joefavs

I won’t go quite so far as to say I enjoy ROTS more, but Rogue One has definitely fallen a few rungs for me as well. Now that the newness has worn off, it feels like kind of a trifle, albeit one with some great visuals and fun set pieces. Different leads would probably be enough to save it for me, but as it is it has two of the dullest protagonists in the entire franchise. I certainly don’t dislike the movie, but I do think I consider it “minor Star Wars”.

You know they rebooted the continuity, right? Disney didn’t go “off track”, they’re operating in a completely different timeline.

Maybe we need a Diet Spoiler® thread? I definitely know too much to hang out in the spoiler-free thread, but I’ve hit my limit.

The “VIII days” TV spot thing was a surprising visual, but without context I don’t think it really gives anything away at all. I’ve got an idea in my head of what that could be, but I really have no idea.

A word of warning: the TLJ Visual Dictionary has leaked and photos of every single page are bouncing around the internet. I read the Luke and Snoke sections and found it to be a lot of cool lore and no real plot spoilers, but then the Leia entry was very spoilery and I stopped reading. I’m told the Poe page is even worse. Proceed with caution.

What do you mean “should’ve been the first sequel”? They have to save the dinosaurs they made in a lab from a volcano? Just make more dinosaurs! It’s one of the dumbest premises I’ve ever encountered.

Good lord does Jurassic World 2 look bad.

Mike O said:

joefavs said:

The Alien blu-ray is one of the best looking transfers I’ve seen of a sci-fi film of that era. I’d be very pleased indeed if a new official release of the OT came out looking like that.

I heard that there were some issues with the color timing.

Having been born a decade after the film’s original theatrical run, I can’t speak to the color timing’s accuracy, but it certainly looks good.

I look exactly like the guy all the way on the right from like three scenes in season 6 of Mad Men, to the point where I made a joke on Facebook about winning a walk-on role in a contest when the episode aired and people believed me.

The Alien blu-ray is one of the best looking transfers I’ve seen of a sci-fi film of that era. I’d be very pleased indeed if a new official release of the OT came out looking like that.

I figured Rey picked up an understanding of astromech “language” while working on ships for Unkar Plutt. She probably had to work with whatever droids he had at any given time, and that probably often meant getting by without a translator.

I just finished a marathon of the OT plus TFA with some friends, and I watched the PT and R1 last week, so I am extremely sure about my ranking right now.

SW = ESB > TFA > ROTJ > R1 > TPM > AOTC = ROTS

EDIT: Just noticed that I had ROTJ in there twice instead of ROTS.

Misdirection. There’s no way in this hyper-secretive era that the biggest twist of the ST is blown by a damn pint glass.

The Hollywood Reporter just posted this short clip about Mark discussing the Wampa scene on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/THR/status/935258761769320449

The clip they show is from the unaltered version of the scene, and the presenter notes that the Special Edition version (she actually says the words “Special Edition”) is much more graphic. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly why they use the OUT instead of the SE for the video, but I still found it kind of neat that an outlet like the Hollywood Reporter would bother going into any amount of detail about SE differences in 2017.

I like Hal9000’s edits an awful lot. His cuts improve the tone and pacing dramatically while leaving enough intact that they don’t feel rushed, which is a problem I’ve had with other edits.

The most interesting thing about the TFA-as-soulless-corporate-product argument is that I’ve yet to see anyone even attempt to describe what a new Star Wars movie that isn’t just a cash grab would look like, beyond vague generalizations like “more original” and “less fan service”. I truly believe these people haven’t even bothered to figure out what it actually is that they want.

EDIT: wrong thread.

I watched Hal’s prequels over the course of this past week. I’m going to watch Rogue One at some point between now and next weekend, then marathon the OT plus TFA with some friends next Saturday. I’d have liked to do it the weekend before TLJ comes out, but the 2nd is the closest everyone’s schedules will permit.

I asked this in the Amadeus theatrical reconstruction thread but it didn’t get any traction. A couple weeks ago, I went to a screening of Amadeus with a live orchestra where they showed a DCP of the theatrical cut. Is this available commercially anywhere? As far as I know, the blu-ray only includes the director’s cut, but now that there’s evidently a high def master of the theatrical version out there I’m thinking there could have been a release somewhere along the line that I missed.

IIRC they let him jump the line because he busted Leia out of the Death Star. It’s not a great explanation but it works for me when you factor in the whole will of the Force thing. I can buy that the Rebels are more accommodating to the idea than they probably should be because the Force wants it to happen.

Anyway, you’re all burying the lede with that story. The big thing about it is that it canonizes Fake Wedge as his own character, who everyone in-universe actually refers to as Fake Wedge.

Didn’t see anything like this in the first ten pages, so I figured I’d do it myself. Most weeks I get together with a few friends for what started as a regular Dungeons and Dragons night and has evolved to encompass a few other games as well. I figured that since we’re a bunch of nerds here, some of you must have similar situations. So, what are you playing, gang? We’ve been going with:

-Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition. Not much to say about this one. I mean, it’s D&D.

-Betrayal at House on the Hill. Semi-cooperative haunted house boardgame that’s a lot of fun. The game board is similar to Clue, except it’s randomly generated from a stack of room cards, which shakes things up a lot from game to game.

-Star Wars: Destiny. Awesome collectible card and dice based game. Very fast-paced and intense. Games only last 35 minutes or so, so it never gets tedious like these things sometimes do.

-The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. Co-op card game from the same publisher as Destiny that plays sort of like a cross between Munchkin and Magic: the Gathering. This is the one we’ve started most recently, and I’m finding the cooperative angle to be very refreshing.

-Munchkin. We’ve done the space one, the Marvel one, and the Rick & Morty one. It’s good fun.

We also plan to give the old West End Games Star Wars RPG a spin sometime soon. So how about yous guys?

So yesterday I began my pre-TLJ saga watch-through with Hal’s TPM edit, and something jumped out at me that I’d never noticed before. This group of presumably wealthy politicians, aristocrats and clerics pluck Anakin from obscurity and bring him to the galactic equivalent of New York City, and no one deems it worthwhile to buy the kid some new clothes. He seriously spends the rest of the movie in his greasy slave burlap while the Queen has three or four complete costume changes. What the hell, space adults?

Oh god damn it. Now you’ve spoiled it for everyone.

I unlocked Luke the second day I played and I suck at the game. Yes, it would take years to unlock everything, but “everything” includes a lot of meaningless bullshit like emotes and victory poses. You should be able to get all the heroes at least reasonably quickly.

To be clear, I only logged on yesterday after the hero unlock prices had been reduced. I had no idea they originally cost 4x as much until now, but since they’ve ultimately been reduced I maintain that it isn’t a big deal.