Wasted characters.
- Thread starter CastletonSnob
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I'm talking about the fact that for the most part, due to the technology at the time, he's just stomping around, clearly not able to see very well. His saber duel with Old Ben is a meme now for how unimpressive it is. I grew up watching that trilogy, and I thought he was a great villain, but if someone is going to say "I only found him scary in Rogue One" then they are simply talking about his martial abilities, and the famous "Hallway Scene." But he also has a fucking dad joke earlier in that film, so I would say that cancels out any menace he accrued in the hallway. So, if he's now scary because rogue one hallway scene was impressive, then it's just how much he scares people with his saber powers. And that's not how he was scary in the OT. It was far more subtle than that. Well, ok not subtle, he would literally choke people out in crowds, but less overt in his menace and violence. He was scary in Empire because of how casually he was beating the shit out of Luke in the Bespin fight. How he seemed to be having fun with him, and sounded amused when he sees that Luke did a Force Leap to get out of the carbonite chamber. How he just stood there and let his mastery of the force beat the shit out of luke with cargo boxes. So many ways he displayed his threat, without it just resorting to "he cut some chumps up in a scary way, so now he's menacing." Which is the point that I was replying to.
At least Finn is still on the poster, what is their beef with Chewbacca?
Don't get me wrong, I wholeheartedly dislike him, but to cut him from the poster like that...?
*blinks* Why would you dislike Chewbacca? Seriously, I'm stumped as to what cinematic offenses he had done in any of the films to warrant "wholeheartedly disliking him"
I'm not a Star Wars fan or critic by any stretch, but I had no idea anyone thought the "hallway scene" was anywhere near as impactful as I did. I watched Rogue One one night out of boredom, and that scene... boy, it just goes to show how dark Vader actually was. Yes, there are implications of the innate evilness of the Dark Side throughout the franchise, but the previous movies [I'd seen] mostly made it out to be more a political and power-hungry movement (like the Republican party; ) watching Vader kill ruthlessly in that hallway was an eye-opener, like "Jesus, he is evil. Like, extremely evil." Prior to, Vader was just a bully, but no, that ************ is a psychopath. It's probably the one scene in all the Star Wars films that actually has any gravitas with me; the rest are just Muppets and magic; that scene was pure violence, like the joke had gone too far, a school yard bully who pushes people in the mud showing you the suit he made out of puppies and human flesh.
I think people forget that Vader was no stranger to the occasional bon mot. Not to the degree that he'd fit in with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but he can say things that are funny when the mood strikes Everyone remembers "I find your lack of faith disturbing" but I watched that scene again recently and Vader is not being ominous, he's being a cheeky, almost sassy, bastard. His sword fight with Obi Wan isn't very flashy, but it looks very much like the kendo bouts I've seen on youtube between people who know what the fuck they're doing and not like dickheads spinning glow sticks at a Skirllex gig. And while I do agree the scene in Rogue One is the best Vader has gotten to be on screen in pure martial skill, the OT has him establish his villain cred with his powers (choking bitches) being ruthless (the whole torture thing) and being a kick ass pilot (wiping out a bunch of the rebel pilots).
That and David Prowse was like, a six foot nine strong man. Boy filled a room.
What, did you miss all the Child Murder in Revenge of the Sith? At least those guys were grown ups with guns in their hands. Obi Wan waxed that Darth Vader hunted down the Jedi Knights and when it happens on screen its no great battle with Anakin besting his peers like Kit Fisto or Aayla Secura or Plo Koon because they all get shot in the back by the Clone Troopers. Anakin....gets to butcher a day care centre. That scene alone torpedoes every supposed effort Luke made to redeem his father. You can't walk back from that. I mean he could walk back from any of the atrocities he committed as a member of the Empire but the Jedi Temple was just that step too far for the audience.
I agree, he has some great sass in the OT. "Apology accepted...admiral needa." (or whatever his name was) *walks over his corpse*. And the Old Ben fight was choreographed by a master swordsman and stuntman, so it had some legit style to it. But it's not very flashy. And you can clearly see some of the cuts, that they are kind of stumbling here and there with the limitations of the props and costumes. Please note, I'm ok with this. I'm 100% fine with differentiating the reality of the fiction, and the fiction's reality. But it IS, from a technical standpoint, less impressive, than 2018 improvements to stuntwork and stunt actors, and the proliferation of martial arts in hollywood, compared to the 70s.
And frankly, that dad joke in Rogue One, was one of the few things in the film I liked, because it was a double dad joke. Aspirations, both meaning his ambitions, and the actual act of breathing itself. And he's choking on it. I thought that was actually quite clever. I just don't agree that he was never scary until R1, and his hallway scene. I think it's just a different flavor (a more physical violence type of menace), compared to his previous iterations, where it was more etheral in how he was a threat.
Like I said, I’m neither a fan nor a critic of Star Wars; I can’t even say with any certainty if I ever SAW Revenge of the Sith (all the films kinda bleed together,) but what you’re talking about seems like a scene designed to dramatize Vader’s horribleness. Rogue One, I feel turned a stock action sequence into a reveal of his true violent capabilities which, for me, is a bit more jarring a turn for the character that was ostensibly redeemed in 1983. Did RotS show him killing children, or was it more implied because “dark side” and “evil?”
It was implied due to PG-13 rating. Closest you get to see is a sort of security footage hologram that shows him cutting down a couple of what look like twelve year olds. But there's only so many ways to interpret him walking into a room filled with kids under the age of ten who look to him for guidance and ask what they should do and be answered with the ignition of his lightsaber.
To clarify, my issue wasn't that she got any of that, it was that she got all of that, and that it was given to her in a "my Original Character (Do Not Steal) is super special" way.And of course she'd go train under Luke, that's just SOP for this kind of storytelling. New Hotness goes and learns from grumpy old wizard living in isolation in the middle of BumFuck Nowhere. That's what Luke did, that's what Rey did. When you reduce the person with the Secret Important Knowledge down to one person, it kind of limits your options on who to go to, to learn said Important Knowledge.
For instance, in principle the only problem I have with Rey getting Anakin's lightsaber is pragmatism. Considering that Luke lost it in Cloud City in Empire Strikes Back (and the aftermath showed us that it should have been dropped straight into the gas giant of Bespin), it should have been functionally unrecoverable. What makes it more annoying is that the writers apparently decided that the lightsaber was suddenly a Harry Potter wand that has been waiting specifically for Rey to wield it. You want to give her the lightsaber? It literally doesn't have to be any more complicated than putting it on some scrapper's shelf/wall as something they were particularly proud of finding, and having her grab it during a scuffle. Same fanservice of having that lightsaber, better writing in the how and why behind it.
Training under Luke? No problem in theory. I'd have been totally on board if she was one of his earliest pupils. But wiping out his new Jedi order during the same 30-year timeskip it was created in so that Luke would be the only one who could train her? The hand of the author is far too evident in that. Better to have her start training under someone else, then circumstances (eg, death/capture/corruption/deficiency of the original mentor) require that Luke complete her training. Falcon? My distaste for the canyon run scene notwithstanding, they introduced it right and then proceeded to narratively sabotage themselves when Han and Chewie reclaimed it and then had Rey seemingly inherit it after Han's death 'because reasons'.
Rey flying off to see Luke with only Chewie in tow? ...Yeah, that just doesn't work without significant rewrite. Considering that finding Luke was a top priority for both the Resistance and the First Order, there's not really a good Watsonian justification that the Resistance would just send Rey - who, mind you, they never even met before she ended up at their base after the raid on Starkiller Base - and call it a day. It basically just happens because Abrams pulled a Hitchcock and said "they'll act this way because I tell them to". Best alternative I can think of (short of just rewriting TFA to get rid of the 'find Luke' plot) is the Resistance reasoning that since the planet was literally off the map, it would be great as a new base of operations. So instead of Rey and Chewie going off on their own so Rey can meet Luke, the Resistance relocates to Luke's hidey-hole en-masse, and Rey tags along with them because she recognizes that she needs training.
Botched executions notwithstanding, however, the heart of my point really is not any single one of them, but the the way that they pile onto each other. To borrow from syllogism, it's an "and" statement, not an "or" statement. There are good ways to toss in references to the old guard, but focusing all that legacy gear and associations onto a single character - particularly the new protagonist you wrote up - is not the way to do it. Point of fact, it's a bog-standard "first fanfic" mistake which often underscores the way the amateur writer is more or less warping the universe to revolve around their original character.
Rey ending up with the lightsaber? Cool. Rey ending up with the Falcon? Cool. Rey immediately hitting it off with Han? Cool. Rey quickly connecting with Leia? Cool. Rey training with Luke? Cool. ...But Rey getting Anakin's lightsaber, and immediately hitting it off with Han, and getting the Falcon (and Chewie), and immediately connecting with Leia, and training with Luke? Too much on one character! For goodness sake, I can do better just by spreading that out between her, Finn, and Poe!
Give Rey the lightsaber and force training, have Poe - the 'best pilot in the resistance' - end up with the Falcon, and have Leia make Finn into a personal project (ie, 'courage is not the absence of fear, but the judgement that something else is more important than fear'). It feels more natural because instead of everything being focused into a single character (with implications of being super special specifically because of that concentration) it feels more like a proper changing of the guard, with an entire new generation being represented by the apparent successors to the major characters of the prior generation. So again, not opposed to all the legacy stuff appearing per se, but I think it was to the detriment of everyone to have it all being drawn to one character.
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That's my point, then. If I saw it, it had no lasting impact on me beyond the theme of "evil Dark Side." Rogue One is the first instance [I recall] of him being overtly and ruthlessly violent with complete disdain. All the lightsaber duals and encounters from previous movies were more poetic, like a ballet of skill for dramatic purposes, whereas Rogue One was a raw, powerful wielder of the Force just outright killing. It was a stark contrast from the "space opera" the franchise has been heralded as for nearly 4 decades.
Just sayin', everyone knows Kermit and Ms. Piggy were a couple, but Sesame Street never showed a frog and a pig fucking; Vader cutting down people with abandon was a frog and a pig fucking. And not unwelcome, either. I'd probably be much more into Star Wars if it took itself a bit more seriously and focused less on the campy/cartoonish "good versus evil" dynamic and more on "these are some seriously powerful people goin' at it!"
I think most GOT characters were wasted in the latter half of the series, but if I had to pick one in particular I'd say Littlefinger. In the book he's this likeable, witty, easy going guy who just happens to be incredibly ambitious, and nobody sees the danger because he's so useful to the other characters. That sense was never really captured in the series. The show also skipped the chapter where he returned to his original home with Sansa, which was pretty important in establishing just how far he had already climbed from his relatively humble beginnings. And then the book material ran out and it became obvious the show writers had no idea what to do with him until he got killed off to provide Arya with another stupid badass moment.
Littlefinger was the guy who epitomised the Game of Thrones ethos more than any other character. Such a waste.
Littlefinger was the guy who epitomised the Game of Thrones ethos more than any other character. Such a waste.
What's there to like about him? He's an ugly looking furball who plays the role of simple brute, just kind of being there and letting out unintelligible grunts and screeches from time to time. Aside from picking up C3PO after he gets trashed, what does he even do exactly?
It's a character I don't understand the allure of, at all.
Point of order: It's not "heralded as" a Space Opera. "Space Opera" is not a term of praise, it's a subgenre of science fiction, and originally a pejorative one at that. The 'opera' in it isn't meant to evoke traditional opera, but rather melodramatic and cliche works like Soap Operas and "Horse Operas" (itself a pejorative term for formulaic Westerns).
While the negative connotations of Space Opera have largely faded (amusingly for this conversation, Star Wars is actually often credited as a turning point for the phrase), to describe something as Space Opera is, at best, roughly on par with calling something Urban Fantasy or Gothic Horror. It's a descriptive term regarding the nature of the setting and story, with Space Opera tending to be on the softer end of Science Fiction, prominently feature interplanetary (if not interstellar) travel, and a bit more romantic in tone between large scale space battles and larger than life heroes/villains
It wasn't so bad for its day: pretty normal quality stage fighting. I mean, it definitely wasn't good, either: you can see better in dozens of swashbucklers from the 30s-50s where the actors were good quality fencers (Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone).
I'd argue it's more realistic for how people would fight with a weapon as light, fast and harmful to the touch as a lightsabre - keep it almost constantly betwen you and your opponent, few if any huge swings, etc.
To clarify, I'm mostly talking about the stuff that is simply in the edits. How the actor playing Vader really couldn't see shit, how you can see Old Ben clearly flinching at the waving of the saber on his face like, you know, he's an old actor and not a master swordsman, how they edit it very quickly BECAUSE it's between a geriatric theater performer, and a stuntman in an awkward suit.
I honestly don't have any issue with the idea that they were trying to be more kendo in style, I'm simply talking about the actual reality of what they were trying to do, given the tech and other factors, compared to a massive CGI budget and advanced tech, like they did in R1, thus making the hallway scene look so good.
I don't fault the 70s version for this, as I've said, I can appreciate what they were trying to convey, versus how it was conveyed. And yes, they had a sword coordinator working from the old errol flynn films throughout, but there is only so much you can do, with the limitations of age and costume like they had. It's easy to be way more nimble in an errol flynn film, when both fighters are in good health, relatively young, and running around in a leotard, with no face covering.
True, and especially so considering that the two were supposed to be well past their prime. But with that said, I do have a certain affection for the SC 38 Reimagined fanwork, as I think it has better emotion in it. The additional dialogue is wholly unnecessary, don't get me wrong, but there's a force in that Vader's physicality that the original choreography lacked, and it just screams outrage.
The point WAS the hallway scene was very tonally dissonant compared to previous Star Wars outings, whatever you want to call it pejoratively or adjectively, even for their most villainous of villains. Semantics aside, Star Wars never showcased objective, raw Dark Side violence as seen in that scene.