General Star Wars Thread

What was so morally ambiguous about Abram's Star Trek? They seemed pretty clear cut about who was good and bad to me.

edited 24th Mar '14 7:06:47 PM by Parable

Abrams said at the time that he had always been more of a fan of Wars than Trek, and I think I remember the powers that be at Paramount brought Abrams on specifically because they wanted a non-Trek fan to shake the franchise up. And Red Letter Media thought the Star Trek reboot felt more like the classic Star Wars films than any of the Star Wars prequels did.

From what little i've seen of the Abrams Trek movies, that seems true. They don't feel like Trek, which is always slower-paced and more cerebral and deliberate. His style would translate well for Star Wars

and remember that he isn't writing it. The Toy Story 3 guy is (name forgotten)

I think I understand where Fantasy Liver is coming from as far as Star Trek being "morally ambiguous". Moral ambiguity might be the wrong term to use, but the heroes of Star Trek could be real jackasses in ways that the heroes of Star Wars weren't. Han Solo may have shot first, but he didn't gain command of the Millennium Falcon by taunting Chewbacca about his dead mother.

That. Star Wars characters were, for the most part, written more as idealistic, larger than life archetypes hearkening back to the stories of old. It had a timeless feel to it whereas Abrams Star Trek, while a good film, felt more...I don't know...edgy? Maybe I'm putting too much blame on Abrams - maybe I should be blaming Hollywood today for wanting more morally ambiguous grimdark in their movies.

Yeah, Abrams has never really impressed me with creating a truly great movie. He definitely has an understanding of form and structure and that is why his movies tend to be entertaining, but the whole process feels perfunctory rather than organic. His stories are written to accommodate the characters (like an Eigen Plot) rather than placing the characters logically within the confines of the story.

For example, Mission: Impossible III took a short scene to develop two minor members of the team, which was a nice effort but called attention to itself because while they were present for the other missions that scene was all their development. In comparison, Ghost Protocol kept running threads for each member of the team throughout and did so as they were building the story rather than stopping just to check off "character development."

Star Wars is similarly defined by their characters, it's seeing how they approach the situation rather than the situation giving them an opportunity to be useful. Luke didn't need to be a naive farmboy and Han didn't need to be a selfish scoundrel, but it's their character arc that makes the story work. It's not like Chekov only being helpful to keep Kirk from falling off a railing during a Gravity Screw.

Abrams Trek was his audition video for Star Wars. He threw out all the intellectual parts of Trek in favor of the pulpiness of Star Wars and had Kirk go full Han Solo. The Wars>Trek guy that runs my comic shop loves the Abrams Trek movies for exactly those reasons.

Is April 1st here early?!

^ Well, when you're given the option of choosing between the various kleptocratic weasels that are endemic to the former USSR's component states, some times not picking between lesser evils is the more appealing option, and Cthulu^note as per the joke bumper sticker isn't always available.

edited 29th Mar '14 11:21:47 PM by Nohbody

I wonder . . . if every election had Cthulu as a write-in candidate and he won every election in the Free World, would he come out of the pages to actually run the countries that voted for him?

Yup. Still, couldn't be much worse than Putin, Obama or Cameron.

I was just thinking about multi-armed combat, and I hit on some Fridge Logic. General Grievous doesn't fight like a naturally four armed creature at all. I don't know if the Kaleesh are two armed or not, but Grievous never uses those extra arms to any advantage. Sure, he does the fanning with the top two, but a Jedi with Sense active could figure out the pattern and avoid that.

I think Grievous COULDN'T use his four arms to max effect because his brain was only wired to use two. He spends most of his screen time with only two arms, and when he whips out the extra two, he always uses them in synch with each other. What he should have been doing was using the bottom sabers to lock blades with Kenobi, then swung in from the side or top and cut at Kenobi as his saber was being driven back.

He might not have won, but he would have been drastically better than he was in Ro TS.

Yeah, Grievous was a humanoid with the normal number of arms before he got turned into a cyborg.

In Star Wars Clone Wars, Grievous did fight mainly with just the two arms, but he was much quicker and more mobile, and he would use his prehensile feet as well. He only whipped out the extra arms to take Jedi opponents by surprise, and there he did exactly what you said: locked their lightsabers with two blades, then cut the Jedi down with his two free blades.

So, basically, Grievous was way off his game when he fought Obi-wan in ROTS. If he were thinking straight, he wouldn't have gone four-arms as his opening move. Hell, he wouldn't have fought Obi-wan at all, because he didn't have surprise and intimidation on his side. That's what Count Dooku tried to drill into Grievous' head: that the only way he can defeat a Jedi is with surprise, intimidation, and dirty tricks.

edited 20th Apr '14 6:36:54 PM by MetaFour

Yeah, because a shit-ton of lightsaber combat between Jedi relies on Force manipulation, and Grievous didn't have that power even when he was fully organic.

I do love Grievous as a character though. HE looks and sounds interesting, and he is this ever lasting thorn in the Republic because he's a coward. Great generals tend to die in the vanguards, but he'll gladly ditch his army to survive to cripple operations another day.

The problem in Revenge is that he's very quickly running out of places to run. After Dooku's decapitated, he's now the effective head of the separatists, so he has no one to run to. The separatist counsel has to be hidden on the most barren of Outer Rim worlds, and he's only doing slightly better.

At that time, if Grievous couldn't prove he could survive on his own merits, it was going to be clear he couldn't survive at all.

Also that whole SLMJ crushing his chest on Coruscant incident.

Grievous I also liked. Like Maul he got me wondering about where he came from and how he got so powerful.

edited 20th Apr '14 6:34:54 PM by Tuckerscreator

Considering the droids were already self aware, the CIS should have programmed several General level droids and set them loose on the enemy to run, hide, fight from the shadows. Even to be willing to go beyond the outer rim and rebuild from a distance before striking. But we all know Sidious was playing both sides, so it wasn't going to happen.

It'd still have been awesome to see that in action.

I honestly think the prequel should have taken the best bits from Maul's and Grievous's biographies, and combined them into a single character. In Episode I, he's a demonic-looking humanoid, and Obi-wan bisects him but the upper half of his body mysteriously disappears after the battle is over. In Episode II, he's got robot legs and he's the leader of the Separtists' combined armies, and he suffers another injury that should have killed him. Finally, in Episode III, he's "more machine than man now", and even more dangerous for it.

What I love about Grievous, is that he's in a setting greatly outmatching him. Jedi and Sith are way above his weight class, but he still manages to be as feared as the latter by the former.

He's the sort of archetype character the original trilogy benefited from. Sure he's just a cowardly dastardly whiplash, but he's a really interesting cowardly dastardly whiplash.

Did you watch Belatedmedia's "What if the Prequels were GOOD" series?

I would love if the New Trilogy involved a return of the Droid army as a true threat and not as joke characters. Yes, the droids were dangerous, but they were mostly cannon fodder while the Force users ran around battling each other. And then the Clones came in as cannon fodder for the Jedi.

What if the new threat were droids fighting side by side with clones?

I'd like if the droids Turned Against Their Masters. It'd be cool seeing the Republic and the Jedi Order trying to survive a war against technology in a sci-fi setting.

Uuugh, I watched them. I don't think I agreed with them.

There's a lot of terrible things about the prequels, but the prequels have some scenes and messages in them I absolutely love. I also fundamentally believe that Revenge is a great film on par with A New Hope. And the problem with the prequels was more that they are prequels made in a time when prequels never happened. And no one knew how to write them.

Phantom Menace's biggest crime to me is that it adds nothing to the saga, and Attack of the Clone's biggest crime to me is that it's boring. But if we're asking how we personally think the prequels could have been better. I would have made the events of Revenge of the Sith the second of a trilogy. We know Anakin turns into Darth Vader, there's no tension in that and there never will be, prequels work better if they're showing how established things came about, but are working towards a conclusion in new ground we can't predict.

So, the creation of Darth Vader and the Empire shouldn't have been the conclusion, the conclusion should have been new ground in a movie set after those events.

Personally I agree with George that Return is the perfect conclusion to the entire saga, and if you're going to add anything to the saga, it should only really be context to the powerful scenes of Luke and Vader before the Emperor. That's why I love the Machete order!

edited 20th Apr '14 6:57:32 PM by Whowho

The Droidekas at least were often a match for the Jedi. With more of those and less of the battle droids, the Jedi might have been held off. But droidekas are probably more expensive.

Droidicas were bad asses because they didn't talk.

Execute Page 66.

edited 20th Apr '14 6:59:12 PM by Whowho