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Looks like it could be good.

"They said you were the best in the parsec."

Wow... still getting that word wrong, huh?

That said, this actually looks like it could be pretty good.

In other SW news, Ian and I just got tickets for a showing of Episode 7-9 on the day Rise of Skywalker comes out in December. Should be fun.

Graham Kennedy wrote:"They said you were the best in the parsec."

Wow... still getting that word wrong, huh?

That said, this actually looks like it could be pretty good.

In other SW news, Ian and I just got tickets for a showing of Episode 7-9 on the day Rise of Skywalker comes out in December. Should be fun.

That sounds really cool. Hope you guys have a blast.

About the trailer, ever since The "Ready Player One" thread, I don't trust trailers so much anymore. I had put Steven Spielberg on a pedestal because of a video about "Spielberg's context" in Jurassic Park but, you guys all rightly called out that trailer for the "Memberrries" the movie turned out to be. If I can't give that kind of leeway to Steven Spielberg anymore, I'm sure not going to give it to Jon Favreau. The real interesting thing in this trailer to me is that it is famous director, Werner Herzog, who is delivering that line, "They said you were the best in the parsec." I also wonder why they cast Pedro Pascal, a relatively expensive actor, in a role where his face will seldom, if ever, be shown? It will also be very interesting to see the Star Wars universe being fleshed out beyond tie-fighters and X-Wings, hopefully.

So I just watched this. Without spoilers...

So on the positive side :

This looks great. They've put a shedload of money into it, and it's all there on the screen.

The world looks and feels pretty cool. Like seeing the debris of the Empire around, which you'd expect.

The action is great.

They mentioned Life Day, LOL.

On the negative :

Honestly it felt like there wasn't much of a story. It's basically "guy goes places and shoots/beats people", which is great in action terms, but I expected a bit more. Especially given that this episode is barely over half an hour long, so it's not like they didn't have the time to flesh things out a bit if they wanted to. Honestly, by the last big shoot-em-up action scene I was getting kind of bored.

I get that it's only the first episode and I assume more will come down the line later on, but IMO you really need to make each episode a full story whilst being part of a bigger story. The original Star Wars movie kicked off a bigger story, but it also worked as a complete story itself. I didn't get that feeling here.


All in all I didn't love it, but it's certainly worth watching and I will be checking out future episodes.

Wait. Barely over a half an hour?

McAvoy wrote:Wait. Barely over a half an hour?

Yep. There were 18 seconds of logos and such at the start, then the episode, then the end credits rolled at 36 minutes 8 seconds.

So actual running time was a little over 35 minutes.

They could have thrown another nine minutes of story and character in there and still only equalled a regular "1 hour" episode of a TV show.

Graham Kennedy wrote:

McAvoy wrote:Wait. Barely over a half an hour?

Yep. There were 18 seconds of logos and such at the start, then the episode, then the end credits rolled at 36 minutes 8 seconds.

So actual running time was a little over 35 minutes.

They could have thrown another nine minutes of story and character in there and still only equalled a regular "1 hour" episode of a TV show.

That is a concern then.

McAvoy wrote:

Graham Kennedy wrote:

McAvoy wrote:Wait. Barely over a half an hour?

Yep. There were 18 seconds of logos and such at the start, then the episode, then the end credits rolled at 36 minutes 8 seconds.

So actual running time was a little over 35 minutes.

They could have thrown another nine minutes of story and character in there and still only equalled a regular "1 hour" episode of a TV show.

That is a concern then.

I'm half and half on it. There's no reason why streaming service shows need to stick to the timings created for the advertising/schedule model. Read the Memory Alpha reviews of episodes and they're always mentioning scenes cut for time, or extra scenes shot to pad out an episode. No need for any of that on a streaming service.

But those are examples of letting the needs of the story dictate the length. This felt like it was short because it sacrificed story that would have helped. It didn't make it poor or anything, but I was a bit "oh, is that it?" when it ended.

But it's early days yet. I can't imagine it's going to be all action, all the time, and nothing else in every episode.

Spoilers:

If there's one thing I've learned about the Star Wars universe this week, it's that their door manufacturing industry is seriously lacking in health and safety regulations.

Seriously, who the hell sells doors that can cut people in half if they close on them?

Graham Kennedy wrote:If there's one thing I've learned about the Star Wars universe this week, it's that their door manufacturing industry is seriously lacking in health and safety regulations.

Seriously, who the hell sells doors that can cut people in half if they close on them?

A wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Incidentally, the second episode was actually a little shorter. Fifty seconds of "previously on", 2 minutes 39 seconds of credits, and 27 minutes 27 seconds of actual show.

I'm still kind of whelmed by the show. It's not bad, there's really nothing bad about it as such. But at the same time it's just... not really sparking with me all that much. It's basically okay.