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GuntherTheUndying
Crimson King, Eater of Worlds

Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2006 4:36 pm
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 3:24 pm 
 

See, those ideas would have been pretty cool to explore: Doubling down on Rey not having come from a super cosmic bloodline, and Kylo and Rey carving a new way with the Force that circumvents the dated battle between Jedi and Sith, like some weird grey area that teeters between good and evil, order and chaos. Hey, at least it would have been something new and fresh, and you gotta give Rian Johnson for at least kinda trying.
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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
Posts: 35183
Location: Where the dead rule the night
PostPosted: Thu Jan 02, 2020 4:55 pm 
 

GuntherTheUndying wrote:
See, those ideas would have been pretty cool to explore: Doubling down on Rey not having come from a super cosmic bloodline, and Kylo and Rey carving a new way with the Force that circumvents the dated battle between Jedi and Sith, like some weird grey area that teeters between good and evil, order and chaos. Hey, at least it would have been something new and fresh, and you gotta give Rian Johnson for at least kinda trying.


Exactly, yeah. That would have been a much better story if the whole trilogy was around that. It can acknowledge the old films while being like 'OK, well, now we're doing something new because it's a new generation of children.' But no, instead people wanted a brainless commercial.
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darkeningday
xXdArKenIngDayXx

Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2004 1:20 pm
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Location: United States
PostPosted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 2:09 am 
 

I can't believe I'm even reading the criticism that RoS is a "brainless commercial" when Johnson gave the world PORGs and fucking ice wolves. Johnson's entire brand is brainless commercialism. You can certainly say the same for Abrams, but at least his commercials are (sometimes) entertaining.

I am in no way defending RoS or the director. But at least Abrams never made a movie where Emily Blunt licks her hand to have a wank.
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Morrigan
Crone of War

Joined: Sat Aug 10, 2002 7:27 am
Posts: 10528
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 5:13 am 
 

UtUmNo1 wrote:
Half way through The Last Jedi Rian Johnson had killed the bad guy, made the new heroine nothing and turned Kylo into a doodle. The movie ended with everyone dead and no hope - it could very well have been the finale.

The fuck was JJ supposed to do? Last film in a trilogy and no bad guy, no hero, no story and no overarching plot.

lol, what. Is this trolling?

No bad guy: Kylo Ren is the bad guy
No hero: Rey is still a hero, very powerful in the Force, she just doesn't have magical parents
No story/plot: what is this nonsense
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darkeningday
xXdArKenIngDayXx

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PostPosted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 6:29 am 
 

Rey's parents not being the duke and duchess of Coruscant was good and all but giving Johnson credit for it is a bit like giving the guy who directed the Beauty and the Beast remake credit for introducing Disney's first gay character. It's long past the date of it being groundbreaking (hey your bloodline doesn't influence what you can accomplish, what a novel idea) and about as difficult to integrate into the film as Pepsi products in a Transformers movie.
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GuntherTheUndying
Crimson King, Eater of Worlds

Joined: Mon Apr 24, 2006 4:36 pm
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 3:09 pm 
 

For a franchise as creatively bankrupt and without any sort of remaining magic as Star Wars, standing firm that a main character is not the offspring of a super space Jesus bloodline is as bold as it gets.
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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 04, 2020 4:13 pm 
 

darkeningday wrote:
I can't believe I'm even reading the criticism that RoS is a "brainless commercial" when Johnson gave the world PORGs and fucking ice wolves. Johnson's entire brand is brainless commercialism. You can certainly say the same for Abrams, but at least his commercials are (sometimes) entertaining.

I am in no way defending RoS or the director. But at least Abrams never made a movie where Emily Blunt licks her hand to have a wank.


It's all brainless commercialism, sure, but ROS was just much worse than most of the other ones. I know my last post made it seem like the old ones or even the previous two are grand deep works of art, but they were solid and entertaining and ROS isn't. So it's much less distraction this time from how commercialized it all is.
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Space_alligator
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 11, 2020 11:31 pm 
 

I feel like the last 3 movies skipped along with no real purpose except to bring back characters from the original trilogy and did too much referencing to the orginal triliogy.

Where Lucas offered a back story to events that happened, everything that happened in the sequel trilogy "just happened". How did the First Order get so huge and put the Resistance in a poor position to start of with? Not too mention "Somehow Palpatine returned".

Way too many characters introduced too as part as convenient solutions to problems faced by the Resistance.

Rey being Palpatine's grand-daughter...just messy.
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~Guest 454771
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 12, 2020 10:27 am 
 

We all know the truth. There had to be fifty thousand locations and fifty million characters to satisfy disney demands for action figures and lego play sets. Star Wars has always been a product sure, but here the tail is wagging the dog off a cliff. The execs were calculating returns on episode IX/Angry Birds crossover mobile games before the script for VII was written. There could never have been a simple, heroic story arc with these requirements to absolutely maximize the amount of "stuff" on screen.

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Resident_Hazard
Possessed by Starscream's Ghost

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PostPosted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 10:49 am 
 

Well, I finally saw it with my son.

It's a very meh movie. The first half roars by at a truly exhausting pace a la any given Michael Bay film, especially Transformers: The Last Knight. Which was 2.5 hours long and still felt like a rushed mess of a movie. During the first half, there is barely a moment of dialog longer than one sentence. Action scenes flash by so fucking fast, I literally do not remember any of it. Right away they're... space-hopping from planet-to-planet or some shit, and I had no clue what the urgency was outside of flashing as much visual flair at us as possible.

SPOILERS FOLLOW, BUT I'M UNDER THE ASSUMPTION THIS IS OKAY HERE:

Characters seem like they're starting their relationships over, and the planet the... Resistance... is on just happens to have every character they met in the previous two films. So it felt like these characters hardly knew each other, at the same time, there seemed to be sexual tension between nearly everyone--EXCEPT THE TWO FUCKING PEOPLE WHO KISSED. What the actual fuck was that? It was infinitely more telegraphed that Finn and Poe would fuck than Rey and Ren would ever kiss.

Too many "big bads" in the film. Who the fuck am I expecting to lose here? Who's the real threat? Kylo Ren? This random-ass bad guy General? Palpatine? None of them had enough bad guy time in this trilogy. Their turns/defeats were all anti-climactic. Where the fuck did this massive fleet of Star Destroyers come from? Sure, putting a planet killing gun on each one is a wacky idea, but it's also the typical overkill of an Abrams film where he over-ramps the threat because he can't tell a compelling story with characters or plot. Just like how he started the new trilogy with his "bigger Jaws" Death Star.

They also missed the logical end that would have been infinitely more satisfying: Using one of their planet-killer Star Destroyers to destroy the fucking Sith planet and actually put an end to things. They didn't because obviously it'll be so much harder to just make another trilogy without it. They chickened out in favor of leaving sequel fuel instead of giving us a fucking ending.

JJ Abrams is just a fucking bad director and a worse writer. This trilogy had a major problem in that there was no consistency in the story, plotting, or character development. Plot-wise, they generally failed to build really good stakes. They never had a good villain throughout the entire mess. I always hated Snoke as a bad guy. He was just an awful CG Palpatine wanna-be that had no good story to him at all.

Now, we see vats filled with Snokes. What the fucking fuck? Palpatine can just clone up a bunch of power Force-enabled underlings? WHY DO THEY EVEN NEED STORMTROOPERS? This, again, is typical Abrams. He throws shit in the film that looks flashy or he thinks will be cool, with no thought at all to how it creates massive plotholes or upends his own storytelling. Another example is that dreadful Star Trek: Into Darkness plotting where suddenly there is transporter technology that just pops you across the galaxy. The ships are fucking useless at that point. That's the end of the traditional franchise right there because after that, instant teleportation would have become the norm!

And here we have Abrams delivering Deus Ex Whatthefucks left and right. Vats filled with Snokes. A planet covered in Star Destroyers with planet-killing cannons built by a phantom workforce. The Sith as a weird fucking cult. Being Sith Malcovich ideas with "every previous Sith inside me".

There were a few high points, and some genuinely warm moments in the film, but they were crowded with nonsense. Palpatine's death was anticlimactic. The stakes, even with a sky filled with ships, never felt very urgent. Character development largely vanished for most characters, and a lot of character motivations simply did not make sense. I'm still not completely sure why Rey wanted to destroy Luke's lightsaber. Where Episode VIII had some pacing issues with the middle being a slog that moved too slowly and locked the film in a single location for too long, this film jumped around so constantly that it was impossible to follow. Do these locations or planets matter?

Oh, and the Goonie-esque "line up the thing on the shoreline with the shape in something" also does not make any sense. At first, they acted as if this Sith blade was some ancient weapon, but it then turned out to be only 20-ish years old. Someone had carved the blade to follow the shape of part of the wrecked Death Star and... that was a map somehow? I also found it strange that Palpatine's old throne room was basically behind the fucking super laser of the second Death Star. That seems like odd placement. It's a ruined spacecraft that is deteriorating in an ocean. They acted like this was to follow an ancient, long-buried treasure. This would have made more sense for Kylo Ren finding the other Sith Compass.

The film is a mess of flashy special effects, hectic action scenes, and baffling character motivations. Dialog delivered too quickly in the first half to the point it's basically just there to move us from scene to scene. Why did the First Order tow the Millennium Falcon onto their ship? Why, so the good guys have a way to escape, of course. Grahhhh

I'm disappointed.
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Timeghoul
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 3:25 pm 
 

I liked it, but its what I expected. I would of love to seen the bad guys win, but that never happens.

I would like to know how

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Lando was able to destroy a few hundred Star Destroyers, with the forces he showed up with. It was a real rag tag group to. Looked like there was everything in there from the garbage trucks of Ksar Hadada, along with the degenerate group of fighters he went and gathered. The Star Destroyers couldn't get underway, but do they still not have ship defenses? Lando was able to destroy a fleet of Star Destroyers? Hundreds of destroyers?
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Oxenkiller
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 9:28 pm 
 

They probably didn't have full crews aboard yet to man them. My speculation.

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Resident_Hazard
Possessed by Starscream's Ghost

Joined: Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:33 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 10:09 am 
 

Oxenkiller wrote:
They probably didn't have full crews aboard yet to man them. My speculation.


They were preparing to launch those ships. So they had crews.
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henkkjelle
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 10:26 am 
 

It looked cool and they're the good guys, so they won. That's as far as the reasoning went.
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LunarisIsDead
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Dec 04, 2019 6:14 pm
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 12:47 pm 
 

It really felt like Abrams tried to continue his original vision for the trilogy instead of building off of The Last Jedi. There are interesting ideas at play, but there's so much crammed into it and nothing gets a lot of development or time. It's like we're missing a movie that a lot of this stuff could've been introduced in. It's a sequel to the second movie of HIS trilogy, a movie that doesn't exist. Honestly if he had written and directed all three movies, they might not have been GREAT, but at the very least it would've been more cohesive.

The rest of the post might just be a mess of ideas I'm trying to articulate, so bear with me.

I'll start off with the things I liked, and the first thing is... Rey being a Palpatine. Yes, it would've been cool if she had been a nobody, but having the blood of the main antagonist of the saga in her was interesting, and was something I wanted to see further the themes of identity obviously being presented. Unfortunately, the movie decided to shit all over it right at the end. "Don't be afraid of who you are" was something that felt so obvious to run off of, and the movie DID, but right in that last scene she calls herself "Skywalker". I cannot begin to tell you how much that line infuriates me. It felt like instead of accepting and making peace with the blood in her veins with the knowledge that it doesn't dictate her actions, she was just in denial. "Nope, not related to THAT freak. I'm a Skywalker!! Because I'm not evil and obviously that means I am not a Palpatine." It doesn't feel like and end to a character arc, it doesn't feel satisfying, and it left me completely dumbfounded.

Oops. Was supposed to be talking about the stuff I LIKED. Let's keep doing that.
The dynamic between the two main characters, Rey and Ben, was refreshing. This ties back into the theme of identity again. Here we have two characters who at the beginning of the trilogy, are both pretty solidly on the dark and light side respectively. There are glimpses of Ben struggling with the light side, but mostly he is an angery dark boi. Ben, the villain, is a Skywalker, and Rey, the hero, is a Palpatine, and while that isn't some genius piece of storytelling, it's cool. Things develop and both of them begin to struggle with the pull of both sides of the force. They're still presented as hero and villain but that area becomes more gray, however it's mostly done with Ben. There could've been a lot more playing with Rey being tempted by the dark side. This was done with Luke and Vader, but here Ben was given a lot of focus and of course it has a different feel to it and all that.

This is something that felt pretty fresh, and could've been a strong dynamic that tied into a strong theme across the course of the trilogy. The elements were there, The Force Awakens set things up pretty well and all that. But it just WASN'T what it could be. And that's because 2/3 of this trilogy is an absolute mess. There's so much that doesn't need to be there, so much that could've USED that time to be developed, underused/misused characters, too many useless undeveloped characters, way too much happening...

And that is what feeds the core of my feeling towards this movie. It just shows me that this trilogy could've been SO MUCH. There are good ideas, glimpses of interesting themes and characters and development, and everything had the potential to fit together well and create a satisfying three movie trilogy. But it just was NOT well done at all. I'm not going to place all the blame on The Last Jedi. Obviously it all would've been way better had it all been done under Abrams, but honestly I think if we went back in time and that IS what happened, it would've been pretty good/decent at best. It's all just very sad. Wasted potential makes me sad and that's what I see when I think about this movie and the trilogy in general.

Also for Christ's sake they DIDN'T USE FINN AT ALL.

Anyway sorry if my words didn't carry across my thoughts well.
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Oxenkiller
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 8:59 pm 
 

I didn't see much of Rose in the finale either, which I thought was odd. I dunno, they did cram an awful lot into the film so I suppose I can understand they couldn't write a major role for everyone.

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droneriot
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 14, 2020 9:07 pm 
 

Already petering out at the box office, and while it should still comfortably overtake Toy Story 4 and Aladdin, Captain Marvel and Spider-Man seem completely out of reach already and it'll probably end up the third worst performing Disney movie from 2019.
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Resident_Hazard
Possessed by Starscream's Ghost

Joined: Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:33 pm
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 15, 2020 11:02 am 
 

Oxenkiller wrote:
I didn't see much of Rose in the finale either, which I thought was odd. I dunno, they did cram an awful lot into the film so I suppose I can understand they couldn't write a major role for everyone.


Abrams pretty clearly ignored and cast off The Last Jedi and made a sequel to a film that doesn't exist.

The biggest problem with this trilogy is that there was no gameplan at the start, no consistent storyteller, and no goal. Abrams came in and basically created a greatest hits film mashing together the previous six films in one with his trademark unending scenes of flashy, over-the-top action. It was formulaic and predictable and easy. Rian Johnson seemed to think fans wanted something new to expand the universe, created something new, and gave us character depth, but cast off some of Abram's stuff. He gave a soft middle finger to Abrams, so Abrams came back and gave a hard middle finger to Johnson, and Disney allowed two directors to have an ego battle with a beloved franchise, because who fucking cares, you'll all still see it and buy a shitload of fucking toys and themed products for it anyway.

With the original trilogy, each film had George Lucas putting the story together, but different directors for each: George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Richard Marquand. Director egos did not ruin these films, and they did not greatly fight one another when it came to the story. This was also before George Lucas was a person no one could say "no" to. The franchise was not the immortal cultural icon it is now. If Empire or Jedi had sucked, the franchise may not have survived the way it is now.

Now it doesn't fucking matter. They can keep shitting out lazy Star Wars movies and they'll still make millions. Disney did not fucking care. Star Wars movies exist to sell toys and video games and bed sheets and bath towels and magic 8-balls and Sith toilet paper and whatever the fuck else.

Abrams and Johnson should never have been given the freedom they were given, especially on the story. Each movie should've had a different director. A third director for the third movie might have actually tried tying things together, instead of fucking off to do whatever they wanted.
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Oxenkiller
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 15, 2020 9:18 pm 
 

That is an interesting take on it. Yeah, it did seem like there was only a vague concept of a "First Order" that people were fighting, but not a lot of continuity with the overall story arc, and no overarching vision holding things together. So hence, the "movies made to sell merchandise" feel of it- I hadn't thought of that but you're right. For what its worth I did enjoy all 3 "New" movies to some degree or other. "The Last Jedi" I thought was the weakest of the 3 "First order trilogy" but it might have been better remembered if this newest one had felt like more of a continuation of it, and not a totally disconnected plot with some of the same characters.

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Space_alligator
Metalhead

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PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 6:58 am 
 

Last 3 movies pretty much are reboots of the original trilogy really:

Film 1. Force sensitve character finds droid and joins up with a motley crew of galaxy castaways, fly away and join a rebellion against the badies in the Falcon

Film 2. Rebels face off against the baddies on a largely ice planet with land bases warefare defending a base before they launch into space. Force sensitve user goes to weird planet to practice jedi.

Film 3. Force sensitve chatacter goes on journey to defeat the sith lord, previous bad sith user does one good deed before dying and saving firce sensitve character. Rebels against all odds defeat the badies with a few good laser beams.
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Resident_Hazard
Possessed by Starscream's Ghost

Joined: Thu Oct 07, 2004 2:33 pm
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:06 am 
 

Oxenkiller wrote:
That is an interesting take on it. Yeah, it did seem like there was only a vague concept of a "First Order" that people were fighting, but not a lot of continuity with the overall story arc, and no overarching vision holding things together. So hence, the "movies made to sell merchandise" feel of it- I hadn't thought of that but you're right. For what its worth I did enjoy all 3 "New" movies to some degree or other. "The Last Jedi" I thought was the weakest of the 3 "First order trilogy" but it might have been better remembered if this newest one had felt like more of a continuation of it, and not a totally disconnected plot with some of the same characters.


My girlfriend hasn't seen Rise of Skywalker yet (I went with my son), but she likes Last Jedi more than Force Awakens, so I know she's going to be very disappointed with Rise of Skywalker because Abrams basically disregarded Last Jedi. She liked the character development and the inclusiveness, and Last Jedi at least tried new ideas, even though that second act was kind of a slog.

I have no opinion on which is the best, but Rise of Skywalker is definitely the worst. This movie, the more I think about it, is damn near Phantom Menace bad, with the caveat that Phantom Menace sucks more on acting and visuals, while Rise of Skywalker sucks on overall story and consistency. They both have shitty pacing in opposite regards. PM is too slow and meandering, RoS is too fast and hectic. They both drop the ball on character development, narrative logic, and fill the screen with exhausting visual overload.

Chris Stuckmann on YouTube has a concept he calls "Phantom Menacing" where people are so hyped about something, they can't admit it's bad. And he applies that to Rogue One, which is a film that he argues gets worse with every viewing, and I agree with him--on all new Star Wars movies thus far. I think Rise of Skywalker is such a mess, it actually fucks up this entire trilogy, lowering the quality of all of them together. To that point, I think fans right now aren't willing to admit this trilogy is, as a whole, only barely better than the prequels, and... may not actually be better. Episode III certainly had problems--I find the bulk of the first act cringe-inducing. But then, despite the overly choreographed light saber duel and "nooooo" is actually quite good. They at least went out on a high note.

Overall fanbase opinion will be like this:

Force Awakens: "That was pretty entertaining, despite a total lack of originality. It was safe, but I'm entertained. It was pretty good."
Last Jedi: "Hmmm, okay so that changed things. I wanted new stuff and this is new, but I don't know how I feel here? I'm polarized."
Rise of Skywalker: "I uhh... Boy this was bad. This is a mess. Did he even watch the previous movies?"
Trilogy together: "Oh, looking at them together, this is a mess. Are these bad? I think these are bad. Ugh, I don't want to say they're bad..."
2025: "That sequel trilogy was worse than the fucking prequels. At least those had a consistent story."
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Resident_Hazard
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:13 am 
 

Oh and it sounds like the original script for Episode IX would have been much better and actually tied the trilogy together.

Quote:

First up is the opening crawl, which establishes that the First Order now dominates the entire galaxy, save for a few planets. The movie starts with a raid on a First Order shipyard, revealing that Rey has forged a double-sided lightsaber from her weapon and Luke Skywalker's. The raid goes wrong, but Rey, Poe, Finn, Rose (who seems to have more to do in this opening than Episode 9 itself) and BB-8 make off with a First Order star destroyer.

Hux is now Chancellor on an oppressed Coruscant. Kylo Ren, meanwhile, is on the Episode 3 planet Mustafar, haunted by Luke Skywalker's ghost. He finds a Sith Holocron containing a message from Palpatine meant for Vader, encouraging Vader to seek out Palpatine's master, Tor Valum, in the event of his death (what happened to two Sith at a time, eh?).

Rey is training as a Jedi, and communicating with Luke's ghost. The ultimate goal of the Resistance in this draft is to activate a beacon that's situated under Coruscant designed to put out a distress call to 50 planets, which they almost achieve before the First Order stops the message from going out.

Kylo Ren meets Tor Valum, characterized as an ancient 'Lovecraftian' Sith alien. Leia teams up with Lando to arrange help from smugglers in overturning the First Order's rule, and the final battle occurs on Coruscant, off the back of civil unrest sparked by Finn and the droids.

Rey defeats the Knights of Ren in battle, and she finally confronts Kylo Ren himself. Kylo Ren reveals he killed Rey's parents at the behest of Snoke. Failing to turn to the light side despite the appearances of Luke, Yoda and Obi-Wan as Force ghosts, Kylo simply dies. The First Order ultimately loses.

There are big gaps in the story from this synopsis, but the choice of Coruscant as a centerpoint for the story seems like a cool idea. Well, better than lots of secret star destroyers coming out of the sea at the behest of a cloned Palpatine, anyway.

It reads like absurd fan fiction in some ways, but it's less of a breathless MacGuffin chase than the finished Episode 9 is. It also treats Kylo Ren as truly lost to the dark side of the Force, which was clearly the point of the decisions he made in The Last Jedi. There's also no suggestion that Rey is a Palpatine, which was one of Episode 9's most divisive choices.


Not only does this sound better overall, but it connects the story, allows space for character arcs to conclude, and actually defines how the First Order is a threat instead of making up a fucking reverse deus ex machina new threat from out of fucking nowhere.
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droneriot
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 10:17 am 
 

Disney trilogy vs prequels not a fair comparison in my opinion because for me the prequels were really elevated by both Clone Wars shows (the first more so than the second) and I can't view the movies out of that context anymore. Clone Wars showed a lot more Palpatine manipulation, showed a lot more of Anakin's character development so his turn to the dark side wasn't as randomly abrupt as it was with only having seen the movies, it showed a lot more of Count Dooku and General Grievous and turned them into important characters to care about, showed a lot more of the Anakin/Padme relationship so it actually made sense as a real relationship, showed a lot more of how the droids vs clones war was entirely orchestrated by Palpatine with no intended winner and only serving the purpose of increasing his power, shows a lot more about how the prophecy of the chosen one fits into everything, etc.
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GuntherTheUndying
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 11:16 am 
 

You could say the new trilogy is just a gigantic waste of potential and opportunity. Hell, if I could change the course of time, I would have rather had Disney utilize Lucas for additional ideas and input or even use his ideas outright. Yeah, the prequels were ass, but imagine having the original cast back with a different story instead of throwaway adventures with useless shits like Finn or Rose Tico or whatever the fuck. That, kids, is a risk I would be willing to take.

Hot take: The sequel trilogy should have been made around the time the prequels were made.
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Timeghoul
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 16, 2020 1:58 pm 
 

GuntherTheUndying wrote:
You could say the new trilogy is just a gigantic waste of potential and opportunity. Hell, if I could change the course of time, I would have rather had Disney utilize Lucas for additional ideas and input or even use his ideas outright. Yeah, the prequels were ass, but imagine having the original cast back with a different story instead of throwaway adventures with useless shits like Finn or Rose Tico or whatever the fuck. That, kids, is a risk I would be willing to take.

Hot take: The sequel trilogy should have been made around the time the prequels were made.
I would of loved it if they had done more with the original cast. Done something like Shadows of the Empire. A store base off of the in between times of the original trilogy.
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~Guest 454771
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 8:41 pm 
 

How about just not having them all be miserable sadsacks? Han is done with everything, Leia is a crap general who leads them into failure after failure, Luke fucked up everything and went off to mope... The first sequel undoes everything that was accomplished at the end of the original trilogy. In the originals: the rebels defeat the empire, the heroes destroy the evil superweapons, Luke goes from idealistic youth to wise jedi, Han and Leia get together... in the sequels the empire (first order) is stronger than ever, they have an unlimited supply of superweapons, Luke is a broken loser, and Han and Leia are divorced and their kid is evil. Nothing the original cast accomplished mattered at all, and they all died sad, pathetic deaths in the new movies. It's no wonder the actors looked so done and broken. Especially Mark, poor guy. :(

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Eradicatedseraphim
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 18, 2020 2:28 pm 
 

I guess I'm in the minority that didn't mind Luke's change. Human beings have faults and in the end he ultimately realized it too late as he stopped himself, and Kylo ended up a transition to the dark side. I liked that Rian at least attempted to see the faults in heroes even if Luke made some nonsensical choices later (like really how are you going to give up hope when you redeemed Vader???) and the stupid crap on that salt planet. I still loved how TLJ expanded on the mythos of the force, which the PT films completely glossed over which lame perfunctory speeches from the Jedi. Rise of Skywalker was just a muddled mess, they shouldve just stuck with a final confrontation between Rey and Kylo. The stuff with Palpatine was incredibly rushed and led to tons of plot holes.
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~Guest 454771
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 19, 2020 9:59 am 
 

The Last Jedi had the only good ideas, and they were: having the bad guy become good and the good guy become bad, some kind of shades of grey sith/jedi fusion, making the force for everyone and not just the elect bloodlines, and that's it. Those should have been what the third movie was about. Kylo and Rey join forces and resolve the perpetual conflict by finding some kind of accord, the old ideologies are discarded, and a new understanding of the force as some kind of universal force that can be used for the benefit of all arises. I think that's the direction Johnson was trying to take the story, but he was hamstrung by having to to include that stupid ending to mirror the hoth battle and I'm sure a million other instances of executive meddling. Still a bad movie but the only attempt to make a new story.

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Chinese_Whispers
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 7:28 am 
 

I had a rewatch of The Last Jedi the other day, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more the second time around. I don’t know if knowing all the ‘twists’ already dulled my initial disappointment, but I could enjoy it for what it was. The humour was still about off to me (for a Star Wars film), but at least it wasn’t Jar Jar comic relief. Even though J.J. kinda pulled the carpet up from under everything Johnson put into place, he couldn’t forgo the Force Timing of Rey and Kylo. Those are still some of the best scenes from both films.

It did reinforce that this trilogy was a bit of a wasted opportunity due to the lack of a plan, but what are ya gonna do? I kinda feel like the third trilogy probably needed to happen in the late-80s/early-90s with the original trio as the focus, just simply because there were so many great stories in the canon from books, comics, etc. in the expanded universe that I enjoyed far more.

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GuntherTheUndying
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 2:54 pm 
 

Did anyone else skim the leaked script from Colin Trevorrow - the original guy running the ship before JJ took over? It looked kinda interesting. Pretty much he had a Sith Yoda as a villain and doubled down on The Last Jedi.
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droneriot
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 21, 2020 5:11 pm 
 

Mellifleur wrote:
How about just not having them all be miserable sadsacks? Han is done with everything, Leia is a crap general who leads them into failure after failure, Luke fucked up everything and went off to mope... The first sequel undoes everything that was accomplished at the end of the original trilogy. In the originals: the rebels defeat the empire, the heroes destroy the evil superweapons, Luke goes from idealistic youth to wise jedi, Han and Leia get together... in the sequels the empire (first order) is stronger than ever, they have an unlimited supply of superweapons, Luke is a broken loser, and Han and Leia are divorced and their kid is evil. Nothing the original cast accomplished mattered at all, and they all died sad, pathetic deaths in the new movies. It's no wonder the actors looked so done and broken. Especially Mark, poor guy. :(

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Twisted_Psychology
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 11:04 am 
 

On the bright side, the trailer for the new Clone Wars season looks pretty stellar. At this point, I don't want any more Star Wars movies; I want more TV shows.

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Sedition and Pockets
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 11:48 am 
 

Twisted_Psychology wrote:
On the bright side, the trailer for the new Clone Wars season looks pretty stellar. At this point, I don't want any more Star Wars movies; I want more TV shows.



Agreed. The tv format just gives so much more space to the world building at the heart of Star Wars.
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thrashinbatman
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 4:23 pm 
 

GuntherTheUndying wrote:
Did anyone else skim the leaked script from Colin Trevorrow - the original guy running the ship before JJ took over? It looked kinda interesting. Pretty much he had a Sith Yoda as a villain and doubled down on The Last Jedi.

It's marginally better but would also have been pretty bad. I'm not really sure there's a way to make a IX that's particularly satisfying given what VII and VIII give you, but Trevorrow's script is definitely not it.

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kybernetic
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 22, 2020 6:16 pm 
 

droneriot wrote:
Disney trilogy vs prequels not a fair comparison in my opinion because for me the prequels were really elevated by both Clone Wars shows (the first more so than the second) and I can't view the movies out of that context anymore. Clone Wars showed a lot more Palpatine manipulation, showed a lot more of Anakin's character development so his turn to the dark side wasn't as randomly abrupt as it was with only having seen the movies, it showed a lot more of Count Dooku and General Grievous and turned them into important characters to care about, showed a lot more of the Anakin/Padme relationship so it actually made sense as a real relationship, showed a lot more of how the droids vs clones war was entirely orchestrated by Palpatine with no intended winner and only serving the purpose of increasing his power, shows a lot more about how the prophecy of the chosen one fits into everything, etc.


Yep to all of this, very spot on. The Clone Wars show actually was quite entertaining and really developed a lot of characters much further than the movies ever would allow. They honestly should have been released in tandem with the films to get the full effect, I'd say.

As for Resident_Hazard's Star Wars timeline, I'm saying the prequels are better now and not in 2025. The evidence is in already, no need to wait 5 more years. *Tips hipster cap*
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Resident_Hazard
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:36 am 
 

DrummingEdge133 wrote:
droneriot wrote:
Disney trilogy vs prequels not a fair comparison in my opinion because for me the prequels were really elevated by both Clone Wars shows (the first more so than the second) and I can't view the movies out of that context anymore. Clone Wars showed a lot more Palpatine manipulation, showed a lot more of Anakin's character development so his turn to the dark side wasn't as randomly abrupt as it was with only having seen the movies, it showed a lot more of Count Dooku and General Grievous and turned them into important characters to care about, showed a lot more of the Anakin/Padme relationship so it actually made sense as a real relationship, showed a lot more of how the droids vs clones war was entirely orchestrated by Palpatine with no intended winner and only serving the purpose of increasing his power, shows a lot more about how the prophecy of the chosen one fits into everything, etc.


Yep to all of this, very spot on. The Clone Wars show actually was quite entertaining and really developed a lot of characters much further than the movies ever would allow. They honestly should have been released in tandem with the films to get the full effect, I'd say.

As for Resident_Hazard's Star Wars timeline, I'm saying the prequels are better now and not in 2025. The evidence is in already, no need to wait 5 more years. *Tips hipster cap*


I have an issue with the prequel trilogy being better because of a TV series that goes with it. Chris Stuckmann makes a good point on it during his videos on Phantom Menacing, in that these movies should be good movies on their own. They shouldn't have to release books or TV shows or comic books or games or whatever to fill in plot-holes to make them good. Rogue One totally lacks character development and has a litany of other issues, but don't worry--they fixed them in some books. No they didn't, the movie still sucks.

That noted, I can appreciate that additional stuff can make things better, my point is only that it shouldn't be necessary. It should just be additional, fun story. Like Shadows of the Empire. It didn't fill plot holes to fix films, it was a stand-alone story in the universe that was a lot of fun. It doesn't exist to make Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi "better." Those movies still stand on their own.

Rogue One came featured a bunch of bullshit books to "expand" the film to make it salvageable. The new trilogy is getting those books, and they're going to need an entire encyclopedia set of novels to fix what's wrong with Rise of Skywalker alone.

This is part of a gripe that these movies are no different than fucking EA games. They're selling us a third of a game for full price and then requiring us to pay the same amount again for the next third in DLC. They aren't selling us complete games, and Disney isn't selling us complete movies. They're giving us substandard entertainment for premium price, and if we want it to be "good," we have to keep paying for more of this shit.

At least the Clone Wars series was on TV that you already pay for. So at least that DLC was free-ish.
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kybernetic
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 28, 2020 5:43 pm 
 

Resident_Hazard wrote:
This is part of a gripe that these movies are no different than fucking EA games. They're selling us a third of a game for full price and then requiring us to pay the same amount again for the next third in DLC. They aren't selling us complete games, and Disney isn't selling us complete movies. They're giving us substandard entertainment for premium price, and if we want it to be "good," we have to keep paying for more of this shit.

At least the Clone Wars series was on TV that you already pay for. So at least that DLC was free-ish.


I don't think you can say this about the prequel films though. I personally like them as they are, at least 1 and 3. 2 was the weakest of the first 6 films, but passable. Could they have been better? Sure, but at least they told a coherent story from start to finish, unlike the sequel trilogy. That's why the prequels will always be better, no matter what comes out later on regarding the sequel trilogy. The sequel trilogy is just not a coherent trilogy, its rife with so many ad hocs and insanely stupid twists that were obviously made up on the spot, that it renders it cringey to me. As I've said before, they got the wrong directors in the wrong order to make the sequel trilogy. And for the love of god, next time, at least keep the same writer in the damn loop through all three films.

The Clone Wars enhanced what I felt was already a decent enough prequel trilogy. I understand that so many people hate these films, but I just don't think they're as bad as people make them out to be.
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droneriot
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 28, 2020 6:05 pm 
 

In the next few days Rise of Skywalker will overtake Aladdin as second least successful Disney release of 2019 and I think it will stay there, unless there's some "special edition" that'll get the extra millions to put it past Toy Story 4. It was advertise as the Star Wars equivalent of Avengers Endgame, instead it became the Star Wars equivalent of awkward blue-painted Will Smith.

JJ should really return to his old job of getting coffee for Michael Bay and learn a bit more about making action blockbuster sequels. The general rule is very simple: Make every movie bigger than the last = People keep paying. Make every movie pretty much the same = People stop paying. For Star Wars it's actually very simple: Write a story that says that the Sith are actually just an offshoot of a much more ancient, much more powerful and much more sinister cult and start off with that cult returning to reclaim their past status and wiping out the Sith in the first movie and showing how Palpatine and Vader and all are basically small fish compared to the ancient cult. Don't forget to take copious amounts of "inspiration" (Bad Robot code word for copy & paste) from H.P. Lovecraft to have some truly monstrous bad guys. That's basically how the sequels could have turned out following the action blockbuster rule of thumb, keep escalating, make everything bigger. You can still have your Reys and your Kylos and all, just put them in a completely apocalyptic scenario. Link it to the old movies by saying that Palpatine was the last thing that kept the ancient cult in check and with his death they could begin to reclaim their power, that's how the original trilogy led to that apocalyptic nightmare, something like that.
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Last edited by droneriot on Tue Jan 28, 2020 9:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Oxenkiller
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 28, 2020 8:52 pm 
 

That would have been an interesting, and very creative, alternate storyline, actually.

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darkeningday
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:06 am 
 

Aladdin was a surprise box-office smash hit, so no doubt Disney and JJ have been overjoyed and even relieved at RotS's stellar success. Now Solo... that's a different story entirely.
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