Movie Thread

My thoughts on Star Wars:

A lot of my friends love Star Wars.  I've liked it but never been so into it.  That may be one reason I'm able to enjoy (or just not hate) the prequels and recent trilogy to an extent as I don't feel a real emotional attachment to the series the way many do.  But it's not a series that I really connected with that much.

Ep 1 - I agree about Anakin being so young that 1) it just made it feel like the situations he was put in were necessarily uninteresting and 2) it made it ridiculous that "he was too old" to be trained.  In fact, when the younglings were slaughtered by uh...him in ep 3, some even looked older than he did when he first started training!! Not smooth.

The first time I watched the movie (in the theaters) I almost fell asleep during the pod race.  Honestly, I'm just not big into racing.  But it just dragged and it felt like shameless promotion for what we'd all knew would be a pod race video game.  I have not been able to watch that segment since then.  The best part of the movie is clearly Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon vs. Darth Maul.  The rest of the movie feels like it could have been condensed into a 30 minute prequel.  

Ep 2 - Watching Anakin hit on Padme was gross.  Like the way he did it was just...eh.  This dude is gonna be Darth Vader, have some integrity in your game!  The end of the movie was really good though and I liked the Yoda/Dooku fight.  The arena fight before that was good too. Obi-Wan going to Kamino to find the clone Army and the Fetts was my favorite part.  But I liked how mysterious it was and the way it laid down the hidden Sith plot.  I find it difficult to watch this movie that often because it just feels like it drags but I'll usually watch the last hour if it's on TV.

Ep 3 - My favorite of the prequel movies and, in some ways, my favorite of the entire series.  Palpatine was incredible in this (though I felt some of the cackling at the end got a little cartoonish).  This movie felt important for the series. Everything just had a sense of immediacy and consequences.  Anakin grew up and his vulnerabilities and fears defined him, to the point of the Jedi Council's concerns seeming legitimate. The speech Palpatine gave to Anakin about Darth Plaguis was intriguing and I'm still hoping we get a tie-in to that in Episode 9. 

The Anakin-Obi-Wan fight was really good early on and then...UGH.

I've ranted about this once before but I'll do it again:




Episode 7 -  Felt like Episode 4. They played it safe and made a billion dollars. I can't blame them. I really liked it when I first saw it in the theater and it got less compelling to me each time I saw it.  I still like it better than Ep 1 and 2.

Episode 8 - Absolutely loved the Luke/Rey/Kylo storylines. Was bored by the rest. Didn't actively hate anything but everything else just kind of paled to the dynamics between Luke, Rey, and Kylo.   I know that Mark Hamill initially didn't like Luke's portrayal but I thought his story and personality was very credible based on what his character had been through. 



I expect to actually be pretty impressed with Episode 9.

Rogue One was excellent. Haven't seen Solo yet. 

I agree with so much of this. I was kinda big in star wars as a kid but fell off after the prequel trilogy and then my interest renewed with Disney announcing a new trilogy. I started to read the zahn trilogy but I lost interest as soon as I started the second book. After I saw episode seven I thought it was fun but I never wanted to watch or think much about it again. I thought rogue one was perfect at the time when I wanted to see a star wars movie with little mention of the force. I went into episode 8 with low expectations but wanting to see some ridiculous force stuff(The Leia. Moment everyone hates was perfect for me) and ended up really liking it as mentioned for the Luke,Rey, kylo stuff. I can see why someone would find the rest boring but I enjoyed it enough. But after all that I'll saw I'm not a huge star wars person solo didn't seem interesting to me until I heard about the cameo at the end that is exciting to see what they did with that character in the cartoons be in the movies. As I stated before I don't have high hopes for 9 but I am interested in Rian Johnson's trilogy.

LOL pretty much exactly this

Still, I'd choose Dennis Stamp as my 4th member of a Survivor Series type match over Anakin.

If it came down to Dennis or Anakin against a high-flyer, Dennis wouldn't somehow lose cause the opponent is on the top rope! Also, if it was against Flair, Dennis would be able to throw him off the top!




I've been interested enough over the years to read wiki style summaries of the original Expanded Universe. It definitely sounds like Zahn and others had some cool ideas but I didn't feel compelled to read the books in their entirety. I heard Thrawn was an interesting character though. And the idea of the Emperor not totally dying and having clones was intriguing too. Sometimes I spend a lot of time reading wiki summaries of Star Wars and Marvel and I often get storylines between the two world mixed and confused 😁

Rogue One was great and may end up being the best Star Wars movie that immediately followed Disney acquiring the license. I hear that Rian and also Kevin Feige is stepping in to do more movies so we'll see how the future goes.

I also had no issue with Leia showing force power but the execution of that scene felt a little hokey to me (similar to how Palpatine was awesome when he fully turned heel but then got less awesome as he couldn't stop laughing).

I understand that giving us a "holy shit - Leia has force powers" moments required an element of surprise but I still think there was a way to hint at her powers a bit better. Honestly though, I only saw the movie once so maybe I missed it. It's not like "higher ground" where I searched up and down that movie for years trying to find any reference whatsoever to altitude being a significant advantage in Star Wars world.

I did completely buy Luke's astral power at the end because 1) he's Luke Skywalker and has plenty of experience using the force in impressive ways and 2) he obviously has been meditating a lot and astral projection worked seamlessly there. I really had no issue with him pulling out that power without any further build to it. And it's not like his astral projection was defeated by Kylo Ren suddenly declaring some arbitrary and not developed rule.



And I will defend your right to not have to do that...and quote you on it! 😂😁




Completely agreed. I didn't want to see original trilogy Luke cause we already saw that Luke. That Luke was awesome. That Luke was as pure a face as we're going to see. But I didn't want to see that Luke again here. Not 20 years older, not Luke/Obi-Wan hybrid, nothing like that. That would have no-sold the impact of the story on him. Luke was clearly negatively affected by the life-changing experience of having Kylo turn against him.

If anything, Luke would be shattered even harder as a result of his hope in people, giving us an initially broken man. Take away the fact that Kylo was Han's son (to neutralize the parental love from Han) and imagine if it was Han who Kylo turned against. I guarantee that Han wouldn't have been as affected as Luke. (Hell, Han was already doing better than Luke even though Kylo was Han's son!). Han was already emotionally hardened. But Luke, all full of hope and naivety and belief in people would have taken Kylo's initial turn and betrayal especially hard. Throw in the fact that Luke was also ashamed (either outwardly or subconsciously) in his lack of trust in Kylo and felt some responsibility for the entire situation.

It was 100% logical and compelling to me that Luke turned out the way we saw him in Episode 8: cut off from everyone in his life and the force. This made sense. Yes, it was hard to watch. But it felt real. In fact, it's hard to have the REST of the story in Eps 7 and 8 and not have Luke this way. I think they handled Luke perfectly given the entire story they were telling. If they weren't telling this story, then it would have been jarring to see Luke like this. But we weren't seeing things as if they paused for 20 years after the Ewok celebration. Some serious shit went down in the Skywalker family and everyone was worse off for it.

I also think it was cool Rey helped Luke find that hope again and that Luke ended the movie incredibly strong, tricking Kylo and reconnecting with the force. This wasn't Luke fight to win, but he did redeem himself and help everyone else along the way. For someone who was no longer the main character, it made sense.

Should he have been the main character in this? That's debatable. I think someone could have made an Eps 7-9 with Luke as the one who had to set everything right (or the main one in an ensemble). But this isn't what they were going for so I think Luke's story and mannerisms and contributions made sense.




Hopefully with a finisher built up to better than "higher ground!" 😁

That's a scene they could have done a lot better with a very simple change: have her move her fingers slightly, and cut to something in the bridge (something metal, doesn't matter what) getting crushed slightly. Then, it's not only evident she's pulling herself into the ship, it just feels much more tactile, more like the force usage we've seen everywhere else. I even just realized it would be a little callback to Luke - the first time we see him actually manipulate the Force, it's a pull.


Also, Luke doesn't even end Jedi laughing and doing a jig; he's somber and very removed from everybody else. For them, it's a great victory, but for him, it's almost equally a loss. He doesn't really brighten up till Leia and Han come get him, if I remember right. In retrospect, he's kind of conflicted like this, and distant from everybody, from pretty much the moment he learns Vader is his dad in Empire right on through the end of Jedi. He's in a very ambivalent place well before the events of the new trilogy, which only made things that much worse for him.

I would have loved to see Luke adventuring with his old (and new) buddies again. I'd have loved to see him and Rey facing down stormtroopers together, or him and Poe bantering about piloting X-Wings. But they couldn't have told that story and this one. Should they have told that story? I can't say yet, because they haven't finished this one, but this is where we are now, and I still want to see where it goes.

At some point over the next 24 hours, Netflix will be releasing: "El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie." This is Jesse's story seemingly immediately after Breaking Bad ends.  I'm intrigued but I wish it was a full series!

It's been years since I've seen The Matrix Trilogy. I've been watching it on Netflix. Apart from the profanity and having to skip over the cave orgy, I can't see anyone other than Keanu as Neo. I also like how in the first one the Matrix looks like a normal city, but as the movies progress, it takes on more of a green tint and looks more fake.

I watched Captain Marvel today. I knew what to expect in terms of formula but it was still largely enjoyable. As big of a fan of 90s alt rock as I am (I still listen to that stuff pretty regularly), I really wasn't feeling its use in the film. Unlike Guardians of the Galaxy and its soundtrack, it felt forced and kind of distracting. That's really the only noticeable problem that I had with the film. A lot of people were down on it before release for one reason or another but the final result is fun, if ultimately forgettable. Pretty great special effects all around though. That team definitely deserves some acknowledgement for that (from making Jackson and Gregg look 25 years younger, to the Skrull transformations, to the flight combat scenes, to Danvers' lightshow, it was all pretty sweet).

Due to my own stubbornness, I wanted to see this before getting around to Avengers: Endgame and now that I've finished Captain Marvel, I'll probably give the latter a look sometime this weekend.