You can’t even nail down your own standpoint, and seem to shift it whenever a counter point is raised.
You've yet to acknowledge that no one is arguing for bloodlines.
One, last, parting shot......Han’s line as that scene opens? ‘You can forget about those Imperial slugs, I told you we’d outrun ‘em’.
Yes, because obviously a starship chase and successful evasion takes... no time?
And with that, I’m out. I shall save my explaining the obvious to the wilfully contrary for when I’m actually being paid to deal with it, yeah?
Wait... the 'obvious' is what? You've repeated a line of philosophical drivel as if it were a point of film theory or storytelling practicality, argued that story and character building don't matter, as well as argued against a position no one was taking.
KTG17 wrote: I find it funny how the original Trilogy unified everyone. I mean, just about everyone LOVED it.
This... isn't actually true. There just wasn't a convenient space to argue about it.
There was a lot of 'vapid, mindless entertainment' accusations tossed at the original trilogy.
I'll tell you how much times have changed. Back in the day, would guys have given a crap who the parents of Rey's was? I mean, we all thought it was cool when good old DV shared the news with Luke, and I guess some expected something similar, and since there isn't, its kind of a let down. But even still, who the hell cares who her parents are?
We're in it for the lasers, light sabers, and space battles, people! COME ON!
KTG17 wrote: I'll tell you how much times have changed. Back in the day, would guys have given a crap who the parents of Rey's was? I mean, we all thought it was cool when good old DV shared the news with Luke, and I guess some expected something similar, and since there isn't, its kind of a let down. But even still, who the hell cares who her parents are?
We're in it for the lasers, light sabers, and space battles, people! COME ON!
All flash and no trousers does not a successful story make.
KTG17 wrote: I'll tell you how much times have changed. Back in the day, would guys have given a crap who the parents of Rey's was? I mean, we all thought it was cool when good old DV shared the news with Luke, and I guess some expected something similar, and since there isn't, its kind of a let down. But even still, who the hell cares who her parents are?
We're in it for the lasers, light sabers, and space battles, people! COME ON!
All flash and no trousers does not a successful story make.
Well, if you have two movies, one where it deals with who some chic's parents are, and another with lasers, light sabers, and space battles. . . I am going with the lasers, light sabers, and space battles!
Honestly, the more i think on it, and the more i watch the movie (3x now) I hope that Reys parents are insignificant. Star Wars is about nobodys or ordinary people doing great things. Its about the everyman over coming impossible odds for the betterment of mankind.
Reys parents are pointless, they aren't in the story.
Think of it this way, in the prequels, no one was complaining about why we didn't know who Obi's parents are? Or that Anakin has no father....
I personally hope they get away from this Light vs Dark. I hope the 10,11,12 movies bring in the Yuuzhan Vong. Would be a fresh new spin on the Force (or lack of).
KTG17 wrote: I'll tell you how much times have changed. Back in the day, would guys have given a crap who the parents of Rey's was? I mean, we all thought it was cool when good old DV shared the news with Luke, and I guess some expected something similar, and since there isn't, its kind of a let down. But even still, who the hell cares who her parents are?
We're in it for the lasers, light sabers, and space battles, people! COME ON!
All flash and no trousers does not a successful story make.
Well, if you have two movies, one where it deals with who some chic's parents are, and another with lasers, light sabers, and space battles. . . I am going with the lasers, light sabers, and space battles!
Seriously everything is second behind those.
Well if the first was made by Christopher Nolan and the latter was directed by Michael Bay......
KTG17 wrote: I am going with the lasers, light sabers, and space battles!
Seriously everything is second behind those.
How much do you like the Prequels?
I hate the prequels, but honestly they feel more like Star Wars than TFA and TLJ.
But a chic trying to find her parents probably can be found in hundreds of stories. Light sabers and tie fighters... not so many. Rey's parents are not the reason we tune into Star Wars. It is the flash.
KTG17 wrote: I'll tell you how much times have changed. Back in the day, would guys have given a crap who the parents of Rey's was?
That isn't a change in times. Luke's parents mattered because that is presented early on in the original film as important (fellow student betrayed and murdered your father)
Anakin's weird parentage sort of mattered because he was creepily obsessed, and she had a bizarre spontaneous pregnancy story
Rey's parentage got weight because it was presented as mattering. And then inexplicably tossed over the shoulder like it was a heirloom lightsaber or some other worthless trash.
Had Rey wanted to get off Jakku and not return and not had visions of being abandoned by people who specifically leave and not die, it wouldn't be an issue. But it was presented as pretty much the sole relevant issue for her character. Even when offered a co-pilot's seat on the legendary Millenium Falcon, her reaction was 'But my parents- have to get back to Jakku.' If she were just a random orphan without this driving need to get back to a horrible life on a hell planet where she's routinely shortchanged on basic rations, she'd have said 'Hell yes,' and everyone would've moved on.
So blame Abrams for setting it up as her most important character trait, and Johnson for abjectly refusing to catch the softball tossed his way, because trivial things like character development would interrupt his CGI masturbation time.
This... isn't actually true. There just wasn't a convenient space to argue about it.
There was a lot of 'vapid, mindless entertainment' accusations tossed at the original trilogy.
I don't know who you were hanging out with, but me and my friends loved it. We had the toys, fought the battles, and didn't argue over this petty crap.
As Voss also explained, The structure, imagery, and even the dialog of TFA (and TLJ!) all indicate that Rey is special. But neither TFA nor TLJ address why. This is a problem because her being special is constantly important to the story/ies.
That's easy, she grew up on a desert planet. All Star Wars protagonists need to do that.
Voss wrote: Rey's parentage got weight because it was presented as mattering. And then inexplicably tossed over the shoulder like it was a heirloom lightsaber or some other worthless trash.
LOL well phrased! But the whole "who are my parents" thing was treated as important in TLJ. Rey cares about it quite a bit. The fact that her parents are nobody is the heart of a great scene between her and Kylo (as well as dumb, weird, inappropriate scene earlier in the Darkside Hole on Force Island). The issue is more like, OK fine it's not the identity of her parents that makes her special - but what is it? That's the part that gets tossed aside like the symbol of your father's redemption.
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dogma wrote: That's easy, she grew up on a desert planet. All Star Wars protagonists need to do that.
Voss wrote: So blame Abrams for setting it up as her most important character trait, and Johnson for abjectly refusing to catch the softball tossed his way.
Honestly, I can't understand how that plot line is getting so much attention. I could careless. It actually makes far more sense that she comes from nowhere and no one, cause that is what Star Wars is all about. The big guy versus the little guy.
Far more of a hole in the plot is the fact the rebels are slightly faster than the imperial ships, cause they are lighter, IN SPACE. Or during that retreat, Fynn and that useless Rose fly off in real time to ANOTHER PLANET and back again. But then again this follows TFA with Han flying the Falcon THROUGH a force field barely scraping the surface of a planet, but within walking distance to where Rey was.
Look you have to accept these movies are poorly written in general and be done with it.
KTG17, I think we're being very generous to TLJ by only talking about its strongest parts. The fact that we aren't talking about the worthless characters of Rose and Admiral Who Cares and the absolutely inane dead end subplots those nobodies dragged into the film with them is pretty polite, if you ask me.
This... isn't actually true. There just wasn't a convenient space to argue about it.
There was a lot of 'vapid, mindless entertainment' accusations tossed at the original trilogy.
I don't know who you were hanging out with, but me and my friends loved it. We had the toys, fought the battles, and didn't argue over this petty crap.
Uh... sure. Kids largely did think it was good.
But when you said 'unified everyone' and 'everyone loved it,' I assumed since you were talking to adults with critical thinking skills, you were talking about the overall audience and critical reception.
Not what your playground buddies were impressed by.
Dynas wrote:Star Wars is about nobodys or ordinary people doing great things.
...
Actually, nobodies and ordinary people are amazingly absent from all Star Wars films. The closest even seen are the people calmly evacuating Bespin after Lando gives his Imperial Takeover announcement, or the background people in the random sports bar in Attack of the Clones. But they're explicitly background people with no lines, names or relevance. They don't do anything, let alone 'great things.' That's solely reserved for the heroes and villains.
Voss wrote: So blame Abrams for setting it up as her most important character trait, and Johnson for abjectly refusing to catch the softball tossed his way.
Honestly, I can't understand how that plot line is getting so much attention. I could careless. It actually makes far more sense that she comes from nowhere and no one, cause that is what Star Wars is all about. The big guy versus the little guy.
Yep, that tiny Empire against a gathering of nobility. No, wait. That secret heir... No. The prophesied child? Nope, has that too.
Um, what?
Voss I am having trouble understanding your points, other than to assume you didn't like the film. Which is fine. I read all the leaks and even watched some leaked footage, swore I would hate it, got talked into going by a friend who had seen it, and found it far more of an enjoyable experience than I thought I would. But I rolled my eyes at a lot of things too. I've been rolling my eyes over Star Wars since Jar Jar and the two headed Pod Race announcer.
Sir Alec was right. He knew peeps would look too much into these movies.
KTG17 wrote: Voss I am having trouble understanding your points, other than to assume you didn't like the film. Which is fine. I read all the leaks and even watched some leaked footage, swore I would hate it, got talked into going by a friend who had seen it, and found it far more of an enjoyable experience than I thought I would. But I rolled my eyes at a lot of things too. I've been rolling my eyes over Star Wars since Jar Jar and the two headed Pod Race announcer.
Sir Alec was right. He knew peeps would look too much into these movies.
I'm not sure what you find confusing. You claimed star wars had a nearly universally positive reception. At the time, among adult movie goers and critics, it did not.
As for the little guy or nobodies- that doesn't describe the rebel alliance at all. Senators, Princesses, Luke the Heir to the Chosen One. It just doesn't work. The prequels make this even worse, but even at the beginning its pretty well beyond the scope of ordinary or little people. Heck the 'slave' character is on the Imperial side!
But yes, I don't particularly care for either of these films. From the standpoint of character development and storytelling, I find them absolutely terrible.
It isn't about looking too much into them, but looking at the very basic elements of film-making and storytelling. The original is a bit trite and copies a lot, but follows a basic recognizable storytelling structure, and does so effectively. These are just a muddled mess of ideas, put together rather incoherently and sold on the idea that the only way to enjoy them is to turn off the brain and go 'Oooo' at the pretty lights. I've no interest in that.
He told him his take on The Force. And put him up against a remote. And. That’s. It. that’s the sum total of his tutelage under Obi-Wan. There’s no time for anything else. He gives him a lightsabre, but doesn’t show him how to fight with it. At all. There’s no time. No opportunity. Not between ANH and Bespin. At all.
He taught him how to block shots behind a blast visor.
Besides I think your taking it the wrong way, Old Ben and Yoda didn't need to teach Luke how to fight. They taught him how to feel the force, then the force does all the fighting for him and he becomes a conduit for it.
Then he gets his butt pummelled by Vader because that's not enough. Op when he kicks Vaders butt back, he's an angry force conduit. So he's actually using the force for his own gains.
I'm not sure what you find confusing. You claimed star wars had a nearly universally positive reception. At the time, among adult movie goers and critics, it did not.
Were you around back Star Wars came out? Because I was, and it was HUGE. Did some critics dislike it? Sure, there are always moron critics that don't like anything. But Star Wars was huge. And yes, everyone open to the idea loved it. I cannot for the life of me ever remember people tearing apart plot points over the original three movies like we're doing here today over Rey.
BTW, I even got to meet Leia and shake Darth Vader's hand. Carrie was being smothered by bigger kids asking for autographs (she was in costume btw), so I was trying to get Vader's attention (I was a real little kid back then), and failing. Finally my grandmother, who brought me to the event, smacked Prowse's arm (who was in full Vader costume) and told him with some attitude, "Hey, he wants to meet you."
Vader turned, looked down at me, and shoot my hand. And I am smiling again just thinking about it.
Of course, my grandma smacking Vader in the arm was something smile at too. Miss you, Grandma.
I'm not sure what you find confusing. You claimed star wars had a nearly universally positive reception. At the time, among adult movie goers and critics, it did not.
Were you around back Star Wars came out? Because I was, and it was HUGE. Did some critics dislike it? Sure, there are always moron critics that don't like anything. But Star Wars was huge. And yes, everyone open to the idea loved it. I cannot for the life of me ever remember people tearing apart plot points over the original three movies like we're doing here today over Rey. .
Yes, I was. And I know people who didn't like it, remember reading and hearing about people who didn't like it, and remember far too many comic shops and game stores where people sat around having pretty much the same conversations.
Was it huge? Yes. Even ignoring critics, was it a universally positive reception? No.
Even in early 80s it wasn't unusual for people to have differing opinions, have some that genuinely disliked something popular and others who just wanted to tear down whatever was popular.
No, those kinds of movies were the standard at the time, which is why Star Wars was so huge. It came out of nowhere and bought all sorts of new stuff. Made Mark, Harrison, and Carrie household names overnight.
Obviously in your restricted memory you can believe what you want, but Star Wars has huge not only with A New Hope, but right up to Return of the Jedi. The fact that they are STILL making toys of those characters to this day says something about that movie's legacy.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Snoke, Luke, Rey, Captain Chrome, and the Solo/Leia divorce questions were not answered.
While annoying as that may be, good story telling keeps that audience in suspense until the end of the tale. TLJ is the middle part of this particular tale, not the end and thus it has zero obligation to give any of those answers.
I, too, would have liked some clarification of some of the issues left open by TFA, but I cannot fault TLJ for not delivering them as it was not its job to do so.
Its job was to build the suspense to a crescendo and leave the audience wanting more. Clearly it achieved this goal as the movie was not only an edge of your seat entertaining watch, but by not answering those questions as well as raising more clearly leaves the audience wanting more
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I think it's past the point of no return. I don't think those answers can be answered in IX.
If they turn round and say Rey's parents aren't really no good hustlers, that leaves the audience feeling cheated, because they were expressly told something else.
Rey's Mary Sue persona in TFA and her mastery of The Force, could only have 3 logical outcomes: mind wipe, Luke's daughter, or created by The Force itself.
She had none of those, because the director didn't give a damn
Nonsense. Those are all constraints that you're placing upon the background.
It's shown, multiple times, that a Force user can (and usually is) born to non-sensitive parents. Because without that, the monastic and supposedly celibate Jedi order would've died out centuries ago.
Indeed, so far as I can tell, Luke and Leia are the exception for having an explicitly force sensitive parent.
So why shouldn't Rey be a nobody? Fan theories abounding don't count here, because they're based on wishful thinking rather than actual evidence.
Because all the previews to TFA had Skywalker's speech about his family and "you have it" and then shifts to Rey.
KTG17 wrote: No, those kinds of movies were the standard at the time, which is why Star Wars was so huge. It came out of nowhere and bought all sorts of new stuff. Made Mark, Harrison, and Carrie household names overnight.
Obviously in your restricted memory you can believe what you want, but Star Wars has huge not only with A New Hope, but right up to Return of the Jedi. The fact that they are STILL making toys of those characters to this day says something about that movie's legacy.
It's really good at selling toys to (boy) children, yes.
But, I'm honestly not sure we're having the same conversation.
I'm not denying it was big. But it wasn't universally praised.
Heck, until the turn of the century, I knew quite a few people who had never seen any star wars movies at all.
That you find it unbelievable or ridiculous is a little puzzling.
KTG17 wrote: No, those kinds of movies were the standard at the time, which is why Star Wars was so huge. It came out of nowhere and bought all sorts of new stuff. Made Mark, Harrison, and Carrie household names overnight.
Obviously in your restricted memory you can believe what you want, but Star Wars has huge not only with A New Hope, but right up to Return of the Jedi. The fact that they are STILL making toys of those characters to this day says something about that movie's legacy.
It's really good at selling toys to (boy) children, yes.
But, I'm honestly not sure we're having the same conversation.
I'm not denying it was big. But it wasn't universally praised.
Heck, until the turn of the century, I knew quite a few people who had never seen any star wars movies at all.
That you find it unbelievable or ridiculous is a little puzzling.
People who haven't seen the original trilogy are inherently flawed and will be shipped to a FEMA "evacuation" camp for processing and eventual recycling to feed the next generation of consumers.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Snoke, Luke, Rey, Captain Chrome, and the Solo/Leia divorce questions were not answered.
While annoying as that may be, good story telling keeps that audience in suspense until the end of the tale. TLJ is the middle part of this particular tale, not the end and thus it has zero obligation to give any of those answers.
I, too, would have liked some clarification of some of the issues left open by TFA, but I cannot fault TLJ for not delivering them as it was not its job to do so.
Its job was to build the suspense to a crescendo and leave the audience wanting more. Clearly it achieved this goal as the movie was not only an edge of your seat entertaining watch, but by not answering those questions as well as raising more clearly leaves the audience wanting more
-
I think it's past the point of no return. I don't think those answers can be answered in IX.
If they turn round and say Rey's parents aren't really no good hustlers, that leaves the audience feeling cheated, because they were expressly told something else.
Rey's Mary Sue persona in TFA and her mastery of The Force, could only have 3 logical outcomes: mind wipe, Luke's daughter, or created by The Force itself.
She had none of those, because the director didn't give a damn
Nonsense. Those are all constraints that you're placing upon the background.
It's shown, multiple times, that a Force user can (and usually is) born to non-sensitive parents. Because without that, the monastic and supposedly celibate Jedi order would've died out centuries ago.
Indeed, so far as I can tell, Luke and Leia are the exception for having an explicitly force sensitive parent.
So why shouldn't Rey be a nobody? Fan theories abounding don't count here, because they're based on wishful thinking rather than actual evidence.
Because all the previews to TFA had Skywalker's speech about his family and "you have it" and then shifts to Rey.
He told him his take on The Force. And put him up against a remote. And. That’s. It. that’s the sum total of his tutelage under Obi-Wan. There’s no time for anything else. He gives him a lightsabre, but doesn’t show him how to fight with it. At all. There’s no time. No opportunity. Not between ANH and Bespin. At all.
Incorrect. We see at the beginning of ESP that Kenobi ghost has been training him. We also know that ESB is a good bit after so there has been training for some time.
We also know his big ANH moment was shooting the torps, but others were trying too. It was difficult but not impossible. Plus he had no resistance and could take his time at that point.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Snoke, Luke, Rey, Captain Chrome, and the Solo/Leia divorce questions were not answered.
While annoying as that may be, good story telling keeps that audience in suspense until the end of the tale. TLJ is the middle part of this particular tale, not the end and thus it has zero obligation to give any of those answers. I, too, would have liked some clarification of some of the issues left open by TFA, but I cannot fault TLJ for not delivering them as it was not its job to do so. Its job was to build the suspense to a crescendo and leave the audience wanting more. Clearly it achieved this goal as the movie was not only an edge of your seat entertaining watch, but by not answering those questions as well as raising more clearly leaves the audience wanting more
-
I think it's past the point of no return. I don't think those answers can be answered in IX.
If they turn round and say Rey's parents aren't really no good hustlers, that leaves the audience feeling cheated, because they were expressly told something else.
Kinda like Obi-wan expressly told Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered Anakin. We all know how that turned out.
"You'll find that many of the truths the audience clings too depend greatly on their own point of view."
If this is the response as to WHY something is, it's wrong.
"It just is" is a cop-out answer. In ANY form of media, be it magically related or not. Macbeth doesn't kill Duncan "just because". Harry Potter isn't the Chosen One "because he is". Luke doesn't fight Darth Vader "because he does". To admit so it to deny causality itself.
Macbeth does it because his wife manipulates him.
Harry is Chosen because Voldemort set in chain a set of events that made him "chosen" over Neville.
Luke is because of the murder of his family, his bloodline, and Obi-Wan's manipulation.
Rey? WHY is she chosen? Why didn't the force choose the random kid in the stable on Kanto Bight? Why? To quote Han, "That's not how the Force works!". That's all people are asking for. It doesn't need to be bloodline, in fact, I'm overjoyed it ISN'T. I just want a reason WHY Rey is so naturally talented with the Force. Luke's explanation was that he was the son of Anakin. Anakin's was that he was literally BORN of the Force. What's Rey's? She's not worked for it - which would have been fine. She's not trained for it. She has NO discernable reason as for our current understanding to be as good as she is, and we should just accept that because "she just is"?
I mean this as no offense, but I cannot disagree more.
Her destiny is to be the light sides champion. That’s it. She’s been picked. There’s no explanation needed other than ‘as the darkness rises, so the light to meet it’. The dark side has its champion. And now does the light side.
Except with Kylo, we see a reason. Luke showed his willingness to kill Ben out of fear for what he could become. It led Ben to become Kylo. In that respect, it's almost Greek in it's tragedy and scale. Luke sees darkness in Ben, and considers ending it. Ben sees this lapse in Luke, and is consumed by the darkness because of it.
Rey, we see none. Ben doesn't become Kylo "just because". It's because of being betrayed and nearly murdered by your uncle and teacher. He's a champion because he has Anakin Skywalker's blood in his veins. Rey is the champion because she's good with the force? Why? No bloodline, so what is it that makes her good?
Kylo almost literally tells Rey and the audience that her backstory doesn't matter and not to worry about it. After a brief period of reflection, she drops it without question and it leads to no further development in her character or in the story.
If it's good enough for the protagonist, I suppose Disney thought it would be good enough for the audience
Also the hyperspace ramming breaks Star Wars Fleet Battles
How is the First Order a threat if you can weaponise hyperspace and destroy the largest vessels. Even civilian ships have hyperdrives and they have droids so aren't losing people. You can effectively destroy a Battleship with your car.
How on earth are they going to justify any Star Wars fleet battle where this tactic isn't used? Why wasn't it used in previous battles? I mean there are going to be moments in future films where people will ask "why don't they just hyperspace ram the enemy ships?"
I think RJ really didn't think that one through. He was after a cool scene and didn't put thought into it.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: Snoke, Luke, Rey, Captain Chrome, and the Solo/Leia divorce questions were not answered.
While annoying as that may be, good story telling keeps that audience in suspense until the end of the tale. TLJ is the middle part of this particular tale, not the end and thus it has zero obligation to give any of those answers.
I, too, would have liked some clarification of some of the issues left open by TFA, but I cannot fault TLJ for not delivering them as it was not its job to do so.
Its job was to build the suspense to a crescendo and leave the audience wanting more. Clearly it achieved this goal as the movie was not only an edge of your seat entertaining watch, but by not answering those questions as well as raising more clearly leaves the audience wanting more
-
I think it's past the point of no return. I don't think those answers can be answered in IX.
If they turn round and say Rey's parents aren't really no good hustlers, that leaves the audience feeling cheated, because they were expressly told something else.
Kinda like Obi-wan expressly told Luke that Vader betrayed and murdered Anakin.
We all know how that turned out.
Yes, Luke felt betrayed and called him on it, leading to a significant growth in his character. Luke's character arc in ESB was structured around that lie, and the ramifications of it. It also goes on to inform their conversation in the next movie, and why Luke's part in the Rebellion (and the story of Star Wars) revolves almost exclusively around Vader. It doesn't matter if the Rebellion blows up the Death Star or not (nor whether or not they're on it at the time): Luke abandons that mission. What matters to Luke is 'redeeming' (or in failing, killing) his father. Even if the mission fails, even if he himself dies in the process. Dad is the central focus, not the Empire, nor even the Emperor.
Rather importantly, when the topic of Luke's father originally came up in Star Wars, (coincidentally or not, depending on if you believe George had that in mind when he wrote SW), that scene was framed and structured as that conversation mattered. The camera changes, Kenobi pauses, strokes his beard and the conversational (and IIRC, musical) tone of the scene changes. Even without knowing what's going on, an aware viewer is given clues that this actually matters in a way that 'spice freighter' and other trappings of the conversation really don't.
If, at the climatic moment of confrontation, Vader's and Luke's conversation in ESB ended with 'Skywalker, Skywalker. Oh, yeah, I remember killing that guy. Whatever.,' it becomes an entirely different story. A much weaker story... like this one.
Rey had a single personal stake attached to her character, a single thing to connect with the audience who can at least imagine her pain at being alone with essentially no one.
Now instead, she's Charlie Brown, and Lucy just yoinked the football. Haha.
Further, too. There is a big difference between Kenobi's lie, and Ren's potential lie (if Do_I_Not_Like_That's theory is correct): one character lying to the other, and the film lying to the audience. An audience is willing to be fooled if it sets up a later reveal or if it turns out to be of significance later, they're not willing to be told something factually wrong, and that is a pretty significant difference.
Personally I don't think it will pan out that way..., but I also don't think Abrams will feel any obligation to maintain consistency with Johnson's treatment of his plot point (or any other theme or arc), and is going to do whatever he wants with it. Potentially leading to more inconsistencies and another jumbled mess. Part of that is Johnson was too tidy. He chopped anything that didn't interest him off, and tidied up every end he could find, which is not something you do in part 2 of 3. Abrams (or whoever's writing part 9) has to be sitting and staring at a blank page for the introduction thinking, 'Welp. This baby is going to have to start cold. How to get from that to an active story in 30 minutes or less?'
Saw it again tonight, have to bump my review up a point. A couple of my criticisms have to be withdrawn:
* The Finn/Rose plot still feels like an RPG side quest gone wrong, and Finn gets zero character development or even reason to exist in this movie, but at least it's shorter than it felt like the first time. And the "how did the traitor know" question is answered, he's actually present to overhear Poe and Finn talking about the transports (when Poe is saying "hurry, she's getting ready to run with the transports") and knows enough to give away the plan. It's still stupid that the cloak seems to be little more than "if they're too lazy and incompetent to bother looking we can escape, otherwise we all die", but it's a bit less stupid with that in mind.
* Luke dying at the end makes a lot more sense if you catch what Kylo says when he first links with Rey: "no, you can't be here, the effort would kill you". It's established that projecting yourself across the galaxy requires a fatal, or at least very risky, level of effort. It even adds a bit to his comment to Kylo about how Luke will haunt him forever. Kylo knows what the illusion costs, he knows that even if he didn't stab Luke with the lightsaber directly the confrontation killed him.
* The ramming scene is still stupid from a fluff point of view, but damn is it a beautiful shot. I mean, I already knew that one, but it needs repeating.
On the other hand, some of my criticism stays true:
* The "oh FFS just talk to each other" problem is still irritating. Half the movie just ceases to exist if Poe and Admiral Purplehair actually talk to each other instead of competing to see who can be the bigger .
* Too much of the movie is based on arbitrary technobabble plot devices. Tracking a ship through hyperspace is impossible! But not only is it possible, the method is so obvious that a random maintenance worker on the rebel ship knows how it works, how to disable it, and even exactly how many minutes they will have to make their escape once it is down. And the previously mentioned "cloak" that only works when the plot requires it. And the hyperspace ram that only happens once the plot requires it, instead of evacuating the support ships and ramming them once they reached their last fuel reserves. If you're going to have "how this particular device works" be a plot point then it needs to be consistent and plausible.
* I really dislike the whole "we're the good guys, war is bad, and we're going to show it by using stupid tactics to avoid losses". It's a war, people die in a war. Yes, I get that Poe has to have his moment of realizing that just shooting stuff isn't always the answer, but FFS you're trapped in a dead-end mine with no hope of escape or survival except destroying the siege gun. If you break off the attack to save a few pilots you only save them for a short time, and then everyone else dies too. It doesn't matter if it's a suicide run, you make the suicde run. Same thing with the bomber attack. Fighters are expendable munitions, you commit them to a fight and some of them will not be coming back. If you aren't willing to lose bombers in an engagement that is a ridiculously one-sided trade in your favor then what's the point in having them in the first place? Even if the bomber losses had been ten times higher it still would have been a decisive win, and an attack that you repeat every time.
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Voss wrote: Rey had a single personal stake attached to her character, a single thing to connect with the audience who can at least imagine her pain at being alone with essentially no one.
Now instead, she's Charlie Brown, and Lucy just yoinked the football. Haha.
Strongly disagree here. The whole point of the way they did it is that she IS no one. Her pain is real, there is not going to be a magic "happily ever after" scene where she finds her parents again and becomes someone. If she's going to become anyone it's going to be because she does it herself, not because the universe hands her an identity the easy way. It really undermines that development if you let her have the easy way out and find her parents. Even if they're awful parents and her story becomes "kill them to stop the horror" it's still a case of her being handed an identity instead of forging her own, just in a different direction.
Strongly disagree here. The whole point of the way they did it is that she IS no one. Her pain is real, there is not going to be a magic "happily ever after" scene where she finds her parents again and becomes someone. If she's going to become anyone it's going to be because she does it herself, not because the universe hands her an identity the easy way. It really undermines that development if you let her have the easy way out and find her parents. Even if they're awful parents and her story becomes "kill them to stop the horror" it's still a case of her being handed an identity instead of forging her own, just in a different direction.
Eh. I don't agree. It isn't about her identity- she has one of those (at least in theory), and it certainly isn't that she's 'no one.' She lost that label the second the light saber starting showing her visions- She's Super Special Force Wielder Rey (because reasons).
It's about the emotional connection of the audience to the character, making her relatable, giving her some connection to the universe, and something like a goal. As it stands, she has nothing and no one, she's just 'the unrelatable Space Wizard.' And it certainly was handed to her- this way there IS no development to undermine. Finding her parents could well be her Epic Task, even (especially) if they're unimportant.
So she still doesn't have any reason to be involved in this story. And now has special abilities that might actually help find her real parents, which was the driving force of her childhood. Whether it gives her an identity or not, the most human thing she could do is wander off from the plot and try to find them.
And for the record? Being abandoned, growing up a scavenger and going through all sorts of crap isn't 'the easy way.' As much as Luke didn't particularly like his life as a teenage moisture farmer, he had it much easier. Leia was raised a noble. That didn't cheapen their identities or development. Neither knew their birth parents, but they group up with food, clothing, shelter, friends and lots (or lots and lots) of stuff. As weird as moisture farming on a desert planet seems, Owen and Beru have a pretty expansive operation, and have enough money that the used car (droid) salesmen come to them.
techsoldaten wrote: The only thing worse than the movie is the fact people can't stop talking about the movie. It's like a social disease.
And I mean that. It's very hard talking to people about it because either they a) are reacting to the weak and shallow plot or b) recounting the special effects (for good or for bad), or c) responding to the diversity of the film.
The movie was designed to have this effect. And now the negative reactions are being blamed on the alt-right. The best thing anyone can do is not talk about it anymore.
Where is anyone trying to tie negative reactions to the Alt Right? That's ridiculous and they should be ridiculed once then ignored forever.
Starting to notice how the media likes to cover people's complaints about genderswapped sci-fi characters, as if there's something sinister going on. 4chan is the source of the claims, which is not exactly a reliable source, nor does it exactly represent the alt-right.
There was similar coverage of the new Dr. Who.
I mean, if a movie has girls instead of boys, are we bad people for seeing the holes in the plot and complaining about them?
Voss wrote: It's about the emotional connection of the audience to the character, making her relatable, giving her some connection to the universe, and something like a goal.
How does finding out that her parents sucked and dumped her make it impossible to relate to her? The main character doesn't need heroic or interesting parents to have a compelling story. Plenty of characters have started off with "abandoned by their parents, life sucks" and still been interesting characters that you can relate to. TBH it makes it easier to relate to her, not harder. She isn't the lost princess, or the daughter of Luke and Palpatine's reanimated corpse, or whatever other Important Heroic Family people wanted her to have. She's just an ordinary person, abandoned by parents who cared more about getting drunk than having a child. And now she's suffered the pain of no longer being able to hide from that reality, and tell herself stories about how they're really coming back someday.
As it stands, she has nothing and no one, she's just 'the Space Wizard.'
Nothing, except that whole "stop Kylo Ren, save the galaxy, restore the jedi" thing...
Whether it gives her an identity or not, the most human thing she could do is wander off from the plot and try to find them.
Sure, if you want a boring movie the main characters could all abandon the plot and go off and live quiet peaceful lives in some boring corner of the galaxy. Poe could retire from flying and go live on a farm and never attract the empire's attention, Finn could have just kept on mopping floors, etc. Part of the hero's journey is leaving behind all those normal-person desires and, you know, becoming a hero.
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Voss wrote: And for the record? Being abandoned, growing up a scavenger and going through all sorts of crap isn't 'the easy way.' As much as Luke didn't particularly like his life as a teenage moisture farmer, he had it much easier. Leia was raised a noble. That didn't cheapen their identities or development. Neither knew their birth parents, but they group up with food, clothing, shelter, friends and lots (or lots and lots) of stuff. As weird as moisture farming on a desert planet seems, Owen and Beru have a pretty expansive operation, and have enough money that the used car (droid) salesmen come to them.
I don't mean easy from a "how much food do you have" point of view, I mean easy from a plot point of view. The easy and lazy way out with Rey is to have her parents be Significant Star Wars Characters and just hand her a plot to follow. Whether it's rescuing them from the evil empire, or stopping their horrible evils, or whatever, all she has to do is learn who they are and then follow the script. The hard way for her is to have her fears confirmed, that there is no miracle coming. Whoever she's going to be she isn't going to inherit the role, she has to earn it for herself.
techsoldaten wrote: The only thing worse than the movie is the fact people can't stop talking about the movie. It's like a social disease.
And I mean that. It's very hard talking to people about it because either they a) are reacting to the weak and shallow plot or b) recounting the special effects (for good or for bad), or c) responding to the diversity of the film.
The movie was designed to have this effect. And now the negative reactions are being blamed on the alt-right. The best thing anyone can do is not talk about it anymore.
Where is anyone trying to tie negative reactions to the Alt Right? That's ridiculous and they should be ridiculed once then ignored forever.
Starting to notice how the media likes to cover people's complaints about genderswapped sci-fi characters, as if there's something sinister going on. 4chan is the source of the claims, which is not exactly a reliable source, nor does it exactly represent the alt-right.
There was similar coverage of the new Dr. Who.
I mean, if a movie has girls instead of boys, are we bad people for seeing the holes in the plot and complaining about them?
On the other hand, more than one poster in this very thread have used the term SJW unironically, so yeah. I'm not in any way saying there aren't many justifiable complaints that can be lobbed at this movie (many good ones posted here), but if the diversity of the cast is one, then I tend to just ignore the rest of the complaints by that person.
The space bombs, a bit silly in some regards but given how so many of the original trilogy battles were frame by frame recreation of WWII footage I can see the nod to the old B-17 footage and sheer terror of airmen falling to their doom trying to unjam the bomb wracks at an absolutely crucial moment for the mission success. Feels a bit out of place when set in space but I liked it as an homage to a unique and intensely terrifying situation of the era.
Luke I really enjoyed every bit of his role in here, he's a failed Jedi and that's fine IMO since during the trilogy he repeatedly screws up and walks away from the Jedi path in order to do what is right and noble in his heart. So his un-Jedi like struggle with guilt and emotional attachment is long established. Later he blames himself for failing with Ben/Kylo but in many ways he repeatedly mirrors Obi-Wan's failings with Anakin/Vader. He withdraws from the world at large and becomes a hermit and hides himself away from the force just as Obi-Wan did, (Vader's line about a presence he hasn't felt in a long time) he struggles knowing that his failures have in turn unleashed a great evil upon the universe and destroyed what remained of the new Jedi just as Obi-Wan's failure destroyed the old Jedi order.
Luke was never meant to be a by the books Jedi, so in that sense he's a failure but those failures grant him greater understanding of who he is as person and his role with the force. He's to become a true master of the force but perhaps not ever a master Jedi, which is the whole point of Yoda nuking the temple. Luke's path to greater enlightenment is his own unique path to walk, not found in following what's written in some ancient codes and the histories of others. The ways of the Jedi are just a stepping stone at the start of becoming a master of the force. Only when he faces his past and failures and learns to overcome them by letting go can he find inner harmony because grief holds him back every bit as much as pain and rage do.
When Obi-Wan confronts Vader he let's go knowing ultimately that it's Vader who chose darkness and not from Obi-Wan's failure (or was destined to darkness depending on the point of view) when he declares that being struck down will give him a far greater power it's his transition to a true force master as he's reached the point he is finally free from his own guilt which is mirrored when Luke confront Kylo. Both give their lives so their friends can escape, at which point both transition to a greater existence in harmony within the force (enlightenment) A similar situation can be found with Yoda who retains guilt over the last of the Jedi and only enters his own enlightenment once he has found a successor to the true ways of the force with Luke.
Another parallel is within Luke's force projection, his lightsaber is blue rather than green which reflects the color of Obi-Wan's lightsaber as he faced Vader for the final time. Luke built the green saber while he was in training and still clouded by doubt and guilt so it was flawed as it carried his internal conflict. Once he accepts his fate and role with greater awareness he appears with a blue one which I don't think is a coincidence.
I'll go into some detail here, but I think the biggest problem with the new trilogy is lack of continuity of the fluff.
For example, we see in previous films, e.g ROTJ, that Luke is prepared to sacrifice all, because he still sees some good in the most evil man in the galaxy. Does that strike you as a character that would walk away from his own nephew at the first sign of trouble? Not for me
As for Rey...
Of course people from humble backgrounds can become force sensitive, even if such a thing has never happened in their family history. We'll call these untrained people Level 1.
Now, due to the vastness of the galaxy, a force sensitive person may never hear about the Jedi, the Sith, or even what the force is. They just know they have talent, an ability unique to them, that they can't explain.
So it's not beyond the realms of possibility that they can move rocks, or windows shatter when they get really mad, or they're very lucky at cards and gambling. etc etc
For a level 1 to get 'promoted' they need training in light sabre handling, years of discipline etc etc
Look how hard it was for Luke to be trained, and see how even Anakin struggled in the prequels, and these were people with Jedi pedigree in the family.
Let's say for argument's sake that Obi Wan is level 4, Vader is level 4.5, Yoda and Palpatine are level 5 force users, and let's say Ren is level 3. He's had training, fought a few battles.
For an untrained level 1 like Rey to defeat a level 3 like Ren? I'm not buying it.
Look how Luke nearly died in his first duel with Vader, and Luke had training, and natural Jedi pedigree. Rey was none of this.
So yeah, to conclude, it's poor story-telling, and an abandonement of previous continuity established over decades. That's the problem with the new trilogy.
For an untrained level 1 like Rey to defeat a level 3 like Ren? I'm not buying it.
Look how Luke nearly died in his first duel with Vader, and Luke had training, and natural Jedi pedigree. Rey was none of this.
The playing field between Rey and Kylo is much more level than between Luke and Vader.
For a start, Kylo is far less talented than Vader (powerful, but as Snoke notes, raw and untamed).
Second, he's just taken a Bowcaster shot to the gut. The same Bowcaster that earlier in the film we see used to knock down multiple Stormtroopers like skittles with a fully charged shot.
Thirdly, he's a complete wreck mentally. He's just murdered Han and is coming to terms with the fact that hasn't given him the power or solace that he was seeking, and he's at a complete loss.
It's also likely that since destroying the temple, Kylo has never fought another lightsaber wielder, and even then, they were semi-trained apprentices. Vader meanwhile has spent the around 20 years hunting down Jedi, defeating two of the greatest Jedi fighters (Ashoka and Obi-wan) within a few years of the duel on Bespin.
Rey, on the other hand, has several advantages.
She is clearly a talented fighter already, whereas there's little indication Luke was at the time (some of the canon comics have him sabering a bit between IV and V, but mostly only against mooks, the one time he meets Vader he doesn't even get a swing in). While a staff is no lightsaber, she has the fitness, control and poise of an experienced fighter.
She is also fighting to protect Finn, Kylo is only fighting because he doesn't know what else to do. That gives Rey a definite psychological advantage.
Her latent Force powers are clearly very strong. Why that is the case is neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion, combat between Jedi and Sith (or equivalents) are as much about strength with The Force as they are skill with a saber, and Rey is clearly no ordinary apprentice at that point.
I'd also note that Rey is distinctly losing that fight until Kylo forces her to the ledge and she gives herself over to The Force, which then gives her the edge to beat him back. At that point though, and perhaps taking into account the suggestion I made a few pages back that the Light Side is souping her up specifically to challenge Ren, you have to question how much she's actually in control there and how much is just a combination of instinct and being guided by The Force.
Peregrine wrote: She's just an ordinary person, abandoned by parents who cared more about getting drunk than having a child. And now she's suffered the pain of no longer being able to hide from that reality, and tell herself stories about how they're really coming back someday.
But she's an "ordinary person" in the same sense that Michael Oher is, so not at all.
For an untrained level 1 like Rey to defeat a level 3 like Ren? I'm not buying it.
Look how Luke nearly died in his first duel with Vader, and Luke had training, and natural Jedi pedigree. Rey was none of this.
The playing field between Rey and Kylo is much more level than between Luke and Vader.
For a start, Kylo is far less talented than Vader (powerful, but as Snoke notes, raw and untamed).
Second, he's just taken a Bowcaster shot to the gut. The same Bowcaster that earlier in the film we see used to knock down multiple Stormtroopers like skittles with a fully charged shot.
Thirdly, he's a complete wreck mentally. He's just murdered Han and is coming to terms with the fact that hasn't given him the power or solace that he was seeking, and he's at a complete loss.
It's also likely that since destroying the temple, Kylo has never fought another lightsaber wielder, and even then, they were semi-trained apprentices. Vader meanwhile has spent the around 20 years hunting down Jedi, defeating two of the greatest Jedi fighters (Ashoka and Obi-wan) within a few years of the duel on Bespin.
Rey, on the other hand, has several advantages.
She is clearly a talented fighter already, whereas there's little indication Luke was at the time (some of the canon comics have him sabering a bit between IV and V, but mostly only against mooks, the one time he meets Vader he doesn't even get a swing in). While a staff is no lightsaber, she has the fitness, control and poise of an experienced fighter.
She is also fighting to protect Finn, Kylo is only fighting because he doesn't know what else to do. That gives Rey a definite psychological advantage.
Her latent Force powers are clearly very strong. Why that is the case is neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion, combat between Jedi and Sith (or equivalents) are as much about strength with The Force as they are skill with a saber, and Rey is clearly no ordinary apprentice at that point.
I'd also note that Rey is distinctly losing that fight until Kylo forces her to the ledge and she gives herself over to The Force, which then gives her the edge to beat him back. At that point though, and perhaps taking into account the suggestion I made a few pages back that the Light Side is souping her up specifically to challenge Ren, you have to question how much she's actually in control there and how much is just a combination of instinct and being guided by The Force.
Which would have been perfectly fine had she actually done any training in the Last Jedi. My take has always been that the Lightsaber is clearly serving the same narrative purpose as a Samurai Sword. You cannot simply pick it you and swing it around you a few times and call yourself a master.
I mean I was watching a clip from Star Wars Rebels where Kanan is training Sabine how to use the Darksaber. But he forces her to use sticks because she is simply untrained and seriously has a go at her for not taking his instruction or the practicing seriously. As he acknowledges later on to Hera, Sabine is a trained Mandalorian who was at the Imperial Academy for a while and a Bounty Hunter, she is an exceptionally gifted fighter; but even she still needs to practice before he feels comfortable even letting her near a lightsaber. If a Mandalorian can't just pick you a lightsaber and master it then why should a scavenger on Jakku who has never received any kind of formal military training or fought in combat.
I mean Rebels isn't old or obscure EU material its their current animated show. It doesn't demean Sabine to be told she needs to practice since we all know she probably is going to master it. All this amounts to is playing the game. Which for me is the problem with Rey, she clearly isn't playing the game when it comes to lightsaber training.
They had a perfect opportunity for Luke to train her using a lightsaber and that issue would have went away. However RJ insisted that Luke would refuse to train her. The insinuation being that SHE DID NOT NEED TO BE TRAINED WITH A LIGHTSABER even though Snoke reminds us that she has never held a lightsaber in her life. In episode 9, lets face it, they will depict her as a full fledged Jedi Master. They have not even given the slightest lip service to the notion that she needed to train. That is bad writing if a childrens show gets this right; but a franchise film cannot. Rey cannot become a master swordswoman without an explanation.
Believe me, I would enjoy nothing more than to see Rey be like Satele Shan in the Hope Cinematic and be awesome. But if you establish she has not been trained as a Jedi you do have to go through those motions. Otherwise, Kylo Ren should defeat her easily in a lightsaber duel, as should have Snokes Praetorians.
Totalwar1402 wrote: The insinuation being that SHE DID NOT NEED TO BE TRAINED WITH A LIGHTSABER even though Snoke reminds us that she has never held a lightsaber in her life.
She hadn't held a lightsaber before (which is not literally true, of course). She had clearly held and used other melee weapons, as you can see from her exercise routine in TLJ. She runs through it with her staff, which she has demonstrated experience and skill with, and then she does the same thing with the lightsaber. Is it exactly the same weapon? No, but let's not act like she was completely untrained and didn't even know which end to poke the enemy with. And remember, Snoke is taunting Kylo in that scene, of course he's going to dismiss Rey's skill and portray her as an inferior opponent and a humiliating loss.
The bulk of Sabine's training with the Darksaber is establishing a connection to the blade itself, as she is already competent with the technique. It's clear from the moment Rey picks up Luke's old saber that that connection immediately exists (for whatever reason). That's further emphasised when the saber flying past Kylo to her.
Thus, Rey has demonstrated the the things needed to competently use a lightsaber; a connection to the Force, a connection to the blade itself and the practical skill as a combatant.
And really, the whole thing about SHE MUST DO THE TRAINING feels like treating the movies as a video game, where you have to grind XP and level up until you can start farming the final boss. Of course Rey couldn't win, she's only a level 15 warrior, Kylo is at least level 30! We need to see Rey turn in some more quests and definitely get some better gear! Thankfully good fiction doesn't work that way.
Paradigm wrote: The bulk of Sabine's training with the Darksaber is establishing a connection to the blade itself, as she is already competent with the technique. It's clear from the moment Rey picks up Luke's old saber that that connection immediately exists (for whatever reason). That's further emphasised when the saber flying past Kylo to her.
Thus, Rey has demonstrated the the things needed to competently use a lightsaber; a connection to the Force, a connection to the blade itself and the practical skill as a combatant.
The implication being that bonding with a weapon should be a personal thing and take time. Something which Rey does not do.
If it was simply about establishing a bond with a particular weapon then why have Sabine train with sticks if there isn't also a level of reason to first get some training wheels. Clearly that is the starting point for training.
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Peregrine wrote: And really, the whole thing about SHE MUST DO THE TRAINING feels like treating the movies as a video game, where you have to grind XP and level up until you can start farming the final boss. Of course Rey couldn't win, she's only a level 15 warrior, Kylo is at least level 30! We need to see Rey turn in some more quests and definitely get some better gear! Thankfully good fiction doesn't work that way.
Training is part of a heroes journey, ESPECIALLY in martial arts or Samurai films on which the Jedi are heavily inspired. If the point of Reys arc is that she must master the ways of the Jedi to destroy Kylo Ren it demeans any sense of journey if she attains those skills without even the flimsiest pretext of actually having to train.
Totalwar1402 wrote: The insinuation being that SHE DID NOT NEED TO BE TRAINED WITH A LIGHTSABER even though Snoke reminds us that she has never held a lightsaber in her life.
She hadn't held a lightsaber before (which is not literally true, of course). She had clearly held and used other melee weapons, as you can see from her exercise routine in TLJ. She runs through it with her staff, which she has demonstrated experience and skill with, and then she does the same thing with the lightsaber. Is it exactly the same weapon? No, but let's not act like she was completely untrained and didn't even know which end to poke the enemy with. And remember, Snoke is taunting Kylo in that scene, of course he's going to dismiss Rey's skill and portray her as an inferior opponent and a humiliating loss.
Competence in self defense does not make you a master swordswoman. I mean two unarmed thugs are a tough challenge for her in the scavangers base when they try to steal the droid. Whereas Sabine is by that point a very experienced member of the Rebellion, has killed a lot of Imperials and is a Mandalorian trained from birth to know nothing but war. Yet she still needs to spend time bonding with and learning to use the Darksaber?
She is not being depicted as a novice like Ezra. That fight with the Praetorians was depicted as full Jedi Knight mode. They are clearly depicting her as the a master jedi. Yoda gives her the seal of approval at the end of LJ; so shes clearly a full fledged Jedi Knight after a few days swinging the thing around without any guide of training.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Training is part of a heroes journey, ESPECIALLY in martial arts or Samurai films on which the Jedi are heavily inspired. If the point of Reys arc is that she must master the ways of the Jedi to destroy Kylo Ren it demeans any sense of journey if she attains those skills without even the flimsiest pretext of actually having to train.
You'd have a point, if lightsaber combat was anything but a side point compared to the real story. The battle is one of wills, not swords. Who will turn, who is stronger in the force, etc. The swords are just an expression of that battle, a pretty show to let the audience know what is going on. I mean, look at the lightsaber fights in TLJ: Rey chops up a rock, Rey swings at a defenseless Luke, Rey flails uselessly at Snoke, Kylo kills Snoke with a sneak attack, Rey and Kylo mop up some anonymous background characters whose sole purpose is to die and show that they're allied for the moment, and then Kylo takes some swings at a ghost he can't possibly hurt. The entire battle between Rey and Kylo is fought with words. And guess what the one thing we explicitly see Rey getting lessons in is? Wisdom and understanding of the force.
Totalwar1402 wrote: The insinuation being that SHE DID NOT NEED TO BE TRAINED WITH A LIGHTSABER even though Snoke reminds us that she has never held a lightsaber in her life.
She hadn't held a lightsaber before (which is not literally true, of course). She had clearly held and used other melee weapons, as you can see from her exercise routine in TLJ. She runs through it with her staff, which she has demonstrated experience and skill with, and then she does the same thing with the lightsaber. Is it exactly the same weapon? No, but let's not act like she was completely untrained and didn't even know which end to poke the enemy with. And remember, Snoke is taunting Kylo in that scene, of course he's going to dismiss Rey's skill and portray her as an inferior opponent and a humiliating loss.
By that logic, that's like saying that somebody who can fire a bow and arrow could handle a 18 inch naval gun. They are after all both missile weapons...
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Paradigm wrote: The bulk of Sabine's training with the Darksaber is establishing a connection to the blade itself, as she is already competent with the technique. It's clear from the moment Rey picks up Luke's old saber that that connection immediately exists (for whatever reason). That's further emphasised when the saber flying past Kylo to her.
Thus, Rey has demonstrated the the things needed to competently use a lightsaber; a connection to the Force, a connection to the blade itself and the practical skill as a combatant.
Didn't Luke have his father's old light sabre in the OT? I don't remember there being a father/son connection to that.
Totalwar1402 wrote: The insinuation being that SHE DID NOT NEED TO BE TRAINED WITH A LIGHTSABER even though Snoke reminds us that she has never held a lightsaber in her life.
She hadn't held a lightsaber before (which is not literally true, of course). She had clearly held and used other melee weapons, as you can see from her exercise routine in TLJ. She runs through it with her staff, which she has demonstrated experience and skill with, and then she does the same thing with the lightsaber. Is it exactly the same weapon? No, but let's not act like she was completely untrained and didn't even know which end to poke the enemy with. And remember, Snoke is taunting Kylo in that scene, of course he's going to dismiss Rey's skill and portray her as an inferior opponent and a humiliating loss.
By that logic, that's like saying that somebody who can fire a bow and arrow could handle a 18 inch naval gun. They are after all both missile weapons...
The Khyber crystal would, still canonically, be chosen by The Right Jedi. This is shown in an episode of Clone Wars where some Younglings are taken to find their own crystals, and the trials therein.
Sith however have used artificial crystals, and that's why their blades are red. But, I'm not 100% sure if that is still canonical.
How cannon is the current comic run? Vader had a recent arc where they explain that Sith get their sabers by hunting down and killing a Jedi and taking theirs, which causes the kyber to “bleed” and turn red.
Totalwar1402 wrote: Training is part of a heroes journey, ESPECIALLY in martial arts or Samurai films on which the Jedi are heavily inspired. If the point of Reys arc is that she must master the ways of the Jedi to destroy Kylo Ren it demeans any sense of journey if she attains those skills without even the flimsiest pretext of actually having to train.
You'd have a point, if lightsaber combat was anything but a side point compared to the real story. The battle is one of wills, not swords. Who will turn, who is stronger in the force, etc. The swords are just an expression of that battle, a pretty show to let the audience know what is going on. I mean, look at the lightsaber fights in TLJ: Rey chops up a rock, Rey swings at a defenseless Luke, Rey flails uselessly at Snoke, Kylo kills Snoke with a sneak attack, Rey and Kylo mop up some anonymous background characters whose sole purpose is to die and show that they're allied for the moment, and then Kylo takes some swings at a ghost he can't possibly hurt. The entire battle between Rey and Kylo is fought with words. And guess what the one thing we explicitly see Rey getting lessons in is? Wisdom and understanding of the force.
It definitely is not a side point, it is a major visual spectacle and part of watching Star Wars. The reason Rey has that duel in TFA is to force a lightsaber fight into that film when she really had no business beating the big bad. In TLJ they shunt a fight with Snokes Praetorians in. They clearly want big flashy lightsaber fights in the film. So its not a pure drama where they don't need to explain Rey becoming a master with a lightsaber.
Plus you're ignoring that there is clearly going to be a huge lightsaber duel that will settle things between Rey and Kylo. They are going to Duel of Fates here. If you want the spectacle you have to provide a rationalization for why Rey is a master swordswoman. That battle is not going to be fought with just words. Do you really think Rey will still be portrayed as a novice in the final film? After Yoda gave the certified Jedi stamp of approval.
As I have stressed earlier it contradicts canon:
* We see Jedi younglings training with lightsabers in prequels
* They have a master and apprentice system.
* The Jedi live in academies.
* We see Obi Wan train Luke who does that blindfold test in the first film.
* Luke trains with Yoda on Dagobah.
* We had the Clone Wars with Ahsoka beng mentored by Anakin.
* We have Kanan training Ezra and Sabine
It has never been implied that any force sensitive can pick up a lightsaber and become a Jedi Master on their own without any practice. That is precisely the sort of thinking that characters get criticized for, Kanan to Sabine in particular. Its validating negative behavior. On some basic level, even a prodigy has to learn and practice from others.
Plus if Disney is really going to make this how the force works then how do you explain all of the previous training scenes in canon Star Wars? Surely Ezra could just pick up a lightsaber and learn everything he needs just as he goes. He doesn't need advice or guidance or need to train. When Rey refounds the Jedi are they really not going to have her take on apprentices and train them in lightsaber combat.
I am telling you now, it will be the most cringe worthy scene if we have Rey lecturing a Padawan on lightsaber techniques and combat when she knows absolutely nothing about it.
In fact they could have at least had it so one of those books was actually about the various lightsaber forms and had Rey practice using that. Instead, what she cuts through a big rock and that constitutes training?
Everything mentioned above is 100% correct and I agree. However, this isnt Star Wars of the 1980s and 90s anymore. I actually think JJ is a weak story teller, as evident in what he did with Star Trek. You just have to accept in each movie there will be a plot, and the characters will be able to do whatever it takes to move that plot forward, regardless of how ridiculous it is.
Plus if Disney is really going to make this how the force works then how do you explain all of the previous training scenes in canon Star Wars?
Easy. Simply highlight that Rey is an exceptional individual with (for whatever reason) a uniquely strong connection to the Force that guides her more than it has anyone else. Previous (and indeed future) generations don't have that and thus still require at least some degree of training. It's clear Rey is no 'ordinary' Force user, so the rules that apply to others may not need to apply to her and vice versa.
I can definitely see why people wouldn't like that, but it doesn't invalidate the rest of Star Wars just because one person contravenes the 'rules' such as they are.
Not to mention that assuming there's a time jump to IX, she can receive plenty of additional training from the ghosts. The bigger question at that point is how Kylo also improves, unless he's self-teaching which is what so many people are objecting to Rey doing.
Plus if Disney is really going to make this how the force works then how do you explain all of the previous training scenes in canon Star Wars?
Easy. Simply highlight that Rey is an exceptional individual with (for whatever reason) a uniquely strong connection to the Force that guides her more than it has anyone else. Previous (and indeed future) generations don't have that and thus still require at least some degree of training. It's clear Rey is no 'ordinary' Force user, so the rules that apply to others may not need to apply to her and vice versa.
I can definitely see why people wouldn't like that, but it doesn't invalidate the rest of Star Wars just because one person contravenes the 'rules' such as they are.
Not to mention that assuming there's a time jump to IX, she can receive plenty of additional training from the ghosts. The bigger question at that point is how Kylo also improves, unless he's self-teaching which is what so many people are objecting to Rey doing.
You can also use the very canon explanation that thus far we have only really seen prequel era Jedi, who are very restrained. Even in the OT, Luke is being trained by Yoda, who still holds to the older teachings for the most part.
Anakin most likely could have shown us very powerful examples of what the Force could do, but because he had to be a "good Jedi" he couldn't exercise these powers and would have been unfamiliar with them even after renouncing the Jedi. Once he became Vader, his connection to the Force was diminished due to not having as much organic tissue to connect with.
And Palpatine was too saturated with the Dark side by the time we see his power in RotJ.
So yeah, plenty of potential canon reasons why a nobody with a strong Force connection can do things unseen in the films thus far.
On the other hand, more than one poster in this very thread have used the term SJW unironically, so yeah. I'm not in any way saying there aren't many justifiable complaints that can be lobbed at this movie (many good ones posted here), but if the diversity of the cast is one, then I tend to just ignore the rest of the complaints by that person.
On the other hand, more than one poster in this very thread have used the term SJW unironically, so yeah. I'm not in any way saying there aren't many justifiable complaints that can be lobbed at this movie (many good ones posted here), but if the diversity of the cast is one, then I tend to just ignore the rest of the complaints by that person.
Could you please point out a post as an example.
I don't recall is my post included the letters "S", "J", and "W" specifically, but I did accuse critics of rating the movie higher due to political bias.
Also, as for the SJW thing... judging by the fact that a lot of reviews I've read cited "Diversity" or "Strong Female Characters", linking SJW's to this movie's generally positive critical reception might not just be the usual "crazy guy on the internet" reaction. I rather suspect that no-one wanting to badmouth Carrie Fischer's last movie may also play a role,
Plus if Disney is really going to make this how the force works then how do you explain all of the previous training scenes in canon Star Wars?
Easy. Simply highlight that Rey is an exceptional individual with (for whatever reason) a uniquely strong connection to the Force that guides her more than it has anyone else. Previous (and indeed future) generations don't have that and thus still require at least some degree of training. It's clear Rey is no 'ordinary' Force user, so the rules that apply to others may not need to apply to her and vice versa.
I can definitely see why people wouldn't like that, but it doesn't invalidate the rest of Star Wars just because one person contravenes the 'rules' such as they are.
Not to mention that assuming there's a time jump to IX, she can receive plenty of additional training from the ghosts. The bigger question at that point is how Kylo also improves, unless he's self-teaching which is what so many people are objecting to Rey doing.
You can also use the very canon explanation that thus far we have only really seen prequel era Jedi, who are very restrained. Even in the OT, Luke is being trained by Yoda, who still holds to the older teachings for the most part.
Anakin most likely could have shown us very powerful examples of what the Force could do, but because he had to be a "good Jedi" he couldn't exercise these powers and would have been unfamiliar with them even after renouncing the Jedi. Once he became Vader, his connection to the Force was diminished due to not having as much organic tissue to connect with.
And Palpatine was too saturated with the Dark side by the time we see his power in RotJ.
So yeah, plenty of potential canon reasons why a nobody with a strong Force connection can do things unseen in the films thus far.
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Sure, but as a writer you still have to at least explain (preferably show) that. This is symbolic of the weakest part of the film for me (which I liked a bit more than I disliked): Johnson may be a great director but he's kind of a bad writer.
On the other hand, more than one poster in this very thread have used the term SJW unironically, so yeah. I'm not in any way saying there aren't many justifiable complaints that can be lobbed at this movie (many good ones posted here), but if the diversity of the cast is one, then I tend to just ignore the rest of the complaints by that person.
Could you please point out a post as an example.
Page 26, for example. This thread has been pretty good overall, largely because we have actual discussions here, but take a look at some of the more general "popular" website comments section, like IGN or IO9, and every third post seems to allude to it.
Well finally got to see it today with a mate. Seeing Ade Edmondson on the bridge of a Star destroyer was definitely a unexpected highlight There was a lot of good stuff, but we both came away feeling unsure about the overall film. I think repeated viewings without the weight of all the expectations I had personally built up for the direction of the story and characters will be a good thing. That said I think a couple of things will always bug me about the film. Namely the total lack of a sense of speed and movement with the bombers at the start and the "chase" through the rest of the film, as well as the waste of Lorna Derns Admiral Holdo.
I think a lesser actress than Laura Dern wouldn't have been able to do anywhere near so much* with the character. Holds is the Captain Harris of the Rebellion, after all. That said, I would like to see Jane Lynch's take on the character.
*the way Jackson did what he could with Windu. Small victories, here. The rebellion is all about small victories.
Plus if Disney is really going to make this how the force works then how do you explain all of the previous training scenes in canon Star Wars?
Easy. Simply highlight that Rey is an exceptional individual with (for whatever reason) a uniquely strong connection to the Force that guides her more than it has anyone else. Previous (and indeed future) generations don't have that and thus still require at least some degree of training. It's clear Rey is no 'ordinary' Force user, so the rules that apply to others may not need to apply to her and vice versa.
I can definitely see why people wouldn't like that, but it doesn't invalidate the rest of Star Wars just because one person contravenes the 'rules' such as they are.
Not to mention that assuming there's a time jump to IX, she can receive plenty of additional training from the ghosts. The bigger question at that point is how Kylo also improves, unless he's self-teaching which is what so many people are objecting to Rey doing.
You can also use the very canon explanation that thus far we have only really seen prequel era Jedi, who are very restrained. Even in the OT, Luke is being trained by Yoda, who still holds to the older teachings for the most part.
Anakin most likely could have shown us very powerful examples of what the Force could do, but because he had to be a "good Jedi" he couldn't exercise these powers and would have been unfamiliar with them even after renouncing the Jedi. Once he became Vader, his connection to the Force was diminished due to not having as much organic tissue to connect with.
And Palpatine was too saturated with the Dark side by the time we see his power in RotJ.
So yeah, plenty of potential canon reasons why a nobody with a strong Force connection can do things unseen in the films thus far.
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Eh. That's a very fanon explanation, actually. Some of doesn't even make sense- palpatine being 'too saturated' with the force to do powerful things?
I'm not even sure that prequel Jedi were all that restrained, to be honest. It seems more a problem of cinematography- several of them (including Yoda and Mace) were quite ridiculous in the Clone Wars cartoon.
While child Anakin had an absurd number of unexplained skills (and a grotesquely positive portrayal of life as a slave), adult Anakin just seemed pretty average. No trace of the future sight others display, average swordsmanship, a good but not ridiculously silly pilot, ok with telekinesis and pretty on par with the other stuff. His most notable traits were arrogance and recklessness that were often indistinguishable from stupidity.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think a lesser actress than Laura Dern wouldn't have been able to do anywhere near so much* with the character. Holds is the Captain Harris of the Rebellion, after all. That said, I would like to see Jane Lynch's take on the character.
*the way Jackson did what he could with Windu. Small victories, here. The rebellion is all about small victories.
Oh she was great no doubt. That's why I wish she had survived the movie, especially with Carrie Fisher's death. Plus it really cramps any Holdo and Poe ships
Page 26 and 28. I see. I already pointed out that is a stunt but Disney uses "equality" for advertisement. Vanity Fair and The Guardian (so low it fell) already wrote some piece about how much we need these movies in this period, that Holdo is an example about mansplaining. I have contempt for the so called alt-right but these "journalists" are no better. And even worse the writers*.
I used to think that this was what I call a Madonna-Whore complex translated to the creation of female characters. The complex can see women only as saints or sexual object, denying their identity and freedom in sexual expression. These writers write female characters that are either damsel in distress or mary sues. To the character is denied any progression/arc (and chance to fail, a very human thing) because they are either object(ive)s, or too perfect to elicit empathy from the viewer.
I used to think that these kind of characters, especially the Sues, were characters written by sexist men that wanted to show off their grasp on equality, and failed because their chauvinism would eventually come out, consciously or not. Then I discover that a good part of the writing staff is female and I shake my head. These people are only able to show men fail, and are unable to develop a proper female.
This, of course, does not show that women should not write sci-fi. Any of these chauvinistic idiots should be struck with an improvised weapon built with the bibliography of Ursula Le Guin. Just that these writers were hired for their views, and not their skill.
I think that if both the media circus and the writers politicize so heavily a children movie, and more importantly at huge expense of story and characters (and killing its "childish spirit, if you wish), we have a BIG problem, regardless that you can like the word "SJW" or not.
Dunno. After all garbage like Twilight and 50shades are written by women. I find this appalling. If I will have a daughter, I will have to pay a lot of attention to what she comes in contact with, if not to censor, at least to discuss.
Where is gone the Disney that could write a character like Mulan?
*in all honesty, Peregrine and others just answered with a sort of Hanlon's Razor - these writers are just stupid/incompetent, no malice. But I cannot help feeling contempt with for circus.
You'd have a point, if lightsaber combat was anything but a side point compared to the real story. The battle is one of wills, not swords. Who will turn, who is stronger in the force, etc. The swords are just an expression of that battle, a pretty show to let the audience know what is going on.
All fight scenes are expressions of will, when the battle comes to swords it is a statement regarding its severity. This is stated outright by Dooku in his fight with Yoda; "It is obvious that this contest cannot be decided by our knowledge of the Force... but by our skills with a lightsaber."
I'm not even sure that prequel Jedi were all that restrained, to be honest. It seems more a problem of cinematography- several of them (including Yoda and Mace) were quite ridiculous in the Clone Wars cartoon.
And how does Mace even die? He never trusted Anakin, but does so in the midst of his fight with Palpatine?
It's really bizarre to me how people can defend some of the decisions made in this film. Even as a standalone film without the Star Wars moniker it's really quite bad. There is no character development, everything that has been set up by every film prior to this one is totally wasted and abandoned, and the plot is completely nonsensical.
Snoke is the most powerful force wielder ever. Who is he? Where did he come from and what are his motivations? Oh, he's dead, never mind.
The First Order are a band of cartoonish space Nazis, that also have absolutely no explanation for where they came from or what they're doing. Just that they wear all black, so they must be bad guys.
If Holdo or whatever had told Poe about her plan, they could have just executed it. Which makes basically the entire movie unnecessary, especially the whole casino sub-plot.
If you can use lightspeed jumps as a weapon, they could have destroyed the First Order fleet with one of their ships in the beginning (not to mention both Death Stars and the Star Killer Base).
Every single decision the Resistance leadership makes just gets more of their own fighters killed, for no reason, to the point where there are literally about 12 of them left at the end of the movie, but it's portrayed as a triumph because "we save the ones we love, feth the rest."
I used to think that this was what I call a Madonna-Whore complex translated to the creation of female characters. The complex can see women only as saints or sexual object, denying their identity and freedom in sexual expression. These writers write female characters that are either damsel in distress or mary sues.
To the character is denied any progression/arc (and chance to fail, a very human thing) because they are either object(ive)s, or too perfect to elicit empathy from the viewer.
I used to think that these kind of characters, especially the Sues, were characters written by sexist men that wanted to show off their grasp on equality, and failed because their chauvinism would eventually come out, consciously or not. Then I discover that a good part of the writing staff is female and shake my head. These people are only able to show men fail, and are unable to develop a proper female.
You can't even write a proper sentence more often than not.
This, of course, does not show that females should not write sci-fi. Any of these chauvinistic idiots should be struck with an improvised weapon built with the bibliography of Ursula Le Guin. Just that these writers were hired for their views, and not their skill.
Well, I'm glad you're here to clarify that's okay for women to write scifi. Thanks. That really needed clarification.
I think that if both the media circus and the writers politicize so heavily a children movie, and more importantly at huge expense of story and characters (and killing its "childish spirit, if you wish), we have a BIG problem, regardless that you can like the word "SJW" or not.
No, you simply don't like the film and are making wild accusations with minimal basis in reality. I really feel to see how having more female characters is somehow an attack on your manhood or how Rose having a go at arms dealers is somehow an attack on capitalism. You are jumping at shadows.
Dunno. After all garbage like Twilight and 50shades are written by women. I find this appalling. If I will have a daughter, I will have to pay a lot of attention to what she comes in contact with, if not to censor, at least to discuss.
Could you paint in broader brush strokes? First you complain about writers creating female characters that are either too weak or too strong or too perfect. Then you complain about real women failing. Guess what? Women are actually humans too and it's perfectly acceptable for them to fail at things just like everyone else. The fact Twilight and 50 Shades were written by an individual woman has nothing to do with the gender as a whole and the fact you even interpret it in that way is honestly fething disturbing.
All of your comments are drenched in this venomous, poorly veiled misogyny.
Luciferian wrote: It's really bizarre to me how people can defend some of the decisions made in this film. Even as a standalone film without the Star Wars moniker it's really quite bad. There is no character development, everything that has been set up by every film prior to this one is totally wasted and abandoned, and the plot is completely nonsensical.
Snoke is the most powerful force wielder ever. Who is he? Where did he come from and what are his motivations? Oh, he's dead, never mind.
The First Order are a band of cartoonish space Nazis, that also have absolutely no explanation for where they came from or what they're doing. Just that they wear all black, so they must be bad guys.
If Holdo or whatever had told Poe about her plan, they could have just executed it. Which makes basically the entire movie unnecessary, especially the whole casino sub-plot.
If you can use lightspeed jumps as a weapon, they could have destroyed the First Order fleet with one of their ships in the beginning (not to mention both Death Stars and the Star Killer Base).
Every single decision the Resistance leadership makes just gets more of their own fighters killed, for no reason, to the point where there are literally about 12 of them left at the end of the movie, but it's portrayed as a triumph because "we save the ones we love, feth the rest."
I used to think that this was what I call a Madonna-Whore complex translated to the creation of female characters. The complex can see women only as saints or sexual object, denying their identity and freedom in sexual expression. These writers write female characters that are either damsel in distress or mary sues.
To the character is denied any progression/arc (and chance to fail, a very human thing) because they are either object(ive)s, or too perfect to elicit empathy from the viewer.
I used to think that these kind of characters, especially the Sues, were characters written by sexist men that wanted to show off their grasp on equality, and failed because their chauvinism would eventually come out, consciously or not. Then I discover that a good part of the writing staff is female and shake my head. These people are only able to show men fail, and are unable to develop a proper female.
You can't even write a proper sentence more often than not.
This, of course, does not show that females should not write sci-fi. Any of these chauvinistic idiots should be struck with an improvised weapon built with the bibliography of Ursula Le Guin. Just that these writers were hired for their views, and not their skill.
Well, I'm glad you're here to clarify that's okay for women to write scifi. Thanks. That really needed clarification.
I think that if both the media circus and the writers politicize so heavily a children movie, and more importantly at huge expense of story and characters (and killing its "childish spirit, if you wish), we have a BIG problem, regardless that you can like the word "SJW" or not.
No, you simply don't like the film and are making wild accusations with minimal basis in reality. I really feel to see how having more female characters is somehow an attack on your manhood or how Rose having a go at arms dealers is somehow an attack on capitalism. You are jumping at shadows.
Dunno. After all garbage like Twilight and 50shades are written by women. I find this appalling. If I will have a daughter, I will have to pay a lot of attention to what she comes in contact with, if not to censor, at least to discuss.
Could you paint in broader brush strokes? First you complain about writers creating female characters that are either too weak or too strong or too perfect. Then you complain about real women failing. Guess what? Women are actually humans too and it's perfectly acceptable for them to fail at things just like everyone else. The fact Twilight and 50 Shades were written by an individual woman has nothing to do with the gender as a whole and the fact you even interpret it in that way is honestly fething disturbing.
All of your comments are drenched in this venomous, poorly veiled misogyny.
SJW. LOL. These are all legitimate arguements and properly constructed sentences. We on the internet use parenthesis to make statements within statements - it's perfectly fine.
Luciferian wrote: It's really bizarre to me how people can defend some of the decisions made in this film. Even as a standalone film without the Star Wars moniker it's really quite bad. There is no character development, everything that has been set up by every film prior to this one is totally wasted and abandoned, and the plot is completely nonsensical.
Snoke is the most powerful force wielder ever. Who is he? Where did he come from and what are his motivations? Oh, he's dead, never mind.
The First Order are a band of cartoonish space Nazis, that also have absolutely no explanation for where they came from or what they're doing. Just that they wear all black, so they must be bad guys.
If Holdo or whatever had told Poe about her plan, they could have just executed it. Which makes basically the entire movie unnecessary, especially the whole casino sub-plot.
If you can use lightspeed jumps as a weapon, they could have destroyed the First Order fleet with one of their ships in the beginning (not to mention both Death Stars and the Star Killer Base).
Every single decision the Resistance leadership makes just gets more of their own fighters killed, for no reason, to the point where there are literally about 12 of them left at the end of the movie, but it's portrayed as a triumph because "we save the ones we love, feth the rest."
Nonsense.
All of this has been addressed, both here and elsewhere.
No character development? Just Luke alone goes from having abandoned the Force to using it to a never before seen degree to save Leia and the handful of Resistance fighters left.
Rey goes from struggling with her identity and place in the galaxy, and falling for Kylo/Snoke's deception, to embracing her role as a Jedi and member of the Resistance.
And that's just two characters. Saying there is no character development is a blatant falsehood. Whether or not you like it is all opinion.
Snoke is never stated to be the most powerful ever. This isn't really clarified at all outside of Luke saying Kylo and Rey have incredible raw strength, but even then it's not compared to how power Luke or Snoke may or may not be.
Yes, the First Order is poorly explained in the movie other than it's The Empire 2.0.
I honestly don't understand how people completely missed the point of the casino subplot. I understand if you think it's stupid, but it's not pointless. There is a clear reason.
An object the mass of an X-Wing moving at the speed of light would destroy/devastate a planet. This has been a criticism of Star Wars since ANH. Real world physics are not applicable.
I'm not sure how you perceive it as a triumph and that's a pretty egregious misquote as well.
So - a ship going into hyperspace delivers interia to an object it hits...but does not also rip itself apart from the interia of dropping out of hyperspace to normal speed. I always assumed that hyperspace was inter dimensional travel. You aren't actually moving at that speed - it's just while in hyperspace movement is expontentially multiplied and you aren't in real space. We basically have to assume that hyperspace is exponentially faster than light-speed because it doesn't take centuries to travel to distant star systems.
The entire scene with the suicide hyper-drive is crap. It looks amazing though. It's true that hyperspace and light-speed were used interchangeably in 4-5-6 but they actually don't mean light speed at all.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I think a lesser actress than Laura Dern wouldn't have been able to do anywhere near so much* with the character. Holds is the Captain Harris of the Rebellion, after all. That said, I would like to see Jane Lynch's take on the character.
*the way Jackson did what he could with Windu. Small victories, here. The rebellion is all about small victories.
Oh she was great no doubt. That's why I wish she had survived the movie, especially with Carrie Fisher's death. Plus it really cramps any Holdo and Poe ships
Now there's an idea to warm the heart. Yes, the heart.
Holdo tells Poe about her evacuation plan. They use their small ships and pods to make a planetary landing and jump their large ships away. Movie over. Crises averted.
Also, no Mary Sues? what is Rey if not a Mary Sue? She is a random person from nowhere who has total command over the force and close combat fighting techniques, and according to Yoda, the full knowledge of the Jedi tradition, in spite of having no training. She not only has no character development, both her and Luke regress in terms of development. After her encounter with Kylo, Rey goes back to exactly where she was before.
And Luke's character arc has absolutely no consistency due to this movie. He's the guy who risks everything going to meet the Emperor and Darth Vader because he believes he can redeem his father, the second most evil person in the known universe, but he considers murdering his nephew and gives everything up because he was getting bad vibes? What is that? And then he just dies. Great character development.
Rose literally stops Finn from saving possibly hundreds or thousands of lives so she can kiss him in the middle of a battlefield, after knowing him for less than a day. So yeah, "save the ones we love, feth the rest."
And this:
All of your comments are drenched in this venomous, poorly veiled misogyny.
is bs.
He is absolutely correct. You don't do service to women by writing them as one-dimensional superbeings. You don't do service to people by pandering to them and treating them like children. And calling that out doesn't make you a misogynist.
Xenomancers wrote: So - a ship going into hyperspace delivers interia to an object it hits...but does not also rip itself apart from the interia of dropping out of hyperspace to normal speed. I always assumed that hyperspace was inter dimensional travel. You aren't actually moving at that speed - it's just while in hyperspace movement is expontentially multiplied and you aren't in real space. We basically have to assume that hyperspace is exponentially faster than light-speed because it doesn't take centuries to travel to distant star systems.
The entire scene with the suicide hyper-drive is crap. It looks amazing though. It's true that hyperspace and light-speed were used interchangeably in 4-5-6 but they actually don't mean light speed at all.
The formerly canonical explanation of hyperdrive is that the ship and everything in it transpose from matter into tachyons, particles than cannot exist below light speed. The jump "to light speed" just refers to achieving this alternate state of existence. However, it also canonically (at one point) was another dimension. It's all messed up. Ships in hyperspace travel through small bits matter without any interaction.
The scene doesn't work by the old rules. Still, pretty sweet if you just don't care.
What was it that Yoda told Luke? Something about failure being one of the greatest teachers? This does seem to be intended as one of the central themes of the movie. Nearly all the protagonists face failure and have to overcome it.
I know there's like some standard ways to complain about films and hyperbole is all the rage, but this is the film in which Poe begins the moving pushing to take down a dreadnought regardless of how many lives it costs to ordering a retreat when he realizes that he's losing too much for it to even matter if they stop the battering ram. This movie spends more time developing characters (at times to a fault) than most of the franchise. I get maybe not liking the development or thinking there's not enough of it or that certain characters are underdeveloped, but none at all?
On a different note; the term Mary Sue needs to be burned to the ground. Its such an egregiously misappropriated term at this point almost entirely used to passive aggressively attack attempts to give women the kind of powerful hero fantasy characters that more or less define my childhood. It's such a pointlessly mean spirited attack; particularly from a culture that is more or less built on our mutual admiration for similar characters that can't hold up to anywhere near the level of scrutiny I see applied to "Mary Sues".
GoatboyBeta wrote: What was it that Yoda told Luke? Something about failure being one of the greatest teachers? This does seem to be intended as one of the central themes of the movie. Nearly all the protagonists face failure and have to overcome it.
I know there's like some standard ways to complain about films and hyperbole is all the rage, but this is the film in which Poe begins the moving pushing to take down a dreadnought regardless of how many lives it costs to ordering a retreat when he realizes that he's losing too much for it to even matter if they stop the battering ram. This movie spends more time developing characters (at times to a fault) than most of the franchise. I get maybe not liking the development or thinking there's not enough of it or that certain characters are underdeveloped, but none at all?
On a different note; the term Mary Sue needs to be burned to the ground. Its such an egregiously misappropriated term at this point almost entirely used to passive aggressively attack attempts to give women the kind of powerful hero fantasy characters that more or less define my childhood. It's such a pointlessly mean spirited attack; particularly from a culture that is more or less built on our mutual admiration for similar characters that can't hold up to anywhere near the level of scrutiny I see applied to "Mary Sues".
I apply Mary Sue to male and female characters equally, and both genders of Mary Sues are equally bad. A poorly written character doesn't become a well-written character when you change its gender in either direction. Change my mind.
All of this has been addressed, both here and elsewhere.
No character development? Just Luke alone goes from having abandoned the Force to using it to a never before seen degree to save Leia and the handful of Resistance fighters left.
That... isn't character development. Thats a 180 (from his stance in Return of the Jedi) then another 180 from his stance earlier in this movie. And powers never seen before with no explanation is unequivocally bad storytelling. It also raises all sorts of awkward questions why Ren can't use the same powers at a short range to kill the handful of people after Luke burns himself out. He's supposed to be really powerful, right? Or would that be narratively unsatisfying...?
Rey goes from struggling with her identity and place in the galaxy, and falling for Kylo/Snoke's deception, to embracing her role as a Jedi and member of the Resistance.
I really hope you're not using that as an example of character development. Who is Rey? <Film shrugs> Oh, tricked? <Well, that guy is dead> Oh, is jedi now. OK...
I'm not even clear why she'd join the Resistance. Rey's interactions with the Resistance consist entirely of:
running around with Finn for maybe... a day? Then he owns up to lying to her about being a Resistance member and tries to convince her to run away with him. Then she gets kidnapped.
He does come back to rescue her (after she escapes on her own), and gets planted into a coma. He doesn't wake up again until after she's gone.
She then briefly gets hugged by the Resistance commander after showing up to tell her her ex-husband has died.
Rey then leaves.
Yep. Awkwardly hugging a single resistance member out of sympathy for her personal loss, really deep reasons for becoming a member of the Resistance there.
And that's just two characters. Saying there is no character development is a blatant falsehood. Whether or not you like it is all opinion.
Actually, if that is sum total of your idea of character development, then it is completely true.
I honestly don't understand how people completely missed the point of the casino subplot. I understand if you think it's stupid, but it's not pointless. There is a clear reason.
Which is... what? To demonstrate that the resistance can just leave the ridiculous hyperspace chase at any time?
Xenomancers wrote:
GoatboyBeta wrote:
What was it that Yoda told Luke? Something about failure being one of the greatest teachers? This does seem to be intended as one of the central themes of the movie. Nearly all the protagonists face failure and have to overcome it.
A little "Disney land" isn't it?
Well, not really. Learning from failure is a lot of Luke's ESB arc, and Han hits it repeatedly (particularly, repairing the falcon, breaking into the Imperial bunker, etc). In a lot of ways it is also Anakin's prequel arc, but he significantly fails to learn from his failures.
But I'm not convinced that the characters in this film overcome or learn from their failures either.
Rey is a Sue. No matter how much in denial you are about her. She picks up abilities in an unbelievably fast way, she beats Luke and people trained by him in a stupidly easy way, and people had to come with explanations like memory wipes or heritage to make sense of this nonsense. Is a bullcrap character.
Is this even a sentence?
I meant that these character have are denied a personhood. They do not progress or fail. They are either like Rey, or just an object and the objective of a "quest".
You can't even write a proper sentence more often than not.
I apologize, when I write hastly my english is very bad. But this does not make my point less solid. These characters are not-characters, caricatures, and look like something written by someone that is unable to see a woman as a person. And yet, they are proposed as examples of new shining female heroes. I find just odd that a female author is involved - I could expect the inability of seeing a woman as a human from a misogynistic man. Also, you are attacking my writing more than my content. And with such a venomous manner that makes me think I struck some nerve. What happened, man? I wish to remind you that this has only the effect of amusing me more.
Well, I'm glad you're here to clarify that's okay for women to write scifi. Thanks. That really needed clarification.
I am in no way attacking women as authors. I strongly believe that people should have roles because of their skill, not because of their chromosomes. I reiterate my points because I am sick of Disney's hypocrisy.
No, you simply don't like the film and are making wild accusations with minimal basis in reality. I really feel to see how having more female characters is somehow an attack on your manhood or how Rose having a go at arms dealers is somehow an attack on capitalism. You are jumping at shadows.
You are creating a strawman, and just reiterating points that many bloggers and other questionable sources are now repeating ad nauseam. That whose who don't like Rey feel threatened by her. I grew up with Ripley and Sarah Connor. But those were character well written, Rey is not and is absolutely maddening that you are unable to understand why. I am perfectly fine with a SW female protagonist. If you ask me, I would have gone with Rey being a stormtrooper and the whole arc focused more on her. A redemption arc, first and indoctrinated soldier then a Jedi trained by luke. With all the faults and struggle, and the initial bigotry. And a mirror of the fall of Vader in I-III (redemption vs fall). But hey, if you want to keep spitting bile on the strawman you created, go ahead.
Could you paint in broader brush strokes? First you complain about writers creating female characters that are either too weak or too strong or too perfect.
The characters are not too weak or strong. Is not a matter of strength, is a matter of humanity. A matter of risk to fail. Compare Rey with Luke of Mulan, since I brought this one up, too, and is a very good female character. What is the biggest difference you can notice (if able)?
Then you complain about real women failing. Guess what? Women are actually humans too and it's perfectly acceptable for them to fail at things just like everyone else.
So you recognize that these writers failed in every way. I mean, this is my main point. This stuff is written like crap.
The fact Twilight and 50 Shades were written by an individual woman has nothing to do with the gender as a whole and the fact you even interpret it in that way is honestly fething disturbing.
This is a valid point, actually. You are right here. These are individual women. The point I wanted to make is that 50 shades or Twilight are very popular, and the women that wrote another popular story (as SW one) created female characters that are awful. But I did not articulate that well so you are right in attacking me here. It did not come out well. I apologize about that.
On a different note; the term Mary Sue needs to be burned to the ground. Its such an egregiously misappropriated term at this point almost entirely used to passive aggressively attack attempts to give women the kind of powerful hero fantasy characters that more or less define my childhood. It's such a pointlessly mean spirited attack; particularly from a culture that is more or less built on our mutual admiration for similar characters that can't hold up to anywhere near the level of scrutiny I see applied to "Mary Sues".
This is absolute crap and another strawman. Sarah Connor or Ripley or Mulan are not Sues, and are women. If Luke did not fail every now and then like he did, and was more like Rey, he would have been the analogous of Mary Sue, a Gary Stu (or Marty Stu).
Is not a matter of the gender of the character, is about its development, flaws and other elements. Anyone that wants to make you think differently is not being honest.
He is absolutely correct. You don't do service to women by writing them as one-dimensional superbeings. You don't do service to people by pandering to them and treating them like children. And calling that out doesn't make you a misogynist.
Thank you for this. You articulated it better than I could.
Funnily enough I and others who didn't like this film had a genuine SJW try to pull there usual crap, they even said and I quote "you only don't like the film because it challenges the male hierarchy" and "as a white male who has never had to deal with oppression"
It's laughable the length these parasites will go to virtue signal
I wnated to like this film, three of us went and had the same opinions, 2 of us having really enjoyed TFA, the other - a big SW fan having not enjyed it much - so mixed anticpation.
Some good stuff amongst the steaming pile of dross that made up much of the films oh so very long run time - It reminded us strongly of geostorm - Occassional good bits, some fun and good effects but basically a crap film.
The ohh so long drawn out chase scene with the Imperials keeping all their fighters in their bays was just awful, was there anyone aboard the Star Destroyers? They certainly did nothing or even fire in the whole film. Plot holes were just everywhere - and becuase the film was so badly paced - they were made obvious - make it fast paced and soem can be overlooked, But not here - no chance.
The whole pop out to visit casino world was terrible filler for an overlong film. "Bring out the battering ram cannon" was hilarious.
Maybe 10 mins of good stuff - rest was terrible. we did like the Rey / Ben stuff though
Best described as somethng to endure rather than enjoy.
Formosa wrote: Funnily enough I and others who didn't like this film had a genuine SJW try to pull there usual crap, they even said and I quote "you only don't like the film because it challenges the male hierarchy" and "as a white male who has never had to deal with oppression"
It's laughable the length these parasites will go to virtue signal
Laugh at those people. One can be Lefty McBleedingheart, love all the diversity in the casting, and still think the film was poorly written, even poorly conceived. The casting and diversity have literally nothing to do with the complaints. Holdo could have been played by Bruce Penhall and it wouldn't make the character any less frustrating.
Every time I think about this film I end up revising my opinion down further. It's really poor, isn't it? I mean, we're talking about scraping new depths of the barrel. I can't think of a level this works on. It ruins classic characters we fell in love with decades ago, it does nothing with half-baked characters we've been waiting to like. It sets up nothing going forward. It's an utter failure as a sequel, a Star Wars story and as a movie.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: One can be Lefty McBleedingheart, love all the diversity in the casting, and still think the film was poorly written, even poorly conceived.
Now that the initial weekend flush is behind it, that hot period when pretty much anything that had the Star Wars name on it could have earned $500 million worldwide, audience fervor for Star Wars: The Last Jedi has cooled off like a chilly winter evening on planet Hoth.
In North America, daily holds for the Rian Johnson-directed flick have been significantly worse than those experienced by Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and if the pattern continues The Last Jedi could actually wind up doing not much better than the 2016 spin-off movie.
That, of course, would be a catastrophic result, akin to Warner/DC’s disastrous, money-losing fiasco with Justice League.
Just as Justice League jammed all of DC’s biggest and most valuable superheroes into a single, swing-for-the-fences mash-up that failed to earn even as much as the single-hero, half-priced (yet far superior) Wonder Woman, so it appears that Disney may have turned the one-time opportunity to put Luke and Leia together in their last movie into an under-performing debacle that earns little more than the band-of-nobodies Rogue One.
Not that Star Wars: The Last Jedi is in any danger of losing money. There’s too much momentum behind the franchise, too many people who will pay to see it even when they’ve heard it’s a disappointing mess. Disney could have called it The Star Wars Movie That Will Completely Turn You Off From Ever Seeing Another Star Wars Movie Again and it still would have collected $1.2 billion at the box office and turned a tidy profit.
But for Disney, and for anyone watching, this isn’t really a matter of whether The Last Jedi turns over a billion or more in revenue. That was always an easy target. This is a matter of how well the film succeeds in meeting financial expectations, how well it fulfills the needs of the franchise, and whether it strengthens the Star Wars brand for future projects.
By those measures, The Last Jedi already looks like a dud.
After opening at nearly 90 percent of The Force Awakens' strength, The Last Jedi has steadily fallen behind, and by Wednesday, its 6th full day in release, it was holding its audience at a lesser rate than every one of the previous eight live action Star Wars movies. It had retained just 16 percent of its opening day gross, a figure that, as the chart below shows, is well below the holds for The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and the last of the prequels, Revenge of the Sith.
I wanted to avoid cluttering up the chart, but I could have added all five of the other previous Star Wars live action movies and the image would remain the same: The Last Jedi is the rock-bottom, worst-holding movie of the entire 9-film franchise. Even Attack of the Clones looks like a champ in comparison.
In fact, The Last Jedi isn't even holding as well as Justice League did. On its sixth day the DC film retained 27 percent of its opening day audience, nearly double what the Star Wars picture has done.
If you object to comparing Last Jedi's daily grosses to the film's $104.6 million opening day with its $45 million in Thursday previews included, compare the grosses instead to the Saturday number. Or Sunday. Or Friday without the preview figures. The story is consistent: The Last Jedi is flying like a fat turkey in the Star Wars universe.
The movie's flight trajectory will more than likely improve as schools let out for the holidays and Christmas week arrives. But the Yuletide competition has begun to boil with Downsizing, Father Figures, Pitch Perfect 3, The Greatest Showman and Jumanji all arriving in theaters to stake their claims on the box office. It's far from certain that The Last Jedi will hold its own against such an onslaught, especially since it's being led by Jumanji's Dwayne "The World's Biggest Movie Star" Johnson.
Star Wars will survive, of course, in the domestic market and in the handful of territories where it's a successful legacy franchise. But in key markets like Korea and Mexico and China and India, places where The Force Awakens wasn't well received and audiences could go either way, The Last Jedi may burn that bridge, and truly turn off mass audiences from ever seeing another Star Wars movie again.
Formosa wrote: Funnily enough I and others who didn't like this film had a genuine SJW try to pull there usual crap, they even said and I quote "you only don't like the film because it challenges the male hierarchy" and "as a white male who has never had to deal with oppression"
It's laughable the length these parasites will go to virtue signal
Laugh at those people. One can be Lefty McBleedingheart, love all the diversity in the casting, and still think the film was poorly written, even poorly conceived. The casting and diversity have literally nothing to do with the complaints. Holdo could have been played by Bruce Penhall and it wouldn't make the character any less frustrating.
They tried to pull the same trick with the remake of Ghostbusters.
@Manchu: I hope it with all my heart because for once the villains could be punished, J. J. Abrams first and foremost. But is as much difficult as shooting two proton torpedoes in a thermal exhaust port. People will watch this... movie-thing (in the John Carpenter sense) over and over for Christmas.
The "coverage" is already shifting conversation away from a discussion about the movie itself to a discussion of the audience. As with Ghostbusters (2016) (and, laughably, The Force Awakens and Rogue One), the story needs to be that poor TLJ is "being attacked" by 4chan, trolls, the Alt Right, MRActivists, mysoginists, racists, manchildren, and whatever other vague, faceless categories of scum & villainy. The logic being, if "bad people" hate TLJ then TLJ must be good and noble. Oh and there's also the implicit threat: if you dare not to like TLJ then it is clearly because you are a horrible, bigoted man-baby. So you better like it!
Manchu wrote: The "coverage" is already shifting conversation away from a discussion about the movie itself to a discussion of the audience. As with Ghostbusters (2016) (and, laughably, The Force Awakens and Rogue One), the story needs to be that poor TLJ is "being attacked" by 4chan, trolls, the Alt Right, MRActivists, mysoginists, racists, manchildren, and whatever other vague, faceless categories of scum & villainy. The logic being, if "bad people" hate TLJ then TLJ must be good and noble. Oh and there's also the implicit threat: if you dare not to like TLJ then it is clearly because you are a horrible, bigoted man-baby. So you better like it!
Seen this myself. "Alt right trolls claim to be the cause of low Rotten Tomatoes score"... Sure.
Manchu wrote: The "coverage" is already shifting conversation away from a discussion about the movie itself to a discussion of the audience. As with Ghostbusters (2016) (and, laughably, The Force Awakens and Rogue One), the story needs to be that poor TLJ is "being attacked" by 4chan, trolls, the Alt Right, MRActivists, mysoginists, racists, manchildren, and whatever other vague, faceless categories of scum & villainy. The logic being, if "bad people" hate TLJ then TLJ must be good and noble. Oh and there's also the implicit threat: if you dare not to like TLJ then it is clearly because you are a horrible, bigoted man-baby. So you better like it!
It will probably shift again when that doesn't fly. Those numbers from Forbes indicate that the will of the people is against TLJ. I wonder if the next step will be casting the film's supporters as the bad people.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Manchu wrote: Disney has already established that directors are disposable.
I know I'm behind the times but I've only really encountered these SJW recently, my line of work insulates me from that kind of person (I work with the army), and I've been trying to research quite how to deal with them as at some point, I will have to (recruitment), and I'm just finding very difficult to see things from there perspective, I've had ethnic and diversity training as part of my job and have been doing it for a long time and still yet I find it difficult to understand.
Don't want to derail the thread though, I just can't understand this virtue signaling (newly learnt term for me) when I am knee deep in actually tackling these issues.
Formosa wrote: I know I'm behind the times but I've only really encountered these SJW recently, my line of work insulates me from that kind of person (I work with the army), and I've been trying to research quite how to deal with them as at some point, I will have to (recruitment), and I'm just finding very difficult to see things from there perspective, I've had ethnic and diversity training as part of my job and have been doing it for a long time and still yet I find it difficult to understand.
Don't want to derail the thread though, I just can't understand this virtue signaling (newly learnt term for me) when I am knee deep in actually tackling these issues.
The Army is possibly the most equal-opportunity, diverse organization on the planet. It's a shining example of how people from all kinds of backgrounds, ethnicities and even nationalities can work together side by side and actually accomplish something, without politicization, tribalism or victim culture. Just apply the values you learn working with the Army (Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity and Personal Courage) to every situation and you will always be in the right. The best way to deal with culture warriors is to plainly and honestly state your case and move on. Don't let them make you apologize for something like not liking a movie, but don't give them any ammunition, either. Just do the right thing as far as you know it and respectfully decline to be shamed or admonished.
It will probably shift again when that doesn't fly. Those numbers from Forbes indicate that the will of the people is against TLJ. I wonder if the next step will be casting the film's supporters as the bad people.
It isn't so much the will of the people as it is the will of the fans, the sort of folks who will rope others into seeing a film they wouldn't otherwise take special note of, and the sort of folks who are easily cast as neck-beards.
It will probably shift again when that doesn't fly. Those numbers from Forbes indicate that the will of the people is against TLJ. I wonder if the next step will be casting the film's supporters as the bad people.
It isn't so much the will of the people as it is the will of the fans, the sort of folks who will rope others into seeing a film they wouldn't otherwise take special note of, and the sort of folks who are easily cast as neck-beards.
Are you implying that everyone that liked the movie is an innocent, causal moviegoer that wants to watch a good movie, and whose who disliked it are all rabid neckbeard lost in pointless details?
I know I'm behind the times but I've only really encountered these SJW recently, my line of work insulates me from that kind of person (I work with the army), and I've been trying to research quite how to deal with them as at some point, I will have to (recruitment), and I'm just finding very difficult to see things from there perspective, I've had ethnic and diversity training as part of my job and have been doing it for a long time and still yet I find it difficult to understand.
Don't want to derail the thread though, I just can't understand this virtue signaling (newly learnt term for me) when I am knee deep in actually tackling these issues.
It will probably shift again when that doesn't fly. Those numbers from Forbes indicate that the will of the people is against TLJ. I wonder if the next step will be casting the film's supporters as the bad people.
It isn't so much the will of the people as it is the will of the fans, the sort of folks who will rope others into seeing a film they wouldn't otherwise take special note of, and the sort of folks who are easily cast as neck-beards.
Star Wars is the most popular film franchise in the Western world. The line between casuals and fans may not even exist.
Formosa wrote: I know I'm behind the times but I've only really encountered these SJW recently, my line of work insulates me from that kind of person (I work with the army), and I've been trying to research quite how to deal with them as at some point, I will have to (recruitment), and I'm just finding very difficult to see things from there perspective, I've had ethnic and diversity training as part of my job and have been doing it for a long time and still yet I find it difficult to understand.
Don't want to derail the thread though, I just can't understand this virtue signaling (newly learnt term for me) when I am knee deep in actually tackling these issues.
I want to try responding to this comment again because I've thought of a way to bring it back to the topic.
Ultimately, what we are talking about here is postmodernism. I posit that TLJ is a postmodern take on the SW franchise.
From Wikipedia:
postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony or rejection toward grand narratives, ideologies and various tenets of universalism, including objective notions of reason, human nature, social progress, moral universalism, absolute truth, and objective reality
Sound familiar? TLJ is consciously trying to deconstruct the audience's expectations of what a Star Wars movie is and strip them of their context and meaning. Most of the characters are in a regressive state compared to their characterizations in the previous movies, in some cases acting in ways that directly contradict their known traits and patterns of behavior. Everything we know or expect to be true about the setting and the characters is conspicuously shown to be meaningless (Jedis don't need training or the Jedi tradition, warriors don't need acts of heroism or sacrifice, bad guys don't need to be externally identifiable as bad guys, defeats can be victories, the internal rules of the setting don't matter, there is no right and wrong only different perspectives etc.)
People like the ones you are finding out about tend to have a decidedly postmodern worldview. That is, they have been taught to deconstruct things to alienate them from their context and meaning as a critical technique, typically in liberal arts or social sciences programs. Critical theory and post-structuralism were originally techniques developed for the analysis of literature or other cultural goods. TLJ is basically a postmodern criticism of Star Wars in the vein of that type of literary analyses.
Some people don't stop at literature or culture, they apply a postmodern dialectic to everything. That is, they want to deconstruct the meanings, hierarchies and contexts of institutions, social groups etc. So basically, they are skeptical of anything previously established and tend to see everything as a construct of human culture and society as opposed to something which may have naturally arisen. In many cases they are right, but in others they are not. The most fervent adherents of this kind of worldview flatly deny the value of rationality, logic and sometimes even science, and perceive them as merely oppressive social constructs instead of expressions of some kind of objective reality. The extent to which they will clash with other people is determined by how far they apply the drive to deconstruct the parts of culture and institution that others obviously inhabit.
It is very important to note that while many extreme postmodernists have a left-leaning bent, postmodernism is by no means limited to one side of the political spectrum. Neither is being an "SJW". The right has SJWs just as much as the left does, really.
I don't have the energy to argue over a film when I won't change your opinion and you won't change mine. Internet arguments are even more pointless than the Finn-Rose subplot. Ultimately the box office numbers will decide the fate.
A few things.
Luciferian described the postmodernism take very well, even though I disagree with some details. I agree that TLJ is very much a deconstruction and that is a large part of the division.
There is a very clear line between casuals and Star Wars fans. I read most of the old EU (reread the Thrawn Trilogy prior to watching the TLJ and am rereading the sequel now), played through KotOR I and II way too many times, still play ToR at times, played and modded JK2/JK:O, etc, etc. I really enjoy the Star Wars universe. I partake in a great deal of Star Wars content. I still enjoyed the movie, but at the same time I don't care enough to read any of the new books simply because they don't interest me enough anymore.
I don't think TLJ (or TFA) qualifies as a postmodern deconstruction of SW. (The Prequels actually have a much stronger claim there.) The Disney films are just sloppy, jumbled-up remakes.
Yeah, I don't buy the idea that TLJ (and R1/TFA) is a deliberate deconstruction or anything like that, it's flaws feel more like things that are just flaws. Everything seems built around brief moments of CGI spectacle or "clever" one-liners or toy commercials, with whatever plot is required to connect the dots kind of lazily thrown in. Rey's training isn't omitted because the director is deconstructing the idea of the hero having to train, it's omitted because it isn't enough of a spectacle and they'd rather get on with Rey having another Heroic Fight Scene. The rules of the setting aren't violated because of some well-reasoned academic theory about the nature of rules, they're violated because the people writing the story don't care enough to invest the effort required to make it consistent. Etc.
Peregrine wrote: Yeah, I don't buy the idea that TLJ (and R1/TFA) is a deliberate deconstruction or anything like that, it's flaws feel more like things that are just flaws. Everything seems built around brief moments of CGI spectacle or "clever" one-liners or toy commercials, with whatever plot is required to connect the dots kind of lazily thrown in. Rey's training isn't omitted because the director is deconstructing the idea of the hero having to train, it's omitted because it isn't enough of a spectacle and they'd rather get on with Rey having another Heroic Fight Scene. The rules of the setting aren't violated because of some well-reasoned academic theory about the nature of rules, they're violated because the people writing the story don't care enough to invest the effort required to make it consistent. Etc.
Yeah, the training example is one where I disagree, but Rian Johnson really strikes me as the type of director who would intentionally subvert things for the sake of it.
The end of TLJ really emphasized that for me (continuing on from what Motyak said)
The Falcon turns up last second, shoots some TIE fighters, somebody in the Falcon goes WOOO. But it was on salty Hoth and not the Trench Run.
Meanwhile the Empi.....First Order were trying to get in a Rebe.....Resistance base by ground assaulting the shield gene....Large Door.
Then Luke Skywalker has a emotionally charged fight with a relative, while things looked super grim for the Rebe.....Resistance, up until he resolved it and the Rebe....Resistance succeeded in their objective (yes I'm glossing over their different objectives).
Then the Falcon escapes from Vad..... Kylo Ren from Salt Hoth. (You could also say something about escaping from a cave with the only difference being the Falcon flies out of a cave and they walk out).
The call back to the two suns on Tatooine shot was nice.
Peregrine wrote: Yeah, I don't buy the idea that TLJ (and R1/TFA) is a deliberate deconstruction or anything like that, it's flaws feel more like things that are just flaws. Everything seems built around brief moments of CGI spectacle or "clever" one-liners or toy commercials, with whatever plot is required to connect the dots kind of lazily thrown in. Rey's training isn't omitted because the director is deconstructing the idea of the hero having to train, it's omitted because it isn't enough of a spectacle and they'd rather get on with Rey having another Heroic Fight Scene. The rules of the setting aren't violated because of some well-reasoned academic theory about the nature of rules, they're violated because the people writing the story don't care enough to invest the effort required to make it consistent. Etc.
Yeah, the training example is one where I disagree, but Rian Johnson really strikes me as the type of director who would intentionally subvert things for the sake of it.
It could be both. Incompetence, but some decision has been dictated, not necessarily in a conscious way, by the cultural Zeitgeist. The Cynism and "ironic" approach to stories is undeniable, IMHO, in most modern blockbusters. (BTW Luciferian, what a post!)
Peregrine wrote: Yeah, I don't buy the idea that TLJ (and R1/TFA) is a deliberate deconstruction or anything like that, it's flaws feel more like things that are just flaws. Everything seems built around brief moments of CGI spectacle or "clever" one-liners or toy commercials, with whatever plot is required to connect the dots kind of lazily thrown in. Rey's training isn't omitted because the director is deconstructing the idea of the hero having to train, it's omitted because it isn't enough of a spectacle and they'd rather get on with Rey having another Heroic Fight Scene. The rules of the setting aren't violated because of some well-reasoned academic theory about the nature of rules, they're violated because the people writing the story don't care enough to invest the effort required to make it consistent. Etc.
Yeah, the training example is one where I disagree, but Rian Johnson really strikes me as the type of director who would intentionally subvert things for the sake of it.
Honestly, he doesn't to me. I think its a combination of general inexperience- this is his 4th film, (all of which he was writer/director on), and other than that he's done 4 tv episodes (not series, episodes), and a couple shorts (which mostly look like film school projects). It's also a matter of specific inexperience- most of his films are a sort of crime drama or sometimes comedy (with a weird time travel twist in the case of Looper), not sci-fi or space opera, and honestly it's been awhile since he's been behind a camera. From Mark Hamill's comments (particularly 'This is not Luke Skywalker'), it doesn't seem like he has much familiarity with Star Wars in particular.
Going from really personal crime stories to a massive effects blockbuster is a pretty big leap. For all that i didn't like TFA (or Abrams other films) very much, I understood why Abrams was tapped to direct it. Johnson? No clue. But as writer/director, I think he flubbed it. Not out of malice and certainly not deconstruction, but just inexperience and unfamiliarity with the patterns and scope of the genre or franchise.
It's more like what Peregrine comments- a lot of the film's flaws come from focusing on the spectacle, and not 'pausing' the scene to really delve into (or even appreciate) the details or characterization (which is something Johnson himself happily admits to- it's his own justification for not delving into Snoke's background or history).
Are you implying that everyone that liked the movie is an innocent, causal moviegoer that wants to watch a good movie, and whose who disliked it are all rabid neckbeard lost in pointless details?
Not at all. I'm explaining why the media narrative that all those who dislike the movie are some variant of misogynist has been able to gain traction. It isn't true, of course, but it fits the neck-beard stereotype.
Perhaps the entire movie isn't meant as a deconstruction, but it definitely explores a lot of postmodernist themes. The traditional Western ideals of heroism are too specifically subverted not to be intentional. Really, the entire mythological framework of Star Wars is so thoroughly dismantled by this film that the more I'm thinking about it, the more it seems like much of it was done on purpose.
The entire series up to this point has been firmly rooted in syncretic archetypes of Western and Eastern mythology. The main conflict in the rest of the films is one between the ideologies of the Jedi (process oriented) and the Sith (goal oriented). The Jedi are very organized and traditional. They are usually very cautious about the means they use to an end. By contrast, the Sith believe the ends justify the means, and will take whatever action they think is necessary to achieve their goals. The Jedi and the Sith at times want the same thing (order and peace) but they have drastically different ways of going about it. The Jedi take pains to make sure that everything is done in a proper and traditional way, while the Sith are more reactionary and emotional. The series up to now has been about the conflict between these two systems of ethics, their upsides and downsides and how they play off of each other. The disadvantage of the Jedi is that their traditionalism makes them hidebound and slow to adapt, and the disadvantage of the Sith is that their emotionality and willingness to take shortcuts leads them astray and damns their cause.
The prequel trilogy is about the failure of the hero to find a balance in himself. He lets his emotions control him and he does not do things the "proper" way, and as a result he is lost, along with what he cares about. The original trilogy is a much more archetypal hero's journey; the hero gains a purpose, is mentored by a spiritual better, has to delve into his own dark subconscious in order to gain mastery over himself, and then returns with the power he needs to save those he cares about. They are the same story, only Anakin fails where Luke succeeds.
TLJ does away with the ethical debate outright. Luke teaches Rey that there are not two sides to the force, there is one side. Rey's journey to confront her subconscious is very conspicuously subverted when she learns nothing (!). Everyone rejects the process-oriented traditionalism of the Jedi order, and it is destroyed (by the quintessential Jedi, Yoda, who says, "We are what they grow beyond.") Likewise, the way of the Sith is unceremoniously killed with Snoke. Neither Kylo nor Rey have any purpose or attachments, only power. Rey is deprived of her past in a major subversion of expectations, and Kylo intentionally destroyed his own. He even gives a postmodernist screed:
The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi... let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you are meant to be.
At this point, Kylo represents a rejection of all meaning. He is more or less nihilist, or at the least trying to represent a Nietzschean Will to Power. He is neither of the dark side of the force (Sith) or the light side (Jedi), because he is not striving for any purpose or goal. He doesn't care about anything or anyone, while even Anakin cared about Padme and his children, and later the Emperor and Darth Vader cared about forcefully imposing order and peace. From that point on, he only represents the impulse to destroy. And he does destroy the Resistance (whose only purpose is to... resist) almost to a man.
By the end of the movie, everything in the mythological framework of Star Wars has been destroyed. The Sith, the Jedi, the dark side and the light side of the force and the heroes and villains who represented them, the Empire and the Rebellion. Just like Kylo said. He wins. That one quote really sticks out to me now as the core purpose of this movie: to clear away the past. The central danger of postmodernism is, of course, that if you only deconstruct and destroy without installing a viable replacement, you give way to nihilism. So we will have to see what the next film fills the void with, but this one was clearly about creating that void.
Many other tropes and expectations which are subverted in this film may be just that. There are plenty of examples, some of which I mentioned earlier. Certainly most of the audience's expectations were subverted; including the importance of characters like Snoke and Phasma, the value of heroism and sacrifice, the danger of passivity, the integrity of specific characters like Luke, Poe and Finn, the "specialness" of Rey, etc. Objective morality is another big one. While in the previous movies there are some shades of grey, and everyone makes mistakes, it is very clear who the good guys and bad guys are. Again, it goes back to the ethical argument about means and ends. However, this movie goes out of its way to at least introduce the idea that both sides are just blowing each other up, and what is bad or good depends on perspective. The two opposing sides aren't really defined by any kind of values or principles. The First Order dress in black and blow gak up, and the Resistance get blown up. And sometimes free animals (but not the slaves tending them).
So at the end of the day, whether it was intentional or not, this film utterly gutted the mythological and philosophical armature of Star Wars without replacing it with anything new. I suppose it's possible that Johnson just really doesn't know anything about what Star Wars is, but to me it seems like too concerted an effort to be a mistake. This movie felt very empty to me, and originally I thought it was because Johnson didn't have the balls to commit to anything, couldn't bring himself to bring in any meaning or direction. Now that I'm thinking about it, though, I'm not so sure.
The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi... let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you are meant to be.
You may have noticed that Kylo is the villain of the story, and his appeal is rejected by the hero. That seems like the exact opposite of endorsing the supposed postmodernist theme.
And he does destroy the Resistance (whose only purpose is to... resist) almost to a man.
Uh, what? The purpose of the resistance is to protect the galaxy from the first order's evil. I'm not sure how you missed this and think that it's just resistance for the sake of resistance.
By the end of the movie, everything in the mythological framework of Star Wars has been destroyed. The Sith, the Jedi, the dark side and the light side of the force and the heroes and villains who represented them, the Empire and the Rebellion.
Again it seems like you and I watched a very different movie. Remember how Luke says that he is not the last jedi, with it pretty clearly implied that Rey continues the order? Remember how she runs off with the sacred jedi texts? Remember all the speeches about how the resistance survives, and will be the heart of a new rebellion?
the importance of characters like Snoke and Phasma
Kind of like how the OT subverted the importance of Palpatine and Boba Fett? Snoke and Palpatine were both supporting characters at most. You never learn anything about them other than their character archetypes ("evil emperor and dark wizard") without resorting to the EU. They're important from an in-universe point of view, but story-wise they never rise above generic archetypes or see any meaningful character development. Same thing with Boba Fett and Phasma, they're background characters with cool armor and any "importance" they had consists almost entirely of their action figure sales.
the value of heroism and sacrifice
Did your theater's projector break down when Admiral Purplehair makes her suicide run, saving the resistance? If so, sorry about the spoilers, but you should go see the movie again. It's a really beautiful scene.
the danger of passivity
Are you talking about how the passive plan of "just run away" turns out to be right? That's not about the danger of passivity, it's about Poe being too impulsive and Admiral Purplehair being an idiot for the sake of the plot. The whole point is that, while Poe is right that they should do something, they are doing something. It isn't a passive acceptance of their fate, it's a plan that he hasn't been informed about.
the "specialness" of Rey
Which was mostly fan speculation, assuming that because Rey had power her parents must be Important Star Wars Characters. Turns out she's special in some ways, acknowledged by Snoke as Kylo's counterpart in the light who grew stronger as he did, but not because she has famous parents.
However, this movie goes out of its way to at least introduce the idea that both sides are just blowing each other up, and what is bad or good depends on perspective.
No, I'm pretty sure that the Space Nazis are still the bad guys. You know, with all that talk about crushing hope and ruling the galaxy by force. The fact that the movie criticizes arms dealers for being sociopaths with no moral beliefs beyond the accumulation of money does not mean that both sides of the war are equal.
After the debacle of these two new films, wild horses couldn't drag me into a cinema to watch IX, but even from a neutral viewpoint, what is there to look forward too?
We know that Luke Vs. Snoke in an ultimate showdown ain't happening.
We know for obvious reasons that Leia is gone
And we know that the rebels will defeat the First order, and we'll be right back where we were at the end of ROTJ...
It's a pile of meh, because Rey Vs. Ren is not setting the world on fire, and Hux's death would be a mercy killing, given how badly his character was developed.
Woah there. Not sure I give into the simplistic continuation of the counter arguement.
No only has Rey consistantly failed to anything Jedilike aside from swing a lightsaber about, but she's never said anything Jedilike either, promised to do anything, or seemed particularly in keeping with wanting to restablish the Jedi herself. She wanted to redeem Kylo, sure, but that's about it, and her reasons for doing so appear to be, 'Despite us not being related the plot has magically connected us! Also you're evil.'
Wanting to beat the badguy does not a Jedi make, even if you are the protagonist of a Star Wars film.
So the Resistance is Resisting the First Orders Evil[TM]? Sounds very resisty. What else do they actually, do, though? We've not seen them save anyones lives, do anything worth a damn, express any degree of competence, or anything. They Resist! That's all the plot requires them to do, and they're quite bad at it. While I agree the Space Nazi's are so much a caricature of evil they're unsupportable. [At least the Empire had a pretty clear reason for building and using the Death Star. These guys appear to have built theres purely for it's cinematic value] The Resistance has no clear reason for supporting them other than, 1) Carrie Fisher is on their side, 2) They're not Space Nazis.
Phasma was billed as a strong female villian. It sure would have been nice if she turned out to be anything but cheap, but I guess we can't have strong female villians, can we?
The whole suicide run thing is bizzarely done. We're in the far future without autopilots? We couldn't have done that earlier with the three escort vessels? It was wrong to do it in the opening scene, right for purple hair to do it, and wrong... Or right? Or something when the speeders didn't do it later? I am confused as to what the movie wants me to think, here. I honestly thought Purplehair was going to jump away, and the next movie was going to cast her as the leader of the resistance as she and her one ship + Heros on the Falcon did stuff.
It's not even clear what her sacrifice achieved. Whoo. She blew up one ship. The first order clearly has another dozen in that shot. Now the rebels have gone from 1-0. The dialogue implies the First Order have more forces and the rebels at best have allies that ignore them. There's no logical reason for her sacrifice to save the transports, all in all Purplehairs decision sounds poor. At least she could have put her ship between the transports and the guns shooting them?
Formosa wrote: Funnily enough I and others who didn't like this film had a genuine SJW try to pull there usual crap, they even said and I quote "you only don't like the film because it challenges the male hierarchy" and "as a white male who has never had to deal with oppression"
It's laughable the length these parasites will go to virtue signal
Laugh at those people. One can be Lefty McBleedingheart, love all the diversity in the casting, and still think the film was poorly written, even poorly conceived. The casting and diversity have literally nothing to do with the complaints. Holdo could have been played by Bruce Penhall and it wouldn't make the character any less frustrating.
Diversity has never been a problem for me.
My all time favourite Star Wars character is Lando, and obviously, Billy Dee Williams is not white.
Princess Leia is another legend of the series, and Carrie Fisher was obviously a woman
It's only with the advent of the internet that diversity has been seen as a problem. I think most people don't care.
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Manchu wrote: I don't think TLJ (or TFA) qualifies as a postmodern deconstruction of SW. (The Prequels actually have a much stronger claim there.) The Disney films are just sloppy, jumbled-up remakes.
I think the problem is that there is nobody in overall creative control in a way that George Lucas used to be.
There's a famous Michael Moorcock comment about the creative arts being the only place where a dictatorship actually works.
Lucas, for all his faults, could at least plan a story arc over a trilogy and get it nailed down, give people something to work with.
e.g the prequels: I = Anakin's birth, II = his life/development III = Anakin's 'death' fall into the dark side. etc etc etc
This new trilogy is a mess of directors and producers being hired and fired, which makes it harder to do some long term planning story wise.
I'm no JJ Abrams fan, but if he was directing all 3, then his story arc could have been nailed down from day 1, and there at least would have been some continuity with villains like Snoke, rather than a new director coming along and throwing the previous film out the window.
Luciferian wrote: Perhaps the entire movie isn't meant as a deconstruction, but it definitely explores a lot of postmodernist themes. The traditional Western ideals of heroism are too specifically subverted not to be intentional. Really, the entire mythological framework of Star Wars is so thoroughly dismantled by this film that the more I'm thinking about it, the more it seems like much of it was done on purpose.
The entire series up to this point has been firmly rooted in syncretic archetypes of Western and Eastern mythology. The main conflict in the rest of the films is one between the ideologies of the Jedi (process oriented) and the Sith (goal oriented). The Jedi are very organized and traditional. They are usually very cautious about the means they use to an end. By contrast, the Sith believe the ends justify the means, and will take whatever action they think is necessary to achieve their goals. The Jedi and the Sith at times want the same thing (order and peace) but they have drastically different ways of going about it. The Jedi take pains to make sure that everything is done in a proper and traditional way, while the Sith are more reactionary and emotional. The series up to now has been about the conflict between these two systems of ethics, their upsides and downsides and how they play off of each other. The disadvantage of the Jedi is that their traditionalism makes them hidebound and slow to adapt, and the disadvantage of the Sith is that their emotionality and willingness to take shortcuts leads them astray and damns their cause.
The prequel trilogy is about the failure of the hero to find a balance in himself. He lets his emotions control him and he does not do things the "proper" way, and as a result he is lost, along with what he cares about. The original trilogy is a much more archetypal hero's journey; the hero gains a purpose, is mentored by a spiritual better, has to delve into his own dark subconscious in order to gain mastery over himself, and then returns with the power he needs to save those he cares about. They are the same story, only Anakin fails where Luke succeeds.
TLJ does away with the ethical debate outright. Luke teaches Rey that there are not two sides to the force, there is one side. Rey's journey to confront her subconscious is very conspicuously subverted when she learns nothing (!). Everyone rejects the process-oriented traditionalism of the Jedi order, and it is destroyed (by the quintessential Jedi, Yoda, who says, "We are what they grow beyond.") Likewise, the way of the Sith is unceremoniously killed with Snoke. Neither Kylo nor Rey have any purpose or attachments, only power. Rey is deprived of her past in a major subversion of expectations, and Kylo intentionally destroyed his own. He even gives a postmodernist screed:
The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi... let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you are meant to be.
At this point, Kylo represents a rejection of all meaning. He is more or less nihilist, or at the least trying to represent a Nietzschean Will to Power. He is neither of the dark side of the force (Sith) or the light side (Jedi), because he is not striving for any purpose or goal. He doesn't care about anything or anyone, while even Anakin cared about Padme and his children, and later the Emperor and Darth Vader cared about forcefully imposing order and peace. From that point on, he only represents the impulse to destroy. And he does destroy the Resistance (whose only purpose is to... resist) almost to a man.
By the end of the movie, everything in the mythological framework of Star Wars has been destroyed. The Sith, the Jedi, the dark side and the light side of the force and the heroes and villains who represented them, the Empire and the Rebellion. Just like Kylo said. He wins. That one quote really sticks out to me now as the core purpose of this movie: to clear away the past. The central danger of postmodernism is, of course, that if you only deconstruct and destroy without installing a viable replacement, you give way to nihilism. So we will have to see what the next film fills the void with, but this one was clearly about creating that void.
Many other tropes and expectations which are subverted in this film may be just that. There are plenty of examples, some of which I mentioned earlier. Certainly most of the audience's expectations were subverted; including the importance of characters like Snoke and Phasma, the value of heroism and sacrifice, the danger of passivity, the integrity of specific characters like Luke, Poe and Finn, the "specialness" of Rey, etc. Objective morality is another big one. While in the previous movies there are some shades of grey, and everyone makes mistakes, it is very clear who the good guys and bad guys are. Again, it goes back to the ethical argument about means and ends. However, this movie goes out of its way to at least introduce the idea that both sides are just blowing each other up, and what is bad or good depends on perspective. The two opposing sides aren't really defined by any kind of values or principles. The First Order dress in black and blow gak up, and the Resistance get blown up. And sometimes free animals (but not the slaves tending them).
So at the end of the day, whether it was intentional or not, this film utterly gutted the mythological and philosophical armature of Star Wars without replacing it with anything new. I suppose it's possible that Johnson just really doesn't know anything about what Star Wars is, but to me it seems like too concerted an effort to be a mistake. This movie felt very empty to me, and originally I thought it was because Johnson didn't have the balls to commit to anything, couldn't bring himself to bring in any meaning or direction. Now that I'm thinking about it, though, I'm not so sure.
Good post.
I think you hit the nail on the head - there is a nihilistic element in this new film, and in modern blockbusters in general these days, but in this instance, I think it was unententioal, to the detriment of the series as a whole.
At this point, Kylo represents a rejection of all meaning. He is more or less nihilist, or at the least trying to represent a Nietzschean Will to Power.
If that's your read of Nietzsche, then you read him wrong. If you interpret nihilsim as the rejection of all meaning, then you failed to understand an entire philosophical movement.
We already knew that from the moment the sequel trilogy was announced. Luke is not a main character, there was exactly zero chance that he was going to be participating in any final showdown.
And we know that the rebels will defeat the First order, and we'll be right back where we were at the end of ROTJ...
You could say the same about ROTJ, we knew that the rebels would defeat the empire because that's how movies work. But somehow it was still worth watching.
Yeah, we knew that the rebels would win in ROTJ, but like Death Stars getting blown up, there's only so many times you can keep playing that card until story fatigue creeps in.
The First Order could have worked as some kind of splinter force Vs the new Republic. An annoying irritant, but not galaxy dominating.
AdmiralHalsey wrote: No only has Rey consistantly failed to anything Jedilike aside from swing a lightsaber about, but she's never said anything Jedilike either, promised to do anything, or seemed particularly in keeping with wanting to restablish the Jedi herself. She wanted to redeem Kylo, sure, but that's about it, and her reasons for doing so appear to be, 'Despite us not being related the plot has magically connected us! Also you're evil.'
Nothing jedi-like? Just taking the sacred jedi texts with her, and the strong implication that Luke's "not the last jedi" line is in reference to Rey carrying on the order.
So the Resistance is Resisting the First Orders Evil[TM]? Sounds very resisty. What else do they actually, do, though? We've not seen them save anyones lives, do anything worth a damn, express any degree of competence, or anything. They Resist! That's all the plot requires them to do, and they're quite bad at it. While I agree the Space Nazi's are so much a caricature of evil they're unsupportable. [At least the Empire had a pretty clear reason for building and using the Death Star. These guys appear to have built theres purely for it's cinematic value] The Resistance has no clear reason for supporting them other than, 1) Carrie Fisher is on their side, 2) They're not Space Nazis.
Did you ever watch the OT? Because all of that applies just as much to the OT rebellion. What do they do, besides fight the empire? They blow up a death star in the first movie, just like the resistance. They run away in the second movie, just like the resistance. You're supposed to assume that they're the good guys and they have a plan, but none of it is ever shown on-screen. It's just taken for granted that they oppose the evil empire, and fill in the blanks yourself. You don't actually see them building a new republic or anything unless you go to the EU.
Phasma was billed as a strong female villian. It sure would have been nice if she turned out to be anything but cheap, but I guess we can't have strong female villians, can we?
Phasma was never convincingly billed as a strong female villain, and her uselessness has nothing to do with her gender. She's the new era's Boba Fett, a minor background character who is hyped up for toy sales.
The first order clearly has another dozen in that shot.
All of them reduced to shattered wreckage along with the flagship. But remember, the main ship is being tracked and has no hope of escape. The resistance traded one ship that was going to die anyway for an entire fleet, and if you ignore the ridiculous plot device siege gun it secures the escape of the surviving leadership and a chance to regroup with their allies. The only thing wrong with the scene from a plausibility point of view is that the resistance didn't do the same thing with the smaller escorts, sending them on suicide runs with their last fuel reserves instead of leaving them to drift out of control and be used for target practice. But obviously that can't happen for story reasons if you want the main scene to have any impact.
Peregrine wrote: Did you ever watch the OT? Because all of that applies just as much to the OT rebellion. What do they do, besides fight the empire? ... They run away in the second movie, just like the resistance.
The Rebellion ran away, the Resistance died. In The Empire Strikes Back the Rebellion was on the back foot but they escaped with a fleet to continue the fight another day. In The Last Jedi a galaxy-spanning superpower is reduced to the contents of a single light freighter, with no allies willing to aid them in their time of need.
The Hero Vs. The Villian is a classic trope that has been embedded into the Western psyche for thousands of years.
Satan Vs. God
Odysseus Vs. the suitors
Caesar Vs. Pompey
Wellington Vs Napoleon
Coca Cola Vs. Pepsi
etc etc
strictly speaking, you could argue that Caesar and Pompey didn't have that much of a different moral outlook from each other, but the ultimate showdown between two great rivals, is expected and demanded by any audience, going back to the days of Ancient Greece.
Luke Vs. Vader is the backbone of the entire Star Wars franchise. To not have Luke Vs. Snoke, is heresy as far as I'm concerned
Peregrine wrote: Did you ever watch the OT? Because all of that applies just as much to the OT rebellion. What do they do, besides fight the empire? ... They run away in the second movie, just like the resistance.
The Rebellion ran away, the Resistance died. In The Empire Strikes Back the Rebellion was on the back foot but they escaped with a fleet to continue the fight another day. In The Last Jedi a galaxy-spanning superpower is reduced to the contents of a single light freighter, with no allies willing to aid them in their time of need.
Peregrine wrote: Did you ever watch the OT? Because all of that applies just as much to the OT rebellion. What do they do, besides fight the empire? ... They run away in the second movie, just like the resistance.
The Rebellion ran away, the Resistance died. In The Empire Strikes Back the Rebellion was on the back foot but they escaped with a fleet to continue the fight another day. In The Last Jedi a galaxy-spanning superpower is reduced to the contents of a single light freighter, with no allies willing to aid them in their time of need.
Also, whilst it's not clear in the movie, what we see on Hoth isn't the Alliance, just the High Command. It would be a crippling blow to lose them but there would be other leaders out there that would take up the fight.
In contrast, the what we see at the beginning of the film is presented as the entirety of the Resistance. Later on we hear about secret allies* who care so much about the cause that they refuse to answer the call.
* I look forward to Ep 9 not even addressing the question of "Who were the secret allies?" Presumably they'll all be killed off-screen by the Knights of Ren, who are also guarding the last copy of Snoke's best-selling autobiography "Where I Came From".
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: The Hero Vs. The Villian is a classic trope that has been embedded into the Western psyche for thousands of years.
Yes, and Luke is not the hero of the new movies. He's a supporting character, and supporting characters don't get the final climactic fight. The moment it was revealed that the new movies would be moving on with new characters, not continuing the stories of the OT characters, it was incredibly obvious that Luke would not be the one to fight Snoke.
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AlexHolker wrote: The Rebellion ran away, the Resistance died. In The Empire Strikes Back the Rebellion was on the back foot but they escaped with a fleet to continue the fight another day. In The Last Jedi a galaxy-spanning superpower is reduced to the contents of a single light freighter, with no allies willing to aid them in their time of need.
Yes, it's rather stupid from a "writers have no sense of scale" point of view, but from a thematic point of view (as the original discussion was) it's functionally the same. The events of the movies parallel each other, so if you want to argue that the resistance is some nihilistic postmodern deconstruction of a rebellion then you have to make the same argument for the rebellion of the OT. Both do the same thing on-screen, and the greater depth and purpose of the OT rebellion only exists in the EU.
The Hero Vs. The Villian is a classic trope that has been embedded into the Western psyche for thousands of years.
Caesar Vs. Pompey
Caesar did not kill Pompey - he was killed by the Egyptians much to Caesars annoyance - and neither of them were heros or villans - you might be able to argue Augustus vs Marc Antonoy - but only if you looked at it from the Hardline Roman view.
Same with Greece vs Persia - despite the laughable propoganda about the former being the land of the free -Greece was a major slave owning society - especially Sparta, plus not a few Greek cities and kings/queen fought for Persia and did very well out it.
Had a chat with my sister about the movie and she really liked it. Now she's what I'd term a casual fan, the closest she gets to any EU content is watching Lego Star Wars with her little girl. So again I really think my own expectations for the direction of the film not being met are what bothered me the most. That said I think the hyperspace ramming and the wasting of Holdo is always going to annoy me.
I think Disney was always in a lose-lose situation to some extent with a sequel trilogy. The problem is the EU and in a way the prequels. I think people had a vision of something along the lines of the good EU being redone or maybe a new great Galactic Republic a la KotOR or prequel era. That was never going to happen and if Disney did do that they'd be getting criticized for doing that.
So they had to do something original and move on past the OT...but I do agree they could have done something better. I don't think Abrams was ever a good choice and I'm worried he'll flub the final act.
insaniak wrote: Well, I finally got to see this tonight, and thought it was freaking awesome. So much win in this movie.
I loved the direction they took Luke. Rather curious how they're going to paint Leia out in the next one, though.
Many of the theories I have seen suspect the next film with be a more significant time jump. Maybe 2-3 year like the difference between ANH and ESB This would allow Rey to become a true Jedi (remember, she took (or maybe Yoda did?) all those texts from the tree without Luke knowing) and possibly have started training more younglings Kylo would also be more established as the Supreme Leader, etc
As for Leia, the movie could easy start out as Leia just passing and the new group dealing with that lose. Honestly, they'll probably just explain it in the crawl. TLJ was all about learning from failure and it set up the new cast as taking those positions of leadership left open by the passing of the old. So even though Lucasfilm has stated that IX was going to be focused on Leia, I don't think much has to really change. Leia can be a source of inspiration for the Resistance and Force Ghost Luke can fill any direct guidance role that Leia was originally going to have.
I don't think the key is who read the EU and who didn't. The difference seems to fall closer to who cares about stories for the content of the story vs who enjoys stories for the way they are told. The critics like the film because it was made by a filmmaker for filmmakers, but people who like, let's say books although I'm really reaching more towards a mindset than an actual hobby, can't get past the flaws. Love the film because of how it is shot and cinematically constructed. Hate the film because the plot and characterization is stupid and throws continuity out the airlock.
Honestly, I suspect RJ doesn't read fiction, certainly not science fiction, and his inexperience with the genre shows through.
I've figured out what I'm going to open with when someone asks me IRL what I thought of the movie:
After finding out Kylo is still a bad dude even after killing Snoke on the flagship, Rey tries to get her lightsaber back with the force instead of answering him with words.
Did she intend to cut him down as she would have Snoke? Was she preparing to defend herself? Was she angry? Afraid? Resolved?
The lightsaber is split in twain from the power of the two force users, and the flagship is crippled by the hyperspeed launch-cruiser.
The next scene Kylo Ren is in he takes command of the FO and pledges to burn all to the ground.
The next scene Rey is in she insta kills three tie fighters with one turret shot (bare minimum necessary to impress after the ridiculousness Poe regularly demonstrates) from the Millennium Falcon. She's bubbly enthusiastic about her station in life, exclaiming "this is fun!"
How does she feel about Kylo now?
Did she spare his life?
Did the impact knock her to a different level of the ship?
How did she get off the Imperial Flagship?
Look, how and why characters react to events or overcome obstacles is not important to the story. If we did things your way we'd slow the movie down with all kinds of character growth, dramatic escapes, interpersonal dynamics and derring do. That's just not what this film is about.
Can you imagine a movie like Die Hard having McLane and Gruber in the same room and then wasting our time showing us how they get out of the same room without killing each other?
GoatboyBeta wrote: Had a chat with my sister about the movie and she really liked it. Now she's what I'd term a casual fan, the closest she gets to any EU content is watching Lego Star Wars with her little girl. So again I really think my own expectations for the direction of the film not being met are what bothered me the most. That said I think the hyperspace ramming and the wasting of Holdo is always going to annoy me.
To hell with Holdo.
That final ride should have belonged to Ackbar and Leia.
I greatly disagree with killing Ackbar as a sidenote.
insaniak wrote: Well, I finally got to see this tonight, and thought it was freaking awesome. So much win in this movie.
I loved the direction they took Luke. Rather curious how they're going to paint Leia out in the next one, though.
Many of the theories I have seen suspect the next film with be a more significant time jump. Maybe 2-3 year like the difference between ANH and ESB
This would allow Rey to become a true Jedi (remember, she took (or maybe Yoda did?) all those texts from the tree without Luke knowing) and possibly have started training more younglings
Kylo would also be more established as the Supreme Leader, etc
As for Leia, the movie could easy start out as Leia just passing and the new group dealing with that lose. Honestly, they'll probably just explain it in the crawl.
TLJ was all about learning from failure and it set up the new cast as taking those positions of leadership left open by the passing of the old. So even though Lucasfilm has stated that IX was going to be focused on Leia, I don't think much has to really change. Leia can be a source of inspiration for the Resistance and Force Ghost Luke can fill any direct guidance role that Leia was originally going to have.
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I think they'll emphasise Leia's role as a symbol very heavily. She was, to many people (both as fans and in-universe) the original Hero of the Rebellion, so I can see them using her legacy as a rallying point or reminder of what they're fighting for or something similar. A hologram projection of one of her speeches used as the signal to kick off an uprising against a FO uprising, or a 'For the Princess' battle cry or something like that. After that, have someone mention that despite the fact she's gone, she's still 'leading' the Rebellion.
It continues the theme established with the use of Luke in VIII, that the legend of Luke and Leia and Han and The Rebellion is as powerful a force as any blaster, lightsaber or starship.
At this point, Kylo represents a rejection of all meaning. He is more or less nihilist, or at the least trying to represent a Nietzschean Will to Power.
If that's your read of Nietzsche, then you read him wrong. If you interpret nihilsim as the rejection of all meaning, then you failed to understand an entire philosophical movement.
I think you might have misread my post. Also, here are a few of definitions of nihilism:
Existential nihilism is the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning or value.
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy.
Define nihilism: a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless
Nihilism is a philosophical doctrine that suggests the lack of belief in one or more reputedly meaningful aspects of life.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Look, how and why characters react to events or overcome obstacles is not important to the story. If we did things your way we'd slow the movie down with all kinds of character growth, dramatic escapes, interpersonal dynamics and derring do. That's just not what this film is about.
Can you imagine a movie like Die Hard having McLane and Gruber in the same room and then wasting our time showing us how they get out of the same room without killing each other?
So what your saying is a story does not need "character growth, dramatic escapes, interpersonal dynamics and derring do" and they never need to "react to events or overcome obstacles" Because that is not what the last jedi is about...
Wow, look if you are happy with not having any of the above to consider a film good, then fair enough, people like me want these things, as you know, it makes a good story, and not a series of set pieces that make little to no sense.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: The Hero Vs. The Villian is a classic trope that has been embedded into the Western psyche for thousands of years.
Yes, and Luke is not the hero of the new movies. He's a supporting character, and supporting characters don't get the final climactic fight. The moment it was revealed that the new movies would be moving on with new characters, not continuing the stories of the OT characters, it was incredibly obvious that Luke would not be the one to fight Snoke.
Actually, what they could have done is rehashed the Obi Wan vs Vader fight, except with Snoke and Luke. Luke dies heroically trying to save Rey, who gets overpowered by Snoke, Rey now has a reason to get stronger and Snoke is shown to be very powerful and dangerous. I mean, you'd think they would at least copy that formula, considering how much else they copied.
Spoiler:
But nope, just unceremoniously kill off the shadowy not-Palpatine guy who they didn't really expand upon, even though he was kind of implied to be a big deal in the previous movie. At least tell us he's a failed clone of Palpatine or something. Then Ren would have a reason to kill him off and take power, as why would you take orders from a failed clone?
GoatboyBeta wrote: Had a chat with my sister about the movie and she really liked it. Now she's what I'd term a casual fan, the closest she gets to any EU content is watching Lego Star Wars with her little girl. So again I really think my own expectations for the direction of the film not being met are what bothered me the most. That said I think the hyperspace ramming and the wasting of Holdo is always going to annoy me.
To hell with Holdo.
That final ride should have belonged to Ackbar and Leia.
I greatly disagree with killing Ackbar as a sidenote.
Ditto. Adding a new character was unnecessary, and putting Ackbar in her place would have been a worthy send off.
Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy.
Thanks for reiterating The Big Lebowski's stance on nihilism, by way of The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
YOU are confusing nihilism and Nietzsche. Nietzsche's Ubermensch takes responsibility to assign value and meaning. Nihilism is the lack of belief in meaning and value. There is a pretty large difference; just ask Nietzsche.
I haven't seen it yet, but after reading all the spoiler talk I kinda feel like I should just satisfy myself by going back to reread some of the great parts of the EU rather than watch The Last Jedi.
AegisGrimm wrote: I haven't seen it yet, but after reading all the spoiler talk I kinda feel like I should just satisfy myself by going back to reread some of the great parts of the EU rather than watch The Last Jedi.
I recommend playing Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2.
Actually, what they could have done is rehashed the Obi Wan vs Vader fight, except with Snoke and Luke. Luke dies heroically trying to save Rey, who gets overpowered by Snoke, Rey now has a reason to get stronger and Snoke is shown to be very powerful and dangerous. I mean, you'd think they would at least copy that formula, considering how much else they copied.
The downside with that is that it would have been much less interesting than what actually happened.
The whole point of killing Snoke off so unceremoniously was that he was completely unimportant to the story. We got what we needed from him - he was a dark-side force user who twisted Ben Solo to be his thrall and was the architect of the First Order. Beyond that, he's irrelevant, and having Ben step in and take over makes perfect sense... The scion of the Skywalker line was never going to be content with being second-fiddle. He either needed to turn, or take over.
Likewise, having Luke charge back into the galaxy with lightsaber ablaze might have been visually fun, but wouldn't have been as fun as the 'duel' with Kylo wound up being, and wouldn't have been right. I read a review this morning that got this point perfectly - Luke Skywalker is the guy who won the day in RotJ by throwing his lightsaber away. I have no words for just how much I love the ending of this movie as it is. My only disappointment is that we will presumably not have more Luke in the next movie. (I'm kind of hoping they decide to do a spin-off at some point to fill in some of the intervening years)
Ditto. Adding a new character was unnecessary, and putting Ackbar in her place would have been a worthy send off.
It wouldn't have worked with Ackbar... we wouldn't have believed that he was just running away without a plan, and more importantly I don't think Poe would have believed that Ackbar was just running away without a plan. Introducing an unknown who we could distrust was the only way that whole sequence could work.
Ditto. Adding a new character was unnecessary, and putting Ackbar in her place would have been a worthy send off.
It wouldn't have worked with Ackbar... we wouldn't have believed that he was just running away without a plan, and more importantly I don't think Poe would have believed that Ackbar was just running away without a plan. Introducing an unknown who we could distrust was the only way that whole sequence could work.
Is this supposed to make us want this less? Multiple [bad] sub-plots hinge off of the purple vice-admirals terrible leadership skills. Give Ackbar the job, and suddenly not only are we a lot more invested in the character, but the writers have to actually do their job properly.
I enjoyed Ren killing Snoke. The way he did it was genius, considering how skilled Snoke was demonstrated as being when it came to reading Ren's emotions/thoughts.
His usage of Rey as a distraction was masterful in order to remove the only person standing between him and his goal of controlling the First Order.
Also, the little hint that not all was as it seemed regarding Luke being at the rebel base was great, too. It was only when I thought back after leaving the cinema that it suddenly occurred to me: his lightsaber was blue when he was facing Kylo.
Is this supposed to make us want this less? Multiple [bad] sub-plots hinge off of the purple vice-admirals terrible leadership skills. Give Ackbar the job, and suddenly not only are we a lot more invested in the character, but the writers have to actually do their job properly.
You weren't supposed to be invested in Holdo... You were supposed to be invested in Poe. It achieved that, for me. They set up in the initial battle scene the fact that Poe is a bit too headstrong and makes rash decisions. Then they introduced Holdo, and led us to believe that this time Poe was completely justified in his actions... And then Leia walks in and just pulls the rug out from under him. If was awesome.
Is this supposed to make us want this less? Multiple [bad] sub-plots hinge off of the purple vice-admirals terrible leadership skills. Give Ackbar the job, and suddenly not only are we a lot more invested in the character, but the writers have to actually do their job properly.
You weren't supposed to be invested in Holdo... You were supposed to be invested in Poe. It achieved that, for me. They set up in the initial battle scene the fact that Poe is a bit too headstrong and makes rash decisions. Then they introduced Holdo, and led us to believe that this time Poe was completely justified in his actions... And then Leia walks in and just pulls the rug out from under him. If was awesome.
YMMV, obviously.
Not to mention that in the end, Poe's actions had some pretty bad consequences. If he hadn't sent Finn and Rose to get a hacker and board the FO ship, they wouldn't have been captured and DJ wouldn't have sold information about the cloaked transports to the FO. Poe's actions inadvertently cost the lives of a good chunk of the remaining resistance members.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Look, how and why characters react to events or overcome obstacles is not important to the story. If we did things your way we'd slow the movie down with all kinds of character growth, dramatic escapes, interpersonal dynamics and derring do. That's just not what this film is about.
Can you imagine a movie like Die Hard having McLane and Gruber in the same room and then wasting our time showing us how they get out of the same room without killing each other?
So what your saying is a story does not need "character growth, dramatic escapes, interpersonal dynamics and derring do" and they never need to "react to events or overcome obstacles" Because that is not what the last jedi is about...
Wow, look if you are happy with not having any of the above to consider a film good, then fair enough, people like me want these things, as you know, it makes a good story, and not a series of set pieces that make little to no sense.
I thought the Die Hard part have away the sarcasm, unless...
Frazzled wrote: Evidently the follow on viewership rates are the lowest of any SW film, and have fallen fast than the rates for Justice League.
Indeed. Despite the efforts of the critics (who, let's remember, get invited along to premieres and hobnob with the stars, all of which might stop if they give too many bad reviews) the moviegoing public are speaking vociferously on this. The RT score is legit and shows all is not well. The footfall of people coming to watch in the subsequent weeks from release are the worst for any SW film ever.
Whichever way you slice it this is an abject failure on multiple levels.
That final ride should have belonged to Ackbar and Leia.
I greatly disagree with killing Ackbar as a sidenote.
Honestly, I don't understand why people feel so strongly about this. Ackbar wasn't a character, he was a generic "explain the mission" delivery service for the audience that had one meme-worthy line. He has no story, no development, nothing at all beyond that one line. What exactly is his great importance that he needs closure to his story and a major part in the movie?
(And no, I don't count the EU, most people haven't read any of it.)
Frazzled wrote: Evidently the follow on viewership rates are the lowest of any SW film, and have fallen fast than the rates for Justice League.
Part of that is probably due to being released during finals week and right before Christmas. It may crack the 1 billion mark, but Disney is simply not going to repeat the success of TFA anytime soon. That was the product of being the first actual sequel to RotJ.
Just out of curiosity using an online inflation calculator adjusted for 2017.
(WW totals for prequels)
TPM = 1.48 bil
AotC = 889.9 mil (even the lowest grossing film had a domestic total of 414mil~)
RotS = 1.07 bil
Can't really compare the OT in terms of WW totals, but this interesting.
ANH had just under 400mil domestic in 11 weeks. It ended up getting 800mil domestic in 29 weeks.
TESB got 422 mil domestic in 12 weeks.
ROTJ earned 600mil domestic in 22 weeks.
TFA earned 965mil!!! in 11 weeks. Even inflation adjusted it topped ANH's run.
I'm thinking if TLJ doesn't at least earn 500-600mil domestic some heads will roll.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Riquende wrote:
Frazzled wrote: Evidently the follow on viewership rates are the lowest of any SW film, and have fallen fast than the rates for Justice League.
Indeed. Despite the efforts of the critics (who, let's remember, get invited along to premieres and hobnob with the stars, all of which might stop if they give too many bad reviews) the moviegoing public are speaking vociferously on this. The RT score is legit and shows all is not well. The footfall of people coming to watch in the subsequent weeks from release are the worst for any SW film ever.
Whichever way you slice it this is an abject failure on multiple levels.
People also post much more frequently if they have a negative opinion. Most people I've spoken to liked or enjoyed the film. I've only heard one or two people dislike it. One of them is the type of person who comes across as being negative about everything though...
It's far from a beloved film, but the outcry seems exaggerated.
That final ride should have belonged to Ackbar and Leia.
I greatly disagree with killing Ackbar as a sidenote.
Honestly, I don't understand why people feel so strongly about this. Ackbar wasn't a character, he was a generic "explain the mission" delivery service for the audience that had one meme-worthy line. He has no story, no development, nothing at all beyond that one line. What exactly is his great importance that he needs closure to his story and a major part in the movie?
(And no, I don't count the EU, most people haven't read any of it.)
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of negative opinions are from people that read the EU. I doubt it could be proven either way, but that's my gut feeling.
That final ride should have belonged to Ackbar and Leia.
I greatly disagree with killing Ackbar as a sidenote.
Honestly, I don't understand why people feel so strongly about this. Ackbar wasn't a character, he was a generic "explain the mission" delivery service for the audience that had one meme-worthy line. He has no story, no development, nothing at all beyond that one line. What exactly is his great importance that he needs closure to his story and a major part in the movie?
(And no, I don't count the EU, most people haven't read any of it.)
Peregrine is right. Ackbar was only shown as a great military leader outside the OT, in the movies he is the calamari in chief and that's all. So as Lucas was fond of saying, if it's not in the movie it didn't happen (or did depending the side of the bed he used) On the other hand that cuts both ways and JJ Abrams or RJ saying that there are things not told in the movies that explain ridiculous plot inconsistencies doesn't count either. Leia had no reason to hug Rey before Chewy JJ cannot fix that in an interview after the movie, tho to be fair he said in that interview that it was a mistake.
Is this supposed to make us want this less? Multiple [bad] sub-plots hinge off of the purple vice-admirals terrible leadership skills. Give Ackbar the job, and suddenly not only are we a lot more invested in the character, but the writers have to actually do their job properly.
You weren't supposed to be invested in Holdo... You were supposed to be invested in Poe. It achieved that, for me. They set up in the initial battle scene the fact that Poe is a bit too headstrong and makes rash decisions. Then they introduced Holdo, and led us to believe that this time Poe was completely justified in his actions... And then Leia walks in and just pulls the rug out from under him. If was awesome.
YMMV, obviously.
The problem of the Holdo-Poe communication problem is that it pretty much causes the destruction of the entire resistance. If Fin and Rose hadn't met the Del Toro's character, Holdo's plan could have succeeded.
While it's an interesting reversal of how impossible missions work in an adventure movie, it doesn't help me to sympathize with Poe. His rashness get's the bomber squadron wiped out. The second time, the whole effort of the new main cast backfires, not due to rashness, but by simply kept out of the loop by senior command. That is a one time payoff in terms of surprise, but pretty sour for the audience upon reflection.
trexmeyer wrote: I'm pretty sure the vast majority of negative opinions are from people that read the EU. I doubt it could be proven either way, but that's my gut feeling.
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of positive opinions are also from people that read the EU. This is a geek forum, most people here have probably read at least some of the EU.
But for the general population I suspect it's also true. Most of the people who haven't read any of the EU haven't done so because they're casual fans, or even people who don't consider themselves fans at all and just went to see the movie because it's the big one for the weekend. They're unlikely to have negative opinions because they're unlikely to care at all. Rey's origin doesn't make sense? Who cares, did you see how awesome that fight scene looked? Meanwhile the people who know enough about the IP to talk about things like story themes have probably been invested enough to read some EU stuff.
Yeah, I'm finding with all of the new stuff that I'm having to make a conscious effort to forget about the EU... But once you do that, everything works much better.
EG, Rogue One is, without a doubt, my favourite Star Wars film (yes, even topping Empire), and that completely, without a doubt, overwrites not just one, but several competing EU storylines.
But my EU comment about that is typically, "oh, it'd have been nice if they had Kyle Katarn's name cropped up." Then, well, there was the ending and I'm like, "nope, glad Kyle wasn't part of that at all!"
It doesn't mean Kyle can't exist, but he had a different mission, that's all.
Additionally, when it comes to TLJ, I feel those complaining about the EU would also be complaining about TFA. Aside from the possibility of Snoke being revealed to be a Palpatine clone, say, or maybe something about Rey's parentage, there's not really much likely overlap even possible between the EU and what TLJ could have been.
Nah, I think the EU's a red herring, unless maybe there's the context of, "things could have been done better than this movie... And here's an example of it being done better in Star Wars without even needing to stray outside that setting.
Also, the little hint that not all was as it seemed regarding Luke being at the rebel base was great, too. It was only when I thought back after leaving the cinema that it suddenly occurred to me: his lightsaber was blue when he was facing Kylo.
And his beard/hair was brown not grey, and he didn't disturb the salt.
Compel wrote: I feel the EU thing is a bit of a red herring.
EG, Rogue One is, without a doubt, my favourite Star Wars film (yes, even topping Empire), and that completely, without a doubt, overwrites not just one, but several competing EU storylines.
But my EU comment about that is typically, "oh, it'd have been nice if they had Kyle Katarn's name cropped up." Then, well, there was the ending and I'm like, "nope, glad Kyle wasn't part of that at all!"
It doesn't mean Kyle can't exist, but he had a different mission, that's all.
Additionally, when it comes to TLJ, I feel those complaining about the EU would also be complaining about TFA. Aside from the possibility of Snoke being revealed to be a Palpatine clone, say, or maybe something about Rey's parentage, there's not really much likely overlap even possible between the EU and what TLJ could have been.
Nah, I think the EU's a red herring, unless maybe there's the context of, "things could have been done better than this movie... And here's an example of it being done better in Star Wars without even needing to stray outside that setting.
That's my point. They're rewriting the EU. And the OT cast is fairly old so it can't be an immediate sequel.
By comparison it's like they jumped straight past the NJO era and into Jacen Solo becoming a Sith Lord. Which is odd because in many ways it seems like they're intentionally subverting a lot of the EU yet mimicking that concept. For example in Rogue One we see a darker side to the Rebellion and I don't recall that ever being shown in any of the wider read books.
That said when the TFA trailer hit I had a completely different story going off in my head then what they went with...I really wanted what turned out to be Ben Solo to have been something like a completely unrelated Dark Jedi/Sith Inquisitor (maybe even an actual Sith) leading a resurgence of an Imperial Remnant. Or even have a Sith Order emerge from the shadows that is not related to the Empire in any way but is simply interested in hunting down Jedi for now.
I caught it for a second time tonight and had originally missed a pretty significant line during the Snoke scene. He says "I warned my dark apprentice that as his powers grew so to would his light counterpart, I had assumed that to be Skywalker but I was mistaken".
It's almost a throw away line but it deals directly with elements in FA that people accused of being Mary Sue. It's mentioned several times in episodes 1-6 and other sources that the force is a self balancing entity, that both guides and manifests of it's own will. While Jedi can tap into the force and use to manipulate things, it is a separate entity of it's own and there's always duality to it, when the Jedi become too strong and dominant then the Sith in turn become strong, when the Jedi were reduced in number to a small handful so too were the dark ones leaving just Vader and the Emperor. (Despite his power Vader has a "weak" connection to the force due to the machine body)
Luke being the last Jedi prior to Rei seals himself off from the force in effect entirely removing the light side from that balance. Kylo is already quite powerful and under the sway of Snoke he is obsessed with taking on Vader's role and pushes to take on more and more dark power and there's nothing keeping things in check on the light side. In gamer terms lets say that Kylo levels up to 30, the force decides that things have swung too far and so the light also needs a level 30, it picks Rei as that champion/chosen one and begins guiding her and unbeknownst to Rei the force begins rapidly pumping her full of all that juicy force XP. She's leveling up at a massive pace but isn't really aware of her abilities or strength but the force is guiding her through the gaps and dangers just as both Luke and Anakin were steered towards their destiny. Luke was most effective when he surrendered all notions of self and just let go so that the force would guide his torpedo shot or deflect the blaster bolts, etc. Those aren't feats that Luke himself is doing but it's a force driven Zen state where he's surrendering control to the force and allowing the will of the force/universe, it happens to benefit Luke as a side effect but it's entirely the force pulling the strings of destiny at those moments.
Rei is like a blank slate where she's unaware she's being guided but in a lot of ways offers less resistance than Luke did, Luke is repeatedly shown doubting what the force is capable of and he can't take his reality blinders off and just open to feeling the force, Rei never really questions it because she doesn't have that deep mental barrier of disbelief. When Luke asks her what she knows of the force she knows something is inside her but has no clue what, but she has an innate grasp she can't explain which in an odd way is much much more than Luke knew when he started out. It's force manifest where Rei has less doubt and can fall into that Zen state naturally where others like Luke had to work harder for it because there were other Jedi (Obi-Wan and Yoda) who already had a large stash of light force points in their reserve. Kylo and Snoke have been running unchecked and rocking up some serious dark side over time, so by the time Rei comes along the surplus light side is ready burst at the seams and when it decides to channel it to her it's not a small trickle but a full on tidal wave.
I think that also may be why her experience with the dark side was so much different than Luke's there was a distinct pull where with Rei there's an over saturation of dark side in Snoke and Kylo and so it's not pulling her at the same strength as if needed more dark side conduits.
Where each side only gets 100 Force points when there's only one person on a side they can get a full 100 points but if you have 10 people on a side all sharing that same 100 points then you are looking at varied number of points but it's kept in check so that the total combination never exceeds 100. Certain major events might create a temporary surplus or deficit, eventually that side has to return back to 100 be it one absolutely one badass 100-point Jeid/Sith or 100 1-point Jedi/Sith.
I believe the studio has spent some marketing money to conjure up a kind of character on whom it can pin negative reaction to TLJ. This character is:
- 25-45 years old
- male
- white
- emtionally immature/disturbed
- misogynist
- racist
- "obsessed" with Star Wars
- deeply committed to now-defunct SW products
In the context of the wider social mood, this character is completely unsympathetic. Anything he might be able to say about the weaknesses of a film would be completely undermined by his immoral, childish, and generally pathetic demeanor. Looking down on him makes people feel better about themselves. Making fun of him doesn't make you a bully; it makes you a Good Person.
He was the same guy who said The Force Awakens was a disappointing remake. He was the same guy who said Rogue One was boring. Of course, all Good People know he just doesn't like women and non-whites. So there's no reason to wonder if he had a point about those movies. Right?
Funny how the only time this guy gets any news coverage is when a corporation doesn't want the public talking about the actual movie it produced and distributed.
I still can't believe that there was no one in the production or marketing who thought maybe one of the main themes of the film shouldn't be "throw your old Star Wars gak out and move on".
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I still can't believe that there was no one in the production or marketing who thought maybe one of the main themes of the film shouldn't be "throw your old Star Wars gak out and move on".
paulson games wrote: I caught it for a second time tonight and had originally missed a pretty significant line during the Snoke scene. He says "I warned my dark apprentice that as his powers grew so to would his light counterpart, I had assumed that to be Skywalker but I was mistaken".
This is pretty obviously the answer. I mean, what was the very first thing we heard in the very first trailer for the new movies? There has been an awakening. And it's right there in the title of the first movie. Rey is powerful because the force has chosen her as its champion, not because of her own skills.
Sure, it's apparent that Rey doesn't need training or anything. I've never had a problem with her suddenly developing Force powers and using a lightsaber like some kind of prodigy because it's pretty clear that she is in fact a prodigy. What's missing is any explanation of why this is the case. Is that how the Force works? If so, that's completely new and it needs to be explained. Also, why her instead of any of trillions of other beings? is a legitimate question that requires an answer.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: I still can't believe that there was no one in the production or marketing who thought maybe one of the main themes of the film shouldn't be "throw your old Star Wars gak out and move on".
Sorry, what?
. How many variations were there of "forget the past. It doesn't matter."? Luke throws his lightsaber away. There is no attempt to bridge the "modern" era to the past, and some antipathy towards anyone who would want to connect current events with those in the beloved trilogy. We are urged to forget the family dynamics of the past, the trapping of master and apprenticeship, the perceived innocence of the Rebellion, the very concept of a hotshot flyboy who can save the day. Throw it away for it doesn't fit in today's world.
Luciferian wrote: YOU are confusing nihilism and Nietzsche. Nietzsche's Ubermensch takes responsibility to assign value and meaning.
The Übermensch is a goal set by humans, for humans. Humans who give that goal meaning because it does not have an intrinsic one; it's just just an allegory for "People suck, and should be better."
Though, thinking on it, introductory Nietzsche isn't a bad read on Ben. He's been told for his whole life that he isn't normal, and then he gets destroyed by someone who is...kind of, maybe.
Manchu wrote: Sure, it's apparent that Rey doesn't need training or anything. I've never had a problem with her suddenly developing Force powers and using a lightsaber like some kind of prodigy because it's pretty clear that she is in fact a prodigy. What's missing is any explanation of why this is the case. Is that how the Force works? If so, that's completely new and it needs to be explained. Also, why her instead of any of trillions of other beings? is a legitimate question that requires an answer.
I think it's a fair question and we'll probably see an answer in the next movie. I think that a lot of people looking back fondly at the original movies tend to remember them as a whole and tend to forget that many of the answers took 3 full films to explore, Vader being Luke's father, Leia being his sister that's all stuff that wasn't resolved until Jedi. A lot of people were screaming Mary Sue simply because the answer to everything wasn't directly in front of their nose at launch, it's obvious that there's some sort of deeper connection as to why Rei was chosen, be it her parents, her innocence, purity of spirit, unbreakable inner hope, or something else. I have a good feeling that we'll see that revealed in the next film but too many people want instant understanding and immediate resolution of every plot point, I blame the ipad generation and their inabilty to follow anything for more than 5 seconds
Luke is introduced as a normal nobody raised by his aunt and uncle. We see that he is curious about his mysterious father. Before his adventure begins and before he demonstrates any aptitude for anything but whining, he meets Obi-Wan who explains to him, as well as us, that his father was a great pilot and a Jedi knight. Obi-Wan says Luke should come with him on an adventure and learn about the Force. Luke initially demures but upon confrontation with the murder of his foster parents by the Empire, he is motivated to follow the apparent destiny unfurling before him.
I didn't need to see ESB or RotJ to learn about why Luke was worth caring about in ANH. But Disney wants me to see three of three films before explaining why Rey is worth caring about? (if it's even explained then, which is far from certain.)
Manchu wrote: I didn't need to see ESB or RotJ to learn about why Luke was worth caring about in ANH. But Disney wants me to see three of three films before explaining why Rey is worth caring about? (if it's even explained then, which is far from certain.)
I think that's unfortunate fallout due to the nature of movies being planned with dedicated sequels. When New Hope released it was a singular film and while Lucas had an idea of what he wanted with his story direction it was done as a singular film, there's a distinct change in the story telling approach in Empire as they had decided that it was now a multi part series. IMO none of the prequels did the concise job the ANH did because it was all meant to be extended to the next film in the chain so it happened well before the DIsney rebranding was ever a factor.
I think a lot of the Marvel movies suffer from the planned sequel structure as well. I still enjoy them but they just don't feel as strong as their initial movies do. This marks film 9 in the Star Wars chain and I can't think of many franchises that are doing well even at half that pace, I'm honestly surprised that the SW films actually aren't considerably worse. They may have lost some steam but after 9 films most franchises would be completely bust.
I can't even begin to imagine what type of mess the 9th film would be like for Terminator/Aliens/Tremors etc.
Trouble is, this isn't just the natural process of a franchise wearing thinner. TFA was cynically designed to raise questions that it was not designed to answer, just like (for example) Prometheus. Unfortunately, one of those questions was Why should the audience care about the protagonist? Last go around, I was willing to wait for the next go around. Two thirds through, no, my goodwill is now exhausted. It's too late.
Saw the movie yesterday. Definitely had likes and dislikes about it. Overall was pretty happy with it.
Didn't like the Poe and Holdo thing because in general I dislike it when huge plot points just come down to an odd lack of communication.
Luke just seemed odd to me, it's been a while since I last saw the original trilogy but he just didn't seem like a realistic portrayal of an older version of that character. I dunno, haven't put a lot of thought in to it I guess it just sort of threw me while watching it.
Rey, eh, I don't hate her as a character but I'm also not sure why I'm supposed to like her and she still feels a bit shallow.
There were other niggles here and there but for the most part I liked it.
Manchu wrote: Unfortunately, one of those questions was Why should the audience care about the protagonist?
What answer do you need beyond 'They're likeable/relateable/kickass and I want to see how things work out for them?'
Backstory is nice, but in no way essential to caring about the protagonist.
Obviously, if you don't like the protagonist, or relate to them, or are inspired by them, then that's not likely to result in an enjoyable movie experience for you... But in that case, I'm not sure that the movie making sure you know where they buy their shoes is necessarily going to fix that.
Have seen it twice now, was unsure at first but loved it all the more after the second viewing mainly because the Canto Bight section seems to go a lot quicker (Is Nick Frost of Spaced, Sean of The Dead, Sean Peggy friend etc one of the guards?).
The only thing that truly jars me is the scene just after Rey and Kylo have their first Force Connection and she blows a hole in the hut. Luke's "what is that?" line and the jump cut to 4/5 fish caretakers seems like the stuff of acid flashbacks.
trexmeyer wrote: I'm pretty sure the vast majority of negative opinions are from people that read the EU. I doubt it could be proven either way, but that's my gut feeling.
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of positive opinions are also from people that read the EU. This is a geek forum, most people here have probably read at least some of the EU.
But for the general population I suspect it's also true. Most of the people who haven't read any of the EU haven't done so because they're casual fans, or even people who don't consider themselves fans at all and just went to see the movie because it's the big one for the weekend. They're unlikely to have negative opinions because they're unlikely to care at all. Rey's origin doesn't make sense? Who cares, did you see how awesome that fight scene looked? Meanwhile the people who know enough about the IP to talk about things like story themes have probably been invested enough to read some EU stuff.
Not read anything of the EU so my dislike of the film had nothing to do with - more the terrible pacing and story.
I liked Rey and Ben, liked the pilot guy and Leia and Luke were good, I didn't even mnd the red headed minon commander - he was quite fun.
The rest was either forgettable or tediously lenghened or completely stupid - lets go to Casino world for instance or the pointless star destroyers, the lack of fighters doing anything after the first action scene and Ben had proved that the Rebel ships were vulnerable to them. It was just lazy writing.
Mr Morden wrote: the lack of fighters doing anything after the first action scene and Ben had proved that the Rebel ships were vulnerable to them.
This was specifically explained. The imperial officer says "fall back, we can't cover you from here" as the rebel ships pull away, and Kylo's wingmen immediately get shot down. The fighters are obviously depending on some kind of suppressing fire effect from the capital ships keeping the AA guns from wiping them out, launching a mass fighter attack would just be throwing away fighters on a suicide run.
That bit does rank pretty highly in the 'list of poorly written plot contrivances' actually. I can see why Hux would want to protect Kylo but not being willing to sacrifce even a hundred minionish TIE pilots to knock out the cruiser's engines thereby ending the entire Resistance there and then is both poor military judgement and not only goes against the very doctrines of the Galactic Empire but also the entire philosophy of cartoonish movie villainy.
But hey, we needed that slow-paced space chase taking up an hour of the running time!
Odd though, does Hux truly want to protect Kylo? I think time and again the friction between the two has been made obvious. I love the scene in Snoke's room when he nearly pulls his blaster on Ren.
Riquende wrote: That bit does rank pretty highly in the 'list of poorly written plot contrivances' actually. I can see why Hux would want to protect Kylo but not being willing to sacrifce even a hundred minionish TIE pilots to knock out the cruiser's engines thereby ending the entire Resistance there and then is both poor military judgement and not only goes against the very doctrines of the Galactic Empire but also the entire philosophy of cartoonish movie villainy.
But hey, we needed that slow-paced space chase taking up an hour of the running time!
But could they actually have done it? Remember, the cruiser's shields were focused aft to protect against the capital ships, presumably leaving the front poorly defended at best and possibly not shielded at all. And they're targeting an exposed hangar bay and an exposed window, not armored hull like it has around the engines. Sacrificing some fighters to win the fight is an acceptable trade perhaps, if you aren't confident in the inevitability of your victory. Sacrificing some fighters to inflict more superficial damage while failing to accomplish any greater goal is pointless.
ListenToMeWarriors wrote: Odd though, does Hux truly want to protect Kylo? I think time and again the friction between the two has been made obvious. I love the scene in Snoke's room when he nearly pulls his blaster on Ren.
Snoke is still about at that point isn't he? Even if he personally doesn't care too much for him he'd know he'd be blamed if he didn't take steps to at least warn Kylo that he's exposed.
And yes, the swiftly hidden blaster part was excellent, although quite we we didn't have any time for a 'Rey dramatically escaping though a collapsing ship to safety' sequence at that point is a question... oh wait, it's because we filled up the running time on all that slowly flying through space stuff and you can't cut that. Best just have her suddenly back on the Falcon 20 minutes later gunning stuff down and whooping excitedly. Almost as if her immedately previous encounter had no effect on her whatsoever.
Mr Morden wrote: the lack of fighters doing anything after the first action scene and Ben had proved that the Rebel ships were vulnerable to them.
This was specifically explained. The imperial officer says "fall back, we can't cover you from here" as the rebel ships pull away, and Kylo's wingmen immediately get shot down. The fighters are obviously depending on some kind of suppressing fire effect from the capital ships keeping the AA guns from wiping them out, launching a mass fighter attack would just be throwing away fighters on a suicide run.
I understood that bit as "I don't want Kylo killed (or steeling all the glory on his own))"- there was no sign of any suppressive fire - the big ships fired its big guns every so often and the Star destoryers just bumbled aliong doing sweet FA.
Neither the First Order or the Imperials before would have cared about loosing a few dozen fighters.
If they had blasted loads of them in the massively successfulfirst attack run that Kylo and his wingman made then fine but they can;t be bothered to show anyting like that. It was not even if Kylo who caused the damage to the bridge it was his wingman.
They even made sure that the Rebels had no fighters of their own - rather having anything actually dramatic like a continual desperate fight as the rebels try to flee - might have had some actual tension in the Chase scenes rather than just looking stupid.
ListenToMeWarriors wrote: Odd though, does Hux truly want to protect Kylo? I think time and again the friction between the two has been made obvious. I love the scene in Snoke's room when he nearly pulls his blaster on Ren.
Snoke is still about at that point isn't he? Even if he personally doesn't care too much for him he'd know he'd be blamed if he didn't take steps to at least warn Kylo that he's exposed.
And yes, the swiftly hidden blaster part was excellent, although quite we we didn't have any time for a 'Rey dramatically escaping though a collapsing ship to safety' sequence at that point is a question... oh wait, it's because we filled up the running time on all that slowly flying through space stuff and you can't cut that. Best just have her suddenly back on the Falcon 20 minutes later gunning stuff down and whooping excitedly. Almost as if her immedately previous encounter had no effect on her whatsoever.
Too true - Hux was great fun -
Yeah gotta keep having the tedious repeated shots of the two fleets moving oh so slowly through space. Like I said - terrible pacing and plot
I did find it a bit odd in the beginning when Poe's lone fighter could take down the guns on the dreadnought. There's really no surface guns capable of taking down a lone fighter, but at the same time the rebel ships do have such capability so that the first order has to pull their fighters back? Not to mention the lack of a combat air/space patrol in an active combat area?
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I did find it a bit odd in the beginning when Poe's lone fighter could take down the guns on the dreadnought. There's really no surface guns capable of taking down a lone fighter, but at the same time the rebel ships do have such capability so that the first order has to pull their fighters back? Not to mention the lack of a combat air/space patrol in an active combat area?
I think its so the directors film critic mates can orgasm over the repeated shots of the space ships moving oh so slowly in space - oh look pretty pictures mentaltiy.
Star Wars has already had "snub fighters" being incredably powerful compared to big ships - They take out Star Destroyer's whereas neither sides main line of battle warships ever do anything to each other.
There were ways of making it make narrative sense - the director could not be bothered.
Mr Morden wrote: there was no sign of any suppressive fire - the big ships fired its big guns every so often and the Star destoryers just bumbled aliong doing sweet FA.
The probable explanation here is that the cruiser had to divert power to shields just to stay alive, but once it pulled out of effective range of the capital ships and reduced the threat of incoming fire it could fire its AA guns again. That's why nothing happens to the fighters while they're wrecking stuff, but as soon as Kylo gets the "fall back, you're too far away for us to cover you" order both of his wingmen are blown away by AA fire from the cruiser.
Mr Morden wrote: there was no sign of any suppressive fire - the big ships fired its big guns every so often and the Star destoryers just bumbled aliong doing sweet FA.
The probable explanation here is that the cruiser had to divert power to shields just to stay alive, but once it pulled out of effective range of the capital ships and reduced the threat of incoming fire it could fire its AA guns again. That's why nothing happens to the fighters while they're wrecking stuff, but as soon as Kylo gets the "fall back, you're too far away for us to cover you" order both of his wingmen are blown away by AA fire from the cruiser.
If that works for you I guess - But again the fall back is addressed to Kylo and with a giant super ship and 4-5 star Destroyers full of fighters - they attack with what 3 of them? AA devenses may be good but we know from al the films that wieght of numbers would have swamped them and that fighters are massively effective against big ships.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: I did find it a bit odd in the beginning when Poe's lone fighter could take down the guns on the dreadnought. There's really no surface guns capable of taking down a lone fighter, but at the same time the rebel ships do have such capability so that the first order has to pull their fighters back? Not to mention the lack of a combat air/space patrol in an active combat area?
I think its so the directors film critic mates can orgasm over the repeated shots of the space ships moving oh so slowly in space - oh look pretty pictures mentaltiy.
Star Wars has already had "snub fighters" being incredably powerful compared to big ships - They take out Star Destroyer's whereas neither sides main line of battle warships ever do anything to each other.
There were ways of making it make narrative sense - the director could not be bothered.
Fighters get within the shields of the ships and fire at close range. The shields are projected around the ship at a distance, fighters can get within that distance whereas capital ships cannot.
As for the Dreadnought lacking guns capable of shooting down a small fighter, it doesn't need them when it has a massive contingent of tie fighters to serve as fighter defence. The only reason Poe was able to take out the guns was due to complacency on Hux's part and the element of surprise.
The resistance cruiser and frigates lack such large fleets of fighters to defend them and so need anti-fighter defence guns to support their fighters.
Mr Morden wrote: there was no sign of any suppressive fire - the big ships fired its big guns every so often and the Star destoryers just bumbled aliong doing sweet FA.
The probable explanation here is that the cruiser had to divert power to shields just to stay alive, but once it pulled out of effective range of the capital ships and reduced the threat of incoming fire it could fire its AA guns again. That's why nothing happens to the fighters while they're wrecking stuff, but as soon as Kylo gets the "fall back, you're too far away for us to cover you" order both of his wingmen are blown away by AA fire from the cruiser.
If that works for you I guess - But again the fall back is addressed to Kylo and with a giant super ship and 4-5 star Destroyers full of fighters - they attack with what 3 of them? AA devenses may be good but we know from al the films that wieght of numbers would have swamped them and that fighters are massively effective against big ships.
Thing is though, why would the FO waste the fighters at that point? They know the Resistance Fleet is going to slowly run out of fuel and they can then pick them off at their leisure with the long guns. Yes, a few hundred TIEs could probably take out at least a chunk of the Resistance Fleet, but as far as they're concerned, wherever they flee the FO can follow moments later, and the Resistance (so far as they know) have nowhere safe to run.
And then there's just the rest of SW to consider. The only times we've ever seen an appropriate amount of fighters launched from a Bad Guy fleet are Endor, Coruscant and Scarif (and a few battles in Clone Wars). The First Death Star should have just launched a few hundred more fighters, the blockade over Hoth should have been more than a couple of Star Destroyers, so on and so forth. But that's the trade-off for actually interested scenes rather than a few hundred TIEs annihilating everything the Empire fight.
Mr Morden wrote: there was no sign of any suppressive fire - the big ships fired its big guns every so often and the Star destoryers just bumbled aliong doing sweet FA.
The probable explanation here is that the cruiser had to divert power to shields just to stay alive, but once it pulled out of effective range of the capital ships and reduced the threat of incoming fire it could fire its AA guns again. That's why nothing happens to the fighters while they're wrecking stuff, but as soon as Kylo gets the "fall back, you're too far away for us to cover you" order both of his wingmen are blown away by AA fire from the cruiser.
That doesn't really make sense either because they were in range of the big guns, just not so close that the big guns could penetrate the shields, so they had to divert power to the rear shields to actually survive (I'm sure I heard a line to that effect in the movie).
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A Town Called Malus wrote: As for the Dreadnought lacking guns capable of shooting down a small fighter, it doesn't need them when it has a massive contingent of tie fighters to serve as fighter defence. The only reason Poe was able to take out the guns was due to complacency on Hux's part and the element of surprise.
But that's the bit that doesn't make sense. If the dreadnought lacked guns capable of taking out fighters then it'd be standard operating procedures to have a combat patrol of fighters at all times.
Maybe I've just seen too much Battlestar Galactica but it wouldn't be a case of Hux being cocky there'd be dozens of people along the chain of command that would KNOW they need fighters patrolling if the craft lacked the weaponry to deal with enemy fighters.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: hat doesn't really make sense either because they were in range of the big guns, just not so close that the big guns could penetrate the shields, so they had to divert power to the rear shields to actually survive (I'm sure I heard a line to that effect in the movie).
Presumably as the range opened up the guns would continue to get less effective. And AA guns don't need as much power as anti-capital guns. So when the cruiser goes from "rear shields only, throw everything we've got into shields or we die" to "rear shields only, throw 95% of everything we've got into shields or we die" that means they can bring some AA guns back online. And again, as soon as Hux gives the recall order we see both of Kylo's wingmen blown away by AA fire. Obviously something has changed to make life a lot more difficult for fighters.
But that's the bit that doesn't make sense. If the dreadnought lacked guns capable of taking out fighters then it'd be standard operating procedures to have a combat patrol of fighters at all times.
Maybe I've just seen too much Battlestar Galactica (which itself has lots of realism issues ) but it wouldn't be a case of Hux being cocky there'd be dozens of people along the chain of command that would KNOW they need fighters patrolling if the craft lacked the weaponry to deal with enemy fighters.
Sure, and that's why the dreadnought's captain yells "WTF IS THIS I WANT OUR FIGHTERS LAUNCHED FIVE MINUTES AGO". There probably would have been some words with Hux if he hadn't died soon after.
Mr Morden wrote: there was no sign of any suppressive fire - the big ships fired its big guns every so often and the Star destoryers just bumbled aliong doing sweet FA.
The probable explanation here is that the cruiser had to divert power to shields just to stay alive, but once it pulled out of effective range of the capital ships and reduced the threat of incoming fire it could fire its AA guns again. That's why nothing happens to the fighters while they're wrecking stuff, but as soon as Kylo gets the "fall back, you're too far away for us to cover you" order both of his wingmen are blown away by AA fire from the cruiser.
If that works for you I guess - But again the fall back is addressed to Kylo and with a giant super ship and 4-5 star Destroyers full of fighters - they attack with what 3 of them? AA devenses may be good but we know from al the films that wieght of numbers would have swamped them and that fighters are massively effective against big ships.
Thing is though, why would the FO waste the fighters at that point? They know the Resistance Fleet is going to slowly run out of fuel and they can then pick them off at their leisure with the long guns. Yes, a few hundred TIEs could probably take out at least a chunk of the Resistance Fleet, but as far as they're concerned, wherever they flee the FO can follow moments later, and the Resistance (so far as they know) have nowhere safe to run.
And then there's just the rest of SW to consider. The only times we've ever seen an appropriate amount of fighters launched from a Bad Guy fleet are Endor, Coruscant and Scarif (and a few battles in Clone Wars). The First Death Star should have just launched a few hundred more fighters, the blockade over Hoth should have been more than a couple of Star Destroyers, so on and so forth. But that's the trade-off for actually interested scenes rather than a few hundred TIEs annihilating everything the Empire fight.
We get narrative explanations for the first Death Star - tarkins arrogance
Endor we had swarms of fighters -
So long repeated shots of the same few ships crawling across space with an occassional couple of shots from the super giant ship is interesting than a series of desperate dogfights? Really? - hmm ok.
Compare the first scene with the destruction of the dreadnought to the Tedious chase that only serves as an excuse to have an equally tedious trip to Casino world.
I think the Hux being cocky there is a viable explanation.
The dreadnought commander himself does specifically say, "Fighters should have been launched 5 minutes ago."
I'm inclined to give that aspect of the film a pass.
No problem at all with that bit - it helps set up Hux as a arrogant and not very effective commander. If they had spent a minute or two with him saying no - I want to savour the pursuit or something than that would have been a bit better. Maybe he got dumped by a fighter pilot or something...
One possible point in defense of the lack of fighters: TIE fighters, at least in the old canon, don't have a hyperdrive. If you launch TIEs you're committing to either abandoning your fighter screen in space as soon as you have to jump, or being tied down to one location while you wait to recover them. Does the hyperspace tracking thing work if the tracking ship doesn't pursue immediately? If so it makes sense to only launch fighters once you know they're needed and avoid getting baited into leaving them all behind and getting your capital ships killed by a fighter attack you can no longer defend against.
But that's the bit that doesn't make sense. If the dreadnought lacked guns capable of taking out fighters then it'd be standard operating procedures to have a combat patrol of fighters at all times.
Maybe I've just seen too much Battlestar Galactica (which itself has lots of realism issues ) but it wouldn't be a case of Hux being cocky there'd be dozens of people along the chain of command that would KNOW they need fighters patrolling if the craft lacked the weaponry to deal with enemy fighters.
Sure, and that's why the dreadnought's captain yells "WTF IS THIS I WANT OUR FIGHTERS LAUNCHED FIVE MINUTES AGO". There probably would have been some words with Hux if he hadn't died soon after.
It still just seems stupid to me. As I said, it would be standard operating procedure to have defensive fighters patrolling. It's odd that Hux would even be part of making that decision because it'd just be something that'd be done automatically if the ship lacked defensive capabilities. It'd be one of those things the engineer wrote in the manual "oh by the way, we forgot to put any light AAA on this thing so it needs constant fighter support" and would be known by everyone from the pilots to the hangar crews up the chain of command to the captain.
There's hubris then there's "wait, is every single person on the chain of command a complete fething idiot?"
Mr Morden wrote: So long repeated shots of the same few ships crawling across space with an occassional couple of shots from the super giant ship is interesting than a series of desperate dogfights? Really? - hmm ok.
Every part of the movie doesn't have to be interesting desperate action. In fact, that's a huge problem with a lot of modern movies, they assume the audience has zero attention span if there isn't a CGI spectacle happening at all times. Adding more dogfight scenes would be pointless filler content, the ship-in-space scenes do a perfectly good job of establishing the context of what is going on while giving a bit of downtime between the action scenes.
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AllSeeingSkink wrote: It'd be one of those things the engineer wrote in the manual "oh by the way, we forgot to put any light AAA on this thing so it needs constant fighter support" and would be known by everyone from the pilots to the hangar crews up the chain of command to the captain.
Except that isn't the case. It's explicitly stated that it does have AA defenses, defenses that would slaughter the attack force if Poe doesn't succeed in clearing them. Its defenses only fail because Poe has character shields and isn't a normal fighter threat.
Peregrine wrote: One possible point in defense of the lack of fighters: TIE fighters, at least in the old canon, don't have a hyperdrive. If you launch TIEs you're committing to either abandoning your fighter screen in space as soon as you have to jump, or being tied down to one location while you wait to recover them. Does the hyperspace tracking thing work if the tracking ship doesn't pursue immediately? If so it makes sense to only launch fighters once you know they're needed and avoid getting baited into leaving them all behind and getting your capital ships killed by a fighter attack you can no longer defend against.
Yeah but if we are applying logic - then you have a basic fighter screen up at all times, you have a few fighters keep up with the rebels and watch them just out of AA range, and you use your own bombers.
They had five star destroyers - you have half launch, half hold back. That's not even counting the giant super ship of doom - whose guns are pretty crap for a giant super ship of doom.
Mr Morden wrote: They had five star destroyers - you have half launch, half hold back. That's not even counting the giant super ship of doom - whose guns are pretty crap for a giant super ship of doom.
And then the rebels jump, and half your fighters are gone without the rebels firing a single shot. Remember, they knew it was an evacuation with the rebels preparing to jump as soon as possible. Throwing away half their fighters on the chance that a single x-wing is piloted by the god of fighter combat instead of a mortal being is bad strategy.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: It'd be one of those things the engineer wrote in the manual "oh by the way, we forgot to put any light AAA on this thing so it needs constant fighter support" and would be known by everyone from the pilots to the hangar crews up the chain of command to the captain.
Except that isn't the case. It's explicitly stated that it does have AA defenses, defenses that would slaughter the attack force if Poe doesn't succeed in clearing them. Its defenses only fail because Poe has character shields and isn't a normal fighter threat.
In which case it's just lazy writing. But I'm pretty sure there was a line somewhere that the captain said the AA wasn't designed for small aircraft, which is why I edited my specified light AA (which is also something I found odd because weren't the Death Star towers at least somewhat effective against fighters?).
I mean, yeah, of course, you can hand wave away certain aspects to make the story function, but that's the whole thing about lazy writing, you have to hand wave instead of just having a story that makes sense.
Mr Morden wrote: They had five star destroyers - you have half launch, half hold back. That's not even counting the giant super ship of doom - whose guns are pretty crap for a giant super ship of doom.
And then the rebels jump, and half your fighters are gone without the rebels firing a single shot. Remember, they knew it was an evacuation with the rebels preparing to jump as soon as possible. Throwing away half their fighters on the chance that a single x-wing is piloted by the god of fighter combat instead of a mortal being is bad strategy.
No - half the fleet goes with the giant ship, half the fleet recovers its fighters and follows the fleet a few minutes later - they have intersteller coms given that the rebels were happily chatting to people vast distances away with no problem so they can be beack with them in minutes.
They can detect how much "fuel" the rebels have so they know one jump left.
Having 5 battleship/aircraft carriers and a super giant battleship aricraft carrier means you have some flexibility in your fleet! More than the rebels who you know have no fighters as your best pilot just blew their hanger up with two other fighters.
Its a narrative choice to have the Imperial fighters do nothing, IMO a very poor one given the tedium it replaces the potentia action with.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: It'd be one of those things the engineer wrote in the manual "oh by the way, we forgot to put any light AAA on this thing so it needs constant fighter support" and would be known by everyone from the pilots to the hangar crews up the chain of command to the captain.
Except that isn't the case. It's explicitly stated that it does have AA defenses, defenses that would slaughter the attack force if Poe doesn't succeed in clearing them. Its defenses only fail because Poe has character shields and isn't a normal fighter threat.
In which case it's just lazy writing. But I'm pretty sure there was a line somewhere that the captain said the AA wasn't designed for small aircraft, which is why I edited my specified light AA (which is also something I found odd because weren't the Death Star towers at least somewhat effective against fighters?).
I mean, yeah, of course, you can hand wave away certain aspects to make the story function, but that's the whole thing about lazy writing, you have to hand wave instead of just having a story that makes sense.
The Death Star towers didn't shoot down a single fighter in A New Hope. Also, the manoeuvres that Poe was performing whilst he was taking out the guns were phenomenal, involving extremely fast switching between maximum velocity (plus extra momentum provided by that booster) and combat formation.
It was, quite frankly, the best display of flying ever shown in Star Wars.
A Town Called Malus wrote: The Death Star towers didn't shoot down a single fighter in A New Hope. Also, the manoeuvres that Poe was performing whilst he was taking out the guns were phenomenal, involving extremely fast switching between maximum velocity (plus extra momentum provided by that booster) and combat formation.
It was, quite frankly, the best display of flying ever shown in Star Wars.
Right, because Poe is a main character and god of starfighter combat, not a mortal pilot. It's explicitly stated that if he fails to take out the guns, all of the guns, the bomber attack is doomed. If leaving a single gun intact means the rest of the attack has no hope of success then it's safe to say that the guns are effective, it's just that Poe is a main character and wins because plot.
PS: poor, neglected Porkins. First he's the subject of every fat meme, now we've forgotten his sacrifice entirely.
Mr Morden wrote: They had five star destroyers - you have half launch, half hold back. That's not even counting the giant super ship of doom - whose guns are pretty crap for a giant super ship of doom.
And then the rebels jump, and half your fighters are gone without the rebels firing a single shot. Remember, they knew it was an evacuation with the rebels preparing to jump as soon as possible. Throwing away half their fighters on the chance that a single x-wing is piloted by the god of fighter combat instead of a mortal being is bad strategy.
No - half the fleet goes with the giant ship, half the fleet recovers its fighters and follows the fleet a few minutes later - they have intersteller coms given that the rebels were happily chatting to people vast distances away with no problem so they can be beack with them in minutes.
Minutes is enough time to make a second jump. The Imperial fleet was estimating the fuel reserves of the resistance fleet, all it would need would be for the resistance to have a secret reserve fuel supply they didn't factor in for the fleet to end up strung out.
Mr Morden wrote: They had five star destroyers - you have half launch, half hold back. That's not even counting the giant super ship of doom - whose guns are pretty crap for a giant super ship of doom.
And then the rebels jump, and half your fighters are gone without the rebels firing a single shot. Remember, they knew it was an evacuation with the rebels preparing to jump as soon as possible. Throwing away half their fighters on the chance that a single x-wing is piloted by the god of fighter combat instead of a mortal being is bad strategy.
No - half the fleet goes with the giant ship, half the fleet recovers its fighters and follows the fleet a few minutes later - they have intersteller coms given that the rebels were happily chatting to people vast distances away with no problem so they can be beack with them in minutes.
Minutes is enough time to make a second jump. The Imperial fleet was estimating the fuel reserves of the resistance fleet, all it would need would be for the resistance to have a secret reserve fuel supply they didn't factor in for the fleet to end up strung out.
Which doesn't matter - you still have at least two battleships/ACs and a Super giant Battleship vs a crappy cruiser and some transports - the only ship even bothering to fire in the film is the gaint super ship - the ISDs do nothing in the entire film - I did wonder if they were just empty shells to make the FO look good.
The whole point is that its the last rebels with their last ships. Again it takes only a few minutes to recover fighters at most - then they jump to your super gaint ships and remaining escorts location as you have coms. Simples! If you are realy worried you cycle a single ISDs complement each time.
A Town Called Malus wrote: The Death Star towers didn't shoot down a single fighter in A New Hope. Also, the manoeuvres that Poe was performing whilst he was taking out the guns were phenomenal, involving extremely fast switching between maximum velocity (plus extra momentum provided by that booster) and combat formation.
It was, quite frankly, the best display of flying ever shown in Star Wars.
Right, because Poe is a main character and god of starfighter combat, not a mortal pilot. It's explicitly stated that if he fails to take out the guns, all of the guns, the bomber attack is doomed. If leaving a single gun intact means the rest of the attack has no hope of success then it's safe to say that the guns are effective, it's just that Poe is a main character and wins because plot.
PS: poor, neglected Porkins. First he's the subject of every fat meme, now we've forgotten his sacrifice entirely.
It is also worth noting that the bombers used to take out the Dreadnought had zero manoeuvrability compared to X-Wings and Y-Wings.
Also, Porkins only got shot down due to his X-Wing having issues, rather than the Death Star turbolasers being any way effective at targeting and hitting the craft used in the first Death Star attack.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Also, Porkins only got shot down due to his X-Wing having issues, rather than the Death Star turbolasers being any way effective at targeting and hitting the craft used in the first Death Star attack.
He took a hit from AA fire that damaged his ship, then exploded once he was an easy enough target.
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A Town Called Malus wrote: It is also worth noting that the bombers used to take out the Dreadnought had zero manoeuvrability compared to X-Wings and Y-Wings.
Sure, but that's the threat they were faced with. The AA guns alone get the job done if Poe is replaced by a mortal pilot instead of a main character who must succeed because of plot. Not launching the fighters was a mistake bad enough to get the dreadnought captain pretty mad about it, but it shouldn't have been a fatal one.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Also, Porkins only got shot down due to his X-Wing having issues, rather than the Death Star turbolasers being any way effective at targeting and hitting the craft used in the first Death Star attack.
He took a hit from AA fire that damaged his ship, then exploded once he was an easy enough target.
Also they turn off some of the guns once Vader and his wingmen go hunting.
Mr Morden wrote: They had five star destroyers - you have half launch, half hold back. That's not even counting the giant super ship of doom - whose guns are pretty crap for a giant super ship of doom.
And then the rebels jump, and half your fighters are gone without the rebels firing a single shot. Remember, they knew it was an evacuation with the rebels preparing to jump as soon as possible. Throwing away half their fighters on the chance that a single x-wing is piloted by the god of fighter combat instead of a mortal being is bad strategy.
No - half the fleet goes with the giant ship, half the fleet recovers its fighters and follows the fleet a few minutes later - they have intersteller coms given that the rebels were happily chatting to people vast distances away with no problem so they can be beack with them in minutes.
Minutes is enough time to make a second jump. The Imperial fleet was estimating the fuel reserves of the resistance fleet, all it would need would be for the resistance to have a secret reserve fuel supply they didn't factor in for the fleet to end up strung out.
Which doesn't matter - you till have at least two battleships/ACs and a Super giant Battleship vs a crappy cruiser and some transports - the only ship even bothering to fire in the film is the gaint super ship - the ISDs do nothing in the entire film - I did wonder if they were just shells to make the FO look good.
The whole point is that its the last rebels with their last ships. Again it takes only a few minutes to recover fighters at most - then they jump to your super gaint ships and remaining escorts location as you have coms. Simples! If you are realy worried you cycle a single ISDs complement each time
Two battleships with no fighter support and then if they release fighters they end up stranding those fighters if the rebels jump again etc.
Also, there was no point in the other Star Destroyers firing at the cruiser. If it was outside the effective range of the guns of the flagship, it was well out of the effective range of the guns of the standard Star Destroyers.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Also, Porkins only got shot down due to his X-Wing having issues, rather than the Death Star turbolasers being any way effective at targeting and hitting the craft used in the first Death Star attack.
He took a hit from AA fire that damaged his ship, then exploded once he was an easy enough target.
He took a hit from debris from a destroyed tower, according to Wookieepedia.
Mr Morden wrote: They had five star destroyers - you have half launch, half hold back. That's not even counting the giant super ship of doom - whose guns are pretty crap for a giant super ship of doom.
And then the rebels jump, and half your fighters are gone without the rebels firing a single shot. Remember, they knew it was an evacuation with the rebels preparing to jump as soon as possible. Throwing away half their fighters on the chance that a single x-wing is piloted by the god of fighter combat instead of a mortal being is bad strategy.
No - half the fleet goes with the giant ship, half the fleet recovers its fighters and follows the fleet a few minutes later - they have intersteller coms given that the rebels were happily chatting to people vast distances away with no problem so they can be beack with them in minutes.
Minutes is enough time to make a second jump. The Imperial fleet was estimating the fuel reserves of the resistance fleet, all it would need would be for the resistance to have a secret reserve fuel supply they didn't factor in for the fleet to end up strung out.
Which doesn't matter - you till have at least two battleships/ACs and a Super giant Battleship vs a crappy cruiser and some transports - the only ship even bothering to fire in the film is the gaint super ship - the ISDs do nothing in the entire film - I did wonder if they were just shells to make the FO look good.
The whole point is that its the last rebels with their last ships. Again it takes only a few minutes to recover fighters at most - then they jump to your super gaint ships and remaining escorts location as you have coms. Simples! If you are realy worried you cycle a single ISDs complement each time
Two battleships with no fighter support and then if they release fighters they end up stranding those fighters if the rebels jump again etc.
Also, there was no point in the other Star Destroyers firing at the cruiser. If it was outside the effective range of the guns of the flagship, it was well out of the effective range of the guns of the standard Star Destroyers.
.
Nope - you always have plenty of fighters.
1. You either launch you CAP so maybe a full ISDs capacity - if you want to make an attack then you go for maybe 2 ships worth.
2. The Rebel fleet jump - yout Super-Giant ship (with all its fighters) jumps with 3 ISDs
3.You either launch you CAP so maybe a full ISDs capacity - if you want to make an attack then you go for maybe 2 ships worth.
4. Somehow the rebels jump again -your Super-Giant ship (with all its fighters) jumps with 1 ISDs
5.You launch you CAP - a full ISDs capacity
5. after a few minutes the rest of your ISDs jump to your location, because your are in constant coms with them. repeat as desired
And thats without the ISDs jumping to your location between jumps, or the rebel ship being damaged by swarms of fighters or running out of fuel
Lastly we know the Fo considers their fighters expendable because they are still using TIEs - if not they would buy X wings (why they don't as well is not especialyl clear but can be hand waved I guess)
Peregrine wrote: One possible point in defense of the lack of fighters: TIE fighters, at least in the old canon, don't have a hyperdrive.
This is true, but some idiot decided the First Order should have two-seater TIE fighters with shields and hyperdrives that look identical to the old TIE fighters.
Peregrine wrote: One possible point in defense of the lack of fighters: TIE fighters, at least in the old canon, don't have a hyperdrive. If you launch TIEs you're committing to either abandoning your fighter screen in space as soon as you have to jump, or being tied down to one location while you wait to recover them. Does the hyperspace tracking thing work if the tracking ship doesn't pursue immediately? If so it makes sense to only launch fighters once you know they're needed and avoid getting baited into leaving them all behind and getting your capital ships killed by a fighter attack you can no longer defend against.
The FO TIEs don't have hyperdrives either, but they do have shields; though that isn't stated in the films. It easily could have been, Poe could have said something along the lines of "These things have shields!?" when he escapes with Finn.
What is stated in the films is that FO soldiers are disposable, Finn wasn't given a name until Poe gave him one.
Some of the First Order Ties do have hyperdrives but most don't. I think the main take from the Dreadnought battle is that Hux is an overconfident idiot promoted way above his talent level.
GoatboyBeta wrote: Some of the First Order Ties do have hyperdrives but most don't. I think the main take from the Dreadnought battle is that Hux is an overconfident idiot promoted way above his talent level.
When was that mentioned? Poe and Finn flee a Star Destroyer in the Jakku System, and crash on Jakku.
Manchu wrote: I believe the studio has spent some marketing money to conjure up a kind of character on whom it can pin negative reaction to TLJ. This character is:
- 25-45 years old
- male
- white
- emtionally immature/disturbed
- misogynist
- racist
- "obsessed" with Star Wars
- deeply committed to now-defunct SW products
In the context of the wider social mood, this character is completely unsympathetic. Anything he might be able to say about the weaknesses of a film would be completely undermined by his immoral, childish, and generally pathetic demeanor. Looking down on him makes people feel better about themselves. Making fun of him doesn't make you a bully; it makes you a Good Person.
He was the same guy who said The Force Awakens was a disappointing remake. He was the same guy who said Rogue One was boring. Of course, all Good People know he just doesn't like women and non-whites. So there's no reason to wonder if he had a point about those movies. Right?
Funny how the only time this guy gets any news coverage is when a corporation doesn't want the public talking about the actual movie it produced and distributed.
GoatboyBeta wrote: Some of the First Order Ties do have hyperdrives but most don't. I think the main take from the Dreadnought battle is that Hux is an overconfident idiot promoted way above his talent level.
When was that mentioned? Poe and Finn flee a Star Destroyer in the Jakku System, and crash on Jakku.
Peregrine wrote: One possible point in defense of the lack of fighters: TIE fighters, at least in the old canon, don't have a hyperdrive. If you launch TIEs you're committing to either abandoning your fighter screen in space as soon as you have to jump, or being tied down to one location while you wait to recover them. Does the hyperspace tracking thing work if the tracking ship doesn't pursue immediately? If so it makes sense to only launch fighters once you know they're needed and avoid getting baited into leaving them all behind and getting your capital ships killed by a fighter attack you can no longer defend against.
But in real life you don't have a carrier stopping to recover a plane that has to ditch. They use a escorting ship or a helicopter for that. I guess the FO could use a destroyer for the same if the big ship had to jump to light speed. Plus it would be doing something more useful that just follow the big ship while staring at whatever they were staring that obviously was not the sensor's screen.
Some dialog about Snoke wanting the Resistance to suffer as the First Order slowly ran them down(possibly to try and lure out Luke and/or Rey) would have solved the whole thing.
A bit like having Maz Kanata's castle in the same system(moon of the same gas giant maybe?) as the New Republic capital would have solved one of the problems with the Starkiller base weapon.
Did anyone else notice that in a movie about, the spirit of rebellion and not doing heroic sacrificing for the big picture and love and stuff.
That they throw away what fleet they have left in order to teach Poe a lesson about leadership?
While also not communicating to anyone what the plan is, in the end going for a heroic sacrifice to save the even fewer numbers of resistance personal.
Manchu wrote: Unfortunately, one of those questions was Why should the audience care about the protagonist?
What answer do you need beyond 'They're likeable/relateable/kickass and I want to see how things work out for them?
Rey is definitely kickass - as in, she is extremely powerful relative to what is reasonably believable given what the audience actually knows about her - but she's not relateable and at this point it's really hurting her likeability. Even TLJ gets bored with her by the end, when the focus of the movie shifts completely away from her to concentrate on Ren and Luke. By the end of TLJ, her sole function is to perform a special effect because ... well, there's really nothing else for her to do because we don't know enough about her for her to be otherwise relevant to the climactic conflict. Contrast this to Kylo Ren, a fully realized character: he takes over as the main character by the end because we actually do know things about him and therefore we can care about what happens to him - not just as a matter of ultimate result but, more importantly, we want to see what he goes through to get there.
I'm watching The Force Awakens again right now and there's certainly a real feeling of their being more star wars 'magic' to it than TLJ, or even Rogue One, in fact.
Although, Rogue One IS still my favourite star wars film, it's still a war film first.
Peregrine wrote: Every part of the movie doesn't have to be interesting desperate action.
That's a good point. In ANH, there are domestic scenes where the protagonist is contextualized and characterized in contrast to the larger conflict that opened the movie. This picks back up when Luke is hanging out at Obi-Wan's house. This old-fashioned, slower pace served an important purpose: giving characters a chance to develop!
You're right, and Finn's statement about getting out of the system implies the existence of a hyperdrive; my mistake.
GoatboyBeta wrote: If only TFA had shown Rey working as a scavenger and living alone in the ruins of the galactic civil war
But Luke is hardly unprovided for. Dude grew up on a multi-generational homestead that had enough disposable income to buy a slave, a T-16 Skyhopper, and get Jawa traders (read: scavengers) to stop by in order to ply their wares.
I enjoyed TLJ. I took in a lot of negative reviews before hand and can see where a lot of them are coming from. There were several points that jumped out muck like the stuff that was complained about in those reviews. I totally get it. I grew up watching ANH probably a few times a week as a little kid.
It was definitely long. I feel they were smushing ESB and RoTJ into one movie, that's what came to mind.
I'm left wondering what's next. I don't think I'm a hard core fan as all I have ever seen were the movies and none of the other stuff and didn't play the games, beyond that one MMORP which became a nightmare fairly quickly.
I really hope Luke as a force ghost is used in the next movie. I'd like to see him troll both Kilo and Ray.
"See you around kid."
GoatboyBeta wrote: After TLJ I'm going to try and keep my personal expectations and assumptions around the level of there will be lightsabers, Tie fighters and X-wings
Smart. I think the lion's share of my disappointment came from enjoying TFA but expecting resolutions to the questions posed.
GoatboyBeta wrote: After TLJ I'm going to try and keep my personal expectations and assumptions around the level of there will be lightsabers, Tie fighters and X-wings
That's been my expectation since Attack of the Clones... And would have been from RotJ, if I had been older the first time I saw it. Maybe that's why I seem to have so much less trouble enjoying these movies than many seem to have.
The good news is that Star Wars: The Last Jedi set another box office record. The bad news is that it’s not a “good” record but a pretty “bad” record. To wit, The Last Jedi topped the holiday box office with another $68.5m. That’s a sharp drop of 68.8%, which is not good for a big movie opening just before Christmas. But it’s about on par with Eragon, which also fell 68% after a $23m launch. I keep bringing up that Star Wars knock-off, starring John Malkovich… as Snoke!, because 2006 was the last time that Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday and Christmas Day, fell on a Monday, which is absolutely skewing the holds and overall numbers heading into the heart of the holiday season.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II fell 72% in its second weekend, while even Alien: Covenant (which also had the buffering of Memorial Day in its second weekend) fell 70% while Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk dropped 77% over Thanksgiving in its second weekend of wide release. Now, when discussing Star Wars, you don’t necessarily want to be discussing reasons why the drop isn’t “that bad.” However, the film has already amassed a ridiculous amount of money in a relatively short time. Moreover, it’s a coin toss as to whether it will make up for some lost ground (compared to the likes of The Avengers and Jurassic World) once every kid is now off for the duration of the Christmas/New Year’s break.
So, here’s the indisputably lousy news: Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi lost more money between its first and second weekends than any film ever, by a lot. Walt Disney’s The Last Jedi made $151 million less between its two weekends, which is way above the $121m gap from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($169m/$42m) back in 2011 and more than Force Awakens' second ($149m) Fri-Sun weekend back in 2015. I’ve written from time to time about the $100m+ losers club, which is a still-rare group of films that opened so high and then dropped so hard that they made over $100m less on their second weekend than their first. Well, thanks to The Last Jedi, we’re going to have to open a $150m+ losers club right next door.
The $100 million+ losers club now has eight members, including The Last Jedi, Harry Potter 7.2, Batman v Superman ($166m opening weekend/$51.3m second weekend = $114.7m difference), Avengers: Age Of Ultron ($191.3m/$77.2m = $114.1m), Captain America: Civil War ($179.1m/$72.6m = $106.5m), Jurassic World ($208.8m/$106.5m), The Avengers ($207.7m/$103m = $104m) and Iron Man 3 ($174.1m/$72.5m = $102m). After that you get the "not-quite $100m" members, such as The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($142m.84m - $42.87m = $99.97m), Star Wars: The Force Awakens - $247.9m/$149.2m = $98.7m and The Dark Knight Rises ($160m - $62m = $98m). The last two Twilight films lost $98m ($141m/$43m for Breaking Dawn part II) and $97m ($138m - $41m = $97m for Breaking Dawn I respectively).
The last four "minus-$90 million" members are The Hunger Games ($152m - $58m = $94m) and Spider-Man 3 ($151m - $58m = $93m), Suicide Squad ($133m/$41m = $91m) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - $155m/$64m = $91m. What you’ll notice about these films is that they all posted huge opening weekends and either went on to be among the biggest grossing movies of all time or hit a wall at a total that The Last Jedi will soon surpass relatively quickly. The Last Jedi has now earned $365m and will be just under $400m domestic by the end of tomorrow. Unless it receives essentially zero uptick from the holiday season, it should end the year with over/under $465m domestic.
A gross well-and-above the $529 million domestic total of Rogue One is absolutely assured. A gross well-and-above $600m is all-but-guaranteed. Anything above that is highly dependent on the next two weeks as it does its best to take advantage of the holiday moviegoers alongside a lot of family fare. If it merely has the same Tues-Thurs uptick as Rogue One did (plus around $30m on Christmas Day), then it’ll enter its third weekend with $460m with a likely 17-day total of over/under $500m and a possible over/under $525m total as 2018 begins. Again, there is a lot of wiggle room, but most movies playing in this part of the year do better in their second Mon-Thurs chunk than their first.
The Last Jedi has already made 1.66x its opening weekend after ten days. That compares to Eragon (1.61x), Hobbit 1 (1.77x), (Hobbit 2 (1.77x) and I Am Legend (1.77x). So, no, this isn’t a Star Trek: Nemesis (1.43x after ten days, after a 76% weekend drop) situation. If it plays anything like Eragon over the next week, which is a bit optimistic, then a $700 million+ total isn’t out of the cards. Even a Nemesis-type run at this point gets it to $605m domestic. So yeah, The Last Jedi lost this weekend, but it doesn’t have to like it. The Lucasfilm sequel still has plenty of time to reassert itself before the new year begins for real on January 12, 2018.
We can debate the reasons, be it the excess kid-friendly competition, mixed word-of-mouth among the faithful, the skewed holiday calendar and/or the lack of the new-ness. Perhaps The Last Jedi is a variation on Ted 2 or Neighbors 2, whereby a sequel is viewed as disappointing for merely doing about as well as folks expected its vastly overperforming predecessor to do. Had The Force Awakens earned $650 million domestic, a $600-$700m domestic total for The Last Jedi would seem just fine. But after a $937m finish last time out, even with the expected 30% Star Wars 1 to Star Wars 2 drop (see also: The Empire Strikes Back and Attack of the Clones, The Last Jedi is finding itself on the defensive.
At the very least, the $250 million-ish budgeted sci-fi actioner has already earned $745m worldwide and should end tomorrow over/under $800m worldwide. It will thus end the year just over/under $1 billion worldwide. Oh, and sometime tomorrow, it will pass the domestic cume of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ($389m) to become the third-biggest domestic earner of 2017. That will be, no matter what happens next, that the top-three North American hits of the year will be Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($400m+), Wonder Woman ($413m) and Beauty and the Beast. Yes, all three of the year’s biggest movies will be female-led blockbuster fantasy movies. But, please remind us again how female-driven blockbusters are box office poison.
What a world we live in, where "only" making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit is considered a disappointment that needs to be analyzed and justified.
Peregrine wrote: What a world we live in, where "only" making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit is considered a disappointment that needs to be analyzed and justified.
It's pretty well established that hype, success of past movies and marketing can bring you in big dollars. Not saying that's the case here, for all my gripes I didn't think it was a terrible movie, but it should be analysed in the context of it being a monolithic established franchise with no small amount spent on marketing.
Afterall, we analysed and scrutinised GW's sale figures for years even though they never actually made a loss and consistently brought in $150 to $200M US per year.
And Disney dropped a few billion on the franchise in the first place. They probably wanted the new trilogy to take back About 4 billion between the three times including the Blu Ray market.
Peregrine wrote: What a world we live in, where "only" making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit is considered a disappointment that needs to be analyzed and justified.
I mean, it needed hundreds of millions to break even. It had about a 200 million production budget and I read you should double that to include advertising. So 400 million to break even (which it's now passed by about 350 million).
The scale of the catastrophe that is Star Wars: The Last Jedi is difficult to comprehend without comparing it to major, historic natural disasters. Because no other movie has come anywhere close to the picture’s $151.5 million 2nd weekend box office razing, there’s no movie comparison that gives its record-obliterating failure proper context.
To begin to appreciate the epic nature of the Last Jedi catastrophe, consider the 9.2 magnitude megathrust 1964 Good Friday earthquake near Anchorage, Alaska. That was such a massive catastrophe that it killed Oregonians and Californians more than 1,000 miles away.
Or contemplate the current natural disaster in Southern California, the Thomas Fire, which has burned 281,000 acres and destroyed 1,063 structures at a cost of billions of dollars to the state. The $171 million expense of fighting the fire is fairly close to the amount it cost Disney/Lucasfilm (NYSEIS) to produce The Last Jedi.
It may seem odd to compare a movie that has earned nearly $400 million in domestic box office receipts to such giant calamities, but that total represents a tremendous shortfall relative to expectations. The important numbers to look at are the measures of the movie’s collapse. That $400 million looks good only if we ignore the results of every previous Star Wars movie. But a closer look at the numbers reveals what a debacle The Last Jedi truly is.
It’s not just the movie’s 69 percent 2nd weekend plunge that underscores its troubles. True, it’s an enormous decline, but a dozen other big-budgeted, heavily marketed studio tent-pole movies (out of the thousands Hollywood has produced) have seen similarly sized percentage declines. They include Fifty Shades of Grey, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and three of the Twilight Movies.
It’s more the absolute number, the $151.5 million plunge from its $220 million debut to its $68.5 million second weekend, that staggers the imagination. Only three movies—The Last Jedi, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, and Batman v Superman have ever shed $100 million or more in box office totals from one weekend to the next.
But even the 2nd biggest collapse, that of the Harry Potter film, was more than 20 percent smaller than The Last Jedi’s fiasco.
Turning back to natural and man-made disasters, the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge offers a useful visual metaphor. The expensive and badly engineered bridge completely failed to take into account the forces in its environment, and not long after it opened to the public it was literally gone with the wind. Its collapse was so unprecedented, so unimaginable, that it had a lasting effect on science and engineering.
Just as bridge designers have long studied the Tacoma Narrows bridge, so movie industry executives will analyze The Last Jedi for insights into the ways a movie can go so tragically, historically wrong.
Early in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader says his underling Admiral Ozzel is “as clumsy as he is stupid,” and then proceeds to use the force to choke him, crushing his windpipe as he utters the immortal line, “You have failed me for the last time.”
That’s a pretty apt analogy for what Lucasfilm and writer-director Rian Johnson have done to the Star Wars franchise. They’ve force-choked it into irrelevance.
Countless former die-hard fans have publicly sworn off seeing any future Star Wars installments. And as the 52 percent (and still declining) Rotten Tomatoes audience rating has indicated, the general audience has responded by telling Disney and the filmmakers, “You have failed me for the last time.”
A Town Called Malus wrote: How many of those fans said the same thing about the series after each of the prequel films?
Yo.
Or rather, I stopped taking Star Wars seriously and reduced my spending accordingly. I'll likely see most future Star Wars films at least once to see if I can enjoy them as spectacle or even for the analysis, but I've definitely cooled on the series and started steering my son's interest elsewhere. If a significant fraction of the fandom moves the same way, it could be a long term disaster for Disney.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Compel wrote: I didn't like it and I have very strong feelings about why I didn't like it.
But even so... Thats kinda egging it on more than a tad. A perfect example of clickbait "journalism."
Well, someone's got to make money off of what Disney did to the franchise.
The following is my first impression of the film, taken from a PM...
I can appreciate it for it's sheer spectacle and dum entertainment value, but it's a really shallow, superficial and unoriginal movie. It's little more than a loose remake and mashup of ESB and ROTJ.
I thought TFA was shallow and unoriginal, but at least it raised interesting questions.
Who is Snoke? Is he an Ancient Sith? Darth Plagius? A resurrected Anakin Skywalker? An ancient Jedi, or one of the Guardians of the Whills from the temple on Jedha in Rogue One?
What are Snoke and Kylo Ren planning? Why does Snoke want an apprentice with the right balance of Light and Dark?
Who are the Knights of Ren? Are they former students of Luke Skywalker who fell to the Dark Side with Kylo Ren?
What was Luke doing on Achto? Why is it time for the Jedi to end? Is he trying to abolish the Jedi Order, and replace it with a less dogmatic and more open minded Grey Jedi Order with more enlightened teachings akin to the Ancient Jee'dai? (the earliest precursors of the Jedi Order, before the Jedi Order split into the Jedi and the Sith).
Who is Rey? Is she a new reincarnation of.the Chosen One, destined to bring balance.to.the force? (again). Who were her parents? Han and Leia? Luke? Was she a Youngling student of Luke Skywalker whose memories were repressed to protect her?
Will Rey and Kylo Ren join forces and abolish both the Jedi and the Sith?
...
But TLJ just brushed all those questions aside. None of.that matters. We get no answers. It's a symptom of having a different Director for.both films. The new dorector Rian Johnson didn't respect the groundwork of the previous director JJ Abrams, and wanted to make his own mark and do his own film.
The result is a shallow and disconnected trilog (2 out of 3 anyway) that has no coherency or consistent theme and direction. It's like two unconnected films.
But hey, Rey and Kylo teaming up to fight the Praetorian guards was fething.awesome. So its not all bad.
Got to see Last Jedi a second time - if you were unsure about it at first, do yourself a favor and see it again! There are so many subtle hints and things in the movie, that you just can't pick up on the first time. One example (spoiler!) below:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Spoiler!
When Luke and Kylo Ren are fighting, Luke looks down and sees how his feet aren't marking the sand, and tries to hide it.
Also just love the growth of Po and the theme of saving the rebellion leaders rather than sacrificing themselves that progressed throughout the movie, you can really appreciate this better the second time.
This is by far my favorite of the new movies now = )
Now, I had spoiled it for myself a few days prior to WW opening night so I was prepared for the major plot points. I liked it the first time around. I LOVED it the second time around. The bit on the casino world is the worst part of the film by far and I truly dislike those scenes. They're just so weak visually and conceptually compared to the rest of the film. The rest of the moving is bloody amazing. I walked out honestly considering for my favorite Star Wars film, but then I remembered TESB exists.
Also, this scene may be the best Star Wars scene yet.
The scale of the catastrophe that is Star Wars: The Last Jedi is difficult to comprehend without comparing it to major, historic natural disasters. Because no other movie has come anywhere close to the picture’s $151.5 million 2nd weekend box office razing, there’s no movie comparison that gives its record-obliterating failure proper context.
To begin to appreciate the epic nature of the Last Jedi catastrophe, consider the 9.2 magnitude megathrust 1964 Good Friday earthquake near Anchorage, Alaska. That was such a massive catastrophe that it killed Oregonians and Californians more than 1,000 miles away.
Or contemplate the current natural disaster in Southern California, the Thomas Fire, which has burned 281,000 acres and destroyed 1,063 structures at a cost of billions of dollars to the state. The $171 million expense of fighting the fire is fairly close to the amount it cost Disney/Lucasfilm (NYSEIS) to produce The Last Jedi.
It may seem odd to compare a movie that has earned nearly $400 million in domestic box office receipts to such giant calamities, but that total represents a tremendous shortfall relative to expectations. The important numbers to look at are the measures of the movie’s collapse. That $400 million looks good only if we ignore the results of every previous Star Wars movie. But a closer look at the numbers reveals what a debacle The Last Jedi truly is.
It’s not just the movie’s 69 percent 2nd weekend plunge that underscores its troubles. True, it’s an enormous decline, but a dozen other big-budgeted, heavily marketed studio tent-pole movies (out of the thousands Hollywood has produced) have seen similarly sized percentage declines. They include Fifty Shades of Grey, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and three of the Twilight Movies.
It’s more the absolute number, the $151.5 million plunge from its $220 million debut to its $68.5 million second weekend, that staggers the imagination. Only three movies—The Last Jedi, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, and Batman v Superman have ever shed $100 million or more in box office totals from one weekend to the next.
But even the 2nd biggest collapse, that of the Harry Potter film, was more than 20 percent smaller than The Last Jedi’s fiasco.
Turning back to natural and man-made disasters, the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows bridge offers a useful visual metaphor. The expensive and badly engineered bridge completely failed to take into account the forces in its environment, and not long after it opened to the public it was literally gone with the wind. Its collapse was so unprecedented, so unimaginable, that it had a lasting effect on science and engineering.
Just as bridge designers have long studied the Tacoma Narrows bridge, so movie industry executives will analyze The Last Jedi for insights into the ways a movie can go so tragically, historically wrong.
Early in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader says his underling Admiral Ozzel is “as clumsy as he is stupid,” and then proceeds to use the force to choke him, crushing his windpipe as he utters the immortal line, “You have failed me for the last time.”
That’s a pretty apt analogy for what Lucasfilm and writer-director Rian Johnson have done to the Star Wars franchise. They’ve force-choked it into irrelevance.
Countless former die-hard fans have publicly sworn off seeing any future Star Wars installments. And as the 52 percent (and still declining) Rotten Tomatoes audience rating has indicated, the general audience has responded by telling Disney and the filmmakers, “You have failed me for the last time.”
I can appreciate it for it's sheer spectacle and dum entertainment value, but it's a really shallow, superficial and unoriginal movie. It's little more than a loose remake and mashup of ESB and ROTJ.
I thought TFA was shallow and unoriginal, but at least it raised interesting questions.
Who is Snoke? Is he an Ancient Sith? Darth Plagius? A resurrected Anakin Skywalker? An ancient Jedi, or one of the Guardians of the Whills from the temple on Jedha in Rogue One?
What are Snoke and Kylo Ren planning? Why does Snoke want an apprentice with the right balance of Light and Dark?
Who are the Knights of Ren? Are they former students of Luke Skywalker who fell to the Dark Side with Kylo Ren?
What was Luke doing on Achto? Why is it time for the Jedi to end? Is he trying to abolish the Jedi Order, and replace it with a less dogmatic and more open minded Grey Jedi Order with more enlightened teachings akin to the Ancient Jee'dai? (the earliest precursors of the Jedi Order, before the Jedi Order split into the Jedi and the Sith).
Who is Rey? Is she a new reincarnation of.the Chosen One, destined to bring balance.to.the force? (again). Who were her parents? Han and Leia? Luke? Was she a Youngling student of Luke Skywalker whose memories were repressed to protect her?
Will Rey and Kylo Ren join forces and abolish both the Jedi and the Sith?
...
But TLJ just brushed all those questions aside. None of.that matters. We get no answers. It's a symptom of having a different Director for.both films. The new dorector Rian Johnson didn't respect the groundwork of the previous director JJ Abrams, and wanted to make his own mark and do his own film.
The result is a shallow and disconnected trilog (2 out of 3 anyway) that has no coherency or consistent theme and direction. It's like two unconnected films.
But hey, Rey and Kylo teaming up to fight the Praetorian guards was fething.awesome. So its not all bad.
The thing is, Star Wars has always included references and ideas that may get taken for granted, or go unexplained. A New Hope introduced Darth Vader as 'the Dark Lord of the Sith'... But we never got a movie explanation of what 'Sith' were until the Phantom Menace.
I can't help but think that people would be more content with this movie if they stop expecting every question to be answered instantly. Some of those questions listed above are answered in TLJ. Some will no doubt be answered in later movies, some in books or TV shows. Disney are building a universe, not just a bunch of movies.
"Dark Lord of the Sith" did not need to be explained because nothing hinged on explaining it. A close comparison from TFA would be "the Knights of Ren." In TFA, Rey touches Anakin's lightsaber and has a vision where she, as a small child, is being menaced by a Knight of Ren before said knight is himself killed by Kylo Ren. This is as close to an explanation we get of who Rey is in TFA, a major cliffhanger for TFA. Yet the Knights of Ren are not mentioned at all in TLJ.
As for "pretensious nonsense," I didn't post it because I admire the writing style - fact remains TLJ has been spectacularly underperforming. That doesn't mean it's a bad movie. But it does contextualize the low audience scores, without resorting to a studio-spun conspiracy story.
TFA had a lot of repeat visits. TLJ will probably have half that number. Many were unimpressed with TFA and won't go see TLJ. Many only went to see TFA because it was the first SW movie in years. Many won't go see TLJ because people are telling their friends that it sucks.
I'm 99% sure the figure Kylo kills in the vision is not a Knight of Ren, they are the guys in similar armour standing behind him in the scene after that.
And as for under-performing, I really don't think that's true (or at least, can be said at this point. As mentioned by one of the articles, Christmas Eve and Day falling across a Monday/Sunday basically represents two days of not making much at all)). It's still going to make a stupid amount of money when all's said and done, and it was never going to be as big as TFA simply as it didn't represent the first good SW movie in two decades. The article compares its takings with Deathly Hallows part 2, which isn't exactly remembered as a flop!
It's supposedly at 32mil for Christmas day which is higher than any of the three previous days and the 4th highest overall.
Edit: I'm convinced Solo will bomb (who the hell wants that film...or Obi-Wan for that matter...) and that will lead to a delay and rewrites for IX. Especially since TLJ will be lucky to match R1 at this point...unless it gets 200 mil in China.
Manchu wrote: Greatest second weekend drop off in history is definitely underperforming. Maybe it will claw back some audience tomorrow.
I suppose, from one point of view. From another point of view to have the greatest second weekend drop in history you have to have a pretty damn impressive opening weekend, which TLJ did. And, again, I think it says a lot that the supposed financial proof of failure consists of "it was only a massive profit, not an obscene record-breaking profit".
trexmeyer wrote: It's supposedly at 32mil for Christmas day which is higher than any of the three previous days and the 4th highest overall.
Edit: I'm convinced Solo will bomb (who the hell wants that film...or Obi-Wan for that matter...) and that will lead to a delay and rewrites for IX. Especially since TLJ will be lucky to match R1 at this point...unless it gets 200 mil in China.
The success of these mega budget movies is not measured intuitively. TLJ was never not going to make a huge amount of money. The question is, will it just be a huge amount of money or a gargantuan pile of money. So far, it looks like it's just huge - which is not enough, from the studio's perspective. The larger problem is, the movie has set a record ... it's just a negatuve one.
Peregrine wrote: What a world we live in, where "only" making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit is considered a disappointment that needs to be analyzed and justified.
First weekend box office is about expectations, everything after that is mostly about whether the movie lives up to those expectations. The marketing and the previous movies succeeded at the first part, but The Last Jedi fails to deliver.
The Force Awakens shares some of the blame with Abrams' mystery box bs (If your movie asks a question, you should already know that you have a satisfying answer.) but The Last Jedi didn't even try to honour the implicit promise that these hooks would have a satisfying resolution.
Manchu - I think you're both judging it too soon, and ignoring other factors. I honestly don't care what its second weekend rating is. Some movies do terribly their whole runs, but are actually really good. You and I both loved Blade Runner, and I think it might be one of the best movies ever made, but it didn't perform well at the box office compared to expectations. Picking stats when a movie has only been out a week to judge it is extremely premature, imo. I'm guessing its third weekend will be better than expected, as all the factors that kept people out this weekend let them catch it next weekend. Let's wait and see before comparing a movie that has made hundreds of millions to freaking natural catastrophes, alright?
(I mean this in a rather light fashion, in case it's not obvious in text)
Also worth noting there are two dueling writers at Forbes who have opposite takes, again just showing that different people are viewing it differently - but the hyperbole about a movie that almost 90% of actual audiences say they "liked" is getting a little out of hand! I respect your view, but like trexmeyer, this movie is near the top of my list for best Star Wars movie ever. That's why I keep advocating a second viewing, because while I can respect the criticism, I think part of it is just a snowball / piling on effect, and people aren't giving the movie its due. Imho, of course!
I understand that people will have differing opinions about TLJ being a good movie or being a disaster. But when a movie needs a second viewing or reading a tie in book, comic, whatever... I think that said movie is a failure at storytelling.
RiTides wrote: Got to see Last Jedi a second time - if you were unsure about it at first, do yourself a favor and see it again! There are so many subtle hints and things in the movie, that you just can't pick up on the first time. One example (spoiler!) below: . . . . . . . . Spoiler! When Luke and Kylo Ren are fighting, Luke looks down and sees how his feet aren't marking the sand, and tries to hide it. Also just love the growth of Po and the theme of saving the rebellion leaders rather than sacrificing themselves that progressed throughout the movie, you can really appreciate this better the second time. This is by far my favorite of the new movies now = )
A second viewing didn't really do anything for me, I still hated the parts I hated and liked the parts I liked. Only this time there weren't rabid cheering fans making me question if we were watching the same movie.
RiTides wrote: You and I both loved Blade Runner, and I think it might be one of the best movies ever made, but it didn't perform well at the box office compared to expectations.
But is the theatrical release of Blade Runner one of the best movies ever made, voiceover and all?
Also worth noting there are two dueling writers at Forbes who have opposite takes, again just showing that different people are viewing it differently - but the hyperbole about a movie that almost 90% of actual audiences say they "liked" is getting a little out of hand! I respect your view, but like trexmeyer, this movie is near the top of my list for best Star Wars movie ever.
trexmeyer wrote: I don't see an interesting story for him. Whatsoever.
He chilled in a desert from III to IV (we see him in Rebels) and we saw him all throughout I-III and the Clone Wars. What's left?
I'll take a Fett, Vader, or even a Sidious origins over Obi-Wan.
Story-wise, I kinda agree with you. However, what people are really wanting from an Obi-wan movie is more Ewan McGregor, arguably the best part of the prequels. You can easily make an Obi-wan anthology film set between III & IV and have it be Obi-wan watching over a young Luke from a distance. Maybe some stuff happens behind the scenes that Obi-wan has to intervene on that Luke never knew about. You could also expand on the thread mentioned in Rebels in which Obi-wan now believes Luke is the Chosen One, not Anakin
Yes, very important to emphasize that audience reaction is certainly NOT 90% positive.
As I already posted, underperformance at the box office doesn't mean a movie isn't good. The reason these numbers are relevant to this conversation is, some people keep assuming audience reaction can only be explained by conspiracy theories.
Miguelsan wrote: I understand that people will have differing opinions about TLJ being a good movie or being a disaster. But when a movie needs a second viewing or reading a tie in book, comic, whatever... I think that said movie is a failure at storytelling.
M.
Not only do I disagree, but I think that statement is poor in general. Many films and books benefit from a second viewing/reading (even if you think they are good in the first place) simply because there are subtleties (especially in film) that we simply don't process completely the first time around.
That's part of the reason I intentionally spoil every movie for myself before going to see it. I appreciate the movie more when I am watching the journey unfold than when I am trying to figure out where it goes.
RiTides wrote: You and I both loved Blade Runner, and I think it might be one of the best movies ever made, but it didn't perform well at the box office compared to expectations.
But is the theatrical release of Blade Runner one of the best movies ever made, voiceover and all?
Also worth noting there are two dueling writers at Forbes who have opposite takes, again just showing that different people are viewing it differently - but the hyperbole about a movie that almost 90% of actual audiences say they "liked" is getting a little out of hand! I respect your view, but like trexmeyer, this movie is near the top of my list for best Star Wars movie ever.
Pretty sure he is referring to 2049. Also the RT audience score is flawed. People have intentionally tanked that score. It's a 4.7/10 on Metacritic with under 5k votes. RT is 3.1/5 with gems like these:
1/2 star "Feminist propaganda. Rian Johnson is a troll. Great way to lose a fan base. Thanks Disney for ruining an epic franchise."
1/2 star "This film was terrible. Even if we ignore the SJW propaganda that infests every minute of the film, the characters were awful and the plot was filled with holes. Nothing about this film even felt like Star Wars (aliens in tuxedos gambling at a galactic Foxwood's??)
Even Jar Jar would be ashamed to associate with such a hot piece of trash that is The Last Jedi."
It's a 7.6 on IMDB with 200k+ votes. 73% of the votes are over 7/10. 82% are over 6/10. 6% of the votes are 1/10 which is clearly trolling. Eliminate the 1/10 and all of a sudden it's 8/10...
And honestly, you can hate the plot all you want. As soon as people start saying the acting of Hamill, Ridley, and Driver is unequivocally bad I dismiss the review completely. At that point it's blind hate.
trexmeyer wrote: It's a 7.6 on IMDB with 200k+ votes. 73% of the votes are over 7/10. 82% are over 6/10. 6% of the votes are 1/10 which is clearly trolling. Eliminate the 1/10 and all of a sudden it's 8/10...
Exactly! Rotten Tomatoes defending their rating is pretty laughable, imo, because obviously either they or IMDB are getting an extremely skewed result, and IMDB's matches actual audience poll results much closer And has more safeguards to avoid review bombing. Even the poster above commenting about his theater cheering while he didn't like it supports this
I'm not saying everyone will enjoy it, but a large majority of the viewing audience obviously do! And I did, for whatever that's worth (I know, not all that much ). I respect those who didn't, though, of course
I agree that none of the acting was terrible. I'm fairly sure RJ is a talented enough director to work with an actor's strengths (perhaps why we don't see a Luke reaction shot to news of Han's death is because RJ wasn't sold on it). However, the real crime against acting in the film was cutting out the one character with the liveliest performance, the most flair, so early.
Have you heard the tragedy of Snoke the Underused?
Automatically Appended Next Post: I could watch an entire film of that time someone served Snoke an undercooked steak at the Applebee's.
Yes, his ship has an Applebee's. It's 60km wide! There's still a boarded up Radio Shack.
Also, when I refer to audience reaction I'm talking about actual exit polling, done by comScore, also referenced above. Here's the breakdown of the 3 recent Star Wars movies - this is obviously quite at odds with the Rotten Tomatoes results!
Someone's data is way off, and imo, it's the RT results. Obviously all that (imo, undeserved) negative buzz could affect turnout, but that's also why I'm posting about it... because while I'm totally OK with discussing why people disliked it, saying the majority of people did is quite simply fake news!
Miguelsan wrote: I understand that people will have differing opinions about TLJ being a good movie or being a disaster. But when a movie needs a second viewing or reading a tie in book, comic, whatever... I think that said movie is a failure at storytelling.
M.
Not only do I disagree, but I think that statement is poor in general. Many films and books benefit from a second viewing/reading (even if you think they are good in the first place) simply because there are subtleties (especially in film) that we simply don't process completely the first time around.
That's part of the reason I intentionally spoil every movie for myself before going to see it. I appreciate the movie more when I am watching the journey unfold than when I am trying to figure out where it goes.
There is a difference between watching or reading something a second time to look for the way Luke dodges, or the subtle reference on the bridge of the cruiser, and the need to go a second time to make sense of what's going on. I didn't had issues with this movie but surely TFA made me wonder what the hell was going on on the screen quite a few times like when they fire the big laser. I'm not going to pay a second time to watch a flawed movie to see if I get it.
I read that bit. I did take my brother to see TLJ as a Christmas gift and he HATED it, but when we discussed it most of his arguments against were moot. I agree with him that Canto was poor...
But this is also a guy who disliked GotG2. When it comes to movies we agree on things like Unbreakable, Arrival, and Fear and Loathing...but I seriously question if he gets those films the same way I do.
After seeing it the second time the performances by Driver and Ridley have me honestly excited for the sequel. Those two may have actually turned out the best acting (to me it's the most interesting story) in a Star Wars film. The amount of layers developed for those two characters is insane...partly because as you evaluate it the complexity, duality, and symbolism all grow. I don't know how to describe it other than it really feels like this is Star Wars done for film/story nerds. It reminds me of how people argued KotOR1 is better than KotOR2 (Are you kidding?)...
The Rey-Ren story is fething amazing. I don't know what to say other than that dynamic touches me in a way no other SW film has...
The han solo movie seems pointless. I agree. But a obi wan man with no name style western taking place on a desert world where hes given up on the jedi stuff and gets all depressed and then pulled into some local conflict where he begrudgingly has to start chopping limbs would be pretty sweet.
Also, when I refer to audience reaction I'm talking about actual exit polling, done by comScore, also referenced above. Here's the breakdown of the 3 recent Star Wars movies - this is obviously quite at odds with the Rotten Tomatoes results!
Someone's data is way off, and imo, it's the RT results. Obviously all that (imo, undeserved) negative buzz could affect turnout, but that's also why I'm posting about it... because while I'm totally OK with discussing why people disliked it, saying the majority of people did is quite simply fake news!
The thing you have to remember about these kinds of surveys is that they are ALSO self-selection bias, just of a bit broader variety. The initial scores, while scientifically conducted, are based on samples of people who saw the movie opening night and opening weekend. This is a category of people more predisposed to like the film than all movie goers because they went in with a heft bit of enthusiasm (hence the early showings). The earlier the showing, the more the enthusiasm. Basically, both the data sets available to us involve a decent element of opt-in (with comScore just randomly selecting from people who already opted in).
Does that invalidate the poll? No, but it puts it on a bit more even footing with RT (which has meticulously reviewed its TLJ reviews and said it found no funny business). We should also note that TLJ is having some of the weakest holds in the entire franchise and while it will make a colossal amount of money due to its opening weekend (before many audience reviews were out) it's legs are suffering. That's a point in favor of RT's analysis being accurate.
While the exact numbers may elude us, the logical conclusion is that there is a large schism of somewhere between 35% and 50% disliking the film.
If 97% of people who saw the film were either definitely or probably going to recommend it to their friends, the weekly box office wouldn't have plummeted like it did. A movie with such good word of mouth would look more like Avatar, a movie that actually made 7% more money in its second week than in the first.
Also, when I refer to audience reaction I'm talking about actual exit polling, done by comScore, also referenced above. Here's the breakdown of the 3 recent Star Wars movies - this is obviously quite at odds with the Rotten Tomatoes results!
Someone's data is way off, and imo, it's the RT results. Obviously all that (imo, undeserved) negative buzz could affect turnout, but that's also why I'm posting about it... because while I'm totally OK with discussing why people disliked it, saying the majority of people did is quite simply fake news!
The thing you have to remember about these kinds of surveys is that they are ALSO self-selection bias, just of a bit broader variety. The initial scores, while scientifically conducted, are based on samples of people who saw the movie opening night and opening weekend. This is a category of people more predisposed to like the film than all movie goers because they went in with a heft bit of enthusiasm (hence the early showings). The earlier the showing, the more the enthusiasm. Basically, both the data sets available to us involve a decent element of opt-in (with comScore just randomly selecting from people who already opted in).
Does that invalidate the poll? No, but it puts it on a bit more even footing with RT (which has meticulously reviewed its TLJ reviews and said it found no funny business). We should also note that TLJ is having some of the weakest holds in the entire franchise and while it will make a colossal amount of money due to its opening weekend (before many audience reviews were out) it's legs are suffering. That's a point in favor of RT's analysis being accurate.
While the exact numbers may elude us, the logical conclusion is that there is a large schism of somewhere between 35% and 50% disliking the film.
It'd be interesting to see how comScore gathers their data as well as I'm just going to go out on a limb and say it's probably also introducing its own bias just in how the numbers are collected. Did audiences fill out pamphlets? Were they asked by actual people? How many people didn't answer?
Any poll is going to be biased simply by how many people don't answer surveys. I'd argue there's a specific type of person who actually says yes to answering a survey and I'm not convinced that type of person is representative of the population as a whole.
Regarding the second weekend box office drop-off: a very vocal minority, which also has a high percentage of very dedicated fans comfortable using technology, could skew "word of mouth" results, as a lot of that is achieved online now, and actually negatively affect ticket sales. That's actually why I'm posting, because I know a lot of folks who liked it, but reading online at first, the posts and subsequent coverage was Very fan-negative...
Also note that TFA had a huge dropoff in its second weekend, and a lot of box office results are affected by the date Christmas and Christmas Eve fall relative to the weekend, what the weather is like, etc. There simply isn't a comparable-situation movie to look at that made so much the first weekend. And again, even fantastic movies don't always perform well at the box office.
Regarding comScore's methods, exit polling isn't everything, but my understanding is a big part of the goal of their polling is to eliminate self selection bias. I don't know that they're successful, but the process is (seemingly) a lot more transparent. There is another similar "actual audience" result that I need to look up the link for, too, but I've seen Nothing in articles refuting the validity of these polls or methods. And then, of course, there's also the "starkly-different-to-RT" IMDB poll, which also happens to have a lot more safeguards than RT.
-----------------------------
The bottom line, as the article above says: something fishy is going on Somewhere. Maybe IMDB and comScore are wrong, maybe Rotten Tomatoes is - but they obviously cannot both be accurate portrayals of general audience reception. Someone has got their data wrong, and personally I'm the least likely to trust the method with less safeguards (and even a crazy guy claiming to have skewed them, although RT disputes it).
Oh well, the debate rages on, I guess . Until third weekend data, then?
AlexHolker wrote: If 97% of people who saw the film were either definitely or probably going to recommend it to their friends, the weekly box office wouldn't have plummeted like it did. A movie with such good word of mouth would look more like Avatar, a movie that actually made 7% more money in its second week than in the first.
Unless all the people that 97% would have recommended it to also already saw it in the first week...
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Manchu wrote: "Dark Lord of the Sith" did not need to be explained because nothing hinged on explaining it
Sure. And the same could be said about the questions in the post I was responding to. They're all things that either were answered, will be answered in time, or are simply not actually important to the story.
Snoke's origin, for example, is only relevant to the story of it actually plays a part in how everything unfolds. Otherwise, it's no more necessary for the new films to cover it than it was for the original trilogy to explain where Palpatine came from.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Manchu wrote: In TFA, Rey touches Anakin's lightsaber and has a vision where she, as a small child, is being menaced by a Knight of Ren before said knight is himself killed by Kylo Ren. This is as close to an explanation we get of who Rey is in TFA, a major cliffhanger for TFA.
I think you've misread that scene. I never took it as actually being Rey involved in that incident, just that was how she was seeing it in the vision. And the Knights are the guys behind Kylo in the vision, who Luke explains in TLJ were other students suborned by Kylo. The guy Kylo kills in the vision is presumably just another student.
trexmeyer wrote: I don't see an interesting story for him. Whatsoever.
He chilled in a desert from III to IV (we see him in Rebels) and we saw him all throughout I-III and the Clone Wars. What's left?
I'll take a Fett, Vader, or even a Sidious origins over Obi-Wan.
There's plenty of scope in that 19 year period that's yet to be explored, even with Rebels and the Journals of Obi-wan Kenobi comics, especially given that you could tell a decent story set over just a few days. Something like this:
Spoiler:
Begin on Tatooine, maybe 18 months after the end of RotS. Obi-wan is settling into his new life, but cannot yet come to terms with the way of things. On his odd forays into civilisation, he hears stories spreading of a masked man in the service of the Empire, strong in the Force and utterly ruthless. He hears how this mysterious figure has been hunting down the last handful of Jedi across the galaxy and left only terror and death in his wake. Obi-wan begins to wonder if he's really doing the right thing waiting around on Tatooine while his former brothers and sisters in arms are being slaughtered. He knows it's what he has to do, but it doesn't sit well with him.
A few weeks later, he receives a message coded on a Jedi channel that hasn't been used in months. A desperate former master (could be a Prequel character who didn't get an on screen death. Shak Tii? Luminara Unduli?) calls for any and all remaining Jedi to join them on [insert planet here. Nar Shadaar would be good, or Dantooine) where they will make one desperate last stand against this new terror. Despite knowing that it's not his destiny, Obi-wan goes. He cannot sit by while the last of his kind are wiped out.
As he travels to this showdown, Obi-wan begins to wonder about the identity of this masked man. He defeated Anakin, so who has The Emperor replaced him with? In his travels, Obi-wan has a brief showdown with an Inquisitor. On defeating him, Obi-wan interrogates him about the Emperor's new apprentice, and learns that he was once a Jedi of immense power.
We're now set up for the epic finale. Obi-wan and 5-6 Jedi of varying strengths up against Vader. Awesome fight of Rogue One Corridor Scene magnitude ensues, with the Jedi being picked off one by one until it's just Obi-wan and Vader. In that duel, Obi-wan slices through the mask and at last recognises his former pupil... The two of them fight to a standstill until Obi-wan can escape, knowing that he cannot now challenge Vader and that Luke is the only hope for the galaxy. He returns to Tatooine and begins his long vigil again...
Any Han Solo story meanwhile is going to just be a straightforward heist caper carried on the sheer magnetism and charisma of Han himself... which of course relies on the new chap being able to bring that to the table, but if he can then it should be fun.
That really doesn't sound very engaging to be honest. Takes too many cues and is far too reminiscent of the prequel era. I'd go with something a little bit more introspective and would be happy if his lightsaber was never ignited. I'm not sure how you'd weave discovering the Vader/Anakin connection into it but if the villains of the piece are the Empire then you'd find a way (that doesn't have to be central to the actual plot).
Compel wrote: I'm watching The Force Awakens again right now and there's certainly a real feeling of their being more star wars 'magic' to it than TLJ, or even Rogue One, in fact.
Although, Rogue One IS still my favourite star wars film, it's still a war film first.
Small wonder, seeing as it's a remake of a new hope. Of course some of the magic was going to carry over into TFA.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I've just had a quick look through some of the previous pages, and people are saying that 'only' making hundreds of millions is not the disaster it's made out to be.
And it's a fair point.
But from my viewpoint, we've had 9 Star wars films. 6 of them, IMO, have been turkeys, and 4 out of 9 have featured Death Stars.
Something of an artistic drought is affecting Star wars, and with Disney, it's not likely to improve.
From what I've been reading and hearing, the Solo film looks as though it could be another mess.
On the plus side, I rarely pay for cinema tickets, so Disney ain't getting a penny out of me
By the time you've made 9 movies in a setting, it's a fairly safe bet that there's going to be some duplication, particularly when the guy who made the first 6 specifically set out to reuse the same tropes as often as possible...
My goodness...now there is a conspiracy to make TLJ look bad.
The critics are right and the viewers are intentionally tanking the score...just wow. SJW is going to your heads if you believe this junk.
The movie is bad by the standards of any movie. As a starwars film - it is an insult to the previous trilogy and without a shadow of a doubt - the worst star wars movie ever made.
Manchu wrote: Greatest second weekend drop off in history is definitely underperforming. Maybe it will claw back some audience tomorrow.
I suppose, from one point of view. From another point of view to have the greatest second weekend drop in history you have to have a pretty damn impressive opening weekend, which TLJ did. And, again, I think it says a lot that the supposed financial proof of failure consists of "it was only a massive profit, not an obscene record-breaking profit".
if half the planet watches it on the first weekend, the falloff would be huge, but the initial run would be, half the planet...
I also thought Del Toro was great, and was hoping he'd return for the third of the trilogy (probably actually helping the good guys, this time ). It was kind of cool to see a neutral mercenary character actually choose the Empire, unlike Han "always do the right thing in the end" Solo
Xenomancers wrote: My goodness...now there is a conspiracy to make TLJ look bad.
The critics are right and the viewers are intentionally tanking the score...just wow. SJW is going to your heads if you believe this junk.
It's hard not to suspect people of tanking the score when we have examples of brilliant reasoning like this one. Clearly it must be "SJWs" if people think that the viewers are tanking the score. It can't possibly be the result of taking a look at reviews like "1/2 star Feminist propaganda. Rian Johnson is a troll. Great way to lose a fan base. Thanks Disney for ruining an epic franchise." and suspecting that there might in fact be some review-tanking going on. Nope. If you suspect anything but 100% honest opinions that TLJ is one of the worst movies ever created you must be a SJW.
As a starwars film - it is an insult to the previous trilogy and without a shadow of a doubt - the worst star wars movie ever made.
RiTides wrote: I also thought Del Toro was great, and was hoping he'd return for the third of the trilogy (probably actually helping the good guys, this time ). It was kind of cool to see a neutral mercenary character actually choose the Empire, unlike Han "always do the right thing in the end" Solo
It's hard to like a character when he conveniently pops into the story like he did. Get thrown into jail with a guy that was just waiting to break you out so he can hack ISD's (which the movie lied to us about - its supposed to be a rare skill only 1 guy has - not a skill a random jail mate should have.)
Xenomancers wrote: My goodness...now there is a conspiracy to make TLJ look bad.
The critics are right and the viewers are intentionally tanking the score...just wow. SJW is going to your heads if you believe this junk.
It's hard not to suspect people of tanking the score when we have examples of brilliant reasoning like this one. Clearly it must be "SJWs" if people think that the viewers are tanking the score. It can't possibly be the result of taking a look at reviews like "1/2 star Feminist propaganda. Rian Johnson is a troll. Great way to lose a fan base. Thanks Disney for ruining an epic franchise." and suspecting that there might in fact be some review-tanking going on. Nope. If you suspect anything but 100% honest opinions that TLJ is one of the worst movies ever created you must be a SJW.
As a starwars film - it is an insult to the previous trilogy and without a shadow of a doubt - the worst star wars movie ever made.
I loved the phantom menace. My favorite of the prequels. Maul vs Qui gon and Obiwan + duel of fates musical score is just beautiful - it brings me chills every time I watch it. TLJ is a dreadful movie I'd never sit through again. Ofc - this is just my opinion.
I do think it's perfectly normal to give a terrible review after just watching the worst movie you've ever seen. It's not a conspiracy. The only conspiracy there is if there is one - is how the major movie critics were paid off or being SJW themselves are doing everything they can to forward their agenda.
Xenomancers wrote: I loved the phantom menace. My favorite of the prequels. Maul vs Qui gon and Obiwan + duel of fates musical score is just beautiful - it brings me chills every time I watch it. TLJ is a dreadful movie I'd never sit through again. Ofc - this is just my opinion.
Your opinion, and a pretty rare one. Most people agree that it was a terrible movie. Terrible acting, weak plot, obnoxious characters, and only one massively over-hyped fight scene to redeem it. But feel free to substitute the other prequels if you like, most people will agree that even if TLJ is a flawed movie it's still better than the borderline-unwatchable prequels.
I do think it's perfectly normal to give a terrible review after just watching the worst movie you've ever seen. It's not a conspiracy.
It might be normal, but it sure as hell isn't accurate data. There is no way that TLJ is bad enough to rank among the worst movies ever created. It's just not that bad.
The only conspiracy there is if there is one - is how the major movie critics were paid off or being SJW themselves are doing everything they can to forward their agenda.
And just what "SJW agenda" is that? At least the idea that the critics are paid off to protect Disney's profits would have a plausible motive, trying to blame "SJWs" for anything here is just nonsense.
Xenomancers wrote: I loved the phantom menace. My favorite of the prequels. Maul vs Qui gon and Obiwan + duel of fates musical score is just beautiful - it brings me chills every time I watch it. TLJ is a dreadful movie I'd never sit through again. Ofc - this is just my opinion.
You mean Ray Park is pretty much the best fight coordinator that isn't Jackie Chan, or Jet Li, or Sammo Hung, or John Woo?
Maul vs Qui Gon and Obi Wan is very pretty to look at but lacks anything beyond that. It only gets any emotional impact after qui gon is killed.
Contrast with the original trilogy, every duel had emotional stakes, they served to further the characters not to distract the viewer.
Also, the duels in Empire and Jedi look phenomenally better than Phantom, thanks to their usage of lighting and framing. There is nothing in the maul fight which ever approaches them. If you have any doubt about that, just look at this:
A Town Called Malus wrote: Maul vs Qui Gon and Obi Wan is very pretty to look at but lacks anything beyond that. It only gets any emotional impact after qui gon is killed.
Contrast with the original trilogy, every duel had emotional stakes, they served to further the characters not to distract the viewer.
Also, the duels in Empire and Jedi look phenomenally better than Phantom, thanks to their usage of lighting and framing.
You say that, but the Obi-Wan solo vs Maul lacks emotion in the actual duel. It was over-choreographed to hell and back.
insaniak wrote: By the time you've made 9 movies in a setting, it's a fairly safe bet that there's going to be some duplication, particularly when the guy who made the first 6 specifically set out to reuse the same tropes as often as possible...
Del Toro didn't so much as phone it in, as get somebody else to phone it in for him!
They'll still be using his footage decades from now, as a masterclass in how not to act.
I'm not sure what you're basing that on, to be honest. I thought he was great.
He looked disinterested, half-asleep, and to be frank, I though he was hung-over.
As I say, it's a shame, because he's a damn good actor.
And from a story POV, he makes zero sense.
He's in jail, but he could leave at any time.
Then I thought he did this to get money out of people, i.e pay him and he'll get you out, but he's a master code breaker, and thus he could hack into any bank at any time. Or even rig the casino machines.
Same for betrayal. He could have gotten the money at any time. Hell, if he can hack into First Order ships, then why not shake down the Resistance for some money?
Like I say, his character is totally unnecessary and makes no sense.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Maul vs Qui Gon and Obi Wan is very pretty to look at but lacks anything beyond that. It only gets any emotional impact after qui gon is killed.
Contrast with the original trilogy, every duel had emotional stakes, they served to further the characters not to distract the viewer.
Also, the duels in Empire and Jedi look phenomenally better than Phantom, thanks to their usage of lighting and framing.
You say that, but the Obi-Wan solo vs Maul lacks emotion in the actual duel. It was over-choreographed to hell and back.
Yeah, If you listen to The Duellists DVD commentary by Ridley Scott (which I would recommend to any aspiring film maker) then he says the same thing.
A duel has to be more than a simple sword fight.
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A Town Called Malus wrote: Maul vs Qui Gon and Obi Wan is very pretty to look at but lacks anything beyond that. It only gets any emotional impact after qui gon is killed.
Contrast with the original trilogy, every duel had emotional stakes, they served to further the characters not to distract the viewer.
Also, the duels in Empire and Jedi look phenomenally better than Phantom, thanks to their usage of lighting and framing.
Bloody hell!
I agree with you. Doesn't happen often.
That being said, every previous duel meant something.
New Hope = Obi Wan being killed.
Empire = massive shift in the story with Vader's revelation to Luke
Jedi = redemption.
Phantom = Obi Wan having to grow up quicker than expected with Liam Neeson's death.
RiTides wrote: I also thought Del Toro was great, and was hoping he'd return for the third of the trilogy (probably actually helping the good guys, this time ). It was kind of cool to see a neutral mercenary character actually choose the Empire, unlike Han "always do the right thing in the end" Solo
It's hard to like a character when he conveniently pops into the story like he did. Get thrown into jail with a guy that was just waiting to break you out so he can hack ISD's (which the movie lied to us about - its supposed to be a rare skill only 1 guy has - not a skill a random jail mate should have.)
Xenomancers wrote: My goodness...now there is a conspiracy to make TLJ look bad.
The critics are right and the viewers are intentionally tanking the score...just wow. SJW is going to your heads if you believe this junk.
It's hard not to suspect people of tanking the score when we have examples of brilliant reasoning like this one. Clearly it must be "SJWs" if people think that the viewers are tanking the score. It can't possibly be the result of taking a look at reviews like "1/2 star Feminist propaganda. Rian Johnson is a troll. Great way to lose a fan base. Thanks Disney for ruining an epic franchise." and suspecting that there might in fact be some review-tanking going on. Nope. If you suspect anything but 100% honest opinions that TLJ is one of the worst movies ever created you must be a SJW.
As a starwars film - it is an insult to the previous trilogy and without a shadow of a doubt - the worst star wars movie ever made.
I loved the phantom menace. My favorite of the prequels. Maul vs Qui gon and Obiwan + duel of fates musical score is just beautiful - it brings me chills every time I watch it. TLJ is a dreadful movie I'd never sit through again. Ofc - this is just my opinion.
I do think it's perfectly normal to give a terrible review after just watching the worst movie you've ever seen. It's not a conspiracy. The only conspiracy there is if there is one - is how the major movie critics were paid off or being SJW themselves are doing everything they can to forward their agenda.
The Phantom Menace is a flawed film IMO, but as I always say, Lucas' heart was in the right place, and it felt like a SW film. Just poor execution let it down. Still, rather have phantom than VII and VIII any day of the week.
Attack of the clones has young Hayden Christensen and that awful scene on Naboo where Padme and Anakan fall in love. Then also that one scene next to the fire place...awful but at least that is the worst of it.
RotS was good except for some really bad acting before the Anakan vs Obi Wan fight and then that stupid high ground scene (could have been better)
They all told good stories though - had consistent characters - and what could be cooler than watching the rise of the emperor?
I don't need to list everything wrong with TLJ. It's infinitely worse than any of the prequels though.
Xenomancers wrote: I loved the phantom menace. My favorite of the prequels. Maul vs Qui gon and Obiwan + duel of fates musical score is just beautiful - it brings me chills every time I watch it. TLJ is a dreadful movie I'd never sit through again. Ofc - this is just my opinion.
Your opinion, and a pretty rare one. Most people agree that it was a terrible movie. Terrible acting, weak plot, obnoxious characters, and only one massively over-hyped fight scene to redeem it. But feel free to substitute the other prequels if you like, most people will agree that even if TLJ is a flawed movie it's still better than the borderline-unwatchable prequels.
I do think it's perfectly normal to give a terrible review after just watching the worst movie you've ever seen. It's not a conspiracy.
It might be normal, but it sure as hell isn't accurate data. There is no way that TLJ is bad enough to rank among the worst movies ever created. It's just not that bad.
The only conspiracy there is if there is one - is how the major movie critics were paid off or being SJW themselves are doing everything they can to forward their agenda.
And just what "SJW agenda" is that? At least the idea that the critics are paid off to protect Disney's profits would have a plausible motive, trying to blame "SJWs" for anything here is just nonsense.
Well...accepting bribes to give good reviews is believable - it is even more believable if they are also on board with the agenda. I can't conceive of someone that has actually studied film and reviews movies for a living that could possibly have anything good to say about this movie. What is the agenda? It appears to be elevation of women and minorities - which would be great if it wasn't at the expense of the quality of the story/characters.
The last jedi was mediocre, but still the average level of american blockbusters. Marvel movies are not better.
IMHO the force awakens was really terrible and along with attack of the clones the worst Star Wars episode ever made.
The previous trilogy wasn't better than the latest two episodes, it starred Hayden Christensen and included Jar Jar after all. But Adam Driver is almost as ridiculous and silly as Christensen. Not that bad in acting but very close. And Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were former actors, the story would have been better if set many years after episode IV, when all the old characters were already dead.
I can save the previous trilogy only because there were a couple of amazing villains, Darth Maul and Grievous but the plots and actings were really terrible.
So yes the last jedi is bad, but not that bad and certainly it doesn't deserve to be re-written.
I am actually amazed in this politically correct world, that a black character beat up and killed a white woman. Then again, in some warped way, that is probably okay. Had Finn been white, I am not so sure that would have gone over as well. Who knows, its hard to know what is okay and not okay these days. I know it wouldn't have been okay had Phasma been a black woman.
Of course, I say this just partially screwing around. I think Phasma is lame anyway. All she did was walk around in that pose holding her blaster. She could have at least killed off a subordinate.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:A duel has to be more than a simple sword fight.
Actually, just getting on with it and having a simple sword fight would have been worlds better than the complete mess of pacing and dancing that characterized the 'Glaring Behind Force Fields of the Fates'
But then, so would a rap battle, given that their fight had no stakes whatsoever. Jar jar matter more to the fate of that planet than the jedi or sith did.
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