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Post by Jaqhama on Feb 6, 2010 2:56:35 GMT
Stars Wars meets Night of the Living Dead. I'm just reading the very first Star wars SF/horror novel and I'm enjoying it. A prison ship discovers a battlecruiser in the darkness of deep space. A scout party goes aboard to find out why no one is answering their hailing calls. Going aboard the battlecruiser was a mistake, a big mistake. The front cover was a major selling point of this novel for many people. It was all over the internet before the book was even released. Here's the cover and book details including reviews over at Amazon USA. www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Troopers-Joe-Schreiber/dp/0345509625Be warned...I purchased the UK Arrow paperback edition of Death Troopers...DON'T! Unless you enjoy reading an entire novel in size 8 print. The USA Del Ray edition apparently uses size 10 print. Death Troopers is a pulpy SF/horror novel that raises the bar of previous Star Wars books. If only there had been a few nubile young nakeds running around and a bit of sexual titilation...it would have been perfect. Maybe in the next one? |
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Post by benedictjjones on Feb 7, 2010 10:20:40 GMT
sounds great  might try and grab the US edition if i can, i've read the main star wars short story collections (tales from mos eisley, bounty hunters and tales of the new republic) plus most of the X-Wing series. really got into the books in the late nineties but didn't like the new films at all. edit: trying to remember where i've put the short stor collections, haven't read them for ages. |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Feb 7, 2010 11:15:12 GMT
Just watched the first three again (ie the good ones)
The follow ups were a simple tragedy. I could hardly believe my eyes. How anything so good could be transformed into something so lame.
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Post by andydecker on Feb 7, 2010 13:32:25 GMT
The follow ups were a simple tragedy. I could hardly believe my eyes. How anything so good could be transformed into something so lame. I will never get why they they couldn´t spend a few dollars for a halfway decent tv-writer to re-write the laughably bad dialogue. Every sentence said in those three movies was beyond painful. Even the terrible techno babble of your average Star Trek ep was easier to stomach than this crap. A shame. |
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Post by benedictjjones on Feb 8, 2010 21:42:17 GMT
i've just blanked the newer ones out! didn't even watch the last one...
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Feb 9, 2010 9:59:09 GMT
Apologies to dem for lengthy space opera discussions but the subject of the star war pastiches is certainly horror to me.
I took my son to see Star Wars when he was nine with the admonition that it would be the best thing he might ever see and I was borne out by his glazed expression for the entire film. he only turned round twice to say 'this is wonderful'. No other film (and he saw lots as I was Macdonald's dad) made the same impression.
The three grotesque follow ups to that magnificent trilogy made so many mistakes it would, take more than a single message to outline them all. The dialogue - god you are so right. I kept saying to myself as I sat like an accident victim 'shut the fuck up. I don't want to hear this laboured unintelligible crap.'
Picture yourself as a loaded film director who has the chance to make any conceptual dream come true. Do you create the next Seven Samurai or Metropolis, do you go for the thought provoking or the extravagant, the elegant, the complex, the subtle or the exciting - no you decide you want loads more money - despite being on a sure winner anyway - and create a sales advert for increasingly banal plastic figures. You employ someone to write your dialogue who would struggle to make conversation with the MacDonald's reps you are clearly courting for the next money deal and would probably fail to complete an understandable laundry list.
Why o why o why did that traitor to greatness not go back to simplicity. Can't you see the parsifalian jedi knights coursing the void in their antiquated space vessels, striding the desert vastness robed like ancestral crusaders in pursuit of eternal truths. The majesty of jihadic quests, the disintegration of the ideals as they fell from grace.The possibilities were endless if he had only kept a sparse dialogue and a sparse set where the simplicity of the symbolism would have shone like a beacon.
Instead, we got a bunch of fluffy toys to go with the burger
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Post by andydecker on Feb 9, 2010 11:47:30 GMT
Guess in this case it was a typical emperor´s new clothes thing. Nobody took Lucas aside and said: "George, this stinks. The love story is awkward and grotesk, the whole rebellion plot doesn´t make any sense, and nobody can take a villian named Count Poo seriously."
The best investment Lucas ever did was hiring Leigh Brackett to co-write Empire. I always thought Return very blah, Ford and Fisher´s performance was phoned in, I hated the saccarine ending and I loathed the Ewoks, still it is a masterpiece compared to any of the last three.
I mean, this is Star Wars, I don´t expect a thing like, say, an episode of Deadwood or The Shield or Spooks, even if the transformation to Vader begs for this kind of drama. But this was on a level of bad fan-fiction, which was annoying.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Feb 9, 2010 12:46:37 GMT
Wrote a lengthy email agreeing with everything you said, then lost it. Shame that didn't happen with the subsequent star wars crap
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Post by Jaqhama on Feb 10, 2010 15:47:18 GMT
Death Troopers turned into a very enjoyable read.
On the subject of the movies:
I only liked Star Wars the original movie.
But...I really enjoy all the PC based Star Wars first person shooter games. Freaking excellent!
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might try and grab the US edition if i can, i've read the main star wars short story collections (tales from mos eisley, bounty hunters and tales of the new republic) plus most of the X-Wing series. really got into the books in the late nineties but didn't like the new films at all.