ST The New Definitely Not Improved Even More Horrible Than The Last Two Rumors Thread

I already suspect how well (or rather unwell) this will go over, but what if Palpatine is only present as a flashback or some kind of hologram explaining things that have already happened? Leaks notwithstanding, what if he doesn't appear as an actual presence in the film? What if Rey doesn't have to defeat him, just the mechanations he set into motion decades ago?

 

That would cause mass outrage due to how much they're hyping Palpatine's return.

 

What has the hype been though? A cackle that IM didn't record new?

I do think it's worth considering that he won't be as big a player as expected.

 

The leaks don't really explain the title of the film in my opinion.

The Rise of Skywalker - somebody is coming back from death for good (Ben).

 

Same creature designer worked on the Nu-Trek movies and the ST, funnily enough. Which I find baffling, because at least in the Nu-Trek movies, despite all their faults, the aliens at least have color. I don't know who decreed that all future aliens in SW have to come from the Planet Beige, or its distant moon of Buttcheek Face.

That's not embarrassing...the guards blocking his embedded saber is what's embarrassing. Kylo's entire head is open for them to hack off, but instead they're blocking his weapon while it's plunged into the ground.

The sheer idiocy of this is staggering. This is literally like if in a Death Wish film, you had Charles Bronson in a gunfight where his gun somehow got out of his hand and sprawled onto the floor, and instead of shooting him, the bad guys aim their weapons and start shooting at the stationary gun on the ground. That's about as much sense as the Throne Room duel makes.

 

I think, by act three in the final confrontation, Palpatine has to actually really be in the room. It's kind of a "Chekov's Gun" thing.

Think "Ghostbusters," which I think is the basic concept. They talk about the big bad all movie and then they have to be summoned in some sort of physical form to be defeated in the end.

My only hope since they went with the Palpatine thing is that he's REALLY decrepit, barely a living thing and kept alive in some form (just barely) like Vader without the suit until he steals Kylo Ren's strength.

 

He literally ducks not one but two swings at his head and the next guard was thinking legs.

 

Ehhh, idk. George had some wacky ideas about Palpatine and women.

"[W]hen I was working at Lucas, I was allowed to go up to the ranch and read the scripts for the [canceled live-action Star Wars] TV show. It was the most mind-blowing thing I’d ever experienced. I cared about the Emperor. They made the Emperor a sympathetic figure who was wronged by this [...] heartless woman. She’s this hardcore gangster, and she just totally destroyed him as a person. I almost cried while reading this. This is the Emperor, the lightning out of the fingers Emperor. That’s something magical. The writers who worked on that, guys from The Shield and 24, these were excellent writers.”

 

That whole scene looks great on speed when broken down the bad choreography shows. I am hoping for some good choreography in the last film.

I am really unsure of how a spirit realm battle will play it will either be amazing or ruin the film.

 

Why does everyone attribute this to Lucas? We don't have any context for this; it could have been open season on script submissions for all we know. There's no telling how the show would have been structured, and it could very well have been an episodic, anecdotal scenario where each episode showcases a separate cast of characters, much like TCW before it. It was a script in an archive, and that's just about the extent of our knowledge. TV shows have rejected scripts all the time, and this entire project was shelved. Either way, presumably Palpatine would have been at least a somewhat decent young man at the time, way before what we see in the films. Even though I don't agree with bestowing Palpatine with a sympathetic backstory, it would have been far less precarious than Darth Sidious as we know him siring children.

 

They aim for his head while he's still moving, not when he plunges his sword into the ground. It's when he plunges his saber into the ground when they mystically decide to aim for his weapon instead of his head, despite going for it not three seconds prior to that.

 

People said the same thing about some pf the PT choreography when they slowed it down frame by frame. They are meant to be watched at speed.

 

Weren't we told by the mods not to return to the whole "ST vs PT" spiel? More importantly, why do you need to pull in another fight's bad choreography to discuss this bad choreography? It doesn't make it any less bad.

 

Sorry I haven't read back through the thread, I just saw the most recent discussion. The point I was making is that even some of the best duels in the Saga, in my opinion, have these 'problems' when you slow them down. The same goes for sword fights in films in general. I think it's so pointless to analysis these things frame by frame when they are meant to be watched at normal speed. To bring it back around to the idea of 'dance' rather than 'realistic' choreography, I think the former works for these types of films where they wouldn't work for a more grounded film.

 

1. It’s like half a second.
2. He’s a powerful force user so he probably saw the future slightly and reacted to it, meaning that that guard thought he was going to get his leg anyway and had made up his mind.
3. There’s so much happening at once and no scenes are meant to be viewed on loops like this as a natural way to experience a film. That this level of crowd-sourced castigation occurs will never cease to astound me.

 

Some of us noticed these things when the fight is moving at its regular speed....I know I did. So I wouldn't hand-wave complaints as the nit-picks of people who've slowed the fight down, combing for details. Things like actors running in circles, missing their queues, and doing illogical nonsense like blocking weapons that are stuck in the ground are things that still look nonsensical at a normal speed. The first two were things my friends noticed in the fight when they saw it in the theater before I did. All they used were their eyes.

No one's asking for a grounded film. I'm all for "dance"-type choreography. I'm a big fan of wuxia duels from Eastern cinema, especially when it's justified in-universe with superpowered humans, so I never had an issue with a few ridiculous moments in SW. I also can happily forgive the odd mistake. But when you have a fight scene that's almost entirely made up of inconsistencies, ridiculous moments and obvious mistakes, all done nearly every step of the way, you're going to have people point them out. Especially given how much time and effort likely went into this scene, if the bragging from all of the behind-the-scenes footage are anything to go by. This isn't like John Boorman, who couldn't be bothered to ask the actors to engage in any kind of swordplay, resulting in the clumsy directionless fights in the otherwise excellent Excalibur. This was a scene that the filmmakers and stuntmen put time and effort into, and spent days of sweat and rehearsal for.

Of course people are going to hold it to a high standard, and criticize obvious mistakes.

What does any of this have to do with the guards' decision to block the embedded saber? Not to mention, more than one of them does it, instead of aiming for Kylo's head. It's like their all wired to the same excruciatingly-small brain.
It's brief. Okay, that's nice, but why was it done to begin with? What purpose does it serve outside of looking ridiculous? Kylo's a powerful force user, so why does he plunge his saber into the ground, and why if he's so powerful do the guards decide not to cut off his head with the stupidly-large opening he's practically given to them?
And yeah, there's a lot happening at once. I happened to be looking at Kylo Ren, and noticed him doing something stupid, just as I was watching the guards spinning around Rey like children at a garden party seconds earlier. Lots of dumb things are happening simultaneously. That doesn't make them any less dumb or noticeable. And again, I noticed most of this at the film's normal speed. It's called paying attention to the film. I can't speak for everyone, but I like to pay attention to fight choreography while it's happening, especially with films of this scale and budget. I'm sorry if that's an astounding concept to you

 

Yeah, Kylo's move is fine. If he was blocking a low attack. But striking the lightsaber while it is already planted is the dumb bit.

If you jump to 4:13 in this video, you hear a pro stuntman talking about the scene. Someone who kind of goes out of his way to find something that works in the stunts they are talking about. It still doesn't go well. I also think it is telling how you compare it to what JJ shows us in TROS trailer.

 

Well, those professionals are clearly just nitpicking. It's not like regular laymen would ever notice these mistakes.

 

There are always going to be people who notice the mistakes straight away. But I don't think that the majority did notice it first, and just enjoyed it as a fun scene which was the point. What other obvious mistakes were there besides that on shot that everyone focuses on?

I was thinking about this video. But again, it's a video designed to pick out mistakes in slow motion.

 

The bottom line is that both Abrams and Johnson are very bland at directing action set pieces. Especially Abrams, who cheats a lot, and takes the camera in close and uses cut edits literally every 1 or 2 seconds. And It’s why, IMO, for all the money thrown at the ST, there’s that one single moment of action that stands out. Not one that makes the pulse go quicker. Saying that, the trailer for TROS does tease a desert chase and the Rey/Kylo duel seems somewhat more reminiscent of a prequel type duel... so maybe Abrams has upped his game. I hope so.

 

No romance for decent young Palpatine, eh?

 

No his reaction is to how it looks in the film. They slow it down so he can explain it step by step. It is no different then watching someone breakdown game tape.

JJ's action is terrific imo. He has had quality work from his first motion picture M:I3. The bridge scene is very slick.

As to his work in TFA. Well, he gave me like 4 of my 5 favorite action scenes in Star Wars. His battle have a visceral speed and kinetic energy lacking in something like the prequels, where everything feels weightless a lot of the time. How much he added to lightsaber duels, just by adding the sparks, is pretty crazy and he just knows how to make a starfighter look sexy.





And I couldn't find a gif, but the basically the entire duel after cutting back from Poe blowing up the oscillator, is just amazing imo. Kylo backing down Rey captures the energy of lightsabers clashing in a way I don't think any other scene has yet.

 

Whether or not you found fun from the scene is irrelevant to my point. I get fun out of watching the over-the-top fight scenes in Power Rangers, but that wasn't the intent of this scene, as I've already stated. This scene wasn't put together for a few seconds of eye-candy, it was choreographed and rehearsed to have the characters in a state of peril that they escape from with their own raw dueling skills. I think you're attempting to downplay the intent of the scene to make the mistakes more acceptable, and that's honestly disheartening. I don't even do that with the fight scenes I enjoy, and those are riddled with their own problems.

But as to your inquiry, we have the guards running around Rey in circles like dizzy rabbits, before all three of them block her at the same position from the exact same angle. They have absolutely no reason to do this---all three of them have longer weapons than Rey, and can jump in to jab at her from a different angle each, without any sort of risk. This isn't like, say, Malgus and Vindican retaining a distance at their respective angles while blocking Darach in one of the SWTOR trailers (in spite of how extravagant and over-the-top as those trailer battles tend to be), because they aren't going to gang up on him while he has access to three lightsaber blades, two of which allow him tremendous reach. This is Rey with her single lightsaber, and the guards not only don't take advantage of their long reach with their staffs, but they all attack her from the same side and angle like idiots. This isn't something you slow down to see: this is something you witness in motion, and it's jarring and nonsensical. Worse yet is when you have the three guards facing off against Kylo, and one of them literally chucks his staff on-screen for Kylo to kill him. Again, not something you slow down to see---there is no reason whatsoever for this guard to this, he just accepts death like an idiot and enables more of Kylo's plot armor. And then of course we have the infamous vanishing knife, but that was not something I never noticed on the first viewing...it's what immediately follows: when the guard wrestles Rey into a clumsy and seemingly-lazy arm lock around her neck, while he leaves his other arm just dangling there. He's literally just standing there with the most low-effort hold on Rey while she's struggling like a fish out of water, while I'm just staring dumbfounded at this guard standing there just staring at Rey. Why on earth isn't he using both arms, and what on earth is he waiting for? And then he just stares at her like a moron when she does drops her lightsaber into her other hand hand overpowers him. This is not some fine-toothed combing through frames of footage. This laughable excuse for fight choreography happens in motion, in real-time, at full speed, and is the kind of laugh-inducing fight maneuvering you see in Corman schlock like Deathstalker III.

And those are just the ones I remember seeing off the top of my head without playing the scene in front of me via YouTube or something. Those moments were so bad I can literally recall seeing them from memory. I bet if I watched it again, I'd probably find even more. This fight has moronic moments between every thrust and dive, literally every other second. Again, one or two mistakes is par for the course with Star Wars, but a non-stop ensemble of mistakes, as blatant and obvious as these ones? That would be considered a low bar for even the most ridiculous, low budget SyFy Channel original movie dreck.

Abrams also uses an insufferable amount of shaky-cam whenever he films his fight scenes. The Sulu Fight from the first Nu-Trek was nauseating and near-impossible to follow, and the fight in TFA was even worse. The camera was way too close and shaking like it was being controlled by an arthritic monkey on bath salts, to where I could barely see the fight itself---I could see the combatant's elbows and ribs, their shoulders and hands, but only because the camera was a fraction of inch away from them. And that's why I still stand that the TFA duel is by far the worst in the series yet.

Say what you like about the TLJ duel staged by Rian, but at least I can actually see what's going on. (For better or for worse...)

 

Could happen I suppose, but it could come across as a bait 'n' switch which I don't think would be well received.

 

Some of the earliest leaks said that Luke's force ghost would resurrect Kylo. Then that turned into Rey resurrecting or healing him which was later attributed to their end of Act 2 duel on the Death Star.