DominicCobb

I will say it’s towards the bottom of my rankings when it comes to SW scores, but considering what we’re dealing with here, that’s not saying much. There is not a single film in the saga where he did in which he did not deliver, whether the film deserved what he brought to it or not. If I’m grateful for one thing in this world, it’s that Williams scored all nine films. We’re very lucky to have him and his exemplary work.

The lightspeed skipping discussion has got to stop. I regret even bringing it up.

Anyway, in honor of the master John Williams’s Oscar nom today, one thing I love wholeheartedly about the film is Williams’s renditions of Kylo Ren’s theme, post redemption, in particular when Ben Solo arrives on Exegol:

https://youtu.be/Y5j_7wK5oOg?t=76

I’ve listened to this almost everyday since the film came out. It’s a brief piece, but it’s probably my favorite musical moment of the film, and possibly my favorite moment of the film on the whole.

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

Probably worth mentioning as well that even if you’re not a fan of the ST, the last two movies got 93% and 91%. So even if you weren’t personally expecting it to be good, it wasn’t unreasonable that most would suspect it’d be in the same ballpark as the last two.

It wasn’t unreasonable, but at least to some of us, the critics ratings didn’t tell the whole story.

My point is that regardless of how you think you’ll feel about it and how you think non-critics will receive it, it wasn’t unreasonable to suspect that it would get a high RT score, because the last two films did.

DrDre said:

Broom Kid said:

DrDre said:
Additionally, not everyone’s expectations for this film’s quality, or its reception were very high.

Again, I’m not saying expectations for quality needed to be “very high.” High 70’s/low 80’s isn’t “very high.” But there’s a big gulf between even low 70s and where it is (53)

That gulf is a big reason why it’s earnings are where they are. Expectations didn’t need to be “very high” for the reality to be jarring, and for that jarring reality to negatively affect the box-office somewhat significantly.

I didn’t expect it to get into the high 70s, low 80s. I expected it to be in the low to mid 60s. While it came out a bit worse than that, I would not have expected the film to have done much better, if it had a 65% RT score.

To my point, unless you predicted the film would be significantly worse than TFA and TLJ, I’m not sure why you would think it would score that much lower than those two, which you already don’t think are good.

Probably worth mentioning as well that even if you’re not a fan of the ST, the last two movies got 93% and 91%. So even if you weren’t personally expecting it to be good, it wasn’t unreasonable that most would suspect it’d be in the same ballpark as the last two.

I like the idea though (I think someone here mentioned it), that Rey transmitting from Luke’s X-wing is sort of continuing Luke’s “spark of hope.” If we could find a way to make that more explicit, I think that’d be preferable.

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

I’m not sure how anyone could be saying it might not break a billion. They’d have to pull it from theaters to accomplish that.

DrDre said:
but given the recent history, and Abrams’ reputation, I don’t think many people expected a masterpiece. Hence, this outcome was not all that suprising to some of us.

If you look at the Tomatoemeter (i.e. the only “review” that matters for the vast majority of the audience), TROS has 53%, which is a massive drop off from the next lowest rated Abrams film (Mission: Impossible III, which also disappointed). Regardless of your personal feelings on TFA, that film was a mostly unanimous success, with a 93% rating. That’s a very significant difference from TROS. Even the flop Solo had a 70%.

There’s a difference between not getting overwhelmingly positive reviews and getting bad reviews. 53% is far outside the realm of what people have come to expect from things like Star Wars and Marvel.

Like I said, I think the film was better recieved by fans, and the general audience, than critics, many of whom viewed it as a capitulation to TLJ’s critics. In any case, I expected mixed reviews from critics, though perhaps a bit more positive than they were in the end. I didn’t believe anything other than it being a truly great film could push it beyond TLJ’s numbers. This coupled with waning interest in the brand led to my own predictions for this film.

If you look at audience ratings metrics, there’s only one where it surpasses TLJ (RT, where there was infamously a review bombing campaign). The most unbiased appraisal of audience reception is Cinemascore, where TROS got a B+ vs. TLJ’s A. That’s a significant drop off. I don’t doubt that general audiences aren’t as mad as people on the internet about this movie and think it’s better than critics do, but they also just generally don’t like it as much as the last two.

The fact that Williams has now been nominated for all of the OT and all of the ST makes his complete shut out from the PT all the more questionable. I think perhaps the only explanation is he had other scores those years that the Academy was more interested in.

I’m not sure how anyone could be saying it might not break a billion. They’d have to pull it from theaters to accomplish that.

DrDre said:
but given the recent history, and Abrams’ reputation, I don’t think many people expected a masterpiece. Hence, this outcome was not all that suprising to some of us.

If you look at the Tomatoemeter (i.e. the only “review” that matters for the vast majority of the audience), TROS has 53%, which is a massive drop off from the next lowest rated Abrams film (Mission: Impossible III, which also disappointed). Regardless of your personal feelings on TFA, that film was a mostly unanimous success, with a 93% rating. That’s a very significant difference from TROS.

There’s a difference between not getting overwhelmingly positive reviews and getting bad reviews. 53% is far outside the realm of what people have come to expect from things like Star Wars and Marvel. Even the flop Solo had a 70%.

Broom Kid said:

Which is why I’m saying I don’t think those early projections would look accurate now had the film not done its damndest to turn off the general audience, which was a factor I don’t think anyone making those projections was accounting for.

Exactly. We probably should have included RT predictions alongside our BO guesses. But then again, I personally would never have guessed there was the possibility it would score this low (fool I am, I probably would have predicted high 80s, low 90s). If you had told me ahead of time it would have 53% I would have guessed a much lower number (and in fact I believe I said as much when the tomatometer was revealed).

snooker said:

I could totally see it being possible, but tricky. It really depends on available footage/elements. I can’t think of any moments of Adam’s face in the movie that could easily be re-worked without it being noticeable.

You might have to grab something not from the film.

VFX wizards, how realistic is the idea of adding Ben as a force ghost to the final scene?

My interpretation of the Final Order was that this was something Palpatine wasn’t able to start developing until he had the resources of the Empire at his disposal (at least that was what I took the Star Destroyer design to imply). I don’t know what the visual dictionary says so I can’t comment on that. Really the main thing that bothers me is it just feels redundant. Wasn’t the First Order the same idea - a mysterious resurrected Imperial force that had been building power in the unknown regions as part of Palpatine’s contingency?

They didn’t seem to have a solid grasp on the interplay of the two forces, and they could have done something interesting with some friction between them if perhaps Palpatine claimed some ownership of the First Order’s existing fleet and they weren’t necessarily on board. They could have at least made it seem like they were part of the same plan. The First Order comes in to destabilize the galaxy, the Final Order finishes the job (but Kylo becoming Supreme Leader complicated matters).

Hal 9000 said:

I’ll grant that you don’t think such a thing is important if you let me maintain that it’s incongruous with what came before. It’s up to you whether it bothers you.

I don’t have any problem with people disliking it. I get it! I said right off the bat that I know my take is controversial. I can plainly see the argument against it and I won’t dispute the logic.

The only thing that bothers me is when people say I shouldn’t be liking it.

StarkillerAG said:

Hal 9000 said:

I only object when stories like these are inconsistent with their own rules. I don’t care whether anything within is ‘realistic’ to our world.

I had a problem with SKB’s firing being visible the way it was since it flies in the face of a basic understanding of light within SW. The discrepancy is evident when one looks at the hilarious official explanation.

Here, jumping in and out of light speed would be expected to look like skipping a stone on a pond. It might be in a straight line, or perhaps alternating a number of directions, but this scene implies they are more or less teleporting. This is baffling when placed alongside any and everything else we’ve ever gotten about hyperspace.

By all means, and please understand me, I welcome space slugs, mysterious gravity sources, sucking up the sun gradually until it fades to night while surviving on the planet, blowing up from the Star you sucked up and turning into a planet-sized Star that looks the same, etc. However this fictional realm works, cool. But I don’t like when it breaks its own rules.

Yes, that’s exactly my problem with this scene. I don’t care about dumb nitpicks like “Why would the bombers use gravity, it’s not realistic.” But when the movie blatantly breaks its own rules by having lightspeed travel take seconds instead of hours, that’s when I draw the line. I don’t know, maybe no one cares anymore. Based on some of the comments here, it seems like some people want Star Wars to devolve into another dumb action franchise. I miss the OT.

Come the fuck on. There’s a lot that’s “dumb” in TROS that annoys me but this barely registers. I’m sorry but I care about more important things and I don’t expect Star Wars to be scientifically accurate or perfectly consistent when it comes to its tech. If you ask me, that kind of stuff has never been important (and should never be) and the fact that people spend so much mental energy on it is baffling to me. Just because it’s fantasy that doesn’t always make sense doesn’t mean it’s “dumb.”

Dislike the concept all you want (I know I’m in the minority on this point) but don’t claim I want the series to be dumb because I like it.

All that said, how long lightspeed takes has never been consistent. We barely even know how it works! And that’s the way it should be, the less explanation the better.

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

It’s just a fun idea that leads to some really cool visuals

Yeah, but it makes no sense. Hyperspace travel doesn’t take one second, and you don’t get dropped in the middle of some exciting action scene.

Here’s the thing you’re missing: I truly could not give less of a shit about that.

Okay, you can like big dumb action setpieces like that, but for me Star Wars is more about quality storytelling than cool action. I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but I think we should expect better from the franchise.

Yeah but for me the logic of in-universe tech has very little to do with what I consider “good storytelling.”

RogueLeader said:

That is true, but I think what supports the puppet Snoke idea is that Papa Palpy says he’s been every voice inside his head, including Snoke’s.

Sure, but again he’s only saying the voices inside his head. That’s a key distinction I think. Coupled with the other two lines I find it hard to buy that Snoke was a literal puppet, especially when you consider that’s not something we’ve ever really seen in the films - besides arguably TROS where Palpatine is seemingly puppeting his own corpse. But in that case, why would Palpatine need to puppet someone like Snoke? It seems more likely that sort of control is beyond his power, and Snoke was merely a pawn, rather than a puppet.

StarkillerAG said:

DominicCobb said:

It’s just a fun idea that leads to some really cool visuals

Yeah, but it makes no sense. Hyperspace travel doesn’t take one second, and you don’t get dropped in the middle of some exciting action scene.

Here’s the thing you’re missing: I truly could not give less of a shit about that.

No one is going to agree with me on this, but I absolutely love the lightspeed skipping. It’s just a fun idea that leads to some really cool visuals, while also following up a major development from last film (lightspeed tracking), and showing us what the guy who can “fly anything” can do with the Falcon (which is a nice character beat for him and Rey to argue about).

Truthfully I only have two issues with it - one, the scene goes by so quick that by the time you figure out what’s even happening, it’s over, and two, it’s never used again! It seemed like a set up for some bigger sequence but never got paid off.

You know, thinking about it, the “Snoke is a literal puppet of Palpatine” isn’t really supported by the text of the film. Palpatine says “Snoke trained you well” and “I made Snoke.” If Palpatine was just puppeting Snoke, he would have said something like “You were trained well” and “I am Snoke.” I think were supposed to believe he was pulling the strings, but not to a literal degree.

The saber is far more important in TLJ than it is in TFA.

Most satisfying: no scantily clad Rey.

ZkinandBonez said:

DominicCobb said:

ZkinandBonez said:

So it just occurred to me that CW season 7 could technically qualify as both Legends and Canon at the same time. Granted the canonicity of CW pre-Disney was kind of weird and inconsistent, but it is the only non-live-action material to be canonized after Disney bought SW, and season 7 is based on unfinished episodes from the pre-Disney days, so shouldn’t the new season technically be part of both continuities? Not that this really matters overall, but I find these kinds of things fascinating.

I would think with that profile picture you might have known about Marvel #108 “Forever Crimson” https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars_108:_Forever_Crimson

Yeah, as a matter of fact I just got my copy of it recently (there was a mix up with my pull-list and I didn’t get it until now). Though I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at.

Maybe I misread your comment. I thought you were wondering if Disney has produced any new Legends content, but I guess you’re talking about producing new Legends content that is also canon.

Anakin Starkiller said:

Idk… I much preferred CW’s focus on movie characters than Rebels’s focus on bland-as-bread Ezra.

Honestly for me TCW was always at its best when it wasn’t focusing on the movie characters.

ZkinandBonez said:

So it just occurred to me that CW season 7 could technically qualify as both Legends and Canon at the same time. Granted the canonicity of CW pre-Disney was kind of weird and inconsistent, but it is the only non-live-action material to be canonized after Disney bought SW, and season 7 is based on unfinished episodes from the pre-Disney days, so shouldn’t the new season technically be part of both continuities? Not that this really matters overall, but I find these kinds of things fascinating.

I would think with that profile picture you might have known about Marvel #108 “Forever Crimson” https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Wars_108:_Forever_Crimson

Mocata said:

I think the main theme from Star Wars accompanies the words “Star Wars” on the screen.

Technically, sure, and yet there is not a single film where its uses surpass the Force theme. The Force theme is and has always been the defacto theme for the series.

Mocata said:

Spoiler - he does.

I shut it off when he suggested that the Force theme wasn’t the main theme of Star Wars until “Disney.” That’s just plain silly, it’s been that way from the very first film (regardless of whether Williams originally wrote it for Ben or not).

Mocata said:

Rey’s theme has a lot of things in it because they had no plan and Williams was covering a variety of possibilities.

Here ya go: https://youtu.be/FstNC8T4LjA

I’m sorry, I couldn’t get through this, I feel like this guy doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.