Drifter

Age 74 from Complications of pneumonia.

I wonder what the new gimmick will be for the new model. I think they've gone through as many technical iterations as there can be.

It's not the plot, it's the execution. They need arsenio hall and tommy davidson to complete the magic but it still looks amazing. Love how they've got the audio sync off to give the spaghetti western feel.

Heh, didn't see that from earlier, You and me Nemo, same wavelength... but I'd like to point out that the first film didn't end with galactic harmony, it ended with the promise of it; "they do get better, really," and the second film picked up from that. The ending of the second film, space aliens and the personification of death were on stage and the band's performance went out to a global audience, and that was before the closing credits giving news clips of the bands future endeavors... Time travel could service the plot, but if they're using the same actors playing older versions of the same characters then at that point they should have their shit together/demigods. Perhaps they would have to go back and save their younger selves or protect the past, but they'd still be fully realized saviors bounding into action and not the clueless slackers with god-like potential bumbling towards their destiny. I hope it's at least fun.

Feels a little off on the guy they got for Solo, the rest have the look and feel down.

ah, thought you meant this bestial version. Always loved that stare-down he was giving Juggernaut.

Probably what I was referring to, I can't recall the details of those issues from back in the 90s. I'm pulling half a day today so I can't view or post pics, I'll have get back to this when I get home.

I'll try to restate my positions more succinctly. 1. I'm contending the background setting the writers created for the new series was at the unnecessary expense of the original trilogy's ending. Their attempt at subverting tropes boils down to unimaginative conformity to the overall trend of the sci-fi genre becoming more dystopian, dark, and nihilistic in general. And I find that annoying. 2. This new epilogue has detracted from the enjoyment of the OT by negating the accomplishments, impact, legacy, and basically anything resulting from the struggles of the protagonists of the original series. Reducing the OT to the point of meaninglessness to the premise of the new series. Change a couple of names and you could pretend that everything from A New Hope to Return of the Jedi never happened and still have the exact same set-up for the new series. The reason Shane and Logan were able to shuffle off the mortal coil to emotional fulfillment was because their action had impact, not even a legacy, but a meaning; good or ill, their actions had repercussions that outlasted them, and you don't get that sense from the original trilogy now. 3. This one hit me the other day. Part of the consternation is that this arrangement has forced the public to chose between their new series or the original. You can only exalt one or the other; if you chose to like both, to mildly invest emotionally, because of their contribution to popular culture and the public consciousness, then you have to hold them as separate entities that are unrelated in spirit and meaning unless you start overly deconstructing everything with wild reinterpretation-ary mental judo. Which is antithetical to the point of making a sequential entry to a franchise. 4. The creators of the new series are utter assholes for forcing (intentionally or not, though I'm getting the sense of unconscious arrogance here on the part of the writers)... utter assholes for forcing the fanbase and audiences in general into this petty Sophie's Choice for geeks. We've been reduced to saying you either like their new stuff and therefore contend that the OT was nothing but just another meaningless and pointless popcorn flick with zero emotional investment in the struggles of the protagonists; or you consider the original trilogy exceptional and think the new series is shitting all over your childhood. Fuck them for doing that. It's outrageous they've created this outrage in the first place and then doubled down on it with implications of 'unwarranted fan entitlement' that's left people questioning the very meaning of entertainment whether they realize they're it or not? Maybe I went too existential with that last sentence, but still... it really shouldn't be this hard to be blissfully content with my preferred form of entertainment, not if it was done right, which implies it wasn't. PS- While not a big deal; I'm going on record as having no problem with the bad guys being Space Nazis again. I was just pointing out what I interpreted to be Nemo's disappointment with what he considered unimaginative re-use of Space Nazis being the stock villains after previously being tickled that the protagonists were last fighting Robots, and not have the next threat be that 'something else' that the EU had. Just a restatement, not an agreement, sorry if it came off as such. Also, while not a big deal, I find that 'balance' hippy bullshit to go completely against the grain of a series with the most diametrically opposed portrayals of good and evil in modern film history, and I think it points back to the overall trend of more grittier and darker settings in the Sci-Fi genre becoming the unfortunate new norm.

So bestial Wolverine, like when he lost his adamantium, was always hunched over, dressed in rags and was shagging Elektra?

I think Nemo was just disappointed on the lack of variety in the new villainy. We had Nazis, then Robots, but instead of the next logical step of 'Aliens' (granted, hard to do with every other character technically an alien but as he said, the EU gave us extra-galactic horrors from beyond the rim) we got Nazis again. Lazy, unimaginative writing. I say keep the Space-Nazis if you want, I'm just disappointed that nothing has changed with the overall backdrop and setting since RotJ, unless you count things having gotten worse. Space Nazis milling about with impunity, showing up at a moments notice anywhere and everywhere. An Emperor stand-in demonstrably more powerful than the last one (say what you will but we have 4 films and 2 cgi tv series with Palpatine in them and at no time did he ever come close to pulling crap the likes of which Snoke casually and easily whipped out). The small insignificant and ineffectual Anti-Space Nazi opposition. The rampant local corruption. The the last lone and broken Jedi in hiding... Failure in Epilogue. ... or Arrested Development? Hell, if feels as if there was no epilogue at all, like the characters never even grew or matured in all that time, just got older. This wasn't the Star Trek: The Motion Picture of Star Wars as much as Star Trek: The Continuing Voyages of Suckage. Less Star Wars: The Next Generation, more Star Wars: The Animated Series of Failure. Good Luck re-watching the OT and thinking the characters were actually accomplishing anything anymore... anyways... always alliterate...

Of course, what do you take us for, pop culture philistines!

Well, absolutely fucking nothing, it would seem. But hey, everybody hurts sometimes so, whatever.

I can't view videos at work but the spirit of Carnac the Magnificent is with me... what is a video of the world's smallest violin?

Regardless of who owns the property I'm contending that it's a dick move to unnecessarily shit over the resolution of the previous films just to darken the setting of the new ones. They unduly robbed the fanbase of their cathartic happy ending by unimaginatively conforming the setting of the new films to the senseless nihilistic pessimism that permeates modern sci-fi just so they could pettily attempt to peddle nostalgia... pathetically. They've detracted from the enjoyment of the original series in perpetuity by subverting the original conclusion of the previous films with Defeat in Epilogue. It's not that the new ones are good or bad, I actually think they're fun, but it was sheer asshole-ery by the new writers to undermine the ending of the original series and whatever fulfillment the audience enjoyed from it, for piss poor reasons. It feels like they're Lucy with the football and we're all Charlie Brown. Instead of a new story or continuation of the old story we get a rehash of the first one by new characters that came about because of the utter failure of the original characters, a failure that is contradictory to the spirit and premise of the original films. It's a bait and switch in some ways. Ultimately they've changed the experience of the original films for the worse. You can't go back and re-watch them now without knowing that everything you're seeing is all for naught, and that every accomplishment the protagonists achieve is fleeting to the point of being meaningless. And that is a disservice to a lot of people.

Gee wiz, it's like writers can't take a hippy gimmick and put it in a shit-hole setting... what's wrong with you? Also, it's not the point; it's about the new films negating the accomplishments of the previous ones for no reason other than to unnecessarily change the tone of the setting because in the unimaginative eyes of the new writers gritty is modern. Gah, I'm talking in circles because you're only reading the parts of my posts that you want to hear. Smiles from the happy shit-hole setting

I apparently know them better than you it would seem. And that 'balance' new-age bullshit was forced down our throats in the god-awful prequel series as a poor attempt by Lucas at trying to look 'mature' in his shit writing and was nowhere to be seen in the original trilogy; which is just as well because even in the prequels as soon as any of the sane touch-up scriptwriters got a hold of it you were shown that said quest for 'balance' was an unmitigated disaster for all involved and also any reference to such bullshit notions were promptly dropped at the wayside when blasters, lightsabers and starfighters came on screen because these were damn Action Movies. Then Lucas shoe-horned that balance shit into the script again at the end and we're wondering just how the hell any of that applies to what's been shown on screen; leaving it up to the writers of the supplementary material to retcon the hell out of things to try and make Lucas' 'ever evolving view' of what he wants to force to be to fit to what's been shown. Which has nothing to do with the unnecessary crap that the new writers took on the previous films of the franchise just to change the tone to match the new darker grittier bullshit we've been getting in modern sci-fi. There's a reason that The Orville has been blasted by critics but is still one of the most beloved new shows to come out of fox and modern sci-fi, raking in record ratings for it's time slot; it's because it's not some grim-dark piece of shit. As for what that crap they took on the franchise was, I stated it before, snatching defeat from the jaws of the heroe's victory:

Oh, that RoLW box set looks so pretty...

Farm boy from nowhere goes off with the wizard to save the princess and along the way team up with the rogue where they all end up defeating the black knight and thwarting the evil empire? Sounds like a fairy tale to me. It's the nihilistic futility of struggle as shown by the static, if not demonstrably worse, setting for their story that betrays the premise and nullifies the accomplishments of the first films of the franchise that's pissing me off. That is the insult to fans. That is the appropriation. It's not about if the new films suck or not; I actually like them, but fuck those writers for unnecessarily shitting over my childhood to do so.

What are you talking about? The first scene of TFA are stormtroopers attacking Jakku. Its' made pretty clear that the first order moves and attacks with impunity and everybody knows about them, but they mostly stayed in their own systems flagrantly breaching the weapons treaty like hitler before ww2. The film stated that they were waiting to attack the 'rest of the galaxy' till after the crippled the republic... by blowing up just one system it would seem, at least there was an obvious fleet in it that presumably was the majority of the republic navy. And the writers did do their research, they got the facts right, but completely missed the point of the franchise being a Fairy-tale Fantasy; and while they have the heroes' journey they went overboard and forgot it's not some Ancient Greek or Norse Myth of lumbering demigods and heroes fighting a loosing battle in a desperate struggle to stave off the end of times for just a little while longer. They did a disservice to the previous films by fucking over the setting to make it more 'gritty' that seems to be all the rage in sci-fi nowadays and it's insulting to a shit load of people. So yeah, fuck them.

A lasting impact doesn't have to be forever or absolutely everywhere, but it sure as hell shouldn't be equivalent to as if it had never happened at all, aka, absolutely fucking nothing. The problem is that this isn't the next part of the cycle, it's that these new films are continuing the last part of the cycle. This isn't Epilogus Interruptus, this is Defeat in Epilogue; this isn't Star Wars: The Next Generation, this is Star Wars: The Animated Series of Failure. And we're seeing a 'microcosm' of the galaxy in these films, not some isolated series of unrelated and contained incidents with no far reaching repercussions, no matter how remote the systems they take place in; they make it quite clear in these films that they are fighting over "the fate of the galaxy." And in that often used statement it's actually the word 'galaxy' that is the understatement because they're actually talking about at least 4 galaxies, the main one and 3 (that are canon, with up to another 4 non-canon) surrounding micro-galaxies. That last scene in Empire? They're in orbit of a protostar in another galaxy, VIEWING THE GALAXY. The scope of the conflict isn't childish fanboying, it's a re-statement of lines from the film series.

I've been reduced to quoting myself

I'd say when Luke got properly pissed off and went full bore at Vader in ROTJ he won, especially when he got Vader down and took his hand, turnabout being fair play and all. He won against Vader, defeated him in Lightsaber combat and fulfilled his final trial as laid out by Yoda, declared victory and proclaimed himself a Jedi to the Emperor's face and then stupidly flung away his laser sword as a final FU to Sidious. New fight starts with a sucker-punch from Sidious as he fries Luke. Vader, being moved by his son's act of mercy, integrity, courage and defiance, and then by his embarrassing begging, is the one who flings the Emperor over the railing, being fatally electrocuted in the process... Luke didn't kill his father, his father died saving him and the rest of the galaxy from Sidious. I agree with Jumbie. As I've been saying, the new series renders the struggle of the previous characters essentially pointless. If the galaxy is that fucked up at the start of TFA, where so little has changed, that you could basically erase the first three films, where if the events of A New Hope thru Return of the Jedi had never happened and you'd still be at exactly the same setting as the beginning of The Force Awakens, then what was the fucking point of the character's actions? It's that fucking Nihilism in Sci-Fi shit all over again. Where anything that happens is a pointless meat grinder of never ending suffering and stagnation for 40000 years grim-dark bullshit. Star Wars is NOT suppose to resemble Warhammer 40k, thank you.

Shower Thought: This is by the same studio that currently owns the X-men franchise... The trailer implies Cable is out to murder some kid in the past to change the future and Deadpool is trying to protect him... Bet the kid's probably going to turn out to be the reincarnation of Apocalypse and Deadpool is mistakenly fighting on the wrong side throughout the whole film...

from what we're seeing, isn't that suppose to be the last image of the entire film, no symbiote till the very, very end?

They set out to change the galaxy and ultimately completely failed, but even worse then they couldn't even change anything in their own lives.