I thought it was bad enough when TLJ critics were put into the racist/sexist/entitled/nerd rage/man-baby buckets. but now we're not even humans, we're just automatons of a totalitarian foreign regime.
as low as my opinion of TLJ is, I think the pushback by Disney and media outlets is where the majority of the damage has been done. the worst that George did after prequel criticism was brush his own movies off as children's matinee flicks. if he came out and said that all the haters were frothing alt-right incels, and major media outlets repeated that theme, I think our memories of the prequel trilogy would be quite different.
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This was posted on r/science on reddit and got plastered in the comments. Essentially:
- The author only considered Twitter in his study.
- The author only considered tweets that @'d the director directly.
- The pool of tweets was tiny.
- The author then subjectively classifies the person making the tweet as a troll either by their username (a common first + surname followed by numbers) or whether or not they have tweeted "conservative talking points" in the past. Essentially you can be a Russian Bot if your name is Jane Doe and happen to follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter.
When even reddit rejects it, you know it's bad.
Beyond that, it doesn't even make sense why Russia would want to sabotage Star Wars. It makes about as much sense as Russian trolls supporting pipeline development in Canada (yes, CBC made an article about this).
Disney has taken a really dumb stance to dehumanize their critics. I hated TLJ, but the vilification of their fans is why I refuse to pay to see Solo. You can read Rian Johnson's twitter at any time to see how much he hates Star Wars fans.
Last edited by Ashasx; 10-09-2018 at 03:15 PM.
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I enjoyed TLJ allot; first and foremost I like how on the surface the followed the model of TFA by mirroring events from original movies so closely, only to subvert all expectations and leave us sitting in a different place than we have been before. I think if a movie can't create something new like that, they probably don't have a story worth telling.
By comparison; I liked TFA, but have settled on the critique of it feeling a little to much like fan fiction with incredible production value. I see the value of having done that, it was almost a much needed apology for the prequels, but it was still a story with very little to say that hasn't been said before.
all of that said, I can respect the opinions of those who did not like the movie. But those who wish to call it a bad movie or be critical of the production value and acting are just trolling.
I enjoyed TLJ allot; first and foremost I like how on the surface the followed the model of TFA by mirroring events from original movies so closely, only to subvert all expectations and leave us sitting in a different place than we have been before. I think if a movie can't create something new like that, they probably don't have a story worth telling.
By comparison; I liked TFA, but have settled on the critique of it feeling a little to much like fan fiction with incredible production value. I see the value of having done that, it was almost a much needed apology for the prequels, but it was still a story with very little to say that hasn't been said before.
all of that said, I can respect the opinions of those who did not like the movie. But those who wish to call it a bad movie or be critical of the production value and acting are just trolling.
Whether a movie is bad or good is subjective.
I found TLJ to be very poorly written. The plot was illogical and didn't make sense. Like a bad Zach Snyder full, the movie was based around making cool looking scenes.
I found Johnson's attempt to "subvert" expectations, just plain unclever. It came across as amateurish, like a joke that doesn't land. Johnson was literally making up new rules as he went along.
There was little consistency with previous films. Since when was fuel a thing? Why would the resistance have so little of it? Since when do all the ships travel at the same speed? Johnson was also making up new force powers as he went along. It's as though he only had a very superficial knowledge of the previous films and hadn't seen them in twenty years.
The acting was all over the place. With various characters have markedly different tones. Mark Hamill Bernicio del Toro, and Rose were straight up bad. The juxtaposition between the comedy and the extreme moodiness of actors like Adam Driver was very jarring. It was as though they were working on different movies. That's actually how a lot of the movie felt, as it seemed to jump around a lot and many scenes were unnecessary to the plot.
The effects were on the whole, quite good. Too many scenes were built around these effects though. For example, in the throne room, they have a weird ballet dance fight, instead of a straight up fight. It has a couple of cool looking moments, but is cringy on the whole.
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TLJ is the ‘Into Darkness’ of Star Wars. It’s fairly dumb and poorly written, but it has great special effects and is entertaining if you don’t think about it too much. You just hear about it more because Star Wars fans are so much crazier than Trekkies, and aren’t used to the wild film to film quality fluctuation like we are :P
Disney has taken a really dumb stance to dehumanize their critics. I hated TLJ, but the vilification of their fans is why I refuse to pay to see Solo. You can read Rian Johnson's twitter at any time to see how much he hates Star Wars fans.
I don't know what you gain by boycotting other Star Wars movies especially if you are a fan of the series. I feel Solo was a victim of circumstance where it was released so close to TLJ that a lot of fans still had a bad taste in their mouths and like you either decided to boycott or simply assumed it would be another bad movie. IMO it's a good not great movie but it's pretty entertaining and one of the better Star Wars moves (not exactly a high bar) released since the original trilogy and probably will go down as the most underrated Star Wars movie if there is ever such a thing.
I don't know what you gain by boycotting other Star Wars movies especially if you are a fan of the series. I feel Solo was a victim of circumstance where it was released so close to TLJ that a lot of fans still had a bad taste in their mouths and like you either decided to boycott or simply assumed it would be another bad movie. IMO it's a good not great movie but it's pretty entertaining and one of the better Star Wars moves (not exactly a high bar) released since the original trilogy and probably will go down as the most underrated Star Wars movie if there is ever such a thing.
Boycotting sends a message that you are unhappy with the direction of the series, and hopefully elicits a change. Quite frankly, Disney has gotten the message and revamped their plans for the entire franchise.
I didn't see Solo in the theatre. This want a conscious boycott, but the quality of TLJ definitely had something to do with this. As soon as I saw the marketing for Solo, with all the "jokes" and cgi, I knew I was out. It reminded me of TLJ, and I didn't want to waste my time and money on it.
Now that I've seen Solo, I can say it wasn't nearly as bad as TLJ. I also didn't miss out on anything. Solo was very bleh... From the train scene on, I lost interest. It felt like actors visiting a Star Wars theme park at times, as opposed to real characters in a real world. Every cgi scene was dragged and bloated. The rest was just very vanilla.
There was potential there. I really liked the early depictions of Han's home world. Although if Han was so shaped by a lost love, surely he would have mentioned that at some point in the four other movies he was in....
TLJ is the ‘Into Darkness’ of Star Wars. It’s fairly dumb and poorly written, but it has great special effects and is entertaining if you don’t think about it too much. You just hear about it more because Star Wars fans are so much crazier than Trekkies, and aren’t used to the wild film to film quality fluctuation like we are :P
Solo is more like Into Darkness. TLJ would be like Generations.... If they gave Diana Troy the power to fly through space and the Borg threat was ended by sending a single ship with hyperdrive through a Borg cube.
That said, I thought it was pretty good, which is sort of damning by faint praise. But if that was the standard for Disney Star Wars movies generally, and they never revisit the lows of TLJ, I'll be perfectly happy to keep watching them.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
TLJ is the ‘Into Darkness’ of Star Wars. It’s fairly dumb and poorly written, but it has great special effects and is entertaining if you don’t think about it too much. You just hear about it more because Star Wars fans are so much crazier than Trekkies, and aren’t used to the wild film to film quality fluctuation like we are :P
Into Dumbness, like the other 2 movies, is standalone so it's easy to brush off as one of the alternating good/bad Trek films. if it were really like TLJ, then they would have started the JJ-verse with the intention of doing the Khan storyline as a trilogy. but then in the 2nd movie Khan gets blown out a shuttle bay after accidentally tripping over a power cord, Kirk stumbles around drunk and incompetent and tells knock knock jokes to the Klingons over subspace, and Spock discovers he has the power to do interstellar transport by concentrating on the mathematical formula hard enough.
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There was potential there. I really liked the early depictions of Han's home world. Although if Han was so shaped by a lost love, surely he would have mentioned that at some point in the four other movies he was in....
That would not be consistent with his character. Han is not the type of guy to talk about his feelings and regale his new friends with stories of a lost love who hurt him.
Maybe Han did talk about it with Leia in private. Just because it wasn't in the film doesn't mean it didn't conceivably occur off camera. The only time it would make sense would be after the end of ROTJ. Prior to that I can't see him opening up about anything like that.
I actually think 3/4 of the Disney era Star Wars were pretty good. TFA, Rogue One and Solo were at the very least decent, and enjoyable to watch. Not masterpieces, but good enough, and I'm okay with that.
The problem with TLJ is that as part of the mainline saga and the middle of a trilogy, it was completely the wrong place to try to be clever and subvert expectations. If you are going to do that you better execute and make sure the new direction leaves the viewers excited, but it failed hard on that. They gutted key character and story development in the process, and as Blankall describes above, became inconsistent with what people know of the overall universe. The clever subversion only served to derail the saga and trilogy in an illogical way.
It also felt like it was deliberately antithetical to what people loved about the series. Thus the backlash. And when they double down and try to insult fans for not liking it, its only going to make the backlash worse.
__________________
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
Alright so I just recently re watched the prequels, and as of now I have seen every Star Wars film within the last 3 months at least.. having re watched TFA the longest ago. My new standings are very similar to my old ones with 3 tiers, where I feel the quality of story drops off significantly between tiers:
ANH
ESB
ROTJ
R1
TFA
TCW
Rebels
RoTS
Solo
TLJ
AoTC
TPM
ANH is still the best of them all. It was lightning in a bottle, which was able to be captured again in ESB and to a lesser extent with RoTJ. ROTJ will bump ahead of R1, RoTS still stays above Solo, the Order 66 part is still a very iconic movie, and despite the fact the duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan is over CGIed with a lot of stupid filler, it is still also to iconic not to tug on the fan strings.
TPM still remains an absolute mess. The only redeeming parts are Palpatine and the Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan fights with Maul. Jar Jar, young Anakin.. ugh.
AOTC is slightly better as I enjoyed the Jango/Obi-Wan duel, and there was actually some story building with pay off as we watch Palpatine manipulate from the background and Anakin struggle with his rage.
And as much of a mess as TLJ was compared to the others, it's still better than those pieces of crap, and it has vintage Yoda which was great. At least it is a visually pleasing movie if nothing else. The CGI is just horrible, horrible in TPM, slightly better in AoTC.
__________________ "In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight / Let those who worship evil's might / Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"
Last edited by GreenLantern; 10-10-2018 at 12:52 PM.
I think the Empire Strikes back is on a totally different level than any other Star Wars movie as it's up there with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Aliens as perfect cinema entertainment.
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I think the Empire Strikes back is on a totally different level than any other Star Wars movie as it's up there with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Aliens as perfect cinema entertainment.
I would agree that ESB and ANH could be interchangeable, like I said both were lightning in a bottle in terms of Cinema. I don't think ESB was BETTER than ANH though. ANH goes first on my list as it has the most Alec Guinness in it.
Battle of Hoth was so well done, compared to what we saw with a 'walker' battle in TLJ.. ugh.
__________________ "In brightest day, in blackest night / No evil shall escape my sight / Let those who worship evil's might / Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"
TLJ is the ‘Into Darkness’ of Star Wars. It’s fairly dumb and poorly written, but it has great special effects and is entertaining if you don’t think about it too much. You just hear about it more because Star Wars fans are so much crazier than Trekkies, and aren’t used to the wild film to film quality fluctuation like we are :P
I like to think of TLJ as the Iron Man 3 of Star Wars. Entertaining but dumb with your expectations being subverted everywhere and not really meshing with previous films. You go in expecting a darker final chapter where Iron Man takes on his arch nemesis and instead you get a light hearted movie that starts off with a cheesy pop song, has very little Iron Man, and the villain is generic.
I recall some backlash against Marvel/Disney but believe fans were more forgiving still coming down from the high of Avengers. It is interesting to note though the following MCU films seem to have ignored all the events of Iron Man 3.
__________________
The masses of humanity have always had to surf.
Its funny because as much as ANH blew me away as a small child, that first scene with the Star Destroyer screaming over head chasing the Blockade runner. Empire had so many awesome scenes, however this scene below was just so much better then anything else in all the movies.
Edit as a side note, Captain Needa had a tiny role as competant Imperial Officer murdered by Vader in a fit of rage, however he was one of the only OT officers that appeared in the Revenge of the Sith book as a ship commander that fought at Coruscant and stood toe to toe with Grievous during a battle between their ships.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Last edited by CaptainCrunch; 10-10-2018 at 04:53 PM.
I didn't need a Russian bot or hacker to tell me TLJ sucked. I went in with a completely open mind, and I left borderline disgusted. There are just so many things wrong with it, and it's been hashed out a billion times.
I saw Solo and I liked it. Spin offs and origin stories have the creative license to do different things and I thought it was good. Not New Hope, Empire, TFA or Rogue one good, but lightyears ahead of TLJ. I would have no problem with a Solo sequel with the same cast.
Did anyone notice Plo Koon at the end, or was I imagining?
