kalvasflam

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I know, right?  Finn spent a good chunk of the first movie wandering around in Poe's clothes.  

Honest, they killed that chemistry with TLJ, let Rose get in the way of Poe x Finn. The third one should get that back on track with the tragic death of Rose when Jar Jar’s corpse falls on her.

we need to have Poe doing his best Maverick impression while Finn is busy wooooooooing and complementing that piloting skill.

3 minutes ago, TangledThorns said:

Meh, can we get another season of 24 instead please?

Nah, do you really want to see old Jack Bauer, how would that be any different from the current SW movie.  Another Atomic Blonde on the other hand.

You know, somewhere someone is cutting up all the scenes from these trailers and assembling something of a coherent movie... as much coherence as this one can provide.

so, wait, Poe is going from being in an X-wing to riding a horse?  They just need to have Finn and Poe kiss passionately on screen and that will silence all the critics, because if anyone still did say something bad about the film at that point, they’d have all sorts of nasty labels thrown at them.

The only thing I remember about Spectre was the tentacle sex, the Nazi dude (from that Brad Pitt movie), and Drax.

as for 25, what happened to the new girl Bond?  Oh I get it, more Hollywood smoke and mirrors to please the progressive crowd. 

More money for ScarJo....  she can leverage her looks for a few more years, and comfortably retire....  as if she couldn’t do that now.

8 hours ago, azrael said:

Why does Rey need a staff if she has a blaster AND a lightsaber? Freakin' hanging onto that thing like a security blanket.

*insert obligatory face palm meme here*

Because a staff is longer and more... potent than a lightsaber. 

and yeah, it probably is sort of a security blanket, remember she had the staff far longer than she has had the lightsaber, so probably more experienced with it.

Who knows, the expectations have been set so low now that even a mediocre film might clear it.  In the near term this will be judged against the last movie.  In that regards, unless they turn this into an Ewok/Jar Jar infested abortion, it would do well.  Or JJ could decide to level one final insult of some type against the fandom.   We will see.

But, clearly the passing of the torch has been muffed.

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I dunno, I think Disney could've had a real good time with her as an evil queen the way she was originally intended to be... but they don't have the balls to write a face-heel turn for a popular character like that.

You mean it'll be too much like professional wrestling, until Anna stabs Elsa with an icicle?  Hey, the cold may not bother her, but she never said anything about object in the shape of ice.

The interesting thing if you think about how a shared universe works out well is not always going back to the well with the characters.  Consider this, the fault of the movies was that they try to recapture the nostalgia of the original by throwing around the name Skywalker, or sticking a Solo here and there.  It doesn't work, because it never lives up to expectations, I think in a lot of ways, the shared universes in Japanese animation series has worked well when they expand and don't push too hard on the forerunner characters. 

Two examples of this are obviously Macross and Gundam.  Now, Gundam does have a tendency of keep trying to bring back Char, regular Char, grown up Char, fat Char, kid Char, but I do admit they flush out the stories pretty well, but I have to say, they were smart to have build up the history of the story, and slapped in all of these little pieces that made it interesting.  From the original MSG, they went to Zeta (probably the best Gundam series of all time), and then they stuck in pieces over time, Gundam 0080, Gundam 0083, 08th MS team, each of these were strong shows in their own line, and they didn't try to bring in Char or Amuro.  Zeta was the best because they pulled in old characters, and balanced the story arc carefully enough that the main character was always Camille, but they grounded it in the reality of the Gryps war, and enhanced it with a good number of your favorites like Char, and Amuro, but didn't make them the main focus.

Macross is another fairly successful storyline in terms of pulling up stories of varying types, the main difference is they built it up around the idea of story and variable fighter with the shared universe being gradually expanded.  Plus and Zero were both fairly successful there.  Mac 7 was a bit disappointing because... well, because of Basara and all of this protodevlin hero crap.  Frontier I think was a spiritual successor to the original SDF Macross, yeah, they all go through the same general variation, but a Michel, a Luca, and a Ranka, they all stood on their own, even though you could easily substitute Jenius, Kakizaki, and Minmay into their place.  The backstory was interesting.  Delta for some reason screwed things up, up till episode 13, it wasn't bad, then somehow it took a dump, and we ended up with the super  robot show.

I think if Disney carefully thought about the SW universe, there were so many places to go, because they don't have to involve the original character, Mandolorian from the looks of it is excellent as a series.  I liked Rogue One because it flushed out the original SW.  But what they need to do is to have no more Skywalkers, no more Solos, the trip down nostalgia lane has to end.  I personally think they would've done fine without the old cast in the new trilogy, and if they went through three movies, and did an eventual reveal of Ren as the son of Solo, and by the way, Snoke was only a Force meat puppet for Palpatine the ghost, it might have been great.  But instead, we got the abortion from RJ, and JJ now has to rescue the series by an even higher jump of the shark.  I'm glad they put SW on hiatus, give the Mandolorian time to work itself out, then do something else in the universe, no Jedi or Sith needed.

I think the point Seto is making is that in order for the franchise to survive and keep the money flowing, there cannot be a happily ever after.

Imagine how boring SW would be if the movie was about the struggles of Leia governing, or Luke looking for funds to set up the new Jedi temple, or how Han is unsatisfied with his marriage because Leia was too busy with work.

Hence Elsa can’t just be queen after Frozen, she has to do something else, otherwise Frozen 2 would not be about empowerment, it would be about the day to day drudgery of ruling a kingdom, who wants to spend hours seeing Elsa haggling a trade deal or settling a dispute between the other ice carriers and her future brother in law.  We can get that in our normal lives.

This is one reason I think John Wick has worked out so well, the story is taking place in the span of less than a couple of months over three movies.

This also goes back to how sad Hollywood is, not able to come up with any new material.

Here is the inevitable problem with this new set of movies, the heroes of your childhood grow old... they get fat, and ugly, and depressed, once, they were the reason you went to the movies, to escape from the present, but thanks to the need to milk the franchise, now you see them in their not so sexy selves, as they wither in the face of youth, hoping to bask in their old glory one last time.   Thank goodness, Disney has  decided to explore the generational divide and remind the old farts that they are old, it's time to move on, and for the batons to be forcibly taken from them by the young generation, because... "let the past die... kill it."

I'm sure there are 20 years olds who saw TLJ, and decided it was a perfect movie to remind the boomers and their immediate successors, GenX that it's time to move on, get out of the way, now, time's up.  Your heroes are dead, and soon, you will be too.... we're taking over.  Sadly, those same young ones don't have quite the spending power of their predecessors, and are still mostly living off of their parents.

But if Sideshow Bob can mooch off of Star wars to pump up the profit a little more, then why not, there is no tomorrow. 

Heh heh, mean, aren't I. 

11 hours ago, peter said:

 

That's just wrong in so many levels... but utterly hilarious.

Because speeder bikes are so yesterday, and we need a new frigging toy to sell.  So, Quidditch trooper launching motorbikes are perfect.  You can see it now, Rey and the rebels are on the run,  here comes the First Order sandbikes, and they are launching their Quidditch troopers, look at them go.

I love this new video, catapulting Quidditch troopers.  They should really rename this movie to: Rise of Skywalker: the final insult.... until we need to milk the fans again

at this point, I hope the end of the movie involves time travel, sending Rey back in time to Tatooine to become Shmi Skywalker... because why not.

Oh man, the way those Quidditch troopers gets launched looks painful. 

Hey there must be a ton of crew on those star destroyers, you think we can open a few Panda Express on those things?  Even stormtroopers... excuse me, Sith troopers, have to eat.

On 11/17/2019 at 8:41 AM, Shadow said:

I recall in Jane's USNF the Su-34 getting the unflattering but appropriate callsign "Platypus" in the manual. I'm assuming this was before NATO designated as Fullback and the game designers needed to call it something.

It might have been unflattering, but it literally fits considering the duckbill nose on that plane, but aesthetics I find is a matter of personal preference, Su-34 was the most flattering version of the Flanker line in my opinion.

3 hours ago, Knight26 said:

And I never once made any comments about her appearance.  The actress is not unattractive, and even if she was "hot" it would make no difference for how inexcusably bad the character was.

Well, I can’t remember where the name Panda Express came from, but it sure was funny.

But the entire role was extraneous, they could have not had her and TLJ would have been almost as bad.

Hehe, it just shows how that character is hated up to a level of Jar Jar and Ewoks.  She was a redundancy in TLJ and added no real value other than to keep Finn company, and the whole Finn side mission was just dumb.

this reminds me, who is the other girl next to her on the cover?  Is she like a newbie put in place to balance out the human male to female ratio?  They should have put in Phasma instead if that was the case.

On 11/19/2019 at 7:06 PM, jvmacross said:

The sequel trilogy has seemingly made it safe to openly praise the prequel trilogy! 

 

Life is full of little bonuses. Somewhere in Marin county, George is smiling.

1 hour ago, sh9000 said:

It’s just so wrong that the original has an Ewok in the cover, the new series has Rose, and somehow they didn’t put Jar jar on the cover for the prequel.

Forgot Badger... because those are pretty cool...  what do they do?  They badger you to death like an annoying spouse.

3 hours ago, Sildani said:

The Su-57, neé PAK-FA, neé T-50, has finally been given its ultimate designation by NATO: “Felon.”

https://theaviationist.com/2019/11/01/nato-code-name-felon-su-57-gets-its-reporting-name-and-it-couldnt-be-better/

Are you serious?  Felon?  Who the hell came up with that.  Of all the F names that could have been used, Felon?  That is literally criminal.

8 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

From what I've seen, this is a pretty typical trajectory for Star Wars fans as a whole... the longer they associate with the franchise, the more they seem to drift towards preferring the Empire and the Dark Side over the actual heroes of the story.  Possibly related to the franchise's recurring obsession with "Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb".

I wonder if that's because most Star Wars fans have become so jaded following the original trilogy that they all realize how Spaceballs was a much more entertaining replacement for the franchise than the spawn of Lucas post the original trilogy.  Because let's face it, we got much more mileage out of Moranis and Pullman than we ever did with Christensen, Portman, McGregor, or Ridley.  Spaceballs is a classic that only gets better with age... the SW follow ons, not so much, and it gets a little worse with every rewatching. 

1 hour ago, Graham said:

Wasn't overly blown away by the trailer.

Didn't like the horses also.

Still, I'll watch it in the cinema when it opens. Its a tradition. Probably see it at least twice, even if it's bad.

Have to use the horses correctly, in a Calvary charge...   across a star destroyer... in space.  

You know, the main problem is that with all these pretend plot twist, my brain just hurts.  I am just waiting for the Kylo REN reacts video now....  at least we will get some entertainment out of this. 

3PO said it the best....  taking one last look.  The subtext here was “before I melt myself down a la T-800 because I can’t stand this crap any more.”

19 hours ago, Graham said:

Personally, I don't think Fantastic Four will ever be a big success as a live-action movie. We've had two failed, disastrous  attempts already.

I just don't think the characters are interesting or likable enough for a mainstream movie franchise.

Admittedly the first one with Jessica Alba wasn't all bad.  Well, mainly, Alba wasn't all bad, the rest were meh....

3 hours ago, JB0 said:

Wasn't it Fox that had the FF license? No road bumps there.

 

And my understanding is Disney was asking for more money, not Sony.

You know what... you are right on both counts.  Great points.  I stand corrected

The funny thing is that given what's happened, Marvel is now going to start figuring out how to push Spiderman to the sidelines, they'll evolve it during the films, but in a way that still contribute to the MCU.  And it makes Fantastic Four harder.

Can you imagine the next big Spiderman success?  Then Sony asks for more money again?

Alternatively, Marvel buys out Sony Entertainment to get the rights back and bring all of Marvel home, and then sell Sony Entertainment again.