Star Wars: the last Jedi – a piece of space shit!

Remember all the things they did wrong in The Force Awakens? Well, in order to correct those things this film decided to AMPLIFY those same mistakes!!

Remember how the entire point of the force awakens was getting the lightsabre to Luke via Ray? Well the first thing Luke does is nonchalantly chuck it away as if to laugh in our face for wasting two hours + two years wondering.

And just like the force awakens did before it, the last Jedi steals elements and character types from the original trilogy and jumbles it up hoping to fool us into thinking it’s something new.

There’s the ethnically diverse ally (Lando), the slickster who betrays the good guys to save his own skin (also Lando), the reluctant mentor (Yoda), the cool-looking charcter with a lame death (Boba Fett)…

Piece of shit.

A return of the Jedi-esc scene in the Emperor’s throne, a Hoth-esc battle on a snow-wait no, “salt” planet. There’s the deep dark scene where Luke-er-Ray, goes into the dark abyss and seeing her reflection.

All of the “comedy” was misfires… there was even one moment that seemed like a Space Balls joke.
And to redeem the crappy lightsaber battle from the force awakens, this one makes up for it by having NONE AT ALL!

Piece of shit.

Aside being insufferably long, it felt like they tried to debunk fan theories by answering things with stupid dumb retarded shit. Like the scene when they say Ray, you know who your parents are? NOBODY!

Piece.of…

SHIIIIT!

Rogue One (a Star Wars Story) review: a middle finger to George Lucas

I just realized I never actually wrote a review of Rogue one, although I did make a few videos about it.

Re-reading my review on The Force Awakens, I was then of the opinion that episode 7 was the worst of the star wars movies. As time has gone on my disappointment has faded, but it is still sitting in a tie with episode II for my least favorites. Yet Rogue One may shift the balance.

The reason I say this is because, unlike the Force Awakens, this movie gets me angrier the more I think about it, and it all comes down to one thing that I – as a lifetime Star Wars fan, have a very hard time getting over… it felt like they were trying to undo everything Lucas did in the prequels.

Love or hate the prequels, they were honest, original works from Lucas and where he was as a man an a filmmaker at that moment in time.

So the fact that one of the very first things I noticed was that all of the storm troopers have voices that not only sound completely different from Jango Fett, but sound completely different from one another, suggested to me that the producers/director decided that they did not like the idea Lucas conceived that the troopers were all clones. Lucas was so in love with this idea that he spent who knows how much time and money to change all the voices of the troopers and Boba Fett in the original trilogy.

Spoilers ahead…

What I consider to be the second middle finger to Lucas is actually arguably the most exciting moment of the film. Towards the end we get the Darth Vader scene we’ve always wanted. He kicks ass like we’ve never seen before. I’ll be honest, my heart was racing when I first saw this, but after reflection it really occurred to me how much this takes away from A New Hope. Lucas always claimed that the first lightsaber battle between Vader and Obi Wan was an old man against a half-man. Granted he was limited by budget and technology, but that explanation worked well within the mythology that Vader carried with him. He was no longer a Jedi in his prime, he was aging, and in fact looking to recruit Luke as his successor.

So for Vader to come into this scene like a ninja, flinging people around using the force, when only a short while later in story time, he enters Leia’s shuttle very slowly and menacingly and using his brute strength to choke a man instead of the force… it feels like a slap in the face to the originals.

Interestingly I used that expression when discussing the Force Awakens, when I suggested that the way they did this felt like they were essentially calling the rebellion’s victory over the empire an act of futility.

I had several other problems with this film that I’m not going to get into because they all fall short of what is really wrong with it. But I will say that the concept of explaining why the Death Star had such a blatant weakness was certainly an idea that deserved being explored.

On that note, they just revealed the new title of episode VIII as The Last Jedi… one more warning sign to me that Disney is trying to write George Lucas out of the history that he created. Goodnight everybody.

 

Why Episode VII is the worst Star Wars film

 
I think Disney managed to hide all the bad reviews of episode 7 off the internet so it won’t surprise me if this one magically disappears too.

Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

I have been a SW fan my entire life, and when I heard about The Force Awakens I was both excited and skeptical. I enjoyed Episode 1 when it first came out but as time went on I realized more and more of the flaws. 

However, when initially viewing this starting episode of a Star Wars trilogy I found that there was much more I didn’t like than what I did. So I’ll start with what I did:

THE STORY:

Story-wise – I’m actually really struggling to think of one thing I liked about the story… maybe the Wolverine-esc mysterious past of Rey.

CHARACTERS:

Rey is really the only one I cared for. She’s well performed, likable, cute and surely has parents who are rooted in the history of Star Wars, probably one of the Skywalker twins, perhaps even Obi Wan.

The acting was pretty decent by Star Wars standards, but let’s be honest; that’s not a huge accomplishment.

THE LOOK:

Some of the cinematography (more on that later) – the hand-held action shots and much of the action was really well shot and looked stunning.

Okay now for the stuff I didn’t like (second warning, tons of spoilers here):

Visually I almost pulled my hair out when I saw all those bloody lens flairs that Abrams apologized for after the second Star Trek movie.

But I could’ve forgiven those, except that story-wise it was so bad in so many ways…

In the first scene the main baddie, Kylo Stimpy – er – Ren menacingly approached an old man very Vaderishly, and he says that he is aware that he is in possession of secret plans – er – “information” which were hidden on a cute gibberish-speaking droid.

So what does he do? The obvious thing a master of interrogation does to the one person he knows had the information he wants – he kills him with a lightsaber that looks seems it was made to look different just for the sake of looking different.

As luck would have it for the dark lord, there is another person who has this information; an extremely unlikable and bland character called Poe. So evil lord Ren captures and imprisons Poe despite his tendency to kill useful assets. To be honest I was kind of hoping this would spell the end for Poe.

The inevitable meeting between beautiful Rey and the cute droid is perhaps a little bit “Disney” but it is okay up until the point where we see extremely fake looking CGI characters, which is an immediate red flag – sidebar here: for all the flaws the prequels had, they can at least boast that they were cutting edge technologically as were the originals, so poor effects by today’s standards don’t cut it in a Star Wars film.

Amid these stories is the ridiculous tale of Fin. This is character who was kidnapped as an infant, brainwashed his entire life while being trained as a soldier up until the point where he was deemed fit to be put on the front-line as a storm trooper, but then he suddenly realizes that the storm trooper life isn’t nice so he decides to help Poe escape from the empire – er – first order.

When we next see Kylo Ren he’s either using said interrogation skills, throwing a temper tantrum or cracking wise. All of this adds up to an interesting if not threatening villain… but later on, he takes off his helmet at will demonstrating that it is about as necessary and absurd as Dark Helmet’s lid on Spaceballs. The fact that we actually see Ren whimpering does not help his villainous facade.

Back to the prequels – they were of course overly political, but here it is the exact opposite. There is the “First Order”, who seem to be the modern-day Empire and in control of everything including the troopers; then there’s the “Resistance” which is the equivalent of the rebellion, and also led by Princess Leia. And then there is the “Republic”, which serves no purpose except to be blown up. So it is as if the entire rebellion overthrowing the empire in the original trilogy was pointless and we’re back to where we began. It’s like a slap in the face to the original trilogy.

At several moments throughout the film it feels like we are watching a Star Wars film made for Trekkies. There are countless blatant plot devices and gimmicks, culminating in the height of what makes this film infuriating: Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber!

Not the green one he had at the end of Return of the Jedi, but the lightsaber that was in Luke’s hand when it was cut off in “Empire” somehow appears here as a major plot point. So either it was a huge oversight or it was purposely stuck in there for the sole reason of making up a convoluted back story as to how it got pried from his severed hand. Either way it’s extremely annoying.

There is a brief appearance by C-3P0 which feels like it was done out of necessity, and he is given a red arm – which seems like it was either done once again as a change for the sake of change, or for the stupid joke he makes about it.

The end of the movie sees a hibernating R2-D2 magically (and conveniently) come back to life for no explained reason, Poe magically (and conveniently) coming back, a death-starish space battle ending in a planetary implosion which seems to warn of the dangers of trying to harness solar energy, a lightsaber battle that can only rival the duel in episode IV for lameness, and Leia sending a virtual stranger off on the search for Spock – er – Luke. And then it concludes with two characters staring back and forth at one another shot in a way that is reminiscent of that brings to mind the sarlacc scene in the Family Guy spoof of Return of the Jedi – you know, the one with those goofy brass hits and the Caddy Shack line “well… We’re waiting!”

The bottom line is, as much as the prequels were hated, this feels like a cheap ripoff done by someone who hates the prequels, thinks the audience is too stupid to notice the similarities to the originals and was then marketed so as to (try to) fool the dimwits who can’t see the “twists” a mile away into being surprised. I do believe this will go down in the history books as being the worst of the films up to this point.

Star Wars: the force awakens trailer 3 review

So you are probably here because you don’t know what to make of the new Star Wars trailer. 

The new trailer was slow paced but gave us glimpses into some of the characters, and was loaded with nostalgic music and imagery.

Maybe I was just so excited to see it that my expectations weren’t met or maybe I’ve just run out of joy in my life.

Seeing the new baddie caress Vader’s cooked helmet made me feel a little dirty, and seeing that the new visual effects they’re using for lightsaber is extending to the blue ones as well annoyed me.

The whole bit with Han confirming that everything we know to have happened in the world of Star Wars did in fact happen. So aside from telling the audience that this is not a Star Trek esc alternate reality, it also suggests that the characters within the film are as enamoured by the events of the original trilogy as the people who will be lined up for weeks to see it. Kind of self indulgent really.

I really hope this movie is good. I know I’ll see it one way or the other, but one thing is for sure, this trailer was lame. It felt like they were trying to send the message that this is “more than just an action movie”, it’s heart felt And all that crap. But what I wanted outed out of this trailer was what the first two gave me… Excitement.

Japan and their super laser!

This just in: Japan blasted a laser beam which was literally two quadrillion watts (petawatts)… So what does this mean?

NOTHING!

Osaka University may have claimed to have created the world’s most powerful laser, but so what? First of all, if they are boasting about this it is not likely to be utilized in some sort of military application, unless maybe to blind someone or maybe remove excessive body hair — and let’s face it, Japaneses are not known for having excessive amounts of body hair.

It also appears to be a pretty massive contraption that is decades away from becoming a pocket device.

Of course just as the British military hid technology from the world as seen in The Imitation Game I’m sure someone out there somewhere has something far more impressive than this anyway.

In other Pews:
SOA – the hilarious new web-series is taking the world by laser-storm

Star Wars the force awakens trailer reaction

 

Maybe I’m just too hard to please these days.

When the first episode VII teaser came out I actually thought it looked really cool — aside from the impractical red lightsaber.

But the newest trailer just felt like it was trying too hard. Even the last shot with Han and Chewy felt forced (pun intended). And I still have no idea what it’s meant to be about.

I hope the storyline is good enough that you don’t have to be a Star Wars fan to be excited for it… But now I am a fan but am not terribly excited.

Related:

SOA – A hilarious new web-series