STAR WARS VIII - "The Last Jedi" - Movie Discussion

[jeff_14]

My only problems with Force Awakens are these - the recycling of ANH and Rey's ability to do anything with the Force with no demonstrated experience. I figured there would be an explanation coming on the latter point and the plot synopsis leaked above appears to address it, so I'm becoming less annoyed by it as time passes. 

I have never expected any Star Wars movie to make me feel like I did as a kid again. Killing off the EU had no effect on my expectations going in. I also had no problem with the idea of someone other than George directing a movie. I think it was time for him to hand over the reins about 1/4 of the way through ROTJ even though I loved that movie the most as a kid. I disagree about George's scripts getting worse or being a problem. Script wise all of his movies are fine. It's the execution of those scripts that was problematic and that's because George was in the director's chair for the prequels and heavily interfered in ROTJ. Another director could have reworked some dialogue, the sequencing, even made Jar Jar a likeable outsider instead of a clown. Just the other day I was reading how Abrams reworked the relationship with Finn and Rey after Harrison Ford got injured on set and made a part of the movie that wasn't working much better. That's what a  good director does in going beyond the script. I think Abrams was the right director, the problem was the script, which of course George did not do. Lucas didn't want control over Episodes 7-9. He was retained as a consultant which I think was the exact right use for him. Then Disney decided to ignore everything he suggested and in the ultimate example of irony made a "new" movie based on one of George's existing movies. Do you still get to be paid as a consultant in those circumstances, or is that more of a super royalty? So I appreciated Lucas' interview with 60 Minutes explaining what happened.
 

The problem with giving the fans what they want is that you're engaging in fan service and not true storytelling. Nobody knew the fans wanted ANH when it came out. George wrote a story and it resonated in a big way. When it came time to do Empire, he went in a completely different direction rather than giving them what they want. There was no death star. There weren't even any space battles in a Star Wars movie, just a long chase scene through asteroids. They risked an entire movie on people accepting a muppet as a main character, then completely ignored everyone's expectations with the "I am your father" bit. Empire is generally considered the best Star Wars movie by fans and critics, and a big part of that is because it didn't engage in fan service but challenged their expectations and dared to be different. I feel the prequels attempted to do that but unfortunately Lucas went off the reservation with his kid tone and odd choices which most people blame for not liking the movies but which I think is more a cover so they don't have to admit that they're mad Lucas didn't engage in fan service and just remake the OT. If a remake is what the fans want, then they deserve it, but it's not going to feel as satisfying. You can't go home again. Those hoping for more deserve more, and I will always prefer those who aim higher and dare to expand the story rather than reheat it and call it twice-baked. I loved everything about Force Awakens that was new. I didn't mind the similarities to ANH in the early part of the movie, like the droid with secret info being pursued by both sides, the desert planet and youngster with mysterious background, or escaping said planet on the Falcon. Those little nods to ANH would have been enough and I'd have had no problems. I felt like I'd gotten kicked in the gonads when the death planet first appeared on screen though. It was precisely that second that the milk curdled. I knew in that second exactly how the movie was going to play out going forward and I was disappointed to not be disappointed with what followed. From that point on I was enjoying the FX, the dialogue and banter, all the little touches that were new, but the wonder at seeing a new Star Wars movie dampened quite a bit. I didn't feel anything like that watching the prequels. Sure I'd groan at the dialogue, anytime Jar Jar appeared, etc. but not once did I ever have the feeling that I'd seen what I was seeing before. And these were movies where I did know much of the ultimate resolution of the plot as I was under no illusions that Anakin would have a happy ending. Seeing how we got from Phantom Menace to ANH was still a new story and there's much in there to reflect on about how good people become evil, not to mention a great civics lesson on the fall of democracy. And that's on top of the awesome action scenes and duels. 

No one can make you feel like you did when you saw ANH for the first time. That was a once in a many generations moment. But they can make you feel like you did when you first saw Empire, aka the next "step into a larger world". There are many more next steps ahead. Aim higher Disney and your reward will "be more well than you can imagine" and I have no doubt you can imagine quite a bit. 

[exciter1]

It's reported they are half-way through the shoot.

[Steve Brule]

I've seen the rumor that Rey is the reincarnation of Vader. At least that would be a nice change from Empire and not another Force Remakens. However, Haden Christenson is an abysmal actor and that should be skipped. There's a reason he isn't making big films.

[zskid00]

They're halfway through shooting and we have to wait until December 2017 to see the finished product?   Good Lord that's a long wait.  Post-production doesn't take over a year does it?

Edited April 30, 2016 by zskid00

[exciter1]

3 minutes ago, zskid00 said:

Their halfway through shooting and we have to wait until December 2017 to see the finished product?   Good Lord that's a long wait.  Post-production doesn't take over a year does it?

CG, sound, score, marketing, editing probably does.

[Pomodoro]

5 minutes ago, zskid00 said:

Their halfway through shooting and we have to wait until December 2017 to see the finished product?   Good Lord that's a long wait.  Post-production doesn't take over a year does it?

The release was pushed back, it was supposed to open in May 2017. That's purely for marketing reasons, Disney figured they could make more money releasing all movies during the holiday season I guess. The new PotC was rescheduled to open in May instead of July 2017 as a result.

Edited April 30, 2016 by Pomodoro

[Bold-Arrow]

1 minute ago, Pomodoro said:

The release was pushed back, it was supposed to open in May 2017. That's purely for marketing reasons, Disney figured they could make more money releasing all movies during the holiday season I guess.

You can watch Avatar and eps 8 in one day 

[exciter1]

well, apparently the MF spends some time again on " Ahch-To " and a cool new building set of some sort.

[jeff_14]

On 4/30/2016 at 9:15 PM, zskid00 said:

They're halfway through shooting and we have to wait until December 2017 to see the finished product?   Good Lord that's a long wait.  Post-production doesn't take over a year does it?

It usually takes 3 years between Star Wars movies. December 2017 is only 2 years. These guys are in a rush if anything.

[CrabslayerT]

So the Millennium Falcon touches down at Malin Head....

http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/first-glimpse-millennium-falcon-being-7934752

[jbacunn]

I love how they built the whole MF in it's entirety instead of using CGI. This is what made TFA feel authentic. The number of sets, vehicles, and aliens they actually built/made is incredible. They cover a lot of this on the TFA blu-ray.   

[Darth_Raichu]

14 minutes ago, jbacunn said:

I love how they built the whole MF in it's entirety instead of using CGI. This is what made TFA feel authentic. The number of sets, vehicles, and aliens they actually built/made is incredible. They cover a lot of this on the TFA blu-ray.   

Lol They went out of their way to make sure people knew TFA was done with as little CGI as possible.  And they also politely never mentioned ep 1,2, or 3 in any TFA related publication.

[citymorgue]

That was the beauty of TFA.  It felt like the star wars universe we were all used to growing up with.  It was filthy, gritty, lived in.  It looked like a universe that you could say is realistic in nature.

Then you look at Episodes 1-3, and it's so insanely clean and not a spec of dust exists in the universe.  It makes no sense that the entire universe would get so gritty so fast.  It felt too clean, too unrealistic.  On top of all the other problems.  But for just the atmosphere alone, it felt right with all the physical effects they did for TFA.

[jeff_14]

35 minutes ago, citymorgue said:

That was the beauty of TFA.  It felt like the star wars universe we were all used to growing up with.  It was filthy, gritty, lived in.  It looked like a universe that you could say is realistic in nature.

Then you look at Episodes 1-3, and it's so insanely clean and not a spec of dust exists in the universe.  It makes no sense that the entire universe would get so gritty so fast.  It felt too clean, too unrealistic.  On top of all the other problems.  But for just the atmosphere alone, it felt right with all the physical effects they did for TFA.

There are actually more models and actual sets in the prequels than in the original trilogy. The entire universe didn't get so gritty. The only gritty parts we saw were Tatooine and the Falcon. Everything else, from Leia's ship, the Death Star, Star Destroyers, etc. were pristine. Naboo did not look any cleaner than Endor, Hoth or Yavin to me, Coruscant, Kimono and Bespin appear to have had the same cleaning staff, etc. Nothing about Geonosis, Mustafar or Utapau looked clean.

[Darth_Raichu]

4 minutes ago, jeff_14 said:

There are actually more models and actual sets in the prequels than in the original trilogy. The entire universe didn't get so gritty. The only gritty parts we saw were Tatooine and the Falcon. Everything else, from Leia's ship, the Death Star, Star Destroyers, etc. were pristine. Naboo did not look any cleaner than Endor, Hoth or Yavin to me, Coruscant, Kimono and Bespin appear to have had the same cleaning staff, etc. Nothing about Geonosis, Mustafar or Utapau looked clean.

Sorry, you can absolutely tell the difference, even between PT movies. There was a difference between Tatooine dust, dirt, & wind in ep1 and the "dust & dirt" in Geonosis arena in ep2.  There was something so unnaturally clean and proper about Geonosis even after so much dust and debris created as result of the fights

[citymorgue]

14 hours ago, jeff_14 said:

There are actually more models and actual sets in the prequels than in the original trilogy. The entire universe didn't get so gritty. The only gritty parts we saw were Tatooine and the Falcon. Everything else, from Leia's ship, the Death Star, Star Destroyers, etc. were pristine. Naboo did not look any cleaner than Endor, Hoth or Yavin to me, Coruscant, Kimono and Bespin appear to have had the same cleaning staff, etc. Nothing about Geonosis, Mustafar or Utapau looked clean.

That's pretty ridiculous.  Sure the empire part was pretty clean, but everything else was very well lived in and showed a universe that had character.  You are forgetting endor, hoth, dagobah, etc.

You know even with empire, although it appeared to be clean, it never had that stupid perfectly shiny chrome feeling to it.  Plus no matter how good CGI is, if all you use is CGI in literally EVERY single frame of the movie, it will feel completely synthetic.  That was the beauty of epidsode VII.  The only part you could feel that was fake was Snoke and Maz, only because they were pure CGI.  But even then, they still felt genuine only because they had character and were written to be believable, unlike the clunky dialogue we got with the prequels.

I don't know if the whole they had more models and sets is true or not, but they also had quite the limited budget back then, so everything was miniatures, and even then, a 40 year old movie has stood the test of time better than any of the prequels.  That's the power of practical effects and make up.

[jeff_14]

Nothing ridiculous about it as it's true. I think you are viewing the old movies through very lived in rose coloured glasses. How am I forgetting Endor, Hoth and Dagobah when I mentioned them in my comment? What looked "lived-in" in a forest, frozen wasteland, and swamp? The Naboo swamps, the Mygeeto frozen wastes, and the Geonosis caverns looked just as lived in. We see very few living areas at all in the OT. Just a few places on Tattooine and the Falcon in the first movie, 3 rooms on Hoth, a Dagobah hut, and the very fake looking Cloud City in the second, and Jabba's Palace in the third. When you watch the OT the cheap FX are quite transparent. You could do a drinking game based on the bad matte paintings used in them. The prequels used more models, miniatures, etc. then the OT. It's a fact. You are going through confirmation bias where a few obvious CGI effects in the prequels colour your entire memory of the movies. 

I felt a lot was fake about Force Awakens. You should read some of the conversations with the FX people and how they used CGI all over the place. Starkiller base in particular never looked "real". It's more a matter of the CGI has gotten so much better in the last 10 years, similar to how CGI vastly improved on the old matte paintings. I assure you, there is CGI in literally every frame of Force Awakens. 

"Limited budget"? Star Wars cost $11 million to make, which was an exorbitant amount in 1977 and the cost was why it kept getting turned down by so many studios. FX alone made up more than 1/3 of the budget, more if you count set construction.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5875998/behold-the-1977-budget-breakdown-for-star-wars

Them's the facts folks. That 40 year old movie stood the test of time because of how novel it was. Even then, most people rank it as at best the 2nd best Star Wars movie, with most people preferring Empire and a lot even preferring Revenge of the Sith over the original, and that was a CGI orgy-fest.

[CrabslayerT]

Went for a spin today, This is what i saw. Is this the Falcon?????????

[tjj1984]

6 hours ago, jeff_14 said:

Nothing ridiculous about it as it's true. I think you are viewing the old movies through very lived in rose coloured glasses. How am I forgetting Endor, Hoth and Dagobah when I mentioned them in my comment? What looked "lived-in" in a forest, frozen wasteland, and swamp? The Naboo swamps, the Mygeeto frozen wastes, and the Geonosis caverns looked just as lived in. We see very few living areas at all in the OT. Just a few places on Tattooine and the Falcon in the first movie, 3 rooms on Hoth, a Dagobah hut, and the very fake looking Cloud City in the second, and Jabba's Palace in the third. When you watch the OT the cheap FX are quite transparent. You could do a drinking game based on the bad matte paintings used in them. The prequels used more models, miniatures, etc. then the OT. It's a fact. You are going through confirmation bias where a few obvious CGI effects in the prequels colour your entire memory of the movies. 

I felt a lot was fake about Force Awakens. You should read some of the conversations with the FX people and how they used CGI all over the place. Starkiller base in particular never looked "real". It's more a matter of the CGI has gotten so much better in the last 10 years, similar to how CGI vastly improved on the old matte paintings. I assure you, there is CGI in literally every frame of Force Awakens. 

"Limited budget"? Star Wars cost $11 million to make, which was an exorbitant amount in 1977 and the cost was why it kept getting turned down by so many studios. FX alone made up more than 1/3 of the budget, more if you count set construction.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/5875998/behold-the-1977-budget-breakdown-for-star-wars

Them's the facts folks. That 40 year old movie stood the test of time because of how novel it was. Even then, most people rank it as at best the 2nd best Star Wars movie, with most people preferring Empire and a lot even preferring Revenge of the Sith over the original, and that was a CGI orgy-fest.

Yeah, that's not accurate.

Five Thirty Eight conducted a Star Wars poll in 2014. You can read about it here.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/americas-favorite-star-wars-movies-and-least-favorite-characters/

I saw all the PT movies in the theaters, and I enjoyed them at the time (Revenge of the Sith was my favorite), but upon revisiting them recently, they have not aged well at all. Between the over-reliance on CG, the hamfisted acting, the corny dialogue, and the needlessly complicated and boring political storyline, they are borderline unwatchable. 

 

[Alpinemaps]

22 minutes ago, CrabslayerT said:

Went for a spin today, This is what i saw. Is this the Falcon?????????

I'm pretty sure I saw something yesterday (probably on Reddit that was a similar picture to yours, confirming that's the Falcon.

[jbacunn]

7 hours ago, jeff_14 said:

 

I felt a lot was fake about Force Awakens. You should read some of the conversations with the FX people and how they used CGI all over the place. Starkiller base in particular never looked "real".

So you wanted them to build an entire ice covered planet with a lethal planet destroying weapon built inside of it?  

[MathBuilder]

3 hours ago, jbacunn said:

So you wanted them to build an entire ice covered planet with a lethal planet destroying weapon built inside of it?  

Don't forget the chocolate syrup and cherry on top!

[citymorgue]

Basically, from the looks of it the people who actually like the prequel trilogy are generally of the age where they were very young when they first came out.  I was young too and even then I enjoyed them to a point.  I only watched them maybe once or twice, but the original trilogy, I've seen many, many, many times over.  You may call it rose colored glasses, but I think those that always try to defend the prequel trilogy as the ones seeing with rose colored glasses.  Those movies are pretty much horrible in every aspect.  We could've done without the episode 1 period.  They could've thrown out all the politics, which covers about half the remaining films.  Get rid of the insanely rapey (sorry if this is against the terms, but there was wayyy to much free candy in an old van vibe to it,) vibe of the love story between Anakin and padme, and you have probably about 40 minutes total watchable film between all 3, and those still really aren't even watchable minutes either.

You know just because a movie started out well doesn't mean that it's a good movie.  Once the beer goggles wore off, and rewatched it after the initial adrenaline rush kicked in when it was first announced, people started to realize they were duped with those movies.

23 hours ago, jeff_14 said:

Them's the facts folks. That 40 year old movie stood the test of time because of how novel it was. Even then, most people rank it as at best the 2nd best Star Wars movie, with most people preferring Empire and a lot even preferring Revenge of the Sith over the original, and that was a CGI orgy-fest.

I would LOVE to know where that came from.  I've heard a lot of opinions about people like episode 3, but almost never have I heard anyone rank it better than any of the original trilogy.

And even then, that entire movie was completely pointless.  Finding out that was in George Lucas' head for how Vader became Vader, destroyed who Vader was imagined.  He just apparently turned out to be a stupid whiny little b**** ******* that deserved to die for that alone. 

[jeff_14]

17 hours ago, tjj1984 said:

Yeah, that's not accurate.

Five Thirty Eight conducted a Star Wars poll in 2014. You can read about it here.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/americas-favorite-star-wars-movies-and-least-favorite-characters/

I saw all the PT movies in the theaters, and I enjoyed them at the time (Revenge of the Sith was my favorite), but upon revisiting them recently, they have not aged well at all. Between the over-reliance on CG, the hamfisted acting, the corny dialogue, and the needlessly complicated and boring political storyline, they are borderline unwatchable. 

 

Your entire evidence for something not being accurate is one poll of 471 people? There are many other polls with much broader samples that say otherwise. There is nothing unwatchable about them at all. Hamfisted acting, corny dialogue? This is Star Wars we're talking about. That's the OT in a nutshell. There was nothing complicated or boring about the politics. Maybe you just didn't understand it. My 10 year old gets it just fine. 

[Sprocket77]

Luke's hidey hole being built in Kerry on the side of a cliff, next stop Boston