Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, on home media Mar. 13, 2018

[kalvasflam]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... if so, why did they sh*t a brick when Luke levitates C-3PO and start worshipping him as a god?

That's so easy I'm surprised you even asked the question, that's because the Ewoks are sophisticated little lying shits.  They'll go ahead and make the brutish outlanders think their little tricks are impressive.  Just act like a bunch of fangirls and go: "Ohhhhh, Ahhhhhhhhhhh"  All the while, masking their force signatures, and no one is the wiser that they are sitting amidst a bunch of psychotic little evil monsters who slaughtered innocent stormtroopers, who suddenly couldn't  aim worth crap against the little buggers, although they seem to aim pretty well to be able to blast Leia in the arm.

 

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

This came up in a thread on MechaTalk a while back.  What was said there was that the interdictor field (which I only remember from X-Wing vs TIE Fighter) doesn't actually prevent ships from using their hyperdrives... it's just creating conditions that trigger built-in safety features in hyperdrives to force ships back into realspace.  If the safety features are disabled or removed, it's only creating a potentially injurious navigational hazard, which would be a non-issue for a ship hell-bent on suicide anyway.

I take you back to TNH when Han was busy getting his ass shot at by stardestroyers, what was he doing?  That's right, busy making calculations so they don't jump into [insert your disaster here].  If there is a so call built in safety feature as suggested, then logic would suggest that  Han jump immediately, because it gets him immediately out of range.  Then he just set up a new course once this safety feature pulls him out of hyperspace.    But I suppose it's easier to chalk it up to the inconsistencies of the writers in this case.  

Edited January 16, 2018 by kalvasflam

[Chronocidal]

24 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Han made it sound like running into a physical object would be a "instant death" type thing, but I think The Force Awakens kind of nixed the idea that hyperdrives in a gravity well would have any major impact on space-time when the Falcon came out of hyperspace only a couple hundred feet above the surface of Starkiller Base.

Yeah, the hyperspace shenaniganry was one of the things I actually really disliked about TFA.  Partly because of how silly it felt, and partly because of how much it reminded me of all the times I've seen it done much better in other places.

I think the biggest problem with all of this stuff may just be that the EU was written will all kinds of meticulous details about how technology worked, and set a standard that the original trilogy never approached, and now we've got techie whiplash from the movies going back to not caring how anything works, and just doing whatever they want.

It's not that they're not allowed to get creative with the universe and how it all works, but fans have been operating under a lot of rules and assumptions for a very long time.  Saying none of it matters anymore and directly contradicting things people have held as canon for decades has a way of unsettling the fanbase.  Though, to be fair, the SW fanbase isn't exactly what I'd call entirely stable to begin with.  

[Focslain]

On 1/14/2018 at 12:23 PM, Seto Kaiba said:

Kinda my point... it's not like the civil rights movement magically cured inequality, and even today there's still a pretty big struggle for minorities in film to escape being typecast into racial stereotypes.  Good luck finding a black man in a police movie who isn't either the partner, the guy who's two days from retirement and dies, a shrieking ninny like every character Chris Rock has played, or some kind of drug-dealing thug gangster pimp. 

*points at Bright* though if you swap 'black' for 'orc' your back to square one.

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

See, maybe they were really only explained in the EU apparently, but I thought the issue was that hyperdrives in general completely cease to function within a gravity well.  They were always referred to as "gravity well projectors," which if you think about the classic space-time as a bedsheet analogy, is like dropping a synthetic bowling ball in the middle of it.  Basically the hyperspace equivalent of getting your car stuck in the mud, it's not going anywhere no matter how hard you gun the engines.

Maybe that all changed in the canon, but the entire purpose of those interdictor cruisers in the EU was to drag ships out of hyperspace, and keep them there.  I'm sure there are safety features involved to a point, and maybe it would take a custom built hyperdrive to get around them, but it always sounded like using a hyperdrive in a gravity well could have consequences on a "fabric of space-time" level (kind of like what we saw in TLJ).

That's how the gravity well generators worked. It's the same principal as the Kessel run. The Maw (a cluster of 5 black holes near Kessel) create a hyperspace sink hole. Since Han juiced the Falcon to better then military grade speeds (in the tech manual the Falcon is listed as having a x.5 hyperdrive while most military craft, an ISD for example is rated with a x1 drive and civilian craft and the stock YT-1300 series having x1.75 and greater. So yeah, smaller is better here) he can effectively skip over the sink hole and therefor cut the time and distance.

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(Wasn't she the one who built her lightsaber wrong and it blew up in her hand?)

Tanel Ka lost an arm in a duel with Jacen when her hand-crafted lightsaber failed mid fight. Her second attempt was better.

[electric indigo]

Meanwhile, in Japan

[Axelay]

According to the Rebels show (which is now considered canon), Interdictor Cruisers are capable - within proximity - of both pulling ships out of hyperspace as well as preventing "realspace" ships from jumping to lightspeed. I don't think that there's any sort of "safety" associated with not being able to escape from this ability. It's just depicted as a gravity well.

Interdictor as shown on Rebels

[Chronocidal]

8 minutes ago, Axelay said:

According to the Rebels show (which is now considered canon), Interdictor Cruisers are capable - within proximity - of both pulling ships out of hyperspace as well as preventing "realspace" ships from jumping to lightspeed. I don't think that there's any sort of "safety" associated with not being able to escape from this ability. It's just depicted as a gravity well.

Interdictor as shown on Rebels

I want to chalk that up to them hiring Zahn and pulling Thrawn back into the canon.  I remember the interdictor cruisers being a favorite tactic of Thrawn, both for trapping enemy fleets, and for springing traps by yanking his own ships out of hyperspace exactly where he needed them.  What I don't remember is if they were Zahn's personal invention, or things that were around before his first set of novels.

If that dreadnaught in the opening battle of TLJ had been an interdictor, it would have made the initial battle in TLJ feel a lot more meaningful.

[Mommar]

Don't forget that Return of the Jedi still has the best space battle ever put to film too.

[Focslain]

38 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

I want to chalk that up to them hiring Zahn and pulling Thrawn back into the canon.  I remember the interdictor cruisers being a favorite tactic of Thrawn, both for trapping enemy fleets, and for springing traps by yanking his own ships out of hyperspace exactly where he needed them.  What I don't remember is if they were Zahn's personal invention, or things that were around before his first set of novels.

If that dreadnaught in the opening battle of TLJ had been an interdictor, it would have made the initial battle in TLJ feel a lot more meaningful.

The Interdictor first appeared in the SW:RPG in the Imperial supplement in 1989, then in Heir to the Empire in 1991. 

5 minutes ago, Mommar said:

Don't forget that Return of the Jedi still has the best space battle ever put to film too.

That space battle is the only reason RoJ is above ESB in my personal list. 

Plus in a SW:RPG campaign I got to fight in it and test my ship building mettle. Good thing I was on the rebel side.

[Dynaman]

I dislike the RotJ space battle, it was everything that went wrong with the series after that point.  Namely that spectacle (MORE SHIPS ON SCREEN!) overtook emotional impact from then on.  One big caveat though, I can't think of a Star Wars battle in any movie that did not flow well - lesser movie space battles leave me wondering what the heck is going on at times.

[Nightbat]

4 hours ago, Focslain said:

Tanel Ka lost an arm in a duel with Jacen when her hand-crafted lightsaber failed mid fight. Her second attempt was better.

I, for no reason, looked up that character and couldn't help laughing out loud about this

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tenel_Ka_Djo

Quote

During her stay at the Jedi academy, Tenel Ka and her friends repelled the deadly Shadow Academy, foiled the Diversity Alliance, and put an end to the return of the Black Sun.

 

[kajnrig]

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

But "Only a Sith deals in absolutes" is an absolute... 

*mind blows*

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

One of the few EU titles I'm familiar with.

KILL IT WITH FIRE. 

WITH.  FIRE.

(Wasn't she the one who built her lightsaber wrong and it blew up in her hand?)

8-year old me thought it was the bees' knees. I always thought she was cool though because afterwards she didn't bother with a prosthetic, just one-armed everything and was still stone cold Space Wonder Woman badass.

5 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I know they jettisoned the old EU, but haven't they been releasing new tie-in comics and novels?  I remember reading something about them creating a big, detailed backstory for Phasma that ended up being jettisoned into a novel rather than having any part in the films.

There was something about the movies and Clone War being the immovable objects of the canon, but I don't know if that was only their rationale for getting rid of the EU, or if that's their policy moving forward as well so that even any new comics/books/etc. are nebulous canon-wise. I dunno. Again, it's arcane.

5 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Yeah, the hyperspace shenaniganry was one of the things I actually really disliked about TFA.  Partly because of how silly it felt, and partly because of how much it reminded me of all the times I've seen it done much better in other places.

Did they do a hyperspace jump from a planet in TFA? Or was that Rogue One? What hyperspace shenanigans was troubling in TFA?

1 hour ago, Mommar said:

Don't forget that Return of the Jedi still has the best space battle ever put to film too.

I'm trying to think of examples to prove this statement wrong, because there HAS to be something better, it's not like RotJ's was THAT good, and yet...

1 hour ago, Nightbat said:

I, for no reason, looked up that character and couldn't help laughing out loud about this

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tenel_Ka_Djo

 

I heard that she ended up marrying Jacen Solo, and then he went and became uber-powerful Sith Lord and killed her?

I'm digging this trip through memory lane.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, Nightbat said:

I, for no reason, looked up that character and couldn't help laughing out loud about this

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tenel_Ka_Djo

 

The narm levels were off the charts there... most fan fiction is not THAT badly written.  It makes The Last Jedi look like Oscarworthy material by comparison.

IIRC, the "Diversity Alliance" was the moniker of a terrorist reactionary racist movement consisting entirely of aliens from species who were oppressed by the Empire and who were on a Bender-approved mission to Kill All Humans (via germ warfare).  In true, terrible fan fiction-y expanded universe form, the original character running that terrorist organization was obligated to have some direct tie to the films so she was the sister or cousin of that dancing girl Jabba fed to the rancor.  She would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids and their wookiee.

 

18 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

*mind blows*

Somebody get a mop!

 

18 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

8-year old me thought it was the bees' knees. I always thought she was cool though because afterwards she didn't bother with a prosthetic, just one-armed everything and was still stone cold Space Wonder Woman badass.

Unfortunately, my ridiculous memory for detail extends to way more than just Macross.  I remember reading those books in like the 7th grade, just out of sheer boredom because there were several days a week I'd be obliged to bum around the library.  I have very clear memories of finding the books painfully cliched, especially the spoiled rich kid and that girl who was a walking after-school special on the dangers of drug use.  (Also have very clear memories of being amused by how anytime Lando appeared, Han or his kids would absolutely ruin whatever his latest business venture happened to be.)  For me, I think it was either that Diversity Alliance sillybollucks runaround or that Dark Jedi who was trying an Oz gambit to set himself up as the Emperor-by-proxy that topped the charts in narm.

(Of course, I was a cynical kid.)

 

18 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Did they do a hyperspace jump from a planet in TFA? Or was that Rogue One? What hyperspace shenanigans was troubling in TFA?

Apart from that crap about fuel pumps, the only hyperspace shenanigans were that big freaking gun on Starkiller Base and Han flying the Millennium Falcon through the Starkiller Base deflector shields by coming out of hyperspace a scant hundred meters or so above the surface.

 

18 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

I'm trying to think of examples to prove this statement wrong, because there HAS to be something better, it's not like RotJ's was THAT good, and yet...

Personally, I thought the ship battle at the start of Revenge of the Sith was pretty awesome too... but then, being a big Warhammer 40,000 fan, that whole aesthetic of spaceships lining up to fire broadsides at each other and exploding into fiery conflagrations speaks to me on a deep, 8 year-old level.

 

18 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

I heard that she ended up marrying Jacen Solo, and then he went and became uber-powerful Sith Lord and killed her?

I'm digging this trip through memory lane.

Wut?

[renegadeleader1]

28 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

?

Let's see if I can explain this...

The old expanded universe when it was under the publisher Bantam had some very good entries with things like Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy and the Rogue/Wraith novels. Even Kevin J. Anderson's books while a little cliched were still enjoyable. The continuity was fairly tight too thanks to the relatively small circle of writers used and their willingness to work together.

Then Bantam lost the publishing rights to Del-Rey who tried to mark their take over of the license by going all dark and edgy. They started hiring garbage Star Trek novel writers to write books, killed Chewie, and introduced a new big bad from outside the star wars galaxy to wreck everything. Who were these guys? The Yuzhan Vong,  a species that doesn't exist in the force which can best be described as Cobra-La from the G.I. Joe movie mixed with sadomasochistic tendencies and  a disturbing interest in body modification. They hate mechanical technology and all their stuff is bioengineered.

[Chronocidal]

55 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Apart from that crap about fuel pumps, the only hyperspace shenanigans were that big freaking gun on Starkiller Base and Han flying the Millennium Falcon through the Starkiller Base deflector shields by coming out of hyperspace a scant hundred meters or so above the surface.

Personally, I thought the ship battle at the start of Revenge of the Sith was pretty awesome too... but then, being a big Warhammer 40,000 fan, that whole aesthetic of spaceships lining up to fire broadsides at each other and exploding into fiery conflagrations speaks to me on a deep, 8 year-old level.

I want to say Han quick-jumping the ship right out the bay door of that massive flying heap of corridors counts too, just on the sheer instantaneous success of it.  The thing had been shut down only a couple moments earlier, and flies in the face of everything said in previous movies about calculating jumps, not to mention all the nonsense mechanical shenanigans they tried to pass off as technobabble, and fell flat on their face with it. 

What they should have done was consult someone who knows literally anything about aircraft, cars, lawnmowers, or any sort of combustion engine-powered mechanical object to write dialogue that sounded anything like it made sense.  Heck, they would have been better off quoting Star Trek for those lines.  At least that would have been intentionally silly.

Far as battles go, the prequels still managed some pretty good ones, RotS pretty much tops them overall with the intro.  Similar to Endor, the music was a big part, and something that I think most newer movies have done a terrible job with is portraying the non-main-character pilots believably.  It's not about making them talk a lot, or discuss tactics, it's about clipping their dialogue to the absolute minimum to sound like they're actually in a fight to survive and achieve their objectives.  I seriously cringe at every single line of dialogue by every pilot in TFA, because it's just a combination of horrible writing, and terrible reading of lines.  I haven't seen TLJ enough to remember much of that scene yet, but I want to say it was a bit better at least.  That, and most of the pilots didn't survive long enough to get any lines anyway.  

I'd say it barely qualifies due to being in atmosphere, but the most recent example I can hold up as well done is the end sequence in GotG.  You didn't need tons of expository chatter between pilots describing every little thing, it was clear from both the visuals and the clipped commands over the comm that let you know what they were doing, and the acting was solid all the way through.

[Seto Kaiba]

1 hour ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Let's see if I can explain this...

[...] They started hiring garbage Star Trek novel writers [...]

I don't know if you've looked in the Star Trek: Discovery thread and seen my strictures on the Star Trek relaunch continuity... but really, that one sentence about them hiring the Star Trek EU's writers said all that needed to be said.  Yowza, that must have been a dumpster fire you could see from Andromeda.

[kajnrig]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

(Of course, I was a cynical kid.)

I hated the Tolkien books because they used single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") for people talking. :/

1 hour ago, renegadeleader1 said:

Then Bantam lost the publishing rights to Del-Rey who tried to mark their take over of the license by going all dark and edgy. They started hiring garbage Star Trek novel writers to write books, killed Chewie, and introduced a new big bad from outside the star wars galaxy to wreck everything. Who were these guys? The Yuzhan Vong,  a species that doesn't exist in the force which can best be described as Cobra-La from the G.I. Joe movie mixed with sadomasochistic tendencies and  a disturbing interest in body modification. They hate mechanical technology and all their stuff is bioengineered.

Oh god, I vaguely remember people throwing fits about this. I also vaguely remember others defending the move with preexisting lore about Force-resistant creatures, like Waddo and... something that secretes mucus that resists the Force? I forget.

[Chronocidal]

Might have been the ysalamiri, another Thrawn-related thing that he used.

I never got into the NJO books, I pretty much cut off my EU at the end of Zahn's last few books in the old Del-Rey series.  It was a really fitting finale I think, and I like leaving the characters on the note it ended on, rather than watch the universe get burnt down by a wacky race of plant-zombie-borg.  

[Gerli]

So.. you guys sound like I'm REALLY need to start watching that Rebels show... right?

[Graham]

Yep, Rebels and Clone Wars (if you haven't already).

[Convectuoso]

I like ROTJ, but I wish I had never watched the BluRay edition. Vader's 'NOOOOO' just ruins everything 

[Black Valkyrie]

 

It's time for Star Wars to end. 

 

 

[Lorindor]

11 hours ago, renegadeleader1 said:

They started hiring garbage Star Trek novel writers to write books, 

So those Klingons-in-all-but-name where made up by former Star Trek writers? This explains so much.

As for best movie space battle ever, I would also say RotJ. But the movie Serenity has also a pretty good (but short) space battle, in my opinion. I think the one in RotS is hampered by those silly buzz droids and it lacks build-up and reasons to personally invest in it.

[TangledThorns]

15 hours ago, Dynaman said:

I dislike the RotJ space battle, it was everything that went wrong with the series after that point.  Namely that spectacle (MORE SHIPS ON SCREEN!) overtook emotional impact from then on.  One big caveat though, I can't think of a Star Wars battle in any movie that did not flow well - lesser movie space battles leave me wondering what the heck is going on at times.

Um, Rogue One? Its tops when it comes to space battles for Star Wars. Plus it had a land/air battle at the same time that was awesome too. 

 

 

 

[ArchieNov]

Umm, Macross:DYRL? It had one of the most epic space battles ever. Plus the song was awesome.

[Lorindor]

56 minutes ago, TangledThorns said:

Um, Rogue One? Its tops when it comes to space battles for Star Wars. Plus it had a land/air battle at the same time that was awesome too. 

Definitely very, very good. Second best in the franchise. But I still prefer RotJ.

[kajnrig]

Random on-topic tangent: Why were people upset about Rey in the water in TLJ? Something about her not being able to swim? Did TFA establish that she doesn't know how to swim or something?

[Dynaman]

19 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Random on-topic tangent: Why were people upset about Rey in the water in TLJ? Something about her not being able to swim? Did TFA establish that she doesn't know how to swim or something?

Where would she have learned to swim?  Didn't bother me if she did swim in TLJ, I remember falling in the water but not her swimming.

 

Rogue One Space Battle - side story and not part of the Star War "series".  DYRL - I would not count that as a "Lesser" movie...

[Kanedas Bike]

42 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Random on-topic tangent: Why were people upset about Rey in the water in TLJ? Something about her not being able to swim? Did TFA establish that she doesn't know how to swim or something?

 

19 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

Where would she have learned to swim?  Didn't bother me if she did swim in TLJ, I remember falling in the water but not her swimming.

 

Rogue One Space Battle - side story and not part of the Star War "series".  DYRL - I would not count that as a "Lesser" movie...

 

Exactly she didn't really swim so much as kick her way to the top of the water. That's pretty instinctual.

The folks that are really, really upset over it are the same crowd that are vehemently "Mary Sue" flag bearers.

And agreed re: Rogue One's and Revenge of the Sith, both had good space battles.

-b.

[Mommar]

4 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Um, Rogue One? Its tops when it comes to space battles for Star Wars. Plus it had a land/air battle at the same time that was awesome too. 

 

 

 

Rogue one comes pretty close, imo, but it suffers from Gareth-itis where you almost get a good look at the scene and then it jumps away... kinda like Godzilla.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 hours ago, Black Valkyrie said:

It's time for Star Wars to end. 

Nope.  Disney paid a fortune for it, so they're going to milk it until its udders turn black and fall off.

Extrapolating from my own experience with the "Legends" material, I suspect it'll take a VERY long time before Disney's near-pathological brand mismanagement diminishes the quality to the point a majority of Star Wars fans will no longer open their wallets.

 

4 hours ago, TangledThorns said:

Um, Rogue One? Its tops when it comes to space battles for Star Wars. Plus it had a land/air battle at the same time that was awesome too. 

It was pretty, but it was all flash and no substance... and it loses many, MANY points for screwing up the opening of A New Hope retroactively.  It reduced Vader's first scene from The Dreaded Enforcer hunting down suspected rebel sympathizers with incredible mystic powers and resources to a tired-as-hell traffic cop asking a young woman if she knows why he pulled her over and trying not to roll his eyes right out of his skull when she says "No".

[Chronocidal]

3 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It was pretty, but it was all flash and no substance... and it loses many, MANY points for screwing up the opening of A New Hope retroactively.  It reduced Vader's first scene from The Dreaded Enforcer hunting down suspected rebel sympathizers with incredible mystic powers and resources to a tired-as-hell traffic cop asking a young woman if she knows why he pulled her over and trying not to roll his eyes right out of his skull when she says "No".

The Vader bit was... yeah.  Didn't feel fitting with ANH, and on top of that, even with all that flashy force-wielding, he managed to fail by completely missing the entire point of his trip down that hallway when he didn't go for the guy carrying the CD.  Would have been better if the scene had never happened really.

I thought the overall battle sequence was pretty nice, but it's definitely earning a lot of points for the nostalgia overkill they went for.  Using the leftover stock footage of the original pilots from ANH was great, even if it didn't quite match the quality of the new footage.  Also, as much as I hate the special editions, I have to admit I would have no trouble seeing a re-re-mastered version of ANH using the digital assets from Rogue One.  They finally got the digital ships looking accurate to the original physical models.

[Mommar]

17 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It was pretty, but it was all flash and no substance... and it loses many, MANY points for screwing up the opening of A New Hope retroactively.  It reduced Vader's first scene from The Dreaded Enforcer hunting down suspected rebel sympathizers with incredible mystic powers and resources to a tired-as-hell traffic cop asking a young woman if she knows why he pulled her over and trying not to roll his eyes right out of his skull when she says "No".

We're only talking about the space battle.  Not the stuff after.  I still hate that fanboy Vader scene.

[kajnrig]

1 hour ago, Dynaman said:

Where would she have learned to swim?  Didn't bother me if she did swim in TLJ, I remember falling in the water but not her swimming.

1 hour ago, Kanedas Bike said:

Exactly she didn't really swim so much as kick her way to the top of the water. That's pretty instinctual.

Okay, good to know. I just remember it being mentioned the past few pages or so and didn't know if it was A Thing or not. Seems like not.

Re: Rogue One, that Vader/finale was the cherry on top for me, or perhaps more accurately the straw that broke the camel's back. The whole movie is already a slog for me, and that scene recontextualizing the entire opening of ANH nearly made me throw up my arms in exasperation.. Or actually at first I thought it was neat, but as I thought on it more I liked it less and less.

Could the whole of TLJ be considered a space battle? If so, that'd be my "better than RoTJ."

[Kanedas Bike]

15 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

*snip*

Could the whole of TLJ be considered a space battle? If so, that'd be my "better than RoTJ."

Anxiously awaits all of the responses to this one line of text. 

-b.

[slaginpit]

I watched the movie last night.

Then again.

and Again

and Again.

Got drunk

watched it again.

 

Then again.

Still didnt like it. Now I know what waterboarding feels like.