Poll of the Day > All Geek's Eve

(+) Yeah! (+)

The Wave Master posted...

Bank Robber is my best friend in real life. He's not a poster on these message boards. In fact he doesn't have any social media of any kind. No Facebook, Twitter, etc

Sounds like a hermit =p

The Wave Master posted...

"Bank Robber, what comic book character is the hottest, and you would nail?"

"Mystique, as she can become any woman. The relationship would never get stale in the bedroom."

He is a very wise man.

While picking a shapeshifter is somewhat common sense, I should remind you Mystique has a looooong history of mental illness and has, on occasion, been a man (even impregnating her girlfriend at the time, if memory serves). I kinda consider that a dampener.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The RedLetterMedia guys (two of whom are huge Star Trek nerds) said something I found interesting - namely, that Orville is basically capturing the spirit of old Star Trek far more faithfully, but sort of fails because it's a comedy written by Seth MacFarlane, so it feels more like self-insert Star Trek fanfic. But Discovery is very much in the vein of the JJ Abrams movies, which were barely Star Trek at all, as much as they were just mostly mindless action movies with the names of Star Trek characters in it.

Which, tbh, is a fairly incisive take on the JJ Abrams reboot although, quite honestly, I was more let down by his work on Star Wars than Star Trek. And, while I haven't seen The Orville, that's more or less what I'd expect of a Seth McFarlane work.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Fortunately, I've never really given much of a shit about Star Trek (it was never really my bag, because I was never into harder sci-fi, and I have a much more cynical view of human nature and what the future holds than Roddenberry ever did), so I have absolutely no horse in the current race. But even if I did, Discovery can go fuck itself because it will be a cold day in hell before I pay for a CBS streaming service just to watch it.

I was never a huge fan, but I've watched an okay amount of several of the shows (original, TGS, DS9, etc) and saw JJ Abrams's action movies.
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Zeus posted...

although, quite honestly, I was more let down by his work on Star Wars than Star Trek.

Well, so far we've only really seen one movie from him when it comes to Star Wars.

Which I was fine with, because Star Wars was never sci-fi in the first place (regardless of what stupid people on the Internet think, it's "Fantasy in Space" or "Space Opera" - there's almost nothing sci-fi in it, and a lot that is more or less anti-sci-fi). And fantasy tends to work better with mindless action than sci-fi does.

(As I used to put it, "Star Wars has more in common with Lord of the Rings than it does Star Trek".)

Or to put it another way, a lot of sci-fi's core appeal is rooted in cerebral experience, while fantasy is more visceral. If sci-fi works by stirring your brain, fantasy works by stirring your heart. Sci-fi is logic, fantasy is emotion. Sci-fi wants you to think, fantasy wants you to feel.

(If anything, most of my utter distaste for the old Star Wars EU was that most of the writers wrote it as if it was sci-fi, not fantasy, which made for jarring genre dissonance to the movies. I might even be willing to argue that part of the reason why everyone hated the prequels so much was because they actually felt like Lucas attempting to make a more sci-fi flavored version of Star Wars.)

So action and nostalgia work fairly well when you're trying to build a visceral response to your work, which makes them a good fit for Star Wars (part of why so many people have said that Episode VII "felt" more like Star Wars than the prequels did), and it's easier to forgive stupid plot holes or unexplained weirdness than it is in sci-fi. But building an entire Star Trek movie around action and nostalgia jars with the original appeal of ToS (to some extent) and TNG (very much so), which is why so many older Trek fans were kind of turned off by Abrams' Trek.

(I'd also argue that the reason why there was always a strong divide between Star Wars and Star Trek fans was because both sides were looking for every different things from their space adventure, and tended to look at the other through that lens. Which kind of helps explain why a lot of older, more traditional Trek fans disliked the new reboot, while a lot of the people who actually liked it seemed to be newer audiences who never liked Trek in the first place, or Star Wars fans who finally saw Trek starting to look more like what they actually wanted out of a movie. In the same vein, there's a reason why so many people disliked Star Trek 1 (which was probably the Trekkiest of the Trek movies) but it seems like everyone loves Wrath of Khan (which managed to balance Trek-ish motifs and themes with more mainstream action and drama).)


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Which I was fine with, because Star Wars was never sci-fi in the first place (regardless of what stupid people on the Internet think, it's "Fantasy in Space" or "Space Opera" - there's almost nothing sci-fi in it, and a lot that is more or less anti-sci-fi). And fantasy tends to work better with mindless action than sci-fi does.

My issue was never, "Is it or is it not scif?" -- a question I consider silly in the first place, given that the term is broadly encompassing -- but instead "Is it good or bad?" and it was a pretty bad film, basically a soulless remake of ANH that looks like it was put together by focus groups.
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Enzo got his ass kicked on Raw last week, and it brought a tear to my eye In a good way because it was just so damn beautiful. Neville and the rest of the 205 Love locker room came our there and whooped his tail. Neville even story line wise giving up a shot at the belt to get the best down, It was great.

Sometimes you just need to see a wrestler get his ass whooped and his pride destroyed.

Then this week he comes out on Raw all sad and disappointed. This too made me feel like an eight year old on Christmas morning.

In non wrestling news why does the entire cooking world love white meat chicken? Dark meat just taste better as it has all the fat and fat is flavor. Plus the dark meat chicken isn't as dry. I just don't understand the love.
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The Wave Master posted...

In non wrestling news why does the entire cooking world love white meat chicken? Dark meat just taste better as it has all the fat and fat is flavor. Plus the dark meat chicken isn't as dry. I just don't understand the love.

#BlameWhitey
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The Wave Master posted...

Plus the dark meat chicken isn't as dry.

And therein lies the problem with dark meat chicken. I want my chicken dry and flavorless. If I wanted flavor, I would be eating any other type of meat.

Raganork posted...

The Wave Master posted...

Plus the dark meat chicken isn't as dry.

And therein lies the problem with dark meat chicken. I want my chicken dry and flavorless. If I wanted flavor, I would be eating any other type of meat.

If you like your meat dry and flavorless, you can eat turkey.
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Zeus posted...

My issue was never, "Is it or is it not scif?" -- a question I consider silly in the first place, given that the term is broadly encompassing -- but instead "Is it good or bad?" and it was a pretty bad film, basically a soulless remake of ANH that looks like it was put together by focus groups.

And my point was, his overall style (ie, visceral action) tends to work better for fantasy than it does actual sci-fi, so when you compare his work on Star Trek (which is supposed to be sci-fi) to his work on Star Wars (which is fantasy), his version of Star Wars is always going to come across more favorably. Especially because his version of Star Trek is more of a genre dissonance compared to earlier films than Star Wars was.

Again, to bring up the RedLetterMedia guys, it's why their review of Abrams' Star Trek was basically "This style of movie would work way better if it was Star Wars rather than Star Trek. Which then seemed a bit prescient once it was actually announced he was going to work on Star Wars.

As for Force Awakens being bad, I'd probably dispute that as well anyway. I'm fully aware that at least part of the reason why is because almost anything would look good compared to the bleeding anal discharge that was the prequel movies, but I think it did exactly what it needed to do to keep the franchise alive in the long-term. Yes, it was nostalgia-heavy, but it pretty much needed to be, because very little else would have worked considering the weight of expectations and the substantial negative load they were fighting against. At best, I might say that it was relatively mediocre, but it was precisely the right KIND of mediocre.

As I've said before, my opinion of Episode VII may change for the negative if Episode VIII winds up feeling like more of the exact same, but Force Awakens more or less NEEDED to be exactly what it was, to open the door up to future films being anything more substantial.

I'd also agree that Force Awakens was the kind of movie you maybe watch once or twice, enjoy in the moment, and then forget about afterwards, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing (and seems to be the same direction the Marvel movies are tending towards) when so many other movies these days don't even hold up under the first viewing. Or try so hard to be deep, meaningful, or complex that they completely fail and wind up just being kind of terrible.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

And my point was, his overall style (ie, visceral action) tends to work better for fantasy than it does actual sci-fi,

I don't really buy into the idea of pushing action -- visceral or otherwise -- as belonging to one genre vs the other.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

his work on Star Wars (which is fantasy),

Which, as always, is an argument I continually rebuke. While it straddles the genres in many respects, I've always firmly held Star Wars as a scifi movie even if it doesn't go into tremendous detail about the technology. And, in general, the rejection of SW as scifi has long been part of a literary plot to police or even "purify" the genre and these attempts have often been tied to leftist politicking.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Again, to bring up the RedLetterMedia guys, it's why their review of Abrams' Star Trek was basically "This style of movie would work way better if it was Star Wars rather than Star Trek. Which then seemed a bit prescient once it was actually announced he was going to work on Star Wars.

Well, JJ Abrams's take on Star Trek was better than his take on Star Wars, so famous last words. I guess the guy just can't do *anything* right... except, you know, found footage.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

As for Force Awakens being bad, I'd probably dispute that as well anyway. I'm fully aware that at least part of the reason why is because almost anything would look good compared to the bleeding anal discharge that was the prequel movies, but I think it did exactly what it needed to do to keep the franchise alive in the long-term. Yes, it was nostalgia-heavy, but it pretty much needed to be, because very little else would have worked considering the weight of expectations and the substantial negative load they were fighting against. At best, I might say that it was relatively mediocre, but it was precisely the right KIND of mediocre.

The different between TFA and TPM bad is that I could enjoy TPM even while knowing it was a fairly bad film. TFA not only annoyed me in many places, but I felt *nothing* while watching it. I wound up checking my cell phone a few times.

And I have no problem channeling nostalgia, like bringing back old characters. My issue was recycling much of the plot *but* with far weaker characters so all I could think is how much better this was done in the past. All of the newly introduced characters sucked and, except maybe Poe, I have no reasonable expectation that any of them will be killed off and replaced. So I have nothing but disappointment to look forward to whereas, at least with the PT, we got neat villains.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd also agree that Force Awakens was the kind of movie you maybe watch once or twice, enjoy in the moment, and then forget about afterwards, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing (and seems to be the same direction the Marvel movies are tending towards) when so many other movies these days don't even hold up under the first viewing. Or try so hard to be deep, meaningful, or complex that they completely fail and wind up just being kind of terrible.

Eh, while I was burned out by Marvel, I was pleasantly surprised by Civil War so I might give some of the other recent ones a chance. (Of course, the *only* one I really cared to see from the get-go was Ant-Man which never made it to NFI.)
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Zeus posted...

Which, as always, is an argument I continually rebuke. While it straddles the genres in many respects, I've always firmly held Star Wars as a scifi movie even if it doesn't go into tremendous detail about the technology. And, in general, the rejection of SW as scifi has long been part of a literary plot to police or even "purify" the genre and these attempts have often been tied to leftist politicking.

If you take a fantasy story and dress it in scifi, it's still fantasy.
So now you have space-magic with space-swords with space-wizards, but the overall story arc is the same with the same sort of leaning into what the story is exploring and the driving force of the story.

Also, saying, "I believe this thing, and I won't hear a word against it" is a s*** way of going about this.

Zeus posted...

Which, as always, is an argument I continually rebuke. While it straddles the genres in many respects, I've always firmly held Star Wars as a scifi movie even if it doesn't go into tremendous detail about the technology.

Which is kinda sorta the whole point of sci-fi movies. Sci-fi films make it a point to over-emphasize the tech with convoluted jargon and intricate lore. You'll notice that, in the original Star Wars film, no character ever goes "oh, you don't know how a lightsaber works, Luke? Well, it draws power from a power cell and it concentrates the energy through the emitter matrix, which, if inverted, could cause the power grid to backfire." You want stuff like that, you read the SW novels, which in a way are more sci-fi than the films. In the Star Wars film, Obi-Wan gave Luke the lightsaber and let him play around with it for a minute while he reminisced about the Jedi. That's it.

Science fantasy has the cool tech, but the emphasis doesn't lie with the tech. That's the key difference here.

Raganork posted...

Science fantasy has the cool tech, but the emphasis doesn't lie with the tech. That's the key difference here.

Y'all know you just made up an entire genre to define just Star Wars, right?

shadowsword87 posted...

Raganork posted...

Science fantasy has the cool tech, but the emphasis doesn't lie with the tech. That's the key difference here.

Y'all know you just made up an entire genre to define just Star Wars, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Science_fantasy_films

Raganork posted...

In the Star Wars film, Obi-Wan gave Luke the lightsaber and let him play around with it for a minute while he reminisced about the Jedi. That's it.

Obligatory:


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shadowsword87 posted...

Zeus posted...

Which, as always, is an argument I continually rebuke. While it straddles the genres in many respects, I've always firmly held Star Wars as a scifi movie even if it doesn't go into tremendous detail about the technology. And, in general, the rejection of SW as scifi has long been part of a literary plot to police or even "purify" the genre and these attempts have often been tied to leftist politicking.

If you take a fantasy story and dress it in scifi, it's still fantasy.
So now you have space-magic with space-swords with space-wizards, but the overall story arc is the same with the same sort of leaning into what the story is exploring and the driving force of the story.

Also, saying, "I believe this thing, and I won't hear a word against it" is a s*** way of going about this.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rebuke

Rebuke meaning sharply criticize, assuming that's the portion you needed clarified. Other clarifications that may need stating include that things can fall into multiple genres and the fact that modern fantasy and science fiction grew out of the same pulp fiction of the 1800s to 1900s so, to some extent, they'll always share some traits. Attempting to purify scifi by denying the rights for something that's clearly scifi to call itself scifi is a ridiculous quest undertaken by people who want to reshape the genre for their own purposes.

And, other than the force -- which isn't explained in any great detail in the OT and *could* have a scientific basis within that universe (and later got a hamfisted explanation) -- there's nothing overtly fantasy about it. Swords *have* been used in science fiction (Gundam, an anime about giant robots, was notorious for using it). Clothing can be anything, and Star Trek was notorious for using fantasy-like clothing (and was generally big on fantasy tropes in the original).

More importantly, while the force is relevant to the story and allows them to do certain things, ultimately *technology* decides the day in the films. You have space stations which blow up planets. Spaceships and battle cruisers used to confront those space stations. Giant legged tanks. Lasers. Probes.
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Raganork posted...

Zeus posted...

Which, as always, is an argument I continually rebuke. While it straddles the genres in many respects, I've always firmly held Star Wars as a scifi movie even if it doesn't go into tremendous detail about the technology.

Which is kinda sorta the whole point of sci-fi movies. Sci-fi films make it a point to over-emphasize the tech with convoluted jargon and intricate lore. You'll notice that, in the original Star Wars film, no character ever goes "oh, you don't know how a lightsaber works, Luke? Well, it draws power from a power cell and it concentrates the energy through the emitter matrix, which, if inverted, could cause the power grid to backfire." You want stuff like that, you read the SW novels, which in a way are more sci-fi than the films. In the Star Wars film, Obi-Wan gave Luke the lightsaber and let him play around with it for a minute while he reminisced about the Jedi. That's it.

Science fantasy has the cool tech, but the emphasis doesn't lie with the tech. That's the key difference here.

That's a more modern, fringe convention, though. A lot of older science fiction works didn't go into tremendous detail about the science. In fact, I can't even recall The Time Machine going much into the technology of how the thing was supposed to work.

Scifi was traditionally set apart by its futuristic settings and emphasis on technology. Star Wars -- despite being set a long, long time ago -- has an overtly futuristic setting (with the backwards worlds being the equivalent of third-world nations) where the first film basically revolves around an impressively powerful new technology nobody believes is possible.
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Zeus posted...

A lot of older science fiction works didn't go into tremendous detail about the science. In fact, I can't even recall The Time Machine going much into the technology of how the thing was supposed to work.

Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Larry Niven off the top of my head might have something to say to the contrary, and those first two are arguably the greatest science fiction writers as of yet.
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Wait, you think that Nute Gunray, Darth Maul, and Count Dooku are better villains the Kylo Ten and The First Order?

If that's the case then I don't know what to savor think.
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shadowsword87 posted...

Y'all know you just made up an entire genre to define just Star Wars, right?

Not really. Space Opera existed long before Star Wars, and "science fantasy" was made up to include any number of other stories outside of just Star Wars.

As a fun aside, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6i2par2Fv0

One could argue (though one would be wrong) that it's sci-fi because it takes place on another planet, and the bad guys are technically aliens who shoot lasers. But the movie is about as fantasy as it gets, and you could change about three lines of dialogue in the movie and remove almost every single thing that would make it "sci-fi" ("Okay, the aliens are demons, the lasers are magic, and the planet isn't in distant space as much as it is a magical fantasy realm. Boom.")



Zeus posted...

Which, as always, is an argument I continually rebuke. While it straddles the genres in many respects, I've always firmly held Star Wars as a scifi movie even if it doesn't go into tremendous detail about the technology.

It doesn't straddle the genres in any meaningful respect other than the most superficial, because it has almost none of the actual genre traits of sci-fi, and actively runs counter to a few of them.

And Star Wars doesn't just fail to "go into tremendous detail about the technology", it actively ignores every aspect of it other than what is necessary to further the plot (which is a basic trait of fantasy). Almost every application of technology in Star Wars is Lucas going "Ehh, fuck it, a wizard did it. Oh, wait, no. The FORCE. The Force did it."

The Jedi are basically magical space wizards who use magic swords and have whatever power is necessary to further the plot whenever necessary, to tell a fantasy story set in space. You could pretty much translate nearly every aspect of the story to a non-space setting and it would work just as well (the single biome planets just become different regions on the same planet, Han becomes a literal pirate with a literal ship, the Death Star is a magical artifact superweapon in a "Hidden Fortress", and suddenly you're reading a transcript of someone's D&D campaign).

I freely admit that there actually ARE sci-fi elements and more detailed explanations for how the technology works in secondary sources, but a) those aren't the movies, and b) there's a reason why Lucas never really considered any of the secondary material canon, no matter how hard his company tried to invent entirely new versions of canon to ensure people would keep buying the books.

And the most "sci-fi" influenced aspects of the Star Wars franchise are also the absolute worst aspects of the Star Wars franchise. Again, it's one of the things that made the EU suck so bad and its influence is a large part of what made the prequels terrible.



Zeus posted...

And, in general, the rejection of SW as scifi has long been part of a literary plot to police or even "purify" the genre and these attempts have often been tied to leftist politicking.

Or it's rooted in an actual awareness of what sci-fi as a genre IS, what it's actual genre conventions and usual intentions ARE, and not just the layperson's assumptions about what it is based on what Hollywood has (wrongly) told them for years.

"A herp derp, but it's set in space!" has literally never been one of the legitimate defining factors of sci-fi.

(I'll talk more about this later at the end, after it comes up in other people's posts)


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Zeus posted...

Well, JJ Abrams's take on Star Trek was better than his take on Star Wars, so famous last words.

It arguably isn't, though. Granted, it's a question that's as subjective as hell, but it feels to me like the Star Trek reboot alienated a lot of older Star Trek fans while pandering to a more mainstream audience (which isn't a bad idea, all things considered, at least monetarily as opposed to creatively), while The Force Awakens was deliberately crafted (so much so that we're agreeing that it might have been TOO MUCH so) to feel like original recipe Star Wars, and thus appeal to the same sorts of people who made Star Wars a success in the first place (and more importantly, win over a lot of older Star Wars fans who'd been disillusioned by the prequels).

It terms of standalone quality, Star Trek MIGHT be a better movie (but again, subjective as hell), but as a Star Trek movie in the context of everything that went before, it's a much worse movie at trying to be what Star Trek IS than Force Awakens is at being what Star Wars is supposed to be.

Which is the similar argument being used by a lot of people currently when talking about Discovery (which is how we got into this discussion) - whether you think Discovery is good or bad, it doesn't really feel like older Star Trek. And Roddenberry would absolutely LOATHE it.

Whether you like The Force Awakens, it's a better Star Wars movie than Star Trek '09 is a Star Trek movie (and I say that in spite of generally LIKING Star Trek '09).



Zeus posted...

I guess the guy just can't do *anything* right... except, you know, found footage.

Cloverfield and Super 8 were shit, though.



Zeus posted...

The different between TFA and TPM bad is that I could enjoy TPM even while knowing it was a fairly bad film. TFA not only annoyed me in many places, but I felt *nothing* while watching it. I wound up checking my cell phone a few times.

If we're going with anecdotal arguments, I have trouble thinking of a single thing TPM did right, and I absolutely hated it at the time (there was a distinct "how the fuck could the trailer be so cool but the movie be so crap?" vibe right out of the gate), while I generally enjoyed TFA in a meaningless popcorn fluff sort of way. I didn't walk away from TFA thinking it was a brilliant cinematic masterpiece, but I also didn't walk away from it wondering what sort of brain parasites George Lucas obviously caught sometime around 1990 or so.

TPM left me assuming that Episode II and III were going to be terrible, TFA left me at least marginally optimistic about where Episode VIII and IX are going (but also fully aware that they might be mediocre or crap). TPM made me angry at how Lucas was half-assedly recycling old plots and rejected ideas from original scripts to churn out garbage, TFA left me feeling like they did an effective job of recycling familiar plot points and characters to effectively create that same "rhyme" feel that Lucas kept harping on about while making the prequels (that he ironically never actually seemed to effectively achieve himself even while bringing it up).

TFA isn't the sort of movie I have any desire to watch over and over again, or otherwise obsess over, but if it was on and someone else wanted to watch it I probably wouldn't object. But you'd have to physically strap me into a chair and force me to watch TPM again (and honestly, that goes for AotC and RotS at this point as well).

In a sense, the highest praise I can give to TFA is that it made me care about Star Wars again, after the prequels made me feel like I was never going to care about Star Wars again.


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Zeus posted...

And I have no problem channeling nostalgia, like bringing back old characters. My issue was recycling much of the plot *but* with far weaker characters so all I could think is how much better this was done in the past.

Yeah, but I'd point the same argument at Star Trek '09 - in almost every case, the performances of the new actors as presented just remind me of how much better the originals were, both in terms of actors and in presentation.

And honestly, I'd say Star Trek '09 did it for the exact same reason TFA did it - after so many years of abusing the fans' trust and churning out shitty installments, there was an absolute need to win those people back, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to go "Hey, remember that thing you loved? We loved it too! See, we're referencing it now to show that we "get it". We're one of you! You can trust us to take care of this franchise, and bring it back to where it was when you first fell in love with it."

Of course, in Star Trek's case the next movie we got was Into Darkness, which took a steaming hot dump on any hope or optimism the reboot might have inspired, so that promise doesn't always translate into results (which is why I've freely admitted that how The Last Jedi is handled will go a very long way to determining how I ultimately feel about TFA in the long run). But I'd argue that TFA mostly handled the nostalgia exactly the way it needed to, while still leaving room to grow - because the goal isn't just to pander to older fans, it's also to pander to potential new fans (which is why we got the multicultural rainbow cast with the female lead).

But in terms of likeable characters, let's be honest - in A New Hope, Luke was kind of a putz and Leia was kind of a bitch for about 90% of the movie. A lot of what cements them as such iconic characters in all of our minds is what happened to them in the follow-up movies.

Except for Han. He was cool from the word go.



Zeus posted...

All of the newly introduced characters sucked and, except maybe Poe, I have no reasonable expectation that any of them will be killed off and replaced.

Which is ironic, because Poe was originally supposed to die, and got saved because test audiences really seemed to like him.

At this point, I'd say that it's unlikely that any of the lead characters are going to die at any point, but I don't think main character death is necessary to produce quality narrative. And I think all of them are at the early point in their hero's journey (ie, the same point as when Luke as a whiny doofus), so it's entirely possible they could easily grow as characters and become more interesting, as the plot begins to move away from nostalgia pandering and attempts to stand more on its own.

Or, again, maybe it will all be mishandled shit and Star Wars will be terrible forever. But at this point, while I acknowledge that as a possibility, I don't see it as inevitable.


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Zeus posted...

whereas, at least with the PT, we got neat villains.

Did we? When did they appear? I must have blinked and missed them.

Did you mean Maul, who looked cool, but was more or less utterly valueless as a character and utterly worthless as part of the plot? There were droids in the Jawa crawler in A New Hope that had more personality (and I'm pretty sure Lo-Bot in Empire had more actual screen time, and possibly more dialogue). He was someone's notebook doodle who existed solely to sell merch when they slapped his face on it, but he was a complete afterthought in the actual story. And yes, I might have thought he was cool if I were 12 when Phantom Menace came out, but I wasn't. I was 22 and very much not impressed.

Dooku? Aside from one of the worst names in the entire franchise, he was a shit character who was poorly portrayed and even more poorly written. In spite of the fact that I love Christopher Lee as an actor and a person, even he couldn't salvage anything worthwhile out of that mess.

Sidious? Well, we already had Palpatine in the original movies, yet Lucas still managed to screw that up somehow in the prequels as well. Almost everything he does as Sidious or after he's revealed as Sith is poorly written and badly overacted (because Ian McDiarmid, like literally everyone involved in these movies whose name wasn't Ewan McGregor or Frank Oz, didn't give even the remotest of shits and was only there to cash a check). He's at his best when he's playing the character straight, but those are also the parts where he's delivering the most boring, soulless dialogue.

Jango? He's basically what you get if someone looked at Boba Fett in the original films, tried to replicate everything that made him cool, and then had a stroke in the middle of the process and did everything exactly wrong. He's lame and he gets way too much screen time and narrative importance solely to pander to fanboys.

Grievous? He's another worthless toy design character who was shoved in solely to produce an extra action figure, who does almost nothing of interest or worth in the plot, and who dies like a bitch. It's kind of telling that the only time the character ever feels impressive is in the cartoon that Lucas later declared was non-canon, because Lucas always feels threatened whenever anyone else does Star Wars better than he does.

Gunray? Aside from being kind of an offensive stereotype (like a number of prequel characters *cough*Watto*cough*Jar-Jar*cough*), he's completely lame an ineffective as an actual antagonist, is a dupe 110% of the time, and doesn't even really work as comic relief.

Anakin? He's a whiny little shit through 99% of the movies regardless of which bad actor is playing him, and he suffers under some of the worst lines (and it's made even worse by the fact that he's the central character, and thus getting a ton of screen time). His performance is so bad it almost makes you retroactively hate Vader (almost - James Earl Jones is just too cool).

For all that some people whine about Kylo Ren being a whiny emo teen (and he absolutely is), he still has more personality than most of the prequel trilogy antagonists put together. He also has a narrative arc that is clearly designed to run through all of the movies, rather than simply being thrown in because they needed another cool toy design (that's Phasma's job).

Kylo works in exactly the same ways that Anakin doesn't. He almost feels like he was created specific to be a bit of a dig at how Anakin was presented in the prequels. And I'm invested enough in his story to want to see how it plays out, whereas the only real feeling of anticipation the prequels ever left me with was anticipating how bad the next movie was going to be.


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Oh, and I left Jar-Jar out of that list, because while I'll grant that the "Jar-Jar is a secret Sith Lord" theory might be the best possible thing about the prequels, that doesn't count because it isn't real (just like Indoctrination Theory doesn't save ME3's ending from being terrible).



Zeus posted...

That's a more modern, fringe convention, though. A lot of older science fiction works didn't go into tremendous detail about the science. In fact, I can't even recall The Time Machine going much into the technology of how the thing was supposed to work.

Scifi was traditionally set apart by its futuristic settings and emphasis on technology

Not really. You're sort of confusing the window dressing with the actual intent of the genre.

Sci-fi, in general, only plays with technology mostly to make a point (usually, to explore the impact of said technology on culture and/or social norms). It doesn't really have to detail out every facet of how technology works, because that isn't really the point - the point is more to explore the consequences of said technology. It doesn't even have to BE about technology, per se - there are sci-fi writers who have written very low-tech stories that still use sci-fi conventions to explore sci-fi themes.

A movie like Blade Runner or Ex Machina isn't sci-fi because of the advanced technology as much as it is because it's using the tech to ask "What actually makes us human?" Robocop wasn't a movie about the practical applications of cybernetic technology, it was a thinly-veiled satire about the nature of free will and the corporate culture of the 80s. The Matrix, as superficial as it was, was far less about the actual VR technology being used and much more about the questions it raised about the nature of reality and our place in it. Sci-fi, at its best, is very philosophical.

It's also why the original Star Trek TV series, in spite of originally being pitched as "Wagon Train in Space" (which would have made it less sci-fi and more Space Western/Space Opera) was very much sci-fi, because many of its episodes explored any number of social issues or philosophical questions via a thinly-veiled veneer of fiction (or a incredibly blunt and obvious one, like the episode on space racism).

A lot of sci-fi tries to stick to "believable" or "scientifically possible" technological advances and assumptions because that tends to lead to more "pertinent" questions about human nature and socialization. It's why so many ideas Jules Verne wrote into stories seem almost prophetic now - most of what he was writing about wasn't all that outlandish even in his own era, and much of it was just extensions of existing understanding.

Fantasy, on the other hand, tends to be more centered on the characters and the story. Like the similar narrative structures of fairy tales or epic sagas there CAN be some moral or underlying social commentary, but for the most part, fantasy is trying to tell an engaging entertainment story. It's more willing to gloss over consequences to tell the story it wants to tell.

Again, like I said originally, sci-fi is basically trying to engage your brain, while fantasy is trying to stir your heart. The intentions of each genre, and the methods they use to achieve them, are different. And the setting they use to tell their stories doesn't really matter. You can have fantasy in space. You can have sci-fi without space, a futuristic setting, or even overly advanced technology.

In the case of The Time Machine, it isn't the time machine itself that makes the story science fiction as much as the exploration of the potential results of humanity's actions on what might be our inevitable future. The REAL sci-fi is what the Traveller discovers in the future, not how he gets there.


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Incidentally, this is why - like I've also pointed out before - most superhero stories work best when the answers to questions like "Hey, how come Newton's Third Law doesn't kill Cyclops every time he fires an eyebeam?", "How can Superman grab a plane in midair and 'catch' it rather than have it immediately tear to pieces from the stress?", and "Where the hell does Ant-Man's extra mass go/come from, because he violates about a dozen fundamental laws of physics?" are dismissed with "Fuck if I know, a wizard did it" rather than trying to come up with actual scientifically plausible explanations. Because superhero fiction was almost ALWAYS written as fantasy rather than sci-fi (regardless of the fact that Superman was an alien from space or Batman and Tony Stark having super technology or characters like Spider-Man and the Hulk having "science"-based powers).

Because when people get confused and start trying to think about those settings from a science fiction viewpoint rather than a fantasy viewpoint, we get answers like "Ant-Man's Pym Particles actually open a rift into an alternate dimension of pure mass, which he can shift mass into and out of when he needs to", "Superman actually has subconscious telekinetic powers that he channels out from his hands that reinforces structures he lifts or grabs so they remain intact", and "Cyclops creates interdimensional portals in front of his eyes and is actually firing EYE PUNCHES FROM THE PUNCH DIMENSION."

Because those explanations are stupid, and they miss the entire point of the characters and their stories.


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I read all that P.O. and my only thought is that Lobot is worthless
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Cuphead looks interesting, but I don't think it's a game that I will play. Because it's on the Xbone and the pc, and I loathe pc gaming. The other reason is that it's difficult for the sake of being difficult. However, I do like the art style. It looks like a Steam Boat Willy cartoon bought to life, and that's pretty cool.

We are about to be under a hurricane warning here on the gulf coast of Mississippi. The forecast is shifting it West to destroy New Orleans, but we are going to get a lot of rain, flooding, and tornados. I should be okay, but Crap happens so we shall see.

Keep posting and keep gaming.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

Zeus posted...

A lot of older science fiction works didn't go into tremendous detail about the science. In fact, I can't even recall The Time Machine going much into the technology of how the thing was supposed to work.

Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Larry Niven off the top of my head might have something to say to the contrary, and those first two are arguably the greatest science fiction writers as of yet.

All of whom came much later than HG Wells, who was not only more influential within the genre than any you named and notably influenced Clarke. Which isn't meant to disparage your choices, but to acknowledge that the strain of scifi you enjoy -- being more technical in nature -- came much later and is less intrinsic to the genre than you pretend.

The Wave Master posted...

Wait, you think that Nute Gunray, Darth Maul, and Count Dooku are better villains the Kylo Ten and The First Order?

If that's the case then I don't know what to savor think.

Kylo is fucking awful. In the long line of Sith seen anywhere, he ranks among the worst. The First Order as a group, however, is neat. But that's not the issue. Darth Maul is an incredibly cool antagonist that gets you interested. Darth Tyranus is an interesting antagonist. Genereral Grievous -- while kinda ridiculous-looking at first -- had a compelling character design and was an interesting antagonist. Jango Fett -- for all of his problems -- conveyed the inherent coolness of Boba Fett which made him, too, an interesting antagonist.

By contrast, TFA had no interesting antagonists. Kylo was boring and whiny. You didn't have a real counterpart to the incredible Grand Moff Tarkin -- as no imperial officer has a name I can remember. And you had Brienne of Tarth being underutilized.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

One could argue (though one would be wrong) that it's sci-fi because it takes place on another planet, and the bad guys are technically aliens who shoot lasers. But the movie is about as fantasy as it gets, and you could change about three lines of dialogue in the movie and remove almost every single thing that would make it "sci-fi" ("Okay, the aliens are demons, the lasers are magic, and the planet isn't in distant space as much as it is a magical fantasy realm. Boom.")

And one should keep in mind that there aren't very distinct lines between the two, other than what's pushed by genre purists who want to turn things into their form. Flash Gordon, for instance, was *widely* considered science fiction within its time... but modern purists have worked to revoke that status.

Flash Gordon which, by the way, is a "space opera," was acknowledged as scifi by historians of the genre, such as Jane Frank.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It doesn't straddle the genres in any meaningful respect other than the most superficial, because it has almost none of the actual genre traits of sci-fi, and actively runs counter to a few of them.

And Star Wars doesn't just fail to "go into tremendous detail about the technology", it actively ignores every aspect of it other than what is necessary to further the plot (which is a basic trait of fantasy). Almost every application of technology in Star Wars is Lucas going "Ehh, fuck it, a wizard did it. Oh, wait, no. The FORCE. The Force did it."

You mean the genre traits that you and some purists have decided upon to exclude anything you disdain to call scifi which, by the way, flies in the face of conventional definitions and understanding despite the best efforts of purism.

More so, you disregard a series predominantly about spaceships, battlestations, and the like in favor of a few magical elements which act only as plot contrivances. And, while doing so, you overlook that most of their actions are incidental or merely function as guiding an existing action. Keep in mind that the epic conclusion of the OT had NO significance to the Jedi or Sith. The shield was lowered by non-Jedi. The second Death Star was destroyed by another non-jedi. In fact, the ENTIRE long battle had no relevance to the conclusion of the story arc, save maybe for giving a reason why the Emperor couldn't escape in time.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The Jedi are basically magical space wizards who use magic swords and have whatever power is necessary to further the plot whenever necessary, to tell a fantasy story set in space. You could pretty much translate nearly every aspect of the story to a non-space setting and it would work just as well (the single biome planets just become different regions on the same planet, Han becomes a literal pirate with a literal ship, the Death Star is a magical artifact superweapon in a "Hidden Fortress", and suddenly you're reading a transcript of someone's D&D campaign).

The problem with that disingenuous argument is that it could be applied to *most* works. Star Trek, for instance, would work on the open sea where the space captain becomes a sea captain and the worlds are islands.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

It arguably isn't, though. Granted, it's a question that's as subjective as hell, but it feels to me like the Star Trek reboot alienated a lot of older Star Trek fans while pandering to a more mainstream audience (which isn't a bad idea, all things considered, at least monetarily as opposed to creatively), while The Force Awakens was deliberately crafted (so much so that we're agreeing that it might have been TOO MUCH so) to feel like original recipe Star Wars, and thus appeal to the same sorts of people who made Star Wars a success in the first place (and more importantly, win over a lot of older Star Wars fans who'd been disillusioned by the prequels).

It terms of standalone quality, Star Trek MIGHT be a better movie (but again, subjective as hell), but as a Star Trek movie in the context of everything that went before, it's a much worse movie at trying to be what Star Trek IS than Force Awakens is at being what Star Wars is supposed to be.

You kinda talked in circles here. However, taking all of the subjectivity aside, it's weird that you note that Star Trek 2009 alienated fans (ha!) while not acknowledging the same for TFA. And TFA certainly did alienate and annoy fans, hence leading to this very discussion.

As an interesting aside, Star Trek 2009 and TFA have *very* similar reception. ST is listed as an 8.0 on IMDB with a 94% RT score whereas TFA is 8.1 with 93%. It's eerily similar.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Whether you like The Force Awakens, it's a better Star Wars movie than Star Trek '09 is a Star Trek movie (and I say that in spite of generally LIKING Star Trek '09).

I completely disagree. It painfully tried to introduce and center around new unlikeable new characters while just repeating much of previous films, making the thing feel unnecessary. Even if the next film knocks it out of the park -- which it might -- that doesn't excuse the first movie.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Cloverfield and Super 8 were shit, though.

I vehemently disagree on Cloverfield. I can't comment on Super 8 as I only watched part of it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

If we're going with anecdotal arguments, I have trouble thinking of a single thing TPM did right, and I absolutely hated it at the time (there was a distinct "how the fuck could the trailer be so cool but the movie be so crap?" vibe right out of the gate), while I generally enjoyed TFA in a meaningless popcorn fluff sort of way. I didn't walk away from TFA thinking it was a brilliant cinematic masterpiece, but I also didn't walk away from it wondering what sort of brain parasites George Lucas obviously caught sometime around 1990 or so.

TPM conveyed a sense of wonder. We had an incredible underwater chase sequence with giant alien fish. We had the incredibly cool Darth Maul. Naboo and the Gungan Cities looked fantastic. While much of the film was a letdown, I was still optimistic for the sequels. TFA made me not care about Star Wars. Nothing has ever made me not care about Star Wars.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Did we? When did they appear? I must have blinked and missed them.

Did you mean Maul, who looked cool, but was more or less utterly valueless as a character and utterly worthless as part of the plot? There were droids in the Jawa crawler in A New Hope that had more personality (and I'm pretty sure Lo-Bot in Empire had more actual screen time, and possibly more dialogue). He was someone's notebook doodle who existed solely to sell merch when they slapped his face on it, but he was a complete afterthought in the actual story. And yes, I might have thought he was cool if I were 12 when Phantom Menace came out, but I wasn't. I was 22 and very much not impressed.

First off, everything about him exuded personality. And, while he'd feature far more deeply into the Clone Wars cartoon years later including in one of the best fights on the show (vs Pre Visla), even here he was incredible.

Sure, TPM *did* have useless things -- like that fucking pod race although I loved the N64 game -- but Maul wasn't one of them. And he was nowhere near as underutilized as the villains in TFA and, I should note, Kylo clearly took a page out of Maul's book given the generally pointless lightsaber battle at the end clearly put there to add action despite there being no real stakes.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Of course, in Star Trek's case the next movie we got was Into Darkness, which took a steaming hot dump on any hope or optimism the reboot might have inspired, so that promise doesn't always translate into results (which is why I've freely admitted that how The Last Jedi is handled will go a very long way to determining how I ultimately feel about TFA in the long run)

I enjoyed Into Darkness, but I'm also a Benedict Cumberbatch fan.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But in terms of likeable characters, let's be honest - in A New Hope, Luke was kind of a putz and Leia was kind of a bitch for about 90% of the movie. A lot of what cements them as such iconic characters in all of our minds is what happened to them in the follow-up movies.

Except for Han. He was cool from the word go.

I disagree. Luke instantly got over as an innocent farmboy who grew throughout the first film even *before* taking on new depths in later ones. Leia was a tsundere, which even then I didn't have an issue with.

And I'll note that you left out Chewbacca and R2-D2, who instantly won me over despite their lack of traditional dialogue. Then you had the *incredible* work of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin and Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan.

The only real character who was more likeable from the later films was Vader himself, who took a backseat to Tarkin and served as a more generic, almost out-of-place villain.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Which is ironic, because Poe was originally supposed to die, and got saved because test audiences really seemed to like him.

Yeah, we already went talked through that a few times. It's also one reason why I mentioned him as being more disposable. At any rate, he's like an enthusiastic Han Solo instead of a cynical Han Solo. As such, he's the only new character who seems to express much personality other than Kylo when throwing a tantrum.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Dooku? Aside from one of the worst names in the entire franchise, he was a shit character who was poorly portrayed and even more poorly written. In spite of the fact that I love Christopher Lee as an actor and a person, even he couldn't salvage anything worthwhile out of that mess.

I disagree on every count except, of course, for the fondness over Christopher Lee.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Sidious? Well, we already had Palpatine in the original movies, yet Lucas still managed to screw that up somehow in the prequels as well. Almost everything he does as Sidious or after he's revealed as Sith is poorly written and badly overacted (because Ian McDiarmid, like literally everyone involved in these movies whose name wasn't Ewan McGregor or Frank Oz, didn't give even the remotest of shits and was only there to cash a check). He's at his best when he's playing the character straight, but those are also the parts where he's delivering the most boring, soulless dialogue.

I don't consider him a new character. Otherwise, he's only unveiled as a Sith right towards of the end of RotS so that's kinda setting the bar low. It also plays into one of my biggest complaints about the prequels, which is having characters get into athletic fights who clearly don't look like they should be in athletic fights.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Jango? He's basically what you get if someone looked at Boba Fett in the original films, tried to replicate everything that made him cool, and then had a stroke in the middle of the process and did everything exactly wrong. He's lame and he gets way too much screen time and narrative importance solely to pander to fanboys.

The *only* problem with Jango is that he's portrayed strictly as a henchman (despite being a hired gun) whereas Boba Fett always felt like he was in business for himself. The presentation failings include the armor being too generic and not talking enough while helmeted. That helmet was part of Boba's magic. As soon as you see underneath the helmet, he's just a man.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Grievous? He's another worthless toy design character who was shoved in solely to produce an extra action figure, who does almost nothing of interest or worth in the plot, and who dies like a bitch. It's kind of telling that the only time the character ever feels impressive is in the cartoon that Lucas later declared was non-canon, because Lucas always feels threatened whenever anyone else does Star Wars better than he does.

While his intro was rocky, Grievous is hard not to love given his goofy combat in RotS. His fight sequence against Obi-Wan was hilarious. However, it's worth noting he was portrayed more seriously in the *better* Clone Wars cartoon.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Anakin? He's a whiny little shit through 99% of the movies regardless of which bad actor is playing him, and he suffers under some of the worst lines (and it's made even worse by the fact that he's the central character, and thus getting a ton of screen time). His performance is so bad it almost makes you retroactively hate Vader (almost - James Earl Jones is just too cool).

For all that some people whine about Kylo Ren being a whiny emo teen (and he absolutely is), he still has more personality than most of the prequel trilogy antagonists put together. He also has a narrative arc that is clearly designed to run through all of the movies, rather than simply being thrown in because they needed another cool toy design (that's Phasma's job).

Kylo works in exactly the same ways that Anakin doesn't. He almost feels like he was created specific to be a bit of a dig at how Anakin was presented in the prequels. And I'm invested enough in his story to want to see how it plays out, whereas the only real feeling of anticipation the prequels ever left me with was anticipating how bad the next movie was going to be.

Excluding TPM, Anakin seemed more compelling although that's more because he had a whole character arc where his turn to the darkside is more gradual as he succumbs to a series of temptations while simultaneously struggling with adhering to the austere Jedi code whereas Kylo's crankiness isn't thus far explained. However, the acting will *always* seem out-of-place unless Kylo is possessed by the spirit of a 12 y/o girl.

As for the remainder, I bemoan the fact that the lion's share of the actual dispute -- the discussion of the nature of scifi itself -- is at the very *end* of your posts since, at the moment, I don't have the time to give due consideration and response, which means that's going to have to wait =x
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Zeus posted...

Darth Maul is an incredibly cool antagonist that gets you interested. Darth Tyranus is an interesting antagonist. Genereral Grievous -- while kinda ridiculous-looking at first -- had a compelling character design and was an interesting antagonist. Jango Fett -- for all of his problems -- conveyed the inherent coolness of Boba Fett which made him, too, an interesting antagonist.

I would emphatically disagree with every single one of these statements.

They're true in theory, perhaps. But in application, no.

In a parallel universe where someone else took Lucas' final draft scripts and wrote a much better story using those character concepts, maybe. Darth Maul COULD be cool, if he was used as anything more than a marketing face and a throwaway cardboard antagonist. Dooku COULD be interesting, if he was written as a more complex character (which seems like it might have been Lucas' intention, albeit a complete failure on screen) and effectively portrayed, but as is he's garbage. Grievous is - again - a cool design who is only slightly more prominent than Maul (at least he gets more lines of dialogue, even if they're mostly pointless and delivered by a forgettable VA with lung problems).

Jango is wearing a cleaner version of Boba Fett's armor, and that's about it - again, in concept, he SHOULD be cool (because people thought Boba Fett was cool), but in practice he fails at nearly every single thing that made people think Boba Fett was cool in the first place (which isn't helped by the fact that he shows less emotion/personality in his dialogue and body language than Boba does in Empire/Jedi - which should be almost impossible - only made worse once he takes his helmet off and kills the "mysterious" appeal, and is attached to yet another annoying kid actor who doesn't really belong in the movies). There are about a dozen (if not hundreds of) better ways to present Boba Fett's backstory and origins if you really need to shoehorn him into those films, and Lucas basically went with the least interesting possibility (which not only makes Jango a zero of a character, it actually hurts Boba Fett's appeal in the same way that whiny Anakin puts Darth Vader into a new, worse light).

There isn't a single worthwhile antagonist character in the prequels. Which is admittedly fitting, because there really isn't a worthwhile protagonist character in the prequels, either.

(Obi-Wan's about the only one I'd give any credit to, and that mostly only because Ewan McGregor was literally the only actor who even remotely gave a shit, and was doing his damnedest to channel Alec Guinness into every aspect of his performance. But even he was still hampered by shit writing, so that only goes so far.)



Zeus posted...

The problem with that disingenuous argument is that it could be applied to *most* works. Star Trek, for instance, would work on the open sea where the space captain becomes a sea captain and the worlds are islands.

Not really, because it still ignores the intent of the work.

Star Trek wouldn't work as well in every alternate setting, but it actually could be extended to other settings IF you could somehow maintain the intent of the philosophical and moral themes, which COULD be done in many cases even outside of a space setting. As I've said, space as a setting alone does not make sci-fi (which is a door that swings both ways).

Star Wars has absolutely nothing to say other than "Here is an enjoyable story." At BEST, you could argue it's trying to explore the idea of the evil within a man's soul (poorly, because Lucas is bad at morality), but that's not really the purview of sci-fi.


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Zeus posted...

And one should keep in mind that there aren't very distinct lines between the two, other than what's pushed by genre purists who want to turn things into their form.

You mean the genre traits that you and some purists have decided upon to exclude anything you disdain to call scifi which, by the way, flies in the face of conventional definitions and understanding despite the best efforts of purism.

No matter how hard you keep pushing that particular button, there really isn't a vast false-flagging politically motivated conspiracy to "purify" sci-fi out of some deeper agenda.

And regardless of whether you like it or not, the conceptual constraints and motivations of the genre as a whole have been there almost from the very beginning, and help define it for the purposes of narrative critique and discussion. Most people don't see the need to differentiate because they're never going to explore anything deeper than "Well, I like what I like", and for those people (and Hollywood marketing firms who also don't care, AND who will say pretty much anything and happily lie if it gets more people in to see movies) the idea of "Well, it's set in space, so it's sci-fi" is always going to be about as complex as they're willing to go.

But on any level deeper than the most superficial, there are absolutely underlying premises and assumptions, and Star Wars (in film form) fails at almost every single one of them.



Zeus posted...

And one should keep in mind that there aren't very distinct lines between the two. Flash Gordon, for instance, was *widely* considered science fiction within its time... but modern purists have worked to revoke that status.

There's nothing that says something MUST either be sci-fi or not. It's entirely possible for any number of things to straddle genre conventions (for instance, Firefly/Serenity very much crosses the line between Western and Sci-Fi, and it isn't the "set in space!" part that makes it sci-fi). So while there ARE distinct lines between them on the genre side, no, those admittedly don't always extend to the actual movies/books/etc themselves.

But just because genre lines CAN be blurred doesn't mean that they are always blurred, or that a movie can't fall hard on one side of the line or the other.


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Zeus posted...

More so, you disregard a series predominantly about spaceships, battlestations, and the like in favor of a few magical elements which act only as plot contrivances. And, while doing so, you overlook that most of their actions are incidental or merely function as guiding an existing action.

The problem is that, even if we accept that the magical elements only act as plot contrivances, it doesn't really change much since the spaceships, battlestations, and the like are even less than that in most cases. The story sure as fuck isn't predominantly about them.

At no point is the story really ABOUT them. Again, the fact that the entire plot of the movies can easily be removed from the setting and the technology eliminated in favor of alternatives underlines that. Spaceships exist almost solely for getting from point A to point B (except for when they're straight analogues of WWII dogfighting footage, which again, not really sci-fi).

The closest you could ever come to making that argument would be to say that the Death Star is technology, and thus sci-fi - but because at no point are the ramifications of the Death Star ever really explored (the closest the movies ever come is one throwaway line about abolishing the Senate), it's not core to the plot as much as it is a MacGuffin that exists to allow Luke to become the hero he is destined to become.

But the real problem is that magic alone isn't the sole determinant of fantasy any more than space is the only thing you need for sci-fi. "The Force as magic" doesn't make Star Wars fantasy, its narrative structure and intent does. "Magic" being a thing is just a symptom of the underlying ethos.



Zeus posted...

Keep in mind that the epic conclusion of the OT had NO significance to the Jedi or Sith. The shield was lowered by non-Jedi. The second Death Star was destroyed by another non-jedi. In fact, the ENTIRE long battle had no relevance to the conclusion of the story arc, save maybe for giving a reason why the Emperor couldn't escape in time.

I notice you're ignoring the end of the individual movies leading up to that point, where a climactic battle was basically won by deliberately relying on magic over technology, and where we basically ended on a swordfight where people were magically throwing things at each other.

But even in Jedi, the way the film as presented tells you very clearly that the most important facet of the entire narrative isn't happening in the fleet battle (where they shoved the tertiary characters), or on Endor (where they shoved the secondary characters), but in the Emperor's throne room. The battle is entirely won or lost based on whether or not Luke overcomes the darkness within himself. Almost every weakness the Rebels exploit exists on purpose or was deliberately leaked to encourage them to attack (to draw Luke in).

The fact that the Rebels on Endor succeed has almost nothing to do with their technology, and is almost entirely predicated on the fact that the magical princess wins over the primitive tribe and gets them to help attack the shield generator, and they win by using the most primitive, anti-tech methods possible.

I've said before (and will say again) that Star Wars has far more common with Lord of the Rings than it does Star Trek, and it applies here as well. The Ewoks are basically the Hobbits in the Scouring of the Shire part of Return of the King (man, that title sounds familiar, doesn't it?). They're the tangible argument that spirituality and nature trump technology. They're the ultimate conclusion to Obi-Wan telling Luke to ignore the targeting computer and trust his instincts.


(I'll reply to more later)


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All I have to say is that Jim .Cantore is an evil hurricane summoning monster.

No less than 24 hours after landing in Gulfport, Mississippi the hurricane, which was drifting West and going to hit New Orleans, is now going to directly hit my hometown.

After tomorrow evening I'm not going to be able to post because I'm going to lose power, and the horrible nature of a hurricane is really going to set in some time Saturday night to Sunday morning.

I hate hurricanes and I hate Jim Cantore.
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Well ****.

Hurricane Nate is going to hit us directly along the Mississippi gulf coast. The worse news is that the bloody thing got much stronger than expected quicker than predicted. We expected a baby hurricane, and now it's a teenage hurricane going through puberty with anger issues and destructive tendencies.

My street floods in normal rain, and now we are going to get something like 9 feet of rain, 110mph winds, and 12 feet storm surge.

I'm trying to convince my wife to let us head for th e hills as it's going to be much worse than expected.

If we do stay then I'm going to miss you guys as it's going to be weeks before I'm able to get power and internet again. ...

Once my wife and I make a decision I will let you all know. Until then, keep posting.
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The Wave Master posted...

Hurricane Nate is going to hit us directly along the Mississippi gulf coast. The worse news is that the bloody thing got much stronger than expected quicker than predicted. We expected a baby hurricane, and now it's a teenage hurricane going through puberty with anger issues and destructive tendencies.

Stay safe, Wave. My parents will be visiting Florida in the coming week, and while it doesn't look like that state will be battered by the storm too much (well, Florida gets rain almost daily, but still), you never know with hurricanes.

I hope everything turns out fine for you, Wave. Best of luck, and take good care of yourself.

.

That said, I have been watching and kinda enjoying the new Ducktales. The episodic plots are serviceable or better. The trio of nephews are actually developing nicely, with an added bonus of the show exploring what happened to (at least one of) their parents. Launchpad is a little too much of an oaf, but it's fine. Webby's likable in this incarnation.

Despite only appearing in three of the five episodes thus far, David Tennant's Scrooge is what we'd expect from this incarnation - a bit of a Scottish Doctor running around as a multi-billionaire duck.

The villains from show-and-comic lore are shaping up as much as they need to, with my favorite build-up at the moment being Magica, as voiced by Catherine Tate. Oh, they better deliver with her and Tennant playing opposite of one another; the cast and crew all, I mean.
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Final Justice League trailer...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGl7IjSaKhE

It looks meh. Mainly because it looks like a damn video game built inside a computer, and acted entirely on a green screen. That and the humor in the trailer feels so forced. It's like DC took the criticism frolm the dour notes off the previous shared universe movies and went, "See, we can make our movies light and fun like Marvel too."

Either way Warner Brothers dropped this trailer today because The full last Jedi trailer is dripping tomorrow during Monday Night Football.

Hopefully It's better than this mess, and I'm sure it will be too.
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Entity13 posted...

That said, I have been watching and kinda enjoying the new Ducktales. The episodic plots are serviceable or better. The trio of nephews are actually developing nicely, with an added bonus of the show exploring what happened to (at least one of) their parents. Launchpad is a little too much of an oaf, but it's fine. Webby's likable in this incarnation.

Which service are you using to watch it?

Entity13 posted...

Despite only appearing in three of the five episodes thus far, David Tennant's Scrooge is what we'd expect from this incarnation - a bit of a Scottish Doctor running around as a multi-billionaire duck.

Holy shit, Tennant is voicing Scrooge? Didn't even notice >_<

The Wave Master posted...

It looks meh. Mainly because it looks like a damn video game built inside a computer, and acted entirely on a green screen. That and the humor in the trailer feels so forced. It's like DC took the criticism frolm the dour notes off the previous shared universe movies and went, "See, we can make our movies light and fun like Marvel too."

Either way Warner Brothers dropped this trailer today because The full last Jedi trailer is dripping tomorrow during Monday Night Football.

Hopefully It's better than this mess, and I'm sure it will be too.

Far more interested in it than TLJ
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Zeus, you have every right to your opinion, but you're more excited about the unearned DC Murderverse Justice League movie than Star Wars?

Spoilers.... (I don't like the spoiler geo tag thing.)

Is it when Supermn inspired hope when he snapped Zod's neck instead of finding a better way to subdue him? Or when he inspired hope by leaving a giant Kryptonian spaceship in the middle of Metropolis instead of dismantling it and tossing it i to the sun so no one could use it for evil in the future.

Maybe it was when the world's greatest detective failed to detect a plot from an idiot Lex Luthor for him to trick him into killing Superman, or when he failed to realize that Superman wasn't a bad guy at all based on some detective work or even looking at television for an hour or two.

At least Wonder Woman is awesome. But does she have another move other than that slow motion leg sweep?

Then there is Aquaman, Cyborg, and The Flash who have no character development prior to the movie because DC rushed everything in order to make this turd float in the punch before Avengers 3 next Summer.

Which of these blunders sound better than The Last Jedi?
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The Wave Master posted...

Zeus, you have every right to your opinion, but you're more excited about the unearned DC Murderverse Justice League movie than Star Wars?

[...]

Which of these blunders sound better than The Last Jedi?

While the DC movieverse has its share of problems, TFA committed the unforgivable sin of being boring. I can tolerate bad when it's still entertaining, but I can't stand boring. TFA was the first Star Wars movie where I couldn't care about a single character (well, Han was still good) -- whereas the DC heroes seem enjoyable -- and seeing a watered-down, defeated version of Luke isn't enough to get me to look forward to TLJ. I'll still watch it at some point, mind you, but I have zero excitement. Zero, sir.

And, while I'm tossing around bold, possibly unpopular opinions, I'm going to say that Rick & Morty season 3 is my favorite season, particularly because Morty's Mindblowers -- which was my second-fave episode this season in its own right -- replaced my least-favorite episodes from seasons 1 & 2. However, my favorite episode this season (and possibly in general?) was Vindicators 3.... maybe followed by Pickle Rick. I wasn't *that* into Pickle Rick's actual adventures, but the opening moments were hilarious as was the counseling session.
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I try not to rank seasons of Rick and Morty. I just enjoy the episodes, and as with any show some episodes are better than others.

When looking at the seasons I don't tend to think about ranking them because in the long run I don't think we are going to get many seasons of the show. Maybe 2 or 3 more before it's all over, or we get 2 or 3 years before seasons so I want to enjoy what little we do have, and not waste my time arguing with hipsters about nothing.

Besides I don't want to be one of these jerk fans that go all elitist and say, "Rick and Morty was better when it was a small cartoon network show before it became mainstream." I hate those people.
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The Last Jedi trailer is finally up! It's going to be an interesting movie, and Bank Robner already scored some tickets for myself and Oreon to accompany him for the Thursday night 7pm pre screening at our local cinema on the 14th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0CbN8sfihY

What do you think? It looks better than that okay Justice League trailer to me.
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I...just can't take Snoke and Kylo Ren seriously as antagonists.
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Oh man, I can't wait for Disney to make the 4th trilogy!
It's going to be so great, then the 5th and 6th will really bring it home.

In case you can't tell, I'm bored of Star Wars already.

The Wave Master posted...

I try not to rank seasons of Rick and Morty. I just enjoy the episodes, and as with any show some episodes are better than others.

When looking at the seasons I don't tend to think about ranking them because in the long run I don't think we are going to get many seasons of the show. Maybe 2 or 3 more before it's all over, or we get 2 or 3 years before seasons so I want to enjoy what little we do have, and not waste my time arguing with hipsters about nothing.

Besides I don't want to be one of these jerk fans that go all elitist and say, "Rick and Morty was better when it was a small cartoon network show before it became mainstream." I hate those people.

I find it impossible not to compare one thing to another thing, especially when it comes to seasons and films within a franchise against one another.

The Wave Master posted...

The Last Jedi trailer is finally up! It's going to be an interesting movie, and Bank Robner already scored some tickets for myself and Oreon to accompany him for the Thursday night 7pm pre screening at our local cinema on the 14th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0CbN8sfihY

What do you think? It looks better than that okay Justice League trailer to me.

Good god, that opening narration is awful. It sounds like something out of a bad fan-dub. The only plus side is that the First-Order AT-ATs look neat and the special effects might be good but, then again, that was true of the prequel trilogy.

On the plus side, Daisy Ridley looks slightly cuter than in the last film but... Kylo still seems lame (especially because they're putting so much effort into hiding some motivation which is intended to justify why he wants to Dark Side so badly despite everything pushing him against it) and I'm not seeing *anything* to be excited for outside of the special effects. And sure, that's some dope-ass TIE Interceptor flying but I need more.

WhiskeyDisk posted...

I...just can't take Snoke and Kylo Ren seriously as antagonists.

Yeah, they're seriously weak. Hopefully they won't suck so badly in the film.
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I noticed the copy and pasted ("homage") scene of Kylo leading a gaggle of stormtroopers via bird's eye view, a la Anakin in Episode 3. Doesn't do much to quell my disdain at the intentional references to the previous films.

OK, probably a little too dramatic for just one small clip. But I will say, practically the only reason I'm excited about this is to see Luke. The new characters really have failed to grow on me.
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The Wave Master posted...

Cuphead looks interesting, but I don't think it's a game that I will play. Because it's on the Xbone and the pc, and I loathe pc gaming. The other reason is that it's difficult for the sake of being difficult. However, I do like the art style. It looks like a Steam Boat Willy cartoon bought to life, and that's pretty cool.

It IS one of the few games for the PC that I've run into as of late that I'm sure would feel better with a controller. Even after customizing the controls, it still doesn't feel *quite* right. That said, I disagree with the "difficult foe the sake of difficult" part. Don't get me wrong, it IS difficult, but looking back on many of the bosses (I'm a little over half-way through), many of their attack patterns are very simple, and it was just my own impatience/ham-handedness that cost me so many tries to beat. Interestingly, it doesn't really have that "here's where I take all of your quarters" feel of many run and guns, like Metal Slug (which, btw, is a series I adore), especially since the attack patterns of many bosses are randomized, so you can't sit there and remember them, a la Donkey Kong). It' very much adapting on the fly and having great situational awareness, which leads to interesting results (some bosses I absolutely struggled with my friend would beat with ease, and visa versa).

That said, I likely wouldn't be playing the game if not for the amazingly charming animation style and music, which is of course the chief draw here.
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