Tobar

Just finished the latest episode of Telltale's The Walking Dead.

timdiggerm said:

Why is he sad? He's Batman.

SilverWook said:

Is the Wil Wheaton tweet real?

August 22nd, 2013

What a weird conclusion to come to. If you want to be known for other things than start making other things.

And so it begins...

Yeah, I've been re-reading the volume 1 omnibus off and on for a few weeks now. Love it.

doubleofive said:

My dogs were alarmed by all of the cheering I did. I wish the SUPER SPECIAL GUEST STARRING credit didn't always ruin things, or I would have cheered loud enough to wake the neighbors.

 Boy am I glad I don't pay attention to the opening credits. =P

It's not veins by the way. Here's a hi-res close up:

What's a duck?

Yeah, I've been learning not to hit the threads around here until after I've seen the ep.

Speaking of which, wow. That was the perfect way to end the season.

Here's this week's poster:

Season finale starts here in half an hour, definitely looking forward to it.

Looks like they're basing him on the Dark Knight Returns Batman:

Leonardo said:

he's best known for his Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, whose phone calls have been known to fool people. He's also known for his Morgan Freeman impression (he did it to his face, and the man called it "outstanding").

 I'd think he'd be best known as Craig Ferguson's robot skeleton. Pretty awesome that they got him to do this. Especially considering it's 24 hours long!

darklordoftech said:

I hate how Thrawn always gets the credit for starting the EU. The EU started with the ANH novelization.

 Ehhh, that should really go to the first original work of fiction based on the property. So either the Marvel comics or Splinter of the Mind's Eye.

SilverWook said:

doubleofive said:

SilverWook said:

IIRC, Roddenberry objected to this, and got it pulled. I recall other brands of candy cigarettes being around well into the 70's though.

oh, they're still around.

 In the U.S.?

 Yes sir. I did a brief stint as an ice cream man last year and the supply distributor we went through had them in stock.

TK-949 said:

If everyone was doing what Jack says the series would be called "12".

 As for this, I was referring to how Navarro chides Ritter about listening to Morgan because she's the best at her job. And then turns around and completely dismisses all the warnings from her about Bauer. Even going so far as dismissing her and having her escorted off the premises.

He's either the most incompetent leader ever or a double agent.

They've stated that the novelizations are canon in all elements that don't contradict the films themselves ie. Obi-wan and Uncle Owen being brothers.

As for building a timeline, it should be pretty easy seeing as besides the novelizations there is literally nothing else until that Rebels tie-in is released.

As to Ziro, he was dating Sy Snootles (yes, seriously) for a while.

lovelikewinter said:

No gay people at all.  

 Actually...

How is Mr. Kaminski doing by the way, he hasn't been around in quite some time.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Tobar said:

Was reading another interview Dave did for Nerdist and then this awesomeness came up:

Joel Aron and I very consciously decided to make it like what you saw in the ’70s... the blades in the prequels actually... taper to a very specific sword point.

 Huh.

 Yeah I remember seeing that too, probably an early promotional image. Here's the blade as it appears in the new trailer:

Hmm...yeah that explanation for the origin of the X-Wing makes no sense to me. In the opening crawl it's explained that the theft of the Death Star plans is the Rebellion's first victory against the Empire.

And yet their fighters are all worn and show signs of age and heavy use. In my mind, all of the Rebel Alliance's equipment was scrounged second hand. The fighters dating back to the days of the Republic.

They are superior to the Empire's fighters but that's because the Empire decided to cut costs as there hadn't been any real opposition up to that point.

That leaves the Rebellion with superior equipment but facing overwhelming odds by the sheer size of the Imperial fleet.

Bingowings said:

I preferred T3 (at least the highly truncated fan edit I last saw) to T2 which is one of the most overrated and annoyingly awful sequels ever made in my book.

A while ago someone recommended The Stainless Steel Rat.

Anyone have any recommendations for fun Sci-fi novels in the same vein as Star Wars?

Was reading another interview Dave did for Nerdist and then this awesomeness came up:

As an original fan, if you just see a TIE fighter scream across the screen – you haven’t seen that since probably ’96 on a screen of any kind unless you’re watching it at home and it’s never been new. I think we have that to offer. Joel Aron, my VFX lead, has done an amazing job at matching the original effects. Something I’ll talk about – I don’t know if I've told anyone this, so this might be somewhat exclusive: We had the lightsaber rendered – the effect you’ll see in this show, Joel Aron and I very consciously decided to make it like what you saw in the ’70s. And they changed it in updated editions. The blade is a lot steadier in the re-releases and in the prequels. In fact, the blades in the prequels actually are wide and then they taper to a very specific sword point. The lightsabers that we’re putting in Star Wars Rebels are very much the long thin slender blade that is just more like a fencing rapier. Much more like that.

And they oscillate. They actually quiver. Joel found the original guy that did the original effect, rotoed it and everything, because it was on a rod that spun. If you look at really old, original footage of Luke’s lightsaber when he turns it on, it kind of almost goes like that [waves hand] and flickers. That really motivates the humming sound of the lightsaber and how it fluctuates when it moves. Joel’s recreated that really well.

Something else, we put in the old kind of yellow-green flash contacts when the sabers hit in the old movies that weren't as present in the new ones. We've gone very retro with our effects package for Rebels. I think old fans will like that, new fans won’t even know the difference. But yes, it’s always a big consideration. For a lot of kids, Rebels will be their introduction [to Star Wars]. It’s exciting, and it’s a huge responsibility, because we want to set things up well for everything that’s going to come.

Full interview here.

So recently show runner Dave Filoni was interviewed by IGN and the topic of fan skepticism came up:

IGN: Right. There are always going to be those people -- I see them on the comment boards -- especially with the adult fans, where it's like, "Dark dark dark dark dark. It should always be darker."

Filoni: Of course, yeah.

IGN: So let's address that, because when Kilian [Plunkett] is saying, "This show is lighter than The Clone Wars”, what would you say to the people going, "Where's the dark stuff?!"

Filoni: For me, if I go back and look at the original Star Wars, I wouldn't call it dark. I think it has dark moments. I think Empire gets there, I think Jedi has some dark moments. But my intention with the storytelling is to be in that realm. I'll easily say, we are not going to be as dark as finding Darth Maul as a shell of his former self, on a junk planet, screaming, you know? That was dark even for Star Wars. I think the other thing too is I just want this to be Star Wars in the most classic sense -- a serialized television show. I want it to have its epic moments and its mythic moments. I want it to get to places where you know the villains are really villains. But for me at least to kind of map out this show, I think we'll start in a place, not unlike what we did in Clone Wars, which was that it was a bit more fun in the beginning. I think the bad guys still have their tone, but I think, since we're coming at it with a boy in the beginning, that it is a little bit lighter in tone. But then as the world kind of rises up around them and things get more serious, I think it allows us to bring everybody into that world, just like Luke did. Things get more and more progressively intense. But it's always with an eye on, how can we keep the flavor of Star Wars or Indiana Jones? It's going to be a very balanced show.

I would also say that it's different than the previous era of Clone Wars and Star Wars because we were really the only game in town. There wasn't almost anything else being made, certainly nothing else by George Lucas. Now we're looking at all types of Star Wars media coming out. I think that it all can't be the same. I would expect, as is a tradition in video games -- those things seem to be darker -- the new movies, what tone they'll have I don't know; maybe dark, maybe not dark. But I think there needs to be a range. There are other types of movies being made as well in Star Wars, and who knows what realm they'll go into. The good thing is, we're all on the same page at Lucasfilm... and I know more than I'm letting on. [Laughs] Obviously. But I just play it that way. No followup questions!

IGN: [Laughs] Yeah, yeah. I was thinking, ‘Suuuure, they never say anything to you about the new movies!’

Filoni: Yeah, I'm totally in the dark. [Laughs] But everything kind of needs to have it's place and space. I think that way you're addressing it in different mediums, in different formats. The nice thing I can say is, it's all more connected than it's ever been at Lucasfilm. Before, we would change something in Clone Wars and people would be like, "Why are you changing canon?" We're like, "Actually, we're not. This is the way George wants it." Now, that is a unified approach where I'm talking to several different people on different projects, and we're all aware of what each other's doing. We all get great ideas from each other and share ideas, so it's a much more unified effort. So our tone is classic Star Wars, very much I think, I'm hoping, A New Hope, because I find that it's probably the most balanced. I mean, Vader doesn't pull any punches. Certainly, Captain Antilles figured that out. But you still have things like Jawas. I love a movie that can encompass both of those things. I think that when we say "lighter tone," I just mean I hope it's in some ways funny. I think that everyone would agree that something that Marvel has done brilliantly is weave comedy into all of their action movies. They need that. I think with Clone Wars, we weren't nearly as good at that. It was very dark and serious most of the time. So I'm just looking for it to be more balanced now.

You can read the full interview here, it's a great read.