What an absolute pile of Trash movie.
It truly makes sense why it has worse ratings than the Prequels.
What an absolute pile of Trash movie.
It truly makes sense why it has worse ratings than the Prequels.
Last edited by Super Kami Dende; 2017-12-17 at 01:29 PM.
Great movie, you can see why this has better ratings than the prequels.
End of movie. Did any one notice the little kid on casino world grab the broom using the force ?
I would highly differentiate between the "bloodline" mythics that Jedis used to track down force affine people (part 1 to 3) and the current perception of how the Force affinity is descending from parent to child (part 7+). Snoke is putting his money on Kylo because he is Vader's grandson. The concept of a powerful bloodline highly differs between the prequels and the sequels. Where part 1 to 3 the concept of bloodlines was used to find Force affine people and finding the promised Chosen One (in somewhat copy paste of the story of Jesus) the sequels are more about heritage of a great person within your family tree. This concept is somewhat questionable as anyone who saw the prequels knows that balance within the force exists (aka it is self-regulating) and that the Force is not exclusive to the Skywalker bloodline.
I would have loved to explore more about this concept as it describes the everlasting societal issue of group affiliation both in immigration as our search for a place in a specific group. They had the chance to make references to the concerns of heritage versus gaining or learning skills through dedication (aka rich exclusivity versus upcomers) and the arrogance of children versus parents (first generation of upcomers being hard workers, second generation are somewhat snobby). It is the key driver of any immigration versus protectionism debatte (aka "pure bloods" versus immigrants, exclusivity of royal bloodlines versus marrying common folks etc.). It is the basic debatte of what leads a group: old values or pure dedication.
If they wanted to clarify why the Jedi have to end (as major part of Luke's revelation) they could have easily built references to the "historical" view of the Force as military instrument (within the prequels) or the perception of the Sith vs. Jedi roles in SW:TOR. They could even have made a reference to the Jedi as reseamblence of the State of the Catholic church.
BUT: the point about this is not how they have handled the basic elements aka if Rey has powerful force affine parents or not but how badly they handled family business. If Rey would have been a Kenobi, okay, if she would be Kylo's twin, so be it. I would have been okay even if she was a Nobody. But the way they told her parents are is.. it's just bad. And the following line from Kylo "You are nothing special, but you are special to me." was one of the creepiest cheesiest lines in all the movie. Try that in any bar and you will get five fingers to your face.
This would have been acceptable if it wasn't handled so badly in all the movie and built-up to it. Luke literally asks her who she is twice. Rey's and Snoke's background leave more questions open than the movie answered. Some scenes of the movie are a caricature of themselves. It is not like the dramatic downfall from ESB where Vader reveals his connection to Luke but rather a WTF moment. Again like said it is not what they did but how poorly they delivered the messages.
Viewer relatability is the core concept of story telling. You don't necessarily have to share the experience (yet) but you design a certain character/product/service for a specific group of users and "sell" it via emotions. It's the 1x1 of story telling (and successful sales management). If you design a character that is a child prodigy with superpowers that has no counterpart and just is so over the top powerful that they don't need training or hard work, the character becomes fake and people won't believe in it. Rey feels so displaced that she could have started building rock castles on Anch-To by lifting rocks with the Force.
(commons: both have something inside them that frigthens them, both grew up with no parents, both are the same age and clearly designed for the sub-21 viewership, white female child prodigies, both look for their role in all of this, both have a superpower more extraordinary than anything around. There are some differences but Rey is clearly adressing the same audience.) And yes it was intentedly overdrawn as Rey's character is just so out of bounds.
The issue is that Rey is tough. She survived 19years on a dessert planet with no friends. She clearly has the traits of a hard working dedicated person (mostly due to her character being a copy from Luke in ANH). In TLJ she is just purely overpowering. She is looking for a teacher and still leaves Anch-to without any progress achieve. Luke totally loses her even with remarks from Yoda that they should not.
You are right that not everything is a plot hole. I honestly do not need a reason for some of the decissions atleast if they are connected by decent story telling. TLJ has just way to many scenes that do not add up, are plainly useless and with no benefit to the character or story development. And what I understand as plot hole are the moments where question marks pop-up while watching the scene. And there were way to many. And I do not mean questions like "who are Rey's parents?" but rather "that's it?".
Finn is one of the most humane characters on screen and one of my favourites because he tries hard and fails and tries again. But his role in TLJ is useless and none of his actions matter at all. He wakes up, gets dressed, wants to run again but then has a change of heart and charges into a suicice mission disabling the tracing device. And Finns-Rose scenes feeled like a filler episode in a bad anime. It was a decent story arc but in the end it just doesn't matter.
And yet the movie doesn't allow proper development of any of these.
Empathy
- Kylo not shooting his mother is directly followed by destruction of the bridge.
- Kylo and Rey exploring the force is "stage" by Snoke.
- Kylo's empathy towards Rey is displayed the same second he literally tells her that she is a nobody.
- Kylo's tantrums are something for a 15year old and not a 32year old.
- Rose's empathy towards Finn done within 5mins from her death to Finn hugging Rey a close to inappropriate time.
- Luke and Leia's empathy moment was followed by a reference to TFA (Leia got her hair done) followed by Luke dying in a somewhat useless moment.
- Rey's empathy when speaking with Leia about Luke's demise followed by some funny chatting of the survivors.
- Luke's fear of Kylo and Rey turning dark followed by somewhat pointless stuff.
- and especially the moment Chewie had a barbeque.
Rejected Indoctrination
- Luke tells Rey the Jedi have to end just to reverse his opinion in the argument on exactly this matter stating that Rey will become a Jedi (without being trained by him as he gives up on life shortly after).
- Rey wants to become a Jedi and self-indoctrinates her. She is not searching for Luke to end the First Order but for a master to teach her the place in all of this. Literally.
- Kylo wants to fill his grandfather's shoes, self-indoctrinating him to Snoke without any further reason(?). Maybe he wants to proof someone that he is the best (that would be severe issues).
- Poe self-indoctrinates himself when after Leia's space excurision he hopes for commanding the fleet. He is so predicatable that Leai's plan fully works out.
Finn is the only somewhat relatable person. Which is kinda weak for the decent characters that Lucasfilm sold to Disney.
What makes it so disappointing is that they could have told a great story to deconstruct all the previous 7 movies, our understanding of the Force, of good and evil of everything just to prepare SW9 as revelation (most likely something like Nathan's ring parabel, that we are all one and that the Force is with us even if we can use it or not). Instead they chose to rather put together some quite enjoyable but meaningless scenes as they decided to not deliver any punchline.
Great movie. I did not like VII but I really enjoyed VIII. Sure there were plot holes, useless characters and some questionable decisions but overall it was a great and very enjoyable movie.
And damn, Poe Dameron is smokin' hot.
MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again
I think my complaint there is more that crucial info shouldn't be left to expanded universe stuff. Everything needed to understand the original trilogy was in those movies; did you need to know how the emperor became the emperor? Not really; he was an evil guy and he had to go down. The rest was nice to know, but not essential.
But Snoke. And Snoke is heads and shoulders above any other complaint for me. The original films firmly told us a couple things: Palpatine had to plot his overthrow for nearly a century. Sith are jealous and singular, with only a master and apprentice. We left that galaxy in episode 6 having destroyed the Sith threat.
SO WHO THE EVERLIVING FUCK IS SNOKE?
This isn't weird irrelevant background info. This is explaining how exactly our happy ending and all the things we thought we knew got turned completely upside down, and how a guy who seems to be even more powerful than the Emperor just slid in under the radar.
SO WHO THE FUCK IS SNOKE? And now it seems unlikely we'll ever know..
Also my problem with it is that at the time of the OT we didn't know what came before, so speculation could be made about Palpatine etc, it was a mystery as to what happened before ANH. But with Snoke we know a fair bit about the time line leading up to TFA and a little after RotJ, and Snoke just comes out of nowhere, so of course people are going to wonder where the fuck Snoke came from and who he is. And i really, really hope that information is not left solely to books and comics :/
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"This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."
-- Capt. Copeland
She's definitely alive. There's no reason to drag a body back and say medic! Then have no on screen death.
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Yeah, this was a fail. We knew little about Palpatine, he was just the bad guy, but this feels different because we have a back story to fill between films, we needed to know who Snoke was and how he was so powerful. Palpatine, not so much, we just back filled it ourselves untill the prequels.