kajnrig
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Everything posted by kajnrig
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Oh, for sure. I suppose it's the assertion that either of them is a "badass" that made my head turn. Snoke, for his part, is far crueler than Palpatine ever was. That doesn't make him more villainous, just... well, more cruel. It's a perfectly fine twist on the Emperor Expy that he otherwise would have been. It's no surprise that Kylo lashes out against him as much as he does. He's very much like an abusive father, and his relationship with Kylo Ren is exceedingly personal, whereas Palpatine seems more scheming, and his relationship with Vader is nowhere near as intense. ...I mean I guess personally I'd have preferred that he not existed to begin with. He was never going to be as good as Palpatine, and the fact that TFA tried only hurt it. Considering what it had to work with, I think TLJ put a good twist on him. For all the faults that TLJ has, I don't consider him to be among them. -
Your most recent Macross or toy purchase! General thread.
kajnrig replied to Gakken85's topic in Hall Of The Super Topics
I don't mean to sound judge-y either (apologies if I come across as such). I've just never had anywhere near that amount of disposable income to... dispose, so the thought of doing so is literally incomprehensible to me. -
Kinda sounds like you want it both ways here. You want something to be original, yet the movie that does original things with the setup it receives you proceed to trash because it doesn't take those setups in a familiar direction... Rewatching his scenes in TFA, I was reminded that he holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is for... literally no reason. Whatever else he does or says, it has to be filtered through that lens. He made a scary face? He holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is, THEN made a scary face. Said something cool? He holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is, THEN said something cool. It's almost like he was literally projecting a facade that looked more imposing than he really was... And the tactic seems to have worked, too, at least in a metafictional sense.
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Your most recent Macross or toy purchase! General thread.
kajnrig replied to Gakken85's topic in Hall Of The Super Topics
Okay, but like... not 7600.00 USD, right? ......right? -
I'm glad to see that Bandai finally seem to have supplied enough to nearly meet demand. Aside from a few unfortunate souls, it looks like everyone who wants one has been able to get them, and even for aforementioned unfortunates, a fair number of places still have stock of it at non-scalper prices. It's certainly no VF-31A... Christ on a crap stick, I still have no idea what went wrong there and how they bungled that up so badly.
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New Macross TV Series in 20xx (sometime this decade)
kajnrig replied to Tochiro's topic in Movies and TV Series
Barring a complete re-write, I'm not sure I'd want to see anything of substance having to do with this particular show... -
I dunno, applying the Blind status to Rod wielders seems to exploit a glitch in the game that turns them OP. (side note: Chirrut, the best of very few good things to come out of that movie) EDIT: Whoops, meant to add to the previous post, my b y'all.
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How long was it between ANH and ESB? I seem to remember having the same feeling going from TFA to TLJ as that. Even if it's just a few days, a week tops, from when Rey leaves the fleet to when she finds Luke. Fair point.
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New Macross TV Series in 20xx (sometime this decade)
kajnrig replied to Tochiro's topic in Movies and TV Series
If that's all Delta had been, I wouldn't have minded one bit. -
Ah yes, that was it, I remember now. Thanks.
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...this may be the wrong game to ask about, but was this the one that was put under bizarre legal threat by one Alex Mauer? Whatever happened? Did the case get thrown out? Is it going to court? With this new trailer, I'm guessing everything is go? I also seem to recall someone else suing this game for copyright infringement or some such thing. Yes? No? Maybe I'm thinking of another game starting with "Star."
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I prefer to think it was a half-baked idea Lucas had that he then poorly implemented in the making of the prequels. Having the ONE Jedi Academy, especially on a city planet... it doesn't work well, thematically. (Maybe the EU expanded the number of academies, but it certainly didn't seem like there were multiple based on the PT.) Before the PT, I envisioned Jedi training academies as patterned after Buddhist temples in old-timey China, or maybe the Shaolin temples. Y'know, one here, one there, often close to nature, sometimes poor and kept up thanks to the generosity of the locals, and so on. That's kind of how it is in the EU, too, IIRC. Since Luke's the only remaining Jedi (or the only trained one, at any rate), he sets up a Jedi... Temple? Academy? on Yavin IV (maybe repurposing the old Rebel base?) and brings students from all over to train, Shaolin monk-style, before setting them off into the world. I don't keep track of Star Wars timetables; I figured that her going to Luke's planet took an indeterminate amount of time, in which time the setup for TLJ happened. No? Yes? By the end of TFA I had kind of checked out.
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Also that would've just been dumb.
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In terms of getting what he wanted and preventing Obi-wan from getting what he wanted, yes, of course. How they bumble around each other is more silly than badass, though. (Though that's hardly the fault of the characters themselves, that has more to do with how the scene was shot and composited, the effects looking dated, etc. Hence why I was kidding.) I'll take your word on it. I was hyped for Mace Windu in Episode I because it was Samuel L. Mother-Loving Jackson with a purple beam saber yooooOOOOO and then the prequels were the prequels, so I quickly lost all interest in Star Wars lore. His design certainly was badass, and with his being a bounty hunter... Cool-looking guy in a cool occupation? It's not hard to see why people wanted to make more of him than what he was. I'm just saying that based solely on what he actually did - not how he looked, which again stands for a lot - he wasn't all that. Like... Boba Fett is no Wedge, right? I freaking love Wedge Antilles, and always have ever since I made the connection that he was in all three movies and survived all three major battles. Dude gets barely any lines or screen time, has no Force powers and zero plot armor whatsoever, and still manages to make it through everything. What's the TV Tropes term for someone like him? Badass Normal? Yeah, he's that. I'll have to take your word on the comics, too, since I don't follow things outside of the movies. Or, well, I don't anymore. If we'd had this convo when I was a teenager, I'd probably have more to add there. I'm not too worried about her not getting more material, though, because people sure will try their damnedest to do her what justice they deem has been denied her. SOMEBODY will. It'll be a thankless job, but someone will inevitably be like, "Hold my beer." It's happened with worse characters coming off of worse story arcs. Might not be someone from the fandom, but it'll happen. Neil Gaiman turned a goofy sand-sprinkling superhero into an all-powerful anthropomorphic concept and no one blinked an eye. Someone'll see it done.
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Neato. The only point I take issue with is "Instead, we’re left with the story as it is, and one well-digested bounty hunter." Because... I mean, c'mon. They spell it out in the movie. 1,000 years of digestion sounds incredibly NOT well-digested. And if he escapes a la the EU, then all the less well-digested. I wonder what it's even like down there. Maybe slightly cavernous, with meaty walls that are perpetually slightly moist with mucus and digestive fluids... You could probably walk around from stomach to stomach without much in the way of impedance. There'd also have to be some source of fresh air, or even recycled air, to keep you alive for as long as possible. I mean, logically there wouldn't, you'd just suffocate before making it very far through a long long long digestive tract, which begs the question of how it's supposed to be a form of torment instead of just a very sadistic form of execution but blargh;alksdjf;alksdfja I don't get where people get this reading of her, nor why it's a problem for her to be as potentially strong with the Force as Anakin was. Is it because of The Prophecy? No one can be as powerful as him? Of all the dumb things from the PT to assimilate into your head canon, why take the Jedi prophecy and the Star Wars equivalent of DBZ power levels? I mean, for one, the OT never needed a prophecy gone wrong to explain why Anakin/Vader is supposedly such a badass, and for another, he's never actually shown being all that powerful, he just does a whole lot of choking people from across the room. Anakin being The Chosen One is lazy writing. Or as Lucas puts it, "It's like poetry. It's sort of... they rhyme." So it isn't inherently a problem for her to be as powerful as Anakin et al, but even if it is, she's never actually shown being able to fly ships without training or duel with lightsabers and use the Force with nary a glance. Her flying ability is alluded to in the early scenes of TFA - everything from her occupation to her hobbies center around starships, so at the very least, the movie demonstrates her keen interest in them - and she actually struggles mightily with the Falcon before figuring it out enough to get Finn and her out of a sticky situation. She doesn't just get into the cockpit and immediately run circles around the TIEs. She is as amateurish in her fight against Kylo Ren as Finn is, up until she embraces the Force and finally gains the upper hand against a physically and emotionally wounded adversary. Her use of the Force is shown to be haphazard at best throughout the movie, more often frightening her than helping her, and it's again only during the climax of the movie that she begins to wield it with intention. And even if it IS a problem for her to be inherently as powerful as Anakin et al, and even if she DOES fly ships without training and duel with lightsabers and use the Force with nary a glance, then it's a problem you should have with this entire world. Anakin uses the Force to pilot Formula 1 cars and take down a super doughnut as a friggin' child (in a space fighter for which he has no training). Luke climbs into an X-Wing (for which he has no training*) and uses the Force (for which he has no training) to blow up the Death Star. The Emperor and Yoda both demonstrate Force abilities far in excess of what Vader ever does. To say that what Rey does is any more implausible than what Anakin/Luke do is... well, it's certainly not well-reasoned. *I'm sure it's explained in the supplementary materials why he actually IS familiar with an X-Wing or that it shares controls systems with his T-16 or whatever and thus he would be able to pilot it, which only reinforces my point. I think they might have been trying to make lightning strike twice. Because like Fett, Phasma's design is pretty cool (I guess... I dunno, Star Wars aesthetic was never my cup of tea), and like Fett, she doesn't really... do anything. Maybe like Fett, she'll also coast on the strength of her design until writers can write her into a badass. I dunno. You mean this lineage? (though to be fair, EVERYONE looks bad in AotC... and boy oh boy that CGI did not age well) I kid, of course. But with regards to Boba Fett specifically, I don't think it's particularly impressive, what he did. He tracked the Falcon to Bespin, then told the Empire they were there in exchange for getting Han's frozen body. It's not so much impressive as expected. If he schemed and machinated his way to isolating and/or capturing Han, that would be a different story, but as it is, he's a pretty minor character in the OT. Kind of an unfair comparison on its face, isn't it? "This character that has had decades of stories that turned him into a badass is a badass. This new character that does not yet have decades of stories that turn her into a badass isn't a badass." Like... I get what you're trying to say - that Phasma won't be embraced by fans the way Boba Fett was - but the way you chose to say it is... bad. There's comparing apples and oranges, and there's comparing warm apple cider and an orange tree bud. And I mean, it's not like Boba Fett even did any of those things. Because he didn't.
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Maybe the same thing happened to Fett between V and VI. It would certainly explain why he's so flippantly discarded in that movie... And it's not like Star Wars doesn't have a history of its creators hate hate HATING its fans... Hmm... I don't think that actually happened, of course, but it would be so appropriate. It's like poetry, y'know - it rhymes.
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You did not miss something. She was already at the mid-point of her life expectancy at the start of the show/movie, and the events of Delta have shortened it, probably significantly. I seem to recall the final episode cures some of the mineralization(?) afflicting her, but not all of it.
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There's still no word on what form AC5 will take, but chances are high it's "just" a PS2 Classic running off the PS4's emulator and not a higher-res, higher-texture remaster. Also, I do hope that one of the art book stories is A Blue Dove for the Princess. A proper translation would be great. Or perhaps a proper adaptation would be more apt, as I feel like those fan translations WERE probably proper translations, which was the problem.
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I dunno, depending on the lighting conditions, she might very well blend right into the environment versus the stark white of a regular Stormtrooper... Are they Stormtroopers now? It never even crossed my question that... Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees Fett for the loser that he is. He does about as much and gets humiliated as much in the OT as Phasma does in the NT. I thought Stormtrooper armor IS laser-proof. You have to aim for the seams. Maybe that was just part of the EU? I know they get taken down willy-nilly in the movies, but I figure that's simply a case of Rule of Cool.
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Ranka EXQ figure now at HLJ (~$35-40 shipped): https://hlj.com/macross-frontier-exq-figure-ranka-lee-bnp38699
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Solo: A Star Wars Story, in theaters May 25, 2018
kajnrig replied to Dobber's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
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So there's still been no official announcement of an American release, but supposedly it's going to be the same Strangereal Edition as Europe gets. Which of the two would you all be more likely to get? The Strangereal comes with the big frakk-off Arsenal Bird figure, but the Japanese one costs much less (~$100 shipped vs ~€170/$200 USD RRP) and you get a much tidier steelbook and (arguably) better stickers/patches. Now that I think about it, none of that sounds as appealing as they did when they were first announced. I was going to get the Japanese one for the steelbook, but now that I take a second look at the price, it doesn't seem very worth it. And since I don't care at all about the Arsenal Bird model, nor about any patches or stickers, maybe it's best to just buy the base game...
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Wow. Crazy. Okay, then. Thanks for the info, y'all.
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Went to see it a second time against my will (saw it with the nephews the first time, saw it with friends the second). It's not as bad the second time around, but only because it's easier to tune everything out and enjoy the at-times admittedly funny humor. The Venom symbiote is kind of an idiot, I'm glad they kept it like that instead of making it some sort of super edgy badass. Eddie, though... Basically this. On his own, he's just not very interesting. He also comes off as more of a shitty reporter than the accomplished one they want you to think he is, more of a tabloid paparazzo (apparently that's the singular of paparazzi) than a dedicated journalist. He doesn't fact-check, he doesn't gather evidence, he reaches bizarre and tenuous conclusions based on that evidence... I mean, I know that's not the point of the movie, but it really stuck out to me. Like, there was no reason he had to be an accomplished reporter. He could've easily been sold as the sloppy journalist that he is and it wouldn't have changed the thrust of the plot at all. The "science" scenes were also extraordinarily bad. From the very first lines spoken by the Life Foundation doctors, you could tell that the writers had no idea how science is done. And this wouldn't be a problem except several key characters are at least partially defined by how well they science. To have them spouting lines like "The symbiote requires a respiratory host in order to survive in an oxygen-rich environment" (or some such thing) is... illusion-breaking. What is a respiratory host, even? How do they know that it's the oxygen that's dangerous to symbiotes? There's more nitrogen in our atmosphere than oxygen. How does oxygen harm them? Would they survive if the oxygen was depleted, then? Wouldn't that mean they don't necessarily need a "respiratory host"? Wouldn't the exact opposite be true, in fact? If a host requires oxygen to breathe, and the symbiotes are adversely affected by oxygen (which, by the way, reads like a really dumb justification completely fabricated for the movie, I don't remember it ever being a thing in the comics/cartoons), wouldn't they expressly want to bond with something that DOESN'T breathe or otherwise takes in oxygen? All of which is to reiterate that the scientific language is clearly and obviously written by people who had no idea what scientific language sounds like, and more importantly, couldn't be bothered to do the most basic research to find out. They added "weakness to O2" to the symbiote as a dumb justification for why it needs to bond with others, when 1) they didn't need to do so in the first place, and 2) THEY DIDN'T NEED TO DO SO IN THE FIRST PLACE. The writers actually already explained it away fine: In another scene (or maybe even in the same scene as "respiratory host" above), main baddie says that the symbiote bonds with others to better survive in unfamiliar territory. No mention of the atmosphere, much less oxygen specifically, AND he follows it up with "and hey, maybe we can use that very thing to survive in THEIR environment." And that's all you need right there. Don't over-explain it, just let that be the explanation. ...sigh. Anyway. The pacing of the movie was... well, it wasn't half-bad, actually, up until they just randomly decide to skip to the ending. I'll echo @mikeszekely's sentiment that the beginning drags, but it's not too agonizing, and events do build on each other satisfyingly enough. But there definitely seems to be a good 30 or 40 minutes of footage that was cut from the middle there by men in business suits. Interestingly enough, Tom Hardy was vocal that his favorite 30 or 40 minutes of scenes were missing from the film. HmmmMMMMMMMMMMM COINCIDENCE I THINK NOT (skipped straight to it for you) The action, once the movie finally gets to it, is... it could be better, could definitely be worse. It doesn't excite the way a Marvel movie does, it doesn't make the most of the uniquely Venom traits the way Marvel did with... well, any and all of their characters, but let's use Spider-Man and Black Panther during their debut in Civil War specifically. And I know a lot of that has unfortunately to do with the fact that they don't have a Spider-Man to give Venom some 60% of this moveset. Speaking of movesets, I'd have loved to see some dumb Marvel VS Capcom moves show up. Venom Fangs, that completely fabricated for the game Death Bite super move... Any and all of that would have been great. They DO do something fairly clever in the final battle, but it's super brief and I couldn't even tell it happened until that second screening. By the way, they completely screw up that final battle with a very obvious plot hole ...but really, it's the pacing that ultimately dooms the movie. You can forgive subpar writing with subpar characters and mediocre action if they're fed to you at the right pace. But cut 30-40 minutes of interplay between Brock and the symbiote (side note: I also dislike that the symbiote itself calls itself Venom. Maybe this isn't the case nowadays or never was, but I always thought that "Venom" referred to the combined form of host + symbiote. It was why Venom referred to itself in the plural.), and the movie may as well not exist. What little bit of that there is is the absolute best part of the movie; cutting it doomed the movie (if not financially, then certainly critically). I'll second this. I don't know nearly as much about Venom as you do, but I could tell they were at least trying to draw from source material. I'll reiterate that I love that the Venom symbiote is the loser of its own kind. I think that was taken from the comics, no? The sillier (and better) aspects of the movie almost certainly draw from the comics. I feel like this could have made for a great R-rated horror comedy. The lack of gore doesn't get me so much as the lack of... follow-through, I guess. They don't do anything with the person-eating thing, it just feels like it's there to check off the list.
