Alderaan

I like a few of the cosmetic changes, like some of the Yavin and X-wing shots in Star Wars, some of the space shots in Return of the Jedi, and the new Death Star explosions. Some of the CGI work on Bespin was also an improvement, although I loathe the shots after Lando announces the evacuation of the city.

Like some of the other posters in this thread, I’m pretty much only an OT Star Wars fan. I’m not that way for the sake of it though, as I keep hoping that each new Star Wars movie will be a good one. But so far, I’ve always been disappointed.

crissrudd4554 said:

The whole reworking of that final act of ESB to accommodate Vader arriving on his shuttle does really slow the pace down.

That’s really the crucial thing. It completely ****s up the pace, which is something that George Lucas and his post-97 team obviously have no clue on, seeing what they did to the first act on Tatooine in Star Wars.

You have this gorgeous and frantic climax going on, and then the movie just stops dead in its ****ing tracks so some CGI guys can play in their sandbox. Give me a ****ing break.

Handman, I hated almost all of Vader’s scenes too. But I liked the last one, except it dragged on too long. If they had shortened the scene it would have been perfect.

This coming from someone who seems to see the film mostly the same way you do.

Thank you for your reply Catbus. I will see if I can help contribute at all.

Oh, and thanks again Harmy and everyone who you collaborated with for all of your outstanding work!

pittrek said:
Depends on what program are you using, but most programs (if not all) should unpack it automatically.

I’m using 7-zip. I downloaded the .RAR files through FRD. I then downloaded 7-zip as was recommended and extracted part 1. It created a new folder called “Multipart” which eventually has the movie in a subfolder called STREAM. I guess in hindsight I’m done at that point, since the file size looks right and the movie plays. But I also extracted part 2 and it created a new folder “Multipart.part02” and a smaller movie file that doesn’t play. Same for part 03 and I stopped there.

I’m guessing I’m done after extracting part 1, but I just wanted to make sure I didn’t need to manually extract all of the other files for some reason.

Sorry for the inexperienced questions here, but I followed HanDuet’s instructions and downloaded all Harmy’s .RAR files on tehPARADOX. I understand that I have to extract the first file, part 01 first, but the instructions were not clear if I have to continue extracting all of the other files or if the program will do that automatically.

I only extracted a couple of the files but I already have the entire movie. Each time I extract part 2 or part 3, it adds a new folder with an unreadable file, so it was really confusing me.

Thanks.

Lord Haseo said:
I want you to cease posting

What else do you want? Please tell us more.

Lord Haseo said:

Alderaan said:

The preview of that Guardians of the Galaxy movie that I saw during the opening trailers at Rogue One made me feel the same way. Literally one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

I thought you were going away again. What ever happened with that?

You continue to display your exemplary character.

That has to be the work of some smarmy dickhead producer at Disney. I won’t believe otherwise.

Btw, my girlfriend is a native Vietnamese speaker, and although she watches movies with me in English, I was going to burn a second set of DVDs or BluRays with Vietnamese subs. If the Empire subs exist then great, but if not, I might be able to help provide some and/or check the others, depending on her interest. She hasn’t seen any of these films yet, but we’re going to fix that pretty soon.

Hi Catbus, thank you so much for all of your hard work. Question for you: are Vietnamese subs available for Empire Strikes Back? I’m on Harmy’s thread right now on tehparadox and I see them listed for Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, but not Empire, so I’m curious if that’s an oversight or what. Thank you.

SilverWook said:

Alderaan said:

The preview of that Guardians of the Galaxy movie that I saw during the opening trailers at Rogue One made me feel the same way. Literally one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Well, you didn’t see the first one, nor read the source material, so why would it mean anything to you?

I wasn’t talking about the storyline, which I have no clue about. I was talking about the cinematic style, the presentation, the dialogue, the characters, and the general feel I got while watching the preview, that I am very certain I would like to stay as far away from that film as I possibly can.

The preview of that Guardians of the Galaxy movie that I saw during the opening trailers at Rogue One made me feel the same way. Literally one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

I don’t know about all of the Mary Sue talk, but it sure felt like Luke earned everything he achieved in Star Wars, whereas Rey got the old Harry Potter liquid luck treatment at every turn.

Not my fault Lucas sold the franchise down the river. Star Wars is like a novel that’s really great for 200 pages, and then nosedives into unreadable trash for the remaining 500 pages.

That’s not true. The 200 pages you liked are all contained within one story with a beginning and an ending. If you don’t like the other books, then forget about them and just enjoy what you like.

I’ll give you an example. I’m perfectly content to pretend the prequels and sequel were never made for instance. Over the course of years I developed ideas about the backstories from the OT, such as why Vader and the Emperor never found Yoda, or what was Anakin like when he was younger. The richness and meaning of great stories is that they are not comprehensive and didactic, but rather they give us the important outlines and allow us the experience of filling in the blanks from within our own souls. At least from my point of view.

Now, someone else on the other hand might have a different type of personality. They may get off on the EU and prequel stuff. They may possess an insatiable appetite for having more and more detail dictated to them. They may never tire of it. I feel like I enjoy quality over quantity and would rather find the hidden layers in well-told stories, whereas other people might be obsessed with gorging out on ever more product. I’ve learned to just let these people do their thing and hopefully they will feel the same towards someone like me. I’ll read my 200 page book and if they want to demand 5,000 more pages of encyclopedia-like definition to a made-up world, then so be it. Doesn’t affect me, because I know in a hundred years, those stories will probably not be remembered or be preserved, but the classics I enjoy will be.

Well the gf and I will watch Star Wars next. So I’ll relay the effect on someone who saw R1 and had no idea what was going on and then jumps into the OT.

Mavimao said:

Alderaan said:

Oh don’t mind me Mavimao, I’m only here for a day or two venting my frustration at watching another Star Wars film that disappointed me. I don’t begrudge anyone else a different opinion. Pretty soon I will go back to occasionally popping in only to check up on restorations of the OOT.

I guess I don’t understand what you expected. For years this was built up as “how the rebels stole the death star plans” and you complain that it’s a film about…people stealing plans to the death star.

I didn’t expect anything, but I was hoping to be surprised and see a good movie. Maybe something that was enjoyable, but also skillfully made in all areas: great script with characters I can really get behind, sharp dialogue, beautiful visuals, exhilarating “wow” special effects, a memorable score, etc.

But I don’t want to criticize Rogue One too much. I can’t praise it by saying it’s the best Star Wars film since 1983, but I can say it’s the least bad, if that makes sense.

Oh don’t mind me Mavimao, I’m only here for a day or two venting my frustration at watching another Star Wars film that disappointed me. I don’t begrudge anyone else a different opinion. Pretty soon I will go back to occasionally popping in only to check up on restorations of the OOT.

Actually, I’m going to update my rankings this way…

Excellent, historically all-time great films:

1. Empire Stikes Back
2. Star Wars

Very good:
3. Return of the Jedi

Mediocre and derivative:
4. Rogue One

Mostly offensive and repugnant but with some redeeming qualities:
5. The Force Awakens
6. The Phantom Menace

And finally, the irredeemable deplorables of Star Wars movies:
7. Revenge of the Sith
8. Attack of the Clones

generalfrevious said:

http://www.agonybooth.com/star-wars-the-force-awakens-2015-a-failed-review-51100

Makes me reconsider my opinions on TFA. JJ Abrams is the one director who might be destroying the art of cinema more than anyone else, even more than Michael Bay or Zack Snyder. I haven’t seen TFA in over a year, and only once, and now I’m uncertain if it would even hold up a second time. What I’m afraid of now is that Disney is going to treat this franchise far worse than George Lucas ever could. We live in the era of assembly-line cinematic universes where everything is middle of the road, no stakes needed, getting by just enough on nostalgia alone for commercial exploitation. Has there been any original movie in the last 10-15 years that had an impact in the public consciousness? No, there aren’t: they’re based on comic books, Harry Potter, YA trilogies, or some preexisting IP. This is the absolute worst decade in the history of film simply because there are no popular films that are not derivative in some form or another. The OT is being diluted piece by piece; it was bad enough in the 80s but each subsequent decade has exponentially built upon the other. By 2020 there will be twice as many films in the SW franchise than there were a decade ago. And I’m betting that there is not going to be even one that can measure up to ANH or ESB. It’s not two out of seven anymore: soon it will be two out of two hundred.

Excellent post general and I’ve been thinking this ever since Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012. I recanted my opinion for awhile between 2014 and 2015 after The Force Awakens trailer got me pretty hyped, and I bought into the idea of passing off Star Wars to a new generation of fans. Unfortunately everything you just described is what I disappointingly saw when I viewed The Force Awakens, and again to a lesser though more mundane extent last night when I watched Rogue One.

There will undoubtedly be a saturation of the market and eventually a precipitous decline in ALL things Star Wars, including the OT. The onus is on those of us who realize how priceless the original films are, to preserve them for posterity, keeping in mind what has happened in the history of motion pictures and literary works throughout the ages. The exploitative, derivative works will be discarded over time and no longer extant, but perhaps a hundred years from now when we are all dead and gone, people will once again appreciate the OOT as the timeless classics that they truly are.

Mithrandir said:

I can’t help disagreeing strongly. There are tons of great movies and stories where you know what is going to happen. Surprise is not an artistic value per se.

What you are talking about is called dramatic irony. It occurs when there is so much meaning and revelation in the story, that you can enjoy and take pleasure in watching it over and over again throughout the years even though you already know what will happen in the plot. Each time you entertain yourself with the story, a new layer, a new depth to one of the characters may reveal itself that you didn’t see before. This is the phenomenon that takes place when literature teachers all over the world teach classics to their students year after year, and some 20 years later they are still finding some new gem that they didn’t notice before. It’s the same phenomenon that happens when I watch Empire Strikes Back for the 1,000th time or see King Lear for the 10th time. This phenomenon only happens through the most well-written of stories, and it only happens when a very good writer, in command of his or her craft, is writing those pages.

It is a very different phenomenon from the one you were alluding to: the random plot-twist! Where the audience’s pleasure is only gratified through suspense. When the pleasure in the motion picture is only derived from answering the question “what happens next?”…it stands to reason that a viewer will enjoy the film much less each time they watch it, rather than continue to enjoy it more and more, as in the previous example of dramatic irony.

The WTF just happened plot-twist is only well executed if it is meaningful, as Vader’s reveal was, insomuch as that new revelation causes the viewer to go back and reassess the meaning of every previous scene and every previous action in a way they had not previously considered.

Is every story or motion picture going to be that complex? No. But if it’s not, then it needs to exhibit some other cadre of strong filmmaking traits if it is to stand the test of time. What other aspects of Rogue One or The Force Awakens cause them to rise to memorable status? Do they possess visuals along the lines of a Kurosawa film? Are they edited as masterfully as the trench run sequence in ANH? There are other ways in which a film can stand the test of time.

But some ways it will not stand the test of time include vfx, which will date sooner rather than later, and nostalgia porn, which will be lost on people within a few years. Making a movie filled with fanservice might please you now in your short sighted and I would argue misguided desire to live in the past (as that review alluded to), but it will not reflect well on these films and will one day not reflect well on your own memories either.

Just one man’s opinion.

I think the camera angles were off in the scenes with Vader and he didn’t look as imposing as a result.

duplicate

Tyrphanax said:

Alderaan said:

Tyrphanax said:
The overarching point of the film was to explain how the plans got from the Empire to the Rebels (unless I watched the wrong movie or something), not to explain that the Death Star was sabotaged. No?

So the entire point of the movie was to explain stuff in another film?

I mean… yeah? I figured that would be pretty obvious from the plot that it wasn’t a character film and was an event film, but I guess it wasn’t, haha.

Like I’ve said a few times, this wasn’t Saving Private Ryan, it was Black Hawk Down. Characters were secondary to the events. They were there and they fulfilled their purposes to advance the story (sacrifice for a larger cause), but I never really expected it to focus on them.

Well, if your idea of a movie is exposition on top of exposition and then some battles thrown in for toys and action figures, I guess we have stumbled upon our fundamental differences in taste when it comes to films and filmmaking.