I still think that ROTS is almost as good as ROTJ. Which isn't much of a testament to the quality of ROTJ.

Didn't know that.



Yeah, podracing-lite is a good way to put it. Empty thriller scenes without much weight.

At least if the planet had Wookies, we might have a scene with Chewbacca that mattered. And maybe they could have used actual technology to fight the empire instead of Lucas' cringey "nature beats technology" shtick. Or was he trying to embed his ideas about the Vietnam war again? Who knows.

I should watch ROTS, I've heard it has aged the best and is "the most tolerable prequel" in most respects. I haven't seen it or AotC since 2006 or so.

It's interesting to grasp how directing worked in the Nazi era. Of course, Star Wars ranges from good symbolism to a bastardized, confused mix of totalitarian cinematography. But it's interesting to note how propagandistic this film is:



Ask yourself; what's being signaled in this bit of film? The first part appears to be a collection of stock footage to be used for propaganda purposes, but notice how it's all shot: you tend not to see the beginning or end of any part of production. Many shots pan over what seems to be an "endless" supply of war machinery. The impression you're left with is the awesome productive capacity of the superior Ger - oh wait, I've been propagandized.

It's interesting how subtle this propaganda really is if you're not paying attention. But it really is propaganda, and you have to think about that whenever watching Nazi era footage. Their efforts really were remarkable..

I did enjoy the live action Beauty and the Beast enough when I saw it one afternoon cause I was bored, but I don't understand who these films are for. Who's saying to them "I want to watch this film, only without any of the charm. Also I want it look as busy as a Michael Bay film"?

90's kids. I.E., white people from age 25-40 with enough disposable income to go see films.

The same visual trick is indeed used in Laibach's fascist satire videos. @2:38, you get the same "no beginning or end" trick, but instead for rows of grave crosses. One of the sharper visual allusions I've seen, tbh.

Yeah that's me.

Nah.

Are you the overly nostalgic sort?

Ergh, I rented Solo the other day. Did not like it. The scenes with the wookies were the worst. Oh wait, no they weren't, the whole thing was bad (but if this was what a planet of wookies would be like, I'd rather watch Ewoks). I had no expectations other than I wanted to like it. I hadn't seen any previews or anything, I was just hoping for a fun Star Wars movie. The best character was Han's girlfriend that betrayed him . Everyone else sucked. Ok the freedom-loving droid was mildly amusing once or twice.

I wish they would stop trying to tie everything together. So now Han initially funded the entire rebellion ? Gimme a break. And Darth Maul is back? I actually really liked him in EP1 but putting him in this movie like that was just lame. He needs his own movie. But not made by these clowns.

I only watched it a couple of days ago but I can't recall even one memorable scene. I was left wishing for more of Corellia; they barely scratched the surface. There was a bunch of desert, and some ice... and... uh...?

Something about the new films that really gets under my skin is when they try to explain the technology. Force Awakens goes into planetary shield refresh rates, and all sorts of techo-babble between Rey and Han while in the Falcon, Rey and Finn talking about flooding the Falcon with toxins is one of those scenes, because we then find out that Stormtrooper helmets only filter smoke and not toxins, why not?
Rogue One has to make it a big point that Kyber crystals power the death star, which doesn't seem deepen the universe to know. And TLJ has some pretty cringy examples when Rose and Finn meet.
But Solo really takes the cake with the Coaxium hyperspace fuel. They treat it like such an expensive entity yet, which really breaks the universe when you consider how many poor people seem to have access to hyperspace ships.

I remember a New Hope going into some rules about how hyperspace works, but nothing trying to explain it. But everytime they try to explain the technology in the new films it really drives home for me that they don't know what made the originals magical.

MIDI-CHLORIANS

Oh yeah, there are prequels. Though aside from that I can't think of other examples where they went into how things work in those films.

THIS WEAPON IS YOUR LIFE

don't be ashamed of who you are

Oh yeah, hyperspace fuel. I forgot all about that already.

I remember there was a train that rotated around the tracks. And some guy that said "don't trust anybody" (most overused movie line ever, followed by most predictable betrayal ever am I right?). I did see a Rodian in there that may not have been a bounty hunter, that was cool.

Yeah, it's bad writing. Like with the toxic gas thing: it doesn't matter and doesn't mean anything in the film at all. Seriously, why is it in there? Haven't these writers heard about Chekov's gun? It's not that stories should never do anything which isn't directly relevant to the plot, but the sequels derail to trivialities far too often. I guess they wanted to drum up drama, but it fails, there's no real weight to the potential threat.

I thought the cloaked binary beacon was how the First Order was tracking the ships at first. I mean, they keep showing it prominently on screen, clearly it has to be important for the plot? But it's not, it's entirely a distraction which serves no narrative purpose really.

There is another problem with the sequels more generally: the plots are so weak and convoluted the characters have to spend half of their time shouting exposition to each other. When Rose and Finn meet, half of the technobabble isn't for worldbuilding, it's establishing some artificial rules to their mission so the writer can excuse them from doing things which are more logical.

Oh, I just realized why: it's so they can reuse the gas mask props from ESB, another "I remember that!" moment.

Re: stormtrooper smoke filters. Honestly though the writing in this area has always been trash. Why do stormtroopers even wear helmets? Aesthetically it's to make them faceless baddies. Literally not even people, just monsters who exist for heroes to put to death. But what's the in-universe reason?

Is "smoke" a major problem in Star Wars warfare? If so, why don't the rebels wear gas masks? If not, why would the empire/first order bother?

Do stormtrooper helmets contain advanced optics? In ANH, Luke complains about not being able to see anything, so probably not. If they did, though, then clearly that's an advantage of some kind and the rebels should wear some kind of eyewear as well.

Is it done to anonymize/depersonalize stormtroopers in-universe too? There's some real world psychological research that suggests this isn't a bad idea, so okay, maybe. But why did the clone troopers wear them, then? They have an engineered psychology, share the same face, and were created to fight robots, so there's no psychological purpose for the helmets whatsoever.


That is a lot of kit for something useless.

Also that's a ****in retarded exchange in TFA for one other reason: technology.

https://www.honeywellsafety.com/Products/Respiratory_Protection/PR500_Series_Front_Mount_PAPR.aspx?site=/usa

This is the Honeywell PR500 series mask-mounted PAPR. You put it on your face. As long as it has battery power, it will filter out vapors and aerosols. More advanced versions connect to an escape tank so you still have breathable air even if the filter fails.

This very-not-designed-for-space uncool modern low-tech PPE device looks like it would fit inside of a stormtrooper helmet just fine.


So wtf? Star Wars galaxy has half-masks that can protect you against a hard vacuum. What vendor is making smoke filters?

Implying there is a reason. In that "Top Ten Things You Didn't Know About Vader's Suit" video, they pretty much confront this directly. They mock the idea that the world of Star Wars has any coherent set of rules to it, and that it isn't just a mishmash of visuals slapped together to create a certain visual effect.



It's just for visual effect. They even made a stormtroooper a real character in the sequels, except whoops, him being a stormtrooper has literally zero relevance for who he is as a character and factors into nothing at all (except a few janitor jokes and plot points which could easily have been written differently). He could have been some random dude just as easily.

They should have made the First Order more like a brownshirts-style paramilitary with, you know, ideas. But I guess when actually confronting the Nazi/fascist visuals you're clinging to, you're placed in the uncomfortable place of genocide, trauma, and human evil of the most profound sort, so you can't sell your toys anymore to wine moms. Or, I guess your bad guys still can genocide, but it's not really projected as a bad thing? I'm not sure what TFA says about it, the movie makes no sense.

I mean, we've brought up this before, but:



If Star Wars made any attempt to be coherent with its allusions, fascists marching down the streets of Disneyland questioning or recruiting children would be extremely uncomfortable.

So tl;dr Star Wars has always used its design and imagery in a hollow way. At least the OT had compelling characters and a good plot.

Apparently Kasdan and Harrison Ford both wanted Han Solo to die in RotJ. Would have been a very compelling moment, had Lucas not wanted to go for the "pointless plot" writing he's famous for.

I think the point of Stormtroops is that they are evil, so you can kill them in good conscience. I don't think GL's thought process goes much deeper than that, other than the idea that the Empire was supposed to be seen as a fascistic force which was threatening to take over. This is consistent with the perspective Americans of his generation saw Nazi Germany.

According to the costume designer, all Lucas said was for Stormtroopers to look "fascist, totalitarian". It's clear no deeper thought went into it for ANH.

Oh I'm not saying it's deep at all. But neither is most Americans' understanding of fascism. They're just generic baddies you gotta mow down or else they'll march into town and enslave you. They might as well be machines instead of humans. I mean in SW GL even made them clones, so

BTW, if you haven't seen it, "They Shall Not Grow Old" is out. Beautifully restored and colorized WWI footage, obviously interpolated to make the jittery film pass by smoothly, audio has been cleaned up quite a bit too. Some of the most professional restoration work I've ever seen.

And then there's also that time GL said that all the independent contractors killed in the destruction of the second death star were actually just a bunch of "large termites".

You're absolutely right about that. It's just like the people who watch Inglorious Basterds and cheer on the Americans as they brutally torture and execute Nazis. Of course, you aren't supposed to sympathize with the Nazis either, but I think Tarantino wanted you to at least feel a little perverse about it. The commentary of Nazis watching a propaganda film about their supersniper killing Russians while we cheer on an American supersoldier killing Nazis makes it a pretty obvious message. If you aren't made uncomfortable by the way the soldiers are executed in Inglorious Basterds, you're missing something.

The better response is pretty much what the U.S. actually did, which was to take them to trial for crimes against humanity.

That message might have come across better had that nazi supersoldier not been trying to rape a French Jew at the screening.

makes me wonder, can Trump pardon himself

Possibly I just don't have the stomach for the kind of dumb brutality we see in some of the early scenes.

interesting choice to see a Tarantino movie

Well, yeah, I generally am not a big fan of his movies, partly for that reason.

Rofl, I never knew he responded to that scene. That actually rules.

The scene I'm referring to in particular is this:



I dunno, is the point of this scene really for us just to go "**** yeah, dumbass Nazi guy got what he deserved"? A simple shot to the head would have sufficed, I don't feel comfortable buying into the glorified brutal violence here. It just makes me uncomfortable that I'm supposed to cheer this on. Maybe that's what he intended, but I'm inclined to believe we're *supposed* to feel a little uncomfortable here.

Hey, we cant talk about movies other than Star Wars in here!
also, I think I just found my favorite analysis of TLJ. Yes, the title is being sarcastic.

it's like Loose Change but for Star Wars...

So, the Inglourious Basterds trailer features the tagline "there are no crimes behind enemy lines", which has a voiceover from Brad Pitt saying Nazis have no humanity.

There are plenty of visual references tying the actions in the film to the propaganda piece, in particular you hear a Wilhelm scream as the sniper shoots an American out of a building, and just a few minutes later you hear one as a flaming Nazi jumps from the theater. Also, Americans literally shoot women in the theater, lol. We should also note that Americans and scalping isn't subtle. And, you know, they torture a women for information.

The film is clearly not trying to get you to sympathize with the Nazis, but I think it's trying to make a commentary on how American media relates to Nazis. Kind of a criticism that we take horrendous violence as a big joke so long as it's done to the enemy, and people will laugh along like Nazis do in the cinema.

Hell Brad Pitt even shoots a POW and laughs directly at us like it doesn't matter. The Americans are a completely immoral, sadistic bunch in the film, it's just framed in a heroic way like a propaganda piece would.

But yeah, this comes across more like a commentary on how people understand WWII now in popular media versus a commentary on the actual events.

I never saw Inglorious Basterds, but did Tarantino intend for the extreme violence perpetrated by Americans to be satirical? I always got the feeling that Tarantino simply enjoyed making violent movies, lol.

I think the helmets (and Vader's as well) look like gas mask because there was supposed to be a fight in outer space. So those were actually just space suites but GL liked them so much that he kept them even though that fight was scrapped.