-
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.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Red Letter Media: Star Wars The Last Plinkett Review
- Thread starter Infinity Times Two
- Start date
- Status
Why hasn't Force ghost Anakin talked to Kylo?
I'm sure seeing his grandson go down the same path he did would have compelled him to commune with him or something.
Same reason Anakin wasn't shown to be haunted by the scores of Jedi he personally murdered, I assume. They likely shut themselves off to that side of the force.
Edit: see this is why I say arguing plot holes in SW is pointless, you can literally just say space magic and everything makes sense.
Ahhh i see where you coming from.
Ummm, could be because Kylo has free will, and made his choice. he (Anakin) can't interfere. Or something along those lines.
Buuut. There's still one more movie, so ya never know. LOL.
Anakin was supposed to appear in the first one.
They decided it would be too much for the first movie. Then Rian did his own thing.
So now we dont know why Anakin doesnt talk to Kylo.
If Anakin helps Kylo, it would indirectly make Luke's story better since he is the one that brought back his father.
I agree. I would have welcome a new story. Over whatever the hell we got.
It's hard for me to go back to the OT how those characters end up ><...
doesn't want to give up the secret Bush's Baked Beans recipe
Not entirely convinced that we both know what I meant, or what you believed I meant, for that matter.
I simply meant that I saw postings of yours that earned you warnings and bans, and would thus prefer to protect both of us from derailing the thread and instead just forget about it. I'm also willing to let insinuations/name-calling like
or
slide. But I will stand by my argument that you really need to offer compelling evidence with a specific time code in a video that shows Mike Stoklasa, not doing a character, being an alt-right asshole, or otherwise I find your suggestion
pretty inflammatory. Until you show me that, and stop shifting goal posts via citing Rich Evans, who is not Mike Stoklasa, like here:
I won't take that back. Feel free to report any of this if you feel that it is me, who's doing the inflammatory accusations.
The Patrick H Willems "shut up about plot holes" video is a pretty perfectly timed video to counter RLM's...
I really dig Half In The Bag but yeesh I actually couldn't make it through this video. Their take on new Star Wars has felt pretty off to me. Except for their Rogue One vid :P
I really dig Half In The Bag but yeesh I actually couldn't make it through this video. Their take on new Star Wars has felt pretty off to me. Except for their Rogue One vid :P
Oh, I totally agree. The OT didn't need prequels nor sequels, as it is a well-rounded story. These movies are made first and foremost because they make bank. And that's okay.
But that's also why I think TLJ is so good. In stead of going unnecessairy sequel like TFA (which is a movie I love, because it succeeds in bringing most of the magic of what made IV so great back), it tried to (and imo succeeded in) actually telling something new. It ads to the mythology of the whole thing, explores new themes and sheds new light on characters we know and love. And this while most blockbuster sequels usually only succeed in having the main character relearn the same lessons they've learned in the original.
By the way, there is a Lucasfilm story group 'guarding' the canon, and iirc the writers of these new movies engage with them often while working on the scripts. It's not a singular vision or voice, but it keeps everything within certain boundaries while giving the new writers and directors a chance to add their voice. I think that has it's merrits too. For me it's not that one way is better than the other.
And to me, TLJ is a great film, that does a lot of things right, but has some flaws.
I'm off to bed. I'll pick this up when i wake up.
Him also saying the same thing about young girl in the HIITB episode. As well downplaying BP in it's HIITB.
The GB 2016, saying all criticisms about misogyny is a big conspiracy by Sony.
And all the little jibs here and there scattered through out all the RLM series.
Again i stated why i brought up Rich. Which had nothing to do with moving goal posts.
But you can feel free to.
You were trying to protect me were you ? hmmmmm.
The TFA video where he said about the kids not caring about seeing themselves. The forced diversity (which he's brought up in other vids)
Him also saying the same thing about young girl in the HIITB episode. As well downplaying BP in it's HIITB.
The GB 2016, saying all criticisms about misogyny is a big conspiracy by Sony.
And all the little jibs here and there scattered through out all the RLM series.
Again i stated why i brought up Rich. Which had nothing to do with moving goal posts.
I've only ever reported one post in my entire time both here and on gaf. So no, i won't be report anything.
But you can feel free to.
I'm apathetic about Star Wars these days because I'm not in high school anymore and the franchise has been irreversibly damaged. That said, certain things matter, or at least are worth pointing out. Now, I will say this symptom isn't exclusive to the new Star Wars movies, but the writing is dumb. Incredibly, amazingly dumb. It's not nitpicking when the movie is literally gaslighting the audience. When audiences accept this and even defend it, that has an impact outside the cinema. Disney's throwing a lot of money at some very bad writing and getting impressive RoIs, so it reinforces the Hollywood trend that even the most fundamental aspects of what the movie is doing is "nitpicky detail" these days. Star Wars has never been high brow but there was a standard for internal consistency that traditionally separated fantasy epics from genre action, and it was there for a reason. When you're creating your own world with its own rules, you have to establish them through reinforcement. This is basic, basic stuff. Or was, at least.
There's a larger point to this as well. I thought Comic Book Girl 19 (re: nuGhostbusters) was rather profound in pointing out (paraphrasing) that movies are the [most common] way in which most people today consume what can still be considered art. So while there's no obligation or even incentive for Hollywood to inject quality into screenwriting, it generally doesn't increase production costs to make something better in this regard. Yet when Roger Corman flicks feel incredibly cohesive compared to today's blockbusters, as a society we could be in trouble. It's easy to dismiss this as just escapism and 15 years ago I would've been fine with that, but TLJ is on such an unprecedented dimension of incoherence unto itself that -- considering its budget -- I'm actually a tad concerned standards for even popcorn flicks can drop this low. Outside the movies we're a highly organized and technological society which means for better or worse, details do matter in our everyday lives, so there's some expectation that we are accustomed to things making sense. As in, it happens and we accept it intuitively, and that's not bad because that's how reality works. TLJ is not an art class project; it's got a structured plot so you don't expect it to brazenly deny what it showed you in a shot just seconds ago. This is Tommy Wiseau or even porn flick levels of bad, in a Disney blockbuster.
I was able to enjoy TFA by throwing out what little regard I had for Star Wars that survived the prequels and treating it like a Saturday morning cartoon, but TLJ doesn't merely ask its audience to turn off their brains. It needs its audience to be comfortable with actively unhealthy mental habits like short term memory loss and cognitive dissonance. Movies, one of our only remaining avenues for exposing audiences to art (even if indirectly), are now asking people to go temporarily insane for casual entertainment. That may be the new normal and I'm just an old codger, but I am a tad uncomfortable at the normalization of this extreme. I can go dumb to enjoy something, but crazy? TLJ literally made my head hurt.
Last edited:
Time for Star Wars: Legacy: The Movie. I'm down.
Plus Ostrander might get royalties and have enough money to continue GrimJack. I'm doubly down.
I can only partially agree with this. I guess you're alluding to the fact that the Jedi/Sith dichotomy will now finally end? In the few seconds after Snoke meets his unceremonious demise and with Luke's open disdain for the whole Jedi business back in mind, I would agree. However, unless Episode IX follows up by not having Kylo vs Rey being the central conflict, I think this is too presumptuous.
At the moment, we have two force wizards, Rey and Kylo irreconcilably disagreeing on what to do with the force, and duking this out in combat. I don't think that it matters much if all they do differently now in contrast to the Anakin/ObiWan scenario, is not referring to this as "Jedi" or "Sith".
The theme of powerful people like Luke resenting their power and (failed) responsibility out of arrogance/vanity is interesting, though. I am in favor of Rian Johnson taking helm for the entirely new trilogy if he finds additional themes like this that stray away from Episodes I-VII.
This list is worthless without actual links and time stamps. I'm not willing to do the leg work for your claims when I already proved with actual evidence (video link + time stamp) that your claim regarding the TLJ-HitB was utter nonse, so I won't trust that list, sorry.
Last edited:
Like most recent Red Letter Media, this is just pure bile in video format. Watched half of it and didn´t find it funny or spot on for the most part. Even many "criticisms" should be easily dismissed if they stopped to think about it: the First Order new about the rebel base location in Episode VII, as Starkiller base was actually aiming at them. It makes sense that right after their planet destroyer was obliterated, they would immediately send their might to wipe out the remaining Resistance that did not die in the attack to Starkiller Base.
I liked 'The Last Jedi', even though it did have some flaws overall I thought it was a very interesting film that wasn´t afraid to toy with characters that have become icons in interesting ways. I also think it ends with a very interesting premise for IX.
I liked 'The Last Jedi', even though it did have some flaws overall I thought it was a very interesting film that wasn´t afraid to toy with characters that have become icons in interesting ways. I also think it ends with a very interesting premise for IX.
It's a comedy review of a movie, there is nothing to discredit. It's merely an opinion piece. Folks take this shit too seriously
The video does make a very salient point about Poes while character arc in the film and how it undermines one of the core themes of the story.
You have the empire and the first order, authoritarian organisations with real world parallels. Subordinates generally don't questions the leadership despite how heinous or stupid the orders are. Then you Poes character arc in the story which amounts to the leadership refusing to provide any information of the plan to him a leading and respected officer with his subsequent rebelling against said authoritarian leadership resulting in countless loss of life. Essentially with the overall message of he was wrong to question leadership that refuses to justify their actions.
You have the empire and the first order, authoritarian organisations with real world parallels. Subordinates generally don't questions the leadership despite how heinous or stupid the orders are. Then you Poes character arc in the story which amounts to the leadership refusing to provide any information of the plan to him a leading and respected officer with his subsequent rebelling against said authoritarian leadership resulting in countless loss of life. Essentially with the overall message of he was wrong to question leadership that refuses to justify their actions.
Legit question: What did you think of the criticism it felt like a bunch of C-Plots, or at least four plots being given equal weighting when they should have felt more priotized?
Some items in the review are silly nit picks or can be explained away in multiple ways, but the whole Comedy of Errors aspect is something I've stated since day one and my biggest issue with the film. The whole movie is propelled forward by people being stupid and making dumb decisions. One after another logic is tossed out the window to tell the story Rian wanted to. The problem is this could have all been done with some more care, instead the movie feels so sloppy. It's a beautiful film that feels so hollow, it wants to be art but it lacks structure. Everything hinges on constant bad or odd decisions by the characters, logic failures, style over substance. The movie is the definition of Hollywood blockbuster "turn off your brain" while it has the outward appearance of a high quality film and tries to put itself off as such. It thinks it's smart when it isn't.
Legit question: What did you think of the criticism it felt like a bunch of C-Plots, or at least four plots being given equal weighting when they should have felt more priotized?[/QUOTE]
That´s actually a fair criticism in my opinion. As in, I would have loved to have more weight put on the Luke and Rey bits and some of the deleted scenes really would have added a lot to the film. It is a very long movie already, so I´d liked it to go the extra mile with it´s more interesting plots (which is Luke and Rei, for me).
I also liked the Finn plot, though, as I found it refreshing that a completely stupid plan would fail in the end. But I wouldn´t mind having less of that and more of Rei and Luke.
I feel that the video points out true flaws mixed with others that are not such, just for the sake of comedy. It just an opinion and, well, it is a comedy video after all. However I found their prequel videos way more satisfiying.
Equally you can rate it on a good/bad scale within RLM's history, but these guys are well established now - some in the thread seem to want to use it to beat their long established hate generally for RLM when (as you say) it's just an opinion piece
I mean I dislike the Cinemasins guys but I long stopped going in every thread bitching about them. Move on
People keep shitting on the RLM review of The Force Awakens but the biggest reason why that review wasn't great was because TFA, despite being a "soft reboot" and a bit of retread, was overall a strong showing and not particularly messy. You could tell the RLM guys legitimately enjoyed it from the Half in the Bag review.
The Last Jedi is much more controversial because it's just all over the place. I think the Plinkett takedown this time was obligated in the same way a TFA, but was also better justified as an overall critique (especially of the screenplay).
So far, the Sequel Trilogy is turning out a lot like the Star Trek reboot. That series started off promising, and then kind of squandered its potential with the sequel. Basically, the first movie was flawed but served as a good setup for future entries, where the second movie became something that "had to be recovered from."
The Last Jedi is much more controversial because it's just all over the place. I think the Plinkett takedown this time was obligated in the same way a TFA, but was also better justified as an overall critique (especially of the screenplay).
So far, the Sequel Trilogy is turning out a lot like the Star Trek reboot. That series started off promising, and then kind of squandered its potential with the sequel. Basically, the first movie was flawed but served as a good setup for future entries, where the second movie became something that "had to be recovered from."
Last edited:
It was "safe" well beyond a fault. It's hard to rip on "safe"; that's the goal. TFA was an extremely stupid movie, but it did hit most of the very conventional beats it was aiming for (as you say, not particularly messy), which makes it by design rather difficult to openly mock.
Is it Rian's fault that JJ handed him a big bowl of trope soup that he had to make a sequel to? Ep VIII had a lot going on because JJ introduced too many characters and too many plot threads with everyone ending Ep VII on the same ship besides Rey. Unless you wanted 90 minutes on the ship and 40 minutes split between the Jedi island and "Hoth" battle, Rian needed to create some reasons for people to escape the ship and do stuff. A slow chase was a fine plot device, but you can't base your entire movie around it and expect people to stay awake in the theater. You'll notice how the only good Star Trek movies have nothing like that in them, which Mike conveniently forgets in the review
Edit: as for the "comedy of errors" point, I think it was refreshing for the series to take that route because of the series focusing so heavily on the Jedi for the last 20 years. The Jedi do some of the stupidest shit imaginable, but it works out in the end because they are Jedi and it just works. These people are regular humans, and when regular humans do stupid things, they quite often fail miserably and get everyone killed.
It's up to Rian how the movie weighted the characters and themes.
I don't have a lot of time to write now, but I consider it on a basic level. Take Empire. Stripping out all of the background noise and physical amount of characters / action, the lasting impression it gave me structurally was (in terms of things I was supposed to really care about)
- Luke training and growth, ultimately leading to their test
- Han and Leia and the rebellion stuff.
That's it. There were lots of other things going on, but they are the weighted take-aways to me as a viewer.
With TLJ, and it's been a while, my impressions now I've had time to digest was that it genuinely wanted to give equal time for
- FO Vs Resistance broader conflict
- Rey and Luke
- Rey and Kylo
- Poe and Holdo
- Luke and his own personal tale of the deconstruction of the hero journey
It felt messy and I don't feel it's JJs fault for introducing the characters
Nonsense. Just do a short time skip. It's not a big deal. There was no requirement to start the film immediately after the events of VII. Someone mentioned a decent idea a while back: open with Luke chucking the lightsaber over his shoulder and then pan the camera over to it, show grass growing over it to note the time change. Done.
I love it. Blame JJ for TLJ. There was simply nothing Rian could do besides burn it all to the ground.
Centering the movie around one long chase scene is not necessarily a bad idea (Fury Road nailed it), but making it a slow chase set immediately after the last movie really dragged it down. The fact that two of the leads hadn't even met until the end of the second movie in a trilogy is nuts.
Nah, some aspects in terms of plotting are completely on Rian as a director and writer. It's a super messy movie when it didn't need to be in order to get the same emotional beats or points across.
That, along with the chase not making sense from the beginning and being extremely boring besides one moment.
Last edited:
Well first off, Ep 4 was tied up in a nice bow and Ep 5 didn't have much to continue from as far as open plot-threads were concerned. Ep 8 has those same basic plot threads that Ep 5 did, but are you just going to leave Finn in the juice tank the entire movie? Was Holdo brought in to flesh out some scenes or for reshoots since Carrie passed? I mean, yeah there could have been some editing here and there to tighten things up, and yes maybe Rose and Benicio weren't really necessary for the overall arc of the film, but they serve as interesting foils for what we normally expect in SW films ("fuck self-sacrifice" and "sometimes the scoundrel is actually a dickhead")
Ok but Ep 7 left off on a pretty crucial moment in the battle. And not showing initial reaction to Luke's abandonment of the Force would have been pretty stupid, not to mention them pausing that particular conversation for 5 months of training while that grass grew so they could just randomly pick it back up later. Not sure how this would have worked.
I am glad they brought up how stupid it was that the First Order are fucking buying their ships now. So the Empire/FO are just buying Tie Fighters because that's the evil ship and the Rebels/Resistance are buying X-Wings because that's the good one? Ugh, this movie didn't get nearly enough shit for that nonsense.
The point was that everyone was complicit, in one way or another, for all of the problems in the galaxy. Just like the dark/light side are aspects of the same force, there is that same capacity even in space capitalism: theres good and bad, but they are both part of the same system and everyone contributes to it. Unless you tear down the entire system and start it over, things will never change.
You know... the theme of the movie
Great Review. TLJ was bad. Like AoTC level bad. Aleast AoTC had fun action scenes at the end.
Have a giant mobile shipyard as a flagship.....buy Tie Fighters
On topic: I thought it was a good review and it made me laugh a lot. Hard to argue with most of their complaints. And it seems absurd to accuse them of being disingenuous about their dislike of the movie when they break it down.
It's not as good as the prequels ones, it's much better than the TFA one, and it's certainly not worth whatever's been going on in this thread for 30+ pages.
It's not as good as the prequels ones, it's much better than the TFA one, and it's certainly not worth whatever's been going on in this thread for 30+ pages.
That is one of the largest flaws of the movie, the spine of the story is just flat out boring. Fury Road and Master and Commander show how to make a chase interesting while advancing plot threads. TLJ chase was just dull and lifeless and really undercut any sense of urgency in the film.
It doesn't make it any less silly that First Order is buying Tie Fighters. The Empire/FO fleet being mainly Tie Fighters makes sense if that's what they're pumping out, those are the ones they can manufacture easily. But if they're just buying their ships then why don't they ever buy some X-Wings as well?
Trying to shove in lessons about about space capitalism is all fine and dandy, but it has to make sense.
And trying to "both sides" a conflict where one side is literally blowing up planets seems a bit silly.
I never liked the idea that Finn needed a lesson on these things anyway. He's an ex-Stormtrooper who knows full well how much of a piece of shit The First Order is. So when he's taking in stuff like child labor and gray weapon dealers, it feels like a huge waste of time.
He was supposed to be in VII but they scrapped a lot of George Lucas's ideas. I'm disappointed tbh.
I swear people who hate TLJ have fucking jumped the shark
That was Kylo Ren's point of view but I wouldn't consider it a theme of the movie. From the protagonists' perspective all of their "systems" are already destroyed. The old Jedi Order died in Episode 3, the new Jedi Order died in between 6 and 7, and the new Republic was decapitated in 7. In addition to that we don't really know enough about the new Jedi or the Republic to know how "complicit" they were. We're just given a dollop of info and then the characters move on.
That's kind of a problem. A New Hope basically started in medias res with the Empire quickly established as bad, which worked because at the time the story was preceded and succeeded by nothing. The Empire already existed, the Death Star already existed, before the prequels as far as anyone knew the Empire could've been around for a century and spent a generation building their superweapon. A lot of that has since been hashed out (badly), but that's not the fault of the intro.
That trick don't fly when you're working on the seventh film of an epic. It'd be nice to understand a thing or two (beyond a title crawl going "this happened") about how the hell these Nazi knockoffs rapidly took over with living members of the old Rebellion still kicking around. The loss of Kylo had to have been a blow but it's not like Snoke needed Kylo breaking bad to get a whole new fleet of star destroyers and a planet-sized superweapon built. Not to mention, if the story is based on the implicit premise that the New Republic simply couldn't function without the Skywalkers to maintain order then that undermines Rey's entire backstory.
Last edited:
Who else is capable of subverting expectations in such a way?
TFA is fine because it's a fast-paced totally conventional hero's journey type movie that jumps from planet to planet while recycling half of ANH
TLJ, scene by scene, is incredibly dull. I'll give you the throne room fight, that one was decent enough, but I can't think of any other setpiece in the movie that I would want to revisit. The space chase? No. Casino planet? NO. Luke's island adventure featuring Rey? No. Infiltration of the New Order ship? No. Hoth 2.0 but worse? No. So in conclusion, the movie is a masterpiece and if you don't like it I'll give you the side eye
TLJ, scene by scene, is incredibly dull. I'll give you the throne room fight, that one was decent enough, but I can't think of any other setpiece in the movie that I would want to revisit. The space chase? No. Casino planet? NO. Luke's island adventure featuring Rey? No. Infiltration of the New Order ship? No. Hoth 2.0 but worse? No. So in conclusion, the movie is a masterpiece and if you don't like it I'll give you the side eye
Last edited:
- Status