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Author Topic: Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi  (Read 248142 times)
eldaec
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Reply #210 on: December 18, 2017, 10:17:19 AM

I agree the first order are a problem. But I don't think back story would fix it.

The problem isn't how snoke came to power. It is where the order are now and how a FO hegemony is made believable.

The Last Jedi opening crawl did a better job of this than the entire previous film, but it is still really unclear.

Re: Kylo

I like the idea they have here that the villian should grow and not arrive fully formed. But would agree there are issues because tFA started really early in his development and didn't move it forward at all.

The Kylo/Rey scenes helped mitigate this for me.

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MediumHigh
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Reply #211 on: December 18, 2017, 11:06:18 AM

We don't loath him as a human being. We loath him for being a small child. And the movie keeps tell us, oh look here is your villain, oh look here is your antagonist who is suppose to give your hero this Rey character some type of obstacle to overcome. And we're giving nothing. Absolutely nothing. As if they were afraid of scaring small children. I know you want to think TFA and Last Jedi writers are making some grand Trump analogy that makes you feel clever on the inside. But the rest of us don't care. We don't want our Star Wars villains to be defeated because they have small hands. Or at least don't call it star wars. Call it liberals vs space trump. Or something else, so I don't have to watch it.
Khaldun
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Reply #212 on: December 18, 2017, 11:20:08 AM

Kylo Ren is a fantastic villain because you actually hate him the way you should hate a villain. He's a whiny, pissy little bad seed. He's what undisciplined anger and hatred and fear given superpowers ought to look like. Evil shouldn't be sleek and seductive and smarter than all the good guys, like Thrawn is, or more ULTIMATE POWAHFUL like Palpatine or more badass and stylish like Vader. It should be sullen and awful and self-indulgent and something that has to be fought and destroyed before it destroys everything.
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Reply #213 on: December 18, 2017, 11:24:52 AM

Going to see it this afternoon; I think MediumHigh's knicker-twisting is only serving to hype me up more.   why so serious?

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Threash
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Reply #214 on: December 18, 2017, 11:27:23 AM

Kylo Ren is a fantastic villain because you actually hate him the way you should hate a villain. He's a whiny, pissy little bad seed. He's what undisciplined anger and hatred and fear given superpowers ought to look like. Evil shouldn't be sleek and seductive and smarter than all the good guys, like Thrawn is, or more ULTIMATE POWAHFUL like Palpatine or more badass and stylish like Vader. It should be sullen and awful and self-indulgent and something that has to be fought and destroyed before it destroys everything.

This. Evil is like Gollum not like Sauron.

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MediumHigh
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Reply #215 on: December 18, 2017, 11:33:39 AM

Yeah keep that to yourself. In a comedy "I'm soo pathetic hahah" works fine. Cause there is no stakes, no tension, no wondering why the intelligent officers around him doesn't just bump him down the steps at the first opportunity. But this isn't a comedy. This isn't a "isn't it ironic" type of movie. Fuck you kids have the lowest standards. Fucking Amazons The TICK had a better set of antagonist and even killed their kylo at the end of season 1, because morons like ben solo don't run organizations, their expandable fodder only allowed near power because they know a guy or nepotism. That what happens in a good series, this is obviously not a good series.
HaemishM
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Reply #216 on: December 18, 2017, 11:49:01 AM

Kylo Ren is a fantastic villain because you actually hate him the way you should hate a villain. He's a whiny, pissy little bad seed. He's what undisciplined anger and hatred and fear given superpowers ought to look like.

I dislike him, because he's Don, Jr. or Eric. And I'm not afraid of either one of those little punk bitches.

Vader scared the everliving piss out of me as a kid, and as an adult, he's still fucking menacing. This guy? I could take this guy and I am a fucking NERD.

Lakov_Sanite
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Reply #217 on: December 18, 2017, 11:51:02 AM

because morons like ben solo don't run organizations


My whole point with the Trump analogy is that yes, they do.  I'm not saying the writers are making a direct 1-1 political analogy with todays American politics, I am saying that the writers are acknowledging that people like this do exist and they do rise to power.  

~a horrific, dark simulacrum that glares balefully at us, with evil intent.
eldaec
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Reply #218 on: December 18, 2017, 11:54:14 AM

Kylo Ren is a fantastic villain because you actually hate him the way you should hate a villain. He's a whiny, pissy little bad seed. He's what undisciplined anger and hatred and fear given superpowers ought to look like. Evil shouldn't be sleek and seductive and smarter than all the good guys, like Thrawn is, or more ULTIMATE POWAHFUL like Palpatine or more badass and stylish like Vader. It should be sullen and awful and self-indulgent and something that has to be fought and destroyed before it destroys everything.

This. Evil is like Gollum not like Sauron.

 

I really am looking forward to the proposed RJ trilogy though.

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jgsugden
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Reply #219 on: December 18, 2017, 12:05:56 PM

I'm boggled by some of the opinions here - truly confused that people could take these insane positions and not be joking.  I don't see any reason to repeat things that have been said over and over already... but wow.  It is shocking that anyone would defend the weaknesses of this film - and even more shocking at who on these boards is doing it.  

I ... can't ... even.

2020 will be the year I gave up all hope.
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Reply #220 on: December 18, 2017, 12:14:33 PM

because morons like ben solo don't run organizations


My whole point with the Trump analogy is that yes, they do.  I'm not saying the writers are making a direct 1-1 political analogy with todays American politics, I am saying that the writers are acknowledging that people like this do exist and they do rise to power.  

And gets promptly stabbed in the back by the tywin lannisters of their world, or watch their empire fall into civil war as "the emperor is not wearing any pants" gets shouted at the top of every rooftop and government building. But we're now on the third movie in the franchise and gollum is ruling Mordor, feel the tension yet? Ohhhhh, I see.
patience
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Reply #221 on: December 18, 2017, 12:19:06 PM

Kylo Ren is a fantastic villain because you actually hate him the way you should hate a villain. He's a whiny, pissy little bad seed. He's what undisciplined anger and hatred and fear given superpowers ought to look like. Evil shouldn't be sleek and seductive and smarter than all the good guys, like Thrawn is, or more ULTIMATE POWAHFUL like Palpatine or more badass and stylish like Vader. It should be sullen and awful and self-indulgent and something that has to be fought and destroyed before it destroys everything.

You can be both. Hitler understood the theater of politics. Even though Trump kept Hitler's books teaching this at his bedside he was too dumb to implement it better than what he managed to do while campaigning, which was stool objectively subpar.

OP is assuming its somewhat of a design-goal of eve to make players happy.
this is however not the case.
Abagadro
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Reply #222 on: December 18, 2017, 12:22:29 PM

If you didn't get that Kylo is not the villain of this particular installment (in fact not a single person was) then we were watching different movies.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Lakov_Sanite
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Reply #223 on: December 18, 2017, 12:24:59 PM

because morons like ben solo don't run organizations


My whole point with the Trump analogy is that yes, they do.  I'm not saying the writers are making a direct 1-1 political analogy with todays American politics, I am saying that the writers are acknowledging that people like this do exist and they do rise to power.  

And gets promptly stabbed in the back by the tywin lannisters of their world, or watch their empire fall into civil war as "the emperor is not wearing any pants" gets shouted at the top of every rooftop and government building. But we're now on the third movie in the franchise and gollum is ruling Mordor, feel the tension yet? Ohhhhh, I see.

Tywin Lannister is as much fiction as Vader.  Shitty, petty, unintelligent people rise to power in our world and they stay there, for quite a long time, even the worst dictators get decades in power. There is a very real argument to be made for wanting movies to be pure fantasy and to leave sad realities for the news but that's not the direction they are going with here.  It's fine to think it's a bad artistic choice but it's not unrealistic at all.

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HaemishM
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Reply #224 on: December 18, 2017, 12:26:23 PM

If you didn't get that Kylo is not the villain of this particular installment (in fact not a single person was) then we were watching different movies.

Maybe that's the problem - Star Wars has always been about pretty stark good vs. evil, even when they've injected some true drama and pathos into it. It's a simplistic tale. Their attempts to "grey everything up" might have worked in a different series or if the writing was actually good enough for that to work, but neither is this a different series, nor are the writers good enough to pull it off.

Threash
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Reply #225 on: December 18, 2017, 12:50:37 PM

I thought it worked amazingly well.

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Bunk
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Reply #226 on: December 18, 2017, 02:26:15 PM

While I agree that the Casino planet overall was a weak act, they needed something to get a few plot points across:


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Khaldun
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Reply #227 on: December 18, 2017, 03:05:21 PM

The Casino stuff performed an amazing variety of plot-critical and theme-critical missions, it just did it inartfully and in a way that called attention to how plot-mechanical it all was.

Honestly, there are reasons that are completely legit to not like the film, but at least some of the people who don't like it are not liking it because it didn't play to their frozen-in adolescent assumptions about what a Star Wars film, or any film, needs to do.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2017, 05:50:34 PM by Khaldun »
Abagadro
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Reply #228 on: December 18, 2017, 03:29:58 PM

It was in some ways a deconstruction of the mythos. I can see why people didn't like it but it is why I am liking it more and more in hindsight. Will require repeat viewings.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
lamaros
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Reply #229 on: December 18, 2017, 04:43:05 PM

I'm boggled by some of the opinions here - truly confused that people could take these insane positions and not be joking.  I don't see any reason to repeat things that have been said over and over already... but wow.  It is shocking that anyone would defend the weaknesses of this film - and even more shocking at who on these boards is doing it.  

I ... can't ... even.


They loved TFA when it came out too. Give them a year and they will retcon how they felt about this.
patience
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Reply #230 on: December 18, 2017, 04:47:16 PM

 Ha you'll be waiting for eternity.

I love both movies. Tlj is better than tfa but because of what tlj is I'm very concerned how Abrams will handle the 3rd movie.

That movie will break or cement what tlj establishes.

OP is assuming its somewhat of a design-goal of eve to make players happy.
this is however not the case.
Samwise
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Reply #231 on: December 18, 2017, 04:53:25 PM

Just saw TLJ.  I liked it better than TFA but not better than ESB.  JJ will definitely fuck up the last one, and there will definitely be a forest planet, because all this has happened before.

I do give them credit for not hitting the exact plot points I'd guessed they would, but I still think the "omg avoid spoilers" was overblown.  I was more surprised by who DIDN'T die than by who did.

Watching this right after rewatching some of the OT was interesting -- the thing that really jarred me was how different Leia's accent is, I guess because she didn't have the energy to do the fake-royalty accent that she put on for the originals.  I thought Hamill did about as well as old Luke as Ford did as old Han, which is to say surprisingly well.

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Lakov_Sanite
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Reply #232 on: December 18, 2017, 05:07:57 PM



Watching this right after rewatching some of the OT was interesting -- the thing that really jarred me was how different Leia's accent is, I guess because she didn't have the energy to do the fake-royalty accent that she put on for the originals. 

Jarring because of the time skip but considering she stopped being official royalty and had been living with rebels 50+ years, it makes sense she would lose the accent.

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Khaldun
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Reply #233 on: December 18, 2017, 05:34:56 PM

I'm boggled by some of the opinions here - truly confused that people could take these insane positions and not be joking.  I don't see any reason to repeat things that have been said over and over already... but wow.  It is shocking that anyone would defend the weaknesses of this film - and even more shocking at who on these boards is doing it.  

I ... can't ... even.


They loved TFA when it came out too. Give them a year and they will retcon how they felt about this.

I am 100% I will love it even more. Even though I'm sure JJA will utterly fail to understand what he's been handed.
Khaldun
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Reply #234 on: December 18, 2017, 05:53:44 PM

Man, also, I continue to be fascinated by the idea that in an intelligent evil system, competent officers get rid of incompetent but powerful evil bosses who are going to wreak havoc if they're not put in check. How's that working out in the real world? How has it worked out in any world we know? The most fictional idea is that the Empire--or the Wehrmacht--was a bunch of ruthlessly efficient conquerors. Read your fucking history--or read the news. Competency doesn't beat evil, a lot of the time.
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Reply #235 on: December 18, 2017, 06:04:00 PM

We loved TFA because it was far better than the prequels. That doesn't mean we didn't see all the faults it had. It was no Phantom Menace, at the time that was a huge sigh of relief.

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Reply #236 on: December 18, 2017, 07:26:14 PM

I liked TFA, it was a good Star Wars film with some fairly obvious flaws that it mostly rose above. I feel the same way about TLJ. It is a good Star Wars film that does a decent job of repeating the beats of ESB without just rehashing the whole thing. The stuff about the Force was well done and should have been how the prequel trilogy explained it. The new space physics are stupid and jar with previously understood Star Wars space physics for no good reason.

I agree about the casino plot, there were valid reasons to have a side-quest happen, but it was handled badly and went on way too long. Also, it seemed thematically completely out of sync with the rest of the movie. I don't know if they were deliberately trying to contrast the desperate scramble for survival with the indulgent opulence of the casino planet, but it was far outside of the Star Wars style guide.

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Reply #237 on: December 18, 2017, 07:50:05 PM

Quote
Also, it seemed thematically completely out of sync with the rest of the movie.

Holy moly. The casino trip is one the the thematic hearts of the whole thing.   I think people are so training in the SW universe to be atomistic and focused on individual people, and I think this film has much bigger things on its mind.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
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Reply #238 on: December 18, 2017, 08:04:35 PM

I meant visually. The Star Wars universe has always been a very utilitarian and ascetic kind of place. Opulence is not really part of the visual lexicon, even in places like Cloud City or Coruscant.

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patience
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Reply #239 on: December 18, 2017, 08:07:09 PM

The casino not fitting in thematically I can understand.


The reason they say this because the mini themes that revolve around Rose's character are more in your face to the point if you are still thinking about them you will gloss over every scene the casino section briefly alludes to the bigger story.


The casino story was framed heavily by themes of exploitation and liberation in the beginning and end. All the stuff in the middle that touches the primary themes by being in the middle were drowned out.

OP is assuming its somewhat of a design-goal of eve to make players happy.
this is however not the case.
HaemishM
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Reply #240 on: December 18, 2017, 08:56:51 PM

The casino scenes were all tonally off, their aesthetic was completely non-Star Wars-y to the point of distraction. The character dialogue/exposition about the place took me completely out of the movie, as all I could think about was what a ham-fisted "1%er" allegory the whole thing was.

Abagadro
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Reply #241 on: December 18, 2017, 09:07:02 PM

Next crawl has apparently leaked.


"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Abagadro
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Reply #242 on: December 18, 2017, 09:35:59 PM

The casino scenes were all tonally off, their aesthetic was completely non-Star Wars-y to the point of distraction. The character dialogue/exposition about the place took me completely out of the movie, as all I could think about was what a ham-fisted "1%er" allegory the whole thing was.

I think there was definitely an element of that, but I don't think it was its main purpose.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
Khaldun
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Reply #243 on: December 19, 2017, 04:59:55 AM

The prequels had some opulent locations--some parts of Coruscant, the capital of Naboo. I think maybe a Star Wars casino could be a bit...stranger? The games, the set-up, etc.

But the premise of the casino sequence is crucial--that what drives some people to the Resistance, maybe all of them besides the Skywalkers--is more than just space fascists. It's the moral rot of life in the SW galaxy: that people are suffering and dying for no reason at the hands of the rich, the powerful, the criminal. I think maybe this is what the Jedi lost when they became space cops working for a government: the charge to protect the weak, stop the strong, spread compassion, wherever they find it. Think of the constraints on Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon that we see in The Phantom Menace, which is kind of the only time we see "normal" Jedi life in the Old Republic. They're following orders, they're on task, they tolerate slavery when they come across it. The Rebellion, when it appears, is obsessed only with overthrowing the Empire's military power--it has no real vision of what government will be like afterwards. It doesn't even really have a sense of what was good and not so good about the Old Republic, from what we can see.

They needed this scene, but I almost wonder if they would have been better off in a cold open having Finn and Rose be sent to recruit the Master Codebreaker simply because the Resistance thinks they'll have a need for someone to crack First Order codes in general, so that they're out of the way when the chase starts. Then you have them coming back to a beacon with the chase underway without knowing what the status quo is; the crazy scheme to turn off the tracker unfolds, etc. The awkwardness of getting Finn and Rose to meet on board, sending them off and then getting them back, of the timing of their mission on the casino in relation to the peril of the fleet, etc, is part of what doesn't work about it.

----

On a separate subject, I'm kind of fascinated at how much people hate the humorous elements. Folks who apparently were totally cool with the ridiculous aliens in the bar in ANH, with the "we're all fine here now, thank you" scene on the Death Star, and with a fat dude named Porkins being blown up, seem to not be able to handle Luke's green milk, the caretaker frog-nuns, and Poe's communication to Hux. Every once in a while it was a bit much--the leprechaun alien with the monocle on the casino planet gets too much visual attention--but it was basically in line with a consistent element in the entire series.

There is a contingent of SW fans who are apparently in love with a SW series that has never really been that is super-serious and nothing but completely straight-forward lightsaber battles between utterly good and utterly evil characters, sort of like two hours of the big lightsaber set-piece of The Phantom Menace and the Luke-Vader duel of ESB repeated on a loop. I'm sure someone can do a supercut of Rey and Kylo against Snoke's guards for anybody in that camp so they don't have to watch the rest.
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Reply #244 on: December 19, 2017, 05:39:07 AM

As someone who liked the movie I agree that the purpose of the casino sidequest was important but yeah the execution was bad.  If I had to boil it down it just didn't feel alien enough, like Finn took a side trip to another movie universe for a few.

~a horrific, dark simulacrum that glares balefully at us, with evil intent.
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