You can tell they had a plan cuz rian when through all the trouble to get kylo out of the helmet, only for jj to put him back in it.
Nah bro he had this vision in mind. 🙄
At the very least Canto Bight was the catalyst for the character arcs.
Nah bro he had a vision and was totally not winging it for the prequel trilogy. That's why there are so many things in the PT that directly contradict or don't make sense in the context of the OT right down to only twenty years passing contradicting the original plan where the Empire was around long enough for there to have been multiple emperors and thus we somehow get this bright eyed boy on a planet where you apparently age like this:
I seriously can't fathom how people can't see that that is EXACTLY the type of thing Kylo would double down on after being rejected by Rey at the end of TLJ.
Hey hey hey now, he had that one line of exposition, thus he shouldn't be questioned, ever. Meanwhile Rey's understanding of the force makes ZERO sense. Especially not in the series where literally babies with no training can use it no problem.
-It's not even "answering fan theories in a different way", it's not answering them at all. I'm supposed to buy Snoke is this big bad something or other who "Gets to Kylo first", and there's a huge ??? as to what he is. And TLJ...does nothing before it kills him off. We know nothing about this central mystery character who has begged several questions, and the movie doesn't bother to have him do anything other than cliche villainy.
It was always intended as a metaphor for believing in yourself and in the power of a force in nature that simply isn't explainable with science.To be fair, I do feel like a lot of misunderstanding of the Force as a concept happens. It does feel like many people perceive of the Force like a game system where if you spend 5 Force Points you unlock Force Lightning where it's more of a living Force, i.e. it's magic and it ain't got to explain shit. It's unfair, it defies logic and rules, and is far more emotion based than people want to admit.
What's funny about the Mary Sue complaint is that she...kind of fails at being a Mary Sue. Like, aren't Mary Sue's supposed to easily get what they want? She botches redeeming Kylo Ren. She botches convincing Luke to help her save the day (that's Yoda that does that). Like in the grand scheme of the movie, her one achievement is...lifting some rocks...
after his whole let the past die speechI seriously can't fathom how people can't see that that is EXACTLY the type of thing Kylo would double down on after being rejected by Rey at the end of TLJ.
Maybe, if anybody ever actually used the term Gary Stu as anything other than a completely hypothetical rhetorical exercise as you're doing now.
you joke but i wouldn't put pass themDisney was like "hey JJ, masked Kylo toys sold better than unmasked Kylo toys so make sure you take care of that for us thanks"
Ready Player One is very definition of a Gary Stu. I hated that movie (and stopped reading the book) because of how shitty a character it was.Gary Stu is a pretty common term actually albeit not as common as Mary Sue.
i still remember plenty of people calling Jon Snow a Gary Stu until the ending hits.
You need to see TLJ as the much needed course correction after the hackery that was TFA. Who Snoke was should have been answered in TFA, JJ chose not to so we're left with a Palpatine rip-off from a film that was basically ANH 2.0. Snoke had to fucking die in TLJ otherwise the entire ST would just be on the path of complete rehash. Rian smartly chose to axe that wannabe rip off to force the franchise in a new direction.
Then JJ brought Palpatine back from the dead...
We shall see, JJ. We shall see...
The one where he literally repeated Vader's TWO "rule the galaxy together" speeches verbatim and then spent the entire rest of the movie getting hella distracted by anything that even remotely reminded him of his past to the point where it cost him what should've been the easiest win in SW film history?
Gary Stu is a pretty common term actually albeit not as common as Mary Sue.
i still remember plenty of people calling Jon Snow a Gary Stu until the ending hits.
For Star Wars Universe.Ready Player One is very definition of a Gary Stu. I hated that movie (and stopped reading the book) because of how shitty a character it was.
The way I view Snoke is that he was a narrative tool to highlight Ben's further descent into the Dark Side, and was always going to be.
After the Force Awakens released, I remember posting on NeoGAF that Ben would kill Snoke in the next episode. That his arc was like the inverse of Luke's in the OT. Luke struggles against the Dark Side, Ben struggles against the Light Side. Luke refrains from murdering his father for the Emperor, Ben succeeds in murdering his father for Snoke. And since Ben's arc is one of fully embracing The Dark Side of the Force, his next step will be to murder his master to complete his training. It's like how Luke became a Jedi over the course of the trilogy, Ben is becoming a Sith of sorts, over the course of this trilogy. Little does Ben know, he is not the hero of this story, Rey is.
This wasn't met with much support back on NeoGAF, and since I don't go to that place, I can't dig up my old posts from 2015 (I was Figboy there too), but I admit I felt a little vindicated when Kylo killed Snoke in The Last Jedi. 😂😂
I never thought Snoke was anything more than an obstacle for Ben to overcome on his path to the Dark Side.
Hell I don't even think planned endings should be rigidly adhered to.It's likely how a lot of things are when it comes to long-term development. You know your start, you know your end, but everything in the middle can be molded as seen fit. So long as they don't impact the end goal.
TFA wasn't even that bad, though. It wasn't the best movie ever, but at its worst I'd say it had enough juice to keep me invested throughout, and it ended with a resonant "Yes, I'd like to see Part 2 to see where some of these mixed reactions go and go from there..." Then TLJ happened and to say IT GOT WORSE understates just how godawful I found it. Giving your expected big bad an air of mystery and not clearing that up immediately isn't something that has to be answered in part one. TFA established the characters just enough to make me barely interested, but TLJ just took everything that made TFA "good" and flushed it down the toilet.
I almost wish the ST were a rehash. That would be an improvement. We've already got Rebellion vs Empire again, Jedi vs Sith again, and they easily could have gone around these and delievered something new, but instead, it's fucking nothing. "Forcing a franchise in a new direction" is not something you save for the end of Act 2. You start a trilogy off in a mildly interesting way with one director, have another director fuck that up ENTIRELY, and then have the same director forced to clean up the previous one's mess. I can't blame him for reviving Palpatine after killing Snoke. RJ left mostly nothing to make a third movie about aside from Rey vs Kylo, and she's already beaten him multiple times, which is a ten minute action sequence at best. Yawn.
It bugs me as a whole that professionals in the industry, at or near the top tier can't get this all sorted beforehand.
There's little excuse.
Thats why I wanted TROS to be a sequel to TLJ and not TFA. This trilogy feels like 3 standalone movies and that is bad.
When a corporation gets big enough, they start to silo everything and then no silos know what the other silos are doing and it just lead to a general fuckery of each silo trying to pretend their not the one dropping the ball while having no idea what game their all supposed to play with said ball.It bugs me as a whole that professionals in the industry, at or near the top tier can't get this all sorted beforehand.
There's little excuse.
Good news, his trilogy is still on. If I recall, anyway.This is probably an unpopular opinion, but after seeing Knives Out twice, I'd really like to see what Rian can cook up if he had control over his own series of films from beginning to end.
Yet Trevorrow said JJ came up with Palpatine coming back. So I guess he wasn't part of the plan?
I'm 99% sure that's because Snoke was supposed to be his Big Bad and he didn't expect Johnson to unceremoniously kill him off in the second film as a stepping stone for Kylo Ren's character development.
If you want to skip the best movie in the series, sure
Too bad he only did that once in the whole trilogyI don't care if they had a plan or not. Nolan didn't have a plan when he made the The Dark Knight trilogy. Just make good movies with good stories.
Sounds about right.
We had a direction we wanted to go. 8th movie happened. We continued in that direction with no idea of a complete narrative.
I swear to god if palpatine is in the process of killing kylo or Rey and the other saves then I'll eat my hat.
What character development?
Rey goes from being a questionable Mary Sue into being an Absolute Mary Sue*
Finn goes from being a major character into a side character
Poe goes from hotshot pilot guy to learning how to always follow orders
Kylo gets some character development, but the script makes sure he goes from edgy sith lord to maybe not...nope, back to edgy sith lord.
I'm not sure i'd call erasing plot questions and killing off most of the B-characters are really worth watching TLJ for. You could easily just sum that up in a sentence or a film crawl.
You're right about Film Criticism though. Anybody who thinks this is the best Star Wars movie can't be taken seriously. It would be like insisting M. Night Shamylan's The Last Airbender is better than the TV show. It has some good shots and some good ideas, but they come across as so half baked or completely useless that the movie comes off as nothing more than Style vs. Substance. Star Wars never had too much substance to begin with, but you end up with less of a story than when you came in.
*Is there a better catch-all term for "Fanfiction insert character"? Let me know if there is.
Maybe RJ is an absolute genious and JJA eats children, if you want. I'm not a fan of RJ nor JJA, even if i think they are both talented with a very different vision. I'm a fan of Star Wars. And all I see is the new trilogy was turned into a dick contest between those two, which is ridiculous.Nah, that'd be terrible. Thankfully, RJ tried to save us from that.
TFA was a mediocre film that took zero risks. RJ forced the franchise away from that nonsense. And yes, explaining Snoke was JJ's job in TFA. It was called Episode 7, not Episode 1 of some new shit. It was a sequel to every film prior, yet couldn't spend two seconds to tell us what the hell happened after ROTJ and who this new asshole who seems exactly like Palpatine was. And ESB was a film that also "forced the franchise in a new direction." Lucas could have easily done what every sequel does, the same shit as the last film except bigger. He chose not to, to help make something far superior and challenging. It was divisive at the time and so we closed with ROTJ, a film that is the sequel people expected, the same shit, but bigger.
I can't wait for RJ's new trilogy, dude isn't afraid to actually take risks and not rehash or wallow in nostalgia. Now, just tone down that wonky humor and make the lead a black dude or gal.
What plan? Feige and the Marvel crew have been making shit up along the way too.
I like this explanation but it still boggles my mind that they did not even attempt to tell us who the hell he was.You need to see TLJ as the much needed course correction after the hackery that was TFA. Who Snoke was should have been answered in TFA, JJ chose not to so we're left with a Palpatine rip-off from a film that was basically ANH 2.0. Snoke had to fucking die in TLJ otherwise the entire ST would just be on the path of complete rehash. Rian smartly chose to axe that wannabe rip off to force the franchise in a new direction.
Then JJ brought Palpatine back from the dead...
We shall see, JJ. We shall see...
This will all be interesting to look back to when the movie is out. Right now I don't really get the impression that there was a plan when the previous movies didn't even have as much as a hint that there might be a bigger threat looming in the form of Palpatine. Like if that was the plan why not make it a cliffhanger to last Jedi?
I actually think RJ's idea of doing it without an almighty big bad in the background is interesting but then that should have been set from the start of the trilogy. Now it feels like we're jumping back and forth between two visions with neither fully fleshed out.I really doubt Palpatine was ever on the cards until after they killed Snoke. Whatever narrative purpose Palpatine has could have probably been filled just as easily by Snoke if he were still alive. Indeed, if the trailers are to be believed and the First Order has a massive fleet hidden in the Unknown Regions, it would have legitimised Snoke further and presumably the big finale would have been Rey and Ben fighting Snoke.
I mean, the cliffhanger in The Force Awakens was Snoke. He was little more than a holographic projection but he was clearly in charge of the First Order and was recalling Ben to complete his training. The setup was all there for Snoke to be the main antagonist of the trilogy, but then he goes out like a chump in The Last Jedi because they were more interested in surprising us than telling us a good story.