Why don't I like Star Wars? (no spoilers)

[drunkenshoe]

Villians in American movies very often have British accents. Esp. in animation. I just thought of the sharks in Finding Nemo.

[SGOS]

I actually like the British accent.  To me it sounds refined, dignified, and intelligent.  But for real bad asses, it doesn't work well, except when it's the leader of a well thought out global takeover caper.  A bad ass should have a low brow American accent, and say things like, "Shit Man.  Ya don't know nutton, and I be putin' a cap in yer damn ass."

[trdsf]

The Hidden Fortress.

That's the one, thank you.

I'm going to see this new one this weekend.  I have calibrated my expectations properly.

[Shiranu]

I'm not huge on the British accent but I see the appeal of it. There are just much more beautiful accents to me (particularly Persian-Indian and some Middle Eastern [expecially Egyptian... hrrrrrrnnnn...]). And of course women with french or spanish accents... men it sounds weird on.

[Atheon]

[spoiler]Snoke is none other than Kitster, Anakin's childhood friend! :)[/spoiler]

[doorknob]

I don't like star wars either. Sorry warsies.

I liked it as a kid but going back and trying to watch it now is painful. I can't stomach it. sorry.

[Sargon The Grape]

I don't like star wars either. Sorry warsies.

I liked it as a kid but going back and trying to watch it now is painful. I can't stomach it. sorry.

Well, if I'm being honest, the only one I go out of my way to re-watch is "The Empire Strikes Back." It was always my favorite to begin with, but with the special edition releases it's also the only one that actually improved, I'd say. (My only real complaint is the change to Vader's meeting with the emperor in the Blu-ray version.)

[widdershins]

I'm possibly the only person under the age of 70 who doesn't even remotely enjoy the franchise. It's not like I haven't tried. My husband and I recently watched episodes I-VI to get ready for the new one (which we still haven't seen). I want to like Star Wars: I just find it boring. It's like a soap opera with a complicated political background and a lot of weird religious undertones. Also interesting to note, admitting you don't like Star Wars in some circles might be worse than admitting you're an atheist.

What I find so bizarre is that I really like Star Trek and routinely forgive it for its numerous plot holes, anachronisms, bad acting, and bad graphics. Why can't I do the same for Star Wars? Is there some social or psychological reason for liking one but not the other?

I also don't like Lord of the Rings or Dr. Who, and everyone seems to think that's really fucking bananas too, as if I'm a defective geek or some sort of poseur. I do enjoy Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and even the Chronicles of Narnia which is just a thinly-veiled Christian allegory (that I do my best to overlook).

Actually, I hate all things Star Wars.  Except the "action figures" (they weren't dolls, dammit!) from when I was a kid.  Those were cool as hell.

But when I see technologically advanced people sword fighting...that's just stupid.  I could wipe out the Jedi in an afternoon with Earth's advanced buckshot technology, no problem.  And if I were a faceless guard who knew some jackass with a magic sword was going to block my laser fire with it I'd tape 3 guns together in a triangle and connect the triggers together and one-shot the bitch.  You can't block a triangle with a line.  The idea that those guards armed with future guns just line up to be killed by one dude with a sword...let's just say the suspension of disbelief is neither willful nor forthcoming for me.

[widdershins]

I really hated all the holodeck episodes in TNG,DS9, and VOY. In Voyager they didn't even make any sense, because the holodecks supposedly took up buttloads of energy but they had to ration food from the replicators because they didn't have enough energy? Like really, you can waste energy pretending to be a 19th century governess but you have to eat nasty roots you dug up on some planet because you can't spare the power? I get that it was supposed to be a story arc, but they were in the Delta quadrant and could essentially rewrite canon since none of the other well-known Alpha quadrant species were around. It had all this potential, but yeah...

NOTHING about Voyager made sense from the very first episode.  The writers didn't have a grasp of even the most basic principals of physics.  Even things so basic as gravity confounded them.

[gentle_dissident]

But when I see technologically advanced people sword fighting...that's just stupid.

That may have been a comment on how society doesn't evolve despite technology evolving.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V268Qk6-xsw

[Sargon The Grape]

NOTHING about Voyager made sense from the very first episode.  The writers didn't have a grasp of even the most basic principals of physics.  Even things so basic as gravity confounded them.

You'd probably like SF Debris if you don't already watch it. Chuck has a whole series talking about Voyager, and his analysis of the episode "Threshold" is especially hilarious.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Anybody else think "Sinestro" when Snoke appeared?

[widdershins]

You'd probably like SF Debris if you don't already watch it. Chuck has a whole series talking about Voyager, and his analysis of the episode "Threshold" is especially hilarious.

Not really my thing.  I don't mind someone pointing out all the ridiculous things in an episode, but the guy is just too wordy.  I don't want to watch a half-hour play by play of a crappy Voyager episode when the major problems in an episode can be summed up in 3 minutes.  And there are such egregious mistakes with Voyager "science", you don't really need to nit-pick.

For instance, they found a water planet and Janeway asks, "What holds it together?"  I know this is probably news to all space travelers everywhere, but water, much like all other matter, does have "gravity", which is capable of holding things together.  But, no, it was a machine in the center of the planet.  But it was failing!  Why was it failing?  The idiots on the planet were using the water to generate power, separating light and heavy elements.  The heavy elements were sinking to the middle, where they were crushing this machine.  Let this be a lesson to you, kids.  If you have a ton of bricks and a ton of feathers ALWAYS stack the feathers on the bottom because if you put the bricks on the bottom the damned thing weighs TWO TONS!

And there's one where they came across a planet which was destroyed, so they check it out.  Janeway slips through a crack back in time to before it was destroyed, the crack caused by the destruction of the planet.  She eventually realizes that the crew's attempt to rescue her is what destroys the planet, so she stops it.  So the planet isn't destroyed.  So she didn't go back in time.  But since it's not destroyed, or warp capable, they just go on by.  So you have this circle-jerk of events where every event has to occur before every other event can possibly happen.  The only things in that episode that could have possibly occurred happened in the last 30 seconds of the episode.

See?  2 episodes, less than 5 minutes typing, all the major problems revealed.

[trdsf]

NOTHING about Voyager made sense from the very first episode.  The writers didn't have a grasp of even the most basic principals of physics.  Even things so basic as gravity confounded them.

I wanted to like Voyager.  I tried to like Voyager.  And any captain who'd risk their ship for the sake of a cup of coffee is a captain I could follow.

But I had to give up the fight at "Beam the cheese to sickbay".

[stromboli]

That's the one, thank you.

I'm going to see this new one this weekend.  I have calibrated my expectations properly.

Big fan of Toshiro Mifune and Kurosawa. Seven Samurai, Ran and Throne Of Blood all rank high on my list of favorite films. The battle scenes in Ran, an overlong movie, just with the color and the sense of purpose of the combatants is worth the watch.

If ever anyone did Shakespeare proud with their interpretations, Kurosawa certainly did. Throne of Blood does Macbeth better than just about any western version. Same with Ran and King Lear. Kurosawa played homage to a master and did so masterfully. Some of the battle and death scenes in his movies transcend violence and become art, something Tarantino tried to do in his movies and frankly I think he mostly failed at.

That is the problem I have with Tarantino. I know where he gets his inspiration and I was a fan of Kurosawa long before Tarantino came along. There is so much "borrowed" in his movies and I know the sources, so it ruins it for me. Ironically it is his inclusion of anime in his work that makes it for a lot of people, but I can't get past the borrowing.

There is one death scene in one of Kurosawa's movies where a man is impaled with a sword. You don't see the sword because of the man's garments, his kimono covering the blood and the impaled sword. Just the body rolling down an embankment, with the impaled sword making the movements jerky and giving a corpse a weird sort of life is visual imagery you literally can't forget. Kurosawa was a genius, period.