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Kolzig

Star Wars Episode 8

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Ok, I don't automatically hate unsuspensful movies, and I do think it had *some*, but it was more like Jake said - felt like a season of a TV series done as 2+ hour movie. Any tension and dramatic arcs just felt to be at a very wrong pace to me. And I guess the twists could be fine, and are somewhat needed in an action movie, so maybe I put the focus of my criticism on the wrong thing - mainly I felt that it was just not a very believable story told with bad pacing and it was trying to give every main character a chance to shine, which is not what film storytelling should be about, IMHO.

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I definitely agree that the story is not very believable. I mean I'm off the boat as soon as they go faster than light, frankly. I find that super tough to swallow. I don't know if the movie is any less believable than any of the other Star Wars films, though. Where did the movie lose you in terms of believing in it?

 

I guess I'm also not sure that the movie was set up to give every main character a chance to shine any more than literally any other movie ever made in the history of movies. Can you give me examples of movies you like where some of the main characters don't get a chance to shine, like they just sort of mope around and never do anything? I think my confusion is a bit that it seems like the way you even find out who a main character is in the first place is by looking at who gets a chance to shine. I'm struggling to think of movies, especially Star Wars movies, where any of the main characters don't get any chances to shine.

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I get a feeling that now you're just making fun of me. On the first point, a sci-fi or fantasy story should still aim for suspension of disbelief and plausibility within a certain framework. In this case I found for example these things to be rather dumb and not believable:

The whole chace - why didn't they just surround them? Those semi-ground vehicles at the end - most ridiculous machinery for fighting in such a situation - hardly any maneuverability, stuck to the ground and fighting flying vehicles... The bombing run... etc.

 

As for the second point, we can tell who are the main characters by the screen time they are given. It is about there being a lack of a big story arc, instead there's a big cast of characters with multiple dramatic arcs all going on almost at the same time. Every character needs at least one EPIC HEROIC moment, so those are abundant. There are no personalities here, epicness is the main quality the persons have.

 

When they get to this secret base at the end, apparently it was just standing there, unused, waiting, with the war machines somehow keeping themselves in condition, because there were no locals there to tell them how things work or how many exits the cave has. Or maybe there were locals, but they were not interested in such things. The otherwise useless Poe guy had to be the one to dramatically discover that the animals are escaping through a tiny hole.

 

Another issue: just for us to be sure who the villains are, they are the ones with the most scarred and disfigured faces. Ugly people are evil, simple.

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No, I'm not making fun of you. I just think you have actual more interesting reasons you didn't like the movie, and I'm trying to draw those out because I'm interested in what they are. Just like you realized you misstated things when you said unsuspensful = the reason this movie is bad, I think you're misstating things (unconsciously) when you say the movie isn't believable, because I think that people believe in movies they like and disbelieve in movies they don't like. We had a similar conversation back in the Blade Runner 2049 thread - I pointed out all the stuff in the original that makes zero sense and you claimed that your brain evolved such that you don't notice this sort of thing. That's false because you noticed it in this movie, and I think that shows that I'm right about how people only notice this stuff when they dislike the movie for other reasons and they start searching around for something to justify their dislike and they settle on plot holes. Guess what? Every movie has enough plot holes to drive a Star Destroyer through. People only notice them when they start nitpicking in order to justify their dislike of a movie. They're not the reason people dislike the movie in the first place, though, and that's what I'm interested in here.

 

As for none of the characters having personalities, I thought this movie was pretty gung-ho about giving them personalities, especially compared to The Force Awakens:

 

 

Poe's personality in The Force Awakens was "sardonic once." Poe's personality in this movie is sardonic, headstrong, obsessed with winning a battle even if it loses the war, has to be in charge of things, etc., and he's got a character arc where all of that plays out in interesting ways when he clashes with another strong personality, Admiral Halitosis or whatever her name is. Rey's got this whole arc about finding Luke, wanting stuff from Luke, wanting to find out about her parents, deciding to try to turn Ren, her brushes with the dark side hole, etc. Finn goes from just caring about saving Rey and escaping from the whole thing to being ready to sacrifice himself, and on the way there's a whole arc about cynicism and what makes the people on the casino planet bad and whether both sides are equally crummy and so on. Luke's got so much character stuff going on it would take a book to go through it. Kylo Ren... I mean wow he's maybe got almost as much as Luke.

 

That's not to say you're wrong, I'm just interested in why you think the characters here have no personality, especially if we stack it up against other Star Wars movies, for instance (especially TFA).

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I saw it a second time and liked it more the second time. The rough parts I felt even more than before (both Finn and Poe’s stories are rough for very different reasons imo), but the high highs, and the overall structure of “meticulously set up a ton of things and then spend the final third of the movie paying them off one after the other” really worked for me the second time around. It was fun watching the audience sit literally on the edge of their seats from the

throne room scene with Snoke, Kylo, and Rey

 on through

the reveal that Luke never left the island

which got an outrageously huge cheer. 

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Quote

That's false because you noticed it in this movie, and I think that shows that I'm right about how people only notice this stuff when they dislike the movie for other reasons and they start searching around for something to justify their dislike and they settle on plot holes.

 

Yeah, as someone who doesn't really care for Star Wars, let me assure all readers that the bullshit you are complaining about here is in no way out of character with the other Star Wars movies. The trench run doesn't make any fucking sense in A New Hope either. Empire is better at it, but Empire is not staring at you and pouring the milk down the sink like this film is.

 

For a movie I was fairly luke-warm on, it's weird how much it's stuck in my head.

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8 hours ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

No, I'm not making fun of you. I just think you have actual more interesting reasons you didn't like the movie, and I'm trying to draw those out because I'm interested in what they are. Just like you realized you misstated things when you said unsuspensful = the reason this movie is bad, I think you're misstating things (unconsciously) when you say the movie isn't believable, because I think that people believe in movies they like and disbelieve in movies they don't like.

 

I think I must admit that I wasn't presenting very good reasoning for my dislike of the movie. To be honest while watching I was really torn between liking it and not liking it. But at the end I just felt I couldn't accept all the flaws, which I think are numerous, and still say that I like it. I can only say I liked the visual side of it a lot, for the most part.

 

To be honest I'm not at the moment very interested in going deeper and really exploring my dislike of it. To summarize, maybe I'd say it just had too much stuff, too many characters to care about, and that stopped it from focusing on particular things or characters better (except Rey and Ren perhaps) and then it just had several situations which I found ridiculous or dumb, but which may have come mostly from again having too much stuff in it and not being able to spend more time to show why the situation would NOT be ridiculous. The motivation of the characters didn't feel right to me, and I think some of the setup for the story was just a bit lazy for not establishing better motivations for certain things.

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7 hours ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

That's false because you noticed it in this movie, and I think that shows that I'm right about how people only notice this stuff when they dislike the movie for other reasons and they start searching around for something to justify their dislike and they settle on plot holes. Guess what? Every movie has enough plot holes to drive a Star Destroyer through. People only notice them when they start nitpicking in order to justify their dislike of a movie. They're not the reason people dislike the movie in the first place, though, and that's what I'm interested in here.

 

I agree that when you dislike something it is easier to notice nitpicks. I think all viewers must reach and maintain a certain degree of suspension of disbelief. But I think any movie is better for having fewer things to assault the suspension of disbelief with. Admittedly there are a lot of individual differences with regards to what threatens the bubble and what doesn't. We know and assume different things. I know that I'm a person who can easily get hung up on the things I notice, while happily ignore the ones I don't.

 

However, a movie does not do itself any favours by challenging that suspension right from the start

 

Spoiler

I am of course talking about the bombing run. The movie lost me with:

  • the baffling stupidity of the First Order's lack of response to the approaching small craft(s). If only they'd hand waved it by saying something. Or why not, in a movie of million twists, have an implausible diversion.
  • the Resistance plan apparently being calling the bad guys and taunting them? This really baffled me. How is this acceptable writing?
  • the laser turret destruction scene. Where are the tie fighters? I'm pretty sure some where in Star Wars they've already said the big lasers can't hit the small ships. I felt it was a really stupid way of trying to make Poe seem heroic. Why wasn't it just a huge fighter melee from the start? The only answer I have is that they needed Poe to have heroic moment. For me it did the exact opposite, and after the terrible jokes I was thoroughly disconnected from Poe.

After all that I certainly was primed to react negatively to anything. The dropping of the bombs scene felt extremely flat, as my mind was still wondering how on Earth this script was greenlit.

 

Interestingly a lot of people have reacted to Leia in space and Luke telepresence-duel poorly. I didn't even register them. I guess I just think people use magic in Star Wars and I am cool with it. I felt Luke was handled quite well by the script in general, and I think Hamill did a good job with it as well. The whole Ben -> Ren reveal is rather contrived when I think about it, but I was completely willing to buy it.

 

As a comparison, Gravity is a movie with shitty science that I like a lot and think is a great movie. The science isn't really the main point, the opening is gorgeous and really sells what the movie is about. On the other hand, Interstellar is a movie I really dislike, even though I think it is a really well made movie, and even respect it a lot. But a movie about black holes with strong allusions to hard scifi just shouldn't so utterly screw up the physics. For no real reason. The liberties with physics just weren't needed by plot. I liked it a fair bit until the wormhole, after which it was terrible.

 

Spoiler

Another thing I've been wondering is that I disliked most of the humour of the movie. Was it because I was kind of primed to do so or was it bad. The BB8 X-Wing maintenance felt like calculating repeat of droid stuff. I did like the Finn water bag leak -gag a lot though.

 

As I said earlier, I like the island bits and then Rey and Ren bits. I'm kind of confused why the movie had any other bits. I don't really get Poe's arc and I think Finn didn't really have one. That's two thirds of the movie that I suppose I fundamentally didn't understand. Which I suspect is the real reason why I don't really like it. And if the movie hadn't started with such inanity I might have been more kindly. Although the Holdo vs Poe mutiny was a typical example of we have to create conflict so we hide information there's no need to hide. And the chase was really stupid. And...

 

:-)

 

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Finn's story is the weakest for me. He starts as the same desperate and selfish person he was in Force Awakens (laser-focussed on Rey to the point where he says 'fuck everyone else, I'll lie to everyone just so I can get to the base and rescue the girl I fancy') but without the background of fear and the drive to escape that justified his thoughtlessness back then. Here he finishes the movie just as he started it - with absolutely no regard for the bigger picture. It's Poe (showing his own shred of growth) who has to hold him back from running out onto the battlefield AGAIN to help Luke. He fits in with the theme of failure, but we haven't seen him learn from it.

 

I think the film might have benefitted from reducing his screentime here and saving his arc for the next one, finally exorcising his First Order demons by confronting them, Star Wars-style, head-on in the form of Phazma. Or better yet, having Phazma captured and him having to interact with her, or even work with her.

 

I guess that's still possible if Phazma returns. Would have been nice to give Finn some more development and free up some space in this one, though.

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5 hours ago, Erkki said:

 

I think I must admit that I wasn't presenting very good reasoning for my dislike of the movie. To be honest while watching I was really torn between liking it and not liking it. But at the end I just felt I couldn't accept all the flaws, which I think are numerous, and still say that I like it. I can only say I liked the visual side of it a lot, for the most part.

 

To be honest I'm not at the moment very interested in going deeper and really exploring my dislike of it. To summarize, maybe I'd say it just had too much stuff, too many characters to care about, and that stopped it from focusing on particular things or characters better (except Rey and Ren perhaps) and then it just had several situations which I found ridiculous or dumb, but which may have come mostly from again having too much stuff in it and not being able to spend more time to show why the situation would NOT be ridiculous. The motivation of the characters didn't feel right to me, and I think some of the setup for the story was just a bit lazy for not establishing better motivations for certain things.

Thanks, this gets closer to what's going on (and if you don't want to go deeper that's fine). Like I said in my first post in this thread, this movie does have a ton of stuff, and I can definitely see why someone would be turned off by that. I don't think there's anything strange about preferring a more focused, straightforward movie to something like this, which is like twelve movies worth of stuff.

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I saw it last night and my first impression is that I liked it, despite some sections like the whole casino bit and the characters from that. And being British and a fan of his work, seeing Ade Edmonson at the very start took me out of the film for a bit because it was unexpected and a little jarring but he did well in his role so I got used to it. I did like that there was a lot going on, it made feel like a fuller world with more stuff to it unlike in the Force Awakens which just felt like a straight simple plot line through the whole film, though some cuts were a bit jarring and for me it would have been nice to see some of the transitions that had to have happened between the cuts. Also figuring out what happened when was a bit tricky for me when Rey's stuff picked up from the end of TFA but I couldn't tell how much time had passed for the rest of them. So while the flaws are noticeable, they didn't detract too much from my experience of the film and I look forward to rewatching it more than Episode 7. This film was always going to be a tricky beast, being the middle of a trilogy that could only give so many answers (and in that regard, did a lot more than I thought it would do) and providing a satisfying ending is tough but I think it managed that. I think this film will be easier to judge once the Episode 9 is out and all the arcs of the story have been concluded. I wonder if Empire was as divisive on release as The Last Jedi has been though I suppose it'll be very hard to compare as the fandom has changed so much in the intervening 37 years.

 

Also, with regards to feelings of Marvel fatigue that I think most are feeling right now, I don't think Star Wars will get to that level and it'll be interesting to see what their plans are for after Episode 9. If it's just to do a spin off side story every couple of years or so I'm more than ok with that but yearly Star Wars Stories might be a bit too much - I'm only really accepting of it now because half the time it's a proper part of the trilogy if that makes any sense.

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On 12/15/2017 at 1:11 PM, Chris said:

I thought there were flashes of excellence—visuals, performances, certainly music—but they were strung together by a LOT of very boring or in some cases utterly nonsensical plot and character motivation. It's bonkers to me that the filmmakers thought this movie needed to be almost three hours long.

 

I think your take is pretty similar to mine - there is a lot to love, but also a lot to face-palm over. There was something about the tone of all the humor they crammed into that really took me out of it. In the few gags that worked for me they really seemed to love to linger on the punch line a little too long.

 

There has always been a bit of humor/brevity in the original trilogy but the slapstick nature and modern tone and just the pure frequency of it in TLJ seemed over the top. 

 

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hey y'all, I liked the movie even thought it was really messy. I agree with a lot of you that Finn's arc needed to be restructured quite a bit, as the film doesn't really know what to do with him. I'm way into the parts of the film that screwed over the fans, and it's always awesome to see paleobotanist Ellie Sattler anywhere (in space!)

 

but I got a question

 

is the red stuff the salt, or is it the white stuff on top of the red stuff that's the salt

 

Wait, ok, I could look this up myself, the Star Wars website says it's the white stuff, which is what I thought (it makes more sense), but man that dude deffo licks some of the red stuff 

 

(EDIT 2: THANKS @TychoCelchuuu)

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So I'm suffering from Blockbuster Exhaustion in general, so I'm not predisposed to forgive the various issues inherent in blockbuster storytelling, but I was excited for this as the lights went down. We whooped (as is required) at the opening fanfare, and then I settled in to enjoy, but found myself annoyed, bored, and frustrated by the first half, then more interested as the various threads wound their way to the (for now) conclusion.


I was annoyed by a number of things -

Spoiler

 

the absurdity of the opening space fight sequence (the lack of fighters) and the overblown WWII-imagery and borrowed heroism it lended to the bomber pilots' final moments. The fact she can use the Force in extremis is interesting, but doesn't justify any of that. (and having that bomb-dropping imagery echo actual US imperialist bombing footage gave me a shudder - we're subtlely being primed to approve of militarism from many sides) The humor mostly felt forced and modern. The "Godspeed" line felt wildly out of place. In general lots of stuff happened that had the shape of something worthwhile and important, but no actual substance. The clearest instance of this was Laura Dern's post-Leia-injury speech to the assembled officers. "We are the remaining spark, we can't let it go out, we've gotta keep fighting." That thing. It was functional (especially in that it served up some of the verbiage and Themic Elements that would be clumsily delivered on at the end), and of course it was a familiar Star Wars scene ("many Bothans" and all that), but it was bad, you guys, it was really, really bad! Dern sucked – she was all limpid and swooshy, missing any passion or gravitas – and the writing was as cliched as it gets. It had the shape of the familiar and the important but it didn't earn that importance in any way. It was empty. Just like lots of the scenes between Luke and Rey were empty. There's a lot of back-and-forth but no actual dyamism – several of the scenes accomplished the same exact function and added no new information. There wasn't a sense of development; they were empty scenes: "Conflict" without any meat on its bones.

 

So eventually Ren and Rey are trying to recruit each other and things are getting interesting. Two people with opposing motives are working against each other, and we're actually interested, because there's ambiguity and uncertainty – we don't know what Rey's thinking all the time, and how deeply Ren's seductions are hitting her, and the same goes in the other direction. They each get to impact each other, and the stakes are high. This culminates in the well-done drama of the Snoke-room, and all the attendant surprises and revelations, most of which are satisfying.

 

 

The main issue

For me the main problem is that Rey is pretty uninteresting in this movie, when hers should be the struggle we can't look away from.

Spoiler

 

Functionally in the movie all she does with Luke is batter against his disdain for a while, get a little bummed, then resume her battering, then change her plan to go convince Ren to be a good guy. She doesn't have a lot of character, and she sure doesn't seem tested or changed by the events in the film. Functionally, she's just an optimist believer in goodness and the rightness of her cause, and that doesn't seem changed.

 

Here's what Could Have Been (and I know this is a dangerous, perhaps stupid game): Let's say Rey is fundamentally optimistic, full of grit and determination, and is creative in the face of adversity. That's who she is. How do we learn it? Because we SEE it. So she beats against Luke for a while, getting more and more frantic and disbelieving. After being on the island for a day or two, her whole sense of the world is tested, and we see her rage, or despair, or whatever is most appropriate, and then finally she says, "Listen. I know now you're not going to come and fight. I can't believe it, and I'm sorely disappointed and for a while my faith in the whole enterprise was tested, but you know what? I'm still going to go and fight for what's right, and for my friends. I have to. I couldn't live with myself if I didn't. And you don't have to come. But here's the thing; I am incredibly powerful and think I can do a good job but at the end of the day I have no teacher, and without your help I am going to go and get myself killed. So. You're devastated by the chance you had to avert a tragedy, by your failure to represent and live by the code of the light side of the Force? This is your chance to make it right. Teach me, and guide me past the pitfalls. Help me make the right choices, so that I can do the thing you originally inspired us all to do, to believe in and fight for what's good in the world, and in the people around us, no matter how far they have fallen. You believed in your father's humanity, and I believe in Ben's. He can be saved, and I'm going to try, and I need your help to win." Her character is such that she finds a way to make goodness and faith work, she finds a way to inspire, to reach for the best in people. It takes her a while to find it, but this quality is precisely why she makes a good Jedi. (I also like the idea of her saying "I don't know who my parents were, so I have to choose my mentors, my teachers, my family; and I choose you." That shows us her emotional intelligence, and her understanding of her own limitations.)

 

Luke is inspired and takes her on despite his fear of fucking up again, and his struggle is to believe he can guide her past the seductions of the dark side, and when she has the vision of the dark hole and is interested, he's terrified all over again, and filled with doubt, and they fight again, and she wins, but he's now really scared, and when the time comes for her to face Ren his act of faith is to let her go – despite his worries about his ability to protect her from the dark side, he has to believe (and she convinces him to believe) that it's worth it to try. And eventually, of course, he comes to believe this about himself.

 

That's MY new headcanon.

 

* Phasma vs Finn = stupid and boring. Him rising up after falling in the hole? Cheap and unearned heroism. It just 'happens'. He doesn't have to earn anything or overcome anything.

* Casino dog chase = pretty and monumentally vapid. I did chuckle at the little goblin rolling in the coins.

* BB8 was too competent. Yeah yeah, he's different than R2D2, but it was a little much.

* There was no sense of the massive loss of life they'd suffered at the end. It's nice to have Leia say "We have everything we need" and offer that voice of hope and reassurance, but it felt pat and too-sunny. It was jarring and confusing when combined with the tableau from the end of Empire – that was full of a wounded, distant hope that this was striving for and flubbed. (I think it may have worked better if it didn't try to reuse the same shot – too many elements banging against each other.)

 

 

I fully agree that when we like something, we give lots of little things a pass - this post is my demonstration that the reverse is true, as well. :)

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I really liked this! I was so happy with how irreverent it is. It has no reverence for what these movies are supposed to look like, no reverence for the kind (and amount!) of humor they're supposed to have, the tone they're supposed to have or the moral universe they exist in. As someone who feels very distanced from his peak Star Wars obsession circa 1996, that was the breath of fresh air I needed. 

 

 

I especially like the step away from the mystical half-baked truism Force shit of the original and prequel trilogies. I always hated Jedis as an established religion, and thought Yoda and Obi Wan were really tedious characters when they were in wise teacher mode. Johnson sets fire to a lot of Star Wars mythology with his approach, as literally visualized by the tree setting on fire. Then it's followed by Yoda saying "Page turner, it was not" because no one in this movie feels like they come from a galaxy far far away. Like how they keep talking about fuel and use the phrase "running on fumes" which makes me wonder what those spaceships are actually powered by. If only there were 20 books detailing the technology of Star Wars.

 

It feels like a half-step towards a Lord/Miller sensibility but the relentless playfulness (and even overly broad silliness) is tempered by a desire to follow through on the emotional journey of every character, no matter who, no matter how it screwed up the pacing. It feels personal and heartfelt in a way no Star Wars movie has since A New Hope. But A New Hope is an elegant weapon, not as clumsy or random as The Last Jedi.

 

After Force Awakens I had no confidence in Disney to allow a movie this idiosyncratic to be part of the main trilogy and if it weren't JJ Abrams taking the reins again for the next one I'd say it's got me more invested in  Star Wars as an ongoing series than ever. Even as a 12 year old who thought Episode 1 was really cool and neat and keen, I had no desire to return to that world. But this was a great time and I am invested in the emotional lives of these space people, even the villains, and that's really something.

 

On the other hand, I even liked the Porgs, and Porgs are objectively awful Star Wars Special Edition crap designed to sell stuffed animals over Christmas that feel extruded from the same think-tank as Minions. So maybe I'm some sort of lunatic.

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I saw the last jedi on saturday, and I find myself liking it the more I think about it, which is the opposite reaction I had to the force awakens.  There are a few obvious complaints I have which have been echoed elsewhere, however my biggest concern about the movie is that so much of it felt contrived.  There are a couple subplots in particular that felt like they were there because a character needed something to do, and not because there was some larger point to be made.  There are some genuinely great sequences in the film, but I feel as though a lot of the inconsistency comes from the need to tick all the right boxes.  Related to this, many of the scenes and character introductions to me seemed to be more justification for transmedia integration (yay buzzword) than something that was critical to the plot.  There are plenty of things I dislike about the film, and to me it adds up to an intriguing but ultimately average movie.  In a lot of ways this feels like Rian Johnson wanting to reset the star wars universe and redefine what it is, and what it can be. In particular...

 

Let's hope I don't mess up the spoiler tags here (if I do, I'll do my best to rectify it immediately)

 



The sequence with Luke, Kylo and Rey on the island was fantastic in it's entirety.  I really wish this comprised most of the movie both because of it's significance in the plot, and the meta commentary that was going on.  This felt like it was a battle for Rey's soul, and ultimately for the direction of star wars going forward.  Here Luke advocates for tradition and discipline, while Kylo sees the path forward as one of radical individualism.  Kylo is interested in knowing and catering to Rey's thoughts and motivations, while Luke was primarily interested in her ancestry so she can be molded into something familar.  Luke wants to see Rey follow a strict code that relies on the wisdom of the past, where Kylo is pragmatic.  So long as the goal is achieved let the consequences be damned.  Luke sees the Jedi as an embodiment of goodness and a means to order while Kylo questions the nature of organizational power.  Luke has exiled and stowed himself away from the world after he was faced with his lesser nature, while Kylo, when being confronted by Rey about "the good in him" seems to say "So what?".

 

It was really this sequence that cemented Kylo as my favorite character in the series, with some phenomenal acting on all sides.  Later in the movie this culminates in Rey and Kylo's conversation after the throne scene fight where she rejects both directions in favor of forming her own in the breaking of Luke's Light saber.  Here the movie deals with the force as less of a skill tree and more of a philosophical concern to great effect, and I'm hoping we see more things like this in the future.

 

 

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16 minutes ago, itsamoose said:

 

 

  Hide contents

 

 


The sequence with Luke, Kylo and Rey on the island was fantastic in it's entirety.  
 

 

 

 

I especially like the way Johnson plainly depicts the bridge between Kylo and Rey via simple editing. It felt similar to the way he depicted time travel mechanics in Looper. No sparks, no fading in or out, just not there one frame and suddenly there in the next. There was a more obvious CGI assisted visualization of their connection that could have happened, but the way Johnson just shoots them as shot/reverse shot, as if they were in the same scene, with the drastically different color schemes, is such a neat and unique visual. I don't know if I've ever seen psychic links depicted that way on film.



 

Also, thank Christ the big reveal about Rey's parentage is that "she's no one special" because I was dreading the inevitable moment that they would tie her to some piece of Star Wars mythos and make the whole thing about fate and destiny and she's the special chosen one blah blah blah that every blockbuster does now.

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10 hours ago, Patrick R said:

On the other hand, I even liked the Porgs, and Porgs are objectively awful Star Wars Special Edition crap designed to sell stuffed animals over Christmas that feel extruded from the same think-tank as Minions. So maybe I'm some sort of lunatic.

Porgs were designed to deal with the fact that there were puffins on that island and it was too much of a pain in the ass to remove them completely.

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Interesting! That certainly explains why they are so ubiquitous and conspicuously clutter the frame in so many of those scenes, which is what made me think of Star Wars Special Edition. On the other hand, this movie is already positively cluttered with new Star Wars creatures elsewhere so it still feels kind of Special Edition to me throughout, and puffin replacement doesn't explain that scene of Chewie traumatizing the porgs, or their return in the Falcon, and I do think those moments are designed to sell stuffed animals.

 

On the other hand, part of my respect for this movie is that everyone gets a character arc, and if he wasn't going to actually affect the plot in any way, Chewie's relationship with the porgs is a cute way to not forget about him.

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As I think about this further, and process other's reactions to this movie, I remember this is much more than just a movie; it's the foremost element of an aforementioned "transmedia brand experience", it's a movie, and it adds more to our understanding of the Star Wars universe.

 

And to me, at least, it's objectively not a very good movie. There's hardly any coherence to the structure, the character threads are all over the place, many characters' stories are explored halfheartedly, and the relation to the overall 'Star Wars' world is muddled, both too-reverent and putatively rebellious at once.

 

But interesting character questions get raised, some questions and suggestions about the overall Star Wars world are posed, and some long-standing assumptions are persuasively challenged. In that way, I think it is a hell of an entry in our understanding of the world, and as the internet is showing, people loooooove to talk about Star Wars. There's the 'rebellious' anti-Star Wars stuff that many are giving Johnson credit for. Luke throws the Jedi under the bus, Kylo Ren says "throw away the past", Rose shows Finn what the glitz of the casino is built on, and so on. That's all catnip to fans.

 

But then some of the reasons this doesn't work as a film for me can be traced to its function as a franchise element. Finn's hero moment with Phazma is the most egregious, but there's a lot that's in here that felt scattershot, empty, and/or unjustified. Fanservice and in-jokes like the blue milk, empty formalism like Laura Dern's lame "rousing" speech, "homages" or "echoes" like the Hoth-alike setting at the end.
 

And this is where I try to critique that without saying that people are dumb for liking those things. <deep breath> Here goes: To me it seems many are latching on to the elements that hook into the old Star Wars they know and love, are stroked and gratified by the fan service, and/or are just grateful it's not a purely cynical rehash like The Force Awakens. And those are perfectly good reasons for liking something. But they relate to what Film Crit Hulk calls the "tangible details" theory of movie criticism; specific elements that work (or don't) are chosen as the "reason" a film succeeds or fails, while ignoring or disregarding structure, theme, and other more analytical or formal elements. For me, The Last Jedi fails as a film because of structural problems and storytelling confusion, and while it raises interesting questions about the world, characters, and themes of Star Wars, it doesn't explore them particularly well as a film. (Others obviously find it very satisfying and that takes us into what we want from these things, and that's a whole other discussion.)

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God, so much pedantic negativity! I didn't expect that coming here. I thought the movie was p great, very nicely designed. The structure and pacing and reshuffled familiar setpieces doing new things reminded me of a good Telltale game, which I'll gladly take from the Disney machine. It set fire to the reheated lore pile of the previous five movies, did weird shit with the force and angered a bunch of nerds. These are all good things. :tup:

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As an aside to the critiques, I realised last week that the title was in my head as a singular (e.g. Luke Skywalker is The Last Jedi) but canonically (very important!) it's plural (e.g. They are The Last Jedi.) I only noticed this because the Spanish title is Los Últimos Jedi and it shattered my perception things.

 

/drama

 

Languages are fun!

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