mostly salt flat from what we see? You just have a speed limited aircraft fixed in altitude forced to be in extreme hull up silhouette. Also, open cockpits?
15.) Its been covered that Rose t-boning Finn in an open cockpit pseudo aircraft aircraft collision at max speed for both of them is instant death. Except it wasn't. SO MUCH TENSION. Thats stupid. Whats more stupid is how she accomplished this in the first place. They were all racing max speed towards the battering ram (why would they even call it that in this setting?). Then Rose turns around while Finn continues forward as fast as possible. How does turn around, catch up with Finn, and not just hit him but get forward of him enough to turn 90degrees and then t-bone him? Would someone like to defend this?
16.) Finn is ramming the battering ram. Despite this being a perfect way to kill/dispose of him and remove a useless character who accomplished exactly nothing for the entire film, how does this work? We see the beam is already causing damage to the door. We see the beam is melting pieces off of his craft. Finn is staring directly at this destructive power with shielded face and eyeballs IN AN OPEN COCKPIT. Why is he not burned, why is he not blind, how is not not dead!
17.) But his alive. So is Rose. Who Finn then drags straight through miles of open battlefield in mere minutes exposed to everyone. He would have had to walk straight past Luke.
18.) Phasma is wasted again, only this time outright stating an Austin Powers stupid comedic trope in the process. Interestingly before the Supremacy is hit they are surrounded by thousands of troopers. When Finn wakes up there are three or four dead around him, and then Phasma walks up out of a door through mist like she hadn't been standing next to him moments before.
19.) So much about the kamikaze cruiser ploy makes no sense. First off, it breaks SW ship combat outright. There is zero way to reconcile how this is notthe sole way warfare is waged in this universe. In the movie itself, why did they not try that with each smaller ship as they began to run out of fuel? Why was that not Pink's original plan when they dispatched the transports? Why did it destroy the other SDs that were not in the line of her path?
20.) What purpose did Pink not telling people her plan serve? Why is she in a cocktail dress? No uniform okay, this is a more ragtag bunch. But you are also an Admiral. On a operation. Surely there are lots of practical reason ti be wearing a dress in a fleet engagement. It probably doesn't protect well agains fire/vacuum. This character was all around stupid and a waste of screen time. I also realize they didn't know Leia wouldn't be around for the next film, but this would have been a great way for her to go out minus the whole idea being, again, stupid beyond belief.
21.) Thats a neat Astral Projection trick Luke. It would have been super useful in petty much ever situation we have ever seen Jedi masters on screen but whatever. It also would have been more impressive if you hadn't immediately died anyway, removing all utility of not exposing yourself to danger through astral projection. From a simple story telling perspective having Luke be there in person and sacrifice himself there would have been better story writing. As it is how does anyone know Luke sacrificed himself at all?
22.) Rey and Chewie see some random animals on SaltyHoth. They immediately think this means something VERY specific, even though they had never seen these animals before and nor had any reason to think they were at all associated with the rebel base.
23.) I think you some of you are jumping the gun on the timeline. Its true the last image from Rey we see in TFA picks up immediately in TLJ, it should be remember the end of TFA was a montage so there is no reason to assume that there wasn't an unspecified time between what we see in the montage and the linear portions of that film. There could be a lot of time in between the films, and it really only makes sense if there is. That said, if there is not there is a pretty big increase in Rey's lighsaber skills if there was zero training between the fights we see. For those of you defend Mary Rey as not being THAT good a lightsaber fighter in TFA, about that...
24.) So it was Snoke who connected Rey and Kylo. So Snoke knows where Luke is. Yet usn't blasting that planet from orbit for some reason...
25.) Maz is in a fire fight while on the phone....
26.) RICH PEOPLE ARE BAD. They only way to make money is by selling weapons of course. And people who sell weapons to the FO as their primary financial activity always congregate en mass in conspicuous locations everybody knows about where people in their primary customer's enemy's uniforms can waltz about freely. Hey idiots, its probably not a good idea to announce your presence by parking on the beach. Also, its probably not a good idea to have your escape vehicle impounded.
27.) The FO droid explicitly noticed B on the Supremacy yet they never bothered to capture it with the rest the gang. There is no good reason for this.
28.) The power of the FO weapons to damage things reducing with range is not a bad idea. But that close? And they can just bash it for days and not drop the shields? Sloppy. Also the turbolaser lob, so all they had to do was get some vertical and horizontal separation between the SDs and they an then hot the unshielded portions of the cruiser.
29.) A technical gripe, but do the Resurgent and Supremacy but have the same Delta-V? From a real world perspective I would expect the larger ships to be faster, so the Supremacy should be able to easily catch the cruiser, and the SDs should be left in both of their wakes. But since this is SW I can see that reversed, but then the SDs should be able to catch the cruiser...
30.) Shields. They play this against both sides. For some reason the dreadnought doesn't have them, for some reason the rebel cruiser's didn't stop Kype from flying up to and shooting into the the hangar bay. This is despite the movie making warship shields as prominent as they have ever been in any other SW movie. The bubble shields look nice, but looking nice is probably all the thought that went into this change. And of course they are entirely irrelevant because just like with TFA as soon as the writers found them selves in a corner of their own making regarding shields, they just wrote them away in two instances. So why are they even there?
31.) Why does the dreadnaught have no anti-fighter defenses. The fact that Poe was going fast is of no matter to direct fire energy weapons. On his apporach his presented the exact same target area on a near constant bearing. He reduced the window to fire by going fast, but it would have had little impact on the effectiveness of the defensive fire given his target angle. The turrets got off plenty of shots, so essentially they are ineffective agains fighters no matter what. This is a common SW trope, but again there is no threat presented when the enemy never leans after half a century of dealing with this cannon problem.
32.) Poe's arc makes no sense, because Finn was going to destroy the battering ram, and Rose's bullshit makes no sense because killing himself to do so was the only useful thing Finn would have accomplished in this movie. Instead he accomplished nothing.
33.) I was a big critic of Snoke from a TFA because he made no sense. Rey's parentage mystery also got my derision because fuck who cares. There was a certain base satisfaction in seeing them snuffed out but it was fleeting and not worth degrading this movie over. Like it or not the TFA happened as it did, Snoke and the Rey parentage mystery are things. If you don't want to write or direct in this setting as it exists then don't, but breaking the story continuity in this fashion degrades the entire experience. You can get rid of them, because dealing with the decisions of the NEXT director and writers is something past directors and writers have to deal with themselves, but that's no excuse to intentionally make a character shitty or inadequately handwave past loose ends.
Knife wrote: ↑2018-01-04 10:30am
I'd like a citation on where you guys are coming up with the entire Republic fleet is destroyed. I've already pointed out that when Hux said it, it was before they fired Starkiller at the Republic and was hyperbole. The novel doesn't say that either.
There's no evidence that it was anything other than substantially true - as C-3P0s says later in the film: he says "without the Republic fleet, we're doomed."
Another thing with the 'Poe has Chronic Hero Syndrome and needs to learn his lesson' subplot is that Finn and Rose's plan, which relied on Finn's knowledge that Holdo and Leia didn't have access to, was a much better plan. In a functional organisation, Poe would have taken the plan to Holdo who could have assigned someone competent to go and fetch the hacker whilst Finn sits his ass in the van until his encyclopedic knowledge of Star Destroyer layouts is actually needed. Surely the Resistance, with all that institutional knowledge from the Rebellion, has one or two James Bond types who can blend into a casino and discreetly make contact with the correct individual?
It still brings us back to 'who's to blame, Holdo or Poe?' - as he didn't even consider taking the plan to her, we have no idea if she would have listened, or blown him off agan and carried on with her 'hope no one looks out of the window at the wrong time or notices that planet over there' plan A.
I pretty much agree with this guy's argument and why I think Kennedy is not a good person to helm a franchise like Star Wars. SW is a franchise that calls for someone to be the head writer and steer all the directors in a consistent direction.
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
jollyreaper wrote: ↑2018-01-04 04:24pmThe Death Star wasn't a planet-destroying super weapon but a peace station designed to reach out and help rehabilitate backwards planets.
Someone's been reading Darths & Droids.
No, but it's the sort of thing people would come up with. Like using an ignited lightsaber to impale someone with the extending blade, that's something I'd thought up playing with the toys as a kid. Now it's in the movie Dropping the lightsaber and having it go through the floor? Now robot chicken did it. I was originally convinced lightsabers disintegrated victims since we never saw the rest of the guy in the bar and obiwan disappeared. But luke didn't disintegrate? Not enough of him was chopped off. I was also convinced there was a death star in empire, too. Death stars in all three movies. I'm sure I wasn't the only one to make these mistakes early on. This is back when I was a little kid and before vhs was common.
There's that, I suppose, but honestly it doesn't feel that significant. At least on Hosnian you got to see people actually looking up and seeing their doom coming down on them. In terms of it actually appearing in the movie... two minutes of screentime and then poof. The rest is 'Obi-Wan, come to Alderaan and help Daddy', more or less.
That's actually something I wondered about with pacing. Lucas didn't have the means to depict Alderaan and the Death Star exploding in detail so he had to work within his means.
I'd speculated over how those scenes would look if shot today and wondered if the temptation to show more would be a pacing mistake. I'd want to see more of the mechanics of the planet blowing up but that could be the wrong instinct and just belabor the point. TFA showed more detail in about roughly the same screentime but I felt nothing because my brain was stuck in wtf this makes no sense mode with the hyperspace laser beam and splitting to hit multiple targets. They also cut the scenes establishing the character Leia sent to the capital who died in the reaction shot. Oddly enough, R1 showed far more detail while blowing up less and the scale felt so much bigger. So they could probably get away with making it more visually complex with a little more screentime but not too much.
The orbital mechanics of blowing up a planet has been discussion fodder for years online. It makes me think that they could depict more of the aftermath cinematically without belaboring the point. All the matter is still present in orbit around the star and would start clumping together. The debris belt would be spectacular and an incredibly complex and dynamic environment. And there's likely a number of alderaanians who were offworld or had emigrated. There would be a huge symbolic incentive to rebuild and that debris field would make for good raw materials. It would likely be beyond the scale of star wars to reconstitute a new planet but megastructure habitats would be possible, O'Neill colonies and such. They could try to recreate the original biosphere inside them. It would be a hell of a setting to revisit in a later film and the laborious background details us geeks want to know could be saved for the books. New Alderaan would be a string of many habitats dramatically framed by the debris field.
I pretty much agree with this guy's argument and why I think Kennedy is not a good person to helm a franchise like Star Wars. SW is a franchise that calls for someone to be the head writer and steer all the directors in a consistent direction.
He makes very fair points. A strong editor with a good sense of the universe is obviously needed.
Thing is, these movies not being artistically good doesn't seem to have a bearing on profitability so, like I've said, Disney has no reason to change its approach. If TLJ vastly underperformed projections, then there's a problem. If the merch sales collapse, then there's a problem. In an informal survey of people I know, the geeks hated it and the casuals enjoyed it. My wife is an outlier because she's a scifi fan but not a hardcore SW nut and she had all the same problems with it. She was the reason why we saw it in a theater because she was so excited and is now completely uninterested in any future films. She's someone who enjoyed R1 and TFA.
Hmm, I wonder how I fit into that analysis? Being a SF fan, and a Star Wars fan, but not one of the die hard "The Prequels raped my childhood" crowd, and being generally prepared to try to accept a film on its own merits, rather than my preconceptions of what it "should" be.
"I know its easy to be defeatist here because nothing has seemingly reigned Trump in so far. But I will say this: every asshole succeeds until finally, they don't. Again, 18 months before he resigned, Nixon had a sky-high approval rating of 67%. Harvey Weinstein was winning Oscars until one day, he definitely wasn't."-John Oliver
"The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan."-General Von Clauswitz, describing my opinion of Bernie or Busters and third partiers in a nutshell.
I SUPPORT A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE TO REMOVE TRUMP FROM OFFICE.
jollyreaper wrote: ↑2018-01-06 03:37pm
He makes very fair points. A strong editor with a good sense of the universe is obviously needed.
Thing is, these movies not being artistically good doesn't seem to have a bearing on profitability so, like I've said, Disney has no reason to change its approach. If TLJ vastly underperformed projections, then there's a problem. If the merch sales collapse, then there's a problem. In an informal survey of people I know, the geeks hated it and the casuals enjoyed it. My wife is an outlier because she's a scifi fan but not a hardcore SW nut and she had all the same problems with it. She was the reason why we saw it in a theater because she was so excited and is now completely uninterested in any future films. She's someone who enjoyed R1 and TFA.
It depends on how much people value consistency. The general public is probably aware of the story of Star Wars in the OT, but they might have seen it 10 years ago or more. They will probably have less issue with the characters not being as consistent as more "hard-core" fans would have hoped. People who rewatched Star Wars multiple times are going to be different from people who saw it 20-30 years ago.
I think what will scare Disney a little is whether SW can have the ability to expand in new markets like China. China is becoming more important for Hollywood studios, with some Hollywood movies in China outgrossing the US domestic box office. With the US box office market slowly shrinking and China's expanding, someone in charge of long-term strategy at Disney will be a little concern. Not alarm in anyway, but they will be right to ask why Star Wars isn't able to expand at the box office in China.
The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2018-01-06 03:43pm
Hmm, I wonder how I fit into that analysis? Being a SF fan, and a Star Wars fan, but not one of the die hard "The Prequels raped my childhood" crowd, and being generally prepared to try to accept a film on its own merits, rather than my preconceptions of what it "should" be.
I think you still have your own preconception of what SW "should" be. It might be less of an issue since you might have a broader tolerance for what SW can or cannot do. Some preconception of SW is more legitimate than others.
I think the fans who are perhaps more preoccupied with the superficial aspect of SW ( too much CGI/too little backwater planets/too shiny spaceships/midichlorians) have less legitimate complaints than people who are preoccupied with what the spirit of Star Wars is about. Being annoyed with the attempts to deconstruct classical heroes is an legitimate concern in my opinion because the thing that forms the core essence of Star Wars.
To me, Star Wars is basically a myth. Myth can exist in different forms, be it a simple good/black fairy tale or something akin to Greek tragedy. Certain things in these stories are idealized, and they often don't reflect the "real" world as we understood them to be.
Humans are such funny creatures. We are selfish about selflessness, yet we can love something so much that we can hate something.
I would like to see a breakdown of the profitability of these different types of fans. People often derisively talk down to the hyper-detail oriented fans and hold up the casual general audience fan as the target audience money wise, but is that true?
A casual fan will pay for a ticket, but usually just one. Maybe they buy a t-shirt at some point. They probably recognize it as cool for kids and buy the odd SW toy for them every other Christmas.
A hardcore detail fan like myself who is in love with the world more that any specific character or movie? I have a whole wall full of literally hundreds of SW books. Novels, tech manuals, game guides, picture books. I have a hard drive(s) choke full of SW games. I have miniatures, models, lego sets (the expensive ones), probably a functional stand alone wardrobe of SW clothing (I kid, but its a lot) and I have filled my child's room with the same. From a money perspective, I am probably worth a thousand casual SW fans at least. Granted much of that money went to third parties, but those third parties pays to license that material. And I also bought the same movie tickets, maybe multiple times.
The point is in the grand scheme of things the movies the are just marketing for the follow on products. If we are talking about the decisions of Disney being all dollars and cents, the detail fans are their bread and butter. And we are the ones that can be lost, because while you can guarantee SW fans will go and see the movies by and large no matter how shitty the past one was and no matter how shitty they think the next one will be and hate themselves for it, those people won't buy the merchandise for those shitty movies. Case in point, I have watched every single SW movie in the theatre where I was alive to be able to do despite being very sour going in for II, III, and VIII. I still buy OT stuff regularly, but there is not a speck of prequel of nuWars crap in my home. It would be if they had paid attention to the details.
The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2018-01-06 03:43pm
Hmm, I wonder how I fit into that analysis? Being a SF fan, and a Star Wars fan, but not one of the die hard "The Prequels raped my childhood" crowd, and being generally prepared to try to accept a film on its own merits, rather than my preconceptions of what it "should" be.
I was perhaps sloppy in my phrasing.
There's extremes among the fans, those with raped childhoods and those who say Lucas and now Disney can do no wrong. The more reasonable middle is where you can actually have a debate, pro and con. I would place myself here along with you.
I would like to see a breakdown of the profitability of these different types of fans. People often derisively talk down to the hyper-detail oriented fans and hold up the casual general audience fan as the target audience money wise, but is that true?
I'd love to as well. All we have to go on here is anecdote and guesswork.
I would wager that you as a hyper consumer would be a key demo. But since you don't like the new material you are a lapsed hyper consumer. And I would further wager most hyper consumers are continuing to buy. This is why I think they won't change what they're doing.
I didn't collect the toys as I got older but I had a wall of books myself and loved the games. The very last star wars merch I ever bought was xwing alliance. I had no love for the prequels and thus no interest in those games. I would still happily pay for more of the classic space sims.
If we hear Disney talk about winning back alienated fans then we know that their numbers are down.
Patroklos wrote: ↑2018-01-07 02:56amI still buy OT stuff regularly, but there is not a speck of prequel of nuWars crap in my home. It would be if they had paid attention to the details.
This is exactly the position I find myself in. I'll buy OT stuff. Hell, I bought myself a Y Wing toy because I was never allowed one as a kid (or for that matter any SW vehicle, but I loved the Y Wing). I bought the whole damn Lego range, a SFX lightsaber, the Blu Rays of the DVDs of the other DVDs of the VHS tapes I owned. But the new stuff? Not a chance. At this point I'm not even going to see Ep IX in the cinema, let alone purchase anything from this trilogy.
There is just such a sense of overwhelming disappointment with this film (and TFA). Some people will call that entitlement but I don't feel cheated. Just really disappointed that SW is seemingly, no longer for me. Falling out of love with a property isn't fun and I don't think there's anything wrong with lamenting when that happens.
My Facebook news feed is currently inundated with people telling me why TLJ is great, why Lucas got SW wrong and why this is the best SW ever. There's even a noticeable theme in there telling me I don't like it because I'm sexist, which I really don't care for. And then there's the people saying 'SW isn't for you' to which I just have to shrug and go 'yeah, I guess so.' But I reject the notion that it was impossible to make VII,VIII and IX in a way that satisfied *more* people than the current offerings.
I would also point out from a business standpoint that while it is important to recruit new consumers, older consumers like me are the ones with deep pockets, in our economic prime. A 17 year old fan might buy a 20 dollar t-shirt now, but I will shell out hundreds of dollars for a ISD lego set. And still buy that t-shirt.
The balance of who is more important to cater to will shift with time, but I think the OT fans are still far more valuable. And I highly doubt the newly minted fans will ever be as dedicated or lucrative to the franchise dollar for dollar when they replace the old timers. Maybe in sheer numbers, but not body for body over a lifetime. These now movies are after all the retreaded cash grabs dependent on the old ones for any relevancy at all, they won't stand the test of time even for their most rabid current fanboys. There is also a lot more media in the genre to compete with which was not the case pre-prequels to any real degree.
Patroklos wrote: ↑2018-01-07 02:56am
I would like to see a breakdown of the profitability of these different types of fans. People often derisively talk down to the hyper-detail oriented fans and hold up the casual general audience fan as the target audience money wise, but is that true?
A casual fan will pay for a ticket, but usually just one. Maybe they buy a t-shirt at some point. They probably recognize it as cool for kids and buy the odd SW toy for them every other Christmas.
A hardcore detail fan like myself who is in love with the world more that any specific character or movie? I have a whole wall full of literally hundreds of SW books. Novels, tech manuals, game guides, picture books. I have a hard drive(s) choke full of SW games. I have miniatures, models, lego sets (the expensive ones), probably a functional stand alone wardrobe of SW clothing (I kid, but its a lot) and I have filled my child's room with the same. From a money perspective, I am probably worth a thousand casual SW fans at least. Granted much of that money went to third parties, but those third parties pays to license that material. And I also bought the same movie tickets, maybe multiple times.
The point is in the grand scheme of things the movies the are just marketing for the follow on products. If we are talking about the decisions of Disney being all dollars and cents, the detail fans are their bread and butter. And we are the ones that can be lost, because while you can guarantee SW fans will go and see the movies by and large no matter how shitty the past one was and no matter how shitty they think the next one will be and hate themselves for it, those people won't buy the merchandise for those shitty movies. Case in point, I have watched every single SW movie in the theatre where I was alive to be able to do despite being very sour going in for II, III, and VIII. I still buy OT stuff regularly, but there is not a speck of prequel of nuWars crap in my home. It would be if they had paid attention to the details.
I'd be fascinated to read your source for all of this. Was it done before or after TFA? Because that film was a pretty crazy watermark for the world of film economics.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"
- A.B. Original, Report to the Mist
"I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately."
- George Carlin
Estimated total value of the Star Wars franchise
Categories Revenue/Value (in billions)
Box Office $7.300
Home Entertainment Sales $5.749
Toys and Merchandise $17.000
Video Games $4.280
This shouldn't surprise anyone. The franchise lived off of non movie revenue for twenty years in what most would call the golden age of the fandom.
Patroklos wrote: ↑2018-01-07 02:56amThe point is in the grand scheme of things the movies the are just marketing for the follow on products. If we are talking about the decisions of Disney being all dollars and cents, the detail fans are their bread and butter. And we are the ones that can be lost, because while you can guarantee SW fans will go and see the movies by and large no matter how shitty the past one was and no matter how shitty they think the next one will be and hate themselves for it, those people won't buy the merchandise for those shitty movies. Case in point, I have watched every single SW movie in the theatre where I was alive to be able to do despite being very sour going in for II, III, and VIII. I still buy OT stuff regularly, but there is not a speck of prequel of nuWars crap in my home. It would be if they had paid attention to the details.
This is pretty much me. I've bought some Rogue One stuff because it's my favorite aesthetic and it was done well, but I won't touch the sequel bits.
I think the box office vs merchandise dynamic is sort of like games with single- and multiplayer- communities. If it's at all balanced in terms of emphasis by the devs the multiplayers in most cases are the ones that represent the serious revenue stream, since they will come back and buy more stuff like DLC (merchandise/games/other media) while the single player people will likely only buy the game (tickets) and play it once or twice.
