Star Wars Episode 7

[Dogg Thang]

She did like it. You know what she loved? Child Anakin. She wasn't really getting into it and then he came on and she was hooked. Reckoned he was adorable and wasn't expecting a young child in Star Wars. She also loved Maul. Generally, she really enjoyed it. For her, the one negative was that she had a really hard time following the story. And when the crawl opens with trade routes and taxation, I don't blame her. So she had a crazy amount of questions, especially at the start - made worse by her having a hard time understanding the trade federation accents.

I asked her to rate the movies she has seen in order and, as much as it would horrify Star Wars fans, she placed episode 1 over New Hope. I asked her why and it was child Anakin. But she places the new movie at the top of the list and Jedi following closely behind. She had a tough time placing Empire but finally put it just above Ep1. So she rated New Hope at the bottom! So I have kicked her out of the house and disowned her.

As for Captain Phasma, she doesn't really have a point. She looks shiny and cool in a few shots. Weirdly, there are many places in the story she could have been and yet had no role, such as the attack on that planet with Maz. She could have done the TRAITOR fight rather than the random Stormtrooper.

I have a suspicion she was just a background character who ended up getting beefed up by the marketing department when they saw the shiny suit. I would also reckon that criticism about the lack of female parts played a part in her getting out out in front.

[buster_broon]

Thing is the actress who plays her isn't a dud, she is great in game of thrones so hoping that isn't it with that character

->Open Spoiler<-

since she probably died in the garbage compactor when star killer exploded

Ha phantom menace rules

You know she's gonna love young yoda and just love revenge of the sith

[Dogg Thang]

Not sure about Yoda but hard to tell from Phantom Menace. I have it on DVD with the puppet Yoda which looked all wrong (CG Yoda looks all wrong too) and she took one look and said 'WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YODA?!'. And whatever about her enjoyment, holy bejaysus, that was a tough watch for me. Sloppy messy rubbish with a story that is all over the place. Boss Nass made me want to tear my face off and every senate/council scene is a crime against cinema. Godawful. Some parts look pretty though. The score is excellent. Sound design fantastic and Maul looks awesome. But a real chore. Will be interesting watching Clones next. It's the one I remember the least.

On Phasma,

->Open Spoiler<-

my guess is we'll see her again and there may well be an attempt to give her a beefier role because quite a few people were disappointed with how little she did. But then they are starting to shoot now so would have had the script pretty much locked before the release of Force Awakens so hard to know how much they could react to any criticism of that movie.

Also curious to see how much more we'll get of Hux. I liked him, although the speech scene descended into parody.

[cutmymilk]

Phasma is the joke of the film I think. Stand around in the first and get eaten in the second JUST LIKE BOBA FETT HAHAHA

[Sam The Man]

Attack Of The Clones is actually my favourite of the prequel trilogy because it felt the most adventurous, had some amazing locations and had some great action scenes as well as being the one where Annie & Padme fell in love which i like.

The dialogue is rubbish though and the acting questionable but i don't care i just love it and never forget seeing it in the cinema and being wowed at the effects thinking how much they had improved from episode 1 which still looked good and how unbelievably attractive Natalie Portman was.

I Love the moments where an explosion occurs and all other sound effects are for just a second muted and only the explosion itself is heard like in the asteroid chase where the seismic charges go off and later where a rocket detonates on impact during the Geonosis battle.

Although i enjoyed episode 1 & 3 i don't love them as much as episode 2

[Dogg Thang]

Continuing my Star Wars season, we braved Attack of the Clones today. Some lovely design here, with some Blade Runner type Coruscant shots and pretty lights and stuff. But leaning far too heavily on CG to the point where a lot of it looked like concept art rather than a finished film. John Williams was on top form, at least with the pieces that weren't edited out, and the sound design is mostly superb (the seismic charges being the highlight of the movie).

But, yeah, the dialogue is hideous in this one, the story a total mess and Anakin is a total train wreck. For the first half hour, I was bombarded with questions about political terms and barely had any good answers to offer. From moment one, my daughter was convinced Anakin was going to do something 'totally evil' during what I think were meant to be love scenes. His completely changed character in this movie renders Ep1 completely redundant - not one part of that movie actually contributes to the story in this trilogy.

And while my daughter didn't seem conscious of the increased use of CG in the first half of the movie (or at least didn't mention it), when the clones arrived she said 'this is obviously a cartoon now. It looks like Star Wars Rebels'. She's not wrong. And then the Yoda bit at the end, 'that is like totally the opposite of Yoda'. Yep. But her main problem with the movie was no sense of what the movie was actually about in terms of good vs bad. She was convinced the clones would turn out to be the enemy (she has that right) but the droid army are the enemy and we don't really have a sense of what is driving them and so there is so little to grasp hold of in terms of simply figuring out what the point of anything is.

One funny moment with Anakin was when she said, 'he's doing a bit of a Kylo Ren there'. Couldn't argue with her but I felt Kylo Ren got it right!

And speaking of Kylo and back to Ep7, watch this!

[Brad]

Watched Force Awakens yesterday. Thought it was garbage. Felt like I was being tricked all the way through; playing on nostalgia and zero risks taken. I saw this film 39 years ago. I'd like a new story for episode 8 please!

[Finsbury Girl]

Funny the kids were watching A New Hope for the first time - they LOVED the new one & enjoyed the prequels - when it came to Obi Wan v Darth Vader they said it was 'Lame' - my poor children, how I have failed thee......

[Dogg Thang]

Well you only have yourself to blame. What kind of order was that to show them the films in?!

[Finsbury Girl]

They did it themselves on Sky on demand! - I failed in my parental supervision

[Dogg Thang]

Ah, the perils of modern media.

[CMcK]

Correct order to view Star Wars films for the first time is 4,5,2,3,6 then 7.

[wakka]

Why, CMcK?

Dogg I've been enjoying your notes on your rewatchings of the Star Wars movies with your daughter. Keep it up for III!

I don't know how I'll react if my someday future children watch A New Hope and tell me it's lame. They'll probably wonder why I'm blubbing at the bit with the two suns as well.

[Asura]

Why, CMcK?

I can answer that:

4 - start, meet Luke and other characters
5 - "I am your father"
2&3 - find out how Vader is
6&7 - Obvious

It stops the "I am your father" getting spoiled.

[Darwock]

My wife just watched A New Hope (she got caught up in the TFA hype but wants to know the background first).

Some comments I received:

When Vader starts busting up the rebel ship - "Is Darth Vader bad?"
In the aforementioned two Suns scene - "is he supposed to be cool?"
When Leia first gets rescued -"She's annoying!"
As the credits rolled - "that wasn't interesting".

To be fair she has a point about Leia, not one bit of gratitude shown to her rescuers. I never noticed that before.