rocknroll41

Rodney-2187 said:

Time for Falcon and Winter Soldier! Then Loki! I wish they’d give some release dates for the Star Wars series. Right now we only know when The Bad Batch is coming (May 4th). Still looking for Obi-Wan, Boba Fett, and Visions dates for this year. Everything else is later.

Boba Fett is confirmed for December and will be immediately followed by Mando Season 3, then Andor in February 2022, and then Kenobi in May 2022.

Visions will apparently happen in 2021, according to Kennedy at least, but yeah no exact release window has been given for that one yet (which is odd).

New article up (where I tackle the mcu’s supposed “villain problem”): https://henrynsilva.blogspot.com/2021/03/marvel-meanies-and-why-they-mostly-suck.html?m=1

BTW if you guys are getting tired of me putting my articles here lemme know and I’ll stop.

I’m actually glad none of my theories came true! The show is better for that 😃

jedi_bendu said:

rocknroll41 said:

(and this is the cameo Paul Bettany was talking about).

SPOILERS:

I heard that because white vision is also played by Paul Bettany, the cameo/actor he’d ‘always wanted to work with’ was actually himself.

Ah yeah I shoulda realized that beforehand.

Well, all my theories were wrong. Oh well!

Final theories before the finale airs:

I think that blonde chick Dottie is really Arcana Jones (another witch from the comics). I think “Ralph” doesn’t really exist and was just a red herring. I think Evan Peters is really the X-men quicksilver (I don’t think they’d tease us by having him NOT really be him). I don’t think the aerospace engineer Monica talked about will be anyone special. I think vision and the kids will both survive. Lastly, I think the person in witness protection that Jimmy Woo was talking about is Dick Van Dyke (and this is the cameo Paul Bettany was talking about).

if anyone is interested, I just published an article summarizing my thoughts on the current Superman movie reboot situation: https://henrynsilva.blogspot.com/2021/03/man-of-reboots.html?m=1

I suppose this could be considered an “unpopular opinion,” cause I’m fine with them getting rid of Cavill.

Probably some kinda remake of The Thrawn Trilogy.

ThisIsCreation said:

JJ completely kneecapped Rian before Rian could even shout action.

We never saw a movie in canon take place immediately after the previous.

In star wars it has always been easy to make a character grow simply by letting time pass offscreen. Rian couldn’t do that, & while it would have been great to see atleast a year pass like Hal mentioned in his commentary so the change in atmosphere & things could have felt a little easier to accept.

---

I am happy with TROS (Hal’s edit remedies alot of my initial issues) it is literally this generations Return of the Jedi, and when you look at the movies from a production stand point they are very similar, so i am okay, kids will grow up and look at it as their ROTJ and that’s nice… but there is a part of me that wishes JJ would give the audience the middle finger and subvert the formula.

JJ has never made something that makes the audience think past the surface, and star wars doesn’t need to be so deep at times, but i would have killed to see something that made me feel different with each viewing.

For some reason I didn’t see this post before so I just wanted to come back here and say that these are my thoughts exactly!

For anyone who is interested, I wrote an article analyzing the retcons shown in episode 8 of WandaVision (and compared it to ESB): https://henrynsilva.blogspot.com/2021/03/regarding-retcons-and-when-they-can-be.html?m=1

NFBisms said:

I just wish it were more confident in itself.

I’m not a huge fan of how they had to take an entire third of the show out to hit us over the head with Outside The Hex exposition from [lame] characters spouting faux-science at computer monitors. It’s just relatively uninteresting. Monica Rambeau and her team are the typical weak, generic blockbuster stuff that I could do without.

We should have stayed exclusively with the sitcom stuff and slowly discovered what was off through Vision. How it all came to be didn’t even have to be as convoluted or fleshed out as it ended up being, especially when the important parts of it are really just Wanda’s emotions and psyche.

I commend that they even did something like this in the first place, but those ambitions are held back by trying to cater to all attention spans. This could have been really good, and not just mildly interesting.

I agree that the sitcom stuff is more interesting than the SWORD stuff and should’ve remained as the main focus of the show.

RicOlie_2 said:

Oh, I could see that. I guess they might reveal more later.

Also, one other nitpick I have is that Latin spells are always kind of cringey…it’s such boring Latin too. Nothing happens when I say stuff like “It is changed into a bird” in Latin.

I agree. I’m tired of Latin spells.

RicOlie_2 said:

SPOILERS ahead:

I felt like there wasn’t really enough of an explanation of how Wanda got such crazy powers. They seem to come from nowhere…her grief maybe. I don’t know how the comics handle it, but I feel like something was missing on that score.

Other than that though, it was amazing! And the after credits scene… Just when I thought it couldn’t get crazier.

My interpretation is that she was born with powers and that the more trauma she goes through, the more powerful she becomes.

Ok this WandaVision show has DEFINITELY become my favorite thing in the whole MCU now! Today’s episode was amazing!

Omni said:

Pretty sure George didn’t give a shit about him either, hence how he died on ROTJ. I must say, with as much Boba Fett fanboy-ism going on after Mando, I like his silly death scene more and more - we shouldn’t be thinking too much of the bad guys, focus on the heroes, dammit!

I agree. Ever since “I am your father,” Star Wars has had this idea that every villain needs to be super complex, and while I understand the desire to make every villain seem “real,” sometimes a simple mustache-twirler that pushes the conflict and moves the plot along is all you need. Save the breathing room for the heroes!

JadedSkywalker said:

I think Star Wars is the best by a hair, Empire is better in a lot of ways just not as fun. Return is the weakest and uneven but still has its moments.

To me all three films, i mean the real versions are one piece. They tell a complete story i find it hard to consider them separately. Although i know Leia was never intended to be the sister, or Vader Luke’s father. The story of the original film when viewed as a standalone thing is very different from what came later. Star Wars itself not the SAGA is a different beast. A simple happy go lucky comic book movie, not some grand Epic.
A movie serial like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. Tells a simple story and is self contained.

I’m more of a “comic serial” person and not a “grand epic” person so I prefer seeing sw77 separate from the rest, but I understand why most others feel differently and respect that!

SparkySywer said:

I don’t really think TFA screwed over TLJ & TRoS that hard. Redoing the Rebels v Empire conflict was a mistake, but they could have brought in the Republic military as late as in Episode 9, and there’s more interesting subtext to the conflict you can read into TFA and TLJ.

They don’t develop on the new concepts of the ST that much, but TLJ picks up the slack enough that I don’t think it’s a problem. At least in TFA’s case.

The Knights of Ren should’ve been cut, because there’s not really anything you could do with them. That’s kind of indefensible, but it’s not that big a deal either.

I don’t really know what else could be a case of TFA screwing over the rest of the ST, though.

Rey’s identity shouldn’t have been a mystery, Poe should’ve died early on as planned (so that Finn could have his role instead of just being a jedi decoy for Rey), and if they were gonna put Luke on an island, then maybe don’t have him standing all elegantly with Jedi robes. I get that they wanted to take artistic license there for the sake of making the ending of TFA feel “hopeful,” but in-universe, it would’ve made more sense to just have him already in rags and maybe just sitting on a rock looking all sad or something. Make it clear right away to the audience that we’re getting a sad hermit Luke.

Servii said:

rocknroll41 said:

I feel like a lot of people THINK they like TFA, but really they just like it cause it did just barely enough to be passable, while also avoiding anything inevitable that it knew would piss people off, thus putting all the burden onto Episode 8.

JJ Abrams is very much a people pleaser. He sets up plot points and mysteries that win over people’s initial interest, while deliberately ignoring or glossing over the the less popular implications of those plot points. He’s not a great long term planner, but he’s very good at getting people excited.

True, but “drumming up excitement” at the expense of telling a genuine story longterm goes against my ethos, hence why I’ve grown to dislike TFA/TRoS, and at the same time grow to like TLJ.

I feel like a lot of people THINK they like TFA, but really they just like it cause it did just barely enough to be passable, while also avoiding anything inevitable that it knew would piss people off, thus putting all the burden onto Episode 8.

Servii said:

Episode numbers were a mistake.

The Mandalorian should never have brought in preexisting characters.

TLJ didn’t derail the sequel trilogy. TFA already did, halfway through its running time. TLJ just made people aware of the derailment.

Geonosis is the coolest looking planet shown in the saga.

Watto and Nute Gunray are worse than Jar Jar.

I agree with all of this (except for your fourth point)! Happy to find a like-minded individual!

ATMachine said:

That’s the problem with making stories instead of giant multimedia franchises. Stories naturally have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Which conflicts with the franchise-minded imperative to keep a constant stream of content going as long as possible, to wring every last cent out of the brand.

For that very reason, I think Star Wars is at it’s best when it’s anthological. That’s why I prefer stuff that feels loose and indefinite (the original film, TCW, TLJ, Solo, etc.). Whenever Star Wars tries to be grandiose and operatic, it works for a little while (ESB), but eventually runs itself into a dead-end corner (TRoS).

Welp, now we’re just going in circles here.

Yeah besides wasn’t Salvador Dali already making award-winning paintings at like age 6?

Servii said:

Cthulhunicron said:

The Star Wars universe is pretty limited, and I don’t think there’s really anywhere for the story to go.

Hypothetically, the universe has limitless potential for new stories to tell and settings to explore, but since the people in charge of this IP are unwilling to step outside of the franchise’s comfort zone and make anything too unfamiliar, it will continue to stagnate, and the universe will shrink. This isn’t just Disney’s fault or modern Lucasfilm’s fault, by the way. This was a problem under George, as well. The franchise is too fettered to its past.

So, if movies can’t actually have their quality measured, then what’s the point of lists like the AFI Top 100? Why create official rankings of movies that are generally considered great if there’s no way to actually quantify that?

For the same reason I might get bored one day and decide to make a personal ranking and/or put up a fan poll somewhere.

In other words: it’s purely for recreational fun, and it doesn’t matter whoever is making said list. Some places that make these lists you speak of just so happen to be more popular than others, is all. But as a poster above mentioned: “Objectively Popular” does not equal “Objectively Good.”

Mocata said:

Lol why is this even a debate. The atomic weight of gold can be objectively measured. Citizen Kane being a better movie that The Room cannot be measured. ‘Better’ and ‘worse’ are not mathematical things. If an alien lands tomorrow he could say that The Phantom Menace is a good movie, but he won’t say that one plus one equals three.

Couldn’t have said it better myself!