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felassan · 3 years

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Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This is the Mass Effect version of this post.

[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]

Note: Drug use is mentioned.

Cut for length.

Mass Effect 1

ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003

Codenamed “SFX”

Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game

Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies

By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel

Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures

By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP

They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.”

The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game

In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer

An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2

Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt

As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game

CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”

CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes

Tali used to be called Talsi

On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity

There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them

Early versions of Asari had hair

Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)

The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians

BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”

The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”

Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached

The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera

The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art

A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?

Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol

Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky

Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones

Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos

The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.

The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)

Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)

Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc

The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”

They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”

Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”

BioWare Labs

As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs

Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years

Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)

Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy

Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story

Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better

Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved

Mass Effect 2

Player choices carrying over was a first for BW

Dirty Dozen-inspired plot

Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)

Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel

There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”

“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM

The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”

When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes

Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence

Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”

Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”

Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”

At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive

Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs

BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics

CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens

Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything

Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book

Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off

Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3

They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO

Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively

Mass Effect 3

“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”

ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”

Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players

JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel

The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali

MP chars were voiced by cops and military people

The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver

The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”

Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase

ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console

FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art

To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since

Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made

Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead

“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”

Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’”

This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued

Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”

The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″

For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient

Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers

Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’”

There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.”

Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime

“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”

AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”

As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”

Mass Effect: Andromeda

By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise

Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail

“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster

MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray

“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”

Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”

Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”

One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact

Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration

German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde

Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine

Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”

Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)

Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements

For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA

Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

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remedialaction · 6 years

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So, the more I think about The Last Jedi, the more problems I have with it. I came out of the theater thinking I loved it but had a few quirk moments that really annoyed me, but as time has gone on I’ve reached this point where I simultaneously love it and hate it, and I’m just going to embrace that and both love and hate it in equal measure.

And because of this, I have a lot to say and I’m just gonna go ahead and post it. Obviously, under a read more cus I’m not gonna bother attempting to hide spoilers. This may ramble some too, but whatever. Time for Starcourse!

The first thing I have to make clear about The Last Jedi is, to me, it did not feel like a Star Wars movie. By this I mean that the way it was shot, the way it was written, the way it is placed inside the whole cinematic series just doesn’t feel like a Star Wars film. Some of this is on a meta level: it begins mere moments after the end of The Force Awakens, and that sets it apart from all the other films, which have massive gaps between them.

The Last Jedi and The Force Awakened could be one movie, in many ways, and that’s not really a good thing, because regardless of anything else, it begins to break down the feel of what a Star Wars movie is. However, the issues that make me say this go on further. On a technical side, the scenes don’t FEEL like a Star Wars movie. There are many things to say about George Lucas but I feel the cinematography in his films was, at the least, distinct. And that distinctness left a clear impression.

But The Last Jedi doesn’t really have that. It’s shot radically different than other films in the series, I felt like. And so that contributes to the feel that it’s a movie using Star Wars props and settings and characters, but yet not feeling like a Star Wars Movie, if you catch my meaning.

Another issue is music. In prior Star Wars films, the music is as much a part of the scenes as any other element, and it stands out in my head. I can hear the music when imagining the scenes, the music is distinctive because of how the scenes are shot and scored. I don’t remember any of the music from The Last Jedi, and while I’m sure it’s actually fantastic it just... didn’t capture me the same way. I’m not sure why yet, and it’ll take multiple viewings to really grasp it probably.

Moving on, the way it’s written also doesn’t feel Star Wars. I mean this in two ways: it’s pacing is all over the place, it’s dialogue feels out of place, and the humor, while occasionally actually good, doesn’t feel like Star Wars humor. I want to be clear that for some of these, much like the above comments, these are not necessarily reasons why it’s a bad movie, but perhaps why it may be a bad Star Wars movie. Other cases, though, absolutely mark it out as just bad writing regardless, but I’ll touch on that in each case.

Firstly, the humor. There is a lot of attempted humor in this film, some which works better than others. I’ll admit, while I found the opening bit with Poe and Hux amusing, it felt utterly out of place. It’s basically an extended version of the scene from The Force Awakens, which itself felt out of place, particularly given the context. In that, we literally just saw a mass slaughter of a village and you’re now doing a comedy bit. Not only that, Star Wars doesn’t really do comedy bits. The humor in Star Wars is delivered in different ways, but the timing is also key. This is akin to Padme cracking wise after Anakin talk’s about how he killed all the Tusken Raiders.

In The Last Jedi, there is less of a poor timing, but the entire bit robs the film of momentum, and also serves to render Hux into a buffoonish character (which I’ll touch on later,) and it just doesn’t feel like Star Wars. It’s funny, but out of place. In a lot of ways, I include Luke’s flick of the saber (though I think that also works well enough) but even more so his dusting his shoulder off. The former at least serves well as a shocking sort of moment. The latter serves to break the drama and scale of it all. Included in this, though, are Poe’s ‘permission to jump in an X-Wing and blow stuff up’ line, which again, just feels... out of place given the situation. It robs the scene of seriousness.

Which is sort of the major issue; I don’t feel like The Last Jedi takes itself seriously. Or, at least, it doesn’t do so consistently. Lines like that, or then lines like Rey when Kylo shows up in the mind link shirtless, and so on just serve to make it feel... less serious. Some might say it grounds things, but that’s the big issue: Star Wars isn’t grounded. It’s a Space Opera, it’s epic fantasy in space, and The Last Jedi doesn’t feel epic. Indeed, the whole film seems... small.

This is as much an issue with The Force Awakens, though, in that it really fails to establish the sort of scope of the First Order, and the Resistance really comes off as minor as well. It continues in TLJ though in that it really just never feels like things are ‘a big deal.’ We’re told of things but it’s very mixed on actually showing, I guess? Or the showing just... falls flat.

Linked to the issue of it taking place right after The Force Awakens, the whole film takes place in, arguably, the course of, what, a day? A few days? It’s hard to tell. At first, I thought it was only literally about a day because they literally give hour counts on their fuel but Rey is with Luke for what seems like a few days. Yet the pacing is such that thing seem both too slow and too fast. There is no real sense of time in a lot of the scenes, and that really causes issues with the pacing. And also with things like Rose and Finn, because we’re talking about people who just met at most a few days ago, on less then stellar circumstances, and then things progress so very quickly, and it seems... out of place.

And then we get things like the entire Casino subplot, which irks me on many levels. First, the intentional aping of the Cantina introduction with a reworking of the ‘scum and villainy’ line, the panning around of all these fantastic and weird aliens and all, and whatnot. Sort of clever, but it just gets hamfisted when Rose goes on to imply that the only way to get this rich is arms sales. I damn near groaned out loud at that moment, because this is a movie by Disney telling me the only way to get rich is arms sales. Eat my ass, Disney! You mean to tell me there are no Space Googles or Space Comcasts or Space Disneys? It doesn’t even make sense!

Particularly not when we just had a bunch of movies about the Trade Federation and the Banking groups and other members of the Confederacy that were rich, and thus had a lot of arms to defend their financial interests, rather than being rich BECAUSE of their arms. And then we have the whole stampede through the city, and how great it was to stick it to them... yet are you trying to imply EVERYONE in the city, all the stuff you broke only belonged to rich arms dealers who are assholes to kids and kick puppies or something? I get that Finn is new to this, impressionable, and so on, but he went from being amazed and loving it to literally being glad they smashed stuff up.

Also, the alien dude with the southern accent was terrible. Should have let it be an alien language and just let us UNDERSTAND through VISUAL STORYTELLING. You know, like we got with the Kubaz who ratted out Luke and Han and them in A New Hope. Indeed, not doing this makes the whole universe feel small. Aliens just aren’t used right.

And honestly, I’m just going go through a long string of ‘why’ questions that really irked me, in no particular order or organization. These aren’t all equal complaints, but they’re just things that got to me...

Why are the bombers literal bombers, when we had Y-Wings and B-Wings in the other movies that clearly were strike craft with heavy payloads for the sort of thing they were doing. Why would you ever have a literal ‘bomber’ in space, given there is no gravity for the bombs? That whole sequence also makes the Resistance feel very very small, because it doesn’t feel like a lot of ships get blown up but apparently that’s their WHOLE bomber wing?

On that subject too, Poe gets hemmed up for disregarding orders and taking out the dreadnought, abet at heavy losses, to the point that he gets demoted and the Vice Admiral (who, by the by, I really hate the design of. Leia looks at least paramilitary in outfit, but she is just straight up wearing a dress and it just feels... out of place) treats him pretty badly despite later saying she actually understood and likes him, but later, when they get caught due to their hyperspace tracking stuff, it becomes utterly apparent that it was absolutely a good thing that Poe did what he did cus had he not, the Dreadnought could have just blasted them from space. Instead, they manage to outpace them because Poe’s desperate gambit took out the ship that could have blasted them due to its superweapon guns.

On that subject, how the hell does ‘out of range’ in a vacuum work? Like, I guess the argument is the energy dissipates but how the hell can they maintain that speed that always keeps them at range yet never outpaces them? And why doesn’t the supermassive Snoke battleship have those same guns? (Also the way these ships are introduced is meh, not like how they did the like Super Star Destroyer in the original trilogy, but that gets back to how the movie is shot and not feeling right.)

And how the hell does on person manage to fly that massive Mon Cal ship, anyway? How come the massive damage done by it ramming them going into hyperspace is played up yet apparently the ships are still mostly functional, at least enough to get folks down to the planet and all? That felt very odd...

And on that subject, the planet! The whole plan seems so very odd. How the hell did they manage to fly so far on sublight speed to get in range of this planet that just so HAPPENED to be an old rebel base (which only has one way in an out, for some reason,) and somehow no one saw these planets? Or, you know, the SUN it must be orbiting? And why not TELL people this plan, like what was the purpose of KEEPING IT SECRET? Particularly not when you have a hotheaded and brash guy who already is on notice for disobeying orders he thought was wrong, and you think your little stern talking to was gonna shut him down? Really?

And the irony is, Poe got hemmed up for his scheme to take out the dreadnought, which ended up being not merely good but necessary. But no one really talks about how his scheme to shut off the tracker, which led to the First Order becoming aware of the transports because the slicer (cus he’s a slicer, not a codebreaker, again, use the damn Star Wars-y terms, film!) ratted them out, and that leads to, what, like 90% of the Resistance dying? For that matter, how big IS the resistance, cus you seem to have enough folks to fill the trench yet apparently everyone fits on the Millennium Falcon in the end?

And why the hell is Finn piloting one of those speeders anyway? He’s not a pilot, we’ve literally been shown he was figuring out how to operate the guns on the TIE Fighter and Falcon but he explicitly NEEDED a pilot, that’s why he rescued Poe, after all, and that’s why Rey piloted their escape. If anything, he should be with the ground forces cus that’s his expertise. And speaking of expertise, how is it that this one guy who was a janitor apparently was a janitor for Starkiller base, and thus knows his way around that in a complex and technical way, and ALSO knows his way around Snoke’s superbattleship, in a complex and technical way? That seems... weird.

Like, I liked when Rey could navigate Starkiller base cus she was familiar with Imperial tech and designs from crawling around in them her whole life. Finn being that knowledgeable seems... sort of weird.

On the earlier thing, why is Hux portrayed in an almost buffoonish way? It robs him of any menace. His other officers seem more competent, and he just seems... very very NOT competent, and it sort of messes things up. It robs some menace from the First Order when he’s the on in charge.

Why does everyone seem to get to where they’re going instantly? Travel time seems simultaneously a plot point and non-existent.

Why introduce Snoke as this strange character if you do basically almost nothing with him? Like, the Emperor at least had build up and then sort of mattered. And yeah, they could reveal more in the third film but that’s... really not helpful for THIS film feeling odd. And then the biggie: Rey and Kylo. And I don’t mean any sort of romantic overtones cus I actually like how they handled that, with Rey conclusively saying fuck no to Kylo and thus squashing that as a thing (though I know some folks refuse to see it that way,)

What I mean is that Kylo’s ‘let the past die, kill it, and start over’ ideology is basically the exact same thing that Yoda is telling and what is happening with the Resistance and Jedi. Which, honestly, is itself fairly stupid and I object to this idea that somehow she already knows any of the good things in ‘old religious texts’ and whatnot, because of broader implications, but if you’re gonna have that message then why show that actually they saved the books and their on board the falcon at the end.

Honestly, there is probably more that I’m missing but this is the general thrust of things. I want to be clear, though, I actually liked a lot of it. Finn is still the best character, even if put in situations I don’t actually totally agree with. The humor was legitimately funny, and sometimes actually fit well. BB8′s constantly trying to pluck the ‘leaks’ and then using their head to do it felt both funny and very Star Wars-y; I can see R2 doing something like that. (though, as a note, that R2, C3P0, and Chewbacca all get basically no real place again sort of stands out. R2 and C3P0 being major aspects of the Star Wars franchise is sort of a big deal. They’re supposed to be there, and they’re really not in this.)

But the fight sequences are pretty damn good, with a few minor hiccups, and like I really enjoyed the film while watching it. I’ll certainly watch it again, but there is so much that I feel also was just in JUST to tweak with people and Rian trying to play gotcha games, and it, at the core, just didn’t feel like a Star Wars movie. It’s a movie using Star Wars trappings in ostensibly the Star Wars universe, but it just...

Didn’t feel like Star Wars.

#star wars #the last jedi #spoilers #the last jedi spoilers #starcourse

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astrophobia-space-blog · 7 years

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DevLog 10.27.17: To-Dos, and To-Dones

Astrophobia is a “neo-Lovecraftian space opera” comic book and audio drama series under development for an intended 2018 release.

Here’s some stuff I did on the project this last week.

Wrote Most Of The Astrophobia #1 Comic Script I’ve been having trouble putting pen to paper on this one... which is screwy, because I’ve got the story so tightly outlined that I know pretty much everything that happens on every page! But sometimes I have trouble getting started on the first issues of new projects, because I’m nervous about committing the wrong stuff to paper. In this case, it meant that I’d only managed to finish about a page or two a day this week — and on some days, not even that much.

Anyway, yesterday was a lovely day, and I tried working outdoors at a different coffeeshop than I’m used to.

I don’t know how much of it was the (awesome!) change of scenery, and how much of it was just me finally being “ready” to write the script. But suffice to say, I ended up writing ten pages. Only six pages left on the first draft!

Figured Out How To Make The #1 Story More “Lovecraftian” There’s certain elements people associate with “Lovecraftian” stories: “Madness,” impossible architecture, “things humanity was not meant to know” — and tentacles. But those are just surface elements. Trappings. And though I certainly want to play with all of those, I want to go deeper than that. To pull certain core elements out of HPL’s fiction that’ll make Astrophobia ring truer as something genuinely “Lovecraftian,” without being part of the Cthulhu Mythos, and without being a Lovecraft homage or pastiche.

One element that I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of before: A number of Lovecraft’s most prominent cosmic horror stories begin and end with the narrator reflecting on what’s happened to them, and the ramifications of what it means to be living in a universe where such things are possible. So I whipped up a test version of some text like that for the beginning of the Astrophobia #1 comic script:

Going to the stars was our biggest mistake.

It was bound to happen, someday. I mean... they're right there! Above us, every night! It was inevitable that, sooner or later, that we'd take that one giant leap. If for no other reason than because we could.

That was our sin, in the end. Not hubris, wrath, or any of the classic seven. Our sin was curiosity. It was built into us by... the ones who built us all.

And now all I can do is pray — to the caring gods that don't exist, and the uncaring "gods" that are way too real — that our species survives its own nature.

This is how it started.

(That’s the “test,” rough draft take on it. If I use something like it, it’ll be in a slimmed-down and spruced-up version.)

Figured Out How To Integrate The Comic & Audio Drama Story Elements Better One of the questions I’ve had as I work on this project is: What stories to tell in the comic, and what stories to tell in the AD? After a lot more thought and some talking to other AD people (see the next entry), I think I’m getting a better sense of what should be in both of them!

(Basically, the AD stories should be more character-focused, more intimate, and should involve aliens/monsters and such that would be hard to represent visually — or that are stronger if they’re just described verbally rather than shown.)

Figured Out More Story Stuff (For The Comic & Audio Drama) Including several new stories ideas (including a couple vaguely inspired by classic horror movies/scenarios), that may end up being in the comic series at some point. Also, firmed up some story plans for the AD.

Also: I’ve been having trouble figuring out which of my (many, many) story ideas to use, and what order to use them in. This week, I realized the obvious solution to that. For each set of stories (both comic and AD), I need to figure out what the overall plot or character arc that I’m focusing on is... and then select the story ideas that best fit that arc. Seems damn obvious now that I’ve thought of it. But it’s taken me literally months to realize it!

Came Up With Several Ideas For AD Music Ideas that I pitched to John (our musician) this week:

The music for different story elements could use consistent, different instrumentation for each element. For example: All the parts of the AD episodes that are about the human cast could use “traditional”-sounding instruments — while all the parts where they encounter aliens could also involve “weird” instruments (synths, weird effects, sampled noises, etc.) “The part of the xenomorph will be played by the bassoon.”

Maybe do short loops of music, like in a video game, more than longer “traditional” songs for the score? More modular, more “plug and play” than full-length songs?

There could be marches playing when the actor talks about the ship’s military crew and its mission. And there should be at least one dirge! And a death march!

Got Drinks With Some Audio Drama People It’s the Austin Film Fest this week, and they have a “Podcast Track.” So there’s some audio drama folks in from out of town. Had a nice, inspiring round of drinks with them at a shmancy, old-timey bar in downtown Austin last night!

(Got lunch with some comics people this week, too.)

Did Heaps Of Research; Found Heaps Of Visual Reference Research I did included: Rewatching Prometheus (what a stupid, stupid movie); listening to audiobook versions of Call of Cthulhu and At The Mountains of Madness; figuring out the specifics of the Alcubierre Drive (the actual hypothesized warp drive that scientists at NASA have been studying); and LOTS of Wikipedia-ing and time spent on Atomic Rockets.

Also: I’ve also collected a vastly larger quantity of visual reference and inspiration than I ever have on a project before. The majority of it, we’ll never end up using. But I think it’s going to come in handy. (Plus, Googling up visual reference is something I can still do when I’m braindead at the end of the workday, or even while I’m talking on the phone to people.) (...Yes, Dan Schkade, I may have been looking up concept art of “insectoid exoskeletons” while we were talking about your new story idea and Gross Pointe Blank on the phone yesterday...)

Here’s a few cool pieces of art that I found.

Whew! This is getting really long! Before I sign off, some stuff I need to do in the coming week. And some stuff that’s not a priority!

To-dos:

Finish the #1 script, and send it out to my “beta readers” for notes.

Firm up the secondary supporting cast/Orpheus crew. (The #1 script focuses on only three of the primary characters, with the other primaries just making cameo appearances, to be fleshed out in future issues. But since the Orpheus is a “closed system” — there’s only so many people on board, and that number’s just going to go down, not up! — it’s useful for me to get a good handle of all the prominent people onboard.)

Decide which stories to tell in the first “arc” of comics.

Decide which stories to tell in the first “arc” of the audio drama.

To-DON’TS (low priority but enticing stuff!)

Search for image ref when I should be doing something else.

Do a bunch of research about things that aren’t germane to my primary “to-dos.”

Come up with more weird aliens to tell stories about (this is a priority, but not a high one at the moment!).

If you actually read this far: Congratulations! Gold stars! :)

#DevLog #Astrophobia #Astrophobia Podcast #Astrophobia Comic Book #Lovecraft #Lovecraftian #podcast #audio drama #comic #comic book #horror #science fiction #space opera

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being-of-rain · 7 years

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Who Movie Viewing #1009 and Thoughts

This got so much longer than I expected. Good.

-The opening of the film, with the music and the graphics and the voiceover and the logo... it’s just so incredible. It always gets me hyped and I unironically love it to death.

- “It was a request they should never have granted.” Did Eight really try to blame the Daleks right then. They did... the least... in this entire film... Doctor you just made a deal with the Daleks and the Master at the same time...

- “I was finally beginning to realise that you could never be too careful.” That is never gonna happen.

-Can you believe that I almost forgot how beautiful the gothic Tardis is???????? Don’t worry tho, my love has been reignited now.

-Lee is looking beautiful tonight.

- “Is he rich? Cause where we’re going he better be rich.” Ah yes, this is one of those eps where they go to a dystopian human colony. This time its called America and has awful health care

-The shot of running down the hospital corridor in full ballgown with opera over the top is one of my favourite things ever and is also the most iconic thing I’ll ever see.

-Grace is looking beautiful tonight.

-Brian is such a dick. @Grace dump him.

-Sylvester McCoy literally spent half his time in the film lying down playing dead.

-I haaate gratuitous operation/hospital scenes, and this is horrible, and the fact that I still like this movie so much is amazing.

-Who decided the goo snake was a good idea because its so freaking weird and i do not like it. They should have just made it Crispy crawling around. Then again if I had to watch Crispy crawl into Bruce I would die right here and now.

-Here’s my boy. Eight is looking beautiful tonight.

-The first words anyone spoke to my beautiful boy; “Oh my God. GOD NO!” @the universe, what is your damage

-omg for some reason I’m not sure I had ever noticed Eight was humming to himself before???? As he shambles around the hospital. Is it the same music he heard when he died?? That would make sense

-Eight is literally the most pure and innocent person to ever appear on film??and all I want in my life is for someone to wrap him in warm clothes and love him.

-What does he even do all night?? Does he go Tenth Doctor-esque catatonic?? In the middle of a soaking wet, shattered glass-littered abandoned hospital wing????? I REPEAT: SOMEBODY GIVE MY BOY A HUG AND SOME LOVE

-The dramatic music when Eight picks up the Nixon mask gets me every time. AU where he bonds with it and wears it as part of his outfit, and everywhere he goes people assume he’s a serial killer.

- “What would you like me to call you then?” “Master will do.” Bruce’s wife does not deserve to be kinkshamed in her own home, so I’m going to kinkshame the Master instead who absolutely deserves it, no matter where the fugk he is, for choosing the name in the first place.

-Underrated Gem from the Movie #78001; *Pete is freaked out after having freaked out because he saw the Doctor come back to life* Pete: Y’know what? I’m going home. Grace: Hey Pete, stop off at a psychiatric and pick up more mind-altering drugs. Pete: *completely serious* okay sure. Grace: *looks incredibly concerned*

-I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again; Eight’s outfit looks so comfortable. I want it.

-What the heck is with the guy just glaring at Eight in the hospital waiting room. What is his damage.

-This hospital guy is is crazy, burning all the evidence so that the operation never happened... he’s straight up gonna kill all of those visitors who watched it. This is an episode of CSI in the making.

- “You’re tired of life but afraid of dying.” Eight you’re like 8 hours old, no one gave you the right to be this Real.

-Eight covering his ears when Grace shouts at him is still the cutest thing ever

-What was that one post that was like “Brian took the couch but not his shoes??” because big mood

-Eight and Grace are drop-dead gorgeous in the scene in Grace’s house.

-The Doctor’s apparent ability to know everyone’s future is something added to the movie that’s just as odd and out-of-keeping with the rest of the show as the “half-human” line. One of the EDAs mention that Eight has a special gift to see people’s timelines and stuff that’s unique to this regeneration or something? That’s pretty neat.

-The Master being in the TARDIS when Lee enters means that (a) he knows the Doctor so well that he knows where the spare key is (and had to get a box or hypnotise a passer-by to help him reach it) or (b) while Lee did that quick stunned walk around the outside, he bolted in and played it cool when Lee came back in. Either option is kinda hilarious to me

- “It took me a while with the walking and the talking” Same.

- Lee is looking incredible in this Tardis scene.

-Eight when he gets excited is the cutest thing ever.

-JKLDSJCOSDIVDSCJO The most underappreciated part of the “THESE SHOES” joke is that Grace stares right at the camera like she’s in the Office

-I love the conversation Lee and El Maestro have when they stick their heads in the holes in the Tardis pillars cause that’s a great use of set??? It is literally a crime that this set was never used again and I want an exact copy as my new bedroom.

-In case someone doesn’t know, according to the EDAs the bats in the Tardis are called Jasper and Stewart and they’re twins and adorable.

-So do all ambulance medics look like the Terminator in America or

-Has anyone else read the Wife in Space blog, because the TV Movie one has the line “is the Eye of Harmony making it rain chickens” and honestly #iconic

- “I can’t make your dream come true forever but I can make it come true today!” Like my favourite line in the movie.

-So the Master and Lee don’t do anything while Grace and Eight get the bike. The Master’s like “Scuse me, I gotta wipe this fire extinguisher guff off. You follow them.” and Lee is like “sure bro, just gotta wait for this traffic.

-Talking of #iconic, the music in The Chase.

- “I wish I had my sonic screwdriver” “What?!” Doctor please stop throwing scifi terms at poor Grace.

- “I told you it was small.” “What is it they say?” “Yeah they say that on my planet too.” I can guarantee you that poor Ace Eight does not have a single clue what Grace actually means.

-So the Master just throws up over everyone now huh. That’s his gameplan now huh. Someone please put him out of our misery.

-We’re back in the Tardis and, Those angles..... That lighting........

-Have I mentioned that I love Eight’s hair yet? Because I love Eight’s hair. Also it’s kind of red in some shots and kind of not in others?? idk

- “We haven’t got any time to waste.” “But time to change!” SPEAKING OF ICONIC; “I always” *snap to close up* “Drezzzzzzzzz, for the occasion.”

-Eight: Lee, this is my Tardis. This is my Eye and I'm in my own body! Master: *the fakest laugh I have ever seen* I’m sorry Lee but how did you ever fall for the Master’s lies.

- “In 700 years no one has managed to open the Eye. How did you do it?” I mean, the last person to open the Eye was probably the Master as well? In the Deadly Assassin? (another face wowee. Just goes to show; to enjoy Dr Who all you gotta do is ignore the logic and “science”)

- “What do you mean it won’t work?” *scientist shrugs* Mood.

- “WHAT DO YOU KNOW OF LAST CHANCES” “MORE THAN YOU” I looove the camera shots for those lines, with both of their faces n stuff.

-Lee: YOU LIED TO ME! Master: I can’t believe... my own son...

-Just How Necessary Was The Master / Grace Kiss Exactly 2k17

- “I’M BLIND!” (Oxygen, 2017)

-Grace just saved the planet by hotwiring an alien time machine she has spent 2 minutes on... when will your fave ever

-This climax never has and never will make any sense, but it sure is editted nicely! Very dramatic.

- “What’s a temporal orbit!” Same

-Eight, calmly: Your life force is dying, Master. The Master, the most dramatic shit you’ll ever meet: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

-Omg where is that post of just Eight’s leg. Because #iconic

- “You’ve both been somewhere I’ve never been” Doctor you were dead exactly one (1) day ago.

-Grace, Lee and Eight are such a beautiful Tardis team, and between the “I definitely wouldn’t live through that again” scene and the final goodbye scene, they absolutely go on a bunch of adventures together.

-Lee could 100% have just walked away with that gold and Eight obviously wouldn’t have stopped him. But he chose to offer it back to him,, when will your fave

- “See you round Grace!” I bet Lee goes to meet up with Grace again and acts like they’ve been through a lot together, and Grace very quickly cycles from “yes we have” to “wait you straight up tried to get me killed” to “why do you even want to talk to me” to “okay wait I have no one to talk to about this, you can stay”

- “Thank you Doctor.” “No thank You doctor.” What a couple of precious cuties. btw they’re both looking gorgeous and beautiful in this scene, and so was Lee. Just in case you were wondering.

#my posts #long post #dream tardis #doctor who tv movie

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years

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Spoilericious Notes On THE LAST JEDI

That’s good… Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren, and Yoda (hey, I said this would be spoilericious!) are all in agreement that humanity (because humanity represents about 90% of the Star Wars universe; there’s a whole side issue on human privilege that could be explored but we won’t) has grossly misunderstood what The Force is all about, attributing moral / ethical values it lacks (The Force simply…is), and as such creating a huge mess with the whole Jedi / Sith dichotomy and so should be (literally) burned to the ground and something new built from the ashes.

That’s bad… Based on the amount of training Rey goes through to get to avalanche lifting levels of Force mastery, Rocky Balboa would be an omnipotent god if he could just get into the Star Wars universe. Y’know how in Hong Kong action films and Japanese anime the characters say, “We need special training,” and they spend thirty seconds to a minute in a montage and come out ready to kick Bruce Lee’s ass? Not as much training as that.

That’s good… For the first time the Star Wars universe acknowledges the dreadful compromise and complexity of any large scale society, in particular how the wealth of the Star Wars universe is generated through arms sales and as such there is absolutely no reason for anyone to stop fighting.

That’s bad… In his climactic showdown with Kylo Ren, Luke Skywalker (dammit, read the title of this post; I said there would be spoilers) promises him and the fans that ”the war is just beginning”. Question: Are Disney and the filmmakers even aware that they are criticizing their own business model? I mean, in a certain sense they’re trapped; by the very name Star WARS they are compelled to tell stories about a grandiose interstellar conflict, unlike Star Trek which is just about a long trip that visits distant planets (or at least used to be…). But this means that despite the title of Episode IV, there is no hope! and the Star Wars universe is condemned to an eternity of horrific conflict and violent death.

That’s good… Everybody has agreed to forget all about that silly midi-chlorian nonsense.

That’s bad… After presenting a consistently godless universe in ten theatrical features, two TV movies, six TV series, and lord knows how many books / comics / games, the concept of God has been dropped into Star Wars (hell as a concept was introduced back in Empire Strikes Back). I’m absolutely not saying that God has no place in popular entertainment, just that the universe of Star Wars -- both in concept and execution -- consistently portrayed a culture where the very idea of God had never been introduced (but this may be attributable to bad scripting; see below…).

That’s good… Snoke’s throne room is like something out of a 1950s MGM musical, and I mean that in a good sense: It looks genuinely futuristic and other worldly. There are some small edits and cutaway shots in the film that look like nothing else in the Star Wars universe (and not big special effects scenes but rather subtle little moments). Now and then there are specific call outs to earlier films, in particular Luke Skywalker dying (Fnck you! I told you there would be spoilers!) under twin suns echoing the moment in the original Star Wars when he stared off into the twin sunset of Tatooine and realized destiny was calling him elsewhere. And the salt-encrusted mineral world of Crait is the closest thing to a genuinely alien world that we’ve ever seen in Star Wars.

That’s bad… As my son-in-law Bobby Dragulescu observed, the Star Wars universe is only visually consistent: In no shape / fashion / form does it portray a uniform worldview (or rather, galactic-view) of a society that could actually function. The political systems are a hot mess, and for all the endless talk about trade alliances in the prequels, there’s virtually no signs of actual large scale interstellar trade or commerce (with the possible exception of the bio-factory on Kamino cranking out endless copies of Temuera Morrison in Attack Of The Clones). Mind you, virtually all space operas suffer from this flaw (Star Trek The Original Series hid it better than most by taking place so waaay far out there that commerce had not yet completely caught up with the Enterprise). Star Wars looks pretty but makes no damn sense, and this problem only gets worse with each additional installment, building towers of cards on foundations of sand.

That’s good… Poe’s brief exchange with General Hux was Monty Python / Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy level hilarity, shockingly unexpected in a funny (not offensive) manner, and an absolute delight harkening back to the cheekiest lines in the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

That’s bad… The rest of the film has the worst dialog heard in a Star Wars movie written by anybody other than George Lucas.

That’s good… More (human) diversity in the roles, with females and non-whites / non-Europeans filling in a lot of supporting roles.

That’s bad… As much as I hate agreeing on anything with the fragile alt-right critics who decry said diversity, to this specifically limited degree they have a point: The appearance of such characters was often shot / staged / edited in a way that instead of appearing naturalistic called undo attention to the casting. “Hey, look! We’ve got an Asian female doing stuff!”

That’s good… Gimme a moment…

That’s bad… I almost typed “There isn’t a single good performance in this film” but realized that isn’t true; there are several good performances but the bad ones are so bad they suck all memory of the good into a black hole of mediocrity. Daisy Ridley as Rey does a good job, Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux and Benicio del Toro as DJ both chew scenery with great gusto, Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico struggles mightily to make a silk purse out of her sow’s ear and ends up with a nice imitation leather wallet, Andy Serkis draws ahead of Doug Jones as the best-actor-you-never-actually-see-onscreen race, but much to my delight Adam Driver as Kylo Ren goes so far over the emo top that I am capable of forgiving the film of all its grievous flaws. That being said, The Last Jedi does Carrie Fisher no favors in her final portrayal of Leia Organa (flying through space like a Marvel superhero doesn’t help, either), Laura Dern is woefully miscast and seems to think she’s just doing a table read, and although serviceable as Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamil proves himself to be the least compelling performer to play a Jedi or Sith. (He does shine as the voice of Dobbu Scay, a trollish alien who insists on shoving coins up BB-8’s nether regions.)

That’s good… ...lemme think…

That’s bad… When it’s good (see themes up above) the script is very good, but when it’s bad (50%+ of the remaining film) it sucks wet farts out of dead porgs. Finn, Rose, and DJ have an incredibly convoluted / overly complicated hour long sub-plot that contributes absolutely nothing to the story’s final resolution. They visit a gambling casino world that looks like a crappy swipe from a James Bond movie (tho the Gerry Anderson Supermarionation-looking alien was a nice touch), feature an alien critter race that’s a lift from Syd Mead, and chat incessantly via com-links while traveling through hyperspace despite the fact that tracking ships through hyperspace is repeatedly presented as a radical leap in technology! And while it’s revealed the First Order has planted a homing device on Leia’s ship (something Darth Vader did in the original Star Wars with the Millennium Falcon) and has an agent on board, nothing is ever done with these ideas.

That’s good… Oh! Snoke tells Kylo Ren to “get rid of that silly mask”. That’s nice.

That’s bad… The Last Jedi drops the ball on several plot points in addition to the hyperspace tracking mentioned above. Luke promises to teach Rey three lessons about the force, but only gets through two and the third one is never alluded to again. They make a big deal about Rey’s parents being despicable drug addicts who sold her as an infant, completely lacking in Force pedigree which means (a) they are belaboring a non-crucial story point or (b) -- and we’ll give ‘em a benefit of a doubt here -- they’re planting a red herring in order to set up a big reveal for the next movie. Snoke is demonstrated to be omniscient and capable of planning so far ahead and in so much detail that he can create a fake future in Kylo Ren’s mind for Rey to read, but conveniently leaves a live / fully charged light saber on the arm of his throne to get sliced in half by (and if he’s such a hot snot re Force abilities, why would getting whacked in half ala Darth Maul even slow him down?).

That’s good… ...I got nuthin’…

That’s bad… Using a starship as a kamikaze by revving up to hyperjump speed and ramming it into the baddies’ ship is a cool idea but makes one wonder why didn’t anybody use it before in the Star Wars universe (c’mon, space torpedoes) and why did they wait to the very last minute to do so -- losing most of the supporting cast in the process -- instead of turning one of the other, smaller ships against Snoke’s flagship? And nobody in the Star Wars universe has figured out that putting a sharp hairpin turn and/or baffles in an exhaust vent will keep people from dropping bombs / flying spaceships through it.

That’s good… Hey, no Death Star. Finally.

#Star Wars #The Last Jedi #Star Trek #sci-fi #sci-fi fans #ethics #The Force

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