Anything would've been better than what we got, really.
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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I just want to see Abram's coke-fueled, batshit crazy first draft of The Rise of Skywalker realized.
Maybe he would have had a chance as the bad guy if he wasn't defeated in the first movie by someone who picked up a lightsaber for the first time.
Eh, Star Wars has always played it pretty heavy with "the will of the Force." Luke one-in-a-million shot at the Death Star towards the end of ANH, for example. It's not like Rey had an easy life growing up as an orphan on a poor desert planet as a scavenger.
It was clearly demonstrated in the beginning of The Force Awakens that Rey is proficient with a quarterstaff so I had no trouble accepting she could pick up a lightsaber and grok it immediately. Quarterstaff to lightsaber should translate more easily than quarterstaff to longsword—eg no worries about edge alignment. Especially considering force sensitivity and all that pizazz.
Star Wars tells a story at the pace of a children’s tv show. Which is why we love it so much, it fits so much in.
Luke blasted womp rats, Anakin was a pod racer and Rey did crazy acrobatic shit while scavenging.
We got a small explanation which works if you know it’s Star Wars and you stop looking for a volume of exposition.
What was wrong with Darth Edgelord von Worf Effect vs Jedi Master Mary Sue?
I like to imagine Jaina Solo endlessly ribbing her brother over the absolute dumpster fire they replaced him with.
They explained that in context. He told Rey she needed a teacher, and she used the Force Knowledge Extract trick he unwittingly taught her when she was a prisoner.
Watch the fight again... She's getting her ass kicked, doesn't even know how to hold a lightsaber.
"You need a teacher..."
"You're right." Closes her eyes, force downloads the techniques Matrix style, THEN kicks his ass.
Also Ren had just killed his own dad and survived being shot by a gun that launches everyone else it hits clean off their feet. He wasn't exactly on his A game for that fight and the film made that clear
Killing his dad threw him into emotional turmoil, the light was gripping at him.
That’s why he kept punching his wound, to try to be angry instead of sad.
Even wounded he could have force choked her walked over and stabbed her through the guts with his lightsaber.
This would be a much better ending, because we all know getting stabbed by a lightsaber in Disney Star Wars is barely a flesh wound and she could be back for the next movie.
But he didn't want to kill her, he wanted to turn her to the dark side.
I'm not actually against this decision at all, I kind of liked the idea that he wasn't ready to live up to his potential. A hero in a trilogy needs their journey from farm boy to knight, and I was really ready for focus on the villain actually growing in ability. It would be hard not to like an antagonist with well written drive that we needed to see on screen, and we nearly got this too.
I didn't particularly like the force awakens in cinema but that's mostly because it didn't do anything new, except have a villain who both started as a villain and had a lot of potential to grow without redemption, which would have actually been kinda new for starwars where basically every character arc with growth is a good character corrupted or a bad one redeemed.
After the emotional turmoil of killing his father, and the massive gut wound caused by the bowcaster. He wasn't exactly fighting at 100%.
Also he didn't want to kill Rey, he wanted to convert her to the darkside, so he wasn't fighting to kill.
I still think Finn should have turned on the lightsaber, given it a dramatic twirl, and immediately cut off his own leg just to demonstrate how dangerous lightsabers are.
I mean... he picked up the lightsaber, dramatically went one on one with Kylo Ren and immediately got the shit kicked out of him. I thought that was fairly sensible.
It underlines that he's all rage and no restraint, straining to live up to Vader's reputation as an unstoppable force.
Or at least it should have if the movie was directed by someone less flashy and shallow than JJ Abrams. Studios have to stop giving that man final edit. Did we learn nothing from Schumacher's Batman films?
The Sequel Trilogy was so poorly executed. I loved the homage to the original Star Wars that the Force Awakens was. I thoroughly enjoyed the rebellion against toxic Star Wars fans that The Last Jedi was. I absolutely hated the utter bullshit the Rise Of Skywalker became. Which in turn soured my feelings about the first two movies. Why they never had an overarching story in the first place is just ridiculous.
absolute worst shit in the world.
And to think they put Timothy Zahn's sequel work aside for this garbage.
They flushed the whole EU. They didn't even pick it's bones for the best bits (until recently), they just messed with the dynamics that worked.
In my opinion, Rey is supposed to be Jaina and Kylo is supposed to be Jacen. Force Awakens has weird moments between the characters that can only make sense if Rey is Han and Leia's daughter. JJ tried to add 'mystery' by hiding this fact, and then Johnson throws it all away to do his own thing.
How was The Last Jedi a rebellion against toxic fans? I thought the movie was fine and has excellent cinematography, but it wasn't anything groundbreaking or controversial in my eyes.
It's a mixture of a few things:
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the film uses certain tropes really badly. Everyone has said something about the whole "subverting expectations" things, and in some places, it's done well but in others, they pretty much 4th wall break. By the middle of the film, you can basically predict when and how the subversions will take place, ironically defeating the point of this trope, and ruining what could have been epic moments.
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certain things flat out make zero sense. The film wants us to believe, literally spelling it out, that Poe is reckless despite his decisions up until this point being pretty good, all things considered, but wants us to consider Holdo a hero despite her causing a panic within her troops by withholding important information, and her plan ending up getting almost all of them killed.
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the casino planet side part of the film feels like it should have been cut by 2/3 and it feels like the only reason for its length was so that Disney could make merchandisable figures from the animals.
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it's a little too reliant on nostalgia. Or rather, when it does its nostalgia hit, the details in question usually aren't there for any particular reason or used for anything. There are a couple of times when it's done really well, such as when R2 persuades Luke to help Rey by playing Leia's message from A New Hope. But other times it's a random Xwing in the water or a two moons hallucination.
Poe was portrayed as being really reckless in TFA as well, though. Like his second ever appearance is stealing a star fighter in a prison break, fighting an entire star destroyer with some guy he literally just met, and then crash landing all while acting like he's on a theme park rollercoaster. His first was him intentionally getting captured in order to pull a fast one on a Sith and his entire army. He's usually doing what needs to be done in TFA, but that's because those situations actually required someone to do exactly what he always wants to do: fly straight at it in the fastest thing he can get his hands on and blow a bunch of stuff up. His arc in TLJ was totally in keeping with what we had already seen of him
But if his actions are necessary, by definition, that's not recklessness. Recklessness involves a complete disregard for other, better options. If those options don't exist, you can't exactly call him reckless for it. What's the guy to do?
If he was doing that shit needlessly, that'd be one thing, but his actions in the beginning of TLJ actually improve the odds of the Rebellion considerably, even factoring in the loss of their bombers.
Poe was a pure good aligned Han Solo.
What he did doesn't show that he wasn't reckless just because it was necessary though. I'm saying he clearly wanted to do those things whether they were the right move or not, it's just fortunate for him that they were generally good moves most of the time
But that's the thing, they were good moves at the time. That speaks far more to his experience as a pilot than his recklessness. At no point is Poe provided a safer, better option for him to disregard in favour of a risky move. So we don't have the information needed to call him reckless, even if he has no qualms about the risky approach.
His enthusiasm for the danger made it pretty clear to me. But even then, what you're describing is just a lack of evidence for recklessness, not evidence against him being reckless. Nothing he did in TFA suggests to me that he wouldn't have done what he did in TLJ, it's just that in TLJ the situation didn't work out so well for him
His enthusiasm for the danger made it pretty clear to me. But even then, what you're describing is just a lack of evidence for recklessness
Exactly. This makes it confusing when the TLJ tries to call him reckless, because there's been no evidence to suggest that, either in this film or the previous. The film tries to point to the bombing run as evidence, but it was clearly necessary and not an example of recklessness. An enthusiasm for danger is not the same thing as needlessly wading into it.
Nothing he did in TFA suggests to me that he wouldn't have done what he did in TLJ, it's just that in TLJ the situation didn't work out so well for him.
In TLJ, he's trying to prevent the entire rebellion from getting smoked by two dreadnoughts. Taking out one of them halves the firepower being aimed at them. The rebellion would have been obliterated had Poe not done what he did, Holdo maneuver or no.
and [Holdo's] plan ending up getting almost all of them killed.
Woah, hang on a second. Holdo's plan would (probably) have worked fine if she hadn't told Poe. It was because he told Finn and Rose over a line he didn't know was secure so he actually also told Benicio Del Toro, who then sold that info to the ~~Discount Empire~~ First Order that everyone died.
And then rather than punish Poe for that, she took responsibility for it, did what she could to save everyone else and sacrificed herself for the cause.
Poe incited a mutiny. Holdo made a command decision about Need To Know. I know who deserves the medal after that all dies down, and it isn't the hotshot that had already been demoted earlier that day for disobeying orders.
You're 100% right about #3. And I can't really disagree with #4 either.
God, I wanted to love this film. I still quite like it, but I can't really bring myself to rewatch it as often as, say Rogue One. I think it's weaker in retrospect after the retcon-fest that was Rise of Skywalker, which is a shame. Rian Johnson had some great ideas that could have reinvigorated the franchise. Instead, it's barely limping on, giving us stuff like Andor as enough of a teaser that we don't just give up on the whole thing.
In general I think there are 4 approximate groups of people when it comes to The Last Jedi. The group that really likes it (i'm in this bucket). The group that thinks its a fun action movie but doesn't push any of its interesting choices enough(you seem to be in this bucket). A group of irate star wars fans who hate it and review bombed the shit out of it. and people that dislike it because its a somewhat basic blockbuster with bad pacing. I think the existence of that third group, and at least in online spaces it isn't remotely small, shows the movie was pushed about as far as it could be for the 8th entry in a big bucket movie franchise.
I guess I'm the fourth. I can't say that I liked the movie, but imo it got more hate than it deserved and it's the best of the trilogy
Here's the thing that doesn't make sense... Driver says this was Abrams plan from the first flick.
Well, Abrams also did the 3rd flick, so what happened to the plan?
Disney wanted to please the more toxic parts of the fandom that were just interested in wanting to see the same exact things over and over again.
No one necessarily wanted the same shit again. Fans just wanted something good that wasn't a cobbled together mess
Get overruled by superiors after people didn't like the last jedi
The Force Awakens was ok, but pretty much the same underlying story as A New Hope
The second movie was a woeful middle finger to The Force Awakens which added nothing at all to the story, in fact 1/3 of the movie was pointless. The code breaker / casino arc didn’t impact what happened after the casino
The third movie felt like it was created around cutting room floor footage of Leia, and they turned Kylo into a pussy.
If I am doing a Star Wars marathon, it is Rogue One, 4, 5, 6 and 7
I think that may have been better.
The Last Jedi was a plea to expand the story beyond one family of aristocratic space wizards and remember that Luke was once some rando farmboy with a chip on his shoulder and nothing left to lose.
It's an anti-war film. It is, honest to god, 90% of an anarchist critique of Star Wars, then 10% "nevermind." People shit on the Rose-Finn-... Benicio del Toro subplot. Guys: that is the plot. Rose is the protagonist. The movie opens with her sister's sacrifice, arcs from showing her faith in the cause to losing it, and closes on one of the magic-wielding enslaved children inspired by her unsubtle metaphor of freeing some animals.
Now: how'd that get into a numbered Star Wars film? Fuck me sideways, I don't know. Is it a good movie? Not really, mostly because it's betrayed by the edit and the surprise fourth act veering back toward the status quo. But it's the best of the sequel trilogy by far, and it was a few easy choices away from living up to to the shock and praise of Empire Strikes Back.
One: end Rey's story when Kylo asks her to join him. Leave her allegiance hanging as we go into the last film. To make this work better, give Kylo an aversion to the First Order's militarism, so his beef with Hux is not giving a shit about megalomania. Kylo's lust for power has nothing to do with hierarchy.
Two: have Rose leave. With Finn or without him, depending on how John Boyega felt about being in all three movies. But by the time she's ditching precious materiel to stop him from repeating her sister's sacrifice, why the fuck is she gonna run back to the rebellion? Not like she's in the next movie anyway.
Three: when the rebels escape, it is because of some glorified extra. A soldier who just watched her friends get pulped by AT-AT fire, stumbles back into the dead-end caverns, and finds the native fauna casually brushing aside boulders. When the survivors can no longer hold the entrance, they find her there - arms raised, avalanche floating in midair, staring in disbelief at her own abilities. She doesn't get dialog. She doesn't get a name. Who she is, does not matter. This is the point the movie keeps writing in eight-foot-tall letters: anyone can be a hero. The Force is in all living things. No religious order could ever own it. Nobody needs to hand you a destiny. You can go out and change the universe.
Anyway, the people who say the next movie's first-draft plot-faucet is better are dumb as dirt. Just to pick one fuckup, Palpatine would be a million times more threatening as an immortal ghost, tempting anyone anywhere anytime.