Author Topic: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi  (Read 103372 times)

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Offline General Battuta

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I will forever love this movie for actually pushing Star Wars forward and asking questions about the nature of the Force and who 'deserves' to hold its power. Also for the Poe/Holdo arc and the lightspeed ram.

This movie didn't take the cowardly step of ignoring the prequels. Instead it said, 'given what we saw of the Jedi and their clear failures, where do we go next with the role of the Force?'

 
Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
YOU GUYS. "How it should have ended" did The Last Jedi and it's amazing.


 

Offline Enioch

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I will forever love this movie for actually pushing Star Wars forward and asking questions about the nature of the Force and who 'deserves' to hold its power.

"It's not about what you deserve. It's about what you believe."[/ww] #don'tgetme****ingstarted

YOU GUYS. "How it should have ended" did The Last Jedi and it's amazing.


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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I will forever love this movie for actually pushing Star Wars forward and asking questions about the nature of the Force and who 'deserves' to hold its power. Also for the Poe/Holdo arc and the lightspeed ram.

This movie didn't take the cowardly step of ignoring the prequels. Instead it said, 'given what we saw of the Jedi and their clear failures, where do we go next with the role of the Force?'

I wouldn't say I loved Last Jedi, but I do appreciate that it tried new things. I had been saying to myself that Ep8 would be a good judge of if I want to bother continuing with this franchise (since 7 was clearly going to be something safe to get butts back in seats).. but 8 took only a few tepid steps forward. I guess 9 will be a good measure of how far they are willing to go... of course it's Abrams, sooooooo. Maybe 10? Maybe that's the brilliant game they are playing... giving people like me just enough hope that they'll let Star Wars evolve and change to keep my own butt in the theater.

The things I mostly didn't like about 8 is how other than a couple character developments, the plot didn't really go anywhere. The whole movie was, essentially, a single battle where the rebels resistance was defeated but implied they'll come back stronger (like always).
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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Yeah I felt it was a bit drawn out.   I expected more from the planet with the red smoke.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
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-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
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-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

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Offline Scotty

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The things I mostly didn't like about 8 is how other than a couple character developments, the plot didn't really go anywhere. The whole movie was, essentially, a single battle where the rebels resistance was defeated but implied they'll come back stronger (like always).

But enough about Empire Strikes Back, how did you feel about the new movie?

 

Offline Det. Bullock

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The things I mostly didn't like about 8 is how other than a couple character developments, the plot didn't really go anywhere. The whole movie was, essentially, a single battle where the rebels resistance was defeated but implied they'll come back stronger (like always).

But enough about Empire Strikes Back, how did you feel about the new movie?

IIRC there is a contemporary review of ESB that had a similar complaint, only it didn't even concede about the character development.
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Just because ESB did it 20 years ago, didn't make it good. I disliked ESB since I was a kid for all the same reasons. It's redeeming factor as a Star Wars film in the particular conversation is that it deeply expanded on the franchise lore. Last Jedi expanded the lore in a few small ways. I'm ready for them to go all in.
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Offline Black Wolf

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Just because ESB did it 20 years ago, didn't make it good.

Want to feel old? Phantom Menace came out almost twenty years ago.

Empire was nearly forty years ago. :(


[EDIT]Oh, and I realise this is insanely late to the party, but I was away from HLP when the movie came out. Without getting deep into the minutia of it and dissecting every little bit, I have never walked out of a SW movie more disappointed than I did after TLJ. I have been a Star Wars fan since I was a kid, but I walked out completely ambivalent and unexcited about the continuing saga, the next movie. People can make all the arguments they want about how it was technically brilliant or whatever, but for me there will never be more damning evidence that it was a bad movie than the way I felt walking out.

That's super subjective I know. I have after the tact justifications for why I felt that way, I can point to a bunch of stuff I disliked or that was (IMO) mishandled. But for me, I think there was something wrong at the core of the film, not easily solvable by tweaking this or that aspect, changing this or that character, removing this or that scene or sequence. It needed a page 1 rewrite. :-\
« Last Edit: February 19, 2018, 09:36:31 am by Black Wolf »
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Offline mjn.mixael

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Egads... 40 years ago. You're right!

I went and saw Black Panther last night (excellent film). Running before it was the Solo trailer and it dawned on me what I think the issue is with the new Star Wars movies coming out. Star Wars is no longer special. The movies are made to make all the $$$ for Disney with as much catering to fans as required to get butts in seats. It's Star Wars for the sake of Star Wars, not because they have a story to tell. Maybe the 10,11,12 trilogy will be different because it will be helmed by the same director and he can craft a complex plotline for us to follow. Right now though? Just Star Wars... all the Star Wars so that Star Wars can Star Wars and fans can Star Wars.
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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
May the star wars be with star wars.



Also it has no leia character..   A fitty for the dads to covet.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The only good Zod is a dead Zod
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Offline The E

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi


Recommended viewing.
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I really need lifе to touch me
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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi

I think this series pretty much sums up my problems with the writing in TLJ. Especially the Holdo arc. "How a child would write dramatic tension." Is how I'd describe it.

The E -- I fixed the yt embed. Remember, only the video id, i.e. everything after the "v=" part, goes between the yt tags
« Last Edit: April 18, 2018, 02:31:11 am by The E »

 

Offline Luis Dias

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I can't watch more than 15 minutes of that screed. It's as if most of these bashing critics just don't understand what Star Wars is. They take it way too ****ing seriously. At 14:00 he goes on to complain that Hux is just a mumbling idiot, and not the incredible strategist that he had headcanoned in his wild bedroom fantasies, and the whole video just goes along like that. "Oh this sucks because it isn't what I imagined it could be". Oopsie ****ing do. Critique what's there, not what is not, ffs.

For all the incredible points that the critical TLJ fandom can do, the most I hate about them is the absolute patreon market they've created around hating TLJ. I just can't take them seriously.

 
Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Okay I have to ask

How do you make a *part 1* of a critique 80 minutes long already?

 

Offline The E

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
By not really understanding Star Wars, or filmmaking, or what a reference is. There's a bit at around 20 minutes in where he complains on and on about the bombers the Resistance uses in the opening battle; how they're bad ships and stupidly designed and only there because of Rian Johnson's love of WW2 bombers.

Now, I don't know whether Johnson has any particular love for these things, but I do know that George Lucas has: While making the original Star Wars, Lucas used guncam footage from WW2 fighters and bombers as placeholders for all the spaceship stuff that ILM hadn't filmed yet; these explicit references and allusions (which, granted, carried more resonance in the 1970s than they do today) are part of the Star Wars canon. TLJ using footage like this or setups like this isn't a "plothole"; it's a deliberate way of evoking something from our own history.

Film criticism is an art form. Whatever this video is, it isn't film criticism.
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Offline Luis Dias

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
how they're bad ships and stupidly designed and only there because of Rian Johnson's love of WW2 bombers.

Holy ****ing ****. If I knew it was gonna drop those amazing bombshells, I'd actually go on watching it. :lol:  :banghead:  :nono:

 

Offline The E

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Earlier in this thread, I talked about cinemasins/TGWTG level of bad criticism and nitpicking and the need to go beyond it to actual film analysis. This series of videos is 302 minutes of nitpicking; you can watch most of the original trilogy (which is 377 minutes long) in the time it takes this dude to pick apart TLJ, and if all of them are on the same level as the points he mentions in the start, I wonder what actual criticisms there are that aren't "I thought $DETAIL introduced in (TPM|AOC|ROS|ANH|ESB|ROTJ|TFA) was something different than what TLJ portraited it as".

Also, since I watched it more against better judgment, at around 35 minutes, the main complaint seems to be "I don't understand the relationship between Snoke and Ren", when the film is very clearly setting it up as an abusive, manipulative one (instead of the paternal one between Anakin and Palpatine).

And on and on it goes, asking "why is this film doing this and not this thing other films have done", without ever considering what this film wants to set up....
« Last Edit: April 18, 2018, 09:51:32 am by The E »
If I'm just aching this can't go on
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Offline Snarks

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Now, I don't know whether Johnson has any particular love for these things, but I do know that George Lucas has: While making the original Star Wars, Lucas used guncam footage from WW2 fighters and bombers as placeholders for all the spaceship stuff that ILM hadn't filmed yet; these explicit references and allusions (which, granted, carried more resonance in the 1970s than they do today) are part of the Star Wars canon. TLJ using footage like this or setups like this isn't a "plothole"; it's a deliberate way of evoking something from our own history.

I'd argue it's a clichéd trope at this point. Maybe in the 1970s it was a fresh idea to allude to WW2, but I'm frankly tired of space Nazis.

If we want to argue that the new trilogy is good art, then it needs be relevant to the context of its time period, which at the moment, really isn't about imperialistic fascist regimes but something closer to cronyism, cynicism, and social unrest. The critic from the video "A Critique of Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Part 1" actually makes a good point early on at 7:35 about making a trilogy of film where the bad guys are puny and trying to survive against the good guys. This would be infinitely more relevant to the social discourse of our time. Instead, we get another Deathstar, another not Empire, another desert child protagonist, and another resistance. If we are to judge the new trilogy as art, then it's from an artist who is too afraid to move out from under the shadow of previous artists, recycling overused tropes and unwilling to embrace something new.

 

Offline The E

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Re: *SPOILER THREAD* Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I'd argue it's a clichéd trope at this point. Maybe in the 1970s it was a fresh idea to allude to WW2, but I'm frankly tired of space Nazis.

Oh? Then why are you watching Star Wars?

Quote
If we want to argue that the new trilogy is good art, then it needs be relevant to the context of its time period, which at the moment, really isn't about imperialistic fascist regimes but something closer to cronyism, cynicism, and social unrest.

Oh boy.

I would argue that imperialistic fascism is a relevant topic for today, purely based on how much of it seems to be making a resurgence lately, but that's neither here nor there.
What you are missing, I think, is that both TFA and TLJ are commentaries on Star Wars as a cultural phenomenon. There's also some other messages in there, about how we need to resist the fascists and their fanboys, how we need to have hope and make hope even when it seems we can't have any, but the core of TFA and TLJ is about Star Wars. TFA is, very intentionally, a sort of retread of A New Hope: It retells that story with slightly rejiggered roles not just to serve as an entry point for contemporary kids, but also as a nostalgia boost for people like us who saw the original films as kids. Han says, in TFA, "It's real. All of it.", and at that point, he's talking to you, the middle-aged viewer and is telling you that yes, Star Wars is still magic, can be magic again, even after all that prequel nonsense.
TLJ, in its rejection of several of the oh so important plot hooks TFA set up, is saying "Yes, we can have that magic back, but we shouldn't try to remake the old. Instead, we need to rebuild it, excise the flaws that one George Lucas put into it in the 70s and 90s, and make it matter to us, as we are right now.

Quote
The critic from the video "A Critique of Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Part 1" actually makes a good point early on at 7:35 about making a trilogy of film where the bad guys are puny and trying to survive against the good guys. This would be infinitely more relevant to the social discourse of our time. Instead, we get another Deathstar, another not Empire, another desert child protagonist, and another resistance. If we are to judge the new trilogy as art, then it's from an artist who is too afraid to move out from under the shadow of previous artists, recycling overused tropes and unwilling to embrace something new.

I think that a film about how the bad guys are a menace, yes, but an ultimately pathetic and weak one is a good message if we look at current politics around us. Hux is a buffoon, caught up in cosplaying as something intimidating he vaguely remembers from his history lessons. Kylo Ren is a mess of anxiety and parental issues, who has retreated into a power fantasy (urged on by a father figure that is in turns abusive and nurturing; the very image of a really toxic relationship there). We are asked to laugh at Hux and empathize with (but not exactly forgive or let go) Kylo, and I don't really see what's wrong with that. Neither of these characters are as intimidating or formidable as Tarkin or Vader were, sure, but that's the point. It's not a flaw in the movies or their writing that these people don't seem as grand as the old villains: That they aren't on that same level despite making every attempt at it (just like certain tiki-torch wielding idiots aren't on the same level as the people they're emulating, yet still a thing we need to take serious and combat lest they get real power) is their tragedy.

Early on in this thread, Battuta commented that
I liked this film a fair bit (and it left me with a lot to think about) but I have never seen a major pop culture movie where the people who dislike it so clearly, totally do not understand the movie. It's like some sort of forcing function for comprehending stories.
And he's mostly correct: A lot of criticism of this movie is based around a fundamental misunderstanding of what this movie is and what it is intending to do.
Again: TLJ and TFA are movies about Star Wars, about how we've talked about Star Wars over the years and how these films have shaped our expectations and realities. If the prequels as a whole were a deconstruction of the Jedi mythos as set up in the original films (which is a theory that isn't without merit), this new trilogy is shaping up to be a reconstruction of it, an attempt to give Star Wars its mythological qualities back that got lost in all the midichlorians and trade federations and bouncy ball Yodas. As commercial artistic endeavours go, this is much more valid than most other ways I could think of to continue the Star Wars saga.

I would like to come back to an earlier point you made:
Quote
If we want to argue that the new trilogy is good art, then it needs be relevant to the context of its time period

No. Good art doesn't need to be relevant in the context of its own, or in fact any, time period. Whether or not it is is a factor in how popular a given work is on release or afterwards, but popularity and goodness aren't exactly related.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns