I've never seen the appeal of Genndy's work on Star Wars, either. That style of animation is used for comedy cartoons like his original Dexter's Lab. It gives the entire thing this weird, where the fuck is the punchline? kind of atmosphere.
Clone Wars and Rebels was definitely an acquired taste. It starts out looking like painted wooden dolls or a couple notches up from Lego people. I personally like it, but I don't begrudge anybody that doesn't. It's clean and easy to follow the action, which I really appreciate.
I've never seen the appeal of Genndy's work on Star Wars, either. That style of animation is used for comedy cartoons like his original Dexter's Lab. It gives the entire thing this weird, where the fuck is the punchline? kind of atmosphere.
Clone Wars and Rebels was definitely an acquired taste. It starts out looking like painted wooden dolls or a couple notches up from Lego people. I personally like it, but I don't begrudge anybody that doesn't. It's clean and easy to follow the action, which I really appreciate.
Yeah, wacky cartoons like Samurai Jack and Primal don't fit Star Wars at all :rotate:
A podcast I listen to dropped a commentary track for The Phantom Menace last week so I sat down and watched it. However, I kept the movie audio muted which greatly helped in not having to hear the word "midichlorians" ever again. Here are a few observations:
This is not a bad-looking movie. With all the criticisms over the years about over-doing the CGI environments I thought it would come across as needlessly overstuffed and unintelligible, but it's actually quite pretty.
The "run away really fast" Force power will never not look hokey.
Aside from offering nothing to the plot, the planet core section has no tension whatsoever because Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson do not react to their environments (either because everything is green screen, poor direction, or some likely combination thereof). This is an issue throughout the rest of the movie as well.
The droid army, as CGI creations, integrate pretty well into the movie; they look like they are actually in that space.
Jar Jar and Watto, however, stick out like sore CG thumbs! Sometimes in darker lighting Jar Jar will look okay but when he's in broad daylight, yikes. Watto pretty much always looks fake. Their character models look good considering it was 1999, but they just do not read as being a part of their environments at all.
The podracing scene is fast, fun, and the most compelling section of the movie. The problem is that once it's over, there's still another hour of movie which is not fast, fun, or compelling.
Jake Lloyd, as an actor who squints all the time, kind of makes perfect sense as the child version of Hayden Christensen.
The Battle for Naboo has NO atmosphere whatsoever. It literally looks like they're battling on the Windows XP default desktop wallpaper.
The big lightsaber battle loses a LOT without "Duel of the Fates" and sound effects to bring it to life. This isn't exactly a fair complaint because you're not supposed to experience it without those elements, but the action reads as much more perfunctory choreography when just visual. Also, Darth Maul toying with Obi-Wan by slashing the rim of the pit is silly.
The force speed effect is one of my favorites. I can't stand either "slow mo" or "flash spinning his arms and legs" as an effect. But looking like you're moving too fast for the eyes to track and skipping out of frame? Now that I can buy.
Quicksilver's scene I'll take as well, or Favora from Superman.
If Obi-Wan hadn't managed to forget how to use force speed by the end of the movie, Qui-Gon might still be alive.
They don't have the power to Force Decelerate, is the thing. So if he had sped up and still been too slow to pass through before those energy barriers turned on... ZZZZAP
He uses the same style in Samurai Jack and pretty much all of his shows. I suppose it depends on which you associate it more with.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited March 2020
Yeah, saying Tartakovsky's animation style is for comedy cartoons is like saying animated shows are just for kids. I get if that's what somebody associates it with because their initial exposure to Tartakovsky's shows were comedic ones, but counterpoint:
Tartakovsky's animation crew has put together some of the most impressively stylized and artistic animated work of this generation. Primal doesn't even have dialogue and is still more heavy-hitting than most shows that get multiple seasons of buildup to work with, everything is conveyed 100% through visuals or sound effects/music.
A podcast I listen to dropped a commentary track for The Phantom Menace last week so I sat down and watched it. However, I kept the movie audio muted which greatly helped in not having to hear the word "midichlorians" ever again. Here are a few observations:
This is not a bad-looking movie. With all the criticisms over the years about over-doing the CGI environments I thought it would come across as needlessly overstuffed and unintelligible, but it's actually quite pretty.
The "run away really fast" Force power will never not look hokey.
Aside from offering nothing to the plot, the planet core section has no tension whatsoever because Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson do not react to their environments (either because everything is green screen, poor direction, or some likely combination thereof). This is an issue throughout the rest of the movie as well.
The droid army, as CGI creations, integrate pretty well into the movie; they look like they are actually in that space.
Jar Jar and Watto, however, stick out like sore CG thumbs! Sometimes in darker lighting Jar Jar will look okay but when he's in broad daylight, yikes. Watto pretty much always looks fake. Their character models look good considering it was 1999, but they just do not read as being a part of their environments at all.
The podracing scene is fast, fun, and the most compelling section of the movie. The problem is that once it's over, there's still another hour of movie which is not fast, fun, or compelling.
Jake Lloyd, as an actor who squints all the time, kind of makes perfect sense as the child version of Hayden Christensen.
The Battle for Naboo has NO atmosphere whatsoever. It literally looks like they're battling on the Windows XP default desktop wallpaper.
The big lightsaber battle loses a LOT without "Duel of the Fates" and sound effects to bring it to life. This isn't exactly a fair complaint because you're not supposed to experience it without those elements, but the action reads as much more perfunctory choreography when just visual. Also, Darth Maul toying with Obi-Wan by slashing the rim of the pit is silly.
The force speed effect is one of my favorites. I can't stand either "slow mo" or "flash spinning his arms and legs" as an effect. But looking like you're moving too fast for the eyes to track and skipping out of frame? Now that I can buy.
Quicksilver's scene I'll take as well, or Favora from Superman.
Those Quicksilver scenes are my favorite things from that run of X-Men movies. They fill me with joy.
Me neither and had to look it up. There's like three or four frames where they get blurry and run to the side and apparently Qui Gonn used it to catch Jar Jar's tongue.
And then no one ever mentioned it ever again.
It is a remarkably fleeting moment (no pun intended). I don't think I even picked up on what happened when I saw it in the theaters or on VHS 20 years ago. But in HD, it is more apparent and kind of corny.
That also leads into a larger discussion of what are the limits of Force powers and why are they used when they're used in the films and other media, but that's a thread that pulls the entire sweater apart so I'm just gonna let it be.
Edit: Although, dang, I totally forgot that Luke used Force speed to quickly jump out of the carbonite pit in Empire, so it's not like rapid movement wasn't already established by TPM. I guess I can't complain about it too much in TPM, then, although I feel like it's still used to better effect in Empire since it shows that Luke is able to outwit Darth Vader momentarily whereas in TPM it's a convenient escape tactic from sentry droids.
If anything, this clip has the same problem as how the series portrayed Gen. Grievous: it makes the characters far too awesome to go out like the chumps Lucas wanted/needed them to be.
(Heck, it's Mace himself who's tasked, in the final episode before Episode IIII, with giving the latter his sharp downgrade from "unstoppable four-armed Jedi-killing badass" to "wheezing, crippled proto-Vader", in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene that had to be inserted for that single purpose.)
If anything, this clip has the same problem as how the series portrayed Gen. Grievous: it makes the characters far too awesome to go out like the chumps Lucas wanted/needed them to be.
(Heck, it's Mace himself who's tasked, in the final episode before Episode IIII, with giving the latter his sharp downgrade from "unstoppable four-armed Jedi-killing badass" to "wheezing, crippled proto-Vader", in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene that had to be inserted for that single purpose.)
To me, it was proof that the prequels didn't have to suck based on poor decision making by the big man himself. Star Wars can be awesome and its been proven by everyone other than Lucas or Abrams who touched this IP.
Alright, closing the old thread ate my long post, but I want to make a real case for Solo as the second best thing to come out of the Disney Era, and a strong second at that.
The thing to realize is that it’s a ridiculous love letter to the old EU, good and bad. Like the best of those stories, it’s propulsive, gets why the OT worked mostly, is still embarrassingly self-referential, and is also completely, utterly superfluous.
BUT.
There’s genuinely so much to love here when you jive with that goofiness. Some of it is actually good, and some of it is the other kind of good, but there’s a lot of it regardless.
For one, all the practical effects. There are puppets again, there are inventive creatures. There’s a scene in a high class Crimson Dawn get together that is basically the rich-people version of the Mos Eisley cantina - that human with half a head whose entire purpose is to serve as a walking table? That’s amazing nonsense.
Woody Harrelson is always twirling his gun for absolutely no reason.
Lando and Han work really well as a pair of scammers who only barely convince themselves that they’re hot shit.
The tone of this movie is all over the place, which also isn’t out of keeping with the old stuff. At one point Lando is carrying his droid partner after she gets hurt, and she gets ripped in half, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny, but it is nonetheless hilarious. Not in a cruel way, but Lando just seems so genuinely confused, and then we hop back to fast-paced adventure.
Thandie Newton’s character genuinely works, no qualifications. Actually, that entire train heist is aces. It’s not cartoony nonsense, physics are in play, and there are stakes. Most of the action is like that. Given the excesses of the PT and ST, it’s almost shocking to watch and actually follow an entire Star Wars action set piece.
At the end, Emilia Clarke’s character is flying away in a building-ship while Han is hundreds of miles away on the planet’s surface, and I swear to God the movie wants me to think they’re making eye contact.
Solo is a movie that mostly feels like smashing toys together, and I mean that as a compliment. I personally think that Aaron Allston’s Wraith Squadron books are the best of the old EU bunch, and that series is goofy as hell, though it also surprises with some pretty good melodrama on occasion. Solo is closer to that than any other filmed Star Wars material, and I have to appreciate that.
A podcast I listen to dropped a commentary track for The Phantom Menace last week so I sat down and watched it. However, I kept the movie audio muted which greatly helped in not having to hear the word "midichlorians" ever again. Here are a few observations:
This is not a bad-looking movie. With all the criticisms over the years about over-doing the CGI environments I thought it would come across as needlessly overstuffed and unintelligible, but it's actually quite pretty.
The "run away really fast" Force power will never not look hokey.
Aside from offering nothing to the plot, the planet core section has no tension whatsoever because Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson do not react to their environments (either because everything is green screen, poor direction, or some likely combination thereof). This is an issue throughout the rest of the movie as well.
The droid army, as CGI creations, integrate pretty well into the movie; they look like they are actually in that space.
Jar Jar and Watto, however, stick out like sore CG thumbs! Sometimes in darker lighting Jar Jar will look okay but when he's in broad daylight, yikes. Watto pretty much always looks fake. Their character models look good considering it was 1999, but they just do not read as being a part of their environments at all.
The podracing scene is fast, fun, and the most compelling section of the movie. The problem is that once it's over, there's still another hour of movie which is not fast, fun, or compelling.
Jake Lloyd, as an actor who squints all the time, kind of makes perfect sense as the child version of Hayden Christensen.
The Battle for Naboo has NO atmosphere whatsoever. It literally looks like they're battling on the Windows XP default desktop wallpaper.
The big lightsaber battle loses a LOT without "Duel of the Fates" and sound effects to bring it to life. This isn't exactly a fair complaint because you're not supposed to experience it without those elements, but the action reads as much more perfunctory choreography when just visual. Also, Darth Maul toying with Obi-Wan by slashing the rim of the pit is silly.
The force speed effect is one of my favorites. I can't stand either "slow mo" or "flash spinning his arms and legs" as an effect. But looking like you're moving too fast for the eyes to track and skipping out of frame? Now that I can buy.
Quicksilver's scene I'll take as well, or Favora from Superman.
If Obi-Wan hadn't managed to forget how to use force speed by the end of the movie, Qui-Gon might still be alive.
They don't have the power to Force Decelerate, is the thing. So if he had sped up and still been too slow to pass through before those energy barriers turned on... ZZZZAP
Samurai Jack? I haven't watched Primal, but Samurai Jack was always 90% serious and 10% tongue in cheek. Hell, the first clip I came across on YouTube just now was Aku visiting a psychiatrist and making silly faces.
Which is great, I never said cartoons are for kids, I said this style indicates a level of insincerity that disconnected me from the story. That scene above with Mace swinging his saber back and forth looks dull to me. It has a few moments with flair, but it always flips back to recycled animation that makes it look like a very serious episode of Scooby Doo.
Alright, closing the old thread ate my long post, but I want to make a real case for Solo as the second best thing to come out of the Disney Era, and a strong second at that.
The thing to realize is that it’s a ridiculous love letter to the old EU, good and bad. Like the best of those stories, it’s propulsive, gets why the OT worked mostly, is still embarrassingly self-referential, and is also completely, utterly superfluous.
BUT.
There’s genuinely so much to love here when you jive with that goofiness. Some of it is actually good, and some of it is the other kind of good, but there’s a lot of it regardless.
For one, all the practical effects. There are puppets again, there are inventive creatures. There’s a scene in a high class Crimson Dawn get together that is basically the rich-people version of the Mos Eisley cantina - that human with half a head whose entire purpose is to serve as a walking table? That’s amazing nonsense.
Woody Harrelson is always twirling his gun for absolutely no reason.
Lando and Han work really well as a pair of scammers who only barely convince themselves that they’re hot shit.
The tone of this movie is all over the place, which also isn’t out of keeping with the old stuff. At one point Lando is carrying his droid partner after she gets hurt, and she gets ripped in half, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny, but it is nonetheless hilarious. Not in a cruel way, but Lando just seems so genuinely confused, and then we hop back to fast-paced adventure.
Thandie Newton’s character genuinely works, no qualifications. Actually, that entire train heist is aces. It’s not cartoony nonsense, physics are in play, and there are stakes. Most of the action is like that. Given the excesses of the PT and ST, it’s almost shocking to watch and actually follow an entire Star Wars action set piece.
At the end, Emilia Clarke’s character is flying away in a building-ship while Han is hundreds of miles away on the planet’s surface, and I swear to God the movie wants me to think they’re making eye contact.
Solo is a movie that mostly feels like smashing toys together, and I mean that as a compliment. I personally think that Aaron Allston’s Wraith Squadron books are the best of the old EU bunch, and that series is goofy as hell, though it also surprises with some pretty good melodrama on occasion. Solo is closer to that than any other filmed Star Wars material, and I have to appreciate that.
Yeah, I was actually surprised by Solo, but I went in with super low expectations and fatigue after seeing TLJ so it simply being adequate was a massively pleasant surprise. That said, they needed to keep Maul out of it. So close to having something almost truly standalone without any force users or lightsabers in it. Clone Wars series proved that they could have episodes that were awesome that had nothing to do with the Force or force users.
While I wait for new season 7 episodes, I've been doing a chronological re-watch of Clone Wars. Except Bombad Jedi. Fuck Bombad Jedi. It's bad enough that I have to suffer Jar Jar in a Hondo episode.
Anyway, I just finished Senate Spy, and Padme's dress in that episode is goddamn scandalous.
You can't see from this angle, but the dress has no back or side torso. I mean, it makes sense, since she volunteered to be a honey trap for a treasonous senator who was an ex-lover, but damn.
Yeah, this show definitely flirts (sometimes literally) with being a show for adults.
If anything, this clip has the same problem as how the series portrayed Gen. Grievous: it makes the characters far too awesome to go out like the chumps Lucas wanted/needed them to be.
(Heck, it's Mace himself who's tasked, in the final episode before Episode IIII, with giving the latter his sharp downgrade from "unstoppable four-armed Jedi-killing badass" to "wheezing, crippled proto-Vader", in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene that had to be inserted for that single purpose.)
It's more that it ramps up the power level on jedi to a ridiculous level the actual movies never intended for them to be at.
I think in general it's also got the same issues that Samurai Jack could often have where it just kinda goes on forever (which makes sense given it's the same person behind both).
I guess there’s a built-in excuse now if TROS disc sales are low. :P
Also, it sounds like the Saga box set isn’t all that—most extras are old, but some are missing from previous releases. Seems like the big selling point is the 4K versions...which are on D+ anyhow. And $250 seems awfully damn pricey to me.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
I'm only interested in the OT, and not the SE versions of those movies either, so... probably not gonna be buying this.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
I was waiting for Rise of the Skywalker to come out on Disney + before giving it another viewing.
I'm only interested in the OT, and not the SE versions of those movies either, so... probably not gonna be buying this.
I've got them all on Google Play simply because I'm a completionist. It was really hard to plunk down cash for the ST when they came out. I was wary about TFA, but hopeful it would get better, but after TLJ and TROS came out I felt like I was just buying them to complete the collection.
All the obi and jango parts are pretty good I think.
Anakin is just so, so creepy.
I like how colourful the prequels are, especially Coruscant.
The CGI of the space stuff is generally pretty good, as is the Camino part. The perspectives in several CGI scenes especially in some Coruscant interiors are really fucked up though.
All the costume, set, character, and space sip design in particular are just top notch. The sequels unending parade of same but marginally altered or blown up in size and numbers designs can't hold a candle to the prequels.
I was waiting for Rise of the Skywalker to come out on Disney + before giving it another viewing.
Has it dropped yet? I don't know as I haven't gone looking for it, or watched any D+ lately. But maybe watching with my kids will mitigate the horrible disappointment.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
I was waiting for Rise of the Skywalker to come out on Disney + before giving it another viewing.
Has it dropped yet? I don't know as I haven't gone looking for it, or watched any D+ lately. But maybe watching with my kids will mitigate the horrible disappointment.
Nothing yet. It is out on streaming services to buy, but no rentals yet. Last I heard they were going to wait a bit to try and make more money on digital sales before putting it up on the big D.
Got Disney+ because we can't go anywhere and the kids are driving me crazy so I finally finished The Mandalorian this week. It was fun but kind of insubstantial? I saw someone call it "thin" and that's kinda my feelings. I enjoyed the aesthetic and some of the ideas (and obviously Baby Yoda) and somehow "western cliches, but Star Wars" is actually way more fun then it would be without the Star Wars setting. But the dialogue and some of the pacing and plotting is frequently very clunky and the whole thing just feels a bit like it's all surface. The last episode, just as an example that's fresh in my mind, was a lot of great ideas that suffered from pacing and structure issues. They've got a decent foundation to build on at least.
One thing I did enjoy was their willingness to actually use even just a bit of the freedom streaming services give you to break out of the TV broadcast mode of television. Having episode lengths be all over the place to accommodate the story is good and something we should see more of imo. They didn't use it to huge effect but they did use it and that's nice. Frankly, there's some spots where they should have used it more. Given the western-film style they are emulating here, there's several parts they should have paced way more deliberately. Cause it's not like you don't have the time if you want it.
And The Mandalorian as a whole and the fun surprise at the end of the last episode did get me to check out the Clone Wars series. This shit is rough going so far I gotta say. It's got the whole "very obviously designed as a kid show without any mitigating factors so far" going on. The episodes so far are very much pointless little action pieces. I'll skim through this stuff because I know people have commented it doesn't get going for a bit. But Avatar this ain't in terms of being tolerable even before it starts pulling it's story together.
The biggest thing I keep thinking watching this is my god the PT sucks. So many things in this show would be less horribly stupid if they didn't have to directly come from all the terrible terrible fucking ideas Lucas put into the PT setting. The droids are by far the most egregious example there. They are so irritating and stupid on every level and this stuff just doesn't make dramatic sense. Though I suppose it's the only thing letting them have a show where (stupid spinny) Yoda hacks up like a thousand motherfuckers and it's still ok for 6 year olds.
The one interesting thing so far though is how much this feels like Lucas finally actually recreating the adventure serials that Star Wars (and Indiana Jones) were so rooted in to begin with. So far this is all "random setup in the opening monologue->tiny action adventure story->end credits, completely new thing next week".
I will push on half-watching this till it gets interesting I guess.
It's not the most popular opinion, but I found most of the first half of Clone Wars boring.
I would never have made it through to the good stuff if I weren't watching it while multitasking (leveling in an MMO, probably). Hell, technically I didn't, I burnt out just as it was getting good and only got back into it and finished (what was out) recently.
And this from someone with low standards, who generally prefers cartoony dumb adventure bullshit, and ranks Rebels above any other Star Wars story.
If I were to speculate on why it didn't land for me at first, I'd guess it's because it takes a while for the meat of the story to shift from 'events' to 'characters'?
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
All the obi and jango parts are pretty good I think.
Anakin is just so, so creepy.
I like how colourful the prequels are, especially Coruscant.
The CGI of the space stuff is generally pretty good, as is the Camino part. The perspectives in several CGI scenes especially in some Coruscant interiors are really fucked up though.
All the costume, set, character, and space sip design in particular are just top notch. The sequels unending parade of same but marginally altered or blown up in size and numbers designs can't hold a candle to the prequels.
Yeah, in addition to everything else with the ST, the unimaginative aesthetic also frustrates me. Some of it makes sense - the Resistance is using handed down gear, so a lot of it should look similar to what the Rebels had (although, Rogue One still gave us new ships despite tighter timeline restrictions) - but why is everything else except for Kylo's personal ships essentially the same? Why do we still have Stormtroopers? Why do we still have gigantic triangular Star Destroyers? Why does the costuming, sets, etc look the same? Why hasn't anything progressed, visually? Or technologically?
All the obi and jango parts are pretty good I think.
Anakin is just so, so creepy.
I like how colourful the prequels are, especially Coruscant.
The CGI of the space stuff is generally pretty good, as is the Camino part. The perspectives in several CGI scenes especially in some Coruscant interiors are really fucked up though.
All the costume, set, character, and space sip design in particular are just top notch. The sequels unending parade of same but marginally altered or blown up in size and numbers designs can't hold a candle to the prequels.
Yeah, in addition to everything else with the ST, the unimaginative aesthetic also frustrates me. Some of it makes sense - the Resistance is using handed down gear, so a lot of it should look similar to what the Rebels had (although, Rogue One still gave us new ships despite tighter timeline restrictions) - but why is everything else except for Kylo's personal ships essentially the same? Why do we still have Stormtroopers? Why do we still have gigantic triangular Star Destroyers? Why does the costuming, sets, etc look the same? Why hasn't anything progressed, visually? Or technologically?
Because the writers think the audience is dumb and won't understand what's going on if red lightsabers doesn't automatically equal bad guy.
It's not the most popular opinion, but I found most of the first half of Clone Wars boring.
I would never have made it through to the good stuff if I weren't watching it while multitasking (leveling in an MMO, probably). Hell, technically I didn't, I burnt out just as it was getting good and only got back into it and finished (what was out) recently.
And this from someone with low standards, who generally prefers cartoony dumb adventure bullshit, and ranks Rebels above any other Star Wars story.
If I were to speculate on why it didn't land for me at first, I'd guess it's because it takes a while for the meat of the story to shift from 'events' to 'characters'?
I thought "the first chunk of Clone Wars is really boring" was like the consensus opinion?
It's not the most popular opinion, but I found most of the first half of Clone Wars boring.
I would never have made it through to the good stuff if I weren't watching it while multitasking (leveling in an MMO, probably). Hell, technically I didn't, I burnt out just as it was getting good and only got back into it and finished (what was out) recently.
And this from someone with low standards, who generally prefers cartoony dumb adventure bullshit, and ranks Rebels above any other Star Wars story.
If I were to speculate on why it didn't land for me at first, I'd guess it's because it takes a while for the meat of the story to shift from 'events' to 'characters'?
I thought "the first chunk of Clone Wars is really boring" was like the consensus opinion?
Cause like, this shit is boring.
Mostly people tend to say S1 isn't good but that the rest is fine, I think.
I don't think most of the next two seasons are much better outside of a few arcs, though, except animation wise.
Rewatching clone wars now and just started on 4th season. The story arcs can be incredibly hit or miss, which means the 4 episode obi wan undercover set is just a slog or some of the droid based episodes (though, they are either awesome or awful, no in between). In some respects the Clone Wars tells a really horrible war story filtered through the medium of a kid friendly cartoon. The krell arc and the mon calamari episodes in season 4 especially.
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Clone Wars and Rebels was definitely an acquired taste. It starts out looking like painted wooden dolls or a couple notches up from Lego people. I personally like it, but I don't begrudge anybody that doesn't. It's clean and easy to follow the action, which I really appreciate.
Yeah, wacky cartoons like Samurai Jack and Primal don't fit Star Wars at all :rotate:
They don't have the power to Force Decelerate, is the thing. So if he had sped up and still been too slow to pass through before those energy barriers turned on... ZZZZAP
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Tartakovsky's animation crew has put together some of the most impressively stylized and artistic animated work of this generation. Primal doesn't even have dialogue and is still more heavy-hitting than most shows that get multiple seasons of buildup to work with, everything is conveyed 100% through visuals or sound effects/music.
I get it if thats your taste but its a pass for me dog
The topmost one is Anakin.
Is it? Eh.
Those Quicksilver scenes are my favorite things from that run of X-Men movies. They fill me with joy.
It is a remarkably fleeting moment (no pun intended). I don't think I even picked up on what happened when I saw it in the theaters or on VHS 20 years ago. But in HD, it is more apparent and kind of corny.
That also leads into a larger discussion of what are the limits of Force powers and why are they used when they're used in the films and other media, but that's a thread that pulls the entire sweater apart so I'm just gonna let it be.
Edit: Although, dang, I totally forgot that Luke used Force speed to quickly jump out of the carbonite pit in Empire, so it's not like rapid movement wasn't already established by TPM. I guess I can't complain about it too much in TPM, then, although I feel like it's still used to better effect in Empire since it shows that Luke is able to outwit Darth Vader momentarily whereas in TPM it's a convenient escape tactic from sentry droids.
If anything, this clip has the same problem as how the series portrayed Gen. Grievous: it makes the characters far too awesome to go out like the chumps Lucas wanted/needed them to be.
(Heck, it's Mace himself who's tasked, in the final episode before Episode IIII, with giving the latter his sharp downgrade from "unstoppable four-armed Jedi-killing badass" to "wheezing, crippled proto-Vader", in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene that had to be inserted for that single purpose.)
To me, it was proof that the prequels didn't have to suck based on poor decision making by the big man himself. Star Wars can be awesome and its been proven by everyone other than Lucas or Abrams who touched this IP.
The thing to realize is that it’s a ridiculous love letter to the old EU, good and bad. Like the best of those stories, it’s propulsive, gets why the OT worked mostly, is still embarrassingly self-referential, and is also completely, utterly superfluous.
BUT.
There’s genuinely so much to love here when you jive with that goofiness. Some of it is actually good, and some of it is the other kind of good, but there’s a lot of it regardless.
For one, all the practical effects. There are puppets again, there are inventive creatures. There’s a scene in a high class Crimson Dawn get together that is basically the rich-people version of the Mos Eisley cantina - that human with half a head whose entire purpose is to serve as a walking table? That’s amazing nonsense.
Woody Harrelson is always twirling his gun for absolutely no reason.
Lando and Han work really well as a pair of scammers who only barely convince themselves that they’re hot shit.
The tone of this movie is all over the place, which also isn’t out of keeping with the old stuff. At one point Lando is carrying his droid partner after she gets hurt, and she gets ripped in half, and I don’t think it’s supposed to be funny, but it is nonetheless hilarious. Not in a cruel way, but Lando just seems so genuinely confused, and then we hop back to fast-paced adventure.
Thandie Newton’s character genuinely works, no qualifications. Actually, that entire train heist is aces. It’s not cartoony nonsense, physics are in play, and there are stakes. Most of the action is like that. Given the excesses of the PT and ST, it’s almost shocking to watch and actually follow an entire Star Wars action set piece.
At the end, Emilia Clarke’s character is flying away in a building-ship while Han is hundreds of miles away on the planet’s surface, and I swear to God the movie wants me to think they’re making eye contact.
Solo is a movie that mostly feels like smashing toys together, and I mean that as a compliment. I personally think that Aaron Allston’s Wraith Squadron books are the best of the old EU bunch, and that series is goofy as hell, though it also surprises with some pretty good melodrama on occasion. Solo is closer to that than any other filmed Star Wars material, and I have to appreciate that.
Which is great, I never said cartoons are for kids, I said this style indicates a level of insincerity that disconnected me from the story. That scene above with Mace swinging his saber back and forth looks dull to me. It has a few moments with flair, but it always flips back to recycled animation that makes it look like a very serious episode of Scooby Doo.
Yeah, I was actually surprised by Solo, but I went in with super low expectations and fatigue after seeing TLJ so it simply being adequate was a massively pleasant surprise. That said, they needed to keep Maul out of it. So close to having something almost truly standalone without any force users or lightsabers in it. Clone Wars series proved that they could have episodes that were awesome that had nothing to do with the Force or force users.
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Anyway, I just finished Senate Spy, and Padme's dress in that episode is goddamn scandalous.
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It's more that it ramps up the power level on jedi to a ridiculous level the actual movies never intended for them to be at.
I think in general it's also got the same issues that Samurai Jack could often have where it just kinda goes on forever (which makes sense given it's the same person behind both).
Also, it sounds like the Saga box set isn’t all that—most extras are old, but some are missing from previous releases. Seems like the big selling point is the 4K versions...which are on D+ anyhow. And $250 seems awfully damn pricey to me.
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I've got them all on Google Play simply because I'm a completionist. It was really hard to plunk down cash for the ST when they came out. I was wary about TFA, but hopeful it would get better, but after TLJ and TROS came out I felt like I was just buying them to complete the collection.
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Anakin is just so, so creepy.
I like how colourful the prequels are, especially Coruscant.
The CGI of the space stuff is generally pretty good, as is the Camino part. The perspectives in several CGI scenes especially in some Coruscant interiors are really fucked up though.
All the costume, set, character, and space sip design in particular are just top notch. The sequels unending parade of same but marginally altered or blown up in size and numbers designs can't hold a candle to the prequels.
Has it dropped yet? I don't know as I haven't gone looking for it, or watched any D+ lately. But maybe watching with my kids will mitigate the horrible disappointment.
Nothing yet. It is out on streaming services to buy, but no rentals yet. Last I heard they were going to wait a bit to try and make more money on digital sales before putting it up on the big D.
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Just, so, so good.
I love it every time.
I’ll be mostly finished in about
*checks watch*
six to eight months
One thing I did enjoy was their willingness to actually use even just a bit of the freedom streaming services give you to break out of the TV broadcast mode of television. Having episode lengths be all over the place to accommodate the story is good and something we should see more of imo. They didn't use it to huge effect but they did use it and that's nice. Frankly, there's some spots where they should have used it more. Given the western-film style they are emulating here, there's several parts they should have paced way more deliberately. Cause it's not like you don't have the time if you want it.
The biggest thing I keep thinking watching this is my god the PT sucks. So many things in this show would be less horribly stupid if they didn't have to directly come from all the terrible terrible fucking ideas Lucas put into the PT setting. The droids are by far the most egregious example there. They are so irritating and stupid on every level and this stuff just doesn't make dramatic sense. Though I suppose it's the only thing letting them have a show where (stupid spinny) Yoda hacks up like a thousand motherfuckers and it's still ok for 6 year olds.
The one interesting thing so far though is how much this feels like Lucas finally actually recreating the adventure serials that Star Wars (and Indiana Jones) were so rooted in to begin with. So far this is all "random setup in the opening monologue->tiny action adventure story->end credits, completely new thing next week".
I will push on half-watching this till it gets interesting I guess.
I would never have made it through to the good stuff if I weren't watching it while multitasking (leveling in an MMO, probably). Hell, technically I didn't, I burnt out just as it was getting good and only got back into it and finished (what was out) recently.
And this from someone with low standards, who generally prefers cartoony dumb adventure bullshit, and ranks Rebels above any other Star Wars story.
If I were to speculate on why it didn't land for me at first, I'd guess it's because it takes a while for the meat of the story to shift from 'events' to 'characters'?
Yeah, in addition to everything else with the ST, the unimaginative aesthetic also frustrates me. Some of it makes sense - the Resistance is using handed down gear, so a lot of it should look similar to what the Rebels had (although, Rogue One still gave us new ships despite tighter timeline restrictions) - but why is everything else except for Kylo's personal ships essentially the same? Why do we still have Stormtroopers? Why do we still have gigantic triangular Star Destroyers? Why does the costuming, sets, etc look the same? Why hasn't anything progressed, visually? Or technologically?
Because the writers think the audience is dumb and won't understand what's going on if red lightsabers doesn't automatically equal bad guy.
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I thought "the first chunk of Clone Wars is really boring" was like the consensus opinion?
Cause like, this shit is boring.
Mostly people tend to say S1 isn't good but that the rest is fine, I think.
I don't think most of the next two seasons are much better outside of a few arcs, though, except animation wise.