donutsweeper | and the kitty cats yell at clouds

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and the kitty cats yell at clouds

I've been meaning to post for absolutely ages but somehow never get around to it and I finally decided today that that's going to change. So voilà! A post!

We finally saw Star Wars this weekend! I somehow managed to remain mostly unspoiled, but it didn't matter much as nothing seemed shocking or surprising to me. Kid liked the movie, Hubby *hated* it (he will rant for hours and hours as to why, it's hilarious) and I walked away thinking the two hours were enjoyably enough spent but that was it. I'm not going to harsh anyone's squee (I hate people who do that) but I will say I am starting to get frustrated by JJ Abrams' friendship with Greg Grunberg- his popping up in everything JJ Abrams directs is starting to get distracting. (I know it's a time honored tradition and Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell do it all time time, but still...)

It's been insanely warm here. The snow cover is completely gone and we've even had the windows open a bunch- it hit 68°F yesterday!! The average temp should be about 35°. (That's 20°C instead of 1.66 if the F to C conversion chart is to be believed). The cats are, not surprisingly, loving it. Open windows FTW!!!

How's everyone on my flist doing?

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I still think it's cute but Grunberg had the first character I liked in Felicity and his character being with Meaghan (Amanda Foreman) was the only 'ship I really cared about.

There was a Felicity episode all about waiting in line for Episode 1 so I thought it was really neat that 17 years later, Abrams, Grunberg and Foreman all worked on Episode 7.

I would be curious about your husband's rants...the first time I saw Episode 7, I kind of borderline...hated it.

I liked Felicity! I was all about Noel though, but I did like Sean and Meagan, they were cute. I didn't remember there was an episode about Star Wars though.

Where to start on his rants... Basically it boiled down to there were so many things (many minor) that he could have ignored/overlooked but when added all together they just were too much.

There was the casting- basically everyone other than the original cast was pretty and young or alien, particularly bad guy general person (Hux?) who was far too young to be in charge anywhere.

Kylo Darth Vader wannabe (seriously, we all walked out of there not knowing practically anyone's names which was another problem) wasn't emoting well- his scenes fell flat and it wasn't clear what kind of emotion he was going for most of the time. His hissyfits and random destruction scenes were... odd. There was never a real sense for why that was allowed.

There's the whole Millennium Falcon issue. Convenient it was just hanging out there, ready to be stolen. Convenient that Han and Chewie are able to track and come across it so easily. Convenient that the two other bad guy groups also track it and gain entry into Han's ship so easily. They say it's just super easy to track so they need a different ship (and thus why they went to the Cantina like place but then they go to the rebel base with it and then out to pick up Luke?

There's BB-8. Is there only one droid that's a BB-8 and also orange and whatever? Are they that rare that everyone who spots it immediately knows it's the one who the First Order was looking for?

Then there's the name for the two main groups. It was like they just C&Ped the new names into the old ones.

There's the 'big death' which was underwhelming and unsurprising and didn't amount to anything plot-wise or even scene-wise?

Honestly, Hubby has about 100 of these kinds of rants, ranging from 'that's not how science works' to 'that logically makes no sense' (his rant on why a TIE fighter would (not) have an escape parachute was epic) to 'wow that was just bad', I really don't remember them all.

The episode was called...you can probably guess it..."The Force", lol. It would have been May 16, 1999, I think and there was actually an advertisement for The Phantom Menace during one of the commercial breaks which made it even more cool/hilarious. I still have it on VHS in a box.

I FOUND IT ONLINE! This is awesome! *minus commercials*
https://vimeo.com/113308449

hehe, there were a lot of plotholes but then, I've watched the first six with my nephews and they can definitely find plotholes so as much as Episode 7 was bad, I've had to admit the others weren't AS bad but still...there were holes.

I've also had debates with one of my brothers because a lot of it...like BB-8's uniqueness, why Rey could fly everything so easily, why was the Resistance separate from the New Republic...requires either reading the tie-in materials yourself or having someone else tell you what was in them which I feel is lazy.
He claims that you don't NEED to know all that, everything can be figured out from the movie or isn't necessary to know.

However, I do have some feelings on some of his rants...
Yes, Hux is young but I think that's on purpose because Snoke is an asshole but he's also kind of smart...at SOME things!
Snoke aka Gollum Palpatine, wants complete obedience and what's the best way to get that? Get a child as young as possible and indoctrinate them. Hux' dad worked for the Empire. All his life he's been taught that the Empire is wonderful. It doesn't matter how young and inexperienced he is when he's nothing more than a puppet for Snoke.

Kylo Ren is just cringey. The first time I saw it and people laughed and I was like...are we supposed to be laughing? Is that a deliberate joke? But the audience laughed at all three showings I went to so you have this combination of total impulsive anger issues brat and HE'S the one who kills Han Solo?
Also, the hair...the hair just bothers me because it's genetically very improbable and everyone else in the Skywalker line makes sense with their genetics. I'm not talking about the fullness which is totally Anakin but the black...the black makes no sense to me. We would literally have to assume that Padme's parents gave her a black hair gene that she gave to Leia and that Han's parents also gave him a black hair gene which came together to overpower their dominant brown hair genes.

Honestly, whenever Kylo and Hux were in a scene together, it was like an AU fanfic where Ron Weasley and Harry Potter joined Voldemort...especially since the Hux actor DID play a Weasley.

Also, Ben? Really? I can't even recall Leia calling Obi-Wan Ben once...unless they were having ghost conversations after ROTJ...since Episode 7 had Obi-Wan calling out Rey's name.

Episode 7 was just a reboot of Episode 4.

The big death wasn't underwhelming to me...the first time I saw the film, it basically ruined the rest of the film. I couldn't even really enjoy Rey getting to be awesome with a lightsaber. The third time was because my best friend hadn't seen it and I was being supportive and afterwards, she was like, "I HATE that movie and never want to see it again!" strictly because of Han.

But it still feels totally stupid and unnecessary and makes me worry for Leia...I figure Luke dying is a foregone conclusion, either Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey or Yoda, take your pick.

Ooh, the TIE fighter thing...that wasn't weird to me, On one hand, the Empire...err, First Order tends to see its stormtroopers as disposable but on the other hand...
Darth Vader had the only TIE fighter with hyperdrive capabilities and the TIE does seem to be their equivalent of an X-Wing or similar 1-2 manned fighter. It makes sense that the First order may want to use small landing parties on certain planets where the large landing parties, like on Jakku, might not work as well.
Also, to really piss him off, the official Visual Dictionary states that each seat has an emergency kit below it with food, water, etc.
That you would think every stormtrooper would know about but nope, Finn totally leaves it behind, whatever.

Ah! I'll have to watch that later when I've some time.

It's quite possible a LOT of the things had explanations in the expanded universe, but I'm always of the 'if it doesn't air it isn't canon' belief and, honestly, if it doesn't make sense without doing reading ahead of time, it's just bad storytelling.

As for Ben- did they even call him Ben in the movie? Hux calls him Ren a few times but unless Han calls him that during the O SO DRAMATIC scene it's usually 'our son'? In general though, Ren was so awful. If he'd been in that mask most of the time he'd be super pale, which wasn't the case. His hair certainly wouldn't be styled and pretty. Where was his hat hair?

Hux, I got the feeling, was sort of supposed to be this movie's Tarkin, but that actor certainly didn't have the gravitas that Peter Cushing had.

You're right that 7 is basically a reboot of 4, but 4 was an actual movie in itself (beginning, middle, ending) while 7 is obviously the first of a trilogy while still keeping most of the data points of 4, if switching the characters around at times. Some scenes were directly ripped from 4 (the cantina, Poe and Finns reunion right before battle = Luke/Wedge, Ren killing Han in front of Finn is like Vader killing Obi Wan in front of Luke, etc)

The thing with the Tie fighter was also due to the fact due to its name it had a certain kind of engine that wouldn't work in atmosphere (I don't remember Hubby's specifics on the rant on that now)

Han calls out "BEN!" to get his attention on the catwalk. Yeah, the whole "our son" pronoun game was so weird to me. If you only have one child, can't you just say his name or our child or whatever...but then The X-Files did the same thing for season ten so...whatever.

Yes, 7 needed a lot more explanations of...everything. The characters were too mysterious.

But I am going to correct you that Luke's reunion was with his childhood friend, Biggs Darklighter from the deleted scene, not Wedge Antilles.

Twin Ion Engine...I'm more of a biological science/DNA girl so yeah, I don't know what that actually means...what did Luke take to get down to the moon of Endor? I can't remember now.

And I couldn't resist putting this since you said you were tired of Greg Grunberg, lol

*facepalms* Biggs, not Wedge. Right.

lol. that's an amazing number of dick jokes there

There's also a Greg Grunberg cameo, lol.

I do wish they would have Denis Lawson appear in one of the other films...they should take advantage of everyone still living while they can, right?

Plus, I always loved how, in real life, Wedge is young Obi-Wan's uncle.

I still haven't seen Star Wars, and won't until it's out on Netflix (movie theatres give me headaches), but everyone I know who's seen it enjoyed it a lot. Which isn't to say other people might not, and that's cool.

It's also very Spring like around here, too! 6° C, which is 48° in freedom units, I believe. Ascii has been very happy on her walks. We've had some awful weather around here, and she was starting to get depressed (https://56.media.tumblr.com/d12b7368810b2c0edda0e28a0bccae8d/tumblr_o2fzr5Cutg1ry1085o5_1280.jpg) because she couldn't go out. You just can't walk in -30° weather, though.

Edited 2016-03-09 15:54 (UTC)

We waited to see it for so long so the theater would be mostly empty and it'd be in one of the smaller ones- usually the sound systems in those isn't as headache inducing. Movies these days are so LOUD these days, ugh. I tend to wait to see a lot on Netflix for that reason too. Most people I know liked Star Wars, hopefully you will too.

Poor Ascii! No matter how cold it gets here (usually there's at least a day in Jan that's down to -40 or more so I know how you feel) Molly still needs a walk, but those days it's a basic- out the back door, pee and turn straight around and go back in kind of thing. I just hope the unseasonably warm Feb/March does not lead to ridiculously hot summer months.

Most people I know liked Star Wars, hopefully you will too.

I'm sure I will. I'm not picky when it comes to entertainment, usually I find something I enjoy about most things I watch, and the nostalgia alone will boost it up for me, I'm sure.

those days it's a basic- out the back door, pee and turn straight around and go back in kind of thing.

Yeah, it's usually the windchill here that's the problem, so Ascii's fine to romp in the yard because it's fenced in and the wind is blocked, but when you're out in the street, it's just frigid. She's a girl who likes her routine, so she gets imperious if we aren't doing the thing we're supposed to be doing at the time she thinks we should be doing it.

I just hope the unseasonably warm Feb/March does not lead to ridiculously hot summer months.

Yes, there's that, too. The last couple of years we've gone to the cottage, winter lasted so long, it was too cold to swim in the lake even in July, so I wouldn't mind a warmer one, but not that 'so hot i don't know what to do with myself' kind of weather. Last summer we barely had the AC on. It was lovely.

You've lucked out if you've been having cooler summers. Here, for whatever reason, the summers have been getting hotter and hotter. Until recently we didn't have central air, just a window unit and there'd only be a few days a year, maybe a week or two total, that we'd bother to turn it on but in the last few years it's been getting hotter and hotter and not only are there weeks in the 90s but a number of times it's hit 100F as well. (which, YUCK)

The last couple summers have been relatively cool, but we've had some scorchers, too. We have an AC/furnace that turns on when it senses a certain temp in the house, but we turn it off and open the windows when it's nice out. One year at the cottage, it was brutally hot. I'm a mess when I'm overheated and I remember my mom wetting a dishcloth and tying it around my hair, and sending me to the AC'd bedroom to cool me down. Thankfully, most years it's been cooler. I'd rather it be too cool than too hot.

Good heavens, that's incredibly warm! Like to send some of that our way? I had trouble sleeping last night, I was so cold.

This was my first JJ Abrams film, so I can only say that the cameo wasn't jarring to newbies (I had to go and look the guy up on IMDB). A few weeks on from my slightly traumatic Lost Star Wars Weekend, I'm still feeling good about the film. Perfect? Hell, no. Fun? Absolutely.

Nice to see you :)

I'd definitely send it your way, but then you have to take some of our stupidly hot summer weather as well. Deal? :)

JJ Abrams also does a lot of tv and Greg had cameos (or starred) in a bunch of that as well. There's nothing wrong with him, he's a fine actor, but distinctive enough I guess that when I see him I'm at that point where I'm like 'oh hey, it's that Greg guy' as opposed to 'and here's character X' if that makes sense. I am glad you liked the movie, especially enough to get fannish about most people I know did.

Deal ;) even in summer, my office is chilly.

That makes sense about the actor, and it can get really annoying if it's an actual actor-actor rather than a speedy cameo-in-passing.

I have a complicated relationship with the Star Wars Universe, including that the Extended Universe - which I lived in for several years - is no longer canon, although I still loved the movie. It's brought me back to fandom and LJ, though, which is a Very Good Thing :)

I read some of the extended universe books way back when, it's got to be super frustrating that they've been erased from canon/made into an alternate canon/whatver. But, even so, it's great it brought you back to fandom!

I really liked the movie! In the same way that I like the Marvel movies; I turn off the analyzing, judging part of my brain and just sit back and enjoy the ride. :)

I know exactly what you mean, it's probably the best way to enjoy movies these days :D

i liked the force awakens, but it was a lot like the first star wars. it wasn't perfect but it was fun, and it looked soooo good.

it was 70-something here today, and it was so nice i sat outside for lunch. but still, weird! it's march! it's not supposed to be spring yet!

Hooray for nice weather! (As long as it doesn't turn into unusually warm summer weather, right?)

I loved Star Wars :)

It's been really warm here, too. I'm not sure it's uncharacteristically warm. We usually do lots of ups and downs this time of year. If it stays this warm and never drops back down for a few more days, that will be a bit unusual.

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