NeverarGreat

Superweapon VII said:

Servii said:

I saw a post somewhere recently that basically said “Why do people who hate Star Wars spend so much time focusing on it and talking about it? Why don’t they focus on something that they actually like and makes them happy?”

And that got me thinking. Why do I focus on Star Wars? I have a love-hate relationship with Star Wars as a franchise. The one thing I don’t feel about Star Wars is indifference. When Star Wars is at its best, it’s something that’s deeply entertaining and engaging for me. When Star Wars is at its worst, I can’t stand it. There’s no other franchise where I have both positive and negative reactions to it so strongly.

I still want Star Wars to be good. And there is still some good Star Wars stuff being made. But it’s like trying to admire the beautiful work done on a garden while the house is on fire, and the homeowners insist that everything is fine.

Star Wars is just something that I can’t fully let go of. It does bring me happiness, still.

Feel much the same way. When I think too much about the past 23+ years, that delicate balance tips more towards hate. Disassociating from all that crap, effectively acting as if the SW saga ended with the Hand of Thrawn duology, helps keep the flame alive.

Suppose The Princess Bride was such a financial success that they decided that this would be a franchise with new installments coming out every year, new books and games being produced several times a year, and merchandise and advertising being pumped out around the clock forever.

The only difference between the Princess Bride franchise and the Star Wars franchise is that they managed to make two classic movies back-to-back with Star Wars and this made everyone assume that such a level of quality could actually be achieved on a continuous basis instead of George Lucas being at the center of a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of talent and opportunity that allowed for lightning to strike twice.

Ever since then people have been wistfully looking back to those first films and wondering how everything after it seems to suck, but it’s just because the first two films managed to set expectations at a level which was unsustainable for a continuing franchise. Fans don’t hate Star Wars, they’re just disappointed with inevitable mediocrity compared to prior greatness. Fans of the Princess Bride Cinematic Universe would have exactly the same reaction if such a thing were to exist.

You could change Yoda’s dialogue in ESB:

“That boy was our only hope.”
“No…he will choose another.”

In this way, when Luke is hanging from Cloud City at the end of the film, he reaches out to Leia and thus ‘chooses’ her to be custodian of his destiny if he should fail.

Then the dialogue for ROTJ would need to change:

“Luke…there is another…” (Cut out the word Skywalker)

Then when Luke speaks with Obi-wan, remove references to Leia being his sister:

“You were our only hope.”
“Yoda spoke of another.”
“The other he spoke of is your twin…your sister in the Force.”
“Leia. Leia’s my sister.”
“Your insight serves you well. Bury your feelings deep down, Luke. They do you credit, but they could be made to serve the Emperor.”

I imagine Obi-wan is used to stretching language to convey a point, and him saying that Leia is akin to a sister to Luke is in keeping with this. Luke may or may not understand that Leia is not his literal sister, but the later scene with Luke telling Leia that she is his literal sister could remain, as Luke continuing Obi-wan’s mystical language or by simply misinterpreting the meaning. The later canonicity of Leia as Luke’s sister would make sense based on this, and feels in keeping with the mythological nature of Star Wars to have a spiritual character like Luke to treat the mysterious machinations of the Force as literally analogous to biological systems.

The change fixes the issue that Yoda both knows about Leia as Luke’s sister and is willing to let her die in ESB, and Obi-wan’s confusion as to whether there is one or two last hopes. With Luke racing off to face Vader unprepared, Yoda is saying that the Force will choose another champion, and Luke will be the instrument of this choice. It also makes clear that Vader could never have sensed Leia’s Force ability in ANH since she isn’t chosen until ESB. Finally and perhaps most importantly, it keeps the universe from shrinking to nothingness in ROTJ as this new hope could only be someone Luke knows.

RogueLeader said:

Love to hear your perspective, Nev! Speaking of the characters’ ways of speaking, I recall reading an interview regarding Rings of Power that basically claimed that the writers attempted to write dialogue for each race in distinctive meters. To be honest I haven’t been able to tell if that translated into the final product. Have you guys noticed anything like that?

I haven’t picked up on if elves speak in a different meter than dwarves, no, though it could well be true. I mostly just notice when the characters try to speak with that stilted profundity which falls flat for me as much as it works.

Now that Season One has ended, I think Poppasketti can take a bow 😉

Overall thoughts about the season: I liked it. Didn’t love it, but the effort is there and I appreciate parts of every storyline. I’ll certainly tune in for season two and see what Sauron is up to with his new volcano.

Thanks y’all!

One of the changes I have made for V2 is to alter the Starkiller Destruction finale music to better fit the tone of this darker edit. Whereas before the music went from the bombastic Starkiller Destruction to the upbeat D’qar base return, now the music culminates in a sustained note and the return to base is left silent. In making this change, I was also able to salvage the shot of the ships going to Hyperspace, and I think the scene now has a sense of finality where the audience is allowed to take a breath before the next scene begins.

https://mega.nz/file/OVkzQKgK#cxHEBck-qP37CXbeerA8jy9-Utjyo6FZeYeYGzJ4aWg

And of course, the sound effects for this entire section of the film have been practically rebuilt from scratch.

I haven’t done work on any edit for a while now, primarily because money is tight and Adobe’s editing suites cost a bit more than I’m willing to spend right now. I’m determined to continue work at some point, but until then it would be helpful to view my edits as on hiatus.

As to your question about the eyes, I had done a whole lot of work on a V2 for a few months and I did end up making the eyes more pronounced, as well as going through the film and fixing a laundry list of sound and visual issues. As noted before, I discovered that a lot of my music and sound effects were stuck on a mono track so I liberated them to become part of the surround mix, and I’ve already done work on several new sequences for version 2. It’s already a lot more polished than V1.

Anyway, that’s a lot of sugar on top of what I’m sure is disappointing news, but rest assured I will not let this project go quietly into the night!

Perfectly said.

I’ve never had much interest in ‘purist’ edits of Tolkien, mainly because I believe adaptations are sometimes strongest when they deviate from source material, and there’s often a good reason for the deviance. In fact, since adaptations are entirely different mediums it’s really hard to compare them at all. For example, you bring up plated armor in the movies and show, but it’s notable that this is a visual detail which is the primary mode of conveying the story in visual media. And while Tolkien did often describe what characters were wearing in the story, he was a linguist first and foremost and this carries into the storytelling. The tale is felt through the names of the characters, their way of speaking, their poems and songs. The word choice of the stories themselves tends heavily toward words derived from Old English roots rather than Latinate words and phrases. This gives everything in the books the feeling of entering another world, an older world of myth and legend.

All this is to say that although the Jackson LOTR movies come close, nothing can really evoke Tolkien’s writing after it has been warped and transmuted onto a screen. It’s the same sort of thing that happened to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy show and movie. It’s the author’s writing style more than anything else that makes the work special, which only really comes through in the books and radio dramas.

Oh, and the latest episode was fine. It felt a bit weightless considering the magnitude of events, that is all.

Despite all my rage I am still not Nicholas Cage.

Hadn’t considered the hyperfuel plot, but you’re right 😃

I am going back and forth between two ideas. The first is in the crawl above, where the fleet’s origin is explained as the old Empire just having deep pockets. This attempts to explain why Canto Bight is in the film, as a further exploration of that theme.

The other idea I had was to use that space in the crawl to explain why the First Order was able to surprise the New Republic fleet, so I’d say that the First Order used its spy network to locate the fleet for the first attack. This would set up the theme of there possibly being a spy on the Raddus, which is later revealed to be a partial red-herring when the Hyperspace tracking plot comes into view.

Thanks!

While tinkering with the crawl for TFA, I thought it would be fun to do an update for TLJ, taking into account my current feelings about the edit. Although I have plenty of ideas for substantial edits and restructures, at this point I’m just thinking about how to make a crawl for the otherwise unchanged film, leaning into the idea of creating a new battle in the crawl in order to justify its existence:

The Republic is doomed.
Without the Jedi Knights,
victory for the First Order
is only a matter of time.

Wielding weapons forged
from the spoils of the
Empire, a deadly armada
of warships commanded by
Supreme Leader Snoke has
ravaged the unsuspecting
New Republic Starfleet
and hunted its survivors
across the stars.

Attempting to escape this
dark armada, the last of
the tattered fleet has fled
to General Leia Organa
and her Resistance base,
seeking a final spark of
hope amidst the galaxy’s
most desperate hour…

Of course there’s a lot I’d like to change about the movie, but this crawl does a lot without needing serious changes to the film. The only thing that may be odd is that the Resistance now should expect the First Order to follow them through hyperspace since they’ve done it even before the film opens, but it may be possible to shift some of Leia’s dialogue about following them through Hyperspace to the opening scene. Then again, that could create problems later, so it may be best to leave it.

I’ll be away for about ten days, so keep on truckin’, or whatever the hell you Star Wars people say 😉

It just makes me happy.

Just a little bump, not because I’ve made any more progress on the edit (sorry!) but because I’m doodling again with the crawl.

EPISODE VII
THE FORCE AWAKENS

It is a time of despair.
Luke Skywalker, striving
to restore the light of the
Jedi Order, has vanished.

In the wake of this crisis,
malevolent agents under
the command of the
IMPERIAL FIRST ORDER
have emerged from a
mysterious hidden base
to sow chaos and fear
throughout the grieving
New Republic.

Overwhelmed by rising
turmoil, members of the
bitterly divided Senate
have secretly called upon
a daring RESISTANCE
to find the last Jedi and
restore peace and justice
to the darkening stars…

The latest episode was the best one so far, IMO. Every plot moved forward with purpose and every character interaction approached something genuine.

Technically in the lore, Orcs are a variety of Elves, and some Orcs such as the Uruk-Hai are Orcs bred with Goblin-men, and all of these races can breed with humans. Elrond is only half-elven, for example. They’re all people, and technically all variations of humans due to that ability to interbreed.

As for how they are portrayed, yes there are plenty of Orcs of all skin colors in the movies and the show:

The point is that clearly you don’t care what skin color these people are regardless of where they come from, so my point stands. Why does skin tone homogeneity matter to the heroes but not to the villains?

Just watched the first three episodes.

It’s pretty good! As with most shows produced these days, it could really use some tightening up, but as streaming services seem to want to monopolize people’s time to their service over others it makes sense. It’s also nice that these three episodes could act as a self-contained story. I like the lack of fanservice and the focus on the street-level view of the Empire. It’s refreshing to see an aspect of the Empire’s power depicted as a dysfunctional bureaucracy driven by the whims of local officials more than the iron fist of an almighty Emperor.

This is precisely the sort of human-level viewpoint of the pre-ANH galaxy that Star Wars Rebels couldn’t capture in four seasons, shown here in the first three episodes.

All in all, something I’ll happily keep watching.

Yeah, I was trying to figure out how to tie the conflict over Naboo into something bigger without getting into the actual Palpatine takeover plot. It’s a shame that Valorum isn’t more prominent in the story since he’s really the last thing remaining between the villains and their goal, but bringing him in does feel like a bit of a red herring.

I think Eddie has a point that there needs to be some reason why Naboo is important, rather than just a small-scale victim of the Republic’s failures, but I don’t think anyone’s cracked that yet.

Or to take some of both crawls:

A golden age is ending. The Galactic Republic, under the faltering leadership of Chancellor Valorum, has been corrupted by agents of the Trade Federation.

With the Senate under their control, the greedy Trade Federation has surrounded the peaceful world of Naboo, home to Valorum’s last remaining ally, with a blockade of deadly warships.

Fearing for the safety of her people, the newly-elected Queen Amidala has requested that Valorum send his greatest ambassadors to restore peace and justice to her kingdom…

It is the end of a golden age. The Galactic Republic, once under the wise rule of the Senate, has been engulfed in corruption.

While their allies in congress turn a blind eye, the greedy Trade Federation seeks to exploit the wealthy planet of Naboo with a blockade of deadly warships.

Fearing for the safety of her people, the newly-elected Queen Amidala has requested the aid of the legendary Jedi Knights, hoping that they will restore peace and justice to her kingdom….

This is a wonderful crawl. But if I may…

A golden age has ended. The senate of the Galactic Republic, once a beacon of democracy, has fallen into a state of corruption and decay.

Seeking to profit from this corruption, the greedy Trade Federation has surrounded the prosperous world of Naboo with a blockade of deadly warships.

Fearing for the safety of her people, the newly-elected Queen Amidala has requested the aid of the legendary Jedi Knights, hoping that they will restore peace and justice to her kingdom….

LexX said:

poppasketti said:

And those that are nauseatingly railing against “wokeness” seem to have no issue with the actor other than that they are black. That’s not good enough. You seem distracted by a perceived agenda behind casting a non-white person, when really you should ask yourself “why not cast a non-white person?”

People with darker skin are affected by the Sun on Earth and the darker you are the closer you live to the Equator, that’s just how it has happened through evolution. How in the hell do you explain dark-skinned dwarfs who live inside mountains hardly at all seeing a Sun? They should be whiter than regular men. And don’t give any “it’s a fantasy world” answer… It is based on cultures on Earth.

So the many dark-skinned Orcs in in the books, movies, and show, who spent much of their lives in caves and avoided the sun whenever possible lived lives…closer to the equator basking in the sun? I can’t recall a single person ever being brought out of the story by this curiosity, and I don’t see any reason why other peoples of Middle Earth should be held to a different standard.

Unless, of course, you think that the Forces of Evil are the only ones expected to be multicultural in Tolkien’s world. Which is a…hell of a take.

Exactly.