And yet the force awakens was way better then the prequels....I think part of it was walking back from the prequels and going in a better direction...
what would be your approach to BB8?
3 hours ago, Daeglan said:And yet the force awakens was way better then the prequels....I think part of it was walking back from the prequels and going in a better direction...
Here is the thing: Was TFA really better than the prequels? The dialogs certainly were, but the overall movie? Full of pointless fanservice, lore breaking mechanics and basically an ANH remake with an political landscape which make look the prequels good by comparison and on top with a few big turds in mystery boxes. The prequels come with the luxury to not be able to destroy the OT, TFA removes nearly every achievement the heroes of the original trilogy made: Han and Leia? Divorced, their son a whiney teenager with mental issues. The new republic? Basically destroyed as a side note, but even before divided so much their senate seems to actually paying for starkiller, the alliance for restoration of the republic failed and left as a shadow of themselves as resistance with limited outdated gear against the republic founded first order which has all the new toys. Luke? In hiding, his new jedi order destroyed before it even could start. TFA is not only a ANH remake, it is basically a reboot to the franchise, the thing JJ seems to specialize these days, and the most important thing for a reboot is that you destroy what came before. JJ did so with Star Trek and he did so with Star Wars as well. And I think the star wars reboot is even more drastic, because the new big theme is not conflict between the dark and the light, but the people in the middle. I would be surprised if Rey and Kylo will not turn out both as Grey Knights, the whole star wars lore gets focus into that directing, Tython is back in cannon, the Bendu teached the jedi, the rogue one temple of the whills and its guardians seem to be a grey order, clearly of some force ability. And new bad guys with glowsticks, the Knights of Ren show as well grey tendencies. So the core theme of the OT gets thrown away too.
Let's wait till it is finished, before we made a definite statement how good or bad this new trilogy is. And at least the music in TPM was clearly miles ahead of TFA ;-)
Republic founded first order???
Pretty sure TFA would've been a soft reboot regardless of if JJ was involved or not. Disney are a very profit minded business, better to draw in a whole new crowd of young fans than just make what the purists want. Soft reboots achieve that goal well.
To me TFA was a masterclass in hype building for episode 8. The old fans will be back to see if the train gets on the rails properly, and find out what Luke actually does. New fans will be clamouring for more Rey, Fin, BB and Poe.
On 2/8/2017 at 1:42 PM, awayputurwpn said:I can feel your JJ-hate.
Now, give in to your anger!
WAY too late to "give in." 
15 hours ago, Daeglan said:Republic founded first order???
This was one of the campaign ads for the holo-star demagogue running to be elected as Chancellor of the New Republic.
2 hours ago, awayputurwpn said:This was one of the campaign ads for the holo-star demagogue running to be elected as Chancellor of the New Republic.
Huh? No idea what this refers too...
Well, I've had the opportunity to see The Force Awakens, and the three Prequels in close succession to each other and I'm not convinced that TFA is better than the prequels.
And SeaApocalypse pretty much hits all of the highlights.
I do like the new characters and I'm hoping that EP VIII is more enjoyable (and believable).
I think it depends what metric you judge quality on.
In terms of being able to watch start to finish without groaning loudly every few minutes, TFA beats the hell out of the Prequels. They don't stand a chance. But when it comes to, say, having an original narrative? Not so much.
I don't think it was a spectacular film but it set things up for a solid set of sequels, at least. I have high hopes that Rian Johnson will be able to take the characters and plot threads set up in TFA and turn them into something genuinely great. Helps that he actually listens to the story group, JJ and Bad Robot as a whole were apparently pretty difficult to work with in terms of interaction with Lucasfilm.
Thanks for your opinion Tom, but I've found every single movie that JJ has directed to be unwatchable. The last "good" project of JJ Abram's that I enjoyed was the first season of Alias.
I literally spend every five minutes convulsing from the assault to internal logic and the abuses to my suspenders of disbelief.
I do run into people who really enjoy the "bubble gum popping" enjoyment derived from TFA . . . so enjoy.
I also recall that everyone loved The Phantom Menace . . . for about a year. And then reality set in.
So that you understand my perspective, I am currently classifying TFA as worse than the prequels. And yes, I've watched all four very recently so I'm not trying to "remember" any experience from a lengthy distance of time.
On the flip side, I'm finding that people who really liked TFA are not enjoying Rogue One (TPK) all that much. And with that said, I am seriously considering TPK to be my most favorite Star Wars movie of all time. (I'll need to re-watch it several more times before I'm absolutely certain).
And to be blunt there are long strings of watching JJ Abrams films where my brain is reacting with something like;
What?!? NO! You can't! Wait? No! Not that either. OMG you didn't do that either! Ugh not that too? NO! Wait, the tech doesn't do that! Or that! Ach no! Not that. That doesn't make sense! Neither does. Oh no you didn't! Is this a freaking fairy tale? Are my little ponies going to show up any minute with their "rainbow" powers? That would be more realistic! Oh for the love of God, this is supposed to be Star Wars not Star Trek! Gah! Wait what was that supposed to be? Why is the camera doing that? Oh no. REally? That's really the best filmography available? STOP SHAKING THE CAMERA JJ!!!
Not an exact quote, but you get the idea.
Don't bring Ponies even near to that trainwreck that JJ Abrams movies are. Mysteries in MLP:FIM get resolved and the mystery boxes are not just filled with a turd sprinkled with marketing bull. 
Though to be honest, Rogue One was even worse, because it was so super boring and hollywood trope heavy with a character development less believable than actual MLP:FIM character developments. The only times when Ponies react like R1 characters is when their characters get influenced by magic. ;-)
"You bastards killed my innocent father, after I told you not to, ignored me, cheated on me, betrayed me and bombarded my nearly direct location with proton torpedoes. Now I totally have be on your sight and fight a war which I wanted nothing to do with for the past years and tried to run away from the last 40 minutes of the movie. Screw this, I am going onto a suicide mission.", and then that mission plays out like a dozen war movies before. I wouldn't be surprise if there are a few old war movies, which you can use as direct template for most of the R1 scenes … which would be fine if I did not had seen those movies before, but is rather boring when a hundert other movies have stolen the exact same **** too.
I guess Empire was as good as it gets in the movie department … at least TCW was awesome and Rebels is at least good. 
/end rant
Sorry about that, (too) high hopes and (bitter) disappointment need to be vented sometimes. Else it will drag you down and spoil the fun of the actual good stuff about star wars. Like this RPG or Filoni's series ;-)
Edited by SEApocalypseWow. I'm glad one of my best friends went to see TFA so I didn't need to. Between what some of you say, what he said, and what reviews I read said, I have no need to waste even a minute of my time on that movie.
I may be one of the few that didn't like TPM "for about a year". I kept waiting for it to get good, or at least interesting, the whole way through, and IT NEVER DID. I left the theater disgusted with the movie and the fact that I'd just spent two hours of my life and $30-$40 (I saw it while I was in Honolulu, so it was extra expensive) on that pile of garbage.
Went to R1 with high hopes but VERY low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised. But then, I don't try to act like I'm some kind of Super Super Cereal movie critic that has to thoroughly examine every aspect of the movie and compare it to every other movie out there to see if anything was similar. My standard for a movie is "Did I enjoy it? Would I watch it again?" (I saw R1 a few times, and just like Deadpool I will buy it as soon as it comes out on DVD). If I want to dissect entertainment, I will go back to college. Or do some online courses, since I'm not about to quit my job just to go back to school again.
As for the prequels, with some time to properly edit them I could turn Ep2 and Ep3 into one good movie, I think. But that sounds an awful lot like unpaid work, and I could just watch The Clone Wars again for my Star Wars In That Time Period fix.
Personally I loved both TFA and Rogue One. In all honesty, there isn't a Star Wars movie I didn't love. I still enjoy the Prequels too. Yes, all of them have their faults, but I still love them all.
On 2/8/2017 at 8:25 PM, Mark Caliber said:Our group ran into an obnoxious R5 astromech a while back and the poor bot had been left in deep space, waiting for us to rendezvous with it.
We showed up 2-3 weeks later than expected so this droid had been stuck in space for the whole time.
R5-Q13 was very angry at our group and let out an angry burst of Astromech squawk at our group in anger. So the Ortolan grabbed a Ion Blaster and "subdued" the droid.
The two haven't gotten along since . . .
The moral of the story is you could also blast BB-8 with an Ion Cannon.
I really hope that Ep VIII is substantially better than the the previous installment. It should be. JJ Abrams name is nowhere near the credits.
I'll continue a bit off topic before I'll go back on topic. I got some bad news to you. JJ will be at credits, with title executive producer. It's another question how much that affects the movie. I think Disney will be the thing affecting more.
20 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:Don't bring Ponies even near to that trainwreck that JJ Abrams movies are. Mysteries in MLP:FIM get resolved and the mystery boxes are not just filled with a turd sprinkled with marketing bull.
Though to be honest, Rogue One was even worse, because it was so super boring and hollywood trope heavy with a character development less believable than actual MLP:FIM character developments. The only times when Ponies react like R1 characters is when their characters get influenced by magic. ;-)
"You bastards killed my innocent father, after I told you not to, ignored me, cheated on me, betrayed me and bombarded my nearly direct location with proton torpedoes. Now I totally have be on your sight and fight a war which I wanted nothing to do with for the past years and tried to run away from the last 40 minutes of the movie. Screw this, I am going onto a suicide mission.", and then that mission plays out like a dozen war movies before. I wouldn't be surprise if there are a few old war movies, which you can use as direct template for most of the R1 scenes … which would be fine if I did not had seen those movies before, but is rather boring when a hundert other movies have stolen the exact same **** too.
I guess Empire was as good as it gets in the movie department … at least TCW was awesome and Rebels is at least good.
/end rant
Sorry about that, (too) high hopes and (bitter) disappointment need to be vented sometimes. Else it will drag you down and spoil the fun of the actual good stuff about star wars. Like this RPG or Filoni's series ;-)
I respectfully disagree with almost everything you said (except JJ movies are often bad. To MLP I won't touch with a three foot pole. 
). I just want to ask you what would have been better thing for Jyn to do after the rebellion started to broke apart, or generally how the movie should have gone? (I'm asking this because I'm genuinely interested about your opinion about it.) IMO R1 was a good movie, definitely better than TFA. It had its problems, but so does every movie. If we continue this, maybe we should move this discussion to another thread...
But back to on topic. I'm with those who said take existing astromech (R7) as baseline and continue from there. Or as PC high int, medium pre, but I might also add some cunning. I might consider something like engineer:scientist, spy:infiltrator or maybe even ace:pilot. But almost anything would work, as I think BB-8 didn't do very much in TFA, so we don't fully know what he's capable of. So, take and aspect of BB-8 decide based on it.
P.S. this new forum software is horrible. I has already lost my reply few times.
I'm not as concerned with JJ being an "Executive Producer" because they just foot the bill.
JJ's creative input should be limited to "How are you spending my money" and "What's my ROI?"
2 hours ago, kkuja said:[...]But back to on topic. [...]
Please?!
Was BB-8 ever referred to as an astromech droid? I don't have the visual guide so I can only guess what is primary function was meant to be.
http://www.starwars.com/databank/bb-8
Website calls BB-8 an astromech.
1 hour ago, kaosoe said:Please?!
Was BB-8 ever referred to as an astromech droid? I don't have the visual guide so I can only guess what is primary function was meant to be.
BB8 goes in a droid socket so astromech.
42 minutes ago, Tom Cruise said:http://www.starwars.com/databank/bb-8
Website calls BB-8 an astromech.
That makes sense. I don't like making assumptions.
On 2/9/2017 at 3:10 PM, Daeglan said:Huh? No idea what this refers too...
Text is hard to tell. Sarcasm?