The Star Wars thread - "Chewie, we're home." - The Bear and Badger

superflyninja

Agree with Ram, 9 was fucked before it even started. It had an impossible job to do. It was terrible but at least it was fun.

I agree with the principle of giving a director/writer a full trilogy to work with. It would allow them to set the overall story first and have a clear map of what they want each movie to be.
To me, the Star Wars movies are big, fun space adventures with space wizards, magic, space battles, exotic worlds and laser swords. I just dont think RJ knows what to do with Star Wars and TLJ proved that.
He had carte blanche and his big idea was a space chase. A slow, movie-long space chase.
Remember when Han and the falcon were being pursued by tie fighters and star destroyers? And he flew into an asteroid field, landed IN an asteroid, only to have landed in the mouth of a giant space worm? Now that was a space chase.

My feelings on RJ aside, its super risky to give him a trilogy considering the fallout over TLJ. Didnt Mark Hamill even diss TLJ recently by making such a huge deal of the Mando S2 finale?

Not sure why RJ would be rewarded with a trilogy for such a controversial(not in a good way) movie.

Yossarian

superflyninja wrote:

It was terrible but at least it was fun.

I must have watched a different cut to you.

superflyninja

Yossarian wrote:

9 is terrible but it almosts gets a free pass from me cos i blame 8 for breaking the story completely such that i didn't care and don't think there's anyway 9 could have been good.

That’s some next level Last Jedi hate right there. The problems with 9 were all of Abrams’ making. It’s not like he didn’t spend the first 15 minutes of the film negating practically everything that happened in 8, everything from that point on was all on him and was fucking terrible.

I too dont want to get drawn into the weeds on a TLJ fight.
But can you tell me what is it about TLJ that you really liked? Im not having a go Im genuinely curious. Ill tell you one thing I liked. The red salt.

Regarding 9 being fun: A space zombie emperor ELECTROCUTED a fleet of spaceships. Poe does hyperdrive skipping through varied worlds and there is a huge battle. Its an awful movie though no arguments from me on that.
Kylo Ren wasnt enough of a threat to be the big bad. Look at TFA, an untrained Rey beat him. He already had his pants pulled down.

Yossarian

I thought it was a decently entertaining romp and I enjoyed the upending of expectations that suggested that there could be more to these new films than simply retreading story beats from the originals.

superflyninja

Yossarian wrote:

I thought it was a decently entertaining romp and I enjoyed the upending of expectations that suggested that there could be more to these new films than simply retreading story beats from the originals.

Yeah agree on the upending expectations bit, he certainly did that. Ive no problem with that actually, its just I felt his execution was waaaay below par. Its like he wanted to reinvent SW a bit but had no good ideas to reinvent it with.

Matt_82

Had 8 been good, I would have cared enough to be annoyed about 9. But as 8 killed all my enthusiasm, I didn't give a single shit about 9 and still don't. I barely remember a thing about it. It's a fleeting memory like any other generic action flick.

9 may or may not be better or worse than 8 but 8 made sure I don't care either way.

monkey

Matt_82 wrote:

Had 8 been good, I would have cared enough to be annoyed about 9. But as 8 killed all my enthusiasm, I didn't give a single shit about 9 and still don't. I barely remember a thing about it. It's a fleeting memory like any other generic action flick.

9 may or may not be better or worse than 8 but 8 made sure I don't care either way.

Yup.

Frosty

Glad you all don't care enough to have this argument again

LivDiv

Imo it doesn't matter what it is they are making or who is directing if Dave Filoni isnt involved in some way advising or creating then Disney arent utilising their best Star Wars asset.

bad_hair_day

Matt_82 wrote:

Had 8 been good, I would have cared enough to be annoyed about 9. But as 8 killed all my enthusiasm, I didn't give a single shit about 9 and still don't. I barely remember a thing about it. It's a fleeting memory like any other generic action flick.

9 may or may not be better or worse than 8 but 8 made sure I don't care either way.

This take had me make a cup of tea and eat that last slice of cake. Cheers.

RedDave2

I'm with yoss on TLJ. Ren is clearly set up as the big bad going forward, he wants to forge a new path for the order that doesn't have the usual sith under pinning. As an unhinged dark side user it could have been a story about how manic he does become.

But whatever, we've been down this road many times and I get why people have issues with that direction.

It's fair to say that 9 being shit is part of the fallout from 8 though. It wasn't meant to be jj directing (right?) So he was scrambled in to save the day. The issues he addressed, yes he made a turd sandwich from but going by comments here , I figure he was right in trying to appease the main fan base. FA is fine as a movie so he could have done better if he didn't feel he had to do so much damage repair and in such a short space of time.

Which makes the idea of Ryan getting 3 more movies bizarre.

Little Franklin

Yossarian wrote:

I thought it was a decently entertaining romp and I enjoyed the upending of expectations that suggested that there could be more to these new films than simply retreading story beats from the originals.

One thing I liked is it still recycled a bunch of plot points from the OT but, unlike Force Awakens, put enough of a twist on them so they felt new.

RedDave2

Would it be fair to say that in general non stars wars fans liked last jedi and star wars fans didn't?

Little Franklin

RedDave2 wrote:

It's fair to say that 9 being shit is part of the fallout from 8 though. It wasn't meant to be jj directing (right?) So he was scrambled in to save the day. The issues he addressed, yes he made a turd sandwich from but going by comments here , I figure he was right in trying to appease the main fan base. FA is fine as a movie so he could have done better if he didn't feel he had to do so much damage repair and in such a short space of time.

I thought it was 'cus that Fantastic Four director turned out to be a flake.

RedDave2 wrote:

Would it be fair to say that in general non stars wars fans liked last jedi and star wars fans didn't?

Sounds right to me. The more hardcore, the more likely you are to hate it. Mind you I've seen some dedicated Star Wars YouTubers who liked it.

mistercrayon

Frosty wrote:

Glad you all don't care enough to have this argument again

Vicious

Yossarian

Apparently this is the entirety of Snoke’s scenes in TFA.

I really don’t think that the argument that his death in the second film made a decent third film impossible holds much weight.

tin_robot

RedDave2 wrote:

Would it be fair to say that in general non stars wars fans liked last jedi and star wars fans didn't?

I don't think so. I made my parents drive me some hideous distance just so that Darth Vader could hand me a duvet cover when I was a kid, and I think Last Jedi is the best of the new 3. I think it's more likely that non-Star Wars fans simply aren't that bothered one way or the other.

superflyninja wrote:

I too dont want to get drawn into the weeds on a TLJ fight. But can you tell me what is it about TLJ that you really liked? Im not having a go Im genuinely curious.

I liked the movement away from the Skywalkers, and back to the notion that anyone could be a Jedi. I liked the recurring themes of individualism versus collectivism. I liked the subversion of the "maverick hero is always right" trope that runs through most stuff, Star Wars included. I liked that it took Luke Skywalker as he was in the original trilogy (a whiny, incompletely trained Jedi with anger issues), and let him be the guy who could so easily have turned to the dark side that we were warned of - rather than the wide eyed hero we preferred to see him as. I thought it was the most visually interesting of the Star Wars movies (yes red sand, but also the hall of mirrors and that explosion). I liked that it at least attempted to open the universe up a bit - even if Episode 9 tried to lock it straight back down again. (And I'd argue that spin offs like The Mandalorian have mostly succeeded when they have attempted to follow that wider template - even if Mando's universe does now seem to be shrinking again.) I liked that the leads were confused messed up adolescents either learning from their mistakes, or leaning yet further into them. Hell, I even liked that he killed off the entirely pointless "big bad" to instead make the villain someone we actually knew and cared about.

Don't get me wrong. I get why people hate it. I absolutely understand that some of the things I've pointed to above would irritate others. I appreciate that whilst the themes explored in the Mando Blight sequence are important, the sequence itself is dull. The slow speed chase through space makes little sense when thought about too hard (though, you know, Star Wars...) I can understand people wanting their childhood hero to be a hero, rather than be reminded that he was always kind of a dick. And the reason that "crazy mavericks" are a trope is because people love them - so again, demonstrating that they can equally be dangerous arseholes is always going to be a risky move. And the jokes mostly don't work.

But still. It was something more interesting than tickling my nostalgia glands (which Force Awakens did well enough). I think the only thing I liked about Episode 9 was the clear illustration of why the change in direction of Episode 8 was necessary.

mistercrayon

I think they completely lost nerve with kylo ren being a true baddie. The seed is there - guy killed hand solo ffs - but some how he still has to be redeemable and then redeems himself.

RamSteelwood

Frosty wrote:

Glad you all don't care enough to have this argument again

Sorry Frosty.....

Yossarian wrote:

I thought it was a decently entertaining romp and I enjoyed the upending of expectations that suggested that there could be more to these new films than simply retreading story beats from the originals.

...but it's comments like this that always make it a 'fun' thing to discuss again. Cos for me I feel like Yoss (and i'm not meaning this to diss his opinion) saw a different film to me. It's quite interesting/confusing for me to try to understand what others saw.

For me...clearly it wasn't what i would have expected, but i don't get this 'it did new and exciting things with the franchise'. nearly all the major elements of the film are ripped from Empire (and a bit from Jedi), and the rest is padded out with a boring space chase, bad attempts at humour and stupidity from certain characters.

so yeah, it subverted my expectations in that i felt it didnt really follow up on the threads from TFA, or set up anything exciting for the third film. But there was nothing about it that made me think "oh my god i didn't expect that could happen in a star wars movie"

superflyninja

RedDave2 wrote:

Would it be fair to say that in general non stars wars fans liked last jedi and star wars fans didn't?

No I dont think so. I knew a guy at my last job that was even more entrenched in SW than Ill ever be and he LOVED TLJ.
I think TLJ seems to have split the fan base as a whole.

@tin_robot

The points you make are all valid in some way. I just think most of what TLJ did isnt actually interesting at all. Look at Canto Bight, I thought the visual design was appalling, totally uninteresting. And the themes highlighted there didnt really add anything. For example...arms dealers are bad?? There is no depth to that. Ok they are bad, so what? What does the story do with that information? Nothing, nothing at all.
But also that for me flew in the face of established canon. Rogue One established the Empire designed and built their own weaponry. This was also detailed in Rebels, there was a tie fighter factory on Lothal I think....I may be wrong, but even there the Empire was designing and building its own craft.

Im not that happy about Filoni though being so entrenched in the Mando series, I dont want Mando tying in to existing stuff too much. It was great being its own thing. It needs to stay in the outer rim so to speak.

Little Franklin

RamSteelwood wrote:

It's quite interesting/confusing for me to try to understand what others saw.

I mainly became fascinated with TLJ because of the reaction to it. Watching loads of YouTube videos trying to figure out how people could have such a wide range of strong opinions. Ended up noticing loads of stuff I didn't pick up on the first time round.

tin_robot wrote:

The slow speed chase through space makes little sense when thought about too hard.

I know the Holdo manoeuvre breaks all Star Wars, but what's wrong with the chase?

monkey

Yossarian wrote:

Apparently this is the entirety of Snoke’s scenes in TFA.

I really don’t think that the argument that his death in the second film made a decent third film impossible holds much weight.

No one made that argument. I said there was nothing left to carry forward which made it impossible. It’s probably not impossible, a good writer can make anything interesting.

But personally I don’t see how an already once (or twice) beaten, conflicted petulant kid could have the same menace as some old, pure evil, force codger. He’s not a credible threat.

But I don’t want to get hung up on Snoke. It’s all bad. The first film was bad, the second threw a load of it out and didn’t replace it with anything, and the third film threw out what little was left, partly I’m sure, out of spite for the first throwing out, and because it was rubbish.

Yossarian

RamSteelwood wrote:

Frosty wrote:

Glad you all don't care enough to have this argument again

Sorry Frosty.....

Yossarian wrote:

I thought it was a decently entertaining romp and I enjoyed the upending of expectations that suggested that there could be more to these new films than simply retreading story beats from the originals.

...but it's comments like this that always make it a 'fun' thing to discuss again. Cos for me I feel like Yoss (and i'm not meaning this to diss his opinion) saw a different film to me. It's quite interesting/confusing for me to try to understand what others saw.

For me...clearly it wasn't what i would have expected, but i don't get this 'it did new and exciting things with the franchise'. nearly all the major elements of the film are ripped from Empire (and a bit from Jedi), and the rest is padded out with a boring space chase, bad attempts at humour and stupidity from certain characters.

so yeah, it subverted my expectations in that i felt it didnt really follow up on the threads from TFA, or set up anything exciting for the third film. But there was nothing about it that made me think "oh my god i didn't expect that could happen in a star wars movie"

I wouldn’t say many of the moments were things that made me think “OMG!”, but more that the previous film was almost a beat for beat retelling of the first film. It was an efficient and well made retelling, but it was a retelling nonetheless. TLJ made me think that the new films could go off in new directions, explore new things within the universe, and that was far more interesting to me than reaching the inevitable conclusion of Rey and Ren teaming up to defeat the big bad and redeeming Ren.

RamSteelwood

monkey wrote:

But I don’t want to get hung up on Snoke. It’s all bad. The first film was bad, the second threw a load of it out and didn’t replace it with anything, and the third film threw out what little was left, partly I’m sure, out of spite for the first throwing out, and because it was rubbish.

This sums it up nicely i reckon.

RedDave2

I'm surprised that there isnt so much love for Force Awakens. Yes its a re-jig of New Hope but I still though it was a very solid blockbuster. After the BS of the prequels I think it was the perfect follow up in many respects.

Just on Snoke being killed - would have been impossible to have Snoke being the one who came back (maybe under the darth plagus guise... or was that revealed to be the emperor before hand)? It would have allowed them to ditch the BS about reys grandparents and still allow much of what happened to go ahead. I mean they have clones of him in a jar so they could have even taken that angle. Maybe thats why his body was so disfigured - he was immortal or moving his spirit from body to body as each one broke down. Maybe he infected Kylos Mind or better still infected Reys as some sort of sith force ghost.

Point being... they could have done all sorts of things to move the story.

Little Franklin

I both love and hate the jar of pickled Snokes. Seems weird to me that people accuse TLJ of trivialising him when ROS explained that he comes in packs of 6.

RamSteelwood

RedDave2 wrote:

I'm surprised that there isnt so much love for Force Awakens. Yes its a re-jig of New Hope but I still though it was a very solid blockbuster. After the BS of the prequels I think it was the perfect follow up in many respects.

I really enjoyed it on first watch. I agree it did a good job of getting that star wars feeling back after the prequels. However on repeat viewings I think it falls apart due to the number of ridiculous coincidences for things to come together....plus it's made worse by TLJ killing off most of the interesting additons. Even if they were just smoke and mirrors to distract from the 'soft reboot'...once they've been stripped away as pointless i think it makes the rest of the film less interesting and watchable.

Yossarian

Wow, what else did TLJ ruin for you? The original trilogy? Star Trek? The feeling of sun in your skin? The sound of a child’s laughter?

RamSteelwood

Yossarian wrote:

Wow, what else did TLJ ruin for you? The original trilogy? Star Trek? The feeling of sun in your skin? The sound of a child’s laughter?

Yes.

superflyninja

Little Franklin wrote:

It's quite interesting/confusing for me to try to understand what others saw.

I mainly became fascinated with TLJ because of the reaction to it. Watching loads of YouTube videos trying to figure out how people could have such a wide range of strong opinions. Ended up noticing loads of stuff I didn't pick up on the first time round.

The slow speed chase through space makes little sense when thought about too hard.

I know the Holdo manoeuvre breaks all Star Wars, but what's wrong with the chase?

The chase was totally unexciting, lacked suspense and it left so many plot holes. For example, it allowed Finn and Rose to go off on a duff side quest somewhere. Given that was possible they could have hired a bus and removed people from the ships bit by bit. Also Finn and Rose could go on their side quest without interference from tie fighters etc. Also the rebel fleet could have hyperspaced to Coruscant or wherever the Republic seat of power was or even to a republic military outpost. Yeah Kylo could follow but he would be following into the midst of the republic. There are so many things that could have gone down and yet the most boring option was taken. The space chase was a terribly contrived scenario and was just not believable(yes, yes I know) at all.
Im not saying all that as a Star Wars geek, Im simply looking at the movie in front of me scratching my head thinking this....makes...no sense.

@RedDave2
I was a big, big fan of TFA. Loved the intro of Rey scavenging in the derelict star destroyer in particular. Yeah it was a retread but it did its job of being Star Wars whilst introducing the new characters. I really liked where it ended. Rey handing off the saber to Luke...awesome.

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