Author Topic: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi  (Read 103409 times)

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Offline Mika

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
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The Last Jedi does build upon the foundations in TFA, characters develop. Finn is still a coward at the start of the movie, then starts to grow a backpone. Po is a hothead but starts to be a leader. Rey is a child, lashes out to defend herself, but then develops some compassion and starts to empathize with Ben.  The movie picks up right after the last movie ended with a conventional attack on the Rebel base and trying to get away.   The Resistance stood alone and is trying to bring allies into the fight. etcetera The movie even tries to explain why Rey is such a bull**** natural with the force.  What did people want? Backstory on generic 2d hologram villian? Backstory on generic good vs evil dynamic?

I don't really think it's about deconstructing star wars.  Rather people I've seen on other forums think that the film has a feminist agenda. And people are lashing out as what they perceive by Disney's star wars on the "heterosexual white man".  Because you know, while every Disney Marvel movie features a heterosexual white man as the hero (until BP comes out), Disney has a "feminist agenda" because TLJ's director liked a feminist t-shirt on twitter.  Just read the user reviews on rotten tomatoes, many of the complaints don't stem from the actual story.  Personally I think Star Wars just has more girls in it to sell more merchandise and movie tickets.

With Luke people also seem to fail to grasp the fundamental role that he's playing in the story. He's not the hero anymore. He can't be. Because the movie is NOT about him. What these movies do right is that they focus on important times in the characters life.  You know, there's an idea that if you're telling a story you ask "is this the most important thing that's ever happened to this character? And if not, why isn't this story about that instead of this other thing".   Stories aren't interested in happily ever after. That's the end of the story not the middle of it.

All those years when Rey was scavenging junk? don't matter. This is important.
Finn's life as a janitor? Doesn't matter. It's when he defected that matters.
Kylo as a student and a pawn? Less important than becoming supreme leader.
Luke's failures as a teacher and life as a hermit are less important than his days teaching Rey and his destruction of the jedi tree and his ultimate sacrifice to save the alliance.

First of all, if you as a director are hired to make a sequel and that the sequel is supposed to follow immediately after the first movie, then make sure the story continues from the first movie. This is already failed at the beginning of TLJ. If Luke wants to die alone and forgotten, he doesn't leave maps behind him. Yes, there's plenty of reasons why this could have happened anyways, but it's a failure in the direction to not show this. It's an obvious conflict and breaks the continuity unless some info is given about this. Another thing is that showing only the "relevant" bits (haha) of some character's life, you end up with a mish mash of some seconds long clips that reveal no real identity. The lulls are important in the stories, as that's the point where the characters tend to actually come alive. It's interesting that nowadays in Robocop (1989) lulls suddenly are far more interesting scenes than the actual action scenes used to be. And talking about cutting to the chase, how does Canto Bight enhance anything? Release the animals and leave the kids enslaved? :lol:

I don't find the character development particularly functional, Finn for example was more relatable in the first movie than in TLJ. They could have pushed him to a Han Solo type scoundrel which would have made more sense given that he is a deserter, but instead he is eagerly shooting his squadmates in the end of the movie. That's him going back to storm trooper basically, or something even worse. Poe is a ridiculous stereotype of a Topgun combat pilot to begin with. Most dudes falling to this category in the army failed or cracked on the first month. Worse, his mutiny does not lead to any kind of punishment, i.e. the surroundings are not reacting to his continuing stupidity when he probably should have been shot for his actions inadvertently exposing the escape pods to the First Order.

Most what I got from Rey and Ren scenes is that Rey is aroused by Ren. I was actually thinking that these two should just get a room to went out their angst and I fully expect an alternate version of this scene from a certain industry in the near future :lol: Thematically speaking, the movie attempts to portray Rey having an idea of Ren being something, but this idea is not explicitly mentioned, nor is the character background known well enough for this scene to have any emotional impact or allow the audience to judge it in any way. Ren, well, there's always room for the comedic relief in the movies. What other motivations does Ren have than epic RAEG? It's not even clear he actually wanted to surpass Snoke or get power, he probably just wanted to kill him to stop the master berating him. The scene of him establishing his position over Hux seems done in afterthought, and not as something he has planned for a some time.

Note that the movie starts from the assault against Le Resistance base and ends with pretty much the same. What did Le Resistance accomplish in the movie? Hope? What's shown is that the galaxy is giving the figurative middle finger to the entire group, and they still don't get it. Movie attempts to portray the younger generation as hope for the better future, even that comes out wrong in a way that instead of adults, La Resistance has to resort to child combatants and agents.

If the movie has a hidden agenda of feminism, I don't mind. If it is indeed intended, it mostly demonstrates why the current feminism is a self-limiting phenomenom. It's the undertones of social commentary that I find quite hilarious as even that comes out "a bit" wrong on times. Monocultural First Order crushes Le Resistance as I'd expect any homogenous army to roll over a heterogenous one. Furthermore, once the other race participants died from Le Resistance, now there's hope of a better tomorrow? :D Then again, Le Resistance group is also now more homogenous so they might actually get something done in the next installment. I'm sure it wasn't intended to look like that, but yeah, the thought did actually cross my mind during the film. :lol:

The deconstruction of Star Wars is related to Luke character (and what the character actually represented in his era), destruction of the idea that the Force has to be harnessed, learned and actually practised to become useful. It also now makes it official there's a nerfing and buffing trait built-in to the Force itself  :rolleyes: It just wasn't awake in the beginning of New Hope, but better late than never in TLJ. Understandably, this cheapens and trivializes the entire thing as now Force sensitives should be popping up like mushrooms. Most of the relatable stuff in the installments were gone after RotJ, and this I think is what made the OT work as well as it did while prequels had little to relate to even if that was intentional by Lucas.

But now we witness Force Ghosts trolling and manipulating things on the current plane of living things while they did nothing earlier :rolleyes: I guess Yoda and Obi-wan just sat there eating popcorn and watched Luke deal with Palpatine and Vader, betting whose gonna win. :lol: Finally, it's deconstruction of the Rebels or the nowadays Resistance. The original premise was that the Rebels were fighting against an evil Empire. That's principally in the opening text crawl. The Rebel Alliance by its own words pushes for the galaxy wide democracy and opposes the current system that allows Tatoiine and the like to remain nests of illegality as the Empire particularly doesn't care.

After TLJ, it appears that the Empire actually had it right all along, the Rebels just want to usurp the power to themselves and change nothing. This makes me wish I had been there in Death Star making the demise of the Alliance faster. And that god damn propagandist at the opening crawls got me for like thirty years until I only now realized he cannot be impartial :D Original trilogy made sure it kept its message the same throughout the series, while prequels pretty much had none, and the TLJ is just plain random and contradictory. We don't win wars by sacrifying ourselves, well, thanks for that, but it had been more powerful if you hadn't just demonstrated an admiral wiping out half the enemy fleet just by doing that.

As I have said earlier, most of these ideas could have worked if pruned and executed carefully. The problem is in the direction and how it's been handled. And it manages to make the previous movies look bad,
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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
First of all, if you as a director are hired to make a sequel and that the sequel is supposed to follow immediately after the first movie, then make sure the story continues from the first movie. This is already failed at the beginning of TLJ. If Luke wants to die alone and forgotten, he doesn't leave maps behind him. Yes, there's plenty of reasons why this could have happened anyways, but it's a failure in the direction to not show this. It's an obvious conflict and breaks the continuity unless some info is given about this. Another thing is that showing only the "relevant" bits (haha) of some character's life, you end up with a mish mash of some seconds long clips that reveal no real identity. The lulls are important in the stories, as that's the point where the characters tend to actually come alive. It's interesting that nowadays in Robocop (1989) lulls suddenly are far more interesting scenes than the actual action scenes used to be. And talking about cutting to the chase, how does Canto Bight enhance anything? Release the animals and leave the kids enslaved? :lol:

I'm talking about the story that's being told, you're talking about how the story is paced. It's two different things.
TLJ actually has more lulls than TFA as well since in TFA the character don't actually think for themselves 90% of the time. Rather the world interrupts them and forces them to react. 
I'm not really sure I understand how Luke is supposed to destroy all the maps to the Jedi planet. Like all the maps in the galaxy?  I thought he just wanted to get away, found the most hidden away spot that he could, and as it turns out, a map to that same place was out there somewhere. The map is not really explained very well in TFA from what I recall.

I don't find the character development particularly functional, Finn for example was more relatable in the first movie than in TLJ. They could have pushed him to a Han Solo type scoundrel which would have made more sense given that he is a deserter, but instead he is eagerly shooting his squadmates in the end of the movie.

What do you mean in the end of the movie? He kills like 50 guys just getting off the ship with Poe and gets his rocks off on punishing Phasma.  And being TFA, after killing all those dudes he doesn't have any moments for remorse because again, characters don't have time to think in that movie. 

That's him going back to storm trooper basically, or something even worse. Poe is a ridiculous stereotype of a Topgun combat pilot to begin with. Most dudes falling to this category in the army failed or cracked on the first month. Worse, his mutiny does not lead to any kind of punishment, i.e. the surroundings are not reacting to his continuing stupidity when he probably should have been shot for his actions inadvertently exposing the escape pods to the First Order.

Well, all the people to punish him were killed or retired so, guess he can make his own rules :P
Then again in TFA Greg Grunberg led to the Empire back to the rebel base and no one batted an eyelash. Can't even perform a simple scouting op without giving away your secret base.

I'll agree that character development wasn't great for Ren and Rey but a bit of it was there.

Note that the movie starts from the assault against Le Resistance base and ends with pretty much the same. What did Le Resistance accomplish in the movie?

They survived. That's about it. Or some of them did.

The deconstruction of Star Wars is related to Luke character (and what the character actually represented in his era), destruction of the idea that the Force has to be harnessed, learned and actually practised to become useful. It also now makes it official there's a nerfing and buffing trait built-in to the Force itself  :rolleyes: It just wasn't awake in the beginning of New Hope, but better late than never in TLJ. Understandably, this cheapens and trivializes the entire thing as now Force sensitives should be popping up like mushrooms. Most of the relatable stuff in the installments were gone after RotJ, and this I think is what made the OT work as well as it did while prequels had little to relate to even if that was intentional by Lucas.

Are these ideas deconstructing star wars or building upon it? Anakin was conceived by the force and had some abilities before Qui-Gon ever came across him, that's why he was able to be some squirt podracer.  So the prequels establish that people have used it without training, and have suggested that the force has an active will.  Anakin was better with training, but he was using it without.

One could even theorise well, if the Jedi guarded the republic for a thousand generations and almost at once they were all killed off, then would the force react to that lack of force-users and manifest sensitivity in new individuals?

After TLJ, it appears that the Empire actually had it right all along, the Rebels just want to usurp the power to themselves and change nothing.

But that's just the thing- the rebels defeated the Empire but didn't actually take power.  Why isn't Princess leia a senator like her mother, in government in some capacity? Instead she's still a general in the resistance while the Republic is run by a bunch of off-screen nobodies.  No one in the Rebel Alliance seems to have any involvement with the Republic. Which is absolutely bizarre.

In TFA it seems like the Resistance is basically, a bunch of Privateers who have a letter of marque from the government to go and fight the evil pirates/First Order. While the official Navy, the Republic, just sit in dock enjoying some buggery.  Makes no sense at all. Like Kara said, JJ Abrams is a complete Hack.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2018, 08:08:16 pm by Akalabeth Angel »

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
First of all, if you as a director are hired to make a sequel and that the sequel is supposed to follow immediately after the first movie, then make sure the story continues from the first movie. This is already failed at the beginning of TLJ. If Luke wants to die alone and forgotten, he doesn't leave maps behind him.

Explain any reason consistent with TFA why Luke would go away and leave a map then. You're going to need to explain why part of the map would be separate and why R2D2 would have most of the map and for some reason powered down.

Or you can admit that the map was a whole bull**** mystery box created in TFA and if you're being honest you shouldn't blame TLJ for not touching that nonsense with a bargepole.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2018, 09:00:54 pm by karajorma »
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Offline Luis Dias

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The "Resistance" part of TFA was the Big Dumb Object that I couldn't ignore for the sake of suspense of disbelief. It's so mind boggingly pointing to the lack of any atom of thought being put to what are the political realities 30 years after the battle of Endor that it becomes impressive as a statement itself "I refuse to think!" I can almost hear JJ shout directly to my brain. And when you put the Prequels into context, it looks like it was intentional, as a 10 meter tall middle finger to George Lucas. Which is a shame, given how talented he clearly was in building out the canvas in which they made a new Star Wars with so many things right.

Thing is, the kind of canvas JJ is interested in is about characters, action pieces, tensions and mystery boxes. The whole "worldbuilding" trend in writing has absolutely evaded the likes of him, to whom that word must be some kind of dirty four letter shenanigan. To this guy, putting a black dude in a stormtrooper helmet and make him defect is "worldbuilding" enough, but then he refuses to think this through and makes Finn shout in joy while he's killing his former comrades (at least in TLJ Finn is embued with a suicidal mania, which makes more sense).

 
Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I never took the Resistance as something dumb, but more of a nostalgia-fuelled volunteer group that also conveniently allowed the Republic to disavow responsibility whilst still keeping a force around that is able to keep The First Order in check. It's a bit what the Flying Tigers would have been if Japan hadn't attacked Pearl Harbour. Proxy wars!

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
That headcanon is fine, but the fact you had to make that up to fill up the holes is dumb in itself, and it's so obvious that JJ didn't put an atom of thought into it and just expected you to fill it with whatever nonsense you could come up with, that the whole exercise becomes a sham.

Then again, I saw through the JJ smoke and mirrors bull**** right at the first episode of LOST, so it's possible I'm somewhat of an outlier in the sense that I really despise this kind of intentionally lazy writing.

 
Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
IIRC, The Resistance being funded by the Republic is actually mentioned as the reason why The First Order blows them up in the first place.

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
IIRC, The Resistance being funded by the Republic is actually mentioned as the reason why The First Order blows them up in the first place.

But that doesn't make an inch of sense. Why is it still called the "Resistance"? Resistance to what, if they won the war? Once guerrilla armies win the war, they stop being guerrilla armies. They coalesce within the governments. To call it "Resistance" still is silly.

More to the point, it could *not* be silly, if we add to it a number of headcanons (or external material, the fashion nowadays). But that should have been settled in the movie itself. It would have been somewhat easy to do, just grab the same plot device that kickstarted BattleStar Galactica - the old General Leia with the old Resistance guard, oldfashioned and out of place within the larger Republic. Then, First Order hits the entire Republican fleet and planet with its STARKILLER base, and thus the only ones left around who are near the base are these old fashioned guys, the only squadrons lying around are these X Wings, (no bombers) etc.

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Yeah, you can make the whole thing make sense, you can say that the republic are trying a policy of appeasement while secretly backing the rebellion. What I've been complaining about since TFA came out is that no thought was put into this at all!
« Last Edit: January 12, 2018, 06:36:53 am by karajorma »
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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Fair enough.

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I find one of the most interesting things about TFA is how badly it degrades on successive re-watching. It's interesting how many people are slamming it now who said they loved it when it first came out. Which does make me wonder if I won't be hugely critical of TLJ after rewatching it a few times.
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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I actually have the opposite notion: I like TFA a bit better now that I rewatched it.

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
You must have really hated it. :p
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Offline Luis Dias

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I have yet to rewatch it to join either one of you on that one, but somehow I'm not really that eager to do that.

 
Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
You must have really hated it. :p

I actually quite liked it initially as well 0_o. I must be an outlier here, but I may not be a traditional Star Wars fan as I tend to see the original trilogy as a fun romp with space wizards.

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I have yet to rewatch it to join either one of you on that one, but somehow I'm not really that eager to do that.

Which one? The Force Awakens? I find that very interesting since you said you loved the first one at the time and actually argued I was wrong about some of the things you now say were glaring errors that distracted you the first time you watched the film. I'm honestly not saying this to be an arsehole and dance around saying "you were wrong and I was right!" but I find it fascinating that the very thing you lambasted several people including myself over as just being nitpicking has become one of your major problems with the film. I just find it interesting how fluid our perceptions of that film are.

And I'm not just picking on you. I said that I'd give TFA 7.5 / 10 at the time. I can't possibly see myself giving it that high a mark today.
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Offline The E

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
But that doesn't make an inch of sense. Why is it still called the "Resistance"? Resistance to what, if they won the war? Once guerrilla armies win the war, they stop being guerrilla armies. They coalesce within the governments. To call it "Resistance" still is silly.

More to the point, it could *not* be silly, if we add to it a number of headcanons (or external material, the fashion nowadays). But that should have been settled in the movie itself. It would have been somewhat easy to do, just grab the same plot device that kickstarted BattleStar Galactica - the old General Leia with the old Resistance guard, oldfashioned and out of place within the larger Republic. Then, First Order hits the entire Republican fleet and planet with its STARKILLER base, and thus the only ones left around who are near the base are these old fashioned guys, the only squadrons lying around are these X Wings, (no bombers) etc.

Yeah, it would not take a lot to make this whole "Resistance" thing work. We know that the Rebellion beat the Emperor (if not the Empire) at Yavin; Now it's 30 years later, and the Republic as a whole is tired of fighting an endless war against the last holdouts of the Empire; surely, after all this time, they must be beaten into irrelevancy? But no, Leia and her crew know that the imperial remnant has reformed under the banner of the First Order, they still have lots and lots of resources available and they're definitely not out of the planetkilling superweapons mode, so the Resistance continues to fight and harass wherever and however they can, even if the rest of the galaxy believes that the NazisEmpire is dead and gone. Hell, that's even something approaching a contemporary political plot, something Star Wars has never really done before, that could've been interesting! But no, all JJ Abrams cares about is mimicry; He can't use "Rebellion", so it's "Resistance" now, he doesn't think "Empire" resonates, so it needs to be "First Order" (because why use a name everyone knows when you could set up a ~mystery~).

I get what TFA wants to do. It even succeeds on several levels. But it's all undercut by JJA throwing ****ty ideas up on the wall without having any ****ing clue what they're supposed to mean and not really caring how many end up sticking. He's been doing it in Lost and Alias before, and that should've been a warning when he got the reigns on Star Trek and Star Wars, franchises that were very much built on either very simple stories or self-contained stories with only the bare minimum of connective tissue between them.
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Offline Luis Dias

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I have yet to rewatch it to join either one of you on that one, but somehow I'm not really that eager to do that.

Which one? The Force Awakens? I find that very interesting since you said you loved the first one at the time and actually argued I was wrong about some of the things you now say were glaring errors that distracted you the first time you watched the film. I'm honestly not saying this to be an arsehole and dance around saying "you were wrong and I was right!" but I find it fascinating that the very thing you lambasted several people including myself over as just being nitpicking has become one of your major problems with the film. I just find it interesting how fluid our perceptions of that film are.

And I'm not just picking on you. I said that I'd give TFA 7.5 / 10 at the time. I can't possibly see myself giving it that high a mark today.

I understand how my words fail to convey what I meant here. I never disagreed that there were flaws in the movie, but that the overall experience was a blast, which it was! It is true what you say here, that as time went on, this tiny rock in the shoe called "Resistance vs Republic" started to annoy the hell out of me, to the point where I eventually think it's the biggest problem of that movie, despite all of its other mistakes / errors / character flaws / etc.

At the time I didn't care, for my expectations were so low to begin with. I never really fawned over JJ's ability to write coherent worlds in which movies existed, so I was never expecting a political teatrise on Star Wars' world to begin with. That he is a hack I also knew (I saw both of his Star Treks for ****s sake), so all I wanted was a good rollercoaster. Which he delivered.

 

Offline Bobboau

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I got the impression that the rebels won and had been the dominant power for decades against which the First Order were trying to undermine, which would technically make the First Order the rebels now, no?
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Offline Luis Dias

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Like I heard someone say on youtube, perhaps I'm misremembering here, eh, something along the lines of "being a nazi ****lord is the new punk!" or something to that effect I dunno.