Movie Discussion Thread

The reason people complain about Rey is because throughout the films, she never grew into her powers through any sort of development. They were simply given to her one by one by the filmmakers, much like a video game character with powerups. From the beginning, Rey knows more about the Falcon than Han Solo, a guy who's owned it for decades, even though she's never set foot in it until then. She instantly knows how to use Jedi mind tricks on the Stormtroopers, something we've only seen Jedi masters with decades of training like Obi-Wan do. And to top it off, she defeats the big bad (regardless of how injured he was, he was still well trained) using a lightsaber she first picked up like five minutes earlier. And this is just the first movie. That alone is utterly ridiculous.

By the end of Last Jedi, she is lifting massive boulders while barely trying. After Luke refused to train her for most of the movie. About the only thing we saw her do on his island was swing a lightsaber a few times... Luke gives her some Jedi wisdom, and then suddenly the ground is splitting open beneath her feet and he's going on about how powerful she is. Okay, great... so was Anakin, but he needed at least a decade of training before he was strong enough to reach the levels Rey seems to slip into almost instantly.

And she does a bunch of shit in RoS that makes those powers look quaint in comparison.

None of it is actually earned. She's powerful because the film needs her to be. It is easy to see why some people come to the conclusion that there is some feminist agenda at play by making her some kind of all powerful force god. Feminism is fine, great even... there was a ton of feminism in movies like Terminator and Aliens, but those female characters earned their respect because they were WELL WRITTEN, so there was nothing to complain about. Rey is a poorly written character, which doesn't do her Jedi credibility any favors. Fans pointing this out is more than fair.

And if a guy had been doing the same thing, the movies would've been just as poorly reviewed, like the prequels. A bad character is a bad character.

 

When thinking about the relative badness of the prequels vs. these new films and Lucas' creative role in SW itself, it helps to think about the 'Campbellian arc' that @ColtMrFire refers to upstream. It was Lucas' own violation of the inner story in the prequels (e.g. the Force becomes materialized and 'explained' via "midichlorians"), along with his unconvincing characterization (e.g. brooding/bratty teenage angst leads to Dark Lordism) that make the prequels so bad relative to the first three. Yet, even here they are "star wars" in recognizable ways. I swim upstream compared to most in I think they got worse as they went along (i.e. episode 1 was better than 2, 2 better than 3) and not better. Phantom Menace captures the essential "feel" and "star war-ness" better, than 2, etc.

In an important sense, the prequels are "bad" because Lucas himself was at least in the process of losing/questioning/changing what made star wars what it is, but he had not lost the plot entirely.

These new movies are obviously the output of a creative and commercial process that literally has no clue as to the existence (let alone the relevance) of that Campbellian arc, and so even when they don't come across as a committee dumpster fire, they still are not SW. Even those who like them implicitly admit this when they describe what it is they like about them.

 

That's why I felt Finn was a far better candidate to lead the series. The stormtrooper turned hero/jedi idea is so much better than the bland repeat of naive desert scavenger turned jedi because DESTINY we've already seen multiple times in this series (and done far better).

 

Some random guy on the internet knows more about Star Wars than Disney....

 

Yep, but here's my question: Is Rian doing anything different in kind (granted, certainly in degree as he takes it up to 11) than Lucas himself did in the prequels/revisions with the nature of the Force (i.e. "midichlorians") or Han (who no longer shoots first)?

 

Good question. But the midi-whatever thing doesn't really change anything. The force still seems to randomly pick who is and who isn't force sensitive, just like it always has. It just seemed like Lucas' desire to expand on the idea with some sort of scientific foundation, which is ludicrous considering Star Wars was always more into philosophy than science. It wasn't Star Trek with its endless stream of technobabble about how everything functioned (and I'm a Trek fan).

The Han shoots first thing is another symptom of Lucas kind of losing his mind. Like I said in a previous post, things shifted during Return of the Jedi and Lucas started losing a grip on his instincts because of his divorce, bad experience on Empire and becoming more of a businessman who was controlling an empire of his own... he was no longer just a filmmaker. Also, it should be said that Greedo shooting first doesn't fundamentally change Han's character... he is still a rogue smuggler who only cares about himself at that point, and his arc remains intact.

Johnson fundamentally destroyed the Luke character at every level and indirectly the entire original trilogy. It was devastating and I understand why fans are still livid. Their complaints are perfectly valid. Last Jedi was the one thing that made me completely distance myself from Star Wars... I was kind of on board with Force Awakens because it had alot of potential. But Last Jedi unambiguously showed Disney didn't give a shit and that it was now total fan fiction nonsense.

Oh, this is also fun:

 

I have a different answer than you @ColtMrFire , and this funny "quiz" points to why. My answer goes back to your fan fiction version and your wanting a more "complex" good and evil story arc. To my mind, the original trilogy and Campbellian arc already possessed this complexity that we all intuit in the real world of the knowledge of good and evil. The thing about myth is that it has this fundamental "mystery" aspect to it by nature, and when you try to "explain" this mystery either with a pseudo-scientific materialism (i.e. "midichlorians") or a moralism (i.e. Han no longer shoots first) you then erode the mystery AND the complexity of the whole good vs. evil atmosphere, replacing it with something non-mysterious. In other words, not different in kind and a fundamental undermining and the arc is not in fact "intact". Lucas is guilty of undermining the myth.

The quiz points to the nihilism found in so much of modern art of all kinds, a kind of scorched earth and radical "humanity" (i.e. Luke has no center - mythic or otherwise - and is capable of anything at any time). This nihilism (in this example, in characterization of Luke's inner life) is rightly in my opinion labeled "insanity". Yet, Lucas has already lost the mythical and human plot with his willingness to revise. Perhaps Lucas was not yet able to steer SW into a real insanity as Ria was, but he still is guilty in a fundamental undermining in my opinion...

 

I get what you're saying.

The "grey area" idea is actually already built into the Campbellian myth via Star Wars, since the Chosen One angle becomes more complex if viewed over 9 movies. It was already hinting at becoming more complex as time went on. Think about it... where else could the trilogy have gone and remained fresh? Everything that had been setup was resolved in Ep. 6.

Actually it was Lucas himself who posited the idea of the third trilogy dealing with more complex moral ideas, I can't remember when and where I saw his quotes though.

And it needs to be said that there is nothing wrong with the fundamental ideas presented in the prequels. It's the details and execution that make those movies painful to watch. When I say Lucas lost his marbles, I mean as a day to day, in the trenches filmmaker... he never lost his touch as an idea man.

And I don't agree about the Han thing, it doesn't really change anything of any consequence. Han is still reacting to the situation the way he always would have.... self preservation. Making Greedo shoot first doesn't change that. Han shooting first is still him trying to preserve his own life, as Jabba would've possibly killed him for not having his money. If you follow the thread of what's happening, nothing has really changed, which is why I always ignored the outcry about Greedo shooting first. It was never as big deal to me, outside of being annoyed at Lucas for making changes just because he could, trying to force me to buy a new version of his movie... I didn't like the change, but didn't feel it altered the character of Han.

 

Finally got around to watching "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"
Highly recommended it you haven't seen it.
1st class story telling and entertainment.
This ain t no spaghetti western, prepare to be surprised,perplexed and delighted.

 

Saw Star Wars Rise of Skywalker yesterday. Saw Knives Out the week before.

Had a wonderful time with Knives Out, and glad we picked it over Jumanji last week. I generally like the stuff that Rian Johnson directed and I think The Last Jedi was the one that would an exception to that.

I am a little mixed on Rise of Skywalker. Disney feels like it doesn't have much of a backbone and picked to retcon parts of The Last Jedi. While I didn't care much for that, its kind dumb the way it was all handled. So many plot holes in ROS and just in general the story was kind of a mess.

Didn't feel like a good conclusion to the trilogy. Silver lining I would say is that at least it feels like they can do more side stories now that this trilogy is over. Enjoyed Rogue One and enjoying The Mandalorian right now.

 

Interesting discussion. I don't entirely agree with this reading of Luke. I think it is potentially in character that after his success against the Emporor, he becomes overconfident and makes the same mistake with Ben that Obiwan made with Anakin. Then with a crisis of self-confidence exiles himself.

I reckon this should have been the focus of this trilogy. The idea could have been that the Jedi made a fatal error by thinking they could entirely deny the dark side and that is what created imbalance in the force and allowed the rise of the sith. The Rey/Ren diad then works too as physical manifestation of this unstable division. The first film should have centred around the fall of Ben Solo and Luke's crisis and break-down. Then in the second film Luke and Rey (and force ghost Yoda) could have worked towards this realisation about the Jedi, destroyed the Jedi texts etc.

Then for the ending, instead of Rey just being all powerful, she finally masters the light and dark sides together, making her more powerful than the dark-side-only Palpatine. Instead of naming herself Skywalker, Rey creates a new balanced force order, called Skywalkers. And as a bonus, the film could have had the much better title Rise of the Skywalker.

As an aside, I liked the idea of bringing Palpatine back, they just should have made this the idea from the start and done it properly. I think that made more sense than bringing in a random new carbon copy in Snoke.

 

This is skirting dangerously close to being awesome. But...

Luke's overconfidence was what sent him to Bespin and lost him his hand. The entire point of the ending of ROTJ is that Luke has grown past this overconfidence and matured. And is his mistake with Ben really overconfidence? I'd argue its the opposite. It demonstrates a distinct lack of all logic and reason that his first instinct is to murder someone he suspects may possibly turn out bad, when even as an immature pre-jedi Luke had the foresight to risk his life to try and save someone who showed almost no signs of being redeemed (Vader). And this isn't even taking into account the ensuing decades where surely Luke has matured even further. It's not the idea that Luke made a bad choice in the hut with Ben that people are upset about, it's that choice being so anti-Luke that he may as well be an entirely different character. No one in the movies has ever done anything so brazenly out of character. Is it possible Luke would do something so horribly misguided? Of course. But that possibility is so vastly remote in the extreme that it comes off as bad fan fiction rather than good writing.

I like your ideas, but starting it from the point of Luke's cartoon level antics doesn't work for me. And Emperor's return is still horribad no matter when it happens.

 

Yeah, the writing in this trilogy across the board was simply incompetent. How anybody beyond the most casual of movie goers could take any enjoyment out of any of this train wreck is beyond me.

Oh, Palpatine's alive after all? I guess Anakin wasn't the chosen one after all then. I guess that ancient prophecy was wrong... da fuq?

Also, if you were going to bring back a surprise villain... do it with Boba Fett. It makes sense and if you did it even remotely well, every theater in America would have gone nuts on opening night. Instead you resurrect a character whose death was integral to the OG trilogy plot line to try and make some semblance of sense to the sequels after the turd that Rian Johnson left behind.

Disney needs to find a Kevin Feige for their Star Wars Universe projects. Lucas left behind one of the all time great Universes to operate in, and these current idiots (Rogue One writers aside) completely fucked it up. Just... wow.