Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (among other things, wink wink) SPOILERS

[Nictarion]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

Even though the fight makes no sense. I'm sorry, but you kill the guards before you kill Snoke. If I was a guard and my job was to guard someone, I'm not going to risk my life to defend that persons corpse, after they're dead. Those guys should bow to Kylo Ren or run away. The fact that they're risking their lives for no reason is just silly.

Maybe they just hated Kylo as much as Hux did.

[sifth]

23 minutes ago, Nictarion said:

Maybe they just hated Kylo as much as Hux did.

If only the movie told us this, lol

[felice]

45 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

The Rebellion is Rogue One is just as universally human as the Empire.

I think that's a flaw with the prequels. In the OT, the Empire and the Republic before it obviously ruled human-occupied space, with aliens only being common on fringe worlds like Tatooine. The massively multi-species Senate of the prequels doesn't fit at all well with what was previously established. Virtually all the major characters in all of the movies are human. Rogue One did do a particularly bad job at distinguishing its characters, though - all dark haired, almost all the guys with beards, all wearing dark drab outfits.

[Lord Varys]

21 minutes ago, felice said:

I think that's a flaw with the prequels. In the OT, the Empire and the Republic before it obviously ruled human-occupied space, with aliens only being common on fringe worlds like Tatooine. The massively multi-species Senate of the prequels doesn't fit at all well with what was previously established. Virtually all the major characters in all of the movies are human. Rogue One did do a particularly bad job at distinguishing its characters, though - all dark haired, almost all the guys with beards, all wearing dark drab outfits.

No, if it is a flaw it is flaw with the OT the PT corrected. We don't see many worlds in the OT, anyway. In fact, aside from Endor and Tatooine we only see military basis - Cloud City is no planet, just a colony in space.

And Yoda and Chewie are not human. That the PT had human main characters sort of goes back to it being the Skywalker back story - Obi-Wan, Anakin, his wife, etc. couldn't be non-humans. But many secondary characters were - the Neimoidians, Geonosians, Kaminoans, etc. Not to mention the Jedi Council guys.

[sifth]

5 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

No, if it is a flaw it is flaw with the OT the PT corrected. We don't see many worlds in the OT, anyway. In fact, aside from Endor and Tatooine we only see military basis - Cloud City is no planet, just a colony in space.

And Yoda and Chewie are not human. That the PT had human main characters sort of goes back to it being the Skywalker back story - Obi-Wan, Anakin, his wife, etc. couldn't be non-humans. But many secondary characters were - the Neimoidians, Geonosians, Kaminoans, etc. Not to mention the Jedi Council guys.

Thanks for reminding me of Star Wars reputation for mocking Trek, lol

[Ran]

5 hours ago, sifth said:

Even though the fight makes no sense. I'm sorry, but you kill the guards before you kill Snoke.

Snoke was too powerful. He wasn't going to sit there and let them take two minutes to kill his guards without intervening.

5 hours ago, sifth said:

If I was a guard and my job was to guard someone, I'm not going to risk my life to defend that persons corpse, after they're dead.

I guess you would not have been among the forty-seven ronin,, but people being personally loyal to someone and seeking to avenge them after death is not a new or even an ahistorical idea.

All that said, the fight scene was indeed pretty badly choreographed, as bad as some of the PT stuff, but yes, the production design and cinematography was lovely.

[red snow]

13 hours ago, RumHam said:

He is supposedly getting a Disney+ show (with the droid.)

It's what I was alluding to

The show has a lot of potential given how his introduction at the beginning of Rogue one was of a morally grey resistance/terrorist. Hopefully they remember that and don't change him into a clean-as-a-whistle hero in the show. If they do they can at least have the show develop why he became a zero tolerance resistance fighter. 

[polishgenius]

7 hours ago, sifth said:

If only the movie told us this, lol

...it did. When they didn't bow to Kylo or run away but instead threw down their lives to avenge Snoke and kill Kylo.

 

 

There are criticisms of that fight to be made - like Ran said it's not particularly well choreographed and in hindsight making the room flammable just to have the cool visual doesn't make much sense - but in terms of making narrative sense having Snoke die first is far more sensible than having him, like Ran said, just sit there and watch his guards get slaughtered, at which point he will be aware that they want to kill him and the sneak attack that was the only way they got it done is no longer on the table.



Also, more generally, a thing I was mentioning with my brother the other day: why is it that in a franchise hugely iconic for its magical sword fights has there, in 11 films, not been one genuinely great sword fight?

[Ran]

42 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

why is it that in a franchise hugely iconic for its magical sword fights has there, in 11 films, not been one genuinely great sword fight?

The Luke - Vader fight not only has terrific production value and narrative weight, but there's some excellent back-and-forth swordplay helped, in no little part, by the fact Bob Anderson was wearing the Vader suit. I've seen it crop up in a number of lists about greatest sword fights on film.

The RotJ fight where Luke nearly gives in to the dark side while overpowering Vader is also quite good, and also a Bob Anderson work.

Personally, I'm waiting for the day Disney gets bold about trying to break into the Asian market and hires the likes of Zhang Yimou to make a Chinese-language Star Wars movie. Let the wuxia inspirations take flight. Or Ang Lee, if you want to play it safe with someone more involved in the traditional Hollywood studio machinery. Either way, I really feel that if you're going to do wuxia lightsaber fights, as they tried in the PT, you should really go all-out with it and hire the directors, fight coordinators, actors, and stunt people who have built their careers around it.

[polishgenius]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

The Luke - Vader fight not only has terrific production value and narrative weight, but there's some excellent back-and-forth swordplay helped, in no little part, by the fact Bob Anderson was wearing the Vader suit. I've seen it crop up in a number of lists about greatest sword fights on film. 

The RotJ fight where Luke nearly gives in to the dark side while overpowering Vader is also quite good, and also a Bob Anderson work.

They're obviously great fights narratively but I don't think they've aged particularly well choreography wise. I suppose that might just be a taste thing.

[Heartofice]

The Luke Vader fights in ESB and ROTJ are two of the most beautiful, emotionally powerful face offs in movies. They are great fights. 

Maybe there is an expectation these days that a great fight needs to be highly technical, mastery of choreography, because we have so much of that these days. But I see a lot of very well done, technically good fights in movies, which don't stick with me at all (with some exceptions.. maybe John Wick for its outrageous coolness) 

The fights in the PT were a disgrace if I'm honest. All style no substance. The best one being Darth Maul in TPM, but even that was held up by a good score. In an attempt to make Light Saber duels cooler, Lucas went over the top, replacing silly flips and swings with any emotional impact. The one fight that should have been the centrepiece of the entire Trilogy, was 2 dudes jumping off floating lava rocks like its Super Mario World. 

The new trilogy is an improvement as far as I can tell, but we still have the Snoke throne room fight which, if you've watched the Corridor Crew analysis of that, you spot the rather ridiculous choreography in it. 

So while I agree that ideally light saber duels should be highly technical and I can see some universe where its closer to House of Flying Daggers, I think I prefer the raw emotion of Luke trying to smash Vader's skull in with a heavy stick.

[sifth]

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Snoke was too powerful. He wasn't going to sit there and let them take two minutes to kill his guards without intervening.

I guess you would not have been among the forty-seven ronin,, but people being personally loyal to someone and seeking to avenge them after death is not a new or even an ahistorical idea.

All that said, the fight scene was indeed pretty badly choreographed, as bad as some of the PT stuff, but yes, the production design and cinematography was lovely.

The problem is, the movie tells us nothing about these yoyo's, aside form the fact that they're guards. Plus Snoke comes off as evil as sin, so I have no idea what type of insane loyalty these guys must have to him, if they're willing to fight a fricken space wizard, for him AFTER he's dead. At least have the movie reveal that they're robots, brainwashed or took some crazy vow. Don't just have a silly fight randomly play out like that. 

Plus let's be real, the fact that they're next paycheck was probably going to come from the guy they were trying to kill, which only makes the scene more silly, lol

 

[polishgenius]

38 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The Luke Vader fights in ESB and ROTJ are two of the most beautiful, emotionally powerful face offs in movies. They are great fights. 

Maybe there is an expectation these days that a great fight needs to be highly technical, mastery of choreography, because we have so much of that these days.

I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been to start of with here but what I'm saying is it's possible for something to be a great scene in overall context without being a great action scene but it's also possible to be both, there's no reason if you've got the budget to hire the expertise for it not to be both, and I don't think any of Star Wars' scenes actually are.



Also people rag on the PT fights for being silly flips and swings but while not great chroegraphy even in Maul vs the two (although that probably is the strongest one in the series just in terms of technical skill) the problem wasn't flips and swings it was the undisguised blatantness of the flynning.

[Lord Varys]

Who cares about how duels are choreographed, really? Those are superficial details - the important things is whether the battles/conflicts have meaning.

And that's case for the OT confrontations - even the ridiculously looking Ben-Vader thing (which is bad because the fictional lightsaber mechanics changed later - they were imagined as being effectively very heavy weapons). And, to a point, even for the TPM confrontation between the Jedi and Darth Maul.

[The big mistake in that fight is that Qui-God is the one driving Maul into the weirdo corridor with the barriers, separating himself from Obi-Wan. The smart thing would have been to have Maul drive him into the corridor, thus actively separating the two Jedi from each other. Qui-Gon comes across both as stupid and aggressive in that stunt ... which is not good.]

The PT issues are that they just fight and don't talk. Dialogue can help give a scene meaning. The lack of dialogue in AOTC (due to the cuts made to the Dooku confrontation) as well as especially to the Obi-Wan-Vader confrontation in ROTS is what makes those fights essentially meaningless spectacles.

And there was nothing ever wrong with Yoda jumping around - he is a powerful Jedi and should also be able to wield a lightsaber. One could have also done more in the field of non-saber combat for the Jedi/Sith masters - and I'd have liked that - but there is nothing wrong with Yoda or Dooku or Palpatine using the Force to make them superior duelists.

If the evil guys do have cool-looking guards they should actually do something of substance if they are dragged in fights. Everybody wearing red in the new movies was an incompetent moron (even Lucas handled them better in ROTS where he had Yoda just knock them out).

The problem with the scene in TLJ is that none of the guards try to inform the First Order leadership that Ren is a traitor or get reinforcement in the room to put down the traitors. A good way to ensure a coup works is to allow the people staging the coup to kill you, too.

[Heartofice]

I’d say you could make an argument that the more technically proficient a fight is the less emotional it’s impact. The Luke Vader fights were almost improved by their lack of technique because it felt a lot more raw

Pinball Yoda can never be excused however. Yoda as drunken master I can imagine. Yoda as Sonic the hedgehog... no.

[Lord Varys]

22 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Pinball Yoda can never be excused however. Yoda as drunken master I can imagine. Yoda as Sonic the hedgehog... no.

I have no issue with that. In fact, I'd have had severe issues if neither Palpatine nor Yoda would have showed they could fight in the PT.

That said, the first Yoda fight would have been much better if they had done it as they planned - with Yoda at first merely blocking Dooku's attacks and only going on the offensive after the man had exhausted himself.

There are such stupid cuts in those AOTC fights that it is painful to watch. Just watch at what point Obi-Wan tosses Anakin the second saber...

[Raja]

This is *so* good

 

 

[Suzanna Stormborn]

20 hours ago, Corvinus said:

Even if you don't plan it out, it's best if there's only one person coming up with the story (or at least there should be a good consensus between writers). 

I'd be curious to see Kathleen Kennedy's thoughts on this, whenever she decides to call it quits or is fired. I bet Disney's main message was "make us money" and in that she succeeded. 

It is possible to make money in a Big Budget Film and still make a meaningful well thought out story that satisfies fans. Thor Ragnorok accomplished that, as did Days of Future Past, Guardians ot Galaxy 1, Black Panther, Wonder Woman.

I will never understand how or why they fucked Star wars up so bad in the ST. They literally had a universe of possibilities for stories and all the money they would ever need.

[Raja]

Just now, Suzanna Stormborn said:

It is possible to make money in a Big Budget Film and still make a meaningful well thought out story that satisfies fans. Thor Ragnorok accomplished that, as did Days of Future Past, Guardians ot Galaxy 1, Black Panther, Wonder Woman.

Yup yup yup ( for me the last jedi & tfa fall under this category)

[Heartofice]

32 minutes ago, Suzanna Stormborn said:

It is possible to make money in a Big Budget Film and still make a meaningful well thought out story that satisfies fans. Thor Ragnorok accomplished that, as did Days of Future Past, Guardians ot Galaxy 1, Black Panther, Wonder Woman.

I will never understand how or why they fucked Star wars up so bad in the ST. They literally had a universe of possibilities for stories and all the money they would ever need.

I’d argue that none of those movies had great stories at all, in fact they were all massively formulaic. What made something like Ragnarok great was it’s aesthetics and humour, that’s where it took risks. The story is bland as hell. 
 

For me there is something about modern blockbuster writing that makes creating a tightly written story very difficult. Don’t know why that is, but I suspect numerous interests interfering, large budgets, consideration for effects shots and timings, and just the need for commercial success are to blame. I’ve noticed so many movies with long run times and loads of left over scenes cut out, which doesn’t suggest a clear vision. 
 

That’s not to excuse the poor quality of these Star Wars movies, but I think it’s probably a lot harder now to create something that is coherent whilst also being unique and artistically challenging.