How I would improve The Last Jedi with minimal revision
Leia dies in the explosion.
Ackbar is the one that stays behind and rams the ship.
No Hodo.
Luke is enthusiastic to train Rey.
Po goes with Fin to planet to get hacker.
Rose Tico lets Fin steal a ship after he flirts awkwardly with her, she sneaks onto ship.
David Tennant cameo in casino, implying Doctor Who is there, but not really confirming it.
Rose Tico knocks fin out of the way and saves Fin, but dies ramming the super laser, buying the Resistance vital time they need to escape.
Luke is actually there for the final battle and dies Obi Wan Kenobi Style instead of being an illusion.
Po becomes head of the Resistance in Leia's absence.
In my mind all it needed was a sub-plot of a spy on the resistance ship. One so high that they couldn't trust anyone outside of the core circle of power (even their best lead pilot). One so key that they couldn't afford to let the spy escape either - that would explain the lock-down on the ship and the whole attitude of keeping the plan secret.
Personally I've never had a problem with Luke being depressed and defeated; however I think the only resolution there would have been to have had more time to actually show him starting his new order, begin the training and then having done that failed and seen him break. Because it happens "of screen" as such I think many have trouble trying to take Luke of their memories and see him as the adult who is crushed by his own percieved failure.
As for his death I loved it - a ghost sent through the force - the power of that event weakening him to the point he joined Yoda and others in another layer of mystery about the Force.
Interesting definition of minimal revision. Without sarcasm, scorn or anything toxic - these changes erase a ton of the film's more compelling themes and moments, completely alter interesting character traits, and add multiple plot holes. I'd much prefer the original film - but I'm sure there'll be a number of people in here to tell you how they'd rather it was changed in a completely different way.
I'm also not sure why there's a Doctor Who cameo. Wouldn't it be more fun to have Q in the casino, if you're going down that route?
Overread wrote: In my mind all it needed was a sub-plot of a spy on the resistance ship. One so high that they couldn't trust anyone outside of the core circle of power (even their best lead pilot). One so key that they couldn't afford to let the spy escape either - that would explain the lock-down on the ship and the whole attitude of keeping the plan secret.
I'd gotten the impression that that's exactly what they were worried about - no one knew hyperspace tracking was a thing, so literally everything was on a need-to-know basis. Just because the answer was something completely different doesn't mean Holdo wasn't right to take precautions.
There's a 95% chance this is a really ballsy grift chasing indignant "only I know how Star Wars should be" money (they said they were taking writing suggestions from the public via gmail, and their 'plan' is to 'get attention and then persuade Disney in a meeting), but there's an infinitesimal possibility that it's for real.
Which I really shouldn't find hilarious, but I'm losing it inside imagining a couple hundred strangers on the internet arguing on a Google Doc somewhere about what prequel character Snoke should be and where they could crowbar in a monologue backstory for him.
(He's clearly Elan Sleazbaggano, guys! He no longer wants to sell Death Sticks, but Obi-Wan never thought about the real possibilities of going home and rethinking your life...)
You cant fix that pile of foul smelling gak with minimal adjustments - You need to start from the beginning and rewrite almost every scene and the entire plot: But at least it can’t be worse than what the Director inflicted on us first time round.
Rey, Kylo and Luke stuff is pretty much the same but changes include:
Establish that time has passed, the First Order has spent weeks or longer taking over the galaxy, crushing all resistance (not half an hour)., some planets collaborate, others are hammered.
Imperial Fleet vs Evacuation: similar, except no stupid bombers - Rose's sister is a Y Wing pilot who sacrifices herself to destroy the Dreadnought with a suicide run.
Rebels flee but are tracked
Fleet splits up when the FO arrive, roving space battle with fighters holding off the enemy ties, Rebel command ship is crippled and its FTL knocked off line and has to head to nearby planet. Leia dies
The FO destroy the ship in orbit but many escape to a old mining base, they are perused and a brutal battle begins as they are hunted down
Rey arrives and she and Kylo kill Snoke, other renegade warships arrive and engage FO ships.
Ends with Kylo and Rey in the scene of devastation trying to decide if they can trust each other as FO forces converge on the shattered bridge area.
1) Eliminate the 'prank call' between Poe and Hux. Poe goes in shooting with a full squadron behind him because Hux was smart enough to launch a fighter screen ASAP.
2) Cut the comic scene of Finn all but naked in the leaky transparent suit. Have him wake up in a bed, cut as he gets dressed, and then do the scene with Poe.
2) Leia doesn't discipline Poe for suffering heavy casualties while delaying an overwhelming force so the fleet can escape.
3) Leia dies in the explosion. Ideally Kylo Ren fires the shot, knowing she's there, following up on his killing Han and cementing his path to the Dark Side.
4) Vice Admiral Holdo takes over, and refuses to share her plan because, as she tells Poe and the audience, "Clearly there's a spy. Unless you catch him, my plans remain a secret so they can't be betrayed to the enemy."
5) Scatter some small scenes backing this up - unauthorized transmissions being detected on the flagship, new reports received by the First Order.
6) Poe has to stay and seek the spy, but sends Rose and Finn to find the Resistance agent who first reported they were infiltrated. Canto Bite follows, they miss their connection, the hacker convinces them to seek the information they want from the source - by hacking the First Order directly. The rest of this plot follows unchanged... aside from having Finn and Phasma get a REAL fight scene in.
7) Once everyone has followed Holdo's plan and bailed out in those unarmed transports, Holdo goes to the comm panel and tells the First Order "It's time." SHE'S THE SPY!
8) Back on the Flying Wing, Hux tells his gunners to lock on to the fleeing transports. Holdo protests, "You promised, if I set them up for capture you'd take them alive!" Hux replies, "You're far too trusting, my dear." in a shout-out to Grand Moff Tarkin.... and opens fire.
This justifies Holdo's sacrifice as a redemption of her character.
9) Poe does NOT send a bunch of people out to die in the trenches. Everyone but the pilots hunkers down while they go after the supercannon. Ideally, Finn's sacrifice works and buys time for Luke to fly in on his X-Wing, and confront Kylo Ren a la Obi-Wan. Keep the script, though: "This will not end the way you expect" and "Be seeing you, kid" are too good to waste.
10) Eventually the heavy guns on the gorilla walkers breaks through the wall once Luke is 'dealt with.'
11) One last scene, Kylo Ren meditating on a ship... and Luke starts talking to him.
1) Eliminate the 'prank call' between Poe and Hux. Poe goes in shooting with a full squadron behind him because Hux was smart enough to launch a fighter screen ASAP.
2) Cut the comic scene of Finn all but naked in the leaky transparent suit. Have him wake up in a bed, cut as he gets dressed, and then do the scene with Poe.
2) Leia doesn't discipline Poe for suffering heavy casualties while delaying an overwhelming force so the fleet can escape.
3) Leia dies in the explosion. Ideally Kylo Ren fires the shot, knowing she's there, following up on his killing Han and cementing his path to the Dark Side.
4) Vice Admiral Holdo takes over, and refuses to share her plan because, as she tells Poe and the audience, "Clearly there's a spy. Unless you catch him, my plans remain a secret so they can't be betrayed to the enemy."
5) Scatter some small scenes backing this up - unauthorized transmissions being detected on the flagship, new reports received by the First Order.
6) Poe has to stay and seek the spy, but sends Rose and Finn to find the Resistance agent who first reported they were infiltrated. Canto Bite follows, they miss their connection, the hacker convinces them to seek the information they want from the source - by hacking the First Order directly. The rest of this plot follows unchanged... aside from having Finn and Phasma get a REAL fight scene in.
7) Once everyone has followed Holdo's plan and bailed out in those unarmed transports, Holdo goes to the comm panel and tells the First Order "It's time." SHE'S THE SPY!
8) Back on the Flying Wing, Hux tells his gunners to lock on to the fleeing transports. Holdo protests, "You promised, if I set them up for capture you'd take them alive!" Hux replies, "You're far too trusting, my dear." in a shout-out to Grand Moff Tarkin.... and opens fire.
This justifies Holdo's sacrifice as a redemption of her character.
9) Poe does NOT send a bunch of people out to die in the trenches. Everyone but the pilots hunkers down while they go after the supercannon. Ideally, Finn's sacrifice works and buys time for Luke to fly in on his X-Wing, and confront Kylo Ren a la Obi-Wan. Keep the script, though: "This will not end the way you expect" and "Be seeing you, kid" are too good to waste.
10) Eventually the heavy guns on the gorilla walkers breaks through the wall once Luke is 'dealt with.'
11) One last scene, Kylo Ren meditating on a ship... and Luke starts talking to him.
One thing that I missed in The Last Jedi was any appearance from the Knights of Ren (I’m hoping they weren’t the red dudes that sucked at their job) They looked badass in the brief TFA scene and their brief time in the reveal trailer is probably when I most paused the trailer before the movie came out.
Instead of that lightspeed tracker thing, Kylo had a Knight of Ren infiltrator (assuming they were Force sensitive) on the ship and thats how they were able to be tracked. Instead of the casino thing, it was a detective subplot on their ship. Leading to the reveal of the Knight of Ren infiltrator. The big twist being that there was more than one.
How to fix TLJ: select all, delete. Repeat for TFA. The story ended at the end of ROTJ. Any other suggestions are just nitpicking at superficial flaws and ignoring the much greater problem that the movie shouldn't exist at all.
Peregrine wrote: How to fix TLJ: select all, delete. Repeat for TFA. The story ended at the end of ROTJ. Any other suggestions are just nitpicking at superficial flaws and ignoring the much greater problem that the movie shouldn't exist at all.
Peregrine wrote: How to fix TLJ: select all, delete. Repeat for TFA. The story ended at the end of ROTJ. Any other suggestions are just nitpicking at superficial flaws and ignoring the much greater problem that the movie shouldn't exist at all.
Peregrine wrote: How to fix TLJ: select all, delete. Repeat for TFA. The story ended at the end of ROTJ. Any other suggestions are just nitpicking at superficial flaws and ignoring the much greater problem that the movie shouldn't exist at all.
Lance845 wrote:7can we place a moratorium on starwars threads until some new sw media is released? This is fething out of control.
trexmeyer wrote:
Peregrine wrote: How to fix TLJ: select all, delete. Repeat for TFA. The story ended at the end of ROTJ. Any other suggestions are just nitpicking at superficial flaws and ignoring the much greater problem that the movie shouldn't exist at all.
Making Luke enthusiastic to train Rey would require rewriting part of TFA. you would need different foreshadowing as to why he dissapeared.
Making Holdo a villain? No bad idea, a traitor is a nice idea. For a different movie with different theme.
Leia dying probably would have happened if Carrie Fisher's passing was planned. Right now just killing Luke was enough.
having luke genuinely fight on Ach-to would be a big betrayal of his character. Luke is at his strongest in the OT ,especially in RotJ when he doesn't fight.
Most of the ideas in this thread would require major changes to the film and worse yet TFA.
Earth127 wrote: Making Luke enthusiastic to train Rey would require rewriting part of TFA. you would need different foreshadowing as to why he dissapeared.
The existing film already needs this.
Luke says he wanted to disappear off the grid, doesn't want anything to do with the galaxy any more, but leaves a map to his location?
TFA needs to either scrap the map he left, or Luke needs to be rewritten in TLJ to actually have a reason he left the map.
Leia dying probably would have happened if Carrie Fisher's passing was planned. Right now just killing Luke was enough.
True, but retroactively speaking, it makes more sense to have her character gone in TLJ. Of course, this is without me knowing what the 9th film might offer in regards to this.
having luke genuinely fight on Ach-to would be a big betrayal of his character. Luke is at his strongest in the OT ,especially in RotJ when he doesn't fight.
Agreed. Luke saving the Rebellion RESISTANCE without actually fighting is brilliant.
I think is character could have been improved in TLJ, but him not actually being there was great.
Most of the ideas in this thread would require major changes to the film and worse yet TFA.
Unfortunately, the actual film itself requires lots of retroactive changes.
The First Order being so powerful and taking over the galaxy in seeming days.
Luke's map leading to him without him actually wanting to be found.
The Knights of Ren
Etc etc
Luke didn't leave the map. People just guessed he was at the original jedi temple and then needed a map to go there.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also Rian Johnson has gone on record saying he didn't want to change anything abou tthe last jedi out of respect for Carrie Fisher.
I do'nt usually aplaud of screen death but this is an exception. Especially with there being a time skip.
While the latest series could definitely be improved, its biggest flaw is in violating a simple movie tenet: Show, don't tell.
Star Wars uses the "what happened previously" shtick in the opening crawl, but we're not shown the rise of the Remnant, we're not shown Snoke corrupting Kylo, we're not shown the Knights of Ren destroying the temple, Luke running away, Han/Leia's breakup, or any number of other things that are probably more interesting than the contents of the movies we're actually shown.
TLJ should have been the 3rd movie - we need an entire movie to set up the events of TFA.
That's easy : The remnants of the Resistance are joined by an alliance of Ewoks and Gungans, and together they find the First Orders' newest, solar-system-sized superweapon.. Hijinks ensue, and the battle is won when a critical exhaust port becomes blocked by one of the Gungans' ears, causing the whole thing to explode, killing the entire First Order and bringing peace to the Galaxy at last.
Peregrine wrote: How to fix TLJ: select all, delete. Repeat for TFA. The story ended at the end of ROTJ. Any other suggestions are just nitpicking at superficial flaws and ignoring the much greater problem that the movie shouldn't exist at all.
Just like this thread.
Then why did you bother reading this thread? If this does not interest you, you do have the option of ignoring it.
Half the posts in the thread do not meet the criteria of "without sarcasm, scorn, or anything toxic". It was a unachievable criteria to begin with. Anyone could ignore it. And those with their toxic answers could have stayed out too. But they didnt. Its another thread about the same dead horse thats been getting beaten in 3 other locked threads.
Lance845 wrote: Half the posts in the thread do not meet the criteria of "without sarcasm, scorn, or anything toxic". It was a unachievable criteria to begin with. Anyone could ignore it. And those with their toxic answers could have stayed out too. But they didnt. Its another thread about the same dead horse thats been getting beaten in 3 other locked threads.
Hey man, we need to beat this horse. Otherwise it will be way to stringy to be edible.
For this movie and the course it runs, I'd fix it by just having the huge space battle continuing after the bombing run. the fighters then concentrate on snokes ship, instead of the pilots and their ships just being blown up in the hanger, they go out fighting.
Finn goes to find lando to enlist his help. just finn, by himself. He finds lando enjoying a colt 45 someplace and says he can't help and finn returns alone.
rey does her thing as is, but after she leaves to find ben, we see luke lifting his xwing up out of the lake. we watch in horror as we see the poor r2 droid still inside of it, then luke goes to join the battle. No one drinks any milk.
As the ships crash & burn and the escape pods return to the planet, Akbar does his herroic thing. The falcon get's blown up by Kylo as he's escaping snokes ship in his fighter.
Rey, poe and finn all end up in the bunker with the few survivors. Luke heads out and does his passive resistance fighting against kylo while the others escape out the back to find lando waiting for them and he fly's them to safety while they enjoy some colt 45's.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
insaniak wrote: That's easy : The remnants of the Resistance are joined by an alliance of Ewoks and Gungans, and together they find the First Orders' newest, solar-system-sized superweapon.. Hijinks ensue, and the battle is won when a critical exhaust port becomes blocked by one of the Gungans' ears, causing the whole thing to explode, killing the entire First Order and bringing peace to the Galaxy at last.
You forgot all the porg spies that died to bring the resistance that information
it's the 3rd movie though, so they fly into this one to blow it up.
Lance845 wrote: Half the posts in the thread do not meet the criteria of "without sarcasm, scorn, or anything toxic". It was a unachievable criteria to begin with. Anyone could ignore it. And those with their toxic answers could have stayed out too. But they didnt. Its another thread about the same dead horse thats been getting beaten in 3 other locked threads.
Spoiler:
I didn't think TLJ was that bad, but I will readily concede that part where Leia flew through space like a fethed up wizard was a little rough.
sirlynchmob wrote: For this movie and the course it runs, I'd fix it by just having the huge space battle continuing after the bombing run. the fighters then concentrate on snokes ship, instead of the pilots and their ships just being blown up in the hanger, they go out fighting.
Finn goes to find lando to enlist his help. just finn, by himself. He finds lando enjoying a colt 45 someplace and says he can't help and finn returns alone.
rey does her thing as is, but after she leaves to find ben, we see luke lifting his xwing up out of the lake. we watch in horror as we see the poor r2 droid still inside of it, then luke goes to join the battle. No one drinks any milk.
As the ships crash & burn and the escape pods return to the planet, Akbar does his herroic thing. The falcon get's blown up by Kylo as he's escaping snokes ship in his fighter.
Rey, poe and finn all end up in the bunker with the few survivors. Luke heads out and does his passive resistance fighting against kylo while the others escape out the back to find lando waiting for them and he fly's them to safety while they enjoy some colt 45's.
Agreed - one of the worst elements of TLJ is the ohhh so long and tedious chase scene which only exists so two idiots can go to Casino World and briefly play with some space horses - change that element and you are starting to build a passable film experience.
Honestly, I think the problems with The Last Jedi are largely rooted in The Force Awakens. Fixing TLJ wouldn’t fix what I dislike about the whole sequel trilogy.
When the new films were announced I just wasn’t that excited about the prospect of new Star Wars films, but the (literally) one thing I was excited about was the prospect of seeing Han and Luke onscreen together again. The thing we never got to see.
A line or two of dialoge explaining that Poe has only opened a gap in the Dreadnoughts defences so the bombers have to keep a tight formation.
Have more time pass in the film by making the "chase" more of a hide and seek that lasts weeks. Possibly using the old sci fi trope of a nebula or asteroid field but the FO has some kind of super interdictor to stop the Resistance from jumping away. While they cant call for help the Resistance can pick up reports about how the FO is rampaging through New Republic systems. Meanwhile Rey gets a period of actual meaningful training from Luke. While Finn and Rose spend a lot more time and effort searching for the master code breaker over several locations and seeing first hand the effects of the FO campaign.
Have a scene after Finn and Rose leave the ship where Holdo confronts Poe in private about sacrificing her people in the Dreadnought attack. She's royally pissed with him and her loyalty to and trust in Leia is the only thing keeping him out of the brig.
Luke warns Rey not to trust what the dark side cave shows her.
During the evacuation of the Raddus a small crew of injured personel and droids stay behined with Holdo.
After Finn, Rose and DJ are captured the FO goes back on there word to DJ. He activates a virus he planted in the FO systems that disables there entire fleet while he escapes. Holdo sees this opening and takes the Raddus all guns blazing through the defencless FO fleet and rams the Supremacy(at sub light).
The scene where Phasma shoots the FO troopers after Finn reveals her cowardice at Star killer base is kept in.
During the final battle Rey is flying Snokes (heavily armed)personal yacht while Chewie and R2 are in the Falcon.
Many more Resistance personel survive the film. Including Holdo, who greets a shocked Poe at the Falcons boarding ramp with "Whats the matter hot shot, never heard of escape pods?"
To start with, redo TFA with someone who will actual put in the work to give the audience a stable background to work with. JJ Abrams likes mystery boxes (and daddy issues) to hook people but there is nothing inside and he just left them for someone else to deal with. He did a flashy reskin of ANH with much of the substance removed in place of cool visuals.
Lucas wasn't really good at writing or directing but he was good at setting things up. Everything was detailed out and you were given everything you needed to work with. Yes, he used mono climate Planets a lot but he gave you enough to make you feel like you were actually looking at another planet with different locations, peoples, and ecosystems like Tatoonin. JJ gave us broken toys in a sand box planet and cantina planet, and even then the Mos Isley cantina felt bigger and more developed than both the populated areas of both.
Aside from being disappointed with being what seemed more like an attempt to reboot ANH, hastily converted to be a sequel, it left a lot of questions.
Why do we need a complicated backstory about the Republic, the Empire, the FO, and the Resistance? All that was needed was that Snoke united remnants of the Empire that had been chased to the outer rim and used them to build the FO. The Republic having a hard time martialing forces from member worlds to build a force to rival it do to politics. This could play into why no one came to help Leia afterwards because most worlds wanted to keep their PDF forces close to home since Starkiller base was destroyed. Also, how was the GR not designed so that a planet killer attack on their capital wouldn't just cause it to effectively collapse for the story, essentially?
Why did Finn just throw off his conditioning the moment we see him? He was supposed to be indoctrinated from childhood and then doesn't seem to show any concern for killing other stormtroopers who presumably when through what he did. I thought that this was because he had been awoken to the force as well but it became clear that they weren't going to do anything with it.
If you're going to make Luke run away, why leave a map? Why not make a certain droid the only one who knows where he is that you have to find? I think having to find R2 would have been a nice reversal on R2 needing to get to the rebels in ANH. Your mcguffin could be the locator linked to a tracker on R2. If anyone is going to know the location of ancient Jedi temples that Luke visited, it would be his Astromech Droid.
So I realize that TPM gave us forcejesus but there was a lot of coincidences that bordered on this same level of wtf land. The whole Anakin's lightsaber that was probably lost in a gas giant but happened to end up in some random bar owners lost and found. You'd think she'd tell Han and Chewie about it considering how much she knew about it. The one that really gets me is Finn and Rei happen to find the Falcon while escaping the FO. They then just happen to bump into Han and Chewie on while they are on a job, using another ship, in the vast depths of space. There are coincidences and then there is this. You could have easily had Rei and Finn slip the FO for a bit, look for a way off planet to escape, and happen to find a cranky old freighter captain who they try and fail to deal with. Stormtroopers show up and the captain jumps into action and has them follow him to his ship. Rei, who's supposed to represent the good side of fandom, gets to bust out "hey, a Corellian light freighter, just like the Millennium Falcon" as they escape to it. Then you have Chewie providing covering fire as they board, Rei puts 2+2 together, realizes what we all knew, Han was using a fake name and OMG Millennium Falcon. It's more of a believable coincidence than finding the Falcon and then finding Han and Chewie. Also we aren't left asking how did they end up loosing the most famous ship in the rebel fleet? It would kind of be like using the USS Constitution. How much would it be worth in a card game?
Since we're on Han, chances are they were well aware that Harrison Ford was probably not going to stick around for more movies. That means that, even if JJ was on for TLJ, there wouldn't be a Han Solo around to use for flashbacks to fill in why he and Ben had a rocky relationship, like Abrams tends to do. So was the intent to just leave it unexplained why Kylo would have enough animosity to kill his father trying to reach out to him? I mean it's not Anakin's "well I guess I'll go kill children now" but they still attempted to explain how he got to that point. With Kylo they didn't even try. It seemed more like a scene constructed with the knowledge they had to kill Han, decided to have Kylo do it to establish that he is bad, and then though that he should probably be conflicted about it, but never went into figuring out why he should be. Also Abram's obsession with daddy issues is like M. Night's twists for me.
Starkiller was like a 6 year old's version of a Death Star. It was bigger and fired more lasers. Same vulnerability to small fighters though. You'd think they would have made point defense more of a priority. It bugged me that they didn't do anything to give an illusion of range though. With the Death Star we are shown Alderaan in a view screen and are given the impression that they are relatively close to the planet from the scene. It also has to travel around Yavin to target the fourth moon. Starkiller just fires several lasers with out giving any real indication they even entered the system. It blows up the capital world and a few other ones for reasons (I'm guessing for the 6 year old's idea that more planets would be cooler). I'm going to assume that all of the planets and/or moons that were blown up were at least in the same system, at least. Even still, considering how close they look to each other in establishing shots... well this is a big reason why I wonder how close the Starkiller was to its target. They seem to have been taking liberties with things like stellar distances.
Snoke is only a minor question in my book. I think just presenting him as a dark force user who used his abilities to unite the Empire remnants as stated above is sufficient. We don't know how the Emperor came to power, just how he created the Empire. I figured Snoke was going to get killed by Kylo in TLJ anyways to try to make him look like a successor to Vader rather than a fan boy anyways by betraying and killing his master for power.
As far as Rei being able to use the force to do things like the old Jedi mind trick, I can actually accept that. They kind of established that she is a rebel fan girl. I'm not surprised she tried using it when she realized she could use the force. It would kind of be like seeing a sword lodged in a stone for her, of course she's going to try and pull it out, especially if in trouble.
Ultimately the problem with the sequels is that they will never be what most fans want. We're adults now and they can't make us feel the same way the originals did when we were kids. I've met plenty of people who saw SW as an adult for the first time and were not impressed. I've met people who were exposed to the prequels as kids and love them but found the originals to be dated. Kids will love the sequels too. I recently watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time in years and couldn't help but notice how bad the fight choreography was by modern standards and how cheesy the special effects were when they used to be cutting edge. Eventually this will happen to the movie Avatar which many people fell in love with because of the state of the art CGI visuals. If you let nostalgia control your perception of a thing you'll just be in for future disappointment.
I was hoping that the Jedi Order would be destroyed, helping to bring down the extremist sith/jedi dichotomy and REALLY bringing balance to the Force. Let's face it, Jedi are weird repressed child kidnapping arseholes the same way the sith are weird rage monsters. When it seemed like Luke's plan was to let the Jedi Order die, I was all aboard, and it made him seem like the wisest person in the franchise. Even though his last scenes were awesome, I was let down that in doing what he did he essentially revived the Jedi Order in the imaginations of the Galaxy and therefore defeated his own (quite valid) point.
Huh... this gal here is reporting that Kathleen Kennedy was almost fired:
Kennedy seems to still have her job.
But it's apparent that she has ceded all creative control to director J.J. Abrams for episode IX, maybe to spare herself further blame, maybe because she wants to just sit this one out, or who knows, maybe because Disney wants the ball in someone else's hands???
Can Abrams, at full control, stop the bleeding?
Also, it looks like The Obi-Wan movie seems to be going forward despite the hold on the other projects. (good!)
RJ has always said there was pretty much no interference from Lucasarts top brass meaning Kennedy. So I don't really get this video. TLJ wasn't plagued by production issues. If anything RJ got to do exactly what he wanted rahter than needing to hit mass apppeal boxes.
Because whatever you say the story decisions in TLJ are not easy mass market decisions. That's TFA's job , or every marvel movie ever.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also that vid way underestimates how many people liked TLJ. It's not a universally hated movie, it's a divisive one.
whembly wrote: Huh... this gal here is reporting that Kathleen Kennedy was almost fired:
Kennedy seems to still have her job.
But it's apparent that she has ceded all creative control to director J.J. Abrams for episode IX, maybe to spare herself further blame, maybe because she wants to just sit this one out, or who knows, maybe because Disney wants the ball in someone else's hands???
Can Abrams, at full control, stop the bleeding?
Also, it looks like The Obi-Wan movie seems to be going forward despite the hold on the other projects. (good!)
If Abrams is directing, that guarantees I won't be watching the last one.
And yet, he’s still better than Johnson. Then again, I’m sure a monkey in the zoo throwing its feces at the wall could have made a better movie than Johnson.
timetowaste85 wrote: And yet, he’s still better than Johnson. Then again, I’m sure a monkey in the zoo throwing its feces at the wall could have made a better movie than Johnson.
Peregrine wrote: How to fix TLJ: select all, delete. Repeat for TFA. The story ended at the end of ROTJ. Any other suggestions are just nitpicking at superficial flaws and ignoring the much greater problem that the movie shouldn't exist at all.
I have to agree with Peregrine.
I seriously would have preferred a New Republic/Yuuzhan Vong Invasion adaptation than a thinly veiled remake of the Original Trilogy.
Spoiler:
The trilogy could have involved a massive invasion of the New Republic from a bizarre humanoid alien race that came from outside the Galaxy. The race is completely cut off from the Force, confounding the Jedi of Luke Skywalker's New Jedi Order and rendering them almost powerless, and over the course of Episode 7 the Jedi Order is crushed (the failure that drives Luke to self-exile).
A decade passes, with the War against the Yuuzhan Vong going badly for the New Republic, which consolidates into the Resistance under the leadership of Leia Organa. Han Solo has gone back to his smuggling in a sense, running a galactic "underground railroad" people trafficking refugees out of Yuuzhan Vong occupied space into Resistance space.
Episode 8 involves the Solo and Skywalker cousins Ben and Rey (Jacen and Jaina) seeking out Luke Skywalker in exile to complete their training (having been younglings in his Jedi Order). But Luke senses the growing darkness within Ben Solo, and is reluctant to continue training him. This is when a mysterious figure knowledgeable in the Force ("Snoke" ) reaches out to Ben, and offers to train him.
Episode 9 sees the Resistance rally for a last battle against the Yuuzhan Vong defeating them, but Ben Solo seizes power, killing Han, Leia and Luke in the process. Ep 9 ends with Ben Solo ruling over the newly formed Galactic Federation and Rey vowing to avenge her family and defeat the Federation.
Setting up the story for the next Star Wars trilogy.
I know why I didn't like - it was a terrible movie with awful characters, shockingly terrible pacing and laughable Direction (amongst soooo many othe problems) - why would I need to be told why i don't like something.
Earth127 wrote: Sort of. Because I'm sorry no matter what. TLJ is not a badly made movie. It has some pacing issues. But it's not a transformers lvl bad movie.
Thats your view so fair enough - mine is tha Transformers - expecially the first - is FAR superior to the pile of stinking gak that was TLJ, in fact I can't recall seeing a worse moive in years.
Rey, Ben and Luke are fine - the rest is poorly written, paced and visualised garbage
TLJ is a badly made movie. The question is not whether there is nothing at all worthwhile in the film. Neither is the question whether there was no thought or insight put into the script. Of course Rian Johnson reflected on Star Wars and came up with a thoughtful approach to the setting and characters. Of course with hundreds of millions of dollars and so many extraordinarily creative and talented people pitching in at all levels of the production there are some beautiful and striking images in the film. But nonetheless the adventures are not fun, the characters are not engaging or likeable, the structure creates boring and ultimately frustrating scenes again and again. TLJ is not a subtle masterpiece that eludes the ignorant masses. It's flaws are structural, not superficial much less imagined.
His attention to plot cohesion is completely non-existent. I mean, no other director gets even close to how much stuff doesn't make sense in his movies. Not even Michael Bay.
JJ.Abrams is a good director and has decent grasp of dialogue, but his writing is truly atrocious. I'd rather see Johnson to do Ep. 9 than JJ.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
MonkeyBallistic wrote: Honestly, I think the problems with The Last Jedi are largely rooted in The Force Awakens. Fixing TLJ wouldn’t fix what I dislike about the whole sequel trilogy.
To some extent I agree. TFA was made very uncomplicated with minimal exposition as they were afraid of boring people with 'political dialogue' which was one of the criticisms of Lucas prequels. Unfortunately, leaving all that backstory out (and the backstory isn't actually bad at all and fits quite well into the movies) made the movie feel detached and remake-ish. Thus, when TLJ starts, viewer is immediately confusing about where everything is taking place, to where Resistance is running to, why is the First Order again and so forth.
Another major problem is character of Finn. He was just not well thought of. His special skill is that he knows some First Order stuff. Okay. Nice but it's a card which is quickly played out. Leia, Han, Lando and Luke each had unique abilities which made them useful assets for the Rebellion and thus easy to write in the plotlines. Finn by contrast is written as a pawn who got disillusioned and wanted out and stumbled to Resistance by accident rather than having any grand motivation to help them. His low stature is underlined by repeated comments how he was mere foot soldier or a janitor doing menial tasks.
So okay, that sorta works out in TFA but what's next? Second movie comes in, what we do with Finn? He is not a Force user, not a super pilot, super spy or super leader. He's just a janitor who knows some FO stuff. So he is used in that capacity again. Only way to use him is another infiltration plotline. But isn't it getting real old that the good guys always manage to pull out these infiltration missions and completely outmaneuver the bad guys? Lets have him fail in his mission so the enemy doesn't feel 100% incompetent and there's some tension and surprises. Okay, that is a good choice in other respects but now Finn's character feels pointless in the movie as he only fails. And then comes the weird and unnecessary-feeling fourth act, maybe he can help there? No, we need to have Luke to resolve that so HE doesn't seem useless and gets some redemption. So lets have Finn fail again.
As can be seen, some of the problems of TLJ are result of character bloat of the franchise and bad choices made in the first movie which were nigh impossible to address in the sequel.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sgt_Smudge wrote: Unfortunately, the actual film itself requires lots of retroactive changes. The First Order being so powerful and taking over the galaxy in seeming days.
See, this is one of the problems resulting from lack of exposition. First Order did not (yet) take over the Galaxy. They just became the strongest faction by decapitating the most powerful one (New Republic) so that none of the others dare to challenge them in open warfare, at least individually. They mention the other factions (Resistance's potential allies) so they do exist. In fact, according to backstory, even the Empire still exists!
TFA and TLJ are presenting First Order's rise to position where they can start taking over the Galaxy, which I presume happens in the third movie, or between 2nd and 3rd movie.
Da Boss wrote: I was hoping that the Jedi Order would be destroyed, helping to bring down the extremist sith/jedi dichotomy and REALLY bringing balance to the Force. Let's face it, Jedi are weird repressed child kidnapping arseholes the same way the sith are weird rage monsters. When it seemed like Luke's plan was to let the Jedi Order die, I was all aboard, and it made him seem like the wisest person in the franchise. Even though his last scenes were awesome, I was let down that in doing what he did he essentially revived the Jedi Order in the imaginations of the Galaxy and therefore defeated his own (quite valid) point.
I just wanted to see Jolee Bindo played by Forest Whitaker, alas he played Saw Gerrera; though that's to be expected. Disney has been pretty ardent about its produced content trumping anything they can't occlude that was made before, so there was no way a character from KOTOR was going to infiltrate cannon, I'm actually surprised Thrawn managed it.
If you want to fix the Last Jedi you need to start at the beginning...and that’s The Force Awakens. And I agree with Shadow Captain Edithae. Was it too much to ask for a new story rather than just a rehash of A New Hope that turns into...well, gak.
To some extent I agree. TFA was made very uncomplicated with minimal exposition as they were afraid of boring people with 'political dialogue' which was one of the criticisms of Lucas prequels. Unfortunately, leaving all that backstory out (and the backstory isn't actually bad at all and fits quite well into the movies) made the movie feel detached and remake-ish. Thus, when TLJ starts, viewer is immediately confusing about where everything is taking place, to where Resistance is running to, why is the First Order again and so forth.
It's hard to sell books and comics if you give everything away in the movie.
Another major problem is character of Finn. He was just not well thought of. His special skill is that he knows some First Order stuff. Okay. Nice but it's a card which is quickly played out. Leia, Han, Lando and Luke each had unique abilities which made them useful assets for the Rebellion and thus easy to write in the plotlines. Finn by contrast is written as a pawn who got disillusioned and wanted out and stumbled to Resistance by accident rather than having any grand motivation to help them. His low stature is underlined by repeated comments how he was mere foot soldier or a janitor doing menial tasks.
I agree that using Finn as new Jar-Jar is bad writing, but it isn't because he lacks special skills. Leia's only special skills are being an Alderanian princess, and Luke's sister; she's a good character because she acquits herself as a bad-ass by keeping up with Han and Luke, and no one bats an eyelash. Finn actually does this too, from his initial escape to flying the ski-speeder, but it isn't cast in the same light. There's a lot more "Holy gak, he's not a moron!" than "Yeah, that's expected.".
So okay, that sorta works out in TFA but what's next? Second movie comes in, what we do with Finn? He is not a Force user, not a super pilot, super spy or super leader. He's just a janitor who knows some FO stuff.
I suspect he's meant to be the everyman that viewers connect with. I'd say that Star Wars doesn't need an everyman, because my grandmother knows who Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are, but I also recall a Penny Arcade strip about the authors' children not knowing anything about Star Wars; so maybe it does? But if that's the case then Finn is poorly realized, as you say, because he doesn't really interact with anyone in a way that leads to explanations.
Also, there is literally no time between the end of TFA and TLJ - Finn has no opportunity to be accepted as part of the resistance and develop any loyalty towards it (see Han Solo between ANH and TESB). So his character has to still be the same "I'm making a run for it, I really don't like the First Order" Stormtrooper Janitor he was in TFA.
Graphite wrote: Also, there is literally no time between the end of TFA and TLJ - Finn has no opportunity to be accepted as part of the resistance and develop any loyalty towards it (see Han Solo between ANH and TESB). So his character has to still be the same "I'm making a run for it, I really don't like the First Order" Stormtrooper Janitor he was in TFA.
That's why having him crash into the cannon would have been a brilliant and satisfying end to his story arc. Because it was when he stopped running and joined the cause.
But you do have to wonder when someone with no piloting skills learned how to fly a speeder.
I think the only way to save TLJ is to go back in time and put JJ in the hospital for an extended stay before he starts writing the script, so they can pass it on to someone else to do it.
I never read any of the novels that came after ROTJ, but it seems many were popular. While Han, Luke, etc had no doubt aged since the original trilogy, I would have preferred to keep their characters on a path closer to where we expected them to go after ROTJ. We see Luke's temple, we see Han and Leia together. Etc etc. Some short time is spent showing the galaxy enjoying some relative peace when then out of the shadow comes a new threat. Maybe the first movie would be about holding off that threat before it got too big, but they fail, and then the second movie the stakes are even higher. Introducing Planet Killer so early kinda takes the stakes out of the threat. Where do we go from here in regards to a super weapon. And how did anyone not see that thing being built? The amount of resources would have been staggering. Yet somehow it was missed.
And I am totally on board with a younger cast to carry the torch. Would have loved to see Luke and his prized student laying the smack down on someone, even if it meant Luke had to sacrifice himself in the process. I don't know how you get around Han though. I think him dying is the only reason they were able to get Harrison back. But the death lacked the emotion it should have as a father since we didn't see any relationship building between Ben and Han. The only time we see them talk is right before Han gets a lightsaber in the belly button.
Of course, this series was about a new cast of characters, not the old ones, but managing that passing the torch could have been done better. There are just so many plot holes and things just written off that it becomes insulting to think we paid premium bucks to watch it on IMAX.
I really don't know what they are going to do from here, and I don't have much hope. You can blame JJ for the start of this trilogy, even if we hate Rian more, and I don't think he's going to be able to tie it all up in a way to make us all think watching these two movies was worth it. Are they going to kill Ben? Hate to say it, he's probably the best character even tho he's silly. Kill Rey? Can't imagine they would do that to all the feminists. Poe? Fin? Can't see that either. I assume to properly close this arc we'll need something like the ewok bonfire scene. Which mean's we'll need everyone. And its not like we've got many main characters left.
I swear the only thing to come out of this trilogy that I like is BB-8. I am a fan of BB-8/ The rest, not so much.
It might. A billion is still a lot. Not as much as it used to be in many ways. But If I were Lucasarts I'd be cautious about banking on a billion bucks atm.
Frazzled wrote: It's on Netflix now. How the hell do you make Star Wars ...boring?!?!?!!
Apparently hire Rian Johnson and his team - if you have a setting, you want it made stupid, tedious and boring, and if you can find them - maybe you hire the RJ team. Da da Da.
If I were to put in a minimal fix I think I would just change the ending. I'd keep Luke alive and stick him on the Falcon, having again cut himself off from the force to protect his location from the enemy. This means his force projection would be over a closer distance and maybe not kill him. allowing for him to return in at a later time or in a different capacity. He would take a back seat in the action department but provide guidance to the younger characters and avoid being killed for a while.
It doesn't save the movie, that would take a fair bit more. My first thoughts on fixing TLJ were based on how to do it with the minimal amount of changes and additions.
At one time I thought to have ghost Anikin save his daughter when she was in space with him putting her back on the ship but it would just be that she is there and no one say how. She on the other hand would be held by her father who would just look down at here and smile and that's it. We could put a troubled look on Kilo's face or something but leave it as he seems unsure but knows something force related has happened but doesn't understand what he's picking up on.
Also, when Ray in in the pod and brought aboard the flag ship. Kilo would be there shirtless just to make things uncomfortable. lol. Maybe later saying is it hot in here..as he messes with his shirt. a trooper standing there could mumble...I have a bad feeling about this. (Just joking about that.)
I would have liked to see Luke survive into the next movie, particularly with the loss of Carrie Fisher meaning all of the 'old guard' are now gone.
Beyond that, though, I wouldn't be interested in a remake. TLJ isn't perfect, but I enjoyed the hell out of it at the cinema, and I enjoyed the hell out of it again watching it at home on Blueray.
Well, rumours have it that Lando will be back for ep9.
I can already visualise the expanding cloud of vapour that will signify his send-off.
"who put that there?"
Automatically Appended Next Post: I don't think they need "fixing".
In the same way I don't think that the holiday special needs "fixing." It serves a purpose. You can't measure "goodish" without "bad ... so bad it's really bad."
If you don't like them, don't watch them. Ignore them, it's almost as good as them not being there. Like the ignore function on this board.
Just don't go foisting your fanboy evangelism on others who may like them (for whatever reason). I hated the ewoks (as a 15 year old - creepy teddy bears) but I know people who were 6-7 who loved them and shed tears when they died by the bucketload. By the same token, there's about 40 minutes in the prequels that didn't suck. Enough to make a decent tv episode but I know there are people who were kids then who love them.
I mean, I think that the 80s animated transformers movie was a pile of dren, with a soundtrack that would make Diane Warren cry - but the live action movies didn't "destroy my childhood memories" - mostly because my childhood memories were already pretty established and buried by the time those movies eventuated.
By the same token, I see current friends clutching their "but muh feels" when so many spandex special kids get turned to dust in the latest spandex-special-kids movie.
insaniak wrote: I would have liked to see Luke survive into the next movie, particularly with the loss of Carrie Fisher meaning all of the 'old guard' are now gone.
I would be surprised if Luke didn't force ghost into E9.
insaniak wrote: I would have liked to see Luke survive into the next movie, particularly with the loss of Carrie Fisher meaning all of the 'old guard' are now gone.
I would be surprised if Luke didn't force ghost into E9.
I expect that to happen too.....so it won't happen, sadly
The h8rfanboys don't go using it, so don't expect me to.
In order to fix the fanatic hate, it is necessary to take the fans out of their attics. Or at least their basements.
Wow how het up are you to defend at all cost this movie and of course insult anyone who dares to take issue with any element of it. Cos thats adult.
If you don't like them, don't watch them. Ignore them,
What a pathetic comment - we go to the movies to be entertained, enthralled, whatever - if we don't like something we PAID for we have every right to voice our views on it same as you have every right to say how wonderful you thought it was.
Just becuase you thought this (IMO POS) movie was great don't expect everyone to do so and don't use the execuse of some sterotype to dismiss anyone else's opionion if you want to be be treated as an adult.
I went on Netflix last night and saw this movie was on it so I said sure, and played it for a bit as I zipped through parts. I have to admit I was just annoyed with just about every character I saw on screen. Even Del Toro who I like as an actor. Even the guy who plays Finn, who I think is a really good actor, has the unfortunate life of playing a crappy character. I am just are not attached to anyone in it. They could have killed everyone off at the end and I would have felt they were just putting it out of its misery.
I don't know how you save Star Wars anymore. I feel I have gotten all I want out of it, and will probably try to wipe this new trilogy from my memory.
I think Rey is hot sometimes, which is about the only thing thats doing it for me while I watch her character, but other times I am annoyed with how she talks.
Its a real shame because pool of actors they got for this movie was fine. The characters they were asked to play suck and so does the story.
I’m sure everyone remembers Harrison Ford’s famous words to Lucas: “George, you can write this gak, but you sure as hell can’t make people read it”. No matter what GL wrote or did, even he couldn’t make a movie as bad as TLJ. Even Jar Jar Binks is an improvement. Yeah, I said it. Binks is better than RJ.
timetowaste85 wrote: I’m sure everyone remembers Harrison Ford’s famous words to Lucas: “George, you can write this gak, but you sure as hell can’t make people read it”. No matter what GL wrote or did, even he couldn’t make a movie as bad as TLJ. Even Jar Jar Binks is an improvement. Yeah, I said it. Binks is better than RJ.
Dude- I respect your desire to prove your point and all, but really? Worse than The Phantom Menace? Sure, a sublight chase to sneak the survivors to a planet is a bad idea- but TPM spent half the movie getting Amidala to the Senate to complain about an invasion sparked by a trade dispute. Their planet was just lost by politics so clearly the answer is to use- politics. Then the other half of the movie having misfits and children win battles in ways that were less probable than Poe's prank call stalling tactic. It was awesome seeing Coruscant on the screen, and the Duel of the Fates was great- but stack that against the Snoke henchmen fight, and the hyperspace kamikaze. The Podrace is as silly as the failed Casino heist and herd of running ostrich lizard horses.
Personally, I much prefer Jarjar when he's just a flock of nonsentient birds which are eaten by Chewbacca. I'm not saying it's the best Star Wars.... but worse than the Phantom Menace? It's just not so.
What's with all the hate for the opening scene? It's an important character moment for both Poe and Hux - it shows that Poe is the type of Han Solo protagonist that goes for half-assed, audacious plans (setting up his arc and conflict with Holdo and Leia) and establishes Hux as an easily-flustered bully who vastly prefers grandiose declarations and shooting at helpless targets to actual conflict with someone dangerous (setting up his tunnel vision while he's gleefully blowing up transport ships and his brief temptation to assassinate Kylo Ren before immediately knuckling under for the rest of the film). It also shows why the Resistance is so low on supplies.
And, c'mon, the bridge crew immediately getting what was happening and not wanting to point it out was pretty funny.
timetowaste85 wrote: I’m sure everyone remembers Harrison Ford’s famous words to Lucas: “George, you can write this gak, but you sure as hell can’t make people read it”. No matter what GL wrote or did, even he couldn’t make a movie as bad as TLJ. Even Jar Jar Binks is an improvement. Yeah, I said it. Binks is better than RJ.
Dude- I respect your desire to prove your point and all, but really? Worse than The Phantom Menace? .... but worse than the Phantom Menace? It's just not so.
Well, at least Phantom Menace had Darth Maul. TLJ has nobody. Even Luke and Leia are shells of their former selves.
I hated TLJ but it is not worse than TPM and AotC.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Relatedly, TPM and AotC could be fixed - the basic ideas and themes are not terrible, but the execution ruins them.
I don't think there is any way to fix TLJ. Again, TLJ is not broken. Rian Johnson, as a screenwriter and director, fully realized his vision. The problem is the vision itself.
You could argue that the movie is boring because the of the splintered structure of the plot. But even that is part of the theme Johnson had in mind - namely that the protagonists are constantly struggling against frustrations that they don't fully understand because they think they are heroes.
Rian Johnson may have had terrible ideas, even to the point where it really seems like he is willfully trying to damage or destroy the Star Wars mythos, but he put them on paper and on the screen pretty faithfully and clearly.
The Podrace was actually fairly cool, and even though you KNEW nothing serious would happen to Anakin (that whole becoming Darth Vader thing and all), it was still pretty intense. Getting Amidala to Coruscant was about five minutes in the ship, multiple lightsaber fights, a harrowing escape which gave R2 some heroics, a look at the Federation clamping down on all hope for the planet, and one of the best lightsaber fights in the entire series; the three actors/fighters REALLY sold it.
It also had an annoying 9 year old kid (but again, he was 9, and he hadn't hit puberty yet so he squeaked when he talked) and it had a racial caricature who was annoying, but had we gotten Lucas's vision (according to the actor) instead of him getting cold feet at the hatred, we'd have an evil version of Yoda hiding in plain sight.
AotC did have a weak Anakin, but the general storyline was fun. Obi-Wan embodied the arrogance of the Jedi, when he denied the truth that Dooku told him, Anakin continued letting his emotions guide him down the path of weakness, and we got to see Anakin start to become "more machine now than man; twisted and evil". Ok, he wasn't more machine and evil yet, but it was the start.
Honestly, the only fun things in TLJ were the fight scenes with Rey and Ren, and Luke trolling both of them and being trolled by Yoda. Finn was wasted, and I had decent hopes for him, Poe had a single moment of "funny" in a Spaceballs sort of way, and then was wasted, and the rest of the movie just felt forced. No, I stand heavily behind even TPM being a better movie. RJ may have accomplished his vision, but he should really have cleaned the gak off his glasses before looking through them.
It's true that there is little to no FUN in TLJ. This is one of the factors that makes it a bad fit for the Star Wars series. In an adventure movie, fun usually comes from seeing the protagonists succeed in tricky situations. Since TLJ is about protagonists failing, we don't get this kind of fun. In fact, it's teased many times in the movie only to be undermined at the last moment. It feels like someone offering you a piece of candy then slapping your hand when you try to take it. And then lecturing you about why candy is bad. But that's the point of TLJ. And it is really well executed. It's sadistic, heartless, and cynical. It makes a mockery of Star Wars. But the reason I and many others hate TLJ so much is because it does effectively communicate this terrible message.
Lucas's prequel movies by contrast trip all over themselves. When we say, the podrace was pretty cool I think we are referring to the idea of the podrace being cool. Lucas was right about that. But in TPM the idea is bogged down by how it is introduced, the role it plays in the story, the way it is framed in the setting, and of course Anakin himself. Same thing with the lightsaber fights. As a concept, acrobatic lightsaber fights should be cool. But in execution they are emotional voids. It's almost like the movie stops and there is this music video inserted. Anyhow, there's more than enough detailed explanations out there of how those movies fail. I would just warn against thinking that because the prequels are true to the spirit of Star Wars, at least in their conception, while TLJ effectively hates Star Wars, that the prequels are better movies than TLJ.
timetowaste85 wrote: I’m sure everyone remembers Harrison Ford’s famous words to Lucas: “George, you can write this gak, but you sure as hell can’t make people read it”. No matter what GL wrote or did, even he couldn’t make a movie as bad as TLJ. Even Jar Jar Binks is an improvement. Yeah, I said it. Binks is better than RJ.
Dude- I respect your desire to prove your point and all, but really? Worse than The Phantom Menace? .... but worse than the Phantom Menace? It's just not so.
Well, at least Phantom Menace had Darth Maul. TLJ has nobody. Even Luke and Leia are shells of their former selves.
Yeah, great. It had a great looking villian who says and does pretty much nothing and then gets cut in half and disappears from the rest of the trillogy to be replaced by an old guy (Duku). Maul is great in all the expanded stuff. He's nothing in TPM. It's like people enjoying Boba Fett. He does cool things in everything BUT the movies.
The h8rfanboys don't go using it, so don't expect me to.
In order to fix the fanatic hate, it is necessary to take the fans out of their attics. Or at least their basements.
Wow how het up are you to defend at all cost this movie and of course insult anyone who dares to take issue with any element of it. Cos thats adult.
Agreed he could have done better, but from what I've seen these SW threads are exactly what you describe but in reverse.
The main and highly signifcant difference is most detractors attack the film, the die hard defenders attack the people.
This. This. Ten thousand times this.
If your only way of opposing the detractors is ad hominen attacks you've already lost the argument.
Disagree. I have seen more detractors ASSUME they were being attacked when in fact they were not being talked about at all then I have seen people actually attack anyone.
The main and highly signifcant difference is most detractors attack the film, the die hard defenders attack the people.
This. This. Ten thousand times this.
If your only way of opposing the detractors is ad hominen attacks you've already lost the argument.
When the critics write stuff like "Phantom Menace is better than TLJ", it's very hard to take them seriously and not call them idiots.
Phantom Menace, AotC and RotS have massive problems:
-none of the characters is in any way engaging. Well, maybe Palpatine. Who is a villain. Who were we rooting for again?
-movies include very annoying, one-dimensional stereotype characters and some shockingly bad casting choices
-directing and cinematography is incredibly uninspiring. Everything is done in front of greenscreen, actors come across detached from environment and seem annoyed the whole time as they can't see or react to anything.
-Plot is full of holes. "It's dangerous to put Padme and Anakin together. Hey, lets send them to this distant planet with no supervision."
-Dialogue is tepid and ludicrous.
-Way too much fan service and inbredness of the universe (C3PO built by Anakin? Boba Fett's dad who has exact same suit?)
By contrast, Disney SW movies are competently directed, use much more real sets which make the action look much more engaging and dialogue is much more dynamic and interesting and humour doesn't rely on stupid insulting stereotype slapstick characters.
So, even if EVERYTHING ELSE in the movies (plot, characters, derivativeness) is no better than Episodes 1-3, the Disney movies are nevertheless much superior in other respects I mentioned. After watching prequels, experience of watching TFA first time was great, because for first time for umpteen years a Star Wars movie felt like you were actually there, just like in original trilogy, because the scenes and shooting was so much more lively and engaging and not bunch of guys walking in boring, sterile, lifeless settings.
Well, at least Phantom Menace had Darth Maul. TLJ has nobody. Even Luke and Leia are shells of their former selves.
Darth Maul, a character with dumb name who had what, 1 line of dialogue which the actor didn't speak himself. He existed entirely so that the heroes had somebody to swordfight, and was given no personality or dimension whatsoever beyond that. I actually still remember watching the movie in the theatre and when the fight was over and Maul sliced in half, I was literally yawning, because why should I have cared about that guy? I mean Dooku sucked too but at least he had few scenes and some exposition to tell us who he was and how he operated.
Yeah, I take Kylo Ren and Snoke any time over them.
And Luke, Leia and Han are supposed to be shells of their former selves. Otherwise, why would you need any new heroes for your movies? You didn't see Yoda gearing up and killing the Emperor in Empire Strikes Back or ROTJ, did you?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Anyway, how would I fix TLJ? Basically the movie's problem is that it is too long and has very derivative extra act after it supposedly climaxes.
-Drop Rose. Or if she needs to be there, make her a minor character who makes Poe uncomfortable as his attack plan got her sister killed.
-Instead, it is Poe and Finn who go on rogue mission to Casino World (which can be cut a bit now), Poe storms off the bridge before Holdo can explain her plan. Holdo rolls her eyes here.
-So they fail, just like in actual movie, but they do manage to save Rey from damaged flagship. Everyone in the Resistance crash lands on the planet.
-Kylo Ren is dealing with a damaged fleet, but he still does have resources superior to Resistance, so he follows them with Stormtroopers and other stuff.
-NOW Luke beams in and confronts Kylo like in the movie. Whole "Death Star gun/speeder attack" -scene is left out. Resistance escapes, leaving Kylo screaming his rage on the planet.
-maybe cut some of awkward humour out (Poe prank call etc)
So what we have then? Pretty much the same movie, all the main characters undergo more or less same developement, but less drawn out, more to the point and leaves more room to potential exposition or character moments. Most notably, more Rey actually training the Force instead of apparently everything dropping to her like a gift.
timetowaste85 wrote: I’m sure everyone remembers Harrison Ford’s famous words to Lucas: “George, you can write this gak, but you sure as hell can’t make people read it”. No matter what GL wrote or did, even he couldn’t make a movie as bad as TLJ. Even Jar Jar Binks is an improvement. Yeah, I said it. Binks is better than RJ.
Dude- I respect your desire to prove your point and all, but really? Worse than The Phantom Menace? .... but worse than the Phantom Menace? It's just not so.
Well, at least Phantom Menace had Darth Maul. TLJ has nobody. Even Luke and Leia are shells of their former selves.
Yeah, great. It had a great looking villian who says and does pretty much nothing and then gets cut in half and disappears from the rest of the trillogy to be replaced by an old guy (Duku). Maul is great in all the expanded stuff. He's nothing in TPM. It's like people enjoying Boba Fett. He does cool things in everything BUT the movies.
The h8rfanboys don't go using it, so don't expect me to.
In order to fix the fanatic hate, it is necessary to take the fans out of their attics. Or at least their basements.
Wow how het up are you to defend at all cost this movie and of course insult anyone who dares to take issue with any element of it. Cos thats adult.
Agreed he could have done better, but from what I've seen these SW threads are exactly what you describe but in reverse.
The main and highly signifcant difference is most detractors attack the film, the die hard defenders attack the people.
This. This. Ten thousand times this.
If your only way of opposing the detractors is ad hominen attacks you've already lost the argument.
Disagree. I have seen more detractors ASSUME they were being attacked when in fact they were not being talked about at all then I have seen people actually attack anyone.
Boba fett was basically a background filler. He literally could have been removed from the OT and nothing would have changed. Maul was playing a dark wanderer character. It is expected he will say nothing - He makes up for his silence with the most BA scene in starwars history. He kills Obiwans master in an the most epic sabre battle ever ever seen. This forces Obi to train Luke. We learn a lot from this and it gives us a reason and a glimps of Obi's power. The Boba comparison is weak.
It's a fair comaprison to Snoke though - who talked plenty but still sucked balls. Maul reveals more in one line than snoke does two movies full of lines. "At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi, At last we will have revenge"
From this scene we learn Darthmaul is a Sith lord trained by Palpatine and after years of hiding - this is when they are striking. It's pretty Epic dude. It's amazing that after all the snoke time we got - we still know nothing about him.
The main and highly signifcant difference is most detractors attack the film, the die hard defenders attack the people.
This. This. Ten thousand times this.
If your only way of opposing the detractors is ad hominen attacks you've already lost the argument.
When the critics write stuff like "Phantom Menace is better than TLJ", it's very hard to take them seriously and not call them idiots.
Phantom Menace, AotC and RotS have massive problems:
-none of the characters is in any way engaging. Well, maybe Palpatine. Who is a villain. Who were we rooting for again?
-movies include very annoying, one-dimensional stereotype characters and some shockingly bad casting choices
-directing and cinematography is incredibly uninspiring. Everything is done in front of greenscreen, actors come across detached from environment and seem annoyed the whole time as they can't see or react to anything.
-Plot is full of holes. "It's dangerous to put Padme and Anakin together. Hey, lets send them to this distant planet with no supervision."
-Dialogue is tepid and ludicrous.
-Way too much fan service and inbredness of the universe (C3PO built by Anakin? Boba Fett's dad who has exact same suit?)
By contrast, Disney SW movies are competently directed, use much more real sets which make the action look much more engaging and dialogue is much more dynamic and interesting and humour doesn't rely on stupid insulting stereotype slapstick characters.
So, even if EVERYTHING ELSE in the movies (plot, characters, derivativeness) is no better than Episodes 1-3, the Disney movies are nevertheless much superior in other respects I mentioned. After watching prequels, experience of watching TFA first time was great, because for first time for umpteen years a Star Wars movie felt like you were actually there, just like in original trilogy, because the scenes and shooting was so much more lively and engaging and not bunch of guys walking in boring, sterile, lifeless settings.
Well, at least Phantom Menace had Darth Maul. TLJ has nobody. Even Luke and Leia are shells of their former selves.
Darth Maul, a character with dumb name who had what, 1 line of dialogue which the actor didn't speak himself. He existed entirely so that the heroes had somebody to swordfight, and was given no personality or dimension whatsoever beyond that. I actually still remember watching the movie in the theatre and when the fight was over and Maul sliced in half, I was literally yawning, because why should I have cared about that guy? I mean Dooku sucked too but at least he had few scenes and some exposition to tell us who he was and how he operated.
Yeah, I take Kylo Ren and Snoke any time over them.
And Luke, Leia and Han are supposed to be shells of their former selves. Otherwise, why would you need any new heroes for your movies? You didn't see Yoda gearing up and killing the Emperor in Empire Strikes Back or ROTJ, did you?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Anyway, how would I fix TLJ? Basically the movie's problem is that it is too long and has very derivative extra act after it supposedly climaxes.
-Drop Rose. Or if she needs to be there, make her a minor character who makes Poe uncomfortable as his attack plan got her sister killed.
-Instead, it is Poe and Finn who go on rogue mission to Casino World (which can be cut a bit now), Poe storms off the bridge before Holdo can explain her plan. Holdo rolls her eyes here.
-So they fail, just like in actual movie, but they do manage to save Rey from damaged flagship. Everyone in the Resistance crash lands on the planet.
-Kylo Ren is dealing with a damaged fleet, but he still does have resources superior to Resistance, so he follows them with Stormtroopers and other stuff.
-NOW Luke beams in and confronts Kylo like in the movie. Whole "Death Star gun/speeder attack" -scene is left out. Resistance escapes, leaving Kylo screaming his rage on the planet.
-maybe cut some of awkward humour out (Poe prank call etc)
So what we have then? Pretty much the same movie, all the main characters undergo more or less same developement, but less drawn out, more to the point and leaves more room to potential exposition or character moments. Most notably, more Rey actually training the Force instead of apparently everything dropping to her like a gift.
Dude - you like Kylo more than Darthmaul. You are basically hopeless. There really isn't much that can be done to save you.
Kylo is probably the most interesting character in the new trilogy. That isn't saying much though. He's a whining brat with no strength. Wears a mask not because it's cool - but because he is ashamed of how pathetic he is - and snoke (a nobody) talks down to him like the brat boy he is and he frowns like a pathetic baby. He represents the emasculation of man which is the entire premiss of of the new trilogy. Another reason why the whole trilogy sucks.
As one of TLJ biggest defenders on this forum. I have to say , the level of vitriol aimed at it combined with people feeling personally attacked whenever you defend it, it is exhausting.
Kylo Ren is weak pathetic, but he is interesting because of that. After all we allready have Vader.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also I have long since had a pet peeve that heroes can say feth the world and by deus ex machina still save it. I like TLJ for challenging those tropes in Poe’s and Finn’s storyline.
Manchu wrote: Kylo Ren is great and certainly a much more interesting character than Darth Maul. Darth Maul is a piece of concept art, at best.
Right.
This is why Maul is like Fette. He just looks cool.
And that lightsaber fight. It's big and flashy, but they spend the entire fight swinging their lihtsabers at each others lightsabers. Ray Park is really great in it. He brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to that fight. But they aren't really attacking each other. All the prequel lightsaber fights suffer from that. They are overly choreographed to the point of being nonsense.
Maul should have survived. He should have been the vader of the prequels, going movie to movie being a horrible sith assassin popping out, cutting people down and disappearing. Obi Wan and Anakin should have watched people they have known most of their life die one after the other because of Maul. Maul should have been the vehicle the Emperor used to push Anakin farther and farther into fear and hate and thus towards the dark side with Anakin going full Dark when he goes berzerk and cuts down Maul himself. Obi trying to pull him back from the brink, and Anakin turning on him in his rage.
Instead we had a revolving door of 1 off cool looking bad guys who die in the movie they get introduced and Count Duku... Great.
Earth127 wrote: Kylo Ren is weak pathetic, but he is interesting because of that.
Very much agree about Kylo Ren. Well he is not really all that weak, that's a misconception. It's more interesting that that. The most dangerous thing is someone who is powerful but feels weak. That is Kylo Ren. (As he showed Snoke.)
It's a pity that TLJ - par for the course - led up to something interesting happening with his character only to pull the rug out at the last moment.
Earth127 wrote: As one of TLJ biggest defenders on this forum. I have to say , the level of vitriol aimed at it combined with people feeling personally attacked whenever you defend it, it is exhausting.
Kylo Ren is weak pathetic, but he is interesting because of that. After all we allready have Vader.
In contrast those (included myself) who expressed their issues with the plot, characters or pace were directly or indirectly accused of being sexist, racist, unable to comprend the sheer brilliance of the director becuase we were ignorant or foolish shmucks just expressing hidden subconscious predujices even we were unaware of.
If you said Rose was a poor character with a stupid story arc you were/are sexist and / or racist.
If you called out the stupidity of the Ship of Fools Chase - well you hate women.
etc etc.
I don't mind Kylo Ren - a competant director might have actually done something interesting with the relationship between him and Rey and perhaps even everyone else in the film. Sadly we just got the pile of gak we got.
say feth the world and by deus ex machina still save it. I like TLJ for challenging those tropes in Poe’s and Finn’s storyline.
You did watch the end of the film right ? Where the Heroine swooped in and saved everyone along with a Angelic Luke?
Rose is a poor character with no arc whatsoever. I think that is totally fair and accurate. I defy anyone here to sincerely accuse me of racism of sexism for holding that view.
Rey and Kylo had a nice build up throughout TLJ. It was what kept me going through the film. And when Kylo is like, no more Jedi and no more Sith, I was like - oh snap maybe, despite all its faults, this movie will achieve something. But nope.
Manchu wrote: Rose is a poor character with no arc whatsoever. I think that is totally fair and accurate. I defy anyone here to sincerely accuse me of racism of sexism for holding that view.
Rey and Kylo had a nice build up throughout TLJ. It was what kept me going through the film. And when Kylo is like, no more Jedi and no more Sith, I was like - oh snap maybe, despite all its faults, this movie will achieve something. But nope.
yep - thats what annoys about all this subversive nonsense - the Director had the opporunity to take it all in a whole new direction but bottled out or was too lazy and went - nah he is just another Dark Lord, - where's my pay check.
Earth127 wrote: As one of TLJ biggest defenders on this forum. I have to say , the level of vitriol aimed at it combined with people feeling personally attacked whenever you defend it, it is exhausting.
Kylo Ren is weak pathetic, but he is interesting because of that. After all we allready have Vader.
In contrast those (included myself) who expressed their issues with the plot, characters or pace were directly or indirectly accused of being sexist, racist, unable to comprend the sheer brilliance of the director becuase we were ignorant or foolish shmucks just expressing hidden subconscious predujices even we were unaware of.
Find me a quote on this forum of that happening. Because it didnt happen.
If you said Rose was a poor character with a stupid story arc you were/are sexist and / or racist.
That didn't happen.
If you called out the stupidity of the Ship of Fools Chase - well you hate women.
First show me where you saw all these poor Defenders have been abused rather than the film itself first.
2 pages back we get lovely constructive contributions like this.
"The h8rfanboys don't go using it, so don't expect me to. In order to fix the fanatic hate, it is necessary to take the fans out of their attics. Or at least their basements. "
The main and highly signifcant difference is most detractors attack the film, the die hard defenders attack the people.
This. This. Ten thousand times this.
If your only way of opposing the detractors is ad hominen attacks you've already lost the argument.
When the critics write stuff like "Phantom Menace is better than TLJ", it's very hard to take them seriously and not call them idiots.
Phantom Menace, AotC and RotS have massive problems:
-none of the characters is in any way engaging. Well, maybe Palpatine. Who is a villain. Who were we rooting for again?
-movies include very annoying, one-dimensional stereotype characters and some shockingly bad casting choices
-directing and cinematography is incredibly uninspiring. Everything is done in front of greenscreen, actors come across detached from environment and seem annoyed the whole time as they can't see or react to anything.
-Plot is full of holes. "It's dangerous to put Padme and Anakin together. Hey, lets send them to this distant planet with no supervision."
-Dialogue is tepid and ludicrous.
-Way too much fan service and inbredness of the universe (C3PO built by Anakin? Boba Fett's dad who has exact same suit?)
By contrast, Disney SW movies are competently directed, use much more real sets which make the action look much more engaging and dialogue is much more dynamic and interesting and humour doesn't rely on stupid insulting stereotype slapstick characters.
So, even if EVERYTHING ELSE in the movies (plot, characters, derivativeness) is no better than Episodes 1-3, the Disney movies are nevertheless much superior in other respects I mentioned. After watching prequels, experience of watching TFA first time was great, because for first time for umpteen years a Star Wars movie felt like you were actually there, just like in original trilogy, because the scenes and shooting was so much more lively and engaging and not bunch of guys walking in boring, sterile, lifeless settings.
Well, at least Phantom Menace had Darth Maul. TLJ has nobody. Even Luke and Leia are shells of their former selves.
Darth Maul, a character with dumb name who had what, 1 line of dialogue which the actor didn't speak himself. He existed entirely so that the heroes had somebody to swordfight, and was given no personality or dimension whatsoever beyond that. I actually still remember watching the movie in the theatre and when the fight was over and Maul sliced in half, I was literally yawning, because why should I have cared about that guy? I mean Dooku sucked too but at least he had few scenes and some exposition to tell us who he was and how he operated.
Yeah, I take Kylo Ren and Snoke any time over them.
And Luke, Leia and Han are supposed to be shells of their former selves. Otherwise, why would you need any new heroes for your movies? You didn't see Yoda gearing up and killing the Emperor in Empire Strikes Back or ROTJ, did you?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Anyway, how would I fix TLJ? Basically the movie's problem is that it is too long and has very derivative extra act after it supposedly climaxes.
-Drop Rose. Or if she needs to be there, make her a minor character who makes Poe uncomfortable as his attack plan got her sister killed.
-Instead, it is Poe and Finn who go on rogue mission to Casino World (which can be cut a bit now), Poe storms off the bridge before Holdo can explain her plan. Holdo rolls her eyes here.
-So they fail, just like in actual movie, but they do manage to save Rey from damaged flagship. Everyone in the Resistance crash lands on the planet.
-Kylo Ren is dealing with a damaged fleet, but he still does have resources superior to Resistance, so he follows them with Stormtroopers and other stuff.
-NOW Luke beams in and confronts Kylo like in the movie. Whole "Death Star gun/speeder attack" -scene is left out. Resistance escapes, leaving Kylo screaming his rage on the planet.
-maybe cut some of awkward humour out (Poe prank call etc)
So what we have then? Pretty much the same movie, all the main characters undergo more or less same developement, but less drawn out, more to the point and leaves more room to potential exposition or character moments. Most notably, more Rey actually training the Force instead of apparently everything dropping to her like a gift.
really, this is how you discuss movies?calling other people idiots?
The main and highly signifcant difference is most detractors attack the film, the die hard defenders attack the people.
This. This. Ten thousand times this.
If your only way of opposing the detractors is ad hominen attacks you've already lost the argument.
When the critics write stuff like "Phantom Menace is better than TLJ", it's very hard to take them seriously and not call them idiots.
Phantom Menace, AotC and RotS have massive problems:
-none of the characters is in any way engaging. Well, maybe Palpatine. Who is a villain. Who were we rooting for again?
-movies include very annoying, one-dimensional stereotype characters and some shockingly bad casting choices
-directing and cinematography is incredibly uninspiring. Everything is done in front of greenscreen, actors come across detached from environment and seem annoyed the whole time as they can't see or react to anything.
-Plot is full of holes. "It's dangerous to put Padme and Anakin together. Hey, lets send them to this distant planet with no supervision."
-Dialogue is tepid and ludicrous.
-Way too much fan service and inbredness of the universe (C3PO built by Anakin? Boba Fett's dad who has exact same suit?)
By contrast, Disney SW movies are competently directed, use much more real sets which make the action look much more engaging and dialogue is much more dynamic and interesting and humour doesn't rely on stupid insulting stereotype slapstick characters.
So, even if EVERYTHING ELSE in the movies (plot, characters, derivativeness) is no better than Episodes 1-3, the Disney movies are nevertheless much superior in other respects I mentioned. After watching prequels, experience of watching TFA first time was great, because for first time for umpteen years a Star Wars movie felt like you were actually there, just like in original trilogy, because the scenes and shooting was so much more lively and engaging and not bunch of guys walking in boring, sterile, lifeless settings.
Well, at least Phantom Menace had Darth Maul. TLJ has nobody. Even Luke and Leia are shells of their former selves.
Darth Maul, a character with dumb name who had what, 1 line of dialogue which the actor didn't speak himself. He existed entirely so that the heroes had somebody to swordfight, and was given no personality or dimension whatsoever beyond that. I actually still remember watching the movie in the theatre and when the fight was over and Maul sliced in half, I was literally yawning, because why should I have cared about that guy? I mean Dooku sucked too but at least he had few scenes and some exposition to tell us who he was and how he operated.
Yeah, I take Kylo Ren and Snoke any time over them.
And Luke, Leia and Han are supposed to be shells of their former selves. Otherwise, why would you need any new heroes for your movies? You didn't see Yoda gearing up and killing the Emperor in Empire Strikes Back or ROTJ, did you?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Anyway, how would I fix TLJ? Basically the movie's problem is that it is too long and has very derivative extra act after it supposedly climaxes.
-Drop Rose. Or if she needs to be there, make her a minor character who makes Poe uncomfortable as his attack plan got her sister killed.
-Instead, it is Poe and Finn who go on rogue mission to Casino World (which can be cut a bit now), Poe storms off the bridge before Holdo can explain her plan. Holdo rolls her eyes here.
-So they fail, just like in actual movie, but they do manage to save Rey from damaged flagship. Everyone in the Resistance crash lands on the planet.
-Kylo Ren is dealing with a damaged fleet, but he still does have resources superior to Resistance, so he follows them with Stormtroopers and other stuff.
-NOW Luke beams in and confronts Kylo like in the movie. Whole "Death Star gun/speeder attack" -scene is left out. Resistance escapes, leaving Kylo screaming his rage on the planet.
-maybe cut some of awkward humour out (Poe prank call etc)
So what we have then? Pretty much the same movie, all the main characters undergo more or less same developement, but less drawn out, more to the point and leaves more room to potential exposition or character moments. Most notably, more Rey actually training the Force instead of apparently everything dropping to her like a gift.
really, this is how you discuss movies?calling other people idiots?
He talked about it alot - you wrote one line?
Critics = parasites - not idiots but they do feed themselves via others work and the money or good will of some of those those they review.
Mr Morden wrote: Critics = parasites - not idiots but they do feed themselves via others work and the money or good will of some of those those they review.
No, that's too extreme. The issue is there are a lot of folks who claim to be critics but don't actually do that job very well. A good critic provides a lot of value to the consumer. Roger Ebert will be the shining example of this but Pauline Kale was also very good. We live in a different age, where anyone can claim to be a critic, including people collecting checks from the folks marketing the movies they claim to "review." But let's not throw out criticism when we acknowledge that there is a lot of shillery and flat ignorance masquerading as criticism.
Mr Morden wrote: Critics = parasites - not idiots but they do feed themselves via others work and the money or good will of some of those those they review.
No, that's too extreme. The issue is there are a lot of folks who claim to be critics but don't actually do that job very well. A good critic provides a lot of value to the consumer. Roger Ebert will be the shining example of this but Pauline Kale was also very good. We live in a different age, where anyone can claim to be a critic, including people collecting checks from the folks marketing the movies they claim to "review." But let's not throw out criticism when we acknowledge that there is a lot of shillery and flat ignorance masquerading as criticism.
What do Critics provide for you? I don;t get it.
I have no use or interest for or in them. Applies to Food and Film. I'll decide what I like or dont like.
I don't think critics can tell us whether we like something. I think they can tell us about what a piece of art is trying for and how/why it succeeds or fails. Contrast this to the "criticism" around, for example, TLJ in the internet junk "press" which is obsessed with insulting people who don't like the movie.
TLJ is a film designed by people who hate and wish to subvert Star Wars for people who hate and wish to subvert Star Wars. At this it succeeded exceedingly well. No wonder modern movie critics loved it.
Mr Morden wrote: First show me where you saw all these poor Defenders have been abused rather than the film itself first.
2 pages back we get lovely constructive contributions like this.
"The h8rfanboys don't go using it, so don't expect me to. In order to fix the fanatic hate, it is necessary to take the fans out of their attics. Or at least their basements. "
And you think that implies that hes calling people sexist racists who cannot comprehend the brilliance of the director?
Mr Morden wrote: First show me where you saw all these poor Defenders have been abused rather than the film itself first.
2 pages back we get lovely constructive contributions like this.
"The h8rfanboys don't go using it, so don't expect me to. In order to fix the fanatic hate, it is necessary to take the fans out of their attics. Or at least their basements. "
And you think that implies that hes calling people sexist racists who cannot comprehend the brilliance of the director?
"Sigh" Actually read my reply and then find you own quotes to back up your previous accusations. I'll wait.
But you dont get to accuse people of bribery,fraud and falsehood without some prove to validate your own opinion.
Its an opinon backed by observation - I can say what I like. When do Crictics have to back anyhting up with facts or proof??
Lets not derail this thread _ I'll make a new one to discuss the worthlessness of Critcis
Wow, a lot of Dakka Dakka historical revisionism going on here. Seems like people have short memories.
Seeing as both sides are accusing the other side of ad hominem whilst denying using it themselves, how about we all go read this thread and refresh our memories? I'd say that there are probably people on both sides of the argument who are guilty of ad hominem and personal abuse.
Mr Morden wrote:What do Critics provide for you? I don;t get it.
I have no use or interest for or in them. Applies to Food and Film. I'll decide what I like or dont like.
A point of view. It might be similar to mine or different but if you find critics you like then their work should expand your horizon a bit instead of just agreeing with you on all points or completely disagreeing with your opinion. Film critics may point out a different approach to some movie that might change my mind upon consideration. A food critic may have some ideas about a recipe or dish that's informed from their perspective and that might provide a starting point to adapt my recipe, or they might just expose me to some things I didn't even know existed. Life can be a bit insular if one has to stew in one's own brain all the time. Critics/criticism can add some additional information and fun serendipity.
Mr Morden wrote:What do Critics provide for you? I don;t get it.
I have no use or interest for or in them. Applies to Food and Film. I'll decide what I like or dont like.
A point of view. It might be similar to mine or different but if you find critics you like then their work should expand your horizon a bit instead of just agreeing with you on all points or completely disagreeing with your opinion. Film critics may point out a different approach to some movie that might change my mind upon consideration. A food critic may have some ideas about a recipe or dish that's informed from their perspective and that might provide a starting point to adapt my recipe, or they might just expose me to some things I didn't even know existed. Life can be a bit insular if one has to stew in one's own brain all the time. Critics/criticism can add some additional information and fun serendipity.
Interesting - however with the mortality issue I don.t have time to do all the things I know I enjoy never mind the things I don't.
Xenomancers wrote: Boba fett was basically a background filler. He literally could have been removed from the OT and nothing would have changed.
I have to disagree. Without Boba Fett, Solo drifts off unobserved as Vader's fleet jumps to lightspeed, heads off to his old buddy/rival Lando's operation on Bespin, gets the Falcon repaired, and returns uneventfully to the Rebellion. Meanwhile Luke trains longer with Yoda instead of charging off to confront Vader to attempt to save his friends...
Sure, you could put someone else there to do what Boba Fett did. But that was Boba Fett's role in ESB, to outsmart Han even as Han outsmarted the Imperials.
Xenomancers wrote: Boba fett was basically a background filler. He literally could have been removed from the OT and nothing would have changed.
I have to disagree. Without Boba Fett, Solo drifts off unobserved as Vader's fleet jumps to lightspeed, heads off to his old buddy/rival Lando's operation on Bespin, gets the Falcon repaired, and returns uneventfully to the Rebellion. Meanwhile Luke trains longer with Yoda instead of charging off to confront Vader to attempt to save his friends...
Sure, you could put someone else there to do what Boba Fett did. But that was Boba Fett's role in ESB, to outsmart Han even as Han outsmarted the Imperials.
Except bobba didnt outsmart han. Vader did. Bobba stood behind vader and said han was worth more alive. Vader sprung the trap and caught them. Any other imperial spy or regular civilian who saw a wanted poster could have done the same thing. We never saw bobba do ANYTHING.
Xenomancers wrote: Boba fett was basically a background filler. He literally could have been removed from the OT and nothing would have changed.
I have to disagree. Without Boba Fett, Solo drifts off unobserved as Vader's fleet jumps to lightspeed, heads off to his old buddy/rival Lando's operation on Bespin, gets the Falcon repaired, and returns uneventfully to the Rebellion. Meanwhile Luke trains longer with Yoda instead of charging off to confront Vader to attempt to save his friends...
Sure, you could put someone else there to do what Boba Fett did. But that was Boba Fett's role in ESB, to outsmart Han even as Han outsmarted the Imperials.
Except bobba didnt outsmart han. Vader did. Bobba stood behind vader and said han was worth more alive. Vader sprung the trap and caught them. Any other imperial spy or regular civilian who saw a wanted poster could have done the same thing. We never saw bobba do ANYTHING.
We saw him drift Slave One out of an ISD's aft hangar bay with a bunch of garbage so he could tail Han to his destination and let Vader know where Han was going.
Without that, Han gets away and we never get to see him throw down on a Sith Lord so fast he gets three shots off. Without Fett, Han loses one of his best scenes!
Xenomancers wrote: Boba fett was basically a background filler. He literally could have been removed from the OT and nothing would have changed.
I have to disagree. Without Boba Fett, Solo drifts off unobserved as Vader's fleet jumps to lightspeed, heads off to his old buddy/rival Lando's operation on Bespin, gets the Falcon repaired, and returns uneventfully to the Rebellion. Meanwhile Luke trains longer with Yoda instead of charging off to confront Vader to attempt to save his friends...
Sure, you could put someone else there to do what Boba Fett did. But that was Boba Fett's role in ESB, to outsmart Han even as Han outsmarted the Imperials.
Except bobba didnt outsmart han. Vader did. Bobba stood behind vader and said han was worth more alive. Vader sprung the trap and caught them. Any other imperial spy or regular civilian who saw a wanted poster could have done the same thing. We never saw bobba do ANYTHING.
We saw him drift Slave One out of an ISD's aft hangar bay with a bunch of garbage so he could tail Han to his destination and let Vader know where Han was going.
Without that, Han gets away and we never get to see him throw down on a Sith Lord so fast he gets three shots off. Without Fett, Han loses one of his best scenes!
Pretty sure we got that in the extended cut. I MIGHT be wrong. But if i remember correctly the original theatrical film had no such shot of the slave 1 following han. And in that cut it worked just fine. I wouldnt consider added scenes in the remaster to matter overly much.
Earth127 wrote: Kylo Ren is weak pathetic, but he is interesting because of that.
Very much agree about Kylo Ren. Well he is not really all that weak, that's a misconception. It's more interesting that that. The most dangerous thing is someone who is powerful but feels weak. That is Kylo Ren. (As he showed Snoke.)
It's a pity that TLJ - par for the course - led up to something interesting happening with his character only to pull the rug out at the last moment.
Only problem with Kylo Ren's character is that he is not really evil and hateable enough to be main villain of the series (unlike Anakin Skywalker who was hateable from all the wrong reasons). This is what Snoke should have been. However, TFA really gave us so little Snoke (I mean, he's the Leader and, uh...) so it was a right thing to expend him the way he was.
However, now the series needs a new really evil villain. It's not Hux because he is incompetent comical idiot. I suppose this is where Knights of Ren come in for the third movie, I predict one of them is shown to be really super evil, possibly challenging Kylo's leadership "because he is too soft, I mean not torturing those orphans before killing them..."
Alternatively, maybe Snoke comes back as a Force Ghost. But that would probably take us too much to Whills and Midichlorians territory.
The scene with Poe taunting Hux was trying too hard to inject Avengers humor into the movie. It was almost uncomfortable to listen to it was so out of place. Original empire would have blown him out of the sky for such dumb antics.
The scene of Poe taunting Hux was basically the same as the scene of Han asking the Imperial Guard how he was doing on the comms in the Death Star prison. It was the same stalling and playing along right up until Poe made a jab at Hux's mom.
Rumor has it episode 9 may reveal Snoke to be Plaguis. Which would mean hes likely not actually dead. Just jumping bodies and living forever.
Also, I don't think Kylo is meant to be a series villian. I don't think 789 are that black and white. It's more about how the Jedi have been feth ups and the Darkside isn't something that needs to be extinguished. Kylo and Rey are both the series heroes.
Lance845 wrote: The scene of Poe taunting Hux was basically the same as the scene of Han asking the Imperial Guard how he was doing on the comms in the Death Star prison. It was the same stalling and playing along right up until Poe made a jab at Hux's mom.
Rumor has it episode 9 may reveal Snoke to be Plaguis. Which would mean hes likely not actually dead. Just jumping bodies and living forever.
Also, I don't think Kylo is meant to be a series villian. I don't think 789 are that black and white. It's more about how the Jedi have been feth ups and the Darkside isn't something that needs to be extinguished. Kylo and Rey are both the series heroes.
No idea who Plaguis is - Should I? Guess that means I am not a Rabid Super fan....
I do think that was the idea behind Kylo/Rey relationship but Rian Johnson made such a complete hash of the film that anything interesting and nuanced that could have been created was badly damaged by his piss poor direction.
Any barely competant Director wanting to go dwn a new path would have done something different in the climatic Thrne Room scene and its aftermath other than another just another Dark Lord.
AegisGrimm wrote: The scene with Poe taunting Hux was trying too hard to inject Avengers humor into the movie. It was almost uncomfortable to listen to it was so out of place. Original empire would have blown him out of the sky for such dumb antics.
Absolutely! If.... none of their higher leadership was involved. The Empire was a pretty terrifying machine, where incompetent field commanders were the exception, and were dealt with very, very harshly. Veers executed his mission calmly and decisively. Up until ordered by Vader into an asteroid field, the Imperial commanders had a great turkey shoot killing Rebel forces. Every failure the Empire suffered was due to its arrogant overlords- Tarkin would not authorize a starfighter launch because he thought the Death Star was invincible. At Endor, Piett held the fleet back because the Emperor wanted to use his new Death Star to show off.
Hux and Kylo were both chosen by Snoke not for their competence, but for their loyalty and the fact that for all their ambition they're pushovers. They are both hampering effective operations of the First Order forces.
Even the commander of the Dreadnought comments on this. We should have launched fighters 5 minutes ago. Any competent commander would have a fighter screen up at all times when fighting the Resistance.Even Hux is baffled by Kylo's orders to completely stop the attack and blast Skywalker for minutes on end, when they could have invaded the base.
Lance845 wrote: The scene of Poe taunting Hux was basically the same as the scene of Han asking the Imperial Guard how he was doing on the comms in the Death Star prison. It was the same stalling and playing along right up until Poe made a jab at Hux's mom.
Rumor has it episode 9 may reveal Snoke to be Plaguis. Which would mean hes likely not actually dead. Just jumping bodies and living forever.
Also, I don't think Kylo is meant to be a series villian. I don't think 789 are that black and white. It's more about how the Jedi have been feth ups and the Darkside isn't something that needs to be extinguished. Kylo and Rey are both the series heroes.
No idea who Plaguis is - Should I? Guess that means I am not a Rabid Super fan....
I do think that was the idea behind Kylo/Rey relationship but Rian Johnson made such a complete hash of the film that anything interesting and nuanced that could have been created was badly damaged by his piss poor direction.
Any barely competant Director wanting to go dwn a new path would have done something different in the climatic Thrne Room scene and its aftermath other than another just another Dark Lord.
Plaguis is Palpatines Master. He gives a speech to Anakin when they go watch an opera about a sith lord who discovered how to avoid death and how they could try to figure it out together. What he doesn't say is that Sideous (Palpatine) "killed him" and became the new sith master, taking Maul on as his apprentice.
The idiotic bit is how Palpatine thinks he killed somebody who figured out how to conquer mortality.
Snoke says he was around to see the rise and fall of the empire so he would have been a powerful dark side user who was around before Palpatine took power. Plaguis fits the bill. People argue that Snokes scars are from palpatine trying to kill him. On the other hand Snoke is the wrong species. On the other other hand the books that mention Plaguises species are not canon any more.
Lance845 wrote: The scene of Poe taunting Hux was basically the same as the scene of Han asking the Imperial Guard how he was doing on the comms in the Death Star prison. It was the same stalling and playing along right up until Poe made a jab at Hux's mom.
Rumor has it episode 9 may reveal Snoke to be Plaguis. Which would mean hes likely not actually dead. Just jumping bodies and living forever.
Also, I don't think Kylo is meant to be a series villian. I don't think 789 are that black and white. It's more about how the Jedi have been feth ups and the Darkside isn't something that needs to be extinguished. Kylo and Rey are both the series heroes.
No idea who Plaguis is - Should I? Guess that means I am not a Rabid Super fan....
I do think that was the idea behind Kylo/Rey relationship but Rian Johnson made such a complete hash of the film that anything interesting and nuanced that could have been created was badly damaged by his piss poor direction.
Any barely competant Director wanting to go dwn a new path would have done something different in the climatic Thrne Room scene and its aftermath other than another just another Dark Lord.
Plaguis is Palpatines Master. He gives a speech to Anakin when they go watch an opera about a sith lord who discovered how to avoid death and how they could try to figure it out together. What he doesn't say is that Sideous (Palpatine) "killed him" and became the new sith master, taking Maul on as his apprentice.
The idiotic bit is how Palpatine thinks he killed somebody who figured out how to conquer mortality.
Snoke says he was around to see the rise and fall of the empire so he would have been a powerful dark side user who was around before Palpatine took power. Plaguis fits the bill. People argue that Snokes scars are from palpatine trying to kill him. On the other hand Snoke is the wrong species. On the other other hand the books that mention Plaguises species are not canon any more.
Snoke says he was around to see the rise and fall of the empire so he would have been a powerful dark side user who was around before Palpatine took power. Plaguis fits the bill.
Not anymore he doesn't. Rian Johnson saw to that theory. Stop making making excuses for RJ and trying to rationalize away his poor decisions. Its time we called a spade a spade and just accept TLJ at face value.
And I say that as someone who wanted to believe that Snoke was Disney's adaptation of Darth Vitiate / Emperor Valkorian (the one who jumps from host to host as a parasitic force entity).
Snoke says he was around to see the rise and fall of the empire so he would have been a powerful dark side user who was around before Palpatine took power. Plaguis fits the bill.
Not anymore he doesn't. Rian Johnson saw to that theory. Stop making making excuses for RJ and trying to rationalize away his poor decisions. Its time we called a spade a spade and just accept TLJ at face value.
1) I PREFER that Snoke is nobody. It's not a rationalization. It's just a rumor that they MAY be confirming that Snoke is/was Plagueis in ep 9. Not that anyone alive would know who that was or give a gak. So I have no idea how they would confirm it without it being really awkward.
2) If Snoke is Plagueis getting cut in half means nothing. He could probably just transfer his mind into another body someplace like the Old Republic Sith Emperor used to do.
3) Also we have seen people get cut in half and survive it. I have no idea where Darth Mauls poop goes but he's still kickin it even though he's missing the bottom 1/4 of his trunk.
Snoke says he was around to see the rise and fall of the empire so he would have been a powerful dark side user who was around before Palpatine took power. Plaguis fits the bill.
Not anymore he doesn't. Rian Johnson saw to that theory. Stop making making excuses for RJ and trying to rationalize away his poor decisions. Its time we called a spade a spade and just accept TLJ at face value.
Snoke was not Plagueis, he was not even a Sith. This was made clear BEFORE TLJ rolled out.
Even in TFA, Snoke is not treated like a mystery villain. Heroes seem to know him and what he does.
I think to "fix" TLJ, you'd need to start from a position that wasn't 'subvert everything'.
You can have your drawn out chase scene but have them go through rational things like "but what about spies". Nobody goes to Casino land, Finn get's suspected of being the mole after Rose finds him at the escape pods, this leads you into Poe's mutiny "Finn is my brother from another mother, he's not the traitor and also he can tell you about the tracking device" que the realisation that they're being tracked through Leia's wrist watch "but how will Rey find her way back????".
The I guess Finn attempts to take wrist watch in a shuttle while the others prepare to make a hyperspace jump, but disaster!!! due to the bridge having exploded there's an issue with the hypedrive because reasons (it's space opera I don't have to explain anything) they settle for making their way to a nearby planet, alas somebody has to distract the First Morons, Finn can volunteer but Rose who's essentially been his jailer has bonded with due to shared First Moron backstory tragedy (I was a indoctrinated child soldier/janitor, my sister died on that bomber, my parents best friends dog was kicked by Cpt Phasma etc) persuades him not to, then Holdo steps up to attone for judging Poe and Finn too harshly.
Then it continues as it did except Finns skimmer gets clipped by blaster fire, Poe and Rose do teamwork things that are very impessive and then you get a kiss that doesn't seem unearned because there was actual emotional connection (heck if you're feeling super ballsy the kiss is Finn/Poe) ending basically goes down the same.
Rey get's to do basically the same but Luke doesn't do comedy recluse and instead is a bitter recluse after everything he tried to do differently ended up with the same results. I.e doesn't throw the lightsaber away, I guess is disgusted by it, hands it back and tells her to leave?
Snoke is more involved in tempting Kylo away, get's his moment of being an actual villain before Kylo stabs him because he's finally realised he's sick of being used.
Obviously you set it a few months after TFA, planets surrender FO is scary yo etc etc.
Ideally you end up in a similar place emotionally to Empire in that wow the big bad is capable, but our hero's are in a position to do something, opposed to wow the big bad is capable and our hero's sacrificed practically everything in order to escape because the were subverted at every turn, how is this movie about hope again?
I guess Phasma and Finn should fight but have no idea where to place it.
Manchu wrote: It's true that there is little to no FUN in TLJ. This is one of the factors that makes it a bad fit for the Star Wars series. In an adventure movie, fun usually comes from seeing the protagonists succeed in tricky situations. Since TLJ is about protagonists failing, we don't get this kind of fun. In fact, it's teased many times in the movie only to be undermined at the last moment. It feels like someone offering you a piece of candy then slapping your hand when you try to take it. And then lecturing you about why candy is bad. But that's the point of TLJ. And it is really well executed. It's sadistic, heartless, and cynical. It makes a mockery of Star Wars. But the reason I and many others hate TLJ so much is because it does effectively communicate this terrible message.
Lucas's prequel movies by contrast trip all over themselves. When we say, the podrace was pretty cool I think we are referring to the idea of the podrace being cool. Lucas was right about that. But in TPM the idea is bogged down by how it is introduced, the role it plays in the story, the way it is framed in the setting, and of course Anakin himself. Same thing with the lightsaber fights. As a concept, acrobatic lightsaber fights should be cool. But in execution they are emotional voids. It's almost like the movie stops and there is this music video inserted. Anyhow, there's more than enough detailed explanations out there of how those movies fail. I would just warn against thinking that because the prequels are true to the spirit of Star Wars, at least in their conception, while TLJ effectively hates Star Wars, that the prequels are better movies than TLJ.
This sums up my thoughts perfectly.
I dislike TLJ so much, because it tells me that I shouldn't like Star Wars in the first place because Star Wars is stupid. So, how do you fix a movie that is in conflict with itself? You can not.
The prequels are not "better" movies, but they DO want to expand stories and try to make an adventure. Their intent is is more "Star Wars" than TLJ could ever hope to achieve.
No, Maul is finally dead. Obi Wan killed him fully in Rebels. It was over a year ago. They sat down, spoke like two adults, then fought to the death. It was actually a pretty powerful scene (somebody linked it here) a while ago.
Watching TLJ last night, I can say with absolute confidence that it is a better made film than either TPM or AotC. It's one thing to dislike TLJ but saying it is worse than those movies is really beyond credible. I could understand, however, someone liking the themes of those movies better than that of TLJ. I am not totally sure what the theme of TLJ even is. If you try to be a hero you deserve to fail?
Manchu wrote: Watching TLJ last night, I can say with absolute confidence that it is a better made film than either TPM or AotC. It's one thing to dislike TLJ but saying it is worse than those movies is really beyond credible. I could understand, however, someone liking the themes of those movies better than that of TLJ. I am not totally sure what the theme of TLJ even is. If you try to be a hero you deserve to fail?
The cinematography and technical quality of TLJ is not under question. Its the vision and core theme that is being questioned.
TPM and AOTC were good visions and themes, executed poorly. TLJ was a terrible vision and theme, executed very well.
Manchu wrote: Watching TLJ last night, I can say with absolute confidence that it is a better made film than either TPM or AotC. It's one thing to dislike TLJ but saying it is worse than those movies is really beyond credible. I could understand, however, someone liking the themes of those movies better than that of TLJ. I am not totally sure what the theme of TLJ even is. If you try to be a hero you deserve to fail?
The cinematography and technical quality of TLJ is not under question. Its the vision and core theme that is being questioned.
TPM and AOTC were good visions and themes, executed poorly.
TLJ was a terrible vision and theme, executed very well.
(IMO, of course)
I didn't think there was anything especially special about the cinematography given the vast budget they had? If it had not looked reasonably good, even more questions should have been asked!
The prequals had some of the same issues IMO, pretty pictures empty of any real meaning or character, souless.
Cinematography isn't just a budget question; its a skill question. There are lots of big budget films that have fairly meh to pretty poor cinematography. They make up for it in other areas, but otherwise they are not highly cinematic.
I'd say that TLJ does stand out in terms of its cinematography in many segments, not all, but a good enough number to make it visually stand out. To me it was cut and missing bits of the story that, whilst they can be mentally added in by the viewer, or overlooked by some - they do at least sit there as a problem that leaves the story feeling forced together in some segments (esp the whole run away and don't tell anyone the plan - and especially don't tell that guy who was just our head fighter pilot the plan even though we know he'll go do something stupid because of it)/
Since it's Friday night, and I've sucked down half a bottle of Penfold's Koonunga Hill Shiraz-Cabernet 2016, here are my suggestions for improving TLJ.
More cowbell.
Bacon, perhaps wrapped around asparagus or prunes, or cocktail sausages.
Fill it with whipped cream.
Anime eyes.
More girls.
More grills.
Since it's Friday night, and I've sucked down half a bottle of Penfold's Koonunga Hill Shiraz-Cabernet 2016, here are my suggestions for improving TLJ.
More cowbell.
Bacon, perhaps wrapped around asparagus or prunes, or cocktail sausages.
Fill it with whipped cream.
Anime eyes.
More girls.
More grills.
You didn't add more "pew pew." No sci-fi improvement can be suggested for a series with its roots in the 80s without adding more pew pew lasers!
The action scenes in TLJ are pretty weak overall. The Rey + Kylo teamup fight is really good because (a) it is a great emotional pay off the film has spent a lot of time setting up and it feels very earned and (b) the other action sequences are not as visually interesting and/or emotionally engaging.
Honestly it'd be so much easier if it was re-made but i think 'How it Should Have Ended' hit the nail on the head for just about every fix that needed to happen.
Manchu wrote: The action scenes in TLJ are pretty weak overall. The Rey + Kylo teamup fight is really good because (a) it is a great emotional pay off the film has spent a lot of time setting up and it feels very earned and (b) the other action sequences are not as visually interesting and/or emotionally engaging.
Agreed completely. For an action movie the action feels almost non-existent.
flamingkillamajig wrote: Honestly it'd be so much easier if it was re-made but i think 'How it Should Have Ended' hit the nail on the head for just about every fix that needed to happen.
I had more fun watching that than I did the whole of TLJ.
flamingkillamajig wrote: Honestly it'd be so much easier if it was re-made but i think 'How it Should Have Ended' hit the nail on the head for just about every fix that needed to happen.
I had more fun watching that than I did the whole of TLJ.
I know right? Honestly i think it was far more entertaining too.
I'm also not sure why there's a Doctor Who cameo. Wouldn't it be more fun to have Q in the casino, if you're going down that route?
Ryan Johnson's previous space based writings include a few Doctor Who episodes, and the TLJ Casino and its inhabitants looked very much like the luxury cruiser/casinos from Doctor Who.
flamingkillamajig wrote: Honestly it'd be so much easier if it was re-made but i think 'How it Should Have Ended' hit the nail on the head for just about every fix that needed to happen.
Good fun and so much more thought and care went into it than the actual film
Manchu wrote: Watching TLJ last night, I can say with absolute confidence that it is a better made film than either TPM or AotC. It's one thing to dislike TLJ but saying it is worse than those movies is really beyond credible. I could understand, however, someone liking the themes of those movies better than that of TLJ. I am not totally sure what the theme of TLJ even is. If you try to be a hero you deserve to fail?
Yeah, the one thing prequels have over Disney sequels is that they introduce new settings and themes for the Star Wars universe. Lucas rightly criticized Disney for having too many derivative visuals in the sequels, pointing out how they tried to make new ships, weapons, sets and aliens and whatnot for the prequels (even though he also recycled too much from the originals). Disney sequels, while much better done in terms of dialogue, directing and cinematography than Lucas' prequels, are nevertheless boring in this respect because they are mostly remakes of the originals with few new ideas or character concepts of their own.
This is what I liked in 'Solo' as it really showed us new places and sides of the Star Wars universe instead of doing same damn Deathstar run over and over again.
I have found a headcannon justification for The Holdo Manoever!
Namely that there is no such thing. Holdo wasn't deliberately trying to wipe out The Snokemobile.
She was trying to cause a distraction, screw up the FO fleet. Remember RotJ? Remember Arvel Crynyd? A-wing pilot. Doomed. Threw the dice and wiped out a Super Star Destroyer.
Crynyd wasn't trying to wipe out the SSD, and possibly didn't even know the bridge shields were down. Crashed into the bridge in a last act of defiance. Admiral Piett realised the danger before he hit as he knew that the SSD design was daft and that a direct bridge hit would fatally damage the ship.
Likewise Holdo. She was trying to do SOMETHING, and certainly realised it was going to get her killed, but what happened suceeded beyond any expecation.
Maybe she thought the fleet would chase her in hyperspace. Maybe she thought she'd pop out of hyperspace immediately in front of the Snokemobile and crash at sublight, which we've seen happen plenty of times between Star Destroyers.
The Snokemobile is BIG. Big enough to have a gravity well to some extent. We know that in Star Wars, a big enough well causes you to drop out of hyperspace and that you could "fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick"
But it's not THAT big. So you don't drop out of light speed any particular distance from it, as you would a planet or Death Star. You drop out while you're inside it. Once again, the Empire/First Order has built a really impressive looking superweapon with a massive design flaw.
And Hux and Eddie know about this flaw. They see it coming. Holdo probably doesn't. She rolls the dice and... boom. If it had been bigger, she'd have dropped out at a distance. Smaller and she'd have jumped straight though.
Also, puts the "suicide attack" thing a bit into context:
Rose's sister - Last roll of the dice. Crynyd.
Holdo - Crynyd.
Finn - still has options, no Crynyd. Therefore saved from killing himself.
Star Wars is, after all, a universe where 1/1,000,000 chances come off. Never tell me the odds. It's also why it isn't a standard tactic.
My main problem with the film is how easily the Republic seem to win. Sounds idiotic and I could probably phrase it better, but compared to the original trilogy, it was either sheer luck, or sheer incompetence on the FO part
- 1 Starfighter takes out all the AA defences of a Dreadnought, with weapons that seem to just blitz through hardened defences like tissue paper? Said Dreadnought can't seem to take down a single craft yet is adept at destroying everything else?
- A single bomber can take down the Dreadnought?
- Despite the fact they're riding huge kangaroo/ostrich creatures larger than a horse, the police/security drones can't actually take them down?
- Rey and Ren, albeit the latter being more significantly trained, are able to take down at least 1/2 a dozen of Snoke's bodyguards? In 40k terms this sounds like a couple of Marines eliminating a whole squad of Custodians; it shouldn't happen for any reason.
- Snoke's battleship, apparently the most powerful and most feared starship so far encountered, can't keep up with a Republic ship, but travels *just* fast enough it can fire the occasional shot to remind them "we're still here by the way". That whole bit annoyed the hell out of me: "We'll run out of fuel and then they'll catch up with us", that's not how space works! Granted it's a universe with glowing light-swords and dogs apparently made out of crystals (another nice marketing ploy), but it's one of the most basic principles of physics.
- A group of battered, poorly-maintained speeders somehow keep an invasion force at bay.
- "Oh yeah I'm just a cleaner on this huge billion-ton starship, but I also happen to know exactly where the hyperspace starship tracking device is, how to access it, and how to acquire uniforms so we can effortlessly sneak onboard, no-one will question how out of place our appearence is, I'm that good of a cleaner".
It's just how the Republic in the original trilogy seemed like a genuine guerilla force that took significant losses and hardship to attain their goals, while the New Republic is full of people who are apparently either the greatest warriors in the galaxy or lucky beyond measure. That's why I liked Rogue One; they killed off characters, there was a general feel that being in the Republic is a dirty, dangerous position that will eventually kill you, but you can be a hero while you die.
With that in mind here's what I'd do to fix it. Bear in mind I'm not a huge SW fan but I'll give it a go
- Leia dies. End of. She's blasted out into the void and finished with.
- Replace the final scene, new environment instead of a Hoth lookalike (Even had to acknowledge it by stating it's salt instead of snow).
- Get rid of the casino planet plot entirely.
- The whole spy motif mentioned earlier in the thread is a good idea. Holdo however was an annoying character that (from what I've experienced) only seems to serve as a "strong female lead" but ends up being a whiny hopeless mare with no real character development.
- 1 Starfighter takes out all the AA defences of a Dreadnought, with weapons that seem to just blitz through hardened defences like tissue paper? Said Dreadnought can't seem to take down a single craft yet is adept at destroying everything else?
Not so unhappy with that - the Dreadnought captain does call out he should have fighter cover and its one of the very few Star Wars (or indeed exciting) moments in this POS film
- A single bomber can take down the Dreadnought?
Small craft usually take out big ships in Star Wars - the bombers are a stupid concept given the fact that X Wings and Y Wings exist.
- Despite the fact they're riding huge kangaroo/ostrich creatures larger than a horse, the police/security drones can't actually take them down?
Stupid scene in a stupid part of the film is stupid
- Rey and Ren, albeit the latter being more significantly trained, are able to take down at least 1/2 a dozen of Snoke's bodyguards? In 40k terms this sounds like a couple of Marines eliminating a whole squad of Custodians; it shouldn't happen for any reason.
Maybe - difficult to know how good the guards are as we never see them do anything - they may be ceremonial.
- Snoke's battleship, apparently the most powerful and most feared starship so far encountered, can't keep up with a Republic ship, but travels *just* fast enough it can fire the occasional shot to remind them "we're still here by the way". That whole bit annoyed the hell out of me: "We'll run out of fuel and then they'll catch up with us", that's not how space works! Granted it's a universe with glowing light-swords and dogs apparently made out of crystals (another nice marketing ploy), but it's one of the most basic principles of physics.
Blame the Director for this gak - its a truely awful part of the film that only exists becuase he apparently can't be bothered to write a decent plot and wnats to waste time - maybe he was paid by the minute as there is little other reason for this tedium. Or he just lkes boring the audience.
- A group of battered, poorly-maintained speeders somehow keep an invasion force at bay.
Actually they don't do anything - like most eople in the film - they wonder around abit and then crash or return - oh and the one that might have done something gets rammed by a lovesick idiot.
- "Oh yeah I'm just a cleaner on this huge billion-ton starship, but I also happen to know exactly where the hyperspace starship tracking device is, how to access it, and how to acquire uniforms so we can effortlessly sneak onboard, no-one will question how out of place our appearence is, I'm that good of a cleaner".
Lazy crap writing and direction - thats what this film is about.
It's just how the Republic in the original trilogy seemed like a genuine guerilla force that took significant losses and hardship to attain their goals, while the New Republic is full of people who are apparently either the greatest warriors in the galaxy or lucky beyond measure. That's why I liked Rogue One; they killed off characters, there was a general feel that being in the Republic is a dirty, dangerous position that will eventually kill you, but you can be a hero while you die.
Ohhh But its sooo subversive. They did kill of the majority of the idiots on the Ship of Fools whilst they sat around and played poker or something. Blame the Director - he made this gak.
Given the way Snoke's guards fight, it's pretty clear that fighting ability was not what they were hired for. There are at least two moments in the fight where Rey is DEAD as her attacker has a clear shot at her back and Kylo Ren is not close enough to save her. One of those comes when a guard with two daggers grabs her and holds her with his right arm... and his left arm is free and clear to stab her in the kidneys at least four times before Ren interferes.
That's three times more than is needed to be lethal, by the by.
But let's face it, bad fighting techniques is endemic not just to Star Wars, but Hollywood. This is just one of the worst examples of it IN Star Wars.
(But nothing will ever beat Anakin and Obi-Wan on Mustafar, spinning their meter-long lightsabers around themselves and each other... while standing less than half that distance apart. Ugh!)
(But nothing will ever beat Anakin and Obi-Wan on Mustafar, spinning their meter-long lightsabers around themselves and each other... while standing less than half that distance apart. Ugh!)
That is my most despised scene in the whole prequel trilogy. Not only are they twirling for no reason, but their stance is completely flat footed and off balance whilst they do so. Obi Wan just needed to give Anakin a little shove and then finish it with a coup de grace.
The OT duels may not have been twirly and flashy but at least the people involved know how to adopt a fighting stance with a stable centre of gravity. I am glad that the new trilogy lightsaber duels have gone back to that style.
