DarthDementous

I agree about Ronin in The Duel, good thing he’s getting a novel next month

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Yeah I was eh on Tattooine Rhapsody, I like the premise of an Order 66 Jedi trying to eek out a new life as a musician but the execution was pretty weird. Just having it be regular rock was immersion breaking, what I like about the in-universe music of Star Wars is that it’s utterly bizarre and uses instruments that don’t always have a real world equivalent. Nary a kloo horn in sight! Blasphemy I tell you Well this is exciting, apparently The Duel is getting a book based off it in October! A mysterious former Sith wanders the galaxy in this stunning Star Wars tale, an original novel inspired by the world of The Duelfrom the Star Wars Visionsanimated anthology. The Jedi are the most loyal servants of the Empire. Two decades ago, Jedi clans clashed in service to feuding lords. Sickened by this endless cycle, a sect of Jedi rebelled, seeking to control their own destiny and claim power in service of no master. They called themselves Sith. The Sith rebellion failed, succumbing to infighting and betrayal, and the once rival lords unified to create an Empire . . . but even an Empire at peace is not free from violence. Far on the edge of the Outer Rim, one former Sith wanders, accompanied only by a faithful droid and the ghost of a less civilized age. He carries a lightsaber, but claims lineage to no Jedi clan, and pledges allegiance to no lord. Little is known about him, including his name, for he never speaks of his past, nor his regrets. His history is as guarded as the red blade of destruction he carries sheathed at his side. As the galaxy's perpetual cycle of violence continues to interrupt his self-imposed exile, and he is forced to duel an enigmatic bandit claiming the title of Sith, it becomes clear that no amount of wandering will ever let him outpace the specters of his former life.

So, Season 1 of the Japanese animated anthology series Star Wars Visions just landed in its entirety on Disney Plus. What are people's thoughts on the shorts? For me it was a mixed bag, which was exactly what I was expecting from an anthology series from completely different studios. There were three I thought were quite good: 'The Duel' by Kamikaze Douga (Batman Ninja), 'The Ninth Jedi' by Production I.G. (Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex), and 'The Elder' by Studio Trigger (Kill La Kill). This was followed by two which I thought were just good: 'Lop and Ocho' by Geno Studio, and 'The Village Bride' by Kinema Citrus (Made in Abyss). It was especially cool seeing a bunch of different Japanese (for the most part) composers try their hand at scoring Star Wars. While some took a significant departure from the soundscape others did a downright brilliant job of working with the Star Wars sound, creating an almost vintage orchestral feel to it that would've felt right at home in the Original Trilogy. It was especially amusing to see Kazuma Jinnouchi's name pop up, for those that don't know he was co-composer and composer for Halo 4 and 5 respectively, and his music has been critiqued as sounding more like Star Wars than Halo at times - so pretty great he finally got a chance to score Star Wars! He was a really good fit. I would genuinely love to hear more Star Wars music from some of these composers, as some of these pieces put even some of the regular Western composers on the series to shame. Fingers crossed there will be some kind of album release at some point. Either way, I hope this ends up being a huge success and we get a second season with a whole new round of studios. Star Wars has felt incredibly stagnant as a series for a while now, and although not everything hit the mark I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this injection of creativity into the franchise with a traditional Japanese flair, that fits quite well considering the foundations Star Wars is built off. My absolute dream would be for Studio Khara (Evangelion Rebuilds) to make a short, apparently some work on Season 1 was out-sourced to them so there's already some kind of tie. The head of that studio, Hideaki Anno, while being an incredible director, is also a huge fan of the Original Trilogy so I think it would be a match made in heaven.

To be fair there is precedent for this, namely in the Architect’s TV room in Reloaded.

I just did a marathon of all The Matrix movies + Animatrix with friends, and it has given me a very different perspective on The Matrix Resurrections trailer I rescind the previous belief that I had, which is the trailer doesn't 'look like The Matrix', it had just been a while since I had actually seen any of the original movies and after them being fresh in my mind it totally looks like a proper sequel to them. Literally the only thing that is missing is the green tinge on the color grading that apparently wasn't even in the theatrical release. It's funny because by the end of the first movie I was thinking "The Matrix 4 is fucked having to continue this" and that continued until Revolutions where it became a case of "This conclusion is really confusing and un-satisfying, I'm rooting for The Matrix 4 to actually wrap things up in a more satisfying way". Was surprised to find on re-watch that Reloaded is actually pretty on par with the original even if I do think the original is ultimately better, Revolutions really is the black sheep because that movie is just a mess. I don't know what the fuck happened behind the scenes because the movie came out in literally the same year Reloaded did so unless it was shot with a completely different crew I don't get why it feels so jank in comparison The Matrix is probably one of the only franchises where going with a meta somewhat self-aware angle for your soft reboot/sequel is actually a rather perfect idea. The previous movies play a lot with the idea of perception and I have a feeling Resurrections is going to take that to the next level by having Neo's perception somewhat mirror our expectations for this movie in terms of bringing back familiar elements. For the audience it's nostalgia, for Neo it's remembering fragments of the past and re-discovering who he is as we also re-discover him as a character. Some very interesting things that can be done there, and my god am I ready for a soft reboot to actually push the format forward creatively instead of being for nostalgia bait and nothing else.

I enjoyed hearing the Arrival on Kamino motif being used and it worked quite well for the initial scene…then it kept being used and it started being ridiculous. Mostly because it was almost the exact same in presentation each time, so it was like the same needle drop (I know it’s a synth recording) over and over.

Remake Aladdin as Space Aladdin? Perfect casting all around

I don't think Hamill recorded a performance and they de-aged his voice, because he was surprised when Luke showed up on The Mandalorian, which implies that he wasn't directly involved. I think we're actually seeing a form of audio deep-fake there where a neural network trained on samples of young Mark Hamill has then been set to recreate certain sentences with perhaps some additional parameters for tweaking performance (although it does sound rather robotic). You can hear a bit of audio artefacts in some of the lines.

Oh no. Love and Monsters was painfully average, that doesn’t bode well for the quality of the script. Invention of Lying I thought was good but I think that’s mostly due to Gervais comedic writing, I can feel his voice very strongly which is unsurprising since he was the co-writer.

The budget for a single episode of TV, even one as high as The Mandalorian, still pales in comparison to the budget of a full blockbuster movie. As a result, due to budget constraints, Luke in the Mandalorian isn’t even fully CGI - it’s a form of deepfake using ILM’s proprietary tech they’ve been developing

I relate very hard to this

Unfortunately the first part of TLJ doesn't have auto translation available, so I'll have to jump to part 2. Hopefully things aren't too confusing

Do you have a source for any of that? I was aware these rumours have been around for a while but I didn’t see anything that was able to disprove the claims

@toothlessI really enjoyed the French YouTuber’s TFA critique videos, thanks for the recommendation! I really want to watch his TLJ ones but it doesn’t seem like there’s any English subtitles so I don’t know what I can do there