yotsuya

DrDre said:

Why you are insisting that learning the force must be difficult is beyond me. That isn’t what we see with Luke. Why should we with Rey? For both characters, there are plenty of obstacles and successes and focusing on Luke’s obstacles while focusing on Rey’s successes is most definitely apples and oranges. Compare their successes (their goals and what they actually achieve) and their failures and both follow the same pattern - some wins, some losses, but generally more wins.

Because Lucas has made this very clear in his statements about how the Force works, which I’m not going to repeat. You have to study, to master it. It’s as simple as that. The entire premise of TESB is, that the Force doesn’t come easy for Luke, and he fails on numerous occasions, and where he succeeds, he rarely succeeds on a first try. Luke leaves Yoda with the clear message, that while he knows the Force, he cannot control it, and facing Vader in this condition is a danger to him physically, and spiritually. He subsequently gets his *** handed to him in his confrontation with Vader, and he ends up hanging on for his life battered hoping that his friends will save him. You don’t have to look hard to see, that Rey’s character gets a very different treatment in the ST. The OT and PT make it very clear, that learning the Force, and becoming a Jedi is very difficult, and just using it half cocked has terrible consequences.

I don’t think it is that different compared to the Force. Luke has always dreamed of the future. His mind was never on where he was or what he was doing. In Rey we have the opposite. Her mind was nearly always on where she was and what she was doing. She had to in order to survive. Everything about the two characters is opposite in terms of training for the Force. Rey has very much had the Miagi type training in life that prepared her to be a Jedi. She has the focus. She also heard the stories so when she sees Kylo do these things, she believes and knows they can be done. So Rey has none of Luke’s doubt - the thing that made him learning the force more difficult. Yet even so, he had no problem learning to deflect a blaster bolt (a full Jedi learns how to aim that as we saw in the PT), he is able to aim the proton torpedoes to destroy the Death Star. Out of desperation he picks up his lightsaber the first time he tries (it takes him a moment to focus and get it right). His training with Yoda was good enough that he can hold his own against Vader. Nothing about how he learned his force skills is hard except his belief and focus. What we do see is that practice, control, and great skill in using these powers takes practice. But learning them and using them comes easy.

What RogueLeader was talking about with being ‘in the zone’ takes years of practice, but once you learn how to do that with one thing you can apply it to something else. We do that with typing, driving, and a lot of things that we just don’t think about. It is learning to apply that to something new that is challenging and difficult. Lucas is right that becoming a Jedi takes a long time, but he has never said the skills needed are hard to learn. We see Rey pick them up from Kylo and then she seeks out Luke to help her channel these new powers. When that fails, she takes the books, hoping they have the answer. She knows she is not ready and needs training. We see her seek that out. The force awakened in her and she wants help understanding what happened and learning how to use it. There is a lot to being a Jedi besides just lifting rocks.

DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

I believe I have said much the same thing before.

DominicCobb said:

One of the issues with the Mary Sue argument is that many who subscribe to it now look anywhere they can find and contort everything Rey does as evidence to back it up the theory. It hurts the argument to do such acrobatics (just as it hurts the argument to use the term in the first place, as that strikes up a whole different debate).

It’s one thing to say that Rey learns the force too quickly, respective of previous canon portrayals, or that the stakes for her emotional journey are too low going forward. But to nitpick and turn everything Rey does into proof that she is better than someone else is disregarding the actual filmmaking decisions and how things actually play out on screen (not to mention in some cases these arguments involve ignoring, forgetting, or fabricating things that happen in certain scenes).

My point being, I’m sorry I get flippant some times but it can be very frustrating when I want to have a discussion and it feels like when we can’t even agree on the reality of the film we’ve all seen (probably multiple times). It makes it very hard to debate!

I agree. I watch the film and read the script and what some people get out of it seems to not come from either of those sources.

DrDre said:

Voss Caltrez said:

DrDre said:

So, there’s failure from a certain point of view, but from many others she is unrealistically successful (or lucky) given her lack of experience, and naive nature, and she achieves many of these successes with powers that she just almost instantly recieved from on high, and thus hasn’t really earned.

I agree with this.
But I don’t think it would play well if we saw Rey getting beat up like other action heroes tend to be.
Had Rey been rescued by Poe Dameron in a Hoth-like situation, people would accuse the filmmakers of resorting to the damsel-in-destress trope.
If Snoke had been hurling giant pieces of machinery at Rey’s back and head, she gets beaten and bruised with a black eye (ala Luke at the end of ESB) AND she loses the fight, it looks like a display of violence against women, and accusations of misogyny are made.

I don’t think she needed to be rescued, but I also think she might have a little bit more trouble escaping, maybe get a few scratches, and seem a little less jubilant in the battle of Crait. As it is the revelations and her failure don’t really seem to affect her much. Given what happened to her, and the Resistance you would expect a bit more somber and reflective tone, rather than smiles and congratulations.

And in A New Hope, Luke’s very old friend Biggs is blown up and other than a moment of sadness that he quickly shrugs off to get the job done, there is nothing. Of 30 ships only 3 came back and everyone is laughing and jubilant. Why? because even when there is a cause to be sad, we can be happy becomes something overrides the sadness. And in TLJ, after the survivor’s are rescued, Rey is somber when she talks to Leia.

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

One of my issues is commenting that a strong female character must be strong physically. That has nothing to do with. Ripley in the Alien films is not a strong female character because she psychically beats the aliens, but because she does what has to be done to survive. Leia is similarly strong even though she is not tasked with the same level of physical demands as Ripley. She stands up to Vader and Tarkin. When Luke comes into her cell, she is not excited to see Luke, but excited to hear about Ben Kenobi. Then when Luke and Han don’t seem to have a plan, she makes one. She is passive during the Death Star battle because she is not a fighter pilot. But in the rest of the Trilogy, and the ST, she is obviously in charge and confident. She is not a damsel in distress even when she is a prisoner. Rey is the same way. After the force has awakened in her, she sees what Kylo does and while she can’t escape him she does escape a Stormtrooper (thanks Daniel Craig) which isn’t hard, but it takes her a couple of tries to get it. But Rey is not overly strong, she is competent and skilled and ready to be a Jedi. She does not outshine any of the other characters but comes to the story their equal. When you look at many of the male written strong female characters, they tend to be physically strong and more badass. That type of character gets old. How many people like that do you meet in real life? It is so easy to do wrong. Ripley is done right.

But to further compare Rey to other characters, let’s compare her to Wonder Woman. Rey obviously lack the extreme super powers, but has the force. Wonder Woman really has no physical adversaries in the 2017 film until she encounters Aries and she herself is the instrument of his death. She literally is outshines everyone and as the title character we expect that. Rey is the young Jedi of the ST. As such she can be expected to save the day in IX. She will initiate the solution the finalizes the Star Wars saga. So at her introduction is it any surprise that she is very powerful to start with and only grows more powerful, growing to the point where she is the equal of her adversary, Kylo. Rey actually has more setbacks than Wonder Woman and is far less powerful and less able to provide the solutions to all the problems. Plus she had the baggage of the abandonment and need for a parental figure.

I think one of the biggest mistakes is to not recognize that Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo are the main characters of the ST. Rey takes Luke’s role from the OT. Rey is supposed to grow into the Jedi Knight who wins the day. They are taking her through all the stages of the heroes’ journey over the 3 film trilogy rather than over a single film. Kylo is her unwitting teacher and Luke, the one she wants to teach her, refuses to do much beyond the basics and some politics.

So Rey is not an overly physical strong character but is capable and is the main character and therefor supposed to outshine the others. She has setback after setback in what she wants to do as the story (which you can read as the force) pushes her to her destiny. She is exactly the type of strong character we need and definitely not a Mary Sue.

The problem is, that her setbacks don’t really have any consequences for her. She fails to convert Kylo and beat Snoke in a direct confrontation, which might be considered a failure, if not for the fact that she only just learned about the Force a few days ago. Would you consider a novice who steps into the ring or the first time, facing a boxing champion, and gets out of the ring without a scratch a failure? The fact is, she does play an important part in getting Ben Solo to turn on his master, even if it doesn’t end up the way she expected, she easily resists Kylo’s temptation, she fights Kylo to a stand still for the lightsaber after beating Snoke’s elite guards in a team effort, she escapes from the lion’s den without a scratch, and ends up saving the remains of the Resistance from certain doom only to join them in a weird sort of celebration aboard the Millenium Falcon. So, there’s failure from a certain point of view, but from many others she is unrealistically successful (or lucky) given her lack of experience, and naive nature, and she achieves many of these successes with powers that she just almost instantly recieved from on high, and thus hasn’t really earned.

And in the first film, Luke gets in an X-wing and blows up the Death Star. Isn’t that unrealistically successful? He’d never sat in an X-wing before. Before that he used a hook to swing across a casm, stood shooting Stormtroopers and didn’t get hit by a single one while hitting several of them and the controls to close the door on Vader and reinforcing Stromtroopers. Let’s be fair. Star Wars is built with the main characters being exceptional heroes not novices in need of training. When we meet Rey in TFA, it is established that she can fight (with a staff and we don’t know what else). By way of example we have Finn use the lightsaber (The first non-jedi we have ever seen use one in combat) and while he does great against stormtroopers, he doesn’t fair as well against Kylo. Rey doesn’t either until she Kylo basically tells her she needs to use the force and she does and then her skills are a match for his in his weakened state. In TLJ we have a bunch of guards in red who look badass, who attack both Kylo and Ren after Snoke is killed. She fights them off (they are more skilled than the thugs on Jakku, but now so is she thanks to the Force). So this whole argument that Rey is treated different and is in some way an oddball in a Mary Sue way is nonsense. Other than she is lacking the doubt the plagued Luke in the first two OT film, they are cut from the same cloth and both far more successful than any non-hero has a right to be.

One big difference between the two of them can be found in comparing them to other types of heroes. Luke is more like Perseus. Great power but he doesn’t know it at first. Rey is more like Spiderman. Suddenly having the force awaken in her and have all these powers at hand and not knowing what to do with them. I can’t think of a Greek hero like that, but she is very similar to Arthur (pulls the sword from the stone and is suddenly king with all the powers that come with the title). Neither Luke nor Rey have any problem tapping into the force to do things. Luke blocks blaster bolts after a few minutes and is able to use the force to aim better than the targeting computer with no instruction other than “use the force”. He picks up his saber with no instruction and only fails with his X-wing because he perceives it is too big before Yoda shows him it isn’t. With Rey, Kylo does everything first and she picks it up from him. The scene of Rey with the Stromtrooper runs about the same length as Luke trying to pick up his saber in the Wampa cave. The difference is that Kylo tried to do that to Rey and Luke has never seen that before. Luke is not the hero of the ST, Rey is. So Rey following in the typical heroes’ journey of mythology is in keeping with what Lucas started. Correction, in keeping with what you find in myths.

Why you are insisting that learning the force must be difficult is beyond me. That isn’t what we see with Luke. Why should we with Rey? For both characters, there are plenty of obstacles and successes and focusing on Luke’s obstacles while focusing on Rey’s successes is most definitely apples and oranges. Compare their successes (their goals and what they actually achieve) and their failures and both follow the same pattern - some wins, some losses, but generally more wins.

I would say the universe is full of them. We really only get two in the OT, Leia and Mon Mothma, but both are obviously people to be reckoned with. But all the EU and comics I’ve read, from the Brian Daley books on are full of more. I can’t think of a single classic stereotype out there. Plus we end up with Mara Jade and Jaina Solo. While the ST has wiped all of them out, Qi’ra is awesome. Jynn is great but with flaws (she doesn’t shape the story until the mid-way point). Hera and Sabine are great and get some nice depth over the series. And I think everyone has been faithful to Carrie’s portrayal of Leia.

One of my issues is commenting that a strong female character must be strong physically. That has nothing to do with. Ripley in the Alien films is not a strong female character because she psychically beats the aliens, but because she does what has to be done to survive. Leia is similarly strong even though she is not tasked with the same level of physical demands as Ripley. She stands up to Vader and Tarkin. When Luke comes into her cell, she is not excited to see Luke, but excited to hear about Ben Kenobi. Then when Luke and Han don’t seem to have a plan, she makes one. She is passive during the Death Star battle because she is not a fighter pilot. But in the rest of the Trilogy, and the ST, she is obviously in charge and confident. She is not a damsel in distress even when she is a prisoner. Rey is the same way. After the force has awakened in her, she sees what Kylo does and while she can’t escape him she does escape a Stormtrooper (thanks Daniel Craig) which isn’t hard, but it takes her a couple of tries to get it. But Rey is not overly strong, she is competent and skilled and ready to be a Jedi. She does not outshine any of the other characters but comes to the story their equal. When you look at many of the male written strong female characters, they tend to be physically strong and more badass. That type of character gets old. How many people like that do you meet in real life? It is so easy to do wrong. Ripley is done right.

But to further compare Rey to other characters, let’s compare her to Wonder Woman. Rey obviously lack the extreme super powers, but has the force. Wonder Woman really has no physical adversaries in the 2017 film until she encounters Aries and she herself is the instrument of his death. She literally is outshines everyone and as the title character we expect that. Rey is the young Jedi of the ST. As such she can be expected to save the day in IX. She will initiate the solution the finalizes the Star Wars saga. So at her introduction is it any surprise that she is very powerful to start with and only grows more powerful, growing to the point where she is the equal of her adversary, Kylo. Rey actually has more setbacks than Wonder Woman and is far less powerful and less able to provide the solutions to all the problems. Plus she had the baggage of the abandonment and need for a parental figure.

I think one of the biggest mistakes is to not recognize that Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo are the main characters of the ST. Rey takes Luke’s role from the OT. Rey is supposed to grow into the Jedi Knight who wins the day. They are taking her through all the stages of the heroes’ journey over the 3 film trilogy rather than over a single film. Kylo is her unwitting teacher and Luke, the one she wants to teach her, refuses to do much beyond the basics and some politics.

So Rey is not an overly physical strong character but is capable and is the main character and therefor supposed to outshine the others. She has setback after setback in what she wants to do as the story (which you can read as the force) pushes her to her destiny. She is exactly the type of strong character we need and definitely not a Mary Sue.

First, a Mary Sue character is a wish fulfillment character. The idea was born from fanfiction and came into the main when this type was noticed in mainstream media. A Mary Sue cannot be a main character because part of the definition is that they upstage the main character. Wesley Crusher was almost a Mary Sue with how often he saved the day. Rey is the main character of the ST. She can’t upstage herself. When we meet her we are shown that she is a skilled fighter. She had abandonment issues. Throughout TFA she just wants to go home and wait for her parents until she finally accepts that her life is taking a new direction. She doesn’t just randomly pick up any force skills (which we are never shown are that hard to learn if you believe you can do it, which was Luke’s problem). She does not pick them up perfectly on the first try any more than Luke picked up blocking blaster bolts the first try. In the OT we went through the heroes journey in the first film before resuming it in the second. Here we are following Rey on that journey and she isn’t zooming through it in one film.

In TLJ she enters the training part of her journey but ends up with Luke not wanting to really teacher, instead he is trying to scare her off. It doesn’t work. Rey steals the sacred texts and leaves having picked up enough to work with. She knows she is powerful and needs training. What she lacks is not ability, but focus and purpose and she gets that in TLJ. By the time she gets in front of Snoke, she has some false confidence and would have been killed if Kylo wanted her dead, but instead he kills Snoke and Snoke’s guards attack. If you watch the scene, Kylo is the better fighter. He fights more of them and against tougher odds. When it comes to the raw power of trying to grab the saber with the force, they are equal. Saying she won when she did not accomplish her goals for going there is ridiculous. She basically failed in all her goals for TLJ. She did not get Luke to come back (Yoda did). She did not get Luke to teacher (he gave her some minor lesson and she stole some books hoping she might learn more from them). She did not turn Kylo. And her saber is broken. So for Rey, TLJ is a list of failures an if she was a Mary Sue, she would have had some big successes other than lifting a bunch of rocks (something that could have been done manually by Chewbacca).

Rey comes closer in TFA, but when you compare where she is at in her heroes’ journey compared to Luke, she has only reach Mos Eisley by the end of TFA and just escaped the Death Star by the end of TLJ. We knew Luke was a great pilot and he picked up the force power that Obi-wan taught him in just a few minutes so Rey being a great fighter, mechanic, and pilot (Luke had all those same qualities) isn’t so different from Luke. But Luke had a much longer and more convoluted journey because when Star Wars came out in 1977, it could have been the only film that ever got made so Lucas gave Luke a complete journey in one film and then reset and resumed his journey in TESB. Rey is missing that journey are reset and is just on the heroes’ journey (it starts with the call and the rejection and the eventual acceptance (TFA) followed by her training and some trials (TLJ) before her chance to save the day arrives.

If Rey is really a Mary Sue, the success of her side in both films would rest with her and I don’t see her provide that success. For Rey to face Kylo in IX, she has to be as good as he is. So she is a protagonist to match him as antagonist. Her story is not one of constant successes. She has failures. She learns the force fast, but as far as we have seen that is normal, as long as you believe you can. So the force doesn’t come easier to her than it did to Luke or Anakin. That is an assumption that is not based on events in the previous films. Luke had problems believing, never a problem with actually doing once he believed he could. And Rey sees Kylo do these things before she does them. She doesn’t have to take it on faith like Yoda made Luke do with the X-wing. And when she attacks both Kylo in TFA and Luke in TLJ, she has surprise on her side (not to mention Kylo being wounded). She never bests either of them in a fair fight.

A Mary Sue would be the best and would always win. Things would always go her way. Instead she spends all of TFA wanting to go back to Jakku and being prevented and spends all her time in TLJ with goals that don’t pan out. So far the only thing she has done successfully is locate Luke. Equating her fast learning of the force with being a Mary Sue ignores all the plot that matters. She spends most of both movies looking for a mentor only to come to the conclusion that she will have to teach herself, there by growing past her need for a parent/mentor. Rey is beset by issues that keep her from being the answer to all the problems.

The entire idea of what Poe did being mansplaining is nonsense and idiotic. It really shows a lack of depth to a person’s education in film and fiction. What he did was question authority. I can’t even count the number of times that has appeared in movies, books, TV shows, etc. where both parties are men. It shows a lack of understanding of what mansplaining is. Because that ain’t it.

I think that pretty much all of the complaints about these new movies that seek to apply a political or social motive to one element or another are off the mark. Who cares what gender any character is or what race. We need to look at them objectively as a genderless and raceless character and when you do that there is nothing but good fiction in the ST. The other motives are just imagination.

And quit blaming Disney. In modern movies the Director and the writer (sometimes the same person as in TLJ) controls the film. Lucasfilm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney, but Kathleen Kennedy is running it the way Lucas wanted (and if you look at her resume she has some pretty awesome films to her credit). Blame the director because that is where the success or failure of a film (in terms of quality) lies.

The mistake some people make is assuming a strong female character is physically strong. That is not what strong means. Leia has always been a strong female character. She was the classic princess in prison, but she grabbed the blaster and found her own way out. Strong means a character that is independent and realistic without being a stereotype. I think that fits Rey very well.

As to what her trials are, well, they are very internal. Yes, Star Wars has always been part action, but let’s remember that a lot of what Luke went through was also very internal. He had to overcome his disbelief in the force. Rey has to overcome her need for her parents or replacements. Luke was never weak. He was quite willing to pull out a blaster before he learned how to use his lightsaber. He learned the lesson of deflecting blaster bolts in just a short time on the Falcon. Learning force powers was so unimportant to his journey, we never even see Anakin train. Qui-gon gives him a tiny lesson and Anakin flys a Starship (after winning the pod race and we know he raced in at least one before that). So he could fly and he took out the droid ship by accident, not skill. Rey is more powerful in the force and she picks up everything she learns after seeing someone else do it. Her skills don’t come out of thin air, but from Kylo mostly. But the struggle of learning the skills has never been part of Star Wars. Luke had no trouble learning the skills, only in believing he could do them. Anakin’s struggle was in letting go of his mother. We never see anyone struggle to learn the force. Never. Their struggles are within themselves. Luke won, Anakin lost, and we have yet to see what will happen with Rey (though we can be sure she will win hers in the end). So while Star Wars in on the surface an action movie, it is much more and always has been. It is a legend/myth for the modern age and when we see how Rey’s journey ends, we will see again a very internal struggle that ends up saving the galaxy while at the same time a larger battle takes place the reinforced her victory.

There is a lot to be said for and against both 3D and 4k. I don’t think most viewers will actually get much out of 4k in films. Especially older films. However, one thing to consider is that the compression used to put them on disk is less obvious at higher resolutions. So even a 2k film upscaled to 4k is going to look better on home video than it will in 2k. I’m just disappointed that the 4k TV’s seem to be exclusivly geared to 4k content instead of tuning them to display the best 480p, 720p, 1080p, and 4k possible.

I think 3D is a novelty. It doesn’t help the story telling or the immersion. I find it annoying because the filmmaker has to direct your focus and when you watch the film you can’t refocus on other things. So it isn’t very realistic. I saw TFA in 3D and I regret that. It was a horrible experience. I prefer to stick with 2D at 2k for the time being.

Williarob said:

JonathanArthur19 said:

What shots from the Blu-Ray we’re used for 4K77, it says on the 4K77 page and I quote " Finally, about 400 frames that couldn’t be sourced from anywhere else at the time they were needed, were upscaled from the official Blu-Ray." I was wondering what scene interpreted these frames

Last shot of reel 3, first and last shots of reel 4, first and last shots of reel 5, first shot of reel 6.

Williarob - any chance of you posting the missing frame from the end of reel 5 color corrected to match the DNR version? It really bugs me that the US GOUT is missing this frame (and has become the site standard) and I’d like to be able to add it in to match.

Congrats on your mini-Dre

It might not have been luck. Alec may have sensed that the lines didn’t ring true. Lucas may have shared his desire to film more with him. There is a lot we don’t know and we unfortunately can’t ask Alec. But I would say that whatever he did there was likely his own take on it. As a stand alone film you can either take it as hesitation from apprehension in telling Luke about it or hesitation from coming close to the truth but not exactly. Not matter how it happened, it really makes the scene resonate with the “certain point of view” we later find out it is.

I don’t have many favorites in the decade prior to Star Wars. I prefer older or newer movies. That time was kind of a dry spell for really good film. At least for me. I have done some marathons of all the SF films that appeared right after. Some really good one. Even the cheesy Battle Beyond the Stars is pretty good (a Seven Samurai remake). Outside the Star Wars films and the SF offshoots, I like Popeye, Grease, Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner.

LexX said:

I just saw The Hidden Fortress for the first time last week. And I have to say, it had almost nothing to with SW. If people hadn’t been saying it from the beginning, I wouldn’t even have made the connection myself. Pretty much the only thing is bickering soldiers that resemble R2 and 3PO (which is an insult to the droids as these people are just immoral scum to the very end), and there is one scene that is almost exactly the same in SW than in THF. Other than that, I don’t see any other similarities other than some ideas like there being a general and a princess, but you can find similar architypes from many movies. The plot is completely different and so are the characters. Comparing it to SW took me out of the movie a bit since I kept waiting “is there going to be this and this scene next” and there never was.

One of the early drafts of the script was pretty much a rewrite of Hidden Fortress. It changed considerably before reaching the final shooting script.

OutboundFlight said:

By that logic, is Lord of the Rings pseudo-Science Fiction? Isengard is shown to master genetic manipulation while the wizards seems to use some sort of energy manipulation.

No, because the genetic manipulation is done by magic, not science. The tech at Isengard is not high tech, but appropriate for the setting of the story. There is no science to the tale, only magic.

There are three levels to science fiction. Possible science, plausible science, and pseudo science. After that there is the rest of the speculative fiction overarching genre and you get into magic and it becomes either something in the tiny cross over area or fantasy. If you get too far over you get into horror. Star War is a mix of plausible science (hyperdrives, blasters, bacta tanks, droids, etc) and pseudo science (where the Force is an extension of nature much as the mental abilities of the Robots and citizens of Gaia were in Asimov’s Robot/Empire/Foundation universe). ESP has long been a staple of science fiction even though it is pseudo science. Some believe it really exists while other think it is illusion. I don’t know anyone who thinks magic is real. That possibility that such things are real is why the Force is firmly on the sf side of the divide between sf and fantasy. That is why Star Trek is hailed as great science fiction even though it is full of the same pseudo science mental abilities and energy being as Star Wars. If you stick to Clarke’s definition, only hard science fiction can be called science fiction and that is not what the readers, writers, agents or publisher limit it too. You have to stretch science fiction to the plausible and near impossible to accurately describe what science fiction is. The entire science fiction genre is based on what science can predict or imagine being real, not just on what is possible now. That’s how writers before space flight had ever happened were able to predict what micro-gravity is like. Just because modern science poops on the ideas of telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation does not mean that we can’t imagine that at some point we unlock a new door in science that makes it possible.

Anyone ever find where Focuspuller moved his project info to?

Two things - the photos in the story books are a mix of production photos and film elements plus there is little control over the printing and for the film elements we have no idea of the color timing used. Such print photos are unreliable.

The other thing is that I feel the colors on the technicolor prints are not represenative of the colors on the rest of the prints. So I don’t think matching the technicolor colors is the right approach. I think they are a good guide, but they need to be corrected to better match the regular release prints so I don’t think the warm tones of the technicolor prints are accurate to the general release. From things Mike Verta said in his videos and the way he processed the images, I think his final colors (which he has not released except for some tantalizing samples) are likely to be far more accurate. I think the colors on the Technicolor print are flawed and in need of color correction. They certainly don’t look like a typical technicolor print colors.

screams in the void said:

https://simondillonbooks.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/why-star-wars-is-not-science-fiction-and-related-matters/?fbclid=IwAR0zjxR1DTl1DmydEZ0Z9Hch9ZR6CFcwmfxPoJFfOuJU826lVLYUPc56ouQ

That’s based on Clarke’s interpretation of genre. His interpretation is a minority opinion that does not match the labeling of most of the science fiction genre. Most of it is things that cannot happen. He would have placed the entirety of Space Opera in fantasy while his colleague Isaac Asimov (a writer and scientist) is one of the big three of Science Fiction (along with Clarke) and a lot of what he wrote falls in Space Opera. Clarke wrote Hard Science Fiction. That is not the entirety of the science fiction genre, just a small corner. Anyone basing the distinction between the science fiction and fantasy genres on what Clarke says is wrong. Robert Heinlein, the other member of the big three of 20th century science fiction, also wrote a lot of space opera and other things that took science pretty loosely. He loved time travel and most scientists will tell you that isn’t possible. So by Clarke’s definition he was the only true great science fiction writer of the 20th century. By reader’s views, he was but one.

The only two films that really have the same format are TESB and ROTJ, all the others vary. All 8 saga films end credits start exactly the same way. TMP has Duel of the Fates followed by Anakin’s theme. AOTC has Across the Stars. Both those end softly. ROTJ has Battle of Heroes and then comes back to the same ending as the OT. ANH didn’t really use the same theme pattern. It used Leia’s theme and the Star Wars theme (which Williams edited together to make the longer Star Wars theme from the original LP). TESB used Yoda’s theme and the Imperial March before coming back to the Star Wars theme to end. ROTJ also used themes and came back to the Star Wars theme at the end. The big difference between the PT and OT is that the PT used the theme recording and the OT had specific scored end credit recordings. From what I see, the ST has followed the pattern of the PT in ending softly. So 4 of the 8 end with the Star Wars theme ending and 4 of the 8 end softly. Well, I should correct myself. That is how they end musically. TPM ended with the Darth Vader breathing sound.

NeverarGreat said:

yotsuya said:

NeverarGreat said:

yotsuya said:

rodneyfaile said:

Luke Skywalker has vanished.
In his absence, the sinister
FIRST ORDER has risen from
the ashes of the Empire
and will not rest until
Skywalker, the last Jedi,
has been destroyed.

With the support of the
REPUBLIC, General Leia Organa
leads a brave RESISTANCE.
She is desperate to find her
brother Luke and gain his
help in restoring peace
and justice to the galaxy.

Leia has sent her most daring
pilot on a secret mission
to Jakku, where an old ally
has discovered a clue to
Luke’s whereabouts…

compared to…

It is a period of civil war.
Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire’s
ultimate weapon, the DEATH
STAR, an armored space
station with enough power to
destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire’s
sinister agents, Princess
Leia races home aboard her
starship, custodian of the
stolen plans that can save
her people and restore
freedom to the galaxy…

See how the stage is set by the original crawl. The players are easy to understand and clearly delineated. In TFA the setup is more complex, but rather than go into any part except the First Order, it is all about Luke. TLJ does a better job…

The FIRST ORDER reigns.
Having decimated the peaceful
Republic, Supreme Leader Snoke
now deploys the merciless
legions to seize military
control of the galaxy.

Only General Leia Organa’s
band of RESISTANCE fighters
stand against the rising
tyranny, certain that Jedi
Master Luke Skywalker will
return and restore a spark of
hope to the fight.

But the Resistance has been
exposed. As the First Order
speeds toward the rebel base,
the brave heroes mount a
desperate escape…

The original crawl is a masterclass in efficient exposition. In three paragraphs we know everything we need to know about the conflict. Of course, this wouldn’t be possible without the galactic situation being simple to begin with. The Empire, which controls the galaxy, has a weapon with clearly defined power. The Rebellion, clearly not a major threat due to their lack of victories thus far, has nevertheless gained an opportunity to destroy this weapon. Then establish the princess and the crawl is perfect.

In short:
The Empire
The Death Star
The Death Star as a formidable weapon
The Rebellion
The Princess
The attack
The plans
The Empire’s sinister agents

TFA on the other hand is a complicated situation. For my fanedit I’ve tried to rewrite the crawl over a hundred times, and I’ve come to the conclusion that minus a missing scene that further explains the galaxy, three paragraphs just can’t cut it.

TFA tries to establish:

Luke and his disappearance
The First Order
The origin of the First Order from the Empire
The First Order’s need to kill Luke
The Republic
The Resistance
Leia
The best pilot
Luke as the last Jedi
Jedi as protectors of the galaxy
Leia as Luke’s sister
Jakku
Leia’s old ally

And this is really not even enough exposition, because you still need:

How the First Order arose
Why Luke is gone
Why Luke is important
The Starkiller
How the Starkiller is possible
The relative power of the Republic vs the Resistance and the First Order
…among other things.

I disagree what the crawl has to explain. It has to cover:
The Republic
The First Order
The Resistance
the basic issue and goals of them
and setup the story

Luke and Starkiller aren’t all that important to get the story moving where the Death Star was because the plans were the driving force of the ANH.

I came up with this which covers why the Republic is weak, where the first order came from, what the resistance is doing and why the Republic isn’t. It only gets to Luke as part of the immediate goal of helping Leia. Let me know what you think. It is the same length as most of the crawls.

THE FORCE AWAKENS

For three decades the REPUBLIC has struggled to rebuild. Out on the rim a remnant of the Empire has been reforged as the FIRST ORDER, bent on galactic conquest.

General Leia Organa and her brave band of RESISTANCE have held back the First Order’s advance while the Republic leaders refuse to take the threat seriously.

Following the betrayal of his star pupil, Luke Skywalker vanished. Leia, desperate for his help, has sent a daring pilot to recover a clue to his whereabouts from an old ally…

That is a very comprehensive crawl, and quite effective in its broad strokes.
Of course there are issues with some of the ‘Star Warsy-ness’ of the language, but the biggest issue I see is in the final paragraph. In the best Star Wars crawls the paragraphs form a miniature three act structure of their own. For example, in the original crawl the first paragraph establishes the two players and the inciting incident, the second paragraph explores the nature of the threat, and the third paragraph uses elements from the previous two in order to craft a compelling scenario to be explored throughout the film. This third paragraph can of course introduce more specifics and even new characters, but rarely does it introduce the focus of the story.

For this reason, I don’t think that Luke and the Jedi can be relegated to the end of the crawl. Here’s my new take on an ideal crawl:

The galaxy is in crisis.
Agents of the fallen Empire
have destroyed the fledgling
Jedi Order of the Republic.

Fearing that these agents
have infiltrated even the
Republic Senate, General
Leia Organa mobilizes a
covert RESISTANCE to
counter this Imperial threat,
now known throughout the
galaxy as the vengeful
FIRST ORDER.

Believing that the master
of the Jedi still survives,
Leia sends her most daring
pilot to discover his
whereabouts and return
the light of peace and
justice to the darkening
stars…

My problem with this is that the Jedi are no more significant to this story than they were to ANH. And in ANH, the Jedi aren’t mentioned in the crawl - only the over arching conflict and the immediate circumstances that lead to the first scene. Luke’s disappearance features in Abrams crawl, but it is really a footnote to the film. He places the goal of the first order as destroying the Jedi when in the film the goal is to take over the Republic. In fact the Jedi aren’t mentioned once in the OT crawls. Dealing with that in the crawl is superfluous to the plot of the movie. That is why I save Luke’s disappearance and Leia’s quest to the last paragraph, because it more relates to the start of the story and Luke as the McGuffin than it does to the main story in TFA.

RogueLeader said:

Considering Abrams also produced the Last Jedi, I would be really surprised if JJ goes in a different direction that is his “original vision”. I guess we’ll see in a year, though, and I guess this debate can never really be resolved until then either.

Yes. Some think Abrams had a grand plan that he had laid out and yet he made changes to TFA in light of what Johnson wanted to do in TLJ. I think he will continue and fully follow all of what we see in TLJ, though some revelations could prove to be false, most will be on the money and remain unchanged. Abrams is used to working on a writing team so I don’t think he was too set on anything he might have had in mind.

DrDre said:

RogueLeader said:

Eh, I think reactions will be different for generations to come who will be able to watch the entire saga one episode after the other. I mean, yeah, they might have expectations between each movie, but the time for them to build up any expectations will be hours/days/weeks rather than years to decades like many of us. Sure, not every kid is going to like it, but there are going to be kids who love it too.

Yes, but that’s precisely my point. TLJ fans in my view erroneously presume the distribution of movie ratings will somehow shift to a higher average, while I’m arguing that it’s more likely the distribution will become less wide around a very similar average. An analysis of the imdb ratings for TLJ show that the mean rating (6.9) and the median (7.0) are almost the same, which is solid evidence that the extremes don’t affect the overall perception of the movie, which stands as above average, but still the least liked saga film after the first two prequels.

Again, you are going off of what the current numbers are. All I and some others are saying is give it time and let IX come out so we have a better idea of the trilogy story arc and how TLJ fits. I think some might give TLJ another chance after IX comes out and the reaction might chance. Note, I have never said it will. And the comparisons to TESB are based on how impressions of that film DID change over time. I ranked it is #3 in the OT for the longest time. Gradually as I grew to appreciate it more, it rose to #1. Depending on many factors the fan ranking of TLJ in the ST may rise from #2 of 2 to something better. You can’t say it won’t and I can’t say it will, because neither of us know the future. A lot of it depends on IX and how the story continues and how much of what is in TLJ plays a part in how things work out in IX.