Star Wars Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker, available on home video

[electric indigo]

In all fairness, when the OT came out there was literally no competition to the designs. Fast forward 40 years, and the number of star fighter iterations has exploded exponentially. If you don't want to cut all ties and have someone like Syd Mead do a take on Star Wars, the margin for original designs gets smaller and smaller. 

And IMHO there were cool new designs in TFA like Kylo's shuttle and the troop transport, the new Stormtrooper just nails it, and BB-8 is genius. But I agree with you that these examples don't balance out the many not-so-great derivations, and that the ties to the OT are too strong. Design-wise, the prequels managed to transport the idea of another era, while the sequels are stuck one minute after ROTJ and sometimes go backwards from there.

[Bolt]

4 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Under Disney, Star Wars is taking no risks and pushing no envelopes.  Disney went into the sequel trilogy trying VERY hard to make a Star Wars movie that'd have the broadest appeal possible and do as little as possible to alienate the well-established fanbase that was such a merchandising cash cow for the franchise

They failed 

[Seto Kaiba]

Just now, Bolt said:

They failed 

Yeah... and still made billions of dollars doing it.

Mind you, I'd say failure was the only option for Disney.  Star Wars fans were never going to gracefully accept the new trilogy no matter what it turned out to be because it retconned out the setting as they knew it for something else entirely.  For those who weren't invested in what came before, they were more successful (or at least failing less hard).

[Bolt]

34 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Yeah... and still made billions of dollars doing it.

 

Oh fo sho.. And they will continue to do so. At least some of the ,(relatively) failures , such as SOLO and take your pick of the new trilogy, let them know they need to be a bit more on it story wise. 

 

38 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Mind you, I'd say failure was the only option for Disney.  Star Wars fans were never going to gracefully accept the new trilogy no matter what it turned out to be because it retconned out the setting as they knew it for something else entirely.  For those who weren't invested in what came before, they were more successful (or at least failing less hard).

I was honestly quite hopeful they were going to be able to pull off a new story without cutting off Skywalkers balls..

[Chronocidal]

1 hour ago, electric indigo said:

In all fairness, when the OT came out there was literally no competition to the designs. Fast forward 40 years, and the number of star fighter iterations has exploded exponentially. If you don't want to cut all ties and have someone like Syd Mead do a take on Star Wars, the margin for original designs gets smaller and smaller. 

See, I'm going to disagree with this, purely on the fact that the EU exists, and has published hundreds, if not thousands of designs that fit perfectly well within the existing universe.  For as often as they cherry-picked from EU concepts, if they weren't going to do something original, I would have much rather seen them just adapt existing EU designs, rather than make rehashes of every ship from the OT.  Hell, I'm not even joking to say that they could have literally browsed DeviantArt for fan designs and wound up with hundreds of viable concepts.  There is no shortage of creativity in the realm of starship design.. they just didn't hire any.

1 hour ago, electric indigo said:

And IMHO there were cool new designs in TFA like Kylo's shuttle and the troop transport, the new Stormtrooper just nails it, and BB-8 is genius. But I agree with you that these examples don't balance out the many not-so-great derivations, and that the ties to the OT are too strong. Design-wise, the prequels managed to transport the idea of another era, while the sequels are stuck one minute after ROTJ and sometimes go backwards from there.

I think the updated Stormtroopers were fine, if a bit unsettlingly reminiscent of the treatment in JJ Trek.  BB-8 though.. I question whether anyone actually considered for two minutes at how impractical he was as a replacement for a single-piece R2-style droid.  His mechanisms can't compensate well for hard acceleration, and his head literally flies off of his body at one point.  I loved him as a character, and he worked fine outside of an X-Wing, but his use as an astromech made no sense whatsoever.  As cool as his design was, it just didn't fit the role.

Kylo's shuttle... ehhhhh... call me nit-picky, but I am really tired of seeing every high ranking enemy yutz get their own custom ride.  I hated it just as much in Rogue One as I did here.  If a standard Lambda-class shuttle was good enough for both Vader and Palpatine, it's good enough for any other Imperial official, and I would have much rather seen a progression of that design (like Lucas did in reverse for the prequels), than see Kylo get some sort of custom black death ship, with wings that actually destabilize the design, rather than looking like they serve some sort of purpose.  I feel like they literally took a classic shuttle, and asked "What can we change just to make it look different?"  "I know!  Turn the wings upside down!"  "Brilliant!"  

The troop transport though is the universe's second biggest example of function over form (Leia's Flying Taco Truck is the top spot).  I'm not going to argue over its practicality, because that is all it is:  a literal box with engines meant to cart people from here to there.  That's all well and good, but did everyone just forget the concept of merchandising?  (Please feel free to read this post in Mel Brooks' voice.) You made a perfectly practical design.  Bravo!  Maybe I can melt down all of the wasted plastic and metal used to manufacture those shelf-warmers, and recycle it to make something someone actually wants to buy.  Why not use an evolution of the transport we saw in the OT?  That started out as a design in the Shadows of the Empire game (ie, part of the EU), but Lucas had no trouble adapting that for his ANH special edition, and I have to give him credit for recognizing when adopting EU material was beneficial to the canon.

I know I'm overly picky about ship designs, but it's a subject near and dear to my heart, as I absolutely grew up designing dozens of custom Star Wars universe designs, putting them into games like X-Wing Alliance, and enjoying the idea that I can make something fun that contributes to the universe.  The decades of the EU provided an almost unending supply of potential designs they could have drawn from.  They decided that they knew better.  I hope the dumpster fires of unsold merchandise keep them warm at night.  

56 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Mind you, I'd say failure was the only option for Disney.  Star Wars fans were never going to gracefully accept the new trilogy no matter what it turned out to be because it retconned out the setting as they knew it for something else entirely.  For those who weren't invested in what came before, they were more successful (or at least failing less hard).

I actually read a very funny take on the saga as a whole recently.  Everything actually runs a lot more smoothly if you just do not include the OT.  Without all of the character development from that era, you can't recognize the surgical levels of character assassination going on in the sequels, and the overall story from the prequels and sequels boils down to The Palpatine Saga.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Chronocidal

[sh9000]

 

[jvmacross]

One of the better scenes of TROS......wish we had received a sequel trilogy with this Luke and Leia....

 

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I actually read a very funny take on the saga as a whole recently.  Everything actually runs a lot more smoothly if you just do not include the OT.  Without all of the character development from that era, you can't recognize the surgical levels of character assassination going on in the sequels, and the overall story from the prequels and sequels boils down to The Palpatine Saga.

I suppose it would... though I've often wondered why fans seem willing to now give a pass to the prequel trilogy that did the exact same thing to Darth Vader and pretty much every other dark side user.  Rogue One tries very hard to cover up the damage with the badass action scene at the end, but for me Darth Vader will never escape being Little Orphan Anni who doesn't like sand.  Like his whiny grandson, he's just an emo kid in a gimp suit who only gets away with his magic strangletantrums because he's in a highly suspect relationship with a powerful creepy old man.

[sketchley]

8 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

(...)

I think the funny part is that, to me, the process backfired.  By playing it safe and changing nothing, they broke with the established trend in all the other movies of seeing new and different developments in each one.  Certain things stayed the same, yes, but designs progressed over time, and every movie carried over elements from the previous ones in new designs.

(...)

That reminded me of the "Wedgie 'em out" webisode.  Say what you will about the acting, story, etc. in the prequel series, they got the design methodology down right:

 

 

[tekering]

1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I've often wondered why fans seem willing to now give a pass to the prequel trilogy that did the exact same thing to Darth Vader and pretty much every other dark side user.

Over the last twenty years, the prequel trilogy (and spin-offs like The Clone Wars) have metastasized into Star Wars canon, so fans don't question it any more... but your point still stands.  As much as Rian Johnson shat on the legacy of Luke Skywalker, Lucas himself did far worse to Darth Vader.  

But hey, at least the toys and models were cool.  

[Bolt]

Except we knew what Vaders was before walking into the theater.  We expected better for his son. 

[Dynaman]

7 hours ago, Bolt said:

Except we knew what Vaders was before walking into the theater.  We expected better for his son. 

The details, it's all in the details.  What we did NOT know before the prequels is that Vader was a Whiny little shi...  And the even ruined Vader proper with that NO.........

[jvmacross]

 

[Chronocidal]

40 minutes ago, jvmacross said:

(video snip) "Rey and Kylo Ren vs Palpatine Fight Scene"

Excuse me.. "FIGHT SCENE??"  What FIGHT?  He sucked them dry of the Force so hard he learned the "FORCE BATHROBE" skill, then gigawatted himself in the face (AGAIN) until he disintegrated.  WTF?

Edited March 11, 2020 by Chronocidal

[Seto Kaiba]

5 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Excuse me.. "FIGHT SCENE??"  What FIGHT?  He sucked them dry of the Force so hard he learned the "FORCE BATHROBE" skill, then gigawatted himself in the face (AGAIN) until he disintegrated.  WTF?

Palpatine is confused!  Palpatine used Force Lightning!  Palpatine hurt itself in its confusion!

[Mommar]

That was a seriously awful fight scene.  The choreography and cinematography were both really bad.

[CoryHolmes]

1 hour ago, Mommar said:

That was a seriously awful fight scene.  The choreography and cinematography were both really bad.

Duel of the Fates was and is and will forevermore be the epitome of a Star Wars fight scene.  It had good vmm vmm stuff, good Force use stuff, good timing and choreography, excellent music, and the benefit of a well-trained stuntman doing the flips and twists.

 

Everything since then has been awful, with the sole exception of a few sequences in Battle of the Heroes.

[Bolt]

8 hours ago, CoryHolmes said:

Duel of the Fates was and is and will forevermore be the epitome of a Star Wars fight scene.

It's certainly one of my favorites. 

[derex3592]

Yup.

[peter]

On 3/9/2020 at 6:12 PM, jvmacross said:

One of the better scenes of TROS......wish we had received a sequel trilogy with this Luke and Leia....

 

This scene sent chills up my spine.  I'd watch a whole movie with clips like this mashed together.

[Mommar]

13 hours ago, CoryHolmes said:

Duel of the Fates was and is and will forevermore be the epitome of a Star Wars fight scene.  It had good vmm vmm stuff, good Force use stuff, good timing and choreography, excellent music, and the benefit of a well-trained stuntman doing the flips and twists.

 

Everything since then has been awful, with the sole exception of a few sequences in Battle of the Heroes.

While stuff from AOTC and ROTS tended to be over-choreographed they were just plain stupid.  And they were at least shot well.  Obi-Wan never put his lightsaber behind his back, bent over and waited for Anakin to strike precisely at his lightsaber in a manner as dumb as the Kylo Ren move there.

[jenius]

1 hour ago, peter said:

This scene sent chills up my spine.  I'd watch a whole movie with clips like this mashed together.

I'll take clips that should have been in episode 8 for $100 Alek.

[renegadeleader1]

Seeing that clip again I'm reminded about something I really hate about the sequel triology's film making and cinematography.

 

Flashbacks. 

 

The original trilogy and prequels always took place in the present of the events that were happening. The past was talked about, but never actually shown because it never had to be. To a lesser extent we never really saw the force visions either, just the effects it had on the people experiencing them. In the end it's just another stamp on how inconsistent, and bad the sequel trilogy's poor storytelling really is no matter how "badass" the scenes are.

Edited March 12, 2020 by renegadeleader1

[jvmacross]

3 hours ago, peter said:

This scene sent chills up my spine.  I'd watch a whole movie with clips like this mashed together.

Yep....I was in awe when I saw it during the movie.....

[sh9000]

 

[CoryHolmes]

On 3/12/2020 at 1:04 PM, Mommar said:

While stuff from AOTC and ROTS tended to be over-choreographed they were just plain stupid.  And they were at least shot well.  Obi-Wan never put his lightsaber behind his back, bent over and waited for Anakin to strike precisely at his lightsaber in a manner as dumb as the Kylo Ren move there.

My favourite sequence in ROTS (wait, which acronym is used for which movie?  I'm talking about Ep III here) was the corridor part where Darth Vader and Obi-Wan battle down a hallway and their blades that cut through everything not another lightsaber slashes and gouges through the metal walls like they're not there.  Sparks flying, chorus blaring, and finally someone remembered how powerful lightsabers are and why only Force Users can wield them properly.

 

Except for in the sequels, where even regular Stormtroopers have lightsaber-proof weapons 

[kajnrig]

14 hours ago, CoryHolmes said:

Except for in the sequels, where even regular Stormtroopers have lightsaber-proof weapons 

I've never liked "lightsaber-proof" weapons either, but they were in Star Wars long before the sequel trilogy. Vibroblades and other weapons in KotOR, those double polearm things in RotS...

Personally, I like to think there are materials that are lightsaber-resistant rather than lightsaber-proof. Bang on them long enough with a lightsaber and they'll eventually melt, too. I also like to think that lightsabers were originally industrial tools that were repurposed into weapons, but were too dangerous for anyone without the precognitive abilities of a Jedi.

But eh, I'm sure the canon has been able to come up with something much, much stupider.

For the most part, I quite liked the lightsaber fights of TLJ, and in retrospect several of the Rise of Skywalker ones were pretty creative, too. Just that last one was... underwhelming, to say the least.

[Seto Kaiba]

So... this came out early.  I got notified yesterday that my girlfriend's preorder for Rise of Skywalker was filled on Google Play and it's showing as an unwatched playable title in our library.

We're embarking on a rewatch of all the Star Wars movies to remind ourselves to keep our expectations painfully low thanks to there being only three good Star Wars movies.

[Dynaman]

Don't forget that Vader's armor took a direct hit from Luke's lightsaber.

[Bolt]

1 hour ago, kajnrig said:

I've never liked "lightsaber-proof" weapons either, but they were in Star Wars long before the sequel trilogy. Vibroblades and other weapons in KotOR, those double polearm things in RotS...

 

Beskar was the best "lightsaber " proof material. Pre  Disney. The Mandalorians are the ones who mostly used it as weapons and armor. There weren't many more materials that could hold up against lightsabers. And because of its relative rarity, nothing like battle droids or blast doors were being made of Beskar in quantity.

[Bolt]

2 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

Don't forget that Vader's armor took a direct hit from Luke's lightsaber.

The only time I remember that was a glancing blow and Vader crying out in pain. I need to go rewatch..

[Bolt]

23 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

We're embarking on a rewatch of all the Star Wars movies to remind ourselves to keep our expectations painfully low thanks to there being only three good Star Wars movies.

Lol, there was only ever 3 good ones.

[Dynaman]

It wasn't a glancing blow, direct hit that would have killed him without the armor.  On the should but at an angle that would have cut inward.

 

The 5:28 mark on this video is a good spot.  It would have been off with his head...

 

[jenius]

Is it the armor or does Vader's blade just get there a little late to parry?

[tekering]

58 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

So... this came out early.

Yeah, I'm watching it now.  So far, the story is as stupid as I remember it being...

...although Hux's sudden reveal that "there was another transport in the desert" (carrying Chewie) doesn't seem like such a cheat, now that I see it was visible in a quick establishing shot.

Okay, J.J.  I'll give you that one.