Gotta admit, watching everyone at Disney play the Blame Game for TROS is more entertaining than the entire ST...
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
JJ Abrams' Editor: "It was The Last Jedi the one that undid everything in the previous film"
- Thread starter Fj0823
- Start date
I do mostly agree with you but the thing with the PT is that it ended on a relative high note compared to the two films before it....whereas this trilogy ended with most of the excitement just gone.
Yes it was, he says he won't have time to save her. How is it so hard to understand basic storytelling.Because it wasn't out of the way of his mission to save Rey. He wasn't just gonna dip with nowhere to go and no pilots. You keep trying to make a casual mention of "I have an idea" when prompted by Han Solo that they're running out of time to be definitive proof that he cared about the cause and wasn't primarily there to rescue Rey. It doesn't work. And the film doesn't try to frame it in anyway shape or form as that sort of character beat.
And I conceded this point. He did it because it was convenient.
And please enough with the gifs my internet is shit enough.
OP
OP
Not to mention it's setting is infinitely more interesting and some of the greatest Star Wars stories are set in the Prequels setting.
Meanwhile, The ST is even faceplanting in its attempt to build stories in that setting (See: "The Rise of Kylo Ren")
He says they won't have much time if the resistance comes in and wins because the space station was about to be blown up. He was being very literal. Why are people who discuss the ST so bad at observing basic shit.
He's not making a choice between deactivating the shields and saving Rey.
That's not at all how that conversation is framed.
A reminder that earlier in the film Finn had already fought the first order, under similar circumstances. He didn't run away from fights whenever they presented themselves.
Arguably that moment is the defining moment where he faces his fear of the FO but if anything it reinforces his fear first and foremost. So it's basically back to square 1 when it comes to fearing the first order. He faced his fear and lost. Him trying to protect Rey matters more in that moment than him facing his fear.
I'm not saying he ran away from fights but I think there is a big difference between fighting stormtroopers while being saved by Han Solo and facing the big bad of the movie by himself knowing "Solo isn't here to save you"
Was about to be blown up because he disabled the shields. lol. He is making a choice to help both.
Either way he would've fought though. There is a difference. But Finn didn't have the chance to run away in either scenario.
Because Han insisted that they find a way to disable the shields. Finn only provided a shaky idea at best when prompted after being called out on his BS. There is not a single ounce of self reflection on Finn's part that would lead to character development and a sudden care for the cause. This all happens in an incredibly short amount of time. You're basically arguing that his character development occurs over the course of five-ten minutes. And that we should just ignore his dialogue and frame it completely differently so that it appears more heroic, in order to get this version of Finn that by all accounts doesn't actually exist in the film. And your metric is
"He cares because he's not standing still and doing nothing when prompted to do come up with an idea"
That's not what caring for a cause means. ESPECIALLY not in SW where characters are entirely defined by their dedication to ideologies.
Last edited:
It's just a mediocre ass trilogy of moves, with a classic jumping the shark in the third film. It's basically the Hobbit trilogy.
If they weren't Star Wars, the movies would never be talked about on their own merits/failures. They are completely forgettable.
If modern day internet discussion was around for the prequels, the discourse would make the ST reactions look mild.
If they weren't Star Wars, the movies would never be talked about on their own merits/failures. They are completely forgettable.
If modern day internet discussion was around for the prequels, the discourse would make the ST reactions look mild.
This is my take too. My biggest problem with the new trilogy is that they did not have a story to tell. It was just like "Let's make more movies, what can possible go wrong, its SW !!!!"
han shaky development is affecting how people expect for characters to develop
Han goes away and returns saving the day so he joins the rebels. HENCE, every other character that does something somehow similar, OBVIOUSLY will join the rebels and never have any doubt in his mind never again 100% rebel scum.
RoS is smooth, so it kinda blew past some people. AotC is Lucas sitting you down and getting intimate with that scene of Anakin and Padme rolling around with the space cows :)
Rey's twist in TLJ doesn't fit with her visions in TFA with the lightsaber, or explain how she just 'knows' how to use force abilities that Jedi take years training to use.
Snoke may as well have been a random Stormtropper for all we discover about him in TLJ, where the hell this powerful Sith Lord came from when is a rule of two would have been nice, what's with those scars on the face that look like a lightsaber slashed it, looks like a story there? Nope, he dead and you get no answers to anything.
Luke was a fair enough direction to go, it's just many people felt it out of character, the guy who saw redemption in Darth Vader almost killing his nephew who didn't actually do anything bad yet, then running off to be a hermit.
the force is not exclusive for some specific bloodlines
even if JJ went and tried to change that again.
we have seen toddlers moving objects without knowing what the force is.
So? Finn could've went to find her instead. He chose to help them, what if capturing Phasma went wrong? I'm arguing that he made a choice, something that you deny.
That basically boils down to every character criticism in the first two ST movies tbh.
"Oh this can't happen, because that's different from the OT's character development."
Drives me nuts.
No he couldn't have. Rey literally freed herself lmao. Finn wasn't in anyway shape or form going to just dip and look for Rey in an enemy base without the two heavily armed and heavily experienced war heroes.
He was already in the process of trying to cover his tracks. Him coming up with an idea to capture Phasma when prompted was the payoff for this line:
---->
This is not: I care for the resistance and their cause
This is: Ok yea I fucked up I'll think of something maybe while we're on our way to save Rey.
Last edited:
JJ set up Luke/Anakin's lost blue lightsaber as a mysterious MacGuffin. Rian had Luke dismissively toss that worthless device over his shoulder.
JJ tried to make Kylo Ren the scary new Darth Vader. Rian had Snoke say "Take that stupid helmet off, it makes you look like an idiot."
JJ tried to create Snoke as the mysterious new Emperor. Rian killed Snoke and put Kylo Ren in charge.
JJ tried to set up the mystery of Rey's parentage. Rian said that Rey is a nobody, because parentage doesn't matter.
Luke catches the lightsaber in RotS. Kylo rebuilds his helmet in RotS. Without Snoke, JJ resorts to bringing back Palpatine for RotS. RotS says that Palpatine was Rey's grandfather. JJ was clearly in love with these ideas that Rian trashed.
JJ's former editor (who didn't work on Rise of Skywalker) isn't saying that TLJ was bad, she actually says it was good, and that it tried to deconstruct the franchise to open the franchise up to new possibilities. But she says that she has some sympathy for JJ (who clearly fell on his face), for being asked to follow an act like Rian Johnson's, an act which had just previously deliberately kicked JJ square in his memberberries.
The fault lies not in JJ or Rian, but in Lucasfilm/Disney choosing JJ to come back for the third movie after Rian pummeled JJ with the second. Lucasfilm/Disney should've let JJ make all three, or let Rian make all three, or let Colin Trevorrow make the third one.
So at no point did he undo anything. None of those are things being undone.
Basically, this
I agree with everything you said
Of the directors, I blame Johnson's the most.
Because shitting on everything that JJ built while making the second movie of a trilogy was a really, really bad look
I understand JJ going "oh, you took a dump on everything I built and now I have to follow your storyline? My ass" and thus, making TROS
I would also be frustrated as fuck
Like, you want to innovate the formula and make your own spin on the franchise ? Ok, but direct a spin off like Rogue One, not the second movie of a trilogy
Last edited:
After honeymoon period for The Phantom Menace wore off, the discourse for the prequels was quite negative on the Internet for the prequels, especially the first 2 movies.
I think this video says it well. While it's focusing on canon and not necessarily character developments I still think it applies here.
It seems that the actual running theme in this trilogy was trying to undo the stuff that came before. True genius from LF.
TFA resets everything to ANH and is a thinly veiled fuck the prequels movie.
TLJ knew the only way to go after a blatant ANH remake was to try and it steer it from that path to be it's own thing.
TROS gets back on the remake track and delivers the finishing blow and retroactively fucks over the whole series but ROTJ and TLJ the most.
TFA resets everything to ANH and is a thinly veiled fuck the prequels movie.
TLJ knew the only way to go after a blatant ANH remake was to try and it steer it from that path to be it's own thing.
TROS gets back on the remake track and delivers the finishing blow and retroactively fucks over the whole series but ROTJ and TLJ the most.
I blame the people that excessively praised The Force Awakens when that movie went downhill after they leave Jakku
Okay I have to respond to this right here because Rey does have a consistent character arc through both those movies regarding this regardless of what the intentions may have been from the different writers involved in it. When we meet her in TFA she's clinging onto a faint memory of her parents so hard that she's content to barely get by as a scavenger so she can stay at the place they left her because she's absolutely convinced herself they'll return one day. She's so paralyzed by the idea of having nothing to tie her identity to that she can barely even aspire to anything else. By TLJ she's so desperate for someone to decide her identity for her that she's openly asking people to and having conversations about it with the man she literally watched murder his own father. Realizing that she'll never get the easy answer she wants is the most devastating thing she could learn, but it's also empowering because it forces her to decide her own identity and gives her the freedom to choose her own path for the first time in her life.
They should have just introduced a new villain imo, it would have been preferable
Kylo got redeemed in the original episode 9 too despite being the big bad. JJ just tried to fit the conclusion of the last two trilogies in this one.
-Rey vs. Kylo on an ocean as an inverse on Obi-wan vs Anakin on Mustafar
-Throne room scene of ROTJ where the big bad wizard tempts the protagonist to become evil and strike him down
The issue is that we didn't need an old wizard final boss in the first place. It was time for something new. Kylo was that something. A character like Kylo had never been the big bad in SW. Kylo is like if we got a continuation of this alternate ending from SW:
Kylo on his own is inherently interesting without playing second fiddle. I just genuinely don't understand why they felt the need to go with something so dull.
OP
OP
What you didn't enjoy Han Solo entering the scene like this?
JJ is only ever able to do fan service. He's not actually good at directing movies. You would think people would know that by now.
I was pretty weirded out when so many people here blamed TROS on "fans" or "reddit" instead of the actual people in charge of producing the film.
If Lucasfilm pandered to "reddit" then, then they should be mad at Lucasfilm. Fans didn't approve of any scripts or choose the talents behind the scene, Lucasfilms did. A strange level of corporate worship there.
I would never argue that TFA capitalizing on fanservice was a bad idea. Fanservice and familiarity aren't inherently bad. It depends on execution. TROS was an example of bad fanservice. Even if the intentions are good. Like having an in universe funeral for Carrie Fisher, there's no way in hell they did that cry cynically. And arguably all of the callbacks are not cynical either but out of the director and writer's genuine love for SW that they'd emulate it. Thing is with TFA it felt like there was a commentary being made, about reintroducing this franchise to a new generation of people. TLJ reinforced that message and commentary with its overall theme of the old guard passing the baton. TROS throws that commentary off a cliff entirely.
Actually it's like if you were hired to write the 3rd book in a story that's been dead for 10 years, you write the opening the same as the last two books, fuck off after a few chapters, and then decide to come back 2/3 through after someone had to pick up your slack. And it's worth pointing out that nothing in The Last Jedi made JJ make the decisions he made in The Rise of Skywalker. Like there's no bad decision in TROS that you can point to and say "oh that's because [thing in TLJ]". He just made a mediocre SW movie.
It's on Disney for not hiring someone that could/would stick around for the whole trilogy. And I can't really blame Abrams for taking the opportunity to do a Star Wars movie. But I also don't think anyone involved has any room to complain about a second film they weren't ever going to do, and a third film they hadn't planned on coming back for.
I don't think fan service is bad but I think TFA and TRoS take it too far, it feels like they have no creativity (though TLJ is just as bad in its own way imo)
Yeah I can see that. Got to sell the merch after all. It's like when TFA came out and it was all Kylo merch rather than Rey or Finn.
Shame. Kylo standing on his own could have been amazing. Hell even if they wanted to redeem him it would have meant more that way.
JJ and creativity have never been friends. He did the exact same thing with Star Trek. He's not able to be creative.
Rey... Rey Skywalker is all anyone needs to know about the extent of how creative JJ can be.
This! The root of the problem is the top executive at Lucasfilm not having a plan for a trilogy. They announced a trilogy since the beginning, they should've plan for one!
HOWEVER, There is no denying that The Last Jedi undid a lot of things that were setup for the trilogy. Whether they were good or bad is another story, but what Rian Johnson did was consciously and on propose for the sake of expectation diversion!
HOWEVER, JJ Abrams was stubborn and still wanted to do what he was planning since the beginning regardless of how much Rian Johnson had broken, and that was also a big mistake. He can blame all he wants that Rian destroyed, and in part he is right (in part because it was the job of the top executives to stop him), but he HAD to adapt to what Rian left. It didn't matter if he liked it or not.
In conclusion, both were at fault: Rian had an ego and tried to leave his mark sacrificing continuity and JJ had an ego and wanted to tell his story even though it was mostly destroyed resulting in much nonsense like the return of the Emperor.
The biggest fault, is LucasFilm for not having proper direction and leadership!
The lightsaber vision in TFA doesn't fit with Rey being a Palpatine either, or having a connection to any other specific bloodline. It's a slideshow of traumatic scenes in the past and the future, relating to Rey, Luke, and Kylo. I don't see how it has to be read as foreshadowing for Rey having significant parentage, since it doesn't even function that way now that her parentage is established.
Regarding Rey's abilities, picking at power levels is a fruitless exercise, especially when you're dealing with magic that's fueled by emotions, and in a setting with rules as poorly defined as Star Wars. You can call this giving up if you want; I just don't see any narrative point in trying to figure out the specific logistics of how magically powerful characters are when that's tangential to the actual story.
As for Snoke being a cipher, the Emperor gets even less than that in ESB and RotJ, and people were satisfied with it for sixteen years. While backstory can be useful for developing a character, not every character needs a backstory, and not every possible question needs to be answered. I think the issue here is the overemphasis on grand mysteries and reveals that has taken root in a lot of fandoms. Again, if you were to watch the OT for the first time, I doubt you'd be let down by the fact that the Emperor is never remotely explained in the films, and he's an even more important character than Snoke to that storyline.
And for Luke, your point's fair enough as well. Traditionally, heroic character arcs like Luke's end with the sense that a character has learned all they need to learn, and can just go on from there to their happily ever after. Trying to give them another character arc after that is inherently going to clash a little with that romantic mode of storytelling, and that's a risk. I do feel it was a worthwhile risk, and that one of TLJ's great strengths is how it steps back to critically assess the romanticism of the OT, but I totally see how it would read as out of character for Luke as he was at the end of RotJ.
Should have given Rian Johnson full control of the new trilogy from the start.
Abrams fucked up Trek, and proceeded to destroy Star Wars.
Abrams fucked up Trek, and proceeded to destroy Star Wars.
Would have been a sight to see. Bringing on JJ was the worst thing they did for the franchise, and I didn't realize how bad it was until he wasn't being propped up by Kasdan and other's ideas/concepts