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Longes
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Post by Longes »

Mask_De_H wrote:
Longes wrote:I'll elaborate later, but the short version is that I consider Rey to be a mary sue because she never faces meaningful opposition. Her lowest moment in TLJ is that Luke doesn't live up to her standards and expectations.
That's not what a Sue is, fam; that's what a wish-fulfillment protagonist just does. To be a Sue: everyone has to be fellating Rey's every action, she has to have no meaningful flaws (outside of being too awesome), and her very existence must warp the romantic/dramatic plot around her and not other characters of equal narrative weight (which, depending on how you feel about 1st trilogy nostalgia acts, may be true).

Basically, what Frank said, but with more parentheses :tongue:
She does rob other characters og their narrative weight all the god damn time. Kylo Ren doesn't matter by the end of the first movie out of three because he's already been beaten by the hero. Handicap-shmandicap, the threat is gone. They could have done that scene differently. They could have had Kylo win the fight against Rey before succumbing to his wounds and letting the characters escape. But they didn't, and so they established the main bloody villain as incompetent compared to the main character. And that's all Rey does - rob other characters of their weight and competence to take it for herself. She diminishes Han Solo's presence by immediately out mechanicing him in regards to the Falcon. That severely cuts down Han because his relationship with the ship is the cornerstone of the character (I think it's uncontroversial to say that the words Han Solo and Millennium Falcon are almost synonymous) and Rey is better at it than he is. She outforces Snoke. She outheroes Luke. No character matters because Rey is always better than everyone at the thing they are supposed to be good at.

On top of that, there is no narrative arc for Rey. If you look at the original trilogy you'll see a clear development of Luke from lazy farmboy avoiding chores to a calm and collected jedi. Rey starts the movies as the ultra kind hearted heroic hero who fixes up droids out of the goodness of her heart. Her character is not going anywhere. Episode 7 Rey and Episode 8 Rey would make identical choices because there is no character development.
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Post by Starmaker »

I liked TLJ.
Leia living: she's Luke's twin. "Gurls can't Force" was terrible and you know it. That said, she IS massively shat on, in that she blows as the leader of the Resistance. Her HR and outreach work is a war crime.

Hux and Kylo Ren as joke villains - they're basically the alt-right, undignified but dangerous. It's perfect.

Rey is very good. Her glaring flaw for most of the movie (as a person, not a character) is the main flaw of the Star Wars setting: she considers awesomeness a heritable trait. She thought Emo Luke and Emo Kylo Ren were better people and better saviours of the galaxy than existing Resistance fighters and sympathizers, including herself. One could argue she checks the box for writer pet low self-worth, but the dynamics are completely different. No one fawns over her, and when she finally overcomes it, the message isn't "I'm totes the bestest", it's "we're all awesome, fuck the aristocracy". The Force isn't just for lifting rocks, it's also for swiping space cow shit off the floor.

Luke's case was a no-win from the beginning. To have a dignified send-off in the timeline, he should have died long before 7, which is obviously unacceptable for the story.

Mark Hamill allegedly hating the movie:
He doesn't. Mark Hamill had "a different vision" for the character, which probably means he didn't like Luke became a failure. And you know what? That's normal. Actors generally like playing awesome characters (heroes or villains) more than pussies, and people who root for a character don't like when he or she fails.
Hamill also tweets about how he likes the movie and is BFFs with Rian Johnson. Considering he also bashes Trump, Don Jr., Ajit Pai, pedo Roy Moore and the Zodiac Killer via twitter, I'm pretty sure Disney isn't pulling his strings.

Luke sucking: I don't like the visuals, but the narrative doesn't disgust me. Luke is a space samurai who carries his laser katana everywhere. He saw a scary hallucination and did what a space samurai is supposed to do when he or she sees something scary: he quickdrew his katana. He fucked up and went into monastic retirement.

Finn and Rose's mission fail: uh, Cloud City? I don't see the point of movies with no chance of the heroes failing.
I like del Toro's character, too: his message is there are no Neutral Me "lovable rogues" in the fight against Space Nazis.

Holdo not being an established character: you're an MRA, fuck off.

Holdo's plan: Okay, a question: how many people are needed to vet a plan? Should every pilot get a say? Every technician? Rose? The bunny girl? Suppose they hold a democratic vote, can the people who lost the vote fuck off and do their own things?

Most stuff not making sense:
Many things "don't work that way", either within the fictional universe or where it touches real physics. Droids and holograms were in the original trilogy. Why do ships still have windows? Why do they need human pilots?
(The tracker and bombs IN SPAAAAAACE were so purposelessly terrible and offensive they're inexcusable.)
maglag wrote:Since the original star wars movie there is sound in sspppaaacceeee. The setting physics have always been whatever the plot demands.
It's a matter of plausibility feels and aesthetics. A good metaphor for it is the lens flare that people want to see in "realistic" movies.
Most viewers know how planes fly, they know precisely dick about spaceships, so most plane physics work for fictional spaceships. Conservation of momentum is not a thing and can be safely ignored.
But unattended floaty things? They fucking float. Objects dropped from a ship can slow down (like objects dropped from a car slow down), but they end up floating because we know full well space stuff floats in space movies, including in Star Wars.

Words people said: Snoke's line after "destiny" will be the go-to example of atrocious writing for generations.

Admiral Ackbar is a joke character, the spaaaaaaace equivalent of a Runequest duck.
nockermensch wrote:why the hell are like 3 star destroyers just watching the dreadnought being attacked on the first battle?
If you mean Poe, every shot that misses him hits the ship. The bombers do a suicide run and only succeed by sheer luck anyway.
nockermensch wrote: and the result is a movie you watch to follow the soap opera between the characters. And they seem to be aiming at this very segment, anyway.
I'm watching it for the politics. Not the trade disputes, of course, but the real-life principles upheld or condemned by the narrative.
Frank wrote:But honestly I believe Rotten Tomatoes when they say that the score is simply authentic.
The exit polls are very favorable, and at this stage that's what Rotten Tomatoes is supposed to reflect, too. It doesn't, so it's cooked.
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Post by deaddmwalking »

I'll have more to say when we aren't hiding spoilers, but I doubt very much that Rotten Tomatoes is deliberately tanking the audience score. If they were going to put a thumb on the scale, I can imagine a pretty big financial reason to exaggerate how many people liked it (because studios want people to see movies and most people want to see movies they'll enjoy) - I don't see any reason they'd lie the other way.

For myself, the movie wasn't great. We're talking 'Attack of the Clones' which is to say it's a pretty disappointing sequel. I saw that once in theaters and never again - this'll be more of the same. But I won't even watch the original trilogy anymore unless I can buy a theatrical release. The extended scene cuts DRIVE ME FUCKING OUT OF MY MIND.

When I walked out of the theater into the hallway I nearly walked into a poster for 'Solo' coming out in February. I said 'nope'. I'm not going to do that to myself.

Ultimately, if I see EVERYTHING that has a Star Wars logo on it, then there isn't much reason to ensure everything they release is worth it. I expect that they're going to start making BETTER Star Wars movies, but I'm feeling that now isn't the time.

Avoiding spoilers, I feel like the 'revelation' about Rey's parents is flimsy enough that it will almost certainly be overturned in the next movie. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other, but it certainly didn't seem convincing.
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Post by Voss »

Starmaker wrote: "we're all awesome, fuck the aristocracy"
Yeah, fuck that Rebellion! Fuck the Aristos! Fuck Leia!
Authoritarian regimes and brainwashed anonymous children for everyone!

This beat makes me think Johnson was very unfamiliar with Star Wars. The Rebellion was extremely aristocratic, and a 'class struggle' theme for Star Wars is essentially nonsense- normal people, working class or middle class, are essentially non-existent. Its either nobles, politicians, generals and merchant leaders, or criminals, slaves and faceless, nameless soldiers all the way down.
Luke's case was a no-win from the beginning. To have a dignified send-off in the timeline, he should have died long before 7, which is obviously unacceptable for the story.
Really, honestly nonsense. Luke could have been slipped quite easily into a Merlin/Gandalf role, sent his chosen apprentice(s) (literally any of Poe, Finn or Rey, given their complete lack of backgrounds) off on a mission that intersects with Jakku in TFA, then died heroically at the end of Act 2.
deaddmwalking wrote:Avoiding spoilers, I feel like the 'revelation' about Rey's parents is flimsy enough that it will almost certainly be overturned in the next movie. I don't have strong feelings one way or the other, but it certainly didn't seem convincing.
Johnson again, I think. Just not wanting to 'pause' his 2.5 hour snore fest to engage with the one fucking point of character development Abrams set up for Rey. I totally see Abrams fitting in a return 'fuck you' directed at Johnson.
Last edited by Voss on Sun Dec 24, 2017 3:58 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Post by MGuy »

The difference between Finn's Fantastic adventure is that it is a throwaway side quest that does literally nothing for the rest of the plot. The Cloud city thing removes Han from the board, gives Luke a reason to defy Yoda which has other consequences, and sets up for what's going to happen in the next movie. I think people who bring up Cloud City as some kind of defense for that dumb side quest don't understand why it was bad. Hell even the people introduced in Cloud City that really aren't a big deal like Lando and Boba Fett are actually stupidly popular ass characters. Finn's side story can't even boast that.
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Post by Voss »

Starmaker wrote:The exit polls are very favorable, and at this stage that's what Rotten Tomatoes is supposed to reflect, too. It doesn't, so it's cooked.
What the actual fuck? You're citing an article that is selectively culling 'random samples' and 'being allowed' to provide 'some ' of someone else's adjusted exit polling data (without providing meaningful details on any of it) to 'prove' that someone's else's numbers are cooked?

I don't care where you stand on anything, that's just fucked up.


You're also wrong. Rotten Tomatoes isn't an exit poll. It gives no shit if you're still on an endorphin high from the movie, on an actual high from whatever you were smoking during the movie, kneejerking about <whatever issue> or gave it a good long think for a week.
Last edited by Voss on Sun Dec 24, 2017 4:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Emerald »

Starmaker wrote:I liked TLJ.
Leia living: she's Luke's twin. "Gurls can't Force" was terrible and you know it.
Leia using the Force and being awesome is great. Her flying slowly through space like Mary Poppins instead of Force-pushing off a big piece of debris or Force-launching herself back to the ship or otherwise moving the way Force-enhanced movement has been shown to work, not so much.
Holdo not being an established character: you're an MRA, fuck off.
How does not liking that they introduced a new character and gave them what was supposed to be a moving and impressive death scene while shitting over all the established characters have anything to do with feminism or MRA-ism or whatever?

It's not a problem with a female character making a heroic sacrifice; Rose's bomber pilot sister does that earlier in the movie and neither I nor anyone I've talked to has any issue with that--not her being a woman, at least, trying to introduce drawn-out "Oh no, will she get to the button in time!?!?!" artificial tension really made the scene fall flat.

Heck, If Leia had been the one to perform the suicide maneuver, then not only would she have gotten the most dramatic sendoff of the OT trio, but from a purely practical perspective they wouldn't be scrambling to rewrite Episode IX to work around Carrie Fisher's death.
Holdo's plan: Okay, a question: how many people are needed to vet a plan? Should every pilot get a say? Every technician? Rose? The bunny girl? Suppose they hold a democratic vote, can the people who lost the vote fuck off and do their own things?
If she'd gotten to the point of having anyone vet a plan, that would have been an improvement.

As it stands, if you're supposed to be the person in charge of a resistance movement whose numbers are dwindling rapidly and you need to keep up morale and someone questions you in front of everyone about whether you have a plan to get them out of that mess--someone who, by the way, you have previously berated for not thinking things through and just flying by the seat of their pants--the only correct response is "Yes, don't worry, I totally have a plan to save our bacon, trust me, I'm the Admiral," even if you don't have one.

"Nah, 'having plans' didn't work out before so I'm just not gonna make one" is not a correct response. Nor is "Nah, this attempted mutiny is going to get a lot of people killed but I still don't have a plan so I'm just going to stand here and not say anything."

I mean, seriously. Not a difficult question.
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Post by Prak »

nockermensch wrote: [*] bomber ships that have to fly over the target ship to drop bombs. On space. Oh, and the bomb hatch activation mechanism is something that would look antiquated on Earth circa 1950. Oh, and this is a setting that has torpedoes. Fuck that scene.
That entire scene, all I was thinking was how shitty the bomber design was.
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Post by rasmuswagner »

So, I just watched Bright, the somewhat hyped modern fantasy cop movie. It's pretty good, mostly. Not great, but good enough.

However.... Will Smith's character is super unlikeable. Not just wrong, but downright unpleasant. And the attempts to lighten it with the actor's famous brand of "charm" is even less successful than in Suicide Squad. Even after his learning-to-accept-his-buddy arc, he is still being a condescending shit to him.
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Post by Longes »

rasmuswagner wrote:So, I just watched Bright, the somewhat hyped modern fantasy cop movie. It's pretty good, mostly. Not great, but good enough.

However.... Will Smith's character is super unlikeable. Not just wrong, but downright unpleasant. And the attempts to lighten it with the actor's famous brand of "charm" is even less successful than in Suicide Squad. Even after his learning-to-accept-his-buddy arc, he is still being a condescending shit to him.
The important question is - how Shadowrun is it?
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Post by Prak »

rasmuswagner wrote:So, I just watched Bright, the somewhat hyped modern fantasy cop movie. It's pretty good, mostly. Not great, but good enough.

However.... Will Smith's character is super unlikeable. Not just wrong, but downright unpleasant. And the attempts to lighten it with the actor's famous brand of "charm" is even less successful than in Suicide Squad. Even after his learning-to-accept-his-buddy arc, he is still being a condescending shit to him.
Seriously. People keep making Will Smith the Fantasy Racist (Bright, iRobot, I Am Legend) and/or completely unlikable asshole (Hancock, Bright) and.... why? Just... why?
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FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

Because those are the roles he takes?
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Post by K »

Bright is a fun movie. Pretty standard cop movie plot with fantasy races thrown in.
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Post by Koumei »

FrankTrollman wrote:I haven't seen Last Jedi because I've been working too much. But honestly it sounds pretty much like a "wait for video" movie.
I'd say it's the other way around: I liked the big space battles and explosions*, and for that, you want to watch it on the big screen. If you watch it at home, you miss out on that, and then you're left with a kind of average movie.

*It turns out I actually have a very simple mind.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

There were some really dumb parts of The Last Jedi but I did enjoy the movie. I can see why others did not.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Prak wrote:
rasmuswagner wrote:So, I just watched Bright, the somewhat hyped modern fantasy cop movie. It's pretty good, mostly. Not great, but good enough.

However.... Will Smith's character is super unlikeable. Not just wrong, but downright unpleasant. And the attempts to lighten it with the actor's famous brand of "charm" is even less successful than in Suicide Squad. Even after his learning-to-accept-his-buddy arc, he is still being a condescending shit to him.
Seriously. People keep making Will Smith the Fantasy Racist (Bright, iRobot, I Am Legend) and/or completely unlikable asshole (Hancock, Bright) and.... why? Just... why?
He's playing against type to prove that he can. It's to remind people that he has actual acting skills and can play characters who aren't some variation of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
Longes wrote:
rasmuswagner wrote:So, I just watched Bright, the somewhat hyped modern fantasy cop movie. It's pretty good, mostly. Not great, but good enough.

However.... Will Smith's character is super unlikeable. Not just wrong, but downright unpleasant. And the attempts to lighten it with the actor's famous brand of "charm" is even less successful than in Suicide Squad. Even after his learning-to-accept-his-buddy arc, he is still being a condescending shit to him.
The important question is - how Shadowrun is it?
Very.

It didn't have any stupid VR hacking scenes, though.
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Post by Whipstitch »

He's black and soft sci-fi tends to default to light social commentary, so it kinda makes sense to me that he'd get these sort of pitches given his "creatures and special effects" formula for box office dominance.
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Post by tussock »

The problem with A New Hope is that its boring. There are too many characters and the things they do aren't important to advancing the plot. You could cut Luke 100% out of the movie and the narrative arc of the movie would be completely unchanged because all of his scenes ultimately don't matter at all. Arguably, the overall tone of the film would be greatly improved.

ACT 1: Princess gives secret plans to the narrator R2D2 before she is captured, who abandons ship, then is also captured by third parties. But R2D2 breaks the restraints and goes to find Old Ben. Old Ben is found, and avoids various hazards to hire a small and very fast ship with R2D2, and with Captain Solo steams the Falcon for the home of the Princess.

ACT 2: Home's been ruined with a Doomsday Ship but the Princess is still captive on board so they rescue her in a dramatically adventurous fashion with subterfuge and stealth and combat. Old Ben dies in a sword fight in the rescue to introduce the Black Knight, but Captain Solo (who prefers guns!) outmanoeuvres the chase around rocks and hides his ship in a cave (psych! it's a big dragon, full steam!).

ACT 3: The secret plans reveal a weakness in the Doomsday Ship, and the Princess orders it wrecked in a risky mission. Captain Solo and R2D2 are instrumental in completing the mission and sinking the Doomsday Ship, along with random man-on-the-spot Pilot Wedge (the token White Male). Captain Solo himself sends the Black Knight packing! Woo! Obvious sequel is obvious. Roll credits.

Luke just makes all that worse, and complains all the fucking time. He's not even a real commoner farm boy, his real parents were nobles. Terrible character.
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Post by MGuy »

Except you'd have to rewrite the narrative. Star Wars is all about the Hero's Journey and cutting out the Hero in that journey changes the narrative. Should be obvious but hey... I don't think you thought your snarky comparison through all that well.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Tussock's flippant comp is obviously stupid but faffing on about the supposed importance of the hero's journey isn't why. The biggest issue is that his Luke-Finn swap falls completely on its ass the second you notice that his new and improved plot line still has someone performing Luke's actions pretty much all the fucking time because they are not in fact tangential to the plot or what the other characters are doing. Besides, a character being inessential isn't necessarily a problem until the writers turn it into one. Chewbacca is 100% unnecessary comic relief in a New Hope but that's fine because he doesn't actually run off and have his own adventure where a nice lady wookie teaches him about how he doesn't need to make a heroic sacrifice..
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Post by deaddmwalking »

Maybe Tussock id always wrong (TM). Finn goes to get something and gets something else indtead. Finn tries to use his something to stop the First Order in a specific way. He fails completely. He doesn't use that failure to succeed another way and only escapes due to someone else's actions. He later has an opportunity to stop another First Order special weapon and is prevented from doing so. But even if he had been successful, it wouldn't have done anything because Rey found a way to escape.

Since Finn accomplished nothing, the events of the movie would have unfolded exactly the same way. He could have stayed home and nothing would have changed.

Now, Tussock could have argued that Luke was insignificant to Empire Strikes Back which this movie is more akin to because he goes for training, doesn't finish and then has his ass handed to him in a fight with Vader. He didn't really 'succeed' but he did grow as a result of the movie and it set up important elements of Return of the Jedi (like the Return of the Jedi) - Finn did not significantly change or grow as a character. Apparently his only contribution was to let the audience learn that if you're rich in the Star Wars Universe, you must be an arms manufacturer supplying both sides of the conflict.
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Post by Voss »

Apparently his only contribution was to let the audience learn that if you're rich in the Star Wars Universe, you must be an arms manufacturer supplying both sides of the conflict.
Which doesn't even makes sense or hold up, which makes me again wonder if Johnson was even vaguely familiar with the setting.

The Empire has their manufacturers, but they're the fucking government so of course they do. But, the Rebellion doesn't use surplus imperial equipment- they had to go off and get the Mon Cals involved for anything close to battle cruisers, and rely heavily on a bunch of fighters that the Empire doesn't use. And many of their ships are mono-built by specific oppressed non-human species, not rich arms dealers.

Similarly in the prequels, we see the Republic using the precursors to Imperial equipment (which makes sense, as the Empire has no reason to discard their defense contractors), but the Separatists- the Trade Feds, the Bankers and bug people obviously have their own designs and are largely manufacturing their own shit- it's a fucking feature of the giant factory mousetrap that gets a stupid amount of screen time in Attack of the Clones. They aren't buying shit from 'arms manufacturers,' they're building their own armies and ships.

And while we never see the Republic Fleet in action in the new films (because a galaxy wide military presence was somehow all parked in the capital system to be conveniently blowed up during the pinpoint interstellar attack), the Resisty is back to the Rebellion's cobbled together hodgepodge fleet from people who are obviously not the same arms manufacturers. Yes, whoever was shitting out star destroyers and Ties was obviously willing to take monies from yet more crazy Space Nazis, but that has fuck all to do with a weird 'both sides' narrative that Johnson is imagining.

It just means that the Republic and the Resisty can't notice or track the sale and movement of some absurd number of fucking huge battleships, and so come off as crazily inept and incompetent.
Last edited by Voss on Mon Dec 25, 2017 11:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Ya know, one thing that kinda surprises me is that people like Film Crit Hulk are apparently super jazzed by the idea that Rey is a member of the hoi polloi rather than a Skywalker as if that really undercuts the "Chosen One" bs and untethers the franchise from the past in any real way. I get that a lot of us book learnin' and art school types roll our eyes when people take the idea of destiny seriously but c'mon, this is Star Wars, a setting with fucking heritable space wizardry. I don't see the point in trying to get off that train with this franchise. Going hard in that direction hits me as about as quixotic as deciding that Mass Effect 3 was a good time to stop letting Shepard solve everything by doing enough sidequests.
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Post by Username17 »

The new set of Star Wars movies got off to a really bad start by trying to make a bigger Empire with a bigger Death Star. I mean, that would be fine for a movie that took place in some other galaxy as a stand alone, or even in a movie that took place hundreds of years in the future. But the main characters of the first movies were still alive. The Republic hadn't even lasted fifty years and somehow it's smaller than an upstart empire? What the actual fuck? How exactly are the good guys called the Resistance? They are the Galactic Government, right? What the fuck?

Obviously the new movie should have been a Die Hard style movie where terrorists were going to blow up the senate or something. The fact that it wasn't meant that every future Star Wars was going to be in a very deep hole because the central conflict is fucking stupid and the bad guys and good guys make negative sense within the context of what we know about the galaxy and its major events.

That being said, trying to set up a plotline where arms dealers are supplying both sides is also right the fuck out. Because we've already established in The Force Awakens that the Resistance and the First Order use obviously different equipment. The Empire expies still use Tie Fighters even though that makes no sense and the Rebellion expies still use X-Wings, even though that makes no sense. Those aren't being supplied by the same factories because fucking obviously.

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Post by nockermensch »

FrankTrollman wrote:Obviously the new movie should have been a Die Hard style movie where terrorists were going to blow up the senate or something. The fact that it wasn't meant that every future Star Wars was going to be in a very deep hole because the central conflict is fucking stupid and the bad guys and good guys make negative sense within the context of what we know about the galaxy and its major events.
The way the movies can make sense is that the rebellion was always the terrorists: a deeply unpopular minority within the galactic population. Blowing up the Death Star and taking Coruscant was less Liberation Day and more 9/11 in that the imperial remnant had no difficulty into rebranding themselves as an even more threatening force in the span of about 20 years while the new Republic couldn't even get the popular mandate to hold and wield the government's military and police powers.

TL;DR: I don't know what the rebel alliance budget is, but they should be spending more into winning some hearts and minds.
@ @ Nockermensch
Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.
Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.
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