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NeverarGreat

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Join date
11-Sep-2012
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11-Sep-2025
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Post
#1380103
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released)
Time

jarbear said:

poppasketti said:

Darth Muffy said:

What I took out of RoS which I really liked the idea of was how it explained Palpatines “stike me down” lines both in RoS and return of the jedi. I like to think that meant that if Luke struck him down in return of the jedi with anger he would of possessed Luke the same way Rey would of been possessed if she stuck him down in RoS through the sith ritual.

This is actually something I don’t like about TRoS. The literal nature of a possible spirit transfer being the real motivation behind one of the crucial moments of the original trilogy cheapens the moral implications for me. In Return of the Jedi, I always thought Palpatine was saying that anger and hatred were corrupting and destructive forces, and that even if Palpatine were to die, he still would have won by corrupting Luke. I realize that doesn’t literally make a ton of sense given Palpatine’s ambition and ruling an empire, but it makes sense in the context of the morality tale that the original trilogy was. This added motivation means there’s a reason for Luke to resist temptation other than showing poise and maturity in the face of evil.

My man.

Also was part of palpable plan: Luke tries to kill him, Vader would protect and start duel. If Vader wins, Luke threat done. If Luke won, he could manipulate him since he started the dark path. So simple.

I hate the sith transfer thing. No wonder Lucas didn’t go to the opening. Lol.

It seems pretty risky to bank on Vader protecting you when he was actively plotting your destruction in the previous film. It’s actually rather strange that Vader protects Palpatine. On the spectrum of ‘protect your master’ to ‘protect your son from falling to the Dark Side’ there seems to be a big grey area of ‘conflicted’ which would lead to inaction in that critical moment.

As for Luke’s additional motivation, he wouldn’t know of this Sith power anyway, so it doesn’t detract from the purity of his motivation in my book.

Post
#1380071
Topic
What's so great about ESB?
Time

Something that I can never quite get over is how real Yoda is as a character. It’s totally believable for this puppet to be a wise Jedi Master, and it’s so good that you forget how damn impressive that is. The model work throughout the film is solid to excellent, and the Imperial Walkers continue to be frightening despite being stop-motion. Apart from Hoth, there are no real locations in this film but it never feels like the world is anything but boundlessly vast.

In addition, none of the characters feel shortchanged by this film. Everyone gets their moment to shine and the small moments between characters feel authentic in a way that hasn’t been achieved since.

Finally, this movie distills the message of Star Wars into its purest form. Yoda’s speech to Luke IS the gospel of the Force, and Luke’s coming of age story is as timeless as storytelling itself.

Star Wars might have been the best contained story of the series, but Empire feels more than any other film like you have stepped into an ancient world where things of myth and archetype are happening all around you.

Post
#1380003
Topic
Star Wars: <strong>The Rise Of Skywalker</strong> Redux Ideas thread
Time

StarkillerAG said:

Also, TFA isn’t a remake of ANH. I have no idea how that idea became so common. Besides a few surface-level callbacks, the movies are nothing alike. And I don’t think that not resolving character arcs in TFA should be considered a criticism, given that it was intended to be the first installment of a trilogy.

It’s definitely cut from the mold of ANH in terms of its basic plot, going so far as to recreate elements that actively work against the events suggested by ROTJ.

You’ve got the evil empire more powerful than the scrappy rebels even though these things should be reversed. We have another big planet-destroying superweapon which is destroyed by the end even though there’s no reason for such a threat to exist nor a reason for it to be destroyed.

And these ‘surface-level callbacks’ make up an astonishingly large part of the film, and again they are mostly inexplicable. The McGuffin is hidden in an easily-identifiable droid on a desert planet, except that this time there’s no excuse for the bad guys to not immediately find it. Han and Chewie are back to being smugglers who go to a cantina to get a ship except that this time they have a perfectly good one. The bad guys have a planet-destroying weapon that they want to use to terrorize the galaxy, except that this time their enemy is based on a single easily-identified planet so they have to blow it up then pretend that they haven’t already won.

I could keep naming examples, but the point is that in each case, the only real creativity on display is when the writers realized that there were problems with cannibalizing elements wholesale from another film and set out to make sense of them. So now the droid escapes capture because Kylo is a conflicted and unstable character, Han is going to the cantina because he doesn’t want to face his responsibilities, and the bad guys haven’t won because they are actually really scared of Luke getting over himself and training some more Jedi at some point. They’re not great explanations, but they do change the context of these moments somewhat.

Post
#1379960
Topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released)
Time

Brewzter said:

NeverarGreat said:

The reason is that this wasn’t how Sith worked back then. This is perhaps the single good thing TROS did in making the Sith spirit canon, and I’d gladly take a retcon that improved the OT even if it makes the PT a little more silly.

I don’t think I understand this- by Sith spirit do you mean the idea that literally every spirit had transferred down the line and they were “all the Sith” inside Palpatine that he mentioned? I thought the general assumption was this wasn’t literal

DZ-330 said:

Hal 9000 said:

But then why does Palpatine seem to gloat as he describes Darth Plagueis not being able to save himself from being killed? Shouldn’t he just be Plagueis?

Maybe because Palps killed him in his sleep and the person being killed needs to consciously transfer their spirit to a new host?

Well that confuses it a bit more- if the original point is the case, would all the Sith have built up in Plagueis only for Palpatine to not take them?

I simply saw it as Palpatine saying all of the Sith had figuratively led up to him, but he was just trying to use the transfer-power with Luke and then Rey (or Kylo) to get into a younger, healthier body.

I assumed that Palps meant that the spirits of all the Sith literally resided within him, otherwise he would have some new power that previous Sith did not have when he tried to transfer his consciousness to a new body. It would be weird to say that he was the first Sith to figure this out when this theory of spirit succession fits so well into the otherwise bizarre practice of the Rule of Two.

Post
#1378859
Topic
<em>The Rise of Skywalker</em> - Rewrite Discussion Thread
Time

Ed Slushie said:

This is more of a starting point than a full-fledged idea, but I was thinking that it might have made more sense if the Sith Eternal established themselves as an enemy of the First Order as well as of the Resistance.

One thing that’s always bothered me about TLJ is how its ending doesn’t really lend itself well to being “Part 2 of 3” because of the fact that all of the remaining conflict can be resolved by one event - Kylo being redeemed. Luke says “the war is just beginning” and Rey says they’re going to “build a rebellion” but I feel like if I were seeking to overthrow a regime run by someone whom I knew personally, whom I had a means of communicating with, and who didn’t 100% believe in what he was doing, then I’d probably put all my resources in persuading him to my side and having a peaceful transition of power. The movie may have shown him doing some terrible things, but it never really convinced me that turning him to the Light Side would be hard enough to justify waging a bloody war instead. So it occurred to me - in order for the movie to redeem Ben while keeping him in power (which is presumably, something we’d want to see because of how much “Supreme Leader Kylo” was built up in the Last Jedi), the Resistance and First Order would have to team up against a common enemy. Kylo could spend most of the movie doing the right things for the wrong reasons, and his return to the light could be more smooth and gradual.

What do you think?

I agree, and that’s sort of what my rewrite is about - the Resistance’s plan in Act 1 is to capture and turn Kylo Ren. I don’t think that a dramatically new threat is warranted in the third movie, so they are just up against Hux as the new Supreme Leader who is allied with Thrawn, who gives the First Order some much needed competence.

My first draft of the idea on this forum had Kylo turn at the end of Act 1, but the more I thought about it the more it felt too abrupt, as you say. The second draft has him only begin to turn at the end of Act 1, and all of Act 2 is him realizing that his goal - destroying the Jedi and the Sith - has been undermined by Snoke’s sinister plot throughout the trilogy to become a new Sith spirit through Kylo. Act 3 will have him turn fully against evil while still holding to his conviction that the Jedi and the Sith, as they have been known, must die so that the cycle of conflict can end.

Post
#1378025
Topic
<strong>The Rise Of Skywalker</strong> — Official Review and Opinions Thread
Time

Absolutely. I’d say that the final entry should have been primarily about the First Order losing power from within, as their kidnapped troops were won over by the actions of Finn and Rose. That TROS casually murders these troops offscreen in the final scenes of the movie is the dagger in the back of the entire sequel trilogy.

Post
#1377801
Topic
Unusual <strong>Sequel Trilogy</strong> Radical Redux Ideas Thread
Time

Anakin Starkiller said:

I feel the other shot better rhymes with TPM and ANH and just feels more Star Warsy…or at least it would be those things if it weren’t moving! I really want to end on a static version of that shot because it just looks wrong when the iris to credits happens on a pan, but I don’t see any way to remedy it here.

Your version just cuts from space to space so it looks really weird.

I had used the same starfield so that the cut would be invisible, but I can accept that it would seem weird since that ‘invisible cut’ has never happened in Star Wars before.

However, ESB used a cut from space (with ships) to space and in my eyes that looks a lot weirder since there’s still an iris out between starfields.

Post
#1377657
Topic
The Rise Of Skywalker - Abrams' Vision or Executive Meddling?
Time

StarkillerAG said:

Dude, whataboutism ain’t gonna help your case. AOTC was a fluke because of the Spider-Man movie coming out at the same time, and the OT fit the same box office pattern that the sequels did. TROS made 1 billion dollars at the box office, that’s pretty damn good to me.

Comparing box office totals as a judge of audience interest isn’t whataboutism, it actually has a fair amount of bearing on the argument. And the OT doesn’t really fit the sequel box office pattern domestically, since TROS made less than TLJ domestically while ROTJ made more than ESB with the same metric. Comparing worldwide gross and the pattern isn’t really there however. The takeaway from that seems to be that 4, 5, 1, and 7 all did extremely well compared to their sequels, telling me that the only trilogy starter that wasn’t a disappointment was the original. TFA and TPM both depressed turnout for their sequels. Only TLJ seems to have unequivocally depressed the turnout of the final installment, since the domestic numbers for ROTJ were actually better than ESB and there are as you said extenuating circumstances in the case of AOTC.

Finally, every saga movie made over a billion dollars worldwide, accounting for inflation. The shocking thing is that TROS only barely made it.

Post
#1377429
Topic
Songs That Tell a Story
Time

Weird Al: The Jackson Park Express

[Verse 1]
Tuesday morning, 8:15
I was riding to work on the
Jackson Park Express
Seemed like any other day
Then my whole world changed
In a way I never could have guessed
Cause she walked in
Took the seat right across the aisle
I knew we had a special connection
The second I saw her smile

She smiled as if to say
“Hello, Haven’t seen you on this bus before”
I gave her a look that said
“Huh, Life is funny, you never know what’s in store
By the way, your hair is beautiful
I bet it smells like raisins”

She looked at me in a way that asked
“Did you have a nose job or something?
I’m only asking, cause your nose looks slightly better
Than the rest of your face”
I arched my eyebrow, ever so slightly
Which was my way of asking
“Do you want my old Hewlett-Packard printer?
It still works, Kinda
And I got a bunch of ink cartridges left”

Then, she let out a long sigh
Which, I took to mean, “Uh
Mama, What is that deodorant you’re wearing?
It’s intoxicating
Why don’t we drive out to the country sometime?
And collect deer ticks in a zip-lock baggie”, Oh yeah

I gave her a penetrating stare
Which could only mean
“You are my answer, my answer to everything
Which is why, I’ll probably do very poorly
On the written part of my driver’s test”

[Chorus]
Yes, It all happened
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express

[Verse 2]
I knew she was starting to fall for me
Cause she crinkled her nose, which unmistakably meant
“Baby, lets wear each other’s clothes
And speak in a thick German accent
And, maybe someday we can own and operate
Our own mobile pet-grooming service”
I couldn’t hold back my feelings
I gave her a look, that said
“I would make any sacrifice for your love
Goat, chicken, whatever
I could never hold you close enough
Let’s have our bodies surgically grafted together
Oh, surgically grafted together”

She picked up her newspaper, and started reading to herself
Which I’m sure, was a way of telling me
“When you’re cold, I will warm you
When you’re shivering, I will hold you
When you’re nauseous, I will give you Pepto-Bismol every hour
For as long as the symptoms persist
Oh, I, I never, ever want to see you cry
So, please let me cauterize your tear ducts with an arc welder”
Then, I glanced down, at her shirt, for a second
In a way that clearly implied
“I like your boobs”

[Chorus]

[Verse 3]
I cleared my throat quietly, and then, I looked away
And I’m sure it was obvious to her, just what I was trying to say
I was trying to say, “Hey
I’d like to make a wall-sized mural out of all the dead skin cells
That you slough off while you sleep at night”
Whoa-o-Oh, “I’d like to rip you wide open
And french-kiss every single one of your internal organs
Oh, I’d like to remove all your skin, and wear your skin, over my own skin
But not in a creepy way”

Then, I’m pretty sure, she looked at me, out of the corner of her good eye
And, though, she never spoke a word, this is exactly what I heard
She was saying, “Oh!
I wanna make out with you, in an abandoned toll-booth, in the middle of a monsoon
I wanna ride dolphins with you, in the moonlight
Until the staff at Sea World kicks us out
I want you inside me, oh, like a tapeworm”

I pointed to the side of my mouth, as a way of indicating
“Hey, I think you got something on the side of your mouth”
She licked the corner of her lips, as if to say
“Here?”, I nodded, implying, “Yeah, you got it”

And, then the bus stopped, at 53rd Street, and she got up suddenly
“Where are you going?”, pleaded my eyes, “Baby, don’t you do this to me
Think of the beautiful children we could have someday
We could school them at home, Raise them up the right way
And protect them from the evils of the world
Like Trigonometry and Prime Numbers, oh no
Baby, please don’t go”

She brushed my leg, as she left the bus
I’m sure that was her way of saying
“I’m sorry this just isn’t working out
You’re suffocating me
I need some space to find out what life’s all about
So, goodbye forever, my love”

And deep inside, I knew she was right
It was time for us both to move on
And though, I never got her number, oh no no
She never bothered to leave her address, oh
But, as long as I live, I’ll never forget
Those precious moments we shared together

[Outro]
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express
On the Jackson Park Express

Post
#1377428
Topic
Songs That Tell a Story
Time

Weird Al: Albuquerque

[Verse 1]
Way back when I was just a little bitty boy
Living in a box under the stairs in the corner of the basement of the house
Half a block down the street from Jerry’s Bait Shop
(You know the place)
Well, anyway, back then life was going swell and everything was just peachy!

Except, of course, for the undeniable fact that every single morning
My mother would make me a big ol’ bowl of sauerkraut for breakfast

Aw, big bowl of sauerkraut!
Every single mornin’!
It was driving me crazy

I said to my mom
I said, “Hey, mom, what’s up with all the sauerkraut?”
And my dear, sweet mother
She just looked at me like a cow looks at an oncoming train
And she leaned right down next to me
And she said, “It’s good for you!”
And then she tied me to the wall and stuck a funnel in my mouth
And force fed me nothing but sauerkraut until I was twenty six and a half years old

That’s when I swore that someday
Someday I would get outta that basement and travel to a magical, far away place
Where the sun is always shining and the air smells like warm root beer
And the towels are oh so fluffy
Where the shriners and the lepers play their ukuleles all day long
And anyone on the street will gladly shave your back for a nickel

Wacka wacka doodoo yeah!

Well, let me tell you, people, it wasn’t long at all before my dream came true
Because the very next day, a local radio station had this contest
To see who could correctly guess the number of molecules in Leonard Nimoy’s butt
I was off by three, but I still won the grand prize
That’s right, a first class one-way ticket

[Chorus]
To Albuquerque!
Albuquerque!

[Verse 2]
Oh yeah
You know, I’d never been on a real airplane before
And I gotta tell ya, it was really great
Except that I had to sit between two large Albanian women with excruciatingly severe body odor
And the little kid in back of me kept throwin’ up the whole time
The flight attendants ran out of Dr. Pepper and salted peanuts
And the in-flight movie was Bio-Dome with Pauly Shore
And, oh yeah, three of the airplane engines burned out
And we went into a tailspin and crashed into a hillside
And the plane exploded in a giant fireball and everybody died
Except for me
You know why?

'Cause I had my tray table up
And my seat back in the full upright position
Had my tray table up
And my seat back in the full upright position
Had my tray table up
And my seat back in the full upright position

Ah ha ha ha
Ah ha ha
Ah

So I crawled from the twisted, burnin’ wreckage
I crawled on my hands and knees for three full days
Draggin’ along my big leather suitcase and my garment bag
And my tenor saxophone and my twelve-pound bowling ball
And my lucky, lucky autographed glow-in-the-dark snorkel
But finally I arrived at the world famous Albuquerque Holiday Inn
Where the towels are oh so fluffy
And you can eat your soup right out of the ashtrays if you wanna
It’s okay, they’re clean!

Well, I checked into my room and I turned down the A/C
And I turned on the SpectraVision
And I’m just about to eat that little chocolate mint on my pillow
That I love so very, very much when suddenly, there’s a knock on the door

Well now, who could that be?
I say, “Who is it?”
No answer
“Who is it?”
There’s no answer
“Who is it?”
They’re not sayin’ anything

So, finally I go over and I open the door and just as I suspected
It’s some big fat hermaphrodite with a Flock of Seagulls haircut and only one nostril
Oh man, I hate it when I’m right
So anyway, he bursts into my room and he grabs my lucky snorkel
And I’m like, “Hey, you can’t have that!
That snorkel’s been just like a snorkel to me!”
And he’s like, “Tough.”
And I’m like, “Give it!”
And he’s like, “Make me.”
And I’m like, “'kay!”
So I grabbed his leg and he grabbed my esophagus
And I bit off his ear and he chewed off my eyebrows
And I took out his appendix and he gave me a colonic irrigation
Yes, indeed, you better believe it
And somehow in the middle of it all, the phone got knocked off the hook
And twenty seconds later, I heard a familiar voice
And you know what it said?
I’ll tell you what it said

It said
"If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again;
"If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator
"If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again;
“If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.”

[Chorus]
In Albuquerque
Albuquerque

[Verse 3]
Well, to cut a long story short, he got away with my snorkel
But I made a solemn vow right then and there that I would not rest
I would not sleep for an instant until the one-nostrilled man was brought to justice
But first, I decided to buy some donuts

So I got in my car and I drove over to the donut shop
And I walked on up to the guy behind the counter
And he says, “Yeah, what do ya want?”
I said, “You got any glazed donuts?”
He said, “No, we’re outta glazed donuts.”
I said, “You got any jelly donuts?”
He said, “No, we’re outta jelly donuts.”
I said, “You got any Bavarian cream-filled donuts?”
He said, “No, we’re outta Bavarian cream-filled donuts.”
I said, “You got any cinnamon rolls?”
He said, “No, we’re outta cinnamon rolls.”
I said, “You got any apple fritters?”
He said, “No, we’re outta apple fritters.”
I said, “You got any bear claws?”
He said, "Wait a minute, I’ll go check

“No, we’re outta bear claws.”
I said, “Well, in that case - in that case, what do you have?”
He says, “All I got right now is this box of one dozen starving, crazed weasels”
I said, “Okay, I’ll take that.”

So he hands me the box and I open up the lid and the weasels jump out
And they immediately latch onto my face and start bitin’ me all over
Oh man, they were just going nuts
They were tearin’ me apart
You know, I think it was just about that time that a little ditty started goin’ through my head
I believe it went a little something like this…

Doh!
Get 'em off me!
Get 'em off me!
No, get 'em off, get 'em off!
Oh, oh God, oh God!
Oh, get 'em off me!
Oh, oh God!

I ran out into the street with these flesh-eating weasels all over my face
Wavin’ my arms all around and just runnin’, runnin’, runnin’
Like a constipated wiener dog
And as luck would have it, that’s exactly when I ran into the girl of my dreams
Her name was Zelda
She was a calligraphy enthusiast with a slight overbite and hair the color of strained peaches
I’ll never forget the first thing she said to me
She said, “Hey, you’ve got weasels on your face.”

That’s when I knew it was true love
We were inseparable after that
Aw, we ate together, we bathed together
We even shared the same piece of mint-flavored dental floss
The world was our burrito
So we got married and we bought us a house
And had two beautiful children - Nathaniel and Superfly
Oh, we were so very very very happy, aw yeah

But then one fateful night, Zelda said to me
She said, “Sweetie pumpkin? Do you wanna join the Columbia Record Club?”
I said, “Whoa, hold on now, baby, I’m just not ready for that kind of a commitment!”
So we broke up and I never saw her again
But that’s just the way things go

[Chorus]
In Albuquerque
Albuquerque

[Verse 4]
Anyway, things really started lookin’ up for me
Because about a week later, I finally achieved my lifelong dream
That’s right, I got me a part-time job at The Sizzler!
I even made employee of the month after I put out that grease fire with my face
Aw yeah, everybody was pretty jealous of me after that
I was gettin’ a lot of attitude

OK, like one time, I was out in the parking lot
Tryin’ to remove my excess earwax with a golf pencil
When I see this guy Marty tryin’ to carry a big ol’ sofa up the stairs all by himself
So I, I say to him, I say, “Hey, you want me to help you with that?”
And Marty, he just rolls his eyes and goes
“No, I want you to cut off my arms and legs with a chainsaw.”

So I did

And then he gets all indignant on me
He’s like, “Hey man, I was just being sarcastic!”
Well, that’s just great
How was I supposed to know that?
I’m not a mind reader for cryin’ out loud
Besides, now he’s got a really cute nickname: “Torso-Boy”!
So what’s he complaining about?

Say, that reminds me of another amusing anecdote
This guy comes up to me on the street and says he hasn’t had a bite in three days
Well, I knew what he meant
But just to be funny, I took a big bite out of his jugular vein
And he’s yellin’ and screamin’ and bleeding all over
And I’m like, “Hey, come on, don’tcha get it?”
But he just keeps rolling around on the sidewalk, bleeding, and screaming
You know, just completely missing the irony of the whole situation
Man, some people just can’t take a joke, you know?

Anyway, um, um, where was I?
Kinda lost my train of thought

Uh, well, uh, okay
Anyway I, I know it’s kinda been a roundabout way of saying it
But I guess the whole point I’m tryin’ to make here is:

I
Hate
Sauerkraut!

That’s all I’m really tryin’ to say
And, by the way, if one day you happen to wake up
And find yourself in an existential quandary​
Full of loathing and self-doubt
And wracked with the pain and isolation of your pitiful meaningless existence
At least you can take a small bit of comfort in knowing that
Somewhere out there in this crazy mixed-up old universe of ours
There’s still a little place called

[Outro]
Albuquerque
Albuquerque
Albuquerque, Albuquerque
Albuquerque, Albuquerque
Albuquerque, Albuquerque
Albuquerque, Albuquerque

I said, “A” (A)
“L” (L)
“B” (B)
“U” (U)
“…Querque!” (Querque!)

Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque
Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque
Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque
Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque, Albuquerque

Albuquerque

Post
#1377331
Topic
The Force Awakens: Starlight (V1.1 Released!)
Time

Here’s an idea - Use part of the Kylo prayer scene between the interrogation and the rescue. The reasoning is that during the interrogation, Kylo might have picked up on Poe’s memories of Leia. There could even be some dialogue of her from the deleted scenes: “Poe, if they get to Luke first we don’t have a chance.”

Then just have a couple lines from the prayer scene, keeping the helmet reveal for later: “Forgive me…I feel it…the pull of the light. Show me the power of the darkness.” Then the vision of the Starkiller would be here instead of in the interrogation, along with the First Order theme music making its first appearance.

This would also explain why Kylo felt the need to give Hux the responsibility of going after the droid instead of doing it himself.