LogFAQs > #945767217

Lego Star Wars
I have only played half of one Lego Indiana Jones, but it seemed fun. I like reimagining established IPs with unique art styles, and Lego aesthetics are certainly unique. I like how they can explain what's going on without words, too, though part of that is just that everyone who plays a Lego Indiana Jones game has probably seen the movies.

Arb Skynxnex
I'm too lazy to scroll up and check who this is, but someone is clearly nominating the most obscure EU characters he can find. This is the bodyguard of a minor criminal guy, so minor that neither of them have color artwork. This guy's gimmick is that he has a double-blaster, which is a gun that shoots two beams into a single beam for extra power. That's dumb. He also looks vaguely like Bruce Willis in Die Hard, but maybe I'm imagining things.

Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Ugh, this movie. I think everyone agrees that either this or AotC is the worst Star Wars movie, right? RotS at least has memes, but PM has nothing except Darth Maul and Duel of the Fates.

Every so often, I rewatch a movie I remember as being bad to see if it's really as bad as I remember. Sometimes I find I was wrong, or that the reality is more nuanced than I thought. Not here, though. PM really is as bad as everyone remembers. Lucas says that it was meant for children, but no child is going to want to watch a movie this slow. There are so many scenes of just nothing. Some decisions, like Jar-Jar Binks, are just completely impossible to explain. It's not even fun to make fun of the bad acting anymore, since Jake Lloyd went insane thanks to being made fun of. Phantom Menace is so bad that it literally destroyed a man's life.

Here is what I will give PM: it does have some imagination. I hate the direction it takes the Jedi in particular (they shouldn't have all had Obi-Wan's desert robes), but everything else has at least some imagination. The podracing is weird and kind of interesting, there are horrifically racist Japanese aliens with pope hats, like, weird stuff exists. But I've never seen a movie with so much weird stuff that is also so slow and boring.

Look, I went into detail about what I don't like about the other movies, but PM has been picked apart by everyone a million times. We've all seen the RLM reviews, so I'll just say that the best thing to come out of this movie is that one N64 podracer game. I played the **** out of that podracer game.

Wedge Antilles
Wedge might be the most confusing character in cinema. Basic storytelling logic suggests that when Luke fights the Death Star, all of his nameless friends die to show how serious the stakes are. That seems to happen, and Wedge is just the last nameless friend. But then Wedge just... doesn't die? He's like "Luke, I can't help anymore," and Luke's like "lol get outta here," and Vader is like "Let him go," and Wedge just shows up later when Luke's X-Wing, the Millennium Falcon, and the support ship return Yavin. Wedge is just awkwardly also there. This would be like if Theoden in Lord of the Rings thanks the main characters for saving him in Helm's Deep, and then there's also a random guardsman there who had his name briefly mentioned once. Wedge only grows more important over time, too. He helps defend the Hoth base, and then he destroys the second Death Star! You'd assume it would be Lando or his weird pancake alien friend, but no, it's Wedge. So bizarre. Did Lucas have a specific plan for this random guy, or what?

Oh, you want an analysis of Wedge as a character? Sorry. The guy has zero character in the movies other than "I am a good guy." I know he gets fleshed out a lot in the books, but I haven't read most of them. I do admit, however, that I enjoy the concept of a random guy who keeps showing up, so he gets points for that.

Star Munchkin
I've never played Star Munchkin, but I have played Munchkin. Googling it quickly, I question how Star Wars-y this is. The cover is a guy in a Space Marine outfit, and the blurb mentions brains in jars and bionic bimbos, clearly Star Trek references, but no psychic ninjas or laser swords are mentioned. Anyway, if this is like Munchkin, I'm sure it's a fine little board game.

Rose Tico
I was wondering if anyone would nominate her. I hereby offer Rose Tico the "Most Awkward Main Character of a Star Wars Movie Ever" award. I have no idea what the point of this character is. I think it's just that Rian Johnson wanted two people to go to that stupid casino planet (I hate that planet, it looks nothing like Star Wars should look), and already had something for Rey and Poe do.

I have no real problems with adding a new main character halfway through the story -- it worked for Lando, so it can theoretically work here, too. But Rose gets the worst plot in the movie, the Casino Planet, and she has all of the worst lines in the movie. Or at least the two worst lines.

Rose and Finn think they're about to be arrested and killed, so she releases some animals the casino people were abusing. She turns to Finn and says "Now it was worth it." Ugh. Later, Finn is going to sacrifice himself to destroy Kylo Ren's giant laser and save the Rebellion, and Rose stops him and says "We'll stop the Empire using looooooooove" and kisses him. Like, they save the Rebellion anyway, but in a way completely unrelated to Rose's declaration.

Rose's role in TRoS is particularly comical. It's clear that JJ Abrams had just nothing for this character to do, and didn't care enough to try to find something. She's in the movie for five seconds at the start, Finn pats her shoulder and friendzones her, and that's the end of it. I just feel bad for her actress, honestly. You think you're going to be the next Lando, and instead you're the next nothing.

Just to be clear: I can imagine something cool being done with like a spunky engineer girl joining the heroes halfway through. Rose is not that girl. She does nothing of consequence, and whatever character development she has in TLJ is undone at the start of the next movie.

Death Star
The defining villain lair, villain spaceship, and "villain thing that summons a giant laser beam" all in one. Even people who don't know Star Wars still know the Death Star. Whoever had the idea of putting a circular crater in the surface to make it not a perfect sphere was a genius, too.

As a storytelling tool, the Death Star is maybe the best thing ever. It represents not just the power and evil of the Empire, but also its attachment to the physical. Where the Jedi are like wise martial arts guys who only own swords and robes, the Death Star's this big giant thing that can destroy entire planets. But as Vader tells us at the beginning, it's nothing compared to the Force. One dude with the Force is enough to destroy the entire thing. All of the Empire's might and majesty, all of the Gestapo guys you can imagine, aren't sufficient to fight one dude with the power of space chi, and the Death Star is the ultimate representation of that: big and impressive, but small and weak where it counts.

Oh, by the way, making the Death Star again in RotJ was dumb, but not as dumb as making it again in TFA, which itself was even less dumb than making a fleet of ships that all have Death Star lasers in TRoS.


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Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005