The Gaming Den

Lately I've been hearing people say "Vader and Obi Wan was MEANT to be a clumsy fight, it's an old man and a cripple with a purposefully uncomfortable suit!"

I mean the honest answer at the time was the 1st Star Wars movie didn't have a dedicated fight choreographer and the suit was difficult to move in, but was there some recent novelization that made this clumsiness canon?

OgreBattle wrote:Lately I've been hearing people say "Vader and Obi Wan was MEANT to be a clumsy fight, it's an old man and a cripple with a purposefully uncomfortable suit!"

I mean the honest answer at the time was the 1st Star Wars movie didn't have a dedicated fight choreographer and the suit was difficult to move in, but was there some recent novelization that made this clumsiness canon?

Doubtful. Rogue One is now canon, and Vader is anything but clumsy in his momentary appearance in that, which happens at most a few weeks before he fights Obi-Wan on the Death Star. Also, initial expanded universe assumptions about Obi-Wan considered him to be much older than his canonical age at that time turned out to be (canonically he's only 57 at time of death).

The novel Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader (which is no longer canon) did make the point that Vader had to change how he fought after being placed in the suit because he moved differently than he was able to move as Anakin. The idea was that he developed a power-heavy style that relied on punishing blows to break his opponents' guard. This was at least partially adopted in sources like The Force Unleashed in terms of how Vader moved.

It is possible to construct a post-hoc argument from this to justify aspects of the Obi-Wan vs. Vader fight based around this - and to some extent all Vader fights in the OT - in that Vader moves slowly but has an impenetrable defense and opponents have to anticipate devastating counters so there's a lot of probing and less acrobatics, but that's not the same as 'clumsy.'

Went and saw The Great Wall. It was actually quite enjoyable, and kind of comes off as being a more comprehensible Fantasy Asia than Rokugan. I totally want to play a soldier of the Nameless Order and fight alien monsters.

Is this in the wrong thread?

Prak wrote:Went and saw The Great Wall. It was actually quite enjoyable, and kind of comes off as being a more comprehensible Fantasy Asia than Rokugan. I totally want to play a soldier of the Nameless Order and fight alien monsters.

You might enjoy Dragon Blade, it's got a clash between Romans and Han dynasty if I recall correctly.

Wiseman wrote:Is this in the wrong thread?

....yes. Yes it is.

Prak wrote:Went and saw The Great Wall. It was actually quite enjoyable, and kind of comes off as being a more comprehensible Fantasy Asia than Rokugan. I totally want to play a soldier of the Nameless Order and fight alien monsters.

Do they ever explain why Matt Damon is white and there?

Hiram McDaniels wrote:

Prak wrote:Went and saw The Great Wall. It was actually quite enjoyable, and kind of comes off as being a more comprehensible Fantasy Asia than Rokugan. I totally want to play a soldier of the Nameless Order and fight alien monsters.

Do they ever explain why Matt Damon is white and there?

He's a mercenary trying to find the secret of 'black powder', accidentally winds up in lizard country and finds a really big wall, a great wall.

The main criticism of the film from Chinese sources is that Matt Damon is not so much a white savior (he spends a lot of the movie being taught lessons on communism) but that he still takes up a lot of screen time from actors popular in China. The heroine Jing Tian is also percieved as a crappy actress who's only there because her family has a lot of money, and she also takes up more screen time than famed actors like Andy Lau or the rising talent Eddie Peng.

"China's Oprah" had a Chinese actor play Matt Damon in a mock interview to criticize the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1B27Cr331w
Summary: It's a fun popcorn flick movie, but they pushed this film as "showing the west Chinese culture" and they found the Chinese elements to be superficial and over-the-top propagandistic.

While I have not see The Great Wall yet, I find it hilarious that the film is nominally set during the Song Dynasty, when the Great Wall itself did not exist in anything resembling its current form as pictured in the film (in fact it may not have existed at all, earlier structures having collapsed) - which was constructed centuries later by the Ming Dynasty.

Yeah, it's hilarious how they totally historically misplaced the wall full of razor scissor traps, flaming spike ball catapults, and weaponized bungie warriors.

Is it more or less racist to make the wall about dragondemons than about the northern barbarians, like, for example, the mongols and the such?

OgreBattle wrote:Lately I've been hearing people say "Vader and Obi Wan was MEANT to be a clumsy fight, it's an old man and a cripple with a purposefully uncomfortable suit!"

I mean the honest answer at the time was the 1st Star Wars movie didn't have a dedicated fight choreographer and the suit was difficult to move in, but was there some recent novelization that made this clumsiness canon?

This just jogged my memory - I'm pretty sure Lucas himself was saying this in an interview, back when the prequels were being made. He said something like "in ANH, you only see the dying remnants of the jedi, but in TPM, you will get to see the prime of the jedi" or something like that. I remember the interview because of that phrase, "prime of the jedi", for how awkard it seems.

Does Lucas himself saying it count at all as canon?

*edit* sauce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liEtSzWZPFo&t=15

I mean he owned star wars back then, so yeah. Though the obvious explanation is just no access to good coreography and special effects, the vader costume was clumsy to move around it, Alec Guiness was old, and the lightsaber props were really flimsy and broke easily.

NBC's Powerless. What a steaming pile of hobo sick.

Apparently there was a pilot for it that was pretty good...then NBC execs said: "We have some notes", after which they took turns squatting and deucing on the series bible in between high-fiving and snorting coke off of eachothers nipples.

Hiram McDaniels wrote:NBC's Powerless. What a steaming pile of hobo sick.

Apparently there was a pilot for it that was pretty good...then NBC execs said: "We have some notes", after which they took turns squatting and deucing on the series bible in between high-fiving and snorting coke off of eachothers nipples.

I think those notes were "We don't know who any of the characters you're referencing are. Drop all of those references and just replace them with references to Batman."

I really wanted that show to be awesome. It turned out to be just another hack-job office comedy with superhero names sprinkled in. I got a better result reading a Cracked article.

Am I the only person in the world who doesn't think Star Trek V: The Final Frontier is as bad as people say it is? Because I actually like it.

I mean, sure, it has it's problems, and it's far from perfect, but I mean, the only reason people don't seem to like it is that Shatner made it, and it's not really entirely his fault: There was a writers strike going on in Hollywood at the time, which always hurts movies, and ILM, Star Trek's usual movie effects company, was unable to work on the film, so Paramount had to use a new and inexperienced sfx group for the film, and because of that the special effects in the film weren't as grand as they had been hyped to be, but again, neither of those were in Shatner's control, and despite all of that, the movie isn't really any worse than Star Trek: The Motion Picture was. Now THAT was a bad film.

Shrapnel wrote: I mean, sure, it has it's problems, and it's far from perfect, but I mean, the only reason people don't seem to like it is that Shatner made it

Nah, that criticism is easy to make and will elicit knowing nods from a generation of nerds weaned on pompous Shatner stories but ultimately it's secondary to the real problem--namely that the movie never fucking justifies its existence. ST:TMP sucked because while hideously overstuffed and humorless it wasn't conceptually any more ambitious than many of the TV episodes. By contrast Khan was well regarded because they had the balls to put in some personal stakes and kill off Spock. That turned things into a red meat space opera with an emotional through line to pull general audiences through two more movies. The arc was dead simple--bring in a beloved crew, break them and then watch them become whole again, with Voyage Home serving as a genial victory lap that could have wrapped a nice little bow on the whole franchise. So it should be no surprise that general audiences abandoned Trek V after the opening weekend once the word got out that the fucking thing was just a "We should all head out into space and talk to a false space god" plot. You know, like in TOS and ST:TMP. Again. FFS, I defy you to come up with a good reason for making Star Trek V that doesn't start with "Star Trek IV grossed over $100 million 1986 dollars."

I like all of the original Star Trek movies, but that doesn't make them good.

The observation that even movies are good and odd numbered movies are bad is generally true. If I were to rate the movies from best to worst it would be: 2, 6, 4, 3, 5, 1.

3 & 5 are close there, but I like me some Doc Brown Klingon.

The thing is, V really did have a lot of potential, but it was a letdown.

The whole thing about the 'Great Barrier' was a problem. First of all, there wasn't any support for it in previous movies or the TV show and secondly they just went through it like it wasn't there. The attempt to build tension fell completely flat.

The angry god thing wasn't much of a conclusion, but it was okay.

The best part of the movie might seriously have been Kirk and McCoy singing 'row, row, row your boat'. And if that's the best part of your movie, you're not trying to appeal to general audiences.

Whipstitch wrote:Nah, that criticism is easy to make and will elicit knowing nods from a generation of nerds weaned on pompous Shatner stories but ultimately it's secondary to the real problem--namely that the movie never fucking justifies its existence ... So it should be no surprise that general audiences abandoned Trek V after the opening weekend once the word got out that the fucking thing was just a "We should all head out into space and talk to a false space god" plot. You know, like in TOS and ST:TMP. Again.

That is probably the most valid criticism I've heard for the film.

ST:TMP sucked because while hideously overstuffed and humorless it wasn't conceptually any more ambitious than many of the TV episodes.

The big difference for me is that I get bored watching TMP because nothing really happens besides the characters standing in awe at impressive 70's effects. At least V has some action and dialogue. Not necessarily good dialogue or action, but at least there's something.

FFS, I defy you to come up with a good reason for making Star Trek V that doesn't start with "Star Trek IV grossed over $100 million 1986 dollars."

deaddmwalking wrote:I like all of the original Star Trek movies, but that doesn't make them good.

I just want to be clear, I'm not saying V was good, just that I seem to be the only person (I know of) who doesn't hate it or think it was awful. Then again, I also liked Dragonball GT, so my tastes may be questionable.

The observation that even movies are good and odd numbered movies are bad is generally true. If I were to rate the movies from best to worst it would be: 2, 6, 4, 3, 5, 1.

3 & 5 are close there, but I like me some Doc Brown Klingon.

That would probably be my relative order, too.

The thing is, V really did have a lot of potential, but it was a letdown.

It was promised to be visually the greatest Star Trek adventure yet. So it did kinda set itself up for some problems there.

The whole thing about the 'Great Barrier' was a problem. First of all, there wasn't any support for it in previous movies or the TV show and secondly they just went through it like it wasn't there. The attempt to build tension fell completely flat.

There is sorta support for it. The Great Barrier IS incredibly similar to the Galactic Barrier from "Where No Man has Gone Before" and other episodes of TOS, but the fact that there are TWO such phenomena in the galaxy is not well explained, nor is any mention made of the fact that the Milky Way is an energy barrier donut (a barrier on the outside and one in the middle). Also, the Enterprise didn't run into any barrier in "The Maigcks of Megas-Tu". (Shut up the cartoon is canon. Shut up.)

The angry god thing wasn't much of a conclusion, but it was okay.

Interesting fact: Roddenberry wanted the crew of the Enterprise to actually meet God, the "real" one, since the beginning of the show, but NBC said, "Nope, you can't do that. You CAN have them meet Satan, though." Because that's better, somehow...? Anyway, it led to the "Megas-Tu" episode. And V, I guess.

The best part of the movie might seriously have been Kirk and McCoy singing 'row, row, row your boat'. And if that's the best part of your movie, you're not trying to appeal to general audiences.

That is my favorite part of the movie, since it's an example of the camaraderie between Kirk, Spock and McCoy, which is where, I've always felt, the series was at it's best.

I appreciate Dragon Ball GT a lot more after watching Dragon Ball Super

I have lost all respect for yo from OAFE because his opinions are offensive to civilized society.

Hey, Leto Joker is funny to me, which no other Movie Joker has succeeded at. Granted, it's because I'm laughing at him, but still.

I have mixed feelings about Logan.

It's an entertaining movie but...

It's kinda like torture porn for someone who grew up reading X-Men comics. Everyone is dead, dying, miserable.

Also Patrick Stewart got everyone killed when he just couldn't turn down dinner and a night of bed rest.

OgreBattle wrote:I have mixed feelings about Logan.

It's an entertaining movie but...

It's kinda like torture porn for someone who grew up reading X-Men comics. Everyone is dead, dying, miserable.

Also Patrick Stewart got everyone killed when he just couldn't turn down dinner and a night of bed rest.

It's probably best to look at Logan as a Western that happens to star X-Men characters, rather than an X-Men movie. '