MalàStrana

Hal 9000 said:

And maybe some details that will retroactively make TFA’s depiction of her make more sense.

VII was trying to “fix” VI issues with Han Solo, now VIII will have to fix issues of VII. Maybe IX will tell a complete and self contained story ?

https://medium.com/@tonyszhou/the-force-awakens-is-a-deeply-broken-film-b-c-one-character-shouldn-t-be-there-spoilers-b31e33a44ee6#.guacyj6jc

John Doom said:

MalàStrana, I agree on most your points, but I think her taking Luke’s sword to fight Kylo could be a strong decision, since it implies she’s accepted her new destiny.

Why not, but as far as we know within the inner movie logic the saber goes to her, she does not take the saber.

Hal 9000 said:
EDIT: For the record, Anakin in TPM comes close to being a Mary Sue.

I was also thinking about that. There are still a few deep differences:

• Anakin is said to be some kind of a chosen one, strong with the Force, and we see him that way ("you must have Jedi reflexes“) although he’s far from perfection (”let’s hope you finish the race this time"); we don’t know anything tangible about Rey in the entire movie. Each time someone seems to know something about her (Maz, Luke, Leia, Snoke, Kylo) we never learn what it is;

• Anakin saves the day by pure luck: I don’t like that but he does save the Gungans thanks to luck and skill at piloting; Rey is just good, even her mistakes happen to save everyone;

• and, I think this is the most important thing: Anakin is conflicted. He’s a slave, he leaves his mother, he has no father and loses the only one besides his mother who cared and believed in him (Qui-Gon), and he willingly endangers his own life to help complete strangers. And he is not the main protagonist (which is also important: he becomes the main protagonist but he is not when the film begins); Rey has no conflict, she is passive the entire movie and never takes any strong decision, she blames Finn for being shot at by troopers, she does not want to help BB-8 any further, she refuses a job offer because she just wants to stay the same (“I need to go back”), she does not take the saber, she does not listen to Maz, she is constantly refusing the call for adventure: she has no inner story, no inner journey. She does not even try to understand the Force, the Force comes directly to her! To sum up: she does not do shit to earn anything, she does not struggle except when she’s forced to.

I don’t like TPM, but there is a pattern of monomyth in it, which is totally absent in TFA. Had Anakin been a girl and Rey been a guy I would say the same thing. Anakin was a dreamer for a better life (it’s in TPM, we don’t need to watch AOTC or ROTS to understand that), Luke was a dreamer too (again, it’s contained in ANH, we don’t need TESB and ROTJ to understand that), Rey just wants to wait her relatives on a shitty desert planet (TFA fails at giving something to the character, VIII and IX will have to fix a blatant issue).

So yeah, Rey is the worse main character of the entire saga: not interesting, no tangible backstory, no conflict, nothing. I’m amazed Kasdan wrote this character and Kennedy thought it was good enough. They really should have postponed TFA for another year in order to finish the writing. If some of you don’t see that, I understand why you would rank TFA higher than ANH: you like Star Wars only because of action stuff and dude wearing masks.

My advice: if you want strong and passionate female leads, watch Hayao Miyazaki movies, watch James Cameron flicks, watch Fury Road.

Good for you !

SilverWook said:

It can be argued what was seen at the end of ROTS was some sort of test structure. It’s a bit of a stretch that it actually took twenty years to build a station the size of a small moon, and keep it a secret that long.

There is a hint about it in Rebels, when we learn that a super weapon might have been assembled in Geonosis orbit, with all of its population deported… elsewhere (planet Poland of the Outer Rim I guess). I think there will be a dialogue about that in some kind of Imperial situation room (“this project is taking too long Tarkin, I want results !”).

TheHutt said:
Interestingly, the finale of ROTS (though I personally prefer not regard the PT as canon) shows a DS1 superstructure with the superlaser dish skeleton already in place.

Yep, at least there will be no continuity issues between ROTS and R1. Disney uses the PT as canon (just watch Rebels… even TFA uses PT references), so it’s a nice move.

Ronster said:
But I do believe we will be in no doubt about when the Tantive is attacked as like I said I think we will see that from the Empires Perspective rather than the Rebels perspective.

So we will see how the stormtroopers have cut their way through the Tantive’s main door ?

• I’m waiting…
• Working on it Lord Vader. I’m almost… there…

Ryan McAvoy said:

Hal 9000 said:

Change her to male and none of this is any different.

Except that if Rey had been male, nobody on the internet would have questioned it, or even noticed.

I would.

Yeah the ewok part of ROTJ is shitty but the movie has more to offer. And at least it concludes the trilogy. I sigh a little every time I finish TESB because I know what’s coming next is a disappointment. The weakness of ROTJ does not strength in any way TFA which is even weaker. The finale of TFA does not need furry characters to be shittier. It has Rey, worst SW main character ever.

darthrush said:

Here here please

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSwO-k-RqNA#t=1m12s

The best sequels of RoboCop are Total Recall and Starship Troopers.

RoboCop 2 and 3 are equally (very) bad, for different reasons. At least the third one has Poledouris back with a tremendous score. Starship Troopers 2-3-4 are also quite terrible films. Never a good idea to make a sequel/remake of a Verhoeven film.

LuckyGungan2001 said:

MalàStrana said:

The Matrix Revolutions

Perfect ending, impressive action scenes, wagnerian music, intelligent symbolism. Even better than the first one. Only Reloaded is kinda mediocre (the narrative is great but it takes too long to get to the Architect, the most important scene of the trilogy).

But…but…how?

I won’t even try to convince anyone. This movie is under-rated because not understood I guess. This is on every level the perfect conclusion of the trilogy. It has to be deserved. I understand that mainstream viewers hate it; it’s too daring, too complex and too simple at the same time, too naive in its beauty (this soundtrack, Don Davis masterpiece with Reloaded). The reverse mirror of the first entry. Brillant. Not surprised to see that the official troll around hates it (it proves it’s an awesome movie).

Bingowings said:

Snoke is Leia

In the Radio version we “see” Leia receive the plans from Rebels under attack from Imperials.
We may see that conflict and hear Leia receive the transmissions. Starting the first film off and gaining a mention in the crawl.

“Thanks for your hard work. You’ll get full credit in the opening crawl… Now they are all dead, what the hell am I going to do with the two gold medals they were supposed to receive ?”

Snoke is Charlie.

Without cgi make up ?

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

I think the idea of overlap with Star Wars is a distinct possibility.

I frankly don’t see “how”. No life form escapes the Tantive IV. Leia’s got the plans and clearly puts them into R2. Everyone on board of the Tantive is either killed or made prisoner. It’s supposed to be a diplomatic ship, so no obvious members of the Rebellion (i.e. the death star suicide squad) would have boarded it. There is already no need to tell this story, so I don’t think at all they are going to step on ANH.

On a screenplay point of view I don’t have any hopes about this reboot/prequel; but the director knows how to shoot action scenes and how to create suspense. He’s also got a very good visual style (Godzilla 2014 is not a great movie at all, the script is lazy, the main protagonist isn’t interesting, but there are a few dazzling ideas). So at least Rogue One could be visually interesting and, why not, surprising. If I get a mediocre/average movie, it will be more than I expect.

At last I have rewatched TFA, 4 months after my initial theater viewings.

So, my final ranking of all 7 films (note that I only like the episodes ranked 1 to 2; rank 3 is watchable; last rank wins by KO) is :

1. ANH/TESB
2. ROTJ
3. ROTS
4. TPM
5. TFA
6. AOTC

Now with fan edits of the PT considered instead of their theatrical counterparts (Hal9000’s versions)

1. ANH/TESB
2. ROTJ
3. ROTS
4. TPM
5. AOTC
6. TFA

The TV series:

1. Clone Wars
2. Rebels
3. The Clone Wars

Well, I guess now I don’t really care about VIII and IX. I will watch them (and most probably I will buy the soundtrack albums) but I feel uninterested about what’s happening next. The saga ends with ROTJ for me, and starts with a good fan edit of the PT when I’m in a good mood (I could reconsider if a very strong new cut of VII was to be edited some day). I sincerely thought I would enjoy it more knowing the flaws and the strengths, but it seems it didn’t work as I would have loved it to work. Hopefully James Cameron is going to deliver the Avatar sequels that could quench thirst for good sci-fi flicks in the next few years. David Twohy might also finish his Riddick saga with a fourth entry. As for Rogue One, I’ll wait for it without any hopes.

Ronster said:

But I do imagine that we will see R2-D2 having the stolen plans uploaded to his memory.

In fact this is what Leia does in the opening scene of ANH. Leia has the plan when the movie begins, she uploads them into R2 after having recording her message to Ben.

What’s the weight of your file ? It’s a rough cut, you can compress it a little I guess. Keep the uncompressed file for the last version of your work. Or you can share it on myspleen or on any torrent site I think.

Mega ?

Hal 9000 said:

I don’t disagree with you, Frink, about any of the specific instances of clear trolling you cite.

Well, since I’m kinda mentioned in Frink’s list, I just want to remind that I have provided clear arguments against Rey as a character. The trolling part (which at first wasn’t meant to be aggressive, just “being sarcastic”) was just to make fun of a few guys who were ridiculously over sensitive about a “female lead” being criticized.

[So I guess when you criticize a character who happens to be a female you become a misogynist right away. I’m lucky Rey isn’t gay, black and jewish, otherwise I would also be homophobic, racist and antisemite (note that I criticized Finn’s character as well and I think a romantic story between him and Poe in Ep VIII would be totally off topic in a SW movie so I might be racist and homophobic after all. I’m lucky there are no jewish people in SW… except for Watto… oh…no… ok, now I’m also antisemite I guess…)].

I was nevertheless wrong according to internet anglo-saxon rules to act as such (on french forums people don’t get offended so easily and don’t usually talk about their private life), but I have never received any “warning” private message by any moderator as far as I remember.

Hal 9000 said:
I think there’s something to be said for the opinion that the prequels feel more legitimate than TFA because they sprung from the mind of Lucas. I don’t hold it, but I think there’s something to discuss there without shutting them down.

On one hand the PT backstory is very close to what Lucas had in mind when he developed ROTJ, and who is more legitimate than the original author ? A few things have changed (the Clone Wars were to finish long before the dawn of the Empire; Luke’s mother was supposed to die when Leia was 2 yo; the Lars were not related at all with Anakin; Anakin would become half-machine a few months after joining the dark side and not the following day; etc.), but overall the PT tells the story it was supposed to tell. On the other hand, the ST is also close to a few ideas Lucas and Kurtz had when they discussed it during TESB post-production (Luke becoming an hermit - and eventually joining the dark side -; Luke’s sister being some kind of a scavenger on a desert planet; the Emperor - here now Snoke - as the ultimate vilain to be faced in Ep IX last act), and Kasdan was a key element of TESB/ROTJ. Personally I prefer to watch a movie made by an author/creator than something decided by a huge company shareholders, and the PT is the work of a creator (a lazy creator with controversial ideas, but a creator nonetheless) whereas TFA is not. I’m however being a little bit hypocritical because I now only watch fan edits of them… fan edits that use GL material anyway.

That’s being said, I still think as a movie TFA to be way better than AOTC (not sure about TPM and ROTS), but one was a daring and fascinating (and eventually barely watchable) experimental and independent (yeah) piece of art (yeah again) while the other is “just” a common but nicely done blockbuster. By the way I would be highly interested to know what Gary Kurtz thinks of TFA (and of the entire PT; I only know his thoughts about TPM).

IKnowWhatYouDidLastSummer said:

when they willfully ignore the racist tinge of TPM, I’m going to mock it. When someone comes here and asks for an invite without any intention of sticking around or contributing in any way, I’m going to mock it. When someone has the opinion that Rey is a shitty character and (more importantly) if you think otherwise you are just thinking with your dick, I’m going to call it out as bullshit. When someone makes fun of Down syndrome AND accuses me of making up my FUCKING DEAD DAUGHTER, I’m going to call them an asshole and do my damned best to get them banned. When that person keeps coming back with new accounts, I’m gonna do my best to get him banned again and again. When someone calls Rey a loathsome mysogynist term like a “Mary Sue” I’m going to call them out for being mysogynist.

So you are a SJW…why am I not surprised.

(ok it worked, the guy is in a loop, he even wrote something nice about AOTC, now we should all quietly leave this thread and then lock it)

It’s time to settle things right, to have a agreement to unite everyone. So, whatever you think about AOTC as a whole, can we all agree this is the worst (or one of the very worst) scene (scenes) ever seen in a SW movie ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G67eMq1YwmI

Unfinished cgi (god this set, these creatures, this phony background), lame plot development, bad acting, intellectual humiliation of 2 main protagonist of the saga. Only Williams gets the job done.

(oh… I should have checked before posting it but it appears the word does not exist in english…)

This movie is even more nocive than I thought.