I bought this 9-pack on Amazon Video some time ago. Noticing the closed captioning is out of sync very badly, I really struggled to figure out where I could report the problem.
Watching this now, I see the problem persists.
It's so annoying. The captions are a good 60 seconds early. You see the lines way before they are spoken, often across a cut that hasn't happened yet.
@onelson we watched every episode of Girls so he is permanently a sensitive enigmatic hipster who lives in Greenpoint , and they even put some of that character in the movie. He's not plausible as any kind of dark lord or anything like that for me. Made the movies feel much less serious
As a teen I was deeply into Star Wars. I fell in love with it just in time to see the Remasters arrive, the color treatment was so good. Then immediately, I felt the rug pull of the Special Editions. I enjoyed being able to see beloved movies in the cinema again, but all the CG additions felt like a betrayal.
The Phantom Menace continued to push me towards feeling obligated-then-alienated.
Today, I feel different. Today, it's fine. This is not a good movie, but really are any of them?
@onelson I think the big thing which hit the prequels was the realization that George Lucas had only ever thought of them as basically kids movies. I wanted the alternate world where he had an equal relationship with Marcia.
As for the filmmaking happening here, I think the cast must have been so wrung out and beaten down by all the green screen that even when they are performing against live actors, the eye lines are still so fucked up.
I think the level of detachment on set works in some cases. Sam Jackson always looks incredibly bored, and I don't think that was just his acting skills.
This scene where the Jedi Council are evaluating Anakin brings back memories.
As an animation student, one assignment in my sophomore year was to do a sort of self-portrait lipsync thing. We had to sketch a caricature of ourselves, then do a CG lipsync animation where we stood in for another character in a clip from a movie.
I took the place of young Anakin and argued with Yoda for mine 🤣
#NowWatching Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Yeah, okay. This one largely didn't work for me, but it's my next stop on this Star Tour of mine.
In a real way, this movie just sort of "fills in gaps" which probably isn't one of those golden rule of storytelling things iirc.
If I want to fill in anything around this period, I'd probably watch the Cartoon Network Clone Wars show by Genndy Tartakovsky, which was beautiful.
The early portion of this movie is chock full of slapstick, often involving droids. This is verging on The Three Stooges, but fake as fuck and therefore less rewarding to watch.
It's so incongruous. Obiwan, Anakin, and Palpatine are in the cockpit of half a huge cruiser which they crashland on a runway. During the landing they crash into a control tower, which presumably had people working in it. Presumably the "back half" of the cruiser was manned by several people. Obiwan cheerfully announces a "happy landing" in spite of this. Surely there was a considerable loss of life.
"How can you BE on the council and NOT be a Master??"
I think Anakin is rightfully perplexed but at the same time this kid is a shit. He's so stupid for not realizing Palpatine is forcing the move. Dude is a dumb dumb.
All this said, I do quite enjoy the sweet irony of the misreading of The Prophecy. I think it's cute that "bringing balance to the force" was a reduction on the Jedi side to realign to the Sith side. It's a total "technically correct is the best kind of correct" move.
During all the action sequences, I keep thinking of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Like, the entire thing is animated, but there's (possibly) one live actor in the frame. Often the actor isn't even there. It's a CG likeness.
Once this one is over, I'll get a little more settled in for hobby hacking hours. I have a cat who is begging for blanket on the couch time, but I keep fussing with chores like an idiot.
Not going to overthink this but it's curious that on Mustafar, a job you can get is to stand on a floating platform and scoop lava out of a lava river with a long-handled bucket.
Since I bought these on Amazon Video, they are followed immediately with the special features, which in this case are a series of unfinished CG sequences. This takes me back to my art school days. Lots of flat shaded, untextured, blocking animation.
The model stand-ins they are using to block Anakin's motion show him with a long ponytail, which I think is neat because it gives him that sort of Leo Johnson look.
Yeah, okay. I'm just going to let these deleted unfinished playblasts roll while I finish chores. THEN it'll be time to partake in ep 4, putting me back on a more sure footing.
I'm going to use the special edition ones, I guess. That's what I'll be watching, after all. The artwork for those posters was great too. Love the look.
I like that at this stage, most people don't really give a fuck about the force and will openly mock this guy who slaughtered all the younglings, back in the day.
And I never thought about this before, but that whole "jedi as investigators" thing holds true in this movie as Obi-wan makes the key observation about Sand People always traveling single file while they survey the blasted up Jawa Sandcrawler.
In reality, Obi-wan is really just a Mary Sue, put here as a narrative shortcut. Let's not draw out the investigation. Instead let's jump straight to the punchline.
I mentioned it earlier, but I really think the controversy around "who shot first" is more of an indictment against the fandom than anything else. It's got a superficial impact on how I see Han as a character. The bigger problem is just how clumsy the edit was, which is the same as the rest of the special edition aftermarket mods.
@Sadsquatch CG Jabba was an "unforced error." We didn't need that scene for context or any other reason. Lucas had the footage and was like, "well I guess I can use it." It's like those scientists who made Jurassic Park without stopping to ask if they should.
I will say, I don't mind a lot of the CG space ship changes. The CG Millenium Falcon looks fine, and the rest of the Rebel fighters also looked good. I can overlook the fact that they feel subtly to undercut the achievements of Murin et al on developing the whole technique of "Go-motion" animation. The effects shop in '77 invented a whole new way to handle motion-control photography.
Something I never noticed before is how the gun turrets in the falcon are accessed, from the main level, up and down a ladder, but the ladder is at the backs of the seats. This means there's some sort of completely understated gravity shift local to those turret rooms.
George Lucas sitting in his home, musing: "Now what can I do to fuck this one up in small ways that don't add much but are still sort of grating? Episode IV will be hard to beat."
@onelson Ep5 is the least-wrecked of the SE films. I really miss Luke’s line to R2 about how “you’re just lucky droids don’t taste very good”. Otherwise I’m pretty happy with it.
There's been a lot of fun Star Wars merch over the years, but there are 2 standout items I think about.
I had a "Yoda Training" Backpack I bought in the 90s (it was a backpack that looked like Yoda was riding on your back like Luke had while training on Dagobah) . The other is a Tauntaun sleeping bag which was sold by Thinkgeek for some time.
Speaking of Empire merch, I remember seeing someone selling a replica jacket like the one Luke wears in Bespin, and I wanted one so badly but it was hundreds of dollars.
I always forget what the name of the creature is that sits beside Jabba, but I know it's fucking dumb like "Mr Critter" or something. I'm looking it up.
They're doing the briefing about the mission to take out Deathstar 2, and General Madine is my favorite in here for his painted-on-lookin' facial hair.
It's like a stapled on piece of carpet or something.
When I played SWG, I seem to remember one of the good grind spots for collecting lightsaber crafting materials was to slaughter Ewoks in this one cave on Endor and I would spend hours and hours absolutely slaying generations of these critters.
This movie is wrapping up. The final moments of this have probably the most egregious overstep of the special editions. I think the reshoot of the jedi ghosts is largely unforgivable.
#NowWatching Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)
Is it me or is this movie poster totally phoned-in compared to earlier ones?
The composition just feels chaotic with so many long angled lines pulling the eye in different directions.
@Sadsquatch I had a bit of a hard time with it. Mostly I remember thinking the whole concept was, "We remember the original trilogy. We see you and your pain."
All three of these suffer from varying degrees of being overloaded with fan service, I think.
@onelson A fair point. Of the new trilogy I found this first one the strongest and best executed, but then all the cool stuff I thought they were setting up kinda got squandered in the second two and replaced with, uh, less cool stuff.
So I guess where I land is "the fan service in The Force Awakens is pretty enjoyable but then they let the Worst Fans dictate the second two, and my disappointment is immeasurable"
Rey the scavenger is also just a very cool character, and a great way to acclimate the audience to the passage of time. She's out here picking over the scraps of things we're familiar with from earlier movies and it's just very fun.
Well, I guess the movie ended some time ago and I should roll the next one. I was distracted with my programming project and my laundry. Maybe dinner, then I'll roll through the next two.
I'm sort of confused because the poster shows what I mostly thought (misremembering) was the conclusion to the trilogy arc. Somehow I thought that battle on the red sand flats was in episode 9.
tbh I think this is one is decently cogent. I like the whole hyperspace tracking pursuit plotline, and Rey trying to learn stuff from Luke plotline, and the Adam Driver Big Pants.
This is apparently my favorite of the 3rd trilogy.
If I remember right, Porgs were invented to "cover up" the puffins that lived on the island who would not stay out of frame no matter what they tried during the shoot.
@onelson kinda funny that they wrote themselves into a corner hard enough that they just didn't try to address why what they did wasn't a huge break in the rules of space combat established for the series. just… move along.
@SnoopJ iirc there are comments in earlier chapters about charting hyperspace courses and winding up inside a planet or asteroid or something, so this doesn't feel like a huge break to me.
@onelson oh yea the perils of hyperspace gone wrong in general are definitely established. It's cool that 8 decided to bring that to space combat, but it does feel like it leaves a hanging "uhhh well why not always do this"
Probably they figured that fans would (do) eagerly debate the reasons if they just never bothered to address it
@SnoopJ I'd have said "because who would ever want to sacrifice a cruiser like that, normally" but taking out 3 or 4 star destroyers with a single cruiser does seem like a good exchange, even more if you're going to lose it anyway.
Okay. Home stretch. My main lift for hobby hacking game dev is committed and pushed to the repo, so I can use this last movie as casual refactor/cleanup time.
#NowWatching Star Wars: Episode IX - Rise of the Skywalker (2019)
I might have only seen this one twice before, once in theaters and once at home. Or maybe twice at home. I don't even know if I bothered to go to the theater.
All I remember is it felt like a total fever dream.
I never read any of the Star Wars novels, and I understand there are a lot of things in them which are not canon for whatever reason, but wasn't Palpatine surviving Endor and Deathstar 2 a thing in the books? I thought it was.
I thought there was something about him floating around in space and keeping himself alive, and then his body was recovered but in a coma. To be honest it sounds a lot like what they did for Leia in episode VIII.
I feel like I misremembered a lot because Carrie Fisher has been here all along and I thought she died during the production, or between VIII and IX, but no. She's here. Maybe there's some sort of de-aged flashback or something that I thought was hokey? There's something.
@onelson ohhhhhhh, I completely forgot. I've watched Rise of Skywalker... I think twice? I own eight replica lightsabers and once wrote a Star Wars musical - it just disgusts me that much. 😬
@onelson Carrie Fisher died after 8. Her Ep9 footage is from outtakes that didn’t make it into Ep7 that they built a story around. That’s a big part of why it feels off.
@onelson I kinda love it. A great twist - the rules have been torn up, and it's unclear where Ren goes from there. It's one of the many reasons why IX was so disappointing - there was a really cool potential schism between the Resistance, First Order and Ren's Sith whatever. But no. No decision Ren makes in VIII to forge his own destiny means anything.
@onelson I wish there had been more actual casino hijinks, though. They do that awesome homage to Wings and then the “yup, that’s them” guy shows up and wrecks everything.
@webology It's funny because I know I have had gripes about Star Wars over the entire duration, but seeing JJ Abrams in this Behind The Scenes stuff, he just comes across as a guy who was fuckin' around. Kid in a candy shop type attitude, not anything more.
@webology I think you're right on the timeline, but my point is just that somehow he navigated the Star Trek projects without going off the deep end, so whatever happened was really specific to these movies. He's not a general rule sci-fi franchise ruiner.
@onelson I thought they weren't even interesting villains in it. Just a lot of copy and paste and stormtroopers, even when they mirror them.
I liked the movie the best of the three. I have never rewatched the last three. I probably should at some point, but they basically took a 💩 on my childhood. I liked the new characters but they didn't seem to know what to do with them after that first movie.
@webology@SnoopJ The behind the scenes stuff that has been playing while I return to my Sunday chores made it apparent there was no real plan for these movies beyond "make another 3 star wars movies."
Seems like everyone was really excited to be involved in the project but to the OG cast members the thought was, "Why? But okay, I guess I'll do it." Everyone else's take was, "Hell yeah, I just want to be in the frame!"
@webology@SnoopJ I think Harrison Ford must be the most bemused at this point. Reprisals of Jones, Deckard, Solo, all within the space of a few years. He's getting paid and that's all I can hope for him. He knows what's happening.
@webology@SnoopJ I'm realizing just now: this is in fact what you get when you give Hollywood players license to do canonized fanfic. That's all this is.
@bitprophet@onelson I think it’s to do with the design of the Falcon being radically changed midway through production. The original design for it was basically the blockade runner body with the Falcon’s cockpit on the front.
@onelson Check out “A New Hope Revisited” by an editor called Adywan. His version is sort of a best of all versions take, incorporating SE changes that worked, reverting the ones that didn’t, adjusting esoteric things (like places the rear audio channels got accidentally swapped, making Vader’s chest lights blink consistently), fixing the color grading, and generally being what SE should have been. It’s great - clearly a labor of love.
@onelson that always felt like such a lazy way for Amazon to handle special features, and was confusing as hell the first time I saw it… like, “I thought this movie was two hours long, why does the play bar show five hours?”
Grid Bidlax was a Lava Trout Net-Fisherlax[1][2] on Mustafar, a dangerous occupation[3] that they were forced to undertake by the local Lava Boss, Bib Kiblib[2][4]
@onelson What throws me from my last rewatch is like… what I remember from my original watch is somehow their fight is so violent it causes the structure to begin collapsing. But no. They're just fighting, and an entire giant lava collector wing just falls off. Most of the danger is due to this falling collector wing and it had nothing to do with anything. It just happened and they happened to be standing nearby.
@onelson I can only make this make sense if this is an incredibly hazardous operation where this sort of stuff just happens all the time, and for some reason whatever they're harvesting is so valuable they can afford to lose an entire collector wing like once every two days and just replace it cuz like well ofc the lava is going to tear off components pretty frequently?
@onelson …but if the installation itself is under such great threat, that raises questions as to whether it's a good secure facility to hide your important fugitive diplomats?!
@mcc My guess is this was just due to it being remote and inhospitable, but again I think this is a trap. I think rationalizing any of this is far too generous.
@onelson Putting it this way may make the script sound smarter than it is but an interesting tension in ep. 3 is how Anakin is very much not an adult, is constantly angry at the jedi for not treating him like an adult, but if you look at events carefully the actual problem was treating Anakin like an adult when what he needed was emotional support like you'd give a growing, learning child.
They leave lots of things unsaid an experienced adult could have easily parsed, give him too much trust
I remember starting to read it as a goof in like 1997 before getting engrossed in it because it was so detailed, and I still think about it all these years later
@onelson it really deflates the cool fight that precedes it by shoving the "what if creaky old character who hobbles everywhere is actually spry when fighting teehee" thing down the viewer's optic nerves
@onelson I've never before considered it but man they really missed an opportunity to do an awesome fight by having him still be creaky and old, but whipping ass in the fight anyway?
@onelson The IMAX cut of Ep2 was really interesting. In order to fit the hard time constraint of the format, it got really trimmed down. Most of the stuff that really sucks is gone, and there’s a lot more focus on the noir detective story. The whole tone of the movie changes, and it’s really cool.
@onelson It’s really the second one where the green screen got out of hand. Phantom Menace has a remarkable amount of actual sets and actual miniatures.
@onelson I’m not at all hard of hearing but I live with many other humans and animals who like to make noises so I started turning on CC about a decade ago so I don’t miss the main important plot points. The state of CC across the board is pretty bad honestly. Old shows/movies, new shows/movies doesn’t seem to matter. I tried reporting a few things a few times to no avail. It’s frustrating
@frank Yeah, this isn't the first time I've gone down the path of trying to report, but not once have I seen a positive outcome from the effort it takes. Very frustrating.
@onelson I completely understand a misspelled word here or there. Even a slightly different wording of the same basic dialog (which I see all the time) or out of sync time a bit. But how a well watched old show (think West Wing or the like) can have two dozen major issues per episode decades later surprises me. It’s obvious no one cares.
@onelson hah! I’ve seen that too when it’s the WRONG CC for the show, but to be fair I’ve also had a couple of streaming experiences where I got the wrong audio for the video being played. SpongeBob Episode #57 for Hellraiser II (I joke but basically)
The ones that really frustrate me is when the character clear as day said “NO! Don’t run into the fire” and the CC is “(inaudible)”
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