Michael Ward

darthrush said:

Michael Ward said:

yhwx said:

Question: What is Rey’s ultimate end goal in all of this?

To be part of a family?

That’s a simple way of putting it. I would say trying to discover what she should do with her newfound powers. To feel wanted and have a place is a more inert desire rather than her outward goal.

That too. I think that motivation emerged in this movie, but the family thing really dominates her arc through the first to films.

• When we meet her she’s been scratching tally marks on the wall of her room for years counting the days until her parents come back.
• Being abandoned is one of the things she see when she finds the lightsaber
• In TFA Kyloe says she sees Han has a father after he reads her mind.
• She hopes to find out who her parents are in the cave
• When she is Kylo’s prisoner and he’s taking her to Snoke, they still find it important enough to talk about her parents
• In TLJ Kylo mentions she looks for a father figure first in Han and the in Luke
• After killing Snoke and his guards the subject of her parents comes up again
• Even her relationship with Kylo seems fraternal. When she sees him with his shirt off, there’s not even the slightest hint of sexual interest. She is in fact annoyed by the sight of him shirtless. She has a strong desire to save him from the dark side as if she loves him but shows absolutely no passion or attraction for him. She regards him exactly like you would expect one to regard a brother.
  So to me, the one thing that comes up over and over again his her need to belong to a family.

yhwx said:

Question: What is Rey’s ultimate end goal in all of this?

To be part of a family?

Frank your Majesty said:

I didn’t say it was easier, I said it was more comfortable for Lucas. With digital cameras, he could review any scene immediately without leaving his chair. The technical difficulties or the final result didn’t bother him too much.

This is an interesting thought.

I’d heard Lucas wasn’t really an actors’ director from his work on Star Wars (A New Hope), but I was stunned the first time I saw him sitting there on the set of one of the prequels drinking his giant coffee watching actors live on two TV monitors like he was filming a soap opera that had to get five episodes done that week. Isn’t there one behind the scene clip we he mentions sometimes he forgets to yell, “Cut”?

Humby said:

Innovation doesn’t always age well,

I did not find it innovative at the time either.

Even when I was seven the space slug bothered me. Not that it could live in space, but that it knew something was trying to fly out of its tummy, and was trying to stop it. But it’s not the whole plot of the movie so it’s OK.

Frank your Majesty said:

Just like digital photo cameras, digital film cameras are much more convenient. It’s easy to assume that they would have been adapted eventually, if they perform just as well as analog cameras. I don’t deny that Lucas probably recognized the potential and wanted to advance the technology. However, he definitely used it too early. He was more concerned with being comfortable while making the movie than with the final product. The reason more and more directors started to film digitally after Lucas was simply the advancement of the technology itself, not because they liked the look of Episode 2.

I hadn’t thought about Lucas’s comfort. I’ve always felt he was just trying too hard to appear innovative.

Collipso said:

You can’t deny he was technologically innovative though, since most movies today are shot in digital cameras and Lucas was the one that started the trend.

I don’t find it innovative. The technology already existed and was being used on smaller films. All he did was use it badly.

nickyd47 said:

The Phantom Menace was shot on 35MM so that can be true 4K, however the other two prequels were shot digitally and not even at 1080p

So by trying to appear technologically innovative Lucas shot AotC and RotS on formats that can’t meet today’s high resolution standards, but the first one from 1977 can? That’s hilarious.

AotC and RotS are the worst two IMO anyway.

Collipso said:

Michael Ward said:

So basically AotC, RotS and TLJ are almost tied?

No, I made a typo. I’ll fix it. Thanks.

For all my problems with TLJ, it was significantly better that AotC and RotS IMO.

Edit: Upon further review, I said tit right. TLJ is basically tied with TPM. Both are better than AotC and RotS.

Edit2: OK. It’s a formatting issue of some kind. The numbers appear one way in edit mode and another way when posted. Maybe I need to take out the T’s.

Edit3: OK. Just figured out it will not let me skip numbers in a list. Where I put a 6 it changed it to 5 because that was the next number after 4. I had to spell the numbers out.

One. Star Wars
Two. The Empire Strikes Back (#1 and #2 are extremely close though. It’s almost a tie.)
Three. Return of the Jedi
Four. The Force Awakens
Tie. Rogue One (I can’t pick between these two yet, very different strengths, very different weaknesses.)
Six. The Phantom Menace
Seven. The Last Jedi (#6 and #7 are also extremely close, and also hard to compare.)
Eight. Attack of the Clones
Tie. Revenge of the Sith (I can’t pick between these two. Both are completely bottom of the barrel.)

I generally like it. Some are better than others of course. Plus my kids like them so we can all go to the movies together.

Guardians of the Galaxy is my favorite. Seeing that at 41 years old was as close as I was going to get at 41 to what seeing Star Wars was like at 4. It was like someone said, “Hey let’s make a movie like Star Wars except less for kids and more for middle-aged men.” 😃

I call it Star Wars because in 1977 when I saw it, that’s what it was. Throughout the 80’s that all anybody called it. I even remember thinking it was “wrong” and that it should be called “An New Hope”, but calling it that just felt weird. I only remember one person who called it A New Hope in the 80’s.

I don’t think people started calling it A New Hope regularly until after The Phantom Menace, and I think it happened then because the advertising put so much more emphasis on “Star Wars” than on “Phantom Menace” that people finally started thinking of “Star Wars” as the name of the series. Before that, if a person want to describe the whole series I think they said “Star Wars Saga”, after that they could just say “Star Wars” for the whole thing.

But for me, it’s too late to change. I may call it A New Hope sometimes for clarity, but I have to force myself to do it. If I just speak naturally, I’ll call it Star Wars every time.

TV’s Frink said:

Michael Ward said:

Mrebo said:

Remind me of the 3PO moments?

Seems like one was about the time that he was saying mutiny was against his programming, but I don’t remember the line. They’re were a couple of others. One might have been when Finn and Poe and Rose were discussing their plan. They were not hilarious, but mildly amusing and not cringe worthy like most. The audience laughed out loud at them which I think made me enjoy them more than if I’d been by myself. Most of the other jokes landed with a thud with the audience when I saw it.

My favorite was when 3PO is trying to tell Poe the odds and Poe is trying to get him to shut up (which is great because
Oscar is such a great actor and really does it in that Oscar way) but 3PO still gets in the last word - “to one.”

I remember that one now. That’s the kind of thing I was talking about. Maybe not hilarious, but entertaining moments.

LuckyGungan2001 said:

Funny how everyone who dislikes the movie seems to have gone to a showing where the jokes weren’t laughed at. All the jokes >
(even the dumb ones) were huge hits with the audience both times I saw it.

In addition to the 3PO moments, Luke saying that Jakku was pretty much nowhere got a good laugh. I found that line really funny too. I also recall one woman laughing a couple of times when no one else did because that really stuck out. I wasn’t consciously gauging the audience reaction so maybe some other jokes went over better than I remember, but any time there was a joke that made me cringe (as opposed to just not making me laugh) I remember noticing no one else was laughing.

Mrebo said:

Remind me of the 3PO moments?

Seems like one was about the time that he was saying mutiny was against his programming, but I don’t remember the line. They’re were a couple of others. One might have been when Finn and Poe and Rose were discussing their plan. They were not hilarious, but mildly amusing and not cringe worthy like most. The audience laughed out loud at them which I think made me enjoy them more than if I’d been by myself. Most of the other jokes landed with a thud with the audience when I saw it.

Star Wars was HUGE in the late 70’s and early 80’s. At least with young people, children and teens, probably a lot of young adults too especially if they were already into science fiction or action movies. But adults weren’t into as much as adults now. I remember picking George Lucas as someone I admired in school, and my teacher asking, “What has he done?” I guess I was supposed to pick Harriet Tubman or someone. Today, it would probably be the teacher who’s obsessed with Lucas and not the students.

It started to tapper off in the mid-80’s. But about '89 it felt like Star Wars was over–a thing of the past that was just going to fade away. I remember thinking at the time that even though Star Wars had been much bigger than Star Trek almost my whole life that it was Star Trek that would live on in the hearts of nerds everywhere. When I started college in '91, I found a bunch of Marvel Star Wars comics on clearance at a comic book store. I almost bought them, but didn’t for some reason.

That’s about the time it started to grow in popularity again with the first Zahn book and the Dark Empire comic limited series getting the ball rolling again, but it didn’t become mind blowingly huge again until The Phantom Menace. I think George Lucas finally realized he was never going to sell toys like he wanted to if he didn’t make films. Shadows of the Empire was his attempt to whip up a fan feeding frenzy without out going to the trouble of making a movie, but it didn’t work so he made The Phantom Menace, and everyone’s been Star Wars happy ever since.

Collipso said:

I think in the end we all agreed Luke was choking them?

That’s how it seemed to me in '83 and how it still seems to me now.

Mrebo said:

There was even a spirited debate about Gamorrean Guards in ROTJ. Sometimes things get a little out of hand.

I can imagine. I haven’t participated in a Star Wars forum in a long time, but I used to be on a usenet Star Wars group back around the time of the Prequel Trilogy (rec.arts.starwars maybe? It’s been so long I can’t remember. Where did the time go?!!), and things got pretty “spirited” there too. Discussions about The Phantom Menace particularly.

Hello, Collipso.

I did read a few dozen. It hadn’t got toxic at that point. Glad I quit while I was ahead.

For me it’s probably adding Jabba to Star Wars. I know it seems like I misunderstood the question, but I think in addition to being hideous looking it is completely pointless. That is, even if it could be done flawlessly, look realistic, and not have Han climbing over Jabba, it serves no purpose and should be left out.

I think they even altered Greedo’s dialogue in the original editing process to cover the same territory as the Jabba scene since they knew they were cutting the Jabba scene so now it’s just redundant.

Boba’s presence is also completely pointless. Combined with his role in Jedi, he now seems to just hang out with Jabba all the time.

Hello, I’m new here, and as much as I enjoy other peoples opinions, 164 pages of comments is just to much to catch up on! So I’ll just add my two cents.

The Luke/Rey/Kylo storyline, what I’ll call the “A” plot, had its moments. I thought it was a lot like The Force Awakens in that though it was often kind of stupid, it was still enjoyable.

The “B” plot with everyone else was terrible. This plot line was dumb. The characters were dumb (I really can’t get over the fact that Poe, Finn, and Rose got almost everyone killed!) The comedy was dumb except for a few good 3PO moments. But worst of all, I was bored most of time.

Everything I enjoyed was in the “A” plot, and even there I was disappointed by Luke’s character.

I put this one in 7th place out of 9 for the whole franchise.

I downloaded all three despecialized editions, and just finished watching Star Wars with my sons. It was amazing. I didn’t own any of the original trilogy films on DVD or Blu-Ray so I had to go to Wal-Mart and by the Blu-Ray collection for all three. I’ll probably never even watch those. Before I got the despecialized editions, I was making do with my old VHS copies! My VHS copy of Star Wars wore out, and I bought a used VHS for $1 to replace it last year. So glad to not have make do with those anymore!!

Is it still possible to get a link to the download for this? Thanks in advance.