Watched it last night. Couldn’t agree more, well said. I like that they changed the structure of their story so that it wasn’t so repetitive which was the problem with Force Awakens- it was a reboot kind of but didn’t need to be. It was way too similar to the originals in a really blunt way, this was similar in a more subtle way, and they carved some new paths and for that they deserve credit. I mean honestly a bigger Death Star in Force awakens??? With the same structural defects?! Dumb.
I thought it was great! Maybe slightly long for my liking but considering how much they were trying to get done it’s understandable. Only thing I would have changed is don’t kill Luke at the end, keep him for 9, just because it was a little weird how nothing killed him and he just kinda turned into dust.
I think the other piece massively under appreciated by fans is how lucky Star Wars fans are for Disney to take this investment on. What other entertainment company studio has the budget, expertise / experience, story telling excellence, and overall ability to take the Star Wars franchise and really give it the kind of investment it needed to become even bigger than it already was? Disney has done a very good job of taking a legendary franchise like Star Wars and marketing, leveraging and launching this next saga plus lining up a whole new saga plus the one-off movies to explore that universe everybody loves. Would Lucas Arts have done that? He had lots of time to do it and didn’t. What about Universal or Legendary ot any other studio? Nobody else took the risks Disney did and they deserve credit for tackling something that nerds around the world will critique every single speck of dust on the screen. Imagine where this story and franchise is sans-Disney!
Seriously?
The film ripped off the Empire Strikes Back repeatedly. The budget was only two hundred million, which is very low for a film like this. Much lower than other high end action franchises.
We should be grateful to the Disney corporation now? Yeah, this film was a real gamble.
The film ripped off the Empire Strikes Back repeatedly. The budget was only two hundred million, which is very low for a film like this. Much lower than other high end action franchises.
We should be grateful to the Disney corporation now? Yeah, this film was a real gamble.
Yes seriously. George Lucas was involved on the prequel trilogy and yikes. We are talking an enormous leap in quality once Disney took over IMO
Firstly, why is being political a bad thing? Shouldn't the various factions have reasons for being, and motivations for their actions? Apparently that isn't required any more. What is the first order even after anymore, and what is the new rebellion rebelling for? Does anyone even know, or is it just an ongoing episode of Tom & Jerry in space? The prequels were hot dogcrap but at least in that sense the political story attempted to give the story some depth. The prequels falling apart was due to execution, not really due to the story.
You need some political backbone to the story, yes. But the prequels were utter garbage with how much time they wasted on it. Painfully boring.
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You need some political backbone to the story, yes. But the prequels were utter garbage with how much time they wasted on it. Painfully boring.
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I just saw it finally, I loved it. The Finn/Rose side story was kinda meh, and the badass chrome stormtrooper was completely wasted..she didn’t even get a kill in either movie. Other than that, I loved it. I loved the character development, Poe in particular. Seeing his expression when he realized their plan had failed was priceless. Really looking forward to seeing how the showdown between Rey and Ben will go. It will be made more interesting with their connection. I wonder if he’s redeemable. I kinda think he might be to some degree. Really looking forward to the next one!
The film ripped off the Empire Strikes Back repeatedly. The budget was only two hundred million, which is very low for a film like this. Much lower than other high end action franchises.
We should be grateful to the Disney corporation now? Yeah, this film was a real gamble.
Is that really a low budget? This is a film without huge brand name stars so with that out of the equation,seems like they spent plenty.
Not that it means much in any case. All movies will be Disney one day, just like Demolition Man where every restaurant was Taco Bell.
The bigger issue was the utility of such clunky and slow ships that have to be in close proximity to their targets. And why design bombers that can't hit targets with defenses. What if Poe hadn't been superman, and had missed a single turret. Now they're totally useless. It also seemed like the bombers had to be so close that they could barely escape their own blast radius.
Heh. Yup. About the only thing with the Bombers that didn't bother me was the bombs 'falling' out of them. Everything else I was thinking "Damn, those things seem really, really useless."
Heh. Yup. About the only thing with the Bombers that didn't bother me was the bombs 'falling' out of them. Everything else I was thinking "Damn, those things seem really, really useless."
I also always laugh (and this is an every science fiction trope) of how space battles play out so two dimensionally.
One of my favourite shots in a sci-fi movie is from the 2009 JJ Trek — they pull out from the bridge to the ship exterior and the camera actually rotates to show that our “normal” perspective was actually upside down to what we were viewing. It’s just a cool reminder that they aren’t battleships out on the ocean.
Last ten seconds of this clip:
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Finally got to see TLJ tonight and was pretty dissapointed. Great sci-fi movie but not much of a Star Wars movie. Too many inconsistencies, too much Disney/Marvel type unnecessary comedy and Rey continues be cinemas leading "mary sue" archetype. New characters like Rose and Holdo didnt catch my interest at all and I think I left cheering for the First Order. I know they could never "win" in the end but I would be just fine with Kylo Ren coming out on top and wiping out the Resistance.
I finally got to see it. I liked it more than TFA and my issues were more with TFA set-ups that were not followed through on in this movie. Things like:
1) Who is Snoke?
2) What's the deal with Rey? Why was she on Jakku with Lor San Tekka and why did she have a connection with the lightsaber?
3) What is the deal with the map to Luke? Half of it was in R2-D2 and half was with Lor San Tekka. If he left a map, he wanted to be found. Yet in this movie he said he didn't want to be found.
4) Why does Captain Phasma suck so much? In the TFA they try to make her out to be a bad ass focusing on discipline, then she betrays the First Order by shutting down the defense shield letting thousands of soldiers die because someone pointed a blaster at her. Then in this movie, she still has a job/position of authority? Oh, and she sucks at fighting.
I liked the space battles for the most part. I the throne room scene and them cutting down the guards after taking out Snoke. My favourite part was Yoda. Overall, it felt like a combo of a ESB/RTJ remake and a reboot movie. They can now really start fresh with Episode 9.
I really liked it. I think you can nitpick about any movie, the constant escalation and retconning of Jedi powers is bothersome. The Force saving Leia from the vaccum of space was over the top, and there inability to ever get time or distance or technology to be contiguous in the star wars universe is frustrating.
Poe's sub plot and growth into a leadership role was a great prospective on who his character was and needed to become. I really like that it tied in nicely with the main plot of both him and Luke needing to learn from their mistakes. Poe learning that he needs to assess his mistakes before moving forward and Luke learning that he needed to continue moving forward after making a mistake.
Fin and Rose seemed like an unneeded diversion. But I think they really wanted to ground the resistance and give it purpose in a way that was hard to feel in the other movies outside of the broader context of fighting the dark side. This was really important if they will continue to forge Kylo into a greyer character. I also liked the death they gave Phasma and I'm happy they didn't just ignore her but dumped a character that was weaker than she should have been, and I feel like there are some good things you can pull out of their side story to setup the next movie.
Kylo was probably the weakest link in the force awakens and probably the strongest link in this movie. Star Wars finally created a motivated bad guy, you can understand that he want to explore more than he was allowed to, you can understand the fear and anger that followed the fight with Luke, you can understand the desire to exert his power and control over the galaxy after years of following a guy like Snooke. But even while understanding all of that you can still hate him.
Rey I like that she mirrored Lukes jury through 5 and 6 getting some training from a reluctant mentor, feeling compelled the reach out and fix the galaxy single handedly. I like that unlike Luke she saw success than instantly had it pulled away from her realizing that the desire to control everything, was a dark path she will have to move away from. the waiting, the training, facing her own dark side was just done so much better than Empire but that should be expected 40 years later. I also like that her and Snoke were not part of this 3 generation squabble of a small group of elites. creating those dangling loose ends just makes the galaxy feel bigger again. Also the "Mary-Sueness" of her is greatly overstated she was a perfect reflection of Luke in this movie and if anything a much more vulnerable character than she had been in the last movie.
Luke, was a story that needed to be told in this trilogy, I like the way they handled it in the story, i like that you saw even the master still needed to learn lessons right to the end, and i'm glad they just let him find peace with the force. I really hope this is the end of all force ghosts other than possibly luke, if yoda and obi wan start appearing to rey it creates more problems for 1-3 than those movies already have.
Liea was not really a needed part of the movie but they wanted her to pass the torch to Poe and she was there and she did that.
The droids i thought were pretty weak in this movie. in the original there was this funny dichotomy with droids where when they were removed from the action they had an outsized influence bringing knowledge and control to a situation that our characters could not have, while when they were in a conflict they were these outside observers that could not be hit nor could they effectively hit anyone. I really miss that now they are just goofy characters that could be replaced by ewokes without anyone noticing.
Generally, I loved the characters, I don't mind their strategy of taking ownership of Star Wars by mirroring the originals so much in their first two installments, and I'm happy they did some bold things killing of big characters and leaving loose threads
[QUOTE=pseudoreality;6516217]I finally got to see it. I liked it more than TFA and my issues were more with TFA set-ups that were not followed through on in this movie. Things like:
1) Who is Snoke?]/quote]
In the end Snoke was the ultimate red shirt, he was there to be powerful, look formidable and die so that Ren could make his final ascension. If you want to get technical, Snoke was really a connection to the old Star Wars that Disney wants to wipe away. Another uber force using Palpatine, that was pretty much easily disposed of. While Snoke wanted power and vengeance against the Jedi which represents the old ideals, Ren wants to find his own identity and place in the world, which is new Disney's view point of the force. They really want us to see Ren as a somewhat sympathetic villain who was betrayed by Luke and felt abandoned by his father, so he wants Vader's power to gain control over his fate.
If there is going to be a backstory, it will probably be a book or cartoon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pseudoreality
2) What's the deal with Rey? Why was she on Jakku with Lor San Tekka and why did she have a connection with the lightsaber?
I think that Disney really kind of messed this up in a way, merely because of the imagery of the flashback of her life. Basically I guess the image represents the force waking up in her and how everything within the force is connected, so she could see Luke's memories from touching the light saber, but at the same time, I think that parts of it were her memories and her creations. Lor San Tekka was a nobody, another red shirt for Ren to kill to show how nasty he was in murdering someone who clearly knew him and was blocking him from his destiny. We saw Rey being handed over to the fat guy, which is clearly her memory of her nobody drunken bums of parents selling her off. The question is, what was with the ship leaving the world. We saw the destruction of the temple and the knights of Ren but we know that image was wrong because Ben was in Kylo gear, but he was still Ben when he destroyed the temple, we also saw the knights of Ren, but it sounds like they didn't come along until after the destruction of the Temple.
Again they created this massive feeling of disconnection between the TFA and TLJ because it feels like they changed Rey's and Luke's stories in mid writing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pseudoreality
3) What is the deal with the map to Luke? Half of it was in R2-D2 and half was with Lor San Tekka. If he left a map, he wanted to be found. Yet in this movie he said he didn't want to be found.
Lor San Tekka found the map he didn't have it all along, at least that's what was indicated at the start. Luke didn't leave the full map with Artoo, which to me means that he left Artoo before continuing on his journey to the Island which is why Artoo is blank. Again though this created a jarring gap between JJ's first movie and this one, its almost like they didn't talk or the new director took a cursory look at the first film and decided not to go down the rabbit hole and literally made a stand alone movie that didn't connect to the first one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pseudoreality
4) Why does Captain Phasma suck so much? In the TFA they try to make her out to be a bad ass focusing on discipline, then she betrays the First Order by shutting down the defense shield letting thousands of soldiers die because someone pointed a blaster at her. Then in this movie, she still has a job/position of authority? Oh, and she sucks at fighting.
Was she ever really a bad ass in the first one though? She shot some prisoners, but we didn't see her fight, she surrendered in a hurry to save her bacon. Frankly she wasn't a needed character, and my guess is that they wanted to do more with her but decided that they had too many characters. In the book written about her (Here's the deal, the new EU books have all just basically been really terrible. The biggest mistake that Disney made when they killed the Legends EU is that they didn't bring across a lot of the really good writers that played in that galaxy. Because of that the new books have been really poorly written and just not really well thought out. I had hopes for the Lord of the Sith book with Palpatine and Vader, but it read like a badly written buddy cop book and I finished it and put it in my storage room.) But in the book Phasma was a warrior, a coward and a career opportunist and survivor, and she was better at the last two then she was at the first two. But because most people won't read that book. Instead she turns into a big colossal bag of poop in a shiny armor. She looks cool, she sells action figures, but if she's supposed to be one of the poster girls for female empowerment or a good villain they really failed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pseudoreality
I liked the space battles for the most part. I the throne room scene and them cutting down the guards after taking out Snoke. My favourite part was Yoda. Overall, it felt like a combo of a ESB/RTJ remake and a reboot movie. They can now really start fresh with Episode 9.
These first two movies have tried to be both a reboot and a new story, and I think that they actually confused themselves, and that's why people are struggling with the movies.
Like I said, I liked a lot about TLJ. I liked the fact that Luke turned out to be basically a bitter failed Jedi who didn't figure out what the Force was really about until later in life, just before he died. Even Yoda came across as a guy who realized that he had been wrong about a great many things.
The space battles were ok, the fight scene in the throne room was ok. Overall this was a good stand alone sci-fi movie. It had a lot of charm to it, some moments of good human and human warmth. But I still circle back to the feeling that there was a major disconnection between the first and second movie that made things make no sense or become irrelevant, and because of that the first two movies when put together don't quite match up.
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It's kinda like Abrams handed the writer/director of this one a huge setup for the next 2 films. A mystery evil guy needing a story, a young hero needing her story, oh, here's Leia and a good Luke mystery at the end. Lots of potential with this stuff. And this guy is all, gee, thanks...your bad guy? Toast. Hero girl? LOL. No story. Luke? Blamo! Old Admiral Akbar? Kapow! You can have Leia though, even though Carrie Fisher is dead now. So uh, good luck writing that one...
And Abrams is like....sigh. Thanks buddy.
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I blame Abrams Losting the Force Awakens. Here Rian I set up all these mysteries with absolutely no idea how to solve them while telling a coherent story. My best idea is having Luke and Yoda wake up on Dagoba and everything from empire onward was a dream.
Yes Rian should have focused on better continuity with JJ but Rian nailed the force and the Rey:Ren relationship so much better than JJ did it made me retroactively disappointed in TFA. I really look forward to the New Trilogy.
I blame Abrams Losting the Force Awakens. Here Rian I set up all these mysteries with absolutely no idea how to solve them while telling a coherent story. My best idea is having Luke and Yoda wake up on Dagoba and everything from empire onward was a dream.
Yes Rian should have focused on better continuity with JJ but Rian nailed the force and the Rey:Ren relationship so much better than JJ did it made me retroactively disappointed in TFA. I really look forward to the New Trilogy.
So Abrams is at fault for setting up questions that actually tantalized the audience? Isn't that the point?
How did Johnson nail the force? Flying Leia? Lighting strikes from force ghosts? Projecting holograms? Unrelenting power over jedi's with years of training with no effort or learning required? The force officially has no more rules.
This series is doomed. Abrams is going to have to be a next level genius to actually make episode 9 interesting at all.
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Rian didn't nail the force, but he did fundamentally change it.
There was a dark side and a light side of the force, and the Dark Side users commanded the dark side at a cost of it dominating their destiny. The Jedi followed the force and acted as its servant serving the will of the force. But the Dark and the light were basically two separate things under George Lucas.
Even under JJ it was the same, Ren fell to the dark side of the force.
With Rian he has the force as this shade of gray is concert, the dark and the light, balanced. When the Dark Side Rises the Light side responds with equality.
In the end he's gone all shades of Gray, and the force is corrupted by the people using it.
Not once did Snoke talk about the power of the darkside of the force for example.
So Rian fundamentally shifted the force towards serving the balance. Life and Death, hot and cold but its the person that is corrupted by what the force offers.
Its funny because in the EU they had that discussion and it lead to the whole stupidity of the Gray Jedi concept. In the end though Luke basically said in the Legends EU that it was Bullspit.
Ren inherently isn't being influenced by the Dark Side of the Force. He is what he is, and the darkness comes from within him and he uses the Force itself as a tool to the ends.
Basically if you put it back to ROTS when Palpatine is talking to Anakin and says, to be a great leader you have to understand all sides of the Great Mystery, understand the power of the Darkside of the Force while understanding the lightside. But Palpatine knew that once Anakin used the easy gifts that the Dark Side offered, control, breaking your chains of slavery, power that he would be corrupted by the Dark Side.
Under this version of the Force that Rian is using. Vader wouldn't be corrupted by the force, but he would have been basically corrupt long before and his ability to bend and use the force would have been the tool to the end.
Disney has basically changed the equation of the bad guy from the Dark Side, to the personality flaws of the person aided by the force as a whole. But the force itself doesn't care, its a tool and not a living breathing thing that commands or has a will.
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I enjoyed it, but one thing I find with the new trilogy is everything feels much smaller. Part of that is due to Abrams - the man has no sense of distance or time in anything he's ever done - but in general the scale of the conflict between the First Order and the Resistance feels very small. That doesn't make them bad movies, just a different feel.
I wonder if Abrams will go back on anything that Rian did. Maybe Rey's parents were nothing, but one of them was born on Tatooine, child of the farm girl who provided comfort to that hermit living out beyond the dune sea. I hope he leaves Rey as being unconnected to the previous stories but I think he had different ideas.
I enjoyed it, but one thing I find with the new trilogy is everything feels much smaller. Part of that is due to Abrams - the man has no sense of distance or time in anything he's ever done - but in general the scale of the conflict between the First Order and the Resistance feels very small. That doesn't make them bad movies, just a different feel.
I wonder if Abrams will go back on anything that Rian did. Maybe Rey's parents were nothing, but one of them was born on Tatooine, child of the farm girl who provided comfort to that hermit living out beyond the dune sea. I hope he leaves Rey as being unconnected to the previous stories but I think he had different ideas.
I left this movie almost feeling like 9 will have a few dozen resistance fighters battling a few dozen first order soldiers, and at some point in the movie the rest of the galaxy will be like are we still doing this ####, can you guys just go somewhere else and kill each other.
Seemingly all that is left of the first order is 5 AT-ATs and a command shuttle, while the entire resistance fits on the Flacon.
I think it would be an OK choice to allow the galaxy to outgrow the fight in the 9th movie, it will really bring a conclusion to this trilogy and leave the story wide open for future movie. They could really go forward or backward from there, they could build up multiple characters on smaller scale conflicts and bring them together later the way they did with Marvel.
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