• '22 '20 '19 '18 '17 '16

    I love the Plinkett movie reviews, I remember stumbling upon his ST Next Gen reviews and getting so excited for his take on the prequels. Though I will say of all the Next Gen films First Contact is by far the best not worthy of total condemnation.

    The RLM team summed up ST 2009 pretty well and even warned about what kind of movie Into Darkness would be. Their Half in the Bag shows are amusing reviews with a little Plinkett mixed in.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @Flashman:

    Can’t believe anyone would bother saving Episodes 1 & 2 from the incinerator.

    While they are exceedingly far from perfect, there are a precious few good choices or scenes.

    Casting Ewan McGregor as Obi-wan was an excellent choice in my opinion. Liam Neeson as Qui-gon was good too, though I shrink from calling it excellent. However, like the video points out, their performances were inhibited by a poor script.

    The ending lightsaber fight in Ep. I with Qui-gon, Obi-wan and Darth Maul was perhaps the best fight of any Star Wars movie. Definitely worth keeping.

    For that matter, Darth Maul was a great bad-guy, but so little was done with him and his role was (intentionally?) left very under-developed. Could have been even better.

    I like Sam Jackson as Mace Windu, though the character himself left a little to be desired.

    Beyond that, casting was very poor and acting was worse. A good part of that blame must be chalked up to the script, but still…

  • Customizer

    I thought Neeson looked thoroughly embarrassed to be seen in the movie; sleepwalked through his role.

    As Plinkett says, there isn’t a single real character in it, apart from Binks who everyone hated.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @Flashman:

    I thought Neeson looked thoroughly embarrassed to be seen in the movie; sleepwalked through his role.

    As Plinkett says, there isn’t a single real character in it, apart from Binks who everyone hated.

    I do agree. Neeson did not do a great job, so I should redact my statement as it pertains to him.

  • Customizer

    I just hope the new one does something interesting with the original cast, like Luke being corrupted by the Force.

    Just playing older versions of themselves taking on a new set of one-dimensional villains with British accents would be pointless. Apart from the money they’d make.

    Rico.PNG


  • The first picture in this story will probably remind Star Wars fans of Luke speeding above the Tatooine desert in his landspeeder.  Even the landscape colour is similar.

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/aerofex-hover-bike-goes-on-sale-in-2017-1.2642866


  • Star Wars Set Photos Taken By Accident

    A man who was taking publicity shots for a flying school returned home to discover he had captured images of spacecraft used in the new Star Wars film.

    Matthew Myatt originally thought his pictures of the Millennium Falcon and an X-Wing fighter were experimental aircraft at Greenham Common, Berkshire.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29144135


  • That is brilliant, thanks Marc.


  • There is the dark side…and the light…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLk59H86ww


  • When I saw that Trailer, I was like:
    Oh man not again, not another fan made one, because I thought first that it was Kevin Hart the Stormtrooper.
    Then I realized , Oh! :-o :-o :-D

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    Always wondered why they didn’t have cross hilts on light sabers. Now they do.


  • @LHoffman:

    Always wondered why they didn’t have cross hilts on light sabers.

    A normal crosshilt on a normal sword offers some protection to the user from the opponent’s sword – but a lightsaber crosshilt consisting of two short lightsaber blades strikes me as being potentially hazardous to the user.  One wrong move and you could end up cutting off your own wrist.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @CWO:

    @LHoffman:

    Always wondered why they didn’t have cross hilts on light sabers.

    A normal crosshilt on a normal sword offers some protection to the user from the opponent’s sword – but a lightsaber crosshilt consisting of two short lightsaber blades strikes me as being potentially hazardous to the user.  One wrong move and you could end up cutting off your own wrist.

    That is true, but we would have to assume that a force using Jedi/Sith would be adept enough to prevent that from happening. At least that is a possible rationale.

    My concern, which I am sort of surprised that some others picked up on, is that the emitters for the cross hilt blades stick out from the hilt itself. This negates the protection that the cross hilt is meant to offer in that another blade could slide down and cut the emitters heads off and continue right on into the user’s hands. (http://www.theverge.com/tldr/2014/11/28/7302383/lets-talk-about-the-new-lightsaber-ouch-hands).

    Either that was not thought through very much or utility doesn’t matter as long as this Sith has some new badass weapon in the mode of Darth Maul. I think it is likely both. All in all, it is a rather puzzling addition because in all the lightsaber fights before we have never seen the need for a protective cross hilt. I am sure we will see it used in an offensive capacity to justify its existence.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    A normal cross-hit on a light sabre wouldn’t work.  Because the other guys light sabre would just cut through it!

    Hence, the important of the light cross-hit, which may have two small/obscure mandibles that prevent the hand from touching them!

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @Gargantua:

    A normal cross-hit on a light sabre wouldn’t work.  Because the other guys light sabre would just cut through it!

    Hence, the important of the light cross-hit, which may have two small/obscure mandibles that prevent the hand from touching them!

    Prevents the user’s hands from touching the blade, yes. But my point is that it would not offer any more protection because the other lightsaber would easily cut through the cross bar emitters and then into the hands. Kinda useless in a protection sense. Now, if the emitters were flush with the sides of the lightsaber hilt itself, then they might be worth something. Clearly they are not in the example from the trailer.


  • The explanation may perhaps have more to do with film grammar than with logical weapon design.  Filmmakers in general, and sci-fi filmmakers in particular, sometimes have to make design compromises over things that might confuse the average moviegoer (as opposed to any specialists who might be in the audience).  Take for example the spaceship Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The ship is powered by a nuclear reactor, and Arthur C. Clarke has pointed out that although it ought to have large radiator fins to dissipate waste heat, Kubrick’s designers left them off because the average moviegoer would have mistaken them for wings and would have been baffled about the presence of wings on a ship that is clearly meant to operate purely in space.  Baffling a film audience is generally a bad idea (except in spy and mystery films, where it’s an expected element of the genre) because when the audience gets hung up on a distracting detail like that, their attention is drawn away from where it ought to be.  So perhaps the crossguard emitters are there for a similar reason.  They tell the people in audience where the crossguard blades are coming from, so that the average moviegoers will immediately accept the presence of the crossguard blades without losing a beat of the story; it’s only the more critical minority of the audience members who will point out, quite correctly, that the emitters are too vulnerable to damage from an opponent’s lightsaber blade.  If the designers had left off the emitters, and had the crossguard blades emerged directly from the handle of the saber, you’d get the opposite reaction: the critical members of the audience would have approved of this logical design, whereas the typical moviegoer might have wondered: “Where are those two extra blades coming from?  Did his lightsaber just spring a couple of leaks or something?”


  • The Sith and other dark Jedis used sometimes Swords wich could take on Lightsabers in battle, but as far as I know there was no similar design like the one we have seen in the Teaser.
    The question, what is more ratteling on the Cage is:
    Are they going to tell us another diffrent Story oposed to the original?
    There are diffrent design out there in SW universe but this design will need an explanation of where it came from…

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @aequitas:

    The question, what is more ratteling on the Cage is:
    Are they going to tell us another diffrent Story oposed to the original?

    What do you mean “different story as opposed to the original”? As in, are they not going to stay faithful to the style and mode of the original… or are they re-telling the story. It isn’t a reboot, but a continuation.

    @aequitas:

    There are diffrent design out there in SW universe but this design will need an explanation of where it came from…

    I don’t think it needs one. They didn’t explain Darth Maul’s lightsaber as being similar to Exar Kun’s.


  • This saber is strictly because that hack JJ thought it looked cool. They put zero thought into it before deciding to do it. They then left it to the fight coordinator to make it work no doubt.

    I point out that the Jedi have typically been shown to use samuraii styled swordsmanship. The Tsuba similar to a cross guard is not frequently used in that style of fighting. I’d also point out that the cross guard typically keeps the opposing blade from sliding all the way down your blade to your hands.

    The blade shown in the underwhelming preview has points near the blade where the light saber cross guard is projected. It has been shown that lightsabers hilts may be sliced by lightsabers. A lightsaber sliding down the claymore lightsaber blade would cut the protrusion projecting the cross guard defeating the main purpose of the guard. This flaw in the weapon design combined with the other difficulties inherent in wielding a weapon as dangerous to the user as these cross guards would be suggests it is not a practical choice.

    We have also seen that lightsabers tend to be “sticky” in that the blades don’t slide along one another hence the lack of cross guards in the previous films: they aren’t needed on these weapons.

    This lightsaber epitomizes the style over substance I’ve come to expect from JJ.

  • '18 '17 '16 '15 Customizer

    @frimmel:

    We have also seen that lightsabers tend to be “sticky” in that the blades don’t slide along one another hence the lack of cross guards in the previous films: they aren’t needed on these weapons.

    While I understand people describing lightsaber dynamics as “sticky”, I have never personally viewed them as such. There certainly has never appeared to me to be any stickiness to the fight sequences. If anything the saber contact usually lasts a fraction of a second or they simply are being pushed together by the users.

    There is definitely some saber on saber movement here at 1:52 and 2:13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRd9PGmAQUE#t=110

    @frimmel:

    This lightsaber epitomizes the style over substance I’ve come to expect from JJ.

    The rather ridiculous shot in the teaser that follows the Millennium Falcon through an upside down loop sealed the JJ-ness for me. Well that and the crazy little soccer ball droid. The first was very obviously a non-traditional Star Wars shot. Jarringly so.

Suggested Topics

Axis & Allies Boardgaming Custom Painted Miniatures

95

Online

17.4k

Users

39.9k

Topics

1.7m

Posts