same, at least at first. but then by the end i was getting the vibe of it. My guess is they are trying to spread the interest and appeal to people who normally wouldn’t get into star wars by using a (recognizable?) song.
2 Likes
So I guess we’ll soon see what the future holds for the franchise once new people are at the helm:
I know that Kennedy was a controversial figure (and no doubt misogyny was at least one part of why she received so much hate) but I think overall she did a pretty decent job. Some of the things that people hated the most (like the subversion of expectations in The Last Jedi) were decisions that I personally respected. Certainly could have been worse, as we’ve seen with other franchises like the DC universe. And Lucas himself certainly made some poor decisions sometimes when he was running the show.
5 Likes
I did not like the new trilogy, i found it to be a hot mess on how that was handled behind the scenes besides a general lack of a solid vision. Each director that came on board for each movie had a different vision and nudged the story in the direction they wanted it to play out, which meant that the way things played out wasn’t very consistent.
The other Star Wars movies and series afterwards were also uneven, though at least we got Rogue One and Mandalorian.
That said i have no particular ill will or even an opinion on Kathleen Kennedy herself. I just didn’t love what Disney was doing and the sheer amount of SW related content really killed my interest in the IP.
5 Likes
It sounds like Vincent Price is the voice of the Magician.
4 Likes
I’ve only watched clips of it, including clips of the Andy Serkis episodes. At first, I couldn’t figure out why my eyes kept getting drawn to this chunky middle-aged guy rather than the yummy Diego Luna, and then I realised; that’s Andy Serkis! And it fell into place. He’s one of those actors that commands the screen.
4 Likes
I liked The Force Awakens fine even though it was almost a beat-for-beat remake of A New Hope. It introduced some promising new characters, got audiences excited for the franchise again after a long hiatus, and opened up a world of possibilities for new directors to take the franchise wherever they wanted to go.
I liked some of what they did with The Last Jedi, particularly the idea that the Force wasn’t something owned by the Jedi, a weird religious cult that separates children from their families so that they can control and indoctrinate them from a very young age. I also liked the idea that Rey came from nobodies rather than a fancy noble lineage. Didn’t care for how they wasted the potential of Captain Phasma though.
I really didn’t like what they did with The Rise of Skywalker, where they brought J.J. Abrams back and let him retcon the events in Last Jedi and crudely drag the storyline into the more predictable, conventional direction he wanted to go, bringing in the original emperor and a bunch of nonsense about Rey’s origins. My understanding was that the studio execs panicked when the reception to "Last Jedi* wasn’t as good as they hoped, and pretty much forced Kennedy’s hand to take a “safe” approach to Ep. 9 rather than follow her original instincts. I would have liked to see what Ep. 9 would have been without those pressures.
7 Likes
yeah, i agree, on all counts. I never had a problem with her, and i thought she did a great job considering how crazy difficult the job is. Interested/scared to see where things go from here, for sure.
4 Likes
I never saw more than a smidgen of the series, but I love how this film seemed to be trying to cram at least three seasons’ worth of show into an hour and a half movie.
4 Likes
Well, given the slow-moving and meandering (being diplomatic AF here) nature of the show, and the many dead end/unresolved dog legs the “plot” took, it wouldn’t be that hard to do! 
It also helps that it’s not unedited live TV, entirely lacking in camera and boom shadows, with no crew nor cast members tripping over long cords.
My friend @ProfOddfellow is a Dark Shadows expert, having watched the entire series alla way thru several times!
7 Likes
I thought that Barnabas Collins looked a bit dorky, so I couldn’t take him seriously. Now, I’d say that he looks like a character out of What We Do In the Shadows.
6 Likes
https://www.avclub.com/this-is-england-stephen-graham
There are a whole bunch of skinhead movies in the late 90s, early 2000s, and I have to say that this is probably the one that “gets” the skinhead scene of the 80s in all it’s complexity… It doesn’t just assume that they’re all just racist white working class kids, but sort of very nicely explores all the complexities of being working class in Britain in the 80s and being into a subculture, the good and the bad.
Some spoilers for a movie from 2006…
7 Likes
I just watched the version you posted with all the cutting-room floor pieces. I preferred the version with Matthew Broderick voicing Tack the Cobbler, and the thief’s running internal monologue. And I think there was a music number with the band of brigands?
6 Likes
7 Likes
Ummm. I admit it’s been a while since I read the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks. But “anti-Star-Trek?!!”
9 Likes
Wouldn’t that just be a distopian sci-fi?
8 Likes
Here it apparently means “showing the cracks in a utopian society”…so, like, DS9.
11 Likes
anti-Star-Trek would probably be dystopian post-scarcity society. Maybe? Id personally peg anti-Star-Trek as any sci-fi glorifying capitalism, fascism, and bigotry.
Unless I am really misremembering the Culture novels, they ain’t that. Yes, there was exploration of the issues in the Culture society, but it wasn’t broken. Most of the books I remember being about what the Culture was like from the outside looking in, from societies full of exploitation and bigotry, and how the Culture was interacting with those societies. Which did involve some questionable decisions by Culture leadership but hardly anti-Star-Trek.
Yeah, a lot like DS9. The friction between a post-scarcity society and other societies based on ideas the post-scarcity society would prefer everyone move past.
8 Likes
I just saw The War Games.
Not the basis for the 1983 Matthew Broderick movie, but possibly the basis for the 2017 Wonder Woman movie. I think this might be the best Dr Who series I have yet seen.
The Tardis appears to land in French no-man’s land during the First World War. But actually they are on an enormous game board, basically, populated by combatants from various wars in Earth history. Kind of like a story from Star Trek or the Twighlight Zone.
Not 3 episodes long. Not 4 episodes long. But it is a full 10 episodes. And the story never lags.
A few interesting facts: This is the last black and white episode, this is the last Patrick Troughton episode, and this is the first time The Doctor is revealed to be a fugitive Time Lord. We even get an early appearance from Rudolph Walker.
The command headquarters is worthy of a synth-pop music video:
And a special guest appearance from Steve Jobs:
9 Likes
Yeah, the War Games are amazing!
3 Likes