mormont

Thoughts and prayers.

The dirty secret that we fans need to acknowledge is, every Star Wars movie is a hot mess in its own way. Troubled productions, creative problems, plot holes, ideas that weren't thought through, directorial difficulties, studio interference, they all have at least some of these issues. It's amazing that we have any decent movies at all.

Read back a few posts please: I wasn't saying you'd said it. I was responding to this post by BoB. No, you didn't say it, but it was part of the conversation you entered into. The personal comment was gratuitous and rude, and really, I'm just going to peace out if that's the level we're operating on.

He is. IIRC, one of the right-wing columnists got him mixed up with Yousaf and talked about how Sarwar was the wrong choice for SNP leader. Which he was, to be fair. :p

That's fine. It isn't any less true because of that, though. But that aside, the idea that TLJ had any impact on the success of Solo seems like wishful thinking. There's simply no evidence to support it. Largely, films, even franchise films, succeed or fail on their own merits. No, it isn't. It's near universally unknown. If every person who ever read the Thrawn trilogy went to see films based on them, the audience would be (relative to most SW audiences) tiny. It may well be that the same things in Thrawn that appealed to the (relatively) hardcore fans would work for the sort of audience the 'main' SW trilogies have to attract. On the other hand, maybe they wouldn't.

The problem with Solo was that it was a badly-written movie that audiences hadn't really asked for with a miscast lead and a change of director. Blaming the marketing won't wash. Marketing starts before a film is made, when you identify the target audience. No amount of ads will work if people aren't interested. Nor will blaming TLJ, particularly since Solo was such a contrast - it was exactly what the TLJ critics said they wanted in a SW film, creatively safe and nostalgic literally to a fault.

[mod] Small topical note: The previous few posts concern demonstrations in New Zealand. Not in the UK. Yes, JK Rowling is British and intervenes in UK politics on this subject and I get that her comments are arguably therefore relevant to the thread. But what I'd prefer to avoid is a situation where any discussion of TERFism/trans rights anywhere in the world gets stuck in the UK Politics thread by default. Can we be mindful of that, please? Thank you. [/mod]

Is there anything more soul-sucking than a Wetherspoons 'pub'?

You don't do mass wave attacks with pikes! They're mostly a defensive weapon. It takes a lot of training and discipline to use them offensively. I don't know shit about tanks. I was feeling left out. :p

Why do you think they need all those foundlings?

I see Boris Johnson has adopted the classic Tory tactic when caught doing something wrong: the passive voice. https://www.itv.com/news/2023-03-21/does-boris-johnsons-defence-hold-water 'Was misled by my statements'. They were misled by something I said, but I didn't do it. It just sort of happened. Words came out of my mouth, and incidentally almost, people were misled by them. Perhaps an evil fairy cast a magic spell on the words as they crossed the air to the ears of the people listening. The important thing is, I didn't mean it. Don't judge me by my words, or the consequences of my words. Judge me by a mysterious inner state of intentionality that only I can ever hope to know for certain. Anything else would be completely unfair.

Yes, both the childcare and pensions measures appear to do more to hand money to upper middle class people already in work than to get economically inactive people back into work, which is their stated intention. I don't necessarily object to that, at least as far as the childcare subsidy goes: middle class earners should get benefits from the state, it gives them a stake in the system. But both things do look like tinkering with the economic issues rather than fixing them.

Here's the thing: not only have Andrew Neil et al been posting political tweets for years, so has Gary Lineker. This wasn't substantially different from dozens of his past tweets - except that a government minister, herself an ethical wasteland who thinks nothing of waving two fingers at the law, leaking confidential documents, and briefing against colleagues, seemingly took umbrage at it, backed by her boss, the clumsiest opportunist you will ever see. And then the BBC heirarchy decided to cave in immediately to get it over with by the weekend. Not even a token attempt to resist. But what they all didn't seem to understand was that the BBC needed Gary Lineker more than he needed them, because guess what, however much they need him, he doesn't need them at all. He clearly enjoys presenting MOTD but it's basically a beloved hobby rather than a job for him. He can get another gig, probably for more money, if he needs it. There was a point at which this all looked to be going rather well for the government, who'd rather be talking about Lineker's tweet than their rancid little bill. But they screwed it up. Couldn't happen to more despicable people.

I can see I shouldn't have just dropped that in! But I'll split this off. Chain mail - historically, generally just referred to as 'maille', which is French for a thing made of links (like a net or mesh) so the 'chain' part is really redundant. There are one or two contemporary references to 'chainmail' but mostly it's a later thing, and there's no such thing as plate mail or terms like that. Heater shield - named for its shape, like the face of a clothes iron, which Victorians called a heater because you heated it by the fire. In the times when it was used, they just called it a shield. Bonus: pea - historically this was 'pease', used in the same way as 'corn'. Because it ends in an -s sound, people assumed it was a plural (it wasn't) and that the singular must therefore be 'pea'.

Yeah, pole-axe is now an accepted and acceptable usage in the same way that 'chain mail' or 'heater shield' or indeed 'pea' are. But all of these are modern versions of the original terms, mostly based on later misunderstandings. Seriously getting off topic though. So back to Elon's misadventures.