Star Wars

[Friday]

[Mongrel]

[Büge]

[Friday]

"stop choking me with the force and start choking me with your cold metal robot hand"

[Thad]

I also started watching The Bad Batch

[...]

(And it was nice to see Kanan again, but they really should have made him look a little older. I looked it up and he's supposed to be 14 when Order 66 is executed, but he looks like he's about 10, which locks poor Freddie Prinze Jr into trying to do a child voice that he's clearly not cut out for.

I got to the two-parter where Hera shows up and god damn Vanessa Marshall is fantastic. She really sells "this is the same character but 20 years younger and hasn't lost her accent yet." This isn't a knock against Prinze, it's praise for Marshall, because that's really hard to do. I think it also highlights the difference in their respective skillsets -- Marshall is a voice actor; Prinze is an actor who sometimes does voice roles.

[Thad]

I also liked how, especially in the first part, the Bad Batch where relegated to a minor supporting role. I kinda miss the anthology style of Clone Wars, with its rotating cast of characters, and while this wasn't quite that it's nice to see there's still room for stories focusing on the wider cast.

[Thad]

I watched the first episode of Andor. As is often the case with the first episode of a new Star Wars thing, it's got potential but I've got mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, I like that they're trying to tell a different kind of story (specifically, noir) in the SW universe; that's what I've been wanting them to do this whole time.

On the other, it kinda feels like they're trying a little too hard to emphasize how much more "adult" this is than previous Star Wars stories. Like, not only does the first scene take place in a brothel, they actually refer to it, in dialogue, using the word "brothel", and not some kind of Star Wars euphemism.

I feel like it could be an interesting direction if it doesn't lean too hard on being edgy. Just tell the story you're going to tell and let it speak for itself; there's nothing mature about calling attention to how mature you're being.

[Mongrel]

[nosimpleway]

Did you hear? George Lucas is reportedly directing a sequel to Rogue One, starring Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker again

It's set to be released in May 1977

[Mongrel]

Well, he's asking for directorial credit but the way I hear it is that his main contribution is a very derivative screenplay and they're going to have the much more talented Marcia Griffin direct instead. She's not well known to the moviegoing public, but she's done a lot of great movies with Martin Scorsese. Hopefully everything will be credited properly; god knows Lucas' head is big enough already.

[KingRoyal]

I've read the script and it's just a rewrite of The Force Awakens, borrowing a lot of the same plot points (there's even a big, last-ditch run on a giant planetoid death machine), except they make the weak characters like Han Solo and Leia the focus

[Büge]

Did'n t Han Solo die

[Newbie]

In The Force Awakens, yeah. That was the last Star Wars thing I watched, other than like two episodes of the Obi-Wan show.

[Mongrel]

Did'n t Han Solo die

I think it's supposed to be his son in the new ones.

[beatbandito]

Did'n t Ben Solo die

[KingRoyal]

Lucas had always talked about doing Star Wars prequels, so I'm guessing his followup to Rogue One is supposed to be the prequel to the trilogy

[Thad]

I've watched the first three episodes of Andor and I like it so far. More than anything since the first season of The Mandalorian, it gets that Star Wars is a setting and you can tell all kinds of stories in that setting, and you don't have to keep nudging the audience with references and cameos. There are some -- and ultimately this is a prequel to a prequel to the first movie, after all -- but you don't have to know any of that shit to follow along, at least so far as I've gotten.

And it's definitely got a vibe that feels different from other Star Wars stuff. There's really no levity to speak of, which I can see as a criticism, but that's because it's not that kind of story; it's noir. It feels a lot more like Blade Runner than Star Wars, and I think that's a good thing, a recognition that Star Wars doesn't have to be so goddamn samey all the time.

I also really like episode 3's focus on the conflict between the cops and an immigrant community. That whole sequence was really well-done.

[KingRoyal]

Everyone is gonna love the hell out of Andor until Disney takes the entirely wrong lessons from its success

[Thad]

I mean I'm a fan of Watchmen, Pulp Fiction, and the Beatles; I have some experience continuing to like a thing after people learn the wrong lessons from its success.

[Thad]

(I was going to add "and the original Star Wars" to the list; I think it would have added some nice symmetry. But the truth is, even the bad Star Wars ripoffs mostly learned the most important lesson from Star Wars, which is "be less boring than pre-Star Wars space movies." If you gave me a choice between watching a bad '50s space movie and a bad '80s space movie, and no other information about either of them, I'd pick the '80s one ten times out of ten.)