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It was disturbing a bit to me the level the audiences really didn't care about Anakin killing the women and children of the tusken raiders, however, it was largely the case that the audiences really didn't care much about "Darth Vader" killing an entire clan of tusken raiders.

In comparison audiences were incredibly disturbed by Anakin killing a bunch of jedi younglings.

Arguably, 9 would not have been bad at all, if 8 would have spent the effort to set it up. Nothing would have been stupid abut Palpatine returning, if it was only been skillfully foreshadowed, rather than jammed into the opening crawl with a shrug worthy of Han Solo.

EPISODE IX
THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

The Dead Speak! Here's the deal....so, Palpatine never died, and evidently was behind everything.
Lucky for our heroes, he sent a warning out over every hyperspace channel.

bat702 wrote:
It was disturbing a bit to me the level the audiences really didn't care about Anakin killing the women and children of the tusken raiders, however, it was largely the case that the audiences really didn't care much about "Darth Vader" killing an entire clan of tusken raiders.

In comparison audiences were incredibly disturbed by Anakin killing a bunch of jedi younglings.

The tusken raiders are pretty dehumanized with their tribal masks and general depiction as raiders rather than natives of Tatooine. The village massacre was also under the backdrop of Anakin basically going mad with grief from his mom dying due to their torture, so it's given a pass of it being a crime of passion. This is in contrast to Jedi being generally (even if on a lore-level they've lost their path a LOT) depicted as the good guys and thus when Anakin turns on them, specifically children that we actually get to see the faces of, it's a bigger "oh-gak" moment for the audience to cue in that Anakin is committing to something much more vast than killing a village of people.

I do agree that they should have written the whole tusken raider scene better though.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Arguably, 9 would not have been bad at all, if 8 would have spent the effort to set it up. Nothing would have been stupid abut Palpatine returning, if it was only been skillfully foreshadowed, rather than jammed into the opening crawl with a shrug worthy of Han Solo.

EPISODE IX
THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

The Dead Speak! Here's the deal....so, Palpatine never died, and evidently was behind everything.
Lucky for our heroes, he sent a warning out over every hyperspace channel.

Wait wait wait wait wait... you're blaming Episode 8 for not setting up episode 9? You're blaming episode 8 for not setting up a movie which wasn't even *written* yet when they completed filming, and probably wasn't even written yet when it released??

Am I understanding this correctly???

I think what you meant to say is, "episode 9 would not have been bad at all if it would have followed through on the setup made in episode 8."

bat702 wrote:
It was disturbing a bit to me the level the audiences really didn't care about Anakin killing the women and children of the tusken raiders, however, it was largely the case that the audiences really didn't care much about "Darth Vader" killing an entire clan of tusken raiders.

In comparison audiences were incredibly disturbed by Anakin killing a bunch of jedi younglings.

If a tribe of humans tortured my mother so badly she died in my arms when i came to rescue her, i'd go dalek on them all. I think annie gets a pass because of what the tusken did to his mother.

What gets me is that everyone is so down on kylo ren because -ERMUGHURD!- he killed (GASP!) Han Solo!

But no one seems to give a feth about him casually ordering his troops to "kill them all" earlier in the movie and they burned an entire village, many killed with flamethrowers.

"Oh, but we knew han, he was a main character! Those people, we didn't know them!"

Oddly enough Han seems to have forgiven kylo for killing him. I doubt those villagers ever forgave him, but hey, not main characters, don't matter.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
I would say 9, primarily because of the horrible expansion of the Force. When you can project yourself to cause damage in remote locations, and teleport objects, it really is going to make it very difficult for subsequent films to find reasons the Sith don't just teleport a thermal detonator into the hero's bed while they're sleeping. Or for that matter, wreck up the flight controls of a fighter instead of spilling a lovely jar of marbles all over the floor.

Long range force teleports and force strikes are a terrible, terrible addition to the universe.

Um, yeah, luke projected himself over interstellar instances and even manifested a lightsaber, and died as an apparent result. it was self sacrifice, Apparently sith are to selfish to do something like that, jedi only in dire circumstances.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:

For even worse cringe, look at the awful "indiana Jones and the temple of doom" (Spielberg finally apologized for this, many years later.)

Basically indy kidnaps a woman, threatens her with a knife in her side, drags her into extreme perial, even helps lock her in a bodfdage rack so she can be slowly lowered into lava and incinerated alive, then 'rescues" her from the danger and terror he put her in, and when she goes off on him about what she suffered because of him and walks away he uses his WHIP on her to DRAG her back to him, and she ends up willingly kissing him after the unimaginable terror he caused her?

To be fair to Lucas, that is pretty much how all "Pulp" movies and serials handled romance too. He was just following the template.

How Indy treated willie was not only unforgivable, it was a set of serious felonies.

 Grimskul wrote:

bat702 wrote:
It was disturbing a bit to me the level the audiences really didn't care about Anakin killing the women and children of the tusken raiders, however, it was largely the case that the audiences really didn't care much about "Darth Vader" killing an entire clan of tusken raiders.

In comparison audiences were incredibly disturbed by Anakin killing a bunch of jedi younglings.

The tusken raiders are pretty dehumanized with their tribal masks and general depiction as raiders rather than natives of Tatooine. The village massacre was also under the backdrop of Anakin basically going mad with grief from his mom dying due to their torture, so it's given a pass of it being a crime of passion. This is in contrast to Jedi being generally (even if on a lore-level they've lost their path a LOT) depicted as the good guys and thus when Anakin turns on them, specifically children that we actually get to see the faces of, it's a bigger "oh-gak" moment for the audience to cue in that Anakin is committing to something much more vast than killing a village of people.

I do agree that they should have written the whole tusken raider scene better though.

There's also the fact that Tusken Raiders in all the movies till then were constantly attacking, killing, and stealing from others. It's a wee bit difficult to pop sympathy when the entire time they've basically seemed like they only want to destroy or enslave everyone else.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think what you meant to say is, "episode 9 would not have been bad at all if it would have followed through on the setup made in episode 8."

And episode 8 wouldn't have been so bad if it would have followed through on the set up of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

bat702 wrote:
It was disturbing a bit to me the level the audiences really didn't care about Anakin killing the women and children of the tusken raiders, however, it was largely the case that the audiences really didn't care much about "Darth Vader" killing an entire clan of tusken raiders.

In comparison audiences were incredibly disturbed by Anakin killing a bunch of jedi younglings.

I mean, I laughed at that scene. The timing of the dialogue and the lightsaber snap-hiss ignition is comedy genius. It was constructed like a Simpsons gag or even more like Paula Poundstone’s bit about how her cats always come to her for help when she sprays them.

My wife is still upset at me when she remembers.

 Ahtman wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think what you meant to say is, "episode 9 would not have been bad at all if it would have followed through on the setup made in episode 8."

And episode 8 wouldn't have been so bad if it would have followed through on the set up of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

7 didn't have setup. It had a series of JJ Abrams mystery boxes before he stepped away and told whoever came in next to "figure it out".

chaos0xomega wrote:

the real issue was the piss poor job Rian Johnson made of every single aspect of his job.

Aside from the fact that he never worked on Star Trek, i've seen every one of Johnsons films and I have to say hes an incredible filmmaker in every respect. If Episode 8 is the worst hes ever done, then hes far and away one of the best filmmakers on earth, period. The problem with 8 isn't Johnson, its Star Wars fans not knowing what they want and rejecting what they said they wanted when its given to them (not unlike a small petulant child).

The pile of gak that was episode 8 was not a bad "Star Wars" film - it was a truely awful film full stop. The Original Star Wars films were good fun - nothing really special but entertaining. This was not.

The dialogue, plot, pacing, story - everything I had to sit through was absolutely terrible. I went to be entertained by a film - I was bored by a lazy, badly made incoherent film whose laughable script and plot seemed to be written in crayon by a bunch of illiterate chimps.

But as apparently you love his work without reservation, I can't expect you to be objective - I guess the same is true of the paid critics who lavished praise on it,.

 Lance845 wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think what you meant to say is, "episode 9 would not have been bad at all if it would have followed through on the setup made in episode 8."

And episode 8 wouldn't have been so bad if it would have followed through on the set up of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

7 didn't have setup. It had a series of JJ Abrams mystery boxes before he stepped away and told whoever came in next to "figure it out".

The set up for 7 was the films before it. TFA didn't invent the idea of the Jedi/Sith/Rebellion ect: they had a world and history to work from. The sequel films lacked a coherent direction overall which lead to even good ideas being poorly done or completely ignored, beyond "make Disney money". Johnson had some good ideas but the eighth part of a nine part story was not the time try and change the course of the river. Then it is as you say with Arbams his inability to follow through on an idea.

"the original film" wasn't Lucas' work.

The original work was a muddled up incoherent mess. The only reason the film worked at the cinema was because his THEN WIFE (Marsha) RECUT the film so that it made more sense.
She and the editing team won an oscar for their work.

Star Wars was a film saved in the editing, and that's what made it the classic. If it had been left as George's work, it would have sunk without a trace.

ALL of the SW movies are cringey. In a 'buck rogers' cringey way. They're meant to be. But ALL of the ones where George wrote dialogue are specifically cringeworthy.

 Matt Swain wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
I would say 9, primarily because of the horrible expansion of the Force. When you can project yourself to cause damage in remote locations, and teleport objects, it really is going to make it very difficult for subsequent films to find reasons the Sith don't just teleport a thermal detonator into the hero's bed while they're sleeping. Or for that matter, wreck up the flight controls of a fighter instead of spilling a lovely jar of marbles all over the floor.

Long range force teleports and force strikes are a terrible, terrible addition to the universe.

Um, yeah, luke projected himself over interstellar instances and even manifested a lightsaber, and died as an apparent result. it was self sacrifice, Apparently sith are to selfish to do something like that, jedi only in dire circumstances.

Ah, I understand your confusion. That happened in 8, and I don't have a problem with it- as you said, it kills the user, and is just an illusion, which built over the distance communication abilities we'd previously seen the Force used for.

What I was upset about was Rey and Kylo physically interacting with the environment around each other, despite being very far apart in Episode 9. Especially passing the lightsabre from Rey to Kylo for his fight with the Knights of Ren. It was a very cool scene, but if it's possible to teleport objects through the Force then.... it's really difficult to write something compelling. Imagine episode IV. Oh, I'll just teleport this proton torpedo inside of the Death Star from Yavin IV, it's cool. Jedi business, move along.

Or Vader rolls up on Hoth. Sir, there's an energy shield protecting the base.
It will fail them for the last time. And then Vader starts teleporting thermal detonators onto the generator until the shield falls.

Any starfighter duel is easily resolved by a force user waving their arms around and hitting lots of sensitive controls in their opponent's cockpit.

Even if it needs a personal connection anchor style thing- like Kylo and Rey, it's going to destroy that whole dynamic of many small battles with the big bad just gives them a target to teleport explosives to while the other one is sleeping.

 Ahtman wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think what you meant to say is, "episode 9 would not have been bad at all if it would have followed through on the setup made in episode 8."

And episode 8 wouldn't have been so bad if it would have followed through on the set up of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

I think this is the fundamental problem: What people wanted was just "more star wars". A sequel doesn't just have to be 'the thing you watched before with better graphics on the next generation of Playstation'. The best sequels do things like play with genre (Aliens) contemplate new aspects of the world (Blade Runner) take a drastically new direction to the worldbuilding while maintaining similar themes to the original (Road Warrior) or in some way interrogate the themes of the original.

Star Wars was a franchise absolutely primed for the latter, and while it got undeniably mangled by the usual studio process, ep8 at least raised some of the relevant questions. We have a group (the jedi) who has been undeniably and uncritically been held up as good, correct, and perfect for 7 films, but the hundreds, more realistically thousands of them were destroyed by a single enemy, who a barely trained boy and his father were able to defeat in the OT.

There are so many signs littered throughout the prequels that indicate that the galaxy was this bizarrely anachronistic place. Enslavement of intelligent beings is a fairly commonplace practice. Women dying in childbirth is somehow a concern despite the existence of weird tanks of mysterious liquid that can bring you back from getting mauled by a yeti and frozen to death. Massive galaxy-wide wars have kept the entire setting in a state of technological stagnation or degradation for seemingly centuries.

"the Jedi's knowledge was far from perfect and in fact deeply flawed, The Force is something that can be learned by anybody even a complete nobody, and it only appeared to travel along familial lines because they'd of course teach their kids from a very young age how to tap into it, there is not a clearly defined 'light side' and 'dark side' of the force, you just tap into it with your emotions" is a really interesting, rich concept to explore.

But people just wanted Star Wars Again With Gooder Graphics. They wanted another x-wing vs tie fighter fight, in perfect crisp HD.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gitzbitah wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
I would say 9, primarily because of the horrible expansion of the Force. When you can project yourself to cause damage in remote locations, and teleport objects, it really is going to make it very difficult for subsequent films to find reasons the Sith don't just teleport a thermal detonator into the hero's bed while they're sleeping. Or for that matter, wreck up the flight controls of a fighter instead of spilling a lovely jar of marbles all over the floor.

Long range force teleports and force strikes are a terrible, terrible addition to the universe.

Um, yeah, luke projected himself over interstellar instances and even manifested a lightsaber, and died as an apparent result. it was self sacrifice, Apparently sith are to selfish to do something like that, jedi only in dire circumstances.

Ah, I understand your confusion. That happened in 8, and I don't have a problem with it- as you said, it kills the user, and is just an illusion, which built over the distance communication abilities we'd previously seen the Force used for.

What I was upset about was Rey and Kylo physically interacting with the environment around each other, despite being very far apart in Episode 9. Especially passing the lightsabre from Rey to Kylo for his fight with the Knights of Ren. It was a very cool scene, but if it's possible to teleport objects through the Force then.... it's really difficult to write something compelling. Imagine episode IV. Oh, I'll just teleport this proton torpedo inside of the Death Star from Yavin IV, it's cool. Jedi business, move along.

Or Vader rolls up on Hoth. Sir, there's an energy shield protecting the base.
It will fail them for the last time. And then Vader starts teleporting thermal detonators onto the generator until the shield falls.

Any starfighter duel is easily resolved by a force user waving their arms around and hitting lots of sensitive controls in their opponent's cockpit.

Even if it needs a personal connection anchor style thing- like Kylo and Rey, it's going to destroy that whole dynamic of many small battles with the big bad just gives them a target to teleport explosives to while the other one is sleeping.

...OK, but put it this way:

"If the force allows someone to telekinetically manipulate objects at a distance, heh, guess that means any 'duel' between two characters is just going to be one second long, because they're just going to do a quick force squish on the opposing combatant's brain."

....there is no aspect of the abilities demonstrated by using the Force from the very beginning of star wars that would not break if basic logic were applied to it. The very first time we see the force used in a star wars film is an ability that should have granted Darth Vader the ability to kill literally anyone at any time instantaneously by aiming his 'force choke' about one foot higher, where it would become "Force Stroke".

 Mr Morden wrote:
The 8th film is one of the worst movies I have ever had the misfortune to sit through

That's the worst part for me. As a generic sci-fi film it would have been pretty good (aside from the awful fight choreography). Maybe even VERY good. But as a STAR WARS film, with all that implies, it was absolutely awful. It breaks from the existing canon so much there's just no recovering from it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Can we all finally agree that JJ Abrams is Not Very Good at His Job?

Sadly, no. His job is to make the studios lots of money... and he's VERY good at doing that. Even if we don't like how he goes about it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:

I mean, 8 had those absolutely ridiculous and incredibly stupid bombers, i'm not even going to start on what was wrong with them.

What was wrong with them? Because, yknow, every complaint I've seen about them to date ignores the fact that the same complaint is present in virtually every preceding Star Wars film.

They do the same job as a Y-Wing only worse. And if you go with the extended material there was a Free Virgillia-class Bunkerbuster right there in the Resistance 'fleet'. It's faster than the bombers, more maneuverable, MUCH better protected, and can deliver a similar destructive payload - thus the name 'Bunkerbuster'.

Yes, that's how bad the 'starfortresses' were. They were slower and clumsier than a CAPITAL SHIP.

It stood a very good chance of making that run and surviving, instead of sacrificing the twenty-odd crewpeople plus who knows how many other much more valuable fighters and THEIR pilots. Those 'bombers' were just a bad purchase all the way around. A better use for those credits would have been... well, I don't know, maybe some MORE FUEL!?!

I swear, the Resistance logistics officer should have been shot. It's almost like he (or she) was working for the First Order...

(And doing that would have made a better plot than a random hyperspace tracker. Have the logistics officer be a spy reporting their position back to the First Order, then Holdo's paranoia and refusal to share information with Poe a lot more believable, especially if she was the head of Resistance counterintelligence...)

 Vulcan wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:

I mean, 8 had those absolutely ridiculous and incredibly stupid bombers, i'm not even going to start on what was wrong with them.

What was wrong with them? Because, yknow, every complaint I've seen about them to date ignores the fact that the same complaint is present in virtually every preceding Star Wars film.

They do the same job as a Y-Wing only worse. And if you go with the extended material there was a Free Virgillia-class Bunkerbuster right there in the Resistance 'fleet'. It's faster than the bombers, more maneuverable, MUCH better protected, and can deliver a similar destructive payload - thus the name 'Bunkerbuster'.

Yes, that's how bad the 'starfortresses' were. They were slower and clumsier than a CAPITAL SHIP.

It stood a very good chance of making that run and surviving, instead of sacrificing the twenty-odd crewpeople plus who knows how many other much more valuable fighters and THEIR pilots. Those 'bombers' were just a bad purchase all the way around.

I think we covered this from the 'why didn't they use Y-Wings instead?' angle but the Bunkerbuster is an angle I haven't seen analyzed before. Lets think about this:

The Y-Wing argument is a relatively simple one, the Starfortress is a heavy bomber and the Y-Wing is a fighter-bomber, the Starfortress takes 5 times the crew to man fully and delivers a payload of 1048 bombs, one-to-one that's 5 times the crew cost for 52.4 times the potential payload delivery - one Starfortress drops 10.48 times as many bombs as the same crew divided into 5 Y-Wings, meaning if you want to field the same number of bombs as those 8 starfortresses you need to field 420 Y-Wings and scrounge up an additional 395 people and droids to fly them.

The Free Virgillia though, that's a different beast, it's bigger and beefier than the Starfortress by degrees (as it should be, it's a frigate) but its armaments are nebulously defined (3 plasma bombs and 8 'heavy ordnance pods' of an unknown specific details) if we assume, generously, that the pods deal comprable damage to a single Starfortress' bomb bay then you have the destructive capacity of all 8 Starfortresses compressed into a single ship with a minimum crew of 23 - meaning if we're strictly limited by the number of people we can field to the same number of people fielded in the bombers it replaces, you are only getting the one. That's one frigate against the withering fire of the First Order fleet with the same fighter escort, if the FO forces were able to do enough damage to destroy 7 of the 8 bombers before delivering their bombs (damage incurred by the bombers being too close to each other still applying since we're talking about one ship after all) do they cause enough damage for the ship to not be combat effective before it can deliver its own payload? I think they would.

Do we have solid performance metrics on the frigate's speed and manevuerability relative to the Starfortress? I assume it is better since the bomber is noted as being slow and ungainly, but I'm curious as to how much?

A better use for those credits would have been... well, I don't know, maybe some MORE FUEL!?!

I had assumed they had the fuel, but hadn't had enough time to fully refuel before the FO showed up and destroyed the stockpile but either way, lol logistics.

I swear, the Resistance logistics officer should have been shot. It's almost like he (or she) was working for the First Order...

(And doing that would have made a better plot than a random hyperspace tracker. Have the logistics officer be a spy reporting their position back to the First Order, then Holdo's paranoia and refusal to share information with Poe a lot more believable, especially if she was the head of Resistance counterintelligence...)

Something like that?

 Captain Joystick wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:

I mean, 8 had those absolutely ridiculous and incredibly stupid bombers, i'm not even going to start on what was wrong with them.

What was wrong with them? Because, yknow, every complaint I've seen about them to date ignores the fact that the same complaint is present in virtually every preceding Star Wars film.

They do the same job as a Y-Wing only worse. And if you go with the extended material there was a Free Virgillia-class Bunkerbuster right there in the Resistance 'fleet'. It's faster than the bombers, more maneuverable, MUCH better protected, and can deliver a similar destructive payload - thus the name 'Bunkerbuster'.

Yes, that's how bad the 'starfortresses' were. They were slower and clumsier than a CAPITAL SHIP.

It stood a very good chance of making that run and surviving, instead of sacrificing the twenty-odd crewpeople plus who knows how many other much more valuable fighters and THEIR pilots. Those 'bombers' were just a bad purchase all the way around.

I think we covered this from the 'why didn't they use Y-Wings instead?' angle but the Bunkerbuster is an angle I haven't seen analyzed before. Lets think about this:

The Y-Wing argument is a relatively simple one, the Starfortress is a heavy bomber and the Y-Wing is a fighter-bomber, the Starfortress takes 5 times the crew to man fully and delivers a payload of 1048 bombs, one-to-one that's 5 times the crew cost for 52.4 times the potential payload delivery - one Starfortress drops 10.48 times as many bombs as the same crew divided into 5 Y-Wings, meaning if you want to field the same number of bombs as those 8 starfortresses you need to field 420 Y-Wings and scrounge up an additional 395 people and droids to fly them.

The Free Virgillia though, that's a different beast, it's bigger and beefier than the Starfortress by degrees (as it should be, it's a frigate) but its armaments are nebulously defined (3 plasma bombs and 8 'heavy ordnance pods' of an unknown specific details) if we assume, generously, that the pods deal comprable damage to a single Starfortress' bomb bay then you have the destructive capacity of all 8 Starfortresses compressed into a single ship with a minimum crew of 23 - meaning if we're strictly limited by the number of people we can field to the same number of people fielded in the bombers it replaces, you are only getting the one. That's one frigate against the withering fire of the First Order fleet with the same fighter escort, if the FO forces were able to do enough damage to destroy 7 of the 8 bombers before delivering their bombs (damage incurred by the bombers being too close to each other still applying since we're talking about one ship after all) do they cause enough damage for the ship to not be combat effective before it can deliver its own payload? I think they would.

Do we have solid performance metrics on the frigate's speed and manevuerability relative to the Starfortress? I assume it is better since the bomber is noted as being slow and ungainly, but I'm curious as to how much?

The Starfortress is just a rubbish approach all over. In the original trilogy we have pinpoint attacks by agile starfighters on the weakspots of capital ships to disable or destroy them. In Rogue One we see a single squadron of Y-wings deliver a volley of Ion torpedoes to disable the star destroyer as part of a combined fleet assault. It all contributes to the david vs goliath/death by a thousand cuts narrative of the rebellion versus the empire. Its elegant and sneaky and smacks of proper military planning and training.

In 8 we get horribly designed lumbering THINGS that carpet bomb their way through what is probably the most heavily armoured part of the dreadnought at zero range. There is nothing clever or elegant here. Its a meat grinder attrittion approach that does not mesh well with a resistance that is undermanned and under pressure. A properly planned assault shouldn't need 1048 bombs per ship. Also, the only purpose of the entire design of the Starfortress is for the things to heroically fail, except for the very last ship.

I swear, the Resistance logistics officer should have been shot. It's almost like he (or she) was working for the First Order...

(And doing that would have made a better plot than a random hyperspace tracker. Have the logistics officer be a spy reporting their position back to the First Order, then Holdo's paranoia and refusal to share information with Poe a lot more believable, especially if she was the head of Resistance counterintelligence...)

Spoiler:

As they're captured on the FO dreadnought, Rose is revealed to be a First Order spy. She had planned to convince her sister it was too late to stop the first order and that she had found an angle to ensure they both got out safely. But her sister had to go and die. Distraught, she goes to the escape pod room to save herself, having planted a tracking beacon like the one Leia had for Rey somewhere onboard the ship - but then she runs into Finn. Finn the traitor, who the First Order want so badly. If she can convince him to come with her to the First Order, she can take him prisoner and turn him in. She feeds him and Poe this story about a hyperspace tracker aboard the dreadnought to justify sneaking over there, preferably not with an escape pod because the FO pretty much blowing up every piece of resistance hardware that floats towards them, but is regretting her choice more and more the more she and Finn get to know each other.

DJ clues in right away, space crime is pretty much built on the premise that hyperspace tracking isn't possible, he plays along just long enough to confirm it's all a big lie (leaves a little shield dropping surprise in their computer just in case the resistance tries something crazy and desperate) and the story proceeds as normal, Rose proving her redemption during the fight in the hangar bay where she has the choice to kill Finn or Phasma and chooses to save him. - and the movie continues.

Something like that?

God, yes. Some actual drama, internal conflict and shades of grey.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:

I mean, 8 had those absolutely ridiculous and incredibly stupid bombers, i'm not even going to start on what was wrong with them.

What was wrong with them? Because, yknow, every complaint I've seen about them to date ignores the fact that the same complaint is present in virtually every preceding Star Wars film.

The Resistance Bomber is my favorite design from the film.



If you're upset by bombers in Star Wars you're 8 films too late.



Maybe 9



I like the Resistance Bombers, B29s in space is perfectly suited to Star Wars and makes for a different sort of drama among the crew than individual fighters can.

And if you need a handwave, just assume they're meant to his ground targets, or to fly in the envelope between a capital ship's shields and its hull.

A lot to complain about Episode 8, but really that ain't one of them.

 Easy E wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:

For even worse cringe, look at the awful "indiana Jones and the temple of doom" (Spielberg finally apologized for this, many years later.)

Basically indy kidnaps a woman, threatens her with a knife in her side, drags her into extreme perial, even helps lock her in a bodfdage rack so she can be slowly lowered into lava and incinerated alive, then 'rescues" her from the danger and terror he put her in, and when she goes off on him about what she suffered because of him and walks away he uses his WHIP on her to DRAG her back to him, and she ends up willingly kissing him after the unimaginable terror he caused her?

To be fair to Lucas, that is pretty much how all "Pulp" movies and serials handled romance too. He was just following the template.

How Indy treated willie was not only unforgivable, it was a set of serious felonies.

Voss wrote:

And also, again, no. The _first time_ he mass-murdered children was Attack of the Clones, and tells her about it. And she's somehow not horrified, but filled with sympathy. And somehow the second time he does it, she's surprised.

Tusken Raiders are always portrayed as savages. Now whether that is a bias of the human settlers treating them like American Indians in old westerns or because in a pulpy sci fi story the 'always chaotic evil' race is still possible, that's up to you.

But the general feeling seems to be that killing a bunch of Tuskens is like saying you burnt out a wasps nest or drove off some wolves.

The fact that the film deliberately showed them as having a culture, art, women and children makes me think it was trying to move against the cliche.

My main issue with those bombers is that we regularly see non-military ships, like cargo freighters and shuttles, lifting off from the ground and flying up past high orbit in a shorter amount of time than it took the bombers to cross a small fraction of the distance. It would have been faster and less labor intensive to push the bombs out of the hatch of a YT-series cargo ship. We’ve already seen a Memphis Belle space right in the series—the Millennium Falcon plays the part in Star Wars, and scene was more exciting in every way.

 Ahtman wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think what you meant to say is, "episode 9 would not have been bad at all if it would have followed through on the setup made in episode 8."

And episode 8 wouldn't have been so bad if it would have followed through on the set up of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

It did. It picked up every meaningful plot hook and story thread left for it by the previous films and trilogies. Arguably it picks up the narrative of the previous film better than any previous film in the series, as its the only one that starts literally moments after the prior film ends.

Episode 7 puts Finn in a coma because of his injuries. Episode 8 starts with Finn in a coma because of his injuries.
Episode 7 puts Luke in self-imposed exile on an island with special importance to the Jedi and the Force. Episode 8 has Luke in self-imposed exile on an island with special importance to the Jedi and the Force.
Episode 7 establishes that Rey is clueless about who her parents are or why they left her behind. Episode 8 establishes their identity and why they left her.
Episode 7 establishes that Kylo is a Vader wannabe who wants to fulfill whatever goal he thinks Vader wanted to accomplish. Episode 8 has him follow through and do what he thinks Vader would have wanted by overthrowing Snoke (in the same way that Vader wanted to overthrow Palpatine), destroying the Resistance/Rebellion, and ushering in his own interpretation of a new age of peace and order in the galaxy - except he falls a bit short and doesn't manage to turn Rey to his side, just like how Vader failed to do the same with Luke.

etc etc etc

That it took these plot threads in directions you didn't enjoy is really more of a "you" problem.

And really, you can't seriously make this argument when the main thrust of complaints against 9 is that it outright invalidates the core narrative arcs of the prior two trilogies. *eyeroll*

The set up for 7 was the films before it. TFA didn't invent the idea of the Jedi/Sith/Rebellion ect: they had a world and history to work from. The sequel films lacked a coherent direction overall which lead to even good ideas being poorly done or completely ignored, beyond "make Disney money".

Theres not much in the way of a coherent and continuing narrative or plot arc from episode 6 through to episode 7. In fact, this is one of the key complaints that was levied by many (myself included) against 7. To some extent this is to be expected when you have to engineer in a 30 year gap in time due to the aging of your talent, but even still the conclusion of the original trilogy leaves you with certain expectations about where you might find your heroes and the state of the galaxy as a whole in 30 years time, none of which are met by 7 (and indeed 7 basically leads you to believe that what whatever expectations you had leaving the theater after watching 6 basically only lasted for a brief moment before devolving in a completely different and IMO undesirable direction).

It breaks from the existing canon so much there's just no recovering from it.

It really doesn't though. It breaks from what *you* think the canon was or should be, but just about every complaint I've seen levied against the film can also be levied at one of the other films, or the Clone Wars series, or any number of things in the EU.

They do the same job as a Y-Wing only worse. And if you go with the extended material there was a Free Virgillia-class Bunkerbuster right there in the Resistance 'fleet'. It's faster than the bombers, more maneuverable, MUCH better protected, and can deliver a similar destructive payload - thus the name 'Bunkerbuster'.

Is there a citation on it being faster and more maneuerable? I'll give you better protected since it seems like a no brainer that a 300+ meter vessel would be better protected than. Fluff indicates that the Free Virgilias heavy plasma bombs were only usable for orbital strikes against hardened targets on the ground, could well be that the dreadnought wasn't a valid target. Considering the Free Virgillias also carried a squadron of 8 Resistance Bombers on board, it would seem that there was a reason to operate the bombers, wouldn't it? Per Poe Dameron in The Rebel Files, there also "wasn't a better bomber around" than the MG-100 Starfortress, which Poe describes as being superior to the B-Wing, which itself was already superior to the Y-Wing. In short - while you may feel that they do the same job as a Y-Wing (which they don't - the MG-100s payload is several orders of magnitude greater, and also has several times more defensive armaments. Your argument is akin to saying that a B-52 does the same job as an A-10), in-universe they have a very different take on matters, and the "in-universe" take actually matters more than yours.

Also, "it does the same job as x only worse" can basically be said about half the stuff in the setting.

It stood a very good chance of making that run and surviving, instead of sacrificing the twenty-odd crewpeople plus who knows how many other much more valuable fighters and THEIR pilots.

Maybe, if you ignore the part where there were 4 whole First Order capital ships, 3 of which still had their full compliment of turbolasers, and the dreadnought itself. *eyeroll* Sure, Poe took out the turbolaser batteries on the dread so that it couldn't attack the bombers, but its pretty well established that its a "fleet killer" - its fair to say those autocannons would have toasted the bunkerbuster, which it couldnt do to the bombers (because, yknow, they are a lot smaller).

The Starfortress is just a rubbish approach all over. In the original trilogy we have pinpoint attacks by agile starfighters on the weakspots of capital ships to disable or destroy them. In Rogue One we see a single squadron of Y-wings deliver a volley of Ion torpedoes to disable the star destroyer as part of a combined fleet assault. It all contributes to the david vs goliath/death by a thousand cuts narrative of the rebellion versus the empire. Its elegant and sneaky and smacks of proper military planning and training.

In 8 we get horribly designed lumbering THINGS that carpet bomb their way through what is probably the most heavily armoured part of the dreadnought at zero range. There is nothing clever or elegant here. Its a meat grinder attrittion approach that does not mesh well with a resistance that is undermanned and under pressure. A properly planned assault shouldn't need 1048 bombs per ship. Also, the only purpose of the entire design of the Starfortress is for the things to heroically fail, except for the very last ship.

So like someone else said, you wanted more of the same but in HD? Theres any number of reasons to justify why your approach wouldn't work, it could be in the 30+ years since the events you referenced the First Order figured out how to harden their ships electrical infrastructure to prevent ion attacks. Or it could be the fact that the dreadnought is several times larger than a Star Destroyer its a much tougher nut to crack owing to heavier armor and shields - after all, we never see them take out the Executor by delivering a volley of ion torpedoes, if the solution was that simple then the Executor wouldn't have been as much of a threat, would it?

 Gitzbitah wrote:

What I was upset about was Rey and Kylo physically interacting with the environment around each other, despite being very far apart in Episode 9. Especially passing the lightsabre from Rey to Kylo for his fight with the Knights of Ren. It was a very cool scene, but if it's possible to teleport objects through the Force then.... it's really difficult to write something compelling. Imagine episode IV. Oh, I'll just teleport this proton torpedo inside of the Death Star from Yavin IV, it's cool. Jedi business, move along.

Or Vader rolls up on Hoth. Sir, there's an energy shield protecting the base.
It will fail them for the last time. And then Vader starts teleporting thermal detonators onto the generator until the shield falls.

Any starfighter duel is easily resolved by a force user waving their arms around and hitting lots of sensitive controls in their opponent's cockpit.

Even if it needs a personal connection anchor style thing- like Kylo and Rey, it's going to destroy that whole dynamic of many small battles with the big bad just gives them a target to teleport explosives to while the other one is sleeping.

The ability for matter to be transferred through the Force shows up in 8 to a very limited degree. I'm not sure I like it, but Rebels has an interesting solution to this and a lot of the Force in general. In the final season there's a Jedi Temple that leads to a world between worlds. It's never outright stated, but if you take it as a the Force itself, it kind of implies the whole thing is a kind of space/time singularity where everywhere and everywhen exists simultaneously. Ezra uses it to pull Ahsoka out of the duel with Vader, but it takes a huge ancient structure to access it with any real ability to control it. It feels very familiar to the way we see visions in the Force; snippets of other points in time with no real context of where and when and how they're happening, but almost entirely of people that characters have a connection with. Arguably what we see in 8/9 is two characters connected directly at the same point in the singularity to the point where matter can enter and exist the Force around them without getting lost in the infinite.

chaos0xomega wrote:

The Starfortress is just a rubbish approach all over. In the original trilogy we have pinpoint attacks by agile starfighters on the weakspots of capital ships to disable or destroy them. In Rogue One we see a single squadron of Y-wings deliver a volley of Ion torpedoes to disable the star destroyer as part of a combined fleet assault. It all contributes to the david vs goliath/death by a thousand cuts narrative of the rebellion versus the empire. Its elegant and sneaky and smacks of proper military planning and training.

In 8 we get horribly designed lumbering THINGS that carpet bomb their way through what is probably the most heavily armoured part of the dreadnought at zero range. There is nothing clever or elegant here. Its a meat grinder attrittion approach that does not mesh well with a resistance that is undermanned and under pressure. A properly planned assault shouldn't need 1048 bombs per ship. Also, the only purpose of the entire design of the Starfortress is for the things to heroically fail, except for the very last ship.

So like someone else said, you wanted more of the same but in HD? Theres any number of reasons to justify why your approach wouldn't work, it could be in the 30+ years since the events you referenced the First Order figured out how to harden their ships electrical infrastructure to prevent ion attacks. Or it could be the fact that the dreadnought is several times larger than a Star Destroyer its a much tougher nut to crack owing to heavier armor and shields - after all, we never see them take out the Executor by delivering a volley of ion torpedoes, if the solution was that simple then the Executor wouldn't have been as much of a threat, would it?

Yes, I would have much preferred more of the same if by that you mean decent squadron tactics undertaken by a semi-believable and vaguely competent paramilitary force, rather than Poe showboating followed by the most boring and suicidal attack run... ever? The Only point that the Resistance are shown as a viable military threat to the first order is when the xwings come in at the end of episode 7. Every other time, it’s not really clear why the first order is even bothering to do anything to them.

 Flinty wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

The Starfortress is just a rubbish approach all over. In the original trilogy we have pinpoint attacks by agile starfighters on the weakspots of capital ships to disable or destroy them. In Rogue One we see a single squadron of Y-wings deliver a volley of Ion torpedoes to disable the star destroyer as part of a combined fleet assault. It all contributes to the david vs goliath/death by a thousand cuts narrative of the rebellion versus the empire. Its elegant and sneaky and smacks of proper military planning and training.

In 8 we get horribly designed lumbering THINGS that carpet bomb their way through what is probably the most heavily armoured part of the dreadnought at zero range. There is nothing clever or elegant here. Its a meat grinder attrittion approach that does not mesh well with a resistance that is undermanned and under pressure. A properly planned assault shouldn't need 1048 bombs per ship. Also, the only purpose of the entire design of the Starfortress is for the things to heroically fail, except for the very last ship.

So like someone else said, you wanted more of the same but in HD? Theres any number of reasons to justify why your approach wouldn't work, it could be in the 30+ years since the events you referenced the First Order figured out how to harden their ships electrical infrastructure to prevent ion attacks. Or it could be the fact that the dreadnought is several times larger than a Star Destroyer its a much tougher nut to crack owing to heavier armor and shields - after all, we never see them take out the Executor by delivering a volley of ion torpedoes, if the solution was that simple then the Executor wouldn't have been as much of a threat, would it?

Yes, I would have much preferred more of the same if by that you mean decent squadron tactics undertaken by a semi-believable and vaguely competent paramilitary force, rather than Poe showboating followed by the most boring and suicidal attack run... ever? The Only point that the Resistance are shown as a viable military threat to the first order is when the xwings come in at the end of episode 7. Every other time, it’s not really clear why the first order is even bothering to do anything to them.

You basically just described the problem with every Star Wars film. At no point in any film are decent semi-believable tactics undertaken by anyone suggestive of an actual competent military or paramilitary force. Many pages of real and digital ink have been spilled analyzing every battle in both the original and prequel trilogies and picking them apart piece by piece to illustrate the contrived nature of the battles and how they are ultimately cinematic exhibition for the sake of exhibition rather than functions of military necessity.

The Resistance bombers would have made more sense if the vertical wing was just a stack of torpedo tubes that fire a big volley of proton torps. Essentially a missile boat.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
My main issue with those bombers is that we regularly see non-military ships, like cargo freighters and shuttles, lifting off from the ground and flying up past high orbit in a shorter amount of time than it took the bombers to cross a small fraction of the distance.

And when you realize the Dreadnaught was moving forward to pursue the Resistance fleet as well, the PAINFUL slowness of the bombers become even more apparent.

Their tinfoil shields don't help either.

A Y-Wing or TIE bomber, by contrast, are FAR faster and more maneuverable. Their shields might not be any stronger. Heck they might not even be AS strong. But their superior maneuverability gives them a chance to dodge incoming fire that the wallowing Starfortresses cannot, and their superior speed means they're exposed to fire for far less time. Thus, their shields become a far less important part of their defenses.

EDIT: The title of the thread is "What is more cringey, Star Wars episode 8 or 9?" Tells you right up front this is NOT a thread for fans of these movies. We get that there are, indeed, some people out there who like the movie. That's fine, different tastes and all that.

But don't come here and post about how great the movie is thinking you're going to change any minds, either. We've all had time to consider all the angles. Those who like it won't change the minds of those who do not, and vice versa. So... perhaps a thread about 'what were your favorite parts of SW 8 and 9' or some such might be started for those who wish to praise the sequels? And those of us who don't like them can just avoid that thread? Prevent the same arguments from being rehashed yet again, y'know?

8 was probably the worst.
Elevating / heroizing the completely toxic leader, breaking the universe vis a vis toxic leader kamikaze manuever, random side trips to find random guy as an excuse to include about "The evil rich", "military industrial complex", and "animal liberation" themes rather than foucs on a story. The absolutely horrible joke/throwaway treatment of what might have been an interesting character if they decided to do something with Phasma other than knock her out all the time and then killer her. All the deliberate writups alienating fans who were unhappy, etc. etc.

I think we wouldn't be having this discussion if they'd have just given everyone (in partiuclar the old coots who were invested in the story since being kids) something more like this:




TBH i thought Rouge One and even Solo was superiour on about all fronts.

Tne rebel bomber had so much off axs load it6 was simply impossible to believe.

The TIE bomber was kinda cool and was clearly firing warheads at the asteroid, plus it was no so off center loaded it was impossible to accept.

Plus the tie fighter crews wore air masks and tanks, the rebel bomber crews apparently breathed space air.

And yes i get that most imperial forces wore helmets and masks to dehumanize them for the audience while the rebels had visible faces to personalize them for the audience...

As to space air, star wars does appear to be some sort of Aether space, where drag stops ships when they turn off their engines, etc.