this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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i was shocked to go online and see mountains of hate for The Last Jedi. i thought it was amazing
I never got that either. It's clearly the best of the three from the new trilogy. I mean, low bar, but still
why are there suddenly cloaking devices in star wars
why don't the imperials hyperjump in front of the fleeing rebels?
why can several characters leave a chase in progress visit some planet and come back to the chase still in progress?
the holdo maneuver breaks several in-universe rules about how hyperdrive works.
there's plenty of problems with the film without being a frothing misogynist. It's better than rise of skywalker but i'd rather watch the holiday special.
To add to the list of non-chud reasons to dislike it, the plot is driven entirely by characters doing the dumbest thing possible at every turn on all sides for little to no reason.
Someone once pointed out the First Order could have ended the movie in the first ten minutes by having their dreadnaught just shoot the Resistance's capital ship instead of the planetary (read: entirely stationary) base first, or by having the dreadnaught's fighter screen/escort ships deployed instead of just chilling and doing nothing the entire fight.
The Resistance should have had all their ships run away in different directions. Sure one of them will get chased down and blown away, but 95% escaping would have been a much better result than what they got. My headcanon is that if Leia hadn't been unconscious that's exactly what she would have done, and Holdo was at a "Civil War General" level of incompetence.
But the Rey/Luke/Kylo stuff was great. Rian Johnson actually figured out something to do with the Jedi that hadn't been done before, and killing off the bad Emperor knockoff was 100% the right call. Every character in that plot was actively making decisions that revealed their character rather than being propelled along by plot contrivance, it was great.
There's also a ton of potential in the B plot, all you have to do it rewrite it a bit. Maybe they find out that the dreadnought isn't tracking them with a new piece of technology after all, and since they can't find a tracking device they suspect there's a spy. Maybe the reason they go to the rich people planet isn't to find some macguffin guy, but to find the people funding the FO and shoot them. The Jedi plot ends with Rey deciding not to burn the Jedi's teachings - you could dramatically pair that with Finn deciding to blow up the arms dealers profiting off of endless galactic war.
the only good thing i think is killing snoke like that. subverting expectations just to subvert them isn't good, just like tropes aren't automatically bad but the snoke death added stakes to the events.
Luke's character "development" happening entirely off-screen (and throwing out better character development from decades of books) makes the flashback scene completely unbelievable. kylo is no jacen
Gosh, you remember more about that movie than I do; I spent a lot of the time in that theater waiting for the plot to develop. Or, you know, character interactions to change. I felt like the movie should have been cut in half. But rather than hate on Rey being a main character, I'll just get on with my life tyvm.
i didn't mention her at all? There are probably problems with Rey but i don't know what they are because everything about the story is so nonsensical. She's a soft reboot of luke, i guess, the same way the movies were soft reboot rather than a logical progression of the pretend material conditions at the end of RoTJ. not to mention anything resembling 30 years of books exploring post-endor events.
Oh, I wasn't referring to your problems with TLJ, I was referring to people who make hating TLJ their whole personality--you know, the ones you can allow to talk for about a minute and three different bigotry colors will shine bright. There's "TLJ was bad," then there's these guys, who usually can't stop talking about Rey.
oh yeah for sure
I don't really care about the honor of Rian Johnson, but I don't think your points are correct.
Cloaking devices were introduced in Episode I
The tracking device makes hyperspace jumping a game of hopscotch. There's not really a point.
Yeah, this one is kinda dumb, but it'd be possible for a small ship to escape unnoticed and get out of range in order to jump to lightspeed.
Those rules are established in the books/supplemental materials, which aren't canon to the film series. The film-makers have no obligation to respect them. Episode 7 also breaks/rewrites the hyperspace rules.
None of the books are canon. It makes sense that people change over long time skips, and they did outline the rationale for his mindset changes in the flashback.
no they were introduced in a TIE Fighter expansion, and if you're going to say there was a romulan-ass cloaking device in phantom menace i'm gonna need a wookieepedia link beacause i do not remember that shit
instead of a dumbass chase that makes no sense you can microjump some of the ships in front of the rebels, or call in more ships from somewhere else if there's time for the fucking b-plot.
throwing out the canon was the first bad decision jj and the other execs made, but even without knowing or caring about anything but the movies... all the fucky things disney movies did with hyperjumps means things like the falcon's escape from mos eisley didn't need to happen and the blockade of naboo couldn't have worked because the "can't go to hyperspace in a gravity well" was thrown out. the big fights against the death stars (hell the death stars themselves) were totally pointless because you could just destroy anything big and slow moving by hyper-ramming it, etc. indefensible on both matters.
it's hack writing to have a change like that happen entirely off-screen, and the flashback is just luke about to murder an innocent person who hasn't done anything wrong yet because of a vision. how the fuck does luke get to that point in 20 years of whatever happened after the battle of endor where it's heavily implied that the rebels were going to win the war? it's totally unearned. (Also the state of galactic politics being completely unchanged from the beginning of a new hope is stupid and terrible but that's not rian's fault.)
You should see a doctor immediately - something is obviously wrong with you.
Jk, enjoy whatever you want, I am not the gatekeeper of your enjoyment but understand you are definitely wrong in this one :)
i disagree. everybody is wrong except me. about all things i am opinionated on
I think the hate Last Jedi receives is overblown BUT it was trash. I was semi hopeful after TFA (in hindsight it set the groundwork for a lot of the bad parts) and forgave it some of its flaws due to being the forst movie in a while and having to restart the franchise when it came to theaters but I walked out of TLJ and wanted my time back.
I think there is a lot of hate for Rey that's actual misogyny hidden behind the legitimate criticism. But the characters writing doesn't help that situation. I don't think any of the other characters are written much better so the fact Rey ends up getting most of the hate boils down to her being a woman and her being the main character (I cannot even guess which of these two weighs more into that equation, which is a shame. Her being female really shouldn't factor into this). The entire movie just felt very silly to me. It makes for good eye candy but if you think deeper about anything that could be construed as a message in that movie it just falls apart imo.
Tl;dr: I don't think it should come as a shock that the movoe got hate, it was pretty bad all things considered, but the amount sure was shocking
You monster!
Funny it was the opposite for me.
Every five minutes I had to stop myself from going "What the fuck?!" Out loud in the theaters.
Like the story is nonsensical, characters go full stupid in every possible scene, there are multiple massive issues with time and character location, the plot breaks the previously established rules of the universe, character development on old and new characters is just dumped for plot convenience, Rey becomes even more of a Mary Sue than she already was. I could go on, it's just a massive shit on the previous films.
Watching it feels like you let a freshman film student direct a plot that was written by a committee of toddlers. I don't see how it's a good movie let alone a good entry into the Star wars franchise.
"Amazing" is too strong imo, but it was way better than the other two in it's trilogy
It was the best of its trilogy and most criticism is complete nonsense, but it still wasn't a great movie. An anti-war deconstruction of Star Wars got made into an actual Star Wars. And that was probably fantastic at one point, but the edit we got was soured by obvious corporate meddling - like the 'whoops, nevermind' ending.
Three simple things would've saved it.
One, end the Rey / Kylo story immediately after their fight together. 'Join me.' Tense silence. No more Rey until the next movie.
Two, have some shellshocked nobody find the crystal fox things and save the good guys. She doesn't need lines. She doesn't need a name. The Force is in all living things. Anyone can be a hero.
Three, don't hand the finale back to JJ fucking Abrams.
rise of skywalker fucked up everything. they tried to appease the fans and it failed big time
It's a plot faucet. From an old discussion elsewhere:
I heavily disagree, that movie disrespected the entire cast if you ask me. There was not a single story thread in TLJ that I found to be even slightly well thought out. Plenty of good ideas but the executions were horribly botched.
I cannot say anything abput Rise of Skywalker since I haven't watched it but I don't think tjat matters for the following. Imo TLJ was not the best movie out of the three, if we look at them in isolation, I could maybe see that being the case. But it isn't a movie in isolation. It's a sequel to a movie that already ate up most of the goodwill around. At least personally I was willing to cut TFA a lot of slack since it was the first movie in a good while for the Star Wars Universe. I was not willing to do so for TLJ sonce it was the second movie and they really should have had some idea of what the plan was by then. TFA probably screws over the trilogy harder than TLJ with its plot but TLJ doesn't get the "Has to restart movie franchise" card that TFA got.
Aforementioned complete nonsense. You're blaming the middle movie for what the other movies did.
No not really, TLJ on its own sucks. TFA also sucks. Probably even moreso. But when TFA came out it had an advantage that counterweighed a lot of the issues. TLJ did not have that luxury. I think we think of this differently. I have not watched the movies again after their cinematic release so I'm rating them as I experienced them then. If I rewatched these movies now I might agree with you since TFA does not have any "new movie after ages" hype bonus clouding my mind.
The only thing I'm blaming on TLJ is in hindsight making TFA even worse since its failure turned the first movie into a premonition instead of a weak start.
Rian provided answers for JJ's mystery-box bullshit. They weren't JJ's answers, but as the third movie proved, JJ's answers sucked. Spreading that garbage thinner would not improve the smell.
One answer in particular was fucking incredible writing: Rey's parents were nobodies. Every aspect of the movie is telling the audience, nobody owes you a destiny, go do cool stuff. Anyone can be a hero. Hey kids, remember how Luke used to be some dirt farmer who saved the universe? Like an identifiable protagonist, and not the secret heir of a prophesied royal messiah? Here you go. Four more of those. Some backwater survivor who can kick ass with a broom handle and three flavors of burned-out space pilot.
JJ going 'nuh uh!' wasn't necessary, clever, or excusable. He dragged the franchise back, kicking and screaming, to being 100.0% about one family of aristocratic space wizards. Slapped that shit right in the title. And yet - people regurgitate that Rian tried to undo everything. You closed out the comment by describing how JJ did that, and at no point do those neurons talk to one another.
Messing up the Sequels was a team effort. JJ's Setup was shit but Rian's own writing wasn't any better. Nothing in JJ's Setup requires a Bullshit Holdo maneuver, or turning Luke into a character from an alternate Universe. Yes the bag of Mysteries Rian was handed was full of steaming shit but that doesn't really matter because in the end he decided to add some shit of his own before handing it back to JJ. You claim I say Rian fucked up the Trilogie, he didn't. He only fucked up 1/3 of it. TLJ however did in retrospect change my view on TFA because, as we agree, JJ's Mystery boxes turned out to be shit. I don't claim that Rian fucked that up, he simply tore off the bandaid with his own bad movie. The blame for TFA (and Rise of ~~Skywalker~~Palpatine) lays solely with JJ.
As I said in another comment chain: TLJ was bad, but the hate it gets is overblown.
That math doesn't math. He was directly responsible for 2/3s of it, and the other third he plowed over.
Rian's script was a genuinely excellent anarchist critique of space opera. Whether or not that belongs in a numbered Star Wars movie is debatable. But the real disconnect with the audience is the edit. The film we got is not excellent. The film we got is not exactly good. And yet - all popular criticism is this same irrelevant fluff.
Luke being a hermit was JJ's fault. It was immutable, when Rian began. Rian's explanation was fine. Jesus Christ, his description of the Force is incredible. People keep shitting on his opinion of the Jedi as if the Jedi way didn't fail the Republic, fail his parents, and fail his mentors, all two of whom kept playing mind games even after death. Some girl shows up expecting How To Hero 101 and of course he says no.
I ask you - as opposed to what?
Sketch it out for me. What does Luke's motivation look like, when a Force-sensitive rando shows up on his extremely private retreat, offering a tool he built from scratch and obviously abandoned? The man knows smugglers, bounty hunters, militants, and diplomats. He's attuned to a psychic power that permeates all life and matter. Some glorified barkeep having his backup glowstick in her basement would not stop him from getting it, if he set aside a month and gave half a shit. Tell me what it would look like, if it looked like that Luke Skywalker was well-written, in your eyes.
Me, personally? I'm quite happy with him kicking Rey straight down the only-what-you-take-with-you hole. He doesn't toy with her except to show her she doesn't need training and shouldn't want training. Yoda played some Mister Miyagi shit while he was looking for a level-up before 1v1-ing the scariest motherfucker in the universe. "Ben" was a dutch uncle his whole life and never mentioned he had space-wizard bona fides, nevermind that his dad was alive and well and the scariest motherfucker in the universe. Jedi hermit Luke points out: the fact this trilogy exists means that what Luke did did not work. Of course he tells her not to repeat his mistakes. His ambition did not solve the problem.
Read this again:
I'm saying Rian only fucked up 1/3, not JJ.
I sorta disagree. Other possible explanations aside (I dunno, maybe Luke went to undertake a serious ritual and didn't want to get interrupted unless absolutely necessary) this explanation demands a lot more elaboration. The concept is fine but it would need some more fleshing out (I would prefer a short movie) to pick up the audience. The gaps between Episode 6 Luke, Flashback Luke and Episode 8 Luke are too large to bridge with suspension of disbelief/imagination for some. The trajectory many thought Luke would take does not match what we are shown, which means the audience should be shown a bit more to adjust that trajectory. The audience needs to see Luke drift off first before this transgression, not just told it happened. We do not need to see Luke attack Kylo. We need to see him drift off into intolerance to narrow the gap between Episode 6 and the Flashback. As it stands we see Luke on a trajectory to heroism in Episode 6, then an angry old man in the Flashback and someone who recognized the error of their ways in Episode 8, the difference between Flashback Luke and Episode 8 Luke is fine but the difference between Episode 6 Luke and Flashback Luke is not. His character makes a complete U-Turn in between and we, as the audience, have not a single clue why. It does not match the character we know to such an extreme extent that is completely takes you out of the movie. There was just not enough time in that movie to fit such an Arc for someone who is a Side Character+.
Whoops. Yeah fair enough on mathing that math.
Still no idea what you think was missing from the explanation of how he got there. Him being there was a given. It awkwardly ended the previous movie, with a bizarre helicopter circle shot. Sprinkled throughout two whole acts, we got a Rashomon overview of him doing what we expected and having that blow up in his face. Short of making the movie about him--
And we're glossing over how Luke in Return Of The Jedi very nearly turned to the dark side. The Emperor was fuckin' thrilled until he got chucked down that elevator shaft. Luke Skywalker was always a hold-my-beer archetype. Plan A for Darth Vader was murder. There was no Plan B. Even with Jabba and the Emperor, his idea of a diplomatic alternative was to surrender his way in, and then murder his way out.
Luke being grumpy is infinitely more explicable than having the empire 'return, somehow.' Especially for an audience that's spent decades joking about the prequels, and wonders if the whole franchise would've gone better if Qui-Gon hadn't yelled "duck." Having the prescience to see Kylo ruin everything is the fuzzy precognition we've long since known about. Seriously considering murder as a solution is his go-to. He's not Batman.