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Topic: Dex's Diner - The Star Wars Topic

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RogerRoger

@LN78 Yeah, watched all three almost as soon as they dropped.

I'm cooler towards it than everybody else seems to be, but that's probably just because I want different things from "my" Star Wars. That isn't to deny the fact that Andor seems to be a well-written, well-made spy thriller, packed with great performances from a surprising cast (Trevor from EastEnders and Parker from the Thunderbirds movie were my biggest "What the...?!" moments) and I'm beyond pleased that Disney are allowing Star Wars to cater to a wider audience, because it can and should.

But I don't like the fact that it's canonised real life swearing, and I don't like how some of it looks like it was filmed on an industrial estate down the road (same issue I had with the Resistance base in The Force Awakens, which was filmed on a military range identical to the one I used to ride my bike all over as a kid; it simply looks too normal to me, and therefore breaks my escapism, in the same way a glitchy texture in a game would). Being brutally honest, I found the first two episodes kinda boring, but the third definitely grabbed me, and was brilliantly tense and well-executed from start to finish.

Which perhaps explains why they delayed the premiere and then dropped them all together. It feels like a complete first act, designed to work together as a compelling crescendo. I have a feeling that the next episode will take us somewhere else, to spend time with other characters, before circling back to Cassian.

Had the first episode, or first two episodes, been it for a week, then I'd have been disappointed. As it stands, I'm on board and excited to see more, but I can't ignore a slight twinge of ambivalence.

Thanks for asking, but sorry if my reaction is... well, probably quite predictable, considering!

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

RogerRoger

@LN78 Flash forward to when the season's over, and I'm calling it the best Star Wars ever created.

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

LN78

@RogerRoger Ditto when I'm kicking myself for getting fooled again like after Episode 1 of Season 2 of "Picard". 🤣.

LN78

JohnnyShoulder

Well this quite the turnaround of what usually goes on here! Feels like I've walked into an alternative dimension! 😂

Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

PSN: JohnnyShoulder

LN78

@JohnnyShoulder Nobody was more surprised than I, believe me. I thought that my days of liking new "Star Wars" content were long gone. Have you seen it yet?

LN78

nessisonett

@LN78 I’ve heard really brilliant things about Andor actually, I wasn’t expecting all that much as it feels like it’s been in development hell for ages. Diego Luna’s a great actor though who just gets a bit unlucky with the way his projects pan out.

Edited on by nessisonett

Plumbing’s just Lego innit. Water Lego.

Trans rights are human rights.

LN78

@nessisonett It's pretty funny - I wouldn't have seen it at all if I hadn't bought the £2 trial month on Disney+ to watch the disastrous "Thor 4" and now they have me for the next two months at full price assuming that the quality of the show stays at this level. That bugs me no end but I must admit it feels nice to actually like "Star Wars" again, even if it is in a limited fashion.

LN78

JohnnyShoulder

@LN78 Not got Disney+ at the mo. Did see the recent offer, but I'm currently occupied with Apple TV.

Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

PSN: JohnnyShoulder

LN78

@JohnnyShoulder I've got a few months left on my Apple TV free trial. "Severance" (I've heard mixed things) and Season 3 of "For All Mankind" (the first two seasons were tremendous) are on my "to watch" list.

LN78

JohnnyShoulder

@LN78 I wasn't so keen on Severance as most other people I heard from. For all Mankind is on my list, might watch that after Slow Horses.

Life is more fun when you help people succeed, instead of wishing them to fail.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.

PSN: JohnnyShoulder

LN78

@RogerRoger Take a look at this (if you haven't already) but trust me when I say stay out of the comments section for the sake of your sanity - https://www.ign.com/articles/best-star-wars-movies
PS Having discussed "Andor" with a couple of my friends who are in the know about editing, it seems to me that the first three episodes were probably intended to be a feature length "pilot" that was later arbitrarily chopped into three by the powers that be for whatever reason. I also thought about your comment about "real world" profanity being canonised and remembered Obi-Wan's damn fool idealistic crusade and that Han's Tauntaun will see you in Hell.

LN78

RogerRoger

@LN78 Heh. Yeah, I tend not to look at rankings. Everybody's got their own, and that's all that matters. Mine's in constant flux anyway, so any claim to be a "definitive" set-in-stone ranking makes me laugh. I appreciate the thought all the same; the real question is, do you agree with the article?

It wouldn't surprise me if the eventual Gallery documentary about Andor reveals as much. Watching all three episodes together really made them feel cohesive.

Yeah, on the profanity thing, I reckon it's a matter of degrees. I tend to use the admittedly somewhat prudish US network television scale, so lesser curses with outdated or specific etymology (like "damn" and "Hell" and "son of a...") fall into everyday use, and are fair game. Despite my best efforts, I might even blurt one out in front of a kid, whereas I'd be super-careful about the Big Four, which is why hearing two of 'em in a Star Wars show surprised me. Especially since The Mandalorian went to great lengths to reinforce its own curse, "dank farrik", so that its characters could swear without swearing.

Each to their own, though. I suppose language is constantly evolving, and kids today probably say far, far worse things anyway. It's just a personal preference, mainly because I find excessive profanity (of the kind that infests most Netflix Originals) tiring and immature. Oh well.

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

LN78

@RogerRoger I'd probably swap "ANH" with "Empire" and "TLJ" with "Rogue One" but otherwise it about sums up my order. For today,anyway - I rate the theatrical cut of "RotJ" much more highly than the "Special Edition" for example. The "degrees" of profanity is spot on, but given today's social environment almost laughably outmoded. I remember my dad used to get annoyed at the infamous "Red Dwarf" quasi-curse "smeg" because given the right etymological evolution it could be considered just as offensive as any other given word - tell your kids it's "rude" and they'll be whispering it in the schoolyard and having a naughty chuckle almost without hesitation!

LN78

RogerRoger

@LN78 Interesting that you note the differences between individual movie editions. Some would argue that making such a distinction should be essential, but that'd make for one heck of a list.

That's part of my problem. Star Wars has become so much more than a series of movies. It's been that way since I was a kid, of course, but it's getting ridiculous now. Sure, I could rank the movies, but then I'd wanna clarify the relative position of the TV shows, as well as some of the games, many of which I cherish more than some of the movies. And then what about individual episodes of said TV shows? Rebels as a whole might rank a hypothetical seventh, let's say, but its episode 3x20 "Twin Suns" would be higher by itself, and it'd be the same for "Chapter 2: The Tribes of Tatooine" from The Book of Boba Fett, which is a heckin' masterpiece. I'm sure that you'd place the first three episodes of Andor somewhere near the top of your list, especially in the wake of our "they feel like a complete movie" discussion and considering how awful you perceive a majority of the movies, but what if its remaining nine episodes turn out to be bantha fodder? Will you separate them out? Should you? Where's the line?!

Untitled

And yeah, I can't keep up with language nowadays. Best I can do is stick to what feels okay. Given the examples you cited from the original trilogy, it's no surprise I'm comfortable with "Hell" and "damn" since those movies got a U certificate when I was a kid. How very shocking!

I remember that Red Dwarf curse doing the rounds in my playground, too!

"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."

PSN: GDS_2421
Making It So Since 1987

LN78

@RogerRoger I wouldn't rate individual episodes in a series. If "Andor" as whole disappoints when all is said and done then I'll "score" it accordingly - I wouldn't review a book based on the first three chapters, after all. I'm quietly optimistic though - for some reason the critics got to see one more episode than we did and according to them it broadens the canvas considerably to include Coruscant and Mon Mothma's senatorial shenanigans as well as more background on Stellan Skarsgaard's character. I'm quite excited.

LN78

Th3solution

@LN78 @RogerRoger Interesting discussion about fictional language expressions. I was just having the thought yesterday while enjoying the latest episode of Rings of Power. I was comparing in my mind the show with Game of Thrones and how it feels pretty clear that they are trying to capture a similar zeitgeist of quality epic fantasy series for which GoT set the standard. In my mental comparisons of the two series, the “maturity” level of the two shows is the obvious biggest difference. Large differences in sexual content (so far RoP has none) and violence (RoP is quite tame to date) aside, the language and lack of profanity is another very stark contrast as well. And honestly, it makes the Middle-Earth fantasy setting feel more “real” and immersive for them to not be dropping an edgy four-letter word in every other conversation. And I think its great how each sub-group (elves, dwarves, harfoots, men) have different regional English accents. It makes it feel more genuine.

I’ve never really dissected the idea of the colloquial language and idioms in the Star Wars universe, but I agree that it’s pretty weird if modern slang and curses are portrayed in another universe, seeing as those things are so incredibly fluid and evolve even year to year in some cases. People don’t even talk the same way today as they did when I was a kid.

It brings to mind when I was playing Cyberpunk 2077, and the writers took the evolution of language into account better than any other futuristic or fantasy game I’d played. The problem was, that I had a really hard time following conversation because of all the colloquial terms and it actually distracted from the flow of narrative for me. (Ironically, the game uses plenty of modern day four letter expletives too). So I guess it’s a fine balance to strike. It’s like trying to read Chaucer and Old English literature. It has to be “translated” into modern English for most of us to follow it.

And your “smeg” comment made me think of playing Guardians of the Galaxy recently and starting to feel the urge to use the Galaxy’s favorite expletive “flark” as a great F-word substitute. 😄

More on subject — I’m excited to watch Andor, and I might be tempted to jump over to it before Book of Boba and Obi-Wan if it’s more narratively self-contained since I’m gradually making my way through Clone Wars first to maximize narrative flow.

Edited on by Th3solution

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

LN78

@Th3solution @RogerRoger I mentioned to my brother that I'd been reminiscing about our late Dad's distaste for "pseudo swearing" ("drokk it!" in the "2000 A.D" comic was another one) in the context of the new "Star Wars" show and he said he has always been bothered by the use of the word "rendezvous" in "The Empire Strikes Back" because it implies that there is a France (or at least French speaking aliens) in a galaxy far, far away. My brother is a very strange young man.

Edited on by LN78

LN78

Th3solution

@LN78 Your brother has a good point.

Great. Now I’ll never be able to not cringe when I hear that line. 😜

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

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