Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

Holy cats, Luke's robotic severed hand crawling to ignite a fallen lightsaber is one of the more badass concepts ever and I fully support JJ ripping that idea off from an old draft / storyboard to put it in episode 7. We already know he's stealing concept art, do that!

 

Oh, they won't. You old farts are still an important group.

All I am trying to say is that I don't see them reducing the over the top action/spectacle for the more story-driven approach that the OT had. I doubt it will as immature like TCW movie was, but I do think the movie will be closer in style wise to ROTS then ESB.

 

Over-the-top action and spectacle are most commonly overused in films with no leadership. Projects which go through development without a director attached, projects with untested directors, projects with heavy studio notes due to expectations placed on a new franchise... but this film has gone through a very writer-centric process with full director involvement, and it has to lay the groundwork for tons of movies to come, so I'm certain the set pieces will be simple enough so as not to step on the character development and dialogue. I'm certain that's the intent, anyway. It's not to say there won't be action and that it won't be top-notch, but it won't be so big as to be unwieldy in the way that, for instance, the Geonosis battle or the RotS duel were.

 

I made sure my younger cousins grew up with the 90s LucasArts. SAM AND MAX FTW

 

Star Wars bread and butter is the visuals/spectacle, not the character development and certainly not the dialogue. I am pretty sure, especially since this is a JJ film that they will not sacrifice a cool visual/spectacle for better character development/dialogue. That has never been Star Wars MO, and is has never been JJ's MO either.

 

I just found my Fate of Atlantis disc while I was moving, and I had one of those moments thinking to myself, "I couldn't possibly have time, what with the move and the baby... I mean... could I? And if I did, would I go fists path, wits path, or team path?? I mean, the team path has the bit where you push Sophia in front of the knife-thrower... but the wits path has Thera... oh, and all the Nazis you get to punch out in the labyrinth on the fists path..."

But not like the prequels. It'll be there, but it won't be absurd and clunky.

And as far as dialogue, Lawrence Kasdan says you're wrong there, and he says it in the voice of Han Solo.

 

Truly one of the best Indy games - scratch that, Indy stories around.

And it had a number of pages devoted to it in the official Indiana Jones Diary. CANON!

 

For you maybe.

 

wait when did michael bay start directing sw

 

You are like my favorite person on the internetz atm.

Now if this were Vader's glove, it would be a whole other story....

 

There was that Empire Strikes Back film that they did though.

 

The visuals/spectacle of the ST will likely be similar to what the PT produced IMO, that was actually one of the strengths.

 

nah it had bad dialogue and character development

 

I thought the design of the prequels was top-notch, but all the set pieces other than the duel of the fates were clunky. The visual effects are great, but they really excel in establishing shots, vistas, that sort of thing... not so much action scenes.

 

but I think following Return of the Jedi with a movie in which the Jedi have not returned is an immensely idiotic notion

hmnn. yeah not having jedi is idiotic, but not because of the name of the last film, Return of the Jedi. The return of the jedi meant that Luke was a Jedi, so because of him they have returned. It never meant a return to the jedi order. However with the example of the sadly departed eu, i can't see Luke having a legacy without re-establishing a Jedi order.

 

Oh, I mean, we all know Jedi are gonna happen; it's just a matter of when... pre- or post-VII.

 

Disagree on the design and visuals. For a "Prequel" the technology was far better than it should be and had nothing in common whatsoever with the OT. Also I thought the visuals looked pretty awful and obviously blue screened and already dated. Compare that to the OT visuals which still hold up to this day.

 

I think it's weird that you supposedly can't have great big action scenes and character development in the same movie. The scriptwriter isn't doing the effects, and even if he was it would be after he wrote the script.

 

The best movie has a combo of both.

 

Empire Strikes Back, Wrath of Khan, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, even karking Galaxy Quest managed to do it. The problem is that most movie studios don't put forth the effort because blockbusters aren't made for the intelligent, discerning film critic, they're made for the lowest common denominator, and the lowest common denominator are the reason that Transformers, a movie franchise with no character, has made billions of dollars world-wide. Film studios (aside from Marvel, thank the Lord) don't see the worth to put effort into a script and characters when they're already spending millions on special effects. It's why Orci and Kurtzman keep getting work, they probably work cheap and they have a track record of box office successes regardless of the quality of their work. Nevermind that all of their most-earning movies are franchise pictures that people would have gone to see regardless of whether they'd just vomited out a script that a dozen monkeys with typewriters would duplicate with relative ease, whatever, I digress.

 

There is something to be said for intelligent films, but that isn't the only recipe.

To me critics seem to forget that it is entertainment, and that is their job of course, to make it all seem more important than it actually is.

Transformers is kinda like a Jackie Chan film. People go to a Jackie Chan film to laugh and see crazy action sequences. Same deal with Transformers.

That doesn't mean that the people who enjoy those films can't appreciate something with complex characterization or plot, but that isn't the be all, end all of film making. One shoe doesn't fit everyone.

 

My bad, double post.

 

Ever hear the phrase "garbage mattes"?

 

HAHA next time you go to the optician, you should think about getting some glasses with less of a rose color.

We're not having this conversation, but I just wonder, if this is how you view the world, how do you reconcile the artisanally-designed deco automobiles and architecture of the Western 1920's with the blocky function-over-form technology of Soviet-era Eastern Europe?

You're probably gonna say "Some other explanation because of one tiny thing that makes this explanation wrong if I look at it from the angle I want to look at it but doesn't really refute it and just feels like it refutes it because the prequels sucked, man, no way anything could be unbiasedly OK about them"---or something along those lines---but that's fine, I know I'm right.