Oh geez, I have seen Rashomon too, it slipped my mind earlier. I’ve been trying to find a good time to watch Seven Samurai for a while, but the three-hour running time makes it difficult. Kagemusha isn’t on Filmstruck, but it looks like I can snag a used copy of the blu-ray for twelve bucks on Amazon, so that’s happening.
Yeah, I saw Ran in college and was absolutely floored by it. I’ll have to revisit it sometime soon. Other than that and Throne of Blood, I’ve only seen The Hidden Fortress and Yojimbo, so I’ve got some catching up to do.
One thing I’ll say about Throne of Blood is that the scenes with the ghost/spirit/witch/whatever you want to call it were genuinely terrifying. Just thinking about it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Absolutely delicious filmmaking.
Finally sprang for a Filmstruck account and have been taking full advantage. This weekend I’ve watched
Throne of Blood - 1957, dir. Akira Kurosawa
Viridiana - 1961, dir. Luis Buñuel
Rome: Open City - 1945, dir. Roberto Rosellini
Rodan - 1956, dir. Ishiro Honda
Laura - 1944, dir. Otto Preminger
Might fire up some more Kurosawa this afternoon, TLJ really put me in the mood for that stuff.
I don’t actually know how to do the hiding spoilers thing.
The stick fight? He was still avoiding using the Force at that point. He only used it to break his fall.
I’m not going to waste energy talking to you about this if you’re not even going to watch it. It’s as if you read about a recipe and decided you hated it without tasting it.
EDIT: Who the shit is this seasoned Jedi master she’s supposed to have beaten?
EDITAGAIN: I should just stop engaging, but I can’t help myself.
Rey becomes a master swords(wo)man with next to no training, yes?
The movie actually makes it pretty clear that her skill with a lightsaber is almost completely due to the fact that she was already a skilled melee fighter with her staff.
She effortlessly lifts a shit-ton of rocks with about the same amount of training, yes?
Didn’t Empire teach us that the only thing keeping you from lifting shit is not believing that you can lift shit? Maybe Rey is just more credulous than Luke was.
She beats a seasoned Jedi master,
Kylo kills Snoke, not Rey.
a bunch of Snoke’s highly-trained bodyguards,
Never established as being Force-sensitive.
and apparently Kylo again, in duels, yes?
No, she doesn’t.
Her parents were nobodies, not Skywalkers or Kenobis or Palpatines or anyone with Force-sensitivity which might explain her innate proficiency, yes? She’s just absurdly powerful and skilled because … Forcedidit.
So the prequel-era Lucas model of super-powerful chosen-one bloodlines is more appealing to you than the Force working in mysterious ways? Wouldn’t’ve pegged you as one of those.
Yeah, that movie that’s not out for another five months fuckin sucks. Seriously though, reviewing a thing you haven’t actually seen is just about the most intellectually disingenuous move I can come up with.
EDIT: I thought you were doing a pun on the Solo movie with Salo, not actually talking about Salo itself. Still, y’know what I do? Not watch OR talk about Salo. I firmly believe that that if you’re going to dump on a thing, watch it first.
What I don’t like are female characters – or really, characters in general – who have little to no flaws and are nearly perfect at what they do without any rationale behind their perfection.
So I guess you were in the bathroom for the part where the entire second act was predicated on Rey fucking up then.
I haven’t watched TLJ and I won’t watch TLJ.
I don’t know how you can espouse an opinion on TLJ with a straight face, then.
What I don’t like are female characters – or really, characters in general – who have little to no flaws and are nearly perfect at what they do without any rationale behind their perfection.
So I guess you were in the bathroom for the part where the entire second act was predicated on Rey fucking up then.
Wait, do we all agree that he died of exhaustion then? I took him getting back upright to mean that he didn’t die from over exertion, but rather that he sort of “leveled up”. It’s not that the Force projection bit took so much out of him that he had to die, it’s that he transcended time and space and achieved Force godhood.
Am I the only one with ROTS in dead last?
I cannot tell if that last post was was couched in enough irony to keep Duracell from sucking now. Anyway, I’d like to see James McAvoy as Luke and that one Stranger Things kid as Ben Solo in this hypothetical interquel.
Anyone else hear shades of Back to the Future in some of the more upbeat renditions of Rose’s theme?
A week on from TLJ, I’m a little more solid in my ranking. If I were to force myself to not have any ties, my list would be . . .
If I AM using ties, then ANH=ESB, TFA=TLJ, and AOTC=ROTS. Since six of nine films would be involved in ties, though, it doesn’t feel worthwhile to do a ranking at all. Those pairs are so close that they could flip any day, and this is how it shakes out today.
Being a sphere, the Death Star is 160 km wide from every direction. That’s substantially larger than a flat ship with a 60 km wingspan. Anyway, onscreen it didn’t look that much bigger than the Executor, so I don’t really give a shit what the official numbers are.
This article is probably the best think piece I’ve seen so far.
https://www.avclub.com/this-is-not-going-to-go-the-way-you-think-the-last-jed-1821472840
i had some thoughts this morning about how the ST seems to be inverting the traditional structure for Star Wars trilogies. Rather than rewriting them here, here’s a link to my tweet storm on the subject.
Let the thread die! Kill it if you have to!
I’m kind of surprised “gay” is getting more pushback than “screeching autistically”.
Link please? This thread is a beast to keep up with.
I’m kind of surprised “gay” is getting more pushback than “screeching autistically”.
Another thing to consider RE: the whole “it should have been Ackbar instead of Holdo” argument: sure, the good admiral is a fan favorite, but how receptive would general audiences have been to that subplot if it was a shouting rubber fish man instead of Laura Dern? Ackbar is fun, but I seriously doubt you could get a compelling enough performance out of him to anchor that sort of storyline. It would almost certainly have read as goofy to anyone going into the theater without this weird reverence for Ackbar that we super fans seem to all have.
TLJ position is subject to change, but right now I’m thinking:
1-2. Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back
3. The Force Awakens
4-5. Return of the Jedi, The Last Jedi
6. Rogue One
7. The Phantom Menace
8-9. Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith.
I’ve got a subscription to Marvel online comics. Still haven’t read the Star Wars comics yet, but plan to at some point. I’ve read that the “Star Wars” line isn’t necessarily that good, but seems that people liked the mini-series Vader Down comics.
Vader Down isn’t really it’s own discreet thing; it’s a crossover arc spread between Star Wars and Darth Vader. Star Wars has some good arcs and some bad ones, it’s pretty up and down. My favorite canon SW series are Dr. Aphra (which you probably ought to read Darth Vader before getting into), Lando, and Poe Dameron.
Saw it for a third time tonight. First viewing, I was overwhelmed. Second, I was enraptured. This time, I’ve found some nits to pick. None of the big character or story stuff that everyone’s losing their minds about, I’m on board with pretty much all of that. Some secondary stuff bothered me tonight, though:
-They’re edging uncomfortably close to prequel R2-D2 territory with BB-8. I could accept any one of the four or five over-the-top moments he has in isolation (after all, this kind of stuff happens in the comics all the time), but taken together it’s more than I want to have to reconcile. I’m hoping J.J. will rein it in a bit when he comes back.
-Snoke’s early death seems to have been used as license to not bother fleshing him out beyond being a Palpatine copy. The characterization is disappointingly close. I’m hoping this feels like less of an issue if and when the EU adds some more context for the character.
-I like everything that happens on Canto Bight apart from the aforementioned BB-8 moments, but it really does a number on the pacing of the film. I know a lot of folks are saying it’s unnecessary, but I think that Poe, Finn and Rose taking matters into their own hands and having it absolutely backfire is a key thematic element in the story. I have no idea how I’d fix it and it ultimately isn’t a deal breaker, but my biggest beef with this movie is the bloat, and Canto Bight is a major part of that problem.
-The time frame. I don’t mean “Rey doesn’t have enough time to train”, I think it’s pretty clear that Ahch-To has a similar kind of weird Force time dilation thing going on to whatever allowed Luke to get through so much Jedi shit on Dagobah. I just have concerns about the “shape” of the ST, so to speak, when two of the three installments take place over such a short amount of time. I expect this to stop feeling so strange over time, but at the moment it’s really bizarre.
In the end, though, the good far outweighs the bad for me, and I respect the fact that Johnson’s swinging for the fences enough to give him the benefit of the doubt on this stuff. I think I’m going to wait a week or two before going again and allow my eyes to become fresh again.
Had no idea this site was filled with so many MRA types. What am I even doing here?
Same. I’m seriously considering shopping around for another community. I remember thinking it was bad when TFA came out, but it just keeps getting worse with every new movie.