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Thom

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  1. Thom
    Looks great there, @pengbuzz! Your friend is going to really like that. Also glad you did not Hulk Smash! the Legios-1 (bits.) Let it sit, either you'll try it again, or the parts can come in handy.😉
  2. Thom
    I can see the criticism of the OG crew being 'broken down' or 'miserable.' We all have our highs and lows, and the lows are seen as far more 'dramatic.' (a far too over-used trope, IMO.) Two little changes could have fixed that. For Han and Leia, they should have had them still together and happy, but with Han off not just looking for the Falcon but also for any news about Ben/Kylo and Luke. Leia is still a General having retired from the Senate for the same reasons she did in the movie. And the second, Luke is in hiding/thought dead, but he's not really hiding, as he is in secret communications with Leia and is more working behind the scenes to find a way to counter Kylo's influence, and trying to find out anything he can about the mysterious leader of the First Order who just seemed to appear out of nowhere. Rey and Finn's story is pretty much unchanged, though when Rey is captured we hear a whispering voice coaching her in her mental confrontations with Kylo Ren. An underlying plot could have been Snoke trying to pit Rey against Kylo, as both a test of his apprentice, or even as a replacement for he feels her strength is equal to Kylo's? However, after Kylo kills Han (which Ford had wanted since Empires) he is solidified as Snoke's Apprentice, Leia is heartbroken (drama) and all seems lost. Then Rey faces Kylo in the woods, and the voice we hear now is not Snoke's but Luke's. Luke felt Han's death and his attention is now focused away from Snoke, which is a good and bad thing as Snoke/Kylo now become more aware of him and that he is not dead or cowering somewhere. Good guys rally and destroy Starkiller Base! Also, the beam from Starkiller Base hits just one planet, not several, but it is still the one currently hosting the Senate, and the beam is a wormhole weapon, neatly short-cutting shooting half way across the known galaxy! The power to open the wormhole is powered from the planet's core. Of course, reading that, a number of points have been raised before as explaining certain events, but the general gist is the same.
  3. Thom
    Ooh, nice little flash of Lightning there @Bolt!
  4. Thom
    Not having read the Relaunch books, I have to say, I like how that handled her in Prodigy much better!
  5. Thom
    I think she was a strong character, but she deferred on crucial decisions* to her captain. Both times it was on her shoulders, when Dallas was off ship and after he had died, she was making the calls, even though there were very few at that point to make. Her arc though Alien/Aliens was done very well. Yeah but *when Dallas was off ship and trying to get a sick crewman an alien pathogen on board, she was steadfast and said no. Now, that cold be strength of character, or just clinging to the Book, but in either case the story would have ended right there. Why do you make me laugh at poor dead Jeki?!?! Exactly. Which just shows poor decision making for the plot. It was thirty years after, there was no need to poison-pill the OT's legacy or its characters. Life does go on after the credits role, but far too often writers go for the low-hanging fruit of drama, such as Han and Leia being estranged and Luke not willing to fight for the Good in his nephew the same way he did for his father. Luke done dirty! Too true! Many great actors in the prequel trilogy, and many many, many, wooden acting as a result of bad directing! Well, we do see her struggle trying to use it, similar to Obi-wan in his series, but I put that more because of an emotional block. I would theorize that she knew the darkness within her, but was fighting it until she learned Sol killed mother.
  6. Thom
    They had Luke make some really bad, uncharacteristic choices. And hey, cool little fighter you got there!😉
  7. Thom
    I don't proscribe to 'woke' being the problem. As just an example, in Alien, the guys were making some pretty bad mistakes, with Ripley being a voice of reason. If it wasn't 'woke' then, why is it 'woke' now? IMO, It's bad story ideas, lack of planning and bad writing.. A good exercise is to imagine all the genders flips, Rey being a man, Kylo being a woman and so on. Now, would it still suck? Sadly, yes. So, three departments that have absolutely nothing to do with story, writing and acting., And two of which actually excelled..,
  8. Thom
    Gonna be great! I hope.😁
  9. Thom
    Luke was just done dirty! They knew audiences wanted to see a Luke reminiscent of the OT, despite the setbacks he'd suffered, but instead we're given a broken-down quitter. I think they were tying to Yoda-fy Luke, but they just it took the wrong way. Even in his exile, Yoda had still not given up, and I think Johnson missed that Luke should have been a version of Old Ben instead. It's all in the way you write them, as Luke could have been this heroic figure right from the moment Rey first met him, not the guy who casually tossed away the Youngling Slayer 9000 for an attempt at audience giggles. (I did cackle a little.) But, if they had kept Jyn and Cassian alive at the end of R1, that would been a movie I would watch over and over again. Instead, I've only seen it all the way through the one time. I don't like the main characters being killed off, though I certainly recognize the weight inherent in that sacrifice. I'm just more for hopeful/happier endings not just for the movies but for the characters themselves.
  10. Thom
    I'm wiling to give shows a chance to rev up, but the main drawback for me was that 1) it is a prequel (not terrible, in itself) and 2) the main character is dead. If he (and Jyn) had survived their movie, I would have watched it. And I would have liked R1 a lot better if they had gone with the ending that had them surviving. But that's just me.
  11. Thom
    Well, I guess there's no reason to watch this season...
  12. Thom
    Rest in Peace, you were the joy of several generations.
  13. Thom
    That's assuming he was using soft lead and not something harder. IDK. Though the one time we see the damage it caused was when Hicks put it into a Xeno's mouth. Soft palate. And I'm going to assume the Xeno-physiology is a bit tougher than us fleshy bags of mostly water.😉 I don't mind it, as at this point Alien is more suspense than horror. Horror, to me, is Event Horizon, whereas this is just sci-fi with killer aliens. though I do hope they are moving away from the Prometheu/Covenant stuff. (?)
  14. Thom
    F-bomsb with a good script makes a big difference!
  15. Thom
    She was too old for a reason, partly because the Jedi want to train younglings when they can more easily sever familial attachments. Osha was too old and Sol, because he lied about how exacly her family died, set up the problem. Also, the Jedi are not Star Wars Vulcans. They have emotions, they are just forbidden to have families. They are 'monks with a little on the side.'😉
  16. Thom
    I had to look up FOMO!😅 And no. If these were legacy characters, then I would be more tempted, and I'm not interested in a show centered on the Sith. I'm more put out that Harewood had such a small role than Sol dying! The whole thing makes me really wish they had done this so far back as to be in the dawn of the High Republic. Or even before. 😑 Problem solved then!
  17. Thom
    But if I don't watch the second season...😜 About the only thing to like about this show, other then Jecki. Poor Jecki....
  18. Thom
    It looked like Sol was getting ready to fire on Mae's ship, and in that dangerous environment I would assume her ship would not have survived. Kind of an odd thing for Sol to do, if he was trying to chase her down. So I think the little rat guy, knowing what Sol was doing was not very Jedi, disabled the weapons, perhaps more to save Sol from his actions than Mae. Sadly, a lackluster ending for a lackluster show.
  19. Thom
    A shot gun is a devastating weapon at close range, where we see it used and, as you point out, the Marine rifles were using explosive tipped rounds, so pretty much firing tiny bombs into a body. Vasqueze's pistol wasn't, so it didn't do much damage. IMO, anything firing explosive rounds could be termed as heavy. I bow to your superior knowledge! Which is one of the reasons that I don't like horror. I like the ending of Aliens more because there was more than one survivor - which was then totally screwed up in the beginning of the third, IMO.
  20. Thom
    Actually, they did show their smarts, first by taking out the power and then by using crawl spaces to get around the doors. The first shows more intelligence than the others, obviously, but it shows problem solving skills. And, true about the first point, though it did take heavy armament to take them out. Pop guns seemed to show no real effect. Aliens was, and is, an extremely popular movie. And as any movie should, it concerned itself with only itself rather than setting up a franchise, which I don't think was even being thought of at the time. Nowadays, we are all about the franchise and having dozens of sequels, but this was the mid-80's. They did a smart pivot away from horror, esp since the alien was now seen, and gave us a rip-roaring actioner that delivered. The third movie failed, IMO, because it killed off every one. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to watch a movie where my hero dies.
  21. Thom
    It always is the end of the franchise, until those without original ideas are in want of more money...😜
  22. Thom
    A lot of these are really, one-and-done kind of things. You can only do Alien once. I think even keeping it in horror and not action, they still would have hit the 'Already Done This' wall of diminishing returns pretty quickly, making it something ripe for the simpler jump-scare format. That's why I think changing it to action upended expectations (in a good way), as half of the horror/suspense was not even really knowing what the monster looked like. The sequel refreshed it and took the story along a new, and expected course. If Alien was the into, then Aliens was getting the full picture and seeing how tough they were. If this was following a standard story-arc then the third should have been the heroes getting the upper hand against the Xenomorphs, as in winning and not just surviving. A3 went back to the original format however, rather than following through, and basically just redid the original story. Everything after that was just picking up the franchise-crumbs and trying to make another whole slice of cake out of it. Wasn't going to work. That's why I ignore any of the movies after Aliens. Not only are they not as good, and in most cases just more muddling, the first two were complete and fulfilling, and we (I) really didn't need anymore.
  23. Thom
    I do like Aliens better than Alien for that reason. I'm more an action fan than horror fan, though today it's not so much horror anymore as suspense.
  24. Thom
    I remember him from Hill Sst Blues! A very dry, witty character. Always came across as a great actor.
  25. Thom
    Yes, that's the one. Apparently it is all Hicks and Bishop with almost no Ripley or Newt. Darn.
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