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[Raphael]

I have decided that the thing with the third Star Wars trilogy is that it had great characters but mediocre-to-bad plots. That might explain both my own mixed feelings about it and the wide range of reactions to it among other people.

[Travis B.]

I have decided that the thing with the third Star Wars trilogy is that it had great characters but mediocre-to-bad plots. That might explain both my own mixed feelings about it and the wide range of reactions to it among other people.

I am strongly of the opinion that episodes 7, 8, and 9 should have been based off the Thrawn Trilogy and refuse to watch any of the Star Wars films/shows/etc. made by Disney.

[Ryusenshi]

I have decided that the thing with the third Star Wars trilogy is that it had great characters but mediocre-to-bad plots. That might explain both my own mixed feelings about it and the wide range of reactions to it among other people.

My take is that the sequel trilogy, as a whole, has a bad main plot due to poor planning and writing-by-committee but is well-made, with good acting, great filming and visual effects. Which makes it the opposite of the prequel trilogy, which has a really interesting main plot but is spoiled by a terrible script, flat filming and bad actor directing. FilmCritHulk makes the same argument in this article.

That said, I actually enjoyed The Last Jedi: this one actually took some chances and tried to take the story into a more interesting direction. More importantly, it made me feel things I hadn't felt from a Star Wars movie in a long time. True, some parts were really clunky (Leia in space, Finn's false sacrifice), but "clunky-with-a-heart" works better for Star Wars than "flawless-and-soulless".

I am strongly of the opinion that episodes 7, 8, and 9 should have been based off the Thrawn Trilogy and refuse to watch any of the Star Wars films/shows/etc. made by Disney.

A filmed version of the Thrawn trilogy would indeed be an interesting proposition.

[Raphael]

My take is that the sequel trilogy, as a whole, has a bad main plot due to poor planning and writing-by-committee but is well-made, with good acting, great filming and visual effects. Which makes it the opposite of the prequel trilogy, which has a really interesting main plot but is spoiled by a terrible script, flat filming and bad actor directing.

Wow, that's a very interesting and insightful take!

What inspired my original comment is that I find myself more and more agreeing both with those who argue "The Force Awakens was just a paint-by-numbers remake of A New Hope, and then things got even worse plot-wise", and with those who argue "Rey is one of the coolest and most likeable heroic characters ever, Finn is based on a brilliant idea, Kylo Ren is a fairly interesting take on the archetype of the villain, and Leia as a general is pretty cool, too!"

(Hm, my spellcheck recognizes both "Leia" and "Rey", but neither "Kylo" nor "Ren".)

[zompist]

I have decided that the thing with the third Star Wars trilogy is that it had great characters but mediocre-to-bad plots. That might explain both my own mixed feelings about it and the wide range of reactions to it among other people.

My take is that the sequel trilogy, as a whole, has a bad main plot due to poor planning and writing-by-committee but is well-made, with good acting, great filming and visual effects. Which makes it the opposite of the prequel trilogy, which has a really interesting main plot but is spoiled by a terrible script, flat filming and bad actor directing. FilmCritHulk makes the same argument in this article.

That said, I actually enjoyed The Last Jedi: this one actually took some chances and tried to take the story into a more interesting direction. More importantly, it made me feel things I hadn't felt from a Star Wars movie in a long time. True, some parts were really clunky (Leia in space, Finn's false sacrifice), but "clunky-with-a-heart" works better for Star Wars than "flawless-and-soulless".

I agree about The Last Jedi-- it's the only film past #5 to take risks and interrogate the very basis of the series. It actually has some ideas about the pitfalls of hero worship and whether the whole Jedi/Sith thing makes sense.

I'm not sure I agree with you or Hulk about 1-3 and 7-9. I agree that the texture of 7-9 is better: better characters, better acting, better chemistry. I don't agree that the prequels are well constructed but just badly done. I think they have a good idea for a theme: how a villain gets made, making a nice symmetry with 4-6 which are about how a hero gets made. But Lucas had in fact no idea how villains are created. He puts off Anakin's heel turn till the last movie and still can't sell it. His ideas about villainy are sub-adolescent: the proto-villain is kind of snotty, and becomes Hitler when his girlfriend dies. This is not a problem that could be solved by better actors or more dynamic camera movement.

To put it another way, 1-3 and 7 and 9 suffer from the same problems: they have great worlds and special effects, but mediocre stories. Abrams gets better actors and characters, but if anything his stories are worse. At least Lucas had a theme. 7 works because it's a rethread of 4, and 9 fails because the basic idea is dumb as shit. (Kudos however for Finn's origin in 7, which was a good enough idea it should probably have been a whole movie.)

I think Hulk almost but doesn't quite answer his own question-- why people can love or hate the same movie. He talks about expectations and different tastes, but I think he misses what audiences bring to the movie house. To put it bluntly, if a movie does most of what we like, we can do the rest. I think he doesn't realize that that's what he's doing with the prequels: he is willing to credit Lucas with a better "text" than is really there, because he can unconsciously finish the text for him, and give Lucas the credit.

[Ryusenshi]

I'm not sure I agree with you or Hulk about 1-3 and 7-9. I agree that the texture of 7-9 is better: better characters, better acting, better chemistry. I don't agree that the prequels are well constructed but just badly done. I think they have a good idea for a theme: how a villain gets made, making a nice symmetry with 4-6 which are about how a hero gets made. But Lucas had in fact no idea how villains are created. He puts off Anakin's heel turn till the last movie and still can't sell it. His ideas about villainy are sub-adolescent: the proto-villain is kind of snotty, and becomes Hitler when his girlfriend dies. This is not a problem that could be solved by better actors or more dynamic camera movement.

I'm not exactly sure I disagree with you. I did mention the script was terrible, after all. When I mentioned a "really interesting main plot", I was thinking in terms of themes and overall structure rather than the story as presented. When I re-watched the prequels recently, especially Revenge of the Sith, there were several moments when I thought "gosh, this would be a really interesting idea to explore if the movie was better".

• A politician is actually playing both sides of a war for his personal power. This is a fantastic idea if we actually gave a damn about the main conflict. (The Trade Federation is super-lame: its goals are unclear, it's neither sympathetic, nor heinous enough to serve as decent villains.)
• When the Jedi realize that Palpatine was a Sith Lord, they start trying to depose him. Wait, they are actually plotting a coup! Are there circumstances so extreme that a coup is justified?? What a great theme to explore if you handle it with some care, which is obviously not the case here.
• Of course the main villain takes full advantage of this attempted coup to further his own agenda. "I did a coup to prevent a coup". Oh my, what a great plot point! And eerily relevant now, as the two main parties in the US accuse each other of manipulating the elections! This would be interesting if Palpatine's plot made any sort of sense, and if the Jedi weren't complete morons.
• Yeah, Anakin's reason to turn to the dark side is super-lame. I wish we had seen him slide more gradually... perhaps, disgusted by the war, Anakin should be increasingly interested in restoring order to the galaxy, the end justifies the means, using increasingly darker methods, before turning full-on space fascist.
• Anakin and Obi-Wan facing each other. Former friends turned enemies. Obi-Wan reaffirming his commitment to democracy. Great stuff, if the difference between the characters' philosophy had actually appeared on screen before.

Oh, something I still find puzzling even after re-watching the entire trilogy. Senator Palpatine is the main villain all along: are viewers supposed to know this from the start, as early as #1, or are they supposed to learn it in #3 the moment Anakin discovers it?? Personally, I knew this as soon as Episode 1, because I knew from the Expanded Universe that the Emperor's name was Palpatine, and they're played by the same actor. But the name Palpatine isn't actually pronounced in 4-6, and the actor is hard to recognize without make-up, so casual viewers may not notice. So... maybe we aren't supposed to guess??

[Raphael]

Oh, something I still find puzzling even after re-watching the entire trilogy. Senator Palpatine is the main villain all along: are viewers supposed to know this from the start, as early as #1, or are they supposed to learn it in #3 the moment Anakin discovers it?? Personally, I knew this as soon as Episode 1, because I knew from the Expanded Universe that the Emperor's name was Palpatine, and they're played by the same actor. But the name Palpatine isn't actually pronounced in 4-6, and the actor is hard to recognize without make-up, so casual viewers may not notice. So... maybe we aren't supposed to guess??

I suspect Lucas simply never cared or thought the slightest bit about how the experience of watching 1-6 would be like for people who are young enough to watch 1-6 in chronological order when they first get introduced to Star Wars.

[Ryusenshi]

I suspect Lucas simply never cared or thought the slightest bit about how the experience of watching 1-6 would be like for people who are young enough to watch 1-6 in chronological order when they first get introduced to Star Wars.

True (I recommend new viewers to watch in release order, 4-6 then 1-3), but my remark applies equally to people who had watched 4-6.

[Raphael]

Last weekend, I noticed that a patch of skin under my wristwatch had gotten seriously irritated, sore, and almost lesion-ish. So in order to allow that patch of skin to rest and recover, I took off my wristwatch. And that has been an interesting experience.

You see, for a very long time, I used to wear my wristwatch pretty much always - I only took it off when I was taking a shower, but not when I was going to bed. Of course, I can still easily find out what time it is by checking the nearest regular clock, or my cellphone. But that does take a little bit longer than just glancing at my wrist. And this small delay, no matter how small, has somewhat changed my perception of time. For a while, I almost felt like I was in some kind of weird trance-like state outside of regular time and space. That has stop, but I still feel a little bit weird.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this.

[foxcatdog]

Last weekend, I noticed that a patch of skin under my wristwatch had gotten seriously irritated, sore, and almost lesion-ish. So in order to allow that patch of skin to rest and recover, I took off my wristwatch. And that has been an interesting experience.

You see, for a very long time, I used to wear my wristwatch pretty much always - I only took it off when I was taking a shower, but not when I was going to bed. Of course, I can still easily find out what time it is by checking the nearest regular clock, or my cellphone. But that does take a little bit longer than just glancing at my wrist. And this small delay, no matter how small, has somewhat changed my perception of time. For a while, I almost felt like I was in some kind of weird trance-like state outside of regular time and space. That has stop, but I still feel a little bit weird.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this.

Maybe you're from an alternate dimension with different time and space rules and you are now adjusting to my home dimensions rules.

[Raphael]

How old is modern party dance?

When I asked this question elsewhere on the web a while ago, people there were apparently quite confused about what kind of dancing I meant. They kept bringing up various formal, organized, structured dancing styles and asked me whether I meant one of them. But I don't mean any formal, organized, structured dancing styles. I mean the kind of mostly "freestyle" dancing that people do in clubs. And to avoid further confusion, by "club", in this context, I mean "a place where young people go clubbing", not "a place where rich old men drink whisky and smoke cigars".

[Linguoboy]

How old is modern party dance?

When I asked this question elsewhere on the web a while ago, people there were apparently quite confused about what kind of dancing I meant. They kept bringing up various formal, organized, structured dancing styles and asked me whether I meant one of them. But I don't mean any formal, organized, structured dancing styles. I mean the kind of mostly "freestyle" dancing that people do in clubs. And to avoid further confusion, by "club", in this context, I mean "a place where young people go clubbing", not "a place where rich old men drink whisky and smoke cigars".

How long have dads been around?

[MacAnDàil]

How old is modern party dance?

When I asked this question elsewhere on the web a while ago, people there were apparently quite confused about what kind of dancing I meant. They kept bringing up various formal, organized, structured dancing styles and asked me whether I meant one of them. But I don't mean any formal, organized, structured dancing styles. I mean the kind of mostly "freestyle" dancing that people do in clubs. And to avoid further confusion, by "club", in this context, I mean "a place where young people go clubbing", not "a place where rich old men drink whisky and smoke cigars".

I'm not sure whether this answers your question but Do the twist again was revolutionary in that people started dancing individually and not in couples.

[Raphael]

How long have dads been around?

Huh? Somehow I don't think that modern party dancing was invented by people who were dads at the time.

[hwhatting]

My guess is some point in the 60s. Before, you had formal dances; even if parents thought 50s rock-n-roll dancing was just a bunch of contortions, it had rules and still included paired dancing. Then came a quick succession of fashionable dances, like the mentioned Twist, leading to single dancing and then to giving up entirely on the idea of formal dance movements. If you look at life music clips from the 60s where they show the audience dancing, you'll already see them swaying free-style. Formal dances still had their moments of being in fashion for short periods - there was Disco Fox in the 70s, the Lambada in the 80s, etc., but freestyle has been the rule for at least 50 years now.

[Raphael]

Thank you!

[foxcatdog]

https://food52.com/recipes/73800-lohike ... almon-soup
In a quest to prove that british cuisine is in fact the worst cuisine in the world I've cooked this soup in 2 versions with or without caramelised onions.
I would recommend the version with caramelised onions (just add a whole brown onion or 2 onions if you are using the small onions i used and 4 tablespoons of sugar at the stage you start cooking the leeks) for which i also used chicken stock instead of fish stock. The version without is also good like an improved potato and leek soup. Also remember to add extra butter for more flavour.

[MacAnDàil]

Well, that's fine seeing as British cuisine shouldn't include Scottish cuisine which includes the likes of cullen skink.

[alice]

Well, that's fine seeing as British cuisine shouldn't include Scottish cuisine which includes the likes of cullen skink.

And the pièce-de-resistance, the deep-fried-pizza.

[Travis B.]

Well, that's fine seeing as British cuisine shouldn't include Scottish cuisine which includes the likes of cullen skink.

And the pièce-de-resistance, the deep-fried-pizza.

If you think that that is the kind of thing that could only be invented in Scotland, you should consider the kind of fare you can get at, say, the Wisconsin State Fair.