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Star Wars: Nothing But Star Wars


Myrddin

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11 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

They're more likely to do a Tala spin off show, because why not.

Nah, they'll go with Haja. 

(and I'd totally be down for a funny Star Wars show about a conman trying to be good,ish. )

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33 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

Nah, they'll go with Haja. 

(and I'd totally be down for a funny Star Wars show about a conman trying to be good,ish. )

And that may be fun, but I was thinking of Andor when I made my comment. ;)

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1 hour ago, Myrddin said:

So, yeah. Star Wars never made 100% sense. Enjoy it for what it is: live action kids shows. 

Ideally Star Wars material should appeal to all ages, hence why the prequels had more nuanced plot lines like the decline of democracy...not exactly a kid-friendly story.

As far as I can remember the original trilogy, and even the prequels were well plotted. The dialogue and acting was iffy but the writing was consistent. Character motivations made sense. There was cause and effect. The antagonists were strong and menacing, not a bunch of clowns like in Obi-Wan. You always felt the heroes were up against it in the original Star Wars films whereas with Disney everything is just so easy.

People try to find dumb moments here and there in the original trilogy so they can point to them and say "Look, you see! Star wars was always dumb!". But it doesn't work. Storm troopers not using sand speeders on Tatooine just comes nowhere near the level of stupid of the empire being unable to stop two snow speeders or find their way through a single blast door.

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Being unable to stop two speeders is the same level of stupid as dragging a huge cannon to within a few hundred meters to blast a hole in large door. Or how a ragtag group of rebels have the expendable resources to set up a huge Ion Cannon and strong shield generator on a remote frozen planet. Or how Ben Kenobi can walk around in Jedi robes but no one knows he's a Jedi. 

I want good well plotted and written Star Wars too. It doesn't negate the fact that the franchise is at its heart a kids show, regardless of the sudo-Vietnam War or decline of Western democracies backdrops. Expecting more just invites disappointment.

If you can moderate your expectations, you might be able to enjoy it for what it is. 

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38 minutes ago, Darryk said:

As far as I can remember the original trilogy, and even the prequels were well plotted.

Sorry, what? This has to be at best the beautiful coloration of nostalgia. 

Star Wars made you feel great, but the opening parts have them deciding to not blow away the droids launching away because...why? Are they saving blast shots? 

38 minutes ago, Darryk said:

People try to find dumb moments here and there in the original trilogy so they can point to them and say "Look, you see! Star wars was always dumb!". But it doesn't work. Storm troopers not using sand speeders on Tatooine just comes nowhere near the level of stupid of the empire being unable to stop two snow speeders or find their way through a single blast door.

A big key point in ANH was storm troopers unable to open blast doors as they desperately try to stop 4 random people running through a fortress. Hell, a big plot point is hiding THE SON OF ANAKIN SKYWALKER on his home planet with his family and his last name. 

I'll say this - Star Wars was fun, had good characters and fun chemistry, and cool action sequences. That does a lot to make you gloss over some of the shitty things. Obi-Wan and Boba Fett (and to a lesser extent Mandalorian) haven't done that. The reason we're nitpicking all this is because we're bored and trying to find reasons for why we don't like it, instead of in the movies where we're enjoying it and not looking for why we don't like it (mostly). 

I guarantee you if we had more Vader kicking ass, Obi-Wan doing cool shit, Reva doing cool shit and less chase sequences with 8 year olds we'd not be caring about this stuff.

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Another thing that bothers me about this Obi Wan show is how Vaders vocabulary is so fucking tiny!

Every sentence in this show is seemingly some variation on something he said in the OT

’bring him to me!’

’he was wise to..’

’’ I will bring him in myself!”

im starting to suspect they couldn’t afford to hire James earl jones and just retooled some of the audio from previous movies 

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21 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

But it's stupid! In a world where droids are routinely used for combat, communications, espionage, and are entirely sentient it is INCREDIBLY stupid to not shoot the thing. It would actually be better to not show that and let people just not think about it. 

In the context of ANH, it makes sense, because all that stuff you're talking about are elaborations on the setting that come after ANH rather than being inherent to ANH. So as a critique of ANH as its own thing without reference to everything that came after, I think it's a weak critique and the point that ANH showed some level of thought to obvious questions is true enough. That it doesn't mesh well with what follows is something else, but it's more an inconsistency than bad plotting.

 

@Heartofice

As I understand it, they used a software company to generate the voice. James Earl Jones is credited for his performance, so he recorded something...  but I wonder if they were unhappy with how the result of trying to youthen his voice and so most/all of his performance ended up on the cutting room floor and they just repurposed lines and tweaked them with the software to suit the scenes.

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14 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Another thing that bothers me about this Obi Wan show is how Vaders vocabulary is so fucking tiny!

Every sentence in this show is seemingly some variation on something he said in the OT

’bring him to me!’

’he was wise to..’

’’ I will bring him in myself!”

im starting to suspect they couldn’t afford to hire James earl jones and just retooled some of the audio from previous movies 

'That what you prefer? The loquacious type?

Most of those are just pre-recorded phrases on a little LP in that chest box of his. It hurts him to talk because the fight on Mustafar damaged his vocal chords and breathy bits. 

Besides, when you're as powerful as he is you don't have to say much. He basically doesn't do much outside of the, "bring him to me" and "don't make me destroy you" business.

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40 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Most of those are just pre-recorded phrases on a little LP in that chest box of his. It hurts him to talk because the fight on Mustafar damaged his vocal chords and breathy bits.

Now you've got me picturing Vader with one of those see and say toys on his chest. He pulls the string whenever he wants to express himself and hopes for the best.

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1 hour ago, KalVsWade said:

But it's stupid! In a world where droids are routinely used for combat, communications, espionage, and are entirely sentient it is INCREDIBLY stupid to not shoot the thing. It would actually be better to not show that and let people just not think about it. 

My friend, you have extremely outsized expectations of the competence of assholes in uniform. Particularly when that uniform grants real authority and social standing.  Out of respect, I will not mention current events on a fanboy discussion forum.

Besides, if they shot at every unmanned escape pod, they'd be there all day. 

ETA: aside from a few specific characters (eg, the Skywalkers), there's a theme in this mythology that droids are consistently underestimated. If you are some Imperial functionary, why would droids using an escape pod even occur to you? What's next? Are your kitchen appliances going to form a labor union?

 

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Have to say the last episode was a bit disappointing. I think it lost me when Third Sister simply light sabered the door. I mean, how can the people writing this and doing story boards no see that and say hey, why would she waste her time with the canon if all she had to do was this???

Then Vader holding back the transport ship but not being able to react in time to get the second one? It would have been better if one left while he was holding back the other, at least that somewhat makes sense.

Thinking this is one show that was better not being done.

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

In the context of ANH, it makes sense, because all that stuff you're talking about are elaborations on the setting that come after ANH rather than being inherent to ANH. So as a critique of ANH as its own thing without reference to everything that came after, I think it's a weak critique and the point that ANH showed some level of thought to obvious questions is true enough. That it doesn't mesh well with what follows is something else, but it's more an inconsistency than bad plotting.

That's really not accurate. In the context of ANH we see a TON of droids being used for all sorts of things in the first 30 minutes alone, we have Luke having probably the most meaningful conversation with a droid early on, we have R2 showing obvious independence multiple times, we have droids not allowed in bars, we have R2 saving their ass on the Death Star and C3P0 improvising a whole random thing to the stormtroopers, and then we have R2 fixing Luke's X-Wing in the battle of Bespin. The idea that droids would be overlooked or aren't particularly capable is belied by most of the actual movie! 

In that, it's consistent (IE, everyone underestimates droids) and also deeply stupid that they do so. It's not inconsistency with the storyline exactly; it's just dumb. 

And that's fine! It's okay for things to be dumb and make the plot move along. It's okay for the enemies to be deeply incompetent. But it's not particularly reasonable to think that this is somehow fine in one place and not fine in others. The problem is that it was there all over the place but there was enough other entertaining shit to keep us amused and happy and excited. 

29 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

My friend, you have extremely outsized expectations of the competence of assholes in uniform. Particularly when that uniform grants real authority and social standing.  Out of respect, I will not mention current events on a fanboy discussion forum.

Besides, if they shot at every unmanned escape pod, they'd be there all day. 

ETA: aside from a few specific characters (eg, the Skywalkers), there's a theme in this mythology that droids are consistently underestimated. If you are some Imperial functionary, why would droids using an escape pod even occur to you? What's next? Are your kitchen appliances going to form a labor union?

 

I dunno, if I was some shitty functionary who occasionally gets to shoot really big guns I'd take every opportunity I got to shoot said guns because otherwise the job would alternate between being boring and stupid. But yes, I agree, fascists are often lazy and bad at their job because they got their job from being kiss-asses. That's entirely reasonable. That also makes it entirely reasonable that they're still shitty at their job in Obi-Wan and complaining about it now is not just. 

My point is that Imps being really, really dumb and using crap strategy and constantly being outfoxed and making stupid decisions is actually quite on brand; what makes it stand out on Obi-Wan is that there just aren't enough neat parts to justify that dumbness.

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6 minutes ago, dbunting said:

Have to say the last episode was a bit disappointing. I think it lost me when Third Sister simply light sabered the door. I mean, how can the people writing this and doing story boards no see that and say hey, why would she waste her time with the canon if all she had to do was this???

LOL, yes, that's certainly an issue.

6 minutes ago, dbunting said:

Then Vader holding back the transport ship but not being able to react in time to get the second one? It would have been better if one left while he was holding back the other, at least that somewhat makes sense.

That could have easily worked if they had given the indication that Vader was exhausted after the first attempt to hold the ship, but there is no such indication.

Insofar as ANH is concerned, I have little problem with the droid thing - it would be foolish to entrust plans to droids considering how incompetent most of them are - nor the Death Star thing. It makes no sense the Empire would be prepared for or expect as poorly planned and incompetently executed 'rescue plan' as the one the guys tried. And it also makes little sense to expect that they are prepared to hunt down three guys in their own space station.

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16 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

In the context of ANH we see a TON of droids being used for all sorts of things in the first 30 minutes alone

There's a couple of protocol droids, there's the little wheeled thing in the halls of the Deathstar, there's the Gonk droid who's a walking battery, and then everything like R2 and so on are basically technical menial repair droids. And an interrogation droid that seems to just zap and inject you with stuff, very tailored to its purpose. The elaboration of the setting as having stuff like bounty hunting droids, scout droids, spy droids, etc. comes later.

That Imperials may not think some random protocol droid or astromech are meaningless doesn't strike me as too odd when the setting at that time did not appear to have militarized droids, and most droids seems decidedly less capable of autonomy than C3-PO and R2-D2.

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Disney Star Wars continues to be a let down, I keep hoping they would find their feet, but they are still stumbling around with with poor writing, plot, and execution.     Rogue One is still their best effort and the Force Awakens and the Last Jedi had some good moments, but were not great movies.     The Mandalorian is their best series, but not sure where they are going with it.  

I watched the latest episodes of Obiwan and Ms. Marvel back-to-back on Disney+ and Ms. Marvel was just so much better in all aspects.   

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4 minutes ago, Leofric said:

I watched the latest episodes of Obiwan and Ms. Marvel back-to-back on Disney+ and Ms. Marvel was just so much better in all aspects.   

Yea releasing them the same day isn’t helping Kenobi at all. Someone mentioned Strange New Worlds as well a few pages back, how are Paramount making a ten episode series that looks like it costs three times as much to make as a Disney flagship-IP series? On top of being all round better thought out, and way more professional looking? 

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34 minutes ago, KalVsWade said:

That's really not accurate. In the context of ANH we see a TON of droids being used for all sorts of things in the first 30 minutes alone, we have Luke having probably the most meaningful conversation with a droid early on, we have R2 showing obvious independence multiple times, we have droids not allowed in bars, we have R2 saving their ass on the Death Star and C3P0 improvising a whole random thing to the stormtroopers, and then we have R2 fixing Luke's X-Wing in the battle of Bespin. The idea that droids would be overlooked or aren't particularly capable is belied by most of the actual movie! 

Wasn’t the point with R2 that his intelligence was unexpected and hidden? He’s treated like some every day worker droid. Even C3P0 is seen as little more than a protocol droid even if he’s more eloquent.

That R2 was so intelligent was seemingly portrayed as something exceptional rather than the norm.

I mean the whole scene at the beginning of ANH with Owen selecting droids basically portrays them as mindless appliances.

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