Movies: What did You Watch Last Night?

[Son of Arathorn]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

Frankenstein is an excellent choice.

I bet there's some description of what qualifies a work as a Great Book. Could I trouble you to find something like that, SoA, if it exists? Obviously there will be edge cases and, equally obviously, reasonable people will disagree about what should or should not be on the list. I don't want to debate that, but I am curious to see the description. And I suppose the list itself, if you can share those things. Maybe posted in the "Books" thread.

Naturally, in the Books thread
I’m out of the house at the moment (phone posting from a family outing), so it’ll have to wait. Of course, the idea of Great Books has been around long before my college was using it, so there’s bound to be disparity. And I don’t mean to call my school the authority- the very idea would shock my peers. But it seemed a fine example to call upon in the discussion.

I’ll peruse the school resources and Wikipedia when I’m back home. If anyone’s interested in the college or its curriculum, google St. John’s College in Santa Fe and Annapolis.

[japes]

Originally Posted by Son of Arathorn

Naturally, in the Books thread
I’m out of the house at the moment (phone posting from a family outing), so it’ll have to wait. Of course, the idea of Great Books has been around long before my college was using it, so there’s bound to be disparity. And I don’t mean to call my school the authority- the very idea would shock my peers. But it seemed a fine example to call upon in the discussion.

I’ll peruse the school resources and Wikipedia when I’m back home. If anyone’s interested in the college or its curriculum, google St. John’s College in Santa Fe and Annapolis.

Browsed the wikipedia page for your college...I had never heard of a program like this. Very interesting. Thought I've read several of what is listed as the curriculum from the 2015–2016year I am tempted to track down others...of course I couldn't read all those in four years now but...interesting.

[Spidey'tilIDie]

I too looked up your school and its curriculum. I've never heard of such a thing before, but wish I had as it seems like the kind of school that I would have been interested in about 25 years ago.

[Son of Arathorn]

To the Books thread!

[Grimnak]

I’ve now seen The Last Jedi three times. I didn’t like it very much at all after the first viewing, but I enjoyed it more and more with each subsequent watch. However...

I don’t know if I missed something or if I’m alone in this, but the Canto Bight scenes didn’t feel like they were necessary at all. Not to mention they didn’t feel like Star Wars at all - it wasn’t “spacey” enough.

What about the glaring plot hole where we can now apparently kamikaze a lone ship to destroy an entire fleet? How did they NOT see a massive plot hole opening up?

Also, they kept referring to the “new technology” of tracking through hyperspace. Uh, hello? How did Vader track the Rebels through hyperspace at the end of Rogue One to Tatooine, where A New Hope begins? Absolutely, 100% a mistake.

[Agent Minivann]

Originally Posted by Grimnak

What about the glaring plot hole where we can now apparently kamikaze a lone ship to destroy an entire fleet? How did they NOT see a massive plot hole opening up?

Also, they kept referring to the “new technology” of tracking through hyperspace. Uh, hello? How did Vader track the Rebels through hyperspace at the end of Rogue One to Tatooine, where A New Hope begins? Absolutely, 100% a mistake.

My take on these. Point the first, It was a big ship that ain't coming back. That is a Yoooge investment. I'm not sure that it is really a plot hole. Kamikaze has a long Star Wars tradition as a weapon of last resort. It's just that it was a really big ship this time, and those are usually already destroyed/disabled when they get to the point that kamikaze sounds like a good idea.
As far as the tracking, I'm just going to guess that this is something new in the sense that they don't have to plant a tracking beacon. Granted I have only seen it once, so I can't honestly remember if a tracking beacon was mentioned. Tracking sans beacon is a pretty serious tech advantage that has big implications moving forward.

[Yodaking]

To your last point first, in ANH when Vader tracks the Falcon it is because they had taken the Falcon into custody aboard the Death Star and at some point while all the heroes were not on board the ship and running around rescuing Leia, Vader order a physical beckon be installed on the ship that would relay their location after dropping out of hyperspace. That beckon was no doubt located in such a place that they could not physically get to it while traveling through space. Thus until they landed, located, and removed the beckon Vader would know where that ship was in the galaxy once it stopped moving through hyperspace.

Spoiler Alert!

This brings up a new question of why didn't they just stop off somewhere other than the secret Yavin base and transfer Leia and the R2 unit with the Death Star plans to a new ship for the final leg of the journey to Yavin, but I suppose they didn't want to risk not getting the plans back when they had the chance considering they had already used the Death Star to destroy one planet. One would assume that once they arrived at the base on Yavin that they immedietly started copying the plans and sending people off world to other factions of the Rebel Alliance to insure that if Yavin was lost the plans would still be out in play that someone else might find a way to destroy the Death Star. In that light, giving up the Yavin base location seems like a small loss.

What we see happening in Last Jedi is the First Order's ability to track a ship through hyperspace absent the physical beckon and in real time. The First Order never had the Resistance ships in their possession to place a physical beckon and we see them arrive in space behind the Resistance ships just moments after they dropped out of hyperspace. Where as in ANH there was clearly some time delay between the Flacon's arrival on Yavin and the Death Star's arrival in the Yavin system, enough of a time delay that they were able to land, withdraw the plans from R2, analyze the plans, then form up an attack strategy to exploit the weakness found. Even if that all only took 15-20 minutes to do, that is much different from the seconds later the First Order arrived on the scene. To arrive that quickly in pursuit suggests real time tracking, even though JJ Abrams started to ignore this fact in Force Awakes, we have seen in previous SW films that to travel from one point in the galaxy to another via hyperdrive can require a ship to remain in hyperspace for large chucks of time. While traveling though hyperspace Han leaves the cockpit and comes back to find Chewie playing chess, Obi-Wan and Luke hold a lightsabre training session, etc. If the First Order only knew where they came out of hyperspace after they dropped out like Vader did, they would be an equal amount of time traveled behind their quarry. So the new technology seems to allow the First Order to track in real time and use that real time data to match the speed and direction of the ship being tracked. That is how they were able to pop out of hyperspace right after the Resistance did.

On the second to last point, my understanding was that the technology that allowed the First Order to track them was only located in the big ship, so once she hyperspaced her ship into that one like a huge cannon ball she destroyed that ship and their ability to track them. Unfortunately at that point all they had left were transport ships without a hyperdrive system so they continued on to the mining planet. Then because the entire First Order fleet was not destroyed, just the biggest lead ship, the First Order was able to pursue them to the mining planet and deploy the ground invasion force of AT-AT knock offs.

I generally agree with your second point, the casino stuff didn't really do anything for the plot considering how everything ended up playing out. It seems like a couple of missed opportunities to me.

Spoiler Alert!

Once they started talking about gambling I was sure Lando was going to pop up. Or at least Lobot as he had the implants that would have made him a world class code breaker. Then when they focused in on the race track, why wouldn't it have been pod racing instead of animal racing. Considering how exclusive the casino resort was suppose to be, the racing seemed really low tech. It would have been neat to see one of the Pod Racers in EPI still working as a racer all these years later and having climbed up the ladder from a backwater racer on the outer rim to a high stakes racer at the exclusive casino resort.

[quozl]

Grimnak is not talking about tracking the Falcon. He's talking about tracking the ship Leia is on at the end of Rogue One and at the beginning of Star Wars. I think it's a Corellian Corvette.

[Tornado]

The casino represented a bigger picture. The rise of the little of guy.

What happened in the moment is secondary to what it sparked.

[Yodaking]

Originally Posted by quozl

Grimnak is not talking about tracking the Falcon. He's talking about tracking the ship Leia is on at the end of Rogue One and at the beginning of Star Wars. I think it's a Corellian Corvette.

Hmmm, I'll have to look at the end of Rogue One and the beginning of ANH again. I don't recall them ever really saying how Vader ended up chasing the ship over Tatooine in ANH when we last see her blast off from the island planet (don't recall the name) with the plans and Vader watching them get away. I kind of assume that some segment of time had passed as she tried to pretend that they were a 'councilor ship on a diplomatic mission' once captured. That suggests that their was at least some small gap in the pursuit such that she could allege they were a different ship (did they change out the ships 'license plate' during this time gap?). From the last known angle of heading before jumping to hyperspace they could project out a series of potential stopping points. Perhaps the island planet was located close enough to the outer rim that their were very limited options for where the ship to go once she blasted out further into the outer rim territories. But that assumes they don't drop out of hyperspace, turn in some way, and make a second jump in an effort to lose the tail. Perhaps the Empire has enough of a galactic presence that a series of probes, spy satellites, and local ship traffic monitors were able to feed Vader a steady stream of 'sightings' and he pursued her over several locations before correctly guessing her eventual jump location of Tatooine, then opted to cut her off there by going directly to Tatooine while her ship zigged and zagged in an effort to shake the pursuers. We do see in ANH that when Han arrives at the former Alderan location that the Death Star already had information about a similar ship having blasted it's way out of Tatooine even though that had just occured before they made the jump to hyperspace. That, along with the 'live' hologram projections used throughout the story over vast reaches of space, indicates that data transmissions occur much faster than the speed ships travel at hyperspace. Kind of like the current situation here in the US involving the cops, you can outrun a single cop car but you can't outrun the police radio. So perhaps Vader used the vast resources of the Empire to form a web around the ships movements?

[japes]

Originally Posted by Tornado

The casino represented a bigger picture. The rise of the little of guy.

What happened in the moment is secondary to what it sparked.

Yeah well the whole casino side story plays out like the ole Raiders of the Lost Ark argument...where nothing Indy does really mattered...

Where here it was the infuriating idea that if anyone would have mentioned anything about any plans everything works out...

Spoiler Alert!

Had Admiral Purple Hair would have at least said they had a plan and that Poe was just not privy to that plan (instead of just playing along with the...we are just waiting until our fuel runs out) or had Poe just said...wait but I have a team boarding them right now to take care of the beacon someone could have told him then to cancel that plan and get them back here...instead it played out like some stupid sitcom misunderstanding that ends up causing the whole mess

I think if I boiled down my opinion to only a few words it would be this...

Honestly if you cut every scene that doesn't have Luke, Rey or Kylo out of the movie you probably have a pretty solid movie because in the grand scheme of the overall story of this saga...nothing else mattered...

Everything else was filler that ended up not mattering in the end anyway and I left the theater wondering to myself...did we really learn anything and did this really propel the story forward...and in my opinion the time invested vs reward wasn't quite there. The stuff I liked...I loved. The stuff I didn't...I hated/thought dumb.

My son and wife saw Ferdinand the animated movie yesterday and my 10 year old, Star Wars obsessed, son actually told me this when I asked him if he liked it..."Yeah, it was better than Star Wars"

[Tornado]

Heh, I was going to bring up Indy. Totally what I was going for here.

No Death Star or Jar Jar.