Mocata

Yeah… actually yeah. They have to get the basics of character chemistry right in a romance plot, before they get into the subtle nuances of real people interacting with each other. What goes said and unsaid in a real human relationship? They’re not ready for that level of depth. The only part that’s convincingly romantic is what John Williams wrote on the sheet music.

K2 has a lot of dumb lines throughout. Donnie Yen is similar but gets less to do, instead of being a truly spiritual figure. Vader shows up and also has a bunch of dumb lines. He doesn’t need to be in the movie. Then there’s a whole ‘Rogue One’ call sign thing that somehow works. I mean if the Alliance was consistently ruthless they’d shoot down the crew to avoid a potential security breach, right? At this point it veers into the old dress up gag because it’s SW and I’m supposed to care they all die?

I dunno I just think that Andor works but it cuts all this stuff and replaces it with more focus on things that matter. The Clone Wars was the same… it came together when it stopped being about dumb PT characters and focused on random villains and soldiers. Anyway, it has a lot of time to gain traction since season two is a long way off. Time will tell.

Oh I agree. But to be honest I don’t think the political nature of Rogue One works in that context, where it’s still trying to be a fun action adventure story. The Alliance sending an assassin out or using bombers to kill a guy instead of rescuing him? That’s kinda sickening when it’s trying in some ways to still be a proper gee whizz Star Wars yarn. It’s not detached enough from the material where C-3PO is saying something funny or a bunch of muppets show up. And I wanted a proper heist movie and it’s only like fifty percent there. Andor works more for me because it goes like ninety percent into spy fiction territory.

I mean at this rate who hasn’t been fired from their job at LFL over creative differences.

I think we can agree that men and women communicate in different ways. Which isn’t really a suitable subject for a SW movie, never mind a movie so poorly written as AOTC.

regularjoe said:

David Lynch’s “Lost Highway” is a better example of how to handle the corruption of Anakin Skywalker by the dark side of the force than a mafia movie is.

In what way? Is the Mystery Man an analogue for the dark side?

The look and feel of Rogue One translated over to Andor, but this is surface level stuff. For it to work the kind of characterisation we have now would have be included in the movie. Beyond it not working as a prequel and having too many pointless fan service characters, the reason I don’t like Rogue One is the heroes are nothing but cardboard cut outs. Somewhere there are deleted scenes with Saw and child Jyn that maybe fix this? But it should have been the focus, two fold, with Jyn’s search for a father figure and the mystical Jedha stuff. So I care when she dies and when the planet dies.

However. This is my take, not the general consensus. I got the impression that most people love Rogue One. So it’s failure to find an audience is odd. Particularly when certain SW fans really want it all to be take so seriously. Which means the problem is probably the same fan service being missing. I guarantee people would watch if Darth Vader and Palpatine were shown. Which is my concern for Season 2 and where it could start to crumble.

Green lighting a rough first draft because they don’t need to try very hard feels like their entire MO since 2015.

So this guy was a mega genius and the dumbest idiot in the galaxy… and it took that long for them to reveal what everyone will have seen coming. Great stuff. Why was this not a five minute scene and why should we care about the troubled conscience of a tertiary character?

I thought the previous cliffhanger was leading to a good second half of THAT journey but no. I thought there would be some trouble with the magic water, or some delay, or … something. Instead it was an artificial ‘to be continued’ which suggests the episode ending and starting points are totally arbitrary, or have been played around with so that people aren’t bored.

In a lot of ways Andor is off-brand for the Company so if the brand is what matters they’d rather keep it off the record so to speak. After all, instead of being disposable nonsense it’s a show that took a torture scene from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy…

StarkillerAG said:

Channel72 said:

Just out of curiosity, do you recall off hand what matte paintings or model work was erased? I thought I was pretty familiar with the Special Edition changes, but I can’t recall off hand any actual models or matte paintings that were erased.

Actually, both of the examples you mentioned were replaced for the SE. The new mattes do look better from an objective point of view, but the original work has still been erased.

This is way off topic now, but Channel72 proves his point. Eventually only a dozen people on here will remember anything was changed.

benduwan said:

does anybody knows what happend with Rodney-2187?
last seen january 2022…
hope he´s fine.

I mean his last post was self-explanatory

They did not fit my perception of what Star Wars should be at all. But nowadays I’ve learned that many younger people see the Prequels as the reference point for what Star Wars is. I never thought that would happen, but here we are.

Audiences are getting dumber over time I guess…

fmalover said:

Back on topic.

I wonder if this season we will finally see the live action debut of Fenn Rau. I’m pretty sure that’s been the plan all along seeing as the character bears a strong physical resemblance to Kevin McKidd, his voice actor.

More Mandalorian stuff from TCW and Rebels is pretty likely. How the random inconsequential pirate story will fit remains to be seen.

What else is anyone expecting at this stage? I’m sure they’ve all signed clauses when they took the jobs they now have. Hand wave it and change the subject. ‘Nobody that matters to the Company even cares about it’ is at least partial honesty for once.

Episode 2 was much better, good pacing, some lore, some atmosphere. Still perhaps one too many CGI action beats that could have been shorter or replaced entirely, but at least it’s leading into a longer story.

I feel like Season 1 was much more self contained, or at least properly bookended, with the whole Werner Herzog plot. Structure goes a long way in a series that has tiny 8 episode seasons. Maybe they were just trying harder because it was unclear if things would work out for the future.

canofhumdingers said:

BoBF completely ruined Boba Fett’s return AND Mando season 3 in one fell swoop. So many awful decisions with that show.

There are certainly some weird decisions going on… because it feels like the two BoBF Mando episodes were what I’d actually have expected the season premier to be.

The episode was a weird mess. The longer opening episodes of previous seasons were much better in terms of content an pacing. It seemed like they were worried people were really bored watching Andor and shoved in both a monster battle and a space battle, without time for the characters. What little they included was all setup for later stories. Trying to revive IG-11 is dumb and makes Mando look dumb. Not a good start.

Servii said:

I should clarify, there’s nothing inherently wrong with a creative changing their mind about something. All stories evolve in the telling of them, and writers are dynamic people who’s vision of their own work is prone to shifting over time.

For example, when JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, it was just a straightforward children’s fantasy adventure story, in his mind. It wasn’t meant to be the prelude to the epic fantasy of LOTR. The Ring was just a magic ring Bilbo found, not the Ring of the Dark Lord himself, who also happened to be the Necromancer of Mirkwood. Tolkien even went back and rewrote the ending to the Gollum chapter of The Hobbit, to make the Ring more consistent with its portrayal in LOTR. And even when Tolkien first started writing LOTR, it started out as merely a sequel to The Hobbit, before ballooning into something bigger and grander.

In a similar way, Star Wars started out as just “the adventures of Luke Skywalker” before ballooning into a drama about the Skywalker family.

The point is, it’s ok that George’s story ideas morphed over time. The problem is that George tends to forget or deny that the change ever occurred. He says “It was always meant to be this way,” when it clearly wasn’t. That’s what people take issue with. If he were more upfront about having changed his mind about things, then people wouldn’t be misled into thinking otherwise.

George’s ideas morphed over time. But unlike Tolkien who loved the work, his languages, and spent time answering letters from fans… George seems to actively hate the fans who made the OOT a success, and doesn’t really like directing movies. The overall denial vibe is also very weird, but I think if the changes were any good people would complain a lot less. Instead it’s like he’s always working on a once classic car and all the tinkering is … well…

The Dooku stuff was surprisingly good. The rest was a waste of time.

Now you’re asking the real questions.

This show was… good. It wasn’t an uneven mess and knew what it wanted to be. It had things like suspense and characterisation which have been missing from recent SW content, if it was ever present before in these terms. It also had some proper acting talent and proper dialogue instead of the nonsense in recent shows. The tone made sense and people behaved in ways that made sense. It didn’t feel cheap and wasn’t full of cringe references, despite a few name drops.

So it came as no surprise that people hated the pacing and the lack of action. Because for better or worse (it’s the former) this isn’t really SW at all in terms of things like escapism and adventure. SW as a continuation of THX or the crime dramas of the 1970s. After the awkward choppy flashbacks in the first 3 parts it all fell into place. So I fully expect season 2 to be tampered with to make it more appealing to a wider audience, i.e. things like Darth Vader and more deepfakes.

It’s these sort of things that mean I can’t yet accept this as enriching Rogue One after the fact. At least not fully. They could give three episode arcs to Saw and Jyn or to Maze and his pals, but it still leads to creepy CGI faces and Darth Vader’s ‘totally epic’ murder spree. Maybe LFL should avoid this and work towards common goals of quality output instead of just handing out jobs to everyone that is in vogue. It depends on if they recognise what they have here. Disney don’t because they buried it on the app front page.

No that would be tonally wrong. There some issues in the movie, but I don’t think all of the darker ideas that were proposed would solve them.

You never saw Aliens? It’s incredible.

Anyway I’ve no time for this show, so I watched the above fan edit. It was pretty dull, but the laughable nonsense everyone got upset about was (mostly) excised. It reminded me of when I saw the Essential Edit of Indiana Jones 4. Less cringe but ultimately not good in any meaningful way.

BedeHistory731 said:

Would that be with or without the kidnapped and tortured sex worker plots?

That kind of thing was pretty long time ago. They should do a proper discussion in their “re:View” series. Regular guests like Colin Cunningham are VFX artists and have the know-how to talk about stuff like that. Also some years ago they also had the director of People Vs George Lucas in an episode. If structured properly it might have some sort of impact. Then again they’d probably just prefer a drunken round table discussion of trash.

Superweapon VII said:

The OOT. That’s it. If the other stuff piques their interest, they can watch it at a friend’s house.

Harsh, but fair.