Star Wars

[Harpua]

Of course nothing to do with his buffoonery "saved" the rebellion so I don't know what that means.

Poe's stall and subsequent attack gave the rebellion time to evacuate the planet and jump to hyperspace. If Hux hadn't fallen for the trick, the fleet would have been destroyed before clearing the planet and jumping to hyperspace.

it's the first time I felt ANY of these movies was trying break away from the nostalgia death-spiral of the original tilogy.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, because you could probably say that about Attack of the Clones. It gave us a mostly original story with some similarities to the original trilogy here and there (Obi-Wan's half was original, but the Anakin / Padme stuff had some Han / Leia similarities), and it didn't use callbacks to the original trilogy for comedy or to advance the plot.

But are you REALLY expecting as much from those movies as you are from the latest Star Wars entry? It's the same genre of movie but no one asks all these nitpicky questions about something like Deadpool. Star Wars diehards just expect too much of these movies and they'll never get it

Since the writing staffs and directors change from movie to movie, I expect uneven quality. In this case, I guess I was expecting satisfying resolutions to: How is Luke going to react? Who are Rey's parents? Who is Snoke? Luke's reaction made sense, and I even didn't mind Rey's parents being "no one", but since they deflated the balloon on those answers, it would have been nice to get a satisfying resolution to the Snoke question. His actions were important to the plot, but without knowing who he was, how he came to power, how he learned the force, what his motivations were, they made a cool looking, main bad guy a weak character.

Also I am far from a diehard. There have been six Star Wars movies released in my lifetime - I've liked two. I don't read the books, own merch, and I've never seen the Christmas Special.

I would suggest you hop OFF Twitter

Trust me, NOBODY wants this. Just like I use the OKP to get my Phish stuff out of my system, so people who don't care about Phish don't have to listen to me talk about Phish, Twitter is where I get my Star Trek bullshit out of my system. Because there is a decent amount crossover in those fandoms, a ton of Star Wars nonsense pops up in my feed. (But I get what you are saying.)

[El Bastarde]

Poe's stall and subsequent attack gave the rebellion time to evacuate the planet and jump to hyperspace.

I think you're mixing it up. Poe's communication with Hux was at the start of the fight to allow him to take out the guns on the main ship which allowed then those bombers to take out the dreadnaught. There wasn't much escaping until later.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, because you could probably say that about Attack of the Clones.

Ew, no. How can the prequels claim to be breaking away from the nostalgia when they were basically created to show us the past of multiple characters from the original trilogy? There's like maybe one major character from the original trilogy even left alive at the end of TLJ...unless you count Chewie or the droids who aren't doing much. And Ren taking down Snoke is a huge break-off point from the original to me. I didn't expect this series to surprise me at all and TLJ did it.

and it didn't use callbacks to the original trilogy for comedy or to advance the plot.

You ain't kidding. The prequels couldn't have been more humorless or soulless is they tried. Their idea of humor was JarJar stumbling around on a battlefield. Ug.

Since the writing staffs and directors change from movie to movie, I expect uneven quality.

As do I, and I blame some of the uneven moments on Abrams leaving messes for Johnson to clean up. Ren being beaten by a novice, a Palapatine ripoff in charge of an Empire ripoff with little explanation, the pointless Phasma character, needing something to do with Finn with Rey gone, etc, etc.

Who is Snoke?

I'm just tired of this "we don't know his backstory" thing. We didn't know Palpatine's backstory in the original trilogy. And we didn't need it. We knew exactly what he was about the second we saw the guy and didn't need any further explanation. Why do we now need some expansive backstory of Snoke when we never needed one for Palps (and when he's virtually identical to Palps)? And when exactly was this 2 1/2 hour movie going to just randomly fit in some backstory that had no place and about a character who wasn't the focus?...they were busy filling in Ren's backstory which was the correct decision since he's a main character and is far more interesting. You're asking the impossible. Even if Snoke had lived through TLJ, you STILL weren't getting any backstory. Leave that backstory crap to the comic books.

His actions were important to the plot, but without knowing who he was, how he came to power, how he learned the force, what his motivations were, they made a cool looking, main bad guy a weak character.

Once again, you didn't know any of that about Palps. And, heck, outside of some vague comments on him being some good guy who turned to the dark side and was Luke's Dad, you didn't know shit about Vader either. Are either of them "weak characters" as a result? This whole "needs a backstory" thing is a total myth. Some of the greatest villains in cinema have had little-to-no backstory and don't even have much character development...that's only some "dork thing" where they have to know the backstory and info on every single event in a movie...I never hear this from normal movie-goers.

Also I am far from a diehard.

I get that since you're far more reasonable than most Jedi diehards, but your gripes are similar to theirs. This weird obsession with backstory is something I only see from uber dorks of this series and it doesn't make sense to me. You can't have all that stuff and yet have a sensible action movie.

Because there is a decent amount crossover in those fandoms, a ton of Star Wars nonsense pops up in my feed. (But I get what you are saying.)

I was mostly kidding there. Do what you want, of course. I just don't much value the opinions of the Twitter hordes and I don't think they represent any sense of a majority.

[SirChompsAlot]

Nothing to add here other than the fact that I saw TLJ twice in the theater, liked it both times, but liked it even more the second time.

[willbreathes]

Solo?

No, we want Sulu!

[El Bastarde]

Yuck. Just have no interest in the Solo movie. Or the rumored Boba Fett movie.

[Harpua]

Looks really bad. I'll wait until it is on Netflix.

Now I could get behind a Sulu origin story. How did he make the transition from Astroscience to Helm? Did he have to go back to the Academy for that, or was it on the job training? How did he get into botany and fencing? Since he grew up in San Francisco, did he get to live at home while he was at Starfleet Academy, or did he have to live in the dorms? So many unanswered questions.

[El Bastarde]

Looks really bad. I'll wait until it is on Netflix.

Has nothing to do with that. I just hate the concept of folks tacking on some lazy backstory onto a character that doesn't need one for the sake of fanservice. I don't ever like this practice and it's why I'm already out on a Fett or Obi Wan movie. Though it's very strange seeing everyone already decide that the new Solo actor is bad simply based on rumors and the extra small sample size of acting that the trailer gave us. Poor dude doesn't stand a chance.

Now I could get behind a Sulu origin story.

Considering that the new Star Trek narrative already butchered the character in the remakes and decided to make him gay simply because his original actor is gay makes me pretty dubious on anything Sulu-related. How do they even do a past on him now that the movied erased his entire history? Is it the original Sulu who helmed the Excelsior or whatever Sulu that Abrams came up with? But I guess I haven't watched anything Star Trek in a while so it doesn't much matter.

[Harpua]

^ 100% kidding about the Sulu backstory. TOS (prime universe) really only gave two characters a history - Kirk and Spock, and they retconned a Dr. McCoy history. (One that involves him fooling around with a Trill!)

[y0n]

Part of the mystique of Han Solo is that his backstory isn’t known. There’s no need to fill that out from a storytelling perspective. Disney should just move on from the Skywalker saga to making a new storyline set in the same universe. That being said I’ll probably still see it in theaters, I’m a sucker for Star Wars content.

[Harpua]

I'm hoping that Solo is exactly like Casino Royale. We meet Han; we get a few lines of dialog that tell you a few things about who he is (we know who he is - we've been watching him for 40 years); he goes to space Vegas and plays in a 50 minute space poker tournament (where he meets and befriends Chewie); he wins the Falcon; the girl dies; and "Han Solo will return in 'Death Star of Solace."

[hosemasterflex]

Imagine if they don't kill off Leia? Like, she just goes mythical and hides away. We get a couple holograms.

[ghost]

I highly recommend Solo. No mention of the force or lightsabers or Jedi. I was OK with that in a story from the Star Wars universe. All the stuff I wanted to see about Lando and Chewbacca and the Millenium Falcon and the Kessel run and other backstory details was all there.

[hosemasterflex]

^Agreed, I was surprised when I finally got around to seeing it, that it was pretty good. Not sure I liked the Kessel run depiction/explanation particularly, but all the other stuff was legit, to me. LOL @ L3, that's a funny robot. Not as funny as what's his face from Rogue One. The Han actor did not mess it up, and even resembled Ford more than I expected. Thought it was a cool movie in general, and just not really making it bad is a feat all by itself.

I have mixed feelings on TLJ, but I think the haters are mostly over the top with their complaints. Mostly I love it. But I feel like Luke's exit could have gone down the same way, but like partway thru Ep. IX. Otherwise I don't think it deserves any more grief than Ep VII.

Oh, also why put the word "last" in the title of the middle film??

[El Bastarde]

I have mixed feelings on TLJ, but I think the haters are mostly over the top with their complaints. Mostly I love it.

I enjoyed TLJ and the Star Wars geeks' reaction to the 2nd movie tells me they'll never be happy with any movie so their opinions seem a bit irrelevant at this point. I just like that it actually did a few things that surprised me.

I'm more negative about this next movie which is back to Abrams' incapable hands and I have a bad feeling he'll butcher what Johnson left for him. Me a friend even make fun of the fact that he'll have probaly have Snoke randomly come back to life just so he can rip off the end of RTJ and have Ren throw him into a pit.

[Harpua]

I'm more negative about this next movie which is back to Abrams' incapable hands and I have a bad feeling he'll butcher what Johnson left for him.

I wasn't big on TLJ (as you know), but I 100% agree with this. From what I have seen, J.J. Abrams relies too heavily on what has already been done and what fans already like, and not just with Star Wars. If you watch Star Trek Into Darkness, you'll see that it was essentially a remake of The Wrath of Khan with some of Star Trek's greatest hits shoe-horned in.

[El Bastarde]

.J. Abrams relies too heavily on what has already been done and what fans already like, and not just with Star Wars.

I just don't think he's that great a writer. Dude often comes with these complicated and intriguing plots but I don't think he knows how they're going to end once he starts them. I can see some of the gripes over Johnson but at least he took some chances.

And, yeah, I was definitely not a fan of someone trying to redo Khan. You can't redo Khan.

[hosemasterflex]

I highly recommend Solo. No mention of the force or lightsabers or Jedi. I was OK with that in a story from the Star Wars universe. All the stuff I wanted to see about Lando and Chewbacca and the Millenium Falcon and the Kessel run and other backstory details was all there.

Ah, but there was a lightsaber.

It was near the end, I can see why you'd be in the bathroom.

I might have been in the bathroom, but I'm not saying I saw you in there.

And I realize that's an assumption, that you'd have been in the bathroom.

But I did think that it'd be fair to assume that you use the bathroom, I know I sometimes do.

The more that film sinks in the more heartily I find myself approving of it.

[willbreathes]

I like the side stories more than the main quest.

(except ep iv & v)

[ghost]

^^ I missed a lightsaber? Great. Way to go, Eli. And you call yourself a fan.

::punches self in stomach::

I think it's available for home consumption starting tomorrow. I'll have to watch again...more closely...

[El Bastarde]

But I did think that it'd be fair to assume that you use the bathroom, I know I sometimes do.

I try to hold it for most movies. The worst part about every movie being 2 and a half hours these days.

Not big on the "surprise" ending with Solo, especially since the circumstances are from Clone Wars which most of the movie-going audience isn't familiar with. And this is ignoring the fact that it was ridiculous for the guy to be back even in the cartoon.

[hosemasterflex]

^Good points. Saw it with a friend who really did not dig that whole thing. Personally I thought it was fine, except for the lightsaber actually! It just seemed silly because it was like he was being threatening with it .. but was he gonna reach thru the hologram to use it? IMO it would've been better to leave out the lightsaber; it was overkill and not necessary, and even dumb.

[El Bastarde]

^Good points. Saw it with a friend who really did not dig that whole thing.

My brother just saw it and he thought Maul was fine because he was under the impression that Solo took place before Phantom Menace. I had to explain to him that wasn't the case. It made me wonder how many other casual SW fans thought the same thing about Maul.

He also mentioned that Solo shows how he got his blaster when I had no clue Han even had a unique blaster. That movie dug deep, I guess.