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Author Topic: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)  (Read 306572 times)

Ratman_tf

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #30 on: July 29, 2021, 07:46:06 PM »
I didn't name Kennedy because it's too easy to dump all the blame on her. There are a host of people at Lucasfilm that went along with this. I'm sure there's at least one other person at Disney/Lucasfilm who backed her play. Probably many.
I despise how Kennedy has run the franchise into the ground, but I also despise the people who helped it happen.

For sure Bob Iger approved her management, at least initially. "The Force Awakens" was terribly derivative, but enjoyable as a "sugar rush".

That's where I differ from a lot of people. I really did not like TFA even as a mindless popcorn flick outside the context of being a Star Wars film. I thought it typical of JJ Abrams. Shallow drama with little effective groundwork to earn the drama. Frantic action and forgettable characters.
As a Star Wars film, it was downright atrocrious. Reversing a lot of character development from the original movies, and bumping off a main character (Han Solo) for that cheap drama. To top it all off, they dumped his dead ass down a reactor shaft, just like Emperor Palapatine. I could hear JJ Abrams hocking up a loogie to spit on the original trilogy.

I think TFA aimed the franchise into the ground. It was The Last Jedi that simply stepped on the gas.
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Armchair Gamer

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #31 on: July 29, 2021, 08:08:33 PM »
As a Star Wars film, it was downright atrocrious. Reversing a lot of character development from the original movies, and bumping off a main character (Han Solo) for that cheap drama. To top it all off, they dumped his dead ass down a reactor shaft, just like Emperor Palapatine. I could hear JJ Abrams hocking up a loogie to spit on the original trilogy.

I think TFA aimed the franchise into the ground. It was The Last Jedi that simply stepped on the gas.

   I never took that much offense at Han's death because I strongly suspected it was a sine qua non to get Harrison Ford back. That said, TFA definitely aimed the franchise in the wrong direction, but IMO, it left just enough wiggle room that someone who knew what they were doing and loved Star Wars could have pulled out of the dive and made something worthwhile. Instead ...

   (I can understand maybe looking askance at George Lucas' plot ideas, but they had Timothy Zahn offering to assist with story and turned him down.  :o)

Ghostmaker

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #32 on: July 29, 2021, 08:11:41 PM »
As a Star Wars film, it was downright atrocrious. Reversing a lot of character development from the original movies, and bumping off a main character (Han Solo) for that cheap drama. To top it all off, they dumped his dead ass down a reactor shaft, just like Emperor Palapatine. I could hear JJ Abrams hocking up a loogie to spit on the original trilogy.

I think TFA aimed the franchise into the ground. It was The Last Jedi that simply stepped on the gas.

   I never took that much offense at Han's death because I strongly suspected it was a sine qua non to get Harrison Ford back. That said, TFA definitely aimed the franchise in the wrong direction, but IMO, it left just enough wiggle room that someone who knew what they were doing and loved Star Wars could have pulled out of the dive and made something worthwhile. Instead ...

   (I can understand maybe looking askance at George Lucas' plot ideas, but they had Timothy Zahn offering to assist with story and turned him down.  :o)
I never understood that.

OK, I can grok not wanting to outright adapt EU stuff, because you're gonna have to pay shitloads of money to people and handle the rights. But surely you could throw enough moolah at just Zahn to adapt some of his stuff! Christ, Disney, you dropped four fucking billion on this franchise. Why get tight fisted now?

Zelen

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #33 on: July 29, 2021, 08:32:49 PM »
If Disney were smart they would create animated film adaptations of the EU material. You literally can't do the on-screen reunion so many fans wanted, but you could at least do something close as an animated series.

Question: Will we see Disney do a complete Star Wars reboot in the next decade? Or was The Farce Awokens enough of a reboot that we don't need it?

Armchair Gamer

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #34 on: July 29, 2021, 08:44:21 PM »
OK, I can grok not wanting to outright adapt EU stuff, because you're gonna have to pay shitloads of money to people and handle the rights. But surely you could throw enough moolah at just Zahn to adapt some of his stuff! Christ, Disney, you dropped four fucking billion on this franchise. Why get tight fisted now?

    Technically, it all belongs to Lucasfilm (and thus the Mouseferatu now), but there may be issues with credit or the like as I understand it.

    The irony is that they wind up doing a bad knockoff of Dark Empire for the final film*, whereas if they'd actually committed to DE with the new characters and timeframe from the beginning, not only could they have made it work, it would have been simple to get most of what they wanted--back to Rebels vs. Empire, Luke Skywalker absent for the first film, "expectations subverted"--with only a few tweaks. Make the 'First Order' the resurgent Empire out of the Deep Core, and end the film with Rey arriving on Byss and finding out Palpatine's alive and Luke is at his side. Spend VIII dealing with the question "Has Luke gone over to the Dark Side, or is he in deep cover trying to overcome Palpatine--or both?" and end with Luke sacrificing himself to save Rey.

    It's not what I would have wanted, but it would have gotten them much of what they wanted without being nearly so slapdash and insulting to the fans.

    *As I understand it; I've never seen The Rise of Skywalker and have no intention of doing so.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2021, 08:49:50 PM by Armchair Gamer »

Reckall

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #35 on: July 30, 2021, 06:25:05 AM »
I didn't name Kennedy because it's too easy to dump all the blame on her. There are a host of people at Lucasfilm that went along with this. I'm sure there's at least one other person at Disney/Lucasfilm who backed her play. Probably many.
I despise how Kennedy has run the franchise into the ground, but I also despise the people who helped it happen.

For sure Bob Iger approved her management, at least initially. "The Force Awakens" was terribly derivative, but enjoyable as a "sugar rush".

That's where I differ from a lot of people. I really did not like TFA even as a mindless popcorn flick outside the context of being a Star Wars film. I thought it typical of JJ Abrams. Shallow drama with little effective groundwork to earn the drama. Frantic action and forgettable characters.

This.

Five minutes after watching it I already was counting the holes. The Millennium Falcon escapes from Jakku and... Where is Kylo Ren's Star Destroyer? The one that we know being in orbit, from which the very TIE fighters that chased the Falcon come from? Nothing.

Or Poe disappearing in a sinkhole only to return "just like that". There is an area full of spaceship remains: just add a line about how he fell into a ship's buried compartment, hit his head, and when he managed to climb out Finn was already gone.

But, as I said, at the end I enjoyed it for what it was. The key scene was the ending (when Mark Hamill acts more in 30 seconds that all the other characters put together in the whole film). It was full of promise and possibilities for better directors. It was when Ryan Johnson turned it into a Benny Hill skit that I knew that Star Wars was doomed.
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Shasarak

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #36 on: July 30, 2021, 08:34:58 AM »
You say Benny Hill skit as if it is a bad thing?  ???
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Ghostmaker

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #37 on: July 30, 2021, 09:10:56 AM »
Back on track here.

Angel of the Dawn gets the axe: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/angel-of-the-dawn-receives-a-%F0%9F%92%80-permanent-ban.884861/

Official reason is 'sockpuppet', though the only recent socking ban was on nevander, so I guess it depends on how much you trust the mods.

Angel of the Dawn originally ate a thirty day ban for describing a fantasy setting involving slavery, which was later increased to six months because the mods of TBP are terrified of discussing anything problematic except in the most muted, pastel ways.

This is one of my biggest beefs with RPGnet and why I won't ever post there. You can't talk about ANYTHING that might be construed as even the slightest bit controversial, lest someone take offense. And because TBP's policy is 'the onus is on the poster to be clear', all it takes is some creative interpretation by some fucknugget and BOOM, off to Infractions you go.


Armchair Gamer

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #38 on: July 30, 2021, 09:36:07 AM »
The salt in the wound there, IMO, is this recent tendency of stealthily increasing sentences at the last minute. That's at least twice now that someone's gotten a ban that's been radically extended just as the original is about to run out, and it's only marked as a tag-on to the original thread rather than a new infraction--who knows how well it's communicated to the 'offender'? I know RPGNet's moderation is almost completely arbitrary, but that still feels like dirty pool to me.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #39 on: July 30, 2021, 10:02:23 AM »
IMO, it left just enough wiggle room that someone who knew what they were doing and loved Star Wars could have pulled out of the dive and made something worthwhile. Instead ...

Wrong. The second they revealed ANODAH deathstar on the poster (and a BIGGER one to boot of course) the series was over. It wasn't 'Aiming' it at the wrong direction. It had murdered it.

If Star Wars is a series with just mindless explosions and scale with no context for anything: Yes TFA just continues that trend.
If Star Wars is a series with any amount of stakes, character development, internal consistency, themes then TFA killed them off with jyst its establishment.

Rian Johnson only followed the path set by a hack. JJ is just a master distractionsmith so people didn't notice.

Ghostmaker

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #40 on: July 30, 2021, 10:17:27 AM »
The salt in the wound there, IMO, is this recent tendency of stealthily increasing sentences at the last minute. That's at least twice now that someone's gotten a ban that's been radically extended just as the original is about to run out, and it's only marked as a tag-on to the original thread rather than a new infraction--who knows how well it's communicated to the 'offender'? I know RPGNet's moderation is almost completely arbitrary, but that still feels like dirty pool to me.
I've seen that as well. 'We're banning you for X amount of time and it'll be discussed backstage' is a similar shenanigan.

It IS dirty pool. Vaguely worded 'rules', mods who deliberately look for posters to ban, threads randomly flagged as 'A-game'...

What bugs me is how many RPG noobs go online, the first place they find is RPGnet, and then they look around and wonder what the hell is wrong with these people?

Reckall

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #41 on: July 30, 2021, 11:59:39 AM »
Rian Johnson only followed the path set by a hack. JJ is just a master distractionsmith so people didn't notice.

I disagree. Sure, J.J. Abrams is a hack and he is only good in creating questions without answers. But a good writer/director could have steered them towards something good.

Rey hadn't to be a Mary Sue. A Jason Bourne-like character would have been fine. "Master Luke, I never trained, I never knew that I had these talents. Who am I? I'm scared."

The mystery surrounding her parents was a big card: play it well.

DON'T TURN LUKE SKYWALKER INTO A WINO. Just don't do that.

And so on. The new trilogy could have been the reverse of the original one - which gave us "Star Rules" and "The Empire Kicks Ass" before devolving into "The Return of the Teddy Bears".
« Last Edit: July 30, 2021, 12:10:26 PM by Reckall »
For every idiot who denounces Ayn Rand as "intellectualism" there is an excellent DM who creates a "Bioshock" adventure.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #42 on: July 30, 2021, 02:23:55 PM »
I disagree. Sure, J.J. Abrams is a hack and he is only good in creating questions without answers. But a good writer/director could have steered them towards something good.

Nope. A master contortionist maybe, but the greatest damage had already been done to a setting.

Quote
Rey hadn't to be a Mary Sue. A Jason Bourne-like character would have been fine.
She was already a Mary Sue. The prequels sucked (well partly) for the ease that the protagonists navigated their environment. Ray was already that way. If she in movie 1 could plow through the opposition her potential for interesting adventure was already limited.

Jason Bourne was still a runner. The implication was never that he could solo the entire US Black ops operation. There was a reason why Luke only learned the mind trick by movie 3.

Quote
DON'T TURN LUKE SKYWALKER INTO A WINO. Just don't do that.

Any answer as to why Luke had left the universe in a shit state and allowed the empire to kidnap children on a multiplanet state, and abandon his friends as their kid became evil could only be answered with:
A: Impotence
B: Unwillingness
C: Utter bullshit contrivedness that would still require a degree of A & B.

He would have been a looser either way.

Quote
"The Return of the Teddy Bears".

While stupid, as a guy removed from the marketting of that era the Ewoks come off more creepy then cute. They only take up a small portion of the film. The movie had so many more truly positive elements that stood out on their own.

TFA was more 'Midacloreans-The movie'. Nearly every scene was about 10 times worse then midicloreans.

Ratman_tf

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #43 on: July 30, 2021, 02:46:20 PM »
What have I done? :D
Is it that some topics can't sustain a whole thread, but can "live" in another thread as a side topic?
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Shrieking Banshee

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #44 on: July 30, 2021, 03:35:42 PM »
Apologies. I had a similar breakup with GUTP forums.

Im sure its more SJW then when I left it, and I left it for being too coddling and soft. The slightest issue caused infractions