A lot of catch up this week, folks. But really, a lot of Star Wars. A LOT of Star Wars. Don’t worry, it’s spoiler free (in my opinion). Also, Tony and William explain their personal varieties of self-hate. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
How and what do you do to temper your own dissonance (if any) when witnessing poverty & struggle when traveling? –Cawfee
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This is going to be difficult, as there are no spoiler tags. I’ll do this spoiler free:
The action figure (if you lookup the story) of Rey was pulled because of what’s included in the pack with her. To get around this, it would have been perfectly possible to make the action figure simply have what she had in the film trailers. Does that make sense?
Anyway, really cool to hear about the women taking their daughters along! I hadn’t heard of that impact. I haven’t taken my kids yet, although saw it on opening day. Good excuse to see it again 🙂
Agreed on all the comments. The humour was really well done, as was the interactions between Fin and Rey, and others. I suspect it has the same number of gaping plot holes as the original, however you’re right in that suspending disbelief is harder when you’re older. I mean really, a big pipe that leads to the main reactor in RotJ after a design flaw left a narrrower pipe to the same place in ANH? But still, the rest of the film made up for it, and it was a needed/safe reboot for Disney’s $4bn investment to allow the new characters to take us forward.
I disagree (and thus sound like an apologist) that the Jedi etc. could have slipped into myth so quickly (30 years). Example: I was watching Mary Poppins the other night, kids had yet to see it. All the war references? The Admiral on the roof? I think all that sort of thing is falling into obsolescence as we get further away from WW2 and thus films about it become less frequent. Jungle Book is another example – kids watching now will wonder what the hell the elephants bit is all about. Why are they in a line? Marching? It all made sense to me, but I grew up on the likes of Tora! Tora! Tora!, Zulu, etc. So, in TFA we’re only 30 years along, but I think given how quickly we forget stuff, and the size of the galaxy (remember the size of the Senate?), it’s entirely plausible. What’s NOT plausible is the “ancient religion” stuff in ANH, after Order 66 was only executed 10 years prior in RotS. Obviously, that’s the prequel continuity at fault, but still.
What *must not* happen is that Fin is related to Lando. That’s the kind of galaxy-shrinking stuff from the prequels (oh hey, it’s those bloody droids again!) that makes it hard to believe people haven’t heard of Jedi or ancient religions or any of that stuff, because it all feels like it takes place in Iowa City where everyone knows everyone else.
Anyway, as a Star Wars obsessive, I loved this film. It was what was needed to satisfy fans new and old, borrows some of the OK bits from the extended universe which this has now replaced, and very quickly established characters you could care about.
Maybe in another few months (blu ray release, April?), we can have a spoiler discussion here.
Correction, the toy pack I was referring to was a six-figure pack. Not sure where I got seven… maybe wishful thinking…
Good Pho? NOICE! 🙂 We’ve got a decent Pho place in CR, though the service is mediocre at best.
Fallout4: 317 hours? It’s not that crazy; I’m currently 240 hours into it, admittedly I’m on a break from it right now.If you really want to get crazy with the game; you need to get it for the PC, where you can install mods to add extra features/content.
TFA: 4 times, but only a solid C? That’s odd and also leads me back to why I rate films on 2 scales: “Good” (how well was it crafted) and “Fun” (did I enjoy watching it). So for example, Schindler’s List gets a very high score on the Good scale and a very low score on the Fun scale. While the Star Wars films (excluding the prequels) tend to right low to medium on the “Good” scale but medium to high on the “Fun” scale.
Billie D. Williams Accent: I think Tony should do an entire podcast in that accent. 😀
R2-D2 & BB-8 Blooping/Bleeping: More importantly if you’re going to build droids like these that can understand standard speech, why the hell wouldn’t you build them to respond in the same language?