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[Star Wars] The Adventures of Crimson Jack and S-M33
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
It’s apparently time for our semi-annual thread renewal as the old thread gets taken for Carousel and or fades into the West, as your faith dictates.
We have a new series live!
THE ACOLYTE
I’m not a fan. Maybe it’ll get better?
https://youtu.be/UELWnj-SSxc?si=LI3t48jYL7nMcswU
Anyway. Andor S2 is less than a year away. Hopefully. Oh and we have two new movies in the pipeline. Allegedly. Does anyone care about the Mandalorian movie? I’m not sure they do.
Man, @Tav was right. Star Wars sucks. 😣
We have a new series live!
THE ACOLYTE
I’m not a fan. Maybe it’ll get better?
https://youtu.be/UELWnj-SSxc?si=LI3t48jYL7nMcswUAnyway. Andor S2 is less than a year away. Hopefully. Oh and we have two new movies in the pipeline. Allegedly. Does anyone care about the Mandalorian movie? I’m not sure they do.
Man, @Tav was right. Star Wars sucks. 😣
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Star Trek had tons of them
O’Brien, the Irish planet, etc.
Star Wars only has Posh British and “other”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
The worst part of Star Wars!
This is going to be a tortured metaphor, gonna let you all know that up front. But! I think about it like how many people have differing opinions on steak.
Let's say you go to a restaurant and you get sirloin and you're like "oh this is great!" And you go back every week to get steak because it's great and you love it.
Then you try prime rib and you're like OMFG this is outstanding!
You may want only prime rib from then on out because why settle for plain sirloin. Or maybe sirloin still is good enough and you're good with either!
And sometimes you can shift from the latter to the former, especially as you get older and realize that a. your life remaining is finite, b. the number of times you will be able to have steak again is finite, due to time, health, lack of money, or a combination thereof, and therefore c. when you do have steak, you want it to be nothing but the best. At that point, you start to get rather particular about having it cooked exactly right and the exact perfect cut of beef. Not because you've become a picky old curmudgeon who can't just enjoy things anymore, but because you have realized you have only a few chances left to enjoy steak, so you better make every one count
If, on top of that pressure, you turn to a restaurant you knew gave you amazing prime rib before, and this time it just gave you an okay prime rib, a bit tough, overcooked perhaps...you're gonna tend to be a bit ornery about it. You had expectations, and there's stakes involved (pun intended). So you criticize and analyze, not because you hate, but because you love, and this is a restaurant that you know can produce amazing steak, so you try to break down what went wrong in hopes of understanding and hopefully either eventually informing the restaurant so the next time will be better, or being able to make the judgement call that it was a fluke, or that it wasn't and you need to find a new restaurant.
To wit: there are some super sharp people in these forums, some with insight into the filmmaking/writing/production process that I for one super appreciate hearing (since I have entered said ornery phase of my life). I certainly don't think anyone here is judging those who just enjoy any good ol' steak, though; if you like Acolyte and don't see the flaws, great! More power to you! I sometimes wish I could turn my brain back to an earlier time in my life where I could do that. But the show does have flaws, and analyzing those flaws is educational/informative/therapeutic for some of us. There should be room for both in here, and I don't think anyone that has been breaking down the flaws has meant anything about those who don't see those flaws, or do but don't care. I certainly haven't (and sorry if I came across any differently).
As for whether or not the Nightsisters are overtly bad guys:
Except for the parts that aren't, of course. But, relevant to current discussions, Acolyte is. So talking about the filmmaking/storytelling aspects of Acolyte seems wholly relevant?
Like, are you thinking those talking about the writing/staging/shot composition on Acolyte aren't wanting to discuss Star Wars?
Because I for one want to discuss Star Wars, and in part I am wanting to discuss the writing/staging/composition in Star Wars and the various shows therein and how some are more successful at satiating my appetite for Wars among the Stars than others.
I get if some (like you?) don't want to break it apart down to that level, but I don't understand how you are apparently feeling that those who do aren't wanting to discuss Star Wars?
I'd have to go back and watch the episode again (and I'm not gonna) so feel free to correct my memory, but:
Now, whether that was what the show was trying to go with, who knows. If it was, they didn't do a good job of making that at all clear.
It set a high bar for Star Wars, not likely to be matched again, but it's perfectly reasonable for us to measure against it and when things come out that don't even seem to try to be half as good it's disappointing and not surprisingly the knives come out.
Personally I feel we've long since reached the tipping point where Star Wars is now mostly bad - which f'n sucks - largely down to poor writing (and everything being tethered to the terrible world building of the prequels).
A real shame.
I hate to hammer home the "Show Being About Things" point too much because it's the kind of point the "anti-woke" crowd has been harping on for TLJ, Rings of Power, Wheel of Time, and pretty much everything in between. And of course for them the problem is "keep politics out" but they'll mask it under "I don't care if they want to handle these themes as long as they can do it well and not shove it in your face."
But as toxic as that discourse is, there is something to "if you're going to handle it, handle it well." So I have no problem with a Star Wars property staying away from handling complex themes, or handling them in uncomplex ways. Luke says, "I hate the Empire." Got it! We understand how Luke feels about the Empire, and we know why because we see them do bad Empire stuff. What Luke doesn't do is stare meaningfully at someone in a dramatic closeup while he says, "Thing about Empires is, they always take the thing you don't want them to take, and that's the thing that they should not have." And Andor talks about power and those allowed to wield it by hitting a cop with a brick.
So it's not that Star Wars has to cover complex topics well. But shows that aren't equipped to get into Big Relevant Things are giving themselves a hernia trying to lift a topic too heavy for them, with their back instead of their legs.
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SF&F Reviews blog
I’m as guilty as anyone
I’d love to be a fly on the wall during some of the production meetings, because the showrunner of this also did Russian Doll on Netflix, which is just a really tightly-written and meticulously directed bit of TV with several great and funny performances. There’s absolutely nothing at all to indicate the person capable to pulling off one of Netflix’s best shows was involved in this mess at all.
So what happened? Is there some part of the process that Lucasfilm locks the showrunner out of? Is there a house style mandate driven by Dave Filoni to make everything the same exact kind of garbage? Was there no clear planning or scripting completed before shooting started?
There has to be a unified explanation. Too many shows have gone to air from LFL that fail in the exact same way; nearly every complaint you can lay on this show is something Kenobi, Mando, Boba Fett, and Ahsoka are also guilty of—incoherent story, overwrought dialogue, thoughtless cinematography, cheap-looking sets and costumes, careless art direction, bland lighting, and actors left adrift with no strong direction.
When everything starts to fail the same way, you need to find the common denominators.
While Disney claimed The Acolyte had their biggest viewership for a premiere, at this point the total viewership is already 22% lower than the previous biggest opener, Ahsoka.
Having half a dozen writers and half a dozen directors and none work on more than 2 episodes of the season might have something to do with it.
Anyway, just because the roots of Star Wars are relatively simple is no reason to have bad material. Fury Road is pretty straightforward stuff and is amazing. John Wick is one of the most barebones action films made and it is stellar because of that. But you can't dump on the original material to try and force the stories you want. You can't do lifeless cinematography and expect people to be visually interested. Simple means you have to put in the effort to make something good and polished.
And for handling specific topics, you gotta use material that fits the show. The Star Wars setting has almost no relation at all to the real world. Yeah, the Empire was basically Nazis right down to the uniforms, but was that a commentary on Nazis or simply because Nazis are Big Bad and that makes for a pretty great visual shorthand for who the bad guys are? Because I would argue very strongly that it's the latter as the OT never touches on anything the Empire does other than be militantly oppressive and evil. The scope of the OT is not criticizing Nazis, it's the broad strokes struggle of good and evil. But then you've got the likes of Andor and that takes commentary on fascism and pins it to the wall with a fucking railroad spike. It's right on the mark for casual grinding cruelty of fascism and the people who truly believe in fascism. People so twisted that self-reflection doesn't even enter into it because enforcing "order" makes them feel so good. Andor makes cool grey uniforms bad again and it's awesome.
In that same vein, anything Jedi related would be a rich environment for exploring issues of relationships, toxic feelings and thoughts, and the genuine failing of the Jedi is believing connection to others is bad. If somebody wanted to make a show which ultimately reveals that as a core consistent failing of the Jedi, that would be on-point and potentially great. And instead for Acolyte, we're getting
That's just what happens if you leave Posh British in charge too long.
Not enough time, not enough oversight (of the right kind), too much focus on the amount of content rather than the quality of content.
That's really it. Anyone who looks at the production credits on Acolyte can easily see that there are way too many fucking people involved just in the writing alone to engender any sort of confidence over the results.
No that’s actually pretty standard
Everyone is nonsensical and also they found two of the worst child actors they could find...
Again, I don’t know if Steven Spielberg—a virtuoso at getting good performances from children—could spin any gold with the atrocious dialogue they saddled those kids with.
I don’t know if two talented adult actors could convincingly sell those lines. Could you imagine Anne Hathaway and Cate Blanchett saying,
I can’t 🤷♀️
I think the number of writers per episode on a project is more indicative of trouble than the overall number of episodes by the same writers
You really don’t need more than one or two writers per episode
The game is played on a 3' x 3' board, usually a neoprene mat with an appropriately space or Star Wars-themed background, and has two or more players flying the various starfighters from the Star Wars universe in intense dogfights and missions. It's sort of a cross between a tactical wargame and board game as there's a strong list-building and collecting element, but the miniatures come pre-painted and there are a lot of game aids like tokens and cards whose updates keep the game engaging. What makes the game unique is the flight path system: you can see black cardboard token representing a 2-banking turn in front of the X-Wing in the picture above. That's the physical distance and location the X-wing moves during that round. Players choose various maneuvers from those available to each starfighter with the general aim of putting the enemy in their own sights while keeping themselves out of their opponent's. The game is a bit complicated to learn, somewhere in the realm of basic D&D or Magic the Gathering, with the number of rules and edge cases, but most people I've played with generally get the hang of it within an hour or two of their first game. The real mastery comes from having good spacial estimation skills and being able to visualize your and your opponents maneuvers when making your plan for each round, as well as creating a list and capitalizing on that list's strengths.
The game originally came out in 2012, just before Disney bought Star Wars, and was developed by Fantasy Flight Games using elements from a similar WWII dogfighting miniature game called Wings of Glory. It was immediately a hit, and FFG released regular updates in the form of new models, new upgrade cards, and new named pilots. You could create your own Red Squadron Escort Veteran pilot with a unique skill, loadout, and modified T-65, but you could also fly Luke Skywalker, Wedge Antillies, Biggs Darklighter, or even Kyle Katarn from the deep lore. The game steadily increased in popularity, temporarily displacing Warhammer 40k from the top-selling miniatures game in 2015. That's a big deal. All the starfighters from the movies where there, including the A-Wing, Y-Wing, & B-Wing, as well as the TIE Advanced x1, TIE Interceptor, and TIE Bomber. And when they ran out of those they reached back into Legends, with the E-Wing and TIE Phantom. They revived the TIE Defender from the games, and even the K-Wing from the Force knows where. Eventually they added a third faction "Scum and Villainy" for pirates, marauders, smugglers, and the like. Some pilot and upgrade cards had lore snippets akin to MtG. Sometimes they released themed bundles with alternative paint schemes, pilot cards, and scenarios. I'm sure the devs were glad when The Last Jedi finally introduced some new ships, because they were getting pretty close to the bottom of the barrel by the time the G-1A Starfighter (Mist Hunter) Expansion Pack released. Sales had peaked by this point and the game had become a bit bloated and expensive to enter: new mechanics were being introduced with new ships, so if you wanted to upgrade your TIE Bomber with a SLAM engine as an Imperial player, you "needed" to buy a K-Wing to get access to those particular upgrade cards... at least if you were playing at an official event.
note: not my collection... not even a fraction of it.
At GenCon 2018 (I was in the room where it happened, the room where it happened) FFG released a 2nd edition of the game, reintroducing the T-65 X-Wing, only this time with moving S-Foils! The new version of the game rebalanced and integrated all the mechanics that had been introduced in the last 5+ years, and also reused all the previous ship models. While the 1.0 models were slowly repackaged with 2.0 materials, FFGs sold conversion kits containing all the cardboard and cardstock required to use a portion of your models with the new rules. These packs cost around $50 per faction, along with "huge ships" and some general upgrades and obstacles IIRC. Buying into 2.0 would cost the fully outfitted 1.0 player in the neighborhood of $250 to get one of each conversion kit. If you'd been buying all the 1.0 stuff at this point I think you'd be in the neighborhood of holding a $1200 - $1500 collection (depending on how many duplicates you'd bought), so that wasn't a small price to pay to continue playing. As I said the game's popularity had started waning by this point, and the 2nd edition release effectively split the community into two halves leading to steadily declining interest and sales. After 2.0's release the only new models were some Republic and Separatist ships from the prequels, but these weren't popular and no further waves were produced.
In a similar vein, Fantasy Flight Games was acquired by Asmodee, a French gaming conglomerate backed by an European equity firm. While initially hands-off, Asmodee began systematically reorganizing FFGs lines and properties into other child companies. As this reorganization occurred, development slowed down (in no small part due to layoffs) and stock shortages were common. Around November of 2020, X-Wing Minis moved to Atomic Mass Games along with the other Star Wars tactical tabletop games like Armada, Legion, and Imperial Assault*. It wasn't an easy move, and AMGs struggled to find ways to reinvigorate the brand. They settled on a 2.5 edition that subtly reworked a few of the pressure points of 2.0, and attempted to ease new players into the game with a revised and simplified squad-building system and single-faction starter packs. I don't think that helped much, but only a few weeks ago I decided I wanted to get back into the game after leaving in 2016** and it seems like there was a small revival underway which included some tournament support from AMG. Then, yesterday, this bombshell dropped:
A wargaming YouTuber I follow had a positive spin on the game that I'm choosing to adopt. The game isn't dead: it's complete. It's a little sad that there's not going to be any more miniatures... at least for a while. As they say in Star Wars, "No [merchandise-able entity]'s ever really gone." For now, I'm going to head to the Friendly Local Gaming Store and buy anything I'm missing from my collection***. I'm sure there will be plenty of stores and vendors liquidating their stock in the next month, so in some ways there's never been a better time to get into this game! The game has definitely maintained a small but dedicated fanbase. I've been following r/XWingTMG and there are talks of a fan-support community in development. The 2.5 edition isn't perfect by any means, but there were some improvements on 2.0 that should probably roll forward into that. Maybe a 2.1 edition is the answer. I don't know. The reality is that you can play with any edition as there are a ton of top-tier fan sites that have preserved all the rules. Moreover, we now live in an age of 3D-printing, so even though the models will soon be discontinued, you could still get them conceivably in the future. For now I'll add this to my list**** of now-defunct FFG games that are still amazing products that I'll continue to play, and hopefully the local gaming group will keep it alive until its inevitable revival.
**From 2016 to 2019 I had one of the worst jobs in my life and wasn't playing much of anything.
***except the prequel stuff... eww.
****current list is Netrunner, Legend of the 5 Rings LCG & RPG, and the Genesis RPG.
At least with physical stuff they can't just turn off the servers and you lose it forever.
Also during the period while FFG's RPG was out of print, they also weren't going after people uploading game content wholesale onto wikis, which meant for a time the "dead game" was effectively open source. Mordheim is in that state too. So this could actually be good for the game: there's enough of the minis out in the wild that I imagine a dedicated community can keep it going for a long time.
You’re almost never going to get the same director from episode to episode in anything, even in good shows, but that’s because TV directors don’t have the same role as a film director
The showrunner is the TV analogue of the film director
As such, there was an expectation that George had gone off and spent the intervening 16 years planning and honing his skills… only to be met with a product that fell drastically short of what it’s predecessor had achieved and the horrid truth became inescapable: George had spent that time figuring out how to create a new hyper merchandisable product and things like writing, philosophy, imagery, metaphor, blocking, acting… those were just frills and extras to facilitate the gluttonous CGI extravaganza and how it would get people to buy every god forsaken piece of merchandise from the computer games to the apparel to the action figures to the candy that required you to French kiss jar jar...
So as a result people recoiled in shock and tried to deal with how the whole thing dam across as being so fundamentally awful. They tried to rationalize it and argue "George isn't stupid, he's got to see how upset people are, he can course correct this!" and a few years later they released attack of the clones which did indeed have good action (Something that wasn't really a problem in the first movie)... and an utter mess of a story with Hayden Christianson trying his best but like an amateur featherweight boxer in the Octagon with a heavyweight UFC champ there was no way that this was going to work. So we wind up with a movie that has a bunch of CGI (to facilitate precisely the number of lightsabers necessary to make them utterly banal you see) and a series of events and motivations that don't really make any sense beyond "shut up I want to do this scene."
Revenge... existed and in a lot of ways it was everything that was wrong with the PT; Gluttonous CGI, poor writing, Actors trying their best with said writing, Fight scenes that went on way too god damn long... The crystallization of it's failure was when Vader ~having taken his first stumbling steps learns what happened to Padme (the woman he did all of this for) and mournfully calls out "NOOOooooOOOOoooooo" and I guarantee you in every theater across north America people burst out laughing.
Time passes. Lucas having been made to intimately understand that the PT was bad and he should feel bad sells it for $texas to the house of mouse who proceed to try and remake the original trilogy... but biggerer and with dumb side plots nobody asked for and that serve no purpose but to irritate the shit out of people who care about film making.
Mandalorian is good though.