Star Wars VII - Open spoilers

[Turkey]

It's just Jackie Chan getting chased across the galaxy for 90 minutes. It ends with an him in an X-wing flight suit getting a kiss on the cheek, and as he smiles at the camera, his teeth sparkle and it fades out with a circle like in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

 

They also throw in the boulder chase from Raiders for no reason, and a cardboard box full of plastic snakes gets dumped on him while he's trying to balance on wooden poles over lava.

[Dewar]

Can we get a Star Wars movie without Jedi? They're like the least interesting  part of the series.

[melmer]

[Bolegium]

Roderick, if it's semi-realistic sword fighting you want, check out 'Alatriste' from 2006.

[Roderick]

Thanks, will check

[Mawd]

I'm kind of hoping that in one of the spin off Star Wars movies we do get something more muted from it (if only by SW standards). Oh and a 'Bounty Hunter' movie with almost no jedi in it would be great.

[melmer]

I think a Boba Fett movie was mentioned/featured in some of those leaked Sony emails. I saw it on Gaf earlier.

I've been thinking about this, how would you feel about Ewan Mcgregor coming back for an obi wan movie? A Jedi detective movie set like 10 years after the prequel, he comes out of hiding to help an old friend solve a murder mystery type thing. Maybe the old friend could be that giant frog guy who owns the diner on corasant

[Mawd]

  On 12/13/2014 at 11:55 AM, Mington said:

I've been thinking about this, how would you feel about Ewan Mcgregor coming back for an obi wan movie? A Jedi detective movie set like 10 years after the prequel, he comes out of hiding to help an old friend solve a murder mystery type thing. Maybe the old friend could be that giant frog guy who owns the diner on corasant

I'd buy that for a dollar!

[Architecture]

  On 12/12/2014 at 7:54 PM, dium said:

Yes, yes, I agree with all this. And movies from Phantom Menace's era particularly suffered from the Crouching-Tiger-Hidden-Dragon-ification of fight choreography.

 

I'm just saying that I can actually stomach to watch the Darth Maul fight scene, which by default makes it the best part of the movie.

 

EDIT: Also, the more I think about it, I actually don't mind and often enjoy overly flashy fight-dancing. Depending on the movie. But the best Star Wars lightsaber fight remains the father-son duel in the freezing chamber of cloud city and the only flashy thing about that scene was the lighting and cinematography, so still, I agree.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came out more than a year after The Phantom Menace.

 

Yes, TPM is undoubtedly influenced by Wuxia films, but you can't lay this at the feet of Ang Lee.

[Apelsin]

A Dash Rendar movie.

[Badfinger]

All of those things remind me of Darths and Droids. Which I haven't read in a while.

 

http://www.darthsanddroids.net/

 

http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0001.html

[dium]

  On 12/14/2014 at 5:46 PM, Architecture said:

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came out more than a year after The Phantom Menace.

 

Yes, TPM is undoubtedly influenced by Wuxia films, but you can't lay this at the feet of Ang Lee.

 

Fair enough, but clearly you understood my gist.

[Architecture]

Yes, but I think it's important to remember that many westerners had yet to be introduced to balletic martial arts action sequences. Even The Matrix, as essential to defining the language of modern action cinema, was released concurrently with Episode I.

 

Though I suppose that's really just an aside.

[Ben X]

But dium was saying that movies from that era were influenced by that style of choreography. Do you disagree?

[Jake]

I thought there were even similar choreography teams on a good chunk of movies in that era. Wasn't there a martial arts fight designer & choreography team that was really in vogue around matrix/prequels/crouching tiger times?

[Ben X]

Yuen Wo Ping became known for doing a lot of fight choreography for Western movies around that time iirc (although he was already a successful Eastern director - I think he directed Drunken Master amongst other things).

 

EDIT: I googled and it seems his name is mostly spelt "Woo" now though it also has been written as "Wo" and that's how I remember it from the late 90s...

[miffy495]

I thought it was just Yuen Wo Ping all along as well. His directing is actually really good. The Tai Chi Master is one of my favourite martial arts movies. If you are at all interested in seeing Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh fight each other on top of a water wheel, you should watch that film.

[Badfinger]

  On 12/21/2014 at 7:38 PM, miffy495 said:

I thought it was just Yuen Wo Ping all along as well. His directing is actually really good. The Tai Chi Master is one of my favourite martial arts movies. If you are at all interested in seeing Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh fight each other on top of a water wheel, you should watch that film.

 

Miffy you know the way to my heart.

 

 

To your point, Jackie Chan had been doing crazy fight choreography for decades before Phantom Menace came out. Even just in the 90's, you had Twin Dragons, Rumble in the Bronx, Legend of Drunken Master, hell Rush Hour was released in 1998. It's not all that fluid balletic fight and direction, but there's certainly some crossover.

[Jake]

What I meant was that for a while there in the late '90s and early 2000s, it felt like Yuen Wo Pin & team, was EVERYWHERE, and there were imitators where he wasn't. Obviously martial arts movies, and action cinema in general that isn't from America, had a ton of very stylized fighting well before the 1990s, but it was an unavoidable explosion for a specific window of time.

Its a style I don't expect to see as pervasive in VII VIII IX, other than maybe a couple hallmark scenes across the movies, which inexplicably get catchy crew nicknames which deep out in DVD featurettes and are name dropped by fans for decades to come. (eg: the "burly brawl" from the third Matrix movie... A movie few see twice but a ton of dorks can name drop the internal name for one specific action scene in it all the same) I bet all of the fights in the new Star Wars films will be very high concept and designed,* but they will try to have a unique gimmick per setpiece instead of constantly just upping the ante on how raged out the sword dancing is.

* a couple of the fights' high concept will be that they are stark and "back to basics" and will excitedly be calling back returning to the Obi Wan fight from Star Wars and the Luke / Vader fight from Empire.... but this will be with the exact same enthusiasm as their describing the equivalent of the water wheel fight in pirates 2 or that parking garage fight in the latest mission impossible (or for that matter, a fight whose concept is that it's a callback to the big sword dancing fight showcases from the prequels). Just another in a string of high concept spotlight setups.**

** if the fight action is as consistently fun as the Pirates water wheel or the mission impossible ghost protocol parking garage scenes I will be pretty happy btw.

[SecretAsianMan]

  On 12/22/2014 at 12:52 AM, Jake said:

(eg: the "burly brawl" from the third Matrix movie... A movie few see twice but a ton of dorks can name drop the internal name for one specific action scene in it all the same)

 

I'm going to prove Jake right and be one of those dorks right now: the burly brawl is actually from the second Matrix movie.  The big fight scene in the third movie is Neo vs Smith in the rain (which was basically a DBZ style fight).

[Jake]

Oh yeah that was in the 2nd one. I combined both the 2nd and 3rd one in my brain but now I remember unfortunately.

[Merus]

I think the only reason people remember the burly brawl is the name. I'd be hard pressed to go the other way - I have a fairly good memory and I only vaguely remember details about the fight - but the words 'burly brawl' are evocative.

[Razor]

  On 12/22/2014 at 12:52 AM, Jake said:

** if the fight action is as consistently fun as the Pirates water wheel or the mission impossible ghost protocol parking garage scenes I will be pretty happy btw.

 

I watched pirates 2 yesterday and hell that is maybe my favourite scene in the movie. It's really well done IMO.

[Professor Video Games]

The only thing I remember about the burly brawl is the bowling pin sound effect. Let's hope the new Star Wars takes note.

[Nachimir]

I'd never heard that scene called the burly brawl before, but knew exactly which one it was going to be.