Alderaan

Lord Haseo said:

lovelikewinter said:

Maybe understanding droid is something the Jedi teach, along with the other skills. Poe would have learned it growing up with a pilot mom and when he trained it would probably come up. Rey might have learned it from Unkar Plot. Luke might not have had the time to learn it in the OT.

Regardless of who exactly Rey learned it from it is stated in the Visual Dictionary that she learned the language of the Wookies and Droid Binary during her time on Jakku. So in that department Rey is in the clear as far as that Mary Sue stuff goes.

I think the criticism is that she can do everything, and knows everything, so giving an explanation for why she knows this or knows that, isn’t exactly addressing the criticism.

SilverWook said:

What did I just say?

SilverWook said:

I’m sure Disney accountants are wiping their tears with all the money Rogue One made. 😉

Tyler0013 said:
Now i love that we have the Despecialized Edition, But i wish we had a Harmys Special Edition with the Good things that were added/fixed.

You can make a fanedit yourself, which is what I’m doing. Not everyone will agree on which changes are good and which are bad though.

Speaking of which, I agree with most of your list, but why do you think the extended rancor scene is good? It’s repetitive, since you already get to see the same **** going on in the scene with Luke and the guard. The off-camera screams in the original were enough to cue in the audience that something bad happened to people who fall down there. It also built suspense towards what Luke was up against, when that big giant metal door slowly opens and reveals the Rancor. The SE change is a terrible editing mistake.

At least nobody chimed in with “It’s pointless to resist” yet.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull got criticized for being ridiculously over the top, self-aware, and cartoonish at times.

Why do you think F&F gets away with it when other movies don’t?

SilverWook said:

Obi Wan seemed to understand his Artoo unit in the prequels.

Well, the prequels are trash, so that doesn’t carry much weight.

NeverarGreat said:

Rey understands Droid-speak, but I think she’s the only human who can do it 😉
Luke only gets the gist of things like strong yes and no answers.

You’re exactly right. Luke even read the translation on his X-wing computer at times. He clearly only understood the gist of R2s beeps, the same way a human understands a cat or dog’s different meows and barks.

DominicCobb said:

F8 certainly doesn’t deserve the record but at least it’s a good movie.

I see our opposing views on movies is not limited to Star Wars. The first Fast and Furious movie was ok to good, and then they got stupid and more ridiculous after that.

Maybe there are some people who like well made movies and an engaging story, and there are other people who just like as much **** thrown on the screen as possible.

Maybe that’s the ADHD society we live in these days?

Maybe I’m in the minority?

Ramblings…

Possessed said:

This is kinda turning into just a random star wars quote thread.

There are definitely some fails in this thread.

The Emperor actually does cackle when he’s walking through the hangar with Vader and Jerjerrod.

While I like the Emperor in ROTJ, because he contrasts nicely against the emotional complexity of Vader, and his level of villainy matches the tone of the rest of the film, I definitely see the merit to Duracell’s point.

Blame George Lucas.

Phantom Menace is a bad kid’s movie, made much worse because it has the single most ridiculous and obnoxious character in movie history. If you took out one thing–Jar Jar–it would just be a goofy kid’s film, nothing more.

There is not one single thing you could take out of Attack of the Clones though to make it improve to even bad. There is so much wrong with it at a conceptual and storytelling level, right to the acting and editing and everything else. It’s just a big steaming pile of ****. One of the worst movies ever made.

I just want to know who in here thinks the U.S./U.K. should have gone to war in Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein in 2003?

Do you think the U.S. should go to war in Syria and overthrow Assad now?

If you answer yes/yes to those questions, you might be like Cheney, Bush, Blair, but also Clinton and maybe Trump. You might be a warmonger.

If you answer no/yes to those questions, what possible explanation can you offer for the discrepancy? Does it not seem like hypocrisy?

If you answer no/no, then why is it OK for the U.S. to pay other people to do the war for them? Is that not hypocrisy also?

chyron8472 said:

Alderaan said:

There would be no Islamic State [if not for Obama].

You can’t possibly be that naive. Islamic extremism has existed for well over a thousand years.
ISIS is just the latest iteration of it.

That’s why I said there would be no Islamic State, and I did not say there would be no Islamic extremism.

Clearly there is a difference between terrorist groups who are not quasi-nation states, and Islamic State, which has their own sovereign territory and economy, and the perception of legitimacy that those things confer.

CatBus said:
The idea that IS sprang forth from a quarter-assed arms campaign and not from the long-term blistering resentment of Arab populations to their own foreign-backed oppressive regimes is just something that’s too far out there for me.

Islamic State and other terrorist organizations thrive in the region because of the long-term political instability sowed by the United States and other foreign countries in the region. The United States has a long history of backing some dictators, and getting rid of other dictators. The idea that peace will ever come to the middle east through military means is horrifically misguided. Barack Obama said it himself many times, and he was correct, but then he proceeded to escalate war and death and destruction in those countries far beyond what George Bush ever did.

I don’t think there’s any doubt about the link between the Obama administration arming and funding and training rebels, and the rise of Islamic State. He decried meddling in the internal politics of other nations, and rightfully so, but then he proceeded to do just that.

I just want to know on what basis anyone could argue that it’s OK to be involved in Syria, but you know we never should have gone to war in Iraq! Or the even more dubious: “we’re not at war in Syria”…because you know, it’s ok if our troops aren’t there, and we only use drones and pay other people to do the killing.

CatBus said:
as is the idea that we should think twice about accepting refugees simply because 15% or so of our population is comprised of congenital bigots who might behave badly (and still not as badly as the people the refugees are fleeing, nor much more badly than the bigots were behaving before the refugees arrived).

If you have a house, and some poor unfortunate soul seeks refuge, and you take them in, it’s a good thing. You should be prudent, and take caution, so that you don’t wind up like Orgon and invite Tartuffe into your home, but all things being equal it’s a good and noble gesture to help out those in need. I’m all for it.

But then if you have a few more that ask to stay in your house, suddenly your resources are constrained. Can you afford to buy food for all of these people? Do you have enough beds?

Then what happens if suddenly twenty more show up and start breaking down your doors and trying to crawl through the windows. Would you be OK with letting all of these people live in your home as well? How will you care for them, how will you be able to keep the peace when they inevitably don’t get along and tempers flare among people who are stressed out and living like sardines?

It’s not as simple as just opening your border and telling everyone to come at will. Especially for the following reason: you ventured a number of 15% xenophobes as though it is a static number. I think instead, that number will vary according to many different social and economic factors. Certainly it will increase much higher, when failed policies are doubled down on, and more and more people decry the state of the nation and look to assign blame towards people who are not like them.

This is venturing a little off topic from refugees to illegal immigration now, but certainly the lax immigration stance of the U.S. government in the last generation or so has been one of the big factors in driving down U.S. wages and decreasing the average standard of living.

It’s hard to hate AOTC for any one thing. There is so much wrong with that movie, it’s hard to believe. It’s truly one of the worst movies ever made.

CatBus said:
The most he could muster was attempting to order a cruise missile attack on Syrian military facilities, but because he sought permission from Congress, that also led to nothing. The only thing he really did was provide fairly meager support for refugees trying to escape that war, which only looks generous in contrast with today. But he did it only because there’s no real downside for the US to resettle Syrian refugees.

There was no reason to be at war with Syria at all. If Obama had not been arming, funding, and training terrorists in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian regime for God knows what purpose, there would be no civil war. There would be no Islamic State.

CatBus said:But he did it only because there’s no real downside for the US to resettle Syrian refugees.

There is downside, obviously. Look at how the Trumpkins treat foreigners. This is not a phenomenon that is unique to our time, as there have been similar political movements like the American Party in the generation before the U.S. Civil War. I’m all for resettling Syrian refugees here or any country where they can find peace and live safe and productive lives, but this idea that the United States or the U.K. or anywhere has an endless tolerance for accepting people with open arms is not only misguided, but in the long run it is destructive. Populist forces will now attempt to disrupt our lives and snuff out the lives of many of these immigrants and refugees. It’s simply not enough to blame the populists and call them evil xenophobes, when the moderates created the mess by means of their poor policies in the first place.

I’m sure we can work out an arrangement which will be mutually beneficial…

Yeah I see it completely differently. He campaigned on ending the Iraq War, which was a good thing. He ended the Iraq War at the beginning of his presidency, which was a good thing. He took credit for ending the Iraq war during most of his presidency, and that could have been a good thing.

But then something bad happened along the way…

His administration spent considerable resources, if not starting, then at least continuing another war in Syria. He armed, trained, and funded Syrian militants, most of whom are terrorists. He ignored the rise of Islamic State in the beginning because they were of potential use in overthrowing the Syrian regime. Then later when Islamic State became an international problem, he did not fight them aggressively, instead choosing a quarantine approach. It’s OK if they kill tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis…just don’t come kill anyone in Europe or the U.S., right?

Now, over time and towards the end of his presidency, the U.S. has become more embroiled in both Iraq and Syria, and Obama has faced criticism for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq too early. After campaigning on doing just that, and spending most of his presidency patting himself on the back for doing that, his supporters suddenly argue that he had no choice, it was all Bush’s idea.

It’s a terrible argument.

The fact is that the Obama administration was right to end the Iraq War, and wrong to essentially bring 6 years of civil war to Syria. This blame game we are discussing all comes back to his atrocious policy record on Syria, where if he had not gotten involved, there would be no Islamic State, no deterioration in Iraq, and no hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees fleeing the two countries.

Although I think Barack Obama has more integrity and character and better judgement than most men who get into his position, I think his presidency will ultimately be remembered for one thing and one thing only: Syria. It was another oligarchic proxy war that brought incredibly tragic death and destruction, once again to people in the Middle East.

[SilverWook said:](post/id/1067750]
Wouldn’t that be like mixing matter and anti matter? Hell, if they were even in the same room, that could rip the very fabric of space and time!
Bad enough we’re living in the alternate 1985 timeline as it is. 😉

It would be more salacious if they got caught doing something together.

So are you saying Obama didn’t campaign on ending the Iraq War? And didn’t take credit for ending the Iraq War? But then a few years later when Islamic State is a big deal, and people are saying U.S. troops left too early, he didn’t try and make the case that the pullout was all on Bush anyway?

It can’t be his accolade part of the time and another administration’s fault the rest of the time.

Jetrell Fo said:
but I chose to pass it by

You’ve taken your first step into a larger world.

Treaties are pieces of paper. They get ignored all the time.

When Obama wanted to take credit for leaving Iraq, he did so. He actually campaigned on it. When the political winds shifted and he wanted to distance himself from leaving Iraq early, he said it was already arranged by Bush before him.

It’s all political fudging.

Bill O’Reilly was the worst. Except maybe Hannity. If Hannity and Maddow could get caught up in some scandal together and both get fired, the world would truly be a better place.

I don’t know what’s worse about that scene change: the fat clown makeup, or the simpleton dialogue?