[OT] More George Lucas bashing.

[Barnacle Bill]

narf poit chez BOOM said:
...Yaay for stories conforming to tired, old cliches!

That was sarcastic.

Actually, the tired old cliche is what happened in the movie - in real life the streetwise cool guy with the hopped-up ride gets the girl, not the starry-eyed nerd. So, in fantasy it should work the other way around. Inspires the nerds...

narf poit chez BOOM said:
I had a longer rant, but I'm quite sure you didn't mean to imply that female characters are simply prizes to be handed out.

Depends entirely on the story. Zena the Warrior Princess - obviously not. The Avengers - surely you jest. Star Wars? The Princess was fundamentally a plot device. A reason for the heroic dering-do. Nothing more.

[Barnacle Bill]

Atrocities said:
Walkers are not really praticle weapons of war, they are mainly TERROR weapons.

Still comes across as hokey, though...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

The nerd already gets superpowers and becomes head of an ancient order of knights.

Han doesn't even get payed, if I remember correctly.

And the princess manages to be a character in her own right at least a few times in each movie. Which is a good thing.

Now, if they really want to have bucked convention, she would have gone off with Chewie...

[PvK]

My takes:

Star Wars IV: Classic, very well done space opera adventure, with very good action sequences with good pacing/timing. Good portrayal of good guy fear and death and chaos.

Star Wars V: Goodish but it's not a very complete story by itself. It's like a series episode that leaves plot threads dangling for the next episode and doesn't really resolve anything. Good effects, good atmosphere. Boring parts. Too much Yoda muppet and Jedi school lessons.

Star Wars VI: Goodish finale to trilogy with some weak points, especially the Ewoks and other bits that undermined the conflict and the sense of actual danger.

Star Wars I: Disappointing, with some potential and good parts, and some good effects, but too many really bad parts. Utterly unbelieveable underwater ecology with whales costantly chain-swallowing each other is just stupid, not exciting. Jedis bored reaction to it is appropriate for a viewer but not for characters supposedly in danger. Gungans are worse than Ewoks! Utterly unbelieveable physics-nonsensical over-accelerated pod race. Utterly unbelieveable Anakin abilities (build droid, insanely good racer, can fly fighter by instinct, finds the one "press here to turn off droid army and win climactic battle" button...). Bad acting, bad script. No one really seems afraid, ever (see Episode IV for people who show some fear in combat).

Star Wars II: Better than Star Wars I, but still disappointing. More good parts and good effects. Christopher Lee vs. Obi-Wan/Anakin and then Yoda is pretty good. Surface combat is pretty spectactular and ok, but slightly hyperactive and not entirely convincing. Lots of bad stuff though: bad script and acting and choreography (esp. Anakin and Padme), hyperactive/silly bits, like the arena combat and the flying R2D2 in a smelter that is like a platform-jumping computer game - are SO unbelieveable and disbelief-destroying. Again, no one really seems afraid, ever, which as in Episode I, undermines the conflict/tension.

Star Wars III: Better effects than Episode II, and lots of nearly non-stop action and significant events and death. But even more missed bets and screw-ups and potential to be far far better than it turned out. More bad choreography and timing and pointlessly unbelievable nonsensical and stupid action situations. Missiles that launch droids which grapple with fighters? Safely crash-landing a battleship from orbit without engines? That scene with Obi-Wan riding on a fake-o CGI dinosaur with super-ball resiliancy? Light-sabre fight next to lava waterfalls? I think not. The whole Anakin forbidden love transformation to evil thing had some dramatic potential, but the way it was done was very lame.

Alien: Good sci-fi horror film, apparently borrowing lots of ideas and aesthetics from Mario Bava's earlier Space "Vampires" film.

Aliens: Very good alien shoot-em-up adventure/horror.

Alien 3: Utterly unworthy sequel crap.

Alien 4: Outraged reviews and Alien 3 leave me with no desire to suffer through this, so I haven't seen it.

Predator: Good for an Arnie shoot'em up horror film.

Predator 2: Bad-ish crap sequel.

Alien vs Predator: Moronic, hyperactive and highly stupid, which wastes its expensive CGI graphics on horridly stupid plot and extremely fake-o CGI choreography.

* I am slightly amazed that anyone, even Atrocities, can possibly have changed his mind about AvP.

[Suicide Junkie]

Atrocities said:
Walkers are not really praticle weapons of war, they are mainly TERROR weapons.

When they are total crap in actual combat, they will quickly cease to be Terror weapons as soon as somebody fights back.

For example, how scary are Jaffa and their staff weapons in SG1? Sure they look scary, but when you shoot them they die, and they're big, noisy and use slow flashy weapons.

Walkers take that slow, flashy and vulnerable to a whole new level. Target practice.

Orbital Bombardment ftw

[PvK]

Ya, walkers even get wiped out by 18-inch stubby-limbed muppets using stone-age wood/rock/vine technology.

Emperor Palpatine said something about them being crewed by "An entire legion of my best troops..." too...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

That's because each ewok is secretly a Jedi Master!

[Spectarofdeath]

I'm with SJ on this one. Seriously, if you want to wipe out the rebel base, why do you send in troops first? I mean come on, two droids, one jedi, one smuggler, one princess and one farmboy are able to elude hordes (not to mention all the ones they killed) of your soldiers on (probably) the biggest base in the galaxy (which you constructed, why aren't those troops being trained better?!?) And you call for a "Ground invasion".

[Hugh Manatee]

They had the shield generators focused over the base and the weapons platform that could disable a whole ISDII for several minutes. Now logic says you could have immolated the areas around the shield turning the planet into uninhabitable slag with a boiling atmosphere but that would have been a boring plot device and I think vader wanted most of them alive so they HAD to invade the base under the shield.

IMO the AT-AT(elephant) walkers were cool, but just a flawed design, like most of the imperial crap(IE fighters without shields, the shoot here buttons, the blindspot behind a star destroyer ect, they just don't give a crap about the safety of their troops they just want big guns for cheap. I'm thinking that hydraulics are bound to be cheaper then an antigrav nit and may require less power to opperate). For one thing the guns only cover about 180 degrees or less in front of the thing, if they had put a turret on top, maybe a few SAM launchers, guns in the back, a few on the sides, and a few underneath(like the one that drops out of the falcon when they escape tatooine in Ep4) it could be a dam near unnaproachable walking fortress.

They were however covered by the AT-ST(chicken) walkers, so their exposed rears would have been covered save for the retarded marksmanship of the imperial gunners they should have been fine. And they did route the rebels from the base.

[PvK]

In general I agree that walkers are usually a poor choice for a fighting vehicle. However I think the AT-AT's can sort of technobabble their way out of being completely unbelievable by saying they have shield generators which due to their large hull can be strong enough to negate most or all expected incoming firepower, but which would be too heavy to cheaply put in a hovering vehicle.