Order your Star Wars films

[Celebrim]

I find it amusing that fans are willing to tie themselves in knots to explain Han Solo using Parsecs...

Han Solo (apparently) quantifying time in Parsecs has always been one of the minor blunders of the OT, and the fans certainly don't like to have to tie themselves up in knots to invent some sort of explanation for it. It's a clear defect in the film to anyone who knows what a parsec is.

and yet just throw up their hands in disgust at TLJ.

It's not a fair comparison. Having Han Solo refer to time in units of Parsecs causes a minor bit of agony, but doesn't undermine a significant portion of the setting and has a few simple explanations - even if the real explanation is simply ignorance on the part of the script writer.

What's really funny is watching people twist themselves up to make straw man arguments both about how other people behave or how the whole lightspeed ram can be justified.

First, the movie itself justifies it. Hux could've shifted fire to the Cruiser, his own hubris gave Holdo the time to line up her shot.

This doesn't hold up. Unlike the escape pods, the Cruiser was 'out of range' as it had continued on to lure the fleet away from the escaping vessels (never mind that the actual range in space is line of sight, we'll just assume this means out of effective range given the limits of their targeting). The amount of time Hux had to shift to the cruiser was minimal even in terms of on screen time (which might even be longer than the time he had available). Moreover, Hux has a good in setting explanation for not expecting a capital ship to ram another capital ship - in setting it's just never done. While we've seen ramming attacks before, they've always involve impromptu 'kamikazi' style attacks, like the one that took out the bridge of the Devastator in RotJ. So even if Hux had been expecting a ramming attack, he had no in setting reason to expect a light speed ram. And the nature of the light speed ram attack means that the Cruiser can safely turn around at virtually any range and close the final portion of the gap more or less instantly.

Second, it had to be a precise hit, while the Cruiser was still accelerating to light speed, not once you're in hyperspace.

A calculation that cannot be more difficult than the one necessary to jump to lightspeed in the first place.

Finally, about remote-control ... if the tech was available, you'd have drones, not manned fighters.

But, we've already seen a prequel trilogy and a long running cartoon filled with drone unmanned fighters. So the tech is available. You just build a purpose built droid to fly the missile. And it's not like highly intelligent homing missiles are unknown in the setting.

So if you'd rather have had Luke flying a simulator and remote piloting his X-Wing at Yavin, be my guest.

It's not that I would rather that, it's that whenever you introduce the light speed ram attack or try to go through backflips to justify it, you are saying that you prefer that. That's the reason these sort of things have been through the decades kept out of the canon, and hyperspace jumps have been given so many restrictions on how they can be used.

I'm not even going to get into Holdo. As soon as I attack how poorly written Holdo is as a character, people are going to start accusing me of sexism (which is IMO itself indicative of a sexist mindset that proves that they, and not me, primarily see the character in terms of the gender). However, I will say that again, a perusal of what we've learned about script history shows how management decisions and forced rewrites caused plot holes to appear in the script that weren't present in the original. The original version of the script was much more like Morris's imagined "33" style plot, and there were far fewer plots holes and far clearer motivations on the part of the original version of the characters.

 

[doghead]

1. A New Hope.
2. The Empire Strikes Back.
3. Return of the Jedi.

/End

 

[Vael]

It's not that I would rather that, it's that whenever you introduce the light speed ram attack or try to go through backflips to justify it, you are saying that you prefer that. That's the reason these sort of things have been through the decades kept out of the canon, and hyperspace jumps have been given so many restrictions on how they can be used.

In the Force Awakens, Han jumps the Falcon to hyperspace while inside another ship, much to Rey's horror. He then jumps out of hyperspace inside a planet's atmosphere to both Chewbacca and Finn's horror. Luke blind-fires the torpedoes that kill the first Death Star. A single out of control A-Wing takes out a Super Star Destroyer. Primitive teddy bears take out stormtroopers and walkers with stone age weaponry. And no one is suggesting these are the basis for radical changes to how the entire universe should function. Or ... in other words, a wizard frickin' did it, but why is this the bridge too far? The Force was with Holdo and she did something extraordinary.

And why I let it go, is that that one shot of silence and ships breaking caused by the heroic desperation of Admiral Holdo is one of the top most beautiful sequences in the entire franchise, up with Luke staring into the twin suns in ANH. It was breathtaking.

There are many things in the Star Wars franchise that do not hold up to any scrutiny. From Han talking parsecs to the sentience and status of Droids, to the nature of the Force itself.

 

[Celebrim]

In the Force Awakens, Han jumps the Falcon to hyperspace while inside another ship, much to Rey's horror.

Mine as well.

He then jumps out of hyperspace inside a planet's atmosphere to both Chewbacca and Finn's horror.

I hated that too.

Luke blind-fires the torpedoes that kill the first Death Star.

Ok, stop there, because there is a huge difference here at it lies in the writing. Let me give you a lesson in screen writing. Why does the audience buy into Luke blind firing the torpedoes that kill the first Death Star? It's not because of some vague explanation about magic or the The Force. It's not because you can retroactively work it out using things in the larger Star Wars canon. The audience that first saw 'Star Wars' knew nothing about The Force and had no larger Star Wars canon to draw on.

No, we buy that because practically the whole movie has been carefully constructing that moment and building up to it and foreshadowing it. We buy it because the writer has spent several minutes of careful exposition in other dramatic scenes developing the audience to expect that scene and be mentally waiting for it. If it had just come out of nowhere, it would have been terrible lazy writing that the audience wouldn't have bought it. But the writer did an excellent job setting up that scene in such a way that really any one seeing the scene would know that was the only right way the movie could end and any clever writer that knows the stories work would have been expecting it and would have fist pumped when it happened.

How was this achieved? Well, way back when we first meet Obi Wan, he tells Luke, "You must learn the ways of the force." In doing so, he's telling the audience what the story is going to be about. He's put a gun on the wall that will have to be fired. Then we see Obi Wan in several scenes displaying his mastery of the force and doing extraordinary things. Then we also see Obi Wan explaining to Luke what The Force will enable him to do, and we have a training scene where Obi Wan gets Luke to blindly deflect a blaster bolt with a lightsaber. Note the importance of the fact that it was done blindly. Then later, we have a scene where Obi Wan is fighting Vader, and Obi Wan allows himself to be slain after telling Vader he cannot win. Then, after dead, Obi Wan tells his distraught pupil, "Run Luke!"

So in the context of all this set up, there is no other right way to conclude the movie. If Luke doesn't destroy the Death Star using the force with his eyes closed and with the help of Obi Wan's force ghost, then it's a bad movie that wasted time building up plot points irrelevant to the conclusion and fails to deliver on its themes.

None of that happens in the case of the lightspeed ram. Now, it would have been a terrible idea, but you could set up the lightspeed ram as the appropriate ending to the movie. Think about a movie like "Ghostbusters" that spends an incredible amount of time telling the audience that you should never ever cross the streams, and spends a lot of time telling the audience how bad that would be. Why? Because it's going to use that idea to Deus Ex Machina save the day when all else seems lost, and by telling the audience how terrible that idea is, when the heroes decide to it, the audience has been primed to believe that it is a brave thing for them to do and satisfied when it is used to solve the problem. If on the other hand none of that setup had been done and faced with a problem they had invented on the spot crossing the streams, it would have been a terrible way to end the movie that would have felt lame. So they could have put the heroes in bad situation after bad situation where they told the audience that light speed rams would never work and were hopeless or otherwise done something to set up the action, and then the audience might have had buy in, but that isn't the movie that was made or the script that was written.

And originally it was going to be Ackbar that performed the light speed ram, and that would have at least made it somewhat meaningful because Holdo was just introduced to the story and we hadn't had time to build a relationship with her and like her, where as Ackbar has despite his low screen presence in the original trilogy was already a fan favorite whose you could have built on. And originally, in the story Ackbar was going to be something of a foil, almost a villain in the movie, so that his self-sacrificial act had the added pathos of being redeeming. But Holdo was just there, and when Holdo took over Ackbar's role in the script, they wrote out most of the conflict between her and the protagonists because they didn't think the audience would respond well to a woman in the role of a foil/antagonist because they didn't trust the audience to accept a complicated character if it was a woman, and because they wanted to have a theme of 'strong women'. So while it was always a bad idea, a lot of the wounds here were self-inflicted, because the original script developed that scene a whole lot better than what they ended up with.

And, I think I'm done. I've wasted enough emotion and time on this. If you don't understand why Luke blind firing the photon torpedoes is a total contrasting moment in cinema and why it works so well, and why it completely undermines your defense instead of bolsters it, then I'm never going to be able to explain this to you. Just go ahead and believe it's all just movie magic and there is no craft to writing well and just keep believing that everyone that says the script to TFA and TLJ as filmed are dog turds, really has just some unrational reason for saying that that probably has to do with them not liking strong women or whatever crappy rationalization makes you happy.

 

[Vael]

Ok, stop there, because there is a huge difference here at it lies in the writing. Let me give you a lesson in screen writing.

I get it, you're a self proclaimed great writer. But since we're keen on lessons, I'll share one that blew my mind just a few weeks ago.

One of my favourite shows growing up was Blackadder, a comedy starring a pre-Mr. Bean Rowan Atkinson. The final season/series, Blackadder Goes Forth, takes place during WW1, where Rowan's character, the titular Blackadder, was a soldier trying to escape the trenches through a various schemes. A sitcom version of Catch-22, so to speak.

The final episode, after all his comic attempts to avoid having to get out of the trenches and charge the enemy fail, Blackadder, along with all the other main characters, get out of the trenches and charge. And in a hail of machine gun fire, they're all cut down, and then the screen fades to a picture of poppies. A poignant ending to the show.

But that's not how it was written. Or filmed, for that matter. Blackadder was supposed to get away, finally achieving his goal by playing dead. But after shooting, in the editing room, it wasn't working. The effects looked cheap, and due to the small sound stage, the ending of the shot looked fake. And there wasn't the money to reshoot and fix it. So the editors trying slowing down the existing footage so they could cut before the camera saw the edge of the set. They added stock shot of poppies, and that was how we got, what I'd argue is a superior ending to the one that was written.

The point here, of course, is that film is more than what was on the page. And so it is that we got Laura Dern, in purple hair, displaying her qualifications as a BAMF, and the last stand of Vice Admiral Holdo. And between her skills, and the other actors, and the rest of the collaboration, I find it works. Not perfectly, but enough.

But if this is to be the end of our conversation, so be it. At least I won't have to keep fighting the urge to point out the snide quality of your comments about "strong women" as being ... illustrative.

 

[Zardnaar]

Akbar should have been used in the TLJ or used to rally the troops in RoS.

Off screen death feels bad man

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

1. ESB
2. RotJ
3. ANH
4. R1
5. RotS
6. AotC
7. Solo
8. RoS
9. TPM
10. A Christmas Story (only seen on youtube, but I doubt its magnificent grandeur on widescreen would allow it to raised a rank).
9. The first of the sequel trilogy, whose name I have erased from my memory
10. The middle of the sequel trilogy, whose name never registered with my mind

 

[Mercurius]

I mean, that's because most of the nitpickers saw the Originals when they were kids. And do you know what?

The new movies might be good, and all, but you can't snuggle into you NEW MOVIE sheets while playing with your NEW MOVIE action figures and pretending that you're NEW MOVIE Luke Skywaker ... pew pew pew.

Man, growing up sucks. All that happens for most of us is we get better verbiage to talk about the things we liked as kids, and to trash the things that kids today like.

That's one perspective, which I think has some truth to it but I think is rather reductive and ignores more substantive critiques.

In short, the original trilogy had a freshness, vitality, and mythic resonance that the later films mostly lack. I think also the chemistry of the original cast hasn't been matched. I like the actors in the recent films, but for some reason they come across as less than the sum of their parts, probably due to poor scripting.

You don't get out much. This kind of argument that Umbran is talking about comes up frequently. She's a Mary Sue, not Luke or Anakin (for whatever deranged reasons). The double-standard comes up a lot, even on these boards.

This is just sloppy, and a nasty rhetorical strategy. I'm not saying that it is intentional, but my point is: saying that Rey is a Mary Sue isn't inherently sexist; it could be and probably often is, but it doesn't have to be, and to imply that any critique of Rey that mentions Mary Sueism is straight out of the "cancel culture" playbook. As others have pointed out, both Luke and Anakin were far more flawed than Rey, who really displays no personal flaws or quirks and a much smoother arc from "newb to force wizard."

Don't get me wrong. I like Rey; and I like the fact that my daughters, 11 and 14, get to see Rey as the protagonist. But I think its valid to criticize how she's been handled as a film character and to draw comparisons to the Mary Sue idea, without it automatically coming from a place of misogyny and/or disgruntled fandom.

 

[Mercurius]

As for the subject of the thread, the only easy and clear way to do this is:

1. The original trilogy - classics, with forgiveable--even adorable--flaws (except the later edits, which mostly tarnish the original films).
2. The new trilogy/anthology films - entertaining and fun, but lacking in vitality, mythic resonance.
3. The prequel trilogy - visually beautiful and imaginative, but that's about it.

There are big gaps between the three trilogies, and the exact ordering within each group can be quibbled and shifts depending upon mood, but the three tiers are pretty straightfoward for me, and no film falls outside those grouped tiers.

 

[ccs]

10. A Christmas Story (only seen on youtube, but I doubt its magnificent grandeur on widescreen would allow it to raised a rank).

A Christmas Story??
You mean the Christmas movie with Ralphie, the pink bunny suit, the Leg Lamp, etc?

a christmas story - Yahoo Search Results

Ok, I can (sorta) understand ranking it worse than ANH/ESB/even RotJ. Many things are below them.
And it's certainly far better than Episodes 7 & 8, and likely this newest installment by default. Again, many many things are better (includung not watching them).
But worse than the SW prequels?? Really? You'd rank Midichloreans, Jar-Jar Binks & whiney emo-bitch Anikan from Episodes II & III higher than Ralphie??? Poor Ralphie!

Or do you perhaps mean this crap: The Star Wars Holiday Special (TV Movie 1978) - IMDb
There's a world of difference between this & A Christmas Story.