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Post by geneweigel on Dec 12, 2016 14:57:57 GMT -5
I follewed a link to the Spiderman clip from THE ELECTRIC COMPANY and it was automatically playing videos for a while. Evenetually it got to deleted scenes from STAR WARS for the past hour. You know George Lucas was worse of a liar than I thought. I never saw those wampa shots with them walking in the hallways. I had bought a CD-rom called BEHIND THE MAGIC in the late 90's and it was supposed to have all the cutting room floor shots. Saying that the wampa in the base scenes were never shot: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD7dIEow9l4#t=67.9665Seriously, I think that guy was off his rocker. I wonder if ROGUE ONE is going to be any good? Some old sci-fier was moaning that ROGUE ONE is "MARY SUE DOES DARTH PART TWO" recently to me and it really took me from left field because I totally knew what they meant. |
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Post by GRWelsh on Dec 12, 2016 15:23:24 GMT -5
I'm not one of the Episode VII haters, but this video brings up a lot of valid criticisms: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g9cJ5WKZeUThere seems to be the reaction from a lot of people that any criticism of Episode VII is just fanboy whining and the evidence that the movie is "great" is its high approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes... As if that proves anything. I enjoyed Episode VII when I saw it, but videos like this have opened my eyes to a lot of the flaws. I think it is now revealed, like a magician's trick, that what Episode VII really did well was play close attention to and reproduce the visuals and general story arc of original trilogy: especially Episode IV but with some elements included from VI and VI as well. A plucky band of outsiders become friends and save the galaxy, using the Force. Yay! And if you're not paying close attention to other details, like character motivations and finer points of the plot, that is good enough for most people. It did bother me that Rey just has all of these Force powers without -- evidently -- having had any training. But I was willing to suspend judgment that this could be explained later... Like maybe she was trained, but had her memory wiped. There could be an explanation to a lot of these things. But then I remember the LOST TV series... I thought the biggest missed opportunity was not have Han, Leia and Luke together on screen one last time, and not giving Luke any dialogue. WTF. I actually have high hopes for ROGUE ONE, based on the trailer. I don't like it that they are once again relying on a prequel and Darth Vader, and the Death Star, but introducing new protagonists is definitely something I want to see. |
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Post by geneweigel on Dec 12, 2016 22:48:21 GMT -5
I don't know the commentary was too critical in that video. I watched about 15 minutes and the guy seems to be someone who likes the sound of their own voice as it sings songs along with quick chattering blurbs. Alright, let's reassess:
Rey: Likable character lots unexplained for now.
Finn: Thought that I might not like him but proved me wrong. Hope he comes back.
Poe: Needs more screen time.
Kylo Ren/Solo Ben: This was a good twist but the patricide is unexplained.
BB-8: Okay but seems like I'd like to see less "new R2" and more of some kind of "new C3PO"
Maz Kanata: This is the biggest weakness of the film the whole locale is weak. Seems like a backyard in New Jersey with a senile matriarch living out of a trailer selling meth... in space.
Snoke: Mysterious and weird. What is there not to like?
Nien Numb and Ackbar: Should have had more continuity and louder presence.
C3PO and R2: No one wants a repeat of their prequel antics but I felt there was something missing there.
Chewbacca: A little shaky on the other actor playing him. Need a puppeteer who can act the part not just another big dude.
Han Solo: Ford kind of signed off before JEDI so its okay that he came back in some form.
Leia: How come no force follow up?
Luke: Yoda had better "always be with him" unless that Ben lied again.
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Post by GRWelsh on Dec 13, 2016 9:10:52 GMT -5
Yeah, I think it is okay for a movie to leave some things unexplained, especially in an ongoing series. So, I'm willing to extend the SW movies credit on the mysteries that some people are calling flaws. They may even really be flaws, but clever writers can sometimes come up with brilliant explanations.
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Post by geneweigel on Dec 13, 2016 9:53:59 GMT -5
The toys are oddly mismatched in proportions. The traditional SW size for figures has too many accessories and fragile realistic hands. The most appealing thing about classic SW toys was the toughness and I feel like this generation lost out on that completely. The early 90's had tougher ones but thats when it was still Kenner just taken over by Hasbro.
As an aside, Hasbro was once a cool toy company the highlight being the military detail on the first wave GI Joe 3 inch figures. Although my GI Joe era was the Adventure Team era with the Mummy's Tomb and the Intruder I have to say that the first wave GI Joe in 1982 had a lot of effort in that remake. Of course, it got whackier with time and something is missing within the next year. Fantasy realism is replaced with a mocking style. Its hard to explain but the original stuff just had screws in the right places. I think them having GI Joe as well as Transformers gave them the power to absorb other toy companies on a routine basis. The worst absorption over even TSR was the absorption of Marvel Toys. Wow, those were some nice figures. I wish that I had bought them all but it started adding up fast. I did get the build-a-Galactus though. My favorite in the Marvel Toys series is probably the Kirby Grey Hulk. Anyway they shrank them so they no longer match the originals and raised the pice $15...MORE and made building figures even more complicated. And no reprint comic book.
Back to Star Wars figures. The durability of a Kenner STAR WARS stormtrooper was amazing. I had bombed the hell out of Tonka trucks with them all wired up with twisted metal results and those figures' joints are still intact to this day..
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Post by GRWelsh on Dec 13, 2016 10:35:18 GMT -5
I never got many of the Kenner Star Wars toys. I think I had Luke and Ben and that was it.
I had some GI Joe Adventure Team stuff, including when it started to diverge into the directions of other genres like Atomic Man Mike Powers (the Bionic Man ripoff) and Bulletman (Golden Age superhero ripoff). My favorite was the Mobile Support Vehicle with the functioning rotating light on top. That was part of Christmas mornings in the 70's... hunting around for batteries to insert into some of these toys!
I also had Mego action figures from the 70's like Batman, Green Arrow, the Human Torch, Iron Man, Captain America, the Thing, and the Hulk. I used to pretend the 12" GI Joe action figure was a robot or a giant that the heroes would sometimes fight or ally with.
My favorite toys as far as action figures went, were the Micronauts. For some reason, they really fired my imagination. Robots, outer space, time travel... I loved all of that stuff they implied. They had some nice attention to detail and durability, also. The comic books based on them had some good things about them, but at their worst felt like a quasi-STAR WARS rip off, and never quite synced up with the toys.
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Post by geneweigel on Dec 13, 2016 12:55:29 GMT -5
Yeah, the Mego era was great. Except my brother would rip them in half in a second. I had quite an assortment. My wife bought Mego replicas of Kirk, Spock and the Klingon a few years back when she went to Vegas for a conference. I only had Spock and some kid chucked him into a pit in a construction site then my Dad found out and proceeded to beat the snot out of me. My wife was like if I heard that story one more time...  The only that sucked about Kenner SW was the tips of the lightsabers breaking off. I had bought the three of them three separate times just to get fresh sabers (3 Bens, 3 Vaders, 3 Lukes, etc) and the funny thing was all the equipment that I took such good care of was tossed out by my mom who thought it was junk. My Boba Fett send away (with 5 proofs of purchase) was chewed by the dog, plus all the playsets and vehicles were thrown out when I went on vacation for 4 months. It seems like in 1984 I was going through major STAR WARS withdrawal. I had been so used to hitting the toy stores for years that I thought STAR WARS would last forever. By the time that Thrawn shit came out (1991) I was off toys totally and I had just cut back on comics in a big way XMEN #1 (1991) with all the cover variants and shallow content made me get off the comic wagon for good. The only thing that I needed to ween off of was bad D&D at that time but I couldn't stop. I took years to get off the shit. Laying in the street with an FR novel... "Hey, man, spare some change the new Ravenloft book is coming out this week..." Seriously, my STAR WARS enthusiasm never stopped but I think I just distance it from the 1991 Zahn stuff and that 1996 SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE shit although I did play all the Lucasarts games up to just before REVENGE OF THE SITH thats when the company went console crazy and cheaped out with the gameplay. Although I did get the Sega 32X, Super Nintendo and Nintendo Gamecube consoles to play STAR WARS ARCADE, the SUPER STAR WARS series and ROGUE SQUADRON II: ROGUE LEADER, I am not a big fan of consoles. I think comic book wise STAR WARS is some weak shit. In the 70's it was very HOWARD THE DUCK-ish and in the 80's it was little difference from an issue of TEAM AMERICA (1982-1983 bike toy comic). The only issue that I thought was cool featured the Imperial transport toy that wasn't in the movie. Marvel was pretty shameless in the 70's with that Spiderman car featured in the comic. Remember that? |
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Post by GRWelsh on Dec 13, 2016 14:13:49 GMT -5
Yeah, I remember the Spider-Mobile (aka "Spider Buggy") and I wish I didn't. That was a low point in comics. IIRC, Johnny Storm built the Spider-Mobile for Spider-man and I think at some point it even simulated his powers somewhat with wall-crawling tires. Ugh. I guess Stan Lee actually pushed the idea... Hey, maybe it will show up in the LOGAN movie! The Lucasarts videogames in the 1990's... that was like a golden era for them. TIE fighter, X-Wing, Dark Forces, Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight, they were all great games. I have fond memories of playing those. I remember Jedi Knight even had a helpline in case you got stuck, and I had to call it once! That was back in the early days of the internet before you could just look up the answer to anything online. Laying in the street with an FR novel... "Hey, man, spare some change the new Ravenloft book is coming out this week..." "You don't need spare change, friend, what you need is to get off the junk and accept Gygax as your savior. Here's a 'Trigee Enterprises' pamphlet." |
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Post by geneweigel on Dec 13, 2016 15:33:59 GMT -5
I think STAR WARS kind of promoted but also killed Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers because it took what a vast sci-fi universe would look like and didn't leave much for everybody else. They still played FG and BR in the early 70's then they redeveloped them but the show, movies and cartoon seemed limited.
I recall some kids who were younger than me when STAR WARS had just come out that hated STAR TREK all of a sudden. The same kids a year prior were playing with phasers (toy guns for some of the unlucky kids but still saying that they were phasers). Then BOOM it was like a political landscape. There was this kid that I knew that would have nothing to with STAR TREK anything but now that I think about it I believe that he had other behavior problems.
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