The development of the emperor in the prequels was great, seeing him go from shifty puppetmaster to full sith was probably one of the best parts of those three movies. That said I never craved a back story after watching 4,5,6.
I thought they missed opportunity with Snoke. I don't think it is worth going back and telling that story in Ep9 and I don't expect it. My only disappointment in lack of back story or maybe just more story is that I liked the character, and it would have been nice to see a bit more of him. I have faith that the over arcing storyline will pan out in 9 so I can live with it. The throne room scenes were great and brought us back to the standoff in ROTJ.
trading 5 minutes of the casino for 5 more of snoke would have been worth it, imo.
There is a ton of potential for 9.
I wonder if Snoke is on the table for one of the standalone movies down the road. Maybe not a movie just on him but on the rise of the First Order.
There was a thread on reddit discussing that a lot of people's complaints with TLJ stem from TFA.
I'm okay with Rey's parents being nobodies. But it seems like they devoted so much time in TFA to her lineage, flashbacks, Maz Kanata. When Kylo is told that BB8 is on Jakku with a girl, he responds with "What girl?" like there's a girl they know about or have an idea about that could be a threat.
I still have a problem with the pacing and unnecessary characters, but I think this disappointment has really blinded me to any real positives in TLJ.
I am really jealous of those who enjoyed this movie. I wish I could feel like the first time I saw this teaser.
Most of the criticism should be leveled at JJ Abrams.
I was reading that there was no narrative plan set for Rey's lineage or Snoke. JJ simply can't help himself from teasing mysteries. It's the cheap heat of a TV producer that's creatively bankrupt.
Rian Johnson gets in there and asks, ok so what's the deal with Rey? And apparently Disney/JJ replied saying, we don't know.
So yeah, it's freaking easy and lame to set up mysteries, it's difficult to tell a self contained tale that incorporates all the plot elements. (Just ask GRRM)
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.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Tinordi For This Useful Post:
The hacker character. First, I liked that there was a human hacker character and not just some robot. Second, I liked that he was indifferent to the causes of the rebellion and first order. not everyone in a universe has to pick sides.
The other thing I liked was that the movie betrayed the expectations of fans. rather than satisfying the obvious desires for Leah to die, or the code breaking plan to work, or Luke training Rae. I love that all that was teased and different interesting choices were made. All this was emphasized by Kylo screaming let the past die at the audience a few times.
Things I disliked:
A few characters, such as Rose. Still, I understand that this movie is for other people as well, including children. I fully expected it to be a movie with cheesy nostalgia, and cheap pops for the children.
Mostly what I disliked, about this movie, and Disney movies in general, is the lack of character depth for villains. Snoke and his guards, and Captian Phasma appear to be throw away characters. I am a firm believer that a movie is only as compelling as its villain. This is especially true when it is a good vs evil plot. Kylo is the exception, I think that he has been wonderfully constructed, and I am a particularly a fan of his whiny ways. It makes him very dislike able.
While I don’t agree with everything they did with Luke, I really disagree with his assessment of Luke.
Having Luke go into exile based on the story they used with Kylo was not unreasonable. Nor was their portrayal of Luke being suspicious of Kylo given what happened with Luke’s father.
I think maybe he’s a little bitter that he wasn’t given star billing and a main role as the hero. I can understand how Lucas’ original vision of having all nine parts be about the Skywalkers as a bit of a letdown for Mark when Disney decided to go a different direction for these three sequels.
Unlike Ford, who wanted to have as little involvement as possible, I totally expect Hamill probably wanted to be the main character again.
TLJ box office has been declining much faster than TFA. Of course this ignores the fact that TLJ opened on the second Friday prior to Xmas and TFA opened on the Friday immediately preceding Xmas, which naturally will affect audiences due to when people start holidays and when kids get out of school and it completely ignores the fact that TLJ is trending at an almost identical rate to Rogue one which similarly opened on the second to last Friday before Xmas.
The article has a bunch of over the top doom and gloom for a move that’s gonna make a billion dollars but that’s Forbes and their independent contributors who get paid by the click.
Its not a good StarWars movie unless it pisses people off.
I thought that the story captured by imagination.
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.
While I don’t agree with everything they did with Luke, I really disagree with his assessment of Luke.
Having Luke go into exile based on the story they used with Kylo was not unreasonable. Nor was their portrayal of Luke being suspicious of Kylo given what happened with Luke’s father.
I think maybe he’s a little bitter that he wasn’t given star billing and a main role as the hero. I can understand how Lucas’ original vision of having all nine parts be about the Skywalkers as a bit of a letdown for Mark when Disney decided to go a different direction for these three sequels.
Unlike Ford, who wanted to have as little involvement as possible, I totally expect Hamill probably wanted to be the main character again.
I think that was all very unreasonable for George Lucas's Luke.
He left his training because of a feeling that his friends were in danger, against all warnings from Yoda and Obi-won. He put all of his friends at risk to save Han from Jabba. He let himself be taken and stood face to face with the most evil man in the universe just on the hope that he could persuade his father to return to the light side, even knowing all the evil he had committed. Dude was partially responsible for blowing up planets and killing an untold number of Admirals and yet Luke still wouldn't kill him.
I had a very hard time believing that Luke would draw a lightsaber on a sleeping Ben, his nephew, even with the dark side growing in him. Luke was a stereotype of an internal optimist, who was ultimately able to save his fathers soul from the dark side. For me it was a huge jump to make him willing to even consider striking down a sleeping blood relative who hadn't actually turned to the dark side yet.
Sorry Leia, I've come here to face him but I can't save him. Yeah I saved Dad who has been on the Dark Side for 20 years, but I'm not even going to try with your kid. Heck it's not even worth my time to leave my island to help you.
I agree with Hamill, it worked for the story, it was reasonable in the context, but it wasn't the Luke Skywalker from the original Trilogy.
__________________
@PR_NHL
The @NHLFlames are the first team to feature four players each with 50+ points within their first 45 games of a season since the Penguins in 1995-96 (Ron Francis, Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Tomas Sandstrom).
Fuzz - "He didn't speak to the media before the election, either."
The Following 6 Users Say Thank You to belsarius For This Useful Post:
But should it be the same Luke from the original trilogy? At least 10-20 years had passed from end of the trilogy to the training of Kylo. Should we have expected the same Luke? Doesn’t it make sense that he’d changed? And wouldn’t it make sense that losing his star pupil and his nephew changed him?
And maybe he did try to save Kylo after he was turned and before he went into hiding. We don’t know for certain that the minute his temple burned down he hopped in his xwing flew away and was never seen again. Maybe he only went into hiding after Han and Leia started hating him for screwing up with their kid and after several failed attempts to win kylo back.
As for pulling his lightsaber on Kylo, that’s a good point and it is out of character for original trilogy Luke but it is worth noting Luke even said it was a moment of weakness and he thought better of it. As we saw in the third, and presumably most accurate flashback, he never actually was going to kill him. Also, in the now copyright deleted clip of Mark Hamill he’s mostly complaining about Luke going into hiding not about considering murdering his nephew.
And I hate to be cynical but is it any wonder why he’s mostly complaining about the exile part? Could it be that going into exile prevented him from being the main protagonist while killing his nephew was just a flashback? I don’t want to trash mark Hamill here, it is pure speculation, but I can’t help but feel there’s a direct correlation to his complaint and his role in the films, not just Luke’s characterization.
Last edited by Cecil Terwilliger; 12-22-2017 at 01:35 PM.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Cecil Terwilliger For This Useful Post:
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?
"I find your lack of faith disturbing," one of the iconic lines, comes in response to "Your sad devotion to that ancient religion..."
And I mean Rogue One definitely had a huge religious motif, so I think you can just chalk it up to this story teller and not some conscious overlooming decision from the higher ups.
Last edited by Oling_Roachinen; 12-22-2017 at 01:38 PM.
The Following User Says Thank You to Oling_Roachinen For This Useful Post:
But should it be the same Luke from the original trilogy? At least 10-20 years had passed from end of the trilogy to the training of Kylo. Should we have expected the same Luke? Doesn’t it make sense that he’d changed? And wouldn’t it make sense that losing his star pupil and his nephew changed him?
And maybe he did try to save Kylo after he was turned and before he went into hiding. We don’t know for certain that the minute his temple burned down he hopped in his xwing flew away and was never seen again. Maybe he only went into hiding after Han and Leia started hating him for screwing up with their kid and after several failed attempts to win kylo back.
And I think this is where they really missed an opportunity for story-telling and instead used it on the visual affects of the casino.
I would have loved to see how Ben turned dark, what were his motivations, how did Snoke do it? They didn't need to go in depth like Vader's fall, but a parallel story of Ben's training mirrored with Rey's and how each one reacted differently. Use Snoke to show the turn, even with his death in the movie it would have added a lot to the depth of Snoke without having to go into details about him.
I can see Luke's reaction to failure and losing his nephew to the Dark Side to be severe enough to have him go into exile. But to me, the original Luke having Ben turn on him and stand with Snoke would have been a much more realistic devastating event than having Luke think about striking him down because of some dark thoughts. It just didn't seem to me to fit in with Luke. It felt a lot more like something thrown out just to fit in why Luke was in exile but wouldn't take more than a couple mins of screentime.
__________________
@PR_NHL
The @NHLFlames are the first team to feature four players each with 50+ points within their first 45 games of a season since the Penguins in 1995-96 (Ron Francis, Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Tomas Sandstrom).
Fuzz - "He didn't speak to the media before the election, either."
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to belsarius For This Useful Post:
