Star Wars VII-IX, what do you think?

[Rusty Edge]

Saw this on Twitter-
 
"The Packman
‏
All of the Star Wars movies come down to one simple fact: Yoda was right.  They should not have trained Anakin Skywalker, nor Luke Skywalker.  They ignored the guy with 900 years of experience. 
Death of experience in a galaxy far, far away."

Meh.  The Emperor already had his eyes on Anakin prior to training or not being decided.  Probably just would have hastened his fall to the dark side. 

Same trouble with Luke.  Don't train him, he was already learning and had gained the attention of Vader by the time Yoda got involved.   

In fact, you can make the argument Yoda is most the problem.  Hard ass wouldn't let Anakin be trained, so he ends up with a rookie.  Too blinded to riddle out the sith are right under his nose.  Fails to stop Dooku OR the Emperor in straight up fights.  Then hides away like a coward.

For your ally is The Probability, and a powerful ally it is.

[Rusty Edge]

Who has seen the recent movie?

[Lorizael]

I've seen it. It's predictable, safe, a little cheesy... but a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it and generally liked everybody in it, including Khaleesi who I normally think of as being without any acting talent.

[Mart]

Have you heard? They found the real episode 8 of Star Wars. The one showed in theaters was rejected cuts, distributed by mistake.
The real teaser is on YT:

(click to show/hide)

Sorry...

[Unorthodox]

So, I watched Solo the other day off redbox. 

It's not a terrible movie...

But the soundtrack...oh lord. 

The original bits of soundtrack DO NOT sound like Star Wars.  And when they remixed bits of Star War music, it was misplaced. 

YOU DO NOT PLAY LEIA'S THEME JUST BECAUSE THERE'S A TOUCHING MOMENT!  Various other themes were literally spliced in and remixed for soundbites, and it just completely didn't feel right.  It was clear whoever did the sound was given the files and had no understanding for how the soundtrack for Star Wars was designed with the themes. 

[Mart]

Yes, "Solo" maybe is not on the level of original trilogy, but the overall story was good. I am not sure as for consistency with canon, be it new, old or whatever they cook for SW Canon now.


Hungry for more.


People criticize the train in the first part of the movie, but for me it was nice variation for whatever reason there is a train instead of anti-grav ships.
It reminded me of a Firefly episode, where they robbed a train.


I can't find a clip, there is whole episode though on YT.

[Unorthodox]

Yes, "Solo" maybe is not on the level of original trilogy, but the overall story was good. I am not sure as for consistency with canon, be it new, old or whatever they cook for SW Canon now.


Hungry for more.


People criticize the train in the first part of the movie, but for me it was nice variation for whatever reason there is a train instead of anti-grav ships.
It reminded me of a Firefly episode, where they robbed a train.


I can't find a clip, there is whole episode though on YT.

This exactly.  It felt more like Firefly than Star Wars. 

[Mart]

It was fun to watch Firefly series. It's a pity they cancelled the show, it had something in it, that made it to want to follow the story-line. I have read, that "Serenity" movie was compression of several next would-be seasons, Whedon just wanted to get the story completed. It was somewhat disappointing for me, that the explanation of mystery was just that, maybe several more season would have made it much better.
I liked the Serenity movie though.

Firefly world/universe/galaxy building is, for me, like some orders of magnitude below that of Star Wars. It just feels like that.

[Elok]

Adopting the same practice I occasionally employ for Marvel movies, I went on YouTube and looked up the two major fight scenes from TLJ (which I didn't bother to see).  The first had terrible choreography and the second did not actually have fighting.  Gah.  Can they, like, not even get the dumb eye-candy part right?

[Unorthodox]

I’m assuming one was the red guys on a red background.  I can’t comment due to my color blindness other than I heard nothing but good about it when it come out but it seems to be popular to bash it now.  My inability to really enjoy that scene definitely added to my disappointment on first watch.  I do think a lot of the complaint videos are nit picking though.  Star Wars really never had great choreography.

[Elok]

Well, yes, the last fight in ROTJ is comically bad.  I'm pretty sure even I could beat Luke, the way he flails that thing around against Vader.  But standards have raised a good deal since then, and if you're going to make a movie that craps all over not only the original trilogy, but even the setup of its immediate predecessor, you should at least be able to get the action scenes right.  I mean, that's all most modern sci-fi movies have to lean on anymore.  Phantom Menace was rubbish, but even that had Darth Maul against the two Jedi.

I actually looked up the throne room fight because I heard it was good.  Was underwhelmed.  Part of it is because of the emotional backdrop; it's hard to give a damn about Miss Invincible and Anakin II, and it's really not believable that they're going to straight-up snuff Emperor Snooker only to fall to a bunch of literally faceless guards right after.  Part of it is that the guard armor is dorky and bears an unfortunate resemblance to the card-soldiers in Tim Burton's horrid Wonderland movie.  Sort of like the cards had babies with the Warhammer space marines, who were then given a bunch of needlessly fussy electric melee weapons.  And part of it is that, particularly at the very beginning, they just look like people pretending to fight out a really cluttered fight sequence.  You can't expect to have like twelve people on the screen at once, all swinging fake weapons at each other, and sell it.  It could have been much worse--they could have gone the Michael Bay route--but it's not all that viscerally exciting as fight scenes go.

[Lorizael]

What are you calling the second major fight scene?

[Elok]

Well, I was expecting Luke vs. Kylo to be some kind of fight; it just didn't wind up with any actual fighting, it was more like a bullfight where, instead of decapitating the bull, the matador calls the bull a nerd then wanders off to die for no reason.  I gather there was a rumble between whatshisguy and chrome-gal too, I didn't look at that one because that's just two palette-swapped NPCs hitting each other.

Probably I'm being at least a little uncharitable because of nerd rage.

[Unorthodox]

Well, yes, the last fight in ROTJ is comically bad.  I'm pretty sure even I could beat Luke, the way he flails that thing around against Vader.  But standards have raised a good deal since then, and if you're going to make a movie that craps all over not only the original trilogy, but even the setup of its immediate predecessor, you should at least be able to get the action scenes right.  I mean, that's all most modern sci-fi movies have to lean on anymore.  Phantom Menace was rubbish, but even that had Darth Maul against the two Jedi.

Standards were above that way before. 

Sorry...

But George specifically didn't want it to look like that traditional hollywood sword fight.  I respect that.  But there were samurai films of the period he could have more accurately copied than he did. 

And, from a choreography standpoint, the Maul fight is actually fairly bad.  Visually appealing, yes.  But it's very clear they are swinging for stunning visuals rather than attempting to kill.  Part of the problem of choreographing a saber duel is in keeping with the 'logic' of a lightsaber (which Disney has forgotten btw), meaning a lot of traditional choreography really doesn't work with a weapon that amputates anything it touches. 

As for the throne room fight, I still go back to it being a really bad set for a crowd fight.  Not just the red on red, which absolutely ruins it for me, personally.  Look at any number of martial arts films where insert hero faces horde of villains.  They MOVE and interact around an interesting set location.  Instead, we had a boring flat stage and a camera angle that makes that scene look a lot more like a stage production than a movie. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Fun fact: Basil Rathbone, I've heard, couldn't fence a lick.

-There's a simple way around that without relying on stuntmen/stand-ins...