joefavs

I think ROTK is trying to make a different point, though. all throughout LOTR, we've seen initially good people around Frodo succumbing to the Ring through their weaknesses, while Frodo remains practically incorruptible. The fact that he doesn't come around at the end, and that the Ring is only destroyed because of external forces, drives it home that even Frodo isn't beyond the reach of evil. Luke's journey, on the other hand, is framed as a question of whether or not he can avoid going down the same path as his father. The payoff here is that he isn't doomed to repeat Anakin's mistakes, So the satisfying triumphant ending fits. I think both endings work wonderfully for their respective works, but they're almost negative images of each other thematically.

It always amazes me how much Star Wars fans seem to hate Star Wars. Yeah, TFA could suck, in which case I just won't watch it all the time, just like the prequels. Until then, isn't giving it the benefit of the doubt and hoping it turns out to be good a much less miserable way to live? Even if it's a masterpiece, I honestly think half the people here won't even be capable of registering it because they're so locked into the idea that it needs to suck. Maybe I'm being naive, but I'd rather be happily hopeful for now and potentially disappointed later than uniformly bitter and wretched for the duration.

By the way, I finally got around to Lost Stars. I'm not sure what my expectations even were going in, but I was really impressed. Easily the best of the Journey to TFA stuff. I'm really looking forward to Claudia Grey's next SW book. As far as direct connections to TFA go, we see some of the Battle of Jakku, including the crash of the Star Destroyer Inflictor (I believe this has been mentioned here already). No talk of the Super Star Destroyer, though, which I'm still guessing is the Ravager from Aftermath. I was hoping for some clue about the mysterious Fleet Admiral, but whatever, it looks like the Aftermath sequel is coming out in a few months anyway. The big takeaway from Lost Stars is that the Empire remains far more unified after Jakku than the New Republic realizes. The novel ends with the fleet massing in some obscure nebula with one of the supporting characters poised to become an antagonist. The whole conceit of the book is that it follows sort of mid-level players without showing what the top brass is up to, so I have no idea if this regrouped Imperial fleet is set up to evolve into the First Order, but hopefully that gets addressed in the other Aftermath books.

People seem to be zeroing in on Monday for the new trailer, specifically during Monday Night Football. This doesn't sound right to me, because I'd think they'd want to generate some hype a little ahead of tickets going on sale rather than late on the day of. Friday sounds like a much better day to me, but those who are ostensibly in the know are pretty adamant about Monday. Either way, I'm pretty happy that it's down to a matter of days.

EDIT: Now I'm seeing tweets that say it looks like there's going to be some kind of announcement on starwars.com tomorrow around 4:00 p.m. EST. Probably confirmation of the day the trailer's going to hit, but there's also speculation about a reveal of the theatrical poster.

Well Lando ended last week, so it doesn't matter if you wait any longer on that one now (unless you're waiting for it to be collected in a paperback, in which case it'll probably be a couple months). Kanan just wrapped up it's first arc, so now's a good time to jump in on that one too. Star Wars has a tendency to drag things out that can get annoying (the Cymoon mission didn't need to last three issues, and it's crazy that we still don't know Sana Solo's deal), but on the whole I like that all it's aiming for is episodic fun. Vader is . . . interesting. It's probably the most uneven thing going right now, but I'm too curious about where the hell they're going with this to stop reading it. The only thing I've out and out disliked so far is Princess Leia.

^I figured it must have, though I read precious little from that era. Anyway, with the continuity wipe they'll need to take another crack at it one way or the other. As for how the new comics are, I've liked most of them, but that's not a popular opinion here. on average they're a lot more fun than the novels, anyway.

I did mean in general, but the TIE Phantom in RAII is another good example.

Eeeh, I kind of like it. Reminds me of something that would've showed up in a video game before the prequels.

Princess Leia was lame, Lando is pretty cool. The five-issue thing really depends on who's writing it. I think it's the Lando guy, so that seems like good news. It would be neat if the new EU manages to make significant strides towards redeeming the prequel era.

^That's what I liked about it. I'm a fan of anything that plays up the ewoks' creep-factor, because they are in fact deeply creepy. They were minutes away from eating our heroes before Luke's levitating Threepio trick. What do you think happened to all the bodies after the battle at the shield generator?

I'm already regretting admitting to this here, but I watched the official blu rays this week for the first time in a while because A.) with TFA this close at hand I figured I might take a break from considering the OT in isolation and at least attempt to make peace with the "saga" versions of the movies, and B.) I had this weird populist urge to take another look at the Star Wars that the vast majority of people accept without thinking twice. I've got to say, I didn't hate it. The unaltered cuts are certainly better films and almost none of the changes are improvements, but those changes didn't torpedo the entire experience of watching the movie like I remembered them doing. I'll still be sticking with the OOT nine viewings out of ten, methinks, but with new movies on the horizon, alternate versions that blend in with the other ones a little more smoothly have a place. With that preamble, there were a handful of things I actually liked.

-All the goofy creature stuff in the Mos Eisley approach sucks pretty hard, but I really dig the rusted out ESB-style transport ship in the background.

-Aurebesh labeling on the tractor beam thing.

-Rotoscoping Vader's saber in that one shot.

-Replacing the cardboard cutout people at the medal ceremony.

-As janky as it is in ANH, the color timing in ESB kind of appeals to me.

-The digitally composited model shots in the Battle of Hoth are glorious.

-Switching Piett's and that other guy's badges to the proper side at the end of the film.

-The blinking ewoks aren't nearly as jarring as they were in my memory. I thought this was actually one of the more convincing effects.

So yeah, that's where I'm at. The OOT has my heart, and I still think it's insane and deplorable that it isn't available through official channels, but setting all that real world baggage aside, if the blu ray is the canonical version going into the sequels, I'm willing to play ball and not gripe about it (too much).

He did say "please".

CatBus said:

joefavs said:

I get that we've all been burned before, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect this to be one of my four favorite Star Wars movies.

Talk about lowering expectations...

 Well truthfully, I expect it to be better than ROTJ when all is said and done, but I hesitate to make open displays of optimism on this board. What I'm getting at, though, is that most of the buzz around this movie is very all-or-nothing in tone, like that idiotic poll where 63% of responders said they thought it would be the best film overall, or the population here that dismisses anything after 1980 as crap by default. I think it's far more likely that TFA will fall somewhere in the middle of the ranking, and I think it's not insane to hope it will rank closer to the top than the bottom given what we've seen and heard so far about how it's being made.

I get that we've all been burned before, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect this to be one of my four favorite Star Wars movies.

Being good in general is no insurance against being bad in a particular movie, especially a Star Wars prequel. Natalie Portman has an Oscar, after all. All I know is that the Palpatine v. Mace Windu confrontation makes me cringe almost as hard as Jedi Rocks, and it's not because of Sam Jackson.

I think the only thing to do is give it time. Yes, nothing that's out so far is as good as the best of the old stuff, but the new EU has only been going for a year, and the quality of the now-Legends stuff had been declining for a while anyway. I think it would be a good idea to be less shy about explicitly re-canonizing things from Legends, and if the implication at the end of Aftermath does in fact pan out, I think that'll be a step in the right direction. But really, I think the biggest thing is that we don't have a large enough sample size yet to really know what we're dealing with.

Don't know much about Darth Bane because I never found the Sith to be terribly interesting, but that and KOTOR are so far removed from the films in the timeline that I'd imagine they're not that tied into classic-era continuity anyway. I've always figured the Old Republic stuff probably functions in-universe as "legend", in that it's so distant that its historicity is ambiguous. I always thought that line they had when they rolled out the Legends label about how these are stories that may or may not be true made the most sense when thinking about that distant past stuff. As for Plagueis, I didn't read that one either, but I think a case could be made for re-canonizing it. I seem to remember Lucas somehow granting it higher status than the other books when it came out, and Luceno makes frequent reference to it in Tarkin. I'm not sure if they'd just take the Legends label off the existing book as-is, but it wouldn't surprise me if they brought a lot of that stuff back in.

That's pretty neat on the audio end of things, but the mouth reminds me of when Conan O'Brien used to have celebrities on "live via satellite" and it was just a photo with someone else's mouth superimposed.

(I personally love the original Emperor to bits and would choose him over McDiarmid every time, continuity be damned)

^I think Rebels canonized OT-era life support in TIEs.

Voice alterations or no, his scenery chewing made Shatner look like Olivier.

I find the better portion of the scores in the prequels to be just servicable. Duel of the Fates and Across the Stars are fantastic, but the rest of it lacks the fire of the originals for me. Also, I've never understood everyone's insistence on how good Ian McDiarmid was. By ROTS his performance was self-parody.

I've heard rumors that theaters have been given a heads up to be ready for a bunch of Star Wars lobby stuff on the 15th or 16th, which would make sense for the trailer too because it's a couple days before tickets go on sale (if that was also true, I can't remember if that was confirmed). Some guy at slashfilm tweeted that he has some inside info that it'll be later than that, but week after next makes the most sense to me.

Jesus, we must be more trailer-starved than I thought if we're really back to fighting about the lightsaber.

Is Jedi likely to show up on myspleen any time soon, or is it tehparadox or bust?

When I think about it, though, if it weren't for the suppression of the unaltered cut, nothing in ANH apart from the whole shooting first business would really bother me. I'm upset that it's the only official version out there and that the color sucks on the blu ray, but there's nothing in there on the level of Boba Fett's voice or Hayden at the end of ROTJ that makes me angry every time I see it. Come to think of it, apart from the Jabba update and tweaking the timing in the cantina shootout, I think ANH might be the least-messed with since 1997 (and I do have a definite soft spot for the 1997 cuts).

^eeeeh, I dunno. I guess if they'd done it before his characterization went completely off the rails it could have been cool, but the original Emperor hologram has always been one of my absolute favorite parts of the saga. Continuity be damned, it's so pleasingly spooky.