It raises an interesting question though, why did they make the decision to move away from the Jedi/Sith lore?
I get why they moved away from a Skywalker story. Mark Hamill can not carry another trilogy. They needed to move away from the old stars and towards new heroes.
But it definitely feels like a conscious decision was made to scrub away a lot of the lore surrounding Jedi as a religion. I find this a bit odd because the religion aspect was never a focus of the original trilogy. I don’t think it was ever even called a religion. Why focus on that now? Was Disney worried audiences, international audiences specifically, wouldn’t react well to that? Was it Rian Johnson’s decision?
Thematically it was one of the few things I didn’t like, I love the Jedi/Sith dichotomy and I never even associated Jedi or Sith as religious fundamentalists.
All that being said, the hardcore fan base is a very small segment of the movie going audience and for better or for worse Disney has tried to move the film into a realm much more palatable for mainstream and international audiences.
Tarkin refers to it as a religion as well in A New Hope. At the time of it being a standalone movie, I think it was to just hammer home the idea of the Jedi being like warrior monks, and wasn't part of something grander, and was basically abandoned for the other movies.
My problem with the prequels is that they made the Jedi too powerful and influential. Given the way people talked in A New Hope you would have figured the Force and its influence would have been fading for a long time. What are they talking about with it being an 'ancient religion' when these officers would have been alive at the time when the Jedi were still part of the administrative structure of the Galaxy.
The prequels failings were by not making a cynical galaxy towards the Jedi and Force users, and growing resentment of their 'outdated' beliefs having too much influence in the Republic, allowing for a more believable turn against them by the Emperor. This would have made Anakin's turn a lot more impactful and even understandable if he felt the traditional ways of the Jedi were failing to bring peace to the galaxy and those he loved, that they were even getting in the way of it with their obsession with (one-sided) balance and not using the potential power to truly defeat those that he saw as a threat, and Palpatine would have been able to exploit and nourish that mindset.
Last edited by Roughneck; 12-22-2017 at 01:42 PM.
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Maybe from now on all Star Wars movies should be based on a crowdsourcing model for plot points. It can be like a choose your own adventure with a vote between multiple options before the story continues.
There’d be no mystery left but at least we’d all get our say.
It's unfortunate line in retrospect thanks to the prequels too. 20 years prior to Motiff talking about that "ancient religion," you had tons of renowned Jedi using the Force every which way.
If Snoke was able connect to distant minds at a distance himself, then who is to say that Snoke and Kylo were not standing together at that moment? In the perspective of Kylo Snoke may have appeared as lucid and Luke did. Surely Kylo couldn't incapacitate his master without the help of Snoke's force presence.
One thing I love about those flash backs is how uncertain they are. I liked to imagine that all three leave the truth obscured.
Maybe from now on all Star Wars movies should be based on a crowdsourcing model for plot points. It can be like a choose your own adventure with a vote between multiple options before the story continues.
There’d be no mystery left but at least we’d all get our say.
Fair point to the necessity of mystery. The beauty of starwars is its ambiguity, it leaves alot to the imagination. That is why no one is satisfied with the answers the movies give because people have always been able to fill in the blanks with their own ideas. I am glad TLJ didn't spell out every detail for me like I was five years old.
I really liked how it tried to push the reset button on blatant fan service. Kill the past, good yes please. Burn the dominant nostalgia that suffocates this franchise to the freaking ground.
I agree with what you're getting at, but they didn't actually do that. Han, Leia, and Luke are all major players in this trilogy. Chewy -- still there. C3PO and R2. Still there. Yoda. There.
You cant just drop the line "kill the past" and now you're all edgy and have something new on your hands. They've been capitalizing on nostalgia since the beginning. If they were going in a new direction they should have just done it from the outset, maybe it wouldn't have left the new batch of characters to seem so purposeless.
__________________
A few weeks after crashing head-first into the boards (denting his helmet and being unable to move for a little while) following a hit from behind by Bob Errey, the Calgary Flames player explains:
"I was like Christ, lying on my back, with my arms outstretched, crucified"
-- Frank Musil - Early January 1994
I give full marks to Johnson who had to make the difficult decision to just bury those distractions and focus on creating new lore without constantly stringing the audience along like Lost.
I'm not sure he actually succeeded in creating new lore. I'm scratching my head thinking of anything important I need to see answered in Episode 9.
__________________
A few weeks after crashing head-first into the boards (denting his helmet and being unable to move for a little while) following a hit from behind by Bob Errey, the Calgary Flames player explains:
"I was like Christ, lying on my back, with my arms outstretched, crucified"
-- Frank Musil - Early January 1994
Tarkin refers to it as a religion as well in A New Hope. At the time of it being a standalone movie, I think it was to just hammer home the idea of the Jedi being like warrior monks, and wasn't part of something grander, and was basically abandoned for the other movies.
My problem with the prequels is that they made the Jedi too powerful and influential. Given the way people talked in A New Hope you would have figured the Force and its influence would have been fading for a long time. What are they talking about with it being an 'ancient religion' when these officers would have been alive at the time when the Jedi were still part of the administrative structure of the Galaxy.
The prequels failings were by not making a cynical galaxy towards the Jedi and Force users, and growing resentment of their 'outdated' beliefs having too much influence in the Republic, allowing for a more believable turn against them by the Emperor. This would have made Anakin's turn a lot more impactful and even understandable if he felt the traditional ways of the Jedi were failing to bring peace to the galaxy and those he loved, that they were even getting in the way of it with their obsession with (one-sided) balance and not using the potential power to truly defeat those that he saw as a threat, and Palpatine would have been able to exploit and nourish that mindset.
On the bolded point, I wouldn't necessarily say that's true. He could mean that it simply dates back to ancient times, the other meaning is that he is being a jerk and using hyperbole to describe how long ago the Jedi had ended.
Quote:
Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels' hidden fort-...
I agree with what you're getting at, but they didn't actually do that. Han, Leia, and Luke are all major players in this trilogy. Chewy -- still there. C3PO and R2. Still there. Yoda. There.
You cant just drop the line "kill the past" and now you're all edgy and have something new on your hands. They've been capitalizing on nostalgia since the beginning. If they were going in a new direction they should have just done it from the outset, maybe it wouldn't have left the new batch of characters to seem so purposeless.
I don't know, Han, Leia, Luke will most likely have no presence in the next movie. Chewy, C3PO, R2D2 are all minor unimportant characters. So, I would say the past is essentially torched at this point.
One thing I love about those flash backs is how uncertain they are. I liked to imagine that all three leave the truth obscured.
Are you talking the flash backs of Luke and Ben at the Jedi training? I liked the direct homage to Kurosawa's Rashomon that those scenes played. Nice moment to have that in a Star Wars movie of all things.
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It raises an interesting question though, why did they make the decision to move away from the Jedi/Sith lore?
I get why they moved away from a Skywalker story. Mark Hamill can not carry another trilogy. They needed to move away from the old stars and towards new heroes.
But it definitely feels like a conscious decision was made to scrub away a lot of the lore surrounding Jedi as a religion. I find this a bit odd because the religion aspect was never a focus of the original trilogy. I don’t think it was ever even called a religion. Why focus on that now? Was Disney worried audiences, international audiences specifically, wouldn’t react well to that? Was it Rian Johnson’s decision?
Thematically it was one of the few things I didn’t like, I love the Jedi/Sith dichotomy and I never even associated Jedi or Sith as religious fundamentalists.
All that being said, the hardcore fan base is a very small segment of the movie going audience and for better or for worse Disney has tried to move the film into a realm much more palatable for mainstream and international audiences.
Doesn't Tarkin call it an old religion right before Vader chokes him
I expect a Chewbacca death in episode 9 sadly, R2 and 3PO will likely just die off at the end of the trilogy as they don't mean much anymore. Sad to know that this movie essentially passed the torch on, didn't feel like the old Star Wars
The more I think about it, the more I like the movie. When I left the movie I loved it. Then I read about all the negative reaction and I started having doubts about the movie and was getting sour on the movie. But as I think about the negative comments, and think about how I feel about each scene, I realize that I'm not on board with all the negativity. I really enjoyed this movie an don't agree with many of the criticisms.
There are valid criticisms, but I feel that there are many criticisms that are reaching. In the grand scheme of things, there are parts that I felt could have been improved upon but they certainly aren't taking away from my enjoyment of the movie. I don't intend to get into a big debate about whose internet dick is bigger when it comes to this movie. I enjoyed The Last Jedi. I'm happy with my own opinion and I don't care if other people liked or hated the movie. I loved it and I can't wait to see it again!
I'm happy for you and others who enjoyed the movie.
My hate for it grows daily like the dark side; I'm pretty much full blown sith at this point. Consumed by my hatred.
As you've stated, also not trying to argue on convince anyone either. To each their own I guess, but amazing how polarizing this movie is.
It'd be pretty hard to make something that "feels" like the original Star Wars. Thematically, Force Awakens was a carbon copy of A New Hope in many ways, yet still didn't have the same feel. I'd contend that a lot of that can be attributed to nostalgia and the mere fact that the Original Trilogy has existed as a cultural phenomenon for so long. Most people experience Star Wars for the first time as children, and those are experiences that stay with someone and are hard to replicate. I love the originals but I also enjoyed Force Awakens, Rogue One, and Last Jedi, even though the vibe isn't totally the same (nor do I think they should be), but it brings me joy to read the posts in here about people's kids loving the film. The cycle begins anew.
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I'm not sure he actually succeeded in creating new lore. I'm scratching my head thinking of anything important I need to see answered in Episode 9.
I mentioned this point in my original post in this thread. This movie wraps up a bit too neatly. Unlike Empire there's no plot lines leading into the next movie. We aren't left wondering.
Maybe creating new lore was the wrong way to put it. I'm really glad non of these fan culture tropes were indulged in this movie. Who cares who Rey's parents are, who Snoke is. JJ didn't care beyond his lizard brain impulsive need to substitute "mystery" for good storytelling.
Snoke was a stand in bad guy that was needed for Kylo to reach his arc. That's all he was. All this bleating about him being the cloned remains of Darth Idontgiveacrap was not important to this story. Just as the Emperor's backstory in the trilogy wasn't necessary.
I mentioned this point in my original post in this thread. This movie wraps up a bit too neatly. Unlike Empire there's no plot lines leading into the next movie. We aren't left wondering.
Maybe creating new lore was the wrong way to put it. I'm really glad non of these fan culture tropes were indulged in this movie. Who cares who Rey's parents are, who Snoke is. JJ didn't care beyond his lizard brain impulsive need to substitute "mystery" for good storytelling.
Snoke was a stand in bad guy that was needed for Kylo to reach his arc. That's all he was. All this bleating about him being the cloned remains of Darth Idontgiveacrap was not important to this story. Just as the Emperor's backstory in the trilogy wasn't necessary.
Disagree on this point. The emperor's back story wasn't important because at that point, there was no back story, those were the first movies. He also took up a role in all 3 movies vs the 1.5 that Snoke was around.
By this point Star Wars has been around for decades with loads of content and additional films at our disposal. Unless this is your first Star Wars movie I'm not sure how you wouldn't be wondering about his identity, given the existing lore.
As far as Rey's parents -- there's literally nothing else interesting about the character other than that bit of mystery. No dilemma, no adversity, nothing. So they gave up on something that might have given insight into the character and her motivations, and even her god like abilities.
I get that you dislike JJ Abrams setup of the trilogy -- but since this is a trilogy, I'm not sure how Rian Johnson could go and ignore virtually everything that was built up in that film and flip the script so wildly in the follow up. Its disjointed and doesn't make sense.
Like I said, if they had the guts to reset the Star Wars universe completely, episode 7 was the time to do it. Now they have this sort of half in, half out trilogy going on.
__________________
A few weeks after crashing head-first into the boards (denting his helmet and being unable to move for a little while) following a hit from behind by Bob Errey, the Calgary Flames player explains:
"I was like Christ, lying on my back, with my arms outstretched, crucified"
-- Frank Musil - Early January 1994
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Disagree on this point. The emperor's back story wasn't important because at that point, there was no back story, those were the first movies. He also took up a role in all 3 movies vs the 1.5 that Snoke was around.
By this point Star Wars has been around for decades with loads of content and additional films at our disposal. Unless this is your first Star Wars movie I'm not sure how you wouldn't be wondering about his identity, given the existing lore.
As far as Rey's parents -- there's literally nothing else interesting about the character other than that bit of mystery. No dilemma, no adversity, nothing. So they gave up on something that might have given insight into the character and her motivations, and even her god like abilities.
I get that you dislike JJ Abrams setup of the trilogy -- but since this is a trilogy, I'm not sure how Rian Johnson could go and ignore virtually everything that was built up in that film and flip the script so wildly in the follow up. Its disjointed and doesn't make sense.
Like I said, if they had the guts to reset the Star Wars universe completely, episode 7 was the time to do it. Now they have this sort of half in, half out trilogy going on.
The emperor wasn’t in IV and only as a hologram in a single scene in empire.
I’d be willing to bet he had about the same amount of screen time as Snoke in their respective trilogies.
I’m not new to Star Wars and I never really wondered about snoke’s identity at all. Big assumption that any Star Wars fan would.
As for Rey, I couldn’t disagree more that the only thing interesting about her is her parents identities. Their identities are also not interesting to me. Her longing for guidance, parental figures and her relationship with Kylo does interest me though. I see all kinds of dilemma and adversity for her. She’s also lost the only two father figures she’s ever had in back to back movies so I see more adversity for her upcoming.
