logo Sign In

NeverarGreat

User Group
Members
Join date
11-Sep-2012
Last activity
11-Oct-2024
Posts
7,671

Post History

Post
#1608903
Topic
General Star Wars <strong>Random Thoughts</strong> Thread
Time

JadedSkywalker said:

Found my Revenge of the Sith ticket stub for 23rd of May 2005. The Ticket price was 9.50.

Other than that, I really can’t remember all that much of that screening the first time I saw the film.

I vaguely remember the opening space battle.

ROTS is the first Star Wars movie I remember seeing in the theater (May 21st, 5:15 PM, $6.25), though I’d seen all the previous ones before that on home video. We went with a group of friends, and I distinctly remember being pleasantly surprised at Palpatine trying to win Anakin over through subtle manipulation and the idea that the Sith had just as valid an interpretation of the Force that the Jedi did.

Unfortunately it didn’t stay that interesting for long and as we know devolved into Anakin going full evil and Palpy going full monster mash. I remember quite vividly the line 'What have I done?" being the moment that I emotionally checked out of the prequel trilogy.

Post
#1601457
Topic
The Force Awakens: Starlight (V1.1 Released!)
Time

A long time ago (since the last update to the crawl 😉 )…

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, sworn
to rebuild the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

With the Jedi now facing
extinction, agents of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
to claim supremacy over
countless worlds beyond
the fragile New Republic.

Afraid to take any action
that could lead to war,
the Senate has secretly
commissioned the pilots
of a brave RESISTANCE
to find the last Jedi and
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars…

Yeah, it’s just the first two lines of paragraph three again.

The reason I don’t like saying that the Republic is mired in endless debate is that such wording is more than just a reference to Episode 1; it is a direct return to the status quo of that movie, and feels like yet another pointless regression rather than a fun homage.

The new lines now at least point to a strategy by the New Republic, even if misguided. The Senate is intentionally avoiding provocative acts that could spark a greater war, since the First Order is still acting beyond Republic jurisdiction as far as anyone knows.

Also, the wording of ‘take action’ is used later by Leia in the reincorporated deleted scene, so it helps to define a consistent through line for the New Republic.

Post
#1599323
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

Or we could just accept that fundamental continuity and character differences exist between each trilogy. That is why the easiest solution is to treat each trilogy as its own entity, existing in a separate continuity from the others. I cannot imagine the universe of the Prequel Trilogy naturally giving rise to the universe of the Original Trilogy, nor of the Original Trilogy giving rise to the Sequel Trilogy.

Post
#1598703
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

G&G-Fan said:

NeverarGreat said:

In the OT, Vader only ever directly kills enemy (and sometimes allied) combatants.

Not only are they not all combatants, but once a combatant is unarmed and you go any further then you have to, there’s no difference, at that point.

He kills Captain Antilles when he’s defenseless and completely at his mercy for no reason other then lying to him and participating in a plot to save the galaxy from a planet destroying weapon.

What Vader did to Leia when they “discussed” the location of the Rebel base (another thing he makes a sardonic joke about), the music, editing, set design, slow buildup, shot choice, was clearly implying it was pretty sinister. It clearly wasn’t a “discussion”. It’s not just a truth serum droid, it’s a torture device. This is an imprisoned politician, not a combatant.

He kills Captain Needa when he apologizes and makes a sadistic joke about doing so.

He leans towards Han Solo, a defenseless prisoner, when he’s being tortured as if he’s enjoying it and sardonically says, “He will not be permanently damaged”, as his screams echo across the hallway. He was chill with the idea of Han dying if it meant using him as a test subject.

He takes pride in trapping Lando in a really unfair deal, with no intent to hold his end at all, taking over the city to subjugate the innocents of Bespin no matter how much Lando complies.

He was gonna torture people working on the second Death Star to “motivate them” despite the workload being seemingly impossible for the number of men they have.

He sadistically gloated about using Luke’s friends as leverage and turning his own daughter to the dark side to use her as a tool for his own ends. He straight up goes, “Yessss”. Not to mention, yeah, trying to do that to your son is also pretty bad.

Han, Leia, Luke, and Antilles are all members of the Rebellion, so I assume that Vader, like the Empire, is treating them like unprivileged combatants (spies and whatnot). Lando is harboring Rebellion fighters and is also running an illegal gas mining operation that has military uses, so it makes sense that the Empire would crack down on that.

Compare Vader’s actions in the OT with Thrawn’s actions at the end of Rebels, where Thrawn holds a city of innocents hostage and begins to destroy them to prove a point. Vader in the OT never indiscriminately kills civilians merely because one of them might be a Rebel.

NeverarGreat said:

Sure, you could argue that he killed Owen and Beru, but he never stepped foot on Tatooine and those executions were probably the purview of his underlings.

Vader is above them. Everything they do goes through him, especially these people who are critical to an important mission. It would’ve been his call to take them prisoner, kill them, etc.

I am 100% certain we were never supposed to get the impression that a grunt stormtrooper is worse then the dark lord of the Sith that is one of the main villains in 3 movies. His very first shot has the stormtroopers submit to what the visual language of the movie is making obvious to us is the bigger bad. He’s taller, darker, scarier mask. The visual language of Star Wars is very deliberate and on-the-nose, which is why it appeals to the most primal sensibilities.

Sure, presumably Vader could have given the order and their deaths are ultimately on his hands, but it’s notable how we don’t see him do this. The movie doesn’t show their deaths, and I think it’s effective in conveying that the Empire killed them, which is all Luke needs to know in order to join the Rebellion.

NeverarGreat said:

Similarly, the Death Star was Tarkin’s project, a project which Vader clearly disliked on a deep and fundamental level. Of course at some level, everyone who supported the Empire had Alderaan’s blood on their hands, but to say that Vader had some unique and singular responsibility for Alderaan seems to be a stretch.

He disliked the Death Star because he feared it could replace him. Vader was the Empire’s ultimate enforcer up to that point. There’s a reason he basically goes, “The Death Star is nothing compared to my power”, instead of, “The Death Star is too much power for us to wield” or something. It was about his ego. Nothing to do with any sense of morality. Which is why Motti basically calls him out on it.

Your previous points are debatable, but I think this one is just wrong. Vader says that ‘The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.’ Vader isn’t saying that he feels threatened by this station, but just that the Force is so much stronger than anything the Empire could produce. His statement is a (prophetic) warning against the Empire’s hubris and a statement of his religion’s faith, which is why the officer rebuts him by calling out his ‘sad devotion to that ancient religion.’

He was in the room with Tarkin when he did it. He held Leia back when she was attempting to stop him. He could’ve used the force to snap Tarkin’s neck and then take command of the station, as he was already second-in-command as is. He’s like a demigod to everybody on that station. He made his choice to do nothing.

This is another instance where the prequels do a disservice to the OT. In the original film, Vader was clearly subservient to Tarkin, who was himself subservient to the Emperor. Leia even cracks a joke at how Vader is Tarkin’s lap dog.

In the OT, there is a somewhat implied growth of Vader in prominence throughout the trilogy, because after Tarkin dies Vader goes from commanding a regular Star Destroyer to commanding an entire fleet and reporting directly to the Emperor. Before ESB, Vader may have been merely a strange curiosity, a holdover from another age. In fact that’s how Vader was seen before the prequels came out, as the Visual Dictionary explained. Vader only became a demigod badass in retrospect after his entire character arc was flattened into a single, static set of attributes that never changed over the course of his life.

Regardless of whether Vader could have physically done anything to stop the Death Star, there’s no indication that he had the influence with the Emperor to survive that action. Saying that he was responsible for Alderaan is the same as saying that Reactor Control Technician #4 was responsible for Alderaan. They could both have thrown a spanner into the works, but their culpability is far superseded by that of Tarkin and the Emperor.

NeverarGreat said:

To then suggest that it was in fact Anakin who was monstrous long before the corrupting influence of the Empire even existed is to strike at the core of everything Anakin is in the eyes of his son. If Anakin committed genocide before the Clone Wars, if he killed children before the Empire was formed, then there is no good man for Luke to save. Anakin didn’t become a monster when he became Darth Vader; Anakin was himself a monster, and the apparent dichotomy between Anakin and Vader in the OT simply doesn’t exist. Anakin as a man was always Vader, and Vader was always a monster.

We’re told he betrayed his brethren, knights that fought for peace and justice, because was seduced by the dark side. Not lied to or fed propaganda, he wanted power. And Vader agrees with this.

“If you only knew the power of the dark side! Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” = “The power of the dark side is so great, even your father was seduced by it.”

He went from being a good man to a bad one by making his own selfish choices. Just because he became a bad man doesn’t mean he wasn’t ever a good one.

But that’s just the point; it doesn’t matter how he was corrupted or seduced, it only matters that he was at one time a ‘good man’, and the prequels show that is just not the case.

He didn’t commit genocide before the Clone Wars. If you’re referring to the Tuskens, that wasn’t genocide, and I disagree with that creative choice anyway, at least if it extends beyond the ones responsible for killing his mother (and even then, that pent up anger could be used as a plot point, if one chose).

Genocide is defined as (among other things) the systematic killing of many people of one race or ethnicity, and often specifically because of their race or ethnicity.

“I killed them. I killed them all. And not just the men, but the women, and the children. I killed them all. They’re animals. And I slaughtered them like animals.”

I don’t think the children had anything to do with killing Anakin’s mother. The point of the scene is to show how Anakin went out of his way to kill everyone in that tribe, specifically because they were Tuskens, a group of people that he viewed as not worthy of being persons. I’d call that genocide.

He killed children after he became a Sith, like a day before it was officially the Empire, when it was already the Empire in all but name. At that point, it’s a semantic argument. I understand the sentiment, as it’s absolutely rushed in ROTS, but when he’s christened Darth Vader, he’s supposed to be like, 90% Vader already.

Again, you’re proving my point. You seem to view any actions taken by Vader as understandable because he is Vader, while I’m saying that the killing of children is not understandable even after Anakin became Vader. Vader at the height of his villainy in the OT never killed children, yet Anakin in the PT kills them on two separate occasions, in both cases before he ever puts on the mask. The prequels give us a bizarre situation where Vader actually reaches the height of his evil as a teenager and then he gradually gets less evil as he gets older, at least when measured by his actual deeds.

Post
#1598651
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

In the OT, Vader only ever directly kills enemy (and sometimes allied) combatants. Sure, you could argue that he killed Owen and Beru, but he never stepped foot on Tatooine and those executions were probably the purview of his underlings. Similarly, the Death Star was Tarkin’s project, a project which Vader clearly disliked on a deep and fundamental level. Of course at some level, everyone who supported the Empire had Alderaan’s blood on their hands, but to say that Vader had some unique and singular responsibility for Alderaan seems to be a stretch.

All of this is to say that Vader’s portrayal in the OT gives the vibe of a ruthless military officer, but one who generally restricts his villainy to the military combatants of the war, real or suspected. It is easy to see how this would have been his modus operandi for decades in the Empire while that Empire continued to fall ever further into darkness as it began to target civilians and institute a reign of terror with an ultimate weapon. For Vader, a military man, to see the organization he followed fall like this would be part of the tragedy of his character.

To then suggest that it was in fact Anakin who was monstrous long before the corrupting influence of the Empire even existed is to strike at the core of everything Anakin is in the eyes of his son. If Anakin committed genocide before the Clone Wars, if he killed children before the Empire was formed, then there is no good man for Luke to save. Anakin didn’t become a monster when he became Darth Vader; Anakin was himself a monster, and the apparent dichotomy between Anakin and Vader in the OT simply doesn’t exist. Anakin as a man was always Vader, and Vader was always a monster.

Post
#1597253
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released)
Time

If I had the LUT that you used for final grading, I could take it and use it to adjust those problem scenes and render them again so that when the LUT is applied in your timeline, the scenes will look correct. You shouldn’t need to change anything in your project, just update the source files to those new renders.

I would just need the LUT for calibration purposes.

Post
#1596390
Topic
What do you think of The Prequel Trilogy? A general discussion.
Time

Definitely. But I’d go further. In the Making of ROTJ, Lucas says that Yoda is a teacher, and that is what the moniker ‘Jedi Master’ implies, as opposed to ‘Jedi Knight’. The terms do not denote power level, but rather specialization. Yoda would never intentionally engage an enemy in battle, because his role is purely to instruct. I imagine Yoda and most Jedi practitioners as pacifists, using the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.

Similarly, Palpatine’s role is as a manipulator, subtly influencing people’s minds and actions to suit his ends. Shooting lightning at a Jedi opponent is clearly a last resort, used after every other puppet and mental trick has been exhausted.

Who would win in a fight? Yoda. We already saw that play out across the battlefield of the Original Trilogy, with Yoda and the Emperor using their greatest weapons (Luke and Vader, respectively) and their preferred techniques (teaching and manipulation, respectively). Stripping away their weapons and comparing their base power levels strips the characters of everything that makes them interesting.

Post
#1596011
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released)
Time

The V5 workprint is the only version I’ve seen that looks correct. V4 had that same incorrect red tint, which I assume comes from the final color grade but which shouldn’t be applied to the Ahch-to scenes. I imagine things are pretty complicated with all the changes and layers, but ideally there should be a layer in the timeline with the final LUT that is applied to the entire film except for the Ahch-to shots, and actually the Mustafar castle flyby and the Jakku shot should be exempted from the final grade as well, otherwise the highlights turn too red.

That might mean that those scenes (Ahch-to, Mustafar Flyby, and Jakku) should get their own layers above the final grade, or the final grade layer is trimmed to exclude those scenes, but either way the final grade would need to be done on the timeline for it to look right, and not applied as a final encoding step.

Post
#1591516
Topic
<em><strong>ANDOR</strong></em> - Disney+ Series - A General Discussion Thread
Time

I imagine it’s like you said, the prisoners are transferred after serving their first sentence to another prison. I imagine that this new prison isn’t like the old one, but it could be similar. The prisoners could be given new sentences and put to work on new projects, and those who refuse the work are killed. There would probably be enough inmates who still believe they will be set free And/or who are resigned to the work that there’s still value in this scheme.

Post
#1590598
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released)
Time

I only watched through the Ahch-to scenes, but I noticed that when Luke says ‘her heart’, his ghostly hairline has been doubled somehow.

Also, I know that color correction hasn’t been applied yet, but those scenes look perfect! I just want to give a gentle reminder to leave these scenes as-is when applying the final color grade, so it doesn’t end up too red like in v4 😉

Post
#1589489
Topic
The Force Awakens: Starlight (V1.1 Released!)
Time

All the links have been sent!

DZ-330 said:

Any updates on this project?

Not really. I just haven’t had the time to get back to it with all my other projects.

Though, it does feel like something’s missing from my post…

…oh right, another crawl 😉

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, sworn
to rebuild the legendary
Jedi Order, has vanished.

With the Jedi now facing
extinction, agents of the
evil FIRST ORDER have
risen from the shadows
of an Imperial fortress
to claim supremacy over
countless worlds beyond
the fragile New Republic.

Woefully unprepared for
another galactic war,
the Senate has secretly
commissioned the pilots
of a brave RESISTANCE
to find the last Jedi and
restore the light of hope
to the darkening stars….

Really I’m just messing around with the first two lines of the third paragraph, everything else is locked down as far as I’m concerned.

Post
#1588211
Topic
Unpopular Opinion Thread
Time

My headcanon on the promotions is that this was such a suicide mission that no reasonable general would have wanted to take these assignments, and it was essentially a practical joke by the leadership that got out of hand when one of them suggested that the kid and his friends who blew up the first Death Star should be in charge of the second operation.

Post
#1585666
Topic
Star Wars: A New Hope DEVASTATOR EDITION (V.1 RELEASED)
Time

Looking at the full quality file, I think the issue is actually that the edges of the model fall off into darkness which doesn’t look right when placed in front of a bright explosion. It would probably be a good idea to use a 3d model so you could get some light bleed from the explosion on the ship model as it passes in front of it. Another option would be to put some blur on the physical model as it passes the explosion and/or more aggressively matte out the edges during those frames.