Obi-Wan Series - Friday 27th May

[Benny]

Spoiler

They were trying to be secretive and then after the Stormtroopers leave they have an open conversation about Obi-Wan being a Jedi while still in the back of the truck within earshot of the moleman. Maybe nitpicky, I mean there was the engine noise, but still, sort it out, Kenobi.

 

[Benny]

Gotta love a Stormtrooper ADRed going "Out of the way!" to an old woman as he walks politely around her.

[Benny]

That loader bot is fucking terrifying.

[Benny]

Episode 3

 

Spoiler

Okay I'll admit a bit of nerd enjoyment with the Vader/Obi-Wan fight. But honestly you wonder how much of this is just the writers being those misguided fans who felt they had to "fix" the Vader/Obi-Wan fight in the original Star Wars because they thought it wasn't epic enough after the prequel events or something.

 

Anyway, how to beat Vader: cover his path with fire apparently. Then he just gives up and goes home. Wat.

 

[Benny]

Nice to have

 

Spoiler

James-Earl Jones back though. I think at the very least we've got him and McGregor really selling their parts 

 

[Thor]

@BennyI'll make a deal with you, I'll stop @ing you about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds if you stop making multiple posts about one episode of TV your watching.  

[Benny]

Episode 4

 

Spoiler

The whole interrogating Leia scene is so weird.

 

The Inquisitor's can't be shown being violent towards a child, but droids though...

 

[Benny]

4 minutes ago, Thor said:

@BennyI'll make a deal wirh you, I'll stop @ing you about Star Trek: Strange New Worlds if you stop making multiple posts about one episode of TV your watching.  

 

Alternatively, how about I put you on ignore for whining constantly about me just contributing a couple of consecutive posts per episode, on a discussion forum, when the thoughts come to mind, in a thread that is otherwise currently pretty quiet.

 

I'm also on my phone, with only the use of one hand, so posting as I go is less of a pain in the arse to edit at the moment.

 

That's my last post for the day from me then, there's a lot more to be said about it but I won't bother adding anything else about this mediocre show then.

 

When people complain someone isn't contributing to something in the "right" way, it's so fucking annoying and petty, and it sucks all the joy out of posting anything when you have to feel like you're always at risk of upsetting some miserable, boring wanker just for making a few posts about something in the wrong way. Get a life.

[Treble]

If it helps, I quite like the 'live tweeting' approach. 

[Thor]

21 minutes ago, Benny said:

When people complain someone isn't contributing to something in the "right" way, it's so fucking annoying and petty, and it sucks all the joy out of posting anything when you have to feel like you're always at risk of upsetting some miserable, boring wanker just for making a few posts about something in the wrong way. Get a life.

The fact you respond defensively with outright insults implies you find validity in my post. Allow me to retort with ... you are being wilfully thick in ignoring the almost unanimous praise for Strange New Worlds. 

[Alan Stock]

4 hours ago, Benny said:

These villains are remarkably nonthreatening. "You kidnapped a child?!"

 

So far my overriding feeling about this is it doesn't really feel like a story that needed telling. And that's permeating through from the fact there aren't any sense of stakes to anything because there are none.

 

This is a big issue for me in this series. We know most of the main cast are safe, and the side characters may as well be Star Trek redshirts for all we know. Which is fine but they build up every confrontation like some tense movie-worthy scene when you know nothing is going to happen. And for the side characters 5 episodes in and I couldn't give two farts about any of them, they haven't really been given personalities. By episode 3 of the Mandalorian I was already engaged and liked the characters we'd met, plus scenes had more tension because you don't know who's safe. I'll watch the rest of Obi Wan for curiosity's sake but this series is C tier for me.

[Dirty Harry Potter]

14 hours ago, Sexton Hardcastle said:

People are talking about Chow like she’s Martin Scorsese & being held back by this new fangled technology. The reality is she’s just a jobber director Disney hired on the cheap, I’m astounded that anyone is expecting anything better than what’s been presented. 

 

I don’t blame Deborah Chow as much as Joby Harold. While she’s the director, he’s the writer AND show runner. 
 

The writer, after having written such stunning movies as “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” and “Army of the Dead”, and currently working on the latest of the “Tranformers” franchise. That’s who they gave writing and show running duties to.. 

And with a pedigree like that, it maybe explains why there is so much garbage in this show. And shame on Disney for not taking more care with it. 

[Benny]

Apologies if I got a bit testy last night. It's been a long time unable to type properly and it's driving me up the wall. So I am going to continue to post in a live tweeting style for the foreseeable.

 

I have to add

 

Spoiler

Hiding Leia under a massive coat in such an obvious way while her little legs trundle along underneath on a busy landing strip was some galaxy brain nonsense

 

It did actually feel kind of "Star Wars" goofy though, but I'm honestly not sure if that was intentional. Throughout the show it has kind of accidentally done a lot of that so I'm more or less okay with it.

 

It's not Mandalorian, but it's also not Book of Jobber Fett, so that's something.

 

[probotector]

3 hours ago, Dirty Harry Potter said:

 

I don’t blame Deborah Chow as much as Joby Harold. While she’s the director, he’s the writer AND show runner. 
 

The writer, after having written such stunning movies as “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” and “Army of the Dead”, and currently working on the latest of the “Tranformers” franchise. That’s who they gave writing and show running duties to.. 

And with a pedigree like that, it maybe explains why there is so much garbage in this show. And shame on Disney for not taking more care with it. 

When you put it like that, I can see why this is so crap.

 

Im enjoying it, but I know it’s crap. I’ve noticed the same flaws everyone else has but it kinda adds to The charm.

 

It does feel like one of those fan made 10 min clips where it looks amazing because you know they did it for little to nothing in terms of budget but this cost millions!

[Girth Certificate]

I'm sure I made a comic in primary school about a character called Jobby Harold. I'll try and dig it up

[Harsin]

6 hours ago, Dirty Harry Potter said:

 

I don’t blame Deborah Chow as much as Joby Harold. While she’s the director, he’s the writer AND show runner. 
 

The writer, after having written such stunning movies as “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” and “Army of the Dead”, and currently working on the latest of the “Tranformers” franchise. That’s who they gave writing and show running duties to.. 

And with a pedigree like that, it maybe explains why there is so much garbage in this show. And shame on Disney for not taking more care with it. 

Good article on the showrunner crisis that's currently going on due to streaming services needing CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT quickly at any

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxeze/television-is-in-a-showrunning-crisis

 

The latest series of Barry (an excellent series that more people should watch) had a subplot about someone going direct from PA to showrunner after noting the random things the algorithm likes and then basing a vacuous series entirely around that.

 

[Girth Certificate]

I’m sure DALL-E 2.0 will be knocking out marvel and Star Wars material soon enough. It’s basically all ports and remixes already. 

[Harsin]

I think the endgame for Disney (and others) is to eventually have fully digital actors. They're already halfway there with deepfake Luke and the AI voice thingie they used for Luke and Vader in this is pretty effective. Then they don't have to worry about pesky things like contracts or actors' trade unions or paying Scarlett Johansen what she was promised and whatnot. Then they can keep making films where Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones or Thor stay forever young like Bart Simpson.

[revol]

On 19/06/2022 at 11:27, Benny said:

Apologies if I got a bit testy last night. It's been a long time unable to type properly and it's driving me up the wall. So I am going to continue to post in a live tweeting style for the foreseeable.

 

I have to add

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Hiding Leia under a massive coat in such an obvious way while her little legs trundle along underneath on a busy landing strip was some galaxy brain nonsense

 

It did actually feel kind of "Star Wars" goofy though, but I'm honestly not sure if that was intentional. Throughout the show it has kind of accidentally done a lot of that so I'm more or less okay with it.

 

It's not Mandalorian, but it's also not Book of Jobber Fett, so that's something.

 

Meh, some people might have viewed it as spam but it was fun and I enjoyed seeing your live tweeting. Twas something different!  Don't let any boring negativity phase you!

[Benny]

Episode 5:

 

Spoiler

I actually really enjoyed this episode! Jolly exciting stuff.

 

It's so weirdly limited by the whole 360 set thing though. It's got the elements there that if it was set designed and location shot like a movie it could be genuinely quite special.

 

So goofiness of some scenes aside, like the Obi-Wan entering stage left only to fuck off again so they could transition Vader into the shots going after him, there was a lot of good stuff:

 

The sheer vicious power of Vader tearing that ship apart for Obi-Wan was a standout. And the whole thing felt really Star Warsy this time. And the cutting back to dueling Anakin was a nice touch, and was fortunately more reminiscent of the Clone Wars cartoon rather than the Prequels.

 

Also, I think the reason this was the best episode in the series so far was for one simple reason: all of the people being trapped in the cave gave the story some genuine stakes which it hasn't really had up to now. And not only that, but introduced stakes even for the villain as well. All of which could have benefited the show enormously from maybe kicking into gear a bit earlier.

 

So overall, still a bit dodgy in parts, but extremely pleased with how they've handled things like Vader and making him actually properly menacing.

 

Much more so than that bit in Rogue One that people seem to love for some reason: in that he was just cutting people down, which wasn't really menacing, it was just vicious and felt like a writer going "omg we're gonna show Vader is a bad-ass cutting down so many Rebel Scum."

 

In this case it's handled so much better when he's a threat to people you care about and has much more personality in terms of what he's actually doing with his powers: not just cutting dozens down, but literally tearing something apart with his hands to get at Obi-Wan as people are trying to escape.

 

It IS a different take on menacing, and it's much better.

 

[R0b]

There's very little @Thordoesn't complain about and his takes are usually far less interesting than yours, Benny. Just ignore the noise. 

[probotector]

I think the main problem is probably that this is a film that was repurposed into a tv series.

 

Which means the 2nd half will be all stakes and action…?

[Benny]

1 hour ago, R0b said:

Just ignore the noise. 

 

Easier said than done - I think bingeing this show has given me tinnitus.

[instasis]

4 episodes in and every episode has some monumentally stupid shit, in terms of character actions, the way the thing is shot, or more often than not both.

 

Spoiler

Episode 1: the entire forest chase scene

 

Ep 2: the entire roof top fight

 

Ep 3: Vader suddenly being scared of fire

 

Ep 4: trenchcoat escape scene, and the bizarre shot of Bad Jedi Lady squaring off against a space ship 6 feet away. This episode also featured Bad Jedi Lady not being particularly Bad. 

 

It's utter shit, but not quite as bad as BoBF. Might stick with this one. 

[gone fishin]

On 19/06/2022 at 07:58, Dirty Harry Potter said:

 

I don’t blame Deborah Chow as much as Joby Harold. While she’s the director, he’s the writer AND show runner. 
 

The writer, after having written such stunning movies as “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” and “Army of the Dead”, and currently working on the latest of the “Tranformers” franchise. That’s who they gave writing and show running duties to.. 

And with a pedigree like that, it maybe explains why there is so much garbage in this show. And shame on Disney for not taking more care with it. 

 

I know this will totally fan the flames, but I think the finger is probably going to be pointed at Kathleen Kennedy.

 

This is the first Star Wars TV series that Dave Feloni/Jon Favreau have had nothing to do with (not even executive producers) and reading the pre-hype for this series, it does feel like Kathleen Kennedy has been behind a lot of the decisions on this one. Supposedly Joby Harold was brought in to rewrite the script as Kathleen Kennedy thought the original draft was “too bleak” for a Star Wars series and it needed to be made more uplifting.

 

 

[DeciderVT]

On 18/06/2022 at 22:09, Benny said:

Alternatively, how about I put you on ignore for whining constantly about me just contributing a couple of consecutive posts per episode, on a discussion forum, when the thoughts come to mind, in a thread that is otherwise currently pretty quiet.

 

I'm also on my phone, with only the use of one hand, so posting as I go is less of a pain in the arse to edit at the moment.

 

That's my last post for the day from me then, there's a lot more to be said about it but I won't bother adding anything else about this mediocre show then.

 

When people complain someone isn't contributing to something in the "right" way, it's so fucking annoying and petty, and it sucks all the joy out of posting anything when you have to feel like you're always at risk of upsetting some miserable, boring wanker just for making a few posts about something in the wrong way. Get a life.

This isn't intended as a personal attack but I've previously found your "live tweeting" approach overbearing and inconsiderate in threads where I've wanted to discuss programmes we've both been watching. In the past I've had to wait until you've finished until I can post about something because your stream of posts will sometimes push through into a new page and posts preceding yours will be ousted from the conversation. (Granted, there's not much conversation as there are commiserations about programmes like Picard.)

[Benny]

37 minutes ago, DeciderVT said:

This isn't intended as a personal attack but I've previously found your "live tweeting" approach overbearing and inconsiderate in threads where I've wanted to discuss programmes we've both been watching. In the past I've had to wait until you've finished until I can post about something because your stream of posts will sometimes push through into a new page and posts preceding yours will be ousted from the conversation. (Granted, there's not much conversation as there are commiserations about programmes like Picard.)

 

I'm struggling to understand how those posts would be "ousted" from the conversation, as assuming people are reading new posts in order, they will still be visible and read yours, unless people are just going to skip your posts to read mine for some reason.

 

I'm not deleting your posts. People can still read them.

 

It makes it sound like I'm silencing everyone by having some passion about something.

 

I actually reduced how many I posted at once at one point because I got discouraged by the comments about it and didn't post in some threads because I thought it meant my contribution wasn't wanted anyway. I've always had people in my life take the piss how I write passionately about things with a stream of consciousness sometimes, so to have more people come on here and just give me a "telling off" for trying to take part in the conversation in the best way I can is really disheartening.

 

I've had my hand in a cast for weeks, so I can literally barely type properly without constant correction as I have to make use of only one hand to make posts, so several short posts on my phone are easier than writing a long one at the moment (this one is a PITA so thanks for goading me into it I guess). If that's "inconsiderate" just contributing that way then I'm not going to post in this thread ever again. Enjoy the last episode everyone, who cares what I think eh.

 

[Benny]

And no, I won't ever watch Star Trek: Strange New Worlds either. Because why would I watch something I might want to post about, potentially in a way that will just have someone moan at me again if I make just a few too many posts.

[DeciderVT]

8 minutes ago, Benny said:

 

I'm struggling to understand how those posts would be "ousted" from the conversation, as assuming people are reading new posts in order, they will still be visible and read yours, unless people are just going to skip your posts to read mine for some reason.

 

I'm not deleting your posts. People can still read them.

 

It makes it sound like I'm silencing everyone by having some passion about something.

 

I actually reduced how many I posted at once at one point because I got discouraged by the comments about it and didn't post in some threads because I thought it meant my contribution wasn't wanted anyway. I've always had people in my life take the piss how I write passionately about things with a stream of consciousness sometimes, so to have more people come on here and just give me a "telling off" for trying to take part in the conversation in the best way I can is really disheartening.

It should be fairly obvious that a post that either gets left at the end of a page or caught up among a stream of others that people end up flicking past can be easily missed. Can you imagine if everybody posting in these threads was picking apart minutiae per-post as they were watching as well? Nobody's giving you a "telling off", you're just being asked to be more considerate and understand why some people might find it annoying.
 

Quote

I've had my hand in a cast for weeks, so I can literally barely type properly without constant correction as I have to make use of only one hand to make posts, so several short posts on my phone are easier than writing a long one at the moment (this one is a PITA so thanks for goading me into it I guess). If that's "inconsiderate" just contributing that way then I'm not going to post in this thread ever again. Enjoy the last episode everyone, who cares what I think eh.

I'm sorry about your hand but you've been doing this a lot longer than the last few weeks. And saying that I'm "goading" you into writing a long reply and having a flounce about never posting in this thread again is being needlessly dramatic.

[Dirty Harry Potter]

26 minutes ago, Benny said:

 

I'm struggling to understand how those posts would be "ousted" from the conversation, as assuming people are reading new posts in order, they will still be visible and read yours, unless people are just going to skip your posts to read mine for some reason.

 

I'm not deleting your posts. People can still read them.

 

It makes it sound like I'm silencing everyone by having some passion about something.

 

I actually reduced how many I posted at once at one point because I got discouraged by the comments about it and didn't post in some threads because I thought it meant my contribution wasn't wanted anyway. I've always had people in my life take the piss how I write passionately about things with a stream of consciousness sometimes, so to have more people come on here and just give me a "telling off" for trying to take part in the conversation in the best way I can is really disheartening.

 

I've had my hand in a cast for weeks, so I can literally barely type properly without constant correction as I have to make use of only one hand to make posts, so several short posts on my phone are easier than writing a long one at the moment (this one is a PITA so thanks for goading me into it I guess). If that's "inconsiderate" just contributing that way then I'm not going to post in this thread ever again. Enjoy the last episode everyone, who cares what I think eh.

 

 

I quite enjoyed your stream of consciousness posting style @Benny so don't stop on account of a few objections. Its creating debate and discussion - which is what this place is for. ❤️