[Movie] Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi

[potis]

Am i the only one that went "Oooh not a bad scene, pew pew" for half the movie and the other half "What is this terrible predictable writing and why is this cliche even doing in this movie?"

[ohiostate124]

Honestly, while I understand that the movie drops the ball on Rey's training because it's too busy with Luke's storyline about giving up on the Jedi, I also don't understand why people think the Praetorian guards should be such hot shit. I never assumed those guys in red in RotJ would be able to do a damn thing against an actual Jedi. Ultimately they're just regular humans.

In fact I didn't care much for that scene because I never bought them as a threat at all. Even if you accept that Rey is untrained, Kylo should've torn them to pieces. I mean hell, couldn't he just Force choke the lot of them?

You said it yourself. Even Kylo didn’t destroy them. They were skilled enough but that’s not the point. The point is there were a bunch of them. Looking at a picture, there were atleast 8 of them.

[Underverse]

Yes, why DIDN'T they cover their bases? Even prior to that, why didn't they just send a bunch of ships through hyperspace to cut off the direction the chase was headed?

Why didn't they just do that when they were trying to recover Leia and the plans to the Death Star in A New Hope for that matter?

Because there wouldn't be a story. Your giant Space Nazi army should in any and all logic immediately wipe out a bunch of randos in like 3 minutes if they actually used all the technology available to them. They don't because it lets there be a god damn sense of stakes, immediacy, and a possibility to win. The Stormtroopers can't hit anything.

Are we just at a cynical, overwrought, miserably exposition-loaded time in our collective media consciousness that people are unwilling to allow for fucking Star Wars writing anymore?



But. They. DIDN'T.

They didn't for FOUR fucking movies of rebellion before The Last Jedi. And people were all over that shit even when it didn't always pan out as logical.

It's a god damn part of the franchise.

Explosion trope was used in movies 1,3,5,6. Death star, death star, starkiller base, dreadnought. I forget the Empire Strikes Back, but maybe there were some chain reaction explosions in there too.

Writing stupid villains is lazy and uncompelling. Star Wars is not exempt from that. And reality shows that reactionaries can thrive even under the boot of highly organized villains.

[Mormolyce]

It wasn't, though. The entire reason DJ overheard is because the plan existed in the first place because Poe was off playing James Bond cowboy cop. Something backfiring after all of that planning is not "pointless," it's called drama and is to create frustration in the audience.

Holdo told everyone as they were boarding, but by that point, it was already so late into the chase that the First Order was unaware it was happening. Someone COULD rat them out, but it was pure fortune that it happened at the exact time that it did. Otherwise, the plan was progressing so quickly that they likely wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the transports.

I don't buy that, obviously when they board the shuttle is the critical moment.

And yeah of course it's there to create drama. That's literally the only reason Finn and Poe's plotlines happen at all.

The thing is, the arc is basically telling the hotshot flyboy that everyone loves because he's a hotshot flyboy that he should stop being a hotshot flyboy. Which is made much worse by the fact that it gives no sane justification for it - any reasonable person in Poe's position would've done the same. For all he knows, the Resistance is completely out of options and its death is imminent. The Admiral tells him to shut up and do nothing, and her only justification is pulling rank. Not only does he not know the plan, he doesn't know there IS a plan. There is nothing on the horizon to save them that he's being asked to put his faith in, he's just being told to shut up and not act while nothing happens.

His actions are perfectly reasonable under those circumstances.

[Halyon]

Anakin was much younger and trained for years to become a jedi, did you even watch those movies?

Yes, I did, and the series (which was really good once it got going). He was a pretty good pilot as a small child. He had skills. He wasn't ragged on for those. Rey was, despite being older, and living in a harsh evironment that would've killed her, or worse, had she not developed some solid skills.

Luke picked up X-wing piloting in no time flat and destroyed the death star. Haxx much?

- - - Updated - - -

But the thing is, they still needed to tell everyone that they were abandoning ship (because they physically needed to board the shuttles), BEFORE they revealed that it was all part of the plan - and that's the point at which Poe contacts Finn and tells him, which is overhead by DJ who tells the First Order and ruins the whole thing. So the secrecy was ultimately pointless.

And of course, if she had simply trusted Poe with that information none of that would've happened, Finn wouldn't even have needed to leave the ship in the first place.

I mean, what's the moral here? Poe should trust his superior officer, who not only didn't tell him the plan but didn't tell him there WAS a plan? When it looks like she's going to get the whole Resistance killed?

It's just a shitty poorly thought out character arc that has unfortunate implications if you think about it too much. The movie couldn't figure out what to do with Finn and Poe so they went on a Filler Adventure.

I agree here. But on the other hand, Poe had proven himself to be rather reckless. This added an amount of blind recklessness on top of it. To me, it just proves Leia right, that there are no other suitable leaders around, aside from herself, and just acting out of control is going to get people killed. So I can also understand why Poe wasn't that trustworthy.

Sometimes, doing nothing is the best solution.

[Mormolyce]

I think it could've been handled worse. Force projection at that distance and convincingly enough would take a massive amount of energy out of anyone, and I think the reason why it was even possible is because he was sitting in the middle of a strong force font. It may not have been what outright killed him, but more the fact that he just...resigned himself that his time was now over, after he did what he could do in the situation he'd put himself in. What could've maybe improved that could've been Yoda popping in and just one-lining some wisdom or something to make it feel less...sudden. It was a nice twist that ended poorly. But it could've been worse... He could've died prior to that and just force ghosted his way through the battle, and that would've just been a bit lame.

Other than that, I'm not sure what else they could've done. Having him and Kylo copy the fight between Obi Wan and Vader where he just poofs would've been boring and cheap...

Yeah it would've been derivative but at least it'd make dramatic sense.

I mean you can make up a reason for his death, in fact I kind of expect the next movie to pull some kind of "I needed to become a Force ghost because more powerful than you can possibly yada yada". But it's still a terrible way to do it.

This is my problem - the movie sets up the scene as if it's going to rehash the Obi-Wan vs Vader fight/sacrifice, but then it subverts the audience's expectations by revealing it was a mislead. Clever. So then the interesting question becomes - what plans did the film have instead? Oh, he just keels over dead minutes later. So you still end up doing the Obi-Wan vs Vader scene, but you cut off the ending, but the result is the same, just handled in a massively anticlimactic way. Really the worst of both worlds.

I mean, if we're not going to do the obvious thing and have Luke die fighting Kylo - fine. Good, I approve. So how about instead he does the whole "see you round, kid", disappears, and then when everyone's looking around like "what the fuck", we cut to space above the planet, and Luke (I dunno, making shit up here) uses his Force powers to smash some of Kylo's Star Destroyers together and dies in the process, covering the Falcon's retreat. Like the point was, distract Kylo on the surface while going after the real objective. You still get the mislead and the writeout, but a proper climactic ending and a big yes moment for the audience who wanted to see him at his finest one last time.

Or you know, keep him alive for the next film like "see you round kid" seems to imply. Basically, I can't think of anything that isn't better than what the film actually presented.

[Vakir]

Explosion trope was used in movies 1,3,5,6. Death star, death star, starkiller base, dreadnought. I forget the Empire Strikes Back, but maybe there were some chain reaction explosions in there too.

I wasn't talking about a specific type of explosion trope. I'm talking about as an entire regime. It should be so easy to just immediately send ONE more Star Destroyer in the path of an escaping ship, ion cannon or not, in Empire, for example. We accept that things don't run that way because the story would be over.

Writing stupid villains is lazy and uncompelling. Star Wars is not exempt from that. And reality shows that reactionaries can thrive even under the boot of highly organized villains.

This is an extremely dogmatic, oversimplified, and "I just took a creative writing class and browsed TV Tropes" way of looking at writing, and an even more ridiculous way of looking at film making's ability to use visual language to convey a great story at the expense of expectations of what a villain "should" be.

Lazy, stupid villains are a cornerstone of some of the most popular franchises and most heavily demanded properties in our collective culture. This extends to and is not limited to Star Wars. The reason people largely go with it is because of the way it's presented and handled. If you can't buy into it - cool, I guess, but it just reeks of cynicism that people will not accept the way Star Wars has always been unless it's a complete carbon-copy of the setting they're accustomed to. (The praise for Rogue One and its cast of thoroughly dull individuals is absolutely baffling to me, but at the same time I know it's because "IT FEELS LIKE STAAAARRR WARRSSSS GUYS. I clapped, I clapped when I saw an AT-ST!")

When people nitpick things like the prequels, it's largely because the films fail to be compelling or well constructed/lacking vision, which makes the little details that much more jarring. But when a film is well crafted, acted, shot, and stirs an emotional response, you can look past certain things like villains that are so arrogant that they effectively sign their own death sentence.

Reactionaries absolutely win over organized regimes - but it's usually through suicide and guerilla tactics, deceit, subterfuge, radicalization of new recruits, etc.

And if you do that in your space adventure film for children that needs to be handled with all the nerd-rage delicacy of a fucking jar of financial nitroglycerin, people are going to bitch that a story that detours that hard "doesn't feel like Star Wars."

...hell, many people ALREADY DO complain that Holdo's final act "doesn't feel like Star Wars" even though it was one of the best parts of the god damn film.

The thing is, the arc is basically telling the hotshot flyboy that everyone loves because he's a hotshot flyboy that he should stop being a hotshot flyboy. Which is made much worse by the fact that it gives no sane justification for it - any reasonable person in Poe's position would've done the same. For all he knows, the Resistance is completely out of options and its death is imminent. The Admiral tells him to shut up and do nothing, and her only justification is pulling rank. Not only does he not know the plan, he doesn't know there IS a plan. There is nothing on the horizon to save them that he's being asked to put his faith in, he's just being told to shut up and not act while nothing happens.

Yes, he's being told to shut up and not act. The extremely arrogant person who has difficulty acquiring and dealing with patience and wants to immediately do whatever the hell he wants needs to learn to shut up, not act, and operate on a little bit of faith because he isn't in charge whether he likes it or not.

That was the point. You can say you don't like that direction, and that is your prerogative. Nothing is going to resonate with anyone.

But to say it's some kind of hideous oversight is just silly. The boisterous guy everyone loves needed a time out, because even if we all like Poe and appreciate that he's a hotshot flyboy, sometimes being a hotshot flyboy is fucking stupid.

[Yunru]

Isnt Leia a risk, since she can be tracked by a force?
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Farsight

[Mormolyce]

I agree here. But on the other hand, Poe had proven himself to be rather reckless. This added an amount of blind recklessness on top of it. To me, it just proves Leia right, that there are no other suitable leaders around, aside from herself, and just acting out of control is going to get people killed. So I can also understand why Poe wasn't that trustworthy.

Sometimes, doing nothing is the best solution.

See, I don't think he has. His actions in TFA pretty much save the galaxy.

And in any case, the whole point of his character is to be a fun wish fulfillment hotshot pilot for the entertainment of the audience. It's like if you had a plot arc where Chewie learns that he needs to shave his fur and speak in English. It's just wrong.

[I Push Buttons]

Yes, I did, and the series (which was really good once it got going). He was a pretty good pilot as a small child. He had skills. He wasn't ragged on for those. Rey was, despite being older, and living in a harsh evironment that would've killed her, or worse, had she not developed some solid skills.

Luke picked up X-wing piloting in no time flat and destroyed the death star. Haxx much?

Anakin's "skills" were fast reflexes that let him pilot pod racers, something he grew into over time working on them for his owner.

Luke spent his entire youth flying around Tatooine in his T-16. And his skills at flying didn't even come into play during the trench run, he flew in a straight line, was nearly killed by Vader before Han saved him, and then fired the torpedoes under Obi-Wan's force guidance.

IE: Both of them had ample experience flying in their youths.

Rey spent no time flying, no time talking to wookies, no time on the Millennium Falcon, no time using the force, no time using a lightsaber.

And she instantly is an expert pilot, out-flying everyone else around (even Han in his own ship), instantly speaks wookie and every other language in the universe, instantly knows all the ins and outs of the Millennium Falcon, including Han's custom modification (knows more about them than Han), instantly can read people's minds, even another force user, instantly can force persuade other people, instantly can force pull things from dozens of feet away, instantly can stand toe to toe with a guy who literally spent years training to use a lightsaber, etc.

Yeah those are totally the same thing, Anakin and Luke are such Mary Sues.

[Mormolyce]

From reading spoilers the movie sounded terrible and hackneyed. After watching it I absolutely loved it (minus one space super woman scene). What that tells me is sub par writing and above average directing. Still, a very enjoyable expirence if you don’t take Star Wars to seriously.

Honestly, I don't have anything against anyone who enjoyed the film, in fact I envy them.

When I left the theater my main reaction was "this is going to be a problem". Because it's well made enough that a lot of people are going to like it, but bad enough in important enough respects that it'll drive a lot of people insane for legitimate reasons. For me it was good enough that I didn't hate it but bad enough that I didn't like it, it just frustrated me.

I almost wish it was just straight up undeniably awful like the prequels. Well, not really.

[Morally Grey Storm]

Looks like the Last Fail made $450m on the opening weekend.

I thought it was mostly great. Tad slow in the middle and the Leia space walk was pretty stupid but other than that it was a great film imho.

What a pristine arguement you brough into discussion.

Suicide shitsquad grossed over 740kk worth of dollars box office.
Does that make it a good movie?
Or does it make it a commercial success?

Does 450kk dollars over opening weekend somehow prove the movie is good?
Or does it prove that movie is a commercial success so far?

[Underverse]

I wasn't talking about a specific type of explosion trope. I'm talking about as an entire regime. It should be so easy to just immediately send ONE more Star Destroyer in the path of an escaping ship, ion cannon or not, in Empire, for example. We accept that things don't run that way because the story would be over.



This is an extremely dogmatic, oversimplified, and "I just took a creative writing class and browsed TV Tropes" way of looking at writing, and an even more ridiculous way of looking at film making's ability to use visual language to convey a great story at the expense of expectations of what a villain "should" be.

Lazy, stupid villains are a cornerstone of some of the most popular franchises and most heavily demanded properties in our collective culture. This extends to and is not limited to Star Wars. The reason people largely go with it is because of the way it's presented and handled. If you can't buy into it - cool, I guess, but it just reeks of cynicism that people will not accept the way Star Wars has always been unless it's a complete carbon-copy of the setting they're accustomed to. (The praise for Rogue One and its cast of thoroughly dull individuals is absolutely baffling to me, but at the same time I know it's because "IT FEELS LIKE STAAAARRR WARRSSSS GUYS. I clapped, I clapped when I saw an AT-ST!")

When people nitpick things like the prequels, it's largely because the films fail to be compelling or well constructed/lacking vision, which makes the little details that much more jarring. But when a film is well crafted, acted, shot, and stirs an emotional response, you can look past certain things like villains that are so arrogant that they effectively sign their own death sentence.

Reactionaries absolutely win over organized regimes - but it's usually through suicide and guerilla tactics, deceit, subterfuge, radicalization of new recruits, etc.

And if you do that in your space adventure film for children that needs to be handled with all the nerd-rage delicacy of a fucking jar of financial nitroglycerin, people are going to bitch that a story that detours that hard "doesn't feel like Star Wars."

...hell, many people ALREADY DO complain that Holdo's final act "doesn't feel like Star Wars" even though it was one of the best parts of the god damn film.

If you set up your story in such a way that it's very easy to circumvent a major plot point, you are a bad writer.

Lazy, stupid villains being a cornerstone of our culture isn't exactly a justification for their use; rather evidence of our own laziness and willingness to make broad generalizations that make us feel like we're holding the moral high ground - signs of an intellectually bankrupt society which, I guess, is what America already is by and large. Then, I never said I was surprised.

Star Wars was never really a children's space opera. It turned into that somewhat after the first trilogy because Lucas was happy to capitalize on uncaptured markets.

[Deleted]

Rey spent no time flying, no time talking to wookies, no time on the Millennium Falcon, no time using the force, no time using a lightsaber.

Except she actually did nothing but learning how to fly, speak alien languages and fixing the Falcon with computer simulators ever since she was ten. She was a scavenger on Jakku, a massive space battle graveyard.

She even learned about Luke, Han and Chewie from the computers.

[Mormolyce]

Rey spent no time flying, no time talking to wookies, no time on the Millennium Falcon, no time using the force, no time using a lightsaber.

I got the strong impression from the film that she'd flown ships before, maybe not in space but at least around Jakku. She seems to know the Falcon hasn't flown in years, which implies she's been around Unkar Plutt's ships a lot.

It is baffling how many people in the galaxy can speak Wookiee and droid, to be honest...

[Deleted]

I got the strong impression from the film that she'd flown ships before, maybe not in space but at least around Jakku. She seems to know the Falcon hasn't flown in years, which implies she's been around Unkar Plutt's ships a lot.

It is baffling how many people in the galaxy can speak Wookiee and droid, to be honest...

Rey's Survival Guide explains everything. And it came on the same day as TFA.

[Halyon]

Yeah it would've been derivative but at least it'd make dramatic sense.

I mean you can make up a reason for his death, in fact I kind of expect the next movie to pull some kind of "I needed to become a Force ghost because more powerful than you can possibly yada yada". But it's still a terrible way to do it.

This is my problem - the movie sets up the scene as if it's going to rehash the Obi-Wan vs Vader fight/sacrifice, but then it subverts the audience's expectations by revealing it was a mislead. Clever. So then the interesting question becomes - what plans did the film have instead? Oh, he just keels over dead minutes later. So you still end up doing the Obi-Wan vs Vader scene, but you cut off the ending, but the result is the same, just handled in a massively anticlimactic way. Really the worst of both worlds.

I mean, if we're not going to do the obvious thing and have Luke die fighting Kylo - fine. Good, I approve. So how about instead he does the whole "see you round, kid", disappears, and then when everyone's looking around like "what the fuck", we cut to space above the planet, and Luke (I dunno, making shit up here) uses his Force powers to smash some of Kylo's Star Destroyers together and dies in the process, covering the Falcon's retreat. Like the point was, distract Kylo on the surface while going after the real objective. You still get the mislead and the writeout, but a proper climactic ending and a big yes moment for the audience who wanted to see him at his finest one last time.

Or you know, keep him alive for the next film like "see you round kid" seems to imply. Basically, I can't think of anything that isn't better than what the film actually presented.

Luke wouldn't have been able to get there physically, that was the point of showing his x-wing sunken underwater, and he only made the decision to help AFTER Rey and Chewie had left in the Falcon... Which again serves to 'reprimand' Luke for being stubborn in his isolation...until Yoda reminds him. Had he left with Rey though, it wouldn't have been a surprise, and I kinda doubt he'd have stayed hidden if he had snuck on board. That kinda blocks him out of using force to destroy some of the walkers or their weapons, as that would just be a tad bit too god-mode, in my opinion.

He shot his own leg out and paid the price. That's how I see it.

If they wanted to do something differently, thinking deeper about it, they'd have to change his arc in the movie. Not by much, by dialing back his borderline agressive sequestering and such... But then, would it have worked better if it hadn't been a twist and more obvious? Would it have removed the attention from the main characters?

To me, it was his 'sudden death' that was the most jarring thing about it, and had they smoothed it out more, either with some dialogue, or a bit of 'rest' time for the audience, it would've worked better. I really think Yoda should have been there at the end to just exchange a few words, Luke realizing his mistakes and such... Not just silence and poof.

[Mormolyce]

Suicide shitsquad grossed over 740kk worth of dollars box office.
Does that make it a good movie?
Or does it make it a commercial success?

Well it won an Oscar.

I'll never let that go :P

[Halyon]

Anakin's "skills" were fast reflexes that let him pilot pod racers, something he grew into over time working on them for his owner.

Luke spent his entire youth flying around Tatooine in his T-16. And his skills at flying didn't even come into play during the trench run, he flew in a straight line, was nearly killed by Vader before Han saved him, and then fired the torpedoes under Obi-Wan's force guidance.

IE: Both of them had ample experience flying in their youths.

Rey spent no time flying, no time talking to wookies, no time on the Millennium Falcon, no time using the force, no time using a lightsaber.

And she instantly is an expert pilot, out-flying everyone else around (even Han in his own ship), instantly speaks wookie and every other language in the universe, instantly knows all the ins and outs of the Millennium Falcon, including Han's custom modification (knows more about them than Han), instantly can read people's minds, even another force user, instantly can force persuade other people, instantly can force pull things from dozens of feet away, instantly can stand toe to toe with a guy who literally spent years training to use a lightsaber, etc.

Yeah those are totally the same thing, Anakin and Luke are such Mary Sues.

So Rey has quick thinking and a good survival instinct. And being older than Anakin when we first see him, her force sensitivity manifesting alongside a solid instinct would give her an edge over some random pleb, but not a trained used...as TFA showed. It took considerable conditions for her to break even with Kylo in a fight when he WASN'T aiming to just kill her.

Rey spent her entire youth surviving and learning to fight, and mechanical engineering while repairing and salvaging. She flew ...whatever that thing was, so she can evidently fly.

Either you're not paying attention, or you're hating for arbitrary reasons.

[Vakir]

Lazy, stupid villains being a cornerstone of our culture isn't exactly a justification for their use; rather evidence of our own laziness and willingness to make broad generalizations that make us feel like we're holding the moral high ground - signs of an intellectually bankrupt society which, I guess, is what America already is by and large. Then, I never said I was surprised.

"To be fair, you have to have a really high IQ to enjoy the original Star Wars trilogy..."

Give me a break. You're talking about something that has always existed for the purposes of carrying broad appeal to a large demographic. Case and point...

Star Wars was never really a children's space opera. It turned into that somewhat after the first trilogy because Lucas was happy to capitalize on uncaptured markets.

OK, I'm officially done. If you're saying this, you are completely oblivious to the actual inspirations for Star Wars. And most of the other stuff George Lucas was responsible for producing, writing, or directing.

It was a throwback, retro movie to old adventure serials for children that played in cinema. Buck Rogers. Flash Gordon. These were CHILDREN'S films and were largely defined by the long, scrolling text and episodic nature where "Oh, I saw Episode 6, and then 8-12 and it was awesome, but I never got a chance to see episode 7! I wonder how he got to this point!"

They were filled with high adventure and ridiculous space shenanigans and they were largely a product of creating broad archetypes that were throwbacks to simple Hero's Journey style stories. George Lucas has said that the films are for children. Now Mark Hamill has said that the films are for children. Does that mean shit like the Ewoks and Jar-Jar aren't massively offensive? Of course they are. They overtake things via too much time and focus and are tonally disconnected. But largely, that is the aimed demographic. The fact that people of all ages love them so much is a function of how GOOD they are at getting us invested, not unlike how some adults can enjoy, for example, better Pixar films.

I mean this in the most respectful way possible - you are completely out of touch with what the original spark of inspiration was for Star Wars if you are unaware of the fact that from Day 1, it was a throwback to cliffhangers in the 30s/40s cinemas that were made for kids. This is also true for Indiana Jones. That face melt was fucking terrifying - but it's supposed to be "for kids/families."