ST ST Criticism Discussion Thread

Good way of putting it. The ST features bar brawls between drunken amateurs. Slugging matches with saber bats.

 

That duel even gets better retroactively after the father reveal and then with the prequels because you can now go back and see Vader`s Anakin is showing - which of course makes sense. At first Vader is all mission-oriented despite this being the first time he sees his son. Then when he thinks Luke is easily captured, there is a bit of disappointment in his line "perhaps you are not as strong bla bla". Then he sees Luke has escaped the carbonite freezing chamber and he goes "impressive, most impressive" aka "yay, my son is not a sucker". They fight, fight, fight. Then Luke lands one serious blow and Vader loses his cool. That is more Anakin than Vader. Vader is cold when he kills, Anakin burns hot. Which ultimately leads to Luke losing his hand. At that point the Vader/Anakin amalgamtion has calmed down again and he is kinda "oops, didn`t mean to go that far".

Even if I didn`t like the prequels in an of themselves as movies (which I do, for the most part), they enrich my viewing experience of the OT movies so freaking much.

The ST movies do just about the opposite. I mean, is C3PO not your hero now for interrupting the Han/Leia kiss because you know their shenanigans only lead to a waste of space like Kylo? That takes the beauty out of any romantic scenes.

 

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed the TFA duel/fight on first viewing but I was watching it under the assumption that Kylo, Finn and Rey were all roughly the same age - 16-20 y/o - and that Kylo was a relative novice with lightsabers because he had abandoned Luke's academy before much training. Once you know that Kylo is 30 something and has supposedly been training for a long time it loses a lot of its credibility. In particular, his line: "That lightsaber! It belongs to me." doesn't work as well. From a purely aesthetic standpoint I still enjoy it.

 

Pretty much nothing about Kylo works when you consider his age imo.

 

I can appreciate that idea. Snoke might be even better if replaced by someone like Freedon Nadd, with Ben's arc moving closer to something along the lines of the Fall of Ulic Qel Droma. The trouble is as you said, there's a lot of ground to cover. But as you say, that requires a good deal of explanation to make work, which I would argue is do-able, though it requires an incredibly tight and synchronized writing team that would be able to keep filler to a minimum to allow the story lots of time to breathe. Something needs to be there to really push Ben into violence in this situation, because as written in this case, by himself, I would see him as being too moral on his own to want to try and insight galactic level violence without something to give him a really big push. His desire is to help people more than anything and he wants to avoid seeing more pain and wouldn't want to be responsible for it on his own. Even Anakin needed Palpatine whispering in his ears to start the ball rolling and tilt the last pin, otherwise just turning violent on his own based on the examples Ben has in his life, just doesn't feel right in this case.

 

I didn't care for the Yoda/Sheev duel for one simple reason, I'm definitely in the camp of "Yoda and Sheev should not use lightsabers because they're beyond that." Actually the fight gets much better for me once they just start using Force Powers against each other because that's more how I imagine them fighting.

The Anakin/Obi Wan duel had emotion, but it got TOO over the top ridiculous after awhile for me. Once they start twirling their sabers around like they're batons in a marching band, or swinging from cables like Tarzan, or jumping from little moving things like it's a Mario game, then I just zone out because it's too cartoonish at that point.

 

I didn’t even care for Anakin as a character. Obi Wan I did, Anakin no. Agree with everything else in your post.

 

Eh, I think those two are two of the best lightsaber duels in all of Star Wars, with the Qui-Gon + Obi-Wan VS Maul closing the triplet. No one is beneath the lightsaber, it's a powerful quintessential weapon in Star Wars, and can be used to solve any conflict, it doesn't have to only be Force powers. I think a mix of both is ideal personally.

 

Gimme over the top over "realism" anyday. I rather have superpowered humans go all out with their sabers and the Force, then have a hard time distinguishing the difference between a Jedi/Sith and some regular person being able to "realistically" swordfight.

 

I think its a matter of taste and personal perspectives. Some people dont like PT duels because they think it looks like video games, some people like me dont like OT duels because i think it looks like significant downgrade without real reason behind and two guys trying too hard to not fart and forgot thats the weightless blade with only hilt having some weight, so they smash with saber like thats the real iron swords.

Actually the only duel from OT i like is Luke vs Vader in RotJ, and only the part where Luke went berserk on Vader, because its music.

 

Duel of the fates is my favorite PT duel (triplet I guess) and there’s no personal stakes between heroes and villain. The personal stake is master/apprentice and that works for me so much.

Maul to me is one of the coolest visual villains in SW. I know GL got flack for making him look like satan, but it didn’t bother me at all. I loved how he embodied rage and hate. He was like the monster in a jedi’s dreams, only they didn’t know he was real.

Meanwhile, QGJ perfectly embodied peace and calm. QGJ is my favorite PT-era Jedi and he was wonderful here. Then Obi stepped up for his master, and was that perfect humble hero for one of these films.

Visually, the double sided saber hit home for me. Again, I understand the look didn’t work for everyone, but it did for me. I’ve watched this duel so many times. It is dance-like, but it works because this isn’t Vader v. novice son. This was three uber-trained force users. It was the duel I had been waiting for ever since RotJ. I prefer it to the Yoda duels basically because it doesn’t require CG. I like Yoda showing his stuff, but I enjoy the less cartoony action more myself.

And with the Ani/Obi RotS duel coming in second for the PT to me, what can I say, I’m a sucker for happy endings. Always have been, always will be, so that duel just doesn’t stand much of a chance. I’ve always thought my love of simple escapism where the good guys win was a big part of the appeal of SW. Obviously Disney LF feels differently lol.

For the record, I also love the OT duels. They convey something different. Just like I’m cool with TFA, because it organically conveys what a novice Rey is, and the tension that goes along with having to do that as a fish out of water. There just needs to be some point being conveyed, and that is where TLJ’s is just worthless to me.

 

I love when you can feel Obi-Wan's temper burning and the adrenaline kick in the moment the shield allows him to pass. It's absolutely just pure energy.

 

Overall i see PT vs OT duels as Global vs Personal themes. Most of OT duels happened to solve personal problems (teacher vs student, son vs father). Most of PT duels happened to solve global problems (Jedi vs Sith). And everyone choose what they like more. Someone like the personal, more toned down and simple vibe of OT duels, someone like the more epic and spectacle vibe of PT duels.

On ST duels, well, they are neither personal nor global. Its just spectacle for sake of spectacle. It reminds me AotC duels between Dooku and good guys the most. Kinda pointless duels.

 

I disagree. Sheev is very dismissive of Luke's saber in ROTJ. He treats it as a mere toy, amusing but no real threat. And Yoda dismisses the idea that size and raw power are all that important. It's just so much more interesting to me if characters like that have become so powerful and so wise that they don't need to resort to weapons like that anymore.

 

You could argue the AOTC duels have connection.

Obi-Wan vs. Dooku is a fight between the the teacher of Qui-Gon and the student of Qui-Gon. Basically a duel of legacy.

Anakin vs Dooku is the duel of power. Both are destined to be pawns of Darth Sidious. They are the duel of the Sith's future. This will become personal in the next film.

Yoda and Dooku are simple Master vs. Apprentice.

 

I agree that Sheev and Yoda were more interesting to me not using the sabers. When Yoda absorbed the force lightening, that was what I’d been waiting to see him do.

 

Since I have searched these forums for quite a bit and I have not found where the heck I can talk about non Star Wars things, and I haven't found a single topic devoted to Christmas, New Year and holidays, I am gonna go ahead and post it here, because I am getting on a plane in 5 hours and I will be in the air when the year changes!

I wish you all a happy new year, may the Force be with you, and may 2019 be your best year yet!

 

But eventually that stuff has to give way to swordfighting. Because otherwise it's just two guys throwing crap at each other and struggling over energy balls, which can be cool in small doses, but can't really sustain an entire fight scene without becoming ridiculous. That's why Lucas gave us both. Star Wars is a series where conflicts are settled with swords, and before he started making the PT he must have decided that his earlier conception of Yoda and the Emperor as uber-powerful Force shamans wasn't practical for the story he wanted to tell. In the story of the PT, Yoda and Palpatine are powerful people, but they're still just people.

But how do you depict that on screen without making Palpatine (not Sheev, we as viewers aren't on a first name basis with him any more than we are with Doctor Doom) and Yoda come across as untouchable gods?

 

The Community forum, also known as Your Jedi Council Community, or YJCC, or as the regulars call it, the JCC.

Before the ST, the entire forum was strictly no Star Wars discussion whatsoever. WDNDSWITJCC. We do not discuss Star Wars in the JCC. Now there is one thread where Star Wars talk is allowed stickied at the top of the page. Pretty much everything not Star Wars goes there. Other movies, books, tv shows, politics, sports, ****posting and other goofy nonsense, etc.

There's a social/best friends club thread there, and there was a Christmas thread and there usually is every year, though it's been buried a couple pages back now that Christmas is over.

Careful, the rules are a bit different there. More conflict and hostile behavior between users is allowed there, though there is still a line. It's not anything goes.

 

I used to feel this way. But it's also that in some ways the PT "subverts" or deconstructs the OT. The Jedi are portrayed as pretty much perfectly wise and good in how Obi-Wan and Yoda talk about them in the OT. Yoda doesn't seem like someone who really would have any need of a lightsaber.

But the PT story shows the flaws with the Jedi and that Yoda was at the center of these Jedi as though he's been the central figure on the council for the last 800 years or something. Yoda has a lightsaber because he is a Jedi, it's the weapon he trained with. Perhaps he was taken from his family as a small child just like the rest of the Jedi. Their flaws are his flaws because they have all been conditioned the same. They ARE all the same, no matter at what level. Yoda can't lose the lightsaber anymore than a Samurai can lose the sword.

 

I, too, like force-users to be a bit more distinguishable in abilities from regular folk. Maybe the Clone Wars TV show got a bit over-enthusiastic with Jedi abilities, mostly you can do more outrageous stuff in animation than you could do with fight choreography but after a strong start in terms of force ability, Kylo`s showing at the duel in TFA was pretty poor. Even Finn held his own against him for a bit. I know, wound, bla bla blibbety bla. At least Rey has the force though simply closing her eyes, saying "the force" and then suddenly being a lightsaber duelist is also patently ridiculous.

In the Legends books, Jedi (or Sith) abilities could be somewhat over the top, too, depending on authors but I liked the general air of them being powerful. Luke was beaten to smithereens in pretty much every single book, at least the earlier ones, but it was always done by a) other powerful force users with control over their abilities, b) powerful beings in their own right, c) the enemy outnumbering him in significant ways or d) all of those combined.

That`s why in 30+ years the closest I`ve seen to new Luke Skywalker material in terms of visuals has been the Battlefront 2 stuff. He didn`t want to fight those Stromtroopers but it was made clear they posed no threat to him.

 

People chastized the Prequel fights for having no emotion, and yet the Throne Room Scene in TLJ is Rey and Kylo grunting and screaming against nameless and faceless guards for 5 minutes. As for the choreography, I can't decide my favorite piece of choreography between Rey kicking three people at the same time, the infamous disappearing knife, that one due spinning like a ballerina 10 feet away from Rey only to intentionally swing 5 feet above Rey's head, or a dude charging at Kylo only to throw his weapon away so he can get stabbed and killed.

 

I personally love Rey lifting her leg and Kylo sticking out his butt for no reason. Those are truly fighting stances I`ve never seen before. If this was an action comedy, those would have been the newbie sidekicks and at that point the veteran fighters would have come on the scene to deliver the straight man reaction of "what the hell?" I think as a comedy with a peanut gallery "what are they doing?" looks, it would work really well.

 

It's so well choreographed that Kylo almost falls on his face in one move and stabs the floor in another. Someone tried to tell me that he stabs the floor because "a guard was coming at him" ....... Well then why didn't he wait and time his move to stab the guard instead?

@Alliyah Skywalker lol you just didn't understand it was Kylo's attempt to twerk...