SW - Episode 7: Mary Sue wakes up but there's no coffee. RAGE.

[Megrim]

He is more suited to Star Wars than he is to Trek. though.

[Ironwood]

How so ?  Or do you mean it worked for you better ?

[Lucas]

  He's so impatient, it's like watching a teenager fuck a glorious older woman.

Well, that's it: I think I just found my new signature 

[Megrim]

How so ?  Or do you mean it worked for you better ?

Trek carries too much scifi weight despite being pulpy. SW is just pure magical realm so there is more room for lazy movie making.  Or in other words, he did essentially the same thing to SW as he did to Trek, but it just works better with SW because it has less established convention. If that makes sense.

[Ironwood]

Yes, it makes sense.  I can see what you mean.  I wasn't as offended when he did it with Star Wars (because fucking laser sword wizards) as Star Trek (because there are fucking Hayes manuals written about how the science works.)

Fair enough.

[MediumHigh]

At the end of the day we can shrug our shoulders and say Star Wars was always for kids. Which is sad cause its not like I'm 40 or something.

[Merusk]

I'm rapidly approaching 50 and I thought TFA was a good star wars movie.

/shrugs

Ironwood gets me and captured what I've been trying to express. Maybe folks missed his statement earlier, but that was the reason for my break-down of early Jedi and using two Fun-but-nonsensical movies as examples yesterday.

The movies and the entire franchise have never "worked" in the way people are complaining and are pulpy fun. If you have a problem with them now, it's probably you not the movies.

I had the same break in the 90s with the EU bullshit. I realized it was no longer for me and moved on, happy with my memories of what it was and leaving it to fans of what I considered drek. There were a lot of people who did and still do love the garbage with the Vong and the Grey Jedi and everything I consider to be bullshit and not-Star-Wars.

However that's just, like, my opinion man. Sure it's why I had a lot of glee as the EU was subverted and then jettisoned but only because it selfishly meant I might be able to get into it again. It was about me, not the content.

Does this mean it can't be criticized? No, I think there's some strong criticisim to be had. Definitely with the pacing, the 'shrink' of the world, and how things aren't left to "breathe." Which is why the music seems so disconnected from the film. Williams isn't given enough space to breathe into the score after Jakku. Even the Tie vs. Falcon fight was too fast for his composing and he did brilliantly with all the fights in the first two prequels.

Which leads to the second big criticism. The runtime is only 15 minutes longer than ANH but it has some dead-end scenes that could be cut to let things breathe. There was no reason for the Death Gang/ Kanji Club/ CGI-Bullshit on the freighter. It could have been cut significantly if not removed so they introduce Han elsewhere, say on Maz's temple where the Autopilot drags the Falcon or a remote "return home" is activated that Rey and Fin can't disable. The cantina scene itself could have been tightened up a bit instead of being where 'things were breathing' because it was pointless to drag things there.

You spend 6:18 minutes in the Cantina in ANH and so much happens with so many memorable scenes. We spend almost double that here and so little happens. Wrong place to breathe.

[Ironwood]

It was the same with Indiana Jones, in fairness.  Lots of complaints about how the fourth one just wasn't Indy because of the Aliens, when, actually, it was pretty much as fucking Indy as it could be.  Now, was it a GOOD movie ?  Debatable.  Were you now too fucking old/jaded/whatever to be bothered with more Indy and resented it and thought it 'raped your childhood' ?  Maybe. 

But it was Indy.  It really, really was.  It tried so fucking hard to be Indy, it wasn't real. 

[Shannow]

In fairness, TFA had likable new characters. Indy 4 had Shia Lebouf.

[Ironwood]

Yes, but that's reasons that the film was good or bad, not reasons that it wasn't Wars or Jones.

And, yes, he was a reason that Indy 4 wasn't as good.  I'm not saying there aren't hundreds of reasons.

[HaemishM]

I have to say that I actually tend to like JJ Abrams except when he's overly interested in homage. Super 8 was a mediocre film because it was such a painful love letter to ET with only a slight nod to modern cinematic sensibilities and more "updated" characters. Mission Impossible 3 was good because it didn't really bother to explain anything it didn't need to and kept you moving. He does have pacing issues and those are abundantly clear in TFA and ST Into Darkness. The difference in one of those movies being utter shit (Into Darkness) and one being a decent Star Wars flick is that the flaws that make you scratch your head in ID take you out of the movie a lot more than the ones in TFA.

[Merusk]

I'd argue the flaws in ID take you out of the ST Universe more than out of the movie.

With an original IP setting that movie could have worked.  Inside Star Trek with all of its baggage and implications you go, "Wait, the Federation did what with a blackops spaceship? And the badguy beamed halfway across the universe AND killed all of the actual captains when there were only 20 folks in that meeting. Oh and the doctor just cured death?!"

Indy 4 had some laughably bad CGI and some over-the-top nonsense that made it bad. But those are also a reflection of how movies have changed in the prior 25 years. We can bitch and moan about how they were 'better' before but we wind-up sounding like the people who bitched about action movies in the 80s and how movies weren't like White Christmas, Ben Hur, Vertigo, An Affair to Remember, and The Day the Earth Stood Still anymore.

[Malakili]

Yeah, Star Wars in general does a lot more hand waving about things like light speed travel to begin with.  There is some sense of travel time (playing Chess on the Falcon), but not very much generally speaking.  Getting from Hoth to Bespin on sublight engines is probably the most obvious example of travel time just being handwaived.

[Ironwood]

Oh come on, it's only a few parsecs away.   

[jgsugden]

Oh come on, it's only a few parsecs away.   

There is one scene in this movie that made me shake my head due to the obvious overlooking of distances...

[eldaec]

Even as someone who liked the film, that was a really bad scene.

It's not just the bad science, it thoroughly confused me about where everyone was and as a result what danger everyone was in. Then I remembered it was a JJA film and at least people aren't teleporting across the galaxy.

[jgsugden]

Are we close to a point where we could merge the two threads?  We're past the typical two week spoiler season.  If you have not seen it by now, you're probably not reading this thread....

[Margalis]

It was bad star wars didn't say it wasn't star wars. A good star wars material expands or adds to the lore. This movie does none of that, instead just rides nostalgia down to the closing credits.

Disagree entirely with the first half of this. The vast majority of awful Star Wars material tries to expand and add to the lore, to disastrous effect.

I think it's fair to say that TFA banks heavily on nostalgia and hitting the same beats as the original. But to me the problem with Star Wars has always been that's it's not a universe or a setting that can be or needs to be expanded upon, it's just two good movies and a whole bunch of crap. I suppose you can say that those two movies expand the lore, but they were the first two movies made, so they had no choice - there was nothing to recycle at that point.

Star Wars has been all about recycling and nostalgia since Jedi.

[lamaros]

I'm not really sure I agree. TFA is a better movie, but the plot is really really bad. The other movies are repetitious, and not great, but they had better basic storylines.

[MediumHigh]

I think there is a balance between given people something new and jumping the shark and more often then not new star wars fluff jumps the shark. Maybe fundamentally you can't extend a fantasy series about the "chosen one" and space wizards, but I'm pretty sure someone can call bullshit on that with examples of other less weighty series chugging along just fine. I don't like lazy writing as excuse because the alternative maybe incompetent writing. 

[Speedy Cerviche]

I don't like lazy writing as excuse because the alternative maybe incompetent writing. 

huh?

[jgsugden]

I don't like lazy writing as excuse because the alternative maybe incompetent writing. 

huh?

He'd rather have lazy writing (repetitive, cliche) than incompetent writing ( nonsensical, unmotivated).

[Riggswolfe]

It was the same with Indiana Jones, in fairness.  Lots of complaints about how the fourth one just wasn't Indy because of the Aliens, when, actually, it was pretty much as fucking Indy as it could be.  Now, was it a GOOD movie ?  Debatable.  Were you now too fucking old/jaded/whatever to be bothered with more Indy and resented it and thought it 'raped your childhood' ?  Maybe. 

But it was Indy.  It really, really was.  It tried so fucking hard to be Indy, it wasn't real. 

Maybe it's just me but the big thing I think about with both movies is Ford.

In Indiana Jones he really felt like he was just barely there and sort of going through the motions. It sucked me right out of the movie. Ford didn't seem interested so why should I be?

Oddly, in Star Wars he felt fully engaged. I say oddly because it is widely assumed that he like Indiana Jones much more than Han Solo. Yet, if you watch both movies back to back you can see which one he is putting more effort into and enjoying more. And it ain't Indy 4.

[MediumHigh]

I don't like lazy writing as excuse because the alternative maybe incompetent writing. 

huh?

He'd rather have lazy writing (repetitive, cliche) than incompetent writing ( nonsensical, unmotivated).

No.

I hate lazy writing. I hate lazy writing because instead of attempting to succeed and run the risk of crashing and burning on your own merits you just fall back on repetition and cliches in order to collect a pay check. Lazy writing is to movies what lazy game design is to mmorpgs.

[Rendakor]

I'd argue the flaws in ID take you out of the ST Universe more than out of the movie.

With an original IP setting that movie could have worked.  Inside Star Trek with all of its baggage and implications you go, "Wait, the Federation did what with a blackops spaceship? And the badguy beamed halfway across the universe AND killed all of the actual captains when there were only 20 folks in that meeting. Oh and the doctor just cured death?!"

This is true. As someone who has only seen a handful of ST episodes and both JJ movies, I thought ID was fine. Not great, not amazing, but not awful. I don't know any of the canon-breaking stuff that's often complained about so I just turned my brain off and enjoyed the ride.

[eldaec]

Into Darkness would be even worse without the Star Trek parody elements, spotting the references gave me something to do while waiting for it to end.

[Furiously]

I've come to realize what I disliked about the movie... I reverted to my inner 7-12 year old when Long, long ago in a galaxy far away and the big Star Wars came up. And I get all giddy when the Star Wars words appear. I become my 40+ year old self really quickly reading the crawl, it's all Luke this Leia that. With just a small blurb about the first order and nothing about the state of the galaxy. It soured me a bit from the beginning. Course then the Millennium Falcon appeared and I was happy again.

[jgsugden]

Episode VIII was scheduled for May 2017 - now pushed back to December 2017. 

http://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-episode-viii-to-open-december-15-2017?cmp=smc%7C339573417&linkId=20528618

[Kail]

I've come to realize what I disliked about the movie... I reverted to my inner 7-12 year old when Long, long ago in a galaxy far away and the big Star Wars came up. And I get all giddy when the Star Wars words appear.

Yeah, had the same experience.  Which is kind of weird given that after so many Star Wars games I'm totally sick of booting up a title and reading their crappy backstory one tedious line at a time while the EXACT SAME MUSIC plays for the millionth time.  But something about seeing the new movies for the first time in a theater brings out my inner child.

[Jeff Kelly]

The OPENING crawl had A weird fondness for NEEDLESSLY capitalizing RANDOM words.

I'm always astonished that Disney - an international megacorporation that is as greedy as it is cynical - manages to create decent to great movies that regularly. It was fan service, it was a 'best of Star Wars' medley, it was designed to sell a shitload of merchandise and the whole 'Starkiller Base' sequence was utter bollocks. It was designed to pester us with spin-offs and sequels until the heat death of the universe and yet it was an utterly enjoyable and in parts even great movie.

They also had Kylo Ren. Granted he is not a very charismatic villain but his motivation for becoming the villain is believable in all of its Oedipalian triteness. Yes it boils down to a misguided act of teenage rebellion, hence the Emo Kylo ren meme, but it was believable. Basically Anakin Skywalker done right.

It was also a great example of "show, don't tell". Abrams managed to tell the audience more with one look a characteror gave or a short interaction than Lucas ever could even with hours of expositional dialogue. In part because of daisy Ridley and a cast of equally talented actors that carry and ground the ridiculousness of the set pieces.

[Velorath]

I'm always astonished that Disney - an international megacorporation that is as greedy as it is cynical - manages to create decent to great movies that regularly.

Managing brands over a long term is kinda their thing. They understand that you don't shit out a bunch of low quality product if you want to be in it for the long haul.

[HaemishM]

It was also a great example of "show, don't tell". Abrams managed to tell the audience more with one look a characteror gave or a short interaction than Lucas ever could even with hours of expositional dialogue. In part because of daisy Ridley and a cast of equally talented actors that carry and ground the ridiculousness of the set pieces.

To be fair, Lucas had a shitton of great actors in the prequels too. He just wrote and directed them so that they couldn't be anything but utterly shitty.

[Malakili]

Yeah, the casting of the prequels was perfectly fine. The direction was garbage.

[Lakov_Sanite]

It was also a great example of "show, don't tell". Abrams managed to tell the audience more with one look a characteror gave or a short interaction than Lucas ever could even with hours of expositional dialogue. In part because of daisy Ridley and a cast of equally talented actors that carry and ground the ridiculousness of the set pieces.

To be fair, Lucas had a shitton of great actors in the prequels too. He just wrote and directed them so that they couldn't be anything but utterly shitty.

Great supporting actors maybe. Both versions of Anakin were atrocious.

[Malakili]

Most children suck at acting and Hayden Christianssen isn't amazing, but he's certainly not as bad as the prequels made him look.