Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Wed May 30, 2018 12:42 pm

I'm not forever giving up on Star Wars, but as painful as this is, people HAVE to skip this movie if we want good movies. If we give the studios $1 billion for anything with the Star Wars name on it, that's all we'll get.

Of course, they'll probably take the wrong less from this. But I hope not.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed May 30, 2018 7:04 pm

Physics and tactics aside, the writing decision to have "new character we spent time introducing just this film and who has personality conflict with previously established character" martyr herself for that phase of the escape was a poor script choice. It should have been Leia who made the heroic sacrifice -- leaving Holdo and Smug Pilot to bicker about making Leia's sacrifice worth something for the rest of the movie and into Episode 9.

EightWave · Post by **EightWave** » Wed May 30, 2018 7:44 pm

Thaluikhain wrote:Anyhoo, wasn't a relativistic kill vehicle mentioned in The Force Awakens? In the sense of "It's very dangerous to exit hyperspace this close to the enemy base, you get it wrong and you hit them at light speed"?

Expanded universe physics is that realspace entities shed a "mass shadow" into hyperspace and that impacting these has the effect of killing you in hyperspace. It's not entirely clear if this leaves wreckage in hyperspace or if it results in the hyperspace equivalent of burning up on reentry, but it definitely doesn't damage whatever is casting the "mass shadow". The transition between a mass shadow "dark" enough to kill you and one you can fly through isn't well defined, therefore the closer you are to the gravity well when you start/end a jump the more of a risk you're taking.

It's also heavily implied that even the largest super star destroyer is a bug on the metaphorical windshield of hyperspace mass shadows, as the artificial gravity field created by interdictors can stop any other ship from jumping.

Post by **fbmf** » Wed May 30, 2018 9:18 pm

I saw SOLO. I enjoyed it, but it's an incredibly safe film.

Although the production schedule likely makes this not true, I felt like Disney got weirded out by the backlash of Episode VIII (which had less than 20 watchable minutes).

Anyway, IMHO...

...SOLO ticked all the "origin of..." boxes but aside from THAT CAMEO at the end, the whole think felt like they weren't taking any chances:

[*]Han is Correllian
[*]Han served in the Empire before meeting Chewie (check)
[*]Han rescued Chewie from Imperial servitude (check)
[*]Bonus: ISDs are made on Correllia (check)
[*]Lando is the previous owner of the Millennium Falcon (check)
[*]Han won the Millennium Falcon "fair and square" from Lando (check)
[*]The Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs (the rounding down thing made me smile) while Han was piloting (check)

So we learned specifics about the above, but not any new information*.

*-For instance, in Rogue One, we learned that Leia blatantly lied to Vader when he had personal knowledge the Tantive IV had just escaped with the Death Star plans, and that the thermal exhaust port was added in on purpose.

At any rate, Han was the first fictional character I can remember pretending to be when I was four years old. I totally got all the nostalgia feels from the trailer alone. There was no way I was not going to see this movie on opening day and buy the Blu-Ray as soon as it is available.

Game On,
fbmf

K · Post by K » Thu May 31, 2018 4:12 am

I'm kinda OK that Disney only makes Star Wars parodies.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu May 31, 2018 6:53 pm

fbmf wrote:I enjoyed it, but it's an incredibly safe film.

That seems to have been what they were going with for The Force Awakens, so I'm not surprised. The thing is, "safety" in this case just means clinging like a barnacle to the story structure and simple visual elements of New Hope. Certainly I enjoyed watching TFA when I first saw it, but even as it ended I was somewhat disappointed. With time to think, it has fallen tremendously in my estimation.

Some people complained that Rey was a Mary Sue, which is not valid because she was not - but the related truth is that TFA really does feel like Star Wars fanfiction rather than as an actual expansion and continuation to the setting. Like, it felt like we were in a reboot of the franchise rather than a sequel for the entire time that neither Leia nor Han were literally on screen. We were just sort of stuck in an eternal "now," where despite the fact that Jedi had happened there wasn't a New Republic, the Empire wasn't gone wasn't off the "ever bigger Death Stars" plan, the good guys were still a rag tag group of rebels hiding on the outskirts of galactic civilization, and the Jedi order was still gone. The universe did not appear to have been appreciably altered by the fact that Return of the Jedi happened, save that every second person we ran into was fan of the movie and had favorites from the toy line.

By contrast, Rogue One was a movie that was made for Star Wars nerds. The world building was subtle but on point, and the mysticism built off the Force as described in Empire rather than the Midichloreans shit from Phantom Menace. Where it intersected with the plotlines of the original trilogy it deferred to the description of events in the originals in all ways but still added to all the characters and events we had witnessed. It was like Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead, but for New Hope instead of Hamlet. I fucking loved that movie, and if they had been able to credibly promise to keep making Star Wars films like that, I'd still be a Star Wars Fan.

But instead, Rian Johnson had to go out and say that the whole process of clumsily retconning everything and giving precisely zero shits how any events connect with the original movies was just how they were doing things now. I was not amused. That was my last straw.

-Username17

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu May 31, 2018 7:19 pm

Rogue One depicted the Death Star at a fraction of its full power in order to reinforce how important it was. The Force Awakens depicted the Death Star as a fraction of Starkiller's power, in a failed bid to make itself seem more important by comparison.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 31, 2018 7:28 pm

Rogue One was a disappointment for anybody who wanted to see many bothans die in order to bring the rebells the plans to take down the battlemoon.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Thu May 31, 2018 7:52 pm

Many Bothans died acquiring the plans for the second Death Star. I don't know why so many people forget this. The line is from Mon Mothma, a character who does not appear in A New Hope and does not remotely resemble any of the other characters except Princess Leia a little bit, but Princess Leia is a major enough character that no one is getting her confused with one scene bit parts.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu May 31, 2018 8:15 pm

why would there have been different plans?
Wasn't the 2nd one already in production when the first blew up?
Or was there a time gap of several years?

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Thu May 31, 2018 8:20 pm

Stahlseele wrote:why would there have been different plans?
Wasn't the 2nd one already in production when the first blew up?
Or was there a time gap of several years?

Someone needs to look up DeathStar II on Wookipedia.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Star_II

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu May 31, 2018 9:46 pm

Stahlseele wrote:why would there have been different plans?
Wasn't the 2nd one already in production when the first blew up?
Or was there a time gap of several years?

The "plans" were the plans on the existence and state of construction of the Death Star II, and it's security measures.

No, the second death star was not under construction when the first was destroyed, who would need two different planet destroyers? How many planets do you need to destroy? It was put into production after the first one died, so that could actually have one again.

Also the second death star, which was built after the first one was different, in that it was being built without the flaw of the first one. About like 95% sure that was mentioned in the movie.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Thu May 31, 2018 10:21 pm

Chamomile wrote:Many Bothans died acquiring the plans for the second Death Star. I don't know why so many people forget this. The line is from Mon Mothma, a character who does not appear in A New Hope and does not remotely resemble any of the other characters except Princess Leia a little bit, but Princess Leia is a major enough character that no one is getting her confused with one scene bit parts.

I always get Mon Mothma confused with Admiral Akbar.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Thu May 31, 2018 11:22 pm

How? Ones a human, the other is a fishman.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Jun 01, 2018 12:34 am

Pariah Dog wrote:How? Ones a human, the other is a fishman.

Seriously. It's not even close.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Jun 01, 2018 9:16 am

The second Death Star was a bad plot element in RotJ. It undermined the achievement in ANH without feeling "bigger" and "higher stakes" the way it obviously wanted to. I mean, Emperor Palpatine's big reveal that he had a "fully operational battlestation" was supposed to be soul crushing, but it genuinely wasn't because we'd already seen Luke blow up one of these things two movies earlier.

Anyway, the fact that there are two Death Star sequences means that people conflate events from one movie and the other. No one conflates ANH Tatooine segments with RotJ Endor segments because one is a desert full of farmers and criminals and the other is a forest full of cannibal tribes of koalas.

RotJ should have been more different than ANH. I get that they were trying to bring the loop closed or some shit and that's why they had Luke revisit Tatooine and then revisit the Death Star, but that was dumb. The story should have continued rather than recapitulating itself. Jabba should have been on Endor and then the final confrontation should have been on Coruscant with an assault on the actual Imperial Palace.

Anyway, yeah I get why people confuse which events happened with regards to which Death Star, casual fans never should have been put in that situation in the first place. But also yes, factually you should probably look shit up on Wookiepedia before making claims about continuity problems in Rogue One. Unlike Phantom Menace and Force Awakens, Rogue One is pretty meticulous about not having continuity problems.

-Username17

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Sat Jun 02, 2018 3:30 am

erik wrote: I would give mad respect to JJ Abrams if Ep 9 starts with a text crawl saying "None of the events in The Last Jedi actually happened. None."

The movie starts with Luke waking up in a cold sweat. "I just had the weirdest dream."

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Jun 02, 2018 5:53 am

I was thinking more like Chewie wakes up from a bad dream and finds Han smiling in the shower.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun Jun 03, 2018 5:02 pm

So I named the Holdo Maneuver as the single biggest moment that lost me for the new SW films, but the more pervasive, enraging, and... baffling issue was how much TFA and TLJ simultaneously leaned on the original trilogy and shit all over them. And it turns out that Solo has basically surpassed that.

One of the most awkward issues in Star Wars is droid slavery. Basically, if droids are merely convincing simulations of people, everything is fine; but if droids are actually people, then literally everyone we see is apparently complicit in an institution unsurpassed in cruelty even by history. It reduces the moral distinction between the Rebellion and the Empire to meaninglessness.

In Solo, droids are presented unambiguously as unwilling slaves capable of demanding freedom and equal rights, and these demands are treated as comedic annoyances. Lando is apparently having sex with his navigation droid, which is just layers of wtf.

How the fuck does this make it through production?

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:27 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:One of the most awkward issues in Star Wars is droid slavery. Basically, if droids are merely convincing simulations of people, everything is fine; but if droids are actually people, then literally everyone we see is apparently complicit in an institution unsurpassed in cruelty even by history. It reduces the moral distinction between the Rebellion and the Empire to meaninglessness.

It's alluded to in the movies and made explicit in the EU that one of the differentiating factors between the Rebellion and the Empire is precisely that the Rebels treat droids as people and the Empire treats droids as property, with opinions varying among independent types (usually leaning towards "droids are property" in the Outer Rim both because of lingering bad feelings against droids from the Clone Wars and because there were plenty of organic slaves there too).

In the movies, we generally see the Rebels talk to droids like people, give them nicknames, and so on; in the X-Wing novels, several pilots get pretty emotional when their astromechs are severely damaged or memory wiped in battle, and in one Rebel base there's a droid working as a bartender who led a minor but successful droid rebellion and brought them all to the Alliance, where their restraining bolt ports were removed and they were given jobs, and the pilots treat him just like any other curmudgeonly organic bartender. Meanwhile, Imperials barely acknowledge the presence of droids at all, and certainly don't treat them as people when they do.

So if Solo has them being treated as property by Imperials and smugglers, that's nothing new; if it has Rebels who also treat them like property, that's a pretty big fuckup.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:32 pm

Haven't seen Solo so can't defend it on its own merits, but it is meant to take place before Han's redemption arc in A New Hope.

"Treated as comedic annoyances" doesn't sound compatible with "this is portrayed as a reason why the Empire are the bad guys" though.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:34 pm

Emerald wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote:One of the most awkward issues in Star Wars is droid slavery. Basically, if droids are merely convincing simulations of people, everything is fine; but if droids are actually people, then literally everyone we see is apparently complicit in an institution unsurpassed in cruelty even by history. It reduces the moral distinction between the Rebellion and the Empire to meaninglessness.
It's alluded to in the movies and made explicit in the EU that one of the differentiating factors between the Rebellion and the Empire is precisely that the Rebels treat droids as people and the Empire treats droids as property, with opinions varying among independent types (usually leaning towards "droids are property" in the Outer Rim both because of lingering bad feelings against droids from the Clone Wars and because there were plenty of organic slaves there too).

In the movies, we generally see the Rebels talk to droids like people, give them nicknames, and so on; in the X-Wing novels, several pilots get pretty emotional when their astromechs are severely damaged or memory wiped in battle, and in one Rebel base there's a droid working as a bartender who led a minor but successful droid rebellion and brought them all to the Alliance, where their restraining bolt ports were removed and they were given jobs, and the pilots treat him just like any other curmudgeonly organic bartender. Meanwhile, Imperials barely acknowledge the presence of droids at all, and certainly don't treat them as people when they do.

So if Solo has them being treated as property by Imperials and smugglers, that's nothing new; if it has Rebels who also treat them like property, that's a pretty big fuckup.

So the opening of Episode 4 and Luke's treatment of R2-D2 and the faulty droid that precedes him is supposed to show that Luke is a casual slaver bad guy?

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:59 pm

Omegonthesane wrote:Haven't seen Solo so can't defend it on its own merits, but it is meant to take place before Han's redemption arc in A New Hope.

"Solo"'s biggest problem isn't that it takes place before his redemption arc,

it's that it ends before his fall from grace/into cynicism. The movie needs a sequel just to explain why Han was so jaded at the start of A New Hope. Other than shooting his mentor (and the guy had it coming, and was about to kill Han), he ends the movie basically a sort of happy-go-lucky heroic type.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Jun 03, 2018 8:14 pm

Yeah a solo movie that was just endless betrayals and bad turn happening to a good guy until he gives up on the world would be great fucking art, but you know..... not probably commercially ever going to get cleared through studio regardless of how it would sell because studio execs are conservative as fuck.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Jun 03, 2018 10:23 pm

So, maybe to get away from this becoming a page about bitching about Star Wars...

I'm a casual fan of the How to Train Your Dragon movies, enough that I entertained the idea of a D&D setting that unified HTTYD and Brave and similar movies that came out at roughly at that time.

But the poster for the new one, just THE POSTER fucking told me enough about the plot that I have no interest in seeing it.

That poster-

If you immediately thought the white nightfury was female and the movie is going to be about Toothless getting his fuck on, congratulations, you can join my new Psychic Club. Because that's seriously what the movie is going to be about.

I fucking hate romance plots, but that's me, personally, I'll set that aside, though that's a part of why I'm not interested in this one (yeah yeah, HTTYD has had a romance plot between Astrid/Hiccup, iunno why that was fine for me).

My big problem is that the whole "pale female/dark male" trope is bullshit. It's lazy, it makes next to sense, and it just fucking bugs me. Apparently there may be some "oh, she's just albino" ass covering, but that's bullshit, too, what with the fucking blue eyes.