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

[lamaros]

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.

Are you still talking about Abrams? Abrams is all about telling, he's a very surface level director...

[Jeff Kelly]

Not in the force awakens though.

compared to the prequel trilogy this movie has almost no exposition via dialogue. Most of the scenes manage to convey all you need to know without two people talking about  trade embargoes. Either through action or by acting, a concept that somehow never occurred to Lucas.

There are actually quite a few scenes in the movie where no one speaks more than a few words and yet the set design, action and facial expressions tell you all you need to know. Take for example the final scene of the movie. Neither Mark Hamill nor Daisy Ridley say a single word and still you can tell everything from their expressions alone.

It's not Shakespeare but it's nevertheless a stark contrast to the static and emotionally flat chattiness of the prequel trilogy.

The movie also tries to do away with at least some of the tropes. The princess doesn't need rescuing, the villain is not swayed by an emotional appeal and no one constructs artificial drama from the fact that an ex storm trooper might not be that forthcoming about his past

It also doesn't fall into the trap of giving the characters too much backstory. It's well made. Which is a surprise after the dreck that was Star Trek into darkness.

[Goumindong]

compared to the prequel trilogy this movie has almost no exposition via dialogue. Most of the scenes manage to convey all you need to know without two people talking about  trade embargoes. Either through action or by acting, a concept that somehow never occurred to Lucas.

Maybe in comparison to the prequel trilogies. But TFA does a LOT of telling and not showing.

In particular, like 80% of Han's dialogue is exposition. And if you wonder why Leia felt flat part of it is because roughly 100% of her dialogue was exposition

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

He gets a lot of undeserved shit for those really. I mean, if Lucas couldn't get good performances out of the rest of the cast*, Hayden had no chance.

*Except the emperor. He fucking hammed it up like nothing else mattered as was generally wonderful.

[MahrinSkel]

You pointing that out made me realize what the core problem was: Nobody, in the entire prequels, ever emoted positively. No happiness, the closest thing was Anakin being a smart ass to Kenobi. Even while Anakin and Padme were supposed to be falling in love, they showed about as much emotional involvement as if they were picking out socks.

Everyone started flat, got flatter, until suddenly everyone is pissed off in the last half of the last movie and mugging like they are doing an acting class and it is "Show me ANGER!" day. The only exceptions are the occasional glower from Anakin that was supposed to be foreshadowing...and the Emperor, the only character allowed to show emotion all through the prequels.

I am sure that Lucas thought he was making some sort of statement about how baroque and formal the Republic had become. He did it badly.

--Dave

[Khaldun]

I have a friend who insists that the first movie is quite good if you see it as about 80% kabuki theater. "Kabuki traditions in Edo and in Kamigata (the Kyoto-Osaka region) were quite different. Through most of the Edo period, kabuki in Edo was defined by extravagance and bombast, as exemplified by stark makeup patterns, flashy costumes, fancy keren (stage tricks), and bold mie (poses)."  (Wikipedia)

Meaning in that version at least, acting is unimportant and even story is not that important.

[Margalis]

Edit: eh, too cynical.

Keep discussing Star Wars!

[Soln]

So, will they remake the prequels?   You know there's a gantt chart somewhere with each movie of the new canon staggered a la MCU. Easy to imagine them bolting on a "re-imagined" set of prequels.

So, 2020? 2025?

[Velorath]

I'm not sure what the draw for that would be as opposed to just continuing to do sequels and spinoffs.

[Cyrrex]

Yeah, they'd probably only make 1.5 billion instead of 1.8 billion or whatever.

I mean, you're right, but they would still make bank.

[Hutch]

So, will they remake the prequels?   You know there's a gantt chart somewhere with each movie of the new canon staggered a la MCU. Easy to imagine them bolting on a "re-imagined" set of prequels.

So, 2020? 2025?

Will Lucas still be alive in 2025? Let's hope so. Just to jab the knife in a little, everyone should buy two tickets, and the holo-VR-braindump, or whatever default home-viewing tech has succeeded Blu-ray by then.

[Velorath]

Yeah, they'd probably only make 1.5 billion instead of 1.8 billion or whatever.

I mean, you're right, but they would still make bank.

And then what? Would they continue to sell the original prequels? What do they package in with box sets? From a marketing perspective it would be a mess. Plus there are kids who grew up with the prequels who genuinely like them. There's a ton of potential downsides and the only real upside is that they might make around what a new SW movie would make. Again, I'm not really seeing what the draw would be. To appeal to people who are still raging at the prequels over 15 years later and can't just move on with their lives? Most of those people watched Ep. VII anyway.

Plus prequels just suck regardless.

[ghost]

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

The dialogue in episode 2 is just atrocious, particularly the romance shit.

[Evildrider]

I thought Hayden did a lot better in Jumper than he did in Star Wars.  He's still just a meh actor, but I blame Lucas and the dialogue more than anything.

[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.

The dialogue in episode 2 is just atrocious, particularly the romance shit.

You couldn't find an actor on earth who could have made that dialog sound good.

[Soulflame]

Helen Mirren?

[calapine]

I think even Helen Mirren would struggle with these lines:

Ooh mooey mooey I love you!

Yousa thinking yousa people ganna die?

Ohh, maxi big da Force. Well dat smells stinkowiff.

IMDB

[Soulflame]

She's the best I could come up with.

[Goumindong]

You pointing that out made me realize what the core problem was: Nobody, in the entire prequels, ever emoted positively. No happiness, the closest thing was Anakin being a smart ass to Kenobi. Even while Anakin and Padme were supposed to be falling in love, they showed about as much emotional involvement as if they were picking out socks.

Everyone started flat, got flatter, until suddenly everyone is pissed off in the last half of the last movie and mugging like they are doing an acting class and it is "Show me ANGER!" day. The only exceptions are the occasional glower from Anakin that was supposed to be foreshadowing...and the Emperor, the only character allowed to show emotion all through the prequels.

I am sure that Lucas thought he was making some sort of statement about how baroque and formal the Republic had become. He did it badly.

--Dave

Yea, there are a couple glimmers. But the dialogue itself is so flat, and the direction so flat that its unsavable.

Another example of flat dialogue in TFA is the non-poe x-wing pilots. I don't know what it is about them but it just screams "i am in no danger whatsoever and am reading a line of a teleprompter". As much as "almoost ther-ER!" is derided is actually sounds like someone talking to another person with trepidation and anxiety. And in TFA everyone is like "Shoot all our guns at that thing" "ok, shooting it more" "hit it with everything you've got" "ok hitting it with everything i have got the second time after i already hit it with all i had"*. Its weird, they aren't even robotic like say "Iceman" was robotic. They just existed.

The good thing about TFA is that the main characters don't really have much dialogue like this. The bad dialogue falls mainly onto supporting cast or transitioning cast and sometimes onto the villains(Finn has some bad ones but they're not flat bad, they're just pointless bad. And the Villain ones are hammy as opposed to crisp, but not bad hammy just like pointlessly hammy). In the prequels it falls everywhere.

*Part of the reason is that this dialogue isn't "moving". In that it doesn't give us new or interesting information besides saying "things are still the way they are". In Star Wars all of the dialogue that the X-wing pilots give actually define and structure the battle in a knowable way. They tell us when the battle starts "Set s-Foils to attack position". They tell us how the empire responds "The guns have stopped?! We have incoming ties from the rear". They let us know that each group is doing something specific and important and it makes us care about each pilot, even though we know that it has to be Luke in the end to blow the thing up. There is nothing like this in TFA. Just "we are still trying to blow up the thing with our weapons"

[HaemishM]

Plus prequels just suck regardless.

They are the dry humping of writing.

[eldaec]

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

The dialogue in episode 2 is just atrocious, particularly the romance shit.

You couldn't find an actor on earth who could have made that dialog sound good.

Fwiw, I thought McGregor and McDiarmid both did pretty well with what was in front of them.

Portman's and Christiansen's dialog was probably not salvagable.

[Shannow]

Plus prequels just suck regardless.

They are the dry humping of writing.

Pfft that's doing dry humping a disservice.

[Fabricated]

I was planning on buying this on Blu-ray or whatever and now with it being available I discover I don't have a particularly strong desire to rewatch it.

[BobtheSomething]

I was planning on buying this on Blu-ray or whatever and now with it being available I discover I don't have a particularly strong desire to rewatch it.

Uh oh.  That's the Into Darkness effect.  It only gets worse over time.

[lamaros]

Yeah, as was discussed when it came out it's a one and done movie. It's so shallow that watching it again offers no novel or imaginative rewards.

I was bored out of my brain on an international flight recently and decided to have a nap instead of watch it again.

[Khaldun]

I liked it but...yeah. There's not much hiding inside of it.

[Soln]

Needs a Director's cut!

[jgsugden]

I wanna see the train wreck of a Lucas edition.

[MahrinSkel]

Only thing I really got from watching it again is that I am pretty certain that Rey has to be Luke's daughter. That line after she touches the light sabre, has visions, and nopes out to the hallway seems like pretty clear telegraphing:

Maz - "That lightsaber was Luke's, and his father's before him and now it calls to you!"

This being right after Maz asked Han "Who's the girl?" and they cut away.

Other than that, yeah, it's a fun movie, but if there's much lurking under the surface (besides obviously cut scenes) we won't know until it comes up in the next two movies. Worth watching again, but you can just zone out between action scenes and not feel like you missed much.

--Dave

[Sir T]

I wanna see the train wreck of a Lucas edition.

Luke is now a Frog.

[Hutch]

Luke is now Yoda.

[Trippy]

angry.bob, stop shitting up non-Politics threads.

[angry.bob]

eh, fuck it. Anything posted outside of politics is going to be "shitting". whatevs, got it.

[Triforcer]

Actually just saw this for the first time on a plane today.  Loved it, my only gripe is that it does a very bad job explaining the political status of the galaxy as it stands 30 years after the battle of Endor.

Does the First Order control most/all/some of the galaxy?  How about the Republic?  Why are the Resistance and the Republic different?  How could the First Order "destroy" the Republic by killing one or two planets?  If you had a general scifi (but non-Star Wars) background, you'd come out of this thinking this was a fight between 2 or 3 neighboring planets.  

Maybe some of this was deliberate (i.e., leaving rich ground for novels, post-Endor pre-Episode 7 prequels, etc.) but this really irritated me.      

[kaid]

You pointing that out made me realize what the core problem was: Nobody, in the entire prequels, ever emoted positively. No happiness, the closest thing was Anakin being a smart ass to Kenobi. Even while Anakin and Padme were supposed to be falling in love, they showed about as much emotional involvement as if they were picking out socks.

Everyone started flat, got flatter, until suddenly everyone is pissed off in the last half of the last movie and mugging like they are doing an acting class and it is "Show me ANGER!" day. The only exceptions are the occasional glower from Anakin that was supposed to be foreshadowing...and the Emperor, the only character allowed to show emotion all through the prequels.

I am sure that Lucas thought he was making some sort of statement about how baroque and formal the Republic had become. He did it badly.

--Dave

Yea, there are a couple glimmers. But the dialogue itself is so flat, and the direction so flat that its unsavable.

Another example of flat dialogue in TFA is the non-poe x-wing pilots. I don't know what it is about them but it just screams "i am in no danger whatsoever and am reading a line of a teleprompter". As much as "almoost ther-ER!" is derided is actually sounds like someone talking to another person with trepidation and anxiety. And in TFA everyone is like "Shoot all our guns at that thing" "ok, shooting it more" "hit it with everything you've got" "ok hitting it with everything i have got the second time after i already hit it with all i had"*. Its weird, they aren't even robotic like say "Iceman" was robotic. They just existed.

The good thing about TFA is that the main characters don't really have much dialogue like this. The bad dialogue falls mainly onto supporting cast or transitioning cast and sometimes onto the villains(Finn has some bad ones but they're not flat bad, they're just pointless bad. And the Villain ones are hammy as opposed to crisp, but not bad hammy just like pointlessly hammy). In the prequels it falls everywhere.

*Part of the reason is that this dialogue isn't "moving". In that it doesn't give us new or interesting information besides saying "things are still the way they are". In Star Wars all of the dialogue that the X-wing pilots give actually define and structure the battle in a knowable way. They tell us when the battle starts "Set s-Foils to attack position". They tell us how the empire responds "The guns have stopped?! We have incoming ties from the rear". They let us know that each group is doing something specific and important and it makes us care about each pilot, even though we know that it has to be Luke in the end to blow the thing up. There is nothing like this in TFA. Just "we are still trying to blow up the thing with our weapons"

Ironically the pilots sounding like they are reading from a telepromter is pretty much fighter pilot 101 radio voice. If you ever hear radio chatter of actual fighter pilots it is like they are having a competition to see who is more blase about things exploding around them.

[eldaec]

Not unlike this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WBG2rJZGW8


The point about ANH dialog saying something more meaningful about the battle is a good one, I'm not sure reading off a teleprompter thing is as fair.