[karajorma]

Yeah, it would be ****.  It would be **** just like making Leia Luke's sister and having an entire legion of the Emperor's best troops significantly hampered by an army of teddybears.

Teddybears who had quite obviously been preparing for days if not weeks or months for the attack.

Both of those things are things I think were far, far dumber than making Leia's recollection of her mother inaccurate

So? Even if you are correct why does that make it a good idea to do it? Just cause other ****ty things were in the films you get to add more ****ty things? Especially when there was no need whatsoever to do it. Especially when it adds nothing to either film.

[Aesaar]

Teddybears who had quite obviously been preparing for days if not weeks or months for the attack.

The ancient Romans would have crushed the Ewoks with trivial ease.  I can say that because nothing used by the Ewoks in that attack is future technology.  It's not even Bronze Age technology.  I absolutely will not believe that an army with firearms/energy weapons and armored vehicles could be hampered by them in any meaningful way.  It's idiotic.

So? Even if you are correct why does that make it a good idea to do it? Just cause other ****ty things were in the films you get to add more ****ty things? Especially when there was no need whatsoever to do it. Especially when it adds nothing to either film.

Did I say somewhere that I think the prequels were universally good and that everything they did was for the best?

Also, are you implying that the prequels added nothing of value to the Star Wars universe? 

[wookieejedi]

I attribute the ewoks success to Chewie stealing that AT-ST, as that is what actually turned the tide of the battle. I kinda figured the whole 'overconfidence' thing was the ground forces flaw, too. Not taking defensive positions, spreading out, underestimating ewok numbers and swarming abilities... But again it is a movie, so there's always that. Still there are many expamples of a well trained, technically superior military force getting overrun with lesser, larger numbers (ie swarmed with close combat where the ranged defense doesn't hold up). 

[Mongoose]

Plus Stormtroopers are canonically absolute **** at hitting pretty much anything.  Is it really surprising that getting beaned by some giant rocks would make them suck even more?

[Aesaar]

I attribute the ewoks success to Chewie stealing that AT-ST, as that is what actually turned the tide of the battle. I kinda figured the whole 'overconfidence' thing was the ground forces flaw, too. Not taking defensive positions, spreading out, underestimating ewok numbers and swarming abilities... But again it is a movie, so there's always that. Still there are many expamples of a well trained, technically superior military force getting overrun with lesser, larger numbers (ie swarmed with close combat where the ranged defense doesn't hold up).

Yeah, it's sorta happened in history.  Except that in every historical case I can think of, the technological superiority of the loser was fairly minor.  It's never been modern tech vs stone age tech, because there's literally nothing stone age tech can do to an armored vehicle.  There's a reason the idea of horses charging tanks is ridiculous. 

No, I'm afraid the idea of stone age teddybears beating a well-equipped, well-trained futuretech conventional army is just far, far beyond what I can believe.


Should have just been Wookiees.  Wookies have real guns and aircraft, are kinda intimidating, plus have actual reason to hate the Empire.

[karajorma]

]Did I say somewhere that I think the prequels were universally good and that everything they did was for the best?

You said it was perfectly acceptable for a film to "challenge assumptions" so I'm just trying to figure out where you draw the line. Where does "challenging assumptions" become something you won't accept?

[Aesaar]

I stop "accepting" it when I don't like it.  But I don't try to say that X is invalid because I don't like it.  If this thread started seriously discussing the in-universe merits of the Battle of Endor, I wouldn't complain about how talking about the Battle of Endor is pointless because the battle's dumb.  I just wouldn't participate.  No one cares about my headcanon.

So when Turambar says that we don't know how the Jedi Order works because the prequels are invalid, that's useless.  It doesn't contribute to the discussion at hand.  In fact, it's an attempt to shut down the discussion over personal taste.  That's why The_E called it stupid.

[karajorma]

So if the Han Solo movie completely changes the character of Han to make him into a standard good guy and then says the reason he was so grumpy in ANH is just because he had a migraine you would say that anyone who clings to the old interpretation of Han was wrong?

[Aesaar]

In a discussion of Star Wars as presented?  Yeah, they'd be wrong.  Right to dislike it though (unless it was done well, I suppose).  Just like I don't like the fact that Leia is Luke's sister.  If I say she isn't, I'm wrong.  That I think it's dumb doesn't change this.

I don't get why this is hard to understand.  "But mah headcanon!" doesn't invalidate anything to anyone but you.

[karajorma]

Because as I've pointed out, any new films in the Star Wars universe are coming out over 30 years after the last one in the trilogy came out and at this point aren't even being made by the people responsible for them. It's like arguing someone can get the rights to make a canon King Lear Part II and change all the stuff that happened in the first one.

[MP-Ryan]

Pssssst.....Aesaar and karajorma.....

[karajorma]

Except I'm not only talking about Star Wars. I'm talking about what counts as part of canon in general. To bring it home, suppose Derek Smart had managed to acquire the rights to FS3. Would people still be arguing that it was canon too?

[Luis Dias]

Yeah I'm with aesaar et al here.

You can dismiss whatever you want, just stop at pretentiously declaring the rest of us don't know anything about "x" because you decided to dismiss the movie that deals with "x".

Say instead that you disagree with how the prequels characterized "x", and then let the adults continue the conversation.

[karajorma]

You can dismiss whatever you want, just stop at pretentiously declaring the rest of us don't know anything about "x" because you decided to dismiss the movie that deals with "x".

Say instead that you disagree with how the prequels characterized "x", and then let the adults continue the conversation.

Now that I agree with. I just disagree with slavishly saying that something must be correct because it was in canon, regardless of who wrote it, when it was written or if it was universally regarded as bad.

[Grizzly]

I finally went around and watched this film. Liked it, more so then I did TFA. Can't say all that much more then has already been said here, but here's a few things anyway:
1) The WW2 era bombers to me where more of a sign of how desperate the resistance had become. Or at the very least, this particular branch.
2) Poe's insubordination had me rolling my eyes a bit, it really figures that rebels would have issues with authority. The contrast between The First Order's style of command and the Rebellion.
3) GENERAL HUGS
4) I get why Poe wasn't told the plan, in no small part because of issues that others have already mentioned but also because telling a bunch of hot shot heroes who are already too eager to die for the cause that you have a plan that involves self-sacrifice seems like a good way to rid yourself of the few people you have left... That being said, I also agree with others: Everyone on the ship should have known the plan. The Rebellion in itself rejects the unquestionable authority that the First Order represents, so demanding people simply follow your orders is a stretch.
5) I like how a significant part of the theme of this movie was about moving on from the old and how that can make the future Jedi better, and the movie in itself moving on from the old is also what made it a better film then TFA did.

Luke simply giving up and living on an island drinking blue milk from alien big-tits?

Okay I have to ask

Do you know what cows are and how we obtain milk from them?

[Aesaar]

Well I mean I wouldn't drink raw milk ever, but maybe Luke has, like, some sort of Jedi Bene Gesserit-like Force-boosted immune system or something.

[Snarks]

It's not that he's drinking alien milk that is wacky, but the presentation of it. Movies are a visual medium, so how things are visually presented matters, particularly so in Star Wars which has a big emphasis on how things look, e.g. Vader's suit, Snoke's hologram, etc. Most of the scenes with Luke put in a lot of inappropriate humor. It is the frequency in which the audience is expected to laugh that clashes with the tone, subject matter, and Luke's character. Robot Chicken uses this exact kind of dissonance to produce its humor, by putting in whacky stuff in its parodies of other works. Take something like the dramatic monologue in MacBeth and then give MacBeth diarrhea, an afro, and stick in a dancing cow in the background, and you will completely change the mood/tension/narrative of the scene.

Yes, Luke is a hermit, and it is perfectly sensible that he's drinking milk from some native wildlife. But you don't have to show it because it adds the wrong kind of emotions for the scene.

The main critique of the Luke scenes in TLJ is in how they presented Luke's character, both in its presentation (as addressed above) and the seemingly contradictory defeatist in old Luke versus the young Luke who turned Darth Vader back to the light side. From a narrative perspective, it is primarily an issue with the jump from RotJ to TFA, which produced a lot of problems, including the apparent collapse of the Empire in that time, the existence of Leia's Resistance paramilitary group (?), the First Order forming, and various other things. The audience simply has to accept too much in the time skip and a lot of it comes off as a hard sell.

[karajorma]

Agreed. The big problem does not lie with TLJ and it's really unfair that it is taking the blame for it. TFA really screwed over whoever would come next. It was strewn with mystery boxes. I would bet money that no one involved in writing TFA actually knows the history of the Republic, the Rebellion, the rise of the First Order or any of the other mysteries that TFA introduced. Rian Johnson has flat out stated that when he came on board no one knew answers to things like who Snoke was. It's massively unfair to blame him for not knowing who Snoke was when the guy who created him had no idea either.

Worse still one of those mystery boxes had been shown opening in the final scene of TFA. So unlike the others which could be partly ignored, whoever came next would have to explain why Luke went away.

First choice they had was to invent some other bull**** mcGuffin for why Luke was on the island. Yes, TFA had said he'd gone looking for the 1st Jedi Temple and hadn't explained why. But if the film starts putting some kind of superweapon or super Jedi techniques on that island (as lots of fans have claimed they should) then it does rather beg the question "Why didn't Yoda and Kenobi look for it rather than do nothing for 20 years?" And to be honest, a McGuffin on the island would have been pretty ****.

The film went with a different choice, Luke has rejected being a Jedi and become a hermit. And that is a very hard sell. We have to believe that the hugely optimistic Luke Skywalker has become an embittered old man. When I watched the film I had no trouble believing it because that's what I thought was going to happen anyway. Lots of people think that the film failed to sell it. But it's something that should have been set up in the first film. Had the first film not been written by complete hacks, they would have had Han Solo talk about how Luke went away after swearing he'd never train another Jedi rather than leaving it to the next film to establish. Then the fans would have less trouble accepting the plot line of TLJ. 


The second problem a lot of people seem to have with the film is that they think Luke should have left the island with Rey and that it was out of character for him not to do so. Again, I disagree. It's actually more heroic for him to stay the course he had decided upon. If all it took for Luke to leave the island was someone to turn up and say "Hey, leave the island" that doesn't make Luke a hero, it makes him indecisive. Instead we see a Luke who swore to never train Jedi again. And he sticks to that. He doesn't train Rey. He teaches her to train herself, to take the good from the Jedi without burdening herself with the rubbish. He doesn't even know she took the books! Had Luke left the island with Rey she'd always have been looking to him for answers, the exact opposite of what he'd sworn to do.



Yes the film isn't perfect. Yes they made a lot of odd visual choices. Leia Poppins is a big one - They could easily have had her free herself using the force after being trapped under debris instead with very little difference in how well the scene worked. But complaining about that is nitpicking really.

In the end the biggest problems the film has is due to the previous film leading them into a minefield and burning the map in front of them. I'm a huge fan of  J. Michael Straczynski's style of writing TV shows, where you never add a plot point unless you know how it will be resolved no matter how many episodes latter. JJ Abrams is the antithesis of that style, shove a lot of crap on screen and try to figure out how it works later. Yeah, if you can write yourself out of the hole you've written yourself into that works really well, you look like a genius. But most of the time you simply can't write yourself out in a way that is believable. That's why a lot of people hate the ending of shows like Lost or Battlestar Galactica. If you have to come up with the end after publishing the start sometimes you realise you can't actually do it.

The Sequel Trilogy should have been planned from start to finish before filming the first one.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

The Sequel Trilogy should have been planned from start to finish before filming the first one.

I remember reading somewhere that Lucas actually had an outline for the Sequel Trilogy and gave it to Disney when he sold the rights for the franchise, but that it was tossed away. Obviously nobody thought about replacing it before they started filming. Oh well, we've survived the prequels, and this is much less painful to watch, even if it was made by hacks.

[karajorma]

I remember reading somewhere that Lucas actually had an outline for the Sequel Trilogy and gave it to Disney when he sold the rights for the franchise, but that it was tossed away.

Well Lucas is something of a hack himself. You only need watch the prequels to see what happens when he has complete control of a script. Much of what made the original trilogy so good is the input from people around him. It's worth remembering that once they threw away his story ideas the biggest input Lucas had on the film was to suggest JJ Abrams.

Funny thing is that I find Lucas actually believing that JJ Abrams would do a good job as believable as it being a Machiavellian act of revenge for them not liking his scripts.

Oh well, we've survived the prequels, and this is much less painful to watch, even if it was made by hacks.

To be honest I don't think the second one was made by hacks. Yeah they made a bunch of mistakes but it's still a great film overall. But yeah, the first film is better than the prequels and even with JJ Abrams at the helm it's hard to imagine how he could **** up the third instalment that badly.

No the true horror to come is likely the Han Solo movie.