The Last Jedi Thread (with Spoilers)

Discussion in 'Random Thoughts' started by ultrabike, Jan 8, 2018.

  1. Rockwell

    Rockwell Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Feb 24, 2019
    Likes Received:
    545
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Vancouver Island, British Columbia
    Sorry for all this...I felt it prudent to respond to a number of comments at once instead of spamming the thread with multiple responses.

    This is pure speculation but I've often wondered if Harrison Ford's ego only agreed to do the movie if a) Solo would be killed off and b) there would be no Skywalker stuff so the impact of (a) would form the the major ualloyed emotional arc of the story.

    It felt like a Star Wars movie. It was a tightly directed well written story with no bloat that instead of sharting on the OT went out of its way to not only maintain internal consistency but also to clarify some elements of ANH in a sensible way. As pluses Donny Yen's character is imho one of the greatest of the whole series-- he brought to the fore just enough classical SW mysticism to satisfy those of us who craved it in a movie that otherwise had no place for it. Also the final scene with Vader was AWESOME and pound for pound one of the most satisfying in any of the movies. Rogue One was the first time since 1983 I left the theater a fully satisfied Star Wars fan. Repeated viewings have further cemented this view.

    I would respectfully disagree with both of those claims ie., TLJ is horrid fecal matter and NOT miles ahead of the prequels. First off let me say that I despise the prequels, have never owned them and have no desire to ever watch them again-- but as much as I despise them I have to acknowledge that within them is the seed of something much better. As Red Letter Media pointed out in their Youtube reviews one gets a sense that the prequels comprise Lucas' first draft and that nobody had the balls to tell him it was too hamfisted and needed to be re-drafted, molded and re-written into something much better. That said there is something there-- the skeleton of a properly structured character arc was there, the basics of a solid SW story was there-- one that expanded the universe without simply re-telling the original stories. Unfortunately it was executed in such a poor and incompetent way that the films are all but unwatchable now. It boils down to the fact that Lucas was fundamentally an idea man who needed others much more competent with script writing, conveying human melodrama and movie direction to turn said ideas into something amazing. Watching the prequels one really starts to appreciate everything Leigh Brackett, Irvin Kershner and Lawrence Kasdan brought to the table in the OT. If Lucas had been the sole writer/director of Empire we very well might not be having this conversation today.

    That said, as bad as the prequels were TLJ was much much worse. Where the prequels contained the seeds of something good and were marred mainly by execution I simply cannot find a single redeeming element of TLJ. It's a total and complete dumpster fire of a movie wrought by a director with an over-inflated opinion of himself and utter contempt for the SW universe and for its primary audience. Put another way, watching the prequels makes me feel insulted, watching TLJ made me feel molested, and in a pinch I'd prefer neither but choose the former.

    Subversion and inserting current social justice trends into the SW universe. Rian Johnson has stated repeatedly that his interest was primarily in "subverting audience expectations" in terms of what comprises a story, a Star Wars movie, even narrative structure in general. This is a terrible idea for a SW movie because IMHO the major lasting appeal of Star Wars stems largely from the fact that, in creating it, Lucas was heavily influenced by the work of Joseph Campbell. For anyone who's not aware Campbell was a professor of mythology who after researching thousands of years of human myths in cultures all over the world developed the thesis that most of humanity's most persistent and endearing myths are rooted in a common structure composed of well defined steps. This structure, dubbed the Hero's Journey, comprises the fundamental DNA of the OT made manifest through the character of Luke Skywalker. Its timeless resonance is one of the reasons IMHO that the OT has had such a unique, powerful and lasting cultural impact-- something about the original Star Wars movies tapped into a deep level of our collective human psyche. So when Johnson decided to "subvert" audience expectations for a SW movie he was, in once sense, also subverting 1000s of years of human cultural DNA and the result, again imho, whatever else it might be is emphatically NOT a satisfying Star Wars movie.

    The Lumineers would agree with you :p

    They sort of evolved into social commentary, moreso in the prequels, but as I tried to express in a comment above I believe that in the OT Lucas was endeavoring to tap into something more universal and much less tied to any specific culture.

    Yup. I love both Star Wars and Star Trek-- Star Trek for politics and Star Wars for its deeper more mystical import.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  2. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

    Pyrate Contributor
    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2017
    Likes Received:
    986
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Croatia
    Well spoken.

    I see original trilogy as a great natural gem. Lots of small imperfections inside, but that's how it is. Very valuable. Lucas dug up the grand gem itself, but it looked as a glass dirty potato in his hands. Other masters of crafts made it into the great gem it was. All that's left of it now are pictures of it's glory.
    Prequels are a synthetic sapphire boule - gem matter forced into an amalgam/glass gem cut to visual perfection from afar but it's implanted in piece of bread. You wouldn't eat it, or wear it. Looks weird. Why would you do it like that? Also that bread gets moldy as time goes by, and it stinks.

    Sequels are a mixture of these beforementioned gems crushed to particles of different sizes in a bucket with a bit of perfume and some cat diarrhea-poo that rian johnson meticulously prepared and then used to paint mona lisa on his ass.
    Looks shiny at times, depending on the angle, someone may like it for it's extravagance, especially critics.
    It's still glorified glitter poo on a dude's butt at the end of the day, and did a lot of damage to the jewelry museum and now regulars no longer want to pay to see this shit.

    Kids would probably play with any of that untill they get a bit older.

    Perfume is social justice. Great for what it is when used properly. No point in spraying poo with it and wearing it as a necklace.

    @purr1n
    I agree with the sentiment but I'd say it's the opposite way around exactly because of it. Sometimes having stuff "too easy" all the time doesn't make you powerful, it makes one useless.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  3. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

    Staff Member Pyrate MZR
    Joined:
    Sep 25, 2015
    Likes Received:
    8,960
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Irvine CA
    I don't really care about Lucas "Hero's Journey" explanation. The OT was very good. The prequels were not.

    I don't care about the prequel's character ark, or solid SW story. It's shit to me. This work proved to me the Lucas can't write, and had some folks do the work for him or fix all his bullshit during OT. He is incompetent.

    Watching the prequels shows me that in the OT there were good writers, and in in the prequels there were not. It is good Lucas did not mess up ESB. Though he tried with his multiple re-releases that attempted to "fix" details here and there.

    TLJ is indeed unimaginative and repetitive. But I would take that to the monumental pieces of shit that the prequels are.

    The take away? f**k YOU Lucas!
     
  4. ultrabike

    ultrabike Measurbator - Admin

    Staff Member Pyrate MZR
    Joined:
    Sep 25, 2015
    Likes Received:
    8,960
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Irvine CA
    Yeah. I'm a little mad at Lucas.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  5. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

    Staff Member Pyrate BWC
    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2015
    Likes Received:
    89,777
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Padre Island CC TX
    I was being ironic. It's only easy in that it appears to be easy, but as I like to say, there is no free lunch. Look at what eventually happened to Aunt Becky's daughters: how they got into USC so easily, only to find out it really wasn't so easy. (Sort of a bad example because it's easy to get into USC with decent grades and a lot of money).

    Anyway the point I was really trying to make is that Rey's insta-mega Force powers with only 24 hours of training is something that appeals to a lot of young people today, and in many instances, it rings true. We only need to look at Post Malone and Aunt Becky's social-media influencer daughter (before she got caught).

    --

    I don't know how much of the Hero's Journey stuff rings true in the OT. For all we know, that might be 4chan alt-right nonsense.

    One key component of the Hero's Journey is falling off the wagon and finally getting one's shit together. Luke made hasty decisions as any young person would, but he never really fell off the wagon. (One could make a better argument that the Hero's Journey applies more to Vader or TLJ cynical Luke, but Heroes don't take that long to get their shit together, or only get their shit together before they die. Maybe 10 years, not 40.)

    Luke was a lot of kids I knew back then. We wanted to get the f**k outta boring suburban San Jose California (or Petaluma) and not do chores anymore. We talked about our slightly older peers who went off to college and couldn't wait to forge our own paths. Add laser swords and space F-4 Phantoms and MIG-21s, and there we have it.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  6. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

    Pyrate Contributor
    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2017
    Likes Received:
    986
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Croatia
    I'm just sad darth jar jar was never a thing.

     
  7. Mithrandir41

    Mithrandir41 Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2016
    Likes Received:
    2,151
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Valencia, CA
    Agreed. George Lucas made me want to vomit when he said the rebels were the Viet cong and America was the empire: so f'ing stupid. But then hard lefties usually don't know the difference between freedom and oppression anyway.
    Yeah: Darth "Meesa wanna suck yousa dicks" would have been an excellent payoff... Or not.
     
  8. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

    Staff Member Pyrate BWC
    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2015
    Likes Received:
    89,777
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Padre Island CC TX
    Nine times out of ten, the world is better off with American "imperialism" than without it. It's just that America never gets credit when things work out right. People, especially some Americans, just take it for granted.

    I wish the young people or old actors (who should know better) of today could experience the fear of communism and how the USSR invaded a big chunk of Europe, or how Mao played Sim Government with his own people, or how Pol Pot killed anyone with an IQ higher than 100 in Cambodia.

    Lucas is an idiot. This is the guy who makes caricatures of Mexicans (actually Guatemalans because they typically are smaller than Mexicans) as Ewoks, Jamaicans as Jar Jar, Chinese as Nute Gunray, and Jews trading in slaves as Watto. I mean, Lucas is incredibly bad about this. For this, I invoke the @ultrabike clause: f**k you Lucas.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  9. Mithrandir41

    Mithrandir41 Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2016
    Likes Received:
    2,151
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Valencia, CA
    We live in Bizarro world. Most of the "cultural influencers"are the most ignorant of fools, and the most widely read or heard.
     
  10. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

    Pyrate Contributor
    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2017
    Likes Received:
    986
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Croatia
    Well... Yoda was a green gremlin stealing wieners and flashlights for something like 20 minutes until he was revealed to be a jedi grandmaster. Would have worked the same for jar jar, he was supposed to be anti-yoda. Imagine at the end of phantom manace instead of maul killing qui-gon, that being a dead serious jar jar, no more goofy/stupid stuff, just murdering him in cold blood. There is a ton of info about it online, apparently this was the plan but the idiots decided to wait to do the reveal in the second movie and then due to huge fan backlash scrapped the idea entirely and introduced count dooku instead and shoved jar jar away as much as possible (which was at that point in time probably a good thing too, imagine if they left yoda as a retarded green monkey for the entire movie as well). But if you are even a tiny bit interested, check the theory out. Plenty of evidence, and I mean really plenty. Jar jar is completely animated so everything he does is on purpose. You can actually see him putting words in Padme's mouth, doing insane jumps off-screen, and in some deleted scenes, manipulating an entire stadium of people, tons of stuff like that - even smiling at the qui-gon's funeral. Jarjar makes an evil smile, hidden in the background - not easily noticeable but there. Has to be on purpose. It's a trope in arthurian legend, the grand wizard is someone you least expect. Jar jar was supposed to be the phantom menace, I think the "actor" sort of confirmed that too. Interesting stuff however you look at it.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  11. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

    Staff Member Pyrate BWC
    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2015
    Likes Received:
    89,777
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Padre Island CC TX
    Just a different perspective from someone who was not born in the USA.

    After Nine-Eleven hit and we were mobilizing to kick someone's ass, my grandmother told me that if I were drafted into the military, I would have to serve. Nevermind the political motives, flawed rational, debatable intelligence, etc. (In any case, Afghanistan was legit). She was just a very simple person.

    She said that the USA did a lot good in the world and that Americans are the most generous people. That it is these good people and their good deeds that made America powerful (implying karma). And that when called, it was my duty to defend the country because of what America had given our family. (Note that Taiwan, being a colony of Japan during WWII, was bombed to shit with incendiary bombs by the USA, but she never held anything against the USA.)

    Just today, I met an Uber driver from Thailand. He was exiled from his home country because he couldn't stop publicly shitting on the royal family and the military at work. (Shitting on the King is a punishable offense in Thailand). He said all the rich and powerful in Thailand are greedy motherfuckers and that members of the royal family have mental problems (implying genetics). I countered that perhaps some of our own leaders in the USA might also have mental problems. He retorted that they still have to earn their positions in four years and after eight, they are gone. (Yes, there exists the the of lack of term limits for Senators.) He was a riot because he was able to speak his mind here without getting killed. (Thai military intelligence routinely "offs" exiled dissidents in Cambodia and Vietnam).

    I can add more stories about Iraq Christians (oops, wrong religion over there) who are family friends. In nutshell, they'd be dead now if they stayed.

    Everybody in the shit parts of the world where there are monarchies, oligarchies, dictators, theocracies, or even Western countries where there are more rigid social structures wants to come to the USA.

    It greatly angers me when retards in their little bubbles say shit like "Now, everybody wants to leave America". Heck, I'm still waiting for Alec Baldwin to go to Canada.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2019
  12. JK47

    JK47 Guest


    Uuuuhhh, yeah. Only problem is the movies already came out, and when is the big reveal? Episode XVII, in 2067?
     
  13. crenca

    crenca Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    May 26, 2017
    Likes Received:
    3,825
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Southern New Mexico
    I'm with @BillOhio, for the first time since seeing A New Hope at the drive in with my parents when I was 8, I won't be seeing the next SW movie in the theatre. My wife or daughter will probably buy it eventually so I doubt I will avoid completely however, but man things are bad for SW right now...
     
  14. ColtMrFire

    ColtMrFire Writes better fan fics than you

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Jun 16, 2016
    Likes Received:
    6,226
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Location:
    Austin, TX
    I'm one of those who thinks SW should've lived and died with Lucas. The prequels warts and all are still his. I really consider the Disney stuff to be glorified fan films.

    Just like I'm not interested in new Matrix movies without the Wichowskis or Back To The Future sequels without Zemeckis/Gale. Some things are just too unique to be passed off.

    Sticking lazer swords and Tie Fighters in a movie and slapping the SW logo on it doesn't necessarily make it genuine for me.
     
  15. obsiCO

    obsiCO Thai Fish Experiment Gone Wrong

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Sep 18, 2017
    Likes Received:
    634
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Bangkok, Thailand
    Felt like adding something here but I don't plan on visiting a cell anytime soon so I'll just leave it at that. :(

    There's a meme here that if you come across something that touches on the monarchy even a little, you say "Safety First. Long Live the King." and leave it there to avoid, well, you know. It's probably birthed from a case where some rioter's mother got arrested for not chastising someone she knows who was shitting on the military rule and the monarchy. Can't get the rioter, get their mother, even with some random charges; that's how low things can get here.

    I'll confirm that most people I know around my age here would all move to the US if given the opportunity. Some just can't because money (or lack thereof), family ties, and, surprisingly enough, food.

    Well, I'd say shitting on anyone is a punishable offense. :D

    Also, to add to the thread (not really), the Hobbit trilogy is trash the same way the SW Prequels is.
     
  16. BillOhio

    BillOhio Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Mar 3, 2017
    Likes Received:
    2,396
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Glendale CA
    Home Page:
    I'm happy we got Rogue One and will be an opening night ticket buyer when Disney hires somebody who knows what the hell they are doing to make Star Wars movies in the future.
     
  17. Ardacer

    Ardacer Friend

    Pyrate Contributor
    Joined:
    Oct 15, 2017
    Likes Received:
    986
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Croatia
    Yes, it's as you said. That train is looong gone now. It was a good idea though, which never came to be.
     
  18. haywood

    haywood Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Oct 22, 2015
    Likes Received:
    763
    Trophy Points:
    93
    New teaser drops and looks epic, can JJ really pull this off?

     
  19. BillOhio

    BillOhio Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Mar 3, 2017
    Likes Received:
    2,396
    Trophy Points:
    93
    Location:
    Glendale CA
    Home Page:
    My favorite part of the trailer was them saying that this is the end of this 'saga'. I'll catch this one on Netflix and rewatch Endgame on IX's opening day. I'm not supporting what Disney has done with this franchise so far.

    From the title are we now expecting that Rey is a Skywalker, that Kylo finds redemption, that Leia goes full Jedi or that Ghost Luke saves the day? Either way, I don't care.
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2019
  20. TwoEars

    TwoEars Friend

    Pyrate
    Joined:
    Feb 2, 2016
    Likes Received:
    2,006
    Trophy Points:
    113
    I hate it already.

    Everything JJ does is so on the nose.
     

Share This Page