Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Aaron

Aaron

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Another thing I just remembered from last night's viewing, and came to me just now. It's obvious that they intend to turn this into a never ending story with a plot that never changes, only new characters every now and then. Towards the end of the film they say something like "This is the spark of a new rebellion" and "the fight will keep on going" or something like that, and it made me realise why TFA basically reset everything: They're turning it into a formulated endless drama.

Compare this to what happened in the EU books, where instead of continual story of "a small group of rebels fighting against overwhelming odds" they have the rebels rebuild the Republic, but with pitfalls along the way, a new cast comes in with Han and Leai's children, as well as Mara Jade and many others. I.e. the story actually progresses.

The problem with using a "This Week's Monster" endless TV show format is that it doesn't actually tell a story, and you don't invest in the characters a lot. TFA: Who's Snoke? TLJ: Snoke's now dead, so who cares. IX: Who's [new bad guy]? X: [New bad guy's] who cares? It makes for poor writing.

Makes me sad they didn't have the balls to venture into a new path like the EU did.
 
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goishen

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Aaron said:
The problem with using a "This Week's Monster" endless TV show format is that it doesn't actually tell a story, and you don't invest in the characters a lot. TFA: Who's Snoke? TLJ: Snoke's now dead, so who cares. IX: Who's [new bad guy]? X: [New bad guy's] who cares? He'll be dead in the next film anyway.
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FTFY.
 
McCheese

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I absolutely loved this movie. I went in completely blind by avoiding as much info as I could. I'm not a huge star Wars fan, but it was just a super enjoyable time.

I've skimmed back over this thread just now and I'm not surprised to see so much rage. Bunch of nerds.
 
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Adebisi

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Saw last night and haven't read any reviews yet.

I'm not sure what I just saw. It's either "fine" or "sucked". I haven't decided yet. *shrugs*

Plot device overload
 
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Heylel

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Aaron said:
Makes me sad they didn't have the balls to venture into a new path like the EU did.
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They should have updated the Thrawn trilogy and ran with that. Hell, you can even make plots out of Han and Leia's kids. Jacen and Jaina Solo already existed in the EU.

Truth is, I *like* Kylo Ren. He's a great villain. It's the story around him that is sorta meh, and the Rashamon-style explanation for how his eventual turn was really just a big misunderstanding is sorta dumb. Why not go ahead and use the EU stories as a basis?

It just smacks of Hollywood creative types thinking, "nah, I want to put my mark on all this." Copy Marvel for fuck's sake. Use the stories as a resource and modernize them.
 
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Royal

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Aaron said:
Another thing I just remembered from last night's viewing, and came to me just now. It's obvious that they intend to turn this into a never ending story with a plot that never changes, only new characters every now and then. Towards the end of the film they say something like "This is the spark of a new rebellion" and "the fight will keep on going" or something like that, and it made me realise why TFA basically reset everything: They're turning it into a formulated endless drama.
Click to expand...

I think this is part of the reason I'm so torn over this one. It's got some real problems but I'd have a hard time denying that RJ was trying to bust Star Wars out of the narrow little box it's existed in for so long now, which is something I've been wanting to see happen. The execution really fell flat in some places though. But I tend to think, at least I'd hope, that if he still gets the chance to do a separate trilogy from scratch one of the things he'll leave behind is the entire rebellion dynamic as the centerpiece for the story. Not to the extent of completely taking the war out of Star Wars but to make it more of a backdrop than the thing the story is built around. And I think that might be a better arrangement for him to direct in, since some of the issues I had with this one center around the way he chose to handle or fit in those military conflict pieces to the narrative.
 
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TomServo

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Royal said:
I think this is part of the reason I'm so torn over this one. It's got some real problems but I'd have a hard time denying that RJ was trying to bust Star Wars out of the narrow little box it's existed in for so long now, which is something I've been wanting to see happen. The execution really fell flat in some places though. But I tend to think, at least I'd hope, that if he still gets the chance to do a separate trilogy from scratch one of the things he'll leave behind is the entire rebellion dynamic as the centerpiece for the story. Not to the extent of completely taking the war out of Star Wars but to make it more of a backdrop than the thing the story is built around. And I think that might be a better arrangement for him to direct in, since some of the issues I had with this one center around the way he chose to handle or fit in those military conflict pieces to the narrative.
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It's all fine and good to want to break something out of the mold and dare to put your mark on it, but that doesn't make much sense in part 8 of a 9 part epic with established characters, themes and arcs. The writing/story for this movie is just awful, full stop.
 
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chaos

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Royal said:
I think this is part of the reason I'm so torn over this one. It's got some real problems but I'd have a hard time denying that RJ was trying to bust Star Wars out of the narrow little box it's existed in for so long now, which is something I've been wanting to see happen. The execution really fell flat in some places though. But I tend to think, at least I'd hope, that if he still gets the chance to do a separate trilogy from scratch one of the things he'll leave behind is the entire rebellion dynamic as the centerpiece for the story. Not to the extent of completely taking the war out of Star Wars but to make it more of a backdrop than the thing the story is built around. And I think that might be a better arrangement for him to direct in, since some of the issues I had with this one center around the way he chose to handle or fit in those military conflict pieces to the narrative.
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Yeah, a lot of the complaints I have heard centered around the movie not following the Star Wars formula, hilarious given the shit Lucas got. Or the expectations the audience member had for a particular character to follow an expected arc. The parts of the movie I liked are the parts that broke from these expectations. But, like you say, there are some issues with how this was done in a couple of cases, and at least one storyline of just pure bad writing. For me, I still like the movie, but yeah, give me an edit of this movie with no casino planet pls.
 
Heylel

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chaos said:
Yeah, a lot of the complaints I have heard centered around the movie not following the Star Wars formula, hilarious given the shit Lucas got. Or the expectations the audience member had for a particular character to follow an expected arc. The parts of the movie I liked are the parts that broke from these expectations. But, like you say, there are some issues with how this was done in a couple of cases, and at least one storyline of just pure bad writing. For me, I still like the movie, but yeah, give me an edit of this movie with no casino planet pls.
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I'm fine with it breaking out of Star Wars, but I still wanted an understandable hero's journey in a Campbell sense. It sorta felt like that for Luke at the end. He got his resolution. The rest feels really rushed.
 
Royal

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Adebisi said:
Did Luke even teach Rey anything?
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He said he was going to give her 3 lessons. The first one was a long version of Ben's description of what the force actually is, how it's balanced, and ended on saying the jedi don't have a monopoly on the light side. The second one seemed to be his treatise on why the jedi were ultimately a failure. He never got around to the third one. It may have been the deleted scene someone posted earlier.
 
Dr.Retarded

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Adebisi said:
Did Luke even teach Rey anything?
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Just the most important thing in the whole movie:

https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F679279%2F2f496432-78b2-456f-a69f-537994610f10.png
 
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Adebisi

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I'd argue that maybe the third lesson is yet to come but we all saw what happens when you start to think the new SW has any depth.

SNOKE DED LOL
 
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chaos

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Heylel said:
I'm fine with it breaking out of Star Wars, but I still wanted an understandable hero's journey in a Campbell sense. It sorta felt like that for Luke at the end. He got his resolution. The rest feels really rushed.
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Yeah, I felt like Luke's arc was resolved well. He's ascended alongside all the other jedi masters of note from the series now that he got over his conflict. I liked Kylo's resolution as well, I didn't find Snoke very interesting and honestly wasn't really looking forward to the same story beats again, so when he actually performed a reverse-Vader I thought it was great. And the way he tried to connect with Rey, I liked that. Rey was a weakness, they just didn't do enough to move her story forward. I don't buy the thing with her parents for a second, but assuming its true, I don't see how it matters if they can make it interesting. The Resistance was also a weakness, a lot of good ideas they had which just weren't fleshed out very well.
 
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