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Post by Cyno on Mar 1, 2021 16:58:09 GMT -5
This is not entirely related to the current debate, but online reviewer SFDebris has a great series of videos on the history of how Star Wars got made, starting with a New Hope: The Hero's Journeyas well as Empire strikes Back and Return of the Jedi The Shadow's JourneyWhile it punctures a lot of the myths Lucas himself has propagated about the creation of the original trilogy, I think both documentary series actually are quite flattering towards his story ideas and gives logical reasoning towards why he made the decisions he did. The latter also details the sad end to his marriage as well, something I suspect ended up informing a lot of his character elements about Anakin in the prequels. While that series on the prequel films is being gradually posted and is unfinished at the moment, the former two are definitely worth a look, and those curious about even more details should check out the Secret History of Star Wars book which dives completely into the subject. I assume it touches a lot on Lucas' inspiration from Kurosawa films, especially The Hidden Fortress?
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Post by BorneAgain on Mar 1, 2021 17:03:02 GMT -5
This is not entirely related to the current debate, but online reviewer SFDebris has a great series of videos on the history of how Star Wars got made, starting with a New Hope: The Hero's Journeyas well as Empire strikes Back and Return of the Jedi The Shadow's JourneyWhile it punctures a lot of the myths Lucas himself has propagated about the creation of the original trilogy, I think both documentary series actually are quite flattering towards his story ideas and gives logical reasoning towards why he made the decisions he did. The latter also details the sad end to his marriage as well, something I suspect ended up informing a lot of his character elements about Anakin in the prequels. While that series on the prequel films is being gradually posted and is unfinished at the moment, the former two are definitely worth a look, and those curious about even more details should check out the Secret History of Star Wars book which dives completely into the subject. I assume it touches a lot on Lucas' inspiration from Kurosawa films, especially The Hidden Fortress? That and a lot of the decisions rooted in production design and practicality, like Vader's design inspired both by potentially old serials and Ralph McQuarrie's pre-production artwork. The discussion about the writing for ESB and ROTJ is especially interesting, going into detail about how the Vader = Father Skywalker decision came about and the nature of how certain story elements in episode VI largely emerged due to Lucas wanting to be done with SW (at least for a while) at that point.
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Post by prettynami on Mar 1, 2021 19:30:38 GMT -5
I honestly didn't mind that they made Rey a Palpatine... I think it has interesting potential from a narrative point of view. Just the execution was so lazy, hurried, and ultimately had seemingly very little to do with the overall drama of the movie. But I think it only really works if you have force ghost Anakin in the sequels and that they have a unified story. Like I think it's hinted that he was a product of the manipulation of the force. So here is this girl, bred to be the replacement for an evil person (Much like Anakin was "created") - is she cursed to go down that path? No, because you can have Luke and Anakin explain stuff to her (After all this is the Skywalker trilogy) and lay out how Anakin ultimately made a choice. Blah blah blah. If she had interacted with Anakin's force ghost it also would have been an interesting contrast to Kylo who worships Darth Vader, the suit and not the conflicted man inside it.
As it turned out all three of the sequels were dire for remarkably different reasons. Force Awakens is such a retread it hurts, and the basic premise makes it seem like all the other struggles that the characters people actually care about going into the movies were over nothing - how quickly the galaxy forgets! The Last Jedi makes the Force Awakens pointless and undoes the character development of Finn, which really hurt the character going forward and ultimately contributed to the fact he had nothing to do in Rise of Skywalker. And Rise of Skywalker was a confused mess that felt like 3 movies crammed into one that somehow at the same time said absolutely nothing - and it just plain looked bad.
I wish they had been more character driven and less gotta ramp up the stakes with everything being bigger, better, and more dangerous. Like seriously, I wish the threat had only been something like Palps return or something not his return with a fleet of 50 gazillion Death Star Destroyers. I guess if they make more they have to have a Death Galaxy that can blow up the whole universe. That's why the TV shows are such a breath of fresh air, you get that Star Wars feel without the stupidity of the bulk of the movies (Seriously, for such a big franchise Star Wars has a pretty bad track record - like only 1/3 of its movies are any good when taken as a whole). Still, despite all my complaints there are parts of every single one I enjoy quite a bit, and they have their fans - so I hope they keep making them for their sakes (Who I am I joking, I know they will).
Why so many of us get so hot and bothered over space wizards and the quality of their movies is amazing. Hahahahaha.
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Post by "Cane Dewey" Johnson on Mar 1, 2021 20:31:21 GMT -5
In hindsight, Star Wars should have ended the moment it arrived in 1977. One movie was enough.
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Post by Cyno on Mar 1, 2021 21:42:52 GMT -5
Yeah, I agree that Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter was a potentially good idea botched by the haphazard execution of Episode IX. I also like the idea of a Palpatine and Skywalker duo being the one to save the galaxy from darkness in contrast to the Palpatine and Skywalker duo that plunged the galaxy in darkness. There's a nice narrative duality there that was ruined by JJ Abrams' and Chris Terrio's shortcomings as storytellers.
Though I still think outside of certain elements like being more of a true follow-up to TLJ, the Trevorrow script would've been just as bad if not worse than what we got.
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Post by Starshine on Mar 1, 2021 22:00:24 GMT -5
I think episodes 7-9 may be one of the worst trilogies in mainstream movies history. I cannot think off the top of my head of another series of films that seem to want as little to do with each other as these ones seem to. Characters grow in one movie, only to regress right back in the next one. Prior plot beats are either ignored, or handwaved away altogether, and sometimes then brought back in the most ham-fisted way. There's no focus to the plot, things just seem to happen at random, and protagonists seem to constantly fail upwards. It's just a miserable journey, which is so sad since I was genuinely charmed by much of what TFA did, even in spite of it being a soft reboot of ANH. There was something there if Disney had actually bothered to put some cohesive narrative together.
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Post by Mr PONYMANIA Mr Jenzie on Mar 1, 2021 22:44:06 GMT -5
i could endlessy rewatch the force awakens ... no ALL of them, if i could! if a movie can have a trailer that can still make me CRY (the second one), then TFA is a great movie for me! the last jedi has three of the greatest animal moments in the series but it also show massive loss to the characters, some genuinely beautiful moments (leia, the JAW DROPPING end of holdo ... honestly that scene alone might be the most beautiful in the entire saga!) and they do things way differently to the first movie of the new trilogy ... and most succeed rise of skywalker was acceptable in a way, given it's writing time span in the first place, but needed more time to space itself out, like in two parts ... and given the time constraints it leads to fascinating characters not having nearly enough time ... you know which ones ... but that also leads you to seeking out their expansion stories in other formats the new trilogy has the charm of the originals, and the precision of the prequels
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Post by romanstylesiii on Mar 2, 2021 0:03:40 GMT -5
Fine then I'll start off with the hottest of got takes: The Last Jedis story arc of Luke Skywalker was logical and had a great ending. I preferred his journey in the movie, with the amount of things he's seen he wouldve became that disillusioned hermit He milked a giant slug The entire trilogy is a mess that was more about the ego's of the two directors than anything else.
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Post by Hit Girl on Mar 2, 2021 4:02:48 GMT -5
In hindsight, Star Wars should have ended the moment it arrived in 1977. One movie was enough. The 1977, 1980 and 1983 films were enough.. Every movie since then has ranged from mediocre to outright garbage, including the 1997 vandalism of the original trilogy.
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xCompackx
Wade Wilson
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Post by xCompackx on Mar 2, 2021 12:38:31 GMT -5
The only thing I will say about Rey being a Palpatine (which I didn't mind, despite it being a pretty obvious backpedal) is it's annoying when characters up and trust what the bad guy says as fact when there's an obvious agenda to them saying it. I don't remember if it was explained how even Kylo Ren knew about it, but I doubt it's something that couldn't have been discovered.
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Post by YAKMAN is ICHIBAN on Mar 2, 2021 12:42:07 GMT -5
The only thing I will say about Rey being a Palpatine (which I didn't mind, despite it being a pretty obvious backpedal) is it's annoying when characters up and trust what the bad guy says as fact when there's an obvious agenda to them saying it. I don't remember if it was explained how even Kylo Ren knew about it, but I doubt it's something that couldn't have been discovered. If there wasn't explicitly a scene where Palpatine told him, I assume he heard it from Palpatine himself?
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Post by Cyno on Mar 2, 2021 12:53:59 GMT -5
It was definitely alluded to in Ep IX that Ol' Sheev told Kylo Ren about Rey.
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TWERKIN' MAGGLE
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Post by TWERKIN' MAGGLE on Mar 2, 2021 13:01:22 GMT -5
Still waiting for a show about Sheev's son Steve.
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Post by Fade is a CodyCryBaby on Mar 2, 2021 13:35:09 GMT -5
I’m putting on a bucket list of things I’ll be doing for the first time (that are challenging) and watching this shit from Episide 1 to Episode 9 is on it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2021 13:53:27 GMT -5
Started a rewatch recently, including the cartoons. Took a few episodes for Clone Wars to get into a groove. Halfway through the first season and I'm enjoying it thus far. That's insane, I'm doing the same thing. I'm doing the movies, the animated shows, Mandalorian, and the novels and comics that were consistent on a lot of best of and essential lists. And I'm doing it chronologically. I totally agree about Clone Wars. It takes like half the first season to find its groove, but I just finished season 1 last night and am really digging it now. And the awesome thing is, these are still considered the bad episodes so my brain might explode when I watch season 3.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 2, 2021 13:56:04 GMT -5
In hindsight, Star Wars should have ended the moment it arrived in 1977. One movie was enough. Boo this man?
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Post by Pooh Carlson on Mar 2, 2021 15:05:04 GMT -5
Started a rewatch recently, including the cartoons. Took a few episodes for Clone Wars to get into a groove. Halfway through the first season and I'm enjoying it thus far. That's insane, I'm doing the same thing. I'm doing the movies, the animated shows, Mandalorian, and the novels and comics that were consistent on a lot of best of and essential lists. And I'm doing it chronologically. I totally agree about Clone Wars. It takes like half the first season to find its groove, but I just finished season 1 last night and am really digging it now. And the awesome thing is, these are still considered the bad episodes so my brain might explode when I watch season 3. You're definitely doing more than me haha. Not planning on doing any books or comics, but yeah so far I watched Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, the Clone Wars movie, and started season 1.
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