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Nah, that 'tone poem' bit is indeed very good.  It's just the banal talking-over trailer footage, dear grud unless you have something to say, that's done.

Not sure if it's just me, but I am now totally lost by Deadworld. I am still reading it, mainly because I never skip anything.


When did Sydney become more dead?
When did Fairfax become a dark judge? And how come he seems able to resist acting full on dark judge?
Has Psiren swapped sides?

Probably need to pull out the back Progs.

Not a bad idea, you'll only need to go back to the previous book Damned from 2018 (Prog 2081-2092), and maybe the 2018 and 2019 Christmas progs. it's really very good.

Quoting myself from a few weeks back aboput Death's death:

Nasty little Tek scrote Casey conspired with the Sisters, who felt Sssidney was getting too big for his bones. Death was chopped up by the Elena-Kurakin-like Martinez, one of Jes' allies, and some of Casey's zombie-golems, and then Casey blasted him with a big gun. I think this is Sidney's first 'death' since he decayed into the role, but have no Fear, he'll work out how to possessss a new host shortly.

Fairfax was captured and dosed with the dead fluidssss, but it's clear he hasn't fully succumbed. That's what Jess and the gang are doing in Sector 13, rescuing him.

Sister Psiren had her head shaken up by a mindmeld with the Resistance psi Agatha Proudwater, and has recovered some of her old self.  The mysterious Third Sister incarnated in Byke probably had a hand too.

Para Handy?  Is that just (rather good) speculationising, or has the Magus ever offered up?

Like Damon Lindelof, I feel I just sort of know what Moore thinks.

As long as you're clear that this is what ALAN MOORE thinks, the ALAN MOORE that also wrote Watchmen, whose intentions regarding the future treatment of ALAN MOORE's work (including Watchmen) are mysterious, even deliberately ambiguous, to this very day, except to you.

"It makes Attack of the Clones look like Citizen Kane ..."

Yes, it must have taken a team of crack comedy writers to come up with that 'epic burn'  . 

(Although if one were to compare some of the AotC trailers with this one that mightn't be a bad comparison... a more elegant approach, for a more civilised time).

It's very well done, both face and voice, but the humour is very much from the Movie Mistakes school of 'hilarity'.

Totally! I choose to believe he's talking about Chewie, R2 and maybe BB8.

Currently I'm wondering how the Emperor's throne room, set on the top of an incredibly spindly largely-hollow observation tower, managed to survive the Death Star's destruction pretty much intact (chair still in place!), enter an atmosphere and land right-way up. It'll be even more puzzling when it turns out this watery place isn't even on Endor.

Para Handy?  Is that just (rather good) speculationising, or has the Magus ever offered it up?

I'd always vaguely thought of Tonypandy as inspiration,  what with riots looming over her fate. Although obviously in the comic itself Clara Pandy is a named for a famous woman of Brinna's acquaintance. (Others long for Book IV,  I pine for a Young Brinna prequel).

Excellent choices for winner, runner-up and hon. mensh - can't have been easy to choose, so congrats all! And many, many thanks to Owen for keeping this one flowing, it's been great.

[Colossal]

Colossal. Don't personally care for Ann Hathaway or Jason Sudekis, but that actually works to the advantage of this film where they play some pretty awful people, surrounded by other awful people. Hits some of the same notes as Russian Doll, which is a good thing. Would have liked some closure on Tim Blake Nelson's character, although it's saying something when the most likeable person in a film is a [spoiler]cokehead[/spoiler]. I was really pleased that at least one of them experienced some kind of redemption by the end, and one got their comeuppance. It's a very enjoyable oddity, and pleasingly tight. Yeah, good stuff.

Wasn't the entire resistance effectively on the Falcon by the end of TLJ? Or was I misreading things?

It was, but some time has passed and the legend of Luke facing down the whole First.Order with a laser sword has given the galaxy hope again. Leia refers to their surviving allies in TFA, but they were too mired in despair to come to their aid: that has changed, and Poe & Co have rebuilt.  That much I'm good with.

My problem is wondering what's happened to the First Order to make Palpatine's secret mothballed fleet the big unifying threat: wasn't the FO already minutes from total control of the galaxy at the start of TFA?

hah ,good catch! 

Been doing some ruminating, and I think my main problem with this trailer is that it fails to tell me a story, preferring to show me familiar stuff... but turned up to 11.  Even as a big fan of TLJ it was clear that the end of that film left a gigantic blank in terms of what would happen next.  At one level I was delighted by this - uncertainty! Potential! Alas, this trailer doesn't really give me many pointers in that direction. Rey and Kylo's relationship appears to be in stasis, Poe and Finn have been rebuilding the resistance, but as to the rest...

Who is doing what to who here? When last we left them, the First Order had taken two or three massive kickings in succession, but as they appeared to have hit the Republic (TFA) and the Resistance (TLJ) far worse blows they looked to still be ahead on points. So why do we appear to be building to a big fight between the galaxy's Skywalker-renewed hope and a revenant Palpatine and a secret fleet of old-timey Star Destroyers? Where has Supreme Leader Ren's First Order gone? Wasn't that what they were fighting in the last two films? Is this a three way fight now? 

This kind of mess is perfectly acceptable, even desirable, as a tease for a first or second film, but if you want me to get all emotionally engaged in a climactic last battle with sweeping elegiac soundtrack, I really think I should know who's fighting and what the stakes are. Han and Luke are already dead, tragically Leia won't be doing much, so explain what's happening to these recent characters and why I should care! This trailer seems to assume I already know.

Finally,  someone appreciates your work Proudhuff!

An enterprising young fellow, although his Twitter feed is somewhat... specialised.

Nah, that was an episode of Survival Geeks.

I've only just noticed that the leader of the Parliament gang in Carroll's zarjaz Dredd story 'The Long Game' is called Andrel Markota and  bears something of a resemblance to this person:




Apologies,  can't find a larger version of that page, but that's her down the bottom!   Squint, damn you!