Star Wars

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seansthomas
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Re: Star Wars

Post by seansthomas »

Thoroughly loved that. Character trio of TFA were more lovable but that aside, this was more my kind of film. Didn't feel like a total retread or make me wince as much.

Helped the events of A New Hope make more sense, showed some imaginitative new planets and settlements, more evenly paced, epic final hour, greater sense of the spread of the Empire...

Score was poor again though. Even the prequels got that right!
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Star Wars

Post by ratsoalbion »

Ah, I was actually very pleased with Michael Giacchino's work. Perhaps it lacked new standout themes and melodies, but I thought he got the tone and mood spot-on.
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Suits
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Suits »

Interesting to read what other people thought of it.

One thing I did notice, which may have been the screen I was watching it on, was that it was very dark. At times I was struggling to see who was who in the first quarter of the film.

The last third of the film was where it really kicked on for me and the last 15 minutes I loved.
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KissMammal
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Re: Star Wars

Post by KissMammal »

ratsoalbion wrote:What I find ironic is that if you dig out some of the many negative reviews of Star Wars from 1977, you'll find many of the exact same criticisms (limp script, thin characterisation obscured by the breakneck pace and an over-reliance on set pieces and special effects) aimed today at Rogue One levelled by critics at that movie back in the day.
I don't doubt it.

But while, as I say, the characterisation and storytelling in the original movie is very simplistic, I would still argue that, on a basic script and structural level, its leaps and bounds ahead of anything in Rogue One. For one thing, Star Wars is very easy to follow whereas Rogue One, to me, felt needlessly confusing at times.

I think at least in part, my problem with Rogue One is that it felt very 'fan film' like. When Lucas was making his original movie, he drew from a very wide and well-documented range of influences, whereas (and maybe this is a little harsh) the people making these new Star Wars movies don't really seem to be drawing influence from much except... other Star Wars movies.

Going back to the finale of Rogue One - did anyone else find it a bit bizarre how many times, in such a very short space of time, they repeated the plot beat of a character having to flip a switch and/or open or close a door? How many characters whose sole purpose in the entire plot basically amounted to them doing either or both of these things? Honestly, it became so repetitive to me by the end that it bordered on surreal. Scores of writers worked on this thing - and a script doctor who was reportedly paid millions of dollars to 'fix' the film, and that was the most exciting sequence of events they could come up with?

Maybe I'm just starting get a bid fed up with the Marvel/Disney formula, as a lot of their films seem to have the same kinds of issues. I would say that the only blockbuster type movies of recent years that I have unreservedly enjoyed would be Dredd, Pacific Rim and Mad Max: Fury Road. It's no coincidence that those three films were - to the best of my knowledge - written by a single screenwriter (or a duo) with a minimum of studio meddling. As a result, they feel so much tighter and more focused to me, and tell relatively simple, self-contained stories. Their characters are well-defined and all have clear motivations, they don't waste screentime pandering to fans with references and cameos, or brazenly trying to set up the next movie or franchise at the expense of the current one. Their plots don't revolve around vaguely defined maguffins, like a key, or a map, or a magic stone. And yet all three of those movies were widely criticised for being 'too simple' and having 'no plot' ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :D
Joshihatsumitsu

Re: Star Wars

Post by Joshihatsumitsu »

Perhaps one of the more well known aspects of the original Star Wars film was that George Lucas was influenced by Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201601 ... stole-from). There's also that 1950's pulp/sci-fi influence as well, and even viewing the original Star Wars movie today, assuming you haven't already watched it to death, still feels like a very unique confluence of different ideas coming together.

The last Star Wars film I've seen, which was episode 7, feels like a movie influenced by Star Wars. For all the problems that the prequel trilogy had, and boy did it have a lot of issues, they didn't feel like Star Wars films influenced purely by Star Wars. The heavy influence of George Lucas and his man-child/old-fashioned view of how romance happens (it's not like sand) and his toy-line/merchandising approach to characters were still present. Like I said, those prequels were very, very, very, very flawed, but still not pure fan-fiction.

Episode 7 (8 & 9) and Rogue One don't have the luxury of existing in a vacuum the way the original film did; the burden of Star Wars expectations and a very demanding/obsessive fan-base weighs it down a bit. Plus so many other movies inspired by Star Wars also exist, and I dare say some may even do it better, or expand upon it in a different way.
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Todinho »

One thing that I like to mention and remind people is that Star Wars isnt sci-fi or about war,it's a fantasy movie set in space ,it was this simple fantasy story with an incredibly compelling setting removed from almost anything we know,there's very little frame of reference for the audience and we are kinda of there for the ride and that's why every new concept introduced became so memorable from lightsabers to At-AT's,I mean just think about Jedi,back then people had no idea how the emperor could be a threat being so old and then outta nowhere BAM lightning nobody could see that coming!
The prequels for all their faults kept up with that be it podracing or the gungans you know,that might not haven been what we would like be but they were memorable,these movies so far have relied only on using the iconography and concepts of the original trilogy and maybe remix it a little bit.

Another thing is that,and people may disagree, despite it's original concepts the Star Wars universe is pretty shallow,it's not like Middle-Earth where Tolkien seemed to have planned up until every tile on the floor you know,it's a universe where the less you know about it the better so you can get surprised and try to understand what's going on. I think episode 7 did the right thing in having this huge time jump and picking up with characters that knew nothing about the world,the problem is that then they just reintroduced the same elements we knew from before,my fear is that what we think of star wars has been so codified already(Stormtroopers,Jedi,etc) that this is all we are gonna get from these new movies.
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Electric Crocosaurus
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Electric Crocosaurus »

ratsoalbion wrote:Ah, I was actually very pleased with Michael Giacchino's work. Perhaps it lacked new standout themes and melodies, but I thought he got the tone and mood spot-on.
I'm really impressed with Giacchino's work on Rogue One. The one mis-step is the 'Jyn theme', which uses the opening motif of the Star Wars theme before inverting the rest of the phrase (it has its most bold statement over the Rogue One title card), as it felt wrong not to continue into that familiar Star Wars sound. But the rest of the score is magnificent, with Giacchino using Williams-style orchestration and instrumentation to replicate his feel, rather than copying themes across wholesale. 'Confrontation on Eadu' is one of my favourite cues of the year, featuring thrilling action beats and closing with swooping strings straight out of the Williams playbook.

I suspect one of the reasons why the score hasn't landed with people is that it doesn't have the same prominence in the film's sound mix as the original SW live-actions did. I may have missed one (I've only seen it once) but I can't think of any moments in Rogue One where the dialogue drops out and the score swells to take precedence. Whereas in the original trilogy you had Luke looking out over the twin suns, Darth Vader's Star Destroyer dwarfing the others, Luke battling back Vader on the Second Death Star... Lucas always designed his movies so that they would work as silent films (albeit with score), and Rogue One is (by the film-makers' own admissions) a different style of film.
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Tleprie
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Tleprie »

Rogue One may be my favorite Star Wars film. I just saw it, so it's a bit early to make any official declaration, but it's very close to Jedi for me, if not above it.

I play a couple different Star Wars tabletop RPGs with my friends and brother, and the movie felt exactly like something we would do in that, down to the weapons and tactics they employed, the only difference being that we rarely are fighting for good over evil, rather just for money and power. In our longest running campaign we killed both Princess Leia and The Emperor, so we have no problem switching sides.

I definitely can see some of the flaws others have mentioned, such as the fan service (though it didn't feel as bad as in 7), but I can ignore that as it was basically the stories that I've been a part of with my friends, but on the big screen.
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Joshihatsumitsu »

Tleprie wrote:Rogue One may be my favorite Star Wars film. I just saw it, so it's a bit early to make any official declaration, but it's very close to Jedi for me, if not above it.
I'm very late to the party, as in I only just saw Rogue One last night (there was only around ten people in the cinema - best way to see it!). When you said it was very close to Jedi for you I knew exactly how you felt. It's definitely one of the best Star Wars films, easily (the prequels did set the bar low, so it's not exactly surprising).

Without repeating too much of what everyone has already said, or going into spoilers, I will say that director Gareth Edwards is very good and very talented at creating larger-than-life but believable and tangible worlds. And just like Monsters and Godzilla, Rogue One still suffers a bit when it comes to moving the attention away from the bigger, effects-driven set pieces. Characters can be a bit on the thin side (not unusual for Star Wars in general, so hardly a sin), so it helps when you have a good talented cast that can raise the material a bit.

I ignored most press leading up to this movie, and only really went to see it because a friend I hadn't seen in a while invited me, so I didn't have expectations going in. And it was better than I expected. Reading afterwards about how there were rewrites and reshoot help explain why occasionally some scenes felt a bit weird, and a bit off. But considering the machine that is Disney and Star Wars, I was still pleasantly surprised by its narrative integrity, and it captured that sense of wonder than no film since the original trilogy seemed to capture. It has its issues, but it felt more like Star Wars than anything recent.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Star Wars

Post by ratsoalbion »

Anyone here seen Solo yet? Overall reception seems to be fairly lukewarm...
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Bullus »

ratsoalbion wrote: May 27th, 2018, 11:46 am Anyone here seen Solo yet? Overall reception seems to be fairly lukewarm...
I'm assuming there's an intended pun in the lukewarm?


No I haven't seen it and I fear my days of being a Star Wars fan have gone the way of the Rancor. Couldn't stand EP 1, 2, 7 + 8. Didn't mind Rogue One but still could have used a tighter leash to eliminate some of the guff.

I'm getting to old for this perhaps?
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Spacefarer »

I saw Solo last night, and I really enjoyed it. Once I've watched it again, I'll tell you exactly why that was...
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Re: Star Wars

Post by ratsoalbion »

That's good to hear. I'm going tomorrow.
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Beck
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Beck »

Bullus wrote: May 27th, 2018, 12:33 pm I'm assuming there's an intended pun in the lukewarm?


No I haven't seen it and I fear my days of being a Star Wars fan have gone the way of the Rancor. Couldn't stand EP 1, 2, 7 + 8. Didn't mind Rogue One but still could have used a tighter leash to eliminate some of the guff.

I'm getting to old for this perhaps?
No, I completely agree with you.

After The Last Jedi I have zero interest in Star Wars films any more. I've gotten to the point where I'd rather remember Star Wars as what it used to be rather than what the new direction is. This also seems to be the opinion of most of the people in my office at work. The Last Jedi was truly awful, in my opinion.
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Bullus
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Bullus »

Beck wrote: May 28th, 2018, 9:43 am I've gotten to the point where I'd rather remember Star Wars as what it used to be...
Yeah that just about sums it up for me too.

My younger brother saw Solo today and said he enjoyed it but that wasn't too keen on some of the stuff towards the end.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Star Wars

Post by ratsoalbion »

I was one of those who enjoyed TLJ, but unsurprisingly I don’t have anything like the affection for the new ones that I do for the ones that dominated my childhood into early adulthood.

I do like Rogue One quite a bit, although CGI Cushing and Fisher were a huge mistake imo.
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Beck
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Beck »

Rogue One was excellent. I was at the Star Wars Celebration event in London a couple years back and was lucky to attend a few of the panel conferences. Mark Hamil was a highlight but I was also really impressed with Gareth Edwards, the director of Rogue One. You could tell he was incredibly humbled by the reception he was getting and that he has a lot of time for Star Wars.

I really like the Godzilla film that he did as well, it's worth a watch if you haven't seen it. Although, some people seem to really hate it. I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised.
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ratsoalbion
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Re: Star Wars

Post by ratsoalbion »

I very much enjoyed his Godzilla, and his previous film Monsters too.
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Joshihatsumitsu »

I have not seen The Last Jedi yet, but I want to watch it less because its a Star Wars film, and more because its a Rian Johnson film. He's a talent, and really, they should just go all out and let different directors go nuts with it. David Lynch anyone? ;)

And gotta say, Rogue One is probably my favourite Gareth Edwards film. As much as I love the monsters in, uh, Monsters, the human characters weren't its strongest element. Still haven't seen Godzilla all the way through, though after Shin-Godzilla it might be harder. Love that version much more.
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Re: Star Wars

Post by Todinho »

Saw Solo and it was certainly a movie, Im pretty much with the concensus that it was better then I thought it was gonna be, its not awful but even my dad that is a bigger Star Wars fan then me wasnt over the moon for this one, I will say that the pandering for nostalgia is the worst its ever been with this one and this is something that every ones of the new movies has been banking on but its like they put it in overdrive here, other then that there's not much more I can say without spoiling it, I will say that I really liked Donald Glover as Lando though I think he nailed that role and I would love to see more of that.
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