Poll: Rate the movie STAR WARS™: The Rise of Skywalker™

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  1. #5321
    Merely a Setback Kaleredar's Avatar
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    The movie was entertaining. But that’s about it.

    If anything, it helps highlight how good of a film TLJ is. TLJ is about something. Luke (and Yoda) say things of actual substance instead of offering vague platitudes of “beat evil yay” dialogue.

    The biggest thing holding back RoS was the decision to make Palpatine... well, to make him ANY part of the plot, let alone the main focus. It actively cheapens episode 6. Why should The emperors death be different this time? The movie doesn’t address that at all. Why does destroying the first order mean anything? Destroying the empire apparently didn’t mean anything. Moreover, the entire last third of the film goes into trying to get the audience to go along with phoned in Sith lore... I don’t think the Sith were even mentioned in episode 7 or 8.

    I get the very distinct impression that JJ was attempting to change the course that episode 8 set the franchise on mid-movie. It comes off as clunky, rushed, and with numerous plot conveniences.

    That’s not to say I didn’t like anything about it. I liked the “Star Wars-y” stuff; the lightsaber fighting, the running through corridors blasting storm troopers, the banter between characters. C3po getting his memory wiped was fun. The scene with Kylo and Han was great, probably the highlight of the movie.

    But as I said, the film highlights what a good film last Jedi was in comparison. Last Jedi took things in new directions, but not by retconning or dropping in new information out of nowhere to move the plot forwards. Luke might not have been presented in the way people had in their head, but he had actual insight into the nature of the force, and not just how it can just do whatever the protagonist or antagonist needs it to do in the moment.
    Last edited by Kaleredar; 2019-12-31 at 05:25 AM.
    “Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
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    Words to live by.

  2. #5322
    Quote Originally Posted by Ragedaug View Post
    That's very common in story telling. I'm completely guessing here, but I would suspect most authors have an ending in mind when they start, so the entire rest of the story is justifying that end.

    The question is always, is it an acceptable or satisfying justification, and when it does not we usually describe that as contrivance. Contrivance leading to poor story telling when the author can't figure a convincing or satisfying solution to reach their ends.
    Not necessarily, and in fact doing so is the harder - and often, much easier and quicker to fuck up - way.

    There are two ways to write a story:

    1. Know where it starts.

    2. Know where it ends.

    The best way of showing the distinction is through A Song of Ice and Fire vs. Game of Thrones.

    George R. R. Martin is the first kind of writer. He made A Song of Ice and Fire by knowing the story from the start: he built a world, he built characters - and he has spent twenty years writing what those characters are doing in that world and what is happening in that world, by letting things flow naturally and decisions made be perfectly in tune with the motivations and backgrounds of each character. He is nowhere near done.

    The guys who did Game of Thrones, on the other hand, especially seasons 7 and 8 knew exactly where they wanted to end up, and where characters needed to be. The reason it was so critically panned, however, was because they knew where the story needed to end - but they don't see inside the character's heads in quite the way the guy who made them does. So characters make idiotic (at worst) and/or completely out of character (at best) decisions in order to get there from where they were when Martin's writings stopped.

    You CAN write a story and start by knowing where the end is - but you must be a very careful and very skilled writer to do it.
    Cheerful lack of self-preservation

  3. #5323
    Quote Originally Posted by Dwarfhamster View Post
    OK. Finally saw TROS. Was not as bad as so many people made it to be. In fact, I thought it was pretty decent, much better than TLJ. It was a bit frantic and the first half was all over the place but it ended well, in my opinion. I'm glad Ben Solo died--narrative-wise, there was no way he can live after killing his father. It was cool to see Ahsoka Tano at the end as well. And the last shot with the twin sunsets on Tatooine. <3

    There were definitely things I thought were lacking or could've been done differently, but I enjoyed it for what it is. And Fin is annoying as fuck.
    that wasnt her at the end unless you mean her voice
    "You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation."

  4. #5324
    Quote Originally Posted by Nefarious Tea View Post
    Not necessarily, and in fact doing so is the harder - and often, much easier and quicker to fuck up - way.

    There are two ways to write a story:

    1. Know where it starts.

    2. Know where it ends.

    The best way of showing the distinction is through A Song of Ice and Fire vs. Game of Thrones.

    George R. R. Martin is the first kind of writer. He made A Song of Ice and Fire by knowing the story from the start: he built a world, he built characters - and he has spent twenty years writing what those characters are doing in that world and what is happening in that world, by letting things flow naturally and decisions made be perfectly in tune with the motivations and backgrounds of each character. He is nowhere near done.

    The guys who did Game of Thrones, on the other hand, especially seasons 7 and 8 knew exactly where they wanted to end up, and where characters needed to be. The reason it was so critically panned, however, was because they knew where the story needed to end - but they don't see inside the character's heads in quite the way the guy who made them does. So characters make idiotic (at worst) and/or completely out of character (at best) decisions in order to get there from where they were when Martin's writings stopped.

    You CAN write a story and start by knowing where the end is - but you must be a very careful and very skilled writer to do it.
    you can fix the latter problem some what by giving the right amount of time (something u should know if you plan right) to get to that end in a logical way, a lot of GoT's ending problem was it felt rushed.

    but knowing your begging - middle - end is basic shit a lot of writers seem to be fucking up a.t.m, i dont know if there being pushed to hard to be creative or out of the box but its not working.

  5. #5325
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    The movie was entertaining. But that’s about it.

    If anything, it helps highlight how good of a film TLJ is. TLJ is about something. Luke (and Yoda) say things of actual substance instead of offering vague platitudes instead of vague “beat evil yay” dialogue.

    The biggest thing holding back RoS was the decision to make Palpatine... well, to make him ANY part of the plot, let alone the main focus. It actively cheapens episode 6. Why should The emperors death be different this time? The movie doesn’t address that at all. Why does destroying the first order mean anything? Destroying the empire apparently didn’t mean anything. Moreover, the entire last third of the film goes into trying to get the audience to go along with phoned in Sith lore... I don’t think the Sith were even mentioned in episode 7 or 8.

    I get the very distinct impression that JJ was attempting to change the course that episode 8 set the franchise on mid-movie. It comes off as clunky, rushed, and with numerous plot conveniences.

    That’s not to say I didn’t like anything about it. I liked the “Star Wars-y” stuff; the lightsaber fighting, the running through corridors blasting storm troopers, the banter between characters. C3po getting his memory wiped was fun. The scene with Kylo and Han was great, probably the highlight of the movie.

    But as I said, the film highlights what a good film last Jedi was in comparison. Last Jedi took things in new directions, but not by retconning or dropping in new information out of nowhere to move the plot forwards. Luke might not have been presented in the way people had in their head, but he had actual insight into the nature of the force, and not just how it can just do whatever the protagonist or antagonist needs it to do in the moment.
    TLJ is a bad film in general and a worse star wars one.

  6. #5326
    Merely a Setback Kaleredar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Xath View Post
    TLJ is a bad film in general and a worse star wars one.
    TLJ is competently plotted. You might not like the trappings of the plot, but the five act structure is there. The character’s actions are driven by their personalities. You might not like their personalities, but that doesn’t mean they have no motives. Their motivations don’t turn on a dime. The movie has a discernible central theme. You might not like the theme of dealing with and overcoming failure, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. No one complains about sand. It doesn’t have jar jar binks. No one wanders off four times in one damn film, endangering everyone else in the process.

    Complaints about Holdo having purple hair and people bitching about nonsense made up space physics hold zero weight to me.
    Last edited by Kaleredar; 2019-12-31 at 05:23 AM.
    “Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    Kaleredar is right...
    Words to live by.

  7. #5327
    Quote Originally Posted by Nefarious Tea View Post
    Not necessarily, and in fact doing so is the harder - and often, much easier and quicker to fuck up - way.

    There are two ways to write a story:

    1. Know where it starts.

    2. Know where it ends.

    The best way of showing the distinction is through A Song of Ice and Fire vs. Game of Thrones.

    George R. R. Martin is the first kind of writer. He made A Song of Ice and Fire by knowing the story from the start: he built a world, he built characters - and he has spent twenty years writing what those characters are doing in that world and what is happening in that world, by letting things flow naturally and decisions made be perfectly in tune with the motivations and backgrounds of each character. He is nowhere near done.

    The guys who did Game of Thrones, on the other hand, especially seasons 7 and 8 knew exactly where they wanted to end up, and where characters needed to be. The reason it was so critically panned, however, was because they knew where the story needed to end - but they don't see inside the character's heads in quite the way the guy who made them does. So characters make idiotic (at worst) and/or completely out of character (at best) decisions in order to get there from where they were when Martin's writings stopped.

    You CAN write a story and start by knowing where the end is - but you must be a very careful and very skilled writer to do it.
    I have to be careful here because I could go on and on regarding GoT and GRRM, and that's a different thread. So feel free to respond to this, but I probably won't revisit this thought. I almost mentioned GRRM in that post you quoted.

    GRRM knew how A Song of Ice and Fire was going to end from the beginning. There are a handful of people who had access to a short few-page document showing the general plot and the survivors. My suspicion on why every book takes more and more years to complete than the one before is because GRRM knows where he wants to go, but has written himself into so many corners on his way to getting there, that it takes an increasingly longer time to write himself out of the corners in a convincing & satisfying manner. That's what separates GRRM and many other authors. He's not doing what the Game of Thrones show did, using contrivance and character-betrayal to get there quickly. Bringing it back to the point in this thread, GRRM is still justifying everything that's going on in order to reach his foregone conclusion, he just won't betray his own characters and his story to get there.

    As a comparison to Rian Johnson and "subverting expectations", GRRM was once asked if he would change this ending or some unanswered story lines because the fan base figured it out. He basically said that would be an insult to the fans and would lead to very bad story telling. He explained the fans reached the conclusions because of the bread crumbs and foreshadowing he put in the story. That said, he also noted that every once in a while he heard a fan theory that he thought sounded much better than his own plan plan, so he said those were tempting to use and chuckled. =)

    "Take the time to sit down and talk with your adversaries. You will learn something, and they will learn something from you. When two enemies are talking, they are not fighting. It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. So keep the conversation going."
    ~ Daryl Davis

  8. #5328
    Pandaren Monk Tabrotar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jettisawn View Post
    Thank you for providing a pefect example of what i'm talking about. The worst kinds of "fans" in the world.
    Bu fucking hu someone says mean things about the movie si like, he must be toxic bcs he doesn´t share my view of things, you have to get rid of them...

    Trolling isn't allowed. Infracted
    Last edited by Faltemer; 2019-12-31 at 09:32 PM.

  9. #5329
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    Seriously, what lore did they supposedly "trash"?

    Ship combat in Star Wars is weirdly like ship combat in WWII, even though the latter takes place on water on a largely 2d plane? Yeah, that was true of the OT.

    Force-users just, like, get randomly born? The only ones whose birth is even mentioned in the OT are Luke's and Leia's. And in the prequels, it's damn clear that Force users are born to non-Force users all the time; that's how the Jedi pick up new younglings.

    Rey's parents are nobodies? 1> See above; that would've been fine. 2> See TRoS; it was never true in the first place.

    Luke's still struggling with the Dark Side, like he did throughout the OT? That's a continuation of lore.

    Most of the Resistance got killed off? Most of the New Republic government got killed off in TFA. Alderaan got annihilated in the OT. Tons of people died in the prequels. How is this wrecking any lore?

    There's things to dislike about TLJ. "Trashing previous lore" isn't one of them, because it really doesn't. I'd agree the decision to change directors mid-stream was a bad idea; we should've had a full trilogy of either Abrams' vision, or Johnson's, not the back-and-forth whipsaw. This meant the first chunk of TRoS had to get rushed because they hadn't set up the Emperor at all in TLJ. All that could've gone a lot smoother. But that's a cross-film issue, not really an internal problem with TLJ itself.
    Luke Skywalker, in the original trilogy, learned that Darth Vader was his father and basically the first thing he wants to do upon that fact being confirmed is to redeem his father from the dark side. Vader, a man who he has only ever known as a monster.

    Cut to TLJ. The lore as presented to the movie (Which apparently has now been retconned in the comics) shows that Luke sensed a spark of darkness inside of Ben Solo and goes to kill him in his sleep. A kid he has known for his entire life and is his own family and hasn't even done anything wrong yet.

    And beyond that Luke treats the entire force sensative and Jedi religion as if they are a joke. I'm not talking about his disillusionment with the Jedi, I'm talking about throwing the lightsaber and tickling Rey with that plant acting like "That was the force". Its trash that's played for laughs that doesn't fit with the character.


    This, by itself, trashes the previous lore. Completely misunderstanding, or maybe intentionally mischaractarizing, the previous main character. I have no problem with his disillusionment with the Jedi. I have a problem with him trying to murder his own nephew and then acting like an obtuse idiot when a person who was basically a star-y eyed kid wants to be trained by you.




    The movie besides that doesn't move the plot along at all. I feel like Rian Johnson took one look at the layout that the JJ Abrams team created for the trilogy, and ripped it to shreds in a childish fit of arrogance about how he will do what he wants. I think there is evidence of that in EP9 as well. JJ Abrams throws some shade at EP8 with the "A Jedi's weapon is to be treated with respect" and "


    If you like the movie then that is fine.
    Last edited by Eldar45; 2019-12-31 at 06:07 AM.

  10. #5330
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by IIBloodXLustII View Post
    Luke Skywalker, in the original trilogy, learned that Darth Vader was his father and basically the first thing he wants to do upon that fact being confirmed is to redeem his father from the dark side. Vader, a man who he has only ever known as a monster.
    You're clearly ignoring the moments in their fight where Luke was hammering away at his Dad in a frenzy, doing his absolute damndest to chop his father into chunks of steaming meat.

    Did he pull himself back from that edge a moment later? Sure. Does that mean he wasn't tipping over into the Dark Side in that moment? Not in the least; that's not just shown, it's clearly reinforced by Palpatine's running commentary on exactly that.

    Cut to TLJ. The lore as presented to the movie (Which apparently has now been retconned in the comics) shows that Luke sensed a spark of darkness inside of Ben Solo and goes to kill him in his sleep. A kid he has known for his entire life and is his own family and hasn't even done anything wrong yet.
    He was standing there, concerned about the darkness he felt in Ben. And in a moment of weakness, got scared by what he could become, had a Dark thought, and immediately stifled it. But Ben felt it, and reacted.

    Luke didn't attack Ben at any point.

    And beyond that Luke treats the entire force sensative and Jedi religion as if they are a joke. I'm not talking about his disillusionment with the Jedi, I'm talking about throwing the lightsaber and tickling Rey with that plant acting like "That was the force". Its trash that's played for laughs that doesn't fit with the character.
    He's really only had one teacher, and that was Yoda. And it's exactly the kind of silly crap Yoda pulled on him. Which was also played for laughs, during ESB.


  11. #5331
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    This is the literal definition of a double standard.

    It's okay to admit you don't like Star Wars any more, y'know. Nobody's forcing you to like it. I'm just pointing out that it's ridiculous to hold the original trilogy to one standard, and then blame the newer films for failing to live up to a much stricter standard, which even the original trilogy couldn't hold up to. It's all Star Wars, and it should all be assessed by the same standard. If you think the newer films are silly because the Force is a deus ex machina that does whatever the writers need it to do, well, that's true of the OT as well. This is you not liking Star Wars as an IP, wholesale, it is not the newer films somehow not living up to their legacy.

    People compare the Star Wars thing with the Transformers films. I was a huge Transformers fan as a kid. And I stopped being able to watch the films. Not because the models were so much more detailed and different, not because Sam Witwicky was so central a character. Because they kept using toilet humour and shit like racist tropes. That was a significant change, pulling away from the older content. You show me a Constructicon with big hanging steel balls clanging, and make a joke about his big balls, and you lose me. I can point to exactly what changed, and why I dislike it.

    And it's why I did really enjoy the Bumblebee film, which was a lot more true to that original legacy and cut all that crap out.
    Same type reasoning I didn't like TLJ, but really liked RoS. I never had a problem with bombs stored on a magnetic rails that are magnetically propelled down through the bottom of the ship towards whatever is below the bomber, but I have a problem with the Rebellion having faster, more defensible, more maneuverable Y-Wing bombers several decades before and now they have these lumbering, non-shielded, easily destroyed MG-100 bombers.

    I don't have a problem with new Force abilities being introduced into Star Wars, that has always happened, or even a character arc that takes the galaxy's most hopeful hero and turns him into a despondent hermit due to bad events or choices made (as much as I may not like ); but I do have a problem watching a guy who tried to save one of the galaxy's most vile killers because he still saw good in him, who now tries to kill this nephew because someone's trying to temp him to the dark side.

    TLJ felt like a story that was using a Star Wars veneer, i.e. Star Wars character names & places, etc. but otherwise, a random Sci-Fi story, whereas RoS felt like Star Wars, which felt really good. (even if some of the story points were a little silly)
    Last edited by Ragedaug; 2019-12-31 at 06:28 AM.

    "Take the time to sit down and talk with your adversaries. You will learn something, and they will learn something from you. When two enemies are talking, they are not fighting. It's when the talking ceases that the ground becomes fertile for violence. So keep the conversation going."
    ~ Daryl Davis

  12. #5332
    Quote Originally Posted by Nefarious Tea View Post
    Not necessarily, and in fact doing so is the harder - and often, much easier and quicker to fuck up - way.

    There are two ways to write a story:

    1. Know where it starts.

    2. Know where it ends.

    The best way of showing the distinction is through A Song of Ice and Fire vs. Game of Thrones.

    George R. R. Martin is the first kind of writer. He made A Song of Ice and Fire by knowing the story from the start: he built a world, he built characters - and he has spent twenty years writing what those characters are doing in that world and what is happening in that world, by letting things flow naturally and decisions made be perfectly in tune with the motivations and backgrounds of each character. He is nowhere near done.

    The guys who did Game of Thrones, on the other hand, especially seasons 7 and 8 knew exactly where they wanted to end up, and where characters needed to be. The reason it was so critically panned, however, was because they knew where the story needed to end - but they don't see inside the character's heads in quite the way the guy who made them does. So characters make idiotic (at worst) and/or completely out of character (at best) decisions in order to get there from where they were when Martin's writings stopped.

    You CAN write a story and start by knowing where the end is - but you must be a very careful and very skilled writer to do it.
    Off topic: GRRM is a "gardener" of his stories but it doesn't mean he doesn't know how it ends. He can cut parts of the story and let other grow to help or evolve his initial idea on how the story ends.

    The series did know how the story ends and many details about the path but they changed it because they wanted to satisfy some fans. In my opinion, GoT strategically wanted to make the story twist during the last season to dont carry the hate over the fan's favorite characters. At least, they played with some stuff of all the seasons to set something.

    On topic: SW 9 is a mix of both of them. They have general idea, they introduced characters with potential interesting plots but they regret everything and eliminated all according to the audience opinions. The last trilogy didnt have time to set anything. It is regret, after regret and after regret without respecting the initial plant, without gardening the story, etc.

  13. #5333
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    TLJ is competently plotted. You might not like the trappings of the plot, but the five act structure is there. The character’s actions are driven by their personalities. You might not like their personalities, but that doesn’t mean they have no motives. Their motivations don’t turn on a dime. The movie has a discernible central theme. You might not like the theme of dealing with and overcoming failure, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. No one complains about sand. It doesn’t have jar jar binks. No one wanders off four times in one damn film, endangering everyone else in the process.

    Complaints about Holdo having purple hair and people bitching about nonsense made up space physics hold zero weight to me.
    TLJ has a long subplot that goes absolutely nowhere. Most of the main plot is a slow motion chase.

    Both of the last two movies had huge problems that would have made them bad movies even if they weren't Star Wars movies. They are like a lot of recent big budget action movies that focus too much on the visuals and not enough on the plot and characters.
    Last edited by Prokne; 2019-12-31 at 07:09 AM.

  14. #5334
    Quote Originally Posted by Prokne View Post
    TLJ has a long subplot that goes absolutely nowhere. Most of the main plot is a slow motion chase.
    The whole point of that subplot is to show how rash and stupid and eventually futile the "heroics" of Poe and Finn, and the naive idea of goodness that Rose has, actually are.

    Keep in mind, Holdo's plan WOULD HAVE WORKED if Poe had just followed orders, and they took the cloaked transports down to the planet and hid as the First Order passed overhead. But Poe not only sent them on the bizarre and unnecessary side quest, he also, on open comms, *while he knew there was an unknown code breaker on board* discusses Holdo's plan and how stupid it is, giving the code breaker (Benicio Del Torro's character) the information he would later use to betray them.

    I agree, the side quest is kind of clunky, particularly in the whole "enslaved animals need to be freed but fuck the slave kids" angle. It is also pointless in terms of achieving the characters' goals. But it isn't pointless in terms of theming, and hitting on the lessons RJ was trying to convey about the naivete of people like Poe, Finn, and Rose.

    The average moviegoer, though, doesn't seem to care about themes or morality plays - they deem anything that doesn't move the immediate plot forwards to be useless.

  15. #5335
    what a dumpsterfire of a movie. Iv never thrown my hands in the air and asked why so many times durring one movie before. So many things that were plot points that didnt make a damn bit of sense aside from giving them somthing to do. So many little things that mechanically just seem fucking stupid and so many fucking world breaking mechanics holy shit. By how fast they travel while moving in hyperspace in this movie you would have thought the falcon had traveled to another galaxy in episode 4 ffs.

  16. #5336
    Quote Originally Posted by Kaleredar View Post
    TLJ is competently plotted. You might not like the trappings of the plot, but the five act structure is there. The character’s actions are driven by their personalities. You might not like their personalities, but that doesn’t mean they have no motives. Their motivations don’t turn on a dime. The movie has a discernible central theme. You might not like the theme of dealing with and overcoming failure, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. No one complains about sand. It doesn’t have jar jar binks. No one wanders off four times in one damn film, endangering everyone else in the process.

    Complaints about Holdo having purple hair and people bitching about nonsense made up space physics hold zero weight to me.
    It's not about liking their personalities or not. It's that the personalities dont make sense.
    Luke wouldn't throw a lightsaber above his head as if it was a piece of garbage, Luke would inquire about Han Solo upon learning of his death, Luke wouldn't pre-emptively strike his nephew because he felt some bad voodoo around him.

    Funny you'd mention Jar Jar because TLJ highlight why character like him are necessary : They allow the writer to condense the visual gag on one, or few characters and free the other characters of such constraints.
    In TLJ, every single character is a Jar jar, constantly used as props to make epic funny moment, starting with luke and his lightsaber throw of course, then it's Rey, the porgs, Poe dameron and it never end.

    TLJ is also the least competently plotted movie of the entire mainline franchise, and yes, romcom drama and making up space physics every minutes to fit a plot does weight on the story over time, and it weight on the quality of the movie as a whole, even if it somehow doesnt weight on you.

    As for TROS I haven't seen yet, and there's no way I'm paying a ticket after that dumpster fire.

  17. #5337
    Quote Originally Posted by Xath View Post
    My "hostility" is because they decanonized everything including the Thrawn trilogy which is a much better story than the shitshow that is the sequel trilogy. It's not one person it was the official system the canon categories are at the bottom of the article.
    They did not decanonize anything. If you bothered to listen to George Lucas interviews not some employee at Lucas arts your thick skull would know one thing.

    That the ONLY Canon was the movies. Period. Lucas own words on the matter.

    Thrawn was nothing more than a fanfic wet dream until Disney made him canon.

  18. #5338
    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    The whole point of that subplot is to show how rash and stupid and eventually futile the "heroics" of Poe and Finn, and the naive idea of goodness that Rose has, actually are.

    Keep in mind, Holdo's plan WOULD HAVE WORKED if Poe had just followed orders, and they took the cloaked transports down to the planet and hid as the First Order passed overhead. But Poe not only sent them on the bizarre and unnecessary side quest, he also, on open comms, *while he knew there was an unknown code breaker on board* discusses Holdo's plan and how stupid it is, giving the code breaker (Benicio Del Torro's character) the information he would later use to betray them.

    I agree, the side quest is kind of clunky, particularly in the whole "enslaved animals need to be freed but fuck the slave kids" angle. It is also pointless in terms of achieving the characters' goals. But it isn't pointless in terms of theming, and hitting on the lessons RJ was trying to convey about the naivete of people like Poe, Finn, and Rose.

    The average moviegoer, though, doesn't seem to care about themes or morality plays - they deem anything that doesn't move the immediate plot forwards to be useless.
    Except even after Poe's actions got a significant portion of the resistance killed, he wasn't punished in any way. It didn't look like they (Poe, Finn and Rose) learned anything. That is why it was pointless.

    And he wouldn't have done what he did if Holdo had just told him what her plan was in the beginning. It was obvious that he was frustrated thinking she didn't have a plan and she knew he was a cowboy, so if she had a plan, why not tell him what it was so he could either help, or stay out of the way? No good leader would have given him the order to trust her and stay in his room.

    I'm also not sure if blindly following orders is the lesson you want to teach people.

  19. #5339
    Quote Originally Posted by Kallisto View Post
    They did not decanonize anything. If you bothered to listen to George Lucas interviews not some employee at Lucas arts your thick skull would know one thing.

    That the ONLY Canon was the movies. Period. Lucas own words on the matter.

    Thrawn was nothing more than a fanfic wet dream until Disney made him canon.
    Such fanfic that lucas had a hand in directing where the expanded universe went storywise himself? Its funny because the most recent movie just shows the EU was far better than the trash that disney has shoveled out.

  20. #5340
    Quote Originally Posted by Prokne View Post
    Except even after Poe's actions got a significant portion of the resistance killed, he wasn't punished in any way. It didn't look like they (Poe, Finn and Rose) learned anything. That is why it was pointless.

    And he wouldn't have done what he did if Holdo had just told him what her plan was in the beginning. It was obvious that he was frustrated thinking she didn't have a plan and she knew he was a cowboy, so if she had a plan, why not tell him what it was so he could either help, or stay out of the way? No good leader would have given him the order to trust her and stay in his room.

    I'm also not sure if blindly following orders is the lesson you want to teach people.
    Poe, in the very next fight, calls off his fighters because he's learned the lesson: it's no good to die heroically, it's better to survive for another day.

    Thematically, he grows into the position Leia occupies at the beginning of the movie. A few minutes later, when they're trying to figure out their escape, he proposes following the crystal foxes (IE, running away to survive another day), and when he finishes speaking, everyone looks to Leia, and she says, "Well, don't look at me. Follow him!"

    And then, thematically, Finn, who was a coward who just wanted to run away, find Rey, and be safe at the beginning of the movie, grows into Poe's role - the hotheaded guy willing to throw himself into the battering ram for essentially nothing (because it would have just vaporized him). It set him up perfectly to grow into a real Han Solo type character in Episode 9.

    Rose was introduced in this movie, and she was stripped of her naive-ness when Benicio Del Toro is showing that the arms dealers deal to the Resistance as well. She has a talisman-like hold on the pendant she shared with her sister (which represents the heroic ideals she ascribes to the dead sister, and, initially, Finn.) By the end of the movie, she makes a practical-ish decision to save another fighter because they're going to need everyone, and that her sister dying for nothing wasn't really some sort of heroic deed that everything balanced on. I will say, the kiss and her suddenly having romantic feelings for Finn was forced, but again, I thought it was to set up something in the 3rd movie where Finn would have to actually grow, and pick between Rey and Rose, the safe choice being Rose, and Rey kind of being the dangerous choice. And then he would pick Rey, but Rey would fall to the Dark Side, and he'd have to deal with her, and Rose would have to help him, and it'd be a lesson on whether love can overlook everything, or if there needs to be a practicality to it. Of course, JJ trashed all that, but I thought it fairly obvious RJ was trying to set up a love triangle and that conflict for the last movie.

    Also, the Holdo thing has been litigated nonstop. She did what every general does - she compartmentalized information on a need-to-know basis. And as Poe is a literally flight jockey, he didn't need to know. And even though he had been demoted for his Dreadnaught plan, and just demanded he be told all the details of a highly sensitive plan, she didn't send him to his room - hell, she didn't even send him to the brig after his outbreaks. She said, "Hey, trust me." And Poe knows she's an adept Admiral because he recognizes her name when she's introduced as an Admiral from an important battle. But guess what - Holdo isn't perfect either. The point isn't that "oh, only Poe fucked up." Everyone fucks up. Poe's fuck up would have made Holdo's fuck up (to not trust Poe) irrelevant, so it's kind of the more important one, which is fitting because Poe is a main character and he has lessons to learn. Holdo is just there to die in that movie, her character arc happened well before this movie ever happened.

    These are all very basic things you can draw from this film. Again, I have to ask if people paid attention when watching, or just go into a blind rage about the movie, every time.

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