Poll of the Day > 'The prequels are worse than the Disney trilogy!!!"

(+) Yeah! (+)

Naw I just like to remind you how sad it is for a grown man to scream elementary school insults at children on xbox live

i dont use a mic so no one was screaming lol
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and honestly calling someone a gay r***** is like the best insult so fuck off

it has nothing to do with actually being homophobic or disliking people with severe mental handicaps, its just a great insult.
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People just kind of lauded the special effects even though the story was garbage, proving that Lucas was ahead of his time is the worst way. It was like a very good fan fiction.

Oh, this thread isn't about the movie anymore.

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no the thread is still about the movie, ohhjaa is just butthurt
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DirtBasedSoap posted...

no the thread is still about the movie, ohhjaa is just butthurt

Says the guy who PMed and has now angrily posted three times in a row about me

jfc what a tryhard lmao
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I just watched Episode 7 again for the first time in over 3 years last night. It's actually quite enjoyable, but it's mostly hurt by how Rey seems to gain a very strong control of the Force with no training at all. They'll need to have a creative explanation for that in Episode 9 to make it forgiving.

I'll watch Episode 8 again soon, but I remember feeling that it ruined nearly everything Episode 7 established. Episode 8 alone is what hurts the legacy of these Disney sequels. I'm not sure that Episode 9 will be able to fix this.
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DirtBasedSoap posted...

jfc what a tryhard lmao

This guy calling me mad while making posts like this lol

what are you trying to say with that last post even
youre trying so hard and its hilarious
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"I'm not mad LMAO... you're just a tryhard bro LMAO!!!"

calling someone a tryhard and laughing about it means... Im mad? damn bro ya got me!
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

To be fair to them, that's not really on them.

Not saying that's their fault - Portman, at least, has shown genuine acting chops in other roles (Christensen, on the other hand... well, I'll get to him in a minute) - but whose fault it was doesn't change my comment. The acting in the sequel trilogy is worlds better than the prequels and that's about as close to objective fact as you can get on the subject.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Hayden Christensen is a much better actor than most people realize.

Taking one look at his post-Star Wars acting resume calls this very much into question. Every other good actor who got a bad shake in the prequels was able to recover and build/resume decent careers. Christensen has basically gone on to feature in a series of ever more obscure and badly rated B-movies. His only real notable credits after Star Wars were Jumper and Takers, both of which happened a decade ago.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And then Johnson basically shat on every single one of those answers, and provided far more unsatisfactory answers for every one, because he decided he felt like making the film a deconstruction

To be fair, I'd probably be kind of annoyed if I was asked to direct a film, then the previous director handed me a book of what he wanted to have happen in it. Abrams was fine for offering it, but I also can't fault Johnson for dumpstering it either.

And as for the movie being a deconstruction, I liked that element of it. I liked that this was not a Lucasean Star Wars film. One of the things that really stands out about Episode VII is how little the plot stands the test of time. It was absolutely the right move to make at the time - as you already stated, the prequels really sullied the Star Wars brand amongst casual fans, while the Disney purchase was viewed with suspicion by the die-hards, so Disney needed a safe movie to bring everyone back onboard and Episode VII, "homage"/blatant rip-off of Episode IV that it was, fit the bill just fine - but when the glow of nostalgia wears off, there's not a lot there and that's not a road they could continue down long-term. Even back when Episode VII came out, I recall remarking, "It's fine for now, but Disney better change things up for the next movie if they want people to stay interested."

And, like it or hate it, Johnson absolutely did that. He provided a very different look at the Star Wars universe and I applaud him for doing that because, after 40 years of the same Hero's Journey myth-story, this is the sort of thing the franchise desperately needs (and what it was never getting under Lucas). That's why I loved Rogue One - it was Star Wars with a particular focus on the Rebels vs. Imperial conflict, rather than the overarching theme of the Force and good vs. evil. I'd still love to see a Sin City-esque crime thriller centring on a Star Wars bounty hunter, or a Top Gun-style starfighter movie reminiscent of the Rogue Squadron books of old.

Johnson's approach created tension where the old formula wouldn't have had any. When Kylo tried to bring Rey to the dark side or Finn tried to sacrifice himself at the end of the movie I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen, despite the fact that under any other director it would have been obvious. The movie had broken the rules and shown it wasn't going to be bound by old convention. I looked on that as a positive.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

You're actually underselling things pretty significantly there - there ARE potential answers that could easily work.

Are there, though? Let's take a look at your suggestions.

Han/Leia's daughter - why leave her on Jakku? These are Rebellion heroes, neither of whom would have reason to straight-up abandon their child (and it would be going strongly against character type). It also doesn't gel with Maz's answer ("Whoever you're waiting for, they're never coming back,") - she would have no reason to say it if Han had just finished explaining to her that Rey was his daughter (and Han wouldn't really have reason to hide that from Rey if, for some bizarre reason, she didn't remember the faces of the parents she'd spent two decades waiting for).

Luke's daughter - Jedi are supposed to be chaste, so that's strike one, but we'll assume that Luke discarded that particular tenant of the old order (despite the attachment it was supposed to prevent being one of the main reasons said order was driven to extinction). The "Force vision" thing is a cheap cop-out, a non-answer that is blatant Deus ex Machina to get out of situation where the writer has been written into the corner. If Luke's wife left before Luke knew she was pregnant, Han would have no way of knowing who Rey was and if it was after, Luke would presumably be more interested in finding her than starting up a Jedi school - after growing up without his parents and nearly sacrificing everything to redeem his father, it would be badly out of character for Luke to simply give up on his daughter and assume her lost.

The nanny - I can't think of any reason why a nanny would want to take the daughter of rebel heroes *away* from the safety afforded by the Republic and, instead, place her in the custody of a crime boss. And, again, if that was the case there would be no reason for Han not to tell her straight-up who she was after he found her and realized she was alive.

Emperor's granddaughter - Ignoring the fact that I think wild snogging isn't really in character for a character like Palpatine, why would Han know who Rey was? Why would Obi-Wan show up in her visions?

Wedge, Boba Fett, minor Imperial, some other named character - Again, why is she dreaming about Obi-Wan then? Why make her a relative of one of these characters at all when it doesn't explain anything about her Force powers (I don't agree with the notion that she *must* be a Skywalker or other powerful Force Sensitive bloodline in order for her powers to make sense, but making her the daughter of Force Sensitives will at least shut up the people complaining about that aspect of her). Why does she *have* to be related to a character we already know about? That just makes the universe seem small.

This is what I mean when I say there really were no good answers the way that Abrams set it up. You could wedge a round peg into a square hole for a few of them, but none of them completely make sense. Johnson's answer, in that respect, is still the one that's most logically congruent.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

but you also push the idea that the important thing is less WHO her parents were, but more the moment when she eventually discovers her past and the reason why she was abandoned

Is that any different to what happened, though?

Rey - and, by extension, the audience - assumes that her parents must be good people, that they loved her, that they wanted to come back for her but couldn't for some reason. We all assume that there *must* be some justifiable excuse for why her parents didn't return for her, and that we just had to learn about it. Then she, as you put it, "discovers the past and the reason why she was abandoned": that her parents didn't want her and straight-up sold her to go drinking. That revelation was used as an emotional cudgel by Kylo Ren, the same way that Vader used Luke's parentage against him. "You're nothing. You're nobody. You're not wanted." For Rey, who had spent 20 years of her life denying that, it's an ugly truth. And then here's Kylo, swooping in to say that he can make things better for her. That she matters to him. If anything, I wish the movie had made more of that, because that is a deceptively powerful manipulation that Kylo is using and they easily could have teased more drama out of it if they wanted.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

There was also an answer who Snoke might be, Johnson didn't use it

Snoke was definitely wasted potential, I will freely admit that. I get why Johnson didn't bother to do much with him, given that he was more interested in developing Kylo, but that could have been done without really touching on anything to do with Snoke and, essentially, keeping him in the background until the final movie, much like Palpatine before him.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Rian Johnson made exactly the movie he wanted to make, and that is what we got.

And, as mentioned, I don't think that was a bad thing.

I liked TLJ and I liked that it was non-traditional, in a Star Wars sense. It gave the story more unpredictability and, at points, more gravity.

I'm not saying TLJ's shortcomings - and there were several - were not Johnson's fault, I'm saying that the specific issue of Johnson basically shutting down the plot-hooks that Abrams left him were specifically because they were shit plot-hooks and that's not Johnson's fault.
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At least I manage to stay awake during the Disney trilogy.
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darkknight109 posted...

but whose fault it was doesn't change my comment. The acting in the sequel trilogy is worlds better than the prequels

Oh, I agree. Like I said, having a competent "actor's director" and using more practical effects helps actors actually produce acceptable performances, while being stuck alone in a green room talking to the air makes it extremely hard for even the best actors to adjust (see also the Hobbit meme with Ian McKellen as Gandalf basically having an existential crisis/nervous breakdown).

I've said in the past it feels like the only person who didn't give up and stop trying completely is Ewan McGregor (who clearly put in a ton of effort to try and mimic Alec Guinness' performance). About the only other person in the film who seems to even remotely give a shit is Frank Oz. Everyone else is either just there to cash a check, has tuned out completely because they can't cope, or has completely ceased to give a shit and are just amusing themselves (Ian McDiarmid is bordering on pantomime most of the time).

But it's still hard to blame any of THEM for the problem. Because it really isn't any of their fault.

Even Jake Lloyd, for as much shit as he gets, really wasn't the problem with his performance. It was the utter lack of guidance or support he got, while being put in a position very few child actors would ever have done well in, no matter how skilled.



darkknight109 posted...

Taking one look at his post-Star Wars acting resume calls this very much into question. Every other good actor who got a bad shake in the prequels was able to recover and build/resume decent careers.

That's deceiving, though. Nearly everyone else either had a career beforehand that gave them enough rep to survive the terrible performances (even Natalie Portman, young as she was), or had such a minor role that it didn't really stick to them (like Keira Knightley).

In his case, he was front and center in the films, and didn't have a huge body of work beforehand, so he was immediately seen as being little more than "shitty Anakin". He was basically doomed to low-tier B-movies forever, so he never really had a chance to shine all that much, before Hollywood mostly stopped calling at all. He was always going to have a much harder time shaking off that stink.
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darkknight109 posted...

To be fair, I'd probably be kind of annoyed if I was asked to direct a film, then the previous director handed me a book of what he wanted to have happen in it. Abrams was fine for offering it, but I also can't fault Johnson for dumpstering it either.

But you can't have it both ways - first you complained because you suggested that Abrams created a bunch of questions and didn't give Johnson any of the answers, but now you're saying Abrams created a bunch of questions with answers, which was also wrong.

So either you're arguing that Abrams shouldn't have set up any overarching plots or questions to be answered at all (which would make all of the movies incredibly boring and pointless, and we'd still be shitting on them right now), or you're saying that Johnson was right to change the answers if he came up with better ones (which I'd actually agree with, and which he was told he could do). But he DIDN'T come up with better answers - he just ignored the questions, and then flipped the middle finger to everyone asking them. And then he didn't even bother coming up with new questions or ideas for the next movie to deal with - he just handed a box full of smoldering ruin back and said "Have fun figuring out what to do with that, assholes."

Also, I'd argue that he wouldn't even have the right to be annoyed about being given ANY advice or ideas by a previous director, no matter how loose or strictly he was expected to conform to them. Johnson taking the job of directing the middle part of a trilogy in an existing franchise means he implicitly accepted the idea that there were going to be expectations on his work, and if he didn't like the idea or didn't consider himself capable of working under those conditions, he shouldn't have taken the job in the first place.

Like I said earlier (and am about to mention again later), a complete deconstruction that ignores previous continuity and proactively limits options in future works is fine if you're doing a stand-alone film. Not so much when you're specifically hired to make the second movie in a three movie trilogy where the movies are deliberately being designed to interlock and interrelate (as opposed to a collection of mostly unrelated stories).
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darkknight109 posted...

And as for the movie being a deconstruction, I liked that this was not a Lucasean Star Wars film.

You liked it (and you're fully entitled to feel that way). Many people did not (and they're fully entitled to feel that way). But the problem is, whether you could enjoy it for what it was or not, it really didn't belong as the middle part of a trilogy that was deliberately being sold as Lucasean Star Wars, after the first film did everything in its power to try and be as Lucas as it possibly could, short of actually letting Lucas be in charge of it (or having Abrams secretly murder him and wear his skin).

Again, deconstructions CAN work in the proper context. Make a completely deconstructionist narrative or radically tonal dissonant story as part of a TV show like the Mandalorian, or as a stand-alone film like Rogue One, and people will be far more open to it.

If you're trying to figure out why so many people HATED the movie as much as they did (and why they may be less likely to see new films in the future, or buy merch, or any of the other things Disney is currently terrified about), that's almost certainly one of the primary reasons. People went to see the movie because they wanted to see a Star Wars film, and instead got a film that told them to go fuck themselves for liking Star Wars films.

Though even beyond that, I'd argue it was an objectively bad movie. The Rose and Finn scenes were almost entirely pointless (and Benicio del Toro's performance was needlessly annoying), and most of the Poe scenes were needlessly awkward and feel like a combination of "We don't know what to do with this character" and "Everyone needs to be stupid for the movie to happen". The Rey/Kylo/Luke scenes are the only ones that even really feel like they should be in the movie at all, and they're the ones where the deconstructionist problems are strongest.

The movie as a whole is a confusing mess that does little to pay off anything that happened before or set up anything to happen after. For all the flaws of the prequels (and there are SO many), Lucas was at least trying to tell a single cohesive story.



darkknight109 posted...

One of the things that really stands out about Episode VII is how little the plot stands the test of time.

I'd argue this is only the case because the movie that follows it makes no effort to follow up on anything, continue anything, or expand on anything. Had Episode VIII built on the foundation that VII established, VII would be more important to the overall narrative. As is, VIII basically takes the same characters and puts them in a story that is almost completely disconnected, ignoring the foundation completely to build the rest of the house without one, in a swamp, that is on fire. It's not surprising that the unfinished, unused foundation now looks less meaningful by proxy.
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darkknight109 posted...

there's not a lot there and that's not a road they could continue down long-term.

Again, this is you trying to have things both ways. Did Abrams set up multiple plot-points that could be paid off in future films, thus hemming in Johnson's creativity, or did Abrams not establish anything, meaning Johnson only has himself to blame for not really coming up with anything better?

There are actually multiple threads that could easily have been drawn on in VII and expanded on. Johnson chose not to. Abrams deliberately established plot-points the people who followed him could build on, Johnson took a hot shit on those things and then failed to replace them with anything meaningful.

The end result is many people being left completely disinterested in how Episode IX plays out, because we're mostly left with no questions other than "How are they going to fuck this one up?" and no real vested interest in any of the characters because we've been given no reason to care about any of them in any real sense.

People unexpectedly loved the Finn/Poe buddy-cop dynamic in VII, which is why Poe was allowed to survive when he was supposed to die in the crash (which is why Finn takes his jacket). They could have followed through with that, but no. Rey's parentage, potential destiny, and overall arc could have her grow and change, rather than leave her a mostly flat cypher. Kylo could have an arc dealing with the consequences of his actions, instead of mostly just being a non-character who mostly exists to do things to further the plot. We could explore more of the actual Republic/First Order/Resistance dynamic that was almost entirely unexplained, we could learn more about Snoke, we could have a more meaningful reason why Luke is hidden away, etc etc etc.

There was a lot of clay to work with there. Johnson just decided he didn't want to use any of it.



darkknight109 posted...

And, like it or hate it, Johnson absolutely did that. He provided a very different look at the Star Wars universe

Change solely for the sake of change is rarely a good thing, though. And a different Star Wars isn't necessarily a better Star Wars.

We can't even argue that he was somehow necessary to establish that Star Wars stories CAN be told differently, because we've already had that example, multiple times, before Episode VIII ever happened.



darkknight109 posted...

I'd still love to see a Sin City-esque crime thriller centring on a Star Wars bounty hunter, or a Top Gun-style starfighter movie reminiscent of the Rogue Squadron books of old.

The irony is, you are now less likely to see any of those things, solely because of Johnson.

Disney is now absolutely gunshy from the backlash. They'll be far less willing to innovate or deviate, which is why Rise of Skywalker is getting the "Hey look, it's Palpatine!" coat of paint. They're going to see TFA as the viable model to emulate and TLJ as the model to avoid, and most future films will likely be more cookie-cutter because of it.

Even the success of Rogue One will likely be ignored in favor of seeing Solo (itself hurt by the backlash to TLJ) as an argument against change.

At this point, any alternate SW viewpoint is likely going to come from things like The Mandalorian, where they can produce more flexible content on a smaller scale to a smaller budget, and react more effectively to criticism.

I freely admit I'd enjoy a Star Wars Western, or crime drama, or minor pilot/agent-based drama, or even something on the scale of the New Order books from the EU, with baby Jedi going on kid-friendly adventures. But those things are now less likely outside of cartoons or Disney+ live-action.
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darkknight109 posted...

Johnson's approach created tension where the old formula wouldn't have had any.

I'd argue the opposite - his approach killed all tension because he basically told the audience nothing matters. Ultimately, there is no tension, because there is no point.

Why care if Kylo tries to sway Rey? She's barely a character at this point, all of the underlying elements that we thought defined her as a character have been dismissed as being unimportant, and she has zero real motivation to care about the Sith, the Jedi, or anyone else. For that matter, who cares if Kylo wins, loses, dies, or is redeemed? He's barely a character, who has broken nearly every thread tying him to something more meaningful.

I no longer feel any tension over whether the Resistance survives, because I've been given very little reason to care about them, either as a concept or as individual characters. I have no real reason to care whether the First Order succeeds or fails, because they still haven't solidly established an expectation that what they're doing will have any real meaningful impact on the greater scale of the galaxy (since the New Republic is still a thing - defeating the Resistance doesn't immediately re-establish a new Empire - and even if it did, an Empire is not inherently evil if a Sith isn't running things as Emperor).

If Episode IX ended with Finn, Poe, and Rey flying to a distant Outer Rim world and just getting drunk in a cantina while leaving the rest of the galaxy to sort out its own shit without them, that would be just as meaningful an ending at this point as anything else. At least then you'd have the positives of them interacting as characters.

Johnson told us the old questions are meaningless and asked no new questions to replace them. Why do I care about any of this, precisely?

Abrams is basically trying to fix what was done by digging even deeper, by dredging up even more nostalgia and trying to ask new questions that are even older than the ones Johnson ruined - but even if it works, it still means that Episode IX is a cobbled together quick-fix that mostly only works because it ignores most of Episode VIII like a cancerous tumor in the middle of the trilogy.
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darkknight109 posted...

Han/Leia's daughter - why leave her on Jakku?

I'm going to quote myself here as an answer to this question, but you can assume it applies to every single question you ask along these lines:

"Any of them could easily have kids, and there are always ways to justify why she was abandoned if you're willing to do the work."

A script-writer could easily come up with a million different reasons why she was abandoned there, regardless of who her parents actually were. And then reasons why it matters can easily be layered into other parts of the story. The key is, you actually have to care enough to do the work.

"Ehh, you know what? Fuck it, they're nobodies" is basically just a lazy answer. It is literally the answer that requires the least effort, justification, and set-up, because it's a cop-out that negates the question.

It's not that hard to come up with better answers (and even BAD answers are generally better than non answers). The only real challenge is to come up with an answer and then make it work.



darkknight109 posted...

Luke's daughter - Jedi are supposed to be chaste, so that's strike one, but we'll assume that Luke discarded that particular tenant of the old order (despite the attachment it was supposed to prevent being one of the main reasons said order was driven to extinction).

On the flip side, from Luke's point of view attachment is also literally the only reason the galaxy was saved from the Emperor.

Remember, the Emperor was essentially winning with or without Anakin's help in the prequels. Without Anakin being tempted to the Dark Side because of his attachment to Padme, Palpatine likely still wins (he's really only "outed" to the Jedi at all because he's really focused on winning Anakin over). But then we're left with an Empire where he either has no apprentice, or trains a new apprentice who doesn't give a shit about Luke Skywalker (so no dramatic last-minute change of heart at the end of Jedi). Not that it matters, because Luke Skywalker wouldn't exist. Nor would Leia.

Without attachment, the Empire wins when they blow up Yavin because there's no pilot there good enough to blow up the Death Star. Even assuming they get that far - someone other than Leia might fail to escape with or hide the plans at all, or might crack under torture, or otherwise allow the Empire to win even earlier.

From Luke's point of view, attachment is the only reason he exists and the prophecy of balance being brought to the Force has been fulfilled. If anything, he might be more willing to seek attachment of his own, or at the very least, be willing to accept it if it comes. Or, at the very least, to see attachment as being more dangerous when it is hidden or corrupted, with "love" itself not being the problem, as much as what can flow from it if it goes wrong. But risk isn't a reason to reject something entirely. If it was, Luke wouldn't be able to do anything ever again, because every action he takes can go wrong in some way.
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darkknight109 posted...

The "Force vision" thing is a cheap cop-out, a non-answer

But so is what we actually got, so it's not as if a cheap cop-out non-answer would be any worse.

And it would at least be a cheap cop-out non-answer with established precedent in-universe, which thematically fits the story being told far more than the alternative.

But like it or not, Luke is basically a space wizard. Luke doing space wizard things is entirely in-character and thematically appropriate. Having Force premonitions, or visions, or foretelling a prophecy are literally things which have happened multiple times in the story up to this point. You kind of can't put that back into the bag and call bullshit on it.



darkknight109 posted...

If Luke's wife left before Luke knew she was pregnant, Han would have no way of knowing who Rey was

Han gives very little indication that he knows who Rey is in TFA, so this isn't really a counterpoint.



darkknight109 posted...

and if it was after, Luke would presumably be more interested in finding her than starting up a Jedi school

Would depend entirely on why.

"You must give your daughter up forever, else she'll die and the galaxy will be devoured by the Dark Side" would be a pretty compelling prophecy, and would fit the epic/mythic/fairy tale-esque feel of the movies very well. Luke would probably be pretty willing to give her up if it meant she would at least get to live her own life and not die horribly and doom everyone else in the process.

Again, it's not hard to come up with answers if you're willing to spend the time setting those answers up. It's really only hard when you're too lazy to bother, or have decided that none of the questions matter because fuck narrative consistency.



darkknight109 posted...

The nanny - I can't think of any reason why a nanny would want to take the daughter of rebel heroes *away* from the safety afforded by the Republic

Are they safe in the Republic?

Was sending her to Jakku always the plan, or could it be desperate improvisation on the part of people left with no other choice?

Could someone getting paid to write a script come up with a plausible justification for pretty much anything if they were actually skilled at their job and spent enough time thinking about it?

The answer to the last one is "yes", by the way.
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The prequels are much worse

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darkknight109 posted...

Emperor's granddaughter - Ignoring the fact that I think wild snogging isn't really in character for a character like Palpatine, why would Han know who Rey was? Why would Obi-Wan show up in her visions?

Again, Han... kind of didn't?

And ignoring the fact that Palpatine is very much shown to be interested in the idea of establishing a legacy of some kind (Anakin), and has a habit of setting up competing schemes to counter-balance against others (using Anakin to remove Dooku, trying to recruit Luke to replace Vader), and completely ignoring the possibilities opened if we bring cloning into the mix, we really know very little about Palpatine at all other than the fact that he's a manipulative politician who wanted to kill the Jedi and become Emperor. He could have been boning a new mistress every other week while he was still Senator, for all we know.

He probably wasn't boning anyone after he turned into a withered monster man, but who knows? Maybe he had a secret harem back on Coruscant and the main reason why he's always sending Vader everywhere to do all his dirty work is because he's always knee-deep in puss and can't be bothered.



darkknight109 posted...

Why would Obi-Wan show up in her visions?

Why would he show up in her visions if she's a nobody?

But again, reference back to the original principle mentioned in the previous post.



darkknight109 posted...

Why does she *have* to be related to a character we already know about? That just makes the universe seem small.

Why ask the question at all if she's not related to a character who is at least significant in some way? That just makes the writing seem bad.

Again, whether Johnson liked the idea or not, the precedent was already established. If he was completely incapable of paying off the set-up, or adamantly refused to accept that the pay-off mattered in any way, he shouldn't have taken the job.

Colin Trevorrow left over "creative differences" with Episode IX - I have more respect for him doing that than I would have if he'd been like, "Ehh, fuck it" and just produced his own version of Episode IX that was two hours of ignoring everything that had happened in the previous two films that retcons everything and makes an even bigger mess.



darkknight109 posted...

This is what I mean when I say there really were no good answers the way that Abrams set it up. You could wedge a round peg into a square hole for a few of them, but none of them completely make sense.

But again, there WERE potential answers that could have been justified if the people involved spent more than 30 seconds shitting out a non-answer. You're only refusing to accept any possible alternative because you've already decided you like the non-answer you were given and are now trying to look for excuses to defend it.

But most of the audience would probably have happily accepted Rey's parentage being meaningful in some way, as long as some effort was expended to justify it. Because that's actually an answer that fits into what most people expect a Star Wars story to BE, and not an answer that basically insults them for asking the question in the first place.

Again, Johnson's answer is probably more realistic - but very few people are going to see Star Wars for realism.

And if they are, they're probably seriously fucking disappointed by the time the credits roll.
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darkknight109 posted...

Is that any different to what happened, though?

Yes.

Because as-is, the moment that reveal occurs, it isn't even remotely followed up on. The question is asked, the question is dismissed, the question is ignored. She goes on from that point as effectively the exact same character, and it really isn't addressed again in any significant way.

It's not presented as a "shocking revelation" that entirely redefines her as a character or opens new doors of opportunity (if she's someone's daughter, you can now explore scenes where she meets those people, or learns about them, or otherwise connects to them in some way). It's not really going "Surprise! The answer isn't what you thought it was!" It's curt dismissal. "The answer doesn't matter. Stop asking the question. Why were you even asking the question in the first place? None of this matters."



darkknight109 posted...

I get why Johnson didn't bother to do much with him, given that he was more interested in developing Kylo, but that could have been done without really touching on anything to do with Snoke and, essentially, keeping him in the background until the final movie

He doesn't really develop Kylo all that much, though. He's almost exactly the same character we see in TFA. He doesn't really grow, he doesn't really change. He kills his surrogate dad to impress the girl he wants to hook up with (teenage metaphors ho!), but that's entirely consistent with everything we've seen of him up to that point.

The only real change is showing why he turned, which casts him and Luke in a new light, but that doesn't really alter much.

Ironically, it would have been easier to do more to develop Kylo if Snoke was better established, presented as a meaningful foil to Kylo (a la the Emperor in the original trilogy), where we almost cast Rey/Luke as Superego to Kylo's Ego and Snoke's Id. Scenes of discussion back and forth, Kylo considering alternative viewpoints even as Snoke plays the devil on his shoulder, could easily make Kylo a deeper character.

As is, he's tantrum teen who wants to be his cool rockstar granddad and bone the cute girl, who's mad at his uncle for touching him while he was sleeping.
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darkknight109 posted...

And, as mentioned, I don't think that was a bad thing.

I liked TLJ and I liked that it was non-traditional, in a Star Wars sense. It gave the story more unpredictability and, at points, more gravity.

But again, there's a time and a place. The middle of a trilogy that you only get to direct one part of is not the time and place to decide you don't really like anything about the universe or its themes and try to set fire to the entire house in a way that makes things incredibly hard for anyone else to follow after you without either retconning everything you did away or ignoring it completely.

That's the problem with collaborative storytelling. You AREN'T just telling the story you want to tell. You're telling the story you want to tell that takes into account everything that's come before, and allows people to continue after you. If you can't do that, you are terrible at your job.

If they'd given me directorial control over Episode VIII and I'd decided that I wanted it to be a character piece set in 1850's New England and which explored the relationship between a lesbian woman and her three dogs, that could theoretically be a good movie in and of itself, with deeper meaning and effective storytelling. But when most of the world decided they wanted to hunt me down and murder me for doing that, I'd find it hard to say they were wrong for being annoyed.

If Johnson had been given a side-film like Rogue One or Solo and wanted to do a stand-alone deconstructionist piece, people would have been far less annoyed. As is, the mere existence of Episode VIII essentially makes both VII and IX worse by proxy.

He basically made a mediocre-to-bad movie that is seen as being much worse because of how it conflicts with the previous part of the same story AND the overall tone of the entire setting as a whole.



darkknight109 posted...

I'm saying that the specific issue of Johnson basically shutting down the plot-hooks that Abrams left him were specifically because they were shit plot-hooks and that's not Johnson's fault.

But shutting those hooks down in the laziest and least satisfying way and then not replacing them with a single meaningful alternative pretty much IS his fault, though. Certainly moreso than almost anyone else involved in the franchise at all other than Kathleen Kennedy.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

I've said in the past it feels like the only person who didn't give up and stop trying completely is Ewan McGregor (who clearly put in a ton of effort to try and mimic Alec Guinness' performance). About the only other person in the film who seems to even remotely give a shit is Frank Oz.

McGregor was, indeed, one of the trilogy's rare bright spots, especially considering the dross he had to work with as a script. Liam Neeson also managed to turn a completely flat and unremarkable character into a halfways decent performance, and I found McDiarmid to be fine-to-good until his disfiguration, after which point he seemed to be channelling the Joker more than the Emperor.

I actually felt like Oz mailed in his performance just a little bit with Yoda in the PT. Maybe it's unfair to compare him to his much more vibrant performance 30 years ago, but Yoda just seemed to be subdued and cranky for most of the trilogy. Here again is where I thought TLJ did wonderfully, because his appearance there really captured that old ESB vibe.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But it's still hard to blame any of THEM for the problem. Because it really isn't any of their fault.

Sure, but that also doesn't mean they're good actors besides.

Again, McGregor and Neeson took awful scripts and turned them into decent-to-good performances. Portman was awful, but the Star Wars films remain a rare black mark in what is otherwise a pretty solid acting career. That's proof positive that all those people know how to act and that the problem wasn't anything to do with them.

But Christensen? He had basically nothing notable before Star Wars and basically nothing notable afterwards. The script and direction did him no favours, no arguments there, but in my opinion that wasn't his only issue - he's just a bad actor that should never have been picked to anchor the plot of one of the biggest movie series of all time.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Even Jake Lloyd, for as much shit as he gets, really wasn't the problem with his performance.

Honestly, I thought Jake Lloyd was fine. I'm already on record in this topic as saying that I'm of the mind that TPM is by far the most tolerable of the prequels and I felt that even at its worst it never plumbed the depths its successors would reach.

Child acting is a tough gig and when you compare Lloyd's performance to some other examples of "the kid" in similar types of movies - like Short Round from Indiana Jones or John "Shrieky" Connor from Terminator 2 - he really isn't nearly as bad as people made him out to be. I feel like people were just disappointed in Episode I in general and picked Lloyd (and Jar Jar) as a scapegoat, when the problems run way deeper (there's really no way to take dialogue like "Now THIS is pod-racing!" and make it sound good).

ParanoidObsessive posted...

In his case, he was front and center in the films, and didn't have a huge body of work beforehand, so he was immediately seen as being little more than "shitty Anakin". He was basically doomed to low-tier B-movies forever, so he never really had a chance to shine all that much, before Hollywood mostly stopped calling at all.

I mean, he managed to get roles in Jumper (as the lead role, no less) and Takers, both of which were reasonably popular and did well at the box office, yet he wasn't able to parlay that into anything bigger, because even in those films he was uninspiring.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

But you can't have it both ways - first you complained because you suggested that Abrams created a bunch of questions and didn't give Johnson any of the answers, but now you're saying Abrams created a bunch of questions with answers, which was also wrong.

No, I said they were questions with no *satisfactory* answers, and I still stand by that.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

So either you're arguing that Abrams shouldn't have set up any overarching plots or questions to be answered at all

No, I think it was fine for Abrams to set up hooks, I just think the ones he did wind up setting were bad and I don't fault Johnson for taking the path he did in response.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But he DIDN'T come up with better answers - he just ignored the questions, and then flipped the middle finger to everyone asking them.

I have yet to hear anyone postulate a better "answer" to the "questions" Abrams set up than what Johnson went with (with the exception of Snoke, which I already addressed earlier in the thread).

Why did Luke flee to Ahch-To? Johnson went with what was really the only sensible answer: "Did you really think I came to the most unfindable place in the galaxy for no reason at all?"

What happened with Ren's training? I thought the one Johnson provided was perfectly apt and helped explain how Ren and Luke came to their current positions.

Who are Rey's parents? Well, we've already discussed that one.

About the only questions he straight-up didn't touch were "Who are the Knights of Ren and what is their significance?" (which is still available for Episode IX, if Abrams wants to return to it) and "What's the deal with Snoke" (which, honestly, was probably one of the least intriguing plot threads Episode VII raised so, botched opportunity though it was, I'm not too upset it got ditched).
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

And then he didn't even bother coming up with new questions or ideas for the next movie to deal with - he just handed a box full of smoldering ruin back and said "Have fun figuring out what to do with that, assholes."

When did this idea that movies in a trilogy need to set up questions for the next movie to answer actually come into effect?

Because it sure as hell wasn't a thing back when the OT - which you've already admitted you consider the best of Star Wars - was being made.

Think about it - what major questions did ANH set-up for Empire to answer? None, really - we just got to see the plot resolved, Luke and the rebels celebrate their victory, and Darth Vader fly off to go fight another day. Hell, the entire series could have ended there and it still would have been a satisfactory conclusion. For the next film, the only thing ESB really set up for RotJ was Luke having a sister (which Lucas wound up clumsily retconning into being Leia, instead of the new character he was thinking of when he first wrote the line, because he didn't want to direct any more movies) and what would happen to Han Solo (which Lucas only wrote in because he wasn't sure he would be able to convince Harrison Ford to come back for another movie).

I like the old style of movie-series, where each movie is a standalone entity, not one that leaves a bunch of stuff unresolved so we have to wait 12 months for the next one to show up. Yet it now seems de rigueur that the second movie in a trilogy must end on a cliffhanger or have a bunch of hooks that the third movie must answer.

In my opinion, TLJ set up RoS just fine. We have Rey, now wiser and more experienced with some Jedi texts to study. We have the remnants of the Resistance trying to figure out what happened regarding the distress call they sent out. We have Kylo Ren taking proper control of the First Order and attempting to fulfill what he believes to be his destiny. That's about as much set-up as any of the previous Star Wars movies gave their immediate sequels.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Like I said earlier (and am about to mention again later), a complete deconstruction that ignores previous continuity and proactively limits options in future works is fine if you're doing a stand-alone film.

In what way did Johnson "ignore previous continuity"?

He addressed pretty much every hook he was given. Even if you don't like the answers he gave to those questions, he did answer them.

And in what way did he proactively limit options for future works beyond just, y'know, writing the movie he was hired to write?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But the problem is, whether you could enjoy it for what it was or not, it really didn't belong as the middle part of a trilogy that was deliberately being sold as Lucasean Star Wars, after the first film did everything in its power to try and be as Lucas as it possibly could, short of actually letting Lucas be in charge of it (or having Abrams secretly murder him and wear his skin).

Notably, one of the biggest complaints levelled at TFA was that it cut too closely to the Lucas mould. The fans were asking for something new and different; Johnson delivered.

I disagree that Johnson's work somehow "didn't belong". Again, it's not like he killed off all the main characters, had a bunch of space kittens invade, and then rolled the credits - there's nothing preventing Abrams from setting up a conclusion to the trilogy however he wants.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Again, deconstructions CAN work in the proper context. Make a completely deconstructionist narrative or radically tonal dissonant story as part of a TV show like the Mandalorian, or as a stand-alone film like Rogue One, and people will be far more open to it.

I would argue, though, that doing it as a "side-project" severely limits its impact.

I think that's what made TLJ so effective as a deconstruction - they weren't gambling with house money, this was a main-branch film and Disney/Johnson showed they were willing to take a risk on it. I, for one, enjoyed that element (and yes, I acknowledge that many did not) and enjoyed the fact that for the first time ever while watching a Star Wars movie I had no idea what was going to happen. All of a sudden anything up to and including the bad guys winning and the protagonists dying was on the table. None of the other movies in the series have had the stones to do that.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The Rose and Finn scenes were almost entirely pointless (and Benicio del Toro's performance was needlessly annoying), and most of the Poe scenes were needlessly awkward and feel like a combination of "We don't know what to do with this character" and "Everyone needs to be stupid for the movie to happen".

Setting aside the fact that I liked del Toro's character (and am disappointed he apparently isn't returning in Episode IX), I've never understood the "Rose and Finn scenes are pointless" complaint.

They weren't sent off on an adventure for no reason at all, they had a specific job to do. That they failed in doing that job doesn't mean those scenes were pointless; it was one of the ways that the movie decided to fake out the audience and I felt it was one of the more effective ones.

One of the tropes that I get a little more annoyed at than I probably should is the "It's a one-in-a-million chance, but if absolutely everything goes right and we get a lot of luck on our side, it'll all work out perfectly!" ...and then it does.

Episode VIII was the first time I can recall - in *any* fictional work that I've read/watched/played - where the protagonists plot out this one-in-a-million scheme and it actually does what it would do in real life and blows up in their faces. The subsequent scene where everything suddenly goes to shit, the Resistance starts getting blasted to pieces, and Holdo is forced into her own desperate gambit are the high point of the film (and I honestly wouldn't have been disappointed if they'd ended it there). That scene is only possible thanks to the set-up provided by the Finn/Rose subplot - it is anything but pointless.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

and most of the Poe scenes were needlessly awkward and feel like a combination of "We don't know what to do with this character" and "Everyone needs to be stupid for the movie to happen".

To be fair, Abrams had this problem too. Hell, originally Poe's "death" at the start of TFA was supposed to have him actually die; Abrams was forced to rewrite the script when Oscar Isaac and Kathleen Kennedy complained about him being killed off. I'm not sure anyone has figured out what they want the character to actually do since then.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

The movie as a whole is a confusing mess that does little to pay off anything that happened before or set up anything to happen after. For all the flaws of the prequels (and there are SO many), Lucas was at least trying to tell a single cohesive story.

You can't really fault Johnson for that, though.

If Disney wanted that sort of an approach, they should have mapped out the entire story in advance, or at least stuck to a single director/producer. I don't really see the wisdom in doing what they did and asking one director to pick up a story that another was right in the middle of telling.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd argue this is only the case because the movie that follows it makes no effort to follow up on anything, continue anything, or expand on anything. Had Episode VIII built on the foundation that VII established, VII would be more important to the overall narrative.

And yet, you could say the same thing about Episode I - it is by far the most isolated of any of the films and you could show someone Episode II first (assuming you didn't like them) and tell them it was the first episode and, as long as they don't see the title card, they probably wouldn't know any better - but its plot holds up significantly better because it's not a retread of something else we've already seen before.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Again, this is you trying to have things both ways. Did Abrams set up multiple plot-points that could be paid off in future films, thus hemming in Johnson's creativity, or did Abrams not establish anything, meaning Johnson only has himself to blame for not really coming up with anything better?

I'm having it both ways because it kind of is both.

Abrams set up multiple plot points that he expected future films to delve into, thus boxing in Johnson; however, the nature of those plot points left them with no options for decent payoff, meaning Johnson was forced into picking the best of bad options to free himself from them and move on.

But that's not actually what I was saying with this point. What I'm saying is that TFA relied on nostalgia for its success, but there's not a lot of meat on that bone and if TLJ had been an ESB-retread the same way that TFA was an ANH-retread, I suspect it would have been viewed a lot more negatively than it was.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Change solely for the sake of change is rarely a good thing, though.

I wouldn't say that this was change purely for the sake of change. Johnson felt he could tell a more interesting Star Wars story by breaking with convention. Whether you think he succeeded or failed at that, it was his decision, not one made because someone felt that the movie "had to change".

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Even the success of Rogue One will likely be ignored in favor of seeing Solo (itself hurt by the backlash to TLJ) as an argument against change.

Solo's performance had little-to-nothing to do with TLJ and I hope Disney themselves are smart enough to realize that.

The only reason why Solo was considered a failure was because it went through awful production hell and basically had to be redone from scratch after they were halfway through the project. It was supposed to be a slimmed down, less expensive Star Wars movie to produce, yet it doubled its initial budget and wound up being the most expensive Star Wars movie ever, blowing past both TLJ and TFA (it is, as of today, the 7th most expensive movie ever made). Then, to top it off, there was absolute shit for advertising and instead of releasing it during the holidays, as Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy were pushing for (seeking to make Star Wars a marquee December film series, the same way LotR was 15 years ago), they stuck to a May release window which, stupidly, put them in competition with themselves.

Solo was forced to go up against Infinity War and Disney, not wanting to hurt Infinity War's profits, made Solo the undercard. Deadpool 2 was also being released at that time, so Solo was up against a pair of nerd blockbusters. And still, in spite of that, it still pulled in almost half a billion dollars.

Had Solo not fucked itself over with production issues and actually been given decent marketing support, it likely would have been reasonably successful. Hopefully Disney has learned that lesson.

So no, if Disney is gunshy, it is not "solely" because of Johnson. Keep in mind that if we're talking about box office hauls, TLJ grossed $1.3 billion and was, at the time, the 9th highest grossing film ever (it's currently at 13th). I still think the backlash to TLJ was more a vocal minority (albeit a not insignificant one) than a large group of people, given that critical reviews and polls of actual confirmed movie-goers had largely positive reviews, while Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic both confirmed that the movie had been review-bombed on their sites.
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darkknight109 posted...

Liam Neeson also managed to turn a completely flat and unremarkable character into a halfways decent performance

I'd strongly disagree. He's one of the ones I feel doesn't even remotely give a shit, and is solely there to cash his check. He never really transcends the flatness of the character in any way, and it's a large part of why so many people have pointed out that his entire character is utterly superfluous. If he'd been able to turn it into a performance worth admiring even in spite of itself, we'd be charmed into forgetting how everything probably would have been better if we'd just left him out entirely, and had Obi-Wan fill his role (preferably with less stupidity).



darkknight109 posted...

and I found McDiarmid to be fine-to-good until his disfiguration, after which point he seemed to be channelling the Joker more than the Emperor.

I'll grant this, though even when he's being "subtle" there's still a bit too much of the pantomime in his performance. Like he stops just short of turning to the camera and winking whenever he does something sneaky or with hidden motive.

It kind of reminds me of the scene in Spaceballs where Dark Helmet is pretending to be Vespa's dad, and he looks directly at the camera and gets this little look on his face that says "I am blatantly lying". Except they do it for comedy.
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darkknight109 posted...

Sure, but that also doesn't mean they're good actors besides.

Again, McGregor and Neeson took awful scripts and turned them into decent-to-good performances. Portman was awful, but the Star Wars films remain a rare black mark in what is otherwise a pretty solid acting career. That's proof positive that all those people know how to act and that the problem wasn't anything to do with them.

But Christensen? He had basically nothing notable before Star Wars and basically nothing notable afterwards.

But all you're really doing is emphasizing my point.

The only actor who was really capable of even turning in an acceptable performance is extremely skilled, and put in a ton of effort on his own time, and was thus able to transcend the limitations of the task. Multiple Oscar-nominated actors turn out vastly subpar performances, either through apathy or out of an inability to adapt to green-screen nonsense and a disinterested director who is too busy masturbating over the idea of all the CGI he's going to cram into the scene later.

Those actors were able to survive the negative impact of their performances because it was obvious that Lucas WAS the problem, not them. They could point to prior movies, defend their skill, and continue to get work.

Christensen had been in fewer movies than even Portman did at that point, and really only one significant role (though tellingly, he'd been nominated for awards for it). That lack of precedent made it harder for him to demonstrate that it WASN'T entirely him, which made it less likely for directors to cast him in future (meaning he had less chance to prove his ability afterwards). He fell into a trap many actors do (regardless of talent), where he couldn't get roles to shake off his prior reputation, which led to him being less choosy about which scripts to take, which only reinforced the bad reputation.

He's HAD movies where he puts out talented acting ability (quite likely because he had directors who nurtured his talent and encouraged him to be better). There IS evidence out there that shows he CAN act when given the proper chance (just like there's evidence that Will Smith can play characters other than "The Fresh Prince", even if 90% of the characters he plays are basically just "The Fresh Prince"), but ultimately Christensen really didn't get the necessary opportunities to either showcast those talents or to further improve them.

In a universe where Christensen was never cast in the Star Wars movies, he'd almost certainly be seen as a better actor than we currently tend to see him as.

Granted, I'm not saying he's a brilliant prodigy or great unappreciated actor, but he gets shit on way harder than he really deserves.



darkknight109 posted...

Honestly, I thought Jake Lloyd was fine. I'm already on record in this topic as saying that I'm of the mind that TPM is by far the most tolerable of the movies and I felt that even at its worst it never plumbed the depths its successors would reach.

You've really just undercut my respect for your opinions here.

Lloyd's absolutely terrible. It's not entirely his fault, and he definitely didn't deserve the real life abuse he got over it, but... still bad.
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darkknight109 posted...

Child acting is a tough gig and when you compare Lloyd's performance to some other examples of "the kid" in similar types of movies - like Short Round from Indiana Jones or John "Shrieky" Connor from Terminator 2 - he really isn't nearly as bad as people made him out to be.

"He's not bad because many kid actors are bad" really isn't a justifiable argument, though.

The fact that many kid actors are bad is the main reason why people dislike kid actors and roles in general. And what helps make the good kid actors stand out even more.

But I honestly don't think if we'll ever really know if Lloyd himself was a bad actor, because he was placed into a position I don't think ANY kid actor could have excelled in, no matter how skilled. The most brilliant kid actor ever and the worst kid actor ever were going to look equally terrible buried under Lucas' complete half-assed direction and weak script.



darkknight109 posted...

I mean, he managed to get roles in Jumper (as the lead role, no less) and Takers, both of which were reasonably popular and did well at the box office, yet he wasn't able to parlay that into anything bigger, because even in those films he was uninspiring.

Yes, but those films would have been uninspiring regardless of who the lead was, because they weren't very good films.

Which goes back to the point - a mediocre actor can become good with effective direction and scripts, and a good actor can become great, but if the only roles he could get were ones where he'd never really grow or be able to soar, he was never going to become a great enough actor to transcend the limitations.

Natalie Portman has gone on to be a critical darling, but in a different world with a few shittier directors early on and she'd be seen much, much, much worse.
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Are we seriously gonna act like the kid who played short round didnt do a great job
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Mead posted...

Are we seriously gonna act like the kid who played short round didnt do a great job

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwDOTz-UWq0
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Nope. The prequels are underrated imo
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

You've really just undercut my respect for your opinions here.

Lloyd's absolutely terrible. It's not entirely his fault, and he definitely didn't deserve the real life abuse he got over it, but... still bad.

I'm sensing some definite inconsistency in your argument here.

You make this point after spending several paragraphs explaining why Christensen's awfulness isn't his fault and is purely because Lucas is a shitty director. Then you rip on Lloyd here, then your very next point seems to double back again and say that maybe it isn't Lloyd and he was fine and it was Lucas's terrible script.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

"He's not bad because many kid actors are bad" really isn't a justifiable argument, though.

That's not really what I'm saying.

Personally, I think Lloyd carried the script he was given about as well as anyone could. On repeated viewings of TPM, he mostly just fades into the background for me. He's not great, but no one is in that movie.

I will say that if you gave me a cosmic choice of having three prequels starring Jake Lloyd or three starring Hayden Christensen, I would pick Lloyd every single time and it's not even particularly close. For however bad some of Lloyd's lines were, I still have never cringed harder than I did during the romance scenes of AotC and RotS (and while Portman had the same awful script, at least her delivery was solid)

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yes, but those films would have been uninspiring regardless of who the lead was, because they weren't very good films.

Both of them reviewed well and made money.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Natalie Portman has gone on to be a critical darling, but in a different world with a few shittier directors early on and she'd be seen much, much, much worse.

It's funny you mention this, because Portman herself has said that Star Wars nearly ended her career, but she managed to get signed on to Black Swan, which she killed in and which served as a revival of sorts. Christensen managed to get not one but two opportunities to do the same and failed to really capitalize on either of them.

That, to me, highlights the difference between them. Portman needed just one decent movie to prove her chops; Christensen got two and did nothing with them.

I don't claim to have watched his entire filmography, but the films I have seen him in outside of Star Wars (which consisted of Jumper and at least one other one whose title I don't remember) didn't give me any better an impression of his acting abilities.

I don't disagree at all with your assertion that no one could really flourish with a script and direction as terrible as they got (McGregor was the closest and even then he was still hindered by it), but I don't buy the argument that Christensen had much higher of a ceiling.
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quigonzel posted...

I don't care what anyone says, The Last Jedi made Luke a far more interesting character and had me caring about him more than I ever had before. I love Luke's portrayal.

100% with you on that one.

I've never bought the argument that Luke's actions were out-of-character and that he should have been more pacifistic and wise. Luke has *never* been pacifistic and wise. He was always headstrong, the type of person who ignored conventional wisdom and leapt before he looked. He followed his heart, not his head and if he had a defining character weakness, it's that he always felt that he knew best and that his instincts (i.e. the Force) would unerringly guide him to the correct path. That was his greatest strength in the OT (he discarded the opinions of two Jedi masters who tried to tell him that Anakin Skywalker was dead, subsumed entirely into the evil that was Darth Vader, and therefore only by killing him could he hope to prevail) and TLJ turned it into his biggest weakness.

And yes, I absolutely loved his description of the old Jedi order and its failings, because it finally lines everything up with what we see in the prequels. Obi-Wan in the OT painted the Jedi Order as something very different than what we saw it as in the prequels. Obi-Wan was the optimist, the nostalgic, the man who saw the Jedi Order at its most idealistic. Luke became the pessimist, the pragmatist, the man who judged the Order based on its worst failings.

And Mark Hamill fucking killed it in TLJ. For whatever gripes anyone has about the movie, I don't think even its worst critics can deny that. He absolutely nailed the "tortured old master", yet was still able to channel some of that OT Luke magic when talking to Yoda (proving as solidly as ever that you never fully grow up for those who knew you as a child).

I can understand a lot of the complaints about TLJ, even the ones I don't agree with, but I will fight anyone who says that Hamill's Luke was anything less than perfect.
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i personally think that its crazy people like the last jedi solely because it subverted expectations. Who cares if the plot is dumb, dissonant and weird, it subverted my expectations!!
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It was a good movie

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Metalsonic66 posted...

It was a good movie

As a standalone film I actually agree, but as a part of a trilogy it really shit the bed
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There were story threads I would have liked to have been addressed.

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Mark Hamill himself said that Luke was out of character in TLJ though.
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