Tyrphanax

I’ll know it when I see it.

I’ll get excited once I’ve seen it and it’s perfect.

Obviously they couldn’t because they didn’t, so it warrants absolutely no thought.

I think a lot of people are missing the fact that the Resistance is not the Army of the New Republic. We don’t know what the Army of the New Republic looks like yet. The Resistance looks like a rag-tag rebel group because that’s exactly what it is.

The Resistance was established as more of a secret rebel group to oppose the growing power of the First Order. It’s not a fully-sanctioned New Republic endeavor (though they do support it in secret) for diplomatic reasons, and until the Republic is directly attacked by the First Order as we see in TFA, I feel like the Republic was officially staying out of the conflict and instead fighting a proxy war through the Resistance.

Nobody knew the First Order was as powerful as they were before now. Maybe in Episode VIII we’ll get to see the actual Army of the New Republic. Maybe they don’t have one even? Maybe they were shooting for some utopian ideal wherein armies aren’t required which necessitated the secret creation of the Resistance in order to combat threats? I dunno, that’s all speculation. All I know is that the Resistance is not the Republic.

I bought a new brand of hot chocolate last night at the store, but it has sucralose in it which utterly ruins the taste. It wasn’t advertised on the front, and it wasn’t full-on Splenda or whatever but there’s enough in there that you get that gross mouthfeel.

People who put unadvertised sucralose in things should be cast out of society.

I didn’t miss the crawl at all.

Yeah, YouTube is shit and literally anyone can copyright flag a video and have it taken down for no reason pretty much.

Looks like Jyn did get to bop some troopers with her landing guides at one point.

Lots of good stills here.

I’m so excited for that I have no words.

Lord Haseo said:

I’m waiting to see 3rd person gameplay or at least confirmation that it’s going to have 3rd person available before rendering judgement. But boy if it’s just 1st person I’ll pass on that mod.

I’d heard they were doing both, if I remember correctly.

It just doesn’t look like KOTOR at all to me.

suspiciouscoffee said:

Tyrphanax said:

It feels less like the PT was scored after TPM and more like Lucas just said “Eh throw in that popular one from the first movie.”

Like the laughable Anakin road trip montage in AOTC that uses Duel of the Fates for some reason.

Yeah. Ugh.

I’m not opposed to themes like that being referenced or re-scored to fit the moment, but it just felt like blatant re-use. They don’t even really defend it on Oxygen and they do a good job of defending musical choices in the PT. =P

Yeah it was a weird development for Woody Boyd.

KOTOR is pretty good, KOTOR II is alright, neither are as good as the OT.

Can’t stand Woody Harrelson. I just see Cheers whenever I see him. No thanks.

Lord Haseo said:

They need to make a fan remaster/remaster of that too. I don’t know how I feel about the Kotor fan remake.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/06/12/e3-2016-ea-motive-is-working-on-star-wars-battlefront-sequel

<_<

JEDIT: Oh, you said “fan remaster/remake.” Oops.

But yeah, the Fan KOTOR thing looks awful.

Richard “Mack” Machowicz - 51

Navy SEAL and host of FutureWeapons, which was a show I really enjoyed during its time on the air. He seemed like a cool guy.

Brain cancer, man.

Dat_SW_Guy said:

Watching some good videos while sitting next to the window snd the rain outside is very, very relaxing.

Nice!

DominicCobb said:

It’s not just reusing themes from TPM in AOTC and ROTS, it’s reusing the exact same recordings. Over and over again. A lot of this had to do with Williams’s busy schedule in 02 and 05 but most of it had to do with GL’s last minute editing changes.

TPM is a truly fantastic score, though I will say I do believe I prefer a score like TFA more because, when you get down to it, JW’s working off what he has to work with. So I’ve always thought “Anakin’s Theme” was a terribly boring bit of music and really don’t care for its use throughout the score. But of course that’s because of the character Williams was writing for. I also am of two minds on Duel of the Fates. Is it an amazing piece of music? Absolutely. Is it also ridiculously over the top? Yes. Why do we need an epic choir for that lightsaber duel? Why do we even care? Well the answer is we don’t, and thus JW is compensating and trying to make us care with his awesome music. But there’s still a dissonance there.

I’ve just been going through the Prequel soundtracks on Star Wars Oxygen and it’s given me more of an appreciation for the music in TPM, but I otherwise agree.

Alderaan said:

Tyrphanax said:
but the difference is that Rogue One and Civil War will still be decent movies.

No, they won’t be. One day you’ll be embarrassed you felt this way.

Please stop, okay? Film enjoyment is subjective. I enjoyed both of those movies, and will continue to enjoy them. I’m sorry that they weren’t Citizen Kane and that you didn’t like them, but I don’t need reminding that you didn’t like them and that you think I’m an idiot for liking them every time they come up. Thanks.

Ryan-SWI said:

Tyrphanax said:

Oh, it isn’t of course. There is a reason we have effects-driven blockbusters today and its in large part thanks to George Lucas.

My point is more that PT gets its rightful bad rap from being just plain bad films moreso than effects in my mind, and I think most here would agree on that point (I would still argue that there is an over-reliance on CGI in the PT, moreso than the Sequel Trilogy or most of the Marvel movies, or at least that it’s used more judiciously, or at least that it’s more forgivable because the movies are better, but that could all be disputed).

The effects used in the PT are very dated at this point (when at the time of release they were very impressive), and I imagine it’ll be the same looking back on Rogue One or Captain America: Civil War seventeen years from now (I remember when the Nintendo 64 looked “lifelike” to me), but the difference is that Rogue One and Civil War will still be decent movies. Going back to the PT today is not only seeing dated CGI, but compounding that on top of the atrocious writing and acting.

I don’t disagree at all for the most part on the technical aspects of the films, I was more referring to the common jab of the prequels being bad films because CGI, without any elaboration. I’m not saying that’s the case here obviously, it was more of a general statement.

Sure, I get that. No harm, no foul. For what it’s worth, I feel like in the day of 3D printing and being at the point of technology where we can translate CGI into physical props, it would be really interesting to see a Star Wars film with the massive Disney/LFL budget behind it using totally physical props again. I remember first seeing the trailers for Rogue One and trying to figure out if that Star Destroyer was a prop or not, though.

Could you elaborate on why you think Rogue One is a decent film, yet Revenge of the Sith isn’t?
Despite ROTS being my favourite Star Wars film I’m not ignorant to its objective flaws, and taking a step back R1 and ROTS have similar issues with effects, characters, plot structure, etc.

Sure, and I think it’s very simple reason (for me at least).

I agree that Rogue One doesn’t have the most amazingly-developed characters in the saga, no argument there. But the difference between Rogue One and Revenge of the Sith for me is that Rogue One isn’t about the characters as much as it is about the state of the galaxy and how that state affects the people living in it. It adds to the universe we saw in Star Wars in a way that doesn’t shrink it or step on many toes (in my view). It’s a “war movie lite” that stands outside the main saga (though it is connected), and I’ve said it a lot but it’s more of a Black Hawk Down telling of events that happened (in that it’s more about the event than the people involved) than it is Saving Private Ryan (which is about characters with the war as a backdrop). More importantly, I had fun during the movie. It’s hard to stay engaged for two hours and fifteen minutes sitting in a seat (even the Marvel movies can lose me there), but I was locked into Rogue One the whole time, both times I’ve seen it so far. These explanations may not work for some, but they were my immediate thoughts leaving the theater the first time.

Revenge of the Sith falls flat for me against this same metric because it depends so much on the flat acting and bad writing (character-, acting-, and story-wise) of the previous two films. I have said many times here and elsewhere that the core concepts and story of the Prequel Trilogy are fantastic. The rise of the Empire, the seduction of Anakin Skywalker by the Dark Side, the birth of Darth Vader, the purge of the Jedi and the collapse of the Old Republic are all amazing concepts. Stuff I wanted to see since I heard Ben Kenobi relate the story of Luke’s father to him on Tatooine and then Endor. But Lucas managed to find so many ways to just ruin those amazing concepts in the most disappointing and thorough ways, not to mention wring some of the worst performances out of otherwise-decent (or great) actors. Where Rogue One was about an event and the people involved, Revenge of the Sith is about characters and their deep impact on the galaxy. The problem is that all these characters are so poorly-written and acted that I don’t care about them or what happens to them at all. I should, because they’re the point of the movie, they’re doing things I always wanted to see, but I just do not. I grew up while the PT was being released, but I never had the same excitement or drive towards them as I did with the OT. I got the Special Editions on VHS in 1997 (I was 8) and watched them weekly. When the PT came out, I think I might have had TPM on VHS but that was it. It was more an obligation to see them than it was that I was excited about seeing what happened next.

I really enjoyed Rogue One but the film is far from being without faults, and I honestly have no doubt that had the film come out in the early 2000s it would be lumped in with those “crap prequel films.” A lot of the complaints levelled at the prequels are glaringly apparent in R1, so why is it excused?
The most hypocritical response I’ve seen is the same people calling the ROTS space battle a “pointless video game cut-scene”, but the Rogue One space battle is brilliant… Why? It has the same plot significance as ROTS and almost the entire thing was created on a computer.
It seems more and more apparent among fans that everything Star Wars is perfectly fine as long as it’s attached to the hip of the OT, any deviation and it’s automatically a huge pile of crap.

I can’t speak so much to this. Rogue One has its faults but it just feels better and was more enjoyable for me. Also, if it had come out in the 2000s, Lucas would have written and produced and directed it and it would have been a mess like the PT, haha. There are just different feels to the two films, and Rogue One feels like Star Wars to me, whereas the Prequels just… don’t so much.

Like I said before, the effects for the PT were cutting-edge at the time, so it’s not so much that as it is the reliance on it. In TPM you had a lot more real sets and practical effects. Those were all nice. But, as time went on, with AOTC and ROTS they just kept on pushing and pushing the boundaries to the point where Obi-Wan’s scenes on Utapau are Ewan McGregor on a greenscreen the entire time interacting with mostly characters that are either not there at all or a guy in a green bodysuit. Obi-Wan and Anakin fighting on Mustafar is the same thing. At least with Rogue One we had a lot of this and this, we had a lot of this and this too, but having the first thing makes the second thing look more believable. When you have a lot of this and this it makes this and this look less believable (especially when you pile a ton of post-production CGI on it).

I think it would be neat to see an image of Jedha in the days of the Old Republic.

I feel like the history of Jedha actually mirrors the history of the Jedi pretty closely. It seems far more ancient than just the Old Republic.

On topic: I think that they’re two different statues.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Also I think important to note that the tie fit in with the “disposable infantry” mentality of the Empire. They seemed pretty easy to shoot down(did once read they were unshielded?) and had no ability to travel long range, so if left behind will do die.

Would hope the new Republic values their fighters’ lives more than that.

They were unshielded in the old EU, but I’m not sure about the new canon.

Ryan-SWI said:

TV’s Frink said:

Ryan-SWI said:

Prefacing by saying I’m not baiting or trolling, and I’m not a child, before someone inevitably screams at me for being wrong about my opinion as usual.

I would accuse you of these things but my brain has locked up after reading your rankings.

JEDIT: Leaving aside the PT, it looks like the rest of your rankings were put in a blender.

And there’s Frink.

I do get annoyed at the “hivemind”/“circlejerk” comments from newer members. I think we’ve all arrived at our rankings fairly independently, and if you go back into the thread a bit you’ll see there are lots of variations on the theme (being OT > PT).

The prequels make me sad. TPM had really quite a decent soundtrack with tons of original stuff and themes that were interwoven with themes from the OT. Great soundtrack.

But then AOTC and ROTS came along and in large part just inappropriately reused the TPM score in various places. Williams still had it because Across the Stars is one of the best pieces of Star Wars music ever written, and Battle of the Heroes is pretty decent as well, but the amount of reuse of Duel of the Fates and The Droid Invasion (and not even in thematic ways like we see the reuse of The Imperial March or The Force Theme in the OT) just annoys me. It feels less like the PT was scored after TPM and more like Lucas just said “Eh throw in that popular one from the first movie.”

That said, listening to the PT soundtracks kills me because I wish we had gotten a PT that was worthy of that music instead of what we got.

Oh, it isn’t of course. There is a reason we have effects-driven blockbusters today and its in large part thanks to George Lucas.

My point is more that PT gets its rightful bad rap from being just plain bad films moreso than effects in my mind, and I think most here would agree on that point (I would still argue that there is an over-reliance on CGI in the PT, moreso than the Sequel Trilogy or most of the Marvel movies, or at least that it’s used more judiciously, or at least that it’s more forgivable because the movies are better, but that could all be disputed).

The effects used in the PT are very dated at this point (when at the time of release they were very impressive), and I imagine it’ll be the same looking back on Rogue One or Captain America: Civil War seventeen years from now (I remember when the Nintendo 64 looked “lifelike” to me), but the difference is that Rogue One and Civil War will still be decent movies. Going back to the PT today is not only seeing dated CGI, but compounding that on top of the atrocious writing and acting.

Yes, the miniatures in the PT is something that’s well-known. It’s just that they piled so much CGI on top of them that they might as well be CG themselves… and doesn’t really effect the many, many scenes where actors had nothing to interact with or look at but green or blue.