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Cut to next triology stinger: Rise of the Second Order!

 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.

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.






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 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.

I think i would have speaded up the pacing.

 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.

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.

Lance845 wrote:Half the posts in the thread do not meet the criteria of "without sarcasm, scorn, or anything toxic".

I see you're contributing your part.

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.

You have to go back to TFA. None if the originals, just historical bits about their achievements.

* Republic, new jedi order, still some Imperial region holdouts.

* Now put the wars back in. Bring a new alien race (a less weird Vong perhaps) with everyone getting hammered and rallying.

Other than that the best would have been not to make any new ones at all.

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.

Not a big Abrams fan myself, if I'm honest.

He's the new Michael Bay.

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.

Yes he did TFA so well I quit watching them.

 Frazzled wrote:
He's the new Michael Bay.

I like some of his movies and Mr Bays as well.

I would not go to see them cos he was directing but conversely I would not avoid them

I would now avoid a RJ movie.

I think we are back to "I did not like it vs I did like it" without suggestions to make it better so it may be the thread has run its course?

 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.

I find this a very interesting video on why some people like/dislike TLJ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJhOpY7bh6s

 Earth127 wrote:
I find this a very interesting video on why some people like/dislike TLJ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJhOpY7bh6s

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.

Unless this is more "hidden reasons" nonsense.

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.

 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.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Not a big Abrams fan myself, if I'm honest.

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.