Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

The fact that these directors are writing these scripts and the extended universe guys have to go in and fill in the gaps for comics and novels kind of gives me a new perspective on the fucked upness of it all.

And then you have little plot holes which demonstrate that the movie tries to do one thing to make it look more authentically Star Wars, and it makes it look stupider. Like Luke saying that "Darth Sidious" had overthrown the Republic and started the Empire. Except how would Luke know his Sith name? Very few people knew he was a Sith to begin with, and almost no people knew his Sith name. Now there are ways to explain how Luke would know it (maybe he chatted with his ghost dad). But still seems rather sloppy, he could've just said "The Emperor" and there would be no canon problem, and no need for story group to go clean up another plot hole.

Olebass said:

It's amazing how many articles I passed today talking about TLJ dropping to #2 after only 18 days.
Headline skips the over a billion in 18 days part though.

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There's an appetite out there right now for the faltering franchise stories among fans that are really dissatisfied with the movie and those articles also draw in fans who think just the opposite on the 'how dare you talk down my Star Wars" angle. Then you have sites like Forbes running pieces arguing both for and against calling the movie a box office failure/disappointment.

jayrebb said:

Like Luke saying that "Darth Sidious" had overthrown the Republic and started the Empire. Except how would Luke know his Sith name? Very few people knew he was a Sith to begin with, and almost no people knew his Sith name. Now there are ways to explain how Luke would know it (maybe he chatted with his ghost dad). But still seems rather sloppy, he could've just said "The Emperor" and there would be no canon problem, and no need for story group to go clean up another plot hole.

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He's best buds with Yoda...

Jive Turkey said:

He's best buds with Yoda...

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Yeah I don't recall Yoda ever hearing the name Darth Sidious in any canon source either.

spronk said:

TFA ended its run with a 2.07b worldwide box office, and while I don't think anyone expects TLJ to hit $2b, anything under $1.5b worldwide is gonna be disappointing to Disney because a good new mainline Star Wars movie should have easily hit 1.5b worldwide.

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I don't know what Disney's internal projections where and I'm not a super close observer of box office results but going into this one thought 1.5b would be the best case scenario for it. I was expecting it to drop by a little more than a third from TFA's total. A lot of people acknowledge TFA as being an outlier because of several factors but I don't think that enough weight is always given to just how much of an impact that had on the final total. And the middle chapters of the two previous trilogies have both had significant drop offs (though the OT really is a poor comparison for several reasons).

Gavinmad said:

Yeah I don't recall Yoda ever hearing the name Darth Sidious in any canon source either.

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Dooku mentioned Sidious to Obi-Wan in AotC who later repeated what Dooku had said to Yoda though he had doubts at the time about Dooku's honesty. But later Yoda referred to Sidious by name in TCW series.

Reaching into my prequel memory banks isn't easy, but doesn't Yoda smuggly call him Darth Sidious to his face before their CG battle fest?

Also, Disney is a public company. If they set expectations at $10 billion in profits and deliver $9.999 billion, almighty Wall Street will still punish them.

zignor 4 said:

Also, Disney is a public company. If they set expectations at $10 billion in profits and deliver $9.999 billion, almighty Wall Street will still punish them.

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Absent Disney saying the reason they missed on projected earnings was TLJ performing under their expectations I don't really see what that says about the movie or any other individual title. Disney has a lot of revenue sources of different types.

Disney is really aggressive right now. I'm not sure what's going on financially with their company in terms of outlook and projections but the money they are pouring into their parks/resorts, movies produced, and their soon to be Netflix rival service makes me wonder if they have concerns so they're shaking things up or if they're rolling in so much money it's time to play a little catch up and take some risks.

Seeing as the film just passed 1 billion dollars, without a China launch, its sad that popular opinion will go unheard and this film is essentially a success.

Muligan said:

Disney is really aggressive right now. I'm not sure what's going on financially with their company in terms of outlook and projections but the money they are pouring into their parks/resorts, movies produced, and their soon to be Netflix rival service makes me wonder if they have concerns so they're shaking things up or if they're rolling in so much money it's time to play a little catch up and take some risks.

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They see the writing on the wall with how people are choosing to consume entertainment today. Theaters are in a downward spiral and being able to deliver content directly to the consumer is where things are and have been headed for a while now. They need lots of IP's and a large library to effectively compete in that shifting dynamic though (hence the purchase of 21CF). It's also a move to recoup the revenue from movies lost to the changes in the post-release movie market (the rapid shrinking of DVD sales). Disney's parks have always been built on synergy with their movie properties. With that mix undergoing some significant changes in recent years the parks have had to be updated accordingly.

Oblio said:

I watched the Warcraft Movie for the first time last night, I went into it with about as low expectations as humanly possible and I can honestly say I enjoyed it more than TLJ. Expectations are everything.

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Nah bro, I am down on SW:TLJ and think it was really bad, but dude, Warcraft the movie was just one step above the Dungeons and Dragons movie. TLJ wasn't THAT bad...

Warrik said:

Nah bro, I am down on SW:TLJ and think it was really bad, but dude, Warcraft the movie was just one step above the Dungeons and Dragons movie. TLJ wasn't THAT bad...

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Dungeons and Dragons was a cinematic masterpiece surpassed only by the perfection that was Dungeons and Dragons 2: Wrath of the Dragon God

It's not just the autists here. That said, he does hit on points I think are really big reasons why the movie bothered me. It's so painfully obvious JJ Abrams set up things in his stupid fucking "magic box"--everything from Rey saying "I don't know how I'm doing this!", to Rey's parents, and Rian Johnson just seemed to despise being boxed in by normal tropes of SW JJ was going for. In the end, this movie did just feel insulting to people who followed those bread crumbs. And yeah, I know SW fans have a knack for theorizing even when there is no lead for it--but lets face it, TFA was pretty obvious with its directions. Rey's parents were part of the mystery. Luke wanted to be found, its why he left a map. Rey's abilities, and her connection were also part of the mystery. Snoke was also part of the mystery.

Johnson's explanation about Snoke I think illustrates a profound misunderstanding for what point in a series you're in. He compares Snoke with the Emperor in the OT. But this comparison is idiotic at best. In the OT, we literally knew nothing about the world--we didn't know the history of the Empire or anything about the setting, or conditions that lead to him. So him being mysterious was fine. In TFA you're dealing with 8 films of continuity, that provide a robust and detailed picture of the galaxy. Having a shadowy figure that no one saw in the previous century of lore covered by those films is not at all the same level of mystery as the Emperor. The Emperor's mystery was part of the larger shadowy knowledge we had of the world. Snoke's mystery actually stems from our knowledge of the world and how odd he is in it.

It's stuff like that which shows, I think, either a fundamental ignorance for how to tell a story in the "shared universe"--or simply contempt for it. I lean toward the former, only because I don't believe someone could put so much work into creating such a gorgeous movie and truly hate the material. But damn, Johnson was absolutely fucking tone deaf in terms of working within a larger orchestra. He absolutely is that collaborative writing asshole that when its his turn to write his part opens with "and then he woke up"--so he can be a jerk off and write whatever he wants.

Gavinmad said:

Yeah I don't recall Yoda ever hearing the name Darth Sidious in any canon source either.

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Are you fucking kidding me?

Hateyou said:

Edit: Oh yeah, the entire "there's only one cryptologist who can do whatever dumb shit you need is on Vegas planet and wears a red brooch was stupid. Then to make it even more fucking stupid they get randomly thrown in the same jail cell with someone else who can do the job that only one guy in the universe is good enough to do. HOW FUCKING LUCKY OF THEM!!! dumb

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Princess Leia makes a recording and stows it away in her droid and in all the galaxy, it just so happens that her brother comes across the droid and buys it. HOW FUCKING LUCKY OF THEM!!! dumb

Jive Turkey said:

Princess Leia makes a recording and stows it away in her droid and in all the galaxy, it just so happens that her brother comes across the droid and buys it. HOW FUCKING LUCKY OF THEM!!! dumb

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r2d2 is a sith lord, he has manipulated events from the beginning of history to eventually result in the next trilogy: Rise of the Droid Sith, led by... HK47. All meatbags will die.