[Mika]

This is pure bull**** and you know it.

Which part of it? Kennedy has already proven to be a piss-poor producer introducing gender favoritism to the company, while under her leadership the latest three movies have all been at least partially re-shot costing hundreds of millions of dollars. That alone should be enough to fire a person. But that's not enough, the resulting fallout of bad reception from fans and the failure of related business proves the failure from the point of view of management. The only thing that's not apparent or acknowledged is that this will affect the possibilities of women getting to the position of power in the future. Well this is sort of obvious to anybody in a management position, but you don't have to trust me on this one. However, when even your radical feminists are starting to shout Kennedy is doing that, one might wonder if they might have a point for once.

Yes let's have Star Wars keep catering to basement-dwelling neckbeards instead of, y'know, half of the population of the planet.

How's that half the population of the planet attending these new films? Given the numbers, I'd actually say they already indeed went and catered to basement-dwelling neckbeards. They just turned out to be different persons you thought they were.

Yes let's regress the entire franchise 40 years that is a great plan.

Sounds like a good idea to me. How about we started to make movies with good plots and characters again? They knew how to do that 40 years ago, but apparently we don't!

So your criticizing the producer based on a quote she gave on the eve of the best of the new movies?

That's not her only quote about it.

So for Kennedy, girls cannot identify with Luke Skywalker. Keeping things equal, then men should not be able to identify with Rey. Obviously that's never been the case. For some reason, men have been able to identify with Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley and all the other well-written characters. I do expect women are actually able to do the same regardless of the gender.

I'm sorry but catering to old fans is a flawed strategy. Why? Because people die. They die, they move on, they get busy, or worst of all, they have less money to spend on star wars merchandise.  To be successful you need to cater to a new audience and bring in new fans, and if the movie is good enough to retain the old fans, bonus. If not- could be worse.

If I'm not mistaken, the 30s something has the most disposable income. So why appeal to a 50-yo fan?

The old fans (30-50 years old) are the people keeping the franchise alive!

Actually, people with most disposable income are not in their 30s. The amount of disposable income is actually the lowest around 30s because of mortgages and babies plus that people in their 30s are generally already more poor than people in their 50s were when they were 30 years old. The max salaries and max disposable income is averagely achieved just before retirement at least here.

I am 99% certain that I'm not supposed to be laughing at Ren outside of the SNL skit. You can write a character that's struggling with a crisis, even one that's sympathetic, but it doesn't mean the audience has to like them. And really that's the issue I had the film. I mentioned this way back earlier on this thread that the pacing was all over the place. The only time I actually feel sympathetic to Kylo Ren is when I abstract him away from the film, which is also the same way I feel about Anakin. Conceptually, they are characters I should be caring about, but when I watch the movies, I don't feel it. And that's the problem.

So to be specific, I like Kylo Ren conceptually, but I dislike Kylo Ren when I see him in the film. Maybe I'd like TLJ more if I was reading it as a novel.

I too find Kylo Ren a source of unintentional comedy gold. I'm mostly wondering about how expensive was the gadget he wrecked this time, or how mission critical was the control panel that he wrecked. That stuff costs money you know.

If I know anything about the army, as a leader Kylo Ren would be facing a **** ton of practical jokes all the time. Particularly during the time of war, the soldiers would, even under the threat of their death ("Whatcha gonna do, kill me? I'm gonna die anyways!"), try to piss him off in ways that could not be linked to them. It wont work every time, but it's still worth it when the brat has rage control issues in front of a group of soldiers who are so very hard trying to show their shoulders are not bobbing. Or that they are not smiling.

[The E]

So what you're saying is is that you want to see safe **** that is exactly what you expect it to be instead of films that are somewhat more forward-looking. Got it.

Tell us, how much did you pledge to the "Remake TLJ" campaign?

[Det. Bullock]

That's not her only quote about it.

So for Kennedy, girls cannot identify with Luke Skywalker. Keeping things equal, then men should not be able to identify with Rey. Obviously that's never been the case. For some reason, men have been able to identify with Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley and all the other well-written characters. I do expect women are actually able to do the same regardless of the gender.

There's an understanding that usually badly or even just not particularly well written male hero characters tend to get a pass much more than female hero characters of the same level.
Think of the way everyone is dissecting the new Lara Croft vs most other average-written videogame protagonists.
Luke is very archetypically male, down to the conflict with the father or the "rescue the princess" thing in the first movie.
Hell, I remember talking to a few girls in high schools that found him to be whiny and immature until Return of The Jedi.
The thing is you can identify with Sarah Connor and Ripley because they were in part written with a male audience in mind from the start, while most male protagonists (even Luke who's arguably a subversion of the typical protagonist of the time) tend to completely ignore the other half of the human species.

[Grizzly]

In this thread: A man arguing with men who liked TLJ that men aren't supposed to like TLJ.

[Grizzly]

Also in this thread: man brings gender politics into discussion, complains about gender politics.

[Aesaar]

He was, remember? After losing the bombers?

He actually wasn't.  He was demoted.  Rank and post are two different things.  He was not relieved of his command.  He still answered to Leia.  At no point are we shown that there's a higher-ranking pilot on the Raddus, which means that in spite of his demotion, he was still the CAG. 

How he made it that far I don't understand.  Poe shouldn't be in command of anything.

And yeah, I think that failing to take into account Poe's hero complex is absolutely a command failure.  There is absolutely no way Holdo didn't know Poe would try something.  But ego- or stress-driven command failures are very, very believable.  Not a failure of the movie.  But I went over this on page 2 of this thread.

[Akalabeth Angel]

So for Kennedy, girls cannot identify with Luke Skywalker. Keeping things equal, then men should not be able to identify with Rey. Obviously that's never been the case. For some reason, men have been able to identify with Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley and all the other well-written characters. I do expect women are actually able to do the same regardless of the gender.

Does it not strike you as problematic that your go-to female characters to identify with are from movies that debuted 39 and 35 years ago?

[Luis Dias]

It's supposed to read like "these idiots think they're doing something unheard of, when Scott and Cameron were doin in 40 years ago" but it actually reads like "why do you want women in these movies, don't you have these 40 year old movies? Aren't they enough?!?!?!?"

[General Battuta]

I rewatched this movie on Netflix (my third viewing) and I've decided that it's an amazing final act saddled with some questionable buildup. Basically everything involving Finn, Rose, and the Heroic Gambit (including said gambit's conclusion on the flight deck of the Supremacy) is kind of flat and unengaging to me. Canto Bight is weak, Benicio del Toro's character is no Lando in terms of screen presence (not to say he needs to be a Landolike character; I just don't find him equivalently compelling), and Luke/Rey has to carry the movie for the first act.

Once Rey gets to the Supremacy it's just about all great from there to the end.

[Snarks]

Canto Bight is weak, Benicio del Toro's character is no Lando in terms of screen presence (not to say he needs to be a Landolike character; I just don't find him equivalently compelling)

I actually really liked DJ as a character, both what he is conceptually and how he was portrayed.

DJ is the subversion of Han Solo. Where Han is over the top, borderline bombastic, DJ is low key. Because the original trilogy portrayed Han in such a positive light, we've come to associate rogues as good people, when in reality, those are exactly the kinds of people you can't trust because they are mercenaries. Even after he betrayed Rose and Finn, the film gave him the spotlight once again with them asking him to reconsider his decision. For me, that was the pivotal moment where the audience is expecting him to change his mind and pull a Han Solo, blasting away a bunch of stormtroopers and escaping with our heroes onboard. But instead, he simply shrug and gets away scot-free with his hefty reward.

[Rhymes]

Canto Bight is the planet, not the codebreaker.

[Scourge of Ages]

I actually really liked Canto as a character, both what he is conceptually and how he was portrayed.

Canto Bight is the subversion of Han Solo. Where Han is over the top, borderline bombastic, Canto is low key.

(Canto Bight is the casino planet, Del Toro's character is named... ??? Well I guess that proves 'Ttuta's point about him)

EDIT: Ninja'd

[Snarks]

Canto Bight is the planet, not the codebreaker.

Ah right. His name was DJ. Corrected that in my post.

Canto Bight is the casino planet

Looking it up, Canto Bight is the city. The planet itself is Cantonica.

Bunch of space names anyways. They only ever stick in my head if they're mentioned a whole bunch of times and are short enough that I can remember it. Doesn't help that there aren't many lines where he is mentioned by name.

Edit: Actually, looking it up some more, I think they may have purposefully downplayed him having a name. I'm curious if that's an oversight or if it was done for an intended effect.

[mjn.mixael]

I rewatched this movie on Netflix (my third viewing) and I've decided that it's an amazing final act saddled with some questionable buildup. Basically everything involving Finn, Rose, and the Heroic Gambit (including said gambit's conclusion on the flight deck of the Supremacy) is kind of flat and unengaging to me. Canto Bight is weak, Benicio del Toro's character is no Lando in terms of screen presence (not to say he needs to be a Landolike character; I just don't find him equivalently compelling), and Luke/Rey has to carry the movie for the first act.

Once Rey gets to the Supremacy it's just about all great from there to the end.

I can agree that the last third apart from everything else is fun to watch. However, the whole plot leading up to that is so contrived... When plot points like Holdo being either good or bad are debated in forum after forum with seemingly the same amount of people on both sides, I would suggest the movie didn't do it's job well enough to justify those plot points. I shouldn't need pages of posts to explain Holdo's actions no matter how much sense it might make after all those posts explain it. The movie is supposed to do that with better character writing.

And then there's the ending which continues to leave me uncaring about it at all. This being the middle movie in a trilogy should have been more like a tv mid-season finale. Give me something. Instead it's more like the season finale to Bones. For those of you who didn't watch Bones, it ends with the murder-mystery solving team essentially getting ready for the next murder-mystery. They'll go on solving murders forever. Sure, you can force in some stuff.. "How is Bones going to raise kids and solve murders at the same time?" or "what's the new Lab going to be like with Hodgens as the boss?", but they aren't really lingering questions that need another season to answer. It's the same with TLJ. The rebels escape again is really all there is to it. How are they gonna rebuild? It's not important because we know they just will. It's Star Wars. Everything else is wrapped up. All the lose threads are tied up (or rather cut off). The rebels will go on rebelling ad infinitum. Which really speaks to the whole corporitization of nu Star Wars. Of course they'll go on rebelling forever. How else is Disney going to keep this going? For as much as TLJ tries to push the boundaries and make Star Wars different, I partially feel it did nothing at all. Could we really have Star Wars without stormtroopers or rebels in orange? I'd like to be proven wrong.

Let's take the next trilogy 30-40 years down the line. The First Order is gone, and Rey is off doing who knows what, having started a new kind of Jedi or whatever. We meet new heroes and new antogonists that don't wear plastic helmets and aren't obsessed with the last trilogy's villain. If they really want to let the past die, let's go somewhere really new with a story about characters that exist in the Star Wars universe instead of getting just another Star Wars universe film with people in it.

[General Battuta]

The sequel trilogy is about how the people who grew up with Star Wars relate to it, so it is by nature reflexive on the OT and the PT (with Luke here being the guy who watched the prequels and became disillusioned; he has to be convinced there is still a story to be told).

TLJ is approximately as conclusive as Empire, which is to say the characters have completed their major arcs but the plot remains open.

I don't think there's anything poorly written about Holdo's actions. People have just slipped down a horrible incline greased with CinemaSins and How It Should've Ended into a pit full of tactical realism where the question 'why did this character do this thing?' can only be answered with 'because the movie is poorly written and makes no sense.' Instead, people should ask "Why did these characters make these choices?" and search for reasons the movie provides.  If no reasons can be found, the characters are poorly written. The fact that this movie presents characters whose motives can be talked about and explored is the definition of good character writing.

I almost wrote a bunch of **** here explaining why Holdo and Poe's actions both make a lot of sense given their respective personalities and histories, and the information they each possess. But that's just going in circles again. Instead I will say that 'cornered irregular partisan group in their literal final hours of existence' is probably the one place in all of human existence where I would most expect a mutiny.

[mjn.mixael]

I very much disagree with your justification on poorly written characters, especially in the case of Holdo who is barely a character and more of a plot obstacle. She literally shows up out of nowhere to be an opposing force to Poe.

[Snarks]

The sequel trilogy is about how the people who grew up with Star Wars relate to it, so it is by nature reflexive on the OT and the PT (with Luke here being the guy who watched the prequels and became disillusioned; he has to be convinced there is still a story to be told).

I'm curious how much of an impact this has on its audience. Being someone who only watched the entire saga about 2-3 years ago, I can safely say that Star Wars was not a direct part of my childhood. All that said though, it is literally impossible to avoid the memes that come with Star Wars. The big reveal about Vader being Luke's father was spoiled for me literally over a decade ago.

[The E]

I'm curious how much of an impact this has on its audience.

I would like to refer you to Mika's posts in this thread, the entirety of the negative discourse surrounding this film, the existence of the "remake TLJ" nonsense....

[The E]

I very much disagree with your justification on poorly written characters, especially in the case of Holdo who is barely a character and more of a plot obstacle. She literally shows up out of nowhere to be an opposing force to Poe.

In Star Wars, a giant tentacle monster lives in the waste disposal infrastructure of a starship that literally shows out of nowhere to be a problem.
In Empire, a bounty hunter literally shows up out of nowhere who knows exactly what Han was planning to do.
In Jedi, a bunch of walking merchandising shows up out of nowhere to first be a hindrance, then allies to our heroes.
In Phantom Menace, a slave owner is randomly immune to force suggestions just to have an excuse for an action scene.
In Attack of the Clones, there's a Christopher Lee cameo out of nowhere to be a mid-boss for the heroes.
In Revenge of the Sith, there's a weird roboman who has too many lightsabers that comes out of nowhere to be a menace to Obi-Wan.

This can go on and on. The point is "Holdo shows up out of nowhere" is .... well, CinemaSins bull****. It's the kind of plot turn that gets labelled a "plot hole" by people who really should know better. And "barely a character"? She is more of a character than Admiral "MEME" Ackbar. In terms of her characterization, she is about equal to Lando in Empire.

Holdo is not badly written. Phasma is a character that's badly written; Holdo is a character that is there to serve a few purposes, but since she doesn't have an arc of her own and for obvious reasons won't be appearing in any future SW films, she doesn't get as much stuff to do than the recurring (or planned-to-be-recurring) characters.

Also, Holdo is not a plot obstacle in her section of the film. Poe is.

[mjn.mixael]

Wut. Poe is the hero... she is the obstacle. That's basic story telling. You literally just said that Holdo is there only to serve a few purposes. The whole plot there is filmed from Poe's perspective. She is the obstacle and then the catalyst for his having a character arc even if it's a really blunt "say-it-out-loud-so-the-audience-doesn't-miss-it" arc.

If you're trying to say that Poe is his own obstacle then you can literally say that about any character that ever had to change to accomplish something. That's a stupid argument and a way to mince words to try and shut down a debate.

Also they tried to make the audience care that Holdo scarified herself. No one gives a flying **** if you don't build up the character, which they didn't do because she's not a character, she's a plot device.

I see your bullet points of fandom whataboutism and say to you that some of those are obviously stretching as a comparison to Holdo. The trash monster? Really? But Fett, Ewoks, Watto, Lee, Grevious are all stupid and have always been stupid... especially the latter 3. So Holdo can just be added to the list of stupid.

Actually, no. I'm not going to get drawn into another minute detail of TLJ and how stupid it was. I don't care. It's not how any one point is stupid that makes the film mediocre at best. It's the number of stupid things along with a nothing ending. I'd rather see your thoughts on this.

And then there's the ending which continues to leave me uncaring about it at all. This being the middle movie in a trilogy should have been more like a tv mid-season finale. Give me something. Instead it's more like the season finale to Bones. For those of you who didn't watch Bones, it ends with the murder-mystery solving team essentially getting ready for the next murder-mystery. They'll go on solving murders forever. Sure, you can force in some stuff.. "How is Bones going to raise kids and solve murders at the same time?" or "what's the new Lab going to be like with Hodgens as the boss?", but they aren't really lingering questions that need another season to answer. It's the same with TLJ. The rebels escape again is really all there is to it. How are they gonna rebuild? It's not important because we know they just will. It's Star Wars. Everything else is wrapped up. All the lose threads are tied up (or rather cut off). The rebels will go on rebelling ad infinitum. Which really speaks to the whole corporitization of nu Star Wars. Of course they'll go on rebelling forever. How else is Disney going to keep this going? For as much as TLJ tries to push the boundaries and make Star Wars different, I partially feel it did nothing at all. Could we really have Star Wars without stormtroopers or rebels in orange? I'd like to be proven wrong.

Let's take the next trilogy 30-40 years down the line. The First Order is gone, and Rey is off doing who knows what, having started a new kind of Jedi or whatever. We meet new heroes and new antogonists that don't wear plastic helmets and aren't obsessed with the last trilogy's villain. If they really want to let the past die, let's go somewhere really new with a story about characters that exist in the Star Wars universe instead of getting just another Star Wars universe film with people in it.

Particularly this.

The rebels will go on rebelling ad infinitum. Which really speaks to the whole corporitization of nu Star Wars. Of course they'll go on rebelling forever. How else is Disney going to keep this going? For as much as TLJ tries to push the boundaries and make Star Wars different, I partially feel it did nothing at all. Could we really have Star Wars without stormtroopers or rebels in orange?

TLJ is forward-thinking as long as it's a good argument. TLJ and it's fans claim it to be the movie that moves star wars in a new direction. I say.... not really.