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Star Wars VII - Open spoilers

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Hearing him talk (very briefly) about it on the tested podcast, it sounds like it was just a natural conclusion to his section of the work as opposed to "losing" anyone. I'm not surprised that Disney would want to run the script through a few writers to homogenize and dullify it as much as possible.

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Hearing him talk (very briefly) about it on the tested podcast, it sounds like it was just a natural conclusion to his section of the work as opposed to "losing" anyone. I'm not surprised that Disney would want to run the script through a few writers to homogenize and dullify it as much as possible.

While I'm guessing you're probably right in that that is likely what's going to happen, having re-writes by different writers isn't bad. Heck, Empire Strikes Back went through the most re-writes of any of the Star Wars films.

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Re-writes of scripts is actually the norm. Never in Hollywood history has there been a script submission accepted as-is.

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Remember when you thought the lightsaber with the crossguard was silly?  There's a new line of toys coming out that lets you make your own wacky lightsaber configurations, including a fucking knuckleduster.

 

xTPP72k.jpg

 

Z9MhEoq.jpg

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Even though I was in the "crossguard is dumb" camp, I'd be lying if I said those toys didn't look cool. Imagine punching somebody with a fistful of lasers!

 

By the way, A Fistful of Laser should be the subtitle of one of the movies in the new trilogy.

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Remember when you thought the lightsaber with the crossguard was silly?

No, I don't!

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Ooooooo knuckle dusters would be sooooo COOL!

So, I was just think if a whip saber will turn up in this films and how would that "work". Could a force user be able to alter the direction of a light saber beam? Is that a thing that ever happened in the books/comics

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Even though I was in the "crossguard is dumb" camp, I'd be lying if I said those toys didn't look cool. Imagine punching somebody with a fistful of lasers!

By the way, A Fistful of Laser should be the subtitle of one of the movies in the new trilogy.

For a Few Sabers More

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Ooooooo knuckle dusters would be sooooo COOL!

So, I was just think if a whip saber will turn up in this films and how would that "work". Could a force user be able to alter the direction of a light saber beam? Is that a thing that ever happened in the books/comics

 

Short answer, yes

 

 

That lightsaber is super dumb, but no worse that some of the over dumb versions that have existed such as

 

The lightwhip

 

Githany_lightwhip.jpg

 

The lighttonfa

 

Guard_shoto.jpg

 

and my personal favorite dumb variant, the lightfoil

 

Tapani_lightfoils.jpg

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I was just think if a whip saber will turn up in this films and how would that "work".

 

Probably like a fire whip, which, unlike many other forms of fire thing, is actually incredibly risky to play with:

 

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He's done some classics but also a load of hack jobs where he just slings a load of characters and moments at the canvas at random. Unfortunately, it seems that the latter have influenced subsequent poster design a lot more than the former.

 

Okay, my comment was of course meant as hyperbole. ;)

 

Still, exactly that "sling a lot of characters at the canvas" is what he's particularly good at. His arrangements, his composition simply hits home. But it's not like is oeuvre is composed of the floating heads you see mimicked with photographs in movie posters today. Actually, he really gets some diversity in. And apart from practically always achieving a spot on likeness with the actors, he is really great at capturing that "moment" that makes a movie.

 

Of course, it's not all peachy with Struzan. His style, particularly the strongly saturated oranges aren't universally welcome. Due to the nature of his work, he mostly used photographs of actors made well after the movie was finished. He made do with those pretty well, usually slapping actor heads on still photographs from his own body and friends (Harrison Ford once said to him: "Thanks for the bod"). Consequently, his art often looks a bit too staged. Other poster artists achieved more impressive results by using stills from the actual movie (e.g. David Grove, that incredibly talented bastard), at the cost of precision of course.

 

In a nutshell, I adore Struzan's work, but am aware of flaws of course. As to Star Wars, "The Art of Drew Struzan" describes the process for the Episode III poster in detail, and it kind of is presented as one of the central reasons why he retired.

 

On my approved comp, Darth Vader was in the background with the main characters up front in red-hot colors. The art director at Lucasfilm wanted Darth bigger. Like, lots bigger. But where in the world would they put a bigger Darth? Their idea was to shove the characters towards the bottom in order to make Darth bigger, which destroyed the composition. The lightsaber fight and the circular group is the focus -  the bullseye - and they missed the target.

I painted a solo piece of an overwhelmingly huge Darth head in the same style as the original. They married the two images digitally, and that ticked me off. Now the composition was lopsided. It was all my work, but it had been cut and pasted and shuffled around without my supervision or approval.

I'm hoping he'll take on the new trilogy, and I really hope he'll get more creative freedom. Struzan really WANTS to try something new, but art directors are usually shocked out of their wits when they see what he has in mind (as with his comps for the 2004 "Sahara" movie). Abrams to the rescue?

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I don't mind there being variations of the lightsaber. The only one I don't like is the whip. That literally doesn't make sense.

 

But I mean, they're called Jedi Knights and Star Wars is a fantasy setting / story with sci-fi dressing. Show me some lightsabre-axes and polearms. The tonfa is a pretty great idea.

 

Also love the implied light-daggers in the kids toys picture.

 

We all have to remember that there are practical versions of all of these in Star Wars. The "light" stuff is for the Jedi and Sith. For commoners, they use "vibro" weapons.

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That literally doesn't make sense.

If I'm not mistaken (I probably am since I don't really care about Star Wars lore or whatever), isn't the idea behind a lightsaber that it's a laser being contained by the power of the Jedi Knight him/herself? Soooo, a whip totally could make sense if the knight was skilled enough to handle the rapidly-varying shape of the laser?

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If I'm not mistaken (I probably am since I don't really care about Star Wars lore or whatever), isn't the idea behind a lightsaber that it's a laser being contained by the power of the Jedi Knight him/herself? Soooo, a whip totally could make sense if the knight was skilled enough to handle the rapidly-varying shape of the laser?

 

The "blade" of the lightsaber is high energy plasma held within a containment field.  The reason that lightsabers can come in "contact" with each other is the fields are repelling each other.  A similar principle applies to lasers from a blaster.  Using a lightsaber doesn't require the Force at all, but using one effectively would.  The reason for this is because the blade is pure energy, it has no mass.  All the mass is in the hilt.  Therefore it doesn't act like a real sword does.  The amount of precision and dexterity required is supposedly something only Force-sensitive users can accomplish. 

 

There's additional nonsense about gyroscopic effects and power expenditure but I won't get into that because this post is already too dorky.

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That's way worse than what I imagined. I hate the lore even more now.

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One of my favorite new-things for Star Wars was in the "Hope" trailer for TOR, when you see a Jedi holding back against a lightsaber.

 

Hey, if Darth Vader can deflect blaster bolts with his palm, why not a Jedi concentrate really hard on a lightsaber?

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That's way worse than what I imagined. I hate the lore even more now.

 

Why? If you accept the Force is a real thing in the world, that actually makes basic sense (as opposed to like 80% of all fantasy).

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Because instead of a cool magic explanation it has a boring science explanation?

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One of my favorite new-things for Star Wars was in the "Hope" trailer for TOR, when you see a Jedi holding back against a lightsaber.

 

Hey, if Darth Vader can deflect blaster bolts with his palm, why not a Jedi concentrate really hard on a lightsaber?

 

That opens such a big can of worms.  If you think about it, a lightsaber would actually be the worst weapon to have.  Why would you use something that requires close range combat if you can use the Force across an entire galaxy (in theory).  I've always wondered why they don't just turn the other person's lightsaber off.  They're still electrical devices with on/off switches.  Just push the button with your mind.

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I've always wondered why they don't just turn the other person's lightsaber off.  They're still electrical devices with on/off switches.  Just push the button with your mind.

 

<Trivia_nerd> Because it's a springloaded button the user must keep their finger on to maintain the beam (that way if you drop it, it turns off and doesn't slice up your legs). You can't use the Force to unpress a held-down button.</Trivia_nerd>

 

It's generally implied that range is at least a factor when it comes to the Force.

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Because instead of a cool magic explanation it has a boring science explanation?

 

midichlorians

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<Trivia_nerd> Because it's a springloaded button the user must keep their finger on to maintain the beam (that way if you drop it, it turns off and doesn't slice up your legs). You can't use the Force to unpress a held-down button.</Trivia_nerd>

 

It's generally implied that range is at least a factor when it comes to the Force.

 

Sure you can, you just lift the finger off the button.  Or push the button up.  Or switch the contact.  Or remove the battery.  Or change any one of the things in a lightsaber.  I've always found that the Jedi and Sith have such limited imaginations when it comes to practical use of the Force.

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