The Star Wars Thread

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I didn't mind Rise... it had enough good moments in it to make it worthwhile but I didn't enjoy it as much as the other films. To me, like the later LotR films its main flaw is that it seemed written to play to fandom and their wishes and expectations which is always a mistake.

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But then outside of Empire I don't consider any of the SW films without some significant flaws. I think I've enjoyed Rogue One, Solo and Mandalorian more than any of the mainline films as they are a little fresher and not struggling as much under notions of canon and satisfying fandom.
 
Welp, I just watched The Last Jedi...

It will probaby take a while to compose all my thoughts. Honestly, overall, it wasn't a good film. But, not for any of the reasons that II've frequently heard.

The stuff with Luke that everyone complains about? Honestly, my favourite part of the film. That subplot was interesting, Hamill does a fantastic job. Everything up until... I guess just after the death of Snokes with Luke, Rey, and Ben was great.

The other plot, OTOH, was just wretched.

This will probably sound sacriligious, but I don't think they should have brought Leia back. Ford and Hamill? They've continued to act, they've had great careers long after Star Wars, and they both were a joy to see again in the Star Wars universe, and still have impressive screeen presences. But watching Carrie slur through her lines, the effects of cocaine and alcohol having taken their obvious toll over the years, so that nothing of the old Leia is left, was simply painful. Whatever that was, it was the opposite of invoking nostalgia.

I really think Poe and Finn could have been great characters. I liked both of them in The Force Awakens, but I have no idea what we're supposed to think of them in this film. Actually I have no idea what we are supposed to think of the Rebellion at all. It went from an egalatarian group bound together by a common goal in the original films to this weird military where apparently questioning anything, expecting explanations, or not blindly following orders is...a bad thing? I don't know. I'm still wrestling trying to figure out what Ryan Johnson was trying to say. What even was Laura Dern's character?Was I supposed to hate her this much?

The dialogue was excrable....even for Star Wars. The bizarre "let's go to a space casino to find a master hacker, and then free CGI horses because weapons dealers are bad because the First Order enslaved Rose's family, because there are no good guys and bad guys, except those guys are the bad guys and we're the good guys because stuff needs to happen" -thing didn't even seem like a Star Wars plot, it felt like just a series of events with no connecting theme or tone. And then the sacharine little kids randomly thrown in just compounded the problem. Benecio Del Toro is an actor I usually love, but his character was pointless, the entire casino story was pointless, it all just felt like a bunch of bad cliches strung together with characters that we're never given the chance to actually grow fond of before the film starts expecting us to respond to emotionally. It was cheap...it didn't earn anything, it just held out it's hands and swelled the music and said "be impressed! Be sad and moved!" and I was just annoyed. Many times I wanted to turn the film off.

Speaking of the music - worst score of any Star Wars film I've ever seen. Usually, music is the highlight of Star Wars. I'd say it was at least 50% responsible for the original film's success. This film just didn't know how to use the music, at all.

If you cut all that stuff. If you took the Luke/Rey/Ben stuff up to Ben killing Snoke, you would have had a decent, compelling film, IMO. Just one in need of a good ending. Just after killing Snoke and the Crimson Guards, when Ben was like "Fuck all this shit. Forget the Jedi, and Sith, and Rebellion and New Order, it's al bullshit", I really wish Rey had joined him. That would have been interesting. That would have set up for a fascinating unexplored new direction to take the third film.

I probably have lots more to say, but I'm writing this literally minutes after the film ended, I need some time to ruminate. Then I'll get to the final film, I guess. I'll be honest, I'm not looking forward to it.
 
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I basically agree, I thought the Jedi stuff was the best part of the film and the space battles and the casino just dragged.

I also appreciated that it's one of the few blockbuster films I've seen in recent years that actually had an ending that felt like an ending, rather than a fight scene with a foregone conclusion.
( I realised a while ago that I could walk out of almost every Marvel film 20-30 minutes before the ending and not have missed anything important).
I'm not saying that it was necessarily all that good an ending, but at least it was there.

Other than that, I can't really say much for it. Every other Rian Johnson film is a better film, so if he never makes another Star Wars film then I feel that's probably a good thing.

I haven't see the last film and don't intend to.
 
I appreciate you taking the time to watch it, Tristram. I’m glad you liked the scenes with Luke and Rey. Did you like Yoda showing up?
 
Endless Flight said:
I appreciate you taking the time to watch it, Tristram. I’m glad you liked the scenes with Luke and Rey. Did you like Yoda showing up?
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Yes, and I really liked that it was crazy old man giggling Yoda from the originals and not the super serious Yoda from the prequels.
 
TristramEvans said:
Speaking of the music - worst score of any Star Wars film I've ever seen. Usually, music is the highlight of Star Wars. I'd say it was at least 50% responsible for the original film's success. This film just didn't know how to use the music, at all.
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I agree. Even Attack of the Clones, one of my least favorite Star Wars films, had lots of music that felt memorable to me.
 
I find the worst thing about Attack of the Clones to be the color palette. I don’t know if it’s because it was the first movie to ever be shot 100% digitally or maybe something else. The colors just seem off compared to every other saga movie.
 
I think the Rose character was just too precious and pressed too hard. I've also wondered why they didn't go with Finn thinking the Empire was tracking him somehow. Nope he's just made into a coward. A man that turned away from a relentless and brutal training regime just turned coward. Wasn't trying to lead the Empire away or surrender to buy the resistance some time, he was just running away so Rose could be AWESOME! not

It's a common mistake, beating the audience over the head with an annoying new character. The Phantom Menace comes to mind.

I think the whole casino plot was the director feeling guilty about directing an action movie and trying to put a moralistic spin on the over the top action. Unforgiven did it much better. It was the pointless failure of the whole venture that makes it hard to swallow. It might be somewhat realistic or model real life better. People in real life often go chasing off the plot and run into disaster. I'd have much preferred a more complete backstory on Snoke.
 
Endless Flight said:
I find the worst thing about Attack of the Clones to be the color palette. I don’t know if it’s because it was the first movie to ever be shot 100% digitally or maybe something else. The colors just seem off compared to every other saga movie.
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The Brown and yellow color scheme sticks in my head for some reason.
 
The issue that a lot of fans have with Luke Skywalker stems from Mark Hamill's own dissatisfaction with how Johnson thought how the character was. Hamill explained that Luke was one of the most hopeful, heroic characters, he wouldn't have abandoned the Galaxy in their time of need.

And a lot of older fans agree with Hamill's assessment of Luke. Personally, I have no dog in that fight, because I've seen how life can drag a person down to nihilism, so that didn't bother as much. And really, I think they did Finn dirty as a character, he was more interesting than any other of the Disney Trilogy, but I never really got attached to any of them, so they weren't that big a thing for me. They were just... There.

My biggest bone of contention has always been what's been termed the 'Holdo Maneuver'. Because it affects the canon, and everyone LIKES canon in their stories, because humans like pattern and consistency and that what Canon does.

However, by having the Holdo Maneuver possible runs counter to what we were told by Han Solo in the first Star Wars film. That you cannot hyperspace into a gravity well, like that of a sun or a planet. nor can you conveniently 'ram' ships as it needs precise calculations.

Which runs literally counter to everything we've been shown in Disney's Trilogy. Which begs the question: Which is Canon? Cannot be both, as one says the other is impossible. Is the OT canon, or Disney's Trilogy?
 
You can go into hyperspace through a planet. What keeps ships from doing that is the navigational computer. There’s a warning system that drops the ship into realspace before they hit the object. If you don’t care about dying, it can be overridden.
 
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Endless Flight said:
You can go into hyperspace through a planet. What keeps ships from doing that is the navigational computer. There’s a warning system that drops the ship into realspace before they hit the object. If you don’t care about dying, it can be overridden.
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The reason why Navicomputer drops the ship out of Hyperspace is because the debris would be spread out in hyperspace and create a travel hazard. There's things called Hyperlanes, which are well traveled and mapped paths to and from a series of planets.

Here's what should have happened in The Force Awakens: If they were as stupid as to try the 'warping into an atmosphere' and disabled the safety system, the Resistance ships go into Hyperspace and... Nothing. Starkiller base rumbles along because they would never have known there was an attack happening, because the entire fleet would have exploded against the planet's gravity.

That's it.
 
I mean, I cared so little about that part of the film that fixing a logical inconsstency at that point would be like spreading butter on a rock.

It felt like the whole "they can track us through Hyperspace" should have been a really big deal, but effectivelly it just meant everything was repetitive. The First Order are attacking and blowing stuff up - run away - the First Order are attacking and blowing stuff up - run away - go to a casino - run away - the First Order are attacking and blowing stuff up - run away - Oops we won.
 
But we've known that you can track through Hyperspace. Since Star Wars: A New Hope. Remember how the Empire found Yavin base in the first place?
 
Chris Brady said:
But we've known that you can track through Hyperspace. Since Star Wars: A New Hope. Remember how the Empire found Yavin base in the first place?
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Honestly, no. I don't even remember what the Yavin base is - it's been almost 25 years since I last saw the original films.

But in this film they said it was new technology, and Rose and Finn later had to engage in some Star Trek TNG technobabble to come up with a "solution".
 
TristramEvans said:
Honestly, no. I don't even remember what the Yavin base is - it's been almost 25 years since I last saw the original films.
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Fair enough, I rewatch the originals every so often, so it's relatively fresh in my mind.

TristramEvans said:
But in this film they said it was new technology, and Rose and Finn later had to engage in some Star Trek TNG technobabble to come up with a "solution".
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Except that it's not.

Let's face it, JJ Abrams is a Star Trek guy (Although like all things, he just scratches at the surface and then floods the screen with lens flares and too much action to think straight) and Rian Johnson is not a science fiction guy, having neither the chops nor the interest in creating an interesting science fiction (As that is what Space Opera is).
 
I'm sure they're both fine directors, I just don't get why they need to be writers too.
 
Chris Brady said:
But we've known that you can track through Hyperspace. Since Star Wars: A New Hope. Remember how the Empire found Yavin base in the first place?
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I'm pretty sure they did that by hiding a tracking device on the Millenium Falcon.
 
Nobby-W said:
I'm pretty sure they did that by hiding a tracking device on the Millenium Falcon.
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Wasnt there a fault they could track in TLJ? I only watched it once, but I seem to remember a reason why they could be tracked.

Also, in Empire, they talked about plotting every possible destination along a vector for the Falcon. So direction k travel is something, too.
 
Endless Flight said:
You can go into hyperspace through a planet. What keeps ships from doing that is the navigational computer. There’s a warning system that drops the ship into realspace before they hit the object. If you don’t care about dying, it can be overridden.
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Honestly, that whole thing is just idiotic.
Why bother building a Death Star (or hell, even a Star Destroyer for that matter) if all it takes to bring it down is a suicide hyperspace attack from an X-Wing?
For that matter, why has it to be suicidal at all? Can't you just program the flight computer beforehand to execute the maneuver without you onboard?

It just doesn't make sense, no matter how you look at it. If that maneuver is at all possible, no matter how contrived of an explanation they give for why it isn't commonly used, waging war in the SW universe would be a completely different thing. Everyone would simply be setting up "the situation where you can use it" and using little suicidal hyperspace drones and not even bother with capital ships, except maybe as troop transport.
 
A hyperspace attack from an X-Wing wouldn’t destroy a Death Star. It would destroy the X-Wing. The reason the ships have that warning system is so pilots can pull out of hyperspace before they hit the object. The other thing is, to pull off that maneuver reliably your ship would have to be right in front of the target at short range. The Death Star can move like a capital ship and can’t be targeted from light years away. You never see it in the movies, but the Death Star can go through hyperspace as well. Now it probably would destroy a planet if it hit it in hyperspace but it took 20 years to build it. Nobody is going to waste time and resources like that.
 
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Some interesting stuff about the High Republic era stuff that's coming out eventually, is that there's some great disaster that causes Hyperspace travel to be dangerous. A chapter for one of the books was released as a teaser recently and I think that it heavily implies that a large colony ship hits something while in hyperspace, causing a bunch of debris to fly around.
Also, we need a new edit of Rogue One that has the Death Star flying around hyperspace.
 
Giganotosaurus said:
Some interesting stuff about the High Republic era stuff that's coming out eventually, is that there's some great disaster that causes Hyperspace travel to be dangerous. A chapter for one of the books was released as a teaser recently and I think that it heavily implies that a large colony ship hits something while in hyperspace, causing a bunch of debris to fly around.
Also, we need a new edit of Rogue One that has the Death Star flying around hyperspace.
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How did it get to Alderaan? To Yavin? To the two planets it zapped cities on? I don't need spoon feeding everything.
 
Luca said:
Honestly, that whole thing is just idiotic.
Why bother building a Death Star (or hell, even a Star Destroyer for that matter) if all it takes to bring it down is a suicide hyperspace attack from an X-Wing?
For that matter, why has it to be suicidal at all? Can't you just program the flight computer beforehand to execute the maneuver without you onboard?
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I'm sure I've heard of this technology before. Something guided, guaranteed to never miss ...

Or, for that matter, just fling marginally subluminal rocks at it.
 
Stevethulhu said:
How did it get to Alderaan? To Yavin? To the two planets it zapped cities on? I don't need spoon feeding everything.
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Really I just want to see the Death Star flying through space to the Star Trek theme. This is the voyage of the Starship Death Star. Her mission, to boldly destroy what has not been destroyed before.
 
Finn's whole character arc fell really flat for me. You'd think that a former Stormtrooper who felt compassion and individuality would've maybe felt some remorse callously gunning down other troopers who likely had the same origins that he did.

What an interesting moment it could've been that he and Rose had discovered an "Order 77" or something that deleted the brainwashing in Imperial soldiers. A deliberate sabotage akin to the weak spot of the Death Star.

As much as people don't like Rose, that should've been HER that Finn was riding beside at the end of the Rise of Skywalker. That would've rhymed well with the casino scene in the previous film.

Honestly, it isn't THAT hard to tell a decent story. It can be very simple too. What the hell is wrong with those people?
 
Necrozius said:
Finn's whole character arc fell really flat for me. You'd think that a former Stormtrooper who felt compassion and individuality would've maybe felt some remorse callously gunning down other troopers who likely had the same origins that he did.

What an interesting moment it could've been that he and Rose had discovered an "Order 77" or something that deleted the brainwashing in Imperial soldiers. A deliberate sabotage akin to the weak spot of the Death Star.

As much as people don't like Rose, that should've been HER that Finn was riding beside at the end of the Rise of Skywalker. That would've rhymed well with the casino scene in the previous film.

Honestly, it isn't THAT hard to tell a decent story. It can be very simple too. What the hell is wrong with those people?
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Leaving Rose out in the last movie was criminal.
 
Giganotosaurus said:
Leaving Rose out in the last movie was criminal.
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I can't say her introduction endeared me to her at all. She attacks Finn for leaving, like he's a conscripted soldier or indentured servant of the Rebellion. It was just another way I really didn't like how the Rebellion was depicted in the film - it really seemed like a military cult.
 
TristramEvans said:
I'm sure they're both fine directors, I just don't get why they need to be writers too.
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The only people who like JJ Abrams is Hollywood, who they consider a Golden Child or 'the Next Spielberg'. He initially makes a lot of money on whatever franchise he works on, and is a master of ditching before any of the backlash can stick to him. So to Hollywood, he's only ever made money.

Most of the audience for the properties he's touched either don't like, or completely forget his projects. He's well known for his flash (often mocked as 'throwing ALL the lens flares!'), overloaded plots, too fast pacing to keep the audience from actually realizing how weak the plot and stories are.

Ryan Johnson is a thin skinned troll, who makes funny, quirky movies often based in the real world and filled with unlikable characters that often get their comeuppance in amusing ways. Knives Out is the perfect vehicle for his ideas, wherein he had a character who was effectively what he thought of the Star Wars fandom that disliked his movie.

His behaviour on Twitter also shows a man unable to let go of the past, and need for attention, often trying to coax a reaction by mentioning the fact that he was given a Star Wars Trilogy. He also has stated that he would rather have a movie wherein half the audience who sees it hates, rather than having everyone love it. Which is a terrible idea to make money on a franchise as Disney sadly found out.

TristramEvans said:
I can't say her introduction endeared me to her at all. She attacks Finn for leaving, like he's a conscripted soldier or indentured servant of the Rebellion. It was just another way I really didn't like how the Rebellion was depicted in the film - it really seemed like a military cult.
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1. She stuns and imprisons people without authority.

2. She assaults Finn and forces herself into a mission she has no part in.

3. She gets them captured on Canto Bight.

4. She stops Finn saving the Rebel base.

5. She's preachy, annoying, entitled and grossly incompetent.
 
Sad sacks of Star Wars “fans” (they really aren’t) forced her off social media. I don’t care how much you hate The Last Jedi, there’s no reason to go after Tran for wanting to be a part of Star Wars. Just for that bullshit she went through, JJ should have given her an even bigger role in the next movie.
 
Endless Flight said:
Sad sacks of Star Wars “fans” (they really aren’t) forced her off social media. I don’t care how much you hate The Last Jedi, there’s no reason to go after Tran for wanting to be a part of Star Wars. Just for that bullshit she went through, JJ should have given her an even bigger role in the next movie.
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going after an actor for a role they play is delusional, like those crazy fans of soap operas that cant tell the difference between the show and reality

Ive heard the actor who played Jar Jar in the prequels was nearly driven to suicide, which is shameful
 
Ahmed Best Is actually doing a Star Wars kids show called Jedi Temple Challenge. He’s the host of the show who is a Jedi Master. Glad to see him back in the franchise after how his life got turned upside down for doing a children’s character.
 
Endless Flight said:
Ahmed Best Is actually doing a Star Wars kids show called Jedi Temple Challenge. He’s the host of the show who is a Jedi Master. Glad to see him back in the franchise after how his life got turned upside down for doing a children’s character.
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Ahmed Best doing the Taken speech in Jar Jar's voice is both hilarious and terrifying.
 
TristramEvans said:
I'm sure they're both fine directors, I just don't get why they need to be writers too.
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Just watched Johnson's Knives Out, which he wrote, and it is an excellent spin on Agatha Christie with clever dialogue. This is also true of his debut Brick. I think the crime thriller seems to be what he excels at, too bad he wasn't able to create a SW riff on Noir the same way the Mandalorian riffs on Westerns and Samurai films..
 
Endless Flight said:
Sad sacks of Star Wars “fans” (they really aren’t) forced her off social media. I don’t care how much you hate The Last Jedi, there’s no reason to go after Tran for wanting to be a part of Star Wars. Just for that bullshit she went through, JJ should have given her an even bigger role in the next movie.
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This is actually factually incorrect. This is the mainstream media blaming of nebulous 'fans' for their actions,. If anyone has read her statement (which I did because I was incenced that a bunch of loonies on the internet, and I do mean crazy people, as the real definition if insanity is the inability to differentiate the difference between reality and fantasy. Most people know that the actor is not the role), Ms. Tran effectively bashes Disney and Hollywood culture for making her believe that she would be 'leading lady' material in a production if she only changed herself. This got twisted into mass media's love of bashing fans.

This is the same media that claimed 'fans' chased Daisy Ridley off social media, but it was in fact Ms. Ridley's desire to move away from it, because it was taking too much of her time which could be better spent in her opinion. To which most of us lauded as frankly social media isn't very social.

Endless Flight said:
Ahmed Best Is actually doing a Star Wars kids show called Jedi Temple Challenge. He’s the host of the show who is a Jedi Master. Glad to see him back in the franchise after how his life got turned upside down for doing a children’s character.
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The only people who attacked Ahmed Best was, once again, the media who hated the character, but whom tried to deflect and project this hate onto unnamed fans. Most people who saw the Prequels did not like Jar Jar Binks, they did not, and still do not, care about his voice actor. Mr. Best was a non-entity in this dislike, no one knew about him.
 
Voros said:
Just watched Johnson's Knives Out, which he wrote, and it is an excellent spin on Agatha Christie with clever dialogue. This is also true of his debut Brick. I think the crime thriller seems to be what he excels at, too bad he wasn't able to create a SW riff on Noir the same way the Mandalorian riffs on Westerns and Samurai films..
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The issue is that Science Fiction requires a deeply imaginative mind built for world design, like George Lucas. A science fiction/space opera setting is as much a 'character' in the story as it is a backdrop and scenery. It needs little moments to make itself feel authentic, like how the various alien species (if any) interact with each other, the general look of the technologies, both important and not,

It requires a lot of investment and actual work (although if one loves to build world's it's less work and more fun) to get it right.

Mr. Johnson doesn't have that inclination. His works are based in the 'real world' which alleviates a lot of the work required to get the audience invested. We know how the world works (or think we do) and thus that can be left to the imagination, while Mr, Johnson focuses on characters and situations, which he clearly excels in.

I rather enjoyed Knives Out, I found all the characters amusing. If I have one criticism is that it didn't seem the mystery got solved, and that bothers me when it comes to a Mystery story.
 
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