Star Wars Episode 7

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

the first three overcame that with awesome art direction and you know, fun.

yeah i didn't say the films were bad as a whole just that lucas as a director would be ranked somewhere around the average director of any given big bang theory episode

[redbreegull]

Lucas asked David Lynch to direct ROTJ and he declined (d'oh!)



I just can't stand Abrams. I understand he's very popular and a safe choice or whatever, but Joss Whedon could have delivered something actually worth watching, now we're just going to end up with another star wars movie we will pretend didn't happen

[Order 66]

he kind of wrote himself into a corner with the clone wars because it was vaguely a part of the original movies. but yeah it doesn't really jive with what the jedi are about and it's kind of dumb how complicit they were with the whole thing.

though i guess you could argue it shows how even the jedi are infallible and susceptible to the dark side if you want to go down the rabbit hole

a film being good in spite of the fact that the writer/director/producer is an incompetent boob is a testament to something
i don't know what
it's something, though

[redbreegull]

George Lucas has that Billy Corgan kind of talent... he's an immensely creative, talented, imaginative guy with NO taste or discrimination in what he puts his name on

[Order 66]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

I just can't stand Abrams. I understand he's very popular and a safe choice or whatever, but Joss Whedon could have delivered something actually worth watching, now we're just going to end up with another star wars movie we will pretend didn't happen

i think the script is really what matters. I'm of the belief you can have a fairly mediocre director but still come away with a good movie with a solid script. yeah abrams has a heavy hand in the script, but so does kasdan. so who knows

[redbreegull]

both matter, but I see it like this

a good director can make a good movie from a bad script

a good script cannot save a movie from bad directing

[Trotskilicious]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

Lucas asked David Lynch to direct ROTJ and he declined (d'oh!)

that movie would have sucked

lynch was right to decline

like seriously david lynch star wars? you wish that happened?

[Trotskilicious]

Originally Posted by Order 66

he kind of wrote himself into a corner with the clone wars because it was vaguely a part of the original movies. but yeah it doesn't really jive with what the jedi are about and it's kind of dumb how complicit they were with the whole thing.

whatever, palpatine uses clones to combat a threat/jedi themselves, jedi fight against palpatine and the "republic" in a losing effort. what the shit is wrong with that, i ask you?

the whole goddamn palpatine plot with the "CIS" and the droid armies is so retarded i can't get my head around it. it's like the robot devil: "My ludicrously circuitous plan is one quarter complete!"

though i guess you could argue it shows how even the jedi are infallible and susceptible to the dark side if you want to go down the rabbit hole

this is the lore issue the nerds are having

because on the one hand you could get into some pretty interesting post-modern shit with the idea that jedi aren't actually as good as they think they are, that the "balance of nature" is the eternal fight between light and dark

but the thing about star wars is that it ultimately appealed to people who liked good vs evil and get really really mad about what they think is cynicism and not believing in True Good and etc. and ultimately i think they are right it's high sci-fantasy, innit? and if i want post modern moral gray and laser sword fights i can find something else (mass effect, i guess)

i don't think the movies were getting at the former, or really understanding the latter. ultimately the binary morality of Star Wars doesn't play as well in a modern dynamic, and i think his new movies were this completely hopeless mash between the two that just turned into slurry.

also GL went several decades thinking his shit didn't stink, when his shit stunk a lot

[Trotskilicious]

like seriously why would you create a threat like the droid armies just to make clones to fight the army and then use the clones to kill the jedi

why don't you just START OFF WITH TRYING TO KILL THE JEDI

[Trotskilicious]

"The Jedi Council are enemies of the Republic, here is an example of one Darth Sidious, yet another fallen force-user that etc blah blah blah all jedi are or will become sith, be scared of jedi, lets kill all the jedi, also clones."

[MyOneAndOnly]

How in the fuck does someone argue that the latest reboot is better than all of the past 3 decades of Trek?

[MyOneAndOnly]

Supposedly the best version of the prequel trilogy is the 90 minute long edit that Topher Grace made.

[Order 66]

the expanded universe delves heavily into the more gray side of the force, and there's even a whole school devoted to it. hopefully the new movies use this as kind of a blueprint because it would enunciate the prequel trilogy more.

honestly i never really thought much about it. i think obi wan was like "oh, so we have a clone army all of a sudden? uh ok well go along with that then"

[MyOneAndOnly]

Disney has publicly stated that they will ignore the expanded universe when making the new films.

[MyOneAndOnly]

Disney to fans... "Fuck You and all the comics and merch and shit you bought growing up."

[redbreegull]

Lucas already discarded tons of expanded universe material when making the prequels. Star Wars canon works in tiers I believe, but the top level is just the six movies

[killtrocity]

Originally Posted by The exploding boy

Well I was pretty much emotionally blackmailed into watching the first two. I haven't seen ROTK and never will nor do I ever plan to see the hobbit. And don't tell me Jackson didn't fuck shit up in the hobbit. One small book into three movies? Come the fuck on. I wish he would die too for good measure. the only good thing these movies ever had is good casting.

Comparing ROTK to The Hobbit is like comparing Empire Strikes Back to Phantom Menace

[redbreegull]

I explicitly remember him saying in a tv guide interview years ago in so many words, expanded universe is somebody else's world, my world is just the movies

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

that movie would have sucked

lynch was right to decline

like seriously david lynch star wars? you wish that happened?

lynch is so good, I'm not sure how you can say with any certainty it would be bad. a lot of hardcore SW fans hate ROTJ anyway

Originally Posted by killtrocity

Comparing ROTK to The Hobbit is like comparing Empire Strikes Back to Phantom Menace

yeah ROTK is pretty good. there are a few completely retarded things that peter jackson did like the other movies, but overall it's a pretty good adaptation (as long as you watch the extended version!!!)

[The exploding boy]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

Lucas asked David Lynch to direct ROTJ and he declined (d'oh!)



I just can't stand Abrams. I understand he's very popular and a safe choice or whatever, but Joss Whedon could have delivered something actually worth watching, now we're just going to end up with another star wars movie we will pretend didn't happen

To be honest I didn't really care for Abrams until the Star Trek reboot. I personally think he did it fine. He understands the characters well enough and sure it went high modern action but between that and Shatner vs Mcdowell in Generations.... I wish he'd give Bones more screen time though. as for Joss Whedon, I don't know...he's been hit and miss the past several years. Though it's true that he was actually barely involved in Agents of SHIELD past the first few episodes I think. but dollhouse sucked.


And Lucas was never as good as anyone had made him out to be. I was blinded like pretty much everyone until the special editions. some years ago I read a transcript of conversations between him, Spielberg and Kasdan as they were coming up with Raiders of the last ark and he had some horrible ideas... So I don't think its something like oh he lost his mojo sometimes in the 90s either. I think it happened a while back. Well we got what we deserved. Should have let SW well the fuck alone. I don't have much faith Abrams will do anything good with it but mainly, I kinda don't care. Unless somehow the whole world agrees they're just absolutely amazing, I probably won't bother with them.


And trostki, I see your point about absolutely nerdy people preferring the TOS to anything else, the truth though is I didn't really like Star Trek at all until a few years back when I gave a shot a the TOS on tv (i'd seen the pre TNG movies but never the series). Maybe it's the fact that it's cheesy because it's dated instead of accidentally cheesy like the TNG that I enjoy it more. Unless I've been misinterpreting TNG all this time. Some of the TNG movies had decent plots but I could never like any character outside of Picard. And that's just cause Patrick Stewart is that good.

[Order 66]

i don't think the expanded universe will be ignored completely... alot of the prequel trilogy had elements in it, like Coruscant (is that how you spell it? whatever). a lot of that material is a logical next step in how the story would play out. i'd be surprised if some aspects weren't at least copied unintentionally

but as for the movies having actual characters like admiral thrawn and recreating full story arcs, i know that's out the window

[Trotskilicious]

Originally Posted by Order 66

i think obi wan was like "oh, so we have a clone army all of a sudden? uh ok well go along with that then"

yeah i'm watching the clone wars tv show and they flirt with it, especially getting into individual clones and their clone stories (which can be murderously confusing) and they make a point to show jedi encouraging them to be individuals and such but ultimately there's no way to watch that thing for long, or for them to even write it, without you noticing how fucked up the whole notion of clone wars is

the episode "The Deserter" is one of the better SW things i've seen

[Trotskilicious]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

lynch is so good, I'm not sure how you can say with any certainty it would be bad.

it's like if scorsese directed star wars

[redbreegull]

Originally Posted by The exploding boy

To be honest I didn't really care for Abrams until the Star Trek reboot. I personally think he did it fine. He understands the characters well enough and sure it went high modern action but between that and Shatner vs Mcdowell in Generations.... I wish he'd give Bones more screen time though. as for Joss Whedon, I don't know...he's been hit and miss the past several years. Though it's true that he was actually barely involved in Agents of SHIELD past the first few episodes I think. but dollhouse sucked.

I haven't seen SHIELD yet nor have I watched Dollhouse but thus far I have not seen anything Whedon-associated that wasn't mostly good. My understanding was that Dollhouse is generally looked upon positively by Whedon's fans, it just didn't do well commercially. Have you seen Much Ado About Nothing? It was very, very good.




and I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I like Generations the best of any of the modern ST movies. The Borg one was also pretty good. The two (three?) after that with the TNG cast were totally forgettable. The reboot put a bad taste in my mouth and I did not see the sequel.

In terms of the television series, I would say

TOS > TNG (but only if you largely ignore the seasons from when Roddenberry was alive unfortunately, otherwise move this behind DS9) > DS9 > Voyager > Enterprise

[Trotskilicious]

Originally Posted by scottytheoneand

Disney to fans... "Fuck You and all the comics and merch and shit you bought growing up."

oh for christ's sake, shut the fuck up

[Trotskilicious]

"the borg one" is easily one of the best star trek movies ever

[MyOneAndOnly]

Originally Posted by redbreegull

I haven't seen SHIELD yet nor have I watched Dollhouse but thus far I have not seen anything Whedon-associated that wasn't mostly good. My understanding was that Dollhouse is generally looked upon positively by Whedon's fans, it just didn't do well commercially. Have you seen Much Ado About Nothing? It was very, very good.

Doll house was fucked up by the network.

My guess is that Whedon isn't nearly as involved with Agents of Shield as he was his other series. Either way it has his signature all over it. And in the last 4 episodes it's pulled some whedonesque shit on it's main characters. The kind of stuff that happened on Buffy.

[killtrocity]

Originally Posted by Order 66

i think the script is really what matters. I'm of the belief you can have a fairly mediocre director but still come away with a good movie with a solid script. yeah abrams has a heavy hand in the script, but so does kasdan. so who knows

This. The prequel scripts were DOGSHIT. ABSOLUTE DOGSHIT. None of the plot points make any sense, there's no protagonist, no antagonist, no pressing conflict, nothing to engage the audience... the prequels were 100% esthetics and lore, and the visual effects weren't even that great compared to something like Two Towers or The Matrix 1

JJ Abrams is an ordinary, unremarkable director (like GL), all he has to do is follow the simple formula that's taught in Film-making 101 and the script laid out for him by Arndt and Kasdan. The difference is that, rather than GL, swarms of executives are calling the shots

[MyOneAndOnly]

Originally Posted by Trotskilicious

"the borg one" is easily one of the best star trek movies ever

it's the best TNG movie for sure.

Nothing beats Wrath of Khan, but The Undiscovered Country is underrated