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 Riquende wrote:
Two years on from TLJ and people are still defending a film they've re-edited in their heads... sad to see.

I wouldn't be surprised if Episode 8, despite its flaws, gains a cult following in a decade or two since of all Star Wars movies, it's the one that delve the most into foreign territory and tries to explore the idea of destiny or the dualism of the entire franchise.

epronovost wrote:

 Riquende wrote:
Two years on from TLJ and people are still defending a film they've re-edited in their heads... sad to see.

I wouldn't be surprised if Episode 8, despite its flaws, gains a cult following in a decade or two since of all Star Wars movies, it's the one that delve the most into foreign territory and tries to explore the idea of destiny or the dualism of the entire franchise.

I am hoping its used in film making classes as a scene by scene examination of how NOT to make a film.

Sadly they might take from it that having a nothing more than few flashy effects scenes is ok when you are subverting a narrative, plot does not matter, characters do not matter and any and all bad reactions by viewers should always be chalked up racist, sexist or evil people rather than any possible flaw with the total POS that you made..

 Nightlord1987 wrote:

Also,what a case of "supervillain revealing their master stroke...." if Palpatine would have just been a menacing spooky marionette, Rey would have cut him down all as planned. Explaining how evil it is ruined the whole plan.

ACHWSCHUALY

If you read supplementary materials 139 and 45-48 (and play fortnite between the hours of 4:00 am and 5:00 am) you'll understand that the dark sith magiks Palpatine was using (and learned on ****** from ******* ****** *) could only be used on someone who was aware of the technique being used on them.

So it actually makes perfect sense.

Sorry about the censored part. I don't want to lose my fortnite account for leaking.

Voss wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

Voss wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
Seems like JJ was absolutely petrified of/perplexed by writing for Rey and Kylo with all the agency they were granted at the end of TLJ. We witness the two principals emphatically seizing control of their destinies, only to have it revealed that more-or-less their every move was manipulated and preordained by the big bad from the other trilogy. Um...okay.

I feel like there's some meta commentary to be had there too.

That seems a stretch. I saw two kids arrive back where they began, with no clue how to move on, and no plot elements left to take them anywhere.

Like... what? Some random cloaked bad guy mumbling dark side nonsense?

You don't need sequel bait to write a sequel. All you need is a story. .

Right. The part that was missing. The loosely connected series of vignettes in TLJ are reasonably resolved by the ship of survivors wandering off to become smugglers on Hutta while Kylo crowns himself king of the galaxy the First Order conquered off-screen. (which gets mentioned offhandedly like its no big deal)

Sure, there was a third film contracted with the same actors, so they needed to go a different way, but there weren't any story elements worth pursuing. They were alone in a hostile universe against a force with apparently infinite resources. No one wanted to help, and everyone was somehow morally the same as the First Order anyway, so it didn't matter.

The script establishes that help is out there -- they just didn't respond at that time. The implication is clear -- the rest of the galaxy is scared of the FO, and they don't want to back what obviously looks to be a losing horse in the Resistance. But the ending shows us how the story of Luke's sacrifice spreads throughout the galaxy. Even those grubby slave children have heard the tale, right?

It's a layup for the next step to be about the galaxy rising up, inspired by Luke's actions. Luke *tells Kylo* that's what will happen. And that's *exactly how* Trevorrow's script starts! This isn't hard.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Also,what a case of "supervillain revealing their master stroke...." if Palpatine would have just been a menacing spooky marionette, Rey would have cut him down all as planned. Explaining how evil it is ruined the whole plan.

He does the same thing with Luke in RotJ. Been saying that for years. If Palpatine quits all the "strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete" gak and lets Luke's anger take over naturally, he gets his new apprentice. Palpatine is one of the all-time greatest and yet absolute worst movie archvillains.

 Scrabb wrote:
If you read supplementary materials 139 and 45-48 (and play fortnite between the hours of 4:00 am and 5:00 am) you'll understand that the dark sith magiks Palpatine was using (and learned on ****** from ******* ****** *) could only be used on someone who was aware of the technique being used on them.

So it actually makes perfect sense.

See, I pretty much gathered that from context the first time I watched the movie. Only my kids play Fortnite in my house and there's no way in heck I'd let them play from 4am-5am. That would make me a monster.

I can certainly agree that it's frustrating to have to piece together the story from supplemental materials, and is a clear cash-grab from Disney. But honestly? How could that NOT have been the reason? And Palpatine's body was absolutely destroyed in RotJ. Him being back does not HAVE to be explicitly explained in the movie. The throw-away lines about cloning, sith magic, etc were good enough.
And seeing as Palpatine wasn't truly exposed as the villain in the prior trilogies, him showing up for this trilogy fits just fine and fairly consistent. Heck, if we didn't already know Palps was the baddie from the orig trig, him being the baddie in Revenge of the Sith would have been almost as surprising as coming back for Rise of Skywalker

-

 gorgon wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
Also,what a case of "supervillain revealing their master stroke...." if Palpatine would have just been a menacing spooky marionette, Rey would have cut him down all as planned. Explaining how evil it is ruined the whole plan.

He does the same thing with Luke in RotJ. Been saying that for years. If Palpatine quits all the "strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete" gak and lets Luke's anger take over naturally, he gets his new apprentice. Palpatine is one of the all-time greatest and yet absolute worst movie archvillains.

Most of it works. Honestly, the point he loses Luke is when he actually switches over to praising him instead. Up to that point, his goading works just fine, though no part of that sequence sees him actually wanting to be struck down as implied by ROS. He's just forcing Luke to fight his father by making it seem like doing so will allow him to put an end to all of this. The goal is to strip Luke of everything. Make him kill his father, watch his friends and any hope of Rebellion die along with him and see all the power he's gained amount to nothing compared to the Emperor.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I am hoping its used in film making classes as a scene by scene examination of how NOT to make a film.

Sadly they might take from it that having a nothing more than few flashy effects scenes is ok when you are subverting a narrative, plot does not matter, characters do not matter and any and all bad reactions by viewers should always be chalked up racist, sexist or evil people rather than any possible flaw with the total POS that you made..

Considering that the filmography of Episode 8 was highly praised your wish might actually happen...in reverse. As for your comment on subverting a narrative that's actally considered "a good thing" since it actually brings something new. The narrative of the other Star Wars movie isn't special or high quality or original or an essential quality.

epronovost wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
I am hoping its used in film making classes as a scene by scene examination of how NOT to make a film.

Sadly they might take from it that having a nothing more than few flashy effects scenes is ok when you are subverting a narrative, plot does not matter, characters do not matter and any and all bad reactions by viewers should always be chalked up racist, sexist or evil people rather than any possible flaw with the total POS that you made..

Considering that the filmography of Episode 8 was highly praised your wish might actually happen...in reverse. As for your comment on subverting a narrative that's actally considered "a good thing" since it actually brings something new. The narrative of the other Star Wars movie isn't special or high quality or original or an essential quality.

Then I hope they at least include a caveat that if you're going to do a big, flashy swordfighting scene, bring in some stunt coordinators who can teach the actors that you don't use a sword the same way you use a baseball bat.

And having to use CGI to edit out a dagger so the hero doesn't get stabbed in the back means you screwed up your fight choreography something ferocious.

 Vulcan wrote:
Then I hope they at least include a caveat that if you're going to do a big, flashy swordfighting scene, bring in some stunt coordinators who can teach the actors that you don't use a sword the same way you use a baseball bat.

And having to use CGI to edit out a dagger so the hero doesn't get stabbed in the back means you screwed up your fight choreography something ferocious.

As far as movie swordfighting goes, I think the sequels were fine despite the few mistakes here and there like the reverse grip that Kylo Ren sometime uses or the edit-out dagger, but it's rare to see a movie without a few such mistake. Episode 8 probably had the best one in the sequel if only thanks to the multitude of weapons used by the guards. The Phantom Menace probably had the best stuntman and stunt choregrapher and they still had a miss chronographed kick and a pretty weird final move to cripple Darth Maul (though that's not a suntman error that's a script error). There was also some strange decisions in terms of fighting moves in Revenge of the Sith like Yoda jumping at the Emperors face whose holding his sword overhead instead of chopping off his legs for example (or even the Emperor holding his sword overhead in the first place), or Obi-Wan and Anakin forgetting that their laser sword can also be used to stab (or that side step are a thing). Considering that a lightsaber cannot lose its sharpness or break its blade, you can hammer away your opponent as much as you want even though considering the "sharpness of such a blade" a fencing style should be favored. A more "realistic" lightsaber fight would last less than four seconds considering no armor can protect you and the blade can slice through a man with basically no effort.

epronovost wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
I am hoping its used in film making classes as a scene by scene examination of how NOT to make a film.

Sadly they might take from it that having a nothing more than few flashy effects scenes is ok when you are subverting a narrative, plot does not matter, characters do not matter and any and all bad reactions by viewers should always be chalked up racist, sexist or evil people rather than any possible flaw with the total POS that you made..

Considering that the filmography of Episode 8 was highly praised your wish might actually happen...in reverse. As for your comment on subverting a narrative that's actally considered "a good thing" since it actually brings something new. The narrative of the other Star Wars movie isn't special or high quality or original or an essential quality.

Yeah "Critics" praised it and then cashed their check.

as you will note I never said the other Star Wars movies were original - they are not - essential - they are quite fun action flicks but thats it. Don;t turn this into a "Only superfans hate this film" bull gak.

This (IMO and many many other people) was a boring, badly written, worse directed POS from start to finish, it would get my vote as worst film I watched this decade regardless of what franschise it did or did not belong to.

 Mr Morden wrote:
This (IMO and many many other people) was a boring, badly written, worse directed POS from start to finish, it would get my vote as worst film I watched this decade regardless of what franschise it did or did not belong to.

This has got to be an exaggeration. There were several abysmal boxoffice bombs in 2019 alone that were worse than ROS by a long shot, much less the laundry list of complete trash over the last decade.

I feel statements like this only exist because of the scale of Star Wars. If this were any other Franchise (aside from the universally praised MCU), I would image you, or at least a good portion of the "many many other people" would have at least given RoS a solid "meh"
But because it is SW, it seems to have either become fashionable to bash it, or too easy to be disappointed with it due to high expectations

-

 Galef wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
This (IMO and many many other people) was a boring, badly written, worse directed POS from start to finish, it would get my vote as worst film I watched this decade regardless of what franschise it did or did not belong to.

This has got to be an exaggeration. There were several abysmal boxoffice bombs in 2019 alone that were worse than ROS by a long shot, much less the laundry list of complete trash over the last decade.

I feel statements like this only exist because of the scale of Star Wars. If this were any other Franchise (aside from the universally praised MCU), I would image you, or at least a good portion of the "many many other people" would have at least given RoS a solid "meh"
But because it is SW, it seems to have either become fashionable to bash it, or too easy to be disappointed with it due to high expectations

-

I was talking about TLJ - I have not watched the new one - I just can't be bothered - I might watch it when its on Sky or whatever...

 Mr Morden wrote:
I was talking about TLJ - I have not watched the new one - I just can't be bothered - I might watch it when its on Sky or whatever...

That's fair. I feel my comment can apply to either "side" of the debate, whether you liked TLJ but hated RoS, or vice versa. Personally, I like RoS much better than TLJ, but I don't hate TLJ by any means

EDIT: WOOHOO! 10,000th post!

-

 Vulcan wrote:


And having to use CGI to edit out a dagger so the hero doesn't get stabbed in the back means you screwed up your fight choreography something ferocious.

Thats been a common practice in post production for years.

Sure, a professional stuntman will tell you it can be done better but when it comes to shooting footage a director will tell you that time is money. The later is something they'd better teach in film school...

tyhe subversion of expectations I think is why so many people bash TLJ myself. Look, star wars will never be a best picture film, ut's not that type of movie, what it is those is comfortable, it uses elements from many of the favorite stories of the past (the whole monomyth) to generate a new story that feels, old, familer, like a pair of comfortable shoes.
Star Wars is, to use a meal analogy, not that fancy novue dish custom crafted by an artisan master chief that combines flavors together in some new and strange cominbation to win awards (55 dollars a plate, portions are tiny!). Star Wars is your box of Mac and Cheese, it's that thing you ate growing up, you know it's not the best thing in the world, but it's comfortable, and sometimes you just want comfortable.

 Galef wrote:

 Scrabb wrote:
If you read supplementary materials 139 and 45-48 (and play fortnite between the hours of 4:00 am and 5:00 am) you'll understand that the dark sith magiks Palpatine was using (and learned on ****** from ******* ****** *) could only be used on someone who was aware of the technique being used on them.

So it actually makes perfect sense.

See, I pretty much gathered that from context the first time I watched the movie. Only my kids play Fortnite in my house and there's no way in heck I'd let them play from 4am-5am. That would make me a monster.

I can certainly agree that it's frustrating to have to piece together the story from supplemental materials, and is a clear cash-grab from Disney. But honestly? How could that NOT have been the reason? And Palpatine's body was absolutely destroyed in RotJ. Him being back does not HAVE to be explicitly explained in the movie. The throw-away lines about cloning, sith magic, etc were good enough.
And seeing as Palpatine wasn't truly exposed as the villain in the prior trilogies, him showing up for this trilogy fits just fine and fairly consistent. Heck, if we didn't already know Palps was the baddie from the orig trig, him being the baddie in Revenge of the Sith would have been almost as surprising as coming back for Rise of Skywalker

-

Since I'm not 100% sure if you were playing along or not, I'm going to put it out there: my post was satirical and any relation the information I gave has to the facts is purely incidental.

I mean, its not a bad way to justify a plot point. Whats bad is that that sort of thing would need to be built up across multiple movies.

epronovost wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
I am hoping its used in film making classes as a scene by scene examination of how NOT to make a film.

Sadly they might take from it that having a nothing more than few flashy effects scenes is ok when you are subverting a narrative, plot does not matter, characters do not matter and any and all bad reactions by viewers should always be chalked up racist, sexist or evil people rather than any possible flaw with the total POS that you made..

Considering that the filmography of Episode 8 was highly praised your wish might actually happen...in reverse. As for your comment on subverting a narrative that's actally considered "a good thing" since it actually brings something new. The narrative of the other Star Wars movie isn't special or high quality or original or an essential quality.

"new" is not term you can apply to any sequel films. I had essentially seen them(with less good CGI) decades ago already. Nothing new, no surprises. What this shows is no need for disney to spend money on creating new stories when simply cut&paste old ones does same thing Only matter of time before SW film starts doing same within same film! Second half of movie copy of first half. Why waste time and money writing one copied script when one can write half a script and copy it! Easy money!

So now the cluster feth that is mouse wars is over and the knives are being sharpened for kk, busses are being eyed carefully and contracts are finished Inthink gak is about to get interesting.

I have been thinking is R Johnson racist? I ask this as he basicly took the first black person to star in starwars and turned him into a janitor and even worse Jar Jar Finn? It may have been subconsciously but he did relegate him to the "help".

Finn's character is the biggest loss/miss step of the giant turd that is the new trilogy, he was literally the only original character in the trilogy and Jhonson relegated him to comedy relief.

The actor did a ama and someone asked him was the character he played the one pitched fo him when he was hired? All he said was No and he would not be drawn on more details.

Everyone is subconsciously racist, so yeah Johnson probably did have some unhelpful biases that caused poor choices. Finn's sections in the Last Jedi were definitely the worst part of the movie and should have been completely re-written. I think part of the problem was trying to get some fairly heavy handed messaging into the sequence.

SeanDrake wrote:
So now the cluster feth that is mouse wars is over and the knives are being sharpened for kk, busses are being eyed carefully and contracts are finished Inthink gak is about to get interesting.

I have been thinking is R Johnson racist? I ask this as he basicly took the first black person to star in starwars and turned him into a janitor and even worse Jar Jar Finn? It may have been subconsciously but he did relegate him to the "help".

Finn's character is the biggest loss/miss step of the giant turd that is the new trilogy, he was literally the only original character in the trilogy and Jhonson relegated him to comedy relief.

The actor did a ama and someone asked him was the character he played the one pitched fo him when he was hired? All he said was No and he would not be drawn on more details.

well we know that he was secretly force sensitive so perhaps the original plan was that would come to head in episode 8 and by episode 9 he'd be swinging a saber along side rey?

but yeah Johnson... I dunno I honestly think he didn't really know what to do with the characters, thought their inital concepts where dull so...

Lando Calrissian exists, you know.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Lando Calrissian exists, you know.

He was not a main character either, more like a side cast one like Mace Windu.

Erm......Finn was a janitor in TFA, not TLJ?

And had his own plot in both?

Anyways. Taiki Waititi might be getting to do a Star Wars movie, according to Collider.

Currently largely unconfirmed, but rumour monger is apparently often correct.

https://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/69482/taika-waititi-has-reportedly-been-approached-to-helm-a-star-wars-film

BrianDavion wrote:
tyhe subversion of expectations I think is why so many people bash TLJ myself. Look, star wars will never be a best picture film, ut's not that type of movie, what it is those is comfortable, it uses elements from many of the favorite stories of the past (the whole monomyth) to generate a new story that feels, old, familer, like a pair of comfortable shoes.
Star Wars is, to use a meal analogy, not that fancy novue dish custom crafted by an artisan master chief that combines flavors together in some new and strange cominbation to win awards (55 dollars a plate, portions are tiny!). Star Wars is your box of Mac and Cheese, it's that thing you ate growing up, you know it's not the best thing in the world, but it's comfortable, and sometimes you just want comfortable.

Nope I bash TLJ becuase it is such a awful film, not a bad "Star Wars" film its simply a terrible film - its dull, tedious, badly written, worse directed and with zero interest in characters or plot.

BrianDavion wrote:

Backfire wrote:
I don't think Johnson destroyed all that much, if anything. He can be rightly blamed for not setting up anything for the next movie, but it's pretty much the situation he inherited from the first.

disagree TFA set things up fine. we where introduced to Rey, Finn and Poe, we where told what Han and Leia ahd been up to. we where introduced to the first order. Kylo Ren and Snoke.
we where given, to a degree the motivation of the characters (Rey was looking for a family, Finn wanted freedom from the first order and friendship, Poe was pretty much "vive le resistance") this was all that was reaaally needed.

How about a protagonist who has interesting backstory or motivations, or main villain who is either intimidating or mysterious, or setting which makes tiny bits of sense? (Well actually background setting for TFA makes great deal of sense, we just never see it in the movie because they were afraid of exposition).

RJ did his best to make Rey more interesting and symphatetic. He saw that Snoke was unfixable, so he offed him. He also tried to expand the setting - didn't do particularly good job there though.

BrianDavion wrote:

in the second act of the trilogy we needed to set the characters up a bit more as to where they where going, what their destinies where etc. we should have been given some indication as to what Snoke WANTED. etc. Johnson didn't really set up anything, hence my comment about him not building. by destroying I mean he attempted to subvert expectations and tear things down in, a to be blunt, unsastifying way. he killed off Snoke, and phasma (who really should have been kept around and used better, she should have been a foil for Finn, instead she was made the "sequal trilogy boba fett")

I really didn't think back then that Phasma was killed and I doubt it was RJ's intention. Her 'end' was ambiguous enough so that she could have plausibly survived it (much more plausibly than in TFA in fact). I was disappointed when she didn't feature in TRoS. Though, the movie was so crammed with stuff there was no room for any more characters.

BrianDavion wrote:

I think, looking at episode 9 and where it was going, If I could go back in time and do TLJ myself, I'd have made the entire second movie about the search for Exogol. Luke and Rey would slowly travel the galaxy unraveling the trail of Bread crumbs. at the very end, yeah Snoke would die (likely at Luke's hands) and Palpatine would be revealed as the "big bad"

then ROS woulda worked a biit differant. I woulda proably had Luke be insturmental in defeating Palpatine (perhaps alongside Rey and Ben) and have LUKE die in the final clash with Palpatine. leaving Rey and Ben to rebuild the jedi

This would have been OK if the plan was that Palpatine was 'big bad' behind the scenes all the time. Unfortunately, it was a terrible plan.

What I would have done in TLJ would have introduced Knights of Ren as secondary enemies in the Casino World sequence (or whatever equivalent for 2ndary Hero Team). I would have shown that one of them was really disturbingly evil, to the point making Kylo Ren look like a choirboy. Then in Ep 9, you could have played out bit like Trevorrow script, though with interal conflict within FO which would have given chance for some degree of redemption for Kylo, if that was to be desired.

 Mr Morden wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
tyhe subversion of expectations I think is why so many people bash TLJ myself. Look, star wars will never be a best picture film, ut's not that type of movie, what it is those is comfortable, it uses elements from many of the favorite stories of the past (the whole monomyth) to generate a new story that feels, old, familer, like a pair of comfortable shoes.
Star Wars is, to use a meal analogy, not that fancy novue dish custom crafted by an artisan master chief that combines flavors together in some new and strange cominbation to win awards (55 dollars a plate, portions are tiny!). Star Wars is your box of Mac and Cheese, it's that thing you ate growing up, you know it's not the best thing in the world, but it's comfortable, and sometimes you just want comfortable.

Nope I bash TLJ becuase it is such a awful film, not a bad "Star Wars" film its simply a terrible film - its dull, tedious, badly written, worse directed and with zero interest in characters or plot.

Says the guy who was over the moon for Thor 2, the movie equivalent of store-brand mac and cheese.

Store brand mac and cheese served with a side of Kat Dennings.







She’s funny in that.

Mmmmmmm...Kat Dennings...

"If I meet a woman with a full bossom, firm leg and a warm heart, may no man try and stop me!"

It's not a terrible film, but fortunate to be able to coast on the wake of Avengers until Winter Soldier saved the day.