Somny
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Post by Somny on Sept 20, 2021 18:18:30 GMT
Somny have you gotten to this yet? That excerpt is showing up everywhere but I haven't reached that part of the book yet. I'm only 1/3rd through. |
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Post by jppiper on Sept 20, 2021 20:44:37 GMT
SomnySorry if i ruined anything
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Somny
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Post by Somny on Sept 20, 2021 21:40:25 GMT
Somny Sorry if i ruined anything No worries. The book isn't a whodunnit.  But if you're into the nuts and bolts of New Hollywood filmmaking, I highly recommend it! Rinzler is Rinzler for a reason. Thus, an engaging and well-crafted memoir that plants you smack dab in the creative and political ferment that is largely responsible for the careers of Lucas and his contemporaries. |
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Post by jppiper on Sept 21, 2021 20:08:48 GMT
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Somny
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Post by Somny on Sept 21, 2021 20:16:28 GMT
Honestly, the opinions about the ST from the book's key personages are the least interesting aspect of the book for me. It has so much more to offer. But cue the feeding frenzy over the red meat, as expected. |
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Post by jppiper on Sept 27, 2021 1:18:29 GMT
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Post by Ingram on Sept 27, 2021 1:27:36 GMT
"There's, just, so much more stuff." + emoji = "It's amazing!"Insightful.
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Post by jppiper on Sept 27, 2021 2:18:34 GMT
Ingramhe's full of crap Disney Getting SW Damaged the Brand
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Post by natalie on Sept 28, 2021 19:44:45 GMT
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Post by jppiper on Oct 19, 2021 2:26:49 GMT
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Post by natalie on Oct 19, 2021 13:28:45 GMT
Disney apologists. There's a word of difference between ROTJ's ending not being so fairy-tale like and completely destroying everything the big three achieved, undoing Anakin's sacrifice, treating everyone like a complete failure in personal and public life all in order to prop up a bland Mary Sue. |
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Post by jppiper on Oct 19, 2021 17:39:57 GMT
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Post by Cryogenic on Oct 20, 2021 13:18:14 GMT
"There's, just, so much more stuff." + emoji = "It's amazing!"Insightful. Counter perspective: It *is* cool to have more Star Wars. Counter-counter perspective: Less is more. Sometimes. |
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Post by jppiper on Oct 27, 2021 17:53:51 GMT
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Post by Cryogenic on Nov 4, 2021 0:19:11 GMT
He has a ghost of a point, but I don't think this thread is really the place for that sort of material. EDIT (i): This reply was in response to the quoted post above. Both replies were originally made in a different location and then moved here.EDIT (ii): The Twitter account holder has now turned their account to private. The tweet quoted above is reproduced below:
Original link: twitter.com ... eldaino/status/1455900211910529039 (First single slash has been changed to three dots to stop the message board software from embedding the link). Reconstructed tweet: |
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Post by Ingram on Nov 4, 2021 6:14:31 GMT
He has a ghost of a point, but I don't think this thread is really the place for that sort of material. Except for the fact that Luke and Leia's relation was setup in the previous film ...and the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with patching over course-corrections from a separate writer/director and recycling generic stakes by simply respawning a character that in no small part dramatically and conceptually undermines much of the heroic trials from any previous installment, let alone all of them. But good job, asshat, with your (what I call) "thumbnail logic".
I guess when they eventually decide to, say, bring back Sauron for the LOTR series then Professor Shit-for-Brains above can come to the defense with "So. It's just like when they brought Gandalf back from the dead in The Two Towers. Like, totally the same, bro." I love it when savants such as this isolate as some kind of obvious correlation two outcomes that only technically go together insofar as to complete a 'which-of-these-is-not-like-the-other' multiple choice question. Instead of moving the goal post, it's akin to spreading it apart so wide that it covers one end of the entire field.
Someone give him his juice box and send him to bed early. Fuck.
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Post by Ingram on Nov 4, 2021 6:16:27 GMT
Sorry. I guess I lost my intellectual cool a bit with that one.
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Post by Cryogenic on Nov 4, 2021 16:25:35 GMT
Sorry. I guess I lost my intellectual cool a bit with that one. I don't have the energy to lose my intellectual cool in that manner. In fact, I'm not sure I have any intellectual cool to begin with -- although I'm "cryogenic" (haha). I'm a Star Wars fan. We're generally a hot-tempered lot. Temperance is for fools. |
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Post by Cryogenic on Nov 4, 2021 16:47:19 GMT
But to deal with your response seriously: Seriously! What?! He has a ghost of a point, but I don't think this thread is really the place for that sort of material. Except for the fact that Luke and Leia's relation was setup in the previous film ...and the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with patching over course-corrections from a separate writer/director and recycling generic stakes by simply respawning a character that in no small part dramatically and conceptually undermines much of the heroic trials from any previous installment, let alone all of them. But good job, asshat, with your (what I call) "thumbnail logic". Heh. Or just Twitter logic. I chalk the line up, or the thing it circumscribes, to the mysteries of the Force. I mean, sure, it's a pretty dumpy line, but I get the tweeter's point: this kinda shit isn't exactly lacking precedent in Star Wars. Luke and Leia's connection was generically set up in TESB, but not necessarily a familial one. Many people have found that twist contrived down the years, including Mark Hamill, who had a lot to say about several plot developments in ROTJ at the film's 30th anniversary screening, on May 4th 2013 at the Egyptian Theater at Entertainment Weekly's CapeTown Film Festival: legacy.aintitcool.com/node/62268Similarly, he opined on Boba Fett's swift exit: And on the re-use of the Death Star: He does qualify on that last one: Similarly, Palpatine was essentially re-used in Disney's version of Episode IX, after Lucas had originally intended to only reveal Palpatine in the same film. It's just, in 1983, Lucas was getting a little burned out on Star Wars and didn't ever see himself seriously making the final three films, so he decided to have Palpatine be revealed and killed in the same movie to bring a strong sense of closure to the Saga (as he then conceived of it). As with the Luke and Leia issue, Palpatine is vaguely hinted at being around in the ST, or having somehow flitted away into the shadows, in the preceding movies to TROS. In TFA, Maz ominously tells the heroes, about halfway through the film, that she has seen evil take many forms: "The Sith. The Empire. (Today it is) the First Order." A line that is quite clearly linking the the First Order to the Empire, and essentially linking both to the Sith. Furthermore, before entering her tavern, Han tells Rey and Finn that Maz has run the watering hole "for a thousand years", which is exactly how long the Sith were believed extinct by the Jedi (and, presumably, all and sundry) in TPM. Off into TLJ, Snoke's throne is based on an early design for Palpatine's by Ralph McQuarrie, and when Snoke hoists Rey into the air and begins torturing her, the Emperor's Theme kicks in. So there was clearly something going on all along. I'm not saying they intended it to be Palpatine from the start, but I believe they were attempting to pull some sort of last-act reveal and tie the conclusion of the ST in with the legend of Darth Plagueis. Lucas left a hefty crumb on the table there -- and even he intended for the Sith to return with a believed-dead antagonist (Maul).
Well, I do think the line itself is pretty clunky. And there's much more dramatic weight of the interpersonal sort to the scene between Luke and Leia in ROTJ. Here is where comparing the two and pretending they are equally "bad" is fatuous. The ROTJ scene is much more moving and effective as a "reveal" scene in itself -- perhaps, in part, because the revelation comes from Luke, the trilogy's main protagonist, rather than a bland Han Solo knockoff (albeit Oscar Isaac brings a certain charisma to the role). And yes, in some ways, it lands better because we've been following these characters for two-and-a-half movies, and Luke and Leia feel like two sides of the same coin. Also, the cinematography is lovely, and John Williams makes the scene work as well as anyone could have hoped.
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Post by Ingram on Nov 4, 2021 22:25:27 GMT
But to deal with your response seriously: Seriously! What?! Except for the fact that Luke and Leia's relation was setup in the previous film ...and the fact that it has absolutely nothing to do with patching over course-corrections from a separate writer/director and recycling generic stakes by simply respawning a character that in no small part dramatically and conceptually undermines much of the heroic trials from any previous installment, let alone all of them. But good job, asshat, with your (what I call) "thumbnail logic". Heh. Or just Twitter logic. I chalk the line up, or the thing it circumscribes, to the mysteries of the Force. I mean, sure, it's a pretty dumpy line, but I get the tweeter's point: this kinda shit isn't exactly lacking precedent in Star Wars. Luke and Leia's connection was generically set up in TESB, but not necessarily a familial one. Similarly, Palpatine was vaguely hinted at being around, or having somehow flitted away into the shadows, in the preceding movies. In TFA, Maz ominously tells the heroes, about halfway through the film, that she has seen evil take many forms: "The Sith. The Empire. (Today it is) the First Order." Furthermore, before entering, Han tells Rey and Finn that Maz has run the watering hole "for a thousand years", which is exactly how long the Sith were believed extinct by the Jedi (and, presumably, all and sundry) in TPM. Off into TLJ, Snoke's throne is based on an early design for Palpatine's by Ralph McQuarrie, and when Snoke hoists Rey into the air and begins torturing her, the Emperor's Theme kicks in. So there was clearly something going on all along. I'm not saying they intended it to be Palpatine from the start, but I believe they were attempting to pull some sort of last-act reveal and tie the conclusion of the ST in with the legend of Darth Plagueis. Lucas left a hefty crumb on the table there -- and even he intended for the Sith to return with a believed-dead antagonist (Maul). If Luke and Leia's setup in Episode V was not strictly familial, it was on its own a plainly conceptual hook for the audience -- "No, there is another" -- later followed by a scene that visually pairs the two in dramatic statement and was directly written in as that which was necessary for Luke's rescue. Even the romantic declaration between Han and Leia had been sealed before closing credits, thereby taking Luke off the table. Only on top of all that are there interpretive nuggets such as a closeup of Leia shooting Vader a haunting look of intuition in the carbon freeze chamber or her and Luke standing together in the end (in their jammies) like, well, two kids waiting longingly for their parents to come home. Even if the specifics of them being siblings was not decided upon until writing treatments for the next film, infused in Episode V were outlined propositions that, regardless of how one might interpret them, dramatically serviced the film itself towards a chapter conclusion. They are internally interpretive ideas nonetheless externally functional, lyrical, powerful, to the present theater that is The Empire Strikes Back.
With the first two ST installments by comparison, and the examples you highlight, I don't think there was something clearly going on but rather something generic going on—vaguely at hand yet noncommittal being the chief purpose, an expansion of Abrams' lame 'mystery box' sensibility. They were making the movies firstly to be commercially familiar in broad strokes i.e., Snoke, his throne room trappings and musical cues to legacy evil. All of it is either window dressing or, with Maz' open-world NPC-baked dialogue, interpretation by itself. Whatever bare premise is usurped by Luke and Leia being revealed as twins, such is far outweighed by a drama logic which bridges together preexisting arcs of all three heroes into a trifecta that much more demanding of audience investment: Luke's sisterly love for Leia, Leia's romantic love for Han, Han's kid-brotherly love for Luke ...to say nothing of said revelation as a key pivotal device that will be used to tempt Luke upon his final precipice.
Simply put, it's just another gear of internal clockwork (planned or added) instead of a handicap that gets the movie, the trilogy, out of a jam. Palpatine's resurrection bridges together nothing insofar that there was nothing of substance, nothing in the way of trajectory, to bridge together in the first, only a blank-check heroine and her nebulously tragic antagonist who, let's face it, could be molded into just about any final act -- Snoke 2.0, Palps-360, Plagueis, Maul, Nega-Rey, Thanos -- without the worry of basic calculation error or outright blatant contradictions. "The other he spoke of is your twin sister."
"But I have no sister."
"To protect you both from the Emperor, you were hidden from your father when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did... if Anakin were to have any offspring, they would be a threat to him. That is the reason why your sister remains safely anonymous."
"Leia! Leia's my sister."
Anyone new to this development without yet having fully appreciated its thematic weight might still-understandably think it odd or abrupt or even haphazard, but the one takeaway they likely wouldn't suffer would be cynicism; a cynicism immediate to watching, not a dramatic (albeit eccentric) play, but coded 1s and 0s; a cynicism born from the savvy that said development is rank with kitchen politics and knockoff part-replacements for trilogy maintenance over core through-lines or madcap invention. If the sibling revelation in Return of the Jedi bewilders the viewer and pops an eyebrow then the post-hoc dialogue on Palpatine's return in The Rise of Skywalker merely rolls the eyes and lands with a flat fart noise. The Twitter comment in question only makes an excuse for the latter by likening it to the former on the basis that both "technically" constitute story points undisclosed until the third entries.
But they're not the same. Not in execution or nuance, as you detail, but not even in form or function either.
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