While I would have loved to have Dolby Vision on the disc, it is still a lovely transfer. Mine will be getting another spin tomorrow evening - got tickets for IX at around noon Wednesday.
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A guide to The Last Jedi, or why the movie is rich in storytelling and set-ups/payoffs of themes (Nerrel video) (open spoilers for everything)
- Thread starter ThisThingIsUseful
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While I would have loved to have Dolby Vision on the disc, it is still a lovely transfer. Mine will be getting another spin tomorrow evening - got tickets for IX at around noon Wednesday.
But, that's kind of the point of Kylo Ren's character. He's not meant to be cartoonishly evil or one dimensional. He's conflicted, but it's the inverse of Luke's conflict. Luke was wrestling with the dark side. Ben is wrestling with the light side. Throughout TFA, Ben makes multiple statements about how he feels the pull to the light. In TLJ, it's less stated, and instead shown, such as his hesitation to kill his mother after Snoke rebuked him for how killing his father didn't solidify his devotion to the dark side, but instead "split him in two." In that brief moment, he's like, "I can kill her. I have her dead to rights. But will it make me stronger in the dark side? Or will it split me in two again?" So he hesitates, then his wingmen take the shot. It's was one of my favorite moments in the film. Adam Driver is so good at displaying conflict in just facial expressions. Something that was sorely missing from the prequels for the characters that were absolutely built to wrestle with internal turmoil (ie, Anakin).
Ben isn't just pure evil, but part of his arc in the first two films was about setting him on a path of darkness, which he came just one more step closer to by killing Snoke, another barrier to his growth that was just using him for his own ends. By the end of the film, Ben is untethered. He's acting on his own, for himself, for the first time. No Leia or Han to guide him, no Luke to lecture him, and no Snoke to manipulate him. It's like that first taste of freedom you get when you move out of your parents home and into your own place. Ben is now unsupervised and able to do as he pleases. I'm interested to see how that plays out in RoS.
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Which is why it's ironic that one of the best acted scenes in the prequels is the silent Anakin/Padme scene. Unfortunately, much of the dialogue is stating exactly how he feels in a expository way, and sometimes an insane way that makes it strange Padme could fall for her, but Hayden showed some good acting chops in that scene. It's something that was written better for Adam Driver in the sequels. His scene with Leia and that fantastic scene after Snoke's death with Rey are phenomenal.
I still argue Hayden Christensen could have delivered if he'd had a competently-written script and a director worth his salt. Not on the same level as Adam Driver, but at least somewhat better than what we got.
Yes, Ben's main internal conflict is that he's always having to live up to others' expectations. He's the son of the leader of the Resistance. He's gifted in the force, and sent to train with his uncle, the most famous man in the galaxy, to be a great Jedi. He's lured to the dark side, where he's expected to carry the legacy of his grandfather, the second most famous man in the galaxy, and lead the First Order.
But who cares who he is. Does he know who he is?
No
I'm not sure if you were being flippant here or not.
There's no friction in space. Thus, if you push off, you'll continue forever, excepting gravity pulling you in a different direction.
You can make whatever rules you want for hyperspace, but regular space, you don't need fuel. Few shows actually do this right - Star Trek's multiple shows fail on this point also a lot, even though it is very simple.
It´s really crazy. I mean what kind of Person makes this and what kind of Person actually enjoys surrounding himself with hours and hours on end of angry/condescending assholes just complaining about Stuff. What a miserable existence.
Bet it´s Georg Lucas´ alt account ;-)
This video is mostly just the same arguments that get brought up. But just going through some of the problems with it.
- Palpatine had very little back story in the originals so its alright that snoke had none. No, because the universe was already set up with 7 movies by the time Snoke dies, Palpatine didn't have this problem. If in episode 9 super Yoda appears out of nowhere and helps the good guys, there would be a lot of questions that need to be answered to make it a satisfying character.
- The whole graph part of balanced force makes no sense at all. Palpatine wasn't some crazy powerful sith he was just smarter then the idiots that were the Jedi and built an army then betrayed them. Also the whole Palpatine never being dead really ruins the graph idea even more. Also where's Leia on the graph, why does she just get ignored.
- The weird idea that Lucas coming up with an idea means it can't be criticized is weird considering the prequels. That's 3 entire movies where that's essentially what happened.
- Random Luke clips out of context, i do like the one where he says "I can't go on alone" that's somehow support for his argument and not against it.
- Tries to compare Luke hesitating for a moment in ROTJ about to kill Vader with him hiding away for like what 10 years while his friends and family die, due to him traumatizing his nephew. That's not a good comparison.
- Tries to say that Indiana Jones and the Crystal skull was bad because of it being to similar to the old ones. Just no.
- Just fills in the story for TLJ about how Luke definitely tried to help Ben. From what we are shown Luke doesn't even try to help Ben he just goes straight to being about to murder him. Maybe instead of some of the horrible jokes we could have seen Luke try to help save Ben...but nah need Your mom jokes and porgs!
- Jedi are failures, i mean just ignore the "1000 generations" where they kept the peace complete failures!
- I wonder why Luke's allies wouldn't accept his decision to just hide while they all get murdered by Snoke and Kylo wheres he just essentially says the force will fix it! Again the weird force graph that doesn't make any sense is brought up and the 1000 generations of peace is ignored. All to somehow try to justify Luke just standing idly by while the Sith kill everyone is actually the right call.
- If you want to ignore Palpatine being alive with the graph idea the obvious right choice for Luke would be to help defeat Kylo and Snoke until he's the last jedi again and then cut himself off from the force. Then we get a balanced force and he doesn't need to just let the Sith kill everyone he cares about and however billions,trillions or whatever amount of other people.
- Usual themes stuff. Themes are not the be all end all of film. Like the Poe and Leia discussion the issue is the writing in service of the themes, since you can make the case that Poe made the right call essentially every time he made a decision.
- Tries to defend the literal worst line in the film "save what we love..." just lol.
- Tries to compare Luke throwing lightsaber away in ROTJ with the TLJ. Once again the problem is the EXECUTION of these things not the idea. If in ROTJ Luke threw it away in a comical way it would be a problem just like it is in TLJ. What is it with these comparisons.
- Again with Luke one of the issues is the execution of the ideas from what we see in the film pretty much every interaction he has had with Kylo is to push him further and further to being evil. He starts by traumatizing him by almost murdering him in his sleep, ignores him for years then comes back and pretty much just trolls him and makes him angry (where does anger lead according to Yoda). Luke come on at least try to you know, help fix your mistake.
- Like just lies about the Plinkett review. No the first half of an almost hour review is not struggling to invent plotholes.
- Again with the weird comparisons like trying to compare Titanic to a film trilogy of course you can't have that sort of a cliff hanger ending on something like the Titanic. Then goes with the the usual I guess they just weren't paying attention/didn't understand the threads of the story.
- Yeah no one criticized the Ewoks in ROTJ.
I don't think you are following the physics all the say through. You don't need energy to stay in motion, but you do need fuel to accelerate. So if you have two bodies, in this case two ships, then relative acceleration comes into play. If one ship is accelerating and the other isn't, then it will either catch up or pull away relative to the other. Therefore a space chase becomes dependent on fuel.
Right? I love that moment in RoTs with the silent Anakin and Padme, with the haunting music. So well executed and beautifully shot. It's a shame the prequels didn't have that more evenly spread out across its entirety. I'll never deny that the prequels had some wonderful ideas, set design, costume design, art direction, and musical score, but the execution fell woefully short of its potential.
Nerrel do you really not see a difference between Snoke and the Emperor?
I don't think that it's wise to fall back on 'media litteracy' in any arguement on Era. At best you're using an incredible amorphous term that will be misunderstood, all while implying an inability to debate issues by way of merit. At worse, you've injected a toxic blocker into discourse where it will be used as a cudgel. Because in practice it will be misunderstood, misused, and an excuse to freeze someone out (selectively!) for the tinyest mistake. Mistakes that are harped upon and outsized to disguise the real truth of 'I don't like the opinion I've just read'
This appeal to authority is doubly funny because we've had exceptionally media littéral persons on Era take the 'wrong position' of disliking TLJ and had their arguements and works degraded.
There really was no need to decry a poster as not 'media literate' simply because they used the wrong noun in describing their issue with Snoke. They are still fully capable of analyzing and criticizing media even if they don't fully grasp diction.
I'd take more issue with posters on Era being media illiterate for not understanding how the relative positions of Snoke and the Emperor create different expectations Within a narrative.
How about 'defenders' on Era having a lengthy if humorous series of exchanges with me where many a poster simply could not understand a fundamental practice of editing :
They were simply unable to grasp how removing a shot from a scene, and not being able to notice any discontinuity, might be an issue to suggest that the shot itself was not needed, or that the peripheral elements to that shot did not adequately establish necessity.
Because those are ACTUAL examples of a blindness in being able to analyze and criticize media and as such would make me question someone's ability to do so. Not more surface level errors.
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I have no idea what scene you're talking about, but I can list like 3 reasons off the top of my head why you would include a shot that doesn't really matter to the narrative.
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If the post you quoted was only about Snoke, then maybe? There's quite a bit more, and ironically, I think using a fallacy of focusing on one thing to discredit the entire post shows an inability to argue the points on the merits since you've skipped over them. What can't be argued on the merits seem to be themes of the movies and purposes of the storylines and how they intertwine; when these points are made, they're dismissed as elitist and condescending. It's toxic and dismissive, and furthermore, if you want to die on the hill that complaining about a "Mary Sue" isn't a sexist argument that doesn't belong on the board, then by all means, defend people who use it as capable of analysis and criticism.
Having every scene be hyper dense and giving scenes no time to breathe is one of the main complaints 1st year film students get for their projects.
Indeed. Of course you need fuel to accelerate, break, turn, etc. Not to mention powering shields, weapons, comms, auxiliar systems and life support. It's very simple.
EDIT - Did not know this was as questionable (read: very likely bogus) as it is. It was linked to me by someone I assumed had at least done a bare minimum of vetting, as they're usually pretty big into stats/polling. My mistake.
Take with massive grains of salt. No point deleting it since it's been quoted like ten times already.
Take with massive grains of salt. No point deleting it since it's been quoted like ten times already.
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I was going to but didn't know if it was thread worthy, but you're free to take it and make one.
I'd endorse it.
Like, it's okay to dislike TLJ, but it's just such a large pile of evidence that it's a minority opinion bolstered by illegitimate critics.
Like, it's okay to dislike TLJ, but it's just such a large pile of evidence that it's a minority opinion bolstered by illegitimate critics.
Wow really interesting.
Unsurprising.
I wouldn't make a thread on it. People wouldn't engage with the data.
I wonder what the statistics would look like for those who view the other films unfavorably. Kind of meaningless data when we can't compare.
Wait who picks up calls
Lol... no surprise here.
Ahahahah oh man, this just says every doesn't it?
Interesting poll. But honestly you go back to the original OT for the movie.....pretty wide variance in terms of opinions. I'm sure we could do a poll purely on here and it would not be white conservative men who hated it. Who had multiple issues with the overall pacing, the lack of payoff and overall structure from 7 to 8, the terrible plot contrivances such as Benicio Del Toro randomly appearing and Holdo holding back on the Resistances plan for no godamn reason.
And people are free to fawn over it and analyze it as much as they want. But so much of the critical response is handwaved away by political attacks that have nothing to do with the movie. Another big reason I can't stand this movie? Finn being pretty severely maligned! Not really a conservative talking point lol. So yes analysis is great but theirs a ton of analysis going the other way about this movie that is incredibly valid as well.
And people are free to fawn over it and analyze it as much as they want. But so much of the critical response is handwaved away by political attacks that have nothing to do with the movie. Another big reason I can't stand this movie? Finn being pretty severely maligned! Not really a conservative talking point lol. So yes analysis is great but theirs a ton of analysis going the other way about this movie that is incredibly valid as well.
Yeah this is what makes any discussion about this movie so impossible, it becomes not about the movie.
So does that mean that roughly a third of the most prolific TLJ defenders shouldn't be considered media literate and thus, in practice, their opinion should not be viewed as equally valid? Because that's a far bigger issue than, say, a poster using the wrong term — and yet such a level of such pedantic selectivity is where we're at.
Which is, in practice, what you did that poster when you highlighted 'Snokes arc'. So thankyou for agreeing with me, that's why I only gave a single concrete example as it pertained to TFA/TLJ and other videos arguement.
Citing theme alone is not dismissed as elitist and condescending. Ironically you yourself have done more to further that reaction than the mentioning of theme as a valid dialectic of discourse.
The thing that is seen as elitist and condescending is when posters respond to a broader complaint of execution solely by bringing up theme and then outright appeal to authority.
Theme is a singular dimension of story. It's nearly a non sequitur to use theme in this fashion unless you're prefacing heavily as to say that for you this was enough.
There's an example of that exact thing happening in this very thread.
People in these threads —generally— absolutely understand the entwinement of theme and purpose, but in the end everyone is simply self rationalizing to reinforce their answer to the following question :
Did I find that satisfying?
Anyone that doesn't understand this, I can only be forced to assume isn't especially media literate.
At the end of this post you can find a decent primer on why I'd take pause at describing the videos creator as 'Media Litterate' by your own benchmark of pedantry. I'm not above sinking low to make a point!
And again this whole 'media litteracy' thing is especially funny when posters like Mockerre, BetterOffEd, Miamiwesker, exist. Posters that are moreso litterate than most of not all TLJ 'defenders' on Era (iF nOt AlL oF tHeMe PuT tOgEtHeR). Posters and persons like these are ignored in the calculus of 'we have the media litterate on our side'. Of course they are, because they have to be.
Also funny that people are laughing at 'multi hour' response videos being made since I'm sure many of them would contain some salient points even if they were otherwise tainted, and —to be sure—not all of them are in fact tainted.
But why search for actual valid critique when lazy handwaves will do I suppose ;)
Anyone that didn't watch the video and pick up on the sorts of things above? I'm sorry, you're just not very media literate. D:
injecting poorly defined gâte keeping into discourses on thé internet are always bad moves.
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I...don't think think that poster is saying what you think they're saying
Funny I was about to name drop you specifically as having a fantastic critique in the OT about why you disliked it and your issues with it. At least the issues you had I agreed with it
it really is the worst criticism. Nothing about it breaks the movies my logic. It's been established since IV that you can hit things in light speed to very bad results. We've also seen large ships hit each other in close range as early as VI.
Rian Johnson shouldn't be penalized for being the first to put 2 and 2 together; and on top of it, it's remixing old things in new and exciting ways. It's exactly what people say they wanted out of Star Wars, and the criticism of it is emblematic of criticism of TLJ as a whole.
Hahah.
You posted so judiciously before about when you said people don't "misunderstand" the movie it doesn't mean that you think they're idiots. You tried so hard trying to make it you don't condescend other people that disagree with you...
And then you posted this.
The poster is saying that a common complaint directed toward first year film students is that they focus so much on stuff happening it doesn't give the film time to breathe. It's okay to have a shot that's just there to show a habit of a character, or a detail in the room, or even just to give the audience something else to look at. You seemed to think the poster was implying the opposite. At least I think you are? You've spent that whole exchange being really vague as to what you're talking about and making some pretty hefty logic leaps even if that poster was agreeing with you in the post I quoted before this.
Wait, do you honestly think that your post is a counter point to my editing scenario?
I wasn't disagreeing with him that these are things taught to first years. Neither of you have the actual context to accurate assess much less critique what I said. I said 'remove a shot' from a sequence and you've filled in the type of shot and the validity of the statement as a whole via assumptions. The problem in the scene wasn't anything to do with frequency.
The logic leaps are meant to impress how disorienting and easily abused based on self serving selective context— You're better, frankly, not going down the Scotsman route, injecting vague expansive gate keeping terms into the dialogue (and media litterate is so broad as to be insufficiently defined for its purposes in this discussion). In practice that's what 'media litteracy' has already been used for.
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You folks who are so quick to cheer on the poll even though the pollster is dubious at best... saying "I knew it!" "lol, of course" and stuff like that...
You folks are really quick to pounce on anything to confirm your bias and prejudice about people who dislike the movie, huh?
You folks are really quick to pounce on anything to confirm your bias and prejudice about people who dislike the movie, huh?
Except none of what you said makes sense if that's what you thought he was saying so you didn't actually make any kind of point.
You asked if a shot that didn't matter to the continuity of the film should be taken out and that if someone failed to realize this they were media illiterate. That poster told you that's not how it works. Then you acted like he agreed with you and made whatever weird point you were trying to make anyway. What did this prove exactly? All this does is make you look dishonest if you're telling me you did that on purpose.
I'm going to be real with you. The being intentionally vague nonsense while busting out the 11th grade vocab makes it look like you're purposely trying to make it look like you're saying something when you're not. If you're actually trying to have an honest discussion stop beating around the bush. This disingenuously looking for a gotcha crap isn't cute.
I didn't see any evidence that was the case, other than people saying it wasn't a prolific and well known pollster.
The percentage list of favorite start wars movies very closely matched the poll that was posted on Era.
Yes. Textbook example of something that's dressed up just enough and aligns closely enough with preexisting beliefs to gain traction. Dude and his 'firm' were 'hired' to help stage fake protests before, not exactly on the up and up.
