Author Topic: The Last Jedi  (Read 16209 times)

1SO

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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #30 on: December 17, 2017, 05:39:12 PM »
2. Kids playing with Luke Skywalker figurines in the final scene. BECAUSE DISNEY NEED TO SELL THE TOYZ. This doesn't sour the film as much as the previous scene, but if the Leia scene didn't exist and this one still did, it would still keep me back from overlooking the other minor problems I had with the film.
I wrote the same and since then I've been listening to other opinions that mostly love the final scene, taking it for what I believe was its true intention, showing the optimism of hope. I can believe that was the intent, but coming from a Star Wars film, one of the great merchandising tools of our lifetime, I can't get past seeing it as selling the mania to future generations.

jdc

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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #31 on: December 17, 2017, 05:41:33 PM »
OK,  I am going to need to rewatch this, maybe be sober next time.
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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #32 on: December 17, 2017, 05:53:52 PM »
2. Kids playing with Luke Skywalker figurines in the final scene. BECAUSE DISNEY NEED TO SELL THE TOYZ. This doesn't sour the film as much as the previous scene, but if the Leia scene didn't exist and this one still did, it would still keep me back from overlooking the other minor problems I had with the film.
I wrote the same and since then I've been listening to other opinions that mostly love the final scene, taking it for what I believe was its true intention, showing the optimism of hope. I can believe that was the intent, but coming from a Star Wars film, one of the great merchandising tools of our lifetime, I can't get past seeing it as selling the mania to future generations.

Yeah, I see that intent too, but how many times did any of us play with General Patton figures? Chris Kyle action figures aren't a top selling toy this Christmas!

DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #33 on: December 18, 2017, 06:40:13 AM »
As much as the entire casino planet was absolutely worthless padding, and the space-superman being incredibly silly, the hyperspace attack on Snoke's ship was jaw-dropping. I wasn't expecting Akira to be a touchstone of a 2017 Star Wars movie, but here we are.

Casino Planet was by far the worst part of the movie. A useless detour that should have been scrubbed out to make space for something better.

Nice catch with Akira though.

Weird that this echoes Harry Potter so much in the midsection.

Ha, yeah. I thought the last shot should have faded to a title that read, "And that's how quidditch was born."

As much as the entire casino planet was absolutely worthless padding ...

The very first shot of the casino literally made me say to myself, "I could walk out now without regret."

the hyperspace attack on Snoke's ship was jaw-dropping

I found it telling that the best moment in the film was when they shut off the soundtrack.

Worst moment in the film: Fighting for what you love. I wish Finn had been ripped to shreds in the crash and Rose walked away without a scratch but in tears, with Leia crying after her, "What were in thinking?!?" and Rose whispering, "I wasn't thinking. I was feeling."

The Fozzie Bear cameo was weird. It's too bad they couldn't get Yoda.

pixote

I want to be mad but I couldn't stop laughing.

I thought the Yoda thing was an interesting commentary of Johnson sourcing his movie from the original trilogy to divorce himself from prequel nonsense. I still wish he had used the superior Revenge of the Sith Yoda and not the sock puppet. It makes sense he retains his end of life personality though.

During the gliders scene, I hoped Johnson was going to be bold and kill a main character. That girl feels very jammed into the series and her arc is not strong at all.
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #34 on: December 18, 2017, 08:26:59 AM »
So Porgs are a thing now?
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Junior

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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #35 on: December 18, 2017, 09:00:29 AM »
2. Kids playing with Luke Skywalker figurines in the final scene. BECAUSE DISNEY NEED TO SELL THE TOYZ. This doesn't sour the film as much as the previous scene, but if the Leia scene didn't exist and this one still did, it would still keep me back from overlooking the other minor problems I had with the film.
I wrote the same and since then I've been listening to other opinions that mostly love the final scene, taking it for what I believe was its true intention, showing the optimism of hope. I can believe that was the intent, but coming from a Star Wars film, one of the great merchandising tools of our lifetime, I can't get past seeing it as selling the mania to future generations.

Is there anything these kids could have done that would not inspire this response? If they were lightsabering around it wouldn't change anything, lightsabers come in all kinds of buyable shapes and sizes. I suppose the one could have just been telling the story to the others, but is that how kids work? Do they sit down to tell each other stories at that age, or do they act them out? It's been about 25 years for me, but the toy version feels like the most realistic thing they could have been doing. We got past the cynicism for The Lego Movie, when are we gonna get past it for Star Wars? (I feel I should point out that perhaps the most important plot/character point in the film, Rey's decision to not join Kylo Ren, is a choice against cynicism.)
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #36 on: December 18, 2017, 09:52:16 AM »
I'm super happy they didn't do something cheap with either Snoke or Rey in terms of their origin. That was my biggest fear going into this movie.

It's funny how they kept bringing up and dancing around Rey's parents like there's a draft where we learn Snoke is Rey's father or at one point it looks like they're building to Kylo being Rey's father somehow. With Force Awakens there was too much conversation about how closely it resembled A New Hope and I think a parental reveal like that would've single-handedly made this an Empire clone.

I loved this too. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that Rey would have to be Luke's kid, or a Skywalker in any effect, maybe Ben's sister. The entire movie is Johnson not doing what people would expect him too. He avoids the clichés and the easy solutions. He makes many decisions I sort of predicted, but not the ones I would have bet on necessarily. Better than that, the ones I hoped for. I think this makes the trilogy more about Ben, because now he is the Skywalker on point, and his arc becomes the centre of the story.

Johson salvaged what he could out of Snoke and I am glad he killed him off. I was dreading the possibility they would make him a reincarnated Palpatine, following one major EU storyline. No backstory at all is much better than that, even though two lines about who he is would have been nice.
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DarkeningHumour

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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #37 on: December 18, 2017, 09:55:39 AM »
2. Kids playing with Luke Skywalker figurines in the final scene. BECAUSE DISNEY NEED TO SELL THE TOYZ. This doesn't sour the film as much as the previous scene, but if the Leia scene didn't exist and this one still did, it would still keep me back from overlooking the other minor problems I had with the film.
I wrote the same and since then I've been listening to other opinions that mostly love the final scene, taking it for what I believe was its true intention, showing the optimism of hope. I can believe that was the intent, but coming from a Star Wars film, one of the great merchandising tools of our lifetime, I can't get past seeing it as selling the mania to future generations.

Is there anything these kids could have done that would not inspire this response? If they were lightsabering around it wouldn't change anything, lightsabers come in all kinds of buyable shapes and sizes. I suppose the one could have just been telling the story to the others, but is that how kids work? Do they sit down to tell each other stories at that age, or do they act them out? It's been about 25 years for me, but the toy version feels like the most realistic thing they could have been doing. We got past the cynicism for The Lego Movie, when are we gonna get past it for Star Wars? (I feel I should point out that perhaps the most important plot/character point in the film, Rey's decision to not join Kylo Ren, is a choice against cynicism.)

I was not a fan of the last scene either. I thought the movie should have cut before we ever get to the kids. It's not a bad scene at all. It's well made and super effective I thought. My only gripe is that it is so out of place in Star Wars. This has never been a franchise about the little people. The masses are never represented and then there is this one scene where we give the people a face. The first trilogy was all about archetypes and Jonhson is shifting the parameters significantly to make it about real people. That's what he does in the opening too, which is an action scene unlike any before in the series.
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Sandy

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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #38 on: December 18, 2017, 12:30:23 PM »
I've been haphazardly/hastily following along and like the conciseness of Solid Blake's approach to join in a little, before heading out the door, again. I've rearranged some things, but thanks for doing the work for me, Blake!



The Highs:
-Cinematography/Inventive Shots
-Rey+Kylo Connection
-Snoke’s Death and Red Room Showdown - Love the Praetorian Guards' choreography!
-Rose
-Hyperspace Punch! - This is the collision, yes?
-Force Luke
-Space Dern vs. Poe subplot - Even though I agree with the choice, I'm a little sad they won't get to have any scenes together in the future. Man, were the sparks flying!
-More Poe time - Both in banter and in battle
-Benicio del Toro

Mixed:
-New Creatures (Porgs)
-Comedy - I absolutely hate the dumb comedy and absolutely love the smart. Examples -- Dumb equals the sea cows. Smart equals Luke flicking dust off his shoulder.
-Rey’s family just being junkers and the fact that even stable boys can use the force.

The Lows:
-Pacing issues hampered my experience - Big time. And also time issues! What were Rose and Finn doing futzing around finding a pickpocket in a casino on a planet, while the rebels were limping along on fumes, trying to stay ahead of the bad guys? Who has time for that?!
-Maz Kanata Skype call felt super cheesy
-They killed off Ackbar... OFF SCREEN!
-General Hux still Sux  I didn't like him in the first one and I have a hard time liking him here. He's all "a wink and a nod" like he can't really inhabit a character.
-The caretakers on Luke’s Island

Low, lows:
-Sea Cow milk
-Fathiers CGI stampede
-Leia in Spaaaaace (Superman scene)
Who is Snoke and why is he on the throne and why is there a canyon in his face?



I'm sure there is much more, but that's a start. Great observations everyone! Happy to read your input. :)

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Re: The Last Jedi
« Reply #39 on: December 18, 2017, 01:28:10 PM »
I really don't get the hate for Leia in SPAAAAAACE. Do we need a scene with an explanation of her ability to do that? Do you just need it too look different? It makes sense and it looks cool to me.

I wrote a long thing about why I liked this one and not (most of) the other ones.

You can read it with pretty pictures here, or without directly below.

I don’t like Star Wars. Wait, stop, don’t go yet. Let me clarify. I don’t like Star Wars movies very much. When I was around 7 years old, I got both the Original Trilogy (hereafter OT) and the Indiana Jones Trilogy on VHS at roughly the same time. I started with Star Wars and found myself enjoying but not falling head over heals with the films. Then I watched the Indiana Jones movies and fell in love with them. Here’s a movie for me! Whips! Nazi punching! The best part of Star Wars given his own films and no whiny kids to muck it all up (ok, well, at least not in 2/3 of them). That isn’t to say that I cast Star Wars aside entirely. In fact, if you looked at my toy collection for the next 5 or so years of my life, you’d think I was the biggest Star Wars fan there was. I did love the extended Star Wars universe. I read a bunch of the books, ignoring the generally bad prose for the pretty fun world-(or universe)-building. As I got older I got really into a few Star Wars videogames, especially the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series and, of course, both Knights of the Old Republic games. When the Prequel Trilogy began I was 11 years old and of course I loved The Phantom Menace because I was the perfect age for it. I came home and fought the classic broom-handle-lightsaber battles with my friends. I played the terrible videogame that followed the events of the movie and the fantastic podracer game. I got Lego sets and the action figures. I made up stories of my own because the stories (and most of the primary characters) weren’t all that interesting to me. This is my Star Wars apostasy, I’m a spiritual Star Wars fan, not a fundamentalist. And that is why The Last Jedi is, for me, the first truly great Star Wars movie.

The Last Jedi corrects most of the problems I had with the OT (and even The Force Awakens). Yo, Mark Hammill is good as hell as an older, cloistered, and sad version of Luke Skywalker. Gone is the whine, in its place is a gruff harrumph. This not only removes a great annoyance but also makes sense for his character. His success at the end of Return of the Jedi has turned into a failure, and he has shut himself off from the Force because of it. Here is the first study of what failure can do to a person and what they do because of it. Another comes in the form of Poe Dameron, who begins the film with a failure disguised as a success and takes the whole film to learn his lesson. But the important thing is that he learns a lesson; he has real character traits and growth instead of a fun sarcasm and a cool coat, which is pretty much all he had going for him in TFA. Even Finn, who spent the whole last movie learning to stop running from something and start running towards something instead, grows further in this film, though its one major flaw is that the path to growth isn’t particularly interesting or consequential. Finn is definitively in a new place by the end of the film, I just wish that getting there was more meaningful. Speaking of meaningful, though, TLJ‘s best correction is in its reinvention (for the movies, at least), of the central idea of Star Wars.

I didn’t make you read all those other Star Wars media that I engaged with earlier in this piece for nothing. They are the place where authors, game makers, and even yours truly were able to engage with the ideas present in the Star Wars films on our own terms. They are the places where the Force went from a pretty boring binary choice between Light and Dark sides to a wider range of possibilities. They were a place for (more) complex storytelling and further invention and elaboration that turned Star Wars from a myth into a real thing: a place with details beyond desert planet, jungle planet, city planet and stories that had characters who grew and came from other places. Until The Last Jedi, the Star Wars movies were the stories of a whiny adolescent who grew up into a great evil and a whiny adolescent who grew up into a boring hero. The Force Awakens started something new but was too focused on setting up mysteries to really give us solid ground to stand on as far as the new characters and their stories went. Audiences were caught up in wondering who Rey’s parents were and where Snoke came from. The Last Jedi doesn’t particularly care about the answers to these questions. On one it punts entirely only to set up a much more interesting story, and on the other the answer solves the biggest issue with of Star Wars forever (I hope).

Rey’s parents are nobody. Snoke’s backstory doesn’t matter because he exists for the same reason that the Emperor existed in the OT: he’s there for a character to kill in order to become somebody else. Rey’s lack of important parentage frees the Star Wars movies from the Skywalker saga it so boringly was for six movies and in so doing makes good on the fight between fascist evil and (militaristic) democratic good by removing the idea that one’s heritage is what makes them great. Rey’s insignificant backstory means that any audience member might see themselves in her. While broom-lightsaber fighting they won’t have to declare “I’m Luke” or whatever, they can be themselves. Because now, for the first time in a Star Wars movie (but not the first time in my experience with Star Wars), the hero is her own thing and so is the villain. Snoke’s backstory doesn’t matter because he stands in for the unmotivated (at least inside the OT) Emperor and even Vader. They were beings of pure evil whose only intention was to create more evil through destruction. They didn’t seem to have much of a reason for this, and their only motivation for trying to stop the Skywalkers was in ridding themselves of a roadblock. So too was Supreme Leader Snoke singleminded in his evilness. Not so for his replacement, Kylo Ren. We know Kylo’s motivations and flaws from two movies of solid character work. We know his reasons for trying to bring Rey to his side because he puts them out for everybody to see. We know why he hates Luke and we know that his hatred is both justified and somewhat ignorant. That’s a complex and fascinating villain, for once, and I’m glad that we get to see a whole arc for him rather than some backstory for Snoke that would have likely been unimportant. This also solves Star Wars’ problems. Both hero and villain have complicated and meaningful motivations and grow from one film to the next. Their power is not built upon revelations about their histories but rather on their qualities as human beings.

Pixote saw this movie before me and predicted that I would hate it. While it is true that The Last Jedi is an indulgent movie and does a lot of the kind of stuff I didn’t like in the earlier films, it turns out that my problems with those earlier films wasn’t with the content but rather the execution. Here’s a film that has a bunch of goofy humor in it, but it’s good goofy humor. There are a lot of hokey religions and ancient weapons, but now they aren’t the only thing. The Force is more expansive and it has become part of the extensive ecology rather than a thing that gives you powers. Indeed, one of the film’s best scenes is an explanation of what the Force is, and if you had told me that beforehand I’d have laughed in your face because I remember midichlorians. But this film pulls it off because there is a sense of craft brought by Rian Johnson and his team. His explanation of the Force is not just words but also images and cuts. The Force is magic, sure, but for the first time it is movie magic, too. The actors here are actually good–even the ones I didn’t like before–and their lines aren’t terrible! There are at least 5 amazing scenes in this movie, and I’m not sure there are that many in the entire OT. This film has the best lightsaber fight of all the movies and two fantastic space fights. It’s a little too long and there’s a big section that could have used a little tuning. But damn if I didn’t find myself loving every minute of The Last Jedi. And that’s a first for the series as well.
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